“Then a little later, Bliss, when he’s found a mate, that old severed nerve throbs again. They’re laughing like fools out in the quarters—is it to mock my dignity? Is it zippered up? Listen to them praying, is it for my abject destruction? I built my house on King Mountain stone, will it crumble before their envying eyes? In the dark in the alley, in the summer night some mister man is making a woman howl and spit like a rapturous cat—could that black tomcat have prowled in my bed? Could he? Could he? How now! He’s a buck stallion full of stinking sweat, I’m an eagle, bright with the light of God’s own smile. His woman’s a bitch and mine a doe … Ah, but think about it with the blue serge hanging on the rack: Has a black stallion ever mounted a snow-white doe at her frisky invitation when the sun was down? What goes on in that darkness I create when I refuse to see? What links up with what? Who reaches out to whom within that gulley, under that lid of life denied? You want me to hush and go away, Bliss?
“Not now, it’s been too long and some things just won’t stand not being said. Oh, all I’ve been talking about is human, Bliss. All human weakness and human pride and will—didn’t Peter deny Christ? But you had a choice, Bliss. You had a chance to join up to be a witness for either side and you let yourself be fouled up. You tried to go with those who raise the failure of love above their heads like a flag and say, ‘See here, I am now a man.’ You wanted to be with those who turn coward before their strongest human need and then say, ‘Look here, I’m brave.’ It makes me laugh, because few are brave enough to be for right and truth above all their other foolishness. There wasn’t a single man in that jail that night they beat me who didn’t know I was innocent and there wasn’t a single person in that town who didn’t know that woman was crazy, but not a single one was brave enough and free enough simply not to beat me. I don’t mean defend me, I don’t mean take up the cause of Justice, but just say to the others, ‘Listen, this man is innocent. He was preaching before a tent full of people and so couldn’t have touched that woman with a ten-foot pole.’ No, Bliss, I didn’t expect that because I knew the score. But even knowing it I found I still had something to learn. I had to lay there while they beat me and what I learned was that there wasn’t a mother’s son among them who, knowing my innocence, had the manhood and decency to refuse to whip my head. I guess if there’d been a preacher among them he’d’ve got in his licks with the rest. I lay there and laughed, Bliss. Sure, I laughed. I laughed because there is some knowledge that’s just too hopeless for tears.
“That was a long time ago and a few years before you were to make your choice, Bliss, but the devilment I’m describing has been going on for years and it’s a process for blinding and all the hell unleashed in the church that night sprang from it. The eye that was trained by two women’s love to love and respond to life now must be blind to the spirit that shines from all but a special few human eyes, and now you can’t look beneath the surface of a windowpane and see fire and the mirrors are rigged so you can’t see what you would deny in those whom you would deny. Oh, sure, Bliss; you can cut that cord and zoom off like a balloon and rise high—I mean that cord woven of love, of touching, ministering love, that’s tied to a babe with its first swaddling clothes—but the cord don’t shrivel and die like a navel cord beneath the first party dress or the first long suit of clothes. Oh no, it parts with a cry like a rabbit torn by a hawk in the winter snows and it numbs quick and glazes like the eyes of a sledge-hammered ox and the blood don’t show, it’s like a wound that’s cauterized. It snaps with the heart’s denial back into the skull like a worm chased by a razor-beaked bird, and once inside it snarls, Bliss; it snarls up the mind. It won’t die and there’s no sun inside to set so it can stop its snakish wiggling. It bores reckless excursions between the brain and the heart and kills and kills again un-killable continuity. Bliss, when Eve deviled and Adam spawned we were all in the dark, and that’s a fact.”
Suddenly the old man shook his head. “Oh, Bliss; Bliss, boy. I get carried away with words. Forgive me. Maybe a black man, even one as old as me, just can’t understand the mystery of a white man’s pain. But one thing I do know: God, Bliss boy, is Love.”
The Senator looked up at the fading voice, gripped by the fear that with its cessation his own breath would go. But there was Hickman still beside him, looking down as with the wonder of his Word for God.
“Perhaps,” the Senator said, “but it makes the laces too tight. Tell me what happened while there’s still time.”
“Lord, Bliss,” Hickman said, “here I’ve gone off and left you suspended in those women’s hands and you crying to beat the band. Well, for a minute there it looked like they were going to snatch you limb from limb and dart off in seven different directions. And the folks were getting outraged a mile a minute. Because although you might have forgot it, nothing makes our people madder and will bring them to make a killing-floor stand quicker than to have white folks come bringing their craziness into the church. We just can’t stand to have our one place of peace broken up, and nothing’ll upset us worse—unless it’s messing with one of our babies. You could just see it coming on, Bliss. I turned and yelled at them to regard the House of God—when here comes another woman, one of the deaconesses, Sister Bearmasher. She’s a six-foot city woman from Birmingham, wearing eyeglasses and who ordinarily was the kindest woman you’d want to see. Soft-spoken and easygoing the way some big women get to be because most of the attention goes to the little cute ones. Well, Bliss, she broke it up.
“I saw her coming down the aisle from the rear of the tent and reaching over the heads of the others, and before I could move she’s in that woman’s head of long red hair like a wildcat in a weaving mill. I couldn’t figure what she was up to in all that pushing and tugging, but when they kind of rumbled around and squatted down low like they were trying to grab better holts I could see somebody’s shoe and a big comb come sailing out; then they squatted again a couple of times, real fast, and when they come up, she’s got all four feet or so of that woman’s red hair wrapped around her arm like an ell of copper-colored cloth. And Bliss, she’s talking calm and slapping the others away with her free hand like they were babies. Saying, ‘Y’all just leave her to me now, sisters. Everything’s going to be all right. She ain’t no trouble, darlings; not now. Get on away now, Sis’ Trumball. Let her go now. You got rheumatism in you shoulder anyway. Y’all let her loose, now. Coming here into the House of God talking about this is her child. Since when? I want to know, since when? HOLD STILL DARLING! she tells the white woman. ‘NOBODY WANTS TO HURT YOU, BUT YOU MUST UNDERSTAND THAT YOU HAVE GONE TOO FAR!’
“And that white woman is holding on to you for dear life, Bliss; with her head snubbed back, way back, like a net full of red snappers and flounders being wound up on a ship’s winch. And this big amazon of a woman, who could’ve easily set horses with a Missouri mule, starts then to preaching her own sermon. Saying, ‘If this Revern-Bliss-the-Preacher is her child then all the yellow bastards in the nation has got to be hers. So when, I say, so when’s she going to testify to all that? You sisters let her go now; just let me have her. Y’all just take that child. Take that child, I say. I love that child ’cause he’s God’s child and y’all love that child. So I say take that child out of this foolish woman’s sacrilegious hands. TAKE HIM, I SAY! And if this be the time then this is the time. If it’s the time to die, then I’m dead. If it’s the time to bleed, then I’m bleeding—but take that child. ’Cause whatever time it is, this is one kind of foolishness that’s got to be stopped before it gets any further under way!’
“Well, sir, there you were, Bliss, with the white woman still got holt of you but with her head snubbed back now and her head bucking like a frightened mare’s, screaming, ‘He’s mine, he’s mine.’ Claiming you, boy, claiming you right out of our hands. At least out of those women’s hands. Because us men were petrified, thrown out of action by that white woman’s nerve. And that big, strong Bearmasher woman threatening to snatch her scalp clean from
her head.
“And all the time Sister Bearmasher is preaching her sermon. Saying, ‘If he was just learning his ABC’s like the average child instead of being a true, full-fledged preacher of the Gospel you wouldn’t want him and you’d yell down destruction on anybody who even signified he was yours—WHERE’S HIS DADDY? YOU AIN’T THE VIRGIN MARY, SO YOU SHO MUST’VE PICKED OUT HIS DADDY. WHO’S THE BLACK MAN YOU PICKED TO DIE?’
“And then, Bliss, women all over the place started to taking it up: ‘YES! That’s right, who’s the man? Let us behold him! Amen! Just tell us!’ and all like that.… Bliss, I’m a man with great puzzlement about life and I enjoy the wonderment of how things can happen and how folks can act, so I guess I must have been just standing there with my mouth open and taking it all in. But when those women started to making a chorus and working themselves up to do something drastic I broke loose. I reached down and grabbed my old trombone and started to blow. But instead of playing something calming, I was so excited that I broke into the ‘St. Louis Blues,’ like we used to when I was a young hellion and a fight would break out at a dance. Just automatically, you know; and I caught myself on about the seventh note and smeared into ‘Listen to the Lambs,’ but my lip was set wrong and there I was half laughing at how my sinful days had tripped me up—so that it came out ‘Let Us Break Bread Together,’ and by that time Deacon Wilhite had come to life and started singing and some of the men joined in—in fact, it was a men’s chorus, because those women were still all up in arms. I blew me a few bars then put down that horn and climbed down to the floor to see if I could untangle that mess.
“I didn’t want to touch that woman, so I yelled for somebody who knew her to come forward and get her out of there. Because even after I had calmed them a bit, she kept her death grip on you and was screaming, and Sister Bearmasher still had all that red hair wound round her arm and wouldn’t let go. Finally a woman named Lula Strothers came through and started to talk to her like you’d talk to a baby and she gave you up. I’m expecting the police or some of her folks by now, but luckily none of them had come out to laugh at us that night. So Bliss, I got you into some of the women’s hands and me and Sister Bearmasher got into the woman’s rubber-tired buggy and rode off into town. She had two snow-white horses hitched to it, and luckily I had handled horses as a boy, because they were almost wild. And she was screaming and they reared and pitched until I could switch them around; then they hit that midnight road for a fare-thee-well.
“The woman is yelling, trying to make them smash us up, and cursing like a trooper and calling for you—though by the name of Cudworth—while Sister Bearmasher is still got her bound up by the hair. It was dark of the moon, Bliss, and a country road, and we took every curve on two wheels. Yes, and when we crossed a little wooden bridge it sounded like a burst of rifle fire. It seemed like those horses were rushing me to trouble so fast that I’d already be there before I could think of what I was going to say. How on earth was I going to explain what had happened, with that woman there to tell the sheriff something different—with her just being with us more important than the truth? I thought about Sister Bearmasher’s question about who the man was that had been picked to die, and I tell you, Bliss, I thought that man was me. There I was, hunched over and holding on to those reins for dear life, and those mad animals frothing and foaming in the dark so that the spray from their bits was about to give us a bath and just charging us into trouble. I could have taken a turn away from town, but that would’ve only made it worse, putting the whole church in danger. So I was bound to go ahead since I was the minister responsible for their bodies as well as their souls. Sister Bearmasher was the only calm one in that carriage. She’s talking to that woman as polite as if she was waiting on table or massaging her feet or something. And all the time she’s still wound up in the woman’s hair.
“But the woman wouldn’t stop screaming, Bliss; and she’s cussing some of the worst oaths that ever fell from the lips of man. And at a time when we’re flying through the dark and I can see the eyes of wild things shining out at us, at first up ahead, then disappearing. And the sound of the galloping those horses made! They were hitting a lick on that road like they were in a battle charge.
“ ‘Revern’?’ Sister Bearmasher yelled over to me.
“ ‘Yes, Sister?’ I called back over to her.
“ ‘I say, are you praying?’
“ ‘Praying,’ I yelled. ‘Sister, my whole body and soul is crying out to God, but it’s about as much as I can do to hold on to these devilish reins. You just keep that woman’s hands from scratching at my face.’
“Well, Bliss, about that time we hit a straightaway, rolling past some fields, and way off to one side I looked and saw somebody’s barn on fire. It was like a dream, Bliss. There we was making better time than the Hambletonian, with foam flying, the woman screeching, leather straining, hooves pounding and Sister Bearmasher no longer talking to the woman but moaning a prayer like she’s bending over a washtub somewhere on a peaceful sunny morning. And managing to sound so through all that rushing air. And then, there it was, way off yonder across the dark fields, that big barn filling the night with silent flames. It was too far to see if anyone was there to know about it, and it was too big for anybody except us not to see it; and as we raced on there seemed no possible way to miss it burning across the night. We seemed to wheel around it, the earth was so flat and the road so long and winding. Lonesome, Bliss; that sight was lonesome. Way yonder, isolated and lighting up the sky like a solitary torch. And then as we swung around a curve where the road swept into a lane of trees, I looked through the flickering of the trees and saw it give way and collapse. Then all at once the flames sent a big cloud of sparks to sweep the sky. Poor man, I thought, poor man, as that buggy hit a rough stretch of road. Then I was praying. Boy, I was really praying. I said, ‘Lord, bless these bits, these bridles and these reins. Lord, please keep these thin wheels and rubber tires hugging firm to your solid ground, and Lord, bless these hames, these cruppers, and this carriage tongue. Bless the breast-straps, Lord, and these straining leather belly-bands.’ And Bliss, I listened to those pounding hoofbeats and felt those horses trying to snatch my arms clear out of their sockets and I said, ‘Yea, Lord, and bless this whiffletree.’ Then I thought about that fire and looked over at the white woman and finally I prayed, ‘Lord, please bless this wild redheaded woman and that man back there with that burning barn. And Lord, since you know all about Sister Bearmasher and me, all we ask is that you please just keep us steady in your sight.’
“Those horses moved, Bliss. Zip, and we’re through the land and passing through a damp place like a swamp, then up a hill through a burst of heat. And all the time, Bliss …”
The voice had ceased. Then the Senator heard, “Bliss, are you there, boy?”
“Still here,” the Senator said from far away. “Don’t stop. I hear.”
Then through his blurring eyes he saw the dark shape come closer, and now the voice sounded small, as though Hickman stood on a hill somewhere inside his head.
“I say, Bliss, that all the time I should have been praying for you, back there all torn up inside by those women’s hands. Because, after all, a lot of prayer and sweat and dedication had gone into that buggy along with the money-greed and show-off pride. Because it held together through all that rough ride even though its wheels were humming like guitar strings, and it took me and Sister Bearmasher to jail and a pretty hot time before they let us go. So there between a baby, a buggy, and a burning barn I prayed the wrong prayer. I left you out, Bliss, and I guess right then and there you started to wander. But you, I left you in some of the sisters’ hands and you misbehaved. Bliss, you was the one who needed praying for and I neglected you.…”
Hickman leaned closer now, gazing into the quiet face.
The Senator slept.
CHAPTER 9
Aaaaaaaayeeeee …! It ripped his ears in a rising curve, choked and bubbling like the shout of a convert wh
o had started screaming while Daddy Hickman was still raising his head from beneath the baptismal waters.… Aaaaaaaaayeeeeee! and he could feel it coming in sharp, shrill bursts but the redheaded woman was holding him so fiercely that he could not tell if they came from her heaving body or his own. Arms and hands were flying and he was plunging toward the coffin, catching sight of Teddy sprawled in the sawdust—only to be snatched up again, feeling a pain burning its way straight up his back as she screamed He’s mine! He’s—her head snapping back and the scream becoming the sound of Daddy Hickman’s trombone and he saw the white sleeve of a tall sister’s arm flash red, hearing, “Y’all leave her to me now,” and thinking Blood as they whirled him around and her arms tightening and thinking That’s flying bloody blare of horn she’s bleeding—feeling himself being ripped completely away from her now, the sisters with faces hard and masklike coming on and twisting him from her arms like a lamb bone popped out of its socket, holding him kicking high and passing him between them as he looked wildly for the flowing blood….