Known World (2004 Pulitzer Prize), The - Edward P. Jones [18]
“Are you hungry?” Winifred said.
“Yes, mistress,” Minerva said, both hands now resting on the bed.
“Then we must eat. And we must find a new and better name for me. But first, you and I must eat.”
Three weeks later William Robbins and four other major landowners summoned Sheriff Gilly Patterson and John Skiffington to Robbins’s home. Robbins had not been able to let go of the sale of Toby and his sister to the man he had met on the road and he was able to convince the four others that something threatening was loose in the land. He was never definite about any of it, but if William Robbins said a storm was coming, then it did not matter how blue and pleasant the sky was and how much the chickens strutted happily about the yard.
Robbins expressed dissatisfaction with Patterson’s vigilance, hinted that while Patterson and Skiffington slept, abolitionists were spiriting away their livelihood to some fool’s idea of nigger heaven in the North. He had become convinced that the man on the road had come into their county and waited on the road and befriended him with the one aim of stealing Toby and his sister. Robbins, for the first time, broached the idea of a militia.
“This is a peaceful land, William,” Sheriff Patterson said. “We have no need for anything more than what we got. Me and John are doing a good job.” Patterson liked what little authority he had and was concerned that anything else would be a usurper. And he had never liked the idea of Robbins riding into town in broad open daylight any day of the week to be with a nigger and her nigger children.
“Gilly, how many slaves you got?”
“None, William. You know that.” Four of the men were on Robbins’s verandah, including the sheriff and three of the landowners. One of the landowners was standing beside Deputy Skiffington on the ground. Skiffington had had to hear Patterson’s complaining about coming to Robbins’s place all the way out there. “I ain’t no fetch and carry, John,” Patterson had said to Skiffington. “But thas what they’re making me into. I didn’t come across that Atlantic Ocean to be a fetch and carry man.” All trace of the accent he had brought across the ocean as a little boy had disappeared a long time ago. He spoke like any average white Virginia man walking down the road.
Robbins said, “Well, Gilly, you don’t know then. You don’t know what the difficulty is in keeping this world going right. You ride around, keeping the peace, but that ain’t got nothin to do with running a plantation fulla slaves.”
“I never said it did, William. This is a peaceful place here in Manchester, thas about all I’m sayin,” Patterson said. He liked the sound of the word peaceful right then and was looking for a way to use it again before he left.
“That was yesterday,” Robbins said. “Yesterday’s peace. Way yesterday. Even now, I can remember that mess with that Turner nigger and them others. Even now, even today. My wife talks about it. My wife cries about it. That wasn’t something he could have thought of on his own. That abolitionist just about walked in here and walked out the door with my property.”
“That ain’t what I heard,” Patterson said. “I heard it was a straight open deal. Straight sale, William.”
“You can hear the wind but it ain’t me whispering in your ear.” Robbins stood up and walked to the edge of the verandah and crossed his arms. He had seen Philomena the day before and had come away with a sour memory of her talking about Richmond and how happy they could be there. The other men on the verandah stayed seated and Patterson leaned forward in his chair, studied the grain of the wooden floor.
Patterson said, “John and me’ll do a little extra duty, if thas what got everyone tied up in a fritter. My job is to protect everybody, to make sure everybody can sleep right every night in a peaceful way, and if that ain’t happenin, then I’ll make it happen.”
One of the landowners on the porch, Robert Colfax, said, “Bill, how that stick with you?” Neither Robbins nor Colfax would know it for a very long time but that day was the high point of their friendship. They