Five Smooth Stones (105 page)

"You think that explains this Sue-Ellen Moore?"

"Hell, ask a psychiatrist. Don't ask me. She's got something like contempt for the older generation. It comes close to an active hatred. She blames an ignorant, helpless, oppressed people for their own crippled status in society. She's dead right that the future lies with youth. But, God damn it, so does the future of every race, every country. That doesn't mean you have to relegate the people who've borne the brunt for a couple of hundred years to a sort of open grave of living dead. What I want to do is get 'em out of that grave so they can vote the freedom for these young people—get 'em out before they shovel the dirt in over 'em. Perhaps she doesn't even realize it, but she's shoveling that dirt now, she thinks she can march to an earthly Gloryland at the head of an army of militant kids—they tell me her groups never sing 'We Shall Overcome' in a demonstration—an army that doesn't represent one vote in its ranks, and that is getting 'trapped by the whites' into violence. It's a funny kind of war. She's fighting the whites, and damned if she isn't fighting a certain segment of her own people that she doesn't understand. I'm hoping we can give her some of that understanding."

They had been having a beer in the coffee shop, and David pushed his empty glass and beer bottle away, stood up. "Come on, Luke. I've got to go write to Klein. And you've got to get to town by five thirty and get film."

"What you doing tonight? Anything for me?"

"Not unless you want to go to a church prayer meeting. I'm going to one a few miles out, give a little talk."

"We-e-ell—I sort of had other ideas. I'm up to my ass in church and prayer-meeting film now. I picked these other ideas up when we were here last month. Maybe I'll draw a blank. Maybe she's got another date—"

"What's been holding you up? Go on. Only, get the car back by seven thirty. You'll have to figure out your own transportation after that. Need money?"

"A five wouldn't hurt, boss."

"Here you are—now get the hell going—"

***

"This is your last night here." Sue-Ellen made the statement to David that night at dinner in the coffee shop. "Unless something unexpected comes up."

"What are you doing with it?"

He looked at her, trying to keep his face serious. "Going to church. Want to come?"

"No! For God's sake, what church?"

"I believe it's called 'Holiness.' In brief. There's more to it. It's in that little town, Big Mountain, about five miles west."

He knew beforehand what her reaction would be, waited for its scornful contempt.

"And I suppose you'll shout and sing and witness and roll on the floor along with the rest of them—"

"Not quite. Might play piano and sing a hymn or two. It's the only chance I get outside of a bar here and there where there's a piano. I've got a couple of gospel numbers I can really shout—"

"Good Christ!"

"That's the general idea—"

He hadn't taken his eyes from her face, noting again that the beauty of its bone structure was the measure of its strength. He could tell by the way the cheekbones seemed to spring into greater prominence that his needling was getting to her.

"You can't be stupid enough, you can't, to be taken in by that mindless hysteria—"

"I didn't say I was." He was laughing at her now and he could see that anger, not ordinarily displayed, was mounting.

" 'Holiness Church'—"

"It's sanctified—"

"And that means something to you, Mr. Harvard-Oxford Champlin?"

"Its members are known as 'saints.' AH members of 'sanctified' churches are known as 'saints.' I'll be speaking before the saints. Gosh, that ought to mean something—"

"Damn you, you think that's a sharp needle you carry, don't you? It isn't—"

"It seems to be drawing blood. I'll drop the needle and use an ax. I've tried everything else to make you see a little light—"

"You flatter yourself. I've been trying to make you see it."

"And we're both still in our own dark, eh?"

She pushed her soup plate away with a quick, impatient gesture, dismissing the subject abruptly. "Give me your itinerary again. Where does the bell ring for the next round?"

"That town called Heliopolis, I suppose. I've got a couple of brief stops between here and there, but that's the next project—"

"Heliopolis! You didn't tell me. Look, do you know that town?"

"I know enough about it to wish I could go in and out real fast. Real fast."

"You just might do that. Only you'd be going out stiff.
And
cold. You're not exactly unknown to the whites—"

"Is it true that every adult white Heliopolis male is reputed to be a member of the Citizens' Council?"

"Yes. Not 'reputed' to be, either. Is."

"All the more reason to go there—"

"David, do you honestly think you'll make any headway with your particular kind of program there?"

"You think you would with yours?"

"There's no other way."

"Oh, God! That's tripe, and you know it."

"I suppose you'll go in there and make friends with all the sisters and brethren and saints—and the preachers. Southern Negro preachers! Parasites, every damned one of them. Greedy opportunists, playing on the ignorance and primitive instincts of these poor people—"

"Climb down, babe—"

"You know damned well I'm right. They're no better than the plantation owners were. Ol' Massa dished out religion the way a doctor dishes out massive doses of sedation in the disturbed ward of a mental hospital. Perhaps the motives are different, but the results are the same."

"Sue-Ellen, honest to Gawd—and I'm taking my life in my hands when I say it—I've known whites with more understanding, more empathy if you will, for your people down here—dammit
your
people—than you have. Chap named Chuck Martin for one."

Uncle Charlie.' Good old 'Chuck'—"

"Oh, hell, I might have known you'd say that. He can't help what his parents named him. He's got a middle name that's worse—Beauregard—so he's stuck with Charles."

"Take him—and lose him."

"You're itching to get back to flogging the preachers—"

"David, I'm on a lot of the same sucker mailing lists you must be on. Crap like a certain so-called bishop sends out— 'Take a dollar bill, put it in Chapter So-and-So of the Bible, leave it there two days, then mail it to me.' Instant salvation."

"We've been over this before.
Ad nauseam.
I've told you that you underestimate your people here.
Your
people, God damn it. You've found out that down here education will get you nowhere in no time. You're still a nigra. Still a nigger in a town like Heliopolis. They haven't even gotten out of the slime as far as 'nigra.' And what are you up north?" She didn't reply, waiting for him to continue. "All right. Up north you're that 'beautiful Negro.' Graduate of a famous university. Brilliant. Wonderful, isn't it, what 'they' can do if they have the chance? You're still isolated as a human being. What makes you so Goddamn much better than people here? Education? That's not enough." He sighed, looking at her, knowing she was only becoming more annoyed, fretting under his words. "What do you know, actually
know,
of the faith, the suffering, the endurance, the hopelessness of these people? Your own experiences were bitter ones. What Negro's aren't? But have you lived every day, every hour, every Goddamned second, with what these people have lived with? And if you had, would you have what they've got? Faith. 'Primitive'! I ought to wash your beautiful superior mouth out with soap and water."

"Perhaps I didn't quite mean—"

"You did, babe, you did. I don't give a damn if a preacher's a charlatan or a saint at this point. If he's a charlatan his little flock are onto him. Don't think they aren't. But where else, how else, can they find release from pressures you can't seem to understand? They've got to have a rallying point for faith. Many of the early saints are great in my eyes because their faith was a lonely one, solitary."

"Faith! Honestly, David. What faith? In what? And why?"

David shrugged hopelessly, reached for the check. " ' 'Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces—'" It was one of Sara's favorite poems, and he wished the words had not come to him just then. He was surprised to hear Sue-Ellen finish the verse: " 'That miss the many-splendoured thing.'" She laughed. "You call it 'faith.' I call it a sort of mental anesthesia. The 'many-splendoured thing' in my book is freedom. And we'll never reach it with anesthetized minds."

"Good God! You seem to think faith is standing in the way. Damn it, woman, it's the blasted key! Maybe it won't do the trick all by itself, but without it you and I would be running around down here with our tongues hanging out—not getting anywhere. I mean
anywhere.
Even Luke's grasped that essential fact. So it came from the people in the Big House originally? So their descendants are having to reckon with it now. They're being beat over the head with their own weapon. And God help 'em. Them there angels with flapping wings these parasitic—your word, for Christ's sake, not mine!— preachers are telling them about just might carry these people to a ballot box before they carry 'em up yonder." He stood up, tired of trying to talk to her. "Let's go, Sister Moore."

She walked beside him to the cashier's desk and after he had paid the check laid her hand on his arm. "It's your last night here, David," she said. "Can't you get out of that meeting?"

He looked down at her, smiling to hide the irritation. "Sure I can."

"We could go—"

"But I don't intend to."

"I kept this evening free on purpose—"

"Sorry, Sue-Ellen. If I'd known that I would have gone to the Sunday-night service—"

"You should have thought of it. Men have no sentiment—"

He laughed down at her. "You aren't exactly loaded with it—"

"I'll see you when you come back?"

"If you're awake—"

"You could always wake me. Not everyone can."

"Thanks. That sounds like a compliment—"

He was relieved to get in the car and drive off. This was the first time he'd realized—perhaps he'd better say permitted himself to realize—that Sue-Ellen might have more than just an impersonal joining of forces in mind. An intimate involvement with Sue-Ellen Moore, or any woman like her, was the last damned thing he wanted. And he had too much respect for her as a person, her brains and dedication, to entertain any idea of a quick in-and-out-of-bed affair with her. Also, there was an uneasy feeling now that such a relationship wouldn't be possible with her, that it would mean more than momentary pleasure, that she would want it to be a continuing thing. A possessive Sue-Ellen—God help any man who got on that spot. Yet it could be that what she wanted—and needed—was some man to possess her, that under those circumstances she might become—Hell! let someone else experiment, Champlin. You aren't the type—

It had been more than two years, and he still could not throw himself into an affair as other men could. He must always remain apart from his own emotions in a sort of split-personality objectivity. For a long time now he had felt that he was watching himself, watching his own tired body push itself up to and beyond its limits, and this duality extended even to his emotional experiences. They did not happen within the man who stood apart, nor was the physical fatigue a part of that man. The body of the one seemed powered by the will of the other, fueled by it, driven. Only the deadening exhaustion of sheer physical strain brought them together, in one body, in sleep. And the man who stood apart was the repository of the memories, tried to hold them back from the other man whom he drove with such relentless cruelty along an uphill road.

***

"You gets here by the down road and you leaves by the up road." Those were the directions Elder Garrison had given David to reach the little church that sat back from the road, on the floor of a small valley.

"Sort of like life," David had said, and the church elder had laughed. "That's what I tells my people."

When David drove up, Garrison was standing just outside the church door, a heavy, handsome man with glowing brown skin and grizzled, white-black hair so effective it seemed to have been done by a makeup artist. They shook hands, and the elder introduced him to the people as they arrived—kindly, smiling people whose handclasps drew him into themselves, made him a part of their lives, trusting him because Garrison had brought him. This intangible something he could not describe—this sharing, however disparate their individual circumstances, of a common destiny, this reaching out, was an experience no white would ever know, no black could ever convey. Their loss, he had often thought. Yes, Lord, their loss.

"Guess the saints is all inside now," said Garrison, and together they entered the weatherbeaten, rickety frame building that was the house where the people worshiped God. Worn, patched-up, makeshift pews were supplemented by equally worn and patched-up chairs. The walls were bare boards, not even protected by plaster. David had never entered one of these little churches, either in country or town, without being deeply moved, without hearing a voice deep within himself crying in protest, and he could silence the voice only by the remembrance of the words, repeated over and over to himself until they brought peace—"Wherever two or three are gathered together in my name—"

He and Garrison talked for a few minutes behind the pulpit, and Garrison said: "Think we can get you to honor us with a song, Lawyer Champlin? And maybe play piano? Ain't much of a piano, but we hears tell you're a mighty fine singer and player—"

"Where did you hear a tall tale like that?" He asked the question from politeness; he was sure someone from another community must have visited Big Mountain and mentioned it.

"Little fella come see me the other day. Bald-headed little fella. I disremember his name. Working with ALEC. Least that what he say. You sit here, Lawyer Champlin. Soon's you hear your name you come up to the pulpit. That means I'm introducing you. After that we'll have a little music. You think that's a good way?"