Brotherhood

by Anne Westrick

  Shad smiled. He’d learned that line in Sunday school and knew it well. The Golden Rule. Daddy knew the Bible upside and down. But that day—Shad wouldn’t ever forget it his whole life long—that day Daddy said, “Problem with the Bible, Shad, is it don’t say slavery is wrong.”

  Shad remembered swallowing. He didn’t know how it was after all those years that he could remember swallowing. But he did. Right there beside the pole beans, he had a good, long swallow and set his head to thinking hard. Shad hadn’t ever heard anybody say there was a problem with the Bible.

  Daddy stood there, shaking his head, nudging the toe of his boot into a thistledown plant. He pressed that weed harder and harder against the red soil until the stem of that plant wasn’t but dust on the bottom of his boot. After a time, he whispered, “I don’t want to go.”

  Shad said, “Don’t go, Daddy.”

  He said, “I got to go.”

  And Shad let that sit because he knew it was true. Daddy had already told them he’d prepared to enlist. He’d put it off for a year and couldn’t put it off any longer. Shad said, “Jeremiah and me gonna take good care of Mama.” He knew Daddy wanted him to say that.

  Then Shad thought he heard Daddy crying, but he wasn’t ever sure because Daddy was hugging him. One of Shad’s ears got smashed into Daddy’s shirt and the other smothered by his big arm. Shad felt Daddy shudder all over. They stood that way until the fog lifted itself up and became a cloud and floated far, far away.

  Shad pulled his silk shirt from the bucket, wrung out the water, and hung it on the line. He’d have to iron it later. Then he scrubbed his face and arms, and the holly hedge scratches stung like the dickens. The scratches were already red, and the water made them even redder. He looked a mess.

  When he went back inside, Jeremiah was hunched over the table, slurping up soup. For a moment, Shad stood there in his Willy Johnson britches, hands on hips, water dripping down his face onto his bare chest, red splotches looking like he had the pox.

  Jeremiah pointed his spoon. “Trouble. Nothing short of trouble—him running back and forth to the Perkinsons’.”

  Shad let his head drop and bob a spell before he lifted it again. He could guess exactly what Jeremiah and Mama had been saying while he was out back. He stood fast, finding the gumption to make his case. “Granddaddy says not to hurt business, Jeremiah. You heard him.”

  “Yeah, well, other people will send tailoring our way.”

  The way he said “other people,” Shad knew he meant the Klan—meant brothers would look after their own. Shad curled his lip. “If Daddy was here, he’d like the idea of me getting lessons. Of me learning to read.”

  “Oh, listen to you, now!” said Jeremiah. “Bringing Daddy into it.”

  “Geez, Jeremiah—”

  “Boys, boys! Heavens.” Mama set aside Abigail’s dress.

  Shad splayed his elbows wide. “Mama, I’m real careful when I’m up there. But I don’t—Mama—I need them lessons. And anyhow, they’re good people—the Perkinsons. They ain’t bad. So, look—tell me this. I don’t understand how, if our family didn’t take to owning slaves and the Perkinsons didn’t, neither, now why don’t that make us friendly toward each other?”

  “Ignoramus,” said Jeremiah.

  Mama sighed. “Shadrach, Lord knows slavery was wrong. But that war—it wasn’t about slavery.”

  “Amen,” said Jeremiah. “Did them Perkinsons put that idea in your head, Shad? That the war was all about slavery? Bullshit.”

  “Watch your mouth, son.”

  Shad set both fists on the top rung of a chair. “Daddy didn’t ever want us ownin’ slaves.”

  “And we never did, never will,” said Jeremiah. “We ain’t talking about slavery, Shad. We’re talking about coloreds who don’t belong here. If folks like Miz Perkinson give them reason to stay, well, it ain’t right. Them working for pennies. Taking work Clifton and me ought to get.”

  Shad frowned. “The war wasn’t about work.”

  Jeremiah arched his back and narrowed his eyes. “Yeah, well, Mr. Know-It-All. Tell me then. What was it about?”

  Shad shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Scratched his scalp.

  Jeremiah said, “Daddy didn’t fight over no right to own slaves. He fought for Virginia.”

  Shad nodded. “Seceding. Pulling out and forming our own country. The Confederate States of America.”

  “That’s right,” said Mama.

  “Amen,” said Jeremiah, still squinting at Shad, “and when you talk about Daddy, you honor his good name and his good sacrifice. You don’t smear him with no slavery bullshit.”

  “I said, watch your mouth, son.”

  “Sorry, Mama.”

  “Now, Shad,” said Mama, “no one thought slavery was right. We all agree on that. But what we don’t agree on—what the war changed—was how things get decided. Now Washington has more power than it ought to have. And them Perkinsons—they’re like all them Yankees—they’re happy the war ended the way it did. When there’s something men got to decide in Washington, the Perkinsons side with them Yankees.”

  Jeremiah pointed a finger at Shad. “And them Yankees gonna fix it to vote a colored into office.”

  “Boy!” Mama gasped.

  “I hear you, Mama.”

  “I can’t even think on it.”

  “Well, it ain’t gonna happen if we can help it, Mama. But that’s what they’s fixing to do.”

  Shad frowned. “They’s fixing the vote?”

  “Sheesh! How did you get so stupid?” said Jeremiah.

  Shad tightened his grip on the rungs of the chair. He kept down an urge to pick up the chair and swing it at Jeremiah—plumb smash it over his head.

  “They’s fixing to give coloreds the vote,” he said like he was talking to a four-year-old. “What means a colored senator might-could get himself voted into office.”

  Mama shook her head. “Just thinking on coloreds ruling Virginia, why, it’s enough to make George Washington cry.”

  “And schooling them coloreds,” said Jeremiah, “well, darn if it don’t get ’em ready to run for office.”

  Mama shook her head. “That Freedmen’s Bureau setting up schools for coloreds? Ain’t nothing good to come of it.”

  “Problem with coloreds,” Jeremiah went on, “is they ain’t smart enough to get elected, so there’s no use wasting time tryin’ to teach ’em. They’re so stupid, they can’t even read.”

  “Can, too,” Shad mumbled.

  Jeremiah leaned in close and put his beady brown eyes in Shad’s face. “What was that?” His hot breath smelled like rotten fruit.

  Shad bit the inside of his cheek.

  “What are you saying?” asked Mama with a can’t-believe-it hush.

  Shad stared at the dirt floor.

  Mama rapped her knuckles on the table. “You saying you know coloreds who can read?”

  Shad shook his head. “Uh, no, ma’am.”

  “What’re you saying, then?”

  Shad’s nostrils flared as he took a slow breath—a breath so deep he wished his lungs would carry him up to the ceiling, up and out and away from this little white house. He let out the air, shaking his head, then nodding, making up his mind what to say, what not to say. “Look. I think—I just think—well, thing is, I don’t know.”

  Mama frowned.

  “Spit it out,” said Jeremiah.

  Shad rubbed a hand over his mouth. His own mama couldn’t read a lick, and he knew full well that nothing good would come of talk about coloreds and book-learning. Why, if he so much as hinted about a school for colored children? No, he dared not say a thing. His head throbbed. Seconds passed.

  “Mama,” said Jeremiah, “I told you he was an ignoramus.”

  “Now, son.”

  “Wasting his time tryin
g to read.” Jeremiah turned from Mama to Shad. “You know what you’re doing? You’re making a fool of yourself—doing chores for Miz Elizabeth. You ain’t never gonna read.”

  Shad stood, knocking over his chair. “Shut up.” He ducked into the bedroom for his FEED AND SEED shirt. He should show them—prove himself—find Daddy’s book and read it out loud. He could do it!

  But instead he ground his teeth. He slammed a fist into the wall. He wasn’t ready. He could read some now—yes, he could! But not with his thoughts in a jumble. Not right now. He pulled on his shirt, stomped a foot, and stormed out of the house.

  28

  A Newspaper

  ALL THE WAY up Nine Mile Road, Shad’s heart thumped in his ears. He swung his fists, mad at himself for not getting his thoughts straight. Angry that he couldn’t begin to explain how Mama and Jeremiah were wrong. Plumb wrong. Those colored children—why, even Nathaniel could read right good. And Rachel and Eloise with their Shakespeare and such? Shad could only dream that one day his reading might come close to theirs.

  No, he couldn’t talk at all about those children. Right now they were in such a heap of danger, it hurt to think about them. Jeremiah had seen Nathaniel in that shed. Now Shad needed to find a way to stitch everything straight—to rip out the seams of Jeremiah’s story and start it all over again. But this fabric had gotten itself all tied up in knots, and Shad couldn’t set a lick of it right.

  He turned on Twenty-third Street, up the hill—always a hill. Lord, this town exhausted him. He walked, and his thoughts tore up his mind. What was it about everybody thinking coloreds were stupid as mules? Maybe it was the coloreds’ fault. Like Rachel herself, putting on the ignorant Negress show when she went to market. Well, then, she had only herself to blame. But she wasn’t stupid! Shad put both hands on his head and squeezed.

  When he got to Venable Street, he flailed his arms at a gray tabby—boo!—and the cat darted up a tree. The sun was high and soon sweat was streaming down his face. The sky was clear, and try as he might, he couldn’t feel Daddy looking down on him today. He wondered what Daddy would say—how Daddy would set things right—if only he’d come back from the war. If only . . .

  At Seventeenth and Main, Shad ducked under the blue and white Weaver’s Fine Tailoring sign and set his hand on the doorknob. He was just about to plunge inside when a vendor caught his eye. He’d seen the man a hundred times, but today he saw him anew. The newspaperman.

  He stood across Main Street at the corner of the marketplace—a colored gentleman in a shabby gray vest and trousers, crumpled white sleeves, brown shoes with holes at the toes, a flat cap on his head. A man old enough to be Shad’s father, but dark enough to be Rachel’s. He stood by a bundle of papers, twine around them. In one arm he carried another bundle, and with his free hand, he held a paper in the air.

  Shad froze at Granddaddy’s door. The newspaper. George Nelson had told him to give it a go. Bring a copy to his next lesson. Shad swallowed. He had never tried to read the paper. No point in trying—the print was small and crowded, clearly a setup for failure. But if George Nelson had thought he was ready? Shad squinted, his hand on Granddaddy’s doorknob, trying to get up the courage to cross the street.

  The newspaperman handed a paper to a man in a top hat and pocketed a coin in return. Shad watched him glance about for new customers, and, seeing none, he sat on the bundle of tied-up papers and wiped his brow on a sleeve. The crowds had thinned—it was late morning—and Shad knew the man would leave soon. He’d walk toward Richmond proper, where he might sell another paper outside one of the popular lunch spots.

  Shad watched him wipe his brow again, then drop his head over the papers in his lap. He sat there—just sat—and Shad stared, wondering if this man, too, could read.

  The man must have felt Shad’s eyes upon him, for he lifted his head. Then he jerked his chin up at Shad. He stood with a smile and held a paper aloft. Did Shad want to buy?

  Shad glanced left and right, waited for a carriage to rattle past, then strolled across.

  “A paper today, son?” The man’s voice was inviting—warm and in hope of a purchase.

  “Uh, what are the headlines?” Shad slouched for a better look.

  The man shrugged. “You tell me. I don’t read ’em. Only sell ’em. And, uh, beg pardon, son, but if you don’t mind my asking—you okay?”

  Shad frowned.

  “The spots there.” He pointed to Shad’s arms and face. “I know a good healer.”

  “Oh, uh, it’s nothing. I ran into a holly hedge this morning.”

  The man chuckled. “Okay, then. A little salt will sting but keep ’em clean, son. You want a paper?” He lifted the newspaper higher.

  Shad ran a finger across the large, fancy letters at the top. THE DAILY RICHMOND ENQUIRER. He glanced at the columns and his body tightened all over. Reading this would be hard. Too hard. The print was awfully small—more like the Bible than George Nelson’s primer for beginners. His eyes settled on clear block type above the columns. TUESDAY MORNING, JUNE 18, 1867.

  The man thrust a finger at the text and tapped impatiently on the third of six columns. “What about that one?”

  Shad glanced at the man’s face and in that split second, it was the oddest thing—his eyes dulled, his gaze dropped. “A nickel,” he said with a vacant stare.

  Shad rubbed the back of his neck, sure that this man could read. But clearly, he was set on hiding it. Did coloreds learn reading and hiding-their-reading at the same time? Letters and blank stares? Shad narrowed his eyes, and Rachel’s words came into his head. Those who survive in Richmond reinvent themselves as circumstances dictate.

  “Only a nickel,” the man said again.

  Shad felt for his pocket but had no coins. A week ago he’d gotten payment for the foot mat, but those coins were safely buried in a cubby under his bed.

  “I’ll ask my granddaddy.” He turned to cross Main Street again, but in that moment a horse and buggy were coming toward him. He glanced at the handsome open carriage, mahogany with painted red trim. Then his eyes nearly popped out of his head. His mouth fell open. On a black leather-covered bench sat none other than George Nelson and Widow Perkinson.

  The little man waved wildly, and Shad froze. Good Lord. It was hard enough for him to keep clearheaded over his lie about lessons from Miss Elizabeth. Did George Nelson understand how important it was to keep their arrangement secret? Shad didn’t want to be seen in public with him.

  Shad glanced around. There was the baker. The fishmonger. Farmers with late-season peas and early beans. The iceman chatting with the man in the top hat. The candle maker. Many of them knew Shad was a Weaver. He couldn’t run from George Nelson. But he could steer the conversation toward tailoring.

  George Nelson wore the dusty gray-green waistcoat and three-corner hat. Beside him, Mrs. Perkinson looked lovely as ever with her ginger-cinnamon hair curling out from beneath a pale yellow bonnet that matched her dress—one that Shad remembered Granddaddy stitching a year ago.

  “Shadrach!” called George Nelson. The carriage stopped and he climbed down to the street, hopping over a puddle from yesterday’s rain.

  “Sir,” said Shad, extending a hand and asking rather loudly, “did you want to be fitted for that suit today?”

  George Nelson frowned. “A suit? Why, here’s the newspaper. Have you read this issue? Good heavens, son, what are all these scratches?” The Yankee accent pegged the little man right away as a carpetbagger, and Shad cringed, fearing that every face in the market was now looking their way.

  “I took a tumble,” he muttered. “It’s nothing. Really.”

  He heard Mrs. Perkinson call, “Mr. Nelson, we’ve already seen this morning’s paper.”

  “Well, Shadrach,” George Nelson said, “do you have your own copy? Have you read the front page?”

  Shad coughed. “No, sir. I, uh—I h
aven’t got a nickel, and—”

  “Ah, of course. Here, here.” George Nelson fumbled in his trouser pockets for a coin, and Shad felt his chest tighten. His throat. His fists. He wanted to run. Wanted George Nelson to run. Wanted everyone’s eyes to turn away. Couldn’t people mind their own business? His thoughts raced. What a shabby suit George Nelson wore—how poorly it fitted, how odd this leprechaun looked. How he wanted to steer the man across the street and into Weaver’s Fine Tailoring and away from all these people.

  He coughed and collected himself. “How about that fitting today, sir?”

  George Nelson raised his eyebrows.

  Mrs. Perkinson called from the carriage. “I have a student coming to the house in half an hour, Mr. Nelson.”

  George Nelson turned toward her. “This boy has a fine idea, Mrs. Perkinson. I think I will get fitted for a new suit today.” He exchanged a nickel for the newspaper and thrust the pages into Shad’s hands.

  “Can you do it next week?” called Mrs. Perkinson.

  George Nelson ignored her and pointed to an article on the front page. “There, Shad. What does that say?”

  Shad cleared his throat. The words blurred together, and he narrowed his eyes. He set a finger under a line and studied the letters. “Uh, Letter from Wash-ing-ton.”

  “Yes, that’s exactly right.”

  “Sir,” called Mrs. Perkinson again.

  He glanced up. “Yes, Mrs. Perkinson? I’ll walk back to the house from here. Don’t worry about me.”

  “But it’s straight uphill.”

  “No problem. Shadrach can point me in the proper direction. I haven’t had a good walk since I arrived.”

  “Really, Mr. Nelson, I think—”

  She stopped abruptly. Shad turned. A figure had appeared between the carriage and the market. A tall boy who sauntered toward Shad and George Nelson, blocking Mrs. Perkinson’s view.