The Known World - Edward P. Jones [111]
“What he means is we aim to do right by strangers.”
“I know what I mean, Pa. He know what I mean. I’m speakin Jesus’ English.”
The father continued, “You never know when a stranger is an angel, come to test which side of right and wrong you standin on. God still does that to people, no matter what some men, even preachers, might claim. He still sends out angels to test us. I don’t want to fail.”
“No,” Counsel said. “I wouldn’t want to fail either.”
The father took up the gun and pointed at the food in front of Counsel. “Eat, eat,” he said. “My wife slaved all mornin over that.” He sat the gun beside his pan, much farther away this time from the boy’s pan.
“I’m not all that hungry this morning,” Counsel said. “Truth is, I just come in to say my good-byes.”
“Oh, go on. Eat. I’m sure you hungry anough. Angel work must be hard work, I would think. Angels do all that hard work for God and the least we could do is feed em as we can.” He had picked up the gun and said the last words tapping himself in the chest with the barrel. “I know I would be hungry if I was doin all that work.”
“Listen,” Counsel began.
“You sayin my wife’s cookin ain’t good anough for one a God’s angels?”
“Thas exactly what I heard,” the boy said. “You buckety-buck up here, sleep in our place and then turn your back on my ma’s food. And you, Pa, I don’t know why you call him some kinda angel.”
Counsel said, “I just come in to thank you and say I have to be going. That’s all I want to do.” He stood up slowly and looked from the man to the woman, who did not appear unhappy at all, despite the bump on her face. “I just wanna get on my way, that’s all I want.” The chair, with the one bad leg, tipped over, and Counsel cursed it in his mind. “I just wanna be going.” He stepped away, heading for the door, never turning his back on the man. The boy drank from a cup on the other side of his pan. It was milk and Counsel saw the white along the boy’s upper lip. Where had they kept the cow all this time? he thought, taking more and more backward steps to the door. Where had the cow been? Where was the cow now? And the chickens for the eggs, where were the chickens? The pig for the bacon. “I just wanna leave in peace.”
The man stood, without hurrying, as if Counsel was the last thing on his mind. “We’ll be sorry to see you go, angel. But when you have to be about God’s work, you have to be about God’s work.”
The boy said, “I should charge you for all you got. I should take every penny you owe. And then take your hide besides.” He reached for the gun but the man turned away. “Don’t you make me mad,” he said to his father. “You know what happens when you make me mad.”
Counsel opened the door and stepped out. Had she told the man and then enjoyed with her husband Counsel’s discomfort, fear?
He got to the barn and saddled the horse and when he came out, the boy was on the porch, legs apart, both hands just inside the top of his britches. Counsel mounted and took a slow time leaving because he knew speed was one more thing in the world the boy didn’t like.
He took all that day to cross into Texas. He no longer knew about California. There was so much of civilization in the east, near the Atlantic Ocean, so much certainty. Here, away from what he always knew, was a world he did not believe he could ever make peace with. He rode on and avoided towns, farms, any signs of people.
Three days after Louisiana, a forest appeared out of nowhere along about Georgetown, Texas, and he was happy to see it after so much flat sameness. Long before he reached the forest, he heard the thunder along the ground but he thought it some weather phenomenon—the sky sending a message down to the ground about the storm that was coming. In North Carolina he had once stood on his verandah as it rained, only to go down the steps and off a few yards to a spot where it wasn’t raining. And many times there had been thunder and lightning while the snow fell. So he was used to the tricks of the weather. The trees of the forest seemed thick enough to provide a little shelter