And now the fog gathered around us, and I felt the bridge disappear under my feet. Thena still had my hand, and I could feel the heat pushing out from the shell necklace all around me, and the waves that once marked the river were quiet and low.
“But Cuffee, with the drum tucked into his bones, was in the now time, in the midst of the Task. And my mother had the drum beating in each and every one of her bones. There were stories when she danced, maybe more true than stories in her words. I remember her patting juba with her sister Emma, how the shell necklace would shake, how the jar of water stayed fixed upon her head. And those were the good years, good years, under the Task. But the Task is the Task, and I do believe my mother, my aunt Emma, danced as they did because they knew what good there was could not last.”
And at this, they came, the phantoms that I had seen flittering about that fateful evening. They were all around us, and I could see that it was Holiday, a Holiday I remembered, when I was five, and it was still the high times of Elm County, and Howell Walker had sent demijohns down to the Street. And down near the bonfire, I saw them, my mother and my aunt Emma, trading dances back and forth. I stopped here and watched, for though the moment was conjured up by me, I wanted to savor it, but when I tried, I saw them begin to fade from me, fade like mortal life and mortal memory, and I knew that I must keep telling the story.
“The world changed. Tobacco fell. I remember the strange men with their worried faces. I remember the soil now hard and the old manses along the Goose left to possums and field-rats. And I remember that there were fewer uncles about; that cousins were off on long jaunts that did not end. And I remember how we were conducted over the bridge, off to Natchez. And I remember because I was there.”
And now, where the phantoms had once danced before us, we saw that these same men and women were walking before us, and where they had once worn looks of great joy, there was now sorrow, and a longing in their eyes deep as the river itself, and where their arms and their legs had once been dancing, I saw now that from ankle to wrist they were chained.
“I remember my mother kneeling at my bedside, waking me, and carrying me off into the night. And for three days and nights we lived out in the forests among the animals, sleeping by day and running by night. And all she would say to me was that we must go, ’fore we end up like Aunt Emma, and though I was young then, I understood that my aunt Emma had been sold. If we could get to the swamps, that was her aim, to get us there to get us away, for she could not run across the water like her mother.
“But they ran us down, Ryland did. Caught us and brought us back. And we were held in their jail in Starfall. I was there with my mother, and I could not wholly understand. And so lost was I that when my father came, I truly believed he had come bringing salvation. He was so soft, Thena. He held his hand on my cheek, and when he looked at my mother, he was pained.
“ ‘Why did you, go?’ he asked. ‘What have I ever done to push you so?’
“But there was only silence in my mother’s regard, and when he asked her again, still she would not speak. And I saw then that his pained look twisted into a rage, and what I then knew was that my father’s pain was not for my mother, nor for me, but for himself. For my mother had seen him, had seen through all the noble facade, and she knew what he was—this was what her flight meant—that she understood, that he would sell her, as sure as he would sell her sister, as sure as he would sell his own son.
“My father walked away and my mother understood. She took the necklace of shells from her neck and handed it to me and she said to me, ‘No matter what shall happen, you are remembered to me now. Forget nothing of what you have seen. I am soon a ghost to you. I have tried, best I could, to be as a mother should. But our time has now come.’
“And then my father came back with the hounds and they pulled me away from her, yelling, crying, pulled me from my mother and left her there to be sold off, while I was to be taken back to Lockless.”
—
And now, for the first time in our journey, I experienced Thena as a weight upon my arm. It was the oddest thing—as though some force were trying to pull her from my arm and drag her back into the hole. The words I spoke were a power. We did not so much walk as float across the fog. I felt the heat in my chest and the blue shine of light pushing out. I could not let go.
“We returned to Lockless with a horse, for that is what he traded Rose for. He had taken my mother from me. But it was not enough. He took my memory of her too, for when we left, my father in more rage than I had ever seen in him, he took the shell necklace from me. And I ran from him. And the next morning I ran down to the stables, where I saw the same horse my mother had been traded for, and there by the trough of water, I felt my first inclination of what I give to you now—Conduction.
“I sat there in the stables crying. An ache filled me until my skin tore apart, my bones popped from their sockets, and my small muscles ripped at the tendons. I clinched to hold myself in. But a wave roiled through me, carried me out the stables, past the orchard, past the field, back to my cabin.
“The pain of memory, my memory so sharp and clear, was more than I could bear, so that this one time, I forgot, though I forgot nothing else. I forgot my mother’s name, forgot my mother’s justice, forgot the power of Santi Bess, of Mami Wata, and turned my eyes to the great house of Lockless.”
Now a ripping feeling overtook my body, and Thena was such a weight that I felt as though my arm would be torn away, and all around me was fog and blue light.
“So many…so many gave me the word…but they could not give memory. They could not give story…”
My words were halting before me now. And I felt us sinking back…sinking into something, into the fog.
“But I shall remain…and Sophia shall remain…And the child, Caroline, shall know the North Star, which…”
And then I had no words. The heat in my chest stamped them out and I felt as though we had been hurled from a cliff. And as I fell a sheaf of memories fell around me like leaves in yellow September. I am eating ginger snaps under the willow. Sophia is passing me the demijohn. Georgie Parks is telling me not to go. I am falling down.
Then a voice came from out of the fog, for as the light dimmed in me, I could see another—green and bright—call out from the distance.
“…which holds that no man shall spread his net in the sight of birds, which we are, Hi, though we were taken from our aerie and installed in the valley of chains.”
Then I was floating, again. Thena had my hand.
“What is this?” she yelled into the fog.
The green light came closer and answered, “It is Conduction, friend. It is the old ways, which shall and do remain.”
I looked into light and saw her there, Harriet clutching her walking stick, and holding her other hand was, my God, Kessiah.
“I am sorry for the late hour, Hiram Walker,” said Harriet. “But it took some doing.”
I could not speak. I felt her words were a rope from which I now dangled. I looked to the way where Harriet had come. I saw, amidst the fog, the Delaware docks.
“It’s all right, baby boy,” Kessiah said. “Go back. We have her now. It’s all gonna be all right.”
—
There was more, I assure you. But I cannot describe the fatigue and pain that was then upon me. I would like to give you some final notion, some look upon Thena’s face at the reunion with her daughter, recovered from among the lost. But I was then falling again, tumbling, amidst all the memory of my life, tumbling back through years, through Micajah Blands and Mary Bronsons, tumbling through my many lives, through free lovers and factory slaves, tumbling past Brothers White, tumbling back into the world.