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By Root 1602 0

I could not believe how I had rushed about for those first two days of my manhood: now that I was quiet, I intimidated myself. Existing inside of Lyman Arquette was much harder when all I had to do was grunt and pick type than ever it had been when I had to talk, and ride, and interview, and saunter about upon the street. This was when I almost gave it up—not when I had to exert myself, but when I didn’t.

After three days, as July turned into August, I felt time pressing on me, and I resolved to come up with another plan if I was given nothing more to do besides setting type on the following Monday. It was now Friday evening. As I was walking to the livery stable a little earlier than usual, I saw a boy of about my age (as Lyman) with a case of peaches on the back of his wagon. He was selling them to passersby for a dime apiece, as much as a meal in some parts of town, but they looked about as bright and peachy as a peach could look, and I reflected that three of them would make supper enough for that night. I handed him my thirty cents, and he told me that for another nickel I could have a fourth, so I put one in my pocket for Nehemiah, should I see him.

I was thinking about Thomas when I turned the next corner, just before the livery, and almost saying to him that I couldn’t go on with this, that it would be far better to go back to K.T. and find Frank, when I saw Master Harry, and Master Harry was angry indeed. He had a buggy pulled up by the Nehemiah horse pen, with a team of chestnuts hitched to it, and he was sitting on the seat with his wife beside him. Her head was turned down and away, and I could hear him shouting. Well, to tell you the truth, I couldn’t resist. I was curious, and so I strolled by as though I had no business with the livery and didn’t know Nehemiah at all.

"Boy, I told you them folks owed me for six weeks on them two mules!"

"They tole me they done paid, Massa Harry, an’ they showed me a paper!"

"They didn’t get no paper from me! Cain’t you recognize my hand?"

"No, suh. Yes, suh. Well, it did look like yo’ hand, suh. I reckon they tricked me, suh—"

Master Harry brandished his stick as if to strike Nehemiah, and his wife gasped, then said, "Harry, dear! For mercy’s sake, not in the public street!"

He turned on her. "May I strike my property, ma’am, and discipline him?"

"Yes, Harry, but—"

"I said, ’May I discipline my own property, or are we living in Massachusetts now?’ "

"Yes, of course, Harry!"

"Well, then." But he lowered the stick.

"Them Samsons done me out of twelve dollars! That’s all your gal’s food for a year, Nehemiah."

"No, suh! She a good gal! She work hard and keep a bright face on, everybody say so, don’t she, Missy Sarah?"

"Yes, Nehemiah, but—" The woman cast a fearful glance at the glowering countenance of her husband, which seemed to pulsate with anger and swell around the band that held the eye patch in place. She took a deep breath. "Nehemiah, of course Master Harry may do as he likes with Josie. You know that."

The look on Nehemiah’s face was a complex one—sadness and fear and anger, too, though he was trying to conquer that, and over everything a veneer of respect. He dipped his head. I had slowed down, but now Master Harry was looking at me, so I sped up and walked around the corner into the next street, where I stopped and clutched that one word to my bosom. The Samsons! The Samsons had cheated Master Harry!

I waited in the shadow of one of the buildings there until I saw master and missy drive past, her with her bonnet pulled way forward and him whipping the chestnuts into a brisk trot. Then I ran back around the corner. Nehemiah was nowhere to be seen. I looked about, then called his name, and after a moment, he came from behind the shed. Without saying anything, I held out one of the peaches to him, and with only a brief hesitation, he took it and bit into it. There was a box there, turned on its side next to the corral, and I sat down on it. Nehemiah said nothing until he had finished his peach and sucked the last bits of juice off the pit. Then he said,