A Silken Thread

by Kim Vogel Sawyer

  He paid the twenty-five cents, smiling as he handed over Miss Millard’s nickels along with his nickel and dime. What a nice person. He didn’t intend to eat one of the sandwiches her family brought for their picnic, but he’d find her, thank her again, and tell her mother she’d raised a very nice girl. He recalled a lady at church telling his ma something like that about him when he was a boy, and Ma glowed like a full moon for days. Made him feel good, too, to have somebody notice when he did good. Most times folks were inclined to notice the bad things kids did.

  Now with an empty pocket, he followed the walkway to Clara Meer, where Miss Millard said her family planned to take their lunch. Since she had a big family, he searched for a big group. He didn’t see one on the east side of the lake, so he crossed the bridge to the other side. There, near the Southern Railway exhibit, he found them. He couldn’t hold back a smile. A pair of little boys chased each other in circles around the group, and a little girl squealed every time they raced past her. One of the women, probably their ma, grabbed at the boys and missed. But when one of the men snapped his fingers, the boys dropped to their bottoms on the grass. Like him and Quincy used to do when Pa or Mr. Tate let them know it was time to settle down.

  Sadness stabbed—he missed Quincy—and envy bloomed on top of it. Quincy had a big family. He probably didn’t miss Willie near as much as Willie missed him. What would it be like to be part of such a big family? No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t imagine it.

  Miss Millard sat with her back to him. He stopped a foot or two behind her and cleared his throat. She didn’t turn, so he coughed into his hand. This time she and the lady sitting next to her glanced over their shoulders. Miss Millard broke into a smile. “Officer Sharp.” She patted the lady’s arm. “Mama, this is Officer Sharp.”

  Mrs. Millard shielded her eyes with one hand and held the other one to him. “Officer Sharp, I’m Adelia Millard, Laurel’s mother. It’s very nice to meet you.”

  He yanked off his cap and leaned over to shake her hand. “Likewise, ma’am.”

  She gestured to the spot beside her. “Please join us.”

  He shifted in place, twisting his cap into a pretzel. “That’s real nice of you, but I only came to let Miss Millard know I got that photograph done at the Liberty Bell and now I—” Seemed every person in the circle was looking at him.

  And the man sitting on the other side of Miss Millard wasn’t one of her brothers. Why was Langdon Rochester taking a picnic with the Millards?

  “I, um, I have to get back on duty. Just wanted her—you, Miss Millard—not to worry if I didn’t come. So thank you, ma’am—all of you—an’…”

  Miss Millard rose. “Even if you can’t stay, at least take a sandwich with you.” She pointed to the large basket in the middle of the group. “Would you rather have chicken and sweet relish or beeftongue and cheese?”

  They both sounded so good his mouth watered. But he shook his head and backed up a couple of steps. “That’s all right. Helpin’ me get my photograph took is more’n enough. You”—he took one more backward step—“enjoy yourselves.” He turned, slapped his cap on his head, and took off, as eager to escape as he’d been the day a neighbor’s dog tried to bite his leg.

  Langdon Rochester’s snide voice reached Willie’s ears. “You kind people will have to excuse Officer Sharp. He lacks decorum. His upbringing, you know.”

  Willie’s face blazed. He wanted to march back and plow his fist into the man’s arrogant face. But he’d lectured Quincy too many times about giving in to his temper to act on the thought.

  He stomped across the bridge, stinging himself by repeating Rochester’s statement in his mind. On the other side of the bridge, he glanced right and left, trying to find the quickest route through the groups, and he saw Quincy snapping the canopy over one of the rowboats. The breeze caught the fabric and tossed it back at him. He heard Quincy’s grunt from a dozen paces away.

  Without thinking, he trotted over. “Here. Lemme help.”

  “Thanks. I—” Quincy looked full at Willie, and his grateful expression went hard. He yanked the canopy close. “I can get it.”

  Willie huffed. “When’re you gonna stop bein’ so mule stubborn? Been a full week. Ain’t you over your mad yet?”

  Quincy’s jaw muscles bulged. He snapped the canopy again. The breeze pushed it sideways. He muttered something under his breath that Willie didn’t catch, but he was pretty sure some cuss words were in it.

  Willie raised one eyebrow. “Your ma hears that kind o’ talk, she’ll wash out your mouth with soap, the way she did the two of us when she caught us practicin’ our swearin’ behind the barn when you were ten. Remember?”

  Quincy draped the canopy over his shoulder, stepped inside the rowboat, and attached one corner of the canopy to a post. He whistled, fussing with that rectangle of striped cloth like Willie wasn’t even there.

  Willie put his hands on his knees and peeked under the canopy. “I know you hear me.”

  Quincy aimed a scowl at Willie. “Don’t you got work to do?”

  Sighing, Willie straightened. “Reckon I do.” He started to leave, but then he turned back. “You been to the square to see the Liberty Bell? It’s real pretty. Big, too. The train’ll take it to Philadelphia tomorrow, so if you wanna see it, you’ll hafta go today.”

  Quincy lurched out of the boat. The canopy slipped from its pole, and one corner dipped in the water. “No, I ain’t seen it. Ain’t intendin’ to, neither.”

  Willie thought about the things the speaker said before the children’s choir sang. “But that bell represents freedom, Quince. Freedom from tyranny, from bein’ held down by a government that doesn’t care about you near as much as it cares about itself. You don’t wanna see the symbol of American liberty?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “ ’Cause that bell, it got nothin’ to do with me.”

  Willie shook his head. He must’ve heard wrong. “Sure it does.”

  “Why?”

  “ ’Cause you’re an American.”

  Quincy stood there without saying a word. Without changing his expression. Almost, it looked like, without life. Then he snorted. “Listen to what you jus’ said, but listen to it from my ears. From the ears o’ folks like me. Me an’ mine, we live in this country, but is we Americans like you?” He waved his arm in the direction of the square. “I heard them children singin’. Was they any black children in the choir? The crowd gath’rin’ ’round. How they all stand? White folks here, black folks there?” He pointed right and then left, the movements jerky and stiff.

  Shame smacked Willie. He’d known Quincy his whole life, but he’d never stopped to think about how life looked through Quincy’s eyes. Now he saw, and the sight pained him. He held out his hands, helpless. “Quince, I…”

  “You white folks, you talk a good talk, but none o’ what you say makes a bit o’ diff’rence for the likes o’ me.” A sneer curled his lips. “We ain’t li’l boys, runnin’ barefoot up an’ down the crick. Time for us to face facts. We’s diff’rent. Always gon’ be diff’rent. You stick with yo’ kind, Willie, an’ I’ll stick with mine. We both be happier that way. Now, you get on outta here.”

  He clomped to the boat, yanked the dripping corner from the lake, and flopped the canopy onto the seat. Then he stood with his arms folded tight over his chest and his head down.

  Willie wanted to say something—anything—to prove Quincy wrong. But he couldn’t. Because all of what Quincy’d said was true. Except for one thing. “Quince, you say we’ll be happier stickin’ to our own kind. I don’t see how we can be. My folks, your folks, we’re all tangled together. Have been even since before we were born. Different? Sure. Ain’t two people anywhere that’re exactly the same. But the differences between us’ll only matter when we let ’em. So I guess what I’m askin’ is, are you an’ me gonna let ’em?”

/>   Quincy

  Quincy couldn’t turn around. Wouldn’t turn around. Why couldn’t Willie leave him alone? Bad enough to have Mam chewing on him—“That boy was near worked up as me ’bout you bein’ in jail. You need to forgive an’ forget.”—without Willie coming around, trying to act like nothing had changed when he knew good as Quincy that everything had changed.

  If Pap wasn’t needing the money from this job coming in, he’d quit right now and go home. He’d pick peaches at picking time and dig potatoes at digging time and crack pecans until his fingers bled. None of those jobs hardly paid piddly, but at least back then he didn’t know how Willie’d take the side of a snooty white woman over his so-called best friend.

  He turned around to tell him so, but Willie’d gone on. Which was exactly what Quincy’d told him to do. So why’d it make him so mad that he’d done it?

  He grabbed a corner of the red-and-white-striped canopy and hooked it over the pole. He tied it in place, then stopped with his hands on the strings. He couldn’t help seeing his hands. They was right there in front of his face. Leathery already even though he was still shy of his twenty-first year. Every finger wore at least one callus. Mam, she told him all the time to rub duck fat on them hard spots and they’d soften up. But they didn’t never go all the way gone. Hands dark on the backs and pink on the palms. Funny how white folks’ hands was the same color front and back, but most every black person he knew had pinkish palms.

  When Booker T. Washington held up his hands that first day of the exposition, Quincy’d seen his pink palms. How fancy that man talked, using words as pretty as any rich white man. Dressed like a rich white man, too. Maybe that’s why all them white folks crowded in the Auditorium to hear him speak. ’Cause his fine words and fine clothes made them look at Mr. Washington the way they’d look at a white man.

  Quincy gazed down his length. At his hand-me-down shirt, patched britches, and boots with toes so scuffed no amount of shining could ever make them decent. He brushed off the knees of his pants, watching his black hands swish back and forth, sending all the dust away.

  There wasn’t one thing he could do to change the color of his skin. But there might could be something that’d help folks see more’n his black face when they looked at him. But Mam and Pap would have to say yes.

  Laurel

  The tower chimed its song announcing the arrival of one o’clock. Laurel wadded the waxed-paper wrap from her sandwich and tossed it into the basket. “Thank you for lunch, Nell and Mayme. I have to go.”

  Langdon stood and offered her his hands. With a self-conscious glance at her siblings, she took hold and allowed him to assist her to her feet. He gave Mama the same gentlemanly treatment. Mama smiled and thanked him and then wrapped Laurel in a hug.

  “Please thank your supervisor for allowing you the extra time to watch your nieces and nephews participate in the choir. It means so much to them to have their whole family in attendance.”

  “I will, Mama. I’ll see you at home.” Laurel bid farewell to her family with a wave, and then Langdon offered his arm. She slipped her hand into the bend of his elbow, but he didn’t take a forward step.

  Langdon bowed slightly to Mama. “Mrs. Millard, it was a pleasure to meet all of you. You have a lovely family.”

  At that moment, Mayme’s boys, Lester and Luther, chose to dive on each other and roll around like puppies. Mayme aimed swats at their rears and missed, but their father, Russell, caught them each by the collar and plopped them down. Hard. They both wailed. Laurel wanted to cover her face and hide. Her nephews might frighten Langdon from wanting children at all.

  Langdon laughed. “Lovely and high spirited.”

  Laurel gave him a smile she hoped conveyed both an apology and a thank-you.

  “Since I’ve had the privilege of meeting all of you, I would very much like permission to introduce Laurel to my family.”

  Laurel’s heart pounded so hard she feared she might faint. She tightened her grip on Langdon’s elbow.

  “I would collect her this coming Saturday evening in our family carriage at six o’clock sharp and carry her to my family’s estate for predinner conversation followed by dining at seven with my parents, Harrison and Marinda Rochester. I assure you she will be home again, safe and sound, no later than ten.”

  Laurel didn’t check, but she sensed her siblings’ gazes on her. She gave Mama a pleading look. “May I go?”

  Mama turned aside. “Alfred, would you come here, please?”

  Laurel bit back a groan. If it were left to Alfred, she wouldn’t visit the Rochester estate and meet Langdon’s parents. Her brother strode around the group and stopped beside Mama. He folded his arms over his chest. “Yes? What is it?”

  Mama repeated the details of Langdon’s invitation. “What do you think? His parents will be there, so they’ll be chaperoned.”

  Alfred glowered at Langdon. “Are you aware she is only eighteen years old, hardly more than a child?”

  Should she remind him that he’d begun courting his Clara when he was only nineteen and she seventeen? And Mayme married Russell shortly after her eighteenth birthday. Why, Raymond’s wife, Violet, was barely sixteen when they exchanged vows. Alfred wasn’t at all concerned about her age. He wanted to scare Langdon away.

  “She told me her age. And I told her mine—which is twenty-three, if you need to know.”

  Laurel couldn’t be certain because he wore such a friendly expression, but was Langdon baiting Alfred? She pressed her fingers against his arm and met her brother’s stormy gaze. “It’s only a dinner, Alfred. I would enjoy meeting Mr. and Mrs. Rochester.”

  Eugene unfolded his tall frame from the grass and approached them. He glanced at Mama, then at Laurel. She glimpsed a hint of hesitance in his eyes, but then he drew a deep breath and faced Alfred.

  “Let her have dinner with the Rochesters. We”—he gestured to their siblings—“had the pleasure of evenings out, and some of us accepted such invitations when we were younger than Laurel is now.”

  Laurel gazed at Eugene in amazement. Where had he found the courage to contradict Alfred? She returned her attention to her oldest brother, whose face had gone blotchy. Eugene would certainly pay for his stance when Alfred had him alone, and she would make up for it by giving Eugene the most heartfelt thank-you she could express.

  “If Mama doesn’t object, then I won’t stand in the way.” Alfred stomped back to his wife and sat nearly as abruptly as Russell had seated his errant sons.

  Eugene winked at her—winked!—and rejoined Ethel and his children.

  Mama turned to Langdon and smiled. “Yes, Mr. Rochester, you and your driver may call for Laurel this Saturday evening. Do you need our address?”

  “I will have Laurel write it for me when I return her to the Silk Room.” He tugged his gold watch from the little pocket in his vest and frowned at it. “Which I had better do quickly. She’s quite tardy. Good day, everyone.” He guided Laurel forward, his strides long.

  She scurried alongside him, hindered by her full skirts. She hoped she wouldn’t catch the toe of her shoe in her hem and trip herself. They crossed the bridge with her at a near jog, and when they reached the opposite side, Laurel tugged at his sleeve. “Please slow down. I don’t care to take a tumble.”

  He looked at her as if surprised to find her still clinging to his arm. “I hurried you because I wanted a short word with you away from your family’s listening ears before you returned to work.”

  Puzzled by his serous expression, she tipped her head. “What is it?”

  “I’m curious what Willie Sharp meant when he thanked you for your help getting his photograph taken at the Liberty Bell.”

  She quickly explained her morning exchange with Officer Sharp and then shrugged. “I thought it the kind thing to do.”

  His frown remained intact. “Kind, yes, but have you considered you could be giving him the wron
g impression? You really need to exercise caution when it comes to making arrangements with strange men.”

  His concern was so misplaced she couldn’t hold back a soft laugh. “Why, Officer Sharp isn’t a strange man. I’ve come to know him very well over the past week.”

  “Oh?” With one short word, he conveyed much disapproval.

  Eager to return to his good graces, she nodded. “He spends every day in the Silk Room, standing guard in case someone attempts to make mischief.”

  “To my knowledge, no other buildings on the grounds are given their own guard. Not even the Negro Building. If mischief were to occur, that would be the most likely place.”

  She wanted to question his reasoning, but she shouldn’t spend any more time away from the Silk Room. She also needed to change the subject. She’d inadvertently divulged more than she should have. She pulled on his arm, drawing him toward the Women’s Building. “Come inside and let me write my address for you. Then I must return to the loom.”

  He remained rooted in place for several seconds, staring at her with his forehead creased. Finally he jerked into motion. “Very well. Let’s go.” He escorted her to the building using a more sedate pace, slowed by others meandering on the walkway. They climbed the steps side by side, and he pressed his hand over her fingers. “Miss Millard, we will speak again about Sharp. You’re keeping company with me. I don’t share. Not my toys when I was a child, and not my sweetheart now.”

  Her heart lurched. He’d stated his intentions toward her. Aloud! This educated, handsome, wealthy man wanted her—Laurel Adelaide Millard—to be his sweetheart. She nodded, one slow bob of her head, while gazing with wonder into his ocean-blue eyes. When would her heart begin to sing?

  He offered his charming smile and bowed over her hand. He brushed a kiss on her knuckles, straightened, and gave her a little nudge toward the door. “It’s late. Go on in. I’ll come by at the end of the day for your address. I trust you’ll have it ready for me.”