Five Smooth Stones (122 page)

"You ask me, of all people? How would I know, my dear? I'm the one who is constantly blasting at the concept of right and wrong, if you happen to have read the stuff I write that gets printed. You did what you had to do. Is anything right? And if it is, does that necessarily mean the opposing action is wrong? Stop thinking, Sara. Stop it. And get some sleep. Now."

When they reached the entrance, she squeezed his arm gently. "Thanks," she said. "Thanks again, Hunter. Good night. And God bless."

He touched her cheek lightly with the back of his hand. "Why?" and suddenly he saw the Sara Kent of years before, the tiny, intense girl who would desert the company of her classmates to slide belly-bumpus down a hill on a sled with the town children of Laurel. She grinned up at him. "Damned if I know, my friend. But sometimes God does seem to bless the most unlikely people."

CHAPTER 76

Before six o'clock on the morning following the committee briefing, Brad Willis got up and dressed quietly. He had slept little and after Hunter Travis's call had lain half awake until daybreak.

He found David in the kitchen drinking coffee. "Feeling all right, brat?"

"So far. What do we do, just sit here and wait until they get damned good and ready to send over for the committee? Damn it, Brad, this whole thing is too lousy passive."

"There wasn't time to plan. Haskin is going to telephone the mayor's office at nine and tell them the committee will be over at ten o'clock."

" 'Here I come, ready or not—' like some fool kid game. There are people out there already, standing at the barriers."

"Any of them who have jobs over there?"

"Yes. It's the only bright spot in the picture. Mrs. Haskin has been out there already talking to some of them. She says a lot of them won't cross over as long as the kids are in the stockade or jail."

"Whether that's good or bad depends on a number of things. How many, for one."

"Couldn't tell you. She said it looked like a lot. She's already gone over to the store."

"Gracie?" Brad asked the question deliberately and noted the hesitation before David answered.

"Mrs. Haskin said she was letting her sleep in. She said someone around here ought to get their rest if this was going to keep up. I made the coffee."

"And good, too." Brad turned away to replenish his cup. It was probably stupid to think David could tell anything by his face, but he didn't trust David's quick, almost intuitive, perceptions. He was remembering how, at two thirty that morning, restless and unable to sleep he had come into the kitchen to fix some whiskey and hot milk. The whiskey was gone, but he had taken milk from the refrigerator, heated it, and while he was drinking it heard a door close quietly on the back porch. Feet had padded softly across the creaking boards; there had been the sound of an old-fashioned latch lifting, then the sound of a second door closing. Which was just fine as far as he was concerned, thought Brad; best thing that could have happened to the guy. He wished to God he thought the incident might have some permanent emotional importance. For years he and Peg had wanted David to find someone warm and comfortable like Gracie, someone who could bring him the uncomplicated emotional peace he had never known, a peace whose healing he needed above all else.

"What's the next move, Chief?"

"I think we should head for Tether's End. I don't like leaving that place alone. We left correspondence, memos, everything. After this, stuff gets locked in car trunks or Haskin's safe."

"Yessir."

"The others can come along later. It's better if we keep that as headquarters. Safer. Les climbs the walls every night to make sure they aren't bugged. I suggest that you go on out to Miz Towers and pick up some supplies. I've got the list made out. You'll have a valid excuse for meeting her, and she'll have a chance to size you up. And don't think she won't do it. Abraham came in after you went to bed last night. He's going to call her this morning and tell her you're coming, also tell her something about you."

"You want me to mention the land deal?"

"If you can do it without forcing the issue. Abraham will have primed her. Don't let Tinker scare you."

"Who's Tinker?"

"The dog. You'll see. You go on out to Tether's End, see if everything's all right, then go on to Miz Towers' and get back to headquarters if you can by ten o'clock. Here's the supply list—and don't ask me why I haven't got beans on it because

we've got closets full of them waiting for you. So. As soon as you leave I'll have to rouse Hummer and the others for a council of war. We may just have to do a wee bit of adjusting on our time schedule for the gone-fishing project You know, like pushing it up a bit."

"There's not much time—"

"There's enough, I think. Hummer and Les know this town like a book. If they start out at seven, or send someone out, they can reach a hell of a lot of people who work over there, and who aren't in the group out front. If we need more time for talk, Haskin can take the committee over at eleven instead of ten."

"Nobody asked me what I thought, but I don't mind saying that for the first time since I heard of this project I feel good about it. Now these people have something more at stake than abstractions."

"And don't forget, the other side has leverage, too, that they didn't have before."

"Brad, get Chuck. Get him on the phone or something. Tell him to get in touch with all the press and radio and TV media he can. This situation can stand being aired to the public."

"Right. Another thing: we may be short on supplies, but not very much, and we'll get hell's own amount of support from outside under these circumstances."

"I'll go now—" David started again toward the door, and Brad called him back. "David!"

When David turned Brad said: "I almost forgot. Hunter Travis called this morning at four o'clock. You'd think, all the traveling he does, he would have learned about time zones."

"Whyn't you call me—"

"You were asleep, and needed to be. It wasn't anything special. A sort of routine inquiry. In anticipation of other routine inquiries."

"What inquiries?"

He knows damned well, thought Brad; knows damned well what inquiries. Suddenly he was sick of playing games. We spoil the guy, he thought; we all spoil him, men, women, all of us. Once in a while he would ask an outright question about Sara, as he had in New Orleans, but not often. Most of the time he'd wait, knowing someone would tell him. Why didn't he give up? Why didn't the poor damned unhappy devil give up? For a moment Brad forgot the pressing problems of Cainsville.

" 'What inquiries!' Don't be an ass. Sara got in from Düsseldorf, and Hunter hoped to have dinner with her."

"Oh. What did you tell him?"

"That you were all right."

"Thanks. Say, are you sore because he called or what? Because you're sure as hell sore about something."

"Hell, I'm not sore. I'm just disgusted, fed up with your gutlessness, David. Give up. Let go. Start living another life, one life. Pull that damned sore tooth out! It's the only way you'll stop biting on it."

"Well—I'll—be—God—damned." David spoke slowly, spacing the words, and Brad looked away, suddenly ashamed, yet angry at the weakness that made him ashamed.

"Get lost, youngster. I snapped because I'm tired of seeing you in pain, that's all. O.K.?"

"Sure," said David. He sounded like a hurt child, puzzled at an unprovoked slap from an adult. "Sure, I guess so. See you later—"

Brad listened to the uneven steps as David went down the short hall to the side door, heard the door close with exaggerated quiet, then heard the steps on porch and drive. "Hell," he said. "Damn it to hell." His own steps were slow, his face somber as he walked to a closed bedroom door and knocked. "Hummer. Hummer. You awake? It's Brad Willis. There's something important I want to talk to you and Les about."

***

There was a smaller double gate in the rear wall of Haskin's loading area, and David headed for it now in the car. It must, he figured, lead to some back road or drive that would take him away without having to face the people in front of the store, spare him possible questions that he couldn't answer. He was sensitive about his position as a newcomer, afraid they might look upon him as a possible instigator—or at the least, supporter—of the previous night's trouble.

The gate was open, and Haskin's nephew, the boy who had been standing on the porch the night before, cursing, was just inside, changing a tire on a pickup truck. He wore blue jeans and a blue-and-white-striped shirt. David slowed to a stop and leaned out. "Morning, Willy."

"Morning, Mr. Champlin. You feeling all right, Mr. Champlin? I heard what they did to you."

"Hell, yes, I'm all right. You've got to take things as they come, Willy. Don't let them get you."

"We just going to sit here and take it, Mr. Champlin?"

"No, Willy. But it's not going to help those kids if we all get our brains beat out. They can lick us that way. Just as long as they can beat our brains out, break our bones, keep us running, they've got the upper hand. Remember, Willy, they're the guys with the guns."

"What we doing now if it isn't running? Standing still can be running." He threw the tire iron to the ground with vicious strength. "I'd rather be shot than take it. If I had me a gun—"

David restarted the car's motor, but before he let his foot down on the accelerator, he said: "Look, Willy. I'm with you. But they'd be too well off dead. One dead white isn't going to do any good. Ten of 'em dead isn't going to, either. I'd rather see 'em sick and helpless. And that takes doing."

Willy spat on the ground, made an obscene gesture with one arm, spat again.

"That's what we're trying to do, son; that's what we're trying to do."

***

The talk with Willy had taken the edge off his reaction to Brad's surprising outburst, put the words in the back of his mind until he drove through the gate and turned left on what he supposed passed for a road. He knew he shouldn't be surprised or hurt at Brad's attitude. God knew, Brad had tried hard through the years to straighten him out emotionally, get him to stop doing what Brad called "living on two planets." Subtly, but not so subtly David couldn't spot it, he tried to urge on David the advantages of marriage, the stabilizing influence of a home and children. Once when he was being outspoken about it he said: "Maybe you wouldn't be split in two the way you are now. It takes a whole man to try and accomplish what you're after down here."

"Even if I could, Brad, even if it were possible to cut out the whole damned past like a worrisome appendix. I don't think I could go on from there the way you want. Know why?"

"No, I don't 'know why.' And I think any reason you give will be rationalization."

"That's a hell of an attitude for a supposedly astute attorney. The trouble is, Brad, I'm not an Ivy League Negro. I just look like one. I'm still nothing but the brown-skin grandson of Li'l Joe Champlin who happened to have the savvy to get through Pengard and Harvard and Oxford. With the help of a great guy from Denmark. I'm not screaming loud screams of self-pity. I'm a Negro, close to my roots, and proud of it. You'd damned well better be proud of it if Gramp brought you up. And what happens when some of the women of our world that I've met who have been seeing an Ivy League Negro suddenly discover what's underneath? Jeez! They go into shock. And when they find out I'd rather be what I am than what they've been thinking I am, that's it, brother. That's it. Li'l ol' Uncle Tom Champlin might as well go back to the tall cotton. And as for the whites! When they scratch that utterly-charming-young-Negro-lawyer-and-brilliant-my-dear, and find
me
it jolts the hell out of them. A sentimental brown-skin slob who likes old-time blues piano, who'll sing in a Negro church service at the drop of a hat— looks for 'em, by God—and who gets more feeling of accomplishment out of registering a middle-aged Negro sharecropper who's been scared witless all his life than he'll get out of arguing his first case before the U.S. Supreme Court—that guy they can't dig;
that
guy they can't dig."

"You poor devil," said Brad. "You just aren't sick enough."

CHAPTER 77

Now as he drove out to Miz Towers, the memory of his conversation with Brad slipped away, replaced by a warmer one—that of Gracie.

He remembered waking in the night and finding her gone. She shouldn't have left him, he thought; shouldn't have taken her soft, all-encompassing comfort away from him. He had reached for her, there in the dark, and his groping hand had found only emptiness. He murmured, half asleep, "Gracie... Gracie..." and he remembered the impression he had that she was still in the room, standing somewhere in its darkness. When she had not answered, he had gone back to sleep to be half awakened later by the sound of a ringing telephone and then Brad's voice in the kitchen answering it, the words indistinguishable. He realized now that it must have been the call from Hunter. And even in that second awakening there had been loneliness and a hope that Gracie would return to lie beside him for what was left of the night.

He realized abruptly that he had passed the Towers house, was almost at the plank bridge across the stream, and he braked quickly, fought the skidding wheels into a full turn, and started back.

He was reaching over the gate for the hook fastening when he saw the dog come around the corner of the house. He drew his hand back slowly, let his arms hang loosely at his sides. Never, so help him, had he seen a more magnificent specimen. Or a bigger one. The damned dog's as big as a pony, he thought. It was all strong grace and swift muscle and power, the great granddaddy of all the German shepherds that had ever been whelped. I love dogs, he thought; yes, Lawd! I love dogs, but I'm no damned fool. The dog had stopped and was standing motionless, halfway between house and gate, and in the immobility of deep chest and sloping flanks there was still a flowing grace of motion and power, and the upright ears were evidence of complete awareness. David cleared his throat, said "Hi, Gorgeous!" There might have been a slight movement of the ears; he couldn't tell. He looked anxiously and saw that the fur along the back lay smooth and sleek, with no upright hackles. But, he thought, he couldn't see any movement of that damned great tail either. "If you think I'm not chicken enough to get back in that car, you're nuts, Gorgeous," he said and was rewarded by seeing the tail move slowly, back and forth, in a wide arc. Then its speed increased, and David looked beyond and saw Miz Towers step from the porch and start down the path. He remembered then. Tinker. That was the dog's name. He said, "Hello, Tinker. Good morning, Miz Towers." The dog did not move until she reached its side, then strode along with her, the lean, strong back almost level with her waist.