A Silken Thread

by Kim Vogel Sawyer

  Bart Elkins bent over and grabbed one of Turner’s feet. He raised it in the air, nearly toppling backward. “This’s how he says he’s goin’ home. In these!”

  Only holey socks covered Turner’s feet. His big toe stuck out of one hole, and he wriggled it, grinning. “Yessir, I’m done as done with my grandpappy’s ol’ boots. Not wearin’ ’em one more hour, nuh-uh.” He wobbled back and forth, grinning like he didn’t have sense. Then his face twisted into a scowl. “Lemme go, wouldja, Elkins? I can’t get up with you holdin’ on to my foot that way.”

  Elkins roared and let go. Turner’s foot hit the floor and he came close to following it. Fresh laughter blasted.

  Willie shook his head. Grown men acting like a bunch of little kids. “How many visits did y’all make to the brewery?”

  “Aw, now, Sharp…” Carney grabbed him. “It’s payday. A fellow’s free to have a little fun on payday.” He raised one eyebrow and pointed at Willie, swaying to and fro. “Wouldn’t do you no harm to have a glass or two o’ beer. Might jus’ loosen you up some. Young feller like you always bein’ so serious. Ain’t natural.”

  Turner lurched to his feet and stumbled forward two steps. He poked Willie twice in the chest with his finger. “Carney’s right. You come with us. We’ll show you a good time. Better’n you c’n have with that boy you used to come with. ’Course”—he grinned, nodding—“ain’t seen you with ’im in a while.” He patted Willie’s cheek. Hard. “Could be you already wised up, huh?”

  Nothing about this was funny. Willie ducked from Carney’s arm and moved out of reach of both him and Turner. “Y’all are drunk. You better go home before you get yourselves in trouble.”

  They all laughed and pounded each other on the back, then grabbed up their jackets and lunch pails and staggered up the stairs. The door slammed behind them. Silence fell. A silence almost as heavy as the one in the Silk Room after Miss Warner left.

  Willie hung his head for a moment, loneliness weighting his chest. He’d run off Miss Warner. He didn’t have Quincy anymore. Miss Millard seemed all caught up with Langdon Rochester. The other guards didn’t want anything to do with him. There wasn’t even a cat waiting for him at home. But he should go there anyway. He changed out of his uniform and into his regular clothes. He put his pay envelope in the waistband of his britches and buttoned his shirt over it. At least he had one good thing from the day—his wages.

  “Thank You, God.”

  Finding a reason to be thankful lifted his spirits a little bit. He turned toward the stairs and stumbled over something. He caught his balance and searched for what had tripped him. Turner’s boots. He bent over and picked them up, then went to set them against the wall where nobody else would fall over them. But halfway across the floor he stopped. He flipped the boots sole side up. Hopscotch…or something else?

  He tucked the boots under his arm and took the steps two at a time. Miss Warner needed to see this.

  Quincy

  “ ‘Mam, this here, this’s the one I’m wantin’.”

  Mam peered over Quincy’s shoulder at the battered catalog laid open on the table. She puckered her lips out like she did when she was thinking. “Mmm-hmm…”

  “Lemme read it.” Quincy bent over the page. “Men’s sack-style suit, black background with small blue pincheck. Do-mes-tic worsted goods.” He scratched his ear. “What’s ‘worsted’?”

  “Wool.”

  “Oh.”

  Mam took up the rag and went to scrubbing the table. “An’ how much that one cos’?”

  “Four dollars an’ twenty-five cents.” He flipped several pages and jammed his finger on a small drawing. “I’m wantin’ this vest, too. It be eighty-five cents. You c’n get it in dark-blue cotton. That’ll go real good with the suit I pick, won’t it?”

  “I s’pose it would look real fine.”

  Quincy breathed out a big sigh. One of pure contentment. Pap and the children from Bunson all the way down to Stu and Sassy was already in bed. Everything was quiet. Just him and Mam in the kitchen, lamplight low, stove still warm from cooking supper. Cozy. Made him feel all growed up.

  He outlined the picture of the vest with his finger. “Be good to have new shoes, too. Black an’ shiny ones. But I don’t want a black suit. Not all the way black. With them blue checks an’ the blue vest an’ my white go-to-meetin’ shirt an’ maybe a gold-colored bow tie—bow ties, they only twenty cents—that suit’ll look good as any the fancy men struttin’ ’round the fairgrounds been wearin’.”

  Mam swished the rag up and down in the basin, splashing little waterdrops over the edge. “What is it you’s wantin’ to look good—the suit or the man wearin’ it?”

  “You know what I’s wantin’.” Quincy slapped the catalog shut and propped his chin in his hand.

  “Reckon I do.” Mam wrung the cloth real good, then hung it over a string tied to nails. She carried the basin to the back door and flung the water in the yard. Humming some tune she must’ve made up in her head, ’cause Quincy didn’t know it at all, she clanked the basin on the dry sink and came to the table. She eased down on the bench beside Quincy and slid the catalog in front of her. “Show me again.”

  He’d memorized the page, and he turned right to it. He pointed. “That’n.”

  Mam looked at it a long time. “It’s a heap o’ money, Quincy.”

  “Not as much as some. Look, this’n cost seven dollars, an’ they’s one over here cost twelve. So, considerin’, four ain’t so bad.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “ ’Course now, addin’ in the vest an’ bow tie, we’s up to five dollars an’ thirty cents. Still an’ all, there be over forty-eight dollars left o’ my pay. ’Nough for Pap to give a earnest payment to the mule seller—’nough that maybe the seller let Pap take the mule on home right away. I’ll be gettin’ mo’ next month an’ the month after that. So when you think o’ things that way, that five dollars an’ some don’t seem so bad.” Quincy ran his hand back and forth over the page. “If Bunson end up goin’ to Booker T. Washington’s school like he’s dreamin’ o’ doin’, or even if he go to the one here in Atlanta—the one called Morris Brown that Bishop Gaines help start—he could take this suit an’ wear it to classes. So way I reckon, that suit, it’s a real good idea.”

  Mam put her warm hand over Quincy’s on the catalog. Covered the suit. Covered near half the page. “Lemme ask you somethin’, Son. You gone twenty years without havin’ a suit, an’ you ain’t never seemed to care. Why all o’ sudden you thinkin’ you need to dress fancy?”

  Quincy yanked his hand free. He took hold of the edge of the bench seat and squeezed. Squeezed so hard his fingers ached. “You don’t know what it’s like, Mam, bein’ ’round all them fancy folks. Some of ’em, they look at me like I’s nothin’. Some of ’em, they don’t look at me at all, like I ain’t even there. ’Cause to them, I just another black face.”

  His belly went all fiery hot. Made it hard to take a good breath. But he still had things needed saying. “Them same folks look straight at Booker T. Washington. They don’t look past ’im. ’Cause he all dressin’ fine an’ fancy. He not just another black face in a whole crowd o’ black faces. He somebody special.” Quincy thumped his chest with his fist. “That’s what I want, Mam. I wanna be somebody special.”

  “An’ you think changin’ yo’ clothes’ll make you special?”

  Quincy groaned and put his face in his hands. “Don’t be tellin’ me it won’t work. ’Cause they ain’t nothin’ else I c’n change.”

  Mam grabbed his wrist and pulled his hand down. “They’s a whole lotta things you c’n change got nothin’ to do with suits an’ bow ties. They’s one big thing needs changin’, an’ you already know it.”

  Quincy pressed his palms on the table and lifted his rump from the bench. “I’m goin’ to bed.”

  “No, you ain’t.” Mam clamped her hand over his shoulder
and pushed. He sat down real quick. She shook her finger in his face. “You already know it, but I gon’ say it anyway. Quincy Donan Tate, you gotta get a grip on yo’ temper an’ never let go.”

  The fire in his stomach climbed up until his whole head was burning. He growled, “I can’t.”

  “You mean you won’t.”

  A fellow shouldn’t get so mad at his mam that he wanted to holler, but Quincy was close. “You think I like feelin’ this way?” He clutched his gut. “Or maybe you think I got no reason to get mad at folks.”

  Mam snorted. “ ’Course you got reasons. We all got reasons. We all got choices, too.”

  “What choices? Is I s’posed to smile when they’s rude to me? Or say, ‘That’s all right, suh, I don’t got feelin’s like you.’ Maybe I oughta preten’ that it don’t matter if my best friend lets some white lady think I can’t be trusted.”

  Mam shook her head real slow. Real sad. “Son, you listenin’ to yo’self? Listenin’ to all the ugly comin’ out o’ you? You’s full o’ pus, like a sore that can’t heal ’cause the one who has it keeps a-pickin’ at it.”

  She was right. Except it wasn’t him picking at the sore. It was white folks picking, picking, picking. He angled his head and squinted at Mam. “How come you ain’t mad? You been held down by white folk. You an’ Pap both, you been slaves. I ain’t no slave, but I still bein’ held down by white folk who ain’t gon’ let me be nothin’ more’n they wanna see.”

  “You’s wrong, Quincy. You is a slave.”

  Quincy reared back and gaped. “Me? How’s that?”

  “Fetch my Bible.”

  He didn’t move.

  She snapped her fingers. “I said fetch my Bible.”

  Twenty years old or not, when Mam talked like that, he did as she said. If her Bible wasn’t in her hands, it was on the little table beside the settee. He picked it up careful. The leather cover had mouse chews at all the corners, and some of the pages were loose. But Mam called it the Word o’ God, and every one of her children respected it or felt the sting of a switch.

  He laid it on the table in front of her.

  “Now sit.”

  Swallowing a grunt, he sat.

  Real gentle, like she was putting a robin’s egg back in its nest, she turned the thin pages, her lips puckering out. Seemed like she turned pages for hours, and Quincy tried not to fidget. Finally she nodded and sucked her lips back in.

  “Here it be. Matthew 6:24. Now you listen close. ‘No man…can serve two masters…’ ” Her brow was pinched up tight. She’d learned to read when Quincy learned, but it didn’t come easy for her. It didn’t keep her from trying, though. “ ‘…for either he will hate the one, an’ love the other; or else…he will hold…to the one…an’ des— des—’ ”

  “ ‘Despise,’ Mam.”

  She glared at him. “I know.” She leaned over the Bible again. “ ‘Despise the other. Ye cannot serve God an’ mammon.’ ” She sat up and nodded, looking all proud. “Mammon. That be money, but truth be tol’, it’s anythin’ we put before God. It be a sin we hold on to ’stead o’ relyin’ on the Maker.” She pointed at him. “Yo’ temper is yo’ mammon. It’s the sin you won’t let go.”

  “Mam, I—”

  “Hush. You listen to me.” She took hold of Quincy’s chin and made him look her square in the face. Fire blazed in her eyes. “You say you ain’t a slave, but you’s wrong. If you’s owned, you a slave. Ever’body who’s born got two choices—be owned by God or be owned by sin. Me, I was a slave to a man, but now I choose to be a slave to God. ’Cause He bought me with a price—the life o’ His own Son. He pay that price for you, too.”

  Tears made her eyes shine even brighter. A feeling like he got when he ate too many sweets attacked his middle, and he wanted to leave—leave Mam and leave the feeling—but he didn’t try to pull away.

  “You already know that good as me. You heard it in church, an’ you heard it from me an’ yo’ pap. But somehow, Quincy, you ain’t took hold o’ God. An’ you need to take hold o’ God. Until you do, you gon’ be owned by that temper you pull out any time somethin’ don’t go like you’s wantin’.”

  She let go of his chin and cupped his cheek with her hand. “Whatever control you, that what owns you. You got to choose, Quincy. You gon’ serve God, or you gon’ serve yo’ mammon? Lemme tell you, no fancy suit gon’ make a bit o’ diff’rence, ’cause what needs fixin’ is on yo’ insides, not yo’ out. Now you think on that.”

  Quincy nodded.

  Mam yawned real big. “Ooo, been a long day. Gon’ turn in now.” She tugged his face close and kissed him noisy on the cheek. “Blow out that lamp when you done thinkin’.”

  “I will, Mam.”

  She pulled herself off the bench, groaning some. She shuffled to the door to her and Pap’s room and closed herself inside.

  Quincy looked at the verse in Mam’s Bible. Then he looked at the suit in the catalog. Back and forth. Verse and suit, verse and suit. Took him a while, but he made his choice.

  Willie

  Willie helped Miss Warner spread the blue silk across the concrete floor in front of Mr. Felton’s desk. She pointed to Turner’s boots, which he’d laid off to the side. “Position them, please, the way you did in my parlor yesterday evening.”

  Mr. Felton’s eyebrows shot high. Whatever he was thinking, he kept it to himself, but that didn’t make Willie any less nervous. If he was looking at this wrong, he’d be setting up an innocent man for condemnation. The way Quincy’d been. Willie’s mouth went as dry as if somebody’d stuffed it full of cotton.

  His hands shook, but he stood the boots on the first two prints—the left one about a foot and a half higher and scooted over maybe six inches from the one on the right. The same way a man would take a step. Then he got out of the way and let her do the talking.

  “I’d presumed, because the prints were identical, that someone had hopped across the cloth on one foot. But you can see from these boots that their matching soles fit the exact size of the stains on the silk.” She walked alongside the fabric, pointing. “It appears he walked the full length of the cloth, turned around, and traveled it again in the opposite direction. Every print matches the soles of these boots, leading me to believe the same individual created all thirteen stains.”

  Mr. Felton pinched his chin between his thumb and fingers and stared down at the silk. With his lips downturned and his forehead scrunched, he looked good and mad. But mad at who? Turner for maybe messing up the Silk Room or Miss Warner and Willie for accusing him?

  Mr. Felton crouched down and put his fingers on one of the stains. “Some local folks’ve been real loud about havin’ the silkworm displayed here at the Cotton Exposition—say it’s a slap in the face to the cotton growers. I’ve heard Turner talk that way, too. But I sure never thought…”

  He stood. His knees popped the way Pa’s did, and Willie got hit again with loneliness for his father. Mr. Felton put his hands on his hips and glared at the cloth. “Lookin’ at this makes somethin’ else make more sense to me. I couldn’t figure out how the night watchmen didn’t see anything out o’ the ordinary that night.” He shifted his gaze to Willie. “But they’d met all you security guards. Did the same trainin’ as you. So if they did see Turner on the grounds, they wouldn’t think nothin’ of it.”

  Willie licked his lips and took a hesitant step toward his boss. “If it does turn out that Turner’s the one who tore up the Silk Room, you prob’ly won’t need a guard in there anymore. Right?”

  Mr. Felton aimed a scowl at Willie. “Wrong. A man who’d be low enough to make a mess like he did’ll likely be one to hold a grudge. Turner’s not stupid, an’ he carries a heap o’ anger toward any an’ all who think different than him. He’ll figure out who told on him, an’ he’ll want revenge. If I let him go, he won’t be workin’ durin’ the day, an’ that’ll give ’im more time to fin
d trouble. First place he’ll look for it is in the Silk Room.”

  Miss Warner wrung her hands. “Do you believe he would attack either Mr. Sharp or me? Mr. Sharp is armed”—she glanced at Willie’s gun, and her face went white—“but I’d rather he didn’t have need to make use of his weapon.”

  Willie swallowed. He hoped the same thing.

  “It’s hard to say.”

  Willie didn’t find his answer too comforting. By Miss Warner’s frown, he figured she wasn’t comforted, either.

  His boss ushered both of them out of his office. “You two head on to the Silk Room. I don’t want y’all in here when the others arrive. It’d be the same as hangin’ a sign around your neck proclaimin’, ‘I accused Turner.’ He ain’t the only one with bad feelin’s, an’ I’d like to keep the whole lot of ’em from goin’ after Sharp.”

  The door at the top of the stairs opened, and voices carried down the stairwell.

  Mr. Felton grimaced. “C’mon.” He hurried them to the set of steps leading to the inside of the Administration Building. He yanked the door open for them and whispered, “Go.”

  Miss Warner entered the stairway first, and Willie went in behind. Mr. Felton snapped the door closed after them, and full black encased them.

  Fingers clutched at Willie’s arm. “Willie?” Her raspy whisper was so soft he had to strain to hear. “I can’t see a thing. I’m afraid to take a step.”

  He was, too, but they couldn’t stay in there until the guards all cleared out. She needed to open up the Silk Room. They’d have to climb those stairs whether they could see them or not. He slid her hand down his arm and grabbed on to it. Then he put his other hand against the cool, rough wall. “I’ll feel my way. You stay close an’ step up when I do.”

  Shoulder brushing the wall, step by step he inched upward with Miss Warner’s warm breath on the back of his neck. He knew he’d found the top when his nose bumped into a hard surface. He winced and pawed across the wood until he found the doorknob. He gave it a twist and pushed, and the door popped open. Light flooded over them, making Willie’s eyes water, and both of them let out big sighs.