Promise of Yesterday

Marylu Biloxi took careful aim with her broom. “You stagger yourself around somewhere else, Zedikiah. We don’t take to your drunken binges, and you’re a shame to the rest of our young black folk.”

Zedikiah blinked hard in the waning sunlight. His dark skin and bloodshot eyes gave evidence of his hearty patronage of anyone who slipped him corn liquor.

Marylu swung the broom at the back of his baggy britches. “Now get. You near mowed down Miss Rosaleigh, and I’ll not have you knocking over any more of Miss Jenny’s customers.”

Miss Jenny McGreary, owner of McGreary’s Dress Shop, the best dress shop in Greencastle, Pennsylvania, appeared on the boardwalk beside Marylu. “Let him go. Miss Rosaleigh’s fine. Besides, she’s got her head so far into the clouds these days,
she
probably ran into
him
.”

Marylu leaned on her broom and chuckled, the sun warm on her head. “You sure right about that. Never seen a woman so scatterbrained.” Her mirth faded when she turned back to Zedikiah, who swayed on his feet. “His mama, the Lord rest her weary soul, would have his head in that trough for acting the way he does.”

An idea popped into her head. Zedikiah stared at her with an unfocused gaze and slack jaw. Marylu crept closer and grabbed the back of his scrawny neck. His slight frame had no chance against her robust figure and greater weight as they took the steps down into the street. If not for her hand on his collar, he would have sprawled face-first into the mud. Marylu stopped him in front of the trough, bent him double, and dunked his head into the warm, horse-slobbered-in water.

“Marylu!” Miss Jenny’s voice held horror.

“His mama would do the same. Since Dottie’s not here to haunt him into sobriety, I’ll take the job.”

Miss Jenny pressed her lips together, her eyes on the trough. “Oh, dear. Marylu …”

Seeing her employer’s concern, Marylu noted that bubbles were slower in getting to the surface. She pulled the boy upright and gave him a good shake to rattle his brain to wakefulness.

Zedikiah sucked in gulps of air, color flushing back into his cheeks. He started sputtering and spewing.

Marylu let him go, and he promptly slumped at her feet. But as he sat in the dust of the worn road, something tugged hard at her heart. He’d lost his mama near a year ago and him not even fourteen. “Time for you to stop your wild ways,” she huffed and bent to help him to his feet.

“You go on over to my house.” Jenny touched the boy’s arm. “Cooper will get you some dry clothes and warm milk.”

But Miss Jenny’s words didn’t seem to penetrate Zedikiah’s stupor. When the boy swayed on his feet, Marylu caught hold of his arm, noticing, again, how large her hand appeared against his scrawny bicep. Drinking himself to death, he was. She would have to keep a closer eye on Zedikiah, else his wild ways were going to land him in a real stew.

Miss Jenny patted the boy’s back and turned. “I have to get back to Miss Rosaleigh,” she threw over her shoulder.

Marylu frowned at the boy and released his arm. “Zedikiah?” She waited for him to look at her, but his head remained sunk between his shoulders, eyes on the ground. “You do what Miss Jenny just said. Have Cooper get you something to eat.” But her words still seemed not to penetrate the fog of the boy’s drink-addled mind. With a heavy sigh, she left him in the street, turning back once to see him stumbling down the road. At least he was headed west, toward Miss Jenny’s place. She hoped he had understood after all.

Inside the shop, Miss Rosaleigh Branson stood before the dressmaker’s model in the corner, inspecting her ivory wedding gown, not seeming the worse for wear from her brush with Zedikiah. Marylu shook her head at the sounds of the young white woman’s sighs and giggles, as her hand brushed over every single detail of the gown.

“Let’s get you into this,” Jenny suggested as she motioned the bride-to-be to a smaller room out of sight of the front door.

Marylu dismissed Zedikiah’s binges and the sad state of the thirteen-year-old boy’s future and set about her chores. She ducked back outside to draw water to mop the floors, where mud from recent rains mottled the hardwood planks. Wouldn’t do a fig to have Miss Jenny’s floors so dirty. Not with all the highfalutin clients she served.

The motion of scrubbing the wood floors brought a song to her lips, and she sang low and mournful of a people in Bible days released from slavery of a different kind. She got to the second verse, when the two women emerged from the back room.

Miss Branson gravitated to the large mirror and gave a squeal of delight, punctuated by a little jig. Marylu couldn’t help but laugh.

“Careful there, Miss Branson. Those pins of Miss Jenny’s will poke you full of holes.”

“I’m getting married!” The young woman sighed as she brushed a hand down the spotless material.

“You sure are.” Miss Jenny crossed the room and knelt beside the young bride-to-be. She folded the material at the hem and secured it with a pin. “You’ll be a beautiful bride.”

Marylu caught the wistfulness in her employer’s tone and harrumphed. Jenny paused her pinning and the two exchanged a smile.

It was an old subject. One they had discussed and lamented many times. Marylu believed her employer should get married, to which Miss Jenny would turn the tables and try and convince Marylu to give marriage a chance.

Marylu’s answer was the same then as it was now. “No one’s going to see me popping over a man like grease in a hot skillet.” With that, she leaned forward to resume scrubbing, her knees cracking in protest to the abuse.

As her employer finished up with Miss Rosaleigh, Marylu scrubbed with vigor at the dried mud. She should have done this yesterday when it seemed every dainty-booted foot crossing the threshold held some chunk of muck to be ground underfoot, but she’d been too busy hemming skirts. Now she paid for the neglect by having to scrape extra hard at the crusty filth. Her back ached as she worked the stiff bristled brush. She stopped long enough to allow Miss Rosaleigh to float past and make her exit, doubting the girl even felt the floor beneath her feet.

“You know, Miss Jenny,” Marylu stoked the embers of the old argument, “that widower at the mill sure would be a good one for you. Don’t you want to be floatin’ around like the ones you stitch such fluff for?”

“Sally Worth has her eye on him already.”

Marylu recognized the resigned tone. Jenny McGreary was a plain woman, and older than most of marrying age at twenty-five, while Sally was much younger and very pretty. Little by little, Marylu had seen Jenny’s girlhood dreams of marriage and family wither.

Before she could gather her thoughts enough to say something comforting, the creak of the door’s hinges signaled another customer. The prospect of dainty, dirty boots getting ready to smear her clean floor made Marylu huff and sit back on her heels. She’d make sure this patron wiped her feet. But the form that appeared inside the door was not of feminine persuasion, and the booted feet were neither dainty nor clean.

The black man raised his hat and grinned down at her. His grizzled black hair, touched with gray, seemed to explode from his head, and she wondered how he managed to keep a hat on at all with such a springy mop. It was when her eyes lighted on the thick mud crusting his boots that Marylu’s normally stiff knees got some youthful spring back into them.

“Don’t know what you’re doing, but you’re not crossing my floor with those muddy boots.”

Miss Jenny headed their way, a dark frown, aimed at discouraging Marylu’s tongue, marring her features. Marylu knew if it weren’t for the fact she’d cared for the woman from the time she pinned cloth rectangles onto her bottom, and that their relationship had matured into friendship, Miss Jenny would have probably fired her long ago. “Really, Marylu, can’t you just greet our visitor?”

Marylu snorted. The man was someone she’d never laid eyes on, to be sure, but any courtesy Jenny’s admonition drummed up fled when the man lifted a booted foot and stared straight at her, a challenge in his dark eyes.

“You full of pepper, but you’ll land on your backside out this door if you set that dirty boot on my clean floor.”

Miss Jenny stopped at the edge of the wet floor to speak. “Can I help you?”

The customer’s gaze shifted, and he lowered his booted foot to the dry spot within the front door. He lifted his hands, palms up, then shrugged. His mouth opened then closed.

When he rolled his gaze to Marylu, the realization dawned on her slow and sure. She’d heard of people being deaf and unable to talk, but the man could obviously hear.

Without prompting, he opened his mouth, eyes rounding, a manic, evil gleam sharpening his gaze and turning his eyes almost black.

Miss Jenny gasped and took a step back.

Marylu watched the man closely. “He can’t talk,” she said for the benefit of her employer. Still, she took a step closer to Jenny to offer the woman her protection should the man be a lunatic after all. Best safe than a name in the
Greencastle Press’s
obituaries.

The man’s head bobbed in agreement to Marylu’s observation. He returned to his pantomime, hands raised, fingers like talons, the dark, coarse material of his shirt giving them a detached life of their own. The pale palms wrapped around his neck.

Miss Jenny’s cold hand grasped Marylu’s.

“He’s not crazy.” Marylu hoped mightily she was on target with that statement. “Watch him close. He’s telling his story.”

His eyes took on something akin to terror and desperation, as the hands seemed to bend him backward. One released his neck and hovered over his open mouth, making a quick slicing gesture. An awful gagging sound emanated from him.

Miss Jenny didn’t loosen her grip until the man’s hands went back to his sides and he straightened, his face once again emotionless.

Marylu felt weak at what she’d witnessed. “Your tongue was cut out,” she stated in a flat tone.

His nod made her stomach heave at the vileness of such a thing.

His eyes held a twinkle that sparked brighter. His gaze on her felt like hot sunshine after a cold rain.

Marylu felt warmth slide along her arms and across her chest, in a way she had never felt warmed. She broke away from those probing eyes and rubbed her stomach. Probably just indigestion from the plate of eggs she’d gobbled down that morning.