Embracing Darkness (23 page)

“NO, EZRA!” Wilma shouted, her voice frantic. “DON’ DO IT!” I BEGGIN’ YA! STOP!”

Ezra bent down, locked his giant hand onto the back of his son’s neck, and brought the spike to the side of the boy’s head. As the searing poker met with Jonas’s wounded ear, the child screamed worse than his mother had ever heard anyone scream before in her life. Ezra stood up, dropped the poker next to Jonas’s convulsing body, and stumbled as he turned around slowly, intending to retire to his bed.

“I be da king o’ my house,” slurred Ezra. “Don’t you be forgettin’ it, woman!”

About a month after the incident, which left one quarter of Jonas’s ear deformed, the boy had grown into the habit of making his parents breakfast. The scab on his head from the wine bottle itched a little that morning, but he paid it no mind. Pain and discomfort were now something to which Jonas had grown accustomed, yet none of the beatings he endured after the night his father bit off part of his ear was as bad as that one had been.

Jonas and his dad had resumed their routine of getting up at dawn and walking down Embry Street from dawn until dusk searching for employment. Ezra had started rising early again because one day, just about two weeks earlier, he had found work at Mason’s General Store doing such things as bringing empty crates out of the store and busting them up out back, taking out rotten and unsold produce, and sweeping up in the store. It was not exactly an ideal job, but it was a job nonetheless.

Now that he had found part-time work at Mason’s, word got around about the tall darkie who was strong as an ox and willing to do anything. Ezra was amazed at how fast people were willing to employ him once a white man vouched for his work ethic. Walking the streets, Ezra told would-be employers, “Yes, sir. I be powerful good at anytfin’ you need done. I can do anyfin’. Liff anyfin’, clean anyfin’. You juss name it, sir, an’ I do it.”

The only reason Ezra was lucky enough to land a job at Mason’s was his son Jonas, who had accompanied his father that day. Shortly after the two had left the retired Mr. Nichols, they made their way to the main group of stores.

Hodges wasn’t expecting any work for himself, yet he did ask Mrs. Beverly Mason, “Any work today, missus?”

She scoffed at him and cocked her head. “As I’ve told you every day since you first came here, Mr. Hodges, I am very sorry, but we have no work available. Now if there’s nothing you wish to buy, I suggest you… .”

He interrupted her and, taking a list from his pocket, said, “My wife usually do the marketin’ durin’ the day, but since I be here I needs a small sack o’ beans, please, and if you don’t mind, a bag o’ flour.”

Mrs. Mason rolled her eyes and went for the items, but she stuck her head back in every few seconds to make sure that the Negro man and his son weren’t stealing anything. The Hodges family was down to its last few dollars. Ezra had been lucky, having won ten dollars in a poker game at “The Watering Hole” a week before, but not surprisingly he had drunk most of it away.

Just then Beverly’s son, Dwight, entered the store carrying three heavy boxes containing miscellaneous stock that had just arrived at the post office. Because it was early and the store had just opened, Ezra and Jonas were the only customers there. Struggling to get past Jonas in the middle of a narrow aisle, Dwight said, “Excuse me, kid. I need to get by.” He then noticed Jonas’s upper right ear. He was so taken aback by the grotesque deformity that he lost his balance and fell, the three heavy boxes crashing down with him.

Beverly Mason ran out from the storeroom and dropped the sack of beans onto the floor. “What in the name of… ?”

Ezra ran over to Dwight and helped him up. Dwight thanked him and started to shake his hand, that is until his mother started in on him.

Beverly yelled at her son, “It sounded like something in there broke. Whatever got broken, Mister, you’re going to pay for it out of your own wages!”

Dwight quickly turned his attention to the boxes and feverishly tore the first one open. As everything appeared to be alright, he did the same with the second box.

By this time Mr. Mike Mason had come in from the storeroom. “What’s all the commotion out here?” he asked, surveying the store. There were his wife amid a pile of spilled beans at her feet, his son rummaging nervously through boxes on the floor, and two Negroes standing between the both of them.

“Your son,” began Beverly Mason, “is the clumsiest child this side of the Mississippi. I don’t know why we even bother. If he’s not giving too much change to the customers, he’s breaking our stock left and right and costing us more money than he’s worth.”

Jonas’s eyes lit up when he heard this. “We from Mississippi!” Knowing very well he’d said more than he should have, the boy lowered his head subserviently.

Mr. Mason walked over to the stranger while his son checked the third box for damage. “How do you do?” said Mike Mason in the friendliest voice Ezra Hodges had ever heard any white man address him, with the exception of Arthur Nichols. “My name is Mason. I’m the owner of… .”

Just then his wife cleared her throat loudly. Without turning around to see what she wanted, Mike Mason corrected himself.

“My
wife
here and I are the owners of this store.”

Mr. Mason had never met Ezra for one reason. One of his duties was to sweep the storeroom every morning and take a quick inventory. His wife, on the other hand, was always in the store itself with Dwight opening the doors, setting up the cash box, and keeping the shelves tidy. Mr. Mason wouldn’t show his face in the store until well after opening, which was fine by him since he saw the storeroom as an escape from his wife and her constant nagging. He’d felt compelled to come out from his hideout, however, when he heard Dwight drop the boxes and his wife scream.

“What can we do for you?” Mike Mason said to Ezra Hodges, just as Dwight moaned at the sight of six busted bottles of soda pop inside the third box.

While Beverly was smacking the back of Dwight’s head and calling him a “nitwit,” Ezra replied, “I be needin’ a job.”

Ezra knew very well that this would inevitably cause Beverly to react. She ceased pulling her son’s hair and telling him to clean up the mess he’d caused and to expect a dock in his pay. As if Ezra had offended her by soliciting her husband for employment, she said in a scornful tone, “As I’ve told you every day for the past five weeks, Mr. Hodges, we don’t have any work for you.”

Mr. Mason shook his head slowly. “I’m truly sorry, Mr. Hodges, but my wife is right. I can’t think of anything we’d need you for. That’s the God’s honest truth.”

Beverly kicked the beans around her with one swipe of her foot and snapped, “If you still want the beans and flour, just give me another minute, and I’ll get them for you.”

Ezra nodded, studying the floor where the opened boxes of goods lay, wishing he could snatch it all up and run out of the store. Mrs. Mason retreated to the storeroom while Dwight, still on his hands and knees as if repenting his clumsiness, sifted through the broken glass in the carton.

The scraping sound of Beverly Mason’s high-heeled shoes grew louder as she came back from the storeroom. “That’s eight cents for the beans and eighty cents for the flour,” the woman snapped. “Eighty-eight cents all together.”

Ezra handed her a dollar bill, and she returned twelve cents to him, slamming the change on the counter in an obvious effort not to touch him. Ezra and Jonas turned without another word and began to walk toward the door. Using the tips of her thumb and index finger, Mrs. Mason dropped the dollar into an open tin box as though it were infected with some contagious disease. Just as Ezra and Jonas passed the threshold of the front door, they heard, “Ouch!” and turned around.

It was Dwight. He was now hunched over, unable to stand up straight. “I THINK IT’S MY BACK, MA!” he exclaimed in an agonized shrill. “I MUST HAVE HURT IT WHEN I FELL.”

Coming to the aid of his son, Mike Mason told him to lie down upstairs on the couch and put his feet up.

“Alright,” Dwight said weakly, excusing himself as he squeezed by Ezra and Jonas and limped out of the store. Beverly simply shook her head slowly.

“Uh, wait a minute, please!” a voice called from inside the store to Ezra Hodges. Mr. Mason waved his hand at Ezra and asked him to come back in. “If my son’s going to be laid up indefinitely, we’re going to need somebody to assume his duties. What do you say? It won’t be permanent. I can’t rightly say when my son will be fit to work again, but in the meantime the job’s yours.” Then Mike Mason motioned to his wife by tilting his head in her direction, as if to remind Ezra of the hazards that came with the job. “That is, if you still want it.”

Ezra Hodges snatched the hand of Mike Mason and wrung it. “Oh yessir, Missuh Mason! I do a powerful good job for you! Yessir!”

Beverly Mason just scoffed, turned on her heel, and walked into the storeroom.

Ezra worked for the Masons for several days, earning three dollars per day, while Jonas would sit and watch. He liked being with his father when he was working. Earning a living and having the means to support his family made the man happy and proud. And during this time he didn’t feel compelled to frequent “The Watering Hole.” The Hodges family seemed to be getting back to normal. Ezra would eat dinner with his family, get to bed at a decent hour, wake up at dawn, and be out of the house by 6:00.

And so this was how things went. Ezra’s steady work created stability in his home, and once Dwight, who had sprained his lower back, was able to return to full-time employment, Mike Mason was pleased to recommend Ezra to several other business owners. The week Dwight came back to work, Ezra worked one day in the Holly Post Office, where he mopped, removed cobwebs from the ceiling, polished the counters, cleaned all the windows, and helped bring in bags of mail from the Crossley mail car parked out front. The bundles were brought into town by Julius Gorman, the shortest man in all of Rockingham County, who was too weak to handle the bags on his own. Mr. Gorman’s usual method was to grab handfuls of envelopes and run them up the stairs—that is, until Ezra Hodges came along.

Ezra worked two days the following week at Wheelwright Academy as an assistant to the handyman. There he helped paint, tidy up, and run numerous errands around town, such as delivering mail to the post office (he enjoyed that because he got to say hello to the people he had come to know during his stint there) and picking up the Academy’s mail. Ezra even found employment two nights that week at “The Watering Hole,” which Wilma at first feared would rekindle his drinking, but it didn’t.

Ezra reported for work at the speakeasy at half past four in the afternoon. He’d take down the chairs from the tables, polish the bar, dust the piano, mop the stage, and act as a bouncer, which soon became his primary role. A man the size of Ezra Hodges quelled any potential for rowdy behavior. Then at four in the morning, when the place closed, he’d put the chairs back on the tables and sweep up. Although he was working only half the day, Ezra loved it because he still received a full day’s wages. In fact, he was so happy to have found steady employment that he didn’t have time to think about drinking. Soon after the stock market’s collapse Mayor Errol Aberfoyle assumed ownership of “The Watering Hole” and asked Ezra whether he wanted more hours. Ezra accepted the full-time position, which carried a salary of twelve dollars a week. Although not quite as much as Mr. Mason had paid him on a daily basis, it was steady work.

Jonas finished frying the eggs and slabs of ham for his mother and father, took the frying pan off the fire, and put the food on a large plate, which he quickly brought over to the table. He then returned to the stove, grabbed the coffee pot, poured some into two cups and put them on the table as well. “Mamma! Daddy! Breakfas’!” Jonas called to his parents.

After a loud yawn Ezra called back, “What time it be, boy?”

Jonas leaned out the window. “By the looks o’ the sun, I reckon it be middle o’ the mornin’.”

Wilma yawned as well, and soon husband and wife emerged from the blue curtain that now acted as the partition between their bedroom and the rest of the apartment.

FIFTEEN
Zachary Black
 

Just about the time Ezra Hodges had attained steady employment, Father Poole and Sister Ignatius were wondering what to do about little Jessica Benson, the recently orphaned child who was now related by blood to no one. The suicides of both great-grandfather Ben Benson and her father Johnny Benson II, coupled with the accidental death of her mother Georgiana, left the two-year-old all alone. For the last few days since the triple funeral she had been staying at the rectory with Father Poole, Sister Ignatius, Mrs. Keats, and (for most of the day) Argyle Hobbs.

Jessica’s first words had come at eleven months. They were “mamma” and “babba,” the latter being her bottle. At a year and a half she was talking in short sentences. Her favorite things to say at that time were “Oh, gosh!” and “No way.”

Once, while sitting on her father’s lap just after supper, Johnny yelled to his wife, “Those sons of bitches won’t get away with manipulating those stocks. Soon they’ll come crashing down on their bleedin’ heads!” All Jessica remembered was “sons of bitches,” which she turned into “somms on dishes.” Georgiana hadn’t approved and asked Johnny to refrain from such language in front of the child.

Now at two years old Jessica was a very fluent talker. “I wanna play,” she said to Father Poole and Sister Ignatius from the main staircase of the rectory. “I’m gonna take my dolly. She can come out, can’t she?”

Sister Ignatius called for the child to come to her, and she did most obediently. Father Poole observed the close bond the two had formed in the short time since the little girl’s arrival.

“It’s strange, Father,” Sister Ignatius began as she picked Jessica up and put her on her lap. “She hasn’t cried once for her mother. She asked for her only once. I think it was the day I found… you know. It was just that one time and that was it.”

Father Poole said happily, “Hey you!”

The child giggled.

“Go see Mrs. Keats in the kitchen. I think she’s got a cookie for you!”