a rock, yes it was. He ain’t show no fear, he was too strong, and his strength broke me down and I wept. ‘Don’t cry, Pap,’ he said. ‘Some way or the other, we shall have our Grand Meeting.’
“Two days later, the headman send me on an errand to town. But before I go, I see a familiar buggy and horse up at the house. And out from that buggy come Ryland—and I knew the time of our parting was upon us. I walked off trying to comfort myself in the knowing that my boy would have a good wife and they should blossom as natural.
“But when I get back, his wife was still there and my boy was gone. At night I come to her, a rage growing in me, and she say they took my son and her baby, that Ryland would not carry them all. And that girl broke down right there in front of me—crazed, wailing. When she regained herself, when she stood, I did not see her face, I saw a haunt of my wife. And I then recalled her injunction upon me—‘Keep that boy safe.’ That’s how I knew my time was all about done. For a man that can’t honor his wife’s dying wish ain’t even a man, ain’t even a life.
“The girl said she could not live. She had other family, and seen many of them go that way, down Natchez. None could know who would be next. By what cause should we live out of connection? The tree of our family was parted—branches here, roots there—parted for their lumber.
“We were crazed in our grieving. I tell you, the girl took my hand and when she turned I again saw the face of my wife. She led me out into the night. She walked to the cook-house and I knew just what she planned. They would have skinned us alive. I dragged her back and put her to bed. When morning came she was back to herself, and she put on that very same costume that all us tasking folk must wear to live.”
I knew the ideas of the old man’s son, and saw myself in his ambitions, in his notion that he might prove himself noble and thus achieve his feeling. It was not so hard to understand. But the Task does not bargain, does not compromise, it devours.
“Time came she was grateful for my wisdom, if you might name it such. We were joined by our grief. Our families gone from us. And living each alone, in Virginia, was a life we could not do.”
And here the old man paused and I had that awful feeling of knowing precisely what he would say before he said it.
“It was natural that I love her. It is natural for man and woman to make family,” he said. “Upon that great stead, with all our people shipped out from us, it is natural that we would be together. And we were together for some years. I will not disavow it. I will not denounce her. I will say I have sinned in a world of terrible sinners, that this world is constructed to divide father from son, son from wife, and we must bite back with whatever a blade we have at hand.
“One day a white man who’d long moved his property to Mississippi returned. Said he’d sold his plot for he could not reconcile himself to such a savage people. He returned with men. And among these men, I learned, was my beloved son.
“Right then, right there, I knew I could not live. A man returns from the grave to find his father has taken his wife. It could no way be me. That night, I went to the cook-house, as my daughter, as my new wife, had once thought, and set it to flame. I knew what they would do to me. It must be done. But before they did, I would atone for my portion. And I would bite back.”
“And so they beat you on instruction of your master?” I asked.
“They beat me because they can,” he said. “Because I am old, and will fetch no price. Someday the ghost shall give me up. I know it. But who will greet me in that After?”
And now he began to slide down against the bars of the cell. I heard weeping and I went to him, he fell into my arms and looked up at me and asked, “What