taking it, because the whole time, he just real quiet. Then he tell me come see him again tomorrow. Same time.
“Next day I come back and there she was, Hiram. I knew her right away. I didn’t even need to search myself or think no time on it. It was my momma. And then Momma tell me that this man, this rock, was my brother. It’s the only time I seen tears in Raymond’s eyes.
“When we was young Lambert and me had all kinds of schemes for seeing our way out. We knew our people were somewhere free. But when all of our plans fell to pieces, despair fell over us like a shadow. You see, we was different than men such as you, Hiram. We had known, since the day our mother vanished, that we were born to the title of freedom. And if freedom was my momma’s right, and freedom was my daddy’s right too, then somehow it must be ours.”
“I think we all got it fixed that way,” I said. “For some it’s just buried far deep.”
“But it was never buried for us. Lambert remembered everything from that last night. He remembered Momma’s caress upon his forehead, the last stroke of her hand. When Lambert died, Hiram, I knew that I could not. I knew that I must, somehow, live and then get back out. And I knew that any anger in that venture was a waste. I think back to my momma’s words the night she left. I think about them all the time in this work, in my time on the Underground. ‘I gotta go for Raymond and I gotta go for Patsy,’ she said. ‘I am so sorry, baby, but I gotta go.’ And I, being young and loving my momma, I said, ‘Momma, why can’t we go with you?’ And my momma she said…she said, ‘ ’Cause I can only carry so many, and them only so far.’ ”
17
THE CONDUCTIONS WERE MORE frequent now. The world would suddenly and randomly fall away and moments later I would return, dumped into back-alleys, basements, open fields, stock rooms. Every Conduction seemed activated by a memory, some whole, some mere shards, like the vision of a woman who snuck me ginger snaps. But with the glue of tales swapped down in the Street, I assembled a rough picture: The woman who’d slipped me ginger snaps was my aunt Emma. I remembered the stories of her prowess in the Lockless kitchen. And I also thought it was no mistake that this Aunt Emma was the same aunt who would water dance out in the woods with her sister, my mother.
I began to feel that something was trying to reveal itself to me, that some part of my mind, long ago locked away, was now seeking its liberation. Perhaps I should have greeted the unraveling of a mystery and new knowledge with relief. But Conduction felt like the breaking and resetting of a bone. Each bout left me fatigued and with a somehow deeper sense of loss than the one I’d carried into it, so that I was in a constant low thrum of agony, a melancholy so deep it would take every ounce of my strength to rise out of bed the next morning. For days after each Conduction, I would still be working my way through the most sullen of moods. This no longer felt like freedom, not anymore.
And so one day I walked out of the Ninth Street office set upon the intention to leave Philadelphia and the Underground, leave the triggers for these memories that threw me into depression. I did not meditate on this decision. I did not gather any effects. I simply walked out the door with no view of ever coming back. I reasoned that my initial exit would alarm no one, since it was known that I enjoyed walking through the city. But then I would just keep walking.
I turned away from the office and made my way over toward the Schuylkill docks. Of all the people I saw in the city, the sailors seemed the most free, tied to nothing save each other, bound by boyish jabs and indecent mockery that always elicited a host of laughter. Sometimes they fought. But whatever their quarrels, these men seemed a brotherhood to me. Even in their freedom they still somehow reminded me of home. Maybe it was their hard black faces, their rough hands, bent fingers, bruised and worn-down nails. Maybe