Free Gloryland by Shelton Johnson

been a good place for someone colored, but now it’s worse cause you’re grown up.”
    I was trying hard to follow where he was going. The first thing he said perplexed me so much, I was having trouble paying good attention, but the trail he was laying out for me, well, someone born without eyes could follow that, only I didn’t want to.
    “See, Elijah,” he continued, “you’re a man now, and round here that can get you killed. If you decide it’s not safe to be a man, you’re still gonna die, but it’ll take a bit longer. Down here we call that gettin to the next day.
    “But you, you startin to have thoughts you ain’t supposed to have, and pretty soon you gonna have dreams you ain’t supposed to have, so something’s got to be done quick, and it comes to this.”
    He stopped again, and I saw there wasn’t anything in his eyes that hadn’t been there all along, but held back. Everything that had ever been done to him, held back till now, and I was the one tipping the bucket, so what he’d never want to show was spilling out. And I knew Daddy wasn’t talking about just me, he was talking about himself and Mama and Grandma Sara, all of us sitting there watching him try to hold back.
    “Daniel,” whispered Grandma Sara, “we talked about doin this and agreed to it, so you need to just say it. Don’t make truth a stranger in your own home. You know he’s truly grown up, and he’s just too big to fit into anything as small as South Carolina.”
    She paused, then went on. “And you know that if Elijah stays, he’s gonna get noticed, and so are we.” She turned her head and swept the whole room with her gaze, then lifted her right hand with the fingers out and grabbed the air. “I know it ain’t much,” she said, “but it’s all we got.”
    My father nodded heavily, and I could see him trying to find the right words when no word was strong enough to carry what he was trying so hard to say, trying so hard not to feel. And I realized Daddy wasn’t just trying to save me, he was trying to save his family. Then he couldn’t hold back anymore.

    “Elijah, you gonna have to leave, leave this cabin, leave Spartanburg. Leave this week, and you can’t ever come back!”
    I felt his words hit me like a blow somewhere deep down where a fist couldn’t hope to reach, and I got dizzy from the jarring and the pain. I hadn’t been thinking about any doorway right here in my home, but suddenly I saw the hole that opened whenever I pulled open our front door, and on the other side of it someplace I’d never been before. I was having trouble getting my breath.
    “Daddy,” I whispered somehow without air in me, “why are you tellin me to go away?”
    My father shook his head. “No, Elijah,” he said softly. “You already gone away. You been gone for weeks, ever since you walked on that sidewalk. Your body’s still here hopin you’ll come back, but you so far away you can’t even hear yourself talk.”
    He stopped again, and then he talked for some time.
    “What I’m sayin, Elijah, is you need to find where you gone off to. You need to get acquainted with who you becomin, but you can’t do it here cause it’s just not safe for you no more. I don’t know if it’s safe for you anywhere, but my suggestion is that you walk north, and keep goin that way till you find yourself up North. Seems to me up North is where you can figure out who you are.
    “And you gonna need a job. Well, my suggestion is that you join the army. They’ll put a uniform on you, and a proud man in a uniform is just a soldier, but round here a proud man is some uppity nigger askin for a lesson. There’s plenty of white folks who would love to teach you that lesson, and most of us had to learn it just to live, but it ain’t livin, Elijah. It’s just gettin to the next day.
    “I want you to leave, Elijah, so one day you can write to me and tell me about what happened next week or next month or next year. Never mind the next day,