The Known World - Edward P. Jones [67]
The pain in his shoulder did not allow him to ride quickly and it took him some three hours to reach Robbins’s place. Mildred and Augustus had wanted a place as far away from most white people as they could get. Henry feared that Robbins would not be home. He had thought he would simply sleep in the barn until morning. But Robbins was drinking alone on the verandah and neither man said a word as Henry came slowly up into the yard. The moon gave them good light. Robbins’s horse was in the yard and raised his head from the grass to look at Henry. Henry dismounted. He led the white man’s horse away, and after a bit, he returned to get his own horse.
When he returned, he stood in the yard, looking up at Robbins, who was drinking from a bottle, something Henry had never seen him do out in the open.
“May I come up and sit with you, Mr. Robbins?”
“Of course. Of course. I would no more deny you a seat than I would deny Louis.” Robbins was one of the few white men who would not suffer from sitting across from a black man. Aside from the crickets and a sound from the odd creature of the night, their words were all there was. Henry sat on the top step. Robbins’s wife was watching from a window up in the East. Robbins was not in his customary rocking chair, for the rocking had begun to pain his back. “I would offer you somethin, Henry, but there are some roads you’d best not go down. At least not now when you have all your senses.”
“Yessir.”
“Is today Tuesday, Henry?”
“Yessir, it be Tuesday. Least for a little bit more.”
“Hmm . . . ,” Robbins muttered and drank from the bottle, two quick sips. “My mother was born on a Tuesday, in a nice place just outside Charlottesville. I’ve always thought of Tuesday as my lucky day, even though I myself was born on a Thursday. I cannot go wrong on a Tuesday. I married on a Tuesday, though Mrs. Robbins would have preferred a Sunday.”
“Yessir.”
“Do you know what day your mother was born on, Henry?”
“No, Mr. Robbins, I don’t.”
“I got down the big book last week. Not my Bible. The other book. The book of all my servants and all else. No, maybe it wasn’t last week. Maybe it was two weeks ago, or whenever it was you started in on your house. And I looked up her name. She has a Tuesday, Henry. Remember that. Marry on a Tuesday and you will be happy. You were born on a Friday, the book says. But pay that no mind.”
Henry said he would pay it no mind.
“Are you happy with your house, Henry?” He could see Henry kneeling before the bed as he amused his children that night in Richmond. His children would be better for having Henry in their world, if he could just stop wrestling with niggers.
“Yessir, I am.” He kept shifting to get the best relief for his pained shoulder.
“Don’t settle for just a house and some land, boy. Take hold of it all. There are white men out there, Henry, who ain’t got nothin. You might as well step in and take what they ain’t takin. Why not? God is in his heaven and he don’t care most of the time. The trick of life is to know when God does care and do all you need to do behind his back.”
“Yessir.”
“I know you have it in you to want, to want to take hold and pull it in for yourself, don’t you, Henry?”
“I do, Mr. Robbins.” He did not know how much he wanted until that moment.
“Then take it and let the world be damned, Henry.”
Henry waited until then to tell Robbins he thought his shoulder was broken and that he might need some help