Five Smooth Stones

by Ann Fairbairn

  ***

  After the ease of the Andrus interview some of the others made him feel as he had when he was a kid and fell out of bed in the middle of the night: shaken up. After they had talked a while and he'd done some verbal translations, Andrus hadn't bothered with a written examination; the others weren't so trusting. He took his mathematics examination with two white boys in Dr. Knudsen's classroom, and was thankful that one of the others was as bad as he was. After it was over and he was ready to crawl under a desk, Knudsen said, "Don't worry, David. As Randall said—you can't win them all."

  Because he realized his money wasn't going to hold out forever, he finally started eating breakfast and dinner in the hotel dining room, gritting his teeth every time he walked in, getting up way early in the morning so there wouldn't be anyone else there, and eating dinner early in the evening for the same reason.

  On the day he left, Mrs. Knudsen drove him to Cincinnati. Sara Kent sat between them, talking, thought David, like a damned parakeet chit-chittering away in a cage. Mrs. Knudsen had called and said she and Sara were going into the city to spend the night with friends and do some shopping the next day. He tried unsuccessfully to back away from the invitation.

  "It's a poky old train," said Mrs. Knudsen. "And you'll have another poky old ride to New Orleans on top of it. Say four thirty?"

  They were on a cutoff road that wound through low, tree-studded hills, when Sara finally stopped talking and asking the questions he had been trying to answer politely and briefly. All this "interest" was just so much crap, he thought, and the less he responded without being rude, the better. Mrs. Knudsen was saying: "Things are so different after classes start. Everything is in such dead earnest; at least, for us. We don't dare see too much of any one student because there mustn't be any playing favorites. That's why we're so delighted to have these in-between visits."

  "I don't see why things should be all that different," said Sara. "Not with David} anyhow. Gosh, he's practically a relative."

  She'd better have left the crack unsaid, thought David. "Practically a relative!" He almost snorted out loud. She was another one of these whites who gushed and palavered and sweet-talked you to death because you were a Negro, who went to the other extreme. Mrs. Knudsen's remark about "playing favorites" could sure as hell be just a polite way of saying, "Look, boy, it's all right in vacation, when the college is practically empty, but, well, during the rest of the time it won't quite do. Negro students for dinner and driving around with us and all that. So don't expect it." Not that he gave a damn. Did they think he wasn't in "dead earnest" too? He wasn't going to have any time, not any time at all, for what Gramp called "socializing." Particularly not with any damned whites.

  Sara was talking again, and a phrase, a word, knifed into his thoughts. "... and you'll like Tom Evans even if he does look as though he ought to be playing with alphabet blocks instead of studying. When he and Gwen get married—and I guess they will someday because they've been planning on it ever since they both really were playing with blocks—the minister will probably pat his head, Tom's head, and—"

  Mrs. Knudsen broke in. "Sara, you must try and realize that other people don't know always what or whom you're talking about, and explain things as you go along. Gwen, David, is Sara's oldest and best friend; Tom Evans, as you must have gathered, is Gwen's 'steady.' They all grew up together. Tom will be in your class. Gwen is going to her mother's college, Vassar. Sara would have gotten to all this eventually, but it might have taken us into Cincinnati."

  David hoped, almost prayed, that they hadn't heard that breath leave his lungs. He'd tried to hold it back. It couldn't make all that much difference, the difference between a silly, chattering parakeet of a silly little dame, and a girl who was so alive and vital and sort of reaching out, running in her mind toward something, feeling things so strongly that she was somehow inside you when you talked to her. Just the knowledge that another guy in another city was going steady with a girl named Gwen—it couldn't make all that difference—

  He turned to look out the window on his right, not turning just his head but his shoulders and body as well, to free them from the soft, warm feel of her cashmere coat, the sense of flesh beneath it. He pointed to a gleam of silver-gray in the, distance. "Is that another lake?"

  "No," said Eve Knudsen. "That's the first glimpse of the river. We'll be driving along beside it now for three or four miles."

  What had been a gleam and then a sliver of silver-gray grew broader now, could be seen in length, was a wide gray ribbon unwinding. The Ohio. And on the other side, Kentucky. To eyes used to the Mississippi it was not a wide river. Wide enough, he told himself; it's wide enough, Champlin; over here you're "Champlin"; over there you're "David" and "boy";... 'Tis summer, the darkies are ga-a-y. But it doesn't make any difference, it doesn't matter, he thought desperately; it doesn't matter if you're "Champlin" here and a damned darky over there; the shells of the eggs you're walking on are just as thin here as they are everywhere, and if you forget it you're in trouble, you're sure as hell in trouble; take it easy, Champlin, take it easy and get on home. There's more than a river to cross.

  ***

  At the station, after David left the car, Eve Knudsen and Sara waited, Eve bent forward, hand on ignition key, Sara leaning from the window. When the tall figure of David Champlin reached the doorway to the terminal, Sara touched the horn button gently and David turned. She waved one small hand frantically and, smiling, he returned the wave; then the doors of the terminal closed behind him and the car started off.

  Sara leaned back, stretching slender legs out straight. After a moment she said, "He's nice."

  "Isn't he, though! His grandfather must be all that Karl says he is, to bring up a boy like that almost unaided, at least for most of the time."

  "I wish I could draw him."

  "Why can't you, dear? You have more crayons and paper than a Paris art supply store."

  "Because—well, just because I don't think I can. Yet... Aunt Eve, why can't I take art first year? It's not fair. It's all I want. It's every blessed thing I want to do."

  "We've been over this before, my dear. Because your father wants you to go to Pengard. And he's quite right. I don't believe any artist has ever been severely damaged by a liberal-arts education. And there's no reason why you can't go to summer classes in Chicago. Or Cincinnati."

  "I know, but—"

  "You can take art, the history of art, art appreciation, all those courses, for three years. A first year devoted to mental groundwork isn't going to hurt you. Why don't you make a sketch of David when we get home? It should be a good practice exercise, even with only one hand available."

  "Yes." Sara closed her eyes, her head against the back of the seat. She couldn't explain, even to Aunt Eve, who was a super sort of adult with a super sort of understanding, why sketching David Champlin wouldn't be just a good practice exercise. Because she didn't want to just sketch David Champlin, his features and body, the set of his head and shoulders. She wanted to catch and put on paper (canvas, that was what she really wanted to do, put on canvas) what she had seen when she opened the door the night he came to the house: a tall figure silhouetted against a gray world slipping into the darkness of night, light from the hall behind her falling on the quiet, dark face, the dignity of it, the depth of the wide, dark eyes, wary, perplexed and—and? That was what she wanted to know and catch, that other thing she had seen that was not fear, yet somehow was fear, was not belligerence, but contained belligerence within it, was somehow allied with the dignity. She could find no word for it, yet might, given the training, the skill, be able to capture it so that someone—David—would say, "That's how it is."

  Eve Knudsen was saying, "Quite often it's difficult even to remember the features of people we see every day, when they're away. Do you think you'll be able to remember David's?"

  Sara did not open her eyes, was silent for a minute. "Easily," she said. "Easily."

  CHAPTER 13


  Unless the weather was subfreezing, the study of Merriwether Goodhue, dean of men at Pengard College, always depended on its open fireplace for heat. The rest of the house depended on an oil furnace, and was warm and comfortable. Goodhue was an Anglophile. "Oppressive," he said of the warmth of the rest of the house. "Stultifies the mental processes." Of his English setter, who usually lay before the fire warming old bones, the students said, "Barks with a British accent."

  The room's temperature was bearable to Goodhue because of the shaggy tweeds and pullover sweaters he affected. He still wore Norfolk jackets with leather elbow patches, and his trousers were without creases. His shoes were sturdy and British made. A pipe was seldom more than an arm's length from him, and invariably, when with someone newly met, he drew attention to a patched burnhole in his jacket, caused by absentmindedly placing a still glowing pipe in the pocket.

  The only jacket he owned that did not show evidences of having harbored a pipe, by either bagginess of pocket or patched burnhole, was his dinner jacket. When he wore the dinner jacket, the pipe was always in the pocket of his topcoat. Students in attendance at the few combined faculty-student functions where a dinner jacket was called for never failed to find him on a side porch or in the shrubbery, smoking. And being young and filled with wisdom, knew that they had been meant to find him doing just that. "I like a pipe," Goodhue would say with a deprecating smile. "Don't tell on me."

  The first student to hit upon his nickname had long since gone on to greater things, but the nickname itself found its way into the vocabularies of both students and faculty members, and he was seldom referred to as anything but "Cozy." He knew of this, and could only be thankful it was no worse; was not, for example, the obvious play on his first name. Better, he told his wife, that it be "Cozy" than "Merry." She had sniffed angrily. "Neither one shows any respect," she said. His wife's voice was syrup laced ever so lightly with acid. She had left Alabama when she was twenty-two, but she clung to every vestige of her origins as though without them she would disintegrate.

  The Goodhues, in 1950, had been married twenty-three years. They met at 'Bama. They always called it 'Bama. Their marriage took place two days after graduation, and they left immediately for the North. In the years that followed, neither of them mentioned the stricken horror of her family when their only daughter had married the son of a tenant farmer.

  Merriwether Goodhue had been a student of slightly above average ability. He had entered the University of Alabama on a scholarship, and then elected to try for a Master's in English history at Yale. His wife's money financed it. At twenty-one Elacoya Goodhue had come into a trust-fund inheritance. Its income was more than sufficient for a young childless couple, and they spent the first year of their marriage in England, where Goodhue's gradual transformation from the son of a tenant farmer to folksy don began. After they returned, two years at a college in northern New England and indefatigable maneuvering resulted in the post at Pengard.

  The Pengard appointment had been made soon after Horace Quimby's retirement to the status of an extraordinarily influential president emeritus, while he was vacationing in Europe, and there was still talk among board members and higher echelon faculty groups of the ex-president's wrath when he heard of it.

  There were numerous Pengard faculty teas and get-togethers throughout the year. Two of them came under the heading of what Dana Brooks, professor of English, called "tribal ceremonies." These were the fall and spring teas, the fall tea at the Quimby residence at the edge of the lake, the spring tea at the Goodhue home. The latter was always held on Friday and had been distinguished for a number of years by a certain fish-paste sandwich served for the benefit of Catholic faculty members unable to eat the thinly sliced ham and chicken salad sandwiches.

  "There are always cheese and olive. Mine are scrumptious. They do it on purpose." Eve Knudsen was speaking to her husband, Dr. Karl Knudsen, as they walked across the campus on their way to the Goodhues' spring tea.

  "Do what?" he asked.

  "Have the tea on Friday so Elacoya can serve those abominations and show how broad-minded and understanding they are. If I hear Elacoya Goodhue say one more time 'Those are fish' I shall eat one and then throw it up. On the hooked rug. because that's the hardest to clean."

  "This year you may have to throw up twice," said her husband. "We now have the Gottliebs and Steins with us. Elacoya will be saying to the Gibbonses and the Kerrys and Aiellos, 'Those are fish,' and to the Gottliebs and Steins Those are fish and these are chicken.'"

  "I can manage," said Eve. "Never think I can't. And with out the aid of mustard water yet."

  She tightened the knot of the scarf she wore over her short hair with an irritated jerk. "I don't suppose the Beanie Ben-fords will be there. And I do like them so."

  "What makes you think they won't be there?"

  "Would you? Would you want to feel that the teacups you drank from were going to be boiled after you left, while the others were just washed with soap and water?"

  "You exaggerate, Eve. True, Goodhue's a phony, but—"

  "You're naive, Karl. You've always been naive. Perhaps it's because you didn't grow up in the land of the free and the home of the brave. It's something one senses like—like— oh, I don't know—a dead mouse in the woodwork."

  Although Dean Goodhue spent at least an hour in the process of dressing before the annual spring teas, to make certain the right degree of casualness was obtained, he always managed to carry with him the spirit of the tweed Norfolk jacket and its leather-reinforced elbows, as some military men carry with them, when they are in mufti, the spirit of their medals and decorations. On this day the casualness was perfection itself, even to the lock of hair that straggled almost, but not quite, over one eye.

  If, thought Dr. Knudsen, Eve was going to make good her promise to throw up the fish sandwiches on the hooked rug, the least he could do was hold his end up by handing Goodhue a pocket comb. His own bristling hair was beyond help, but Cozy's forelock would comb back nicely. It would, of course, leave him looking like nothing so much as the gangling, big-boned proprietor of a small-town variety store, but Knudsen could not see that this would necessarily be any worse.

  This thought sustained him through the hall and into the already crowded living room. He glanced at the door of the study and wondered if, with Cozy's permission, he could manage to slip through it. Goodhue had some rather good first editions in there, and had told him recently of some new ones. Goodhue bought first editions on the advice of a dealer, managing always to give the impression that they were the fruits of long and arduous personal search.

  Knudsen heard the rasp of Elacoya's accent near him, like the sound of a file heard through velvet. "Those are fish, my dear. I took special care with them. I hope you'll like them." He turned quickly to throw a cigarette into the fireplace, then poked vigorously at a fire already burning nicely. He would not, actually dared not, look at his wife.

  He heard Cozy's voice beside him. "Thanks, old boy. We've had the devil of a time with that chimney this year. Can't think why. Seems to be working splendidly now. I do like a proper blaze." He lowered his voice to a whisper. "Let's pop off to the study. No one will miss us."

  As soon as they entered the study Goodhue made a long-armed grab for the pipe that lay in an oversized ashtray at the edge of the eighteenth-century table he used as a desk. While he loaded the pipe, lit it, puffed at it, lit it again, and then tried it out, Knudsen looked with delight at the first editions, held them gently in his hands, then replaced them carefully in their places. He glanced through the text of an early nineteenth-century history of the thirteen original colonies; it was not a first edition, merely an old book, and dry and dull. Goodhue said: "Interesting volume, that. Might be a splendid book to put in the hands of some of our less promising students. Might give them a sense of the real idealism of our founding fathers, change their viewpoint, awaken their interest."

  "It is doubtful," said Knudsen. "It is very doubtful. I w
ould fear the opposite effect. Flight, in fact."

  Goodhue took the book from Knudsen, caressing it gently with large, bony hands, and Knudsen tried to erase all expression from his face. The book was of no value and was excruciatingly boring.

  For a time they discussed common problems concerning students. Of a student who might be forced to drop out before the end of the year because of ill health, Goodhue said, "Pity. A great pity if it happens. I am sure he has many potentials, particularly with that background. I believe there are unsuspected potentials in all young people, if we can but use the right divining rod to find them. It is worth a try at any rate, worth the attempt at salvage."

  He was busy with his pipe for a moment, then said: "What about our new Quimby, due in the fall? The protégé of your brother. The boy who came up for interviews when I was in hospital."

  "Ja!" said Knudsen. "A find, Dean. A real find."

  "You are really impressed?"

  "Definitely. I saw the lad for the first time when he was just a child, and then last fall I flew to New Orleans and talked with him twice. I was much impressed. And so were the other faculty members who interviewed him here. There is something about him—something eager. Dedicated, perhaps, although that is a poor word for an untried scholar. But I felt it. Ja. I felt it"

  "Is he a New Orleans boy? A native-born Louisiana Negro?"

  "He was born just across town from my brother's home. Bjarne saw him first when he was only a few days old."

  The stem of Goodhue's pipe was directly in the center of his smile and made it unreadable. "He sensed this—this eagerness then?" He removed the pipe so it would not obstruct his quiet laughter at his own wit.

  Knudsen did not laugh. "I am quite serious. You will see when he comes here. He is a find. He will bring honor to our gray hairs—and to Pengard—in the years ahead."