Five Smooth Stones (10 page)

Li'l Joe's mind was working in darting flashes. "His father" the doctor had said; he didn't know that David didn't have a father, that he was the child's grandfather. And Li'l Joe didn't know whether a grandfather was a "legal guardian" or not. What he did know was he wasn't signing no paper, wasn't signing no paper that said this smarty pants ofay boy could lay a hand on David, could cut off his foot.

"I'll study 'bout it," said Li'l Joe, and when he looked at the doctor his eyes were as dully black as an old shoe button.

The doctor began to talk, illustrating the talk with sketches on a pad of paper, and Joseph Champlin did not hear a word. The doors of his mind and ears were on well-greased hinges, and he closed them easily, from long practice. The doctor, when he had finished, looked up and said, "You see —what's your name?"

"Joseph. Joseph Champlin."

"You understand, Joe? It's the only—"

"I has to study 'bout it. You ain't—you ain't going to do nothing tonight?"

"Not unless infection sets in. You better be here early in the morning, boy. Tell them at the desk to page me—Dr. Carson." He scribbled the name on a piece of paper, wrote a quick memo under it. Li'l Joe took the paper and put it in his pocket without looking at it, and started from the room. Behind him he heard the doctor's voice, sharp, impatient, "We're trying to save the boy's life—" but he did not turn back, and found his way somehow to the street.

***

There didn't seem to be the sound of anything in the streets, and the faces of the people passing were blurs. He knew only that behind him, close to one of a thousand windows, a little boy lay in a high bed surrounded by strangers, in pain, lonely. If David had to lose his foot, he had to, and there wasn't anything anyone could do about it, but Li'l Joe didn't believe he had to; didn't believe God would do it to a li'l chile, yet knew He could and had and that David Champlin was no dearer in God's sight than Ambrose Jefferson's grandson Henry, who had lost both his legs under a trolley car. For the first time in his life he bumped into a white man on the sidewalk. The man snarled, "Watch where you're going, nigger!" but it did not snap him out of his preoccupation.

He did not know where he was going, only that he was seeking help and advice. He headed for the French Quarter because his friends were there, but he did not know to which one of them he could turn. His old friend Isaiah Watkins might be the best. Isaiah knew something about the law; Isaiah had more education than most, and at night, when he had finished his work on the docks, he was trying to start a little insurance business. Ever since it had started he had worked with the N-double-ACP, and along with that he was lying to found a local chapter of a new group, the American League for Equal Citizenship, ALEC, they called it He had even been to Boston several times to national headquarters. Geneva had not been optimistic about the activities of Isaiah and the others who were working with groups to help their people. "Fat lot of good it'll do 'em," she would say. "All these N-double-A's and ALEC's. Ain't nothing going to change the whites but a slow fry in hell."

"Meantimes," Li'l Joe had said, "Meantimes, till they fries, I can't see as it hurts us none to try." Still, Neva had paid her dues and he had paid his and taken out a membership for David in each when he was still crawling over the floor in diapers.

Li'l Joe knew he wouldn't be able to see Isaiah until nightfall, and his need was urgent.

Suddenly his steps quickened, and when he reached Rampart Street he turned left instead of going on into the French Quarter. He'd never liked to ask favors of the Professor, but this was one time, he thought, he'd have walked barefoot to Washington and asked the President.

Bjarne Knudsen saw Joseph Champlin walking down the path that led to the rear of the house as he drove his car up to the front door. He bellowed, bull-like, and the slender figure halted, turned quickly, and retraced its steps to meet him. Together they entered the house, and as he closed the front door behind them Knudsen realized that it was the first time his friend, Joseph Champlin, had entered by this door. In the study he laid his portfolio on his desk and turned on Li'l Joe.

"So! What is it? For God's sake, Li'l Joe, what is it that makes you look like death?"

Li'l Joe, his knees giving way, sank into the big chair by the fireplace. "It's David," he said. "And he's hurted, real bad."

Knudsen had not expected this; had expected some "worriment" or financial difficulty that could be solved by advice or other help. His voice sank, became low and gentle. "Tell me about it, Li'l Joe. It cannot be as bad as you think."

At the end of his halting story Li'l Joe said: "I ain't signing no paper says they can cut David's foot off. I'd rather carry him out of there unless somebody more'n that little piece of something what calls hisself a doctor says it's right. He ain't more'n a chile hisself."

Knudsen thought: I never before saw that black head bent, the shoulders bowed, not even after Geneva's death. He tried to find words, and knew that the ones he heard himself saying were stupid and poor comfort. "Perhaps, Li'l Joe, it must be done to save the boy. It is not so bad today, to lose a foot. In one of my classes I have a young man with both legs paralyzed."

Li'l Joe looked up at him, and what might have been a smile flickered across his face. "He ain't David," he said.

After a moment Knudsen spoke softly.
"Ja,"
he said.
"Ja,
you are right."

His voice changed, became the more familiar half-roar.
"Ja!"
he said again. "We must try. We must try, Li'l Joe." His hand was on the telephone, and he did not miss, as he waited for his call to go through, the sudden relaxation of Joseph Champlin's body, the letting go of taut muscles as though an invisible rubber band had snapped. He felt like God, and hated the feeling because he was not; if he had been God, he thought, he would be a most disturbed and unhappy man. When he said into the telephone,
"Ja,
I would like to speak to Dr. Fricke, if you please; you will tell him Professor Knudsen is calling and it is an emergency." His eyes were still on the man in the chair, and he saw the body freeze, every fiber listening as a small woods animal in its den would freeze and listen at a strange sound.

Li'l Joe heard only one side of the conversation that followed, but even in the midst of his worry what he heard brought a smile: "There is a boy you must see in the hospital, Joel.... Ja, I know, but he is badly hurt. There is talk of amputating his foot... A truck crushed his ankle...
Ja, ja, ja,
he is colored... I have
no
chip on my shoulder.... I know he is getting good care, but he must be seen by you.... The hell with your regulations! You must examine him. If you do not I will raise... I am not excited, not yet.... What can you do! What can you
do!
What can the great Joel Fricke do for a boy who may lose his foot? You can save it.... Bah! You know what the hospital can do with its regulations.... You are the great bone man, the great Joel Fricke; they will be honored at your presence...." Li'l Joe heard the voice change, lower, become almost wheedling, but it was a wheedle with a menace. "You would do it if I were lying there, Joel. You would do it then, no? Then pretend it is I...
Ja!
Good! I will be at your office in twenty minutes.... No! You will not go alone.... I will go with you.... I trust no one, Joel, and I must see the boy, too, "and I must know quickly, very quickly, what can be done.... You will wait for me, my friend."

Knudsen looked down into the face that had turned to him as he hung up the receiver, then quickly looked away. There was too much nakedness in it. He clapped his hands together briskly, said loudly: "So! We go together, my friend Joel Fricke and I, and we see. He is the best, the very best. He teaches at the university and he is a consultant on the staff at the hospital. If he has not the guts to take over the boy's care, like Sampson I will pull the hospital down about his ears. Where will you be so I may call you later? At home?"

"Lawd, no! I can't go that far away, not now. You call me at the Jeffersons'. I'll stay there till I hear."

***

When Joseph Champlin left the Professor's house that evening there was some difficulty with legs that seemed to belong to someone else. He had finally let himself be persuaded to drink schnapps with his beer. Schnapps had always held, in his eyes, great peril, ever since his first taste, but this evening had been a real occasion, and the Prof had been like a child in his pleading that he try Denmark's favorite drink. "The news is good, Li'l Joe," he said. "It is not perfect but it is better than the news you brought to me earlier. The odds are good that your boy will not lose his foot, but he will be lame. You must face that. He will be lame. And there must be surgery. Not once but several times. He must be patient, and you too. He is a good boy. They let me see him, even though it was not visiting hours. Oh, I raised a sand, I tell you!"

Li'l Joe chuckled. He always did whenever the Prof's Danish accent accommodated itself to one of the colloquialisms of Li'l Joe's people. He felt a relief that came close to making him sick, and he drank the schnapps in haste to account for gathering tears.

***

Three days after his grandson's first operation Li'l Joe went to the Professor's house again. It was late evening, damp and drizzly, and he knew that there would be a fire in the little grate in the study and that the Professor would have a drink ready, because he had called and asked if he might come over.

He stood in front of the fire for a minute, warming his legs, and apologized for his work clothes, then sat in the big chair beside the grate, rubbing his palms together nervously.

"You are upset, Li'l Joe?" said the Professor. "You are not sure about your boy? He is doing splendidly. I have it from the great Fricke himself."

"I ain't worrying about the leg now, Prof. Not anymore. I trusts what you say."

"You are still worried about something, Li'l Joe. You come in here looking like a troubled chipmunk; you forget the drink I have so carefully prepared. That can only be worry."

Joseph Champlin twisted uneasily in his chair.

"How long the doctors say that boy's going to have to lay up there in that bed?"

"Several weeks."

'Then he's going to come out with his leg in a cast?"

"I'm afraid so, Joe. That is the way it was explained to me. And, as the doctor told you, he will have to return for more surgery."

"And each time he goes back in there for this surgery, he's going to be there like he is now, mebbe weeks? Two, three times for the next two, three years? With casts and all?"

"Yes."

Joseph Champlin was quiet for a long time. The drink remained untouched. Knudsen shuffled papers on his desk, rumbled in his throat, wished himself in Denmark. When the small brown man in the big chair finally spoke, there was despair in the low voice.

"He ain't going to get his schooling. He ain't going to get his education right. I'd most rather he'd lost both his feets than lose that."

Knudsen whirled, glared at Li'l Joe, drew in a deep breath and roared when he spoke.

"That's it! That is what is worrying you!" The roar died, the eyes softened. "You are being a damned idiot, my friend. Of course he will get his schooling. Perhaps a little late, but he will get it."

Joseph Champlin shook his head. "No. You don't understand. Chile like that, he needs schooling when he's young. That boy thinks all the time; I mean,
all
the time. Thinks too damn much for a young un his age. Worrying me all the time about stuff I can't explain good to him because I only had a little bit of education. I ain't going no place now, but mebbe he could have, thinking the way he does, quick like he is."

"Is he doing well in school, Joe?"

"He's doing fine, just fine. I tried to teach him a little myself, best I could, before he even went to school. I taught him his alphabet and how to spell little words like 'cat' and 'dog' and 'God.'"

Knudsen's lips twitched. "In that order?"

"Sort of. A chile knows a cat and a dog, chile just learning about God. Seemed like if I could make him see a cat and a dog had names you could spell out, then seemed like if I could make him see God did, too, why then God would be more real." He smiled apologetically. "He caught on quick. My mamma always said I caught on quick, too; only in them days schools for colored weren't as good as they are now, and Gawd knows they ain't much now. And she was working all the time, and I had to start rustling up money before I even got out of the fourth grade." He hesitated and went on: "They tells me my daddy was like that. Taught himself to read and write, with my mamma helping him."

"Do you remember your father, Joe?" Knudsen was sparring for time, trying to get the other man's worry into some kind of perspective, trying to find an answer to the problem, knowing it was not nearly so great a problem as Joseph Champlin believed it to be, but respecting Li'l Joe's concern over it.

"No," said Joseph Champlin. "No, I don't remember my daddy. Ain't no one alive now remembers him excepting one or two of the real old folks in the Quarter, ol' Miz Jefferson, folks like that."

"He died when you were small?" It occurred to Knudsen that he had never heard Joseph Champlin mention his father before. He did not know what drove him to ask further questions. He pressed the questions as he would have with no other Negro but Joseph Champlin, and he could sense that even with him he was endangering a friendship that must always remain fragile.

"He died before I was even small," said Li'l Joe. "He died before I was born, while my mamma was carrying me. He died away from here, not even in Louisiana." There was no sound in the little room except Knudsen's breathing. Joseph Champlin did not seem to be breathing at all. "My daddy's name was David, too. He was a real good man, but they burnt him; burnt him alive on a pile of logs in the middle of a field. Made them a bonfire out of David Champlin."

Bjarne Knudsen felt the room sway around him, could for a moment see nothing, not even the man in the chair in front of him. He tried to speak, but emotion clogged his throat. He choked on his own horror. He felt the house in which he sat, with its high ceilings, its classic grace, its perfect proportions, fall away from him and leave him alone and shuddering at the edge of something unknown.