Chapter 34: Plebian

“Andre,” his mother cooed as the young Johnson continued staring out the window, “you know waiting around isn’t going to make your father come back any sooner, right?”

“But I’m so excited to go and play with him again!”

“I can tell you are,” she replied with a chuckle.

His mom started setting up the dishes for dinner when a ring came from her phone.

“Hello?” she answered, “Yes, this is she…he…he what now?”

Andre looked to his mother, flinching back as tears started falling down her face.

“…mommy,” Johnson asked in a hushed whisper, as if he didn’t want his mother to answer him. “Did…did something happen to daddy?”

His mother covered up her mouth, then leaned over, bringing the boy into her arms as the two of them sobbed together on the floor.

It took some time for his mother to calm down enough to tell him the news in full, and it would take far longer for the young Johnson to fully accept the cruel reality that stood before him.

In brief, Johnson’s dad had been given the grueling assignment of ringing the town’s bell on his own after showing up late for work. He performed his duty well, but the strain of this herculean task together with all his sprinting and swimming from earlier in the day was too much for his worn-out and malnourished body to bear. Thus, with the very last bits of strength, Johnson’s dad managed to check out of work and pick up the final paycheck of his life before collapsing onto the ground, his body done in by a fatal heart attack.

The Johnsons couldn’t afford a funeral. Heck, they could barely afford to eat. Johnson’s mother did the best that she could to support her family all on her own, but the burden was too much for her to bear. So, with tears in her eyes, she sent Johnson along with his older brother off to live and work in a neighboring tailor’s shop.

In theory, the two boys were supposed to be apprentices in training. In reality, they were nothing more than indentured servants, routinely working 12-hour shifts under harsh conditions for a cruel master. The job would have been all but unbearable for the young Johnson, were it not been for the kindness of a lone customer.

“Hello there, Andre,” Willie Hill said as he walked in. “How are you doing today?”

“Fine,” Johnson replied curtly. “Did you bring it?”

Hill gave a sly wink.

“Of course!” he said, pulling out a book entitled “The American Fighter” from inside his satchel.

Hill sat himself down, opening up his book as he started reading aloud the various stories detailing the heroic battles faced by Washington’s Founding Fighters during the Revolutionary War.

Johnson listened to the tales in awe as he tended to Hill’s clothing, with him stopping his work altogether when the battles reached a particularly gripping turn. Hill was perfectly aware that Johnson intentionally slowed himself down at these points in order to prolong Hill’s stay, but the lonely old man was more than happy to play along with the ruse.

These meetings of theirs would continue for nearly four years, going on right until Hill breathed his last. The night of Hill’s funeral, Johnson stared aimlessly at the ceiling over his bed, his hands clenched tightly onto the book Hill gifted him in his will.

“…I say…we ought to run away from this place,” he whispered aloud.

His brother twisted in bed, giving a heavy yawn.

“What are you even talking about, bro?”

“Huh?” his brother asked through a heavy yawn.

“Think about it!” Johnson exclaimed, covering up his mouth as he continued the rest of his pitch in a hushed whisper. “We’ve learned everything we can from this cruddy sweat shop! Our best move now is to start over in a new place where they’ll actually pay us for the work that we do.”

“But we’re legally bound to this shop,” his brother moaned, “and we still have another 7 years left on our contracts.”

“Screw those stinking contracts made by them lousy, stinking lawyers!” Johnson hissed. “Why I’m sick and tired of all these snobby aristocrats profiting off our skilled labor! We can do better…heck, we deserve better!”

His brother bit his lip.

“You know they’re gonna come after us if we run, right?”

Johnson gave a toothy grin.

“Let ‘em try.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

In the present, Buchanan tried saying something, but only puffs of air came from his mouth as Johnson continued tightening the hold around his neck.

“What’d you say?” Johnson asked, dramatically drawing his ear closer to Buchanan’s quivering mouth. “You want me to cut deeper, do you? My, that doesn’t sound like a good idea to me at all. But what would I know!” he said, displaying his full set of teeth in a vicious snarl. “I’m just a lowly plebian, after all!”

Johnson drew his needle back, readying his final, vindictive jab.

Suddenly, something wrapped around Johnson’s ankles and jerked back, throwing Johnson to the floor, forcing him to release both Buchanan and his needle from his grasps.

“What the…?”

Johnson looked down to see his ankles trapped inside a pair of steel shackles attached to a long metal chain that was reeling back with tremendous speed, pulling Johnson on a collision course towards the wall of the arena. Johnson gritted his teeth.

“Executive Power,” he screeched, thrusting his hands into his own legs, “Reconstruction!”

Johnson tore his feet off from his legs, releasing him from the shackles as his body skidded across the floor from the momentum of the pull. Johnson snarled to himself as he looked around for his amputated feet.

“You’re gonna’ pay for that one you little twerp!” Johnson spat as he spotted his limbs just a few yards behind him.

Johnson turned around and started crawling towards his body parts. He made it about halfway there. Then, the earth around him started to tremble and shake.

“Huh?” Johnson mumbled as a large, iron wall rose up from the ground directly in front of him, blocking off his path.

Johnson deepened his scowl as he started to crawl around the blockade, but the earth shook once more as three additional metal walls rose out of the ground, closing together in a tight box around Johnosn’s position. Johnson tilted his head upwards, his fury doubling over at the sight before him.

“Oh you no good son of a—”

Johnson’s words were cut off as an iron ceiling extended over the top of the walls, sealing Johnson within a pitch-black cell. From across the arena, Buchanan gave his first smile of the match as he rubbed at his wounded neck.

“I said…”

Buchanan coughed violently, cutting off his dramatic rebuttal.

“I said,” he continued on in a raspy voice, “Executive Power: Dred Scott!”

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Johnson’s Flashback II. After his daring rescue, Andrew Johnson’s dad went to performed his usual job of ringing the only bell in town and died several days later from a heart attack. From there, Andrew Johnson and his brother were sent by his mother to work for a tailor as an indentured servant (called bound-boys at the time) where he worked 12 hours a day.

During his apprenticeship, William Hill (a clerk, not a customer) read him a collection of speeches called “the American Speaker.” He later gave the book to Andrew who loved it so much that he learned how to read the book before he learned how to spell. As far as I know William Hill didn’t die while Andrew was working, and in particular his death wasn’t the cause for Andrew running away before his apprenticeship was over (though this did indeed happen).