Dark Series, The Color of Seven and The Color of Dusk (Books We Love Special Edition) (13 page)

“But Sadie, to raise the boy like
this, without—and
Papa, all your preachin’ about education. You could have sent
him to school, sent him North—”

“Paul, I’ve made sure he can read and write and cipher. But to do more until educated Negroes aren’t freaks anymore, that would make him an outsider just as much as being half-white.”

“And besides, the Yankees
goan
socialize with a nigger, Paul? Any more than the Collins up the street and the Thompsons on Washington or the Billings over on Orange
goan
do? Shoot, they worse den
de
folks down here!”

Sadie’s voice slid without pause from educated white to upper echelon Negro and as she vented her ire at the system so completely entrapp
ing
her son, it moved on down into the funky street talk that was purely black.

“Why,
d
ey scared of us, most of ‘em! Actually scared, like
dey
think the black
goan
rub of
f if they touch us! We fine—we got lots o’ rights—long
as they don’t have to socialize with us! North
! D
at’s de worse place in the
world
for an educated black man
!
‘
S
pecially one dat’s half white!”

Everett took over.
“Paul, you’re home now. I’m gettin’ old, I’m tired, I’m cuttin’ back. You can look after him, train him, teach him. You can teach him a lot. He’s real good with animals, there’s always a need for a good home-grown vet.”

“I still don’t want Sadie to leave you, Papa.”

“Paul, I can run
this
house with my eyes closed. I’m still
goan
handle
this
house too, never intended anything different.”

“And she comes and goes as she pleases, son. If she’s not at your house, then you know where she is.”

“Whoooo,” sighed Paul softly, the breath whistling past his lips. “Yes, I guess I w
ill. And Joshua doesn’t know—”

“No. He doesn’t know anything about it,” said Dr. Devlin. Joshua broke out
of
shock and ran, hee
dless of the noise.
T
hey didn’t want him. He’d never been anything but an embarrassment and his parents didn’t want him. They never had and they didn’t now, and they were giving him away, passing him on to Paul as though he were the slave boy he would have been twenty-five years before, available for purchase and resale. The noise of his running feet sounded harshly on the hardwood floors of the hall and startled the occupants of Everett’s study.

“I don’t think I’d make a bet on that,” said Paul, and stood back up, moving rapidly to the door.

“Oh, God!” exclaimed Dr. Devlin. “I have to catch him, I have to explain!”

“No, Papa.” Paul paused at the door and threw up his hand. “I don’t think he’s goin’ to be real inclined to listen to you or Sadie right now. I’ll go.” And he ran down the hall, following his newly
dis
covered brother.

Joshua’s huddled figure crouched on the ground outside the backdoor.
Paul put his hand on the boy’s shoulder
. He
jerked violently away.

“Leave me be!” Joshua shouted, throwing off Paul’s hand. “Just leave me be! All dese years
dey
l
ied to me! Tellin’ me my mama wa
s dead and
dey
didn’t know my daddy!
Dey
let me think I
’s
some trash
dey
found on
de
street!”

“Joshua, they didn’t. They love you, they took care of you, they did the best they could.”

“Well, it weren’t good ‘nuff!”

“Josh—”

“All dose nights, when I was little, when I laid ‘
wake and won
der
ed ‘bout my mama an’ wh
u
t she like and was she lookin’ down from heaven and watchin’ over me, and it was Sadie, all de time,
all de time
!”

“But Josh, your mama
was watching over you. All the time, just like she always watched over me.”

“Mist’ Paul, you do it? Like Doc say? You take me with you
when you—”

“Of course I will. But let’s get rid of the mister, alright?”

“No, suh. No, suh, we can’t do dat.” Josh raised his head. “I heard y’all, heard de whole thing. Shouldna’ listened but I just couldn’t walk away, and I guess
dey was
right. I got no place in any world but de one
dey
done made for me, and I’m mad, I can’t help it, they coulda
tol
’
me! But I can’t live in
dis
world de same way do anybody knows I’s Doc’s son. And if I d
oan
call you Mist’, anybody hear me,
dey
think I’s just an uppity nigger. No place in any world for an uppity nigger, Mist’ Paul. No place a’tall. An’ I won’t be no trouble, I’ll look after you, I’ll take real good care of you, keep yo’ horse
groomed and yo’ boots shined—”

Paul winced. He put both his hands on Josh’s shoulders, and the boy turned around and threw himself in
to
Paul’s arms.

“What a world,” Paul said softly as he held the boy. “What a goddamned mess! Don’t worry, little brother. We’ll take care of each other. We will. You’ll see.”

And as Joshua sobbed
,
he reached out and grabbed the lifeline offered by his brother in
this
sea of horrible and hurtful emotions.
A new alliance, an alliance of brothers, one black, one white, an alliance that would last to the grave and beyond, forged itself in hot and scalding tears from the wreckage of the night.

Throughout that night, Paul tossed restlessly under his mosquito netting, Joshua’s voice echoing in his ears.
I won’t be no trouble, I’ll look after you, I’ll take real good care of you, keep yo’ horse
groomed and yo’ boots shined—

Paul cringed. His brother, carrying the same blood in his veins that
he
carried himself, spending his life grooming Paul’s horse and shining Paul’s boots? Fulfilling their father’s highest expectations for him of becoming a home-trained horse vet?

No.
Hell, no.

Chapter
Fourteen

Paul had
plans for his brother
. But they’d require teamwork.
After all, Paul was getting married.
And if his bride had her way about it
,
which he was sure she would
,
he was getting married a lot sooner than his future mother-in-law thought suitable.
It was time to talk with Chloe.

Paul drove the buggy over to the Duval household, picnic basket in the back.
He didn’t pull up into the driveway because he didn’t want the chaperon
e
Chloe’s mother would insist on, even though they were engaged.
They’d gotten very good at avoiding that in the few weeks he’d been home.
Chloe waited for him out of view of the house, visions of a few lazy hours spent in his arms by the riverbank dancing in her head.

He jumped lightly down from the buggy to lift her up, retaking his own seat seconds later.

“God, you look good,” he said, flicking the reins.

“You look strange,” she commented, studying him carefully.

“I do?”

“You do. Like somethin
g
’s really on your mind. Haven’t decided you want to stay a bachelor, have you?” she asked.
She smiled as she said it.
She’d felt him feel the lightning bolt
that struck
him from above his first night home at the small dinner party for twenty his father’d held in celebration of his homecoming.
Her own lightning bolt she’d felt years ago
in childhood
, but she’d never forget its intensity.

Chloe laughed at his facial response.
No verbal clarification needed.

“Then what on earth’s the matter?”

Paul guided the horse forward, raising his hand in greeting to the pedestrians.

“Oh, Lord, that was Celia Davenport!” he exclaimed. “Your Mama’s goin’
to
hear about
this!
”

“I don’t care,” said Chloe pertly
and
shrug
ged
her shoulders.
She hooked her arm underneath his to show how much she didn’t care.
“I’m almost a married lady.
She can’t lock me in my room. I know how to climb down the oak tree, done it plenty of times.”

“Have you now?”

“I have.
So what’s the matter?”

“I guess I need to be sure you still want to marry me. After I tell you what I’m goin’
to
tell you.”

“Lord,
that sounds solemn!”

“Solemn subject.”

Chloe studied
this
man she’d chosen when she was five and he was twelve
. He
hadn’t appreciated his favored status at the time
.
In fact, h
e’d
spen
t
an inordinate amount of energy avoiding her attentions.

“You’ve
seen the world,
you don’t want to stay in town, you want to go up North, or back to Europe. Fine with me, I don’t give a damn.”

“Chloe!” he exclaimed in mock horror
. He loved her disregard of convention.

“Well, I don’t. Whither thou goest, and all that. Is that the problem? Because you have been away a long time and I’ll go anywhere with you, really.”

“No, that’s not it at all. Couldn’t wait to get home and I never want to leave.”

“Then what is it?”

Paul turned onto Wharf Street, taking the road out of the city limits proper towards a little secluded spot they knew down by the banks of the Ocmulgee.

“I have a brother,” he said, and began to speak. By the time they’d reached their destination and spread the tablecloth on a grassy rise under the overhanging willows, Chloe
knew as much as he did.

She spread the food, the bread and butter, the thick slices of roast beef and ham, the fried chicken legs, the bowl of potato salad, and filled their plates. She handed him his and settled into a pretty pose, her long skirt billowing off the cloth and onto the grass.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know I’m missing something here, but what are you so upset about? It’s not exactly like it’s something that’s never happened before, now is it?”

“And what would you know about it, Miss Worldly?”

“A lot,” she said frankly. “You don’t really think our
m
amas can always keep us in hot houses, do you? To tell the truth, you’ve been gone so much you wouldn’t know, but there’s always been talk
a
bout your father and Sadie. I’ve heard Mama and Papa. ‘Course, they don’t know that. Mama, she just can’t stand not to see a man married, one night she was planning
a
party and carrying on about how Ella Tannen would be such a good match for D
oc
Everett now that she was out of mourning for her husband, and Papa just hollered and told her she shouldn’t count on it ‘cause that would interfere with Everett’s brown sugar.
I wish I could have seen it instead of just hear it. I bet Mama turned puce! Purely puce!” Chloe laughed in delight at the memory of her indomitable mother struck speechless.

“Thank you, darlin’, that makes me feel so much better. Everybody in town knew about it but me!”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” said Chloe, nibbling daintily on a biscuit. “And I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything about Joshua. Besides,” she gave a pretty shrug, “everybody loves your papa. As long as he keeps it private, nobody’s going to say anything about it. I mean, like I said, it’s not like it’s all that uncommon.”

“No,” Paul agreed, finally biting into a chicken leg. “But it makes me feel like I don’t even know Papa, you know? He’s so straight-forward, so honest, and they went to such lengths. Sent me to Charleston that summer, Sadie went off somewhere ‘vis
iting’, they said—”

He broke off as Chloe laughed.

“Overabundance of caution, if you ask me,” she said.

“Why’s that?”

“’Cause it involves Sadie. And if Sadie didn’t want anybody to say anything, then they wouldn’t. Well, the Negroes wouldn’t, anyway. I guess the white folks might have been a problem but then, they don’t pay that much attention when a darky housekeeper has a baby.”