The Known World - Edward P. Jones [158]
He left the cabin and she followed him to the door. Grant ran off and back and his father clapped and their daughter Tessie came forward with the other children and they all shouted to Elias that they could do it all so much better. The boy said no, no, not better than me. Elias told the children that they were not to come to the fields that day and he led the adults away. Grant came to Celeste and swung her arm about as if it were a rope hanging from a tree and then returned to the other children.
She limped out to the lane and looked back to make sure Ellwood was still sleeping. The children ran by, then ran back the other way. It was like Sunday. The rooster that had been pecking at Moses’s door scurried to the side when the children ran his way and it would have run into her place but she shooed him away. “You get along home,” she said. She was thinking that such a lovely day could only mean that they would kill poor Moses when they found him. The God of that Bible, being who he was, never gave a slave a good day without wanting something big in return.
Skiffington knew the moment he saw Bennett that the man had come about the overseer. What crime had he committed now? The sheriff had just come out of the general store and saw Bennett riding up in the wagon. He noticed that Bennett rode mostly with his eyes not on the road before him but down on the mule’s head and harness. William Robbins had come by the jail the evening before, inquiring of him—and Counsel—about their progress on finding Caldonia’s three slaves and Augustus Townsend. Robbins had brought Louis, but his son did no more than stand near the door as the white man let the sheriff and his deputy know that escaping slaves jeopardized practically everything they all had. “Bill,” Skiffington had said, “you’re not telling me anything I haven’t thought about a thousand times.”
Bennett made to get out of the wagon, but Skiffington told him to tell whatever it was from the seat. Bennett looked momentarily forlorn, as if his message would lose its urgency if he had to tell from the wagon. And as Skiffington watched him ride away, he saw that the man was not used to riding a wagon, just in the way he let the mule ride all over the road. No doubt, he thought as he continued to watch Bennett go away, if he knew nothing about driving a mule, he knew nothing about riding a horse.
Someone walking on the other side of the street called out good morning and Skiffington raised his hat out of habit. He and Winifred and his father and Minerva should have been in Pennsylvania long ago. He should have been an American citizen doing well in Pennsylvania, where Benjamin Franklin had lived. He should have been on the bank of a nice river, showing his son how to make a living just from God’s bounty. And Minerva should have been out, out with some Pennsylvania Negro, out so that he would not think about her in a way a father should not think about a daughter. Out and about, Minerva should be, so that he would not think, as he had the day before, that once, just once, would not hurt anyone, would not disturb anything that mattered. Shhh . . . Don’t tell Winifred, and don’t tell God. Shhh . . . He saw that Bennett had stopped for something crossing the road. He seemed to be standing there for a long time and Skiffington wondered what could take so long to cross a road. Just once . . . Is that what Eve said to Adam, or did Adam say that to her? And if it was just once, would God allow him to see Pennsylvania?
Bennett started up again