The Known World - Edward P. Jones [171]
Skiffington and Counsel were silent for a very long time and Skiffington prayed, but once again, the words failed him. Counsel looked at Skiffington, who dropped his rifle, and in the time it took for the rifle to reach the ground, Skiffington’s horse took a few steps away from Counsel and his horse. “What have I asked except civility and righteousness?” Skiffington said. “John?” Counsel said. “John?” “I rise in the morning,” Skiffington continued without hearing Counsel, “and I asked nothing of that nigger, except what is proper and right. No more than that do I ask of any nigger. No more. Who can say I asked for more, Counsel? Name that person this moment who says I asked for more than civility and righteousness for righteousness’ sake. That person has no name because that person does not live. Are civility and righteousness so dear that I cannot have them?” Counsel said, “John? Do you hear me, John?”
“Counsel, I want you to go in there and bring that murderin nigger out here so we can take him to his owner, to his right and proper owner. This has gone on long enough. Every bit of this has gone on long enough.”
“John?”
“Do what I say, Counsel. Uphold the law the way you have been sworn to do, the way we have been sworn to do. Go in and bring that murderer out here. Do what I say or you will be in a wrath of trouble. Act, damn you!”
Counsel dismounted and took out his pistol. He should marry the boardinghouse woman and turn his back forever on being somebody’s deputy, especially deputy to a man he knew he was better than. He stood a foot or more from Mildred’s body and raised his head high and higher to avoid seeing her. Skiffington said, “Counsel, we cannot leave her there like that. I know who that woman is. I know her name. I know her husband.” Counsel held up one foot to step around Mildred but as he did he realized he might step into blood, so he had to look down. Her eyes were not closed and he asked God why he hadn’t done that one small favor for him and closed them. He took a giant step past her. He went through the first floor and his eye caught the green curtain on the side window blowing prettily from a breeze he hadn’t enjoyed out in the front. That was the nature of houses, good breezes from the side and hellish nothing coming in the front and back. He went out to the kitchen. It was such a clean house that no one would have thought a nigger lived there. A bowl of apples sat on the table, and one of them was tilted so that the long stem was pointing directly at Counsel, a kind of suggestion that it should be eaten first. The dog cowered at the back door and when he turned and saw Counsel, the dog began peeing. He opened his mouth to bark but there was no sound. Counsel looked at the dog for nearly a minute, then he went and opened the door for it, and after he had shut it, he thought for the first time since entering the home that he was in the house with a man who had murdered three people. He gripped the pistol tighter.
“Counsel! What are you doing? Bring him out!”
Counsel went back through the kitchen, staying to the side of the front room to avoid Skiffington seeing him. The problem was that the boardinghouse woman was not wealthy. Near the stairs he noticed the rack of walking sticks and found it impossible not to admire them. He reached up and touched one and turned it to better see what Augustus Townsend had carved. If the boardinghouse woman wasn’t barren, he might get one child out of her. One boy was all he needed. Up and down the stick were houses, each amazingly different from the others, big and small houses, foreign houses like in the books in the burned library in North Carolina. Where had a nigger seen such things? The beauty of the walking stick kept him there, and, as if to release its hold on him, he tapped the most foreign-looking of the houses with the barrel of his gun and then looked toward the stairs. The boardinghouse woman said she was thirty-seven, but the lines on her upper lip seemed to tell him something