Fairbairn, Ann

by Five Smooth Stones

  He laughed. "We seem to be doing all right. Want me to take over on the eggs?"

  "Gosh, yes. Please. Just so they'll be the way you like 'em-"

  Usually when they ate in the breakfast nook, David sat with his back against the wall window, the leg with the injured knee stretched out along the bench. Today he sat facing her squarely, the leg, knee slightly bent, extended along the floor beside the table. He looked at the knee, wagged the leg, and said, "It bendeth."

  "It will bendeth more after Moore has another go at it. Sudsy says."

  "One more river to cross. Only let's not even talk about it, huh? Let's wait till we get over this baby-having deal."

  "Till you get over it, you mean."

  "All right. Till I get over it, pet." Toast popped up in the toaster beside him, and he took a piece. A sound brought his eyes to the chair at the end of the table, and he saw two small black, pink-lined ears and two round yellow eyes just clearing the table's edge.

  "Sara."

  "Don't be a meanie."

  "Sara, I know I've always been a damned fool about that cat. But I never, I swear I never let him sit at the table."

  "Don't blame Chop-bone. And don't make him get down. He won't be top dog—top cat—much longer." She took a small scrap of bacon and laid it near the edge of the table and grinned delightedly when a white-tipped black paw snaked out, speared it, and brought it to a pink and dainty mouth.

  "Do you suppose our son will be that smart? Relatively speaking, of course," she asked.

  When David did not respond she said, "David, you're not going to mind terribly, are you, I mean really mind, if we have a boy?"

  He broke off a small piece of toast, buttered it with careful deliberation, his eyes on the knife, the butter, the toast, miles from Sara.

  "David."

  He did not look up. "I'm not going to 'really mind,' as you put it, anything if you'll just hurry up and have the baby so I can stop worrying."

  "That's not an answer. And I've told you and Suds has told you and Dr. Frye has told you I'm going to be all right."

  "What the hell do they know about it?"

  "A fair amount, I'd say. Anyhow, look at Peg. Ten years older than I am."

  "And twice your size. Besides, she had a Cesarean."

  "So will I if anything goes haywire. It won't. David, I think it's going to be a boy. And so does Dr. Frye."

  "He's only guessing. Only person I ever knew who could tell beforehand was an old, old lady in the French Quarter. Black as jet, and folks said she practiced voodoo. She was never known to miss...." He broke off another piece of toast, began the slow buttering process again. "She's dead now."

  Some women, thought Sara, some women would throw that specially softened butter right smack in his face. And win custody of the child, the cat, and both bank accounts. She drew a deep breath and said, "You mustn't, David; you simply must not mind having a baby, me having a baby, and it's being a boy."

  He looked at her now and saw a troubled, anxious face.

  "Sweet, let's not go all through it again, huh? There sure as hell isn't anything we can do about it. I know when I'm licked. I even gave in on naming him David. Let's just concentrate on bringing the baby into a world that doesn't, particularly want him—or her."

  "David. It's not—" She stopped, started to resume speaking twice before she finally managed. "We're in one of those 'areas' again, aren't we? The kind you've talked about. Your area and my area and never the twain and stuff."

  "I'm afraid we are."

  She remembered their past discussion of the subject, sitting where they were sitting now, late at night, drinking beer, eating cheese and crackers. She wasn't even sure about her pregnancy that time, only hopeful. And she was more than hopeful that David, once he thought they were going to have a baby, would change his stubborn attitude of "no children, for God's sake." His reaction to the news of her possible pregnancy had been the most jolting hurt of her marriage.

  "No!" he said. "Go see Suds or an obstetrician or someone tomorrow. You could be mistaken. Lots of times—"

  "I've already made an appointment." She was almost whispering. "I made it today. David, I was so happy about it." She sat upright suddenly, stiff and straight and defiant. "And if it's true, David, I'm not going to do anything about it. Not for you or for anything in the world. So don't even mention it."

  "I know better than to do that." He smiled across the table at her, and she could tell he was trying to soothe the hurt. "I'll just put in an order for a girl."

  "Girl? I've already spoken for a boy. Most men—"

  "Sara, love, I've told you this before. I don't want a baby, any kind of baby, because it's too damned rough on any human who has to go through life living in two worlds. It's rough to have one white parent and be called a nigger. It's rough to have two black parents and be called a nigger, but of the two, I'll take two black parents and the word 'nigger' and know pride in my skin. It takes a lot of doing, Sara, for two people to instill pride of race into a child half white, half black. I was born black, lived black, but on my mother's side I must have had white ancestors. You think I'm proud of it? Christ no! Remember Jedediah? There's a proud man. Real pride, I'm talking about. The right kind of pride."

  He had gotten up and gone to the refrigerator for more beer. His limp was more pronounced then, and she knew the leg was often painful, but the doctor had said, "Don't try to spare him moderate walking, Mrs. Champlin," and she held herself back from the quick jump to bring him what he wanted, to push things closer to him, her own inner pain greater than his outer pain.

  When he came back to the table he said, "I happen to believe that the mixed-race girl has a little better chance. Let's say a less lousy chance."

  He poured beer, then smiled at her over the glass, and she knew he was trying to change the course of their talk. "Besides, if this baby we don't know whether we're producing or not is a girl, it might look like you."

  "David, if he's a boy—and don't call a baby 'it'—I want him to look like you. Only it doesn't work that way usually. Daughters look like fathers, sons like mothers."

  "My God, a midget!"

  Sara knew she was being stubborn and female but refused to be diverted. "You've got so much, David, so damned much to offer a son—"

  Only when they were in what he'd called "those areas" did David explode with a change of mood so sudden it frightened her. It was as though a word, a phrase not thought out beforehand, acted on the stored memories in his mind like a torch to dynamite.

  "What? For Christ's sake, what! A heritage of horror, that's what. One ancestor burned alive, his son dying of fright on a city street when he was an old man, that man's son killed hopping a freight trying to make a living for his family in a white man's world, and his own father missing death from lynching by minutes, permanently crippled. I'll offer him a Champlin coat of arms, I'll draw it—a noose, symbolizing his people; a bonfire, crossed rifles, and a wolf dog rampant."

  "David. Don't! You've never talked quite this way before."

  "Maybe I've never faced being a parent before."

  "But David, that's downright silly. That's not pride of race. It's not what happened to them that's important. It's what they were. Good, fine men, every one of them. You've always said so. And I can speak for Gramp. David, wouldn't you rather point to a dozen ancestors who were lynched than one —just one—who'd taken part in a lynching? Wouldn't you?"

  "Of course I would! Of course I would! But how can a man explain that to his son when the kid hears himself called 'nigger' for the first time—a kid who's only half nigger at that? What does he say? Does he say: 'Listen, son, don't let it upset you. Your old man's folks were O.K., they were black. But your mother's folks were stinkers, they were white, and they hung and burned and shot and castrated and enslaved and oppressed your old man's people for two hundred years.' And they'll still be doing it! Even while you're talking to the poor little tyke, they'll still be doing it!"

  And I
can't do anything about it, she thought; no one can do anything about those deep and hidden areas of stored-up agony and humiliation; no one, no one, no matter how much they love. If only I could bear this baby secretly, without having it show, have it suddenly, not let him know until it is alive and his—and mine. He'd love it, oh, most surely he must love his own as he did other children.

  She said, "Billy. You know, the little boy in New Orleans you told me about—"

  "He'd already been born! He was already here and in the world, and of it—"

  "And fighting. Isaiah told us when he was here that he's the youngest member of ALEC, that he gives a nickel a week to ALEC, out of what little he has. Do you think if you had a son he'd just sit back and feel sorry for himself, let himself be licked? Not David Champlin's son."

  It ended then, with David behind the wall she could never stretch tall enough to peer over, even his voice different when it came from the other side of that battlement. "Maybe," he said lightly, "I'd rather a girl because I like girls best—" and she had remained silent because of the bitter knowledge that now, at this moment, when a man and a woman should be closest, she and David were two different lifetimes apart.

  They had not discussed it again during the nine months just past, David's shrinking from the fact of the child apparently swallowed up in his inordinate worry about her. She told Peg, "Honestly, there's not a single thing that can go wrong with a pregnancy or delivery that he doesn't wake up in the night worrying about."

  "As long as you don't do that, it'll be a breeze—"

  "I don't care if it's a breeze or a hurricane, Peg. I just can't seem to be anything but brainless and happy about the whole thing—"

  Now, in what might be only a matter of days or even hours before the child was born that he had said he didn't want, she drew back from getting any deeper into one of the "areas" that held pain for them both.

  She refilled their cups, sugared David's generously, and held her own in both hands, looking at him over its rim.

  "You know when this baby was conceived, David? I mean, really conceived?"

  He grinned at her. "We could turn the problem over to a computer—"

  "Please. I'm serious, David. I hoped you'd know, but I imagine it's one of those only-female things. And maybe you won't even understand. It was a long time ago. It was on a spring night in Laurel, Ohio, when a kid named David Champlin came to a door and a girl with her arm in a green silk sling opened it and loved him like hell from then on in. That's when it was."

  Looking at her, he felt his throat constrict. What could a man say when his wife came out with something as completely woman as that; what say that wouldn't be clumsy or flip or sound as if he was making fun? He took her hand and rolled the fingers in, closing his own hand over the tiny fist.

  "Maybe you're right, hon. But we're a long way out there, in the realms of metaphysics, and predestination, and theology and God knows what. It wasn't nearly as much fun standing in the door as depending on the good old way—"

  "You—you thing, you." She grinned at him. "No soul."

  "One damned sure thing. Our child wasn't conceived when we thought it was. The infant would be three weeks old now and I'd be sleeping better. Viper."

  "Who's a viper?"

  "You are, honey chile. Lawd, yes! Losing count, not taking your pill on the right days—"

  "Judge, the defendant called my client a viper and a liar and accused her of deceit and treachery and we hereby petition this honorable court—"

  "Brad'll handle it, baby."

  He stood up slowly, taking his cane from where it was hooked over the back of the bench. "I have to get dressed and beat it." He scratched behind Chop-bone's ears, and the cat, settled now in elderly complacency on the seat of the chair, paws tucked in, responded with dignified thanks. As David limped toward the bedroom, Sara watched him, thinking how much faster he was getting around now, how his body had adjusted to the new handicaps and managed somehow to keep its grace, noting the wide spread of the shoulders and how almost undetectable was the stiffness of one. She remembered the long hours he had spent at the piano, forcing his right shoulder to guide his arm, playing more treble than she had ever heard. "Gramp always said he didn't give a hoot how good a man's right hand was, that it wasn't worth a damn if he couldn't back it up with a solid left. But damned if he meant the left hand to do it all."

  After she had cleared the table, she followed David to the bedroom and began making the bed.

  "Don't," he said. "Just smooth it up."

  "This from you!"

  "I'm scared to have you stoop over."

  "I won't tuck in."

  "See you don't." He was standing in front of the mirror, chin up, making fearful grimaces as he knotted his tie. "Sara."

  "What? Go on. Don't just stand there making faces."

  "Are you going to raise a sand if I take that trip to Cainsville with Brad? I mean, after the baby's born."

  She was pulling up the plaid bedspread, and stood holding it in her hand. "Raise a sand? I haven't before, have I? I don't when you go to New Orleans. And I didn't when you went to Selma, did I?"

  He was watching her in the mirror, and now, smoothing the ends of his tie, he laughed. "Baby, you never said a word, you never made a sound, when I went to Selma. But you screamed to high heaven just the same."

  She sighed. "Probably I did. I didn't mean to. You won't go alone?"

  "There'll be Brad, and Luke if he can make it."

  "And only for a day?"

  "Early plane in the morning, rent a car in Capitol City, plane to Washington late that evening with a good connection to Boston that night."

  "I'd be a dope to mind, wouldn't I? Or worry."

  "That's not saying you won't, but honest-to-God, Sara, it will be all right. A couple of deaths too long delayed have helped."

  "That poisonous little puff adder, Scoggins—"

  "Stone-cold daid in the market. Apoplexy. As you know."

  "I know."

  "And the mayor. Mowed down in his prime, he was, by his own tractor, on his own farm. A squashy character he looked, even alive. He must have;—"

  "Ick!—"

  "Sorry. I forgot your usually strong stomach has weakened—"

  He slipped into his coat, walked over to her and drew her close, his arm around her. "It hasn't been easy for you, Smallest. Married to me."

  "Or for you—to me."

  "Sorry?"

  "Stoopid! You don't know, you just don't know, what it was like all that long time—"

  "I don't? Sara. Sara." His arm tightened; then he released her, and she walked beside him to the front door.

  "Today? Think you can manage to produce today, elephant girl?"

  "Elephant girl!"

  "I stood in that doorway a hell of a long time ago—"

  "So you did, sweet, so you did—"

  ***

  At four o'clock that afternoon David Champlin thumped into the third-floor lounge of Endicott Hospital's maternity wing, Brad just behind him, and glared at Peg Willis. "Why didn't you call me this morning!"

  She took his arm, her husky voice deeper than usual with amusement. "Everything's fine, kid. All systems go—"

  "She's been here all day!"

  "She wouldn't let me." Peg turned to Brad. "What'll we do with the guy, Brad?" then back to David. "She said she could labor and bring forth for one but she was damned if she could do it for two. I see what she meant. She had me call as soon as your offspring seemed more imminent—"

  "The last damned minute—"

  "By the time I got to the telephone, called, and came back

  up, they were taking her to the delivery room. Things were happening that fast."

  "That can be bad, can't it?"

  "No! My God! Brad, rustle up some coffee—"

  For an hour David prowled the room, sat, stood up, growled when spoken to and growled when not spoken to, finally retreating into tense silence. He was standing by a center table l
eafing through a magazine, seeing nothing, when Suds came into the room, pink and beaming.

  "Congratulations, dad! It's a boy, six seven, and Sara's fine!"

  David dropped the magazine to the table and leaned forward, resting his weight on his hands. Sudsy's hand hit him between the shoulders. "Did you hear me?"

  "Sure. Sure I heard you. You're not kidding? About Sara?"

  Peg ran over, hugged him and kissed him resoundingly on his cheek. "Of course he's not. I tried to tell you, dope. It's wonderful!"

  David looked uncomprehendingly at Suds. "Six seven?"

  "Weight. Pounds and ounces. What did you think it was, height? Or quantity?"

  "Can I go up now?"

  "Wait for half an hour. She'll be wide awake then. That lad was in a hurry, a real hurry. Frye had to slow things down a bit. I promised Sara I'd run over from the office for the big moment, and I barely made it."

  David said, "I'm going up now—"

  'There's no point—Wait, here's the boss of the project."

  Dr. Anthony Frye entered, and David thought he had never seen a more incompetent-looking man. There was only a thin veil over the hostility in David's eyes when he looked at the doctor. For a moment, his thoughts left Sara as he tried to read the other man's face. What was the smug-looking bastard thinking now, breaking the news of a son to the black husband of the white woman who had borne that son? What was he thinking, this man who could be the archetype of the ordered, conventional white world into which he brought God knew how many babies each year to lead ordered, conventional white lives? There was no answer in the smiling face that, David had to admit, did not bear at that moment any evidence of giving the matter even superficial thought.

  "Mr. Champlin, you can relax now." The doctor's eyes were bright. "I'll turn you over to young Dr. Sutherland here for care and treatment. Everything is one hundred percent The boy, the mother, the friends." He laughed a practiced laugh. "Everyone's fine except the father, eh?"

  "I'm all right. I want to see her now—"

  "Wait a bit. Your son was in quite a hurry, Mr. Champlin. I don't think I've ever run as fast, comparatively speaking, to catch a train. We had to put your wife under to slow things a bit. And there was a little repair work—" He held up a hand reassuringly. "Bound to be. Makes for discomfort, nothing worse, and no fooling around with surgery later." He spoke to Suds now. "The whole thing was rather amazing, wasn't it, Doctor?"