Read American Heroes Series - 03 - Purgatory for Free Online Page A

trouble. “’T’aint far,” he repeated. “Ms. Biffy will be ‘specting me.”
    “What do you mean she’s expecting
you?”
    “I have to git on home, young
buck. The ladies are awaitin’.”
    Alec, the young man born and
raised in big-city California, and who counted several African-Americans as
close friends, was genuinely perplexed. The attitude of this old black man in
the rural South was foreign to him.
    “You realize the Civil War is
over, right?” he asked, more out of concern than anything. “Slavery was over
one hundred and fifty years ago.”
    Mickey wasn’t sure what he meant.
“I knows it, suh,” he kept walking. “My grandpappy was born a slave but then he
was freed.  I’m freed, too. I gots to go now ‘cuz the ladies is awaitin’ on
me.”
    Alec didn’t know what to say. The
old man kept walking and he stopped following, turning to look at his mother
with a quizzical look. Elliot could see that her son was truly baffled by the
man’s attitude. The California boy who was raised not to see race or color just
got his first taste of class culture in the Old South.
    “Come on,” she pulled the kid by
the arm, back towards the house. “We’ve got work to do.”
     Alec wasn’t sure what to say.
This new place was weird and foreign already and he wasn’t sure he liked it. He
let his mother drag him back into the house where boxes upon boxes of their
possessions waited to be unpacked.
    In mostly silence, they continued
unpacking until the sun was nearly set and Alec went about trying to turn on
some lights.  They soon found out that there were only electrical plugs on the
lower floor, and even then, they were spotty. 
    They took a few lamps around with
them, trying plugs in different rooms, and came to see that only two plugs in
the entire house worked. They put a big lamp with a 100 watt bulb in the first
of the double parlors and a second in the kitchen. 
    But they needed more light so
Elliot dug through the boxes in the upstairs bedroom until she came across her
collection of candles. Most of them were decorative but a few of them had seen
service, so after hunting around for and finding her lighter, she lit up every
candle she had. Soon, the entire room was aglow with the haunting and warm
illumination of the candles. The scents of Lemon Sage or Golden Myrhh mixed with the smell of dust.
    Alec soon joined her and began
taking candles to various rooms on the upper floor so they would at least have
light to move around by.
    “I feel like I’m in the Dark
Ages,” he said as he moved into the big bedroom across the hall from his mother
that he had claimed. He started singing a bizarre monk chanting song as he
moved around with the candles, sending his mother into laughter.
    Elliot followed him to put one in
his bathroom, a small box of a room that had a toilet, a small corner sink, and
a shower stall that was made out of copper. The poor kid could barely move
around in it.
    “Remember that this house is used
to candlelight,” she reminded him. “It’s only seen electricity in the last
seventy years or so. I think it’s pretty cool that we’re seeing the house the
way it was meant to be seen.”
    Alec made a face, hauling his
mattress up onto his bed frame. “Mom, I know you really like this old house
stuff, but I’ve got to tell you that it sucks.” He grunted as he tossed the
mattress down. “I want my satellite television and my Xbox Live. I don’t like
living like the pioneers.”
    Elliot snorted at him. “You have your
smart phone and your iPad, at least, and satellite internet. At least you’re
not completely cut off.”
    “This still sucks.”
    She shook her head at him. “Don’t
worry,” she assured him. “We’ll have the contractor here on Monday and start
getting wired in. You’re not a total caveman yet.”
    Alec tried to make a face at her
but ended up laughing instead.  Elliot returned to her bedroom and collected
more candles, carefully taking them down