"It might be a good idea if you checked with a man named Benford, my math professor, before turning this innocent character over to me."
"I'm not worrying. Naturally, you'll work closely with Lloyd's accountants. Lean on them whenever you feel at a loss. Just be sure that the firm is in top form for scrutiny to go public. I'll take it from there."
When Brad introduced Litchfield that afternoon he said: "David Champlin is the ideal lad for you, my friend. He has a gift so rare as to be almost nonexistent in young, fledgling lawyers—the gift of keeping it simple. For some reason he was never bitten by the 'whereas' bug. He drew up a complicated will the other day that left me gasping. Even the client understood it. She didn't ask a single question."
Litchfield was a small man, inconspicuously dressed, with shy dark eyes behind plain spectacles, and prematurely graying hair. After Brad had left them together in David's cubicle of an office, David took the top folder of the file Litchfield had brought with him, opened it, looked through its contents, and wondered why his feet weren't throbbing because they, sure as hell, were where his heart had landed. He closed the folder carefully, leaned back, tried to relax, and said: "Mr. Litchfield, suppose you start at the very beginning and give me the history of the firm until now. Then we'll go over these files and then meet with your accountants and your associates."
After two weeks David felt an almost paternal affection for Litchfield and, in a lesser degree, his two associates, protecting them from the occasional acerbity of the accountants, having a quiet drink with them at the firm's expense after the afternoon sessions, and explaining those points on which he felt they were confused. "In Mother Goose language," he told Brad.
On Thursday night of the third week of work on the case, Gramp called him at the apartment. He sensed instantly that Li'l Joe was troubled.
"You busy, son?"
"No, Gramp. Thinking about going to bed in a little bit. Just sitting here working on a case."
"I don't mean now. I means are you busy at your office?" Gramp never said "the office," always "your office" with a barely concealed pride, as though his grandson owned it lock, stock, and building.
"I—yes—well, sort of. What's wrong, Gramp? You sick?"
"It ain't me. It's the Prof. He's real bad."
"Gee, Gramp, I'm sorry—"
"He's been asking about you, son. His brother's here."
"Doc Knudsen? There? In New Orleans?" The Prof must really be sick to get Doc down there just at the start of the school year.
"He came down a couple of days ago. You reckon you could get away? You ain't got money enough to fly I can get it to you—"
"I've got enough, Gramp—"
Litchfield, Brad—the part of the job they were just getting to was the most important, with a meeting scheduled for the next day. And now the Prof—
"How bad is he, Gramp?"
" 'Bout as bad as a man can get. I seen him today."
"Is he in the hospital?"
"He was, but they sent him home. That's—that's what he Wanted. He's got nurses—"
"Stick by the phone, Gramp. I'll call you back."
Brad, when David called, showed neither surprise nor displeasure. "I'll get in touch with Lloyd, David. Go down there. Charge the fare to the firm if you need to and we'll square things up later." It was almost, thought David as he hung up the receiver, as though Brad had been expecting it. Which, obviously, couldn't be true.
The next afternoon Ambrose Jefferson met him at the airport, as David had asked when he called Gramp back. The airport limousines wouldn't carry Negroes, and neither would the white cab companies. He was taking no chances on a two-hour wait for transportation to town such as he had once experienced.
"Li'l Joe says you might as well go direck to the Profs," said Ambrose. "You give a ring when you're ready to leave, and I'll take you home. I'll take care of this here bag."
David opened the wrought-iron gate in front of the Professor's house and stood looking up at the spare, graceful facade that was as familiar to him as the little frame house across the river in Beauregard with its simple front porch built by Li'l Joe's own hands. He limped forward on the bricked path toward the side door. Old habits die hard, he thought; Gramp had cautioned him when he was a child about going to the front door. "It ain't that the Prof cares. Lawd! The Prof wouldn't have no one going to the side door. But we don't want the Prof being given no trouble by his neighbors, getting hisself talked about any more than what he is—"
As he approached the house the door opened and Karl Knudsen hurried down to meet him. The little man did not shake hands; instead he threw his arms around David's shoulders in the European embrace. He said something rapidly in Danish; then, hand on elbow, he guided David up the low steps and into the house, explaining, "I said 'God bless.' And God be thanked that you are here. Bjarne would not ask that we send for you, but he had talked of you constantly. Your grandfather told me you would be here, but I had to see you first before I was sure—"
As they entered, a nurse came down the hall from the rear of the house, a small tray with gauze-protected hypodermic on it in her hand. She stopped at the foot of the stairs, looking at David with shocked surprise. If they had been printed in large, easy-to-read type her thoughts could not have been easier to read: "I didn't know the person my patient talked about so much was colored." She must have been off duty when Gramp had been there, thought David, or surely she would have overheard something that would have prepared her. Suddenly he hated her; he hated the blossom whiteness of her skin, the sleek, neat blackness of her hair under its white cap, the dark coldness of her eyes. She had brought something into this house that had never been there before through all the years that it had been so familiar to him. There was a wall now, a high wall, between him and the man he had come to see, whom he loved greatly, and she was the wall. He knew the hate was in his eyes as he returned her look. And he knew from the sharp edge to Doc Knudsen's voice that, perhaps made sensitive by worry and fatigue, he sensed the situation.
"Mr. Champlin is going up to see my brother."
She looked at Knudsen, carrying the contempt in her eyes to him now. "It's time for his four o'clock injection. He needs the rest." Her upcountry drawl was as cold as her eyes.
"He needs to see this young man. That is what he needs. An extra fifteen minutes of rest does not matter now."
David, one foot already on the lowest stair, turned at the
words. It was one thing to feel fear; it was a cold something else to have that fear made real.
"You and I will talk later, David. Go now to Bjarne. You know the room? In a day or two we will have a good talk."
"In a day or two?"
Karl Knudsen nodded, not answering, and turned away. As David slowly mounted the staircase, he heard the whispering rustle of the nurse's skirts as she turned and walked angrily down the hall.
He knew where the Profs room was; once, during his childhood the Prof had been laid up with some unremembered illness and had insisted that David's tutoring sessions continue just the same. The first time he had gone to the Profs room it had been via the back stairs, led by the cook, a cousin of Ambrose and Pop Jefferson.
At the top of the staircase he turned and walked along the upper hallway to the front of the house and the corner room he had almost forgotten. The door to the room was closed. He stood for a long moment, not touching the door. Now it all seemed to have come too suddenly; there had been no time to prepare himself. The Prof had written months before, just after David returned to Boston, and said he was going into the hospital for surgery. "It is not to be worried about," he wrote. David had sent books, a humorous get-well card, and a lightly worded letter urging the Prof to get well quickly so he could attend the swearing-in of the first Negro Justice of the U.S. Soopreme Court. "I'm going to make a speech," he had written, "and tell them I owe it all to a Dane."
There had been no thought then that he would be standing so soon in the upper hallway of a ho
use whose quiet was more shattering than the loudest roar the Prof had ever roared. It was a quiet broken by small, alien sounds that had no place there, that would have been inaudible in the presence of the immense vitality that, so short a time before, filled every room and hallway and remote corner.
He drew a deep breath and squared his shoulders, and his lips moved faintly. "Give me a hand, God—" Then he entered slowly, without knocking, the door opening soundlessly. Halfway across the room to the hospital-type bed that stood against the wall opposite the door he stopped, feeling the blood drain from his head, feeling his legs fan. The Professor lay quietly, head turned away, one arm stretched along the side of his body, the forefinger of the hand rising, falling, every few seconds. It was the only sign that life still existed within that gaunt, emaciated frame. The neatly trimmed beard seemed to grow out of bare bone; the eyes were closed within deep hollows above sharply outlined facial bones. The hands, the great, strong hands, were sallow skin lying loosely over bony protuberances.
"Christ!" breathed David, shock acting as heavy shackles on feet and legs and hands, as a choking gag in his mouth. He swallowed, trying to clear his throat for speech, closed his eyes against what he was seeing, and when he opened them the massive head was moving on the pillow, turning toward him, and then the blue fire of the eyes was blazing. David moved forward to take the hand that was slowly lifted from the counterpane.
"Prof—" What asinine, inadequate thing could he say next, even if he was able to master the emotion that was shaking him as a terrier shakes a rag toy. There was still strength in the hot, thin dryness of the hand that clasped his, but the voice seemed to be blown through the pale lips by the last, fading winds of the spirit.
"Ja," it said, and the lips moved in a smile. "I told them you would come. Not—not to send—"
"You were betting on a sure thing, Prof. You knew I'd be here."
"Is it afternoon, David?"
"Yes. Afternoon."
"Then it was this morning I dreamed about you. We were in a plane."
"I was in one just about then, Prof. Flying down here—" The Prof was laughing, and David wanted to cry aloud to God at the sound of it.
"You think, my son, that I was making a little trip? Before the big one?"
"Knowing you, Prof, I think almost anything's possible." Anything except life; anything except living. David knew that he was smiling, could feel the effort of the muscles in his face to keep the smile alive and real.
"They have told you, yes? About me?"
"Only—only that you're graduating. Cum laude."
Again the not quite soundless laugh. "Cum laude? Bah! Summa cum laude!"
Then the blue eyes were covered by the pale, veined lids, and the hand that David held grew slack. He laid it gently on the counterpane and drew forward a straight chair standing near so that he could sit quietly by the bed, watching the thin chest rise and fall. Even now the great body did not seem small and puny; there was a kind of majesty about it, and dignity still clothed the framework of its bones. David felt very young, was again the child who had giggled gleefully at the roaring laughter of this man, and, a few minutes later, frowned in concentration over a problem that, if left unsolved, would call forth another kind of roar.
As suddenly as they had closed down, the eyelids opened again, pale curtains rising on the ever-diminishing stage of Bjarne Knudsen's life.
"You are still here, my son. That is good."
"Yes. I—I won't go away."
"You must. It is not good for a boy to sit a death watch."
"I'm not a boy, Prof."
"I forget." His words came slower, now, the phrases spaced by spells of silence. "A few minutes ago I must have dreamed.... I thought you were here... as a child... and when I opened my eyes I would see you with your leg in a cast... and big scared eyes... And now you are here as a man...." A quick, frown-like spasm moved the flesh of the Prof's forehead. "The pain I do not like. Ja. This is true.... Soon you will ring for the nurse because it is knocking at the door.... But it will hold off for a little.... Your hand, son."
David laid his hand over the unfleshed bones of the Prof's hand, closed strong fingers gently around it, waited, not able to speak.
"David. You have heard me say I believe in no God—"
"Yes, Prof. But—but it doesn't matter. Honestly it doesn't."
"Wait, son.... I do not know... yet.... I know only that when I—I..." He was silent for a long minute, gathering strength. "When I see... a child grow into a good man... then I must believe in—in something."
"When I see a good man like you, Prof, I don't believe. I know." He was watching the man in the bed closely. "Don't tire yourself, Prof."
"Bah!" There was a dim flash of the Prof of David's youth in the word. "If I tire myself... perhaps I will know... that much sooner."
"Prof—"
"Be quiet.... When I learn what this... something is... I will say to It that... that I have left here a son... a son of my mind... strong and fine.... That is good, David.... Ja, that is good." He was quiet again, eyes closed; then the hand under David's twitched, jerked involuntarily, and there was a strained, hoarse whisper, "The buzzer, David... over my head..."
A hospital-type bell, newly installed, was fastened by a safety pin around its cord to the mattress at the head of the bed. David tightened his fingers around the Prof's, and with the other hand pressed the button in the end of the bell. In less than a minute the nurse was in the room, going quickly to the other side of the bed, baring the loose flesh of the Professor's arm for the needle, saying, "You'll be all right in just a minute, Professor. Off to sleep—" She looked across at David, inclined her head sharply toward the door. "I'll stay with him until he's asleep," said David. "Certainly not. You will leave now."
"He will stay!" Where had the strength come from to shape those words so clearly? "Leave us, young woman. He does not like you and neither do I."
David's smile was genuine now. He focused it directly on the indignant nurse's face. "He's so right, Nurse," he said gently. "So right."
When she had left in wrathful silence, he said, "You knew I didn't like her, Prof. How?"
"Minds are alert... when they are going... they hear other minds...."
"Try and sleep now, Prof." He stood up and went close to the bed, slipping a strong arm under the Prof's shoulders, raising the body from the bed, wincing at the lightness of his burden. With his other hand he turned and plumped the pillows up, smoothing the slips over them, then lowered the Professor gently back. He said again, "Try and sleep now—"
"A-a-ah. That is good.... My friend, Li'l Joe... he comes often...."
"I know. He told me. He's thinking of you all the time, Prof."
"Ja." Again there was a long silence, and David sensed the drug-induced oblivion coming closer with every tick of the bedside clock. Before its mercy became absolute, the blue eyes opened again, vague and unfocused, then focused for the space of a few breaths on David's face. "My son," whispered the Prof. The eyes closed. "The son... of my mind... That is good; my God, that is good...."
David waited ten minutes, his hand lying again over Bjarne Knudsen's. Then he rose quietly and tiptoed from the room, although he knew the Prof was sleeping profoundly and would remain so for hours. There was nothing further that he could do until the Prof awakened, perhaps wanting to see him again. He would stay close to home where he could be reached. "My son," the Prof had said, and David knew it to be true. A part of David Champlin was drifting away in that narrow bed, and when it was gone it would not return and nothing would take its place. For the first time David Champlin realized that death, when it comes, takes more than just the life of him whose forehead it touches.
***
Karl Knudsen was standing in the doorway of the Professor's study, and David hurried over to him when he reached the lower floor. "What can I do to help, Doc? My God—it's—it's hell—"
"There is nothing, David. Except waiting. My wife will be here so
on. A friend of Bjarne's will bring her from the airport. She will be glad, too, that you are here. Will you be at home?"
"I won't leave the house, Doc."
"Later, we will talk. Perhaps you could spend some time with us in Laurel?"
"I wish I could. But there's a case waiting—"
"I forgot. You are a lawyer now. And evidently a busy one. You cannot imagine, David, the happiness and pride my brother has known, realizing this. You could have given him nothing he would treasure more."
"It's not much to give a man who's done as much for me as the Prof—"
"Not much? It is everything, David; everything he could want in life."
***
David and his grandfather talked little that night. Conversations started and trailed off, ending nowhere. Part of the heavinesss of his heart came from his knowledge of how great Gramp's loneliness would be when the Prof died. After a late supper he said: "Gramp, I've got an idea. Why don't you come back with me for a while? Couple of weeks, maybe."
Gramp's face creased in the smile an older person gives a child. "I knows what you're getting at, son, and I appreciates it. But there ain't no sense in it. A man can't run away from what makes him feel bad. You don't know that yet, you going to learn it one of these days." The bright, dark eyes looked at David closely. "Reckon you found it out already, son."
It was the closest Gramp had ever come to putting a gentle finger on the wound David had hoped was so well hidden no one could see it. He did not answer for a minute; then a small smile flickered across his lips. "Know a lot, don't you, Gramp?"
"Know a lot I wish I didn't. Ain't nothing I got any business saying except God'll balance things up, give Him time."
David wasn't quite sure he knew what Gramp meant by that, but he did not press him for clarification. His first thought after Gramp's telephone call to Boston had been of Sara, all memory of their break momentarily wiped from his mind. He wanted to tell her of the Prof's illness, know her instantaneous identification with whatever concerned him, ask her advice about the trip. And then the realization had swept over him—there was no Sara he could reach out to, there was only a faraway figure in an unknown place. Just what it was Gramp meant God would balance up he did not know: the counterweight would have to be beyond his powers to imagine to offset the pain and loneliness of Sara's absence.
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