Going to Meet the Man (27 page)

They rarely mentioned anything not directly related to the war that they were fighting, but this had failed to establish between them the unspoken communication of soldiers during a war. Each man, in the thrilling silence which sped outward from their exchanges, their laughter, and their anecdotes, seemed wrestling, in various degrees of darkness, with a secret which he could not articulate to himself, and which, however directly it related to the war, related yet more surely to his privacy and his past. They could no longer be sure, after all, that they had all done the same things. They had never dreamed that their privacy could contain any element of terror, could threaten, that is, to reveal itself, to the scrutiny of a judgment day, while remaining unreadable and inaccessible to themselves; nor had they dreamed that the past, while certainly refusing to be forgotten, could yet so stubbornly refuse to be remembered. They felt themselves mysteriously set at naught, as no longer entering into the real concerns of other people—while here they were, out-numbered, fighting to save the civilized world. They had thought that people would care—people didn’t care; not enough, anyway, to help them. It would have been a help, really, or at least a relief, even to have been forced to surrender. Thus they had lost, probably forever, their old and easy connection with each other. They were forced to depend on each other more and, at the same time, to trust each other less. Who could tell when one of them might not betray them all, for money, or for the ease of confession? But no one dared imagine what there might be to confess. They were soldiers fighting a war, but their relationship
to each other was that of accomplices in a crime. They all had to keep their mouths shut.

I stepped in the river at Jordan.

Out of the darkness of the room, out of nowhere, the line came flying up at him, with the melody and the beat. He turned wordlessly toward his sleeping wife.
I stepped in the river at Jordan.
Where had he heard that song?

“Grace,” he whispered. “You awake?”

She did not answer. If she was awake, she wanted him to sleep. Her breathing was slow and easy, her body slowly rose and fell.

I stepped in the river at Jordan.

The water came to my knees.

He began to sweat. He felt an overwhelming fear, which yet contained a curious and dreadful pleasure.

I stepped in the river at Jordan.

The water came to my waist.

It had been night, as it was now, he was in the car between his mother and his father, sleepy, his head in his mother’s lap, sleepy, and yet full of excitement. The singing came from far away, across the dark fields. There were no lights anywhere. They had said good-bye to all the others and turned off on this dark dirt road. They were almost home.

I stepped in the river at Jordan,

The water came over my head,

I looked way over to the other side,

He was making up my dying bed!

“I guess they singing for him,” his father said, seeming very weary and subdued now. “Even when they’re sad, they sound like they just about to go and tear off a piece.” He yawned and leaned across the boy and slapped his wife lightly on the shoulder, allowing his hand to rest there for a moment. “Don’t they?”

“Don’t talk that way,” she said.

“Well, that’s what we going to do,” he said, “you can make up your mind to that.” He started whistling. “You see? When I begin to feel it, I gets kind of musical, too.”

Oh, Lord! Come on and ease my troubling mind!

He had a black friend, his age, eight, who lived nearby. His name was Otis. They wrestled together in the dirt. Now the thought of Otis made him sick. He began to shiver. His mother put her arm around him.

“He’s tired,” she said.

“We’ll be home soon,” said his father. He began to whistle again.

“We didn’t see Otis this morning,” Jesse said. He did not know why he said this. His voice, in the darkness of the car, sounded small and accusing.

“You haven’t seen Otis for a couple of mornings,” his mother said.

That was true. But he was only concerned about
this
morning.

“No,” said his father, “I reckon Otis’s folks was afraid to let him show himself this morning.”

“But Otis didn’t do nothing!” Now his voice sounded questioning.

“Otis
can’t
do nothing,” said his father, “he’s too little.” The car lights picked up their wooden house, which now solemnly approached them, the lights falling around it like yellow dust. Their dog, chained to a tree, began to bark.

“We just want to make sure Otis
don’t
do nothing,” said his father, and stopped the car. He looked down at Jesse. “And you tell him what your Daddy said, you hear?”

“Yes sir,” he said.

His father switched off the lights. The dog moaned and pranced, but they ignored him and went inside. He could not sleep. He lay awake, hearing the night sounds, the dog yawning and moaning outside, the sawing of the crickets, the cry of
the owl, dogs barking far away, then no sounds at all, just the heavy, endless buzzing of the night. The darkness pressed on his eyelids like a scratchy blanket. He turned, he turned again. He wanted to call his mother, but he knew his father would not like this. He was terribly afraid. Then he heard his father’s voice in the other room, low, with a joke in it; but this did not help him, it frightened him more, he knew what was going to happen. He put his head under the blanket, then pushed his head out again, for fear, staring at the dark window. He heard his mother’s moan, his father’s sigh; he gritted his teeth. Then their bed began to rock. His father’s breathing seemed to fill the world.

That morning, before the sun had gathered all its strength, men and women, some flushed and some pale with excitement, came with news. Jesse’s father seemed to know what the news was before the first jalopy stopped in the yard, and he ran out, crying, “They got him, then? They got him?”

The first jalopy held eight people, three men and two women and three children. The children were sitting on the laps of the grown-ups. Jesse knew two of them, the two boys; they shyly and uncomfortably greeted each other. He did not know the girl.

“Yes, they got him,” said one of the women, the older one, who wore a wide hat and a fancy, faded blue dress. “They found him early this morning.”

“How far had he got?” Jesse’s father asked.

“He hadn’t got no further than Harkness,” one of the men said. “Look like he got lost up there in all them trees—or maybe he just go so scared he couldn’t move.” They all laughed.

“Yes, and you know it’s near a graveyard, too,” said the younger woman, and they laughed again.

“Is that where they got him now?” asked Jesse’s father.

By this time there were three cars piled behind the first one,

with everyone looking excited and shining, and Jesse noticed that they were carrying food. It was like a Fourth of July picnic.

“Yeah, that’s where he is,” said one of the men, “declare, Jesse, you going to keep us here all day long, answering your damn fool questions. Come on, we ain’t got no time to waste.”

“Don’t bother putting up no food,” cried a woman from one of the other cars, “we got enough. Just come on.”

“Why, thank you,” said Jesse’s father, “we be right along, then.”

“I better get a sweater for the boy,” said his mother, “in case it turns cold.”

Jesse watched his mother’s thin legs cross the yard. He knew that she also wanted to comb her hair a little and maybe put on a better dress, the dress she wore to church. His father guessed this, too, for he yelled behind her, “Now don’t you go trying to turn yourself into no movie star. You just come on.” But he laughed as he said this, and winked at the men; his wife was younger and prettier than most of the other women. He clapped Jesse on the head and started pulling him toward the car. “You all go on,” he said, “I’ll be right behind you. Jesse, you go tie up that there dog while I get this car started.”

The cars sputtered and coughed and shook; the caravan began to move; bright dust filled the air. As soon as he was tied up, the dog began to bark. Jesse’s mother came out of the house, carrying a jacket for his father and a sweater for Jesse. She had put a ribbon in her hair and had an old shawl around her shoulders.

“Put these in the car, son,” she said, and handed everything to him. She bent down and stroked the dog, looked to see if there was water in his bowl, then went back up the three porch steps and closed the door.

“Come on,” said his father, “ain’t nothing in there for nobody to steal.” He was sitting in the car, which trembled and
belched. The last car of the caravan had disappeared but the sound of singing floated behind them.

Jesse got into the car, sitting close to his father, loving the smell of the car, and the trembling, and the bright day, and the sense of going on a great and unexpected journey. His mother got in and closed the door and the car began to move. Not until then did he ask, “Where are we going? Are we going on a picnic?”

He had a feeling that he knew where they were going, but he was not sure.

“That’s right,” his father said, “we’re going on a picnic. You won’t ever forget
this
picnic—!”

“Are we,” he asked, after a moment, “going to see the bad nigger—the one that knocked down old Miss Standish?”

“Well, I reckon,” said his mother, “that we
might
see him.”

He started to ask,
Will a lot of niggers be there? Will Otis be there?
—but he did not ask his question, to which, in a strange and uncomfortable way, he already knew the answer. Their friends, in the other cars, stretched up the road as far as he could see; other cars had joined them; there were cars behind them. They were singing. The sun seemed, suddenly very hot, and he was, at once very happy and a little afraid. He did not quite understand what was happening, and he did not know what to ask—he had no one to ask. He had grown accustomed, for the solution of such mysteries, to go to Otis. He felt that Otis knew everything. But he could not ask Otis about this. Anyway, he had not seen Otis for two days; he had not seen a black face anywhere for more than two days; and he now realized, as they began chugging up the long hill which eventually led to Harkness, that there were no black faces on the road this morning, no black people anywhere. From the houses in which they lived, all along the road, no smoke curled, no life stirred—maybe one or two chickens were to be seen, that was all. There was no one at the windows, no one in the yard, no
one sitting on the porches, and the doors were closed. He had come this road many a time and seen women washing in the yard (there were no clothes on the clotheslines) men working in the fields, children playing in the dust; black men passed them on the road other mornings, other days, on foot, or in wagons, sometimes in cars, tipping their hats, smiling, joking, their teeth a solid white against their skin, there eyes as warm as the sun, the blackness of their skin like dull fire against the white of the blue or the grey of their torn clothes. They passed the nigger church—dead-white, desolate, locked up; and the graveyard, where no one knelt or walked, and he saw no flowers. He wanted to ask,
Where are they? Where are they all?
But he did not dare. As the hill grew steeper, the sun grew colder. He looked at his mother and his father. They looked straight ahead, seeming to be listening to the singing which echoed and echoed in this graveyard silence. They were strangers to him now. They were looking at something he could not see. His father’s lips had a strange, cruel curve, he wet his lips from time to time, and swallowed. He was terribly aware of his father’s tongue, it was as though he had never seen it before. And his father’s body suddenly seemed immense, bigger than a mountain. His eyes, which were grey-green, looked yellow in the sunlight; or at least there was a light in them which he had never seen before. His mother patted her hair and adjusted the ribbon, leaning forward to look into the car mirror. “You look all right,” said his father, and laughed. “When that nigger looks at you, he’s going to swear he throwed his life away for nothing. Wouldn’t be surprised if he don’t come back to haunt you.” And he laughed again.

The singing now slowly began to cease; and he realized that they were nearing their destination. They had reached a straight, narrow, pebbly road, with trees on either side. The sunlight filtered down on them from a great height, as though they were under-water; and the branches of the trees scraped against the cars with a tearing sound. To the right of them,
and beneath them, invisible now, lay the town; and to the left, miles of trees which led to the high mountain range which his ancestors had crossed in order to settle in this valley. Now, all was silent, except for the bumping of the tires against the rocky road, the sputtering of motors, and the sound of a crying child. And they seemed to move more slowly. They were beginning to climb again. He watched the cars ahead as they toiled patiently upward, disappearing into the sunlight of the clearing. Presently, he felt their vehicle also rise, heard his father’s changed breathing, the sunlight hit his face, the trees moved away from them, and they were there. As their car crossed the clearing, he looked around. There seemed to be millions, there were certainly hundreds of people in the clearing, staring toward something he could not see. There was a fire. He could not see the flames, but he smelled the smoke. Then they were on the other side of the clearing, among the trees again. His father drove off the road and parked the car behind a great many other cars. He looked down at Jesse.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Yes sir,” he said.

“Well, come on, then,” his father said. He reached over and opened the door on his mother’s side. His mother stepped out first. They followed her into the clearing. At first he was aware only of confusion, of his mother and father greeting and being greeted, himself being handled, hugged, and patted, and told how much he had grown. The wind blew the smoke from the fire across the clearing into his eyes and nose. He could not see over the backs of the people in front of him. The sounds of laughing and cursing and wrath—and something else—rolled in waves from the front of the mob to the back. Those in front expressed their delight at what they saw, and this delight rolled backward, wave upon wave, across the clearing, more acrid than the smoke. His father reached down suddenly and sat Jesse on his shoulders.