The Known World (40 page)

He watched as Moses went back to the row he had been in and picked up his bag and became one with all around him, the land and its bounty and the slaves leaning over and picking and stepping. The crows hovered above them. Skiffington could see that the birds were high enough to avoid a hand but not high enough to escape a thrown stone. Moses had looked him straight in the eye the whole time, not once blinking or looking away. There was a reason God had made telling the truth one of his commandments; lying had the power to be a high wall to hide all the other transgressions. Skiffington considered Caldonia. He had heard of that white woman in Bristol who had slept with her slave. Bad business. But what the coloreds like Caldonia and Moses did among themselves was no crime in itself. Killing a slave for no reason was always a crime, before man, before God.

Two days later, evening, Skiffington heard a commotion out on the street and came to see what it was.

”Hey, John,” Barnum Kinsey, the patroller, said from atop his horse, the old thing his father-in-law had given him. Even before he reached him, Skiffington could tell that Barnum had been drinking, and he had drunk a lot. It had been more than two weeks since Augustus Townsend had been sold back into slavery. Barnum’s wife had had many sorrows but she had never regretted marrying him.

“Barnum?” Skiffington said.

The dry goods merchant had been trying unsuccessfully to shoo Barnum away from in front of his establishment but now that Skiffington was there, he left to close up for the night. Once the merchant went inside, the street was empty except for the two men, the horse Barnum was on, Skiffington’s tethered horse and a dog across the street that had lost its way.

“Hey, John. Nice evenin, huh?”

“Not a bad one, Barnum. You headin home?”

“Yes, John, I reckon I will. Soon. But I do have my patrollin.” He was quiet for a time, and while he was the dog got up from its haunches and went west. “I wanted to tell you somethin, and I have been workin my mind so the words will tumble out in a straight line. You know how that can be, John.”

“I do, Barnum. Just set them words one by one and they’ll do fine and we’ll get where we got to go.”

“Harvey Travis and Oden Peoples took Augustus Townsend and sold him. Harvey ate his free papers up, and then he sold him away, John. Thas all there is to it.”

“Sold Augustus? When was this?”

“Days ago maybe. Maybe a week. Time and me not friends anymore so a day can be like a month. Or a minute.” Barnum belched and seemed to be sobering with each word he spoke. “Man’s name was Darcy, that slave speculator you told us to look out for. Sold him for more money than I see at one time. Sold his mule, too, John. Sold that man’s mule. Had niggers in the back that he was probably tryin to sell. No tellin who they belong to.”

“Tellin me sooner might have done some good, Barnum. Sellin a free man is a crime and you should be there to stop it.”

“I know, John. I know all about that. You ain’t tellin me nothin I don’t already know.” The dog came back and stood in the middle of the street, then looked around. It trotted east. Barnum belched again. He shifted in the saddle. “I wish I was braver, John. I wish I was as brave as you.”

“You are, Barnum, and one day people will know that.”

“I wonder. I wonder.” He leaned forward. “Now I don’t want you to take me tellin you all this as my becomin a nigger kisser or somethin like that. It ain’t that. You know me, John. But they sold that Augustus and they sold his mule.” It was twilight and the stars were quite evident in the sky. The moon, still low, was behind Skiffington and only Barnum could see it.

“I know you, Barnum.”

“But he was a free and clear man, and the law said so. Augustus never hurt me, never said bad to me. What Harvey done was wrong. But tellin you don’t put me on the nigger side. I’m still on the white man side, John. I’m still standin with the white. God help me if you believe somethin else about me.” He shifted in the saddle once more. The moon was just above the horizon now, a large, dusty orange point, but Barnum did not raise his head high enough to see it. “It’s just that there should be a way for a body to say what is without somebody sayin he standin on the nigger side. A body should be able to stand under some . . . some kinda light and declare what he knows without retribution. There should be some kinda lantern, John, that we can stand under and say, ‘I know what I know and what I know is God’s truth,’ and then come from under the light and nobody make any big commotion bout what he said. He could say it and just get on about his business, and nobody would say, ‘He be stickin up for the nigger, he be stickin up for them Indians.’ The lantern of truth wouldn’t low them to say that. There should be that kinda light, John. I regret what happened to Augustus.”

“Yes, Barnum, I know.” The merchant came out of the store and tipped his hat to Skiffington and Skiffington nodded and the merchant went home.

“A man could stand under that light and talk the truth. You could hold the lantern with the light right from where you standin, John. Hold it so I could stand under it. And when nobody was talkin, was tellin the truth bout what they know, you could keep the lantern in the jail, John. Keep it safe in the jail, John.” Barnum closed his eyes, took off his hat, opened his eyes and studied the brim. “But don’t keep the lantern too near the bars, John, cause you don’t want the criminals touchin it and what not. You should write the president, you should write the delegate, and have em pass a law to have that lantern in every jail in the United States of America. I would back that law. God knows I would. I really would, John.”

“I would, too, Barnum,” Skiffington said. Barnum put his hat back on. “Now I want you to go home now. I don’t want you patrollin tonight. You rest up. You go home to Mrs. Kinsey and the chaps. Go straight home.” The dog came back and went west and did not return that night.

“I will, John. I’ll go home to Mrs. Kinsey and the chaps.” Barnum could see a burning lamp on the table he and his family had their meals on. He saw two more on the mantelpiece, and when he turned around in that room, he saw his wife, and the two lamps on the mantelpiece were reflected in her eyes. “I will, John.” Days before he and his family left the county forever, one of his sons, Matthew, found a map of America in a two-year-old newspaper. Matthew showed his father where they were going, took his father’s finger and traced the route from Virginia to Missouri. “A long way,” Barnum said. “Yep,” the boy said.

“Here,” Skiffington said, “stand there a little bit.” He went into the jail and returned with a small burlap sack no bigger than a puppy’s head. “Some sweets for them chaps, Barnum. Some horehound. A little peppermint for the chaps.”

“I appreciate that, John.”

“You go straight home now, Barnum.” He watched Barnum ride away. The candy had been for Winifred and Minerva, and maybe his father if he happened to be in the house. Now that the merchant was gone Skiffington would not be able to buy more until tomorrow. As for himself, his stomach did not permit him to have a sweet tooth.

The next morning he told Winifred that he might have to stay the night at Robbins’s place and she was not to worry. He then went to the telegraph office and sent long telegrams about Darcy and the wagon to sheriffs between Manchester and the North Carolina border. He knew what Darcy looked like and he mentioned the beaver pelts and that he was traveling with a Negro who may or may not be a slave. He also mentioned Augustus Townsend, “a free man and upstanding citizen of Manchester County.” “You sure you wanna say all this?” the telegraph man asked him. “I’m sure. Send every word. The county will pay.” “I ain’t worried about that, John.”

He went to the jail and told Counsel that he would be gone the rest of the day and that he was to handle matters until he returned the next day. “Want me along?” Counsel said. Skiffington said, “I think I can manage alone. Just keep it even here, will you, Counsel?”

He rode as hard as he could. He wondered why Mildred or no one else had come to him about Augustus being taken. He hit William Robbins’s place about one and could have used a good meal, but he went on. If he himself had been colored and had been somehow sold off, he would want someone to let a colored Winifred know, to let her know that there was hope for her. He passed the remains of Augustus’s wagon that Travis had burned but he didn’t know that it was what was left of Augustus. Toward three he reached Mildred’s place and knocked at the door but got no answer. She was not in the barn nor in the little workshop Augustus had set up next to the barn. He found her in the back, coming in from her garden. The dog was with her, and it went up to Skiffington and sniffed and then went on toward the house.

He took off his hat. “Mildred . . .”

“My husband dead, sheriff?” She had a basket of tomatoes and she sat it down and wiped the sweat from one side of her face, and as she wiped the other side, she said, “Is my husband gone?”

“No, not as I know. He was sold by a speculator.” There were still people in the county who believed tomatoes were poisonous but Mildred and Skiffington did not believe that.

“How can you sell a free man, sheriff?”

“Outside the law, Mildred. You go outside the law.”

“Outside. Inside. Outside. Inside.” She picked up her basket. “I don’t think Augustus was outside it. That wouldna been Augustus.”

“I will try to find him, Mildred, and bring him home to you. It is a crime what happened and the law will stand by that.”

“I know it will.”

“Why didn’t you tell me he was missing?”

She had been picking over the tomatoes and looked up quickly at him. “Me and Caldonia and Fern went to the jail and your deputy say he gon tell you all about it. He told me he was gonna let you know that Augustus was missin.”

He did not like telling Negroes about the failings of other white people, but he said, “He told me nothing, Mildred. I only heard of this last night.”

“From him? This late from him?”

“No, Barnum Kinsey told me.” He could see Counsel sitting at his desk, cleaning his gun and whistling. “I knew nothing, I can promise you that.”

“None a that matters anymore, sheriff.” She went by him and to the back door. The dog wanted to go in and she opened it for him and turned to Skiffington. The door shut on its own. “I had faith that he would come home. He could sometimes get caught up in fixin somethin and lose time and be late for days and days. I let that be cause I always knew he was safe. But your comin here is somethin else. I would rather have waited months for him to just ride on in then have you come here like this with what’s just plain bad news.”

“We will do what we can, Mildred.”

“I have a feelin it don’t matter anymore, sheriff. Nobody cares. Your deputy didn’t seem to care.”

“The law cares, Mildred. The law always cares.”

She looked at him and he blinked because he knew that she was closer to what was true than he was. “The law cares,” he said again. Mildred said nothing more and opened the door and went in. Skiffington put on his hat and went around the house and back to his horse. The horse was eating grass and Skiffington had to pull him away. He led him to the water trough, but that was not what the horse wanted so Skiffington let him eat grass again.

Mildred had come through the house and was now on the porch. “Augustus would not forgive me if I didn’t ask if you wanted a mouthful to eat.”

“No, I won’t trouble you no more,” Skiffington said. “I need to get back before it gets too late.” He thought of the pretty tomatoes; maybe there was bread, too. “I appreciate the offer.”

“Wouldn’t be no trouble. I got plenty.”

“I will sit and pass the time when I bring you good news about your husband,” he said. “The next time.”

She told him good day and went back into the house. The dog had been watching but did not move from the threshold.

Skiffington did not stop at the Robbins place on his way back to the town, but he did stop twice to read from his Bible. He had begun to think of Minerva again and he wanted the Bible to help him put it out of his heart. He didn’t sit down. He just stood in the road and read from the book while the horse, both times, wandered about. It had had its fill of grass at Mildred’s and so went here and there with the curiosity of a child. He read and read but could not concentrate.

Three weeks before, the morning after Minerva’s fifteenth birthday, Skiffington, going out to work, had seen her getting dressed in her room. She had apparently gone to dump her slops and had returned to finish dressing and left the door ajar, the way she had been doing it since a little girl. In the instant he saw her, her nightgown was pulled tight around her and the fullness of her body, from her breasts to her knees, showed through. She did not see him and he left without saying anything, but she had been on his mind ever since. He knew many a white man who had taken black women as their own, and among those men, he would have been thought normal. But he saw himself living in the company of God, who had married him to Winifred, and he believed God would abandon him if he took Minerva. And Winifred would discover what he had done, even if Minerva never said a word.

He put off reading the Bible as it was doing him no good and got to the jail about seven that night and the place was dark until he lit the lanterns. There were no messages from Counsel and so he suspected the day had gone without event. He had been uncertain about Counsel from the beginning. Now his faith in him had crumbled further. He brushed down his horse and left him in the barn in the back and walked home. Minerva was sitting in the porch swing and she waved to him and he felt all over again that feeling he had had the morning he saw her after her birthday. What good had all the praying done? Why should a man feel this way about someone who was like a daughter to his heart? “Howdy,” he said. She said, “You hungry?” “No. Where is Winifred?” “Inside sewing.” He went in and was suddenly pulled down by the weight of the day and the long ride. The tomatoes in Mildred’s basket were large and quite ripe. He would have liked one at that moment, but he knew his stomach would protest. The weight of the day pulled him down to Winifred in her chair and he sat on the floor beside her. She put her sewing in her lap. “I think your stomach could use something to eat,” she said. “No. Nothing.” “I say yes, Mr. Skiffington.” “Let me start with a little milk,” he said. “Fine,” she said. “Milk, then all the rest.”