Five Smooth Stones

by Ann Fairbairn

  It might even be, he thought, that on this trip he would be seeing for the last time those festering sores that were the outer signs of the South's inner sickness, the signs "White" and "Colored." A circumstance, he thought grimly as he settled into his seat, that would in no way mean that he would forget them.

  Chittock had been understanding when, by good luck and hard work on the part of the long-distance operator, he had been tracked down to a Washington restaurant.

  Don't worry about it, Chittock said, and David knew the sympathy in his voice was genuine. God knew, the checking they had done on him had probably resulted in a detailed account even of Gramp and Tant'Irene teaching him how to use a knife and fork. Chittock had said he would get through to London and Geneva in the morning, set David's appointments up for later. "A week?" he asked, then, without waiting for an answer, "Ten days. I imagine there will be property to be settled."

  The fight for composure had begun when he called Sara. At first there had been things to do: his plane reservation to London to cancel, another reservation to be made for a night plane to New Orleans, Chittock to be called. The fact that Gramp was gone did not sink into his consciousness. Chittock's words "property to be settled" were the first touch of the probe on the nerve of his grief.

  "No!" cried Sara, in the first shock of the news. "Not Gramp!"

  "I'm afraid so, baby. It had to come sooner or later. But I wish—God, how I wish—he could have made that trip."

  "David, I'll be there in twenty minutes. Sooner if I can get a cab right away."

  "Please, Sara, don't. I'll be leaving almost as soon as you could get here."

  "David—David, I'm coming with you. You're feeling dreadfully—I can tell by your voice. I'm coming with you, or I'll meet you there tomorrow."

  "No! Sara, no! For God's sake, you know better than that. You can't come to New Orleans with me. You couldn't even walk down the street with me. It will only be for a little while. Go on over to London, and I'll be there as soon as I can. Maybe by the end of the week."

  She consented at last. "All right, David. If it will make it easier for you. Darling, I'm so sorry. Poor Gramp. Poor lamb. His whole life was in that trip, and now—"

  "I know—"

  "David, I love you. You know that. All that matters of me will be with you—"

  "I know."

  "I'll call you, dear. From London. I'll find out what time it is in that hellhole I can't go to with you, and when it's nine o'clock there Wednesday night, I'll call you."

  "All right, sweet. Take care, baby. And—love me!"

  "Yes. Oh, yes, yes, yes! Wait—David. Flowers. Red roses, the most beautiful you can find. 'With love to Gramp from Sara.' You won't forget?"

  "Of course not. Wait for me, y'hear!"

  "Stoopid! Where would I go—what would I do without you? I wouldn't even be!"

  "God, I'm sorry, babe. I wouldn't—"

  "David, David, dearest. Stop. You can't help it. You have to go to him now. This last time, when he needs you."

  When he hung up, his head dropped until it rested on the hand that still gripped the receiver. He heard no sounds at all, not the swish of tires on the street outside, not the voices and laughter of the men and women passing above, nor the sound of their feet on the sidewalk. Something great and good had gone away from him and from the world, and he was alone in the vacuum left by its passing. Makes a person sick, all that grief inside 'em, never coming out, like poison.

  He had lied to Sara; there was time, there were hours, that must pass before his plane left for New Orleans, but they must pass for him in a country of the heart where she could not follow. Had it been yesterday, the day before, ten years ago, that he had said to her, "There will be such wide areas in both our lives that we can't share, as though our spirits were each on another planet"?

  What could Sara know, what could Sara ever know, of the wiry strength of thin brown arms picking a frightened child up in the night and gentling its crying? What could Sara—little love—know of a frightened brown boy sobbing in his grandmother's arms because he had heard for the first time the taunting insult of a white? What could Sara know of the man who had taken him from his grandmother's arms and set him on his feet and said in a voice the child had never heard before: "Stop it, son! You going to be crying all your life, you keep on like this. There ain't nothing you can do about n. Reckon me n' Gram's got to teach you about God some more. Come on, little man, right now we goes and gets ourselfs an ice-cream cone"? The money, the hoard of nickels and dimes and pennies they had broached to still his crying, to make him forget everything but their love—what could Sara know of these things? Or of a man and his grandson making music in the steaming heat of a New Orleans night, in a little cottage in Beauregard, making their own music against the world? "I love you, Sara; I love you, but this is a different world. I'll never have to leave you and go to it again, be patient with me this one time."

  Pop Jefferson had said—what had Pop said?—"He went real quick, David, real quick. God was good to him. Ambrose got to him and had him in his arms, and he only spoke once, son. Said your name. Said something like 'Need—needs David—' and then God took him; took right holt of his hand, son. He'd been seeing some of his friends, telling 'em about his trip. He had his passport in his pocket."

  Then Pop had said: "Li'l Joe's at Jones's Funeral Home. We figured to wait till you got here to make arrangements. Figured you'd know what he'd want. We're fixing the parade, us lodge brothers, and the music. We know he wanted that We're leaving the rest of it up to you."

  He knew; he knew what Gramp wanted. They'd fixed it up a long time ago, the first summer he'd been home from Pengard.

  "Look, son," said Gramp. "Come the time you got to bury me, there's a few things I wants done."

  "Gramp, for gosh sake! You're not going to die. You're talking foolish."

  "No, I ain't, son. Man's got to get shet of it all sometime. Every man. Black and white. Might as well have what he wants before they puts him away for good. I put it in writing, David, but I wants you to know about it from me. First thing, you keep that damfool Preacher Sims away from me, y'hear! Lawd! Preach a man right out of his coffin, Sims would. Besides, he ain't always strickly sober. Maybe I ain't either, but I don't want no cheap whiskey fumes blowing oyer my coffin. And I don't want a lot of talking, nohow."

  "Listen, Gramp—"

  "Hush up, son. You listen. I'll have the music going with me to the graveyard. 'Flee as a Bird' maybe, and 'Garden of Flowers.' Them's real pretty ones. On the way back I guess it don't matter so much, but I sure likes 'Walking with the King.' George Lewis and his boys, they plays that like five hundred, and I'd like it, but I don't suppose it makes much difference what they plays on the way back."

  (They'll play it, Gramp. I'll tell them to play it. Whatever you told me that night, whatever you told me, I'll do it.)

  "And at the services I'd like a little music. If God don't call Emma Jefferson before He calls me, I'd like for Emma to play 'Take My Hand, Precious Lord' and 'Oh, Mary, Don't You Weep.' They was your Gram's favorites, and I sure like hearing 'Oh, Mary' when they sings it. And for sure I want the preacher—and you make sure it ain't Sims—to read the Ninety-first Psalm. I've got it all wrote out here. Look, David, you watch where I'm putting this piece of paper now, right here in the buffet under the forks. Mind you don't forget."

  "All right, Gramp."

  "Get the Bible, David. Been a long time since I heard the Ninety-first Psalm. Read it to me, son. And don't go showing no disrespeck."

  David answered his grandfather's grin with one of his own; he knew what Li'l Joe meant. Gramp had decided there wasn't any better practice for a boy learning to read than the Bible, and he'd cut his reading teeth on it. The first time Gramp had asked for the Ninety-first Psalm and he'd come to the words "He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust," he had looked up and seen Gramp, head cocked on one side like a bird's, watching him and smiling, and
suddenly he had snickered. Gramp had said: "What you snickering at, boy? If they's something funny, laugh like a man; don't go to snickering like an idiot. What's so funny?"

  And David had told him, because he knew Gramp wouldn't mind, would even laugh with him. "When I was reading about the feathers and the wings and I looked up and you was looking at me like a sparrow and I seen you under a big wing, like an eagle's, a big, big wing, and you was peeking out and peeking out and smiling—"

  And Gramp, as he'd known he would, was smiling with him and then he said: "Stop your foolishness now, boy, before you gets disrespeckful. Just keep on a-reading."

  He heard the voice of the boy and the voice of the youth, now: "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.... He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou

  trust... Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night

  David Champlin—Pengard, Harvard, Oxford—heard a new sound, the rasp of his own sob, and there in the noisy New York night he cried like a child for a gentle brown man who lay in a mortuary in New Orleans, little quieter when he slept in death than he had been when he slept in life and warm blood was in his veins.

  He had his passport in his pocket.

  CHAPTER 58

  Ambrose drove the cab directly to Pop Jefferson's. It was not yet daylight, and the air was chill and damp. Lights were burning in the apartment of the old building; and when they entered, David heard Emma moving around in the kitchen. Without taking off his topcoat he walked back and surprised her at the stove, throwing a strong arm around her as he had done for years, saying, "Hiya, Sugar!"

  She did not laugh this time as she usually did. "Lord, David!" she said. "It's sure fine to see you." He saw her eyes fill with tears.

  He ate breakfast because it was put before him and because he could not destroy Emma's faith that good hot food would ease almost any ill of body or mind, including grief. After the meal he refused gently, because he did not want to hurt his feelings—Ambrose's offer to put himself and his cab at his disposal for the day, asked only that Ambrose drive him over the river to Beauregard and then back to Jones's Funeral Home. "There's something at the house I want to pick up," he said. "Gramp wrote out what he wanted done, and I want to make sure I don't forget anything."

  At Jones's they set the funeral for the next afternoon, and he went over each point of Gramp's instructions with Hosea Jones, Zeke's son. David smiled when he said, "Gramp said, 'For Gawd's sake not Preacher Sims.'"

  "Couldn't be," said Jones. "We buried Sims six months ago. Wasn't anybody didn't expect him to start preaching his own funeral right from the coffin. You know Reverend Jackson?"

  David shook his head.

  "Him and your Gramp was acquainted. He's not much for talk. Li'l Joe liked him. We'll get him, and you can talk to him before the service. He'll go 'long with whatever you say."

  David was able to reach Reverend Jackson only by telephone, but he was convinced the minister understood. He told him about the Ninety-first Psalm and he told Emma about the music at the services and Pop and Ambrose about the parade music, and by midafternoon everything was arranged and David was free.

  There was little time for the emptiness of the cottage in Beauregard to get to him. The telephone rang continually. At six, Miz Timmins came over. "I come to carry you over to supper," she said. "You can't stay here, eating alone, with your grandaddy gone. You come over and eat with us like you used to. I still got the bib I used to make you wear."

  David laughed. "I don't need it. I swear I don't, Miz Timmins." Miz Timmins had aged, he thought. He hadn't realized how much when he saw her on his last trip home, a couple of weeks before. The years of childbearing and hard work seemed to have been lying in wait for her and attacked her when she was defenseless. He saw the age, and he saw something else: his own grief mirrored in her eyes as it had been in the eyes of Pop and Emma and Ambrose, and old Zeke Jones when he had come in to greet him at the Funeral Home.

  "I'd like that, Miz Timmins," he said.

  After supper, back in the little house that was emptier, he thought, than any house must ever have been, the telephone rang again. For a moment, sandy-eyed from fatigue, he considered not answering it. When he did the sound of Chuck Martin's voice surprised him into complete wakefulness.

  "Where are you, man!"

  "Right here, David."

  "You mean in New Orleans?"

  "Right downtown. I came down yesterday. I heard about your grandfather this morning but I couldn't reach you. What can I do, David?"

  "Nothing, Chuck. Everything's—I mean, it's just one of those things. Ain't nothin' no one kin do about it. You might —well, you might just sort of say something for Gramp."

  Chuck's voice was low. "He doesn't need it now, David. He took care while he was here that he wouldn't need prayers when he was gone. But I'm sort of reminding the Lord about you, dad."

  "Thanks. Listen, Chuck—what you doing here in New Orleans?"

  "This school mess."

  "School—" David's voice trailed off. He felt a quick shame. Although Pop and Emma and Miz Timmins had talked about it—Miz Timmins with frank disapproval of this "stirring up a whole mess of trouble"—the conversation had barely disturbed the periphery of his thinking, centered as his thoughts had been on his own loss, on the sorrow that it was too late for Gramp ever to see his Tiger, Tiger.

  Now he said, regaining his composure, "School mess— helluva note, isn't it? But I still don't see why you're here."

  "I'll tell you when I see you. Wait—there's another friend of yours here. Hang on—"

  There was a pause, then someone said "David—" and before the voice could go on, David broke in with a startled exclamation. "Brad! Brad Willis! For God's sake! What in hell are you doing in New Orleans?"

  "Tell you later. Is there anything I can do?"

  David repeated what he had told Chuck.

  "Are you alone there?" asked Brad. . "Yes."

  "How about inviting your old boss over? Or would you rather—"

  "God, yes! Where are you?"

  "At ALEC headquarters. I don't know where I'll be later'."

  "You'll have to get a colored cab—"

  "I'm ahead of you. Your friend Ambrose—my friend now —is here. I have to go to Baton Rouge tomorrow, then come back early Thursday morning. I'll be over as soon as Ambrose can get me there."

  David had thought, before he talked with Brad, that he wanted to be alone. Now he knew he did not. Now he knew that no matter how tired he was, a night alone in the little house Gramp had left the day before, and to which he would never return, would be almost more than he could take. He walked to the door of Gramp's room and, head averted, closed it softly. Brad could have his room and he would sleep on the divan. He checked the refrigerator and found beer in plentiful supply. There was a nearly full fifth of bourbon in one cupboard.

  Brad's handclasp was warm, but did not linger. He knows me well, thought David; he knows one kind word and I might break down like a blubbering kid.

  "Got a razor?" asked Brad.

  "Sure. Electric, no less."

  "Pajamas?"

  "Slews of them. Anything you need. Including beer. Or hard liquor, if that's the way your taste runs. It's—hell, it's good to see you."

  "I don't mean to flatter myself, but I thought it might be. I mean—"

  "I know what you mean. What'll it be? Beer or bourbon?"

  "Bourbon. The first one straight, if you don't mind." He made a face. "Maybe it will kill the taste of this damned place."

  "It's glamorous. It's cosmopolitan. It's picturesque. It stinks with history."

  "It is also phony, corrupt, bigoted—and the history it stinks with I don't like. Did you think I would?"

  "No. That's why I was so surprised when I heard your voice. The first time I met you—way back in East Cambridge —you said you'd never been here, never had any intention of being here." David motioned
Brad to the divan, pushed the coffee table in front of him, and handed him his drink. He sat in Gramp's chair himself. When he put his drink on the end table beside it, he noticed that dust had gathered even since Gramp had left the house the evening before, and with a facial tissue from the box on the table he wiped it clean quickly, forgetting, forgetting completely that Li'l Joe Champlin would not see the dust now to "tsk-tsk" about, thinking, as he took the tissue from the box, Gramp's got the sniffles again.

  Brad was saying: "You know how one always has a mental picture of places one's heard about? So help me, David, this is just as I had pictured it." He smiled. "I see now where you got your persnickety neatness."

  "By hand," said David. "Believe me, I was brought up by hand to be neat. No cocoa and cookies at bedtime if mere was so much as a toy train still on the floor."

  Sitting in Li'l Joe Champlin's chair, with Li'l Joe lying in a mortuary across the river, with Li'l Joe no farther from him than his right hand, with Li'l Joe gone yet as close to him as the air he was breathing, David felt for the first time in his life the peculiar pride of ownership. In some strange way the pride seemed to come to him from Gramp, as though sitting in that chair he was somehow a part of Gramp and Gramp of him, and the little house of them both.

  His own pennies and nickels and dimes, his own sweat and work, had not gone into this little house. "Sell it," he had said to Gramp. "Sell it and come north with me." Now he knew it was going to take all the guts he had to go to a real-estate agent tomorrow and say: I want to sell the property at 3020 St. Augustine Street. Lock, stock, and barrel. Sell it all: the new screen door, and the front porch Gramp had added on with his own hands; the kitchen with all the cupboards— Neva's a terrible woman for a lot of cupboards—where Tant' Irene had held him close the night Gram died; the roof from which Gramp had almost fallen, from which he had hung cussing, he said, like five hundred, till his friends rescued him. Sell it all, the room where he sat now, the piano in the dining room, the dining room where he had studied, where the portable typewriter Gramp had given him had taken his breath away; the bathroom in which Gramp had laid every tile; this house where he and Gramp had "made a little music" so many nights. Sell it all, including the bedroom with the closed door where Gramp had slept so quietly.