Free The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis

about a town in Georgia nobody ever heard of. How could you know what hurt I have?
    Footsteps approached the stand of trees.
    “Evening, Reverend,” the two men said.
    “Praise the Lord, brothers,” Reverend Grist replied.
    “That’s your young man preached?’
    “That’s right. First time preaching away from home,” said Reverend Grist.
    “Got the spirit in him, that’s sho’.”
    “Ya’ll seen him? They said he came this way outta the tent.”
    “Naw, sir, ain’t seen not hide nor a hair.”
    “He turn up, surely. He run out to get some air, maybe. It’s hot in there.”
    “Well, if you see him, tell him to meet me at the big tent. His mama left him in my charge,” Grist said. The two men walked away.
    At the mention of Hattie, Six’s throat tightened. He sighed, then sat still as he could for fear he’d been heard.
    “If it was a boy round here somewhere he’d like as not be tired. He might go on out to the car and take a nap in the backseat.” Revered Grist said. He paused, listening. “Such a boy might say yessir or some such so I’d know he was alright.”
    “Yessir.” Six’s voice was soft and breathy, barely audible over the cicadas and the soft shirring of the leaves and the drip drip drip of raindrops falling through the oaks.
    When Six was certain he was alone, he climbed out of the tree and, keeping to the darkness beyond the floodlights, found his way to the reverend’s car, where he fell asleep stretched across the backseat.
    Six woke once deep in the night, well past midnight and far from dawn, to the sound of the car’s motor stopping. He got out and was led into a house, down a corridor, and into a room that smelled of fried fish. He undressed in a half sleep, too tired to be concerned with whether the reverend saw his scars. A cot had been prepared for him. He climbed in, and the canvas sagged under his weight. Six dreamed he was swinging in a hammock on a porch in front of a big white house with a trellis, and his father came up the porch steps, saying, “I knew you’d like it here. I knew you’d want to stay forever.”
    IN THE MORNING there was no sign of Reverend Grist. The room Six had slept in was drab and cheerless, with yellow walls that had dingied over time. Sunlight streamed in from a window near his cot. The light was clouded somehow and grainy. The window was sheeted with a thin gauzy material through which the light filtered. Voices murmured somewhere in the house—the sound was menacing, as though someone were whispering against him. Six swung his legs over the side of the cot and looked for his pants, keenly aware that he didn’t know where he was or whose house he was in and that he couldn’t recall the name of the town. The only person he knew in this foreign, faraway place was Reverend Grist. Tears welled in his throat. Baby. Baby boy crying. He would not snivel, he thought, and he kneeled to look for his clothes under the cot. He found only his shoes.
    “Damn!” he said. Reverend Grist opened the bedroom door.
    “The Lord doesn’t like that kind of talk, boy.”
    Six, dressed only in his briefs, whirled around to face him, shamed by his scars and his nakedness. He covered himself with his hands.
    “Excuse me, sir,” Six said.
    “Ain’t fitting of a boy who preached so fine last night.”
    The reverend walked further into the room and laid Six’s clothes on the cot.
    “The lady of the house washed and pressed them for you.” Grist said. “She prepared a breakfast for you too. These sisters are real kind. Most of them hardly have enough for they own selves, but they put us up, feed us. Just like the widow in the temple. You know that story, boy?” the reverend said.
    Six shook his head.
    “You got a lot of fire in you, and the Lord does bless you with his spirit, but you don’t know the Word like you need to if you keep on preaching.” He gave Six a hard look. “You want to keep on preaching?”
    Six did not want to keep on preaching. It