The Known World

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 Pe

Be

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 Be

Just as Be

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 Calhe

There was as well a black man, Beau, in that place near Valdosta, Georgia. His last name was also Calhe

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 Calhe

On one rainy day, Beau and Morris rode out to the eastern edge of Morris’s land and they sat their horses and looked down across the hill to the line where the white man’s land ended. On a back road not on his property, they saw a young white woman trying to get a white mule to stand up from the muddy road. The mule had been pulling a wagon in the rain, and it wasn’t clear to Beau or Morris whether the animal had sat down because it was tired of working or because it just liked sitting down in the rain.

The white woman was named Hope Martin, but only Beau knew that. Though white, she was not in Morris’s class.

“You want me to go down and help her?” Beau asked Morris.

“No,” Morris said, “give her a little time.”

The woman at first seemed to be talking to the mule, trying to convince it that it should get up so they could continue. The mule didn’t move. Finally, Hope went to the back of the wagon and took out several apples from a covered basket. She sat down in the road in front of the mule and ate an apple as she fed first one and then another to the mule. She got more apples several times from the wagon. The rain did not let up and the black man and the white man on the horses did not move.

After some thirty minutes of eating apples, the mule stood up but Hope still sat in the mud, taking her time as she ate her fourth apple. Seeing Hope sitting there, the animal became restless, its tail swishing and its head going up and down, first one front hoof stamping the mud, then the other. After fifteen or more minutes of this, Hope stood and stretched, the rain still coming on. She said something to the mule and pointed up the road to where they had to go. The mule started moving even before she got back on board.

“What’s her name?” Morris asked Beau as they watched the woman and the mule and the wagon go up the hill without any trouble.

Beau told him who she was, that she had come down from north Georgia to take care of her aunt and her ailing uncle. Both aunt and uncle were very old people, not long for the world. “She’d make some man a good wife,” Beau said, putting an end to the woman’s history.