The Fire Within

Chapter 20

Our past is what we remember it to be. Sometimes our memories are accurate and sometimes our memories are skewed by our perception of what was happening at the time. Perception often clouds even the simplest memories. We see what we want to see and we remember what we want to remember, we take what we want from every experience, what our brains can handle, and the rest is either forgotten or completely changed by our twisted view of what happened.

Isaiah sits and stares out at the stars from the porch of the Philadelphia home trying to make sense of what he learned about what his father supposedly did to his brother, what his father said happened, and what he actually remembers. Ezekiel did show him some proof of the whippings that he endured at the end of his father’s horse whip. The evidence of scars on the backs of his arms and the top part of his back where there were once open raw lash marks. He had flashes of finding his father in a compromising position with one of the young slaves that worked in the stables. He also had flashes of hearing his brother crying out in pain and begging his father to stop what he was doing. But in both of those situations he’d convinced himself that he was having a nightmare or that he hadn’t seen or heard what he thought. ‘The mind is such a fickle thing’ he thinks to himself. He’d managed to convince himself that they were all just the horror-filled dreams of a child who lost his mother and a young man who then lost his brother. But then again, there were always younger men working around the house and in the stables. They never had women working inside of the home cleaning and cooking, they were always young men doing the cleaning and cooking.

The nightmares, or memories, only got worse once his brother left him for the north. Isaiah’s father convinced him that Ezekiel was nothing but a traitor who deserved to be killed. His father convinced him that it was his duty to fight for the south and to fight for their way of life. By the time Isaiah left his home to join the Confederate army, he was convinced that it was his responsibility to kill his brother. It was like this entire war was about Isaiah and Ezekiel being on opposing sides and it was Isaiah’s burden to kill his brother by whatever means necessary.

Now he sits here, among people who should be his enemies, and he’s never felt more at home. Ezekiel treats him as though no time has passed and they are still as close as they were before. Mary and Elizabeth get along well and became fast friends, Ida who lives in the house on the grounds is friendly and helpful, and Helen is nothing like the slaves that he remembers from his father’s plantation. She’s intelligent, well spoken, and she is not submissive in any way. The slaves he remembers were always so obedient, they were even compliant toward Isaiah when he was a child. But now he realizes that it wasn’t that they wanted to be compliant, they wanted to stay alive and they knew that if they questioned or acted out in any way they would have been beaten, possibly to death. But now he wonders if they were also worried about what his father would do to them in other ways.

All of the back and forth going on in his head starts to give him a headache. For every memory he has of the perfect childhood, there are horror-filled memories of the sounds of beatings and what he now believes to be the rape of his brother and other young men on the plantation.

But could they just be trying to brainwash him in his addled state? Using their connection to one another and to him to confuse him and convince him that the man that he’s been loyal to his whole life was actually evil. Is it possible that he could be so wrong about so much?

He continues to stare up into the heavens, taking in the enormity of the cosmos, and thinking about his past, his present, and his future. Everything used to be so clear. He’s a son of the south, it’s his duty to defend it but now he’s not so sure about that. Out of the corner of his eye he sees a figure make its way from the house to the barn. It’s too small to be Ezekiel or Zachariah so it must be one of the women. He decides to get up and follow to see who is there and what they are doing. Maybe whoever it is will be able to help him clear some things up that are jumbled and confusing.