Little Brier

Abstract

Little Brier Dennis McFadden (bio) The way the sun came beating down made him feel like the iron on the anvil. He was anxious and hurried, and the trickle of sweat inching down the middle of his back didn’t help. Nor did his pal Henry, the old man who’d taught him patience, for still there were times when Hen brought him to the edge of his patience, and then pushed him over. That was the thing about Hen—when any given situation truly called for haste, you could be sure that call would fall on deaf ears. Fudge stopped on the road, turning to watch Hen, who’d stopped to pee. There was a time to bend in the wind, there was a time to stiffen your backbone, a distinction lost on his pal. “Move it, Hen,” Fudge said. “We gonna see what that boy up to, we got to get there ’fore the sun go down.” It wasn’t much past noon. “What that boy up to,” said Hen, resuming his shuffle, “what that boy up to.” An hour earlier, passing by on his way home to Little Brier after closing up his boot shop, Fudge had spotted a horse, apparently one of Augustus Hamilton’s Morgans, tethered out behind the Birchwoods schoolhouse, in what seemed to be attempted concealment. A young black man, Augustus had no earthly business in the white children’s schoolhouse, and Fudge feared the worst—especially since a few days earlier he’d seen him talking to Miss Eva, the young white school teacher, on Hartsgrove’s Main Street, in the middle of the town, in front of God and the whole white world. Fudge hadn’t survived thirty-eight years as a free black man without a natural sense of danger as keen as any bee’s. It was a sweltering summer day. Fudge took off his tattered straw hat, waving it at his sweaty face, waiting. Hen caught up in his own good time, having barely broken a sweat, his floppy old felt hat still comfortably atop his head. “Your mama ever told you you was slower’n a one-legged turtle?” said Fudge. He glimpsed a glimmer of hurt in the old man’s eyes, a leathery face frosted white with whisker stubble. “Man gotta pee when a man gotta pee,” Hen said. “Man gotta pee every two minutes whole way down the road?” “Old man do,” said Hen. “You find out one day.” They moved on, stepping on their shadows, Fudge walking slower now so Hen could keep up. The cicadas buzzed and droned in the woods close by the road, but the birds were too hot to fuss, the woods were still, even the gnats and horseflies keeping out of the sun. When the schoolhouse came into view, there stood the black Morgan, the older, gentler of the pair, the horse Augustus called [End Page 63] Jupiter, the one he used as a saddle horse. He was not tethered to the post in front but suspiciously to a bush out back. Fudge took Hen’s arm. “Looky there,” he said with a mournful grunt. “What that boy up to,” said Hen. Fudge reconnoitered. “Okay—we go over behind the big oak there, then make us a beeline to the rock on the other side. Get over to the corner, we can sneak on up to the window. Ready?” Fudge dashed crouching to the oak, where he hesitated, then sprinted, still crouching, toward the big rock. He turned. There was Hen, ambling upright straight across the yard toward the school. “Dang it, Hen.” Hen walked up to the open window and looked in. “What you up to, boy?” he said. Fudge came up beside him. Inside the schoolroom Augustus looked up, brow raised in surprise, which did little to raise his eyelids—his eyes were constant slits. A handsome young man, his burnished skin a perfect fit for the muscles of his face, he was sitting on a children’s bench, lanky legs nearly up to his chin, a stub of chalk in his hand, slate on one knee, his hat—a narrow-brimmed black derby—on...