The Known World - Edward P. Jones [119]
“He belongs to me,” Mann kept saying once they were inside. He produced a bill of sale that showed Jebediah was bought in Durham sixteen years before for $250.
“How he get that free paper?” Skiffington said.
Mann looked abashed. “He wrote em. He can read and write better than you and me.” Mann took off his nice gray hat and set it with both hands on Skiffington’s desk near the Bible. “That was my wife’s doing, bless her name. I told her not to do something like that, but I could never say no to her. He was just a pup back then. She was sweet except for doing things I didn’t approve of.”
Jebediah, in the cell, was silent.
“You should make your wife stop doin work like that,” Skiffington said. “She should know she shouldn’t be doin that. She know what the law is about teaching slaves to read and write?”
“I know,” Mann said. “But she dead now, been dead for two years, left us not long before this damn Jebediah here took off. Bless her name. I got me a real smart wife now—she can’t read nor write so she can’t teach anybody what she don’t know.” He told Skiffington that Dickinson was his first wife’s maiden name. “Ain’t that a kick in the head for you?” the preacher said.
“I don’t know,” Skiffington responded. “I’ll just accept your word that it is.”
“Well, it is. It’s a big kick in the head,” Mann said.
“If you didn’t free him,” Skiffington said, “how he get that free paper?”
“I told you he can read. He can read and write. Can do it better than I can, can’t you, Jebediah? Can cipher like the dickens, too.” He walked over to the bars. “Damn your soul to hell for causin me all this trouble.” Jebediah still said nothing. “And why you wanna go and despoil my wife’s good memory by usin her name to commit a crime with? Huh? You tell me that? Damn your soul.”
“You can take him home anytime,” Skiffington said.
“Lemme go out and get a little mouthful of somethin to eat. I brought my neighbor and he eatin now. We both can get him back where he belong.”
“Fine, that’s good with me.”
Mann had turned to talk to Skiffington but now he went back to Jebediah. “I’m gonna whip your black hide till God tell me to stop, you hear me?” Jebediah stepped back and sat on the pallet on the floor. The cot for the white prisoners had been removed. “Yessiree, you rest up now cause I’m gon tan you good, boy. And then I’ma let you heal, give you time to grow another hide and then I’ma whip that one off you. Then let you grow another, then whip that one off. Go around despoilin my wife’s good name and committin God knows what crimes. Thas all the work you ever gonna have to do again, Jebediah, just grow hides and watch me whip em off you.” Mann took up his hat and then he leaned his head back a few degrees, patted down the front part of the blond hair and set the hat on his head with the same gentleness he would use to set the hat down in a hatbox. “I’ll be back directly,” he told Skiffington and went out the door.
As it happened, Ramsey Elston had returned home two nights before. He told his wife that he didn’t know any Jebediah Dickinson, and if a Jebediah Dickinson didn’t exist for him, then surely a $500 debt couldn’t exist. Fern knew he was not telling her the truth. God’s gift to Ramsey as he aged was easiness with lies. They were in their eleventh year of marriage. She had not been able to get Jebediah out of her mind since the day Oden rode away with him.
She had intended to go into town to inquire about Jebediah the day after her husband told her he did not know him, but Ramsey rose that first morning and was as sweet as ever. That evening he turned sour and she went to bed determined to