Five Smooth Stones (3 page)

Geneva laid the baby in the carton without answering, turned to the stove and took a nursing bottle from a pan of water. She handed the bottle to her husband. "You understands about this better than what I do. You done raised three, and the Lord only let me have one but a few hours. You test this, see is it all right."

He took the bottle, shook a few drops of milk on the inside of his wrist, and gave it back to her with a nod. "You giving that baby straight milk? You want it to get colic?"

"It ain't milk; it's formula. They give it to me at the clinic at the hospital, and
showed me how to fix it. They give me the talcum powder too; the sister did."

"You went to—Neva, what you been doing?" His voice grew husky. "Neva, what you going to
do
with that chile?"

She bent over the carton, put the nipple of the bottle in the baby's mouth, then looked up at her husband over her shoulder. "You mean what
we
going to do with that chile," she said. "We going to
raise
him, Li'l Joe. We sure as the devil going to raise him."

Joseph Champlin heated up the supper that night, red beans, rice, some leftover greens, eggs. "Where'd them eggs come from?" he asked.

"Tant' Irene give them to us."

"My ma? She been here?"

"I been there. We went to Josephine's to see could we help, and to find out about the wake. Lady your mamma works for left word at the store across the street she wanted your mamma to work tomorrow. Lady what keeps the store says your mamma could have credit for what she needed. Your ma give us them eggs, and a little coffee and some sugar."

Li'l Joe had not yet told her of the ten dollars. He felt vaguely cheated that the excitement over the baby had pushed the miraculous finding of ten dollars into the background. He knew that if he had found a hundred dollars it wouldn't bring the look to Geneva's face the sight of the baby brought, wouldn't erase the edge from her voice as the presence of the baby had.

He had not argued with her at first when she said, "We sure as the devil going to raise that chile." He never argued with Geneva when she said they sure as the devil were going to do anything. Sometimes he lost out when he eventually got round to opposing her; sometimes he won. He knew Geneva had lost a baby right after its birth years before, when his and Josephine's babies had been coming along so fast, and that there had never been another; he thought he knew how she must feel about this one.

He drew a deep breath. "Geneva, we too old to start raising a child, let alone try to feed one, times like these. Ruth's got folks, real good people, up there in Mississippi. They got a little farm; they'd probably be happy to take the chile, and take better care of him than what we can."

When they had first been married, the police had come to the house one night and, without warning, broken the lock of the door and thundered in, looking for a man Li'l Joe had never heard of, let alone been harboring. The fear he had seen in her eyes that night, when she had thought the police were after him, had been as great as the fear he saw in them now. He could not look at her, looked instead at his empty plate.

"We send that chile away, it's flying in the face of Providence," said Geneva. "God sent him to us."

"God never done no such thing, Neva. Way you tell it, you walked clear across town and fetched him your own self."

"God don't have to leave no baby on a doorstep to mean He wants it taken care of." She stopped, listening. "You think he wants another bottle?"

Li'l Joe sighed, and walked to the chair by the stove, stood looking at the sleeping baby. The shadow of a look of his son was there, and more than a shadow—and he did not know this—of a child who had been born more than sixty years before, just a few blocks away. He heard Geneva saying: "Tant' Irene say he's like your boy John was. She say he don't look a bit like you when you was born. But she says more than anyone he looks like his great-grandaddy must

have looked when he was a baby, only his skin's going to be lighter, like Ruth's. She says she can sure see your daddy in him. Tell me, you think he needs another bottle?"

Li'l Joe came back to the table. "You want the chile to bust? Along with smothering? He wants feeding he'll let you know. Long about the time you just beginning to get a good sleep, he'll let you know."

***

"We kept 'em in the dresser drawer, me and Josephine did, when they was real little. Makes a fine crib."

"We ain't putting that baby in no dresser drawer, Joseph Champlin. What about them rats? I'll keep him with me, right in the bed with me."

"You fixing to finish that chile off before he even gets a good start. You can't keep him in the bed. You'll overlay him sure. You roots, woman."

"Maybe I does. God knows you don't. You sleeps like a co'pse. Sometimes you so quiet that if I wakes up I puts out my hand to tech you and see is you really breathing."

"Better watch them hands, girl. No telling what you'll find."

Suddenly Geneva Champlin laughed, and her husband turned to her and saw the young woman he had married. He had not seen her for a long time.

***

"You comfortable, Joe, laying on the inside?"

"Reckon I'm all right if you don't turn over."

"I ain't all that big."

"You big enough, girl. You big enough so's I don't stand no chance if you start rooting me up against the wall."

"You sure he don't need another bottle?"

"I keep a-telling you, Neva, that baby wants another bottle he sure as hell ain't going to be backward about letting you know. Mebbe he won't want one till morning. You get you some sleep, girl."

"Funny. I done all that walking and I ain't tired."

"You tired all right. You just ain't got sense enough to know it."

"You sure you fixed them ropes good around that carton so's it'll stay on that chair?"

"It's right beside you. Jiggle it and see."

"Seems all right."

"That's the way my ma kept me when I was born.... Gawd sake, go to sleep, woman."

"Joe... Joe...
Joe!
You awake?"

"Lawd! I am now. What you want?"

"You get a job of work today?"

"Yeah. Made me a little piece of change. Worked for Guastella, cleaning out that club of his. Sure was dirty. Made me four bits."

"How long you work for a four-bit piece?... How long?"

"Three, four hours."

Sometimes when Joseph Champlin described his wife's reactions to anger he would say, "Geneva's a mighty fine churchgoing woman. But she can sure cuss like a grown-up, she puts her mind to it."

She put her mind to it now. The mildest she came up with was "ofay bastard." Li'l Joe gave her her head, smiling in the darkness. When she had finished he said: "I done better than that. Found me ten dollars. On the floor in the men's room."

"Ten dollars! And you never said nothing to me about it!"

"Gawd sake, Neva, you ain't give me chance. I was fixing to tell you in the morning when you wasn't so excited about the chile and all."

"Ten dollars! Joseph Champlin, you'd oughta be ashamed. I swear you ought. If that ain't proof God sent us this chile, I don't know what is."

"It ain't proof of no such thing. If it's proof of anything it's proof of what my ma was always telling me—you has good luck, you has to pay for it, somehow, some way or another. How's it proof? You think we can raise a chile on ten dollars? You think we going to live on air, and cook on paper fires, and put water in the lamp 'stead of oil, and pay the rent and insurance with cigarette coupons?"

"It's going to tide us over, that's what it's going to do. Your ma, she'd call it 'signs of land.' Better times coming."

"You said yestiddy better times never coming."

"That was yestiddy," said Geneva.

***

"Joe!"

"Jesus!"

"Joe, I can't sleep for thinking that chile's got no name. They ain't never bothered to give him no name."

"Worry about it in the morning. He ain't going to fret about it for quite a spell."

"Ruth didn't pick no name because she say she wanted to wait and see. She wanted a girl real bad."

Silence, the silence of hope that if one doesn't answer the voice will go away. "Joe... Joe."

"Gawd sake—"

"Joe, your ma, she looked at that chile, and the first thing she said was 'David.' She didn't say nothing else, just 'David.' You hear what I'm saying, Joe?"

The silence was different now. The woman could feel the difference; she could not see her husband, but she had shared his bed for a long time. "You hear me, Joe?"

"I ain't deaf. David was my daddy's name."

"I knows that. But ain't no one in your family ever had that name since him. It's a good name, 'David' is. Tant' Irene says there never was a better man than your daddy. It don't seem right never having a chile come from him carry his name."

She waited a long time for an answer that did not come.

"Joe—Joe, you thinking 'bout how your daddy died. You thinking you don't want a little chile to carry his name; you thinking it'll bring him bad luck. It says right in the Bible that God loved David. What you thinking is foolish. Tant'Irene don't think that way."

"She didn't name me 'David.'"

"That's because your daddy was a good Catholic. You knows that. He made your mamma promise before he went away she'd name you Joseph if you was born on his day. And you was. You got a birthday coming up soon."

"I ain't studying 'bout no birthday."

"I seen your mother's face when she looked at that baby, first time she seen him, this morning. 'David' she says, just like that; not 'ain't he sweet' or anything. Just 'David,' and her face all lighted up. Your mamma's past sixty, and when she said that, she looked like she wasn't no more'n sixteen."

After a long time the quiet man beside her spoke. "All right," he said. "All right. My mamma wants it, you wants it, I reckon that's what it will be. David. David Champlin."

CHAPTER 3

Joseph Champlin was nearing his sixth birthday when he learned a little of the circumstances of his father's death. By that time his playmates and most of his relatives called him "Li'l Joe Champlin," always giving the surname the French pronunciation. His mother always called him "Joseph."

Whenever he asked his elders why he did not have a father as the other children had, he sensed a wall of concealment in their answers. About his father he knew a great deal because his mother talked about him often; about his father's absence he knew little, because the talk stopped there. "An accident," his mother said. "An accident." For a while the answer was enough.

It was his grandmother, Gran'Cecile, who brought his quiet child's doubts into the open. He was always a little afraid of his grandmother, of her wandering, sometimes wild, speech, of her "spells," and was never tempted to disobey his mother's orders that he stay away from the old lady unless she was with him, although Gran'Cecile was kind and given to buying ice cream and candy and licorice whips.

The day that Gran'Cecile filled his mind with questions he kept his own counsel until his mother came home from work. He had learned not to question that tired, harassed woman when she first entered their little room after a day's work, or when she picked him up at Miz Jefferson's, where he was often left to play with the Jefferson children, especially Abraham, a year older. He would follow Irene Champlin quietly around the room, watching with round eyes as she unpacked her big bag, looking hopefully for something a small boy could eat, seldom disappointed, hoarding his day's store of troubles or joys until she sat down for a moment and took him on her lap, rubbing her cheek against his head, saying, "Have you been a good boy, son?"

But on this day the story of Gran'Cecile's "spell," of the words that had poured in a moaning scream from her mouth,

was of such magnitude that he could not hold it back, must rid himself of it as soon as the door closed behind his mother. When he finished she stood in stony, frightening silence, speaking at last—as she always did when she was upset —in French. "How many times have I told you, my son, Gran'Cecile does not know what she is saying? That she is not to be believed.
Mon Dieu!"
She broke into Creole. "You have been a bad boy. You have disobeyed me. You have gone to Gran'Cecile's—" her voice was rising.

"No, Ma! No! I didn't go to Gran'Cecile's! Don't lick me, Ma! I didn't Not really. She took me, Ma. She met me on St. Claude Street and—and bought me a licorice whip and held my hand and took me to her house and we sat on the step."

"And then? And then, son?"

He told her again of the clanging of the great brass bell atop the fire engine, how it had seemed to come closer and closer as they sat on the step, and then how the sound had faded as the horses carrying the engine turned down the street above them. "Then she
h
a
d
a
sp
e
ll, Ma
.
Gran'Cecil
e had a spell."

He told it as best he could within the limits of his vocabulary. Gran'Cecile had begun to moan and rock—"like this, Ma," and his thin arms hugged his chest and he rocked back and forth—and then Gran'Cecile had cried out. "They're going for David!" she cried. "They're going for our David!" Her voice had become a crazed keen, a wail. The child, staring at her in fright, knew that she had forgotten his presence, had lost him somewhere in the dark terror that was filling her mind. "They can't get to him! They can't get to our David! Jesus ride with them! Jesus put out the fire!" She keened aloud in French now. "They're burning David; they're burning our David! They're burning my baby's David, and she is carrying his chile!"

Then she stiffened and screamed without words, and Joseph Champlin turned and ran in blind fright, to be caught at the courtyard entrance by Miz Jefferson and carried to the banquette. "Run," she said. "Run to my house, chile. Abraham's waiting for you." The hand with which she hit him across the small buttocks was hard and strong; he felt its sting, and it acted as a counter to his fear and he ran as she had told him, to her house. Behind him, in the courtyard, Gran'Cecile was still screaming, and he heard other voices now, and though he could not see he knew that she was being carried inside.