Known World (2004 Pulitzer Prize), The - Edward P. Jones [41]
Henry went to Elias and slapped him. “This is a hurtful disappointment to me. What I’m gonna do with you? What in the hell I’m gonna do with you? If you want a hard life, I will oblige.” “I will oblige” was a favorite phrase of Fern Elston’s during her lessons, heard by Henry the first time as he sat with her in her parlor dominated by trees, a peach and a magnolia, she and her servants had managed to domesticate. Her husband the gambler had seen it done by foreign people in a Richmond whorehouse and brought the technique back to Manchester County. “Is that what you want?” Henry asked. “I will oblige you with a hard life.” The trees in Fern’s house disoriented most people, those used to the inside always being inside and the outside always being outside. People said nice things about the trees to Fern even as their minds were swirling. Those people were all free Negroes because white people never came to Fern’s place. Henry had feared that Caldonia might want that done with their parlor.
“No, Marse.” Elias was still chained, Robbins having forgotten that the chains belonged to him. Other slaves had come out and were watching. Celeste was just behind the first row of people and Stamford twisted his shoulder a bit so she could see.
“You sure don’t act like it,” Henry said. Once you own them, once you own even one, you will never be alone, Robbins had told Henry after Henry purchased Moses from him. Knowing how painful loneliness could be, having been separated as a child from Augustus and then Mildred, Henry had thought that a good thing, never to be alone, to always have someone. Henry said to Elias, “If you want a good life, I will oblige that, too.” Fed by light streaming in from windows that went from the floor to a foot shy of the ceiling, the trees in Fern’s parlor grew to a height of about eight or nine feet, then stopped, as if on command. The peaches born on the tree were very tiny, could fit on a man’s thumb, and they were very sweet, too sweet for a pie or cobbler if the cook could manage to collect enough of them. The magnolia blossoms were also small, so beautiful that Fern’s gambling husband said he would frame them if they were pictures.
“Moses,” Henry said, “take him and chain him till I decide if he wants a good life or a bad life.” Since the day was a good one and Valtims Moffett the preacher would hold the services in the lane, Moses chained Elias in the large barn. “You want a good life or a bad life?” Moses mocked and then left him.
His first hours in the stall were spent thinking how he could kill everyone around him, first everyone on the plantation, then everyone in the county, in Virginia. Colored and white. He tried not to move the chains because the sound of their rattling hurt his ears, spread a dryness throughout his mouth. He could stand comfortably enough, if he wanted to stand all the time facing that section of the barn wall, the one section that was without a hole through which he could see the outside. When Elias sat, he found he could twist himself a little away from the wall, but his hands were suspended about level with his face and it was impossible to lie down. For a long time he looked up at the rafters, at the sparrows coming and going to the nest they were building. Engaged in a simple task of living—take straw to the nest, go back for more. The sun came in on them but there was not much of it near where their nest was. He wondered if he would be there long enough for the birds to have eggs, then chicks, to see the chicks grow and then make their own nests. Take straw to the nest, go back for more. To see the grandchildren sparrows become parents. He could wring the neck of everyone on the plantation, it was just a matter of whether to start with Moses or the master. Moses’s neck was thicker. The children’s necks would be the hardest. But over and done with in a snap. He could close his eyes tight with them, with the children, and with the old people. The women would scream the loudest, but God, being the kind of God he was, would give him strength.