Free The Sleeping Night by Barbara Samuel

she said, shaking her head. “Thank you for the offer, but just because you went off to war and won you some medals doesn’t mean I changed my mind.”
    His nostrils flared as he exhaled and Angel watched a string of muscle draw tight from his jaw to his temple as he stared out at the creeping darkness. “All right, then, Angel,” he said in his rough voice. “I got time.” He flipped his cigarette butt away. “Take care now, hear?”
    “Night, Edwin.” She watched his broad back disappear into the night.
    Rubbing a foot over the other arch lazily, she smoked and considered the problem of Edwin Walker. “What am I gonna do about that man, Ebenezer?” Nothing she said seemed to make the slightest difference to him. He just kept coming back, like a boomerang.
    And whatever he said about changing, those eyes had grown worse, not better, while he’d been gone. She didn’t care if he was a deacon at church—wouldn’t care if he was the preacher himself. Something had always been off-kilter with Edwin Walker and it was tipped clear sideways now.
    Ebenezer whistled sharply and she held her hand out for him to perch on her fingers. “What do you think, baby? Maybe I oughta get me a guard dog or something.” He answered with a soft purring. She stroked the downy feathers of his breast. Edwin’s unearthly eyes burned into her mind.

— 11 —
     
May 6, 1943
Dear Miss Corey,
I cannot even express my delight over the package that Isaiah has just brought to my door. So much bounty! The nuts and candy will be a lovely addition, but I am most delighted by the tea. It is my great weakness, you see, and it pains me to parcel it out so.
While I have nothing of great value to send you in return, I hope you will enjoy the enclosed book of Emily Dickinson’s poems. Poetry is my other great passion. Isaiah and I have been enjoying great discussions when he is able to come to town. He is a very great help to me.
Please write again, and when this war is over, I hope you will come to see me. I will show you the land as I know it, an insider’s view.
Again, my deepest thanks, Miss Corey.
Most sincerely,
Mrs. Angela Wentworth

— 12 —
     
    Isaiah rocked on his mama’s porch in the mild evening. His mother and sister had learned to let him be in the late evenings, when things he couldn’t speak of crowded into his mind. Things no one should see. Things that could not be unseen.
    And yet, through it all there had been a measure of freedom. Now it was seeped away, drop by drop, changing the tilt of his head, the angle of his shoulders.
    A fat woman wanting a piggy back ride, that was Texas, and no matter how he fought to keep her off, she still climbed on and insisted he walk upright and bear her weight.
    It wasn’t that she struggled to jump up on him again that surprised him. He had expected that. The thing that amazed him was that he had not ever really understood her obesity until she had been flung off.
    Not all at once. The Army, at first, had been no different than home—colored soldiers were colored first. Crow was part of training and the Army. Just like home.
    But Isaiah had been lucky. As the States had been drawn into the war, he had been among the first troops assigned to Britain. There the class structure had been intimidatingly different. Its subtle complexities had been so confounding that he was afraid to do much of anything at all for the first few weeks.
    Slowly, though, he began to enjoy the first real freedom he’d ever tasted. The English, wary of colored troops to begin with, had finally decided the American color problem was none of their concern. They flung open the doors of their pubs and dance halls and homes to colored soldiers as well as white.
    When the trouble came, later on, it wasn’t the Brits that caused it. The murders and stabbings and fights stemmed from the fury of the Americans. Eventually, out of self-defense, the Brits had been forced to hold dances on alternate nights, arrange