A Partial Sun by Lawrence Reid Bechtel

Author:Lawrence Reid Bechtel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Boutique of Quality Books Publishing
Published: 2019-08-19T16:00:00+00:00

With a good night’s sleep I felt better, and I came through the shop door the next mornin’ firmly resolved.

“Well, look,” said Shady, “the one-handed cripple is back.”

But I paid his insult no mind and got down on my knees and looked over the tin scrap box still lying broken on the floor. It was sturdy, though, and not so badly damaged as I first thought, and workin’ slow with my bandaged hand, I tacked a few loose nails back in place and set it upright again. Then I scooted with it along the floor, pitchin’ back in all the tin scrap that had fallen out.

Shady laughed to see me. “I like the sight of you down there,” he said, dropping in five pieces, one at a time, very slowly. “Maybe now you will understand your proper station in life.”

As Charles helped me heft the scrap box back up onto the table, Mr. Bringhouse came over. “Set me to work again,” I begged.

He was skeptical, but I raised my bandaged hand and wiggled the last three fingers. “These work fine,” I said. Though it hurt, and Rachel no doubt would have told me not to, I then wiggled my forefinger and thumb. “These, too, almost.”

“I won’t accept shoddy work,” he said, “even if thou art injured.”

“Oh, you shall see no shoddy work from my hand, Mr. Bringhouse,” I said. “For I am not inclined to laziness, as some might think, and only want the chance to work hard and show my worth.”

He frowned at me a moment, then brought out his timepiece, and I felt his impatience as he told me I must move along in my learnin’, regardless of my hand, which I assured him I would. He reminded me that I risked infection, but I promised to be careful and change the dressing daily, as Miss Bringhouse instructed. Still he hesitated, timepiece in hand, so I just took hold of the shears with my good hand, managed with care to brace the tinsheet steady with my bandaged left hand, the tin sheet still spotted with my blood, and began cuttin’ honest and true along the curved and double curved lines, and even double curved lines turned back upon themselves that I had earlier marked out.

“You will never learn tinwork,” said Shady. “No nigger can.”

I put down the shears. “Then you needn’t worry,” I said. “I can be no threat to you.”

Mr. Bringhouse snapped his timepiece shut and went over to observe Little Will at work at his bench, then came back my way to Charles, and finally again to me. “Gracious,” he said, “will thee cut all my tin into curved lines?”

“Mr. Bringhouse,” I said, “set me to make something of purpose.”

He looked over the tin cuts I had made, picking up one piece of tin and then another, rubbing his thumb along the cut edge of a double curve. “Perhaps something simple.”

“Not too simple, I hope.”

He looked at me over the top of his spectacles, then went to his own bench in the far corner, plucked down something from a shelf, and brought this back.

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