Five Smooth Stones

by Ann Fairbairn

  "Thank you, sir," said David. He looked longingly at the French window behind Benford's desk, then walked to his seat, his mind, he thought, a blank, just a damned vacuum no one would ever be able to pour mathematics into, least of all a character made purely of black ice.

  Sara's call came late that afternoon after he returned from the library and bookstore and was thinking it was a sobbin' shame that the only Negro professor he'd seen so far had to be a sour-faced scarecrow who must have been weaned on persimmons.

  When he came back to his room from the telephone booth, he sat looking at the pile of books on the too small desk. He'd have to get a card table, he thought, something with more surface to it. He was fighting his mind, battling to drive from it the thought—any thought—of Sara Kent's voice, of a rendezvous in any old "rec hall" where he'd get himself—and her—stared at, whispered about. Maybe there'd even be a humbug; plenty of mealymouthed southern accents around, and a white boy could be all right, he could be friendly as a pup, all smiles and buddy-buddy talk—until he saw you even looking at a white girl. David Champlin hadn't pome to any college to show any damned white he was as good as they were, not him; he knew he was, and for now that would have to do. Didn't this pint-sized chick have any sense, any sense at all?

  Suddenly his subconscious mind threw to the surface something she had said the first night they met when he wasn't listening much because he was all jarred up by her reference to a "Little Tommy" Evans. Now he heard it in his mind: "My father says anyone who'd do that"—what it was David couldn't remember—"didn't have good sense, and I said that sometimes I just didn't think you ought to have good sense. That if you had a lot, an awful lot, of sense you didn't have any fun, and couldn't get a lot of things done that ought to be done and that maybe 'sense' is a sort of, well, hindrance—"

  That answered his question. She didn't have any sense at all, and he knew that he was going to have to remember it and watch out.

  And he knew, too, that careful, careful, careful as he must be, he would be doing every day what he had been doing ever since Suds Sutherland's car had gone through the entrance to the campus yesterday: looking, listening, waiting with something deep inside himself that functioned independently of mind or body for the glimpse of a small figure that walked outwardly and ran inwardly, the sound of a high young voice tumbling out words in a freshet of sound that sparkled and glowed from the warmth beneath it. This he knew he would be doing, and there could be no stopping it.

  CHAPTER 21

  Two weeks after David entered Pengard, Dr. Karl Knudsen sat in the little office adjoining Dr. Andrus's classroom, talking with the Latin professor. He started to refuse the proffered cookies that Andrus was passing across his desk, then, fearing to appear rude, took one and held it fearfully. He had often considered the possibility of slipping one into his pocket and taking it to the Geology Department. One of the instruments used to determine the age of fossils and rocks might be tried with interesting results.

  Andrus, munching contentedly and somewhat noisily on his own cookie, disposed of its residue with a swallow of tea and said, "So you threw your protégé to the wolves, eh?"

  "Benford will be good for Champlin. The boy will never be outstanding in mathematics, true, but he should manage a 'B' once he learns to discipline his mind. You agree with me and the others that there is no objection to Greek?"

  "Certainly. Haven't you made your recommendation to the dean yet?"

  "I was waiting until I had talked with you. I will call him this afternoon. I mentioned Champlin's desire to take Greek in my report—"

  Andrus pushed the telephone that was on his desk across to Knudsen. "Why not do it now?"

  "Why not?" Knudsen dialed a number well known on cam-pus because of the dean's habit of singing it whenever he gave it out—"Ein, zwie—" one-two-three-four. It was a separate line to the dean's study. In a moment Goodhue's voice was audible even to Andrus. "Goodhue here—"

  "Yes, Dean Goodhue. Knudsen here... I know, and I apologize.... I have been busy but that is no excuse.... But now I am pardoned, I hope.... It is about young Champlin that I am calling.... I have been talking with his instructors.... They see no reason why he should not add Greek to his curriculum, even though he has started late.... But, Dean... there have been exceptions in the past.... We are not a rigid... you were favorably impressed when you interviewed him, no?... You have not? It has been two weeks!... One moment, Dean, one moment...."

  Knudsen lowered the receiver, cupped a hand over the mouthpiece, and looked across the desk at Andrus, who sat quiet and unsmiling. There was a look of tiredness in the Latin professor's eyes. Knudsen's eyes were wide, seemed a deeper blue than when he had placed the call, had fire behind them. "He has not interviewed David Champlin! Two weeks the boy has been here, and the dean has not interviewed him. Yet he refuses Greek. Incredible!"

  "No," said Andrus. "Not in the least incredible. Get back to him, Knudsen. He'll be suspicious."

  Knudsen spoke again into the telephone. "When do you plan to interview him?... This afternoon? Do not crowd yourself.... I am not being sarcastic. I try only to point out that the boy is worth taking time with.... You will call me after you have seen him?... Good—"

  Knudsen replaced the receiver on its bracket with exaggerated gentleness. "My wife says I am naive," he said softly. "It is possible. Ja. She says it is because I did not grow up in the land of the free." He sighed. "I should have followed through when the boy first arrived. There was an inkling last spring, at the dean's tea—"

  "Don't blame yourself," said Andrus. "You have been in this country how long? Ten years? And you came directly to Pengard. What can you be expected to know of the prevalence of an evil we take for granted? Some of us fight the evil, a few of us, but feebly. Feebly. Goodhue is angry because he did not dare veto Champlin's delayed entrance. We would all have been lined up against him; it would have reached the old man by the lake—I will personally guarantee that it would—and there would have been hell to pay."

  "He need not take it out on the boy."

  "Human nature in any case. With the boy's color, the situation is inevitable. For years Goodhue has been quietly imposing his own quota system."

  "A 'quota'? For Negroes? This is—is odious. The old man—"

  "We can't prove it. But of twelve Quimby applicants for entrance this year, all apparently well qualified and able, only six received the dean's approval: Champlin, the Benjamin girl, Wilson, Simmons and Dunbar, and Travis."

  "Travis? You're confusing him with someone else—" _

  "You didn't know that Hunter Travis is the son of Lawrence Travis?"

  "Good God, no! I was not aware even that he was—is—a Negro!"

  "You know, of course, who his father is?"

  Knudsen's voice was testy when he answered. "Naturally. I read the papers. A great international statesman."

  "Possibly one of the greatest your adopted country has produced. Of mixed ancestry, ethnically speaking. But definitely a Negro in the eyes of his countrymen."

  "Well!" said Knudsen. "Well." He sighed again. "My wife will not be happy with me."

  "Travis's mother is an Englishwoman. Much of his education has been received in Europe."

  "The latter I knew, at least." Knudsen was silent a moment, then asked, "Why did Goodhue accept Nehemiah Wilson without argument? Except for mathematics his preliminary showing was less than mediocre—"

  "One can only guess," said Andrus. "It is my theory only, and wholly empirical. Wilson is not going anywhere."

  "Don't make me feel more ignorant than I obviously am."

  "Wilson is a prodigy in mathematics. Very well. But that alone will not carry him far. He must do better in other areas. The dean is no fool. He is a Southerner and he knows, not the Negro mind—no white Southerner gets below the surface of that—but the Negro stereotypes. In Wilson he sees a sort of freak. And he is shrewd enough to recognize Wilson's hatred and antagonism. It is my theory that Champlin represent
s to him the hated symbol of Negro intellectual equality, possibly superiority. He has heard of your brother's tutelage, knows his high opinion of the boy's mind. Wilson's hidden psychological scars have already deformed his mind to such an extent that he poses no threat to us."

  "Andrus! Do not say to 'us'—"

  "It's true, is it not?"

  "That we are white? Yes. That we are all of a piece? No! Bah! How do you know so much, my friend?"

  "You forget. If I believed in reincarnation I would say that in some past life I fed great numbers of early Christians to the lions, and for that I taught for ten years in a college in the Deep South."

  "It was bad?"

  "I suppose I exaggerate. It was not that bad. There were many fine and sensitive minds. But. But. Knudsen, I cannot put a name to it, cannot fully explain it, except to say that in the South the white mind is as crippled, in its own way, as the Negro mind. Not in every instance, mind you, but in most. There is a something that is not direct, is devious. Perhaps it is because they know subconsciously the evil of their own thinking. My God! How can they help but know it! Yet they will not face it, and in not facing it their minds become like, let us say, someone with a 'wry neck.' I used to call it, to myself, the 'wry mind.'"

  "There is Martin. The boy they call 'Chuck.' A fair student, and one who has been twice expelled for interracial activities in southern colleges."

  "Ah, yes. The Martins. There were a number of them, and they were the leaven in a bitter, sodden loaf. In the Martins

  perhaps the South will find salvation. And in some of its writers who have achieved objectivity. But I doubt that their numbers are great enough."

  "That may be good."

  "Why do you say that, Knudsen?"

  "Because "even I can see that the Negro, if he is to achieve his proper status, will have a far firmer foundation if it comes through his own efforts, without the patronage of whites."

  "This will mean violence."

  "You believe this?"

  "I am almost certain of it."

  Knudsen sighed, stood. "I am not happy, Andrus. No, I am not happy. I am far more unhappy than when I came in. Now I must go home, and my wife will make me more unhappy. She will say 'See? That is what I have been trying to make you understand.'"

  "Before you leave—one question. In Nehemiah Wilson we also face the problem we have faced so often with Negro students from the Deep South: the problem of the cultural lag; the problem presented by inadequate, segregated schooling, often illiterate or only semiliterate parents with no background of learning or even simple schooling. Champlin was fortunate. Few of them are so fortunate. His injury exposed him mercilessly to your brilliant brother. But Wilson—like so many others—did not have such an advantage. Why wasn't he given precollege brush-up courses in the summer, as we have done for others?"

  "It was offered, Andrus. I assure you it was offered. But he would not. And I felt we could handle it after he entered. Perhaps I was mistaken. There were economic reasons, valid ones. There is poverty, and there are many children. They needed what little he could earn. It was a real sacrifice for them to send him up here."

  Andrus was silent for a long moment; then, for the first time in their years of friendship, Knudsen heard Hugh Andrus, head of the Department of Ancient Languages at Pengard, swear.

  "God damn," said Andrus. "God damn to hell a world in which the human mind is at the mercy of those who hate the color of the body that houses it!"

  CHAPTER 22

  The summons from Dean Goodhue came on David's second Friday at Pengard. "Four thirty at the Dean's residence," it read. From Sanders, one of the upper classmen in the big room that adjoined his in Quimby House, he received directions for finding the house. "He likes to have the interviews there," said Sanders. "Cozier."

  It would be shorter cutting through the outer quadrangle, and David was halfway across when he saw Dr. Knudsen emerge from one of the buildings and come toward him. For the first time since David had known him the little professor looked worried, but his face lightened when they met. "Ah, David! You are headed for the dean's?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Have your ears burned? Professor Andrus and I have been talking about you. Don't look so concerned. What we said was good. If the dean does not keep you too long, come and have coffee with us. We are close by. I shall be interested to hear what is said, and my wife also. She asks about you constantly."

  "Yes, sir. Thanks. I'll be glad to—"

  Perhaps Sara would be there; that would be something he couldn't help. Meeting her there would be different from seeking her out, looking for her, knowing he was looking for trouble at the same time. He had stayed away from the recreation hall, knowing he was doing what Randall had warned against, that he was "holing up," but seeing no alternative that wasn't worse. He and Sara took no classes together, but he knew that sooner or later there would be a meeting; only the need for intensive study these first two weeks had prevented it so far.

  A semicircular drive swept in front of the dean's brick-and-timber house, and the French door to his study opened directly on it, set between mullioned casement windows. Sanders had described it to him. He knocked, making it a firm knock, and when he heard the summons to come in he carefully scraped the mud from his shoes on the old-fashioned iron scrapers beside the door and took off his new knit cap before entering. He had been downright shocked by the manners of some of his fellow students: caps on in the house, not saying "sir" or "ma'am" to an older person or a teacher, things like that. Gramp would give 'em hell, he had thought, pure hell. If these were white manners—

  When he entered he found himself looking directly at the top of the dean's head, bent over papers on a desk in the center of the room. He didn't know how he knew, but he knew; the minute the dean raised his head and reached for the pipe resting in the heavy ashtray, David knew. It wasn't ever something seen or heard; it was something smelled with a mental olfactory apparatus. He wondered why Nehemiah hadn't tipped him off, but Nehemiah saw Crow everywhere he looked, and the dean would be part of Nehemiah's general picture of the world, no better, no worse, than any other white.

  "Ah, David," said Goodhue. Andrus had said "Ah, Champlin" that first day in class. Doc Knudsen was the only faculty member who called him "David." From the Doc, "Champlin" would have sounded forced.

  You wants to keep breathing in and out you has to take it. Jes remember how ignorant they is. Gramp had said that once, but a hell of a lot of good it did in a spot like this. Gramp had said something else, too, and that did help sometimes. He guessed it was from the Bible. "Does it matter that they know thee not? I knows thee—"

  Now, in this spot, the best thing to do after saying "Yes, sir" was to keep quiet, say nothing. Even if someone had held a gun at his head he wouldn't have smiled, and that was what this of ay character was looking for, hoping for; a nice wide, white-toothed nigra smile. Son of a bitch, he thought. You'll be dead and smelling even worse'n you do now before you see li'l David's teeth.

  He sensed and grimly enjoyed that his own impassiveness had put the dean momentarily at a loss, made him flounder.

  The dean looked down at his desk again. "Your reports," he said, indicating the papers before him. Now that he spoke as an authority he was in possession of himself again.

  "Your reports," said the dean again. "They are surprisingly good."

  David inclined his head slightly, said nothing.

  "Surprising, I mean, when one considers that you entered late. You had help, no doubt?"

  "From Professor Bjarne Knudsen in New Orleans. He tried to keep me caught up."

  "Ah, yes. Well, I can find no fault with them, except your mathematics report. I have discussed this with Professor Ben-ford. He does not seem concerned."

  Was there an ever so slight accenting of the "he"? An intonation that said plainly, "He does not seem concerned, but what could one expect? I certainly am." Whether or not this was true, the knowledge that Benford had not expressed concer
n was the best news he'd received since entering.

  The dean shuffled through the papers. His pipe was resting in its accustomed niche in one side of his mouth, and small puffs punctuated his phrases. "There is a recommendation here—no—here—no—this is it—" He separated one paper from the others and leaned back, reading it, but not aloud, frowning as he did so. "About Greek. That you be permitted to add it to your first-year courses. It is submitted by your faculty adviser, Dr. Knudsen, and"—puff-puff—"apparently has the"—puff-puff—"approval of some of your instructors."

  This bastard was lying, sure as hell was lying; David was certain the recommendation carried the approval of all of his professors, even Benford. The dean's sigh was commensurate with his size, and he removed his pipe from his mouth to give full vent to it. "I regret that I must disagree with these faculty members. But this seems ill-advised at the present time, and it is definitely a departure from established procedure. No, I cannot consent to this. Any spare time you have, any spare energy, should be devoted to strengthening your weaknesses, not on added studies." He laid the paper down gently. "You may, of course, elect it in your sophomore year."

  David was not particularly disappointed, had begun to have doubts himself about carrying an additional subject. He had the textbooks with him; if he had time he could keep on fooling around with it unbeknown to anyone. But he'd fry before he'd tell this man that. He remained silent behind his one-way wall, neither smiling nor scowling, eyes set and still.