Five Smooth Stones (51 page)

But there was something else he had to face, and that was the biggest something of all. The wisp of silver rain broke in his fingers, and he rolled it up and tossed it to one of the neighborhood cats who was meditating in the sun on the bricked path below him. A fellow could study all his life, he supposed, cram his mind with knowledge and facts and other men's thoughts and conclusions and philosophies, and never come up with the answer to the questions a Negro faced every time he walked down the street, applied for a job, or just plain tried to be a human being. And never, never the answer to the question David Champlin faced when he found himself hooked, gaffed, helpless and flounderingly in love with a white girl. It wasn't enough that he had to get talked into going to a white college; he had to wind up in the God-damnedest fix anyone could think up—and on top of that he had to really mess up and fall in love with a white girl, and the best thing he could do was stay where he was, right on his own front porch, or pick himself a Negro college and get the hell out of where he had been. He knew a lot of mixed couples had already broken the ice in a lot of places outside of the South, and then they'd usually fallen through that ice into the cold depths below. Unless it was an exceptional case like the Travises, he'd never heard of a mixed marriage that hadn't turned out anything but lousy. Besides, he wasn't the ice-breaking type. Already, just showing his black face in a white college had blown up a storm. And life was going to be like that, just like that, like it always had been and would be for a long time—a mess-up; he couldn't ask a half-pint-sized kid who didn't know what it was all about to join him in the mess-up. It wasn't that he had any fool idea he wasn't good enough for her; he was, and he knew it. It was that after a couple of years of rock-throwing she'd wish she'd never heard of him, and he'd rather never see her again than have that happen.

He thought of the first time he'd met her after their big dustup at Mom's. She had seen him walking toward her in the inner quadrangle and stopped for just the fraction of a second, then come forward more slowly, and he had grinned self-consciously, feeling like a kid. "Sara," he said when she drew closer. It was hard enough to say that, but it was harder still to say what he knew he must. "Look—I didn't mean—I guess I was pretty stinking—"

She had looked up at him, eyes shining, mouth laughing. "You were. Oh, David, my darling, you were. And it doesn't matter. Honestly it doesn't because when I want to be mean I can—well, I can out-mean you and anyone else—you wait—"

"I don't think I want to—" He had been trapped then in her eyes, her laugh, her whole vibrant body; he could not look away, and it was only the heavy thud of Chuck Martin's running feet, Chuck's heavy handclap on his shoulder, and "Come on, Stoopid—we're late now for Beanie—" that brought him back to earth.

For a long time after that, he forgot he was beginning to feel like a pariah, that by now there were quick glances his way and equally quick ones away from him, and the quick whispered comments between students were beginning to have a meaning he did not want to think about. And even after the problem came back to ride on his shoulder, "Oh, David, my darling" made it lighter to carry.

The Prof came back at the end of the week, not roaring, to David's surprise, but with a sort of sustained rumble in his voice, like distant thunder. "Say it, my boy," he commanded. "The Prof has deserved it. T told you so'—and that these things were not under the bed."

David laughed as heartily as he had for a long time. "How'd you know, Prof? You picked the words, the same identical words, I was all set to say. Dirty trick, not giving me the chance."

The Prof did not go into any detail about what his brother had told him at Pengard. On that score he said only: "David, I cannot urge you. A man must make up his own mind to stay or run. I urged you when your grandfather was sick, and you followed my urging then. Now you must follow your own. But wherever it takes you, David, I think you know Bjarne Knudsen is with you."

"Yes, sir. Thanks."

***

The day before New Year's a package came, with Sara Kent's return address in Lakeside Heights in the upper left-hand corner. David thanked what luck was left to him that Gramp was out when it arrived. A card was Scotch-taped to the gleaming gold of the Christmas wrapping, and he opened it and read: "Am sorry to pieces this is so late but I thought I could get it finished. Only I couldn't because I was too busy being appraised. If it doesn't fit, blame Chuck. I used him for a model. Please like it. And please call me as soon as you get back. A Happy New Year to all—Sara."

The present was a sweater, a heavy green one in cable stitch that he had seen her working on for weeks before Christmas vacation. It was high in the neck for warmth, with long sleeves. For her brother-in-law, she'd said. It fitted perfectly, long and snug around the hips with a cuff that could be turned up waist high if he wanted it that way, snug at the wrists, shoulders and neck easy and right.

After he took it off he sat for a long time on the edge of his bed, holding it in his hand, turning it over and over, looking at the careful, beautifully even work, not seeing much of any of it, knowing that into the stitches there had to have been knit thoughts, because you couldn't knit a big sweater like this without thinking of the guy you were knitting it for. And damn it, there he was again, and he wished life would let him alone just long enough for him to get on his feet emotionally, know where he was going, or at least how he wanted to get wherever it was he was headed.

There was the sound of the front door closing. Gramp was back. He started up guiltily, folding the sweater back into the tissue paper quickly, kicking the box under the bed, and then pulling his suitcase out of the closet. He threw it on the bed and opened it, put the sweater carefully in the shirt compartment, and buckled the flaps over it. Then he locked the suitcase. That was one thing Gramp mustn't see. Gramp knew something was wrong, he could tell that; and Gramp was worrying about him. If he showed him a sweater knit by a white girl—Jesus have moicy! David didn't even want to think about it. And if he lied and said she was colored, Gramp would be so happy and relieved he'd start picking out names for his great-grandchildren right then and there.

But even though the sweater was well out of sight, he could still see the girl who had made it for him. He stood looking at the suitcase, while in the kitchen there were the sounds of Gramp stirring round. "Sara—Smallest—" He knew now. It would take guts to go back and face that situation—but it would take more guts to stay away from wherever Sara was, and he didn't think he had them.

CHAPTER 36

President John Vidal was Pengard College's answer to the youth movement that was becoming evident in the academic world through the appointments of young and progressive men to head many universities and colleges, including some of the most conservative. He was still only forty-seven when he was faced with one of the stickiest problems he supposed he'd ever have to deal with. Crew-cut, ruddy-complexioned, of medium height and stocky build, his general appearance of Kiwanian bounce and vitality was so deceptive that there was scarcely a faculty member who did not bear psychic scars acquired in encounter with a broad and penetrating mind that was balanced nicely between objective intellect and subjective humanitarianism. Vidal made no fetish of comradely relationship with his students, although he did not hesitate to fall in step with one, on or off the campus, and say, "I'm John Vidal. What's your name? Tell me about yourself." When Benford had jokingly commented on it once, Vidal had grinned at him and said, "With professors like you around, I feel I have to show them that Someone Cares." His greatest weaknesses were an occasional naivete in his relationships with his fellows, and a real belief in a basic goodness inherent in all men. This naivete and belief explained the presence of Goodhue and several assistant professors the students were forced to suffer, not often gladly. He was a widower, with twin sons at Exeter and a daughter at a preparatory school in New York.

His selection had been accomplished without any discernible pressure from the then president, Horace Quimby, yet the opinion prevailed among the faculty that he was "Quimby's man." The opinion was correct. On Thursday of the final week of a midterm vacation that Vidal knew he would always remember as one of the most troubled periods of his academic career, he faced the prospect of meeting with his full board, once in the afternoon and again in the evening. There was little comfort in the thought that facing his board could be no worse than the job of facing himself had been for the past four weeks—ever since Horace Quimby had called him to the house by the lake on the Sunday following Thanksgiving weekend. He had not known at the time, but he knew now that on that same Sunday Tom Evans, troubled and perplexed, had talked with his father in the Evans home, and on the day before Hunter Travis had sought counsel from Dr. Maynard Sutherland in Boston.

He had been curious but not concerned on that Sunday as his car jounced over the unpaved shortcut to the lake road, a shortcut forbidden. to student cars except on special occasions. When he rounded a curve that would bring the lake into full view, he saw two students walking ahead of him. One student was the tall, good-looking young Negro from New Orleans, David Champlin, whom he had talked to several times and liked better each time; the other was the bony, rugged-looking chap from Georgia with the unruly blond hair and candid face. Vidal remembered him well because of circumstances connected with his admission. He blew his horn, and drew alongside them. "Lift?" he called when he had lowered the window. "It's cold out there!" Charles Martin had answered. "Sure is, but we're getting our exercise. Thanks, sir —" And Champlin had smiled. (Good God thought Vidal now, was it only four weeks before? He could still feel the warm charm of a smile lighting a face that always appeared almost somber in repose.) "Thank you, sir," Champlin had said. "There's no place to lift us to. We don't know where we're going." Vidal remembered laughing. "That's scarcely an attitude we encourage at Pengard, Champlin, but it's sure as the devil the best one to have when you start out on a walk. Take care—and good luck!" And he had driven on, to Quimby's home, and the start of the unhappy four weeks climaxing today in the meeting of the board.

Only Horace Quimby, for whom Vidal had more affection than for any older man he had ever known, could have cooled his anger when he learned that three faculty members had gone over his head to the former president with a strange story of racial discrimination and bias, a story that held certain other unsavory implications as well. Quimby had said, "Would you have been able to receive their story open-mindedly, John? All three ran a certain risk in coming to me, but they did so because they had no proof—yet. They believe, and so do I, in the truth of the story. But to have come to you with nothing definite to go on would have seemed like gossipmongering, particularly as all of them are known to be anything but supporters of Goodhue. They came to me for counsel solely, after all, I have no real power—"

A good measure of Vidal's anger was expended in his laughter at Quimby's last words. Quimby responded to the laughter with a dry chuckle. "Do what you can, John. What seems right. My advice was that they put the entire problem in your lap. I think your secretary will tell you that you have an appointment with them tomorrow."

"Should I say, "Thank you'?"

Again the dry, aged chuckle. "You're getting your lumps at last, John. I believe that's the expression. My advice—and please understand that it is advice only—is that you start with the current problem, the one that involves David Champlin, and work back."

"I just saw him, on the way up here. It's incredible. I could wish, though, that he hadn't attacked a fellow student."

"I've told you what the circumstances were. He had reason enough, in my judgment."

"Of course, under those circumstances, it seems to have been expedient. And it could explain, possibly, the origin of a malicious rumor."

"Possibly?" said Quimby.

***

He remembered that interview well, standing at the window of the board room, watching the members arrive, listening to the rumble of talk in the hallway and waiting room. Ordinarily he would have been out there, greeting them Today he did not feel like the amenities. As they came into the board room he sensed their surprise at his expression, but he could not lighten it. One member said, as they shook hands, "It's quite apparent, John, that we aren't here to discuss an unexpected ten-million-dollar endowment."

"Not even one million, Henry."

Pengard's governors had been chosen through the years for their mental flexibility, their ability to think and make decisions within the framework of current thought and problems; it was not, therefore, what is known as "well balanced." During his years as president, Quimby had snapped at a well-intentioned adviser: "I'm not in the least interested in balance for its own sake. I'd rather see us go overboard and have to rescue ourselves than never get wet at all."

Vidal announced the plan of the meeting when they were all seated at the big oval table in the center of the room; there would be an informal, and probably lengthy, session first, then dinner at the Laurel Inn, followed by a formal session for action later. In anticipation of the length of the afternoon session a long table against a side wall held a coffee urn and cups and saucers.

He sat at one end of the table, not the relaxed, smiling figure they were accustomed to, but straight, almost stiff, eyes cold, one hand resting on a stack of folders in front of him, the other holding his dark-rimmed reading glasses. Without comment he passed one of the folders to each man, then leaned forward, holding his eyeglasses delicately in both hands as though afraid that if he permitted himself to grasp them firmly he would shatter them.

"The contents of the folders you have just been given will be easier to understand after I have told you something about them. You will find, when you open them, photostatic copies of records pertaining to certain students who were either asked to leave the college during the past few years or who left of their own accord. There are six of those. You will also find, attached to the records of some of these students, letters recently received setting forth their views of the reasons they are no longer students. Naturally, these are for the most part subjective in tone, although far from entirely so. In almost every instance careful reading cannot help but result in the suspicion that these expulsions and voluntary quits were—and it is painful, very painful, for me to say this—quite probably rigged."