The Known World - Edward P. Jones [78]
They rode home sitting close in the carriage, her arm through his and Skiffington singing a few songs his mother sang to him when he was a child in North Carolina on his cousin Counsel’s place. Then they talked for the first time about what life they wanted in Pennsylvania in a few years when he left the job as the sheriff of Manchester County. She wished to be close to relatives, particularly her sister, in Philadelphia. He wasn’t awfully partial to Philadelphia, but doing a visit up there a year before, they had come upon a nice area around Darby, just outside Philadelphia. There was even a place for him to fish, a good place to teach a son how to be patient and silent and appreciate what God had done for them.
”Will your daddy come? I wouldn’t like to think of him down here without us.”
Skiffington smiled and Winifred leaned her head on his shoulder. “The South is all he knows, but he can fish for souls up there just as easy as he can down here,” he said. His father had taken up evangelism but he was quiet about it, diplomatic, never wanting to force his religion down someone’s throat unless they gave him permission.
“Yes, well, I have a feeling that he’ll like the challenge of the people in Pennsylvania,” Winifred said. “If you present your case in just the right way, they’ll accept.”
“Like you did with me.”
She laughed and raised her head and looked at him. “I would say, Mr. Skiffington, that it was the reverse of that. I was standing in one spot and you walked over to me. I wasn’t raised to live any other way.”
He said nothing.
“And Minerva?” Winifred said.
“She would come, too, that is if she isn’t grown and off on her own when we leave.” He could see Minerva, out in the back of their house, near the chicken coop, reaching up to pick apples, the ones not quite ripe and so best for a pie. “We can make a way for her in Pennsylvania. And if she is grown, then there will be nothing to talk about. It will be her life to do with as she pleases.”
“I want her up there with me as well,” Winifred said. “I would hate to be home without her. I want everybody I love up there, like in a big garden where we wouldn’t want for anything.”
“I think Adam and Eve might have taken that from us,” Skiffington said. “And Pennsylvania may be as far from Eden as we can get.”
“Pooh.”
“We’ll make our own way. I give you my word.”
“Then I take the pooh back.” She held her hand out before her. “Come back pooh.” She opened her hand and then put it to her open mouth and clamped her mouth shut. “There, pooh is back.” A little farther on she yawned and closed her eyes with her head against his shoulder. He went back to singing. Soon she was asleep but he went on singing anyway, just a mite softer than before.
Minerva was waiting at the gate when they pulled up. She waved and they waved to her. She was almost as tall as Winifred. This was before Skiffington began to think of her in a different way.
”Father Skiffington went to the jail to feed that man,” Minerva said. Carl Skiffington, John’s father, was not above working on Sunday, and besides, he said, feeding a prisoner was a necessity, not a task that could be put off until Monday. Minerva sailed up the front steps of the house and wrapped her arms around the post. She turned and opened the door and the three went in.
She, Minerva, was not a servant in the way the slaves all about her were, for they did not believe they owned her. She did serve, charged with cleaning the house, sharing the job of cooking the meals with Winifred. But they would not have called her a servant. Had she been able to walk away from them, knew north from south and east from west,