silence. When we got back home, we sat in the front parlor.
“So, Maryland,” I said.
“Maryland,” she said. Then she reached into her bag and produced a file of letters.
“I need two things: First a pass, drawn from the shadow of this hand. I need the pass to be for two.”
I started scribbling notes.
“Then I need a letter in slave-hand. Remit it to Jake Jackson of Poplar Neck—Dorchester, Maryland. From his brother Henry Jackson. Beacon Hill, Boston. Give him all the loving tidings a brother would, and do it whatever way should come to you. But note this portion particularly: Tell my brothers to be watchful unto prayer and when the good old ship of Zion come along, be ready to step onboard.
I nodded, still scribbling.
“Have that letter off by tomorrow’s post. We got to give the thing time to land and make its effect. Then we are on our way. We leave in two weeks. One night’s journey.”
I stopped and gave a puzzled look.
“Wait,” I said. “One night? Ain’t enough time to get to Maryland.”
She just looked back and smiled.
“Nowhere near enough time,” I said.
* * *
—
But two weeks later, in the dead of night, I walked out of the Ninth Street station, down Market Street, where all was asleep, and met Harriet at the docks of the Delaware River. We headed south past the coal depot, past the South Street pier where the Red Bank ferry bobbed in its moorings, until we stood before an array of older, battered piers that were little more than rotted wood groaning and creaking as they swayed in the night-black river. I looked farther down the docks and saw that these shadowy ruins diminished into mere stakes jutting out of the water.
The October wind blew up off the river. I looked up and saw that clouds obscured the stars and moon, which so often guided us. Fog rolled up. Harriet stood at the pier, looking out into the night, out through the fog, toward the invisible banks of Camden, but in fact far past them. She was leaning on her trusty walking stick, the one I’d seen her with on our way to New York. She said, “For Micajah Bland.” And then she began to walk on the shattered pier before us directly out into the river.
That I followed, and did not question, tells you exactly how much faith I had placed in Harriet by then. She was our Moses and I believed even in my fear that she would somehow split the sea that now stood before us. And so I walked.
I heard Harriet say, “For all those who have sailed off to the port from which there can be no return.”
I heard the wet wood of the pier groan under my weight, but the planks felt sturdy beneath my feet. I looked back, but a fog had encircled us on all sides, and thickened so that I could no longer see the city behind me. I looked forward and saw Harriet still walking out.
“We forgot nothing, you and I,” Harriet said. “To forget is to truly slave. To forget is to die.”
And at that Harriet stopped in her tracks. There was a light growing now, out of the darkness. At first I thought Harriet had lit a lantern, for the light was low and faint. And then I saw that the light was not yellow but a pale spectral green, and I saw that this light was not in Harriet’s hand, but was in Harriet herself.
She turned to me, with eyes of the same green fire that had grown up out of the night.
“To remember, friend,” she said. “For memory is the chariot, and memory is the way, and memory is bridge from the curse of slavery to the boon of freedom.”
That was when I saw that we were in the water. No, not in it, over it. We should have been under it, for I knew that the pier was gone and there was no longer anything of this world beneath our feet. The Delaware River is deep enough for a steamer to come into harbor. But the water barely lapped against my boots.
“Stay with me, friend,” Harriet said. “No exertions needed. It’s just like dancing. Stay with the sound, stay with the story and you will be fine. And the story is as I have said, offered up for all those given over to the maw of the Demon. We seen it all our lives, yes we