perhaps you will be called to my side. Maynard loved you so. Your name was the subject of anticipation. My champion was your champion. He gave his life for you. Perhaps, in due course, you too shall give of yourself. Do you see this, Hiram?”
“I do,” I said.
And I did see, if not in that moment, then in the hour of reflection after. The grief and weeping might be true, but more certain was her dark intent—to pry me from Lockless and claim my services, my body, as her own. You have to remember what I was: not human but property, and a valuable property—one learned in all the functions of the manor, of crops, read, capable of entertaining with my tricks of memory. I was known for my industry, for my steady disposition, for my rectitude. And it would not be hard. I had, through her union with Maynard, been promised to her anyway. And now she would simply appeal to my father to leave this portion in place, to have me given over as terms of bereavement and mourning. And where would I find my home then? It was known that Corrine had property in Elm County but also farther west, across the mountains in the less developed portion of the state. This was the seed of her fortune, for through the management of multiple interests—timber, salt mines, hemp—it was said she had avoided the fall that now overtook Elm County. Whatever it was, I knew after that meeting I faced a new danger, not Natchez, but a parting from Lockless, the only home I’d ever known.
* * *
—
Maynard’s body was never found. But it was decided that all the far-flung Walkers who were able would assemble at Lockless that Christmas to share their memories of the departed heir. The whole month before, we prepared. We cleaned out, swept, and mopped the upstairs salon, which had fallen into disuse in the years after Maynard’s mother died. I dusted mirrors stored in the shed, repaired two old rope beds, and had them, along with a small piano, moved into the house. At night I worked down in the Street with Lorenzo, Bird, Lem, and Frank. It was good to be back there, for they had been my playmates as a young boy. We worked restoring cabins that had gone empty as the number of Tasked declined. We fortified roofs, swept out birds’ nests, and brought down covers for pallets, for we knew that we would have to house not just Walkers but all the Tasked who came with them.
I let my mind go numb with the labor, which now assumed a kind of intimate rhythm, so strongly felt that it compelled Lem to call out:
Going away to the great house farm
Going on up to where the house is warm
When you look for me, Gina, I’ll be far gone.
And then he called it back again, this time leaving space for his chorus, which was all of us, to repeat each line. And then we took turns adding on from other renditions or from lines all our own, building the ballad out, room by room, like the great house of which we sang. When it came to me, I hollered out:
Going away to the great house farm
Going up, but won’t be long
Be back, Gina, with my heart and my song.
And then it was decided by the elders that we too must have a feast, and a table fit for one. A tree was brought down, stripped and finished and then installed with legs, and in that fashion we had a feasting table. It was hard work, but forced all the difficult and thorny questions from my mind.
On Christmas Eve morning, I stood on the house veranda, looking out, and just as the sun peeked over the mountains, which had turned bare and brown, I saw, arriving with sunrise, the long snaking train of Walkers coming up the road. I counted ten wagons. I walked downstairs exchanging greetings and then began, with the tasking folk who’d come up, to help unload the baggage. I remember this time as happy, because there was, in this train of Walkers, colored people who’d known me as a child, who’d known my mother, and spoke of her with a great fondness.
As was the Holiday tradition then, we were all given an extra share of victuals—two pecks of flour, and of meal, thrice the share of lard and salted pork,