Candle in the Darkness - Lynn N. Austin [11]
Before I could reply, Esther shuffled into the room. “You wanting more coffee, Massa Fletcher?”
“No, I’ll be on my way shortly. I was just waiting to see Caroline off on her first day of school.”
“That gal looking mighty sickly, if you ask me,” Esther mumbled as she turned to leave. “Strong wind blow her clear to Washington, D.C.”
Daddy stood. “I know you’re nervous on your first day, Sugar. It’s only natural. But I want you to be a brave girl for me, all right? Make me proud of you.”
I remembered Tessie’s words and mumbled, “I-I’ll try.”
I followed him into the front hallway where Gilbert waited with Daddy’s hat. Outside, our carriage stood at the curb.
“Can Eli drive me to school?” I begged. I had always been a little afraid of Gilbert with his slightly pompous ways, but I loved gentle Eli. I spent more time with him than with any other person except Tessie.
“Well . . . all right.”
This was the first good news I’d heard all morning. With Eli beside me I wouldn’t feel so alone. “Can he walk all the way inside the school with me, too? Please, Daddy?”
He hesitated a moment, then nodded. “All right, but tell him he has to wear livery, not his dirty old stable clothes.” He said this loudly enough for Tessie to hear as she waited in the hallway behind us.
“Yes, sir,” she replied. “I tell him.”
I was sick to my stomach before leaving, losing the small amount of food I’d eaten for breakfast. Tessie hugged me goodbye and hustled me into the carriage, heedless of my tears and pallid face. Eli snapped the reins, and we quickly drove off. But as soon as we’d rounded the corner, out of sight of the house, we stopped again. Eli hopped down from the driver’s seat and, to my utter amazement, climbed into the back of the carriage and sat down beside me. I quickly scrambled into the safety of his arms, burying my face in his broad chest.
“I’m scared, Eli! I don’t want to go.” It felt different to hug him in his scratchy uniform, and he didn’t smell like the same old Eli I loved. At least his deep, gentle voice was the same.
“I know, Missy. I know you scared.”
“Please, take me back home . . . or . . . or let’s just drive around all day.”
“Now, you know I can’t do that. Massa Fletcher have my hide if I don’t do exactly what he say. But why all this fussing? You forget all them stories I tell you and Grady? You forget how Massa Jesus always with you, taking good care you?”
“Tell me again,” I begged.
I loved listening to Eli talk about Massa Jesus. It seemed like ages since I’d sat with Eli in the carriage house, Grady on one of his knees and me on the other, listening as he told us what the Good Book said. I was pretty sure that Eli’s Jesus was the same person who the minister preached about every Sunday in church, but the stories sounded better when Eli told them. They sounded as though they might have really happened.
“It ain’t doing no good to tell you again,” he warned, “if you not hiding them words in you heart.”
He tapped his chest with his forefinger, and I remembered how Grady, solemn-eyed, would tap his own chest in imitation and say, “They in there, Eli. They all hiding right down in there.”
I pointed to my heart. “I’ll remember. I promise.”
“All right, then.” Eli settled back against the carriage seat and I leaned against him, gripping his burly arm. “In olden times,” he began, “there a great big giant man name Goliath. Everybody scared of him. Grown men run and hide when he come out, waving his shiny sword all around in the air. ‘Who gonna fight me?’ Goliath ask every day. And I shamed to tell you that all them soldiers in God’s army so scared they turn tail and run.
“Then one day little David come along. He bringing some ham and sweet potatoes to his brothers in the army. Now, David hardly believing the way them grown men running scared. So little David say, ‘I fight him! I fight Goliath ’cause I ain’t afraid! I got God on my side.’
“Then David tell the king how one time he and God kill theirselves a lion, and how they kill