Gabriel's Story Read Online Free PDF

a moment, then continued collecting the spoons and bowls in one big kettle. “I spent near ten years working in your daddy’s funeral parlor. That ain’t no work to love either, living off the dead.” Gabriel’s eyes snapped at her, but Eliza stopped his words before the boy uttered them. “I hear you, Gabriel. I know your father had bigger plans for you than this, but things ain’t come to pass quite that way. Just settle your mind to the fact that we’re here in Kansas and live with it. I know your father wouldn’t’ve had nothing to do with this, but he’s gone.”
    Gabriel crossed his arms and stood with his legs set wide apart, although there was something nervous even in this defiant stance, something of the child playing the adult. “If you know what he’d’ve thought, why you spurning him?”
    â€œThat was never my intention. Anyway, it’s not your place to judge me for your father.” She scooped up the last bowl and dropped it in the pot. Her eyes flicked up toward Gabriel, but only for a second. The glance seemed to affect her. She paused in her work, and a melancholy frown wrinkled her brow. She set both her hands on the table and leaned her weight on the unstable boards. “You were special to your father. You know that, don’t you? More so than Ben, and don’t ask me if that’s right. He never could get enough of you, and he always did see all of his hopes and dreams growing in you. That’s why you cherish him so. And I’m thankful for it. But Gabriel, there was no great love between him and me. He chose me because he figured I looked good on his arm and was educated enough not to embarrass him and his kin. But he never loved me, and his family never cared for me either. Yes, they’re prosperous for black folks, but they got no soul, Gabriel.”
    â€œLike Solomon’s got soul?” he asked, the words blunt and cold, less a question than an accusation.
    â€œYes, that’s just what I mean. I loved Solomon first, if you have to know. Way back, way back and way south, when I was somebody’s property. But I got sold away and found my way to your father and he made his offer and I took it, but I never did forget my soul. I never did forget Solomon. When your father passed I sent for him, wrote him and told him if he wasn’t married already he could come up and I’d be his wife.”
    Gabriel’s jaw dropped. “You asked him?”
    Eliza nodded. She slipped her hand into an old quilted mitten, lifted a pot of hot water from the fire, and poured it over the dishes.
    â€œHe came out with my daddy’s money, and this is all he got for it?”
    â€œThere’s no crime there. What’s mine is Solomon’s and what was your father’s became mine. That’s all there is to that. Fact that things here is primitive ain’t nobody’s fault. We just have to get through it. And the fact that we’re here is just a fact, and you can see that plain as anybody else.” With that, she made to lift the pot up and move it. “Anyway, this land may be better’n you think. Just give it some time.”
    â€œYou know what’s gonna happen, don’t you?”
    â€œI can’t say that I do. Never had that gift.”
    â€œWe gonna work ourselves dumb for nothing. You gonna put me to work out there for nothing. We will go back East, only we’ll go back broke and with nothing to show for it.”
    Eliza rested her hands on her hips and looked at her son with a skeptical grin. “Is that right? That’s the way you see it? And that’s why you don’t aim to do any work to make sure we do succeed? That what you’re saying?”
    Gabriel rocked forward on the balls of his feet. “Hell, no, that’s not what I’m saying. I’ll work. I’ll work like nobody else here. I’m just saying what I think.”
    â€œAll