The next evening Moses came in the back door without knocking, just opened it and went by Bennett and Zeddie sitting at the kitchen table, and walked into the parlor where Caldonia was standing talking to Loretta.

”I needs to talk to you,” he said. “I needs to.”

“What?” Caldonia said.

He pointed at Loretta. “You leave.”

“Wait, Moses. You wait,” Caldonia said. Loretta walked around him to the door and Moses stepped closer to Caldonia.

“Why you got me waitin round like this, like I’m somebody’s child? Why ain’t you done freed me?” He raised his fist into the air between them. “Why you doin this?” He took one more step and as he did, Loretta took her time and put her arm around his neck, a knife in her hand pressing into his throat so that he had to lower his foot in mid-stride.

“I ain’t foolin with you,” Loretta said. He had seen her, too, once upon a time before he eventually married Priscilla, but had always thought that a house woman was beyond him. What would she have seen in him? But Priscilla had toiled in the same fields he toiled in. Such a better match. “I ain’t foolin with you, Moses.”

He and Caldonia were watching each other. He trembled and saw himself back in the woods, naked and on his back. The night birds were watching and Alice was watching. He could hear Priscilla approaching, loudly, stepping on first one twig after another. He lowered his head and the knife was closer than before.

When he was gone, Loretta got a pistol and gave one to Bennett. Loretta wanted to go out and find the patrollers, to have them take Moses away, but Caldonia told her he would be himself by morning. “Henry’s death,” she said finally, “has unsettled all of us.” Before going to see Celeste that night, Loretta, on her own, had Clement come up and stay the night at the back door. “Be careful,” Gloria told him before he left.

Moses could feel that the world had changed even before he came to his feet the next morning. When he opened the door they were all waiting for him to lead them off to the fields. Celeste and Elias were not there, as Loretta had told Elias to stay with his wife and that Zeddie would bring them food. The slaves of the field were murmuring, like they did on any other day, but he knew it was all different and felt a dryness throughout his mouth.

He went up to the back door at about eight that evening and Loretta was there and told him their mistress was not up to hearing him that evening. “Tomorrow’ll do,” she said and raised the pistol so that it was inches from his face.

“I got plenty to say to her,” he said. “I got somethin to say.”

“It’ll wait. Where’s it goin?” she said and Bennett came up behind her. “It ain’t goin nowhere.”

He left and stood where he had the evening before, waiting for the life in the lane to quiet so he could go home. Being in the woods did not cross his mind. Being out there was good only when he could come back to something that was not pain every second. It had been more than a whole day since he had eaten, he realized, but he was not hungry. And this thought came to him at about the same time as Celeste was standing over her husband as he fluffed the straw in their pallet. Their children were now sleeping and the hearth was throwing out the last of the day’s light and heat. They, the entire family, had gone earlier for the first time to the new grave of the baby Lucinda, and they were all weighed down by the agony of the visit. When Elias was finished with the pallet, he reached up to his wife’s hand and put it to his cheek and then helped settle her on their bed. “I wonder,” she said for the first time ever, “I wonder if Moses done ate yet.”

He could hear them gathering out in the lane before the first rooster crowed. Someone knocked once at his door and called his name, but he did not answer. He was sitting with his back against the door, just as he had the first night. And, as with that night, he sat there not to bar anyone but because that was as far as he went once he entered the cabin. Someone called him again. A woman sang:

Come on outa there, Mr. Moses man

Come on out and lead us to the Promise Land

People laughed, even the children. “Mr. Overseer, is you here? Mr. Overseer, is you there?” The woman sang again. Moses thought, Could anyone plant a row of cotton with that song? “Leave him be,” a man said. He thought it might be Elias but the more he considered it, the more Moses realized it could be any of the men. Then he could hear them walk away to the fields, the first morning in a year that he had not been among them. Would they know that that bottomland had to be left alone for at least another five days? He had eaten a good pinch of the dirt two days ago and it just wasn’t ready yet; a good rain was what it really needed, and then you could go at it all you want. But not now, not today… “I’m countin on you to run this place,” Henry had told him after the plantation had four slaves and three more were due to arrive any day from the neighboring county. “You be the boss of this place. There’s my word, then my wife’s word, and then there’s your word.” “Yessir, Marse Henry.” His master had opened the big book one day to make some notation and pointed at some words in it, saying, “Thas you, Moses. That says, ‘Overseer Moses Townsend.’ ”

There was quiet. This, he thought, is what this place be soundin like when not a soul be around. He got up and peed into the fireless hearth. He sat again at the door. His cabin was dark except for the thick line of light at the bottom of the door, the line broken in the middle by his body. Priscilla had had a time keeping the wind from getting under that door. “It’s a wonder we don’t all freeze to death, Moses. Can’t you get me some more rags for that door?” Priscilla hadn’t been such a bad wife. Lord knows if he and that Loretta had been together, he would have had to kill her by now. Pullin a gun and a knife on him like that. Yes, he would have had to kill her by now. Or she would have killed him. One or the other. Did those words really say “Overseer Moses Townsend”? Maybe they just said this man belongs to me always and always. And after I’m gone, he belongs to my wife, Mrs. Caldonia Townsend. Don’t you see my brand right there on his hindpots?

Something pecked at the door. He heard the flapping of wings and a rooster crowed and Moses wondered who was supposed to be watching the chickens. The rooster pecked again. “Go way,” Moses said. “Go way from that door.” His voice just seemed to encourage the bird and he crowed once more. No, Priscilla hadn’t been such a bad wife. And the boy could have turned out right with just a little more time. A little less fat. The rooster pecked. “You want me to come out there and wring your neck? Thas what you want?” Then the quiet returned.

What all had he ever really asked for in this life, such as it was? He could have done better for the place than Henry Townsend. People would have said, “That Marse Moses, he got somethin magic in him to make that plantation like it is. I did time over to Marse Robbins and Marse So-and-So and Marse Everybody-Else. Did time in all those places and they ain’t got half the magic Marse Moses got. It’s another Eden, the preacher say, and I can’t say no more than that.”

He sat there all that day, dozing and talking to himself, and then he listened to everyone return from the fields, listened to Elias and Celeste and their family next door preparing their supper. The children were loud in their laughter. Well now, you can’t blame them. They just bein little chaps, is all. Who in this world can blame chaps? About eight-thirty Celeste tapped at his door. “I got a little somethin for you to eat, Moses. You open and take this now, Moses.” He could hear her standing on the other side of the door, could see her as full and clear as if she were standing before him, leaning just a little bit to the left because of that bad leg, her hair combed with one of those many combs her husband had made for her. “Moses?” He had witnessed that slave saying to her one day that she should be shot like a lame horse, had seen her cry. Had she cried because of what the slave said or because she had seen him standing there and seen him turn away from her? Where was that slave now? You listen here-just take back every damn word you said to this poor woman. Take it back or this overseer will whip you till you raw. This woman gon be in the family way one day and she don’t need that kinda talk. “Moses, just open this door one little bit and take this here nourishment. You need some nourishment, Moses.”