"But if a man does just the ordinary things, nothing good, nothing bad?"
"It's not up to man's judgment to decide what is good and what is bad. God sees the truth, and is our Saviour."
These days Malone had often prayed, but what he was praying to he did not know. There seemed no sense in continuing the conversation, for he was getting no answer. Malone put the Coca-Cola glass carefully on the doily beside him and stood up. "Well, thanks very much, Dr. Watson," he said bleakly.
"I'm glad you dropped in to talk with me. My home is always open to my parishioners who want to speak of spiritual things."
In a daze of weariness and vacuity, Malone walked through the November twilight. A bright woodpecker pecked hollowly at a telephone pole. The afternoon was silent except for the woodpecker.
It was strange that Malone, who loved singsong poetry, would think of those memorized lines: The greatest danger, that of losing one's own self, may pass off quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, that of an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc., is sure to be noticed. The incongruity of these ideas, fateful and ordinary as his own life, sounded like the brassy clamor of the city clock, uncadenced and flat.
9
THAT WINTER the Judge made a grave mistake about Sherman and Sherman made a still graver mistake about the Judge. Since both mistakes were phantasies which flowered as richly in the senile brain of the old man as they did in the heart of the thwarted boy, their human relationship was going very much amiss, choked as it were with the rank luxuriance of their separate dreams. So that the relationship which had begun with such joy and lucidity was, by the end of November, already tarnished.
It was the old Judge who spoke first of his dream. One day with an air of secrecy and zest he opened his safety deposit box and handed Sherman a sheaf of papers. "Read carefully, boy, for this may be my final contribution as a statesman to the South."
Sherman read and was puzzled, less by the ornate and badly spelled manuscript than by the contents of what he read. "Don't bother about the calligraphy or spelling," the Judge said airily. "It's the trenchancy of ideas that matters." Sherman was reading about the Confederate money while the Judge looked on, glowing with pride and anticipated compliments.
Sherman's delicately fluted nostrils widened and his lips fluttered but he said nothing.
Passionately the old Judge began to speak. He described the history of devaluations of foreign monies and the rights of conquered nations to the redemption of their own currencies. "In every civilized nation the currencies of defeated nations have been redeemed ... devaluated, to be sure, but redeemed. Look at the franc, the mark, the lira and look at, by God, even the yen." This last redemption particularly infuriated the old man.
Sherman's slate-blue eyes stared at the deeper blue eyes of the old Judge. At first bewildered by the talk of all the foreign money, he wondered if the Judge was drunk. But it was not yet twelve o'clock and the Judge never started his toddies until noon. But the old Judge was speaking passionately, drunk with his dream, and Sherman responded. Knowing nothing about what the Judge was discussing, Sherman responded to rhetoric, repetition and rhythm, to the language of passionate demagoguery, senseless and high flown, of which the old Judge was a past master. So Sherman's delicately fluted nostrils widened and he said nothing. The Judge, who had been hurt by his grandson's casual indifference to his dream, knew a spellbound listener when he had one and pressed on triumphantly. And Sherman, who seldom believed a word that Jester said, listened to the Judge's tirade, heedful and wondering.
It happened that some time ago the Judge received a letter from Senator Tip Thomas in reply to the first petition letter that Sherman had written concerning Jester's admittance to West Point. The senator had replied with cumbersome courtesy that he would be glad to put his old friend and fellow statesman's grandson up at his first opportunity. Again the old Judge and Sherman had struggled with a letter to Senator Tip Thomas. This time with the same cumbersome courtesy the old Judge wrote of the dead Mrs. Thomas, as well as the living Mrs. Thomas. It always seemed a miracle to Sherman that the old Judge had actually been a congressman in the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. The glory was reflected in Sherman, the genuine amanuensis who had his trays on the library table. When Senator Thomas replied, referring to past favors the Judge had shown him and promising that Jester would get an appointment at West Point—playing footsie with the old Judge—it seemed magical to Sherman. So magical that he even fought down his rebellious jealousy that his own letter to Washington had not been answered.
The Judge, in spite of his oratory, was a great one for putting his own foot in his mouth, and soon, sure enough, his foot was in the middle of his mouth. He began to talk about reparation for burnt houses, burnt cotton, and to Sherman's shame and horror, of reparation for slaves.
"Slaves," Sherman said in a voice almost inaudible with shock.
"Why certainly," the old Judge continued serenely. "The institution of slavery was the very cornerstone and pillar of the cotton economy."
"Well Abe Lincoln freed the slaves and another Sherman burnt the cotton."
The Judge, fixed in his dream, had forgotten that his amanuensis was colored. "And a sad time that was, to be sure."
The Judge wondered helplessly why he had lost his spellbound listener, for Sherman, far from being spellbound, was now trembling with insult and fury. Deliberately, he picked up one of the pens and broke it in two. The Judge did not even notice. "It will take a lot of statistical work, a pile of arithmetic, in fact a lot of doing. But my motto for my election campaign is 'rectify' and justice is on my side. I only have to get the ball rolling, so to say. And I'm a born politician, know how to work with people and handle delicate situations."
The Judge's dream had flattened for Sherman, so he could see it in all its detail. The first flush of enthusiasm with which he had responded to the Judge's dream had faded utterly. "It would take a lot of doing," he said in a dead voice.
"What strikes me is the simplicity of the whole idea."
"Simplicity," Sherman echoed in the same dead voice.
"Yes, the simplicity of genius. Maybe I couldn't have thought up To be or not to be,' but my ideas of the restoration of the South are sheer genius." The old voice quivered for confirmation. "Don't you think so, Sherman?"
Sherman, who was looking round for a fast escape in case the Judge did anything suddenly wild, said simply: "No. I don't think it's genius or even common sense."
"Genius and common sense operate at two different polarities of thought."
Sherman wrote down the word "polarities" thinking he would look it up later; he was benefiting from the Judge's vocabulary if nothing else. "All I would say is that your plan would turn back the clock for a hundred years."
"I would like nothing better," said the mad old foolhardy Judge. "And furthermore I think I can do it. I have in high places friends who are deadly sick of this so-called liberalism and who are only waiting for a rallying cry. I am after all one of the Senior Statesmen in the South and my voice shall be attended; maybe some weak sisters will hesitate because of the details of statistics and bookkeeping involved. But, by God, if the Federal Government can screw every nickel out of me for income tax, my plan will be child's play to carry out."
The Judge lowered his voice. "I never filed state income tax yet and never will. I wouldn't bruit this around, Sherman, as I tell you in strictest confidence. And I pay the Federal Income Tax under the utmost duress and mighty unwillingly. As I say, many a Southerner in high power is in my same boots and they will harken to the rallying call."
"But what does your income tax have to do with this?"
"A lot," the old man said. "A mighty lot."
"I don't dig it."
"Of course the N.A.A.C.P. will be dead set against me. But the brave long for battle if the battle is just. For years I've yearned to tangle with the N.A.A.C.P., force them to a showdown, put them out of business."
Sherman jus
t looked at the blue and passionate eyes of the old Judge.
"All Southern patriots feel the same about the scurrilous pressure group that aims to destroy the very axioms of the South."
Sherman's lips and nostrils fluttered with emotion when he said: "You talk like you believe in slavery."
"Why of course I believe in slavery. Civilization is founded on slavery."
The old Judge, who still thought of Sherman as a jewel, a treasure, continued to forget, in his passionate prejudice, that Sherman was colored. And when he saw his jewel so agitated he tried to make amends.
"If not actual slavery at least a state of happy peonage."
"Happy for who?"
"For everybody. Do you believe for a single instant that the slaves wanted to be freed? No, Sherman, many a slave remained faithful to his old master, would not be freed till the day he died."
"Bullshit."
"Beg your pardon," said the old Judge, who was conveniently deafer at times. "Now I've been told that the conditions of the Negro in the North are appalling—mixed marriages, nowhere to live and lay his head, and just downright appalling misery."
"Still a nigger would rather be a lamppost in Harlem than the Governor of Georgia."
The Judge inclined his good ear. "Didn't quite catch," he said softly.
All Sherman's life he had thought that all white men were crazy, and the more prominent their positions the more lunatic were their words and behavior. In this matter, Sherman considered he had the sober ice-cold truth on his side. The politicians, from governors to congressmen, down to sheriffs and wardens, were alike in their bigotry and violence. Sherman brooded over every lynching, bombing, or indignity that his race had suffered. In this Sherman had the vulnerability and sensitivity of an adolescent. Drawn to broodings on atrocities, he felt that every evil was reserved for him personally. So he lived in a stasis of dread and suspense. This attitude was supported by facts. No Negro in Peach County had ever voted. A schoolteacher had registered and been turned down at the polls. Two college graduates had been turned down likewise. The Fifteenth Amendment of the American Constitution had guaranteed the right to vote to the Negro race, yet no Negro Sherman had known or heard tell of had ever voted. Yes, the American Constitution itself was a fraud. And if his story he had told Jester was not true, about the voting of the Golden Nigerians and the cardboard coffins, he had heard the actual story about a club in another county; and if it had not actually happened to the Golden Nigerians of Milan, he knew it had happened to others somewhere else. Since his imagination enveloped all disasters, he felt that any evil he read or heard about could just as well have happened to himself.
This state of anxiety made Sherman take the old Judge more seriously than he would have under calmer conditions. Slavery! Was the old Judge planning to make slaves of his race? It did not make sense. But what the fuckin hell made sense in the relation between the races? The Fifteenth Amendment had been put at nought, the American Constitution was a fraud as far as Sherman was concerned. And justice! Sherman knew of every lynching, every violence that had happened in his time and before his time, and he felt every abuse in his own body, and therefore lived in his stasis of tension and fear. Otherwise he would have thought of the plans of the old Judge as the product of a senile mind. But as a Negro in the South, an orphan at that, he had been exposed to such real horror and degradation that the wildest phantasies of the old Judge seemed not only possible, but in Sherman's lawless land, almost inevitable. Facts combined to support his phantasies and fears. Sherman was convinced that all white Southerners were crazy. Lynching a Negro boy because a white woman said he had whistled at her. A Judge sentencing a Negro because a white woman said she didn't like the way he looked at her. Whistling! Looking! His prejudiced mind was inflamed and quivering like some tropical atmosphere that causes mirages.
At noon Sherman made the drinks and neither he nor the old Judge spoke. Then at dinnertime an hour later, Sherman was reaching for a can of lobster when Verily said: "You don't need that, Sherman."
"Why not, old woman?"
"Yestidy you opened a can of tuna fish and made yourself a tuna fish sandwich mess. There's ample plenty of the tuna fish to make a sandwich today."
Sherman kept right on opening the lobster can. "Besides," Verily went on, "you ought to be eating collards and cornpones in the kitchen like anybody else."
"Nigger doings!"
"Well, who do you think you are? The Queen of Sheba?"
Sherman was mashing the lobster with hunks of mayonnaise and chopped pickles. "Anyway I'm not pure nigger like you are," he said to Verily who was very dark. "Look at my eyes."
"I seen them."
Sherman was busily spreading his lobster sandwich.
"That lobster was supposed to be for Sunday night supper when I'm off. I got a good mind to tell the Judge on you."
But since Sherman was still the jewel, the treasure, the threat was an empty one and they both knew it.
"Go on and tell him," Sherman said as he garnished his sandwich with bread and butter pickles.
"Just because you have them blue eyes is no reason to act so high and mighty. You nigger like the rest of us. You just had a white pappy who passed on them blue eyes to you, and that's nothin to put on airs about. You nigger like the rest of us."
Sherman took his tray and stalked carefully through the hall to the library. But in spite of the party sandwiches he could not eat. He was thinking about what the Judge had said and his eyes were fixed and bleak in his dark face. His mind felt that most of the Judge's words were crazy, but Sherman, slanted by anxiety, could not think rationally; he could only feel. He remembered the campaign addresses of certain Southerners, cunning, violent, menacing. To Sherman the Judge talked no crazier than many another Southern politician. Crazy, crazy, crazy. All of them!
Sherman did not forget that the Judge had once been a congressman, thus holding one of the highest offices in the United States. And he knew people in high places. Just look at his answer from Senator Tip Thomas. The Judge was smart—mighty foxy—he could play a soft game of footsie. In dwelling on the power of the old Judge, he forgot his sicknesses; it did not even occur to Sherman that the brain of the old man who had once been a congressman could have deteriorated in old age. Zippo Mullins had a grandfather who had lost his mind in his old age. Old Mr. Mullins ate with a towel around his neck, could not pick out the watermelon seeds but swallowed them whole; he had no teeth and would gum his fried chicken; at the end he had to go to the county home. The old Judge on the other hand carefully unfolded his napkin at the beginning of a meal and had beautiful table manners, asking Jester or Verily to cut up the food he couldn't manage. Those were the only two very old men that Sherman had actually known, and there was a world of difference between them. So Sherman never considered the possibility of brain-softening in the old Judge.
Sherman stared for a long time at the fancy lobster sandwich, but anxiety would not let him eat. He did eat one bread and butter pickle before going back to the kitchen. He wanted a drink. Some gin and tonic, half and half, would settle his spirits so that he could eat. He knew he faced another run-in with Verily, but he went straight to the kitchen and grasped the gin bottle.
"Look yonder," she said, "look what the Queen of Sheba is up to now."
Sherman deliberately poured his gin and added cold tonic.
"I try to be kind and pleasant to you, Sherman, but I knew from the first it was no use. What makes you so cold and airy? Is it them blue eyes passed on from your pappy?"
Sherman walked stiffly from the kitchen, his drink in hand, and settled himself again at the library table. As he drank the gin his inward turbulence increased. In his search for his true mother, Sherman had seldom thought about his father. Sherman thought only that he was a white man, he imagined that the unknown white father had raped his mother. For every boy's mother is virtuous, especially if she is imaginary. Therefore, he hated his father, hated even to think about him. His father was a
crazy white man who had raped his mother and left the evidence of bastardy in Sherman's blue and alien eyes. He had never sought his father as he sought his mother, the dreams of his mother had lulled and solaced him, but he thought of his father with pure hate.
After dinner when the Judge was taking his usual nap, Jester came into the library. Sherman was still sitting at the table, his tray of sandwiches untouched.
"What's the matter, Sherman?" Jester noticed the gin-drunk somnolence in the rapt eyes and he was uneasy.
"Go fuck," Sherman said brutally, for Jester was the only white person to whom he could use words like that. But he was in a state where no words could relieve him now. I hate, I hate, I hate, he thought as his unseeing eyes fixed, brooding and drunk, at the open window.
"I have often thought that if I had been born a Nigerian or colored, I couldn't stand it. I admire you, Sherman, the way you stand up to it. I admire you more than I can say."
"Well save your peanuts for the zoo."
"I have thought often," went on Jester who had read the idea somewhere, "that if Christ was born now he would be colored."
"Well he wasn't."
"I'm afraid..." Jester began and found it hard to finish.
"What are you afraid of, chicken-out sissy?"
"I'm afraid that if I were a Nigerian or colored, I would be neurotic. Awfully neurotic."
"No you wouldn't." His right forefinger cut swiftly across his neck in a slashing gesture. "A neurotic nigger is a dead nigger."
Jester was wondering why it was so hard to make friends with Sherman. His grandfather had often said: "Black is black and white is white and never the two shall meet if I can prevent it." And the Atlanta Constitution wrote of Southerners of good will. How could he tell Sherman that he was not like his grandfather, but a Southerner of good will?
"I respect colored people every whit as much as I do white people."
"You're one for the birds all right."
Clock Without Hands Page 15
