few yards away. I wanted so bad to say something as radical as I felt the moment then demanded. I wanted to tell her of my great sorrow at having led her into this deeper, truer slavery. I wanted to hold myself to her account for this great betrayal. But when I spoke, I had nothing but the most impoverished of words.
“I…I am sorry,” I said. I had turned my head back down to the ground. “I am so very sorry.”
Sophia did not answer.
What I badly wanted, right then, was a blade, and with it, I would slit my own throat. I could not live knowing what I had done, what I had brought to Sophia. And it was so very cold out there. I could feel my hands turning to rock, and my ears disappearing into the night, and I knew I was crying, because I felt those quiet tears freezing on my cheeks.
At that moment, lost in my own shame, I heard a low rhythmic grunting, and I saw that with each grunt the bottom rail of the fence shook a little. And now looking over I saw that it was Sophia who was grunting. She was pulling the weight of the chains and, one foot at a time, sliding closer and closer, for what I could not be sure. Perhaps she wanted to be closer so that she might whisper some ancient curse, or rend one of my ears between her teeth. She moved with great force, and with her every upward heave, the rail heaved with her. I had no idea she was this strong. She began slowly, breaking between each slide, but as she approached, the heaves became faster and greater, so that I thought her plan might be to the snap the railing itself and free us. But when she reached me, she stopped, exhausted, panting from her great effort, and she was close enough that I could see all of her features and she looked upon me, tender at first, so tender that, at least for that moment, my shame slid away. Then, straining against the chains, she angled her head forward a bit, past the fence, past the jail, and though I could not see it, I knew that her indication was aimed toward Freetown. And she looked back at me and what I saw was a look so hard that I knew that she too wished for a knife, though the throat she wanted it for would not be her own. Now I saw her face tighten and her teeth bear down. Sophia gave one last heave until she was right next to me, so close that I could feel her breath on my cheek and her arm close against mine, so close that she could lean in against me, as she did now, so close that I could feel her warmth, so close that icy darkness retreated, and I shivered no more.
II.
Were I to tell you the evils of slavery…I should wish to take you one at a time and whisper them to you.
WILLIAM WELLS BROWN
10
RYLAND’S JAIL WAS MY home now. Sophia was parted from me that next day, for where I did not know—sold to the fancy trade? Sent back to Nathaniel? Natchez?—and what I was left with was that portrait of her, which I see even now, fighting against the chains for that moment of contact, focusing her hateful gaze, not inward, not on me, not on herself, but on the base treachery of Georgie Parks. Even then I did not know how deep the treachery went. But I knew enough to husband a hate thick as winter stew. Later, years and years later, I would understand the impossibility of Georgie’s standing, the way the Quality had narrowed his choices until he lived on a thin chancy reed called Freetown. But just then I hated him and succored myself on the miraculous notion that Georgie would someday be subject to my wrath.
I was thrown into a dank cell, with a filthy cover and straw pallet for bedding, and a bucket for relief. Each day I was brought out early, made to exercise, and then washed. Blacking was applied to my hair, oil to my body. And then I was made to stand, with all the others, stripped down to my skin, in the front parlor of the jail. The flesh-traders, vultures of Natchez, entered and had their way with me. They were a ghastly sight, the lowest