A Matter of Souls (9 page)

“Let's go home, Beesi,” Covington said. He picked up his pace, and very shortly the two of them were standing in front of the neat and narrow two-story clapboard building, which stood at the edge of what used to be a cow pasture when the town was new.

Elizear Markham had come from up East with his Quaker parents, who'd sold their farm and come South to try to preach the slavery out of the town. To make a living and set an example, Elizear Markham's parents had started up a shoemaker's business and hired—not bought—Covington's uncle to learn the trade and work for them for pay.

Uncle Jim had appreciated the value of his position, and over the years he bought his own freedom and that of his sister. Not long after she arrived from the plantation, Elizear's father died and left him the business. Uncle Jim's sister became Mrs. Markham's friend, companion, and partner in turning the pasture into a rich and thriving garden, from which they grew and sold the most sought-after produce.

When Elizear Markham's mother dropped dead from a stroke in the middle of the cornstalks, Elizear and Covington's mother consoled each other.

Covington was born nine months later as his own mother died, and Uncle Jim lied that the baby was his own from a failed union. People chose to believe it, though the fair-skinned boy shared no physical features with his black-haired, square-shouldered uncle.

Elizear Markham had left Covington what he rightly deserved.

At the door, Covington slowly turned the key in the lock.

“Oh, Covie!” Beesi whispered, passing across the threshold before him, “Is it ours? Is it ours for true?”

Before he answered her, Covington quietly closed the door, flipped the “Closed” sign and pulled the shade. Then he threw the hat off his head and whooped.

“God Almighty, Beesi, it is ours!” Covington never imagined feeling genuine excitement like this pumping through his veins. He could hardly stand still.

“It's somethin' wonderful,” Beesi murmured, stepping lightly around the small outer room of the shop. She touched the handsomely crafted man's shoe on display in the window and then skipped around to the shining wood counter, which she'd polished but had never stood behind.

“Wonderful.” She smiled over at Covington.

He let himself go and grinned back, grabbing Beesi's hand to lead her into the rear workroom. He went to
the tall bureau in one corner and opened a drawer. Beesi watched quietly, intently.

Covington drew a metal lockbox out and used another small key on his chain to open it. He slipped his precious papers from his suit pocket and laid them into the box, clicking it shut and locking it again.

Before he'd lifted his hands, Beesi caressed his cheeks. She turned his face so that he looked squarely at her.

“I got a powerful love for you, Covie,” she purred.

The next morning, when Covington blinked his eyes open upstairs, Beesi wasn't at his side. And he was sure it couldn't be much past dawn, but he smelled coffee. Some cloth was tacked up at the two front windows, and his faded old work clothes were folded neatly near the wall, alongside his only suit. He got up from the pallet they'd made with a couple of quilts and stretched.

A fine china pitcher and basin, each rimmed in blue, sat on a small table near the door. Covington at once recognized it as Beesi's wedding present from his uncle.

Beesi had already started the unpacking without him! Covington hurriedly washed and dressed and rushed into the other room.

“Mornin', Sleepy.” Beesi had set Elizear Markham's round pine table with a steaming tin mug of coffee and a fork, both flanking a heavy ironstone plate piled high with
fluffy eggs and a plump, browned sausages.

“Good morning, Honey-girl,” Covington said. His mouth watered. He hoped Beesi would always be full of such wonderful surprises.

Elizear had not been keen on the match, though Covington had overheard his uncle's salty “Ain't none of yourn, Master Markham, and you chose it that way! Leave the boy to his heart.” And the way he'd said that, Covington remembered, was the closest any Colored man could come to accusing any White man of anything. 'Course, they'd been way out behind the shed on the far edge of the property, tanning hides. But Covington knew courage when he heard it.

Besides, his choice of a bride hadn't been all that complicated.

When Beesi first came to work for them, neither she nor Covington had made sixteen years. She'd come to tend house and the garden, and she kept her deep, dark eyes cast down. She never spoke. Townsfolk said she was mute, and simpleminded.

But Beesi put that lie to rest one day—for Covington, at least—when a mouse had run across his foot near the woodpile. Covington had unfortunately never gotten over his fear of such, and he'd squealed, jumped, and thrown his armload of kindling higher than his head.

A laugh, loud and sweet and free as singing, rang out from the kitchen window, and Covington saw Beesi smiling directly at him.

“You funny, funny!” She'd laughed, pushing the window up so he could hear her clearly, then shutting it quickly. She held his gaze for a long while, until Covington remembered himself and began to gather up the wood to go on with his duties.

Covington believed he had loved her from then on. They had waited four years till the end of the War to marry, so they could do it legal. Covington's only regret was that his uncle hadn't lived to see freedom come—nor see them wed.

“Beesi, I thought we were going to set up house together today!” He gulped coffee sweet with honey.

Beesi looked at him with a schoolteacher's stern frown.

“Don't you fret none 'bout that. I'm gonna put everything good. You got feet to make shoes for, dontcha?”

She flashed him a dazzling smile, her dimples deep, and Covington knew right away that Beesi was well aware of the way she had twisted the old folks' saying about making feet for shoes. Making babies.

Covington blushed.

Beesi, still smiling, waved her apron tail at him as if to shoo him off.

“Gone work, now. Gone!” she cooed.

Covington pushed back his chair and swallowed the last of the sausage.

He felt he must've been walking on clouds, leaving his own wife to go into his own business on his own property.

Covington sat comfortably at his stool and took a moment to survey the shelves of lasts around the walls; many he had carved himself. He could almost see the faces of the people whose feet were modeled in wood. Mostly well-off, these were generations of planters, farmers, businessmen, and fine ladies that Elizear and his father before him had courted and kept satisfied by their exquisite workmanship.

Along the bench to his left, Beesi had neatly arranged his familiar tools in the order he liked: lasting pincers first, to shape the leather onto the custom-carved lasts; the small hammer next to the awls he used to pierce elaborate patterns into the leather of women's shoes; rubbing sticks to finish the heels and edges just right.

On another small bench to his right were several pairs of shoes in progress. A ripple of annoyance ran through Covington; he was behind, everything was behind, what with Elizear Markham's sudden taking sick (though he was close to three score), and then the trips back and forth to fetch Worthy, whom he only spoke to behind closed doors. And then the dying, and the funeral, and the disposing of the shoemaker's things … the one face-to-face conversation Markham'd had with Covington was minutes before his last breath: he had insisted that all his personal belongings, except the pine table and chairs, be sold at public auction two days after his funeral. And then he had said, as if Covington were not standing there beside him, “And to my son, I leave my business, tools, and good name.” Elizear's chest had
rattled one last time, and his eyes rolled sideways. Worthy bowed his head briefly and then buckled up his case. Beesi produced two coins, which she placed on the dead man's eyelids.

Covington had turned away to the window, vowing—not against a dead man's soul, but to the perfect rainbow of a setting sun and passing storm—vowing that he would never take the name of his father.

That was two weeks and a lifetime ago. Covington leaned over his progress bench to examine the tag on the left shoe of a men's pair. This was Worthy's order. Covington set to work.

He enjoyed the sounds of Beesi humming and moving in and out as she carried things off the wagon they'd driven over from their rented room yesterday. She never interrupted him, and he never interrupted her. When the sun fell in just the right place across the wood floor, Covington got up and went across the shop to flip over the “Open” sign and unlock the front door.

He brought in a selection of tools to do finish work as he sat at the counter.

Business was brisk; there were still condolences to receive (on the loss of his “master,” which he didn't bother to correct, since the year on the great big calendar behind him clearly added up to five years past that day Lincoln had used the unbelievable word, “Emancipation”). There were old customers to reassure and curious new ones to entertain, including the silly young daughter of a local
plantation owner who wanted dove-colored slippers for her wedding party of twelve.

Covington remembered his uncle's teaching well. He was clear, he was precise, he averted his eyes, and he never let them see him cipher.

Near the end of his first day in business, Covington looked up as the bell on the door tinkled. “Sam!” Covington put down the shoe he was working on and got up to greet the giant of a man striding across the floor with the traces of Africa still proudly bred and borne across his nose and mouth and cheekbones.

Sam was carrying a package wrapped in brown paper. “Cov! I come to give you business!”

Covington smiled and shook his friend's hand, shaking his own head at the same time. “Hard to believe, Sam. I waited, and I wouldn't even let myself hope, but …”

Sam slapped Covington lightly on the back.

“Quit that nonsense talk. You a free man, done inherited your—” he paused, cocking his head to one side. “—your blood papa's business. It's what he readied you for, what's by right any man's. Now come on here, and measure these feets for me!”

Sam lifted his pants leg. Covington looked down, then up. Sam jangled coins in his pocket.

“I come to be your first Colored customer! You gonna do me right?”

Covington was speechless, tongue-tied by joy and gratitude.

“Do who right?” Beesi peeked through the curtain of the workroom. “Sam! Vi come with you?”

“Naw. She want y'all to come Saturday night for some cake and good wishes on your fortune,” he said with a straight face. “And I come to get myself measured for some of Cov's shoes!”

Beesi clapped her hands together, then propped them on her broad hips. “Shop closed, Sam. Shop closed. Covie done worked a full day, and friends don't get special!”

“Beesi!” Covington laughed.

“You got a tough biddy there, Cov!” Sam laughed too. “All right, I come reg'lar hours tomorrow, soon's I get off my job.” He moved to tap the brown paper package.