“I’d like you to talk to him,” Clara said to Skiffington after supper. They were in the parlor. Ralph had appeared to take away the dishes and then disappeared again before bringing in coffee some fifteen minutes later. The rope was gone from his hair. Once, some five years before, he had come into the parlor and found Clara struggling to comb and brush her hair. “Oh, my goodness,” she kept saying. “Better I should have no hair at all than all this mess.” “Now don’t you say that, Miss Martin.” “Well, it’s just a mess, Ralph. It most certainly is.” It had been raining all day and it was summer so his bones gave him nothing to complain about. “My sister,” she said, “got the hair God shoulda given me. And she has never appreciated it, I must say. Wondrous red hair. A queen’s hair. Not one day has she thanked God for that hair and yet he lets her keep it right on.” “Yo sister got nothin on you, thas for sure, Miss Martin. Let me now, if that be fine with you,” he said, standing behind her, touching the back of her hand. He had never touched her before in any deliberate way, only in some innocent, accidental way no witness would ever think anything about. Hesitantly, she raised her hand higher and after a few seconds she opened it and he took the brush. There had been thunder and lightning earlier in the day but now there was only rain, falling on the porch, tapping the window, watering the plants in the garden that had gone so long without. “Let me, if that be fine with you,” and he gently worked through her hair. When the brush had done its work, he reached around without asking permission and took the comb, which had been resting in the very center of her lap. There were a few strands of hair in the comb and he took them out and they took their own time falling to the floor. She leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes, thinking, Yo sister got nothin on you. He spent an hour on it, brushing and combing and applying a little sweet oil, and before he was done, she had fallen asleep, which was unusual for her because she always said the bed was the only place where her body could sleep. She awoke hours later to find Ralph gone and her hair in plaits, soft to her fingers, callused and bony. She called his name, once and once again, and when she saw the candle, dancing with a feeble light, and became aware of a silence that seemed to have a kind of voice, she thought there was something wrong in calling him like that and so closed her mouth. She sighed and leaned back in the chair. She soon fell asleep again and stayed much of the night in the chair. The rain went on for another two days and he did her hair each of those days but never again after that. “That should do, Ralph,” she said that final time. “That will do for now.” “Yessum.”
As they drank their coffee, Clara said again to Skiffington, “I’d like you to talk to him.”
“Now what would I say to him, Clara?” Skiffington said.
“I don’t know. Somethin sheriff like. Somethin a sheriff would say to a miscreant. A possible miscreant. ‘I have my eyes on you, you possible miscreant.’ ”
Winifred laughed. She had been drinking coffee at that moment and now set the cup on the tiny table beside her. The laughter came from what Clara had said but also because the word miscreant reminded her of school days and spelling tests in Philadelphia. Her husband had been sheriff for about a year. He called her “Mrs. Skiffington,” and she called him “Mr. Skiffington,” except when he had displeased her or made her unhappy, and then he was “John” for days and days.
“It is all so very serious, John,” Clara said. “It really is. You have no servants to speak of, only a child you have raised. But Ralph is not a child, and the world is changing from once upon a time.”
“But you’ve known him for a very long time, haven’t you?” Skiffington said.
Winifred turned to Skiffington. “Since before God sent the flood to Noah, probably.”
Clara said, “Time has no meaning anymore, Winnie. Loyalty either. The world is turning upside down.”
“Has he said something to you to make you afraid?” Skiffington said. “Something,” and he winked at his wife, “something I could arrest him on.”
“No, no, Lord no. There is just…,” and Clara held her hand out before her and fanned it a few times. “There is just the miasma. The miasma he and I have.”
Winifred thought: “M-I-A-S-M-A.”
“What is that?” Skiffington asked. “What is that word?” It certainly wasn’t one he had ever come across in the Bible.
“It’s the air, Mr. Skiffington,” Winifred said, then tapped her forefinger to her closed lips as she fought with her memory for a better meaning. “It’s the atmosphere. It’s the air.”
“Bad air,” Clara said. “Bad air.”
“I’ll go out to talk with him before I leave,” Skiffington said.
“What will you say?” Clara said. “Don’t say anything to hurt his feelings. Please don’t say anything mean, John.”
“Clara, either he is a miscreant or he isn’t. I don’t know what I’ll say. None of it will come to me until I’m standing before him. But it won’t be anything harsh because I think he’s a good servant, and I have to tell you that or I wouldn’t be honest with you. He’s served you all these years and he will go on serving you, despite all the foolishness you hear from somewhere else.”
Clara sighed. “A half a loaf is better than nothin.”
“A slice of bread is better than nothing,” Winifred said.
After the women had retired for the night, Skiffington remained in the parlor, reading the Bible, as he often did at home, after Winifred and Minerva had gone to bed. His father smoked a pipe at night before sleeping, and while the son had tried to take it up, he had not found the enjoyment his father had. It was a pity, he often thought, because the words of God sometimes put his mind in a turmoil that a pipe might calm.
He heard Ralph in the back and got up, placing the Bible open to his page on the chair. In the kitchen, Ralph was in the last stages of cleaning up before going to bed.
“Is there somethin I might get you this mornin, Mr. Skiffington?” he said as Skiffington stood in the doorway. “We got some more that pie you was so fond of. Put a nice little piece on a plate for you, send you off to sleep like a baby.”
“No, Ralph. I just wanted to come in and say good night. I wanted to make sure everything was fine with you. I know caring for Miss Clara can be a mighty chore. You have served her well and she knows that.”
“Night? Good night?”
“Yes. I just wanted to say good night.”
“Yessuh. Thank you. And good night, suh.”
“Yes, well… Good night.”
“And good night to you, suh. A good night.” His hair was in the rope again. “No pie? It’s fine pie if I say so myself.”
“No, thank you. But good night. And thank you for a fine meal. For the pie, too.”
“And thank you, too, suh. A good night. And good mornin when mornin comes.”
“Good night.” Skiffington left, the awkwardness still in the air. He went back to the parlor and picked up the Bible where he had left off. But that chapter was not what he felt he needed right then so he flipped through the book and settled on Job, after God had given him so much more, far more than what he had before God devastated his life.
He told Clara the next day that he had spoken with Ralph and that all was well, that she was not to worry anymore. “Worry bout rain for your garden, and don’t go any higher on the worry ladder,” he told her. She smiled.
He had business with two patrollers-Harvey Travis and Clarence Wilford-several miles from her, and after dinner, near one o’clock, he set out on a horse Ralph saddled for him. The Saturday was cloudy but he was confident that he could get there and back before the rain, if rain there was.
When the group of patrollers were formed, Barnum Kinsey and Oden Peoples, brother-in-law to Harvey Travis, were the only patrollers who owned slaves. The patrollers were paid $12 a month, mostly from the tax on slaveowners, a levy of 5 cents a slave every other month. (The tax went to 10 cents a slave with the start of the War between the States, and it was enforced through most of 1865.) Barnum Kinsey was exempt from the tax for the time his one slave Jeff was alive, and Oden Peoples was never taxed.