Five Smooth Stones (16 page)

I'll be damned, thought David. I mean, I'll really be damned, a couple of honest-to-God white northern liberals like you read about. And with only one head apiece, yet. He looked over at the doctor, saw that he was smiling, and surprised in the blue eyes the same warmth that so frequently animated the eyes of the Prof in New Orleans. "See?" said the doctor. "As my brother said—'chips.' I saw them. Wear them for the stupid clerk. Discard them for others."

"Yes, sir—" said David, and tried to smile, then was distracted when the waitress presented the check and Dr. Knudsen scrawled his signature across it. "When you eat your meals here, David, sign your name to the check. Your room, of course, is paid for. You did not know?
Ja
. My brother was

to tell you. We have an arrangement here for scholarship applicants during our remodeling period, while we are short of dormitory space."

David was thankful his room was paid for, but he was damned if he'd walk into that dining room alone, NAACP directors, anthropology professors or not. For every one of those, there could be ten filming racists, and he wasn't about to take any chances.

In the lobby the doctor said, "At four, either my wife or I will pick you up. This morning I arranged your first interview for four thirty. Latin. Afterward you will have dinner with us."

"I will? I mean—thanks, only I don't want—"

"At four."

He followed Randall to a small room under the eaves on the top floor. When they were inside, he said, "What kind of a place is this?"

"Good," said Randall. "It's O.K. most of the time. Hell, for a cat just coming out of the South, it'll seem like getting out of jail."

"Where you from?"

"Philadelphia. And that place doesn't smell like roses, either. I had some adjusting to do. Look, take it easy. Some of the colored guys hole up and don't have anything to do with anyone, and some of them throw their weight around, and either way it's not good. Most of the students are all right. Some of them stink. Where would you find it different? The faculty's O.K. Most of it. You have to feel your own way."

"What about the town? Man, that dining room gives me fits. Suppose I want a sandwich or a Coke or something?"

Randall shrugged. "Any place you want. This Inn was Crow for years. I guess ever since it opened way back when. Then the faculty boycotted it; most of the students went along and had their parents stay at the hotel across the square. The Inn saw the light. Same with the Coke and juke joints and hamburger places. Enough of the students gave 'em a bad time to make 'em change their minds. A real quiet cash register's a mighty moving thing. Influencing."

This guy must know what he's talking about, thought David. But he wasn't taking too many chances. There were bound to be, had to be, what Gramp called "traps for the unwiry."

***

The doctor's wife was walking through the front doorway

of the Inn just as David reached the bottom of the wide curving staircase that afternoon. Her first words were a commonplace greeting, and David felt surprise because he had taken it for granted that she would be Danish. But hers was a strictly American accent, of a region he could not identify, and his guard went up instantly. She was a tall woman; must be, he thought, a good two inches taller than her husband, with curling light brown hair touched with gray, and clear, direct, gray-blue eyes. She was wearing a short Mackintosh-type jacket and plaid skirt Her handshake was crisp, firm, and unavoidable. The car she led him to was an elderly Plymouth four-door. She went to the far side, slid beneath the wheel, and reached across the front seat to release the lock of the right-hand door.

David wondered if she had noticed that his hand had been on the handle of the rear door.
Act like you would was you down here. That way you can't get in no trouble. Smell out the land first.
Gramp had said that to him. Still, he couldn't ignore the door to the front that she had pushed open. "Best car we ever had," she was saying. "We won it in a raffle and it makes us practically the only two-car family in the faculty."

They swung away from the Inn and she drove first around the central square of the town, pointing out buildings and landmarks he knew he'd forget as soon as they were left behind. They passed the Inn at the end of the circuit and continued on a broad tree-lined street from which they did not turn and which, after the first mile, became less thickly lined with houses, until finally it was almost a rural road with mailboxes at the sides.

"My husband told you that we're expecting you for dinner?"

"Yes, ma'am. It's sure nice—"

"Nonsense. You'll be company for Sara. That's our niece. Not our real niece, our courtesy niece. Her mother and I were childhood friends and then roommates at Smith. She died three years ago. We claim Sara gladly. She has a sister living in Brazil, and her father flew down there a few days ago. On the way home from the airport her taxi was in an accident and she broke her arm, poor pet. She'll be entering Pengard when you do, next fall."

He could feel his guard lowering, not all the way, just enough so that his replies were made in normal tones. The car slowed and she said, "On your right—" and he turned and saw a big white house of turn-of-the-century vintage. A sign hanging from the roof of the porch proclaimed MOM'S.

"When we can't find a student anywhere on campus, we inquire at Mom's first. Fried chicken and spareribs. They raise their own chicks and I don't know where they get the ribs, but they're the best you've ever tasted. And inexpensive. It's closed now for spring vacation."

He could see ahead, on their left, the cluster of buildings that must be the campus, and behind the buildings there were glimpses of blue water through the trees. "Laurel Lake," said Mrs. Knudsen. "And very beautiful. Some of the hardier swim in late spring."

David had poured over so many pictures in Pengard catalogues that he had little trouble identifying many of the buildings: the Infirmary just inside the entrance to the campus, on their right; the dormitories lining two sides of a quadrangle whose far end was framed by the recreation hall and student dining hall. He knew that beyond the main quadrangle was another, smaller one formed by classroom buildings and the administration building. On this day scaffolds hung against the walls of several dormitories, piles of brick and lumber obstructed the sidewalks, and in two places, one on each side of the main quadrangle's broad, grassy center, new buildings were going up.

"We're trying desperately to expand without enlarging," said Mrs. Knudsen. "It's a neat trick if you can do it. There will be two new dorms in the fall, and remodeling of the old ones. The place is an architectural hash, but we hope to improve it gradually."

In the classroom-building area they stopped in front of a gray two-story fieldstone building. "Here we are, David Champlin. Your first interview. Room Ten. Don't let it worry you, please. Andrus is a pet, truly. From all I've heard you'll be what my husband calls 'right out of his kitchen cupboard.' We live over thataway and we'll be expecting you any time at all." She gave him explicit directions, then stopped quickly and said, "We'll pick you up," and David knew she had remembered his gimpy leg.

"No, ma'am. You forget about me until I get there. That's no walk at all."

When he left Room Ten more than an hour later, he felt drained and empty, and recognized the feeling as relief. Randall had said to him, "Don't let this interview with Andrus spook you. He's O.K. If you walked in there with three heads, each one a different color, he wouldn't be anything but happy as long as each head knew Latin."

Half an hour after entering Andrus's study, some of the meaning of a remark by the Prof began to sink in, not wholly accepted, yet not totally rejected as it had been when the Doc first made it. "There is only one color in which most of your instructors will be interested: gray.
Sal
Gray. The gray of that unpleasant-looking, spongy material within your skull." Before the interview was an hour old, David had been given a cup of tea, which he was too nervous to drink, and some pretty God-awful cookies, had discussed some hitherto unexplored reasons for the decline of the Roman Empire, and had translated without too much difficulty a short essay in Latin that the tall, pale, angular professor had himself written. At the close of the translation, which he was required to do verbally, Andrus said, "Professor Bjarne Knudsen was your tutor, was he not? The brother of our Dr. Knudsen?"

"Yes, sir."

"Of course." Andrus's smile was a thin and reserved one, but it had its own peculiar warmth. "A young man from our Deep South who speaks Latin with a Danish accent. No matter. This can be easily corrected. You will be well ahead of your class, Champlin." Andrus sighed. "Well ahead. Is there a subject you'd like to add?"

"Well, sir." David hesitated. He didn't want this guy to think he was showboating. "If I could, I mean if it's all right, I'd like to take Greek."

"Greek, eh? Do you know the language at all?"

"No, sir. Just the alphabet I learned it for kicks once."

"Learned it for kicks! Good God!"

David felt ill at ease, embarrassed, his cheeks hot. "I—I'm not a freak, sir. You know, a—a prodigy. Only, I had a lot of time every now and then because I had to be in the hospital a lot and all. I'm lousy—very bad—in math, and, well, I'm not too good in physics, and I was lazy and so I guess I did what came easiest"

When he rose to leave, Andrus Came to the door with him and laid a thin hand on his shoulder. David sensed the gesture was an unusual one for this man. "Don't worry about Greek, Champlin," said the professor. "I'm sure it can be arranged. I will talk with Dr. Knudsen. He will be your faculty adviser, I understand. The dean's approval must be obtained, of course. It can all be arranged, I feel sure." He shook his head, and again the thin smile appeared. "And to think, to think, you did not quote at me once. I suffer excruciatingly at the hands of would-be students who quote at me. I say 'at me' advisedly. Most of them could not translate adequately what they quote, but quote they must. Until later, Champlin. Tell Dr. Knudsen I am pleased."

As he walked to the Knudsens', David kept telling himself: "Take it easy, Champlin; take it easy. They won't all be like that one. Don't get cocky—"

***

The Knudsen home was an undistinguished gray frame house with white trim and a wide, old-fashioned porch. There had to be large, shabby, comfortable rooms inside, both upstairs and down, and it was not until he reached the door that David felt the inner withdrawal, the fear and the resentment at the fear, and the simple, sick perplexity of the question: Should he have gone to the rear?

As he stood uncertain and wavering, the door opened so suddenly that he took an involuntary step backward. A clear, rather high voice said, "You're David Champlin. Hello—" He looked down toward the source of the voice and found it in a small girl whose short, close cap of gleaming brown hair came to a spot well below his shoulder and whose dark, intense eyes were wide in a stare of unabashed and unashamed curiosity. His own eyes widened in surprise. He had thought the Knudsens were childless. Then he noticed that the splash of kelly-green silk he had taken for a scarf was actually a sling for a forearm in a plaster cast. This must be the niece, and if it was, she looked a long way from being old enough to go to college. The hand she held out was so tiny the palm of his own could bound it, and when he closed his fingers only a small thumb showed, pink and white against the brown of his skin.

"Come in, for goodness' sake. I'm Sara. Sara Kent, and we've been waiting for you, just busting with curiosity." In the background he heard Mrs. Knudsen's voice. "Is he alive and well, Sara? Bring him in."

He followed the small figure with the ridiculous kelly-green arm sling across a wide hall covered with soft-toned throw rugs toward an arched doorway on their right. Although the girl ahead of him was actually walking, it seemed to David that she was half running, half skipping, like a child, and he quickened his step.

Bookshelves lined the open spaces of the living-room walls; there was a pleasing clutter of miscellaneous objects on the flat surfaces of tables; some of the chairs were ancient and of wicker, with cushions covered with faded chintz. A huge old-fashioned divan faced a fire of just the right intensity for a cool early spring night.

"Sherry, David?" Dr. Knudsen had appeared from a room under the stairway at the rear of the entrance hall and was holding out a small tray of sherry-filled glasses. David stifled a sigh. He loathed sherry. It turned his stomach; there wasn't anything that came out of a bottle he hated more than sherry, but he'd seen enough movies and read enough books to know that it was some damned ceremonial sort of thing with a lot of people like these, and he forced a smile and said, "Yes, sir. Thank you."

"It went well, David? Your interview with Andrus?" asked the doctor.

Sara was sitting, legs curled beneath her, in a corner of the divan, and now she leaned forward and tugged his jacket gently. "Sit," she said. "For gosh sake don't just stand there. Sit and tell us about it."

Dr. Knudsen had turned to place the tray on a table near the fireplace, and Mrs. Knudsen was arranging two chairs so they would all be facing one another. He lowered himself gingerly to the edge of the divan, and as he did so thought fleetingly of Gramp. He'd die, he told himself; Gramp would plumb die if he saw me; probably grab me by the ear and haul me out. Then Sara Kent's hand, small as a child's, reached out and gently took his sherry glass from him. "I can tell you loathe it," she whispered, and he turned and grinned down at her gratefully, started to speak and found silence clogging his throat, something smothering his mind. He looked away quickly.

Dr. and Mrs. Knudsen were seated now, the doctor leaning forward, hair and eyes both seeming alive with interest. "Come, David. Tell us of it." Then when David finished, "He is human our Andrus."

"Yes, sir. At least, I thought so. I was sort of nervous—"

"He offered you tea and cookies? Did you eat them?"