“So much depends on when the circuit judge gets here to try your case,” Skiffington said, hanging his coat on a rack near the door. Broussard’s coat was the only other thing hanging, and it had been hanging there for two weeks. “He gets here, the jury hears you and the whole world belongs to you again. France and any place else you want to go.” Skiffington went to his desk and sat, started looking for paper to petition, once more, for the circuit judge to come. The town had not had a need for a judge since a white man a year before was charged with wounding his wife. He was acquitted after the wife, a dressmaker and Robert Colfax’s lover, testified that she had somehow shot herself in the back.
“Perhaps not France anymore. I love France. France gave me birth, but I am America now, Monsieur Sheriff. I raise the flag! I raise the flag high over my head and over all your heads, Monsieur Sheriff!”
“Good for you, Broussard. Good for all of us.” A man from Culpeper had agreed to come down and defend him. Skiffington found a piece of paper for the petition, and in another drawer he found the list of questions that needed to be answered on the blank paper before someone in Richmond would say the judge could come. Each question had to be written down on the petition paper, followed by the answer. And each question from the list had to be written down even if there was no answer to it. Nature of the Alleged Crime.
“I am thinking that I will stay forever to live here, stay in this place and be happy.” Broussard had been a citizen of the United States for three years. He had not seen France and his family since he left them eight years ago. He still planned to bring his family to America. Only his two oldest children even remembered what Broussard looked like. “Stay and pursue the happiness, heh, as be always the right of you and me.” Broussard’s wife had taken a lover two years after he left. The wife and every last one of Broussard’s children were in love with the lover. It was a love from which Broussard would not have been able to retrieve them. “I sing America. I sing America happiness.”
“Yes,” Skiffington said, opening the ink jar, “pursue it to your heart’s content.” Name of Alleged Victim or Victims.
“I will bring my wife here and we will be strong like you and the Mrs. Skiffington. I will be Mr. Broussard and we will be Mr. and Mrs. Broussard. Have a house bigger than yours, Monsieur Sheriff. Do you have a big house, Monsieur Sheriff?” Broussard and his partner, Alm Jorgensen, had come to Manchester with two slaves to sell-Moses, the man who would become Henry Townsend’s overseer, and a woman named Bessie. They had heard that Robert Colfax was looking for new slaves, but Colfax was not satisfied with how Broussard and Jorgensen had come about the slaves. “We got the people in Alexandria, goddamn the world,” Jorgensen kept telling Colfax. He also told Colfax he was Finnish. But they had no bills of sale for Moses and Bessie, and because Broussard and Jorgensen were strangers, and foreigners to boot, Colfax sent them away.
“My house is big enough for me and my family is about all I can put in it. I told you you could call me John,” Skiffington said.
“Yes yes. John, like me is a John, heh?” Broussard had planned to use his share of the money from the sale of Moses and Bessie to bring his wife and children over. After an evening of drinking, he and Jorgensen had fought on the porch of the boardinghouse where they were staying and the Swede had ended up dead.
The jail door opened and William Robbins walked in, followed by Henry Townsend, who was then twenty years old. Henry was a little more than a year from buying Moses, nearly three years from marrying Caldonia. More than half of his time was spent at Robbins’s plantation, in a cabin separate from the slave quarters. He was a free man, a bootmaker and shoemaker, coming and going as he pleased, as long as he took his free papers with him.
“John,” Robbins said. He reached across the desk and shook Skiffington’s hand. The handshake was complete before Skiffington had fully risen.
“Bill.”
“Good day,” Broussard said, though he didn’t know Robbins.
“John, we had a little nasty business with Henry here. Harvey Travis gave him bad treatment not two nights ago when he was leaving my place. He hit Henry once and might have done more if Barnum Kinsey hadn’t stepped in to take Henry’s side. Bad business. John, very bad business. Henry was only headin to his folks.”
Henry had not moved from the door.
“Good day, Monsieur Bill.” Broussard was at the bars, as he had been since Skiffington entered.
Robbins turned around. “It was Travis, right?” he asked Henry. “Yessir.” “Travis,” Robbins said to Skiffington.
“I just saw him Saturday, Bill. Saw Harvey on Saturday.”
“About this here business?”
“No, another matter,” Skiffington said. “I’ll see him again this evening before the patrol. I’ll speak to him.” He knew of Henry, the boot and shoe Negro, had spoken a few times to him over the years. Skiffington and Winifred and Minerva would be at Henry’s funeral. As he looked at Henry standing at the door, Skiffington recalled that he was the son of the furniture maker Augustus and the woman Mildred who, at the far end of the county, might as well be at the end of the world.
Broussard and Jorgensen had gotten the name of William Robbins from Colfax, and it was slowly occurring to Broussard that this was the man Colfax had said might be interested in purchasing Moses and Bessie. “Monsieur. Monsieur Bill, please a moment. Three moment.”
“What?” Robbins said.
“Please, we have slaves for you. Two good humans for you.”
Skiffington explained.
“I didn’t come here for no damn slaves,” Robbins said to Broussard. He had heard about the Frenchman who had killed his own partner.
“Please. Please. I want to bring my wife and babies here and be America.”
Skiffington and Robbins looked at each other and then Skiffington shrugged. Robbins looked for one second at Henry then said to Broussard, “Where is this property?”
“Sawyer has em back of his place, and what little money Broussard had for their upkeep is running out,” Skiffington said. “He gets to live here free but I don’t know what will become of them when the money runs out.”
Robbins turned to Henry. “Go tell Mr. Sawyer to bring the property here, and tell him I want to get home before dinner.”
“Yessir,” Henry said and left.
“Good humans. The finer of the slaves,” Broussard said.
“Plain ‘finer’ ain’t good enough,” Robbins said and turned from Skiffington and Broussard and looked out the window that faced the street. “Only the finest will get me out of the bed in the morning.”
“Then finest it will be, Monsieur Bill.”
Sawyer walked in the door first. He was a fat man and he was out of breath. Then came Moses who turned to help Bessie because there was something wrong with her foot. She was limping and winced with each step. They were without chains, him and her, but Sawyer was holding a pistol. Then came Henry who stayed at the door after everyone had walked into the room.
“See, see, Monsieur Bill. Finest humans.”
Moses and Bessie looked at Broussard, then at Skiffington and finally over to Robbins, who had watched them come down the street. He already knew the woman would not do. The injury may not have been permanent, but he saw a kind of unsettling tilt to her walk, as if God had leaned her body just a bit to the side when he made her and bid her walk leaning just to the left for the rest of her life. And he could see that she had been crying and it had nothing to do with the foot. That, the crying, was also a permanent condition, he had decided.