PRL Serials

“…please blame it on the Son of the Morning”

– Jay-Z

“I thought I was doing right by my babies. Ever since my grandmama said what she said, all I ever tried to do was protect my babies from the evil that was after them. My granddaddy saw it from up in heaven, said he saw Lucifer himself playing the fiddle around the unformed souls that would become my babies. It’s cause of Richard’s people, he don’t know nothing about ’em, but they courted Lucifer and gave him influence in they life. My grandaddy said Lucifer was gone get both my babies unless they got a blessing as soon as they came into the world, and I made sure it was a preacher in the delivery room when Anthony was born. It was supposed to be the same for Lincoln, but…”

Her voice cracked and then faded to silence. She took a minute staring blankly at nothing, her round face puckered with despair as she tried to hold back sadness, or something closer to devastation, but it was a devastation that she knew and resigned herself to. 

“I lost my baby, Lincoln. He got the devil on him and I don’t know what he gone do with his future. I’m so scared of him, I hate myself for it but I am. And I want to curse my grandmama for opening my eyes to this because I know now that I would rather love the devil in ignorance of his real self, than to know him and have to deny him when I see him on my flesh and blood. I know she was just doing her duty, but what if Lincoln just a boy who need his mama and I’m too scared to give him what he needs? It eat me up, all the way, but I seen it. I saw the devil on him, I failed him and I lost my baby.”

Lincoln watched his mother collapse on the table in tears. He knew that she was convinced that either he was the devil himself or that the devil was always with him. It made Lincoln afraid to be alone with himself and it’s the main reason that he always listened to music so that he was never alone with that devil his mother was so obsessed with. He asked his father about it once, and Richard had explained that his mother just worried for him and because of her religion she expressed that concern the way that she did.

“You think I’m the devil, too?” Lincoln asked as they sat on the back porch one evening Richard found him there while Anthony was at basketball practice. Lincoln had been sitting alone since he got off the school bus, for a couple of hours before Richard arrived.

“No and she don’t either. I talked to her, I told her how you say she make you feel, son, but it ain’t like that. You taking it wrong, she love you, if she talk about the devil around you, it’s cause she trying to get him away. We love you son.”

Though he had never heard his mother express the sentiment from her own mouth, he wanted to believe his father, and watching her crying at the table, he felt sorry for her and wanted to do everything he could to show her that he couldn’t possibly be the devil.

“Mama…” he said tentatively, and as soon as the word passed his lips, he regretted it. 

Zora Crowder startled up from the table like she had heard a gunshot, and then she was on her feet, throwing anything she could get her hands on at Lincoln. After being pelted by silverware and a plastic cup, Lincoln ran out of the backdoor and slammed it hard. He sat on the step and cried as mournfully as his mother had been earlier. 

“I’m sorry son,” he heard her muffled voice behind the door. “If you there, any part of the boy I gave birth to, please know that I love you and I’m gonna get that devil off you. If it’s the last thing I do…”

Lincoln walked away from the door while she talked, determined to find his brother. 

He wandered to all of the places that Anthony frequented, like the community center with outdoor basketball courts, and the high school that had open-gym throughout the summer months and allowed everyone from the neighborhood to use the courts. When he didn’t find his brother at either place, he wandered Ladoga until he came to the street where he could see Edwards Library in the distance. The building looked like a school building. It was mostly one floor with a tented roof over walls dominated by windows, but the main entrance led to a portion of the library that was two floors. The windows had curtains from floor to ceiling and there were benches with umbrella coverings scattered in the grass in front of the building. There was a parking lot along the side.

Lincoln thought about sitting outside, but the humidity and the heat made him go in where there was air conditioning. There were a lot of people inside, most were in groups that were attended by the library staff. Some sat in chairs listening to a lecture, there was a group underneath the first floor nook created by the staircase that led up to the exposed second floor of the building’s main entrance, there was a group in one of the media rooms with the lights off and the door closed. Lincoln sat alone at a table staring at his hands.

“You look lonely there by yourself,” an older woman said and when Lincoln looked at her, she smiled. “I’m Ms. Eunice.”

Lincoln introduced himself in a quiet voice and Mr. Eunice sat at the table across from him. 

“You look like you had a rough day,” she said. “It’s a lot going on here, a lot to enjoy and forget about whatever’s bothering you. Take your pick.”

Lincoln surveyed the room, but nothing looked enticing. After the encounter with his mother, he just wanted to be alone and he said as much to Ms. Eunice. 

“Sometime,” she said, “it help to talk about it. Not all the time, but sometime when things happen, it don’t do no good to keep it all bottled up. I don’t wanna pry, I know how it is to have family trouble and some stranger come along being all nosey.” She chuckled and it made Lincoln smile. “But if you can find somebody you trust, it might be helpful to talk it out.”

“I talked to my daddy about it, but he said I was thinking about it wrong. I’m not, though, my mama hate me. She think I’m the devil.”

Ms. Eunice was taken aback by this and asked about his parents to see if she knew them.

“Mr. Richard Crowder and Mrs. Zora Crowder, I’ve known them both since they wasn’t much older than you. I ain’t talked to your mama since she grew up, but I talked with your daddy when I was working part-time at the school. You got good parents. What you say, your mama think you the devil?”

“She say it all the time.”

“And you sure you hearing her right?” Ms. Eunice asked. “Might be like your daddy say, you might just be taking it wrong. Don’t nobody like when they parents get mad about something they do, when they parents have to discipline them, but that’s life.”

Lincoln was quiet and looked back down at his hands.

“You ain’t the first person been called the devil that wasn’t. Which devil she call you? You know they say it’s more than one devil out there.”

Lincoln looked at her curiously.

“Mmm hmm, it’s more than one, they talk about them in books.”

“Sometimes she say Lucifer,” Lincoln said quietly and looked around himself, afraid that someone might be listening. No one was in earshot. 

“Hmm, Lucifer, now that’s a tricky one. You know Lucifer got a lot of names?”

Lincoln shook his head.

“He got more than the one at least. Lucifer wasn’t even really the devil people think he was. You ever heard the name Helel ben Shachar?” 

Lincoln shook his head.

“That’s Hebrew, mean Son of the Morning.”

“Like the sun in the sky?””

Ms. Eunice nodded, “like that, but some people say it like he was the son of the morning sun.”

“How he get to hell then if he the son of the sun?” 

“Well that depend on who you ask. You ask that poet named John Milton, he’ll tell you the story some Christians learn in Sunday school. Lucifer was a angel, got too big for his britches, and God cast him down from heaven into hell where he became the devil we know and fear today. But if you ask the Hebrews…”

“Who that?” Lincoln asked. He was completely engrossed in the words of Ms. Eunice by that point. 

“Easy way to explain it is Jewish people from a long time ago. Hebrew is a language and the Old Testament of the Bible was in Hebrew. So people translating the Hebrew came up with Lucifer from the Hebrew word Helel, but they wasn’t talking about no fallen angel. They was talking about the King of Babylon. They was talking about Nebuchadnezzar II, and he was far from the devil, far from hell depending on who you talk to.”

Lincoln spent the rest of his afternoon learning about Nebuchadnezzar and his Kingdom of Babylon.

“If you a enemy of a man like that,” Ms. Eunice explained, “then I can see why you might call him a devil. But if you was living in Babylon, he probably wasn’t so bad. He was the Day Star, the Shining One…”

“The Son of the Morning,” Lincoln said with a smile.