Brotherhood

by Anne Westrick

  Shad felt fury rise from the inside out. If Jeremiah so much as touched her, Shad would—

  “Miss Rachel?” little Maggie called.

  Jeremiah turned and Rachel took the moment to dart around him, making it through the gate before he blocked her again.

  Jeremiah threw his head back and laughed.

  Rachel ran to Maggie. Then she stood in the grassy stretch, the brick outbuilding framing her proud black figure, and she stared at Jeremiah. She held her head high.

  Shad felt his chest rise way up and fall with a whoosh of air. He saw the farmer wave to Jeremiah, and watched his brother saunter away from the gate.

  A bead of sweat ran down the side of Shad’s face and dripped onto the warm cloth in his hands. More than anything, he wanted to apologize. He wanted to tell Rachel how sorry he was that his brother ran these streets. He wanted to hug little Maggie and thank her for thanking him.

  But Shad couldn’t say or do anything. Not here. Not now. Satisfied that the moment had passed, he headed up Church Hill. Dern that brother of his!

  He stewed all the way home, trying to figure what he’d say when Jeremiah asked why a little colored girl had baked him some mighty fine corn bread.

  He could eat the corn bread on the way. Hide the evidence. He peeled back the cloth and bit into the buttery corner—crisp on the edge and soft inside, still hot. He took one bite, then another, and another. It was mouthwatering good. But it was too much for one person. He couldn’t finish it between here and home.

  Shad thought to give it to the birds, befriend a stray dog . . .

  But no. After years of scraping by, sometimes whole days with nothing to eat, he had to give this corn bread to Mama. He would add one more lie to his list. The corn bread—it came from Doc Moore as a thank-you for Mama’s beautiful tailoring—that extra special embroidery that she’d done on his collar and pocket. Doc Moore said, “Thank you, kindly.”

  Oh, and Mama—Shad was just so sorry—he couldn’t help himself. He’d had to nibble a tad on the edge as he walked home. Jeremiah said the bread came from a colored girl? Pshaw. Jeremiah didn’t know what he was talking about. Making things up, he was.

  23

  The Best of All Possible Worlds

  AT SUPPER THAT night, Mama said, “What’s got you boys worked up? You two ain’t said one word to each other in the past hour.”

  Shad looked at his plate and didn’t reply. Neither did Jeremiah.

  After supper Shad helped Mama wash the dishes. Then he headed to the coop to check on Peep and Poke.

  Yesterday, Jeremiah and Clifton had gotten scrap wood and wire from Mr. Kechler and built a little coop—nothing fancy. The roof wasn’t even as high as Shad’s waist. It was a small wooden house with a board on top that Shad could easily lift at egg-gathering time. The chickens could exit the house on one side—the side where the boys had stretched a large piece of wire mesh. They’d lashed the mesh to stakes in the ground. It gave the chickens plenty of yard without letting them get away, and it kept out the raccoons and such.

  Shad liked Peep and Poke a lot. He liked to watch them strut about. Listen to them cluck and coo. They were settling in well—not laying eggs yet, but once they got good and comfortable, Shad knew they’d start laying, and the family would have real breakfasts again.

  Today, not two seconds into the yard, Shad heard the kitchen door open. Jeremiah was plumb on his heels. Smirking and walking with a swagger, he whistled. “You’re getting to be quite the liar.”

  Shad gritted his teeth, waiting for Jeremiah to knock him one.

  But he didn’t. Instead, Jeremiah crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m impressed, little brother.” Jeremiah whistled again, this time louder than the first. “Very impressed. I think you’re growing up.”

  Jeremiah seemed to be waiting for Shad to say something, but Shad kept his mouth shut. He didn’t know how much Jeremiah had seen of him and Maggie and Rachel.

  “Keeping a secret is a sign of maturity,” Jeremiah said, drawing out the word maturity as if to make fun of Shad, as if to suggest Shad was too stupid to understand a four-syllable word. Then he marched at Shad, and Shad flinched, raising an arm to block the punch. But no punch came. Instead, Jeremiah patted his back. Shad didn’t know what to make of it.

  Jeremiah leaned toward him and talked quietly. “You worked a deal with a colored and got us some nice corn bread tonight. Heh, heh, my little brother is proving to be slicker than I thought.”

  Shad kept his guard up. He didn’t smell whiskey on Jeremiah, and Clifton wasn’t here for him to show off to, so Shad was having a time of it—trying to read him. Jeremiah’s posture was pure bully, but at the same time, darn if he wasn’t paying Shad a compliment. Darn if Shad didn’t feel a wee bit of pride rise up inside. Part of him didn’t ever want anything to do with his brother and part of him had been hankering after Jeremiah ever since he could crawl.

  Then Jeremiah said, “I guess you just wanna talk with colored girls.”

  “I do not.” Shad’s hands went into fists.

  “Is that it, Shad? You got a thing for colored girls?”

  “Shut up.”

  Jeremiah laughed and danced around Shad with his fists up. “Oh, yeah? Is that it?”

  Peep flapped her wings and squawked.

  “Get out of here, Jeremiah.”

  He laughed and laughed. “Wanna fight about it? Put them dukes up. Put ’em up. Fight like a man.”

  “Go away.”

  “Put ’em up. Come on, put ’em up.”

  Poke and Peep squawked, and Jeremiah danced in close. Shad swatted at him and missed. He laid one into Shad’s cheek, but not hard. Jeremiah was all playful tonight. He tilted his head sideways. Shad swung at him and Jeremiah caught his wrist and pulled him so hard and fast, Shad’s chest smashed into his. Jeremiah grabbed Shad’s other wrist and held his arms behind him. He squeezed him into his stinking wet armpit.

  “Stop it, Jeremiah!”

  “Stop it, stop it,” he sang. Then he twisted Shad’s arm.

  “Ow!”

  Jeremiah let go and clapped at the chickens. They squawked. He walked toward the house, then suddenly turned. He was on Shad again, pinching his arms behind his back and breathing hot air down his neck. “Let me tell you something, and don’t you forget it.”

  “Ow—”

  “Don’t you never shame our family, you hear me?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know what you got going on, little brother. But I’m gonna find out.”

  “Stop—”

  “And you better make sure that whatever it is, it don’t embarrass me or Mama or our family.”

  “Geez—I—”

  “You understand?”

  Shad tried to shake loose.

  “Say it. Tell me you understand.”

  Shad coughed. Jeremiah held his arms crooked, pinched up behind him. Shad coughed again. “Yeah. Yeah, I understand.”

  Jeremiah let him go with a shove and he bumped against the wire and the coop rattled and the chickens squawked full-out.

  Then Jeremiah was gone and Shad’s knees were knocking so bad, he had to sit a spell. His arms throbbed. His chest hurt. He plopped down, and darn if he didn’t land lickety-squat in chicken shit.

  Wednesday at dawn, when Caroline opened the front door and stepped aside for Shad to slip through the house and down the back stairs to the shed, Shad’s feet held fast to the brick step.

  “Caroline,” he whispered, “I can’t do lessons in the shed no more. Mama’s almost finished Abigail’s dress, and I’ll deliver it next week. And here—this here cloth belongs to Maggie and her mama. Would you give it back and tell her thank you for me?”

  He turned to go and heard Caroline say, “Wait. Just you wait there a minute, Mr. Weaver. Don’t you leave, now.”


  Shad listened to the door slide into its frame, and he stood there as the sun rose beyond a clump of pines to the east. With the light behind them, the straight black tree trunks loomed over him like bars on a prison cell. He felt trapped. He needed to get away—far, far away.

  He couldn’t see the river from the steps, and even though she’d asked him to wait, he couldn’t keep himself at the door. Just couldn’t. He slipped down the steps, across Franklin Street to the hill, taking in the fresh smell of the water and pine and wet earth. He started toward the terrace where the view was best—where he might watch the morning sun touch down on the river—but when he heard the Perkinsons’ door open, he stopped and listened.

  He didn’t look to see who it was, but he hoped it was Rachel. He heard footsteps—light ones—down to the street. The footsteps stopped. He still didn’t turn around. He thought he shouldn’t have waited—he should have gone. He had come to return a cloth and deliver a message, was all. There was nothing more to do or say. Shad was finished here. It was plumb too dangerous.

  But still, he didn’t go. He lingered, waited, feeling drawn to this place. He breathed deeply and turned, ready to say no, he couldn’t do lessons anymore, and the words caught in his throat.

  Miss Elizabeth stood in the middle of the street. She was halfway between him and the house, her arms crossed, her hands running up and down from elbows to shoulders and back again, rubbing away the morning chill. Dew glistened on the azaleas and rhododendron that lined the house behind her. The way the sun hit the bushes just so, slanting horizontal across the hill, the dew glistened like a good dream. The azalea blooms had fallen away over a month ago, and the rhododendron were finished now, their big pink petals drooping brown.

  “Mr. Weaver, I was just having coffee and toast with Mr. Nelson. Please join us, won’t you?”

  “Ma’am, I—”

  “I insist.”

  She said it so firmly that he shuffled behind her. He brushed dust from his Willy Johnson britches, took the wide brick steps in a leap, and trod softly across Miss Elizabeth’s clean wooden floorboards. His feet were bare. Now that he’d stopped growing, soon Mr. Hanson would fit him for his first real pair of boots. In exchange, Shad would sweep Mr. Hanson’s floors, run a few errands, and do whatever the man needed. If Mr. Hanson was Klan—and he probably was—he wouldn’t ask for more than a week’s worth of chores for a pair of boots. Brotherhood was enough.

  Shad nodded at George Nelson, sitting there on the crimson brocade settee. George Nelson jumped up and offered his soft handshake. “Ah, Mr. Weaver! How is our student this morning?”

  “Just fine, sir.”

  Miss Elizabeth gestured for Shad to sit, and he slipped onto the settee beside George Nelson. Caroline came with a tray of toast and coffee, cream and sugar. One whiff of coffee and Shad closed his eyes to savor the smell. Then he picked up the silver spoon, added two heaping spoonfuls of sugar, and filled the pretty china cup to the brim with cream.

  He took the first sip slowly and felt the heat touch every inch of his innards. It lined his throat, soothed his chest, and eased his belly. The taste brought a gleam to his eyes. Delicious. How good these people have it, he thought. How he wished they’d let him take lessons here in the sitting room, not from coloreds in a shed out back.

  “Ah, Mr. Weaver,” said George Nelson, beaming, “your expression brings to mind Voltaire. What a joy it will be for me—for me, mind you—when your reading has improved to the point where you might master Candide. Why, the best of all possible worlds!”

  George Nelson wagged a finger in the air and laughed, tilting his head back. His nose quivered and the little black hairs protruding from his nostrils quivered, too. “Yes—that’s what your face proclaims this morning, Mr. Weaver. The best of all possible worlds!” Then he leaned toward Shad, his enormous nose nearly touching Shad’s shoulder. “But of course, it’s satire, my boy. And when a student comes to appreciate satire, why, the world opens before him. For the teacher—well, there’s nothing more satisfying to a teacher than opening worlds, one student at a time.” He looked up at Miss Elizabeth. “Have you read Candide, Mrs. Perkinson?”

  She smiled. “Yes, Mr. Nelson, of course. It was some years ago.”

  “Good, good, good. Now, Mr. Weaver, tell me why the change of heart this morning? Caroline gave us your message, and, quite frankly, I don’t understand it at all. I’ve heard from Rachel and Nathaniel that in only a month’s time, you’ve made significant progress. You’re a sharp lad. You have great potential.”

  Shad set the cup on the fine white saucer and it rattled. He had been Miss Jenny’s dunce for years. He was an embarrassment to Jeremiah. A disappointment to Daddy. A frustration to Mama. Granddaddy’s go-for boy. But here in this amazing house, this funny little man saw potential in him. He didn’t know what to make of it.

  He swallowed. He didn’t think George Nelson had it right. The man didn’t understand the ways of Virginia. Here firstborns had potential, not lackeys like Shad. “Sir, it’s just—it’s wrong, plumb wrong—me being in that colored school. I’m white.” It irritated him that he had to state the obvious.

  Miss Elizabeth sighed. “Mr. Weaver, I believe you made an arrangement. Tailoring lessons in exchange for reading lessons. When you have become an accomplished reader and those children fine tailors, then it will make sense to end the arrangement. But listen to you—to your misuse of the double negative, the lack of subject-verb agreement—why, you have tremendous potential, but you will need to continue lessons much longer than a month.”

  His eyes went back and forth between their faces. He didn’t care a lick for Miss Elizabeth’s grammar terms, but the fact that George Nelson saw potential in him gripped Shad through and through. This morning, he’d come to the house to quit lessons, and now he desperately wanted to stay.

  “I have a proposition,” said George Nelson. He stood and paced to the piano and back. “Once a week I shall work one-on-one with you alone, Mr. Weaver. One half an hour, every—what? You tell me, Mrs. Perkinson. Which morning might be available? I’d be honored to teach this lad while he, in turn, continues to instruct our young Negro charges in the fine art of tailoring.”

  “Well, I don’t know,” Miss Elizabeth began.

  “Tuesdays!” shouted George Nelson. “Tuesdays here in the parlor. Seven o’clock in the morning. Sharp.”

  “But I—”

  “A clock. Have you a clock, lad? I’m sure Mrs. Perkinson has a spare clock for you. Or a pocket watch—that would suit better, wouldn’t it? Do you have your own pocket watch?”

  “Uh, no, sir.”

  Miss Elizabeth cleared her throat. “Well, I suppose—”

  “Marvelous!” shouted George Nelson. “Let’s see here. Today is Wednesday. You’ve got instruction to give this morning and Thursday and Friday, and I’ll see you bright and early Tuesday morning. Perfect.”

  Before Shad had quite grasped what he’d agreed to, he was down the back stairs and into the shed, and in his hand he held a fine little timepiece that had once belonged to Mr. Parks Randolph Perkinson.

  The moment Rachel saw him, she threw her hands in the air. “Better late than never. Is that your motto, Mr. Lourdaud? What sort of school would this be if all of our students arrived whenever they pleased? What sort of teacher would I be . . . ?”

  She went on and on about the value of timeliness, and Shad hung his head, rubbing his thumb up and down along the smooth glass face of the pocket watch, promising never to run late again.

  24

  Accidents Happen

  FOR THE NEXT few days, Shad went through the motions, sounding out words as Rachel looked over his shoulder and teaching the children to set pockets hidden in the seams of jacket lining. But he was distracted. Anxious for the upcoming lesson with George Nelson, anxious over his brother’s questions, anxious over coming and going through the Perkinsons’ h
ouse and not warning Rachel that danger loomed, Shad’s stomach twisted into a knot and he nearly stopped eating.

  On Saturday night he went to another Klan meeting—a brotherly one full of song and backslaps and handshakes and one fellow telling stories in such a funny accent with such a lisp, why, Shad was sure it had to be Mr. O’Malley. He’d been right that day at the saloon when O’Malley hadn’t taken the penny for the root beer—right that O’Malley was Klan, too. For much of the night, he wondered who else was under all the sheets.

  Shad left the meeting with Jeremiah, Clifton, and Bubba, and after a spell, like so often happened, he and Bubba fell a few steps behind. They were near Venable Street when a fellow Klansman ran up. He looked at Bubba and Shad, then ran ahead and got Jeremiah and Clifton to stop. They talked quietly. Then Jeremiah and Clifton and the ghost turned around and headed back. Bubba and Shad waited. The night was extra dark, and the air was heavy like it was going to rain.

  Shad watched from a distance as Jeremiah and Clifton met with some ghosts. One was the Grand Cyclops. Shad was beginning to understand how it worked. The meetings were crowded. A mob was easy to rile up, and nobody knew exactly who was under each sheet. The Grand Cyclops was careful about everything he said in an official meeting, and about making the meetings right brotherly and warm. Afterward, he would pull aside some boys and give out assignments.

  When the Cyclops was finished talking with Jeremiah and had walked the other way, Jeremiah, Clifton, Bubba, and Shad headed up Venable Street. They pulled off their disguises, and whooee, it felt good to take in the fresh air, even if it was heavy with the damp.

  It started drizzling and Shad’s britches stuck to his thighs. When they got to the end of Venable, Clifton and Bubba peeled off, saying good night in hushed tones. Then Jeremiah and Shad headed for Nine Mile Road and it started to rain full-out.

  “Hey,” Shad whispered, “what did the Cyclops want you and Clifton doing?” He felt a tad disappointed that the Cyclops hadn’t asked him and Bubba to handle something.