Final Rights

by Tena Frank

  Marie Eleanor Vance and Leland Samuel Howard married in a small ceremony in Ellie’s backyard on the Saturday after Leland graduated. Seven months and three days later, she gave birth to their first and only child.

  TEN

  1939

  This will do very nicely, thought Harland Freeman as he surveyed the plot of land in front of him.

  His house—no, his masterpiece—would perch at the top of the rise. The hill would need to be cut back a bit and supported with a retaining wall of fieldstone. Little jewels would adorn the ledge at the top of the wall. Not jewels actually, but the drops of cobalt and sea green and silvery gray glass he imagined would be a nice addition to the natural colors of the stone.

  The steps up from the street would have to be shallow, not as deep as those of the other houses in the neighborhood. He detested having to walk up steep steps. It just seemed wrong to him that one should have to suffer through physical strain before entering the elegant edifice he planned to build. He wanted all of his visitors, and he expected there would be many, to enter gracefully, a befitting introduction to the soirées he would host.

  Harland Freeman did not enjoy popularity in town, but he was an important man. A pompous man who put great stock in appearing to be in control of all aspects of his life, he kept secret his disappointment about how things had turned out for him.

  Well, this house would finally seal his position among Asheville’s business elite. They would no longer be able to snigger behind his back, wondering when he would make some fatal error that would land him in bankruptcy, put him out of business and make it possible for them to get away with publicly deriding him. Maybe they didn’t like him, but they would have to respect him once he built his house. They would attend his parties and thank him graciously for having been invited, and they would hide any contempt they had for him behind their smiles and friendly chatter. He would see to that. The shame he harbored for the place he had grown up, only blocks away, would finally be dispelled by the house he planned to build here.

  Childhood memories always made Harland feel sick. Now, even while envisioning his new home sitting atop the sloped hill, his stomach churned as images pushed to the surface of an old shanty on a junk-filled patch of land at the edge of Stumptown. And he remembered Mazie. Mazie, who had saved his life in more ways than one. Mazie, whom he loved and hated in equal amounts. Mazie who these days crossed the street rather than speak to him.

  Mazie gathered her apron in her hands and stepped into the morning sun splashing across her small stoop. She breathed in the fresh, wet air. Dew glistened on the small plants pushing their way through the damp earth in her small garden, and her chickens clucked and pranced in their hutch beside the house.

  “Thank you, Lord, for this beautiful morning.” She started and ended every day in the same way—giving thanks for what she had and asking the Lord to watch over her and hers. “I don’t ask for much, Lord, just enough to feed my family, a warm place for us to sleep, my loved ones to come home safe and the chance to do your work here on Earth.”

  Depending on how one defined God’s work, Mazie had plenty of it to do. She kept her own house, tended to the needs of her family and also worked in the homes of the rich folks in Montford who sought her out, in particular for her cooking. Her exceptional skill with everything from roast beef to apple raspberry pie gave Mazie more freedom than most of the women in Stumptown who worked from dawn to dusk cleaning, washing, ironing, scrubbing floors and doing any other task assigned to them by their employers.

  Two families employed Mazie, both of them within a mile of her small place in Stumptown. Every day but Sunday she went to the Milners’ in the late morning where she prepared lunch and put dinner on, to be finished and served by the kitchen maid. She then walked three blocks to the Raskins’ to prepare their dinner, the leftovers of which would be used for the next day’s lunch. When she got home she fed her own family and tended to her daily chores. She filled her mornings before work with feeding the chickens, cooking for her own family and getting her husband off to the mill and her children to school.

  Mazie liked her routine. She enjoyed her work and her employers generally treated her well. What she didn’t like was surprises. And as she stood on the stoop that morning in the warm sunshine, she spied a surprise coming up the street toward her.

  “Well I’ll be . . .” She shaded her eyes and squinted to get a better look. “Who’s that scrawny little white boy toddlin’ up my street?” She walked down the steps as he approached.

  Harland had learned to walk only a few months earlier, and he had taken to it quickly. Whenever he got out of the house, he headed off in one direction or another, often wandering around for hours, looking for scraps of food and whatever else he could scavenge until his path crossed his mother’s—who did her own roaming—or someone else brought him back home. Today he had meandered into Stumptown and found Mazie. He took one look at her, then walked right up and threw his little arms around her thick calf, hugging her tight and smiling into her dark face.

  “Who are you, little boy?” She expected no answer, so surprise caught her again when he spoke.

  “Harland hungry!”

  “What? My word, chile . . .”

  “Hungry!” In fact, Harland was ravenous, but he did not know that word. He knew “hungry” and he repeated it now as he did frequently in his search through the neighborhoods around his home, having learned that saying it often enough would usually result in someone giving him food.

  “Okay, chile, let’s get you somethin’ to eat.” Mazie took him inside and sat him down with a chunk of cornbread and two fried eggs, which he gobbled down without chewing.

  “More!” he demanded. Mazie saw the fear and desperation in the boy’s eyes, and her own filled with tears.

  “Well, Lord, you sure done give me a chance to do your work today!” She spoke aloud as she gave Harland another piece of cornbread.

  Mazie noticed the dirt and grime covering the boy’s body, so she heated up a kettle of water and pulled the tub out from under the stoop. Then she stripped off his dirty pants, tattered shirt and the ragged shoes no longer big enough for his growing feet. She scrubbed him from head to toe and dressed him in clothes and shoes her own sons had outgrown long ago. Once clean, the child’s thick, black hair gleamed and his dark eyes no longer showed anxiety.

  “Now that’s better!”

  “Better!” Harland mimicked with a big smile.

  Mazie surveyed the boy and wondered what she would do with him next. She had to go to work. She could not be responsible for this stranger. Where did he live? Why was he wandering around Stumptown?

  “What you doin’ with Crazy Eulah’s boy?” Cora Jenkins called from the street.

  “This little boy? He come up here looking for food and I give him a bath, too. He was filthy. You know his mama?”

  “She live over there on Pearson, in the little shack back off the street behind the piles a junk. He be all over the place looking for food and a little love. He jus’ now findin’ his way to you?”

  “I never did see this boy ’fore he come here this mornin’. I figure he be my God’s work for the day!” Mazie laughed and Cora joined in with her rich trill.

  “Well, you bes’ be sendin’ him on home. ’Ventually Crazy Eulah’ll come lookin’ for him, but no tellin’ if that’s today, tomorrow or when.”

  “You mean she let this chile roam ’round on his own? He jus’ a baby. Can’t be walking more’n a few months.”

  “Honey, he be wanderin’ since he be crawlin’. Crazy Eulah leave him to hisself most the time. And his daddy ain’t much better. Weren’t for the kindness of strangers, that chile woulda starved or froze to death long time ago. You best fergit about that boy and git on to work.”

  “I’ll be gittin’ on to work, but I won’t be fergittin’ ’bout this chile. Somebody gotta love him, and looks to me like the Lord give me that job.”

  “Think twice ’fore you decide, M
azie. No way to know where takin’ in a little white boy will lead.”

  Cora’s good advice went unheeded. “No chile should have to fend for hisself in this world, not when he barely kin walk or talk. Not when I got a piece a cornbread and a egg to keep him fed, and not when I got arms to give him a hug and a voice to sing him a lullaby.”

  “Well, then . . .” And Cora walked off, shaking her head as she took one last look at Mazie and Harland.

  “Come on now, boy. I gotta go to work.” Mazie slipped out of her apron, picked up her bag and took the boy’s hand. They walked together to the corner of Pearson Drive, and she pointed him in the direction of his house as she turned toward the Milners’.

  “No . . .” he said and gripped her hand tightly.

  “Yes,” Mazie insisted. She loosened his hand and pushed him gently in the direction of home. “Go now.” She bent down to give him a hug before motioning him on. He stood and watched as she walked away, huge tears rolling down his gaunt little cheeks.

  Harland found his way through childhood much the same way he had chanced upon Mazie. He rambled around the area surrounding the shack he shared with Eulah and his father, picking up the basics of survival along the way—food, clothing, language, craftiness—and in the process he developed a shrewd comprehension of the world around him.

  As he wandered about his ever-expanding territory, Harland met the rich and poor alike. He quickly grasped that scrounging from the first group proved much harder than from the second. Those with plenty held to it tightly while people with little gave what they could freely. Experiencing such stinginess and generosity side by side proved a powerful influence on Harland’s forming psyche. Avarice sank its roots in the fertile ground of the child’s soul while the generosity of his most impoverished neighbors nurtured his growing body.

  Harland’s relationship with Mazie and her family deepened quickly. His visits became regular, and he grew to understand he need not beg from them. Mazie and her family provided not only food and clothing, but comfort and companionship. As the years passed, he became a regular at their dinner table and often spent hours at the little place, helping Mazie with the garden and chickens.

  He would have lived there, gladly. Sometimes she walked with him to the corner on her way to work, and frequently she found him waiting on the same corner or on her stoop when she returned.

  “Harland stay,” he’d proclaim without budging.

  “No, Harland, go home now.” Mazie always responded the same way, the firm words coupled with a soft hand brushing back his hair.

  “Stay!”

  “No. Go home, Harland! I can’t have no little white boy sleepin’ in this house!” And he would reluctantly leave, only to return the next day.

  Only when Harland entered school did he begin to learn the confusing social customs that dictated relationships between blacks and whites. Why could he sit at the dinner table with Mazie and her family but not play with her children in public?

  This puzzled him, but even more so, it filled him with shame. He knew intuitively his ability to survive depended upon what people thought of him. How could he not have known about this taboo? Why had no one told him? And what was he to do now? Who would feed him, hug him and care for him if he couldn’t go to Mazie?

  Just as he had done from infancy, Harland adapted to the new circumstances forced upon him. He grew more secretive about his visits with Mazie and her family. Over time, as he became more autonomous, his visits to Stumptown became less frequent. Although he remained fond of Mazie, he put distance between himself and her. Sometimes he went so far as to pretend not to know her if he encountered her in public.

  The critical gaps in Harland’s development began to show themselves by his teenage years. Though self-reliant, he was not responsible. He did what he wanted, what he determined to be important based on his immediate needs. He was capable of handling whatever presented itself to him, but he had not developed the ability to think ahead, to plan or prepare for the challenges he would have to face as an adult.

  When Eulah began including Stumptown in her daily sojourns, Mazie knew the time had come to teach Harland an important life lesson. She caught him one day as he left the tiny shack for school.

  “Harland, we need to talk.”

  “What? Mazie, what are you doing here?” He looked around furtively.

  “You gotta do somethin’ about Eulah.”

  Harland caught his breath and bristled.

  “It’s none of your business, Mazie. Leave me alone.”

  “I’ll do no such thing, young man. I took you in when you was starvin’ and nearly naked. You growed up in my home more’n you did in this place.” She glanced over his shoulder at the mess of a place he called home.

  His face flushed with shame, Harland tried to cover by puffing himself up and jutting his chin toward her.

  “I appreciate all you did for me, Mazie, but I’m a man now . . .”

  “And a man has responsibilities, Harland. One a yours is your mother.”

  “She’s not my problem! She never did nothin’ for me, and I’m returning the favor!”

  “I’m not axin’ you to take care of her, Harland. I’m axin’ you to take care of your friends in Stumptown, even though you pretend not to know us anymore.” Mazie did not try to hide her disappointment. Much as Harland wanted to deny it, the force of Mazie’s love held power over him. He felt his determination eroding as she held him in her gaze.

  “What do you think I can do about her? She’s crazy and you know it. She won’t listen to anyone.” Rarely did Harland feel helpless, but the idea that Mazie expected him to somehow control Eulah overwhelmed him.

  “She’s vexin’ us all, Harland. She roams through the neighborhood in the middle a the night hollerin’ and raisin’ a ruckus. I know you can’t do nothin’ when you in school, or out there on the baseball field, but you gotta’ do something to keep her home at night. I ain’t wantin’ to threaten, but she gonna’ get hurt by somebody purdy bad if she don’t stop.”

  For the first time in his life, Harland felt a burden of responsibility for others settling onto his shoulders. Not that he gave a hoot about Eulah. She could wander off into the night and never come back and it would be all the better for him. But he did care about his reputation and what Mazie thought of him. Harland truly owed Mazie his life. If she needed him to do this one thing, he would have to find a way to do it.

  “I’ll figure somethin’ out, Mazie. I’ll do my best,” he conceded.

  “Can’t ask no more’n that. Please make sure your best is good ’nuf to let us sleep the night through, Harland.”

  And even as he resolved to pay his debt of gratitude to Mazie by dealing with his crazy mother, he also decided in the future to rigorously avoid ever owing anything to anyone.

  Harland had little time to follow through on his promise. Barely three weeks later, some boys discovered Eulah’s body in a patch of woods near the river, dead apparently of natural causes.

  Harland was now an orphan, his father having died several years earlier. As the only child, Harland inherited the shanty and the land it sat on—valuable land on the growing edge of Montford. He took his belongings out of the shack, poured a can of kerosene on the floor and tossed a lit match inside as he exited for the final time. The place had burned to the ground before the fire department arrived.

  There were questions about the fire, of course. No more than a superficial investigation, but still he had to talk to the inspectors. He stuck closely to the simple story he put together as he waited for the fire to be extinguished.

  “I was trying to light the old kerosene lamp.”

  “When I struck the match, I knocked the lamp over and everything went up in flames.”

  “Don’t know why I didn’t get burned. Just lucky I guess.”

  “I jumped out of the way. I’m an athlete, you know. I can move fast and I did this time, that’s for sure.”

  Eventually they left him alone sitti
ng outside the smoldering ruins. He breathed in the acrid smoke, a smug, self-satisfied grin curling the corners of his mouth.

  “Such a shame! That boy lost his mother and his house all at the same time.” The sentiment echoed through town, voiced with a thinly disguised suggestion that it wasn’t a shame at all.

  Harland buried Eulah and, he hoped, his childhood with her. He was sixteen years old. He had a job at the hardware store downtown and friends he could stay with until he figured out his next move. That move, when it came, proved a major turning point in his life.

  “You’re Harland Freeman, aren’t you son?” The well-dressed man asking the question had stopped Harland as he left work one day. “Didn’t your mama die and your house over there on Pearson burn down a couple of weeks ago?”

  Why is Mr. Howell interested in me? How come he knows so much about me? Harland should have been aware that everyone in town knew about him now—not only his name and where he worked, but many tidbits about his life before he became the talk of the town. Harland knew Mr. Howell owned the shop two blocks up from the hardware store. He had accumulated a sizable fortune as one of Asheville’s most successful businessmen.

  “Yes, that’s me.” Harland knew he would get more from Mr. Howell by placing the burden of the conversation on him rather than offering too much.

  “Well I hope you’re doing okay, son. Everyone has been pretty worried about you.”

  “Really? Why?”

  This unexpected question put Mr. Howell on the spot.

  “Well, you’ve got no family, and we just . . . we . . . we’ve been concerned.”