Grace

by Robert Ward

  “He put his hands to his ears, his face contorted.

  “ ‘No,’ he said. ‘Stop! Now!’

  “His face was wrenched in pain … but I had to finish.

  “ ‘Listen to me,’ I said. ‘Tell me the truth. Haven’t you thought … I mean when you’re alone, in the middle of the night … haven’t you thought that you’re risking your life for nothing? For fantasies?’

  “His face changed then. He didn’t look stricken any longer but furious. He stared at me then with an anger I’d never seen in him or anyone else before. His eyes widened and his nostrils flared, and he raised his hand above me in a fist.

  “ ‘Get out!’ he shouted. ‘Get out of my church!’

  “I knew I had hurt him beyond all repair … but still I felt compelled to make him see.

  “ ‘No, I won’t…. You have to listen. We’re both just kids … that’s all. Kids. We should be having fun, discovering the world … not sacrificing our lives for some impossible ideals. Come with me. We’ll go back to Baltimore. You shouldn’t be doing any of this.’

  “Slowly, with the greatest of effort to control himself, he brought his hand down to his side and unclenched his fist.

  “ ‘I can’t speak for you,’ he said. ‘But I’m a man doing my people’s and my Father’s work. You … you have forsaken our friendship, and, worse, you have lost sight of all that really matters. Or maybe you never cared. Maybe it was always just an entertainment to you. The progressive white girl with her bright but primitive little Negro friend.’

  “I don’t know what happened. I just snapped. That’s when I slapped him in the face.

  “He didn’t move but stood there staring through me.

  “ ‘Now we finally get to it,’ he said. ‘When your Nigrah don’t please, you gots to whip him into line.’

  “ ‘God, I’m sorry. So sorry.’

  “He didn’t move a muscle. But the look on his face told me that I was now classified with all the other white people who had hurt him and his people. I was now the enemy.”

  “ ‘Get out of my church,’ he said. ‘Don’t ever come back.’

  “I turned and stumbled through the door of the rectory, knocking over chairs on my way to the street.

  “During the next week, I felt as though I was living under water. Everything that happened between Wingate and me was like a dream. Did he ever really exist at all? Or had I invented him and the whole story just to get through my exile in Mayo? I now know that this feeling of unreality is like being in shock. I cared for and admired him so much, and the pain of what had happened to our friendship and my selfish part in its breakup were so painful…. Well, I simply retreated into fantasy.”

  Grace fidgeted in her chair, ran her hand nervously up and down her jaw. I wanted to say something, something that would relieve her anguish, but I could think of nothing.

  “I was lost, so in need of a rudder … that I leaned heavily on Rob. He was strong…. I couldn’t really talk to him about Wingate, but what was there to say? I retreated into everydayness … studying, meeting Rob after school. I tried to talk to Bonnie about it all … but she seemed distant, unapproachable. Then one day when I finally cornered her and made her talk about it, she told me the truth. She wasn’t afraid for Wingate anymore. She was afraid of him.

  “She told me that she was certain he was preaching Negro violence against whites … armed revolution.

  “I told her that was ridiculous, absurd. But I was unable to convince her.

  “Nothing scared me more than that. Bonnie was the most liberal person I knew down there. If she felt that way … what must the others feel?

  “I lay in bed worrying about him … knowing there was nothing I could do. I tried to lose myself in my love for Rob. We were inseparable at that time … we went rowing and we hiked … and we began to make plans to be married. Sometimes I feel that we made plans all too fast and all because of my own fears, just because I wanted permanence, no matter what the cost.”

  Grace took a deep breath and stared down into the carpet.

  “One night Rob talked me into going to the school football game at Annapolis. I was, as you already know, Bobby, no football fan, but I was trying very hard to escape back into what I imagined Everygirl would want in life. So I went and huddled with Rob and watched as he and some other boys passed a flask around. I even pretended to drink some of it … that’s how normal I wanted to be.

  “After the game we went out to the parking lot, and Rob began to drink more…. He and his friends were laughing and sort of wrestling around. It made me nervous, frightened. I wanted to leave but he was having fun, so I stood around smiling, pretending it was all okay with me.

  “Then I saw J.J. Randall, Lee Harrison, and Bailey Calhoun. They were just a few cars away from us, and they were really drunk. They were yelling and laughing because we’d won the game … and they were getting loud and mean. I told Rob I wanted to go, but they’d drifted over near us and I saw that Bailey had a jug of p.g.a., pure grain alcohol … the strongest stuff around, strong enough to knock down a racehorse. They offered Rob a pull off the bottle. I was sick when he took it … but I didn’t say anything. I figured we’d leave soon enough … and maybe it was a good thing that they were trying to be friendly. Some of the other kids were going down to the waterfront to take a sail, and I said, ‘Rob, can we go?’ but he wanted one more drink … and one more after that … and then when they were very drunk, Randall turned toward me and said half-kiddingly:

  “ ‘Heard about your friend Wingate Washington? He’s been preaching Bolshevism, telling all the niggers they should band together.’

  “I looked over at him and felt such a deep revulsion that it turned my stomach.

  “ ‘That’s a lie,’ I said.

  “ ‘Oh, no, it ain’t,’ Randall said. ‘That Washington thinks who he is, sure enough.’

  “Now Lee Harrison looked at me. His fat face was distorted with drunkenness. Ordinarily he wouldn’t have said a thing because of Rob, but he had drunk plenty of courage.

  “ ‘The son-of-a-bitch nigger,’ he said. ‘Out there in plain sight, running down the white man.’

  “I felt fear running up my spine. I looked over at Rob, who was heading back to me, laughing.

  “ ‘We oughta teach him a lesson,’ Bailey Calhoun said.

  “ ‘Oughta lynch him,’ Lee Harrison said.

  “I walked right into them when I heard that.

  “ ‘You say that again, and I’ll … I’ll kill you myself,’ I said.

  “Of course, all that got me was a huge round of laughter from all of them. And then J.J. said:

  “ ‘Way she always take up for that nigger boy, you’d think she was sweet on him or something.’

  “I didn’t have to beat him up after that. Rob heard him, walked over, and hit him so hard that he knocked J.J. over the back end of his car. Two of his teeth were lying on the ground next to him. I was so scared. I said, ‘Let’s go … before something terrible happens!’ I just wanted to get out of there. I had never seen anyone hit so hard…. Rob looked at them all and said, ‘Anyone else got a problem needs attending to?’ None of them said a word, of course, but as we started to leave, I heard one of them say, ‘All that damned nigger’s fault. We oughta get that son of a bitch.’

  “We took Rob’s old car down to the beach, but I couldn’t forget what they’d said. Of course, they’d said things like it a hundred times before, but tonight … there was more anger behind their words. And stronger alcohol. I kept asking Rob, ‘Would they do it? Would they really go after him?’ but he just laughed and said, ‘Those three? They couldn’t beat an egg…. That’s just drunk talk. You saw how tough Randall is, didn’t you?’

  “That made me feel better. I told myself that it was going to be okay. They’d get drunk and pass out … and I let Rob take me out in the boat. It was a rich man’s skipjack … a lovely boat. Rob took the man and his friends out fishing. He knew where all the best spots were, s
o he got to use the boat as a reward. Rob was teaching me how to trim the sails. I let myself relax a little, and we sailed out into the Chesapeake Bay under a full moon. Rob lent me his coat—in those days he could be so gallant—and I snuggled in his arms. We’d been out about an hour when I turned and looked back toward land and saw the fire, a raging wildfire in the trees. I began to scream, for I knew beyond any doubt that they’d done it…. They’d gone and burned out Wingate.

  “By the time we got to the church, the place was already smoldering embers…. The town’s little fire department—one pathetic truck—had come and done the best they could, but it was no use. The church had burned down. There was a wagon from the coroner’s office there … and they were taking away two bodies. They had sheets laid across their faces. When I saw that, I broke away from Rob and raced toward the ambulance.

  “ ‘Who is it?’ I said. ‘Tell me.’

  “ ‘A man and a boy,’ the fireman said.

  “Then I did a shocking thing. I pulled the sheet right off the smaller of the two corpses.

  “ ‘Are you out of your mind, ma’am?’ the doctors said.

  “I looked down at that poor, blackened body. A boy of thirteen, only a few years younger than Wingate. I felt sick, but I also felt relieved. Then I turned and saw an older Negro man with a clerical collar. I figured it was the Reverend Phillips and quickly went to him. I introduced myself and told him I was a friend of Wingate’s. I asked him if he’d been here when it happened.

  “The Reverend was a huge man with the sleepiest eyes. He looked down at me, and I felt that he knew all of my sins and was judging me. If God is black, he must look like Dr. Phillips.

  “ ‘Somebody threw a bomb through the front window,’ he said. ‘Wingate was coming out of the rectory, and he was blown back. I think he was injured, but he went out in the street after them. Crazy fool child, he ran after them. They drove away, and he went after them on his old bicycle.’

  “ ‘Oh, God!’ I said.

  “I turned to Rob and told him that we had to go after Wingate. He looked at me as if I was mad, but he got back in his old Ford and we headed out, down the road.

  “It was dark, and there were no lights on those old country roads. Hard to see. We drove for four, five miles. Then I saw something on the side of the road. I told Rob to stop at once, and then I jumped out and ran to it. The bicycle. And next to it there was a trail of blood on the sandy grass. I ran into the woods … in the dark, Rob calling after me from the car. Finally, he ran in, too, but he couldn’t find me, and I kept running, falling over logs and roots, running through branches that scraped my face. I didn’t care. I kept going.

  “It took me a while in the dark, but I finally got there. To our old cabin. I’d run all the way, and I could barely breathe. I’d lost Rob in the underbrush, and I suddenly wished he was here. Slowly, I opened the door, not even daring to hope.

  “He was up against the far wall, under the spot where the roof was ripped away. He looked up at the shining full moon, and he stared at me as I bent over him.

  “He was covered with blood. Blood running down his neck, and there was a slash in his side … I could see ribs, and beyond that intestines.

  “ ‘Oh, God!’ I said. ‘What have they done to you?’

  “I held his head in my lap. He looked at me and traced his bloody finger down my face.

  “ ‘My angel,’ he said.

  “ ‘You have to rest,’ I said.

  “ ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’m almost there. Almost.’ “He tried to laugh but coughed, and I tore away my blouse and wiped the blood from his lips.

  “ ‘I’ve got to get you back,’ I said.

  “ ‘Back to what?’ he said. ‘What we had … that was the best world … that was the only world. Why did you cast me out?’

  “ ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. God forgive me.’ “ ‘It was so good here,’ he said. “ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I love you.’

  “He used all his effort and sat up, looking up through the trees at the moon.

  “ ‘Did you ever believe me?’ he asked. ‘I have to know. Did you ever believe me … that I had a mission, or were you just slumming?’

  “ ‘I believed you,’ I said. ‘I believed you. I swear it.’

  There was no use hiding it anymore. I cried, and my whole body was wracked with sobs. He began to cough and spat up more blood.

  “ ‘You did?’ he said. ‘Really?’

  “ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Really.’

  “His huge, expressive eyes opened wide then, and he looked straight into my face.

  “ ‘Damn your soul,’ he said.

  “Then he fell back and died.

  “Rob found me holding his body, and together we got him back to town.”

  Grace’s head dropped, and she put her hands over her face.

  “Those words have haunted me all my life,” she said.

  “God,” I said.

  My grandmother rocked back and forth in the chair, staring straight ahead, her face waxen, as though she herself were a corpse.

  “It was a perfect day for his funeral. There were over a hundred people there. Mostly, but not all, Negroes.

  “Of course it came out that I’d been with him when he died. My aunt and uncle were horrified. They tried to question me one day, but I screamed at them so loudly they ended up calling the doctor, and I had to be given a shot to make me sleep.

  “I walked all the way from our house to the graveyard. About four miles.

  “I half-expected to cry all the way there, but I couldn’t. I felt a remorse and sorrow too deep for tears. All that kept going through my head was, ‘If I had just let him go to Harlem, but I kept him here.’ “

  Her voice cracked now, and I felt that I had to try.

  “Grace,” I said. “You helped him find who he really was. What you said was right …”

  She shook her head.

  “No. I was a young girl, and I wanted him around to … to … amuse me. If he’d left, I’d have been lonely. And when I thought about it later, I had to admit that deep down when we had played our games in the woods, and he saw signs of the spirit in a bird’s call or in a tree limb being broken a certain way, I didn’t really believe him. Not literally. Which wouldn’t have been so bad, except I said I did. I told him what he wanted to hear … that he was a leader, that he was a visionary. But in the end, I was just talking, you understand? It was like an exciting game. The problem was, he was really listening. What I told him out of vanity cost him his life.”

  “No,” I said. “That’s not so. He was a leader … so he led. And maybe he was a little bit crazy. You say yourself that he had all these visions and things before you ever came around. He would have probably gotten into trouble whether he met you or not.”

  Grace nodded wearily.

  “My dear, sweet grandson, don’t you think I’ve gone through all these arguments myself? Even if it were so, if he had gone to Harlem, he would have gotten seasoned, matured … and then if he had come back to Mayo, he would have had experience, he would have known how to deal with people. But he trusted me, and I betrayed him. That’s the long and short of it. To say anything else is to cheapen it, to tell more lies.”

  She looked so weary, so tired …

  “I remember the funeral like it was yesterday. A hundred people there, the church overflowing with those who came to take one last look at him. I walked in the line, and I felt they all knew, they all knew that somehow I was his Judas. I thought of Rob hitting J.J. Randall … was that the final insult to those boys? And why, why didn’t I go warn him? I knew that things could get out of hand. But I let Rob talk me out of it. Why? Do you know how many thousands of times I have asked myself that question?”

  She was pacing nervously, rubbing her hands on the front of her dress, as though she was trying to wipe off Wingate’s blood.

  “I finally went to see him lying there in that cherry wood casket. He looked so small, so young �
� just a child … and I thought he’d been like a comet, blazing brilliantly, then gone to ash. I kissed him on the top of his forehead and went out. There was a service, but I didn’t stay for it. I didn’t want to hear someone else’s version of Wingate Washington. I knew him. Better than I have known any living person. I knew him and I loved him and I helped get him killed.”

  She stopped and looked at me, her eyes filled with what looked like an unbearable sorrow and grief.

  “You didn’t,” I said. “You didn’t. You were just a kid yourself. You were mixed up. You couldn’t know what he would do when you told him to stay. You couldn’t know that those boys would kill him. Maybe it wasn’t even them. How do you know it was?”

  “I know … they laughed about it. Rob even talked about beating a confession out of them, and I almost let him do it. But in the end, I knew that was wrong … and I stopped him.”

  She shook her head.

  “They were never charged. They got away with it. One of them, Calhoun, is still alive. The other two drank themselves to an early death.”

  There was a long silence. She had gone into a place in the world that I hadn’t even known existed. Finally, I managed to speak.

  “Now I understand,” I said. “And I thought it was about your trip to England. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s all right, honey.”

  “And last week … the fall from the garage. That’s what these ‘spells’ of yours have been about all these years?”

  She nodded. “Yes, honey, I’m afraid so.”

  “But you told me you weren’t sure what they were.”

  “A white lie,” she said. “I was … I am ashamed of all that happened. I could barely admit it to myself … so how could I tell you?”

  “What is it you see in your spells?”

  Grace took a long breath.

  “Wingate,” she said. “That’s the other reason I didn’t tell you …”

  “I don’t understand. You dream of Wingate?” She gave an embarrassed laugh.

  “No, I’m afraid I haven’t yet told you the complete truth. You see, I don’t think I’m dreaming. When he comes to me, I mean. I think you saw him, too. That night.”