Fairbairn, Ann

by Five Smooth Stones

  David put a hand on her wrinkled arm. "The big man, Miz Towers. The big, happy black man who laughed so much—"

  Her eyes opened. "Y'all knows about him? You knows about him, too?"

  "His name was David." He pressed her arm gently. "Wait, Miz Towers. Wait before you say anything." He curled his fingers between front and back covers of the folder, laid it open and looked at it, and Li'l Joe Champlin was beside him. Never did get to see a picture of my daddy. Your Tant' Irene say the onlies' one they had he taken with him when he went away. Now Li'l Joe Champlin's father was looking at his great-grandson, his namesake, from a faded photograph that was streaked and dim with age, in a close, stuffy kitchen on the outskirts of a small southern town, and the place where he had died in flames was just beyond the window, lying green and quiet under the morning sun. The chair on which he had sat, laughing, playing with the babies, was the chair on which his great-grandson sat now.

  A big man, everyone said, and had not exaggerated. The camera techniques of the time had lightened the blackness of the skin, but in spite of the stiffly seated pose, the self-consciousness evident in the straightness of back and neck, the gentleness was there, in mouth and eyes, and the laughter.

  Beside him stood his white-clad, veil-bedecked wife, a hand on her husband's shoulder. The sternness David remembered in Tant'Irene was not in that young face; in that face there was softness, even under the unaccustomed circumstance of being photographed, softness, and pride in the man she had chosen and now stood beside.

  David freed the picture from the folder and turned it over, finding on its back what he knew would be there, the writing in Tant'Irene's clear hand, for years forgotten, remembered now:

  Mr. and Mrs. David Champlin, October 10, 1885. "Whom God hath joined—"

  He reached for his wallet, usually sure fingers fumbling and clumsy as he tried to unbutton the flap of the back pocket. He drew the wallet out at last and took a card from it. He laid the card on the back of the picture, beneath the inscription, edged his chair around until he was sitting beside Miz Towers, the picture in front of them. Carefully he spelled each name out for her, pointing with his forefinger first to the "D" of David on the picture, then to the same letter on the card, until he had gone through the entire name.

  Her breathing was hoarse and loud as she listened, and she made small keening noises at the end of each exhalation. When he had finished she wrapped thin arms around her chest, rocking back and forth, a shrunken black figure, rocking, rocking. "Lord! Lord! An' you here carrying his name. Lord! Lord Jesus! A-a-a-ah, my Jesus!—"

  CHAPTER 78

  David walked slowly down the path from Miz Towers's house to the gate, Tinker padding delightedly alongside. He was keenly conscious that the old lady who had shuff-shuffed to the edge of the porch with him was standing there now, watching him. He carried in his mind the image of the frame house with its ungainly appendages of tacked-on rooms, its front porch without foundation, its crisp curtains so white and clean and brave. And of a field that stretched wide and green and wild beyond it, a field his people in Cainsville called "Flaming Meadows."

  Halfway down the path he turned to wave at her, and she called, "Y'all give my son that message, hear!"

  "Yes, ma'am." He stood, smiling. She was like ol' Miz Speck, only brighter, less victimized by the years. "I'll get him out here. You'll remember what I told you, Miz Towers?"

  "Sure will. Sure will and that's a fact. Don't you worry, son. I keeps my land. Even if they sends the law, I keeps my land less'n I talks with you and Abra'm."

  He sighed with relief. She trusted him, and trust among his people, even of each other, could be hard to come by.

  The reason she trusted him had shaken him inwardly so much that after its full significance hit him he found it almost impossible to talk any longer, even with her, and had to hurry his leave-taking. He needed time to do what he had learned in England to call "sort out" his tangled emotions.

  Driving back he wondered how he could explain it all to Brad and Chuck. The facts were simple; he could give them those, tell about the faded old photograph of a young woman in a white wedding dress and veil, standing beside a big black man with happy eyes.

  But his own reactions, his own shock, he could never explain to anyone—was having trouble trying to explain them to himself. He knew this much—those reactions, that shock, had something to do with all the things he had heard Gramp saying when Gramp had tried to tell him things about God. Not all the learning, the law, the experiences he had absorbed during the past years gave an answer, and he could not shake the feeling, and did not try, that somehow Li'l Joe Champlin would have found that answer.

  ***

  He thought that the heat and dust, the rutted roadway he was traveling now toward Cainsville, had probably been much the same on that day nearly eighty years before when the old woman's father-in-law had let the first David Champlin and Abraham Jefferson wash themselves in clear cold water from his pump, had taken them into his home and given them something to eat—chittlins, had she said?—and then had let them bed down in the shed in the back, even bringing them quilts for comfort in the nip of the early spring night. The second David Champlin thought of these things and shook his head and said aloud, "Hell, it can't be true. It can't be."

  He thought of novels he had read about the South and their so frequent preoccupation with its atmospheres of brooding malevolence. There had been nothing brooding or malevolent about Flaming Meadows, nothing but glaring heat, high grass unstirring in the humid air, and the sound of rushing water just above him where Angel Creek tumbled and sang over rocks, a creek as wide as a river and as deep. There should be malevolence, he thought, and a brooding sense of evil, not just here but everywhere. It was not more than a hundred miles from here that another Negro had been burned alive, more recently, and when the screams of his wife, heavy with his child, had disturbed the burners, she had been thrown on the fire to die with him. And not far from him a woman named Till must still remember a son named Emmett.

  When he got out of the car at Tether's End he was soaked with perspiration, and he thanked God for the makeshift shower in the lean-to. He hitched up his khaki pants irritably, then tried to pull his belt in another notch and remembered it was already at the last one. He told himself for the thousandth time to buy and wear suspenders, at least until he got his weight back. The gnawing pain was in his belly again, and he was glad there was milk in the supplies Miz Towers had given him.

  The heat in the building was stifling, the humidity like a fog, clogging lungs, slowing breath. Brad, stripped to the waist, was typing, café-au-lait skin gleaming with sweat. Chuck, sitting near him, was wearing his black trousers, but was down to a cotton undervest that was gradually becoming sodden. Garnett, fully clothed, was standing at the side door leaning against the jamb, Coke bottle in one pudgy hand. David flopped into the old wicker chair in front of the table, opposite Brad.

  "The damndest thing," he said. "The Goddamndest thing has happened."

  "Yes?" said Brad. "Now what? Never mind. Don't tell me, I'll tell you. The Ninth Brigade of the Ku Klux moved in last night. So what else is new?"

  "Nuts. It's got nothing to do with this mess." He paused. "Or maybe it has. If you're interested in nonprogress and the ability of the human race to remain in status quo. Especially if the status quo is evil. Sometimes I wonder—Chuck, you ought to know the answer—why people think Jesus Christ ever bothered with it, ever bothered to be worried with the human race. You know the answer to that one, Chuck?"

  "Don't needle me. It's all there was. I keep telling you, you oversimplify too much. Stop philosophizing and start talking, Stoopid."

  "Out there at that house—" began David, and stopped at the rattling slam of the screen door. The man entering was heavy set, with brown skin, a powerful body, and a sternly lined patient face, and deep, patient eyes. He wore blue jeans, and his blue shirt was blotched with dark patches of sweat. "David," Brad said, "let me introduce
you to Abra'm Towers."

  David got to his feet, ignoring complaints of bruised muscles, and held out his hand. "I'm David. David Champlin. I've just come from your mother's house; got a message for you."

  "Pleased to meet you," said Abra'm Towers. "We're mighty proud you come down here." His grip was hard, firm. "What's my ma worrying about now?"

  "You."

  "Lawd!"

  "You aren't eating or sleeping, she says. You ain't been in the bed and you ain't had a good meal for two, three days. She says you better get on home and get you a good meal and some bed res' right quick before you sickens and dies."

  Abra'm laughed. "Lawd!" he said again. "All we got going on here and it don't make no difference to her; she's got to worry about am I eating, am I sleeping. I'm eating. I'm eating fine. Long's a man eats good he don't need too much sleep. I'll go on out there soon's I leave here and ease her mind." He stopped and frowned. "Excuse me, sir, but what did you-all say is your name?"

  "Sit down, Mr. Towers. Sit down and res' yourself. And listen."

  ***

  Brad and Chuck sat quietly, without interrupting, while David told his story. Abraham Towers did not interrupt, but his interpolations were like exclamation points, the frequent "Well, I'll be!" and "Lawd!" and the hummed, amazed, "Umm-ummmm Ummm-ummmm."

  When the story was finished, Abraham leaned forward. "My ma tell you about the ha'nt?"

  "She mentioned it. You don't believe it, do you?" Abraham averted his eyes, leaning back again. "Couldn't say. Don't know nothing about it myself. Never seen nothing. But then," he added, "I don't have no call to go 'cross there, to go round by there at night."

  "Especially when the moon's dark."

  "Not no time," said Abraham. "Not no time at all."

  Brad said: "Abra'm, I wish you'd tell this around, you and your mother. There may be a certain feeling that we're outsiders, that we don't know enough about the problems here. If the people know that David's great-grandfather was burned alive only two miles away, it might help."

  Abra'm smiled. "I don't know about you, Lawyer Willis. Mebbe a few of them feels that way about you. They'll get over it. They know about you getting shot, don't they? But this here young man"—he smiled at David—"shucks, he ain't no outsider. I knew the minute we spoke, even before he told us about his great-grandaddy, I knew he wasn't no outsider." Garnett put down his Coke bottle and went out the side door, saying something about working on his damned jalopy, and David watched him go, glad that he was leaving. Abra'm's eyes were also following the pudgy man, and when he was out of earshot Abra'm said, "Bear watching, that fella. Too full of big-mouth talk."

  Relief swept over David. Garnett didn't have them fooled, at least not all of them.

  "I wish Sweeton would wake up to him," said Chuck.

  "Lawd! Reverend Sweeton, he trusts everyone. .Everyone," said Abra'm. "Ain't never seen no colored person that trusting before. He'll wake up. You'll see."

  Brad broke in. "One other thing, Abra'm, when you see your mother. Be sure, be sure to tell her not to weaken, not to agree to sell her land to anyone. Not now. Especially not now and especially not to anyone connected with the city."

  "Like ol' Hoot'n' Holler?"

  "Especially not your besotted mayor, ol' Hoot'n' Holler."

  Abra'm turned to David. "You tell her anything?"

  "I tried to give her the general idea. I'm pretty sure she trusts me. But it must come from you, too."

  "What they want with that land, Mr. David? What they want with it? Plenty of other places where they can build 'em a factory." He began to laugh. "They cheats my ma outa that field, makes 'em a lot of money building a factory, I bet your great-grandaddy'll give 'em fits. Bet there'll be busted machinery and all kinds of trouble happening won't nobody be able to explain."

  "Lay off, Abra'm. I've got goose pimples bad enough now. You're sure your mother'll hang tough?"

  "She will if I tells her how and why they cheating her. My ma's powerful set against being cheated. Seen too much of it. We all has. This about the first chance we've had to get back at 'em."

  Brad said, "Is Haskin related to you? Through your mother?"

  "Distant," said Abra'm. "Distant."

  "Could they get at her through him?"

  "You mean in these here talks?" Abra'm grew thoughtful. "They could try," he said at last. "They could try. Sure could. But I don't think they will, don't think they got sense enough, not right now. Ol' Hoot'n' Holler, he won't want to tip his hand less he has to. And if he does, Haskin going to suspicion something. Mighty suspicious man, Haskin. Don't trust no one. That's one reason we picked him."

  A new thought struck David, sending chills down his spine. "In Georgia," he said, "and some other states they're insisting on unencumbered real property, to secure bonds for demonstrator prisoners. It's one way to acquire real estate—cheap." He looked at Brad with a question in his eyes.

  "Hell, David, the N-double-A and ALEC and CORE are going to be responsible for more damned new roads and courthouses and civic improvements in the South than they have towns in these lousy states. Add it all together and it's more than a million dollars, easily more. If it keeps up, their senators can quit asking for appropriations from Congress. This was bound to come. We're rebuilding the whole damned South." He frowned. "Wait a minute. What are you driving at? That they'll offer us the kids if the land's put up as bond?"

  "Something like that," said David. "Something sweet and simple like that."

  "Abra'm," said Brad, "if they should make that suggestion and your mother refuses and you back her it will turn the whole town—all your people—against you." .

  Abraham stood up. "Ain't no sense worrying 'bout that yet. Let's take the trouble when it comes, not 'fore it gets here."

  David walked toward the door with him. "Damned if I know why I should worry at all. There's more damned common sense and mother-wit this side of those barricades than in that whole stinkhole of a town over there."

  "We ain't all that smart, Mr. David. But them bastids don't give us credit for no sense at all. They still thinks like their grandaddies did, we nothing but a bunch of savages or something. Been a hell of shock to them, men like the Reverend King and Mr. Wilkins and Mr. Willis and you and all, coming down here. Ain't no wonder they say one thing they hates is an educated nigger. Hell, half-dozen educated colored running this town, it be a decent place to live in." They were at the door now, and Abra'm was still talking. "I've knowed a lot of colored, Mr. David, but I ain't never knowed no colored what'd treat a little chile bad, and I don't care what color the chile is. Maybe they is some, maybe they is, but I ain't never knowed 'em."

  Brad's voice halted them as they started through the door: "Abra'm! You don't have any idea at all, any memory yet, of the name of the company that Holloway—Ol' Hoot'n' Holler —and Scoggins are dealing with on that land? You haven't remembered?"

  "Said I disremembered earlier," said Abra'm. "But an inkling come to me a while ago while we were talking. Some big company way north of here, way north. Does a lot of work for the government. That's according to my nephew. Leech —Leechman—Leechwood—some such name."

  Brad was on his feet, coming around the table toward them, his eyes the darkening green David had learned to recognize as a sign of inner excitement. "Litchfield? Was that it, Abra'm, Litchfield? Litchfield and Associates?"

  "That's it! That's right; I can see the name now, good as a book, right on that envelope. Litchfield."

  Brad stopped just in front of them, lean torso gleaming with sweat, ribs showing plainly under the skin, the purple-red of the bullet wound a surly scar. His breathing was quick and shallow. "You're sure, Abra'm? You're sure?"

  "I'm positive, Mr. Willis. Why? You-all know them?"

  "Know them!" breathed Brad. "Know them!"

  David's own breathing had quickened, and when he lit a cigarette to cover his excitement he found that his hands were unsteady. He had seen Lloyd Litchfield only occasionally since thos
e few weeks in Boston when he had tried to help him clear the jungle of red tape that surrounded the project of Litchfield and Associates going public. After he had returned to Boston following the Prof's death, Brad had invited him and Litchfield to dinner, and he learned then that the little scientist's mind was far from fuzzy when it came to human relationships, that he felt a deep emotional involvement in the Negro's struggle. They discussed at length the training program for Negroes set up by the Litchfield firm, and its three scholarships on scientific fields. "Abra'm," he said, "are you sure about something else? Are you sure your mother never signed a paper—I don't mean a bill of sale; I mean a paper of any kind, anything that might have been an option?"

  "Sure I'm sure," said Abra'm. His own eyes had taken a spark from theirs and were glowing. "My ma never had no schooling. She knows to sign her name and that's all. Anytime she does that it's a big thing. My ma ever put her name to a piece of paper she'd tell me. Couldn't anyone make her put her name to a piece of paper anyhow she wouldn't ask me first."

  The three men walked to the rickety, sagging porch, and David said, "Remember, Abra'm, you're to tell her not to sign anything, anything at all that anyone brings her. And she must trust us. You must trust us."

  As Abra'm climbed into his pickup, David called after him, "Mind you don't stay out there! Mind you make your ma turn you loose, y'hear!"

  As Abra'm's laughter, clear and rich and coming from deep inside, came back to him David thought how rare it had been, these last months, the sound of the deep, rich laughter of his people.

  ***

  When they came back into the room, Chuck was standing, waiting for them. "You heard that, Chuck?" asked David.

  Chuck nodded. "Sorry," he drawled, "but I've plumb got to say it: 'God works in mysterious ways,' you guys."

  "He do," said David. "He do indeed. Where's Garnett?"

  "Out back, working on his car. He couldn't hear anything."

  Brad was at the telephone, his hand on the receiver. He withdrew it slowly. "I don't dare," he said. "God damn it, I don't dare use this phone for something like this. It's bugged as sure as I'm a foot high." He sighed. "I'll take a bullet any day over this kind of thing. Lloyd Litchfield is a hell of a person; he was one of my best friends at college, besides being one of our clients. But if I call him and start talking about tapped lines and acting like a phony hero in a cheap TV series he'll send the white coats after me."