Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker Read Free Book Online

“Oh, boy ,” his signal to spring into genuinely delighted or, at the least, concerned action. What a nightmare, thought Suwelo, a hellish nightmare. And how oddly moving it was that Uncle Rafe loved food and wine and dancing (he danced beautifully into old age) in his house—the spacious, uncluttered digs of a stone bachelor, or so Suwelo had thought—with family and friends, and could sit and tell of his days on the railroad and not only laugh himself, but have everybody else laughing too.
    And the depth of the laughter! The way it seemed to go so far down inside it scraped the inside bottoms of the feet. No one laughed like that anymore. Nothing seemed funny enough. When his uncle and his guests finished laughing, they’d seemed lighter, clearer; even their activities appeared to be done more gracefully. It was as if the laughing emptied them, and sharing it placed whatever was laughable and unbearable in its proper perspective.
    How he wished he could laugh like that now over the mess he’d made of his life with Fanny. And the cowardice he’d shown in his relationship to Carlotta. Fanny loved to laugh, flaunting the irresistible gap between her front teeth, as if she still lived in Africa, where it was distinctly a sign of beauty; a gap that sometimes pinched his tongue. But he could not imagine being included in the laughter, now. His would be the place of the white miser, the one who exploited; or of the children and their grateful mothers, who nonetheless never saw. He imagined Fanny and Carlotta laughing together—at him.
    One morning an ancient gentleman, whom Suwelo recognized as one of the two who had attended his uncle Rafe’s postcremation ceremony, rang the bell. He stood there in workshirt, old pants and boots, appearing to dodder. After a minimum of pleasantries—“Nice day. Warm up after a while. How you?”—he announced he’d come to “cut the yard.”
    Without a word Suwelo led him through the house and out the back door. Once in the yard he watched as the old fellow unlocked the shed and took out a lawn mower as old as everything else about the house. This he proceeded to push back and forth over the tiny lawn, snipping off the heads of the tender blades of grass in great stateliness and serenity. Suwelo was impressed.
    “My name’s Suwelo,” he said when the old man had finished, put away the mower, raked up the grass, and returned the tools to the shed. Suwelo stood beside him as he ran his hands under the water from the outside faucet and used a large yellowing handkerchief to wipe the perspiration from his face.
    “I know who you are,” said the old man. “I knew your father and mother. I knew you as a boy, before you changed your name. ‘Louis, Jr.,’ we used to call you. Or ‘Little Louis.’” He sighed. “You wouldn’t remember me. My name’s Jenkins. Harold D., for Davenport. Hal, for short.” He smiled. “The children always called me ‘Mr. Hal.’ Pleased to meet you.” He stuck out a moist hand, which Suwelo took, marveling at its smoothness and fragility—the hand of someone who worked two or three hours a month now, at most.
    Suwelo offered Mr. Hal a cup of coffee, which was accepted. Mr. Hal sat comfortably at the kitchen table, as if he were used to sitting there. Indeed, when he shifted in his chair and felt the slight unevenness of its legs, he gave the kind of exasperated grunt one gives when a piece of furniture has aggravated one unceasingly for a number of years.
    “Mind if I switch?” he asked, already rising from the annoying chair. “That one ...”
    “Did you know my uncle long?” asked Suwelo.
    “All his life, just about. We was boys together down on the Island. Both of us come from furniture-making peoples. Went off to World War I together, the Great War. Married ...” There he stopped. Looked at his shoe.
    He was a rather small man. His head was longish; his hair, that strange shade of gray that seems to be white hair turning black again,