The Seeker by Ann H. Gabhart Read Free Book Online Page B

waited, and finally as if Aunt Tish could feel Charlotte’s eyes on her, she sighed and turned around. “I don’t know if’n that’s where he really went or why he would want to.” She hesitated again.
    Charlotte lifted her shoulders in a show of unconcern. “It doesn’t really matter to me where he went. I was simply curious about what he might be sketching next.”
    “Uh-huh,” Aunt Tish said with one peaked eyebrow that showed she was seeing right through what Charlotte was saying. “Looks to me like as how he done caught your eye. Guess that’s why it’s so odd him askin’ the way to Mr. Edwin’s place.” “Edwin’s?” Charlotte didn’t even attempt to hide her surprise. She shifted uneasily in her chair. He’d promised not to kiss and tell.
    “I couldn’t figure him wantin’ to be drawin’ Mr. Edwin’s long skinny face, but then I couldn’t figure him wantin’ to draw my round black one neither. I overheared him talkin’ to Willis as he was leavin’. He was wantin’ a horse. Course when Willis come in later for his breakfast, he was tellin’ how the man was full of questions on how to get to the Shakers’ town too. Askin’ all manner of questions about what Willis knew about them and the way they lived and such.”
    “What’d Willis tell him?”
    “Well, you know Willis. He ain’t much for talkin’ to white folks. Says the less said, the better. He just tol’ him all he knew was they had some mighty fine workhorses.”
    Charlotte played with one of the tarts on her plate, breaking edges off it but not putting them in her mouth.
    Aunt Tish sat back down and reached across the table to touch her arm. “Somethin’ botherin’ you, Miss Lottie?”
    “Edwin says he wants to go to the Shakers.”
    “I knowed it. Mattie tol’ me so some weeks ago. Says that Shaker man is in and out of the house over there like as how it was his.”
    Mattie was Edwin’s longtime housekeeper. “What’s she think about it?”
    Aunt Tish pulled her hand back and wrapped it around her cup. “She ain’t upset.” She stared straight at Charlotte. “No way she could be. Folks join the Shakers, they has to set their people free. Them Shakers don’t abide with slaveholdin’.”
    “Or marrying either.”
    “You speakin’ the truth there.”
    The bell in the dining room tinkled and Aunt Tish pushed herself up out of her chair. “Sounds like the Massah’s wantin’ his bacon. You goin’ out there with ’em?”
    “Not today, Aunt Tish. If Papa asks, you can tell him I’ve already eaten.”
    “There’s little truth in that,” Aunt Tish said as she eyed the tarts still on Charlotte’s plate. “You gonna waste away to nothin’, chile.”

6
    Edwin Gilbey wasn’t home. Off to the Shaker village, according to the servant who met Adam in the driveway to hold his horse. The man had the biggest smile on his face as any Negro Adam had seen since he got to Kentucky. When Adam asked if he could sketch his picture holding the horse’s head, the man’s smile got even wider. He was missing a couple of teeth.
    “Ain’t nobody ever wanted to use up no pencil markings on the likes of me.” The man ran a hand through the fuzz of gray hair on his head as the horse snuffled his shoulder. “You any good at it?”
    “No Michelangelo, but I do a fair likeness.” Adam opened his pad to the sketch of the senator’s cook and turned it around where the man could see it.
    “Well, I’ll be if Latisha Sparrow ain’t a-starin’ up at me off’n that paper plain as day. I reckon if she let you draw her, won’t be no harm in you drawin’ my old face too.” He tilted his chin up a bit the way he’d surely seen white men’s portraits posed.
    Adam turned over to a blank page and made some quick marks. “What’s your name?”
    “Redmon.”
    “Last name or first?” Adam asked.
    “Last name, first name. All the name I needs.”
    “Well, tell me, Redmon. Are you always this happy?”
    “Ain’t no good