Willie heard them and touched his father’s face, a single tear stuck to his finger. The Blacksmith had never cried as far as Willie knew. His father was strong, and strong people didn’t cry, didn’t weep.
Except when people died.
Willie looked at the building. There was no sign above the door. “Got some paper inside I can draw on, Papa? I’d like to do a picture of it.”
“Brother, it ain’t nothing but a shack.”
“No, Papa. That’s not what I see. It’s much more. It’s what you did to make a life for our family.” He pulled his body up so straight it was hard to see the illness hovering above him. “Don’t worry, papa. I feel strong. Suddenly, I don’t feel sick at all.”
The Blacksmith stood his ground, afraid to move.
“When I look at this shop, Papa, I see the pretty dresses my sisters wear, the fine china on the table. The land that you bought all over Atlanta. Please, Papa, the paper.”
Obediently the Blacksmith went to find the boy something to draw on. Inside he grabbed a lamp and tore pages from his ledger book. He found a fairly sharp pencil and ran out to his son.
Propped up against the back of the wagon on folded sacks, bags and hay, Willie began to draw. His hand was steady. He got the building, the well and the trees. In the lamp and star lit morning the Blacksmith’s son sketched the world that would have been his had his legs been strong.
Willie looked up and saw his father smiling as he watched, then he added something that wasn’t there to the picture of the shop: a sign over the door that said ‘Brown and Son’.
He asked his father: “Do you like it?”
The Blacksmith stood there amazed holding the lamp near the paper not seeing the boy’s damp brow.
“Son, it is wonderful.” How had he refused all these years to see the boy’s talent?
“Papa, may I have a drink of water?” The words came out far too weak and the Blacksmith held the light to Willie’s face.
Sweat poured from him like water from a faucet. The Blacksmith dropped the pencil and the drawing, and ran to the well. He pulled up the bucket quickly and grabbed the cup. Without thinking he jumped into the wagon making the ailing boy wince. He held the cup to his son, but the boy couldn’t drink the water. It trickled from his mouth in a fading stream.
“Papa, Papa,” he tried to shout. “I’m scared. Real scared. I can’t see all the stars.”
He held the boy is his arms. “Willie, you can’t see all the stars ‘cause the sun’s gonna come up soon.” Willie nodded and the Blacksmith kept talking. About the wind in the trees, about the stars in the sky. About his life as a boy. The Blacksmith talked and talked about things he had never told his children, then about things he had never told a living soul. And when he couldn’t think of another thing to say he told his son: “Boy, I have always loved you. I thought it was the bad in me that came out in you when you was born this way. So when that old evil woman told me to take out your flame I told her: ‘My son will be strong. Wait and see.’ You are strong my son.”
The boy was still. The boy was dead. He had a peaceful look on his face as if every word his father had said was going with him to glory.
The Blacksmith gently lay his son down in the wagon, but he didn’t cover him yet for there were still some stars in the sky. He took the water and cup back to the well. He picked up the drawing from the ground and dusted away the dirt and the leaves.
He went into his shop and took two nails and placed the picture on the wall. “Gots to get me a frame. A nice frame for this. Maybe send off to Paris for it.” He removed his shirt and put on his apron.
The Blacksmith built the fire quickly. “Willie,” he said to the still night sky. “You got to do this for St. Peter up there in heaven. You strong enough, I know that now. I wish I had known before. Angels don’t need no legs.”
He found a piece of metal he had been working on and placed it in the fire.
“Sometimes Gabriel’s chariot might need the wheels fixed, or a horse needs new shoes. Now I want you to be able to do it right because,” and he said this with tears streaming down his face as he stared at the wagon, “when you come to get me I don’t want it to be in no new-fangled car or some junk heap. I want to know you been earning your keep up there. You come and get me in a chariot you built yourself.”
It was not yet dawn when the Blacksmith took the metal to his anvil and spoke his last words to his son. “Now watch carefully Willie, I ain’t got much time to show you.”
And before the cocks crowed that morning, the Blacksmith’s hammer came down on the metal in strong thundering strokes.
The Piano Man heard it and rushed to his bedroom window, smelling only Mrs. Maples’ coffee and not yet feeling the dawn.
The preacher heard it, went down on his knees and immediately began to pray.
Of all the sleeping sisters only June heard it. She jumped up and ran to Willie’s room, wondering how she had gotten in her own bed during the night. Her mother was sitting on the floor on a blanket of many colors. The smoke was gone from the room, the smell of the poultice a thing of the past. Mama Bira was humming as tears rolled down her cheeks.
“Where’s Willie?” June screamed as she shook her mother. “Where’s my brother?”
Bira reached up and pulled the crying girl down to her. “You know, we all know. Brother’s gone. Ain’t you listening? Your father’s telling us Willie’s gone to glory.”
CHAPTER NINE
Bira put the wood into the kitchen stove. Always the warmest room in the house, this was the reason they had placed Brother’s room so near it. Not because of any lack of love but because of the chills he got. Winter and summer the kitchen fire was always burning.
Willie was no longer there to wake June to chop the wood. The Blacksmith had hired a young man to do things around the house that his wife needed done. Each day his last job was making sure there was enough wood on the porch for the stove. And even though it burned low at night, and the coal bin was always full, there was no warmth in the kitchen since Brother had gone.
The Blacksmith was in the bathroom and the girls were awake and stirring. Even June was not in her bed. Most mornings she went outside of her own accord to bring in more firewood. Bira glanced on the back porch and saw her youngest daughter bent over an old slop bucket. She rushed outside. Dear Lord, are you going to punish me again and take away this baby too?
“Girl, what’s wrong?” she asked lifting June’s head. The child didn’t feel warm.
“Let go, Mama. I’m fine. Dinner just didn’t agree with me last night. I spent most of the time throwing it up in the bathroom.” Bira touched her but June pulled away again. She hadn’t let anyone get close to her in the weeks since Brother died.
“I’ll be all right soon. We got to get breakfast on the table. I was getting some more wood for the stove.”
Bira didn’t ignore it. Didn’t forget it. She wanted what she had seen, what she had witnessed, to disappear. It was just dinner, like the child said. Nothing else. Dinner had made the child sick.
Breakfast started off fine. June was dressed first for a change. Said she had some studying to do before classes. The Blacksmith asked if he could say grace and his wife smiled. Happy talk filled the table for a while. Bira thought all that was missing was Brother’s laugh.
Then it all changed.
June sipped her coffee laced heavily with milk and sugar and said nothing as her sisters wagged their tongues. There was no conversation of why the Piano Man had not come by the night before. He hadn’t shown his face at all. Fawn hadn’t seen him after classes and he hadn’t called on Minnelsa in a few days but he was not the topic of conversation.
Instead they talked of spring, of planting flowers in a garden Brother would have liked, and of new dresses. As they passed the eggs and bacon, June started to turn green. She refused the eggs saying they were too runny. The baking soda smell of the biscuits was not pleasing.
But it was the bacon in all
its greasy glory that ended the peace in the Brown household.
“I can’t eat this,” she said. “I’m not hungry.”
“Nonsense.” The Blacksmith filled his plate as she passed him the strips of meat still crackling in their own fat. “You'll have a long time before lunch at the college. You have to keep up your. . .”
“I’m not hungry Papa. Please, the smell of that. . .” She turned her head away and covered her mouth praying she wouldn’t retch again.
Bira held her breath and prayed. Then she spoke: “Still feeling sick from last night, dear?”
“What happened last night?” the Blacksmith commanded carelessly banging the meat platter down onto the table.
The other daughters turned to look at their sister, sitting at their father’s right hand. “She said dinner disagreed with her, William. Been throwing up most of the night.”
“Dinner?” he exclaimed. “What was wrong with dinner last night? It was fine meal. Pork chops and greens, yams, all things you've eaten before and. . . Well it didn’t make me sick.”
June looked at her mother. The look in her Bira’s eyes was not love. It was pain. June had let her mother down. June had let Willie down too.
“It didn’t make me sick either, Papa.” June sighed.
“But, June, Mama just said. . .” Fawn interrupted.
“I know what mama said, Fawn. But. . .” she shrugged her shoulders and leaned back defiantly in her seat. “I lied. I’m pregnant Papa. I’m going to have a baby. That’s what made me sick. And it’s going to do a lot more to me”
Before anyone could say anything the Blacksmith dropped his fork and raised his hand to slap June. She recoiled quickly and said: “All right, Papa. Then I won’t say I’m pregnant. At least not at this table.”
The Blacksmith lowered his hand and closed his eyes.
“Maybe I should keep saying it and you could keep hitting me and knock the baby out of me.”
Anger welled up in the Blacksmith as a pot about to boil over. He threw his plate, a good expensive China plate he knew was one of Bira’s favorites, to the floor. He raised his hand again, but the sisters sighed in fear and Bira screamed: “William, no. No. This won’t help.”
“You’re lying, June.” His hand was still in the air. “Tell me you’re lying.”
She said nothing.
“How could this happen June?”
Coyly she replied: “Papa, you have six, no I’m sorry I forgot, five children. Don’t you remember how it happened?’
He unleashed the slap but it was not so powerful. She kept her face turned to him so he could see the hand imprint on her fair skin. Bira still standing at the end of the table took control of the situation. “June, go to your room.”
“NO!” the Blacksmith shouted. “How did this happen? Who is the boy? WHO IS HE?” He smashed his fist into his bread plate and sent it shattering into pieces. Fawn and Jewel moved away from the table. Rosa ran to mama. Only Minnelsa and a very angry June sat.
“What does it matter, Papa? He wouldn’t be good enough for me to marry. Nobody is good enough to marry any of us according to you.”
“June, please,” Bira shouted. “Go to your room.”
“Why should I, Mama? It has to be said. Going to my room isn’t going to make it go away. I won’t, I can’t marry the father, Papa. This is something you can’t do anything about. There’s no man to send away because you think he’s made love with me just to get your money. There is no one to marry. And if there was, well don’t you think people can count? They’ll know the cart got out of the barn before the horse.” She neatly folded her linen napkin into her lap. “Besides the oldest daughter is supposed to marry first.”
All was silent after she spoke. The Blacksmith watched her through horrified eyes as she placed the napkin on the table and stood up to leave. Then he screamed the painful scream of a wounded animal and with one hand, knocked all the china off the left hand side of the table. Syrup from the hotcakes poured across the linen table cloth, and down into Minnelsa’s lap as she sat in shock. Butter and coffee and cream covered the floor. The Blacksmith stood, an angry giant.
“Come into my room with me, June,” he snarled
“No,” she said her own sneer on her lips. “You never wanted me in there when all was right with your little world and I won’t go in there now.” With that she left the house.
The Blacksmith went into his room and closed the door. He could hear the cleaning of broken dishes. French china, expensive china he had a white man bring him from France. Broken because of June. His life, his world, broken because of June.
There was a small knock on the door. He knew it was Bira. He didn’t respond but she entered anyway.
“Why has she done this to you and me? To this family? Was it her grief over her brother that had allowed her to slip off the path of righteousness and allow some man to use her as his instrument?”
“William, losing Brother was hard for her.”
“All is going to be lost. All those years of seeking the right husbands, of preparing the girls for the right men and telling them that there were none about. Those who were jealous, those who hadn’t made it, they’ll laugh at us. They’ll talk about how she got that way and when they see me coming, they’ll pretend to stop, only to look at me and say he’s just a regular Negro like everybody else.”
She touched him long enough to stop his pacing. “You have never been like anyone else William. God put you on this earth to help your people.”
“Well, one of those people I helped has allowed the downfall of this house.”
She pulled him to the chairs. He sat reluctantly as she stood over him.
Bira spoke with a quickness that she hoped would ease her husband. “We can send her to Alabama. To stay for a while with Fannie and Ella and their people. The baby can be raised there.”
“How long have you known about this?” he looked at her for an answer. When she gave him none he said: “I am sorry, Bira. I know you would never. . .”
“I didn’t know. I only suspected this morning when I saw her. . . William, send her away.”
“Everyone will know something is wrong.” He turned away from his wife.
“Would that be so bad? People know how close she was to Brother. They’ll think she had to get away for a rest.”
“For nine months, Bira? The girl is right, people can count.” Bira sat down in the chair next to him and touched his hand but he didn’t respond, didn’t touch back. “What if the boy starts talking.”
“Boys always talk. And lie, William.”
He stood and paced. He was nervous and fidgety. “I need to think. With the hammer in my hand I usually can sort out any problem.”
“Then go to the shop. She’ll come home after class.”
He nodded but did not seem convinced that his sweet Bira had the answer. “There seems to be no solution.”
“I told you William, send her away. Send her soon.”
Over and over he pounded his fist into his hand. He kept talking to himself. “Think of something, some way.”
Bira could not watch his suffering. She left and went to the kitchen just in time to catch June re-entering the house by the back door. They stared at one another only for a second and then June disappeared into her room.
The Blacksmith kept pounding his fist, first into his hand, then into the arm of the chair until it fell into a rhythmic pattern not unlike his hammer and anvil. The repetitious beating helped him think. The only solution was the one Bira suggested but that would cause talk.
Suddenly something struck him as he pounded the chair one last time then hastened for the door. “Minnelsa,” he shouted loud enough to wake the dead.
He stood in the parlor as she ran to him. “Yes Papa?” She had changed from the dress stained with food from his outburst.
“Are you going to see your Piano Man this evening?”
“What, Papa?” Minnelsa didn’t understand.
Impatientl
y the Blacksmith grabbed her by the shoulder. Minnelsa froze in fear of the big man. “Do you love this music teacher, Minnelsa?” he asked holding her by the shoulders.
Minnelsa blushed. What a question now when all this was going on. “Well do you girl?”
She couldn’t look in her father’s face so she hung her head as she whispered: “Yes, Papa. I guess I do.”
The sisters stood watching. Even June left her room her stomach rumbling with morning sickness to find out what the commotion was.
“Has he spoken of marriage?”
“Papa?” Minnelsa said half shaking.
The Blacksmith sighed: “Girl, has he proposed? That’s what I mean.”
“No, Papa.”
He released her and Minnelsa stepped back. The Blacksmith paced with anger, pounding one big fist into another. The women stood back afraid of the blows. “Well, do you feel that he wants to marry you?”
Minnelsa stared at her father. She turned to her mother whose eyes gave her no sign. “I believe so. But Papa, he’s just gotten established here. He has very little money and he lives in Mrs. Maples’ rooming house.”
The Blacksmith nodded and began to smile. “Fawn.”
“Yes sir?” she too was scared to death of a possible angry outburst.
“What time is his first class today?”
“Not until ten, Papa.”
“Good,” the Blacksmith said. “I believe I have solution to our problem.” The entire room was still. “I believe it’s time for Mr. Jenkins to marry into our family.”
Minnelsa frowned and spoke with a defiance they had not seen since John Wood. “And your solution is to have June marry the man who wants to marry me?” She turned and looked down the long dining hall to her sister standing in the kitchen holding her stomach.
The Blacksmith grabbed Minnelsa by the shoulders and said: “No, that is not my idea at all. But if he is to become a part of this family, he must help.”
The Wilful Daughter Page 14