Fairbairn, Ann

by Five Smooth Stones

  "Then you get on back out there. He bullies you again, you stand up to him, y'hear!"

  "Jimmy—he said he was going to hit me." David was still sniffling, engulfed in self-pity.

  "Ain't no law says you can't hit him first."

  Silence.

  "Well, is there?"

  "No—no, sir."

  As he left the room slowly, reluctantly, he heard his grandmother's voice raised shrilly: "You crazy, Joseph Champlin? That Jimmy's twice as big as him—and bad." And his grandfather's slow, quiet, "Chile's got to learn sometime. Chile's got to learn there's coming a time won't no one stand up for him but his own self." But he heard soft footsteps, and knew that Gramp was following him, then was standing at the door, quiet, alert.

  David went to bed that night nursing his first black eye.

  Several times, after he had been guided through his prayers by Geneva, he climbed out of his cot and over the foot of his grandparent's bed, looking at his bruises in the mirror, seeing himself as a hero in the dim light that filtered in from the kitchen. He had not followed his grandfather's implied advice to hit first. Instead he had marshaled his strength, and at the first taunt from the bully—a light-skinned boy, overloaded with soft, flabby flesh—had taken a running start and, goatlike, butted the soft belly with his head backed by all the momentum he could muster. The results were even more than Gramp could have hoped for. He was not clear in his mind how he had gotten the black eye, because the sight of the neighborhood scourge lying winded on the banquette had started a free-for-all.

  The fight had taught him something, though, and it was his first real secret, a something he could not share with Gramp, something only he would know: He did not like to fight. All that he could tell Gramp and take pride in was that he was not afraid to fight and that he could fight. Gramp had been, according to his own stories, which Tant' Irene acknowledged to be true, "One helluva fighter" when he was young. "Used to go out looking for 'em if they didn't happen natural," he'd say, and usually add, "Ain't but two things makes me want to fight now I'm older and come to my senses—that's seeing somebody hurt a young un or an old person."

  The process of teaching David Champlin to live in a divided world was begun when he was still too young to walk down the street without holding the protecting hand of Gram or Gramp. It was the first order of the business of upbringing. That he had white playmates with whom he romped on terms of equality only made it more urgent. He was told to take off his hat to all adults and call them "sir" or "ma'am" whether they were white or colored, but in dealing with white adults he was to keep his eyes to himself and never on them, and he must never look a white woman squarely in the face. Once his business with any white person was over he was to get out of their company, even though at that age the business might be no more than the purchase of an ice-cream cone. He learned early that lying to Gram or Gramp or those entrusted with his care was a bad thing and brought a stinging whipping; lying to a white, except the Professor, was glossed over, and therefore it was not a bad thing as lying to his own was a bad thing. The inevitable "why" of childhood's logic was never adequately answered.

  "What's a nigger bastid?" he asked his grandparents at supper one night.

  "Lawd!" said Geneva. "Lawd!" There was the sound of keening in her voice.

  Joseph Champlin finished flavoring his stew with hot sauce, and carefully replaced the bottle in the cruet stand. "Why you ask, son?"

  "Tommy Lucido called me a nigger bastid."

  It was not the "bastid" that made the muscles of Li'l Joe's jaws set; it was the lisp of childhood in the epithet. "What you do?" he asked.

  "I hit him," said his grandson. "I hit him and he runned away. I didn't want to hit him but I did."

  "You should of come home, baby," said Geneva. "You should have come home. Don't play round with him no more, y'hear! How many times I got to tell you—stay in your own courtyard; nev' mind what the white kids do."

  David paid no attention. He was looking at his grandfather, the source of all wisdom.

  "Is there white bastids?" he asked. "Is there?"

  "They's plenty," said Li'l Joe, and David heard an abrupt laugh from his grandmother.

  "And we the ones what knows it," she said. Then, "Lawd! his folks going to tell all their friends how their lily-white chile got beat up by colored. Going to use it to show why their kids is too good for us. I wish God would strike 'em dead. I wish they was all dead and rotting in hell."

  "They bound to be someday," said Li'l Joe reasonably. 'They bound to be. Ain't no God I ever heerd about going to find no places for 'em too close to Him. The whites is lots of things, but there's one thing they ain't—that's Christian." He frowned at his wife. "Ain't no use getting all upsetted. God don't work in no hurry. He'll catch up with 'em, give Him time. Ain't nothing you can do about it, not if you wants to keep on living." He looked across the table into the dark, round puzzlement of his grandson's eyes, and flinched as from a blow. "Next time some white calls you bad names, don't go to fighting, and—"

  "But—but Gramp—you said when Jimmy—"

  "That's different. He's colored. Some white lays a hand on you, you fight back, but don't get in no humbug over bad names. You going to be hearing bad names from whites all your life. Ain't nothing but bad comes from fighting 'em. They ignorant."

  "What's iggerant?"

  "They don't know no better. You getting old enough to learn now how it is. You gets in trouble with the whites, I'll tan your hide so good you can use it for shoe leather. You let 'em alone, y'hear!"

  David nodded, his eyes seeming to be all that there was of his face. He had never heard that tone in Gramp's voice before; had always known that threats to "tan his hide" were joking, that the worst he would get was a right smart switching. He had never been afraid of Gramp before, and now, suddenly, he was. It was a shattering thing—to be afraid of Gramp, to see a real and bitter threat in Gramp's eyes, hear a harsh promise in Gramp's voice of fearful punishment for disobedience to an order he could not comprehend. The foundations of his small world rocked, threatening to disintegrate. He sensed something else behind that harshness. Gramp was no longer Gramp, gentle, loving, kindly; Gramp was a being to fear and yet Gramp, too, was afraid.

  He was sobbing now, and Gram held him close and rocked him fiercely in her arms. "You got no call to cry, baby. All the love you got, you got no call to cry." Her voice was edged and sharp as she spoke over his head to her husband. "You stir yourself, Joseph Champlin, and get down to Antonelli's and get us some ice cream and some of them frosted cookies they got the baby likes."

  Gramp's hands were under his shoulders, setting him on his feet, but Gramp's tone was still strange. "Stop it, son! You going to be crying all your life, you keep on like this. There ain't nothing you can do about it. Reckon me'n' Gram's got to teach you about God some more. Come on, li'l man, right now we gets ourselves some ice cream."

  At Antonelli's he had a peppermint, and Gramp bought ice cream and some cookies to take home. Later, at the table, he warily approached a question he had to ask, a question that came from the depths of a new bewilderment.

  "Gramp." There was a ring of ice cream on the smooth brown of his lips, and the cookie in his hand had a half-moon bite in it.

  "Don't talk with your mouth full, son." David swallowed ice cream and the bite of cookie and tried again. "Gramp, when I says my prayers I says 'God bless Gram and Gramp and Tant' Irene and ol' Miz Jefferson and the Professor and little colored children everywhere.' Don't I, Gramp?"

  "Sure do, baby."

  "Ain't the Professor white, Gramp?"

  Li'l Joe had been expecting this one eventually. "Sometimes they's what they call exceptions, son. The Professor, now, he comes from over the water, where they got all different kinds of countries. They even speaks different languages. I mean different from what we speaks and the Creoles and French and Eyetalians speaks around here. And the people is different, way different."

  David carefully put a
heaping spoonful of ice cream into his mouth, the last in the plate, smoothing it, rounding it off with his lip, leaving some in the bowl of the spoon so it would last longer.

  "You mean the Professor's white, but he ain't New Orleans white. That what you mean, Gramp?"

  Li'l Joe sighed, then smiled at the boy. "Reckon you could say that, son." He pushed his half-eaten plate of ice cream across the table. "Here, baby. Finish it for me. My teeths can't stand no more of that cold."

  CHAPTER 6

  Bjarne Knudsen had known for a long time of the dream that sustained Joseph Champlin, that made his job with Zeke Jones bearable, that sent him out to play a gig on nights when his body ached with fatigue because he had worked at hard labor since dawn. The Professor tried to slow him down, to show him that the human body can absorb only so much without harm, but Li'l Joe would only smile and say, "Reckon I'm just hardheaded like my ma says." It was why happiness and relief brought the big Dane storming across the room to envelop his friend in a bear hug and pound him on the back when the little man said: "Looks like I found it, Prof. Looks like I found me the house and the li'l piece of property where me'n' Geneva and the chile can live, with room for my ma as long's she's alive."

  Sipping beer, seated across from the Professor, Li'l Joe said: "It ain't no great shakes. And it ain't finished. Just the outside walls and the inside framework. Fellow that owned it, e's in the penitentiary. His lawyer, he's trying to get the property for his fee, but I got me a real-estate agent and we're going to work it out somehow so's I pays a down and then something every month, and after a while I gets title. I got friends'll help me work on it, musicians, fellows scratching for a dime when they ain't playing. They'll help for whatever I can pay 'em." His thin face almost vanished in a smile. "It's got gas connections and drains all in it, so's someday when I got the money we can have an inside bathroom. You want to know something, Prof? All the years of my life I been living in the great city of New Orleans, that's something I ain't never had."

  Later he said: "Fellow what owns the house, he put an old piano in it. They calls him 'Cat.' Cat Masterson his name is. He's a real fine musician. I've heard him plenty times. It's about all he lives for, his music and his daughter. She's near fifteen but she ain't real bright. Guess they calls 'em retarded, but she's a real nice girl. That piano's the onlies' thing in the house. Ain't even no walls on the inside, but he got him a second-handed piano and put in it."

  "Are you sure, Li'l Joe, he won't want it when he gets out?"

  "Ain't sure of nothing except it's going to be a mighty cold day in hell the day he gets out."

  "What did he do? Why is he there?" Knudsen was sorry he had asked the question the moment the words had crossed his lips. He knew now, always, the kind of answer he would get to a question like that by the way the spirit, the essence, of Li'l Joe Champlin withdrew behind a blank brown mask, behind eyes grown dull and without expression.

  "Didn't do nothing you could fault him for really. Nothing more'n what any man would do. Lost his head and went after a guy for trying to force his daughter, guy what ran a laundry next door; he caught him trying to get in the bed with his daughter one night when he come home early. Heerd her screaming when he come in the courtyard. Cut the guy bad. Didn't know what he was doing, I guess. Onlies' trouble is the guy was white. They tells me, them what's got friends in the penitentiary up there, he's going queer in the head. He's got —he's got—I can't call it right, but it means he can't stand to be shut up in no small place. Now they got him in solitary."

  "Claustrophobia," said the Professor. His voice was dull and sick-sounding. He ran a hand through his hair, tugged at his beard. "All right," he said. "All right, Li'l Joe. No more. For God's sake, no more. You tell me of these things that are a stench in the nostrils of humanity as though you spoke of the price of sugar. I hear what you are saying, but I cannot know what you are thinking. Perhaps I should thank God for it."

  "You-all don't believe in God, remember? That's what you been saying."

  "Ja. If I could believe in the God I learned as a child, with a long white beard who rewards the good and punishes the evil—"

  "He do," said Li'l Joe. "He do. But he don't do it right now. He takes His time. He sure takes His time."

  The Professor was quiet for a moment. "Ja," he said at last. "Ja. He does."

  They discussed the work to be done, and Bjarne Knudsen relaxed and felt warmed and better as his friend rambled on happily about his plans.

  "Kid Arab, he's a good plasterer," said Li'l Joe. "And Bob John—he plays trombone and piano—he's a pretty fair carpenter if you can keep him away from a bottle, and my son, Evan, when he ain't in trouble, works for a roofer. Far's that goes, I could do most of it myself in the evenings, but it would take a helluva long time, and then the short days coming on and all. These men all scratching when they ain't working. If we keeps that down payment low, I got enough put by to pay 'em, long with what I makes."

  ***

  They worked as fast as they could, with Li'l Joe breathing down their necks and outworking them all during his off-work hours. Evan Champlin got the better part of the roofing work done at the start of the job. Now that John was dead, Evan was the only living child of Joseph Champlin's first marriage; a daughter had died in childhood. "He ain't a bit of good," Li'l Joe would say morosely, speaking of his son. "He ain't a bit of good. His mother done ruint him." When word came that Evan would be unavailable because he was doing thirty days, Li'l Joe cursed roundly and wound up saying, "Damfool woman." When Bob John commented that there wasn't nothing surer than a woman to get a man in trouble, Li'l Joe said: "It ain't like you mean. Evan never was one to get hisself in trouble over no woman. He's got a good wife, a real good wife. It's his ma. If I says it myself, that boy's a helluva boxer. He won more fights than any boxer in his class round here. Didn't he whup Sammy Nelson twice— and he's champeen now? But it ain't no good sticking round New Orleans if you going to get any place fighting. Ain't no future round here where a colored boy can't fight a white boy. They too scared the colored boy's going to whip the white boy, knock him out maybe, then they won't be soopreme no more. Evan, he got a fine chance to leave from here and fight up North, and his mother raised such a sand he didn't go. Carried on and had herself heart attacks and Gawd knows what. Now he ain't going no place but the jail-house, doing his fighting in the bars and on the street."

  The night the house was finished to the point that it was judged fit to live in, Li'l Joe came home in no state to go into details. Geneva did not nag. Before he fell asleep he managed to tell her how he had slipped on the roof and hung, dangling, kicking wildly, cussing like five hundred, until Bob John and Kid rescued him. After that they had celebrated. Which was obvious.

  The next day was Sunday, and Geneva let him sleep late, shushing David, running him out into the courtyard to play. At late breakfast Li'l Joe told her how the house looked, how it was finished except for the inside doors and a window here and there still boarded up. He had not wanted her to see it until it was ready, and she had not pressed him to take her over. Now he said:

  "You get that chile ready, Neva, and fix us some sandwiches. We going over there so's you can see the place. I'll get us some beer. Ain't no stove yet to fix coffee on."

  "We got the Thermos."

  Li'l Joe winced. He had always contended that Geneva stole the Thermos, and Geneva always denied it, then contradicted herself by saying: "They away over the water. You think they going to miss it when they come back? You needs a hot drink or some soup, working on them docks in the cold and rain. They'da give it to me anyway." She would laugh her quick, abrupt laugh. "After one of them kids broke it and it didn't work good no more, they'da give it to me then."

  ***

  "How you like it, Neva? Suits you, I'm satisfied."

  Geneva had not spoken since they had walked up the path to the front door and stepped inside. "Everything's fine," she said. "Everything's just fine."

  There were no m
ore words to say; she had said all she could from a full heart. As she walked through the empty house, the long narrow front room, the small dining room behind it and the big kitchen beyond, turned and walked back into the little hall off the dining room with its small bedrooms at each end and what would be the bathroom in its center, she was remembering the first time she had lain all night with the man who was now her husband, remembering waking in the night and reaching for him, not seeking passion but just his presence. I was happy that night, she thought. First time I'd been real happy since I'd growed up. And I'm happy now like I was then.

  ***

  "You got the privy built?"

  "Shucks, we done that first thing."

  Li'l Joe had never been demonstrative, but now he put his arm around his wife's waist and, holding her body close to his, led her to the back porch.

  "See?" he said, pointing to the far end of the backyard. "Can't no wind blow that down. And you just looka there. Bob John, he scrounged some used brick and I laid us a path so's we won't have to walk through no mud and wet to get to it like we does now. But you wait. We keep saving and I gets some used tile. I know where I can get it real cheap. Mebbe I can even get it free if I does some work for the man. Then I lays it in the bathroom. Later we can get us a tub and a basin and a toilet. I can get them secondhanded real cheap too from the same guy."

  He looked down at the wide-eyed child who had followed them and who stood now holding his hand.

  "That day come and we has a tub, you'n' me going to have a time, li'l man; we going to have a time."

  Geneva was looking at the new privy and at the clean brick path that led to it, and her throat was tight.

  "Everything's fine," she whispered again. "Everything's just fine. Just the way it is—"

  ***

  Now grass and brown earth were under David Champlin's bare feet every day; there were flowers to pick and bring to his grandmother, and she showed him what peppergrass looked like and where it grew, and he brought it to her to cook. The fat brown dog came almost every day, and they rolled and played together in the grass and undergrowth. There were so many children in the old frame house across the road that David thought it must be a school, like the big building near where they had lived in the French Quarter. After a few days they straggled over, one by one, and did what Gram called "made themselves acquainted." Their name was Timmins, and there were as many different complexions as there were children, from the jet-black, skinny boy who had come over the first day Gramp brought them to the house, to the youngest girl, whose skin was creamy and whose brown hair curled loosely, softly, not in tight kinks. Miz Timmins, their mother, who had brought a pot of coffee over the first day they moved in, was tall and as skinny for a woman as Gramp was for a man, with black skin and big teeth that stuck out in front, and a way with her with a child that soon placed her next to Pop and Miz Emma Jefferson in David's affections. David puzzled for a while about a conversation he overheard one night, between his grandparents, after he'd said his prayers and was supposed to be asleep.