The Known World - Edward P. Jones [121]
“I am free,” Jebediah said. “Mann ain’t knowed what he talkin bout. I am free.”
“The law does not say that.” She had intended, only hours before, to free him, allow what she had paid for him to be a trade for what Ramsey owed him. She had expected Jebediah to go for that because he would be, after all, free and clear once and for all. But the knowledge of her husband’s infidelity had come full and heavy and squatted down big in front of her, blocking everything else out. She resented her husband, and she resented the messenger, the companion to her husband. She was thirty-four years old. “This barn has been here many years, and it will stand many more with you in it if you cannot learn manners.”
“Manners ain’t what I need, lady. I need my money.”
Fern said to Colley, “I don’t want him going anywhere until he learns right from wrong, night from day.”
“Yessum,” Colley said and pulled three times on the chain.
“You and your gotdamn no-good husband can go to hell!” Jebediah shouted as she went out. “Y’hear me good. Both a yall can go straight to hell.”
Jebediah stayed there four days and then he told Colley that he was ready to do what she paid for him to do and Colley and another man took Jebediah to the back of the house and Fern came out and down to him.
“I want no trouble. I want not one moment’s trouble,” Fern said.
“All right, all right,” Jebediah said and she slapped him.
“I thought you said he had learned some manners,” Fern said to Colley.
“He told me he had, Mistress. He told me that.” Colley grabbed Jebediah by the neck and forced him to his knees. Ramsey had not gone away to gamble since he had returned while Jebediah was in the jail. He had not been in her bed since his first night back. She had not washed that day he came back; she had washed the night before she went in to buy Jebediah.
“Please tell him to let me up,” Jebediah said. “I’m gonna do right. I told yall that.”
He was a good worker, when he was there to work. For more than two weeks Fern had no trouble from him. Colley, who was as close to an overseer as the Elstons had, kept watch on Jebediah all the day and night long. Fern had alerted Skiffington that he might run, and the sheriff made sure his patrollers didn’t retire for the night without knowing where Jebediah was. Everyone got used to his being a good worker. Then, near the end of the third week of doing what he was told, he would just saunter off. He didn’t make a show of it. He would simply drop whatever they had him doing and walk away and go fishing, or he’d pick blueberries and gorge himself right at the spot where he picked them, or he would find a pasture to nap in, moving the cows away if they were in a spot he relished.
They would drag him back with little fuss, but he would be at it again, maybe not the next day or the day after but pretty soon.
With the fourth week he began going off in the night and returning before morning, seemingly with no trouble from the patrollers. Several slave women in the area knew his name and knew it well; he told one he was a preacher and had been called by God Almighty. For a week he walked by Alice and they would not say a word to each other but each time they waved as though they were passing in the marketplace. Then one night he said hello and she started in on her nonsense and he turned and started walking with her, listening to everything she said. He wanted to know how long she would keep it up and found that she could outlast his walking beside her.
What Fern and Ramsey were to discover was that he had somehow gotten hold of a piece of paper and made himself a pass and had been showing it to patrollers any night they found him on the road. He had been fortunate that he had not run into Oden Peoples. “This nigger,” the paper said, “is on business for his owners, Ramsey and Fern Elston at the Elston Estate. He can be trusted to come back home.” It was signed “Fern Elston,” but it looked nothing like her signature