Dossie wanted to touch him and sway him from his rage. Her fingers could be persuasive. She could insinuate them in his clothes and make him smile as she’d done before. Maybe she ought to have run at him, circled his neck with her arms, and pressed herself against him so that he could feel her heart and her circumstance and forget the dress. Surely the crisis was that Pet was injured, cracked up very badly. Yet Duncan had fixed his eye on the ripped dress and been completely focused on that bit of it. And the shawl. He said such rude things about her lost shawl as if it were a virgin girl dragged through the mud. Now was the time to be a little swallow that could fly the distance, slip in, search the tavern, and retrieve the shawl and bring it home.
Because Dossie had turned her face into her pillow and cried throughout the night, had let him also cry onto her swelling skin, and had finally slept with her nose caked and mouth open, she woke up more swollen, feeling her face chafed raw. Her knees ached also because she’d slammed onto them when Duncan had hit her, which was what he had done no matter what she woke wanting to believe.
Though Duncan was contrite, he continued fuming into the next days. He shouted that Pet and Jan were fools to think the Irish would accept them as equals in the tavern. He reviewed all of his previous lectures to them on the subject. He shouted at Dossie that it was little wonder there’d been a brawl. Pet had sat in an Irish bar at a table in the middle of the room with dark Dossie on his arm, and Jan had the audacity to dance their best jiggers into the ground.
“And what must they thought of you, woman? There you was sittin’ in a white man’s tavern with a white man!”
Duncan’s shouting was so loud and furious that Dossie wished he would slap her again and leave off haranguing. No. She would not ever wish to be slapped again. She felt the bones in her ears still rattling. She wished only that the slap could have been the last of it.
Dossie hadn’t thought about Pet being a white-looking man. He was as he’d always been—her cousin. They were all of them cousins—her and Jan and Pet. She hadn’t thought about the temper of the room around them. She’d been caught up in the jig competition, oblivious to all but Jan’s flying feet and his saucy smile. They had all three forgotten themselves in the place. They’d danced at the wedding. They had been the beautiful cousins then. But in that Irishman’s tavern, they were somebody else.
Hat considered how tenderly her husband lifted his son and brought him into the house. Pet fainted once when he was shifted, and his head lolled on his father’s chest. His father held it and kissed it there for the long moment that they worked to rouse him. She had never seen Mr. Wilhelm so tender. Hat herself cried out to see Pet’s scars and bruises. She sat at his bedside and dozed only when he neither moaned nor trembled, when his breathing was neither shallow and quiet nor rattling loudly.
Hat and Noelle kept Pet still in the bed. They laid plasters across his chest to draw the pain from him. At first Pet writhed and moaned, but then Hat brought her chair to the bedside and fed him whiskey by the spoonful to ease his pain. She held his hand and bathed his head.
When several days had passed, Pet’s vigor began returning. He felt the warm things that lay across his body. He felt the touches of his nurse mother. He fought against coming wide awake because her bending over him—her bedside vigil—was so pleasurable. He tried to remain still so that she would continue to peck at his face with her lips while she tightened his bed and drew the blankets under his chin. When he could control himself no longer, he opened his eyes to hail her.
“Mama.”
Hat smiled broadly, and Pet lost his pallor at once in response.
“Oh, you are back!” Hat began wiping Pet’s moist forehead with her apron. She called his father, who rushed in to the bedside, and for a moment Pet thought he had died and gone to heaven. His parents were together, both smiling at him.
“He has scars as well as bruises, Ernst. Why does he fight so much?” Hat asked her husband later, sounding like a child asking for an explication of a Bible verse.
“Ask your brother, Hattie,” Ernst Wilhelm replied.
Hat was leery of Duncan, nervous still at what she imagined he would do to Dossie. She had confronted Duncan that first night. “Brother, you should not be harsh with her.”
“Hattie, I ought to box your ears for lettin’ her go off with them boys,” Duncan had shouted.
“Is she a child or a grown woman?” Hat had answered back and further riled him.
“Hattie, you were wrong not to stop her.” Duncan glared, and Hattie did feel culpable. “She ain’t a slut to be hangin’ about in a public house. You know that even if she don’t. Your husband would chastise you if he’d caught you in a public house full of drunk Irish and your dress was torn and some bogtrotting bastard had your shawl wrapped up round his jasper!”
“Punkin, please…,” she had gasped.
“It’s finished, Hattie.”
So Hat had dedicated herself to nursing Pet and forgot about Dossie, Jan, or anybody else. She satisfied her nascent curiosity about her son and examined all of the things from his pants pockets and his chests while he slept. She ran her hand along the bottom of his drawers and found billets-doux and all else. An embroidered handkerchief buried deep below some shirts gave her pause, and Hat tried very hard to note the design, then put it back as if it had not been touched. She looked and looked at his face as she bathed his head and swabbed his ears, nose, and eyes.
Hat confiscated several flasks, cigar cutters, pipes, and pipe-cleaning implements. She was concerned at the number of knives that Pet seemed to own. She had a boot maker in to measure after she and Noelle scraped and bathed Pet’s feet and trimmed his toenails. She gave away his old boots.
Pet was powerless to resist his mother’s ministrations and intrusions, since he was weak and in pain. He was made to wear one of his father’s sleeping gowns and be covered in shawls when he was propped up for feeding. His head was shaved to ensure his fever did not return.
Hat enticed Pet’s appetite by filling the house with cooking aromas, though after consultations with Noelle and her medicinal texts she placed Pet on a strict regime that allowed only broth and tea and mush and benne wafers. Hat was frightened of the damage the men’s kicks may have done to her son’s innards. Thus she gave him teas and flushed him and held the chamber pot before him herself so that she might note the color of his water as it flowed.
Jan’s wounds, such as they were, healed up with Noelle’s aid. He’d come out worse in tussles with Pet. The damage was done to his feelings. Guilt. He was guilty for all of it. He took it on himself that what had happened to Pet and what had happened to Dossie were his fault. He wanted to slip in and see Pet, but Hat wouldn’t let him. “Gwan off, Jan,” she’d said. Jan knew he better stay away from Dossie, and he did so. They all blamed him.
“I’m sorry, An’ Hat,” he said weeks later. “Pet’s better?” Jan came up behind Hat with soft shoes as she fussed about in the kitchen.
“He’s come back to himself. But no drinkin’,” Hat admonished. She let Jan come close and brush her cheek with his lips, though she did not peck back at his. “He’s not strong yet.”
“I’m sorry he was hurt. It’s my fault.” For once he didn’t raise his eyes and try to win her favor with handsomeness. His contrition was abject, but still she wanted to fuss and fume.
“Yes,” Hat answered. “You made the trouble. You made trouble for her, too. You made trouble for her with her husband. Are you a wolf that can’t come inside and sleep near the fire, Jan? Don’t make no more trouble for Dossie. Leave her alone, Jan,” Hat implored.
Jan had always wanted to call An’ Hat Mama like Pet did. Hat never encouraged it. She mothered him, but he felt that she always wanted to remain his aunt. Like Noelle, she wanted to leave a slot for Cissy, her beloved sister, a ghost haunting their dinner table.
“Colored people have got to be careful. I think you forgot that. Dossie should have known better herself than be pulled in there.
I should have stopped her. It’s somewhat my fault, too. I should have slapped your face for asking her, before I let you pull her to go in there. I’m sorry I didn’t. Your uncle is right to say I been too soft on you—so easy persuaded by your smilin’. I think your uncle has taught her not to be swayed by a honey-tongue fancy boy who would take her into a rowdy house. You’re becoming a caution, Jan. You’re becoming a dangerous kinda man for a decent colored woman to know!”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry a thousan’ times. But An’ Hat, he’s got no right. He’s got no right to—”
“Maybe she was too young to marry him. Duncan is grown. He ain’t no boy to trifle with. But she’s accepted him. Dossie wants him—not you, Jan. She’s living in his light because she loves him. She’s his wife. She takes what he gives her. She’s got her guile and her meekness and her special secrets to influence him, you know that.” Hat touched Jan’s hot cheek. Her gesture was a mock flirtation, and it stung him. She made it clear that she did not believe his love was sincere—chaste even. She thought he only wanted to fuck Dossie.
“I would not prick her finger if it would make her cry out. I love her,” Jan pronounced very solemnly.
Hat was surprised.
“Her husband chastised her,” Hat said to Honey Vander, though not knowing actually whether he had. Honey Vander heard the words in silence. It was a rash, punishable act to go into a white men’s drinking place. Honey Vander had mulled it. She figured Dossie Smoot would think twice about her behavior in town now. Colored women had to win and keep their reputations at some cost. Honey considered that a lesson had been taken. Her Sally would now never consider doing such a thing.
Everyone in Russell’s Knob knew what had happened in Paterson. Everyone knew how badly Petrus Wilhelm had been beaten. All of them knew that Dossie Smoot was at the middle of a brawl in an Irish tavern full of raucous dancers and drinking men. She was with her husband’s wild, capering nephews without her husband. That her dress had been ripped was the subject of whispers. As it stood in the town’s view, Dossie’s reputation had a blemish that was expiated by her contrition and the willingness of her husband to forgive her.
7
AUGUST VANDER’S PAPA WORKED for Ernst Wilhelm in the brewery. As little shavers, Jan and August and Pet had ripped about together taking messages and eating corn cakes outside of Hat’s kitchen. Though there was some envy among them now, Jan needed company and attention, and August Vander needed drinks. Pet needed a small band about to truss him.
“No colored men ’lowed in?” Jan asked.
“Not a one,” August answered.
August Vander’s currency for a lark—a long afternoon of ale drinking leading up to a night of whiskey—was his willingness to spark up things with randy conversation. “Not in the Alta Club. In this house are the prettiest dark gals you can picture. No white ones. And they’re reserved for white men only—no Africans, no jumble boys, no ’Talians, no Indians, no Greeks. Just for your pale, white men. You know, your rebels and your redcoats, your Scots, your Frenchies, your Dutch,” August Vander spat at saying “Dutch” as many did in Russell’s Knob. “And your Germans,” he added.
“Oh, I don’t believe it,” Jan piped. “Whorehouses in Paterson are wide open. They let in Europes of all kinds and jumble boys and blacks and whites and Indians.”
“Them are bawdy houses. This here is a better house,” August insisted.
Pet wouldn’t admit it, but he was leery of going to Paterson. And especially he didn’t want Uncle to know this and think he was a coward. He had heard Papa tell Mama that he and Duncan and some other men had gone down to town and cracked open the head of a blind-drunk bastard that stumbled out of the back of the same Irish tavern that had given him the beating. Then they went back and did it a second time so that the bastards would know they were hard and unpredictable. Mama purred with satisfaction at the news, and Pet marveled at the vengeful hearts of the Smoots. But he wanted less trouble from now on.
Pet breathed deeply and rubbed his sensitive ribs. He had promised his mother he wouldn’t drink whiskey at all and would not fight (he meant to keep this promise!) and would “stay away from loose lollies.” His mother had giggled at her own words and pinched his nose.
“Maybe you could get in, Pet,” Jan said.
“What? Oh, shut up, Jan! You probably could, too,” Pet said. “You got the price.”
“But not in the Alta Club. That’s a place for pale white-skinned men like you and your father,” August said to Pet, “only.” August looked straight into Pet’s face. He had the eyes all the Vanders have that people called molasses bullets because they’re the color that molasses becomes in the deep wintertime and they are hard like ice.
“What does it matter?” Pet asked. He felt the one glass of whiskey he’d drunk sear his stomach and roar to his head. He chose to be dumb to August’s provocation. But a realization crept up on him that his pale face had kept him from knowing some deep tenets that Jan knew—that August knew—because their faces said something different from his face in the town. And he didn’t know what they knew, or did he? He knew full well that he and Jan had no business challenging them Irish dancers in that tavern and bringing Dossie in there. Uncle was right about that.
“It don’t make any matter unless you want to see what kinda pussy they got in the Alta Club,” August Vander continued slyly.
“I don’t believe they got such a house. We never been. I never heard of it. Uncle’s never been there,” Pet said, now feeling ensnared in some trap.
“Don’t be stupid, Pet, we’re colored men. How can we know about it? You the only white one,” Jan put in. The liquor was affecting him, too. It made him careless and disloyal to his cousin.
“I ain’t white,” Pet said.
“Well, you look white,” Jan came back at him.
“You and your papa.” Again August spoke in a sly voice of instigation. “You the only ones look white enough to pass through those doors.”
“I ain’t no white man,” Pet said as he’d said so many times before.
“Pet, don’t be dumb about it. You know what you look like. You know what people take you for.”
They all drank one more shot of whiskey, rode into Paterson, and Pet agreed to go in the Alta Club. It was a show for Jan and August—a lark. When had he been immune to a lark?
“Go on up there and go in and look around, Pet,” Jan said. “You can bring us back the word of the beauties. You can get you a taste and tell us all about it. We’ll never get to New Orleans.” Jan and August guffawed and hiccuped.
Pet loosened up with the raucous laughing on the ride into town and put aside his vows to his mother. What did it matter? What was the big tick in being white skinned? For one brief moment of ale insight, though, Pet felt that August was envious of his white looks and was getting back at him. Maybe Jan was, too? Pet chuckled to himself because he had always been jealous of Jan’s place among the golden gorgeous and the pretty browns and the lovely blacks of Russell’s Knob. Jan was the beautiful one with his tawny skin and dark, curly hair and Uncle’s majestic, formidable face. Jan’s eyes were bright and always dancing. He was the one called handsome. Suddenly now, it occurred to Pet that Papa might be keeping something sweet from him by not letting him be a white—not sharing these privileges with his white-looking son.
The thought that carried Pet into the place was that it might actually be fun to go in just to see what there was and to tell Jan and August about it. It would be a unique pleasure to have something to brag to Jan about.
“Gwan, Pet. We’ll sit in back with the wagon. Take your time, boy. You got money? You got to have dough.” They laughed more, Jan stuffed his own money in Pet’s pockets, plucked a bit of straw from Pet’s hair, and brushed at his clothes.
“Go on, white boy,” August cajoled. He wondered to himself why they didn’t take their pooled resources and go to a house that welcomed all comers. Of course, he was the fool that had started this idea up.
They drove the wagon into a grove at back, and Pet had to walk past the barn to enter at the front door. Well, he knew it all then—or most of it—when he saw Freyda, his papa’s horse, in the barn. His father’s mount would not be in such comfort in a place that had not made his papa comfortable. She had been brushed. Her mane looked dry and fluffy. She wore a feed bag and looked at Pet with surprise. Whiskey told him to snatch the feed bag off Freyda’s face and punish her treachery in some way, but when he put his hands on her a voice called out, “Can I he’p you, suh?” A small stable urchin ran up.
“Whose horse is this here?” Pet demanded.
The stable boy looked up frightened and stammered, “This Mr. Ernst Wilhelm’s mount.” Pet started at the boy’s tone. “What’s your name, boy?” Pet asked harshly.
“I’m Careful Jackson, suh,” the boy answered.
“Humph,” Pet muttered, in a complete fluster.
The madam admitted Pet to the Alta Club, after he showed her a persuasive amount of cash and recognized that he was not innocent. Pet entered the parlor and sat looking about for five or ten minutes. He stood up again, returned to the anteroom, and found the madam at her post near the door. Pet pulled another fold of bills and asked to be taken to Ernst Wilhelm. The madam took the money and said, putting her palm in the center of Pet’s chest, “Don’t take it out on that girl and don’t tear my place up.”
When the lovely girl opened the door Pet had banged on, she was wearing a shimmering blue robe. She was young, about his own age, and brown skinned. The girl he’d ogled at the market! In the room behind her, Pet saw his father also wearing a robe. His father lurched up from an incline, completely breathless with shock at seeing Pet in the room. He could not stand.
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