“I do, Mrs. Elston.”

“So did Henry. ‘Ain’t that a thing to say’ is what he said of the Devil who proclaimed that he would rather rule in hell than serve in heaven. He thought only a man who knew himself well could say such a thing, could turn his back on God with just finality. I tried to make him see what a horrible choice that was, but Henry had made up his mind about that and I could not turn him back. He loved Milton and he loved Thomas Gray. I am partial to neither, but I must reveal them to my students nevertheless.” She turned to Anderson and tipped her head back somewhat so that her whole face was visible. She continued, “I could not break him of his diction. Sometimes he spoke the way I wanted him to speak, but there were so many times when he spoke the way a man had to speak who had been twenty years in the field. His own father spoke that way as well.”

The day Robbins saw him wrestling with Moses, Henry Townsend reached his parents a little after seven that evening. Mildred and Augustus were awake and he was glad. He had stayed away and not told them about the purchase of Moses or that he had started building a house. Part of him just wanted to surprise them about the new house. Part of him had been afraid to tell them about Moses. But Henry was weary in the mind after what Robbins had said to him and thought that sharing the story of his house and Moses would be a good way to pass the evening before sleep. He found them at the kitchen table and Mildred stood and covered his face with kisses. Augustus was playing with one of the dogs, tugging gently at its ears. “Leave off now,” he told the dog as he rose and the dog sidled away. Augustus and Henry kissed on the mouth, a habit born in those days when Henry and Robbins traveled about, a way of pulling Henry back into the family. The day of the wrestling the family had not been together in nearly two months.

They sat at the kitchen table. Mildred put a slice of apple pie before her son, then took it back and put a second slice on the plate right beside the first. As always, they were silent for very long moments. The time the three had spent apart in the early years had built up an awkwardness that came out in such moments: Augustus first being free and working to free his wife and then mother and child living together as slaves and then father and mother working to free Henry and then the three of them together forging a life just when the sap was commencing to rise in the boy. But then, in the midst of the silence, Mildred or Augustus would do some throat clearing and the words would flow again among them.

“I’m workin on a house,” Henry said in between chews on the second piece of pie. “I’m puttin up a house. A big house.”

Mildred and Augustus looked at each other and smiled. “What next, a wife?” Augustus asked.

“Maybe. Maybe. It’s gonna be a good house, Papa. Even white people will say, ‘What a nice house that Henry Townsend got.’ ”

“Why ain’t you tell me, Henry?” Augustus said. “You know I woulda done all I could. I coulda come down there for you. Thas why I’m here.”

“I know, Papa. I just wanted to get anough of somethin for you and Mama to make a fuss over. Maybe you can come in when we get to that second story.”

“Two floors,” Mildred said. “Look out, Augustus, he’s buildin somethin bigger than what you got.” She winked at her husband. “When ‘we’ get to the second floor? Who this ‘we’ you talkin about?”

Henry put down his fork from the last of the pie. “Thas the other part of the news. I got help.”

Augustus shook his head in pleasant wonder. “Who you got? You hired out Charles and Millard from over Colfax’s plantation. They good men with they hands, I haveta say. Good men and worth what you gotta pay. Get your money out the backyard and do right by em. And Colfax’ll let em keep some of what they earn. That Charles could use the money with him tryin to buy hisself away from Colfax. Is it Buddy? Free Buddy, not Buddy thas from Dalford’s plantation. I don’t know bout slave Buddy’s work sometime. But free Buddy be somethin else.”

“No, Papa. I got my own man. I bought my own man. Bought him cheap from Master Robbins. Moses.” The pie had made him drowsy and he was thinking how good it would be to go upstairs and fall asleep. “He a good worker. Lotta years in him. And Mr. Robbins lend me the rest of the men for the work.”

Mildred and Augustus looked at each other and Mildred lowered her head.

Augustus stood up so quickly his chair tilted back and he reached around to catch it without taking his eyes from Henry. “You mean tell me you bought a man and he yours now? You done bought him and you didn’t free that man? You own a man, Henry?”

“Yes. Well, yes, Papa,” Henry looked from his father to his mother.

Mildred stood up, too. “Henry, why?” she said. “Why would you do that?” She went through her memory for the time, for the day, she and her husband told him all about what he should and should not do. No goin out into them woods without Papa or me knowin about it. No steppin foot out this house without them free papers, not even to go to the well or the privy. Say your prayers every night.

“Do what, Mama? What is it?”

Pick the blueberries close to the ground, son. Them the sweetest, I find. If a white man say the trees can talk, can dance, you just say yes right along, that you done seen em do it plenty of times. Don’t look them people in the eye. You see a white woman ridin toward you, get way off the road and go stand behind a tree. The uglier the white woman, the farther you go and the broader the tree. But where, in all she taught her son, was it about thou shall own no one, havin been owned once your own self. Don’t go back to Egypt after God done took you outa there.

“Don’t you know the wrong of that, Henry?” Augustus said.

“Nobody never told me the wrong of that.”

“Why should anybody haveta teach you the wrong, son?” Augustus said. “Ain’t you got eyes to see it without me tellin you?”

“Henry,” Mildred said, “why do things the same old bad way?”

“I ain’t, Mama. I ain’t.”

Augustus said quietly, “I promised myself when I got this little bit of land that I would never suffer a slaveowner to set foot on it. Never.” He put his hand momentarily to his mouth and then tugged at his beard. “Of all the human beins on God’s earth I never once thought the first slaveowner I would tell to leave my place would be my own child. I never thought it would be you. Why did we ever buy you offa Robbins if you gon do this? Why trouble ourselves with you bein free, Henry? You could not have hurt me more if you had cut off my arms and my legs.” Augustus walked out the room to the front door, meaning for Henry to follow. Mildred sat back down but soon stood up again.

“Papa, I ain’t done nothin I ain’t a right to. I ain’t done nothin no white man wouldn’t do. Papa, wait.”

Mildred went to her son and put her hand to the back of his neck and rubbed it. “Augustus…?” Henry followed his father and Mildred followed her son. “Papa. Papa, now wait now.” In the front room, Augustus turned to Henry. “You best leave, and you best leave now,” Augustus said. He opened the door.

“I ain’t done nothin that any white man wouldn’t do. I ain’t broke no law. I ain’t. You listen here.” Beside the door, Augustus had several racks of walking sticks, one under the other, about ten in all. “Papa, just cause you didn’t, that don’t mean…” Augustus took down a stick, one with an array of squirrels chasing each other, head to tail, tail to head, a line of sleek creatures going around and around the stick all the way to the top where a perfect acorn was waiting, stem and all. Augustus slammed the stick down across Henry’s shoulder and Henry crumpled to the floor. “Augustus, stop now!” Mildred shouted and knelt to her son. “Thas how a slave feel!” Augustus called down to him. “Thas just how every slave every day be feelin.”