soft mouth to her long arms, from her low voice to her wicked laugh. I wanted it all. And I was not thinking of all the terror that came with that, the terror that had swallowed her life. All I was thinking about was the light dancing in me, dancing to some music I hoped only she would hear.
“Huh,” she said. Then looked away. She took another drink and set the ale at her feet, and looked up to the starry sky, and when her eyes moved away, I felt jealous of the heavens themselves. And with that feeling, a range of thoughts came to me. I thought of Corrine and Hawkins, and how these well could be my last days at Lockless—gone not to Natchez, but gone all the same. I thought of Georgie and all that he might know. I felt Sophia’s hand slipping its way through my arm, until our arms were locked. She sighed, her head on my shoulder, and we sat there watching the stars over Virginia.
7
HOLIDAY PASSED AND WE said our final goodbyes, more final than any on this earth, and then the New Year, and with it, our diminished numbers. Corrine was still in the habit of her daily visits and murmured intimations of my fate, and I knew then, given the sway she held with my father, that it would not be long before these intimations became real. My days at Lockless were numbered.
My father had taken note of the restored highboy. And so it came down from Roscoe that my task would now be the resurrection of furniture pieces from ages past. I read documents from my father’s study that detailed the precise date each piece was fashioned or purchased, some stretching all the way back to the progenitor, so that these pieces came to represent a story of my ancestry. An ancestry that would end with me, a slave, sold away from this land, unable to save it or the people who’d built it and burnished it and made it thrive, who would be broken apart and scattered to the wind, but still in chains. The old thoughts of Oregon thickened as I read. I could not save Lockless, but another scheme was growing hotter in me. Should I be divided from Lockless, perhaps I might be divided on my own terms. And that led me back to thoughts of Georgie Parks and precisely what he might know.
It was just a notion in my mind, when I walked out that early Friday to complete my ritual drive of Sophia to Nathaniel’s place. I walked over to the stables, and hitched two horses to the pleasure-wagon. It was still dark, but I had done this so often before, and was so used to working before dawn, that I was able to perform the necessary exercise blind. I had just finished the hitching when I looked up and saw her.
“Morning,” Sophia said.
“Morning,” I said.
She was fully dressed in her outfit—bonnet, crinoline skirt, long coat. I wondered at what hour she had risen to make it all work. And watching her delicately move, with the aid of my hand, into the chaise, it occurred to me that Sophia’s ability to take on the trappings of a lady wasn’t an accident. It had been her life’s work to dress Helen Walker, Nathaniel’s late wife, to move through the difficult ritual of creams and nail polishings, of corsets and bodices. She knew this ritual better than Helen knew it herself.
Halfway through our ride, I looked over and saw Sophia looking out at the frozen trees, lost in her own thoughts, as was her tendency.
“What you think?” she asked. I had been in her company long enough to be familiar with this habit of beginning conversations in her head and then continuing them out loud.
“I think so,” I said. Now she faced me and a look of incredulity came over her face.
“You got no idea what I’m talking about, do you?” she said.
“I do not,” I said.
She laughed to herself and said, “So you was just gonna let me talk as though you knew?”
“Why not?” I said. “Figure I’d catch on soon enough.”
“And what if it was something you ain’t wanna hear?”
“Well, seeing as how I won’t know till I hear it, guess that’s a risk I’m taking. Besides, you already in it. Can’t back out now.”
“Mmm-hmm,” she said, nodding. “I guess so. But it’s personal, Hi, you see? Goes back to the times