Officially it was declared that a smoldering cinder from the wood stove that heated the building had ignited in the chimney and set the place ablaze. That was nonsense, because it would have had to have smoldered for nearly forty-eight hours. It was the Klan that had burnt that place.
Worst of all in the Klan’s eyes, unlike Harper Bay, where there were separate churches, the white and colored Catholics actually went to the same services here in Chatqua County. Years later he heard that one of the Klansmen had pointed out that some of the coloreds from north of Harper Bay had been coming into the county to attend those services. Next thing you know, he had asserted, there’ll be Jews building one of their Christless temples. It did not matter that there were fewer than thirty Catholics in the county, and only six of them were colored; the Klan hated Catholics near about as much as Jews and Negroes.
It made Tobit chuckle morbidly to think about where that would place a colored Catholic in Klan estimation. Anna looked up at him. “What?”
“Nothing; I was just musing. Oh, I saw the boy-sheriff again today. I think maybe I should just build a still somewhere and then report it to him. Maybe that way he would let go this notion he has.”
“He would only produce a new notion”, said Anna. “I have never seen a man that so needs to hate. A lot of folk say his father should have been more firm with him.”
“Not that”, replied Tobit as he borrowed the claw to clear more soil. “If anything, his old man was much too hard on him. How Judge Oliver could have produced such a spoiled, mean-spirited, no good drunk as that boy’s father is beyond me. No, I’d be more likely to think the son is hateful because he felt hated by his own, worthless father all those years.
“I only ever saw that man do one kind thing for that boy. Back when he was maybe seven or eight he bought him a little shotgun, a child’s shotgun. Pretty little thing so finely made. Had it made over in Europe.
“Well, Chuck was just a little boy. The first time he fired that thing it knocked him down even though it was just a four-ten gauge, and the noise of it scared the young’un half to death. So little Chuck starts crying and his father starts calling him names and talks just ruthless to the boy.”
The judge’s son had died in Atlanta. Shot down in the street, the Harper Bay News had reported. Shot in a fight over a whore, said other folk around the county.
“The judge’s daughter seems to have turned out all right”, noted Anna. Melissa Oliver had become a school teacher and married a lawyer. They lived in Greenville and had produced a large family of seven children.
“Fine girl”, said Tobit, remembering the cheerful, freckle-faced child with ginger hair and hazel eyes. “Sweet, kind little child she was. It’s a wonder how things turn out, ain’t it.”
Anna got to her feet, brushing dirt from her canvas apron. “That’s enough for the entire weekend and most of next week.”
Tobit pried the basket from out of her hands. “I’ll carry that up for you, clever girl.”
“You are so kind, sir”, laughed Anna.
“Well, if I didn’t carry a lady’s burden when I ought to, I reckon my mama would rise up out of her grave to cuff the back of my head. What’s for dinner?”
“Fried potatoes, and scrambled eggs”, replied Anna softly.
Tobit just nodded. Meat was scarce for them these days. “I hope that boy of yours gets home at least before his supper goes cold.”
Tobias worked part-time for Crafty Forgeron, the owner of a motor repair shop and gasoline station. His given name was Francis Forgeron, but he went by either Frank or Crafty. His shop was called Crafty’s Repair. He was indeed crafty with things mechanical.
Tobias was only twelve when he started working part-time at Crafty’s. At first he had only done some sweeping and cleaning. Forgeron let him watch sometimes as cars were repaired and let him help with the handing over of tools and parts. Then one day, sometime after Tobias’s fourteenth birthday, Crafty Forgeron had towed in a battered Model A Ford. “A Model A Tudor Deluxe”, Tobias had reported to his father, who had no clue what that meant.
There was already a junked, plain Tudor sedan behind the shop, and Crafty told Tobias that he could, on his own time, begin the repair of the Deluxe by using the junker for parts. He said that in this way Tobias could learn how to repair cars, and at the end of it Crafty would have a car he could sell for a profit.
“That is, if you’ve got the incentive and desire to learn”, Crafty had told the boy.
Tobit laughed now at the thought of it. The boy had both. He spent any spare moment he could working on that old car. At first that was quite a lot of time, though it became less and less so as Crafty began letting him work in the shop for pay. Nearly four years had passed, but the car was virtually complete.
Despite liking him, Tobit thought Forgeron a peculiar man. Tobit was more than a little unsure that Crafty’s Repair was the sort of place Tobias should be working. Forgeron was a short, thin white man with bowed legs and cropped hair atop a large head. He wore cowboy boots, though he had never been west of the Mississippi River. He was known to associate with loose women of any race, though he was careful to conduct such goings-on outside of the county.
Crafty repeatedly had the notion that maybe somehow he and Tobit were related due to their French surnames. The Forgeron family was descended from French Huguenots who ended up in America by way of Wales. Tobit would point out that his own ancestry was Negro and Berber rather than French, and Forgeron would reply, “I reckon you’re right.” Then days, weeks, or months later he would bring up the notion again.
Despite his reckless ways with women, gambling, and drinking, Crafty Forgeron was a good-hearted man. He was essentially color blind when it came to race. Tobit worried about him because of that, but Forgeron had one brother who worked for the Justice Department in Washington and another for the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation. It was unlikely that any organized Klan violence would fall upon Crafty.
Tobit figured that some memory of the persecution the family had faced in France was passed down through the generations, and it made the three brothers peculiarly sensitive to the tribulations of Negroes. As he washed his hands and face at the pump, Tobit smiled to think of Crafty talking about his important brothers.
“You see,” said the little bowlegged man, “I’m the black sheep of my family! Reckon that’s why I get along so well with the colored folk.”
Once inside, Tobit began to clean and cut the potatoes for frying. These days Anna worked about as hard outside of the house as he did, so he did not feel it was appropriate that he should leave all the housework to her. Truth was, she actually earned more money now than he did.
After he had finished, Anna was about to shoo him from the kitchen when they heard the sound of Crafty Forgeron’s truck trundling noisily up the drive. Tobit frowned; it was not unusual for Crafty to give Tobias a ride home, but only when he had kept him working late or the weather was bad. This was early and heightened a sense of concern.
The truck creaked to a halt with a wake of ground oyster-shell dust catching up and swirling past it. Tobias emerged from the truck, appearing healthy enough to the relief of his parents, who had stepped out onto the front porch of the house. Forgeron hopped down from the driver’s side and followed the young man.
Tobias looked much like his father. So much so that folk were always commenting on how he was the spitting image of Tobit until one day, not one of his better days, Tobit had finally tersely replied, “He damned well better be.”
“Daddy,” called out the young man as he approached the porch, “Reverend Walker says he needs to speak with you and that he’ll come by first thing in the morning.”
Forgeron followed to the steps, nodding as Tobias spoke, and pulling his perpetually unlit pipe from his mouth, said, “I thought I’d tell you, Tobit, that he seemed out of sorts with worry. Very put out. So look here, if y’all need some help tomorrow, you let me know.”
He had punc
tuated each statement with a jab of his pipe, Forgeron’s habitual expression of earnestness. “You know you can count on me. You can trust me too.”
Tobit nodded in reply. “I know that, Frank, and I thank you for it. Won’t you come in for a bite of supper?”
“No, I reckon I better get back and finish up the brake job I was doin’ when the preacher came by. But I thank you for the offer.”
The Messagers waved a farewell as the truck bounced back down the drive. Tobit looked over to his son as the vehicle disappeared onto the road. “Did Gaston say what this was about?”
Tobit knew the reverend might be hesitant to talk about colored business in front of a white man, even Crafty. Tobias shook his head. “No, sir, but by the look on his face, it’s bad. Real bad.”
Click here to continue reading Tobit’s Dog!
More from Ignatius Press
The Leaves Are Falling: A Novel by Lucy Beckett
Poor Banished Children: A Novel by Fiorella De Maria
You May Also Be Interested In . . .
A Postcard from the Volcano: A Novel of Pre-War Germany by Lucy Beckett
The Song at the Scaffold: A Novel by Gertrud Von Le Fort
Charis in the World of Wonders Page 39
