David by Ray Robertson Page B

away as Kentucky they’re hoping to one day reach, and I let him tell me and tell me. Potash and its resultant commercial uses aren’t, in and of themselves, enlivening conversation, but a Black-born, Black-owned, Black-run organization full of an everyyear-increasing number of Black men building, expanding, growing —I could listen to that all night. A team player? Me? No, never, not even if I wanted to be. But I can still cheer, I can still root for the home side. Can’t but cheer.
    Besides, as good as we both are at not talking about things that talking about can never change anyway, there’s one thing neither of us wants to acknowledge that we both know needsto be said before we can spend the rest of the evening sitting in this house that I own mortgage-free, drinking expensive whiskey that I can easily afford, and feeling pleased with ourselves for how pleasantly our past has turned into our present. Any topic, then, just as long as it’s off-topic.
    â€œSo they’re calling Mr. Brown a Father of Confederation now,” I say.
    George leans back in his seat. “Mr. Brown from the board?” George is a Buxton man, usually only comes into Chatham to visit me. George pays his taxes to the Dominion of Canada, but his real country is Elgin.
    â€œOne and the same.”
    George Brown was not only the publisher of the Globe and an editorializing abolitionist and an early, outspoken supporter of the Elgin Settlement, but he, along with two Black businessmen from Toronto and Buffalo—who sent their children to the Buxton school because it was so superior to any coloured schools near where they lived—formed the Canada Mill and Mercantile Company to promote businesses in Elgin. The potash company, for one, was launched with seed money borrowed from them interest-free.
    â€œThe only white man on the board of directors,” I say, tending to George’s empty glass. I’m behind the bar every night at Sophia’s—why would I pay someone else to do what I can do better and for free?—but the first Saturday of every other month, I’m George’s personal bartender.
    George takes his freshly poured glass of whiskey; looks at it, doesn’t drink it. “The only white man except for the Reverend King.”
    I finish fixing my drink but don’t waste any time staring at the glass. When I set it back down empty, George has turned his attention from his glass to me.
    â€œI didn’t ask you why you weren’t at the funeral,” he says.
    â€œYou didn’t have to.”
    He holds up his hand like I imagine he does at business meetings when an idea is proffered that he wants to stop in its tracks before it can waste any more valuable time. “That’s all . . . your business,” he says.
    â€œThat’s right, it is.”
    â€œAnd you know I’ve never made it mine.”
    I watch Henry lying in front of the fireplace getting serious with his bone, a paw slung over one of its gnawed ends to better keep it in place while he chews and chews his way to nothing. I don’t have any choice but to nod.
    â€œAnd I don’t see any reason to make it mine now.”
    â€œGood,” I say, picking up my glass.
    â€œBut I’ll tell you this, too—I don’t think we should let this night go by without at least toasting him, David. I don’t think that would be right.”
    I look back at Henry.
    â€œWe don’t even have to say anything, not out loud, anyway. Just raise our glasses and each of us can think whatever he wants to think and that’ll be that.” George lifts his drink, holds it in the air experimentally, like a man sticking his wet finger in the breeze to determine which way the wind is blowing.
    I clink my glass to his, hear the telltale ping of a genuine crystal-to-crystal kiss, and that’s that, it’s just George and me again.
    â€œGood,” he says, massaging his stomach clockwise