my father was a tailor. in leeds. as was his father. and his father’s father. time was, if a man on the avendale road asked where he could find the finest clothes in northern england, he was pointed towards the shop of a man named rackham. THEN: the men who sell wool decided they would rather not compete with the men who sell cotton. and as the men who sell wool have the ears of the men who make laws, an embargo is enacted to increase profits. and calico disappears. and my father’s business - that he inherited from his father… and his father’s father - begins to wither and die. and my father suffers the compound shame of financial failure seen by the eyes of his son, and descended into drink. i’d sit beside him as a boy at the sunday services as he shouted at the pastor. at the altar. at anyone who would listen, really, about the injustice of it all. and i’d put his arm over my shoulder as the insults began, and i’d carry him out of the church GOD THE INSULTS. at his funeral, our neighbors were kind enough to whisper them instead of call them out loud. SO. i set to work, determined to rebuild what had been taken away; i was thirteen years old, but i was determined! until a man arrived at my door claiming to hold debts belonging to my father, debts accumulated as my father drank, debts he claimed that now belonged to me, debts i could not possibly have hoped to repay. debts over which that man would have seen me imprisoned… imprisoned in a place where the debts would only have been discharged through hard labor. hard labor at no wages, working at - wait for it - the production. of textiles. “you people. incapable of accepting the world as it is.” says the man to whom the world handed everything. if no anne, if no rescue, if this is defeat for me, then know this: you and i were neck-in-neck in this race, right til the end. BUT JESUS DID I MAKE UP A LOT OF GROUND TO CATCH YOU.
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