“Just what I witnessed,” Magnus replied. “I didn’t know there was any story about it to know.”
“You never knew about the old man?”
“He never affected me.”
“Well, he came over here from England — it must have been a full hundred years ago now — and when he bought that land there was nothing at all around there, or anywhere else in all of Virginia. Even so, he thought to name his new property, and the name he thought to call it by, as you well know, was Colonus.
“He would stand out on the porch, after the house grew to a certain size, and stare at all that virgin country around him, with no idea what lay beyond the other side of the river, and get the most forlorn look on his face. He would turn then and say, to anyone who happened to be in hearing distance, ‘See how Edenic it all is.’ That was his word. ‘We are in exile, but only to be purified. If we let ourselves be cleansed without despoiling it, we will be allowed home again.’
“Then, not too long after the time Ruth and her mother came on the place, he started one day to call the old woman Antigone for no good reason. ‘What are we having for dinner this fine evening, Antigone?’ Or, ‘How does the weather agree with you this afternoon, Antigone?’ He claimed that if his wife had agreed to it that is what he would have named Hannah. ‘I can’t think of any better name for a daughter than that,’ he said.
“Nobody paid it much mind at first. Some men rename a slave at the drop of a hat, like a name is nothing more than a plaything. We just thought it a little peculiar, because he was not that way. When time came for Hannah to marry that Sorel fellow, he gave them some land out on his property to build a house and sent me off with them.
“It must have been the night before we were set to leave, and I was going into the house when he called me out there and told me to sit with him. Now that wasn’t very strange either, as he always had somebody to sit out with him after his wife died. What was strange was when he started talking that night, and wanted to tell me it seemed like everything he knew, starting with where the name of his house came from.
“‘Once, long ago, there lived a great king, and those are precious few, who committed two gross and unforgivable crimes, and when they had made him poor as a beggar for it, his people’s gods let it be known that Colonus was the place that would receive him in his old age.’
“When he finished telling me that I could see how very old he had grown, and I thought perhaps he was trying to remember the rest of his story, but he just looked at me and said, ‘It is terrible to be loved by God. Most cannot endure it, Jasper. But name all thy houses Colonus and all thy daughters Antigone, and thou shall never know sorrow.’
“That nearly brought tears to my eyes, to see how scared he was out there on his place; and that it would always be strange to him, even though it was his house. His advice, though, seemed sound as any I ever had. ‘Name all your houses Colonus and all your daughters Antigone, and you will never know sorrow.’”
That night when he went to bed, Magnus lay awake for the same long time as before, staring at the beams of the ceiling in his room and thinking of the last months. But instead of fearing what trial could possibly come next, he saw the good fortune he had had and the strength of the way he had acquitted himself. It felt then as if a great pressure was lifted up from him. He began to see that strength was as much a part of him as the fear he had been carrying since he ran from Virginia and had nearly been consumed by on the journey to Stonehouses, when he spent every day in hiding, waiting for nightfall so he could move on again. He began then to laugh, not altogether maniacally, but he had a good roar at all of it, and when he finished he was in tears. He fell asleep quite peaceful, and the next morning before Merian asked him he could say for himself, “It is good now.”
Merian was pleased when Magnus announced that he had finally put his fear aside. “It is a special day when that happens,” he told his sons, as Purchase left for his shop and he and Magnus went on to the fields. “It is like becoming a man all over again, when you come to know you’re alive but will eventually die and so start to celebrate that. Everything changes. You start winning the struggle, because it is your own.”
Magnus did not feel anything so profound as all that had happened to him, but he told Merian he would take him at his word, as they went to work the fields with the hired men.
The previous days Magnus had worked lethargically, barely keeping up with the slowest man out there, but that afternoon when he worked he produced handsomely, thinking he owed Merian something for all he had given to him, and the only way he could repay him was with good labor. He was not invested in that land, but he worked as though it meant something to him, and as the days passed he found he was beginning to grow attached to the people of Stonehouses.
Still, he did not sleep as well as he was accustomed to. At the end of his first week, when he was finally able to drift off for more than an hour or two, he had a strange dream that was very haunting and disturbing to him. In it he pursued a woman continuously but never caught up with her. He would run faster and faster, but she would always manage to elude him, until he grew frustrated and could not remember why he chased her in the first place. “Go on, you old witch,” he called out in the dream. “I don’t want you no way.”
She laughed at him when he said this and began taunting him. “Even if you did catch me, you still couldn’t get what you want.”
“I don’t want nothing from you,” he yelled at her again, then added, as if she were an animal he could command, “Pass on.”
“Oh, yes, you do,” she countered, raising her skirts up so that he could see all her private parts.
“Man give the meat,
Man give the gravy,
But woman give the milk
And woman give the babies.”
She laughed and dropped her skirt.
“Get away from me, you evil thing,” he called out. She continued laughing at him and ran off again. Despite himself he started to chase after her, even though he understood by then he would never catch up.
He awoke frustrated and understood from the dream that he was meant never to have children. This in itself did not play at his emotions, because he had never been overly drawn to children in the first place and so could not see any shame in not having them. As for women, he had known several at Sorel’s Hundred and the surrounding plantations, but never one whom he would have thought to call a wife. For to tell the truth he could not see the great pleasure in being so intimate with anyone and sharing all your thoughts and time. When he did take a woman, it was because nature could not be suppressed, or when he found one pleasant and thought to spend a season or so in her company — but not longer than that, for it began to weary him. He had no need for children and marriage but preferred his own solitude and thought, when there was the luxury for it, which was but very seldom for family men. That was why the dream disturbed him even more, because he did not think it revealed anything true but was only a deep taunting, and he worried someone had put a root spell on him to make him want what he did not.
After dinner the following day, Magnus was still trying to puzzle out the dream when Purchase asked him whether he would not like to go for some amusement.
“What is there at this hour?”
“I thought you might fancy a game of cards.”
“I don’t have money, but I’ll join you for company if you don’t mind.”
Magnus was not generally one for drinking and the concomitant sins, but he appreciated the offer from Purchase, and thought it might do him well to go out in the air. The two brothers went to the stable then, where they saddled horses and went off in search of entertainment.