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By Root 4711 0

the tears, was how much she had enjoyed that dinner, now lost to the road. And she vomited again—thinking that this time it was that little breakfast of one stolen egg and a slice of an old pig’s ear that would have been green in another hour or two if she hadn’t cooked it. She took the bottom of her frock and wiped her mouth. Being that it was noon, the sun was high. The sun for a moment went behind a cloud and when it emerged, she took a step toward the departing wagon. She wiped her tears and then she began to run, and in the moments it took for the sun to go behind another cloud, she had caught up with the wagon and had hold of the back of it. Augustus wasn’t driving the wagon very fast because he had his family together again and all time was now spread out before him over the valley and the mountains forever and ever. Henry soon took hold of Rita’s other hand. Augustus and Mildred were facing ahead, toward home. “Daddy,” Henry said quietly as he watched Rita. His legs dangling off the edge of the wagon, he alone was facing back, toward the Robbins plantation. “Daddy.” Augustus turned in his seat and saw Rita. “What you doin, woman?”

”Don’t leave me here. Please don’t leave me here,” Rita managed to say. The wagon was dragging her when she wasn’t able to run along and it was all Henry could do to hold on to her. Augustus stopped. She climbed aboard and pulled Henry into her arms. “Please please. Lord Jesus, please.”

“Go back now,” Mildred said and Augustus repeated her words. The sun was coming full again and the clouds drifted away and so there was even more light on what wasn’t yet a crime, just a minor offense—two lashes of the whip on Rita’s back and a scolding to the free and clear Townsends, even the boy, who should have known better even if his parents were to claim they didn’t. “You go back,” Mildred and Augustus said together. Henry, beginning to understand the weight of the problem, began to cry, but he clung to Rita as much as she was clinging to him. Augustus got down and pulled at Rita. “Go way. Go way, woman,” he said, looking about, waiting for Robbins or the overseer or some slave to come out and bear witness to it all. Augustus trembled and he saw the sun move in that doomed way a dying man sees a clock’s hour and minute hands move; worse was the promise from the much faster second hand on the clock that all their backs would be whipped raw before sundown. “Please go way, Rita. Please.”

“Don’t leave me here, Augustus. I never been bad not one day to Henry. Tell him, Henry, bout what a good mother I been to you.”

“Yes, Daddy, she been a good mother.” He turned and looked at Mildred. “Mama, she been a good mama.”

“It don’t matter. Don’t kill us like this, Rita.” Augustus raised his hands and shook them at the universe. “Bad mother, good mother, it don’t matter.” He knelt to halt the tears. Mildred got down and came to him. “Augustus,” she said and she was followed by Henry saying, “Daddy, daddy.” In less than an hour, he had said “Daddy” more times than he had in three years. Augustus stood up. “Augustus,” Mildred said. She touched his chest and he knew. “We all be dead by mornin,” he said. He got back up on the wagon, and after he had taken the reins, he was silent as he saw time rolling back toward him from the valley and from the mountains. Mildred told Rita to lay down and she and Henry covered her with a blanket. When Mildred got back up, her husband said, “You got your free papers?” “Yes,” she said. “You got yours?” They were the same questions they had asked before setting out every Sunday from home, but now he added, “You got Henry’s bill a sale?” “Yes,” Mildred said. Augustus nodded and commanded the mules to go. “Up,” he said. “Go up.” He looked back once and when he saw the gray lump that was Rita and saw even farther back the opening to Robbins’s plantation where he had been and his wife had been and his child had been, he commanded the mules to go faster.

He sat all night waiting and thinking of what he could do. Rita, as if trying to disappear, went to a corner of the kitchen in the