Joby 1

Joby is the oldest among the family of enslaved people who serve as the 'house slaves' of the Sartoris family in two novels and more than half a dozen short stories. He first appears, very briefly, in Flags in the Dust, in the stories Jenny tells about the old days on the plantation; there he is "Simon's grandfather" who helped bury the white family's silver under "the ammoniac barn floor" to hide it from Yankees during the Civil War (37). In the stories Bayard tells later in the Unvanquished series, he is Simon's father, and he helps bury the silver (repeatedly) in the plantation's orchard. What remains the same in every text is his loyalty to the Sartoris family. "Skirmish at Sartoris," for example, takes place after Emancipation, but even then Joby remains on the plantation, helping to rebuild - or to use a more loaded term, 'reconstruct' - the Sartoris mansion that the Yankees have destroyed. He is the husband of Louvinia and the grandfather of Ringo, both also enslaved and loyal, and the father of Loosh, the one Sartoris slave who rebels against his enslavement. Joby himself, however, is invariably depicted serving his masters in one or another way, though he allows himself to complain quietly against some of their commands. He is either the great- or the great-great-grandfather of the Joby who appears in "There Was a Queen," which was published between Flags and the first Unvanquished stories.