Five Smooth Stones (91 page)

"Got a razor?" asked Brad.

"Sure. Electric, no less."

"Pajamas?"

"Slews of them. Anything you need. Including beer. Or hard liquor, if that's the way your taste runs. It's—hell, it's good to see you."

"I don't mean to flatter myself, but I thought it might be. I mean—"

"I know what you mean. What'll it be? Beer or bourbon?"

"Bourbon. The first one straight,
if
you don't mind." He made a face. "Maybe it will kill the taste of this damned place."

"It's glamorous. It's cosmopolitan. It's picturesque. It stinks with history."

"It is also phony, corrupt, bigoted—and the history it stinks with I don't like. Did you think I would?"

"No. That's why I was so surprised when I heard your voice. The first time I met you—way back in East Cambridge —you said you'd never been here, never had any intention of being here." David motioned Brad to the divan, pushed the coffee table in front of him, and handed him his drink. He sat in Gramp's chair himself. When he put his drink on the end table beside it, he noticed that dust had gathered even since Gramp had left the house the evening before, and with a facial tissue from the box on the table he wiped it clean quickly, forgetting, forgetting completely that Li'l Joe Champlin would not see the dust now to "tsk-tsk" about, thinking, as he took the tissue from the box, Gramp's got the sniffles again.

Brad was saying: "You know how one always has a mental picture of places one's heard about? So help me, David, this is just as I had pictured it." He smiled. "I see now where you got your persnickety neatness."

"By hand," said David. "Believe me, I was brought up by hand to be neat. No cocoa and cookies at bedtime if mere was so much as a toy train still on the floor."

Sitting in Li'l Joe Champlin's chair, with Li'l Joe lying in a mortuary across the river, with Li'l Joe no farther from him than his right hand, with Li'l Joe gone yet as close to him as the air he was breathing, David felt for the first time in his life the peculiar pride of ownership. In some strange way the pride seemed to come to him from Gramp, as though sitting in that chair he was somehow a part of Gramp and Gramp of him, and the little house of them both.

His own pennies and nickels and dimes, his own sweat and work, had not gone into this little house. "Sell it," he had said to Gramp. "Sell it and come north with me." Now he knew it was going to take all the guts he had to go to a real-estate agent tomorrow and say: I want to sell the property at 3020 St. Augustine Street. Lock, stock, and barrel. Sell it all: the new screen door, and the front porch Gramp had added on with his own hands; the kitchen with all the cupboards—
Neva's a terrible woman for a lot of cupboards
—where Tant' Irene had held him close the night Gram died; the roof from which Gramp had almost fallen, from which he had hung cussing, he said, like five hundred, till his friends rescued him. Sell it all, the room where he sat now, the piano in the dining room, the dining room where he had studied, where the portable typewriter Gramp had given him had taken his breath away; the bathroom in which Gramp had laid every tile; this house where he and Gramp had "made a little music" so many nights. Sell it all, including the bedroom with the closed door where Gramp had slept so quietly.

Get a good price for it, Mr. Agent, but sell it, sell it all. And if the folks who buy it hear small sounds in the night, tell them not to mind; that will be Gramp stirring round, seeing if a little boy is well tucked in. Sell it, Mr. Agent, sell it all.

He heard Brad say gently: "It's rough, David. It's damned rough. I know. And it's going to be rougher. Then it will ease off. But things won't ever be quite the same again."

David did not answer, and Brad went on, the blood of the dark people that flowed in his veins giving him the understanding, the wisdom about grief and the folly of burying it like a rotting bone, giving him the knowledge that it was clean and good when it was met face on.

"Years from now you'll find yourself still thinking, 'Gramp'll get a kick out of hearing about that,' then realizing he's gone. My mother died ten years ago, but it still happens to me. The people we love never really leave us."

When David spoke at last he said: "It's more than that, more than a personal thing, a personal loneliness. I felt it when the Prof died, too. He and my grandfather were the best men, the damnedest,
goodest
men I've ever known. Or ever will. There's a feeling of a vacuum in the world, a feeling of emptiness, when a man like Gramp leaves it."

"Yes, I know," said Brad. He held out his glass and smiled. "It's going to take a couple more of these to untie those knots, chum. I don't want you to drink alone."

As he took Brad's glass David said: "Come on, Brad. Let me show you the rest of the house. Gramp and his friends did it all except the bare framework."

Later, after Brad had showered and was sitting on the divan again in a pair of David's pajamas and one of his old flannel robes, David said: "All right, Brad. I've been a hell of a host, just talking about myself. What? Why? Brad Willis in New Orleans?"

"It gets bigger and better tomorrow. Brad Willis in Baton Rouge."

"Lord, yes! I remember now. Your cousin—"

"In the State Capitol. Attorney General's office. We had the same grandmother."

"I wouldn't bring the matter up if I were you."

"You mean I shouldn't rush into his office and say 'Hi, Cuz! How's it going? How about a drink?' I doubt that we meet."

"It doesn't seem likely." David smiled, remembering Goodhue at Pengard. "Pity. A great pity."

Brad looked into his drink for a moment, then spoke slowly, measuring his words like drops of acid from a medicine dropper.

"I weathered Little Rock," he said. "Yes, I weathered Little Rock just dandy, sitting at my nice mahogany desk in my nice Boston law office. Believe me, I held up bravely." David had heard anger and scorn in Brad's voice, never such mocking bitterness. "But I didn't take it lying down. No, indeed." Brad got to his feed, padded back and forth across the narrow room. "I acted. Yes, sir, I acted. It mustn't be said that while a white mob was screaming 'Lynch the black bitch!' at a nice teen-age colored girl, Bradford Willis didn't act. I sent two fat checks, one to ALEC and one to the N-double-ACP." He whirled, pointed a finger at David, and still without raising his voice from that bitter monotone, said: "And I did more. I fired letters off to the papers, boom-boom, just like that. And the
Globe
sent someone out to interview me. I told 'em. By God, I told 'em what Bradford Willis thought of Governor Faubus and the whole stinking state of Arkansas.

"And I did more than that. I told 'em what I thought of the Administration, too, from the President on down. Hell, there wasn't any feeling back of that show of force in Little Rock. Not a Goddamned word, not one lousy little word came out of Washington about it being an evil thing or even a not nice thing for children to walk through obscene mobs, risk their lives, to get to a school in the United States of America. All there was, all the hell there was, were high-sounding words about upholding the law of the land. You had the feeling that only great self-restraint prevented the word 'unfortunately' from being used. 'Unfortunately we must uphold the law.' Well, I told 'em about it; I told 'em all about it. Yes, indeed." He laughed abruptly. "That took courage, my boy. That took real courage. Even some of my Negro friends gave me hell for being so outspoken. You remember it, David—how up there in New England—cool, cool New England—the white people were more upset than the colored, at least as far as I could judge."

David, watching the slow deliberate pacing, listening to the low, biting voice, thought how fortunate it was for those accused of crime that Bradford Willis had elected to act for the defense and not the prosecution. These were the words, this the tone, of a hanging prosecutor.

"I felt virtuous as hell, David. Especially when I was criticized. I was, by God, in the forefront of the battle. I was, by God, hearing bullets whine. I went home and told Peg about it. She'd started on a whale of a bender, and all she'd say was, 'Come on, Buster. Have another drink.' She knows how brave I am; drunk or sober, God love her, Peg knows how brave I am."

Brad went back to the divan and sat down, looking tired and spent. David wanted to say something, groped mentally for words, could find none. Brad continued: "It was weeks afterward that I picked up an old news magazine in the press room of the courthouse in Boston. I don't know what one it was—
Life, Look, Newsweek, Time,
one of them. There was a picture in it of a girl, not a little girl or a big girl, just a girl in a pretty summer dress, wearing glasses, carrying school-books. She was sitting on a bench, an ordinary wooden bench, the kind they put at bus stops. She was waiting for a bus. And ringed around her were beasts, slavering, filthy beasts, the kind you see in nightmares. She was all alone.
All alone, David.

"While Bradford Willis was being brave, sending off fat checks, making controversial remarks about a President whose voice was never heard, not even in a whisper, saying 'In the name of decency' but only saying 'In the name of the law'—this girl was sitting alone on a wooden bench listening to a mob of subhumans scream 'Lynch the black bitch!' Just a kid, David, just a damned sweet kid, all dressed up for her first day in high school."

David spoke at last. "I was being brave, too, Brad. Nice and comfortable in that Boston law office—sounding off at ALEC meetings."

"This isn't for you, David! For Christ's sake, no! You were stockpiling ammunition. You still are. Pengard, Harvard, practice, Oxford—you'll need them all."

He stood, started the slow pacing again, hands deep in the pockets of the robe. "That's it, the 'why' of Bradford Willis in New Orleans. Or part of it. The picture never left me, never left my mind. Every time I saw a wooden bench—any kind, anywhere, in a park, at a street corner—I felt as Pilate might have felt when he saw a cross after the Crucifixion. That girl was always sitting on that bench, David, wherever it was."

Were you there? Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Nehemiah was half screaming, half sobbing the words in the basement meeting room of the church in Laurel.
Must Jesus bear the cross alone and all the world go free?
His grandmother was singing the words in the church at the end of the road.

Brad's voice silenced the voices in his mind. "O'Shea was down here last week on an estate case. He told me all hell was brewing underneath. This time, David, it's the primary grades. It's a little girl, a very small girl with chubby brown legs, all dressed in her Sunday best, and frightened. But at least, at least she's not alone. There's someone to hold her hand. A United States Marshal. Not her mother, not her father; they'd stone them to death, so help me.
A United States Government official
to take the hand of a big-eyed, frightened little girl and lead her up the steps of a schoolhouse in America, past human spittle and the obscene screams of human beings with sewers for minds. She doesn't know what it's all about the way my girl on the bench must have known; she's too little. She's just a little kid. Just a baby! Jesus! Jesus Christ, David! She's my kid! She's the child of every Negro in this country!"

Suddenly the fire went out of Bradford Willis, and he sat on the edge of the divan, drank what was left of his drink thirstily. "That's why I'm here," he said. "I'm a helluva good lawyer and I'd be the last to say I'm not. I offered my services to ALEC for field work. Right now ALEC's shorter staffed than the N-double-A. I can't leave everything up in the air in Boston, but gradually I'll be able to make myself more and more available. There's time, because it's not just here and it's not just now. It's tomorrow and next year, and the years to come until after they bury your grandchildren. Because I swear to you, David, all hell is going to break loose."

Lawrence Travis had said that too, just a short time ago. David told Brad of his talk with Travis, and what Travis had said after a recent trip South: a bugler practicing to sound reveille—and then—Charge!

"Yes," said Brad. "That's the way it is."

"But, Brad—it's not that simple. Are you suffering from the illusion that all the Negroes in the South are on our side of the fence?"

"Hell, no! On the bus today I overheard a colored woman talking to a friend. It was all just a mess of trouble, she said. First thing anyone knew there wouldn't be no colored have no jobs anywhere. Bunch of foolishness, and nothing but trouble coming out of it. No, I'm not so naive I don't know there are
status quo
Negroes in the South as well as the 'Omi-god-isn't-it-a-shame-I'm-sure-glad-rm-here' Negroes in the North. But standing in front of them there's a solid phalanx of youth. It only took me a day, sitting quietly as an observer in the ALEC office, to realize that."

The telephone had not rung for the better part of an hour, and now its sudden clamor startled them both. David glanced at his watch and said, "It might be important, calling this late." He answered it, then handed it to Brad. "Long distance. For Bradford Willis."

"Here?"

David saw the cringe of fear, knew Brad was thinking of Peg and some of her calls when she had been drinking, and tensed when the other man took the telephone and said, "Yes?" quietly.

David tactfully retired to the kitchen to refill their empty glasses, but the house was too small to take him out of the range of a normal voice, and Brad's followed him. There seemed to be no strain in it, no patient gentleness. Instead he heard a bantering affection. Maybe, he thought, it's not Peg; maybe at last Brad has found someone to ease the tension— "apprehension" might be a better word—that living with Peg entailed. He heard Brad saying, "That's fine, hon.... Just getting back?... Fine.... Of course I'm all right.... Just take it easy, worry wart.... I'll call you tomorrow night.... You'll be all right, Babe.... Sure, wait...." Brad called, "David!"

When David came into the room the expression on Brad's face warmed him. It was Peg, no doubt about that, and she must be sober. Brad's face was that of man who has been denied sex for a long time and then finds satisfaction. The deep vertical lines beside nose and mouth had smoothed out miraculously, and the eyes were clear with the clarity of inner release.