The Old Colored Man B­­reaks the Law (again)

The Old Colored Man B­­reaks the Law (again)

a Short Story by

Matthew T. Hastings

What he was about to do was against the law. Then again, most everything he’d ever done in his life that’d gotten him anywhere near getting what he wanted or feeling good about himself had been either illegal or frowned upon. He smiled, thinking of this, holding the small cardboard box, sitting on the boardwalk on one of those benches where the back flips so that you can either face the parade of sunburned tourists or gaze out over the beach and the ocean. He was not looking at the tourists.

It had been his idea to scatter Emma’s ashes on Rehoboth Beach. They’d never discussed funerals or burials. They had an unspoken agreement not to and an even more unspoken understanding that he’d go first. He’d failed her once again.

For a half century they’d come down from Bala Cynwyd every June to open up Miss Charlotte’s rambling 14-room beach house in the Pines. They’d stay all summer, doing the work that allowed Miss Charlotte to entertain an endless parade of family, old and brand new friends and people who just wanted something, usually money; her money.

He was technically the butler, just like his Papa had been for Miss Charlotte’s father. Emma was technically the cook. And what a cook. Everyone who ever tasted her cooking couldn’t get enough and insisted that her food somehow made you feel better about yourself. He did everything to keep the place going and guests happy. He looked forward to stripping and revarnishing the wood on the ’49 Packard Woody and the Rhodes 19 (one each year) keeping track of Fergus and India, Miss Charlotte’s two meandering Westies (there were always two and they were always called the same). He didn’t mind changing the diapers on Mr. Lucas when his caretaker wasn’t available. Mr. Lucas was Miss Charlotte’s brother and had become a quadriplegic after a bad car accident. Emma was not only the cook and oversaw the daily girls who cleaned; she was the gatekeeper to, and protector of, Miss Charlotte. They’d do one big final party on Labor Day, pack up and then head back to Philly for the season and get the kids back to school.

No matter how many years they were in Rehoboth they got the stares. Some of these Sussex County folks just couldn’t keep their eyes off them and couldn’t keep their ignorant comments and outrage about what they saw to themselves. Over the years he’d heard plenty, but he never said or did anything until “it” happened. Just once, once in all those years, did he lose control. Some ignorant cracker called six year-old Annie a “half-breed” and said she shouldn’t be allowed to be in the Whites Only amusement arcade. He’d cracked that fool’s jaw half off his face before he’d known he’d done. Forty years later he got all hot remembering standing there, in the line for the bumper cars at Playland, with the cracker bleeding on the hard cement floor, ashamed that he’d lost his temper, horrified and disgusted with himself. As soon as he’d looked over at a shocked Emma and terrified Annie he was filled with dread thinking he’d go to jail for the audacity of knocking down a white man who’d insulted his little girl.

In fact he had been arrested, as had the cracker, much to the outrage of the cracker’s wife and children. He spent a total of one hour and nine minutes in jail. That was how long it took Miss Charlotte to call her cousin, the President of the largest company in Delaware, who called the Governor of Delaware who called the Mayor of Rehoboth Beach who told the Police Chief to release him and apologize to him. The newspaper people were waiting for him when Emma came to walk him back to the house. He said nothing. There was nothing they would write that would make it all go away or teach that cracker fool and his kind a lesson.

His three kids had played on that beach for hours. One good thing about being high yellow, his Mama had said every time she inspected each of her brand new grandchildren, was that they just didn’t never sunburn. After hero-worshiping them for fifteen years and taking endless classes at the Y, his tall, handsome, athletic and gentle son Will tried out for Lifeguard Team. Will had tested out first in a group of over 100 boys. When he wasn’t chosen Emma was some rip pissed. She had marched into the Mayor’s office, by this time quite familiar with his family. The mere thought of another of Miss Charlotte’s phone calls immediately made Will the first Black lifeguard Rehoboth had ever had. Then Emma had second thoughts and was scared to death that some silly white girl would flirt with Will and claim he’d forced her to do the strange and the locals would lynch him. After all, it had only been a few years since they stopped public whipping people (that meant coloreds) in Dover. But Will was way too smart to fall into any of those traps.

When Will joined up with the Army, right out of Howard, he’d busted with pride and then immediately filled up with fear that something bad would happen to his boy. They’d all known he’d be in the service, what with his ROTC obligations. But they’d all thought he’d postpone it until after he finished law school by which time, with any luck, this nonsense in Vietnam would have cooled off. But Will wanted to get it over with. He came down to Rehoboth just before he left for duty. He’d brought a girl with him, not one of the pretty, adoring coeds he’d dated at Howard, but a different girl; a very serious, very thin and very white girl.

Emma was real quiet at his graduation from officer’s school. From the second he shipped out she was a nervous wreck. Her cooking went from magical to edible. She went stone silent when Miss Charlotte and Lucas came to tell them that Will had been taken prisoner in Vietnam and spoke as little as possob;e after they got the word. When the General tried to hand Emma the flag that had draped Will’s coffin she’d turned her face and walked away. The skinny white girl walked away with her. He took the flag from the General. He still had it with Will’s sports and debating trophies and annuals and clippings and scrapbooks; all in his old Army chest in the basement.

That Annie had been a handful. So willful and spirited, but she was always a daddy’s girl. He’d taken his hand to her only once. Afterwards he felt sick with shame for losing control. Luckily, for some reason, the mere thought of disappointing her Daddy kept Annie in line; more or less. At least as far as he knew. She was number one in everything she set out to do: Gold Award Girl Scout, first violin in the youth orchestra, president of student council and class valedictorian. She was Head Girl at Candy Kitchen at 15, and then a summer supervisor, at age 17, for all five of their local shops. She was an easy child to be proud of.

When Annie got married to her Spellman roommate’s brother, a fine young man named Charles who was in medical school at Johns Hopkins, they’d had the wedding and reception at Miss Charlotte’s beach house. Miss Charlotte insisted and paid for everything. She turned the entire place over to them for two weeks and moved into a hotel with Lucas, the caretaker and the wee beasties. She even got some of her friends to loan out their beach houses for the overflow – for even then black folks weren’t exactly welcomed with open arms at most of the guest houses and hotels at the beach.

There was dancing and singing and music that went on and on. And the food, Good Lord the tables were groaning with every sort of food you could imagine, prepared by his kitchen competitive sisters, cousins and aunts. That wedding was the first and last time he’d ever danced with Miss Charlotte. She’d mentioned this half way through the dance and told him that until that point she’d only danced with three men who could actually dance: her father, her brother and her late husband. He said he was honored. She stopped dead on the dance floor, which brought a lot of attention to them; as if this little white lady with the skunk-striped hair in red Chinese pajamas dancing with a black man in a room of black folks wasn’t enough to attract attention. She told him in no uncertain terms that the honor was all hers. It was more or less a lecture. He smiled thinking of it.

His own wedding to Emma, he remembered, was quite different. There was no laughter, no singing and certainly no food. It had been in March 1944, in a half bombed-out chapel in London’s East End. He was technically AWOL from the 761st Tank Division and he hadn’t gotten permission from his CO to get married. He hadn’t even asked. His CO was a racist animal who hated all white people and held a special well of wrath for the Jews. Emma was Jewish. This would have been double trouble.

Emma’s people were mostly dead, killed in the blitz. Emma herself had lost half her hearing. But the moment he saw her handing out food while standing in line at the canteen, he’d known he was a goner. And that was before he’d tasted one mouthful of her magical cooking. He’d been listening to her talk to the soldiers in front of him. Her voice sparkled. He’d never heard anything like it. And she sparkled. He kept his eyes looking down when it was his turn. There was silence, He had to look up. She’d looked him right in the face and said, “black or white?” He was crushed and hot with shame disgusted with himself why would this beautiful English girl give him a second glance, but he said quietly, “a little of both.” She burst into a laugh that then and would later always lift his spirits. “I meant the coffee,” she said. “Do you want it with our without milk?”

It took an hour, three trips to the bathroom and every ounce of courage in his body to ask her out for a walk. After the words stumbled out of his mouth she had her apron off and her arm in his so fast he lost his breath. Very quickly they’d fallen in love. He seemed to live for Emma’s touch, and thanks be to God, she for his. Emma’s landlady who was the bossy kind and took matters into her own hands, found a sweet old minister to marry them not too concerned about Army regulations. Emma was pregnant by the time of the invasion and it was the thought of getting back to her and his baby that kept him going as his tank rolled from Normandy to Berlin. He was all Emma had in the world and he never let himself forget it.

He looked down at the little plain cardboard box with Emma’s ashes. He hadn’t cried yet. He supposed he would soon en0ugh. He hadn’t really cried since the last time he saw Cessy, his baby girl. It had been in court. She’d been arrested for the last time and the judge had no option. She would be away for ten years, minimum.

What Cessy had been doing with drugs and the people who used and sold them was scared him to death. The sweet little girl with the blue eyes, “from some long-ago Russian Cossack’s pogrom exploits,” Emma had said when she’d handed this squirming little bundle to him at the hospital was never far from his thoughts. How had she gone from ballet recitals and spelling bees and Prom Queen to this horribly sick addict? She had done unthinkable things, stealing from her parents and putting herself out on the street, to feed her addiction. And now she was taken away from him.

The last time Cessy had come to the beach she’d disappeared right after supper. He’d spent hours looking for her and found her at two in the morning, face down in the sand, all strung out. A hypodermic needle was next to her. He crushed it with his foot and kicked it into the ocean. He cried as he carried her black-and-blue bruised skeleton to Emma, just like he used to carry her back to the house so many times dead asleep to the world, after a day of playing on the beach. When her mama went to her room the next morning with her favorite breakfast, Cessy was gone.

The summers in Rehoboth came and went. Each one a little different, but now that he thought of it not really all that much. Annie and Charles would come for a week, first alone and then with the babies. The first time he took his twin granddaughters to Playland he was shaking, remembering what had happened so long ago, thanking God that it wouldn’t happen to these precious treasures.

But soon enough it had been just Miss Charlotte, Mr. Lucas, Emma and him. Most of Miss Charlotte’s friends had died off or had lost their buttons. Miss Charlotte made him promise that he’d never lose his buttons; that he’d always remember. He was the last person who remembered what she remembered after Lucas had been taken.

When they stopped giving sunset barbecues, the brother and sister started going to the beach to watch twilight on the ocean. Of course like everything associated with Miss Charlotte it was a production, but he’d been happy to be useful. They had a proper canopy, proper bamboo beach chairs, a proper table and proper postprandials. He’d carry Mr. Lucas to the car and place him gently on the back seat, and Miss Charlotte would climb up front; she’d shrunk so much she barely saw over the dashboard. The Packard would crawl the two blocks to the beach, as if in a parade, which considering the stares they got it might as well as been. He completed the elaborate set-up and the two of them would sit there holding hands laughing as the sun went down. He’d leave them be and sit on the bench, this bench actually, on the boardwalk and watch them; going down to bring them back to the house when the first chill came in the air.

The last time they made what Mr. Lucas called “the pilgrimage” he’d seen Miss Charlotte get up from her chair, but not for a fresh cracker with caviar to feed Mr. Lucas. Instead she put her arms around his head and rocked back and forth. He’d rushed down and stopped a few feet away. “Now there,” Miss Charlotte said softly, “Now there, everything is all right.” Then she looked up at him. Tears were making her trademark panda-eye mascara run down her cheeks like blue-black rain. He took her in his arms and carried her back to the Packard. He went back for Mr. Lucas and carried him to the back seat. They drove to the Beebe Hospital together. Miss Charlotte sat in the front seat while he took care of the paperwork. He never went back to the beach for the set-up.

For a while afterward Miss Charlotte seemed to spark up. She was having parties and going out again, ordering new wallpaper and one day at breakfast announcing they were trading in the 40-year old Packard for a power blue (her favorite color as it matched her eyes) Rambler American wagon she’d seen in Milford the day before. When he went to collect it he’d taken Mr. Vinal Bennett at the dealership aside and told him to hold the Packard for them; they’d be back for it. The Rambler lasted one week and the Woody was quietly reclaimed. Miss Charlotte claimed she couldn’t think from all the noise the Rambler made; in fact it was the quietest car he’d ever known. What she didn’t like, but couldn’t come out and say, was that no one in Rehoboth knew she was coming when they saw the Rambler. The highly polished and stately Packard and its owner and driver were well known; legendary in fact. Miss Charlotte had posed for umpteen lobster-red sunburned tourists’ cameras in front of that car. The Rambler wasn’t so photogenic. They were soon back in the Packard with the one digit license plate. The Rambler had clocked a total of 45 miles and lived under an oilcloth in the garage on blocks. They saw it daily but it was ignored.

But after a while Miss Charlotte didn’t seem to have it in her any more. There were no more parties. A good day was when she would ride her three-wheeled bicycle to Lingo’s Market in the morning to get the Philadelphia papers and have a gossip with Mrs. Lingo, with whom she’d played on the beach as a girl. In the afternoon she’d take yet another watercolor class at the Art League and then come home and listen to her pile of opera records until it was time to share a postprandial and more often than not a dividend (her term for refill). She’d usually fall asleep looking at photo albums. He’d carry her up to her bed and Emma would take it from there. Miss Charlotte was a few years older than Emma and him. They hoped she went before they did. They worried who would take care of her. There were only some scheming cousins, she’d say, “just aching to get their hands on Mummy’s Flora Danica.”

When Emma had her first stroke it was Miss Charlotte who took over the nursing. She’d trained in the war as a WAVE and knew exactly what to do, or more accurately what the 24-hour nurse’s aides should do.

It had been a week ago today that he’d kissed Emma goodbye as she set off on her daily “walk”, pushed in a wheelchair by Jennifer, the aide. They would stroll down the boardwalk with the current Fergus and India on leashes. That day they stopped for cotton candy. It slipped out of her hands and fell on Fergus. She had gone to her maker looking at the beach.

He thanked the Lord he’d not seen her go. He’d not seen her dead and wouldn’t. Charles came down to identify his Jewish mother-in-law married for his colored father-in-law. They’d had a service at the little synagogue on Holland Glade Road, where Emma had taken to going after Will was killed. Annie’s girls had recited a poem about their Nana, and he’d been real surprised to see Will’s skinny white girl friend paying her respects. Emma and she’d kept in touch all these years.

He’d brought the box to the house where is sat for a couple of days. Finally, that morning, Miss Charlotte had said, “It’s time.” And here he was, once again, down to the beach with Emma. For the last time.

Miss Charlotte was right. It was time. She was waiting patiently at the house; told him to take his time. But he knew she’d be thirsty for her postprandial, something they now had together.

He took off his socks and folded them in thirds and put them in his pocket. He tied his always mirror-polished shoes with the shoelaces and put them around his neck. He rolled up his trousers. He took a deep breath and walked out into the water. There weren’t many people about. He’d chosen this time, dinner time, for that reason. He took a deep breath and put the box entirely under water. He opened it and watched the ashes drop like grey snow in the blue sea. Some came up on the surface. He timed it for when the wave came in and when it went out it swept Emma away with it. Forever.

He walked back to the boardwalk and rinsed his feet off. He was putting his socks and shoes back on when he saw a little red-haired boy; a very inquisitive little boy who was staring him down. The ginger couldn’t have been more than three. He smiled at him. The little boy smiled back and walked over to him. The fire engine red-haired boy paused and then put his finger out to touch the colored man’s arm. He let the boy do this. The little boy rubbed his finger on his arm and then looked at it and then laughed. He laughed with him. The boy’s mother came rushing over, full of apologies and ashamed. He’d told her not to worry. Now the little boy knew, the color wouldn’t come off.