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snatched from the fields and led gibbering in an African tongue and limping with age into a tobacco barn, where a white man cleared away the drylitter before painting him with pitch oil and setting him alight. This is not a story to tell to children unless they need to be taught to hate, a lesson that, of all of us, Primus learned best.
    THE NIGHT WE knocked down the posts was a treasure to me, and I held on to it like truth, so when someone asked me about my brother I told them that, about our victory over our master’s fence and Primus mapping all kinds of worlds for us, and I didn’t tell them the end of the story, which is that we didn’t wake up in time, and when the sun rose and we were scurrying along the line propping up the posts and stacking the rails as fast as our hands would let us, Farlan came picking through the woods on his big black horse. Our mother hadn’t wanted to say about our not coming home, because better us dead somewhere from snakebite than dragged in by white hands, but Granny in the pen had a job to do and couldn’t be losing little ones, so she told on us, and there Farlan was, reins in one hand, whip in the other.
    He didn’t want a story, so we saved it for Master. The cows had gotten to the fence, we said, and in all their lusting for each other had toppled a whole stretch of it, which we found when we were picking sticks for kindling. We’d shooed them away and were working hard to put the posts back up so none of the cows would come trampling into the tobacco fields, which we knew Master wouldn’t like. “Did we do a good thing?” we said, our little hands pressed together like prayer.
    I was too young to get anything more than ten smacks on the bottom. Only later did I hear from Primus about Master’s small knotted whip, and how he made my brother stand in the broad hall away from the fine things, and how he whipped him hard, but not hard enough so blood would get on the new-varnishedfloor, polished the day before by black hands and too fine now for black blood.
    That’s when the big house stopped seeming like a grand place, one I’d like to live in, and turned into someplace haunted. It swallowed up screams and breathed them out in little whispers through the day, so that walking past made your ears hurt, though you couldn’t tell why. I didn’t tell the end of the story to people who asked, because the best part of my brother was the bit that lay dozing on the far side of the fallen fence, his land still whole and perfect in his head.
    THE STORIES WERE what reminded us that what seemed real was just a passing fancy; this bound land, our broken cabins, the way we couldn’t see our mother but at night, these were not all of what could happen. The best of life was not what we were living, but something already past, or up ahead. When Primus snuck out to the far creek Sunday evenings, I followed him, chattering away, carrying my shoes by their worn heels and sometimes a stick to fight off the panthers I knew were hiding and which my brother would be too creek-minded to notice till they were pouncing. My limbs turned into antelope legs; I bounded the way our mother told us Antelope bounded when he was climbing up toward heaven. He was a grandfather to us, same as Abraham but even further back, a thousand generations. Antelope was small, like us, and all the other animals wanted to eat him so that he was always running, never resting. He even ran at night, through the dark, dark forests and fields, and we all put our hands over our faces at this part, because Panther was right behind. She showed us how close with her hands: her right was Antelope, with four finger legs gallopinghard, and her left was Panther, slinking as fast as the other could bound. She ran her hands all around the cabin floor and we followed with anguish until the left hand toppled the right and the baby started wailing. But just as Antelope stopped his spasming and Panther loosened his tight grip, lo! the