In My Father's House

  “That poor little sissy,” Virginia said. “What’s he want get messed up with this thing for?”

  Shepherd grinned at Virginia’s description of Elijah. “You know Elijah,” he said. “He feels sorry for everything. Then he let somebody else do the work.”

  “Well, I can’t say nothing ’bout Elijah,” Virginia said. “Didn’t he get in here? And ain’t I done even fed him? And how many times I done burnt myself today? I take that top off the pot, with no dishrag. I put that comb so close to my scalp you can hear it frying clear to Brick O’Linde. All ’cause of him. Screaming and going on.”

  “Screaming?” Shepherd asked her.

  “Last night there after midnight. Nearly scared me to death. I ran up there and knocked on the door, but you think he’d answer? Abe Matthews almost knocked the door down with his fist—you think he’d answer? God knows I don’t know what I got myself into.”

  “Look what I got myself into,” Shepherd said. “I have to escort him to a party.”

  “You, you can get out of it,” Virginia said. “Just go back and tell Elijah you couldn’t find him. Tell him he went walking somewhere and you don’t know where he’s at.”

  “Beverly wants me to bring him to the party, too,” Shepherd said. “That’s why I’m here. She wants me to be nice to people. I’m not nice enough, she said.”

  “How is Beverly?” Virginia asked. She had forgotten about her tenant for a moment.

  “She’s all right,” Shepherd said.

  “When y’all getting married, Shepherd?” Virginia asked seriously.

  “It never crossed my mind,” he said.

  “You ought to marry her, Shepherd,” Virginia told him. “She’s a nice girl, even if she is Catholic and Creole. It be good for both of y’all. Keep both of you out of them bars, for one thing.”

  Shepherd didn’t want to talk about his personal life.

  “What room is he in?” he asked Virginia.

  “Four,” Virginia said.

  Both of them turned and looked toward the stairs.

  “Something’s wrong up there,” Virginia said. Now she had forgotten about Beverly, and she was thinking about her tenant again. “I can’t put my finger on it, but something’s wrong up there. How I got in it, only God knows.”

  Shepherd went upstairs and knocked on the door. He had to knock a second time before the door opened. The new tenant stood before him in a wrinkled brown shirt and wrinkled brown slacks, his hair uncombed, his eyes bloodshot and weak as if he had not slept for days. This was the first time Shepherd had seen him up close, and for a moment he could do nothing but stare at him. The tenant waited to hear what he had to say.

  “Elijah sent me,” he said finally. “To bring you to the party.”

  “What party?”

  “At Reverend Martin’s house,” Shepherd told him.

  “What day is it?”

  “Saturday.”

  He turned and went back inside, sitting down on the bed facing the window. Shepherd stood at the door a moment, then followed him into the room. The room stank with the odor of cheap wine. Now Shepherd wished he had stayed out in the hall.

  “You want me to come back later?” he asked.

  The tenant didn’t answer him. Instead, he reached for the bottle of wine on the lamp table. He drank about half of what was left in the bottle and set the bottle back.

  “That stuff’s no good,” Shepherd said.

  “It kills the pain,” the tenant answered quietly.

  “You had anything to eat?”

  “A sandwich.”

  “When?” Shepherd asked.

  “I don’t know,” the tenant answered.

  Shepherd had come closer to the bed and he could see all the wrapping papers on the floor against the wall. About a half dozen wine bottles were on the floor with the paper. It seemed that nothing had been thrown out since Virginia’s new tenant had started buying his food at the grocery store. The covers and the sheets on the bed were rumpled and pushed to one side. The bed probably had not been made up either since he had been sleeping in it.

  The tenant got up from the bed and went to the window. Shepherd stood back a moment, then followed him.

  “My soul don’t feel good,” he said as he stared down at the alley that ran alongside the building. “Like garbage, broke glass, tin cans. Any trash.”

  “Can I do something?” Shepherd asked him.

  He shook his head without looking round. “Nobody can do nothing,” he said.

  “Maybe you ought to see a doctor.”

  “A doctor can’t do me no good.”

  “Why don’t you go back home?” Shepherd said with sympathy.

  The tenant grunted quietly to himself. “Home?”

  “Don’t you have a home?”

  He nodded his head, as he continued to stare down into the alley below the window.

  “I had a home once,” he said.

  “Where did you come from?”

  “A prison.”

  “You’re just getting out of prison?”

  “You can call it that.”

  For a moment Shepherd watched him without saying anything else. He seemed unaware of Shepherd even being in the room. The room was small, gray; the furniture old and worn. His coat and cap hung on a nail against the wall. Shepherd had looked round at the things in the room, and now he looked back at the tenant again.

  “Why don’t you change,” he told him. “We ought to get moving.”

  “Everything is like this,” the tenant said without looking round.

  “Do you have another shirt?”

  “Just like this one,” the tenant said. “It’s blue, not brown.”

  “We can drop by my place and pick up something,” Shepherd said. He didn’t like the idea of sharing his clothes with this fellow, but he would do anything to get out of the room.

  The tenant didn’t seem to be listening to him. His whole interest was directed toward the alley below the window. The alley was strewn with broken bottles, rusty tin cans, bits of paper, and any other kind of debris imaginable.

  “Is that how life is?” he asked, still not looking round. “Like that alley down there?”

  Shepherd looked down at the trash below the window.

  “Used to be something good in them bottles, in them cans,” the tenant said. “Somebody went through lot of pain making them bottles round—red and green. Look at them now. Busted. Cans bent and rusted. Nothing but trash. Nothing but trash now.”

  “Life’s not like that,” Shepherd said. “Man’s not made of glass and tin.”

  “It all adds up to the same thing,” the tenant said. “No matter what you do, no matter how hard you work, how much you love, they catch you off guard one day and break you. It don’t matter if you’re glass and tin, or meat and bone. It don’t matter.” He turned to Shepherd. “Why don’t you go on,” he said. “I can see him some other time.”

  “Elijah told me to bring you,” Shepherd said. “My old lady told me not to show up without you.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “She says I’m not nice enough to people.”

  “You’re nice,” the tenant said.

  “Not according to her. Not often enough.”

  “I don’t want to be no burden on you,” the tenant said.

  “You won’t be a burden.”

  “That’s cause you don’t know me,” he said. “If you knowed me, I’d be a burden.”

  “Know you how?” Shepherd asked him.

  “I’m go’n die soon,” the tenant said, looking sadly at Shepherd.

  “Are you sick?” Shepherd asked him.

  “I’m sick,” the tenant said calmly. “My soul is sick. My soul.”

  “Then you need to see a priest, or a preacher, or somebody like that,” Shepherd said.

  The tenant suddenly laughed in Shepherd’s face. Shepherd didn’t know what he had said that was so funny, but he laughed too. The tenant turned from him and looked down into th
e alley again.

  “Come on,” Shepherd said.

  “I’m not a freak,” the tenant said.

  “Nobody’s calling you a freak,” Shepherd said. “All right, I’ll go and tell them you didn’t want to come. If you change your mind, call the house.”

  He turned away from him and started out of the room. He was near the door when the tenant said, “Wait.” Shepherd stopped and looked back at him, but the tenant still looked down into the alley.

  “Yes?” Shepherd said.

  The tenant turned from the window and picked up the bottle from the lamp table.

  “I wouldn’t drink that stuff,” Shepherd said.

  He drank it all and set the bottle back on the table.

  “When I’m gone, you’ll know why I had to drink it,” he said.

  He got his overcoat and knitted cap from against the wall and followed Shepherd out of the room.

  The minister lived about a quarter of a mile farther back of town. His ranch-style brick house was the most expensive and elegant owned by a black family in St. Adrienne. The house sat behind a thick green lawn of St. Augustine grass about fifty feet away from the road. A driveway covered with sea shells ran along the right side of the yard, ending under a canopy beside the house. The minister’s big Chrysler and his wife’s smaller station wagon were parked there. Other cars were on the drive and before the door. Shepherd parked half a block down the street, and he and the new tenant walked back to the house.

  The big living room, with a fire in the fireplace, was crowded and noisy. The people were all well-dressed, and most of them were older than Shepherd and the new tenant. Two years earlier half of the crowd would have been their ages, but with Martin Luther King’s death many of the younger people had left the program.

  Shepherd and the new tenant had been in the room only a little while when Shepherd noticed the minister’s wife coming toward them. Alma Martin, a small brown-skinned woman, wore a long dark-green dress with a black patent-leather belt round the waist. She was only thirty-five years old, but her calm, passive face and dark clothes made her look much older. She spoke so quietly when she asked for their coats that they could hardly hear her over the noise in the room. Shepherd had taken off his hat and coat when he came inside, but the tenant kept his on.

  Shepherd introduced them. The tenant nodded politely, looked at her for only a second, and looked away. Alma wasn’t surprised. Most people usually ignored her and worshipped her husband. After telling them she wished they would have a good time at the party she left with Shepherd’s hat and overcoat. Halfway cross the room she met Elijah, who had just come in with a tray of cups and glasses. Shepherd could see them talking, and a moment later Elijah was coming toward them.

  “What a madhouse,” he said. “What a madhouse. Everybody showed up. I’m running all over the place. Good Lord, Robert, but aren’t you burning up in that coat?”

  “He wants to keep it on,” Shepherd said. “What you got in them cups, eggnog?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Plain eggnog.”

  Shepherd and the new tenant both took a cup off the tray.

  “Beverly showed up yet?” Shepherd asked Elijah.

  “I thought she was coming with you,” Elijah said.

  “She had to go on the Island,” Shepherd said. “I thought she’d be back by now.”

  Elijah turned from Shepherd to the new tenant. “Well, Robert X, how’ve you been? Haven’t seen you since Thursday evening. Thought maybe you had left us already. I suppose your friend hasn’t showed up yet, huh?”

  The tenant shook his head but did not answer. He had been looking round the room as if he was looking for someone.

  “Shepherd, I’m going to be a little busy for a while,” Elijah said. “You don’t mind showing Robert X around, do you?”

  Shepherd did mind; he thought he had already done enough. But before he could say anything, Elijah had turned from them and he was pushing his way through the crowd again.

  “Want to move around?” Shepherd asked the tenant.

  “I’m good here.”

  Shepherd didn’t want to move either. He expected Beverly any moment, and he wanted to stay near the door to see her when she came in. He drank from his cup of eggnog while looking the people over in the room. Then finding the minister, he nodded his head and waved his cup in that direction.

  “Over there by the piano,” he said to the tenant. “Big man in the dark suit, talking to the white folks. King Martin himself.”

  Shepherd was still looking at Phillip Martin and not at the tenant, so he didn’t see how violently the tenant’s face trembled when he saw the minister for the first time. The tenant raised the cup to his mouth to calm himself and held it there with both hands. Shepherd didn’t look round at him for a moment, and when he did he saw him staring across the room like someone hypnotized. His face was covered with sweat.

  “What’s the matter?” Shepherd asked him. “Something the matter?”

  The tenant didn’t answer. He seemed not even to hear Shepherd and stared across the room as though in a trance. Shepherd grabbed the sleeve of his coat and jerked at him.

  “What’s the matter with you?” he whispered.

  The tenant snapped his head back and looked at Shepherd as if Shepherd had just woken him up. Then he pulled his arm free and wiped the sweat from his face.

  “I’m all right,” he said.

  “Why don’t you get out of that coat?” Shepherd told him. “You want to step outside for some fresh air?”

  He shook his head. “No, I’m all right.”

  “You sure you’re all right?”

  “I’m all right.”

  He had been breathing quick and hard. Now he took in a deep breath and exhaled loudly as he looked down at the floor.

  Several other people who had seen what happened moved away from them, but a tall gray-headed man named Howard Mills came over to where they were. Mills had been watching them ever since they came into the room. He thought there was something familiar about Virginia’s new tenant. Either he had seen him somewhere else before or he knew some of his people.

  “Is he all right?” he asked Shepherd.

  “I think so,” Shepherd said.

  Shepherd introduced them. Mills was the head deacon in Phillip Martin’s church.

  “Hear you from Chicago?” he said, after they shook hands. “Folks out this way?”

  “No,” the new tenant said, avoiding Mills’s eyes.

  “Ever been out this way before?” Mills asked him.

  “No,” he answered.

  “New Orleans? Biloxi?” Mills asked.

  “No.”

  “Look like I done seen you somewhere before,” Mills said. “I ain’t wrong ’bout faces too many times. Sure you ain’t got no people this way? No aunts, no uncles, nobody like that?”

  “I don’t know nobody,” he said.

  Mills looked at him closely and grunted to himself. He was still convinced that he knew him, or definitely knew some of his people. He turned to Shepherd.

  “Well, Shepherd, how’ve you been?” he asked.

  “Fine. And yourself, Deacon?” Shepherd said.

  “Can’t complain for an old man,” Mills said. “We still hoping for some young blood in the program.”

  “I’m joining one day,” Shepherd said.

  “Sounds like something I heard before,” Mills said and smiled at him.

  While they stood there talking, the front door opened and Phillip’s young assistant pastor came into the room. Jonathan Robillard looked the people over from the door, then seeing Howard Mills he came over to where he was. Robillard was just under six feet tall, brown-skinned, and very slender. His eyes—large, dark, and clear—seemed suspicious of everything round him. Mills introduced him to Virginia’s new tenant. Jonathan nodded but didn’t reach out his hand. The tenant seemed preoccupied anyhow.

  “How are you, Shepherd?” Jonathan spoke. r />
  “Okay, and you?”

  “I see you found a little time to come on over, but I don’t see any of your other school-teaching friends?”

  “I suppose they’re busy,” Shepherd said.

  “Sure,” Jonathan said. “Sure. They’re too busy. That’s why we’re in the shape we’re in today, everybody’s too busy.” He turned from Shepherd to Mills. “I missed anything?” he asked him.

  “He’s still talking to Octave and Anthony,” Mills said.

  “I hope one day we won’t have to depend on that crowd,” Jonathan said.

  “I hope one day be more of us walking together,” Mills said.

  “Yes, but not depend on them like he does,” Jonathan said, looking cross the room at Phillip. “I don’t mind advice. I don’t mind participation, but I like to make up my own mind.”

  “He knows what he’s doing,” Mills said.

  “I still believe we must bring our own together,” Jonathan said. “Not them. We. We must do it.”

  “We can still use help,” Mills said. “They in a position to help us. We ain’t got no black attorney round here who can do what Anthony can do. And Octave’s the only friend we have on the board of education. We need them, Jonathan.”

  “We still have to do it ourselves,” Jonathan said. “Get what we can get from them, but don’t trust them all the way. He trusts them too much. Mark my word, they’ll let him down one day.”

  4

  Elijah had put away his tray of cups and glasses, and now he stood in the center of the room clapping his hands for silence. The people were making too much noise to hear him, and he clapped again and stamped his foot. When everyone had quieted down, he told them that Reverend Martin wished to say a few words to them. The people turned to Phillip who was already surrounded by a small crowd.

  Phillip Martin wore a black pinstriped suit, a light gray shirt, and a red polka-dot tie. He was sixty years old, just over six feet tall, and he weighed around two hundred pounds. His thick black hair and thick well-trimmed mustache were just beginning to show some gray. Phillip was a very handsome dark-brown-skinned man, admired by women, black and white. The black women spoke openly of their admiration for him, the white women said it around people they could trust. There were rumors that he was involved with women other than his wife, but whether these rumors were true or not he was very much respected by most of the people who knew him. And no one ever questioned his position as leader of the civil rights movement in the parish.