William Henry is a Fine Name

by Cathy Gohlke

  “The truth is, Mother, that it was so hot today that everything I wore began to itch me something fierce and I feared I’d break out in a rash from the heat in my body and the wool in my socks mingling together, so I took them off and kept them safe and clean—clean as possible—in my pocket.” Pa picked up his fork. He knew it wasn’t the whole truth, but he let me off just the same and I thought well of him for it. Ma studied my face, then tugged with little patience at the tatted edges of her cuffs. Pretty soon she sighed, eased her brow, and passed me the cornbread.

  Ma was no ordinary woman. She loved me in her way, but a war seemed to be forever waging inside her, a war I couldn’t see.

  Granny Struthers, who lived near the bend in the run, told me that Ma was raised at Ashland, a big tobacco plantation in North Carolina, the only child of a well-to-do planter. Ma was just ten when her mother died in a buggy accident. A spooked horse ran wild, throwing the buggy against a tree, ripping the seat apart and crushing Grandmother. Grandfather shot the horse in the head and beat the driver, an old family slave, near to death. After that he gained a fearful reputation with a whip among the slaves, men and women alike. Granny Struthers figured Ma suffered most for losing her mother at such a tender age, but vowed Marcus Ashton may as well have followed his wife to her grave for all the love he gave his daughter after that.

  Ma had missed out on family but she’d had everything else in this world. Granny Struthers said Ma grew up talking the most proper kind of southern English and spreading a host of silver spoons and forks beside her dinner plate. She’d been waited on and fussed over by slaves every day of her life. Even Ma said that falling in love with Pa in his military uniform at a Washington, D.C., ball was the first thing she ever did by herself.

  But Grandfather wouldn’t take a Massachusetts man for his daughter, not even a West Point graduate. He feared all Northerners were “dyed-in-the-wool abolitionists.” Still, Pa was smitten, so he wrote to Isaac Heath, a family friend in Maryland, asking for a job. He left West Point and Massachusetts both and took the foreman’s job at Laurelea, about halfway between his home and Ma’s. Then Grandfather swore Pa was no better than a deserter and dirt farmer, living low. Ma ran off and married Pa anyway. Grandfather disowned Ma, swearing that he was no kin to any Yankee abolitionist and that the day she set her slippered foot off North Carolina red clay soil was the day his only child died. When I was born Ma wrote her pa a letter, begging him to come. He never answered.

  That’s when Ma settled in at Laurelea. Miz Laura and Aunt Sassy took her under their wing, taught Ma how to cook and get along the way regular folks do. Even so, Ma bristled around anybody of color. She hated being taught how to do by Aunt Sassy. I figured it was just the way she was brought up, owning slaves and all. But sometimes her ways shamed me in front of William Henry and Aunt Sassy. I knew her ways shamed Pa, who’d had to learn a new way of life, too. Sometimes, he took little patience with her.

  Granny Struthers told me all this one day when I stopped to see her for herbs for Miz Laura’s garden. Granny Struthers is no real kin to me. She’s William Henry’s granny for real, Aunt Sassy’s ma. Granny’s as black as the crow that flies, like William Henry. She has a way of knowing things that folks don’t speak outside their four walls, and of what’s on a person’s mind before he speaks it.

  The mantel clock bonged seven-thirty. Supper was long cleared. I’d finished filling the wood and kindling boxes, and hauled water for morning. Daisy hadn’t liked that I was so late milking her, and let me know with a sharp crack of her tail against my cheek. I’d skimmed the cream for Ma and set the pail to cool in the springhouse. My chores were finally finished.

  Sleepy summer sounds of wood thrushes and night owls drifted low on the evening breeze. A Carolina wren sang its lullaby. I stretched long on the hearth rug, my hands locked behind my head, and stared up into the beams of the ceiling. Pa tamped his pipe, lifted his heavy black Bible off the shelf, and sat down by the west window so the light could find his page. Ma folded her mending and placed it square in the basket at her feet. She pushed a pesky curl, the color of chestnuts just ripened, from her forehead, closed her eyes, and gave herself over to listening.

  I never minded the evening read. I loved the music in Pa’s voice when he took up the Book. Words didn’t sit still on the page in black, block letters for him like they did for me. They leaped into the night sky, casting shadows among the fire dancers, conjuring battles and bloody sacrifices. Long, treacherous journeys, spoils of war, and riches beyond anything I could imagine in daylight played through the air while Pa read.

  When he read Solomon, I loved a woman with my whole heart and soul, even though I’d not raised my eyes to a girl in town. In Acts, I believed myself in far-off Jerusalem, breathless from the heat of the mob and bruised by the sharp edges of rocks that stoned Stephen. I lay limp on the floor when the lifeblood and water dripped out of Jesus on the cross.

  Some place deep inside me cried over the tenderness of an Almighty God who counts the hairs of my head precious and keeps track of each sparrow, who would search night and day until He found a lone, lost lamb, intent on returning it to the fold.

  I wondered how the God of the Bible and the one Preacher Crane railed about on Sunday mornings could be one and the same. Preacher Crane screamed about a God of vengeance, and lakes of fire and brimstone. But when Pa read, I saw a God of peace and mercy, grieved by war and one man’s meanness to another. It seemed to me a great, long journal written since the beginning of time, and in it I could learn, little by little, the secrets of life.

  TWO WEEKS LATER I dreamed that William Henry and I and a sea of black bodies with no names and no faces hoed behind the Heaths’ house. The sun rode high, bright white above us. The air hung heavy, too hot and too still. The only sounds were the buzzing of mosquitoes inside my ear and the low, in-and-out weaving of Aunt Sassy’s spirituals, sometimes loud enough to know she was near, sometimes lost among the hoeing bodies, which couldn’t be separated from the soil they turned. A tiny black cloud blew up from the south, so small I might not have noticed if William Henry hadn’t laid down his hoe and stretched his arms, calling me with no words, but a deep down sadness in his eyes. The wind rose until it grew into a great black funnel and pulled the green corn from the ground, split the barn, and uprooted the entire Laurelea. The funnel swallowed William Henry and the whole sea of black bodies with no names and no faces, pulling them upside down and backward through the sky. William Henry begged me with his eyes till they lost their color in the distance. His skin split a seam down the middle and peeled off his body in one long sheet that came flying in my face. When I looked down I was wearing William Henry’s sleek, black skin, and it felt good and cool and right.

  I looked up and there stood Ma, six feet above me, weeping as the world’s end came on. I reached up to comfort her, calling, “Ma! Ma!” But she narrowed her eyes in hate and glared on me with shame. She shoved me away, swearing by God Almighty. She whistled a shrill blast on two fingers and set the hounds on me. Then she turned and ran south, away from the storm and Laurelea, and me.

  My screams were nothing but spit in the rushing fire and wind. As the hounds bared their fangs and ripped the flesh from my face and arms I screamed and screamed, “Ma! Ma!”

  “Robert! Robert! Wake up, Robert!” Ma knelt in her white nightdress, on the floor by my bed, shaking me.

  I gulped great swells of air, trying to pull myself up from dream drowning. I jerked upright in bed, the sheet wound tightly around my neck, my heart pounding in its cage, my shirt and hair soaked.

  “Robert! You’re having another nightmare. You must wake up!”

  Ma’s voice, urgent, called me up, up out of my dream. She wrapped her arms around me. I clung tight, but still my head pounded. She pulled my head to her chest, like she might comfort a baby.

  Time passed until I realized the clock ticked in the next room, my heart beat steadily, and my body was still one long, solid piece. I looked at
my hands in the lamplight. They were the color of sand at the bottom of the run, the same as always. That’s when I realized that the far-off barking of hounds on the chase was real. My body tensed and my grip on Ma’s arm tightened.

  “It’s all right, Robert. It was all a dream. A frightful dream.”

  “But the hounds. I hear the hounds!”

  Ma’s tired sigh came through her nightdress. I pulled away. “It’s Tulleys’ hounds. They must be searching for a runaway.” Ma sounded worried, vexed, and tired.

  Yes. Tulleys’ hounds. The Tulleys couldn’t make it as dirt farmers, so they raised a vicious strain of hounds to hire out to bounty hunters and slave catchers to track runaways. The dogs were ugly and mean and would just as soon rip the face off a man as tree him. I shuddered.

  “Here, Robert. Wrap this around you. You’re taking chill.” Ma stood and pulled the bed quilt across my shoulders.

  Daylight rose in the east window of my room, and Ma smiled on me with love and worry. My dream tugged at me, but I saw no traces of hate or shame in the corner creases of her eyes.

  “Your father’s already gone. You may as well get up, Robert. I’ll start breakfast. You and William Henry are to mend Miss Laura’s garden fence today.” Ma tried to keep the vexation from her voice. I knew it was for Pa, not me.

  It wasn’t uncommon for Pa to go out in the night. I never figured why a man who worked from dawn till dark as hard as Pa did would want to go traipsing off in the middle of the night. He never took the lantern off the hook. Sometimes, if I happened to wake, I’d hear him lead one of Mr. Heath’s horses or a wagon down the side of the lane. Not on the lane, but alongside, in the grass, as though he took pains not to be heard. But who would care? I told myself that everybody has their odd ways and Pa kept fewer than most.

  Ma’s hand gripped the doorframe. “Every blessed time your father goes out those hounds are turned loose! If he isn’t mauled to death it will be a miracle of grace!” She swiped tears of frustration from her eyes. The next thing I heard was the breakfast skillet slammed onto the cast-iron stove. What she’d said made no sense. But it was true. Hound hunts often followed Pa’s nighttime ramblings. Why? There were no criminals or runaways at Laurelea. We kept no slaves at all. And what would bounty hunters, runaway slaves, or no-good white trash like Sol and Jake Tulley and their demon hounds have to do with Pa?

  I STUDIED ON MA’S WORDS as William Henry and I mended Miz Laura’s garden fence. I couldn’t get the sense of it no matter which way I turned the matter. I didn’t see Aunt Sassy creep up behind us, never knew she was two breaths away until her sharp voice spoke at my ear. “You boys come on up to the porch when you’re done, hear?” I jumped, and my hammer slipped, cracking my thumb wide open. I swore.

  “Robert Leslie! Hush your mouth that swearin’! Your Mama hear you she’ll wear you out!” Aunt Sassy grabbed my shoulder and swung me ’round in one motion, her tiny face puffed like an owl.

  “He’s hurt, Mama!” William Henry broke in. “Can’t you see he’s bleedin’?”

  “Hush up, William Henry! Robert, let me see that hand.” Aunt Sassy’s snap melted. She pulled my bloody thumb from my armpit and cradled it between her palms. “Oh, child. You gonna lose that nail! Come on now Robert, you let Aunt Sassy tend that thumb.”

  “He’s got to spit!” William Henry stood back. My stomach turned over and the green, blue, and purple of the flowerbed yellowed in my head, and I retched. The next thing I knew, William Henry dumped a bucket of cold well water over my head.

  “You gonna drown him, for mercy sakes!” Aunt Sassy screeched and snatched the empty bucket from William Henry, just missing my head. “William Henry! Run get me a cup of cider vinegar from the cellar, and bring out that pitcher of lemonade. Go on, now!” She swatted after him, then hurried me toward the front porch, knotting her pocket handkerchief tight around my thumb. When the red stain stopped spreading she unwrapped it and turned it one way, then the other, finally pushing it into the icy golden liquid of a broken-handled teacup. “This will take out the swellin’, child.” My stomach rose again in my throat but I swallowed it down. “You gonna be just fine.”

  The lemonade cleared a path down my throat, and I was grateful for the vinegar. The sting finally passed, only to be replaced by a deep, throbbing pain. I pulled my mottled thumb from the china cup, checking for the bruise sure to form around my smashed nail.

  I marveled how the vinegar seeped into my thumb and crept toward my palm, turning it the same bronzed color as Aunt Sassy’s skin. I wondered if I took a whole vinegar bath if I’d be that same color all over, and would I stay that way forever? Was color only as deep as a person’s skin, or did it go down inside a person’s thinking and dreaming and being? But if blacks and whites were different, why did William Henry and I bleed the same dark red? Does it have to do with a soul? Preacher Crane said that coloreds have no soul. What is a soul? Is it just the person or is it something else that lives inside? Does a soul have color? Is it white or black or red or yellow or some other color, like purple, that could be the same for everybody? William Henry plunked down on the porch step and I peered at him through my wonderings, curious as to the color of his soul.

  “How is the book coming that Mr. Heath loaned you last week, Robert?” Miz Laura spoke to me, but I didn’t know if she’d just started or if she’d been going on a while. I shifted my seat, trying to get my bearings.

  “Ma’am?” I sat up straighter and wracked my brains, trying to remember the name of the book I’d passed on to William Henry the other day. William Henry grinned at me from the other side of Miz Laura’s skirts spread over her wheeled chair.

  “It’s fine, Miz Laura. Just fine, I reckon.” I hated that my voice still squeaked sometimes. For the life of me I couldn’t remember the name of that book.

  “Hmmm.” Miz Laura’s eyes bore strong upon me. I looked away, pretending to wince from the pain in my thumb.

  “And what do you say, William Henry? How do you think Robert is enjoying the book Mr. Heath loaned him?” Miz Laura spoke to William Henry but never took her eyes off me. I felt my face heat up.

  William Henry leaned over his toes, intent on worrying a granddaddy longlegs on the step below him. “I reckon he likes it, Miz Laura. He talks about it some.” I shot William Henry a grateful glance.

  “Oh?” Miz Laura stared holes in me.

  “Yes’m. He does.”

  “And what does Robert tell you about this particular book, William Henry? What does he like most about it?”

  William Henry’s eyes met mine. Everything grew too warm and too still. “Well, I know he likes it, Miz Laura. But me not being educated, and all, I’m not exactly sure what Mr. Robert likes best.”

  I groaned inside. William Henry only called me “Mister” when he was trying to pull wool over somebody’s eyes.

  Miz Laura raised her eyebrows. “I see,” she said. I feared she did. “Suppose you think hard. I’m sure you must remember something Robert said.”

  William Henry worried the spider some more, then clasped a hand around one knee. “Well, he thought right much of Mr. Longfellow’s poem about Hiawatha.”

  “Go on, William Henry.” Miz Laura gave him her full attention.

  “That Hiawatha was some Indian, Miz Laura! And that old grandma, Nicomus, teaching him about the birds and animals and trees and the moon, and about how all those creatures be brothers. If everybody thought that way there wouldn’t be folks worrying over color. They’d all be looking out for one another and treating each other like family.” William Henry, warmed to his subject, might have gone on had he not caught the drop in my jaw and the twinkle in Miz Laura’s blue eyes. “I reckon that’s what fired Robert up about that book, Miz Laura.” William Henry went back to worrying the granddaddy longlegs.

  “It doesn’t seem to me that Robert is the one ‘fired up.’” Miz Laura smiled and laid her hand on William Henry’s shoulder, giving him a squeeze more affectionate than I liked to see.
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  I was Miz Laura’s favorite, or so I believed. I was the grandson she and Mr. Heath never had and the boy they lavished hope and affection upon. I wished I’d been the one to bring that twinkle to Miz Laura’s eyes. I wondered if she knew I hadn’t read that book at all and that William Henry’d read it cover to cover twice.

  The sun inched higher, climbing closer and closer to the front porch. I was studying on some way to redeem myself in Miz Laura’s eyes and show up William Henry, just a little, when we heard a steady clip-clop, clip-clop beating the orchard trail behind the barn. William Henry tore round the house in the direction of the horse’s hooves. Miz Laura breathed deeply and whispered, “Thank You, Lord! Oh, thank You, for their safe journey!”

  “Who?” I asked, forgetting my thumb. “Whose safe journey?” I scrambled to my feet.

  The clip-clops rounded the house then and a sandy haired man, his face bearded with some days’ growth, his shirt stained from hard riding, reined in one of the biggest high-stepping horses I’d ever seen. He grasped the reins in one hand and danced William Henry’s blue shirt collar in the other, dragging him along like a newly bagged skunk.

  “Let me down! Let go!” William Henry kicked and hollered.

  The stranger rode to the porch steps and dropped William Henry, sprawling on all fours, at Miz Laura’s feet. He stumbled to the far end of the porch, anger and humiliation spitting from his face. I’d wanted William Henry taken down a peg or two, but not like this.

  “How dare you! What is the meaning of this!” Miz Laura nearly stood.

  The man slouched astride his giant horse, tipped his sweat-banded Stetson, and drawled, “I’m looking for Isaac Heath. Caught your darky running off.” He eyed Miz Laura and me, and looked like he figured we didn’t amount to much. “If you need somebody to teach him a lesson, I offer my services.” He fingered the dark leather whip coiled at his thigh.