Brimstone and Lily (Legacy Stone Adventures) Read Free Page A

don’t look much like her. Guess I got Pa’s face. At least that’s what she tells me. I don’t recall him. Sure wish I could, though. “You could have said no.”
    “And then he’d be onstage right now, in a world of trouble with Mr. Ford. I did him a favor.”
    “And since you’re so considerate for your best friend, you’ll do him another. Go help with the wash…now. Then you’ll both beat those rugs.”
    I started to argue, but knew it would be useless. Jamming the peppermint stick in my mouth, I clumped out.
    “Don’t forget to give him half of that candy,” she called after me.
    Oh, a big one for honesty and fairness, my ma. She based everything she did or said on those ideas. Whether portions at dinner, kids’ games, or national affairs, she considered right more important than convenient . Even though Eddie didn’t really count as my real brother—Mr. Ford had found him on the street and let him live at the theatre—he got treated as such by us. And Ma had hired Romulus to help with odd jobs, paying him the same as a white man. Him being somewhat simple didn’t matter to her. As soon as Mr. Lincoln had freed all of Washington City’s slaves in April she’d made it a point to give a job to the first colored person who’d asked her. Didn’t care who knew it or who objected, neither. Of course, she expected the same from me, too.
    Me and Eddie spent a miserable hour wrestling with two dozen pair of pants. Boiling water, boiling lye, and boiling sun, combined with stirring what seemed like eleven tons of waterlogged trousers, made us woozy and weak. The sultry air could have almost drowned you trying to breathe it. Romulus helped out a bit, truth be told, or we’d likely have fainted. He had the kind of ‘strong’ you read about in fairy tales.
    Big old loyal Romulus. He’d come to Ford’s asking for a job, any job, the day he’d got his freedom papers in April. Ma hadn’t needed any help, but she told me that something about him made her feel safe, somehow. Faithful and brawny, he looked after us like a kindly uncle. Though sometimes he watched over me so careful that he resembled a sheepdog guarding his flock from wolves.
    After some time in the shade back of the theatre—and about a gallon of Ma’s lemonade—we beat the lobby rugs till we almost choked to death. The beaters made good pretend-swords, so we performed Macduff vs. Macbeth for Romulus, poor old Mad Molly, and a few scruffy alley cats. Eddie got to win that time—his last victory, come to think of it. Shaved head shining in the sun like a big buckeye, Romulus clapped his giant paws as he watched. Sitting in that odd way of his, upright on his toes with his hands between his knees, he looked like a happy old mutt, tongue lolling.
    Ma let us loose after chores, so long as we got back at five for supper. Dress rehearsal started at six and we had to help. I’d shift scenery and Eddie’d work with Ma and the costumes. That gave us over an hour. We ran west to the Potomac, my horrid boots left at home. Woo! My tootsies can breathe! We waved at the guards around the President’s House on the way. They were used to seeing us. Once Mr. Lincoln had even said hello while watching Willie ride his pony on the South Lawn. Willie had been the same age as us. The typhoid got him just four months before. Now the poor President didn’t come out much anymore.
    President Washington’s monument-to-be rose a ways to our left, a whitish mess that didn’t look like something dedicated to a great man. Seemed more like a gravestone. In fact, some kids we knew said it was haunted. Weird things happened there, they said. People would come out of it wearing clothes from long ago: Napoleon’s Gaulle, or the Middle Ages, or the Thirty Years War. We laughed, of course. ‘About as believable as the Headless Horseman’. But with the smell of the nearby sewage Canal smacking you in the face, you could believe it a half-built castle from Ivanhoe’s