An Eye for Mine, A Tooth for Two

November twenty-third, eighteen-fifty: the day I committed my first crime against humanity. I was eight years old, one of the youngest in the Alabama plantation, the orphaned boy known for shenanigans.

Will. The little slave boy.

Wednesday morning. The air screamed of the winter holidays just around the corner. Snores sounded from the slave houses as I jerked my eyes open and slipped out the door, adventure consuming my thoughts. I had a mission. With one last glance at the horizon, the sun’s edge poked over the trees, and I sprinted for the barn doors. The air froze against my chest, burned down my lungs.

I stopped dead inside the door to find the stable boy.

Drat, I thought.

He wore more lines across his face than me, moving with force as he lifted each stack of hay and thrust them towards the trough. I glanced up to find him towering over me, yet his eyes were smaller than when I looked in the mirror. Like most who dared eye contact, his were brown, darker still than the skin of his forearms. A threadbare shirt stained with grease tore along his broad shoulders, down his scrawny spine. The proportions were devastating: spaghetti legs and poky spine, yet arms of melons and a face of a boulder. I was sure I had never seen him before, yet his hands moved with an experience I craved.

I snuck past him, eyed the stallion in the cleanest stall.

“’Oy, what ya doin’?”

My body shredded with indignation when a shadow broadened and loomed over my own. I hated how long the stable boy’s hair tucked out, camouflaging his shiny forehead, scars on his neck tucked away. It made him look like the white man. The overseer.

I met his eyes, felt my forehead crease. My teeth wrenched with the lie that seeped through them. “Everyone’s asleep,” I said, “I want to play in the haystacks.”

He flinched—at what I’ll never know—before wiping the gliss from his eyes and disappearing behind a stall at the far end of the barn. A shovel sounded against hay and dung.

“Go on then,” he said, “But ya’d best be back before dusk breaks out.”

A whimper melodied in the air, and I gazed back at the polka-dotted stallion. A rare breed, worth ten plantations put together. The owner’s daughter owned the magnificent beast—word around plantation had spread that she wanted to ride it. But someone had to tame it. I rested my hand on the stall. If I pulled this off, I would rise above all others, at the right hand of the white man, first to grab freedom and become the rare slave boy in the news articles, “black” and “free” in a single sentence.

Before I could stop myself, I flicked the stall door open. The stallion’s eyes shadowed to crescents.

An engine roared from the horse’s mouth and my knees buckled, mud puddling around my legs. Dust particles flew to my face with the stomping of its hooves. My thoughts went frantic. How could I ever believed I could control such a beast? What would the white man say? What would he do if… Horror drowned my lungs as the hooves thrust against the morning air and the tail flew behind it. My heart thundered through my veins when it rose over my figure, kicked dust for my eyes, air puffed from its nose.

Then it charged out the barn door. With a hard whinny, it leaped over the fence and faded in the distance.

My face froze. I was dead. I was nobody. They would beat me, sell me, kill me. My back ached. Soon I would join the slaves with long gashes down their shoulder blades, threatening to charge for their necks and pointing down their legs.

Something thundered in the distance and I jumped for the nearest haystack. Seconds passed. Minutes. How could they have noticed so quickly? Cornstarch flung up my nose as two shadows loomed over me. I poked my head through the straw, scratching my temples.

My heart fled my chest. The white man—the overseer. And the stable boy.

“Are you good for nothing, Foolzer?”

The slave boy edged away from the white man. “I-I-I didn’t let it go! I w-w-was on the o-other side mucking out t-the s-s-stalls when-“

Smack. The stable boy touched his fingers to his face, and the white man reared his fist to the other side. I felt for my own lip, shuffled from the straw, eyeing the door for freedom. That’s when a set of hazel eyes whipped around to find me strewn across the floor. The white man thumped towards me. I hated how my body shivered and hands throbbed against the wooden floor as I cowered on my back. No. He would not hit me. He would not make me whimper like the stable boy. It was time to tell a thumper. A big whopping thumper.

“Why were you hiding in that straw, Boy?”

Will. My name is Will.

My eyes darted to the stable boy, mouth clamped silent. His teeth pinched it, and blood trickled from his lip. He bit harder.

I knew better than to look the white man in the eye. Disrespect. A sign of rebellion. Yet, at the thought of looking like the stable boy, I scrunched my nose together and glanced to the sides of his nose, found eyes not much lighter than mine, penetrating his fare skin. They hardened into mine. Mistake or not, I held contact.

“I was scared when I saw him let the horse go,” I said. “He mumbled he wanted to ride it, tame it to impress you. Too high for his nut, I’d say.”

The white man drilled holes through my pupils with his stare. It’s the truth, I spoke with my thoughts. I needed to convince him that I was more than a filthy liar. I needed to convince myself.

Finally, with a new sense of establishment in his demeanor, he extended his hand towards mine. My fists shook, but I enclosed my calluses into my fingers as I stood on my heels, toes itching to bolt and never look back. I looked at the white man’s hand like it was a puzzle I couldn’t solve, and he sneered and pulled it away.

Something stumbled against the ground. My feet itched when the white man snatched the stable boy by the upper of his dark ear. Stop this, I thought. My mouth parted as he stomped him out the door, towards a shack on the other end of the plantation. Yet my voice caught in my throat. I could only watch as they disappeared out the door—like I was held at gunpoint and someone pulled the trigger, but there was no bullet inside. I hated the relief that rushed me, overwhelming the rotting wood in my chest.

Screams evaded from the shack. I peered around the corner—a whip flashed my vision. Never had I felt its lashes, yet as the boy’s wounds were inflicted deeper, agony scorched my veins. It could have been minutes. Hours. Mere seconds were eternities. When the man marched out, clenching his fist around the slave boy’s forearm, I abandoned the sight from my thought. His torn shirt soaked in crimson liquid. My eyes darted for a source. There were no buckets, no wells, no lakes. Yet the boy looked as if he’d just been drowned, choking up violent substances from his veins. My chest heaved as the white man dragged him back to the stable, chucked him towards the manure pile, then shackled his wrists against a supporting pole, leaving the guiltless in guilty’s trials. A long coil dangled from his hand.

The white man turned around, and I jerked my head for the floor. Watching is always judging in their eyes. He patted his fat hand on my back. It was caked in blood.

“Watch him,” he said, pointing at the body in the corner.

I nodded as the man charged across the yard. Each step distinguished itself, carrying authority. He knocked thrice on the big white house in the plantation’s center. More bodies appeared outside of it, shuffling with discomfort, but I’d turned away. I shimmied closer to the body and attempted to hide in the shadows, but brown eyes locked into mine.

My mouth parted again. I needed to show some sort of decency in myself.

The stable boy shook his head as if to read my thoughts. “Nothing of it. Treat us like animals, can’t not ‘spect us to act like ’em. Same thing any one of us would’ve done in your shoes.”

I clenched my eyes shut when he grimaced. I groped for something to cover the gashes.

“No,” the boy said. “He can’t know you was helping me. Just wait over there. Cross your arms. Show ’em you ain’t afraid of nothing.”

I followed his instructions.

The boy leaned his head against the pillar, closed his lids until they met the under part of his eyes. His voice carried age beyond what his face could mirror. “Good. You’re good at that, showing no fear. I’m no good at that, I cower at that pig’s face. Probably why he wouldn’t stop, gave in so quick.” His eyes shot open and I jumped. They protruded my soul, etched something inside. “You’re good at that—you know what you want. You’s the kinda people who’s gonna change all this for the better, ya hear?” He shoved his nails against the dirt, hardened his lip. “But no more against your own kind. Think of me as a Stephen for you, but no more of this crap. We’ve gotta band together.”

I nodded, but the boy’s lips tucked into his cheeks without looking at me. His gaze found a wall, salty liquid in the corners of his eyes. An eternity later, he spoke again, “You know my whole family managed to stick it out here.” His forehead creased. “Yours?”

My eyes drifted to the floor. “None to yap about.”

He grimaced again but concealed it with something that resembled a grin. Not quite crinkled enough in the eyes to sell it.

“Good though,” he said, “You can look out for yourself that way. Get outta here faster.” I felt my eyes water over at my nod, but the boy jerked his feet. “Hey, none of that. I coulda selled ya out if I wanted to, but they shouldn’t treat ya like that. You just a kid, too. I ain’t good enough to suck up to them anymore, but you might. Ya’ve got what it takes.”

“At least you’re a good person,” I mumbled. My chest flipped around my body at my words.

“Good person. Good as dead a good person. It’s those guys who’ll fight for what they want, tear down anything in their way, I wish I were like them guys. They’re gonna make a difference. Might not be liked, but those’ll be the ones in them history books. Like you.”

I stocked my shoulders when the white man reappeared in the door. He gave me a nod, and I left without turning back.

The next day, I was given the stable boy’s position. I was the one they asked to wake up early, the one they trusted with the tedious tasks. I was responsible for the daughter’s safety, the one who got to wear clothes over my back, the one who got to shake the owner’s hand.

I never saw that boy again. But as guilt converted to fire, I remembered his words. They rang through my ears, pushed my very being into something more than morals ever could.

You treat us like animals, you’ll get animals.

And an animal I was.