A Partridge In A Pear Tree

Feet blister and tire through passages of sticks and mud.

A whip gallops off of the lightly brown-tinted back of Jacob, creating passageways for the inside of his flesh to dance through, whilst he screams “MAMA!”

Then, blood slithers like snakes down the branches of the pear tree, painting the ripest pear from stem to bell.

At last, wolves howl at the moon’s debut, shining through dispersed clouds, silhouetting a partridge soaring across the sky.

Josephine awakes in panic and sweat. Clutching her chest while those images from the nightmare, replay in her mind without a stutter. 

“I could help your boy,” Madeline suggests, while sitting calmly in the corner of the shack where she, Josephine, and Solomon took refuge after they escaped from Master Martin’s plantation.

Josephine knew of the help Madeline was talking about. That kind of aide called on unholy spirits, which goes directly against the religion in which Josephine has been taught. 

 “Ain’t no salvation in the hand you eat from.” Josephine shivered. 

Solomon, a brawny young man, is pacing back and forth. “What you think they gon’ do to ‘em?” He asked.

Helping slaves escape, automatically gave you thirty lashings. This they all knew and were preached to over and over. The real fear was that Jacob, a scrawny boy who never worked a field or even delivered a platter a day in his life, wouldn’t live past the twentieth.

“He be the best friend I have.” Solomon utters. “Y’all don’t think Massa Martin would kill his own son, do you?”

From her feet, Josephine’s eyes lift up in steady fear and anxiety. She felt a sort of guilt. Thinking if she had not been so selfish, had she just kept her mouth shut and her head down. One, she wouldn’t be scheduled to be placed on the selling block at first dawn. Two, she wouldn’t have put her incautious son on a task that was far beyond his capability. And three, he would be safe from the merciless hand of his father.

“I can protect him my Cherie,” Madeline says as she walks over to Josephine to take her hand in comfort. But once again, Madeline’s proposal is dismissed. “You’re God is not here! I am!” She asserted. “I am here! I can save him. No one else!”

Stories of Madeline’s practices have always whispered through the fields of the plantation. She has said to have been responsible for the illness of Master Martin’s wife. After a confrontation regarding missing silverware, Mrs. Martin had taken sick, losing much of her body weight, and had developed a perpetual cough. From this, Madeline was dubbed the mistress of Satan or in retrospect, Satan herself. 

“Do IT!” Solomon interrupts. “I’m sorry Miss Josephine but we have to save him. He tried to save us.”

Josephine still sits with a terrified look on her face. Sweat starts to seep through her worn scarf on her head and her palms so perspired that even wiping it off on her clothes doesn’t seem to dry them.

Madeline gets out a bowl while Solomon sparks a fire. “I’ll need something of his.” Madeline exclaimed.

Solomon eyes the cross necklace around Josephine’s neck. The one Jacob gifted her from his own neck right before they set out for the woods. So without hesitation, he rips it from her.

“And your blood Josephine.” Madeline pulls out a small knife.

Josephine is resistant, as she still doesn’t want any parts of this witchcraft, but is overpowered when Madeline pulls her arm closer to draw a wound on the palm of her hand with the knife. From her pocket, Madeline pulls out a few herbs she gathered, a vial with thick red liquid of unidentified origin, and then proceeds to chant a prayer in Coptic.

When she was done she dusted her hands off one another and sat back down in her seat in the corner.

“That’s it?” Solomon asked. He was puzzled because he was expecting some grand firework or indication that magic was made. With great disappointment, he bolted out the door to take matters into his own hands.

Solomon, within minutes, sprinted back to the plantation, seamlessly avoiding all the slave catchers that were still in the woods hunting for them. When he got back, he seen Jacob tied to the single tree, which was grown offset of the mansion's lawn. It was an old pear tree that grew anjou pears.

“Tell us where they are boy!” The overseer yelled as he massaged the whip in his hand. Master Martin stood beside him without emotion, just a pipe in one hand and the other in his pocket.

Solomon was crouched in bushes far off but he could still see Jacob’s bruised and blood bathed face highlighted by the moon’s light.

True to his word, Jacob refused to give up the location of his mother and others. So the whipping began.

His screams seemed to echo through the night sky, as his back opened. Negligently ventilating his flesh with deep gashes. His blood created small raindrops on the leaves at each lift of the whip. His continued screams did a decrescendo to whimpers until there wasn’t any breath left to make a sound.

With tears and hate melting out of his eyes Solomon made it back to the shack. “He’s dead! You’re a liar! It didn’t work!” He screamed at the ever so calm Madeline as she stared out the window at the moon.

Josephine started gasping for air, as she wanted to scream but nothing could come out.

Madeline stood up and looked at both Solomon and Josephine as tears covered their faces and assured, “He will rise again.”

Then, like a balloon receiving air, Jacob's lungs expanded. His bones cracked like thunder, coupled with the return of his agonizing screams. Hair from the body prickled out of his flesh like wild grass grown. His eyes transformed into deep blood moons.

With absolution, Madeline whispers, “La vengeance est ä moi… Rise my boy.”

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- J.J. Curseph