Brotherhood

by Anne Westrick

  “Yes, ma’am, I’m sure it’s fine. And Mama, I been meaning to tell you . . .” He paused, searching for the right words.

  Mama raised her eyebrows.

  Shad swallowed. “My reading, Mama—it’s gettin’ better.”

  She tilted her head and the look on her face was kind, but at the same time, Shad saw a flicker of disbelief.

  “Really, Mama. They got methods up there—methods Miss Jenny don’t know.”

  Mama set aside her fabric, needle, and thread, and took a deep breath. She narrowed her already little eyes. “You pullin’ my leg?”

  “No, ma’am. Just you wait, Mama. One of these days, I’m-a show you what I can read. You got to give me a little more time, but I’m gettin’ there, Mama. I am!”

  Shad watched her tighten her lips and knew she was choosing her words carefully. He was so much like her—sometimes so much he couldn’t stand it. A smile crept onto her face, and she said, “Okay, then, Shad, one of these days you gonna show me.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’m proud of you, son.”

  “Thank you, Mama.” Then he was off at a good clip, clocking exactly how long it would take to get from their little house to the overlook.

  Mama’s pride put a skip in his step. Twice he stopped briefly to snatch up bits of cloth and threads for weaving into another foot mat. When he turned off Twenty-eighth Street onto Franklin, he did his calculation. Thirty-one minutes and sixteen seconds. Whooee. And the time was now one minute before seven o’clock. He’d cut it awful close.

  Caroline let him in to the warm smells of bacon and coffee, but she didn’t offer him breakfast. She showed him to the front room where George Nelson was thumbing through a book. No sign of Miss Elizabeth at all.

  “Ah, Mr. Weaver, yes,” he said, checking his own watch and nodding in satisfaction. Then he gestured for Shad to sit on the crimson settee.

  George Nelson had rolled up his white shirtsleeves, and also the bottoms of his brown trousers. Black suspenders held the trousers up—he was clearly in need of a tailor—and Shad imagined that Mr. Nelson might someday ask for his services. He liked to think so.

  The man held up a book and pointed to each word as he read the title: Harper’s School and Family Series. The School and Family Primer: Introductory to the Series of School and Family Readers, by Marcius Willson.

  “Now, Mr. Weaver, we’re going to skip part one, as it’s the alphabet. Parts two and three cover two- and three-letter words. I believe you can handle them, as well. We’re going to start on page thirty-nine. Here, see what you can make of it. I’d like you to read out loud, please.”

  Shad took the brown book, turning it over, feeling the grain and smelling the musk scent of fine leather. The binding resisted as he opened to page thirty-nine, and when he got it full open, he felt the spine crack. Shad marveled at it. “Mr. Nelson, why—this book is new.”

  “Yes, my boy, I requested that Mrs. Perkinson order a set of these before my arrival. They’re by far the best for beginners. Now, come, come. Please read.”

  Shad leaned over the page and began slowly. “Do you see this man? He is . . .” He paused, as he wasn’t sure of the next word. It had some of the letters that gave him trouble. He looked at the picture of three men, hoping it would give him a clue. Then he silently scolded himself. No, he didn’t want to guess. Didn’t want to rely on pictures. He would focus on the letters themselves.

  George Nelson said, “Look closely at that word. What are the four letters you see there?”

  “B and, no—d, and, wait, that’s a b. The letters b and a and l.”

  “Yes, and the fourth letter?”

  “D. Dal . . . no, ball . . . it’s bald . . . He is bald.”

  “Perfect!”

  Shad beamed. It was such a little word—bald—and once he’d said it, well, it was clear that the word was bald. He ran his fingers along the smooth paper. He liked this little book and wondered why no one had told Miss Jenny about primers like this one. It made so much sense, putting two-letter words together, then three-letter words, and so on. But that Bible—parts of it didn’t make any sense at all.

  He went on, slowing here and there, sorting out the letters and smiling at words he knew.

  Do you see this man? He is bald and he is old; but he is a good man.

  Do you ask how I . . .

  Shad narrowed his eyes and set a finger under the word.

  “The k is silent,” said George Nelson.

  “Oh. All right, then,” said Shad. “Now—uh, know . . .”

  . . . he is a good man? I know he is a good man, for I can see it in his face.

  Do you hear him talk to them? Do you know what he says?

  When he got toward the end of the page, the word bad appeared, and he paused, hoping for a hint. But George Nelson only waited patiently. The silence set Shad’s mind to race. He became aware of everything around him. The smooth and rough textures in the fabric of the crimson brocade settee. The uneven widths of the floorboard planks. A bird chirping near the front window. The lingering scent of bacon.

  Then Rachel came to mind—Rachel pointing out that whenever Shad hit a word he wasn’t sure about—and there were many—instead of looking at the letters, Shad would look around the room. She’d been sitting beside him in the shed when she made that observation, and at the time Shad had thought her rather preachy. But today—here he was, doing exactly what she’d said.

  He ground his teeth and set his eyes on the page. Again, Rachel came to mind. Rachel holding a slate before him and printing letters on it. Rachel telling him to make the same set of letters, each with a circle, and each with a little line attached.

  He squeezed his eyes shut, opened them again, and forced himself to pay attention to George Nelson. He read.

  He says, God made you. God is good. He can take care of you, and keep you from harm.

  Here are two more men, but I do not know that they are good men. They may be bad.

  They do not look much like good men. You must shun bad boys and bad men. Go not with them.

  Shad froze. He didn’t look up from the primer—didn’t straighten or sit back in the chair. He remained hunched over the book, and he listened for George Nelson to move—to breathe—to react. Nothing.

  He swallowed. Not only had he figured out the letters—the words—but along with them came the meaning. Why had Mr. Nelson chosen this page?

  Shad felt George Nelson’s eyes on him, and still he didn’t look up. He wondered what his teacher knew about bad boys. About Shad’s brother. About the . . . Shad stopped himself. He wouldn’t let himself think about the Klan.

  Seconds passed. A minute. Finally, George Nelson said, “Thank you. Now turn the page and continue.”

  And Shad breathed again.

  Half an hour later, Shad had made it to page forty-two and the lesson was over. Caroline shooed him to the door. George Nelson called, “Before next week, pick up a newspaper and see what progress you can make with it. Bring it to the lesson.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Shad stepped out into the sunshine, thinking on how he was reading. Reading. Lordy, he’d read better today than ever before. He wasn’t a dunce. He looked up at a cotton-ball cloud hanging in a pretty blue sky. Daddy, did you see me today? Did you hear me?

  Shad leaped off the wide brick steps and skipped toward the overlook for one quick glimpse of the beautiful James River before he’d head to Granddaddy’s for deliveries, then home to braid another foot mat. Today had been a good day. Tomorrow and the rest of the week he’d do tailoring lessons in the shed with the children, and at some point he’d be in town again and could pick up the Daily Richmond Enquirer. Thinking on reading the paper—why, it hadn’t ever occurred to him to try. Not even try.

  Shad beamed. Just one private lesson with George Nelson, and he wa
s bursting with pride. How would he stand to wait a whole week until his next lesson?

  He took in the sweet smell of honeysuckle and craned his neck down the hill to see where it grew. He lifted his face to catch the breeze, but darn if he didn’t sense something funny. He felt eyes watching him. Felt the hairs on the back of his neck reach for the sky.

  Shad turned. Shoot. Jeremiah was there—twenty paces off, leaning against a pine tree, squinting, with arms folded across his chest.

  Shad’s hands went into fists. He didn’t tell them to fist up—they fisted up all by themselves. He relaxed his knees for balance in case Jeremiah marched his way and shoved him.

  But Jeremiah surprised him. He started chuckling. He dropped his arms by his side. Then he laughed himself silly. He sauntered slowly in Shad’s direction, and Shad moved toward him, and they met in the middle of the street.

  Jeremiah spoke softly. “You wasn’t lying.”

  Shad swallowed. He didn’t say anything.

  “I got to tell you, Shad. I had the strongest sense that you been lying to me. But you just came out of that house—out of some tutoring lesson, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  Jeremiah tilted his head a tad and got to pulling on his goatee. He glanced at the Perkinsons’ front door, then back to Shad. He nodded. “I don’t know, little brother. Something tells me you got something up your sleeve, and I ain’t been able to figure out what it is, but you’d best know I’m watching you. You hear me?”

  “What’s your problem, Jeremiah? I ain’t done nothing.”

  Shad headed toward Twenty-eighth Street and Jeremiah grabbed him by the shoulder. “You idiot.” Shad tried to brush his hand away, but Jeremiah got a fistful of the silk shirt and held on tight. “You’re a coward, is what you are.”

  “Get off-a me.”

  “Clifton and me—we gave you an assignment.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t what me.” Jeremiah leaned into his ear, so close Shad smelled the whiskey—sharp like vinegar. He’d been to O’Malley’s already—breakfast in a bottle. “A shed or no shed. Why’s that so hard?” He let go of the shirt with a shove.

  Shad fell sideways but managed to stay on his feet. He threw his hands in the air to show he wasn’t a threat to Jeremiah. Not here, not now.

  Jeremiah marched in close and put his mouth to Shad’s ear. “I seen it, Shad. It’s right there behind the Perkinsons’ house. Ain’t nothing mysterious about seeing that shed behind that hedge. Here. Lemme show you.”

  He grabbed Shad’s forearm and pulled him down Twenty-eighth Street to the alley that separated the backyards of the houses on Grace and Franklin Streets.

  Shad’s thoughts raced. Like a hound on a hunt, his ears perked up, and sure enough, when they got to the alley, he heard voices. Low, not loud, but they were there in the middle of Tuesday morning lessons, smack-dab on the other side of that enormous hedge. Rachel, Eloise, Maggie, Nathaniel, Kitty . . . The lessons would end soon and the children would slip through the opening in the hedge.

  Please, not now, he screamed to Rachel inside his mind. Keep quiet, stay put, don’t move, and, for God’s sake, no singing this morning.

  Shad strained to clear his face—keep it blank. Not show anything. Then he made to stumble and fell hard against the hedge. “Whoa!” he called out.

  The voices stopped. Dead silence but for a bird twittering. A squirrel chattering. An orange tabby dashed across the alley and scrambled beneath the hedge.

  Shad righted himself, rubbing at his face and arms where the holly leaves had scratched him.

  “Shut up.” Jeremiah grabbed the back of Shad’s neck and thrust Shad’s face into the opening in the hedge. He whispered, “There. Now do you see it?”

  He held Shad for a second, then pulled him back into the alley.

  A second. It was only a second, maybe two. But in that moment, Nathaniel appeared in the doorway of the shed. He saw Shad, and his face froze.

  Then Jeremiah dragged Shad away, jerking his arm, marching with him down Twenty-eighth Street. They crossed over Grace, stopped at Broad while two carriages rattled by, then marched on. Shad felt Jeremiah’s hand firmly around his upper arm, squeezing until the hustle-bustle of Church Hill was behind them.

  “You don’t get it, Shad.”

  Shad jerked his arm free.

  “Now you listen here.” Jeremiah’s voice was guttural—not like Clifton’s dying-man voice, but deep like a wild animal. “When Clifton and me tell you to do something, you do it.”

  Shad’s arm throbbed from the pressure of Jeremiah’s grip. He rubbed it, and darn if he didn’t smear blood on the sleeve. The holly hedge had scratched his face and neck, and now he’d made brown-red marks on his fine silk shirt. Ugh! He couldn’t run deliveries for Granddaddy with blood all over his shirt.

  “The Klan ain’t Sunday school, Shad. This is a brotherhood. And when the Cyclops asks me to do something, and when I go to you for help with that something, you don’t do it if you feel like doing it. You do it.”

  Shad nodded. “Yeah, okay.”

  “You swore allegiance to the Klan, what means you’re part of a chain of command now. You got that?”

  “Yeah, I got it.”

  Jeremiah shoved his shoulder. “Then you tell me—why was it so hard to report that Miz Perkinson had a shed behind her house?”

  “Look, I didn’t want to get seen in that alley.”

  “Didn’t want to get seen,” Jeremiah whined, his voice high like a girl’s. “Well, guess what? You got seen today. And you know what else got seen? A Negro in that shed.” He leaned into the word Negro like it was long and heavy, weighing him down. “The Cyclops was right. There are Negroes in that shed.”

  27

  The Golden Rule

  “MAMA!” JEREMIAH CALLED as he banged open the door of their little house.

  Shad followed him inside. Mama sat by the front window, up to her elbows in the pink flowered dress for Miss Abigail. She angled her thin eyebrows, and the skin on her pale forehead formed worry lines.

  “Mama,” declared Jeremiah, “that arrangement you let Shad make with Miz Perkinson—it ain’t working.”

  Mama’s shoulders fell. “I’m near finished this here dress, Jeremiah.”

  “I ain’t talking about no tailoring, Mama.”

  She leaned forward, narrowing her beady eyes at Shad. “What in heaven’s name happened to you, Shadrach?”

  “I—uh, had a run-in with a holly hedge, is all.”

  “Lord, boy.”

  “Mama,” said Jeremiah, “I’m talking about him going up there for lessons.”

  “Don’t get into my business, Jeremiah.”

  “It don’t look right—our family and them Yankee-lovers.”

  “You don’t need extra reading lessons. But I do.”

  Mama pursed her lips, and it was a look Shad had seen on her face many times. He knew she was irritated but didn’t yet have the words to see her through.

  Shad rolled his eyes and marched out the back door. He didn’t want to listen to the babble. Darn that Jeremiah. Darn the Klan. He was in a tight spot, and he had to get his thoughts running straight again.

  He stripped off the silk shirt, worked the pump, and got a bucketful of cold water. He took a quick drink, then dunked the shirt and scrubbed at the blood spots, but many refused to scrub clean. He rubbed the fabric against itself and rubbed some more, rubbing until his muscles ached.

  The sun beat down on him and his muscles throbbed, and after a time his body curved into itself, bending over the bucket like the branches of a weeping willow. He got to thinking about other people working hard in the sun . . . about what it might have felt like to slave over someone else’s laundry . . . about the lives the slaves had lived. He remembered a time when Daddy had lectured him over it.

 
Daddy.

  His daddy.

  He’d been gone a long, long time.

  Daddy hadn’t taken to owning slaves. Not that he’d ever said as much in public because words like that riled people up. But he’d told Shad—told him that day, why, it was right out there in the cornfield. The memory washed over Shad, and he let the shirt slip from his hands. He stepped away from the bucket and looked over the weeds stretching two acres up Nine Mile Road to the tree line.

  Daddy. Shad and Daddy, hoeing up weeds together—that’s what he remembered. The dawn trying to glow. The sun having a time of it, what with a heavy fog that morning. The stink and steam of manure on the field. The little field his family rented from Mr. Kechler—the field they thought of as their own, not Kechler’s. They’d always worked it like it was theirs, and maybe they’d work it again someday, if only they could set aside enough money for seed.

  On that day in the field, Daddy was pushing a lump of tobacco around inside his cheek, and every once in a while, he spat. Just like that—he spat into the row between the corn and the pole beans and the butter beans.

  Shad said, “Sure would be nice to have us a slave for all this weeding.” And Shad was on the ground before he knew what hit him.

  “Don’t you never say that again.”

  How old was he then? Eight? Nine? About the age Nathaniel was now. Shad rubbed his jaw—it stung more from the shock than Daddy’s wallop.

  “Promise me you’ll never own no slave,” said Daddy.

  Shad opened his mouth, but he was still sitting in the beans, collecting his surprise, and he didn’t say anything right off.

  He heard Daddy growl. “Promise me, Shad.”

  “Yessir, Daddy, I promise.” He stood up and brushed off his britches and wiped his chin against his shoulder. He watched Daddy go back to hoeing. Then he tugged on a morning glory vine that had climbed up the pole beans, and said, “Daddy, I heard of some what own ’em to give ’em a better life.”

  “Hogwash,” said Daddy.

  Shad rubbed his chin some more.

  “Look, Shad—they’re just trying to feel better ’bout doing wrong. Slavery is wrong. A better life?” Daddy spit again. “There ain’t nothin’ better than freedom, and don’t you let them tell you otherwise.” Daddy pulled off his cap and looked up to heaven. After a spell, he set the cap back on his head and said, “All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.”