Five Smooth Stones

by Ann Fairbairn

  "Climb down, babe—"

  "You know damned well I'm right. They're no better than the plantation owners were. Ol' Massa dished out religion the way a doctor dishes out massive doses of sedation in the disturbed ward of a mental hospital. Perhaps the motives are different, but the results are the same."

  "Sue-Ellen, honest to Gawd—and I'm taking my life in my hands when I say it—I've known whites with more understanding, more empathy if you will, for your people down here—dammit your people—than you have. Chap named Chuck Martin for one."

  Uncle Charlie.' Good old 'Chuck'—"

  "Oh, hell, I might have known you'd say that. He can't help what his parents named him. He's got a middle name that's worse—Beauregard—so he's stuck with Charles."

  "Take him—and lose him."

  "You're itching to get back to flogging the preachers—"

  "David, I'm on a lot of the same sucker mailing lists you must be on. Crap like a certain so-called bishop sends out— 'Take a dollar bill, put it in Chapter So-and-So of the Bible, leave it there two days, then mail it to me.' Instant salvation."

  "We've been over this before. Ad nauseam. I've told you that you underestimate your people here. Your people, God damn it. You've found out that down here education will get you nowhere in no time. You're still a nigra. Still a nigger in a town like Heliopolis. They haven't even gotten out of the slime as far as 'nigra.' And what are you up north?" She didn't reply, waiting for him to continue. "All right. Up north you're that 'beautiful Negro.' Graduate of a famous university. Brilliant. Wonderful, isn't it, what 'they' can do if they have the chance? You're still isolated as a human being. What makes you so Goddamn much better than people here? Education? That's not enough." He sighed, looking at her, knowing she was only becoming more annoyed, fretting under his words. "What do you know, actually know, of the faith, the suffering, the endurance, the hopelessness of these people? Your own experiences were bitter ones. What Negro's aren't? But have you lived every day, every hour, every Goddamned second, with what these people have lived with? And if you had, would you have what they've got? Faith. 'Primitive'! I ought to wash your beautiful superior mouth out with soap and water."

  "Perhaps I didn't quite mean—"

  "You did, babe, you did. I don't give a damn if a preacher's a charlatan or a saint at this point. If he's a charlatan his little flock are onto him. Don't think they aren't. But where else, how else, can they find release from pressures you can't seem to understand? They've got to have a rallying point for faith. Many of the early saints are great in my eyes because their faith was a lonely one, solitary."

  "Faith! Honestly, David. What faith? In what? And why?"

  David shrugged hopelessly, reached for the check. " ' 'Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces—'" It was one of Sara's favorite poems, and he wished the words had not come to him just then. He was surprised to hear Sue-Ellen finish the verse: " 'That miss the many-splendoured thing.'" She laughed. "You call it 'faith.' I call it a sort of mental anesthesia. The 'many-splendoured thing' in my book is freedom. And we'll never reach it with anesthetized minds."

  "Good God! You seem to think faith is standing in the way. Damn it, woman, it's the blasted key! Maybe it won't do the trick all by itself, but without it you and I would be running around down here with our tongues hanging out—not getting anywhere. I mean anywhere. Even Luke's grasped that essential fact. So it came from the people in the Big House originally? So their descendants are having to reckon with it now. They're being beat over the head with their own weapon. And God help 'em. Them there angels with flapping wings these parasitic—your word, for Christ's sake, not mine!— preachers are telling them about just might carry these people to a ballot box before they carry 'em up yonder." He stood up, tired of trying to talk to her. "Let's go, Sister Moore."

  She walked beside him to the cashier's desk and after he had paid the check laid her hand on his arm. "It's your last night here, David," she said. "Can't you get out of that meeting?"

  He looked down at her, smiling to hide the irritation. "Sure I can."

  "We could go—"

  "But I don't intend to."

  "I kept this evening free on purpose—"

  "Sorry, Sue-Ellen. If I'd known that I would have gone to the Sunday-night service—"

  "You should have thought of it. Men have no sentiment—"

  He laughed down at her. "You aren't exactly loaded with it—"

  "I'll see you when you come back?"

  "If you're awake—"

  "You could always wake me. Not everyone can."

  "Thanks. That sounds like a compliment—"

  He was relieved to get in the car and drive off. This was the first time he'd realized—perhaps he'd better say permitted himself to realize—that Sue-Ellen might have more than just an impersonal joining of forces in mind. An intimate involvement with Sue-Ellen Moore, or any woman like her, was the last damned thing he wanted. And he had too much respect for her as a person, her brains and dedication, to entertain any idea of a quick in-and-out-of-bed affair with her. Also, there was an uneasy feeling now that such a relationship wouldn't be possible with her, that it would mean more than momentary pleasure, that she would want it to be a continuing thing. A possessive Sue-Ellen—God help any man who got on that spot. Yet it could be that what she wanted—and needed—was some man to possess her, that under those circumstances she might become—Hell! let someone else experiment, Champlin. You aren't the type—

  It had been more than two years, and he still could not throw himself into an affair as other men could. He must always remain apart from his own emotions in a sort of split-personality objectivity. For a long time now he had felt that he was watching himself, watching his own tired body push itself up to and beyond its limits, and this duality extended even to his emotional experiences. They did not happen within the man who stood apart, nor was the physical fatigue a part of that man. The body of the one seemed powered by the will of the other, fueled by it, driven. Only the deadening exhaustion of sheer physical strain brought them together, in one body, in sleep. And the man who stood apart was the repository of the memories, tried to hold them back from the other man whom he drove with such relentless cruelty along an uphill road.

  ***

  "You gets here by the down road and you leaves by the up road." Those were the directions Elder Garrison had given David to reach the little church that sat back from the road, on the floor of a small valley.

  "Sort of like life," David had said, and the church elder had laughed. "That's what I tells my people."

  When David drove up, Garrison was standing just outside the church door, a heavy, handsome man with glowing brown skin and grizzled, white-black hair so effective it seemed to have been done by a makeup artist. They shook hands, and the elder introduced him to the people as they arrived—kindly, smiling people whose handclasps drew him into themselves, made him a part of their lives, trusting him because Garrison had brought him. This intangible something he could not describe—this sharing, however disparate their individual circumstances, of a common destiny, this reaching out, was an experience no white would ever know, no black could ever convey. Their loss, he had often thought. Yes, Lord, their loss.

  "Guess the saints is all inside now," said Garrison, and together they entered the weatherbeaten, rickety frame building that was the house where the people worshiped God. Worn, patched-up, makeshift pews were supplemented by equally worn and patched-up chairs. The walls were bare boards, not even protected by plaster. David had never entered one of these little churches, either in country or town, without being deeply moved, without hearing a voice deep within himself crying in protest, and he could silence the voice only by the remembrance of the words, repeated over and over to himself until they brought peace—"Wherever two or three are gathered together in my name—"

  He and Garrison talked for a few minutes behind the pulpit, and Garrison said: "Think we can get you to honor us with a song, Lawyer Champlin
? And maybe play piano? Ain't much of a piano, but we hears tell you're a mighty fine singer and player—"

  "Where did you hear a tall tale like that?" He asked the question from politeness; he was sure someone from another community must have visited Big Mountain and mentioned it.

  "Little fella come see me the other day. Bald-headed little fella. I disremember his name. Working with ALEC. Least that what he say. You sit here, Lawyer Champlin. Soon's you hear your name you come up to the pulpit. That means I'm introducing you. After that we'll have a little music. You think that's a good way?"

  "Sure. Anything you say." For a moment Garrison's disclosure about Garnett knocked his little planned speech out of his mind. The hell Garnett was working with ALEC. David doubted that Sue-Ellen had discussed any proposed coalition of activities with Garnett; whenever Garnett had been around she had treated him very definitely as a subordinate. She ought to be tipped off to the fact that Garnett had evidently sized up her group and ALEC, decided ALEC was the best bet and was going to try to worm his way back into ALEC's graces. She was asking for trouble if she kept him around, and any joint plan of action by the two groups was out until she got rid of him.

  Garrison was talking now from the pulpit, had been for several minutes. "... and so we're privileged to have tonight this distinguished guest here, this fine young man who's come all the way down here to tell us 'bout something we been hearing about for a hundred years and ain't known nothing about yet—freedom. Lawyer Champlin—"

  ***

  Driving the "up road" back to the motel, he decided first to wait until morning to talk to Sue-Ellen, then changed his mind. He and Luke wanted to leave early; she might still be asleep, and he might as well get it over with while the feeling of accomplishment from the meeting he had just left was still with him. He was glad they were leaving in the morning; Sue-Ellen seemed perilously close to becoming a Problem.

  He saw that there was a light in her room, a little beyond his. Luke apparently hadn't made out too well; the shades were drawn in their room, and a light was burning, indicating that Luke was probably there in bed reading. He'd tell her about his misgivings over Garnett as soon as he saw her, then get away fast and get a night's sleep.

  He never had a chance. He had not taken more than three steps into the room when the blow landed on one cheek, openhanded but backed by the wiry strength of an enraged woman who believed in physical training. The blow was so hard, so unexpected, it sent him off-balance, one hand reaching out and grabbing the footboard of the bed. It also was so savage that it knocked out of him, for that moment, any anger, leaving him gaping in stunned amazement and shock at a finely sculptured face grown gaunt with rage, at eyes ink black with fury.

  "Good God! What—"

  "You bastard."

  That was all. Why didn't she scream, curse—she wouldn't be half so dangerous as she was now, tight-lipped, speaking in a half-whispering snarl, deep in her throat. He looked quickly around for some sign of a weapon, saw none. This woman was killing mad. She moved toward him, and he saw that her fingers were curled, long nails clawlike. He grabbed her wrists before she could avoid him, held them and kept her at a distance, feeling, he thought later that night, much as he would have felt trying to hold an enraged mountain lion.

  "Keep your hands off me." She did not struggle, and he loosened his grip. But only slightly.

  "When you tell me why in hell you put one of yours on me I will. When someone hits me I want to know why. Right now."

  "Let go of me." Still that low snarl.

  "And lose an eye? You think I'm crazy?"

  She twisted both arms suddenly in a downward arc, and the pressure was so strong on his thumbs that his loosened grip was broken and she was free. He couldn't get away from her without sidestepping or rolling backward over the bed.

  The latter move he didn't let occupy his mind for more than a small fraction of a second. And if he tried to sidestep he wouldn't be quick enough. For some reason—shock, he supposed—he had no impulse to retaliate in kind. He knew she expected it, even wanted it.

  Her breathing was short, heavy; with her eyes still fixed on him she reached sideways and snatched a newspaper clipping from the bureau. He would have expected her hand to be shaking with anger when she held the clipping out to him, but it was steady. And this was even more dangerous. God damn, what in hell ailed the woman? Maybe she was a manic-depressive, an honest-to-God mental case—yet he knew she wasn't. He couldn't read the clipping without taking his eyes off her. At the moment that seemed risky.

  "Read it. Read it, you son of a bitch."

  There was nothing to do but take a chance. He glanced down at the clipping in his hand. It was a gossip column from a New York paper. Every now and then the columnists ran a paragraph that was led into with the identifying words in boldface caps: "Torchbearers." In the text the names of individuals were also in boldface. The items were short, always in the same style: "So-and-So for that movie starlet who just married her producer. So-and-So for her ex, now living it up—or down?—at a Swiss ski resort with a famous Italian beauty." Vapid stuff that could have come strictly from the need to fill space, and out of the columnist's own sterile imagination.

  Halfway down the paragraph his own name sprang out at him, and as he read the item there was the familiar feeling of tightening knots of tension in his belly, nerves crawling like snakes just under his skin. The item read: "David Champlin, former Boston attorney and State Department appointee, and Sara Kent, young American artist now getting kudos from European critics—for each other."

  He wanted to run, leave Sue-Ellen and this small room, find a solitary place where he could battle with what the item had awakened in him.

  The hoarse half-whisper broke through to him: "I didn't know. I was stupid. But Garnett knew. He gave me this. He told me who she is."

  (Don't snarl at me. Let me alone. Let me the hell out of here—) "It's no one's—"

  "Be quiet. Oh, be quiet, you son of a bitch. Do you think I'd have had anything to do with you if I'd known?"

  There was no time now to kick himself for not getting the hell out of this situation before, for not seeing more clearly than he had that Sue-Ellen was not just becoming a Problem, but had become one.

  This was a woman enraged by jealousy beyond all reason, her rage the more flaming because she had learned that he had been involved with a white woman—and the hint contained in the column that he was still involved emotionally. There was more than resentment in her, there was bitter fury, brought to life by the awakening of memories of her first lover, a white man. There was no "right thing" to say at the moment, only a multitude of wrong ones, and he said the first one that came into his head: "You're acting like a three-year-old."

  During the storm that rocked the room for the next few minutes his only thought was escape, but he was literally trapped, with Sue-Ellen standing now between him and the door. He wished again that she would curse; obscenity would be easier to take than the accusations she was hurling at him. The only answer seemed to be to knock her clear across the room, but he was damned if he wanted his first physical attack on a woman to be on this embittered, enraged embodiment of hate. She gave no signs of running down, of running out of either words or breath. A flash of memory brought to his mind the scene in a Boston kitchen when his landlady had launched a tirade of filth at him because she had seen Sara coming to his apartment. Then he thought of nothing but the need to duck as Sue-Ellen, in an incredibly swift movement, launched a heavy glass ashtray at his head, followed through with a vase, then started in a quick rush toward him. He heard the words, louder, far louder, than the previous torrent, "white woman's nigger—" and moved in.

  Because she was moving he caught her off-balance, one arm around her waist, lifting her feet from the floor, one hand holding one of her wrists behind her. It was only a few feet to the shower, but by the time he made it he was out of breath. This was a powerful woman with—at last—a powerful voice. In the shower room
he wrestled with her briefly, freeing her arm but holding her, still off the floor, tightly against him. With his free hand he opened the door of the shower stall, reached in, and turned on the cold water full force. Somehow he forced her to the floor of the stall, rolling her under the icy cascade, then shut the glass door of the shower. The door to the bedroom opened outward and he slammed it shut, wedging a heavy chest of drawers across it. Even as he hurried from the room, Sue-Ellen's screams following him, he thought what a damned shame it was to subject such physical perfection to such an ignoble and complete messing up.

  The tiny screened window high up in the wall of the bathroom was open, and Sue-Ellen's screams for deliverance, he thought, must be heard by the occupants of every room in the place.

  He ran the last few steps to the office. No man could have sent him fleeing at that speed, but Sue-Ellen was making him wish he had wings. When he thudded into the lobby her voice was still shatteringly audible, louder and more carrying even than it had been when she had first regained her breath. All he could see as he entered the lobby were the enormously wide eyes of the tall thin night clerk behind the desk.

  "Man!" he gasped as David hurried toward him. "Man! You in trouble! You in real trouble—"

  "Tell me something I don't know—" David fumbled for his wallet. "Give me our bill quick. Tell that kid Luke I'll call him from somewhere in the morning—"

  The clerk was out from behind the desk, grasping his arm. "You ain't leaving. Where the hell you gonna go? Ain't no-wheres nearer'n a hundred miles you can find a place to sleep." He was pulling David around the side of the counter. "Y'all come back here to my room. Gimme the keys to your car. I'll stash it away in a garage out back."

  "No—"

  "Y'all do like I say. Far's I know you done taken off, anybody asks. An' they sure as hell gonna ask—"

  David found himself in a tiny bedroom in the rear, between kitchen and lobby. That chest of drawers he had wedged across the shower room door had been heavy, but sooner or later Sue-Ellen would be able to push her way out. He had to stay now. Too much time had been wasted. The clerk said: "I sleeps here when I works, and goes home weekends. I'll bring you a drink later." He put the old-fashioned key he carried in the keyhole. "You lock the door, y'hear. I'll get that woman out."