Hunting Midnight

given it to him.

“You give this to Midnight, along with a blessing from me. Tell him that I have continued our work all these years — and that I searched for him. He has never left my thoughts for a single day.”

A few minutes later, he threw on his cloak, hugged me, and started on his way. As I stood in my doorway, my heart was racing as though to impel me to beg him not to go. But I discounted my thoughts of death and eternal separation as a symptom of fear.

*

How does a good man do evil? Sometime after the tolling of two, I saw that I might ask the question not only with regard to Father but also in relation to Midnight and Mother — if they had been guilty of betrayal.

It seemed to me that the three of them had done me a great wrong. Their lies had pulled up my anchor and cast me out to sea; their secrecy had left me shipwrecked. They willingly sacrificed me so that they might continue their secret lives.

I resented them all, but it was at Father that I silently hurled all my curses. He was a blackguard and a poltroon. And I despised him.

*

I awoke to the dawn, choking, seized by panic: I had never dug up all the keepsakes I’d buried before the first of the French invasions — including Midnight’s feather. I had to make them mine again before leaving for London.

Dashing down the stairs, wearing only my blanket, I rushed out to the garden. Squatting among the prickly weeds, I started to dig frantically.

I dug three holes, each in error, then succeeded in finding the two shafts from so long ago. Soon, I had in my arms Daniel’s amulet and masks; the jay we had carved; Midnight’s quiver, arrows, and feather; and Gilberto’s tile of a triton. All were caked with dirt but not much the worse for having been buried these many years. Clutching them to my naked chest, I danced a jig in my stocking feet. Then I dropped everything to the ground and fell to my knees.

*

Later that morning, I felt curiously compelled to rebury Daniel’s frog mask, our jay, Midnight’s quiver, and all but one of his arrows, so as to leave something of myself and them in Porto during my trip. While doing so, I knew for certain that I would voyage to New York and hunt for Midnight — for as long as it took to find him. I was not frightened, for I had Mantis between my toes. And I had found what had been lost.

II

XXX The Power of Silence

I’m not going to say who did it just yet. Because if I were to so much as whisper it, then my friends at River Bend might pay for my carelessness. I’ve seen one good man die because of me, and I’m not about to put anyone else in harm’s way. No, sir. It’s not too late for Mistress Anne to tell her new man to tie a rope around any old neck that might strike her fancy and hang yet one more borrowed body from the nearest oak. I say borrowed because our ears and fingers and toes don’t belong to us. I found that out for real sure when I was twelve, and I’m not likely to ever forget.

My papa once told me that the master even tries to own our dreams — to get his chains round our wings, as he put it. I’m damned sure he owned mine for a time, because I sure as hell never dreamed of flying or fluttering.

I remember the moment I knew my dreams had gotten clean away — a few years back, in December. What came to me in the soft dawn of my room was what I’d last been dreaming — a girl, me, strolling down an avenue bigger than any in Charleston, in a city of red brick, like a fortress built to last forever. I was singing, because there was no weeds or rice anywhere. The snow I’d only ever read about in books was covering lampposts and carriages and rooftops, and it was so white that tears stung my eyes. Then a tingling wetness began falling onto my face from above and made me go quiet. I looked up, and what did I see but a million flakes of that blessed snow filling all the sky, as unstoppable and as alive as butterflies carried by the powerful breath of God that Moses writes about in the Bible. I was shivering, but it was good, because I knew then there was a place protected by a cold so powerful that nothing from River Bend and South Carolina could ever survive there.

I thought about that girl and that city every day, and the possibility of them being real wore me down so much that I couldn’t say no any longer. “You might lose yourself if you say no to the nightinside you toooften”was what my papa always told me. He knew about losing things, if anyone did.

*

The white folks think the overseer committed the murders. Or, at least, that’s what they said in their newspapers. Nobody knows what they truly think, least of all me. I’m not so clever as that. If I were, Weaver might still be alive.

So I’m not going to whisper a thing about who just yet. I hardly got any power to speak of, but I got my silence.

I’m not going to say why our masters were murdered either. You’re going to have to discover that for yourself. And it’ll make sense to you or it won’t. Just like Mantis is either out there on the plantation or he ain’t. No perhaps and no maybes about it.

So I can’t help you with the why just yet. Even so, you’re going to have to know a slip about Big Master Henry. Him first. Then the other masters who came along after him.

You’re going to have to know about him alive if you’re going to understand how important it was to have him dead and buried. Because it sure meant a good many things to us when we laid his casket in the ground on that glorious day of September sun. For one thing, it meant that Mantis might be out there in the wild grasses sprouting up along Christmas Creek. Inside us too, getting us ready. Waiting beyond our master’s reach for a chance to lead us toward that everlasting fortress in our minds where snow is always falling.

*

So there Big Master Henry is, standing on the piazza with his hands on his hips like he done own the sky over all of Carolina. Big, because he’s over six feet tall and wide too, like a wagon filled with horse manure. Some folks think he’s handsome, but they haven’t seen him with an empty bottle of whiskey clutched in his hand, his face all puffy and his eyes darting like spiders figuring out a way to get at you. Ain’t nobody look maw o’nery den dat man, my mamma used to whisper. And if you ask me, she was right. Not that anybody’s waiting in line to ask me much. Though I’ve got plenty to say, because I got fifteen years of keeping my mouth shut sitting behind me.

So now you know why there’s a Big in Big Master Henry. We always call him Master because he may not own the sky, but he owns every weed, wattle, and Negro from Christmas Creek in the east, to the Cooper River in the north and west, on down to Marble Hill in the south.

Yes, Massa, I’s do jus’ what ya seh, Massa…. I talk like that sometimes in front of the white folks, since they don’t much appreciate me speaking like I’ve got any education. But my papa won me the chance to read and write when I was barely done crawling. Not that I’m any different from the others. The scars on my back that are never going to come off, no matter how hard I scrub, remind me of that every day. That’s why I sometimes reach around to feel them just before I go to sleep. Pain that makes you the same as people you love can be a good pain, I think.

Marble Hill used to be Marylebone Hill back when my mamma came over from Africa, but she and the others shortened the name because Marylebone didn’t fit in their mouths too good. Papa still called it that though, because