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

by Gail Roughton

  Another murmur went through the crowd.

  “I didn’t think so,” said Joshua. “And none of you know exactly how he died, do you? Because you broke and you ran. Finally, you ran, away from Cain and his false gods. And you left Paul Devlin behind. He went down to that riverbank to free you from Cain! And he did. He did. And you know what that cost him? His life. Is there anyone here doesn’t feel a debt for that? I hope not.”

  Joshua surveyed the crowd, judging its mood.

  “I told you this was about the truth and it is. You can’t move forward till you leave the past behind and you can’t leave the past owing old debts. And there’s a way you can pay that debt. To Isaiah Gorley and to Paul Devlin. You can make sure that the truth is the most important thing in your lives and in your children’s lives. Sometimes, it’s hard, oh, Lord, it’s hard, to judge the difference between truth and lies. But there is one thing that will always help you judge. It’s called education. I want to build this church, people!”

  Joshua began to pace again, moving into the free-flowing rhythm of worship his congregation expected.

  “I want to build this church to a church Isaiah Gorley would be proud of! Are you with me?”

  “Yes, Lord!”

  “Will you help me?”

  “Yes, Lord!”

  “Will you help me move this church out? Out into the streets, to be the source of light and truth for all the folks that don’t got nowhere else to turn?”

  “Praise de Lord!”

  “That’s right!” exclaimed Joshua, moving freely now with the swaying rhythm of the crowd. “And to praise the Lord we have to know Him! And we have to teach our children to know Him! We have to teach our children the truth!”

  “Amen! Amen!”

  “And more than that, we have to educate our children so they can judge the truth, see the truth, for themselves!”

  “Yes, Lord!”

  Joshua, breathing heavily, stood in front of the altar. Mission accomplished, groundwork laid. The rest would follow as the day followed night.

  “It’s good to be home, people,” he said.

  * * *

  Paul materialized within the walls of the College Street House and waited for his brother’s return. He expected to wait for a while. Judging from the crowd’s enthusiasm, it’d take Joshua some time to clear the church out. Paul turned his head as the door opened.

  “You, little brother, are a dangerous man.”

  “Well,” said Joshua with a sigh, as he helped Sadie slip off her summer shawl. “Personally, I prefer not to use all that swaying and chanting but I got to say, it gets their attention.”

  “You hesh up, both of you!” said Sadie. “I wus ‘bout to bust, I’s so proud.”

  “You’re a con artist, Joshua,” said Paul, “a con artist with a cause.”

  “Damn right. All good preachers are. So what do you think?”

  “I think I’m so proud I could bust. Isaiah would be too.”

  “Well, that’s who it’s for. You and Isaiah.”

  Chapter Eight

  Had Joshua attempted to further the cause of education for education’s own sake, protests would have swelled. “I ken sign my name an’ count my money an’ dat was good ‘nuff for my daddy an’ it be good ‘nuff fo’ me.” That’s what the congregation would’ve said. Now all of his plans proceeded with the express approval of the church, its members, and the Holy Ghost. All of this was for a cause, a reason. For the church. Jesus was looking down and smiling. Josh didn’t feel a bit guilty, either. He figured Jesus was looking down and smiling.

  The executor and trustee of Everett’s Will sold the house on College Street. Everett’s attorney had never met this Executor. P. J. Devlin was a distant cousin who resided in, of all places, Boston, but every family had a cross to bear and it was no wonder the Devlins hadn’t advertised their connection to Yankee relatives. Lawyer Young repressed a shudder.

  Of course, Lawyer Young didn’t know P. J. Devlin occupied not one body, but two, or that the initials P. J. consolidated the personages of Paul Devlin, supposedly deceased, and Joshua Devlin. Fortunately, the “J” portion of the entity had school friends in Boston accommodating enough to re-mail P. J.’s instructions to Lawyer Young from Boston.

  As Paul expected, Sadie bounced back with astonishing vigor. With both her boys in easy reach, she gloried in organizing the new house-shelter specially designed and constructed near St. Barnabas on Congress Street. She fussed and clucked over Joshua while helping oversee the day-to-day administration of the combination school-shelter and the ever-increasing numbers of needy passing through the doors of that shelter, christened Gorley House in honor of Isaiah Gorley.

  A dozen or so children, black and while, walked out of the textile mills and didn’t return, becoming the first permanent residents of the shelter. Sadie’s heart warmed as she watched these children revert to being children, at least a little bit, but the mixture of black and white skin worried her. So did Joshua’s steadfast and absolute refusal to use black dialect when in white company.

  “One day dose chillun goan land you in trouble, son.”

  “Mama, for God’s sake! Nobody knows or cares about any of these children. Nobody else wants ‘em!”

  “Dat doan matter none do it come to de white folks’ ‘ttenion you raisin’ ‘em all together. But dat doan worry me near as much as de way you talk.”

  “You can talk just like me. You just don’t do it very much anymore.”

  “I doan wear every necklace and broach I own at de same time, neither,” Sadie pronounced. “Ain’t necessary to show ‘em off just ‘cause I got ‘em.”

  “Mama, I can’t preach education, education, education and talk like I don’t have one! I have to show everybody talking properly isn’t anything to be ashamed of!”

  “But you doan have to do it in front of white folks! Dey think you an uppity nigger. An’ boy, shouldn’t be no need for me to tell you what happens to uppity niggers!”

  “I don’t make any trouble. I mind my own business. I don’t preach insurrection and riot. I just take care of folks nobody else wants and try to teach our own people things nobody else will.”

  “An’ de way you talk goan get you in trouble while you do it!”

  “Unnhhh!” Joshua threw up his hands and gave up the argument. He wasn’t oblivious to the hard truth at the core of Sadie’s observations and he was careful around the white folks. Not careful enough for Sadie, though.

  The nineteenth century moved closer to its merger with the twentieth century and the streets of Macon changed. Pavement appeared where horses formerly trod upon hard-packed earth. A few horseless carriages wound down the roads with noisy motors and blatting horns. A new contraption installed in some of the businesses and more elite residences of the town let folks talk to others through wires and cables.

  Life was easier for Paul with Joshua home. He visited with Joshua and Sadie almost every night, and watched Joshua’s dreams mature at breakneck speed, mostly because of the funds available to P. J. Devlin. Sadie’s sister Tamara, the pivotal force spearheading the battle against Cain, had been right all those years ago back at the beginning. He’d learned to control the new, disturbing urges surging through his body.

  Still on occasion the lust for blood and urge to hunt hit him so strongly he couldn’t ignore it. When it did, he roamed the woods with the scent of blood in his nostrils. At those times he again stalked and captured, bit and tore. And drank. And drank. And drank.

  After those nights, he always cast himself into the dark and materialized at Tamara’s little cottage near Stone Creek Swamp.

  “I thought it be ‘bout time for my best boy to come vistin’!” she always exclaimed.

  She always had some fresh-baked treat waiting for him. Blackberry cobbler when blackberries were in season, peach cobbler, pound cake, or biscuits and wild honey. He didn’t need the food but he relished the taste. It linked him somehow to normality.

  In the mid-
portion of 1906, he observed a gray tinge creeping into Tamara’s complexion, followed quickly by undeniable weight loss. She brushed his concerns aside.

  “Boy, I done lived a good life. Ain’t got no regrets. Well, I’ve always grieved I couldn’t change things for you, but ‘cept for dat, it’s been a good life. Sho’ ain’t goan start tryin’ to change nuttin’ now. What happens, son, it happen. Ain’t no use to waste time an’ energy tryin’ to change it.”

  Tamara knew, as surely as Dr. Paul Devlin knew. Her body harbored a malignant invader. She was dying.

  “Tamara, let me bring you something. You’re hurtin’, don’t try to deny it.”

  She threw back her head and laughed.

  “Where you goan get it, boy?”

  “I ain’t above a little breakin’ and enterin’ in Sol Hogue’s drug store. Not for you and not for this.”

  Tamara smiled. “I ‘preciate it, son, but I doan need it. Gots my own little remedies scattered around. An’ you de best one. You reckon maybe you might could stop in a trifle mo’ often?”

  Paul didn’t think any of Tamara’s remedies approached the strength of morphine but he knew she wouldn’t want to live in befuddled fog. He visited almost nightly and waited for the inevitable.

  “You likes it out here, doan you son?” she asked one night. “In de country.”

  “Very much.”

  “Dis yours, you know. When I gone. Yo’ own refuge. Dat marble house in de cemetery in de daytime, dat’s safer, no ways ‘round dat, but dis is yours. For yo’ nights.”

  Pain stabbed Paul’s heart. Nights without Tamara. He didn’t even want to think about it. She’d been his anchor through those first dark nights. He spoke in a light tone. “Makes me feel like a rich man, Tamara. A city house and a country house. ‘Cept mine’s a daytime house and a nighttime house.”

  “You lik’ dat?”

  “I like that.”

  Chapter Nine

  By January of 1907, Gorley House, both its shelter and orphanage, were firmly established. Quietly and without fanfare, it filled a vital community need. Neither black nor white Macon had any problem with who or what was filling that need. It was just one less thing for the city to worry about. Then in the late hours of a February night in 1907, somebody knocked on the shelter’s doors and everything changed. Forever.

  Joshua and Sadie, comfortably ensconced by the iron stove, sipped coffee from steaming mugs. Outside, the wind howled, making sure everyone knew just how bitter the night was. A hesitant knock sounded on the door, so softly Joshua wasn’t sure it was anything but the wind.

  “Was that the door?”

  “Lord, I hope not. Bad night, an’ I think all de beds full.”

  “If that’s a knock, we’ll have to find someplace. It’s freezing out there.” He opened the door. He had to drop his gaze from eye level to see her.

  She was very small, no more than five foot two or three. She hugged a big cloak to her tightly, shivering in its folds. Joshua looked into dark blue eyes. Strands of black hair had escaped their confining bun and hung, limply now, around her face. Exhaustion and illness tinted a naturally fair complexion to ghostly white.

  “I—” The caller stopped and attempted to clear the croak from her voice. Bad sore throat there, Joshua knew. He hadn’t pursued any formal medical education but he hadn’t forgotten his early training, either. If he lived in one of the small towns on the western frontier, he’d probably have ended up serving as town doctor.

  “It’s late, I know,” the caller spoke again. “I’m sorry, but I heard, someone told me—I don’t have anywhere else to go,” she finished, and simply stood.

  Johsua took her arm and pulled her inside.

  “You do now,” he said, and led her to the stove.

  “I—thank you,” she said. “I won’t bother you for long.” Her eyes rolled upward and she pitched forward to the floor.

  “Mama!” Sadie was already there, blankets in hand.

  “Trouble,” she muttered. “Bad trouble.”

  “Mama, ain’t got time for that now. Help me get this wet cloak off her. God, she’s burning up!” He shifted her slight body to remove the clinging folds of damp cloth. “Lord, she don’t weigh nothing! There’s nothing to her!”

  The last clinging folds fell away. Joshua stared down in dismay.

  “Yeah, dere is,” said Sadie in a resigned tone. Nothing she could say or do would make Joshua get this woman out of the house anytime soon.

  “Dere sho’ly is,” she repeated. She looked down at the woman’s swollen stomach, huge with child.

  “Trouble,” she repeated. “Bad trouble.”

  * * *

  Between the two of them, they got her to Sadie’s room. Joshua collected his medical supplies while Sadie shifted her from her clothes into a clean, dry nightgown. He checked her forehead again as she lay back semi-conscious against the white pillowslips.

  “Well?” asked Sadie.

  “Bad fever. Well, we’ll just have to do the best we can right now.” He inserted the ear pieces of one of Paul’s stethoscopes in his ears and bent over her. “Thank God. No pneumonia, I don’t think, at least not yet. It goes into pneumonia, that’ll probably finish her.” He laid the first of many wet cloths against her forehead. “And thank God we’ve got aspirin now, or we’d be brewing a lot of cherry bark. We do have some, don’t we?”

  “I’m sorry,” the woman muttered, “didn’t want to be so much trouble.”

  “Everything’s fine. See if you can sleep.”

  She did, and by the next afternoon, the new miracle drug that changed the medical world in 1899 had broken her fever. By that night, she could sip clear broth. Joshua decided it was question and answer time.

  His shelter was open to anyone in need, and it was obvious this woman was in bad need. However, he did have rules. Individuals on the run from the law weren’t welcome. This woman was on the run from something. He and Sadie agreed on that. Not from the law, he didn’t think. Then from what?

  “So.” He sat down in the armchair by the side of the bed. “You feel like having a little talk?”

  She hesitated. No, she didn’t feel like having a talk, little or otherwise, but one couldn’t just barge into another’s home, even it was common street knowledge that home was a shelter, with no explanations.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “My name’s Joshua,” he said. “Joshua Devlin.”

  “Yes, I know. I heard, when I was on the streets. They told me Reverend Devlin always helped, never turned anyone away. And I can’t tell you how much I appreciate all you’ve done.”

  He nodded.

  “It’s what I do. Don’t use the Reverend much, though. You know, when somebody introduces themselves, the person they introduce themselves to usually do the same.”

  She gave a shaky laugh. “Yes, of course, what you must think! My name’s Se-Sally. Sally Ferris.”

  “Is it now, Miss Se-Sally?” he asked, lifting his eyebrow. “Let’s start over. My name’s Joshua Devlin. What’s yours?”

  She closed her eyes.

  “I’m usually better than that. The fever must have me off balance.”

  “Probably. I’m waiting.”

  “I’m not in any trouble,” she said firmly.

  “Then you got a strange definition of trouble, ma’am.”

  “I mean, I’m not—I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  Joshua considered. Some men were born gentlemen and he was one of them. His early rearing and education reinforced his natural inclination toward chivalry and he didn’t enjoy browbeating this young woman, alone, sick and near term. Still, he had a responsibility to those who depended on the shelter.

  “Look, ma’am. I help people, or I try to. It’s what I do, a decision I made a long time ago. But I can’t help if I don’t know what the problem is. You say you’ve heard about me. Then surely you know you can trust me?”

  She hesitated, very much off-balance. Joshua Devlin wasn’t at a
ll what she’d expected. And his speech. She was a native Southerner, born and bred. Contrary to anything the rest of the country thought, the white Southerner, more than any other American, interacted with the Negro on a personal level that would’ve astounded a resident of any other section of the country.

  But this man. He sounded white. And his mannerisms, the way he moved. She hadn’t hesitated to seek shelter here, mostly because she figured it was last place the the man looking for her would look. She’d expected Reverend Devlin to be well aware he was a Negro and as such, hadn’t expected him to question any story she, obviously white and obviously a lady, cared to spin. She was a lot younger than he’d expected, too, mid-thirties at the most. She looked more closely and wondered how she’d missed it. He was a mulatto.

  And extremely well-educated. Polite and concerned, but not deferential. And he wouldn’t appreciate being lied to, even supposing she could lie to him successfully. She didn’t think she could. Not to this man. Might as well not try. She had nothing to lose.

  “My name’s Serena Wentworth,” she said. “My husband’s David Wentworth. Of the Greenville, South Carolina Wentworths. And if you try and send me back to him, I’ll throw myself in the nearest river, see if I don’t.”

  Well, that damn sure had the ring of truth about it. Joshua nodded.

  “I see. Well, the Greenville, South Carolina Wentworths don’t throw a lot of weight around down here in Macon, Georgia. But I take it they throw a lot in Greenville, South Carolina.”

  She made no response.

  “And I further take it that Mr. David Wentworth ain’t a pleasant individual to live with. Seein’ as how you’re on the run, at least eight months pregnant, sick as hell and looking for shelter with the niggers.”

  “I—please don’t—it’s not—he hurts me,” she finished simply. “In ways—I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Oh, I got the general idea.”