Page 59 of Good Dirt

Words

1847

W ords had a kind of power. Anyone who had read the Scriptures knew this. Anyone who had ever been freed from bondage by a bill of sale or a final will and testament knew this. Teaching an enslaved person to read and write was against the law in this territory. Enslaved persons caught studying could be lashed, and a plantation owner known to teach them to read or write could be fined or jailed. But like many of his brethren, Moses had learned his letters anyway. Martin Oldham believed that a certain familiarity with the Scriptures was fundamental and had chosen to look the other way when he came to know that Uncle was teaching the young ones to read.

Martin Oldham also was a practical man, and ultimately, he saw fit to make use of Moses’s reading and writing skills. Moses had begun by writing initials, dates, and sizes on pieces of pottery. Soon, he began to make note of inventories and pricing and deliveries in the pottery’s register. The only thing was, everyone knew better than to acknowledge it. Words had the power to feed resistance, and for this, an enslaved person who could read and write words would continue to be feared.

After Betsey’s death, Moses decided to carve five words into a piece of greenware that, unbeknownst to him, would go on to change lives. He contemplated the size of the disk and the space that would be required for him to fit all the words onto it. He broke up the phrase into three lines and attached the disk to the bottom of a twenty-gallon storage jar. Then he added the jar to the kiln with the next batch ofstoneware.

In the days after Betsey’s death, everyone had been feeling particularly low. Distracted. As the jar was fired, glazed, and fired again, the uneven heat caused a slight distortion in the structure that no one, not even Moses, would notice. Everyone who saw the jar would take a second look, though. There was something about that particular piece, not only the leaves added by Willis. They did not realize that it was the slight asymmetry of the jar that had caught their eye. Moses himself felt it to be the most beautiful thing he’d ever made.

While loading the jar onto a wagon bed one day, Willis accidentally knocked the piece off the edge of the platform and had to lunge for it. He had parked the wagon too close to the creek. The earth was damp over there, and the soil being what it was, it didn’t hold his shoes. Willis skidded and the jar continued to roll toward the edge of the water. As Willis caught up with the vessel and bent to pick it up, he caught sight of the words incised on the bottom.

Willis had not been there when Moses was inscribing the words on the bottom of the jar. Still, he understood exactly what had inspired the phrase. He read the full inscription three more times, moving his lips silently.

A fortnight later, Willis was gone.