Five Smooth Stones (25 page)

"Too bad we don't go in for sports here, David." He was smiling. David did not miss the fact that it was first names right off the bat with this character, no "Champlin" to a Negro. "I was just thinking you'd make a fine back for a varsity squad."

"I doubt that," said David. He did not return the smile, although he knew it was expected of him, and hated the knowledge. "Left leg's gimpy."

"Sorry. I didn't notice." Clevenger's voice sounded sincerely sympathetic. Which was in character, thought David.

"You couldn't very well. I've been standing back here. It's nothing much. Just a stiff ankle joint."

"Champlin." Clevenger gave the name the French pronunciation, and his voice was thoughtful. "Champlin. Two 'a's?"

"One," said David shortly. "I guess it used to be two."

"I'm sure it did," said Clevenger. "My grandmother was a Champlain from down your way. It's an old southern name."

"Meaning?" Chuck spoke quietly. David would not have to have asked the meaning, and he knew Chuck did not. Former slaves carried their owners' names even until today.

Chuck didn't wait for a reply. "Run along and get your Alka-Seltzer," he said, and David's muscles tautened at the raw anger in his tone. "We were breathing real fine wholesome, healthy air until you came along."

If I've got to get mixed up in a fight the first day I'm here, thought David, if I have to do that, I'm flyin'. But there was no answering anger in Clevenger's face as he looked at Chuck; instead there was a contempt that, thought David, if it had been directed at him he would have wiped off with a fist, much as he hated to fight. Clevenger did not speak, turned to leave, but before he was well into the hallway he stopped and turned back, his eyes on David. "You'll find a fellow Quimby in this building, David. And two in Justin Hall." He closed the door, and they heard his footsteps on the uncarpeted floor of the corridor.

***

The strained silence in the room after Clevenger had left made David more acutely uncomfortable than he had ever been in his life. There was no sound except the thud of his iron. He glanced at Chuck covertly, and saw what had been the dull, brick-red flush of anger gradually subsiding. It was Sudsy who broke the silence with a high-pitched, wailing protest. "What's the matter with guys like that! What's the
matter
with them!"

"Me," said Evans, and, unlike Sudsy's, his voice was unexpectedly strong, far more mature than the troubled, boyish face. "Me, I think a lynch mob's a cleaner proposition."

"Look," said David. "Look. You fellows shouldn't get all—"

Chuck took over. His face had returned to its normal pink. He spoke slowly, his accent exaggerated, the voice pitched somewhere behind the nose.

"Y'all don't understand," he said. "Y'all just don't understand. David knows how it is. We've got a Problem. With a big capital 'P.' Our nigras understand this. Ouah nigras have been happy for a hundred years. No one was any happier than what we was to free the slaves. My grandfather freed his slaves long befo' Abe Lincoln come along, messin' with ouah way of livin'. My grandaddy even gave his slaves a little piece of ground all their own, those he'd had a long time.

Ouah nigras know we understand them and take care of them. Ouah
good
nigras don't want no interferin' nobodies from up No'th comin' round messin' up a relationship that's been so good and beautiful so long."

David had quietly set his iron down at the end of the board at the beginning of Chuck's speech. Now he looked quickly at Sudsy and then at Tom, who was back on the couch. There was sheer horror on Sudsy's face, set cold anger on Tom's. He looked at Chuck, whose eyes met his squarely. Suddenly he put both hands on the ironing board and leaned forward, laughing the deep clear laughter of the man of whom Irene Champlin had said, "You could hear him laughing two courtyards away." When it was spent he said, "I don't know why you're wasting your time on liberal arts, Chuck; I swear I don't. Why didn't you go to one of those big dramatic schools in the East?"

Chuck stood up. "Forget about that character Clevenger," he said. "You must have known we'd have 'em like that. They've got 'em everywhere, nearly as I can tell." He turned to the others. "I've got beer." He sighed gustily. "I'm ashamed, plumb ashamed to admit that I was saving it for next weekend. And I know where I can get more. I'll break it out now I'm a repentant sinner."

CHAPTER 19

"Lawd! What you moaning about? The boy ain't dead." Li'l Joe Champlin spoke aloud with only the yellow tail-less cat to hear. There was a great loneliness within him and an emptiness in the little white house that changed it from a cottage warm with life to a vast echoing hall, as chill and empty as a disused auditorium. It had not been like this even after Geneva died; then there had been a small boy and an old woman to silence the echoes.

He pushed his supper dishes and coffee cup back and stood. "You just griping because now you has to wash the dishes," he told himself, and smiled at the liar he was talking to. This would be David's first night at the college, and he wondered what sort of room, in what kind of bed, his grandson would be sleeping.

David had brought home some lamb liver for Stumpy the day before he left, and Li'l Joe began cutting it up in small pieces for the cat's ancient teeth. "Going over the river," he said to Stumpy. "Going to get that belly of yours full before I leaves."

Perhaps somewhere over the river he would find one of the groups he played with and could sit in for a while. If not, there were plenty of warm, smoky places he could go and be greeted loudly by friends, where he could have a friendly drink or two. The doctor had said that one or two were O.K., but he wished he could get drunk; it had been a long time since he'd been good and happy drunk.

He didn't suppose he'd feel a hell of a lot better even if he did go over the river. He'd still miss the boy because David had been going over with him often lately, playing piano sometimes. Playing it good, too, thought Li'l Joe, even if he did have to get on the kid now and then for some of that "far-out" stuff he'd work in. No sense in it, good as the boy could play the real stuff. "Uncle Toms" was what the younger musicians were calling men like himself and Kid Arab and other older men, but they were wrong. Li'l Joe forced his mind to stay on this track, away from the boy's absence. People were asking for the old-time stuff these days, and it was coming back, professors and writers, all different kinds of whites, writing books about it, collecting records, asking ten thousand damfool questions a minute. Speaking for himself, he couldn't see anything Uncle Tom about it. Give the people who were paying their money what they wanted, don't bite off the tongue in your cheek; give 'em "Dixie" then come on strong with "Gettysburg March," and the hell with them; the kitty stayed full and you didn't have to scrape too hard to pay your ALEC and your N-double-A dues.

Even some of the young whites were calling them "Uncle Toms," and Li'l Joe thought about it a lot, wondering what they'd have been like if they'd grown up the way the folks they criticized had grown up. A man's got to survive, he'd think. What they didn't know, what they didn't know at all, was that the guys who put on the biggest show of Uncle Tom-ing were the ones who hated the whites the most, men like Papa Ballantine and Bob John. Sometimes Papa Ballantine was enough to turn a man's stomach, capering around up there on the stage, talking to people sitting at the tables in the club where he'd played for years. "Lawd! Lawd 'a' mercy!" he'd say. "If there ain't Miss Betty So-and-So! Sho' glad to see you, Miss Betty. Folks, I been knowin' Miss Betty ever since she wasn't nothing but a baby. Been knowin' her mamma and her daddy, too. Lawd! Lawd! My mamma, she nursed Miss Betty's mamma way back there, way back, an' here's Miss Betty, pretty as a picture and got a baby herself! What you-all want Papa Ballantine to play for you, Miss Betty?"

He knew, Li'l Joe knew, and so did the others in the band, that the little notes Bob John blew on his trombone before they started on "Miss Betty's" request were retches. And there didn't any of the whites, not any of them, know the things Papa Ballantine said when there wasn't anyone around but his own people. Lawd! Some of 'em wouldn't even know the meaning of the words.

Li'l Joe sat in the big chair in front of the mock fireplace, feet propped on the hassock, and reached to turn on the radio beside him. He stopped, hand on knob, at the sound of a heavy thud-thud of feet on the porch. When he opened the door the Professor was standing before it, red-gray beard jutting over the top of the brown paper bag he held in his arms.

"Ah! My friend—" The Professor pushed past Li'l Joe and went directly to the kitchen. "You are lonely. Do not lie to me and say you are not." He was opening the refrigerator. "Bjarne Knudsen is lonely with the boy away, and I know Li'l Joe must be also. So I come. With beer. Good Danish beer. The shot glasses, Li'l Joe! The shot glasses. What have you done with them?"

"Lawd!" Li'l Joe, just behind him, was looking at the bottle the Professor had placed on the table. "You brought them schnapps. I dunno, Prof—"

"There is no law that says you must drink schnapps with beer." The Professor was carrying a tray laden with bottles and glasses into the living room. "But there should be. Tonight you will have some, yes?"

"No. I mean sure. Sure, Prof. Mebbe one or two."

Later, sitting in a corner of the blue divan, the Professor shook a finger at him, a small shake, without menace. "Two grown men; two grown men and we sit consoling each other because one young boy has gone a short distance. Do not tell me your heart is not heavy. It is true that there is a feeling no? A feeling that he has gone a long way."

"I done told the boy, long time ago, I done told him he' be leaving this place one of these days. Said he wa'n't, but knows better. Lawd, Prof! That boy's been lucky. I
mean,
he's been lucky! I looks around and I sees these other boys around here and the way they going, and I thinks about it al' the time. Not that I ain't had no problems with him; reckon just being a teen like he is, that's a problem all by itself. But still I wonders what I done the good Lord should make it so fine for David. I keep a-telling him there ain't nothing free; sooner or later a man pays for his luck."

"You must not say that to him. He owes nothing. Excep to his people. And this he will know, or I am a stupid man."

Li'l Joe grinned. "You ain't stupid, Prof." He sobered "Y'all think he'll make it? Y'all think he'll measure up?"

"With—how do I say it?—with no sweat he will measure up. Without sweat he will make it. He is no prodigy, thank the good God, but he has what I call a wide intelligence."

The Professor smiled at Joseph Champlin, and there was a sweetness in the smile Li'l Joe had never seen before, not in all the years he had known the Prof.

"Something within you almost hopes he will not make it, no? It is natural."

"My Gawd, Prof! I ain't all that selfish! I ain't like—"

"You are human, Li'l Joe, and you love the boy. He is your life. He is—what is it your people say?—your 'heart.'" Knudsen picked up his glass of schnapps, downed it in one gulp, and followed it with beer. "He will go far, our David. But not from you, Li'l Joe. I know this. You do not understand? You will remain with him, Joseph Champlin, you and your wife and this house and the Timminses and the Jeffersons and the bureau drawer in which he was cradled. And, I hope, the Prof. Good God, yes! I hope the Prof! A man cannot cast aside his childhood, Li'l Joe, though he run from it as he would run from the devil. He may make of it a burden under which to stumble and fall, or a shield to hide behind, or he may make of it a tool." He sighed. "I do not make myself clear?"

"Sure." Li'l Joe was looking into his glass. "Sure you makes yourself clear. You always does when you puts your mind to it."

Knudsen found himself in the unfamiliar position of being without words. He knew Li'l Joe understood what he had said. He also knew that there was in Li'l Joe's mind a dark land as unknown to Bjarne Knudsen as the surface of a far planet, a land that his words would never reach, or if they reached would never lighten. Of that land he knew only that its prevailing wind was fear.

He rose quietly and went to the kitchen, opened two more bottles of beer, and brought them back. He handed one to Li'l Joe, and said: "From your own life, you have given him courage. Do not worry about him. Where he goes, you go too." Picking up the bottle of schnapps, he said:
"Akvavit,
Li'l Joe? Three? Bah! It is nothing. Will you let a Viking out-drink you?"

Li'l Joe was quiet for a moment, then he said, "Lawd! Ain't no—what you always calling it? Wiking?—what can't outdrink me. Reckon all of you was weaned on that stuff. Where y'all going with that bottle? You didn't hear me say I wouldn't."

***

The outstanding feature of "Margie's" Coke and hamburger dispensary was noise. Its booths seemed made of elastic siding, capable of expanding to accommodate anywhere from one to eight young people. The day after David Champlin's arrival at Pengard, the woodwork of the back booth was creaking under the weights and against the pressures of Suds Sutherland, Tom Evans, Chuck Martin, and three girls, one of them Sara Kent. At the end of the booth's table Randolph Clevenger sat, chair pushed back, legs crossed, hands clasped around one knee. The other two girls were Carol Babcock, who had come with Chuck, and Lou Callender, Tom Evans's current companion in off moments. Randolph Clevenger had been drinking coffee at the counter when they entered, and had now attached himself to their table. They were talking about Goodhue, from whom Tom, earlier that day, had received a sternly tolerant lecture on curfew violations. Tom's mimicry of the dean was subtle but sure in touch.

" 'Cozy,'" said Carol. "Whoever thought that up—"

Sutherland protested. "He's too big. Man, he's got bones like a dinosaur."

"I don't care. I think he's dreamy," Lou answered him. It was an adjective current at the time, and Lou used it as though she was afraid it would go out of style or vanish from the vocabulary before she had exhausted its possibilities.