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“Are you … running away?”

“Yep,” she answered. “I surely am. Folks affer me for sure.”

“Are you … a … slave?”

The softening foot withdrew, then thrust forward deeper into his hands.

“Not anymore,” the girl replied, her voice whitening once more.

“You don’t act like …” Lloyd’s cracking voice trailed off.

“Thass ’cause I ain’t!” Hattie hissed. “Not for true. I’m from downriver—the Mississippi. Long way. Been sneakin’ on boats and layin’ low and trampin’ for more than two moons. Covered a lot of ground. Gwain to keep movin’.”

“So … you escaped? Were you on a farm?”

“Plantation. Big one. With a big white house and los of niggers.”

The last word stalled in the air like a belch.

“W-where?” Lloyd asked, squeezing the other foot.

“They calls it—call it—the Corners. Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louise-y-anna. Down on the line there. Grand place back off the river a few mile.”

“Why—did you run away? Was the master mean?”

The girl’s right hand whipped out like a frightened bat and cuffed his face in the dark.

“The mastah was my papa!”

Lloyd’s cheek smarted from the blow, but he did not stop working his fingers into her other foot, which seemed to him to have taken on a life of its own, like some cave animal he was cuddling. He thought back to the professor’s monkey, Vladimir, and Mother Tongue’s odd cat.

“I was born in the cabin, as they say. But he allas treated me special. Right. Gave me learning. On the sly. Told me one day I’d go to school. Europe. One day … I’d be a lady. Fine dresses. Books. Music.”

“Then why … did you run away?” Lloyd gasped, confused about why his companion in the dark had thrown away the same sorts of chances that he had.

“His wife hated me! She knew the truth. She saw I waddn’t like the other niggers. She hated my mother, but she hated me more. When I’s younger, it was just mean. But when I got a figure—and she found out I could read and write and do sums—she became a devil. Thought it was a sin that I should know about paintings and novels. Wouldn’t raise a hand to me long as Mama was alive. But when Mama died last year—I reckon she was poisoned! Then the old thing laid for me.”

Lloyd swallowed hard.

“She sent me up to Memphis to be sold away. It was her daddy had the land first. She was older ’n Papa. He married her back when she was still a little pretty. But she got crooked and sick—and evil inside. Lay up in her white bed all day dabbing her throat with cologne and whining for the nigger girls to fan her and shoo the flies. Story was she lost a baby. Wouldn’t let Papa come to her bed after that. So … he came … to my mother.”

“Why didn’t your father … protect you?”

“He tried.” Hattie sighed, with a mixture of fatigue and sadness that made Lloyd lighten his touch. “But men are weak. They’re all … slaves.”

This last assertion made Lloyd wince, but he kept rubbing the foot, subconsciously easing it against his erection. This girl was like no one he had ever imagined. Shining machines and flying over rivers and cities did not seem so wondrous as before.

“Papa’s heart was broken when Mama died,” the girl continued, as if she were reconsidering the events as she recounted them.

“He sounds … like a sad man,” Lloyd offered, feeling stupid. He kept imagining her eyes in the dark.

“He was a brave man and a wise man, and a good man,” Hattie insisted. “Let all the niggers read the Bible—and more. Got ’em learning arithmetic—and the stars. The neighbor white folks hated him for that.”

“He must miss you now.”

“He’s dead,” Hattie said, and must have reached in the sack for a hunk of mutton, because Lloyd could hear her jaws click. “Hung hisself.”

“He did?” the boy wheezed, thinking back to his own actions on the deck.

“Died in shame,” the girl continued. “Man named Barlow—plantation owner nearby—challenged him to a duel. Said he was a nigger lover and a traitor to the South! Papa strung himself up the night before. His old wife had her way after that. Her and the overseer.”

Lloyd did not know what to say. It reminded him of the story