Five Smooth Stones (70 page)

The apartment was below sidewalk level, its windows giving a view of feet and portions of legs only, its kitchenette a curtained-off alcove. The furnishings were Hunter's, and included an antique captain's chest with an exquisite, glowing Oriental scarf on its top, Benares brass, French prints, a silky Persian rug, a hand print from India serving as a throw for the couch. There were color and warmth, where David had expected severely cold modernity. Only the desk and typewriter and the comfortable chairs were things of today. He looked around admiringly, and as Hunter handed him a drink and a plate of dark bread and cheese, said, "Any old time you want to move out, man—"

"Any old time at all, David. When I'm here or if I'm away, it's all yours. No kidding. If you ever want to come over—don't go anywhere else. I'll give you a key."

"I'll call first."

"That's considerate, but I don't bring any women here. I know what you're thinking
.
Perfect setup. But I've got a sort of feeling for this place, David, and the stuff in it. And to tell you God's truth, I haven't found any one of them yet I wanted to share it with. I try to pick 'em with apartments of their own. A man needs sanctuary. But you—that's different."

They talked until the drinks ran out, Hunter letting David ask the questions, asking none himself, then went to bed, the pain of the scalpel deadened by more Scotch than David could ever remember drinking at one time before.

The next day he tagged along after Hunter through the vast complexity of the United Nations building. After the first hour he stopped asking questions, unable to phrase intelligent ones under the successive waves of new impressions, of dawning concepts of a world that before had existed for him only in the columns of the newspapers, the phrases of a news announcer's broadcast. He met and shook hands and drank coffee with two correspondents whose names and voices were household words. With a third, Christopher Barkeley, Gramp's favorite, he drank beer while Hunter put in a transatlantic call. Barkeley had just returned the day before from West Germany, and David found himself answering questions about the Supreme Court decision on school desegregation, and its impact on the South.

From sheer panic when Hunter left them alone together he slipped without realizing it into complete ease and relaxation, a feeling that this slight, quiet-eyed, dark-haired man had been a drinking-and-talk companion of long standing. He was almost disappointed when he saw Hunter crossing the room toward them. Barkeley stood when Hunter reached the table, and said: "I have to leave, much as I dislike it. I've enjoyed talking to you, Champlin—maybe our paths will cross again."

"I hope so, sir."

David watched him as he walked away from them, then turned to Hunter with a puzzled frown. "Damn it, Hunter, I wanted to ask him a mess of questions about the government in West Germany—and I never asked one."

"That's the way it is with Chris. A grand guy, probably one of the best friends I have."

They returned to the apartment late in the afternoon, and David, leg-weary and quiet from sheer exhaustion, sat on the edge of the couch rubbing his stiff ankle, unaware that he was doing it until Hunter said, "My God, I've run you ragged. Almost walked your bad leg off."

"It was worth it." He gratefully accepted the drink Hunter offered. After a minute he said: "They're right next door, aren't they? I mean all those countries. Next door to each other and next door to us. Right damned next door. When any one of them dumps garbage on his lawn we can smell it. And if we dump garbage on our lawn they can smell it. Man, I've got a whole set of brain cells working that never worked before."

"Know what you did not see today? Wouldn't have seen even if the Assembly had been in session? It's something you'll be seeing four, five, ten years from now."

"I can't think offhand."

"I'm not pontificating, just stating what is generally taken for granted. Black. Black faces, white robes, nappy black heads with keen minds inside them. Bush babies, some of them, with master's degrees from great universities all over the world." Hunter laughed quietly. "The inferior savage, you understand. They'll be moving through that building, David, and moving with authority. They've been sending my father everywhere except Africa, but Africa is his private study project. Think it over."

After a while David said: "Those inferior savage types with master's degrees will be living next door to us then. Wonder if they'll like the smell of our garbage?"

"Nobody else does, certainly not the other Caucasian nations, and certainly not the Oriental nations. The black nostrils will be even more sensitive."

"Opens up all kinds of areas for speculation, doesn't it? There'll be a whole new dimension to our problems then."

"Let's hope."

David took a swallow from his drink. "Let me dream a minute, Hunter. Just let me dream. An entente—I suppose you'd call it that—of free African nations challenging the voice of the United States in the United Nations on the grounds that we don't have free elections, that many members of our legislative branch of government hold office by virtue—or vice—of illegal elections."

"When you dream, you really take off, don't you?"

"Yes, and is that so far out? We go haring off in all directions screaming freedom and democracy, don't we? Moving into the affairs of smaller countries, telling them how to run their governments the way we want them to, even if their majority doesn't want it that way? What's so crazy about somebody—or a group of somebodies—moving in on us? The centuries of white dominance are numbered, that's for sure."

Hunter grinned. "Come the take-over, what happens to me?"

David stood up, stretching. "So-so, little man, so-so. Don't you worry yo'se'f about nothin'. David'll take care of you. Yes, sir, big, black, conquering David'll tell 'em to put out the fire because you're just as black a cat as the rest of us."

CHAPTER 45

David remembered that the trip to the United Nations had not only activated formerly inactive brain cells but had also succeeded in bringing into saner focus the scene with Sara of the day before. The familiar loneliness he always knew without her was back, but with it there was the feeling of having turned away from the detour, the byroad trip to happiness, and of being once again on the main highway of his life, the highway he had walked since birth. It was a road too steep, too full of peril for Sara's quick, childlike steps and gentle faith, and when the thought came to him "But not for Sara's love" he tried desperately to put it from his mind. Self-immolation should be a quick, an instant thing, not a lifetime experience; he could not believe that the day would never come when Sara would not run from its pain. When he returned to Boston he would move. This time, so help him God, there would be no detours or byroads.

Hunter had a date that second night in New York and David, restless and uneasy, roamed the streets until he tired, and then returned to the apartment understanding better what people were talking about when they called New York a lonely city.

The next morning the ringing of Hunter's telephone awakened him. He looked over at the other couch, saw that it had not been slept in, and reached sleepily over his head for the instrument on the desk.

"Hunter?" It was a man's voice answering his "Hello."

"No. Hunter isn't here. Would you like to leave your number?"

"Who is this?"

"A friend. Just visiting—"

"David! Hiya! This is Chuck! Couldn't miss that voice—"

David woke up completely now, swinging his legs over the side of the couch. "Hey, man! Where you calling from?"

"Never mind. What are you doing up here?"

"Sleeping—till you called. Sure good to hear—"

"Well, quit sleeping and put the coffee on. I'll be there in twenty minutes—"

He had made it in fifteen. "Why didn't you let me know you were here, you big dope? Did you think I was in a monastery under vows of silence or something?"

"I didn't have time yesterday and I forgot to ask Hunter where to reach you last night."

Chuck looked thinner, David thought, and when he remarked on it, Chuck said: "I'm working. All my misspent life at Pengard when I didn't study goes through my cotton-picking mind every time I crack a book. I don't know about law, but theology's murder on the unaccustomed mind."

"You still like it? Still glad you picked it?"

"Yes, without qualification. But I hope I can do what I want to—"

"I thought the idea was to do what the Almighty wants—"

"It is. But the real idea is to try and synchronize. If my bishop is still around when I'm ordained, I think I can. I pray for his health and well-being daily, believe me."

David saw a quiet figure seated on the floor of the recreation hall of a church in Laurel, knees drawn up, face hidden, while the agonized words of Nehemiah Wilson still rang through the room; saw a tall, ungainly figure with bent head walking slowly through the nighttime snow, and saw the light from an open church door shining on a troubled, unhappy face.

"Say, I forgot. Gramp gave me a message for you the last time I saw him."

"Well, give—"

"He said, 'Tell that young fellow, Chuck, that I prays for him all the time—' "

"Yeah?" Chuck's face lighted, then sobered. "You tell Gramp I'd rather have his prayers going for me than the presiding bishop's."

They talked over coffee, later over bacon and eggs, then later over more coffee.

"Hunter out tomcatting?" asked Chuck.

"How you talk! And you damned near being what Gramp calls an Episcolopian preacher."

"Have to face facts, my boy, have to face facts. I tried to call last night, but no one answered."

"Hunter was out and I was restless so I went wandering around. I even thought of going up to Harlem."

"See the promised land, eh?"

"You've been up there?"

"We've got some missions there. I go up in my spare time to help with the kids. The twentieth century's answer to the fundamental belief in an actual hell. A hell here, not hereafter. Speed everything up, why wait for death to show you? Trains leave every five minutes on the West Side subway—"

"Chuck, you turning into a blasted do-gooder? Like handing out goodies to the poor damned souls on the grids?"

"Not entirely. We've got a lot of things going. But it's like the sparrow in the Arabian legend. A horseman found him lying on his back in the middle of the road, feet up. When the horseman asked him why he was doing it, he said he'd been told the heavens were going to fall that day. The horseman laughed and asked him if he thought his puny little legs could hold the heavens up, and the sparrow said, 'One does what one can.'"

"Sure, sure. Big deal."

"You're a plumb contentious man. Besides, while I'm not low-rating faith, your hope for survival is better if you have a carton of milk in your hand."

"He who gives the milk away lives to fight another day?"

"That's pretty lousy, son, pretty lousy, but there's a germ of truth in it."

Chuck walked over to the gas plate, poured more coffee and came back cradling the cup in both big hands. "If you want to punch my head in, David, you can—notice I don't say 'haid' anymore?—but how come you haven't mentioned Sara? Hunter's told me what the score is. Or should I say 'was'?"

"Theology makes personal questions O.K., eh? Four months and you're already a confessor."

"All right, Stoopid. I just happen to like you both. I reckon your answer takes care of the question."

David, sitting on the couch, leaned forward, elbows on knees, hands twisting the belt of the robe he had borrowed from Hunter. "It's all right, Chuck. I shouldn't have blown. I guess I'm glad you asked. For some reason I can talk to you. Although I couldn't have yesterday."

"Couldn't have talked to anyone yesterday. Right?"

"Right." He was silent for a long time, then said, "Listen, Chuck, there's nothing wrong with the mixed marriages I've seen or heard about that divorce won't cure."

"That's the first completely puerile, adolescently cynical remark I've ever heard you make. Besides being stupid. What about Hunter's folks?"

"That's no answer. They're not even an exception. That's a mixed marriage in another world. Look. I keep saying 'look' when I should say 'listen,' but maybe that's what I mean: look. How can two people, no matter how much they love each other, stick it out when there's a great gulf between 'em they can't walk across and they can't talk across, so they wind up shouting across it, and that doesn't mean communication because they're shouting in different languages? And it's there for a lifetime. And where do the kids grow up? In the bottom of the gulf?"

"I'm supposed to answer that little dilly?"

"If there was an answer there wouldn't have been a question. Maybe I just wanted you to listen."

'To you talk a lot of plain and fancy hogwash?"

"It's not, Chuck. It's not."

"That's what you think." Chuck stood, walked slowly across the room, and came back to stand in front of David, looking down at him. "Did you want sympathy? Because you're not getting it. Not from Chuck Martin. 'If I can't be captain you can't use my ball and bat.' And then when there isn't a ball game you feel sorry for yourself. I don't get it. I just don't get being in love with a champion like Sara all this time, and not having any faith in her. Nobody's going to hold a gun at her head and make her marry you. She'd be doing it with her eyes open."

"Well, well, listen to ol' sweetness and light! No problems. Everything's for the best in the best of all possible worlds."

"Problems? I didn't say there weren't any problems. There'll be a problem every time you turn around. And I'm not saying that it wouldn't be easier in time if you called the whole thing off now, that she wouldn't forget.... That got to you, didn't it? But one thing's for dead sure, David: you can't go on like this. It's certain trouble, and I'm not talking about the moral aspects of it, although I suppose I should be."

"That's what I know."

"And I don't think cutting your hearts out is the answer, either. Give her a chance! Don't make her live as a half-woman. Give her a chance to do what she must do if she's to stay alive spiritually—commit herself. Who are you, you self-righteous idiot, to look God's gift in the teeth? To say, 'Thank you very much, God, but I don't believe I care for any.' Sometimes, young Champlin, you make me sick!"