Trigger Warnings: Racial Slurs, Threats of Racial Violence
The negroes in the growing town of Canton were vanishing without so much as a whisper left behind. Leslie had been hearing the stories for weeks now. At his job at the textile factory, his coworker Desmond made a habit of sharing the latest disappearances when they stood around the maple tree, waiting for more batches of finished product to come through the factory doors so they could load them onto the boxcars. Leslie spent twelve hours a day heaving the heavy bundles of finished cotton cloth. It was grueling work that had made the muscles in his back develop a constant ache, even when he wasn’t working, but occasionally a machine would break down which meant the negroes could gather round the maple tree and share a few words. Leslie was on one such break now and took the opportunity to bite into the ham sandwich he’d made himself that morning. He ate quickly— one could never know how fast they would be called back to work. As he ate, he leaned against the tree, listening to the latest tale.
“They say she vanished just after getting fired from her job at the elementary school,” Desmond said to a captivated audience. “She went home and no one ever heard from her again. One of her sisters got worried and went over there to check on her, but she wasn’t there. No sign of a break-in, no sign of a struggle.”
“Well, you know them police be lying,” another coworker said. “What if it was them that took her?”
“Nah,” Desmond said, “I don’t think so. They say the sister was there first— she ain’t see no sign of struggle either. Everything in its place, like she had just went to pick up some milk from the sto’.”
“Where she live at?” “Over on Crabtree Ave.”
At this, Leslie looked up from his sandwich. He had a cousin who lived on Crabtree.
“What was the woman’s name?” Leslie asked.
“Strange name,” Desmond said. “Can’t remember ‘zactly. Something like ‘Kinda...kinda—‘
“Kandake?” Leslie said, pushing off the tree.
“Yeah! That’s the one! Kandake. Strange name.”
“That ain’t strange, it’s from the Bible,” another of the workers said.
“How you know that?”
“I went to seminary school for a bit. Didn’t finish though. Dropped out after a few months.”
“Sound strange to me. Ain’t never heard no name like that.”
Leslie stopped listening. His brain seemed to have frozen. Kandake—missing. Even though the reports of disappearing negroes had been increasing, he somehow never thought he or his family would be affected. Leslie screwed the cap on his tin bottle of lemonade and hurried to the boss’s office. He wrapped on the door, quick and firm.
“Come on in.”
The boss looked surprised to see him. The negroes usually sent over Desmond whenever they needed anything from him. Desmond was really good at getting the white bosses to grant his requests.
“Sorry to intrude, sir,” Leslie said, pulling off his hat and holding it before him. The boss nodded and Leslie took that as a sign to proceed. “I just got word that my cousin, Kandake, is missing. Disappeared like them other negroes. Sir, would you mind very much if I leave now to help look for her—my family must be worried sick. I’ll make up the time. On my day off—whenever you like.”
The boss’s face didn’t change throughout Leslie’s speech. Leslie’s stomach began to churn.
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” the boss said. He didn’t sound it. “But I can’t afford to be short-handed today. I need you here, workin’— not gossiping ‘round the maple tree. Now go back there and tell them coloreds to get back to work.”
Leslie stared for a moment at the man, stunned at his callousness. Desmond had made it seem so easy, always coming back to the group saying he’d convinced the boss to let them have their way. Leslie had assumed the boss must be a reasonable man, even if he was white.
“But sir,” Leslie said, “she’s my family—I’ve got to—"
“You can do whatever you like,” the boss said, his blonde, almost invisible eyebrows sinking toward his nose, “but don’t you expect no job waiting for you when you come back.”
Leslie’s heart hardened, but he was sure not to let his anger show on his face. “Yes, sir,” he said. He went back to the gathering of negro workers and told them what happened.
“You shoulda let me handle it,” Desmond said. “I got the boss on my good side. He prolly didn’t like you barging in on him without warnin’.”
Leslie nodded, but he was lost in his own thoughts. Kandake. Missing. Sweet Kandake. Fired. Fired for what? She was meticulous in everything she did. She was quiet, never did nothin’ to nobody. All the kids down at the school loved her. It was that white superintendent for sure. Who else would find a reason to fire her?
Leslie got through the remainder of the workday in a blur of worry. He would’ve loved nothing more than to storm out of there and go looking for his cousin, but he couldn’t afford to lose his job. It barely kept him afloat as it was. Without the small income, he’d be destitute in a week.
When the time came, he ran out of the factory and began the thirty-minute walk to the colored side of town. When he arrived at his cousin’s house, Kandake’s sister, Henrietta was already there along with uncle Charles, aunt Betty, and an assortment of other family members.
“What’s the news?” Leslie said to Henrietta, as she was the closest, standing at the foot of the steps that led up to the wooden porch. “I heard at work. Any word?”
Henrietta shook her head and wiped her streaming eyes with a handkerchief. “Oh Leslie, I don’t know what in heaven or earth is goin’ on. People’s just disappearing and white folks say they don’t know where they goin’.”
“I think it’s the white folks who’s doin it all,” uncle Charles chimed in. “And then blamin us, sayin we doin’ witchcraft.”
“Witchcraft?” Leslie said, his brows coming together. “Ain’t nobody ‘round here mess with that stuff. We’s all Christians.”
“White folks don’t believe it,” Henrietta said. “They sayin we doin’ voodoo. Escapin’ our rightful punishments.”
“Punishments?” Leslie said. “Of what? Ain’t nobody doin nothin’ wrong but mindin’ they business from what I hear tell.”
“Well, that’s the thing, ain’t it?” Charles said. “All those folks who done disappeared, they ran into some trouble wit white folk just befo’. The whites don’t know how to explain it.
“I heard tell one negro disappeared in front of some white folk’s very eyes. They was bout to beat him for lookin’ at a white woman in the eyes, but he just vanished!”
“I ain’t heard that one,” Leslie said.
“I did,” Henrietta said. “I heard too that they went after his brother next. Figured if they couldn’t get one, they’d get the other. If one was practicing witchcraft, the other had to be too. They tied him up and took em out to the woods to hang em, but just before they was gone string em up, he was gone. No footprints or nothing. Just gone.”
Leslie just shook his head, stunned. He didn’t know what to make of these stories. They sounded like something someone had made up. But if they’d been made up, where were all the negroes going?
By now more neighbors had gathered and were asking questions. People were starting to get worried. No telling what kind of awful fates could have befallen the missing. They didn’t like negroes round here— or anywhere for that matter. Leslie wouldn’t be surprised if they were found in a ditch somewhere. The Klan was strong in Canton.
Immediately, Leslie banished the thoughts from his head. There had to be some other reason. He just couldn’t picture poor Kandake rolled over in the dirt somewhere, her body bloated, bruised, contorted. He’d found his father in a similar state when he was eleven. He’d never been the same since.
“What do we do?” Leslie asked the group. “What can we do?”
After much discussion, the assembly agreed to form a Negro Search League. They created teams and schedules. Each team would have their night to patrol the streets and search the woods for the missing. Others would try to investigate the many missing person’s cases. The police weren’t doing anything at all to look for them. It wasn’t much, didn’t give Leslie much hope anyway. But at least they were doing something. The missing had to have gone somewhere. Kandake had to have gone somewhere.
Leslie was added to a group of two men and two women, brining their total to five. They went looking every other night, week after week, but they found nothing. The other teams discovered nothing useful either. And all the while, more people disappeared. But only negroes, never whites. Everyone in the Negro Search League, including Leslie, were afraid they would be next.
After each night of searching, the group reported to the elected leaders of the League, one of which was uncle Charles. There was never anything to actually report, but the League kept at it anyway. One day, Leslie had another long night of searching the woods and had finished “reporting” to the League.
“We didn’t find nothin’,” he said, shaking his head sadly. It was hopeless. He would never see Kandake again.
He stepped outside the Mt. Zion Baptist Church, which they were using for their meeting place and looked up to see the factory boss across the street, watching the building. The boss stared at him. Leslie stared back, startled.
Wesley, one of the other men in his search group, joined him on the curb.
“Yeah they been postin them white boys ‘round here. They’s afraid we plottin to kill em all. Still think we doin that witchcraft. They was gone put a new law down in the books saying negroes can’t gather in groups of more than three, but Desmond managed to convince em against it. Tongue like silver, that boy.”
Leslie nodded in agreement, averting his eyes from his boss and hoping no trouble would come of it.
“They postin the white boys here instead. Keepin’ an eye on things. Wish they put more into actually helpin us look for our missin’. But you know they don’t care ‘bout us none.”
“I know that’s right,” Leslie said, remembering his boss’s reaction when he wanted to go look for Kandake.
The very next morning he was summoned to the boss’s office. That had never happened before. Usually when someone was summoned to the office it meant they were in some kind of trouble or fired.
Desmond gave him a comforting clap on the back as he headed to the office, but it didn’t help quell the acid churning in his gut. He couldn’t afford to lose this job.
“Close the door behind you,” the boss said when Leslie entered the office and took off his hat.
Leslie did so. He dared not sit in the chair that was opposite the boss and the boss did not invite him to sit down.
“Now let’s not pretend or play any games here,” the boss said. “I saw you and you saw me. What were you doin’ at the colored folk’s gathering?”
“I was helping to look for the missing, sir,” Leslie said. “I’m sure you don’t remember, it was so long ago, but my cousin Kandake disappeared a few months ago. I’m trying to help my family find her.”
“That ‘League’ of y’all’s ain’t nothin’ but trouble. You stay far away from them meetings boy, you understand me?”
“But sir, my cousin—”
“Your cousin’s likely dead and if she ain’t, she deserves to be for messin’ ‘round with that devil’s work.”
“Kandake was a good Christian woman—”
“I said stop your attendance at those meetings. You stop going or you’re fired.”
Leslie was so angry he almost protested. Then he remembered where he was and who he was, and more importantly, who his boss was. He remembered the hole in the roof of his house and the patches in his clothes. He recalled how little food he could afford— how he’d been rationing ingredients just to have his regular ham sandwich for lunch. He kept his mouth shut.
He nodded curtly. “Yes, sir. Won’t happen again, sir.”
“Good,” the boss said, already looking back down at his desk. “Now get back to work.”
Leslie returned to the back of the building where the negroes worked to load the boxcars, his stomach clenched tight. He funneled his rage into moving the giant rolls of cloth, speaking to no one for the rest of his shift. White folks always wanted to tell negros what to do. Well, not this time. He was going to continue the search for his cousin in secret.
Leslie didn’t know why he insisted on attending the meetings, sneaking through the back door of the church and slipping from behind the pulpit and into the pews. He had long lost hope that they would find any of their missing. And more were disappearing by the day. It seemed there was an endless cycle—the more the negroes disappeared, the more the white folks attacked them, then the more negroes disappeared. Most of the negroes in town thought it was some kind conspiracy by the whites— an excuse to hunt and kill them and hide their bodies where they’d never be found.
Leslie didn’t think that made any sense though. When did white folks ever have any trouble getting rid of negroes round here? They’d done it to his daddy all those years ago. His father’s murderer still ran a local pub, didn’t see a single day inside of a cell.
No, something mysterious was going on here. That more than anything was why Leslie continued, he supposed. He wanted to discover what was really going on.
One night there was a real ruckus during the meeting. All the search teams had returned to the church to report what they’d found— nothing. Except two searchers never came back. There was a great clamor of voices as everyone fought to be heard. Then uncle Charles let out a loud, piercing whistle up at the pulpit and everyone settled down.
“Everyone shut yo mouths so we can hear what happened.”
William, one of the men who was a part of the group, started to speak.
“We was searching the woods as usual,” he said. “When we got down by the river, a group of white men was waiting for us. Said they were tired of holding back. They wanted to ‘put us down,’ for disobeying God and practicing witchcraft. One of ‘em pulled out a gun and we all started runnin’. I was in the lead. I— when I looked back, Ephram and Joseph was gone. Not like they’d been hit and fell. They was just—gone.”
“I was right next to Joseph,” one of the women said. Tears were streaming down her face. “We was spossed to be married this fall. He was holdin’ my hand, helpin me to keep up and he just— he vanished, just like the stories say. One minute his hand was in mine, the next I was clutchin’ at the air.”
Leslie stared at the group with his mouth parted. So, it really was true. So far, all the missing had disappeared while they were alone or with a white person. It had been hard to believe that the white folks didn’t have a hand in it, but now— now it was undeniable that something supernatural was going on. Something evil.
Leslie left the meeting that night in such deep thought that he forgot to leave the church through the back door. When he looked up and became aware of the world around him once more, he was at the end of the block and realized what he had done. He turned around, checking to see who had been posted to keep watch over the negro church.
It was the very person he hoped it would not be. Bad, bad luck. The boss wasn’t looking at him now, but Leslie was sure the man had seen him.
The next day Leslie showed up to work, hoping against hope that his boss had missed him amongst the crowd of negroes leaving the church. After working for half the day, Leslie began to think that things would be okay after all.
Then he was called to the office.
Chest tightening, he entered the cold room and took off his hat. The boss looked at him. He looked back.
“You got anything to say for yourself, boy?”
Leslie looked the man in the eye, a strong emotion bubbling in his chest. This man didn’t care one lick about him or any of the dozens of negroes that had gone missing. Leslie didn’t know what made him say it, but he did.
“Don’t call me boy,” he said. “I’m a man. And a man decides what he will and won’t do outside his workplace.”
The boss looked floored and Leslie laughed inside. His chest swelled with his newfound power.
“What you say to me, boy?” The boss said, his face turning red. He looked as if he’d been slapped.
Leslie stepped forward, put his fists on the desk and leaned forward. “You heard me white boy. You ain’t my master. I’m a free man and I’ll do what I want when I’m not here at work.”
“You’re fired,” the boss spat. “Get the hell out. Disrespectful, ungrateful nigger.”
Leslie smiled. “Fine, I’ll go. I won’t miss it.”
But he would miss it. He knew that. He would miss the money. Leslie held his head high as he slammed the door behind him and left the factory. The whole walk home felt like stepping on air. It wasn’t until he reached his home that he realized what he’d done.
He tried not to panic. He would find another job. Things would be okay. Worst case scenario he’d stay with Uncle Charles for a while until he picked up something else.
That night, Leslie was woken abruptly from his sleep by a banging on the door. He jumped out of bed, thinking it must be news about the missing, but when he opened his front door, no one was there. The same thing happened again the next night. After the third incident, Leslie knew for sure the whites were watching him, trying to scare him. Nothing was better to them than a negro’s fear. They were going to come for him for disrespecting the boss.
On the fourth night, Leslie couldn’t sleep. He tossed and turned but was too afraid to close his eyes for fear of waking to the house burning down around him. Or waking up to a burlap sack over his head, ending up tied to the back of a pickup. It wasn’t until a week later that Leslie’s fears came true. He finally managed to fall asleep in the wee hours of the night. Then he was wakened by the shuffle of feet inside his room. Before he could make out what was going on, a sack was over his head.
“You’re coming with us, boy.” Leslie recognized the harsh voice of his ex-boss.
“We don’t want no uppity niggers ‘round here,” someone else said. He didn’t recognize that one.
Leslie was yanked out of bed and his hands tied behind his back. His body trembled and quaked as he was forced outside, stumbling over the rocks on the path from his house to the back of a truck.
A sudden image of his father’s corpse.
Leslie feared he would end up like his old man. At least he would die with a backbone, just like his father.
They tossed him into the bed and drove off. Leslie felt himself bumping into other bodies and breathed a sigh of relief that they were still warm.
“Who’s here?” Leslie asked.
“Earl.”
“Doris.”
“Any idea where they’re taking us?”
“No,” Earl said. “But I think they the ones making all the negroes disappear. They say we using witchcraft, but really it was them. White man’s greatest wish since we got free— we ain’t no use to them so they wanna get rid of us.”
They came to a stop. Feet crunched in dirt. The door of the pickup was let down. Leslie was prodded with something sharp, a stick maybe, as they were hustled out of the back of the truck.
“Get a move on!”
“MOVE, NOW!”
They scrambled out. Leslie could hear the river nearby. He swallowed hard. He had always harbored a fear of drowning. He prayed they’d just shoot him in the back of the head and not toss him into the water.
Leslie heard more vehicles nearby and the sounds indicated that more negroes were being urged to leave them.
“Alright now!” A white man said as all the engines shut off. “We know you niggers are out here doin’ something unnatural. You all manage to escape just as soon as you do something disrespectful to your betters. But not this time!”
Leslie was made to stand with two other negroes on either side of him. His hood was ripped away and the cool air blew against his face. He saw that twelve negroes stood in a line, all with their heads down. No one wanted to look at the white man who stood before them, his mouth twisted into an angry shape, his fists balled into the promise of violence.
Leslie didn’t want to look at the other white men either, who all looked equally menacing with their flaming torches. None of them bothered to wear their hoods, he noticed. Several of them were cops, but he also recognized the town’s dentist and shoemaker.
“We’re here to find out what ya’ll been up to. This can be easy, or it can be real hard. Who’s gonna speak up first?”
There was a long silence.
“Okay,” he said. “The hard way.” He nodded to another pair of white men, who stomped forward and grabbed Leslie. They threw him into a hole in the ground, about four feet deep— deep enough to be a shallow grave.
He landed face first, his hands still tied behind him. Leslie wriggled in the hole like a worm until he was on his back. The air brushing his face offered no relief from the heat of his fear.
“Please, sir,” Leslie said. “Don’t do this. Ain’t none of us doin’ no witchcraft. Our loved ones is missin’. We don’t know where they are.”
“Youse a lyin’ son of a bitch,” a white man said. “Ya’ll blackies are always lyin’.”
“They probably got em all stashed away someplace safe,” another said.
“And tonight we gonna find out where,” the first man said. “Now, let’s see how long it takes before ya’ll refresh ya’ll’s memories. We gone bury this boy alive. We gone pile dirt on em till you talk.”
“We don’t know!” A woman said. Leslie couldn’t see her, but he could hear the tears in the way her voice shook.
“We’ll see about that.” They began to bury him. Leslie’s heart started to drum against his ribcage. At first it wasn’t so bad. They threw dirt on his legs and arms and a little got on his face but he was a long way from being suffocated.
Then, as the time passed and no one could give the men any valuable information, the dirt began to pile up around his head. His entire body was covered but his face just managed to poke out for air. Leslie shook his head and spit out the dirt every time they threw more on his face. Eventually it piled too high. He took in a deep breath, intending to hold it for as long as he could.
Leslie was sweating. This was it. He was going to die. The point had come where his lungs began to scream, and he could hold his breath no longer. He may as well have drowned. It was the same thing anyway—not being able to breathe.
But wait. Something was wrong. Leslie could breathe. He was under what felt like a mountain of earth, yet he could breathe easily.
“Hey ya’ll!” Leslie heard a voice in the dark. It didn't sound like a white voice. “I think another one is comin’ in!”
“Where?” said another.
“Here!” said the first voice. “You see that glow in the ground?”
“They must’ve buried whoever it is. Come on, let’s dig ‘em out.”
Soon Leslie could feel the dirt lifting from his body. Someone was digging him from out of the ground, but who? Couldn’t be the white men. Didn’t sound like them. Didn’t seem like something they’d do anyway, after all their threats.
The dirt loosened enough that Leslie could move his limbs, so he sat up, dirt falling from his head. When he had brushed the earth from his eyes, he looked up.
A circle of smiling, black faces, their teeth shining in the moonlight that filtered through the trees. Leslie heard the river tumbling nearby. He was in the same place... but not in the same place.
“Move aside!”
Someone was shouting from the back of the crowd. “Move aside so I can see who it is!”
A face pushed through the bodies.
“Kandake!” Leslie shouted. His mouth remained open for several seconds as Kandake stood there, laughing, hands on her hips. She was just as he remembered—short and thin and sweet. She reached down to help him out.
“Kandake, th-they tried to bury me alive to make the others talk,” Leslie said. “They thought ya’ll were hiding some place safe. And they were right.” Leslie almost laughed at the absurdity. “We gotta go help the others.”
Kandake didn’t seem to hear him. “This my cousin ya’ll! He made it!”
Leslie looked around at the happy faces. A murmur of conversation picked up as they clapped him on the back in congratulations, one by one.
“Made it where?” Leslie said, distracted for a moment from thoughts of his fellow victims. “We still in Canton, ain’t we?”
“Something like that,” Kandake said.
Leslie looked around. The colors here seemed different—brighter. And what he’d assumed to be the light of the moon coming through the trees turned out to be two moons. He stared up at the heavenly bodies, mouth agape.
“Where are we, Kandake?”
“We don’t know,” she said. “All we know is, we safe.”
“Safe?”
“Yeah,” she said. “We don’t know how we got here, who brought us here, but it’s all the same as back home except—” she shook her head. “Ain’t no white people here.”
“That’s impossible,” Leslie said. “I thought so too. Come on, I’ll show you ‘round.”
Leslie was taken on a tour of the town. Unlike the real Canton, it was surrounded by tall mountains. There wasn’t a white person in sight.
They circled back to where Leslie had popped out of the ground.
“This is—this is wonderful!” Leslie found himself laughing. He had been so worried about his job and how he was going to survive. So worried about finding his family thrown inside a ditch somewhere, beaten and bloody, but here they all were, thriving and singing. Someone brought over a wheelbarrow full of shovels.
“You said there were others, right?” The man pushing the wheelbarrow said.
Leslie nodded. “Well, we’ll be ready for ‘em,” the man said.
While they waited, the all-negro town danced and sang. Someone played a song on a fiddle and someone else joined them on a cello. A heavyset woman Leslie recognized as Ella, the church’s choir director, brought out a large pot of greens and a tray of fried chicken from a nearby house. On a second trip she brought cornbread. She passed around tin bowls and everyone formed a line to fill them up with her cooking. Not long after, another woman Leslie didn’t know brought mason jars full of moonshine and the glasses were passed around from person to person, everyone taking liberal sips. Even the children were allowed small sips. Leslie felt himself get lighter by the minute. He had never been so happy in his life.
Being here felt like being reborn. Every time he remembered that the white folks couldn’t touch them here, his chest filled with joy and relief. Out of the corner of his vision, Leslie saw a glow coming from the area where he’d rose from the ground.
“Hey look!” Leslie shouted. “What’s that?”
Everyone went to grab shovels. Leslie ran to the wheelbarrow and grabbed one too. He ran, beaming and exhilarated, toward the patch of glowing earth.
A new soul was coming.
“please, don’t call
us dead, call us alive someplace better.”
- Danez Smith
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