Brotherhood

by Anne Westrick

  “Ain’t you gonna give me no clue?” He heard his voice go high. He coughed and made it low like Clifton’s. “A clue. Give me a clue!”

  Her whole face went into a smile. She had the biggest, prettiest teeth he’d ever seen—every single one lined up perfectly—and in that moment, Shad envied her those teeth. His own were crooked and two on the left side had been pulled a few years back, leaving a gap the size of a peach pit. Who was she to have such fine teeth? It didn’t seem fair.

  “Rachel, I think it’s time we go now,” said Eloise.

  But Rachel didn’t go. She shook her head at Eloise and turned to Shad with a sad sort of look—with a sincerity that made him frown. Then she said, ever so gently, “You can’t read, can you?”

  “Dern fool!” The words exploded out of him. “You ain’t better ’n me. You don’t know what that sack says no more ’n I know what it says. Don’t you go giving me no high-and-mighty attitude.”

  “No, sir,” said Eloise. “She didn’t mean anything by it.”

  He gripped the bolt to keep from trembling. His own words had surprised him.

  “She gets a little carried away sometimes,” Eloise went on. “She didn’t mean to offend you, sir.”

  Rachel smiled. Then she laughed and her tone was sweet—not mean or haughty—and the sound of it settled Shad’s nerves. It was hard to stay angry.

  He rubbed the back of his neck. He’d never met anyone like this girl. Not having a sister, he hadn’t had much to do with girls, white or colored. Oh, sure, every once in a while he’d lost himself in thought over Mr. O’Malley’s freckle-faced daughter, and he’d even talked with her maybe three times at Sunday school.

  But he hadn’t ever thought one way or another about colored girls. They were freed slaves, was all. His family had never owned one and his stomach had turned over Mr. Kechler’s treatment of his, so Shad had avoided the coloreds as best he could. Between the war and Daddy dying and people up in arms over Lincoln freeing the slaves, why, there was so much so wrong that sometimes it was better not to think at all. Better just to make his deliveries and weave his foot mats and master his mending and mind his own business and let the world be.

  Now, here he was in conversation with a colored girl, a conversation he didn’t invite and couldn’t handle. He found himself fighting an overwhelming urge to cuss and walk away.

  Rachel giggled and looked at Eloise, then back at Shad, and said, “I don’t know where to begin.”

  “Well,” he said, shifting the fabric from one shoulder to the other, trying to keep control and clear his head. Maybe he could respond like Jeremiah—take charge and act like a man. “Well, how ’bout you begin by tellin’ me where you’re stealing sacks of flour from, ’cause I got a right mind to report you for thievery.”

  “Whoa, wait a minute.” She smiled and waved her free hand, and he saw that the palm was light-colored, almost peach, and he knew that all coloreds’ hands were like that—dark on top and light underneath—but he hadn’t ever before paid it mind. Today he felt flummoxed. The conversation was turning in ways he couldn’t control, and the sooner it ended, the better.

  “Now look—”

  “Just hold your horses,” Rachel said warmly, and she pointed at the hill toward Richmond proper. “The Freedmen’s Bureau is giving food to everyone who needs it.” She lifted the sack and pointed to each letter. “S-U-G-A-R.”

  Up went the hairs on the back of Shad’s neck. “I know that’s an S. Don’t you go tellin’ me my letters.”

  She didn’t miss a beat. “Sugar,” she said. “Today they’re giving out sugar. A few days ago it was flour. You’re welcome to get in line for a sack if you need it.”

  Sugar. Once she’d said it, Shad knew that she was right. It was obvious—the word was sugar. Why hadn’t he seen it?

  Rachel smiled.

  “We really need to go,” said Eloise.

  But Rachel didn’t go. She said, “How much do you charge for the dresses you sew?”

  Shad looked at his bare feet, thinking about the turns this conversation had taken, about how incapable he’d been of controlling it, about how to answer her question. He squirmed, feeling that he ought to know Granddaddy’s prices. But he’d never handled that part of the business.

  He looked at Rachel’s feet—her little brown lace-up boots. They were scuffed some, but they were nice.

  His head was still down when she said, “I’ll tell you what, Mr. Nincompoop. Can you remember the name? Perkinson. Mrs. Parks Randolph Perkinson, Franklin and Twenty-eighth Street, up Libby Hill.”

  “Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid!” Lord God Almighty, he wanted to shove her down the street. “I know Widow Perkinson. Course I know Miz Perkinson.”

  “Well, good, then. Here. You take this sugar and sew me a lovely summer dress for Miss Abigail. Come by the house of Mrs. Perkinson and leave word how much we owe you. I’m sure one sack of sugar isn’t enough. But that’s all I have today.”

  She thrust the sack in his free arm, then grabbed Eloise by the elbow. “Miss Elizabeth will be delighted with a new dress for Abby!”

  Before he could say “Jack Sprat,” Rachel and Eloise were up the street and Shad was standing at the corner of Seventeenth and Broad, carrying a bolt of fabric and a sack of sugar. His mouth had gone dry. His thoughts ran in circles, trying to make sense of this colored girl, Rachel, who spoke so fine and radiated such confidence and knew her letters up, down, and sideways.

  10

  Brown Rabbits

  WHEN SHAD GOT close to his family’s little house out Nine Mile Road, he strutted with an Ain’t I something gait because he was the one bringing home a nice sack of sugar today. For once, he had something Jeremiah didn’t, and, moreover, he was Jeremiah’s equal now. A Klan brother. Worthy of respect. Today Mama would thank him and see him as the man he’d become. Thinking on it made him preen like a peacock as he went through the door.

  But as soon as he explained the deal to Mama, she got hot and bothered over the tailoring. She was a tiny woman with light brown eyes and a delicate frame, but there was nothing delicate about her. Mama had grown up milking cows on a farm out Creighton Road, and she still relished a good thumb-wrestle from time to time. Today she put her worn hands on bony hips and looked up at Shad, then chided him for accepting a commission without taking the measurements.

  “When will you learn to think, boy? You don’t dare cut the fabric until you know her height, the shoulder length, the waist. Why, the girl could be petite. She could be enormous!”

  Shad smacked the side of his head with an open palm. How could he have been so stupid? Of course he should have asked, but while the girls were standing in front of him, he’d been too flustered to think.

  Then Jeremiah sauntered in from the outhouse with a smirk on his face. Clearly he’d heard every word. He was tall, and on his beanpole frame, his beady brown eyes looked even smaller than Mama’s—eyes too small for chiseled features—strong nose, high cheekbones, square chin. Over the past year, he’d grown a goatee in the fashion of President Jefferson Davis, and today it was in sore need of a trim.

  Jeremiah elbowed Shad aside and held up a big, brown, dead rabbit he’d nabbed who-knows-where. Mama hugged him and kissed him. Shad watched her go up on tiptoes to reach his cheek. Over the top of her head, Jeremiah looked down on Shad and his smile spoke loud and clear: Jeremiah: one; Shadrach: zero.

  Shad raised the sack of sugar and gave Jeremiah a nod that said he wasn’t to be outdone. A whole sack sure beat a scrawny rabbit.

  Then Jeremiah stepped away from Mama, reached under his shirt, and brought out a second dead rabbit. He beamed.

  Shad’s face fell.

  “Ooh, lordy!” said Mama with delight. “Skin them hares out back now. And save me them pelts. Don’t you shred them up none.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Jeremiah.
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br />   “When did you find time to hunt rabbits?” Shad demanded. “Thought you were working a day job up Fourteenth Street.”

  “Coloreds,” he said with a snarl.

  Shad squared his shoulders. “So you still ain’t got no work.”

  “Shut up, Shad. Damn Yankees push them coloreds to the front of the pack.”

  Shad glanced toward Mama, hoping she’d wag a finger at Jeremiah’s laziness. But Mama did no such thing. She shook her head and agreed with him. “Ain’t right—all them coloreds loose on the streets.”

  “No, ma’am,” said Jeremiah, “ain’t right at all.”

  Shad’s nostrils flared. He was a Klan brother now, as well as a blood brother, but in his own house, you’d never know it. Jeremiah this, Jeremiah that.

  He knew what his brother meant about pushing the coloreds, but he doubted the Yankees had actually pushed them. Men swarmed around construction foremen, hoping for work. The ones selected were those who made the least trouble and worked the hardest—those who accepted a pittance for pay. Not hotheads like Jeremiah. Not ruffians who took to whistling “God Save the South” while they hauled bricks and lumber.

  So Jeremiah hadn’t gotten hired today. Or yesterday. Or the day before that. Much as Daddy and Granddaddy had tried to teach him the tailoring business, Jeremiah had never taken to needles and thread. He wanted to swing a hammer, lay a rail line. But jobs were scarce. Some were offered by carpetbaggers, and it would be a cold day in hell before Jeremiah Weaver would answer to one of them.

  After the war, hordes of greedy carpetbaggers had flooded the South—come to make money, was all. They hadn’t watched the flames lick Richmond’s buildings like they were honeycomb. They hadn’t fallen on their knees and prayed alongside Granddaddy. They didn’t love Virginia. And worse—they’d laughed at Richmond for setting fire to her own.

  The fire—Lord God Almighty, that fire! When word had come from Petersburg that General Robert E. Lee, bless his good name, couldn’t hold off General Grant any longer—why, the Confederates had hightailed it to the west while Grant’s army marched into Richmond from the east. To keep Grant’s men from getting to the supplies along the river, Confederates had set ablaze the munitions, tobacco warehouses, and flour mills. How were they to know the fire would turn inland and burn down half of Richmond proper?

  Shad would never forget the sight when, three days later, he’d convinced Mama to come see for herself. They’d walked to St. John’s at the crest of Church Hill and looked out at the ruins. Such a crying shame!

  In years past, they had loved that view—the beauty of Richmond laid out before them—especially at Christmastime with lantern lights a-sparkling across Shockoe Valley and up the far hill to the capitol building. But on that day in April 1865, a sea of burned chimneys and black foundations had lain before them. Thank the Lord the capitol had been spared—Thomas Jefferson himself had designed it. And the Spotswood Hotel all the way across town at Eighth and Main still stood. But the rest was an eyesore. Block after block of chimneys and foundations and rubble, and here and there a wisp of smoke from a smoldering beam.

  At least Granddaddy had been lucky—Seventeenth Street hadn’t burned. But Fifteenth Street west to Ninth? Lord have mercy.

  The day after the fire, when Grant’s troops came marching into town, Granddaddy said it was like a column of ants with no end in sight. Said he watched from his second-floor window there in the Bottom—he didn’t have the devil machine then. He sat by that window and looked down on Main Street and took in the heads and shoulders and muskets and caps of those blue troops streaming by. And he wept.

  Now, two years later, Richmond was rebuilding, but progress was slow. Men who’d been wealthy before the war had nothing but burned fields and freed slaves and worthless Confederate dollars and too much pride to stand on a street corner and wait for a day job from a stupid carpetbagger.

  Of course it was just like Jeremiah to say he’d tried those street corners. Tried to get a job. But what Jeremiah said and what he did—well, Shad knew those two didn’t always line up.

  He stiffened as Jeremiah stood in the doorframe, holding the limp rabbits aloft like trophies.

  “Now, you skin them hares for me quick ’fore they stiffen up,” said Mama, turning back to her iron.

  But Jeremiah didn’t go out right away. Instead, he approached Shad, leaned into his ear, and whispered, “You ignorant fool.” Then he shoved Shad’s shoulder, and Shad was so unprepared, so expecting Jeremiah to acknowledge their bond—the Klan if not blood brotherhood—so thrown off guard, that he lost his grip on the sack of sugar and it fell, breaking open on the dirt floor.

  Jeremiah sauntered out the door, looking like he didn’t do anything.

  Shad thought to cry, “Mama, look what he did!” But he knew Jeremiah would turn and say, “What?” with his beady brown eyes so innocent-looking. And Mama would laugh.

  Jeremiah always made Mama laugh.

  11

  Lye Soap

  SHAD PICKED UP the sugar, saving what he could in a blue bowl that he covered with a plate to keep out the ants. Then he scrounged around the house for a cotton measuring strip, a scrap of paper, and a stick with a burned tip that was good for jotting numbers.

  The whole way back up Church Hill, Mama’s words and Jeremiah’s smirk ran around inside his head. He didn’t have to carry a heavy bolt of fabric this time, but even still, his legs felt heavy. He’d already done the hills twice today, going to and from Granddaddy’s. What he’d give now to trade in last night’s handshaking for a shove at Jeremiah and a heap of shut-eye!

  When he got to Twenty-eighth and Franklin Street on the far side of Church Hill—the pretty area everyone knew as Libby Hill—he glanced up at the Perkinsons’ redbrick house. Then he strolled right past it toward the overlook. He couldn’t help himself—ahead at Libby Terrace was the most beautiful view in all of Richmond. Every time he made a delivery up that way, he’d steal himself a glance at the river, and every time the view would startle him. Every time felt like the first time again, and his mind couldn’t stew over Mama or Jeremiah—not when he had the whole world laid out before him.

  He looked east for miles down the James River, thinking it was no wonder men had settled at Richmond. This was the fall line—so full of rocks that boats couldn’t travel farther inland—strategically a perfect location. Anyone—friend or foe—coming up the river would be seen long before he arrived.

  Not only that, but everything was calm and beautiful here. Shad looked down the hillside with its long grasses that changed direction in the wind, shifting from green to yellow and every shade between. He took in the railroad tracks running along the river. He took in the water—how he knew it rushed along quickly, but from this distance, it seemed like blue stained glass in church windows. Three blocks away the city was all hustle-bustle with people and carriages, but here at the overlook, the world lay quiet as a napping cat.

  For a long while, he relished the glory of it. Then he turned and headed to the Perkinsons’. There were a few houses along the terrace and on top of the hill, but none as fine as the Perkinsons’. Theirs stretched three stories tall and had black shutters and redbrick steps leading to a black door. Up high, little white bricks sat in a neat pattern over each window. Shad envied them those windows. As soon as he stepped away from the overlook, the river fell from his view, but from those high-up windows, he bet the Perkinsons got to see that fine river every single day.

  The breeze brought the sound of piano music—quick little notes floating, tinkling, dancing, and weaving in, out, and around. Right pretty music. He walked up the wide front steps and heard the piano get louder. He fingered the door knocker—a molded brass lion’s head—and thought how fancy-pants this house was.

  Shad wondered if Rachel had always lived here and he’d never noticed. He’d delivered dresses and mending to the Perkinsons before, but h
adn’t been inside. Hadn’t seen the missus. A colored woman had always answered this door. Had it been Rachel? Had he already met her and plumb not realized?

  Shad lifted the knocker and let it drop twice. A thump-thumping started in his chest. The door opened and music came out. So did a colored face. Not Rachel. This one was tight in the cheekbones.

  “Mending?” she said. She must have been the woman who always answered this door. Today his eyes met hers, and she looked straight at him—not like other coloreds who lowered their eyes. She nodded. Her chin went up to say she recognized him.

  “Uh, well, not mending, exactly. I’m here to take Miss Abigail’s measurements for the dress she ordered.”

  The woman’s eyes expanded and twinkled. Her eyebrows lifted, and she seemed to hold back a smile. She set a hand on her waist and tilted her head to one side. “Is this one of Rachel’s little jokes?”

  Shad frowned. “Ma’am?”

  She leaned into the house and snapped, “Rachel!”

  The piano music stopped. Shad strained his ears over the music ending just like that. He heard the sound of shoes clicking across wooden floorboards, and he marveled at the fact that not only could that colored girl read, but she could play the piano!

  Rachel appeared with a hand over her mouth. Shad saw a funny little smile start in her dark eyes and go all the way to her ears. She was no longer wearing the scarf, and her hair was plaited in rows. She said, “Well, if it isn’t Mr. Nincompoop.”

  “What mischief are you about today?” asked the older one, and her voice was just as rich as Rachel’s. For a moment, Shad imagined the two of them with their eloquent diction mingling with royalty in Queen Victoria’s court. “This boy asked for Miss Abigail.”

  Rachel nodded. “Yes, Abigail needs a new dress.”