Chapter 1 Summary

On the evening his master dies, Moses plows on after dismissing the other slaves. Moses tastes a pinch of soil to get the feel of the season, smiles at the scent of nearing rain, and walks to edge of the cornfield. There, he strips naked, sleeps, masturbates, and walks home to his wife and family, who are used to his tardiness. Alice watches Moses during her nightly wanderings, brought about, some say, when a mule kicked all sense out of her. Moses has been a slave for thirty-five years, twice to white masters and now, for ten years, as the overseer slave to a black master.

The master, Henry Townsend, a thirty-one-year-old free black man who owns 33 slaves and over 50 acres, has been dying for six days. He has been sick seven times in ten years, and his estranged father Augustus, sets aside...