Dark Series, The Color of Seven and The Color of Dusk (Books We Love Special Edition) (16 page)

He
immersed
himself in his work. He’d already taken over a great deal of Everett’s huge practice, much of which was non-paying
. That had always been irrelevant to Everett, and it certainly was to Paul. He
was grateful for the volume of practice available to him. He moved in and took over more and more of his father’s patients
.
Everett, content that his people were in good hands, better hands, he felt, than his own, given Paul’s superior education and the vigor of his youth, sat back and abdicated more and more of his professional life to his son.

Sadie
didn’t like it.
She didn’t leave any doubt about her feelings, either, to E
verett
or
Paul.

“Boy go
an kill his
self.”

“He enjoys it, Sadie.”

“
No, he doan.
He don’t enjoy nothin
’
no more. Just uses it to fill his time.”

“Same difference right now. Leave him be.”

Finding no success with Everett, she turned her tongue on Paul.

“
De
Bible say ‘
p
hysician, heal thyself
’
, Mist’ Paul. How you go
an
do
d
at when you tire yourself out so bad you catch
de
typhoid or something?”

“I’m fine, Sadie.”

“You ain’t. You ain’t fine a’tall. You think deliverin’ every baby in town go
an
bring yours back? Make Chloe live again?”

“Sadie, sometimes you’re too smart for words.”

“Paul. You listen to me.” That got his attention all right. Sadie almost never omitted the ‘Mist’. “I been yo’
m
ama since you w
a
s eight years old. Didn’ you say
dat
yo’self?”

“You know you have.”

“Mamas knows. An’
dis
m
ama knows
her
boy’s riding for a fall. You ain’t made out of iron, son, you just think you is.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said agreeably. “Now I got some calls over on Woolfolk Street if anybody needs me.”

He strode away
.

“Ridin’ for a fall, boy! You hear me?”

He did
n’t
pause in his stride and Sadie turned away, mutte
ring under her breath. “Kill hisself. Pure-de-kill his
self!”

Formal lessons suspended in the Devlin household.
Paul
couldn’t concentrate and had trouble staying still for longer than a few seconds at a time. Joshua mourned Chloe deeply. H
e didn’t have the necessary concentration either.
For the first time in four years,
even though
Joshua’s days were
still spent with
Paul
in a whirlwind of activity,
his
evenings were now free. Paul
wouldn’t let Joshua come with him on the e
vening emergencies
. And there
were
a lot of evening emergencies now, si
nce Paul made it clear to
every doctor in Macon he’d take any night call anyone got.

“Why can’t I go?” asked Joshua.

“Because you’re a growing boy and you need your sleep.”

“You don’t?”

“I ain’t grown any in a long time, Josh.”

“Ain’t what I meant and you know it.”

“Break’ll do you good, Josh, we’ll
start again
this fall.
A
nyway, I probably been pushing too hard. Why don’t you just read when I’m out in the evening? Reading’s the best education you can get, anyway. And besides, you need some time off.”

“Time off?”

“I worked you too hard, Josh. I didn’t realize, but you never get out with any of your friends, you never court a girl. I been keeping you in here with your nose stuck in a book.”

“
L
earned a lot, didn’t I?” Josh asked proudly.

“Yes, and I’m real, real proud of you. But Josh, life’s too short. God, it’s too short.
Summer’s coming up, won’t get dark ‘til late. Go off with the other boys.
Go fishin’, go swimmin’, go courtin’. For God’s sake, just go! Go have some fun!”

Joshua didn’t have the heart to tell his brother
the truth.
Which was,
he didn’t
actually
have any friends anymore.
So a
s the lazy spring twilights lengthened into lazier summer twilights, he walked out
the back door, onto the porch, and down the steps
. He
whistl
ed
as he walked as though he had a definite destination in mind.
He maintained
his purposeful stride until he was down the corner and out of sight.

The first few evenings he did
this
, he stuck a book under his shirt, out of Paul’s view. He debated walking down to Doc’s and claiming a corner to read in, but rejected
the
idea for several reasons.

In his own mind, he was still
nothing but
an inconve
nient problem for Doc and Sadie. He wasn’t c
omfortable in their presence.
He still called them Doc and Sadie, just as he had before he’d known they were his parents, and he didn’t ever plan to call them anything else.
Lingering feelings of rejection were hard to overcome.
Then, too, they’d ask why he was reading at the Devlin residence on College Street and not in his own room at the Devlin residence on Orange Street.
Which meant h
e’d have to explain Paul had
pretty much
thrown him out of the house with orders to have fun with his friends
. Which meant explaining
he
didn’t really have any
friends to have fun with. He knew Doc and Sadie
had always been
scared to death his education would cut him off from both the white and black worlds, leaving him in limbo
. And since it sort of had,
wouldn’t they just jump on that like a duck on a June bug?

None of which gave him a destination.
The first few times he walked aimlessly and finally returned home after a suitable absence.
But then
one evening, as he headed down the street, he passed a group of three childhood cronies.

“Lord have mercy!” exclaimed Abe Ludlow, whose full and formal name was Abraham Emancipation
Ludlow. “
Josh! Yo’ master don’t need you wave a fan over him tonight?”

Joshua turned an icy stare on Abe, remembering the hot dusty mornings they’d sat in Doc’s driveway shooting marbles.
From his lips came the unbridled inflections of his childhood.

“You watch yo’ mouth, nigger. Din’ nobody a
sk
yo’ ‘pinion.”

“Whooo!” Eulises S. Jones chimed in.
That was his name, Eulises S. His mother hadn’t known what the S stood for, and she hadn’t been sure of the spelling of
‘
Ulysses
’
either, but she wasn’t going to pass up the elegance of the rolling syllables on a minor technicality.

“Watch it, Abe!” called Jeremiah Andrews. His mother quoted Bible verses every other breath. She blithely worked her way through the Old Testament whenever she needed to name a new child, usually every eleven to thirteen months. “He fixin’ to get nasty!”

“No, I ain’t!” declared Joshua. “Y’all are. Ain’t done nuttin’ to any one of y’all!”

“An you ain’t done nuttin’ with us in so long we done forgot what yo’ voice sound like!” exclaimed Abe. “Why you done forget where all us lives, boy? You too good or s
omethin’
?”

Joshua stared at Abe. Could it be that simple? Had his friends ignored him only because
they thought he was ignoring them?

“’Course I ain’t. None of y’all wanted to have nuttin’ to do with me.”

“You ain’t give us a chance, boy. Never see you no mo’. Everybody gots to work, but they don’t do it all de damn time! What you do when you ain’t workin’?”

“I been—Mist’ Paul, he been teaching me—”

“Teachin’ you what? You already knows how to read, don’t you?”

“Sho.”

“Den what else you need?”

“De
re’s lots of things.”

“Well, it ain’t changed de way you talk, nigger. An’ you still black.”

Joshua wasn’t brave enough to show them
it had
changed the way he tal
ked. And he certainly couldn’t dis
pute he was still black. He was more properly speaking brown, but he knew what Abe meant and didn’t feel it expedient to get into an argument over semantics.

“Yep,” he said finally. “I still is.”

“An’ you off yo’ leash tonight?”

Joshua bridled at the implied insult to Paul, but fe
lt it best to be a
greeable
. He
nodded.

“Well! Wanna’ mosey on with
us a while?”

“Where you go
in’?
”

“Down to de river.”

“Why come? You ain’t got no fishin’ pole.”

“Ain’t go
an
fish.”

“Den whu
t?”

“You see iff’n you come. So is you comin’ or is you ain’t?”

Joshua stood for a moment, undecided. He didn’t like walking blindly into situations he knew nothing about.
Besides, something about his old friends seemed different. There was something furtive, secretive.

“Guess you ain’t,” said Abe with a shrug, and the boys started off.

Joshua stared after them. Of course they seemed different. He hadn’t really talked to them in over four years, what did he expect? Probably they were just going skinny-dipping or maybe even meeting girls down by the riverbank. He called after them.

“Wait! I’s comin’!”

He caught up with them, driving the final nail into
the coffin his brother’d be sleeping in by fall.
During the daylight hours, anyway.

* * *

“So why for we goin’
to de river?” Josh asked again as they strolled briskly along
towards
Wharf Street.

“You see do we get
dere.
Got a meetin’.”

“Meetin’? What kind of meetin’?”

“Boy, you just fu
ll up of questions, ain’t you? Dat
what all dat learnin’ do for you?”

“I just—”
Joshua started, but Jeremiah broke in.

“Damn, Abe! Act like it
be
some big secret or somethin’! Josh, you seen dat new feller wh
u
t started showin’ up on Sunday at St. Barnabas?”

St. Barnabas was the black Episcopal church.
It stood on the corner of Congress Street and Third Street and enjoyed a large attendance, consisting primarily of the house servants who worked in the big houses of the well-to-do streets.

Sadie
’d
hauled Joshua off to St. Barnabas every Sunday of his memory unless he was sick as sin.
Sadie wasn’t terribly social, though, and didn’t linger after the sermon.
So Joshua,
confirmed member of the
c
hurch though he was,
really didn’t know much about the
c
hurch’s social structure.

“Not really,” he admitted.

“Boy! How you not notice him? Big man, coal black, shaved head?”

“I just—Sadie
do
an
stay aroun’ long after Brother Gorley finish. I just ain’t noticed nobody like dat.”

“Well, dat don’t make no never mind no how,” Abe assured him. “He be real special.”

“Special how? Wh
u
t his name?”

“His name be Cain,” said Abe, alm
ost reverently. “An he say—he say his color be sebben
.”

“He say whu
t?”

“His color be sebben
.”

“Dat don’t make no sense a’tall. Colors ain’t numbers.”

Abe shook his head.
“Can’t ‘splain. Can’t ‘splain nuttin
’ ‘bout Cain.
But you see. He—never
mind. You see.”

Josh hung slightly back
.
He didn’t like the sound of
this. H
e didn’t understand his friends’ fascination with a man who spoke in riddles. He almost turned around and headed back toward town and Abe, sensing his withdrawal, stopped dead in his tracks.