“Yes, sir.”
“You’ll be able to go to school and learn a trade as long as you follow his rules, so you make sure you do. It might not be the best living conditions for you, but you’ll learn plenty from this man. He’s a man of few words, but you listen to everything he says.”
My daddy was right. Josiah Pinter was a man of few words, but every word he uttered was direct and to the point. “I know about you,” he said when my daddy was gone. “I know about you and your daddy. He never spoke it to me, but folks know, and if a man wants to do that sort of thing, that’s his business long as it doesn’t get in the way of mine. I’ve done a lot of business with your daddy, but you lay one eye on any one of my girls, I’ll have your hide, your daddy notwithstanding. That understood?”
I looked him straight in the eyes. “It’s understood.”
He nodded. “You smart as I hear you are, we ought to get along just fine.” Then he put me to work.
Now, my daddy was right about another thing: Josiah Pinter certainly did know his trade, and he wasn’t stingy in teaching it to me. I put in my morning hours of school each day, and the rest of the daylight hours I studied under Josiah Pinter. He worked me hard and he worked me long, and my school studying had to wait until the late hours after Josiah Pinter had retired for the night. I slept in the shed behind his house and I ate alone; but the man treated me fair. He was one of the best furniture makers around, and I learned what I was sent to learn. I figured I didn’t need to sit at his table.
I was a quick study, and I soon was making lamp tables and other small pieces of furniture. In fact, before I left Josiah Pinter’s tutorage, I could make just about anything. I had a knack for looking at something and figuring out how to put it together, whether I had been taught how to do it or not. I was still considered an apprentice, but folks said my work was of journeyman quality, and some even said it was more than that. I did well in my school studies too, even though I wasn’t decided on how I was going to put all my book learning to use. I was told I could teach or I could go into some kind of colored business, but the truth about the thing was that I wasn’t sure what I really wanted. I still had to figure that out.
Though my sleep was little with all the studying and work I had to do, I had no complaints about that; I didn’t need that much sleep and I was learning much, both in school and with the carpentry. What bothered me, though, was one of Josiah Pinter’s daughters—his middle daughter, girl called by the name of Jessie—and the way she was always looking at me and following me around when her daddy wasn’t near. Now, I was coming into my teenage years and this girl Jessie was doing the same, and even though her daddy had told her I was a colored boy, she seemed not to care.
“Doesn’t make sense to me,” she said. “You’re a person, I’m a person. Why can’t we be friends?”
I said nothing to that. I didn’t want to take the time to tell her.
When I went back home and Robert was there, I told him about Jessie and how she was always trying to talk to me, even though her daddy had said she shouldn’t.
“You think she’s trying to get you in trouble?” Robert asked. “You know, some girls do that.”
“No. No, I don’t think that,” I answered.
“Well, then, you just got to tell her what’ll happen to you if she doesn’t stop it,” advised Robert. “Tell her exactly what her daddy told you. That he’ll have your hide.”
I nodded but didn’t say anything.
Robert studied me. “Or maybe you like her talking to you?’
“She’s been the only friend I’ve made there.”
“Believe me,” said Robert, “last thing you need is a white female friend. Why, I’ve heard stories at school that’d make you puke. Some of those fellas love to talk about what their families have done to Negroes like they were talking about going fishing. One of those boys told me about how his daddy and kin caught a Negro near the outhouse when a white woman was in there. The Negro, he said he was just passing through the field, but the woman came out and said he was peeping at her through the boards, and you know they strung him up right then and there! That’s what they’ll do, Paul. You looking white won’t stop that, they know you got colored in you. That white boy, he bragged on hanging that man and he laughed about it too. That’s what they’ll do, all right, so, Paul, you be careful with that girl.”
I nodded. Robert was quiet a few moments, then said, “You know, I told you Christian and Percy Waverly go to school up there with me. They go along with the rest of those boys’ talk about colored folks.”