Five Smooth Stones (27 page)

"That's wonderful, David. I'm—we're so glad you got here. I looked and looked for you at the beginning of term, and then Uncle Karl told me about your grandfather. Is he all right now?"

"My grandfather?" How did she manage it? How did she manage to sound as though it made all that difference to her if Gramp was all right?

"Of course, Stoopid. No one else's—"

"He's—he's pretty good. The doctor says he'll be all right if he takes it easy. I mean—thanks for asking—"

He'd gotten well into his halting, embarrassed reply before he realized he'd been called "Stoopid" by someone he'd met only once, a white at that, and had felt not even a flicker of resentment.

"We were scared. Honestly we were. Not just about your grandfather but that you wouldn't make it this year. Uncle Karl was having conniptions all over the place."

He could find no answer, and even had he found one he had no confidence that his voice would be up to delivering it. Sara broke into a pause that was becoming almost audible. "David—what time is your sitting?"

"My sitting—"

"In the dining hall. At dinner."

"Six o'clock."

"Oh, damn. Mine's six thirty. Look, we'll see you after dinner? In the rec hall? Everyone goes in then for a candy bar or something. You just have to after those puddings—"

"Well, gosh, I've got an awful lot of studying and, well, sort of straightening out to do on my schedule and assignments and all—"

"Pooh! You'll do it all the better. Everyone has a lot of studying to do. Don't be difficult. That's what my mother used to say—"

"Well—I'll try. And—and thanks for calling—"

He walked back upstairs slowly. For all his kidding around with Gramp, he knew the last thing he wanted was to start out his college career with some damned girl entanglement, any girl, but especially a white one. It wasn't that good here; a guy only had to walk his black self across the campus two or three times, only had to catch a few of the stares, a few of the big, phony smiles—smiles that would have been casual if he'd been white—and listen to some of the accents to know it wasn't all that good. He sure as hell wanted to see Sara Kent again; more, he guessed, than he'd ever wanted to see anyone. And there it was, staring him right in the eye: his own dark face, trouble, danger, loneliness, staring him right in the eye.

He didn't go to the recreation hall. Instead, he battled furiously with the problems Benford had assigned, then restored his self-confidence by whipping through Andrus's assignment in Latin. Maybe this was what the guy at the hotel, Randall, bad called "holing up," and had said wasn't good. Let it be that way, then; let it be.

He had learned a lot about some of the students the day before, in Sutherland's room, after Clevenger left and they all settled down to digest their chicken and drink Chuck Martin's beer. Sutherland was the son of a famous doctor in Boston, the grandson of the doctor who had founded the Sutherland Clinic. David had read about the clinic in news magazines, and about the royalty and famous people from all over the world who came there. Sudsy was headed for Harvard Medical—he hoped. "Hey!" he said. "Maybe you'll make Harvard Law the same time I make the med school and—"

"Gosh, I hadn't figured on Harvard—"

"Hell, man, you've got to. You're going to be the first Negro Justice of the Yewnited States Soopreme Court, and Harvard's the first rung—"

Some whites saying that would have offended him. Now he just grinned and said, "You saying it. Not me."

To Tom Evans's obvious pleasure, David knew all about Bull Evans. The Prof had considered Bull Evans one of the greatest leaders American labor had ever known. Tom said: "Kinda hard for a guy who looks like me to live up to. The old man's always telling me if I ever forget my father was a labor man and got his arm broken by a labor cop, and did time in prison, he'll break my neck." He sighed. "I look awful funny making muscles."

"You'll meet Hunter Travis," said Chuck.

"Travis—Travis—you mean—"

"Yeah. Son of Lawrence Travis."

"Gosh."

"Hell of a swell guy. And he's almost as blond as I am—" David wondered if this Travis guy was passing, then realized he couldn't be, his father was too well known. "He writes," said Sudsy. "Already?"

"Well, gosh!" said Tom. "You have to be able to if you want to get in here. Read, too."

"Don't be so damned smart," said Sudsy. "Champlin means does he already write and get published. And he does. In the little magazines."

"I tried reading one of his things once," said Chuck. "Too highbrow for me. I couldn't reach that far."

David made a mental note to give Travis a wide berth.

They didn't know, as he did, what a pain in the neck an uppity, near-white northern Negro could be. Some of them could give lessons to any ofay red-neck in any southern town. And Travis probably wasn't the only Negro at the college it would be well to go easy with at first. He had already learned, by way of a surprisingly long letter from Nehemiah, about two other characters, Negroes, and Nehemiah's adjectives had prompted him to destroy the letter in case Gramp got hold of it. Gramp was no kindergartener when it came to cussing, but Nehemiah qualified for a degree.

"And you've already met the scourge of my childhood," said Tom. "Sara. Little Sara Kent."

"Well—sort of. Last spring."

He wanted Tom to go on, but the smaller youth only sighed, said "Oh, well. Our relationship goes back to prehistoric times. She's all right, I guess—" and the conversation veered to the peculiarities of various professors and the dearth of entertainment in Laurel. Sara wasn't mentioned again until Tom Evans walked back to Quimby House with him, invited himself upstairs, and stood for a moment looking out the window over the couch. "That's Rainsford Hall, directly across the quad. Sara's there and a girl I go out with sometimes named Lou Callender. Kinda stupid but sexy. And there's a girl there from down your way, colored, named Margaret Benjamin. You could spot her even if she wasn't colored because she's one of the dead-earnest kind, and it's all you can do to see her for textbooks. She even studies in the rec hall and looks at the rest of us like we were a bunch of incorrigible delinquents."

He turned from the window and saw David, who had started to unpack, and his eyes widened like a child's. "What in hell you got there, Champlin!"

"Oh, my God!" said David. "Sweet Jesus!" He looked at the object in his hand, felt that he must be changing color with embarrassment. Never, never, never, if he lived to be ten thousand, would he let Gramp mess with his packing again. The cloth lions and tigers, the ceramic and ivory elephants and giraffes he and Gramp had collected as a sort of hobby, were all right; he'd packed a few of those himself, and put them on the mantel. But
this
—this was a battered calico tiger with yellow wool whiskers and multicolored mane of yarn, made for him so long ago he couldn't remember, although he remembered sleeping with it almost until he got into high school, remembered that the night he came home

from the hospital the first time, it had been on his pillow, where Gramp had put it, and that he had gone to sleep with it feeling good in his hand, while Stumpy had lain curled beside him, purring.

Evans was laughing now. "Relax, Champlin. I'll bet if I hadn't hidden it, my mother would have packed my old Teddy bear. I guess they figure these things are sort of symbols. If they can get us to hang on to 'em, we'll keep on looking innocent and cute when we're asleep. That tiger's a work of art. Put it in the center of the mantel and punch the first guy in the nose who laughs at it. It's got real character."

***

David saw Nehemiah the first time on Monday morning, walking down the steps of the dining hall, swaggering a little, squinting as he searched with small, dark eyes the hurrying groups of students crossing the campus on their various ways to classes or breakfasts. David whistled, and Nehemiah turned, grinned, and hurried across the grass. "Hey, man! Looking for you! You made it—"

"Yeah. How you doing?"

"Somewhat. Somewhat."

It was an expression that was exclusively Nehemiah's, and it sounded good to David. Then, for the first time, he realized the truth of Gramp's remark about the fleas in a pan of milk.

"Hi, flea!" he said, and chuckled at Nehemiah's puzzlement. It was plain that Nehemiah thought this was a new slang phrase he should be up on.

"How's Li'l Joe? He all right now?"

"Seems to be. I wouldn't have left if he'd been too poorly. He's a stubborn old goat, though. Sure hope the doc stays on his back—"

"How you like it so far? I went to Columbus over the weekend. Next weekend I'm going to Dayton. Man, you know I got uncles and aunties and cousins all over this damned state? Man, you gotta make that Columbus scene with me. They got girls there—you just don't know. You got to make it with me—"

"O.K., O.K. Give me time, man. Right now I've got to go eat, then pick up my schedule, then go to nine o'clock class."

They talked for a few minutes, the questions David wanted to ask going unspoken. Nehemiah wasn't the guy to answer them. Nehemiah didn't just see things under the bed; if they weren't there, he put them there. From the talk of the New Orleans musicians who had traveled outside the South, David knew the technique of finding the way. If you traveled by train and the porter didn't know, you found a redcap or a clean-up man in the station and you asked him "What kind of a town is this?" The question had only one meaning; it had nothing to do with weather or the cost of living or the possibilities of a good time. Let the whites worry about those aspects of a city; when a Negro asked the question it meant just one thing. Before the conversation was over he'd know what hotels would take colored, where he could eat, where he could go, and—most important of all—where he could not go.

If a town was entered by car, a guy kept his eye out for the poorer streets, the slum areas, those places where only Negroes were seen on the sidewalks, or mostly Negroes.

As far as Pengard and the town of Laurel were concerned, the boy at the Inn last spring, Randall, had answered most of his questions. He had learned a lot yesterday, too, albeit from whites, although he hadn't quite digested it yet. Nehemiah's answers to further questions were bound to be diatribes and would only be confusing.

"Y'all meet a couple of colored guys named Simmons and Dunbar yet?" Nehemiah was asking.

"No. They the two cats you wrote about?"

"Yeah. You'll know 'em. Light-complected, nappy. They both wear solid gold threads, swear they do. They aren't in the same dormitory, but that's the only time you'll see 'em apart. Got no time for anyone, either of 'em. Don't rush up to speak. They'll put you in the deep freeze right now. Make you feel like you never was born."

"Where they from?"

"New York. Chicago. Dicty! Man, they invented it. If you come from the South or you talk like it, they got you down for a handkerchief-haid Uncle Tom, no matter do they even know your name. You'll meet 'em; can't miss 'em."

"I'll watch out. See you later?"

"Sure. You got a buck and a quarter to spare?"

"I—I guess so." He was surprised. Nehemiah was too proud to borrow.

"Been saving. Thought maybe we'd get us some ribs tomorrow night. Place called Mom's. Closed Mondays."

"Sure." One thing was certain: Gramp wouldn't blame him for spending part of his small hoard on ribs.

When he walked into the dining hall his defense went up automatically. It was a defense that had served him well all his life; it was like a modern glass window in a door: those behind it could see out, but to those on the outside it was opaque. The Prof had spotted it, had growled once, "What I am thinking you know, but what you are thinking—bah! I will never know."

He told himself that most of the stares when he walked into the room were reactions to be expected. Even a bunch of kids in grade school stared at a newcomer, even if he was the same color. The room was filled with long tables, and the wall on his right was taken up by a cafeteria-style counter. Through an archway opposite the entrance he could see more long tables with women students eating at them. He saw no faces that were not white, were not strangers, and it was like walking into winter. Then he heard someone call, "Hey! David! Champlin!" and, searching for the source, saw Chuck Martin at the rear of the room hurrying toward a side door. The big ungainly youth waved to him, called, "Gotta rush! See you later!" and was gone.

He turned to go toward the cafeteria counter, and a tall, good-looking, rather elegant youth rose from the table directly in front of him and came over, hand outstretched. "Sit anywhere you can find a seat, Champlin," he said. Then, looking back over his shoulder, "There's one next to me now. Fellow just left."

David said, "Thanks," and followed, took his seat and said "Thanks" again when someone handed him a filled coffee cup. He sugared it and listened as the slim young man who had greeted him said, "This is the routine: get the motor started at the table with coffee and juice, then fuel up at the counter. Tilt your chair against the table when you go—"

There was something about this guy, thought David, something familiar that he couldn't be quite sure about, but was pretty damned sure. In New Orleans, when they were as light as this guy, they rode in the front of the bus, drank at the tables in the nightclubs or at the white end of the bar in saloons, used the white toilets, and married white women—or men—if their own ancestry wasn't too well known. If that was the case they usually moved north. Gram's first cousin, a woman named Ella something-or-other, wouldn't even speak to Gramp when she saw him on the street, usually crossed over, yet she'd had the same grandparents Gram had.

He finished his coffee, started to rise and go to the counter, when the fair-skinned young man beside him said: "My name's Travis. Hunter Travis. Glad you made it O.K., Champlin. Doc Knudsen told me about you."

"Yeah?" He shouldn't be surprised, should have known, after what Chuck had said the day before. He remembered that he'd decided to give this Travis guy a wide berth; now the decision flickered and went out. Travis's speech, though it was warm and friendly, was precise, the speech, almost, of a foreigner who had complete mastery of English. Hadn't someone said that Travis had received most of his education in Europe? And here he was, David Champlin, sitting next to a guy whose father was just about one of the most famous statesmen in, well, just about in the world.