Free Emancipation Day by Wayne Grady Page B

push, that’s right, darlin’, push a little more, that’s it, while he sat in the front room with Alvina and little Benny wondering what in God’s name he was going to do to pay the bills.The Chrysler plant had just opened at the top of McDougall so it must have been 1925. He might be able to get a job there. They didn’t hire coloureds for the assembly line, but they did for the foundry, which was dirtier work. He’d been plastering and doing odd jobs around the Settlement, hauling ashes, cleaning garages, anything he could do with a truck. They’d been getting by, it wasn’t the Depression yet, but they didn’t need another mouth, that was for sure. A big one, too, by the sound of it. And then everything went quiet in there, all at once, like an angel flew over, and he knew something gone wrong.
    He couldn’t hear Josie anymore. He remembered looking at Alvina and her looking at him. She was twelve, old enough to know what was going on, but Benny was only four, he was playing with some pieces of wood on the floor. They stopped moving, poised to listen, like they were in a forest, like they knew their future was about to become even harder than they thought it was going to be. He turned to look at the wall and saw the photograph of Josie’s sister, Hazel, and thought someone would have to tell her, if they could find her, because she’d gone off to Chicago. And then he thought of Josie’s father, the Reverend John S. Rickman, the AME pastor, who was somewhere in Indiana now, he’d have to be notified even though he was the one who gave Josie up for adoption. And then the baby started crying, maybe it had been sucking all that time, and he heard Josie’s voice pleading, don’t let him in, don’t let him in. But he was so happy to hear her voice he got up and went in anyway.
    William Henry stared down at the lath in his hands and realized he had drifted off. That was happening a lot lately.
    “We need to cut that wire and re-run it through the ceiling,” Benny said, lighting a cigarette and looking at him oddly.
    William Henry nodded. “We’re going to lose money on this job,” he said. “Jackson should’ve known that wire was in there.”
    Benny shrugged. “Not even Jackson can see through walls,” he said, and they both laughed.
    In the truck, heading into the city for lunch at the British-American Hotel, William Henry’s mood lifted. It was as though they were setting off on a vacation together, father and son, a limitless stretch of freedom, understanding each other perfectly, united in the work that lay behind them and the hours that stretched ahead. He never had that feeling with Jackson. But William Henry had got up from his chair in the front room the day Jackson was born, and he had gone into the bedroom to see his child, as what man wouldn’t? “You kids stay here,” he’d said to Alvina and Benny, who anyway made no move to join him. The women had changed the sheets on the bed and Josie was sitting propped up against the wall, holding the little bundle to her and looking at William Henry as though he was the Devil himself come to take the baby from her. Boy or girl? he asked. They already had one of each so it didn’t matter to him. It was one of the women who said, “Boy.” Josie didn’t say anything, nor even lift the corner of the blanket to show him.
    “Alive?” William Henry asked. Why else would they be acting so strange?
    “Of course he alive,” the other woman said. “Didn’t you hear him hollerin’ just now?”
    William Henry leaned over his wife. “Josie?” he said. She was getting ready to cry, her chin wrinkled up and trembling.
    “Oh, Willie,” she said. “I never thought. All the time I was carryin’ him I never thought …”
    “Thought what? What you sayin’, girl?”
    She looked away from him, turning her head so far from him that the cords on the side of her neck stood out like tree roots. Then just as quickly she looked back to him. But this time