Go Tell It on the Mountain

by James Baldwin

  “Another soul struck down,” murmured Sister McCandless. “Lord have mercy.”

  “He said in the last days evil would abound,” said Sister Price.

  “Well, yes, He did say it,” said Praying Mother Washington, “and I’m so glad He told us He wouldn’t leave us comfortless.”

  “When ye see all these things, know that your salvation is at hand,” said Sister McCandless. “A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand—but it ain’t going to come nigh thee. So glad, amen, this morning, bless my Redeemer.”

  “You remember that day when you come into the store?”

  “I didn’t think you never looked at me.”

  “Well—you was mighty pretty.”

  “Didn’t little Johnny never say nothing,” asked Praying Mother Washington, “to make you think the Lord was working in his heart?”

  “He always kind of quiet,” said Elizabeth. “He don’t say much.”

  “No,” said Sister McCandless, “he ain’t like all these rough young ones nowadays—he got some respect for his elders. You done raised him mighty well, Sister Grimes.”

  “It was his birthday yesterday,” Elizabeth said.

  “No!” cried Sister Price. “How old he got to be yesterday?”

  “He done made fourteen,” she said.

  “You hear that?” said Sister Price, with wonder. “The Lord done saved that boy’s soul on his birthday!”

  “Well, he got two birthdays now,” smiled Sister McCandless, “just like he got two brothers—one in the flesh, and one in the Spirit.”

  “Amen, bless the Lord!” cried Praying Mother Washington.

  “What book was it, Richard?”

  “Oh, I don’t remember. Just a book.”

  “You smiled.”

  “You was mighty pretty.”

  She took her sodden handkerchief out of her bag, and dried her eyes; and dried her eyes again, looking down the avenue.

  “Yes,” said Sister Price, gently, “you just thank the Lord. You just let the tears fall. I know your heart is full this morning.”

  “The Lord’s done give you,” said Praying Mother Washington, “a mighty blessing—and what the Lord gives, can’t no man take away.”

  “I open,” said Sister McCandless, “and no man can shut. I shut, and no man can open.”

  “Amen,” said Sister Price. “Amen.”

  “Well, I reckon,” Florence said, “your soul is praising God this morning.”

  He looked straight ahead, saying nothing, holding his body more rigid than an arrow.

  “You always been saying,” Florence said, “how the Lord would answer prayer.” And she looked sideways at him, with a little smile.

  “He going to learn,” he said at last, “that it ain’t all in the singing and the shouting—the way of holiness is a hard way. He got the steep side of the mountain to climb.”

  “But he got you there,” she said, “ain’t he, to help him when he stumbles, and to be a good example?”

  “I’m going to see to it,” he said, “that he walks right before the Lord. The Lord’s done put his soul in my charge—and I ain’t going to have that boy’s blood on my hands.”

  “No,” she said, mildly, “I reckon you don’t want that.”

  Then they heard the siren, and the headlong, warning bell. She watched his face as he looked outward at the silent avenue and at the ambulance that raced to carry someone to healing, or to death.

  “Yes,” she said, “that wagon’s coming, ain’t it, one day for everybody?”

  “I pray,” he said, “it finds you ready, sister.”

  “Is it going to find you ready?” she asked.

  “I know my name is written in the Book of Life,” he said. “I know I’m going to look on my Saviour’s face in glory.”

  “Yes,” she said, slowly, “we’s all going to be together there. Mama, and you, and me, and Deborah—and what was the name of that little girl who died not long after I left home?”

  “What little girl who died?” he asked. “A lot of folks died after you left home—you left your mother on her dying bed.”

  “This girl was a mother, too,” she said. “Look like she went North all by herself, and had her baby, and died—weren’t nobody to help her. Deborah wrote me about it. Sure, you ain’t forgotten that girl’s name, Gabriel!”

  Then his step faltered—seemed, for a moment, to drag. And he looked at her. She smiled, and lightly touched his arm.

  “You ain’t forgotten her name,” she said. “You can’t tell me you done forgot her name. Is you going to look on her face, too? Is her name written in the Book of Life?”

  In utter silence they walked together, her hand still under his trembling arm.

  “Deborah didn’t never write,” she at last pursued, “about what happened to the baby. Did you ever see him? You going to meet him in Heaven, too?”

  “The Word tell us,” he said, “to let the dead bury the dead. Why you want to go rummaging around back there, digging up things what’s all forgotten now? The Lord, He knows my life—He done forgive me a long time ago.”

  “Look like,” she said, “you think the Lord’s a man like you; you think you can fool Him like you fool men, and you think He forgets, like men. But God don’t forget nothing, Gabriel—if your name’s down there in the Book, like you say, it’s got all what you done right down there with it. And you going to answer for it, too.”

  “I done answered,” he said, “already before my God. I ain’t got to answer now, in front of you.”

  She opened her handbag, and took out the letter.

  “I been carrying this letter now,” she said, “for more than thirty years. And I been wondering all that time if I’d ever talk to you about it.”

  And she looked at him. He was looking, unwillingly, at the letter, which she held tightly in one hand. It was old, and dirty, and brown, and torn; he recognized Deborah’s uncertain, trembling hand, and he could see her again in the cabin, bending over the table, laboriously trusting to paper the bitterness she had not spoken. It had lived in her silence, then, all of those years? He could not believe it. She had been praying for him as she died—she had sworn to meet him in glory. And yet, this letter, her witness, spoke, breaking her long silence, now that she was beyond his reach forever.

  “Yes,” said Florence, watching his face, “you didn’t give her no bed of roses to sleep on, did you?—poor, simple, ugly, black girl. And you didn’t treat that other one no better. Who is you met, Gabriel, all your holy life long, you ain’t made to drink a cup of sorrow? And you doing it still—you going to be doing it till the Lord puts you in your grave.”

  “God’s way,” he said, and his speech was thick, his face was slick with sweat, “ain’t man’s way. I been doing the will of the Lord, and can’t nobody sit in judgment on me but the Lord. The Lord called me out, He chose me, and I been running with Him ever since I made a start. You can’t keep your eyes on all this foolishness here below, all this wickedness here below—you got to lift up your eyes to the hills and run from the destruction falling on the earth, you got to put your hand in Jesus’ hand, and go where He says go.”

  “And if you been but a stumbling-stone here below?” she said. “If you done caused souls right and left to stumble and fall, and lose their happiness, and lose their souls? What then, prophet? What then, the Lord’s anointed? Ain’t no reckoning going to be called of you? What you going to say when the wagon comes?”

  He lifted up his head, and she saw tears mingled with his sweat. “The Lord,” he said, “He sees the heart—He sees the heart.”

  “Yes,” she said, “but I done read the Bible, too, and it tells me you going to know the tree by its fruit. What fruit I seen from you if it ain’t been just sin and sorrow and shame?”

  “You be careful,” he said, “how you talk to the Lord’s anointed. ’Cause my life ain’t in that letter—you don’t know my life.”

  “Where is your life, G
abriel?” she asked, after a despairing pause. “Where is it? Ain’t it all done gone for nothing? Where’s your branches? Where’s your fruit?”

  He said nothing; insistently, she tapped the letter with her thumbnail. They were approaching the corner where she must leave him, turning westward to take her subway home. In the light that filled the streets, the light that the sun was now beginning to corrupt with fire, she watched John and Elisha just before them, John’s listening head bent, Elisha’s arm about his shoulder.

  “I got a son,” he said at last, “and the Lord’s going to raise him up. I know—the Lord has promised—His word is true.”

  And then she laughed. “That son,” she said, “that Roy. You going to weep for many a eternity before you see him crying in front of the altar like Johnny was crying tonight.”

  “God sees the heart,” he repeated, “He sees the heart.”

  “Well, He ought to see it,” she cried, “He made it! But don’t nobody else see it, not even your own self! Let God see it—He sees it all right, and He don’t say nothing.”

  “He speaks,” he said, “He speaks. All you got to do is listen.”

  “I been listening many a nighttime long,” said Florence, then, “and He ain’t never spoke to me.”

  “He ain’t never spoke,” said Gabriel, “because you ain’t never wanted to hear. You just wanted Him to tell you your way was right. And that ain’t no way to wait on God.”

  “Then tell me,” said Florence, “what He done said to you—that you didn’t want to hear?”

  And there was silence again. Now they both watched John and Elisha.

  “I going to tell you something, Gabriel,” she said. “I know you thinking at the bottom of your heart that if you just make her, her and her bastard boy, pay enough for her sin, your son won’t have to pay for yours. But I ain’t going to let you do that. You done made enough folks pay for sin, it’s time you started paying.”

  “What you think,” he asked, “you going to be able to do—against me?”

  “Maybe,” she said, “I ain’t long for this world, but I got this letter, and I’m sure going to give it to Elizabeth before I go, and if she don’t want it, I’m going to find some way—some way, I don’t know how—to rise up and tell it, tell everybody, about the blood the Lord’s anointed is got on his hands.”

  “I done told you,” he said, “that’s all done and finished; the Lord done give me a sign to make me know I been forgiven. What good you think it’s going to do to start talking about it now?”

  “It’ll make Elizabeth to know,” she said, “that she ain’t the only sinner … in your holy house. And little Johnny, there—he’ll know he ain’t the only bastard.”

  Then he turned again, and looked at her with hatred in his eyes.

  “You ain’t never changed,” he said. “You still waiting to see my downfall. You just as wicked now as you was when you was young.”

  She put the letter in her bag again.

  “No,” she said, “I ain’t changed. You ain’t changed neither. You still promising the Lord you going to do better—and you think whatever you done already, whatever you doing right at that minute, don’t count. Of all the men I ever knew, you’s the man who ought to be hoping the Bible’s all a lie—’cause if that trumpet ever sounds, you going to spend eternity talking.”

  They had reached her corner. She stopped, and he stopped with her, and she stared into his haggard, burning face.

  “I got to take my subway,” she said. “You got anything you want to say to me?”

  “I been living a long time,” he said, “and I ain’t never seen nothing but evil overtake the enemies of the Lord. You think you going to use that letter to hurt me—but the Lord ain’t going to let it come to pass. You going to be cut down.”

  The praying women approached them, Elizabeth in the middle.

  “Deborah,” Florence said, “was cut down—but she left word. She weren’t no enemy of nobody—and she didn’t see nothing but evil. When I go, brother, you better tremble, ’cause I ain’t going to go in silence.”

  And, while they stared at each other, saying nothing more, the praying women were upon them.

  Now the long, the silent avenue stretched before them like some gray country of the dead. It scarcely seemed that he had walked this avenue only (as time was reckoned up by men) some few hours ago; that he had known this avenue since his eyes had opened on the dangerous world; that he had played here, wept here, fled, fallen down, and been bruised here—in that time, so far behind him, of his innocence and anger.

  Yes, on the evening of the seventh day, when, raging, he had walked out of his father’s house, this avenue had been filled with shouting people. The light of the day had begun to fail—the wind was high, and the tall lights, one by one, and then all together, had lifted up their heads against the darkness—while he hurried to the temple. Had he been mocked, had anyone spoken, or laughed, or called? He could not remember. He had been walking in a storm.

  Now the storm was over. And the avenue, like any landscape that has endured a storm, lay changed under Heaven, exhausted and clean, and new. Not again, forever, could it return to the avenue it once had been. Fire, or lightning, or the latter rain, coming down from these skies which moved with such pale secrecy above him now, had laid yesterday’s avenue waste, had changed it in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, as all would be changed on the last day, when the skies would open up once more to gather up the saints.

  Yet the houses were there, as they had been; the windows, like a thousand, blinded eyes, stared outward at the morning—at the morning that was the same for them as the mornings of John’s innocence, and the mornings before his birth. The water ran in the gutters with a small, discontented sound; on the water traveled paper, burnt matches, sodden cigarette-ends; gobs of spittle, green-yellow, brown, and pearly; the leavings of a dog, the vomit of a drunken man, the dead sperm, trapped in rubber, of one abandoned to his lust. All moved slowly to the black grating where down it rushed, to be carried to the river, which would hurl it into the sea.

  Where houses were, where windows stared, where gutters ran, were people—sleeping now, invisible, private, in the heavy darknesses of these houses, while the Lord’s day broke outside. When John should walk these streets again, they would be shouting here again; the roar of children’s roller skates would bear down on him from behind; little girls in pigtails, skipping rope, would establish on the sidewalk a barricade through which he must stumble as best he might. Boys would be throwing ball in these streets again—they would look at him, and call:

  “Hey, Frog-eyes!”

  Men would be standing on corners again, watching him pass, girls would be sitting on stoops again, mocking his walk. Grandmothers would stare out of windows, saying:

  “That sure is a sorry little boy.”

  He would weep again, his heart insisted, for now his weeping had begun; he would rage again, said the shifting air, for the lions of rage had been unloosed; he would be in darkness again, in fire again, now that he had seen the fire and the darkness. He was free—whom the Son sets free is free indeed—he had only to stand fast in his liberty. He was in battle no longer, this unfolding Lord’s day, with this avenue, these houses, the sleeping, staring, shouting people, but had entered into battle with Jacob’s angel, with the princes and the powers of the air. And he was filled with a joy, a joy unspeakable, whose roots, though he would not trace them on this new day of his life, were nourished by the wellspring of a despair not yet discovered. The joy of the Lord is the strength of His people. Where joy was, there strength followed; where strength was, sorrow came—forever? Forever and forever, said the arm of Elisha, heavy on his shoulder. And John tried to see through the morning wall, to stare past the bitter houses, to tear the thousand gray veils of the sky away, and look into the heart—that monstrous heart which beat forever, turning the astounded universe, commanding the stars to flee away before the sun’s red sandal, bidding the moon to wax
and wane, and disappear, and come again; with a silver net holding back the sea, and, out of mysteries abysmal, re-creating, each day, the earth. That heart, that breath, without which was not anything made which was made. Tears came into his eyes again, making the avenue shiver, causing the houses to shake—his heart swelled, lifted up, faltered, and was dumb. Out of joy strength came, strength that was fashioned to bear sorrow: sorrow brought forth joy. Forever? This was Ezekiel’s wheel, in the middle of the burning air forever—and the little wheel ran by faith, and the big wheel ran by the grace of God.

  “Elisha?” he said.

  “If you ask Him to bear you up,” said Elisha, as though he had read his thoughts, “He won’t never let you fall.”

  “It was you,” he said, “wasn’t it, who prayed me through?”

  “We was all praying, little brother,” said Elisha, with a smile, “but yes, I was right over you the whole time. Look like the Lord had put you like a burden on my soul.”

  “Was I praying long?” he asked.

  Elisha laughed. “Well, you started praying when it was night and you ain’t stopped praying till it was morning. That’s a right smart time, it seems to me.”

  John smiled, too, observing with some wonder that a saint of God could laugh.

  “Was you glad,” he asked, “to see me at the altar?”

  Then he wondered why he had asked this, and hoped Elisha would not think him foolish.

  “I was mighty glad,” said Elisha soberly, “to see little Johnny lay his sins on the altar, lay his life on the altar and rise up, praising God.”

  Something shivered in him as the word sin was spoken. Tears sprang to his eyes again. “Oh,” he said, “I pray God, I pray the Lord … to make me strong … to sanctify me wholly … and keep me saved!”

  “Yes,” said Elisha, “you keep that spirit, and I know the Lord’s going to see to it that you get home all right.”

  “It’s a long way,” John said slowly, “ain’t it? It’s a hard way. It’s uphill all the way.”