The Last List of Miss Judith Kratt

by Andrea Bobotis

  By now, the entire group had made it to the landing. The Tiffany lamp claimed our attention, finally Quincy’s, too, but he was still sneaking glances back at Dovey, as if she were a thing that could be misplaced. The lamp was a magnificent specimen. Nothing like it existed in Bound. A yellow-and-brown acorn motif adorned its shade (diameter 16 inches), and the base, in the shape of a Greek urn, had an exquisite moss-colored patina that managed to be both earthy and refined. It stood at 21¾ inches and was designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany, the son of Charles Lewis Tiffany. The lamp was not for sale—it was our personal property—but part of the thrill Daddy Kratt offered his customers was showing them things they couldn’t possess. What’s more, that evening, the lamp would take on even greater significance: the first electric current in Bound would spring forth from it.

  I stood staring at the lamp. It had enthralled me all over again, and for a moment, I forgot how or why we had gotten there. Until Quincy lifted the rope so that Byrd could get a closer look.

  “Quincy!” I cried, but he waved off my alarm. His spirits seemed high, as if Byrd had said something that pleased him.

  “You see, sir”—he was instructing Byrd to peer underneath the shade—“there are three separate key switches for each of the lamp’s three light bulbs. Now that’s fine craftsmanship.”

  Before Byrd could respond, Quincy impulsively stuck his fingers underneath the shade and gave one of the switches a vicious crank. The light bulb didn’t turn on, but the switch made the sound—unmistakably—of something breaking. A few feet away, Dovey’s hands were fluttering at her neck, as if checking for a necklace that had vanished.

  Quincy retracted his hand, his breath quickening. “It’s fine. It’s fine.”

  The tour disbanded on the spot. People hurried away from the mere thought of Daddy Kratt’s wrath. Byrd just shook his head glumly, as if to say he could have expected it, how living skewed toward misery and how the occasional rattle of joy, when it did occur, was far-off and muted and happening to someone else.

  After breaking the key switch on the Tiffany lamp, Quincy disappeared. As he left, his face was tense with worry. This frightened me, and I felt a surge of concern for my brother. I was left to execute the remainder of the tours with a knot in my stomach. On my way to the midday tour (I wolfed a piece of cornbread Ima had packed for me), I rounded one of the aisles and stifled a surprised cry. Daddy Kratt and Quincy stood with their heads drawn together in confidence. I retreated behind a display shelf, hoping to hear some of their conversation.

  “Byrd Parker said what?” Daddy Kratt cried, a kind of frenzied pleasure in his voice. “Tell me more!” He eased in toward Quincy with a chumminess that irked me. My brother had obviously not told him about the broken switch. My concern for Quincy drained away; if my brother didn’t admit to breaking the lamp, he would have to blame someone else. I leaned forward to listen.

  Quincy’s voice was faint. I heard it crack—his bravado could not stifle his fourteen-year-old hormones. I edged my head around the corner for a chance to read his lips.

  “How about that!” Daddy Kratt boomed with such abruptness, I thought I’d been spotted. I hadn’t. The two were carrying on like old pals.

  As my brother continued to talk, in tones too low for me to understand, my father’s head nodded in affirmation. Quincy’s eyes, for a split second, slid past Daddy Kratt’s and locked onto mine. With a startled gasp, I recoiled, knocking back into the shelf and upsetting its contents (cans of motor oil, sent tottering, and odd-looking mechanical instruments, fussing and clacking into one another). I pressed my hands over my face.

  Silence whirred in my ears, but after a few beats, their muffled conversation resumed. Quincy had not given me away, and Daddy Kratt, pleasantly distracted by whatever he had learned, did not inquire about the racket I had made. The two continued talking, but I heard none of it. Afterward, they parted ways, my father heading deeper into the store and Quincy the opposite direction. Quincy had told Daddy Kratt something about the tour with Byrd Parker, but I didn’t know what.

  I scrambled after my brother. “What did you tell Daddy Kratt?”

  Quincy turned around. With a friendly shrug, he said, “Don’t worry. I didn’t give you up, Sister.”

  “Didn’t give me up?” My throat was constricting. “I didn’t do anything! You are the one who broke the lamp.” I could barely get the words out, my heart thudded so recklessly in my chest.

  Quincy nodded his head in consideration, as if things that happened were always up for interpretation and another version of events, light and intangible, were as possible as the present moment.

  “I wasn’t talking to him about the lamp,” he said. “Something much more important came up.”

  “Regarding Byrd?”

  Quincy smiled. “Yes!” He drew his head close to mine. “I knew there was more to the story than Byrd’s wife cheating on him.”

  “Oh!” I said, startled. “Cheating? Who was the other man?”

  Quincy’s forehead widened. “A colored boy, that’s who. At least his wife was dutiful enough to punish herself.”

  I stiffened at the word. Punish, as if she were a child.

  “Where is he now?” I asked.

  “Who?”

  “That colored boy.”

  “I don’t have a clue,” he said. “But he ought to stay hidden, if he knows what’s good for him.” Quincy shrugged. “For our purposes, we don’t need him. What we’ve got is enough.”

  “Enough for what?”

  Quincy drew back a bit, studying me for a moment. “Enough to put the screws to Byrd, that’s what.”

  I marveled at my brother. Quincy had used Byrd’s own nature, his state of perpetual gloom, to draw the very information from Byrd that would be used against him. Byrd was always expecting the worst, which made him careless with disclosing his sorrows.

  “There’s more,” Quincy said. “Byrd’s wife was pregnant.”

  “With Byrd’s child?” I whispered.

  “Not Byrd’s child,” he sang, pleased by the scandal of it all. With a broad smile, Quincy took off through the store.

  “Quincy!” I called after him. “Our next tour starts in a few moments!” But he had disappeared behind a rack of women’s fancy drop-waist dresses, disturbing them as he slid out of sight, and they swooshed into one another in a slaphappy way, like boozy women at a party, giddy he had brushed up against them.

  I thought about our unnamed lake, which sat to the north of town. I could not stave off an image of Byrd Parker’s wife. There she was, belly thriving, standing barefoot, two feet at the edge of the lake like two smooth white stones ready to sink.

  It would take me years to connect the events. To realize that Byrd’s sudden change of heart—selling his cotton gin to Daddy Kratt a few weeks later, after years of refusal—was the outcome of our father blackmailing him. It was one thing for Daddy Kratt and Quincy to know about Byrd’s wife and an entirely different thing for the rest of town to find out; Byrd might be loose-lipped about his troubles, but he was also no fool. Had I thought on it harder at the time, the blackmailing would have been plain. But the way luck always seemed weighted toward Daddy Kratt was a nonchalant truth, almost genealogical in its depth and sureness, like the way my eyetooth, its particular curve, had been shaped by generations before. I was untroubled by the way business transactions inevitably fell in his favor, and it never occurred to me to question it.

  With Byrd’s fall, Daddy Kratt’s cotton fortune was solidified. He and his business partner, Shep Bramlett, now owned all three cotton gins in town. This was a huge step for Daddy Kratt. Byrd Parker came from plantation money in Charleston, but my father started with nothing. Bound was merely a crossroads junction when he showed up with his horse and wagon, establishing a trading post to buy and sell goods. He waited as a settlement lurched into existence, the crossroads junction gradu
ating to a chartered town with the coming of the Charleston, Cincinnati & Chicago Railroad in the late 1880s. Just as the town was transforming itself, our father seized the chance to remake himself. He had no lineage to speak of and was nineteen years older than Mama, whose father was a lucrative cotton wholesaler, but Daddy Kratt was as persuasive as they came, and in the end, he got Mama plus her generous dowry. Daddy Kratt was living in high cotton, as the saying goes.

  The final tour of the day was miserable for me. Quincy was nowhere to be found. I kept straining for a sight of him, a distraction that rendered me useless for answering questions. After forgetting some details about our supply of cottonseed, which I knew by heart, and flubbing an answer about our millinery shop, people in my group took to talking among themselves, and I lost authority, my voice flattened by the steady roar of their conversations. I was sinking into exhaustion, too, having been on my feet all day, but despite my ineptitude, more people joined the tour group. We were nearing the important moment.

  Dusk was falling, and light dwindled in the store. People’s voices, rowdy the moment before, collapsed into whispers. There was already a tingle of electricity in the air, a pulse of expectation and unease, as though the lights had fallen in a theater for a new and strange performance. Mothers huddled with their children. Men, on break from farming duties, shifted restlessly in their spots. I saw the five Sullivan girls holding hands in a neat row, tangled hair rising from their heads; they came from one of the poorest families in town, but my father possessed the charisma to draw together unlike elements. Daddy Kratt had shut off the store’s Delco generator, which charged rows of battery jars so that he could conduct business after nightfall. As the store fell further into darkness, people’s whispers dissipated, and a silence swept in that bristled with anxiety and left the hairs on my arms whiskered out.

  Clop clop clop. The footfalls of some distant horse.

  It took me a few moments to realize it was my father. He was, I could tell from the sound, wearing his church shoes, a detail that struck me as poignant, because he rarely wore his church shoes to church even. He came into view, rounding the corner and starting up the stairs. The shoes, buffed to a high gloss, seemed to extract the remaining light in the room, and they glinted and winked with each footstep.

  “Folks, it’s time!” he roared.

  He strode to the lamp. Mama was already there. I could tell someone else had positioned her, her hands clasped and elbows bent in a staid and uncomfortable manner. Her body was present, but her gaze flickered like a candle. They were a comical pair. Next to Mama, who possessed a porcelain beauty, our father appeared especially coarse, as though he had been blasted from a quarry, clothes and all, and had simply dusted himself off and fixed his hat on his head before carrying on down the road.

  As the twilight matured into deeper shades of blues and purples, I placed myself behind a farmer who had forgotten to remove his large straw hat. He smelled of sweat and stinkbugs, which lately had been swarming our juvenile cotton plants. I breathed through my mouth and sifted through faces in the crowd. I was looking for my brother.

  Daddy Kratt stole my attention. He swept open his arms, and everyone hovered in stillness, as though he were a conductor on the verge of storming into his first movement. The gesture erased all my anxiety. Arms raised, my father had set the evening into motion, ordaining a sequence of events I was powerless to alter.

  He didn’t seem to notice Mama, stationed right next to him. His eyes flew in my direction. “Now, my eldest child is here. Come join me, Judith.”

  My lungs tightened. Light-headed, I emerged from behind the farmer, my body floating along, and as I stood on the other side of the lamp, the crowd acknowledged me with a patch of feeble applause. Daddy Kratt nodded gruffly at me and then reached underneath the shade.

  Prepared for the worst, I stood, my breath trapped in my lungs, when, with a flick of my father’s wrist, light cracked open from the first bulb. Radiant! The color of the first healing rays of dawn in my room each morning, lapping onto the pine planks, sparking the dust in the air. My father, crouching now, his face pressed into the light, refulgent in its glow, the tips of his beard sizzling in its brilliance. All at once, breath rushed out of my lungs. The crowd roared, and Daddy Kratt gave an impish little grin. He flipped the second key switch. Light again! I was flush with joy. I saw the faces of those around me, mirroring my wonder. My father was a hero.

  Daddy Kratt clicked the third switch. The bulb sat dumbly. He tried it again, and again and again. Terror seized my throat, but Shep Bramlett’s voice bellowed through the tense silence.

  “Here! Here!” he cried. “Mr. Brayburn Kratt has brought electricity to Bound!” The audience erupted into anxious applause.

  Mr. Bramlett strode a few feet forward to congratulate my father with a slap to his back, pushing the failure of the third light bulb into the past. Until that moment, I had never had much use for Mr. Bramlett. He was a boorish man whose two-storied face had extra square footage on his forehead—square footage that, based on his ruthlessness in all business matters, he would probably be willing to sell off in hard times. Despite my distaste for him, he had turned a dire moment around, and for that, I was grateful.

  The crowd disbanded, and Daddy Kratt motioned for Mama to leave. I watched her walk down the stairs and, without saying a word to anyone, glide through the crowd and approach the front door. When she got to the door, she didn’t exit but rather melted off toward a set of side stairs that led straight to the fourth floor. On the fourth floor was the milliner’s office, and above that, the store’s attic, where Charlie Watson lived. Charlie was a Negro who worked as our mechanic. Daddy Kratt’s eyes followed Mama. She climbed the stairs all the way to the fourth floor, where she slipped out of sight.

  Mr. Bramlett, who was admiring the lamp, elbowed Daddy Kratt in the side. “Too bad you didn’t have Rosemarie with you,” Mr. Bramlett said. “She’s a pearl to look at.”

  Daddy Kratt drew his eyes from the staircase and gestured toward me. “This one’s got a sturdy mind. She’s the smartest of the three.”

  Mr. Bramlett turned his giant face toward me and drew a look as if taking a pull on a cigar.

  “Don’t forget, Shep. She solved our boll weevil problem,” my father said.

  During the outbreak, I had been the one to suggest paying workers a penny for each of those nasty critters, which were devastating our cotton crops, and my plan had helped Daddy Kratt and Mr. Bramlett salvage more product than their competitors. A bud of pride stirred in my chest.

  The satisfaction was short-lived. My father was no longer looking at me. He was staring again in the direction Mama had gone. He said something I couldn’t hear, and Mr. Bramlett motioned to Quincy, who had materialized from the crowd. My brother made his way over, and Daddy Kratt said something in his ear.

  Quincy’s face remained passive. Then I heard his question, clear as anything, as if he were holding it up under the light for illumination.

  “You want me to spy on Mama?”

  I couldn’t believe what my brother had said. But Daddy Kratt nodded, confirming it. After a moment, my father glanced at the lamp with a scowl. The memory of the broken key switch had returned; it hadn’t taken long. He turned to Quincy. “Was it Olva?” Daddy Kratt asked.

  Quincy paused, studying our father. “No. It wasn’t her.”

  “Mmm,” Daddy Kratt grunted, as if he hadn’t believed it would be Olva, but she was on his mind. I remembered how he had taken particular notice of her before he sent the shortcakes flying. It made me nervous. To be in our father’s thoughts was to be a target of them.

  “Who broke the goddamned lamp?” Daddy Kratt said.

  My brother’s eyes cut toward me. As he turned to our father, I knew what was coming. Before I ran, I saw Quincy’s mouth form the word Judith. I dashed down the stairs, managing to escape the store. As I raced home, I saw Rosema
rie up in a tree, one bare foot dangling. She watched me go. My sister had always lived a nymph’s life, far from the concerns of the everyday world, climbing trees while the rest of us toiled on the ground.

  Windsor chair

  Wooden spinning wheel

  Mahogany secretary

  R. S. Prussia vase

  Pie safe—Grandmother DeLour’s

  Butler’s tray (silver plated)

  Amsterdam School copper mantel clock

  Hamilton drafting table

  Letter opener (cut glass)

  Tiffany lamp (diameter 16˝; 21¾˝ height)—broken

  Three

  The next morning, I found Olva in the kitchen, her back to me. On the counter, biscuits bloomed their aroma, broad and consoling, which put to mind the warm smell of the seaside. When I was a child, we vacationed on the Carolina coast only once, because Daddy Kratt thought we should, and despite our accommodations, the finest hotel cotton money could buy, my sister chose to sleep on the balcony every night. I shook my head to try to release the memory. My sister was always creeping into my mind without invitation, outstaying her visit like a guest with poor manners.

  “Would you like to know my progress on the inventory?”

  Olva upset the saucepan from which she poured our instant coffee. I hadn’t meant to startle her. “Miss Judith, you need more sleep, I do believe,” she said, mopping the spilled coffee with a rag.

  It was true that I had worked into the late hours. As a result, I felt sluggish, and a pinprick of pain had lodged itself between my eyes.

  “Would you like to know my progress on the inventory?”

  Olva dropped a metal measuring cup, which sang a plaintive note as it hit the floor.

  “Are you quite all right?” Then I realized what might be bothering her. “Don’t you worry about Rosemarie’s postcard,” I said. “She never was the type to make good on her word.”

  Olva bent down to retrieve the measuring cup. “Miss Judith, since spring’s days are numbered, we should enjoy our breakfast on the front porch.”