The Known World - Edward P. Jones [174]
After Counsel told them what had happened at Mildred’s, Travis would say over and over, “John is dead. Is that what you tellin me? John is dead.” When he had accepted what Counsel said, Travis said to the gathering, “We can’t bring John back, but we have right here the reason for this whole mess,” and he would point to Moses. “We have a nigger here who got it into his head that it was proper for him to run away. He got it into his head and now the sheriff of this county is dead. A good and upstanding sheriff. I say we make it so he never gets it into his head to stroll away again.”
“What are you meaning?” Louis said. He was a Negro but the white men and Oden all knew that he was William Robbins’s Negro, which made him special.
“Fix him right here in the road,” Travis said, looking at Moses. “Let him remember every day what he done to John Skiffington. Fix him so he won’t run again.”
Louis said, “That slave does not belong to you for yall to do with as you please. He is not your property. He is not yours.”
Travis said, “He is the reason our John is dead. That makes him everybody’s property.”
“Sure he belongs to us,” Counsel said. “Would we be out here in this hot sun if he hadn’t decided he had a right to run away?”
“Just leave him be,” Louis said. Barnum was silent; something in his heart told him there were many lies about what Counsel said. But John was dead and that was the one big truth. Elias was also silent. He was sitting on a gray mare, which Caldonia said came with his new position as overseer. Celeste had said nothing to him that morning. Less than an hour later on that road, as the group of men and horses moved toward Caldonia’s place, Elias would falter and be unable to ride. As he fell farther and farther behind, Louis, surprised at how close they had become in the last few days, would go back to him, dismount and help Elias off his horse, and both men would walk with the reins in their hands, Louis telling Elias all the while that they should take all the time they needed. “There’s no hurry now.” At that point in the road, most of the day was behind all the horses and their men, as was the sun.
Moses, still behind Counsel and his horse, said to the white men and to Louis, “Please, yall, don’t hurt me like that. Please.” He called out to Elias, “Please, don’t let em hurt me. Please, tell em to let me be, Elias.”
Elias could see Celeste standing in their cabin doorway, waiting for him. He needed Celeste now. He needed Celeste to tell him right and point him toward home. How had he come to forget just where he was in the world? He worried at that moment that something would happen to him on that road with the white men raging and that he would never see his family again. After Moses, Elias knew he would be next, and then Louis, the son of a black woman. And if they needed more, the white men would jump on the Indian, who wasn’t as white as he always thought he was.
Counsel and Travis and Oden got off their horses. Moses turned to run but Counsel took the rope he had tied Moses with and pulled him back. Barnum, on his horse, said, “He ain’t the one that hurt John. He ain’t the one. And besides, it look like he done learned his lesson.” Oden looked at Travis and the two men laughed.
With Counsel and Travis holding the still-tied Moses, Oden bent down and put his knife, in two swift back and forth motions, through Moses’s Achilles’ tendon. “Please,” Moses kept saying, “let me be.” He tried to get Elias’s attention, and he tried to get Louis’s attention. “Please let me be.” Moments after the cutting, Oden applied his blood-stopping poultice to Moses’s wound and the slave collapsed, screaming in agony.
Barnum rode away, rode toward his home and his family. There was not anything in Virginia for him anymore. He had been treading water all his life in Virginia—not enough water to drown him, but just enough to always keep his feet and britches wet. He was many miles away before he heard Moses stop screaming.
Hobbling anyone left a mark in the dirt