Going to Meet the Man (2 page)

Sister McCandless now sat fanning herself in the easy chair, at the head of the sofa where Roy lay, bound and silent. She paused for a moment to look sharply at John. John stood near the window, holding the newspaper advertisement and the drawing he had done.

“We was sitting on the fire escape,” he said. “Some boys he knew called him.”

“When?”

“He said he’d be back in five minutes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me he was downstairs?”

He looked at his hands, clasping his notebook, and did not answer.

“Boy,” said Sister McCandless, “you hear your mother a-talking to you?”

He looked at his mother. He repeated:

“He said he’d be back in five minutes.”

“He said he’d be back in five minutes,” said Sister McCandless with scorn, “don’t look to me like that’s no right answer. You’s the man of the house, you supposed to look after your baby brothers and sisters—you ain’t supposed to let them run off and get half-killed. But I expect,” she added, rising from the chair, dropping the cardboard fan, “your Daddy’ll make you tell the truth. Your Ma’s way too soft with you.”

He did not look at her, but at the fan where it lay in the dark red, depressed seat where she had been. The fan advertised a pomade for the hair and showed a brown woman and her baby, both with glistening hair, smiling happily at each other.

“Honey,” said Sister McCandless, “I got to be moving along. Maybe I drop in later tonight. I don’t reckon you going to be at Tarry Service tonight?”

Tarry Service was the prayer meeting held every Saturday night at church to strengthen believers and prepare the church for the coming of the Holy Ghost on Sunday.

“I don’t reckon,” said Elizabeth. She stood up; she and Sister McCandless kissed each other on the cheek. “But you be sure to remember me in your prayers.”

“I surely will do that.” She paused, with her hand on the door knob, and looked down at Roy and laughed. “Poor little man,” she said, “reckon he’ll be content to sit on the fire escape
now
.”

Elizabeth laughed with her. “It sure ought to be a lesson to
him. You don’t reckon,” she asked nervously, still smiling, “he going to keep that scar, do you?”

“Lord, no,” said Sister McCandless, “ain’t nothing but a scratch. I declare, Sister Grimes, you worse than a child. Another couple of weeks and you won’t be able to
see
no scar. No, you go on about your housework, honey, and thank the Lord it weren’t no worse.” She opened the door; they heard the sound of feet on the stairs. “I expect that’s the Reverend,” said Sister McCandless, placidly, “I
bet
he going to raise cain.”

“Maybe it’s Florence,” Elizabeth said. “Sometimes she get here about this time.” They stood in the doorway, staring, while the steps reached the landing below and began again climbing to their floor. “No,” said Elizabeth then, “that ain’t her walk. That’s Gabriel.”

“Well, I’ll just go on,” said Sister McCandless, “and kind of prepare his mind.” She pressed Elizabeth’s hand as she spoke and started into the hall, leaving the door behind her slightly ajar. Elizabeth turned slowly back into the room. Roy did not open his eyes, or move; but she knew that he was not sleeping; he wished to delay until the last possible moment any contact with his father. John put his newspaper and his notebook on the table and stood, leaning on the table, staring at her.

“It wasn’t my fault,” he said. “I couldn’t stop him from going downstairs.”

“No,” she said, “you ain’t got nothing to worry about. You just tell your Daddy the truth.”

He looked directly at her, and she turned to the window, staring into the street. What was Sister McCandless saying? Then from her bedroom she heard Delilah’s thin wail and she turned, frowning, looking toward the bedroom and toward the still open door. She knew that John was watching her. Delilah continued to wail, she thought, angrily,
Now that girl’s getting too big for that
, but she feared that Delilah would awaken Paul and she hurried into the bedroom. She tried to soothe
Delilah back to sleep. Then she heard the front door open and close—too loud, Delilah raised her voice, with an exasperated sigh Elizabeth picked the child up. Her child and Gabriel’s, her children and Gabriel’s: Roy, Delilah, Paul. Only John was nameless and a stranger, living, unalterable testimony to his mother’s days in sin.

“What happened?” Gabriel demanded. He stood, enormous, in the center of the room, his black lunchbox dangling from his hand, staring at the sofa where Roy lay. John stood just before him, it seemed to her astonished vision just below him, beneath his fist, his heavy shoe. The child stared at the man in fascination and terror—when a girl down home she had seen rabbits stand so paralyzed before the barking dog. She hurried past Gabriel to the sofa, feeling the weight of Delilah in her arms like the weight of a shield, and stood over Roy, saying:

“Now, ain’t a thing to get upset about, Gabriel. This boy sneaked downstairs while I had my back turned and got hisself hurt a little. He’s alright now.”

Roy, as though in confirmation, now opened his eyes and looked gravely at his father. Gabriel dropped his lunchbox with a clatter and knelt by the sofa.

“How you feel, son? Tell your Daddy what happened?”

Roy opened his mouth to speak and then, relapsing into panic, began to cry. His father held him by the shoulder.

“You don’t want to cry. You’s Daddy’s little man. Tell your Daddy what happened.”

“He went downstairs,” said Elizabeth, “where he didn’t have no business to be, and got to fighting with them bad boys playing on that rockpile. That’s what happened and it’s a mercy it weren’t nothing worse.”

He looked up at her. “Can’t you let this boy answer me for hisself?”

Ignoring this, she went on, more gently: “He got cut on the forehead, but it ain’t nothing to worry about.”

“You call a doctor? How you know it ain’t nothing to worry about?”

“Is you got money to be throwing away on doctors? No, I ain’t called no doctor. Ain’t nothing wrong with my eyes that I can’t tell whether he’s hurt bad or not. He got a fright more’n anything else, and you ought to pray God it teaches him a lesson.”

“You got a lot to say
now
,” he said, “but I’ll have
me
something to say in a minute. I’ll be wanting to know when all this happened, what you was doing with your eyes
then.
” He turned back to Roy, who had lain quietly sobbing eyes wide open and body held rigid: and who now, at his father’s touch, remembered the height, the sharp, sliding rock beneath his feet, the sun, the explosion of the sun, his plunge into darkness and his salty blood; and recoiled, beginning to scream, as his father touched his forehead. “Hold still, hold still,” crooned his father, shaking, “hold still. Don’t cry. Daddy ain’t going to hurt you, he just wants to see this bandage, see what they’ve done to his little man.” But Roy continued to scream and would not be still and Gabriel dared not lift the bandage for fear of hurting him more. And he looked at Elizabeth in fury: “Can’t you put that child down and help me with this boy? John, take your baby sister from your mother—don’t look like neither of you got good sense.”

John took Delilah and sat down with her in the easy chair. His mother bent over Roy, and held him still, while his father, carefully—but still Roy screamed—lifted the bandage and stared at the wound. Roy’s sobs began to lessen. Gabriel readjusted the bandage. “You see,” said Elizabeth, finally, “he ain’t nowhere near dead.”

“It sure ain’t your fault that he ain’t dead.” He and Elizabeth considered each other for a moment in silence. “He came mightly close to losing an eye. Course, his eyes ain’t as big as your’n, so I reckon you don’t think it matters so much.” At this
her face hardened; he smiled. “Lord, have mercy,” he said, “you think you ever going to learn to do right? Where was you when all this happened? Who let him go downstairs?”

“Ain’t nobody let him go downstairs, he just went. He got a head just like his father, it got to be broken before it’ll bow. I was in the kitchen.”

“Where was Johnnie?”

“He was in here?”

“Where?”

“He was on the fire escape.”

“Didn’t he know Roy was downstairs?”

“I reckon.”

“What you mean, you reckon? He ain’t got your big eyes for nothing, does he?” He looked over at John. “Boy, you see your brother go downstairs?”

“Gabriel, ain’t no sense in trying to blame Johnnie. You know right well if you have trouble making Roy behave, he ain’t going to listen to his brother. He don’t hardly listen to me.”

“How come you didn’t tell your mother Roy was downstairs?”

John said nothing, staring at the blanket which covered Delilah.

“Boy, you hear me? You want me to take a strap to you?”

“No, you ain’t,” she said. “You ain’t going to take no strap to this boy, not today you ain’t. Ain’t a soul to blame for Roy’s lying up there now but you—you because you done spoiled him so that he thinks he can do just anything and get away with it. I’m here to tell you that ain’t no way to raise no child. You don’t pray to the Lord to help you do better than you been doing, you going to live to shed bitter tears that the Lord didn’t take his soul today.” And she was trembling. She moved, unseeing, toward John and took Delilah from his arms. She looked back at Gabriel, who had risen, who stood near the
sofa, staring at her. And she found in his face not fury alone, which would not have surprised her; but hatred so deep as to become insupportable in its lack of personality. His eyes were struck alive, unmoving, blind with malevolence—she felt, like the pull of the earth at her feet, his longing to witness her perdition. Again, as though it might be propitiation, she moved the child in her arms. And at this his eyes changed, he looked at Elizabeth, the mother of his children, the helpmeet given by the Lord. Then her eyes clouded; she moved to leave the room; her foot struck the lunchbox lying on the floor.

“John,” she said, “pick up your father’s lunchbox like a good boy.”

She heard, behind her, his scrambling movement as he left the easy chair, the scrape and jangle of the lunchbox as he picked it up, bending his dark head near the toe of his father’s heavy shoe.

E
ACH SUMMER
the church gave an outing. It usually took place on the Fourth of July, that being the day when most of the church-members were free from work; it began quite early in the morning and lasted all day. The saints referred to it as the ‘whosoever will’ outing, by which they meant that, though it was given by the Mount of Olives Pentecostal Assembly for the benefit of its members, all men were free to join them, Gentile, Jew or Greek or sinner. The Jews and the Greeks, to say nothing of the Gentiles—on whom, for their livelihood, most of the saints depended—showed themselves, year after year, indifferent to the invitation; but sinners of the more expected hue were seldom lacking. This year they were to take a boat trip up the Hudson as far as Bear Mountain where they would spend the day and return as the moon rose over the wide river. Since on other outings they had merely taken a subway ride as far as Pelham Bay or Van Cortlandt Park, this year’s outing was more than ever a special occasion and even the deacon’s two oldest boys, Johnnie and Roy, and their friend, David Jackson, were reluctantly thrilled. These three tended to consider themselves sophisticates, no longer, like the old folks, at the mercy of the love or the wrath of God.

The entire church was going and for weeks in advance talked of nothing else. And for weeks in the future the outing would provide interesting conversation. They did not consider this frivolous. The outing, Father James declared from his pulpit a week before the event, was for the purpose of giving the children of God a day of relaxation; to breathe a purer air and to worship God joyfully beneath the roof of heaven; and there was nothing frivolous about
that
. And, rather to the alarm of the captain, they planned to hold church services aboard the ship. Last year Sister McCandless had held an impromptu service in the unbelieving subway car she played the tambourine and sang and exhorted sinners and passed through the
train distributing tracts. Not everyone had found this admirable, to some it seemed that Sister McCandless was being a little ostentatious. “I praise my Redeemer wherever I go,” she retorted defiantly. “Holy Ghost don’t leave
me
when I leave the church. I got a every day religion.”

Sylvia’s birthday was on the third, and David and Johnnie and Roy had been saving money for her birthday present. Between them they had five dollars but they could not decide what to give her. Roy’s suggestion that they give her under-things was rudely shouted down: did he want Sylvia’s mother to kill the girl? They were all frightened of the great, raw-boned, outspoken Sister Daniels and for Sylvia’s sake went to great pains to preserve what remained of her good humor. Finally, and at the suggestion of David’s older sister, Lorraine, they bought a small, gold-plated pin cut in the shape of a butterfly. Roy thought that it was cheap and grumbled angrily at their combined bad taste (“Wait till it starts turning her clothes green!” he cried) but David did not think it was so bad; Johnnie thought it pretty enough and he was sure that Sylvia would like it anyway; (“When’s
your
birthday?” he asked David). It was agreed that David should present it to her on the day of the outing in the presence of them all. (“Man, I’m the oldest cat here,” David said, “you know that girl’s crazy about me”). This was the summer in which they all abruptly began to grow older, their bodies becoming trouble-some and awkward and even dangerous and their voices not to be trusted. David perpetually boasted of the increase of down on his chin and professed to have hair on his chest—“and somewhere else, too,” he added slyly, whereat they all laughed. “You ain’t the only one,” Roy said. “No,” Johnnie said, “I’m almost as old as you are.” “Almost ain’t got it,” David said. “Now ain’t this a hell of a conversation for church boys?” Roy wanted to know.

The morning of the outing they were all up early; their
father sang in the kitchen and their mother, herself betraying an excitement nearly youthful, scrubbed and dressed the younger children and laid the plates for breakfast. In the bedroom which they shared Roy looked wistfully out of the window and turned to Johnnie.