“I know why she done it now. I knew why she done it even back then. But it burned in me, a low, heavy hatred. Can you imagine hating your own mother, Hiram? After that, the old master sold us south—two lost boys sent down into the Deep. He did it to punish my mama, to show her that whatever plans she had of coming back for me and Lambert was done. I had a whole other life down there. I met a girl—Lydia—and we made a family. I Tasked hard. I was a man well regarded in slavery, which is to say I was never regarded as a man at all.

“Lambert knew. Maybe ’cause he was older, he knew all that had been taken from us. And the hate in him was so strong, it just ate him. So Lambert . . . Lambert died down there, far from home, far from the mother that birthed him and the father that reared him.”

I could not see Otha’s face in the dim light, but I heard the halting in his voice, and I felt a halo of agony burning all around him.

“There are so many holes in me, so many pieces cut away. All those lost years, my mother, my father, Raymond and Patsy, my wife, and my kids. All my losses. Well, I got out. My master needed the money, more than he needed to hold on to me, and, through the kindness of others, I got out. I came up to this city searching for my family, for I was left with rumors of where they had been. And soon I heard from the coloreds that this man Raymond was a good one to know, should you be searching for family. I sought him out.”

“Y’all recognize each other?” I asked.

“Not even a little bit. And I had no surname. He sat with me, just like we sat with Mary Bronson, and I gave him my whole story. Later, Raymond told me that he trembled with every detail. But you know Raymond—he is a rock. I’m sitting there telling him all that I know. And I’m wondering how he’s taking it, because the whole time he’s just real quiet. Then he tell me come see him again tomorrow. Same time. Next day I come back and there she was, Hiram. I knew her right away. I didn’t need to search myself or think no time on it. It was my mama. And then Mama tell me that this man, this rock, was my brother. It’s the only time I seen tears in Raymond’s eyes.

“When we was young, Lambert and me had all kinds of schemes for seeing our way out. And when Lambert died, Hiram, I knew that I must somehow do it. And I knew that any anger in that venture was a waste. I think back to my mama’s words the night she left. I think about them all the time in this work, in my time with the Underground. ‘I gotta go for Raymond and I gotta go for Patsy,’ she said. ‘I am so sorry, baby, but I gotta go.’ And I, being young and loving my mama, I said, ‘Mama, why can’t we go with you?’ And my mama, she said, ‘ ’Cause I can only carry so many, and only so far.’ ”

The Conductions became frequent for me now. The world would suddenly and randomly fall away, and moments later I would return, dumped into back alleys, basements, open fields, stockrooms. Every Conduction seemed activated by a memory, some whole, some mere shards, like the vision of a woman who sneaked me gingersnaps, who I realized suddenly was my aunt Emma. I remembered the stories of her prowess in the Lockless kitchen. I began to feel that something was trying to reveal itself to me, that some part of my mind, long ago locked away, was now seeking its liberation. Perhaps I should have greeted the unravelling of a mystery and new knowledge with relief. But Conduction felt like the breaking and resetting of a bone. Each bout left me fatigued and with a somehow deeper sense of loss than the one I’d carried into it, so that I was in a constant low thrum of agony, a melancholy so deep it would take every ounce of my strength to rise out of bed the next morning. For days after each Conduction, I would still be working my way through the most sullen of moods. This didn’t feel like freedom, not anymore.

And so one day I walked out of the Ninth Street office set upon leaving Philadelphia and the Underground, leaving the triggers for these memories that threw me into depression. I did not meditate on this decision. I did not gather any effects. I simply walked out the door with no view of ever coming back. I reasoned that my initial exit would alarm no one, since it was known that I enjoyed walking through the city. But then I would just keep walking. I turned away from the office and made my way over toward the docks.

Of all the people I saw in the city, the sailors seemed the freest, tied to nothing save one another, bound by boyish jabs and indecent mockery that always elicited a host of laughter. Sometimes they fought. But whatever their quarrels these men seemed a brotherhood to me. Even in their freedom, they somehow reminded me of home. Maybe it was their hard black faces, their rough hands, bent fingers, bruised and worn-down nails. Maybe it was how they sang, because they sang as the Tasked did, but were not of the Task.

I stood at the dock, hoping one might call out to me, perhaps asking for a hand, and when no one did I left, and that whole day I just wandered. I crossed the river, passed a cemetery and some railroad tracks, and stopped before an almshouse to watch the indigent of the city gather. I walked more until I stood before Cobbs Creek and a forest at the southwesterly recesses of the city. By now it was late. I had no plan and it was getting dark. I really had no way out, no way to escape the Underground or the binds of memory. So I turned around, but these were the thoughts that clouded me on my way back to Ninth Street, back to my fate, the notions that kept me from watching out as I had been trained to do. Suddenly, I was face to face with a white man, who seemed to materialize out of the night itself. He asked me something, but I could not hear. I leaned closer, asking him to repeat himself. And then I felt a sharp blow fall across the back of my head. There was a bright flash. Another blow. And then nothing.

When I awoke, I was chained, blindfolded, and gagged. I was in the back of a drawn cart and could feel ground moving beneath me. I cleared my head and knew exactly what had befallen me, for I had heard all the stories. It was the man-catchers—Ryland’s Hounds of the North—who’d got me. They were known to simply grab colored people off the street and ship them south for a price, with no regard to their status as free or in flight from the Task. I could hear them laughing, doubtless counting up their haul. I was not alone in the cart. Someone near me was weeping, quietly—a girl. But I was silent. I had wanted out of the Underground, and now I had it. There was some small part of me that felt relief, for I was, at least, returning to the Task I knew.