Read Online The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau - Free Book Online Page A

the middle of the afternoon William Howland found himself sitting alone in the dining room of the Washington Hotel. His elbow was propped on the long glass-littered table, his hand was holding his head up, and the walls were singing and zooming around his ears. He was watching Gregory Mason stagger through the door, guided by Oliver’s black arm.
    “Careful with him,” he shouted to Oliver. And then softer, to no one in particular: “Holds his likker right well, that fella. And who’d thought it?”
    William Howland took his fist from under his chin and turned his head carefully and slowly. He discovered that he wasn’t alone at all. Almost hidden by a row of bottles and jugs, Harry Armstrong dozed, head down on the table. “You poor son of a bitch,” William said aloud, “wake up.”
    Harry Armstrong did not even move or mumble. “Son of a bitch,” William said again as he looked around the room. The guests were gone, helped to their beds by teams of servants directed by Oliver. Except for one—William finally noticed him. In the far corner of the room someone slept on the floor. Face to the wall, he was covered with a grey blanket and there was a pillow under his head.
    Good for Oliver, William thought, Oliver and his boys. …
    William stood up carefully, holding the room steady around him. He walked slowly over and shook Harry Armstrong’s arm. “They gone,” he said.
    “Who?” Harry Armstrong pushed himself up, using both hands.
    “Who was here.”
    Armstrong looked at his watch. “Can’t see a damn thing.” He rubbed his eyes and squinted harder. “Past two. I’m going to bed.”
    “Harry,” William said, “who’s that on the floor there?”
    Harry Armstrong looked. “Can’t see his face.”
    Oliver came back. His white jacket was rumpled and stained. A button was pulled off, and the pocket ripped. The too heavy brilliantine on his hair had run down on his forehead and his neck. He scrubbed at it with a large blue handkerchief but he couldn’t seem to get it off.
    “You put the groom to bed?” William asked him.
    Oliver nodded. “I reckon everybody gone now.”
    Harry Armstrong chuckled and pointed. “You forgot him, Oliver.”
    Oliver looked at the sleeping huddled form with the pillow tucked neatly under its head. “You want me to move him?”
    Harry Armstrong stood up, gingerly. “See who it is.”
    Oliver walked over and peeped into the face. “Mr. Bannister.”
    William said: “He’s comfortable, let him be. I’m going for a swim.”
    Harry Armstrong thought a minute. “Me too.”
    So Oliver put an overcoat over his white jacket and followed them down to the foot of the street. He watched them shed their clothes and slide into the icy water of the Providence River. He turned up his collar and found a log to sit on, waiting patiently. A group of black children gathered around him, giggling.
    That evening, bathed and shaved and aching, they rode—all the men together, thirty-odd of them—to the Howland place for the wedding.
    In his crowded parlor, during the ceremony when John Hale, the Methodist minister, was pronouncing the familiar words in his very best manner, William’s eye focused on a swatch of green that hung directly over the portrait of his grandfather. He could have sworn that in the massed and twisted leaves he saw the unmistakable shape of poison ivy.
    Afterwards, bride and groom gone, Annie said to him: “It was the loveliest wedding I have ever seen.”
    And he answered: “Do you get poison ivy?”
    “For heaven’s sake, Willie … no.”
    “I saw some, all bound up with the others.”
    She gave him a quick smile, the sort of smile that he had not seen on her face since they had been very young children together. She winked at him too, a vague dipping of an eyelid. “It’s green like the others,” she said, “and we were running short.”
    That evening Annie giggled like a young girl, had far too much to drink, and sat at the piano and played and