and daubing of the whole world encircle us, enclose us together. All of nature seemed in on it, so that when I tasted the rum of her mouth, it was the sugar of life.
And only then did I understand that I did not really remember everything, that there were things beyond my mother that I had chosen to forget—not pictures, but the feelings behind them. I had forgotten how much I dearly missed Sophia, how much I longed for her; had forgotten those days in Philadelphia, when all I wanted was for Raymond and Otha to leave me be, so that I could be alone with the memory of her, dancing by that large Holiday fire. And I had forgotten the low and deep sickness of longing pushing through the vessels of my body like a train pushing down the track. I had forgotten how I accepted this sickness, like a cough I could not shake, had forgotten the days when, alone, I drew my arms around my stomach and doubled over, feeling loneliness consume me. I loved her, and perhaps knowing, even then, the great danger of such a feeling under the Task, under slavery, and even in the Underground, I had forgotten as much of it as I could, though it had not forgotten me. And now it was here, with us, between us, and when she stroked her hand against my face, when she took my arm in her hands, she did not take it soft, but firm and wanting, and I knew then that all that I felt, all of the longing in me, all the bridled wanting of blind and violent youth, and the low need to vent it, was not solely my own.
* * *
—
Hours later, we were in the loft, staring upwards. Her arm was across my chest, her hand fingering my shoulder as if playing a piano.
“By God, it is you,” she said. “Your hands. Your eyes. Your face.”
It was now way past dark, so much so that I knew morning would soon be upon us, and then the rafters of the world would relax and we would be left in our regular places, and with our regular tasks at Lockless. But some things could not go back, and among them was a new knowledge that I felt upon me, and it was the same knowledge that compelled Otha White, the mania that took hold of him, how he could never truly sleep without Lydia. For the first time, I understood Conduction, understood it as a relay of feeling, assembled from moments so striking that they become real as stone and steel, real as an iron cat roaring down the tracks, chasing blackbirds from the awning.
As I dressed, while Sophia watched from the loft above, I looked at the mantel and saw the toy horse I had retrieved from the home of Georgie Parks, and I swear to you that it almost glowed. Sophia came back down from the loft now and stood behind me with her arms wrapped around my waist, her head on my back, as I studied the wooden horse in my hands.
“Go head,” she said. “Take it. Told you it’s a little soon for her to have such things.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Guess so.”
I turned to Sophia then, with the small wooden horse still in my hand, and one last time, there in the dark, the world drew my lips to hers, and we held each other as if holding to the mast of a ship in a great storm.
“All right,” I said. “Prolly should go.”
“Prolly should,” she said.
“All right,” I said again, and when I walked outside into a different world, I did so backwards to preserve the look of her in those small blue hours, to hold it for as long as I might.
Everything would have been easier had I simply gone back up to the Warrens then and blacked my brogans and wiped myself clean. But this new understanding, this unlocking of old notions, prevailed on me. What I did instead was walk down a path that led me through the darkness to Dumb Silk Road. I now risked the hounds, which even then patrolled these roads for what had to be the last runaways out of a diminished Elm County. But as I walked, I fingered the wooden horse in my hands, and I knew that even if it had been the good years, the hounds could never truly threaten me.