Glory over Everything: Beyond The Kitchen House(14)

“Never?” I ask.

“Never!”

“What if there is a house fire?” I ask.

“Then you come for me,” Robert says.

“And what if you is burned up?” I ask.

He gives me a sigh. “I suppose at that point, you may knock on the door and shout, ‘Fire!’?”

“I don’t think that’s what I’d say. I think that I’d say, ‘Mr Burton! Mr. Burton, you best stop your private meeting, because Robert is burnt up and the house is on fire.’?”

“You could talk like this all day, couldn’t you?” he asks.

“You mean about a fire?” I ask, but he don’t answer me no more.


THEN COMES A DAY I walk into Malcolm’s room and Mr. Burton and Miss Caroline is caught up in kissing. I’m so surprised that I just stand there until Mr. Burton sees me.

“Pan!” Mr. Burton says, like I do something wrong.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Burton, I come in here to clean Malcolm’s cage,” I say, but it’s something to watch Miss Caroline’s white face turnin’ red.

“Will he tell Robert and your housekeeper?” she asks Mr. Burton, like I don’t hear her.

“You know this is a private matter, Pan, that you must not speak to anyone of this?” Mr. Burton says.

“I don’t say nothing,” I say.

“Are you certain he . . .” she whispers loud enough for me to hear.

“Pan is most reliable, aren’t you, Pan?” Mr. Burton says.

“I know how to be discreet!” I say.

Mr. Burton’s eyebrows go up and then he gives me a smile. “Discreet, eh? We shall count on that, Pan,” he says.


FOR MONTHS AFTER, Mr. Burton is whistling like never before, and I know why but I keep my mouth shut even when I hear Robert and Molly talkin’ almost every night at supper, both thinkin’ that I don’t know what’s goin’ on.

Then, all of a sudden, everything stops. Mr. Burton stops teaching his art classes and Miss Caroline don’t come to the house no more. There’s no more whistling and Mr. Burton spends most of his time closed up in his study.

One day I go to Malcolm’s room with an apple that Molly gives me from the cold storage room.

“Hey, Malcolm,” I say, “look what I got for you!” and when I toss the apple in the air and go to catch it, I bump into Mr. Burton, who is sitting quiet in a chair and looking down at his feet.

Malcolm flies over to me and I make him talk before he gets the apple, but this is the first time the bird’s yapping don’t get Mr. Burton to smile. I study the man for a while, then I say what he always says to me when I got trouble. “Mr. Burton,” I say, “is there anything that you got on your mind?” I know he’s goin’ on a trip down into North Carolina to paint some birds, and I’m wonderin’ if it would make him feel better if I was to go along to help him out. I’m about to say so when he looks up at me. “How old are you now, Pan?” he asks.

“I’m twelve,” I say.

“You have always been wise beyond your years,” he says. Mr. Burton is the kind of man who needs to think before he talks, so I stay quiet and wait on him. “I was thirteen when I first met your father,” he says. “Has Henry ever told you about our first meeting? He saved my life, you know.”

My eyes open wide. In all these years he’s never talked to me about this, and my daddy won’t say nothing about it, either, even when I ask. “How did he do that?” I say.

Mr. Burton puts his hands through his hair, making it go curly—not like mine, where it stands straight out if Robert don’t keep it cut. “I’ll tell you about my early years another time. For now I have too many things to sort out. It seems I’ve made a mess of things.”

“Did you make a mess with Miss Caroline?” I ask.

He nods. “I’m afraid so,” he says.

I try hard to think of something to say. “My mama always said, ‘As long as you tell the truth, you got that to stand on.’?”

Mr. Burton gives me a quick glance, then looks out the window. “Well, you’ve certainly hit on the problem.”

I can see he’s done talking, so I go back and finish cleaning up after Malcolm, then I hear Molly calling and I set out to find her.


FOR A COUPLE of weeks I keep waitin’ for Mr. Burton to perk up, because I don’t like to see him so quiet. He was never like this before. I keep tryin’ to think of what to do, until one morning I remember how, before Miss Caroline was comin’ around, he was always talkin’ to me about gettin’ a parrot with green feathers.

“Where you gonna find one like that?” I asked.

“They bring them in on the ships,” he said.

I never been down to the docks. Robert and my daddy said for me to stay away because of slave catchers down there. But I’m old enough now to watch out for myself. Besides, my daddy’s been talking all these years about gettin’ caught by slave catchers and nothin’s happened to him.

I got the money that Mr. Burton gives me, but I don’t know how much a new bird is. I’m hopin’ I got enough with what Molly gives me.





CHAPTER SEVEN


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