“Alma want you to stay in bed, sir,” Elijah said, after he had caught his breath. “She went on the island to get the children. Told me to make sure you stayed in bed.”
“I’m all right,” Phillip said.
He went to the front door and pulled the curtains to the side. He looked through the glass and through the screened porch. But no one stood in the street watching his house, and no one was passing by.
“Something the matter?” Elijah asked him.
“I’m checking the weather,” Phillip said.
“Sure to freeze tonight,” Elijah told him.
“How was church?” Phillip asked, turning from the door and facing Elijah again.
“Church was all right.”
“Alcee lit the heaters on time?”
“It was still a little chilly when I got there,” Elijah said. “Most of the people kept their coats on.”
“How did Jonathan make out?” Phillip asked.
“All right,” Elijah said. “But Jonathan is still a little too”—Elijah touched the side of his head—“too sophisticated for the people—especially the old people. They feel Jonathan is talking over them, not to them.”
“Jonathan is that new breed,” Phillip said. “He thinks education, big words, is all you need to communicate. He’ll have to learn he must break them big words down to reach his people. They all right in school, but not in that church, and not out there on the street either. What did he talk about?”
“The work mostly. Chenal Friday.”
“Did the people ask about me?”
“Everybody,” Elijah said.
“What did you tell them?”
“You fell because you were tired.”
“Do I look tired to you, Elijah?” Phillip asked him.
“Sir?”
Phillip stood wide-legged and stretched out his two big arms. In his navy blue cotton robe, he looked like a heavyweight fighter in the center of the ring.
“Do I look tired?” he asked again.
“That’s what the doctor said,” Elijah said.
“Yes, that’s what the doctor said,” Phillip said. “But Octave Bacheron said it first.”
“Mr. Bacheron studied medicine,” Elijah said. “I think—”
“Octave Bacheron studied pills,” Phillip cut him off. “Pills, not medicine. White pills and pink pills. There’s a difference, Elijah.”
Elijah thought Phillip was speaking strangely, and he felt embarrassed and lowered his eyes.
“First time I ever fell in my life,” Phillip told him. “No, the second time. The first time was that Thursday morning when He lifted the burden of sin from my shoulders. I swooned, I fell.” Phillip thought back to that moment of his conversion fifteen years ago and nodded, thoughtfully, to himself. “The only other time I ever fell in my life,” he said. “Shot at; shot. Staggered, but wouldn’t go down. I was a good man, boy; I was a good man.” He frowned and squeezed his forehead.
“Something the matter?” Elijah asked again.
“Just thinking about being a man,” Phillip said. “Just thinking about being a man. Men supposed to clamb up off the floor.”
“Not if you’re tired, sir,” Elijah said.
“Floyd Patterson was tired,” Phillip said. “Did you see that fight? How many times that Swede knocked him down? Six, seven times? But he got up. He kept on getting up. I fell once—and I let a little finger—I coulda knocked that hand away like, like knocking lint off my robe.” He flicked at imaginary lint on the sleeve of his robe. “Why didn’t I, Elijah? And don’t say I was tired.”
“Yes sir,” Elijah said.
“Then why didn’t I?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Because he’s white? And that’s why y’all believed without questioning—because he’s white?”
“At that time, what else could we believe, sir?” Elijah asked.
“Nothing else,” Phillip said. “I don’t know why I’m blaming y’all. I’m the one to blame.”
“For what, sir? For falling?”
“For denying him twice,” Phillip said.
“Denying who, sir?”
Phillip shook his head. He couldn’t say any more now than he could say last night.
“It was a nice party,” he said.
“I thought so,” Elijah agreed.
“You had a lot of people. Didn’t expect to see so many in this kind of weather.”
“They came for a good cause, Reverend Martin.”
“You still think so, Elijah?”
“I know so,” Elijah said.
“Lately I’ve been having my doubts,” Phillip said. “Since Martin’s death—I don’t know. The older people still there—but where’s the young? If you not reaching the young, what good you doing?”
“You’ve done a lot of good, Reverend Martin,” Elijah said.
“Have done, Elijah?”
“Still doing, sir.”
“Leaders have to clamb up off the floor,” Phillip said. “We can’t let others speak for us no more, Elijah.”
“You speak for us, Reverend Martin,” Elijah said trying to encourage him.
“I didn’t speak for you yesterday,” Phillip said. “I reckon it’s no sin to fall. But surely it’s one not to get up.”
He turned from Elijah and looked out on the street again. Where was the boy? In his room? Walking the streets? Where?
“Did your friend show up?” Phillip asked, with his back to Elijah. “That new tenant at Virginia’s house?”
“He was here,” Elijah said. “Him, Shep, Beverly stood cross the room over there most of the time.”
Phillip turned back to Elijah, pretending he didn’t know what he was talking about.
“Stood where?” he asked.
Elijah nodded his head toward the other side of the room. “Over there,” he said.
“Wait,” Phillip said. “Wait. I think I did see him. He wore an overcoat, and a wool cap?”
“That was Robert X,” Elijah said.
“Robert X?” Phillip asked.
Elijah nodded. “That’s what he calls himself—Robert X. But if he’s a Muslim, he sure doesn’t carry himself like one.”
“Why would he call himself Robert X then?” Phillip asked. “Hiding from something?”
“I don’t know,” Elijah said. “According to him he’s on his way to a conference—some kind of black man’s conference. He stopped off here to meet somebody.”
“To meet who?”
Elijah shrugged his shoulders. “I have no idea.”
“Y’all talked, and he never mentioned a name, not once?”
“No sir, not once,” Elijah said.
“Maybe Shepherd knows?”
“I don’t think so,” Elijah said. “Shep woulda told me if he knew. It’s none of my business, but I don’t think he’s here to meet anybody. I think he’s just drifting. Just drifting. I think he’s a lost soul that’s just drifting.”
“How do you mean?” Phillip asked.
“Plain lost,” Elijah said. “Psychologically lost. Lonely. Nowhere to go. The other day when I gave him a ride he said nothing matters to him. He said winter and summer were the same. Good weather or bad weather it didn’t matter. It’s none of my business, but it looks like he wouldn’t care if he died tomorrow. I don’t think he’d care if he caught pneumonia and died tomorrow. When you look in his face you see somebody who don’t care any more.”
Listening to Elijah, a heaviness came in Phillip’s chest. His heart started beating a little too fast. He felt his eyes burning him and he wanted to raise his hand, but he knew Elijah was still watching him.
“I want to meet him,” he said. “Can you get him to come back—I mean with Shepherd and the others?”
“If I see him I’ll tell him,” Elijah said. “But he didn’t act like he wanted to come the first time. He didn’t think he was good enough for a house like this. I told him this house was opened to everybody.”
“Ye
s,” Phillip said. “Any time. Any time he would like to come here. Any time. Tell him I said so myself.”
“I’ll take a little run up to the Congo Room when Alma gets back,” Elijah said. “If I see him I’ll tell him then.”
Phillip went back into his office. Behind him he heard Elijah saying that he ought to be in bed, but he didn’t answer. He went into the room and stood by the window looking out on the street.
What is his name? he asked himself. What is his name? Robert is not his name, I’m sure of that. What is his name? What is his name?
He spent the rest of the afternoon in his office, either standing at the window, sitting at his desk, or pacing the floor. No matter what name he came up with he could not be sure that it was his son’s name. He tried remembering the names of the other two children, but he couldn’t remember theirs either. He thought about all the names of the old people, both in his and Johanna’s families. But still he couldn’t be sure who the children were named for. He looked in the Bible, but he could not read, and he turned to the window again.
Just before dark he saw the small station wagon turn into the yard, and he hurried out of the office into the bedroom. He had just hung up his robe and gotten under the covers when he heard Alma and the children come inside the house. Alma pushed the bedroom door open and asked him if he was asleep, and when he told her no, she called in the children to speak to him. Patrick, wearing a black overcoat and mittens, came up to the bed quickly, bravely, and shook hands. Emily in her red overcoat and red bonnet seemed afraid and stood back, until Phillip smiled at her, then she came up to the bed and kissed him on the mouth. Joyce Anne kissed her father on the forehead, then she led her smaller brother and sister out of the room.
“You all right, Phillip?” Alma asked him. She sat down on the bed and passed her hand over the side of his face. His day-old beard felt and sounded like sandpaper to her.
“I’m all right,” he said.
“You sure you all right, Phillip?”
“I’m all right. How’d you leave everybody?”
“Everybody’s fine. Daddy wanted to come over and see you, but I told him to wait a couple days.”
She got up from the bed to hang up her coat in the closet.
“You having supper with us?” she asked.
“Yes. I’m tired of this bed.”
“You stayed in bed all day?”
“Got up once; went to the bathroom. What time did you go on the Island?”
“After Joyce and Elijah came back from church.”
“I musta been asleep,” he said.
“I’ll call you when it’s time to eat,” Alma said, and left the room.
A half hour later Emily knocked on the door and told him that supper was on the table. When he came into the kitchen everyone, including Elijah, was sitting round the table waiting for him. He sat down and blessed the food.
Both Emily and Patrick watched him constantly. Alma had already explained to them that he had fallen from overwork, but they couldn’t understand it. They had never heard of a man falling from overwork, and they had never known him to be sick before.
While the children watched him, Phillip looked at Elijah to see if Elijah had said anything to Alma about his being up all afternoon. But Elijah seemed innocent enough, and Alma didn’t seem suspicious of anything either.
After supper Phillip took the pills in front of everyone to let them see that he was following the doctor’s orders. Then he left the table and went into the bedroom to get the newspapers. When Elijah came into the living room with his hat and overcoat, Phillip was sitting in a dark-brown soft-leather chair pretending to be reading. He was not reading, he had been sitting there the last few minutes thinking about his son. He knew that Robert was not his name. And he had been sitting there trying to think of his true name.
“You going out?” he asked Elijah.
“The Congo Room for a quick one,” Elijah said.
“If you see Shepherd, Beverly, tell them I’m sorry I didn’t get to see them yesterday. They might want to drop by again soon.”
“I’ll tell them,” Elijah said.
Phillip didn’t mention Virginia’s new tenant. He hoped that Elijah would remember their conversation earlier that afternoon.
After Elijah had gone, Phillip went to the door to look outside again. It was dark now, and he wouldn’t have been able to tell his boy from anyone else even if he had passed by the house. When he heard Alma coming up the hall, he sat down in his chair and pretended to be reading.
Alma came into the room with her sewing basket and a pair of khaki pants. Phillip watched her sit by a light near the fireplace.
“Something for Patrick?” he asked her.
“A brand-new pair pants he tore playing cowboy,” Alma said. “I told them they can watch television after they finish their lesson.”
Phillip looked across the room at her a while, then he started thinking about the boy again. He was trying to figure out how he had found out where he was. Had someone from St. Adrienne or from Reno Plantation gone up North recently? Had Johanna written home and asked about him? How else would the boy have known where to find him?
Why? he asked himself. He had asked himself this a dozen times at least. After all these years—why? The boy was what now—twenty-seven? twenty-eight? Twenty-seven, because he was born the winter of ’42. Cane cutting—grinding. Because she had cut cane all day Saturday, and the boy was born on Sunday. He didn’t see him for a week, because he wasn’t living with her. He lived with his parents in one house, and she lived with her mother and sister farther down the quarters. He saw the baby a week later when she brought him to the gate wrapped in a blanket. A year later there was another boy, and a year after that a little girl. They still lived separately. He had no time for marriage, for settling down. There were too many other things to do; there were too many other women in his life.
“Something in that paper must be good,” he heard Alma saying. “You ain’t turned that page once.”
“Nixon,” he said, without looking at her.
“What’s he up to now?”
“Same thing. Still messing over people.”
Alma went on with her sewing. Phillip watched her a moment, then flipped the page of the newspaper. He tried reading a couple of minutes, but soon his mind began wandering again.
He remembered the day Johanna and the children left from there. It was cold, raining, just as it was now. It was either December, 1948, or January, 1949, because he was living with Tut Hebert at the time. He remembered that he had been gambling the night before they left, and he had lost everything but three dollars, which he had stuffed down into his watch pocket, something to give each child just in case he saw them again before they left.
That was over twenty years ago. He hadn’t sent her one penny or written her one letter in all that time, and neither had he received a letter from her. He had heard that she lived in Texas a few years, then she left for California. He had not heard a thing about her since.
Why now? he asked himself again. Why now?
When Elijah came back to the house around nine thirty, the children had studied their lesson, had watched a show on television, and had gone to bed. Alma had put up her sewing and she was back in the kitchen making coffee. Phillip sat in the living room alone, with half of the newspaper in his lap and the rest on the floor by his chair.
“Getting colder and colder out there,” Elijah said. “Freeze before morning.”
He took off his hat and coat and laid them on the arm of the couch. Then he went to the fireplace and stood with his back to the fire. Phillip looked at him, waiting to hear if he had seen the boy.
“Alma turned in?” Elijah asked.
“In the kitchen,” Phillip said.
Elijah blew on his hands and rubbed them. Phillip looked at him, waiting. Elijah turned his back on Phillip and held his hands over the fire.
“You caught up with your friends?” Phillip asked when it seemed that
Elijah wasn’t going to say anything.
“Up there drinking as usual,” Elijah said, still holding his hands over the fire.
“You told them what I said?”
“Tuesday evening, after school,” Elijah said, and turned round to face Phillip again.
“Who-all you saw?” Phillip asked casually.
“The usual crowd—Shep, Beverly, Guy, Frances, Chuck. Yes—Robert X was sitting there with them, drinking wine. Everybody else drinking Old Forester, Robert X drinking wine.”
“Wine?” Phillip said.
“Yes sir. Wine.”
“Well, if he come maybe we’ll have a little wine Tuesday,” Phillip said. “Yes, a little wine. They said they was coming?”
“They’ll probably show up,” Elijah said. “They don’t do nothing else in the evening but sit around and drink.”
Alma came into the living room with three cups of coffee, a bowl of sugar, a small pitcher of cream, and a plate of cookies on a tray. She served Phillip, then Elijah, and set the tray on the coffee table in front of the couch. Elijah came to the couch with his cup of coffee and sat down.
“What was all that talking about up here?” Alma asked Phillip. “I thought you was supposed to be resting.”
“We was just talking about the teachers,” Phillip said. “I told Elijah to invite them to the house. They coming over Tuesday evening.”
“Who say you can have company that soon?” Alma asked him. “I told my own people you needed rest, now you inviting others?”
“The doctor said rest a couple days,” Phillip told her. “Today is one; tomorrow two; all day Tuesday is three. If I needed any more rest than that they might as well put me in the grave.”
“That’s where you’ll be if you don’t start listening to people,” Alma said. She turned on Elijah, who was sitting at the other end of the couch. “You the one doing this behind my back?” she asked him.
“Don’t blame Elijah,” Phillip said from across the room. He drank from the hot coffee and set the cup back in the saucer that he held in the palm of his hand. “I didn’t get a chance to talk with Shepherd and Beverly yesterday, and I told Elijah to invite them back.”
“Can’t it wait till you up and moving around?”