Mann and the white man he came with escorted Fern and her driver Colley and Jebediah back to her place. Jebediah was roped again and he sat in the front seat beside Colley, who never said a word to him. At Fern’s place, Mann and the white man took Jebediah into the barn and there they chained him to a wall. “If he happens to get up and disappear during the night,” Mann said before he and his companion left, “I am due my money.” “I understand that,” Fern said, “but I anticipate no disappearances.” All this time Mann thought he was dealing with a white woman and he was never to know any different.
She told Colley to make sure Jebediah was comfortable, fed and blanketed, and he was as comfortable as he could be with less freedom to move about than he had in Skiffington’s jail cell. Her husband, who had not been about when she came back with Jebediah, was brought out to the barn the next day and right off Jebediah started ranting and raving.
“Where’s my gotdamn money, Ramsey? You owe me five hundred dollars, and I want every gotdamn penny!” He strained against the chains and kicked straw up at Ramsey. “Let me loose, you hear!” he shouted to Fern.
“I don’t know you and I know nothing about some five hundred dollars,” Ramsey said, his feet apart and ignoring the straw that was settling on his boots. “Why you buy somethin that will give you nothing but trouble?” he said to his wife. Their parents had met and discussed their marriage before the two of them had ever laid eyes on one another. Ramsey had picked at his chicken the evening of their first meeting. She was not impressed with him and would not be for some time.
“Standin there with all the love in you now, huh?” Jebediah said to Ramsey. Colley had gone to Jebediah and whenever he would strain against the chains trying to reach Ramsey, Colley would take hold of the chains and pull him back. “There’s a lot of people in Richmond and places that would be mighty surprised you had a damn wife.” Then to Fern he said, “I didn’t know he had a wife till he woke up screamin with that lovely cross the hall from me one night. Woke me up and woke a lotta other people up, too.” Some straw had settled on Fern’s dress and boots and she now began picking it all off. “I want my damn $500, Ramsey, and I want every penny now.”
Ramsey left the barn. Fern left off picking off straw and stepped closer to Jebediah. “You will stay here until you learn some manners, until you learn you cannot get up and walk about like some free man.”
“I am free,” Jebediah said. “Mann ain’t knowed what he talkin bout. I am free.”
“The law does not say that.” She had intended, only hours before, to free him, allow what she had paid for him to be a trade for what Ramsey owed him. She had expected Jebediah to go for that because he would be, after all, free and clear once and for all. But the knowledge of her husband’s infidelity had come full and heavy and squatted down big in front of her, blocking everything else out. She resented her husband, and she resented the messenger, the companion to her husband. She was thirty-four years old. “This barn has been here many years, and it will stand many more with you in it if you cannot learn manners.”
“Manners ain’t what I need, lady. I need my money.”
Fern said to Colley, “I don’t want him going anywhere until he learns right from wrong, night from day.”
“Yessum,” Colley said and pulled three times on the chain.
“You and your gotdamn no-good husband can go to hell!” Jebediah shouted as she went out. “Y’hear me good. Both a yall can go straight to hell.”
Jebediah stayed there four days and then he told Colley that he was ready to do what she paid for him to do and Colley and another man took Jebediah to the back of the house and Fern came out and down to him.
“I want no trouble. I want not one moment’s trouble,” Fern said.
“All right, all right,” Jebediah said and she slapped him.
“I thought you said he had learned some manners,” Fern said to Colley.
“He told me he had, Mistress. He told me that.” Colley grabbed Jebediah by the neck and forced him to his knees. Ramsey had not gone away to gamble since he had returned while Jebediah was in the jail. He had not been in her bed since his first night back. She had not washed that day he came back; she had washed the night before she went in to buy Jebediah.
“Please tell him to let me up,” Jebediah said. “I’m gonna do right. I told yall that.”
He was a good worker, when he was there to work. For more than two weeks Fern had no trouble from him. Colley, who was as close to an overseer as the Elstons had, kept watch on Jebediah all the day and night long. Fern had alerted Skiffington that he might run, and the sheriff made sure his patrollers didn’t retire for the night without knowing where Jebediah was. Everyone got used to his being a good worker. Then, near the end of the third week of doing what he was told, he would just saunter off. He didn’t make a show of it. He would simply drop whatever they had him doing and walk away and go fishing, or he’d pick blueberries and gorge himself right at the spot where he picked them, or he would find a pasture to nap in, moving the cows away if they were in a spot he relished.
They would drag him back with little fuss, but he would be at it again, maybe not the next day or the day after but pretty soon.
With the fourth week he began going off in the night and returning before morning, seemingly with no trouble from the patrollers. Several slave women in the area knew his name and knew it well; he told one he was a preacher and had been called by God Almighty. For a week he walked by Alice and they would not say a word to each other but each time they waved as though they were passing in the marketplace. Then one night he said hello and she started in on her nonsense and he turned and started walking with her, listening to everything she said. He wanted to know how long she would keep it up and found that she could outlast his walking beside her.
What Fern and Ramsey were to discover was that he had somehow gotten hold of a piece of paper and made himself a pass and had been showing it to patrollers any night they found him on the road. He had been fortunate that he had not run into Oden Peoples. “This nigger,” the paper said, “is on business for his owners, Ramsey and Fern Elston at the Elston Estate. He can be trusted to come back home.” It was signed “Fern Elston,” but it looked nothing like her signature because he had never seen it. The Elstons took that pass away from him, not knowing he had another signed “Ramsey Elston.” On that one he was not just on “business” for the Elstons but “urgent business.”
But the worst of it was that he started calling out whenever he was near the house that he wanted his money. “I ain’t forget yall got my money. I ain’t forgot what yall owe me. I want my five hundred dollars.” In the night, before they took his passes away, he would say it. He said it on the way to the blueberries and he said it on the way to a nap. “I ain’t forgot yall got my money.” Ramsey came out one morning and shot his pistol over Jebediah’s head, but that didn’t stop him.
Then, three days after Ramsey returned to gambling, Fern came out and told him she wanted him to turn over a new leaf. She had Colley and two other men grab hold of Jebediah in front of the cabin he shared with one other unattached man. “This will all end today,” Fern said. “I have been patient, but my patience is at an end. If you do not do right, I will have you in chains again.”
Jebediah said, as she walked away, “If you was my woman you wouldn’t be sleepin in that bed alone every night.” She stopped but she didn’t turn around. “Do you know how long it would take me to undo your hair and get them things off you? You know how long?” He must have known, with that heart and mind born in slavery, that he had gone way too far and he bowed his head. Without a word from Fern, the men released him and Jebediah took off his shirt and lay on his stomach on the ground. Fern never like to flog slaves; for every whip mark on one slave’s back, she estimated that his value came down $5. But there were some unforgivable matters in the world.