“The Lord give me vigilance. The Lord light the path.”
“Conduction!”
“The Lord called me to Philadelphia.”
“Conduction!”
“But my John would not come.”
“Hard! Hard!”
“I made my moves from the North. I saw new things.”
“Moses got a ox!”
“And when I come back I was not the same girl.”
“Moses break the land!”
“But I was fast to my word.”
“Strong Moses.”
“And I came back for my John.”
“Yes, you did!”
“And found him taken up with some other gal.”
“Hard, Moses! Hard!”
“I stewed on that. I thought to find them both and make a mess of the thing.”
“Moses got a ox!”
“Didn’t care how loud I was. Didn’t care if Broadus heard me in full fury.”
“John Tubman!”
“Didn’t care if I was put back under slavery’s chain.”
“Hard! Hard!”
“But one man stop me.”
“Strong, Moses!”
“My daddy, Big Ben Ross. He grab me up and say Harriet got to love who love Harriet.”
“Go head, Pop Ross! Go head!”
“And brothers, I shall tell you, like Pop Ross told me—got to love who love you.”
“Go head!”
“And it was my Lord who always loved me most.”
“Go head!”
“My John left me, brothers. But I knows it was I who left that man first.”
“John Tubman!”
“My soul was captive of the Lord, for it was Him who, over all again, loved me most.”
“Moses got a ox.”
“John Tubman.”
“Strong, Moses.”
“Wherever you are.”
“Strong, Moses, strong.”
“I know your heart and you now know mine.”
“Strong Moses.”
“May no vice come upon you. May your nights be easy.”
“Strong.”
“May you find your peace, even down in the coffin.”
“By and by.”
“May you find a love that love you, even in these shackled times.”
“That’s the word.”
26
AND THERE WE WERE early that next morning, before sunrise, down at the Delaware Avenue docks, on the other end of Conduction. Fog rolled off the water, obscuring the city. I looked back at the party and found a weakened Harriet with an arm slung around the shoulders of Henry and Robert. I took command and guided the group to our appointed meeting, a storehouse but a two-minute walk from where we had appeared. There we found Otha and Kessiah waiting for us. Henry and Robert laid Harriet down on a row of crates. She said, “Now, don’t you start fussing over me, you hear? I told you I was fine long as I had my folk. Served me well, don’t you think?”
“That was beautiful, Harriet,” I said. “I ain’t never seen nothing like it.”
“You’ll see it again, friend,” she said, fixing her eyes to mine. “You’ll see it again.”
Kessiah rubbed Harriet’s brow softly for a moment and then she turned to me. She smiled silently and nodded her head, and in that moment, I felt the import of all that I had just seen wash over me in a great wave of grieving and joy. Something I had long been searching for, a need that I felt but could not name, now clarified before me. It was Harriet, her brothers, her father, an entire family warring to exist as such. And I felt then that there could be no holier, no more righteous war than this. And now looking upon Kessiah, who was my bridge back to Virginia, my bridge to my mother, my bridge to Thena, I felt her to be family, so that it was natural to do as I did in that moment, to take her by the shoulders and pull her close and hold her tight, and inhale the floral smell of her hair and feel the softness of her cheek against mine. It was all so new. And I was so very new. A weight was falling away, and the weight wasn’t merely the fact of the Task, its labors and conditions, but the myths beneath—my father as my savior, my plot to leave behind the Street, my notion that Lockless could be redeemed by my special hand. My forgetting. I forgot my mother. And then went off into the house of Lockless like I had no mother. And then I was conducted, brought up out of the coffin, brought up out of slavery. And now I felt myself shedding the lie, like old skin, so that a truer, more lustrous Hiram emerged.
Kessiah said, “It’s all right, Hi. It’s all gonna be all right.” And I felt her patting and rubbing my back, in the way that one soothes a child. I tasted salt on my lips, and became aware that I was crying, and now I was sobbing in her arms, and realizing this, I was ashamed. But then I looked up and saw that everyone