Helena Clare Pittman, one of the Center’s most dedicated teachers, has written, painted, and taught her entire life. In her monthly Helena Writes series, she shares a lifetime of wisdom, one pearl at a time.
In her 60th post, Helena shares with us a short children's story called “Arthur’s Song,” originally published in Cricket Magazine in 1996.
A children’s story: “Arthur’s Song” (© Helena Clare Pittman)
Someone’s singing in the basement. Annie hears it through the floor and feels it in her feet when she puts them on the floor to pull on her slippers. It’s a blue kind of humming, the way Arthur sings, in his deep voice.
Annie gets up and looks out the window. Arthur’s red two-wheeler is leaning against the brick wall near the door to the basement, under the electric light, throwing its shadow onto the concrete of the paved alley. Annie puts on her sweater. She tiptoes past her sister still sleeping, and her father snoring. Annie’s mother is brewing coffee. “Got your slippers?” asks her mother. “Ummm-hmmm,” Annie answers. Down the creaky steps to the swept-earth floor and the fragrance of apples stored in the fruit cellar.
Arthur’s bent at the door of the iron furnace, humming a song Annie doesn’t know. It’s a sound like talking without any words. Arthur’s wearing faded ticking overalls. His brown face reflects the orange glow of coal. “Good morning,” he says softly. “You’re up early!”
Annie laughs, because he says that every morning that she comes to watch him shovel coal. It’s almost dawn; the sky through the high basement window is beginning to pale. Annie sits on the laundry table, thumping her heels against its wooden legs. Thumping, 1-2-3. Dimming stars are twinkling. Spent coal, like falling stars, clinks through the furnace’s damper grate.
“I got an old mule and her name is Sal…” Arthur sings under his breath. Annie sings with him. “Sixteen miles on the Erie Canal! She’s a good old worker and a good old pal, sixteen miles on the Erie Canal!” Arthur and Annie, singing together. His voice is low in his chest, hers is high and sweet, Annie is kicking against the table legs, 2,3,4. “Apples, pears, peaches, plums,” she sings the song of the fruit truck man. Sometimes Annie sings it when she bounces her ball on the concrete square in front of the house. Sometimes she crosses her leg over the ball with the fruit seller’s calls, when she hears him on Montgomery Street, rounding the corner into Crown. Apples, pears, peaches, plums... And if she’s jumping rope she sings the names of the fruit to the tap of the rope on the pavement, to the sound of her jumping— Apples, pears, peaches, plums! One jump two, two jump one!
1-2-3-4 shovels full of coal from the coal pile—Arthur piles it into the furnace, mounds it so it will catch the flame. “Look at that,” he says, stepping back. “That there is burning rock. Once it was wood!” He says.
“Wood?” repeats Annie.
“Umm-hmm—trees,” answers Arthur. “Buried long, long ago—year after year—layers of earth, layers of leaves, bearing down…” He looks over at Annie and shakes his head. “Imagine,” he says, “Time and the weight of earth changing wood to coal.” He nods, laughs, pushes his peaked ticking cap farther back on his head. Annie feels his wonder.
“This here is the fire of old, old trees!” he says.
“How old?” asks Annie. “A hundred years?”
“Older,” answers Arthur.
“A thousand?” she asks. “A million?”
“A hundred million!” he answers and laughs at his own surprise. He looks out the window. “The stars are fading,” says Arthur.
“How old are the stars?” she asks.
Arthur shakes his head again. “The stars?” he says and laughs again. “The stars are older than this coal. Older than the earth…there it is—” he says. “The Big Dipper, the Drinkin’ Gourd.” Arthur closes the heavy iron furnace door. The latch snaps. Arthur bolts it. He straightens his hat. His smile is as warm as the glowing coal, coal light flickering through a glass hole at the front of the furnace. “Going to go upstairs and get your breakfast?” he asks. “See you tomorrow,” says Annie. Arthur tips his hat, winks, and climbs up the ladder through the two wooden doors leading to the back yard and closes them.
Annie can hear him singing outside. “Follow the Drinkin’ Gourd, there’s an old man who’s awaitin’…” Kickstand scrapes in the alley. Tires mumble over concrete. “Followww….” whispers away. Winter, summer, every morning, coal keeps the furnace burning and the water hot.
Upstairs, Annie’s father is cooking oatmeal. Annie watches through the kitchen window until Arthur’s two-wheeler turns into another alleyway.
The milk wagon clatters over cobblestones. The milkman’s horse clops up the street. Up and down the street, bottles clink, milk box lids squeak. Annie hums the drinkin’ gourd song.
Out on the pavement, Annie jumps rope. “Apples, pears, peaches, plums…” Breathless, she sings, counting her jumps and rope-slaps, matching the rhythm of the man in the fruit truck’s cries. “One…jump…two, two…jump one…three-jump, four- jump, five-jump-six.”
Annie bounces her ball.
Grapes peaches apricots—bananas and figs…
Cash for old clothes! I cash clothes! The ragman is calling, his pushcart is piled high with all the colors of the rainbow.
Knives, scissors, sharp as new! From the knife sharpener’s truck, the grindstone whines until the morning is old and noisy. A fleet of two-wheelers passes, all the riders dressed the way Arthur’s dressed, going home, their tires rumbling along the cobblestoned street that runs between the sidewalks like a river. One of the riders waves. It’s Arthur. Annie waves back.
“Follow the Drinkin’ Gourd,” Arthur sings again when he comes back. “There’s an old man who’s awaitin’ for to carry you to freedom…if you fol…low the Drinkin’ Gourd…”
“What’s a drinkin’ gourd?” Annie says.
The furnace door moans shut. Arthur leans on the iron shovel. “Gourds are fruit that grow…in Africa,” he answers. “Hollow one out, fasten a branch for a handle, then you have a dipper to fill with water from the river. A dipper to drink from, same shape as those stars.” Arthur traces the Big Dipper on the window glass. “See it up there?” he says. “It’s so bright, it’s still shining in the dawn…”
Annie looks out the window; the horizon is already streaked with green.
Arthur says, “In Mississippi, the Dipper points north. My grandfather came from Africa. He was brought here as a slave…” Arthur stops.
Annie feels the silence in the basement.
“My mother and I sing a song,” says Annie. “My grandmother sang it to her in Poland.”
Annie sings—Mamma, Mamma, put me to bed. Mamma, Mamma, give me a piece of bread. Wash me and comb me and pu-ut me to bed, Wash me and comb me and pu-ut me to bed…
Annie’s notes are sweet and sad. Arthur listens, his head bowed.
Soft songs in the morning. Quiet talk.
Annie sings the drinkin’ gourd song when she plays with her dolls. She sings the words softly before she falls asleep. She hears the melody in her dreaming. It reminds her of her grandmother’s songs, the songs her mother sings while she’s washing dishes. And songs Annie’s mother sings when she’s combing Annie’s long brown hair before she weaves it into braids.
…a road of stars twinkling bright, twinkle twinkle stars of light!
One morning, Annie sings Arthur's song, sitting on the laundry table, keeping the time with her heels against the wood, like a drum. Arthur laughs. Then they sing the song together.
“My grandfather followed those stars to Canada…” Arthur says. “…followed them to freedom.”
Slavery. People bought and sold…far from home…thirsting for freedom. Drinking freedom from a cup of stars…
Arthur’s face is shining blue in the moonlight, the moon setting.
One star, two. Two stars three. Four and five and six and seven. Annie is counting the Big Dipper’s stars.
“It’s still up there,” he says. Arthur’s speaking quietly, but Annie hears him, she sees Arthur’s eyes gleaming, shining the way stars shine. He sniffs then looks over at Annie. He smiles but his eyes are sad. “I once asked my grandfather why white people weren’t slaves. Do you know what my grandfather answered?”
Annie shakes her head.
“’White people are slaves too,’ my grandfather said. That’s what he told me.” Arthur takes out his handkerchief and wipes his forehead. Then he wipes the earth dust, and the coal dust, from the window. “Look at how bright she shines through the glass!” he says.
The Big Dipper’s shine lights the basement. It makes the electric light hanging on its cord look dull and yellow. In that quiet basement, Arthur’s words sit on the air.
“And here’s what else my grandfather told me that time I asked,” Arthur says. My grandfather said, “We’re all slaves…slaves! Slaves, looking for freedom’s road. Long after slavery had passed, my grandfather said that.”
How does Annie, just a child, understand? But she does.
*
One morning when Arthur comes there is no song behind Arthur’s smile. “Good morning,” he says. Then he says, “The landlord’s putting in a new furnace.” The shovel is heavy with its load of coal, its iron clangs against the iron damper grate. “Oil doesn’t need shoveling,” he says.
Annie has heard what he has said. A child, she understands. The basement falls silent.
Annie’s sitting on the laundry table. No singing the street songs this morning.
Arthur shakes down the coal. His eyes are gleaming with coal light now.
Annie feels like the coals are in her throat. Her eyes are full of tears. Just a child, she knows what Arthur has told her.
1,2,3,4, 5 shovels full of coal. Iron furnace door groans shut. Latch snaps. Iron bolt slides into place, keeping the fire of those old trees in, the pressure of their heat driving the water through the radiators, through the water heater. Winter, summer, coal keeps the furnace burning, the water for the bathtub, for the dishes, hot.
A morning comes when the basement feels big and chilly. Arthur pulls his cap down to cover his ears. Even the furnace doesn’t warm the air. Annie watches in silence, counting the coals, dropping from the iron shovel onto the grate.
“The Dipper is almost at the bottom of the window,” she says after a while.
“Umm-hmmm,” Arthur looks over to the window. Then he closes the iron door and fastens the bolt. Annie hears the latch snap. “It will be spring before it’s high up in the sky again,” Arthur says. Arthur leans the shovel against the wall.
Suddenly he laughs. “You see the second star in the Dipper’s handle?” he asks. He’s pointing up at the sky through the window. Annie stands on the coal pile to see. “If you keep looking at that star,” says Arthur, “You’ll see it’s made of two stars!”
…one is two…two are one!
“When I look at those stars,” he tells her, “I’ll remember that song your grandmother sang.” Arthur turns to her, turns his head away from the window to ask her something. “When you see those two stars, will you remember what my grandfather said?”
Yes, I’ll remember, I’ll remember—we’re all, all of us people, looking for freedom’s road…yearning for that bright, shining road.
The coal furnace is dismantled and put out onto the sidewalk for a truck to haul away.
Oil whistles through a long hose into the basement. The new oil burner rumbles through the floor.
Annie jumps rope on the pavement. She hears the cries of the fruit man, the cries of the rag man, the monotonous notes of the grinding wheel.
Annie plays with her ball, throwing it against the front steps of the house, until the men in ticking overalls, riding two wheeled bicycles, turn onto Crown Street, or continue on to Montgomery Street, or turn the block to Troy Avenue—that fleet of riders who will keep the fires hot enough to heat the houses that still burn coal.
Annie calls out, waving. Arthur waves back, laughing.
Shining like the starlight, glowing like the fires of old, old trees, they wave until he turns the corner.
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