Rich Man's Coffin (49 page)

"Sounds vaguely familiar. He's just now gettin' 'round to writin' about that?"

"Here's one about a black man in the United States who escaped to the North and lived to write about it.
 
'The Heroic Slave' by Frederick Douglass."

"All right.
 
Well where's the second part?
 
He just stayed in America after he escaped?
 
What's so great about that?”

She flashed him a sideways glance.
 
"Here's one by a man named Whitman who wrote about the American president who set the slaves free.
 
It's called, 'O Captain! My Captain!'
 
How about that one?"

"I might check that one out.
 
Is he black? I didn’t know they set the slaves free.
 
Lord, when did that happen?”

"I don't know. Here's a couple of books by a man who decided to drop out of society for a while and write in a cabin he built by a pond.
 
One's called, 'Walden'.
 
The other's called, 'Civil Disobedience'.
 
Either of those sound interesting?"

"Hell, I could sit around here and write about plenty of disobedience."

"Then perhaps you should read this one. It's by a gentleman by the name of Dostoevsky.
 
'Crime and Punishment."

         
"Sittin' out here alone for years on end has been punishment enough for two men’s crimes, darling."

She laughed.
 
"Oh, here's some you'll like:
 
'The Innocents Abroad' by Mark Twain.
 
Or, his 'Roughing It'.
 
Those might suit you."

"Is he a Southern man?"

"Yes.
 
A humorist.
 
Now here is someone a bit more morose:
 
Friedrich Nietzsche.
 
Not a man I would want to spend a lot of time alone with."
 
She said.
 
"He wrote 'The Birth of Tragedy'."

"Ooh. Keep that one away from me. Sounds too depressing."

"The list goes on: Jules Verne:
 
'Around the World in Eighty Days'.
 
That one came out just last year, 1873.
 
Then there's Longfellow, Poe, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Dickens, Tolstoy; oh, and one for the ladies:
 
'Little Women' by Louisa May Alcott."

"I don't know. I'm not a Poe, Dickens, or Longfellow.
 
All of those men sound so
uppity
."

"Well, now, Arthur, keep in mind:
 
Most of these are just popular works of fiction.
 
Perhaps you would prefer some of the more traditional classics?"

Black Jack became overwhelmed and frustrated with the flood of new information. He tossed one of the books back at her.
 
"Here, I'll write my own book."
 
As she tried to catch it, the book bounced off her hands and onto the desk.
 
It sent the watch flying to the hard earthen floor.
 
She sprang from her seat and onto her hands and knees to retrieve the timepiece.

"Oh, Arthur!"
 
She shrieked.
 
"How could you?"
 
She found the watch. It was missing its crystal face.
 
"The glass, Arthur. You’ve lost the glass!"
 
She screamed.

"Now calm down, Miss Baillie."
 
He remained seated to avoid crushing the lost lens.
 
"Just hold on. You'll find it."
 
He leaned forward and placed his hand on her head as it darted around during her frantic search.

She snapped upright on her knees, meeting him with a desperate stare.
 
"It's gone, Arthur!
 
That's my uncle's watch!
 
He'll kill me."
 
She moaned.

"Now, now, Miss Baillie, just slow down.
 
It's here somewhere."
 
He ran his big, dusky, black hand through her thick, long hair, trying to relax her.
 
He began to talk about the books to ease her panic.
 
"I guess the thing about those people that I don't particularly like is that they just seem to make up words.
 
You know?"

She slowed in her search, occasionally casting a glance upward as she spoke, "Well, that's all right.
 
You can make up words if you wish, too."
 
She said, starting to smile.

"How?"

"Well, let's see."
 
She said, looking around the floor.
 
"The easiest way is to cross words.
 
Say, your name, for example."

         
"Why my name?
 
What's wrong with my name?"

"Well, you told me that 'Arthur' was something only your mother called you.
 
You still seem uncomfortable when I use it.
 
Then there's 'Harper'.
 
You’ve told me why that name makes you flinch.
 
So why not combine the two, say, into something like 'Arpur'.
 
How does that sound?"

"That sounds all fancy.
 
I like that."
 
He smiled and wriggled his shoulders as if mocking the name playfully as he repeated the word aloud.
 
"Ar
pur
!"
 
He said, placing the major emphasis on the last syllable.
 
"That sounds like a prince or something."

"
My
prince."

"Do another one!"
 
He said, sounding like an excited child at Christmas.

"Well, you can do these yourself."
 
She said in her school-matron voice.
 
"But I'll do one more just to get you started."
 
She lifted one hand and began to stroke his knee as she raised the other hand to reveal the dusty crystal.
 
She smiled triumphantly, placing the glass on the desk beside the watch.
 
She quickly glanced at the watch hands before returning her chin to rest upon her hands folded atop his knees.
 
She slid her fingers slowly down his thigh as she smirked.
 
"Let's see:
 
'Large' plus 'happy' gives you 'lappy'."
 
She said, as her hand reached the object of her lesson.

Or harpy
, he thought smugly as she latched.

Tooth marks spun in all directions, each bite overlapping the next in a cascading circle of rough swirls.
 
Furry splinters leaned in odd patterns like tiny trees blown over by some forgotten frozen breeze.
 
Black Jack stared up at the roughly cut ceiling timbers of his recent addition, and inhaled the sharp, sweet, scent of sawdust.
 
The new room was a gift from the Major.
 
Now the cabin had two halves, and it seemed like a proper house to Black Jack.

Lying down upon his big, billowy bed, his gaze came to rest upon the coffin nestled among the new beams.
 
He had built it last year and hid it out back. She happened to notice it during one of her visits.

"Arpur, what is that?" She asked, looking up.

"It's my canoe."
 
He said in a fatherly tone.

"It looks like a... well, you know, a coffin."

"Same thing."

"What do you mean?
 
Are you going somewhere?
 
Are you dying?"

"No.
 
I'm not dying.
 
Yet
."

"I’ve been thinking about a lot of things lately."

         
"Like what?
 
Death?"

"Not just that.
 
Listen, I just built the thing because I realized that maybe I won't be able to soon.
 
I just want a proper burial, that's all.
 
Besides, Death is a glorious thing to some people, not something to be scared of."

         
"Oh. Well, don't be thinking of dying anytime soon."
 
She kissed him on the cheek as she rolled beneath the linen covers. The potbelly stove crackled in the corner.

"A glorious death may be all I get at the end of this life.
 
I haven’t got much else."

"How can you say that?
 
You’ve got me!
 
What more could you want?"

"Well, look at your father."

"What about him?"

"He's half my age. He hasn't done nearly half the things I've done in my life. Look at all he's got!"

"Well, what do you want all that stuff for, Arpur?"

"I just feel that I deserve it. You know, after all I have accomplished."

"But he's a white gentleman, Arpur.
 
You're a black farmhand.
 
What do you expect?"

"Well, for starters, it would be nice to own some land. Maybe I'd like to build a big house and have a large family.
 
Maybe even run for office."

         
"Oh, Arpur, you're so cute!"

"I'm being serious.
 
Why shouldn't I have what every other man has, as hard as I have worked to achieve it?"

"Oh, Arpur, now you are just being negative.
 
Look how far you've come!
 
You said yourself that you started life as a slave.
 
Isn't it enough that you have your freedom now?
 
You've had a full life.
 
Now you've got a roof over your head, plenty to eat, and friends.
 
I don't understand why you've got to be so hard on yourself.” She looked at him for a moment. “I guess it's a man thing."

"You know, you've got an amazing talent for stating the obvious." He went silent, staring up at the coffin in the overhead beams while she stroked his chest hair.

Looking up now, lying in the same spot without her, he longed for her presence.
 
She would be along soon, he thought.
 
He could suffer the agony of her misunderstanding his plight, he reckoned, if it meant having her undying affection.
 
It was a fair, yet frustrating, trade for him.
 
No worse than the condition of my life in general,
he thought.
 
At least she understands me more in some ways than most people do, maybe even more than Lalani or Kumari
.
 

She offered empathy and sympathy:
 
The latter he could do without; but he realized that she was the only one who had ever offered both.
 
So he took the poisoned pair with a grain of salt.
 
Aside from their intimacy, however, he found himself alone to grapple with his own personal struggle.
 
The paradox compounded his pain.
 
If she could only truly understand me
, he thought.
 
Ah, the shortcomings of love:
 
So close and yet so far.
 
With all of her modern schooling and self-realized social awareness, she still could not see the forest for the trees.
 
It actually made him feel better to pity her than to crave her.

Wondering if it were possible to know someone right down to the very core of their soul, he lay there as long, thick bands of winter clouds swept by on the darkening horizon.
 
She is late
, he thought.
 
He got up and looked at the watch:
 
Six p.m.
 
He worried.
 
She had never been late.
 
He pensively flipped the watch in his fingers, reading the inscription on the back:
 
“J.O. Western.”
 
Quite an expensive timepiece, he thought.
 
The initials were not hers. Surely its owner must be missing it.