The Known World (2004 Pulitzer Prize)

by Edward P. Jones

  Two mornings later, Thursday, Caldonia told Loretta, who was to tell Zeddie, that she would supper with Moses in the kitchen. Loretta was not a woman to ask her mistress to repeat anything she said, but Zeddie wanted to know if Loretta was going around with ears too dirty to hear right. Loretta funned no one and when Zeddie saw she had the same face as on every morning, she said, “Tell her I get everything ready for her and the overseer.”

  The meal was over and done with rather quickly because they did not talk. He had never sat at a table such as that one and had a full plate put before him. He had not known what to do and she saw this and took him away from the table.

  They did not make love but he went back to the lane with the same amount of joy. He knocked at Alice’s cabin and took her outside, over to the side of the barn, and told her he was setting her free, that he had the power to do it. She said nothing and he laughed because he knew she was thinking this was an overseer’s trick. “You just be ready to go on Saturday night. Ain’t that a good time to go, Saturday? With all that lazy Sunday to go? Well, ain’t it?”

  “I don’t know bout goin nowhere,” she said. “I’m just Alice on Marse Henry’s plantation, thas all I know. Marse Henry and Missus Caldonia Townsend in Manchester County, Virginia.”

  He laughed again. “Henry dead. I put him in the ground myself and covered him up.” She could see that he was not the man fumbling and hugging himself in the forest, just one more sad sight as she mapped her way again and again through the night. No slave, not even the overseer, spoke the master’s name without calling him the master first, and Moses was doing that and not caring who in the night could hear him. Then he said, “And I want you to take my wife and boy with you,” and she began to feel that he was not just trying to trick her.

  “Take Priscilla and Jamie? Take em, too?” The boy was fat and the woman was weighed down with worshiping her husband and her mistress.

  He nodded. “Just take em along with you. Don’t say you don’t know what you doin. You ain’t foolin me goin all over Robin Hood’s barn, girl. I know you. I know what you been up to.”

  “I ain’t been up to nothin. I’m just Alice, I told you. Over here on Marse Henry’s plantation in Manchester County, Virginia.” No one ever again drank out of the well the woman dove into to swim home. It had been the one used by the white people, and even after they had their new one dug, they wouldn’t let the Negroes use the well the slave woman swam home in. Every slave on the place wanted to taste the water that gave a woman the power of a fish, but the white people bricked over the well. Some said they poisoned the water before they did it.

  “You listen after my words or I’ll see to it you never run around like you been doin.”

  That night Moses told his family that he was sending them into freedom and that he would soon follow. “I don’t know how to get to freedom,” Priscilla said. “Me neither,” the boy said.

  “Alice’ll take you, and yall can make a place for me.” Moses stood just inside the closed door.

  “Alice? What is Alice, Moses? What is she? Her left hand would get lost tryin to find her right hand. What can Alice do?” Priscilla had been preparing to feed the hearth fire when her husband entered. Now she stood up with the wood pieces in her arms. The fire first wavered, then leaned toward the woman as wind came down the chimney and moved toward the bottom of the door.

  “She knows more than you think, woman. She does. Now you just gon haveta trust me on this, Priscilla. You gon haveta trust that I can get yall to the other side.”

  Priscilla said, “Lord, Moses, why you throwin us away like this?”

  “It ain’t that,” Moses said. “I’m makin the way good for yall on this side, thas all I’m tryin to do.” Priscilla trembled and the wood fell from her arms. “Just trust Alice to know what to do,” he said.

  “Why can’t you just come on with us now, Moses?” There was a chasm and he was telling her that it was an easy thing for her to jump, that she should simply make the jump to this freedom thing that wouldn’t even include him at first. He was not a good husband but he was all she had. Some women had no husbands or husbands off on another plantation, not right by them every night, breathing and fighting with the world in their sleep.

  “Pa, you be comin long later?” Jamie said.

  “I be there,” Moses said.

  They said no more, but all the next day Priscilla tarried in her furrows and so Moses had to go to her and tell her to do right by her work. “I don’t wanna get after you again,” he said.

  More than a mile from the plantation, that Saturday night, the four of them came to a stretch of woods that ended three miles later on William Robbins’s plantation. Alice had said nothing to Moses, but Saturday was a day many of the patrollers were liable to have been drinking. She did not know it but the sheriff paid them on Saturday, and while he didn’t forbid it, he didn’t like them working on Sundays, the Lord’s day, a day of rest. So the patrollers tended to start their Sundays way before Saturday midnight.

  In the woods, Priscilla began crying. “Moses, why can’t you come now? Please, Moses, please.”

  Alice stepped up to her and slapped Priscilla twice. Moses said nothing and Jamie said nothing. Who was this new woman, who was this Alice acting like this in the night? She said, “You just stop all that cryin right now. I won’t have it. Not one tear ever watered my thirst, and it won’t water yours neither. So stop it all right now.”

  “It ain’t so bad, Mama,” Jamie said. “We can make it. See.” And the boy ran off for several yards and returned, then ran back and returned again. He stood running in place. “We can make it, Mama.”

  “Heed that boy,” Alice said to Priscilla. “You better heed that boy. Moses, you hold off tellin long as you can.” In the dark of the woods, they could not see faces straight on, so the only way anyone could see a person was to stare at something just to the side. Only then did a face come clear. Alice looked at the tree next to Moses. “If they say they see you on the other side, then they know better than I do.”

  To look at Alice, he looked at his son beside her. “Then I’ll see yall.”

  “Bye, Pa.”

  “Moses,” Priscilla said, “don’t you forget me.”

  Alice took Priscilla by the hand and the three disappeared into the woods, and no amount of looking left or right could give Moses a picture of them. He heard what he thought was them, but he had heard the same sounds when alone with himself in that other woods. When there was quiet, he began to wonder what would happen if they were caught. Moses helped us do it. . . . He looked behind him, and the sounds started up again. Moses, why would you do this when I trusted you? Why would you take our future and just throw it away? He clenched and unclenched his hands. He knew the way back home, but could he reach them way out there somewhere and still find his way back? Oh, Moses, why? We had this and that and this and that, so why, Moses? He followed them, walking at first, then running, one arm before him to keep the low-hanging branches from hitting him in the face.

  He waited until just after the noon hour to report to the house. His heart had beat furiously all night and he had hoped for relief as the sun rose, but the heart refused. In the kitchen, he told Caldonia, as Loretta and Zeddie and Bennett looked on, that Priscilla and the boy had left sometime during the night while he was sleeping. He had gone to Alice’s cabin, he said, and found that she had not returned from her wandering.

  Caldonia was not worried and told him the patrollers would come upon them and return them. “They had wandered off,” she said. Alice was just crazy enough to have gotten lost.

  When there was no sign of them by nightfall, she told Bennett she wanted him to go to the sheriff the next day, Monday, and report the “disappearance” of three slaves. Escaping was in a very distant part of her mind, given the three people—and no man—involved, but perhaps some harm had come to them. Patrollers may have taken advantage of the women and killed them all to cover the crime. But why kill them if the crim
e was only rape? Raping a slave would not bring the law down on them. In many minds, raping a slave was not even a crime. Killing property was the greater crime. She wrote Bennett a pass, then she wrote a letter explaining to Sheriff Skiffington what she knew. She told Moses to keep an eye on everyone until the matter could be straightened out. At first she put some blame on him since his wife and child were two of the missing, but her disappointment did not last very long.

  Bennett found Skiffington talking to Counsel in front of the jail, and the more Bennett added to what was in the letter, the more Skiffington suspected Moses of something. He didn’t know a great deal about the Townsend place and faulted himself as sheriff of the whole realm. He left Counsel and rode out with Bennett to the plantation. He had faith in his patrollers, that they would not let three pieces of property get by them. So the slaves were somewhere in the county. If alive, they could be back before sundown. And if dead, it could be wolves or bears or mountain lions.

  Bennett took care of Skiffington’s horse and Zeddie led him into the parlor where Caldonia stood when he entered the room. He took off his hat and said, as he had at the funeral, that he was sorry about her husband.

  “I don’t know where they could have gotten to,” Caldonia said. No one sat.

  “I understand the Alice one wasn’t comfortable in her own head.”

  “No, and Priscilla would no more leave this plantation than I would, sheriff.”

  “How much were they worth?”

  “Pardon?”

  “How much were the three slaves worth? How much would you get if you were to sell them? On the market.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. My husband would have known just like that, but I can’t say I kept up with such matters. I’m sorry.”

  “It doesn’t matter very much. How long that overseer and her been married?”

  “I’d say about ten years,” Caldonia said. It was the first time she had fully realized that she had been making love to another woman’s husband. Priscilla had always been there and yet she had been on the other side of the earth, married to a different man.

  “Ten years is a long time,” Skiffington said. Caldonia said nothing but looked slightly puzzled. When he asked about Moses, she offered to have him brought to the house but he told her he would go out to meet him.

  Heading to the fields, he remembered the slave man and woman in his office, the man being sold that day to William Robbins and the woman being sold days later to someone else. We are together, the slave man kept saying. We are one. . . . He came to a small rise that led down to the fields and could not make out the overseer because he was not on a horse looking down, but was just one among the working slaves. He went down the rise and called out that he wanted to see Moses. Moses rose up from the furrow and made his way to Skiffington.

  Moses took off his hat and said good morning to Skiffington and the sheriff said good morning.

  “You know where they might be?”

  “No, sir. I woke yesterday and they was gone, all three just gone.”

  “Were they there when you went to sleep?” More and more of the day Moses was sold in the jail was coming back to Skiffington.

  “Yes, sir. But that Alice tend to wander, bein not in one piece the way she was. No harm by that. No harm by all that walkin about and such like. And sometimes my Priscilla and Jamie would just go to keep her company. They thought the world of Alice.” Elias would put a lie to most of that on Skiffington’s second visit. Moses continued building a story that Elias and others would tear down with just a few questions from Skiffington.

  Finally, Skiffington told him to go on back to work and Moses set his hat on his head and returned. Skiffington would not remember in a few days who told him that Moses and his mistress had supper—“just like some man and his wife be eatin”—just before the slaves disappeared. He would remember that no one would ever report seeing buzzards in the sky to evidence killing by wolves or bears. He became convinced that the three were dead and that someone had had to put the dead in the ground to deprive the buzzards. He watched Moses, who overcame the need to turn and look back at the sheriff, and Skiffington knew any slave would want to leave the field and never return. It was in watching Moses walk away that he began to suspect him of murder. He could not understand why until he heard he had had supper with Caldonia. But why kill when all that was required was for him to step out of the cabin door, wipe his hands clean of a wife and child, and step through the house door? And why hurt a child and a woman not of her own mind?

  He watched as Moses went back to the row he had been in and picked up his bag and became one with all around him, the land and its bounty and the slaves leaning over and picking and stepping. The crows hovered above them. Skiffington could see that the birds were high enough to avoid a hand but not high enough to escape a thrown stone. Moses had looked him straight in the eye the whole time, not once blinking or looking away. There was a reason God had made telling the truth one of his commandments; lying had the power to be a high wall to hide all the other transgressions. Skiffington considered Caldonia. He had heard of that white woman in Bristol who had slept with her slave. Bad business. But what the coloreds like Caldonia and Moses did among themselves was no crime in itself. Killing a slave for no reason was always a crime, before man, before God.

  Two days later, evening, Skiffington heard a commotion out on the street and came to see what it was.

  ”Hey, John,” Barnum Kinsey, the patroller, said from atop his horse, the old thing his father-in-law had given him. Even before he reached him, Skiffington could tell that Barnum had been drinking, and he had drunk a lot. It had been more than two weeks since Augustus Townsend had been sold back into slavery. Barnum’s wife had had many sorrows but she had never regretted marrying him.

  “Barnum?” Skiffington said.

  The dry goods merchant had been trying unsuccessfully to shoo Barnum away from in front of his establishment but now that Skiffington was there, he left to close up for the night. Once the merchant went inside, the street was empty except for the two men, the horse Barnum was on, Skiffington’s tethered horse and a dog across the street that had lost its way.

  “Hey, John. Nice evenin, huh?”

  “Not a bad one, Barnum. You headin home?”

  “Yes, John, I reckon I will. Soon. But I do have my patrollin.” He was quiet for a time, and while he was the dog got up from its haunches and went west. “I wanted to tell you somethin, and I have been workin my mind so the words will tumble out in a straight line. You know how that can be, John.”

  “I do, Barnum. Just set them words one by one and they’ll do fine and we’ll get where we got to go.”

  “Harvey Travis and Oden Peoples took Augustus Townsend and sold him. Harvey ate his free papers up, and then he sold him away, John. Thas all there is to it.”

  “Sold Augustus? When was this?”

  “Days ago maybe. Maybe a week. Time and me not friends anymore so a day can be like a month. Or a minute.” Barnum belched and seemed to be sobering with each word he spoke. “Man’s name was Darcy, that slave speculator you told us to look out for. Sold him for more money than I see at one time. Sold his mule, too, John. Sold that man’s mule. Had niggers in the back that he was probably tryin to sell. No tellin who they belong to.”

  “Tellin me sooner might have done some good, Barnum. Sellin a free man is a crime and you should be there to stop it.”

  “I know, John. I know all about that. You ain’t tellin me nothin I don’t already know.” The dog came back and stood in the middle of the street, then looked around. It trotted east. Barnum belched again. He shifted in the saddle. “I wish I was braver, John. I wish I was as brave as you.”

  “You are, Barnum, and one day people will know that.”

  “I wonder. I wonder.” He leaned forward. “Now I don’t want you to take me tellin you all this as my becomin a nigger kisser or somethin like that. It ain’t that. You know me, John. But they sold that Augustus and they
sold his mule.” It was twilight and the stars were quite evident in the sky. The moon, still low, was behind Skiffington and only Barnum could see it.

  “I know you, Barnum.”

  “But he was a free and clear man, and the law said so. Augustus never hurt me, never said bad to me. What Harvey done was wrong. But tellin you don’t put me on the nigger side. I’m still on the white man side, John. I’m still standin with the white. God help me if you believe somethin else about me.” He shifted in the saddle once more. The moon was just above the horizon now, a large, dusty orange point, but Barnum did not raise his head high enough to see it. “It’s just that there should be a way for a body to say what is without somebody sayin he standin on the nigger side. A body should be able to stand under some . . . some kinda light and declare what he knows without retribution. There should be some kinda lantern, John, that we can stand under and say, ‘I know what I know and what I know is God’s truth,’ and then come from under the light and nobody make any big commotion bout what he said. He could say it and just get on about his business, and nobody would say, ‘He be stickin up for the nigger, he be stickin up for them Indians.’ The lantern of truth wouldn’t low them to say that. There should be that kinda light, John. I regret what happened to Augustus.”

  “Yes, Barnum, I know.” The merchant came out of the store and tipped his hat to Skiffington and Skiffington nodded and the merchant went home.

  “A man could stand under that light and talk the truth. You could hold the lantern with the light right from where you standin, John. Hold it so I could stand under it. And when nobody was talkin, was tellin the truth bout what they know, you could keep the lantern in the jail, John. Keep it safe in the jail, John.” Barnum closed his eyes, took off his hat, opened his eyes and studied the brim. “But don’t keep the lantern too near the bars, John, cause you don’t want the criminals touchin it and what not. You should write the president, you should write the delegate, and have em pass a law to have that lantern in every jail in the United States of America. I would back that law. God knows I would. I really would, John.”