Abraham Lockwood’s mother died of weariness a few weeks after Rhoda was put away. Weariness, some shame, uselessness, hard work, an uninspiring future, a too demanding past, and, on the death certificate, quinsy. It was not an easy death, to strangle slowly and look into the eyes of husband and son and read so plainly their wish to have the laborious breathing come to an end. Within a week Moses Lockwood had pleaded successfully with Adelaide and Abraham to move into the red brick box, and there, in 1873, their son was born. He was called George Bingham Lockwood, in honor of the Governor of the Commonwealth, who was a close friend of Levi Hoffner’s.
FIVE
WHEN George Lockwood was about five years old and his brother Penrose an infant, their grandfather’s health was bad. He had become so enfeebled that he seldom made the effort to walk the few squares to his office in Dock Street, and business matters that required his attention were taken care of at his desk in the den in the red brick box. All of his day was spent in the house or in the yard. He was up early in the morning, and the servants who were hired soon after his wife’s death took turns rising at five o’clock to get him his tea. On fair days he would be out in the yard, carefully dressed in the clothes he might wear for a business day, and walking a few steps at a time, from rose bush to elm tree, sometimes touching the petals of a rose, sometimes studying the tree from ground to topmost branch, pausing to rest in the rough-hewn oaken chairs and benches that were strategically distributed about the yard. On days when rain or snow or bitter cold kept him in the house he would walk about from room to room, stopping to study a statuette, a bit of porcelain, and often colliding with a servant on her cleaning rounds. The household was now a busy place, with Abraham and Adelaide and their two young children, and the two servants and nurse, and a coachman in and out of the kitchen; and yet wherever Moses Lockwood went in the house he would bring quiet with him; his entrance into a room would suspend conversations and the people would wait respectfully for him to tell them what he wanted; but most often there was nothing he wanted and he would take their continuing silence for the dismissal that indeed it was.
Moses Lockwood did not like the coachman, Rafferty, who made him feel on visits to the stable that he was spying. Moses Lockwood was thus deprived of the company of the horses, of which he was not over-fond but which were at least living beings and would hear him if he said a few words. Abraham Lockwood, the only survivor of the four human beings with whom Moses had passed most of his life, was off in a hurry every morning, frequently gone for the day, fairly frequently gone for two or three days with his new interests in Philadelphia. Adelaide Lockwood, a pleasant little piece, had the children and the household on her mind, and she would almost never spare a few minutes just to sit down and converse. The servants were a pair of colored women, sisters, from Richterville, and they had a way of looking at a white man who conversed overlong that told plainly and embarrassingly their suspicions of him, although he was sixty-five years of age and weak in the knees. There was only one person in the household who had any time for Moses Lockwood, and that was his grandson, George. And what with the new baby and his mother’s preoccupation with it, and his father’s being engrossed in his business, the boy and his grandfather were mutually interdependent for stimulating company. The old man told stories, semi-inventions out of his early past, of which the boy soon had several favorites and in which, in the retelling, he would correct the old man’s departures from the original versions. (“Grandpa, you told me the Indian had a rifle, but before you told me he had a tommyhawk. Then you shot him.”) The differing versions and the boy’s corrections made the storytelling sessions into a game, and the old man began deliberately to introduce new details into the basic stories to challenge the boy’s alertness. Momma was Momma, Poppa was Poppa, but Grampa was Grampa, the storyteller with the funny ear and fascinating spitting and interesting sore on his left temple. (“Did the bullet go through your ear and then they cut off the bottom part? Or did the bullet shoot it all off?”) Sometimes they would go to the privy together, the old man sitting on the elevated hole, the boy on the lower, smaller one. The boy would finish his business quickly and watch while his grandfather strained and grunted. (“Wait outside, boy, this is going to take a little time.”) The boy would pick a capful of cherries, which the old man could eat with him. The old man could not bite into an apple, but he would peel one with his pocket knife, in a long continuous curl, and cut the apple up into small bits that they would share. Always there was something to talk about when they were together. (“Why don’t you want me to touch your sore? Does it hurt? Is that from a bullet, too, Grampa? Grampa, let me see your teeth. Did you have to buy your teeth when you were little?”) The old man taught the boy about money (“This is a penny. Here’s one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten pennies. All these pennies are worth one of these. One of these will buy as many sourballs as all these pennies.”) and a little bit about flowers (“Never twist them off, cut them off with a scissors or they won’t grow again.”) and some American history (“Mr. Lincoln was shot because he made John Wilkes Booth give up his slaves.”).
Because of their companionship the boy was on his grandfather’s side during the worst fight he had ever witnessed in the household. His mother started the fight. “Mr. Lockwood, when are you going to be as good as your word and tear down the wall?” said his mother.
“As long as there’s a Bundy alive—”
“The last Bundy died two years ago, and the wall is still up yet,” said Adelaide Lockwood.
“Well, don’t hurry me, young lady.”
“Two years is time aplenty. You promised you’d tear it down.”
“I don’t remember no promise. I said we’d talk about it.”
“Mr. Lockwood, that’s a falsehood. You’re prevaricating.”
“Call me a liar and be done with it, why don’t you?”
“If the boy wasn’t present—George, run out and play.” The boy, trained to obedience, left the room but stayed in the hall outside the den. “Now, Mr. Lockwood, either that wall comes down inside of the next six months or we move out of this house.” Adelaide was getting Dutchier by the second: “We moo otta this hahs,” was the way she pronounced the threat.
“My son won’t move.”
“There is where you’re wrong, Mr. Lockwood. Abraham wants the wall down as much as I do. I won’t have my children raised in such a penitentiary with a prison wall around it. Now mind, you listen. Six months, Mr. Lockwood.”
“Who’s going to pay to have the wall torn down and them bricks carted away?”
“With my own money it won’t cost you.”
“There’s better things you could do with your money.”
“I don’t take orders how I spend my own money, Mr. Lockwood. Such as I could build a new house and take my boys and my husband and let you sit behind your wall.”
“Tear it down and be damned to you.”
“Will you order the contractor?”
“I’ll order the contractor. And I’ll pay the money.”
“Mr. Lockwood, I’m not a mean person, but I don’t like my boys growing up in such a penitentiary. They make jokes about my boy George, and they’ll make jokes about the baby too.”
“I never heard any jokes about my grandson.”
“You never see anybody any more. But they say is my boy like you-know in the Insane.”
“Not a mean person, you call yourself, but you say a thing like that.”