Make by Misha S. McDaniel

Samuel and David were born in the same year at opposite ends: New Year’s Day and New Year’s Eve. They only knew their birthdays because their mothers were able to labor in peace, and that’s something their mothers would never forget. All decent masters gave their slaves the annual gift of seven days of rest, a gift that meant time, a cherished and fleeting thing for anyone burdened with slave work. Samuel and David’s mothers had time to labor, time to give birth on all fours in the dirt, time to be pinched back together, and time to let their babies suckle at their breasts. They knew what day the boys had entered the world, and they knew the year, one-seven four-four. They thanked God for such blessings. For mercy. For time.   

Samuel belonged to a landowner, a stout little man named Thomas Pole who owned about a third of the shop buildings on Front Street. Samuel had belonged to Thomas Pole since he was born, growing up alongside a half dozen other slaves and indentured who now managed Thomas Pole’s shops. David belonged to St. Peter’s stuttering episcopal priest, a Reverend James Michael, and it was David who liked to sing, just like the-man-he-used-to-call-father. Samuel, on the other hand, liked to make things with his hands. Apprenticed to Mass’ Tom’s aging carpenter when he was not yet ten, Samuel was now the one who made the things made of wood. He made chairs, tables, wardrobes, all kinds of instruments, fiddles, banjos, and recorders. And he sourced the wood, too, from surrounding forests about a day’s horse ride north and west, dragging carts full of lumber to the cobblestone square. It was there that he would de-bark, shave, saw, whittle, bend, and bind until he made a thing that could make music, or a home. 

See, the reverend liked to supply his choir with the instruments the woodmaker would make. And when, two months after he purchased David, the reverend learned that David knew how to sing and how to play the woodwind instruments, he put him in charge of instrument repair and upkeep for the church, among other things. The woodmaker could fix a pew and could add an altar. Could repair the organ and patch the front stairs that always seemed to burst underneath the Philadelphia snow. David, he decided, would be the woodmaker’s caller ‘cause he’d know if he was doin’ his job right. This is how they met. 

#

David was two-two years old when his master’s widow, dying in Maryland, sold him to a priest in Philadelphia. His mother and the-man-he-used-to-call-father were still there, working at the house one-seven miles south of Annapolis, but they were old now. Wired hair gray and bones that ached when it rained. Wouldn’t make for a good sale. And the widow had already started to lose her hair and her legs and her mind. So she did what she knew best, what all the old mistresses eventually do, and sold everything worth anything ‘cept the roof she slept under. 

David’s mother, Eve, a coffee-colored woman whose mother came to the land from across the sea, sobbed at the widow’s wrinkled feet when she called for the trader. The widow stared out the window as Eve cried, stiller than a cat with its eyes on its prey, and then finally told her to hush all that noise and make her that ginger tea she liked. Meanwhile, the-man-David-used-to-call-father stood at the bottom of the sweet maple tree about a quarter mile away from the main house, a banjo in his limp hands, looking up.

Come down now, boy. 

And David hugged the thick branch tighter, hot salty tears blurring the landscape before him. 

We got many years with you, boy. Many, many years. 

And David bit the inside of his cheek until the soft skin broke underneath all the weight. 

I hear Philadelphia’s nice. Real nice. A city. 

And David dug his fingernails into the tree’s bark, splinters spreading everywhere. 

The-man-he-used-to-call-father sighed and with a match, lit the rolled tobacco he kept in his pocket. After a few smokey breaths, he sat down at the base of the tree, the sugar maple’s roots as thick as his thigh. The wind started to move again, swaying the tops of the yellowing grass, while the-man-David-used-to-call-father strummed his first note. Then he strummed again, the wires rippling like waves. He started to sing in a smooth baritone voice a song he always sang. David’s favorite song. The song that initially lulled him to sleep the night his other father, his first father, was hanged. They didn’t talk about him anymore, just like they didn’t talk about how it was the same branches David sought refuge in. 

Now, you could be up in that tree for other reasons, the-man-he-used-to-call-father didn’t say. Instead he sang until the trader called.

#

The day David walked into Samuel’s shop, or what he learned to think of as Samuel’s shop, he was still in a state of disbelief. He was caught moving through his days suspended, numb. Ignoring the ever-present weight of never seeing his mother or father again. He told himself that he didn’t mind Philadelphia. There were a lot of negroes there, free and slave, but it was colder than Maryland the closer it got to his birthday and busier, the type of work faster. David tricked himself into accepting the Philadelphia fast instead of the Maryland slow because the Maryland slow of it all would give him time to notice the absent shadows of his parents. And worse, time to notice the presence of fire behind his ribs. His parents would be dead soon, he told himself, in corners, at the church, in bed. They would be dead soon. So he decided to let the Philadelphia cold consume him and his fire.

When the reverend first heard David singing his favorite song as David swept the empty chapel’s wooden floor, the reverend smiled at him. David could not muster a smile back, or a comment even, or a glance into the man’s eyes, when the reverend asked if David could play instruments, too. David had only nodded his head and the reverend, although a master with a fleeting thought to strike David across the face, was also a man of God; the reverend always felt that the slaves had a lower countenance in their first few weeks of arrival. This was normal, the reverend told himself. I don’t mind as long as he works.

It’s why David had to go to Samuel’s shop on the first Thursday in November. The second to last step on the front stairs of the chapel was rotten through and needed to be fixed. The reverend figured it was time to replace the whole thing as it happened every year that a step or two would become soft and molded and bend until broken. David was told that the woodmakers’ shop was on Front Street where the slaves came in, past the docks to the left, in the half circle of stores amidst the many rows. It was the sixth shop down from the right, a short, nearly slanted brick building with white people and carriages and dogs and slave children walking quickly and talking loudly all around it. A slave woman who also belonged to the reverend, and who tended to his wife, told David the order of shops. But only after asking in a whisper if he could at least count to ten. David could count to ten; and he understood the patterns the numbers made, too, he didn’t say. One, one-one, two-one, three-one because he could read them. But he hadn’t tried writing them ever.

David disliked the noise, the crowd, the closeness of others. But it was November, the time of year when the chill left everyone’s breath a soft white. And so he found himself grateful for the warm bodies––his master had yet to give him this year’s coat. The one David had was blue black with holes on the elbows and under the armpits, limp and nearly as thin as his shirt. He shivered a lot, his brown nose running, but he had yet to develop a cough. Every single morning, he drank the ginger tea his mother had taught him to make, and this is what kept him from being sick. 

David squeezed the errand sheet in his pocket as he finally found the correct store, trying not to obviously count the number of shops he passed on his right. It always took him a moment to remember the word for the number after three, but he did it. And when he finally counted to six, he stopped, looked through the glass window at all the clarinets and recorders and banjos and fiddles, and walked in. 

A short white man stood behind a little wooden desk. He was pink in the face and had a fire burning to the left of him. The shop’s front was empty of people, and on the walls hung dozens of wooden instruments and trinkets very intricately whittled and designed. The man coughed a wet cough into his yellow handkerchief, stuffed it in the pocket of his black fine coat, and stared at the shivering negro before him. 

I’m s’posed to talk to the woodmaker. And then David handed the crumpled errand sheet to him. 

Ah, you’re the reverend’s boy. 

David forced himself to nod. 

He’s in the back. 

David shuffled past the white man, head down, flattened shoes caked with dirt. He moved through the doorway and found himself in a woodshop with tables and tables of half-finished pieces, saws rusted over, a stack of logs in the corner, a small window to the left, and him. 

A tawny man of at least six feet stood with his back towards him. His hair was the color of maple syrup and had a loose curl. He was hunched over something, working intensely and quietly, a pale gray tunic too tight for his frame gripping his shoulders. 

You the woodmaker?

The man made a grunt. 

David walked closer. The reverend at St. Peter’s needs his stairs replaced.

The man grunted again. 

David didn’t know what to do and already wanted to be back in the shed behind the chapel pretending not to shiver underneath the thin blue blanket they gave him. 

I’m your caller. I’m s’posed to bring you with me.

The man finally turned towards him and met David’s eyes. 

Samuel saw before him a man whose entire body bent to the right. Just a few inches shorter than he was, his skin a smooth mahogany. His eyes were dark as was his hair, and he stood there shaking as he looked at Samuel with wide eyes. He didn’t sound like the other negroes from Philadelphia which is why he said:

You not from here. 

David shook his head, but it looked like a painful spasm, like the move a child makes right before they get hit. 

Samuel understood. 

Look, he told him, and showed David the birdhouse he was whittling, the length of his forearm. 

David blinked. The birdhouse looked like any birdhouse, but as he stared, he saw that its roof had soft half moons carved into it. And stencils of robins and owls resting on fine curvy branches engraved into its walls, with never-ending swirls etched above the oval doorway. It was half-painted light green with a sky blue ledge for a bird to land on. 

Who’s that for? 

Samuel shrugged. I make what Mass’ Tom wants me to make. Or what my heart wants me to make. Or what my hands decide to make. Today, I made this. 

David blinked again. The rev wants you to make his staircase, he said quickly. 

Samuel nodded and put the birdhouse down. 

#

Six weeks passed with the two men born at opposite ends of the year visiting one another. Once the front stairs were completed, the reverend had Samuel repair the organ. So David called. And add a few extra pews. So David called. And patch up the rooftop. And there David was, shivering in front of Samuel’s shop. The reverend promised David a new coat every time he called. Then the reverend would place silver coins in the hands of Thomas Pole as Samuel watched each transaction with iced-over rage. Thomas would give Samuel one coin for every three-zero or five-zero the reverend gave him. David would pretend not to count as he watched. 

When Samuel and David weren’t working for their masters, they found each other at Congo Square, drinking white rum they could trade with the free negroes for. Or they walked at sundown around Mass’ Tom’s shops, nodding to the negro men and women who swept the floors and washed the windows, soap suds everywhere. But their favorite shop to visit was the gunsmith’s shop, operated solely by a mute negro man named Wise, and Sarah, a teenage girl whose mother nursed the children Mass’ Tom’s slaves would make. 

Sarah was oval-shaped with dark twisted hair beneath a sand-colored scarf. She was nearly the height of Samuel and the lightest dancer the two had ever seen. Her father was a freeman who lived just west of the cobblestone center. And many days, after she broke apart the pistols and the muskets and scrubbed their insides clean under Wise’s instruction, David and Samuel would walk with her to her father’s little blue house with the dying tomato garden out front. 

Eventually, Samuel started coming to Reverend James Michael’s church on Sundays to listen to David sing and play the fiddle or the banjo or the flute. But David wasn’t a baritone like the—man-he-used-to-call-father. Instead he was a tenor, and he would lead even the white choir in praise. Afterwards, after every sermon and every song, David would stare up at the oil paintings of Jesus and the angels and try not to cry. When he failed, Reverend James Michael would be filled with joy at the sight of his new negro boy, moved by the word of his god. 

After church, the two men would walk to Samuel’s shop, and David would watch as Samuel turned felled tree into something worth the destruction. Once the new clarinet or bowl or frame laid on the table born anew, David would pick the splinters out of Samuel’s hands as he hummed his favorite song. 

Where you learn that song you always sing? Samuel had asked him one late Sunday evening, after their routine had finally made its comforting home inside their chests. It was barely snowing, the lint-filled sky trailing dust on their shoes and shoulders. The two men had just come from a modest dinner at Sarah’s father’s house, the sour tomato soup settling in their stomachs as they walked home. David tilted his head, jutted out his chin, and swallowed. 

They sang it to me while they strung my father up. While my mother wailed and wailed until sun break. 

Samuel blinked, his throat suddenly filled with splinters. 

You know what’s funny? David asked, stopping to collect the dust falling from the sky. 

Samuel hummed.

The tree they used to kill him still stands. I climbed it nearly everyday, even the day they sold me here. 

Samuel placed his pale palm up to the clouds, mirroring the man before him. 

I’d fell that tree for you, David. I’d make you anything, he said quietly. A piano even.

David nearly smiled at that. And once back at his shed, he made Samuel the ginger tea his mother had taught him how to make. He knew that Samuel was due for a coat at the end of the year, too, and he didn’t want the winter snow to make either of them sick with cold.

#

Eventually, finally, the annual gift that all decent masters gave their slaves came around, and the two men found themselves alone with time and a dark rum they stole from the reverend’s cabinet, sitting at a boardwalk on Front Street where the slave ships would dock. The moon was halved as it sat high in the sky surrounded its stars. Christmas had already passed, so they each had new coats, still thin but with fewer holes, and this time with feathers stuffed between the Georgia cotton. David had overheard the reverend saying that the rum was from Jamaica or Cuba or one of those places where it never grew cold. They promised each other to drink it all before the night was up and crush the glass bottle into dust, hiding their theft. 

Further in the town, people sang. They danced, even, as they drank and laughed. But near where David and Samuel sat, legs swinging and toes grazing the icy water, no one walked along the pier. The shops were closed. The ships wouldn’t come until tomorrow. And the December wind moving over the water liked to gnaw on ears and hair and noses. They were alone. 

It was quiet, save for the lapping waves of the river and their soft white breaths in the night. Then the clock bell rang out and echoed one two three four five six seven eight nine ten one-one one-two times.

The memory came upon David suddenly, as the owl started to call perhaps in response to the clock. It was the sixth day since Christmas and the new coats, and his mother used to tell him what that meant.

I was born today, David told him. And then he swallowed the sweetest rum he’d ever tasted.

Samuel looked at his profile as he did so, watching David’s throat bob up and down. 

I was born tomorrow. 

David cut his eyes to Samuel, who only reached for the clear glass bottle. 

Y’know the year? 

Seventeen forty-four. 

What are the numbers? 

One-seven four-four. 

David laughed. It was quick, like a bird’s chirp as it hops out the nest for the first time. He hadn’t laughed since he got to Philadelphia, had barely shown his teeth or his tongue to anyone but the mirror. But he laughed. 

We’re like brothers, David said with a smile. Despite the wind, David was warm, and the glow of the lantern seemed to buzz all around him. 

Samuel shook his head with a smirk and sipped the rum some more. On the surface of the Delaware, the half moon shifted in the silence.

Can you tell me something? David asked after a moment, after the owl had made its third call of the night. 

What?

What comes after ten? 

Samuel passed David the bottle. One-one. 

David shook his head. There’s a name for it, ain’t there? 

Eleven. 

Eleven. 

Here, Samuel said and took David’s empty hand. It’s the easiest to draw. He slid one finger down David’s left palm, and then he did it again. David practiced the movement on Samuel’s palm, too, mirroring him. 

Eleven, David said again. 

Eleven. 

David passed the rum back to Samuel. Samuel stared at the brown liquid, his nose pink from the cold. 

I was made in the sea, he said finally. 

David hummed. 

My mother wasn’t pregnant when they took her. 

David hummed again. 

I hate that everything we make belongs to them. 

David looked at Samuel, at his profile blurring at the edges. And then he looked up to the stars. The fire behind his ribs bloomed from the embers they had been forced to settle into. The Philadelphia cold had a say no longer.

What can you make? David finally asked after the owl crowed again. 

Samuel pretended to be at the auction block. I make anything wooden: clarinets, banjos, recorders, flutes, tables, chairs, stairways, and doors. Then he laughed to himself something hollow.

David listened to the sweet maple trees for a moment. And then he said:

So you can make a canoe. 

Samuel glanced at him. Of course he could make a canoe. He could make anything with his hands. 

We know a gunsmith, David continued. We’d be worth three-zero shillings, maybe less. A pistol––

––Or five––

––Would be worth more.

And we can get gunpowder.

The two men stared at each other, breaths in sync, a warmth they hadn’t felt since June creeping up their spines. David smiled.

We can get gunpowder as easy as we can get rum. David raised the almost empty glass. 

The river, Samuel murmured, looking out into the black water. 

The river.

END

Misha Shariadain McDaniel is a fiction and prose poetry writer, born in Harlem, NY and raised in Atlanta, GA. She is also a fourth-year Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago, specializing in Black Atlantic speculative literature, Caribbean Studies, and enslaved resistance narratives.

27 December 2024