Chapter Twenty-Four #2
In the glow of the gas lamp, he rolled a peanut between his fingers. “I didn’t want you to worry. Or . . . hope.” He let out
a breath and shook his head. “Anyway, nothing came of it. Once again, we were told an operation would kill us both.”
I could hear the anguish beneath his words. He had allowed himself to believe he might be free of his brother. Now he had to live with the certainty that his fate was not his own and never would be.
The winter of 1851 brought ice storms that encased tree branches in glass and turned the roads slick and treacherous. During
one such spell of bitter weather—on a Sunday night, the last of their stay, after two days trapped inside my house—Eng and
Chang chose to argue about the tobacco crop.
“We should’ve sold in September,” Chang said for the third time, jabbing at the fire with a poker. Sparks leapt up the chimney.
“But no, your husband insisted we wait for a better price.” He glanced sideways at me as I mended a shirt by the window.
I kept my eyes on the stitches, trying to stay out of range. I was used to making myself small in the shadow of their conflict.
“The price would’ve been better,” Eng replied evenly, “if Henderson hadn’t flooded the market with inferior leaf.”
He was right. Henderson’s west field was rocky and poor, yet he’d still sent cartloads of spindly, thin-veined tobacco to
market, dragging down prices for everyone.
“And you should’ve anticipated that. You’ve known him for a decade.”
“You’ve known him just as long, brother.”
Snow piled against the windows. My eight-month-old baby, Patrick, was asleep in a cradle near the hearth, covered by the patchwork
quilt I’d made for Katie when she was an infant. The older children were upstairs with Grace, half of them fighting winter
colds. I pushed my needle through the heavy cotton, trying to concentrate on my task.
“We lost four hundred dollars because of your stubbornness,” Chang said.
“We lost it because of Henderson’s dishonesty,” Eng replied.
My thread knotted. I bit off the end with more force than necessary and rethreaded the needle. “Perhaps,” I offered, “you might resume this conversation when you return to business matters tomorrow.” When you return to Addie’s, I meant.
Both men ignored me.
“If we’d accepted Colonel Whitaker’s first offer—”
“Whitaker is a scoundrel, fattening himself on others’ misfortune.”
“Better the devil you know.”
“Better no devil at all.”
Outside, ice cracked from a branch and clattered onto the roof. At this point, I was convinced they’d go on like this until
the thaw.
I set down my mending. “I believe I’ll check on the children,” I said to no one in particular and left the room.
Upstairs, Grace was pouring a drop of molasses into a cup of horehound tea at Stephen’s bedside. She stirred it with a spoon
and handed it to him. His face puckered as he swallowed. We could hear the distant murmur of the brothers’ voices, still raised
in dispute—Eng’s measured cadence, Chang’s sarcastic retorts.
“How is this boy?” I touched his forehead with the back of my hand. Still warm but no longer alarming.
“Fever’s coming down,” Grace said. “The mustard plaster helped.” She gave me a look. “It’s noisy down there.”
“Two roosters in a pen.”
“Two roosters who can’t go to separate corners,” she said.
I lingered longer than I needed to, moving from bed to bed to straighten Katie’s bedcovers, fluff Julia Ann’s pillow, wipe
James’s nose, postponing my return to the parlor. Eventually, all four of them drifted to sleep.
In the shadowed hallway, I paused, reluctant to rejoin the fray.
“You never listen,” Chang was saying. “Not about the tobacco price, not about the inventory. Not about the proper way to break
that new colt.”
“I know what I’m doing. The colt is coming along fine,” Eng said.
“It nearly trampled Christopher!”
“That boy needs to learn to get out of the way.”
I leaned against the wall. Just one more day of this—of Chang’s scattershot anger and Eng’s curt dismissals.
I took a breath and stepped back into the parlor. Chang sat with his arms crossed, his body angled as far from Eng as their
shared ligament allowed. Eng, hunched over a ledger on the table in front of him, was writing in swift, slanted strokes.
“The children are resting comfortably,” I told Eng.
He looked up. “Good. How’s Stephen?”
“Improving.” I resumed my seat by the window and took up my mending.
After several minutes of strained silence, Chang shifted in his seat. “I need a drink.”
“You’ve had two,” Eng said, his pen moving across the page.
Chang gave a mirthless laugh. “But who’s counting.”
“I am. And you should be.”
“ ‘Should. Should.’ ” Chang mimicked Eng’s voice.
“Grow up, Chang.”
“It’s always about my drinking with you. You’re a scold.”
“One of us has to be an adult.”
Chang turned to me, drawing me into the fray. “This man is my jailer, Sallie. Am I not entitled to a whiskey after a long
day?”
I knew what he was doing—trying to make me his ally. And I knew I shouldn’t encourage him. But in that moment, I felt a pang
of sympathy. How exhausting it must be to share every moment of your life with someone who disapproves of you! To feel that
judgment against your skin like a tight garment you can’t remove. I understood his desire to carve out a small, private freedom,
even if all it gave him was a hangover the next day.
“It’s not my place to say,” I replied carefully.
“See?” Eng’s mouth was set in a line that suggested not just disapproval, but moral superiority. “Sallie agrees with me.”
“I said it’s not my place to say. I didn’t say I agree with you,” I said, nettled by his presumption.
Eng looked at me with surprise.
Chang’s expression shifted too—a glimmer of curiosity, perhaps even respect.
Eng closed the ledger with a clap and withdrew into silence.
I’m not sure what came over me, but I rose from my chair, crossed to the drinks table, and poured a measure of whiskey into
a crystal glass. I held it out to Chang.
“Sallie!” Eng said.
Chang laughed—a sound I hadn’t heard from him in weeks. A genuine laugh. He accepted the glass. “Why, thank you.”
“You’re welcome, Chang.”
He raised the glass. “Cheers.”
For a moment I thought Eng might retreat again into rigid dignity. Instead, he gave a shrug. “To hell with it. I’ll have a
whiskey too.”
I poured a glass for him and a goblet of sherry for myself.
As the fire settled and the storm pressed hard against the windows, the room softened around us. Chang sipped his drink, savoring
it rather than gulping it down, as had become his habit. “Let’s tell Sallie about the time you tried to impress that ambassador’s
daughter in Milan,” he said.
Eng groaned. “Please don’t.”
I glanced up from my stitching. “Now I’m intrigued.”
“Another time,” Chang said. “When my brother is less able to interrupt.”
The clock struck nine. The fire had burned down to embers. I added a log and poked it until the flames caught. Snow piled
halfway up the windows, a heavy drift clinging to the panes. Wind moaned around the eaves.
“I suppose I should check on the children again,” I said, gathering our empty glasses.
As I reached for his, Chang caught my wrist. The gesture was so unexpected I nearly dropped the tray.
“I want to apologize,” he said. “It’s inexcusable for us to argue like this in your home. Especially when you’re tending to
sick children.” He ran a hand through his hair. “It’s this weather. Being confined.”
“I know,” I said. “I understand.”
For a moment our eyes met, and the barriers between us seemed to thin. We both knew it wasn’t the weather, but the fiction
served us both.
By morning, the tension would return. Chang would be surly over breakfast, Eng would be exasperated, and I’d be caught in
the middle. The snow would melt, the roads would clear, and the brothers would return to Addie’s house, our lives resuming
their familiar pattern.
But for now, in the hush of a winter storm, the three of us had found a moment of peace. A small clearing in a dense forest.