From Slaveroad, which will be published this month by Scribner.

Lucy Gantt Sheppard brings the glass teapot into a room too full of furniture to breathe. A woman not small, not large, not exactly shrunken, but clearly not the woman she once was. Old but as substantial as each piece of polished furniture, furniture whose every flat surface is loaded with knickknacks, photos in ornate frames, painted crockery, and vases. LGS, an old woman, crowded, competing for air with all the stuff she’s accumulated to surround herself: antiques, relics, African masks, a room full of last things belonging to her, these inanimate objects dying with her in this old house. She is a perfect housekeeper, perfectly prepared to let the manner she cares for this room, into which she invites me for a cup of tea, introduce her, display her, tell her story if I or any other visitor desires to hear it.

Why me? A question she addresses as much to herself as to me.

On the round mahogany table, a rooster-shaped metal trivet atop a circular mat finally accepts the teapot. Before she vanishes again, my host, this Lucy Gantt Sheppard I found after years of searching, seats herself on a chair matching mine, matching five others matching the table, her posture perfect, back straight, shoulders squared, no droop to her chin. She is substantial again, not dead, as I’d begun to assume after failing to discover any trace of her in public records after her husband’s death in 1927. Lucy Gantt Sheppard, not small, even though cut in half by the tabletop’s shining black immensity separating us in this room of a house on East Breckinridge Street, Louisville, Kentucky, a room, a house, street, neighborhood, all of which have seen better days, and worse too, I heard in her voice, Why me, before she sat down, before she shakes her head slowly and sighs, All that time . . . all that long, long time . . .

I had written not long before to an old friend, editor of an influential journal, describing LGS’s husband, the Presbyterian missionary William Henry Sheppard, as more or less forgotten by the American public, a man I had recently discovered purely by accident whose story fascinated me enough that I had immediately begun to research his career. My letter was an attempt to persuade my editor/buddy to initiate in his prestigious journal a campaign for a WHS Day to honor the unique achievements of an extraordinary human being who absolutely deserved more national recognition. Took a while for the journal editor to respond, a whole lot longer than I had expected, given our long acquaintanceship and what I had assumed was mutual respect. Didn’t S’s unique story speak for itself? WHS a missing link. S connecting America and Africa in a rather startling fashion seldom acknowledged, seldom explored by traditional historians, thus unsuspected, virtually unknown territory for ordinary citizens.

Got my old running buddy on the phone, finally, and he pleaded, C’mon, man. You of all people must know this S dude poison. Me and a couple staff folks pretty hip to him, but soon as I mentioned your idea, the ones even a little bit aware of WHS rolled their eyes, started to wag their heads, not one of my people even sort of agrees with you. Yeah, yeah, S something else, an unusual brother, especially back in those times, those evil days. A sure enough cooking brother. Anybody got to be impressed by him. The dude way out there back then, but the baggage, his baggage, you know what I’m talking about, man. Presbyterians snatched his ass out the Congo.

Boy lucky they didn’t lynch him when they got him back home. Lucky they only rusticated his randy behind and didn’t flat out defrock him. Course we both know he isn’t the first colored preacher fucking colored church ladies, but shit, Sheppard steady humping African honeys and making babies over there. What’s worse, brother let his wife and them cracker missionaries catch him red-handed.

Least one little son named after Sheppard crawling around the Congo compound. No, no, no. Almost had no MLK Day behind shit like that, bro, so can’t help you with this project, my friend. No way, José. Still, tell the truth, I dig the cat just like you do. But best forget about it, man. Leave it alone. Sheppard fucked up big. Women around here would burn me at the stake and my little raggedy magazine too, we start agitating for some kind of WHS Day.

I tried but failed to convince the editor I had no desire to promote a WHS story that excluded or slighted LGS or disparaged women in general. But good intentions are not worth shit these trifling days.

Not easy for me, Lucy Gantt Sheppard says, sitting up ramrod straight, eyes fixed on mine across the dark expanse of dining-room table. And if you are familiar, sir, she continues, even a tiny bit familiar with my history, and you must be some, because you found me, didn’t you, and here we sit in my home and you’re going to ask whatever you need to ask, but anyway, I will start by saying, even though I’m guessing you may already know more than enough about Lucy Gantt Sheppard, that no matter what else you found written about me or folks have whispered in your ear, I need to add this. It’s not easy for me even now, after all the long, long years, to go back to Congo. Even going back only in my own mind. Congo hurt me once. And still hurts. More than words can say. Other people’s words or my words, if I can make myself say them.

Person like you, a man as you are, and being a man a blessing for you, you ought to be grateful, I believe, but you cannot even start to imagine how hard it was back in those days for a person like me in Africa. A woman, a mother, a wife, a teacher, a lover. Hard enough anytime, anyplace to be those things, do those things. To do what others expect of me. What I expect and demand from myself. All that, and color, which I have not even mentioned.

Africa. Congo. Beautiful sometimes. I loved how Africans spoke. Their voices reminded me of home. Taught myself an African language. Talk it still to myself. Africa a special place, Africans special people, S wrote me in his letters. Beautiful and sometimes terrible here in Africa, he wrote. Hard lives for Congo people, for him and the other missionaries. Strangely, when I read his letters, they aroused no fear of what might befall me when I joined him. The killing fevers preying on missionaries, relentless heat, poisonous snakes and insects, wild animals, bloody wars natives wage upon each other, armed, financed by Belgian companies, floods, starvation, diseases cutting people down every day. All the horrors and perils of Congo Sheppard described seemed bearable, did not scare me or warn me away. Haunted me only because life for me here or there unbearable, if S did not survive. The letter I like to remember as a telegram arrived finally, telling me, Lucy, please come, and not exactly in those words, but that’s all the message I recall, because nothing else in it mattered, nothing more I needed to start me packing and hurrying up, fast as I could to join him, marry him, go off with him to another world.

And that Africa world just as beautiful, as mean, as soul-and-body-crushing as what I’d heard and read. As S warned. But S did not warn me about his fickle heart, icy heart, forgetful heart, about changes he would put me through if I joined him in Congo, and now, going back again now, thinking about him today, well, excuse me, it isn’t easy. Sheppard isn’t easy and I pray your soul may rest in peace, William Henry Sheppard. You done me blacker, worse than Africa ever did.

African fever took my two babies, but S took my heart. Ate it. Spit the blood in my face. Don’t misunderstand me, sir, please. I don’t ask “why me” because I feel my share of suffering greater than other folks’ share. Just talking to myself most the time. Then a person like you at my door. Wanting me to bear witness. Bare my soul. Asking me about Sheppard. Asking about me, too, it seems. After all the years, after this long, long time, how come you think only me left to bear witness to the things you seem to want to know, sir?

Yes. Just me living in this house years and years now. But old house not empty. When people have to go they just go on and leave here. One by one they go away. Doesn’t mean they are not around. Or do not return. Busy coming and going. Witnesses like me. Who else I’m supposed to talk to? Rattle round in these rooms long as I’ve been rattling, you get used to bumping into people. People big as life, bright as day everywhere in this house. Love my house. All these precious Africa pieces we brought back to grace it. They can’t talk exactly, but they help make this my dream home.

When I was just a tiny thing, promised my mother I’d buy her a beautiful house and we would live in it together forever and ever like happy people in those fairy tales she used to sing to me. Last few years of her life, my mama, bless her soul, lived in this lovely home with me. Good years. Happy years. My promise to her come true.

My children lived here too—wise, perky Wilhelmina till she left to start a home of her own, and Max, smart and a warrior like his father, but frightened of people like his father never was frightened.

Max here till he left and start roaming all four corners of the globe.

Sheppard here in this house when he passed in his sleep. We suffered together, good days and bad days here.

People put on earth to suffer. How else would a body know they alive. This house a woman-dream. Woman-dream a place where she can live with her people. Man-dream a throne. Nice, shiny place just for him alone to sit and pretend he a little king. Place he can puff himself up about, brag about so other men think he a big king on a big throne. No doubt about it, but I am a witness also to the truth that there’s some men dream a home, some women dream a throne. Two different kinds of dream, and me, Lucy Gantt Sheppard, I just called one man-dream, and the other kind woman-dream.

Woman-dream I suffered, believed, learned all those years with S. And without him.

I imagine you prefer your days to begin briskly now, Lucy Gantt Sheppard. No lingering in bed for you. Sleep lost time for you. Why drift in the foggy labyrinth separating awake from asleep. When your eyes open (pop/snap open), you do not hesitate, do you? Put your feet on the floor, on the path toward your tasks, I bet. Your mission.

You do not slip backward, do you? Back into your dreaming. You avoid that door of no return.

Or perhaps you begin days with prayer. Prayer never ending till night comes and you fall asleep again. As I imagine Rebekah prays her way through her days. No such thing as a crisp, rushed prayer for you, is there, Lucy? Unless a person has forgotten how to pray.

Forgotten that prayer is a kind of wide-awake drift toward God.

Each of your prayers hovering, teasing at the edges of lasting forever, I think, Lucy. Prayer silencing you. Alone in the presence of your God. Listening. Until the silence, the mystery tells you to move, to fill your day. Fill it with duties, tasks, mission. Then whatever you perform, whatever you feel about all the busyness of a day, become simply afterthoughts, after your morning begins alone in your God’s presence. Listening. The weight of his voice heavy inside you. And light. Wings of light lifting, driving, flying you from one duty to the next. In no hurry.