Five Smooth Stones (111 page)

"Anyone tell you you're looking mighty peaked, son? You better eat. You lost a hell of a lot of weight, and that's a fact. Got not much more flesh on your bones than what your grandaddy had; only, on him it looked natural. You go on home and get your rest after. I know you need it. We just beginning this fight."

David managed cold turkey and a beer, began to let down a little talking with Isaiah and Annie and some of their relatives, slipping into the easy, idle, relaxed talk of his people, letting its inconsequence and good humor carry him. Ambrose strolled over, greeted him warmly, and mentioned his brother, Pop Jefferson. "You seen him this trip, David?"

"Not yet," said David, and felt guilty.

"Sure is sad. Sure is a mighty sad thing, the way Pop's gone down. Seems like he don't take interest in nothing since Emma passed. Ev'ry day, ev'ry day you can see him going to the places they used to go together, down by the French Market, outside the place they used to drive to for ribs, sitting on his steps. Keeps the place she used to sit alongside of him clear; he's sitting there, someone comes along and he puts his hand down on the place she used to sit, you has to sit on the step below. It's sad, man, it's a sad sight. Seems like I lost a brother along with a sister-in-law."

"I'll go by there Tuesday," said David. He felt choked up, and wished, selfishly, that Ambrose would go away. Once he could have taken it; now everything that tore at his emotions was a certain threat to hard-fought-for equilibrium.

He got to his feet, said: "You-all mind if I find me a spot under a tree and make some notes for this speech? It ought to be coming up soon."

"Sure is," said Isaiah. "There goes Louis Grayson up now to play piano. There'll be some singing; then I'll make a little spiel and introduce you. You run along."

He looked for and found a tree where the nearby picnickers were strangers. He let himself down on the ground and leaned against its trunk, wondering about ants, knowing about mosquitoes. No notes were necessary for this speech, or at most just a one- or two-word "A,B,C" sequence reminder. He let his eyes roam over the crowd, seeking the color chaos of Luke's shirt. Some of the people had gathered in front of the stand and were singing; some had remained comfortably seated on the ground, listening, talking, a few of them also singing.

Then he saw the child, a boy in leg braces, using crutches, walking beside an older boy. Watching him he thought, Poor kid. It must have been polio rather than an injury. David thought that while it had been tough on him when he was a kid, it had not been as tough as this boy had known it, and would know it. The pair reached a small tree, and the older boy helped the child in braces to sit down, crutches beside him. David could sense what the older boy was saying before he started off: "Now you stay there, y'hear? I'll be right back."

David watched the younger boy for a moment, chuckling. As soon as the kid had known his older brother was far enough away he'd started fooling with the crutches. It was, thought David, exactly what he would have done himself. He remembered Gramp giving him fits when he had tried to get around too fast, too soon, on a walking cast. His difficulties, compared to this child's, had been minor. And, too, this boy was younger than he had been at the time of his injury; the boy's arms were still chubby, the backs of the hands padded with soft flesh. David sighed, rose, and went across to the boy; he couldn't let him hurt himself.

"Hi!" He dropped to one knee, and the child turned his head away shyly, began pulling at grass, no longer fooling with the crutches. "What's your name?"

The boy turned and looked at him directly, eyes enormous dark pools in a round face. "You—you Mr. Cham—Cham—"

"David. Me, David. You—?" He pointed a finger at the child's chest, and the child smiled a smile of such angelic and ineffable sweetness that David grinned, thinking such a smile could not be real, thinking also that he'd give odds this youngster was a heller around the house.

"Me, Billy," said the boy, and the clear peal of his laugh brought an answering laugh from David. "You going to talk."

"I'm going to try to talk."

The dark eyes fixed themselves intently on David's face. "I knows who you is—"

David laid a hand on the small knee. "Listen, son, don't go trying to hop off all by yourself. You listen to me. I know. I've got a bad leg too."

The boy nodded solemnly, the nod saying he'd noticed, and David realized the boy's parents must have pointed him out. "Did you have polio?"

David shook his head. "Nope. I had a truck, a big ol' truck, run right over my foot." He smiled, watching the young face, knowing the boy was thinking that it must be a lot more exciting to have a truck responsible for lameness than polio.'

"Did it
hurt?"

"Oh, I guess it did. It was a long time ago. Where's your mamma and daddy?"

"Mamma's working. Granny's here. Daddy's up there"—a nod toward the platform—"playing piano."

"Your daddy a musician?"

The black head rolled slowly from side to side.
"Uh-unh.
Not really and truly. He jus' plays at home and in church and if Mr. Isaiah wants him. Mr. Isaiah's gimpy too."

"By golly, so he is. Let's have a club. Billy and David and Mr. Isaiah. You can be president until you get rid of those crutches; then Mr. Isaiah can be president."

Again the head rolled slowly.
"Uh-unh.
You be president." Now the child was looking at him with a directness that made him uncomfortable. He realized that for some reason known only to the inscrutable God who fashioned children this boy was in the throes of an attack of hero worship. And I'm not even a cowboy, he thought; Isaiah must have been talking about me at the child's house, setting me up as some sort of damned celebrity among my people.

"O.K., I'll be president, you be vice-president, and Mr. Isaiah can be our big fat member and pay his dues every day so we can buy ice-cream cones and licorice whips." He hoped licorice whips were still in existence.

The boy gave a delighted crow of laughter. For a while they pursued the subject of what use they would make of Mr. Isaiah's dues; then the child changed the subject abruptly.

"Mr. Cham—Cham—"

"David."

Billy paused, but it was evident he couldn't quite encompass the full familiarity of a first name. He said, "Mr. David. You going to march?"

"March? Now? There isn't going to be a parade, Billy."

"Yes there is
too.
In Wash-ing-ton."

"Oh." David had forgotten the civil rights parade in Washington scheduled for later in the month, although he had been talking it up, giving advice on plans in the towns and cities he had been working in. "It depends, Billy."

"My daddy's going. And my brother. With Mr Isaiah."

"Your mamma too?"

Again the solemn shake of the head. "She's 'fraid 'bout her job. Why, Mr. David?"

Why? Why? Why? How often had he, David Champlin, asked the question? How often received a dark and hurting answer, an answer he could not, if his life depended on it, give this round-eyed child?

. "I don't know, Billy." And spoke, he thought, God's truth. "Look, Billy, did you ask your daddy to take you to the big parade?"

"He don't want to take me. Mr. David, I can walk. I can walk
good."

"It's going to be a
long
walk, Billy. Even a little boy with strong legs would have a time."

The child's soft mouth set stubbornly. "I got a wheelchair."

David, looking down at the boy, wondered if he had been as stubborn when he was a child, and remembered that he had. "Why do you want to march, Billy? Just because your daddy and your big brother are going to?"

"Uh-unh."

David, beginning to look for the solemn roll of the small head, held back a smile.

"Uh-unh,"
said the child again. "So's little colored children everywhere can grow up same's everyone else. So's my daddy can get a good job. So's my mamma won't be 'fraid."

David had never had quite the feeling before that he had now, a cessation of all thought, his mind clear and light, like a limpid pool in which there are no images or shadows. When it began to stir with life again, he thought, "Rote." Coming from this child it had to be rote, learned at home, overheard. Yet it had not sounded like rote. Rote can be true, he thought; like formal prayers in a liturgical church, rote can be true. He was silent for a long time, and heard the boy say, "Mr. David?" from a distance, then more insistently, "Mr. David!"

"Yes, Billy?"

"Mr. David, you mad?"

One arm went round the child's shoulders, drawing him close. "No, Billy. No. Oh, my God, no!"

The singing by the people in front of the platform had stopped; he could hear Isaiah's high voice, and knew that in a moment he would hear his own name. He rose slowly, looking down at Billy.

"I'll talk to Mr. Isaiah, Billy. I'll ask him to tell your daddy to take you to Wash-ing-ton with him."

"Gee!"

"And I'll be there, Billy. I promise I'll be there, if God spares. And by golly, Billy, I'll find you and I'll push that wheelchair. We'll make it together, son."

The child's eyes shone so brightly that, as he had turned away from Gramp's eyes once because their light hurt him, he turned his head away now.

"They're waiting for me, Billy. Don't you go trying to hop around by yourself now before your brother gets back. If he's not back when I finish I'll take you to Granny. Be good now, y'hear!"

***

David stood with his foot on the first step of the wooden flight at the side of the platform until he heard Isaiah introduce him, then mounted quickly and stood quietly during the round of polite applause. He caught a flash of frantic color to his left, Luke jog-trotting across a clearing to the edge of the crowd, tossing a baseball mitt to a youth behind him. He smiled to himself. He'd thought the lad was under the bushes with a dame.

There was a lectern on the platform, and its presence annoyed him. Disregarding it, he launched into the talk he had planned. It differed from a score of other talks only in that today he was condensing as he went along. After the first few times when his talks had been broadcast, timing came easily to him. He wasn't, he thought, what singers called "in good voice." He could hear his voice sounding tired, strained, almost thready. His eyes, smarting from heat and glare, ranged over the quiet, intent crowd before him and he thought, as he had so often: God bless my people when they're an audience. Whatever our faults, we listen. And we hear. Through the years he had strengthened his ability to organize and give a talk with one part of his mind, observe with the other.

A young couple standing just below caught his eyes, held them, and he had to force himself to look away. They had moved forward quietly during the opening sentences of his speech and stood now, without moving, like statues. They were holding hands, standing close, their shoulders touching, the boy's head slightly above the girl's, both of them tall, straight, with a dark, brooding beauty in their eyes. They seemed without sex, although they were vital with a strength that reached up to him and gave new life to his own. The girl wore a blouse and tight stretch pants, and the contours of the brown flesh under them were rounded promises of pleasure. The youth beside her was more than youth, was a man now, shoulders broad, waist small, hips thin; the column of his throat rising from the open-necked sport shirt was a muscular cylinder of black power. Yet there was no sense of sex between them. The brown fingers of the girl's hand were interlaced with the fingers of the boy's without pressure, loosely.

It was not the first time during the past years that David had noted the young people of his race together, flesh touching flesh, yet without sensuality or desire or thought of coupling. They were like single individuals, these pairs, androgynous, the universal urge to bring forth the fruit of their bodies silenced for the moment, merged into a different urge, felt by both as one, the urge to create a world in which then-seed could grow in freedom, could be children of men as well as of God, an urge stronger than sex, mightier than any instinct to lie together for an hour.

David missed the thread of his thought, snatched it back, half angry with himself, and rewove it into the pattern of his speech. He would not lose the couple standing so silently before him, he knew that. They would be with him wherever he went, had been with him wherever he had been. There would be no losing them; let his country take heed: there would be no losing them.

He reached that part of his talk about the only powerful Negro—the only Negro with real ability to influence the destiny of his people—being the voting Negro, but instead of making it the climax, as it had always been, he let it become a part of the preclimax buildup, and moved to the front of the platform.

"These things are important," he said. "These things that I have said." He knew the value of repetition when he spoke to his people, knew it to be the secret of his people's eloquence, the repetition of a phrase like the background beat of a drum lending rhythm to thought, making the subject matter of a speech a thing of the senses as well as the mind. "All the things that we have done are important, the boycotts, such as the one that brought about a victory for our people in Montgomery, the freedom rides, the demonstrations, the sit-ins, the pray-ins, all have left their mark. But what we have done is only a tiny shadow of what we will do, as, it has been said, the child is the shadow of the man. As we sit here today there are towns all over the South in which no Negro has ever entered a voting booth, towns in which Negroes still dare not walk on the white side of the street, towns from which Negroes still vanish, to be found, later, dead. That's how short a distance our shadow reaches."

David slipped one hand into a trouser pocket, smiled and gathered in the audience with the smile, not with intent but because in that moment its members had become real and close to him. His voice strengthened, lost its strained and thready quality.

"This morning," he said, "I was a man with a different mission than I have now. This morning I was making plans to leave the South, at least for a time, hide myself in a quiet office, behind a thick door, in our national headquarters in Boston. I would have been doing what I was trained to do: wrassling with the law, instead of with a red-neck bully."