‘Wait a minute,’ Mick said. ‘Even if Bubber is seven years old he’s got brains enough not to tell us where he’s going if he wants to run away. That about Florida is just a trick.’
‘A trick?’ her Dad said.
‘Yeah. There only two places Bubber knows very much about.
One is Florida and the other is Atlanta. Me and Bubber and Ralph have been on the Atlanta road many a time. He knows how to start there and that’s where he’s headed. He always talks about what he’s going to do when he gets a chance to go to Atlanta.’
They went out to the automobile again. She was ready to climb into the back seat when Portia pinched her on the elbow. ‘You know what Bubber done?’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘Don’t you tell nobody else, but my Bubber done also taken my gold earrings off my dresser. I never thought my Bubber would have done such a thing to me.’
Mister Brannon started the automobile. They rode slow, looking up and down the streets for Bubber, headed toward the Atlanta road.
It was true that in Bubber there was a tough, mean streak. He was acting different today than he had ever acted before. Up until now he was always a quiet little kid who never really done anything mean. When anybody’s feelings were hurt it always made him ashamed and nervous.
Then how come he could do all the things he had done today? They drove very slow out the Atlanta road. They passed the last line of houses and came to the dark fields and woods. All along they had stopped to ask if anyone had seen Bubber. ‘Has a little barefooted kid in corduroy knickers been by this way?’
But even after they had gone about ten miles nobody had seen or noticed him. The wind came in cold and strong from the open windows and it was late at night.
They rode a little farther and then went back toward town. Her Dad and Mister Brannon wanted to look up all the children in the second grade, but she made them turn around and go back on the Atlanta road again. All the while she remembered the words she had said to Bubber. About Baby being dead and Sing Sing and Warden Lawes. About the small electric chairs that were just his size, and Hell. In the dark the words had sounded terrible.
They rode very slow for about half a mile out of town, and then suddenly she saw Bubber. The lights of the car showed him up in front of them very plain. It was funny. He was walking along the edge of the road and he had his thumb out trying to get a ride. Portia’s butcher knife was stuck in his belt, and on the wide, dark road he looked so small that it was like he was five years old instead of seven.
They stopped the automobile and he ran to get in. He couldn’t see who they were, and his face had the squint-eyed look it always had when he took aim with a marble. Her Dad held him by the collar. He hit with his fists and kicked. Then he had the butcher knife in his hand. Their Dad yanked it away from him just in time. He fought like a little tiger in a trap, but finally they got him into the car. Their Dad held him in his lap on the way home and Bubber sat very stiff, not leaning against anything.
They had to drag him into the house, and all the neighbors and the boarders were out to see the commotion. They dragged him into the front room and when he was there he backed off into a corner, holding his fists very tight and with his squinted eyes looking from one person to the other Like he was ready to fight the whole crowd.
He hadn’t said one word since they came into the house until he began to scream: ‘Mick done it! I didn’t do it Mick done it!’ There were never any kind of yells like the ones Bubber made. The veins in his neck stood out and his fists were hard as little rocks.
‘You can’t get me! Nobody can get me!’ he kept yelling.
Mick shook him by the shoulder. She told him the things she had said were stories. He finally knew what she was saying but he wouldn’t hush. It looked like nothing could stop that screaming.
‘I hate everybody! I hate everybody!’ They all just stood around. Mister Brannon rubbed his nose and looked down at the floor. Then finally he went out very quietly. Mister Singer was the only one who seemed to know what it was all about. Maybe this was because he didn’t hear that awful noise. His face was still calm, and whenever Bubber looked at him he seemed to get quieter. Mister Singer was different from any other man, and at times like this it would be better if other people would let him manage. He had more sense and he knew things that ordinary people couldn’t know. He just looked at Bubber, and after a while the kid quieted down enough so that their Dad could get him to bed.
In the bed he lay on his face and cried. He cried with long, big sobs that made him tremble all over. He cried for an hour and nobody in the three rooms could sleep. Bill moved to the living-room sofa and Mick got into bed with Bubber. He wouldn’t let her touch him or snug up to him. Then after another hour of crying and hiccoughing he went to sleep.
She was awake a long time. In the dark she put her arms around him and held him very close. She touched him all over and kissed him everywhere. He was so soft and little and there was this salty, boy smell about him. The love she felt was so hard that she had to squeeze him to her until her arms were tired. In her mind she thought about Bubber and music together. It was like she could never do anything good enough for him. She would never hit him or even tease him again. She slept all night with her arms around his head. Then in the morning when she woke up he was gone. But after that night there was not much of a chance for her to tease him any more--her or anybody else. After he shot Baby the kid was not ever like little Bubber again. He always kept his mouth shut and he didn’t fool around with anybody.
Most of the time he just sat in the back yard or in the coal house by himself. It got closer and closer toward Christmas time. She really wanted a piano, but naturally she didn’t say anything about that. She told everybody she wanted a Micky Mouse watch. When they asked Bubber what he wanted from Santa Claus he said he didn’t want anything. He hid his marbles and jack-knife and wouldn’t let anyone touch his story books.
After that night nobody called him Bubber any more. The big kids in the neighborhood started calling him Baby-Killer Kelly. But he didn’t speak much to any person and nothing seemed to bother him. The family called him by his real name--George. At first Mick couldn’t stop calling him Bubber and she didn’t want to stop. But it was funny how after about a week she just naturally called him George like the others did.
But he was a different kid--George--going around by himself always like a person much older and with nobody, not even her, knowing what was really in his mind.
She slept with him on Christmas Eve night. He lay in the dark without talking. ‘Quit acting so peculiar,’ she said to him. ‘Less talk about the wise men and the way the children in Holland put out their wooden shoes instead of hanging up their stockings.’
George wouldn’t answer. He went to sleep.
She got up at four o’clock in the morning and waked everybody in the family. Their Dad built a fire in the front room and then let them go into the Christmas tree and see what they got. George had an Indian suit and Ralph a rubber doll. The rest of the family just got clothes. She looked all through her stocking for the Mickey Mouse watch but it wasn’t there. Her presents were a pair of brown Oxford shoes and a box of cherry candy. While it was still dark she and George went out on the sidewalk and cracked nigger-toes and shot firecrackers and ate up the whole two-layer box of cherry candy. And by the time it was daylight they were sick to the stomach and tired out. She lay down on die sofa. She shut her eyes and went into the inside room.
EIGHT o’clock Doctor Copeland sat at his desk, studying a sheaf of papers by the bleak morning light from the window.
Beside him the tree, a thick-fringed cedar, rose up dark and green to the ceiling. Since the first year he began to practice he had given an annual party on Christmas Day, and now all was in readiness. Rows of benches and chairs lined the walls of the front rooms. Throughout the house there was the sweet spiced odor of newly baked cake and steaming coffee. In the office with him Portia sat on a bench against the
wall, her hands cupped beneath her chin, her body bent almost double.
‘Father, you been scrouched over the desk since five o’clock.
You got no business to be up. You ought to stayed in bed until time for the to-do.’
Doctor Copeland moistened his thick lips with his tongue. So much was on his mind that he had no attention to give to Portia. Her presence fretted him.
At last he turned to her irritably. ‘Why do you sit there moping?’
‘I just got worries,’ she said. ‘For one thing, I worried about our Willie.’
‘William?’
‘You see he been writing me regular ever Sunday. The letter will get here on Monday or Tuesday. But last week he didn’t write. Course I not really anxious. Willie--he always so good-- natured and sweet I know he going to be all right. He been transferred from the prison to the chain gang and they going to work up somewhere north of Atlanta. Two weeks ago he wrote this here letter to say they going to attend a church service today, and he done asked me to send him his suit of clothes and his red tie.’
‘Is that all William said?’
‘He written that this Mr. B. F. Mason is at the prison, too. And that he run into Buster Johnson--he a boy Willie used to know. And also he done asked me to please send him his harp because he can’t be happy without he got his harp to play on. I done sent everthing. Also a checker set and a white-iced cake.
But I sure hope I hears from him in the next few days.’
Doctor Copeland’s eyes glowed with fever and he could not rest his hands. ‘Daughter, we shall have to discuss this later. It is getting late and I must finish here. You go back to the kitchen and see that all is ready.’
Portia stood up and tried to make her face bright and happy.
‘What you done decided about that five-dollar prize?’
‘As yet I have been unable to decide just what is the wisest course,’ he said carefully.
A certain friend of his, a Negro pharmacist, gave an award of five dollars every year to the high-school student who wrote the best essay on a given subject. The pharmacist always made Doctor Copeland sole judge of the papers and the winner was announced at the Christmas party. The subject of the composition this year was ‘My Ambition: How I Can Better the Position of the Negro Race in Society. ‘There was only one essay worthy of real consideration. Yet this paper was so childish and ill-advised that it would hardly be prudent to confer upon it the award. Doctor Copeland put on his glasses and re-read the essay with deep concentration.
This is my ambition. First I wish to attend Tuskegee College but I do not wish to be a man like Booker Washington or Doctor Carver. Then when I deem that my education is complete I wish to start off being a fine lawyer like the one who defended the Scottsboro Boys. I would only take cases for colored people against white people. Every day our people are made in every way and by every means to feel that they are inferior. This is not so. We are a Rising Race. And we cannot sweat beneath the white man’s burdens for long. We cannot always sow where others reap.
I want to be like Moses, who led the children of Israel from the land of the oppressors. I want to get up a Secret Organization of Colored Leaders and Scholars. All colored people will organize under the direction of these picked leaders and prepare for revolt. Other nations in the world who are interested in the plight of our race and who would like to see the United States divided would come to our aid. All colored people will organize and there will be a revolution, and at the close colored people will take up all the territory east of the Mississippi and south of the Potomac. I shall set up a mighty country under the control of the Organization of Colored Leaders and Scholars.
No white person will be allowed a passport--and if they get into the country they will have no legal rights.
I hate the whole white race and will work always so that the colored race can achieve revenge for all their sufferings. That is my ambition.
Doctor Copeland felt the fever warm in his veins. The ticking of the clock on his desk was loud and the sound jarred his nerves. How could he give the award to a boy with such wild notions as this? What should he decide? The other essays were without any firm content at all. The young people would not think. They wrote only about their ambitions and omitted the last part of the tide altogether. Only one point was of some significance. Nine out of the lot of twenty-five began with the sentence, ‘I do not want to be a servant.’ After that they wished to fly airplanes, or be prizefighters, or preachers or dancers. One girl’s sole ambition was to be kind to the poor.
The writer of the essay that troubled him was Lancy Davis. He had known the identity of the author before he turned the last sheet over and saw the signature. Already he had some trouble with Lancy. His older sister had gone out to work as a servant when she was eleven years old and she had been raped by her employer, a white man past middle age. Then a year or so later he had received an emergency call to attend Lancy.
Doctor Copeland went to the filing case in his bedroom where he kept notes on all of his patients. He took out the card marked ‘Mrs. Dan Davis and Family’ and glanced through the notations until he reached Lancy’s name. The date was four years ago. The entries on him were written with more care than the others and in ink: ‘thirteen years old--past puberty.
Unsuccessful attempt self-emasculation. Oversexed and hyperthyroid. Wept boisterously during two visits, though little pain. Voluble--very glad to see Lucy Davis--mother washerwoman. Intelligent talk through paranoiac.
Environment fair with one exception and well worth watching and all possible help. Keep contact. Fee: $1 (?)’
‘It is a difficult decision to make this year,’ he said to Portia.
‘But I suppose I will have to confer the award on Lancy Davis.’
‘If you done decide, then--come tell me about some of these here presents.’
The gifts to be distributed at the party were in the kitchen.
There were paper sacks of groceries and clothing, all marked with a red Christmas card. Anyone who cared to come was invited to the party, but those who meant to attend had stopped by the house and written (or had asked a friend to write) their names in a guest book kept on the table in the hall for that purpose. The sacks were piled on the floor. There were about forty of them, each one depending in size on the need of the receiver. Some gifts were only small packages of nuts or raisins and others were boxes almost too heavy for a man to lift The kitchen was crowded with good things. Doctor Copeland stood in the doorway and his nostrils quivered with pride.
I think you done right well this year. Folks certainly have been kindly.’
‘Pshaw!’ he said. This is not a hundredth part of what is needed.’
‘Now, there you go, Father! I know good and well you just as pleased as you can be. But you don’t want to show it.
You got to find something to grumble about. Here we haves about four pecks of peas, twenty sacks of meal about fifteen pounds of side meat, mullet, six dozen eggs, plenty grits, jars of tomatoes and peaches. Apples and two dozen oranges. Also garments. And two mattresses and four blankets. I call this something!’
‘A drop in the bucket.’
Portia pointed to a large box in the corner. These here--what you intend to do with them?’
The box contained nothing but junk--a headless doll, some duty lace, a rabbit skin. Doctor Copeland scrutinized each article. ‘Do not throw them away. There is use for everything.
These are the gifts from our guests who have nothing better to contribute. I will find some purpose for them later.’
‘Then suppose you look over these here boxes and sacks so I can commence to tie them up. There ain’t going to be room here in the kitchen. Time they all pile in for the refreshments.
I just going to put these here presents out on the back steps and in the yard.’
The morning sun had risen. The day would be bright and cold.
In the kitchen there were rich, sweet odor
s. A dishpan of coffee was on the stove and iced cakes filled a shelf in the cupboard.
‘And none of this comes from white people. All from colored.’
‘No,’ said Doctor Copeland. ‘That is not wholly true. Mr.
Singer contributed a check for twelve dollars to be used for coal. And I have invited him to be present today.’
‘Holy Jesus!’ Portia said. ‘Twelve dollars!’
‘I felt that it was proper to ask him. He is not like other people of the Caucasian race.’
‘You right,’ Portia said. ‘But I keep thinking about my Willie. I sure do wish he could enjoy this here party today. And I sure do wish I could get a letter from him. It just prey on my mind.
But here! Us got to quit this here talking and get ready. It mighty near time for the party to come.’
Time enough remained. Doctor Copeland washed and clothed himself carefully. For a while he tried to rehearse what he would say when the people had all come. But expectation and restlessness would not let him concentrate. Then at ten o’clock the first guests arrived and within half an hour they were all assembled.
‘Joyful Christmas to you!’ said John Roberts, the postman. He moved happily about the crowded room, one shoulder held higher than the other, mopping his face with a white silk handkerchief.
‘Many happy returns of the day!’ The front of the house was thronged. Guests were blocked at the door and they formed groups on the front porch and in the yard. There was no pushing or rudeness; the turmoil was orderly. Friends called out to each other and strangers were introduced and clasped hands. Children and young people clotted together and moved back toward the kitchen. ‘Christmas gift!’ Doctor Copeland stood in the center of the front room by the tree. He was dizzy. He shook hands and answered salutations with confusion. Personal gifts, some tied elaborately with ribbons and others wrapped in newspapers, were thrust into his hands. He could find no place to put them. The air thickened and voices grew louder. Faces whirled about him so that he could recognize no one. His composure returned to him gradually. He found space to lay aside the presents in his arms. The dizziness lessened, the room cleared. He settled his spectacles and began to look around him.