[Spring of 1860; Ozark, Alabama] "Say you! whar do ol man Josh live?" "ah...down de road a piece," says Silas to the stranger, " 'bout a mile, de Hightower place, but yous wont find 'im, he's away fishin' I reckon." At the Hightower plantation, the black stranger knocked on the door, and old Hightower answered and the stranger asked where Josh was. Old man Hightower, hollered for Josh, but he didn't answer, looking toward the back of his house, toward the barn and beyond were the enclosure was. "He's gitting old..." the stranger said to himself quietly. Old Josh had seen the stranger and was hiding behind the cow corral and further than, and behind some bushes and jimson weeds. The stranger was now sanding looking through the open area of the corral with his owl-like face"Old Josh's knees bent, acing a ting, but not willing to stand up yet. Thus, he remained hidden about one-hundred feet away. The stranger just stood there chewing his tobacco, glancing here and there, up and down over this way and that way"eyes eating up each square foot. "Hey!, wher is you...this is Abram!" said the stranger, then he saw his brother, "dhar you all is a-sitten...!" he said; yet old Josh continued to conceal himself, even though his brother saw him; Abram's foot on the railing. "Wuz you callin' somebody?" said a voice. Abram looked deadeye into Josh's face, from a distance, from where he stood with his foot on the fence. "Say Josh, what you doin'?" Old Josh still remained quiet. Then Josh hollered at him, "kep-a right on goin, dont look back, I dont hyear ya-feet movin!" "Well, I reckon I cam-a long ways not fer nothing..." said his brother Abram, still chewing his tobacco, while listening off and on to the mockingbirds singing on a nearby old Alabama Oak. (Interlude: there was dust in the air, this early spring morning, blowing about, flowers filling the air with light odor scents; Josh wanted to lay down, didn't really want his day disturbed; wanted to go fishing, was about to before he saw the stranger coming up the road on a sprinkled old horse. He walked like his brother, didn't really know it was him, but had a second sense it was somebody from the past, back when he was a boy in New Orleans, and was left by his mother and older brother, left wandering about aimlessly, but that was seventy years ago.) "Looks like yous in dhe po' house back der," he said to Josh with a smile. "I'm goin' on seventy-nine years old, Josh," he said, as if his days were numbered"then spat into the weeds some of his over moistened tobacco he was chewing. "You done lef me in New Orlens when I's just a boy"walking up and down de streets, 'til Hightower's pick me up, and hers I am...!" It showed on their faces, the long and hard years of labor, loneliness, on both their faces, a little less on Josh's perhaps, or so it seemed: he took thinks a bit lighter than Abram; accept, possibly for this moment. "I' ...s got money to buy your freedom," said Abram, to Josh. A shadow of gloom was on Josh's face, and a bitter sneer that he tried to hide. Now Josh and Abram sat on Josh's porch (of his two room shack); Abram still chewing his tobacco, slowly. Hightower had departed. "Josh, com wit me," shouted Abram abruptly, as if he was a big brother. They sat there for hours, both fell to sleep, and Silas come home, tip-toed past them, slowly, not to wake them up, and into the hut, and sat down by the small wooden table, and had some pumpkin soup. In the morning Abram looked at Josh, they had fallen to sleep where they sat; the old spotted horse had not been fed, and was pacing, nibbling over in the bushes eating whatever. It had been seventy years since they had seen each other, seventy long years since Abram let go of his brother's hand, and ran, seventy years"that's when he was his big brother (so thought Josh). "Nah...! All right!" shouted Abram, as he stood up, flung his coat over his shoulder, spat out some tobacco onto the dirt a few feet from the front of the porch"put on his hat emerged onto the road in front of Hightower's house. At the same time, old Josh turned his head to see what his son was doing; he heard a noise in the hut, said to his boy, "Dhat dhar chewin' enough to kill ya!" Then he looked at his brother..."...damn his black-hide!" He repeated. Written 1/20/2006; the Author lived in Ozark, Alabama in the mid l970s. |
