The Wilful Daughter (18 page)

And from time to time, pray that he would.

“
I am old, Lord,” the Blacksmith would whisper to the night wind as if she were carrying his words to God. “I have a cripple son and five daughters. I have tried to do my best by them all, Lord. Where have I gone wrong?”

Inside the house he could hear June singing sweetly to her brother:

“
I believe I’ll go back home

And admit that I done wrong.”

“
Why have I never noticed the sweetness of the sound of her voice, Lord?” He brushed the old horse that had been his companion for so many years. A brisk, cold wind blew and the Blacksmith looked up at the house. “Why is she singing that song to him, Lord? I am sure she knows others. Others that I would not approve of.” He stopped brushing and looked up at the house. The wood would have to be chopped by someone else, he could hire a boy to come by and do it. “My son was strong, Lord, stronger than me. Why didn’t I see it?”

He brushed until his old arms were sore. He went to his private room and picked a volume of Shakespeare, he had no idea what it was. He opened it but never saw the printed words.

“
My son should be with me, Lord. My son should be by my side.” He closed his eyes and rested for a while. When he awoke it was late and a quilt covered him. Bira, sweet Bira who cared for them all had covered him from the chill of the night.

“
Why did she never tell me about the strength of my son?”

That night the boy stirred a great deal. It seemed that having June lie next to him, holding him and refusing to let him go, was keeping him from his rest. So the Blacksmith picked up the tiny, soundly sleeping, June and took her to the bed she hadn’t slept in for seven nights. He touched the boy’s forehead then held the old bowl for him to spit the poison from his body.

It must have been two hours before Willie was lucid enough to realize that it was his father nursing him through to his death.

“
Why didn’t you kill me when I was born, Papa? The midwife said nobody would have faulted a man for putting a pillow over the face of such a sick and weak baby. No one would have ever known.”

The Blacksmith wiped his son’s brow. “I would never kill a child of mine. No matter what he was.”

“
But you never loved me, Papa.”

“
Love,” the Blacksmith stated with his usual harshness, “is for women.”

“
And cripples.” The boy coughed. When he finished he looked into his father’s eyes. “I was never a woman, Papa. I was strong, could cut wood, pull myself up a tree. I just didn’t have legs, Papa. I was real strong but you never wanted to see.”

“
Of course I saw, boy. You were always a big help to your mother and sisters.”

“
You never took me to the shop, Papa. Your shop. You never did.”

The Blacksmith hung his head.

“
I could have sat on a tree stump. I could swing a hammer just like I heard you swinging it every morning of my life, if you had taught me. No one had to know I was weak Papa, cause I wasn’t. I was strong. I have hands just like you, Papa. Big hands.” And the frail boy held his pale palms up to the dim light. The Blacksmith placed his own hand to one and sighed. Just as big, just as strong. Gnarled in a few places from the crutches, from the chopping of wood, from pulling himself up into trees by rope. Strong hands.

Exactly how he measured each of his daughters’ suitors.

But he had forgotten to measure his son’s.

Tears welled in the Blacksmith’s eyes. “The doctors said the sun would hurt you, and the winds would chill you. I know you don’t believe me, but I always cared about you. And when they said too much exposure. . .”

“
I wish,” the boy whispered laying back and looking out the window into the night, “that I could have seen your shop, Papa. It’s not far from here. When I was little I tried to go in my wagon. June tried to pull me. But there was this hill and she was so tiny.”

The boys head was cool, almost normal. He closed his eyes and faded into sleep. The Blacksmith remembered coming home one day when the boy had been nine, thinking: I left Bira and the girls without enough wood for to cook dinner. I’ll have to cut a whole cord tonight.

But Willie had cut it all. While his father had been at the shop a legless boy had been the man of the house, dragging himself about on crutches. The boy had cut new slats for the beds and fixed the chair legs. The boy had been every bit a man. But the father never noticed.

Silently he bundled the frail body into the many blankets that covered him and lifted the fragile parcel towards the door. Willie awoke startled.

“
Where am I going, Papa? Am I going to glory?”

The Blacksmith tried to laugh. “No boy, in a few hours it will be dawn. You’re going to the shop with me.”

He took his son quietly from the house and out to the barn. He laid him on a pile of straw in the back of the wagon then he hitched the horse. Slowly and quietly so as not to wake the sleeping women, he started from the house for the shop, leaving behind the cloud that clung to his home like a veil of tears. He turned time and again to look at his cargo, his only son.

“
I ain’t never been out this late, Papa.” There was happiness in his voice. “Look up at them stars.”

“
Son, this ain’t late this is early. Come to think of it,” the Blacksmith chuckled, “I ain’t never been up this early.”

The boy didn’t laugh but he smiled. The trip never took very long but with such frail cargo the Blacksmith made sure to miss each and every hole and to go slow when he could.

“
Papa,” the boy asked with false strength, “why’s the shop so far from home?”

“
Isn’t far, son, but ain’t near. Used to be near, used to be in the barn.”

“
Why’d you move it, Papa?” the boy asked, then added: “I didn’t know you could just look up and see such stars.”

“
I moved it ‘cause a white man tried to get too friendly with your mama one day. I decided it was good business if the white folks didn’t know where my family was.”

The boy was silent again and the Blacksmith looked back and saw that he was sleep.

To get down the hill to the shop was not a difficult thing to do since years before the Blacksmith had built a road of tar and gravel. No one ever complained about getting to his shop. Willie felt nothing from the smooth pavement but he woke just the same when the wagon stopped. He tried to sit up.

“
Easy son.” The smithy lifted the boy and propped him on hay and feed bags. He pointed to the small shack-like house. “Well, here it is. This is the shop.”

The boy smiled at the place and his father.

“
I didn’t think it would look like this. Papa, it’s so small.”

“
It’s bigger than the first time you saw it.” The Blacksmith said with pride.

The sad sick eyes widened in disbelief. “I’ve been here before?”

The Blacksmith went around the wagon and stood behind his son, touching his forehead. The boy’s fever hadn’t returned and for that he was glad. “On the night you were born I snuck into the room when all the women were finished having their way with you and I took you here. I showed you to the sky and to the land. Then I showed them to you. I told you we would one day work here together. That it would say ‘Brown and Son’ on the sign. Then I snuck you back home.” Tears shook the Blacksmith’s voice.

Willie heard them and touched his father’s face, a single tear stuck to his finger. The Blacksmith had never cried as far as Willie knew. His father was strong, and strong people didn’t cry, didn’t weep.

Except when people died.

Willie looked at the building. There was no sign above the door. “Got some paper inside I can draw on, Papa? I’d like to do a picture of it.”

“
Brother, it ain’t nothing but a shack.”

“
No, Papa. That’s not what I see. It’s much more. It’s what you did to make a life for our family.” He pulled his body up so straight it was hard to see the illness hovering above him. “Don’t worry, papa. I feel strong. Suddenly, I don’t feel sick at all.”

The Blacksmith stood his ground, afraid to move.

“
When I look at this shop, Papa, I see the pretty dresses my sisters wear, the fine china on the table. The land that you bought all over Atlanta. Please, Papa, the paper.”

Obediently the Blacksmith went to find the boy something to draw on. Inside he grabbed a lamp and tore pages from his ledger book. He found a fairly sharp pencil and ran out to his son.

Propped up against the back of the wagon on folded sacks, bags and hay, Willie began to draw. His hand was steady. He got the building, the well and the trees. In the lamp and star lit morning the Blacksmith’s son sketched the world that would have been his had his legs been strong.

Willie looked up and saw his father smiling as he watched, then he added something that wasn’t there to the picture of the shop: a sign over the door that said ‘Brown and Son’.

He asked his father: “Do you like it?”

The Blacksmith stood there amazed holding the lamp near the paper not seeing the boy’s damp brow.

“
Son, it is wonderful.” How had he refused all these years to see the boy’s talent?

“
Papa, may I have a drink of water?” The words came out far too weak and the Blacksmith held the light to Willie’s face.

Sweat poured from him like water from a faucet. The Blacksmith dropped the pencil and the drawing, and ran to the well. He pulled up the bucket quickly and grabbed the cup. Without thinking he jumped into the wagon making the ailing boy wince. He held the cup to his son, but the boy couldn’t drink the water. It trickled from his mouth in a fading stream.

“
Papa, Papa,” he tried to shout. “I’m scared. Real scared. I can’t see all the stars.”

He held the boy is his arms. “Willie, you can’t see all the stars ‘cause the sun’s gonna come up soon.” Willie nodded and the Blacksmith kept talking. About the wind in the trees, about the stars in the sky. About his life as a boy. The Blacksmith talked and talked about things he had never told his children, then about things he had never told a living soul. And when he couldn’t think of another thing to say he told his son: “Boy, I have always loved you. I thought it was the bad in me that came out in you when you was born this way. So when that old evil woman told me to take out your flame I told her: ‘My son will be strong. Wait and see.’ You are strong my son.”

The boy was still. The boy was dead. He had a peaceful look on his face as if every word his father had said was going with him to glory.

The Blacksmith gently lay his son down in the wagon, but he didn’t cover him yet for there were still some stars in the sky. He took the water and cup back to the well. He picked up the drawing from the ground and dusted away the dirt and the leaves.

He went into his shop and took two nails and placed the picture on the wall. “Gots to get me a frame. A nice frame for this. Maybe send off to Paris for it.” He removed his shirt and put on his apron.

The Blacksmith built the fire quickly. “Willie,” he said to the still night sky. “You got to do this for St. Peter up there in heaven. You strong enough, I know that now. I wish I had known before. Angels don’t need no legs.”

He found a piece of metal he had been working on and placed it in the fire.

“
Sometimes Gabriel’s chariot might need the wheels fixed, or a horse needs new shoes. Now I want you to be able to do it right because,” and he said this with tears streaming down his face as he stared at the wagon, “when you come to get me I don’t want it to be in no new-fangled car or some junk heap. I want to know you been earning your keep up there. You come and get me in a chariot you built yourself.”

It was not yet dawn when the Blacksmith took the metal to his anvil and spoke his last words to his son. “Now watch carefully Willie, I ain’t got much time to show you.”

And before the cocks crowed that morning, the Blacksmith’s hammer came down on the metal in strong thundering strokes.

The Piano Man heard it and rushed to his bedroom window, smelling only Mrs. Maples’ coffee and not yet feeling the dawn.

The preacher heard it, went down on his knees and immediately began to pray.

Of all the sleeping sisters only June heard it. She jumped up and ran to Willie’s room, wondering how she had gotten in her own bed during the night. Her mother was sitting on the floor on a blanket of many colors. The smoke was gone from the room, the smell of the poultice a thing of the past. Mama Bira was humming as tears rolled down her cheeks.

“
Where’s Willie?” June screamed as she shook her mother. “Where’s my brother?”

Bira reached up and pulled the crying girl down to her. “You know, we all know. Brother’s gone. Ain’t you listening? Your father’s telling us Willie’s gone to glory.”

CHAPTER NINE

Bira put the wood into the kitchen stove. Always the warmest room in the house, this was the reason they had placed Brother’s room so near it. Not because of any lack of love but because of the chills he got. Winter and summer the kitchen fire was always burning.

Willie was no longer there to wake June to chop the wood. The Blacksmith had hired a young man to do things around the house that his wife needed done. Each day his last job was making sure there was enough wood on the porch for the stove. And even though it burned low at night, and the coal bin was always full, there was no warmth in the kitchen since Brother had gone.