I took my stone jar from the corner and walked out of the tunnel, out into the morning darkness, and down to the well, hauled up the water, filled the jar, and walked back through the crisp autumn air to the Warrens.
I thought back on the dream. All those other souls chained with me, who vanished, might one day include my own family, all in Maynard’s loose hand, to be pulled this way or that, or dropped on a whim. It pained me. I was of the age when it was natural to seek out a wife, but by then I had seen tasking women promised to tasking men, and then seen how such “promises” were kept. I remember how these young couples would hold one another, each morning before going to their separate tasks, how they would clasp hands at night, sitting on the steps of their quarters, how they would fight and draw knives, kill each other, before being without each other, kill each other, because Natchez-way was worse than death, was living death, an agony of knowing that somewhere in the vastness of America, the one whom you loved most was parted from you, never again to meet in this shackled, fallen world. That was the love the Tasked made, and it was that love that occupied my thoughts when time came to tend to Maynard—how families formed in the shadow and quick, and then turned to dust with the white wave of a hand.
Now, walking out of my quarters, then through the Warrens, I passed the doorway of Sophia, which was open, so that I saw her there knitting by the lantern-light. And stopping at the door, I saw her in profile—her small nose, the soft outcropping of her mouth, the twists of her hair peeking out from beneath the fabric wrapped around her head. She was sitting on a stool, her back straight as a stone wall, the light of the lantern casting her shadow out into the corridor, her long spider arms winding two needles back and forth, fashioning the yarn into something that had not yet taken discernible form.
“You come to say goodbye,” she asked. This startled me a bit, for she did not turn, but kept her eyes on that inscrutable whatever suspended between her two needles. I mumbled something garbled and confused. And at that she turned and I saw her sun-drop eyes alight and her soft mouth break into a warm smile. Sophia was conspicuous among the Tasked, because she seemingly did not task at all. She loved to knit, and I often saw her walking among the gardens and orchards, working her needles, so that this knitting might be taken to be her only labor. But all of Lockless knew better. She belonged to my uncle, my father’s brother, Nathaniel Walker. None needed to guess at the nature of this arrangement. But if I had had any doubts, they were quickly extinguished when I was given the task of driving her to and then retrieving her from Nathaniel’s property each weekend.
This “arrangement” was not unusual, was indeed the custom of the men of Quality. But something in Nathaniel revolted against concubinage, even as he committed himself to it. And like the dumbwaiters and secret passages that the Quality employed to mask their theft, Nathaniel too employed means to take as though not taking, and transfigure robbery into charity. So he had Sophia live down here in the Warrens of his brother’s plantation. He insisted she dress like a lady of Quality when visiting, but use the back road of his estate to enter. He kept tabs on who visited her and let it be known among the community of the Warrens that he did so, to ward off tasking men, all, as it happened, save me.
“Did you come to say goodbye, Hiram?” she said again.
“No, uhh, more like good morning,” I said, recovering myself.
“Ahh, well, good morning, Hi,” she said. Then she turned away from me and back to her knitting.
“Forgive me, I’m guessing I got it backwards,” she went on. “Funny thing is, I was thinking of you just now, just before you wandered past. I was thinking of you and the young master, and race-day. I was thinking how glad I was to not be there, and in my thinking, I had had a whole conversation with you, and it was like you was here. So when I seen you there at the door, I