Five Smooth Stones

by Ann Fairbairn

  "No, ma'am. You forget about me until I get there. That's no walk at all."

  When he left Room Ten more than an hour later, he felt drained and empty, and recognized the feeling as relief. Randall had said to him, "Don't let this interview with Andrus spook you. He's O.K. If you walked in there with three heads, each one a different color, he wouldn't be anything but happy as long as each head knew Latin."

  Half an hour after entering Andrus's study, some of the meaning of a remark by the Prof began to sink in, not wholly accepted, yet not totally rejected as it had been when the Doc first made it. "There is only one color in which most of your instructors will be interested: gray. Sal Gray. The gray of that unpleasant-looking, spongy material within your skull." Before the interview was an hour old, David had been given a cup of tea, which he was too nervous to drink, and some pretty God-awful cookies, had discussed some hitherto unexplored reasons for the decline of the Roman Empire, and had translated without too much difficulty a short essay in Latin that the tall, pale, angular professor had himself written. At the close of the translation, which he was required to do verbally, Andrus said, "Professor Bjarne Knudsen was your tutor, was he not? The brother of our Dr. Knudsen?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Of course." Andrus's smile was a thin and reserved one, but it had its own peculiar warmth. "A young man from our Deep South who speaks Latin with a Danish accent. No matter. This can be easily corrected. You will be well ahead of your class, Champlin." Andrus sighed. "Well ahead. Is there a subject you'd like to add?"

  "Well, sir." David hesitated. He didn't want this guy to think he was showboating. "If I could, I mean if it's all right, I'd like to take Greek."

  "Greek, eh? Do you know the language at all?"

  "No, sir. Just the alphabet I learned it for kicks once."

  "Learned it for kicks! Good God!"

  David felt ill at ease, embarrassed, his cheeks hot. "I—I'm not a freak, sir. You know, a—a prodigy. Only, I had a lot of time every now and then because I had to be in the hospital a lot and all. I'm lousy—very bad—in math, and, well, I'm not too good in physics, and I was lazy and so I guess I did what came easiest"

  When he rose to leave, Andrus Came to the door with him and laid a thin hand on his shoulder. David sensed the gesture was an unusual one for this man. "Don't worry about Greek, Champlin," said the professor. "I'm sure it can be arranged. I will talk with Dr. Knudsen. He will be your faculty adviser, I understand. The dean's approval must be obtained, of course. It can all be arranged, I feel sure." He shook his head, and again the thin smile appeared. "And to think, to think, you did not quote at me once. I suffer excruciatingly at the hands of would-be students who quote at me. I say 'at me' advisedly. Most of them could not translate adequately what they quote, but quote they must. Until later, Champlin. Tell Dr. Knudsen I am pleased."

  As he walked to the Knudsens', David kept telling himself: "Take it easy, Champlin; take it easy. They won't all be like that one. Don't get cocky—"

  ***

  The Knudsen home was an undistinguished gray frame house with white trim and a wide, old-fashioned porch. There had to be large, shabby, comfortable rooms inside, both upstairs and down, and it was not until he reached the door that David felt the inner withdrawal, the fear and the resentment at the fear, and the simple, sick perplexity of the question: Should he have gone to the rear?

  As he stood uncertain and wavering, the door opened so suddenly that he took an involuntary step backward. A clear, rather high voice said, "You're David Champlin. Hello—" He looked down toward the source of the voice and found it in a small girl whose short, close cap of gleaming brown hair came to a spot well below his shoulder and whose dark, intense eyes were wide in a stare of unabashed and unashamed curiosity. His own eyes widened in surprise. He had thought the Knudsens were childless. Then he noticed that the splash of kelly-green silk he had taken for a scarf was actually a sling for a forearm in a plaster cast. This must be the niece, and if it was, she looked a long way from being old enough to go to college. The hand she held out was so tiny the palm of his own could bound it, and when he closed his fingers only a small thumb showed, pink and white against the brown of his skin.

  "Come in, for goodness' sake. I'm Sara. Sara Kent, and we've been waiting for you, just busting with curiosity." In the background he heard Mrs. Knudsen's voice. "Is he alive and well, Sara? Bring him in."

  He followed the small figure with the ridiculous kelly-green arm sling across a wide hall covered with soft-toned throw rugs toward an arched doorway on their right. Although the girl ahead of him was actually walking, it seemed to David that she was half running, half skipping, like a child, and he quickened his step.

  Bookshelves lined the open spaces of the living-room walls; there was a pleasing clutter of miscellaneous objects on the flat surfaces of tables; some of the chairs were ancient and of wicker, with cushions covered with faded chintz. A huge old-fashioned divan faced a fire of just the right intensity for a cool early spring night.

  "Sherry, David?" Dr. Knudsen had appeared from a room under the stairway at the rear of the entrance hall and was holding out a small tray of sherry-filled glasses. David stifled a sigh. He loathed sherry. It turned his stomach; there wasn't anything that came out of a bottle he hated more than sherry, but he'd seen enough movies and read enough books to know that it was some damned ceremonial sort of thing with a lot of people like these, and he forced a smile and said, "Yes, sir. Thank you."

  "It went well, David? Your interview with Andrus?" asked the doctor.

  Sara was sitting, legs curled beneath her, in a corner of the divan, and now she leaned forward and tugged his jacket gently. "Sit," she said. "For gosh sake don't just stand there. Sit and tell us about it."

  Dr. Knudsen had turned to place the tray on a table near the fireplace, and Mrs. Knudsen was arranging two chairs so they would all be facing one another. He lowered himself gingerly to the edge of the divan, and as he did so thought fleetingly of Gramp. He'd die, he told himself; Gramp would plumb die if he saw me; probably grab me by the ear and haul me out. Then Sara Kent's hand, small as a child's, reached out and gently took his sherry glass from him. "I can tell you loathe it," she whispered, and he turned and grinned down at her gratefully, started to speak and found silence clogging his throat, something smothering his mind. He looked away quickly.

  Dr. and Mrs. Knudsen were seated now, the doctor leaning forward, hair and eyes both seeming alive with interest. "Come, David. Tell us of it." Then when David finished, "He is human our Andrus."

  "Yes, sir. At least, I thought so. I was sort of nervous—"

  "He offered you tea and cookies? Did you eat them?"

  "One, sir."

  "Good. Good. More and we might not have had the pleasure of your company. His wife makes them. Probably from an ancient Roman recipe. Dreadful things, but offered only to those whom he likes. You are hungry now. Nerves plus relief spell hunger for a young stomach. Eve, shall we eat?"

  The doctor led the way to the dining room across the hall, and Sara walked beside David and again he had the feeling that though her feet were going through the motions of walking something inside her was running, skipping, something so vital and electric her small body could not quite contain it.

  Soup came first, from an old-fashioned tureen in front of Mrs. Knudsen. There was a tureen just like it, or nearly so, on their sideboard at home; only, Gramp used it for spare safety pins, thumbtacks, and Scotch tape; and an old rubber ball and some jacks were in it that he had played with when he was a kid. He was waiting, from habit, for someone to ask the blessing when he realized Mrs. Knudsen was ladling out the soup and there would be no blessing. As he started to eat he thanked silently and with fervor his Tant' Irene for teaching her son, Li'l Joe Champlin, the manners she had learned, the manners she had taught the white children in the homes where she had worked throughout her life, and he thanked with equal fervor her son for passing those lessons along to his grandson. Righ
t now he could feel in retrospect the sharp rap of a knife or fork handle on his knuckles, and he carefully spooned his soup away from him as he had been taught.

  Then, for no reason he could find, his complacency cracked and then shattered. In place of the memory of Gramp's teachings he heard Nehemiah and Rudy and a half-dozen others of his friends, heard in his mind what they would be saying if they saw him now, and could have read his mind a second ago. "Bootlicking, ass kissing—Uncle Tom, Jr.—white man's pet puppy, ain't you now—" Hell, those were mild. Nehemiah would have reached down into that store of biological oddities he had in his mind and come up with some beauts. Almost defiantly he tilted his soup plate the wrong way and spooned the last mouthful toward him and then wished he hadn't been childish. Damn, he wasn't any of those things; not any of them, yet misery took hold of him because of the knowledge that he might be and not know it.

  A question from Dr. Knudsen brought his attention back sharply. It was about food and the proper preparation of it, and was a continuation of discussions held a long time ago in the Prof's study, when Gramp had been there. He was in definite disagreement now with the doctor, and found himself arguing with intensity, and in a hidden corner of his mind was surprised at his own temerity. "Not thyme?" said the doctor. "Not thyme," said David firmly. "Bay leaf."

  When they finished the meal David felt well fed and almost relaxed; would have felt completely relaxed were it not for the ghosts of Nehemiah and Rudy and the others peering from the corners of the room. It had been a good meal; not, thought David judiciously, as interesting as one of Gramp's, or even one of his own, but passable.

  Sara pushed back her chair and stood up. "Dishes," she said. "It's one of the rewards of being young. David will help, won't you, David? He can wash; we'll stack 'em in the drainer and pour boiling water over 'em. I'll put them away later."

  Mrs. Knudsen turned to David. "I'm sorry, David. She's overcompensating for her plaster cast."

  "I'd like to. Honest. Honestly, Mrs. Knudsen."

  David scraped and Sara rinsed, holding the dishes under scalding water from the faucet; then David took over, hands and forearms deep in suds.

  "Want to bet Uncle Karl went rushing to the study to call Professor Andrus?" asked Sara.

  "To call—oh, gosh!"

  "You mustn't worry. I'm not scholarship but I took regular entrance exams early—last Christmas. I was interviewed by scads and scads. And Andrus just sort of glared at me and said my declensions were very poor and he 'hoped' I'd do well. As though I had some incurable disease or something. Do you know any of the other students?"

  "No. Yes. One. From New Orleans. He's a mathematics whiz kid."

  "Wait With an odd name—from the Bible—"

  "Ne'miah. Ne'miah Wilson."

  "Uncle Karl told us. He's coming up later. I won't be here. I don't know a single one, not one except little Tommy Evans; only, he hates to be called 'little Tommy.' So I don't because I think it's mean if someone doesn't like a nickname to use it, even if you grew up together. Have you got a nickname, even if you don't like it?"

  "No. Everyone's always called me David. Even my grandfather." He grinned, remembering. "Once in a while, when I was growing up, someone would call me 'Dave' or 'Davey,' and Gramp would say 'Chile's named David.'"

  "Even your mother?"

  "I don't have a mother. She died when I was born. My father died before I was born." He was holding the gravy boat under the hot-water faucet, and when he turned off the water the room was so quiet he could hear the clock ticking over the sink. He looked down at Sara, into a small, unhappy face, eyes wide and dark with distress.

  "David! Oh, David— Gosh, that's—that's awful. You were an—a full orphan when you were born, and I've been a half-orphan for three years and feel sorry for myself. David, that's terrible."

  She's not phony, he thought; whatever else she may be she's not phony; she's hurting inside; she's honest-to-God hurting inside thinking about it, feeling it. "It's not all that bad," he said. "My grandfather and grandmother brought me up; at least until my grandmother died. After that it was just Gramp."

  "He's super."

  "Who?" It was hard keeping up with this pint-sized kid. "Your grandfather. Who else? Uncle Karl told us about him."

  "He's just a li'l guy, just an ordinary li'l guy. Maybe a hundred pounds with his pockets full of nails. He's sure been good to me, though. All hundred pounds. Sure been good."

  Then she was singing. She had a high, clear voice, not strong, but true in pitch and tone and rhythm, and David turned, hands still in sudsy water, and stared as she sang: " 'Lord, Lord, Lord, you sure been good to me! Lord, Lord, Lord, you sure been good to me.... Saved my soul from sinandshame—'"

  It was white singing but it was good. He let her finish the first verse. "Where'd you learn that? My gram used to sing it"

  "My father. He's got, I'll bet you, just about every record that ever was made of every Negro spiritual and blues and early jazz. I mean every. Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey and Chippie Hill and King Oliver and—oh, gosh, all of them."

  "You like it? It's sort of old-fashioned now—I mean—"

  There you are again, David, there you are again, off by yourself, a brown boy in a white world where people just love you to pieces because you're a Negro or hate you to death because you're a Negro and they collect the records of your people and the songs you went to sleep by because you're—what the hell are you?—a folk, maybe. Because you're a folk and different, your people were different. But the songs they collect are the songs of another generation that wasn't going anywhere because it couldn't, and maybe that's why they like the songs, because they reassure them. But it wasn't true now, not like it used to be—

  Sara was saying: "You mean you think I ought to like bop and Kenton and progressive—stuff like that? Well, I do. I really do, only I like the older music better because it sort of says something and you can sing it. You know what my father says? He says the young generation of Negroes is making a terrible mistake, turning away from what was beautiful in the greatest art form, the only real art form—that's what he calls it—America ever had. So there."

  It was always better when a white came right out and acknowledged you as a Negro, didn't skirt around the subject and try to pretend you weren't, the way some people, even his own, tried to pretend they didn't know he had a gimpy leg.

  "Maybe he's right," said David, thinking of Rudy and how Rudy sometimes low-rated his piano playing. "But I guess every generation has to have its say," he added sententiously.

  "Tom Evans agrees with father and me. He comes over to the house all the time to play records."

  David let a handful of silver slide very slowly into its groove in the dish drainer. He let it slide slowly because he wanted to throw it in with all his strength. Who in hell was this guy Tom Evans? Some ofay kid who must live in her town and who goes to her house and listens to records and raves over "Negro art forms." God damn him and her and her record-collecting old man to hell and let him, David Champlin, get back home as quick as he could. "Little Tommy Evans." Probably some pasty-faced brat, white as a biscuit, with a crew cut and horn-rimmed glasses and an earnest handshake and earnest moist eyes who could tell you what Jelly Roll Morton's first words had been in the cradle and who, when he came to New Orleans, liked to come to the back rooms of the clubs and meet the musicians; and as far as he, David Champlin, was concerned, he hoped they'd all do what Gram was always wishing for 'em, fry in hell forever. Sara was still talking, and he wished she'd shut up. He smiled. "I'll just put the drainer in the sink and pour boiling water over them. Then I'll dry."

  "Nope. Just pour the water and leave 'em lay." She smiled up at him. "That's what we always do. Basically, Aunt Eve and I are lazy."

  After that, until they finished, he let her do the talking, and in his present mood he couldn't see that what she said amounted to anything. As they entered the living room they surprised Dr. Knudsen in a yawn, and it gave David what he was looking
for: the chance to say he'd better be leaving.

  "To be rested for tomorrow, eh?" said the doctor. "There is one interview you can omit from your list. The dean. Dean Goodhue. His wife just called, and he was taken to the hospital this afternoon for an emergency removal of his appendix. You must wait to talk with him until after you enter. He will accept the combined judgments of your interviewers."

  The doctor drove him back to the Inn and he spoke his piece, said his "thank yous" prettily, as Gramp and Gram had taught him, then hurried up the stairs without looking back.

  ***

  He closed the door of his room softly, in case there were others sleeping on the same floor. It was all too mixed up and confusing. Whether it was bad or not, he'd be one of the students Randall had said "holed up." That was the best way. What in hell was he there for anyway? To get his hand compulsively shaken by more whites so far than he'd just about met in his whole life, or to prepare for a law course? A guy didn't have to bother about Crow in New Orleans because it was always there, but here you had to sniff it out, go round like a damned ol' noun' dawg with your nose twitching. There hadn't been much of it so far, he'd hand 'em that, except for an occasional student and the day clerk on duty at the Inn desk who made him feel when he and the doctor went into the dining room, as though he were a typhoid carrier walking into a nursery full of kids.

  Then, because the Professor had taught him that no matter how much he lied to anyone else he could never lie to himself, because to do that killed the intellect, he faced the truth: that he was sick, angry, and brought down, misery bound and disgusted, because of a guy he'd never seen in his life, never heard of until tonight, who lived a thousand miles from New Orleans and spent a lot of time listening to race records at a dame's house he, David Champlin, would never get to see inside of. A white dame, and as far as he was concerned if he never saw her again or any other white chick all the time he was at Pengard it would be all right with him. Her and her sympathy and her "David! Oh, David, that's terrible—" and why in hell was Gramp so worried about it anyway? Couldn't he give his own grandson credit for having a little sense, just a little sense?