“Y’all niggers just as dumb as they say,” said Thena. She was standing near the bonfire, looking directly into the flame. “Y’all think this about Maynard?”
No one replied and now Thena looked up and scanned her audience. The truth is everyone was afraid of her. But the silence that now emerged from this fear only agitated her more.
“Land, niggers! Land! This here land right here! They flattering that man Howell,” she said. She paused again and looked around. I was close enough to see the shadow of the bonfire dancing off her face and the wintery clouds of her breath. “It’s his bequest they after. Land, niggers! Land and us! This whole thing is a game and the winner get to take hold of this place, get to take hold of us.”
We already understood. But this was our farewell too, perhaps the last time we would gather in community. And none wished to ruin the moment by loudly trumpeting this fact. But Thena, owing to her particular injuries and disposition, could not smile, could not lose herself in jest and reminiscence. So she shook her head and sucked her teeth, then pulled her long white shawl around her and stomped away.
Everyone sat there, eyes now downcast, stunned back into the reality Thena had put upon them. I waited a few minutes and then walked down to the far end of the Street, until I reached the farthest cabin, the one set off from the others, the one where Thena once stood with her broom, running off children, where I had appeared all those years ago, sensing that this woman, in particular, would understand the betrayal I felt. And now I saw her standing before her old cabin, lost in her own particular thoughts. I walked over and stood close enough so that she knew that I was there. She looked over at me for a few seconds, and I saw that her face had now softened, then she turned back to the cabin.
I stood with her for a moment and then walked back up, leaving her to her thoughts. When I returned, the conversation had turned back to stories, now reaching into a deep past, as much myth as memory.
“Ain’t no such thing,” said Georgie.
“I say it is,” said Kat.
“And I say it ain’t,” said Georgie. “If any coloreds had ever walked down to the Goose and vanished, I tell you I’d know it.”
Now Kat spotted me, and said, “You know it, Hi. It was your grandmother, was your Santi Bess.”
I shook my head and said, “Never met her. You know about as much as I do.”
Georgie shook his head, and waved his hands at Kat and said, “Leave that boy out of it. He don’t know nothing. I am telling you, if some slave woman walked off this here Lockless and took fifty-odd of us with her, I would know. I’m tired of hearing of this. Every year it’s the same.”
“Was before your time,” said Kat. “My auntie Elma was about these parts back then. Say she lost her first husband when he walked down with Santi Bess into the Goose. Said he went back home.”
“Every year,” Georgie said shaking his head. “Every damn year it’s the same with y’all. But I’m telling you—I’m the one who’d know, not none of y’all.”
I felt everything go quiet just then. It was true. At every gathering there was this dispute about my mother’s mother, Santi Bess, and her fate. The myth held that she had executed the largest escape of tasking folk—forty-eight souls—ever recorded in the annals of Elm County. And it was not simply that they had escaped but where they’d been said to escape to—Africa. It was said that Santi had simply led them down to the river Goose, walked in, and reemerged on the other side of the sea.
It was preposterous. That was what I had always thought, what I had to think, because Santi’s story came to me in a mix of rumor and whisper. And this faulty narration was fractured even more by the fact that so many of her generation, and the one following, had been sold off, so that by my time, not a single person left in Elm County had seen Santi Bess for themselves.
My thoughts were with Georgie—I doubted she even existed. But it was not Georgie’s assault on Santi Bess that made everyone quiet, it was his certitude—“I know,” he had said.
Kat walked over until she stood directly in front of Georgie. She smiled and said, “And how’s that, Georgie? How would you know?”
I looked hard at Georgie Parks. The sun had set long ago, but the light of the bonfire showed his whole face, frozen in discomfort.
Now Amber sidled up beside him. “Yeah, Georgie,” she said. “How you know?”
Georgie glanced around. All eyes were fixed on him. “Don’t none of y’all worry,” he said. “I. Know.”
There was a rumble of nervous laughter. And then the conversation switched back to Maynard and more news from all the far-flung places that our people now called home. It was late now, but the spirit was such that none wanted to part. And I am not sure how it happened, or when, because I was not watching for it, my mind was still on Thena, but by the time I caught wind it was all already in motion. I heard the beat but paid it no mind, until a few began to gather on the farther end of the bonfire, and looking over there I saw that one of the tobacco men, Amechi, had pulled a chair out from out of the quarters and a wash-pan and sticks and with this he was tapping out a beat, something up and happy, and then two then three tasking folk began clapping and slapping their knees, and then I saw Pete, the gardener, walk over with a banjo, and then strum the strings, and then it felt like it all happened at once, spoons, sticks, jaw-harps, the dance was upon us, had bloomed seemingly of its own accord, and there was now a circle just off from the fire, and there was a girl with her hand on the end of her skirt swaying her hips to the beat, and what I now saw was an earthen jar on the girl’s head, and looking down to her face, I saw that the girl was Sophia.
I looked up into the starry cloudless night, and judging by the half-moon’s journey across the sky, I knew that it was somewhere close to midnight. The fire roared high, beating back the December chill, and before I knew it, everyone was in the Street dancing. I slowly backed away until I had a view of everything. There were dozens of us down there. It was an entire nation in movement. Some of us paired off, others in small semicircles, others alone. I looked over toward the quarters and saw Thena seated on the steps of one of the cabins, nodding to the beat.
I watched Sophia, a flurry of limbs, but all under control, and the jar seemingly fused to her head, never moving, and when one of the men got too close, I watched her pull him in and whisper something, which must have been rude, for the man stopped there and simply walked away. And then she looked and saw me watching her, and at that she smiled and walked toward me, and as she did, she angled her head so that the jar slid, and reaching up with her right hand, she caught the jar by the neck. Now standing in front of me, she sipped from the jar and then passed it to me. I drew it to my lips and recoiled at its taste, for I had assumed it to be water. She laughed and said, “Too much for you, huh?”
Still holding the ale, I looked at her and drew it to my lips again, keeping eye contact, and drank, and drank, and drank, and then handed the empty jar back to her. I did not know what made me do such a thing, at least not then I did not, but I knew well what it meant, even if I tried to deny it to myself. She knew too. And cutting her eyes, she put the jar down, jogged over to the far end of the table, disappearing among the shadows, then came back with a full demijohn, and handed it to me.
“Let’s walk,” she said.
“All right,” I said. “Where we going?”
“You tell me,” she said.
And so we did walk, and let the sound of the music die behind us as we moved up from the Street, until we were back near the lawn, and the main house of Lockless. There was a small gazebo off to the side, below which was the ice-house. We sat with the demijohn of ale, passing it back and forth silently, until our heads were swimming in it.