will the mother of my only son say to me? Will she know that I have done it as best it came to me? Or will she who charged me so, who charged me with a task no colored can bring, turn from me forever?”
I did not answer. I had no answer. I helped him stand and felt his skin like cracked leather that only barely held in his bones. I walked him over to his pallet and laid him back down. And I listened as he wept softly, repeating over and over, “Oh, who will greet me in that After?” And I listened until he fell asleep, and when I fell asleep after him, I dreamed again of that same field I’d seen months ago, a field of my people with Maynard, who was my brother, holding the chain.
* * *
—
The boy went first. I saw him taken in a coffle of coloreds headed west. I saw him from the back courtyard where they had brought us, as they did from time to time, to endure, yet again, our own appraisal and inspection. His mother walked slowly next to the coffle, in step with her son. She was not chained. She was silent and in all white, and when she could, she touched the boy’s shoulder, clasped an arm or held his hand. The train disappeared down the road. It was morning. The day was clear. I was still out in the yard—being handled, being molested, violated, robbed. I was trying so hard to fall back into my mind, to not be there. But the sight of that boy, disappearing in the train down the road, and the sight of his mother—so familiar from some other life—pulled me back.
A half hour after the train had disappeared, I was still in the yard when I heard wailing, shrieking, and looking over I saw that the boy’s mother had returned. “Damn you child-killers!” she cried. “Damn you who have murdered my boys! Hell upon you, say I! May a just God scatter all of your animal bones!”
Her wailing cut the air and the courtyard turned to her. She was walking toward us, shrieking, cursing Ryland and all who should enter the savage trade. So many of us who went, went with dignity and respect. And it occurred to me how absurd it was to cling to morality when surrounded by people who had none. And so seeing this woman, crying out, inconsolable, summoning the wrath of God, gave me heart. She seemed to grow as she came toward us, her every step shaking the ground, I thought, so that even these jackals of the South halted their business to look. A young mother had gone down the road. But something else had come back. Her hands were talons. Her hair was alive and enflamed. Ryland met her at the fence. She clawed at his eyes. She caught his ear in her teeth. He yelled with pain. Soon others came, overtook her, threw her to the ground, kicked her, spat upon her. I did nothing. Understand that I saw all of this and I did nothing. I watched these men sell children and beat a mother to the ground, and I did nothing.
They dragged her away, one hound pulling each arm. Her white garments now ripped and dirty. And as they dragged her off, I heard her holler, almost in rhythm and melody, like the old work songs, “Murderer, say I! Auctioneer of all my lost boys! Ryland’s Hounds, Ryland’s Hounds! May a righteous God rend you to worms’ meat! May black fire scorch you down to your vile and crooked bones.”
The old man went next. They took him out for their amusements one night, and never returned him. He had made confession before me, and having done as such, he might now go to his reward.
Nothing so simple for me. My task had only just begun. I was there for three weeks. I was starved and thirsted. They kept us just hearty enough to make us work, and just hungry enough to make us miserable. I was rented out across the county for various tasks. I cleared frozen ground. I emptied outhouses and drove night-soil. I hauled corpses and dug graves. In those weeks I watched a great number of coloreds—man, woman, and child—brought through and sold off. I was surprised to have remained so long. I began to suspect that I had been singled out for some especial point