Of Ashes and Dust

by Marc Graham

  The leather soles of the boots were smooth and slick, and I slipped off the third rung and bounced past the other seven. I grabbed at the rough wood as I fell—more concerned about mussing my suit than breaking a leg—and managed to catch my fall at the expense of an ugly splinter in one finger. I plucked out the sliver of wood and jammed the finger in my mouth to stanch the trickle of blood while I hurried to dinner.

  The large front door swung open as I approached. Missus Warren’s bony figure was outlined by the bright lights inside.

  “You were told that dinner is at six, were you not?” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “What time is it now?”

  I looked for the sun to gauge the hour, but it was hidden behind the house.

  “I don’t know, ma’am.”

  “Hmph,” she snorted, her only deviation from Mister Webster’s lexicon. “Haven’t you a timepiece?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Come with me.” She led me into a richly appointed sitting room with a beautiful pendulum clock resting on a carved mantel. “Can you read a clock?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And what time does it tell?”

  “Six o’clock and six minutes.”

  “Hold out your hands,” she said.

  “Ma’am?”

  “I will not repeat myself,” she informed me.

  I didn’t understand, but obediently held my hands out to her. She took my right hand—her fingers icy cold on my skin— and turned it over and back, inspecting between the fingers and under the nails.

  “What’s this?” she said.

  “Just a sliver, ma’am. It’s nothing.”

  “I will be the judge of that.” She dragged me toward a table and held my hand under the stained glass shade of an oil lamp, where she twisted and probed the wound. “You’ll live, but you missed some dirt under your thumbnail. Now, let me see the other hand.”

  “Yes, ma—Oww,” I shouted as a wooden spoon appeared out of thin air and struck my knuckles.

  “Did I instruct you to withdraw your hands?” the old biddy asked.

  I glared at her for a moment, but managed to swallow my anger. “No, ma’am.”

  “You were six minutes late. You will receive one stroke for each minute.”

  “But it was only five,” I objected, still rubbing my hand.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Well, ma’am,” I said in as reasonable a tone as I could muster, “it was just six after when you had me read the time. I reckon at least a minute must’ve passed between the time I came to the door and then.”

  Her face screwed up as she considered the argument, then relaxed slightly.

  “Very well,” she said. “Five.”

  I held out my hands and clenched my teeth, more against the insult to my dignity than the pain. “Two—three—four—and five. And one more,” she added with a final blow on my right hand. “For impertinence. Do not ever presume to correct me.”

  Without another word, she led me from the sitting room, across the entry hall and into the spacious dining room. Mister Warren sat at the head of the table, with Angelina on one side, and a younger girl on the other.

  “Ah, here you are,” Uncle Cy said. “JD, this is my flower, Cassandra.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” I said.

  The girl looked to be a year or two younger than Matt and me, her hair a dull orange-red compared to Angelina’s copper. Her pale face was dotted with freckles and her sunken eyes were a limpid blue-green.

  “Likewise,” she mumbled as she looked shyly up at me, one hand over her mouth to hide her slightly bucked teeth.

  “If you are going to speak, Cassandra, speak clearly,” Missus Warren scolded her, and I felt badly for having greeted the girl in the first place. “Take your seat, Mister Robbins,” the woman ordered, indicating the empty seat next to hers, across from Matt. “Would you say the grace, Mister Warren?” she asked.

  Heads bowed around the table and I bowed my own and clasped my hands together in my most reverent posture. At the conclusion of the short prayer, the others repeated, “Amen,” while I managed only a strangled “Am—Ow.”

  I jerked away from the serving fork whose tines had left their bite marks in my elbow.

  “Proper gentlemen and ladies do not place their elbows on the dining table,” Missus Warren said.

  I heaved a sigh through my nose, but kept my temper in check and lowered my hands to my lap.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  The meal passed with only three raps on my knuckles and one more skewering of my elbow. After dinner, Missus Warren walked me to the door.

  “A servant will see that you are awakened on time,” she said, “but you must learn to rise on time of your own accord. You may have your devotions and read briefly before retiring. However, you will receive only one candle each week so I suggest that you spend your evening hours wisely. Good night, Mister Robbins.” Without another word, she closed the door on me.

  I cursed myself as I entered the darkened shed, having failed to set out a candle. Tools and harnesses rattled to the floor as I searched for the ladder. I climbed up, felt my way to the desk and fumbled for the box of matches I’d seen earlier.

  With the candle lit, I dressed for bed, careful to smooth and hang the new set of clothes. In the flickering light I again read the titles of the books, but finally settled on my own tattered Bible. I flipped through the pages and stopped somewhere in Proverbs.

  Despise not the chastening of the Lord, neither be weary of his correction.

  I laughed aloud and shook my head. Missus Warren seemed a strange choice of instrument for the Lord to carry out His work. I left the answer to that riddle for another time, and placed the Bible on the desk. I blew out the candle and cracked open the small windows to let in the cool evening breeze. Then I slid between the fine linen sheets, and drifted into dreams of this strange, new life.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Little Rock, Arkansas—June 1856

  I gripped the metal with a pair of tongs, and lifted it from the coals. The air shimmered around the glowing iron, and water seethed and roiled as I plunged it into the tempering bath. The foundry filled with clouds of steam, and the groan of shock-cooled iron joined with the sigh and hiss of the boiling water. I pulled the scrollwork from the tub, hung it on the cooling rack next to its twin that I had formed earlier and took a keen satisfaction from the near-perfect match.

  “Not bad,” came a gruff approval from over my shoulder.

  I turned toward the voice and took a step back from my mentor, Rawls. His habit of standing closer to people than good manners allowed still caught me off-guard, even after nearly two years.

  “The scrolls aren’t quite even,” I suggested, quick to point out any flaws before his critique could begin.

  “Oh, I didn’t say they was anywhere near perfect.” His words tempered my glowing pride before he stoked the flames again. “But I know men been smithing for twenty years couldn’t do no better’n that. Nope,” he decided as he stepped to the rack and took the two pieces in his hands. He seemed at once to weigh, gauge and take the pulse of the creations. “These ain’t the work of no novice. You’re like to be as good as me before too long—even better, if you keep at it.”

  I was dumbstruck by the generous words. Rawls was always quick to give praise when he felt it was deserved, but he despised hollow compliments.

  “Thanks,” I muttered, unsure of what more to say.

  Rawls ran a hand over his stubbly scalp and scrunched up his pockmarked face, as though trying to remember something.

  “Mister Warren’s landed a commission for a new clock tower down to Arkadelphia,” he said at last. “His carpenters and masons’ll be doing most of the work, but it’s for us to build the clock itself.”

  I stared at him for several moments as the words sank in.

  “We’re making a clock?” I finally said.

  “Not just any clock.
The face of the beast’ll be half again as high as you. Gonna take brass, copper, maybe even gold, on top of all the iron, and that’s just for the face. The gears are the tricky part. Got to be precise and even, take a skilled hand. I told Cy it was too much for just me, but with my chief assistant we ought to be able to handle her.”

  “Me?”

  “I wouldn’t have agreed to take the job if I didn’t think you was ready,” Rawls said. “I’m gonna trust you with the bulk of the large work. I’ll handle most of the precision workings, but I reckon you’ll be able to lend a hand there, too, before it’s all said and done. Well?” he prompted me after a moment’s pause.

  I forced a couple of swallows, my throat gone dry at this unexpected opportunity. What took most apprentices seven years—sometimes as many as fourteen—was being handed to me in less than two. One, really, if you considered the fact that most of the first year had been spent solely in managing the bellows.

  For ten months, my only instruction in the smithy’s art had been “Too hot” or “Too cold.” Though I’d balked at the monotony of working the bellows, when it came time to pick up the hammer and tongs I found that my arms had been strengthened so I could handle the heavy tools with little effort. Now, in just a fraction of the time it usually took, I had the chance to perform a journeyman’s work.

  “Yes,” I finally managed to answer.

  Rawls grinned broadly at that, his eyes all but disappearing among the bushy eyebrows and bushier beard that framed his gnome-like face. His teeth gleamed a brilliant white as he smiled, his one attractive feature.

  “Good man,” he said, then slapped me soundly on the back and pumped my hand in a massive paw. “We’ll be working on-site most of the summer. They want to hold the ground-breaking to celebrate Independence Day, but we won’t need to be there as early as that. Probably head down in a couple of weeks.”

  My excitement ebbed as it dawned on me that I wouldn’t be going home this summer either. Last year’s break had been spent advancing my apprenticeship, and the winter holiday had been too short to allow for much of a visit even if the money had been available to make the trip up-river—which it hadn’t. It’d been nearly two years since I’d been home, and it looked like another year would pass before I’d have my next chance.

  “I know you were looking forward to going home,” Rawls said, seeming to read the expression on my face. “A chance like this don’t come along very often, though. And we’ll see how it goes. Maybe there’ll be time at the end of the summer.”

  I nodded my thanks for this seed of hope, though I didn’t really expect it to bear fruit.

  “Yeah, maybe so,” I said.

  “Meantime, Miz Warren wanted me to scoot you on back to the house,” Rawls said. “They’s some kind of shindy tonight, and she wants you properly cleaned and turned out.”

  The news took me by surprise. Matt hadn’t said a word about a party. But, then, he really hadn’t said much about anything to me for quite some time. I shrugged and untied my heavy leather apron.

  “You going?” I asked.

  Rawls roared with laughter at that.

  “No,” he said. “I ain’t exactly what you’d call the social type. I got better things to do with my time than listen to a bunch of dandies flapping their gums. Though I wouldn’t mind catching me an eyeful of them spring flowers that’s blooming here about.”

  The beginning of summer was just the next day, so I gathered he was talking about the young ladies who would be walking around the Warrens’ gardens, rather than the blossoms that grew there. I grinned as I thought of the young ladies of Little Rock society. Few, if any, could compare favorably with Angelina. As she was spending this year in New Orleans, though, I figured a daisy in my garden was better than a rose in someone else’s.

  “I’ll see you Monday, then” I said, and hung the apron on its peg.

  I stripped off my sweaty shirt, plunged my head in the water trough and let the cool stream run down my back and chest. I gave Rawls a backward wave and ducked out the low doorway.

  I squinted as I stepped into the bright sunlight, and shook loose the muscles of my arms and fingers. Eyes closed, I breathed deeply of the air tainted by laundry and livery, tannery and net. I braced my hands against my lower back and stretched back and forth, side to side to work the kinks out of muscles strained from bending over the anvil. My skin had been tempered by the heat of the forge, and the brilliant rays of the sun were but a gentle caress on my chest and shoulders. I ran a hand over my scalp—I’d cropped the hair short like Rawls’s, to avoid catching any sparks from the forge—then slung my shirt over a shoulder and started home.

  Bare-chested, save for Zeke’s totem around my neck, I walked up the narrow streets of the lower riverfront. I tried to keep my composure as the girls and younger women of the trades district turned to watch me pass. Smiles and nods, waves and whispers greeted me as I passed laundresses, fish mongers, rope weavers and the girls who waited at the entrances of alleys that led down to the piers. Rawls had cautioned me against venturing into those alleys, but I longed to discover the mysteries that lurked there.

  Just sixteen, I had yet to kiss a girl. Not that I hadn’t had the chance. Cassandra Warren had a crush on me that she’d tried to disguise since we first met. I was flattered by her awkward flirtations, but couldn’t bring myself to take advantage of her feelings. For one, Missus Warren would never stand for it. And, I admitted to myself, plain though she might be, she was still above my station. If I was going to aim that far above myself, I may as well go all the way and hold out for Angelina.

  Still, I longed to be with someone. The young women I passed as I left the foundry were well within my reach, and I could imagine myself being with any one of them. Well, maybe not the ones waiting by the alleys. But pretty or plain, a hard-working woman would make a fine wife for an up-and-coming tradesman. And far more attainable for a sharecropper’s son, I reminded myself, than the blossoms of Little Rock aristocracy.

  I left the common folk—my folk—behind, and pulled my shirt on as I entered the commercial district. Out of habit, I walked out of my way to pass by the men’s clothing shop that boasted all the eastern fashions. With the sun behind me, my reflection was cast in the storefront glass and I could almost see myself wearing one of the suits on display. I stood tall and cocked my chin, as Matt often did when he was trying to be impressive. The gesture felt silly and I left the little shop for the Warrens’ fashionable neighborhood.

  Through an alley to the servants’ gate, I made my way up familiar paths, past the carriage house and stable to the little shed that had become my home. I paused outside the door as I heard the raspy twang of a metal file and the raspier treble of a voice that sang in time with the tool’s strokes.

  “Jordan’s water is chilly and cold, it chill the body but not the soul. Wade in the water, children. God gonna trouble the water.”

  Sorry to interrupt the song, I loudly cleared my throat, then pushed open the door. Timothy smiled up at me from his seat at the tool bench, but his eyes glistened in the dim light of the shed.

  “Marse Jade,” he said. “What brings you home at this hour?”

  “Mister Rawls let me go early,” I said. “I suppose Missus Warren wanted me to have plenty of time to wash off the stench before the party tonight.”

  Timothy laughed, and set down the harness he’d been working on.

  “I reckon that’s the case,” he said. “Miz Warren gots a delicate nose, like most the fine ladies be showing up tonight. Ain’t nothing wrong with a little stink, though. That just the smell of hard work. All the same, I’ll run and have Miriam fetch you some bath water.”

  “No hurry,” I said, and motioned the man—I couldn’t think of him as a slave—to his seat. “What’re you working on?”

  “Oh, just a harness got whacked up some, is all,” he said. “The rings got spurs in them that’ll dig into the horses, so I’m filing them down a bit.”

  I looked at th
e harness and recognized it as one of the first pieces I’d made on my own. I remembered my pride as I’d forged the rings and studs, then joined them with the leather to form the harness. “It’d take some doing to bung them up like that. What happened?”

  “Marse Matthew,” Timothy answered. “He tried breaking that new stud this morning.”

  “Pegasus?” I said.

  I couldn’t imagine even Matt would be brash enough to try such a stunt. Mister Warren had added the stallion to his stables just a week earlier. The name had come from Uncle Cy’s beloved Greek mythology, and seemed quite fitting. Like the mythical winged horse, the black beast’s feet never seemed to touch the ground as he bounded madly about the stable yard.

  “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it,” Timothy went on. “Dang fool boy got close enough to try slipping the bridle over the monster’s head before the thing put him backside-down in the dirt. Did that two or three times before he finally landed in a pile of manure.”

  “You’re joking,” I said, unable to keep from laughing at the thought.

  “No, suh,” he said. “Marse Jade, you should’ve seen the look on that boy’s face. Why, I didn’t know if he was gonna cry or spit, up to his middle in filth the way he was. Well, he up and takes that bridle, storms out of the pen and starts in to hammering everything in sight with it. Lucky for me and the others, we managed to stay out of his way. I’d say the fence post got the worst of it, but the bridle took a pretty good licking itself.”

  I picked up the harness and examined it. I’d decorated the leather straps of the brow band and cheek pieces with metal studs, many of which were now loose. The buckles and rings were scored and spurred from the beating.

  “Well that’s shot,” I said, indicating the twisted snaffle bit.

  “Yep,” Timothy said. “I got most of the spurs ground down, but ain’t no horse gonna take that bit. Now, if someone was to figure a way to harness a horse without shoving a bar halfway down his throat . . .”

  He let the suggestion lie there for a moment before he picked up the file and examined the bridle again. He hummed as he ran his fingers deftly over the metal surfaces, smoothing down the remaining rough spots.