Sweetsmoke Read Online Free PDF Page B

Miss Genevieve got herself a personal servant and Miss Anne
do, too—but Tempie, she been here a while and she know everythin 'bout the
place.
        From
the stairs, Pet caught Cassius's eye and made a more urgent nod toward Hoke's
study.
        Still
Cassius did not move.
        "Cassius?
Come on in here now," said Hoke.
        Cassius
entered the study. Hoke sat behind his desk, writing. Cassius noted that his
pen hand moved with more deliberation than usual.
        Cassius
knew that Hoke was not the tower of strength he had once been. In the past, his
wife would not have dared challenge him. Hoke nevertheless maintained the image
of authority in front of his servants. The calculated time spent writing was
meant to intimidate Cassius. But now that Cassius was here, he found himself in
no hurry to learn the bad news. He took this time to observe his old master.
Age and gravity crept in relentlessly, tugging at his neglected edges. Loose
skin draped off his jawbone, gray tufts spiked from the tops of his ears and
inner caverns, his eyebrows curled into his eyes, and the backs of his hands
wore a pattern of liver spots. At fifty-four, Hoke Howard may have had power,
but Cassius took no small satisfaction in his own relative youth, his physical
strength and the tautness of his skin. Time had squeezed and bruised and
softened Hoke as if he were an overripe pear.
        Cassius
examined the room. Once it had been a sitting room, but Hoke had chosen to make
it his office and the room had been transformed accordingly. Cassius had, in
fact, done the work. He remembered back, seven or eight years, to the months he
had spent in this room. He had built the wall of shelves. He had erected the
wainscoting and created the decorative interior casing for the windows. He had
built all of the furniture, particularly the great desk, as well as the chair
in which Hoke now sat. The old man had a fondness for wooden boxes of different
sizes in which he stored personal items. A low rectangular box held paper
alongside a taller, more narrow box with writing instruments. On the shelves
were boxes appropriate for chewing tobacco, snuff, and his decorative pipes
which Cassius had never seen Hoke smoke. There were boxes for medicines and
candies, and some that were either empty or held items about which Cassius did
not know. Cassius had made many of the boxes, some simple, others elaborate,
but the most ornate boxes had been purchased during Hoke's travels. His eyes
moved around the room. Even the picture frames were his work.
        Behind
Hoke was the oil portrait of his wife, Ellen Corey Howard, in younger days. The
painter had captured an expression in her eyes Cassius did not recognize, and
it made the portrait appear false to him. Cassius had also not remembered her
ever being so pretty. He did not consider that the artist had shrewdly
idealized her; only that the artist may have been mediocre or worse, blind. On
the opposite wall, so placed for Hoke's pleasure, was the portrait of his sons
John-Corey and Jacob. John-Corey was thirteen in the portrait, Jacob ten. The
portrait of his daughters was in another area of the house.
        "Well,
Cassius," said Hoke, looking up. "Did you finish work on the
gate?"
        No
sir.
        "No,"
said Hoke thoughtfully. The issue of the gate seemed to hold little meaning to
him, and Cassius was surprised at how quickly he abandoned it. Hoke Howard
rubbed the root of his nose between his eyebrows with his left thumb and
forefinger. Cassius had seen him perform this gesture many times, and
remembered the same gesture made by his son.
        "I
do not know how things will turn out, I simply do not." Hoke looked not at
Cassius but at the space beside him, as if he spoke to someone else. "What
will be my legacy, with my son gone to war and showing no inclination to take
his natural place at Sweetsmoke? The government raids our essentials to supply
the troops, they appropriate the crop before