But my mind was swimming in the ocean of possibilities opened up by Georgie’s assent. And more my great concern was not with uncovering the plotting of others, but with how I might best conceal my own.
* * *
—
The next day I rode back to Nathaniel’s estate to retrieve Sophia. Fifteen minutes into my ride, not far from home, I was stopped by the patrol of low whites—Ryland’s Hounds—who haunted the woods in search of runaways. I produced my papers for them, and seeing Howell’s name upon them, they quickly allowed me on my way. But the event shook me, for I had by then completed a shift inside of myself. I’d already gone from Tasked to fugitive. I so greatly feared that they would see it in me, in some misbegotten smile or unlikely ease. But Ryland’s Hounds were white—low whites, but white all the same—so that their power blinded them.
Sophia and I rode back in silence, saying nothing. But just before reaching Lockless, I stopped the chaise. It was late morning and cold. No one was on the road and the only sound was the wind whipping through the bare branches, that and my pounding heart. I wondered if Sophia had been taken in on some design. Phantoms flittered before me like moths and for a moment I saw them all in concert together—Howell, Nathaniel, Corrine, Sophia, even Maynard, who did not die, who presided over my dreams where he rose up out of the icy teeth of the Goose detailing the roster of my sins. But when I looked over and saw her, brown eyes looking out into the forest, as she often did, not even noting our pause, when I saw her there, seeming so cool and far above the cares of the world, the feelings in me welled up and overwhelmed.
And then she spoke.
“I got to get out, Hi,” she said. “I will not be an old woman down in the coffin. I will bring no child to this. Ain’t no society here. No rules. No prohibitions. They took it all with them to Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee. Ain’t nothing left. It’s all gone Natchez-way.”
She paused for a moment and then said again, slower this time, “I got to get out.”
“Right,” I said. “Then let’s get out.”
8
I AM SO MUCH OLDER now, old enough to understand how a tangle of events can be unraveled to reveal a singular thread. So as to my freedom, the events stood thus: I knew that I would never advance beyond my blood-bound place at Lockless. And I knew that even if I did, Lockless, whatever its past glories, was falling, as all the great houses of slavery were falling, and when they fell I would not be freed, but would instead be sold or passed off. And I knew by then that my genius would not save me, indeed my genius would only make me a more valuable commodity. I was convinced that this was what had attracted Corrine, that she, aided by the mendacity of her people, was making an early if still mysterious claim. And my own view of this claim, of everything really, was altered from the moment I walked out of the Goose. And all of that—my knowledge, my destiny, my escape from death—taken together was like a bomb in my chest, and Sophia, and her intentions, were the fuse. That was how I saw her back then, as the necessary end-point of my calculations. It all made sense to me, but would have made more had I considered that Sophia was a woman of her own mind, with intentions, calculations, and considerations all her own.
She came upon me later that week, while I was outside working a set of corner chairs, and when I saw her, the fuse burning in me, I felt a kind of daring.
She stopped and smiled, looked at the corner chair, and then began walking into the shed.
“Don’t think you wanna do that,” I said. “Ain’t really no place for a lady.”
“Ain’t no lady,” she said, walking inside.
I followed her in and watched as she wiped away the cobwebs and ran her fingers against the furniture to judge how much she could accumulate in one swipe. She walked among the pieces, passing the maple drunkard’s chair, then the Hepplewhite table and the Queen Anne clock, the light from the small window cutting against the dark.
“Huh,” she said, turning to face me. “This all yours to work?”