Free M.C. Higgins, the Great by Virginia Hamilton Page B

down again on the step.
    The step was wet. So was M.C., who seemed not to notice. The rain was just dripping now. The mist had grown intense with light.
    “It already cover all the trees they root up,” M.C. forced himself on. “It’ll tear loose, maybe just a piece. But without a warning. Maybe a roar, and sliding into the yard and trying to climb my pole.”
    “Quit it,” Jones said. “Just . . . don’t talk to me.”
    M.C. couldn’t tell if there was any worry in his father’s face. He could see only an intensity of anger at being bothered.
    Suddenly the sun came out. M.C. bowed his head until the light leveled off, softened and shaped by the green of hills.
    Doesn’t even hear me, M.C. thought. Fool, Daddy. All at once, he wanted to be back up on his pole.
    Dude’ll have to tell him. He’ll have to listen.
    Bright sunlight began to dry up the truth seen so easily in the rain.
    “These old mountains,” Jones said. He looked out over the side of Sarah’s and beyond. “They are really something.”
    M.C. stayed quiet. Sullen.
    “It’s a feeling ,” Jones said. “Like, to think a solid piece of something big belongs to you. To your father, and his, too.” Jones rubbed and twisted his hands, as if they ached him. “And you to it, for a long kind of time.” He laughed softly. To M.C., it sounded full of sadness.
    “Granddaddy came here in his mama’s, Sarah’s, arms,” Jones said quietly. “She wasn’t free yet. The war wasn’t started but it was coming. Only Sarah couldn’t wait. I expect she ran until she found a place big enough to free her troubles. Just the clothes on her back, that half-dead child and the song she sang to him, my granddaddy. He grew up and sang it to my daddy. And he to me.”
    And then Jones began the weirdest chant: “ O bola, ” he sang, “ Coo-pa-yani, Si na-ma-gamma, O deh-kah-no. ”
    M.C. stared at his father. Jones looked embarrassed. “Don’t know how I forgot it this long. Sing it always to the sons. One son to another, down the line.”
    “Daddy!” M.C. whispered, awed and excited by the sound of the words. “What does it mean?”
    “Well, I had a feeling I knew, once,” Jones said. “But I guess even Great-grandmother Sarah never knew. Just a piece of her language she remembered.”
    “Does it mean something pretty?” M.C. asked. They sat, close and still.
    “It might just mean something too awful to forget,” Jones said. “We’ll never know.”
    M.C. felt awed by the past’s enormous mystery.
    “Is there more about Sarah?” he asked.
    “Just only two more things,” Jones said. “The one is that there’s an old title I have to this mountain slope. Show it to you sometime. Says deeded fee simple from McKelroy lands to Sarah McHigan, 1854.”
    “McHigan?” M.C. said.
    “He was the one she married, but he was sold away from her. That was maybe one reason she ran in the first place. McHigan, and then later in Granddaddy’s time, changed to Higgins.”
    “Man, I sure don’t remember hearing about that,” M.C. said softly.
    “I must of told you,” Jones said, “but you were little.”
    “Man,” M.C. said again, and then: “What’s the other thing? You said there were two things.”
    He looked at Jones and Jones looked at him. “You can believe it,” Jones began, “or you can misbelieve it. But I know and your mama knows. Times, in the heat of the day. When you not thinking much on nothing. When you are resting quiet. Trees, dusty-still. You can hear Sarah a-laboring up the mountain, the baby, whimpering. She say, ‘Shhh! Shhh!’ like a breeze. But no breeze, no movement. It’s just only Sarah, as of old.”
    “I know,” M.C. said, simply.
    “You know?” Jones said.
    “When I’m all alone,” M.C. told him, “up on my pole, all of a sudden, I know she is coming.”
    “Yea, Lord,” Jones said.
    “It scare me so,” M.C. said.
    “Don’t you be afraid,” Jones said quietly. “For she not show you a vision of her. No