The Candle Star

by Michelle Isenhoff

  “Come a day Mr. Peters decide to sell out and head west. He put all us slaves on de block to sell piecemeal.”

  She stirred harder, clanking a rhythm on the side of the pot. “We was put in chains and marched up one at a time fo’ de white men to examine, jus’ like dey was buyin’ beef cattle. Dey pinch my arms, poke at my ribs and pry open my mouth to look at my teeth. I’s only thirteen, my body just learnin’ to be a woman, an’ I had to stand dere wearin’ nothin’ but my pride. But dat weren’t de worse of it. I’d a stood dere all week if it keep my family together.”

  The stirring stopped and Julia stared into the pot. “I seen my daddy’s face as his family was sold away. It a terrible thing for a man to be powerless. God gib him de job to look after his family, and de white man, he take it away.

  “It kill ’im. He sol’ away south and we heard later he jus’ up and died. He only thirty-five years old.

  “Mama, I don’t know what happen to her, but I can still hear her scream like when dose babies bein’ wrenched outta her arms.”

  The spoon clanked again. “I’s lucky; my brother sol’ wid me.”

  Emily absorbed the story in silence, and Julia cast her a dark glance. “Now you sees why I gots no tolerance for yo’ high and mighty ways, yo’ Southern talk and yo’ petty orders. Picture yo’self on dat block, missy.”

  Emily’s eyes grew wide. “But I’m white!”

  Julia shook her head. “You’s so full o’ yo’ own color you can’t trade places wid a black person even in yo’ own imagination. But when we’s hurt, we bleed de same color, Miss Emily.” She dropped the spoon and picked up a paring knife, flicking her fingertip with the sharp point.

  “Look here,” she demanded, shoving the drop of blood before Emily’s eyes. “When we’s hurt, you and I, we both bleed red.”

  ~

  That night, Isaac came home angry. “The best doctor in the city won’t treat an Irish boy.” He shrugged off his coat and hung it on a nail by the back door. Emily and Malachi glanced at each other over the open math book between them. “I had to settle for some idiot who prescribed sawdust and fish oil, or some such nonsense. It’s clear the boy has scarlet fever. He has a purple rash and he’s burning up. I’d like to wring that old fool’s throat!”

  Julia commanded, “Malachi, run an’ fetch Doc Ferguson.”

  The black doctor confirmed scarlet fever. The child’s home was quickly placed under quarantine and fixed with a bold red placard prohibiting anyone from entering or leaving. Within a week the disease had spread to three other children. Shannon’s sister wore herself to exhaustion and finally came down with it, too. Shannon had to quit her job at the hotel to care for them all.

  Isaac and Malachi brought them leftovers on several occasions, leaving the food outside the door, and Julia took in much of the laundry that comprised the family’s income, adding it to her own workload. But everyone was careful not to violate the quarantine and spread the deadly germs.

  Isaac sat at the kitchen table, his haggard eyes peering between the fingers pressed against his face. His hair stood on end from running his hands up and over his head.

  “Emily, you’ve been a tremendous help this week, taking over Shannon’s responsibilities, and I thank you. Business always slows in winter, but if it doesn’t, I’m going to have to hire someone to take her place. I can’t ask you to miss several weeks of school.”

  Several weeks? Emily perked up. Shannon was going to be gone for several weeks? Maybe this was the opportunity she’d been hoping for. Without the maid always underfoot, maybe Isaac would forget his foolish plan to marry her. Maybe…

  Yes, she definitely had a plan.

  Chapter 12

  Yet another muffler was taking shape under Emily’s hands. In only two weeks she had completed ten of the darn things. Sometimes she regretted asking Julia to teach her, but when darkness fell at five o’clock in the afternoon, there wasn’t much else to do.

  The household had taken to gathering around the stove during the long, snowy evenings. Sometimes Isaac pulled out a copy of William Cullen Bryant, or Tennyson, or Keats, but mostly he read Longfellow, and Emily became acquainted with the great Indian chief, Hiawatha, and with fair Evangeline, the Canadian maiden evicted from her homeland and separated from her bridegroom. She found herself concentrating on the versed stories, even identifying with the poor, banished maiden.

  But tonight Isaac stared at his book vacantly, not turning pages, hardly even moving. Suddenly he slapped his cup of coffee down, sloshing it on the table. “A Christmas tree!” he exclaimed. “I am going to cut down a Christmas tree!”

  Emily glanced out the window doubtfully. Nothing could be seen but wind-driven snow that flashed across the light of the window. She turned her eyes on him questioningly.

  “Tomorrow, of course. For Shannon’s nieces and nephews. A Christmas tree would be just the thing to bring them some holiday cheer!”

  Julia harrumphed, setting down the gray garment taking shape under her needle. “You spread too much cheer and you gonna be spreadin’ germs as well. Mr. Milford, you get arrested if you go in dat house.”

  “Who said anything about going inside?” Isaac smiled at Emily and Malachi. “What do you say? Shall we bring them a tree?”

  “Let’s do it!” Malachi shouted.

  Emily was slower to answer. Her compassion struggled to rise above the snowdrifts.

  “Emily?” Isaac prompted.

  Malachi answered for her. “’Course she wants to go. She’s been clacking those needles together till I can hardly stand it.”

  “Malachi Watson,” Julia admonished. “Miss Emily ain’t a’clackin’ no needles. She knittin’ warm clothes for dem what gots none.”

  Malachi gave Emily’s work a doubtful glance. “A fellow would have to be freezing to death before he put on that muffler.”

  Emily wadded the scarf into a ball and threw it at Malachi, needles and all.

  “You hush!” Julia admonished. “She gettin’ better all de time.”

  “Well I should be. There’s nothing else to do when the weather’s so blasted—” a quick peek at Julia “—uh, blessed cold. Who wears all these things anyway? Seems I’ve knitted enough scarves to wrap every neck in Detroit.”

  “Dey gets put to good use,” Julia said firmly. “Tomorrow I’ll show you how to make mittens.”

  “Tomorrow she’s helping us get a tree,” Malachi countered. “Aren’t you?”

  “All right,” Emily relented.

  Isaac grinned. “In that case, we’re going to need some decorations. Julia, would you pop us some corn? The rest of us can search for ribbons, buttons, and scraps of bright cloth, anything to dress up the branches and bring a sparkle to some little eyes.”

  Emily raided her supply of hair ribbons and cut the lace edging off the cuffs and bottom of her traveling suit. Isaac tore an old flannel shirt into colorful strips to tie into bows. Even Zeke donated a pair of faded handkerchiefs. By the time the corn was popped, they had filled a bucket with pretty decorations. Then they spent the rest of the evening munching popcorn and stringing it into long garlands.

  After breakfast the next morning, Isaac appeared with an ax and a length of rope. “Julia, do you think you could find Emily some appropriate clothing while I hitch up Barnabas?”

  When Emily climbed in the sleigh beside Malachi, she was covered in so many pairs of woolen socks, woolen undergarments, woolen shawls, mittens and mufflers that she felt indebted to a whole flock of sheep. She practically rolled onto the seat, yet the icy air still found her skin.

  Isaac tucked a fur robe over their laps and drove out of the yard, guiding Barnabas down roads packed firmly with use. The sleigh runners whisked over the snow with a soft whisper, and the bells on the harness jangled merrily. The sun set the world to sparkling as they moved quickly between buildings capped with snow and laced with jagged icicles.

  They traveled the route that Coal Dust had carried her all those weeks ago, follow
ing Michigan Avenue through a countryside softened by a feathery white covering. It looked so different in winter that Emily scarcely recognized it, though she did know the bridge and the field where Coal Dust had bolted. With all the leaves down, she could even see a cabin in the copse of trees looking as mean as the old fellow with the shotgun.

  A short way beyond, Isaac turned onto a narrow road that passed through a wood. The bare, gnarled fingers of hardwood trees splayed against the gray sky, and evergreens listed under the weight of their snowy skirts.

  Isaac drove the horse into a clearing. “I own a dozen acres in here. They provide me with maple syrup, beechnuts, and firewood, and now they will offer up my first Christmas tree since I was a boy. Everyone out! Help me locate a good one.”

  Malachi trotted off into the woods. Isaac followed more slowly, and Emily dragged behind, stepping carefully in her uncle’s tracks. The snow was deep and she was freezing. She remembered with longing the mild winters in Charleston.

  Suddenly a great gob of snow smashed into her cheek, spraying her clothing and dripping down between the layers at her neck. She looked around in surprise. Isaac still marched steadily in front of her, but Malachi was nowhere to be seen.

  “Malachi Watson, you’re going to be sorry!”

  Another snowball burst against her shoulder. This time she caught sight of the boy slipping behind a tree. She veered from the trail and bounded through the snowy drifts.

  Malachi got off one more shot before Emily rounded the tree and slammed into him. They both fell to the ground. Malachi tried to roll away, but Emily heaped snow on him, rubbing it onto his face and neck. Soon they were both winded and laughing, and looking very much like the snowman the students had made in the schoolyard.

  Malachi paused to dig snow out of his ear. “You know, for a girl, you tackle hard.”

  She grinned. “You forget I have a big brother.”

  Isaac was nearly out of sight among the trees. They raced to follow him, Emily no longer caring about the snow packing into her shoes and clinging to her socks.

  When they caught up, Isaac was circling a tree about his own height, admiring it from all sides. “What about this one?” he asked them.

  It was a pretty little tree, straight and even and fragrant. It would look beautiful in Shannon’s yard dressed for the holiday. Emily smiled and nodded, and Isaac began chopping through the trunk.

  As they waited, Malachi climbed a stump a few yards away. Spreading his arms, he toppled backwards like a falling tree. Then he flapped his arms and legs as though he hoped to fly away.

  Emily giggled. “What in the world are you doing?”

  “Haven’t you ever made a snow angel before?”

  “A what?”

  “A snow angel!”

  He jumped up and pointed to the shape left in the snow, a figure with outspread wings and a flowing robe. “It’s the only way I’ll ever look so pearly white,” he grinned.

  She considered the angel, her brow furrowed in thought. “Malachi, do you suppose there are black angels?”

  “’Course there are.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Everyone knows about the angel choirs, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Way I figure, God wouldn’t even stop and listen if they didn’t have at least a few black members.”

  Emily laughed and flopped in the snow to make her own angel. Overhead, the clouds tumbled like scraps of paper in a breeze. She no longer felt the bite of winter. In fact, she had grown uncomfortably warm beneath all her woolen layers.

  “If you two are ready, the tree is already tied to the sled.” The call sounded thin and far away.

  Emily rose and threw one more handful of snow at Malachi, catching him on the cheek. He swiped it off and hollered, “Race you!”

  Back at the sleigh, Isaac had cut several pine boughs that he laid on the floor at their feet. “I figure we might as well do some decorating of our own,” he explained and turned Barnabas toward home. Then he began singing a song Emily had never heard before. “Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way…”

  The children caught on quickly and joined in on the last few choruses. Emily’s face tingled from the cold, but under the lap robe she was warm and cozy as they moved from one Christmas carol to another. They were still singing when they pulled up in front of Shannon’s house.

  The family lived in a shabby row house, and Emily couldn’t imagine how nine people fit in the tiny building. As Isaac nailed two flat slabs of wood to the bottom of the evergreen tree, smiling faces appeared in the front window. Three of the children had hair in shades of red, but the littlest one, a freckle-faced boy with his face pressed to the glass, was blond as corn silk.

  Isaac set the tree upright. “All right you two, help me dress this beauty up.”

  Together they tied on decorations. Emily fussed with the bows and draped the strands of popcorn in even waves. When they were done, the buttons glittered and the bright cloth blazed against the snow. The tree brightened up the whole drab street.

  Isaac called to Malachi, “Help me move it so the others can see it from their beds.”

  When the tree nearly leaned against the glass, they piled back into the sleigh. Even before the horse moved, a pair of chickadees landed in the top branches and began pecking at the strand of corn. Emily smiled at the birds, and at Malachi and her uncle, and at the faces in the window, glad she had chosen to participate in the fun.

  The three of them made merry again on their way home, but when they pulled into the hotel drive, all the jolly left Malachi’s face.

  And then Emily, too, caught the sound of a baying bark.

  Chapter 13

  “Hello, Jarrod,” Isaac greeted as he stomped his boots off inside the door. “One of your clients lose something again?”

  “To be sure,” Mr. Burrows answered, rising from a fireside chair to shake Isaac’s hand. “It’s the only thing that could induce me to share one of your godforsaken winters.”

  He caught sight of Emily. “Ah, Miss Preston, it is indeed an honor,” he said, bowing over her hand. “I was hoping you were still in residence. Will you be joining me for dinner this evening?”

  Emily glanced hopefully at her uncle. He gave her a cautionary look then nodded.

  She turned to Mr. Burrows with a beaming smile. “I will. And perhaps you’d be so gracious as to grant me details of our beloved South. I’ve been away so long.”

  He bowed again. “It would be my pleasure.”

  “You boys want your same rooms?” Isaac asked, slipping behind the large desk.

  “Already taken care of. You’re man Zeke is a fine fellow.” He dropped his voice, out of hearing of the hotel’s other guests. “Old as he is, he’d fetch a fair sum.”

  Emily’s smile faltered just a bit. She couldn’t imagine sending away the grandfatherly old man.

  Isaac waved Mr. Burrows off. “He’s far too valuable for that. Let me get you a room key.”

  “Like I said, all taken care of. My boys are already sleeping off the effects of our travel. I simply want to sit beside this fire and soak up as much warmth as I can before I must go out again.”

  Emily chose to focus on the upcoming meal. She regained her smile and took the opportunity to make a graceful exit. “If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to peek in on dinner.”

  Mr. Burrows nodded at Isaac. “Few more years and she’ll make a fine plantation mistress.”

  Emily overheard him and his words brought her up short. She flipped her hair with annoyance. Did everyone expect her to marry?

  Malachi met Emily in the kitchen, his eyes as dark as coal. “What’s he doing here?”

  “What you think he doin’?” Julia snapped. “Some black folks tryin’ to be free this Christmas. He gonna drag ‘em back in chains.”

  Emily cleared her throat, suddenly uncomfortable. “I won’t be serving this evening. Mr. Burrows has asked me to join him for dinner and Uncle Isaac has agreed.” />
  Julia met Malachi’s eyes over Emily’s head, and the slap of that look made Emily cringe. Her emotions warred inside her, but pride won out. Mr. Burrows was a fine, cultured gentleman and she would dine with him, no matter what they thought.

  She raised her chin and looked Julia square in the eye. “I just want to see that dinner is prepared extra special tonight.”

  Julia’s face grew stony, and her eyes burned into Emily’s. Emily felt the heat rising in her cheeks and whirled from the room before the black woman could see it.

  The evening passed pleasantly. Mr. Burrows was as agreeable as she remembered. His soft drawl and conversation centered on home made her happily forget all about her friends eating in the kitchen.

  After dinner, her uncle entertained them with music. Mr. Burrows commented, “You play as well as my mother. She’s always liked that last one. Bach, is it?”

  “Beethoven,” Isaac replied. “‘Moonlight Sonata.’ It has special meaning for me.”

  “Yes, yes, Beethoven. I never could keep all those German fellows straight.”

  The slave catchers stayed with them three days, keeping odd hours. They would suddenly appear or disappear, sometimes taking the dogs, often staying out half the night. Twice Emily heard them clomping up the stairs long after midnight.

  The usual evening gatherings in the kitchen became particularly strained. She couldn’t endure Malachi’s frank gaze or Julia’s scornful glare, so like a naughty child she retreated to the lobby with the guests.

  On the night before Christmas, however, the three Southerners were absent all day, and the entire household set aside their differences, exchanging small gifts in front of the lobby fire before the work of the busy holiday began. Isaac read the Christmas story and led them in carols around the piano.

  After the second stanza of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” the front door opened. “Milford!” boomed a voice that Emily recognized. “Got a delivery here from my daughter. She wanted to come but she’s feeling poorly. She asked me to give this to your niece.”