Five Smooth Stones

by Ann Fairbairn

  "Wait, Brad. The hell with what Suds said. They didn't hurt Tinker, did they? Those sons of bitches that jumped me?"

  "They didn't have time. Calhoun Road isn't exactly the Indianapolis Speedway, but the jeep was doing a good job, I gather. Shots were fired, but the men made their car and took off, and Tinker was back waiting for the jeep. Then Sheba was back, and they gave the troops a bad time at first. One of the soldiers was colored, and he says he 'gentled' them. Also, Jim Towers got there about then. He'd heard the shots. He helped with the dogs."

  "You mean that dog saved my life?"

  "I won't go that far, but he helped. The Army would have busted them up anyhow. But Tinker helped. And both dogs left their marks. There was blood on the road between you and their car, and the grapevine has it that a white man was treated for a badly torn arm and another for a chewed-up leg at the hospital on the other side of town."

  "Lawd!" said David. "Lawd! Lawd! You sho' been good to me—"

  Brad looked closely at the man on the bed, put his hands on the arm of the chair, and started to rise. "My time's about up. You're beginning to look tired—"

  "No, for God's sake! You've got to get me off the ground. You left me there a bloody mess—"

  "So I did. The Army handled the immediate medical work. You were in shock, and they did what was necessary so that when you got to the hospital it wouldn't be a dead-on-arrival. Plasma, control of bleeding, antibiotics, that sort of thing. You made the plane with Luke eventually. Mrs. Anderson went with you along with Chuck. She kept up the treatment—"

  "How'd Anderson manage?"

  "He traded her in temporarily for a couple of Army corps-men. They touched down in New York, where Luke's magazine had everything set up at the Medical Center. Chuck says he doesn't think the landing-gear wheels even stopped rolling. Then they brought you here. Suds met the plane. Incidentally, they operated on Luke. Blood clot. The only after-effect so far is amnesia covering about an hour before it happened."

  "Brad." David was quiet for a moment. "Brad, it's not right. Luke and I. If we'd been someone like Jim Haskin or Abr'am, we'd be dead now. But just because we knew the right people—or something. That's just too damned much luck, Brad, too damned much—"

  "Is that all you've got to worry about? It just happened that way. My grandmother used to say if you're born to be hanged you'll never drown."

  The door opened, and a nurse with red hair and freckles and an obvious effort to look stern came in and said, "Time's up—"

  "Please," said David. "Please, he's doing me good. Just a few more minutes, huh?"

  Brad covered his mouth with a quick hand to hide a smile

  at the expression of warm indulgence on her face as she said hesitantly, "We-e-ell—"

  "Be sweet, now—"

  "Just a few minutes. And don't tell Dr. Sutherland—"

  "No, ma'am. God forbid—"

  She left, and Brad shook his head. "How do you do it? How the hell do you do it? Eating out of your hand. Shot, beaten half to death, and spoiled rotten all at once. You could ask for the moon here, and I have not the slightest doubt you'd get it. With butter and jam."

  David did not look at him, kept his eyes on the screen in front of the door. "Know something, Chief? I'd trade it in, whatever the hell it is you're talking about, for something I'll never have again. One good leg. Just one."

  Brad said. "Hell, I know—" and David turned his head to face him. "Forget it, Chief. Look—you and Chuck away, Fred, I suppose, still out of the picture, and Hummer—he's gone. Who in hell's minding the store?"

  "Les, Haskin, Abraham. And doing a fine job. If, on next Monday morning, more than fifteen Negroes cross Main Street to go to work I'll join the Klan. I'm going back there tonight. I'm just up for a day or so. Mainly to check on you."

  "The kids?"

  "Fifty-dollar fines. That's all."

  "You're lying for sure!"

  "No. I stayed down until the next noon, and if you think that was any fun with you and Luke possibly listening to harp tune-ups, you're crazy. As it turned out, I didn't need to stay. I stood by and let Les handle the defense, and nicely he did it. But I am quite certain that the interested spectators in the courtroom accounted for the moderate fines. Army, press, and two United States marshals. It was all over in an hour and a half, and I made the one o'clock plane from Capitol City and arrived here while you were in surgery."

  Brad came closer to the bed, hand outstretched, and David grasped it with his free left hand.

  "If I behave and go now, perhaps they'll give both Chuck and me a chance to see you tomorrow before I leave. And any fool can tell you're tired."

  "So I'm tired. It's something different anyhow. At least it doesn't hurt. And thanks, Chief."

  "What for?"

  "Damned if I know. I'll study about it and tell you tomorrow. Ask 'em to push Peg's name up on the list so I can see her soon."

  "Right." Brad released David's hand and started for the door. Before he reached the screen he stopped at the low voice behind him.

  "I thought you'd break down and tell me before you left What're you holding back, Chief?"

  He turned. "Nothing. What's eating you? Nothing. You're getting fanciful."

  "Think so? After watching you hold out on surprise testimony as often as I have? I don't know when you're holding back?"

  "If I am, I don't know it. It's in my subconscious and I'll have to rout it out in my sleep and tell you tomorrow. Is that O.K.?"

  "No. But I'll settle for it for now."

  ***

  Ten days later Brad Willis and Suds Sutherland had coffee in the hospital coffee shop while they waited for Chuck Martin.

  "Do they give this coffee to the patients, Doctor?" asked Brad.

  "No. Theirs is better."

  "I was just thinking of our boy. This stuff could set him back where he was when they scraped him off the road."

  He stirred his coffee, then looked at the entrance door with obvious relief. "Here's Chuck—"

  Chuck, looking no more dignified and ministerial in his clericals than he had when he was in duffel coat and corduroys at Pengard, but with his hair slicked down in temporary subjection, sat beside Brad and said, "How's it going?"

  "So far, very well," said Suds.

  "I would say he's as well taken care of and spoiled a patient as Endicott Memorial has ever had," said Brad.

  "Everyone loves the guy," said Suds. Chuck's eyebrows rose slowly, and Suds added, "That is a gross exaggeration, of course. There must be a million or so who hate him. Obviously. Thank God only three or four of them caught up with him." He added cream and sugar to his second cup of coffee, sipped it, and said morosely: "It must be hell. Day and night, not knowing anything for sure except that you're surrounded by hate and disgust and that somewhere near you, always, there are those who would kill you without even calling it murder. And go scot-free." He pushed his cup away from

  him, plump face grim. "Can you keep him out of there, Brad, after this? You, Chuck?"

  "No," said Brad quietly. "I can't and Chuck can't. He may elect to stay out of there, but it will be David Champlin who's staying out by his own decision. Hell, Suds, he was all set to come back here two weeks ago. And stay. At least for a good while. The next thing I knew he was walking through the door of our headquarters in Cainsville. Something had triggered him off."

  "We haven't had a chance yet to find out what," said Chuck.

  Brad said, "His nerves—" and Suds interrupted him. "You think I don't know? Thin as a damned scarecrow. Probably an ulcer, although it hasn't bothered him here, but from what he says it's been giving him a bad time for quite a while. Now this. I don't think he can take another bout of it after this."

  "He'll try," said Chuck. "Sure as I'm sitting here, he'll try, eventually."

  "We have months, perhaps a year or more to worry about that in," said Brad. "He's not so quixotic that he'll leave here as long as he's under treatment. Or, poor devil, having periodic sur
gery. I've a more pressing problem at the moment."

  "Concerning David?" asked Suds.

  "Very much so. And Sara. I think you're going to have to let her see him, Suds. This business of not letting him get emotionally upset is fine, but he's definitely aware of something. He accused me yesterday of holding out on him. I denied it. And how much longer can you hold the lid on Sara?"

  "Indefinitely. Which has been one of the great surprises of my life. Brad, we're taking chances. I don't want him put through any emotional pulling and hauling."

  Chuck said: "Suds, will you let me tell him? It's not a job I relish, but I think I can handle it. If, of course, you think it's safe." He made a quick hand movement toward his hair, then checked himself, grinning. "Trying to keep it civilized." He waited a moment then prodded, "How about it, Suds?"

  "It's 'safe' enough. It won't endanger his life, if that's what you thought I meant. But I'm shying away from adding emotional wounds—or opening old ones—with a guy as sick and suffering as he is."

  "I've had some experience with human beings myself, Suds. And a lot with David."

  "Why don't we wait till he asks?"

  "He won't," said Brad. "Not because he's too stubborn or proud but because if he really wants to see her he'll be too afraid of being hurt."

  "All right," said Suds. "I'm not convinced, but all right. Nothing sudden, Chuck. Sound him out. No sudden, gladsome whoops of joy, no 'Goody, goody, Sara's here!' stuff."

  "You blasted imbecile! Do you think I'm that stupid? When can I go up?"

  "In about an hour, after rounds. If they do anything cute like mess with the knee through the cast window, I'll page you and call you off. Call everyone off." Suds got to his feet slowly. "What a damned stinking mess the world is—"

  Chuck looked up at the unimposing, tubby, troubled figure of Suds Sutherland. "I wouldn't say that, dad. I honest-to-God wouldn't. Not as long as there are guys like David who can be 'triggered off.' That's what counts, not what happens afterward."

  Suds reached a short arm out, brought his hand across Chuck's head from front to back, as he had done years before at Pengard, smiled at the wrath on Chuck's face, at the hair so rudely freed from subjection.

  "You win, Reverend; you win."

  ***

  The nurse wheeled the bed-table so that it stretched across the bed a little way below David's chin and laid a pile of opened telegrams and cards on it. "Read what you can," she said, "until you get tired. Reading is more tiring than talking when you've been sick."

  "Thanks for the past tense. Hey! Here's one from the U.S. Attorney General!"

  "And a lot of good it does," she observed tartly.

  "Mustn't be like that." He picked up another wire, but before he read it, he said, "We could use your disposition down there. How's about joining the fight?"

  "I'd kill 'em all, Mr. Champlin. If I couldn't shoot 'em I'd —I'd needle 'em to death."

  "And that's the truth." He squinted his eyes at blurring print. "This one's from—damned if it isn't from Beany Ben-ford—" There was a sound, and he looked toward the door as Chuck's head appeared around the screen, the face solemn and concerned.

  "Pax," said the face.

  "Be damned! Pax yourself, Reverend! Man, come in! Pull up a chair. Res' yo'se'f!"

  After they had shaken hands, Chuck flexed his fingers and looked at them doubtfully. "They said you'd been sick."

  "Just have to stay off my feet, that's all. Fallen arches."

  The nurse smiled a red-haired, freckle-faced young smile as she left, and said, "No wrestling, now."

  Chuck settled back in the big chair, and David said, "How long did they give you? Ten and a half minutes?"

  "No one said. The way they're watching over your battered hulk, they'll throw me out when the time comes."

  David looked at the big blond man sitting quietly beside him and could find no words. What was there about the guy, he wondered, that always made something inside himself feel warm and good, a guy so naive in some ways, so wise in others, so far removed from reality at times, yet at other times so close to the suffering of every man that his own pain called for comforting? David could remember times when Chuck had irritated him almost past control, as he had when the hatchet-faced man, Elmore, said the kids in the stockade would only be fined. And he could remember times when Chuck's strength and understanding had been like a strong arm holding him upright.

  He found himself saying inanely: "What're you all dressed up for? A wedding or something? I'm not used to it—"

  "Who me? Dressed up?" Chuck grinned. "It's my hair. And no thanks to a young quack named Sutherland they permit to roam these halls. I've reformed. I'm trying to civilize this stuff on my head."

  David touched the thick, no longer closely cropped nappi-ness of his own hair and said, "You reckon I could get me a barber?"

  "Why not, chum?"

  "No white ones. For gosh sake, no white barbers. They don't know what to do with this stuff."

  "I'll get Brad on it You want some of Peg's old stockings for caps?"

  "You'd have made a swell Negro, Chuck. Sometimes I wonder—"

  "The universal mind, that's me—"

  Chuck talked quietly for a while, filling him in on details Brad had forgotten, telling him in low, uninflected tones that the man who had gone to the Veterans Administration Hospital with Fred Winters had been named Jason Patterson, that he had been a young man whose first child was just two weeks old, and that he had died before noon the next day. "Suds will scalp me," he said.

  "It's all right. What Suds doesn't realize, because he can't, is that the telling and hearing can never equal the reality. If we lived through Hummer's death and didn't lose our minds, Chuck—"

  "Right."

  "Eddie, Chuck?"

  Chuck shifted his weight uneasily in the big chair before he spoke. "They bombed his house four or five days ago. No serious injuries. His wife and baby had some minor cuts from flying glass. He's going to Philadelphia, too. Murfree's going to give him a hand in getting a job."

  "They must think this brotherly-love bit is more than skin deep. Why Philadelphia? It's no shining example—"

  "Murfree's in-laws are there. It's not completely strange to him. Remember, chum, they're both white."

  "It makes a difference. Luck to 'em both—"

  "Here's something else, David, only it's not bad. ol' Miz Towers—" Chuck paused, shook his head and grinned over at David.

  "What about her? She all right?"

  "Bright-eyed and lively as a collie pup. I think she thrives on this sort of thing now. What really threw her, though, was what happened to you. Abr'am had a time with her, David. She made him call here three times a day, and hang the expense. She's going to deed that piece of land known as Flaming Meadows over to you."

  "Oh, my God!" David closed his eyes, opened them, and tried not to laugh. "I don't want it. For gosh sake, stop her, Chuck! What in hell do I want with thirty acres of ground in the middle of nowhere! I was afraid I'd get stuck with it when we worked out that option deal. Stop her if you can."

  "How you talk. Stop that old lady when her mind's made up? The last thing our friend John Murfree did before he moved to Philadelphia, day before yesterday, was fix up a codicil to her will leaving it to you. Then she decided she wanted to live to see you own it. She says it's yours by right. Says once you own it that ha'nt will be at peace. Says that ha'nt's been waiting for you. You can't reason with her, David. She just knows what she wants and sticks to it. And she thinks you ought to own that land, and do something with it. What, she didn't say. Just, 'Tha's his land by rights—!'"

  David gave a short, strange laugh that came from somewhere no deeper than his throat. "If I could take a deep breath I'd sing it: '... Land where my fathers died'—"

  After a moment Chuck said: "Did Brad tell you there was a goodly amount of mail with contributions for you? One postmarked Cainsville, absolutely anonymous, five one-hundred-dollar bills, in a heavy envel
ope."

  "Good God!"

  "Exactly."

  "We can't keep it, Chuck. Give it to Effie's mother. Maybe that's what Brad was—no, it can't be."

  "What can't be what?"

  "I had the feeling he was holding something back, not telling me something. I didn't get the impression it was anything bad, but it's been bugging me." David was silent again, eyes closed. Chuck waited, letting him rest, knowing that in a minute he would tell him about Sara. This man was strong. He knew David, and in spite of trauma, suffering, the knowledge of crippling, in spite of the years of fighting a bitter, cruel evil, this was still the David Champlin—basically and so far as his mental well-being was concerned—who had eaten his first meal at Pengard at a card table across from him. The man is indestructible, he thought. There is that in him that will not be destroyed; there is in him that core of indestructible spirit that has brought his people to an unflinching confrontation of their dark history and has given them the strength and power to lay the foundations of a new and brighter one.

  Chuck rose quietly and came to the foot of the bed, and David opened his eyes. "Don't go now," said David. "I just became a southern landowner. You better stick around and get to work on my soul."

  "There's something else, David."

  "Something else? That I can't take. I'll report you to Suds."

  "I think you can take it, David. But I want you to tell me the truth, so help you God. Will you?"

  "What the hell—of course I will."

  "Then listen, David. Within a few hours after she heard about you, Sara Kent was on a plane to Boston, from London. She sweated out the night with us when you were in surgery. Suds let her see you twice while you were unconscious. After that, he refused to let her see you again because he was afraid, and rightly, of any emotional shock for you. David, the chips are pretty much down. Whatever has happened in the past must not happen again. I would pick Sara up bodily and put her on the first plane leaving the country if I thought that you would refuse her commitment again now. You've had more strain and suffering than God usually calls on one person to take. But so has she, David. So has Sara. And she didn't choose the path that led to it as you did. She's waiting. She's been waiting a long time with a love and devotion as patient and unselfish as any I've ever seen. May I tell Suds to call her and ask her to come to you? Do you want to see her?"