Edward’s family had been alone on their journey. His father had not hired a smuggler, who, if he was trustworthy （and some were）， greatly improved your chances of a successful escape; they had not traveled with another family, which was preferable because it meant one couple could sleep while the other looked after the children. From Georgia, the trip required around a fortnight, but by the end of the first week, the weather had grown chilly, and then bitter, and the family’s food reserves were nearly depleted.
“My parents would wake us very early, at daybreak, and my sisters and I would forage for acorns,” Edward said. “We couldn’t risk building a fire, but my mother would pound them into a paste, and we would eat it mashed atop hardtack.”
“How awful,” he murmured. He felt foolish—but there was nothing else he might say.
“Yes—it was. Most awful for my younger sister, Belle. She was only four and didn’t understand that she had to be quiet; she only knew she was hungry and didn’t know why. She cried and cried, and my mother had to hold her hand over her mouth so she wouldn’t give us away.”
Neither of his parents ate breakfast or lunch. They saved their remaining food for dinner, and at night, the family would huddle together for warmth. Edward and his father would try to find a copse of trees for them to sleep in, or at least a gully, and they would cover themselves with leaves and branches, both to protect themselves from the wind and to try to conceal their scent from the patrol’s dogs. What was worse, Edward remembered thinking, even then—the terror or the hunger? Both defined his every day.
When they finally made it to Maryland, they went straight to one of the centers a friend had told Edward’s father about, where they remained for several months. Edward’s father taught classes in reading and mathematics to some of his fellow escapees’ children; Edward’s mother, a skilled seamstress, repaired damaged clothes, which the center took in to earn its residents a pittance. By spring, they had left the center and had embarked upon their travels once again—a difficult but less arduous journey, since now they were at least in the Union—this time to the Free States, where they continued northward to New York. Here, in the city, Mister Bishop had eventually found work at a printing press （there being a certain prejudice in the Free States and the Union against the educational standards of people from the Colonies, meaning that many learned escapees found themselves in reduced circumstances）， and the six of them had settled into a small apartment on Orchard Street.
Still, Edward said （and David detected a note of sincerity, of pride, in his voice）， they had most of them done well for themselves. His parents had died, carried away by the flu of ’90, but his two older sisters were both schoolteachers in Vermont, and Belle, a nurse, lived with her husband, a doctor, in New Hampshire, in Manchester.
“Indeed, I am the only failure,” he said, and sighed, dramatically, although David sensed that Edward in some way believed this to be true, and that it troubled him.
“You are not a failure,” he told Edward, and pulled him closer to his body.
For a while, they were silent, and David, his chin resting atop Edward’s dark head, traced patterns on Edward’s back. “Your father,” he said, at last, “had he been like us?”
“No, not like us, though if he had objections to our kind, he never said. I do not think he did.”
“Had he been a believer of Reverend Foxley’s, then?” Many of the escapees were secret believers in the preachings of the famous Utopian, an advocate of open love and one of the Free States’ founders. He was considered a heretic in the Colonies, where possession of his texts was illegal.
“No, no—he’d not been very religious.”
“Then—if you do not mind my asking—why did he want to come north?”
Here David felt Edward sigh, his warm breath against his chest. “I must be honest and say that, even after all this time, I don’t know myself. We had a good life in Georgia, after all. We were known; we had friends.
“When I was older and therefore impertinent enough, I asked him why we had made the journey. And all he would say is that he wanted us to have a better life. A better life! He had gone from being a respected teacher to being a printer—a perfectly fine occupation, of course, but a man who works with his mind does not usually consider a life working with his hands a better one. So I have never understood, not to my satisfaction—and, I suppose, I never shall.”
“But maybe,” David said, quietly, “maybe he did it for you.”
Edward was quiet, too. Then, “I don’t imagine he would have known when I was six.”
“Perhaps he did. My father did; I believe he knew it of all of us. Well, not Eden, perhaps—she was still little more than a baby when he and my mother died. But John and I, even though we were so young…Yes, I believe he knew.”
“And he was not bothered by this?”
“No, and why should he have been? His own father was like us. We were not foreign to him, nor distasteful.”
At this, Edward gave a laugh like a puff of air and rolled away from him, onto his back. By now, it was evening, and the room had grown dark—David would have to leave soon, lest he miss another dinner. But all he wanted to do was lie in Edward Bishop’s hard, narrow bed, feeling the terrible itch of the poor wool blanket atop him, the lingering warmth from the fire burning low in the hearth, and Edward’s skin beside him. “You know what they call the Free States in the Colonies, don’t you?” Edward asked, and David, though he did not put much stock in what the Colonies thought of them or not, was not of course ignorant of the cruel and vulgar nicknames by which they referred to his country, and instead of answering Edward’s question, he put his palm over his mouth.
“I do,” he said. “Kiss me.” And Edward did.
He had returned to Washington Square after that, reluctantly dressing and venturing into the cold, but later, up in his study, he was able to recognize that that discussion, that encounter, had left him changed. He had a secret, and his secret was Edward, and not just him, his smooth white skin and his soft dark hair, but Edward’s experiences, what he had seen and what he had endured: He was from another place, another existence, and in sharing his life with David, he had made David’s own suddenly richer, more profound and ecstatic and mysterious all at once.
Now, in his study, he reviewed his journal again, poring over details he well knew as if he were learning them for the first time: Edward’s middle name （Martins—his mother’s maiden name）; Edward’s favorite piece of music （Bach’s Cello Suite no. 1 in G Major）; Edward’s favorite food （“Don’t laugh—it’s hominy, with bacon. No, you mustn’t laugh! I am from Georgia, after all!”）。 He read through the pages he’d written with a greed he’d not felt for many years, and when he finally retired, unable to stop yawning, it was with pleasure, for he knew that it would soon be the next day, and that would mean he would see Edward once more. The affinity he felt for Edward was thrilling, but equally as thrilling was the intensity of that affinity, and the speed with which it had developed. He felt, for the first time in perhaps his whole life, reckless, wild—as if he were atop a runaway horse, scarcely holding on as it galloped down a long stretch of plain, gasping with laughter and fear.