Never Too Late

by Michael Phillips

  Josepha hit the ground with a vengeance.

  “Da devil’s got a coat er pride jes’ made ter fit each one ob us,” Henry went on. “It fits so nice an’ snug, we gits so’s we like wearin’ it. We don’t eben know we’s got it on cuz it feels so good an’ warm. It comes in all shapes an’ sizes. Dat’s what pride does. But it’s da devil’s coat.”

  “Why you know so much ’bout dat ol’ coat?”

  “Cuz I got my own dat I had ter git rid ob. I had ter learn da hard way. My own pride might er cost me my family. I’ll neber know. But even tryin’ ter stand up fo truf, I had a streak er pride. I tol’ you ’bout it before. Dat wuz my coat er pride, made ter fit nobody but me.”

  “An’ you figger I’s too proud ter be nice ter Mrs. Hammond?”

  “I don’t know,” said Henry. “I can’t rightly say what you’s thinkin’. But it seems a mite like you think you’s better’n her. An’ dat’s pride, pure an’ simple.”

  “Dere you go agin! What business is it er yers ter say dat ter me?” said Josepha, more angrily this time.

  “Maybe none, but I figgered it oughter be said.”

  Josepha stared at Henry another second or two, then threw down the hoe at his feet and turned and walked away in a huff.

  Dejected and even more heartbroken than Mayme, Henry returned to his cabin, sat down on his bed, and buried his face in his hands.

  Josepha, meanwhile, was in a turmoil of emotions. She walked across the field toward nowhere, stomping at the ground as she went. When she came to herself she was standing beside the river, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  Her anger had subsided, replaced by grief for the things she had said to the two people she loved more than any other two people in the world. But now it would take twice the humility and courage to get rid of the coat as before, because now she had to say she was sorry, a thing that’s sometimes hardest to do to those we love the most.

  Josepha’s heart stung her for her outbursts. Mayme was right. Henry was right. They had both been right. Her anger only showed how right they had been. Her pride had gotten the better of her, just like Henry said.

  She sat down at the river’s edge, remembering the happy time she and Henry had spent in this very spot, playing in the water like two happy children.

  How quickly it had all changed.

  Again tears welled up in her eyes, and slowly her body began to shake with heart-wrenching sobs.

  Henry had seen Josepha walk away and knew she couldn’t go far. He had been watching from his cabin window for her return. At last, some thirty or forty minutes later, he saw her ambling slowly toward the house.

  They had been thirty or forty minutes of the hardest thinking and praying Henry Patterson had ever done in his life. The turbulence of the exchange with Josepha had sent unexpected emotions and thoughts rising in his brain and heart.

  It was not just the last thirty or forty minutes. Henry now realized that it had been growing invisibly within him for the better part of a year.

  And now that he saw it for what it was, what ought he to do about it?

  He left his cabin and went out into the grassy pasture where a few horses were grazing.

  He needed to go for a walk and fetch a few things.

  An hour later Henry appeared at the kitchen door. What he had to say was for Josepha alone. He was relieved to find her by herself in the kitchen.

  She answered the door. He knew instantly that she’d been crying.

  “I brung you dese,” said Henry, holding out the small bouquet of wild flowers he’d picked in the field.

  A look of confusion spread over her face. No one had ever given her flowers!

  “I wants ter apologize fo bein’ so hard on you,” he said. “Maybe I didn’t hab no right ter say dose things.”

  “You had every right, Henry Patterson,” said Josepha emphatically, “cuz every word wuz true.”

  She took the flowers, wiped at her eyes and held them to her face, then drew in a breath and smiled.

  Suddenly Henry stepped toward her, leaned forward, and kissed her. Josepha’s eyes opened wide and her heart started beating so fast it felt like it was going to jump right out of her chest.

  But already Henry had turned and was disappearing across the yard.

  TWO HEARTS

  34

  HENRY WAS LYING ON HIS BED STARING UP AT THE ceiling, wondering if what he’d just done was the stupidest thing he had ever done in his life.

  He did not hear Josepha’s approach. She crept up the steps almost on tiptoe and timidly knocked. Not suspecting who it was, Henry rose and went to open the door.

  There stood Josepha, still holding the simple bouquet, a sheepish look on her face.

  “Nobody eber gib me flowers before,” she said. “I wanted ter thank you proper. I wuz so speechless I didn’t know what ter say.”

  Henry gazed into her face just a moment, then opened his arms, stretched them as far as they would go around Josepha’s waist, and drew her to him. The bouquet of flowers was crushed between them.

  “Oh, my goodness, what’s dis all about!” exclaimed Josepha.

  “I ain’t too shore, Miz Black,” said Henry, “but I’s afraid dis ol’ heart er mine’s losin’ itself fo da second time in its life. I hope you don’t take no offense at da affections ob an ol’ colored man.”

  Gradually Josepha relaxed and slowly returned Henry’s embrace.

  “Maybe it ain’t too late after all,” she whispered.

  “What dat you said?” asked Henry.

  “Oh, nuthin’ . . . jes’ thinkin’ out loud.”

  “Happy thoughts, I hope.”

  “Yes, sir, Mister Patterson—dey’s happy thoughts indeed.”

  ANOTHER LETTER

  35

  Our aunt Nelda from Philadelphia—where Katie’s mother and uncles, and my family too, were from—had never seemed to have much use for any of us, at least not for her two brothers, because she seemed to think they had wasted their lives. But gradually over the last couple of years there had been more letters back and forth between Pennsylvania and North Carolina, and she had gradually been taking more and more of an interest in Katie. I think at first Papa might have been a little annoyed by it, thinking that maybe she was trying to work her way into Katie’s good graces and thinking that the company of her two rough and wayward uncles wasn’t good enough for her. But by this time we were all so close that nothing anybody did or said—not even an aunt—could get between us. So Papa didn’t seem to mind so much now. Aunt Nelda’s letters always came either to Katie or to all three of them—Katie and Papa and Uncle Ward, and usually it was Katie who wrote back. I don’t know if they had told her about me. I mean, she knew that Katie had a black friend called Mayme and that we had survived together. Whether she knew that I was kin and that she was my aunt too, that much I didn’t know. Papa was still guarded and private about what he said about him and Mama.

  The most recent letter had come to Katie, and in all the hubbub about Mrs. Hammond and then Micah and Emma’s letter, she hadn’t said anything about it. So it was a surprise at the dinner table several days later when she announced:

  “Aunt Nelda said she would like to come for a visit.”

  We all looked around at each other. Papa and Uncle Ward wore questioning expressions.

  “What did you tell her?” asked Uncle Ward.

  “Nothing yet,” answered Katie. “I wanted to see what you thought first.”

  “Hmm . . . well, I reckon you might as well tell her to come whenever she likes—what do you think, Templeton?”

  “Sure, why not?” said Papa, though he didn’t seem completely enthusiastic.

  And so Katie wrote back the next day, and three weeks after that came another letter telling us that she would arrive by train in Charlotte two weeks later.

  I think maybe we were all more than a little nervous before her visit. We didn’t have any idea what to expect. After all Katie’s anxiety years earlier about us
being found out by her kin and her telling me her Aunt Nelda had never liked any of them that much, I couldn’t help wondering why she was coming and what she would think. Papa was jittery too, and that was a mite peculiar for him. He was so friendly with everyone. There wasn’t anybody he didn’t like. But maybe it’s different with kin.

  As the day drew closer everything around Rosewood got quieter. No one knew what to say. We were all just waiting. Neither Papa nor Uncle Ward had seen their sister for years. Why was she coming for a visit? No one knew. Then suddenly we got nervous and the quietness turned into a flurry of cleaning and baking and washing, straightening up all the rooms, making sure everything would be just right.

  All four of us went in to Charlotte to meet her train.

  The train stopped at the station. People began to get out. Papa was always kind of the leader in situations like this because of his friendly personality. The moment he saw his sister, he stepped forward and greeted her warmly.

  “Nelda,” he said, “welcome to Charlotte!” He didn’t exactly give her a hug or a handshake, but placed his hand on her shoulder.

  “Hello, Templeton,” she said.

  He led her over to where we were waiting. Uncle Ward stepped forward.

  “Hello, Ward,” she said.

  “Nelda . . . it’s nice to see you again. It’s been a few years.”

  “Thank you. It’s good to see the two of you too. I cannot in all honesty say that you haven’t aged a day since I saw you. You are older—of course, so am I. But you . . . you look well, both of you.”

  “Come and say hello to Kathleen,” said Papa, leading her to where Katie and I stood.

  “Oh, Kathleen,” she exclaimed, “I would know you anywhere. You are the picture of your mother!”

  “Hello, Aunt Nelda,” said Katie. “I’m glad you could come. It is nice to see you at last.”

  “And this must be Mayme,” she said, turning toward me with a smile.

  “You remember Lemuela,” said Papa.

  “Of course.”

  “Mayme is her daughter.”

  “I see. How wonderful. She’s almost family, then.”

  I saw Katie and Papa exchange a brief glance. It was their place to tell her more when the time came, not mine. I knew they wanted to let it sink in slowly to her that I wasn’t just almost family, I was family.

  Aunt Nelda stayed at Rosewood a week, and it was a better visit than any of us had expected. Enough time had gone by that the old antagonisms of the past had faded away. Most evenings Katie and I lay in bed upstairs in our rooms drifting to sleep, listening to the talk and laughter from downstairs of the two brothers and their sister catching up on their lives and sharing story after story from their younger years, memories of their parents, and of Katie’s mama.

  One night they began reminiscing about their grandparents.

  “How well do you remember Grandpa Daniels?” asked Ward when they were talking.

  “You mean Grandpa William and Grandma Sarah?” asked Nelda. “—I don’t remember them at all. I think they died when I was two or three. Do you really remember them, Ward?”

  “Just faintly. My only recollection is that they were religious—seemed too religious even to a little tyke like me.”

  “Quakers, weren’t they?” asked Templeton.

  “That’s what Mama always said,” replied Nelda. “It’s strange, now that I think of it, how the Daniels family was Quaker for so many generations, ever since old Elijah Daniels came over from England with the Woolmans and the Bortons . . . but then it died out with our folks.”

  “Yeah, well, Papa was the Daniels, and I don’t think he cared too much for all that. Mama was religious enough, but she was no Quaker.”

  “I do remember her telling us about the Woolmans and the Bortons,” said Templeton, “and that we’d come from an important line of people and were related to the famous John Woolman.”

  “Papa was funny about his heritage,” said Nelda. “Everything I know about our family’s Quaker roots I remember Mama telling me, not him. She must have gotten it all from Papa’s parents before they died. What about the old homestead—did you ever see it, Ward?”

  “Mama took me and Templeton out to see the farm once. But that was after Grandma and Grandpa were gone and the place had been sold.”

  “She took Rosalind and me out to see it too. We were probably ten or twelve.”

  “Anybody living in it?” asked Ward.

  “A man and his wife, I think. Actually I’ve forgotten. All I remember is that it was run-down and old-looking even back then.”

  “Yeah, that’s how it was when we saw it too.”

  “And why not?” added Templeton. “The first house was built there in the 1700s when the first Daniels came to Pennsylvania as part of William Penn’s Quaker experiment, as Mama told it. It’s amazing anything’s still left of it.”

  “There might not be by now,” said Ward.

  “Be nice to see it again though, wouldn’t it?”

  “If we could find it,” Templeton agreed. “I don’t know that I could. You know where it is, Nelda? You were there more recently than us.”

  “I don’t know . . . somewhere near the Maryland border . . . what was the name of the town it was by . . . Hanover, that’s it. Hanover, Pennsylvania.”

  “Funny, when you think if it,” said Templeton. “Here we’ve been living in the South, and Rosalind spent all her adult life in the South, but we’re not really Southerners at all. Kathleen’s the only true Southerner in the whole family. But our roots are really in Pennsylvania.”

  “Quaker roots,” said Ward thoughtfully. “Kind of strange to think of it like that. But I suppose it explains how we were raised. Mother wasn’t a Quaker, but she tried to teach us the Bible. Kind of wish I’d paid more attention to things she taught us and what they said about the old days and how our people came here and all. But when you’re a child you don’t think of that.”

  “Did you hear that, Mayme?” whispered Katie as we lay listening. I had been reading in bed with Katie before I went back to my room. But by then our books were on our chests and we were just dreamily listening to the conversation downstairs.

  “What?” I said. I had almost been asleep.

  “They’re talking about some place their grandparents used to live, an old family homestead or farm or something. I just heard Aunt Nelda say it was just outside Hanover. That’s where Rob might move to!”

  I was still too sleepy to understand what she was getting so excited about.

  “I don’t remember,” I said.

  “I told you that he wrote to say that Sheriff Heyes was going to move from Ellicott City to take a job as sheriff in Pennsylvania and asked Rob to go with him. Now Uncle Ward and Uncle Templeton and Aunt Nelda are talking about the same town. Isn’t that an amazing coincidence?”

  “Maybe it isn’t a coincidence,” I said, though I don’t even know why I said it. “I’m sleepy. I’m going back to my room.”

  That’s how it was most nights during Aunt Nelda’s visit. We never tired of listening to them, but usually were off to our beds while they were still going strong. It was really wonderful to see them laughing and talking like that. I know everyone was relieved and happy. It’s not right when parts of a family aren’t together like they ought to be, and this was just like what Katie had said about people growing together. Aunt Nelda had probably been nervous to come too, just like the rest of us had been nervous about seeing her. But everybody had grown together a little bit at a time.

  When Papa finally told Aunt Nelda that I was his daughter, she didn’t seem altogether surprised.

  “I wondered,” she said. “I knew that you and Lemuela had been fond of each other. I thought I could see a little of the Daniels look in Mayme’s face.”

  The evening before she was scheduled to leave, Aunt Nelda said she wanted to talk to Katie and me about something. We sat down in the parlor with Papa and Uncle Ward because we wanted them to hear whateve
r she had to say.

  “This wasn’t really the purpose of my visit,” she began. “I just wanted to see you all and to see how you, Kathleen, were getting on and whether you needed . . .”

  She paused as if rethinking what she had been about to say.

  “A woman’s influence!” said Papa with a grin.

  “Well, you can hardly blame me,” said Aunt Nelda. “I didn’t know. You two were . . . different back then.”

  “Wild, you mean!”

  “Well . . . different. And with Rosalind gone . . . I have wondered if Kathleen needed an aunt. But I can see that you are all happy here and doing well and I have no wish to interfere in any way. However, with you girls—both of you,” she said, glancing toward me, “growing into such fine young ladies . . . I have been thinking . . . well, there are good schools in the North, two in Philadelphia, for young ladies of good breeding. And now,” she added, again looking in my direction, “one of these has begun accepting young Negroes. There are so many more opportunities now than there used to be—good opportunities for education and advancement . . . that it simply seems to me that this might be something for you all to consider.”

  “What’s wrong with plantation life like this?” asked Uncle Ward.

  “I am not saying that there is anything wrong with it, Ward. The girls have become accomplished and capable young women. It’s only that the girls ought to have the opportunity to see more of the world if they want to—to travel and get more of an education and meet people. Then they can decide what they want to make of their lives. Women didn’t used to have the opportunities they do today, and it seems that the girls ought to take advantage of some of them.”

  She paused a moment.

  “You know, for all your reckless ways,” she went on to Papa and Uncle Ward, “the two of you did see a lot more of the world than I ever did. I’m not saying it was right or wrong or anything because I don’t know. I’m only saying . . . I don’t know, it’s hard to admit this, but . . . well, in a way Rosalind and I were always a little envious of that. We never saw anything of the world.”