“What on earth do you mean?”
“I just mean it’s late.”
“Is it?” She glanced at the clock on the counter near the stove. “Nine? Well, I guess it depends who you ask.”
She was still smiling. Mr. Sitwell had noticed that about her. She smiled a lot, had a way of talking to people as if what she really wanted to do was laugh at them. When she first started working there two months before it had hurt his feelings a couple of times before he realized she talked to everybody like that, even Miss Mamie. That it was just her way.
“I could walk you to the streetcar. If you’d like. Make sure you get there safe.” He looked away from her, toward the sink, and was disappointed when he saw the stack of dirty pots still piled there.
“Well, aren’t you sweet,” Jennie said. “That’s real nice, Sitwell. Honestly, I can’t imagine a girl needs much protection in this neighborhood, never mind the hour. But I certainly would appreciate the company.”
Mr. Sitwell nodded and looked back at the pots. If the Barclays didn’t send those boys back to the asylum for wandering the halls at night, Miss Mamie just might, if they were stupid enough to leave a mess like that.
“Could you wait a few minutes? I’ve got to take care of something right quick.”
“Alright, Sitwell. I don’t mind waiting. Gives me a chance to put these napkins away.” She flicked her cigarette out the window.
Mr. Sitwell reached down to straighten his tie, then pushed through the swinging door that led to the front of the house.
As he passed through the dining room his heart was beating fast, but he had to figure that hadn’t gone so bad. He’d been trying to think of questions to ask Jennie since she’d started working there, but that was the first time they’d been alone. Jennie, he decided, was a nice person, and looking back on their conversation, not scary at all. A lot of people on staff didn’t know what to make of her, in part because of the smiling, but also because they were still adjusting to the fact that Petunia, the woman she’d replaced, was indeed gone. Petunia’s termination had been a shock, not because she’d been good at her job but because she’d been there doing her job badly for so long. When Mamie got promoted and took charge of the kitchen, it seemed like the first thing she did was send Petunia home.
He walked up a short flight of stairs and entered the main hall, the chandelier above him shining a harsh light on the objects in Mrs. Barclay’s cabinet. He looked at the pistol that had so entranced Bart and noticed at once that the gilt was peeling on the handle; several other items on the shelves were chipped or otherwise damaged. Electric lighting, which seemed necessary only because everyone else on the block now had it, had not been kind to this house. There was a reason for the care Mrs. Lawson, the parlor maid, took to ensure each lamp was covered with a cloth of a particular weight when company came to dinner. Some of the rugs in the halls were worn down and frayed from overuse, there were water stains on the side tables in the parlor, and the velvet cushions of the couch in the conservatory were sun-bleached in places. All these flaws had been there for years but were made disturbingly visible in the new glare.
He continued down the hall. He still remembered when he was a boy like the three he was looking for now, how fine that house had seemed to him, the glitz and glitter of the various curios in Mrs. Barclay’s cabinet sparkling in the warm glow of the gaslights. There’d been a time when he’d been convinced this was not simply the finest house he’d ever seen but perhaps the finest there ever was. Then, one day when he was fifteen, he was standing in the front yard and happened to look beyond the Barclays’ fence. For the first time it occurred to him that most of the houses on the Avenue were twice the size of the one where he worked, that the Barclays had neighbors who, if they wanted to, could have bought and sold both his employers and everything they owned several times over. He must have looked over that fence a thousand times before this actually occurred to him. Before that the house had always been just another part of the block, an extension of the world it belonged to, and therefore, extremely precious.
He moved past the stairs. Perhaps the Barclays weren’t as rich and important as they once were, but it was still a good house. The boys had a good thing there, whether they realized it or not. What they’d been given wasn’t exactly charity but it was better than the industrial college where scores of boys and girls shivered on cold factory room floors fourteen hours a day. Here they worked hard but they slept on warm cots at night and Miss Mamie made sure they were always well-fed. The Barclays were not crazy enough to be unmanageable and, miraculously for the times, still maintained an entirely colored staff. The Barclays had come to the city from Missouri thirty-five years before with their cook, Mr. Boudreaux; they did not believe in race mixing in the kitchen, rightly thought it caused too many problems. Because Mr. Boudreaux had been colored the rest of the staff, out of necessity, had to be colored too. When he finally left, Miss Mamie, his former assistant, had been the obvious choice to take his place. This meant that so long as she continued to cook and maintain order to the Barclays’ satisfaction, the opportunity to be reformed in the kitchen would remain the exclusive preserve of three colored orphans between the ages of fourteen and fifteen.
When he reached the conservatory he heard a loud, “Oooooohhhh!” followed by a series of childish giggles. He pushed the door open and found the three boys huddled together on the floor near the piano with Frederick at the center. From the halting sound of Frederick’s voice, Mr. Sitwell could tell he was reading.
“Now that Cherokee knew that Wash Talbot, his former deputy, had been arrested, he had to make a choice: keep his vow to never again set foot in Seminole County, or let the last remaining member of his gang fall into the hands of an angry mob.”
“What are you boys doing?”
They spun around in unison and blinked at him with enormous brown eyes. They were handsome children with bright round faces, thick eyebrows, full lips, and skin the dark red color of cedar wood. Their features were so similar that anybody would have mistaken them for actual brothers. In truth they were not blood relatives at all; their strong bond was formed in the interest of survival, on the waterfront.
“Nothing, sir.” Mac smiled, eyes all innocent. “Just sitting here reading.”
“In the front of the house?”
“Oh, nobody saw us. We made sure them folks was long gone before we came in here,” Frederick said. He lifted his arms and rocked back and forth, in imitation of someone else’s waltz. “We waited until they finished dancing.”
Mr. Sitwell frowned. “Somebody saw you. I did. Saw Bart playing in the hall when I was on my way out. Then come to find you haven’t even finished cleaning the kitchen.”
“Not true, sir. Kitchen’s all done,” Bart said. “Well, except for the pots. But remember last time, how Miss Mamie told us not to disturb Mr. Barclay’s guests with a lot of banging while folks were eating dinner? Figured this time we’d just wait until the dinner was over, so as not to bother nobody.”
The boy looked very proud of himself.
“It’s alright, sir. We don’t mind working late.”
“The last guest left over an hour ago,” Mr. Sitwell said.