Edward Jones - The Known World

“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 the 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.

From the day Fern Elston arrived when Henry Townsend died to the day she closed down her extended stay with Caldonia was a little more than five weeks, though she had returned home for periods of no more than a day or two. She lived some eight miles from Caldonia. Fern, like Maude, Caldonia’s mother, and her brother Calvin, thought she could be of greater comfort and use to Caldonia if she were with her under the same roof, day by day. Fern knew how death and the mourning that followed could set a life adrift and how important it was for family and friends to guide a soul back to shore, back home. At the beginning of the fourth week, Fern could see that Caldonia had stood up in her boat, had placed her hand on the captain’s shoulder to steady him and reassure all on board and was making up her mind about where it would be best to come ashore. “She had come from good people so I never feared for her,” Fern told Frazier Anderson, the Canadian pamphlet writer that August day in 1881. “And you had been her teacher,” Anderson added. She responded, ignoring the compliment, “I have been given credit when I should not have. And there have been times when I was denied the credit due me. But that is the fate of many a teacher, the good and the bad.”