“Mister Lex lying over there in the kitchen dead. Knocked me round and tried to stick his thing in me and I busted his head open with a iron. So you pardon me but it seem like a fine night to travel.” Saying it put it behind her. She grew calmer, rapturous with motion, as if her nerve cells were already out before her in the wet night. Watching Peter fold his polish rag slow and evenly and place it on the bench before him. Then he stood. His eyes on her hard and fierce, not angry but clenched wide open. He did not speak. He stepped to the connecting door into the stable and from the back of the door took down a heavy greatcoat, ragged at the collar and cuffs and torn once low in the back. She’d never seen the coat before; it was the navy wool of the Union army. He laid it over the small table and from under his bed came out with a pair of boots and two pairs of socks and said, “Set down and get this on your feet.” While she put the boots on he found a sack and put three cold sweet potatoes still black with fireplace ash in the sack and folded it over and lifted the coat as she stood and put it around her shoulders. He put the sack in one of the coat pockets and told her, “Carry your shoes out and drop em in the lane back the garden. Don’ carry em far. Leave em right by the gate. Your mama find em in the mornin’. Cut crossways and don’ let nobody see you, white or colored. Get down in the bottom under the train trestle, opposite end of the bottom from that. Couple big oak trees there, you know?”

She nodded.

“Wait there. Anybody there, cut back up through and get to the colored burying ground. But they ain’t gon’ be anybody down in that bottom. Wait there or the burying ground until a man come find you. Won’t be long, maybe a hour but it seem like a long time. Just wait there.”

And then she paused, arrested now, alone. And said, “You ain’t goin take me?”

“Gon’ to go clean your mess child. You don’ need me hold your hand.”

“Peter—” she started but he cut her off.

“Get on out of here,” he said. “You ain’t got no time at all to spare right now. Just git. Watch your step. Watch out around you. Git.”