As the wind rustled against his dilapidated two-story shed, George, who was Lawrence County’s best blacksmith, worked to put the finishing touch on a wrought iron gate that a wealthy insurance executive ordered for his antebellum home. Robert, his whiskey-swilling octogenarian friend, lumbered into the shed, exhausted after fighting the fierce March wind.
Noticing that George rubbed his hands together to warm them up, Robert handed a silver flask filled with whiskey to George and said, “That should warm you up.”
While clutching the flask, George said, “When did you start drinking?” He paused, then added, “Never mind, probably when you woke up.”
Robert assented with a couple of nods.
George felt the engraving on the flask, mindlessly looked at it briefly, and then took a long pull on the whiskey. “This some good stuff. Where’d you get it?” George said while evincing the strong taste of the whiskey by grimacing, revealing yellow-stained teeth that matched the color of his skin.
“Secret recipe,” Robert muttered.
“I heard you. It won’t be secret for long after I beat it out of you.”
“You try and I cut your throat with this here rusty knife,” Robert said, holding up the knife in a trembling hand.
“I was kidding, old man.”
“You’d be wise not to mess with this old man.” George rolled his eyes at Robert, who was a waif and bent over from age. He had a pair of coal eyes that were the only external signs of a crafty mind within. And he combined a defiantly idiosyncratic temperament with a universal approachability. Robert knew where people’s skeletons lie in town, and George liked imbibing all the gossip George served him.
George looked at the engraving on the flask again, a bit more carefully. “Looks like a man with a missing arm. What do the letters mean?”
“Don’t know. Wondered that myself.”
“You mean Uncle Remus don’t know?” George asked, mocking him.
Robert was slapped with the Uncle Remus moniker because he loved to tell stories. George loved to hear Robert’s parodies of slave plantation life. He particularly liked hearing Robert’s story about how Old Man Buchanan shot his wife in the rear end while she was bending down to retrieve something in the field. The way Robert told it, Buchanan mistook her rear end for a sow’s. Old Man Buchanan blamed the mistake on his failing vision. “It was such a wide target, I just knew I couldn’t miss,” Buchanan told Robert. “Buchanan’s old lady made him sleep in the barn with the pigs for a week.”
George moved the flask toward and away from his eyes to find the right distance to see the engraving. “It’s hard to make out. I see a letter A.” He squinted to refocus his eyes. “That look like U or O.” He turned the flask over and said, “Now I can see these letters, TB.”
“What does TB mean?” George asked.
“Don’t know. This flask been with me for at least five years. Never really paid it no mind. I found it outside the shed one day. I just liked what I keep inside.”
“Got any tobacca, Uncle Remus?”
“Only the best: Prince Albert.”
“I need some for my pipe,” George said.
Robert removed a large packet of tobacco from his vest pocket. He scraped a dollop onto a nearby table.
“I need more than that,” George said.
“People in hell want ice water,” Robert countered.
Robert relented and scraped some more tobacco on the table. George packed his pipe with the tobacco, lit it a few times, then blew a smoke circle.
With his corncob pipe dangling from his mouth, George mumbled, “What you say wrong with Miss Tilla? She ain’t been the same for a long time.”
“Yeah, you right,” Robert acknowledged. “Some say she ain’t forgiven herself for what happened to her boy, Claude.”
“What happened?” George asked.
“Ever since Claude disappeared, Tilla ain’t been right. Every so often, she’ll walk miles around town looking for him, calling his name. One day she walked too far, got lost, and did not return home for a day. A passerby found her sleeping outside of a barn. He gave her something to eat and helped her get home. Some say Claude had consumption and just passed out in a field somewhere. Some say he met his doom by looking cross at a white woman.”
“He was just a boy,” George said.
“Don’t matter. It’s 1920, we still ain’t free. May never be free,” Robert said.
“What do John and the kids think?” George asked.
“Don’t know the answer to that one.”
“Want some more of this here whiskey?” Robert asked.
“I really shouldn’t be drinking this hooch; doctor say it ain’t too good for my condition.”
“The doctor don’t know about my secret recipe,” Robert exclaimed proudly. “I guess I’m about eighty-five. Whiskey’s got something to do with it.”
It was weighing on George’s mind. He needed help. “Robert, my woman’s pregnant. She can’t go to no hospital around here. The midwife we once used moved; don’t know where. You know everybody. Who’d you recommend?”
“I’ll take a look at her,” Robert said chuckling.
“You won’t go near my woman, dirty old man.”
“Unless she got something no other woman got, I ain’t interested. I’ve seen plenty trim. I got twenty kids,” he vaunted.
“Yeah, by twenty different women,” George replied.
“You want my help, Robert?”
George’s silence indicated his assent. “Then watch your mouth.” He paused, then added: “They call her Minnie P. She can be found in Birmingham. She may can do it. Make sure the price is right.”