this one job I need a man who runs least well as he writes, and I am told that you are one of the few, this side of the Underground, who qualifies.”
“Can’t see why you need any help from me. I know they call you Moses. And that name comes out of a majestic power, don’t it?”
“Majestic,” she said. “That’s a big word for something so simple.”
“But the stories,” I said. “I know what they say. Moses tamed oxen as a girl and harrowed the fields like a man. Moses talk to the wolves. Moses brought the clouds to earth. Knives melt upon the garments of Moses. Bullwhips turn to ash in the slave-master’s hand.”
She laughed. “That what they say, huh?”
“That and a lot more.”
“Well, here is what I will tell you,” she said. “My methods are not for the offering. It’s the Underground, not the Overground. This ain’t no show. I don’t advertise like Box Brown. Put before something they can’t understand, people got a tendency to talk—and also to make something bigger than what they actually saw. However it play, understand that talk don’t come from me. I speak no more than required, and leave the passenger to their colors and wide tales. And as for names, I answer to one—Harriet.”
“So no Conduction, then?” I asked.
“Big words. Big words,” she said. “All I want to know is you ready to work. I’m headed back home. And you have been recommended to me as one who could well do a turn. So do you wish to work, or do you want to while away the hours quizzing me?”
“Of course I want to work. When do we leave and who are we after?”
It was only then that I heard the eagerness in my own voice, the powerful desire to work with this woman of whom I had heard so many stories.
“I am sorry,” I said. “I stand ready whenever you would have it.”
“Go on back to the camp,” she said. “Enjoy the show.”
She then walked back to her boulder and, turning away from me, said, “We be moving soon enough. Might even get you that saddle.”
* * *
—
The next morning, I woke up to a grand commotion outside the tent. I heard Otha’s voice, lost in a kind of hysteria. And then I heard Raymond and some others, whom I did not recognize. They were trying to calm him and I think right then I must have known, because no matter our troubles, Otha almost never was one for such commotion. Something truly terrible must have come. I stepped outside the tent. It was barely first light, but I could clearly see Otha’s head buried in the shoulder of his brother, and he was swaying almost, barely able to stand.
Raymond saw me first. His eyes widened and he shook his head. Otha, perhaps sensing me there, broke away from his brother and turned to me. I saw an entire funeral on his face.
“Have you heard?” Otha asked me. “Have you heard what they done did?”
I did not answer.
“Hiram,” Raymond said. “We can explain it all later. We have to…” And at that Raymond just shook his head in disbelief, and tried to guide Otha away. “Come on, Otha,” he said. “Come on…”
“Come on where?” Otha said. “Where can we go, Raymond? For the doing of what? It’s over. Can’t you see that it’s over? They got Lydia in the coffin. Where we gon go? Micajah Bland is dead. Where can any of us go?”
And then Otha turned to me. “Did you hear that, Hiram?” he asked. And I saw that his face had gone from pain to rage. “Did you hear what they did? They killed him. Chained his body, bashed in his head, and threw him in the river.”
And Otha burst into tears as he said this, and Raymond and several of the men pulled him away from the tent. He nearly came to blows with them at first. He yelled and screamed and kicked, until Raymond took hold of him. Now they led him, almost carried him, away and I could hear Otha yelling the whole time, “Did you hear what they done did? Micajah Bland is in the water! And what we gon do now?”
I stood there rooted, until I could no longer see them. And then I stood there longer, struck wholly dumb. When I came out of it, I saw that there was a commotion all around me. The news was spreading across