The Color of Your Skin Ain't the Color of Your Heart

by Michael Phillips

  "Yes'm," I said and turned slowly away.

  "Is there something I can help you with?" asked Katie. As I went I saw Henry out of the corner of my eye standing there dumbfounded. The three men looked as confused as him, but then two of them led the three horses to the trough while the third one stood there and kept talking to Katie.

  "No, I reckon there ain't," he said. "When do you expect him back?"

  "About any time now," Katie answered, glancing in the direction of the woods. "Don't you think so, Henry? He and the other men ought to be back soon?"

  Henry just stared back at her, then mumbled something that could have meant just about anything, but the man seemed to take it as a yes.

  One of them wandered back from the water trough and the two men talked between themselves for a bit. I couldn't hear anything, but they looked a little mystified about how this was turning out. Then one of them looked up toward Katie again.

  "Word has it, ma'am," he said, "that he's got him a brother-in-law who was out west for a spell-that be your brother, ma'am?"

  "That's right ... my brother Ward. Are you friends of his?"

  "In a manner of speaking, ma'am. We're trying to get in touch with him, and it's a matter of some importance.... If you could tell us where he is, ma'am, we'd be much obliged."

  "I would like to help you," said Katie. "But I'm afraid I haven't seen or heard from my brother in years.-I am sorry, but I'm going to have to ask you to excuse me. We've been passing a sickness around that's very contagious, and I'm feeling faint. I think I need to go he down. Good day, gentlemen."

  Katie pulled her head back inside and everything got quiet for a minute. The men kind of stood there looking at each other, not knowing quite what to do. There was nobody left to talk to but Henry standing over by the barn and me where I'd gone back to the laundry. And they didn't seem too inclined to talk to either of us. Aleta was just wandering up too, but they didn't pay any more attention to her than they had to me.

  Finally they got back on their horses and rode away real slow, like they still didn't know what to make of it all.

  I glanced over at Henry. He still stood looking up at the empty window where Katie had been. Then he glanced over at me where I was pretending to be hanging the laundry, then down toward the slave cabins where smoke was now rising in the air from the fires Aleta had started, then finally back to where the men on their horses were just disappearing around the side of the barn.

  "Well, if dat ain't da beatenest thing I eber saw!" he finally mumbled to himself.

  HEN IT WAS ALL OVER, HENRY CAME INSIDE and sat down. Katie was still made up to look older, and Emma and Aleta were laughing. But Henry had a serious look on his face.

  "I reckon hit's time you all tol' me a little more er what's goin' on roun' here," he said.

  His tone silenced us. Henry was such a peaceable and loving man, just one look from him was enough. I didn't know much about such things yet, but later in my life when I understood a little more about how God works, I reckon what I'd say is that his looks could be convicting to your spirit.

  That's the kind of man Henry was. He knew when one of us was feeling down or sad, and a smile or the gentle touch of his rough hand on your cheek, or a squeeze round your shoulder in reassurance from his big strong arm was enough to make you know you were loved and that everything was going to be all right. But a stern look was enough to send a knife into your heart too. But a good knife. Cutting out bad things from inside you's a good and necessary thing, and if it sometimes takes a little pain to get it done, I reckon that's the price a person has to pay to grow up and become the kind of person God wants him to be-or who God wants her to be. A lot of folks don't spend a lot of time thinking about who God wants them to be-they just spend their lives being who they want to be. And I can't say I was thinking too much about it yet at that time. I was only sixteen. But I was starting to think about it, and having Henry around helped me think about it more because I kind of had the feeling that when he looked at me it was almost like God looking at me, and it made me think about things a mite different.

  I'm sure most of the white folks who'd known Henry for years just looked at him and saw a quiet colored man who couldn't speak as well as them, and who couldn't even read, and took him for an ignorant man. That's the trouble with people of all colors-they judge folks by what they think they see, which is usually only on the outside. But it's what's inside that counts. That's what makes a person who he or she really is. And sometimes it takes a little work to dig down inside and see what someone's made of, what kind of stuff their character has in it. That's just about one of the most important things in life-learning how to do that, learning how to find out what people are made of.

  Henry was a man who I had the feeling had been doing that most of his life. You could tell his eyes saw things that other people didn't see, probably from spending so much time in his mind with God.

  Henry had a saying that he said every once in a while that he said explained a lot about life. It was that the color of your skin ain't the color of your heart. Then he'd say that the color of your heart was the most important thing in all of life. Was it dark and full of mean and selfish and unkind things? Or was your heart light and pink and warm and full of kind and unselfish things? Someday, he said, maybe not till we died, everything that was on the outside would fall away, and what color your skin was and where you lived and what people thought about you and how much money you had ... none of that would matter because no one would see it anymore. The only thing they would be able to see was the color of your heart. Some hearts would be ugly and dark, and others would be warm and light and full of love. It wouldn't matter what color your skin was then.

  So on this day, as he looked around at all of us, I knew Henry was looking to see what color our hearts were.

  "Uh ... what do you mean, Henry?" said Katie after a minute.

  "Jes' dat I know you been all alone here an' dat you been doin' some pretendin' ter git by. But effen dese of ears ain't mistaken, I heard you say some things dat weren't true, Miz Kathleen. An' I ain't sayin' hit's right or wrong what you done, 'cuz I don' know all dere is ter know, an' dat's da Lord's job ter divide atween right an' wrong an' not mine, nohow. But I's jes' tryin' ter git a grip on what color yer heart is in all dese strange goin's-on."

  It was silent a minute. I knew Katie felt just the same as me about Henry. As determined as she could be sometimes, and as grown-up as she'd gotten about making decisions and running off rowdy white boys, she could be as tender as a little girl too. I reckon she and me and Emma were still little girls down inside, and yet halfway to becoming grown-up women at the same time. And sometimes it was confusing not knowing which one was making you feel the things you felt-the girl or the woman.

  Right now the little girl in Katie came to the surface from Henry's words, and she started to cry.

  "I don't know either, Henry," she said softly, sniffling and wiping at her eyes and nose. "When Mayme and I first started, we talked about it some, and we knew lying was wrong, but we didn't know what else to do. It started one day when Mr. Thurston came by and I just couldn't tell him about what had happened. I was afraid. And then after that, we just kept telling people that my mama was still alive and that my daddy wasn't home yet."

  "What wuz you afraid ob, chil'?"

  "That they'd take me away, that my uncle Burchard would come and take Rosewood, that they'd hurt Mayme."

  "Yep," said Henry like he did, nodding and thinking as he said it. "Yep ... I kin see dat, all right. You wuz feared fer Miz Mayme."

  "Yes," said Katie. "She practically saved my life. I couldn't let anything happen to her."

  "Wuz you feared fer yerse'f?"

  "I suppose ... yes, I was afraid for myself too. I didn't know what they might do to me. I didn't want them to take me away someplace."

  "Yep ... yep," nodded Henry slowly. "I kin see dat it was a sore difficult thing, all right. 'Peers t' me dat da color er yer heart wuz good en
uff. You wuzn't tryin' ter do nobody no harm, an' I can't see dat no harm's been done. An' it don't 'pear t' me dat dose men was up ter no good, an' so maybe what you done was right. But now we gots ter ax da Lord 'bout all dis."

  He looked around at the rest of us, then opened his big arms and drew us all together as much as he could. We put our arms around each other, and then Henry started to pray.

  "Dear Lord," he said, "we's yer chilluns, an' we's tryin' our bes' ter figger out how t' be good chilluns, but sometimes hit's a mite hard, Lord. We know dat lyin's wrong, but den Miz Kathleen an' Miz Mayme's been in some kind er difficult predikament here an' dey's jes' tryin' ter protect dereselves an' Miz Aleta an' Miz Emma an' her little boy from what folks might do effen dey foun' out. But, Lord, da truf's gotta come out sometime, an' so we ax you what's right ter be done an' ter show us what you want us ter do 'bout it all."

  Henry gave us all a hug when he was through, then he left to go back to town. He said he would try to come back as soon as he could and would let us know if he found out anything more about the men.

  WOKE UP ONE MORNING, AND WHEN I WENT downstairs I was surprised to see the carpet pulled back and the trapdoor into the cellar open. I saw the light from a lantern and heard noise coming up from below.

  I got down on my knees and poked my head in.

  There was Katie down in the cellar with a shovel in her hand, sleeves rolled up, dirt on her hands and face, and sweating like she'd been working down there for hours. The chest where we'd found the gold coins in her uncle's trousers was shoved to one side, and all the things inside it were strewn about on the dirt floor. And there were holes all about the cellar where she had apparently been digging.

  "Katie," I said as I climbed down, "what are you doing!"

  The lantern she'd brought down was flickering like it was about out of oil. I noticed the old brass lantern she'd tried to move that other time and wondered why she hadn't lit it, since it was bigger.

  Katie looked up at me but kept right on digging.

  "It's got to be here!" she said.

  "What does?"

  "The gold ... there's got to be more gold! I know my uncle had more gold than just those few coins."

  Whack went the shovel again into the hard dirt. But she was hardly scooping much out. The floor was so dry and hard packed, and Katie was obviously exhausted.

  "How long have you been down here?" I asked.

  "I don't know," said Katie in a weary voice. "A few hours. I couldn't sleep from worrying about the money and Rosewood and what's going to happen."

  "Why don't you take a rest. Come up and let's have some breakfast and then we can talk about it."

  "I don't want to talk about it!" she snapped. "And I don't want any breakfast. I want to find the gold! We've got to pay back the bank."

  She looked at me and her eyes were flashing. I'd never seen a look like it in Katie's face before. It was as if the idea of the gold had possessed her.

  She went on trying to dig the hole deeper.

  "Do you think it might be ... there?" I asked. "Right there? Is that why you're digging that hole?"

  "That's what people do, don't they?" she said. "They bury gold in the ground." She threw another small shovelful of dirt onto the pile beside the hole.

  "But why ... right there?" I asked again. "What made you think to start digging right there?"

  Katie stopped and her hands were trembling. Then I saw her eyes filling with tears. The shovel fell from her hands with a thud and she nearly collapsed on the dirt floor.

  "Oh, Mayme ... I don't know!" she wailed. "Nothing made me start digging here, I just did. I don't know why. There's no reason it should be here ... I just had to do something. I just looked through the chest, and then moved it away and started digging. It might just as well be over under that potato barrel in the corner. It's stupid ... I'm stupid for thinking of such a thing. I just ... I just don't know what to do! And I'm so worried they'll take Rosewood from us!"

  She began to sob and sat there with her dirty hands in her face and tears pouring down her cheeks.

  I knelt beside her and wrapped my arms around her. Katie sobbed and sobbed. If she had really been up half the night, no wonder she was exhausted and her emotions were worn to a frazzle.

  We sat there for a long time and I let her cry.

  "Why don't we go upstairs," I said. "You can get cleaned up and have something to eat and maybe take a bath and a nap. You'll feel better after a bath and some sleep."

  Katie didn't argue. I helped her to her feet and toward the steps. I could tell she was completely spent. I doubted whether she'd even make it through breakfast and a bath before falling asleep.

  But before I could even get her back up out of the cellar, suddenly Emma's head appeared in the opening above our heads.

  "You better come up quick," she said. "Dat man's here agin.

  MMA'S WORDS SENT A CHILL THROUGH ME. Whoever she meant I didn't know, but visitors around here were not usually a welcome sight.

  I helped Katie up the stairs and then followed her, carrying the lantern she'd brought down with her. I handed it up to Emma and then climbed the last few steps up into the parlor.

  In the doorway to the kitchen stood Templeton Daniels.

  "My, my!" he said in that humorous voice of his. "This is quite a sight! What were you looking for down thereburied treasure!"

  Then he looked at me, and all the humor and wittiness went out of his expression. He got the oddest, most serious look on his face. It was almost like there was something inside him he was trying to say but couldn't get out.

  "Hello, Mayme," he said after a second or two. His voice was quiet, strange, calm, completely different than how he'd spoken to Katie. He held my eyes with his just a second ... and then smiled, almost nervously, I thought.

  "Uncle Templeton," said Katie, breaking the strange spell in the air that had even temporarily silenced Emma. "What a surprise-what are you doing here?"

  Again an odd look passed over her uncle's face, and again came a smile. "Let's just say I left a little suddenly last time, and that I had some unfinished business here I needed to take care of."

  He looked better than the last time we had seen him, better groomed and his clothes cleaner. He didn't look like he was trying to hide from someone like I'd thought last time. I got the idea he had come, strange as it was to say it ... because he actually wanted to see us.

  "What kind of business?" asked Katie.

  "Never mind about that right now. Let's just say that I need to have a long talk with the two of you-"

  As he said it he glanced over at me. I couldn't imagine what he wanted to talk to me about, unless he had decided what to do about Katie's future and wanted me to know about it.

  "-There's plenty of time for all that," he went on. "But what's all this?" he added. "You look like you've been prospecting, Kathleen."

  "Oh, Uncle Templeton," said Katie, "the bank's going to take Rosewood away if we don't pay back my mama's loan, and there's not enough money and the rain ruined the cotton and I was looking for Uncle Ward's gold!"

  Mr. Daniels took in Katie's flood of information with a thoughtful nod.

  "You know, Kathleen," he said after a moment, "I spent the night in your barn out there and I'm hungry and could use a cup or two of good strong coffee. So why don't we see what we can find in here to eat, and then we'll talk about it."

  Almost the same moment, a cry sounded from William upstairs and Emma ran off to tend to him. Then Aleta's steps came bounding down the stairs but stopped abruptly when she saw Katie's uncle standing there.

  While Katie was explaining it all to Aleta, I went into the kitchen, stoked up the fire, put on some water to boil, and got out some bread and milk and cheese and eggs for breakfast.

  "Why did you sleep in the barn?" Katie was asking as she and Aleta and Mr. Daniels came into the kitchen.

  "I didn't get here until late, Kathleen," he said. "I didn't want to bother you young ladies, or f
righten you. So I just snuck into the barn as quietly as I could."

  "Did you sleep well?"

  "It wasn't exactly the sort of accommodations I'm used to," he laughed, "but I managed to doze off. But tell me, do cows and horses ever sleep? It seemed I heard them moving and shuffling and snorting all night long!"

  "I don't know, Uncle Templeton."

  Ten minutes later we were all seated at the table and I had just poured Mr. Daniels some coffee. He took the steaming cup in his hands and put his nose to it almost like the smell was better than drinking it. "That smells mighty fine, Mayme," he said, looking up at me with a smile. "Thank you."

  "Do you know where it is, Uncle Templeton?" said Katie as she munched on a piece of buttered bread. "Did Uncle Ward or Mama tell you what he did with his gold?"

  "Well, your mama, God rest her soul, knew me well enough, I'm sorry to say, not to tell me anything about it," he answered, sipping at the cup. "That is, if she knew anything herself. And Ward and I weren't exactly on the best of terms when he disappeared, so you can be sure he never told me anything. So I don't even know if there is any gold, Kathleen," he added with a sigh. "And that's the truth. All I know is that there are some men who think there is, and they've been hounding me for a year trying to get on Ward's trail."

  "Yes ... those must be the same men who came here looking for him!"

  A concerned look came over his face.

  "When?" he asked.

  "Twice," answered Katie. "Once a year ago, and then again just last week."

  "They know about Rosewood.... You mean those are the men you chased off with guns?!"

  Katie nodded.

  "Hmm ... that's not good. They didn't ... do anything-hurt any of you?" said Mr. Daniels, glancing around at the rest of us, still looking serious.

  "No-we fooled them and they left."

  "Well, they're likely to be back. They don't give up easily. It's taken me a long time to shake them loose. I made the mistake of tangling with one of them once in a poker game too, and that didn't help. I'm afraid I took him for quite a bit of money. It sure won't do for them to find me here. That will make it bad for all of us. They're sure to think something's up then, and it will put you in even more danger than you are now"