days, and how we used to stomp the floor. Good golly. Your momma and Emma was as opposite as could be—Rose quiet as Emma was loud, but when they got down to Deep Meeting you knew the same blood was between them. I am telling you I was there, all those Saturday nights. I was there with Jim the Phenomenal and his boy Young P. We had the banjo, jaw-harp, fiddle all going, pots and pans ringing out, and sheep bones clacking, and when it got hot, Emma and Rose would get to it. And it was something, I tell you, with the jars of water on their heads, going back and forth until a splash of water fell from one of their pots. Then they’d smile and curtsy, and whichever one of them had come out on top would look out for any other who should like to step in the ring.”
“But no one did.” Georgie laughed loudly and asked, “You ever water dance, Hi?”
“Naw,” I said. “Wasn’t my thing.”
“Shame, shame,” Georgie said. “Shame to have all that beauty and not pass it on. And it was so much beauty back there. Beautiful girls. Beautiful boys.”
Georgie was finished eating by now. He set down his plate and blew out a long stream of air.
“And I think of all that beauty sometimes, how it withered in them chains….Man, I tell you, when I took up with Amber, I vowed I would get her out. Whatever it took, I did not care. I think I might well have killed a man to get her out, Hiram. Anything to not watch her…”
And Georgie pulled up there because I think he then realized the import of what he was saying, what it meant for me, and what it meant for my momma.
“And you are out now,” I said. “You have done it. You out.”
Georgie laughed quietly and then he said, “Ain’t nobody out, son, you hear? Ain’t no out. All gotta serve. I like serving here more than at some other man’s Lockless, I will grant you that, but I am serving, of that I can assure you.”
We sat there quiet for a few minutes. The voices out front subsided and I heard the front door close and then the back one open. Amber came out and took Georgie’s plate and then my own.
She looked at me, raised an eyebrow, and said, “Georgie filling you with lies again?”
“Tough to tell,” I said.
“Mmmm-hmm,” she said, walking back into the house. “Watch him, I say. Watch Georgie. He is slippery.”
From Georgie’s back garden, I could see the far edge of the Goose River. The sun was now dropping low in the sky and clouds were calling up and the day grew cooler. It would soon be time. Maynard would be ready. So I decided to say something to Georgie Parks that would alter my life.
“Georgie, I feel that I must go.”
I think he caught the meaning, and then decided he did not, and said, “I guess so. Got to get back across the river, huh?”
“No,” I said. “I am telling you that I am getting up in age, and I am watching people disappear, carried off Natchez-way, and I can see the whole place going down. The land is dead, Georgie. The soil done turned to sand and they know it, all of them. I was just walking here and I seen a man knifed and a girl beat in the street. Ain’t no law. I like to think there was law once, the older folks speak of such a time, and though I have not known it, I can feel all the changes. A man is blooming inside me, Georgie, and I cannot shackle him. He know too much. He seen too much. He has got to get out, this man, or he cannot live. I swear I fear what is coming. I fear my own hands.”
Georgie started to say something, but I cut him off.
“It is said that you are a man of knowledge, that you know more than this little free quarter, that you are connected with people who operate in such things. I want the railway, Georgie. I want the railway out, and I have been told you know of such things.”
And now Georgie stood and wiped his mouth, and then wiped his hands on his overalls. Then, never looking at me, he sat down again.
“Hiram, go home now,” he said. “Ain’t no man blooming in you. It done