(1952)

Contents

Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue



Prologue



I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those
who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood
movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone,
fiber and liquids -- and I might even be said to possess a mind. I
am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see
me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus
sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of
hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only
my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination
-- indeed, everything and anything except me.

Nor is my invisibility exactly a matter of a bio-chemical
accident to my epidermis. That invisibility to which I refer
occurs because of a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those
with whom I come in contact. A matter of the construction of
their inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through their
physical eyes upon reality. I am not complaining, nor am I
protesting either. It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen,
although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves. Then
too, you're constantly being bumped against by those of poor
vision. Or again, you often doubt if you really exist. You wonder
whether you aren't simply a phantom in other people's minds.
Say, a figure in a nightmare which the sleeper tries with all his
strength to destroy. It's when you feel like this that, out of
resentment, you begin to bump people back. And, let me
confess, you feel that way most of the time. You ache with the
need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world,
that you're a part of all the sound and anguish, and you strike
out with your fists, you curse and you swear to make them
recognize you. And, alas, it's seldom successful.

One night I accidentally bumped into a man, and perhaps
because of the near darkness he saw me and called me an in-
sulting name. I sprang at him, seized his coat lapels and
demanded that he apologize. He was a tall blond man, and as
my face came close to his he looked insolently out of his blue
eyes and cursed me, his breath hot in my face as he struggled.
I pulled his chin down sharp upon the crown of my head,
butting him as I had seen the West Indians do, and I felt his
flesh tear and the blood gush out, and I yelled, "Apologize!
Apologize!" But he continued to curse and struggle, and I
butted him again and again until he went down heavily, on his
knees, profusely bleeding. I kicked him repeatedly, in a frenzy
because he still uttered insults though his lips were frothy with
blood. Oh yes, I kicked him! And in my outrage I got out my
knife and prepared to slit his throat, right there beneath the
lamplight in the deserted street, holding him by the collar with
one hand, and opening the knife with my teeth -- when it
occurred to me that the man had not seen me, actually; that
he, as far as he knew, was in the midst of a walking nightmare!
And I stopped the blade, slicing the air as I pushed him away,
letting him fall back to the street. I stared at him hard as the
lights of a car stabbed through the darkness. He lay there,
moaning on the asphalt; a man almost killed by a phantom. It
unnerved me. I was both disgusted and ashamed. I was like a
drunken man myself, wavering about on weakened legs. Then I
was amused. Something in this man's thick head had sprung
out and beaten him within an inch of his life. I began to laugh
at this crazy discovery. Would he have awakened at the point of
death? Would Death himself have freed him for wakeful living?
But I didn't linger. I ran away into the dark, laughing so hard I
feared I might rupture myself. The next day I saw his picture in
the Daily News, beneath a caption stating that he had been
"mugged." Poor fool, poor blind fool, I thought with sincere
compassion, mugged by an invisible man!

Most of the time (although I do not choose as I once did
to deny the violence of my days by ignoring it) I am not so
overtly violent. I remember that I am invisible and walk softly
so as not to awaken the sleeping ones. Sometimes it is best
not to awaken them; there are few things in the world as dan-
gerous as sleepwalkers. I learned in time though that it is
possible to carry on a fight against them without their real-
izing it. For instance, I have been carrying on a fight with
Monopolated Light & Power for some time now. I use their ser-
vice and pay them nothing at all, and they don't know it. Oh,
they suspect that power is being drained off, but they don't
know where. All they know is that according to the master
meter back there in their power station a hell of a lot of
free current is disappearing somewhere into the jungle of Har-
lem. The joke, of course, is that I don't live in Harlem but
in a border area. Several years ago (before I discovered the
advantage of being invisible) I went through the routine
process of buying service and paying their outrageous rates.
But no more. I gave up all that, along with my apartment, and
my old way of life: That way based upon the fallacious
assumption that I, like other men, was visible. Now, aware of
my invisibility, I live rent-free in a building rented strictly
to whites, in a section of the basement that was shut off and
forgotten during the nineteenth century, which I discovered
when I was trying to escape in the night from Ras the Destroy-
er. But that's getting too far ahead of the story, almost to
the end, although the end is in the beginning and lies far
ahead.

The point now is that I found a home -- or a hole in the
ground, as you will. Now don't jump to the conclusion that
because I call my home a "hole" it is damp and cold like a
grave; there are cold holes and warm holes. Mine is a warm
hole. And remember, a bear retires to his hole for the winter
and lives until spring; then he comes strolling out like the
Easter chick breaking from its shell. I say all this to assure
you that it is incorrect to assume that, because I'm invisible
and live in a hole, I am dead. I am neither dead nor in a state
of suspended animation. Call me Jack-the-Bear, for I am in a
state of hibernation.

My hole is warm and full of light. Yes, full of light. I doubt
if there is a brighter spot in all New York than this hole
of mine, and I do not exclude Broadway. Or the Empire State
Building on a photographer's dream night. But that is taking
advantage of you. Those two spots are among the darkest of
our whole civilization -- pardon me, our whole culture (an
important distinction, I've heard) -- which might sound like a
hoax, or a contradiction, but that (by contradiction, I mean) is
how the world moves: Not like an arrow, but a boomerang.
(Beware of those who speak of the spiral of history; they are
preparing a boomerang. Keep a steel helmet handy.) I know; I
have been boomeranged across my head so much that I now
can see the darkness of lightness. And I love light. Perhaps
you'll think it strange that an invisible man should need light,
desire light, love light. But maybe it is exactly because I am
invisible. Light confirms my reality, gives birth to my form. A
beautiful girl once told me of a recurring nightmare in which
she lay in the center of a large dark room and felt her face
expand until it filled the whole room, becoming a formless mass
while her eyes ran in bilious jelly up the chimney. And so it is
with me. Without light I am not only invisible, but formless as
well; and to be unaware of one's form is to live a death. I
myself, after existing some twenty years, did not become alive
until I discovered my invisibility.

That is why I fight my battle with Monopolated Light & Power.
The deeper reason, I mean: It allows me to feel my vital
aliveness. I also fight them for taking so much of my money
before I learned to protect myself. In my hole in the basement
there are exactly 1,369 lights. I've wired the entire ceiling,
every inch of it. And not with fluorescent bulbs, but with the
older, more-expensive-to-operate kind, the filament type. An act
of sabotage, you know. I've already begun to wire the wall. A
junk man I know, a man of vision, has supplied me with wire
and sockets. Nothing, storm or flood, must get in the way of
our need for light and ever more and brighter light. The truth
is the light and light is the truth. When I finish all four walls,
then I'll start on the floor. Just how that will go, I don't know.
Yet when you have lived invisible as long as I have you develop
a certain ingenuity. I'll solve the problem. And maybe I'll in-
vent a gadget to place my coffeepot on the fire while I lie in
bed, and even invent a gadget to warm my bed -- like the fel-
low I saw in one of the picture magazines who made himself a
gadget to warm his shoes! Though invisible, I am in the great
American tradition of tinkers. That makes me kin to Ford,
Edison and Franklin. Call me, since I have a theory and a
concept, a "thinker-tinker." Yes, I'll warm my shoes; they
need it, they're usually full of holes. I'll do that and more.
Now I have one radio-phonograph; I plan to have five. There
is a certain acoustical deadness in my hole, and when I have
music I want to feel its vibration, not only with my ear but
with my whole body. I'd like to hear five recordings of Louis
Armstrong playing and singing "What Did I Do to Be so Black
and Blue" -- all at the same time. Sometimes now I listen to
Louis while I have my favorite dessert of vanilla ice cream and
sloe gin. I pour the red liquid over the white mound, watching
it glisten and the vapor rising as Louis bends that military
instrument into a beam of lyrical sound. Perhaps I like Louis
Armstrong because he's made poetry out of being invisible. I
think it must be because he's unaware that he is invisible. And
my own grasp of invisibility aids me to understand his music.
Once when I asked for a cigarette, some jokers gave me a
reefer, which I lighted when I got home and sat listening to my
phonograph. It was a strange evening. Invisibility, let me
explain, gives one a slightly different sense of time, you're
never quite on the beat. Sometimes you're ahead and some-
times behind. Instead of the swift and imperceptible flowing
of time, you are aware of its nodes, those points where time
stands still or from which it leaps ahead. And you slip into
the breaks and look around. That's what you hear vaguely in
Louis' music.

Once I saw a prizefighter boxing a yokel. The fighter was
swift and amazingly scientific. His body was one violent
flow of rapid rhythmic action. He hit the yokel a hundred times
while the yokel held up his arms in stunned surprise. But
suddenly the yokel, rolling about in the gale of boxing gloves,
struck one blow and knocked science, speed and footwork as
cold as a well-digger's posterior. The smart money hit the
canvas. The long shot got the nod. The yokel had simply
stepped inside of his opponent's sense of time. So under the
spell of the reefer I discovered a new analytical way of liste-
ning to music. The unheard sounds came through, and each melodic
line existed of itself, stood out clearly from all the rest, said
its piece, and waited patiently for the other voices to speak. That
night I found myself hearing not only in time, but in space as
well. I not only entered the music but descended, like Dante,
into its depths. And beneath the swiftness of the hot tempo
there was a slower tempo and a cave and I entered it and
looked around and heard an old woman singing a spiritual as
full of Weltschmerz as flamenco, and beneath that lay a still
lower level on which I saw a beautiful girl the color of ivory
pleading in a voice like my mother's as she stood before a
group of slave owners who bid for her naked body, and below
that I found a lower level and a more rapid tempo and I heard
someone shout:

"Brothers and sisters, my text this morning is the
'Blackness of Blackness.' "

And a congregation of voices answered: "That blackness
is most black, brother, most black . . ."

"In the beginning . . ."

"At the very start," they cried.

". . . there was blackness . . ."

"Preach it . . ."

". . . and the sun . . ."

"The sun, Lawd . . ."

". . . was bloody red . . ."

"Red . . ."

"Now black is . . ." the preacher shouted.

"Bloody . . ."

"I said black is . . ."

"Preach it, brother . . ."

". . . an' black ain't . . "

"Red, Lawd, red: He said it's red!"

"Amen, brother . . ."

"Black will git you . . ."

"Yes, it will . . ."

". . . an' black won't . . ."

"Naw, it won't!"

"It do . . ."

"It do, Lawd .
. ."
". . . an' it don't."

"Halleluiah . . ."

". . . It'll put you, glory, glory, Oh my Lawd, in the
WHALE'S BELLY ."

"Preach it, dear brother . . ."

". . . an' make you tempt . . ."

"Good God a-mighty!"

"Old Aunt Nelly!"

"Black will make you . . ."

"Black . . ."

". . . or black will un-make you."

"Ain't it the truth, Lawd?"

And at that point a voice of trombone timbre screamed
at me, "Git out of, here, you fool! Is you ready to commit
treason?"

And I tore myself away, hearing the old singer of
spirituals moaning, "Go curse your God, boy, and die."

I stopped and questioned her, asked her what was
wrong.

"I dearly loved my master, son," she said.

"You should have hated him," I said.

"He gave me several sons," she said, "and because I loved
my sons I learned to love their father though I hated him
too."

"I too have become acquainted with ambivalence," I
said. "That's why I'm here."

"What's that?"

"Nothing, a word that doesn't explain it. Why do you
moan?"

"I moan this way 'cause he's dead," she said.

"Then tell me, who is that laughing upstairs?"

"Them's my sons. They glad."

"Yes, I can understand that too," I said.

"I laughs too, but I moans too. He promised to set us
free but he never could bring hisself to do it. Still I loved him . .."

"Loved him? You mean . . ."

"Oh yes, but I loved something else even more."

"What more?"

"Freedom."

"Freedom," I said. "Maybe freedom lies in hating."

"Naw, son, it's in loving. I loved him and give him the poi-
son and he withered away like a frost-bit apple. Them boys
woulda tore him to pieces with they homemake knives."

"A mistake was made somewhere," I said, "I'm confused."
And I wished to say other things, but the laughter up-
stairs became too loud and moan-like for me and I tried to
break out of it, but I couldn't. Just as I was leaving I felt
an urgent desire to ask her what freedom was and went back.
She sat with her head in her hands, moaning softly; her leather
brown face was filled with sadness.

"Old woman, what is this freedom you love so well?" I
asked around a corner of my mind.

She looked surprised, then thoughtful, then baffled. "I
done forgot, son. It's all mixed up. First I think it's one thing,
then I think it's another. It gits my head to spinning. I guess
now it ain't nothing but knowing how to say what I got up in my
head. But it's a hard job, son. Too much is done happen to me
in too short a time. Hit's like I have a fever. Ever' time I starts
to walk my head gits to swirling and I falls down. Or if it ain't
that, it's the boys; they gits to laughing and wants to kill up the
white folks. They's bitter, that's what they is . . ."

"But what about freedom?"

"Leave me 'lone, boy; my head aches!"

I left her, feeling dizzy myself. I didn't get far.

Suddenly one of the sons, a big fellow six feet tall,
appeared out of nowhere and struck me with his fist.

"What's the matter, man?" I cried.

"You made Ma cry!"

"But how?" I said, dodging a blow.

"Askin' her them questions, that's how. Git outa here
and stay, and next time you got questions like that, ask
yourself!"

He held me in a grip like cold stone, his fingers fasten-
ing upon my windpipe until I thought I would suffocate be-
fore he finally allowed me to go. I stumbled about dazed, the
music beating hysterically in my ears. It was dark. My head
cleared and I wandered down a dark narrow passage, thinking
I heard his footsteps hurrying behind me. I was sore, and into
my being had come a profound craving for tranquillity, for
peace and quiet, a state I felt I could never achieve. For one
thing, the trumpet was blaring and the rhythm was too hectic.
A tomtom beating like heart-thuds began drowning out the
trumpet, filling my ears. I longed for water and I heard it
rushing through the cold mains my fingers touched as I felt my
way, but I couldn't stop to search because of the footsteps
behind me.

"Hey, Ras," I called. "Is it you, Destroyer? Rinehart?"

No answer, only the rhythmic footsteps behind me. Once
I tried crossing the road, but a speeding machine struck
me, scraping the skin from my leg as it roared past.

Then somehow I came out of it, ascending hastily from
this underworld of sound to hear Louis Armstrong innocently
asking,

What did I do
To be so black
And blue?

At first I was afraid; this familiar music had demanded act-
ion, the kind of which I was incapable, and yet had I ling-
ered there beneath the surface I might have attempted to
act. Nevertheless, I know now that few really listen to this
music. I sat on the chair's edge in a soaking sweat, as though
each of my 1,369 bulbs had everyone become a klieg light in an
individual setting for a third degree with Ras and Rinehart in
charge. It was exhausting -- as though I had held my breath
continuously for an hour under the terrifying serenity that
comes from days of intense hunger. And yet, it was a strangely
satisfying experience for an invisible man to hear the silence of
sound. I had discovered unrecognized compulsions of my being--
even though I could not answer "yes" to their promptings. I
haven't smoked a reefer since, however; not because they're
illegal, but because to see around corners is enough (that is not
unusual when you are invisible). But to hear around them is too
much; it inhibits action. And despite Brother Jack and all that
sad, lost period of the Brotherhood, I believe in nothing if not
in action.

Please, a definition: A hibernation is a covert preparation
for a more overt action.

Besides, the drug destroys one's sense of time completely.
If that happened, I might forget to dodge some bright morn-
ing and some cluck would run me down with an orange and yel-
low street car, or a bilious bus! Or I might forget to
leave my hole when the moment for action presents itself.

Meanwhile I enjoy my life with the compliments of Mono-
polated Light & Power. Since you never recognize me even
when in closest contact with me, and since, no doubt, you'll
hardly believe that I exist, it won't matter if you know
that I tapped a power line leading into the building and ran it
into my hole in the ground. Before that I lived in the darkness
into which I was chased, but now I see. I've illuminated the
blackness of my invisibility -- and vice versa. And so I play the
invisible music of my isolation. The last statement doesn't seem
just right, does it? But it is; you hear this music simply because
music is heard and seldom seen, except by musicians. Could
this compulsion to put invisibility down in black and white be
thus an urge to make music of invisibility? But I am an orator, a
rabble rouser -- Am? I was, and perhaps shall be again. Who
knows? All sickness is not unto death, neither is invisibility.

I can hear you say, "What a horrible, irresponsible bastard!"
And you're right. I leap to agree with you. I am one of the most
irresponsible beings that ever lived. Irresponsibility is part
of my invisibility; any way you face it, it is a denial. But to
whom can I be responsible, and why should I be, when you
refuse to see me? And wait until I reveal how truly irresp-
onsible I am. Responsibility rests upon recognition, and
recognition is a form of agreement. Take the man whom I
almost killed: Who was responsible for that near murder -- I? I
don't think so, and I refuse it. I won't buy it. You can't give
it to me. He bumped me, he insulted me. Shouldn't he, for his own
personal safety, have recognized my hysteria, my "danger
potential"? He, let us say, was lost in a dream world. But didn't
he control that dream world -- which, alas, is only too real! --
and didn't he rule me out of it? And if he had yelled for a
policeman, wouldn't I have been taken for the offending one?
Yes, yes, yes! Let me agree with you, I was the irresponsible
one; for I should have used my knife to protect the higher
interests of society. Some day that kind of foolishness will
cause us tragic trouble. All dreamers and sleepwalkers must
pay the price, and even the invisible victim is responsible for
the fate of all. But I shirked that responsibility; I became too
snarled in the incompatible notions that buzzed within my
brain. I was a coward . . .

But what did I do to be so blue? Bear with me.



Chapter 1



It goes a long way back, some twenty years. All my life I
had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned
someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers
too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-
contradictory. I was naïve. I was looking for myself and asking
everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could
answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging
of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else
appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself.
But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man!

And yet I am no freak of nature, nor of history. I was in
the cards, other things having been equal (or unequal) eighty
five years ago. I am not ashamed of my grandparents for
having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at
one time been ashamed. About eighty-five years ago they were
told that they were free, united with others of our country in
everything pertaining to the common good, and, in everything
social, separate like the fingers of the hand. And they believed
it. They exulted in it. They stayed in their place, worked hard,
and brought up my father to do the same. But my grandfather
is the one. He was an odd old guy, my grandfather, and I am
told I take after him. It was he who caused the trouble. On his
deathbed he called my father to him and said, "Son, after I'm
gone I want you to keep up the good fight. I never told you, but
our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a
spy in the enemy's country ever since I give up my gun back in
the Reconstruction. Live with your head in the lion's mouth. I
want you to overcome 'em with yeses, undermine 'em with
grins, agree 'em to death and destruction, let 'em swoller you
till they vomit or bust wide open." They thought the old man
had gone out of his mind. He had been the meekest of men.
The younger children were rushed from the room, the shades
drawn and the flame of the lamp turned so low that it sputtered
on the wick like the old man's breathing. "Learn it to the
younguns," he whispered fiercely; then he died.

But my folks were more alarmed over his last words than
over his dying. It was as though he had not died at all, his
words caused so much anxiety. I was warned emphatically to
forget what he had said and, indeed, this is the first time it has
been mentioned outside the family circle. It had a tremendous
effect upon me, however. I could never be sure of what he
meant. Grandfather had been a quiet old man who never made
any trouble, yet on his deathbed he had called himself a traitor
and a spy, and he had spoken of his meekness as a dangerous
activity. It became a constant puzzle which lay unanswered in
the back of my mind. And whenever things went well for me I
remembered my grandfather and felt guilty and uncomfortable.
It was as though I was carrying out his advice in spite of
myself. And to make it worse, everyone loved me for it. I was
praised by the most lily-white men of the town. I was
considered an example of desirable conduct -- just as my
grandfather had been. And what puzzled me was that the old
man had defined it as treachery. When I was praised for my
conduct I felt a guilt that in some way I was doing something
that was really against the wishes of the white folks, that if
they had understood they would have desired me to act just the
opposite, that I should have been sulky and mean, and that that
really would have been what they wanted, even though they
were fooled and thought they wanted me to act as I did. It
made me afraid that some day they would look upon me as a
traitor and I would be lost. Still I was more afraid to act any
other way because they didn't like that at all. The old man's
words were like a curse. On my graduation day I delivered an
oration in which I showed that humility was the secret, indeed,
the very essence of progress. (Not that I believed this -- how
could I, remembering my grandfather? -- I only believed that it
worked.) It was a great success. Everyone praised me and I
was invited to give the speech at a gathering of the town's
leading white citizens. It was a triumph for our whole
community.

It was in the main ballroom of the leading hotel. When I
got there I discovered that it was on the occasion of a smoker,
and I was told that since I was to be there anyway I might as
well take part in the battle royal to be fought by some of my
schoolmates as part of the entertainment. The battle royal
came first.

All of the town's big shots were there in their tuxedoes,
wolfing down the buffet foods, drinking beer and whiskey and
smoking black cigars. It was a large room with a high ceiling.
Chairs were arranged in neat rows around three sides of a
portable boxing ring. The fourth side was clear, revealing a
gleaming space of polished floor. I had some misgivings over
the battle royal, by the way. Not from a distaste for fighting,
but because I didn't care too much for the other fellows who
were to take part. They were tough guys who seemed to have
no grandfather's curse worrying their minds. No one could
mistake their toughness. And besides, I suspected that fighting
a battle royal might detract from the dignity of my speech. In
those pre-invisible days I visualized myself as a potential
Booker T. Washington. But the other fellows didn't care too
much for me either, and there were nine of them. I felt superior
to them in my way, and I didn't like the manner in which we
were all crowded together into the servants' elevator. Nor did
they like my being there. In fact, as the warmly lighted floors
flashed past the elevator we had words over the fact that I, by
taking part in the fight, had knocked one of their friends out of
a night's work.

We were led out of the elevator through a rococo hall into
an anteroom and told to get into our fighting togs. Each of
us was issued a pair of boxing gloves and ushered out into the
big mirrored hall, which we entered looking cautiously about
us and whispering, lest we might accidentally be heard above
the noise of the room. It was foggy with cigar smoke. And
already the whiskey was taking effect. I was shocked to see
some of the most important men of the town quite tipsy. They
were all there -- bankers, lawyers, judges, doctors, fire chiefs,
teachers, merchants. Even one of the more fashionable pastors.
Something we could not see was going on up front. A clarinet
was vibrating sensuously and the men were standing up and
moving eagerly forward. We were a small tight group, clustered
together, our bare upper bodies touching and shining with
anticipatory sweat; while up front the big shots were becoming
increasingly excited over something we still could not see.
Suddenly I heard the school superintendent, who had told me
to come, yell, "Bring up the shines, gentlemen! Bring up the
little shines!"

We were rushed up to the front of the ballroom, where
it smelled even more strongly of tobacco and whiskey. Then we
were pushed into place. I almost wet my pants. A sea of faces,
some hostile, some amused, ringed around us, and in the
center, facing us, stood a magnificent blonde -- stark naked.
There was dead silence. I felt a blast of cold air chill me. I
tried to back away, but they were behind me and around me. Some
of the boys stood with lowered heads, trembling. I felt a wave
of irrational guilt and fear. My teeth chattered, my skin turned
to goose flesh, my knees knocked. Yet I was strongly attracted
and looked in spite of myself. Had the price of looking been
blindness, I would have looked. The hair was yellow like that of
a circus kewpie doll, the face heavily powdered and rouged, as
though to form an abstract mask, the eyes hollow and smeared
a cool blue, the color of a baboon's butt. I felt a desire to spit
upon her as my eyes brushed slowly over her body. Her breasts
were firm and round as the domes of East Indian temples, and I
stood so close as to see the fine skin texture and beads of
pearly perspiration glistening like dew around the pink and
erected buds of her nipples. I wanted at one and the same time
to run from the room, to sink through the floor, or go to her and
cover her from my eyes and the eyes of the others with my
body; to feel the soft thighs, to caress her and destroy her, to
love her and murder her, to hide from her, and yet to stroke
where below the small American flag tattooed upon her belly
her thighs formed a capital V. I had a notion that of all in the
room she saw only me with her impersonal eyes.

And then she began to dance, a slow sensuous movement;
the smoke of a hundred cigars clinging to her like the
thinnest of veils. She seemed like a fair bird-girl girdled
in veils calling to me from the angry surface of some gray and
threatening sea. I was transported. Then I became aware of
the clarinet playing and the big shots yelling at us. Some
threatened us if we looked and others if we did not. On my
right I saw one boy faint. And now a man grabbed a silver
pitcher from a table and stepped close as he dashed ice water
upon him and stood him up and forced two of us to support him
as his head hung and moans issued from his thick bluish lips.
Another boy began to plead to go home. He was the largest of
the group, wearing dark red fighting trunks much too small to
conceal the erection which projected from him as though in
answer to the insinuating low -registered moaning of the
clarinet. He tried to hide himself with his boxing gloves.

And all the while the blonde continued dancing, smiling
faintly at the big shots who watched her with fascination, and
faintly smiling at our fear. I noticed a certain merchant who
followed her hungrily, his lips loose and drooling. He was a
large man who wore diamond studs in a shirtfront which
swelled with the ample paunch underneath, and each time the
blonde swayed her undulating hips he ran his hand through the
thin hair of his bald head and, with his arms upheld, his
posture clumsy like that of an intoxicated panda, wound his
belly in a slow and obscene grind. This creature was completely
hypnotized. The music had quickened. As the dancer flung
herself about with a detached expression on her face, the men
began reaching out to touch her. I could see their beefy fingers
sink into the soft flesh. Some of the others tried to stop them
and she began to move around the floor in graceful circles, as
they gave chase, slipping and sliding over the polished floor. It
was mad. Chairs went crashing, drinks were spilt, as they ran
laughing and howling after her. They caught her just as she
reached a door, raised her from the floor, and tossed her as
college boys are tossed at a hazing, and above her red, fixed
smiling lips I saw the terror and disgust in her eyes, almost like
my own terror and that which I saw in some of the other boys.
As I watched, they tossed her twice and her soft breasts
seemed to flatten against the air and her legs flung wildly as
she spun. Some of the more sober ones helped her to escape.
And I started off the floor, heading for the anteroom with the
rest of the boys.

Some were still crying and in hysteria. But as we tried to
leave we were stopped and ordered to get into the ring.
There was nothing to do but what we were told. All ten of us
climbed under the ropes and allowed ourselves to be blind-
folded with broad bands of white cloth. One of the men seemed
to feel a bit sympathetic and tried to cheer us up as we
stood with our backs against the ropes. Some of us tried to
grin. "See that boy over there?" one of the men said. "I want
you to run across at the bell and give it to him right in the belly.
If you don't get him, I'm going to get you. I don't like his looks."
Each of us was told the same. The blindfolds were put on. Yet
even then I had been going over my speech. In my mind each
word was as bright as flame. I felt the cloth pressed into place,
and frowned so that it would be loosened when I relaxed.

But now I felt a sudden fit of blind terror. I was unused to
darkness. It was as though I had suddenly found myself in
a dark room filled with poisonous cottonmouths. I could hear
the bleary voices yelling insistently for the battle royal to begin.

"Get going in there!"

"Let me at that big nigger!"

I strained to pick up the school superintendent's voice,
as though to squeeze some security out of that slightly more
familiar sound.

"Let me at those black sonsabitches!" someone yelled.

"No, Jackson, no!" another voice yelled. "Here,
somebody, help me hold Jack."

"I want to get at that ginger-colored nigger. Tear him
limb from limb," the first voice yelled.

I stood against the ropes trembling. For in those days I was
what they called ginger-colored, and he sounded as though
he might crunch me between his teeth like a crisp ginger
cookie.

Quite a struggle was going on. Chairs were being kicked
about and I could hear voices grunting as with a terrific
effort. I wanted to see, to see more desperately than ever
before. But the blindfold was as tight as a thick skin-pucker-
ing scab and when I raised my gloved hands to push the layers of
white aside a voice yelled, "Oh, no you don't, black bastard!
Leave that alone!"

"Ring the bell before Jackson kills him a coon!" some-
one boomed in the sudden silence. And I heard the bell
clang and the sound of the feet scuffling forward.

A glove smacked against my head. I pivoted, striking out
stiffly as someone went past, and felt the jar ripple along
the length of my arm to my shoulder. Then it seemed as though
all nine of the boys had turned upon me at once. Blows pound-
ed me from all sides while I struck out as best I could. So
many blows landed upon me that I wondered if I were not the
only blindfolded fighter in the ring, or if the man called
Jackson hadn't succeeded in getting me after all.

Blindfolded, I could no longer control my motions. I had
no dignity. I stumbled about like a baby or a drunken man. The
smoke had become thicker and with each new blow it seemed
to sear and further restrict my lungs. My saliva became like hot
bitter glue. A glove connected with my head, filling my mouth
with warm blood. It was everywhere. I could not tell if the
moisture I felt upon my body was sweat or blood. A blow
landed hard against the nape of my neck. I felt myself going
over, my head hitting the floor. Streaks of blue light filled the
black world behind the blindfold. I lay prone, pretending that I
was knocked out, but felt myself seized by hands and yanked to
my feet. "Get going, black boy! Mix it up!" My arms were like
lead, my head smarting from blows. I managed to feel my way
to the ropes and held on, trying to catch my breath. A glove
landed in my mid-section and I went over again, feeling as
though the smoke had become a knife jabbed into my guts.
Pushed this way and that by the legs milling around me, I
finally pulled erect and discovered that I could see the black,
sweat-washed forms weaving in the smoky-blue atmosphere
like drunken dancers weaving to the rapid drum-like thuds of
blows.

Everyone fought hysterically. It was complete anarchy.
Everybody fought everybody else. No group fought together for
long. Two, three, four, fought one, then turned to fight each
other, were themselves attacked. Blows landed below the belt
and in the kidney, with the gloves open as well as closed, and
with my eye partly opened now there was not so much terror. I
moved carefully, avoiding blows, although not too many to
attract attention, fighting from group to group. The boys
groped about like blind, cautious crabs crouching to protect
their mid-sections, their heads pulled in short against their
shoulders, their arms stretched nervously before them, with
their fists testing the smoke-filled air like the knobbed feelers
of hypersensitive snails. In one corner I glimpsed a boy
violently punching the air and heard him scream in pain as he
smashed his hand against a ring post. For a second I saw him
bent over holding his hand, then going down as a blow caught
his unprotected head. I played one group against the other,
slipping in and throwing a punch then stepping out of range
while pushing the others into the melee to take the blows
blindly aimed at me. The smoke was agonizing and there were
no rounds, no bells at three minute intervals to relieve our
exhaustion. The room spun round me, a swirl of lights, smoke,
sweating bodies surrounded by tense white faces. I bled from
both nose and mouth, the blood spattering upon my chest.

The men kept yelling, "Slug him, black boy! Knock his guts
out!"

"Uppercut him! Kill him! Kill that big boy!"

Taking a fake fall, I saw a boy going down heavily beside
me as though we were felled by a single blow, saw a sneaker-
clad foot shoot into his groin as the two who had knocked
him down stumbled upon him. I rolled out of range, feeling
a twinge of nausea.

The harder we fought the more threatening the men
became. And yet, I had begun to worry about my speech again.
How would it go? Would they recognize my ability? What would
they give me?

I was fighting automatically when suddenly I noticed
that one after another of the boys was leaving the ring. I was
surprised, filled with panic, as though I had been left alone
with an unknown danger. Then I understood. The boys had
arranged it among themselves. It was the custom for the two
men left in the ring to slug it out for the winner's prize. I
discovered this too late. When the bell sounded two men in
tuxedoes leaped into the ring and removed the blindfold. I
found myself facing Tatlock, the biggest of the gang. I felt sick
at my stomach. Hardly had the bell stopped ringing in my ears
than it clanged again and I saw him moving swiftly toward me.
Thinking of nothing else to do I hit him smash on the nose. He
kept coming, bringing the rank sharp violence of stale sweat.
His face was a black blank of a face, only his eyes alive -- with
hate of me and aglow with a feverish terror from what had
happened to us all. I became anxious. I wanted to deliver my
speech and he came at me as though he meant to beat it out of
me. I smashed him again and again, taking his blows as they
came. Then on a sudden impulse I struck him lightly and as we
clinched, I whispered, "Fake like I knocked you out, you can
have the prize."

"I'll break your behind," he whispered hoarsely.

"For them?"

"For me, sonofabitch!"

They were yelling for us to break it up and Tatlock spun
me half around with a blow, and as a joggled camera sweeps
in a reeling scene, I saw the howling red faces crouching tense
beneath the cloud of blue-gray smoke. For a moment the world
wavered, unraveled, flowed, then my head cleared and Tatlock
bounced before me. That fluttering shadow before my eyes was
his jabbing left hand. Then falling forward, my head against
his damp shoulder, I whispered,

"I'll make it five dollars more."

"Go to hell!"

But his muscles relaxed a trifle beneath my pressure
and I breathed, "Seven?"

"Give it to your ma," he said, ripping me beneath the
heart.

And while I still held him I butted him and moved away.
I felt myself bombarded with punches. I fought back with
hopeless desperation. I wanted to deliver my speech more than
anything else in the world, felt that only these men could judge
truly my ability, and now this stupid clown was ruining my
chances. I began fighting carefully now, moving in to punch
him and out again with my greater speed. A lucky blow to his
chin and I had him going too -- until I heard a loud voice yell,
"I got my money on the big boy."

Hearing this, I almost dropped my guard. I was confused:
Should I try to win against the voice out there? Would not
this go against my speech, and was not this a moment
for humility, for nonresistance? A blow to my head as I
danced about sent my right eye popping like a jack-in-the-box
and settled my dilemma. The room went red as I fell. It was a
dream fall, my body languid and fastidious as to where to land,
until the floor became impatient and smashed up to meet me. A
moment later I came to. An hypnotic voice said FIVE emphati-
cally. And I lay there, hazily watching a dark red spot of
my own blood shaping itself into a butterfly, glistening and
soaking into the soiled gray world of the canvas.

When the voice drawled TEN I was lifted up and dragged to
a chair. I sat dazed. My eye pained and swelled with each
throb of my pounding heart and I wondered if now I would
be allowed to speak. I was wringing wet, my mouth still
bleeding. We were grouped along the wall now. The other boys
ignored me as they congratulated Tatlock and speculated as to
how much they would be paid. One boy whimpered over his
smashed hand. Looking up front, I saw attendants in white
jackets rolling the portable ring away and placing a small
square rug in the vacant space surrounded by chairs. Perhaps,
I thought, I will stand on the rug to deliver my speech.

Then the M.C. called to us, "Come on up here boys and
get your money."

We ran forward to where the men laughed and talked
in their chairs, waiting. Everyone seemed friendly now.

"There it is on the rug," the man said. I saw the rug
covered with coins of all dimensions and a few crumpled bills.
But what excited me, scattered here and there, were the gold
pieces.

"Boys, it's all yours," the man said. "You get all you
grab."

"That's right, Sambo," a blond man said, winking at me
confidentially.

I trembled with excitement, forgetting my pain. I would
get the gold and the bills, I thought. I would use both hands. I
would throw my body against the boys nearest me to block
them from the gold.

"Get down around the rug now," the man commanded,
"and don't anyone touch it until I give the signal."

"This ought to be good," I heard.

As told, we got around the square rug on our knees.
Slowly the man raised his freckled hand as we followed it
upward with our eyes.

I heard, "These niggers look like they're about to pray!"

Then, "Ready," the man said. "Go!"

I lunged for a yellow coin lying on the blue design of
the carpet, touching it and sending a surprised shriek to join
those rising around me. I tried frantically to remove my hand but
could not let go. A hot, violent force tore through my body,
shaking me like a wet rat. The rug was electrified. The hair
bristled up on my head as I shook myself free. My muscles
jumped, my nerves jangled, writhed. But I saw that this was not
stopping the other boys. Laughing in fear and embarrassment,
some were holding back and scooping up the coins knocked off
by the painful contortions of the others. The men roared above
us as we struggled.

"Pick it up, goddamnit, pick it up!" someone called
like a bass-voiced parrot. "Go on, get it!"

I crawled rapidly around the floor, picking up the coins,
trying to avoid the coppers and to get greenbacks and the gold.
Ignoring the shock by laughing, as I brushed the coins off
quickly, I discovered that I could contain the electricity -- a
contradiction, but it works. Then the men began to push us
onto the rug. Laughing embarrassedly, we struggled out of
their hands and kept after the coins. We were all wet and
slippery and hard to hold. Suddenly I saw a boy lifted into the
air, glistening with sweat like a circus seal, and dropped, his
wet back landing flush upon the charged rug, heard him yell
and saw him literally dance upon his back, elbows beating a
frenzied tattoo upon the floor, his muscles twitching like the
flesh of a horse stung my many flies. When he finally rolled off,
his face was gray and no one stopped him when he ran from
the floor amid booming laughter.

"Get the money," the M.C. called. "That's good hard
American cash!"

And we snatched and grabbed, snatched and grabbed. I
was careful not to come too close to the rug now, and when I
felt the hot whiskey breath descend upon me like a cloud of
foul air I reached out and grabbed the leg of a chair. It was
occupied and I held on desperately.

"Leggo, nigger! Leggo!"

The huge face wavered down to mine as he tried to push
me free. But my body was slippery and he was too drunk.
It was Mr. Colcord, who owned a chain of movie houses and
"entertainment palaces." Each time he grabbed me I slipped
out of his hands. It became a real struggle. I feared the rug
more than I did the drunk, so I held on, surprising myself for
a moment by trying to topple him upon the rug. It was such an
enormous idea that I found myself actually carrying it out. I
tried not to be obvious, yet when I grabbed his leg, trying to
tumble him out of the chair, he raised up roaring with laughter,
and, looking at me with soberness dead in the eye, kicked me
viciously in the chest. The chair leg flew out of my hand and I
felt myself going and rolled. It was as though I had rolled
through a bed of hot coals. It seemed a whole century would
pass before I would roll free, a century in which I was seared
through the deepest levels of my body to the fearful breath
within me and the breath seared and heated to the point of
explosion. It'll all be over in a flash, I thought as I rolled
clear. It'll all be over in a flash.

But not yet, the men on the other side were waiting, red
faces swollen as though from apoplexy as they bent forward in
their chairs. Seeing their fingers coming toward me I rolled
away as a fumbled football rolls off the receiver's fingertips,
back into the coals. That time I luckily sent the rug sliding out
of place and heard the coins ringing against the floor and the
boys scuffling to pick them up and the M.C. calling, "All right,
boys, that's all. Go get dressed and get your money."

I was limp as a dish rag. My back felt as though it had been
beaten with wires.

When we had dressed the M.C. came in and gave us each
five dollars, except Tatlock, who got ten for being last in the
ring. Then he told us to leave. I was not to get a chance to
deliver my speech, I thought. I was going out into the dim alley
in despair when I was stopped and told to go back. I returned
to the ballroom, where the men were pushing back their chairs
and gathering in groups to talk.

The M.C. knocked on a table for quiet. "Gentlemen," he
said, "we almost forgot an important part of the program. A
most serious part, gentlemen. This boy was brought here to
deliver a speech which he made at his graduation yesterday . .
."
"Bravo!"

"I'm told that he is the smartest boy we've got out there
in Greenwood. I'm told that he knows more big words than a
pocket-sized dictionary."

Much applause and laughter.

"So now, gentlemen, I want you to give him your attention."

There was still laughter as I faced them, my mouth dry,
my eye throbbing. I began slowly, but evidently my throat
was tense, because they began shouting, "Louder! Louder!"

"We of the younger generation extol the wisdom of that great
leader and educator," I shouted, "who first spoke these
flaming words of wisdom: 'A ship lost at sea for many days
suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of the
unfortunate vessel was seen a signal: "Water, water; we die of
thirst!" The answer from the friendly vessel came back: "Cast
down your bucket where you are." The captain of the distress-
ed vessel, at last heeding the injunction, cast down his
bucket, and it came up full of fresh sparkling water from the
mouth of the Amazon River.' And like him I say, and in his
words, 'To those of my race who depend upon bettering their
condition in a foreign land, or who underestimate the
importance of cultivating friendly relations with the Southern
white man, who is his next-door neighbor, I would say: "Cast
down your bucket where you are" -- cast it down in making
friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom
we are surrounded . . .' "

I spoke automatically and with such fervor that I did not
realize that the men were still talking and laughing until my
dry mouth, filling up with blood from the cut, almost strangled
me. I coughed, wanting to stop and go to one of the tall brass,
sand-filled spittoons to relieve myself, but a few of the men,
especially the superintendent, were listening and I was afraid.
So I gulped it down, blood, saliva and all, and continued. (What
powers of endurance I had during those days! What enthusiasm!
What a belief in the rightness of things!) I spoke even louder
in spite of the pain. But still they talked and still they
laughed, as though deaf with cotton in dirty ears. So I
spoke with greater emotional emphasis. I closed my ears and
swallowed blood until I was nauseated. The speech seemed a
hundred times as long as before, but I could not leave out a
single word. All had to be said, each memorized nuance
considered, rendered. Nor was that all. Whenever I uttered a
word of three or more syllables a group of voices would yell for
me to repeat it. I used the phrase "social responsibility" and
they yelled:

"What's that word you say, boy?"

"Social responsibility," I said.

"What?"

"Social . . ."

"Louder."

". . . responsibility."

"More!"

"Respon --"

"Repeat!"

"-- sibility."

The room filled with the uproar of laughter until, no
doubt, distracted by having to gulp down my blood, I made a
mistake and yelled a phrase I had often seen denounced in
newspaper editorials, heard debated in private.

"Social . . ."

"What?" they yelled.

". . . equality --"

The laughter hung smokelike in the sudden stillness.
I opened my eyes, puzzled. Sounds of displeasure filled the
room. The M.C. rushed forward. They shouted hostile phrases
at me. But I did not understand.

A small dry mustached man in the front row blared out,
"Say that slowly, son!"

"What sir?"

"What you just said!"

"Social responsibility, sir," I said.

"You weren't being smart, were you, boy?" he said, not
unkindly.

"No, sir!"

"You sure that about 'equality' was a mistake?"

"Oh, yes, sir," I said. "I was swallowing blood."

"Well, you had better speak more slowly so we can
understand. We mean to do right by you, but you've got to
know your place at all times. All right, now, go on with your
speech."

I was afraid. I wanted to leave but I wanted also to
speak and I was afraid they'd snatch me down.

"Thank you, sir," I said, beginning where I had left
off, and having them ignore me as before.

Yet when I finished there was a thunderous applause.
I was surprised to see the superintendent come forth with a
package wrapped in white tissue paper, and, gesturing for
quiet, address the men.

"Gentlemen, you see that I did not overpraise this boy.
He makes a good speech and some day he'll lead his people in
the proper paths. And I don't have to tell you that that is
important in these days and times. This is a good, smart boy,
and so to encourage him in the right direction, in the name of
the Board of Education I wish to present him a prize in the
form of this . . ."

He paused, removing the tissue paper and revealing a
gleaming calfskin brief case.

". . . in the form of this first-class article from Shad
Whitmore's shop."

"Boy," he said, addressing me, "take this prize and keep
it well. Consider it a badge of office. Prize it. Keep developing
as you are and some day it will be filled with important papers
that will help shape the destiny of your people."

I was so moved that I could hardly express my thanks.
A rope of bloody saliva forming a shape like an undiscovered
continent drooled upon the leather and I wiped it quickly away.
I felt an importance that I had never dreamed.

"Open it and see what's inside," I was told.

My fingers a-tremble, I complied, smelling the fresh leather
and finding an official-looking document inside. It was a scho-
larship to the state college for Negroes. My eyes filled with
tears and I ran awkwardly off the floor.

I was overjoyed; I did not even mind when I discovered
that the gold pieces I had scrambled for were brass pocket
tokens advertising a certain make of automobile.

When I reached home everyone was excited. Next day
the neighbors came to congratulate me. I even felt safe from
grandfather, whose deathbed curse usually spoiled my triumphs.
I stood beneath his photograph with my brief case in hand and
smiled triumphantly into his stolid black peasant's face. It
was a face that fascinated me. The eyes seemed to follow
everywhere I went.

That night I dreamed I was at a circus with him and that he
refused to laugh at the clowns no matter what they did.
Then later he told me to open my brief case and read what was
inside and I did, finding an official envelope stamped with the
state seal; and inside the envelope I found another and another,
endlessly, and I thought I would fall of weariness. "Them's
years," he said. "Now open that one." And I did and in it I found
an engraved document containing a short message in letters of
gold. "Read it," my grandfather said. "Out loud."

"To Whom It May Concern," I intoned. "Keep This
Nigger-Boy Running."

I awoke with the old man's laughter ringing in my ears.

(It was a dream I was to remember and dream again for
many years after. But at that time I had no insight into its
meaning. First I had to attend college.)



Chapter 2



It was a beautiful college. The buildings were old and cov-
ered with vines and the roads gracefully winding, lined with
hedges and wild roses that dazzled the eyes in the summer sun.
Honeysuckle and purple wisteria hung heavy from the trees
and white magnolias mixed with their scents in the bee-
humming air. I've recalled it often, here in my hole: How the
grass turned green in the springtime and how the mocking
birds fluttered their tails and sang, how the moon shone down
on the buildings, how the bell in the chapel tower rang out the
precious short-lived hours; how the girls in bright summer
dresses promenaded the grassy lawn. Many times, here at
night, I've closed my eyes and walked along the forbidden road
that winds past the girls' dormitories, past the hall with the
clock in the tower, its windows warmly aglow, on down past the
small white Home Economics practice cottage, whiter still in
the moonlight, and on down the road with its sloping and
turning, paralleling the black powerhouse with its engines
droning earth-shaking rhythms in the dark, its windows red
from the glow of the furnace, on to where the road became a
bridge over a dry riverbed, tangled with brush and clinging
vines; the bridge of rustic logs, made for trysting, but virginal
and untested by lovers; on up the road, past the buildings, with
the southern verandas half-a-city-block long, to the sudden
forking, barren of buildings, birds, or grass, where the road
turned off to the insane asylum.

I always come this far and open my eyes. The spell breaks
and I try to re-see the rabbits, so tame through having
never been hunted, that played in the hedges and along the
road. And I see the purple and silver of thistle growing be-
tween the broken glass and sunheated stones, the ants moving
nervously in single file, and I turn and retrace my steps and
come back to the winding road past the hospital, where at
night in certain wards the gay student nurses dispensed a far
more precious thing than pills to lucky boys in the know; and I
come to a stop at the chapel. And then it is suddenly winter,
with the moon high above and the chimes in the steeple ringing
and a sonorous choir of trombones rendering a Christmas
carol; and over all is a quietness and an ache as though all the
world were loneliness. And I stand and listen beneath the high
hung moon, hearing "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," majestically
mellow on four trombones, and then the organ. The sound
floats over all, clear like the night, liquid, serene, and lonely.
And I stand as for an answer and see in my mind's eye the ca-
bins surrounded by empty fields beyond red clay roads, and be-
yond a certain road a river, sluggish and covered with algae
more yellow than green in its stagnant stillness; past more
empty fields, to the sun-shrunk shacks at the railroad
crossing where the disabled veterans visited the whores,
hobbling down the tracks on crutches and canes; sometimes
pushing the legless, thighless one in a red wheelchair. And
sometimes I listen to hear if music reaches that far, but recall
only the drunken laughter of sad, sad whores. And I stand in
the circle where three roads converge near the statue, where
we drilled four-abreast down the smooth asphalt and pivoted
and entered the chapel on Sundays, our uniforms pressed,
shoes shined, minds laced up, eyes blind like those of robots
to visitors and officials on the low, whitewashed reviewing
stand.

It's so long ago and far away that here in my invisibility
I wonder if it happened at all. Then in my mind's eye I see the
bronze statue of the college Founder, the cold Father symbol,
his hands outstretched in the breathtaking gesture of lifting a
veil that flutters in hard, metallic folds above the face of a
kneeling slave; and I am standing puzzled, unable to decide
whether the veil is really being lifted, or lowered more firmly in
place; whether I am witnessing a revelation or a more efficient
blinding. And as I gaze, there is a rustle of wings and I see a
flock of starlings flighting before me and, when I look again,
the bronze face, whose empty eyes look upon a world I have
never seen, runs with liquid chalk -- creating another ambiguity
to puzzle my groping mind: Why is a bird-soiled statue more
commanding than one that is clean?

Oh, long green stretch of campus, Oh, quiet songs at
dusk, Oh, moon that kissed the steeple and flooded the
perfumed nights, Oh, bugle that called in the morning, Oh,
drum that marched us militarily at noon -- what was real, what
solid, what more than a pleasant, time-killing dream? For how
could it have been real if now I am invisible? If real, why is it
that I can recall in all that island of greenness no fountain but
one that was broken, corroded and dry? And why does no rain
fall through my recollections, sound through my memories,
soak through the hard dry crust of the still so recent past? Why
do I recall, instead of the odor of seed bursting in springtime,
only the yellow contents of the cistern spread over the lawn's
dead grass? Why? And how? How and why?

The grass did grow and the green leaves appeared on the
trees and filled the avenues with shadow and shade as sure
as the millionaires descended from the North on Founders' Day
each spring. And how they arrived! Came smiling, inspecting,
encouraging, conversing in whispers, speechmaking into the
wide-open ears of our black and yellow faces -- and each
leaving a sizeable check as he departed. I'm convinced it was
the product of a subtle magic, the alchemy of moonlight; the
school a flower-studded wasteland, the rocks sunken, the dry
winds hidden, the lost crickets chirping to yellow butterflies.
And oh, oh, oh, those multimillionaires!

THEY were all such a part of that other life that's dead that
I can't remember them all. (Time was as I was, but neither
that time nor that "I" are any more.) But this one I remember:
near the end of my junior year I drove for him during the week
he was on the campus. A face pink like St. Nicholas', topped
with a shock of silk white hair. An easy, informal manner, even
with me. A Bostonian, smoker of cigars, teller of polite Negro
stories, shrewd banker, skilled scientist, director, philan-
thropist, forty years a bearer of the white man's burden, and
for sixty a symbol of the Great Traditions.

We were driving, the powerful motor purring and filling me
with pride and anxiety. The car smelled of mints and cigar
smoke. Students looked up and smiled in recognition as we
rolled slowly past. I had just come from dinner and in bending
forward to suppress a belch, I accidentally pressed the button
on the wheel and the belch became a loud and shattering blast
of the horn. Folks on the road turned and stared.

"I'm awfully sorry, sir," I said, worried lest he report me
to Dr. Bledsoe, the president, who would refuse to allow
me to drive again.

"Perfectly all right. Perfectly."

"Where shall I drive you, sir?"

"Let me see . . ."

Through the rear-view mirror I could see him studying
a wafer-thin watch, replacing it in the pocket of his checked
waistcoat. His shirt was soft silk, set off with a blue-and-white
polka-dotted bow tie. His manner was aristocratic, his movements
dapper and suave.

"It's early to go in for the next session," he said. "Suppose
you just drive. Anywhere you like."

"Have you seen all the campus, sir?"

"Yes, I think so. I was one of the original founders, you
know."

"Gee! I didn't know that, sir. Then I'll have to try some
of the roads."

Of course I knew he was a founder, but I knew also that
it was advantageous to flatter rich white folks. Perhaps he'd
give me a large tip, or a suit, or a scholarship next year.

"Anywhere else you like. The campus is part of my life
and I know my life rather well."

"Yes, sir."

He was still smiling.

In a moment the green campus with its vine-covered
buildings was behind us. The car bounded over the road. How
was the campus part of his life, I wondered. And how did one
learn his life "rather well"?

"Young man, you're part of a wonderful institution. It
is a great dream become reality . . ."

"Yes, sir," I said.

"I feel as lucky to be connected with it as you no doubt do
yourself. I came here years ago, when all your beautiful
campus was barren ground. There were no trees, no flowers,
no fertile farmland. That was years ago before you were born . .."

I listened with fascination, my eyes glued to the white
line dividing the highway as my thoughts attempted to sweep
back to the times of which he spoke.

"Even your parents were young. Slavery was just recently
past. Your people did not know in what direction to turn
and, I must confess, many of mine didn't know in what
direction they should turn either. But your great Founder did.
He was my friend and I believed in his vision. So much so, that
sometimes I don't know whether it was his vision or mine . . ."

He chuckled softly, wrinkles forming at the corners of his
eyes.

"But of course it was his; I only assisted. I came down
with him to see the barren land and did what I could to render
assistance. And it has been my pleasant fate to return each
spring and observe the changes that the years have wrought.
That has been more pleasant and satisfying to me than my own
work. It has been a pleasant fate, indeed."

His voice was mellow and loaded with more meaning
than I could fathom. As I drove, faded and yellowed pictures of
the school's early days displayed in the library flashed across
the screen of my mind, coming fitfully and fragmentarily to
life-- photographs of men and women in wagons drawn by mule
teams and oxen, dressed in black, dusty clothing, people who
seemed almost without individuality, a black mob that seemed
to be waiting, looking with blank faces, and among them the
inevitable collection of white men and women in smiles, clear
of features, striking, elegant and confident. Until now, and
although I could recognize the Founder and Dr. Bledsoe among
them, the figures in the photographs had never seemed
actually to have been alive, but were more like signs or
symbols one found on the last pages of the dictionary . . . But
now I felt that I was sharing in a great work and, with the car
leaping leisurely beneath the pressure of my foot, I identified
myself with the rich man reminiscing on the rear seat . . .

"A pleasant fate," he repeated, "and I hope yours will be
as pleasant."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir," I said, pleased that he wished
something pleasant for me.

But at the same time I was puzzled: How could anyone's fate
be pleasant? I had always thought of it as something painful.
No one I knew spoke of it as pleasant -- not even Woodridge,
who made us read Greek plays.

We were beyond the farthest extension of the school own-
ed lands now and I suddenly decided to turn off the highway,
down a road that seemed unfamiliar. There were no trees and
the air was brilliant. Far down the road the sun glared cruelly
against a tin sign nailed to a barn. A lone figure bending over
a hoe on the hillside raised up wearily and waved, more a sha-
dow against the skyline than a man.

"How far have we come?" I heard over my shoulder.

"Just about a mile, sir."

"I don't remember this section," he said.

I didn't answer. I was thinking of the first person who'd men--
tioned anything like fate in my presence, my grandfather.
There had been nothing pleasant about it and I had tried to
forget it. Now, riding here in the powerful car with this white
man who was so pleased with what he called his fate, I felt a
sense of dread. My grandfather would have called this
treachery and I could not understand in just what way it was.
Suddenly I grew guilty at the realization that the white man
might have thought so too. What would he have thought? Did
he know that Negroes like my grandfather had been freed
during those days just before the college had been founded?

As we came to a side road I saw a team of oxen hitched to
a broken-down wagon, the ragged driver dozing on the seat
beneath the shade of a clump of trees.

"Did you see that, sir?" I asked over my shoulder.

"What was it?"

"The ox team, sir."

"Oh! No, I can't see it for the trees," he said looking
back. "It's good timber."

"I'm sorry, sir. Shall I turn back?"

"No, it isn't much," he said. "Go on."

I drove on, remembering the lean, hungry face of the
sleeping man. He was the kind of white man I feared. The
brown fields swept out to the horizon. A flock of birds dipped
down, circled, swung up and out as though linked by invisible
strings. Waves of heat danced above the engine hood. The tires
sang over the highway. Finally I overcame my timidity and
asked him:

"Sir, why did you become interested in the school?"

"I think," he said, thoughtfully, raising his voice, "it was
because I felt even as a young man that your people were
somehow closely connected with my destiny. Do you under-
stand?"

"Not so clearly, sir," I said, ashamed to admit it.

"You have studied Emerson, haven't you?"

"Emerson, sir?"

"Ralph Waldo Emerson."

I was embarrassed because I hadn't. "Not yet, sir. We
haven't come to him yet."

"No?" he said with a note of surprise. "Well, never mind.
I am a New Englander, like Emerson. You must learn about
him, for he was important to your people. He had a hand in
your destiny. Yes, perhaps that is what I mean. I had a feeling
that your people were somehow connected with my destiny.
That what happened to you was connected with what would
happen to me . . ."

I slowed the car, trying to understand. Through the glass
I saw him gazing at the long ash of his cigar, holding it
delicately in his slender, manicured fingers.

"Yes, you are my fate, young man. Only you can tell me
what it really is. Do you understand?"

"I think I do, sir."

"I mean that upon you depends the outcome of the years
I have spent in helping your school. That has been my life's
work, not my banking or my researches, but my first-hand
organizing of human life."

I saw him now, leaning toward the front seat, speaking with
an intensity which had not been there before. It was hard
not to turn my eyes from the highway and face him.

"There is another reason, a reason more important, more
passionate and, yes, even more sacred than all the others,"
he said, no longer seeming to see me, but speaking to him-
self alone. "Yes, even more sacred than all the others. A
girl, my daughter. She was a being more rare, more beautiful,
purer, more perfect and more delicate than the wildest dream
of a poet. I could never believe her to be my own flesh and
blood. Her beauty was a well-spring of purest water-of-life,
and to look upon her was to drink and drink and drink again . .
She was rare, a perfect creation, a work of purest art. A
delicate flower that bloomed in the liquid light of the moon. A
nature not of this world, a personality like that of some biblical
maiden, gracious and queenly. I found it difficult to believe her
my own . . ."

Suddenly he fumbled in his vest pocket and thrust something
over the back of the seat, surprising me.

"Here, young man, you owe much of your good fortune in at-
tending such a school to her."

I looked upon the tinted miniature framed in engraved plati-
num. I almost dropped it. A young woman of delicate, dreamy
features looked up at me. She was very beautiful, I thought at
the time, so beautiful that I did not know whether I should
express admiration to the extent I felt it or merely act
polite. And yet I seemed to remember her, or someone like her,
in the past. I know now that it was the flowing costume of soft,
flimsy material that made for the effect; today, dressed in one
of the smart, well-tailored, angular, sterile, streamlined,
engine-turned, air-conditioned modern outfits you see in the
women's magazines, she would appear as ordinary as an expen-
sive piece of machine-tooled jewelry and just as lifeless.
Then, however, I shared something of his enthusiasm.

"She was too pure for life," he said sadly; "too pure and
too good and too beautiful. We were sailing together, touring
the world, just she and I, when she became ill in Italy. I thought
little of it at the time and we continued across the Alps. When
we reached Munich she was already fading away. While we were
attending an embassy party she collapsed. The best medical sci-
ence in the world could not save her. It was a lonely return,
a bitter voyage. I have never recovered. I have never forgiven
myself. Everything I've done since her passing has been a mon-
ument to her memory."

He became silent, looking with his blue eyes far beyond the
field stretching away in the sun. I returned the miniature,
wondering what in the world had made him open his heart to
me. That was something I never did; it was dangerous. First, it
was dangerous if you felt like that about anything, because
then you'd never get it or something or someone would take it
away from you; then it was dangerous because nobody would
understand you and they'd only laugh and think you were crazy.

"So you see, young man, you are involved in my life quite
intimately, even though you've never seen me before. You
are bound to a great dream and to a beautiful monument. If
you become a good farmer, a chef, a preacher, doctor, singer,
mechanic -- whatever you become, and even if you fail, you
are my fate. And you must write me and tell me the outcome."

I was relieved to see him smiling through the mirror. My
feelings were mixed. Was he kidding me? Was he talking to
me like someone in a book just to see how I would take it? Or
could it be, I was almost afraid to think, that this rich man was
just the tiniest bit crazy? How could I tell him his fate? He
raised his head and our eyes met for an instant in the glass,
then I lowered mine to the blazing white line that divided the
highway.

The trees along the road were thick and tall. We took a curve.
Flocks of quail sailed up and over a field, brown, brown, sailing
down, blending.

"Will you promise to tell me my fate?" I heard.

"Sir?"

"Will you?"

"Right now, sir?" I asked with embarrassment.

"It is up to you. Now, if you like."

I was silent. His voice was serious, demanding. I could
think of no reply. The motor purred. An insect crushed itself
against the windshield, leaving a yellow, mucous smear.

"I don't know now, sir. This is only my junior year . . ."

"But you'll tell me when you know?"

"I'll try, sir."

"Good."

When I took a quick glance into the mirror he was smiling
again. I wanted to ask him if being rich and famous and
helping to direct the school to become what it was, wasn't
enough; but I was afraid.

"What do you think of my idea, young man?" he said.

"I don't know, sir. I only think that you have what you're
looking for. Because if I fail or leave school, it doesn't seem to
me it would be your fault. Because you helped make the school
what it is."

"And you think that enough?"

"Yes, sir. That's what the president tells us. You have yours,
and you got it yourself, and we have to lift ourselves up the
same way."

"But that's only part of it, young man. I have wealth and a
reputation and prestige -- all that is true. But your great
Founder had more than that, he had tens of thousands of lives
dependent upon his ideas and upon his actions. What he did
affected your whole race. In a way, he had the power of a king,
or in a sense, of a god. That, I've come to believe, is more
important than my own work, because more depends upon you.
You are important because if you fail I have failed by one
individual, one defective cog; it didn't matter so much before,
but now I'm growing old and it has become very important . . ."

But you don't even know my name, I thought, wondering what
it was all about.

". . . I suppose it is difficult for you to understand how this
concerns me. But as you develop you must remember that
I am dependent upon you to learn my fate. Through you and
your fellow students I become, let us say, three hundred tea-
chers, seven hundred trained mechanics, eight hundred skilled
farmers, and so on. That way I can observe in terms of living
personalities to what extent my money, my time and my hopes
have been fruitfully invested. I also construct a living memorial
to my daughter. Understand? I can see the fruits produced by
the land that your great Founder has transformed from barren
clay to fertile soil."

His voice ceased and I saw the strands of pale blue smoke
drifting across the mirror and heard the electric lighter
snap back on its cable into place behind the back of the seat.

"I think I understand you better, now, sir," I said.

"Very good, my boy."

"Shall I continue in this direction, sir?"

"By all means," he said, looking out at the countryside.
"I've never seen this section before. It's new territory for me."

Half-consciously I followed the white line as I drove,
thinking about what he had said. Then as we took a hill we
were swept by a wave of scorching air and it was as though we
were approaching a desert. It almost took my breath away and
I leaned over and switched on the fan, hearing its sudden
whirr.

"Thank you," he said as a slight breeze filled the car.

We were passing a collection of shacks and log cabins
now, bleached white and warped by the weather. Sun-tortured
shingles lay on the roofs like decks of water-soaked cards
spread out to dry. The houses consisted of two square rooms
joined together by a common floor and roof with a porch in
between. As we passed we could look through to the fields
beyond. I stopped the car at his excited command in front of a
house set off from the rest.

"Is that a log cabin?"

It was an old cabin with its chinks filled with chalkwhite
clay, with bright new shingles patching its roof. Suddenly
I was sorry that I had blundered down this road. I recognized
the place as soon as I saw the group of children in stiff new
overalls who played near a rickety fence.

"Yes, sir. It is a log cabin," I said.

It was the cabin of Jim Trueblood, a sharecropper who
had brought disgrace upon the black community. Several
months before he had caused quite a bit of outrage up at
the school, and now his name was never mentioned above a
whisper. Even before that he had seldom come near the
campus but had been well liked as a hard worker who took
good care of his family's needs, and as one who told the old
stories with a sense of humor and a magic that made them
come alive. He was also a good tenor singer, and sometimes
when special white guests visited the school he was brought up
along with the members of a country quartet to sing what the
officials called "their primitive spirituals" when we assembled
in the chapel on Sunday evenings. We were embarrassed by the
earthy harmonies they sang, but since the visitors were awed
we dared not laugh at the crude, high, plaintively animal
sounds Jim Trueblood made as he led the quartet. That had all
passed now with his disgrace, and what on the part of the
school officials had been an attitude of contempt blunted by
tolerance, had now become a contempt sharpened by hate. I
didn't understand in those pre-invisible days that their hate,
and mine too, was charged with fear. How all of us at the
college hated the black-belt people, the "peasants," during
those days! We were trying to lift them up and they, like
Trueblood, did everything it seemed to pull us down.

"It appears quite old," Mr. Norton said, looking across
the bare, hard stretch of yard where two women dressed in
new blue-and-white checked ginghams were washing clothes in
an iron pot. The pot was soot-black and the feeble flames that
licked its sides showed pale pink and bordered with black, like
flames in mourning. Both women moved with the weary, full
fronted motions of far-gone pregnancy.

"It is, sir," I said. "That one and the other two like it were
built during slavery times."

"You don't say! I would never have believed that they
were so enduring. Since slavery times!"

"That's true, sir. And the white family that owned the
land when it was a big plantation still lives in town."

"Yes," he said, "I know that many of the old families still
survive. And individuals too, the human stock goes on, even
though it degenerates. But these cabinsl" He seemed sur-
prised and confounded.

"Do you suppose those women know anything about the age
and history of the place? The older one looks as though she
might."

"I doubt it, sir. They -- they don't seem very bright."

"Bright?" he said, removing his cigar. "You mean that they
wouldn't talk with me?" he asked suspiciously.

"Yes, sir. That's it."

"Why not?"

I didn't want to explain. It made me feel ashamed, but he
sensed that I knew something and pressed me.

"It's not very nice, sir. But I don't think those women
would talk to us."

"We can explain that we're from the school. Surely they'll
talk then. You may tell them who I am."

"Yes, sir," I said, "but they hate us up at the school. They
never come there . . ."

"What!"

"No, sir."

"And those children along the fence down there?"

"They don't either, sir."

"But why?"

"I don't really know, sir. Quite a few folks out this way don't,
though. I guess they're too ignorant. They're not interested."

"But I can't believe it."

The children had stopped playing and now looked silently
at the car, their arms behind their backs and their new
over-sized overalls pulled tight over their little pot bellies as
though they too were pregnant.

"What about their men folk?"

I hesitated. Why did he find this so strange?

"He hates us, sir," I said.

"You say he; aren't both the women married?"

I caught my breath. I'd made a mistake. "The old one is,
sir," I said reluctantly.

"What happened to the young woman's husband?"

"She doesn't have any -- That is . . . I --"

"What is it, young man? Do you know these people?"

"Only a little, sir. There was some talk about them up on
the campus a while back."

"What talk?"

"Well, the young woman is the old woman's daughter . .
."
"And?"

"Well, sir, they say . . . you see . . . I mean they say the
daughter doesn't have a husband."

"Oh, I see. But that shouldn't be so strange. I understand
that your people -- Never mind! Is that all?"

"Well, sir . . ."

"Yes, what else?"

"They say that her father did it."

"What!"

"Yes, sir . . . that he gave her the baby."

I heard the sharp intake of breath, like a toy balloon suddenly
deflated. His face reddened. I was confused, feeling shame
for the two women and fear that I had talked too much and
offended his sensibilities.

"And did anyone from the school investigate this matter?"
he asked at last.

"Yes, sir," I said.

"What was discovered?"

"That it was true -- they say."

"But how does he explain his doing such a -- a -- such a
monstrous thing?"

He sat back in the seat, his hands grasping his knees, his
knuckles bloodless. I looked away, down the heat-dazzling
concrete of the highway. I wished we were back on the other
side of the white line, heading back to the quiet green stretch
of the campus.

"It is said that the man took both his wife and his daughter?"

"Yes, sir."

"And that he is the father of both their children?"

"Yes, sir."

"No, no, no!"

He sounded as though he were in great pain. I looked at
him anxiously. What had happened? What had I said?

"Not that! No . . ." he said, with something like horror.

I saw the sun blaze upon the new blue overalls as the man
appeared around the cabin. His shoes were tan and new and
he moved easily over the hot earth. He was a small man
and he covered the yard with a familiarity that would have
allowed him to walk in the blackest darkness with the same
certainty. He came and said something to the women as he
fanned himself with a blue bandanna handkerchief. But they
appeared to regard him sullenly, barely speaking, and hardly
looking in his direction.

"Would that be the man?" Mr. Norton asked.

"Yes, sir. I think so."

"Get out!" he cried. "I must talk with him."

I was unable to move. I felt surprise and a dread and resent-
ment of what he might say to Trueblood and his women, the
questions he might ask. Why couldn't he leave them alone!

"Hurry!"

I climbed from the car and opened the rear door. He
clambered out and almost ran across the road to the yard, as
though compelled by some pressing urgency which I could not
understand. Then suddenly I saw the two women turn and run
frantically behind the house, their movements heavy and
flatfooted. I hurried behind him, seeing him stop when he
reached the man and the children. They became silent, their
faces clouding over, their features becoming soft and negative,
their eyes bland and deceptive. They were crouching behind
their eyes waiting for him to speak -- just as I recognized that
I was trembling behind my own. Up close I saw what I had not
seen from the car: The man had a scar on his right cheek, as
though he had been hit in the face with a sledge. The wound
was raw and moist and from time to time he lifted his handker-
chief to fan away the gnats.

"I, I --" Mr. Norton stammered, "I must talk with you!"

"All right, suh," Jim Trueblood said without surprise and waited.

"Is it true . . . I mean did you?"

"Suh?" Trueblood asked, as I looked away.

"You have survived," he blurted. "But is it true . . .?"

"Suh?" the farmer said, his brow wrinkling with bewilderment.

"I'm sorry, sir," I said, "but I don't think he understands
you."

He ignored me, staring into Trueblood's face as though
reading a message there which I could not perceive.

"You did and are unharmed!" he shouted, his blue eyes
blazing into the black face with something like envy and indig-
nation. Trueblood looked helplessly at me. I looked away. I
understood no more than he.

"You have looked upon chaos and are not destroyed!"

"No suh! I feels all right."

"You do? You feel no inner turmoil, no need to cast out
the offending eye?"

"Suh?"

"Answer me!"

"I'm all right, suh," Trueblood said uneasily. "My eyes is all
right too. And when I feels po'ly in my gut I takes a little
soda and it goes away."

"No, no, no! Let us go where there is shade," he said,
looking about excitedly and going swiftly to where the porch
cast a swath of shade. We followed him. The farmer placed his
hand on my shoulder, but I shook it off, knowing that I could
explain nothing. We sat on the porch in a semicircle in camp
chairs, me between the sharecropper and the millionaire. The
earth around the porch was hard and white from where wash
water had long been thrown.

"How are you faring now?" Mr. Norton asked. "Perhaps I could
help."

"We ain't doing so bad, suh. 'Fore they heard 'bout what
happen to us out here I couldn't git no help from nobody. Now
lotta folks is curious and goes outta they way to help. Even the
biggity school folks up on the hill, only there was a catch to it!
They offered to send us clean outta the county, pay our way and
everything and give me a hundred dollars to git settled with.
But we likes it here so I told 'em No. Then they sent a fellow
out here, a big fellow too, and he said if I didn't leave they was
going to turn the white folks loose on me. It made me mad and
it made me scared. Them folks up there to the school is in
strong with the white folks and that scared me. But I thought
when they first come out here that they was different from
when I went up there a long time ago looking for some book
learning and some points on how to handle my crops. That was
when I had my own place. I thought they was trying to he'p me,
on accounta I got two women due to birth 'bout the same time.

"But I got mad when I found they was tryin' to git rid of us
'cause they said we was a disgrace. Yessuh, I got real mad.
So I went down to see Mr. Buchanan, the boss man, and I tole
him 'bout it and he give me a note to the sheriff and tole me to
take it to him. I did that, jus' like he tole me. I went to the
jailhouse and give Sheriff Barbour the note and he ask me to
tell him what happen, and I tole him and he called in some
more men and they made me tell it again. They wanted to hear
about the gal lots of times and they gimme somethin' to eat and
drink and some tobacco. Surprised me, 'cause I was scared and
spectin' somethin' different. Why, I guess there ain't a colored
man in the county who ever got to take so much of the white
folkses' time as I did. So finally they tell me not to worry, that
they was going to send word up to the school that I was to stay
right where I am. Them big nigguhs didn't bother me, neither.
It just goes to show yuh that no matter how biggity a nigguh
gits, the white folks can always cut him down. The white folks
took up for me. And the white folks took to coming out here to
see us and talk with us. Some of 'em was big white folks, too,
from the big school way cross the State. Asked me lots 'bout
what I thought 'bout things, and 'bout my folks and the kids,
and wrote it all down in a book. But best of all, suh, I got
more work now than I ever did have before . . ."

He talked willingly now, with a kind of satisfaction and no
trace of hesitancy or shame. The old man listened with a
puzzled expression as he held an unlit cigar in his delicate
fingers.

"Things is pretty good now," the farmer said. "Ever time
I think of how cold it was and what a hard time we was having I
gits the shakes."

I saw him bite into a plug of chewing tobacco. Something
tinkled against the porch and I picked it up, gazing at it from
time to time. It was a hard red apple stamped out of tin.

"You see, suh, it was cold and us didn't have much fire.
Nothin' but wood, no coal. I tried to git help but wouldn't
nobody help us and I couldn't find no work or nothin'. It was so
cold all of us had to sleep together; me, the ole lady and the
gal. That's how it started, suh."

He cleared his throat, his eyes gleaming and his voice taking
on a deep, incantatory quality, as though he had told the story
many, many times. Flies and fine white gnats swarmed about
his wound.

"That's the way it was," he said. "Me on one side and
the ole lady on the other and the gal in the middle. It was dark,
plum black. Black as the middle of a bucket of tar. The kids was
sleeping all together in they bed over in the corner. I must have
been the last one to go to sleep, 'cause I was thinking 'bout
how to git some grub for the next day and 'bout the gal and the
young boy what was startin' to hang 'round her. I didn't like
him and he kept comin' through my thoughts and I made up my
mind to warn him away from the gal. It was black dark and I
heard one of the kids whimper in his sleep and the last few
sticks of kindlin' crackin' and settlin' in the stove and the
smell of the fat meat seemed to git cold and still in the air
just like meat grease when it gits set in a cold plate of molas-
ses. And I was thinkin' 'bout the gal and this boy and feelin'
her arms besides me and hearing the ole lady snorin' with a kinda
moanin' and a-groanin' on the other side. I was worryin' 'bout
my family, how they was goin' to eat and all, and I thought
'bout when the gal was little like the younguns sleepin' over in
the corner and how I was her favorite over the ole lady. There
we was, breathin' together in the dark. Only I could see 'em in
my mind, knowin' 'em like I do. In my mind I looked at all of
'em, one by one. The gal looks just like the ole lady did when
she was young and I first met her, only better lookin'. You know,
we gittin' to be a better-lookin' race of people . . .

"Anyway, I could hear 'em breathin' and though I hadn't been
it made me sleepy. Then I heard the gal say, 'Daddy,' soft and
low in her sleep and I looked, tryin' to see if she was still
awake. But all I can do is smell her and feel her breath on my
hand when I go to touch her. She said it so soft I couldn't be
sure I had heard anything, so I just laid there listenin'. Seems
like I heard a whippoorwill callin', and I thought to myself, Go
on away from here, we'll whip ole Will when we find him. Then
I heard the clock up there at the school strikin' four times,
lonesome like.

"Then I got to thinkin' 'bout way back when I left the farm
and went to live in Mobile and 'bout a gal I had me then. I
was young then -- like this young fellow here. Us lived in a two
story house 'longside the river, and at night in the summertime
we used to lay in bed and talk, and after she'd gone off to sleep
I'd be awake lookin' out at the lights comin' up from the water
and listenin' to the sounds of the boats movin' along. They used
to have musicianers on them boats, and sometimes I used to
wake her up to hear the music when they come up the river. I'd
be layin' there and it would be quiet and I could hear it comin'
from way, way off. Like when you quail huntin' and it's getting
dark and you can hear the boss bird whistlin' tryin' to get the
covey together again, and he's coming toward you slow and
whistlin' soft, cause he knows you somewhere around with your
gun. Still he got to round them up, so he keeps on comin'.
Them boss quails is like a good man, what he got to do he do.

"Well, that's the way the boats used to sound. Comin'
close to you from far away. First one would be comin' to you
when you almost sleep and it sounded like somebody hittin' at
you slow with a big shiny pick. You see the pick-point comin'
straight at you, comin' slow too, and you can't dodge; only
when it goes to hit you it ain't no pick a'tall but somebody far
away breakin' little bottles of all kindsa colored glass. It's
still comin' at you though. Still comin'. Then you hear it close
up, like when you up in the second-story window and look down on
a wagonful of watermelons, and you see one of them young juicy
melons split wide open a-layin' all spread out and cool and
sweet on top of all the striped green ones like it's waitin' just
for you, so you can see how red and ripe and juicy it is and all
the shiny black seeds it's got and all. And you could hear the
sidewheels splashin' like they don't want to wake nobody up;
and us, me and the gal, would lay there feelin' like we was rich
folks and them boys on the boats would be playin' sweet as
good peach brandy wine. Then the boats would be past and the
lights would be gone from the window and the music would be
goin' too. Kinda like when you watch a gal in a red dress and a
wide straw hat goin' past you down a lane with the trees on
both sides, and she's plump and juicy and kinda switchin' her
tail 'cause she knows you watchin' and you know she know, and
you just stands there and watches 'til you can't see nothin' but
the top of her red hat and then that goes and you know she
done dropped behind a hill -- I seen me a gal like that once. All
I could hear then would be that Mobile gal -- name of Margaret
-- she be breathin' beside me, and maybe 'bout that time she'd
say, 'Daddy, you still 'wake?' and then I'd grunt, 'Uhhuh' and
drop on off -- Gent'mens," Jim Trueblood said, "I likes to recall
them Mobile days.

"Well, it was like that when I heard Matty Lou say, 'Daddy,'
and I knowed she musta been dreamin' 'bout somebody from
the way she said it and I gits mad wonderin' if it's that boy.
I listen to her mumblin' for a while tryin' to hear if she
calls his name, but she don't, and I remember that they say
if you put the hand of a person who's talkin' in his sleep in
warm water he'll say it all, but the water is too cold and I
wouldn't have done it anyway. But I'm realizin' that she's a
woman now, when I feels her turn and squirm against me and
throw her arm across my neck, up where the cover didn't reach
and I was cold. She said somethin' I couldn't understand,
like a woman says when she wants to tease and please a man. I
knowed then she was grown and I wondered how many times it'd
done happened and was it that doggone boy. I moved her arm
and it was soft, but it didn't wake her, so I called her, but
that didn't wake her neither. Then I turned my back and tried
to move away, though there wasn't much room and I could still
feel her touchin' me, movin' close to me. Then I musta dropped
into the dream. I have to tell you 'bout that dream."

I looked at Mr. Norton and stood up, thinking that now was
a good time to leave; but he was listening to Trueblood so
intensely he didn't see me, and I sat down again, cursing
the farmer silently. To hell with his dream!

"I don't quite remember it all, but I remember that I
was lookin' for some fat meat. I went to the white folks
downtown and they said go see Mr. Broadnax, that he'd give it
to me. Well, he lives up on a hill and I was climbin' up there to
see him. Seems like that was the highest hill in the world. The
more I climbed the farther away Mr. Broadnax's house seems
to git. But finally I do reach there. And I'm so tired and rest-
less to git to the man, I goes through the front door! I knows
it's wrong, but I can't help it. I goes in and I'm standin' in a
big room full of lighted candles and shiny furniture and pictures
on the walls, and soft stuff on the floor. But I don't see a livin'
soul. So I calls his name, but still don't nobody come and don't
nobody answer. So I sees a door and goes through that door and
I'm in a big white bedroom, like I seen one time when I was a
little ole boy and went to the big house with my Ma. Everything
in the room was white and I'm standin' there knowin' I got no
business in there, but there anyhow. It's a woman's room too.
I tries to git out, but I don't find the door; and all around
me I can smell woman, can smell it gittin' stronger all the
time. Then I looks over in a corner and sees one of them tall
grandfather clocks and I hears it strikin' and the glass door
is openin' and a white lady is steppin' out of it. She got on
a nightgown of soft white silky stuff and nothin' else, and
she looks straight at me. I don't know what to do. I wants to
run, but the only door I see is the one in the clock she's
standin' in -- and anyway, I can't move and this here clock
is keepin' up a heapa racket. It's gittin' faster and faster
all the time. I tries to say somethin', but I caint. Then she
starts to screamin' and I thinks I done gone deef, 'cause though
I can see her mouth working, I don't hear nothin'. Yit I can
still hear the clock and I tries to tell her I'm just lookin'
for Mr. Broadnax but she don't hear me. Instead she runs up and
grabs me around the neck and holds tight, tryin' to keep me out
of the clock. I don't know what to do then, sho 'nough. I tries
to talk to her, and I tries to git away. But she's holdin' me
and I'm scared to touch her cause she's white. Then I gits so
scared that I throws her on the bed and tries to break her holt.
That woman just seemed to sink outta sight, that there bed was so
soft. It's sinkin' down so far I think it's going to smother both
of us. Then swoosh! all of a sudden a flock of little white geese
flies out of the bed like they say you see when you go to dig for
buried money. Lawd! they hadn't no more'n disappeared than I
heard a door open and Mr. Broadnax's voice said, 'They just
nigguhs, leave 'em do it.' "

How can he tell this to white men, I thought, when he knows
they'll say that all Negroes do such things? I looked at the
floor, a red mist of anguish before my eyes.

"And I caint stop -- although I got a feelin' somethin' is
wrong. I git loose from the woman now and I'm runnin' for the
clock. At first I couldn't git the door open, it had some kinda
crinkly stuff like steel wool on the facing. But I gits it open
and gits inside and it's hot and dark in there. I goes up a dark
tunnel, up near where the machinery is making all that noise
and heat. It's like the power plant they got up to the school. It's
burnin' hot as iffen the house was caught on fire, and I starts to
runnin', try-in' to git out. I runs and runs till I should be tired
but ain't tired but feelin' more rested as I runs, and runnin' so
good it's like flyin' and I'm flyin' and sailin' and floatin' right
up over the town. Only I'm still in the tunnel. Then way up ahead I
sees a bright light like a jack-o-lantern over a graveyard. It gits
brighter and brighter and I know I got to catch up with it or
else. Then all at once I was right up with it and it burst like a
great big electric light in my eyes and scalded me all over. Only
it wasn't a scald, but like I was drownin' in a lake where the
water was hot on the top and had cold numbin' currents down
under it. Then all at once I'm through it and I'm relieved to be
out and in the cool daylight agin.

"I wakes up intendin' to tell the ole lady 'bout my crazy
dream. Morning done come, and it's gettin' almost light. And
there I am, lookin' straight in Matty Lou's face and she's beatin'
me and scratchin' and tremblin' and shakin' and cryin' all at the
same time like she's havin' a fit. I'm too surprised to move.
She's cryin', 'Daddy, Daddy, oh Daddy,' just like that. And all at
once I remember the ole lady. She's right beside us snorin' and
I can't move 'cause I figgers if I moved it would be a sin And I
figgers too, that if I don't move it maybe ain't no sin, 'cause
it happened when I was asleep -- although maybe sometimes a
man can look at a little ole pigtail gal and see him a whore --
you'all know that? Anyway, I realizes that if I don't move the
ole lady will see me. I don't want that to happen. That would be
worse than sin. I'm whisperin' to Matty Lou, tryin' to keep her
quiet and I'm figurin' how to git myself out of the fix I'm in
without sinnin'. I almost chokes her.

"But once a man gits hisself in a tight spot like that there
ain't much he can do. It ain't up to him no longer. There I
was, tryin' to git away with all my might, yet having to move
without movin'. I flew in but I had to walk out. I had to move
without movin'. I done thought 'bout it since a heap, and when
you think right hard you see that that's the way things is
always been with me. That's just about been my life. There was
only one way I can figger that I could git out: that was with a
knife. But I didn't have no knife, and if you'all ever seen them
geld them young boar pigs in the fall, you know I knowed that
that was too much to pay to keep from sinnin'. Everything was
happenin' inside of me like a fight was goin' on. Then just the
very thought of the fix I'm in puts the iron back in me.

"Then if that ain't bad enough, Matty Lou can't hold out
no longer and gits to movin' herself. First she was tryin' to
push me away and I'm tryin' to hold her down to keep from sinnin'.
Then I'm pullin' away and shushin' her to be quiet so's not to
wake her Ma, when she grabs holt to me and holds tight. She
didn't want me to go then -- and to tell the honest-to-God truth
I found out that I didn't want to go neither. I guess I felt then,
at that time -- and although I been sorry since -- just 'bout
like that fellow did down in Birmingham. That one what locked
hisself in his house and shot at them police until they set fire
to the house and burned him up. I was lost. The more wringlin'
and twistin' we done tryin' to git away, the more we wanted to
stay. So like that fellow, I stayed, I had to fight it on out to
the end. He mighta died, but I suspects now that he got a heapa
satisfaction before he went. I know there ain't nothin' like what
I went through, I caint tell how it was. It's like when a real
drinkin' man gits drunk, or when a real sanctified religious
woman gits so worked up she jumps outta her clothes, or when
a real gamblin' man keeps on gamblin' when he's losin'. You got
holt to it and you caint let go even though you want to."

"Mr. Norton, sir," I said in a choked voice, "it's time we were
getting back to the campus. You'll miss your appointments . . ."

He didn't even look at me. "Please," he said, waving his
hand in annoyance.

Trueblood seemed to smile at me behind his eyes as he
looked from the white man to me and continued.

"I couldn't even let go when I heard Kate scream. It was
a scream to make your blood run cold. It sounds like a woman
who was watchin' a team of wild horses run down her baby
chile and she caint move. Kate's hair is standin' up like she
done seen a ghost, her gown is hanging open and the veins in
her neck is 'bout to bust. And her eyes! Lawd, them eyes. I'm
lookin' up at her from where I'm layin' on the pallet with Matty
Lou, and I'm too weak to move. She screams and starts to
pickin' up the first thing that comes to her hand and throwin'
it. Some of them misses me and some of them hits me. Little
things and big things. Somethin' cold and strong-stinkin' hits
me and wets me and bangs against my head. Somethin' hits the
wall -- boom-a-loom-a-loom! -- like a cannon ball, and I tries to
cover up my head. Kate's talkin' the unknown tongue, like a
wild woman.

"'Wait a minit, Kate,' I says. 'Stop it!'

"Then I hears her stop a second and I hears her runnin'
across the floor, and I twists and looks and Lawd, she done got
my double-barrel shotgun!

"And while she's foamin' at the mouth and cockin' the
gun, she gits her speech.

"'Git up! Git up!' she says.

"'HEY! NAW! KATE!' I says.

"'Goddam yo' soul to hell! Git up offa my chile!'

"'But woman, Kate, lissen . . .'

"'Don't talk, MOVE!'

"'Down that thing, Kate!'

"'No down, UP!'

"'That there's buckshot, woman, BUCKshot!'

"'Yes, it is!'

"'Down it, I say!"

"'I'm gon blast your soul to hell!'

"'You gon hit Matty Lou!'

"'Not Matty Lou -- YOU!'

"'It spreads, Kate. Matty Lou!'

"She moves around, aimin' at me.

"'I done warn you, Jim . . .'

"'Kate, it was a dream. Lissen to me . . .'

"'You the one who lissen -- UP FROM THERE!'

"She jerks the gun and I shuts my eyes. But insteada
thunder and lightin' bustin' me, I hears Matty Lou scream in
my ear,

"'Mamma! Oooooo, MAMA!'

"I rolls almost over then and Kate hesitates. She looks
at the gun, and she looks at us, and she shivers a minit like she
got the fever. Then all at once she drops the gun, and ZIP!
quick as a cat, she turns and grabs somethin' off the stove. It
catches me like somebody diggin' into my side with a sharp
spade. I caint breathe. She's throwin' and talkin' all at the same
time.

"And when I looks up, Maan, Maaan! she's got a iron in
her hand!

"I hollers, 'No blood, Kate. Don't spill no blood!'

"'You lowdown dog,' she says, 'it's better to spill than to
foul!'

"'Naw, Kate. Things ain't what they 'pear! Don't make
no blood-sin on accounta no dream-sin!"

"'Shut up, nigguh. You done fouled!'

"But I sees there ain't no use reasonin' with her then.
I makes up my mind that I'm goin' to take whatever she gimme.
It seems to me that all I can do is take my punishment. I tell
myself, Maybe if you suffer for it, it will be best. Maybe you
owe it to Kate to let her beat you. You ain't guilty, but she
thinks you is. You don't want her to beat you, but she think she
got to beat you. You want to git up, but you too weak to move.

"I was too. I was frozen to where I was like a youngun
what done stuck his lip to a pump handle in the wintertime. I
was just like a jaybird that the yellow jackets done stung 'til
he's paralyzed -- but still alive in his eyes and he's watchin'
'em sting his body to death.

"It made me seem to go way back a distance in my
head, behind my eyes, like I was standin' behind a windbreak
durin' a storm. I looks out and sees Kate runnin' toward me
draggin' something behind her. I tries to see what it is 'cause
I'm curious 'bout it and sees her gown catch on the stove and
her hand comin' in sight with somethin' in it. I thinks to myself,
It's a handle. What she got the handle to? Then I sees her right
up on me, big. She's swingin' her arms like a man swingin' a
ten-pound sledge and I sees the knuckles of her hand is bruised
and bleedin', and I sees it catch in her gown and I sees her
gown go up so I can see her thighs and I sees how rusty and
gray the cold done made her skin, and I sees her bend and
straightenin' up and I hears her grunt and I sees her swing and
I smells her sweat and I knows by the shape of the shinin' wood
what she's got to put on me. Lawd, yes! I sees it catch on a
quilt this time and raise that quilt up and drop it on the floor.
Then I sees that ax come free! It's shinin', shinin' from the
sharpenin' I'd give it a few days before, and man, way back in
myself, behind that windbreak, I says,

"'NAAW! KATE -- Lawd, Kate, NAW!!!' "

Suddenly his voice was so strident that I looked up
startled. Trueblood seemed to look straight through Mr.
Norton, his eyes glassy. The children paused guiltily at their
play, looking toward their father.

"I might as well been pleadin' with a switch engine," he
went on. "I sees it comin' down. I sees the light catchin' on
it, I sees Kate's face all mean and I tightens my shoulders and
stiffens my neck and I waits -- ten million back-breakin' years,
it seems to me like I waits. I waits so long I remembers all the
wrong things I ever done; I waits so long I opens my eyes and
closes 'em and opens my eyes agin, and I sees it fallin'. It's
fallin' fast as flops from a six-foot ox, and while I'm waitin'
I feels somethin' wind up inside of me and turn to water. I sees
it, Lawd, yes! I sees it and seein' it I twists my head aside.
Couldn't help it; Kate has a good aim, but for that. I moves.
Though I meant to keep still, I moved! Anybody but Jesus
Christ hisself woulda moved. I feel like the whole side of my
face is smashed clear off. It hits me like hot lead so hot that
insteada burnin' me it numbs me. I'm layin' there on the floor,
but inside me I'm runnin' round in circles like a dog with his
back broke, and back into that numbness with my tail tucked
between my legs. I feels like I don't have no skin on my face
no more, only the naked bone. But this is the part I don't
understand: more'n the pain and numbness I feels relief. Yes,
and to git some more of that relief I seems to run out from
behind the windbreak again and up to where Kate's standin'
with the ax, and I opens my eyes and waits. That's the truth. I
wants some more and I waits. I sees her swing it, lookin' down
on me, and I sees it in the air and I holds my breath, then all
of a sudden I sees it stop like somebody done reached down
through the roof and caught it, and I sees her face have a
spasm and I sees the ax fall, back of her this time, and hit the
floor, and Kate spews out some puke and I close my eyes and
waits. I can hear her moanin' and stumblin' out of the door and
fallin' off the porch into the yard. Then I hears her pukin' like
all her guts is coming up by the roots. Then I looks down and
seen blood runnin' all over Matty Lou. It's my blood, my face is
bleedin'. That gits me to movin'. I gits up and stumbles out to
find Kate, and there she is under the cottonwood tree out
there, on her knees, and she's moanin'.

"'What have I done, Lawd! What have I done!'

"She's droolin' green stuff and gits to pukin' agin, and when
I goes to touch her it gits worse. I stands there holdin' my
face and tryin' to keep the blood from flowin' and wonders
what on earth is gonna happen. I looks up at the mornin' sun
and expects somehow for it to thunder. But it's already bright
and clear and the sun comin' up and the birds is chirpin' and I
gits more afraid then than if a bolt of lightnin' had struck me.
I yells, 'Have mercy, Lawd! Lawd, have mercy!' and waits. And
there's nothin' but the clear bright mornin' sun.

"But don't nothin' happen and I knows then that somethin'
worse than anything I ever heard 'bout is in store for me.
I musta stood there stark stone still for half an hour. I was
still standin' there when Kate got off her knees and went back
into the house. The blood was runnin' all over my clothes and
the flies was after me, and I went back inside to try and stop
it.

"When I see Matty Lou stretched out there I think she's dead.
Ain't no color in her face and she ain't hardly breathin'.
She gray in the face. I tries to help her but I can't do no good
and Kate won't speak to me nor look at me even; and I thinks
maybe she plans to try to kill me agin, but she don't. I'm in
such a daze I just sits there the whole time while she bundles
up the younguns and takes 'em down the road to Will Nichols'.
I can see but I caint do nothin'.

"And I'm still settin' there when she comes back with
some women to see 'bout Matty Lou. Won't nobody speak to
me, though they looks at me like I'm some new kinda cotton
pickin' machine. I feels bad. I tells them how it happened in a
dream, but they scorns me. I gits plum out of the house then. I
goes to see the preacher and even he don't believe me. He tells
me to git out ot his house, that I'm the most wicked man he's
ever seen and that I better go confess my sin and make my
peace with God. I leaves tryin' to pray, but I caint. I thinks and
thinks, until I thinks my brain go'n bust, 'bout how I'm guilty
and how I ain't guilty. I don't eat nothin' and I don't drink
nothin' and caint sleep at night. Finally, one night, way early in
the mornin', I looks up and sees the stars and I starts singin'. I
don't mean to, I didn't think 'bout it, just start singin'. I don't
know what it was, some kinda church song, I guess. All I know
is I ends up singin' the blues. I sings me some blues that night
ain't never been sang before, and while I'm singin' them blues I
makes up my mind that I ain't nobody but myself and ain't
nothin' I can do but let whatever is gonna happen, happen. I
made up my mind that I was goin' back home and face Kate;
yeah, and face Matty Lou too.

"When I gits here everybody thinks I done run off.
There's a heap of women here with Kate and I runs 'em out.
And when I runs 'em out I sends the younguns out to play and
locks the door and tells Kate and Matty Lou 'bout the dream
and how I'm sorry, but that what done happen is done happen.

"'How come you don't go on 'way and leave us?' is the
first words Kate says to me. 'Ain't you done enough to me and
this chile?'

"'I caint leave you,' I says. 'I'm a man and man don't
leave his family.'

"She says, 'Naw, you ain't no man. No man'd do what
you did.'

"'I'm still a man,' I says.

"'But what you gon' do after it happens?' says Kate.

"'After what happens?' I says.

"'When yo black 'bomination is birthed to bawl yo wicked
sin befo the eyes of God!' (She musta learned them
words from the preacher.)

"'Birth?' I says. 'Who birth?'

"'Both of us. Me birth and Matty Lou birth. Both of us
birth, you dirty lowdown wicked dog!'

"That liketa killed me. I can understand then why Matty
Lou won't look at me and won't speak a word to nobody.

"'If you stay I'm goin' over an' git Aunt Cloe for both of
us,' Kate says. She says, 'I don't aim to birth no sin for folks to
look at all the rest of my life, and I don't aim for Matty Lou to
neither.'

"You see, Aunt Cloe is a midwife, and even weak as I
am from this news I knows I don't want her foolin' with my
womenfolks. That woulda been pilin' sin up on toppa sin. So I
told Kate, naw, that if Aunt Cloe come near this house I'd kill
her, old as she is. I'da done it too. That settles it. I walks out
of the house and leaves 'em here to cry it out between 'em. I
wanted to go off by myself agin, but it don't do no good tryin' to
run off from somethin' like that. It follows you wherever you go.
Besides, to git right down to the facts, there wasn't nowhere I
could go. I didn't have a cryin' dime!

"Things got to happenin' right off. The nigguhs up at the
school come down to chase me off and that made me mad. I
went to see the white folks then and they gave me help. That's
what I don't understand. I done the worse thing a man could
ever do in his family and instead of chasin' me out of the
county, they gimme more help than they ever give any other
colored man, no matter how good a nigguh he was. Except that
my wife an' daughter won't speak to me, I'm better off than I
ever been before. And even if Kate won't speak to me she took
the new clothes I brought her from up in town and now she's
gettin' some eyeglasses made what she been needin' for so
long. But what I don't understand is how I done the worse thing
a man can do in his own family and 'stead of things gittin' bad,
they got better. The nigguhs up at the school don't like me, but
the white folks treats me fine."


HE WAS some farmer. As I listened I had been so torn
between humiliation and fascination that to lessen my sense of
shame I had kept my attention riveted upon his intense face.
That way I did not have to look at Mr. Norton. But now as the
voice ended I sat looking down at Mr. Norton's feet. Out in the
yard a woman's hoarse contralto intoned a hymn. Children's
voices were raised in playful chatter. I sat bent over, smelling
the sharp dry odor of wood burning in the hot sunlight. I stared
at the two pairs of shoes before me. Mr. Norton's were white,
trimmed with black. They were custom made and there beside
the cheap tan brogues of the farmer they had the elegantly
slender well-bred appearance of fine gloves. Finally someone
cleared his throat and I looked up to see Mr. Norton staring
silently into Jim Trueblood's eyes. I was startled. His face had
drained of color. With his bright eyes burning into Trueblood's
black face, he looked ghostly. Trueblood looked at me question-
ingly.

"Lissen to the younguns," he said in embarrassment.
"Playin' 'London Bridge's Fallin' Down.' "

Something was going on which I didn't get. I had to get
Mr. Norton away.

"Are you all right, sir?" I asked.

He looked at me with unseeing eyes. "All right?" he
said.

"Yes, sir. I mean that I think it's time for the afternoon
session," I hurried on.

He stared at me blankly.

I went to him. "Are you sure you're all right, sir?"

"Maybe it's the heat," Trueblood said. "You got to be
born down here to stand this kind of heat."

"Perhaps," Mr. Norton said, "it is the heat. We'd better
go."

He stood shakily, still staring intently at Trueblood.
Then I saw him removing a red Moroccan-leather wallet from
his coat pocket. The platinum-framed miniature came with it,
but he did not look at it this time.

"Here," he said, extending a banknote. "Please take
this and buy the children some toys for me."

Trueblood's mouth fell agape, his eyes widened and
filled with moisture as he took the bill between trembling
fingers. It was a hundred-dollar bill.

"I'm ready, young man," Mr. Norton said, his voice a
whisper.

I went before him to the car and opened the door. He
stumbled a bit climbing in and I gave him my arm. His face was
still chalk white.

"Drive me away from here," he said in a sudden frenzy.
"Away!"

"Yes, sir."

I saw Jim Trueblood wave as I threw the car into gear.
"You bastard," I said under my breath. "You no-good bastard!
You get a hundred-dollar bill!"

When I had turned the car and started back I saw him
still standing in the same place.

Suddenly Mr. Norton touched me on the shoulder. "I
must have a stimulant, young man. A little whiskey."

"Yes, sir. Are you all right, sir?"

"A little faint, but a stimulant . . ."

His voice trailed off. Something cold formed within my chest.
If anything happened to him Dr. Bledsoe would blame me. I
stepped on the gas, wondering where I could get him some
whiskey. Not in the town, that would take too long. There
was only one place, the Golden Day.

"I'll have you some in a few minutes, sir," I said.

"As soon as you can," he said.



Chapter 3



I saw them as we approached the short stretch that lay
between the railroad tracks and the Golden Day. At first I failed
to recognize them. They straggled down the highway in a loose
body, blocking the way from the white line to the frazzled
weeds that bordered the sun-heated concrete slab. I cursed
them silently. They were blocking the road and Mr. Norton was
gasping for breath. Ahead of the radiator's gleaming curve they
looked like a chain gang on its way to make a road. But a chain
gang marches single file and I saw no guards on horseback. As
I drew nearer I recognized the loose gray shirts and pants worn
by the veterans. Damn! They were heading for the Golden Day.

"A little stimulant," I heard behind me.

"In a few minutes, sir."

Up ahead I saw the one who thought he was a drum
major strutting in front, giving orders as he moved energe-
tically in long, hip-swinging strides, a cane held above his
head, rising and falling as though in time to music. I slowed
the car as I saw him turn to face the men, his cane held at
chest level as he shortened the pace. The men continued to
ignore him, walking along in a mass, some talking in groups
and others talking and gesticulating to themselves.

Suddenly, the drum major saw the car and shook his cane-
baton at me. I blew the horn, seeing the men move over to
the side as I nosed the car slowly forward. He held his ground,
his legs braced, hands on hips, and to keep from hitting him I
slammed on the brakes.

The drum major rushed past the men toward the car,
and I heard the cane bang down upon the hood as he rushed
toward me.

"Who the hell you think you are, running down the army?
Give the countersign. Who's in command of this outfit?
You trucking bastards was always too big for your britches.
Countersign me!"

"This is General Pershing's car, sir," I said, remembering
hearing that he responded to the name of his wartime
Commander-in-Chief. Suddenly the wild look changed
in his eyes and he stepped back and saluted with stiff preci-
sion. Then looking suspiciously into the back seat, he barked,

"Where's the General?"

"There," I said, turning and seeing Mr. Norton raising
himself, weak and white-faced, from the seat.

"What is it? Why have we stopped?"

"The sergeant stopped us, sir . . ."

"Sergeant? What sergeant?" He sat up.

"Is that you, General?" the vet said, saluting. "I didn't know
you were inspecting the front lines today. I'm very sorry, sir."

"What . . . ?" Mr. Norton said.

"The General's in a hurry," I said quickly.

"Sure is," the vet said. "He's got a lot to see. Discipline
is bad. Artillery's shot to hell." Then he called to the men
walking up the road, "Get the hell out of the General's road.
General Pershing's coming through. Make way for General
Pershing!"

He stepped aside and I shot the car across the line to
avoid the men and stayed there on the wrong side as I headed
for the Golden Day.

"Who was that man?" Mr. Norton gasped from the back
seat.

"A former soldier, sir. A vet. They're all vets, a little
shellshocked."

"But where is the attendant?"

"I don't see one, sir. They're harmless though."

"Nevertheless, they should have an attendant."

I had to get him there and away before they arrived. This
was their day to visit the girls, and the Golden Day would
be pretty rowdy. I wondered where the rest of them were.

There should have been about fifty. Well, I would rush in and
get the whiskey and leave. What was wrong with Mr. Norton
anyway, why should he get that upset over Trueblood? I had
felt ashamed and several times I had wanted to laugh, but it
had made him sick. Maybe he needed a doctor. Hell, he didn't
ask for any doctor. Damn that bastard Trueblood.

I would run in, get a pint, and run out again, I thought.
Then he wouldn't see the Golden Day. I seldom went there
myself except with some of the fellows when word got out that
a new bunch of girls had arrived from New Orleans. The school
had tried to make the Golden Day respectable, but the local
white folks had a hand in it somehow and they got nowhere.
The best the school could do was to make it hot for any student
caught going there.

He lay like a man asleep as I left the car and ran into the
Golden Day. I wanted to ask him for money but decided to
use my own. At the door I paused; the place was already full,
jammed with vets in loose gray shirts and trousers and women
in short, tight-fitting, stiffly starched gingham aprons. The
stale beer smell struck like a club through the noise of voices
and the juke box. Just as I got inside the door a stolid-faced
man gripped me by the arm and looked stonily into my eyes.

"It will occur at 5:30," he said, looking straight
through me.

"What?"

"The great all-embracing, absolute Armistice, the end of
the world!" he said.

Before I could answer, a small plump woman smiled into
my face and pulled him away.

"It's your turn, Doc," she said. "Don't let it happen till after me
and you done been upstairs. How come I always have to come
get you?"

"No, it is true," he said. "They wirelessed me from Paris
this morning."

"Then, baby, me an' you better hurry. There's lots of money I
got to make in here before that thing happens. You hold it
back a while, will you?"

She winked at me as she pulled him through the crowd to-
ward the stairs. I elbowed my way nervously toward the bar.

Many of the men had been doctors, lawyers, teachers,
Civil Service workers; there were several cooks, a preacher, a
politician, and an artist. One very nutty one had been a
psychiatrist. Whenever I saw them I felt uncomfortable. They
were supposed to be members of the professions toward which
at various times I vaguely aspired myself, and even though they
never seemed to see me I could never believe that they were
really patients. Sometimes it appeared as though they played
some vast and complicated game with me and the rest of the
school folk, a game whose goal was laughter and whose rules
and subtleties I could never grasp.

Two men stood directly in front of me, one speaking
with intense earnestness. ". . . and Johnson hit Jeffries at an
angle of 45 degrees from his lower left lateral incisor, pro-
ducing an instantaneous blocking of his entire thalamic rine,
frosting it over like the freezing unit of a refrigerator, thus
shattering his autonomous nervous system and rocking the big
brick-laying creampuff with extreme hyperspasmic muscular
tremors which dropped him dead on the extreme tip of his
coccyx, which, in turn, produced a sharp traumatic reaction in
his sphincter nerve and muscle, and then, my dear colleague,
they swept him up, sprinkled him with quicklime and rolled him
away in a barrow. Naturally, there was no other therapy pos-
sible."

"Excuse me," I said, pushing past.

Big Halley was behind the bar, his dark skin showing through
his sweat-wet shirt.

"Whatcha saying, school-boy?"

"I want a double whiskey, Halley. Put it in something deep so
I can get it out of here without spilling it. It's for somebody
outside."

His mouth shot out, "Hell, naw!"

"Why?" I asked, surprised at the anger in his thyroid eyes.

"You still up at the school, ain't you?"

"Sure."

"Well, those bastards is trying to close me up agin, that's why.
You can drink till you blue in the face in here, but I wouldn't
sell you enough to spit through your teeth to take outside."

"But I've got a sick man out in the car."

"What car? You never had no car."

"The white man's car. I'm driving for him."

"Ain't you in school?"

"He's from the school."

"Well, who's sick?"

"He is."

"He too good to come in? Tell him we don't Jimcrow nobody."

"But he's sick."

"He can die!"

"He's important, Halley, a trustee. He's rich and sick and if
anything happens to him, they'll have me packed and on my
way home."

"Can't help it, school-boy. Bring him inside and he can
buy enough to swim in. He can drink outta my own private
bottle."

He sliced the white heads off a couple of beers with an ivory
paddle and passed them up the bar. I felt sick inside. Mr.
Norton wouldn't want to come in here. He was too sick. And
besides I didn't want him to see the patients and the girls.
Things were getting wilder as I made my way out. Supercargo,
the white-uniformed attendant who usually kept the men quiet
was nowhere to be seen. I didn't like it, for when he was
upstairs they had absolutely no inhibitions. I made my way out
to the car. What could I tell Mr. Norton? He was lying very still
when I opened the door.

"Mr. Norton, sir. They refuse to sell me whiskey to bring out."

He lay very still.

"Mr. Norton."

He lay like a figure of chalk. I shook him gently, feeling
dread within me. He barely breathed. I shook him violently,
seeing his head wobble grotesquely. His lips parted, bluish,
revealing a row of long, slender, amazingly animal-like teeth.

"SIR!"

In a panic I ran back into the Golden Day, bursting through
the noise as through an invisible wall.

"Halley! Help me, he's dying!"

I tried to get through but no one seemed to have heard
me. I was blocked on both sides. They were jammed together.

"Halley!"

Two patients turned and looked me in the face, their eyes
two inches from my nose.

"What is wrong with this gentleman, Sylvester?" the tall
one said.

"A man's dying outside!" I said.

"Someone is always dying," the other one said.

"Yes, and it's good to die beneath God's great tent of
sky."

"He's got to have some whiskey!"

"Oh, that's different," one of them said and they began push-
ing a path to the bar. "A last bright drink to keep the anguish
down. Step aside, please!"

"School-boy, you back already?" Halley said.

"Give me some whiskey. He's dying!"

"I done told you, school-boy, you better bring him in here.
He can die, but I still got to pay my bills."

"Please, they'll put me in jail."

"You going to college, figure it out," he said.

"You'd better bring the gentleman inside," the one called
Sylvester said. "Come, let us assist you."

We fought our way out of the crowd. He was just as I left him.

"Look, Sylvester, it's Thomas Jefferson!"

"I was just about to say, I've long wanted to discourse with
him."

I looked at them speechlessly; they were both crazy. Or
were they joking?

"Give me a hand," I said.

"Gladly."

I shook him. "Mr. Norton!"

"We'd better hurry if he's to enjoy his drink," one of them said
thoughtfully.

We picked him up. He swung between us like a sack of old
clothes.

"Hurry!"

As we carried him toward the Golden Day one of the men
stopped suddenly and Mr. Norton's head hung down, his
white hair dragging in the dust.

"Gentlemen, this man is my grandfather!"

"But he's white, his name's Norton."

"I should know my own grandfather! He's Thomas Jefferson
and I'm his grandson -- on the 'field-nigger' side," the tall
man said.

"Sylvester, I do believe that you're right. I certainly do," he
said, staring at Mr. Norton. "Look at those features. Exactly
like yours -- from the identical mold. Are you sure he didn't spit
you upon the earth, fully clothed?"

"No, no, that was my father," the man said earnestly.

And he began to curse his father violently as we moved
for the door. Halley was there waiting. Somehow he'd gotten
the crowd to quiet down and a space was cleared in the center
of the room. The men came close to look at Mr. Norton.

"Somebody bring a chair."

"Yeah, let Mister Eddy sit down."

"That ain't no Mister Eddy, man, that's John D. Rockefeller,"
someone said.

"Here's a chair for the Messiah."

"Stand back y'all," Halley ordered. "Give him some room."

Burnside, who had been a doctor, rushed forward and felt for
Mr. Norton's pulse.

"It's solid! This man has a solid pulse! Instead of beating, it
vibrates. That's very unusual. Very."

Someone pulled him away. Halley reappeared with a bottle
and a glass. "Here, some of y'all tilt his head back."

And before I could move, a short, pock-marked man appear-
ed and took Mr. Norton's head between his hands, tilting
it at arm's length and then, pinching the chin gently like a
barber about to apply a razor, gave a sharp, swift movement.

"Pow!"

Mr. Norton's head jerked like a jabbed punching bag. Five pale
red lines bloomed on the white cheek, glowing like fire beneath
translucent stone. I could not believe my eyes. I wanted to
run. A woman tittered. I saw several men rush for the door.

"Cut it out, you damn fool!"

"A case of hysteria," the pock-marked man said quietly.

"Git the hell out of the way," Halley said. "Somebody git
that stool-pigeon attendant from upstairs. Git him down here,
quick!"

"A mere mild case of hysteria," the pock-marked man said as
they pushed him away.

"Hurry with the drink, Halley!"

"Heah, school-boy, you hold the glass. This here's brandy I
been saving for myself."

Someone whispered tonelessly into my ear, "You see, I told
you that it would occur at 5:30. Already the Creator has
come." It was the stolid-faced man.

I saw Halley tilt the bottle and the oily amber of brandy slosh-
ing into the glass. Then tilting Mr. Norton's head back, I put
the glass to his lips and poured. A fine brown stream ran from
the corner of his mouth, down his delicate chin. The room
was suddenly quiet. I felt a slight movement against my hand,
like a child's breast when it whimpers at the end of a spell of
crying. The fine-veined eyelids flickered. He coughed. I saw a
slow red flush creep, then spurt, up his neck, spreading over
his face.

"Hold it under his nose, school-boy. Let 'im smell it."

I waved the glass beneath Mr. Norton's nose. He opened his
pale blue eyes. They seemed watery now in the red flush that
bathed his face. He tried to sit up, his right hand fluttering to
his chin. His eyes widened, moved quickly from face to face.
Then coming to mine, the moist eyes focused with recognition.

"You were unconscious, sir," I said.

"Where am I, young man?" he asked wearily.

"This is the Golden Day, sir."

"What?"

"The Golden Day. It's a kind of sporting-and-gambling house,"
I added reluctantly.

"Now give him another drinka brandy," Halley said.

I poured a drink and handed it to him. He sniffed it, closed his
eyes as in puzzlement, then drank; his cheeks filled out like
small bellows; he was rinsing his mouth.

"Thank you," he said, a little stronger now. "What is this
place?"

"The Golden Day," said several patients in unison.

He looked slowly around him, up to the balcony, with its scroll-
ed and carved wood. A large flag hung lank above the floor.
He frowned.

"What was this building used for in the past?" he said.

"It was a church, then a bank, then it was a restaurant and a
fancy gambling house, and now we got it," Halley explained.
"I think somebody said it used to be a jail-house too."

"They let us come here once a week to raise a little
hell," someone said.

"I couldn't buy a drink to take out, sir, so I had to bring you
inside," I explained in dread.

He looked about him. I followed his eyes and was amazed
to see the varied expressions on the patients' faces
as they silently returned his gaze. Some were hostile, some
cringing, some horrified; some, who when among themselves
were most violent, now appeared as submissive as children.
And some seemed strangely amused.

"Are all of you patients?" Mr. Norton asked.

"Me, I just runs the joint," Halley said. "These here other
fellows . . ."

"We're patients sent here as therapy," a short, fat, very
intelligent-looking man said. "But," he smiled, "they send along
an attendant, a kind of censor, to see that the therapy fails."

"You're nuts. I'm a dynamo of energy. I come to charge my
batteries," one of the vets insisted.

"I'm a student of history, sir," another interrupted with
dramatic gestures. "The world moves in a circle like a roulette
wheel. In the beginning, black is on top, in the middle epochs,
white holds the odds, but soon Ethiopia shall stretch forth her
noble wings! Then place your money on the black!" His voice
throbbed with emotion. "Until then, the sun holds no heat,
there's ice in the heart of the earth. Two years from now and
I'll be old enough to give my mulatto mother a bath, the half
white bitch!" he added, beginning to leap up and down in an
explosion of glassy-eyed fury.

Mr. Norton blinked his eyes and straightened up.

"I'm a physician, may I take your pulse?" Burnside said,
seizing Mr. Norton's wrist.

"Don't pay him no mind, mister. He ain't been no doctor in
ten years. They caught him trying to change some blood into
money."

"I did too!" the man screamed. "I discovered it and John
D. Rockefeller stole the formula from me."

"Mr. Rockefeller did you say?" Mr. Norton said. "I'm sure
you must be mistaken."

"WHAT'S GOING ON DOWN THERE?" a voice shouted from
the balcony. Everyone turned. I saw a huge black giant of
a man, dressed only in white shorts, swaying on the stairs. It
was Supercargo, the attendant. I hardly recognized him
without his hard-starched white uniform. Usually he walked
around threatening the men with a strait jacket which he
always carried over his arm, and usually they were quiet and
submissive in his presence. But now they seemed not to
recognize him and began shouting curses.

"How you gon keep order in the place if you gon git
drunk?" Halley shouted. "Charlene! Charlene!"

"Yeah?" a woman's voice, startling in its carrying power,
answered sulkily from a room off the balcony.

"I want you to git that stool-pigeoning, joy-killing, nut-
crushing bum back in there with you and sober him up. Then
git him in his white suit and down here to keep order. We got
white folks in the house."

A woman appeared on the balcony, drawing a woolly
pink robe about her. "Now you lissen here, Halley," she
drawled, "I'm a woman. If you want him dressed, you can do
it yourself. I don't put on but one man's clothes and he's in
N'Orleans."

"Never mind all that. Git that stool pigeon sober!"

"I want order down there," Supercargo boomed, "and if
there's white folks down there, I wan's double order."

Suddenly there was an angry roar from the men back
near the bar and I saw them rush the stairs.

"Get him!"

"Let's give him some order!"

"Out of my way."

Five men charged the stairs. I saw the giant bend and
clutch the posts at the top of the stairs with both hands,
bracing himself, his body gleaming bare in his white shorts.
The little man who had slapped Mr. Norton was in front, and,
as he sprang up the long flight, I saw the attendant set himself
and kick, catching the little man just as he reached the top,
hard in the chest, sending him backwards in a curving dive into
the midst of the men behind him. Supercargo got set to swing
his leg again. It was a narrow stair and only one man could get
up at a time. As fast as they rushed up, the giant kicked them
back. He swung his leg, kicking them down like a fungo-hitter
batting out flies. Watching him, I forgot Mr. Norton. The Golden
Day was in an uproar. Half-dressed women appeared from the
rooms off the balcony. Men hooted and yelled as at a football
game.

"I WANT ORDER!" the giant shouted as he sent a man
flying down the flight of stairs.

"THEY THROWING BOTTLES OF LIQUOR!" a woman screamed.
"REAL LIQUOR!"

"That's a order he don't want," someone said.

A shower of bottles and glasses splashing whiskey crash-
ed against the balcony. I saw Supercargo snap suddenly
erect and grab his forehead, his face bathed in whiskey,
"Eeeee!" he cried, "Eeeee!" Then I saw him waver, rigid from
his ankles upward. For a moment the men on the stairs were
motionless, watching him. Then they sprang forward.

Supercargo grabbed wildly at the balustrade as they snatch-
ed his feet from beneath him and started down. His head
bounced against the steps making a sound like a series of
gunshots as they ran dragging him by his ankles, like volunteer
firemen running with a hose. The crowd surged forward. Halley
yelled near my ear. I saw the man being dragged toward the
center of the room.

"Give the bastard some order!"

"Here I'm forty-five and he's been acting like he's my
old man!"

"So you like to kick, huh?" a tall man said, aiming a
shoe at the attendant's head. The flesh above his right eye
jumped out as though it had been inflated.

Then I heard Mr. Norton beside me shouting, "No, no!
Not when he's down!"

"Lissen at the white folks," someone said. "He's the
white folks' man!"

Men were jumping upon Supercargo with both feet now
and I felt such an excitement that I wanted to join them. Even
the girls were yelling, "Give it to him good!" "He never pays
me!" "Kill him!"

"Please, y'all, not here! Not in my place!"

"You can't speak your mind when he's on duty!"

"Hell, no!"

Somehow I got pushed away from Mr. Norton and found
myself beside the man called Sylvester.

"Watch this, school-boy," he said. "See there, where his ribs
are bleeding?" I nodded my head. "Now don't move your eyes."

I watched the spot as though compelled, just beneath
the lower rib and above the hip-bone, as Sylvester measured
carefully with his toe and kicked as though he were punting a
football. Supercargo let out a groan like an injured horse.

"Try it, school-boy, it feels so good. It gives you relief,"
Sylvester said. "Sometimes I get so afraid of him I feel
that he's inside my head. There!" he said, giving Supercargo
another kick.

As I watched, a man sprang on Supercargo's chest with
both feet and he lost consciousness. They began throwing cold
beer on him, reviving him, only to kick him unconscious again.
Soon he was drenched in blood and beer.

"The bastard's out cold."

"Throw him out."

"Naw, wait a minute. Give me a hand somebody."

They threw him upon the bar, stretching him out with his
arms folded across his chest like a corpse.

"Now, let's have a drink!"

Halley was slow in getting behind the bar and they cursed
him.

"Get back there and serve us, you big sack of fat!"

"Gimme a rye!"

"Up here, funk-buster!"

"Shake them sloppy hips!"

"Okay, okay, take it easy," Halley said, rushing to pour
them drinks. "Just put y'all's money where your mouth is."

With Supercargo lying helpless upon the bar, the men whirled
about like maniacs. The excitement seemed to have tilted
some of the more delicately balanced ones too far. Some
made hostile speeches at the top of their voices against the
hospital, the state and the universe. The one who called himself
a composer was banging away the one wild piece he seemed to
know on the out-of-tune piano, striking the keyboard with fists
and elbows and filling in other effects in a bass voice that
moaned like a bear in agony. One of the most educated ones
touched my arm. He was a former chemist who was never seen
without his shining Phi Beta Kappa key.

"The men have lost control," he said through the uproar.
"I think you'd better leave."

"I'm trying to," I said, "as soon as I can get over
to Mr. Norton."

Mr. Norton was gone from where I had left him. I rushed
here and there through the noisy men, calling his name.
When I found him he was under the stairs. Somehow he
had been pushed there by the scuffling, reeling men and he
lay sprawled in the chair like an aged doll. In the dim light his
features were sharp and white and his closed eyes well-defined
lines in a well-tooled face. I shouted his name above the roar
of the men, and got no answer. He was out again. I shook him,
gently, then roughly, but still no flicker of his wrinkled lids.
Then some of the milling men pushed me up against him and
suddenly a mass of whiteness was looming two inches from my
eyes; it was only his face but I felt a shudder of nameless
horror. I had never been so close to a white person before. In a
panic I struggled to get away. With his eyes closed he seemed
more threatening than with them open. He was like a formless
white death, suddenly appeared before me, a death which had
been there all the time and which had now revealed itself in the
madness of the Golden Day.

"Stop screaming!" a voice commanded, and I felt myself pulled
away. It was the short fat man.

I clamped my mouth shut, aware for the first time that the shrill
sound was coming from my own throat. I saw the man's face
relax as he gave me a wry smile.

"That's better," he shouted into my ear. "He's only a man. Re-
member that. He's only a man!"

I wanted to tell him that Mr. Norton was much more than that,
that he was a rich white man and in my charge; but the very
idea that I was responsible for him was too much for me to
put into words.

"Let us take him to the balcony," the man said, pushing me
toward Mr. Norton's feet. I moved automatically, grasping
the thin ankles as he raised the white man by the armpits and
backed from beneath the stairs. Mr. Norton's head lolled upon
his chest as though he were drunk or dead.

The vet started up the steps still smiling, climbing
backwards a step at a time. I had begun to worry about him,
whether he was drunk like the rest, when I saw three of the
girls who had been leaning over the balustrade watching the
brawl come down to help us carry Mr. Norton up.

"Looks like pops couldn't take it," one of them shouted.
"He's high as a Georgia pine."

"Yeah, I tell you this stuff Halley got out here is too
strong for white folks to drink."

"Not drunk, ill!" the fat man said. "Go find a bed that's
not being used so he can stretch out awhile."

"Sho, daddy. Is there any other little favors I can do for
you?"

"That'll be enough," he said.

One of the girls ran up ahead. "Mine's just been changed.
Bring him down here," she said.

In a few minutes Mr. Norton was lying upon a three quarter
bed, faintly breathing. I watched the fat man bend over him
very professionally and feel for his pulse.

"You a doctor?" a girl asked.

"Not now, I'm a patient. But I have a certain knowledge."

Another one, I thought, pushing him quickly aside. "He'll
be all right. Let him come to so I can get him out of
here."

"You needn't worry, I'm not like those down there, young
fellow," he said. "I really was a doctor. I won't hurt him.
He's had a mild shock of some kind."

We watched him bend over Mr. Norton again, feeling his
pulse, pulling back his eyelid.

"It's a mild shock," he repeated.

"This here Golden Day is enough to shock anybody," a girl
said, smoothing her apron over the smooth sensuous roll of
her stomach.

Another brushed Mr. Norton's white hair away from his fore-
head and stroked it, smiling vacantly. "He's kinda cute," she
said. "Just like a little white baby."

"What kinda ole baby?" the small skinny girl asked.

"That's the kind, an ole baby."

"You just like white men, Edna. That's all," the skinny
one said.

Edna shook her head and smiled as though amused at her-
self. "I sho do. I just love 'em. Now this one, old as he is, he
could put his shoes under my bed any night."

"Shucks, me I'd kill an old man like that."

"Kill him nothing," Edna said. "Girl, don't you know that all
these rich ole white men got monkey glands and billy goat
balls? These ole bastards don't never git enough. They want to
have the whole world."

The doctor looked at me and smiled. "See, now you're learn-
ing all about endocrinology," he said. "I was wrong when I
told you that he was only a man; it seems now that he's either
part goat or part ape. Maybe he's both."

"It's the truth," Edna said. "I used to have me one in Chicago --"

"Now you ain't never been to no Chicago, gal," the other one
interrupted.

"How you know I ain't? Two years ago . . . Shucks, you don't
know nothing. That ole white man right there might have him
a coupla jackass balls!"

The fat man raised up with a quick grin. "As a scientist
and a physician I'm forced to discount that," he said. "That is
one operation that has yet to be performed." Then he managed
to get the girls out of the room.

"If he should come around and hear that conversation," the
vet said, "it would be enough to send him off again. Besides,
their scientific curiosity might lead them to investigate whe-
ther he really does have a monkey gland. And that, I'm afraid,
would be a bit obscene."

"I've got to get him back to the school," I said.

"All right," he said, "I'll do what I can to help you. Go see if
you can find some ice. And don't worry."

I went out on the balcony, seeing the tops of their heads.
They were still milling around, the juke box baying, the piano
thumping, and over at the end of the room, drenched with
beer, Supercargo lay like a spent horse upon the bar.

Starting down, I noticed a large piece of ice glinting in the
remains of an abandoned drink and seized its coldness in
my hot hand and hurried back to the room.

The vet sat staring at Mr. Norton, who now breathed with
a slightly irregular sound.

"You were quick," the man said, as he stood and reached
for the ice. "Swift with the speed of anxiety," he added, as if
to himself. "Hand me that clean towel -- there, from beside the
basin."

I handed him one, seeing him fold the ice inside it and apply
it to Mr. Norton's face.

"Is he all right?" I said.

"He will be in a few minutes. What happened to him?"

"I took him for a drive," I said.

"Did you have an accident or something?"

"No," I said. "He just talked to a farmer and the heat knocked
him out . . . Then we got caught in the mob downstairs."

"How old is he?"

"I don't know, but he's one of the trustees . . ."

"One of the very first, no doubt," he said, dabbing at the
blue-veined eyes. "A trustee of consciousness."

"What was that?" I asked.

"Nothing . . . There now, he's coming out of it."

I had an impulse to run out of the room. I feared what
Mr. Norton would say to me, the expression that might come
into his eyes. And yet, I was afraid to leave. My eyes could not
leave the face with its flickering lids. The head moved from side
to side in the pale glow of the light bulb, as though denying
some insistent voice which I could not hear. Then the lids
opened, revealing pale pools of blue vagueness that finally
solidified into points that froze upon the vet, who looked down
unsmilingly.

Men like us did not look at a man like Mr. Norton in that
manner, and I stepped hurriedly forward.

"He's a real doctor, sir," I said.

"I'll explain," the vet said. "Get a glass of water."

I hesitated. He looked at me firmly. "Get the water," he said,
turning to help Mr. Norton to sit up.

Outside I asked Edna for a glass of water and she led me down
the hall to a small kitchen, drawing it for me from a green old-
fashioned cooler.

"I got some good liquor, baby, if you want to give him a drink,"
she said.

"This will do," I said. My hands trembled so that the water spilled.
When I returned, Mr. Norton was sitting up unaided, carrying on
a conversation with the vet.

"Here's some water, sir," I said, extending the glass.

He took it. "Thank you," he said.

"Not too much," the vet cautioned.

"Your diagnosis is exactly that of my specialist," Mr. Norton said,
"and I went to several fine physicians before one could diagnose
it. How did you know?"

"I too was a specialist," the vet said.

"But how? Only a few men in the whole country possess the
knowledge --"

"Then one of them is an inmate of a semi-madhouse," the vet
said. "But there's nothing mysterious about it. I escaped for a
while -- I went to France with the Army Medical Corps and
remained there after the Armistice to study and practice."

"Oh yes, and how long were you in France?" Mr. Norton
asked.

"Long enough," he said. "Long enough to forget some
fundamentals which I should never have forgotten."

"What fundamentals?" Mr. Norton said. "What do you
mean?"

The vet smiled and cocked his head. "Things about life. Such
things as most peasants and folk peoples almost always know
through experience, though seldom through conscious thought . . ."

"Pardon me, sir," I said to Mr. Norton, "but now that you
feel better, shouldn't we go?"

"Not just yet," he said. Then to the doctor, "I'm very in-
terested. What happened to you?" A drop of water caught in
one of his eyebrows glittered like a chip of active diamond. I
went over and sat on a chair. Damn this vet to hell!

"Are you sure you would like to hear?" the vet asked.

"Why, of course."

"Then perhaps the young fellow should go downstairs
and wait . . ."

The sound of shouting and destruction welled up from
below as I opened the door.

"No, perhaps you should stay," the fat man said.

"Perhaps had I overheard some of what I'm about to tell you
when I was a student up there on the hill, I wouldn't be the
casualty that I am."

"Sit down, young man," Mr. Norton ordered. "So you were
a student at the college," he said to the vet.

I sat down again, worrying about Dr. Bledsoe as the fat man
told Mr. Norton of his attending college, then becoming a
physician and going to France during the World War.

"Were you a successful physician?" Mr. Norton said.

"Fairly so. I performed a few brain surgeries that won me
some small attention."

"Then why did you return?"

"Nostalgia," the vet said.

"Then what on earth are you doing here in this . . . ?" Mr.
Norton said, "With your ability . . ."

"Ulcers," the fat man said.

"That's terribly unfortunate, but why should ulcers stop
your career?"

"Not really, but I learned along with the ulcers that my
work could bring me no dignity," the vet said.

"Now you sound bitter," Mr. Norton said, just as the
door flew open.

A brown-skinned woman with red hair looked in. "How's
white-folks making out?" she said, staggering inside. "White
folks, baby, you done come to. You want a drink?"

"Not now, Hester," the vet said. "He's still a little weak."

"He sho looks it. That's how come he needs a drink. Put
some iron in his blood."

"Now, now, Hester."

"Okay, okay . . . But what y'all doing looking like you at a
funeral? Don't you know this is the Golden Day?" she stag-
gered toward me, belching elegantly and reeling. "Just look
at y'all. Here school-boy looks like he's scared to death. And
white-folks here is acting like y'all two strange poodles. Be
happy y'all! I'm going down and get Halley to send you up some
drinks." She patted Mr. Norton's cheek as she went past and I
saw him turn a glowing red. "Be happy, white-folks."

"Ah hah!" the vet laughed, "you're blushing, which
means that you're better. Don't be embarrassed. Hester is a
great humanitarian, a therapist of generous nature and great
skill, and the possessor of a healing touch. Her catharsis is
absolutely tremendous -- ha, ha!"

"You do look better, sir," I said, anxious to get out of the
place. I could understand the vet's words but not what they
conveyed, and Mr. Norton looked as uncomfortable as I felt.
The one thing which I did know was that the vet was acting
toward the white man with a freedom which could only bring
on trouble. I wanted to tell Mr. Norton that the man was crazy
and yet I received a fearful satisfaction from hearing him talk
as he had to a white man. With the girl it was different. A
woman usually got away with things a man never could.

I was wet with anxiety, but the vet talked on, ignoring the
interruption.

"Rest, rest," he said, fixing Mr. Norton with his eyes.
"The clocks are all set back and the forces of destruction are
rampant down below. They might suddenly realize that you are
what you are, and then your life wouldn't be worth a piece of
bankrupt stock. You would be canceled, perforated, voided,
become the recognized magnet attracting loose screws. Then
what would you do? Such men are beyond money, and with
Supercargo down, out like a felled ox, they know nothing of
value. To some, you are the great white father, to others the
lyncher of souls, but for all, you are confusion come even into
the Golden Day."

"What are you talking about?" I said, thinking: Lyncher?
He was getting wilder than the men downstairs. I didn't dare
look at Mr. Norton, who made a sound of protest.

The vet frowned. "It is an issue which I can confront
only by evading it. An utterly stupid proposition, and these
hands so lovingly trained to master a scalpel yearn to caress a
trigger. I returned to save life and I was refused," he said. "Ten
men in masks drove me out from the city at midnight and beat
me with whips for saving a human life. And I was forced to the
utmost degradation because I possessed skilled hands and the
belief that my knowledge could bring me dignity -- not wealth,
only dignity -- and other men health!"

Then suddenly he fixed me with his eyes. "And now, do
you understand?"

"What?" I said.

"What you've heard!"

"I don't know."

"Why?"

I said, "I really think it's time we left."

"You see," he said turning to Mr. Norton, "he has eyes
and ears and a good distended African nose, but he fails to
understand the simple facts of life. Understand. Understand?
It's worse than that. He registers with his senses but short
circuits his brain. Nothing has meaning. He takes it in but he
doesn't digest it. Already he is -- well, bless my soul! Behold!
a walking zombie! Already he's learned to repress not only his
emotions but his humanity. He's invisible, a walking personi-
fication of the Negative, the most perfect achievement of your
dreams, sir! The mechanical man!"

Mr. Norton looked amazed.

"Tell me," the vet said, suddenly calm. "Why have you been
interested in the school, Mr. Norton?"

"Out of a sense of my destined role," Mr. Norton said shakily.
"I felt, and I still feel, that your people are in some important
manner tied to my destiny."

"What do you mean, destiny?" the vet said.

"Why, the success of my work, of course."

"I see. And would you recognize it if you saw it?"

"Why, of course I would," Mr. Norton said indignantly. "I've
watched it grow each year I've returned to the campus."

"Campus? Why the campus?"

"It is there that my destiny is being made."

The vet exploded with laughter. "The campus, what a
destiny!" He stood and walked around the narrow room,
laughing. Then he stopped as suddenly as he had begun.

"You will hardly recognize it, but it is very fitting that
you came to the Golden Day with the young fellow," he said.

"I came out of illness -- or rather, he brought me," Mr.
Norton said.

"Of course, but you came, and it was fitting."

"What do you mean?" Mr. Norton said with irritation.

"A little child shall lead them," the vet said with a smile.
"But seriously, because you both fail to understand what is
happening to you. You cannot see or hear or smell the truth of
what you see -- and you, looking for destiny! It's classic! And
the boy, this automaton, he was made of the very mud of the
region and he sees far less than you. Poor stumblers, neither of
you can see the other. To you he is a mark on the score-card of
your achievement, a thing and not a man; a child, or even less --
a black amorphous thing. And you, for all your power, are not
a man to him, but a God, a force --"

Mr. Norton stood abruptly. "Let us go, young man," he said
angrily.

"No, listen. He believes in you as he believes in the beat
of his heart. He believes in that great false wisdom taught
slaves and pragmatists alike, that white is right. I can tell you
his destiny. He'll do your bidding, and for that his blindness
is his chief asset. He's your man, friend. Your man and your
destiny. Now the two of you descend the stairs into chaos and
get the hell out of here. I'm sick of both of you pitiful ob-
scenities! Get out before I do you both the favor of bashing
in your heads!"

I saw his motion toward the big white pitcher on the wash-
stand and stepped between him and Mr. Norton, guiding
Mr. Norton swiftly through the doorway. Looking back, I saw
him leaning against the wall making a sound that was a
blending of laughter and tears.

"Hurry, the man is as insane as the rest," Mr. Norton
said.

"Yes, sir," I said, noticing a new note in his voice.
The balcony was now as noisy as the floor below. The
girls and drunken vets were stumbling about with drinks in
their hands. Just as we went past an open door Edna saw us
and grabbed my arm.

"Where you taking white-folks?" she demanded.

"Back to school," I said, shaking her off.

"You don't want to go up there, white-folks, baby," she
said. I tried to push past her. "I ain't lying," she said. "I'm the
best little home-maker in the business."

"Okay, but please let us alone," I pleaded. "You'll get me
into trouble."

We were going down the stairs into the milling men now
and she started to scream, "Pay me then! If he's too good for
me, let him pay!"

And before I could stop her she had pushed Mr. Norton,
and both of us were stumbling swiftly down the stairs. I landed
against a man who looked up with the anonymous familiarity of
a drunk and shoved me hard away. I saw Mr. Norton spin past
as I sank farther into the crowd. Somewhere I could hear the
girl screaming and Halley's voice yelling, "Hey! Hey! Hey,
now!" Then I was aware of fresh air and saw that I was near
the door and pushed my way free and stood panting and prepar-
ing to plunge back for Mr. Norton -- when I heard Halley call-
ing, "Make way y'all!" and saw him piloting Mr. Norton to the
door.

"Whew!" he said, releasing the white man and shaking his
huge head.

"Thanks, Halley --" I said and got no further.

I saw Mr. Norton, his face pale again, his white suit rumpled,
topple and fall, his head scraping against the screen of the
door.

"Hey!"

I opened the door and raised him up.

"Goddamit, out agin," Halley said. "How come you bring
this white man here, school-boy?"

"Is he dead?"

"DEAD!" he said, stepping back indignantly. "He caint
die!"

"What'll I do, Halley?"

"Not in my place, he caint die," he said, kneeling.

Mr. Norton looked up. "No one is dead or dying," he
said acidly. "Remove your hands!"

Halley fell away, surprised. "I sho am glad. You sho you
all right? I thought sho you was dead this time."

"For God's sake, be quiet!" I exploded nervously. "You
should be glad that he's all right."

Mr. Norton was visibly angry now, a raw place showing
on his forehead, and I hurried ahead of him to the car. He
climbed in unaided, and I got under the wheel, smelling the
heated odor of mints and cigar smoke. He was silent as I drove
away.



Chapter 4



The wheel felt like an alien thing in my hands as I followed
the white line of the highway. Heat rays from the late af-
ternoon sun arose from the gray concrete, shimmering like
the weary tones of a distant bugle blown upon still midnight air.
In the mirror I could see Mr. Norton staring out vacantly upon
the empty fields, his mouth stern, his white forehead livid
where it had scraped the screen. And seeing him I felt the fear
balled coldly within me unfold. What would happen now? What
would the school officials say? In my mind I visualized Dr.
Bledsoe's face when he saw Mr. Norton. I thought of the glee
certain folks at home would feel if I were expelled. Tatlock's
grinning face danced through my mind. What would the white
folks think who'd sent me to college? Was Mr. Norton angry at
me? In the Golden Day he had seemed more curious than
anything else -- until the vet had started talking wild. Damn
Trueblood. It was his fault. If we hadn't sat in the sun so long
Mr. Norton would not have needed whiskey and I wouldn't have
gone to the Golden Day. And why would the vets act that way
with a white man in the house?

I headed the car through the red-brick campus gateposts
with a sense of cold apprehension. Now even the rows of
neat dormitories seemed to threaten me, the rolling lawns
appearing as hostile as the gray highway with its white
dividing line. As of its own compulsion, the car slowed as we
passed the chapel with its low, sweeping eaves. The sun shone
coolly through the avenue of trees, dappling the curving drive.
Students strolled through the shade, down a hill of tender
grass toward the brick-red stretch of tennis courts. Far beyond,
players in whites showed sharp against the red of the courts
surrounded by grass, a gay vista washed by the sun. In the
brief interval I heard a cheer arise. My predicament struck me
like a stab. I had a sense of losing control of the car and
slammed on the brakes in the middle of the road, then
apologized and drove on. Here within this quiet greenness I
possessed the only identity I had ever known, and I was losing
it. In this brief moment of passage I became aware of the
connection between these lawns and buildings and my hopes
and dreams. I wanted to stop the car and talk with Mr. Norton,
to beg his pardon for what he had seen; to plead and show him
tears, unashamed tears like those of a child before his parent;
to denounce all we'd seen and heard; to assure him that far
from being like any of the people we had seen, I hated them,
that I believed in the principles of the Founder with all my
heart and soul, and that I believed in his own goodness and
kindness in extending the hand of his benevolence to helping
us poor, ignorant people out of the mire and darkness. I would
do his bidding and teach others to rise up as he wished them
to, teach them to be thrifty, decent, upright citizens, contri--
buting to the welfare of all, shunning all but the straight
and narrow path that he and the Founder had stretched before
us. If only he were not angry with me! If only he would give me
another chance!

Tears filled my eyes, and the walks and buildings flowed and
froze for a moment in mist, glittering as in winter when rain
froze on the grass and foliage and turned the campus into
a world of whiteness, weighting and bending both trees and
bushes with fruit of crystal. Then in the twinkling of my eyes,
it was gone, and the here and now of heat and greenness return-
ed. If only I could make Mr. Norton understand what the school
meant to me.

"Shall I stop at your rooms, sir?" I said. "Or shall I take you
to the administration building? Dr. Bledsoe might be worried."

"To my rooms, then bring Dr. Bledsoe to me," he answered
tersely.

"Yes, sir."

In the mirror I saw him dabbing gingerly at his forehead with
a crinkled handkerchief. "You'd better send the school phy-
sician to me also," he said.

I stopped the car in front of a small building with white pillars
like those of an old plantation manor house, got out and open-
ed the door.

"Mr. Norton, please, sir . . . I'm sorry . . . I --"

He looked at me sternly, his eyes narrowed, saying nothing.

"I didn't know . . . please . . ."

"Send Dr. Bledsoe to me," he said, turning away and swing-
ing up the graveled path to the building.

I got back into the car and drove slowly to the admini-
stration building. A girl waved gaily as I passed, a bunch
of violets in her hand. Two teachers in dark suits talked
decorously beside a broken fountain.

The building was quiet. Going upstairs I visualized Dr. Bled-
soe, with his broad globular face that seemed to take its
form from the fat pressing from the inside, which, as air
pressing against the membrane of a balloon, gave it shape and
buoyancy. "Old Bucket-head," some of the fellows called him.
I never had. He had been kind to me from the first, perhaps
because of the letters which the school superintendent had
sent to him when I arrived. But more than that, he was the
example of everything I hoped to be: Influential with wealthy
men all over the country; consulted in matters concerning the
race; a leader of his people; the possessor of not one, but two
Cadillacs, a good salary and a soft, good-looking and creamy
complexioned wife. What was more, while black and bald and
everything white folks poked fun at, he had achieved power
and authority; had, while black and wrinkle-headed, made
himself of more importance in the world than most Southern
white men. They could laugh at him but they couldn't ignore
him.

"He's been looking all over for you," the girl at the desk
said.

When I walked in he looked up from the telephone and
said, "Never mind, he's here now," and hung up. "Where's Mr.
Norton?" he demanded excitedly. "Is he all right?"

"Yes, sir. I left him at his rooms and came to drive you
down. He wishes to see you."

"Is anything wrong?" he said, getting up hurriedly and
coming around the desk. I hesitated.

"Well, is there!"

The panicky beating of my heart seemed to blur my
vision.

"Not now, sir."

"Now? What do you mean?"

"Well, sir, he had some kind of fainting spell."

"Aw, my God! I knew something was wrong. Why didn't
you get in touch with me?" He grabbed his black homburg,
starting for the door. "Come on!"

I followed him, trying to explain. "He's all over it now,
sir, and we were too far away for me to phone . . ."

"Why did you take him so far?" he said, moving with
great bustling energy.

"But I drove him where he wanted to go, sir."

"Where was that?"

"Back of the slave-quarter section," I said with dread.

"The quarters! Boy, are you a fool? Didn't you know
better than to take a trustee out there?"

"He asked me to, sir."

We were going down the walk now, through the spring
air, and he stopped to look at me with exasperation, as though
I'd suddenly told him black was white.

"Damn what he wants," he said, climbing in the front
seat beside me. "Haven't you the sense God gave a dog? We
take these white folks where we want them to go, we show
them what we want them to see. Don't you know that? I
thought you had some sense."

Reaching Rabb Hall, I stopped the car, weak with bewilder-
ment.

"Don't sit there," he said. "Come with me!"

Just inside the building I got another shock. As we approach-
ed a mirror Dr. Bledsoe stopped and composed his angry
face like a sculptor, making it a bland mask, leaving only
the sparkle of his eyes to betray the emotion that I had seen
only a moment before. He looked steadily at himself for a mo-
ment; then we moved quietly down the silent hall and up the
stairs.

A co-ed sat at a graceful table stacked with magazines. Be-
fore a great window stood a large aquarium containing col-
ored stones and a small replica of a feudal castle surround-
ed by goldfish that seemed to remain motionless despite the
fluttering of their lacy fins, a momentary motionful suspension
of time.

"Is Mr. Norton in his room?" he said to the girl.

"Yessir, Dr. Bledsoe, sir," she said. "He said to tell you to
come in when you got here."

Pausing at the door I heard him clear his throat, then rap
softly upon the panel with his fist.

"Mr. Norton?" he said, his lips already a smile. And at the
answer I followed him inside.

It was a large light room. Mr. Norton sat in a huge wing
chair with his jacket off. A change of clothing lay on the cool
bedspread. Above a spacious fireplace an oil portrait of the
Founder looked down at me remotely, benign, sad, and in that
hot instant, profoundly disillusioned. Then a veil seemed to fall.

"I've been worried about you, sir," Dr. Bledsoe said. "We
expected you at the afternoon session . . ."

Now it's beginning, I thought. Now --

And suddenly he rushed forward. "Mr. Norton, your head!"
he cried, a strange grandmotherly concern in his voice.
"What happened, sir?"

"It's nothing." Mr. Norton's face was immobile. "A mere
scratch."

Dr. Bledsoe whirled around, his face outraged. "Get the doc-
tor over here," he said. "Why didn't you tell me that Mr. Norton
had been injured?"

"I've already taken care of that, sir," I said softly, seeing
him whirl back.

"Mr. Norton, Mister Norton! I'm so sorry," he crooned.
"I thought I had sent you a boy who was careful, a sensible
young man! Why we've never had an accident before. Never,
not in seventy-five years. I assure you, sir, that he shall be
disciplined, severely disciplined!"

"But there was no automobile accident," Mr. Norton said
kindly, "nor was the boy responsible. You may send him
away, we won't need him now."

My eyes suddenly filled. I felt a wave of gratitude at his words.

"Don't be kind, sir," Dr. Bledsoe said. "You can't be soft
with these people. We mustn't pamper them. An accident to a
guest of this college while he is in the charge of a student is
without question the student's fault. That's one of our strictest
rules!" Then to me: "Return to your dormitory and remain there
until further notice!"

"But it was out of my control, sir," I said, "just as Mr.
Norton said . . ."

"I'll explain, young man," Mr. Norton said with a half
smile. "Everything will be explained."

"Thank you, sir," I said, seeing Dr. Bledsoe looking at
me with no change of expression.

"On second thought," he said, "I want you to be in chapel
this evening, understand me, sir?"

"Yes, sir."

I opened the door with a cold hand, bumping into the girl
who had been at the table when we went inside.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Looks like you have old Bucket head
kind of mad."

I said nothing as she walked beside me expectantly. A red
sun cast its light upon the campus as I started for my dorm-
itory.

"Will you take a message to my boy friend for me?" she
said.

"Who is he?" I said, trying hard to conceal my tension
and fear.

"Jack Maston," she said.

"Okay, he's in the room next to mine."

"That's swell," she said with a big smile. "The dean put me
on duty so I missed him this afternoon. Just tell him that I
said the grass is green . . ."

"What?"

"The grass is green. It's our secret code, he'll
understand."

"The grass is green," I said.

"That's it. Thank you, lover," she said.

I felt like cursing as I watched her hurrying back into
the building, hearing her flat-heeled shoes crunching the
graveled walk. Here she was playing with some silly secret
code at the very minute my fate for the resf of my life was
being decided. The grass was green and they'd meet and she'd
be sent home pregnant, but even so, in less disgrace than I . . .
If only I knew what they were saying about me . . . Suddenly I
had an idea and ran after her, into the building and up the
stairs.

In the hall, fine dust played in a shaft of sunlight, stirred
by her hurried passing. But she had disappeared. I had
thought to ask her to listen at the door and tell me what was
said. I gave it up; if she were discovered, I'd have that on my
conscience too. Besides, I was ashamed for anyone to know of
my predicament, it was too stupid to be believed. Down the
long length of the wide hall I heard someone unseen skipping
down the stairs singing. A girl's sweet, hopeful voice. I left
quietly and hurried to my dorm.

I lay in my room with my eyes closed, trying to think.
The tension gripped my insides. Then I heard someone coming
up the hall and stiffened. Had they sent for me already? Nearby
a door opened and closed, leaving me as tense as ever. To
whom could I turn for help? I could think of no one. No one to
whom I could even explain what had happened at the Golden
Day. Everything was upset inside me. And Dr. Bledsoe's attitude
toward Mr. Norton was the most confusing of all. I dared not
repeat what he'd said, for fear that it would lessen my chances
of remaining in school. It just wasn't true, I had misunderstood.
He couldn't have said what I thought he had said. Hadn't I seen
him approach white visitors too often with his hat in hand,
bowing humbly and respectfully? Hadn't he refused to eat in
the dining hall with white guests of the school, entering only
after they had finished and then refusing to sit down, but
remaining standing, his hat in his hand, while he addressed
them eloquently, then leaving with a humble bow? Hadn't he,
hadn't he? I had seen him too often as I peeped through the
door between the dining room and the kitchen, I myself. And
wasn't his favorite spiritual "Live-a-Humble"? And in the chapel
on Sunday evenings upon the platform, hadn't he always taught
us to live content in our place in a thousand unambiguous
words? He had and I had believed him. I had believed without
question his illustrations of the good which came of following
the Founder's path. It was my affirmation of life and they
couldn't send me away for something I didn't do. They simply
couldn't. But that vet! He was so crazy that he corrupted sane
men. He had tried to turn the world inside out, goddamn him!
He had made Mr. Norton angry. He had no right to talk to a
white man as he had, not with me to take the punishment . . .

Someone shook me and I recoiled, my legs moist and
trembling. It was my roommate.

"What the hell, roomy," he said. "Let's go to chow."

I looked at his confident mug; he was going to be a
farmer.

"I don't have an appetite," I said with a sigh.

"Okay now," he said, "you can try to kid me but don't
say I didn't wake you."

"No," I said.

"Who're you expecting, a broad-butt gal with ballbearing
hips?"

"No," I said.

"You'd better stop that, roomy," he grinned. "It'll ruin your
health, make you a moron. You ought to take you a gal and
show her how the moon rises over all that green grass on the
Founder's grave, man . . ."

"Go to hell," I said.

He left laughing, opening the door to the sound of many
footsteps from the hall: supper time. The sound of departing
voices. Something of my life seemed to retreat with them into a
gray distance, moiling. Then a knock sounded at the door and I
sprang up, my heart tense.

A small student wearing a freshman's cap stuck his head in
the door, shouting, "Dr. Bledsoe said he wants to see you
down at Rabb Hall." And then he was gone before I could
question him, his footsteps thundering down the hall as he
raced to dinner before the last bell sounded.


AT MR. NORTON'S door I stopped with my hand on the
knob, mumbling a prayer.

"Come in, young man," he said to my knock. He was
dressed in fresh linen, the light falling upon his white hair as
upon silk floss. A small piece of gauze was plastered to his
forehead. He was alone.

"I'm sorry, sir," I apologized, "but I was told that Dr.
Bledsoe wanted to see me here . . ."

"That's correct," he said, "but Dr. Bledsoe had to leave.
You'll find him in his office after chapel."

"Thank you, sir," I said and turned to go. He cleared his
throat behind me. "Young man . . ."

I turned hopefully.

"Young man, I have explained to Dr. Bledsoe that you
were not at fault. I believe he understands."

I was so relieved that at first I could only look at him,
a small silken-haired, white-suited St. Nicholas, seen through
misty eyes.

"I certainly do thank you, sir," I managed finally.
He studied me silently, his eyes slightly narrowed.
"Will you need me this evening, sir?" I asked.

"No, I won't be needing the machine. Business is taking
me away sooner than I expected. I leave late tonight."

"I could drive you to the station, sir," I said hopefully.

"Thank you, but Dr. Bledsoe has already arranged it."

"Oh," I said with disappointment. I had hoped that by serv-
ing him the rest of the week I could win back his esteem.
Now I would not have the opportunity.

"Well, I hope you have a pleasant trip, sir," I said.

"Thank you," he said, suddenly smiling.

"And maybe next time you come I'll be able to answer
some of the questions you asked me this afternoon."

"Questions?" His eyes narrowed.

"Yes, sir, about . . . about your fate," I said.

"Ah, yes, yes," he said.

"And I intend to read Emerson, too . . ."

"Very good. Self-reliance is a most worthy virtue. I shall
look forward with the greatest of interest to learning your
contribution to my fate." He motioned me toward the door.
"And don't forget to see Dr. Bledsoe."

I left somewhat reassured, but not completely. I still had
to face Dr. Bledsoe. And I had to attend chapel.



Chapter 5



At the sound of vespers I moved across the campus with
groups of students, walking slowly, their voices soft in the
mellow dusk. I remember the yellowed globes of frosted glass
making lacy silhouettes on the gravel and the walk of the
leaves and branches above us as we moved slow through the
dusk so restless with scents of lilac, honeysuckle and verbena,
and the feel of spring greenness; and I recall the sudden
arpeggios of laughter lilting across the tender, springtime grass
-- gay-welling, far-floating, fluent, spontaneous, a bell-like
feminine fluting, then suppressed; as though snuffed swiftly
and irrevocably beneath the quiet solemnity of the vespered air
now vibrant with somber chapel bells. Dong! Dong! Dong!
Above the decorous walking around me, sounds of footsteps
leaving the verandas of far-flung buildings and moving toward
the walks and over the walks to the asphalt drives lined with
whitewashed stones, those cryptic messages for men and
women, boys and girls heading quietly toward where the
visitors waited, and we moving not in the mood of worship but
of judgment; as though even here in the filtering dusk, here
beneath the deep indigo sky, here, alive with looping swifts and
darting moths, here in the hereness of the night not yet lighted
by the moon that looms blood-red behind the chapel like a
fallen sun, its radiance shedding not upon the here-dusk of
twittering bats, nor on the there-night of cricket and
whippoorwill, but focused short-rayed upon our place of
convergence; and we drifting forward with rigid motions, limbs
stiff and voices now silent, as though on exhibit even in the
dark, and the moon a white man's bloodshot eye.

And I move more rigid than all the others with a sense
of judgment; the vibrations of the chapel bells stirring the
depths of my turmoil, moving toward its nexus with a sense of
doom. And I remember the chapel with its sweeping eaves,
long and low as though risen bloody from the earth like the
rising moon; vine-covered and earth-colored as though more
earth-sprung than man-sprung. And my mind rushing for relief
away from the spring dusk and flower scents, away from the
time-scene of the crucifixion to the time-mood of the birth;
from spring-dusk and vespers to the high, clear, lucid moon of
winter and snow glinting upon the dwarfed pines where instead
of the bells, the organ and the trombone choir speak carols to
the distances drifted with snow, making of the night air a sea
of crystal water lapping the slumbering land to the farthest
reaches of sound, for endless miles, bringing the new
dispensation even to the Golden Day, even unto the house of
madness. But in the hereness of dusk I am moving toward the
doomlike bells through the flowered air, beneath the rising
moon.

Into the doors and into the soft lights I go, silently, past
the rows of puritanical benches straight and torturous, find-
ing that to which I am assigned and bending my body to its
agony. There at the head of the platform with its pulpit and
rail of polished brass are the banked and pyramided heads of
the student choir, faces composed and stolid above uniforms
of black and white; and above them, stretching to the ceiling,
the organ pipes looming, a gothic hierarchy of dull gilded
gold. Around me the students move with faces frozen in
solemn masks, and I seem to hear already the voices
mechanically raised in the songs the visitors loved. (Loved?
Demanded. Sung? An ultimatum accepted and ritualized, an
allegiance recited for the peace it imparted, and for that
perhaps loved. Loved as the defeated come to love the symbols
of their conquerors. A gesture of acceptance, of terms laid
down and reluctantly approved.) And here, sitting rigid, I
remember the evenings spent before the sweeping platform in
awe and in pleasure, and in the pleasure of awe; remember the
short formal sermons intoned from the pulpit there, rendered
in smooth articulate tones, with calm assurance purged of that
wild emotion of the crude preachers most of us knew in our
home towns and of whom we were deeply ashamed, these log-
ical appeals which reached us more like the thrust of a firm
and formal design requiring nothing more than the lucidity
of uncluttered periods, the lulling movement of multisyllabic
words to thrill and console us. And I remember, too, the talks
of visiting speakers, all eager to inform us of how fortunate we
were to be a part of the "vast" and formal ritual. How fortunate
to belong to this family sheltered from those lost in ignorance
and darkness.

Here upon this stage the black rite of Horatio Alger was
performed to God's own acting script, with millionaires come
down to portray themselves; not merely acting out the myth of
their goodness, and wealth and success and power and benevo-
lence and authority in cardboard masks, but themselves, these
virtues concretely! Not the wafer and the wine, but the flesh
and the blood, vibrant and alive, and vibrant even when stoop-
ed, ancient and withered. (And who, in face of this, would
not believe? Could even doubt?)

And I remember too, how we confronted those others, those
who had set me here in this Eden, whom we knew though we
didn't know, who were unfamiliar in their familiarity, who
trailed their words to us through blood and violence and
ridicule and condescension with drawling smiles, and who
exhorted and threatened, intimidated with innocent words as
they described to us the limitations of our lives and the
vast boldness of our aspirations, the staggering folly of our
impatience to rise even higher; who, as they talked, aroused
furtive visions within me of blood-froth sparkling their chins
like their familiar tobacco juice, and upon their lips the
curdled milk of a million black slave mammies' withered dugs,
a treacherous and fluid knowledge of our being, imbibed at our
source and now regurgitated foul upon us. This was our world,
they said as they described it to us, this our horizon and its
earth, its seasons and its climate, its spring and its summer,
and its fall and harvest some unknown millennium ahead; and
these its floods and cyclones and they themselves our thunder
and lightning; and this we must accept and love and accept
even if we did not love. We must accept -- even when those
were absent, and the men who made the railroads and ships
and towers of stone, were before our eyes, in the flesh, their
voices different, unweighted with recognizable danger and
their delight in our songs more sincere seeming, their regard
for our welfare marked by an almost benign and impersonal
indifference. But the words of the others were stronger than
the strength of philanthropic dollars, deeper than shafts sunk
in the earth for oil and gold, more awe-inspiring than the
miracles fabricated in scientific laboratories. For their
most innocent words were acts of violence to which we of
the campus were hypersensitive though we endured them not.

And there on the platform I too had stridden and debated,
a student leader directing my voice at the highest beams
and farthest rafters, ringing them, the accents staccato
upon the ridgepole and echoing back with a tinkling, like
words hurled to the trees of a wilderness, or into a well
of slate-gray water; more sound than sense, a play upon
the resonances of buildings, an assault upon the temples
of the ear:

Ha! to the gray-haired matron in the final row. Ha! Miss
Susie, Miss Susie Gresham, back there looking at that co-ed
smiling at that he-ed -- listen to me, the bungling bugler of
words, imitating the trumpet and the trombone's timbre,
playing thematic variations like a baritone horn. Hey! old
connoisseur of voice sounds, of voices without messages, of
newsless winds, listen to the vowel sounds and the crackling
dentals, to the low harsh gutturals of empty anguish, now
riding the curve of a preacher's rhythm I heard long ago in a
Baptist church, stripped now of its imagery: No suns having
hemorrhages, no moons weeping tears, no earthworms refusing
the sacred flesh and dancing in the earth on Easter morn.
Ha! singing achievement, Ha! booming success, intoning,
Ha! acceptance, Ha! a river of word-sounds filled with
drowned passions, floating, Ha! with wrecks of unachievable
ambitions and stillborn revolts, sweeping their ears, Ha!
ranged stiff before me, necks stretched forward with listening
ears, Ha! a-spraying the ceiling and a-drumming the dark
stained after rafter, that seasoned crossarm of torturous
timber mellowed in the kiln of a thousand voices; playing
Ha! as upon a xylophone; words marching like the student
band, up the campus and down again, blaring triumphant sounds
empty of triumphs. Hey, Miss Susie! the sound of words that
were no words, counterfeit notes singing achievements yet un-
achieved, riding upon the wings of my voice out to you, old
matron, who knew the voice sounds of the Founder and knew the
accents and echo of his promise; your gray old head cocked with
the young around you, your eyes closed, face ecstatic, as I toss
the word sounds in my breath, my bellows, my fountain, like
brightcolored balls in a water spout -- hear me, old matron,
justify now this sound with your dear old nod of affirmation,
your closed-eye smile and bow of recognition, who'll never be
fooled with the mere content of words, not my words, not these
pinfeathered flighters that stroke your lids till they flutter
with ecstasy with but the mere echoed noise of the promise. And
after the singing and outward marching, you seize my hand and
sing out quavering, "Boy, some day you'll make the Founder
proud." Ha! Susie Gresham, Mother Gresham, guardian of the
hot young women on the puritan benches who couldn't see your
Jordan's water for their private steam; you, relic of slavery
whom the campus loved but did not understand, aged, of slavery,
yet bearer of something warm and vital and all-enduring, of
which in that island of shame we were not ashamed -- it was
to you on the final row I directed my rush of sound, and it
was you of whom I thought with shame and regret as I waited
for the ceremony to begin.


The honored guests moved silently upon the platform, herd-
ed toward their high, carved chairs by Dr. Bledsoe with the
decorum of a portly head waiter. Like some of the guests, he
wore striped trousers and a swallow-tail coat with black-braid-
ed lapels topped by a rich ascot tie. It was his regular dress
for such occasions, yet for all its elegance, he managed to
make himself look humble. Somehow, his trousers inevitably
bagged at the knees and the coat slouched in the shoulders.
I watched him smiling at first one and then another of the
guests, of whom all but one were white; and as I saw him
placing his hand upon their arms, touching their backs,
whispering to a tall angular-faced trustee who in turn touched
his arm familiarly, I felt a shudder. I too had touched a white
man today and I felt that it had been disastrous, and I realized
then that he was the only one of us whom I knew -- except
perhaps a barber or a nursemaid -- who could touch a white
man with impunity. And I remembered too that whenever white
guests came upon the platform he placed his hand upon them
as though exercising a powerful magic. I watched his teeth
flash as he took a white hand; then, with all seated, he went
to his place at the end of the row of chairs.

Several terraces of students' faces above them, the organ-
ist, his eyes glinting at the console, was waiting with his
head turned over his shoulder, and I saw Dr. Bledsoe, his eyes
roaming over the audience, suddenly nod without turning his
head. It was as though he had given a downbeat with an
invisible baton. The organist turned and hunched his shoulders.
A high cascade of sound bubbled from the organ, spreading,
thick and clinging, over the chapel, slowly surging. The
organist twisted and turned on his bench, with his feet flying
beneath him as though dancing to rhythms totally unrelated to
the decorous thunder of his organ.

And Dr. Bledsoe sat with a benign smile of inward concen-
tration. Yet his eyes were darting swiftly, first over the
rows of students, then over the section reserved for teachers,
his swift glance carrying a threat for all. For he demanded
that everyone attend these sessions. It was here that policy
was announced in broadest rhetoric. I seemed to feel his eyes
resting upon my face as he swept the section in which I sat. I
looked at the guests on the platform; they sat with that alert
relaxation with which they always met our upturned eyes. I
wondered to which of them I might go to intercede for me with
Dr. Bledsoe, but within myself I knew that there was no one.
In spite of the array of important men beside him, and
despite the posture of humility and meekness which made him
seem smaller than the others (although he was physically
larger), Dr. Bledsoe made his presence felt by us with a far
greater impact. I remembered the legend of how he had come
to the college, a barefoot boy who in his fervor for education
had trudged with his bundle of ragged clothing across two
states. And how he was given a job feeding slop to the hogs
but had made himself the best slop dispenser in the history
of the school; and how the Founder had been impressed and
made him his office boy. Each of us knew of his rise over
years of hard work to the presidency, and each of us at
some time wished that he had walked to the school or pushed
a wheelbarrow or performed some other act of determination
and sacrifice to attest his eagerness for knowledge. I
remembered the admiration and fear he inspired in everyone
on the campus; the pictures in the Negro press captioned
"EDUCATOR," in type that exploded like a rifle shot, his face
looking out at you with utmost confidence. To us he was more
than just a president of a college. He was a leader, a
"statesman" who carried our problems to those above us, even
unto the White House; and in days past he had conducted the
President himself about the campus. He was our leader and
our magic, who kept the endowment high, the funds for scho-
larships plentiful and publicity moving through the chan-
nels of the press. He was our coal-black daddy of whom we
were afraid.

As the organ voices died, I saw a thin brown girl arise
noiselessly with the rigid control of a modern dancer, high in
the upper rows of the choir, and begin to sing a cappella. She
began softly, as though singing to herself of emotions of utmost
privacy, a sound not addressed to the gathering, but which they
overheard almost against her will. Gradually she increased its
volume, until at times the voice seemed to become a disem-
bodied force that sought to enter her, to violate her, shak-
ing her, rocking her rhythmically, as though it had become
the source of her being, rather than the fluid web of her own
creation.

I saw the guests on the platform turn to look behind them,
to see the thin brown girl in white choir robe standing
high against the organ pipes, herself become before our eyes a
pipe of contained, controlled and sublimated anguish, a thin
plain face transformed by music. I could not understand the
words, but only the mood, sorrowful, vague and ethereal, of the
singing. It throbbed with nostalgia, regret and repentance, and
I sat with a lump in my throat as she sank slowly down; not a
sitting but a controlled collapsing, as though she were
balancing, sustaining the simmering bubble of her final tone by
some delicate rhythm of her heart's blood, or by some mystic
concentration of her being, focused upon the sound through
the contained liquid of her large uplifted eyes.

There was no applause, only the appreciation of a profound
silence. The white guests exchanged smiles of approval. I
sat thinking of the dread possibility of having to leave
all this, of being expelled; imagining the return home and
the rebukes of my parents. I looked out at the scene now from
far back in my despair, seeing the platform and its actors as
through a reversed telescope; small doll-like figures moving
through some meaningless ritual. Someone up there, above the
alternating moss-dry and grease-slick heads of the students
rowed before me, was making announcements from a lectern
on which a dim light shone. Another figure rose and led a
prayer. Someone spoke. Then around me everyone was singing
Lead me, lead me to a rock that is higher than I. And as though
the sound contained some force more imperious than the image
of the scene of which it was the living connective tissue, I
was pulled back to its immediacy.

One of the guests had risen to speak. A man of striking ug-
liness; fat, with a bullet-head set on a short neck, with a
nose much too wide for its face, upon which he wore black-
lensed glasses. He had been seated next to Dr. Bledsoe, but so
concerned had I been with the president that I hadn't really
seen him. My eyes had focused only upon the white men and
Dr. Bledsoe. So that now as he arose and crossed slowly to the
center of the platform, I had the notion that part of Dr. Bledsoe
had arisen and moved forward, leaving his other part smiling in
the chair.

He stood before us relaxed, his white collar gleaming
like a band between his black face and his dark garments,
dividing his head from his body; his short arms crossed before
his barrel, like a black little Buddha's. For a moment he stood
with his large head lifted, as though thinking; then he began
speaking, his voice round and vibrant as he told of his pleasure
in being allowed to visit the school once more after many years.
Having been preaching in a northern city, he had seen it last in
the final days of the Founder, when Dr. Bledsoe was the
"second in command." "Those were wonderful days," he
droned. "Significant days. Days filled with great portent."
As he talked he made a cage of his hands by touching
his fingertips, then with his small feet pressing together, he
began a slow, rhythmic rocking; tilting forward on his toes until
it seemed he would fall, then back on his heels, the lights
catching his black-lensed glasses until it seemed that his head
floated free of his body and was held close to it only by the
white band of his collar. And as he tilted he talked until a
rhythm was established.

Then he was renewing the dream in our hearts:

". . . this barren land after Emancipation," he intoned, "this
land of darkness and sorrow, of ignorance and degradation,
where the hand of brother had been turned against bro-
ther, father against son, and son against father; where
master had turned against slave and slave against master;
where all was strife and darkness, an aching land. And
into this land came a humble prophet, lowly like the humble
carpenter of Nazareth, a slave and a son of slaves, knowing
only his mother. A slave born, but marked from the beginning
by a high intelligence and princely personality; born in the
lowest part of this barren, war-scarred land, yet somehow
shedding light upon it where'er he passed through. I'm sure
you have heard of his precarious infancy, his precious life
almost destroyed by an insane cousin who splashed the babe
with lye and shriveled his seed and how, a mere babe, he lay
nine days in a deathlike coma and then suddenly and mirac-
ulously recovered. You might say that it was as though he
had risen from the dead or been reborn.

"Oh, my young friends," he cried, beaming, "my young
friends, it is indeed a beautiful story. I'm sure you've heard
it many times: Recall how he came upon his initial learning
through shrewd questioning of his little masters, the elder
masters never suspecting; and how he learned his alphabet and
taught himself to read and solve the secret of words, going
instinctively to the Holy Bible with its great wisdom for his
first knowledge. And you know how he escaped and made his way
across mountain and valley to that place of learning and how
he persisted and worked noontimes, nights and mornings for
the privilege of studying, or, as the old folk would say, of
'rubbing his head against the college wall.' You know of his
brilliant career, how already he was a moving orator; then his
penniless graduation and his return after years to this count-
ry."And then his great struggle beginning. Picture it, my
young friends: The clouds of darkness all over the land, black
folk and white folk full of fear and hate, wanting to go forward,
but each fearful of the other. A whole region is caught in a
terrible tension. Everyone is perplexed with the question of
what must be done to dissolve this fear and hatred that
crouched over the land like a demon waiting to spring, and
you know how he came and showed them the way. Oh, yes,
my friends. I'm sure you've heard it time and time again; of
this godly man's labors, his great humility and his undimming
vision, the fruits of which you enjoy today; concrete, made
flesh; his dream, conceived in the starkness and darkness of
slavery, fulfilled now even in the air you breathe, in the sweet
harmonies of your blended voices, in the knowledge which each
of you -- daughters and granddaughters, sons and grandsons,
of slaves -- all of you partaking of it in bright and well-
equipped classrooms. You must see this slave, this black Aris-
totle, moving slowly, with sweet patience, with a patience not
of mere man, but of God-inspired faith -- see him moving slow-
ly as he surmounts each and every opposition. Rendering unto
Caesar that which was Caesar's, yes; but steadfastly seeking
for you that bright horizon which you now enjoy . . .

"All this," he said, spreading his fingers palm down
before him, "has been told and retold throughout the land,
inspiring a humble but fast-rising people. You have heard it,
and it -- this true story of rich implication, this living par-
able of proven glory and humble nobility -- and it, as I say,
has made you free. Even you who have come to this shrine only
this semester know it. You have heard his name from your parents,
for it was he who led them to the path, guiding them like a
great captain; like that great pilot of ancient times who led
his people safe and unharmed across the bottom of the blood-red
sea. And your parents followed this remarkable man across the
black sea of prejudice, safely out of the land of ignorance,
through the storms of fear and anger, shouting, LET MY PEOPLE
GO! when it was necessary, whispering it during those times
when whispering was wisest. And he was heard."

I listened, my back pressing against the hard bench, with a
numbness, my emotions woven into his words as upon a
loom.

"And remember how," he said, "when he entered a certain
state at cotton-picking time, his enemies had plotted to take
his life. And recall how during his journey he was stopped by
the strange figure of a man whose pitted features revealed
no inkling of whether he was black or white . . . Some say he
was a Greek. Some a Mongolian. Others a mulatto -- and others
still, a simple white man of God. Whoever, and whatsoever, and
we must not rule out the possibility of an emissary direct from
above -- oh, yes! -- and remember how he appeared suddenly,
startling both Founder and horse as he gave warning, telling
the Founder to leave the horse and buggy there in the road and
proceed immediately to a certain cabin, then slipped silently
away, so silently, my young friends, that the Founder doubted
his very existence. And you know how the great man continued
through the dusk, determined though puzzled as he approached
the town. He was lost, lost in reverie until the crack of
the first rifle sounded, then the almost fatal volley that
creased his skull -- oh my! -- and left him stunned and
apparently lifeless.

"I have heard him tell with his own lips how consciousness
returned while they were still upon him examining their
foul deed, and how he lay biting his heart lest they hear
it and wipe out their failure with a coup-de-grace, as
the French would say. Ha! And I'm sure you've each of you
lived with him through his escape," he said, seeming to
look directly into my watered eyes. "You awakened when he
awakened, rejoiced when he rejoiced at their leaving without
further harm; arising when he arose; seeing with his eyes the
prints of their milling footsteps and the cartridges dropped in
the dust about the imprint of his fallen body; yes, and the cold,
dust-encrusted, but not quite fatal blood. And you hurried with
him full of doubt to the cabin designated by the stranger, where
he met that seemingly demented black man . . . You remember
that old one, laughed at by the children in the town's square,
old, comic-faced, crafty, cotton-headed. And yet it was he who
bound up your wounds with the wounds of the Founder. He, the
old slave, showing a surprising knowledge of such matters --
germology and scabology -- ha! ha! -- he called it, and what a
youthful skill of the hands! For he shaved our skull, and
cleansed our wound and bound it neat with bandages stolen
from the home of an unsuspecting leader of the mob, ha! And
you recall how you plunged with the Founder, the Leader, deep
into the black art of escape, guided at first, indeed, init-
iated, by the seemingly demented one who had learned his craft
in slavery. You left with the Founder in the black of night, and
I know it. You hurried silently along the river bottom, stung
by mosquitoes, hooted by owls, zoomed by bats, buzzed by snakes
that rattled among the rocks, mud and fever, darkness and
sighing. You hid all the following day in the cabin where
thirteen slept in three small rooms, standing until darkness in
the fireplace chimney, back in all the soot and ashes -- ha! ha! --
guarded by the granny who dozed at the hearth seemingly
without a fire. You stood in the blackness and when they came
with their baying hounds they thought her demented. But she
knew, she knew! She knew the fire! She knew the fire! She
knew the fire that burned without consuming! My God, yes!"

"My God, yes!" a woman's voice responded, adding to
the structure of his vision within me.

"And you left with him in the morning, hidden in a wagonload
of cotton, in the very center of the fleece, where you
breathed the hot air through the barrel of the emergency
shotgun; the cartridges, which thank God it was unnecessary
to use, held fanwise and ready between the spread fingers of
your hand. And you went into this town with him and were
hidden by the friendly aristocrat one night, and on the next
by the white blacksmith who held no hatred -- surprising
contradictions of the underground. Escaping, yes! helped by
those who knew you and those who didn't know. Because for
some it was enough to see him; others helped without even
that, black and white. But mostly it was our own who aided,
because you were their own and we have always helped our
own. And so, my young friends, my sisters and brothers, you
went with him, in and out of cabins, by night and early
morning, through swamps and hills. On and on, passed from
black hand to black hand and some white hands, and all the
hands molding the Founder's freedom and our own freedom
like voices shaping a deep-felt song. And you, each of you,
were with him. Ah, how well you know it, for it was you
who escaped to freedom. Ah, yes, and you know the story."

I saw him resting now, and beaming out across the chapel,
his huge head turning to all its corners like a beacon, his
voice still echoing as I fought back my emotion. For the
first time the evocation of the Founder saddened me, and the
campus seemed to rush past me, fast retreating, like the
fading of a dream at the sundering of slumber. Beside me, the
student's eyes swam with a distorting cataract of tears, his
features rigid as though he struggled within himself. The fat
man was playing upon the whole audience without the least
show of exertion. He seemed completely composed, hidden
behind his black-lensed glasses, only his mobile features
gesturing his vocal drama. I nudged the boy beside me.

"Who is he?" I whispered.

He gave me a look of annoyance, almost of outrage.
"Reverend Homer A. Barbee, Chicago," he said.

Now the speaker rested his arm upon the lectern and
turned toward Dr. Bledsoe:

"You've heard the bright beginning of the beautiful
story, my friends. But there is the mournful ending,
and perhaps in many ways the richer side. The setting
of this glorious son of the morning."

He turned to Dr. Bledsoe, "It was a fateful day, Dr. Bled-
soe, sir, if I may recall it to you, for we were there. Oh yes,
my young friends," he said, turning to face us again with a
sad proud smile. "I knew him well and loved him, and I was
there. "We had toured through several states to which he
was carrying the message. The people had come to hear the
prophet, the multitude had responded. The old-fashioned
people; women in aprons and Mother Hubbards of calico and
gingham, men in their overalls and patched alpacas; a sea of
upturned and puzzled faces looking out from beneath old
battered straw hats and limp sunbonnets. They who had come
by oxen and mule team and by walking long distances. It was
the month of September and unseasonably cold. He had spoken
peace and confidence into their troubled souls, had set a star
before them and we were passing on to other scenes, still
carrying the message.

"Ah, those days of ceaseless travel, those youthful days,
those springtime days; fertile, blossomy, sun-filled days of
promise. Ah, yes, those indescribably glorious days, in which
the Founder was building the dream not only here in this then
barren valley, but hither and yonder throughout the land,
instilling the dream in the hearts of the people. Erecting the
scaffolding of a nation. Broadcasting his message that fell like
seed on tallow ground, sacrificing himself, fighting and
forgiving his enemies of both complexions-oh yes, he had them,
of both complexions. But going forward filled with the
importance of his message, filled with his dedicated mission;
and in his zeal, perhaps in his mortal pride, ignoring the advice
of his physician. I see in my mind's eye the fatal atmosphere of
that jam-packed auditorium: The Founder holds the audience
within the gentle palm of his eloquence, rocking it, soothing it,
instructing it; and there below, the rapt faces blushed by the
glow of the big pot-bellied stove now turned cherry-red with its
glowing; yes, the spellbound rows caught in the imperious
truth of his message. And I hear now, again, the great humming
hush as his voice reached the end of a mighty period, and one
of the listeners, a snowy-headed man, leaps to his feet crying
out, 'Tell us what is to be done, sir! For God's sake, tell us! Tell
us in the name of the son they snatched from me last week!'
And all through the room the voices arising, imploring, 'Tell us,
tell us!' And the Founder is suddenly mute with tears."

Old Barbee's voice rang out, as suddenly he made charged
and incomplete movements about the platform, acting out his
words. And I watched with a sick fascination, knowing part
of the story, yet a part of me fighting against its sad
inevitable conclusion.

"And the Founder pauses, then steps forward with his
eyes spilling his great emotion. With his arm upraised, he
begins to answer and totters. Then all is commotion. We rush
forward and lead him away.

"The audience leaps to its feet in consternation. All is
terror and turmoil, a moan and a sighing. Until, like a clap of
thunder, I hear Dr. Bledsoe's voice ring out whip-like with
authority, a song of hope. And as we stretch the Founder upon
a bench to rest, I hear Dr. Bledsoe stomping out the time with
mighty strokes upon the hollow platform, commanding not in
words but in the great gut-tones of his magnificent basso -- oh,
but wasn't he a singer? Isn't he a singer still today? -- and
they stand, they calm, and with him they sing out against the
tottering of their giant. Sing out their long black songs of
blood and bones:

"Meaning HOPE!

"Of hardship and pain:

"Meaning FAITH!

"Of humbleness and absurdity:

"Meaning ENDURANCE!

"Of ceaseless struggle in darkness, meaning:

"TRIUMPH . . .

"Ha!" Barbee cried, slapping his hands, "Ha! Singing verse
after verse, until the leader revived!" (Slap, slap of his
hands.)

"Addressed them" --

(Slap!) "My God, my God!

"Assured them" -- (Slap!)

"That" -- (Slap!)

"He was only tired of his ceaseless efforts." (Slap!) "Yes,
and dismisses them, sending each on his way rejoicing, giv-
ing each a parting handshake of fellowship . . ."

I watched Barbee pace in a semicircle, his lips compres-
sed, his face working with emotion, his palms meeting
but making no sound.

"Ah, those days in which he tilled his mighty fields,
those days in which he watched the crops take hold and
grow, those youthful, summery, sun-bright days . . ."

Barbee's voice sighed off in nostalgia. The chapel hardly
breathed as he sighed deeply. Then I watched him produce a
snowy handkerchief, remove his dark glasses and wipe his
eyes, and through the increasing distance of my isolation,
I watched the men in the seats of honor slowly shake their
spellbound heads. Then Barbee's voice began again, disem-
bodied now, and it was as though he had never paused, as
though his words, reverberating within us, had continued
their rhythmic flow though their source was for a moment
stilled:

"Oh, yes, my young friends, oh, yes," he continued with
a great sadness. "Man's hope can paint a purple picture, can
transform a soaring vulture into a noble eagle or a moaning
dove. Oh, yes! But I knew," he shouted, startling me. "In spite
of that great, anguished hope within me, I knew -- knew that
the great spirit was declining, was approaching its lonely
winter; the great sun going down. For sometimes it is given one
to know these things . . . And I staggered under the awful
burden of that knowledge and I cursed myself because I bore
it. But such was the Founder's enthusiasm -- oh, yes! -- that
as we sped from country town to country town through the
glorious Indian summer, I soon forgot. And then . . . And
then . . . and . . . then . . ."

I listened to his voice fall to a whisper; his hands were
outspread as though he were leading an orchestra into a
profound and final diminuendo. Then his voice rose again,
crisply, almost matter-of-factly, accelerated:

"I remember the start of the train, how it seemed to groan
as it started up the steep grade into the mountain. It was
cold. Frost formed its icy patterns upon the window's edges.
And the whistle of the train was long-drawn and lonely, a
sigh issuing from the depths of the mountain.

"In the car up ahead, in the Pullman assigned him by the
very president of the line, the Leader lay tossing. He had
been struck with a sudden and mysterious sickness. And I knew
in spite of the anguish within me that the sun goeth down, for
the heavens themselves conveyed that knowledge. The rush of
the train, the clicking of wheels upon the steel. I remember
how I looked out of the frosted pane and saw the looming great
North Star and lost it, as though the sky had shut its eye. The
train was curving the mountain, the engine loping like a great
black hound, parallel with the last careening cars, panting
forth its pale white vapor as it hurled us ever higher. And
shortly the sky was black, without a moon . . ."

As his "mooo-o-on" echoed over the chapel, he drew his
chin against his chest until his white collar disappeared,
leaving him a figure of balanced unbroken blackness, and I
could hear the rasp of air as he inhaled.

"It was as though the very constellations knew our impend-
ing sorrow," he bugled, his head raised to the ceiling, his
voice full-throated. "For against that great -- wide -- sweep
of sable there came the burst of a single jewel-like star, and
I saw it shimmer, and break, and streak down the cheek of that
coal-black sky like a reluctant and solitary tear . . ."

He shook his head with great emotion, his lips pursed as he
moaned, "Mmmmmmmmmm," turning toward Dr. Bledsoe as
though he did not quite see him. "At that fateful moment . . .
Mmmmmm, I sat with your great president . . .Mmmmmmmmmm!
He was deep in meditation as we awaited word from the men
of science, and he said to me of that dying star,

"'Barbee, friend, did you see?'

"And I answered, 'Yes, Doctor, I saw.'

"And at our throats already we felt the cold hands of sorrow.
And I said to Dr. Bledsoe, 'Let us pray.' And as we knelt
there on the swaying floor our words were less prayers than
sounds of mute and terrible sorrow. And it was then, as we
pulled to our feet, staggering with the motion of that speeding
train, that we saw the physician moving toward us. And we
looked with bated breath into the blank and expressionless
features of the man of science, asking with our total beings:
Do you bring us hope or disaster? And it was then and there he
informed us that the Leader was nearing his destination . . .

"It was said, the cruel blow had fallen and we were left numb,
but the Founder was still for the moment with us and still
in command. And, of all in the traveling party, he sent for
him who sits there before you, and for me as a man of God.
But he wanted mainly his friend of midnight consultations,
his comrade of many battles, who over the weary years had
remained steadfast in defeat as in victory.

"Even now I can see it, the dark passage lit with dim
lights and Dr. Bledsoe swaying as he went before me. At the
door stood the porter and the conductor, a black man and a
white man of the South, both crying. Both weeping. And he
looked up as we entered, his great eyes resigned but still
aflame with nobility and courage against the white of his
pillow; and he looked at his friend and smiled. Smiled warmly
at his old campaigner, his loyal champion, his adjunct, that
marvelous singer of the old songs who had rallied his spirit
during times of distress and discouragement, who with his
singing of the old familiar melodies soothed the doubts and
fears of the multitude; he who had rallied the ignorant, the
fearful and suspicious, those still wrapped in the rags of
slavery; him, there, your leader, who calmed the children of
the storm. And as the Founder looked up at his companion, he
smiled. And reaching out his hand to his friend and companion
as I now stretch out my hand to you, he said, 'Come closer.
Come closer.' And he moved closer, until he stood beside the
berth, and the light slanting across his shoulder as he knelt
beside him. And the hand reached out and gently touched him
and he said, 'Now, you must take on the burden. Lead them the
rest of the way.' And oh, the cry of that train and the pain
too big for tears!

"When the train reached the summit of the mountain, he was
no longer with us. And as the train dropped down the grade
he had departed.

"It had become a veritable train of sorrow. Dr. Bledsoe
there, sat weary in mind and heavy of heart. What should he
do? The Leader was dead and he thrown suddenly at the head
of the troops like a cavalryman catapulted into the saddle of his
general felled in a charge of battle-vaulted onto the back of his
fiery and half-broken charger. Ah! And that great, black, noble
beast, wall-eyed with the din of battle and twitching already
with its sense of loss. What command should he give? Should
he return with his burden, home, to where already the hot
wires were flashing, speaking, rattling the mournful message?
Should he turn and bear the fallen soldier down the cold and
alien mountain to this valley home? Return with the dear eyes
dulled, the firm hand still, the magnificent voice silent, the
Leader cold? Return to the warm valley, to the green grounds
he could no longer light with his mortal vision? Should he
follow his Leader's vision though he had now himself departed?

"Ah, of course you know the story: How he bore the body
into the strange city, and the speech he made as his Leader
lay in state, and how when the sad news spread, a day of
mourning was declared for the whole municipality. Oh, and
how rich and poor, black and white, weak and powerful, young
and old, all came to pay their homage-many realizing the
Leader's worth and their loss only now with his passing. And
how, with his mission done, Dr. Bledsoe returned, keeping his
sorrowful vigil with his friend in an humble baggage car; and
how the people came to pay their respects at the stations . . .
A slow train. A sorrowful train. And all along the line, in
mountain and valley, wherever the rails found their fateful
course, the people were one in their common mourning, and
like the cold steel rails, were spiked down to their sorrow.
Oh, what a sad departure!

"And what an even sadder arrival. See with me, my young
friends, hear with me: The weeping and wailing of those
who shared his labors. Their sweet Leader returned to them,
rock-cold in the iron immobility of death. He who had left them
quick, in the prime of his manhood, author of their own fire and
illumination, returned to them cold, already a bronzed statue.
Oh, the despair, my young friends. The black despair of black
people! I see them now; wandering about these grounds, where
each brick, each bird, each blade of grass was a reminder of
some precious memory; and each memory a hammer stroke driv-
ing home the blunt spikes of their sorrow. Oh, yes, some
now are here gray-haired among you, still dedicated to his
vision, still laboring in the vineyard. But then with the
blackdraped coffin lying in state among them -- inescapably
reminding them -- they felt the dark night of slavery settling
once more upon them. They smelt that old obscene stink of
darkness, that old slavery smell, worse than the rank halitosis
of hoary death. Their sweet light enclosed in a black-draped
coffin, their majestic sun snatched behind a cloud.

"Oh, and the sad sound of weeping bugles! I can hear
them now, stationed at the four corners of the campus,
sounding taps for the fallen general; announcing and re-
announcing the sad tidings, telling and retelling the sad
revelation one to the other across the still numbness of the air,
as though they could not believe it, could neither comprehend
nor accept it; bugles weeping like a family of tender women
lamenting their loved one. And the people came to sing the old
songs and to express their unspeakable sorrow. Black, black,
black! Black people in blacker mourning, the funeral crape
hung upon their naked hearts; singing unashamedly their black
folk's songs of sorrow, moving painfully, overflowing the
curving walks, weeping and wailing beneath the drooping trees
and their low murmuring voices like the moans of winds in a
wilderness. And finally they gathered on the hill slope and as
far as the tear-wet eyes could see, they stood with their heads
bowed, singing.

"Then silence. The lonesome hole banked with poignant flow-
ers. The dozen white-gloved hands waiting taut upon the silk-
en ropes. That awful silence. The final words are spoken. A
single wild rose tossed farewell, bursts slowly, its petals
drifting snowlike upon the reluctantly lowered coffin. Then
down into the earth; back to the ancient dust; back to the
cold black clay . . . mother . . . of us all."

As Barbee paused the silence was so complete that I could
hear the power engines far across the campus throbbing the
night like an excited pulse. Somewhere in the audience an
old woman's voice began a plaintive wail; the birth of a
sad, untormulated song that died stillborn in a sob.

Barbee stood with his head thrown back, his arms rigid at
his sides, his fists clenched as though fighting desperately
for control. Dr. Bledsoe sat with his face in his hands. Near
me someone blew his nose. Barbee took a tottering step forward.
"Oh, yes. Oh, yes," he said. "Oh, yes. That too is part of
the glorious story. But think of it not as a death, but as a birth.
A great seed had been planted. A seed which has continued to
put forth its fruit in its season as surely as if the great creator
had been resurrected. For in a sense he was, if not in the flesh,
in the spirit. And in a sense in the flesh too. For has not your
present leader become his living agent, his physical presence?
Look about you if you doubt it. My young friends, my dear
young friends! How can I tell you what manner of man this is
who leads you? How can I convey to you how well he has kept
his pledge to the Founder, how conscientious has been his
stewardship?

"First, you must see the school as it was. Already a great
institution, to be sure; but then the buildings were eight,
now they are twenty; then the faculty was fifty, now it is two
hundred; then the student body was a few hundred, where now
I'm told you are three thousand. And now where you have
roads of asphalt for the passage of rubber tires, then the roads
were of crushed stone for the passage of oxen, and mule teams,
and horse-drawn wagons. I have not the words to tell you how
my heart swelled to return to this great institution after so
great a while to move among its wealth of green things, its
fruitful farmland and fragrant campus. Ah! and the marvelous
plant supplying power to an area larger than many towns -- all
operated by black hands. Thus, my young friends, does the
light of the Founder still burn. Your leader has kept his promise
a thousandfold. I commend him in his own right, for he is the
co-architect of a great and noble experiment. He is a worthy
successor to his great friend and it is no accident that his great
and intelligent leadership has made him our leading statesman.
This is a form of greatness worthy of your imitation. I say to
you, pattern yourselves upon him. Aspire, each of you, to some
day follow in his footsteps. Great deeds are yet to be
performed. For we are a young, though a fast-rising, people.
Legends are still to be created. Be not afraid to undertake the
burdens of your leader, and the work of the Founder will be one
of ever unfolding glory, the history of the race a saga of
mounting triumphs."

Barbee stood with his arms outstretched now, beaming
over the audience, his Buddha-like body still as an onyx
boulder. There was sniffling throughout the chapel. Voices
murmured with admiration and I felt more lost than ever. For
a few minutes old Barbee had made me see the vision and now I
knew that leaving the campus would be like the parting of
flesh. I watched him lower his arms now and start back to his
chair, moving slowly with his head cocked as though listening
to distant music. I had lowered my head to wipe my eyes when
I heard the shocked gasp arise.

Looking up, I saw two of the white trustees moving swiftly
across the platform to where Barbee floundered upon Dr.
Bledsoe's legs. The old man slid forward upon his hands
and knees as the two white men took his arms; and now as he
stood I saw one of them reach for something on the floor and
place it in his hands. It was when he raised his head that I
saw it. For a swift instant, between the gesture and the opaque
glitter of his glasses, I saw the blinking of sightless eyes.
Homer A. Barbee was blind.

Uttering apologies, Dr. Bledsoe helped him to his chair.
Then as the old man rested back with a smile, Dr. Bledsoe
walked to the edge of the platform and lifted his arms. I clos-
ed my eyes as I heard the deep moaning sound that issued from
him, and the rising crescendo of the student body joining in.
This time it was music sincerely felt, not rendered for the
guests, but for themselves; a song of hope and exaltation. I
wanted to rush from the building, but didn't dare. I sat stiff
and erect, supported by the hard bench, relying upon it as upon
a form of hope.

I could not look at Dr. Bledsoe now, because old Barbee
had made me both feel my guilt and accept it. For although I
had not intended it, any act that endangered the continuity of
the dream was an act of treason.

I did not listen to the next speaker, a tall white man who
kept dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief and repeating his
phrases in an emotional and inarticulate manner. Then the
orchestra played excerpts from Dvorak's New World Symphony
and I kept hearing "Swing Low Sweet Chariot" resounding
through its dominant theme -- my mother's and grandfather's
favorite spiritual. It was more than I could stand, and before
the next speaker could begin I hurried past the disapproving
eyes of teachers and matrons, out into the night.

A mockingbird trilled a note from where it perched upon the
hand of the moonlit Founder, flipping its moon-mad tail above
the head of the eternally kneeling slave. I went up the sha-
dowy drive, heard it trill behind me. The street lamps glowed
brilliant in the moonlit dream of the campus, each light
serene in its cage of shadows.

I might well have waited until the end of the services, for
I hadn't gone far when I heard the dim, bright notes of the
orchestra striking up a march, followed by a burst of voices as
the students filed out into the night. With a feeling of dread
I headed for the administration building, and upon reaching it,
stood in the darkened doorway. My mind fluttered like the
moths that veiled the street lamp which cast shadows upon the
bank of grass below me. I would now have my real interview
with Dr. Bledsoe, and I recalled Barbee's address with
resentment. With such words fresh in his mind, I was sure Dr.
Bledsoe would be far less sympathetic to my plea. I stood in
that darkened doorway trying to probe my future if I were
expelled. Where would I go, what would I do? How could I ever
return home?



Chapter 6



Down the sloping lawn below me the male students
moved toward their dormitories, seeming far away from me
now, remote, and each shadowy form vastly superior to me,
who had by some shortcoming cast myself into the darkness
away from all that was worthwhile and inspiring. I listened to
one group harmonize quietly as they passed. The smell of fresh
bread being prepared in the bakery drifted to me. The good
white bread of breakfast; the rolls dripping with yellow butter
that I had slipped into my pocket so often to be munched later
in my room with wild blackberry jam from home.

Lights began to appear in the girls' dormitories, like the
bursting of luminous seeds flung broadside by an invisible
hand. Several cars rolled by. I saw a group of old women who
lived in the town approaching. One used a cane which from
time to time she tapped hollowly upon the walk like a blind
man. Snatches of their conversation fluttered to me as they
discussed Barbee's talk with enthusiasm, recalled the times of
the Founder, their quavering voices weaving and embroidering
his story. Then down the long avenue of trees I saw the familiar
Cadillac approaching and started inside the building, suddenly
filled with panic. I hadn't gone two steps before I turned and
hurried out into the night again. I couldn't stand to face Dr.
Bledsoe immediately. I was fairly shivering as I fell in behind
a group of boys going up the drive. They were arguing some
point heatedly, but I was too agitated to listen and simply
followed in their shadows, noticing the dull gleam of their
polished shoe-leather in the rays of the street lamps. I kept
trying to formulate what I would say to Dr. Bledsoe, and the
boys must have turned into their building, for suddenly finding
myself outside the gates of the campus and heading down the
highway, I turned and ran back to the building.

When I went in he was wiping his neck with a blue-bordered
handkerchief. The shaded lamp catching the lenses of his
glasses left half of his broad face in shadow as his clenched
fists stretched full forth in the light before him. I stood,
hesitating in the door, aware suddenly of the old heavy
furnishings, the relics from the times of the Founder, the
framed portrait photographs and relief plaques of presidents
and industrialists, men of power-fixed like trophies or heraldic
emblems upon the walls.

"Come in," he said from the half-shadow; then I saw him
move and his head coming forward, his eyes burning.

He began mildly, as if quietly joking, throwing me off
balance.

"Boy," he said, "I understand that you not only carried
Mr. Norton out to the Quarters but that you wound up at
that sinkhole, that Golden Day."

It was a statement, not a question. I said nothing and he
looked at me with the same mild gaze. Had Barbee helped Mr.
Norton soften him?

"No," he said, "it wasn't enough to take him to the Quar-
ters, you had to make the complete tour, to give him the
full treatment. Was that it?"

"No, sir . . . I mean that he was ill, sir," I said. "He had
to have some whiskey . . ."

"And that was the only place you knew to go," he said.
"So you went there because you were taking care of him . . ."

"Yes, sir . . ."

"And not only that," he said in a voice that both mocked
and marveled, "you took him out and sat him down on the
gallery, veranda -- piazza -- whatever they call it now'days --
and introduced him to the quality!"

"Quality?" I frowned. "Oh -- but he insisted that I stop,
sir. There was nothing I could do . . ."

"Of course," he said. "Of course."

"He was interested in the cabins, sir. He was surprised
that there were any left."

"So naturally you stopped," he said, bowing his head
again.

"Yes, sir."

"Yes, and I suppose the cabin opened up and told him
its life history and all the choice gossip?"

I started to explain.

"Boy!" he exploded. "Are you serious? Why were you out on
that road in the first place? Weren't you behind the wheel?"

"Yes, sir . . ."

"Then haven't we bowed and scraped and begged and lied
enough decent homes and drives for you to show him? Did
you think that white man had to come a thousand miles -- all
the way from New York and Boston and Philadelphia just for
you to show him a slum? Don't just stand there, say
something!"

"But I was only driving him, sir. I only stopped there
after he ordered me to . . ."

"Ordered you?" he said. "He ordered you. Dammit, white
folk are always giving orders, it's a habit with them. Why
didn't you make an excuse? Couldn't you say they had sickness
-- smallpox -- or picked another cabin? Why that Trueblood
shack? My God, boy! You're black and living in the South --
did you forget how to lie?"

"Lie, sir? Lie to him, lie to a trustee, sir? Me?"

He shook his head with a kind of anguish. "And me thinking
I'd picked a boy with brain," he said. "Didn't you know
you were endangering the school?"

"But I was only trying to please him . . ."

"Please him? And here you are a junior in college! Why,
the dumbest black bastard in the cotton patch knows that the
only way to please a white man is to tell him a lie! What kind of
education are you getting around here? Who really told you to
take him out there?" he said.

"He did, sir. No one else."

"Don't lie to me!"

"That's the truth, sir."

"I warn you now, who suggested it?"

"I swear, sir. No one told me."

"Nigger, this isn't the time to lie. I'm no white man. Tell
me the truth!"

It was as though he'd struck me. I stared across the desk
thinking, He called me that . . .

"Answer me, boy!"

That, I thought, noticing the throbbing of a vein that
rose between his eyes, thinking, He called me that.

"I wouldn't lie, sir," I said.

"Then who was that patient you were talking with?"

"I never saw him before, sir."

"What was he saying?"

"I can't recall it all," I muttered. "The man was raving."

"Speak up. What did he say?"

"He thinks that he lived in France and that he's a great
doctor . . ."

"Continue."

"He said that I believed that white was right," I said.

"What?" Suddenly his face twitched and cracked like the
surface of dark water. "And you do, don't you?" Dr. Bledsoe
said, suppressing a nasty laugh. "Well, don't you?"

I did not answer, thinking, You, you . . .

"Who was he, did you ever see him before?"

"No, sir, I hadn't."

"Was he northern or southern?"

"I don't know, sir."

He struck his desk. "College for Negroes! Boy, what do you
know other than how to ruin an institution in half an hour
that it took over half a hundred years to build? Did he talk
northern or southern?"

"He talked like a white man," I said, "except that his voice
sounded southern, like one of ours . . ."

"I'll have to investigate him," he said. "A Negro like that
should be under lock and key."

Across the campus a clock struck the quarter hour and some-
thing inside me seemed to muffle its sound. I turned to
him desperately. "Dr. Bledsoe, I'm awfully sorry. I had no
intention of going there but things just got out of hand. Mr.
Norton understands how it happened . . ."

"Listen to me, boy," he said loudly. "Norton is one man and
I'm another, and while he might think he's satisfied, I know
that he isn't! Your poor judgment has caused this school in-
calculable damage. Instead of uplifting the race, you've torn
it down."

He looked at me as though I had committed the worst crime
imaginable. "Don't you know we can't tolerate such a thing?
I gave you an opportunity to serve one of our best white
friends, a man who could make your fortune. But in return you
dragged the entire race into the slime!" Suddenly he reached
for something beneath a pile of papers, an old leg shackle from
slavery which he proudly called a "symbol of our progress."
"You've got to be disciplined, boy," he said. "There's no
ifs and ands about it."

"But you gave Mr. Norton your word . . ."

"Don't stand there and tell me what I already know.
Regardless of what I said, as the leader of this institution I
can't possibly let this pass. Boy, I'm getting rid of you!" It
must have happened when the metal struck the desk, for sud-
denly I was leaning toward him, shouting with outrage.

"I'll tell him," I said. "I'll go to Mr. Norton and tell him.
You've lied to both of us . . ."

"What!" he said. "You have the nerve to threaten me . . .in
my own office?"

"I'll tell him," I screamed. "I'll tell everybody. I'll fight
you. I swear it, I'll fight!"

"Well," he said, sitting back, "well, I'll be damned!" For
a moment he looked me up and down and I saw his head go
back into the shadow, hearing a high, thin sound like a cry of
rage; then his face came forward and I saw his laughter. For
an instant I stared; then I wheeled and started for the door,
hearing him sputter, "Wait, wait," behind me.

I turned. He gasped for breath, propping his huge head
up with his hands as tears streamed down his face.

"Come on, come," he said, removing his glasses and
wiping his eyes. "Come on, son," his voice amused and
conciliatory. It was as though I were being put through a
fraternity initiation and found myself going back. He looked
at me, still laughing with agony. My eyes burned.

"Boy, you are a fool," he said. "Your white folk didn't
teach you anything and your mother-wit has left you cold. What
has happened to you young Negroes? I thought you had caught
on to how things are done down here. But you don't even know
the difference between the way things are and the way they're
supposed to be. My God," he gasped, "what is the race coming
to? Why, boy, you can tell anyone you like -- sit down there . . .
Sit down, sir, I say!"

Reluctantly I sat, torn between anger and fascination, hating
myself for obeying.

"Tell anyone you like," he said. "I don't care. I wouldn't
raise my little finger to stop you. Because I don't owe anyone a
thing, son. Who, Negroes? Negroes don't control this school or
much of anything else -- haven't you learned even that? No, sir,
they don't control this school, nor white folk either. True they
support it, but I control it. I's big and black and I say 'Yes,
suh' as loudly as any burr-head when it's convenient, but I'm
still the king down here. I don't care how much it appears
otherwise. Power doesn't have to show off. Power is confident,
self-assuring, self-starting and self-stopping, self-warming and
self-justifying. When you have it, you know it. Let the Negroes
snicker and the crackers laugh! Those are the facts, son. The
only ones I even pretend to please are big white folk, and even
those I control more than they control me. This is a power set
up, son, and I'm at the controls. You think about that. When you
buck against me, you're bucking against power, rich white
folk's power, the nation's power -- which means government
power!"

He paused to let it sink in and I waited, feeling a numb,
violent outrage.

"And I'll tell you something your sociology teachers are
afraid to tell you," he said. "If there weren't men like me
running schools like this, there'd be no South. Nor North,
either. No, and there'd be no country -- not as it is today.
You think about that, son." He laughed. "With all your
speechmaking and studying I thought you understood something.
But you . . . All right, go ahead. See Norton. You'll find
that he wants you disciplined; he might not know it, but he
does. Because he knows that I know what is best for his in-
terests. You're a black educated fool, son. These white folk
have newspapers, magazines, radios, spokesmen to get their
ideas across. If they want to tell the world a lie, they can
tell it so well that it becomes the truth; and if I tell them
that you'relying, they'll tell the world even if you prove
you're telling the truth. Because it's the kind of lie they
want to hear . . ."

I heard the high thin laugh again. "You're nobody, son.
You don't exist -- can't you see that? The white folk tell
everybody what to think -- except men like me. I tell them;
that's my life, telling white folk how to think about the things
Iknow about. Shocks you, doesn't it? Well, that's the way it is.
It's a nasty deal and I don't always like it myself. But you
listento me: I didn't make it, and I know that I can't change
t. But I've made my place in it and I'll have every Negro in the
country hanging on tree limbs by morning if it means staying
where I am."

He was looking me in the eye now, his voice charged and
sincere, as though uttering a confession, a fantastic
revelation which I could neither believe nor deny. Cold
drops of sweat moved at a glacier's pace down my spine . . .
"I mean it, son," he said. "I had to be strong and pur-
poseful to get where I am. I had to wait and plan and lick
around . . . Yes, I had to act the nigger!" he said, adding
another fiery, "Yes!"

"I don't even insist that it was worth it, but now I'm here
and I mean to stay -- after you win the game, you take the
prize and you keep it, protect it; there's nothing else to do."
He shrugged. "A man gets old winning his place, son. So you go
ahead, go tell your story; match your truth against my truth,
because what I've said is truth, the broader truth. Test it, try
it out . . . When I started out I was a young fellow . . ."

But I no longer listened, nor saw more than the play of light
upon the metallic disks of his glasses, which now seemed
to float within the disgusting sea of his words. Truth, truth,
what was truth? Nobody I knew, not even my own mother, would
believe me if I tried to tell them. Nor would I tomorrow, I
thought, nor would I . . . I gazed helplessly at the grain of
the desk, then past his head to the case of loving cups behind
his chair. Above the case a portrait of the Founder looked
noncommittally down.

"Hee, hee!" Bledsoe laughed. "Your arms are too short
to box with me, son. And I haven't had to really clip a young
Negro in years. No," he said getting up, "they haven't been so
cocky as they used to."

This time I could barely move, my stomach was knotted
and my kidneys ached. My legs were rubbery. For three years I
had thought of myself as a man and here with a few words he'd
made me as helpless as an infant. I pulled myself up . . .

"Wait, hold on a second," he said, looking at me like a man
about to flip a coin. "I like your spirit, son. You're a fighter,
and I like that; you just lack judgment, though lack of judgment
can ruin you. That's why I have to penalize you, son. I know
how you feel, too. You don't want to go home to be humiliated, I
understand that, because you have some vague notions about
dignity. In spite of me, such notions seep in along with the
gimcrack teachers and northern-trained idealists. Yes, and you
have some white folk backing you and you don't want to face
them because nothing is worse for a black man than to be
humiliated by white folk. I know all about that too; ole doc's
been 'buked and scorned and all of that. I don't just sing about
it in chapel, I know about it. But you'll get over it; it's foolish
and expensive and a lot of dead weight. You let the white folk
worry about pride and dignity -- you learn where you are and
get yourself power, influence, contacts with powerful and
influential people -- then stay in the dark and use it!"

How long will I stand here and let him laugh at me, I
thought, holding on to the back of the chair, how long?

"You're a nervy little fighter, son," he said, "and the race
needs good, smart, disillusioned fighters. Therefore I'm going
to give you a hand -- maybe you'll feel that I'm giving you my
left hand after I've struck you with my right -- if you think I'm
the kind of man who'd lead with his right, which I'm most
certainly not. But that's all right too, take it or leave it. I
want you to go to New York for the summer and save your pride --
and your money. You go there and earn your next year's fees,
understand?"

I nodded, unable to speak, whirling about furiously within
myself, trying to deal with him, to fit what he was saying
to what he had said . . .

"I'll give you letters to some of the school's friends to
see that you get work," he said. "But this time, use your
judgment, keep your eyes open, get in the swing of things!
Then, if you make good, perhaps . . . well, perhaps . . .
It's up to you."

His voice stopped as he stood, tall and black and diskeyed,
huge. "That's all, young man," he said, his tone abrupt,
official. "You have two days in which to close your affairs."

"Two days?"

"Two days!" he said.

I went down the steps and up the walk in the dark, making
it out of the building just before it bent me double be-
neath the wisteria that hung from the trees on rope-like
vines. Almost a total disembowelment and when it paused I
looked up through the trees arched high and cool above me
to see a whirling, double-imaged moon. My eyes were out of
focus. I started toward my room, covering one eye with my
hand to avoid crashing into trees and lampposts projected into
my path. I went on, tasting bile and thankful that it was night
with no one to witness my condition. My stomach felt raw.
From somewhere across the quiet of the campus the sound of
an old guitar-blues plucked from an out-of-tune piano drifted
toward me like a lazy, shimmering wave, like the echoed
whistle of a lonely train, and my head went over again, against
a tree this time, and I could hear it splattering the flowering
vines.

When I could move, my head started to whirl in a circle.
The day's events flowed past. Trueblood, Mr. Norton, Dr.
Bledsoe and the Golden Day swept around my mind in a mad
surreal whirl. I stood in the path holding my eye and trying to
push back the day, but each time I floundered upon Dr.
Bledsoe's decision. It still echoed in my mind and it was real
and it was final. Whatever my responsibility was for what had
occurred, I knew that I would pay for it, knew that I would be
expelled, and the very idea stabbed my insides again. I stood
there on the moonlit walk, trying to think ahead to its effects,
imagining the satisfaction of those who envied my success, the
shame and disappointment of my parents. I would never live
down my disgrace. My white friends would be disgusted and I
recalled the fear that hung over all those who had no
protection from powerful whites.

How had I come to this? I had kept unswervingly to the
path placed before me, had tried to be exactly what I was
expected to be, had done exactly what I was expected to do --
yet, instead of winning the expected reward, here I was
stumbling along, holding on desperately to one of my eyes in
order to keep from bursting out my brain against some familiar
object swerved into my path by my distorted vision. And now to
drive me wild I felt suddenly that my grandfather was hovering
over me, grinning triumphantly out of the dark. I simply could
not endure it. For, despite my anguish and anger, I knew of no
other way of living, nor other forms of success available to such
as me. I was so completely a part of that existence that in the
end I had to make my peace. It was either that or admit that
my grandfather had made sense. Which was impossible, for
though I still believed myself innocent, I saw that the only
alternative to permanently facing the world of Trueblood and
the Golden Day was to accept the responsibility for what had
happened. Somehow, I convinced myself, I had violated the
code and thus would have to submit to punishment. Dr. Bledsoe
is right, I told myself, he's right; the school and what it
stands for have to be protected. There was no other way, and
no matter how much I suffered I would pay my debt as quickly
as possible and return to building my career . . .

Back in my room I counted my savings, some fifty dollars,
and decided to get to New York as quickly as possible.
If Dr. Bledsoe didn't change his mind about helping me get a
job, it would be enough to pay my room and board at Men's
House, about which I had learned from fellows who lived there
during their summer vacations. I would leave in the morning.
So while my roommate grinned and mumbled unaware in his
sleep I packed my bags.


NEXT morning I was up before the bugle sounded and already
on a bench in Dr. Bledsoe's outer office when he appeared.
The jacket of his blue serge suit was open, revealing
a heavy gold chain linked between his vest pockets as he
moved toward me with a noiseless tread. He passed without
seeming to see me. Then as he reached his office door he said,

"I haven't changed my mind about you, boy. And I don't intend
to!"

"Oh, I didn't come for that, sir," I said, seeing him turn
quickly, looking down upon me, his eyes quizzical.

"Very well, as long as you understand that. Come in and
state your business. I have work to do."

I waited before the desk, watching him place his
homburg on an old brass hall-tree. Then he sat before me,
making a cage of his fingers and nodding for me to begin.

My eyes burned and my voice sounded unreal. "I'd like
to leave this morning, sir," I said.

His eyes retreated. "Why this morning?" he said. "I gave
you until tomorrow. Why the hurry?"

"It isn't hurry, sir. But since I have to leave I'd like to
get going. Staying until tomorrow won't change matters . . ."

"No, it won't," he said. "That's good sense and you have
my permission. And what else?"

"That's all, sir, except that I want to say that I'm sorry
for what I did and that I hold no hard feelings. What I did
was unintentional, but I'm in agreement with my punishment."

He touched his fingertips together, the thick fingers
meeting delicately, his face without expression. "That's the
proper attitude," he said. "In other words, you don't intend to
become bitter, is that it?"

"Yes, sir."

"Yes, I can see that you're beginning to learn. That's
good. Two things our people must do is accept responsibility
for their acts and avoid becoming bitter." His voice rose with
the conviction of his chapel speeches. "Son, if you don't become
bitter, nothing can stop you from success. Remember that."

"I shall, sir," I said. Then my throat thickened and I
hoped he would bring up the matter of a job himself.
Instead, he looked at me impatiently and said, "Well? I
have work to do. My permission is granted."

"Well, sir, I'd like to ask a favor of you . . ."

"Favor," he said shrewdly. "Now that's another matter.
What kind of favor?"

"It isn't much, sir. You suggested that you would put me
in touch with some of the trustees who would give me a job.
I'm willing to do anything."

"Oh, yes," he said, "yes, of course." .

He seemed to think for a moment, his eyes studying the
objects on his desk. Then touching the shackle gently with his
index finger, he said, "Very well. When do you intend to leave?"

"By the first bus, if possible, sir."

"Are you packed?"

"Yes, sir."

"Very well. Go get your bags and return here in thirty
minutes. My secretary will give you some letters addressed to
several friends of the school. One of them will do something for
you."

"Thanks, sir. Thank you very much," I said as he stood.

"That's all right," he said. "The school tries to look out
for its own. Only one thing more. These letters will be sealed;
don't open them if you want help. White folk are strict about
such things. The letters will introduce you and request them to
help you with a job. I'll do my best for you and it isn't
necessary for you to open them, understand?"

"Oh, I wouldn't think of opening them, sir," I said.

"Very well, the young lady will have them for you when
you return. What about your parents, have you informed
them?"

"No, sir, it might make them feel too bad if I told them I
was expelled, so I plan to write them after I get there
and get a job . . ."

"I see. Perhaps that is best."

"Well, good-bye, sir," I said, extending my hand.

"Good-bye," he said. His hand was large and strangely
limp.

He pressed a buzzer as I turned to leave. His secretary
brushed past me as I went through the door.

The letters were waiting when I returned, seven of them,
addressed to men with impressive names. I looked for
Mr. Norton's but his was not among them. Placing them
carefully in my inside pocket, I grabbed my bags and
hurried for the bus.



Chapter 7



The station was empty, but the ticket window was open
and a porter in a gray uniform was pushing a broom. I bought
my ticket and climbed into the bus. There were only two
passengers seated at the rear of the red and nickel interior,
and I suddenly felt that I was dreaming. It was the vet, who
gave me a smile of recognition; an attendant sat beside
him.

"Welcome, young man," he called. "Imagine, Mr. Crenshaw,"
he said to the attendant, "we have a traveling companion!"

"Morning," I said reluctantly. I looked around for a seat
away from them, but although the bus was almost empty, only
the rear was reserved for us and there was nothing to do but
move back with them. I didn't like it; the vet was too much a
part of an experience which I was already trying to blot out of
my consciousness. His way of talking to Mr. Norton had been a
foreshadowing of my misfortune -- just as I had sensed that it
would be. Now having accepted my punishment, I wanted to
remember nothing connected with Trueblood or the Golden
Day.

Crenshaw, a much smaller man than Supercargo, said no-
thing. He was not the type usually sent out to accompany
violent cases and I was glad until I remembered that the only
violent thing about the vet was his tongue. His mouth had
already gotten me into trouble and now I hoped he wouldn't
turn it upon the white driver -- that was apt to get us
killed. What was he doing on the bus anyway? God, how had
Dr. Bledsoe worked that fast? I stared at the fat man.

"How did your friend Mr. Norton make out?" he asked.

"He's okay," I said.

"No more fainting spells?"

"No."

"Did he bawl you out for what happened?"

"He didn't blame me," I said.

"Good. I think I shocked him more than anything else he
saw at the Golden Day. I hoped I hadn't caused you trouble.
School isn't out so soon, is it?"

"Not quite," I said lightly. "I'm leaving early in order to
take a job."

"Wonderful! At home?"

"No, I thought I might make more money in New York."

"New York!" he said. "That's not a place, it's a dream.
When I was your age it was Chicago. Now all the little black
boys run away to New York. Out of the fire into the melting pot.
I can see you after you've lived in Harlem for three months.
Your speech will change, you'll talk a lot about 'college,' you'll
attend lectures at the Men's House . . . you might even meet a
few white folks. And listen," he said, leaning close to whisper,
"you might even dance with a white girl!"

"I'm going to New York to work," I said, looking around
me. "I won't have time for that."

"You will though," he teased. "Deep down you're thinking
about the freedom you've heard about up North, and you'll
try it once, just to see if what you've heard is true."

"There's other kinds of freedom beside some ole white
trash women," Crenshaw said. "He might want to see him some
shows and eat in some of them big restaurants."

The vet grinned. "Why, of course, but remember, Crenshaw,
he's only going to be there a few months. Most of the time
he'll be working, and so much of his freedom will have
to be symbolic. And what will be his or any man's most easily
accessible symbol of freedom? Why, a woman, of course. In
twenty minutes he can inflate that symbol with all the freedom
which he'll be too busy working to enjoy the rest of the time.
He'll see."

I tried to change the subject. "Where are you going?" I
asked.

"To Washington, D. C.," he said.

"Then you're cured?"

"Cured? There is no cure --"

"He's being transferred," said Crenshaw.

"Yes, I'm headed for St. Elizabeth's," the vet said. "The
ways of authority are indeed mysterious. For a year I've tred
to get transferred, then this morning I'm suddenly told to
pack. I can't but wonder if our little conversation with your
friend Mr. Norton had something to do with it."

"How could he have anything to do with it?" I said,
remembering Dr. Bledsoe's threat.

"How could he have anything to do with your being on
this bus?" he said.

He winked. His eyes twinkled. "All right, forget what I've
said. But for God's sake, learn to look beneath the surface,"
he said. "Come out of the fog, young man. And remember you
don't have to be a complete fool in order to succeed. Play the
game, but don't believe in it -- that much you owe yourself.
Even if it lands you in a strait jacket or a padded cell. Play the
game, but play it your own way -- part of the time at least. Play
the game, but raise the ante, my boy. Learn how it operates,
learn how you operate -- I wish I had time to tell you only a
fragment. We're an ass-backward people, though. You might
even beat the game. It's really a very crude affair. Really Pre-
Renaissance -- and that game has been analyzed, put down in
books. But down here they've forgotten to take care of the
books and that's your opportunity. You're hidden right out in
the open -- that is, you would be if you only realized it. They
wouldn't see you because they don't expect you to know
anything, since they believe they've taken care of that . . ."

"Man, who's this they you talking so much about?" said
Crenshaw.

The vet looked annoyed. "They?" he said. "They? Why, the
same they we always mean, the white folks, authority, the
gods, fate, circumstances -- the force that pulls your strings
until you refuse to be pulled any more. The big man who's
never there, where you think he is."

Crenshaw grimaced. "You talk too damn much, man," he
said. "You talk and you don't say nothing."

"Oh, I have a lot to say, Crenshaw. I put into words
things which most men feel, if only slightly. Sure, I'm a
compulsive talker of a kind, but I'm really more clown than
fool. But, Crenshaw," he said, rolling a wand of the newspaper
which lay across his knees, "you don't realize what's
happening. Our young friend is going North for the first time!
It is for the first time, isn't it?"

"You're right," I said.

"Of course. Were you ever North before, Crenshaw?"

"I been all over the country," Crenshaw said. "I know how
they do it, wherever they do it. And I know how to act too.
Besides, you ain't going North, not the real North. You going
to Washington. It's just another southern town."

"Yes, I know," the vet said, "but think of what this means
for the young fellow. He's going free, in the broad daylight and
alone. I can remember when young fellows like him had first to
commit a crime, or be accused of one, before they tried such a
thing. Instead of leaving in the light of morning, they went in
the dark of night. And no bus was fast enough -- isn't that so,
Crenshaw?"

Crenshaw stopped unwrapping a candy bar and looked at him
sharply, his eyes narrowed. "How the hell I know?" he
said.

"I'm sorry, Crenshaw," the vet said. "I thought that as a
man of experience . . ."

"Well, I ain't had that experience. I went North of my
own free will."

"But haven't you heard of such cases?"

"Hearing ain't 'speriencing," Crenshaw said.

"No, it isn't. But since there's always an element of
crime in freedom --"

"I ain't committed no crime!"

"I didn't mean that you had," the vet said. "I apologize.
Forget it."

Crenshaw took an angry bite from his candy bar, mumbling,
"I wish you'd hurry up and git depressive, maybe then
you won't talk so damn much."

"Yes, doctor," the vet said mockingly. "I'll be depressive
soon enough, but while you eat your candy just allow me to
chew the rag; there's a kind of substance in it."

"Aw, quit trying to show off your education," Crenshaw
said. "You riding back here in the Jim Crow just like me.
Besides, you're a nut."

The vet winked at me, continuing his flow of words as the
bus got under way. We were going at last and I took a last
longing look as the bus shot around the highway which circled
the school. I turned and watched it recede from the rear
window; the sun caught its treetops, bathed its low-set
buildings and ordered grounds. Then it was gone. In less than
five minutes the spot of earth which I identified with the best
of all possible worlds was gone, lost within the wild uncultivat-
ed countryside. A flash of movement drew my eye to the side of
the highway now, and I saw a moccasin wiggle swiftly along the
gray concrete, vanishing into a length of iron pipe that lay
beside the road. I watched the flashing past of cotton fields
and cabins, feeling that I was moving into the unknown.

The vet and Crenshaw prepared to change busses at the
next stop, and upon leaving, the vet placed his hand upon my
shoulder and looked at me with kindness, and, as always, he
smiled.

"Now is the time for offering fatherly advice," he said,
"but I'll have to spare you that -- since I guess I'm nobody's
father except my own. Perhaps that's the advice to give you: Be
your own father, young man. And remember, the world is possi-
bility if only you'll discover it. Last of all, leave the Mr.
Nortons alone, and if you don't know what I mean, think about
it. Farewell."

I watched him following Crenshaw through the group of pass-
engers waiting to get on, a short, comical figure turning to
wave, then disappearing through the door of the red brick
terminal. I sat back with a sigh of relief, yet once the
passengers were aboard and the bus under way again, I felt
sad and utterly alone.


NOT until we were sailing through the Jersey country-
side did my spirits begin to rise. Then my old confidence
and optimism revived, and I tried to plan my time in the
North. I would work hard and serve my employer so well
that he would shower Dr. Bledsoe with favorable reports. And I
would save my money and return in the fall full of New York
culture. I'd be indisputably the leading campus figure. Perhaps
I would attend Town Meeting, which I had heard over the radio.
I'd learn the platform tricks of the leading speakers. And I
would make the best of my contacts. When I met the big men
to whom my letters were addressed I would put on my best
manner. I would speak softly, in my most polished tones, smile
agreeably and be most polite; and I would remember that if he
("he" meant any of the important gentlemen) should begin a
topic of conversation (I would never begin a subject of my own)
which I found unfamiliar, I would smile and agree. My shoes
would be polished, my suit pressed, my hair dressed (not too
much grease) and parted on the right side; my nails would be
clean and my armpits well deodorized -- you had to watch the
last item. You couldn't allow them to think all of us smelled bad.
The very thought of my contacts gave me a feeling of
sophistication, of worldliness, which, as I fingered the seven
important letters in my pocket, made me feel light and
expansive.

I dreamed with my eyes gazing blankly upon the landscape until
I looked up to see a Red Cap frowning down. "Buddy, are you
getting off here?" he said. "If so, you better get started."

"Oh, sure," I said, beginning to move. "Sure, but how do
you get to Harlem?"

"That's easy," he said. "You just keep heading north."

And while I got down my bags and my prize brief case, still
as shiny as the night of the battle royal, he instructed me
how to take the subway, then I struggled through the crowd.

Moving into the subway I was pushed along by the milling
salt-and-pepper mob, seized in the back by a burly, blue-
uniformed attendant about the size of Supercargo, and
crammed, bags and all, into a train that was so crowded that
everyone seemed to stand with his head back and his eyes
bulging, like chickens frozen at the sound of danger. Then
the door banged behind me and I was crushed against a huge
woman in black who shook her head and smiled while I stared
with horror at a large mole that arose out of the oily whiteness
of her skin like a black mountain sweeping out of a rainwet
plain. And all the while I could feel the rubbery softness of
her flesh against the length of my body. I could neither turn
sideways nor back away, nor set down my bags. I was trapped,
so close that simply by nodding my head, I might have brushed
her lips with mine. I wanted desperately to raise my hands to
show her that it was against my will. I kept expecting her to
scream, until finally the car lurched and I was able to free my
left arm. I closed my eyes, holding desperately to my lapel.
The car roared and swayed, pressing me hard against her, but
when I took a furtive glance around no one was paying me the
slightest attention. And even she seemed lost in her own
thoughts. The train seemed to plunge downhill now, only to
lunge to a stop that shot me out upon a platform feeling like
something regurgitated from the belly of a frantic whale.
Wrestling with my bags, I swept along with the crowd, up the
stairs into the hot street. I didn't care where I was, I would
walk the rest of the way.

For a moment I stood before a shop window staring at my own
reflection in the glass, trying to recover from the ride
against the woman. I was limp, my clothing wet. "But you're up
North now," I told myself, "up North." Yes, but suppose she had
screamed . . . The next time I used the subway I'd always be
sure to enter with my hands grasping my lapels and I'd keep
them there until I left the train. Why, my God, they must have
riots on those things all the time. Why hadn't I read about
them?

I had never seen so many black people against a background
of brick buildings, neon signs, plate glass and roaring traf-
fic -- not even on trips I had made with the debating
team to New Orleans, Dallas or Birmingham. They were
everywhere. So many, and moving along with so much tension
and noise that I wasn't sure whether they were about to
celebrate a holiday or join in a street fight. There were even
black girls behind the counters of the Five and Ten as I passed.
Then at the street intersection I had the shock of seeing a black
policeman directing traffic -- and there were white drivers in
the traffic who obeyed his signals as though it was the most
natural thing in the world. Sure I had heard of it, but this was
real. My courage returned. This really was Harlem, and now all
the stories which I had heard of the city-within-a-city leaped
alive in my mind. The vet had been right: For me this was not a
city of realities, but of dreams; perhaps because I had always
thought of my life as being confined to the South. And now as I
struggled through the lines of people a new world of possibility
suggested itself to me faintly, like a small voice that was barely
audible in the roar of city sounds. I moved wide-eyed, trying to
take the bombardment of impressions. Then I stopped still.

It was ahead of me, angry and shrill, and upon hearing it
I had a sensation of shock and fear such as I had felt as a
child when surprised by my father's voice. An emptiness
widened in my stomach. Before me a gathering of people were
almost blocking the walk, while above them a short squat man
shouted angrily from a ladder to which were attached a
collection of small American flags.

"We gine chase 'em out," the man cried. "Out!"

"Tell 'em about it, Ras, mahn," a voice called.

And I saw the squat man shake his fist angrily over the
uplifted faces, yelling something in a staccato West Indian
accent, at which the crowd yelled threateningly. It was as
though a riot would break any minute, against whom I didn't
know. I was puzzled, both by the effect of his voice upon me
and by the obvious anger of the crowd. I had never seen so
many black men angry in public before, and yet others passed
the gathering by without even a glance. And as I came
alongside, I saw two white policemen talking quietly with one
another, their backs turned as they laughed at some joke. Even
when the shirt-sleeved crowd cried out in angry affirmation of
some remark of the speaker, they paid no attention. I was
stunned. I stood gaping at the policemen, my bags settling
upon the middle of the walk, until one of them happened to see
me and nudged the other, who chewed lazily upon a wad of
gum.

"What can we do for you, bud?" he said.

"I was just wondering . . ." I said, before I caught myself.

"Yeah?"

"I was just wondering how to get to Men's House, sir," I
said.

"Is that all?"

"Yes, sir," I stammered.

"You sure?"

"Yes, sir."

"He's a stranger," the other said. "Just coming to town,
bud?"

"Yes, sir," I said, "I just got off the subway."

"You did, huh? Well, you want to be careful."

"Oh, I will, sir."

"That's the idea. Keep it clean," he said, and directed
me to Men's House.

I thanked them and hurried on. The speaker had become
more violent than before and his remarks were about the
government. The clash between the calm of the rest of the
street and the passion of the voice gave the scene a strange
out-of-joint quality, and I was careful not to look back
lest I see a riot flare.

I reached Men's House in a sweat, registered, and went im-
mediately to my room. I would have to take Harlem a little at
a time.



Chapter 8



It was a clean little room with a dark orange bedspread.
The chair and dresser were maple and there was a Gideon
Bible lying upon a small table. I dropped my bags and sat on
the bed. From the street below came the sound of traffic, the
larger sound of the subway, the smaller, more varied sounds of
voices. Alone in the room, I could hardly believe that I was so
far away from home, yet there was nothing familiar in my
surroundings. Except the Bible; I picked it up and sat back on
the bed, allowing its blood-red-edged pages to ripple beneath
my thumb. I remembered how Dr. Bledsoe could quote from the
Book during his speeches to the student body on Sunday
nights. I turned to the book of Genesis, but could not read. I
thought of home and the attempts my father had made to
institute family prayer, the gathering around the stove at
mealtime and kneeling with heads bowed over the seats of our
chairs, his voice quavering and full of church-house rhetoric
and verbal humility. But this made me homesick and I put the
Bible aside. This was New York. I had to get a job and earn
money.

I took off my coat and hat and took my packet of letters
and lay back upon the bed, drawing a feeling of importance
from reading the important names. What was inside, and how
could I open them undetected? They were tightly sealed. I had
read that letters were sometimes steamed open, but I had no
steam. I gave it up, I really didn't need to know their contents
and it would not be honorable or safe to tamper with Dr.
Bledsoe. I knew already that they concerned me and were
addressed to some of the most important men in the whole
country. That was enough. I caught myself wishing for someone
to show the letters to, someone who could give me a proper
reflection of my importance. Finally, I went to the mirror and
gave myself an admiring smile as I spread the letters upon the
dresser like a hand of high trump cards.

Then I began to map my campaign for the next day. First, I
would have a shower, then get breakfast. All this very early.
I'd have to move fast. With important men like that you
had to be on time. If you made an appointment with one of
them, you couldn't bring them any slow c.p. (colored people's)
time. Yes, and I would have to get a watch. I would do
everything to schedule. I recalled the heavy gold chain that
hung between Dr. Bledsoe's vest pockets and the air with which
he snapped his watch open to consult the time, his lips pursed,
chin pulled in so that it multiplied, his forehead wrinkled. Then
he'd clear his throat and give a deeply intoned order, as though
each syllable were pregnant with nuances of profoundly
important meaning. I recalled my expulsion, feeling quick
anger and attempting to suppress it immediately; but now I
was not quite successful, my resentment stuck out at the
edges, making me uncomfortable. Maybe it was best, I thought
hastily. Maybe if it hadn't happened I would never have
received an opportunity to meet such important men face to
face. In my mind's eye I continued to see him gazing into his
watch, but now he was joined by another figure; a younger
figure, myself; become shrewd, suave and dressed not in
somber garments (like his old-fashioned ones) but in a dapper
suit of rich material, cut fashionably, like those of the men you
saw in magazine ads, the junior executive types in Esquire. I
imagined myself making a speech and caught in striking poses
by flashing cameras, snapped at the end of some period of
dazzling eloquence. A younger version of the doctor, less crude,
indeed polished. I would hardly ever speak above a whisper
and I would always be -- yes, there was no other word, I would
be charming. Like Ronald Colman. What a voice! Of course you
couldn't speak that way in the South, the white folks wouldn't
like it, and the Negroes would say that you were "putting on."
But here in the North I would slough off my southern ways of
speech. Indeed, I would have one way of speaking in the North
and another in the South. Give them what they wanted down
South, that was the way. If Dr. Bledsoe could do it, so could I.
Before going to bed that night I wiped off my brief case with a
clean towel and placed the letters carefully inside.

The next morning I took an early subway into the Wall
Street district, selecting an address that carried me almost to
the end of the island. It was dark with the tallness of the
buildings and the narrow streets. Armored cars with alert
guards went past as I looked for the number. The streets were
full of hurrying people who walked as though they had been
wound up and were directed by some unseen control. Many of
the men carried dispatch cases and brief cases and I gripped
mine with a sense of importance. And here and there I saw
Negroes who hurried along with leather pouches strapped to
their wrists. They reminded me fleetingly of prisoners carrying
their leg irons as they escaped from a chain gang. Yet they
seemed aware of some self-importance, and I wished to stop
one and ask him why he was chained to his pouch. Maybe they
got paid well for this, maybe they were chained to money.
Perhaps the man with rundown heels ahead of me was chained
to a million dollars!

I looked to see if there were policemen or detectives with
drawn guns following, but there was no one. Or if so, they
were hidden in the hurrying crowd. I wanted to follow one of
the men to see where he was going. Why did they trust him
with all that money? And what would happen if he should
disappear with it? But of course no one would be that foolish.
This was Wall Street. Perhaps it was guarded, as I had been
told post offices were guarded, by men who looked down at
you through peepholes in the ceiling and walls, watching you
constantly, silently waiting for a wrong move. Perhaps even
now an eye had picked me up and watched my every movement.
Maybe the face of that clock set in the gray building across
the street hid a pair of searching eyes. I hurried to my
address and was challenged by the sheer height of the white
stone with its sculptured bronze facade. Men and women hur-
ried inside, and after staring for a moment I followed, tak-
ing the elevator and being pushed to the back of the car. It
rose like a rocket, creating a sensation in my crotch as though
an important part of myself had been left below in the lobby.

At the last stop I left the car and went down a stretch of
marble hallway until I found the door marked with the trustee's
name. But starting to enter I lost my nerve and backed away. I
looked down the hall. It was empty. White folks were funny; Mr.
Bates might not wish to see a Negro the first thing in the
morning. I turned and walked down the hall and looked out of
the window. I would wait awhile.

Below me lay South Ferry, and a ship and two barges were
passing out into the river, and far out and to the right I
could make out the Statue of Liberty, her torch almost lost in
the fog. Back along the shore, gulls soared through the mist
above the docks, and down, so far below that it made me dizzy,
crowds were moving. I looked back to a ferry passing the
Statue of Liberty now, its backwash a curving line upon the bay
and three gulls swooping down behind it.

Behind me the elevator was letting off passengers, and I
heard the cheery voices of women going chattering down the
hall. Soon I would have to go in. My uncertainty grew. My
appearance worried me. Mr. Bates might not like my suit, or
the cut of my hair, and my chance of a job would be lost. I
looked at his name typed neatly across the envelope and
wondered how he earned his money. He was a millionaire, I
knew. Maybe he had always been; maybe he was born a mill-
ionaire. Never before had I been so curious about money as
now that I believed I was surrounded by it. Perhaps I would get
a job here and after a few years would be sent up and down the
streets with millions strapped to my arms, a trusted messenger.
Then I'd be sent South again to head the college -- just as the
mayor's cook had been made principal of the school after she'd
become too lame to stand before her stove. Only I wouldn't stay
North that long; they'd need me before that . . . But now for
the interview.

Entering the office I found myself face to face with a
young woman who looked up from her desk as I glanced swiftly
over the large light room, over the comfortable chairs, the
ceiling-high bookcases with gold and leather bindings, past a
series of portraits and back again, to meet her questioning
eyes. She was alone and I thought, Well, at least I'm not too
early . . .

"Good morning," she said, betraying none of the antagon-
ism I had expected.

"Good morning," I said, advancing. How should I begin?

"Yes?"

"Is this Mr. Bates' office?" I said.

"Why, yes, it is," she said. "Have you an appointment?"

"No, ma'm," I said, and quickly hated myself for saying
"ma'm" to so young a white woman, and in the North too. I
removed the letter from my brief case, but before I could
explain, she said,

"May I see it, please?"

I hesitated. I did not wish to surrender the letter except
to Mr. Bates, but there was a command in the extended hand,
and I obeyed. I surrendered it, expecting her to open it, but
instead, after looking at the envelope she rose and disa-
ppeared behind a paneled door without a word.

Back across the expanse of carpet to the door which I had
entered I noticed several chairs but was undecided to go
there. I stood, my hat in my hand, looking around me. One wall
caught my eyes. It was hung with three portraits of dignified
old gentlemen in winged collars who looked down from their
frames with an assurance and arrogance that I had never seen
in any except white men and a few bad, razor-scarred Negroes.
Not even Dr. Bledsoe, who had but to look around him without
speaking to set the teachers to trembling, had such assurance.
So these were the kind of men who stood behind him. How did
they fit in with the southern white folks, with the men who
gave me my scholarship? I was still staring, caught in the
spell of power and mystery, when the secretary returned.

She looked at me oddly and smiled. "I'm very sorry," she said,
"but Mr. Bates is just too busy to see you this morning and
asks that you leave your name and address. You'll hear from
him by mail."

I stood silent with disappointment. "Write it here," she
said, giving me a card.

"I'm sorry," she said again as I scribbled my address
and prepared to leave.

"I can be reached here at any time," I said.

"Very good," she said. "You should hear very soon."

She seemed very kind and interested, and I left in good
spirits. My fears were groundless, there was nothing to it.
This was New York.

I succeeded in reaching several trustees' secretaries
during the days that followed, and all were friendly and
encouraging. Some looked at me strangely, but I dismissed
it since it didn't appear to be antagonism. Perhaps they're
surprised to see someone like me with introductions to such
important men, I thought. Well, there were unseen lines that
ran from North to South, and Mr. Norton had called me his
destiny . . . I swung my brief case with confidence.

With things going so well I distributed my letters in the
mornings, and saw the city during the afternoons. Walking
about the streets, sitting on subways beside whites, eating with
them in the same cafeterias (although I avoided their tables)
gave me the eerie, out-of-focus sensation of a dream. My
clothes felt ill-fitting; and for all my letters to men of power,
I was unsure of how I should act. For the first time, as I swung
along the streets, I thought consciously of how I had conducted
myself at home. I hadn't worried too much about whites as
people. Some were friendly and some were not, and you tried
not to offend either. But here they all seemed impersonal; and
yet when most impersonal they startled me by being polite, by
begging my pardon after brushing against me in a crowd. Still I
felt that even when they were polite they hardly saw me, that
they would have begged the pardon of Jack the Bear, never
glancing his way if the bear happened to be walking along
minding his business. It was confusing. I did not know if it
was desirable or undesirable . . .

But my main concern was seeing the trustees and after
more than a week of seeing the city and being vaguely
encouraged by secretaries, I became impatient. I had dis-
tributed all but the letter to a Mr. Emerson, who I knew from
the papers was away from the city. Several times I started
down to see what had happened but changed my mind. I did
not wish to seem too impatient. But time was becoming short.
Unless I found work soon I would never earn enough to enter
school by fall. I had already written home that I was working
for a member of the trustee board, and the only letter I had
received so far was one telling me how wonderful they thought
it was and warning me against the ways of the wicked city.
Now I couldn't write them for money without revealing that I
had been lying about the job.

Finally I tried to reach the important men by telephone,
only to receive polite refusals by their secretaries. But
fortunately I still had the letter to Mr. Emerson. I decided to
use it, but instead of handing it over to a secretary, I wrote
a letter explaining that I had a message from Dr. Bledsoe and
requesting an appointment. Maybe I've been wrong about the
secretaries, I thought; maybe they destroyed the letters. I
should have been more careful.

I thought of Mr. Norton. If only the last letter had been
addressed to him. If only he lived in New York so that I could
make a personal appeal! Somehow I felt closer to Mr. Norton,
and felt that if he should see me, he would remember that it
was I whom he connected so closely to his fate. Now it seemed
ages ago and in a different season and a distant land. Actually,
it was less than a month. I became energetic and wrote him a
letter, expressing my belief that my future would be
immeasurably different if only I could work for him; that he
would be benefited as well as I. I was especially careful to
allow some indication of my ability to come through the appeal.
I spent several hours on the typing, destroying copy after copy
until I had completed one that was immaculate, carefully
phrased and most respectful. I hurried down and posted it
before the final mail collection, suddenly seized with the dizzy
conviction that it would bring results. I remained about the
building for three days awaiting an answer. But the letter
brought no reply. Nor, any more than a prayer unanswered by
God, was it returned.

My doubts grew. Perhaps all was not well. I remained in
my room all the next day. I grew conscious that I was afraid;
more afraid here in my room than I had ever been in the South.
And all the more, because here there was nothing concrete to
lay it to. All the secretaries had been encouraging. In the
evening I went out to a movie, a picture of frontier life with
heroic Indian fighting and struggles against flood, storm and
forest fire, with the out-numbered settlers winning each
engagement; an epic of wagon trains rolling ever westward. I
forgot myself (although there was no one like me taking part in
the adventures) and left the dark room in a lighter mood. But
that night I dreamed of my grandfather and awoke depressed. I
walked out of the building with a queer feeling that I was
playing a part in some scheme which I did not understand.
Somehow I felt that Bledsoe and Norton were behind it, and all
day I was inhibited in both speech and conduct, for fear that
I might say or do something scandalous. But this was all fan-
tastic, I told myself. I was being too impatient. I could wait
for the trustees to make a move. Perhaps I was being subjected
to a test of some kind. They hadn't told me the rules, I knew,
but the feeling persisted. Perhaps my exile would end suddenly
and I would be given a scholarship to return to the campus. But
when? How long?

Something had to happen soon. I would have to find a job
to tide me over. My money was almost gone and anything might
happen. I had been so confident that I had failed to put
aside the price of train fare home. I was miserable and I dared
not talk to anyone about my problems; not even the officials at
Men's House, for since they had learned that I was to be
assigned to an important job, they treated me with a certain
deference; therefore I was careful to hide my growing doubts.
After all, I thought, I might have to ask for credit and I'll have
to appear a good risk. No, the thing to do was to keep faith. I'd
start out once more in the morning. Something was certain to
happen tomorrow. And it did. I received a letter from Mr.
Emerson.



Chapter 9



It was a clear, bright day when I went out, and the sun
burned warm upon my eyes. Only a few flecks of snowy cloud
hung high in the morning-blue sky, and already a woman was
hanging wash on a roof. I felt better walking along. A feeling
of confidence grew. Far down the island the skyscrapers rose
tall and mysterious in the thin, pastel haze. A milk truck went
past. I thought of the school. What were they doing now on the
campus? Had the moon sunk low and the sun climbed clear?
Had the breakfast bugle blown? Did the bellow of the big seed
bull awaken the girls in the dorms this morning as on most
spring mornings when I was there -- sounding clear and full
above bells and bugles and early workaday sounds? I hurried
along, encouraged by the memories, and suddenly I was seized
with a certainty that today was the day. Something would
happen. I patted my brief case, thinking of the letter inside.
The last had been first -- a good sign.

Close to the curb ahead I saw a man pushing a cart piled
high with rolls of blue paper and heard him singing in a
clear ringing voice. It was a blues, and I walked along behind
him remembering the times that I had heard such singing at
home. It seemed that here some memories slipped around my
life at the campus and went far back to things I had long ago
shut out of my mind. There was no escaping such reminders.

"She's got feet like a monkey
Legs like a frog -- Lawd, Lawd!
But when she starts to loving me
I holler Whoooo, God-dog!
Cause I loves my baabay,
Better than I do myself . . ."

And as I drew alongside I was startled to hear him call
to me:

"Looka-year, buddy . . ."

"Yes," I said, pausing to look into his reddish eyes.

"Tell me just one thing this very fine morning -- Hey!
Wait a minute, daddy-o, I'm going your way!"

"What is it?" I said.

"What I want to know is," he said, "is you got the dog?"

"Dog? What dog?"

"Sho," he said, stopping his cart and resting it on its sup-
port. "That's it. Who --" he halted to crouch with one foot
on the curb like a country preacher about to pound his Bible --
"got . . . the . . . dog," his head snapping with each word
like an angry rooster's.

I laughed nervously and stepped back. He watched me out
of shrewd eyes. "Oh, goddog, daddy-o," he said with a
sudden bluster, "who got the damn dog? Now I know you from
down home, how come you trying to act like you never heard
that before! Hell, ain't nobody out here this morning but us
colored -- Why you trying to deny me?"

Suddenly I was embarrassed and angry. "Deny you?
What do you mean?"

"Just answer the question. Is you got him, or ain't you?"

"A dog?"

"Yeah, the dog."

I was exasperated. "No, not this morning," I said and
saw a grin spread over his face.

"Wait a minute, daddy. Now don't go get mad. Damn, man!
I thought sho you had him," he said, pretending to dis-
believe me. I started away and he pushed the cart beside
me. And suddenly I felt uncomfortable. Somehow he was like
one of the vets from the Golden Day . . .

"Well, maybe it's the other way round," he said. "Maybe
he got holt to you."

"Maybe," I said.

"If he is, you lucky it's just a dog -- 'cause, man, I tell
you I believe it's a bear that's got holt to me."

"A bear?"

"Hell, yes! The bear. Caint you see these patches where
he's been clawing at my behind?"

Pulling the seat of his Charlie Chaplin pants to the side,
he broke into deep laughter.

"Man, this Harlem ain't nothing but a bear's den. But I tell
you one thing," he said with swiftly sobering face, "it's the
best place in the world for you and me, and if times don't get
better soon I'm going to grab that bear and turn him every way
but loose!"

"Don't let him get you down," I said.

"No, daddy-o, I'm going to start with one my own size!"

I tried to think of some saying about bears to reply, but
remembered only Jack the Rabbit, Jack the Bear . . . who were
both long forgotten and now brought a wave of homesickness.
I wanted to leave him, and yet I found a certain comfort in
walking along beside him, as though we'd walked this way
before through other mornings, in other places . . .

"What is all that you have there?" I said, pointing to the
rolls of blue paper stacked in the cart.

"Blueprints, man. Here I got 'bout a hundred pounds of
blueprints and I couldn't build nothing!"

"What are they blueprints for?" I said.

"Damn if I know -- everything. Cities, towns, country clubs.
Some just buildings and houses. I got damn near enough to
build me a house if I could live in a paper house like they
do in Japan. I guess somebody done changed their plans," he
added with a laugh. "I asked the man why they getting rid of
all this stuff and he said they get in the way so every once
in a while they have to throw 'em out to make place for the
new plans. Plenty of these ain't never been used, you know."

"You have quite a lot," I said.

"Yeah, this ain't all neither. I got a coupla loads. There's
a day's work right here in this stuff. Folks is always making
plans and changing 'em."

"Yes, that's right," I said, thinking of my letters, "but
that's a mistake. You have to stick to the plan."

He looked at me, suddenly grave. "You kinda young,
daddy-o," he said.

I did not answer. We came to a corner at the top of a
hill.

"Well, daddy-o, it's been good talking with a youngster from
the old country but I got to leave you now. This here's one
of them good ole downhill streets. I can coast a while and won't
be worn out at the end of the day. Damn if I'm-a let 'em run me
into my grave. I be seeing you again sometime -- And you know
something?"

"What's that?"

"I thought you was trying to deny me at first, but now I
be pretty glad to see you . . ."

"I hope so," I said. "And you take it easy."

"Oh, I'll do that. All it takes to get along in this here
man's town is a little shit, grit and mother-wit. And man,
I was bawn with all three. In fact,

I'maseventhsonofaseventhsonbawnwithacauloverbotheyesandra
isedonblackcatboneshighjohntheconquerorandgreasygreens --"
he spieled with twinkling eyes, his lips working rapidly.
"You dig me, daddy?"

"You're going too fast," I said, beginning to laugh.

"Okay, I'm slowing down. I'll verse you but I won't curse
you -- My name is Peter Wheatstraw, I'm the Devil's only
son-in-law, so roll 'em! You a southern boy, ain't you?"
he said, his head to one side like a bear's.

"Yes," I said.

"Well, git with it! My name's Blue and I'm coming at you
with a pitchfork. Fe Fi Fo Fum. Who wants to shoot the Devil
one, Lord God Stingeroy!"

He had me grinning despite myself. I liked his words though
I didn't know the answer. I'd known the stuff from child-
hood, but had forgotten it; had learned it back of school...

"You digging me, daddy?" he laughed. "Haw, but look me up
sometimes, I'm a piano player and a rounder, a whiskey
drinker and a pavement pounder. I'll teach you some good
bad habits. You'll need 'em. Good luck," he said.

"So long," I said and watched him going. I watched him
push around the corner to the top of the hill leaning sharp
against the cart handle, and heard his voice arise, muffled
now, as he started down.

She's got feet like a monkeeee
Legs
Legs, Legs like a maaad
Bulldog . . .

What does it mean, I thought. I'd heard it all my life but
suddenly the strangeness of it came through to me. Was it
about a woman or about some strange sphinxlike animal?
Certainly his woman, no woman, fitted that description. And
why describe anyone in such contradictory words? Was it a
sphinx? Did old Chaplin-pants, old dusty-butt, love her or hate
her; or was he merely singing? What kind of woman could love
a dirty fellow like that, anyway? And how could even he love
her if she were as repulsive as the song described? I moved
ahead. Perhaps everyone loved someone; I didn't know. I
couldn't give much thought to love; in order to travel far you
had to be detached, and I had the long road back to the campus
before me. I strode along, hearing the cartman's song become
a lonesome, broad-toned whistle now that flowered at the end
of each phrase into a tremulous, blue-toned chord. And in its
flutter and swoop I heard the sound of a railroad train high-
balling it, lonely across the lonely night. He was the Devil's
son-in-law, all right, and he was a man who could whistle a
three-toned chord . . . God damn, I thought, they're a hell of a
people! And I didn't know whether it was pride or disgust that
suddenly flashed over me.

At the corner I turned into a drugstore and took a seat
at the counter. Several men were bent over plates of food.
Glass globes of coffee simmered above blue flames. I could
feel the odor of frying bacon reach deep into my stomach as I
watched the counterman open the doors of the grill and turn
the lean strips over and bang the doors shut again. Above,
facing the counter, a blonde, sun-burned college girl smiled
down, inviting all and sundry to drink a coke. The counterman
came over.

"I've got something good for you," he said, placing a glass
of water before me. "How about the special?"

"What's the special?"

"Pork chops, grits, one egg, hot biscuits and coffee!" He
leaned over the counter with a look that seemed to say, There,
that ought to excite you, boy. Could everyone see that I was
southern?

"I'll have orange juice, toast and coffee," I said coldly.

He shook his head, "You fooled me," he said, slamming two
pieces of bread into the toaster. "I would have sworn you
were a pork chop man. Is that juice large or small?"

"Make it large," I said.

I looked silently at the back of his head as he sliced an
orange, thinking, I should order the special and get up and
walk out. Who does he think he is?

A seed floated in the thick layer of pulp that formed at
the top of the glass. I fished it out with a spoon and then
downed the acid drink, proud to have resisted the pork chops
and grits. It was an act of discipline, a sign of the change
that was coming over me and which would return me to college
a more experienced man. I would be basically the same, I
thought, stirring my coffee, yet so subtly changed as to in-
trigue those who had never been North. It always helped at the
college to be a little different, especially if you wished to play
a leading role. It made the folks talk about you, try to figure
you out. I had to be careful though, not to speak too much like
a northern Negro; they wouldn't like that. The thing to do, I
thought with a smile, was to give them hints that whatever you
did or said was weighted with broad and mysterious meanings
that lay just beneath the surface. They'd love that. And the
vaguer you told things, the better. You had to keep them
guessing -- just as they guessed about Dr. Bledsoe: Did Dr.
Bledsoe stop at an expensive white hotel when he visited New
York? Did he go on parties with the trustees? And how did he
act?

"Man, I bet he has him a fine time. They tell me when
Ole Doc gets to New York he don't stop for the red lights.
Say he drinks his good red whiskey and smokes his good black
cigars and forgets all about you ole know-nothing-Negroes
down here on the campus. Say when he gets up North he
makes everybody call him Mister Doctor Bledsoe."

I smiled as the conversation came back to my mind. I felt
good. Perhaps it was all to the best that I had been sent
away. I had learned more. Heretofore all the campus gossip had
seemed merely malicious and disrespectful; now I could see the
advantage for Dr. Bledsoe. Whether we liked him or not, he was
never out of our minds. That was a secret of leadership. Strange
I should think of it now, for although I'd never given it
any thought before, I seemed to have known it all along. Only
here the distance from the campus seemed to make it clear and
hard, and I thought it without fear. Here it came to hand just as
easily as the coin which I now placed on the counter for my
breakfast. It was fifteen cents and as I felt for a nickel I took
out another dime, thinking, Is it an insult when one of us tips
one of them?

I looked for the counterman, seeing him serving a plate
of pork chops and grits to a man with a pale blond mustache,
and stared; then I slapped the dime on the counter and left,
annoyed that the dime did not ring as loud as a fifty-cent piece.


WHEN I reached the door of Mr. Emerson's office it occurred
to me that perhaps I should have waited until the business
of the day was under way, but I disregarded the idea and
went ahead. My being early would be, I hoped, an indication
of both how badly I wanted work, and how promptly I would
perform any assignment given me. Besides, wasn't there
a saying that the first person of the day to enter a bus-
iness would get a bargain? Or was that said only of Jewish
business? I removed the letter from my brief case. Was
Emerson a Christian or a Jewish name?

Beyond the door it was like a museum. I had entered a large
reception room decorated with cool tropical colors. One
wall was almost covered by a huge colored map, from which
narrow red silk ribbons stretched tautly from each division of
the map to a series of ebony pedestals, upon which sat glass
specimen jars containing natural products of the various
countries. It was an importing firm. I looked around the room,
amazed. There were paintings, bronzes, tapestries, all
beautifully arranged. I was dazzled and so taken aback that I
almost dropped my brief case when I heard a voice say, "And
what would your business be?"

I saw the figure out of a collar ad: ruddy face with blond
hair faultlessly in place, a tropical weave suit draped
handsomely from his broad shoulders, his eyes gray and
nervous behind clear-framed glasses.

I explained my appointment. "Oh, yes," he said. "May I
see the letter, please?"

I handed it over, noticing the gold links in the soft white
cuffs as he extended his hand. Glancing at the envelope he
looked back at me with a strange interest in his eyes and
said, "Have a seat, please. I'll be with you in a moment."

I watched him leave noiselessly, moving with a long hip-
swinging stride that caused me to frown. I went over and took
a teakwood chair with cushions of emerald-green silk, sitting
stiffly with my brief case across my knees. He must have been
sitting there when I came in, for on a table that held a beautiful
dwarf tree I saw smoke rising from a cigarette in a jade ash
tray. An open book, something called Totem and Taboo, lay
beside it. I looked across to a lighted case of Chinese design
which held delicate-looking statues of horses and birds, small
vases and bowls, each set upon a carved wooden base. The
room was quiet as a tomb -- until suddenly there was a savage
beating of wings and I looked toward the window to see an
eruption of color, as though a gale had whipped up a bundle of
brightly colored rags. It was an aviary of tropical birds set near
one of the broad windows, through which, as the clapping of
wings settled down, I could see two ships plying far out upon
the greenish bay below. A large bird began a song, drawing my
eyes to the throbbing of its bright blue, red and yellow throat.
It was startling and I watched the surge and flutter of the birds
as their colors flared for an instant like an unfurled oriental
fan. I wanted to go and stand near the cage for a better view,
but decided against it. It might seem unbusinesslike. I observed
the room from the chair.

These folks are the Kings of the Earth! I thought, hearing
the bird make an ugly noise. There was nothing like this at
the college museum -- or anywhere else that I had ever been.
I recalled only a few cracked relics from slavery times: an
iron pot, an ancient bell, a set of ankle-irons and links of
chain, a primitive loom, a spinning wheel, a gourd for drinking,
an ugly ebony African god that seemed to sneer (presented to
the school by some traveling millionaire), a leather whip with
copper brads, a branding iron with the double letter MM.
Though I had seen them very seldom, they were vivid in my
mind. They had not been pleasant and whenever I had visited
the room I avoided the glass case in which they rested,
preferring instead to look at photographs of the early days
after the Civil War, the times close to those blind Barbee had
described. And I had not looked even at these too often.

I tried to relax; the chair was beautiful but hard. Where
had the man gone? Had he shown any antagonism when he saw
me? I was annoyed that I had failed to see him first. One had
to watch such details. Suddenly there came a harsh cry from the
cage, and once more I saw a mad flashing as though the birds
had burst into spontaneous flame, fluttering and beating their
wings maliciously against the bamboo bars, only to settle down
just as suddenly when the door opened and the blond man
stood beckoning, his hand upon the knob. I went over, tense
inside me. Had I been accepted or rejected?

There was a question in his eyes. "Come in, please," he
said.

"Thank you," I said, waiting to follow him.

"Please," he said with a slight smile.

I moved ahead of him, sounding the tone of his words
for a sign.

"I want to ask you a few questions," he said, waving my
letter at two chairs.

"Yes, sir?" I said.

"Tell me, what is it that you're trying to accomplish?" he
said.

"I want a job, sir, so that I can earn enough money to
return to college in the fall."

"To your old school?"

"Yes, sir."

"I see." For a moment he studied me silently. "When do
you expect to graduate?"

"Next year, sir. I've completed my junior classes . . ."

"Oh, you have? That's very good. And how old are you?"

"Almost twenty, sir."

"A junior at nineteen? You are a good student."

"Thank you, sir," I said, beginning to enjoy the
interview.

"Were you an athlete?" he asked.

"No, sir . . ."

"You have the build," he said, looking me up and down.
"You'd probably make an excellent runner, a sprinter."

"I've never tried, sir."

"And I suppose it's silly even to ask what you think of
your Alma Mater?" he said.

"I think it's one of the best in the world," I said, hearing
my voice surge with deep feeling.

"I know, I know," he said, with a swift displeasure that
surprised me.

I became alert again as he mumbled something incompre-
hensible about "nostalgia for Harvard yard."

"But what if you were offered an opportunity to finish
your work at some other college," he said, his eyes widening
behind his glasses. His smile had returned.

"Another college?" I asked, my mind beginning to whirl.

"Why, yes, say some school in New England . . ."

I looked at him speechlessly. Did he mean Harvard? Was this
good or bad. Where was it leading? "I don't know, sir," I
said cautiously. "I've never thought about it. I've only a
year more, and, well, I know everyone at my old school and
they know me . . ."

I came to a confused halt, seeing him look at me with a
sigh of resignation. What was on his mind? Perhaps I had been
too frank about returning to the college, maybe he was against
our having a higher education . . . But hell, he's only a
secretary . . . Or is he?

"I understand," he said calmly. "It was presumptuous of
me to even suggest another school. I guess one's college is
really a kind of mother and father . . . a sacred matter."

"Yes, sir. That's it," I said in hurried agreement.

His eyes narrowed. "But now I must ask you an embarrassing
question. Do you mind?"

"Why, no, sir," I said nervously.

"I don't like to ask this, but it's quite necessary . . ." He
leaned forward with a pained frown. "Tell me, did you read the
letter which you brought to Mr. Emerson? This," he said, taking
the letter from the table.

"Why, no, sir! It wasn't addressed to me, so naturally I
wouldn't think of opening it . . ."

"Of course not, I know you wouldn't," he said, fluttering
his hand and sitting erect. "I'm sorry and you must dismiss
it, like one of those annoying personal questions you find
so often nowadays on supposedly impersonal forms."

I didn't believe him. "But was it opened, sir? Someone
might have gone into my things . . ."

"Oh, no, nothing like that. Please forget the question . . .
And tell me, please, what are your plans after graduation?"

"I'm not sure, sir. I'd like to be asked to remain at the
college as a teacher, or as a member of the administrative
staff. And . . . Well . . ."

"Yes? And what else?"

"Well -- er, I guess I'd really like to become Dr. Bledsoe's
assistant . . ."

"Oh, I see," he said, sitting back and forming his mouth
into a thin-lipped circle. "You're very ambitious."

"I guess I am, sir. But I'm willing to work hard."

"Ambition is a wonderful force," he said, "but sometimes
it can be blinding . . . On the other hand, it can make
you successful -- like my father . . ." A new edge came
into his voice and he frowned and looked down at his hands,
which were trembling. "The only trouble with ambition is that
it sometimes blinds one to realities . . . Tell me, how many
of these letters do you have?"

"I had about seven, sir," I replied, confused by his new
turn. "They're -- "

"Seven!" He was suddenly angry.

"Yes, sir, that was all he gave me . . ."

"And how many of these gentlemen have you succeeded in
seeing, may I ask?"

A sinking feeling came over me. "I haven't seen any of
them personally, sir."

"And this is your last letter?"

"Yes, sir, it is, but I expect to hear from the others . . .
They said --"

"Of course you will, and from all seven. They're all loyal
Americans."

There was unmistakable irony in his voice now, and I
didn't know what to say.

"Seven," he repeated mysteriously. "Oh, don't let me upset
you," he said with an elegant gesture of self-disgust. "I
had a difficult session with my analyst last evening and the
slightest thing is apt to set me off. Like an alarm clock without
control -- Say!" he said, slapping his palm against his thighs.
"What on earth does that mean?" Suddenly he was in a state.
One side of his face had begun to twitch and swell.

I watched him light a cigarette, thinking, What on earth
is this all about?

"Some things are just too unjust for words," he said,
expelling a plume of smoke, "and too ambiguous for either
speech or ideas. By the way, have you ever been to the Club
Calamus?"

"I don't think I've ever heard of it, sir," I said.

"You haven't? It's very well known. Many of my Harlem friends
go there. It's a rendezvous for writers, artists and all kinds
of celebrities. There's nothing like it in the city, and by
some strange twist it has a truly continental flavor."

"I've never been to a night club, sir. I'll have to go there
to see what it's like after I've started earning some money,"
I said, hoping to bring the conversation back to the problem
of jobs.

He looked at me with a jerk of his head, his face beginning
to twitch again.

"I suppose I've been evading the issue again -- as always.
Look," he burst out impulsively. "Do you believe that
two people, two strangers who have never seen one another
before can speak with utter frankness and sincerity?"

"Sir?"

"Oh, damn! What I mean is, do you believe it possible
for us, the two of us, to throw off the mask of custom and
manners that insulate man from man, and converse in naked
honesty and frankness?"

"I don't know what you mean exactly, sir." I said.

"Are you sure?"

"I . . ."

"Of course, of course. If I could only speak plainly! I'm
confusing you. Such frankness just isn't possible because all
our motives are impure. Forget what I just said. I'll try to
put it this way -- and remember this, please . . ."

My head spun. He was addressing me, leaning forward
confidentially, as though he'd known me for years, and I
remembered something my grandfather had said long ago:
Don't let no white man tell you his business, 'cause after he
tells you he's liable to git shame he tole it to you and then
he'll hate you. Fact is, he was hating you all the time. . .

". . . I want to try to reveal a part of reality that is most
important to you -- but I warn you, it's going to hurt. No, let me
finish," he said, touching my knee lightly and quickly removing
his hand as I shifted my position.

"What I want to do is done very seldom, and, to be honest,
it wouldn't happen now if I hadn't sustained a series of
impossible frustrations. You see -- well, I'm thwarted . . . Oh,
damn, there I go again, thinking only of myself . . . We're both
frustrated, understand? Both of us, and I want to help you . . ."

"You mean you'll let me see Mr. Emerson?"

He frowned. "Please don't seem so happy about it, and don't
leap to conclusions. I want to help, but there is a tyranny
involved . . ."

"A tyranny?" My lungs tightened.

"Yes. That's a way of putting it. Because to help you I
must disillusion you . . ."

"Oh, I don't think I mind, sir. Once I see Mr. Emerson,
it'll be up to me. All I want to do is speak to him."

"Speak to him," he said, getting quickly to his feet and
mashing his cigarette into the tray with shaking fingers. "No
one speaks to him. He does the speaking --" Suddenly he broke
off. "On second thought, perhaps you'd better leave me your
address and I'll mail you Mr. Emerson's reply in the morning.
He's really a very busy man."

His whole manner had changed.

"But you said . . ." I stood up, completely confused. Was
he having fun with me? "Couldn't you let me talk to him for just
five minutes?" I pleaded. "I'm sure I can convince him that I'm
worthy of a job. And if there's someone who has tampered with
my letter, I'll prove my identity . . . Dr. Bledsoe would --"

"Identity! My God! Who has any identity any more anyway?
It isn't so perfectly simple. Look," he said with an
anguished gesture. "Will you trust me?"

"Why, yes, sir, I trust you."

He leaned forward. "Look," he said, his face working
violently, "I was trying to tell you that I know many things
about you -- not you personally, but fellows like you. Not much,
either, but still more than the average. With us it's still Jim
and Huck Finn. A number of my friends are jazz musicians, and I've
been around. I know the conditions under which you live -- Why
go back, fellow? There is so much you could do here where
there is more freedom. You won't find what you're looking for
when you return anyway; because so much is involved that you
can't possibly know. Please don't misunderstand me; I don't say
all this to impress you. Or to give myself some kind of sadistic
catharsis. Truly, I don't. But I do know this world you're trying
to contact -- all its virtues and all its unspeakables -- Ha, yes,
unspeakables. I'm afraid my father considers me one of the
unspeakables . . . I'm Huckleberry, you see . . ."

He laughed drily as I tried to make sense of his ramblings.
Huckleberry? Why did he keep talking about that kid's story?
I was puzzled and annoyed that he could talk to me this way
because he stood between me and a job, the campus...

"But I only want a job, sir," I said. "I only want to make
enough money to return to my studies."

"Of course, but surely you suspect there is more to it than
that. Aren't you curious about what lies behind the face of
things?"

"Yes, sir, but I'm mainly interested in a job."

"Of course," he said, "but life isn't that simple . . ."

"But I'm not bothered about all the other things, whatever
they are, sir. They're not for me to interfere with and
I'll be satisfied to go back to college and remain there as
long as they'll allow me to."

"But I want to help you do what is best," he said. "What's
best, mind you. Do you wish to do what's best for yourself?"

"Why, yes, sir. I suppose I do . . ."

"Then forget about returning to the college. Go somewhere
else . . ."

"You mean leave?"

"Yes, forget it . . ."

"But you said that you would help me!"

"I did and I am --"

"But what about seeing Mr. Emerson?"

"Oh, God! Don't you see that it's best that you do not
see him?"

Suddenly I could not breathe. Then I was standing, grip-
ping my brief case. "What have you got against me?" I blurt-
ed. "What did I ever do to you? You never intended to let
me see him. Even though I presented my letter of introduction.
Why? Why? I'd never endanger your job --"

"No, no, no! Of course not," he cried, getting to his feet.
"You've misunderstood me. You mustn't do that! God, there's
too much misunderstanding. Please don't think I'm trying to
prevent you from seeing my -- from seeing Mr. Emerson out of
prejudice . . ."

"Yes, sir, I do," I said angrily. "I was sent here by a friend
of his. You read the letter, but still you refuse to let me
see him, and now you're trying to get me to leave college. What
kind of man are you, anyway? What have you got against me?
You, a northern white man!"

He looked pained. "I've done it badly," he said, "but you
must believe that I am trying to advise you what is best for
you." He snatched off his glasses.

"But I know what's best for me," I said. "Or at least Dr.
Bledsoe does, and if I can't see Mr. Emerson today, just tell
me when I can and I'll be here . . ."

He bit his lips and shut his eyes, shaking his head from
side to side as though fighting back a scream. "I'm sorry, really
sorry that I started all of this," he said, suddenly calm. "It was
foolish of me to try to advise you, but please, you mustn't
believe that I'm against you . . . or your race. I'm your friend.
Some of the finest people I know are Neg -- Well, you see, Mr.
Emerson is my father."

"Your father!"

"My father, yes, though I would have preferred it otherwise.
But he is, and I could arrange for you to see him. But to be
utterly frank, I'm incapable of such cynicism. It would
do you no good."

"But I'd like to take my chances, Mr. Emerson, sir . . .This
is very important to me. My whole career depends upon it."

"But you have no chance," he said.

"But Dr. Bledsoe sent me here," I said, growing more excited.
"I must have a chance . . ."

"Dr. Bledsoe," he said with distaste. "He's like my . . . he
ought to be horsewhipped! Here," he said, sweeping up the
letter and thrusting it crackling toward me. I took it, looking
into his eyes that burned back at me.

"Go on, read it," he cried excitedly. "Go on!"

"But I wasn't asking for this," I said.

"Read it!"

My dear Mr. Emerson:

The bearer of this letter is a former student of ours (I
say former because he shall never, under any circumstances,
be enrolled as a student here again) who has been expelled for
a most serious defection from our strictest rules of deport-
ment.

Due, however, to circumstances the nature of which I
shall explain to you in person on the occasion of the next
meeting of the board, it is to the best interests of the college
that this young man have no knowledge of the finality of his
expulsion. For it is indeed his hope to return here to his classes
in the fall. However, it is to the best interests of the great
work which we are dedicated to perform, that he continue
undisturbed in these vain hopes while remaining as far as
possible from our midst.

This case represents, my dear Mr. Emerson, one of the
rare, delicate instances in which one for whom we held great
expectations has gone grievously astray, and who in his fall
threatens to upset certain delicate relationships between
certain interested individuals and the school. Thus, while the
bearer is no longer a member of our scholastic family, it is
highly important that his severance with the college be exe-
cuted as painlessly as possible. I beg of you, sir, to help
him continue in the direction of that promise which, like the
horizon, recedes ever brightly and distantly beyond the hopeful
traveler.

Respectfully, I am your humble servant,

A. Herbert Bledsoe

I raised my head. Twenty-five years seemed to have lapsed
between his handing me the letter and my grasping its message.
I could not believe it, tried to read it again. I could not believe
it, yet I had a feeling that it all had happened before. I rubbed
my eyes, and they felt sandy as though all the fluids had sud-
denly dried.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm terribly sorry."

"What did I do? I always tried to do the right thing.

"That you must tell me," he said. "To what does he refer?"

"I don't know, I don't know . . ."

"But you must have done something."

"I took a man for a drive, showed him into the Golden
Day to help him when he became ill ... I don't know
I told him falteringly of the visit to Trueblood's and the
trip to the Golden Day and of my expulsion, watching his
mobile face reflecting his reaction to each detail.

"It's little enough," he said when I had finished. "I don't
understand the man. He is very complicated."

"I only wanted to return and help," I said.

"You'll never return. You can't return now," he said. "Don't
you see? I'm terribly sorry and yet I'm glad that I gave in to
the impulse to speak to you. Forget it; though that's advice
which I've been unable to accept myself, it's still good advice.
There is no point in blinding yourself to the truth. Don't blind
yourself . . ."

I got up, dazed, and started toward the door. He came
behind me into the reception room where the birds flamed in
the cage, their squawks like screams in a nightmare.
He stammered guiltily, "Please, I must ask you never to
mention this conversation to anyone."

"No," I said.

"I wouldn't mind, but my father would consider my revela-
tion the most extreme treason . . . You're free of him now.
I'm still his prisoner. You have been freed, don't you
understand? I've still my battle." He seemed near tears.

"I won't," I said. "No one would believe me. I can't
myself. There must be some mistake. There must be . . ."

I opened the door.

"Look, fellow," he said. "This evening I'm having a party
at the Calamus. Would you like to join my guests? It might help
you --"

"No, thank you, sir. I'll be all right."

"Perhaps you'd like to be my valet?"

I looked at him. "No, thank you, sir," I said.

"Please," he said. "I really want to help. Look, I happen
to know of a possible job at Liberty Paints. My father has
sent several fellows there . . . You should try --"

I shut the door.

The elevator dropped me like a shot and I went out and
walked along the street. The sun was very bright now and the
people along the walk seemed far away. I stopped before a gray
wall where high above me the headstones of a church
graveyard arose like the tops of buildings. Across the street in
the shade of an awning a shoeshine boy was dancing for
pennies. I went on to the corner and got on a bus and went
automatically to the rear. In the seat in front of me a dark man
in a panama hat kept whistling a tune between his teeth. My
mind, flew in circles, to Bledsoe, Emerson and back again.
There was no sense to be made of it. It was a joke. Hell, it
couldn't be a joke. Yes, it is a joke . . . Suddenly the bus
jerked to a stop and I heard myself humming the same tune that
the man ahead was whistling, and the words came back:

O well they picked poor Robin clean
O well they picked poor Robin clean
Well they tied poor Robin to a stump
Lawd, they picked all the feathers round from
Robin's rump
Well they picked poor Robin clean.

Then I was on my feet, hurrying to the door, hearing the
thin, tissue-paper-against-the-teeth-of-a-comb whistle following
me outside at the next stop. I stood trembling at the curb,
watching and half expecting to see the man leap from the door
to follow me, whistling the old forgotten jingle about a bare
rumped robin. My mind seized upon the tune. I took the
subway and it still droned through my mind after I had reached
my room at Men's House and lay across the bed. What was the
who-what-when-why-where of poor old Robin? What had he
done and who had tied him and why had they plucked him and
why had we sung of his fate? It was for a laugh, for a laugh, all
the kids had laughed and laughed, and the droll tuba player of
the old Elk's band had rendered it solo on his helical horn; with
comical flourishes and doleful phrasing, "Boo boo boo booooo,
Poor Robin clean" -- a mock funeral dirge . . . But who was
Robin and for what had he been hurt and humiliated?

Suddenly I lay shaking with anger. It was no good. I
thought of young Emerson. What if he'd lied out of some
ulterior motive of his own? Everyone seemed to have some plan
for me, and beneath that some more secret plan. What was
young Emerson's plan -- and why should it have included me?
Who was I anyway? I tossed fitfully. Perhaps it was a test of my
good will and faith -- But that's a lie, I thought. It's a lie
and you know it's a lie. I had seen the letter and it had prac-
tically ordered me killed. By slow degrees . . .

"My dear Mr. Emerson," I said aloud. "The Robin bearing this
letter is a former student. Please hope him to death, and keep
him running. Your most humble and obedient servant, A. H. Bled-
soe . . ."

Sure, that's the way it was, I thought, a short, concise
verbal coup de grace, straight to the nape of the neck. And
Emerson would write in reply? Sure: "Dear Bled, have met
Robin and shaved tail. Signed, Emerson."

I sat on the bed and laughed. They'd sent me to the rook-
ery, all right. I laughed and felt numb and weak, knowing
that soon the pain would come and that no matter what
happened to me I'd never be the same. I felt numb and I was
laughing. When I stopped, gasping for breath, I decided that
I would go back and kill Bledsoe. Yes, I thought, I owe it
to the race and to myself. I'll kill him.

And the boldness of the idea and the anger behind it
made me move with decision. I had to have a job and I took
what I hoped was the quickest means. I called the plant young
Emerson had mentioned, and it worked. I was told to report the
following morning. It happened so quickly and with such ease
that for a moment I felt turned around. Had they planned it this
way? But no, they wouldn't catch me again. This time I had
made the move.

I could hardly get to sleep for dreaming of revenge.



Chapter 10



The plant was in Long Island, and I crossed a bridge in
the fog to get there and came down in a stream of workers.
Ahead of me a huge electric sign announced its message
through the drifting strands of fog:

KEEP AMERICA PURE WITH LIBERTY PAINTS

Flags were fluttering in the breeze from each of a maze
of buildings below the sign, and for a moment it was like
watching some vast patriotic ceremony from a distance. But no
shots were fired and no bugles sounded. I hurried ahead with
the others through the fog.

I was worried, since I had used Emerson's name without
his permission, but when I found my way to the personnel
office it worked like magic. I was interviewed by a
little droopy-eyed man named Mr. MacDuffy and sent to work
for a Mr. Kimbro. An office boy came along to direct me.
"If Kimbro needs him," MacDuffy told the boy, "come back
and have his name entered on the shipping department's
payroll."

"It's tremendous," I said as we left the building. "It
looks like a small city."

"It's big all right," he said. "We're one of the biggest
outfits in the business. Make a lot of paint for the gov-
ernment."

We entered one of the buildings now and started down
a pure white hall.

"You better leave your things in the locker room," he
said, opening a door through which I saw a room with low
wooden benches and rows of green lockers. There were keys in
several of the locks, and he selected one for me. "Put your stuff
in there and take the key," he said. Dressing, I felt nervous.
He sprawled with one foot on a bench, watching me closely as he
chewed on a match stem. Did he suspect that Emerson hadn't
sent me?

"They have a new racket around here," he said, twirling
the match between his finger and thumb. There was a note of
insinuation in his voice, and I looked up from tying my shoe,
breathing with conscious evenness.

"What kind of racket?" I said.

"Oh, you know. The wise guys firing the regular guys and
putting on you colored college boys. Pretty smart," he said.
"That way they don't have to pay union wages."

"How did you know I went to college?" I said.

"Oh, there're about six of you guys out here already.
Some up in the testing lab. Everybody knows about that."

"But I had no idea that was why I was hired," I said.

"Forget it, Mac," he said. "It's not your fault. You new
guys don't know the score. Just like the union says, it's
the wise guys in the office. They're the ones who make
scabs out of you - - Hey! we better hurry."

We entered a long, shed-like room in which I saw a
series of overhead doors along one side and a row of small
offices on the other. I followed the boy down an aisle between
endless cans, buckets and drums labeled with the company's
trademark, a screaming eagle. The paint was stacked in neatly
pyramided lots along the concrete floor. Then, starting into
one of the offices, the boy stopped short and grinned.

"Listen to that!"

Someone inside the office was swearing violently over a
telephone.

"Who's that?" I asked.

He grinned. "Your boss, the terrible Mr. Kimbro. We call
him 'Colonel,' but don't let him catch you."

I didn't like it. The voice was raving about some failure
of the laboratory and I felt a swift uneasiness. I didn't like
the idea of starting to work for a man who was in such a nasty
mood. Perhaps he was angry at one of the men from the school,
and that wouldn't make him feel too friendly toward me.

"Let's go in," the boy said. "I've got to get back."

As we entered, the man slammed down the phone and
picked up some papers.

"Mr. MacDuffy wants to know if you can use this new
man," the boy said.

"You damn right I can use him and . . ." the voice trailed
off, the eyes above the stiff military mustache going hard.

"Well, can you use him?" the boy said. "I got to go make
out his card."

"Okay," the man said finally. "I can use him. I gotta.
What's his name?"

The boy read my name off a card.

"All right," he said, "you go right to work. And you," he
said to the boy, "get the hell out of here before I give
you a chance to earn some of the money wasted on you every
payday!"

"Aw, gwan, you slave driver," the boy said, dashing from
the room.

Reddening, Kimbro turned to me, "Come along, let's get
going."

I followed him into the long room where the lots of paint
were stacked along the floor beneath numbered markers that
hung from the ceiling. Toward the rear I could see two
men unloading heavy buckets from a truck, stacking them
neatly on a low loading platform.

"Now get this straight," Kimbro said gruffly. "This is a
busy department and I don't have time to repeat things. You
have to follow instructions and you're going to be doing things
you don't understand, so get your orders the first time and get
them right! I won't have time to stop and explain everything.
You have to catch on by doing exactly what I tell you. You got
that?"

I nodded, noting that his voice became louder when the
men across the floor stopped to listen.

"All right," he said, picking up several tools. "Now come
over here."

"He's Kimbro," one of the men said.

I watched him kneel and open one of the buckets, stirring
a milky brown substance. A nauseating stench arose. I
wanted to step away. But he stirred it vigorously until it
became glossy white, holding the spatula like a delicate
instrument and studying the paint as it laced off the blade,
back into the bucket. Kimbro frowned.

"Damn those laboratory blubberheads to hell! There's got
to be dope put in every single sonofabitching bucket. And
that's what you're going to do, and it's got to be put in
so it can be trucked out of here before 11:30." He handed
me a white enamel graduate and what looked like a battery
hydrometer.

"The idea is to open each bucket and put in ten drops of
this stuff," he said. "Then you stir it 'til it disappears.
After it's mixed you take this brush and paint out a sample
on one of these." He produced a number of small rectangular
boards and a small brush from his jacket pocket. "You under-
stand?"

"Yes, sir." But when I looked into the white graduate I hes-
itated; the liquid inside was dead black. Was he trying to kid
me?

"What's wrong?"

"I don't know, sir . . . I mean. Well, I don't want to start
by asking a lot of stupid questions, but do you know what's in
this graduate?"

His eyes snapped. "You damn right I know," he said.
"You just do what you're told!"

"I just wanted to make sure, sir," I said.

"Look," he said, drawing in his breath with an exaggerated
show of patience. "Take the dropper and fill it full
. . . Go on, do it!"

I filled it.

"Now measure ten drops into the paint . . . There, that's
it, not too goddam fast. Now. You want no more than ten, and
no less."

Slowly, I measured the glistening black drops, seeing
them settle upon the surface and become blacker still,
spreading suddenly out to the edges.

"That's it. That's all you have to do," he said. "Never mind
how it looks. That's my worry. You just do what you're told
and don't try to think about it. When you've done five or six
buckets, come back and see if the samples are dry . . . And
hurry, we've got to get this batch back off to Washington by
11:30 . . ."

I worked fast but carefully. With a man like this Kimbro
the least thing done incorrectly would cause trouble. So I
wasn't supposed to think! To hell with him. Just a flunkey,
a northern redneck, a Yankee cracker! I mixed the paint
thoroughly, then brushed it smoothly on one of the pieces of
board, careful that the brush strokes were uniform.

Struggling to remove an especially difficult cover, I
wondered if the same Liberty paint was used on the campus, or
if this "Optic White" was something made exclusively for the
government. Perhaps it was of a better quality, a special mix.
And in my mind I could see the brightly trimmed and freshly
decorated campus buildings as they appeared on spring
mornings -- after the fall painting and the light winter snows,
with a cloud riding over and a darting bird above -- framed by
the trees and encircling vines. The buildings had always
seemed more impressive because they were the only buildings
to receive regular paintings; usually, the nearby houses and
cabins were left untouched to become the dull grained gray of
weathered wood. And I remembered how the splinters in some
of the boards were raised from the grain by the wind, the sun
and the rain until the clapboards shone with a satiny, silvery,
silver-fish sheen. Like Trueblood's cabin, or the Golden Day . . .
The Golden Day had once been painted white; now its paint
was flaking away with the years, the scratch of a finger being
enough to send it showering down. Damn that Golden Day! But
it was strange how life connected up; because I had carried Mr.
Norton to the old rundown building with rotting paint, I was
here. If, I thought, one could slow down his heartbeats and
memory to the tempo of the black drops falling so slowly into
the bucket yet reacting so swiftly, it would seem like a se-
quence in a feverish dream . . . I was so deep in reverie that I
failed to hear Kimbro approach.

"How's it coming?" he said, standing with hands on hips.

"All right, sir."

"Let's see," he said, selecting a sample and running his
thumb across the board. "That's it, as white as George
Washington's Sunday-go-to-meetin' wig and as sound as the al-
mighty dollar! That's paint!" he said proudly. "That's paint
that'll cover just about anything!"

He looked as though I had expressed a doubt and I hurried
to say, "It's certainly white all right."

"White! It's the purest white that can be found. Nobody
makes a paint any whiter. This batch right here is heading
for a national monument!"

"I see," I said, quite impressed.

He looked at his watch. "Just keep it up," he said. "If I
don't hurry I'll be late for that production conference! Say,
you're nearly out of dope: you'd better go in the tank room
and refill it . . . And don't waste any time! I've got to go."

He shot away without telling me where the tank room was. It
was easy to find, but I wasn't prepared for so many tanks.
There were seven; each with a puzzling code stenciled on it.
It's just like Kimbro not to tell me, I thought. You can't
trust any of them. Well, it doesn't matter, I'll pick the tank
from the contents of the drip cans hanging from the spigots.
But while the first five tanks contained clear liquids that
smelled like turpentine, the last two both contained something
black like the dope, but with different codes. So I had to make
a choice. Selecting the tank with the drip can that smelled most
like the dope, I filled the graduate, congratulating myself for
not having to waste time until Kimbro returned.

The work went faster now, the mixing easier. The pigment
and heavy oils came free of the bottom much quicker,
and when Kimbro returned I was going at top speed. "How
many have you finished?" he asked.

"About seventy-five, I think, sir. I lost count."

"That's pretty good, but not fast enough. They've been put-
ting pressure on me to get the stuff out. Here, I'll give you a
hand."

They must have given him hell, I thought, as he got
grunting to his knees and began removing covers from the
buckets. But he had hardly started when he was called away.
When he left I took a look at the last bunch of samples
and got a shock: Instead of the smooth, hard surface of the
first, they were covered with a sticky goo through which I could
see the grain of the wood. What on earth had happened? The
paint was not as white and glossy as before; it had a gray tinge.
I stirred it vigorously, then grabbed a rag, wiping each of the
boards clean, then made a new sample of each bucket. I grew
panicky lest Kimbro return before I finished. Working
feverishly, I made it, but since the paint required a few minutes
to dry I picked up two finished buckets and started lugging
them over to the loading platform. I dropped them with a
thump as the voice rang out behind me. It was Kimbro.

"What the hell!" he yelled, smearing his finger over one
of the samples. "This stuff's still wet!"

I didn't know what to say. He snatched up several of the
later samples, smearing them, and letting out a groan. "Of all
the things to happen to me. First they take all my good men
and then they send me you. What'd you do to it?"

"Nothing, sir. I followed your directions," I said
defensively.

I watched him peer into the graduate, lifting the dropper
and sniffing it, his face glowing with exasperation.

"Who the hell gave you this?"

"No one . . ."

"Then where'd you get it?"

"From the tank room."

Suddenly he dashed for the tank room, sloshing the liquid
as he ran. I thought, Oh, hell, and before I could follow,
he burst out of the door in a frenzy.

"You took the wrong tank," he shouted. "What the hell,
you trying to sabotage the company? That stuff wouldn't work
in a million years. It's remover, concentrated remover! Don't
you know the difference?"

"No, sir, I don't. It looked the same to me. I didn't know
what I was using and you didn't tell me. I was trying to save
time and took what I thought was right."

"But why this one?"

"Because it smelled the same --" I began.

"Smelted!" he roared. "Goddamit, don't you know you can't
smell shit around all those fumes? Come on to my office!"

I was torn between protesting and pleading for fairness.
It was not all my fault and I didn't want the blame, but I did
wish to finish out the day. Throbbing with anger I followed,
listening as he called personnel.

"Hello? Mac? Mac, this is Kimbro. It's about this fellow
you sent me this morning. I'm sending him in to pick up his pay
. . . What did he do? He doesn't satisfy me, that's what. I don't
like his work . . . So the old man has to have a report, so what?
Make him one. Tell him goddamit this fellow ruined a batch of
government stuff -- Hey! No, don't tell him that . . . Listen, Mac,
you got anyone else out there? . . . Okay, forget it."

He crashed down the phone and swung toward me. "I swear I
don't know why they hire you fellows. You just don't belong
in a paint plant. Come on."

Bewildered, I followed him into the tank room, yearning to quit
and tell him to go to hell. But I needed the money, and even
though this was the North I wasn't ready to fight unless I
had to. Here I'd be one against how many?

I watched him empty the graduate back into the tank and noted
carefully when he went to another marked SKA-3-69-T-Y and re-
filled it. Next time I would know.

"Now, for God's sake," he said, handing me the graduate,
"be careful and try to do the job right. And if you
don't know what to do, ask somebody. I'll be in my office."
I returned to the buckets, my emotions whirling.

Kimbro had forgotten to say what was to be done with the
spoiled paint. Seeing it there I was suddenly seized by an angry
impulse, and, filling the dropper with fresh dope, I stirred ten
drops into each bucket and pressed home the covers. Let the
government worry about that, I thought, and started to work on
the unopened buckets. I stirred until my arm ached and painted
the samples as smoothly as I could, becoming more skillful as I
went along.

When Kimbro came down the floor and watched I glanced up
silently and continued stirring.

"How is it?" he said, frowning.

"I don't know," I said, picking up a sample and hesitating.

"Well?"

"It's nothing . . . a speck of dirt," I said, standing and
holding out the sample, a tightness growing within me.
Holding it close to his face, he ran his fingers over the
surface and squinted at the texture. "That's more like it,"
he said. "That's the way it oughta be."

I watched with a sense of unbelief as he rubbed his
thumb over the sample, handed it back and left without a
further word.

I looked at the painted slab. It appeared the same: a
gray tinge glowed through the whiteness, and Kimbro had
failed to detect it. I stared for about a minute, wondering if
I were seeing things, inspected another and another. All were
the same, a brilliant white diffused with gray, I closed my
eyes for a moment and looked again and still no change. Well,
I thought, as long as he's satisfied . . .

But I had a feeling that something had gone wrong, something
far more important than the paint; that either I had played
a trick on Kimbro or he, like the trustees and Bledsoe,
was playing one on me . . .

When the truck backed up to the platform I was pressing
the cover on the last bucket -- and there stood Kimbro
above me.

"Let's see your samples," he said.

I reached, trying to select the whitest, as the blue-
shirted truckmen climbed through the loading door.

"How about it, Kimbro," one of them said, "can we get
started?"

"Just a minute, now," he said, studying the sample, "just
a minute . . ."

I watched him nervously, waiting for him to throw a fit
over the gray tinge and hating myself for feeling nervous and
afraid. What would I say? But now he was turning to the
truckmen.

"All right, boys, get the hell out of here.

"And you," he said to me, "go see MacDuffy; you're through."

I stood there, staring at the back of his head, at the pink
neck beneath the cloth cap and the iron-gray hair. So he'd let
me stay only to finish the mixing. I turned away, there was
nothing that I could do. I cursed him all the way to the
personnel office. Should I write the owners about what had
happened? Perhaps they didn't know that Kimbro was having
so much to do with the quality of the paint. But upon reaching
the office I changed my mind. Perhaps that is how things are
done here, I thought, perhaps the real quality of the paint is
always determined by the man who ships it rather than by
those who mix it. To hell with the whole thing . . . I'll find
another job.

But I wasn't fired. MacDuffy sent me to the basement of
Building No. 2 on a new assignment.

"When you get down there just tell Brockway that Mr. Spar-
land insists that he have an assistant. You do whatever he
tells you."

"What is that name again, sir?" I said.

"Lucius Brockway," he said. "He's in charge."

IT WAS a deep basement. Three levels underground I
pushed upon a heavy metal door marked "Danger" and
descended into a noisy, dimly lit room. There was something
familiar about the fumes that filled the air and I had just
thought pine, when a high-pitched Negro voice rang out above
the machine sounds.

"Who you looking for down here?"

"I'm looking for the man in charge," I called, straining
to locate the voice.

"You talkin' to him. What you want?"

The man who moved out of the shadow and looked at me sull-
enly was small, wiry and very natty in his dirty overalls.
And as I approached him I saw his drawn face and the cottony
white hair showing beneath his tight, striped engineer's cap.
His manner puzzled me. I couldn't tell whether he felt guilty
about something himself, or thought I had committed some
crime. I came closer, staring. He was barely five feet tall,
his overalls looking now as though he had been dipped in pitch.

"All right," he said. "I'm a busy man. What you want?"

"I'm looking for Lucius," I said.

He frowned. "That's me -- and don't come calling me by
my first name. To you and all like you I'm Mister Brockway . . ."

"You . . . ?" I began.

"Yeah, me! Who sent you down here anyway?"

"The personnel office," I said. "I was told to tell you that
Mr. Sparland said for you to be given an assistant."

"Assistant!" he said. "I don't need no damn assistant!
Old Man Sparland must think I'm getting old as him. Here I
been running things by myself all these years and now they
keep trying to send me some assistant. You get on back up
there and tell 'em that when I want an assistant I'll ask for
one!"

I was so disgusted to find such a man in charge that I
turned without a word and started back up the stairs. First
Kimbro, I thought, and now this old . . .

"Hey! wait a minute!"

I turned, seeing him beckon.

"Come on back here a minute," he called, his voice
cutting sharply through the roar of the furnaces.
I went back, seeing him remove a white cloth from his
hip pocket and wipe the glass face of a pressure gauge,
then bend close to squint at the position of the needle.

"Here," he said, straightening and handing me the cloth,
"you can stay 'til I can get in touch with the Old Man.
These here have to be kept clean so's I can see how much
pressure I'm getting."

I took the cloth without a word and began rubbing the
glasses. He watched me critically.

"What's your name?" he said.

I told him, shouting it in the roar of the furnaces.

"Wait a minute," he called, going over and turning a valve
in an intricate network of pipes. I heard the noise rise to
a higher, almost hysterical pitch, somehow making it possible
to hear without yelling, our voices moving blurrily under-
neath. Returning, he looked at me sharply, his withered face
an animated black walnut with shrewd, reddish eyes.

"This here's the first time they ever sent me anybody like
you," he said as though puzzled. "That's how come I called
you back. Usually they sends down some young white fellow
who thinks he's going to watch me a few days and ask me a
heap of questions and then take over. Some folks is too damn
simple to even talk about," he said, grimacing and waving his
hand in a violent gesture of dismissal. "You an engineer?" he
said, looking quickly at me.

"An engineer?"

"Yeah, that's what I asked you," he said challengingly.

"Why, no, sir, I'm no engineer."

"You sho?"

"Of course I'm sure. Why shouldn't I be?"

He seemed to relax. "That's all right then. I have to watch
them personnel fellows. One of them thinks he's going to
git me out of here, when he ought to know by now he's wasting
his time. Lucius Brockway not only intends to protect hisself,
he knows how to do it! Everybody knows I been here ever since
there's been a here -- even helped dig the first foundation. The
Old Man hired me, nobody else; and, by God, it'll take the Old
Man to fire me!"

I rubbed away at the gauges, wondering what had brought
on this outburst, and was somewhat relieved that he
seemed to hold nothing against me personally.

"Where you go to school?" he said.

I told him.

"Is that so? What you learning down there?"

"Just general subjects, a regular college course," I said.

"Mechanics?"

"Oh no, nothing like that, just a liberal arts course. No
trades."

"Is that so?" he said doubtfully. Then suddenly, "How
much pressure I got on that gauge right there?"

"Which?"

"You see it," he pointed. "That one right there!"

I looked, calling off, "Forty-three and two-tenths
pounds."

"Uh huh, uh huh, that's right." He squinted at the gauge
and back at me. "Where you learn to read a gauge so good?"

"In my high-school physics class. It's like reading a
clock."

"They teach you that in high school?"

"That's right."

"Well, that's going to be one of your jobs. These here
gauges have to be checked every fifteen minutes. You ought to
be able to do that."

"I think I can," I said.

"Some kin, some caint. By the way, who hired you?"

"Mr. MacDuffy," I said, wondering why all the questions.

"Yeah, then where you been all morning?"

"I was working over in Building No. 1."

"That there's a heap of building. Where 'bouts?"

"For Mr. Kimbro."

"I see, I see. I knowed they oughtn't to be hiring any-
body this late in the day. What Kimbro have you doing?"

"Putting dope in some paint that went bad," I said
wearily, annoyed with all the questions.

His lips shot out belligerently. "What paint went bad?"

"I think it was some for the government . . ."

He cocked his head. "I wonder how come nobody said nothing
to me about it," he said thoughtfully. "Was it in buckets
or them little biddy cans?"

"Buckets."

"Oh, that ain't so bad, them little ones is a heap of
work." He gave me a high dry laugh. "How you hear about this
job?" he snapped suddenly, as though trying to catch me off
guard.

"Look," I said slowly, "a man I know told me about the
job; MacDuffy hired me; I worked this morning for Mr. Kimbro;
and I was sent to you by Mr. MacDuffy."

His face tightened. "You friends to one of those colored
fellows?"

"Who?"

"Up in the lab?"

"No," I said. "Anything else you want to know?"

He gave me a long, suspicious look and spat upon a hot
pipe, causing it to steam furiously. I watched him remove a
heavy engineer's watch from his breast pocket and squint at
the dial importantly, then turn to check it with an electric clock
that glowed from the wall. "You keep on wiping them gauges,"
he said. "I got to look at my soup. And look here." He pointed to
one of the gauges. "I wants you to keep a 'specially sharp eye
on this here sonofabitch. The last couple of days he's 'veloped a
habit of building up too fast. Causes me a heap of trouble. You
see him gitting past 75, you yell, and yell loud!"

He went back into the shadows and I saw a shaft of brightness
mark the opening of a door.

Running the rag over a gauge I wondered how an apparently
uneducated old man could gain such a responsible job. He
certainly didn't sound like an engineer; yet he alone was
on duty. And you could never be sure, for at home an old man
employed as a janitor at the Water Works was the only one
who knew the location of all of the water mains. He had been
employed at the beginning, before any records were kept, and
actually functioned as an engineer though he drew a janitor's
pay. Perhaps this old Brockway was protecting himself from
something. After all, there was antagonism to our being
employed. Maybe he was dissimulating, like some of the
teachers at the college, who, to avoid trouble when driving
through the small surrounding towns, wore chauffeur caps and
pretended that their cars belonged to white men. But why was
he pretending with me? And what was his job?

I looked around me. It was not just an engine room; I
knew, for I had been in several, the last at college. It was
something more. For one thing, the furnaces were made
differently and the flames that flared through the cracks of the
fire chambers were too intense and too blue. And there were
the odors. No, he was making something down here, something
that had to do with paint, and probably something too filthy
and dangerous for white men to be willing to do even for
money. It was not paint because I had been told that the paint
was made on the floors above, where, passing through, I had
seen men in splattered aprons working over large vats filled
with whirling pigment. One thing was certain: I had to be
careful with this crazy Brockway; he didn't like my being here
...And there he was, entering the room now from the stairs.

"How's it going?" he asked.

"All right," I said. "Only it seems to have gotten louder."

"Oh, it gets pretty loud down here, all right; this here's
the uproar department and I'm in charge . . . Did she go over
the mark?"

"No, it's holding steady," I said.

"That's good. I been having plenty trouble with it lately.
Haveta bust it down and give it a good going over soon as I can
get the tank clear."

Perhaps he is the engineer, I thought, watching him inspect
the gauges and go to another part of the room to adjust
a series of valves. Then he went and said a few words into
a wall phone and called me, pointing to the valves.

"I'm fixing to shoot it to 'em upstairs," he said gravely.
"When I give you the signal I want you to turn 'em wide open.
'N when I give you the second signal I want you to close 'em up
again. Start with this here red one and work right straight
across . . ."

I took my position and waited, as he took a stand near
the gauge.

"Let her go," he called. I opened the valves, hearing the
sound of liquids rushing through the huge pipes. At the sound
of a buzzer I looked up . . .

"Start closing," he yelled. "What you looking at? Close
them valves!

"What's wrong with you?" he asked when the last valve
was closed.

"I expected you to call."

"I said I'd signal you. Caint you tell the difference be-
tween a signal and a call? Hell, I buzzed you. You don't
want to do that no more. When I buzz you I want you to do
something and do it quick!"

"You're the boss," I said sarcastically.

"You mighty right, I'm the boss, and don't forgit it. Now
come on back here, we got work to do."

We came to a strange-looking machine consisting of a
huge set of gears connecting a series of drum-like rollers.
Brockway took a shovel and scooped up a load of brown
crystals from a pile on the floor, pitching them skillfully
into a receptacle on top of the machine.

"Grab a scoop and let's git going," he ordered briskly.
"You ever done this before?" he asked as I scooped into the
pile.

"It's been a long time," I said. "What is this material?"

He stopped shoveling and gave me a long, black stare, then
returned to the pile, his scoop ringing on the floor. You'll
have to remember not to ask this suspicious old bastard any
questions, I thought, scooping into the brown pile.

Soon I was perspiring freely. My hands were sore and I
began to tire. Brockway watched me out of the corner of his
eye, snickering noiselessly.

"You don't want to overwork yourself, young feller," he
said blandly.

"I'll get used to it," I said, scooping up a heavy load.

"Oh, sho, sho," he said. "Sho. But you better take a rest
when you git tired."

I didn't stop. I piled on the material until he said, "That
there's the scoop we been trying to find. That's what we want.
You better stand back a little, 'cause I'm fixing to start her
up."

I backed away, watching him go over and push a switch.

Shuddering into motion, the machine gave a sudden scream like
a circular saw, and sent a tattoo of sharp crystals against
my face. I moved clumsily away, seeing Brockway grin like a
dried prune. Then with the dying hum of the furiously whirling
drums, I heard the grains sifting lazily in the sudden still-
ness, sliding sand-like down the chute into the pot underneath.
I watched him go over and open a valve. A sharp new smell of
oil arose.

"Now she's all set to cook down; all we got to do is put the
fire to her," he said, pressing a button on something that
looked like the burner of an oil furnace. There was an angry
hum, followed by a slight explosion that caused something to
rattle, and I could hear a low roaring begin.

"Know what that's going to be when it's cooked?"

"No, sir," I said...

"Well that's going to be the guts, what they call the vee-
hicle of the paint. Least it will be by time I git through
putting other stuff with it."

"But I thought the paint was made upstairs . . ."

"Naw, they just mixes in the color, make it look pretty.
Right down here is where the real paint is made. Without what
I do they couldn't do nothing, they be making bricks without
straw. An' not only do I make up the base, I fixes the varnishes
and lots of the oils too . . ."

"So that's it," I said. "I was wondering what you did down
here."

"A whole lots of folks wonders about that without gitting
anywhere. But as I was saying, caint a single doggone drop
of paint move out of the factory lessen it comes through
Lucius Brockway's hands."

"How long have you been doing this?"

"Long enough to know what I'm doing," he said. "And I learn-
ed it without all that education that them what's been sent
down here is suppose to have. I learned it by doing it. Them
personnel fellows don't want to face the facts, but Liberty
Paints wouldn't be worth a plugged nickel if they didn't have
me here to see that it got a good strong base. Old Man
Sparland know it though. I caint stop laughing over the time
when I was down with a touch of pneumonia and they put one
of them so-called engineers to pooling around down here. Why,
they started to having so much paint go bad they didn't know
what to do. Paint was bleeding and wrinkling, wouldn't cover
or nothing -- you know, a man could make hisself all kinds of
money if he found out what makes paint bleed. Anyway, ever-
ything was going bad. Then word got to me that they done
put that fellow in my place and when I got well I wouldn't come
back. Here I been with 'em so long and loyal and everything.
Shucks, I just sent 'em word that Lucius Brockway was
retiring!

"Next thing you know here come the Old Man. He so old hisself
his chauffeur has to help him up them steep stairs at my
place. Come in a-puffing and a-blowing, says, 'Lucius, what's
this I hear 'bout you retiring?'

"'Well, sir, Mr. Sparland, sir,' I says, 'I been pretty sick,
as you well know, and I'm gitting kinder along in my years, as
you well know, and I hear that this here Italian fellow you got
in my place is doing so good I thought I'd might as well take it
easy round the house.'

"Why, you'd a-thought I'd done cursed him or something. 'What
kind of talk is that from you, Lucius Brockway,' he said,
'taking it easy round the house when we need you out to the
plant? Don't you know the quickest way to die is to retire?
Why, that fellow out at the plant don't know a thing about
those furnaces. I'm so worried about what he's going to do,
that he's liable to blow up the plant or something that I
took out some extra insurance. He can't do your job,' he
said. 'He don't have the touch. We haven't put out a first-
class batch of paint since you been gone.' Now that was the
Old Man hisself!" Lucius Brockway said.

"So what happened?" I said.

"What you mean, what happened?" he said, looking as though
it were the most unreasonable question in the world. "Shucks,
a few days later the Old Man had me back down here in full
control. That engineer got so mad when he found out he had
to take orders from me he quit the next day."

He spat on the floor and laughed. "Heh, heh, heh, he was
a fool, that's what. A fool! He wanted to boss me and I
know more about this basement than anybody, boilers and
everything. I helped lay the pipes and everything, and what I
mean is I knows the location of each and every pipe and switch
and cable and wire and everything else -- both in the floors and
in the walls and out in the yard. Yes, sir! And what's more, I got
it in my head so good I can trace it out on paper down to the
last nut and bolt; and ain't never been to nobody's engineering
school neither, ain't even passed by one, as far as I know. Now
what you think about that?"

"I think it's remarkable," I said, thinking, I don't like this old
man.

"Oh, I wouldn't call it that," he said. "It's just that I been
round here so long. I been studying this machinery for over
twenty-five years. Sho, and that fellow thinking 'cause he been
to some school and learned how to read a blueprint and how to
fire a boiler he knows more 'bout this plant than Lucius
Brockway. That fool couldn't make no engineer 'cause he can't
see what's staring him straight in the face . . . Say, you
forgittin' to watch them gauges."

I hurried over, finding all the needles steady.

"They're okay," I called.

"All right, but I'm warning you to keep an eye on 'em. You
caint forgit down here, 'cause if you do, you liable to blow
up something. They got all this machinery, but that ain't
everything; we are the machines inside the machine.

"You know the best selling paint we got, the one that made
this here business?" he asked as I helped him fill a vat
with a smelly substance.

"No, I don't."

"Our white, Optic White."

"Why the white rather than the others?"

"'Cause we started stressing it from the first. We make
the best white paint in the world, I don't give a damn what
nobody says. Our white is so white you can paint a chunka coal
and you'd have to crack it open with a sledge hammer to prove
it wasn't white clear through!"

His eyes glinted with humorless conviction and I had to
drop my head to hide my grin.

"You notice that sign on top of the building?"

"Oh, you can't miss that," I said.

"You read the slogan?"

"I don't remember, I was in such a hurry."

"Well, you might not believe it, but I helped the Old Man
make up that slogan. 'If It's Optic White, It's the Right White,'"
he quoted with an upraised finger, like a preacher quoting holy
writ. "I got me a three-hundred-dollar bonus for helping to
think that up. These newfangled advertising folks is been tryin'
to work up something about the other colors, talking about
rainbows or something, but hell, they caint get nowhere."

"'If It's Optic White, It's the Right White,'" I repeated
and suddenly had to repress a laugh as a childhood jingle rang
through my mind:

"'If you're white, you're right,' " I said.

"That's it," he said. "And that's another reason why the
Old Man ain't goin' to let nobody come down here messing with
me. He knows what a lot of them new fellers don't; he knows
that the reason our paint is so good is because of the way
Lucius Brockway puts the pressure on them oils and resins
before they even leaves the tanks." He laughed maliciously.
"They thinks 'cause everything down here is done by
machinery, that's all there is to it. They crazy! Ain't a
continental thing that happens down here that ain't as iffen I
done put my black hands into it! Them machines just do the
cooking, these here hands right here do the sweeting. Yes, sir!
Lucius Brockway hit it square on the head! I dips my fingers in
and sweets it! Come on, let's eat . . ."

"But what about the gauges?" I said, seeing him go over
and take a thermos bottle from a shelf near one of the
furnaces.

"Oh, we'll be here close enough to keep an eye on 'em.
Don't you worry 'bout that."

"But I left my lunch in the locker room over at Building
No. 1."

"Go on and git it and come back here and eat. Down here
we have to always be on the job. A man don't need no more'n
fifteen minutes to eat no-how; then I say let him git on
back on the job."


Upon opening the door I thought I had made a mistake. Men
dressed in splattered painters' caps and overalls sat about
on benches, listening to a thin tubercular-looking man who was
addressing them in a nasal voice. Everyone looked at me and I
was starting out when the thin man called, "There's plenty of
seats for late comers. Come in, brother . . ."

Brother? Even after my weeks in the North this was surpris-
ng. "I was looking for the locker room," I spluttered.

"You're in it, brother. Weren't you told about the meeting?"

"Meeting? Why, no, sir, I wasn't."

The chairman frowned. "You see, the bosses are not cooper-
ting," he said to the others. "Brother, who's your foreman?"

"Mr. Brockway, sir," I said.

Suddenly the men began scraping their feet and cursing.
I looked about me. What was wrong? Were they objecting to
my referring to Brockway as Mister?

"Quiet, brothers," the chairman said, leaning across his
table, his hand cupped to his ear. "Now what was that, brother;
who is your foreman?"

"Lucius Brockway, sir," I said, dropping the Mister.

But this seemed only to make them more hostile. "Get him
the hell out of here," they shouted. I turned. A group on
the far side of the room kicked over a bench, yelling, "Throw
him out! Throw him out!"

I inched backwards, hearing the little man bang on the
table for order. "Men, brothers! Give the brother a chance . . ."

"He looks like a dirty fink to me. A first-class enameled
fink!"

The hoarsely voiced word grated my ears like "nigger"
in an angry southern mouth . . .

"Brothers, please!" The chairman was waving his hands
as I reached out behind me for the door and touched an arm,
feeling it snatch violently away. I dropped my hand.

"Who sent this fink into the meeting, brother chairman?
Ask him that!" a man demanded.

"No, wait," the chairman said. "Don't ride that word too
hard . . ."

"Ask him, brother chairman!" another man said.

"Okay, but don't label a man a fink until you know for
sure." The chairman turned to me. "How'd you happen in here,
brother?"

The men quieted, listening.

"I left my lunch in my locker," I said, my mouth dry.

"You weren't sent into the meeting?"

"No, sir, I didn't know about any meeting."

"The hell he says. None of these finks ever knows!"

"Throw the lousy bastard out!"

"Now, wait," I said.

They became louder, threatening.

"Respect the chair!" the chairman shouted. "We're a
democratic union here, following democratic --"

"Never mind, git rid of the fink!"

". . . procedures. It's our task to make friends with all
the workers. And I mean all. That's how we build the union
strong. Now let's hear what the brother's got to say. No
more of that beefing and interrupting!"

I broke into a cold sweat, my eyes seeming to have become
extremely sharp, causing each face to stand out vivid
in its hostility.

I heard, "When were you hired, friend?"

"This morning," I said.

"See, brothers, he's a new man. We don't want to make the
mistake of judging the worker by his foreman. Some of you
also work for sonsabitches, remember?"

Suddenly the men began to laugh and curse. "Here's one
right here," one of them yelled.

"Mine wants to marry the boss's daughter -- a frigging
eight-day wonder!"

This sudden change made me puzzled and angry, as though
they were making me the butt of a joke.

"Order, brothers! Perhaps the brother would like to join
the union. How about it, brother?"

"Sir . . . ?" I didn't know what to say. I knew very little
about unions -- but most of these men seemed hostile . . . And
before I could answer a fat man with shaggy gray hair leaped
to his feet, shouting angrily,

"I'm against it! Brothers, this fellow could be a fink,
even if he was hired right this minute! Not that I aim to be
unfair to anybody, either. Maybe he ain't a fink," he cried
passionately, "but brothers, I want to remind you that nobody
knows it; and it seems to me that anybody that would work
under that sonofabitching, double-crossing Brockway for more
than fifteen minutes is just as apt as not to be naturally fink-
minded! Please, brothers!" he cried, waving his arms for quiet.
"As some of you brothers have learned, to the sorrow of your
wives and babies, a fink don't have to know about trade
unionism to be a fink! Finkism? Hell, I've made a study of
finkism! Finkism is born into some guys. It's born into some
guys, just like a good eye for color is born into other guys.
That's right, that's the honest, scientific truth! A fink don't
even have to have heard of a union before," he cried in a frenzy
of words. "All you have to do is bring him around the neighbor-
hood of a union and next thing you know, why, zip! he's finking
his finking ass off!"

He was drowned out by shouts of approval. Men turned violent-
ly to look at me. I felt choked. I wanted to drop my head
but faced them as though facing them was itself a denial of his
statements. Another voice ripped out of the shouts of approval,
spilling with great urgency from the lips of a little fellow with
glasses who spoke with the index finger of one hand upraised
and the thumb of the other crooked in the suspender of his
overalls:

"I want to put this brother's remarks in the form of a motion:
I move that we determine through a thorough investigation
whether the new worker is a fink or no; and if he is a fink,
let us discover who he's finking for! And this, brother
members, would give the worker time, if he ain't a fink, to
become acquainted with the work of the union and its aims.
After all, brothers, we don't want to forget that workers like
him aren't so highly developed as some of us who've been in
the labor movement for a long time. So I says, let's give him
time to see what we've done to improve the condition of the
workers, and then, if he ain't a fink, we can decide in a
democratic way whether we want to accept this brother into
the union. Brother union members, I thank you!" He sat down
with a bump.

The room roared. Biting anger grew inside me. So I was
not so highly developed as they! What did he mean? Were they
all Ph.D.'s? I couldn't move; too much was happening to me. It
was as though by entering the room I had automatically applied
for membership -- even though I had no idea that a union
existed, and had come up simply to get a cold pork chop
sandwich. I stood trembling, afraid that they would ask me to
join but angry that so many rejected me on sight. And worst of
all, I knew they were forcing me to accept things on their own
terms, and I was unable to leave.

"All right, brothers. We'll take a vote," the chairman shout-
ed. "All in favor of the motion, signify by saying 'Aye' . . ."
The ayes drowned him out.

"The ayes carried it," the chairman announced as several
men turned to stare at me. At last I could move. I
started out, forgetting why I had come.

"Come in, brother," the chairman called. "You can get
your lunch now. Let him through, you brothers around the
door!"

My face stung as though it had been slapped. They had
made their decision without giving me a chance to speak for
myself. I felt that every man present looked upon me with
hostility; and though I had lived with hostility all my life,
now for the first time it seemed to reach me, as though I had
expected more of these men than of others -- even though I had
not known of their existence. Here in this room my defenses
were negated, stripped away, checked at the door as the
weapons, the knives and razors and owlhead pistols of the
country boys were checked on Saturday night at the Golden
Day. I kept my eyes lowered, mumbling "Pardon me, pardon
me," all the way to the drab green locker, where I removed the
sandwich, for which I no longer had an appetite, and stood
fumbling with the bag, dreading to face the men on my way
out. Then still hating myself for the apologies made coming
over, I brushed past silently as I went back.

When I reached the door the chairman called, "Just a minute,
brother, we want you to understand that this is nothing
against you personally. What you see here is the results of
certain conditions here at the plant. We want you to know that
we are only trying to protect ourselves. Some day we hope to
have you as a member in good standing."

From here and there came a half-hearted applause that
quickly died. I swallowed and stared unseeing, the words
spurting to me from a red, misty distance.

"Okay, brothers," the voice said, "let him pass."

I STUMBLED through the bright sunlight of the yard, past
the office workers chatting on the grass, back to Building
No. 2, to the basement. I stood on the stairs, feeling as
though my bowels had been flooded with acid.

Why hadn't I simply left, I thought with anguish. And
since I had remained, why hadn't I said something, defended
myself? Suddenly I snatched the wrapper off a sandwich and
tore it violently with my teeth, hardly tasting the dry lumps
that squeezed past my constricted throat when I swallowed.
Dropping the remainder back into the bag, I held onto the
handrail, my legs shaking as though I had just escaped a great
danger. Finally, it went away and I pushed open the metal door.

"What kept you so long?" Brockway snapped from where he sat
on a wheelbarrow. He had been drinking from a white mug now
cupped in his grimy hands.

I looked at him abstractedly, seeing how the light caught
on his wrinkled forehead, his snowy hair. "I said, what kept
you so long!" What had he to do with it, I thought, looking
at him through a kind of mist, knowing that I disliked him and
that I was very tired.

"I say . . ." he began, and I heard my voice come quiet
from my tensed throat as I noticed by the clock that I had
been gone only twenty minutes. "I ran into a union meeting --"

"Union!" I heard his white cup shatter against the floor
as he uncrossed his legs, rising. "I knowed you belonged to that
bunch of troublemaking foreigners! I knowed it! Git out!" he
screamed. "Git out of my basement!"

He started toward me as in a dream, trembling like the needle
of one of the gauges as he pointed toward the stairs, his
voice shrieking. I stared; something seemed to have gone
wrong, my reflexes were jammed.

"But what's the matter?" I stammered, my voice low and my
mind understanding and yet failing exactly to understand.

"What's wrong?"

"You heard me. Git out!"

"But I don't understand . . ."

"Shut up and git!"

"But, Mr. Brockway," I cried, fighting to hold something
that was giving way.

"You two-bit, troublemaking union louse!"

"Look, man," I cried, urgently now, "I don't belong to
any union."

"If you don't git outta here, you low-down skunk," he said,
looking wildly about the floor, "I'm liable to kill you. The
Lord being my witness, I'LL KILL YOU!"

It was incredible, things were speeding up. "You'll do
what?" I stammered.

"I'LL KILL YOU, THAT'S WHAT!"

He had said it again and something fell away from me, and
I seemed to be telling myself in a rush: You were trained to
accept the foolishness of such old men as this, even when you
thought them clowns and fools; you were trained to pretend
that you respected them and acknowledged in them the same
quality of authority and power in your world as the whites
before whom they bowed and scraped and feared and loved
and imitated, and you were even trained to accept it when,
angered or spiteful, or drunk with power, they came at you with
a stick or strap or cane and you made no effort to strike back,
but only to escape unmarked. But this was too much . . . he was
not grandfather or uncle or father, nor preacher or teacher.
Something uncoiled in my stomach and I was moving toward
him, shouting, more at a black blur that irritated my eyes than
at a clearly denned human face, "YOU'LL KILL WHO?"

"YOU, THAT'S WHO!"

"Listen here, you old fool, don't talk about killing me!
Give me a chance to explain. I don't belong to anything -- Go
on, pick it up! Go on!" I yelled, seeing his eyes fasten upon a
twisted iron bar. "You're old enough to be my grandfather, but
if you touch that bar, I swear I'll make you eat it!"

"I done tole you, GIT OUTTA MY BASEMENT! You impudent
son'bitch," he screamed.

I moved forward, seeing him stoop and reach aside for the
bar; and I was throwing myself forward, feeling him go over
with a grunt, hard against the floor, rolling beneath the force
of my lunge. It was as though I had landed upon a wiry rat. He
scrambled beneath me, making angry sounds and striking my
face as he tried to use the bar. I twisted it from his grasp,
feeling a sharp pain stab through my shoulder. He's using a
knife flashed through my mind and I slashed out with my elbow,
sharp against his face, feeling it land solid and seeing his head
fly backwards and up and back again as I struck again, hearing
something fly free and skitter across the floor, thinking, It's
gone, the knife is gone . . . and struck again as he tried to
choke me, jabbing at his bobbing head, feeling the bar come
free and bringing it down at his head, missing, the metal
clinking against the floor, and bringing it up for a second try
and him yelling, "No, no! You the best, you the best!"

"I'm going to beat your brains out!" I said, my throat dry,
"stabbing me . . ."

"No," he panted. "I got enough. Ain't you heard me say I
got enough?"

"So when you can't win you want to stop! Damn you, if
you've cut me bad, I'll tear your head off!"

Watching him warily, I got to my feet. I dropped the bar,
as a flash of heat swept over me: His face was caved in.

"What's wrong with you, old man?" I yelled nervously. "Don't
you know better than to attack a man a third your age?"

He blanched at being called old, and I repeated it, add-
ing insults I'd heard my grandfather use. "Why, you old-
fashioned, slavery-time, mammy-made, handkerchief-headed
bastard, you should know better! What made you think you
could threaten my life? You meant nothing to me, I came down
here because I was sent. I didn't know anything about you or
the union either. Why'd you start riding me the minute I came
in? Are you people crazy? Does this paint go to your head?
Are you drinking it?"

He glared, panting tiredly. Great tucks showed in his over-
alls where the folds were stuck together by the goo with
which he was covered, and I thought, Tar Baby, and wanted to
blot him out of my sight. But now my anger was flowing fast
from action to words.

"I go to get my lunch and they ask me who I work for and
when I tell them, they call me a fink. A fink! You people
must be out of your minds. No sooner do I get back down here
than you start yelling that you're going to kill me! What's
going on? What have you got against me? What did I do?"

He glowered at me silently, then pointed to the floor.

"Reach and draw back a nub," I warned.

"Caint a man even git his teeth?" he mumbled, his voice
strange.

"TEETH?"

With a shamed frown, he opened his mouth. I saw a blue flash
of shrunken gums. The thing that had skittered across the
floor was not a knife, but a plate of false teeth. For a
fraction of a second I was desperate, feeling some of my
justification for wanting to kill him slipping away. My fingers
leaped to my shoulder, finding wet cloth but no blood. The old
fool had bitten me. A wild flash of laughter struggled to rise
from beneath my anger. He had bitten me! I looked on the floor,
seeing the smashed mug and the teeth glinting dully across the
room.

"Get them," I said, growing ashamed. Without his teeth,
some of the hatefulness seemed to have gone out of him. But I
stayed close as he got his teeth and went over to the tap and
held them beneath a stream of water. A tooth fell away beneath
the pressure of his thumb, and I heard him grumbling as he
placed the plate in his mouth. Then, wiggling his chin, he
became himself again.

"You was really trying to kill me," he said. He seemed
unable to believe it.

"You started the killing. I don't go around fighting," I
said. "Why didn't you let me explain? Is it against the law
to belong to the union?"

"That damn union," he cried, almost in tears. "That damn
union! They after my job! I know they after my job! For
one of us to join one of them damn unions is like we was to bite
the hand of the man who teached us to bathe in a bathtub! I
hates it, and I mean to keep on doing all I can to chase it
outta the plant. They after my job, the chickenshit bastards!"

Spittle formed at the corners of his mouth; he seemed
to boil with hatred.

"But what have I to do with that?" I said, feeling sudden-
ly the older.

"'Cause them young colored fellers up in the lab is trying
to join that outfit, that's what! Here the white man done
give 'em jobs," he wheezed as though pleading a case. "He
done give 'em good jobs too, and they so ungrateful they goes
and joins up with that backbiting union! I never seen such a
no-good ungrateful bunch. All they doing is making things bad
for the rest of us!"

"Well, I'm sorry," I said, "I didn't know about all that. I
came here to take a temporary job and I certainly didn't intend
to get mixed up in any quarrels. But as for us, I'm ready to
forget our disagreement -- if you are . . ." I held out my hand,
causing my shoulder to pain.

He gave me a gruff look. "You ought to have more self-respect
than to fight an old man," he said. "I got grown boys older
than you."

"I thought you were trying to kill me," I said, my hand
still extended. "I thought you had stabbed me."

"Well, I don't like a lot of bickering and confusion myself,"
he said, avoiding my eyes. And it was as though the closing
of his sticky hand over mine was a signal. I heard a shrill
hissing from the boilers behind me and turned, hearing Brock-
way yell, "I tole you to watch them gauges. Git over to the
big valves, quick!"

I dashed for where a series of valve wheels projected
from the wall near the crusher, seeing Brockway scrambling
away in the other direction, thinking, Where's he going? as I
reached the valves, and hearing him yell, "Turn it! Turn it!"

"Which?" I yelled, reaching.

"The white one, fool, the white one!"

I jumped, catching it and pulling down with all my weight,
feeling it give. But this only increased the noise and I
seemed to hear Brockway laugh as I looked around to see him
scrambling for the stairs, his hands clasping the back of his
head, and his neck pulled in close, like a small boy who has
thrown a brick into the air.

"Hey you! Hey you!" I yelled. "Hey!" But it was too late.
All my movements seemed too slow, ran together. I felt the
wheel resisting and tried vainly to reverse it and tried to let go,
and it sticking to my palms and my fingers stiff and sticky, and I
turned, running now, seeing the needle on one of the gauges
swinging madly, like a beacon gone out of control, and trying to
think clearly, my eyes darting here and there through the room
of tanks and machines and up the stairs so far away and
hearing the clear new note arising while I seemed to run
swiftly up an incline and shot forward with sudden acceleration
into a wet blast of black emptiness that was somehow a bath of
whiteness.

It was a fall into space that seemed not a fall but a
suspension. Then a great weight landed upon me and I seemed
to sprawl in an interval of clarity beneath a pile of broken
machinery, my head pressed back against a huge wheel, my
body splattered with a stinking goo. Somewhere an engine
ground in furious futility, grating loudly until a pain shot
around the curve of my head and bounced me off into blackness
for a distance, only to strike another pain that lobbed me
back. And in that clear instant of consciousness I opened
my eyes to a blinding flash.

Holding on grimly, I could hear the sound of someone
wading, sloshing, nearby, and an old man's garrulous voice
saying, "I tole 'em these here young Nineteen-Hundred boys
ain't no good for the job. They ain't got the nerves. Naw,
sir, they just ain't got the nerves."

I tried to speak, to answer, but something heavy moved
again, and I was understanding something fully and trying
again to answer but seemed to sink to the center of a lake of
heavy water and pause, transfixed and numb with the sense
that I had lost irrevocably an important victory.



Chapter 11



I was sitting in a cold, white rigid chair and a man was
looking at me out of a bright third eye that glowed from the
center of his forehead. He reached out, touching my skull
gingerly, and said something encouraging, as though I were a
child. His fingers went away.

"Take this," he said. "It's good for you." I swallowed.
Suddenly my skin itched, all over. I had on new overalls,
strange white ones. The taste ran bitter through my mouth. My
fingers trembled.

A thin voice with a mirror on the end of it said, "How is
he?"

"I don't think it's anything serious. Merely stunned."

"Should he be sent home now?"

"No, just to be certain we'll keep him here a few days.
Want to keep him under observation. Then he may leave."

Now I was lying on a cot, the bright eye still burning
into mine, although the man was gone. It was quiet and I
was numb. I closed my eyes only to be awakened.

"What is your name?" a voice said.

"My head . . ." I said.

"Yes, but your name. Address?"

"My head -- that burning eye . . ." I said.

"Eye?"

"Inside," I said.

"Shoot him up for an X-ray," another voice said.

"My head . . ."

"Careful!"

Somewhere a machine began to hum and I distrusted
the man and woman above me.

They were holding me firm and it was fiery and above it
all I kept hearing the opening motif of Beethoven's Fifth --
three short and one long buzz, repeated again and again in
varying volume, and I was struggling and breaking through,
rising up, to find myself lying on my back with two pink-faced
men laughing down.

"Be quiet now," one of them said firmly. "You'll be all
right." I raised my eyes, seeing two indefinite young women in
white, looking down at me. A third, a desert of heat waves
away, sat at a panel arrayed with coils and dials. Where was
I? From far below me a barber-chair thumping began and I felt
myself rise on the tip of the sound from the floor. A face was
now level with mine, looking closely and saying something
without meaning. A whirring began that snapped and cracked
with static, and suddenly I seemed to be crushed between the
floor and ceiling. Two forces tore savagely at my stomach and
back. A flash of cold-edged heat enclosed me. I was pounded
between crushing electrical pressures; pumped between live
electrodes like an accordion between a player's hands. My
lungs were compressed like a bellows and each time my breath
returned I yelled, punctuating the rhythmical action of the
nodes.

"Hush, goddamit," one of the faces ordered. "We're trying
to get you started again. Now shut up!"

The voice throbbed with icy authority and I quieted and
tried to contain the pain. I discovered now that my head was
encircled by a piece of cold metal like the iron cap worn by the
occupant of an electric chair. I tried unsuccessfully to strug-
gle, to cry out. But the people were so remote, the pain so
immediate. A faced moved in and out of the circle of lights,
peering for a moment, then disappeared. A freckled, red-haired
woman with gold nose-glasses appeared; then a man with a cir-
cular mirror attached to his forehead -- a doctor. Yes, he was
a doctor and the women were nurses; it was coming clear. I
was in a hospital. They would care for me. It was all geared
toward the easing of pain. I felt thankful.

I tried to remember how I'd gotten here, but nothing came.
My mind was blank, as though I had just begun to live.
When the next face appeared I saw the eyes behind the thick
glasses blinking as though noticing me for the first time.

"You're all right, boy. You're okay. You just be patient,"
said the voice, hollow with profound detachment.

I seemed to go away; the lights receded like a tail-light
racing down a dark country road. I couldn't follow. A sharp pain
stabbed my shoulder. I twisted about on my back, fighting
something I couldn't see. Then after a while my vision cleared.

Now a man sitting with his back to me, manipulating dials
on a panel. I wanted to call him, but the Fifth Symphony
rhythm racked me, and he seemed too serene and too far away.
Bright metal bars were between us and when I strained my
neck around I discovered that I was not lying on an operating
table but in a kind of glass and nickel box, the lid of which
was propped open. Why was I here?

"Doctor! Doctor!" I called.

No answer. Perhaps he hadn't heard, I thought, calling again
and feeling the stabbing pulses of the machine again and
feeling myself going under and fighting against it and coming
up to hear voices carrying on a conversation behind my head.
The static sounds became a quiet drone. Strains of music, a
Sunday air, drifted from a distance. With closed eyes, bare-
ly breathing I warded off the pain. The voices droned
harmoniously. Was it a radio I heard -- a phonograph? The vox
humana of a hidden organ? If so, what organ and where? I felt
warm. Green hedges, dazzling with red wild roses appeared
behind my eyes, stretching with a gentle curving to an infinity
empty of objects, a limpid blue space. Scenes of a shaded lawn
in summer drifted past; I saw a uniformed military band
arrayed decorously in concert, each musician with well-oiled
hair, heard a sweet-voiced trumpet rendering "The Holy City"
as from an echoing distance, buoyed by a choir of muted horns;
and above, the mocking obbligato of a mocking bird. I felt
giddy. The air seemed to grow thick with fine white gnats,
filling my eyes, boiling so thickly that the dark trumpeter
breathed them in and expelled them through the bell of his
golden horn, a live white cloud mixing with the tones upon
the torpid air.

I came back. The voices still droned above me and I
disliked them. Why didn't they go away? Smug ones. Oh,
doctor, I thought drowsily, did you ever wade in a brook before
breakfast? Ever chew on sugar cane? You know, doc, the same
fall day I first saw the hounds chasing black men in stripes
and chains my grandmother sat with me and sang with twinkling
eyes:

"Godamighty made a monkey
Godamighty made a whale
And Godamighty made a 'gator
With hickeys all over his tail . . ."

Or you, nurse, did you know that when you strolled in
pink organdy and picture hat between the rows of cape
jasmine, cooing to your beau in a drawl as thick as sorghum,
we little black boys hidden snug in the bushes called out so
loud that you daren't hear:

"Did you ever see Miss Margaret boil water?
Man, she hisses a wonderful stream,
Seventeen miles and a quarter,
Man, and you can't see her pot for the steam..."

But now the music became a distinct wail of female pain.
I opened my eyes. Glass and metal floated above me.

"How are you feeling, boy?" a voice said.

A pair of eyes peered down through lenses as thick as
the bottom of a Coca-Cola bottle, eyes protruding, luminous
and veined, like an old biology specimen preserved in al-
cohol.

"I don't have enough room," I said angrily.

"Oh, that's a necessary part of the treatment."

"But I need more room," I insisted. "I'm cramped."

"Don't worry about it, boy. You'll get used to it after a
while. How is your stomach and head?"

"Stomach?"

"Yes, and your head?"

"I don't know," I said, realizing that I could feel nothing
beyond the pressure around my head and the tender surface of
my body. Yet my senses seemed to focus sharply.

"I don't feel it," I cried, alarmed.

"Aha! You see! My little gadget will solve everything!"
he exploded.

"I don't know," another voice said. "I think I still prefer
surgery. And in this case especially, with this, uh . . .
background, I'm not so sure that I don't believe in the
effectiveness of simple prayer."

"Nonsense, from now on do your praying to my little
machine. I'll deliver the cure."

"I don't know, but I believe it a mistake to assume that
solutions -- cures, that is -- that apply in, uh . . . primitive
instances, are, uh . . . equally effective when more advanced
conditions are in question. Suppose it were a New Englander
with a Harvard background?"

"Now you're arguing politics," the first voice said
banteringly.

"Oh, no, but it is a problem."

I listened with growing uneasiness to the conversation
fuzzing away to a whisper. Their simplest words seemed to
refer to something else, as did many of the notions that
unfurled through my head. I wasn't sure whether they were
talking about me or someone else. Some of it sounded like a
discussion of history . . .

"The machine will produce the results of a prefrontal lobo-
tomy without the negative effects of the knife," the voice
said. "You see, instead of severing the prefrontal lobe, a single
lobe, that is, we apply pressure in the proper degrees to the
major centers of nerve control -- our concept is Gestalt -- and
the result is as complete a change of personality as you'll find
in your famous fairy-tale cases of criminals transformed into
amiable fellows after all that bloody business of a brain
operation. And what's more," the voice went on triumphantly,
"the patient is both physically and neurally whole."

"But what of his psychology?"

"Absolutely of no importance!" the voice said. "The patient
will live as he has to live, and with absolute integrity.
Who could ask more? He'll experience no major conflict of
motives, and what is even better, society will suffer no
traumata on his account."

There was a pause. A pen scratched upon paper. Then, "Why
not castration, doctor?" a voice asked waggishly, causing
me to start, a pain tearing through me.

"There goes your love of blood again," the first voice laugh-
ed. "What's that definition of a surgeon, 'A butcher with a
bad conscience'?"

They laughed.

"It's not so funny. It would be more scientific to try to
define the case. It has been developing some three hundred
years --"

"Define? Hell, man, we know all that."

"Then why don't you try more current?"

"You suggest it?"

"I do, why not?"

"But isn't there a danger . . . ?" the voice trailed off.
I heard them move away; a chair scraped. The machine
droned, and I knew definitely that they were discussing me and
steeled myself for the shocks, but was blasted nevertheless.
The pulse came swift and staccato, increasing gradually until I
fairly danced between the nodes. My teeth chattered. I closed
my eyes and bit my lips to smother my screams. Warm blood
filled my mouth. Between my lids I saw a circle of hands and
faces, dazzling with light. Some were scribbling upon charts.

"Look, he's dancing," someone called.

"No, really?"

An oily face looked in. "They really do have rhythm, don't
they? Get hot, boy! Get hot!" it said with a laugh.

And suddenly my bewilderment suspended and I wanted to be
angry, murderously angry. But somehow the pulse of current
smashing through my body prevented me. Something had been
disconnected. For though I had seldom used my capacities
for anger and indignation, I had no doubt that I possessed
them; and, like a man who knows that he must fight, whether
angry or not, when called a son of a bitch, I tried to im-
agine myself angry -- only to discover a deeper sense of
remoteness. I was beyond anger. I was only bewildered. And
those above seemed to sense it. There was no avoiding the
shock and I rolled with the agitated tide, out into the black-
ness.

When I emerged, the lights were still there. I lay beneath
the slab of glass, feeling deflated. All my limbs seemed
amputated. It was very warm. A dim white ceiling stretched far
above me. My eyes were swimming with tears. Why, I didn't
know. It worried me. I wanted to knock on the glass to attract
attention, but I couldn't move. The slightest effort, hardly
more than desire, tired me. I lay experiencing the vague pro-
cesses of my body. I seemed to have lost all sense of propor-
tion. Where did my body end and the crystal and white world
begin? Thoughts evaded me, hiding in the vast stretch of clin-
ical whiteness to which I seemed connected only by a scale of
receding grays. No sounds beyond the sluggish inner roar of
the blood. I couldn't open my eyes. I seemed to exist in some
other dimension, utterly alone; until after a while a nurse
bent down and forced a warm fluid between my lips. I gagged,
swallowed, feeling the fluid course slowly to my vague middle.
A huge iridescent bubble seemed to enfold me. Gentle hands
moved over me, bringing vague impressions of memory. I was
laved with warm liquids, felt gentle hands move through the
indefinite limits of my flesh. The sterile and weightless texture
of a sheet enfolded me. I felt myself bounce, sail off like a ball
thrown over the roof into mist, striking a hidden wall beyond a
pile of broken machinery and sailing back. How long it took, I
didn't know. But now above the movement of the hands I heard
a friendly voice, uttering familiar words to which I could
assign no meaning. I listened intensely, aware of the form
and movement of sentences and grasping the now subtle
rhythmical differences between progressions of sound that
questioned and those that made a statement. But still their
meanings were lost in the vast whiteness in which I myself was
lost.

Other voices emerged. Faces hovered above me like inscrutable
fish peering myopically through a glass aquarium wall. I saw
them suspended motionless above me, then two floating off,
first their heads, then the tips of their finlike fingers,
moving dreamily from the top of the case. A thoroughly mys-
terious coming and going, like the surging of torpid tides. I
watched the two make furious movements with their mouths. I
didn't understand. They tried again, the meaning still escaping
me. I felt uneasy. I saw a scribbled card, held over me. All a
jumble of alphabets. They consulted heatedly. Somehow I felt
responsible. A terrible sense of loneliness came over me; they
seemed to enact a mysterious pantomime. And seeing them
from this angle was disturbing. They appeared utterly stupid
and I didn't like it. It wasn't right. I could see smut in one
doctor's nose; a nurse had two flabby chins. Other faces came
up, their mouths working with soundless fury. But we are all
human, I thought, wondering what I meant.

A man dressed in black appeared, a long-haired fellow,
whose piercing eyes looked down upon me out of an intense
and friendly face. The others hovered about him, their eyes
anxious as he alternately peered at me and consulted my chart.
Then he scribbled something on a large card and thrust it
before my eyes:

WHAT IS YOUR NAME?

A tremor shook me; it was as though he had suddenly
given a name to, had organized the vagueness that drifted
through my head, and I was overcome with swift shame. I
realized that I no longer knew my own name. I shut my eyes
and shook my head with sorrow. Here was the first warm
attempt to communicate with me and I was failing. I tried
again, plunging into the blackness of my mind. It was no use; I
found nothing but pain. I saw the card again and he pointed
slowly to each word:

WHAT . . . IS . . . YOUR . . . NAME?

I tried desperately, diving below the blackness until I was
limp with fatigue. It was as though a vein had been opened
and my energy syphoned away; I could only stare back mutely.
But with an irritating burst of activity he gestured for another
card and wrote:

WHO . . . ARE . . . YOU?

Something inside me turned with a sluggish excitement.
This phrasing of the question seemed to set off a series of weak
and distant lights where the other had thrown a spark that
failed. Who am I? I asked myself. But it was like trying to
identify one particular cell that coursed through the torpid
veins of my body. Maybe I was just this blackness and
bewilderment and pain, but that seemed less like a suitable
answer than something I'd read somewhere.

The card was back again:

WHAT IS YOUR MOTHER'S NAME?

Mother, who was my mother? Mother, the one who screams
when you suffer -- but who? This was stupid, you always
knew your mother's name. Who was it that screamed? Mother?
But the scream came from the machine. A machine my mother?
. . . Clearly, I was out of my head.

He shot questions at me: Where were you born? Try to
think of your name.

I tried, thinking vainly of many names, but none seemed
to fit, and yet it was as though I was somehow a part of
all of them, had become submerged within them and lost.

You must remember, the placard read. But it was useless.
Each time I found myself back in the clinging white mist
and my name just beyond my fingertips. I shook my head
and watched him disappear for a moment and return with a
companion, a short, scholarly looking man who stared at me
with a blank expression. I watched him produce a child's
slate and a piece of chalk, writing upon it:

WHO WAS YOUR MOTHER?

I looked at him, feeling a quick dislike and thinking, half
in amusement, I don't play the dozens. And how's your old lady
today?

THINK

I stared, seeing him frown and write a long time. The slate
was filled with meaningless names.

I smiled, seeing his eyes blaze with annoyance. Old Friendly
Face said something. The new man wrote a question at which
I stared in wide-eyed amazement:

WHO WAS BUCKEYE THE RABBIT?

I was filled with turmoil. Why should he think of that?
He pointed to the question, word by word. I laughed, deep,
deep inside me, giddy with the delight of self-discovery and the
desire to hide it. Somehow I was Buckeye the Rabbit . . . or
had been, when as children we danced and sang barefoot in the
dusty streets:

Buckeye the Rabbit
Shake it, shake it
Buckeye the Rabbit
Break it, break it . . .

Yet, I could not bring myself to admit it, it was too ridic-
ulous -- and somehow too dangerous. It was annoying that
he had hit upon an old identity and I shook my head, seeing
him purse his lips and eye me sharply.

BOY, WHO WAS BRER RABBIT?

He was your mother's back-door man, I thought.

Anyone knew they were one and the same: "Buckeye" when you
were very young and hid yourself behind wide innocent eyes;
"Brer," when you were older. But why was he playing around
with these childish names? Did they think I was a child? Why
didn't they leave me alone? I would remember soon enough
when they let me out of the machine . . . A palm smacked
sharply upon the glass, but I was tired of them. Yet as my eyes
focused upon Old Friendly Face he seemed pleased. I couldn't
understand it, but there he was, smiling and leaving with the
new assistant.

Left alone, I lay fretting over my identity. I suspected
that I was really playing a game with myself and that they were
taking part. A kind of combat. Actually they knew as well as I,
and I for some reason preferred not to face it. It was irritating,
and it made me feel sly and alert. I would solve the mystery the
next instant. I imagined myself whirling about in my mind like
an old man attempting to catch a small boy in some mischief,
thinking, Who am I? It was no good. I felt like a clown. Nor
was I up to being both criminal and detective -- though why
criminal I didn't know.

I fell to plotting ways of short-circuiting the machine.
Perhaps if I shifted my body about so that the two nodes would
come together -- No, not only was there no room but it might
electrocute me. I shuddered. Whoever else I was, I was no
Samson. I had no desire to destroy myself even if it destroyed
the machine; I wanted freedom, not destruction. It was
exhausting, for no matter what the scheme I conceived, there
was one constant flaw -- myself. There was no getting around
it. I could no more escape than I could think of my identity.
Perhaps, I thought, the two things are involved with each other.
When I discover who I am, I'll be free.

It was as though my thoughts of escape had alerted them. I
looked up to see two agitated physicians and a nurse,
and thought, It's too late now, and lay in a veil of sweat
watching them manipulate the controls. I was braced for the
usual shock, but nothing happened. Instead I saw their hands
at the lid, loosening the bolts, and before I could react they
had opened the lid and pulled me erect.

"What's happened?" I began, seeing the nurse pause to
look at me.

"Well?" she said.

My mouth worked soundlessly.

"Come on, get it out," she said.

"What hospital is this?" I said.

"It's the factory hospital," she said. "Now be quiet."

They were around me now, inspecting my body, and I
watched with growing bewilderment, thinking, what is a
factory hospital?

I felt a tug at my belly and looked down to see one of
the physicians pull the cord which was attached to the
stomach node, jerking me forward.

"What is this?" I said.

"Get the shears," he said.

"Sure," the other said. "Let's not waste time."

I recoiled inwardly as though the cord were part of me.
Then they had it free and the nurse clipped through the belly
band and removed the heavy node. I opened my mouth to speak
but one of the physicians shook his head. They worked swiftly.
The nodes off, the nurse went over me with rubbing alcohol.
Then I was told to climb out of the case. I looked from face to
face, overcome with indecision. For now that it appeared that I
was being freed, I dared not believe it. What if they were
transferring me to some even more painful machine? I sat
there, refusing to move. Should I struggle against them?

"Take his arm," one of them said.

"I can do it," I said, climbing fearfully out.

I was told to stand while they went over my body with the
stethoscope.

"How's the articulation?" the one with the chart said as
the other examined my shoulder.

"Perfect," he said.

I could feel a tightness there but no pain.

"I'd say he's surprisingly strong, considering," the other
said.

"Shall we call in Drexel? It seems rather unusual for him
to be so strong."

"No, just note it on the chart."

"All right, nurse, give him his clothes."

"What are you going to do with me?" I said. She handed
me clean underclothing and a pair of white overalls.

"No questions," she said. "Just dress as quickly as
possible."

The air outside the machine seemed extremenly rare. When
I bent over to tie my shoes I thought I would faint, but
fought it off. I stood shakily and they looked me up and down.

"Well, boy, it looks as though you're cured," one of them
said. "You're a new man. You came through fine. Come with
us," he said.

We went slowly out of the room and down a long white corr-
idor into an elevator, then swiftly down three floors to a
reception room with rows of chairs. At the front were a number
of private offices with frosted glass doors and walls.

"Sit down there," they said. "The director will see you
shortly."

I sat, seeing them disappear inside one of the offices for
a second and emerge, passing me without a word. I trembled
like a leaf. Were they really freeing me? My head spun. I looked
at my white overalls. The nurse said that this was the factory
hospital . . . Why couldn't I remember what kind of factory it
was? And why a factory hospital? Yes . . . I did remember some
vague factory; perhaps I was being sent back there. Yes, and
he'd spoken of the director instead of the head doctor; could
they be one and the same? Perhaps I was in the factory already.
I listened but could hear no machinery.


ACROSS the room a newspaper lay on a chair, but I was too
concerned to get it. Somewhere a fan droned. Then one of
the doors with frosted glass was opened and I saw a tall
austere-looking man in a white coat, beckoning to me with a
chart.

"Come," he said.

I got up and went past him into a large simply furnished
office, thinking, Now, I'll know. Now.

"Sit down," he said.

I eased myself into the chair beside his desk. He watched
me with a calm, scientific gaze.

"What is your name? Oh here, I have it," he said, studying
the chart. And it was as though someone inside of me tried
to tell him to be silent, but already he had called my name
and I heard myself say, "Oh!" as a pain stabbed through my
head and I shot to my feet and looked wildly around me and
sat down and got up and down again very fast, remembering. I
don't know why I did it, but suddenly I saw him looking at me
intently, and I stayed down this time.

He began asking questions and I could hear myself replying
fluently, though inside I was reeling with swiftly changing
emotional images that shrilled and chattered, like a sound-
track reversed at high speed.

"Well, my boy," he said, "you're cured. We are going to re-
lease you. How does that strike you?"

Suddenly I didn't know. I noticed a company calendar beside
a stethoscope and a miniature silver paint brush. Did he
mean from the hospital or from the job? . . .

"Sir?" I said.

"I said, how does that strike you?"

"All right, sir," I said in an unreal voice. "I'll be glad to
get back to work."

He looked at the chart, frowning. "You'll be released, but
I'm afraid that you'll be disappointed about the work," he
said.

"What do you mean, sir?"

"You've been through a severe experience," he said. "You
aren't ready for the rigors of industry. Now I want you to
rest, undertake a period of convalescence. You need to be-
come readjusted and get your strength back."

"But, sir --"

"You mustn't try to go too fast. You're glad to be released,
are you not?"

"Oh, yes. But how shall I live?"

"Live?" his eyebrows raised and lowered. "Take another job,"
he said. "Something easier, quieter. Something for which
you're better prepared."

"Prepared?" I looked at him, thinking, Is he in on it too?

"I'll take anything, sir," I said.

"That isn't the problem, my boy. You just aren't prepared
for work under our industrial conditions. Later, perhaps,
but not now. And remember, you'll be adequately compensated
for your experience."

"Compensated, sir?"

"Oh, yes," he said. "We follow a policy of enlightened hu-
manitarianism; all our employees are automatically insured.
You have only to sign a few papers."

"What kind of papers, sir?"

"We require an affidavit releasing the company of responsi-
bility," he said. "Yours was a difficult case, and a number
of specialists had to be called in. But, after all, any new
occupation has its hazards. They are part of growing up, of
becoming adjusted, as it were. One takes a chance and while
some are prepared, others are not."

I looked at his lined face. Was he doctor, factory official,
or both? I couldn't get it; and now he seemed to move back and
forth across my field of vision, although he sat perfectly calm
in his chair.

It came out of itself: "Do you know Mr. Norton, sir?" I said.

"Norton?" His brows knitted. "What Norton is this?"

Then it was as though I hadn't asked him; the name sounded
strange. I ran my hand over my eyes.

"I'm sorry," I said. "It occurred to me that you might. He
was just a man I used to know."

"I see. Well" -- he picked up some papers -- "so that's the
way it is, my boy. A little later perhaps we'll be able to do
something. You may take the papers along if you wish. Just
mail them to us. Your check will be sent upon their return.
Meanwhile, take as much time as you like. You'll find that we
are perfectly fair."

I took the folded papers and looked at him for what seemed
to be too long a time. He seemed to waver. Then I heard my-
self say, "Do you know him?" my voice rising.

"Who?"

"Mr. Norton," I said. "Mr. Norton!"

"Oh, why, no."

"No," I said, "no one knows anybody and it was too long
a time ago."

He frowned and I laughed. "They picked poor Robin clean,"
I said. "Do you happen to know Bled?"

He looked at me, his head to one side. "Are these people
friends of yours?"

"Friends? Oh, yes," I said, "we're all good friends. Bud-
dies from way back. But I don't suppose we get around in
the same circles."

His eyes widened. "No," he said, "I don't suppose we do.
However, good friends are valuable to have."

I felt light-headed and started to laugh and he seemed
to waver again and I thought of asking him about Emerson,
but now he was clearing his throat and indicating that he
was finished.

I put the folded papers in my overalls and started out.
The door beyond the rows of chairs seemed far away.

"Take care of yourself," he said.

"And you," I said, thinking, it's time, it's past time.

Turning abruptly, I went weakly back to the desk, seeing
him looking up at me with his steady scientific gaze. I
was overcome with ceremonial feelings but unable to re-
member the proper formula. So as I deliberately extended my
hand I fought down laughter with a cough.

"It's been quite pleasant, our little palaver, sir," I said. I
listened to myself and to his answer.

"Yes, indeed," he said.

He shook my hand gravely, without surprise or distaste.

I looked down, he was there somewhere behind the lined face
and outstretched hand.

"And now our palaver is finished," I said. "Good-bye."

He raised his hand. "Good-bye," he said, his voice
noncommittal.

Leaving him and going out into the paint-fuming air I had
the feeling that I had been talking beyond myself, had used
words and expressed attitudes not my own, that I was in the
grip of some alien personality lodged deep within me. Like the
servant about whom I'd read in psychology class who, during a
trance, had recited pages of Greek philosophy which she had
overheard one day while she worked. It was as though I were
acting out a scene from some crazy movie. Or perhaps I was
catching up with myself and had put into words feelings which
I had hitherto suppressed. Or was it, I thought, starting up the
walk, that I was no longer afraid? I stopped, looking at the
buildings down the bright street slanting with sun and shade. I
was no longer afraid. Not of important men, not of trustees and
such; for knowing now that there was nothing which I could
expect from them, there was no reason to be afraid. Was that
it? I felt light-headed, my ears were ringing. I went on.

Along the walk the buildings rose, uniform and close toge-
ther. It was day's end now and on top of every building the
flags were fluttering and diving down, collapsing. And I felt
that I would fall, had fallen, moved now as against a current
sweeping swiftly against me. Out of the grounds and up the
street I found the bridge by which I'd come, but the stairs
leading back to the car that crossed the top were too dizzily
steep to climb, swim or fly, and I found a subway instead.

Things whirled too fast around me. My mind went alternately
bright and blank in slow rolling waves. We, he, him -
- my mind and I -- were no longer getting around in the same
circles. Nor my body either. Across the aisle a young platinum
blonde nibbled at a red Delicious apple as station lights rippled
past behind her. The train plunged. I dropped through the roar,
giddy and vacuum-minded, sucked under and out into late after-
noon Harlem.



Chapter 12



When I came out of the subway, Lenox Avenue seemed to car-
een away from me at a drunken angle, and I focused upon the
teetering scene with wild, infant's eyes, my head throbbing.
Two huge women with spoiled-cream complexions seemed to
struggle with their massive bodies as they came past, their
flowered hips trembling like threatening flames. Out across the
walk before me they moved, and a bright orange slant of sun
seemed to boil up and I saw myself going down, my legs watery
beneath me, but my head clear, too clear, recording the crowd
swerving around me: legs, feet, eyes, hands, bent knees,
scuffed shoes, teethy-eyed excitement; and some moving on
unhalting.

And the big dark woman saying, Boy, is you all right, what's
wrong? in a husky-voiced contralto. And me saying, I'm
all right, just weak, and trying to stand, and her saying, Why
don't y'all stand back and let the man breathe? Stand back
there y'all, and now echoed by an official tone, Keep moving,
break it up. And she on one side and a man on the other,
helping me to stand and the policeman saying, Are you all
right? and me answering, Yes, I just felt weak, must have
fainted but all right now, and him ordering the crowd to move
on and the others moving on except the man and woman and
him saying, You sure you okay, daddy, and me nodding yes, and
her saying, Where you live son, somewhere around here? And
me telling her Men's House and her looking at me shaking her
head saying, Men's House, Men's House, shucks that ain't no
place for nobody in your condition what's weak and needs a
woman to keep an eye on you awhile. And me saying, But I'll be
all right now, and her, Maybe you will and maybe you won't. I
live just up the street and round the corner, you better come on
round and rest till you feel stronger. I'll phone Men's House
and tell 'em where you at. And me too tired to resist and
already she had one arm and was instructing the fellow to take
the other and we went, me between them, inwardly rejecting
and yet accepting her bossing, hearing, You take it easy, I'll
take care of you like I done a heap of others, my name's Mary
Rambo, everybody knows me round this part of Harlem, you
heard of me, ain't you? And the fellow saying, Sure, I'm Jenny
Jackson's boy, you know I know you, Miss Mary. And her saying,
Jenny Jackson, why, I should say you do know me and I know
you, you Ralston, and your mama got two more children, boy
named Flint and gal named Laurajean, I should say I know you
-- me and your mama and your papa useta -- And me saying, I'm
all right now, really all right. And her saying, And looking like
that, you must be worse off even than you look, and pulling me
now saying, Here's my house right here, hep me git him up the
steps and inside, you needn't worry, son, I ain't never laid eyes
on you before and it ain't my business and I don't care what
you think about me but you weak and caint hardly walk and all
and you look what's more like you hungry, so just come on and
let me do something for you like I hope you'd do something for
ole Mary in case she needed it, it ain't costing you a penny and
I don't want to git in your business, I just want you to lay down
till you rested and then you can go. And the fellow taking it up,
saying, You in good hands, daddy, Miss Mary always helping
somebody and you need some help 'cause here you black as me
and white as a sheet, as the ofays would say -- watch these
steps. And going up some steps and then some more, growing
weaker, and the two warm around me on each side of me, and
then inside a cool dark room, hearing, Here, here's the bed, lie
him down there, there, there now, that's it, Ralston, now put his
legs up -- never mind the cover -- there, that's it, now go out
there in the kitchen and pour him a glass of water, you'll find a
bottle in the ice-box. And him going and her placing another
pillow beneath my head, saying, Now you'll be better and when
you git all right you'll know how bad a shape you been in, here,
now taka sip of this water, and me drinking and seeing her
worn brown fingers holding the bright glass and a feeling of
old, almost forgotten relief coming over me and thinking in
echo of her words, If I don't think I'm sinking, look what a hole
I'm in, and then the soft cool splash of sleep.


I SAW her across the room when I awoke, reading a newspaper,
her glasses low across the bridge of her nose as she stared
at the page intently. Then I realized that though the glasses
still slanted down, the eyes were no longer focused on the
page, but on my face and lighting with a slow smile.

"How you feel now?" she said.

"Much better."

"I thought you would be. And you be even better after you
have a cup of soup I got for you in the kitchen. You slept a
good long time."

"Did I?" I said. "What time is it?"

"It's about ten o'clock, and from the way you slept I sus-
pects all you needed was some rest . . . No, don't git up yet.
You got to drink your soup, then you can go," she said, leaving.
She returned with a bowl in a plate. "This here'll fix you
up," she said. "You don't get this kind of service up there at
Men's House, do you? Now, you just sit there and take your
time. I ain't got nothing to do but read the paper. And I like
company. You have to make time in the morning?"

"No, I've been sick," I said. "But I have to look for a
job."

"I knowed you wasn't well. Why you try to hide it?"

"I didn't want to be trouble to anyone," I said.

"Everybody has to be trouble to somebody. And you just
come from the hospital too."

I looked up. She sat in the rocking chair bent forward,
her arms folded at ease across her aproned lap. Had she
searched my pockets?

"How did you know that?" I said.

"There you go getting suspicious," she said sternly.
"That's what's wrong with the world today, don't nobody trust
nobody. I can smell that hospital smell on you, son. You got
enough ether in those clothes to put to sleep a dog!"

"I couldn't remember telling you that I had been in the
hospital."

"No, and you didn't have to. I smelled that out. You got
people here in the city?"

"No, ma'm," I said. "They're down South. I came up
here to work so I could go to school, and I got sick."

"Now ain't that too bad! But you'll make out all right.
What you plan to make out of yourself?"

"I don't know now; I came here wanting to be an
educator. Now I don't know."

"So what's wrong with being an educator?"

I thought about it while sipping the good hot soup.

"Nothing, I suppose, I just think I'd like to do something
else."

"Well, whatever it is, I hope it's something that's a
credit to the race."

"I hope so," I said.

"Don't hope, make it that way."

I looked at her thinking of what I'd tried to do and of
where it had gotten me, seeing her heavy, composed figure
before me.

"It's you young folks what's going to make the changes," she
said. "Y'all's the ones. You got to lead and you got to fight
and move us all on up a little higher. And I tell you something
else, it's the one's from the South that's got to do it, them what
knows the fire and ain't forgot how it burns. Up here too many
forgits. They finds a place for theyselves and forgits the ones
on the bottom. Oh, heap of them talks about doing things, but
they done really forgot. No, it's you young ones what has to
remember and take the lead."

"Yes," I said.

"And you have to take care of yourself, son. Don't let this
Harlem git you. I'm in New York but New York ain't in me,
understand what I mean? Don't git corrupted."

"I won't. I'll be too busy."

"All right now, you looks to me like you might make
something out of yourself, so you be careful."

I got up to go, watching her raise herself out of her
chair and come with me to the door.

"You ever decide you want a room somewhere beside Men's
House, try me," she said. "The rent's reasonable."

"I'll remember that," I said.


I WAS to remember sooner than I had thought. The moment
I entered the bright, buzzing lobby of Men's House I was
overcome by a sense of alienation and hostility. My overalls
were causing stares and I knew that I could live there no
longer, that that phase of my life was past. The lobby was the
meeting place for various groups still caught up in the illusions
that had just been boomeranged out of my head: college boys
working to return to school down South; older advocates of
racial progress with Utopian schemes for building black
business empires; preachers ordained by no authority except
their own, without church or congregation, without bread or
wine, body or blood; the community "leaders" without follow-
ers; old men of sixty or more still caught up in post-Civil-
War dreams of freedom within segregation; the pathetic ones
who possessed nothing beyond their dreams of being gentle-
men, who held small jobs or drew small pensions, and all
pretending to be engaged in some vast, though obscure, en-
terprise, who affected the pseudo-courtly manners of certain
southern congressmen and bowed and nodded as they passed
like senile old roosters in a barnyard; the younger crowd for
whom I now felt a contempt such as only a disillusioned
dreamer feels for those still unaware that they dream -- the
business students from southern colleges, for whom business
was a vague, abstract game with rules as obsolete as Noah's
Ark but who yet were drunk on finance. Yes, and that older
group with similar aspirations, the "fundamentalists," the
"actors" who sought to achieve the status of brokers through
imagination alone, a group of janitors and messengers who
spent most of their wages on clothing such as was fashionable
among Wall Street brokers, with their Brooks Brothers suits
and bowler hats, English umbrellas, black calfskin shoes and
yellow gloves; with their orthodox and passionate argument as
to what was the correct tie to wear with what shirt, what shade
of gray was correct for spats and what would the Prince of
Wales wear at a certain seasonal event; should field glasses be
slung from the right or from the left shoulder; who never read
the financial pages though they purchased the Wall Street
Journal religiously and carried it beneath the left elbow,
pressed firm against the body and grasped in the left hand --
always manicured and gloved, fair weather or foul -- with an
easy precision (Oh, they had style) while the other hand
whipped a tightly rolled umbrella back and forth at a calculated
angle; with their homburgs and Chesterfields, their polo coats
and Tyrolean hats worn strictly as fashion demanded.

I could feel their eyes, saw them all and saw too the
time when they would know that my prospects were ended and
saw already the contempt they'd feel for me, a college man who
had lost his prospects and pride. I could see it all and I knew
that even the officials and the older men would despise me as
though, somehow, in losing my place in Bledsoe's world I had
betrayed them . . . I saw it as they looked at my overalls.

I had started toward the elevator when I heard the voice
raised in laughter and turned to see him holding forth to
a group in the lobby chairs and the rolls of fat behind the
wrinkled, high-domed, close-cut head, and I was certain that it
was he and stooped without thought and lifted it shining, full
and foul, and moved forward two long steps, dumping its great
brown, transparent splash upon the head warned too late by
someone across the room. And too late for me to see that it was
not Bledsoe but a preacher, a prominent Baptist, who shot up
wide-eyed with disbelief and outrage, and I shot around and
out of the lobby before anyone could think to stop me.

No one followed me and I wandered the streets amazed at my
own action. Later it began to rain and I sneaked back
near Men's House and persuaded an amused porter to slip my
things out to me. I learned that I had been barred from the
building for "ninety-nine years and a day."

"You might not can come back, man," the porter said, "but
after what you did, I swear, they never will stop talking
about you. You really baptized ole Rev!"

So THAT same night I went back to Mary's, where I lived
in a small but comfortable room until the ice came.

It was a period of quietness. I paid my way with my com-
pensation money and found living with her pleasant except
for her constant talk about leadership and responsibility. And
even this was not too bad as long as I could pay my way. It was,
however, a small compensation, and when after several months
my money ran out and I was looking again for a job, I found her
exceedingly irritating to listen to. Still, she never dunned me
and was as generous with her servings of food during mealtime
as ever. "It's just hard times you going through," she'd say.
"Everybody worth his salt has his hard times, and when you git
to be somebody you'll see these here very same hard times
helped you a heap."

I didn't see it that way. I had lost my sense of direction.
I spent my time, when not looking for work, in my room, where
I read countless books from the library. Sometimes, when there
was still money, or when I had earned a few dollars waiting
table, I'd eat out and wander the streets until late at night.
Other than Mary I had no friends and desired none. Nor did I
think of Mary as a "friend"; she was something more -- a force,
a stable, familiar force like something out of my past which
kept me from whirling off into some unknown which I dared not
face. It was a most painful position, for at the same time, Mary
reminded me constantly that something was expected of me,
some act of leadership, some newsworthy achievement; and I
was torn between resenting her for it and loving her for the
nebulous hope she kept alive.

I had no doubt that I could do something, but what, and
how? I had no contacts and I believed in nothing. And the
obsession with my identity which I had developed in the factory
hospital returned with a vengeance. Who was I, how had I
come to be? Certainly I couldn't help being different from when
I left the campus; but now a new, painful, contradictory voice
had grown up within me, and between its demands for
revengeful action and Mary's silent pressure I throbbed with
guilt and puzzlement. I wanted peace and quiet, tranquillity,
but was too much aboil inside. Somewhere beneath the load of
the emotion-freezing ice which my life had conditioned my
brain to produce, a spot of black anger glowed and threw off a
hot red light of such intensity that had Lord Kelvin known of its
existence, he would have had to revise his measurements. A
remote explosion had occurred somewhere, perhaps back at
Emerson's or that night in Bledsoe's office, and it had caused
the ice cap to melt and shift the slightest bit. But that bit, that
fraction, was irrevocable. Coming to New York had perhaps
been an unconscious attempt to keep the old freezing unit
going, but it hadn't worked; hot water had gotten into its coils.
Only a drop, perhaps, but that drop was the first wave of the
deluge. One moment I believed, I was dedicated, willing to lie
on the blazing coals, do anything to attain a position on the
campus -- then snap! It was done with, finished, through. Now
there was only the problem of forgetting it. If only all the
contradictory voices shouting inside my head would calm down
and sing a song in unison, whatever it was I wouldn't care as
long as they sang without dissonance; yes, and avoided the
uncertain extremes of the scale. But there was no relief. I was
wild with resentment but too much under "self-control," that
frozen virtue, that freezing vice. And the more resentful I
became, the more my old urge to make speeches returned.
While walking along the streets words would spill from my lips
in a mumble over which I had little control. I became afraid of
what I might do. All things were indeed awash in my mind. I
longed for home.

And while the ice was melting to form a flood in which I
threatened to drown I awoke one afternoon to find that my first
northern winter had set.



Chapter 13



At first I had turned away from the window and tried to
read but my mind kept wandering back to my old problems
and, unable to endure it any longer, I rushed from the house,
extremely agitated but determined to get away from my hot
thoughts into the chill air.

At the entrance I bumped against a woman who called me
a filthy name, only causing me to increase my speed. In a
few minutes I was several blocks away, having moved to the
next avenue and downtown. The streets were covered with ice
and soot-flecked snow and from above a feeble sun filtered
through the haze. I walked with my head down, feeling the
biting air. And yet I was hot, burning with an inner fever. I
barely raised my eyes until a car, passing with a thudding of
skid chains whirled completely around on the ice, then turned
cautiously and thudded off again.

I walked slowly on, blinking my eyes in the chill air, my
mind a blur with the hot inner argument continuing. The whole
of Harlem seemed to fall apart in the swirl of snow. I imagined I
was lost and for a moment there was an eerie quiet. I imagined
I heard the fall of snow upon snow. What did it mean? I walked,
my eyes focused into the endless succession of barber shops,
beauty parlors, confectioneries, luncheonettes, fish houses, and
hog maw joints, walking close to the windows, the snowflakes
lacing swift between, simultaneously forming a curtain, a veil,
and stripping it aside. A flash of red and gold from a window
filled with religious articles caught my eye. And behind the film
of frost etching the glass I saw two brashly painted plaster
images of Mary and Jesus surrounded by dream books, love
powders, God-Is-Love signs, money-drawing oil and plastic
dice. A black statue of a nude Nubian slave grinned out at me
from beneath a turban of gold. I passed on to a window
decorated with switches of wiry false hair, ointments
guaranteed to produce the miracle of whitening black skin.
"You too can be truly beautiful," a sign proclaimed. "Win
greater happiness with whiter complexion. Be outstanding in
your social set."

I hurried on, suppressing a savage urge to push my fist
through the pane. A wind was rising, the snow thinning. Where
would I go? To a movie? Could I sleep there? I ignored the
windows now and walked along, becoming aware that I was
muttering to myself again. Then far down at the corner I saw
an old man warming his hands against the sides of an odd-
looking wagon, from which a stovepipe reeled off a thin spiral
of smoke that drifted the odor of baking yams slowly to me,
bringing a stab of swift nostalgia. I stopped as though struck by
a shot, deeply inhaling, remembering, my mind surging back,
back. At home we'd bake them in the hot coals of the fireplace,
had carried them cold to school for lunch, munched them
secretly, squeezing the sweet pulp from the soft peel as we hid
from the teacher behind the largest book, the World's
Geography. Yes, and we'd loved them candied, or baked in a
cobbler, deep-fat fried in a pocket of dough, or roasted with
pork and glazed with the well-browned fat; had chewed them
raw -- yams and years ago. More yams than years ago though
the time seemed endlessly expanded, stretched thin as the
spiraling smoke beyond all recall.

I moved again. "Get yo' hot, baked Car'lina yam," he
called. At the corner the old man, wrapped in an army
overcoat, his feet covered with gunny sacks, his head in a
knitted cap, was puttering with a stack of paper bags. I
saw a crude sign on the side of the wagon proclaiming YAMS,
as I walked flush into the warmth thrown by the coals
that glowed in a grate underneath.

"How much are your yams?" I said, suddenly hungry.

"They ten cents and they sweet," he said, his voice
quavering with age. "These ain't none of them binding ones
neither. These here is real, sweet, yaller yams. How many?"

"One," I said. "If they're that good, one should be
enough."

He gave me a searching glance. There was a tear in the
corner of his eye. He chuckled and opened the door of the
improvised oven, reaching gingerly with his gloved hand. The
yams, some bubbling with syrup, lay on a wire rack above
glowing coals that leaped to low blue flame when struck by
the draft of air. The flash of warmth set my face aglow as
he removed one of the yams and shut the door.

"Here you are, suh," he said, starting to put the yam
into a bag.

"Never mind the bag, I'm going to eat it. Here . . ."

"Thanks." He took the dime. "If that ain't a sweet one,
I'll give you another one free of charge."

I knew that it was sweet before I broke it; bubbles of
brown syrup had burst the skin.

"Go ahead and break it," the old man said. "Break it and
I'll give you some butter since you gon' eat it right here.
Lots of folks takes 'em home. They got their own butter at
home."

I broke it, seeing the sugary pulp steaming in the cold.

"Hold it over here," he said. He took a crock from a rack
on the side of the wagon. "Right here."

I held it, watching him pour a spoonful of melted butter
over the yam and the butter seeping in. "Thanks."

"You welcome. And I'll tell you something."

"What's that?" I said.

"If that ain't the best eating you had in a long time, I
give you your money back."

"You don't have to convince me," I said. "I can look at it
and see it's good."

"You right, but everything what looks good ain't neces-
sarily good," he said. "But these is."

I took a bite, finding it as sweet and hot as any I'd ever
had, and was overcome with such a surge of homesickness that
I turned away to keep my control. I walked along, munching
the yam, just as suddenly overcome by an intense feeling of
freedom -- simply because I was eating while walking along the
street. It was exhilarating. I no longer had to worry about who
saw me or about what was proper. To hell with all that, and as
sweet as the yam actually was, it became like nectar with the
thought. If only someone who had known me at school or at
home would come along and see me now. How shocked they'd
be! I'd push them into a side street and smear their faces with
the peel. What a group of people we were, I thought. Why, you
could cause us the greatest humiliation simply by confronting
us with something we liked. Not all of us, but so many. Simply
by walking up and shaking a set of chitterlings or a well-
boiled hog maw at them during the clear light of day! What
consternation it would cause! And I saw myself advancing upon
Bledsoe, standing bare of his false humility in the crowded
lobby of Men's House, and seeing him there and him seeing me
and ignoring me and me enraged and suddenly whipping out a
foot or two of chitterlings, raw, uncleaned and dripping sticky
circles on the floor as I shake them in his face, shouting:
"Bledsoe, you're a shameless chitterling eater! I accuse
you of relishing how bowels! Ha! And not only do you eat them,
you sneak and eat them in private when you think you're
unobserved! You're a sneaking chitterling lover! I accuse you of
indulging in a filthy habit, Bledsoe! Lug them out of there,
Bledsoe! Lug them out so we can see! I accuse you before the
eyes of the world!" And he lugs them out, yards of them, with
mustard greens, and racks of pigs' ears, and pork chops and
black-eyed peas with dull accusing eyes.

I let out a wild laugh, almost choking over the yam as
the scene spun before me. Why, with others present, it would
be worse than if I had accused him of raping an old woman of
ninety-nine years, weighing ninety pounds . . . blind in one eye
and lame in the hip! Bledsoe would disintegrate, disinflate!
With a profound sigh he'd drop his head in shame. He'd lose
caste. The weekly newspapers would attack him. The captions
over his picture: Prominent Educator Reverts to Field
Niggerism! His rivals would denounce him as a bad example
for the South. Editorials would demand that he either recant or
retire from public life. In the South his white folks would
desert him; he would be discussed far and wide, and all of the
trustees' money couldn't prop up his sagging prestige. He'd
end up an exile washing dishes at the Automat. For down South
he'd be unable to get a job on the honey wagon.

This is all very wild and childish, I thought, but to hell
with being ashamed of what you liked. No more of that for me.
I am what I am! I wolfed down the yam and ran back to the old
man and handed him twenty cents, "Give me two more," I said.

"Sho, all you want, long as I got 'em. I can see you a ser-
ious yam eater, young fellow. You eating them right away?"

"As soon as you give them to me," I said.

"You want 'em buttered?"

"Please."

"Sho, that way you can get the most out of 'em. Yessuh,"
he said, handing over the yams, "I can see you one of
these oldfashioned yam eaters."

"They're my birthmark," I said. "I yam what I am!"

"Then you must be from South Car'lina," he said with a
grin.

"South Carolina nothing, where I come from we really
go for yams."

"Come back tonight or tomorrow if you can eat some more,"
he called after me. "My old lady'll be out here with some
hot sweet potato fried pies."

Hot fried pies, I thought sadly, moving away. I would pro-
bably have indigestion if I ate one -- now that I no longer
felt ashamed of the things I had always loved, I probably
could no longer digest very many of them. What and how much
had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me in-
stead of what I myself had wished to do? What a waste, what a
senseless waste! But what of those things which you actually
didn't like, not because you were not supposed to like them,
not because to dislike them was considered a mark of refine-
ment and education -- but because you actually found them
distasteful? The very idea annoyed me. How could you know?
It involved a problem of choice. I would have to weigh many
things carefully before deciding and there would be some
things that would cause quite a bit of trouble, simply because I
had never formed a personal attitude toward so much. I had
accepted the accepted attitudes and it had made life seem
simple . . .

But not yams, I had no problem concerning them and I
would eat them whenever and wherever I took the notion.
Continue on the yam level and life would be sweet -- though
somewhat yellowish. Yet the freedom to eat yams on the street
was far less than I had expected upon coming to the city. An
unpleasant taste bloomed in my mouth now as I bit the end of
the yam and threw it into the street; it had been frost-bitten.
The wind drove me into a side street where a group of
boys had set a packing box afire. The gray smoke hung low and
seemed to thicken as I walked with my head down and eyes
closed, trying to avoid the fumes. My lungs began to pain; then
emerging, wiping my eyes and coughing, I almost stumbled
over it: It was piled in a jumble along the walk and over the
curb into the street, like a lot of junk waiting to be hauled
away. Then I saw the sullen-faced crowd, looking at a building
where two white men were toting out a chair in which an old
woman sat; who, as I watched, struck at them feebly with her
fists. A motherly-looking old woman with her head tied in a
handkerchief, wearing a man's shoes and a man's heavy blue
sweater. It was startling: The crowd watching silently, the
two white men lugging the chair and trying to dodge the blows
and the old woman's face streaming with angry tears as she
thrashed at them with her fists. I couldn't believe it.
Something, a sense of foreboding, filled me, a quick sense of
uncleanliness.

"Leave us alone," she cried, "leave us alone!" as the men
pulled their heads out of range and sat her down abruptly
at the curb, hurrying back into the building.

What on earth, I thought, looking about me. What on earth?
The old woman sobbed, pointing to the stuff piled along
the curb. "Just look what they doing to us. Just look,"
looking straight at me. And I realized that what I'd taken
for junk was actually worn household furnishings.

"Just look at what they doing," she said, her teary eyes
upon my face.

I looked away embarrassed, staring into the rapidly grow-
ing crowd. Faces were peering sullenly from the windows
above. And now as the two men reappeared at the top of the
steps carrying a battered chest of drawers, I saw a third
man come out and stand behind them, pulling at his ear as he
looked out over the crowd.

"Shake it up, you fellows," he said, "shake it up. We
don't have all day."

Then the men came down with the chest and I saw the crowd
give way sullenly, the men trudging through, grunting
and putting the chest at the curb, then returning into the
building without a glance to left or right.

"Look at that," a slender man near me said. "We ought
to beat the hell out of those paddies!"

I looked silently into his face, taut and ashy in the cold,
his eyes trained upon the men going up the steps.

"Sho, we ought to stop 'em," another man said, "but
ain't that much nerve in the whole bunch."

"There's plenty nerve," the slender man said. "All they
need is someone to set it off. All they need is a leader.
You mean you don't have the nerve."

"Who me?" the man said. "Who me?"

"Yes, you."

"Just look," the old woman said, "just look," her face still
turned toward mine. I turned away, edging closer to the two
men.

"Who are those men?" I said, edging closer.

"Marshals or something. I don't give a damn who they
is."

"Marshals, hell," another man said. "Those guys doing
all the toting ain't nothing but trusties. Soon as they
get through they'll lock 'em up again."

"I don't care who they are, they got no business putting
these old folks out on the sidewalk."

"You mean they're putting them out of their apartment?"
I said. "They can do that up here?"

"Man, where you from?" he said, swinging toward me.
"What does it look like they puttin' them out of, a
Pullman car? They being evicted!"

I was embarrassed; others were turning to stare. I had
never seen an eviction. Someone snickered.

"Where did he come from?"

A flash of heat went over me and I turned. "Look, friends,"
I said, hearing a hot edge coming into my voice. "I asked
a civil question. If you don't care to answer, don't, but
don't try to make me look ridiculous."

"Ridiculous? Hell, all scobos is ridiculous. Who the hell
is you?"

"Never mind, I am who I am. Just don't beat up your gums
at me," I said, throwing him a newly acquired phrase.
Just then one of the men came down the steps with an arm-
ful of articles, and I saw the old woman reach up, yelling,

"Take your hands off my Bible!" And the crowd surged forward.
The white man's hot eyes swept the crowd. "Where, lady?"
he said. "I don't see any Bible."

And I saw her snatch the Book from his arms, clutching
it fiercely and sending forth a shriek. "They can come in your
home and do what they want to you," she said. "Just come
stomping in and jerk your life up by the roots! But this here's
the last straw. They ain't going to bother with my Bible!"

The white man eyed the crowd. "Look, lady," he said, more
to the rest of us than to her, "I don't want to do this, I
have to do it. They sent me up here to do it. If it was left
to me, you could stay here till hell freezes over . . ."

"These white folks, Lord. These white folks," she moaned,
her eyes turned toward the sky, as an old man pushed
past me and went to her.

"Hon, Hon," he said, placing his hand on her shoulder. "It's
the agent, not these gentlemen. He's the one; He says it's
the bank, but you know he's the one. We've done business with
him for over twenty years."

"Don't tell me," she said. "It's all the white folks, not
just one. They all against us. Every stinking low-down one of
them."

"She's right!" a hoarse voice said. "She's right! They all
is!"

Something had been working fiercely inside me, and for
a moment I had forgotten the rest of the crowd. Now I
recognized a self-consciousness about them, as though they, we,
were ashamed to witness the eviction, as though we were all
unwilling intruders upon some shameful event; and thus we
were careful not to touch or stare too hard at the effects that
lined the curb; for we were witnesses of what we did not wish
to see, though curious, fascinated, despite our shame, and
through it all the old female, mind-plunging crying.

I looked at the old people, feeling my eyes burn, my
throat tighten. The old woman's sobbing was having a strange
effect upon me-as when a child, seeing the tears of its parents,
is moved by both fear and sympathy to cry. I turned away,
feeling myself being drawn to the old couple by a warm, dark,
rising whirpool of emotion which I feared. I was wary of what
the sight of them crying there on the sidewalk was making me
begin to feel. I wanted to leave, but was too ashamed to leave,
was rapidly becoming too much a part of it to leave.

I turned aside and looked at the clutter of household
objects which the two men continued to pile on the walk. And
as the crowd pushed me I looked down to see looking out of an
oval frame a portrait of the old couple when young, seeing the
sad, stiff dignity of the faces there; feeling strange memories
awakening that began an echoing in my head like that of a
hysterical voice stuttering in a dark street. Seeing them look
back at me as though even then in that nineteenth-century day
they had expected little, and this with a grim, unillusioned
pride that suddenly seemed to me both a reproach and a
warning. My eyes fell upon a pair of crudely carved and
polished bones, "knocking bones," used to accompany music at
country dances, used in black-face minstrels; the flat ribs of
a cow, a steer or sheep, flat bones that gave off a sound, when
struck, like heavy castanets (had he been a minstrel?) or the
wooden block of a set of drums. Pots and pots of green plants
were lined in the dirty snow, certain to die of the cold; ivy,
canna, a tomato plant. And in a basket I saw a straightening
comb, switches of false hair, a curling iron, a card with silvery
letters against a background of dark red velvet, reading "God
Bless Our Home"; and scattered across the top of a chiffonier
were nuggets of High John the Conqueror, the lucky stone; and
as I watched the white men put down a basket in which I saw a
whiskey bottle filled with rock candy and camphor, a small
Ethiopian flag, a faded tintype of Abraham Lincoln, and the
smiling image of a Hollywood star torn from a magazine. And
on a pillow several badly cracked pieces of delicate china, a
commemorative plate celebrating the St. Louis World Fair . . .
I stood in a kind of daze, looking at an old folded lace fan
studded with jet and mother-of-pearl.

The crowd surged as the white men came back, knocking over
a drawer that spilled its contents in the snow at my feet.
I stooped and starting replacing the articles: a bent
Masonic emblem, a set of tarnished cuff links, three brass
rings, a dime pierced with a nail hole so as to be worn about
the ankle on a string for luck, an ornate greeting card with the
message "Grandma, I love you" in childish scrawl; another card
with a picture of what looked like a white man in black-face
seated in the door of a cabin strumming a banjo beneath a bar
of music and the lyric "Going back to my old cabin home"; a
useless inhalant, a string of bright glass beads with a tarnished
clasp, a rabbit foot, a celluloid baseball scoring card shaped
like a catcher's mitt, registering a game won or lost years ago;
an old breast pump with rubber bulb yellowed with age, a worn
baby shoe and a dusty lock of infant hair tied with a faded and
crumpled blue ribbon. I felt nauseated. In my hand I held three
lapsed life insurance policies with perforated seals stamped
"Void"; a yellowing newspaper portrait of a huge black man
with the caption: MARCUS GARVEY DEPORTED.

I turned away, bending and searching the dirty snow for
anything missed by my eyes, and my fingers closed upon
something resting in a frozen footstep: a fragile paper, coming
apart with age, written in black ink grown yellow. I read: FREE
PAPERS. Be it known to all men that my negro, Primus Provo,
has been freed by me this sixth day of August, 1859. Signed:
John Samuels Macon . . . I folded it quickly, blotting out the
single drop of melted snow which glistened on the yellowed
page, and dropped it back into the drawer. My hands were
trembling, my breath rasping as if I had run a long distance or
come upon a coiled snake in a busy street. It has been longer
than that, further removed in time, I told myself, and yet I knew
that it hadn't been. I replaced the drawer in the chest and
pushed drunkenly to the curb.

But it wouldn't come up, only a bitter spurt of gall filled
my mouth and splattered the old folk's possessions. I turned
and stared again at the jumble, no longer looking at what was
before my eyes, but inwardly-outwardly, around a corner into
the dark, far-away-and-long-ago, not so much of my own
memory as of remembered words, of linked verbal echoes,
images, heard even when not listening at home. And it was as
though I myself was being dispossessed of some painful yet
precious thing which I could not bear to lose; something
confounding, like a rotted tooth that one would rather suffer
indefinitely than endure the short, violent eruption of pain that
would mark its removal. And with this sense of dispossession
came a pang of vague recognition: this junk, these shabby
chairs, these heavy, old-fashioned pressing irons, zinc wash
tubs with dented bottoms -- all throbbed within me with more
meaning than there should have been: And why did I, standing
in the crowd, see like a vision my mother hanging wash on a
cold windy day, so cold that the warm clothes froze even before
the vapor thinned and hung stiff on the line, and her hands
white and raw in the skirt-swirling wind and her gray head
bare to the darkened sky -- why were they causing me discom-
fort so far beyond their intrinsic meaning as objects?
And why did I see them now as behind a veil that threatened
to lift, stirred by the cold wind in the narrow street?

A scream, "I'm going in!" spun me around. The old couple
were on the steps now, the old man holding her arm, the
white men leaning forward above, and the crowd pressing me
closer to the steps.

"You can't go in, lady," the man said.

"I want to pray!" she said.

"I can't help it, lady. You'll have to do your praying out
here."

"I'm go'n in!"

"Not in here!"

"All we want to do is go in and pray," she said, clutching
her Bible. "It ain't right to pray in the street like this."

"I'm sorry," he said.

"Aw, let the woman go in to pray," a voice called from the
crowd. "You got all their stuff out here on the walk -- what
more do you want, blood?"

"Sure, let them old folks pray."

"That's what's wrong with us now, all this damn praying,"
another voice called.

"You don't go back, see," the white man said. "You were
legally evicted."

"But all we want to do is go in an' kneel on the floor,"

the old man said. "We been living right here for over twenty
years. I don't see why you can't let us go just for a few minutes
. . ."

"Look, I've told you," the man said. "I've got my orders.
You're wasting my time."

"We're go'n in!" the woman said.

It happened so suddenly that I could barely keep up with it:
saw the old woman clutching her Bible and rushing up the
steps, her husband behind her and the white man stepping
in front of them and stretching out his arm. "I'll jug you,
he yelled, "by God, I'll jug you!"

"Take your hands off that woman!" someone called from
the crowd.

Then at the top of the stairs they were pushing against
the man and I saw the old woman fall backwards, and the
crowd exploded.

"Get that paddie sonofabitch!"

"He struck her!" a West Indian woman screamed into my ear.
"The filthy brute, he struck her!"

"Stand back or I'll shoot," the man called, his eyes wild
as he drew a gun and backed into the doorway where the two
trusties stood bewildered, their arms full of articles. "I swear
I'll shoot! You don't know what you're doing, but I'll shoot!"
They hesitated. "Ain't but six bullets in that thing," a
little fellow called. "Then what you going to do?"

"Yeah, you damn sho caint hide."

"I advise you to stay out of this," the marshal called.
"Think you can come up here and hit one of our women,
you a fool."

"To hell with all this talk, let's rush that bastard!"

"You better think twice," the white man called.

I saw them start up the steps and felt suddenly as though
my head would split. I knew that they were about to attack
the man and I was both afraid and angry, repelled and fas-
cinated. I both wanted it and feared the consequences, was
outraged and angered at what I saw and yet surged with fear;
not for the man or of the consequences of an attack, but of
what the sight of violence might release in me. And beneath it
all there boiled up all the shock-absorbing phrases that I had
learned all my life. I seemed to totter on the edge of a great
dark hole.

"No, no," I heard myself yelling. "Black men! Brothers! Black
Brothers! That's not the way. We're law-abiding. We're a
law-abiding people and a slow-to-anger people."

Forcing my way quickly through the crowd, I stood on the steps
facing those in front, talking rapidly without thought but
out of my clashing emotions. "We're a law-abiding people
and a slow-to-anger people . . ." They stopped, listening.
Even the white man was startled.

"Yeah, but we mad now," a voice called out.

"Yes, you're right," I called back. "We're angry, but let
us be wise. Let us, I mean let us not . . . Let us learn from
that great leader whose wise action was reported in the news-
paper the other day . . ."

"What, mahn? Who?" a West Indian voice shouted.

"Come on! To hell with this guy, let's get that paddie
before they send him some help . . ."

"No, wait," I yelled. "Let's follow a leader, let's organize.
Organize. We need someone like that wise leader, you read
about him, down in Alabama. He was strong enough to choose
to do the wise thing in spite of what he felt himself . . ."


"Who, mahn? Who?"

This was it, I thought, they're listening, eager to listen.
Nobody laughed. If they laugh, I'll die! I tensed my
diaphragm.

"That wise man," I said, "you read about him, who when that
fugitive escaped from the mob and ran to his school for pro-
tection, that wise man who was strong enough to do the legal
thing, the law-abiding thing, to turn him over to the forces
of law and order . . ."

"Yeah," a voice rang out, "yeah, so they could lynch his
ass."

Oh, God, this wasn't it at all. Poor technique and not at
all what I intended.

"He was a wise leader," I yelled. "He was within the law.
Now wasn't that the wise thing to do?"

"Yeah, he was wise all right," the man laughed angrily.

"Now get out of the way so we can jump this paddie."

The crowd yelled and I laughed in response as though
hypnotized.

"But wasn't that the human thing to do? After all, he
had to protect himself because --"

"He was a handkerchief-headed rat!" a woman screamed, her
voice boiling with contempt.

"Yes, you're right. He was wise and cowardly, but what a-
bout us? What are we to do?" I yelled, suddenly thrilled
by the response. "Look at him," I cried.

"Yes, just look at him!" an old fellow in a derby called
out as though answering a preacher in church.

"And look at that old couple . . ."

"Yeah, what about Sister and Brother Provo?" he said.

"It's an ungodly shame!"

"And look at their possessions all strewn there on the
sidewalk. Just look at their possessions in the snow. How old
are you, sir?" I yelled.

"I'm eighty-seven," the old man said, his voice low and
bewildered.

"How's that? Yell so our slow-to-anger brethren can
hear you."

"I'm eighty-seven years old!"

"Did you hear him? He's eighty-seven. Eighty-seven and
look at all he's accumulated in eighty-seven years, strewn in
the snow like chicken guts, and we're a law-abiding, slow-to
anger bunch of folks turning the other cheek every day in the
week. What are we going to do? What would you, what would I,
what would he have done? What is to be done? I propose we do
the wise thing, the law-abiding thing. Just look at this junk!
Should two old folks live in such junk, cooped up in a filthy
room? It's a great danger, a fire hazard! Old cracked dishes
and broken-down chairs. Yes, yes, yes! Look at that old woman,
somebody's mother, somebody's grandmother, maybe. We call
them 'Big Mama' and they spoil us and -- you know, you
remember . . . Look at her quilts and broken-down shoes. I
know she's somebody's mother because I saw an old breast
pump fall into the snow, and she's somebody's grandmother,
because I saw a card that read 'Dear Grandma' . . . But we're
law-abiding . . . I looked into a basket and I saw some bones,
not neckbones, but rib bones, knocking bones . . . This old
couple used to dance . . . I saw -- What kind of work do you do,
Father?" I called.

"I'm a day laborer . . ."

". . . A day laborer, you heard him, but look at his stuff strewn
like chitterlings in the snow . . . Where has all his labor
gone? Is he lying?"

"Hell, no, he ain't lying."

"Naw, suh!"

"Then where did his labor go? Look at his old blues records
and her pots of plants, they're down-home folks, and every-
thing tossed out like junk whirled eighty-seven years in a
cyclone. Eighty-seven years, and poof! like a snort in a
windstorm. Look at them, they look like my mama and papa
and my grandma and grandpa, and I look like you and you look
like me. Look at them but remember that we're a wise, law
abiding group of people. And remember it when you look up
there in the doorway at that law standing there with his
fortyfive. Look at him, standing with his blue steel pistol and his
blue serge suit. Look at him! You don't see just one man
dressed in one blue serge suit, or one forty-five, you see ten for
every one of us, ten guns and ten warm suits and ten fat bellies
and ten million laws. Laws, that's what we call them down
South! Laws! And we're wise, and law-abiding. And look at this
old woman with her dog-eared Bible. What's she trying to bring
off here? She's let her religion go to her head, but we all know
that religion is for the heart, not for the head. 'Blessed are the
pure in heart,' it says. Nothing about the poor in head. What's
she trying to do? What about the clear of head? And the clear
of eye, the ice-water-visioned who see too clear to miss a lie?
Look out there at her cabinet with its gaping drawers. Eighty-
seven years to fill them, and full of brick and brack, a bric-
abrac, and she wants to break the law . . . What's happened to
them? They're our people, your people and mine, your parents
and mine. What's happened to 'em?"

"I'll tell you!" a heavyweight yelled, pushing out of the
crowd, his face angry. "Hell, they been dispossessed, you crazy
sonofabitch, get out the way!"

"Dispossessed?" I cried, holding up my hand and allowing
the word to whistle from my throat. "That's a good word,
'Dispossessed'! 'Dispossessed,' eighty-seven years and
dispossessed of what? They ain't got nothing, they caint get
nothing, they never had nothing. So who was dispossessed?" I
growled. "We're law-abiding. So who's being dispossessed? Can
it be us? These old ones are out in the snow, but we're here
with them. Look at their stuff, not a pit to hiss in, nor a window
to shout the news and us right with them. Look at them, not a
shack to pray in or an alley to sing the blues! They're facing a
gun and we're facing it with them. They don't want the world,
but only Jesus. They only want Jesus, just fifteen minutes of
Jesus on the rug-bare floor . . . How about it, Mr. Law? Do we
get our fifteen minutes worth of Jesus? You got the world, can
we have our Jesus?"

"I got my orders, Mac," the man called, waving the pistol
with a sneer. "You're doing all right, tell 'em to keep out
of this. This is legal and I'll shoot if I have to . . ."

"But what about the prayer?"

"They don't go back!"

"Are you positive?"

"You could bet your life," he said.

"Look at him," I called to the angry crowd. "With his blue
steel pistol and his blue serge suit. You heard him, he's the
law. He says he'll shoot us down because we're a law-abiding
people. So we've been dispossessed, and what's more, he
thinks he's God. Look up there backed against the post with a
criminal on either side of him. Can't you feel the cold wind,
can't you hear it asking, 'What did you do with your heavy
labor? What did you do?' When you look at all you haven't got
in eighty-seven years you feel ashamed --"

"Tell 'em about it, brother," an old man interrupted. "It
makes you feel you ain't a man."

"Yes, these old folks had a dream book, but the pages went
blank and it failed to give them the number. It was called
the Seeing Eye, The Great Constitutional Dream Book, The
Secrets of Africa, The Wisdom of Egypt -- but the eye was blind,
it lost its luster. It's all cataracted like a cross-eyed carpenter
and it doesn't saw straight. All we have is the Bible and this
Law here rules that out. So where do we go? Where do we go
from here, without a pot --"

"We going after that paddie," the heavyweight called,
rushing up the steps.

Someone pushed me. "No, wait," I called.

"Get out the way now."

There was a rush against me and I fell, hearing a single
explosion, backward into a whirl of milling legs, overshoes,
the trampled snow cold on my hands. Another shot sounded above
like a bursting bag. Managing to stand, I saw atop the steps the
fist with the gun being forced into the air above the crowd's
bobbing heads and the next instant they were dragging him
down into the snow; punching him left and right, uttering a low
tense swelling sound of desperate effort; a grunt that exploded
into a thousand softly spat, hate-sizzling curses. I saw a woman
striking with the pointed heel of her shoe, her face a blank
mask with hollow black eyes as she aimed and struck, aimed
and struck, bringing spurts of blood, running along beside the
man who was dragged to his feet now as they punched him
gauntlet-wise between them. Suddenly I saw a pair of
handcuffs arc gleaming into the air and sail across the street. A
boy broke out of the crowd, the marshal's snappy hat on his
head. The marshal was spun this way and that, then a swift
tattoo of blows started him down the street. I was beside
myself with excitement. The crowd surged after him, milling
like a huge man trying to turn in a cubbyhole -- some of them
laughing, some cursing, some intently silent.

"The brute struck that gentle woman, poor thing!" the West
Indian woman chanted. "Black men, did you ever see such
a brute? Is he a gentleman, I ask you? The brute! Give it back
to him, black men. Repay the brute a thousandfold! Give it back
to him unto the third and fourth generations. Strike him, our
fine black men. Protect your black women! Repay the arrogant
creature to the third and fourth generations!"

"We're dispossessed," I sang at the top of my voice, "dispo-
ssessed and we want to pray. Let's go in and pray. Let's
have a big prayer meeting. But we'll need some chairs to sit
in . . . rest upon as we kneel. We'll need some chairs!"

"Here's some chairs down here," a woman called from the
walk. "How 'bout taking in some chairs?"

"Sure," I called, "take everything. Take it all, hide that
junk! Put it back where it came from. It's blocking the street
and the sidewalk, and that's against the law. We're law-abiding,
so clear the street of the debris. Put it out of sight! Hide it,
hide their shame! Hide our shame!

"Come on, men," I yelled, dashing down the steps and seizing
a chair and starting back, no longer struggling against
or thinking about the nature of my action. The others followed,
picking up pieces of furniture and lugging them back into the
building.

"We ought to done this long ago," a man said.

"We damn sho should."

"I feel so good," a woman said, "I feel so good!"

"Black men, I'm proud of you," the West Indian woman
shrilled. "Proud!"

We rushed into the dark little apartment that smelled of
stale cabbage and put the pieces down and returned for more.
Men, women and children seized articles and dashed inside
shouting, laughing. I looked for the two trusties, but they
seemed to have disappeared. Then, coming down into the
street, I thought I saw one. He was carrying a chair back
inside.

"So you're law-abiding too," I called only to become aware
that it was someone else. A white man but someone else
altogether.

The man laughed at me and continued inside. And when I
reached the street there were several of them, men and
women, standing about, cheering whenever another piece of
furniture was returned. It was like a holiday. I didn't
want it to stop.

"Who are those people?" I called from the steps.

"What people?" someone called back.

"Those," I said, pointing.

"You mean those ofays?"

"Yes, what do they want?"

"We're friends of the people," one of the white men
called.

"Friends of what people?" I called, prepared to jump
down upon him if he answered, "You people."

"We're friends of all the common people," he shouted.
"We came up to help."

"We believe in brotherhood," another called. "Well,
pick up that sofa and come on," I called. I was uneasy
about their presence and disappointed when they all
joined the crowd and started lugging the evicted arti-
cles back inside. Where had I heard of them?

"Why don't we stage a march?" one of the white men
called, going past.

"Why don't we march!" I yelled out to the sidewalk
before I had time to think.

They took it up immediately.

"Let's march . . ."

"It's a good idea."

"Let's have a demonstration . . ."

"Let's parade!"

I heard the siren and saw the scout cars swing into the
block in the same instant. It was the police! I looked into the
crowd, trying to focus upon their faces, hearing someone yell,
"Here come the cops," and others answering, "Let 'em come!"
Where is all this leading? I thought, seeing a white man
run inside the building as the policemen dashed from their cars
and came running up.

"What's going on here?" a gold-shield officer called up
the steps.

It had become silent. No one answered.

"I said, what's going on here," he repeated. "You," he
called, pointing straight at me.

"We've . . . we've been clearing the sidewalk of a lot of
junk," I called, tense inside.

"What's that?" he said.

"It's a clean-up campaign," I called, wanting to laugh.

"These old folks had all their stuff cluttering up the sidewalk
and we cleared the street . . ."

"You mean you're interfering with an eviction," he called,
starting through the crowd.

"He ain't doing nothing," a woman called from behind me.

I looked around, the steps behind were filled with those
who had been inside.

"We're all together," someone called, as the crowd
closed in.

"Clear the streets," the officer ordered.

"That's what we were doing," someone called from back
in the crowd.

"Mahoney!" he bellowed to another policeman, "send in
a riot call!"

"What riot?" one of the white men called to him.

"There's no riot."

"If I say there's a riot, there's a riot," the officer said.
"And what are you white people doing up here in Harlem?"

"We're citizens. We go anywhere we like."

"Listen! Here come some more cops!" someone called.

"Let them come!"

"Let the Commissioner come!"

It became too much for me. The whole thing had gotten out
of hand. What had I said to bring on all this? I edged to the
back of the crowd on the steps and backed into the hallway.
Where would I go? I hurried up to the old couple's apartment.
But I can't hide here, I thought, heading back for the stairs.

"No. You can't go that way," a voice said.

I whirled. It was a white girl standing in the door.

"What are you doing in here?" I shouted, my fear turning
to feverish anger.

"I didn't mean to startle you," she said. "Brother, that was
quite a speech you made. I heard just the end of it, but you
certainly moved them to action . . ."

"Action," I said, "action --"

"Don't be modest, brother," she said, "I heard you."

"Look, Miss, we'd better get out of here," I said, finally
controlling the throbbing in my throat. "There are a lot of
policemen downstairs and more coming."

"Oh, yes. You'd better go over the roof," she said.

"Otherwise, someone is sure to point you out."

"Over the roof?"

"It's easy. Just go up to the roof of the building and keep
crossing until you reach the house at the end of the block.
Then open the door and walk down as though you've been visit-
ing. You'd better hurry. The longer you remain unknown to the
police, the longer you'll be effective."

Effective? I thought. What did she mean? And what was
this "brother" business?

"Thanks," I said, and hurried for the stairs.

"Good-bye," her voice rose fluidly behind me. I turned,
glimpsing her white face in the dim light of the darkened
doorway.

I took the flight in a bound and cautiously opened the door,
and suddenly the sun flared on the roof and it was windy
cold. Before me the low, snow-caked walls dividing the
buildings stretched hurdle-like the long length of the block to
the corner, and before me empty clotheslines trembled in the
wind. I made my way through the wind-carved snow to the next
roof and then to the next, going with swift caution. Planes were
rising over an airfield far to the southeast, and I was running
now and seeing all the church steeples rising and falling and
stacks with smoke leaning sharp against the sky, and below in
the street the sound of sirens and shouting. I hurried. Then,
climbing over a wall I looked back, seeing a man hurrying after
me, slipping, sliding, going over the low dividing walls of the
roofs with puffing, bustling effort. I turned and ran, trying to
put the rows of chimneys between us, wondering why he didn't
yell "Halt!" or shout, or shoot. I ran, dodging behind an
elevator housing, then dashing to the next roof, going down,
the snow cold to my hands, knees striking, toes gripping, and
up and running and looking back, seeing the short figure in
black still running after. The corner seemed a mile away. I tried
to count the number of roofs that bounced before me yet to be
crossed. Getting to seven, I ran, hearing shouts, more sirens,
and looking back and him still behind me, running in a short-
legged scramble, still behind me as I tried to open the door
of a building to go down and finding it stuck and running once
more, trying to zig-zag in the snow and feeling the crunch of
gravel underneath, and behind me still, as I swung over a
partition and went brushing past a huge cote and arousing a
flight of frantic white birds, suddenly as large as buzzards as
they beat furiously against my eyes, dazzling the sun as they
fluttered up and away and around in a furious glide and me
running again and looking back and for a split second thinking
him gone and once more seeing him bobbing after. Why doesn't
he shoot? Why? If only it were like at home where I knew
someone in all the houses, knew them by sight and by name, by
blood and by background, by shame and pride, and by religion.

It was a carpeted hall and I moved down with pounding heart
as a dog set up a terrific din within the top apartment.
Then I moved quickly, my body like glass inside as I skipped
downward off the edges of the stairs. Looking down the
stairwell I saw pale light filtering through the door glass, far
below. But what had happened to the girl, had she put the man
on my trail? What was she doing there? I bounded down, no
one challenging me, and I stopped in the vestibule, breathing
deeply and listening for his hand upon the door above and
brushing my clothing into order. Then I stepped into the street
with a nonchalance copied from characters I had seen in the
movies. No sound from above, not even the malicious note of
the barking dog.

It was a long block and I had come down into a building
that faced not the street but the avenue. A squad of mounted
policemen lashed themselves around the corner and galloped
past, the horseshoes thudding dully through the snow, the men
rising high in their saddles, shouting. I picked up speed, careful
not to run, heading away. This was awful. What on earth had I
said to have brought on all this? How would it end? Someone
might be killed. Heads would be pistol-whipped. I stopped at
the corner, looking for the pursuing man, the detective, and for
a bus. The long white stretch of street was empty, the aroused
pigeons still circling overhead. I scanned the roofs, expecting
to see him peering down. The sound of shouting continued to
rise, then another green and white patrol car was whining
around the corner and speeding past me, heading for the block.
I cut through a block in which there were close to a dozen
funeral parlors, each decked out with neon signs, all set up in
old brownstone buildings. Elaborate funeral cars stood along
the curb, one a dull black with windows shaped like Gothic
arches, through which I saw funeral flowers piled upon a
casket. I hurried on.

I could see the girl's face still, below the short flight of
stairs. But who was the figure that had crossed the roof behind
me? Chased me? Why had he been so silent, and why was there
only one? Yes, and why hadn't they sent a patrol car to pick me
up? I hurried out of the block of funeral parlors into the bright
sun that swept the snow of the avenue, slowing to a leisurely
walk now, trying to give the impression of a complete lack of
haste. I longed to look stupid, utterly incapable of thought or
speech, and tried to shuffle my feet over the walk, but quit with
distaste after stealing a glance behind me. Just ahead I saw a
car pull up and a man leap out with a physician's bag.

"Hurry, Doctor," a man called from the stoop, "she's
already in labor!"

"Good," the doctor called. "That's what we've been waiting
for, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but it didn't start when we expected it."

I watched them disappear inside the hall. What a hell of
a time to be born, I thought. At the corner I joined several
people waiting for the lights to change. I had just about
convinced myself that I had escaped successfully when a quiet,
penetrating voice beside me said, "That was a masterful bit of
persuasion, brother."

Suddenly wound tight as a tensioned spring I turned almost
lethargically. A short insignificant-looking bushyeye-
browed man, with a quiet smile on his face stood beside me,
looking not at all like a policeman.

"What do you mean?" I asked, my voice lazy, distant.

"Don't be alarmed," he said, "I'm a friend."

"I've got nothing to be alarmed about, and you're no
friend of mine."

"Then say that I'm an admirer," he said pleasantly.

"Admirer of what?"

"Of your speech," he said. "I was listening."

"What speech? I made no speech," I said.

He smiled knowingly. "I can see that you have been well
trained. Come, it isn't good for you to be seen with me
in the street. Let's go somewhere for a cup of coffee."

Something told me to refuse, but I was intrigued and, under-
neath it all, was probably flattered. Besides, if I refused
to go, it would be taken as an admission of guilt. And he didn't
look like a policeman or a detective. I went silently beside him
to a cafeteria down near the end of the block, seeing him peer
inside through the window before we entered.

"You get the table, brother. Over there near the wall where
we can talk in peace. I'll get the coffee."

I watched him going across the floor with a bouncy, roll-
ing step, then found a table and sat watching him. It was
warm in the cafeteria. It was late afternoon now only a few
customers were scattered at the tables. I watched the man
going familiarly to the food counter and ordering. His
movements, as he peered through the brightly lighted shelves
of pastry, were those of a lively small animal, a fyce, interested
in detecting only the target cut of cake. So he's heard my
speech; well, I'll hear what he has to say, I thought, seeing him
start toward me with his rapid, rolling, bouncy, heel-and-toey
step. It was as though he had taught himself to walk that way
and I had a feeling that somehow he was acting a part; that
something about him wasn't exactly real -- an idea which I
dismissed immediately, since there was a quality of unreality
over the whole afternoon. He came straight to the table
without having to look about for me, as though he had expected
me to take that particular table and no other -- although many
tables were vacant. He was balancing a plate of cake on top of
each cup, setting them down deftly and shoving one toward me
as he took his chair.

"I thought you might like a piece of cheese cake," he said.

"Cheese cake?" I said. "I've never heard of it."

"It's nice. Sugar?"

"Go ahead," I said.

"No, after you, brother."

I looked at him, then poured three spoonfuls and shoved
the shaker toward him. I was tense again.

"Thanks," I said, repressing an impulse to call him down
about the "brother" business.

He smiled, cutting into his cheese cake with a fork and
shoving far too large a piece into his mouth. His manners are
extremely crude, I thought, trying to put him at a disadvantage
in my own mind by pointedly taking a small piece of the cheesy
stuff and placing it neatly into my mouth.

"You know," he said, taking a gulp of coffee, "I haven't
heard such an effective piece of eloquence since the days when
I was in -- well, in a long time. You aroused them so quickly to
action. I don't understand how you managed it. If only some of
our speakers could have listened! With a few words you had
them involved in action! Others would have still been wasting
time with empty verbiage. I want to thank you for a most
instructive experience!"

I drank my coffee silently. Not only did I distrust him, I
didn't know how much I could safely say.

"The cheese cake here is good," he said before I could an-
swer. "It's really very good. By the way, where did you learn
to speak?"

"Nowhere," I said, much too quickly.

"Then you're very talented. You are a natural. It's hard
to believe."

"I was simply angry," I said, deciding to admit this much
in order to see what he would reveal.

"Then your anger was skillfully controlled. It had elo-
quence. Why was that?"

"Why? I suppose I felt sorry -- I don't know. Maybe I just
felt like making a speech. There was the crowd waiting, so I
said a few words. You might not believe it, but I didn't know
what I was going to say . . ."

"Please," he said, with a knowing smile.

"What do you mean?" I said.

"You try to sound cynical, but I see through you. I know,
I listened very carefully to what you had to say. You were
enormously moved. Your emotions were touched."

"I guess so," I said. "Maybe seeing them reminded me
of something."

He leaned forward, watching me intensely now, the
smile still on his lips.

"Did it remind you of people you know?"

"I guess it did," I said.

"I think I understand. You were watching a death --"

I dropped my fork. "No one was killed," I said tensely.

"What are you trying to do?"

"A Death on the City Pavements -- that's the title of a
detective story or something I read somewhere . . ." He
laughed. "I only mean meta-phor-ically speaking. They're
living,but dead. Dead-in-living . . . a unity of opposites."

"Oh," I said. What kind of double talk was this?

"The old ones, they're agrarian types, you know. Being
ground up by industrial conditions. Thrown on the dump heaps
and cast aside. You pointed it out very well. 'Eighty-seven
years and nothing to show for it,' you said. You were abso-
lutely correct."

"I suppose that seeing them like that made me feel pretty
bad," I said.

"Yes, of course. And you made an effective speech. But
you musn't waste your emotions on individuals, they don't
count."

"Who doesn't count?" I said.

"Those old ones," he said grimly. "It's sad, yes. But
they're already dead, defunct. History has passed them by.
Unfortunate, but there's nothing to do about them. They're like
dead limbs that must be pruned away so that the tree may bear
young fruit or the storms of history will blow them down
anyway. Better the storm should hit them --"

"But look --"

"No, let me continue. These people are old. Men grow old
and types of men grow old. And these are very old. All they
have left is their religion. That's all they can think about.
So they'll be cast aside. They're dead, you see, because they're
incapable of rising to the necessity of the historical situation."
"But I like them," I said. "I like them, they reminded me
of folks I know down South. It's taken me a long time to feel it,
but they're folks just like me, except that I've been to school a
few years."

He wagged his round red head. "Oh, no, brother; you're mis-
taken and you're sentimental. You're not like them. Perhaps
you were, but you're not any longer. Otherwise you'd never
have made that speech. Perhaps you were, but that's all past,
dead. You might not recognize it just now, but that part of you
is dead! You have not completely shed that self, that old
agrarian self, but it's dead and you will throw it off com-
pletely and emerge something new. History has been born in your
brain."

"Look," I said, "I don't know what you're talking about. I've
never lived on a farm and I didn't study agriculture, but I
do know why I made that speech."

"Then why?"

"Because I was upset over seeing those old folks put out in
the street, that's why. I don't care what you call it, I was
angry."

He shrugged. "Let's not argue about it," he said. "I've a
notion you could do it again. Perhaps you would be interested
in working for us."

"For whom?" I asked, suddenly excited. What was he trying
to do?

"With our organization. We need a good speaker for this
district. Someone who can articulate the grievances of the
people," he said.

"But nobody cares about their grievances," I said.

"Suppose they were articulated, who would listen or care?"

"They exist," he said with his knowing smile. "They exist,
and when the cry of protest is sounded, there are those
who will hear it and act."

There was something mysterious and smug in the way he spoke,
as though he had everything figured out -- whatever he was
talking about. Look at this very most certain white man,
I thought. He didn't even realize that I was afraid and yet he
speaks so confidently. I got to my feet, "I'm sorry," I said,
"I have a job and I'm not interested in anyone's grievances
but my own . . ."

"But you were concerned with that old couple," he said with
narrowed eyes. "Are they relatives of yours?"

"Sure, we're all black," I said, beginning to laugh.

He smiled, his eyes intense upon my face.

"Seriously, are they your relatives?"

"Sure, we were burned in the same oven," I said. The
effect was electric. "Why do you fellows always talk
in terms of race!" he snapped, his eyes blazing.

"What other terms do you know?" I said, puzzled. "You
think I would have been around there if they had been white?"

He threw up his hands and laughed. "Let's not argue that
now," he said. "You were very effective in helping them. I
can't believe that you're such an individualist as you pre-
tend. You appeared to be a man who knew his duty toward the
people and performed it well. Whatever you think about it
personally, you were a spokesman for your people and you have
a duty to work in their interest."

He was too complicated for me. "Look, my friend, thanks for
the coffee and cake. I have no more interest in those old
folks than in your job. I wanted to make a speech. I like to
make speeches. What happened afterwards is a mystery to me.
You picked the wrong man. You should have stopped one of
those fellows who started yelling at the policemen . . ." I
stood up.

"Wait a second," he said, producing a piece of envelope
and scribbling something. "You might change your mind. As for
those others, I know them already."

I looked at the white paper in his extended hand. "You are
wise to distrust me," he said. "You don't know who I am
and you don't trust me. That's as it should be. But I
don't give up hope, because some day you will look me up on
your own accord and it will be different, for then you'll be
ready. Just call this number and ask for Brother Jack. You
needn't give me your name, just mention our conversation.
Should you decide tonight, give me a ring about eight."

"Okay," I said, taking the paper. "I doubt if I'll ever need
it, but who knows?"

"Well, you think about it, brother. Times are grave and
you seem very indignant."

"I only wanted to make a speech," I said again.

"But you were indignant. And sometimes the difference be-
tween individual and organized indignation is the difference
between criminal and political action," he said.

I laughed, "So what? I'm neither a criminal nor a poli-
tician, brother. So you picked the wrong man. But thanks
again for the coffee and cheese cake -- brother."

I left him sitting with a quiet smile on his face. When I
had crossed the avenue I looked through the glass, seeing him
still there, and it occurred to me that he was the same man
who had followed me over the roof. He hadn't been chasing me
at all but only going in the same direction. I hadn't understood
much of what he had said, only that he had spoken with great
confidence. Anyway, I had been the better runner. Perhaps it
was a trick of some kind. He gave the impression that he
understood much and spoke out of a knowledge far deeper
than appeared on the surface of his words. Perhaps it was only
the knowledge that he had escaped by the same route as I. But
what had he to fear? I had made the speech, not he. That girl in
the apartment had said that the longer I remained unseen the
longer I'd be effective, which didn't make much sense either.
But perhaps that was why he had run. He wanted to remain
unseen and effective. Effective at what? No doubt he was
laughing at me. I must have looked silly hurtling across the
roofs, and like a black-face comedian shrinking from a ghost
when the white pigeons shot up around me. To hell with him.
He needn't be so smug, I knew of some things he didn't know.
Let him find someone else. He only wanted to use me for
something. Everybody wanted to use you for some purpose.
Why should he want me as a speaker? Let him make his own
speeches. I headed for home, feeling a growing satisfaction
that I had dismissed him so completely.

It was turning dark now, and much colder. Colder than I
had ever known. What on earth was it, I mused, bending my
head to the wind, that made us leave the warm, mild weather
of home for all this cold, and never to return, if not something
worth hoping for, freezing for, even being evicted for? I felt
sad. An old woman passed, bent down with two shopping bags, her
eyes upon the slushy walk, and I thought of the old couple at
the eviction. How had it ended and where were they now?
What an awful emotion. What had he called it -- a death on the
city pavements? How often did such things occur? And what
would he say of Mary? She was far from dead, or of being
ground to bits by New York. Hell, she knew very well how to
live here, much better than I with my college training --
training! Bledsoing, that was the term. And I was the one being
ground up, not Mary. Thinking of her made me feel better. I
couldn't imagine Mary being as helpless as the old woman at
the eviction, and by the time I reached the apartment I had
begun to lose my depression.