He left the cabin and she followed him to the door. Grant ran off and back and his father clapped and their daughter Tessie came forward with the other children and they all shouted to Elias that they could do it all so much better. The boy said no, no, not better than me. Elias told the children that they were not to come to the fields that day and he led the adults away. Grant came to Celeste and swung her arm about as if it were a rope hanging from a tree and then returned to the other children.
She limped out to the lane and looked back to make sure Ellwood was still sleeping. The children ran by, then ran back the other way. It was like Sunday. The rooster that had been pecking at Moses’s door scurried to the side when the children ran his way and it would have run into her place but she shooed him away. “You get along home,” she said. She was thinking that such a lovely day could only mean that they would kill poor Moses when they found him. The God of that Bible, being who he was, never gave a slave a good day without wanting something big in return.
Skiffington knew the moment he saw Bennett that the man had come about the overseer. What crime had he committed now? The sheriff had just come out of the general store and saw Bennett riding up in the wagon. He noticed that Bennett rode mostly with his eyes not on the road before him but down on the mule’s head and harness. William Robbins had come by the jail the evening before, inquiring of him-and Counsel-about their progress on finding Caldonia’s three slaves and Augustus Townsend. Robbins had brought Louis, but his son did no more than stand near the door as the white man let the sheriff and his deputy know that escaping slaves jeopardized practically everything they all had. “Bill,” Skiffington had said, “you’re not telling me anything I haven’t thought about a thousand times.”
Bennett made to get out of the wagon, but Skiffington told him to tell whatever it was from the seat. Bennett looked momentarily forlorn, as if his message would lose its urgency if he had to tell from the wagon. And as Skiffington watched him ride away, he saw that the man was not used to riding a wagon, just in the way he let the mule ride all over the road. No doubt, he thought as he continued to watch Bennett go away, if he knew nothing about driving a mule, he knew nothing about riding a horse.
Someone walking on the other side of the street called out good morning and Skiffington raised his hat out of habit. He and Winifred and his father and Minerva should have been in Pennsylvania long ago. He should have been an American citizen doing well in Pennsylvania, where Benjamin Franklin had lived. He should have been on the bank of a nice river, showing his son how to make a living just from God’s bounty. And Minerva should have been out, out with some Pennsylvania Negro, out so that he would not think about her in a way a father should not think about a daughter. Out and about, Minerva should be, so that he would not think, as he had the day before, that once, just once, would not hurt anyone, would not disturb anything that mattered. Shhh… Don’t tell Winifred, and don’t tell God. Shhh… He saw that Bennett had stopped for something crossing the road. He seemed to be standing there for a long time and Skiffington wondered what could take so long to cross a road. Just once… Is that what Eve said to Adam, or did Adam say that to her? And if it was just once, would God allow him to see Pennsylvania?
Bennett started up again and Skiffington went down the steps to the road, the dust rising almost imperceptibly as he set both feet down. A good rain would do us all some good. He looked over his shoulder. The door to the jail was open just a bit, but it did not matter because he had no prisoners that day. Someone else bid him good morning and he raised his hat again. He went left, headed for the boardinghouse, to get Counsel and tell him that he and the patrollers were failing with the primary reasons they had been hired. Four slaves from one plantation. Who could live with that? And one of those slaves had murdered the other three. But four were still gone, four had disappeared from the books. He stopped in the street and realized that the boardinghouse was in the other direction. And if he moved to Pennsylvania and Winifred gave him a daughter, and not a son, would he think of her the way he had been thinking of Minerva?
He turned around and headed down the way he had come. Slaves, Minerva, and now Counsel coming in later and later, sleeping up with that boardinghouse woman like he was a young dog who had never known a woman in his life. Everything was coming apart. “How you this morning, John?” His only job was to pull it all back together again, make it whole and right the same way God had given it to him. “John, tell Winifred Mrs. Harris so appreciated what she did for her. Tell her that for me, will you?” Go and stutter no more, for I have led you out of the stuttering valley into this place I will give you and all your generations. Count them… Sit here by the road and count them like leaves on a tree…
Three days later Skiffington was standing in nearly the same spot as the morning Bennett came to tell him about Moses running off. “Mr. Sheriff,” Bennett said, “Missus want me to tell you that her Clement and her Gloria done gone, too. Just up and went away. She want me to come tell you that.” Bennett again had trouble maneuvering the wagon around. “Why don’t you just ride a horse like every other man?” Skiffington asked him, counting up the numbers of missing slaves. “Well, sir,” Bennett said, considering the reins in his hands, “a horse ain’t nearly as smart as a mule, the way I hear it.”
Just as Bennett managed to turn the wagon around, Counsel rode up the other way and Skiffington lit into him about what a lazy man he was becoming. Counsel said nothing but got off his horse and tied him to the post and went into the jail. Skiffington followed him, all the while calling him a lazy deputy, so loud that even after they were in the jail, people along the street could hear the sheriff, which was not like their sheriff, and the mule and Bennett could hear him as they rode out of town.
That was Tuesday.
11 A Mule Stands Up. Of Cadavers and Kisses and Keys. An American Poet Speaks of Poland and Mortality.
There was once a generally well-liked white man in Georgia, near Valdosta, quite a wealthy man with his slaves and his land and his money and his history. This man, Morris Calhenny, suffered from a crushing melancholy, particularly on days when it rained. He would get on his horse, the mare that he used only on rainy days, and would ride and ride until he reached some peace with himself. The peace, to be sure, never lasted, but there wasn’t anything Morris could do about any of it.
There was as well a black man, Beau, in that place near Valdosta, Georgia. His last name was also Calhenny, but only because all Morris’s slaves had his last name. When they, Beau and Morris, had been boys, they were almost as close as brothers, and Morris would seek out Beau when the melancholy hit because Beau never asked why he suffered like that, why Morris couldn’t just get up and walk away from whatever was bothering him. Beau just stayed by his side until things got a bit better.
When the two reached the age of fourteen, there was the inevitable parting and they never came back together in the same way. But many times when they were adults, Beau remembered how the sad days would take a hold of Morris and he would take one of Morris’s horses without asking anyone and go out in the rain in search of his master. The two of them would ride for a long time until Beau would ask Morris, “You done had anough?” The question always came at the right moment, even with the rain still coming, and Morris would nod his head and say, “I done had enough.” Then they would go slowly back to the barn, the one that housed only the Calhenny horses, and then Morris would go into his big house and Beau would go to his cabin where his family was waiting to ask what he was doing out in all that rain.