“But you eat and drink and cast reflections.”
“You actually checked to see if I cast a reflection?”
“Well, duh. But that was more on the idea that you might be a ghost than a vampire. The eating and drinking were really messing me up on both those theories, though, I got to tell you.”
Paul laughed. “Actually, I think that part of the legend, the no reflection part, came about because of the speed with which we can disappear.”
Ria sat, struck by the word ‘we’.
“Are there others? Like you?”
“Oh, I’m sure there must be, somewhere, or have been in the past. All the legends start from something. But the eating and drinking—I just do that ‘cause it tastes good. I don’t have to eat and in fact, sometimes I’ll go for days without it. I just enjoy it. Especially the variety the world has now. Imagine, having ice anytime you want it! Which you’ve had all your life. The luxuries people take for granted now.”
“What do you do for money?” Ria asked, a tad of hesitation in her voice. “I mean—”
“Well, life’s been a great deal easier since they invented ATMs and the internet,” he said, and grinned. “I used to have to bank by mail and that was really the pits. And I’ve had some lucky hits on the stock market. Managed to get in very early with some very lucrative companies. And I do mean early.”
Ria laughed. “As in you own a lot of original blue-chip stock?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Ria laughed. “I didn’t see a computer anywhere.”
“Well, I cheat a little on some things. I can get in the library anytime I want you know, and before the smartphone era, I’d use their computers. And I check out library books without a card, but nobody’s ever objected. Had to slack off on buying ‘em, place is getting crowded. You’ve no idea how many books have just appeared as donations on the library counters one morning over the years, hope they got used.”
“You own original blue chip stock and you’ve got a smartphone. Dracula never had it so good.”
He grinned and shifted and pulled it out of his pants pocket. “Right here. Latest version. I love gadgets.”
“Where do you charge it?”
“I only use it for quick surfing, most of the time it’s off. When it needs charging, I plug it in at the cemetery gatehouse before I, ah, turn in for the day, loose wall board up there I hide it behind, nobody’s ever noticed.”
“And what else do you cheat on?”
“Showers,” he said without hesitation. “Hot showers are the single greatest invention of the Twentieth Century. Always an empty hotel room around somewhere. I sort of consider things like that Macon’s compensation for past services I rendered the public a good while back. Nobody knows about it, of course. The past services I mean. And damn lucky for the town it doesn’t.”
“And that past service would be?”
“I guess you want to hear all the gruesome details?”
“Every last one.”
Paul sighed and settled back against the stone he was using for a backrest.
“You live in my house and you’ve seen my family. So of course you know Joshua.”
“Sure.”
“Well, Joshua fell into some very bad company.”
“And you decided to do something about it.”
“I’ve always been a bit impulsive.”
“You charged into the middle of something dangerous enough to turn you into this for a servant? A houseboy?”
Paul’s laugh floated out over the Ocmulgee.
“I see the house didn’t give up all the family secrets. Joshua wasn’t my servant. Or my houseboy.”
“Then what was he?”
“My brother.”
Chapter Thirteen
The turbulent events of the summer of 1888 broke and swirled around a boy named Joshua Devlin. Insofar as the Devlin family was concerned, anyway. It was the hottest summer many Macon residents could recall, though fortunately for them, few of them had any idea of just how much hotter, metaphorically speaking, it almost was.
In that summer of 1888, Joshua was sixteen years old, a slender handsome boy caught in the hormonal imbalance of adolescence. Back then even the medical doctors didn’t understand the extreme physiological changes of puberty. Certainly Joshua didn’t know his exuberant ups and his crashing downs were the common lot of all teenagers and nothing unusual at all.
He damn sure knew the structure of his entire world shattered and re-formed when he was twelve years old, though. That he’d never forget. At seventeen, he still carried the scars of that personal reconstruction.
Roughly five foot eight inches in height, he was three inches shy of the five eleven he’d attain, probably 145 pounds in weight. He would never be heavy. His skin glowed with the creaminess of café au lait, milky brown. His eyes were large and lustrous, his features almost chiseled. His hair, while not straight, didn’t have quite the same texture expected with his skin tone.
Joshua Devlin was a mulatto. Until he was twelve, he’d thought his mother died at his birth and Dr. Everett Devlin, the doctor in attendance, had taken him in and given him his last name. Everybody thought that, and nobody was surprised. Doc Everett was notorious for his gruff exterior and his soft heart.
He’d been a happy child. He didn’t have a father, but he had Doc, who’d begun taking him on his medical rounds when Joshua was only six years old. In his earliest memories, he sat on shady back porches with his primer on his lap, watching Doc’s horse and buggy. Anybody living in Doc’s house was sure going to know how to read.
He didn’t have a mother, but he had Sadie, the copper-skinned and regal mistress of Doc’s household. Sadie didn’t smother him with embraces and endearments, but his clothes were clean, his meals delicious and ample. In the midst of the childhood fevers of measles and chickenpox and scarlet fever, she was there with damp cloths, cool water, and freshly simmered broth.
Someone else lived in the Devlin household, a tall, golden boy. Paul. The crown prince of the Devlin family. Joshua didn’t know him well and interacted with him even less. Paul was fourteen years older than Joshua. Of course he didn’t lavish much attention on a child that much younger than himself and Joshua didn’t expect it. He just worshipped from afar.
When Joshua was four, this private god of his departed from home, reappearing sporadically through the next four years. By the time Joshua was six, he knew Paul lived at some mysterious institution called Harvard. When Joshua was eight, even Paul’s sporadic appearances ceased and he learned from conversations he overheard between Doc and some of Doc’s friends—he didn’t precisely eavesdrop, but after all, he wasn’t deaf—that Paul was far, far away, over that vast expanse of water called an “ocean” which Joshua’d never seen, in attendance at another school, one where he was learning to be a doctor, just like Doc. Joshua missed him, though he couldn’t say why. The house just seemed more alive when Paul was home.
However, time passed as it does for all children, in a slowmoving pattern of endless days, changes marked mostly by the passage of the seasons. Days that revolved into endless weeks and moved into endless months and finally into endless years, and one day—one day Paul Devlin came home for good, and Joshua’s world changed forever.
Joshua didn’t listen on purpose. He’d approached the study door that evening as twilight came down over the streets of Macon for no other purpose than to tell Paul he’d finished rubbing down Cyclone, the big black stallion Doc had waiting for Paul on his return home.
Something in the tone of the voices he heard behind the door alerted him this wasn’t an ordinary conversation. He put his head down low and concentrated and distinguished Doc’s voice, Paul’s voice, Sadie’s voice.
“Didn’t expect to have you come home, take over my practice, and get married all in the course of two weeks.” Doc’s tone was jocular, but there was something else, some note of unease that ran beneath the surface humor.
Paul laughed. “I haven’t
taken over your practice yet, Papa. And we’re not quite married, either, you know.”
“No, but you will be, very soon. That Chloe—once she makes up her mind about something, it’s done. She says she don’t want a long engagement, she won’t have one. Bet you never thought when you were twelve and she was five and used to run away from her Mammy to follow you around—”
“She drove me crazy,” admitted Paul. “And I’ve never believed in love at first sight, but when I saw her again—she’s sure not five anymore, Papa.”
“She sure isn’t. You’re well-matched, son. I’m real pleased.”
“I’m glad.” Paul’s voice carried easily through the door.
“And with Henry already having Chloe’s house built for her dowry—”
“Man of great foresight, my future father-in-law.”
“Yes, well. Anyway, I’d like to furnish it for you.”
“I appreciate that, Papa, but that’s not necessary.”
Joshua almost knocked to announce his presence. It was an ordinary conversation after all. Then Doc’s next words snared his attention.
“I know it’s not necessary, but I want to. And as far as your house staff goes—well, Sadie’d like to be your housekeeper, Paul.”
“What!” Paul exclaimed. Behind the door, Joshua felt a shockwave hit him. Sadie was the North Star in Doc Everett’s house. For her to leave it—that was about as likely as a snowstorm in the south in August.
“Sadie! You can’t leave Papa, you run this house!”
“Last time I looked, Mist’ Paul, I was free,” said Sadie.
“And last time I looked, you’ve been my Mama since Mama died when I was eight! But Sadie, there’s no reason to upset your life, Chloe and I can manage just fine, we’ll set up our own house.”
“Well, there’s something else, son. I want young Joshua to move into your house with you, too.”
What? Doc wanted him out of his house? Why? What had he done?
“Joshua? You’ve raised him!”
“Son, you can use him. He’d be a big help, lots of company, you’re going to be out at night and working long hours—”
“He’s a fine boy, Papa, but I’m not havin’ you disrupt your whole household just for me!”
Joshua moved closer, making his ear a part of the door crack. Doc sighed.
“You just ain’t goin’ to make this easy, are you, son? You remember when Joshua came? Well, I know you don’t remember, you were spending the summer in Charleston with your grandmother.”
“Of course I remember. I was fourteen, not four.”
“And I told you his mother was a street girl I’d found with no place to go, in no shape to survive childbirth?”
“So you took him. Of course you did. Papa, you’ve always practiced what you preached. No son ever had a better man to watch while he was growin’ up.”
Everett Devlin was ahead of his time. His gruff exterior notwithstanding, Everett Devlin’s actions spoke of a humanity too rarely shown in the human race. Paul had grown up watching his father do what others only preached about.
Everett firmly believed no living human being had a right to own another, but he saw red whenever he heard or read the word ‘emancipation’. Because of his profession, he understood firsthand the many problems faced by the newly freed slaves immediately after the Emancipation Proclamation and through the course of Reconstruction and beyond. They were children, turned suddenly loose and often just as helpless.
They hadn’t been educated to deal with the responsibilities of freedom when invited to embrace its privileges. Doc frequently shook his head sadly when he left one of the black houses. He took a private vow to help whenever he could, however he could. It was a vow far beyond the Hippocratic Oath and one he’d kept for many years. It was as much a part of him as his salt and pepper hair, his round stomach, and his habit of expressing himself vigorously and loudly.
“I know you’ve always been your brother’s keeper,” Paul assured his father. “Raised me the same way. Papa, I’ll always take care of our people. I’m my brother’s keeper, too, couldn’t get away from it if I tried.”
“Yes, well,” said Dr. Devlin slowly. “And some of them are more your brothers than others.”
“Sir?”
“I lied.”
“Sir?”
“You weren’t in Charleston to visit your grandmother. You were in Charleston so you wouldn’t be around to ask questions.”
“About what?”
“Me, Mist’ Paul,” said Sadie softly. “’Bout why I weren’t around either. I went off visitin’ that summer, too. An’ ‘bout why yo’ daddy was gone so much. Joshua’s my son.”
Lead settled in the pit of Joshua’s stomach. He slumped against the wall. All this time and not a word to him, not a word!
“That doesn’t make any sense, Sadie! Why the hell wouldn’t you want him to know?”
“’Cause he’d ask who his daddy was.”
“So tell him. Sadie, you can’t tell me you don’t know who his father is. I won’t believe you.”
“Oh, I knows, alright,” she said.
“Then what—”
“Me,” Dr. Devlin interjected abruptly. “Joshua’s my son.”
Joshua went numb. His world as he knew it was gone. And not a word, not in all these years. They must be so ashamed of him. Paul was, he could tell from the long, heavy silence. When he did speak, the disgust was tangible.
“Papa, how could you?”
“Boy, don’t you take that tone with me! I wouldn’t expect that out of you, Paul, lookin’ at me like you think I fell to the depths of degradation, like I was too white to soil myself with Sadie!”
“Horseshit! Just horseshit! That’s not it at all, goddamn it! Sadie’s been my mother since I was eight years old! You think I think you’re too good for her? She’s too damn good for you, for this! All your rantin’ and ragin’ ‘bout our responsibility to take care of our people, well you took care of her just fine, didn’t you, Papa? I don’t know how I could have been so damn stupid, not to see! All these years, you been using her! No chance for a husband, a family of her own!”
Sadie got up and moved to stand between the two raging Devlins. She tugged Paul’s sleeve gently.
“Paul,” she said softly. She’d raised this boy, she loved him as much as she loved her own boy. Because he was Everett Devlin’s son, because of the child he’d been and the man he’d become. It was the first time in his life she’d ever addressed him without the obligatory ‘Mist’’.
“Paul, don’t talk to your daddy that way. I got a family. Your daddy and Joshua and you. We did the best we could, son. Might not have been good enough, but it was the best we could do.”
Paul stood and stared at her for moment before he pulled her into his arms and hugged tightly.
“God, Sadie, how could you stand it all these years?”
“Her real name’s Sadama, son,” supplied Dr. Devlin. “Wish she’d use it, but she won’t. Sadie sounds like a damn slave to me, always has. Let’s sit down and talk about this, what do you say?”
Joshua remained where he was. He heard the words, but the meanings were beyond him.
“Sorry I yelled at you, Paul. You just sayin’ everything I been thinking about myself for years now.”
“Sorry I yelled at you, Papa. Not my place to judge.”
“It’s just—your mother’d been dead for four years and I was so lonely, Paul. And after Sadie—”
He broke off and smiled at Sadie. “You spoiled me, woman. Knew there’d never be anybody else but you. No question of remarriage to anyone ‘suitable’.” His tone put a bitter emphasis on the word. “God, I hate that word, suitable. I couldn’t have Sadie, I didn’t want anybody. Damn us all for hypocrites! You know, I’m sure some of my friends have speculations but they really don’t care. Wouldn’t even be surprised. Just how things are. But I wouldn’t give a damn what anybody else thought. ‘Cept for you. And Joshua. The two of you hav
e to live in this town. See, Paul, I don’t have to tell you—”
Sadie broke in. “A mulatto, he’s neither one nor the other. Especially a boy. A girl woulda been easier, but a half-white boy, a half-white man, he doesn’t fit anywhere. And since there was no way Joshua could ever live as a white man, he’s had to live as a Negro.”
Paul looked at her in puzzlement. Something was different. Her speech. The familiar rhythm and cadence and slurring of Negro speech was completely absent.
“Sadie, have you always been able to talk like this?”
“Yes,” she said, with a smile. “Been with your daddy a long time.”
“I’ve never heard you.”
“I have to live as a Negro, too, Paul. And outside of this room, after tonight, you’ll never hear it again. And you’ll be ‘Mist’ Paul’. Forever.”
“But Sadie, to raise the boy like this, without—and Papa, all your preachin’ about education. You could have sent him to school, sent him North—”
“Paul, I’ve made sure he can read and write and cipher. But to do more until educated Negroes aren’t freaks anymore, that would make him an outsider just as much as being half-white.”
“And besides, the Yankees goan socialize with a nigger, Paul? Any more than the Collins up the street and the Thompsons on Washington or the Billings over on Orange goan do? Shoot, they worse den de folks down here!”
Sadie’s voice slid without pause from educated white to upper echelon Negro and as she vented her ire at the system so completely entrapping her son, it moved on down into the funky street talk that was purely black.
“Why, dey scared of us, most of ‘em! Actually scared, like dey think the black goan rub off if they touch us! We fine—we got lots o’ rights—long as they don’t have to socialize with us! North! Dat’s de worse place in the world for an educated black man! ‘Specially one dat’s half white!”
Everett took over. “Paul, you’re home now. I’m gettin’ old, I’m tired, I’m cuttin’ back. You can look after him, train him, teach him. You can teach him a lot. He’s real good with animals, there’s always a need for a good home-grown vet.”
Dark Series, The Color of Seven and The Color of Dusk (Books We Love Special Edition) Page 7
