Five Smooth Stones

by Ann Fairbairn

  " 'Not permit'? If you had possessed the courage I did, and married, you'd know that you are talking nonsense."

  "But they made only one Eve. What could I do? I must content myself with variety—"

  "A lecherous, promiscuous old man—that's what you'll be when you grow up," said Eve.

  "Ah, I hope so, Eve, I hope so. I am trying—"

  After dinner Eve set out schnapps and Danish beer, with cheese and crackers, and he sat on the big couch, Karl and Eve facing each other across the fireplace in front of him. He had not been content, because he had been troubled, but he remembered the comfort of that room that night, and his realization that this was the only place in which he felt a deep loneliness, this room with its fire and its man and woman.

  Before Eve started knitting she said, "Do you want me to leave? Or sit and knit and gather wisdom at your feet?"

  "Stay, Eve," said Bjarne. "You are always welcome. And you do not gather wisdom; you dispense it."

  After they were served and beer foamed in long slender glasses, Bjarne said, "About my boy, David. I do not want to ask questions, Karl. I want you to tell me your thoughts, without my leading or prompting you."

  "Are you asking about him as a scholar? He will make the honors list, undoubtedly a cum laude. But—" Karl shrugged. "Almost any student of his ability and brains could do the same if he devoted himself almost wholly to study and class-work."

  "It's not right. Not what I hoped. He would make honors without doing that. I know the boy."

  "I agree. What is your impression of him when he is at home? Allow me a few questions also."

  "I do not want to talk about my impressions; I want yours. And Eve's. But I will say this. He is quieter, yes, and it is not just the quietness of added maturity. He has many reticences. All his people, we realize, have many reticences, too many, and too tragic. But he has new ones he did not have before."

  "Ja." Karl Knudsen was silent for a moment, then sighed deeply. "Ja." He refilled his brother's glass and resumed his seat. "He has been lonely, although he has good friends, many of them. Perhaps he has not even known that he was lonely. Or perhaps he has preferred loneliness to exposing himself to further possible hurt. Yet by the end of his sophomore year I believe the rumors and talk had almost entirely subsided. Goodhue's resignation—you must have known this would happen—set off a terrific buzz of talk on campus. It could be that some of the students with whom he was involved and who did not go along with his—er—ideas felt free to talk. I don't know. Our students are well able to do the simple mathematical problem of two plus two. Goodhue now exposed as a homosexual—it got around with fantastic speed, Bjarne—his bias toward David, his liking for Clevenger, and David's action in knocking Clevenger out when he made a pass. That, too, swept through the campus like a forest fire. All these things helped discredit any malicious rumor. Our students aren't fools; they examine. And I believe certain of David's loyal friends had a good deal to do with all of this, and with, I believe, getting Clevenger to assist them—"

  Eve spoke quietly from the depths of her wing chair. "We more than 'believe,' Karl. We know."

  "Yes. Well. David must have been aware of all this, yet it made no difference. It was as if he feared another attack from ambush and walked very quietly."

  "What have his outside activities been, Karl? He says nothing at home except that he's been so loaded with studying there hasn't been much time for anything."

  "Bah! Much of this loading he has done himself. Plenty of less able students than David Champlin will also graduate high in their class and yet will have found time for the activities I would have liked to see him take part in. Drama, poetry readings and discussions, music, many recreational activities. Do you know we have an intercollegiate chess champion in our junior class? Laugh, but that is good. David plays chess now and then with Andrus. A promising player, Andrus tells me."

  "No social life at all, Karl?"

  "Little, on campus. While Wilson—Nehemiah—was here he spent a good deal of time with him. He spends some time with the two students Simmons and Dunbar, now, although at first there was real antagonism between them. Now there seems to be only friendly and pleasant wrangling. Then there are Evans, Travis—whom he also plays chess with—Martin. They are together quite a bit. But they too are good students, not group-minded, and spend considerable time studying. You have met them. Evans is planning on a master's in English, so that he may teach, odd though it may seem. Travis wants to write. I hear he has already started a book. Martin—"

  "David. David. It is David in whom I am interested."

  "He continues to earn money playing piano weekends at the Calico Cat—he must have told you—and the club recently moved to larger quarters. Not because of David, but I believe it has been of financial help to him. He works out on a punching bag and on the rings and bars in the gymnasium several times a week. Andrus says he is working off his aggressions. I have watched him. He is a magnificent specimen. I understand that every so often he goes over to Laurel on a Wednesday night to a Negro church there and sings. Sometimes he does this on Sundays at a church in Cincinnati where Nehemiah Wilson's aunt and uncle go. Occasionally he stays with them weekends when he remains in the city. He attends some of the ALEC meetings here, but not regularly. I have been to some of the meetings myself—I learned a great deal last year. I cannot say that I wonder at David's lack of interest. It is not well administered here. The guiding light is the minister of our Episcopal church down the road, who likes to be known as Father McCartney. He reminds me of nothing so much as a kind and optimistic angel napping around the edges of a stinking swamp, searching for the pretty flowers that grow there so that he may pick them and talk about them. Of the swamp itself he knows nothing."

  Bjarne Knudsen laughed, scattering cracker crumbs. "May I tell this to David?"

  "I have already expressed my opinion to David. He is in complete agreement."

  "He is a realist, like all his people."

  "Sara." Eve Knudsen dropped the word quietly into the conversation between the two men, and their talk stopped.

  "Ah, yes," said Bjarne at last. "Sara."

  "They're in love." Eve spread her knitting over one knee, began counting rows, and could have been remarking on the number of them.

  Her husband said, "You are right, Eve, to bring it up." He turned to his brother. "It is true."

  "I know, I know!" Bjarne Knudsen bristled visibly. "You think I am a fool? It is very clear, even to a bachelor. And difficult."

  "Not for Sara," said Eye. "The difficulties seem to be in David's thinking."

  Bjarne said: "I have known Sara almost as long as you have, Eve. Or at least as long as Karl. There would be no difficulties for Sara if she loved. But with David it is different. He sees not only the difficulties and pressures the world will present to them, but the difficulties and pressures from within themselves, their own hearts and minds. He is very much a man of his people. He will always be. And he is an extremely intelligent one, and a farsighted one. One does not see David Champlin forgetting, in the happiness of the present, the picture of what the years ahead could bring. And what he has been through here has only sharpened his awareness. Or so I believe."

  "Karl and I are unhappy about it," said Eve. "Not because they are in love, you understand, but because neither one of them seems to have very good sense. Sara has no patience, and David no 'give'—it doesn't make sense—"

  "It makes sense, Eve," said Bjarne. "It makes a sad sense. Yet it may work out. It may—if we let them alone, if we do not force our middle-aged romanticism upon them. Harvard, the North, his career—they may give David a different perspective, a deeper understanding, more courage—"

  "Perhaps by then," said Karl, "they will be over it"

  "No," said Bjarne, quietly for him when in a contradictory mood. "No. They will not. I can promise you this."

  ***

  Today, more than a year after that conversation with his brother, remembering it,
Bjarne Knudsen was conscious not only of David sitting, unseen, behind them, but also of Sara, both looking serious and proud in their gowns and mortarboards. He wanted to reach out a hand to each, draw them together, say, "Take what life has given you and be thankful, and take the suffering with it and be thankful, too...."

  He suddenly realized that the man who was a stimulating friend and such an unforgivably boring speaker had stopped talking and that President Vidal was standing at the long table with its twin cases of diplomas just behind it, prayerfully arranged and watched over so that the proper one would be handed to him just as the student for whom it was intended approached. The possibility of a slipup in this procedure fascinated Knudsen. He remembered one such nightmare ceremony at his own university—there was a rumbling behind, and he and Li'l Joe looked back and saw the first row of students filing across the balcony to the upper staircases-then he watched carefully and saw with relief that things were going smoothly for the first eight students. He drew in a breath sharply, because there was David just coming onto the stage—the David he had seen first cradled in a bureau drawer with Geneva Champlin standing over him knowing her God was in there with the child, knowing it; the David of the round dark eyes and the soft mouth rimmed with ice cream, playing with battered secondhand toys; the David looking very small and brown in a hospital bed trying to fight back tears of pain and fright, saying, "Prof—Prof—where's my Gramp? Isn't my Gramp coming back?"

  David's diploma was in his hands now and he was turning smartly and coming forward to the head of the steps in the center of the stage. He was looking straight ahead as he limped, no slower than the others, down the steps and up the aisle, very solemn and intent. It was the unexpected smile that lightened the dark face, the broad wink that took in both him and Li'l Joe that brought on the loud and startling "Harrumph!" and the embarrassing flood of moisture to his eyes. He reached for his handkerchief, amazed at his own weakness—he had thought better of himself—and blew his nose. In a minute there was the gentle sound of Li'l Joe doing the same, and Knudsen's feeling became one of amusement. Two grown men, side by side—it was a wondrous disgrace. He glanced down and was looking into Li'l Joe's face, into his eyes that were still moist, and then Li'l Joe's soundless laughter joined with his. He knew that they could not share again just this particular, private happiness, and he wanted never to forget it.

  ***

  Now, in less than an hour, it would be all over, thought David, and it hadn't been too bad; it hadn't been what you'd call exactly good, but it hadn't been too bad and he supposed that if he could say that about all the experiences of the lifetime that lay ahead, he would be more fortunate, far more fortunate, than most The mess of his sophomore year had done other things besides sharpen his wariness; it had built a wall around him that not even Joshua's army, blowing every horn in New Orleans, could topple, and from behind that wall had come summa cum laude. There were a few, seated behind and around him, who had climbed over the wall and visited with him there, and they'd been welcome because finally they understood that this was where he wanted to be. And there was Sara, always. And God give him strength now to think of it as "was" and not "is."

  But even if it had been all bad and there had been no Sara, die sight of two men easily discernible in the auditorium below him would have made up for it. Gramp had not understood about summa cum laude, and the Prof had explained, not talking down but making it clear, and Gramp had been without words to express his pride. When he did speak he grinned and said, "That ain't luck, son. That's you." David knew that he could get every degree the world of law had to offer, sit on the bench of the U.S. Supreme Court, and there would never be happiness and pride such as he saw now in Gramp's face.

  Meanwhile, he was Pengard, summa cum laude; it was all over, thank God, and maybe someday when he heard the college song he'd feel nostalgic and maudlin, but he doubted it.

  ***

  Graduation night was a time of well-bred, well-educated bedlam on the Pengard campus. The larger of the residence halls put on elaborate buffets, overseen by undergraduates, and relatives and faculty roamed the campus in the tow of gowned sons and daughters, from buffet to buffet, on a sort

  of progressive supper party, except for a select few of the students who preferred to give small parties in their rooms. By tradition graduates kept on their gowns.

  He had finally agreed, after pleading that was close to tearful from Chuck, to prepare red beans for the Quimby House buffet. It was the only one of the small residence halls serving buffet, and he sent Chuck up town for the necessary ingredients. As he watched the awkward blond boy drive off in baggy slacks and sweater, he wondered how he'd look in a dark suit and clerical collar with that mop of no-color hair and that earnest, country-boy face, standing in a pulpit. He couldn't picture it, yet he had not been in the least surprised when Chuck had told him of his decision to enter a theological seminary in New York after graduation. They had been changing the Yellow Peril to a car thereafter known only as the Peril, spraying it a dark blue. The paper shielding a side window became detached, and spray from Chuck's gun hit the glass full force. Chuck had said—"Doggone—" and David had laughed. "One of these days, you're going to cuss real bad and the world's going to come to a shrieking end. You and Tom. Only, he can do a good job of it if he's stirred up enough. What it is usually, you two sound like a Boy Scout handbook."

  "Too late to start now, dad. I'm going to enter a seminary, study for the ministry, if I get out of here with a diploma in my hand—"

  "The hell you say!"

  "Father McCartney's recommending me. It looks like it's going through O.K.—"

  "You have to have that? A recommendation?"

  "Yes. I know you're not exactly crazy about him—"

  "He's O.K."

  "He's helped me a lot. And I talked with the dean yesterday about realigning my schedule and—well, that's it. O.K. with you, Papa Champlin?"

  David grinned at him over the hood of the car. "It's fine with me, Chuck. I—well, honestly, I'm not surprised. It doesn't shake me up or anything. Maybe I've sort of expected it ever since—" he hesitated, awkward with the words, and started again—"ever since that night at the ALEC meeting when Nehemiah sounded off. I saw you afterward—"

  "I guess I made up my mind, sort of, that night. Only, I didn't know it. Seemed as though it came gradually, but I don't think it did. Sometimes I think we make decisions in our subconscious minds and don't know it, like going into the ministry or committing murder or something. Then for a long time our conscious mind fights 'em and then one day something comes along and the conscious mind gives up and there's the decision—all made and ready for action. Maybe Nehemiah was what did it."

  David inspected the shields over the headlights intently, not looking at Chuck. Just talking about Nehemiah made him half sick with a kind of frustrated anger, and it didn't do any good. There was a rage inside and nothing to rage at, nothing to hit out at. Nehemiah, just nineteen, dead someplace in Korea after the Army took him. And the hell of it, the damned hell of it, was that the Army hadn't really taken him; he'd walked in like a damned fool and said, "Here I am." Nehemiah!

  He'd done everything but get down on his knees to the crazy ape. "Man, you're out of your mind!" He'd almost been yelling. "I'm telling you, man, telling you—hell, I've been telling you for two years—that I'll work with you all summer and in vacation, help you catch up. God damn it, you ought to have known that just math wouldn't do it, should have studied more! It's not too late. Who told you you'd flunk out?"

  "Beanie."

  "Oh." David's face fell. "You're his favorite guy as far as math is concerned. He must have felt bad about it himself—"

  "I guess he did—"

  "But didn't he tell you if you'd catch up on the other stuff you could come back in the fall—get deferred if your grades were good enough then? I'll do everything I can, man—"

  "Cool off. It's too late anyhow. I already put in for the Army."

&nb
sp; "Oh, my God! Oh, Chrisalmighty! How crazy can you act! I'm asking you—why!"

  Nehemiah shrugged, sank lower in his chair in David's room and looked up at David under lowered eyebrows. "Because I'm just plain sick of the place, that's one reason. Look what happened to you. If I never see another Goddamned ofay face I'll be too happy to stand it. Anyhow, I started too late; I couldn't make it anyhow. It's not a bad deal, the Army. They train you. Hell, man, I'm a hot mathematician. You think they won't use that? They got a lot of soft jobs in the Army, technical jobs and stuff, for a guy who can handle mathematics like I can. And this way I'm not flunked out

  And the Army's waiting until the end of the term, till I get in two full years here. The Army's got its little khaki tongue hanging out, waiting for Nehemiah. Come a war, don't matter how much they hate us, they gotta have Sam—"

  "Why the Army? Why not the Air Force? That's a helluva lot better deal—"

  "Maybe they'd put me in a plane—"

  "You no like? And Gramp's going to be wing-walking next trip. They fly you everywhere in the Army, man. Everywhere—"

  "They doing it, not me. Anyhow, it's too late now. It's Army—"

  "You've gone out of your mind, you've flipped, you're— you're—what the hell, you some kind of a patriot or something?"

  "Christ, no! Are you?"

  "No. But I'm not saying if I live long enough and things change I couldn't be. I mean I'll take a crack at making things so I could be. As I said, if I live long enough—"

  "Long enough to see a white man swing for killing a Negro? You'll be living so long you'll be tired of living. You think it'll hurt to know how to use a gun?"