The Wilful Daughter Page 6

  The box landed at the top of the stairs.

  “Papa has standards. He wants what’s best for his family.” Willie leaned on the ax.

  “Humph,” she shrugged. “If he did he would have let you go to Florida with that white man that wanted to help you with your painting. Papa’s got his rules and they’re stupid rules.” She ran up the steps and emptied the box then lowered it. Once it was landed at the bottom she ran back down the steps and helped him into the box as his taut muscular arms pulled him up the rope that pulled his box up the side of the stairs.

  “Somebody’s got to break the rules around here, Willie. Might as well be me.”

  She helped a little, she always did. Willie never went up and down in that box unless she was in the yard waiting for him or at the top of the stairs. She wasn’t strong enough to make a difference on the rope but it was important to him that she was there, always there for him. And if she wanted to get this Piano Man, he’d have to be there for her.

  Once on the porch he whispered to her: “I need to meet him first. So you better tell me about him. Maybe something about him papa’s not gonna like.’

  She kissed him and helped him out of the box. “Wonderful. But I already know papa’s gonna love him. He reads Shakespeare, he’s played in New York and he’s played all over Europe.”

  “Then why did he come here?”

  “June, I need some more wood!” The call came from Fawn in the kitchen.

  June gathered as much as her tiny arms could carry: “I don’t know. Maybe he got tired of living in the north. I don’t care. I just want him. Maybe the next time he travels he’ll take me with him.” She ran into the house happily. As he slowly came in he heard the sounds of morning more clearly: Minnelsa fussing at June because she scattered the chickens, mama telling June to wash her hands, Fawn complaining that June was stealing the bacon, and Jewel wondering why June had to steal biscuit dough. He washed his hands. If June left the place would be dull for him. She was the life of a house full of sad lonely women. But she would have to go to be happy.

  Willie knew when June went, he would certainly die.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Not much got past the Blacksmith. No one ever thought to call him ignorant. No one ever noticed that his ears perked when the women started to gossip, or that his attention was more alerted when someone said strangers were about. He handled the white folks well, kept clean records for customers with questions, and darkened the church door every Sunday surrounded by his family, including his crippled son. Not much got past him.

  Except June.

  Everybody in the neighborhood who knew that June spent many summer nights at places like Emma’s with Ross, the mortician’s son from the family at the end of the block. They all wanted to tell him, but nobody dared. Besides, she wasn’t their child, she wasn’t their business. When it came to the Blacksmith’s daughters they all had one clear memory flash past them. It was the memory of what happened in ‘16 that stayed with them.

  Everyone knew the Blacksmith had very high standards for the gentlemen who wanted to keep company with his daughters. Every father has high hopes for his children, and with daughters, especially educated daughters of a land owning father, the hopes and standards were higher. There were families in Atlanta who would have gladly allowed their sons to come and call. But most of them could not pass the stringent tests the Blacksmith had designed for the future husbands of his girls. Hence all these years they remained single and alone.

  Men tried. All types of men. They would come to call just after dinner. They would sit in the parlor with one of the five daughters and chat about the weather, chat about the latest dances, the doctor’s new car or the mortician’s shiny black hearse. They would laugh easily about the toils of youth then ease closer to the daughter of their choice, perhaps for a secret, perhaps for a kiss.

  Then the Blacksmith would enter from his evening stroll with his wife or from the sitting room where he and his son had been reading aloud to each other in their deep brassy voices. The young man sitting nervously in the parlor would pull on his starched collar and then prepare to be asked a litany of questions that had to be answered in just the right way.

  There was the “What book have you read lately?” question that the Blacksmith posed to those he knew could not read or whose literacy he questioned.

  There was the “How was work today?” question for those who were unemployed.

  There was the “Where do you own land?” question for those who barely had a roof over their heads.

  And of course “Who is your father?” was asked to those of questionable parentage.

  If the man was found illiterate, lazy, jobless, poor, homeless, or fatherless, the Blacksmith would never come out and openly deny him the right to visit his house. He would just say: “As a father I want the best for my daughter. Someone who can keep her informed of the world through books. (Or give her a nice home. Or make sure she doesn’t starve or live in poverty. Or give her a good family name).”

  He would stare at the prospective suitor until it was understood that the inquisition was over and nothing could be done. The suitor would leave with his head hung low, the daughter crying as her father explained the young man’s particular flaw.

  None of his daughters had ever openly defied or disobeyed his request for her not to see a man.

  Until ‘16 when Minnelsa took up with John Wood.

  There was nothing wrong with John Wood’s parentage. His father owned a general store at the end of the road on the opposite end from the mortician. John himself had finished Howard University and returned to Atlanta to write a book while he worked with his father and taught school. When his father died John would inherit the store and the land because he was the eldest. Everyone knew this. He had enough money to build a house on the land they rented from the Blacksmith when he married.

  So what was the reason the Blacksmith didn’t like him?

  Some said the Blacksmith was afraid he’d take Minnelsa away to another town or even another state. Maybe far up north where the boy had been in school and like so many of them, he’d never see his child again. Never see his grandchildren.

  The Blacksmith had asked John one question each time he had called on his daughter and each question had been answered correctly. The young couple was positive on the day John came to ask for Minnelsa’s hand that the answer would be yes.

  “No,” the Blacksmith had flatly refused. “I don’t have to give you a reason, daughter. After all, I am your father.”

  “But I love him, Papa.” Minnelsa had cried in Bira’s arms. Angry and standing firm John would not be led to the door.

  “You need more than love with a man like this, daughter.”

  “Then what am I lacking, sir?” John Wood had boldly asked.

  No suitor had ever questioned the Blacksmith before.

  His reply was: “Get out. This is my house and my daughter. Whether I have a reason or not, I do not have to give it to you.”

  “I ask you, sir, I have come in good faith. I’m an educated man. I’ve read far more books than you know. I have a job, a future, a place to live. I will inherit my father’s business, and most likely I’ll be able to buy the property it’s on, too. I have some money saved, though it’s only a little. But I can take good care of a wife. I ask you sir, what am I lacking in a husband for your daughter?”

  Each person who gossiped would tell you a different story about what had happened next. Each wagging tongue had a different tale to tell.

  Some believed the mighty Blacksmith had taken John Wood and thrown him out the door into the dirt of the street for the Blacksmith was at least a head and a half taller than the man. Others said he swore at the boy for questioning his authority in his house and took his daughter and locked her in her room for three days. She didn’t even go to church.

  Someone even suggested the possibility that the Blacksmith had told John Wood to his face that he might be his father. Of course everyone dism
issed that as just evil gossip for John’s mother had been a woman of high virtue-and dear friends with Bira until she died.

  What really happened was just as sad. The truth is always worse than the most vicious gossip. For William Brown sent his eldest daughter to her room, put his prospective son-in-law in the wagon and drove him to his father’s store. There the three men decided the future of Minnelsa Brown without her consent.

  Brown said: “John Wood, you are a dreamer. You have spent more time with your nose in books then you did attending to your affairs.”

  Harland Wood tried to speak to what he thought was an old friend. “William, what are you talking about? You know John has been the pride of the community since he got back from college and. . .”

  “He has a teaching position and almost lost it for failing to show up for classes. They say he is working on his book. I find this unsuitable behavior for a husband to be.”

  The father sighed. “William you are a reader and John is. . .”

  “I promise to change. I love Minnelsa. I will give up writing the book until I have the time and more money. I will tutor and take on more classes.”

  As he pleaded with his father, Harland Wood noticed the immovable expression on the Blacksmith’s face and called a halt to the begging.

  “He owns this store, John,” he told his son.

  “This is our store, father. You own it. He may own the land but you own the store and the house.”

  The father, too embarrassed to look his son in the eye, said: “When your mother got sick I needed money. Things were bad. You were away at school and your brother had just gotten married. And there was the fire. I borrowed the money from William and I have a lot to pay back. He has legal papers that say if I don’t pay it or if he has a mind, he gets, not just the property but everything on it.”

  John Wood had been devastated. So devastated that he had disappeared from the face of the earth for three whole days. His father and brother searched everywhere from church to Miss Emma’s. His friends searched whorehouses. When John Wood reappeared, he did not go to his father’s house but to the house of the woman he loved.

  “Did he tell you why we cannot get married?” he asked her after she tried to run to him but was halted by the Blacksmith’s strong arms.

  “Go home, John. Harland has been worried about you,” the big man told him gently.

  John was still in the throes of being drunk. For the last three days of his life he had been hiding in a shack in the woods drinking shine and getting up nerve. “My father isn’t worried about me. He’s worried about his store and his land and his house. All the things that I thought he owned really belong to you. You hold the papers on my life.”

  “This is not the place for this talk boy. This is private business between me and your father.”

  “Let him talk, Papa,” Minnelsa had screamed. The shock of her voice raised against him silenced the Blacksmith.

  “That’s how you get your land, ain’t it? That's how you got so rich. You didn’t smithy your way into wealth, I went and checked on you. I found out about you. You loan people money when they need it and you get Lawyer Gibbs to draw up a contract. Oh it’s legal and all. And you make sure even the dumbest person in the world knows everything in it because you have Gibbs read it to them.

  “But it has this clause in it. It sets a time limit when they can pay the money back to you. And if they don’t pay on time, you take what they own. Did you know that, Minnelsa? Did you know your father owns me?”

  There had been a silence in which all one could hear were the tears in the hearts of the two young people. “I love him, Papa. Why can’t you understand I love him?”

  “He’s not good enough for you Minnelsa,” he shouted. “Don’t you understand? He didn’t fight to get you. He just went away and got drunk. Drunk, Minnelsa! Look at him!”

  Now John Wood had been a sight. Wrinkled and stained clothes, three days growth of beard, his tie too loose at the neck. He had not thought out his plan or his appearance as he reproached the man he hated.

  “But he came back, Papa. Don’t you see? He came back because he loves me.”

  The Blacksmith’s anger grew from a furnace deep within. “Loves you? He hates me more than he loves you. Hate, Minnelsa. Hate brought this boy back here. All he can do is talk to me.”

  “But he did that, papa,” she shouted back. The Blacksmith raised his hand at her but Bira stood in the way. The furnace was burning out of control.

  “You go with him and I disown you. You get nothing from me. If he drops dead on the street the moment you set foot off this porch, if he has a heart attack, if the white folks lynch him two blocks away, you can’t ever come back here. Do you understand? You go with this useless human being and you get nothing from me.”

  The words made the air a storm. The romance that had been blossoming since childhood, the love that they had refused to share while she taught and he went off to study and then teach and write a book, this Minnelsa felt had to be stronger than any amount of property her father owned.

  Their gazes met, arm in arm they opened the door to leave. But the Blacksmith spoke the last words, changing words. He had worked too hard to make his family perfect. He would not be outdone.

  “I love my daughter. She will make someone a fine wife and a wonderful mother. She would want to give you a son, your first son. But that’s already been done, hasn’t it?”

  John Wood stopped in the doorway. He dropped Minnelsa’s hand. He lifted his head to the heavens, sighed, and stared sadly at the Blacksmith. “Is there anything you don’t know?”

  “When were you going to tell her? When did you think it would be right to let the woman you claim to love all these years know that you sired a son when you were in school? The reason your father had to borrow money when your mother was ill, short of his bad business sense and the fire, was to pay to cover up your scandal, your disgrace. You have a son in a little Virginia town outside of Washington, DC. When were you going to tell my daughter about your bastard?”

  “William!” Bira covered her mouth and not another word was spoken.

  Minnelsa reached for his hand and waited for John Wood to tell her it wasn’t so. But John didn’t speak. Except with his eyes. She walked slowly into the house and never spoke his name again.

  No one ever forgot how John had been treated by the Blacksmith. The boy had signed up for the army then died in the war. Minnelsa was too grief stricken to speak on it even with her sisters.

  The Blacksmith hammered into the afternoon. He had protected his daughter then. She knew so little of the world. They all did. Even he did not know as much as he wanted. But he knew more than them.

  Now there was a new music teacher at Morris Brown. The Blacksmith hammered and wondered if this man would be suitable for Minnelsa. He would find out. He had his ways.

  * * *

  “Papa’s coming!” Willie called into the house in a childish singsong voice. Rosa got up from the piano to see if Fawn had finished the yams. Jewel made some fresh bread, something round and new with a French name, and popped it into the oven. Mama had done a fresh peach cobbler. The table was set with china plates edged in gold and hand painted roses. The sideboard held the coffee pot and tea service although the only liquid consumed in this house was served cold on hot days. In the middle of the table was an arrangement of yellow and red roses from the bushes on the side of the house where the parents and the sisters slept.

  The house was ready for the Blacksmith’s supper.

  He drove the wagon around back, as he always did, tying the horse in the small barn and giving him some hay. After dinner he would come and brush him down. He smelled of hard work, a smell he had abhorred all his life but learned to appreciate for it was the smell of his success.

  “Boy, you stink!” the white man had told him in Macon County. “But that’s ’cause you work hard. Ain’t no finer smell than that of a hard working man. Ain’t no finer steel hammering man then you, Wil
liam Brown, white or colored. I can’t do it but you should be paid better than any white man for his services-services which people stand in line for.”

  After all William Brown had been free and eighteen with no wife and children to support. He could leave any time he chose.

  He had been washing himself out back while his cousin stood by waiting for him. “That white man made me think, Tom.”

  “Think what?” Tom was a young gigolo living off of a half-white widow woman.

  “Thinking I should be in business for myself.” He was on the way to Atlanta for the weekend with Tom.

  “William, the only business a young colored man can get in for hisself is the business I’m in.” William had laughed as Tom went on. “See, I got Maureen to really give me everything I need. Pleasing a woman is an art.”

  “You mean pleasing her in ways that can’t be spoken of at the dinner table.”

  Proudly Tom nodded. “Yes. She told people I was her late husband’s nephew. I kinda bear a slight resemblance to him in shape and color. Especially since she gave me all his fine clothes.”

  But each night in Atlanta he slept in her bed. During the time that the Blacksmith stayed in her house with them that woman moaned and groaned in pleasure.

  William Brown realized his cousin was not a hard working man.

  When the woman’s light skinned relatives found out what was going on they killed the cousin in the Macon County woods. William Brown decided that working with his hands, being hard working, being lucrative was the key. He saved his money to buy land, to marry and to leave.

  In Atlanta he learned some men had no couth, they stopped at his front door and tried to steal a glimpse of his pretty wife or touch her hair. Once she screamed as a white man tried to kiss her. When the Blacksmith appeared, almost twice the pale man’s size and not even breathing hard from running from the barn to the front of the house, the white man had left, saying he really didn’t need his horse shoed. It was that day that he went to find a piece of land farther away from his home for his shop. Bira was never allowed to come there. But the girls traveled in pairs to bring their father his lunch on occasion when he couldn’t get home.