Somehow, he got her back to the top of the hill. In silence he helped her dress. As they walked toward the college they could see the city silhouetted against the early evening sky. On the distant campus, a few early lights in the college buildings seemed remote and lonely. Strawberry Hill was enveloped in a strange stillness. The chatter of night insects made the silence seem more intense.
Neither of them spoke. Cynthia felt empty and hollow. The trumped-up anger had gone out of her. Her body stung and ached. The blood had dried and her skin stuck uncomfortably to her clothes. I am really close to panic and I am destroying the person I love most in the world.
When they came on to the road leading to the campus it was nearly dark.
"I can't go to my room, Yale. Sue would ask a million questions.
Yale tried to put his arm around her. "I want to ask you a million questions, too, but I think you should see a doctor. Your face is badly cut. My God, Cindar, what have I done? What's gone wrong . . . ?"
13
It was nearly seven o'clock when Mat Chilling climbed the four flights of stairs to his room. After six years of lonely living in Doctor Tangle's attic apartment he no longer noticed the furnishings. The first flight was carefully carpeted with figured green broadloom rug. The second flight was likewise carpeted with broadloom, but the nap was severely worn, indicating that the economical Mrs. Tangle had transferred this covering from the first flight of stairs. Climbing to his room, Mat thought, was somewhat like shaking off the material vestments of the world, and assuming the more ascetic character of the seeker after Heaven. Not only did the broadloom rug change to a linoleum on the third floor, but on the fourth floor it gave way to bare wooden stairs. On the top floor there was no vestige of the carefully picked floral wallpaper or the artistic hunting scene tapestry that decorated the stairwell of the second and third floors.
Except for a small cot, a plain wooden table and books scattered in wild disorder, the room was empty and unadorned. "A good room for a future minister," Doctor Tangle had said approvingly when Mat had first taken it. A room conducive to self-contemplation for only four dollars a week. No electric appliances -- and no female visitors. Dr. Tangle had stated the conditions with his usual grim, take-it-or-leave-it manner. Mat had accepted with alacrity.
When he opened the door, a blast of heat greeted him. Wearily mopping the sweat off his forehead, he opened the small window that looked out over the campus. Thank God, he thought. He was nearly finished with Midhaven College. Tomorrow he would officially become the Reverend C. M. Chilling. Then, would begin the long struggle through a series of assistant ministerships until one day he obtained his own church. Taking off his work clothes he noticed that his underwear was still damp from the swim he had taken. It had been a crazy day, he thought, completely outside of the normal ministerial way he should live his life. It worried him that within a few short hours he could so completely break into a different pattern of living. He wondered, as he had many times in the past year, whether he was adapted for the pious, devotional sort of life that would be expected of him. A life of justifying God's seeming impersonality toward man.
Through arrangements with the personnel department of the yard, he had been assigned the noon to six thirty shift which fortunately had no conflict with his morning class. In the past two years he picked up enough knowledge of welding from Joe Pepperelli so that he was reasonably competent. Without the money that he had earned at Latham's, he would never have been able to finish and obtain his Divinity degree. It had been a year of drudgery, and he knew that he would probably have to continue working at Latham's through the summer until he had accumulated a little bit of money, or received an assistant's appointment in some church.
At two o'clock he had been unable to stand the heat in the gasoline compartment of the partially completed hull of #301. He had climbed to the open deck of the tanker and the full glare of the sunlight blinded him. He tried to avoid looking at the Mamaputock River, drifting listlessly to sea like a stream of hot steel pouring out of an electric furnace. No man in the Latham Shipyard looked at that mirror of sunlight long without feeling his eyes contract painfully. It was like the continuous flare from a welder's torch. Mat swabbed his face with his hand. The taste of salt made his mouth feel dry. It was incredible that it could be so hot in May. Everyone was praying for a shift in the wind that would bring a cool east breeze from the Atlantic. He watched the men going dully about their jobs. Below him, a welder sat on an "I" beam, his goggles around his neck, staring at his feet and cursing. "Christ, Chilling, I can feel the heat of these plates right through these boots. Another day like this and you will find me at Midhaven Beach, enjoying the cool ocean breezes. They can take this cruiser and shove it up Alfred Latham's ass."
"It certainly is hot," Mat said. "Have you seen Joe Pepperelli?"
"Yeah, Reverend, he's down in the forward bulkhead." Mat felt his way gingerly across the deck. Down a steel ladder and into the hull, he inched his way slowly forward. The shadow of a man was sihouetted in the flare of a welder's torch just a few yards ahead of him. The air in the bulkhead was oppressive and lifeless.
"Pepperelli? Joe?"
The man turned and lowered his goggles. His face was grimy, his eyes rimmed with smudge.
"Yeah, Mat, what you want? Look, some son of a bitch weld this whole damn thing wrong I can raise hell with him, for sure."
"Joe, I got to go -- I feel pretty rotten. I think the heat has got me."
"Sure, Mat. I fix it so you get your time. I punch you out at six. Can you get by the gate?" Pepperelli asked.
"I know the guard, I think. I'm not going through that rigamarole of reporting sick."
"Okay. Mat, see you tonight, maybe?"
Mat nodded. He took another look at the seam; the weld was uneven and bumpy.
"What a mess! They certainly got a bunch of amateurs working here."
Mat walked across the yard. He jumped out of the way of men carrying valves and pipes and ducked under a crane swinging steel plates through the air. The chatter of riveters and the fumes from gasoline engines seemed to intensify the heat of the day. He felt so nauseated that he thought he might be sick before he got out of the yard. At the corner of the plate shop, he sat down in the shade of the building. He leaned against the wall for support. The pace of the past two years had really worn him out. Trying to earn a degree while he slaved on these damned ships, trying to mix religion and shipbuilding, had been almost an impossibility. Plodding between work and books, and back to work again, for the past two years he had just been existing. There had been no social life. He had made no attempt to have a date with a girl since his sophomore year, nearly five years ago.
He tried to remember the girl. He had taken her to one of the Midhaven College dances -- Marjorie something or other. Had she been blonde or brunette? He shook his head; all he could remember were her breasts, they bobbled so nicely.
He stood up, feeling better. If I get out of the sun for a while, I'll be all right, he thought. The guard at the gate was new. Mat did not recognize him. "You guys think you can walk out of this place like you owned it." He looked at Mat suspiciously. "I'll have to report you for leaving early today."
"I don't give a damn what you do," Mat snapped. "Just open that gate and let me out of here."
Across the street from Latham Shipyard the sign on Marty's Taproom caught his eye, and he decided that he would have a bottle of beer. Sitting in the barroom, he looked at the varnished, wainscotted walls and at the plaster chipping off the ceiling. It was an unsavory place, reeking with the odor of stale beer. What a place for a future minister to be caught in, he thought. Well, why not? A minister has to live too, doesn't he? Maybe he didn't have the right stuff for a minister. Mat knew that he was much too individualistic to adjust to a narrow Christian outlook like Dr. Tangle's. At the thought of the Reverend, President of Midhaven College, Mat ordered another bottle of beer. The cold liquid griped his stomach. He doubled over with pain.
>
"What's the matter, bud?" Marty patted him on the shoulder. "Wanta puke? Just go ahead out back. Make you feel better."
Impatiently, Mat shook off his solicitude. "The sun's got me -- let me alone." When the pain subsided, Mat staggered out of the barroom. The screen door banged against his unsteady feet.
Past rows of parking lots, and endless automobiles, left almost anywhere as their owners ran to punch in before the deadline, Mat walked, stretching his long legs in an unsteady pace. Ahead of him the road seemed like a rippling ribbon, waving in the wind. "I'm drunk," he thought. He laughed crazily.
He was beyond the sprawling Latham Yards now. Scraggly trees and brush sheltered the Mamaputock River from his view. He crashed through the undergrowth, anxious, with an unreasonable desire, to wet his face in the water. It was hot water, but it was water. He was on fire. What a fool he had been to drink that beer.
The small patch of woods smelled dry and dead. Sudenly he felt cold. He shivered. Perspiration trickled unpleasantly down his back. He rubbed his fingers. They felt shriveled and limp. "I'm going to have a stroke," he thought.
"What am I doing here, anyhow?" The smell of his own sweat nauseated him. He clung to a tree. What was this odor he smelled? It swelled up against his brain. Pepperelli, that was it! Good old Pepperelli . . . stinking in that bulkhead . . . stinking with sweat, flavored with garlic he had eaten for breakfast.
God! The thought hit him bluntly. He felt cold with fright. The guard would turn his name in for leaving early. Pepperelli was punching him out at six. When the payroll department put the two facts together, there would be hell to pay. He'd go back. He'd . . .
"Hello!"
Dimly Mat was aware that the owner of the voice was a girl. A colored girl, with warm brown eyes.
"Hello," he answered miserably. He could feel himself about to vomit. "I'm sick, awfully sick; I think I've had too much sun. . . ."
When he opened his eyes again, Mat realized that he must have fainted. The girl was sitting beside him, smiling down at his face. Her teeth were white and her eyes tender.
"Do you feel any better?"
"Yeah, much, much better."
Mat felt a wet cloth on his face. The girl had evidently tried to cool his forehead and wrists. He noticed that his belt was undone.
She saw him looking at his pants. "You are supposed to undo anything that constricts the flow of blood when a person has a sunstroke."
"You are right," Mat said. "You've been very nice -- who are you?"
"Honey Johnson -- I've seen you before . . . fishing off the Helltown Bridge. I live in Helltown."
Mat looked at her carefully. She was slim and boyish in appearance. Her lips were full and expressive. She returned his stare.
"What are you looking at?"
"You are a very pretty girl," Mat said. He realized it sounded foolish.
"You mean I'm pretty for a colored girl," she answered.
"I didn't mean that, but it's probably true. We all tend to judge other races by the standards we like in our own."
She didn't answer.
"Do you mind if I take a swim?"
She laughed. "So I can see how pretty your white body is?"
Mat stood up. "As a matter of fact, my body is not pretty, but rather hairy." He took off his pants, and walked into the river with his underwear on. The water was hot, but it made him feel better. The mud oozed between his toes. He enjoyed the cool squishing of it. Finally, he came cut of the water and sat down in the shade of a tree.
"I wish you'd get dressed; someone might see you and think it funny."
"You don't know how funny it is," Mat said, looking at his bony knees. He wondered what Dr. Tangle would say if he could see him. "Do you know I haven't been swimming in nearly three years? I've been so busy reading about God and contemplating theological matters that I haven't had time to sit down and enjoy His work."
She looked at him curiously. "You must go to Midhaven College?"
Mat nodded. "I graduate from Divinity School tomorrow. How did you guess?"
"There's a lot of queers like you there."
"Who said so?"
"Pa. My father. I told him I wanted to go there, but he said I could learn a lot more just reading by myself. Besides, I guess they have no room for Negroes."
"That's right," Mat nodded. "They have no room for Negroes. Some of our dear white children might get blemished with the contact." He wondered who determined the policy. Obviously no overt statement had ever been made. As a matter of fact, until the past two or three years, when an influx of Negroes into the Helltown area had occurred, there had been no need for a stated policy or a hidden one. It was unlikely that any of the Negroes living in Helltown could afford even the moderate tuition at Midhaven College.
"What does your father do?"
"My father is a minister," she said, proudly. "He reads a lot of books, too. Most of the colored folks around here aren't very religious. Right now he works at the Weathersham Hotel . . . in the kitchen. He is a good cook, too." Honey spoke the words simply. She looked out across the river. "I wish you'd get dressed." Mat pulled on his pants and shirt over his damp underwear. He looked at the book that Honey had been reading. It was a book of essays for freshmen college students. "Why are you reading that?"
"Because I like to know about things. This man sees things about nature I could never have thought myself." She pointed to an essay by Emerson. Mat was about to remark that Emerson was all words and had no sound philosophical scheme. He held the words back, realizing that such a remark was pointless. It shows my own lack of comprehension, he thought. This girl was gaining something from Emerson. She was reading him because she wanted to. It was a lot more than most of the Midhaven freshmen could say. He would like to take this girl to the graduation dance tomorrow night. Without weighing the idea, he asked her if she would go.
Honey stood up. Her dark hair whipped against her face. She looked at him solicitously. "Do you really feel all right?"
"Fine," he said. He bent over and kissed her cheek quickly. "I really mean it -- I would like to have you go," he mumbled into her surprised face.
"I've never been to a dance like that," she said wistfully. "But it's really a rather silly idea. When you think it over a minute, I'm sure you'll agree." She walked toward the road. "So long, Mister, I'll see you sometime."
Mat walked back along the road leading to Latham. A long line of automobiles had already turned in from Route 6 jamming the narrower road that led into the shipyard. The new shift was arriving.
He walked by the slowly moving cars, noticing the occupants. All of them looked tired and exasperated. One red-faced man kept opening the door of his car, holding one hand on the wheel, and one foot on the running board, while be peered anxiously over the roofs of the cars ahead of him. Six other men were crowded into one car. They kept asking him what the trouble was. "Leave the damn car here and let's walk," a belligerent voice yelled. "Alfred Latham better get this road fixed. We need some parking place around here if he expects to build these ships so damned fast."
Work, work, Mat thought. They all hate it . . . yet they are all in a fever to get there and punch the clock. Gasoline fumes drifting low on the humid air filled his nostrils. He felt a return of his nausea. He kept thinking about Honey. What had possessed him to ask her to the dance? . . . and then to kiss her cheek? He knew that if he ever walked through the reception line, introducing Honey Johnson to the faculty, particularly Dr. and Mrs. Tangle, he would be embroiled in trouble. Nothing would actually happen. Doctor Tangle would be coldly cordial, but in the glint of his eyes would be the certainty that the next morning Mat Chilling would be called into his office and the lid would blow off. Alms and prayers for the colored; that was a duty demanded by God. But to take a Negro to the social event of the college year was something that your future parishioners simply would not tolerate.
Yet, Mat knew that he wasn't being fully honest with himself. He felt depressed. He knew that
his motive in asking Honey to the dance was not based on any sudden interest in the lot of Negroes in Helltown. He simply had a childish urge to thumb his nose at Doctor Tangle. To do it, he had considered involving a trusting, unsophisticated colored girl. It worried him to find depths of his personality revealed in such an unpleasant light. Was Mat Chilling going to be a real servant of God, or a charlatan willing to sacrifice an innocent girl to a wild obsession?
Deep in his thoughts, Mat trudged wearily in the gutter of the road toward the bus stop. An automobile edged close to him. He jumped away and continued walking, oblivious.
"For the good Lord's sake! Mat Chilling! Do you want a lift into Midhaven, or don't you?"
Startled, Mat turned. It was Peoples McGroaty, editor and owner of the Midhaven Herald.
"I've been tooting this damned horn at you for the past five minutes, but you continued to walk along thinking your heavenly thoughts."
"I'm afraid my thoughts weren't very spiritual, Peoples." Mat got into the car.
He had met McGroaty five years before at a church supper. He remembered that he had attended it largely to obtain a square meal. He had discovered in Peoples a kindred soul. Like Mat, the wiry, wrinkled-faced editor had the kind of probing mind that was developing a constantly evolving philosophy of life. Nothing was too small or insignificant to come under the scalpel of his intellect.
After that evening, Mat became a frequent visitor to Peoples' famous office. He would listen with wonder as Peoples roamed the world with penetrating comments on people and politics while Mat sat next to him in a broken-down leather chair surrounded by what he estimated must be five thousand books that filled the room from ceiling to floor. The bookcases that lined the walls had been filled years ago. Now books were piled tipsily four and five feet high. Books were everywhere . . . on nearly every available part of the floor. Peoples explained that he had a mania -- he couldn't surrender one single book. If a book came into his hands he had to read it; worse, he had to keep it. It had gotten so bad that Peoples was looking for a man to screen the daily offerings of review copies from the nation's publishers. Someone to decide what was really worth reading. Not until he had met Mat had Peoples found a person he trusted to do the job. Once a week, Mat went through the new book arrivals. His only pay for the job had been an unending supply of books on every subject from better cooking to zoology. Mat made twenty dollars a week or more selling them at reduced rates to a local bookstore. He wondered what Peoples' reaction to this graft might be. One day Peoples bluntly asked him how much he was making peddling books. "I hope you are clearing fifteen bucks or so a week, else I'd feel it necessary to put you on the payroll," he had said, rubbing his leathery face without a trace of a smile.
The Rebellion of Yale Marratt Page 18
