Stand the Storm (9 page)

“Is there news?” had become Gabriel’s address to Daniel Joshua in these days since Mary had gone.

“None, Brother Gabriel,” Daniel replied with gently mocking camaraderie. No news had come to them through the usual sources. But such information traveled precariously and took a meandering route through the mouths and households it passed. The time had been short.

Gabriel was eager for news of Mary and anxious to see his friend this evening.

“Sit to your supper, Brother Daniel,” Annie said with her back turned from the bear come in from the outside. She paid him this womanly courtesy while he slapped dirt from his clothes and washed his hands and face in a trough of water. When he sat to the table at a seat that had become his own, she put a bowl of her stew before him.

There was an ambitious undertaking that needed Daniel Joshua’s expertise in slipping and hiding. Gabriel had taken the audacious step of responding to a newspaper advertisement seeking tailors to work upon army uniforms for the government.

Gabriel presented himself, a sample of his skills, and an offer of his price to a sergeant at the army’s Consignment Office. He had been scrutinized so thoroughly—the sergeant circled him and stared hard—that he’d feared he would be asked to remove his clothes. He had wisely maintained his eyes at the level of the floor and had spoken little.

“Show me yer hands!” the sergeant had demanded. “I cain’t be fooled about a tailor’s hands, you know.”

Clearly one who knew the tailoring profession, the sergeant examined the colored man’s hands and rubbed his own fingers along Gabriel’s calluses.

“Either you got the right calluses or you ain’t. You got ’em.”

Though palmists are routinely ridiculed, there is a tale to be told in a man’s hands. The consignment officer satisfied himself about Gabriel. Gabriel’s price for the commission was rock bottom and the sergeant could not detect an offensive look or odor about him. He’d told the nervous tailor to deliver the completed uniforms in one week and to pick up the material at the Disbursement Office.

Secrecy was paramount. Aaron Ridley was not to know about this large commission. Sewing Annie closed her face against excitement at the prospect of the uniform commission and admonished Gabriel to do the same. She was rock firm in her admonition to Daniel Joshua. They must be quiet—careful if they would salt their mush.

Gabriel sighed and mumbled as the precious bolts of cloth were secured in Daniel’s wagon at the Disbursement Office. Gabriel’s poor digestion and nervousness at handling such cargo had him shifting his weight from hip to hip and rumbling low in his gut on the wagon ride.

“Aye, Brother, we’ve no ways to worry now,” Daniel Joshua said as his companion blew gas nervously.

“Aye, Brother, but we are not yet home,” Gabriel replied, sitting up tall in the seat next to his friend. He felt newly conspicuous and thus quaked a bit. But Daniel Joshua rested his shoulders and drove his nag and wagon through the streets comfortably. In fact, he spoke to a great many people. For at every corner there was a person who nodded or called out a greeting. Gabriel asked him outright how a man who had run away could live so openly in Washington. Daniel laughed and called himself a specter.

“Folks catch a glimpse, but when they turn I’m gone. Always keep two or three matches in your pocket and a flint or something to strike upon and when they are looking at your back going, you strike and flick a match head out and away from you and their eyes will follow it and leave your back and give you time and cover. I can be down an alley faster than the flicker. It is my invisible secret,” Daniel said. “I know how to throw my whistle so it sounds like a bird. They turn their head and I flit off.”

Daniel and Gabriel carried the five bolts of dark navy cloth into the back room of the shop at nightfall as though they were the blessed dead gone to glory. They were unobserved except by Annie, for Aaron Ridley was yet enjoying his supper and ale at an establishment on his circuit.

Gabriel and his mother decided on the pattern and what tricks would yield cloth enough and extra. Gabriel did worry over the care of the cloth now that he was fully responsible for it. The bolts were valuable and there wasn’t the time to correct mistakes. He must deliver finished garments or pay.

Annie sharpened Gabriel’s shears until satisfied with them. Gabriel then unfolded the first bolt and spread, rubbed, and smoothed the cloth. He stood back and looked and considered and rearranged. He draped his measuring strop around his neck. The measuring and cutting of the cloth approached ritual. Gabriel and his mother put Daniel Joshua in mind of a sawbones. They moved about the room readying their tools and eyeing the first bolt like it was a sick babe.

Gabriel lifted the shears and began his cut as Annie and Daniel held aloft candles to illumine his work. Annie guided Daniel Joshua’s arms and positioned him behind Gabriel’s right shoulder with his taper.

“Hold it high.” She worried that an errant drop of candle wax would splash on the cloth and spoil it.

In the close light, Annie saw the pustules that ran down the left side of Daniel Joshua’s face. These sores were made more inflamed and suppurating by his habit of wiping his dirty hands over them. A salve was what Daniel needed and she resolved to press it on him.

Annie positioned herself behind Gabriel’s left shoulder and held the candlestick well above her own head. She breathed deeply and settled her arms into their duties solemnly. The seriousness of their expressions and the careful, deliberate way that Gabriel proceeded with his scissors would have caused an observer to bend her knee and bow her head and burble prayers into her chest.

When Gabriel finished cutting the first bolt of cloth, he felt the tension flow away from his shoulders and pool at his ankles.

“Go no further tonight, Brother Gabriel.” Annie placed her hands upon his back to offer him comfort. Resolved to stop at this juncture and not risk the next bolt to his fatigue, Gabriel yielded to his mother.

He sat at the table and waited for a hot cup of coffee.

Daniel Joshua looked from mother to son in amazement. He, too, had been under the spell of the cloth, and every nerve in his body wanted to down a cup of the hot drink Annie was serving. He sat also. Annie put a plate of benne wafers on the table in front of the two men and looked at them and sat to a cup of coffee for herself.

“ ’Tis beautiful, Nanny. And it cuts up well,” Gabriel said.

“ ’Tis you that cuts well, Gabriel,” Annie replied.

“Nay, the cloth. You will have scraps and plenty odd strips left over for a quilt, Nanny,” he put in modestly, for her praise made him uncomfortable.

The indigo cloth was a solid beauty! Annie was enamored of it. There was pleasure in handling it and warmth and joy in looking at the lovely color.

“Aye, Brother Gabriel,” she said. “We’ll make the Wild Geese Flying or some such?” She tossed the decision to him like a rubber ball.

“Yes, Nanny. We’ll have plenty to make it up if I’m clever with the shears,” he finished.

“Aye, every thread, Gabriel!”

When the three of them had downed their dregs, Daniel Joshua rose to take leave. Gabriel shook the man’s hand and knew that his friend would slip out of the door and be gone down the alley at the back of the shop before one could whistle.

Annie was ashamed to recollect Ridley Plantation with pleasure. But working the cloth left a stain of bluing on her hands that put her in mind of spring at Ridley. She thought of spring and of the little girl who was called Blue Girl on Ridley Plantation when Annie, too, was small and working beside Knitting Annie. Little Blue Girl had come to Ridley just past the first of the year. She had seemed mystical to Sewing Annie because her arms were purpled from elbow to fingertips. Knitting Annie explained that this child had come from the Sea Island people—the people who dye the dark blue cloth. She’d been born to the work of indigo dyeing and her arms were stained. Folks wondered how she’d come to be at Ridley.

Blue Girl had given some of the other hands a fright. There were some who’d disdained to touch the Blue Girl or come near her at all. Worse was to have her touch you, they thought. Sewing Annie had worked beside her for the short while the girl was at Ridley. The two had been pressed to haul water for the extra laundry work entailed in spring cleaning. There seemed no end to the buckets of water put to fire. The two girls had lugged and dragged. Blue Girl did not last long at Ridley. She died just after Christmas that same year when the croup took off several youngsters.

Eight

T
HE MOLLYCODDLE WAS
complete. Annie helped Gabriel out of his coat. She put her palm at his back and helped him to slough off worrying the shop’s commissions. She took pains to feed him. She gave him his regular stew but added the fillip of powder biscuits and butter and honey.

“What, Nanny! Are we celebrating too early,” he said boastfully—to tease her.

“Don’t add to my weariness, Boy Gabriel. I have my own rows to work,” Annie answered him in a familiar sparring singsong, and sat to her stew and biscuits and smiled.

“Aye, don’t add to my weariness!” The phrase brought back recollections that were themselves trails toward bitter memories. She was betrayed by a fleeting lovely remembrance of the two of them together with Ellen on Ridley beside their old familiar hearth.

“Aye, don’t add to my weariness!” Gabriel repeated. “You have always said that, Nanny—about powder biscuits. Whenever we called out for them at cabin you answered with ‘Don’t add to my weariness, boy.’ You have gone toward weariness for me this evening.”

“Go on, boy,” she said, and clucked with her tongue to toss away his love. The boy was a prize and every day he grew dearer.

Annie set out his shears with ceremony and helped him to smooth the cloth. She traced a line across the drawn fabric with her fingernail, directing him, and was miffed when he gently brushed her hands aside and took up his shears. Gabriel was ceremonial in his preparation, too. As a preamble, he licked his left thumb and tested the blades of his implements. He was not satisfied that the blade of his scissors was sufficiently sharp and took up a file to improve it.

“Nanny,” he answered to her surprised look. “I know the cut. I can make it with my eyes closed.”

Gabriel showed his mastery with the cutting. Ah, his precision! When he had cut out the pieces for the entire consignment, there was one half of a complete bolt remaining.

“The babe is yours, Nanny. Do what you want with it,” he crowed softly.

He was full of himself, but the work was splendidly begun. Annie put away her dear bundle and accepted a cog of the work. She began with sewing sleeves to the vests that Gabriel executed.

At the start, Gabriel set to quickly and quietly. He used Abraham Pearl’s practiced stitches to assemble the garments and he used Pearl’s practiced methods of measuring out lengths of thread and wasting none on biting and licking and sucking to gain a tip.

“You learned aplenty from Master Pearl, Brother Gabriel. I never taught you this or that,” Annie purred, pleased with him and pleased to show it.

“No, Nanny. Mr. Pearl did not show me anything I had not seen you do before,” he answered.

“Biscuits!” she exclaimed, and laughed out loud in sharp departure from her usual tittering and clacking. Gabriel joined her in loud laughing.

As a green youth, Gabriel had chafed at the constant suggestion from his mam and from Abraham Pearl that they alone were responsible for the skills and beauty of his needlework.

“You were always quick to pick up the thread of it, Son Gabriel,” Nanny said frequently, as if no stitch had ever begun in his head.

Only Ellen was better than he with a needle. But Gabriel could best all with his scissors. He never made an ill-considered or careless cut.

Mother and son bent to their work and came up well at the end of the evening, which end came when Annie noticed that Gabriel was slumped and snoring—shushing and sussing and hitching his breath in rhythm.

“Brother Gabriel.” She roused him and pushed him toward his loft and went to put away his work. But he would not let her do that. He awoke and cleaned off his work and climbed to his bed and urged Annie to her pallet as well.

When time came to finish the first of the uniforms, Gabriel brought out Abraham Pearl’s hidden cache of buttons. It was the gift that made the deal. Saving the expense of purchasing buttons to finish his order would preserve much of the profit. Abraham Pearl was hailed furtively and fervently thanked.

The buttons came out of their hiding and gleamed riotously. Also hidden and brought to light ceremoniously was a doll dressed as an army man. It was a stuffed fabric figure in a small uniform, with a face of white bisque and delicately painted features. The lapels, pockets, and seams of the doll’s clothing and the placement of the buttons were perfect. Gabriel used the figure to be sure of his work.

“Mr. Pearl’s wife gave him this doll, Nanny. ’Twas their only babe,” he said, smiling, fondly recollecting Mr. Pearl.

Abraham Pearl had decided to proceed with gentle firmness and gauge the result—thinking to train the boy up like a puppy. He made no apology for being disinclined to force and brutality. He had resolved to coerce the boy with kindness at the start. Working late by lamplight, Pearl had sat at his table gazing on the doll and scrutinizing the uniform. He had held it high and showed it to the tearful boy and smiled to cheer him.

“Aye, a clever man. Would that his luck will hold,” Annie declared, and invoked a benediction for Abraham Pearl.

Nine

Sir:

I write to inform you of a matter of concern to you regarding these slaves of yours. I suspect that they have a plan of some sort up their sleeves. In the past two weeks the old woman has produced little or no knitted work. These items are especially popular with the folks here. There is a great call for knitted socks of the kind that the old woman can make. She goes about with her shoulders slumped and moaning. I am certain she is feigning aches in order to avoid work. She has produced far too few knitted goods in the last weeks and I am often without any stock to sell. Please advise if there is any action that I must take with this old woman.