Dark Series, The Color of Seven and The Color of Dusk (Books We Love Special Edition)

by Gail Roughton

  “I still don’t want Sadie to leave you, Papa.”

  “Paul, I can run this house with my eyes closed. I’m still goan handle this house too, never intended anything different.”

  “And she comes and goes as she pleases, son. If she’s not at your house, then you know where she is.”

  “Whoooo,” sighed Paul softly, the breath whistling past his lips. “Yes, I guess I will. And Joshua doesn’t know—”

  “No. He doesn’t know anything about it,” said Dr. Devlin. Joshua broke out of shock and ran, heedless of the noise. They didn’t want him. He’d never been anything but an embarrassment and his parents didn’t want him. They never had and they didn’t now, and they were giving him away, passing him on to Paul as though he were the slave boy he would have been twenty-five years before, available for purchase and resale. The noise of his running feet sounded harshly on the hardwood floors of the hall and startled the occupants of Everett’s study.

  “I don’t think I’d make a bet on that,” said Paul, and stood back up, moving rapidly to the door.

  “Oh, God!” exclaimed Dr. Devlin. “I have to catch him, I have to explain!”

  “No, Papa.” Paul paused at the door and threw up his hand. “I don’t think he’s goin’ to be real inclined to listen to you or Sadie right now. I’ll go.” And he ran down the hall, following his newly discovered brother.

  Joshua’s huddled figure crouched on the ground outside the backdoor. Paul put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. He jerked violently away.

  “Leave me be!” Joshua shouted, throwing off Paul’s hand. “Just leave me be! All dese years dey lied to me! Tellin’ me my mama was dead and dey didn’t know my daddy! Dey let me think I’s some trash dey found on de street!”

  “Joshua, they didn’t. They love you, they took care of you, they did the best they could.”

  “Well, it weren’t good ‘nuff!”

  “Josh—”

  “All dose nights, when I was little, when I laid ‘wake and wondered ‘bout my mama an’ whut she like and was she lookin’ down from heaven and watchin’ over me, and it was Sadie, all de time, all de time!”

  “But Josh, your mama was watching over you. All the time, just like she always watched over me.”

  “Mist’ Paul, you do it? Like Doc say? You take me with you when you—”

  “Of course I will. But let’s get rid of the mister, alright?”

  “No, suh. No, suh, we can’t do dat.” Josh raised his head. “I heard y’all, heard de whole thing. Shouldna’ listened but I just couldn’t walk away, and I guess dey was right. I got no place in any world but de one dey done made for me, and I’m mad, I can’t help it, they coulda tol’ me! But I can’t live in dis world de same way do anybody knows I’s Doc’s son. And if I doan call you Mist’, anybody hear me, dey think I’s just an uppity nigger. No place in any world for an uppity nigger, Mist’ Paul. No place a’tall. An’ I won’t be no trouble, I’ll look after you, I’ll take real good care of you, keep yo’ horse groomed and yo’ boots shined—”

  Paul winced. He put both his hands on Josh’s shoulders, and the boy turned around and threw himself into Paul’s arms.

  “What a world,” Paul said softly as he held the boy. “What a goddamned mess! Don’t worry, little brother. We’ll take care of each other. We will. You’ll see.”

  And as Joshua sobbed, he reached out and grabbed the lifeline offered by his brother in this sea of horrible and hurtful emotions. A new alliance, an alliance of brothers, one black, one white, an alliance that would last to the grave and beyond, forged itself in hot and scalding tears from the wreckage of the night.

  Throughout that night, Paul tossed restlessly under his mosquito netting, Joshua’s voice echoing in his ears. I won’t be no trouble, I’ll look after you, I’ll take real good care of you, keep yo’ horse groomed and yo’ boots shined—

  Paul cringed. His brother, carrying the same blood in his veins that he carried himself, spending his life grooming Paul’s horse and shining Paul’s boots? Fulfilling their father’s highest expectations for him of becoming a home-trained horse vet?

  No. Hell, no.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Paul had plans for his brother. But they’d require teamwork. After all, Paul was getting married. And if his bride had her way about it, which he was sure she would, he was getting married a lot sooner than his future mother-in-law thought suitable. It was time to talk with Chloe.

  Paul drove the buggy over to the Duval household, picnic basket in the back. He didn’t pull up into the driveway because he didn’t want the chaperone Chloe’s mother would insist on, even though they were engaged. They’d gotten very good at avoiding that in the few weeks he’d been home. Chloe waited for him out of view of the house, visions of a few lazy hours spent in his arms by the riverbank dancing in her head.

  He jumped lightly down from the buggy to lift her up, retaking his own seat seconds later.

  “God, you look good,” he said, flicking the reins.

  “You look strange,” she commented, studying him carefully.

  “I do?”

  “You do. Like something’s really on your mind. Haven’t decided you want to stay a bachelor, have you?” she asked. She smiled as she said it. She’d felt him feel the lightning bolt that struck him from above his first night home at the small dinner party for twenty his father’d held in celebration of his homecoming. Her own lightning bolt she’d felt years ago in childhood, but she’d never forget its intensity.

  Chloe laughed at his facial response. No verbal clarification needed.

  “Then what on earth’s the matter?”

  Paul guided the horse forward, raising his hand in greeting to the pedestrians.

  “Oh, Lord, that was Celia Davenport!” he exclaimed. “Your Mama’s goin’ to hear about this!”

  “I don’t care,” said Chloe pertly and shrugged her shoulders. She hooked her arm underneath his to show how much she didn’t care. “I’m almost a married lady. She can’t lock me in my room. I know how to climb down the oak tree, done it plenty of times.”

  “Have you now?”

  “I have. So what’s the matter?”

  “I guess I need to be sure you still want to marry me. After I tell you what I’m goin’ to tell you.”

  “Lord, that sounds solemn!”

  “Solemn subject.”

  Chloe studied this man she’d chosen when she was five and he was twelve. He hadn’t appreciated his favored status at the time. In fact, he’d spent an inordinate amount of energy avoiding her attentions.

  “You’ve seen the world, you don’t want to stay in town, you want to go up North, or back to Europe. Fine with me, I don’t give a damn.”

  “Chloe!” he exclaimed in mock horror. He loved her disregard of convention.

  “Well, I don’t. Whither thou goest, and all that. Is that the problem? Because you have been away a long time and I’ll go anywhere with you, really.”

  “No, that’s not it at all. Couldn’t wait to get home and I never want to leave.”

  “Then what is it?”

  Paul turned onto Wharf Street, taking the road out of the city limits proper towards a little secluded spot they knew down by the banks of the Ocmulgee.

  “I have a brother,” he said, and began to speak. By the time they’d reached their destination and spread the tablecloth on a grassy rise under the overhanging willows, Chloe knew as much as he did.

  She spread the food, the bread and butter, the thick slices of roast beef and ham, the fried chicken legs, the bowl of potato salad, and filled their plates. She handed him his and settled into a pretty pose, her long skirt billowing off the cloth and onto the grass.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know I’m missing something here, but what are you so upset about? It’s not exactly like it’s something that’s never happened before, now is it?”

  “And what would you know about it, Miss Worldly?”

  “A lot,” she sa
id frankly. “You don’t really think our mamas can always keep us in hot houses, do you? To tell the truth, you’ve been gone so much you wouldn’t know, but there’s always been talk about your father and Sadie. I’ve heard Mama and Papa. ‘Course, they don’t know that. Mama, she just can’t stand not to see a man married, one night she was planning a party and carrying on about how Ella Tannen would be such a good match for Doc Everett now that she was out of mourning for her husband, and Papa just hollered and told her she shouldn’t count on it ‘cause that would interfere with Everett’s brown sugar. I wish I could have seen it instead of just hear it. I bet Mama turned puce! Purely puce!” Chloe laughed in delight at the memory of her indomitable mother struck speechless.

  “Thank you, darlin’, that makes me feel so much better. Everybody in town knew about it but me!”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” said Chloe, nibbling daintily on a biscuit. “And I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything about Joshua. Besides,” she gave a pretty shrug, “everybody loves your papa. As long as he keeps it private, nobody’s going to say anything about it. I mean, like I said, it’s not like it’s all that uncommon.”

  “No,” Paul agreed, finally biting into a chicken leg. “But it makes me feel like I don’t even know Papa, you know? He’s so straight-forward, so honest, and they went to such lengths. Sent me to Charleston that summer, Sadie went off somewhere ‘visiting’, they said—”

  He broke off as Chloe laughed.

  “Overabundance of caution, if you ask me,” she said.

  “Why’s that?”

  “’Cause it involves Sadie. And if Sadie didn’t want anybody to say anything, then they wouldn’t. Well, the Negroes wouldn’t, anyway. I guess the white folks might have been a problem but then, they don’t pay that much attention when a darky housekeeper has a baby.”

  Chloe jumped from point to point a lot. Most folks thought she was scatterbrained. Paul knew better. She was so smart she frequently forgot her audience couldn’t follow the darting quickness of her thoughts because she never had trouble following anybody else’s, frequently before they knew where they were going themselves.

  “Chloe, you did it again. You skipped something somewhere. I don’t understand.”

  Her trilling laughter floated out under the willows.

  “Darlin’, you have been away from home for a long time. You just don’t know all the ins and outs around town anymore, that’s all.”

  “So tell me.”

  “Well, with the other Negroes, Sadie has considerable—power.”

  “Power?”

  “Power,” Chloe affirmed emphatically.

  “What kind of power? How do you know about it?”

  “Well, I have power of my own.”

  “I’m well aware.”

  “Not like that. I mean, I’ve got Betsy.”

  “Chloe—”

  “My maid. Betsy.”

  “I know who Betsy is, I just don’t know what that’s got to with this.”

  “Well, Betsy’s better than a telegraph. And she’s a lot more than just my maid, she’s my best friend. We practically grew up together, you know. She knows everything that goes on in town and she tells me. So I know just as much about what goes on in the Negro houses as they do. And a lot more about what goes on in the white houses than the other white folks do. Lord, I’m going to miss her!”

  “Why? She isn’t coming with you?”

  Chloe sighed. “Oh, she went and fell in love. Not that I’ve got any room to talk. But she went all calf-eyed and moony over one of the Thorpes’ tenants up at Bolingbroke and she’s getting married and turning into a farmer’s wife!”

  Paul laughed at her woebegone expression. “I’m sorry, darlin’.”

  “So am I!” declared Chloe emphatically. Betsy was much better company than any of the white society girls of Chloe’s acquaintance. And certainly far more experienced. She’d already lost a lot more than her heart to her young farmer. And shared with Chloe breathless descriptions of the franker joys of physical love. Sometimes as Chloe lay awake in the dark and counted the days until her wedding, she thought of Paul and imagined him already lying beside her. At such times, when her body raged in a fever that couldn’t yet be slacked, she wished Betsy hadn’t been quite so informative.

  “But I still don’t understand about Sadie—”

  “Sadie knows mojos,” Chloe stated baldly.

  “Mojos?”

  “Mojos. You know, magic and love potions and things like that. The other blacks have a lot of respect for her, but they’re scared of her, too. None of them would dare cross her.”

  “I don’t believe—”

  “Believe it. I mean, she only uses good magic, but they’re all pretty sure if they made her mad enough, she could pull out some black magic real fast, too.”

  Paul stared.

  “Did I turn green?”

  “Sadie just about raised me! She never misses a service at St. Barnabas, she hauls Joshua off every Sunday! She’s better at Episcopal liturgy than I am, and you sit there and tell me she’s the local witch woman?”

  “Well,” said Chloe, shrugging again. Facts were facts and not much changed them. “She is. Didn’t know about her and your father, either, did you?”

  “I’m beginning to think I don’t know too much about anything!” he exclaimed, and examined the delicate contours of his future bride’s features. “And not only do I not know any of this, you do! You know everything about everybody in town!”

  “Not quite,” she said modestly, “but I do try hard.”

  Paul dissolved into laughter and flung his plate aside, pulling her into his arms. Even the rigid confines of the foundation garments of 1883 didn’t disguise the underlying softness. He pulled away, wondering suddenly if Chloe knew a lot more about a lot of things than he’d supposed. He certainly hoped so. He didn’t know what the hell Chloe’s mother’d told her about the physical side of marriage, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t a recommendation. All the men in town were certain Henry Duval’s male appendage had long since frozen off, considering what he had to stick it in.

  “Chloe, do you know everything about everything? I mean, like marriage? Real marriage, a man and a woman, not just wedding cakes and white icing?”

  “Not from personal experience,” she said.

  “Well, I hadn’t supposed you did,” he said with a grin.

  “But Betsy does.”

  “Which information she has shared—”

  “Betsy’s very good with words.”

  “Ahhh!”

  “And you’d better not disappoint me.”

  “Betsy, she seems to enjoy it, does she?”

  “Enjoy it? My Lord, she thinks it’s wonderful! Isn’t it supposed to be?” she asked, sudden alarm in her voice.

  “Well, yes, but sometimes, ladies seem to—”

  “Betsy says it’s the most wonderful feeling in the world, it’s like when you have to go, I mean really, really go—”

  “Go?”

  “Paul, for heaven’s sakes! You’re a doctor. You know people use chamber pots!”

  He roared.

  “Anyway, she says that’s the best she can describe it, it’s like when you really, really have to go, but you can’t right then, and then finally, when you do get to, that it feels like that, but even better.”

  “My God,” said Paul in astonishment. Best description of human orgasm he’d ever heard.

  “Is it like that?”

  “I—yes. Yes, it is. And you go downtown tomorrow and pick out the very best wedding present you can think of for Betsy and tell ‘em to charge it to me. Whatever you know she’d want, cost don’t matter.”

  “That’s very generous, darlin’! Are you sure?”

  “Chloe, you have no idea of the wedding present she’s just given me, explainin’ things to you like that!”

  She moved closer and leaned over, running her lips up his throat.

  “Then why don’t you go ahea
d and show me?” she whispered.

  Paul pulled back, temptation roaring in his veins. Such a lovely spot, and the trees were thicker further back, and it was only three weeks, and what possible harm could it do? His gaze fell on her face, reflecting her every thought. Chloe would wear the glow of sexual satisfaction in a visible aura. It would transform her from a beautiful girl into an absolutely breathtaking woman, and the difference would be there, observable to all who knew what to look for.

  Premature consummation would also subject his wife and any potential child to the tender mercies of the town matrons who kept track of all births and deaths and relentlessly backtracked the birthdate of all first children born to newly married couples. For a first child to make its appearance in the world nine months to the day from his parents’ marriage was quite acceptable. For such child to make its appearance eight months and one week after his parent’s marriage was not. He himself didn’t care, but damned if they were going to snicker behind Chloe’s back. It was only three weeks. Only. Jesus.

  He pushed her gently away. “Back, girl!”

  “Why not?” Her voice was plaintive, edging toward hurt.

  “Because you show everything you think and feel on your face. I don’t want anybody talkin’ bad about you behind your back.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I care, because I love you. It’s only three weeks, Chloe. Now move over a little and let me recover.”

  “From what? Are you in pain?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I am. But it won’t last long. Now, is it alright with you if Joshua lives with us?

  “Good Lord! Do you have to ask? Of course it’s alright.”

  “But you see, it’s not goin’ to be the way or for the reason that Papa wants, so you might want to think about it a little harder.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Chloe, I can’t do what Papa wants! I can’t just throw up my hands and say ‘oh, well, too bad the Devlin blood’s black this time’, and turn him into a manservant and a horse vet. I can’t do that!” He got up and began to pace the grass. “I mean, would you just look at me? Harvard and Edinburgh! And look at him! Same father, same blood. My brother’s goin’ to spend his life shining my boots? Like hell!”