The Known World

by Edward P. Jones

  He had a good look at the woman. A dark blue knot sat right next to her left eye.

  “We ain’t got hotel fixins,” the boy said.

  “What he means is we aim to do right by strangers.”

  “I know what I mean, Pa. He know what I mean. I’m speakin Jesus’ English.”

  The father continued, “You never know when a stranger is an angel, come to test which side of right and wrong you standin on. God still does that to people, no matter what some men, even preachers, might claim. He still sends out angels to test us. I don’t want to fail.”

  “No,” Counsel said. “I wouldn’t want to fail either.”

  The father took up the gun and pointed at the food in front of Counsel. “Eat, eat,” he said. “My wife slaved all mornin over that.” He sat the gun beside his pan, much farther away this time from the boy’s pan.

  “I’m not all that hungry this morning,” Counsel said. “Truth is, I just come in to say my good-byes.”

  “Oh, go on. Eat. I’m sure you hungry anough. Angel work must be hard work, I would think. Angels do all that hard work for God and the least we could do is feed em as we can.” He had picked up the gun and said the last words tapping himself in the chest with the barrel. “I know I would be hungry if I was doin all that work.”

  “Listen,” Counsel began.

  “You sayin my wife’s cookin ain’t good anough for one a God’s angels?”

  “Thas exactly what I heard,” the boy said. “You buckety-buck up here, sleep in our place and then turn your back on my ma’s food. And you, Pa, I don’t know why you call him some kinda angel.”

  Counsel said, “I just come in to thank you and say I have to be going. That’s all I want to do.” He stood up slowly and looked from the man to the woman, who did not appear unhappy at all, despite the bump on her face. “I just wanna get on my way, that’s all I want.” The chair, with the one bad leg, tipped over, and Counsel cursed it in his mind. “I just wanna be going.” He stepped away, heading for the door, never turning his back on the man. The boy drank from a cup on the other side of his pan. It was milk and Counsel saw the white along the boy’s upper lip. Where had they kept the cow all this time? he thought, taking more and more backward steps to the door. Where had the cow been? Where was the cow now? And the chickens for the eggs, where were the chickens? The pig for the bacon. “I just wanna leave in peace.”

  The man stood, without hurrying, as if Counsel was the last thing on his mind. “We’ll be sorry to see you go, angel. But when you have to be about God’s work, you have to be about God’s work.”

  The boy said, “I should charge you for all you got. I should take every penny you owe. And then take your hide besides.” He reached for the gun but the man turned away. “Don’t you make me mad,” he said to his father. “You know what happens when you make me mad.”

  Counsel opened the door and stepped out. Had she told the man and then enjoyed with her husband Counsel’s discomfort, fear?

  He got to the barn and saddled the horse and when he came out, the boy was on the porch, legs apart, both hands just inside the top of his britches. Counsel mounted and took a slow time leaving because he knew speed was one more thing in the world the boy didn’t like.

  He took all that day to cross into Texas. He no longer knew about California. There was so much of civilization in the east, near the Atlantic Ocean, so much certainty. Here, away from what he always knew, was a world he did not believe he could ever make peace with. He rode on and avoided towns, farms, any signs of people.

  Three days after Louisiana, a forest appeared out of nowhere along about Georgetown, Texas, and he was happy to see it after so much flat sameness. Long before he reached the forest, he heard the thunder along the ground but he thought it some weather phenomenon-the sky sending a message down to the ground about the storm that was coming. In North Carolina he had once stood on his verandah as it rained, only to go down the steps and off a few yards to a spot where it wasn’t raining. And many times there had been thunder and lightning while the snow fell. So he was used to the tricks of the weather. The trees of the forest seemed thick enough to provide a little shelter for him and the horse during the storm. The thunder on the ground grew louder as he approached the forest.

  He was less than fifteen yards from the edge of the forest when the dogs emerged from the trees, walking slowly, but moving with some purpose. It was a grand and strangely disciplined passel of mongrels. He couldn’t see anything pure in the bunch, about twenty-five dogs in all. He was too near to them to run; it would not take them long to overtake him and the horse. First one dog noticed him, one in the middle of the pack, and then one at the edge of the group, and then all the rest took casual notice. When they had all cleared the forest, they sat down as one on their haunches. At some safe distance, he thought, he could have admired the wonder of them, the variety of colors and sizes, and the sense that they were sharing the same mind. They had stopped but the thunder on the ground went on. He eased his gun out of the holster and held it along with the reins. Perhaps just the sight of one or two of them dying would scare off the rest.

  Something told him it would be best to continue on; perhaps they would credit him and the horse with some courage for not running away. He thought it odd that the horse had not shown one bit of hesitation or fear. He moved slowly into the pack and the dogs, row after row, rose and moved out of the way and then sat down after he had passed. He was well into the forest when the thunder grew louder, and he figured it was because the sounds were trapped under the canopy of trees. Then, as if they had been invisible and chose just that moment to reappear, there were ten men and women on horses facing him, and Counsel could see beyond them even more people and horses as well as six or seven wagons, all coming with ease through the forest the way they would go along a well-kept road. As he looked from face to face to face, the crowd of humans and horses slowed and stopped. His hand shook and the gun fell almost soundlessly to the forest floor. A black man, not three feet from Counsel, rode closer and leaned far down and swept up the gun and handed it to Counsel along with some of the wood sorrel the gun had fallen into.

  The black man, on his right side, began speaking a foreign language and pointed to Counsel’s coat pocket and his saddlebags. Counsel could make out a few English words but everything together made no sense to him. Counsel shook the sorrel from the gun and rested it over the pommel. The black man kept on talking, and his talking, just above a whisper, was very loud in the forest, even with all the people and the animals. All the people and the horses seemed to have quieted just to listen to what he had to say. The man reached over and shook the hem of Counsel’s coat and seemed disappointed that he didn’t hear what he expected. Counsel used his gun to brush the man’s hand away. A woman Counsel thought was Mexican rode up on a blond horse and stopped next to the black man and nodded to Counsel. He thought Mexican because she looked like a painting in one of his books back in his library in North Carolina.

  “What that nigger saying?” Counsel said. “What’s he talking?” He spoke to the woman but also directed his questions to a white man he noticed just behind the black man and to another white man who appeared on his left side. “What this nigger want from me?” he asked the white man on the left. “What’s he talking?”

  “He’s talking American talk,” the Mexican woman said, her face unsmiling as if to convey the seriousness of what the black man was saying.

  He knew she was lying and he wanted her now to just go away.

  “He is asking if you have any tobacco,” the white man on the left said. “I take it you are not American or you would understand him.” The man raised his hat by the crown and then let it drop back down on his head. “He’s hard of hearing or he would start to discuss your calling him out of his name. His discussions can be painful, or so I’m told.”

  “Tell him I ain’t got nothing for him.” The black man shrugged, apparently because he understood what Counsel had said. He began r
iding past Counsel and then stopped and picked the last piece of wood sorrel from Counsel’s gun. Would they all hang him from one of the trees if he up and shot the nigger right there? “Need a clean shooter,” the black man said in the same clear way he had spoken all the other words. He went on by.

  The white man on the left sounded to Counsel like someone who had some sense, despite the foolishness that had come out of his mouth. “I just wanna be on my way.” Had he said that only an hour ago? A few days ago? Or was it the remnant of a conversation from a dream?

  “We hold nobody back,” the Mexican woman said and followed the black man.

  “Not on purpose anyway,” the white man behind her said.

  Counsel started forward and people and their horses made way. He had underestimated the amount of people by half and as he moved on, he thought their numbers, with their horses and wagons, would never end. He turned around at one point and looked in the back of one wagon and saw two pregnant women, one white, one black, sitting up and staring at him. The black woman waved at him, but the white woman had a pout on her face; she had on a light green bonnet and one of the strings was in her mouth. He had seen a dark old man driving the wagon, not really a Negro, not really from any race that was recorded in any of the books in his destroyed library. As he looked between the pregnant women he saw a tiny blond-haired boy standing with his arms around the dark man’s neck, hanging on for support. The boy turned and looked at him. Counsel wondered if the authorities knew about all these people. There was something wrong here and the government of Texas should be doing something about it.

  When he turned from the wagon with the pregnant women, a boy smiling with perfect teeth was facing him. He knew the origins of this one from another of the destroyed books-someone from the Orient. It might be China, if the book had been telling him the truth. The boy was no more than fifteen, and his long and thick pigtail lay over his left shoulder with the ease of a coveted pet. The boy was in his way and Counsel stopped. The boy, his hand out, shifted slightly to the right side and Counsel continued, and as he passed, the boy’s hand, never threatening, never harsh, paused at the ear of Counsel’s horse and moved down the horse’s neck, along Counsel’s saddle and thigh and on out past the horse’s rump, finally taking a gentle hold of the tail before letting horse and man go on. The boy had never stopped smiling, and the smile, more than the touch, was chilling to Counsel.

  The people of one color or another and their horses flowed on past him, the ground thundering and the dappled sun coming down on them all. In the end, it did not seem that he and his horse were moving but were simply being carried forward by some counterforce the horses and wagons and people were creating as they went past him. He was in a river of them and he had no say in it. He closed his eyes.

  “Better open your eyes or you’ll fall off Texas.” Counsel opened his eyes and saw a red-haired white woman looking at him. Beyond her he could see what he thought was the end of it all.

  “I remember when you did that and fell off into Mississippi from Alabama.” A blond-haired man appeared beside her. The hair seemed similar to that of the boy holding the nigger in the wagon, and Counsel, trying to make some sense of everything, thought the man might be father to that boy. The man and the woman were on black horses, though the woman’s horse seemed to be turning blue as seconds went by.

  “I did not,” the woman said and gave a kick to the man’s leg. “That was Jenny and her one eye.” They were now in Counsel’s way and he stopped again.

  “You going farther into Texas?” the man asked Counsel.

  “I have that plan.” He felt that everything behind him, horses and people and wagons, had now stopped as if what he and the white woman and man were saying was more important than wherever they were going.

  “Hmm,” the woman said, “I’ve seen the rest of Texas and now I’ve seen you, and I don’t think the two of you would marry well.” Where was the law in Texas with all these people going about?

  “You could join us,” the white man said. Yes, Counsel decided, the little boy was his son. “We’ve seen Texas and we could tell what all you are missing. The rivers, the land, the dust. Before we’re done telling you, you’ll think you’ve been to every part of Texas.”

  “We’re as good as picture books,” the woman said.

  “The only thing we ask is that you not hurt children,” the man said.

  “That’s a hard one,” the woman said, kicking the man again.

  “I learned it. He can learn it.”

  “I want to see for myself,” Counsel said and started up his horse again.

  “You learned it after you learned not to lie anymore,” the woman said and reached over and rubbed the back of her hand along the blond man’s beard. He closed his eyes and smiled, and had he been a cat, he would have curled up and purred.

  “No,” the man said, opening his eyes, “that was Jenny that had the lying problem. Lying problem along with falling into Mississippi.”

  Counsel turned his horse to the right. “Texas,” he said.

  “Suit yourself,” the man said.

  “Suit everybody,” the woman said, and as soon as she did the thunder of movement began and the white man and white woman parted and Counsel went between them. “Just don’t lie and hurt the children. Jenny learned the hard way.”

  Counsel could see full sunlight for the first time since he had entered the forest, but after a few yards, he felt thunder coming from ahead and dozens of horses appeared. No people, just horses who seemed to be following all the people with the obedience of the dogs at the beginning of the forest. He went into the mix and closed his eyes. There was a sweet musty smell to all the horseflesh, and on another day, somewhere else, he could have enjoyed the wonder of them. A man behind him began to whistle. Maybe, Counsel thought, Texas was being emptied out of filth and it was now a better place for a man like him.

  In five minutes or so, he was clear of everything and the land and the air belonged to him alone. But he could still hear the thundering and it stayed with him even as he put more distance between him and the pack. At a creek he stopped and he and the horse drank, and even after he had put his whole head in the water, the thundering remained. He and the horse walked across the creek, and on the other side he mounted, and they were fine for more than two miles. Then a thicket of vegetation came up. He dismounted and at first it went easy with just a few cuts here and there with his knife. He thought at any moment they would have a clearing again. But the vegetation continued and so did the thundering in his head. Counsel looked to the left and the right, hoping for a way to avoid the growth but there were just long lines of green that he felt would take days to pass. The horse began to balk. Counsel pulled on it and cut at the green with his knife.

  “Come on,” he told the horse, wondering if it might be sensing some snake lurking in the growth. “Come on.” He released his reins and went ahead to cut a path. He returned for the horse and it seemed to be satisfied but as he moved on, still holding the reins and still cutting, the horse balked again. “I said come. I want you to come.”

  The horse began pulling him back. Counsel stopped, sweating, head full of thunder, chest heaving, and he looked the horse in the eyes. “Come,” he said in as calm a voice as he could manage. “Come.” He pulled out his pistol. “When I tell you to come, don’t you think I mean it?” The horse did not move. “Come,” he said, again calmly. He raised the pistol and shot the horse between the eyes. The horse sank on two knees and moaned and Counsel fired once more and the horse collapsed. Its breathing was heavy and he prepared to fire again but soon the breathing stopped. “Why is coming so hard?” he said to the horse.

  In one of the destroyed books back home there had been a man in a dark place who commanded the power of a magic carpet. Counsel had sat one of his daughters on his knee and read stories to her. How easy it had all been for the man and his carpet.

  He holstered his gun and all the thundering stopped for the first time since t
he entrance to the forest. A few flies appeared immediately above the horse. “What is it that you want of me?” Counsel asked God. He sat down, less than four feet from the horse, and more flies, bigger than any he had known in North Carolina, came to the horse in a black cloud. He took off his hat and tried to wave them away, but more came as if the waving had been a signal for them to come. “What do you want me to do?” he asked God. “Tell me what it is.” He looked up and was surprised that the buzzards were circling so soon. He shot at one but missed and no sooner had the sound of the shot gone away than the buzzards began to land. Maybe it was not Texas where he should be; maybe it was still full of niggers and people no one could identify because they weren’t in books, and still full of white women gone bad and white men letting them go bad. “You tell me what to do and I will do it,” he said to God. “Isn’t that how it has always worked? You say, I do. You say and I do.” He thought of the men in the large family Bible in the destroyed library who talked the way he was talking now. Sometimes God heard and acted, took pity on his creations, and sometimes he heard and ignored the creations talking to him. His daughters had liked the stories in the Bible, the Bible with their names and the days of their births written large and in ink the general store man had said would last for generations. “First,” the man said, “the ink will note your children’s birthdays, and then it will note their marriage days. The ink will outlast you, Mr. Skiffington.” Counsel went on talking to God, and the buzzards came down and joined the flies, all of them feasting on the horse and ignoring the man who still had some life in him.

  8 Namesakes. Scheherazade. Waiting for the End of the World.