Fairbairn, Ann

by Five Smooth Stones

  Later, when they were drinking coffee at Brad's desk, Brad said: "Hell, brat, I'm not going to be a hypocrite and say I'm glad to see you go, give you a lot of static about 'whatever's best for you makes me happy.' I'm damned upset, selfishly upset, about it. So will everyone else be when they hear of it. Let me know when the last O.K. comes through so I can tell them."

  "Did you tell Peg?"

  Brad nodded. "Come what may, drinking or not, she's safe."

  "How did she take it?" David shifted his eyes from Brad's face to the desk top. "Don't answer. I can tell by your face."

  "I'm afraid she went pretty much overboard. I don't know exactly why. I never know, really, except that it is always something above and beyond—or below and behind—the actual incident that, on the surface, appears to be what triggered her off."

  "Hell, Brad, I feel lousy about this. As though I was walking out on everyone. Like a damned dicty so-and-so who's let Oxford go to his head."

  "Don't be a damned fool. By the way, vacations are already here. You going to be free to give us a hand for a while?"

  "You know it."

  ***

  There was a dinner with Brad and Peg just before he left that David wished had never happened. He was thankful that Chuck Martin and Tom Evans were both in town and that Brad included them in the invitation. At the end of the dinner he wondered if Brad had not done so purposely, because he thought it would be easier on the guest of honor. Usually, in a situation like this, Peg had sweet-talked him into coming early and cooking some special dish, even if it was only hot biscuits. This night she depended entirely on her own efforts and those of the housekeeper. She was tensely sober, as she had been the first time David met her, shying away from talk of his new work, encouraging him and Chuck and Tom to talk of days at Pengard. "This sounds more like a reunion than a goodbye affair," Brad said once, and David cried quickly, "Au revoir, for God's sake!"

  They left early, Tom initiating the move on the plea of having to catch an early-morning plane to Chicago, an excuse David knew was a lie. While the others walked slowly into the hall with Brad, Peg touched his arm and drew him into the dining room. She turned and faced him, standing very quiet, unsmiling, her eyes searching his face. "Why?" she said. "Why?"

  He heard himself stammering. "Peg, I—what are you getting at?"

  "I'm trying to get at you. What's inside you. What I thought was inside you—only, I was wrong. Guts."

  He was too stunned to answer at first, then heard, gratefully, Tom's voice calling from the hall, and he turned away from Peg's eyes. "I—I wish you didn't feel that way, Peg. It hasn't been easy."

  "No? I think it's been the easiest thing you ever did in your life, David Champlin."

  Her eyes softened a little. He felt, and was sure he looked, like a favored dog who has come, tail wagging, to have its ears scratched, receiving a blow instead.

  "That was rough, David," she said. "But I had to say it. We're here if you need us. Don't forget that."

  "I won't," he mumbled. "Thanks." He hurried into the hall, Peg following slowly to say good night to her guests.

  As they drove away in Chuck's car, Tom let out a long "Whee-eew! Is Peg like that often?"

  "No," David said. "Not ever. Drunk or sober."

  "Speaking of getting drunk—" said Tom.

  "Chuck'll have to change clothes—"

  "We can go to my room and talk and lubricate the vocal cords. Or—how about Sudsy's?"

  "Hell, we'd wake the baby," snapped David. "Let's go to Tom's room," said Chuck. "I'm at the same hotel."

  ***

  When Brad came back into the living room, Peg was coming in from the dining room carrying a tray with a bowl of ice cubes and two fresh glasses. He had known it was coming, yet had hoped he would be able to forestall it, and he wanted to wrest the tray from her violently, shake her, beat her if necessary, into some semblance of sense, make her let go of what was eating her away inside. He stood, hands clenched in his pockets, fighting himself, knowing that fighting her would be worse than useless. A protest would do more harm than good, would make the hand that poured the drink from the decanter on the coffee table more generous, yet he could not stop himself. "Peg!"

  "Say when—"

  "Oh, God, Peg! What's the matter?"

  "I'm just going to have a couple tonight. Tomorrow, no. Just tonight."

  "Peg, I know you hate to see David go. We both do. But he's on the way to great things. You wouldn't want—"

  "Oh, shut up, Brad! You sound like a male PTA-er. Here, drink your drink."

  He walked farther into the room slowly and took the drink, remembering what Mike Shea had said once: "Don't try to stop her, Brad. It will only make it worse. Just stand by and give her a hand when she's trying to stop."

  He finished his drink standing, looking into the fireplace, and heard Peg set her empty glass down on the coffee table behind him. How long would it be this time? Days? Weeks? He supposed he'd have the stamina to go through another one; the strength had always come from somewhere, but there was a deep sadness within him. David gone, Peg—he turned quickly at her next words.

  "The gutless wonder. Our brat. Our beautiful boy."

  "Cut it out, Peg," he said wearily, but she did not seem to hear him.

  "Zambana. That's the name of the damned place, isn't it? It gets its independence in January. I read all about it." Whiskey trickled over the ice cubes in her emptied glass, slowly, darkly, and her hand, as she poured it, was not quite steady. "De Lawd's done done it for Zambana—set His people free. And our David's going over there to help them. He's going to show them what to do with freedom." She began to laugh huskily, deep in her throat. "Our brat's going to show the Negroes in Zambana how to live as a free people, isn't he, dear? Oh, Christ!"

  He took a step toward her, one hand held out, wanting to help her. "Peg, Peg, don't. I know what you're getting at—"

  "Do you? Do you now?"

  "I think so—for God's sake, Peg, take it easy with that whiskey—"

  She held the now full glass up, looked at him through it. "Once in a lifetime, sweetheart. Just for the once-in-a-lifetime when a brat we love lets his people down—"

  "He's not doing that, Peg—"

  "He is, and he knows it." She rose and took his glass away from him, refilled it, and handed it back to him, then touched its rim with the rim of hers. She raised her glass, smiling. "To Sara," she said. And then, after a long moment, when she had taken the glass from her lips, "And I love her, too. That's why it's such hell, Brad. Can't you see? That's why it's such hell. People—two—turning their backs on people—millions. Drink your drink. Why don't you go to London and be best man?"

  ***

  In the early fall David wound up his affairs in Boston and went to New York, staying at Hunter's apartment. Jedediah had written that one of his countrymen was at Columbia, and he made arrangements for some lessons in the Zambanian language. Before he left Boston he spent an evening with Suds and Rhoda. Suds was almost childlike in his delight at David's good fortune. "We'll miss you like hell, but we'll fill in the time bragging about you to our friends," he said. "And as soon as I finish my residency Rhoda and I are taking a long-delayed trip, before I start in at the clinic. We thought of Europe, leaving the offspring with my unfortunate parents. Maybe we'll see you and Sara—"

  "If you make it the right time in November, why can't you be with us when we get married? It'll be in London, we decided. Hunter will be there—you could be witnesses—whatever they call them in England."

  "You didn't do it for me, dad. Let me go through it alone, you did."

  "Walla Walla, for gosh sake!"

  Rhoda said: "Of course we can, David. We'd love it. Sara's going to need moral support."

  David doubted that; Sara wouldn't need moral support if they got married in the middle of the veldt with two tigers and a lion on the sidelines crouched to spring. Suds, the same idea in mind, said: "The hell our Sara will need moral support. You
don't know her as well as we do. But if you want us, David, we'll do our damnedest to make it."

  In October, Sara came over to visit her father. "Now I don't mind visiting my family," she said. "Before it seemed awful. The old house gone, Father living in a modern apartment with a new wife. But now that I'm happy, it's all right Selfish beasts, we humans. We can fly to London together, David. Think of it—Christmas in Zambana. I can be with you then, don't you think? Perhaps that's when Gramp could come over."

  ***

  When Sara telephoned him one night from her midtown hotel, after she returned from Chicago, and told him there had been a news item in the Times the day before about his appointment, and a gossip-column comment that day about their marriage, he said: "Lord, baby! I have to get down home, but quick. I haven't told Gramp yet, and 'Saiah Watkins takes the New York papers for the ALEC office. Gramp will die all over if he hears about it from someone else. I wasn't going until this weekend, but I'll go tomorrow now. Do some phoning for me, baby, to some people?"

  "Of course. You won't be gone long, sweet?"

  "Not more'n five years—"

  "David!"

  ***

  David knew the moment he saw his grandfather's face that he was too late: the news of his African appointment and his marriage had already been told to him by Isaiah or he had read it in the local Negro paper, picked up as a rewrite item from the New York papers. Surely he wasn't important enough to rate a wire-service dispatch. He was angry with himself for having postponed telling Gramp. No matter how well intentioned the planned delay had been, he shouldn't have taken a chance. Gramp must have had some damned bad hours after hearing about it—and every minute of them showed in his eyes and face as David hurried through the front door.

  There had never been many outward demonstrations of affection between the two men but today David threw a long arm around the little man's shoulder, tightened it in a quick gesture of affectionate reassurance. "It's all right, Gramp. I wanted to tell you first, but some big-mouth got ahead of me, eh? Everything's going to be fine."

  "You saying it, son, not me."

  The memory of a night completely without sleep, of tossing restlessly in bed, then roaming uneasily through the house, of watching the little living room turn first gray, then light, in the early-morning hours was too vivid right now for Li'l Joe's mood to be lightened by his grandson's words. He was acquainted with grief and loneliness and sorrow, and had known all three in those dark night hours.

  He knew the answer to sorrow; his mother had taught him that. Keep busy. Keep working. But when a man was getting on in years, the work wasn't always there. And even a young man gave way to it sometimes, had to let it carry him. He knew men, young men, who'd let pain and disappointment carry them too far, so far from life they couldn't get back to living it, wrapped themselves up in a cocoon of disappointment and defeat like fuzzy caterpillars, not caring if anyone called them shiftless and lazy. Better if they did call them that, so's nothing would be expected of them. Figured on coming out of that cocoon after they were in their graves, flying around on their wings after they were buried. He'd done that, after Geneva was taken, but, Lord! a man couldn't stay in a cocoon like that when there was a little chile to took after and an old lady who'd near killed herself to bring a son up, no matter how bad the grief was, how deep the darkness. And it had been dark, didn't anybody but God know how dark it had been after Geneva passed.

  "And it ain't exactly light now," he said to himself, watching the thin grayness of dawn creep beneath the window shades.

  Don't do no good, he told himself, don't do no good thinking how the boy's marrying up with a white woman. Lord's got to take care of that; He's sure got to take care of that because it ain't right, it's trouble, and Lord, if You can take his trouble away without hurting him too bad I sure wish You'd do it. The trouble would come more than likely when they had children, or when something come up that she'd see white and David would see colored, and there wouldn't be any way to bring them together so's they'd see it alike, never could be a way to bring two persons together, living as man and wife, when one of them was white and the other colored, when neither of them could remember one thing, scarce one thing, common from when they were children. "Jesus he'p him," Li'l Joe had murmured, half aloud. "Jesus he'p him. He's going to need it."

  Those night hours had been too long for David's smile, his presence, his reassuring arm and words, to chase their memory away. And there were longer, lonelier ones ahead, and these were in his heart when he said, "You saying it, son, not me."

  ***

  "Gramp, let's have a beer and then you let me talk and tell you about it. Don't start feeling bad until I've finished, because then you won't feel bad—"

  Li'l Joe wanted to say he'd already started, that feeling bad was part of him now. Instead he said, "Sure, son. There's plenty beer in the icebox."

  It took almost an hour for David to tell the story, leaving nothing out, retracing his meeting and friendship with Jedediah and his later meeting with Solomon of Zambana; then the new story of Lawrence Travis and his efforts on his behalf, his meeting with Chittock of State—"That's why I was in Washington, Gramp—" and then hesitantly, defensively, the decision he and Sara had reached about their marriage now that they could live elsewhere and know peace. He had just started to tell Gramp of the plan to bring him to Africa when there was a familiar, thudding footstep on the porch, followed by a familiar knock.

  " 'Saiah," said Gramp.

  "Hell!" said David. "I was just getting—"

  Then Isaiah was inside and there was more beer and more talk—Lord, thought David, how my people talk; You ought to do something about it—and he went over the story again, this time briefly and only in outline, mentioning his marriage only casually, in passing. He didn't mention the plan to have Gramp come to Africa because he wanted to be alone with Gramp when he told him.

  The talk stopped all at once, and the sudden pause had an uncanny something about it. Isaiah took what was left of a well-smoked cigar from his mouth and laid it carefully in an ashtray. He looked stern and reproving, and when he cleared his throat the sternness and reproof became more marked. "You'd ought to be mighty proud, David," he said. "That's a big honor."

  "Can't say that I see it exactly as an honor. It was more a case of meeting the right guy in the right place at the right time. I didn't go after it."

  "Sure. Sure. And you ain't going to be there forever, don't suppose." He pulled another cigar from his pocket and studied it carefully, not looking at David. "After you get through helping the black man down there in Africa, maybe you can come back and help him here. Days of trouble coming. We could sure use an extra hand."

  He stood up without waiting for an answer, said loudly, "Gotta go, Li'l Joe! Gotta go, David! Got a meeting at headquarters on this school mess that's coming up—"

  After he had left, Gramp looked at David's back, as the boy stood in the doorway looking out, silent since Isaiah's barbed remark. "Don't take it hard, son. He's all wound up in this school trouble, people getting threats and all, and all the trouble stirring everywhere, can't think of nothing else. He's just what you calls 'needling.' A man goes where he's needed. I ain't happy about it, God knows I ain't, but a man goes where he's needed. Man's got something to give, God sends him where he can give it. Better there, where you're going, son, where you can get yourself a little peace inside. You got a woman you love, and you don't want no other. Don't guess you ever will, and I ain't even saying anything about that."

  As Li'l Joe walked toward David, his grandson opened the door and the two men walked out on the front porch together and stood silently, leaning on the rail, watching Miz Timmins's grandchild playing in the yard across the road. At last Li'l Joe could keep silent no longer, and at the same time could not keep the pain from his voice.

  "Don't look like you'll be coming back this way much again, David."

  David turned so quickly that the little man gave a half-jump back. "What
are you saying, Gramp?"

  "You about finished here, son. Man has to go on. I said a long time ago, before you went away to collidge, that you'd be going away from here. I been lucky it ain't come sooner."

  "Look, Gramp, is that what you've been thinking? Is that why you've been so brought down? Don't kid me, Gramp. I can tell. Now, listen to me—"

  "That's what I been doing—"

  "Just listen, will you! Anytime you need me, I can get here. I'm not exactly my own boss, but I know I can say that and back it up. Anytime you need me—twenty-four hours and I'm here. You haven't heard of airplanes?"

  "What you saying! I been on 'em, ain't I?"

  "Didn't waste any time, did they? Pretty soon they'll all be jets, too. Come on back inside and let's have another beer and sit down and I'll tell you what I've got in my mind—"

  "Thought you had some damned thing in your head—" said Gramp as they sat down, beers at hand.

  "Yup. Listen, Gramp—how'd you like to come to Africa, too, for a while? For as long as you want, as far as that's concerned. And no cracks about money. We can make it."

  He thought Gramp would never answer. The mantel clock

  Sara had sent Gramp on Christmas ticked more times than a man would want to count; the cat entrance-exit in the kitchen door squeaked softy as Chop-bone came in to check up on things; there was a soft plop-plop from the faucet in the kitchen Gramp said was acting up, and at last David said, "Well, Gramp?" The little man opposite was not looking at him now, and David knew he did not dare. Someday, David told himself for the millionth time since he'd been grown, he'd take time out and try to analyze what it was about Gramp, what in hell it was about Gramp that never left a guy.

  Again David said, "Well, Gramp?" and Li'l Joe's silence finally gave way.

  "Lawd! Africa!"

  "And Europe, too. Sara can take over there. But Africa first, if you want it that way."

  It was clear that Gramp was only half believing. "Look, son," he said. "You going to be on a honeymoon, sort of. You'll don't want an old man trailing along—"