Five Smooth Stones (39 page)

"Right. No one saw us."

"Clevenger did."

"Randy? He went away for the holiday."

"Then he got back. I saw him, upstairs in the corridor in Emory."

Since David had given up hope of keeping Sudsy on campus, he had only pretended to drink, wanting a clear head for the driving he had no taste for, and there was still some whiskey in the bottle that Sudsy had tucked tenderly under his coat, along with two paper cups. He poured a generous slug into one of the cups, offered it to David, who refused, then drank it quickly himself. David said, "Take it easy, Suds; tomorrow's coming."

David knew the ride to Columbus would never leave his memory. There were no special incidents to fix it in his mind, nothing outstanding to ensure its life through the years, just a long ride on a gray winter afternoon, through grayer dusk, the snow falling at first and then stopping, with darkness coming on long before they reached the lights of the city.

It was still dusk, and they were a long way from Columbus when Sudsy said, "The car. You keep the car, huh?"

"I never thought about the car," said David. "How could I get it to you?" He started to say he could sell the car for Sudsy, but decided it was too much like talking about funerals to someone who was dying.

Sudsy leaned his head against the back of the seat. "Sick," he said again, as he had in David's room. "I feel so damned sick."

"So-so," said David. He felt Sudsy's sickness in his own bones and nerves and muscles and belly. "Sure you do. You'll feel better. Swear to God you'll feel better, Sudsy."

He heard the gurgle as Sudsy sat up and poured more whiskey. "Listen," said Sudsy. "Listen. You take the car. Keep the darned old car. You can have the li'l ol' car. Give you the li'l ol' car."

"Stop talking foolish. We'll leave it the way it is. Until you want it I'll use it to get back and forth to the job weekends. Don't worry about a thing. Just let me know what you want when you feel better."

They drove without speaking for a long time. David began to hum, then to sing. He didn't know why he sang, except that somehow singing released the tautness that the sorrow within him had brought on.

"Blues,'" said Sudsy. "Hell of a thing to sing. Why'd you want to sing blues? Lesh—lesh—let us be gay."

"What d'you want? Old English madrigals? That what you want?"

"Something square, David. Shomething real cubed. Shomething Shquare for Shimmons." He giggled. "I'm not that drunk."

David laughed, then started to hum again, then to sing, his voice soaring, driving like a lead trumpet, Sudsy's following, faltering, like a badly tuned clarinet at the lips of a tone-deaf youth.

"Ever tell you I was tone deaf?" said Sudsy.

"You think you need to tell me? Man, that's not something you ever have to tell a guy. Come
on,
man, get your back in it.... 'Pharaoh's army got
drownded.... Oh,
Mary...'"

***

The man at the gate to the train platform in the Columbus station let David through without a ticket because of Sudsy's noticeable unsteadiness and because the stairs were long and steep. He watched them as they went down, the tall Negro impassive, unsmiling; the white boy flushed and sick-looking. "Damned jigs," he muttered automatically. "Steal the gold outa his teeth." He told himself he was no damned southern cracker; it was none of his business, none of his business at all; he was just a white man, just a good white American; but right's right, he said to himself, and wrong's wrong, and damned if it wasn't wrong—decent white boys getting drunk with niggers.

Behind dirty spectacles and pursed mouth, he debated with himself as to the advisability of following the white boy and his companion, thought about going down the stairs and tipping off the conductor, while below him, on the platform beside the door of a Pullman car, David Champlin drew a five-dollar bill from his pocket and gave it to the porter.

"Keep your eye on that boy," said David. "He's sick."

"He's mighty
high,"
said the porter.

"Yeah. But he's sick, too. See he gets coffee in the morning —lots of it. In his room, y'hear. He won't be feeling too good. He may get feeling hungry—"

"I'll find him something," said the porter. "Sure will. And I'll look after him in the morning. I knows them bad feelings, morning after." He turned to help a passenger, and when he turned back to speak again the tall youth was no longer beside him. He was—damned if he wasn't—thumbing his nose at the window of Bedroom C, waving, then limping off, long-legged, big, quiet-seeming. Gonna be a powerful man, that colored boy, thought the porter. Fine boy. Fine-looking boy. He saw David reach the steps, get a third of the way up, then flatten himself against the stair rail to let a man pass. The man hurried by him, not saying "thank you," not acknowledging the courtesy. "Um-um," murmured the porter. "Um-ummmm."

CHAPTER 29

David prowled the waiting room of the station uneasily. In an obscure way he sensed that Sudsy had done more than just go home because he was sick; he was leaving David's world for another planet where David could not follow him even in his thoughts. If it had been Nehemiah, David would have known what was happening, would have been able to see Nehemiah's folks when they heard the news, know what they would do and what they would say, hear the cadence of their voices. Nehemiah absent would still have been as much a part of his life as Nehemiah present.

He did not like to think of Sudsy getting off the train in the morning, sick as he was bound to be, with no one to meet him, yet he shied away from calling Sudsy's father, in spite of Sudsy's frequent reiteration that for a parent the famous Dr. Sutherland was a pretty regular guy. You didn't know these things just because somebody told you. You didn't know anything just because somebody told you. The ice was always thin, and no one could test it but you. He said "Hell!" under his breath, and reached into his pocket for his wallet. He had ten dollars left, two fives. It couldn't cost more than five, station-to-station, after six, to call Boston. If the doctor wasn't there he would leave word. Someone ought to meet a guy as sick as Sudsy would be in the morning. Until he had taken care of that, Suds was still in sight, still had one foot on the world they inhabited together; after that he would be gone.

The newsstand attendant, clearing shelves before closing up, watched David covertly. He was sliding the glass panels over the upper part of the stand when David came up to him. Over the tall Negro's shoulder he could see, leaning against the wall opposite, the man who had been at the gate to the train platform. The gate attendant was looking across at him, unsmiling, wary, like a mangy, protective terrier.

It startled David when, after a seemingly endless succession of bong-bongs as coins dropped into slots, a man's voice said, "Why not make it collect, Cliff?" He had been hoping the telephone would be answered by a servant—he was sure the Sutherlands must have servants—and that he could say, "Clifton Sutherland's arriving—" and let it go at that.

Now he said, "It's—it's not Cliff, sir."

The voice sharpened. "Has something happened to Cliff?"

Sudsy had said his father was shaped like an egg. This voice did not sound as though it belonged to a man who was shaped like an egg, thought David. It sounded as though it belonged to a man who might be very tall, and pleasantly thin, with a firmly kind face, but he supposed a fellow would say his father was shaped like an egg if he wasn't.

"No, sir. He's all right. I mean, well, nothing really bad."

"This is David Champlin, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir."

"We've heard a lot about you, David. Is my son in some kind of trouble?"

"No, sir. No, Doctor. It's just that, well, he's been sick, and he wanted to come home and, well, I thought if someome could meet him—"

"Signal your operator, David. Tell her to reverse the charges."

"It's all right—"

"Please, I can talk more easily."

Sutherland perè might look like an egg, thought David, but he spoke with unanswerable authority. David obeyed, and when the lengthy and complicated process of reversing the charges on a call already put through had been completed, the doctor said: "Ah. Now. Give me the story. He was in the Infirmary on Tuesday with what he said in his wire was influenza. There's been a lot of it this fall. You take it from there."

David, more at ease now, took it from farther back than the preceding Tuesday. He told the story from the beginning: Sudsy's repeated colds, the persistent cough, the tiredness, the fever. All he omitted was the diagnosis. At the conclusion of the story he said, "He decided he wanted out, sir. Wanted to come home."

"Yes," said the doctor. "Yes, I see. Don't beat around the bush, David. What you are trying to tell me is that my son was told he had pulmonary tuberculosis?"

"Well—yes, sir."

The silence that followed was so long David thought they had been disconnected. "Dr. Sutherland?"

"I'm here. Very much here. Why didn't they take X rays, do skin tests, before?"

"I couldn't say about that, sir. The last time he went there, and that was almost two months ago, he just had a cold. They told him to come back for a checkup, but—well, he never did."

"Why didn't they follow through!"

David knew the anger in the doctor's voice was not directed at him, not directed even at the authorities at the Infirmary, but at himself. Dr. Sutherland and his wife had been in Europe most of the previous summer, David knew that, and had not returned until after Sudsy had left for college. David knew what the man on the other end of the telephone was thinking: If he and his wife had been there, or had insisted that Sudsy go with them, the symptoms would have been uncovered long before.

"I'm surprised they released him from the Infirmary," the doctor said.

The telephone booth became smaller, hotter, more airless, le took off the green stocking cap with a nervous yank. Well, sir, they didn't. Not exactly."

"He just walked out? Damned young idiot."

"I tried to stop him, sir, but there didn't seem to be any way. I really tried."

"I'm sure you did. Will you be in trouble over this?"

"It will be all right, sir."

"Where did he get the money for the ticket? The wire I received asked for money. Did you give it to him?"

"Well, I just happened to have some put by—it was just luck."

"I'll mail a check in the station when I meet Cliff, special delivery. Thank you, David."

"That's O.K., Doctor. He'll be all right now."

"We'll see. But will you? You shouldn't have done this. David, I want you to let us know if you are in any kind of serious trouble over this—this incident. Cliff has made you seem one of the family, you know. You're to write. That's an order."

"All right, Doctor. And, please, will you ask Sudsy—Cliff, to let me know how—well—how things are going?"

"We both will. And thank you again, David. His mother and I will meet the train."

When David left the telephone booth, the platform guard was standing opposite it, the newsstand attendant with him. It was obvious they had been watching the booth and their eyes followed him as he crossed the waiting room. They'll know me next time, he thought. They sure as hell must have seen a guy with a gimpy leg before, even a Negro with a gimpy leg.

He felt both relieved and sad. He knew now what he would do. Park the car in some safe garage, and then try and find the girl Nehemiah had introduced him to a few weeks before, a girl who was so good she might be able to make him forget that Sudsy had TB.

***

When David returned to Pengard the next day just before noon, he felt better than he had expected to, but still not good. There were messages in his mail rack. He stood looking at them morosely, then took them out and without looking at them went up to his room. There he heated water, made coffee, and splashed cold water on his face. As he sat, coffee mug in hand, at the card table, he read the messages. Two of them read "Call the Infirmary." These he crumpled and threw away. It was too late now. Two others read "Call Dr. Knudsen," and the fifth read "Call Dean Goodhue."

He finished his coffee, made another cup and drank that, then went downstairs to the telephone. His conversation with Dr. Knudsen was brief, consisting of: "This is David Champlin"—"Be here immediately"—and "Yes, sir."

He was glad he had Sudsy's car, and he thought as he drove to Professor's Knudsen's that Sudsy's offer of the car had not been the result of whiskey; stone sober, Sudsy would have done the same thing. It would be a godsend on weekends to get him back and forth to his job in Cincinnati. He just wished it didn't seem so damned empty without Sudsy in it.

Eve Knudsen opened the door, smiled warmly, and said, "He's waiting for you, David."

"With a club?"

She laughed. "No, no. Not with a club. Never a club for you, David."

She had turned and started down the hall, and David felt his eyes drawn upward, perhaps by a sound, but if it had been a sound it had been a very small one. Sara was standing halfway down the stairs, not moving, her face solemn and troubled. He smiled up at her. "Hi, Sara!" He had stopped himself just in time from saying "Hi, smallest."

She smiled, like a child who has been reassured. "Hi, David." She wrinkled her nose, and in a stage whisper said, "It's all right. Don't worry." Then, without moving a hand, or pursing her lips, without changing her position, she blew a kiss to him.

He told himself as he followed Eve Knudsen, "You're out of your mind, Champlin; she couldn't have. You're-out-of-your-ever-lovin'-mind."

At the study door Eve stopped, knocked, and said, "It's David Champlin, dear." Before she turned away she patted his shoulder. "He's not angry," she whispered. "Just upset. An upset Dane is a fearsome thing—but not lethal."

He was grateful for her reassurance when he entered the room. Dr. Karl Knudsen's eyes were a blazing blue; every hair on his head seemed crackling with emotion. He was sitting facing the door, in a swivel chair behind a flat-topped desk.

"Where have you been?"