THAT NEXT MORNING, IT came the hour to decamp, and having gathered my affairs in my carpet-bag, I wandered through the field and watched as this wondrous city of new ideas, of visions and liberated futures, of men and women, which sprung up in the fields, fell back into nothing. I took a walk in the woods, so as to enjoy the country air one last time before my descent into the smoke and filth of the city. When I returned, Raymond, Otha, and Harriet were all finishing their preparations. I saw Kessiah nearby tightening the strap on a traveling piece. When she saw me, she put her hand to her mouth, walked over, pulled me close into a hug, and said, “I am so sorry, Hi. I am so deeply sorry.”
“I appreciate it,” I said. “But no concern should be put upon me. Not with Otha’s family still lost.”
“I know. But I also know Micajah Bland was something to you,” she said. And she gripped my arm tight, almost as a mother would a child.
“Before you,” I said, “he was my closest connection back to the old place. Not that I would ever wish it, but it is truly something for him to leave me just as you came.”
“It is,” she said. “Maybe someone is watching for you.”
She smiled and I felt a warmth between us. I had met Kessiah only three days before, but already I had been drawn into her. She was the elder sister I had never thought to need, the plug in the hole that I had not even known was there.
“Thank you, Kessiah,” I said. “I hope I shall see you soon. In fact, should you have some time, please put down a few lines for me.”
“I’d surely like to,” she said. “I am of the field, though, so I cannot say I can match eloquence with one such as you. Anyway, I shall be traveling to Philadelphia with you—me and Harriet. Micajah Bland’s going as he did has changed some things. Likely we will have to change too.”
We embraced again. I reached down for her bag and carried it over to the coach and stowed it away. When I looked back, I saw that Raymond and Otha and Harriet had been joined by Corrine and, to my surprise, Hawkins and Amy. They were all in deep conversation and exchanging embraces and affectionate words for Otha. I had never seen them so soft with each other, but too I had never seen the Underground in mourning for one of its own. Corrine looked different. She had traded in the mask of Virginia—her hair flowed down to her shoulders. Her ivory dress was plain. She wore neither powder nor rouge. When Hawkins spotted me, he nodded and gave, as much as was possible for him, a look of concern.
We rode in a caravan of three coaches. Otha, Raymond, and I in the first coach, Corrine, Hawkins, and Amy in the second, and finally Harriet, Kessiah, and their driver, a young man conducted recently by Harriet, who swore himself to her. We bedded down that night at a small inn about an hour’s ride north of Manhattan island. But sleep brought me not one measure of peace, for no sooner had I closed my eyes than I found myself lost in baneful nightmares, so that I was out in the water, out in the river Goose, bursting through the waves, and when I came up I saw, all again, May drowning before me. And I thought myself back there, and seeing, already, the blue light gathering around, and knowing that the power was in me, I decided that this one would be different. But when I reached out, Little May turned and I saw it was not him but Micajah Bland.
I awoke with a dreadful thought. I had created the passes, I had forged the letters of introduction. The fault for all this must lie with me. I thought of Simpson. I thought of McKiernan. I thought of Chalmers. I ran through all the events of that night. I thought of the days following and all the practiced forgeries. And I remembered that it was sometimes perfection that gave up the house agent, that sometimes the passes were too good, too practiced, and aroused suspicion. It had been me, I was certain of it.
I had killed Micajah Bland. I had nearly killed Sophia. Perhaps I had doomed my mother, somehow, and maybe that is why I could not remember. I felt my chest tighten. I could not breathe. I rose from my bed, dressed, and then stumbled outside. I sat on the back porch and bent over and breathed and breathed and breathed. Sitting up, I saw a garden in the back. It was still late evening. I walked through the garden, and as I approached I heard familiar voices. Hawkins, Corrine, and Amy were there all seated on a circle of benches, each of them smoking a cigar. We exchanged brief greetings and I took my seat. By the moonlight, I saw Corrine inhale and then breathe out a long stream of smoke. And for a few long minutes there was only the night music of insects. Then Corrine took it upon herself to speak what was in all of our minds.
“He was an uncommon man,” she said. “I knew him well—and liked him very much more. He was so uncommon. He found me all those years ago. He saved me. He showed me a world that I had not even glimpsed. I am not here without him.”
There was now more silence and I watched as the faces around me alighted in the glow of the cigars. Guilt took hold of me, and I said, “He saved me too. Saved me from Ryland. Saved me from all those dumb notions of the swamps. Was he that first introduced me to books. I owe him more than could ever be known.”
Amy nodded and then reached into her pouch. She offered a cigar. I took it and nodded a thank-you, then played with it between my fingers. Then I leaned into Hawkins, who struck up a light. I inhaled deep and said, “But I have learned. I tell you I have learned some things.”
“We all know, Hiram,” said Hawkins. “Somebody say you headed down Maryland-way, goin down with Moses, as they say.”
“If she still would have me.”
“Oh, she will,” Hawkins said. “Moses would not stop for Bland, no more than Bland would have stopped for her. Might wait a few, but she is going. It is truly a terrible thing. But it also just as he would want—an uncommon man, as you say—but he went just as every one of us would want.”
I felt sick at that moment. I remembered my dream. I said, “And how was that?”
“Sure you want to know?” Amy asked. She said this softly and somehow this caused the whole blow to land with even greater effect. But I did want to know. As much as possible, I did, and my guilt stripped me of all my guile, so that as I inhaled this time, I began to cough and choke, and this gave Hawkins a great laugh, and then the whole party of them laughed together. And I watched them laughing until they all settled back into their silence. And when they had, I calmly said, “The papers. I did the papers. I believe it was me who got that man killed.”
This was the cause for more laughter, but this time only from Hawkins and Amy.
“I did the papers,” I said again. “No other way a man like Bland would have gotten caught, except by my hand.”
“What you mean ain’t no other way?” asked Hawkins. “All kinds of ways.”
“Especially in Alabama,” said Amy.
“The papers,” I said. “That got him caught.”
“No. That is not what happened at all,” Corrine said. “It had nothing to do with his papers.”
“What then?” I asked.
“He was so close,” Corrine said. “So close. He spent all those weeks scouting the shore along the Ohio River, until he found the perfect landing. We don’t precisely know how he did it, but he found Lydia with her boys and rowed down the Tennessee posing as their owner until he was in the free country of Indiana. But then, as I understand it, one of the children got sick, and it became hard on them to continue their travels by night.”
“That’s how they got picked up,” said Hawkins. “White man stopped ’em for questioning. Thought Bland’s story was funny and took ’em to a local jail, waiting to see if it was any word on runaways.”
“There was,” said Amy.
“Bland could have left right there,” Hawkins said. “They had nothing on him. But as we’ve got it from the papers and dispatches of agents in the area, he kept trying to get to Lydia and the kids, until they jailed him too.”
“We do not know how he was ultimately killed,” Corrine said. “But knowing Bland, he would have continued looking for an escape. And I suspect that his captors realized that the delivery of their Negroes, and the claiming of a likely reward, would be easier without an agent fixed on getting those Negroes away.”
“My Lord, my Lord,” I moaned.
“And damn y’all for sending him,” Hawkins said. “Alabama? All kinds of ways to get caught. Into the coffin for some babies?”
I could have told Hawkins all that I had learned. I could have told him about Otha White. I could have told him about gingerbread. I could have told him about Thena and Kessiah. I could have told him how much more there was to the Underground, more than math and any angle, more than movement.
But Hawkins was grieving in his own way, I knew. I was feeling it more even now, for the levels of grief and loss now began to unspool. Sophia, Micajah Bland, Georgie, my mother. I was not even angry about it. By then I knew that this was part of the work, to accept the losses. But I would not accept them all.