The Stories of J.F. Powers (New York Review Books Classics)

by J.F. Powers

  They all left about this time, except the doctor and the old woman friend of Old Gramma’s. She came out of Old Gramma’s room, and when the door opened I saw Old Gramma lying on the cot with her eyes closed. The old woman asked me if I could work a can opener, and I said, “Yes, I can,” and she handed me a can of vegetable soup from the shelf. She got a meal together and us kids sat down to eat. Not Carrie, though. She sat in our good chair with her legs under her and her eyes closed. Mama was sleeping and the doctor rolled up the shade at the window and looked out while we ate. I mean brother George and the baby. I couldn’t eat. I just drank my glass of water. The old woman said, Here, here, I hadn’t ought to let good food go to waste and was that any way to act at the table and I wasn’t the first boy in the world to lose his mother.

  I wondered was she crazy and I yelled I wasn’t going to lose my mother and I looked to see and I was right. Mama was just sleeping and the doctor was there in case she needed him and everything was taken care of and . . . everything. The doctor didn’t even turn away from the window when I yelled at the old woman, and I thought at least he’d say I’d wake my mother up shouting that way, or maybe that I was right and the old woman was wrong. I got up from the table and stood by the doctor at the window. He only stayed there a minute more then and went over to feel Mama’s wrist again. He did not touch her forehead this time.

  Old Gramma came out of her room and said to me, “Was that you raising so much cain in here, boy?”

  I said, “Yes, it was,” and just when I was going to tell her what the old woman said about losing Mama I couldn’t. I didn’t want to hear it out loud again. I didn’t even want to think it in my mind.

  Old Gramma went over and gazed down at Mama. She turned away quickly and told the old woman, “Please, I’ll just have a cup of hot water, that’s all, I’m so upset.” Then she went over to the doctor by the window and whispered something to him and he whispered something back and it must’ve been only one or two words, because he was looking out the window the next moment.

  Old Gramma said she’d be back in a minute and went out the door, slipslapping down the hall. I went to the window, the evening sun was going down, and I saw Old Gramma come out the back entrance of our building. She crossed the alley and went in the back door of the grocery store.

  A lot of racket cut loose about a block up the alley. It was still empty, though. Old Gramma came out of the grocery store with something in a brown bag. She stopped in the middle of the alley and seemed to be watching the orange evening sun going down behind the buildings. The sun got in her hair and somehow under her skin, kind of, and it did a wonderful thing to her. She looked so young for a moment that I saw Mama in her, both of them beautiful New Orleans ladies.

  The racket cut loose again, nearer now, and a pack of men came running down the alley, about three dozen whites chasing two coloreds. One of the whites was blowing a bugle—tan tivvy, tan tivvy, tan tivvy—like the white folks do when they go fox hunting in the movies or Virginia. I looked down, quick, to see if Old Gramma had enough sense to come inside, and I guess she did because she wasn’t there. The two coloreds ran between two buildings, the whites ran after them, and then the alley was quiet again. Old Gramma stepped out, and I watched her stoop and pick up the brown bag that she had dropped before.

  Another big noise made her drop it again. A whole smear of men swarmed out of the used-car lot and came galloping down the alley like wild buffaloes. Old Gramma scooted inside our building and the brown bag stayed there in the alley. This time I couldn’t believe my eyes; I saw what I thought I’d never see; I saw what us kids had been waiting to see ever since the riot broke out—a white man that was fixing to get himself nice and killed. A white man running—running, God Almighty, from about a million coloreds. And he was the one with the tan-tivvy bugle, too. I hoped the coloreds would do the job up right.

  The closer the white man came the worse it got for him, because the alley comes to a dead end when it hits our building. All at once—I don’t know why—I was praying for that fool white man with the bugle to get away. But I didn’t think he had a Chinaman’s chance, the way he was going now, and maybe that’s what made me pray for him.

  Then he did a smart thing. He whipped the bugle over his shoulder, like you do with a horseshoe for good luck, and it hit the first colored behind him smack in the head, knocking him out, and that slowed up the others. The white man turned into the junk yard behind the furniture warehouse and the Victory Ballroom. Another smart thing, if he used his head. The space between the warehouse and the Victory is just wide enough for a man to run through. It’s a long piece to the street, but if he made it there, he’d be safe probably.

  The long passageway must’ve looked too narrow to him, though, because the fool came rushing around the garage next to our building. For a moment he was the only one in the alley. The coloreds had followed him through the junk yard and probably got themselves all tangled up in garbage cans and rusty bed springs and ashpiles. But the white man was a goner just the same. In a minute they’d be coming for him for real. He’d have to run the length of the alley again to get away and the coloreds have got the best legs.

  Then Old Gramma opened our back door and saved him.

  I was very glad for the white man, until suddenly I remembered poor Mama all broken to pieces on the bed, and then I was sorry Old Gramma did it. The next moment I was glad again that she did. I understood now I did not care one way or the other about the white man. Now I was thinking of Mama—not of myself. I did not see what difference it could make to Mama if the white man lived or died. It only had something to do with us and him.

  Then I got hold of a funny idea. I told myself the trouble is somebody gets cheated or insulted or killed and everybody else tries to make it come out even by cheating and insulting and killing the cheaters and insulters and killers. Only they never do. I did not think they ever would. I told myself that I had a very big idea there, and when the riot was over I would go to the public library and sit in the reading room and think about it. Or I would speak to Old Gramma about it, because it seemed like she had the same big idea and like she had had it a long time, too.

  The doctor was standing by me at the window all the time. He said nothing about what Old Gramma did, and now he stepped away from the window and so did I. I guess he felt the same way I did about the white man and that’s why he stepped away from the window. The big idea again. He was afraid the coloreds down below would yell up at us, did we see the white man pass by. The coloreds were crazy mad all right. One of them had the white man’s bugle and he banged on our door with it. I was worried Old Gramma had forgot to lock it and they might walk right in, and that would be the end of the white man and the big idea.

  But Old Gramma pulled another fast one. She ran out into the alley and pointed her old yellow finger in about three wrong directions. In a second the alley was quiet and empty, except for Old Gramma. She walked slowly over against our building, where somebody had kicked the brown bag, and picked it up.

  Old Gramma brought the white man right into our room, told him to sit down, and poured herself a cup of hot water. She sipped it and said the white man could leave whenever he wanted to, but it might be better to wait a bit. The white man said he was much obliged, he hated to give us any trouble, and, “Oh, oh, is somebody sick over there?” when he saw Mama, and that he’d just been passing by when a hundred nig—when he was attacked.

  Old Gramma sipped her hot water. The doctor turned away from the window and said, “Here they come again,” took another look, and said, “No, they’re going back.” He went over to Mama and held her wrist. I couldn’t tell anything about her from his face. She was sleeping just the same. The doctor asked the white man, still standing, to sit down. Carrie only opened her eyes once and closed them. She hadn’t changed her position in the good chair. Brother George and the baby stood in a corner with their eyes on the white man. The baby’s legs buckled then—she’d only been walking abou
t a week—and she collapsed softly to the floor. She worked her way up again without taking her eyes off the white man. He even looked funny and out of place to me in our room. I guess the man for the rent and Father Egan were the only white people come to see us since I could remember; and now it was only the man for the rent since Father Egan died.

  The doctor asked the white man did he work or own a business in this neighborhood. The white man said, No, glancing down at his feet, no, he just happened to be passing by when he was suddenly attacked like he said before. The doctor told Old Gramma she might wash Mama’s face and neck again with warm water.

  There was noise again in the alley—windows breaking and fences being pushed over. The doctor said to the white man, “You could leave now; it’s a white mob this time; you’d be safe.”

  “No,” the white man said, “I should say not; I wouldn’t be seen with them; they’re as bad as the others almost.”

  “It is quite possible,” the doctor said.

  Old Gramma asked the white man if he would like a cup of tea.

  “Tea? No,” he said, “I don’t drink tea; I didn’t know you drank it.”

  “I didn’t know you knew her,” the doctor said, looking at Old Gramma and the white man.

  “You colored folks, I mean,” the white man said, “Americans, I mean. Me, I don’t drink tea—always considered it an English drink and bad for the kidneys.”

  The doctor did not answer. Old Gramma brought him a cup of tea.

  And then Daddy came in. He ran over to Mama and fell down on his knees like he was dead—like seeing Mama with her arm broke and her chest so pushed in killed him on the spot. He lifted his face from the bed and kissed Mama on the lips; and then, Daddy, I could see, was crying—the strongest man in the world was crying with tears in his big dark eyes and coming down the side of his big hard face. Mama called him her John Henry sometimes and there he was, her John Henry, the strongest man, black or white, in the whole damn world, crying.

  He put his head down on the bed again. Nobody in the room moved until the baby toddled over to Daddy and patted him on the ear like she wanted to play the games those two make up with her little hands and his big ears and eyes and nose. But Daddy didn’t move or say anything, if he even knew she was there, and the baby got a blank look in her eyes and walked away from Daddy and sat down, plump, on the floor across the room, staring at Daddy and the white man, back and forth, Daddy and the white man.

  Daddy got up after a while and walked very slowly across the room and got himself a drink of water at the sink. For the first time he noticed the white man in the room. “Who’s he?” he said. “Who’s he?” None of us said anything. “Who the hell’s he?” Daddy wanted to know, thunder in his throat like there always is when he’s extra mad or happy.

  The doctor said the white man was Mr Gorman, and went over to Daddy and told him something in a low voice.

  “Innocent! What’s he doing in this neighborhood then?” Daddy said, loud as before. “What’s an innocent white man doing in this neighborhood now? Answer me that!” He looked at all of us in the room and none of us that knew what the white man was doing in this neighborhood wanted to explain to Daddy. Old Gramma and the doctor and me—none of us that knew—would tell.

  “I was just passing by,” the white man said, “as they can tell you.”

  The scared way he said it almost made me laugh. Was this a white man, I asked myself. Alongside Daddy’s voice the white man’s sounded plain foolish and weak—a little old tug squeaking at a big ocean liner about the right of way. Daddy seemed to forget all about him and began asking the doctor a lot of questions about Mama in a hoarse whisper I couldn’t hear very well. Daddy’s face got harder and harder and it didn’t look like he’d ever crack a smile or shed a tear or anything soft again. Just hard, it got, hard as four spikes.

  Old Gramma came and stood by Daddy’s side and said she had called the priest when she was downstairs a while ago getting some candles. She was worried that the candles weren’t blessed ones. She opened the brown bag then, and that’s what was inside—two white candles. I didn’t know grocery stores carried them.

  Old Gramma went to her room and took down the picture of the Sacred Heart all bleeding and put it on the little table by Mama’s bed and set the candles in sticks on each side of it. She lit the candles and it made the Sacred Heart, punctured by the wreath of thorns, look bloodier than ever, and made me think of that song, “To Jesus’ Heart All Burning,” the kids sing at Our Saviour’s on Sundays.

  The white man went up to the doctor and said, “I’m a Catholic, too.” But the doctor didn’t say anything back, only nodded. He probably wasn’t one himself, I thought; not many of the race are. Our family wouldn’t be if Old Gramma and Mama didn’t come from New Orleans, where Catholics are thicker than flies or Baptists.

  Daddy got up from the table and said to the white man. “So help me God, mister, I’ll kill you in this room if my wife dies!” The baby started crying and the doctor went to Daddy’s side and turned him away from the white man, and it wasn’t hard to do because now Daddy was kind of limp and didn’t look like he remembered anything about the white man or what he said he’d do to him if Mama . . . or anything.

  “I’ll bet the priest won’t show up,” Daddy said.

  “The priest will come,” Old Gramma said. “The priest will always come when you need him; just wait.” Her old lips were praying in French.

  I hoped he would come like Old Gramma said, but I wasn’t so sure. Some of the priests weren’t much different from anybody else. They knew how to keep their necks in. Daddy said to Mama once if you only wanted to hear about social justice you could turn on the radio or go to the nearest stadium on the Fourth of July, and there’d be an old white man in a new black suit saying it was a good thing and everybody ought to get some, and if they’d just kick in more they might and, anyway, they’d be saved. One came to Our Saviour’s last year, and Father Egan said this is our new assistant and the next Sunday our new assistant was gone—poor health. But Daddy said he was transferred to a church in a white neighborhood because he couldn’t stand to save black souls. Father Egan would’ve come a-flying, riot or no riot, but he was dead now and we didn’t know much about the one that took his place.

  Then he came, by God; the priest from Our Saviour’s came to our room while the riot was going on. Old Gramma got all excited and said over and over she knew the priest would come. He was kind of young and skinny and pale, even for a white man, and he said, “I’m Father Crowe,” to everybody in the room and looked around to see who was who.

  The doctor introduced himself and said Old Gramma was Old Gramma, Daddy was Daddy, we were the children, that was Mr Gorman, who was just passing by, and over there was poor Mama. He missed Old Gramma’s old woman friend; I guess he didn’t know what to call her. The priest went over and took a look at Mama and nodded to the doctor and they went into Old Gramma’s room together. The priest had a little black bag, too, and he took it with him. I suppose he was getting ready to give Mama Extreme Unction. I didn’t think they would wake her up for Confession or Holy Communion; she was so weak and needed the rest.

  Daddy got up from the table mad as a bull and said to the white man, “Remember what I said, mister.”

  “But why me?” the white man asked. “Just because I’m white?”

  Daddy looked over at Mama on the bed and said, “Yeah, just because you’re white; yeah, that’s why . . . ” Old Gramma took Daddy by the arm and steered him over to the table again and he sat down.

  The priest and the doctor came out of Old Gramma’s room, and right away the priest faced the white man, like they’d been talking about him in Old Gramma’s room, and asked him why he didn’t go home. The white man said he’d heard some shouting in the alley a while ago that didn’t sound so good to him and he didn’t think it was safe yet and that was why.

  “I see,” the priest said.

  “I’m a Catholic too, Father,” th
e white man said.

  “That’s the trouble,” the priest said.

  The priest took some cotton from his little black bag, dipped his fingers in holy oil, and made the sign of the cross on Mama’s eyes, nose, ears, mouth, and hands, rubbing the oil off with the cotton, and said prayers in Latin all the time he was doing it.

  “I want you all to kneel down now,” the priest said, “and we’ll say a rosary. But we mustn’t say it too loud because she is sleeping.”

  We all knelt down except the baby and Carrie. Carrie said she’d never kneel down to God again. “Now Carrie,” Old Gramma said, almost crying. She told Carrie it was for poor Mama and wouldn’t Carrie kneel down if it was for poor Mama?

  “No!” Carrie said. “It must be a white God too!” Then she began crying and she did kneel down after all.

  Even the white man knelt down and the doctor and the old woman friend of Old Gramma’s, a solid Baptist if I ever saw one, and we all said the rosary of the five sorrowful mysteries.

  Afterwards the white man said to the priest, “Do you mind if I leave when you do, Father?” The priest didn’t answer, and the white man said, “I think I’ll be leaving now, Father. I wonder if you’d be going my way?”

  The priest finally said, “All right, all right, come along. You won’t be the first one to hide behind a Roman collar.”

  The white man said, “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean by that, Father.” The priest didn’t hear him, I guess, or want to explain, because he went over to Mama’s bed.

  The priest knelt once more by Mama and said a prayer in Latin out loud and made the sign of the cross over Mama: In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. He looked closer at Mama and motioned to the doctor. The doctor stepped over to the bed, felt Mama’s wrist, put his head to her chest, where it wasn’t pushed in, and stood up slowly.