“I don’t like this,” said Mike. “I should be with you.”

’I promise you, Mike, I’m not the one in danger down there.”

“It’s a blame fool thing to do!” said Mike.

“What, leave you behind?”

“Healing Calvin.”

Alvin understood the love that prompted these words, but he couldn’t leave the idea unanswered. “Mike, he’s my brother.”

“I’m more brother to you than he ever was,” said Mike.

“You are now,” said Alvin. “But there was a time when he was my dearest friend. We did everything together. I have no memories of my childhood without him in them, or scarcely any.”

“So why doesn’t he feel that way?”

“Maybe I wasn’t as good a brother to him as he was to me,” said Alvin. “Mike, I’ll come back safe.”

“This is as crazy as it was you going back to jail.”

“I walked out when I needed to,” said Alvin. “And now I’ve got to get moving. I need you to get Jean-Jacques out of New England without getting deported as a Catholic, and Verily and Purity need somebody who isn’t ga-ga with love to make sure they eat and sleep.”

Arthur Stuart solemnly shook hands with Mike and Jean-Jacques. Alvin hugged them both. Then they took off at a jog, the man leading, the boy at his heels. In a few minutes the greensong had them and they fairly flew through the woods along the river.

* * *

“He’s coming,” said Margaret.

“Where he be, you say?” asked Gullah Joe.

Outside, they heard the sound of galloping horses. The singing and wailing from the slave quarters had grown more intense as the sun set and darkness gathered.

“I can’t tell,” said Margaret. “He’s in the midst of the music. Running. He moves like the wind. But it’s such a long way.”

“We tell folks what you say,” said Denmark, “but this be too hard for them. The anger, it come so fast to them. I hear some talking about killing their White folks tonight in their beds. I hear them say, Kill them the White babies, too, the children. Kill them all.”

“I know,” said Margaret. “You did your best.”

“They be other ones, too,” said Gullah Joe. “No name come back a-them. Empty like him. More empty. They die. He kill them.”

Margaret looked down at Calvin’s body. The young man’s breath was so shallow that now and then she had to check his heartfire just to see if he was alive. Fishy and Denmark’s woman were tending him now, so Margaret could rest, but what good did washing him do? Maybe they were keeping the fever down. Maybe they were just keeping him wet. They certainly weren’t keeping him company, for he had lapsed into unconsciousness hours ago and all his futures had come down to just a handful that didn’t lead to a miserable death here, tonight, in this place.

“Why he no fix up, him?” asked Gullah Joe. “He strong.”

“Strong but ignorant,” said Margaret. “My husband tried to teach him, but he refused to learn. He wanted the results without practicing the method.”