Five Smooth Stones

  Something in his tone brought a sharp question from David. "What business?"

  "They aren't going to get away with it. That's what he means," said Tom.

  "Who's 'they'?" snapped David. "Who in hell knows who 'they' is—are. Just drop it. Drop it right now." He walked past the table where Tom was sitting to the window beside the fireplace, stood looking out, his back to the room.

  "David," said Chuck, "I couldn't drop it. I humbly suggest that you come down out of that ivory tower and give us a hand. Of course there's no law says you have to. You can just shack up here in your li'l ol' room with your li'l ol' fireplace and hire you a li'l ol' freshman to bring you your meals, and you don't even have to speak to li' ol' us again. And all through the cold winter nights you can sit in front of your li'l ol' fireplace and think of us out there fighting your big ol' battle for you."

  David heard a sharply indrawn breath, and knew it was Tom's, and that Tom was afraid Chuck had gone too far. He had, thought David, too damned far. He felt his hands ball into fists in his pockets, felt anger crawling up his belly, fought it, waiting for the calm he knew would follow. From the window he saw a world grown dark enough to bring out the pale lights in the main quadrangle. He felt a lifetime older than the two boys in the room with him. When, for Christ sake, had the whites fought the Negroes' battle on any front except argument and words? He turned back to the room with an abrupt laugh.

  "All right, John Brown," he said. "All right. And when your academic body lies a-moldering in the grave I'll put flowers on it every Grand Army day. And I'll tell my little black pickaninny grandchildren what a good fight you put up. For the last time—Chuck—Tom—will you drop it? Drop the whole Goddamned stinking mess!"

  "No," said Tom. "We won't drop it, David. You can do whatever you want, and if it's nothing, then do that. But we aren't going to drop it. We sort of hoped you'd give us a hand, help us find a starting point, but if you won't, we'll have to find it ourselves."

  "There isn't a starting point. That's what I'm trying to tell you guys; there isn't a starting point. Not one you'll ever find. A thing like this is like some—some self-generating poison gas."

  "I know that," said Chuck. "I know that too damned well. You can't ever track down where the rumor came from that starts a lynch mob gathering." He stopped, ran a hand through the tow-colored stubble that was his hair, finally spoke hesitantly, almost appealingly, ignoring Tom, looking directly at David. "You'd understand, David, you'd recognize the words, if I said 'A man's got to trust someone.' " His eyes met and held David's, and the somber fire in David's seemed to die out a little, and he dropped his eyes first and turned away.

  Tom had taken the pen apart and reassembled it. He held it up and looked at it closely, one eye squinting. "Maybe so there isn't any starting point," he said. "But I've got a nasty, dirty little suspicion running around in my mind. Have to do some research before I say anything. You had supper?"

  "I've got enough here. I'm stuffed now."

  "We thought we'd get some ribs." There was still hope in Tom's voice, but when his eyes met only the impassive darkness of David's face he joined Chuck at the door. "See you in class tomorrow?"

  "How the hell do I know? Maybe they expel you in the middle of the night here, give you an hour to leave town. If I'm not there, it's been nice knowing you."

  David saw Tom's face flush with anger, and looked away.

  "O.K.," said Tom. "O.K., dad, if that's the way you warn it."

  Chuck's hand was inside Tom's coat collar. "Come on, young Evans, come on."

  "Wait," said David slowly. "I'm—I don't want you to think I'm not grateful. I guess I was rude. Anyhow, thanks."

  "That's all right," said Tom. "But you sure as hell can make me see red. Be seeing you—"

  ***

  David looked at the clock on his desk—a few minutes past six. He could call New Orleans collect and it wouldn't cost much. Calling every so often made Li'l Joe happy, and also took the pressure off him to write his weekly letter. When he heard Gramp's voice accepting the charges, he could always hear the undertone of happiness. He wanted to hear Gramp's voice now and called himself a damned baby for it. But he hesitated; there had never been any way to keep anything from Gramp for long. No matter how hard he might try to keep his voice normal, he knew how the conversation would go: "What's worrying you, son?... Nothing, Gramp, nothing. Just thought I'd call.... You lying, son.... No, Gramp.... Yes, you are. You feeling all right?"

  Beanie was right. Gramp would probably be relieved if he quit, not even mind too much if he was expelled. But David knew that Gramp would be so damned proud if things went all right, if his grandson made it all the way through. It was going to be one hell of a thing to explain, not only to Gramp but to the Prof.

  He decided against calling, and thought of something he had heard Kid Arab say when Kid returned to New Orleans after playing an engagement in a northern city. "Least you knows where you stand down here. Maybe it's in the muck, but you got no worries about being kicked out of the muck. You can settle in and make yourself at home. There's no way of telling up there. You gets your hand shaken one day and your ass kicked the next. There's just no knowing."

  For the second time that day he did not hear the door of his room open. He had not thought to lock it after Chuck and Tom left. Now at the sound of a step he turned from his desk at the window to face the newcomer, on the defensive. Then abruptly he was on his feet, no longer in a vacuum, no longer dwelling alone. He was smiling when he said, "Hi-ya, Ne'miah." He pulled back the chair Tom had been sitting on. "Where you been, man? Sit down. Res' yourself."

  Nehemiah Wilson sat, folding his arms on the table, looking at David with no expression in the simian-like eyes. "I've just been talking to Evans and Martin," he said. "First I knew about all this stink."

  "Where've you been?" asked David again. "Where the devil you been? It's all over the place. I mean all over."

  "I didn't get back till late last night. I heard about you being in trouble over helping Sutherland get home. You asked for that, man. I mean, you got up on your hind legs and you asked for that. But that's not a hell of a big beef. I figured you get a slap on the wrist, maybe. And you had it coming. And I wasn't fixing to offer sympathy. What you didn't learn in eighteen years in New Orleans I guess you got to learn here. Fact is, you asked for the whole damned mess."

  "All right. Cut the lecture."

  "Evans and Martin thought I'd heard about this other. Why would I? Who the hell would tell me? I'd be the last to hear. You had enough, David? You had enough ofay bitching up?"

  "Yeah. Yeah, Ne'miah, I've had enough. Heck, I'm on the way out. I'm pretty sure of that. But at least they're going to have to kick me out."

  "Cozy's gotten rid of us before," said Nehemiah. He looked with astonishment at David's puzzled face, and said: "What the devil's the matter with you, man? You think you're something special? That trash hates us all, only he's too smart to move unless he thinks he can win. He's letting me alone because I've kept my nose clean. You been fooling around with whites. And if there's one thing that bastard can't stand it's a white face and a black face side by side. And if the white face's female—"

  "But—"

  "Don't give me any 'buts.' You think he doesn't know what's going on? You think he hasn't got half-a-dozen minchy, mealymouthed spies coming to him and getting taken in by his—coziness? Telling him things?"

  "There's nothing going on? What the hell can anyone tell him about me?"

  "Oh, shit, David." Nehemiah made no attempt to conceal his disgust. "Don't be a starry-eyed ass all your life. You do, you're going to wind up swinging in the breeze—and it's going to be a mighty high tree."

  David did not protest. He had been stupid, he thought, to even pretend ignorance of what Nehemiah was talking about. Sara. Little Sara Kent, Sara of the mittened hands and the shining hair, who walked beside you like a child skipping: Sara, with the dark eyes that could be as bright as a bird's or as soft as a
young puppy's; Sara who cares so Goddamned much about everything and everybody you could feel the caring, like electricity.

  "Man," Nehemiah was saying, "where he comes from they cut a guy's nuts off for just thinking about it. And you know it. His old man was poor white. But somewhere along the line a little piece of a brain got into Cozy's head by mistake and he wound up at 'Bama University. The whites he comes from are so damned stupid, and you know that, too, that I think there must have been a little mix-up somewhere. That southern moon when it's full can be a mighty moving thing."

  David was quiet for a moment, and then spoke slowly. "What you said about cutting a guy's nuts off for just thinking about it. This thing about me—"

  "Now you're talking, man," said Nehemiah softly. "Now you're really talking. He's just doing it gentle-like to you."

  It was dark now. The only light in the room was the gooseneck lamp on the desk by the windows. Downstairs someone had lighted a fire in the big fireplace in the lounge, and a trick of the breeze outside brought its pungent friendly smell into the room through the window that was always kept open a crack. David looked down at the small, compact figure, drawing comfort from its presence. "You hungry, Ne'miah?"

  Nehemiah gave a quick start. "Hungry? Me? I'm always hungry. Why? You got food?"

  "That li'l piece of a car you got running all right?" Nehemiah was on his feet. "Running like a rabbit. Where you want to go?"

  "Mom's. Swear to God I can't talk anymore till I get some ribs in me. I've been starving for the last two hours. Let's go, man."

  ***

  Tom Evans's voice sounded like that of a child who has discovered his father has lied to him. "That was David, Chuck," he said. "Sitting at the table in the window with Nehemiah Wilson. He said he wasn't hungry."

  "Tom." Chuck, seated beside his friend in Evans's car, sounded like a kindergarten teacher trying earnestly to explain some natural phenomenon to a five-year-old. "Tom, if you and me—you and I, were on Mars, and we were living

  among a bunch of Martians and they didn't speak our language, and they looked different, and they thought different, and one of us got in bad trouble—where the hell would he run to?"

  After a moment Tom said, "The other one." Then, pounding his fist on the steering wheel, "And that's what's so wrong."

  "There ain't nothin' you can do about it," said Chuck. "Not right now. Just keep driving, young Evans; just keep going. We'll eat someplace in Laurel."

  CHAPTER 32

  If he hadn't written "glasses" on a card in black crayon and clipped it to his math notebook, David would have forgotten his appointment with an ophthalmologist in Laurel the day after his dinner with Nehemiah. He saw it that morning, and swore. The appointment had been made for him through the Infirmary after Doc Knudsen had seen him holding a book too far from his nose, and he'd broken down and confessed to headaches. Now if he didn't go it would be more hot water. Not that he could see that it made much difference when you were drowning in the stuff already.

  The appointment was at four, and there were no buses to Laurel between one and four. He'd get there as best he could —on foot. He had told no one of Cozy's final humiliation of him, and he wasn't about to ask favors of anyone, or accept them either. In the drizzly rain his ankle would hurt like hell before he got there, but he'd survive. The ache in his ankle on bad days and after long walks was a clean one; there was good and sufficient reason for it; it wasn't like an inner ache that was not clean, and for which there was no good and sufficient reason.

  The wind from the lake was raw and damp as he walked through the main gates of the campus, then turned right toward Laurel. He saw no students he knew more than by sight, and they spoke casually, the way any half-stranger would speak, and common sense told him the rumor hadn't had time to spread throughout the entire college.

  He didn't see how he could do much more thinking; he'd thought himself into exhaustion. There wasn't a damned thing to be done and the sensible thing was to face the fact. Right now the guy he wished he could talk to was an old man in a big mansion on the lakefront, a man named Quimby who, according to Doc Knudsen, didn't like the terms "white college" and "Negro college." He apostrophized him in absentia, feeling his circulation smarten up in the process. "You better wake up, Mr. President Emeritus Quimby. You better believe that what you've got now, like it or not, is a 'white' college. You've just been kidding yourself, Mr. Pres, just kidding yourself, and you haven't got one dollar or one million that will make it—this one or any other—any different." .

  Whites were so damned stupid, he thought; even the ones he liked, the good guys like Suds and Tom and Chuck who came on sincere as hell and meaning it, not giving a damn about what color a guy's skin was, and you let yourself get taken in and you quit thinking. Right off the bat, that made you even stupidier. Then something happened, as it always had and always would, and they had their hackles up and were mad and horrified because they hadn't known the gun was loaded.

  The sound of a horn was so unexpected that he jumped sideways, then turned and saw a florist truck draw up just ahead. When he drew alongside, the door was open and a young man about his own age was leaning across the seat. "Ten degrees warmer inside!" he cried. "Want a lift?"

  David climbed in, slammed the door shut, and said "Thanks" before he remembered his resolve to neither ask nor accept favors. The boy was saying: "I'm only going as far as Abington, just this side of the library. Want me to drop you off there? Or you can come along with me—"

  "Drop me," said David. "Got a doctor's appointment." He glanced at the boy. "Seen you on campus or the rec hall or somewhere, haven't I?"

  "Yes. I'm just a freshman."

  "Don't apologize. We all were once."

  "You're—you're David Champlin, aren't you?"

  The muscles at the back of David's neck stiffened. "Yes. So?"

  "Well—nothing. It's just that—well, I've heard a lot about you."

  Don't go on, thought David; just leave 'er lay, kid; leave 'er lay.

  But the boy was continuing: "How you're a brain, and yet you're a helluva piano player. I listen to you all the time in the rec hall."

  "You're the guy who's always eating an ice-cream cone? Now I recognize you."

  Was this all the kid knew about him? He waited as the boy rattled on in a half-embarrassed, friendly way, seeming more than a little awed. "You got Benford in math?" he asked.

  "Yeah," answered David. "Good man."

  "Holy cats! You think so? In math maybe, but—"

  "He's a good man. He's O.K.—" But you'll never know it, thought David; you'll never know the kind of good man Beanie is. And it's your loss. Your loss.

  "We-ell, maybe. Perhaps I just don't know him—"

  "That's right. You just don't know him."

  As David left the truck at Abington, the boy leaned across the seat again, ducked his head the better to see David through the opened window. There was an almost wistful note in his voice as he said, "Hey, look, mind if I drop in and see you sometime? Have a talk—"

  David checked himself this time, bit back the impulse to say, "Sure kid, come on. Any time." The boy was lonely; he could tell that. And for some reason he had a pretty inflated idea of David Champlin. But the gun's loaded, kid—he said this to himself, and to the boy said—"I'm damned busy these days. After Christmas maybe—" and turned away quickly from the hurt in the boy's eyes. Damned kid wouldn't know till he heard the story that David Champlin had done him a favor, turning away like that.

  His mood was hot and bitter as he neared the library. He'd never done anything like that before in his life, to anyone, white or black—been deliberately and cold-bloodedly hurting rude to someone who didn't deserve it. This thing's making a sonofabitch out of me, too, he thought. He crossed the street just before he reached the library; too much chance of meeting someone he knew coming out of it if he didn't. His ankle was pure murder now, but he walked as fast as he could.

  He felt the quick touch on his arm a
lmost as soon as he heard the running feet, a soft, light touch like a kitten's gentle pass at someone loved.

  "David!" Sara was panting. "David, for gosh sake, slow down! I've been running like crazy to catch up!"

  He did not want to look down, not at a red knit cap with a pompon on top, at shining dark hair and eyes he knew would be looking directly into his. He said "Hi!" and kept walking, not slowing down, wishing to God she'd take her hand off his arm. Dames ought not to touch guys. Not unless they were asked. A woman ought to keep a hand in a red mitten off a guy's arm unless—

  "David, aren't you going to say more than that? Slow down. Gosh please slow down."

  "I've got an appointment. Eye examination."

  "I told you, Stoopid! I told you if you couldn't borrow Sudsy's car to let me know if you were coming into town. Where is the Yellow Peril?"

  "In—in a garage."

  The hand was gone from his arm, and that was better. That was altogether good. Now if she'd just get gone herself —get lost—be missing—

  "You didn't want to, did you? Drive with me, I mean—"

  Why'd these people have to be so damned direct? That was one of the little things, just a little one of the many things about whites, so damned direct, so damned "yes" and "no."

  Sara said, "What's the matter? It's this mess, isn't it? This awful rotten, rotten mess."

  "Nothing's the matter. What mess?"

  "Please, David. Don't be all nasty and prickly."

  "Me nasty? How you talk."

  "Yes, you are, and I don't wonder. But—but I want to talk to you about—about things. I've—well, I've got some ideas."

  This did not seem to call for an answer, and he remained silent. The Medical Building was just ahead now, and he tried to think of something to say that would be off the subject.

  "David! Answer me! Talk. Talk. For heaven's sake, talk! Communicate."

  He hoped she hadn't heard his under-the-breath laugh. There was no reason to laugh; there wasn't anything funny to laugh at, but she'd wrapped it up so perfectly, put it in a word so neatly, and not even known she'd done it. Communicate. She might as well have said, "Make your ankle stop aching. Make your anklebones normal—" She hadn't meant to but she'd hit on the key to the whole damned thing between them. Communication was something that didn't exist, not between him and Sara Kent, not between him and others