经典名著《高山上的呼喊》
詹姆斯·鲍德温（James Baldwin）（1924–1987年），美国作家。作为一名作家和演说家，他在20世纪60年代的民权运动中声名鹊起。大部分作品生动地描述了美国黑人远离主流社会的现象以及这种疏远给黑人和白人带来的毁灭性影响。很多评论家都认为，他的随笔好过他的小说和剧本，如短文集《下一次将是烈火》（The Fire Next Time）（1963年）。 《[url=http://novel.tingroom.com/jingdian/168/]高山上的呼喊[/url]》是其作品中最重要的一部。[url=http://novel.tingroom.com/jingdian/168/]Introduction[/url]
‘The balloon of experience is tied to the earth,’ wrote Henry James in The American, ‘andunder that necessity we swing, thanks to a rope of remarkable length, in the more or lesscommodious car of imagination.’ In 1949 James Baldwin was living in Paris – a measure of ropehaving been unfurled – yet his ties to Harlem grew stronger by the day. There was little of Hemingway or Gertrude Stein in Baldwin’s sojourn; though he enjoyed a little more freedomthere, and adventure too, he wasn’t there for friendship or freedom or adventure either, but forwriting. Baldwin came to Europe in search of his own voice. He came for a clear view of the past.
And this exile suited him, sentences at once beginning to bleed out of memory ands imagination,old wounds opening into new language.
Baldwin’s father was a lay preacher; to his eldest son he was ‘handsome, proud, andingrown’. The son was born into a religious community, a world where duty joined with pride,where sin battled with high hopes of redemption, where the Saved sang over the Damned, wherelove and hate could smell similar, and where fathers and sons could be strangers for ever. ‘I haddeclined to believe,’ Baldwin wrote in his famous Notes of a Native Son, ‘in that apocalypse whichhad been central to my father’s vision.’
… I had not known my father well. We had got on badly, partly because we shared,in different fashions, the vice of stubborn pride. When he was dead I realized I had hardlyever spoken to him … He was of the first generation of free men. He, along with thousandsof other Negroes, came North after 1919 and I was part of that generation which had neverseen the landscape of what Negroes sometimes called the Old Country.
Baldwin was the kind of writer who couldn’t forget, He remembered everything, and thepulse of remembering, and the ache of old news, makes for the beat of his early writing. At the ageof fourteen he underwent what he called later ‘a prolonged religious crisis’, a confusion too deepfor tears, but not for prose. ‘I then discovered God, His saints and angels, and His blazing Hell,’ hewrote, ‘I suppose Him to exist only within the wall of a church – in fact, of our church – and I alsosupposed that God and safety were synonymous.’ At this point Baldwin became a preacher too. Heknew that something important happened when he stood up and entered deeply into the languageof a sermon. People listened, they clapped. ‘Amen, Amen,’ they said. And all of it remained withhim: the smell of church wood and the crying out, the shimmer of tambourines; the heat ofdamnation; the songs of the Saved, his father’s face; and the New York world outside with itswhite people downtown who’d say ‘Why don’t you niggers stay uptown where you belong?’ Butmore than anything it was his father’s face. ‘In my mind’s eye,’ hw writes in Notes, ‘I could seehim, sitting at the window, locked up in his terrors; hating and fearing every living soul includinghis children who had betrayed him, too, by reaching toward the world which had despised him.’
Some novelists, in their early work especially, set out to defeat the comforts of invention:
they refuse to make anything up. Go Tell It on the Mountain is James Baldwin’s first novel, ashadow-album of lived experience, the lines here being no less real than those on his mother’sface. For Baldwin, as for Proust, there is something grave and beautiful and religious about thelove of truth itself, and something of sensual joy in bringing it to the page. Baldwin’s career as anovelist was spent walking over old territory with ghosts. Things became new to him this way.
‘Mountain is the book I had to write if I was ever going to write anything else,’ he said years later.
‘I had to deal with what hurt me most. I had to deal with my father.’
The novel is centred around a “tarry service’ at the Temple of the Fire Baptised in Harlemin 1935. Fourteen-year-old John Grimes, dubious, fearful, and already bitter, is about to walk thepath to salvation. There are high expectations of John, ‘to be a good example’, and to ‘comethrough’ to the Lord. The service will last the whole night, and John is there in the company of theelder ‘saints’ of the church, and with his father and mother and Aunt Florence. There is a strongsense of John being one of the anointed, but we absorb his slow, terrible doubts about himself.
Altogether he is not a happy child on this special night:
Something happened to their faces and their voices, the rhythm of their bodies, and tothe air they breathed; it was as though wherever they might be became the upper room, andthe Holy Ghost were riding in the air. His father’s face, always awful, became more awfulnow, his father’s daily anger was transformed into prophetic wrath. His mother, her eyesraised to heaven, hands arked before her, moving, made real for John that patience, thatendurance, that long suffering, which he had read in the Bible and found so hard to image.
Between the novel’s opening and closing – the beginning of the service, with ‘the Lord high on thewind tonight’, and the closing, the morning, with John writhing for mercy on the threshing floor infront of the altar – we read the stories of his relatives: Florence, his aunt; Gabriel, his father; andhis mother Elizabeth. In three long chapters we come to know the beliefs, the leave-takings, theloves, the honour and dishonour, that had made up the lives of these three people, lives which haveanimated a host of other lives, and which, by and by, have come to animate the life of John Grimestoo. There are secrets in the novel, as they emerge in a beautiful, disturbing pattern, uncoveredwords speaking clearly, soulfully, of this one family’s legacy of pain and silence.
In Go Tell It on the Mountain, John has a certain dread of the life that awaits him; he feelsdoomed and he dreams of escape. He has made decisions. ‘He will not be like his father, or hisfather’s father. He would have another life.’ It might be said that this has been a vain dream ofartists – and teenagers – since the beginning of time, but in Baldwin it is neither vain not merely adream, for John Grimes represents, in all the eloquence of his wishes, a new kind of American. Hisfather’s fathers were slaves. John’s father, Gabriel, is free, bur he is expected to swear allegianceto the flag that has not sworn allegiance to him, and he lives in a racist land. On this front,Baldwin’s America was to become a battleground, but John, given the date of events in the novel,can never be a Civil Rights cipher. He feels guilty for failing to share Gabriel’s unambivalenthatred of white people, but John has additional freedoms in mind – freedom from the localoppressions of Gabriel being first among them. Go Tell It on the Mountain is not a protest novel, itis a political novel of the human heart. White men may be evil, but they are not the beginning northe end of evil. Baldwin was interested at this point in corruption at the first level of legislativepower – the family.
Baldwin wrote about black people. He did not write novels which understood the lives ofblack people only in terms of white subjugation. At the same time he recognized every terror ofsegregation, and Go Tell It on the Mountain is a shocking, and shockingly quiet, dramatization ofwhat segregation meant in the years when the novel is set. Early on we see John contemplating the forbidden world inside the New York Public Library, a world of corridors and marble steps and noplace for a boy from Harlem. ‘And then everyone,’ Baldwin writes, ‘all the white people inside,would know that he was not used to great buildings, or to many books, and they would look at himwith pity.’ This is a strong thing for a writer to remember, or to imagine, and Baldwin brings it tothe page with a sense of anger, and regret. The novel is marked by the dark presence of ‘downhome’, the Old South, where all of John’s family came from in search of a new life. This wasBaldwin’s primary milieu: the Harlem of migrant black Americans, bringing with them the storiesof their fathers and mothers, one generation away from slavery.
This Northerness was important to Baldwin. It was the world he knew from his childhoodand the world he cared most about. He had a feeling for the hopes that were invested in the journeyNorth – ‘North,’ where, as Gabriel’s mother says, ‘wickedness dwelt and Death rode mightythrough the streets’. In one of his essays, ‘A Fly in the Buttermilk’, Baldwin wrote of anotherSoutherner’s contempt for the North, a man he tried to interview for a piece on the progress ofCivil Rights: ‘He forced me to admit, at once, that I had never been to college; that NorthernNegroes lived herded together, like pigs in a pen; that the campus on which we met was a tribute tothe industry and determination of Southern Negroes. “Negroes in the South form a community.” ’
Baldwin’s sensibility, his talent for moral ambivalence, his taste for the terrifying patternsof life, the elegant force of his disputatious spirit, as much Henry James as Bessie Smith, was notalways to find favour with his black contemporaries. Langston Hughes called Go Tell It to theMountain ‘a low-down story in a velvet bag’. ‘A Joan of Arc of the cocktail party’ was AmiriBaraka’s comment on Baldwin. Some of this could be constructed as standard resentment –reminiscent of the kind expressed by Gabriel towards John for not hating whites enough – andsome was a reaction against Baldwin’s popularity with the white literary establishment. But thatwasn’t all. By the time he was writing novels, and writing these essays – works of magical powerand directness – Baldwin had come to feel that the black ‘protest’ novel was breathlesslyredundant. In a recent essay about Baldwin’s writing, the novelist Darryl Pinckney comments onBaldwin’s rejection of Richard Wright, the author of Native Son:
In retrospect Baldwin praises Wright’s work for its dry, savage folkloric humour andfor how deeply it conveys what life was like on Chicago’s South Side. The climate that hadonce made Wright’s work read like a racial manifesto had gone. Baldwin found whenreading Wright again that he did not think of the 1930s or even of Negroes, because Wright’scharacters and situations had universal meanings.
In ‘Alas, Poor Richard’, an essay in the collection Nobody Knows My Name, Baldwin concludesthat Wright was not the polemical firebrand he took himself to be. Many of Baldwin’s blackcontemporaries hated this view.
Baldwin’s first novel, in respect of all this, demonstrates a remarkable unit of form andcontent; the style of the novel makes clear the extent to which he was turning away from hisliterary forefathers. It may be sensible to see the novel as a farewell not only the Harlem of hisfather, but to the literary influence of Richard Wright and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Baldwin was unremitting on this point, and these several goodbyes, offered from his Paris exile, became thecreed of his early writing. ‘In most of the novels written by Negroes until today,’ he wrote, ‘thereis a great space where sex ought to be; and what usually fills this space is violence.’
Go Tell It on the Mountain is a very sensual novel, a book soaked in the Bible and theblues. Spiritual song is there in the sentences, at the head of chapters, and it animates the voices onevery side during the ‘coming through’ of John Grimes. As he steps up to the altar John issuddenly aware of the sound of his own prayers – ‘trying not to hear the words that he forcedoutwards from his throat’. Baldwin’s language has the verbal simplicity of the Old Testament, aswell as its metaphorical boldness. The rhythms of the blues, a shade of regret, a note of pain risingout of experience, are deeply inscribed in the novel, and they travel freely along the lines ofdialogue. There is a kind of metaphorical, liturgical energy in some novels – in Faulkner’s TheSound and the Fury, in Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, in Elizabeth Smart’s ByGrand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, in Toni Morrison’s Beloved – which is utterlyessential to the art. It may seem at first overpowering, to waft in the air like perfume, or to have thetexture of Langston Hughes’s velvet bag, but it is, in each of the cases, and especially in the caseof Baldwin’s first novel, a matter of straightforward literary integrity. Every word is necessary.
Every image runs clear in the blood of the novel.
Take John’s mother Elizabeth. Look at the shape of her thoughts on the page, as broughtout in Baldwin’s third-person narrative:
‘I sure don’t care what God don’t like, or you, either,’ Elizabeth heart replied. ‘I’mgoing away from here. He’s going to come and get me, and I’m going away from here.’
‘He’ was her father, who never came. As the years passed she replied only: ‘I’m goingaway from here.’ And it hung, this determination, like a heavy jewel between her breasts; itwas written in fire on the dark sky of her mind. But, yes – there was something she hadoverlooked. Pride goeth before destruction; and a haughty spirit before a fall. She had notknown this: she had not imagined that she could fall.
When reading this novel I am always aware of the charge that sex gives to religion, a bond thenovel explores and confirms. We think of Baldwin as a figure of the 1960s, a literary embodimentof outrage in the face of American segregation, but actually, Baldwin, in his novels, writes more ofsex and sin than he does of Civil Rights. Gabriel, a preacher speaking fiery words from the pulpit,is actually a secret sinner, fallen in ways that are known to his sister Florence, and known to hiswife Elizabeth too. When younger, ‘he drank until hammers rang in his distant skull; he cursed hisfriends and his enemies, and fought until blood ran down; in the morning he found himself in mud,in clay, in strange beds, and once or twice in jail; his mouth sour, his clothes in rags, from all ofhim rising the stink of his corruption’.
The novel tells the story of how John comes to know this. Gabriel uses the church not toraise but to conceal his true character: his hypocrisy is everywhere around him, and nowhere morethan in the minds of the women who had suffered him, and increasingly, too, in the mind of John,his ‘bastard’ son. Florence’s lover Frank was similarly corrupt, yet he, at least, in ‘the brutality of his penitence’, tried to make it up to Florence. It is John’s terrible fate – and everyone else’s – thatGabriel can neither inspire forgiveness nor redeem himself. He goes on with his lying. He inspiredfear. He is hated.
Novels about the sins of men often turn out to be novels about the courage of women.
Florence, Elizabeth, Deborah, and the tragic Esther, who is made pregnant by Gabriel and sentaway to die, are the novel’s moral retainers, keeping faith with humanity, whilst all around themFaith rides on his dark horse, cutting down hope and charity. Florence says something for all thewomen in the novel, and for James Baldwin, one suspects, contemplating the fate of the women inhis early life, when she looks at the face of Frank. ‘It sometimes came to her,’ Baldwin writes,‘that all women had been cursed from the cradle’; all, in one fashion or another, being given thesame cruel destiny, born to suffer the weight of men.’ Florence remembers the beginning of herown cruel destiny. It began with the birth of Gabriel. After this her future was ‘swallowed up’, andhe life was over: ‘There was only one future in that house, and it was Gabriel’s – to which, sinceGabriel was a man-child, all else must be sacrificed.’
Baldwin is unusual – and controversial, for more traditional black writers, as well as thecountercultural ones ahead of him – in making the African-American bid for freedom complicated.
For Florence, and for her nephew John Grimes, ‘free at last’ would have to mean several things,not only free from the Old South, or free from the evils of segregation, but the freedom to enter theworld outside, and freedom from the hatreds of the family kitchen. ‘And this because Florence’sdeep ambition: to walk out one morning through the cabin door, never to return.’ But the novelknows there is a price to be paid for this too. Elizabeth, a long time away from the South, enjoyedwalking in Central Park, because ‘it recreated something of the landscape she had known’.
Baldwin never got over his religious crisis at the age of fourteen. He didn’t forget. ‘Thatsummer.’ he writes in The Fire Next Time, ‘all the fears with which I had grown up, and whichwere now a part of me and controlled my vision of the world, rose up like a wall between theworld and me, and drove me into the church.’ He surrendered to a spiritual seduction, falling downbefore the altar, and thereafter preaching for three years. Baldwin recalls his father one dayslapping his face, ‘and in that moment everything flooded back – all the hatred and all the fear, andthe depth of a merciless resolve to kill my father rather than allow my father to kill me – and Iknew that all those sermons and tears and all that repentance and rejoicing had changed nothing’.
Baldwin put the essence of all of this into Go Tell it on the Mountain. Gabriel has thepreacher’s traditional love of helplessness, and traditional anger in the face of self-sufficiency. Yetthe central issues of Gabriel’s life are his hypocrisy, and the sexual desire that accompanies therejoicing of religious life. His treatment of Esther combines the two (‘I guess it takes a holy man tomake a girl a real whore,’ she say) but only Florence seems aware of the truth after Ester is dead.
At the close of the novel she seeks to name the tree by its fruit. And John, who is not strange fruitof that tree, might live to curse all lies and go free into the world.
Baldwin, all his writing, insisted he wrote only from experience. That was the kind ofwriter he was: he meant every word. There would always be something of the pulpit on Baldwin’swriting, and something too of the threshing floor. Go Tell It on the Mountain is a beautiful,enduring, spiritual song of a novel, a gush of life from a haunted American church. Like manywriters with a religious past, the young man who wrote this novel was stranded in the space between his own body and the body of Christ, and strung between the father he hated and theFather who might offer him salvation. John Grimes finds the beginning of his redemption in thevery place where his father lived out his hypocrisy, the church, where Gabriel spawned so much ofthe trouble in their lives. Here, at last, after all is said and done, John Grimes can go in search ofthe Everlasting, ‘over his father’s head to Heaven – to the Father who loved him’.
Andrew O’HaganAndrew O’Hagan was born in Glasgow in 1968. He is the author of The Missing, a bookabout missing persons, and Our Fathers, a novel shortlisted for the Booker Prize, a WhitbreadAward, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the IMPAC Dublin International Literary Award. He isa contributing editor to the London Review of Books.
For My Father and Mother They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength;they shall mount up with wings like eagles;they shall turn and not be weary,they shall walk and not faint.
欢迎访问[url=http://novel.tingroom.com/]英文小说网[/url][url=http://novel.tingroom.com/]http://novel.tingroom.com[/url] [url=http://novel.tingroom.com/jingdian/168/]Part 1 The Seventh Day[/url]
[p=30, 2, center]And the Spirit and the bride say,Come.
And let him that heareth sayCome.
And let him that is athirstcome.
And whosoever will, let himtake the water of life freely.[/p][p=30, 2, left] I looked down the line,
And I wondered
Everyone had always said that John would be a preacher when he grew up, just like his father. Ithas been so often that John, without ever thinking about it, had come to believe it himself. Notuntil the morning of his fourteenth birthday did he really begin to think about it, and by then it wasalready too late.[/p][p=30, 2, left] His earliest memories—which were in a way, his only memories—were of the hurry andbrightness of Sunday mornings. They all rose together on that day; his father, who did not have togo to work, and led them in prayer before breakfast; his mother, who dressed up on that day, andlooked almost young, with her hair straightened, and on her head the close-fitting white cap thatwas the uniform of holy women; his younger brother, Roy, who was silent that day because hisfather was home. Sarah, who wore a red ribbon in her hair that day, and was fondled by her father.[/p][p=30, 2, left] And the baby, Ruth, who was dressed in pink and white, and rode in her mother’s arms to church.[/p][p=30, 2, left] The church was not very far away, four block up Lenox Avenue, on a corner not far fromthe hospital. It was to this hospital that his mother had gone when Roy, and Sarah, and Ruth wereborn. John did not remember very clearly the first time she had gone, to have Roy; folks said thathe had cried and carried on the whole time his mother was away; he remembered only enough tobe afraid every time her belly began to swell, knowing that each time the swelling began it wouldnot end until she was taken from him, to come back with an stranger. Each time this happened shebecame a little more of a stranger herself. She would soon be going away again, Roy said—heknew much more about such things than John. John had observed his mother closely, seeing no swelling yet, but his father had prayed one morning for the ‘little voyager soon to be among them,’[/p][p=30, 2, left] and so John knew that Roy spoke the truth.[/p][p=30, 2, left] Every Sunday morning, then, since John could remember, they had taken to the Streets, theGrimes family on their way to church. Sinners along the avenue watched tem—men still wearingtheir Sunday-night clothes, wrinkled and dusty now, muddy-eyed and muddy-faced; and thewomen with harsh voices and tight, bright dresses, cigarettes between their finger or held tightly inthe corners of their mouths. They talked, and laughed, and fought together, and the women foughtlike the men. John and Roy, passing these men and women, looked at one another briefly, Johnembarrassed and Roy amused. Roy would be like them when he grew up, if the Lord did notchange his heart. These men and women they passed on Sunday mornings had spent the night inbars, or in cat houses, or on the streets, or on the rooftops, or under the stairs. They had beendrinking. They had gone from cursing to laughter, to anger, to lust. Once he and Roy had watcheda man and woman in the basement of a condemned house. They did it standing up. The womanhad wanted fifty cents, and the man had flashed a razor.[/p][p=30, 2, left] John had never watched again; he had been afraid. But Roy had watched them many times,and he told John he had done it with some girls down the block.[/p][p=30, 2, left] And his mother and father, who went to church on Sundays, they did it too, and sometimesJohn heard them in the bedroom behind him, over the sound of rat’s feet, and rat screams, and themusic and cursing from the harlot’s house downstairs.[/p][p=30, 2, left] Their church was called the Temple of the Fire Baptized. It was not the biggest church inHarlem, not yet the smallest, but John had been brought up to believe it was the holiest and best.[/p][p=30, 2, left] His father was head deacon in this church—there were only two, the other a round, black mannamed Deacon Braithwaite—and he took up the collection, and sometimes he preached. Thepastor, Father James, was a genial, well-fed man with a face like a darker moon. It was he whopreached on Pentecost Sundays, and led revivals in the summer-time, and anointed and healed thesick.[/p][p=30, 2, left] On Sunday mornings and Sunday nights the church was always full; on special Sundays itwas full all day. The Grimes family arrived in a body, always a little late, usually in the middle ofSunday school, which began at nine o’clock. This lateness was always their mother’s fault—atleast in the eyes of their father; she could not seem to get herself and the children ready on time,ever, and sometimes she actually remained behind, not to appear until the morning service. Whenthey all arrived together, they separated upon entering the doors, father and mother going to sit inthe Adult Class, which was taught by Sister McCandless, Sarah going to the Infants’ Class, Johnand Roy sitting in the Intermediate, which was taught by Brother Elisha.[/p][p=30, 2, left] When he was young, John had paid no attention in Sunday school, and always forgot thegolden text, which earned him the wrath of his father. Around the time of his fourteenth birthday,with all the pressures of church and home uniting to drive him to the altar, he strove to appearmore serious and therefore less conspicuous. But he was distracted by his new teacher, Elisha, whowas the pastor’s nephew and who had but lately arrived from Georgia. He was not much older thanJohn, only seventeen, and he was already saved and was a preacher. John stared at Elisha allduring the lesson, admiring the timbre of Elisha’s voice, much deeper and manlier than his own, admiring the leanness, and grace, and strength, and darkness of Elisha in his Sunday suit,wondering if he would ever be holy as Elisha was holy. But he did not follow the lesson, andwhen, sometimes, Elisha paused to ask John a question, John was ashamed and confused, feelingthe palms of his hands become wet and his heart pound like a hammer. Elisha would smile andreprimand him gently, and the lesson would go on.[/p][p=30, 2, left] Roy never knew his Sunday school lesson either, but it was different with Roy—no onereally expected of Roy what was expected of John. Everyone was always praying that the Lordwould change Roy’s heart, but it was John who was expected to be good, to be a good example.[/p][p=30, 2, left] When Sunday school service ended there was a short pause before morning service began.[/p][p=30, 2, left] In this pause, if it was good weather, the old folks might step outside a moment to talk amongthemselves. The sisters would almost always be dressed in white from crown to tow. The smallchildren, on this day, in this place, and oppressed by their elders, tried hard to play withoutseeming to be disrespectful of God’s house. But sometimes, nervous or perverse, they shouted, orthrew hymn-books, or began to cry, putting their parents, men or women of God, under thenecessity of proving—by harsh means or tender—who, in a sanctified household, ruled. The olderchildren, like John or Roy, might wander down the avenue, but not too far. Their father never letJohn and Roy out of his sight, for Roy had often disappeared between Sunday school and morningservice and has not come back all day.[/p][p=30, 2, left] The Sunday morning service began when Brother Elisha sat down at the piano and raised asong. This moment and this music had been with John, so it seemed, since he had first drawnbreath. It seemed that there had never been a time when he had not known this moment of waitingwhile the packed church paused—the sisters in white, heads raised, the brothers in blue, headsback; the white caps of the women seeming to glow in the charged air like crowns, the kinky,gleaming heads of the men seeming to be lifted up—and the rustling and the whispering ceasedand the children were quiet; perhaps someone coughed, or the sound of a car horn, or a curse fromthe streets came in; the Elisha hit the keys, beginning at once to sing, and everybody joined him,clapping their hands, and rising, and beating the tambourines.[/p][p=30, 2, left] The song might be: Down at the cross where my Savior died![/p][p=30, 2, left] Or: Jesus, I’ll never forget how you set me free![/p][p=30, 2, left] Or: Lord, hold my hand while I run this race![/p][p=30, 2, left] They sang with all the strength that was in them, and clapped their hands for joy. There hadnever been a time when John had not sat watching the saints rejoice with terror in his heart, andwonder. Their singing caused him to believe in the presence of the Lord; indeed, it was no longer aquestion of belief, because they made that presence real. He did not feel it himself, the joy theyfelt, yet he could not doubt that it was, for them, the very bread of life—could not doubt it, that is,until it was too late to doubt. Something happened to their faces and their voices, the rhythm oftheir bodies, and to the air they breathed; it was as though wherever they might be became theupper room, and the Holy Ghost were riding on the air. His father’s face, always awful, becamemore awful now; his father’s daily anger was transformed into prophetic wrath. His mother, hereyes raised to heaven, hands arked before her, moving, made real for John that patience, thatendurance, that long suffering, which he had read of in the Bible and found so hard to imagine.[/p][p=30, 2, left] On Sunday mornings the women all seemed patient, all the men seemed mighty. WhileJohn watched, the Power struck someone, a man or woman; they cried out, a long, wordlesscrying, and, arms outstretched like wings, they began the Shout. Someone moved a chair a little togive them room, the rhythm paused, the singing stopped, only the pounding feet and the clappinghands were heard; then another cry, another dancer; then the tambourines began again, and thevoices rose again, and the music swept on again, like fire, or flood, or judgment. Then the churchseemed to swell with the Power it held, and, like a planet rocking in space, the temple rocked withthe Power of God. John watched, watched the faces, and the weightless bodies, and listened to thetimeless cries. One day, so everyone said, this Power would possess him; he would sing and cry asthey did now, and dance before his King. He watched young Ella Mae Washington, the seventeen-year-old granddaughter of Praying Mother Washington, as she began to dance. And then Elishadanced.[/p][p=30, 2, left] At one moment, head thrown back, eyes closed, sweat standing on his brow, he sat at thepiano, singing and playing; and then, like a great black cat in trouble in the jungle, he stiffened andtrembled, and cried out. Jesus, Jesus, oh Lord Jesus! He struck on the piano one last wild note, andthrew up his hands, palms upward, stretched wide apart. The tambourines raced to fill the vacuumleft by his silent piano, and his cry drew answering cries. Then he was on his feet, turning, blind,his face congested, contorted with this rage, and the muscles leaping ands swelling in his long,dark neck. It seemed that he could not breathe, that his body could not contain this passion, that hewould be, before their eyes, dispersed into the waiting air. His hand, rigid to the very fingertips,moved outward and back against his hips, his sightless eyes looked upward, and he began to dance.[/p][p=30, 2, left] Then his hands close into fists, and his head snapped downward, his sweat loosening the greasethat slicked down his hair; and the rhythm of all the others quickened to match Elisha’s rhythm; histhighs moved terribly against the cloth of his suit, his heels beat on the floor, and his fists movedbeside his body as though he were beating his own drum. And so, for a while, in the centre of thedancers, head down, fists beating, on, on, unbearably, until it seemed the walls of the church wouldfall for very sound; and then, in a moment, with a cry, head up, arms high in the air, sweat pouringfrom his forehead, and all his body dancing as though it would never stop. Sometimes he did notstop until he fell—until he dropped like some animal felled by a hammer—moaning, on his face.[/p][p=30, 2, left] And then a great moaning filled the church.[/p][p=30, 2, left] There was sin among them. One Sunday, when regular service was over, Father James haduncovered sin in the congregation of the righteous. He had uncovered Elisha and Ella Mae. Theyhad been ‘walking disorderly’; they were in danger of straying from the truth. And as Father Jamesspoke of the sin that he knew they had not committed yet, of the unripe fig plucked too early fromthe tree—to set the children’s teeth on edge—John felt himself grow dizzy in his seat and couldnot look at Elisha where he stood, beside Ella Mae, before the altar. Elisha hung his head as FatherJames spoke, and the congregation murmured. And Ella Mae was not so beautiful now as she waswhen she was singing and testifying, but looked like a sullen, ordinary girl. Her full lips were looseand her eyes were black—with shame, or rage, or both. Her grandmother, who had raised her, satwatching quietly, with folded hands. She of the pillars of the church, a powerful evangelistandverywidelyknown.Shesaidnothi(was) ngin(one) Ella Mae’s defense, for she must have felt,as the congregation felt, that Father James was only exercising his clear and painful duty; he wasresponsible, after all, for Elisha, as Praying Mother Washington was responsible for Ella Mae. It was not an easy thing, said Father James, to be the pastor of a flock. It might look easy to just situp there in the pulpit night after night, year in, year out, but let them remember the awfulresponsibility placed on his shoulders by almighty God—let them remember that God would askan accounting of him one day for every soul in his flock. Let them remember this when theythough he was hard, let them remember that the Word was hard, that the way of holiness was ahard way. There was no room in God’s army for the coward heart, no crown awaiting him who putmother, or father, sister, or brother, sweetheart, or friend above God’s will. Let the church cryamen to this! And they cried: ‘Amen! Amen!’[/p][p=30, 2, left] The Lord had led him, said Father James, looking down on the boy and girl before him, togive them a public warning before it was too late. For he knew them to be sincere young people,dedicate to the service of the Lord—it was only that, since they were young, they did not know thepitfall Satan laid for the unwary. He knew that sin was not in their minds—not yet; yet sin was inthe flesh; and should they continue with their walking out alone together, their secrets andlaughter, and touching of hands, they would surely sin a sin beyond all forgiveness. And Johnwondered what Elisha was thinking—Elisha , who was tall and handsome, who played basket-ball,and who had been saved at the age of eleven in the improbable fields down south. Had he sinned?[/p][p=30, 2, left] Had he been tempted? And the girl beside him, whose white robes now seemed the merest,thinnest covering for the nakedness of breasts and insistent thighs—what was her face like whenshe was alone with Elisha, with no singing, when they were not surrounded by the saints? He wasafraid to think of it, yet he could think of nothing else; and the fever of which they stood accusedbegan also to rage him.[/p][p=30, 2, left] After this Sunday Elisha and Ella Mae no longer met each other each day after school, nolonger spent Saturday afternoons wandering through Central Park, or lying on the beach. All thatwas over for them. If they came together again it would be in wedlock. They would have childrenand raise them in the church.[/p][p=30, 2, left] This was what was meant by a holy life, this was what the way of the cross demanded. Itwas somehow on that Sunday, a Sunday shortly before his birthday, that John first realized thatthis was the life awaiting him—realized it consciously, as something no longer far off, butimminent, coming closer day by day.[/p][p=30, 2, left] John’s birthday fell on a Sunday in March, in 1935. He awoke on this birthday morning with thefeeling that there was menace in the air around him—that something irrevocable had occurred inhim. He stared at a yellow stain on the ceiling just above his head. Roy was still smothered in thebedclothes, and his breath came and went with a small, whistling sound. There was no other soundanywhere; no one in the house was up. The neighbors’ radios were all silent, and his mother hadn’tyet risen to fix his father’s breakfast. John wondered at his panic, then wondered about the time;and then (while the yellow stain on the ceiling slowly transformed itself into a woman’snakedness) he remembered that it was his fourteenth birthday and that he had sinned.[/p][p=30, 2, left] His first thought, nevertheless, was: ‘Will anyone remember?’ For it had happened, once ortwice, that his birthday had passed entirely unnoticed, and no one had said ‘Happy Birthday,Johnny,’ or given him anything—not even his mother.[/p][p=30, 2, left] Roy stirred again and John pushed him away, listening to the silence. On other mornings heawoke hearing his mother singing in the kitchen, hearing his father in the bedroom behind himgrunting and muttering prayers to himself as he put on his clothes; hearing, perhaps, the chatter ofSarah and the squalling of Ruth, and the radios, the clatter of pots and pans, and the voices of allthe folk nearby. This morning not even the cry of a bedspring disturbed the silence, and Johnseemed, therefore, to be listening to his own unspeaking doom. He could believe, almost, that hehad awakened late on that great getting-up morning; that all the saved had been transformed in thetwinkling of an eye, and had risen to meet Jesus in the clouds, and that he was left, with his sinfulbody, to be bound in hell a thousand years.[/p][p=30, 2, left] He had sinned. In spite of the saints, his mother and his father, the warning he had heardfrom his earliest beginnings, he had sinned with his hands a sin that was hard to forgive. In theschool lavatory, alone, thinking of the boys, older, bigger, braver, who made bets with each otheras to whose urine could arch higher, he had watched in himself a transformation of which hewould never dare to speak.[/p][p=30, 2, left] And the darkness of John’s sin was like the darkness of the church on Saturday evenings;like the silence of the church while he was there alone, sweeping, and running water into the greatbucket, and overturning chairs, long before the saints arrived. It was like his thoughts as he movedabout the tabernacle in which his life had been spent; the tabernacle hated, yet loved and feared. Itwas like Roy’s curses, like the echoes these curses raised in John: he remembered Roy, on somerare Saturday when he had come to help John clean the church, cursing in the house of God, andmaking obscene gestures before the eyes of Jesus. It was like all this, and it was like the walls thatwitnessed and the placards on the walls which testified that the wages of sin was death. Thedarkness of his sin was in the hardheartedness with which he resisted God’s power; in the scornthat was often his while he listened to the crying, breaking voices, and watched the black skinglisten while they lifted up their arms and fell on their faces before the Lord. For he had made hisdecision. He would not be like his father, or his father’s fathers. He would have another life.[/p][p=30, 2, left] For John excelled in school, though not, like Elisha, in mathematics or basket-ball, and itwas said that he had a Great Future. He might become a Great Leader of His People. John was notmuch interested in His people and still less in leading them anywhere, but the phrase so oftenrepeated rose in his mind like a great brass gate, opening outward for him on a world where peopledid not live in the darkness of his father’s house, did not pray to Jesus in the darkness of hisfather’s church, where he would eat good food, and wear fine clothes, and go to the movies asoften as he wished. In this world John, who was, his father said, ugly, who was always the smallestboy in his class, and who had no friends, became immediately beautiful, tall, and popular. Peoplefell all over themselves to meet John Grimes. He was a poet, or a college president, or a moviestar; he drank expensive whisky, and he smoke Lucky Strike cigarettes in the green package.[/p][p=30, 2, left] It was not only colored people who praised John, since they could not, John felt, in anycase really know; but white people also said it, in fact had said it first and said it still. It was whenJohn was five years old and in the first grade that he was first noticed; and since he was noticed byan eye altogether alien and impersonal, he began to perceive, in wild uneasiness, his individualexistence.[/p][p=30, 2, left] They were learning the alphabet that day, and six children at a time were sent to theblackboard to write the letters they had memorized. Six had finished and were waiting for theteacher’s judgment when the back door opened and the school principal, of whom everyone wasterrified, entered the room, No one spoke or moved. In the silence the principal’s voice said:[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘Which child is that?’[/p][p=30, 2, left] She was pointing to the blackboard, at John’s letters. The possibility of being distinguishedby her notice did not enter John’s mind, and so he simply stared at her. Then he realized, by theimmobility of the other children and by the way they avoided looking at him, that it was he whowas selected for punishment.[/p][p=30, 2, left] “Speak up, John,’ said the teacher, gently.[/p][p=30, 2, left] On the edge of tears, he mumbled his name and waited. The principal, a woman with whitehair and an iron face, looked down at him.[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘You’re a very bright boy, John Grimes,’ she said. ‘Keep up the good work.’[/p][p=30, 2, left] Then she walked out of the room.[/p][p=30, 2, left] That moment gave him, from that time on, if not a weapon at least a shield; he apprehendedtotally, without belief or understanding, that he had in himself a power that other people lacked;that he could use this to save himself, to raise himself; and that, perhaps, with this power he mightone day win that love which he so longed for. This was not, in John, a faith subject to death oralteration, nor yet a hope subject to destruction; it was his identity, and part, therefore, of thatwickedness for which his father beat him and to which he clung in order to withstand his father.[/p][p=30, 2, left] His father’s arm, rising and falling, might make him cry, and that voice might cause him totremble; yet his father could never be entirely the victor, for John cherished something that hisfather could not reach. It was his hatred and his intelligence that he cherished, the one feeding theother. He lived for the day when his father would be dying and he, John, would curse him on hisdeath-bed. And this was why, though he had been born in faith and had been surrounded all his lifeby the saints and by their prayers and their rejoicing, and though the tabernacle in which theyworshipped was more completely real to him that the several precarious homes in which he and hisfamily had lived, John’s heart was hardened against the Lord. His father was God’s minister, theambassador of the King of Heaven, and John could not bow before the throne of grace without firstkneeling to his father. On his refusal to do this had his life depended, and John’s secret heart hadflourished in its wickedness until the day his sin first overtook him.[/p][p=30, 2, left] In the midst of all his wonderings he fell asleep again, and when he woke up this time and got outof bed his father had gone to the factory, where he would work for half a day. Roy was sitting inthe kitchen, quarrelling with their mother. The baby, Ruth, sat in her high chair banging on the traywith an oatmeal-covered spoon. This meant that she was in a good mood; she would not spend theday howling, for reasons known only to herself, allowing no one but her mother to touch her.[/p][p=30, 2, left] Sarah was quiet, not chattering to-day, or at any rate not yet, and stood near the stove, arms folded,staring at Roy with the flat black eyes, her father’s eyes, that made her look so old.[/p][p=30, 2, left] Their mother, her head tied up in an old rag, sipped black coffee and watched Roy. Thepale end-of-winter sunlight filled the room and yellowed all their faces; and John, drugged andmorbid and wondering how it was that he had slept again and had been allowed to sleep so long,saw them for a moment like figures on a screen, an effect that the yellow light intensified. Theroom was narrow and dirty; nothing could alter its dimensions, no labor could ever make it clean.[/p][p=30, 2, left] Dirt was in the walls and the floorboards, and triumphed beneath the sink where the cockroachesspawned; was in the fine ridges of the pots and pans, scoured daily, burnt black on the bottom,hanging above the stove; was in the wall against which they hung, and revealed itself where thepaint had cracked and leaned outward in stiff squares and fragments, the paper-thin undersidewebbed with black. Dirt was in every corner, angle, crevice of the monstrous stove, and livedbehind it in delirious communion with the corrupted wall. Dirt was in the baseboard that Johnscrubbed every Sunday, and roughened the cupboard shelves that held the cracked and gleamingdishes. Under this dark weight the walls leaned, under it the ceiling, with a great crack likelightning in its center, sagged. The windows gleamed like beaten gold or silver, but now John saw,in the yellow light, how fine dust veiled their doubtful glory. Dirt crawled in the gray mop hungout of the windows to dry. John thought with shame and horror, yet in angry hardness of heart: Hewho is filthy, let him be filthy still. Then he looked at his mother, seeing, as though she weresomeone else, the dark, hard lines running downward from her eyes, and the deep, perpetual scowlin her forehead, and the downturned, tightened mouth, and the strong, thin, brown, and bonyhands; and the phrase turned against him like a two-edged sword, for was it not he, in his falsepride and his evil imagination, who was filthy? Through a storm of tears that did not reach hiseyes, he stared at the yellow room; and the room shifted, the light of the sun darkened, and hismother’s face changed. He face became the face that he gave her in his dreams, the face that hadbeen hers in a photograph he had seen once, long ago, a photograph taken before he was born. Thisface was young and proud, uplifted, with a smile that made the wide mouth beautiful and glowedin the enormous eyes. It was the face of a girl who knew that no evikl could undo her, and whocould laugh, surely, as his mother did not laugh now. Between the two faces there stretched adarkness and a mystery that John feared, and that sometimes caused him to hate her.[/p][p=30, 2, left] Now she saw him and she asked, breaking off her conversation with Roy: ‘You hungry,little sleepyhead?’[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘Well! About time you was getting up,’ said Sarah.[/p][p=30, 2, left] He moved to the table and sat down, feeling the most bewildering panic of his life, a needto touch things, the table and chairs and the walls of the room, to make certain that the roomexisted and that he was in the room. He did not look at his mother, who stood up and went to thestove to heat his breakfast. But he asked, in order to say something to her, and to hear his ownvoice:[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘What we got for breakfast?’[/p][p=30, 2, left] He realized, with some shame, that he was hoping she had prepared a special breakfast forhim on his birthday.[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘What you think we got for breakfast?’ Roy asked scornfully. ‘You got a special cravingfor something?’[/p][p=30, 2, left] John looked at him. Roy was not in a good mood.[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘I ain’t said nothing to you,’ he said.[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘Oh, I beg your pardon,’ said Roy, in the shrill, little-girl tone he knew John hated.[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘What’s the matter with you to-day?’ John asked, angry, and trying at the same time to lendhis voice as husky a pitch as possible.[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘Don’t you let Roy bother you,’ said their mother. ‘He cross as two sticks this morning.’[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘Yeah,’ said John, ‘I reckon.’ He and Roy watched each other. Then his plate was putbefore him: hominy grits and a scrap of bacon. He wanted to cry, like a child: ‘But, Mama, it’s mybirthday!’ He kept his eyes on his plate and began to eat.[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘You can talk about your Daddy all you want to,’ said his mother, picking up her battlewith Roy, ‘but one thing you can’t say—you can’t say he ain’t always done his best to be a fatherto you and to see to it that you ain’t never gone hungry.’[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘I been hungry plenty of times,’ Roy said, proud to be able to score this point against hismother.[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘Wasn’t his fault, then. Wasn’t because he wasn’t trying to feed you. Than man shoveledsnow in zero weather when he ought’ve been in bed just to put food in your belly.’[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘Wasn’t just my belly,’ said Roy indignantly. ‘He got a belly, too, I know—it’s a shame theway that man eats. I sure ain’t asked him to shovel no snow for me.’ But he dropped his eyes,suspecting a flaw in his argument. ‘I just don’t want him beating on me all the time,’ he said atlast. ‘I ain’t no dog.’[/p][p=30, 2, left] She sighed, and turned slightly away, looking out of the window. ‘Your Daddy beats you,’[/p][p=30, 2, left] she said, ‘because he loves you.’[/p][p=30, 2, left] Roy laughed. ‘That ain’t the kind of love I understand, old lady. What you reckon he’d doif he didn’t love me?’[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘He’d let you go right on,’ she flashed, ‘right on down to hell where it looks like you is justdetermined to go anyhow! Right on, Mister Man, till somebody puts a knife in you, or takes youoff to jail!’[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘Mama,’ John asked suddenly, ‘is Daddy a good man?’[/p][p=30, 2, left] He had not known that he was going to ask the question, and he watched in astonishment asher mouth tightened and her eyes grew dark.[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘That ain’t no kind of question,’ she said mildly. ‘You don’t know no better men, do you?’[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘Looks to me like he’s a mighty good man,’ said Sarah. ‘He sure is praying all the time.’[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘You children is young,’ their mother said, ignoring Sarah and sitting down again at thetable, ‘and you don’t know how lucky you is to have a father what worries about you and tries tosee to it that you come up right.’[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘Yeah,’ said Roy, ‘we don’t know how lucky we is to have a father what don’t want you togo to movies, and don’t want you to play in the streets, and don’t want you to have no friends, and he don’t want this and he don’t want that, and he don’t want you to do nothing. We so lucky tohave a father who just wants us to go to church and read the Bible and beller like a fool in front ofthe altar and stay home all nice and quiet, like a little mouse. Boy, we sure is lucky, all right. Don’tknow what I done to be so lucky.’[/p][p=30, 2, left] She laughed. ‘You going to find out one day,’ she said, ‘you mark my words.’[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘Yeah,’ said Roy.[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘But it’ll be too late, then,’ she said. ‘It’ll be too late when you come to be … sorry.’ Hervoice had changed. For a moment her eyes met John’s eyes, and John was frightened.. He felt thather words, after the strange fashion God sometimes chose to speak to men, were dictated byHeaven and were meant for him. He was fourteen—was it too lat? And thus uneasiness wasreinforced by the impression, which at that moment he realized had been his all along, that hismother was not saying everything she meant. What, he wondered, did she say to Aunt Florencewhen they talked together? Or to his father? What were her thoughts? Her face would never tell.[/p][p=30, 2, left] And yet, looking down at him in a moment that was like a secret, passing sign, her face did tellhim. Her thoughts were bitter.[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘I don’t care,’ Roy said, rising. ‘When I have children I ain’t going to treat them like this.’[/p][p=30, 2, left] John watched his mother; she watched Roy. ‘I’m sure this ain’t no way to be. Ain’t got no right tohave a houseful of children if you don’t know how to treat them.’[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘You mighty grown up this morning,’ his mother said. ‘You be careful.’[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘And tell me something else,’ Roy said, suddenly leaning over his mother, ‘tell me howcome he don’t never let me talk to him like I talk to you? He’s my father, ain’t he? But he don’tnever listen to me—no, I all the time got to listen to him.’[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘Your father,’ she said, watching him, ‘knows best. You listen to your father, I guaranteeyou you won’t end up in no jail.’[/p][p=30, 2, left] Roy sucked his teeth in fury. ‘I ain’t looking to go to no jail. You think that’s all that’s inthe world is jails and churches? You ought to know better than that, Ma.’[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘I know,’ she said, ‘there ain’t no safety except you walk humble before the Lord. Yougoing to find it out, too, one day. You go on, hardhead. You going to come to grief.’[/p][p=30, 2, left] And suddenly Rot grinned. ‘But you be there, won’t you, Ma—when I’m in trouble?’[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘You don’t know,’ she said, trying not to smile, ‘how long the Lord’s going to let me staywith you.’[/p][p=30, 2, left] Roy turned and did a dance step. ‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘I know the Lord ain’t as hardas Daddy. Is he, boy?’ he demanded of John, and struck him lightly on the forehead.[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘Boy, let me eat my breakfast,’ John muttered—though his plate had long been empty, andhe was pleased that Roy had turned to him.[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘That sure is a crazy boy,’ ventured Sarah, soberly.[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘Just listen,’ cried Roy, ‘to the little saint1 Daddy ain’t never going to have trouble with her—that one, she was born holy. I bet the first words she ever said was: “Thank you, Jesus,” Ain’tthat so, Ma?’[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘You stop this foolishness,’ she said, laughing, ‘and go on about your work. Can’t nobodyplay the fool with you all morning.’[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘Oh, is you got work for me to do this morning? Well, I declare,’ said Roy, ‘what you gotfor me to do?’[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘I got the woodwork in the dining-room for you to do. And you going to do it, too, beforeyou set foot out of this house.’[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘Now, why you want to talk like that, Ma? Is I said I wouldn’t do it? You know I’m a rightgood worker when I got a mind. After I do it, can I go?’[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘You go ahead and do it, and we’ll see. You better do it right.’[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘I always do it right,’ said Roy. ‘You won’t know your old woodwork when I get through.’[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘John,’ said his mother, ‘you sweep the front room for me like a good boy, and dust thefurniture. I’m going to clean up in here.’[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘Yes’m,’ he said, and rose. She had forgotten about his birthday. He swore he would notmention it. He would not think about it any more.[/p][p=30, 2, left] To sweep the front room meant, principally, to sweep the heavy red and green and purpleOriental-style carpet that had once been that room’s glory, but was now so faded that it was all oneswimming color, and so frayed in places that it tangled with the broom. John hated sweeping thiscarpet, for dust rose, clogging his nose and sticking to his sweaty skin, and he felt that should besweep it for ever, the clouds of dust would not diminish, the rug would not be clean. It became inhis imagination his impossible, lifelong task, his hard trial, like that of a man he had read aboutsomewhere, whose curse it was to push a boulder up a steep hill, only to have the giant whoguarded the hill roll the boulder down again—and so on, for ever, throughout eternity; he was stillout there, that hapless man, somewhere at the other end of the earth, pushing his boulder up thehill. He had John’s entire sympathy, for the longest and hardest part of his Saturday mornings washis voyage with the broom across this endless rug; and coming to the French doors that ended theliving-room and stopped the rug, he felt like an indescribably weary traveler who sees his home atlast. Yet for each dustpan he so laboriously filled at the door-still demons added to the rug twentymore; he saw in the expanse behind him the dust that he had raised settling again into the carpet;and he gritted his teeth, already on edge because of the dust that filled his mouth, and nearly weptto thinl that so much labor brought so little reward.[/p][p=30, 2, left] Nor was this the end of John’s Labor; for, having put away the broom and the dustpan, hetook from the small bucket under the sink the dust rag and the furniture oil and a damp cloth, andreturned to the living-room to excavate, as it were, from the dust that threatened to bury them, hisfamily’s goods and gear. Thinking bitterly of his birthday, he attacked the mirror with the cloth,watching his face appear as out of a cloud. With a shock he saw that his face had not changed, thatthe hand of Satan was as yet invisible. His father had always said that his face was the face ofSatan—and was there not something—in the lift of the eyebrow, in the way his rough hair formed a V on his brow—that bore witness to his father’s words? In the eye there was a light that was notthe light of Heaven, and the mouth trembled, lustful and lewd, to drink deep of the wines of Hell.[/p][p=30, 2, left] He stared at his face as though it were, as indeed it soon appeared to be, the face of a stranger, astranger who held secrets that John could never know. And, having thought of it as the face of astranger, he tried to look at it as a stranger might, and tried to discover what other people saw. Buthe saw only details: two great eyes, and a broad, low forehead, and the triangle of his nose, and hisenormous mouth, and the barely perceptible cleft in his chin, which was, his father said, the markof the devil’s little finger. These details did not help him, for the principle of their unity wasundiscoverable, and he could not tell what he most passionately desired to know: whether his facewas ugly or not.[/p][p=30, 2, left] And he dropped his eyes to the mantelpiece, lifting one by one the objects that adorned it.[/p][p=30, 2, left] The mantelpiece held, in brave confusion, photographs, greeting cards, flowered mottoes, twosilver candlesticks that held no candles, and a green metal serpent, poised to strike. To-day in hisapathy John stared at them, not seeing; he began to dust them with exaggerated care of theprofoundly preoccupied. One of the mottoes was pink and blue, and proclaimed in raised letters,which made the work of dusting harder:[/p][p=30, 2, left] Come in the evening, or come in the morning,Come when you’re looked for, or come without warning,A thousand welcomes you’ll find here before youAnd the oftener you come here, the more we’ll adore you.[/p][p=30, 2, left] And the other, in letters of fire against a background of gold, stated:[/p][p=30, 2, left] For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoevershould believe in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.[/p][p=30, 2, left] John iii, 16These somewhat unrelated sentiments decorated either side of the mantelpiece, obscured alittle by the silver candlesticks. Between these two extremes, the greeting cards, received year afteryear, on Christmas, or Easter, or birthdays, trumpeted their glad tidings; while the green metalserpent, perpetually malevolent, raised its head proudly in the midst of these trophies, biding thetime to strike. Against the mirror, like a procession, the photographs were arranged.[/p][p=30, 2, left] These photographs were the true antiques of the family, which seemed to feel that aphotograph should commemorate only the most distant past. The photographs of John and Roy,and of the two girls, which seemed to violate this unspoken law, served only in fact to prove itmost iron-hard: they had all been taken in infancy, a time and a condition that the children couldnot remember. John in this photograph lat naked on a white counterpane, and people laughed andsaid that it was cunning. But John could never look at it without feeling shame and anger that hisnakedness should be here so unkindly revealed. None of the other children was naked; no, Roy lay in the crib in a white gown and grinned toothlessly into the camera, and Sarah, somber at the ageof six months, wore a white bonnet, and Ruth was held in her mother’s arms. When people lookedat these photograph and laughed, their laughter differ from the laughter with which they greetedthe naked John. For this reason, when visitors tried to make advances to John he was sullen, andthey, feeling that for some reason he disliked them, retaliated by deciding that he was a ‘funny’[/p][p=30, 2, left] child.[/p][p=30, 2, left] Among the other photographs there was one of Aunt Florence, his father’s sister, in whichher hair, in the old-fashioned way, was worn high and tied with a ribbon; she had been very youngwhen his photograph was taken, and had just come North. Sometimes, when she came to visit, shecalled the photograph to witness that she had indeed been beautiful in her youth. There was aphotograph of his mother, not the John liked and had only once, but taken immediatelyafterhermarriage.Andthere(one) wasaphotographofhisfat(seen) her, dressed in black,(one) sittingon a country porch with his hands folded heavily in his lap. The photograph had been taken on asunny day, and the sunlight brutally exaggerated the planes of his father’s face. He stared into thesun, head raised, unbearable, and though it had been taken when he was young, it was not the faceof a young man; only something archaic in the dress indicated that this photograph had been takenlong ago. At the time this picture was taken, Aunt Florence said, he was already a preacher, andhad a wife who was now in Heaven. That he had been a preacher at that time was not astonishing,for it was impossible to imagine that he had ever been anything else; but that he had had a wife inthe so distant past who was now dead filled John with wonder by no means pleasant. If she hadlived, John thought, then he would never have come North and met his mother. And this shadowywoman, dead so many years, whose name he knew had been Deborah, held in the fastness of hertomb, it seemed to John, the key to all those mysteries he so longed to unlock. It was she who hadknown his father in a life where John was not, and in a country John had never seen. When he wasnothing, nowhere, dust, cloud, air, and sun, and falling rain, not even thought of, said his mother,in Heaven with the angels, said his aunt, she had known his father, and shared his father’s house.[/p][p=30, 2, left] She had loved his father. She had known his father when lightning flashed and thunder rolledthrough Heaven, and his father said: ‘Listen. God is talking.’ She had known him in the morningsof that far-off country when his father turned on his bed and opened his eyes, and she had lookedinto those eyes, seeing what they held, and she had not been afraid. She had seen him baptized,kicking like a mule and howling, and she had seen him weep when his mother died; he was a rightyoung man then, Florence said. Because she had looked into those eyes before they had looked onJohn, she knew that John would never know—the purity of his father’s eyes when John was notreflected in their depths. She could have told him—had he but been able form his hiding-place toask!–how to make his father love him. But now it was too late. She would not speak before thejudgment day. And among those many voices, the stammering with his own, John would care nolonger for her testimony.[/p][p=30, 2, left] When he had finished and the room was ready for Sunday, John felt dusty and weary andsat down beside the window in his father’s easy chair. A glacial sun filled the streets, and a highwind filled the air with scraps of paper and frost dust, and banged the hanging signs of stores andstore-front churches. It was the end of winter, and the garbage-filled snow that had been bankedalong the edges of pavements was melting now and filling the gutters. Boys were playing stickballin the damp, cold streets; dressed in heavy woolen sweaters and heavy trousers, they danced and shouted, and the ball went crack as the stick struck it and sent I speeding through the air. One ofthem wore a bright-red stocking cap with a great ball of wool hanging down behind that bouncedas he jumped, like a bright omen above his head. The cold sun made their faces like copper andbrass, and through the closed window John heard their coarse, irreverent voices. And he wanted tobe one of them, playing in the streets, unfrightened, moving with such grace and power, but heknew this could not be. Yet, if he could not play their games, he could do something they could notdo; he was able, as one of his teachers said, to think. But this brought him little in the way ofconsolation, for to-day he was terrified of his thoughts. He wanted to be with these boys in thestreet, headless and thoughtless, wearing out his treacherous and bewildering body.[/p][p=30, 2, left] But now it was eleven o’clock, and in two hours his father would be home. And then theymight eat, and then his father would lead them in prayer, and then he would give them a Biblelesson. By and by it would be evening and he would go to clean the church, and remained for tarryservice. Suddenly, sitting at the window, and with a violence unprecedented, there arose in John aflood of fury and tears, and he bowed his head, fists clenched against the window-pane, crying,with teeth on edge: ‘What shall I do? What shall I do?’[/p][p=30, 2, left] Then his mother called him; and he remembered that she was in the kitchen washingclothes and probably had something for him to do. He rose sullenly and walked into the kitchen.[/p][p=30, 2, left] She stood over the wash-tub, her arms wet and soapy to the elbows and sweat standing on herbrow. Her apron, improvised from an old sheet, was wet where she had been leaning over thescrubbing-board. As he came in, she straightened, drying her hands on the edge of the apron.[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘You finish your work, John?’ she askedHe said: ‘Yes’m,’ and thought how oddly she looked at him; as though she were looking atsomeone else’s child.[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘That’s a good boy,’ she said. She smiled a shy, strained smile. ‘You know you’re yourmother’s right-hand man?’[/p][p=30, 2, left] He said nothing, and he did not smile, but watched her, wandering to what task thispreamble led.[/p][p=30, 2, left] She turned away, passing one damp hand across her forehead, and went to the cupboard.[/p][p=30, 2, left] Her back was to him, and he watched her while she took down a bright, figured vase, filled withflowers only on the most special occasions, and emptied the contents into her palm. He heard thechink of money, which meant that she was going to send him to the store. She put the vase backand turned to face him, her palm loosely folded before her.[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘I didn’t never ask you,’ she said, ‘what you wanted for your birthday. But you take this,son, and go out and get yourself something you think you want.’[/p][p=30, 2, left] And she opened his palm and put the money into it, warm and wet from her hand. In themoment that he felt the warm, smooth coins and her hand on his, John stared blindly at her face, sofar above him. His heart broke and he wanted to put his head on her belly where the wet spot was,and cry. But he dropped his eyes and looked at his palm, at the small pile of coins.[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘It ain’t much there,’ she said.[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘That’s all right.’ Then he looked up, and she bent down and kissed him on the forehead.[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘You getting to be,’ she said, putting her hand beneath his chin and holding his face awayfrom her, ‘a right big boy. You going to be a mighty fine man, you know what? Your mama’scounting on you.’[/p][p=30, 2, left] And he knew again that she was not saying everything she meant; in a kind of secretlanguage she was telling him to-day something that he must remember and understand to-morrow.[/p][p=30, 2, left] He watched her face, his heart swollen with love for her and with an anguish, not yet his own, buthe did not understand and that frightened him.[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘Yes, Ma,’ he said, hoping that she would realize, despite his stammering tongue, the depthof his passion to please her.[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘I know,’ she said, with a smile, releasing him and rising, ‘there’s a whole lot of things youdon’t understand. But don’t you fret. The Lord’ll reveal to you in His own good time everythingHe wants you to know. You put your faith in the Lord, Johnny, and He’ll surely bring you out.[/p][p=30, 2, left] Everything works together for good for them that love the Lord.’[/p][p=30, 2, left] He had heard her say this before—it was her text, as Set thine house in order was hisfather’s—but he knew that to-day she was saying it to him especially; she was trying to help himbecause she knew he was in trouble. And this trouble was also her own, which she would never tellto John. And even though he was certain that they could not be speaking of the same things—forthen, surely, she would be angry and no longer proud of him—this perception on her part and hisavowal of her love for him lent to John’s bewilderment a reality that terrified and a dignity thatconsoled him. Dimly, he felt that he ought to console her, and he listened, astounded, at the wordsthat now fell from his lips:[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘Yes, Mama. I’m going to try to love the Lord.’[/p][p=30, 2, left] At this there sprang into his mother’s face something startling, beautiful, unspeakably sad—as though she were looking far beyond him at a long, dark road, and seeing on that road atraveler in perpetual danger. Was it he, the traveler? or herself? or was she thinking of the cross ofJesus? She turned back to the wash-tub, still with this strange sadness on her face.[/p][p=30, 2, left] ‘You better go on now,’ she said, before your daddy gets home.’[/p][p=30, 2, left] In Central Park the snow had not yet melted on his favorite hill. This hill was in the center of thepark, after he had left the circ le of the reservoir, where he always found, outside the high wall ofcrossed wire, ladies, white, in fur coats, walking their great dogs, or old, white gentlemen withcanes. At a point that he knew by instinct and by the shape of the buildings surrounding the park,he struck out on a steep path overgrown with trees, and climbed a short distance until he reachedthe clearing that led to the hill. Before him, then, the slope stretched upward, and above it thebrilliant sky, and beyond it, cloudy, and far away, he saw the skyline of New York. He did notknow why, but there arose in him an exultation and a sense of power, and he ran up the hill like anengine, or a madman, willing to throw himself headlong into the city that glowed before him.[/p][p=30, 2, left] But when he reached the summit he paused; he stood on the crest of the hill, hands claspedbeneath his chin, looking down. Then he, John, felt like a giant who might crumble this city withhis anger; he felt like a tyrant who might crush this city beneath his heel; he felt like a long-awaited conqueror at whose feet flowers would be strewn, and before whom multitudes cried,Hosanna! He would be, of all, the mightiest, the most beloved, the Lord’s anointed; and he wouldlive in this shining city which his ancestors had seen with longing from far away. For it was his;the inhabitants of the city had told him it was his; he had but to run down, crying, and they wouldtake him to their hearts and shoe him wonders his eyes had never seen.[/p][p=30, 2, left] And still, on the summit of that hill he paused. He remembered the people he had seen inthat city, whose eyes held no love for him. And he thought of their feet so swift and brutal, and thedark gray clothes they wore, and how when they passed they did not see him, or, if they saw him,they smirked. And how the lights, unceasing, crashed on and off above him, and how he was astranger there. Then he remembered his father and his mother, and all the arms stretched out tohold him back, to save him from this city where, they said, his soul would find perdition.[/p][p=30, 2, left] And certainly perdition sucked at the feet of the people who walked there; and cried in thelights, in the gigantic towers; the marks of Satan could be found in the faces of the people whowaited at the doors of movie houses; his words were printed on the great movie posters that invitedpeople to sin. It was the roar of the damned that filled Broadway, where motor-cars and buses andthe hurrying people disputed every inch with death. Broadway: the way that led to death wasbroad, and many could be found thereon; but narrow was the way that led to life eternal, and fewthere were who found it. But he did not long for the narrow way, where all his people walked;where the houses did not rise, piercing, as it seemed, the unchanging clouds, but huddled, flat,ignoble, close to the filthy ground, where the streets and the hallways and the rooms were dark,and where the unconquerable odor was of dust, and sweat, and urine, and home-made gin. In thenarrow way, the way of the cross, there awaited him only humiliation for ever; there awaited him,one day, a house like his father’s house, and a church like his father’s, and a job like his father’s,where he would grow old and black with hunger and toil. The way of the cross had given him abelly filled with wind and had bent his mother’s back; they had never worn fine clothes, but here,where the buildings contested God’s power and where the men and women did not fear God, herehe might eat and drink to his heart’s content and clothe his body with wondrous fabrics, rich to theeye and pleasing to the touch. And then what of his soul, which would one day come to die andstand naked before the judgment bar? What would his conquest of the city profit him on that day?[/p][p=30, 2, left] To hurl away, for a moment of ease, the glories of eternity![/p][p=30, 2, left] These glories were unimaginable—but the city was real. He stood for a moment on themelting snow, distracted, and then began to run down the hill, feeling himself fly as the descentbecame more rapid, and thinking: ‘I can climb back up. If it’s wrong, I can always climb back up.’[/p][p=30, 2, left] At the bottom of the hill, where the ground abruptly leveled off on to a gravel path, he nearlyknocked down an old white man with a white beard, who was walking very slowly and leaning onhis cane. They both stopped, astonished, and looked at one another. John struggled to catch hisbreath and apologize, but old man smiled. John smiled back. It was as though he and the old manhad between them a great secret; and the old man moved on. The snow glittered in patches all overthe park. Ice, under the pale, strong sun, melted slowly on the branches and trunks of trees.[/p][p=30, 2, left] He came out of the park at Fifth Avenue where, as always, the old-fashioned horse-carriages were lined along the kerb, their drivers sitting on the high seats with rugs around theirknees, or standing in twos and threes near the horses, stamping their feet and smoking pipes andtalking. I summer he had seen people riding in these carriages, looking like people out of books, orout of movies in which everyone wore old-fashioned clothes and rushed at nightfall over frozenroad, hotly pursued by their enemies who wanted to carry them back to death. ‘Look back, lookback,’ had cried a beautiful woman with long blonde curls, ‘and see if we are pursued!—and shehad come, as John remembered, to a terrible end. Now he stared at the horses, enormous andbrown and patient, stamping every now and again a polished hoof, and he thought of what it wouldbe like to have one day a horse of his own. He would call it Rider, and mount it at morning whenthe grass was wet, and from the horse’s back look out over great, sun-filled fields, his own. Behindhim stood his house, great and rambling and very new, and in the kitchen his wife, a beautifulwoman, made breakfast, and the smoke rose out of the chimney, melting into the morning air.[/p][p=30, 2, left] They had children, who called him Papa and for whom at Christmas he bought electric trains. Andhe had turkeys and cows and chickens and geese, and other horses besides Rider. They had a closetfull of whisky and wine; they had cars—but what church did they go to and what would he teachhis children when they gathered around him in the evening? He looked straight ahead, down FifthAvenue, where graceful women in fur coats walked, looking into the windows that held silkdresses, and watches, and rings. What church did they go to? And what were their houses like inthe evening they took off these coats, and these silk dresses, and put their jewelery in a box, andleaned back in soft beds to think for a moment before they slept of the day gone by? Did they reada verse from the Bible every night and fall on their knees to pray? But no, for their thoughts werenot of God, and their way was not God’s way. They were in the world, and of the world, and theirfeet laid hold on Hell.[/p][p=30, 2, left] Yet in school some of them had been nice to him, and it was hard to think of them burningin Hell for ever, they who were so gracious and beautiful now. Once, one winter when he had beenvery sick with a heavy cold that would not leave him, one of his teachers had bought him a bottleof cod-liver oil, especially prepared with heavy syrup so that it did not taste so bad: this was surelya Christian act. His mother had said that God would bless that woman; and he had got better. Theywere kind—he was sire that they were kind—and on the day that he would bring himself to theirattention they would surely love and honor him. This was not his father’s opinion. His father saidthat all white people were wicked, and that God was going to bring them low. He said that whitepeople were never to be trusted, and that they told nothing but lies, and that no one of them hadever loved a nigger. He, John, was a nigger, and he would find out, as soon as he got a little older,how evil white people could be. John had read about the things white people did to colored people;how, in the South, where his parents came from, white people cheated them of their wages, andburned them, and shot them—and did worse things, said his father, which the tongue could notendure to utter. He had read about colored men being burned in the electric chair for things theyhad not done; how in riots they were beaten with clubs; how they were tortured in prisons; howthey were the last to be hired and the first to be fired. Niggers did not live on these streets whereJohn now walked; it was forbidden; and yet he walked here, and no one raised a hand against him.[/p][p=30, 2, left] But did he dare to enter this shop out of which a woman now casually walked, carrying a greatround box? Or this apartment before which a white man stood, dressed in a brilliant uniform? John knew he did not dare, not to-day, and he heard his father’s laugh: ‘No, nor to-morrow neither!’ Forhim there was the back door, and the dark stairs, and the kitchen or the basement. This world wasnot for him. If he refused to believe, and wanted to break his neck trying, then he could try untilthe sun refused to shine; they would never let him enter. In John’s mind then, the people and theavenue underwent a change, and he feared them and knew that one day he could hate them if Goddid not change his heart.[/p][p=30, 2, left] He left Fifth Avenue and walked west toward the movie houses. Here on 42nd Street it wasless elegant but not less strange. He loved this street, not for the people or the shops but for thestone lions that guarded the great main building of the Public Library, a building filled with bookand unimaginably vast, and which he had never yet dared to enter. He might, he knew, for he was amember of the branch in Harlem and was entitled to take books from any library in the city. But hehad never gone in because the building was so big that it must be full of corridors and marblesteps, in the maze of which he would be lost and never find the book he wanted. And theneveryone, all the white people inside, would know that he was not used to great buildings, or tomany books, and they would look at him wit pity. He would enter on another day, when he hadread all the books uptown, an achievement that would, he felt, lend him the poise to enter anybuilding in the world. People, mostly men, leaned over the stone parapets of the raised park thatsurrounded the library, or walked up and own and bent to drink water from the public drinking-fountains. Silver pigeons lighted briefly on the heads of the lions or the rims of fountains, andstrutted along the walks. John loitered in front of Woolworth’s, staring at the candy display, tryingto decide what candy to buy—and buying one, for the store was crowded and he was certain thatthe salesgirl would never notice him—and before a vendor of artificial flowers, and crossed SixthAvenue where the Automat was, and the parked taxis, and the shops, which he would not look atto-day, that displayed in their windows dirty postcards and practical jokes. Beyond Sixth Avenuethe movie houses began, and now he studied the stills carefully, trying to decide which of all thesetheaters he should enter. He stopped at last before a gigantic, colored poster that represented awicked woman, half undressed, leaning in a doorway, apparently quarreling with a blond man whostared wretchedly into the street. The legend above their heads was: ‘There’s a fool like him inevery family—and a woman next door to take him over!’ He decided to see this, for he feltidentified with the blond young man, the fool of his family, and he wished to know more about hisso blatantly unkind fate.[/p][p=30, 2, left] And so he stared at the price above the ticket-seller’s window and, showing her his coins,received the piece of paper that was charged with the power to open doors. having once decided toenter, he did not look back at the street again for fear that one of the saints might be passing and,seeing him, might cry out his name and lay hands on him to drag him back. He walked veryquickly across the carpeted lobby, looking at nothing, and pausing only to see his ticket torn, halfof it thrown into a silver box and half returned to him. And then the usherette opened the doors ofthis dark palace and with a flashlight held behind her took him to his seat. Not even then, havingpushed past a wilderness of knees and feet to reach his designated seat, did he dare to breathe; nor,out of a last, sick hope for forgiveness, did he look at the screen. He stared at the darkness aroundhim, and at the profiles that gradually emerged from this gloom, was so like the gloom of Hell. Hewaited for this darkness to be shattered by the light of the second coming, for the ceiling to crackupward, revealing, for every eye to see, the chariots of fire on which descended a wrathful God and all the host of Heaven. He sank far down
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THE PRAYER OF THE SAINTSAnd they cried with a loud voice,saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true,dost thou not judge and avengeour blood on them that dwell on the earth1 FLORENCE’S PRAYERLight and life to all He brings,Risen with healing in His wings!
Florence raised her voice in the only song she could remember that her mother used to sing:
‘It’s me, it’s me, it’s me, oh, Lord, Standing in the need of prayer.’
Gabriel turned to stare at her, in astonished triumph that his sister should at last behumbled. She did not look at him. Her thoughts were all on God. After a moment, the congregationand the piano joined her:
‘Not my father, not my motherBut it’s me, oh, Lord.’
She knew that Gabriel rejoiced, not that her humility might lead her to grace, but only thatsome private anguish had brought her low: her songs revealed that she was suffering, and this herbrother was glad to see. This had always been his spirit. Nothing had ever changed it; nothing everwould. For a moment her pride stood up; the resolution that had brought her to this place to-nightfaltered, and she felt that if Gabriel was the Lord’s anointed, she would rather die and endure Hellfor all eternity than bow before His altar. But she strangled her pride, rising to stand with them inthe holy space before the altar, and still singing:
‘Standing in the need of prayer.’
Kneeling as she had not knelt for many years, and in this company before the altar, shegained again from the song the meaning it had held for her mother, and gained a new meaning forherself. As a child, the song had made her see a woman, dressed in black, standing in infinite mistsalone, waiting for the form of the Son of God to lead her through the white fire. This woman nowreturned to her, more desolate; it was herself, not knowing where to put her foot; she waitedtrembling, for the mists to be parted that she might walk in peace. That long road, her life, whichshe had followed for sixty groaning years, had led her at last to her mother’s starting-place, thealtar of the Lord. For her feet stood on the edge of that river which her mother, rejoicing, hadcrossed over. And would the Lord now reach out His hand to Florence and heal and save? But,going down before the scarlet cloth at the foot of the golden cross, it came to her that she hadforgotten how to pray.
Her mother has taught her that the way to pray was to forget everything and everyone butJesus; to pour out of the heart, like water from a bucket, all evil thoughts, all thoughts of self, allmalice for one’s enemies; to come boldly, and yet more humbly than the little child, before theGiver of all good things. Yet, in Florence’s heart to-night hatred and bitterness weighed likegranite, pride refused to abdicate from the throne it had held so long. Neither love nor humility hadled her to the altar, but only fear. And God did not hear the prayers of the fearful, for the hearts ofthe fearful held no belief. Such prayers could rise no higher that the lips that uttered them.
Around her she heard the saints’ voices, a steady, charged murmur, with now and again thename of Jesus rising above, sometimes like the swift rising of a bird into the air of a sunny day, sometimes like the slow rising of the mist from swamp ground. Was this the way to pray? In thechurch that she had joined when she first came North one knelt before the altar once only, in thebeginning, to ask for forgiveness of sins; and this accomplished, one was baptized and became aChristian, to kneel no more thereafter. Even if the Lord should lay some great burden on one’sback—as He has done, but never so heavy a burden as this she carried now—one prayed in silence.
It was indecent, the practice of common niggers to cry aloud at the foot of the altar, tears streamingfor all the world to see. She had never done it, not even as a girl down home in the church they hadgone to in those days. Now perhaps it was too late, and the Lord would suffer her to die in thedarkness in which she had lived so long.
In the olden days God had healed His children. He had caused the blind to see, the lame towalk, and He had raised dead men from the grave. But Florence remembered one phrase, whichnow she muttered against the knuckles that bruised her lips: ‘Lord, help my unbelief.’
For the message had come to Florence that had come to Hezekiah: Set thine house in order,for thou shalt die and not live. Many nights ago, as she turned on her bed, this message came toher. For many days and nights the message was repeated; there had been time, then, to turn to God.
But she had thought to evade him, seeking among the women she knew for remedies; and then,because the pain increased, she had sought doctors; and when the doctors did no good she hadclimbed stairs all over town to rooms where incense burned and where men or women in trafficwith the devil gave her white powders, or herbs to make tea, and cast spells upon her to take thesickness away. The burning in her bowels did not cease—that burning which, eating inward, tookthe flesh visibly from her bones and caused her to vomit up her food. Then one night she founddeath standing in the room. Blacker than night, and gigantic, he filled one corner of her narrowroom, watching her with eyes like the eyes of a serpent when his head is lifted to strike. Then shescreamed and called on God, turning on the light. And death departed, but she knew he would beback. Every night would bring him a little closer to her bed.
And after death’s first silent vigil her life came to her bedside to curse her with manyvoices. Her mother, in rotting rags filling the room with the stink of the grave, stood over her tocurse the daughter who had denied her on her deathbed. Gabriel came, from all his times and ages,to curse the sister who had held him to scorn and mocked his ministry. Deborah, black, her body asshapeless and hard as iron, looked on with veiled, triumphant eyes, cursing the Florence who hadmocked her in her pain and barrenness. Frank came, even he, with that same smile, the same tilt ofhis head. Of them all she would have begged forgiveness, had they come with ears to hear. Butthey came like many trumpets; even if they had come to hear and not to testify it was not they whocould forgive her, but only God.
The piano had stopped. All around her now were only the voices of the saints.
‘Dear Father’—it was her mother praying—‘we come before You on our knees this evening to askYou to watch over us and hold back the hand of the destroying angel. Lord, sprinkle the doorpostof this house with the blood of the Lamb to keep all the wicked men away, Lord, we praying forevery mother’s son and daughter everywhere in the world but we want You to take special care of this girl here to-night, Lord, and don’t let no evil come nigh her. We know you’s able to do it,Lord, in Jesus’ name, Amen.’
This was the first prayer Florence heard, the only prayer she was ever to hear in which hermother demanded the protection of God more passionately for her daughter than she demanded itfor her son. It was night, the windows were shut tightly with the shades drawn, and the great tablewas pushed against the door. The kerosene lamps burned low and made great shadows on thenewspaper-covered wall. Her mother, dressed in the long, shapeless, colorless dress that she boreevery day but Sunday, when she wore white, and with her head tied up in a scarlet cloth, knelt inthe center of the room, her hands hanging loosely folded before her, her black face lifted, her eyesshut. The weak, unsteady light placed shadows under her mouth and in the sockets of her eyes,making the face impersonal with majesty, like the face of a prophetess, or like a mask. Silencefilled the room after her ‘Amen,’ and in the silence they heard, far up the road, the sound of ahorse’s hoofs. No one moved. Gabriel, from his corner near the stove, looked up and watched hismother.
‘I ain’t afraid,’ said Gabriel.
His mother turned, one hand raised. ‘You hush, now!’
Trouble had taken place in town to-day. Their neighbor Deborah, who was sixteen, threeyears older than Florence, had been taken away into the fields the night before by many white men,where they did things to her to make her cry and bleed. To-day, Deborah’s father had gone to oneof the white men’s house, and said that he would kill him and all the other white men he couldfind. They had beaten him and left him for dead. Now, everyone had shut their doors, praying andwaiting, for it was said that the white folks would come to-night and set fire to all the houses, asthey had done before.
In the night that pressed outside they heard only the horse’s hoofs, which did not stop; therewas not the laughter they would have heard had there been many coming on this road, and nocalling out of curses, and no one crying for mercy to white men, or to God. The hoofbeats came tothe door and passed, and rang, while they listened, ever more faintly away. Then Florence realizedhow frightened she had been. She watched her mother rise and walk to the window. She peered outthrough a corner of the blanket that covered it.
‘They’s gone,’ she said, ‘whoever they was.’ Then: ‘Blessed be the name of the Lord,’ shesaid.
Thus had her mother lived and died; and she had often been brought lo, but she had neverbeen forsaken. She had always seemed to Florence the oldest woman in the world, for she oftenspoke of Florence and Gabriel as the children of her old age, and she had been born, innumerableyears ago, during slavery, on a plantation in another state. On this plantation she had grown up asone of the field-workers, for she was very tall and strong; and by and by she had married andraised children, all of whom had been taken from her, one by sickness and two by auction; andone, whom she had not been allowed to call her own, had been raised in the master’s house. Whenshe was a woman grown, well past thirty as she reckoned it, with one husband buried—but themaster had given her another—armies, plundering and burning, had come from the North to set them free. This was in answer to the prayers of the faithful, who had never ceased, both day andnight, to cry out for deliverance.
For it had been the will of God that they should hear, and pass thereafter, one to another,the story of the Hebrew children who had been held in bondage in the land of Egypt; and how theLord had heard their groaning, and how His heart was moved; and how He bid them wait but alittle season till He should send deliverance. Florence’s mother had known this story, so it seemed,from the day she was born. And while she lived—rising in the morning before the sun came up,standing and bending in the fields when the sun was high, crossing the fields homeward when thesun went down at the gates of Heaven far away, hearing the whistle of the foreman and his eeriecry across the fields; in the whiteness of winter when hogs and turkeys and geese were slaughtered,and lights burned bright in the big house, and Bathsheba, the cook, sent over in a napkin bits ofham and chicken and cakes left over by the white folks—in all that befell: in her joys, her pipe inthe evening, her man at night, the children she suckled, and guided on their first short steps; and inher tribulations, death, and parting, and the lash, she did not forget that deliverance was promisedand would surely come. She had only to endure and trust in God. She knew that the big house, thehouse of pride where the white folks lived, would come down; it was written in the Word of God.
They, who walked so proudly now, had nor fashioned for themselves or their children so sure afoundation as was hers. They walked on the edge of a steep place and their eyes were sightless—God would cause them to rush down, as the herd of swine had once rushed down, into the sea. Forall that they were so beautiful, and took their ease, she knew them, and she pitied them, who wouldhave no covering in the great day of His wrath.
Yet, she told her children, God was just, and He struck no people without first giving manywarnings. God gave men time, but all the times were in His hand, and one day the time to forsakeevil and do good would all be finished: then only the whirlwind, death riding on the whirlwind,awaited those people who had forgotten God. In all the days that she was growing up, signs failednot, but none heeded. ‘Slaves done ris,’ was whispered in the cabin and at the master’s gate: slavesin another county had fired the masters’ houses and fields and dashed their children to deathagainst the stones. ‘Another slave in hell,’ Bathsheba might say one morning, shooing thepickaninnies away from the great porch: a slave had killed his master, or his overseer, and hadgone down to Hell to pay for it. ‘I ain’t got long to stay here,’ someone crooned beside her in thefields, someone who would be gone by morning on his journey north. All these signs, like theplagues with which the Lord had afflicted Egypt, only hardened the hearts of these people againstthe Lord. They thought the lash would save them, and they used the lash; or the knife, or thegallows, or the auction block; they thought that kindness would save then, and the master andmistress came down, smiling, to the cabins, making much of the pickaninnies and bearing gifts.
These were great days, and they all, black and white, seemed happy together. But when the Wordhas gone forth from the mouth of God nothing can turn it back.
The Word was fulfilled one morning, before she was awake. Many of the stories her othertold meant nothing to Florence; she knew them for what they were, tales told by an old blackwoman in a cabin in the evening to distract her children from their cold and hunger. But the storyof this day she was never to forget; it was a day for which she lived. There was a great running andshouting, said her mother, everywhere outside, and, as she opened her eyes to the light of that day, so bright, she said, and cold, she was certain that the judgment trumpet had sounded. While shestill sat, amazed, and wondering what, on the judgment day, would be the best behavior, in rushedBathsheba and behind her many tumbling children and field hands and house niggers, all together,and Bathsheba shouted: ‘Rise up, rise up, Sister Rachel, and see the Lord’s deliverance! He donebrought us out of Egypt, just like He promised, and we’s free at last!’ Bathsheba grabbed her, tearsrunning down her face; she, dressed in the clothes in which she had slept, walked to the door tolook out on the new day God had given them.
On that day she saw the proud house humbled; green silk and velvet blowing out ofwindows, and the garden trampled by many horsemen, and the big gate open. The master andmistress, and their kin, and one child she had borne were in that house—which she did not enter.
Soon it occurred to her that there was no longer any reason to tarry here. She tied her things in acloth that she put on her head, and walked out through the big gate, never to see that country anymore.
And this became Florence’s deep ambition: to walk out one morning through the cabindoor, never to return. Her father, whom she scarcely remembered, had departed that way onemorning not many months after the birth of Gabriel. And not only her father; every day she heardthat another man or woman had said farewell to this iron earth and sky, and started on the journeynorth. But her mother had no wish to go North where, she said, wickedness dwelt and Death rodemighty through the streets. She was content to stay in this cabin and do washing for the whitefolks, though she was old and her back was sore. And she wanted Florence, also, to be content—helping with the washing, and fixing meals and keeping Gabriel quiet.
Gabriel was the apple of his mother’s eye. If he had never been born, Florence might havelooked forward to a day when she would be released from her unrewarding round of labor, whenshe might think of her own future and go out to make it. With the birth of Gabriel, which occurredwhen she was five, her future was swallowed up. There was only one future in that house, and itwas Gabriel’s—to which, since Gabriel was a man-child, all else must be sacrificed. Her motherdid not, indeed, think of it as sacrifice, but as logic: Florence was a girl, and would by and by bemarried, and have children of her own, and all the duties of a woman; and this being so, her life inthe cabin was the best possible preparation for her future life. But Gabriel was a man; he would goout one day into the world to do a man’s work, and he needed, therefore, meat, when there was anyin the house, and clothes, whenever clothes could be bought, and the strong indulgence of hiswomenfolk, so that he would know how to be with women when he had a wife. And he needed theeducation that Florence desired far more than he, and that she might have got if he had not beenborn. It was Gabriel who was slapped and scrubbed each morning and sent off to the one-roomschoolhouse—which he hated, and where he managed to learn, so far as Florence could discover,almost nothing at all. And often he was not at school, but getting into mischief with other boys.
Almost all of their neighbors, and even some of the white folks, came at one time or another tocomplain of Gabriel’s wrongdoing. Their mother would walk out into the yard and cut a switchfrom a tree and beat him—beat him, it seemed to Florence, until any other boy would have fallendown dead; and so often that any other boy would have ceased his wickedness. Nothing stoppedGabriel, though he made Heaven roar with his howling, though he screamed aloud, as his motherapproached, that he would never be such a bad boy again. And, after the beating, his pants still down around his knees and his face wet with tears and mucus, Gabriel was made to kneel downwhile his mother prayed. She asked Florence to pray, too, but in her heart Florence never prayed.
She hoped that Gabriel would break his neck. She wanted the evil against which their motherprayed to overtake him one day.
In those days Florence and Deborah, who had come close friend after Deborah’s ‘accident,’
hated all men. When men looked at Deborah they saw no father that her unlovely and violatedbody. In their eyes lived perpetually a lewd, uneasy wonder concerning the night she had beentaken in the fields. That night had robbed her of the right to be considered a woman. No manwould approach her in honor because she was a living reproach, to herself and to all black womenand to all black men. If she had been beautiful, and if God had not given her a spirit so demure, shemight, with ironic gusto, have acted out that rape in the field for ever. Since she could not beconsidered a woman, she could only be looked on as a harlot, a source of delight more bestial andmysteries more shaking than any a proper woman could provide. Lust stirred in the eyes of menwhen they look at Deborah, lust that could not be endured because it was so impersonal, limitingcommunion to the area of her shame. And Florence, who was beautiful but did not look with favoron any of the black men who lusted after her, not wishing to exchange her mother’s cabin for oneof theirs and to raise their children and so go down, toil-blasted, into, as it were, a common grave,reinforced in Deborah the terrible belief against which evidence had ever presented itself: that allmen were like this, their thoughts rose no higher, and they lived only to gratify on the bodies ofwomen their brutal and humiliating needs.
One Sunday at a camp-meeting, when Gabriel was twelve years old and was to be baptized,Deborah and Florence stood on the banks of a river along with all the other folks and watched him.
Gabriel had not wished to be baptized. The thought had frightened and angered him, but hismother insisted that Gabriel was now of an age to be responsible before God for his sins—shewould not shirk the duty, laid on her by the Lord, of doing everything within he power to bringhim to the throne of grace. On the banks of a river, under the violent light of noon, confessedbelievers and children of Gabriel’s age waited to be led into the water. Standing out, waist-deepand robed in white, was the preacher, who would hold their heads briefly under the water, cryingout to Heaven as the baptized held his breath: ‘I indeed have baptized you with water: but He shallbaptize you with the Holy Ghost.’ Then, as they rose sputtering and blinded and were led to theshore, he cried out again: ‘Go thou and sin no more.’ They came up from the water, visibly underthe power of the Lord, and on the shore the saints awaited them, beating their tambourines.
Standing bear the shore were the elders of the church, holding towels with which to cover thenewly baptized, who were then led into the tents, one for either sex, where they could change theirclothes.
At last, Gabriel, dressed in an old white shirt and short linen pants, stood on the edge of thewater. Then he was slowly led into the river, where he had so often splashed naked, until hereached the preacher. And the moment that the preacher threw him down, crying out the words ofJohn the Baptist, Gabriel began to kick and sputter, nearly throwing the preacher off balance; andthough at first they thought that it was the power of the Lord that worked in him, they realized ashe rose, still kicking and with his eyes tightly shut, that it was only fury, and too much water in hisnose. Some folks smiled, but Florence and Deborah did not smile. Though Florence had also been indignant, years before when the slimy water entered her incautiously open mouth, she had doneher best not to sputter, and she had not cried out. But now, here came Gabriel, floundering andfurious up the bank, and what she looked at, with an anger more violent than any she had feltbefore, was his nakedness. He was drenched, and his thin, white clothes clung like another skin tohis black body. Florence and Deborah looked at one another, while the singing rose to coverGabriel’s howling, and Deborah looked away.
Years later, Deborah and Florence had stood on Deborah’s porch at night and watched avomit-covered Gabriel stagger up the moonlight road, and Florence had cried out: ‘I hate him! Ihate him! Big, black, prancing tomcat of a nigger!’ And Deborah had said, in that heavy voice ofhers: ‘You know, honey, the Word tell us to hate the sin but not the sinner.’
In nineteen hundred, when she was twenty-six, Florence walked out through the cabindoor. She had thought to wait until her mother, who was so ill now that she no longer stirred out ofbed, should be buried—but suddenly she knew that she would wait no longer, the time had come.
She had been working as cook and serving-girl for a large white family in town, and it was on theday her master proposed that she become his concubine that she knew her life among thesewretched people had come to its destined end. She left her employment that same day (leavingbehind her a most vehement conjugal bitterness), and with part of the money that with cunning,cruelty, and sacrifice she had saved over a period of years, bought a railroad ticket to New York.
When she bout it, in a kind of scarlet rage, she held like a talisman at the back of her mind thethought: ‘I can give it back, I can sell it. This don’t mean I got to go.’ But she knew that nothingcould stop her.
And it was this leave-taking that came to stand, in Florence’s latter days, and with othermany witness, at her bedside. Gray clouds obscured the sun that day, and outside the cabin windowshe saw that mist still covered the ground. Her mother lay in bed, awake; she was pleading withGabriel, who had been out drinking the night before, and who was not really sober now, to mendhis ways and come to the Lord. And Gabriel, full of the confusion, and pain, and guilt that were hiswhenever he thought of how he made his mother suffer, but that became nearly insupportablewhen she taxed him with it, stood before the mirror, head bowed, buttoning his shirt. Florenceknew that he could not unlock his lips to speak; he could not say yes to his mother, and to theLord; and he could not say no.
‘Honey,’ their mother was saying, ‘don’t you let your old mother die without you look herin the eye and tell her she going to see you in glory. You hear me, boy?’
In a moment, Florence thought with scorn, tears would fill his eyes, and he would promiseto ‘do better.’ He had been promising to ‘do better’ since the day he had been baptized.
She put down her bag in the center of the hateful room.
‘Ma,’ she said, ‘I’m going. I’m a-going this morning.’
Now that she had said it, she was angry with herself for not having said it the night before,so that they would have had time to be finished with their weeping and their arguments. She hadnot trusted herself to withstand the night before; but now there was almost no time t. The center of her mind was filled with the image of the great, white clock at the railway station, on which thehands did not cease to move.
‘You going where?’ her mother asked sharply. But she knew that her mother hadunderstood, had indeed long before this moment known that this time would come. Theastonishment with which she stared at Florence’s bag was not altogether astonishment, but astartled, wary attention. A danger imagined had become present and real, and her mother wasalready searching for a way to break Florence’s will. All this Florence knew in a moment, and itmade her stronger. She watched her mother, waiting.
But at the tone of his mother’s voice Gabriel, who had scarcely heard Florence’sannouncement, so grateful had he been that something had occurred to distract from him hismother’s attention, dropped his eyes and saw Florence’s traveling-bag. And he repeated hismother’s question in a stunned, angry voice, understanding it only as the words hit the air:
‘Yes, girl. Where you think you going?’
‘I’m going, she said, ‘to New York. I got my ticket.’
And her mother watched her. For a moment no one said a word. Then, Gabriel, in achanged and frightened voice, asked:
‘And when you done decide that?’
She did not look at him, nor answer his question. She continued to watch her mother. ‘I gotmy ticket,’ she repeated. ‘I’m going on the morning train.’
‘Girl,’ asked her mother, quietly, ‘is you sure you know what you’s doing?’
She stiffened. seeing in her mother’s eyes a mocking pity. ‘I’m a woman grown,’ she said.
‘I know what I’m doing.’
‘And you going,’ cried Gabriel, ‘this morning—just like that? And you going to walk offand leave your mother—just like that?’
‘You hush,’ she said, turning to him for the first time, ‘she got you, ain’t she?’
This was indeed, she realized as he dropped his eyes, the bitter, troubling point. He couldnot endure the thought of being left alone with his mother, with nothing whatever to put betweenhimself and his guilty love. With Florence gone, time would have swallowed up all his mother’schildren, except himself; and he, then, must make amends for all the pain that she had borne, andsweeten her last moments with all his proofs of love. And his mother required of him one proofonly, that he tarry no longer in sin. With Florence gone, his stammering time, his playing time,contracted with a bound to the sparest interrogative second, when he must stiffen himself, andanswer to his mother, and all the host of Heaven, yes or no.
Florence smiled inwardly a small, malicious smile, watching his slow bafflement, andpanic, and rage: and she looked at her mother again. ‘She got you,’ she repeated. ‘She don’t needme.’
‘You going north,’ her mother said, then. ‘And when you reckon on coming back?’
‘I don’t reckon on coming back,’ she said.
‘You come crying back soon enough,’ said Gabriel, with malevolence, ‘soon as they whipyour butt up there four or five times.’
She looked at him again. ‘Just don’t you try to hold your breath till then, you hear?’
‘Girl,’ said her mother, ‘you mean to tell me the Devil’s done made your heart so hard youcan just leave your mother on her dying bed, and you don’t care if you don’t never see her in thisworld no more? Honey, you can’t tell me you done got so evil as all that?’
She felt Gabriel watching her to see how she would take this question—the question that,for all her determination, she had dreaded most to hear. She looked away from her mother, andstraightened, catching her breath, looking outwards through the small, cracked window. Thereoutside, beyond the slowly rising mist, and farther off that her eyes could see, her life awaited her.
The woman on the bed was old, her life was fading as the mist rose. She thought of her mother asalready in the grave; and she would not let herself be strangled by the hands of the dead.
‘I’m going, Ma,’ she said. ‘I got to go.’
Her mother leaned back, face upward to the light and began to cry. Gabriel moved toFlorence’s side and grabbed her arm. She looked up into his face and saw that his eyes were full oftears.
‘You can’t go,’ he said. ‘You can’t go. You can’t go and leave your mother thisaway. Sheneed a woman, Florence, to help look after her. What she going to do here, all alone with me?’
She pushed him from her and moved to stand over her mother’s bed.
‘Ma,’ she said, ‘don’t be like that. Ain’t a thing can happen to me up North can’t happen tome here. God’s everywhere, Ma. Ain’t no need to worry.’
She knew that she was mouthing words; and she realized suddenly that her mother scornedto dignify these words with her attention. She had granted Florence the victory—with apromptness that had the effect of making Florence, however dimly and unwillingly, wonder if hervictory was real. She was not weeping for her daughter’s future, she was weeping for the past, andweeping in an anguish in which Florence had no part. And all of this filled Florence with terriblefear, which, which was immediately transformed into anger. ‘Gabriel can take care of you,’ shesaid, her voice shaking with malice. ‘Gabriel ain’t never going to leave you. Is you, boy?’ and shelooked at him. He stood, stupid with bewilderment and grief, a few inches from the bed. ‘But me,’
she said, ‘I got to go.’ She walked to the center of the room again, and picked up her bag.
‘Girl,’ Gabriel whispered, ‘ain’t you got feelings at all?’
‘Lord!’ her mother cried; and at the sound her heart turned over; she and Gabriel, arrested,stared at the bed. ‘Lord, Lord, Lord! Lord, have mercy on my sinful daughter! Stretch out yourhand and hold her back from the lake that burns forever! Oh, my Lord, my Lord!’ and her voicedropped, and broke, and tears ran down her face. ‘Lord, I done my best with all the children whatyou give me. Lord, have mercy on my children, and my children’s children.’
‘Florence,’ said Gabriel, ‘please don’t go. You ain’t really fixing to go and leave her likethis?’
Tears stood suddenly in her own eyes, though she could not have said what she was cryingfor. ‘Leave me be,’ she said to Gabriel, and picked up her bag again. She opened the door; thecold, morning air came in. ‘Good-bye.’ she said. And then to Gabriel: ‘Tell her I said good-bye.’
She walked through the cabin door and down the short steps into the frosty yard. Gabriel watchedher, standing frozen between the door and the weeping bed. Then, as her hand was on the gate, heran before her, and slammed the gate shut.
‘Girl, where you going? What you doing? You reckon on finding some men up North todress you in pearls and diamonds?’
Violently, she opened the gate and moved out into the road. He watched her with his jawhanging, and his lips loose and wet. ‘If you ever see me again,’ she said, ‘I won’t be wearing ragslike yours.’
All over the church there was only the sound, more awful than the deepest silence, of the prayersof the saints of God. Only the yellow, moaning light shone above them, making their faces gleamlike muddy gold. Their faces, and their attitudes, and their many voices rising as one voice madeJohn think of the deepest valley, the longest night, of Peter and Paul in the dungeon cell, onepraying while the other sang; or of endless, depthless, swelling water, and no dry land in sight, thetrue believer clinging to a spar. And, thinking of to-morrow, when the church would rise up,singing, under the booming Sunday light, he thought of the light for which they tarried, which, inan instant, filled the soul, causing (throughout those iron-dark, unimaginable ages before John hadcome into the world) the new-born in Christ to testify: Once I was blind and now I see.
And then they sang: ‘Walk in the light, the beautiful light. Shine all around me by day andby night, Jesus, the light of the world.’ And they sang: ‘Oh, Lord, Lord, I want to be ready, I wantto be ready. I want to be ready to walk in Jerusalem just like John.’
To walk in Jerusalem just like John. To-night, his mind was awash with visions: nothingremained. He was ill with doubt and searching. He longed for a light that would teach him, foreverand forever, and beyond all question, the way to go; for a power that would bind him, forever andforever, and beyond all crying, to the love of God. Or else he wished to stand up now, and leavethis tabernacle and never see these people any more. Fury and anguish filled him, unbearable,unanswerable; his mind was stretched to breaking. For it was time that filled his mind, time thatwas violent with the mysterious love of God. And his mind could not contain the terrible stretch oftime that united twelve men fishing by the shores of Galilee, and black men weeping on theirknees to-night, and he, a witness.
My soul is a witness for my Lord. There was an awful silence at the bottom of John’s mind,a dreadful weight, a dreadful speculation. And not even a speculation, but a deep, deep turning, asof something huge, black, shapeless, for ages dead on the ocean floor, that now felt its restdisturbed by a faint, far wind, which bid it: ‘Arise.’ And this weight began to move at the bottomof John’s mind, in a silence like the silence of the void before creation, and he began to feel aterror he had never felt before.
And he looked around the church, at the people praying there. Praying Mother Washingtonhad not come in until all the saints were on their knees, and now she stood, the terrible, old, black ,above his Aunt Florence, helping her to pray. Her granddaughter, Ella Mae, had come in with her,wearing a mangy fur jacket over her everyday clothes. She knelt heavily in a corner near the piano,under the sign that spoke of the wage of sin, and now and again she moaned. Elisha had not lookedup when she came in, and he prayed in silence: sweat stood on his brow. Sister McCandless andSister Price cried out every now and again: ‘Yes, Lord!’ or: ‘Bless your name, Jesus!’ And hisfather prayed, his head lifted up and his voice going on like a distant mountain stream.
But his Aunt Florence was silent; he wondered if she slept. He had never seen her prayingin a church before. He knew that different people prayed in different ways: has his aunt alwaysprayed in such a silence? His mother, too, was silent, but he had seen her pray before, and hersilence made him feel that she was weeping. And why did she weep? And why did they come here,night after night, calling out to a God who cared nothing for them—if, above this flaking ceiling,there was any God at all? Then he remembered that the fool has said in his heart, There is no God—and he dropped his eyes, seeing that over his Aunt Florence’s head Praying Mother Washingtonwas looking at him.
Frank sang the blues, and he drunk too much. His skin was the color of caramel candy. Perhaps forthis reason she always thought of him as having candy in his mouth, candy staining the edges ofhis straight, cruel teeth. For a while he wore a tiny mustache, but she made him shave it off, for itmade him look, she thought, like a half-breed gigolo. In details such as this he was always veryeasy—he would always put on a clean shirt, or get his hair cut, or come with her to Uplift meetingswhere they heard speeches by prominent Negroes about the future and duties of the Negro race.
And this had given her, in the beginning of their marriage, the impression that she controlled him.
This impression had been entirely and disastrously false.
When he had left her, more than twenty years before, and after more than ten years ofmarriage, she had felt for that moment only an exhausted exasperation and a vast relief. He had notbeen home for two days and three nights, and when he did return they quarreled with more thantheir usual bitterness. All of the rage she had accumulated during their marriage was told him inthat evening as they stood in their small kitchen. He was still wearing overalls, and he had notshaved, and his face was muddy with sweat and dirt. He had said nothing for a long while, andthen he had said: ‘All right, baby. I guess you don’t never want to see me no more, not a miserable,black sinner like me.’ The door closed behind him, and she heard his feet echoing down the longhall, away. She stood alone in the kitchen, holding the empty coffee-pot that she had been about towash. She thought: ‘He’ll come back, and he’ll come back drunk.’ And then she had thought,looking about the kitchen: ‘Lord, wouldn’t it be a blessing if he didn’t never come back no more.’
The Lord had given her what she said she wanted, as was often, she had found, His bewilderingmethod of answering prayer. Frank never did come back. He lived for a long while with anotherwoman, and when the war came he died in France.
Now, somewhere at the other end of the earth, her husband lay buried. He slept in a landhis fathers had never seen. She wondered often if his grave was marked—if there stood over it, asin pictures she had seen, a small white cross. If the Lord had ever allowed her to cross that swelling ocean she would have gone, among all the millions buried there, to seek out his grave.
Wearing deep mourning, she would have laid on it, perhaps, a wreath of flowers, as other womendid; and stood for a moment, head bowed, considering the unspeaking ground. How terrible itwould be for Frank to rise on the day of judgment so far from home! And he surely would notscruple, even on that day, to be angry at the Lord. ‘Me and the Lord,’ he had often said, ‘don’talways get along so well. He running the world like He thinks I ain’t got good sense.’ How had hedied? Slow or sudden? Had he cried out? Had death come creeping on him from behind, or facedhim like a man? She knew nothing about it, for she had not known that he was dead until longafterwards, when boys were coming home and she had begun searching for Frank’s face in thestreets. It was the woman with whom he had lived who had told her, for Frank had given thiswoman’s name as his next-of-kin. The woman, having told her, had not known what else to say,and she stared at Florence in simple-minded pity. This made Florence furious, and she barelymurmured: ‘Thank you,’ before she turned away. She hated Frank for making this woman officialwitness to her humiliation. And she wondered again what Frank had seen in this woman, who,though she was younger than Florence, had never been so pretty, and who drank all the time, andwho was seen with many men.
But it had been from the first her great mistake—to meet him, to marry him, to love him asshe so bitterly had. Looking at his face, it sometimes came to her that all women had been cursedfrom the cradle; all, in one fashion or another, being given the same cruel destiny, born to sufferthe weight of men. Frank claimed that she got it all wrong side up: it was men who sufferedbecause they had to put up with the ways of women—and this from the time that they were bornuntil the day they died. But it was she who was right, she knew; with Frank she had always beenright; and it had not been her fault that Frank was the way he was, determined to live and die acommon nigger.
But he was always swearing that he would do better; it was, perhaps, the brutality of hispenitence that had kept them together for so long. There was something in her which loved to seehim bow—when he came home, stinking with whisky, and crept with tears into her arms. Then he,so ultimately master, was mastered. And holding him in her arms while, finally, he slept, shethought with the sensations of luxury and power: ‘But there’s a lots of good in Frank. I just got tobe patient and he’ll come along all right.’ To ‘come along’ meant that he would change his waysand consent to be the husband she had traveled so far to find. It was he who, unforgivably, taughther that there are people in the world for whom ‘coming along’ is a perpetual process, people whoare destined never to arrive. For ten years he came along, but when he left her he was the sameman she had married. He had not changed at all.
He had never made enough money to buy the home she wanted, or anything else she reallywanted, and this had been part of the trouble between them. It was not that he could not makemoney, but that he would not save it. He would take half a week’s wages and go out and buysomething he wanted, or something he thought she wanted. He would come home on Saturdayafternoons, already half drunk, with some useless objects, such a vase, which, it had occurred tohim, she would like to fill with flowers—she who never noticed flowers and who would certainlynever have bought any. Or a hat, always too expensive or too vulgar, or a ring that looked asthough it had been designed for a whore. Sometimes it occurred to him to do the Saturday shopping on his way home, so that she would not have to do it; in which case he would buy aturkey, the biggest and most expensive he could find, and several pounds of coffee, it being hisbelief that there was never enough in the house, and enough breakfast cereal to feed an army for amonth. Such foresight always filled him with such a sense of his own virtue that, as a kind ofreward, he would also buy himself a bottle of whisky; and—lest she should think that he wasdrinking too much—invite some ruffian home to share it with him. Then they would sit allafternoon in her parlor, playing cards and telling indecent jokes, and making the air foul withwhisky and smoke. She would sit in the kitchen, cold with rage and staring at the turkey, which,since Frank always bought them unplucked and with the head on, would cost her hours ofexasperating, bloody labor. Then she would wonder what on earth had possessed her to undergosuch hard trial and travel so far from home, if all she had found was a two-room apartment in a cityshe did not like, and a man yet more childish than any she had known when she was youngSometimes from the parlor where he and his visitor sat he would call her:
‘Hey, Flo!’
And she would not answer. She hated to be called ‘Flo,’ but he never remembered. Hemight call her again, and when she did not answer he would come into the kitchen.
‘What’s the matter with you, girl? Don’t you hear me a-calling you?’
And once when she still made no answer, but sat perfectly still, watching him with bittereyes, he was forced to make verbal recognition that there was something wrong.
‘What’s the matter, old lady? You mad at me?’
And when in genuine bewilderment he stared at her, head to one side, the faintest of smileson his face, something began to yield in her, something she fought, standing up and snarling at himin a lowered voice so that the visitor might not hear:
‘I wish you’d tell me just how you think we’s going to live all week on a turkey and fivepounds of coffee?’
‘Honey, I ain’t bought nothing we didn’t need!’
She sighed in helpless fury, and felt tears springing to her eyes.
‘I done told you time and again to give me the money when you get paid, and let me do theshopping—’cause you ain’t got the sense that you was born with.’
‘Baby, I wasn’t doing a thing in the world but trying to help you out. I thought maybe youwanted to go somewhere to-night and you didn’t want to be bothered with no shopping.’
‘Next time you want to do me a favor, you tell me first, you hear? And how you expect meto go to a show when you done brought this bird home for me to clean?’
‘Honey, I’ll clean it. It don’t take no time at all.’
He moved to the table where the turkey lay and looked at it critically, as though he wereseeing it for the first time. Then he looked at her and ginned. ‘That ain’t nothing to get mad about.’
She began to cry. ‘I declare I don’t know what gets into you. Every week the Lord sendsyou go out and do some foolishness. How do you expect us to get enough money to get away fromhere if you all the time going to be spending your money on foolishness?’
When she cried, he tried to comfort her, putting his great hand on her shoulder and kissingher where the tears fell.
‘Baby, I’m sorry. I thought it’d be a nice surprise.’
‘The only surprise I want from you is to learn some sense! That’d be a surprise! You thinkI want to stay around here the rest of my life with these dirty niggers you al the time bring home?’
‘Where you expect us to live, honey, where we ain’t going to be with niggers?’
Then she turned away, looking out of the kitchen window. It faced an elevated train thatpassed so close she always felt that she might spit in the faces of the flying, staring people.
‘I just don’t like all that ragtag … looks like you think so much of.’
Then there was silence. Although she had turned her back to him, she felt that he was nolonger smiling and that his eyes, watching her, had darkened.
‘And what kind of man you think you married?’
‘I thought I married a man with some get up and go to him, who didn’t just want to stay onthe bottom all his life!’
‘And what you want me to me to do, Florence? You want me to turn white?’
This question always filled her with an ecstasy of hatred. She turned and faced him, and,forgetting that there was someone sitting in the parlor, shouted:
‘You ain’t got to be white to have some self-respect! You reckon I slave in this house like Ido so you and them common niggers can sit here every afternoon throwing ashes all over thefloor?’
‘And who’s common now, Florence?’ he asked, quietly, in the immediate and awful silencein which she recognized her error. ‘Who’s acting like a common nigger now? What you reckon myfriend is sitting there a-thinking? I declare, I wouldn’t be surprise none if he wasn’t a-thinking:
“Poor Frank, he sure found him a common wife.” Anyway, he ain’t putting his ashes on the floor—he putting them in the ashtray, just like he knew what a ashtray was.’ She knew that she had hurthim, and that he was angry, by the habit he had at such a moment of running his tongue quicklyand incessantly over his lower lip. ‘But we’s a-going now, so you can sweep up the parlor and sitthere, if you want to, till the judgment day.’
And he left the kitchen. She heard murmurs in the parlor, and then the slamming of thedoor. She remembered, too late, that he had all his money with him. When he came back, longafter nightfall, and she put him to bed and went through his pockets, she found nothing, or almostnothing, and she sank helplessly to the parlor floor and cried.
When he came back at times like this he would be petulant and penitent. She would notcreep into bed until she thought that he was sleeping. But he would not be sleeping. He would turn as she stretched her legs beneath the blankets, and his arm would reach out, and his breath wouldbe hot and sour-sweet in her face.
‘Sugar-plum, what you want to be so evil with your baby for? Don’t you know you donemade me go out and get drunk, and I wasn’t a-fixing to do that? I wanted to take you outsomewhere to-night.’ And, while he spoke, his hand was on her breast, and his moving lipsbrushed her neck. And this caused such a war in her as could scarcely be endured. She felt thateverything in existence between them was part of a mighty plan for her humiliation. She did notwant his touch, and yet she did: she burned with longing and froze with rage. And she felt that heknew this and inwardly smile to see how easily, on this part of the battlefield, his victory could beassured. But at the same time she felt that his tenderness, his passion, and his love were real.
‘Let me alone, Frank. I want to go to sleep.’
‘No you don’t. You don’t want to go to sleep so soon. You want me to talk to you a little.
You know how your baby loves to talk. Listen.’ And he brushed her neck lightly with his tongue.
‘You hear that?’
He waited. She was silent.
‘Ain’t you got nothing more to say than that? I better tell you something else.’ And then hecovered her face with kisses; her face, neck, arms, and breasts.
‘You stink of whisky. Let me alone.’
‘Ah. I ain’t the only one got a tongue. What you got to say to this? And his hand strokedthe inside of her thigh.
‘Stop.’
‘I ain’t going to stop. This is sweet talk, baby.’
Ten years. Their battle never ended; they never bought a home. He died in France. To-night sheremembered details of those years which she thought she had forgotten, and at last she felt thestony ground of her heart break up; and tears, as difficult and slow as blood, began to tricklethrough her fingers. This the old woman above her somehow divined, and she cried: ‘Yes, honey.
You just let go, honey. Let Him bring you low so He can raise you up.’ And was this the way sheshould have gone? Had she been wrong to fight so hard? Now she was an old woman, and allalone, and she was going to die. And she had nothing for all her battles. It had all come to this: shewas on her face before the altar, crying to God for mercy. Behind her she heard Gabriel cry: ‘Blessyour name, Jesus!’ and, thinking of him and the high road of holiness he had traveled, her mindswung like a needle, and she thought of Deborah.
Deborah had written her, not many times, but in a rhythm that seemed to remark each crisisin her life with Gabriel, and once, during the time she and Frank were still together, she hadreceived from Deborah a letter that she had still: it was locked to-night in her handbag, which layon the altar. She had always meant to show this letter to Gabriel one day, but she never had. Shehad talked with Frank about it late one night while he lay in bed whistling some ragtag tune and she sat before the mirror and rubbed bleaching cream into her skin. The letter lay open before herand she sighed loudly, to attract Frank’s attention.
He stopped whistling in the middle of a phrase; mentally, she finished it. ‘What you gotthere, sugar?’ he asked, lazily.
‘It’s a letter from my brother’s wife.’ She stared at her face in the mirror, thinking angrilythat all these skin creams were a waste of money, they never did any good.
‘What’s them niggers doing down home? It ain’t no bad news, is it? Still he hummed,irrepressibly, deep in his throat.
‘No … well, it ain’t no good news neither, but it ain’t nothing to surprise me none. She saysshe think my brother’s got a bastard living right there in the same town what he’s scared to call hisown.’
‘No? And I thought you said you brother was a preacher.’
‘Being a preacher ain’t never stopped a nigger from doing his dirt.’
Then he laughed. ‘You sure don’t love your brother like you should. How come his wifefound out about this kid?’
She picked up the letter and turned to face him. ‘Sound to me like she been knowing aboutit but she ain’t never had the nerve to say nothing.’ She paused, then added, reluctantly: ‘Ofcourse, she ain’t really what you might call sure. But she ain’t a woman to go around thinkingthings. She mighty worried.’
‘Hell, what she worried about it now for? Can’t nothing be done about it now.
‘She wonder if she ought to ask him about it.’
‘And do she reckon if she ask him, he going to be fool enough to say yes?’
She sighed again, more genuinely this time, and turned back to the mirror. ‘Well … he’s apreacher. And if Deborah’s right, he ain’t got not right to be a preacher. He ain’t no better’nnobody else. In fact, he ain’t no better than a murderer.’
He had begun to whistle again; he stopped. ‘Murderer? How so?’
‘Because he done let this child’s mother go off and die when the child was born. That’show so.’ She paused. ‘And it sounds just like Gabriel. He ain’t never thought a minute aboutnobody in this world but himself.’
He said nothing, watching her implacable back. Then: ‘You going to answer this letter?’
‘I reckon.’
‘And what you going to say?’
‘I’m going to tell her she ought to let him know she know about his wickedness. Get up infront of the congregation and tell them too, if she has to.’
He stirred restlessly, and frowned. ‘Well, you know more about it than me. But I don’t seewhere that’s going to do no good.’
‘It’ll do her some good. It’ll make him treat her better. You don’t know my brother like Ido. There ain’t but one way to get along with him, you got to scare him half to death. That’s all. Heain’t got no right to go around running his mouth about how holy he is if he done turned a tricklike that.’
There was silence; he whistled again a few bars of his song; and then he yawned, and said:
‘Is you coming to bed, old lady? Don’t know why you keep wasting all your time and my moneyon all them old skin whiteners. You as black now as you was the day you was born.’
‘You wasn’t there the day I was born. And I know you don’t want a coal-black woman.’
But she rose from the mirror, and moved toward the bed.
‘I ain’t never said nothing like that. You just kindly turn out that light and I’ll make you toknow that black’s a mighty pretty color.’
She wondered if Deborah had ever spoken; and she wondered if she would give Gabriel theletter that she carried in her handbag to-night. She had held it all these years, awaiting some savageopportunity. What this opportunity would have been she did not; at this moment she did not wantto know. For she had always thought of this letter as an instrument in her hands which could beused to complete her brother’s destruction. When he was completely cast down she would preventhim from ever rising again by holding before him the evidence of his blood-guilt. But now shethought she would not live to see this patiently awaited day. She was going to be cut down.
And the thought filled her with terror and rage; the tears dried on her face and the heartwithin her shook, divided between a terrible longing to surrender and a desire to call God intoaccount. Why had he preferred her mother and her brother, the old, black woman, and the low,black man, while she, who had sought only to walk upright, was come to die, alone and in poverty,in a dirty, furnished room? She beat her fists heavily against the altar. He, he would live, andsmiling, watch her go down into the grave! And her mother would be there, leaning over the gatesof Heaven, to see her daughter burning in the pit.
As she beat her fists on the altar, the old woman above her laid hands on her shoulders,crying: ‘Call on Him, daughter! Call on the Lord!’ And it was as though she had been hurledoutward into time, where no boundaries were, for the voice was the voice of her mother but thehands were the hands of death. And she cried aloud, as she had never in all her life cried before,falling on her face on the altar, at the feet of the old black woman. Her tears came down likeburning rain. And the hands of death caressed her shoulders, the voice whispered and whispered inher ear: ‘God’s got your number, knows where you live, death’s got a warrant out for you.’
2 GABRIEL’S PRAYERNow I been introducedTo the Father and the Son, And I ain’tNot stranger now.
When Florence cried, Gabriel was moving outward in fiery darkness, talking to the Lord.
Her cry came to him from afar, as from unimaginable depths; and it was not his sister’s cry heheard, but the cry of the sinner when he is taken in his sin. This was the cry he had heard so manydays and nights, before so many altars, and he cried to-night, as he had cried before: ‘Have yourway, Lord! Have your way!’
Then there was only silence in the church. Even Praying Mother Washington had ceased tomoan. Soon someone would cry again, and the voices would begin again; there would be music byand by, and shouting, and the sound of the tambourines. But now in this waiting, burdened silenceit seemed that all flesh waited—paused, transfixed by something in the middle of the air—for thequickening power.
This silence, continuing like a corridor, carried Gabriel back to the silence that hadpreceded his birth in Christ. Like a birth indeed, all that had come before this moment waswrapped in darkness, lay at the bottom of the sea of forgetfulness, and was not now countedagainst him, but was related only to that blind, and doomed, and stinking corruption he had beenbefore he was redeemed.
The silence was the silence of the early morning, and he was returning from the harlot’shouse. Yet all around him were the sounds of the morning: of birds, invisible, praising God; ofcrickets in the vine, frogs in the swamp, of dogs miles away and closed at hand, roosters on theporch. The sun was not yet half awake; only the utmost tops of trees had begun to tremble at histurning; and the mist moved sullenly before Gabriel and all around him, falling back before thelight that rules by day. Later, he said of that morning that his sin was on him; then he knew onlythat he carried a burden and that he longed to lay it down. This burden was heavier than theheaviest mountain and he carried it in his heart. With each step that he took his burden grewheavier, and his breath became slow and harsh, and, of a sudden, cold sweat stood out on his browand drenched his back.
All alone in the cabin his mother lay waiting; not only for his return this morning, but forhis surrender to the Lord. She lingered only for this, and he knew it, even though she no longerexhorted him as she had in days but shortly gone by. She had placed him in the hands of the Lord,and she waited with patience to see how He would work the matter.
For she would live to see the promise of the Lord fulfilled. She would not go to her restuntil her son, the last of her children, he who would place her in the winding-sheet, should haveentered the communion of the saints. Now she, who had been impatient once, and violent, who hadcursed and shouted and contended like a man, moved into silence, contending only, and with thelast measure of her strength, with God. And this, too, she did like a man: knowing that she hadkept the faith, she waited for Him to keep His promise. Gabriel knew that when he entered shewould not ask him where he had been; she would not reproach him; and her eyes, even when sheclosed her lids to sleep, would follows him everywhere.
Later, since it was Sunday, some of the brothers and sisters would come to her, to sing andpray around her bed. And she would pray for him, sitting up in bed unaided, her head lifted, hervoice steady; while he, kneeling in a corner of the room, trembled and almost wished that shewould die; and trembled again at this testimony to the desperate wickedness of his heart; andprayed without words to be forgiven. For he had no words when he knelt before the throne. And hefeared to make a vow before Heaven until he had the strength to keep it. And yet he knew that untilhe made the vow he would never find the strength.
For he desired in his soul, with fear and trembling, all the glories that his mother prayed heshould find. Yes, he wanted power—he wanted to know himself to be the Lord’s anointed, Hiswell-beloved, and worthy, nearly, of that snow-white dove which had been sent down fromHeaven to testify that Jesus was the son of God. He wanted to be the master, to speak with thatauthority which could only come from God. It was later to become his proud testimony that hehated his sins—even as he ran toward sin, even as he sinned. He hated the evil that lived in hisbody, and he feared it, as he feared and heated the lions of lust and longing that prowled thedefenceless city of his mind. He was later to say that this was a gift bequeathed him by his mother,that it was God’s hand on him from his earliest beginnings; but then he knew only that when eachnight came, chaos and fever raged in him; the silence in the cabin between his mother and himselfbecame something that could not be borne; not looking at her, facing the mirror as he put on hisjacket, and trying to avoid his face there, he told her that he was going to take a little walk—hewould be back soon.
Sometimes Deborah sat with his mother, watching him with eyes that were no less patientand reproachful. He would escape into the starry night and walk until he came to a tavern, or to ahouse that he had marked already in the long daytime of his lust. And then he drank until hammersrang in his distant skull; he cursed his friends and his enemies, and fought until blood ran down; inthe morning he found himself in mud, in clay, in strange beds, and once or twice in jail; his mouthsour, his clothes in rags, from all of him arising the stinks of his corruption. Then he could noteven weep. He could not even pray. He longed, nearly, for death, which was all that could releasehim from the cruelty of his chains.
And through all this his mother’s eyes were on him; her hand, like fiery tongs, gripped thelukewarm ember of his heart; and caused him to feel, at the thought of death, another, colder terror.
To go down into the grave, unwashed, unforgiven, was to go down into the pit for ever, whereterrors awaited him greater than any the earth, for all her age and groaning, had ever borne. Hewould be cut off from the living, for ever; he would have no name for ever. Where he had beenwould be silence only, rock, stubble, and no seed; for him, forever, and for his, no hope of glory.
Thus, when he came to the harlot, he came to her in rage, and he left her in vain sorrow—feelinghimself to have been, once more, most foully robbed, having spent his holy seed in a forbiddendarkness where it could only die. He cursed the betraying lust that lived in him, and he cursed itagain in others. But: ‘I remember,’ he was later to say, ‘the day my dungeon shook and my chainsfell off.’
And he walked homeward, thinking of the night behind him. He had seen the woman at thevery beginning of the evening, but she had been with many others, men and women, and so he hadignored her. But later, when he was on fire with whisky, he looked again directly at her, and saw immediately that she had also been thinking of him. There were not so many people with her—itwas as though she had been making room for him. He had already been told that she was a widowfrom the North, in town for only a few days to visit her people. When he looked at her she lookedat him and, as though it were part of the joking conversation she was having with her friends, shelaughed aloud. She had the lie-gap between her teeth, and a big mouth; when she laughed, shebelatedly caught her lower lip in her teeth, as though she were ashamed of so large a mouth, andher breasts shook. It was not like the riot that occurred when big, fat women laughed—her breastsrose and fell against the tight cloth of her dress. She was much older than he—around Deborah’sage, perhaps thirty-odd— and she was not really pretty. Yet the distance between them wasabruptly charged with her, and her smell was in his nostrils. Almost, he felt those moving breastsbeneath his hand. And he drank again, allowing, unconsciously, or nearly, his face to fall into thelines of innocence and power which his experience with women had told him made their lovecome down.
Well (walking homewards, cold and tingling) yes, they did the thing. Lord, how they rocked intheir bed of sin, and how she cried and shivered; Lord how her love came down! Yes (walkinghomewards through the fleeing mist, with the cold sweat standing on his brow), yet, in vanity andthe pride of conquest, he thought of her, of her smell, the heat of her body beneath his hands, ofher voice, and her tongue, like the tongue of a cat, and her teeth, and her swelling breasts, and howshe moved for him, and held him, and labored with him, and how they fell, trembling andgroaning, and locked together, into the world again. And, thinking of this, his body freezing withhis sweat, and yet altogether violent with the memory of lust, he came to a tree on a gentle rise,beyond which, and out of sight, lay home, where his mother lay. And there leaped into his mind,with the violence of water that has burst the dams and covered the banks, rushing uncontrolledtoward the doomed, immobile houses—on which, on rooftops and windows, the sun yet palelyshivers—the memory of all the mornings he had mounted here and passed this tree, caught for amoment between sins committed and sins to be committed. The mist on this rise had fled away,and he felt that he stood, as he faced the lone tree, beneath the naked eye of Heaven. Then, in amoment, there was silence, only silence, everywhere—the very birds had ceased to sing, and nodigs barked, and no rooster crowed for day. And he felt that this silence was God’s judgment; thatall creation had been stilled before the just and awful wrath of God, and waited now to see thesinner—he was the sinner—cut down and banished from the presence of the Lord. And hetouched the tree, hardly knowing that he touched it, out of an impulse to be hidden; and then hecried: ‘Oh, Lord, have mercy! Oh, Lord, have mercy on me!’
And he fell against the tree, sinking to the ground and clutching the roots of the tree. Hehad shouted into silence and only silence answered—and yet, when he cried, his cry had caused aringing to the outermost limits of earth. This ringing, his lone cry rolling through creation,frightening the sleeping fish and fowl, awakening echoes everywhere, river, and valley, andmountain wall, caused in him a fear so great that he lay for a moment silent and trembling at thebase of the tree, as though he wished to be buried there. But that burdened heart of his would notbe still, would not let him keep silence—would not let him breathe until he cried again. And so hecried again; and his cry returned again; and still the silence waited for God to speak.
And his tears began—such tears as he had not known were in him. ‘I wept,’ he said later,‘like a little child.’ But no child had ever wept such tears as he wept that morning on his facebefore Heaven, under the mighty tree. They came from deeps no child discovers, and shook himwith an ague no child endures. And presently, in his agony, he was screaming, each cry seeming totear his throat apart, and stop his breath, and force the hot tears down his face, so that theysplashed his hands and wet the root of the tree: ‘Save me! Save me!’ And all creation rang, but didnot answer. ‘I couldn’t hear nobody pray.’
Yes, he was in that valley where his mother had told him he would find himself, wherethere was no human help, no hand outstretched to protect or save. Here nothing prevailed save themercy of God—here the battle was fought between God and the Devil, between death andeverlasting life. And he had tarried too long, he had turned aside in sin too long, and God wouldnot hear him. The appointed time had passed and God had turned His face away.
‘Then,’ he testified, ‘I heard my mother singing. She was a-singing for me. She was a-singing low and sweet, right there beside me, like she knew if she just called Him, the Lord wouldcome.’ When he heard this singing, which filled all the silent air, which swelled until it filled allthe waiting earth, the heart within him broke, and yet began to rise, lifted of its burden; and histhroat unlocked; and his tears came down as though the listening skies had opened. ‘Then I praisedGod, Who had brought me out of Egypt and set my feet on the solid rock.’ When at last he liftedup his eyes he saw a new Heaven and a new Earth; and he heard a new sound of singing, for asinner had come home. ‘I looked at my hands and my hands were new. I looked at my feet and myfeet were new. And I opened my mouth to the Lord that day and Hell won’t make me change mymind.’ And, yes, there was singing everywhere; the birds and the crickets and the frogs rejoiced,the distant dogs leaping and sobbing, circled in their narrow yards, and roosters cried from everyhigh fence that here was a new beginning, a blood-washed day!
And this was the beginning of his life as a man. He was just past twenty-one; the century was notyet one year old. He moved into town, into the room that awaited him at the top of the house inwhich he worked, and he began to preach. He married Deborah in that same year. After the deathof his mother, he began to see her all the time. They went to the house of God together, andbecause there was no one, any more, to look after him, she invited him often to her home formeals, and kept his clothes neat, and after he had preached they discussed his sermons; that is, helistened while she praised.
He had certainly never intended to marry her; such an idea was no more in his mind, hewould have said, that the possibility of flying to the moon. He had known her all his life; she hadbeen his older sister’s older friend, and then his mother’s faithful visitor; she had never, forGabriel, been young. So far as he was concerned, she might have been born in her severe, hersexless, long and shapeless habit, always black or gray. She seemed to have been put on earth tovisit the sick, and to comfort those who wept, and to arrange the last garments of the dying.
Again, there was her legend, her history, which would have been enough, even had she notbeen so wholly unattractive, to put her for ever beyond the gates of any honorable man’s desires.
This, indeed, in her silent, stolid fashion, she seemed to know: where, it might be, other women held as their charm and secret the joy that they could give and share, she contained only the shamethat she had borne—shame, unless a miracle of human love delivered her, was all she had to give.
And she moved, therefore, through their small community like a woman mysteriously visited byGod, like a terrible example of humility, or like a holy fool. No ornaments ever graced her body;there was about her no tinkling, no shining, and no softness. No ribbon falsified her blameless andimplacable headgear; on her woolen head there was only the barest minimum oil. She did notgossip with the other women—she had nothing, indeed, to gossip about—but kept hercommunication to yea and nay, and read her Bible, and prayed. There were people in the church,and even men carrying the gospel, who mocked Deborah behind her back; but their mockery wasuneasy; they could never be certain but that they might be holding up to scorn the greatest saintamong them, the Lord’s peculiar treasure and most holy vessel.
‘You sure is a godsend to me, Sister Deborah,’ Gabriel would sometimes say. ‘I don’tknow what I’d do without you.’
For she sustained him most beautifully in his new condition; with her unquestioning faithin God, and her faith in him, she, even more than the sinners who came crying to the altar after hehad preached, bore earthly witness to his calling; and speaking, as it were, in the speech of men shelent reality to the mighty work that the Lord had appointed to Gabriel’s hands.
And she would look up at him with her timid smile. ‘You hush, Reverend. It’s me thatdon’t never kneel down without I thank the Lord for you.’
Again: she never called him Gabriel or ‘Gabe,’ but from the time that he began to preachshe called him Reverend, knowing that the Gabriel whom she had known as a child was no more,was a new man in Christ Jesus.
‘You ever hear from Florence?’ she sometimes asked.
‘Lord, Sister Deborah, it’s me that ought to be asking you. That girl don’t hardly neverwrite to me.’
‘I ain’t heard from her real lately.’ She paused. Then: ‘I don’t believe she so happy upthere.’
‘And serve her right, too—she ain’t had no business going away from here like she did, justlike a crazy woman.’ And then he asked, maliciously: ‘She tell you if she married yet/’
She looked at him quickly, and looked away. ‘Florence ain’t thinking about no husband,’
she saidHe laughed. ‘God bless you for your pure heart, Sister Deborah. But if that girl ain’t goneaway from here a-looking for a husband, my name ain’t Gabriel Grimes.’
‘If she’d a-wanted a husband look to me like she could a-just picked one right here. Youdon’t mean to tell me she done traveled all the way North just for that?’ And she smiled strangely,a smile less gravely impersonal. He, seeing this, thought that it certainly did a strange thing to herface; it made her look like a frightened girl.
‘You know,’ he said, watching her with more attention, ‘Florence ain’t never thought noneof these niggers around here was good enough for her.’
‘I wonder,’ she ventured, ‘if she ever going to find a man good enough for her. She soproud—look like she just won’t let anybody come near her.’
‘Yes,’ he said, frowning, ‘she so proud the Lord going to bring her low one day. You markmy words.’
‘Yes,’ she sighed, ‘the Word sure do tell us that pride goes before destruction.’
‘And a haughty spirit before a fall. That’s the Word.’
‘Yes,’ and she smiled again, ‘ain’t no shelter against the Word of God, is there, Reverend?
You is just go to be in it, that’s all—’cause every word is true, and the gates of Hell ain’t going tobe able to stand against it.’
He smiled, watching her, and felt a great tenderness fill his heart. ‘You just stay in theWord, little sister. The windows of Heaven going to open up and pour down blessings on you tillyou won’t know where to put them.’
When she smiled it with heightened joy. ‘He done blessed me already, Reverend. He blessed me when (now) He save(was) d your s(a) oul and sent you out to preach His gospel.’
‘Sister Deborah,’ he said, slowly, ‘all that sinful time—was you a-praying for me?’
Her tone dropped ever so slightly. ‘We sure was, Reverend. Me and your mother, we wasa-praying all the time.’
And he looked at her, full of gratitude and a sudden, wild conjecture: he had been real forher, she had watched him, and prayed for him during all those years when she, for him, had beennothing but a shadow. And she was praying for him still; he would have her prayers to aid him allhis life long—he saw this, now, in her face. She said nothing, and she did not smile, only looked athim with her grave kindness, now a little questioning, a little shy.
‘God bless you, sister,’ he said at last.
It was during this dialogue, or hard on the heels of it, that the town was subjected to amonster revival meeting. Evangelists from all the surrounding counties, from as far south asFlorida and as far north as Chicago, came together in one place to break the bread of life. It wascalled the Twenty-Four Elders Revival Meeting, and it was the great occasion of that summer. Forthere were twenty-four of them, each one given his night to preach—to shine, as it were, beforemen, and to glorify his Heavenly Father. Of these twenty-four, all of them men of great experienceand power, and some of them men of great fame, Gabriel, to his astonished pride, was asked to beone. This was a great, a heavy honor for one so young in the faith and in years—who had but onlyyesterday been lying, vomit-covered, in the gutters of sin—and Gabriel felt his heart shake withfear as this invitation came to him. Yet he felt that it was the hand of God that called him out soearly to prove himself before such mighty men.
He was to preach on the twelve night. It was decided, in view of his possible failure toattract, to support him on either side with a nearly equal number of war horses. He would have,thus, the benefits of the storm they would certainly have stirred up before him; and should he failto add substantially to the effect they had created, there would be others coming after him toobliterate his performance.
But Gabriel did not want his performance—the most important of his career so far, and onwhich so much depended—to be obliterated; he did not want to be dismissed as a mere boy whowas scarcely ready to be counted in the race, much less to be considered a candidate for the prize.
He fasted on his knees before God and did not cease, daily and nightly, to pray that God mightwork through him a mighty work and cause all men to see that, indeed, God’s hand was on him,that he was the Lord’s anointed.
Deborah, unasked, fasted with him, and prayed, and took his best black suit away, so that itwould be clean and mended and freshly pressed for the great day. And she took it away again,immediately afterwards, so that it would be no less splendid on the Sunday of the great dinner thatwas officially to punctuate the revival. This Sunday was to be the feast day for everyone, but moreespecially for the twenty-four elders, who were, that day, to be gloriously banqueted at the saints’
expense and labor. On the evening when he was to preach, he and Deborah walked together to thegreat, lighted, lodge hall that had but lately held a dance band, and that the saints had rented for theduration of the revival. The service had already begun; light spilled outward into the streets, musicfilled the air, and passers-by paused to listen and to peek in through the half-open doors. Hewanted all of them to enter; he wanted to run through the streets and drag all sinners in to hear theWord of God. Yet, as they approached the doors, the fear held in check so many days and nightsrose in him again, and he thought how he would stand to-night, so high, and all alone, to vindicatethe testimony that had fallen from her lips, that God had called him to preach.
‘Sister Deborah,’ he said, suddenly, as they stood before the doors, ‘you sit where I can seeyou?’
‘I sure will do that, Reverend,’ she said. ‘You go on up there. Trust God.’
Without another word he turned, leaving her in the door, and walked up the long aisle tothe pulpit. They were all there already, big, comfortable, ordained men; they smiled and nodded ashe mounted the pulpit steps; and one of them said, nodding towards the congregation, which wasas spirited as any evangelist could wish: ‘Just getting these folks warmed up for you, boy. Want tosee you make them holler to-night.’
He smiled in the instant before he knelt down at his throne-like chair to pray; and thoughtagain, as he had been thinking for eleven nights, that there was about his elders an ease in the holyplace, and a levity, that made his soul uneasy. While he sat, waiting, he saw that Deborah hadfound a seat in the very front of the congregation, just below the pulpit, and sat with her Biblefolded on her lap.
When, at last, the Scripture lesson read, the testimonies in, the songs sung, the collectiontaken up, he was introduced—by the elder who had preached the night before—and found himselfon his feet, moving toward the pulpit where the great Bible awaited him, and over that sheer dropthe murmuring congregation; he felt a giddy terror that he stood so high, and with this,immediately, a pride and joy unspeakable that God had placed him there.
He did not begin with a ‘shout’ song, or with a fiery testimony; but in a dry, matter-of-factvoice, which trembled only a little, asked them to look with him at the sixth chapter of Isaiah, andthe fifth verse; and he asked Deborah to read it aloud for him.
And as she read, in a voice unaccustomedly strong: ‘ “Then said I, Woe is me! for I amundone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips;for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts,” ’
Silence filled the lodge hall after she had read this sentence. For a moment Gabriel wasterrified by the eyes on him, and by the elders at his back, and could not think how to go on. Thenhe looked at Deborah, and began.
These words had been uttered by the prophet Isaiah, who had been called the Eagle-eyedbecause he had looked down the dark centuries and foreseen the birth of Christ. It was Isaiah alsowho had prophesied that a man should be as a hiding-place from the wind and tempest, Isaiah whohad described the way of holiness, saying that the parched ground should become a pool and thethirsty land springs of water: the very desert would rejoice, and blossom as the rose. It was Isaiahwho had prophesied, saying: ‘Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the governmentshall be upon His shoulder.’ This was a man whom God had raised in righteousness, whom Godhad chosen to do many works, yet this man, beholding the vision of God’s glory, had cried out:
‘Woe is me!’
‘Yes! cried a woman. ‘Tell it!’
‘There is a lesson for us all in this cry of Isaiah’s, a meaning for us all, a hard saying. If wehave never cried this cry then we have never known salvation; if we fail to live with this cry,hourly, daily, in the midnight hour, and in the light of the noonday sun, then salvation has left usand our feet have laid hold on Hell. Yes, bless our God forever! When we cease to tremble beforeHim we have turned out of the way.’
‘Amen!’ cried a voice from far away. ‘Amen! You preach it, boy!’
He paused for only a moment and mopped his bow, the heart within him great with fearand trembling, and with power.
‘For let us remember that the wages of sin is death; that it is written, and cannot fail, thesoul that sinneth, it shall die. Let us remember that we are born in sin, in sin did our mothersconceive us—sin reigns in all our members, sin is the foul heart’s natural liquid, sin looks out ofthe eye, amen, and leads to lust, sin is in the hearing of the ear, and leads to folly, sin sits on thetongue, and leads to murder. Yes! Sin is the only heritage of the natural man, sin bequeathed us byour natural father, that fallen Adam, whose apple sickens and will sicken all generations living,and generations yet unborn! It was sin that drove the son of the morning out of Heaven, sin thatdrove Adam out of the Eden, sin that caused Cain to slay his brother, sin that built the tower ofBabel, sin that caused the fire to fall on Sodom—sin, from the very foundations of the world,living and breathing in the heart of man, that causes women to bring forth their children in agonyand darkness, bows down the backs of men with terrible labor, keeps the empty belly empty, keepsthe table bare, sends our children, dressed in rags, out into the whore houses and dance halls of theworld!’
‘Amen! Amen!’
‘Ah. Woe is me. Woe is me. Yes, beloved—there is no righteousness in man. All men’shearts are evil, all men are liars—only God is true. Hear David’s cry: “The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler and the hornof my salvation, and my high tower.” Hear Job, sitting in dust and ashes, his children dead, hissubstance gone, surrounded by false comforters: “Yea, though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.”
And hear Paul, who had been Saul, a persecutor of the redeemed, struck down on the road toDamascus, and going forth to preach the gospel: “And if ye be Christ’s, then ye are Abraham’sseed, and heirs according to the promise!” ’
‘Oh, yes,’ cried one of the elders, ‘bless our God forever!’
‘For God had a plan. He would not suffer the soul of man to die, but had prepared a planfor his salvation. In the beginning, way back there at the laying of the foundations of the world,God had a plan, amen!, to bring all flesh to a knowledge of the truth. In the beginning was theWord and the Word was with God and the Word was God—yes, and in Him was life, hallelujah!
and this life was the light of men. Dearly beloved, when God saw how men’s hearts waxed evil,how they turned aside, each to his own way, how they married and gave in marriage, how theyfeasted on ungodly meat and drink, and lusted, and blasphemed, and lifted up their hearts in sinfulpride against the Lord—oh, then, the Son of God, the blessed lamb that taketh away the sins of theworld, this Son of God who was the Word made flesh, the fulfillment of the promise—oh, then, Heturned to His Father, crying: “Father, prepare me a body and I’ll go down and redeem sinful man.”
’
‘So glad this evening, praise the Lord!’
‘Fathers, here to-night, have you ever had a son who went astray? Mothers, have you seenyour daughters cut down in the pride and fullness of youth? Has any man here heard the commandwhich came to Abraham, that he must make his son a living sacrifice on God’s altar? Fathers, thinkof your sons, how you tremble for them, and try to lead them right, try to feed them so they’ll growup strong; think of your love for your son, and how any evil that befalls him cracks up the heart,and think of the pain that God has borne, sending down His only begotten Son, to dwell amongmen on the sinful earth, to be persecuted, to suffer, to bear the cross and die—not for His own sins,like our natural sons, but for the sins of all the world, to take away the sins of all the world—thatwe might have the joy of bells ringing deep in our hearts to-night!’
‘Praise Him!’ cried Deborah, and he had never heard her voice so loud.
‘Woe is me, for when God struck the sinner, the sinner’s eyes were opened, and he sawhimself in all his foulness naked before God’s glory. Woe is me! For the moment of salvation is ablinding light, cracking down into the heart from Heaven—Heaven so high, and the sinner so low.
Woe is me! For unless God raised the sinner, he would never rise again!’
‘Yes, Lord! I was there!’
How many here to-night had fallen where Isaiah fell? How many had cried—as Isaiahcried? How many could testify, as Isaiah testified, ‘Mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord ofhosts’? Ah, whosoever failed to have this testimony should see His face, but should be told, on thatgreat day: ‘Depart from me, ye that work iniquity,’ and be hurled for ever into the lake of fireprepared for Satan and all his angels. Oh, would the sinner rise to-night, and walk the little mile tohis salvation, here to the mercy seat?
And he waited. Deborah watched him with a calm, strong smile. He looked out over theirfaces, their faces all upturned to him. He saw joy in those faces, and holy excitement, and belief—and they all looked up to him. Then, far in the back, a boy rose, a tall, dark boy, his white shirtopen at the neck and torn, his trousers dusty and shabby and held up with an old necktie, and helooked across the immeasurable, dreadful, breathing distance up to Gabriel, and began to walkdown the long, bright aisle. Someone cried: ‘Oh, bless the Lord!’ and tears filled Gabriel’s eyes.
The boy knelt, sobbing, at the mercy seat, and the church began to sing.
Then Gabriel turned away, knowing that this night he had run well, and that God had usedhim. The elders all were smiling, and one of them took him by the hand, and said: ‘That wasmighty fine, boy. Mighty fine.’
Then came the Sunday of the spectacular dinner that was to end the revival—for whichdinner, Deborah and all the other women, had baked, roasted, fried, and boiled for many daysbeforehand. He jokingly suggested to repay her a little for her contention that he was the bestpreacher of the revival, that she was the best cook among the women. She timidly suggested thathe was here at a flattering disadvantage, for she had heard all of the preachers, but he had not, for avery long time, eaten another woman’s cooking.
When the Sunday came, and he found himself once more among the elders, about to go tothe table, Gabriel felt a drop in his happy, proud anticipation. He was not comfortable with thesemen—that was it—it was difficult for him to accept them as his elders and betters in the faith.
They seemed to him so lax, so nearly worldly; they were not like those holy prophets of old whogrew thin and naked in the service of the Lord. These, God’s ministers, had indeed grown fat, andtheir dress was rich and various. They had been in the field so long that they did not tremble beforeGod any more. They took God’s power as their due, as something that made the more excitingtheir own assured, special atmosphere. They each had, it seemed, a bagful of sermons oftenpreached with great authority, and brought souls low before the altar—like so many ears of cornlopped off by the hired laborer in his daily work—they did not give God the glory, nor count it asglory at all; they might as easily have been, Gabriel thought, highly paid circus-performers, eachwith his own special dazzling gift. Gabriel discovered that they spoke, jokingly, of the comparativenumber of souls each of them had saved, as though they were keeping score in a pool-room. Andthis offended him and frightened him. He did not want, ever, to hold the gift of God so lightly.
They, the ministers, were being served alone in the upper room of the lodge hall—the less-specialized workers in Christ’s vineyard were being fed at a table downstairs—and the womenkept climbing up and down the stairs with a loaded platters to see that they ate their fill. Deborahwas one of the serving-women, and though she did not speak, and despite his discomfort, he nearlyburst each time she entered the room, with the pride he knew she felt to see him sitting there, soserene and manly, among all these celebrated others, in the severe black and white that was hisuniform. And if only, he felt, his mother could be there to see—her Gabriel, mounted so high!
But, near the end of the dinner, when the women had brought up the pies, and coffee, andcream, and when the talk around the table had become more jolly and more good-naturedly loosethan ever, the door had but barely closed behind the women when one of the elders, a heavy,cheery, sandy-haired man, whose face, testifying no doubt to the violence of his beginnings, wassplashed with freckles like dried blood, laughed and said, referring to Deborah, that there was a holy woman, all right! She had been choked so early on white men’s milk, and it remained so sourin her belly yet, that she would never be able, now, to find a nigger who would let her taste hisricher, sweeter substance. Everyone at the table roared, but Gabriel felt his blood turn cold thatGod’s ministers should be guilty of such abominable levity, and that that woman sent by God tocomfort him, and without whose support he might already have fallen by the wayside, should beheld in such dishonor. They felt, he knew, that among themselves a little rude laughter could do noharm; they were too deeply rooted in the faith to be made to fall by such an insignificant tap fromSatan’s hammer. But he stared at their boisterous, laughing faces, and felt that they would havemuch to answer for on the day of judgment, for they were stumbling-stones in the path of the truebeliever.
Now the sandy-haired man, struck by Gabriel’s bitter astounded face, bit his laughter off,and said: ‘What’s the matter, son? I hope I ain’t said nothing to offend you?’
‘She read the Bible for you the night you preached, didn’t she?’ asked another of the elders,in a conciliatory tone.
‘That woman,’ said Gabriel, feeling a roaring in his head, ‘is my sister in the Lord.’
‘Well, Elder Peters here, he just didn’t know that,’ said someone else. ‘He sure didn’t meanno harm.’
‘Now, you ain’t going to get mad?’ asked Elder Peters, kindly—yet there remained, toGabriel’s fixed attention, something mocking in his face and voice. ‘You ain’t going to spoil ourlittle dinner?’
‘I don’t think it’s right,’ said Gabriel, ‘to talk evil about nobody. The Word tell me it ain’tright to hold nobody up to scorn.’
‘Now you just remember,’ Elder Peter said, as kindly as before, ‘you’s talking to yourelders.’
‘Then it seem to me,’ he said, astonished at his boldness, ‘that if I got to look to you for aexample, you ought to be an example.’
‘Now, you know,’ said someone else, jovially, ‘you ain’t fixing to make that woman yourwife or nothing like that—so ain’t no need to get all worked up and spoil our little gathering. ElderPeters didn’t mean no harm. If you don’t never say nothing worse that that, you can count yourselfalready up there in the Kingdom with the chosen.’
And at this a small flurry of laughter swept over the table; they went back to their eatingand drinking, as though the matter were finished.
Yet Gabriel felt that he has surprised them; he had found them out and they were a littleashamed and confounded before his purity. And he understood suddenly the words of Christ,where it was written: ‘Many are called but few are chosen.’ Yes, and he looked around the table,already jovial again, but rather watchful now, too, of him—and he wondered who, of all these,would sit in glory at the right hand of the Father?
And then, as he sat there, remembering again Elder Peter’s boisterous, idle remark, thisremark shook together in him all those shadowy doubts and fears, those hesitations and tenderness, which were his in relation to Deborah, and the sum of which he now realized was his certainty thatthere was in that relationship something fore-ordained. It came to him that, as the Lord had givenhim Deborah, to help him to stand, so the Lord had sent him to her, to raise her up, to release herfrom that dishonor which was hers in the eyes of men. And this idea filled him, in a moment,wholly, with the intensity of a vision: What better woman could be found? She was not like themincing daughters of Zion! She was not to be seen prancing lewdly through the streets, eyes sleepyand mouth half-open with lust, or to be found mewing under night fences, uncovered, uncoveringsome black boy’s hanging curse! No, their married bed would be holy, and their children wouldcontinue the line of the faithful, a royal line. And, fired with this, a baser fire stirred in him also,rousing a slumbering fear, and he remembered (as the table, the ministers, the dinner, and the talkall burst in on him again) that Paul had written: ‘It is better to marry than to burn.’
Yet, he thought, he would hold his peace awhile; he would seek to know more clearly theLord’s mind in this matter. For he remembered how much older she was than he—eight years; andhe tried to imagine, for the first time in his life, that dishonor to which Deborah had been forced somany years ago by white men: her skirts above her head, her secrecy discovered—by white men.
How many? Had she borne it? Had she screamed? Then he thought (but it did not really troublehim, for if Christ to save him could be crucified, he, for Christ’s greater glory, could well bemocked) of what smiles would be occasioned, what filthy conjecture, barely sleeping now, wouldmushroom upward overnight like Jonah’s gourd, when people heard that he and Deborah weregoing to be married. She, who had been the living proof and witness of their daily shame, and whohad become their holy fool—and he, who had been the untamable despoiler of their daughters, andthief of their women, their walking prince of darkness! And he smiled, watching their elders’ well-fed faces and their grinding jaws—unholy pastors all, unfaithful stewards; he prayed that he wouldnever be so fat, or so lascivious, but that God should work through him a mighty work: to ring, itmight be, through ages yet unborn, as sweet, solemn, mighty proof of His everlasting love andmercy. He trembled with the presence that surrounded him now; he could scarcely keep his seat.
He felt that light shone down on him from Heaven, on him, the chosen; he felt as Christ must havefelt in the temple, facing His so utterly confounded elders; and he lifted up his eyes not caring fortheir glances, or their clearing of throats, and the silence that abruptly settled over the table,thinking: ‘Yes. God works in many mysterious ways His wonders to perform.’
‘Sister Deborah,’ he said, much later that night as he was walking her to her door, ‘the Lorddone laid something on my heart and I want you to help me to pray over it and ask Him to lead meright.’
He wondered if she could divine what was in his mind. In her face there was nothing butpatience, as she turned to him, and said: ‘I’m praying all the time. But I sure will pray extra hardthis week if you want me to.’
And it was during this praying time that Gabriel had a dream.
He could never afterwards remember how the dream began, what had happened, or who hewas with in the dream; or any details at all. For there were really two dreams, the first like a dim,blurred, infernal foreshadowing of the second. Of this first dream, the overture, he rememberedonly the climate, which had been like the climate of his day—heavy, with danger everywhere,Satan at his shoulder trying to bring him down. That night as he tried to sleep, Satan sent demons to his bedside—old friends he had had, but whom he saw no more, and drinking and gamblingscenes that he had thought would never rise to haunt him again, and women he had known. Andthe women were so real that he could nearly touch them; and he heard again their laughter andtheir sighs, and felt beneath his hands their thighs and breasts. Though he closed his eyes andcalled on Jesus—calling over and over again the name of Jesus—his pagan body stiffened andflamed and the women laughed. And they asked him why he remained in his narrow bed alonewhen they waited for him; why he had bound his body in the armor of chastity while they sighedand turned on their beds for him. And he sighed and turned, every movement torture, each touch ofthe sheets a lewd caress—and more abominable, then, in his imagination, than any caress he hadreceived in life. And he clenched his fists and began to plead the blood, to exorcise the hosts ofHell, but even this motion was like another motion, and at length he fell on his knees to pray. Byand by he fell into a troublous sleep—it seemed that he was going to be stoned, and then he was inbattle, and then shipwrecked in the water—and suddenly he awoke, knowing that he must havedreamed, for his loins were covered with his own white seed.
Then, trembling, he got out of bed again and washed himself. It was a warning, and heknew it, and he seemed to see before him the pit dug by Satan—deep and silent, waiting for him.
He thought of the dog returned to his vomit, of the man who had been cleansed, and who fell, andwho was possessed by seven devils, the last state of that man being worse than his first. And hethought at last, kneeling by his cold bedside, but with the heart within him almost too sick forprayer, of Onan, who had scattered his seed on the ground rather than continue his brother’s line.
Out of the house of David, the son of Abraham. And he called again on the name of Jesus; and fellasleep again.
And he dreamed that he was in a cold, high place, like a mountain. He was high, so highthat he walked in mist and cloud, but before him stretched the blank ascent, the teep side of themountain. A voice said: ‘Come higher.’ And he began to climb. After a little, clinging to the rock,he found himself with only clouds above him and mist below—and he knew that beyond the wallof mist reigned fire. His feet began to slip; pebbles and rocks began ringing beneath his feet; helooked up, trembling, in terror of death, and he cried: ‘Lord, I can’t come no higher.’ But the voicerepeated after a moment, quiet and strong and impossible to deny: ‘Come on, son. Come higher.’
Then he knew that, if he would not fall to death, he must obey the voice. He began to climb again,and his feet slipped again; and when he thought that he would fall there suddenly appeared beforehim green, spiny leaves, and he caught on to the leaves, which hurt his hand, and the voice saidagain: ‘Come higher.’ And so Gabriel climbed, the wind blowing through his clothes, and his feetbegan to bleed, and his hand were bleeding; and still he climbed, and he felt that his back wasbreaking; and his legs were growing numb and they were trembling, and he could not controlthem; and still before him there was only cloud, and below him the roaring mist. How long heclimbed in this dream of his, he did not know. Then, of a sudden, the clouds parted, the felt the sunlike a crown of glory, and he was in a peaceful field.
He began to walk. Now he was wearing long, white robes. He heard singing: ‘Walked inthe valley, it looked so fine, I asked my Lord was all this mine.’ But he knew that it was his. Avoice said: ‘Follow me.’ And he walked, and he was again on the edge of a high place, but bathedand blessed and glorified in the blazing sun, so that he stood like God, all golden, and looked down, down, at the long race he had run, at the step side of the mountain he had climbed. And nowup this mountain, in white robes, singing, the elect came. ‘Touch them not,’ the voice said, ‘myseal is on them.’ And Gabriel turned and fell on his face, and the voice said again: ‘So shall thyseed be.’ Then he awoke. Morning was at the window, and he blessed God, lying on his bed, tearsrunning down his face, for the vision he had seen.
When he went to Deborah and told her that the Lord had led him to ask her to be his wife,his holy helpmeet, she looked at him for a moment in what seemed to be speechless terror. He hadnever seen such an expression on her face before. For the first time since he had known her hetouched her, putting his hands on her shoulders, thinking what untender touch these shoulders hadonce known, and how she would be raised now in honor. And he asked: ‘You ain’t scared, is you,Sister Deborah? You ain’t got nothing to be scared of?’
Then she tried to smile, and began, instead, to weep. With a movement at once violent andhesitant, she let her head fall forward on his breast.
‘No,’ she brought out, muffled in his arms, ‘I ain’t scared.’ But she did not stop weeping.
He stroked her coarse, bowed head. ‘God bless you, little girl,’ he said, helplessly. ‘Godbless you.’
The silence in the church ended when Brother Elisha, kneeling near the piano, cried out and fellbackward under the power of the Lord. Immediately, two or three others cried out also, and a wind,a foretaste of that great downpouring they awaited, swept the church. With this cry, and theechoing cries, the tarry service moved from its first stage of steady murmuring, broken by moansand now and again an isolated cry, into that stage of tears and groaning, of calling aloud andsinging, which was like the labor of a woman about to be delivered of her child. On this threshing-floor the child was the soul that struggled to the light, and it was the church that was in labor, thatdid not cease to push and pull, calling on the name of Jesus. When Brother Elisha cried out and fellback, Sister McCandless rose and stood over him to help him pray. For the rebirth of the soul wasperpetual; only rebirth every hour could stay the hand of Satan.
Sister Price began to sing:
‘I want to go through, Lord,I want to go through.
Take me through, LordTake me through.’
A lone voice, joined by others, among them, waveringly, the voice of John. Gabrielrecognized the voice. When Elisha cried, Gabriel was brought back in an instant to this presenttime and place, fearing that it was John he heard, that it was John who lay astonished beneath thepower of the Lord. He nearly looked up and turned around; but then he knew it was Elisha, and hisfear departed.
‘Have your way, Lord,Have your way.’
Neither of his sons was here to-night, had ever cried on the threshing-floor. One had beendead for nearly fourteen years—dead in a Chicago tavern, a knife kicking in his throat. And theliving son, the child, Roy, was headlong already, and hardhearted: he lay at home, silent now, andbitter against his father, a bandage on his forehead. They were not here. Only the son of the bondwoman stood where the rightful heir should stand.
‘I’ll obey, Lord,I’ll obey.’
He felt that he should rise and pray over Elisha—when a man cried out, it was right thatanother man should be his intercessor. And he thought how gladly he would rise, and with whatpower he would pray if it were only his son who lay crying on the floor to-night. But he remained,bowed low, on his knees. Each cry that came from the fallen Elisha tore through him. He heard thecry of his dead son and his living son; one that cried in the pit forever, beyond the hope of mercy;and one who would cry one day when mercy would be finished.
Now Gabriel tried, with the testimony he had held, with all the signs of His favor that Godhad shown him, to put himself between the living son and the darkness that waited to devour him.
The living son had cursed him—bastard— and his heart was far from God; it could not be that thecurse he had heard to-night falling from Roy’s lips was but the course repeated, so far, so longresounding, that the mother of his first son had uttered as she thrust the infant from her—herselfimmediately departing, this curse yet on her lips, into eternity. Her course had devoured the firstRoyal; he had been begotten in sin, and he had perished in sin; it was God’s punishment, and itwas just. But Roy had been begotten in the marriage bed, the bed that Paul described as holy, andit was to him the Kingdom had been promised. It could not be that the living son was cursed forthe sins of his father; for God, after much groaning, after many years, had given him a sign tomake him know he was forgiven. And yet, it came to him that this living son, this headlong, livingRoyal, might be cursed for the sin of his mother, whose sin had never been truly repented; for thatthe living proof of her sin, he who knelt to-night, a very interloper among the saints, stood betweenher soul and God.
Yes, she hardhearted, stiff-neck, and hard to bend, this Elizabeth whom he had married; shehad not seemed so, years ago, when the Lord had moved in his heart to lift her up, she and hernameless child, who bore his name to-day. And he was exactly like her, silent, watching, full ofevil pride—they would be cast out, one day, into the outer darkness.
Once he had asked Elizabeth—they had been married a long while, Roy was a baby, andshe was big with Sarah—if she had truly repented of her sin.
And she looked at him, and said: ‘You done asked me that before. And I done told you,yes.’
But he did not believe her; and he asked: ‘You mean you wouldn’t do it again? If you wasback there, where you was, like you was then—would you do it again?’
She looked down; then, with impatience, she looked into his eyes again: ‘Well, if I wasback there, Gabriel, and I was the same girl! …’
There was a long silence, while she waited. Then, almost unwillingly, he asked: ‘And …would you let him be born again?’
She answered, steadily: ‘I know you ain’t asking me to say I’m sorry I brought Johnny inthe world. Is you?’ And when he did not answer: ‘And listen, Gabriel. I ain’t going to let you makeme sorry. Not you, nor nothing, nor nobody in this world. We is got two children, Gabriel, andsoon we’s going to have three; and I ain’t going to make no difference amongst them and you ain’tgoing to make none neither.’
But how could not be difference between the son of a weak, proud woman and somecareless boy, and the son that God had promised him, who would carry down the joyful line hisfather’s name, and who would work until the day of the second coming to bring about His father’sKingdom? For God had promised him this so many years ago, and he had lived only for this—forsaking the world and its pleasures, and the joys of his own life, he had tarried all these bitteryears to see the promise of the Lord fulfilled. He had let Esther die, and Royal had died, andDeborah had died barren—but he had held on to the promise; he had walked before God in truerepentance and waited on the promise. And the time of fulfillment was surely at hand. He had onlyto possess his soul in patience and wait before the Lord.
And his mind, dwelling bitterly on Elizabeth, yet moved backwards to consider once againEsther, who had been the mother of the first Royal. And he saw her, with the dumb, pale, startledghosts of joy and desire hovering in him yet, a thin, vivid, dark-eyed girl, with something Indian inher cheekbones and her carriage and her hair; looking at him with that look in which were blendedmockery, affection, desire, impatience, and scorn; dressed in the flame-like colors that, in fact, shehad seldom worn, but that he always thought of her as wearing. She was associated in his mindwith flame; with fiery leaves in autumn, and the fiery sun going down in the evening over thefarthest hill, and with the eternal fires of Hell.
She had come to town very shortly after he and Deborah were married, and she took a jobas serving-girl with the same white family for which he worked. He saw her, therefore, all thetime. Young men were always waiting for her at the back door when her work was done: Gabrielused to watch her walk off in the dusk on a young man’s arm, and their voices and their laughterfloated back to him like a mockery of his condition. He knew that she lived with her mother andstepfather, sinful people, giving to drinking and gambling and ragtime music and the blues, whonever, except at Christmas-time or Easter, appeared in church.
He began to pity her, and one day when he was to preach in the evening he invited her tocome to church. This invitation marked the first time she ever really looked at him—he realized itthen, and was to remember that look for many days and nights.
‘You really going to preach to-night? A pretty man like you?’
‘With the Lord’s help,’ he said, with a gravity so extreme that it was almost hostility. Atthe same time, at her look and voice something leaped in him that he thought had been put downfor ever.
‘Well, I be mighty delighted,’ she said after a moment, seeming to have briefly regrettedthe impetuosity that had led her to call him a ‘pretty’ man.
‘Can you make yourself free to come to-night?’ he could not prevent himself from asking.
And she grinned, delighted at what she took to be an oblique compliment. ‘Well, I don’tknow, Reverend. But I’ll try.’
When the day was ended, she disappeared on the arm of yet another boy. He did notbelieve that she would come. And this so strangely depressed him that he could scarcely speak toDeborah at dinner, and they walked all the way to church in silence. Deborah watched him out ofthe corner of her eye, as was her silent and exasperating habit. It was her way of conveying respectfor his calling; and she would have said, had it ever occurred to him to tax her with it, that she didnot wish to distract him when the Lord had laid something on his heart. To-night, since he was topreach, it could not be doubted that the Lord was speaking more than usual; and it behooved her,therefore, as the helpmeet of the Lord’s anointed, as the caretaker, so to speak, of the sanctifiedtemple, to keep silence. Yet, in fact, he would have liked to talk. He would have liked to ask her—so many things; to have listened to her voice, and watched her face while she told him of her day,her hopes, her doubts, her life, and her love. But he and Deborah never talked. The voice to whichhe listened in his mind, and the face he watched with such much love and care, belonged not toDeborah, but to Esther. Again he felt this strange chill in him, implying disaster and delight; andthen he hoped that she would not come, that something would happen that would make itimpossible for him ever to see her again.
She came, however; late, just before the pastor was about to present the speaker of the hourto the congregation. She did not come alone, but had brought her mother with her—promisingwhat spectacle Gabriel could not imagine, nor could he imagine how she had escaped her youngman of the evening. But she had; she was there; she preferred, then, to hear him preach the gospelthan to linger with others in carnal delight. She was here, and his heart was uplifted; somethingexploded in his heart when the opening door revealed her, smiling faintly with her eyes downcast,moving directly to a seat in the back of the congregation. She did not look at him at all, and yet heknew immediately that she had seen him. And in a moment he imagined her, because of thesermon that he would preach, on her knees before the altar, and then her mother and that gambling,loud-talking stepfather of hers, brought by Esther into the service of the Lord. Heads turned whenthey came in, and a murmur, barely audible, of astonishment and pleasure swept over the church.
Here were sinners, come to hear the Word of God.
And, indeed, from their apparel the sinfulness of their lives was evident: Esther wore a bluehat, trimmed with many ribbons, and a heavy, wine-red dress; and her mother, massive, and darkerthan Esther, wore great gold ear-rings in her pierced ears and had that air, vaguely disreputable,and hurriedly dressed, of women he had known in sporting-houses. They sat in the back, rigid anduncomfortable, like sisters in sin, like a living defiance of the drab sanctity of the saints. Deborah turned to look at them, and in that moment Gabriel saw, as though for the first time, how black andhow bony was this wife of his, and how wholly undesirable. Deborah looked at him with awatchful silence in her look; he felt the hand that held his Bible begin to sweat and tremble; hethought of the joyless groaning of their marriage bed; and he hated her.
Then the pastor rose. While he spoke, Gabriel closed his eyes. He felt the words that hewas about to speak fly from him; he felt the power of God go out of him. The the voice of thepastor ceased, and Gabriel opened his eyes in the silence and found that all eyes were on him. Andso he rose and faced the congregation.
‘Dearly beloved in the Lord,’ he began—but her eyes were on him, that strange, thatmocking light—‘let us bow our heads in prayer.’ And he closed his eyes and bowed his head.
His later memory of this sermon was like the memory of a storm. From the moment that heraised and looked out over their faces again, his tongue was loosed and he was filled with thepower of the Holy Ghost. Yes, the power of the Lord was on him that night, and he preached asermon that was remembered in camp-meetings and in cabins, and that set a standard for visitingevangelists for a generation to come. Years later, when Esther and Royal and Deborah were dead,and Gabriel was leaving the South, people remembered this sermon and the gaunt, possessedyoung man who had preached it.
He took his text from the eighteen chapter of the second book of Samuel, the story of theyoung Ahimaaz who ran too soon to bring the tidings of battle to King David. For, before he ran,he was asked by Joab: ‘Wherefore wilt thou run, my son, seeing that thou hast no tidings ready?’
And when Ahimaaz reached King David, who yearned to know the fate of his headlong son,Absalom, he could only say: ‘I saw a great tumult but I knew not what it was.’
And this was the story of all those who failed to wait on the counsel of the Lord; who madethemselves wise in their own conceit and ran before they had the tidings ready. This was the storyof innumerable shepherds who failed, in their arrogance, to feed the hungry sheep; of many afather and mother who gave their children not bread but a stone, who offered not the truth of Godbut the tinsel of this world. This was not belief but unbelief, not humility but pride: there workedin the heart of such a one the same desire that had hurled the son of the morning from Heaven tothe depths of Hell, the desire to overturn the appointed times of God, and to wrest from him whoheld all power in His hands power to meet for men. Oh, yes, they had seen it, each brother andsister beneath the sound of his voice to-night, and they had seen the destruction caused by a solamentable unripeness! Babies, bawling, fatherless, for bread, and girls in the gutters, sick with sin,and young men bleeding in the frosty fields. Yes, and there were those who cried—they had heardit, in their homes, and on the street corners, and from the very pulpit—that they should wait nolonger, despised and rejected and spat on as they were, but should rise to-day and bring down themighty, establishing the vengeance that God had claimed. But blood cried out for blood, as theblood of Abel cried out from the ground. Not for nothing was it written: ‘He that believeth will notmake haste.’ Oh, but sometimes the road was rocky. Did they think sometimes that God Forgot?
Oh, fall on your knees and pray for patience; fall on your knees and pray for faith; fall on yourknees for overcoming power to receive the crown of life. For God did not forget, no wordproceeding from his mouth could fail. Better to wait, like Job, through all the days of ourappointed time until our change comes than to rise up, unready, before God speaks. For if we but wait humbly before Him, He will speak glad tidings to our souls; if we but wait our change willcome, and that in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye—we will be changed one day from thiscorruption into incorruptibility forever, caught up with Him beyond the clouds. And these are thetidings we now must bear to all the nations: another son of David has hung from a tree, and he whoknows not the meaning of that tumult shall be damned forever in Hell! Brother, sister, you mayrun, but the day is coming when the King will ask: ‘What are the tidings that you bear? And whatwill you say on that great day if you know not the death of His Son?
‘Is there a soul here to-night’—tears were on his face and he stood above them with armsoutstretched—‘who knows not the meaning of that tumult? Is there a soul here to-night who wantsto talk to Jesus? Who wants to wait before the Lord, amen, until He speaks? Until He makes toring in your soul, amen, the glad tidings of salvation? Oh, brothers and sisters’—and still she didnot rise; but only watched him from far away—‘the time is running out. One day He’s comingback to judge the nations, to take His children, hallelujah, to their rest. They tell me, bless God,that two shall be working in the fields, and one shall be taken and the other left. Two shall belying, amen, in bed, and one shall be taken and the other left. He’s coming, beloved, like a thief inthe night, and no man knows the hour of His coming. It’s going to be too late then to cry: “Lord,have mercy.” Now is the time to make yourself ready, now, amen, to-night, before His altar. Won’tsomebody come to-night? Won’t somebody say No to Satan and give their life to the Lord?’
But she did not rise, only looked at him and looked about her with a bright, pleasedinterest, as though she were at a theater and were waiting to see what improbable delights wouldnext be offered to her. He somehow knew that she would never rise and walk that long aisle to themercy seat. And this filled him for a moment with a holy rage–that she stood, so brazen, in thecongregation of the righteous and refused to bow her head.
He said amen, and blessed them, and turned away, and immediately the congregation beganto sing. Now, again, he felt drained and sick; he was soaking wet and he smelled the odor of hisown body. Deborah, singing and beating her tambourine in the front of the congregation, watchedhim. He felt suddenly like a helpless child. He wanted to hide himself for ever and never ceasefrom crying.
Esther and her mother left during the singing—they had come, then, only to hear himpreach. He could not imagine what they were saying or thinking now. And he thought of tomorrow, when he would have to see her again.
‘Ain’t that the little girl what works at the same place with you?’ Deborah asked him on theway home.
‘Yes,’ he said. Now he did not feel like talking. He wanted to get home and take his wetclothes off and sleep.
‘She mighty pretty,’ said Deborah. ‘I ain’t never seen her in church before.’
He said nothing‘Was it you invited her to come out to-night?’ she asked, after a bit.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think the Word of God could do her no harm.’
Deborah laughed. ‘Don’t look like it, does it. She walked out just as cool and sinful as shecome in—she and that mother of her’n. And you preached a mighty fine sermon. Look like she justain’t thinking about the Lord.’
‘Folks ain’t got no time for the Lord,’ he said, ‘one day He ain’t going to have no time forthem.’
When they got home she offered to make him a hot cup of tea, but he refused. Heundressed in silence—which she again respected—and got into bed. At length, she lay beside himlike a burden laid down at evening which must be picked up once more in the morning.
The next morning Esther said to him, coming into the yard while he was chopping wood for thewoodpiles: ‘Good morning, Reverend. I sure didn’t look to see you to-day. I reckoned you’d be allwore out after that sermon—do you always preach as hard as that?’
He paused briefly with the axe in the air; then he turned again, bringing the axe down. ‘Ipreach the way the Lord leads me, sister,’ he said.
She retreated a little in the face of his hostility. ‘Well,’ she said in a different tone, ‘it was amighty fine sermon. Me and Mama was mighty glad we come out.’
He left the axe buried in the wood, for splinters flew and he was afraid one might strikeher. ‘You and your ma—you don’t get out to service much?’
‘Lord Reverend,’ she wailed, ‘look like we just ain’t got the time. Mama works so hard allweek she just want to lie up in bed on Sunday. And she like me,’ she added quickly, after a pause,‘to keep her company.’
Then he looked directly at her. ‘Does you really mean to say, sister, that you ain’t got notime for the Lord? No time at all?’
‘Reverend,’ she said, looking at him with the daring defiance of a threatened child, ‘I doesmy best. I really does. Ain’t everybody got to have the same spirit.’
And he laughed shortly. ‘Ain’t but one spirit you got to have—and that’s the spirit of theLord.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘that spirit ain’t got to work in everybody the same, seems to me.’
Then they were silent, each quite vividly aware that they had reached an impasse. After amoment he turned and picked up the axe again. ‘Well, you go along, sister. I’m praying for you.’
Something struggled in her face then, as she stood for yet a moment more and watched him—a mixture of fury and amusement; it reminded him of the expression he had often found on theface of Florence. And it was like the look on the faces f the elders during that far-off and somomentous Sunday dinner. He was too angry, while she thus stared at him, to trust himself tospeak. Then she shrugged, the mildest, most indifferent gesture he had ever seen, and smiled. ‘I’mmighty obliged to you, Reverend,’ she said. Then she went into the house.
This was the first time they spoke in the yard a frosty morning. There was nothing in thatmorning to warn him of what was coming. She offended him because she was so brazen in her sins, that was all; and he prayed for her soul, which would one day find itself naked and speechlessbefore the judgment bar of Christ. Later, she told him that he had pursued her, that his eyes had lefther not a moment’s peace. ‘That weren’t no reverend looking at me them morning in the yard,’ shehad said. ‘You looked at me just like a man, like a man what hadn’t never heard of the HolyGhost.’ But he believed that the Lord had laid her like a burden on his heart. And he carried her inhis heart; he prayed for her and exhorted her, while there was yet time to bring her soul to God.
But she had not been thinking about God; though she accused him of lusting after her in hisheart, it was she who, when she looked at him, insisted on seeing not God’s minister but a ‘prettyman.’ On her tongue the very title of his calling became a mark of disrespect.
It began on an evening when he was to preach, when they were alone in the house. Thepeople of the house had gone away for three days to visit relatives; Gabriel had driven them to therailroad station after supper, leaving Esther clearing up the kitchen. When he came back to lock upthe house, he found Esther waiting for him on the porch steps.
‘I didn’t think I’d better leave,’ she said, ‘till you got back. I ain’t got no keys to lock upthis house, and white folks is so funny. I don’t want them blaming me if something’s missing.’
He realized immediately that she had been drinking—she was not drunk, but there waswhisky on her breath. And this, for some reason, caused a strange excitement to stir in him.
‘That was mighty thoughtful, sister,’ he said, staring hard at her to let her know that heknew she had been drinking. She met his stare with a calm, bold smile, a smile mockinginnocence, so that her face was filled with the age-old cunning of a woman.
He stared past her into the house; then, without thinking, and without looking at her, heoffered: ‘If you ain’t got nobody waiting for you I’ll walk you a piece on your way home.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘ain’t nobody waiting for me this evening, Reverend, thank you kindly.’
He regretted making his offer almost as soon as it was made; he had been certain that shewas about to rush off to some trysting-place or other, and he had merely wished to be corroborated.
Now, as they walked together into the house, he became terribly aware of her youthful, vividpresence, of her lost condition; and at the same time the emptiness and silence of the house warnedhim that he was alone with danger.
‘You just sit down in the kitchen,’ he said. ‘I be as quick as I can.’
But his speech was harsh in his own ears, and he could not face her eyes. She sat down atthe table, smiling, to wait for him. He tried to do everything as quickly as possible, the shutteringof windows, and locking of doors. But his fingers were stiff and slippery; his heart was in hismouth. And it came to him that he was barring every exit to this house, except the exit through thekitchen, where Esther sat.
When he entered the kitchen again she had moved and now stood in the doorway, lookingout, holding a glass in her hand. It was a moment before he realized that she had helped herself tomore of the master’s whisky.
She turned at this step, and he stared at her, and at the glass she held, with wrath andhorror.
‘I just thought,’ she said, almost entirely unabashed, ‘that I’d have me a little drink while Iwas waiting, Reverend. But I didn’t figure on you catching me at it.’
She swallowed the last of her drink and moved to the sink to rinse the glass. She gave alittle, ladylike cough as she swallowed—he could not be sure whether this cough was genuine or inmockery of him.
‘I reckon,’ he said, malevolently, ‘you is just made up your mind to serve Satan all yourdays.’
‘I done made up my mind,’ she answered, ‘to live all I can while I can. If that’s a sin, well,I’ll go on down to Hell and pay for it. But don’t you fret, Reverend—it ain’t your soul.’
He moved and stood next to her, full of anger.
‘Girl,’ he said, ‘don’t you believe God? God don’t lie—and He says, plain as I’ talking toyou, the soul that sinneth, it shall die.’
She sighed. ‘Reverend, look like to me you’d get tired, all the time beating on poor littleEsther, trying to make Esther something she ain’t. I just don’t feel it here,’ she said, and put onehand on her breast. ‘Now, what you going to do? Don’t you know I’m a woman grown, and I ain’tfixing to change?’
He wanted to weep. He wanted to reach out and hold her back from the destruction she soardently pursued—to fold her in him, and hide her until the wrath of God was past. At the sametime there rose to his nostrils again her whisky-laden breath, and beneath this, faint, intimate, theodor of her body. And he began to feel like a man in a nightmare, who stands in the path ofoncoming destruction, who must move quickly—but who cannot move. ‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,’ rangover and over again in his mind, like a bell—as he moved closer to her, undone by her breath, andher wide, angry, mocking eyes.
‘You know right well,’ he whispered, shaking with fury, ‘you know right well why I keepafter you—why I keep after you like I do.’
‘No, I don’t,’ she answered, refusing, with a small shake of the head, to credit his intensity.
‘I sure don’t know why you can’t let Esther have her little whisky, and have her little ways withoutall the time trying to make her miserable.’
He sighed with exasperation, feeling himself begin to tremble. ‘I just don’t want to see yougo down, girl, I don’t want you to wake up one fine morning sorry for all the sin you done, old,and all by yourself, with nobody to respect you.’
But he heard himself speaking, and it made him ashamed. He wanted to have done withtalking and leave this house—in a moment they would leave, and the nightmare would be over.
‘Reverend,’ she said, ‘I ain’t done nothing that I’m ashamed of, and I hope I don’t donothing I’m ashamed of, ever.’
At the word ‘Reverend,’ he wanted to strike her; he reached out instead and took both herhands in his. And now they looked directly at each other. There was surprise in her look, and aguarded triumph; he was aware that their bodies were nearly touching and that he should moveaway. But he did not move—he could not move.
‘But I can’t help it,’ she said, after a moment, maliciously teasing, ‘if you done things thatyou’s ashamed of, Reverend.’
He held on to her hands as though he were in the middle of the sea and her hands were thelifeline that would drag him in to shore. ‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,’ he prayed, ‘oh, Jesus, Jesus. Help meto stand.’ He thought that that he was pulling back against her hands—but he was pulling her tohim. And he saw in her eyes now a look that he had not seen for many a long day and night, a lookthat was never in Deborah’s eyes.
‘Yes, you know,’ he said, ‘why I’m all the time worrying about you—why I’m all the timemiserable when I look at you.’
‘But you ain’t never told me none of this,’ she said.
One hand moved to her waist, and lingered there. The tips of her breasts touched his coat,burning in like acid and closing his throat. Soon it would be too late; he wanted it to be too late.
That river, his infernal need, rose, flooded, sweeping him forward as though he were a long-drowned corpse.
‘You know,’ he whispered, and touched her breasts and buried his face in her neck.
So he had fallen: for the first time since his conversion, for the last time in his life. Fallen:
he and Esther in the white folks’ kitchen, the light burning, the door half-open, grappling andburning beside the sink. Fallen indeed: time was no more, and sin, death, Hell, the judgment wereblotted out. There was only Esther, who contained in her narrow body all mystery and all passion,and who answered all his need. Time, snarling so swiftly past, had caused him to forget theclumsiness, and sweat, and dirt of their first coupling; how his shaking hands undressed her,standing where they stood, how her dress fell at length like a snare about her feet; how his handstore at her undergarments so that the naked, vivid flash might meet his hands; how she protested:
‘Not here, not here’; how he worried, in some buried part of his mind, about the open door, aboutthe sermon he was to preach, about his life, about Deborah; how the table got in their way, how hiscollar, until her fingers loosened it, threatened to choke him; how they found they foundthemselves on the floor at last, sweating and groaning and locked together; locked away from allothers, all heavenly or human help. Only they could help each other. They were alone in the world.
Had Royal, his son, been conceived that night? Or the next night? Or he next? It had lastedonly nine days. Then he had come to his senses—after nine days God gave him the power to tellher this thing could not be.
She took his decision with the same casualness, the same near-amusement, with which shehad taken his fall. He understood about Esther, during those nine days: that she considered his fearand trembling fanciful and childish, a way of making life more complicated than it need be. Shedid not think life was like that; she wanted life to be simple. He understood that she was very sorryfor him because he was always worried. Sometimes, when they were together, he tried to tell herof what he felt, how the Lord would punish them for the sin they were committing. She would notlisten: ‘You ain’t in the pulpit now. You’s here with me. Even a Reverend’s got the right to takeoff his clothes sometimes and act like a natural man.’ When he told her that he would not see herany more, she was angry, but she did not argue. Her eyes told him that she thought he was a fool; but that, even had she loved him ever so desperately, it would have been beneath her to argueabout his decision—a large part of her simplicity consisted in determining not to want what shecould not have with ease.
So it was over. Though it left him bruised and frightened, though he had lost the respect ofEsther for ever (he prayed that she would never again come to hear him preach) he thanked Godthat it had been worse. He prayed that God would forgive him, and never let him fall again.
Yet what frightened him, and kept him more than ever on his knees, was the knowledgethat, once having fallen, nothing would be easier than to fall again. Having possessed Esther, thecarnal man awoke, seeing the possibility of conquest everywhere. He was made to remember thatthough he was holy he was yet young; the women who had wanted him wanted him still; he hadbut to stretch out his hand and take what he wanted—even sisters in the church. He struggled towear out his visions in the marriage bed, he struggled to awaken Deborah, for whom daily hishatred grew.
He and Esther spoke in the yard again as spring was just beginning. The ground was stillwith melting snow and ice; the sun was everywhere; the naked branches of the trees seemed to belifting themselves upward toward the pale sun, impatient to put forth leaf and flower. He wasstanding at the well in his shirt-sleeves, singing softly to himself—praising God for the dangers hehad passed. She came down the porch steps into the yard, and though he heard the soft steps, andknew that it was she, it was a moment before he turned round.
He expected her to come up to him and ask for his help in something she was doing in thehouse. When she did not speak, he turned around. She was wearing a light, cotton dress of light-brown squares, and her hair was braided tightly all around her head. She looked like a little girl,and he almost smiled. Then: ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked her; and felt the heart within himsicken.
‘Gabriel,’ she said, ‘I going to have a baby.’
He stared at her; she began to cry. He put the two pails of water carefully on the ground.
She put out her hands to reach him, but he moved away.
‘Girl, stop that bellering. What you talking about?’
But, having allowed her tears to begin, she could not stop them at once. She continued tocry, weaving a little where she stood, and with her hands to her face. He looked in panic aroundthe yard and toward the house. ‘Stop that,’ he cried again, not daring here and now to touch her,‘and tell me what’s the matter!’
‘I told you,’ she moaned, ‘I done told you. I going to have a baby.’ She looked at him, herface broken up and the hot tear falling. ‘It’s the Lord’s truth. I ain’t making up no story, it’s theLord’s truth.’
He could not take his eyes from her, though he hated what he saw. ‘And when you donefind this out?’
‘Not so long. I thought maybe I was mistook. But ain’t no mistake. Gabriel, what we goingto do?’
Then, as she watched his face, her tears began again.
‘Hush,’ he said, with a calm that astonished him, ‘we going to do something, just you bequiet.’
‘What we going to do, Gabriel? Tell me—what you a-fixing in your mind to do?’
‘You go on back in the house. Ain’t no way for us to talk now.’
‘Gabriel——’
‘Go on in the house, girl. Go on!’ And when she did not move, but continued to stare athim: ‘We going to talk it to-night. We going to get to the bottom of this thing to-night!’
She turned from him and started up the porch steps. ‘And dry your face,’ he whispered. Shebent over, lifting the front of her dress to dry her eyes, and stood so for a moment on the bottomstep while he watched her. Then she straightened and walked into the house, not looking back.
She was going to have his baby—his baby? While Deborah, despite their groaning, despitethe humility with which she endured his body, yet failed to be quickened by any coming life. Itwas in the womb of Esther, who was not better than a harlot, that the seed of the prophet would benourished.
And he moved from the well, picking up, like a man in a trance, the heavy pails of water.
He moved toward the house, which now—high, gleaming roof, and spun-gold window—seemed towatch him and to listen; the very sun above his head and the earth beneath his feet had ceased theirturning; the water, like a million warning voices, lapped in the buckets he carried on each side; andhis mother, beneath the startled earth on which he moved, lifted up, endlessly, her eyes.
They talked in the kitchen as she was cleaning up.
‘How come you’—it was the first question—‘to be so sure this here’s my baby?’
She was not crying now. ‘Don’t you start a-talking that way,’ she said. ‘Esther ain’t in thehabit of lying to nobody, and I ain’t gone with so many men that I’m subject to get my mindconfused.’
She was very cold and deliberate, and moved about the kitchen with a furious concentrationon her tasks, scarcely looking at him.
He did not know what to say, how to reach her.
‘You tell your mother yet?’ he asked, after a pause. ‘You been to see a doctor? How comeyou to be so sure?’
She sighed sharply. ‘No, I ain’t told my mother, I ain’t crazy. I ain’t told nobody exceptyou.’
‘How come you to be so sure?’ he repeated. ‘If you ain’t seen no doctor?’
‘What doctor in this town you want me to go see? I go to see a doctor, I might as well getup and shout it from the housetops. No, I ain’t seen no doctor, and I ain’t fixing to see one in ahurry. I don’t need no doctor to tell me what’s happening in my belly.’
‘And how long you been knowing about this?’
‘I been knowing this for maybe a month—maybe six weeks now.’
‘Six weeks? Why ain’t you opened your mouth before?’
‘Because I wasn’t sure. I thought I’d wait and make sure. I didn’t see no need for getting allup in the air before I knew. I didn’t want to get you all upset and scared and evil, like you is now, ifit weren’t no need.’ She paused, watching him. Then: ‘And you said this morning we was going todo something. What we going to do? That’s what we got to figure out now, Gabriel.’
‘What we going to do?’ he repeated at last; and felt that the sustaining life had gone out ofhim. He sat down at the kitchen table and looked at whirling pattern on the floor.
But the life had not gone out of her; she came to where he sat, speaking softly, with bittereyes. ‘You sound mighty strange to me,’ she said. ‘Don’t look to me like you thinking of nothingbut how you can get shut of this—and me, too—quick as you know how. It wasn’t like thatalways, was it, Reverend? Once upon a time you couldn’t think of nothing and nobody but me.
What you thinking about to-night? I be damned if I think it’s me you thinking of.’
‘Girl,’ he said, wearily, ‘don’t talk like you ain’t got good sense. You know I got a wife tothink about——’ and he wanted to say more, but he could not find the words, and, helplessly, hestopped.
‘I know that,’ she said with less heat, but watching him still with eyes from which the old,impatient mockery was not entirely gone, ‘but what I mean is, if you was able to forget her onceyou ought to be able to forger her twice.’
He did not understand her at once; but then he sat straight up, his eyes wide and angry.
‘What you mean, girl? What you trying to say?’
She did not flinch—even in his despair and anger he recognized how far she was frombeing the frivolous child she had always seemed to him. Or was it that she had been, in so short aspace of time, transformed? But he spoke to her at this disadvantage: that whereas he wasunprepared for any change in her, she had apparently taken his measure from the first and could besurprised by no change in him.
‘You know what I mean, she said. ‘You ain’t never going to have no kind of life with thatskinny, black woman—and you ain’t never going to be able to make her happy—and she ain’tnever going to have no children. I be blessed, anyway, if I think you was in your right mind whenyou married her. And it’s me that’s going to have your baby!’
‘You want me,’ he asked at last, ‘to leave my wife—and come with you?’
‘I thought,’ she answered, ‘that you had done thought of that yourself, already, many andmany a time.’
‘You know,’ he said, with a halting anger, ‘I ain’t never said nothing like that. I ain’t nevertold you I wanted to leave my wife.’
‘I ain’t talking,’ she shouted, at the end of patience, ‘about nothing you done said!’
Immediately, they both looked toward the closed kitchen doors—for they were not alone inthe house this time. She sighed, and smoothed her hair with her hand; and he saw then that herhand was trembling and that her calm deliberation was all a frenzied pose.
‘Girl,’ he said, ‘does you reckon I’m going to run off and lead a life of sin with yousomewhere, just because you tell me you got my baby kicking in your belly? How many kinds of afool you think I am? I got God’s work to do—my life don’t belong to you. Nor to that baby,neither—if it is my baby.
‘It’s your baby,’ she said, coldly, ‘and ain’t no way in the world to get around that. And itain’t been so very long ago, right here in this very room, when looked to me like a life of sin wasall you was ready for.’
‘Yes,’ he answered, rising, and turning away, ‘Satan tempted me and I fell. I ain’t the firstman been made to fall on account of a wicked woman.’
‘You be careful,’ said Esther, ‘how you talk to me. I ain’t the first girl’s been ruined by aholy man, neither.’
‘Ruined?’ he cried. ‘You? How you going to be ruined? When you been walking throughthis town just like a harlot, and a-kicking up your heels all over the pasture? How you going tostand there and tell me you been ruined? If it hadn’t been me, it sure would have been somebodyelse.’
‘But it was you,’ she retorted, ‘and what I want to know is what we’s going to do about it.’
He looked at her. He face was cold and hard—ugly; she had never been so ugly before.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, deliberately, ‘what we is going to do. But I tell you what I thinkyou better do: you better go along and get one of these boys you been running around with tomarry you. Because I can’t go off with you nowhere.’
She sat down at the table and stared at him with scorn and amazement; sat down heavily, asthough she had been struck. He knew that she was gathering her forces; and now she said what hehad dreaded to hear:
‘And suppose I went through town and told your wife, and the churchfolks, and everybody—suppose I did that, Reverend?’
‘And who you think,’ he asked—he felt himself enveloped by an awful, falling silence—‘isgoing to believe you?’
She laughed. ‘Enough folks’d believe me to make it mighty hard on you.’ And she watchedhim. He walked up and down the kitchen, trying to avoid her eyes. ‘You just think back,’ she said,‘to that first night, right here on this damn white folks’ floor, and you’ll see it’s too late for you totalk to Esther about how holy you is. I don’t care if you want to live a lie, but I don’t see no reasonfor you to make me suffer on account of it.’
‘You can go around and tell folks if you want to,’ he said, boldly, ‘but it ain’t going to lookso good for you neither.’
She laughed again. ‘But I ain’t the holy one. You’s a married man, and you’s a preacher—and who you think folks is going to blame most?’
He watched her with a hatred that was mixed with his old desire, knowing that once moreshe had the victory.
‘I can’t marry you, you know that,’ he said. ‘Now, what you want me to do?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘and I reckon you wouldn’t marry me even if you was free. I reckon youdon’t want no whore like Esther for your wife. Esther’s just for the night, for the dark, where won’tnobody see you getting your holy self all dirtied up with Esther. Esther’s just good enough to goout and have your bastard somewhere in the goddamn woods. Ain’t that so, Reverend?’
He did not answer. He could find no words. There was only silence in him, like the grave.
She rose, and moved to the open kitchen door, where she stood, her back to him, lookingout into the yard and on the silent streets where the last, dead rays of the sun still lingered.
‘But I reckon,’ she said slowly, ‘that I don’t want to be with you no more’n you want to bewith me. I don’t want no man what’s ashamed and scared. Can’t do me no good, that kind of man.’
She turned in the door and faced him; this was the last time she really looked at him, and he wouldcarry that look to his grave. ‘There’s just one thing I want you to do,’ she said. ‘You do that, andwe be all right.’
‘What you want me to do?’ he asked, and felt ashamed.
‘I would go through this town,’ she said, ‘and tell everybody about the Lord’s anointed.
Only reason I don’t is because I don’t want my mama and daddy to know what a fool I been. Iain’t ashamed of it—I’m ashamed of you—you done made me feel a shame I ain’t never feltbefore. I shamed before my God—to let somebody make me cheap, like you done done.’
He said nothing. She turned her back to him again.
‘I … just want to go somewhere,’ she said, ‘go somewhere, and have my baby, and thinkall this out of my mind. I want to go somewhere and get my mind straight. That’s what I want youto do—and that’s pretty cheap. I guess it takes a holy man to make a girl a real whore.’
‘Girl,’ he said, ‘I ain’t got no money.’
‘Well,’ she said, coldly, ‘you damn well better find some.’
Then she began to cry. He moved toward her, but she moved away.
‘If I go out into the field,’ he said, helplessly, ‘I ought to be able to make enough money tosend you away.’
‘How long that going to take?’
‘A month maybe.’
And she shook her head. ‘I ain’t going to stay around here that long.’
They stood in silence in the open kitchen door, she struggling against her tears, hestruggling against his shame. He could only think: ‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.’
‘Ain’t you got nothing saved up? she asked at last. ‘Look to me like you been married longenough to’ve saved something!’
Then he remembered that Deborah had been saving money since their wedding day. Shekept it in a tin box at the top of the cupboard. He thought how sin led to sin.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘a little. I don’t know how much.’
‘You bring it to-morrow,’ she told him.
‘Yes,’ he said.
He watched her as she moved from the door and went to the closet for her hat and coat.
Then she came back, dressed for the street and, without a word, passed him, walking down theshort steps into the yard. She opened the low gate and turned down the long, silent, flaming street.
She walked slowly, head bowed, as though she were cold. He stood watching her, thinking of themany times he had watched her before, when her walk had been so different and her laughter hadcome ringing back to mock him.
He stole the money while Deborah slept. And he gave it to Esther in the morning. She gavenotice that same day, and a week later she was gone—to Chicago, said her parents, to find a betterjob and to have a better life.
Deborah became more silent than ever in the weeks that followed. Sometimes he was certain shehad discovered that the money was missing and knew that he had taken it—sometimes he wascertain that she knew nothing. Sometimes he was certain that she knew everything: the theft, andthe reason for the theft. But she did not speak. In the middle of the spring he went out into the fieldtom preach, and was gone three months. When he came back he brought the money with him andput it in the box again. No money had been added in the meanwhile, so he still could not be certainwhether Deborah knew or not.
He decided to let it all be forgotten, and begin his life again.
But the summer brought him a letter, with no return name or address, but postmarked fromChicago. Deborah gave it to him at breakfast, not seeming to have remarked the hand or thepostmark, along with the bundle of tracts from a Bible house which they both distributed eachweek through the town. She had a letter too, from Florence, and it was perhaps this novelty thatdistracted her attention.
Esther’s letter ended:
What I think is, I made a mistake, that’s true, and I’m paying for it now. Butdon’t you think you ain’t going to pay for it—I don’t know when and I don’t knowhow, but I know you going to be brought low one of these days. I ain’t holy like youare, but I know right from wrong.
I’m going to have my baby and I’m going to bring him up to be a man. And Iain’t going to read to him out of no Bible and I ain’t going to take him to hear no preaching. If he don’t drink nothing but moonshine all his natural days he be a betterman than his Daddy.
‘What Florence got to say?’ he asked dully, crumpling his letter in his fist.
Deborah looked up with a faint smile. ‘Nothing much, honey. But she sound like she goingto get married.’
Near the end of that summer he went out again into the field. He could not stand his home, his job,the town itself—he could not endure, day in, day out, facing the scenes and the people he hadknown all his life. They seemed suddenly to mock him, to stand in judgment on him; he saw hisguilt in everybody’s eyes. When he stood in the pulpit to preach they looked at him, he felt, asthough he had no right to be there, as though they condemned him as he had once condemned thetwenty-three elders. When souls came weeping to the altar he scarce dared to rejoice, rememberingthat soul who had not bowed, whose blood, it might be, would be required of him at judgment.
So he fled from these people, and from these silent witnesses, to tarry and preach elsewhere—to do, as it were, in secret, his first works over, seeking again the holy fire that had sotransformed him once. But he was to find, as the prophets had found, that the whole earth becamea prison for him who fled before the Lord. There was peace nowhere. In every church he entered,his sin had gone before him. It was in the strange, the welcoming faces, it cried up to him from thealtar, it sat, as he mounted the pulpit steps, waiting for him, waiting for him in his seat. It staredupward from his Bible: there was no word in all that holy book which did not make him tremble.
When he spoke of John on the isle of Patmos, taken up in the spirit of the Lord’s day, to beholdthings past, present, and to come, saying: ‘he which is filth, let him be filthy still,’ it was he who,crying these words in a loud voice, was utterly confounded; when he spoke of David, the shepherdboy, raised by God’s power to be the King of Israel, it was he who, while they shouted: ‘Amen!’
and: ‘Hallelujah!’ struggled once more in his chains; when he spoke of the day of Pentecost whenthe Holy Ghost had come down on the apostles who tarried in the upper room, causing them tospeak in tongues of fire, he thought of his own baptism and how he had offended the Holy Ghost.
No: though his name was writ large on placards, though they praised him for the great work Godworked through him, and though they came, day and night, before him to the altar, there was noword in the Book for him.
And he saw, in this wandering, how far his people had wandered from God. They had allturned aside, and gone out into the wilderness, to fall down before idols of gold and silver, andwood and stone, false gods that could not heal them. The music that filled any town or city heentered was not the music of the saints but another music, infernal, which glorified lust and heldrighteousness up to scorn. Women, some of whom should have been at home, teaching theirgrandchildren how to pray, stood, night after night, twisting their bodies into lewd hallelujahs insmoke-filled, gin-heavy dance halls, singing for their ‘loving man.’ And their loving man was anyman, any morning, noon, or night—when one left town they got another—men could drown, itseemed, in their warm flesh and they would never know the difference. ‘It’s here for you and ifyou don’t get it it ain’t no fault of mine.’ They laughed at him when they saw him—‘a pretty man like you?’—and they told him that they knew a long brown girl who could make him lay his Bibledown. He fled from them: they frightened him. He began to pray for Esther. He imagined herstanding one day where these women stood to-day.
And blood, in all cities through which he passed, ran down. There seemed no door,anywhere, behind which blood did not call out, unceasingly, for blood; no woman, whether singingbefore defiant trumpets or rejoicing before the Lord, who had not seen her father, her brother, herlover, or her son cut down without mercy; who had not seen her sister become part of the whiteman’s great whorehouse, who had not, all too narrowly, escaped that house herself; no man,preaching, or cursing, strumming his guitar in the lone, blue evening, or blowing in fury andecstasy his golden horn at night, who had not been made to bend his head and drink white men’smuddy water; no man whose manhood had not been, at the root, sickened, whose loins had notbeen dishonored, whose seed had not been scattered into oblivion and worse than oblivion, intoliving shame and rage, and into endless battle. Yes, their parts were all cut off, they weredishonored, their very names were nothing more than dust blown disdainfully across the field oftime—to fall where, to blossom where, bringing forth what fruit hereafter, where?—their verynames were not their own. Behind them was the darkness, nothing but the darkness, and all aroundthem destruction, and before them nothing but the fire—a bastard people, far from God, singingand crying in the wilderness!
Yet, most strangely, and from deeps not before discovered, his faith looked up; before thewickedness from which he fled, he yet beheld, like a flaming standard in the middle of the air, thatpower of redemption to which he must, till death, bear witness; which, though it crush him utterly,he could not deny; though none among the living might ever behold it, he had beheld it, and mustkeep the faith. He would not go back into Egypt for friend, or lover, or bastard son: he would notturn his face from God, no matter how deep might grow the darkness in which God his His facefrom him. One day God would give him a sign, and the darkness would all be finished—one dayGod would raise him, who had suffer him to fall so low.
Hard on the heels of his return that winter, Esther came home too. Her mother and stepfathertraveled north to claim her lifeless body and her living son. Soon after Christmas, on the last, deaddays of the year, she was buried in the churchyard. It was bitterly cold and there was ice on theground, as during the days when he had first possessed her. He stood next to Deborah, whose armin his shivered incessantly with the cold, and watched while the long, plain box was lowered intothe ground. Esther’s mother stood in silence beside the deep hole, leaning on her husband, whoheld their grandchild in his arms. ‘Lord have mercy, have mercy, have mercy,’ someone began tochant; and the old mourning women clustered of a sudden round Esther’s mother to hold her up.
Then earth struck the coffin; the child awakened and began to scream.
Then Gabriel prayed to be delivered from blood-guiltiness. He prayed to God to give him asign one day to make him know he was forgiven. But the child who screamed at that moment inthe churchyard had cursed, and sung, and been silenced for ever before God gave him a sign.
And he watched this son grow up, a stranger to his father and a stranger to God. Deborah,who became after the death of Esther more friendly with Esther’s people, reported to him from the very beginning how shamefully Royal was being spoiled. He was, inevitably, the apple of theireye, a fact that, in operation, caused Deborah to frown, and sometimes, reluctantly, to smile; and,as they said, if there was any white blood in him, it didn’t show—he was the spit and image of hismother.
The sun did not rise or set but that Gabriel saw his lost, his disinherited son, or heard ofhim; and he seemed with every passing day to carry more proudly the doom printed on his brow.
Gabriel watched him run headlong, like David’s headlong son, toward the disaster that had beenwaiting for him from the moment he had been conceived. It seemed that he had scarcely begun totalk before he cursed. Gabriel often saw him on the streets, playing on the curbstone with otherboys his age. Once, when he passed, one of the boys had said: ‘Here comes Reverend Grimes,’ andnodded, in brief, respectful silence. But Royal had looked boldly up into the preacher’s face. Hesaid: ‘Hoe-de-do, Reverend?’ and suddenly, irrepressible, laughed. Gabriel, wishing to smile downinto the boy’s face, to pause and touch him on the forehead, did none of these things, but walkedon. Behind him, he heard Royal’s explosive whisper: ‘I bet he got a mighty big one!’—and then allthe children laughed. It came to Gabriel then how his own mother must have suffered to watch himin the unredeemed innocence that so surely led to death and Hell.
‘I wonder,’ said Deborah idly once, ‘why she called him Royal? You reckon that’s hisdaddy’s name?’
He did not wonder. He had once told Esther that if the Lord ever gave him a son he wouldcalled him Royal, because the line of the faithful was a royal line—his son would be a royal child.
And this she had remembered as she thrust him from her; with what had perhaps been her lastbreath she had mocked him and his father with this name. She had died, then, hating him; she hadcarried into eternity a curse on him and his.
‘I reckon,’ he said at last, ‘it must be his daddy’s name—less they just given him that namein the hospital up north after … she was dead.’
‘His grandmama, Sister McDonald’—she was writing a letter, and did not look at him asshe spoke—‘well, she think it must’ve been one of them boys what’s all time passing through here,looking for work, on their way north—you know? Them real shiftless niggers—well, she think itmust’ve been one of them got Esther in trouble. She say Esther wouldn’t never’ve gone north ifshe hadn’t been a-trying to find that boy’s daddy. Because she was in trouble when she left here’—and she looked up from her letter a moment—‘that’s for certain.’
‘I reckon,’ he said again, made uncomfortable by her unaccustomed chatter, but not daring,too sharply, to stop her. He was thinking of Esther, lying cold and still in the ground, who had beenso vivid and shameless in his arms.
‘And Sister McDonald say,’ she went on, ‘that she left here just a little bit of money; theyhad to keep a-sending her money all the time she was up there almost, specially near the end. Wewas just talking about it yesterday—she say, look like Esther just decided overnight she had to go,and couldn’t nothing stop her. And she say she didn’t want to stand in the girl’s way—but ifshe’d’ve known something was the matter she wouldn’t never’ve let that girl away from her.’
‘Seems funny to me,’ he muttered, scarcely knowing what he was saying, ‘that she didn’tthink something.’
‘Why she didn’t think nothing, because Esther always told her mother everything—weren’tno shame between them—they was just like two women together. She say she never dreamed thatEsther would run away from her if she got herself in trouble.’ And she looked outward, past him,her eyes full of a strange, bitter pity. ‘That poor thing,’ she said, ‘she must have suffered some.’
‘I don’t see no need for you and Sister McDonald to sit around and talk about it all thetime,’ he said, then. ‘It all been a mighty long time ago; that boy is growing up already.’
‘That’s true,’ she said, bending her head once more, ‘but some things, look like, ain’t to beforgotten in a hurry.’
‘Who you writing to?’ he asked, as oppressed suddenly by the silence as he had been byher talk.
She looked up. ‘I’m writing to your sister, Florence. You got anything you want me tosay?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Just tell her I’m praying for her.’
When Royal was sixteen the war came, and all the young men, first the sons of the mighty, andthen the sons of his own people, were scattered into foreign lands. Gabriel fell on his knees eachnight to pray that Royal would not have to go. ‘But I hear he want to go,’ said Deborah. ‘Hisgrandmama tell me he giving her a time because she won’t let him go and sign up.’
‘Look like,’ he said sullenly, ‘that won’t none of these young men be satisfied till they cango off and get themselves crippled or killed.’
‘Well, you know that’s the way the young folks is,’ said Deborah, cheerfully. ‘You can’tnever tell them nothing—and when they find out it’s too late then.’
He discovered that whenever Deborah spoke of Royal, a fear deep within him listened andwaited. Many times he had thought to unburden his heart to her. But she gave him no opportunity,never said anything that might allow him the healing humility of confession—or that might, forthat matter, have permitted him at last to say how much he hated her for her barrenness. Shedemanded of him what she gave—nothing—nothing, at any rate, with which she could bereproached. She kept his house and shared his bed; she visited the sick, as she had always done,and she comforted the dying, as she had always done. The marriage for which he had oncedreamed the world would mock him had so justified itself—in the eyes of the world—that no onenow could imagine, for either of the, any other condition or alliance. Even Deborah’s weakness,which grew marked with the years, keeping her more frequently in her bed, and herbarrenness,likehe(more) r previous dishonor, had come to seem mysterious proof of how completely shehad surrendered herself to God.
He said: ‘Amen,’ cautiously, after her last remark, and cleared his throat.
‘I declare,’ she said, with the same cheerfulness, ‘sometimes he remind me of you whenyou was a young man.’
And he did not look at her, though he felt her eyes on him; he reached for his Bible andopened it. ‘Young men,’ he said, ‘is all the same, don’t Jesus change their hearts.’
Royal did not go to war, but he went away that summer to work on the docks in anothertown. Gabriel did not see him any more until the war was over.
On that day, a day he was never to forget, he went when work was done to buy somemedicine for Deborah, who was in bed with a misery in her back. Night had not yet fallen and thestreets were grey and empty—save that here and there, polished in the light that spilled outwardfrom a pool-room or a tavern, white men stood in groups of half-a-dozen. As he passed eachgroup, silence fell, and they watched him insolently, itching to kill; but he said nothing, bowing hishead, and they knew, anyway, that he was a preacher. There were no black men on the street at all,save him. There had been found that morning, just outside the town, the dead body of a soldier, hisuniform shredded where he had been flogged, and, turned upward through the black skin, raw, redmeat. He lay face downward at the base of a tree, his fingernails digging into the scuffed earth.
When he was turned over, his eyeballs stared upward in amazement and horror, his mouth waslocked open wide; his trousers, soaked with blood, were torn open, and exposed to the cold, whiteair of morning the thick hairs of his groin, matted together, black and rust-red, and the wound thatseemed to be throbbing still. He had been carried home in silence and lay now behind lockeddoors, with his living kinsmen, who sat, weeping, and praying, and dreaming of vengeance, andwaiting for the next visitation. Now, someone spat on the pavement at Gabriel’s feet, and hewalked on, his face not changing, and he heard it reprovingly whispered behind him that he was agood nigger, surely up to no trouble. He hoped that he would not be spoken to, that he would nothave to smile into any of these so well-known white-faces. While he walked, held by his cautionmore rigid than an arrow, he prayed, as his mother had taught him to pray, for loving kindness; yethe dreamed of the feel of a white man’s forehead against his shoe; again and again, until the headwobbled on the broken neck and his foot encountered nothing but the rushing blood. And he wasthinking that it was only the hand of the Lord that had taken Royal away, because if he had stayedthey would surely have killed him, when, turning a corner, he looked into Royal’s face.
Royal was now as tall as Gabriel, broad-shouldered, and lean. He wore a new suit, blue,with broad, blue stripes, and carried, crooked under his arm, a brown-paper bundle tied with string.
He and Gabriel stared at one another for a second with no recognition. Royal stared in blankhostility, before, seeming to remember Gabriel’s face, he took a burning cigarette from betweenhis lips, and said, with pained politeness: ‘How-de-do, sir.’ His voice was rough, and there was,faintly, the odor of whisky on his breath.
But Gabriel could not speak at once; he struggled to get his breath. Then: ‘How-de-do,’ hesaid. And they stood, each as though waiting for the other to say something of the greatestimportance, on the deserted corner. Then, just as Royal was about to move, Gabriel rememberedthe white men all over town.
‘Boy,’ he cried, ‘ain’t you got good sense? Don’t you know you ain’t got no business to beout here, walking around like this?’
Royal stared at him, uncertain whether to laugh or to take offense, and Gabriel said, moregently: ‘I just mean you better be careful, son. Ain’t nothing but white folks in town to-day. Theydone killed … last night …’
Then he could not go on. He saw, as though it were a vision, Royal’s body, sprawled heavyand unmoving for ever against the earth, and tears blinded his eyes.
Royal watched him, a distant and angry compassion in his face.
‘I know,’ he said abruptly, ‘but they ain’t going to bother me. They done got their niggerfor this week. I ain’t going far noway.’
Then the corner on which they stood seemed suddenly to rock with the weight of mortaldanger. It seemed for a moment, as they stood there, that death and destruction rushed towardthem: two black men alone in the dark and silent town where white men prowled like lions—whatmercy could they hope for, should they be found here, talking together? It would surely bebelieved that they were plotting vengeance. And Gabriel started to moved away, thinking to savehis son.
‘God bless you, boy,’ said Gabriel. ‘You hurry along now.’
‘Yeah,’ said Royal, ‘thanks.’ He moved away, about to turn the corner. He looked back atGabriel. ‘But you be careful, too,’ he said, and smiled.
He turned the corner and Gabriel listened as his footfalls moved away. They wereswallowed up in silence; he heard no voices raised to cut down Royal as he went his way; soonthere was silence everywhere.
Not quite two years later Deborah told him that his son was dead.
And now John tried to pray. There was a great noise of weeping and of song. It was SisterMcCandless who led the song, who sang it nearly alone, for the others did not cease to moan andcry. It was a song he had heard all his life:
‘Lord, I’m traveling, Lord,I got on my traveling shoes.’
Without raising his eyes, he could see her standing in the holy place, pleading the bloodover those who sought there, her head thrown back, eyes shut, foot pounding the floor. She did notlook, then, like the Sister McCandless who sometimes came to visit them, like the woman whowent out every day to work for the white people downtown, who came home at evening, climbing,with such weariness, the long, dark stairs. No: her face was transfigured now, her whole being wasmade new by the power of her salvation.
‘Salvation is real,’ a voice said to him, ‘God is real. Death may come soon or late, why doyou hesitate? Now is the time to seek and serve the Lord.’ Salvation was real for all these others,and it might be real for him. He had only to reach out and God would touch him; he had only to cry and God would hear. All these others, now, who cried so far beyond him with such joy, hadonce been in their sins, as he was now—and they had cried and God had heard them, and deliveredthem out of all their troubles. And what God had done for others, He could also do for him.
But—out of all their troubles? Why did his mother weep? Why did his father frown? IfGod’s power was so great, why were their lives so troubled?
He had never tried to think of their trouble before; rather, he had never before confronted itin such a narrow place. It had always been there, at his back perhaps, all these years, but he hadnever turned to face it. Now it stood before him, staring, nevermore to be escaped, and its mouthwas enlarged without any limit. It was ready to swallow him up. Only the hand of God coulddeliver him. Yet, in a moment, he somehow knew from the sound of that storm which rose sopainfully in him now, which laid waste—for ever?— the strange, yet comforting landscape of hismind, that the hand of God would surely lead him into this staring, waiting mouth, these distendedjaws, this hot breath as of fire. He would be led into darkness, and in darkness would remain; untilin some incalculable time to come the hand of God would reach down and raise him up; he, John,who having lain in darkness would no longer be himself but some other man. He would have beenchanged, as they said, for ever; sown in dishonor, he would be raised in honor: he would have beenborn again.
Then he would no longer be the son of his father, but the son of his Heavenly Father, theKing. Then he need no longer fear his father, for he could take, as it were, their quarrel over hisfather’s head to Heaven—to the Father who loved him, who had come down in the flesh to die forhim. Then he and his father would be equals, in the sight, and the sound, and the love of God. Thenhis father could not beat him any more, or despise him any more, or mock him any more—he,John, the Lord’s anointed. He could speak to his father then as men spoke to one another—as sonsspoke to their fathers, not in trembling but in sweet confidence, not in hatred but in love. His fathercould not cast him out, whom God had gathered in.
Yet, trembling, he knew that this was not what he wanted. He did not want to love hisfather; he wanted to hate him, to cherish that hatred, and give his hatred words one day. He did notwant his father’s kiss—not any more, he who had received so many blows. He could not imagine,on any day to come and no matter how greatly he might be changed, wanting to take his father’shand. The storm that raged in him to-night could not uproot this hatred, the mightiest tree in allJohn’s country, all that remained to-night, in this, John’s floodtime.
And he bowed his head yet lower before the altar in weariness and confusion. Oh, that hisfather would die!—and the road before John be open, as it must be open for others. Yet in the verygrave he would hate him; his father would but have changed conditions, he would be John’s fatherstill. The grave was not enough for punishment, for justice, for revenge. Hell, everlasting,unceasing, perpetual, unquenched for ever, should be his father’s portion; with John there towatch, to linger, to smile, to laugh aloud, hearing, at last, his father’s cries of torment.
And, even then, it would not be finished. The everlasting father.
Oh, but his thought were evil—but to-night he did not care. Somewhere, in all thiswhirlwind, in the darkness of his heart, in the storm—was something—something he must find. Hecould not pray. His mind was like the sea itself: troubled, and too deep for the bravest man’s descent, throwing up now and again, for the naked eyes to wonder at, treasure and debris longforgotten on the bottom—bones and jewels, fantastic shells, jelly that had once been flesh, pearlsthat had once been eyes. And he was at the mercy of this sea, hanging there with darkness allaround him.
The morning of that day, as Gabriel rose and started out to work, the sky was low and nearly blackand the air too thick to breathe. Late in the afternoon the wind rose, the skies opened, and the raincame. The rain came down as though once more in Heaven the Lord had been persuaded of thegood uses of a flood. It drove before it the bowed wanderer, clapped children into houses, lickedwith fearful anger against the high, strong wall, and the wall of the lean-to, and the wall of thecabin, beat against the bark and the leaves of trees, trampled the broad grass, and broke the neck ofthe flower. The world turned dark, for ever, everywhere, and windows ran as though their glasspanes bore all the tears of eternity, threatening at every instant to shatter inward against this force,uncontrollable, so abruptly visited on the earth. Gabriel walked homeward through this wildernessof water (which had failed, however, to clear the air) to where Deborah waited for him in the bedshe seldom, these days, attempted to leave.
And he had not been in the house five minutes before he was aware that a change hadoccurred in the quality of her silence: in the silence something waited, ready to spring.
He looked up at her from the table where he sat eating the meal that she had painfullyprepared. He asked: ‘How you feel to-day, old lady?’
‘I feel like about the way I always do,’ and she smiled. ‘I don’t feel no better and I don’tfeel no worse.’
‘We going to get the church to pray for you,’ he said, ‘and get you on your feet again.’
She said nothing and he turned his attention once more to his plate. But she was watchinghim; he looked up.
‘I hear some mighty bad news to-day,’ she said slowly.
‘What you hear?’
‘Sister McDonald was over this afternoon, and Lord knows she was in a pitiful state.’ Hesat stock-still, staring at her. ‘She done got a letter to-day what says her grandson—you know, thatRoyal—done got hisself killed in Chicago. It sure look like the Lord is put a curse on that family.
First the mother, and now the son.’
For a moment he could only stare at her stupidly, while the food in his mouth slowly grewheavy and dry. Outside rushed the armies of the rain, and lightening flashed against the window.
Then he tried to swallow, and his gorge rose. He began to tremble. ‘Yes,’ she said, not looking athim now, ‘he been living in Chicago about a year, just a-drinking and a-carrying on—and hisgrandmama, she tell me that look like he got to gambling one night with some of them northernniggers, and one of them got mad because he thought the boy was trying to cheat him, and took outhis knife and stabbed him. Stabbed him in the throat, and she tell me he died right there on the floor in that bar-room, didn’t even have time to get him to no hospital.’ She turned in bed andlooked at him. ‘The Lord sure give that poor woman a heavy cross to bear,’
Then he tried to speak; he thought of the churchyard where Esther was buried, and Royal’sfirst, thin cry. ‘She going to bring him back home?’
She stared. ‘Home? Honey, they done buried him already up there in the potter’s field.
Ain’t nobody never going to look on that poor boy no more.’
Then he began to cry, not making a sound, sitting at the table, and with his whole bodyshaking. She watched him for a long while and, finally, he put his head on the table, overturningthe coffee cup, and wept aloud. Then it seemed that there was weeping everywhere, waters ofanguish riding the world; Gabriel weeping, and rain beating on the roof, and at the windows, andthe coffee dripping from the end of the table. And she asked at last:
‘Gabriel … that Royal … he were your flesh and blood, weren’t he?’
‘Yes,’ he said, glad even in his anguish to hear the words fall from his lips, ‘that was myson.’
And there was silence again. Then: ‘And you sent that girl away, didn’t you? With themoney outen that box?’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes.’
‘Gabriel,’ she asked, ‘why did you do it? Why you let her go off and die, all by herself?
Why ain’t you never said nothing?’
And now he could not answer. He could not raise his head.
‘Why,’ she insisted. ‘Honey, I ain’t never asked you. But I got a right to know—and whenyou wanted a son so bad?
Then, shaking, he rose from the table and walked slowly to the window, looking out.
‘I asked my God to forgive me,’ he said. ‘But I didn’t want no harlot’s son.’
‘Esther weren’t no harlot,’ she said quietly.
‘She weren’t my wife. And I couldn’t make her my wife. I already had you—and he saidthe last words with venom—‘Esther’s mind weren’t on the Lord—she’d of dragged me right ondown to Hell with her.’
‘She mighty near has,’ said Deborah.
‘The Lord He held me back,’ he said, hearing the thunder, watching the lightning. ‘He putout His hand and held me back.’ Then, after a moment, turning back into the room: I couldn’t ofdone nothing else,’ he cried, ‘what else could I of done? Where could I of gone with Esther, andme a preacher, too? And what could I of done with you?’ He looked at her, old and black andpatient, smelling of sickness and age and death. ‘Ah,’ he said, his tears still falling, ‘I bet you wasmighty happy to-day, old lady, weren’t you? When she told you he, Royal, my son, was dead. Youain’t never had no son.’ And he turned again to the window. Then: ‘How long you been knowingabout this?’
‘I been knowing,’ she said, ‘ever since that evening, way back there, when Esther come tochurch.’
‘You got a evil mind,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t never touched her then.’
‘No,’ she said slowly, ‘but you had already done touched me.’
He moved a little from the window and stood looking down at her from the foot of the bed.
‘Gabriel,’ she said, ‘I been praying all these years that the Lord would touch my body, andmake me like them women, all them women, you used to go with all the time.’ She was very calm;her face was very bitter and patient. ‘Look like it weren’t His will. Look like I couldn’t nohowforget … how they done me way back there when I weren’t nothing but a girl.’ She paused andlooked away. ‘But, Gabriel, if you’d said something even when that poor girl was buried, if you’dwanted to own that poor boy, I wouldn’t nohow of cared what folks said, or where we might havehad to go, or nothing. I’d have raised him like my own, I swear to my God I would have—and hemight be living now.’
‘Deborah,’ he asked, ‘what you been thinking all this time?’
She smiled. ‘I been thinking,’ she said, ‘how you better commence to tremble when theLord, He gives you your heart’s desire.’ She paused. ‘I’d been wanting you since I wantedanything. And then I got you.’
He walked back to the window, tears rolling down his face.
‘Honey,’ she said, in another, stronger voice, ‘you better pray God to forgive you. Youbetter not let go until He make you know you been forgiven.’
‘Yes,’ he sighed, ‘I’m waiting on the Lord.’
Then there was only silence, except for the rain. The rain came down in buckets; it wasraining, as they said, pitchforks and nigger babies. Lightning flashed again across the sky andthunder rolled.
‘Listen,’ said Gabriel. ‘God is talking.’
Slowly now, he from his knees, for half the church was standing: Sister Price, Sister McCandless,andPray(rose) ing Mother Washington; and the young Ella Mae sat in her chair watchingElisha where he lay. Florence and Elizabeth were still on their knees; and John was on his knees.
And, rising, Gabriel thought of how the Lord had led him to this church so long ago, andhow Elizabeth, one night after he had preached, had walked this long aisle to the altar, to repentbefore God her sin. And then they had married, for he believed her when she said that she waschanged—and she was the sign, she and her nameless child, for which he had tarried so many darkyears before the Lord. It was as though, when he saw them, the Lord had returned to him again thatwhich was lost.
Then, as he stood with the others over the fallen Elisha, John rose from his kneed. He benta dazed, sleepy, frowning look on Elisha and the others, shivering a little as though he were cold;and then he felt his father’s eyes and looked up at his father.
At the same moment, Elisha, from the floor, began to speak in a tongue of fire, under thepower of the Holy Ghost. John and his father stared at each other, struck dumb and still and withsomething come to life between them—while the Holy Ghost spoke, Gabriel had never seen such alook on John’s face before; Satan, at that moment, stared out of John’s eyes while the spirit spoke;and yet John’s staring eyes to-night reminded Gabriel of other eyes: of his mother’s eyes when shebeat him, of Florence’s eyes when she mocked him, of Deborah’s eyes when she prayed for him,of Esther’s eyes and Royal’s eyes, and Elizabeth’s eyes to-night before Roy cursed him, and ofRoy’s eyes when Roy said: ‘You black bastard.’ And John did not drop his eyes, but seemed towant to stare for ever into the bottom of Gabriel’s soul. And Gabriel, scarcely believing that Johncould have become so brazen, stared in wrath and horror at Elizabeth’s presumptuous bastard boy,grown suddenly so old and evil. He nearly raised his hand to strike him, but did not move, forElisha lay between them. Then he said, soundlessly, with his lips: ‘Kneel down.’ John turnedsuddenly, the movement like a curse, and knelt again before the altar.
3 ELIZABETH’S PRAYERLord, I wish I had of diedIn Egypt land!
While Elisha was speaking, Elizabeth felt that the Lord was speaking a message to her heart, thatthis fiery visitation was meant for her; and that she humbled herself to listen, God would give toher the interpretation. This certainty did not fill her with exultation, but with fear. She was afraidof what God might say–of what displeasure, what condemnation, what prophesies of trial yet to beendured might issue from His mouth.
Now Elisha ceased to speak, and rose; now he sat at the piano. There was muted singing allaround her; yet she waited. Before her mind’s eyes wavered, in a light like the light from a fire, theface of John, whom she had brought so unwillingly into the world. It was for his deliverance thatshe wept to-night: that he might be carried, past wrath unspeakable, into a state of grace.
They were singing:
‘Must Jesus bear the cross alone,And all the world go free?’
Elisha picked out the song on the piano, his fingers seeming to hesitate, almost to beunwilling. She, too, strained against her great unwillingness, but forced her heart to say Amen, asthe voice of Praying Mother Washington picked up the response:
‘No, there’s a cross for everyone.
And there’s a cross for me.’
She heard weeping near her—was it Ella Mae? or Florence? or the echo, magnified, of herown tears? The weeping was buried beneath the song. She had been hearing this song all her life,she had grown up with it, bur she had never understood it as well as she understood it now. It filedthe church, as though the church had merely become a hollow or a void, echoing with the voicesthat had driven her to this dark place. Her aunt had sung it always, harshly, under her breath, in abitter pride:
‘The consecrated cross I’ll bearTill death shall set me free,And then go home, a crown to wear’
For there’s a crown for me.’
She was probably an old, old woman now, still in the same harshness of spirit, singing thissong in the tiny house down home which she and Elizabeth had shared so long. And she did notknow of Elizabeth’s shame—Elizabeth had not written about John until long after she was marriedto Gabriel; and the Lord had never allowed her aunt to come to New York City. Her aunt hadalways prophesied that Elizabeth would come to no good end, proud, and vain, and foolish as shewas, and having been allowed to run wild all her childhood years.
Her aunt had come second in the series of disasters that has ended Elizabeth’s childhood.
First, when she eight, going nine, her mother had died, an event not immediately recognizedbyElizabe(was) thasadisaster,s(on) ince she had scarcely known her mother and had certainlynever loved her. Her mother had been very fair, and beautiful, and delicate of health, so that shestayed in bed most of the time, reading spiritualist pamphlets concerning the benefits of diseaseand complaining to Elizabeth’s father of how she suffered. Elizabeth remembered of her only thatshe wept very easily and that she smelled like stale milk—it was, perhaps, her mother’s disquietingcolor that, whenever she was held in her mother’s arms, made Elizabeth think of milk. He motherdid not, however, hold Elizabeth in her arms very often. Elizabeth very quickly suspected that thiswas because she was so very much darker that her mother and not nearly, of course, so beautiful.
When she faced her mother she was shy, downcast, sullen. She did not know how to answer hermother’s shrill, meaningless questions, put with the furious affectation of material concern; shecould not pretend, when she kissed her mother, or submitted to her mother’s kiss, that she wasmoved by anything more than an unpleasant sense of duty. This, of course, bred in her mother akind of baffled fury, and she never tired of telling Elizabeth that she was an ‘unnatural’ child.
But it was very different with her father; she was—and so Elizabeth never failed to think ofhim—young, and handsome, and kind, and generous; and he loved his daughter. He told her thatshe was the apple of his eye, that she was wound around his heartstrings, that she was surely thefinest little lady in the land. When she was with her father she pranced and postured like a veryqueen: and she was not afraid of anything, save the moment when he would say that it wasbedtime, or that he had to be ‘getting along.’ He was always buying her things, things to wear andthings to play with, and taking her on Sundays from long walks through the country, or to thecircus, when the circus was in town, or to Punch and Judy shows. And he was dark, like Elizabeth,and gentle, and proud; he had never been angry with her, but she had seen him angry a few timeswith other people—her mother, for example, and later, of course, her aunt. Her mother was alwaysangry and Elizabeth paid no attention; and, later, her aunt was perpetually angry and Elizabethlearned to bear it: but if her father has ever been angry with her—in those days—she would havewanted to die.
Neither had he ever learned of her disgrace; when it happened, she could not think how totell him, how to bring such pain to him who had had such pain already. Later, when she wouldhave told him, he was long past caring, in the silent ground.
She thought of him now, while the singing and weeping went on around her—and shethought how he would have love his grandson, who was like him in so many ways. Perhaps shedreamed it, but she did not believe she dreamed when at moments she thought she heard in Johnechoes, curiously distant and distorted, of her father’s gentleness, and the trick of his laugh—howhe threw his head back and the years that marked his face fled away, and the soft eyes softened andthe mouth turned at the corners like a little boy’s mouth—and that deadly pride of her father’sbehind which he retired when confronted by the nastiness of other people. It was he who had toldher to weep, when she wept, alone; never to let the world see, never to ask for mercy; if one had todie, to go ahead and die, but never to let oneself be beaten. He had said this to her on one of thelast times she had seen him, when she was being carried miles away, to Maryland, to live with heraunt. She had reason, in the years that followed, to remember his saying this; and time, at last, todiscover in herself the depths of bitterness in her father from which these words had come.
For when her mother died, the world fell down; her aunt, her mother’s older sister, arrived,and stood appalled at Elizabeth’s vanity and uselessness; and decided, immediately, that her fatherwas not fit person to raise a child, especially, as she darkly said, an innocent little girl. And it wasthis decision on the part of her aunt, for which Elizabeth did not forgive her for many years, thatprecipitated the third disaster, the separation of herself from her father—from all that she loved onearth.
For her father ran what her aunt called a ‘house’—not the house where they lived, butanother house, to which, as Elizabeth gathered, wicked people often came. And he had also, toElizabeth’s rather horrified confusion, a ‘stable.’ Low, common niggers, the lowest of the low,came from all over (and sometimes brought their women and sometimes found them there) to eat,and drink cheap moonshine, and play music all night long—and to do worse things, her aunt’sdreadful silence then suggested, which were far better left unsaid. And she would, she swore, moveHeaven and earth before she would let her sister’s daughter grow up with such a man. Without,however, so much as looking at Heaven, and without troubling any more of the earth than that part of it which held the courthouse, she won the day. Like a clap of thunder, or like a magic spell, likelight one moment and darkness the next, Elizabeth’s life had changed. Her mother was dead, herfather banished, and she lived in the shadow of her aunt.
Or, more exactly, as she thought now, the shadow in which had lived was fear—fear mademore dense by hatred. Not for a moment had she judged her father; it would have made nodifference to her love for him had she been told, and even seen it proved, that he was first cousin tothe Devil. The proof would not have existed for her, and if it had she would not have regrettedbeing his daughter, or have asked for anything better than to suffer at his side in Hell. And whenshe had been taken from him her imagination had been wholly unable to lend reality to thewickedness of which he stood accused—she, certainly, did not accuse him. She screamed inanguish when he put her from him and turned to go, and she had to be carried to the train. Andlater, when she understood perfectly all that had happened then, still in her heart she could notaccuse him. Perhaps his life had been wicked, but he had been very good to her. His life hadcertainly cost him enough in pain to make the world’s judgment a thing of no account. They hadnot known him as she had known him; they did not care as she had cared! It only made her sad thathe never, as he had promised, came to take her away, and that while she was growing up she sawhim so seldom. When she became a young woman she did not see him at all; but that was her ownfault.
No, she did not accuse him; but she accused her aunt, and this from the moment sheunderstood that her aunt had loved her mother, but did not love him. This could only mean that heraunt could not love her, either, and nothing in her life with her aunt ever proved Elizabeth wrong.
It was true that her aunt was always talking of how much she loved her sister’s daughter, and whatgreat sacrifices she had made on her account, and what great care she took to see to it thatElizabeth should grow up a good, Christian girl. But Elizabeth was not for a moment fooled, anddid not, for as long as she lived with her, fail to despise her aunt. She sensed that what her auntspoke of as love was something else—a bribe, a threat, an indecent will to power. She knew thatthe kind of imprisonment that love might impose was also, mysteriously, a freedom for the souland spirit, was water in the dry place, and had nothing to do with the prisons, churches, laws,rewards, and punishments, that so positively cluttered the landscape of her aunt’s mind.
And yet, to-night, in her great confusion, she wondered if she had not been wrong; if therehad not been something that she had overlooked, for which the Lord had made her suffer. ‘Youlittle miss great-I-am,’ her aunt had said to her in those days, ‘you better watch your step, you hearme? You go walking around with your nose in the air, the Lord’s going to let you fall right ondown to the bottom of the ground. You mark my words. You’ll see.’
To this perpetual accusation Elizabeth had never replied; she merely regarded her aunt witha wide-eyed insolent stare, meant at once to register her disdain and to thwart any pretext forpunishment. And this trick, which she had, unconsciously, picked up from her father, rarely failedto work. As the years went on, her aunt seemed to gauge in a look the icy distances that Elizabethhad put between them, and that would certainly never be conquered now. And she would add,looking down, and under her breath: ‘ ’Cause God don’t like it.’
‘I sure don’t care what God don’t like, or you, either,’ Elizabeth heart replied. ‘I’m goingaway from here. He’s going to come and get me, and ‘I’m going away from here.’
‘He’ was her father, who never came. As the years passed, she replied only: ‘I’m goingaway from here.’ And it hung, this determination, like a heavy jewel between her breasts; it waswritten in fire on the dark sky of her mind.
But, yes—there was something she had overlooked. Pride goeth before destruction; and ahaughty spirit before a fall. She had not known this: she had not imagined that she could fall. Shewondered, to-night, how she could give this knowledge to her son; if she could help him to endurewhat could now no longer be changed; if for ever, she came into the store alone, wearing her bestwhite summer dress and with her hair, newly straightened and curled at the ends, tied with a scarletribbon. She was going to a great church picnic with her aunt, and had come in to buy some lemons.
She passed the owner of the store, who was a very fat man, sitting out on the pavement, fanninghimself; he asked her, as she passed, if it was hot enough for her, and she said something andwalked into the dark, heavy-smelling store, where flies buzzed, and where Richard sat on thecounter reading a book.
She felt immediately guilty about having disturbed him, and muttered apologetically thatshe only wanted to buy some lemons. She expected him to get them for her in his sullen fashionand go back to his book, but he smiled, and said:
‘Is that all you want? You better think now. You sure you ain’t forgot nothing?’
She had never seen him smile before, nor had she really, for that matter, ever heard hisvoice. Her heart gave a dreadful leap and then, as dreadfully, seemed to have stopped for ever. Shecould only stand there, staring at him. If he had asked her to repeat what she wanted she could notpossibly have remembered what it was. And she found that she was looking into his eyes andwhere she had thought there was no light at all she found a light she had never seen before—andhe was smiling still, but there was something curiously urgent in his smile. Then he said: ‘Howmany lemons, little girl?’
‘Six,’ she said at last, and discovered to her vast relief that nothing had happened: the sunwas still shinning, the fat man still sat at the door, her heart was beating as though it had neverstopped. She was not, however, fooled; she remembered the instant at which her heart had stopped,and she knew that it beat now with a difference.
He put the lemons into a bag, with a curious difference, she came closer to the counter togive him the money. She was in a terrible state, for she found that she could neither take her eyesoff him nor look at him.
‘Is that your mother you come in with all the time?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she said, ‘that’s my aunt.’ She did not know why she said it, but she said: ‘Mymother’s dead.’
‘Oh,’ he said. Then: ‘Mine, too.’ They both looked thoughtfully at the money on thecounter. He picked it up, but did not move. ‘I didn’t think it was your mother,’ he said, finally.
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. She don’t look like you.’
He started to light a cigarette, and then looked at her and put the packet in his pocket again.
‘Don’t mind me,’ she said quickly. ‘Anyway, I got to go. She’s waiting—we going out.’
He turned and banged the cash register. She picked up her lemons. He gave her her change.
She felt that she ought to say something else—it didn’t seem right, somewhat, just to walk out—but she could not think of anything. But he said:
‘Then that’s why you so dressed up to-day. Where you going to go?’
‘We going to a picnic—a church picnic,’ she said, and suddenly, unaccountably, and forthe first time, smiled.
And he smiled, too, and lit his cigarette, blowing the smoke carefully away from her. ‘Youlike picnics?’
‘Sometimes,’ she said. She was not comfortable with him yet, and still she was beginningto feel that she would like to stand and talk to him all day. She wanted to ask him what he wasreading, but she did not dare. Yet: ‘What’s your name?’ she abruptly brought out.
‘Richard,’ he said.
‘Oh,’ she said thoughtfully. Then: ‘Mine’s Elizabeth.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I heard her call you one time.’
‘Well,’ she said helplessly, after a long pause, ‘good-bye.’
‘Good-bye? You ain’t going away, is you?’
‘Oh, no,’ she said, in confusion.
‘Well,’ he said, and smiled and bowed, ‘good day.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘good day.’
And she turned and walked out into the streets; no the same streets from which she hadentered a moment ago. These streets, the sky above, the sun, the drifting people, all had, in amoment, changed, and would never be the same again.
‘You remember that day,’ he asked much later, ‘when you come into the store?’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, you was mighty pretty.’
‘I didn’t think you never looked at me.’
‘Well, I didn’t think you never looked at me.’
‘You was reading a book.’
‘Yes.’
‘What book was it, Richard?’
‘Oh, I don’t remember. Just a book.’
‘You smiled.’
‘You did, too.’
‘No, I didn’t. I remember.’
‘Yes, you did.’
‘No, I didn’t. Not till you did.’
‘Well, anyway—you was mighty pretty.’
She did not like to think of what hardness of heart, what calculated weeping, what deceit,what cruelty she now went into battle with her aunt fro her freedom. And she wont it, even thoughon certain not-to-be-dismissed conditions. The principal condition was that she should put herselfunder the protection of a distant, unspeakably respectable female relative of her aunt’s, who livedin New York City—for when the summer ended, Richard said that he was going there and hewanted her to come with him. They would get married there. Richard said that he hated the South,and this was perhaps the reason it did not occurred to either of them to begin their married lifethere. And Elizabeth was checked by the fear that if her aunt should discover how things stoodbetween her and Richard she would find, as she had found so many years before in the case of herfather, some means of bringing about their separation. This, as Elizabeth later considered it, wasthe first in the sordid series of mistakes which was to cause her to fall so low.
But to look back from the stony plane along the road which led one to that place is not atall the same thing as walking on the road; the perspective, to say the very least, changes only withthe journey; only when the road has, all abruptly and treacherously, and with an absoluteness thatpermits no argument, turned or dropped or risen is one able to see all that one could not have seenfrom any other place. In those days, had the Lord Himself descended from Heaven with trumpetstelling her to turn back, she could scarcely have heard Him, and could certainly not have heeded.
She lived, in those days, in a fiery storm, of which Richard was the center and the heart. And shefought only to reach him—only that; she was afraid of what might happen if they were kept fromone another; for what might come after she had no thoughts or fears to spare.
Her pretext for coming to New York was to take advantage of the greater opportunities theNorth offered colored people; to study in a Northern school, and to find a better job than any shewas likely to be offered in the South. Her aunt, who listened to this with no diminution of herhabitual scorn, was yet unable to deny that from generation to generation, things, as she grudginglyput it, were bound to change—and neither could she quite take the position of seeming to stand inElizabeth’s way. In the winter of 1920, as the year began, Elizabeth found herself in an ugly backroom in Harlem in the home of her aunt’s relative, a woman whose respectability was immediatelyevident from the incense she burned in her rooms and the spiritualist séances she held everySaturday night.
The house was still standing, not very far away; often she was forced to pass it. Withoutlooking up, she was able to see the windows of the apartment in which she had lived, and thewoman’s sign was in the window still: MADAME WILLIAMS, SPIRITUALIST.
She found a job as a chambermaid in the same hotel in which Richard worked as lift-boy.
Richard said that they would marry as soon as he had saved some money. But since he was goingto school at night and made very little money, their marriage, which she had thought of as takingplace almost as soon as she arrived, was planned for a future that grew ever more remote. And this presented her with a problem that she had refused, at home in Maryland, to think about, but fromwhich, now, she could not escape: the problem of their life together. Reality, so to speak, burst infor the first time on her great dreaming, and she found occasion to wonder, ruefully, what hadmade her imagine that, once with Richard, she would have been able to withstand him. She hadkept, precariously enough, what her aunt referred to as her pearl without price while she had beenwith Richard down home. This, which she had taken as witness to her own feminine moralstrength, had been due to nothing more, it now developed, than her great fear of her aunt, and thelack, in that small town, of opportunity. Here, in this great city where no one cared, where peoplemight live in the same building for years and never speak to one another, she found herself, whenRichard took her in his arms, on the edge of a steep place: and down she rushed, on the descentuncaring, into the dreadful sea.
So it began. Had it been waiting for her since the day she had been taken from her father’sarm? The world in which she now found herself was not unlike the world from which she had, solong ago, been rescued. Here were the women who had been the cause of her aunt’s mostpassionate condemnation of her father—hard-drinking, hard-taking, with whisky-and cigarette-breath, and moving with the mystic authority of women who knew what sweet violence might beacted out under the moon and stars, or beneath the tigerish lights of the city, in the raucous hay orthe singing bed. And was she, Elizabeth, so sweetly fallen, so tightly chained, one of these womennow? And here were the men who had come day and night to visit her father’s ‘stable’—with theirsweet talk and music, and their violence and their sex—black, brown, and beige, who looked onher with lewd, and lustful, and laughing eyes. And these were Richard’s friends. Not one of themever went to church—one might scarcely have imagined that they knew that churches existed—they all, hourly, daily, in their speech, in their lives, and in their hearts, cursed God. They allseemed to be saying, as Richard, when she once timidly mentioned the love of Jesus, said: ‘Youcan tell that puking bastard to kiss my big black arse.’
She, for very terror on hearing this, had wept; yet she could not deny that for such anabundance of bitterness there was a positive fountain of grief. There was not, after all, a greatdifference between the world of the North and that of the South which she had fled; there was onlythis difference: the North promised more. And this similarity: what it promised it did not give, andwhat it gave, at length and grudgingly with one hand, it took back with the other. Now sheunderstood in this nervous, hollow, ringing city, that nervousness of Richard’s which had soattracted her—a tension so total, and so without the hope, or the possibility of release, orresolution, that she felt it in his muscles, and heard it in his breathing, even as on her breast he fellasleep.
And this was perhaps why she had never thought to leave him, frightened though she wasduring all that time, and in a world in which, had it not been for Richard, she could have found noplace to put her feet. She did not leave him, because she was afraid of what it might happen to himwithout her. She did not resist him, because he needed her. And she did not press about marriagebecause, upset as he was about everything, she was afraid of having him upset about her, too. Shethought of herself as his strength; in a world of shadows, the indisputable reality to which he couldalways repair. And, again, for all that had come, she could not regret this. She had tried, but she had never been and was not now, even to-night, truly sorry. Where, then, was her repentance? Andhow could God hear her cry?
They had been very happy together, in the beginning; and until the very end he had beenvery good to her, had not ceased to love her, and tried always to make her know it. No more thanshe had been able to accuse her father had she ever been able to accuse him. His weakness sheunderstood, and his terror, and even his bloody end. What life had made him bear, her lover, thiswild, unhappy boy, many another stronger and more virtuous man might not have borne so well.
Saturday was their best day, for they only worked until o’clock. They had all the afternoonto be together, and nearly all of the night, since Madame William had her séances on Saturdaynight and preferred that Elizabeth, before whose silent skepticism departed spirits might findthemselves reluctant to speak, should not be in the house. They met at the service entrance.
Richard was always there before her, looking, oddly, much younger and less anonymous withoutthe ugly, tight-fitting, black uniform that he had to wear when working. He would be talking, orlaughing with some of the other boys, or shooting dice, and when he heard her step down the long,stone hall he would look up, laughing; and wickedly nudging one of the other boys, he would halfshout, half sing: ‘He-y! Look-a-there, ain’t she pretty?’
She never failed, at this—which was why he never failed to do it—to blush, half-smiling,half-frowning, and nervously to touch the collar of her dress.
‘Sweet Georgia Brown!’ somebody might say.
‘Miss Brown to you,’ said Richard, then, and took her arm.
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ somebody else would say, ‘you better hold on to little Miss Bright-eyes, don’t somebody sure going to take her away from you.’
‘Yeah,’ said another voice, ‘and it might be me.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Richard, moving with her toward the street, ‘ain’t nobody going to take mylittle Little-bit away from me.’
Little-bit: it had been his name for her. And sometimes he called her Sandwich Mouth, orFunnyface, or Frog-eyes. She would not, of course, have endured these names from anyone else,nor, had she not found herself, with joy and helplessness (and a sleeping panic), living it out,would she ever have suffered herself so publicly to become a man’s property—‘concubine,’ heraunt would have said, and at night, alone, she rolled the word, tart like lemon rind, on her tongue.
She was descending with Richard to the sea. She would have to climb back up alone, butshe did not know this then. Leaving the boys in the hall, they gained the midtown New Yorkstreets.
‘And what we going to do to-day, Little-bit?’ With that smile of his, and those depthlesseyes, beneath the towers of the white city, with people, white, hurrying all around them.
‘I don’t know, honey. What you want to do?’
‘Well, maybe, we go to a museum.’
The first time he suggested this, she demanded, in panic, if they would be allowed to enter.
‘Sure, they let niggers in,’ Richard said. ‘Ain’t we got to be educated, too—to live with themotherf——s?
He never ‘watched’ his language with her, which at first she took as evidence of hiscontempt because she had fallen so easily, and which later she took as evidence of his love.
And then he took her to the Museum of Natural History, or the Metropolitan Museum ofArt, where they were almost certain to be the only black people, and he guided her through thehalls, which never ceased in her imagination to be as cold as tombstones, it was then she sawanother life in him. It never ceased to frighten her, this passion he brought to something she couldnot understand.
For she never grasped—not at any rate with her mind—what, with such incandescence, hetried to tell her on these Saturday afternoons. She could not find, between herself and the Africanstatuette, or totem pole, on which he gazed with such melancholy wonder, any point of contact.
She was only glad that she did not look that way. She preferred to look, in the other museum, at thepaintings; but still she did not understand anything he said about them. She did not know why heso adored things that were so long dead; what sustenance they give him, what secrets he hoped towrest from them. But she understood, at least, that they did give him a kind of bitter nourishment,and that the secrets they held for him were a matter of his life and death. It frightened her becauseshe felt that he was reaching for the moon and that he would, therefore, be dashed down againstthe rocks; but she did not say any of this. She only listened, and in her heart she prayed for him.
But on other Saturdays they went to see a movie; they went to see a play; they visited hisfriends; they walked through Central Park. She liked the park because, however spuriously, it recreated something of the landscape she had known. How many afternoons had they walked there!
She had always, since, avoided it. They bought peanuts and for hours fed the animals at the zoo;they bought soda pop and drank it on the grass; they walked along the reservoir and Richardexplained how a city like a New York found water to drink. Mixed with her fear for him was atotal admiration: that he had learned so young, so much. People stared at them but she did notmind; he noticed, but he did not seem to notice. But sometimes he would ask, in the middle of asentence—concerned, possibly, with ancient Rome:
‘Little-bit—d’you love me?’
And she wondered how he could doubt it. She thought how infirm she must be not to havebeen able to make him know it; and she raised her eyes to his, and she said the only thing shecould say:
‘I wish to God I may die if I don’t love you. There ain’t no sky above us if I don’t loveyou.’
Then he would look ironically up at the sky, and take her arm with a firmer pressure, andthey would walk on.
Once, she asked him:
‘Richard, did you go to school much when you was little?’
And he looked at her a long moment. Then:
‘Baby, I done told you, my mama died when I was born. And my daddy, he weren’tnowhere to be found. Ain’t nobody never took care of me. I just moved from one place to another.
When one set of folks got tired of me they sent me down the line. I didn’t hardly go to school atall.’
‘Then how come you got to be so smart? how come you got to know so much?’
And he smiled, pleased, but he said: ‘Little-bit, I don’t know so much.’ Then he said, witha change in his face and voice which she had grown to know: ‘I just decided me one day that I wasgoing to get to know everything them white bastards knew, and I was going to get to know it betterthan them, so could no white son-of-a-bitch nowhere never talk me down, and never make me feellike I was dirt, when I could read him the alphabet, back, front, and sideways. He weren’t going tobeat my arse, then. And if he tried to kill me, I’d take him with me, I swear to my mother I would.’
Then he looked at her again, and smiled and kissed her, and he said: ‘That’s how I got to know somuch, baby.’
She asked: ‘And what you going to do, Richard? What you want to be?’
And his face clouded. ‘I don’t know. I got to find out. Looks like I can’t get my mindstraight nohow.’
She did not know why he couldn’t—or she could only dimly face it—but she knew hespoke the truth.
She had made her great mistake with Richard in not telling him that she was going to havea child. Perhaps, she thought now, if she had told him everything might have been very different,and he would be living yet. But the circumstances under which she had discovered herself to bepregnant had been such to make her decide, for his sake to hold her peace awhile. Frightened asshe was, she dared not add to the panic that overtook him on the last summer of his life.
And yet perhaps it was, after all, this—this failure to demand of his strength what it mightthen, most miraculously, have been found able to bear; by which—indeed, how could she know?—his strength might have been strengthened, for which she prayed to-night to be forgiven. Perhapsshe had lost her love because she had not, in the end, believed in it enough.
She lived quite a long way from Richard—four underground stops; and when it was timefor her to go home, he always took the underground uptown with her and walked her to her door.
On a Saturday when they had forgotten the time and stayed together later than usual, he left at herdoor at two o’clock in the morning. They said good night hurriedly, for she was afraid of troublewhen she got upstairs—though, in fact, Madame Williams seemed astonishingly indifferent to thehours Elizabeth kept—and he wanted to hurry back home and go to bed. Yet, as he hurried offdown the dark, murmuring street, she had a sudden impulse to call him back, to ask him to take herwith him and never let her go again. She hurried up the steps, smiling a little at this fancy: it wasbecause he looked so young and defenceless as he walked away, and yet so jaunty and strong.
He was to come the next evening at supper-time, to make at last, at Elizabeth’s urging, theacquaintance of Madame Williams. But he did not come. She drove Madame Williams wild withher sudden sensitivity to footsteps on the stairs. Having told Madame Williams that a gentlemanwas coming to visit her, she did not dare, of course, to leave the house and go out looking for him, thus giving Madame Williams the impression that she dragged men in off the streets. At teno’clock, having eaten no supper, a detail unnoticed by her hostess, she went to bed, her headaching and her heart sick with fear; fear over what had happened to Richard, who had never kepther waiting before; and fear involving all that was beginning to happen in her body.
And on Monday morning he was not at work. She left during the lunch hour to go to hisroom. He was not there. His landlady said that he had not been there all week-end. While Elizabethstood trembling and indecisive in the hall, two white policemen entered.
She knew the moment she saw them, and before they mentioned his name, that somethingterrible had happened to Richard. Her heart, as on that bright summer day when he had first spokento her, gave a terrible bound and then was still, with an awful, wounded stillness. She put out onehand to touch the wall in order to keep standing.
‘This here young lady was just looking for him,’ she heard the landlady say.
They all looked at her.
‘You this girl?’ one of the policemen asked.
She looked up at his sweating face, on which a lascivious smile had immediately appeared,and straightened, trying to control her trembling.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Where is he?’
‘He’s in jail, honey,’ the other policeman said.
‘What for?’
‘For robbing a white man’s store, black girl. That’s what for.’
She found, and thanked Heaven for it, that a cold, stony rage had entered her. She would,otherwise, certainly have fallen down, or began to weep. She looked at the smiling policeman.
‘Richard ain’t robbed no store,’ she said. ‘Tell me where he is.’
‘And I tell you,’ he said, not smiling, ‘that your boyfriend robbed a store and he’s in jail forit. He’s going to stay there, too—now, what you got to say to that?’
‘And he probably did it for you, too,’ the other policeman said. ‘You look like a girl a mancould rob a store for.’
She said nothing; she was thinking how to get to see him, how to get him out.
One of them, the smiler, turned now to the landlady and said: ‘Let’s have the key to hisroom. How long’s he been living here?’
‘About a year,’ the landlady said. She looked unhappily at Elizabeth. ‘He seemed like areal nice boy.’
‘Ah, yes,’ he said, mounting the steps, ‘they all seem like real nice boys when they paytheir rent.’
‘You going to take me to see him?’ she asked of the remaining policeman. She foundherself fascinated by the gun in the holster, the club at his side. She wanted to take that pistol and empty it into his round, red face; to take that club and strike with all her strength against the baseof his skull where his cap ended, until the ugly, silky, white man’s hair was matted with blood andbrains.
‘Sure, girl,’ he said, ‘you’re coming right along with us. The man at the station-housewants to ask you some questions.’
The smiling policeman came down again. ‘Ain’t nothing up there,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’
She moved between them, out into the sun. She knew that there was nothing to be gainedby talking to them any more. She was entirely in their power; she would have to think faster thanthey could think; she would have to contain the fear and her hatred, and find out what could bedone. Not for anything short of Richard’s life, and not, possibly, even for that, would she havewept before them, or asked of them a kindness.
A small crowd, children and curious passers-by, followed them as they walked the long,dusty, sunlight street. She hoped only that they would not pass anyone she knew; she kept her headhigh, looking straight ahead, and felt the skin settle over her bones as though she were wearing amask.
And at the station she somewhat got past their brutal laughter. (What was he doing withyou, girl, until two o’clock in the morning?—Next time you feel like that, girl, you come by hereand talk to me.) She felt that she was about to burst, or vomit, or die. Though the sweat stood outcruelly, like needless on her brow, and she felt herself, from every side, being covered with a stinkand filth, she found out, in their own good time, what she wanted to know. He was being held in aprison downtown called the Tombs (the name made her heart turn over), and she could see him tomorrow. The state, or the prison, or someone, had already assigned him a lawyer; he would bebrought to trial next week.
But the next day, when she saw him, she wept. He had been beaten, he whispered to her,and he could hardly walk. His body, she later discovered, bore almost no bruises, but was full ofstrange, painful swellings, and there was a welt above one eye.
He had not, of course, robbed the store, but, when he left her that Saturday night, had gonedown into the underground station to wait for his train. It was late, and the trains were slow; hewas all alone on the platform, only half awake, thinking, he said, of her.
Then, from the far end of the platform, he heard a sound of running; and, looking up, hesaw two colored boys come running down the steps. Their clothes were torn, and they werefrightened; they came up the platform and stood near him, breathing hard. He was about to askthem what the trouble was when, running across the tracks toward them, and followed by a whiteman, he saw another colored boy; and at the same instant another white man came running downthe underground steps.
Then he came full awake, in panic; he knew that whatever the trouble was, it was now histrouble also; for these white men would make no distinction between him and the three boys theywere after. They were all colored, they were about the same age, and here they stood together onthe underground platform. And they were all, with no questions asked, herded upstairs, and intothe wagon and to the station-house.
At the station Richard gave his name and address and age and occupation. Then for the firsttime he stated that he was not involved, and asked one of the other boys to corroborate histestimony. This they rather despairingly did. They might, Elizabeth felt, have done it sooner, butthey probably also felt that it would be useless to speak. And they were not believed; the owner ofthe store was being brought there to make the identification. And Richard tried to relax: the mancould not say that he had been there if he had never seen him before.
But when the owner came, a short man with a bloody shirt—for they had knifed him—inthe company of yet another policeman, he looked at the four boys before him and said: ‘Yeah,that’s them, all right.’
Then Richard shouted: ‘But I wasn’t there! Look at me, goddammit—I wasn’t there!’
‘You black bastard,’ the man said, looking at him, ‘you’re all the same.’
Then there was silence in the station, the eyes of the white men all watching. And Richardsaid, but quietly, knowing that he was lost: ‘But all the same, mister, I wasn’t there.’ And helooked at the white man’s bloody shirt and thought, he told Elizabeth, at the bottom of his heart: ‘Iwish to God they’d killed you.’
Then the questioning began. The three boys signed a confession at once, but Richard wouldnot sign. He said at last that he would die before he signed a confession to something he hadn’tdone. ‘Well then,’ said one of them, hitting him suddenly across the head, ‘maybe you will die,you black son-of-a-bitch.’ And the beating began. He would not, then, talk to her about it; shefound that, before the dread and the hatred that filled her mind, her imagination faltered and heldits peace.
‘What we going to do? she asked at last.
He smiled a vicious smile—she had never seen such a smile on his face before. ‘Maybeyou ought to pray to that Jesus of yours and get Him to come down and tell these white mensomething.’ He looked at her a long, dying moment. ‘Because I don’t know nothing else to do,’ hesaid.
She suggested: ‘Richard, what about another lawyer?’
And he smiled again. ‘I declare,’ he said, ‘Little-bit’s been holding out on me. She got afortune tied up in a sock, and she ain’t never told me nothing about it.’
She had been trying to save money for a whole year, but she had only thirty dollars. She satbefore him, going over in her mind all the things she might do to raise money, even to going on thestreets. Then, for very helplessness, she began to shake with sobbing. At this, his face becameRichard’s face again. He said in a shaking voice: ‘Now, look here, Little-bit, don’t you be like that.
We going to work this out all right.’ But she could not stop sobbing. ‘Elizabeth,’ he whispered,‘Elizabeth, Elizabeth.’ Then the man came and said that it was time for her to go. And she rose.
She had brought two packets of cigarettes for him, and they were still in her bag. Wholly ignorantof prison, she did not dare to give them to him under the man’s eyes. And, somehow, her failure toremember to give him the cigarettes, when she knew how much he smoked, made her wept theharder. She tried—and failed—to smile at him, and she was slowly led to the door. The sun nearlyblinded her, and she heard him whisper behind her: ‘So long, baby. Be good.’
In the streets she did not know what to do. She stood awhile before the dreadful gates, andthen she walked and walked until she came to a coffee shop where taxi drivers and the people whoworked in nearby offices hurried in and out all day. Usually she was afraid to go into downtownestablishments, where only white people were, but to-day she did not care. She felt that if anyonesaid anything to her she would turn and curse him like the lowest bitch on the street. If anyonetouched her, she would do her best to send his soul to Hell.
But no one touched her; no one spoke. She drank her coffee, sitting in the strong sun thatfell through the window. Now it came to her how alone, how frightened she was; she had neverbeen so frightened in her life before. She knew that she was pregnant—knew it, as the old folkssaid, in her bones; and if Richard should be sent away, what, under heaven, could she do? Twoyears, three years—she had no idea how long he might be sent away for—what would she do? Andhow could she keep her aunt from knowing? And if her aunt should find out, then her father wouldknow, too. The tears welled up, and she drank her cold, tasteless coffee. And what would they dowith Richard? And if they sent him away, what would he be like, then, when he returned? Shelooked out into the quiet, sunny streets, and for the first time in her life, she hated it all—the whitecity, the white world. She could not, that day, think of one decent white person in the whole world.
She sat there, and she hoped that one day God, with tortures inconceivable, would grind themutterly into humility, and make them know that black boys and black girls, whom they treated withsuch condescension, such disdain, and such good humor, had hearts like human beings, too, morehuman hearts than theirs.
But Richard was not sent away. Against the testimony of the three robbers, and her owntestimony, and, under oath, the storekeeper’s indecision, there was no evidence on which toconvict him. The courtroom seemed to feel, with some complacency and some disappointment,that it was his great good luck to be left off so easily. They went immediately to his room. Andthere—she was never all her life long to forget it—he threw himself, face downward, on his bedand wept.
She had only seen one other man weep before—her father—and it had not been like this.
She touched him, but he did not stop. Her own tears fell on his dirty, uncombed hair. She tried tohold him, but for a long while he would not be held. His body was like iron; she could find nosoftness in it. She sat curled like a frightened child on the edge of the bed, her hand on his back,waiting for the storm to pass over. It was then that she decided not to tell him yet about the child.
By and by he called her name. And then he turned, and she held him against her breast,while he sighed and shook. He fell asleep at last, clinging to her as though he were going downinto the water for the last time.
And it was the last time. That night he cut his wrists with his razor and he was found in themorning by his landlady, his eyes staring upward with no light, dead among the scarlet sheets.
And now they were singing:
‘Somebody needs you, Lord,Come by here.’
At her back, above her, she heard Gabriel’s voice. He had risen and was helping the othersto pray through. She wondered if John were still on his knees, or had risen, with a child’simpatience, and was staring around the church. There was a stiffness in him that would be hard tobreak, but that, nevertheless, would one day surely be broken. As hers had been, and Richard’s—there was no escape for anyone. God was everywhere, terrible, the living God; and so high, thesong said, you couldn’t get over Him; so low you couldn’t get under Him; so wide you couldn’tget around Him; but must come in at the door.
And she, she knew to-day that door: a living, wrathful gate. She knew through what firesthe soul must crawl, and with what weeping one passed over. Men spoke of how the heart brokeup, but never spoke of how the soul hung speechless in the pause, the void, the terror between theliving and the dead; how, all garments rent and cast aside, the naked soul passed over the verymouth of Hell. Once there, there was no turning back; once there, the soul remembered, though theheart sometimes forgot. For the world called to the heart, which stammered to reply; life, and love,and revelry, and, most falsely, hope, called the forgetful, the human heart. Only the soul, obsessedwith the journey it had made, and had still to make, pursued its mysterious and dreadful end; andcarried, heavy with weeping and bitterness, the heart along.
And, therefore, there was war in Heaven, and weeping before the throne: the heart chainedto the soul, and the soul imprisoned within the flesh—a weeping, a confusion, and a weightunendurable filled all the earth. Only the love of God could establish order in this chaos; to Himthe soul must turn to be delivered.
But what a turning! How could she fail to pray that He would have mercy on her son, andspare him the sin-born anguish of his father and his mother. And that his heart might know a littlejoy before the long bitterness descended.
Yet she knew that her weeping and her prayers were in vain. What was coming wouldsurely come; nothing could stop it. She had tried, once, to protect someone and had only hurledhim into prison. And she thought to-night, as she had thought so often, that it might have beenbetter, after all, to have done what she had first determined in her heart to do—to have given herson away to strangers, who might have loved him more than Gabriel had ever loved him. She hadbelieved him when he said that God had sent him to her for a sign. He had said that he wouldcherish her until the grave, and that he would love her nameless son as though he were his ownflesh. And he had kept the letter of his promise: he had fed him and clothed him and taught him theBible—but the spirit was not there. And he cherished—if he cherished her—only because she wasthe mother of his son, Roy. All of this she had through the painful years divined. He certainly didnot know she knew it, and she wondered if he knew it himself.
She had met him through Florence. Florence and she had met at work in the middle of thesummer, a year after Richard’s death. John was then over six months old.
She was very lonely that summer, and beaten down. She was living alone with John in afurnished room even grimmer than the room that had been hers in Madame Williams’s apartment.
She had, of course, left Madame Williams’s immediately upon the death of Richard, saying thatshe had found a sleep-in job in the country. She had been terribly grateful that summer for Madame Williams’s indifference; the woman had simply not seemed to see that Elizabeth,overnight, had become an old woman and was half mad with fear and grief. She wrote her aunt thedriest, and briefest, and coldest of notes, not wishing in any way to awaken whatever concernmight yet slumber in her breast, telling her the same thing she had told Madame Williams, andtelling hr not to worry, she was in the hands of God. And she certainly was; through a bitternessthat only the hand of God could have laid on her, this same hand brought her through.
Florence and Elizabeth worked as cleaning-women in a high, vast, stony office-building onWall Street. They arrived in the evening and spent the night going through the great deserted hallsand the silent offices with mops and pails and brooms. It was terrible work, and Elizabeth hated it;but it was at night, and she had taken it joyfully, since it meant that she could take care of Johnherself all day and not have to spend extra money to keep in a nursery. She worried about him allnight long, of course, but at least at night he was sleeping. She could only pray that the housewould not burn down, that he would not fall out of bed or, in some mysterious way, turn on thegas-burner, and she had asked the woman next door, who unhappily drank too much, to keep aneye out for him. This woman, with whom she sometimes spent an hour or so in the afternoons, andher landlady, were the only people she saw. She had stopped seeing Richard’s friends because, forsome reason, she did not want them to know about Richard’s child; and because, too, the momenthe was dead it became immediately apparent on both sides how little they had in common. Andshe did not seek new people; rather, she fled from them. She could not bear, in her changed andfallen state, to submit herself to the eyes of others. The Elizabeth that she had been was buried faraway—with her lost and silent father, with her aunt, in Richard’s grave—and the Elizabeth she hadbecome she did not recognize, she did not want to know.
But one night, when work was ended, Florence invited her to share a cup of coffee in theall-night coffee shop nearby. Elizabeth had, of course, been invited before by other people—thenight watchman, for example—but she had always said no. She pleaded the excuse of her baby,whom she must rush home to feed. She was pretending in those days to be a young widow, and shewore a wedding ring. Very shortly, fewer people asked her, and she achieved the reputation ofbeing ‘stuck up.’
Florence had scarcely ever spoken to her before she arrived at this merciful unpopularity;but Elizabeth had noticed Florence. She moved in a silent ferocity of dignity which barely escapedbeing ludicrous. She was extremely unpopular also and she had nothing whatever to do with any ofthe women she worked with. She was, for one thing, a good deal older, and she seemed to havenothing to laugh or gossip about. She came to work, and she did her work, and she left. One couldnot imagine what she was thinking as she marched so grimly down the halls, he head tied up in arag, a bucket and a mop in her hands. Elizabeth thought that she must once have been very rich,and had lost her money; and she felt for her, as one fallen woman for another, a certain kinship.
A cup of coffee together, as day was breaking, became in time their habit. They sat togetherin the coffee shop, which was always empty when they arrived and was crowded fifteen minuteslater when they left, and had their coffee and doughnuts before they took the underground uptown.
While they had their coffee, and on the ride uptown, they talked, principally about Florence, howbadly people treated her, and how empty her life was now that her husband was dead. He hadadored her, she told Elizabeth, and satisfied her every whim, but he had tended to irresponsibility.
If she had told him once, she had told him a hundred times: ‘Frank, you better take out lifeinsurance.’ But he had thought—and wasn’t it just like a man!—that he would live for ever. Nowhere she was, a woman getting along in years, forced to make her living among all the black scumof this wicked city. Elizabeth, a little astonished at the need for confession betrayed by this proudwoman, listened, nevertheless, with great sympathy. She was very grateful for Florence’s interest.
Florence was so much older and seemed so kind.
It doubt this, Florence’s age and kindness, that led Elizabeth, with no premeditation, (was) to ta(no) ke Florence into her confidence. Looking back, she found it hard to believe thatshe could have been so desperate, or so childish; though, again, on looking back, she was able tosee clearly what she then so incoherently felt: how much she needed another human being,somewhere, who knew the truth about her.
Florence had often said how glad she would be to make the acquaintance of little Johnny;she was sure, she said, that any child of Elizabeth’s must be a wonderful child. On a Sunday nearthe end of that summer, Elizabeth dressed him in his best clothes and took him to Florence’shouse. She was oddly and fearfully depressed that day; and John was not in a good mood. Shefound herself staring at him darkly, as though she were trying to read his future in his face. Hewould grow big one day, he would talk, and he would ask her questions. What questions would heask her, what answers would she give? She surely would not be able to lie to him indefinitelyabout his father, for one day he would be old enough to realize that it was not his father’s name hebore. Richard had been a fatherless child, she helplessly, bitterly remembered as she carried Johnthrough the busy, summer, Sunday streets. When one set of folks got tired of me they sent me downthe line. Yes, down the line, through poverty, hunger, wandering, cruelty, fear, and trembling, todeath. And she thought of the boys who had gone to prison. Were they there still? Would John beone of these boys one day? These boys, now, who stood before drug-store windows, before poolrooms, on every street corner, who whistled after her, whose lean bodies fairly rang, it seemed,with idleness, and malice, and frustration. How could she hope, alone, and in famine as she was, toput herself between him and this so wide and raging destruction? And then, as though to confirmher in all her dark imaginings, he began, as she reached the underground steps, to whimper, andmoan, and cry.
And he kept this up, too, all the way uptown—so that, what with the impossibility ofpleasing him that day, no matter what she did, what with restless weight, and the heat, and thesmiling, staring people, and the strange dread that weighed on her so heavily, she was nearly readyto weep by the time she arrived at Florence’s door.
He, at that moment, to her exasperated relief, became the most cheerful of infants. Florencewas wearing a heavy, old-fashioned garnet brooch, which, as she opened the door, immediatelyattracted John’s eye. He began reaching for the brooch and babbling and spitting at Florence asthough he had known her all of his short life.
‘Well!’ said Florence, ‘when he get big enough to really go after the ladies you going tohave your hands full, girl.’
‘That,’ said Elizabeth, grimly, ‘is the Lord’s truth. He keeps me so busy now I don’t knowhalf the time if I’m coming or going.’
Florence, meanwhile, attempted to distract John’s attention from the brooch by offeringhim an orange; but he had seen oranges before; he merely looked at it a moment before letting itfall to the floor. He began again, in his disturbingly fluid fashion, to quarrel about the brooch.
‘He like you,’ said Elizabeth, finally, calmed a little by watching him.
‘You must be tired,’ said Florence, then: ‘Put him down there.’ And she dragged one largeeasy chair to the table so that John could watch them while they ate.
‘I got a letter from my brother the other day,’ she said, bringing the food to the table. ‘Hiswife, poor ailing soul. done passed on, and he thinking about coming North.’
‘You ain’t never told me,’ said Elizabeth, with a quick and rather false interest, ‘you had abrother! And he coming up here?’
‘So he say. Ain’t nothing, I reckon, to keep him down home no more—now Deborah’sgone.’ She sat down opposite Elizabeth. ‘I ain’t seen him,’ she said, musingly, ‘for more thantwenty years.’
‘Then it’ll be a great day,’ Elizabeth smiled, ‘when you two meet again.’
Florence shook her head, and motioned for Elizabeth to start eating. ‘No,’ she said, ‘weain’t never got along, and I don’t reckon he’s changed.’
‘Twenty years is a mighty long time,’ Elizabeth said, ‘he’s bound to have changed some.’
‘That man,’ said Florence, ‘would have to do a whole lot of changing before him and mehit it off. No,’—she paused, grimly, sadly—‘I’m mighty sorry he’s coming. I didn’t look to seehim no more in this world—or in the next one, neither.’
This was not, Elizabeth felt, the way a sister ought to talk about her brother, especially tosomeone who knew him not at all, and who would, probably, eventually meet him. She asked,helplessly:
‘What do he do—your brother?’
‘He some kind of preacher,’ said Florence. ‘I ain’t never heard him. When I was home heweren’t doing nothing but chasing after women and lying in the ditches, drunk.’
‘I hope,’ laughed Elizabeth, ‘he done changed his ways at least.’
‘Folks,’ said Florence, ‘can change their ways much as they want to. But I don’t care howmany times you change your ways, what’s in you is in you, and it’s got to come out.’
‘Yes,’ said Elizabeth, thoughtfully. ‘But don’t you think,’ she hesitantly asked, ‘that theLord can change a person’s heart?’
‘I done heard it said often enough,’ said Florence, ‘but I got yet to see it. These niggersrunning around, talking about the Lord done changed their hearts—ain’t nothing happened to themniggers. They got the same old black hearts they was born with. I reckon the Lord done give themthose hearts—and, honey, the Lord don’t give out no second helpings, I’m here to tell you.’
‘No,’ said Elizabeth heavily, after a long pause. She turned to look at John, who was grimlydestroying the square, tasseled doilies that decorated Florence’s easy chair. ‘I reckon that’s thetruth. Look like it go around once, and that’s that. You miss it, and you’s fixed for fair.’
‘Now you sound,’ said Florence, ‘mighty sad all of a sudden. What’s the matter with you?’
‘Nothing,’ she said. She turned back to the table. Then, helplessly, and thinking that shemust not say too much: ‘I was just thinking about this boy here, what’s going to happen to him,how I’m going to raise him, in this awful city all by myself.’
‘But you ain’t fixing, is you,’ asked Florence, ‘to stay single all your days? You’s a rightyoung girl, and a right pretty girl. I wouldn’t be in no hurry if I was you to find no new husband. Idon’t believe the nigger’s been born what knows how to treat a woman right. You got time, honey,so take your time.’
‘I ain’t,’ said Elizabeth, quietly, ‘got so much time.’ She could not stop herself; thoughsomething warned her to hold her peace, the words poured out. ‘You see this wedding ring? Well,I bought this ring myself. This boy ain’t got no daddy.’
Now she had said it: the words could not be called back. And she felt, as sheb sat,trembling, at Florence’s table, a reckless, pained relief.
Florence stared at her with a pity so intense that it resembled anger. She looked at John,and then back at Elizabeth.
‘You poor thing,’ said Florence, leaning back in her chair, her face still filled with thisstrange, brooding fury, ‘you is had a time, ain’t you?’
‘I was scared,’ Elizabeth brought out, shivering, still compelled to speak.
‘I ain’t never,’ said Florence, seen it to fail. Look like ain’t no woman born what don’t getwalked over by some no-count man. Look like ain’t no woman nowhere but ain’t been draggeddown in the dirt by some man, and left there, too, while he go on about his business.’
Elizabeth sat at the table, numb, with nothing more to say.
‘What he do,’ asked Florence, finally, ‘run off and leave you?’
‘Oh, no,’ cried Elizabeth, quickly, and the tears sprang to her eyes, ‘he weren’t like that!
He died, just like I say—he got in trouble, and he died—a long time before this boy was born.’ Shebegan to weep with the same helplessness with which she had been speaking. Florence rose andcame over to Elizabeth, holding Elizabeth’s head against her breast. ‘He wouldn’t never of leftme,’ said Elizabeth, ‘but he died.’
And now she wept, after her long austerity, as though she would never be able to stop.
‘Hush now,’ said Florence, gently, ‘hush now. You going to frighten the little fellow. Hedon’t want to see his mamma cry. All right,’ she whispered to John, who had ceased his attempts atdestruction, and stared now at the two women, ‘all right. Everything’s all right.’
Elizabeth sat up and reached in her handbag for a handkerchief, and began to dry her eyes.
‘Yes,’ said Florence, moving to the window, ‘the menfolk, they die, all right. And it’s uswomen who walk around, like the Bible says, and mourn. The menfolk, they die, and it’s over forthem, but we women, we have to keep on living and try to forget what they done to us. Yes, Lord——’ and she paused; she turned and came back to Elizabeth. ‘Yes, Lord,’ she repeated, ‘don’t Iknow.’
‘I’m mighty sorry,’ said Elizabeth, ‘to upset your nice dinner this way.’
‘Girl,’ said Florence, ‘don’t you say a word about being sorry, or I’ll show you to this door.
You pick up that boy and sit down there in that easy chair and pull yourself together. I’m going outin the kitchen and make us something cold to drink. You try not to fret, honey. The Lord, He ain’tgoing to let you fall but so low.’
Then she met Gabriel, two or three weeks later, at Florence’s house on a Sunday.
Nothing Florence had said had prepared her for him. She had expected him to be older thanFlorence, and bald, or gray. But he seemed considerably younger than his sister, with all his teethand hair. There he sat, that Sunday, in Florence’s tiny, fragile parlor, a very rock, it seemed to theeye of her confusion, in her so weary land.
She remembered that as she mounted the stairs with John’s heavy weight in her arms, andas she entered the door, she heard music, which became perceptible fainter as Florence closed thedoor behind her. John had heard it, too, and had responded by wriggling, and moving his hands inthe air, and making noises, meant, she supposed, to be taken for a song. ‘You’s a nigger, all right,’
she thought with amusement and impatience—for it was someone’s gramophone, on a lower floor,filling the air with the slow, high, measured wailing of the blues.
Gabriel rose, it seemed to her, with a speed and eagerness that were not merely polite. Shewondered immediately if Florence had told him about her. And this caused her to stiffen with atentative anger against Florence, and with pride and fear. Yet when she looked into his eyes shefound there a strange humility, an altogether unexpected kindness. She felt the anger go out of her,and her defensive pride; but somewhere, crouching, the fear remained.
Then Florence introduced them, saying: ‘Elizabeth, this here’s my brother I been tellingyou so much about. He’s a preacher, honey—so we got to be mighty careful what we talk aboutwhen he’s around.’
Then she said, with a smile less barbed and ambiguous than his sister’s remark: ‘Ain’t noneed to be afraid of me, sister. I ain’t nothing but a poor, weak vessel in the hands of the Lord.’
‘You see!’ said Florence, grimly. She took John from his mother’s arms. ‘And this here’slittle Johnny,’ she said, ‘shake hands with the preacher, Johnny.’
But John was staring at the door that held back the music; towards which, withinsistence at once furious and feeble, his hands were still outstretched. He looked questioningly,(an) reproachfully, at his mother, who laughed, watching him, and said, ‘Johnny want to hear somemore of that music. He like to started dancing when we was coming up the stairs.’
Gabriel laughed, and said, circling around Florence to look into John’s face: ‘Got a man inthe Bible, son, who like music, too. He used to play on his harp before the king, and he got todancing once day before the Lord. You reckon you going to dance for the Lord one of these days?’
John looked with a child’s impenetrable gravity into the preacher’s face, as though he wereturning this question over in his mind and would answer when he had thought it out. Gabrielsmiled at him, a strange smile—strangely, she thought, loving—and touched him on the crown ofthe head.
‘He a mighty fine boy,’ said Gabriel. ‘With them big eyes he ought to see everything in theBible.’
And they all laughed. Florence moved to deposit John in the easy chair that was his Sundaythrone. And Elizabeth found that she was watching Gabriel, unable to find in the man before herthe brother whom Florence so despised.
They sat down at the table, John placed between herself and Florence and opposite Gabriel.
‘So,’ Elizabeth said, with a nervous pleasantness, it being necessary, she felt, to saysomething, ‘you just getting to this big city? It must seem mighty strange to you.’
His eyes were still on John, whose eyes had not left him. Then he looked again atElizabeth. She felt that the air between them was beginning to be charged, and she could find noname, or reason, for the secret excitement that moved in her.
‘It’s mighty big,’ he said, ‘and looks to me—and sounds to me—like the Devil’s workingevery day.’
This was in reference to the music, which had not ceased, but she felt, immediately, that itincluded her; this, and something else in Gabriel’s eyes, made her look down quickly to her plate.
‘He ain’t,’ said Florence, briskly, ‘working no harder up here than he worked down home.
Them niggers down home,’ she said to Elizabeth, ‘they think New York ain’t nothing but one long,Sunday drunk. They don’t know. Somebody better tell them—they can get better moonshine rightthere where they is than they likely to here—and cheaper, too.’
‘But I do hope,’ he said, with a smile, ‘that you ain’t taken to drinking moonshine, sister.’
‘It wasn’t never me,’ she said, promptly, ‘had that habit.’
‘Don’t know,’ he persisted, still smiling, and still looking at Elizabeth, ‘tell me folks dothings up North they wouldn’t think about doing down home.’
‘Folks got their dirt to do,’ said Florence. ‘They going to do it, no matter where they is.
Folks do lot of things down home they don’t want nobody to know about.’
‘Like my aunt used to say,’ Elizabeth said, smiling timidly, ‘she used to say, folks surebetter not do in the dark what they’s scared to look at in the light.’
She had meant it as a kind of joke; but the words were not out of her mouth before shelonged for the power to call them back. They rang in her own ears like a confession.
‘That’s the Lord’s truth,’ he said, after the briefest pause. ‘Does you really believe that?’
She forced herself to look up at him, and felt at that moment the intensity of the attentionthat Florence fixed on her, as though she were trying to shout a warning. She knew that it wassomething in Gabriel’s voice that had caused Florence, suddenly, to be so wary and so tense. Butshe did not drop her eyes from Gabriel’s eyes. She answered him: ‘Yes. That’s the way I want tolive.’
‘Then the Lord’s going to bless you,’ he said, ‘and open up the windows of Heaven for you—for you and that boy. He going to pour down blessings on you till you won’t know where to putthem. You mark my words.
‘Yes,’ said Florence, mildly, ‘you mark his words.’
But neither of them looked at her. It came into Elizabeth’s mind, filling her mind: Allthings work together for good to them that love the Lord. She tried to obliterate this burningphrase, and what it made her feel. What it made her feel, for the first time since the death ofRichard, was hope; his voice had made her feel that she was not altogether cast down, that Godmight raise her again in honor; his eyes had made her know that she could be—again, this time inhonor—a woman. Then, from what seemed to be a great, cloudy distance, he smiled at her—andshe smiled.
The distant gramophone stuck now, suddenly, on a grinding, wailing, sardonic trumpet-note; this blind, ugly crying swelled the moment and filled the room. She looked down at John. Ahand somewhere struck the gramophone arm and sent the silver needle on its way through thewhirling, black grooves, like something bobbing, anchorless, in the middle of the sea.
‘Johnny’s done fell asleep,’ she said.
She, who had descended with such joy and pain, had begun her upward climb—upward,with her baby, on the steep, steep side of the mountain.
She felt a great commotion in the air around her—a great excitement, muted, waiting on the Lord.
And the air seemed to tremble, as before a storm. A light seemed to hang—just above, and allaround them—about to burst into revelation. In the great crying, the great singing all around her, inthe wind that gathered to fill the church, she did not hear her husband; and she thought of John assitting, silent now and sleepy, far in the back of the church—watching, with that wonder and thatterror in his eyes. She did not raise her head. She wished to tarry yet a little longer, that God mightspeak to her.
It had been before this very altar that she had come to kneel, so many years ago, to beforgiven. When the autumn came, and the air was dry and sharp, and the wind high, she wasalways with Gabriel. Florence did not approve of this, and Florence said so often; but she neversaid more than this, for the reason, Elizabeth decided, that she had no evil to report—it was onlythat she was not fond of her brother. But even had Florence been able to find a languageunmistakable in which to convey her prophecies, Elizabeth could no have heeded her becauseGabriel had become her strength. He watched over her and her baby as though it had become hiscalling; he was very good to John, and played with him, and bought him things, as though Johnwere his own. She knew that his wife had died childless, and that he had always wanted a son—he was praying still, he told her, that God would bless him with a son. She thought sometimes, lyingon her bed alone, and thinking of all his kindness, that perhaps John was that son, and that hewould grow one day to comfort and bless them both. Then she thought how, now, she wouldembrace again the faith she had abandoned, and walk again in the light from which, with Richard,she had so far fled. Sometimes, thinking of Gabriel, she remembered Richard—his voice, hisbreath, his arms—with a terrible pain; and then she felt herself shrinking from Gabriel’santicipated touch. But this shrinking she would not countenance. She told herself that it wasfoolish and sinful to look backward when her safety lay before her, like a hiding-place hewn in theside of the mountain.
‘Sister,’ he asked one night, ‘don’t you reckon you ought to give your heart to the Lord?’
They were in the dark streets, walking to church. He had asked her this question before, butnever in such a tone; she had never before felt so compelling a need to reply.
‘I reckon,’ she said.
‘If you call on the Lord,’ he said, ‘He’ll lift you up, He’ll give you your heart’s desire. I’ma witness,’ he said, and smiled at her, ‘you call on the Lord, you wait on the Lord, He’ll answer.
God’s promises don’t never fail.’
Her arm was in his, and she felt him trembling with his passion.
‘Till you come,’ she said, in a low, trembling voice, ‘I didn’t never hardly go to church atall, Reverend. Look like I couldn’t see my way nohow—I was all bowed down with shame … andsin.’
She could hardly bring the last words out, and as she spoke tears were in her eyes. She hadtold him that John was nameless; and she had tried to tell him something of her suffering, too. Inthose days he had seemed to understand, and he had not stood in judgment on her. When had he sogreatly changed? Or was it that he had not changed, but that her eyes had been opened through thepain he had caused her?
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I done come, and it was the hand of the Lord what sent me. He brought ustogether for a sign. You fall on your knees and see if that ain’t so—you fall down and ask Him tospeak to you to-night.’
Yes, a sign, she thought, a sign of His mercy, a sign of Hs forgiveness.
When they reached the church doors he paused, and looked at her and made his promise.
‘Sister Elizabeth,’ he said, ‘when you go down on your knees to-night, I want you to askthe Lord to speak to your heart, and tell you how to answer what I’m going to say.’
She stood a little below him, one foot lifted to the short, stone step that led to the churchentrance, and looked up into his face. And looking into his face, which burned—in the dim, yellowlight that hung about them there—like the face of a man who has wrestled with angels and demonsand looked on the face of God, it came to her, oddly, and all at once, that she had become awoman.
‘Sister Elizabeth,’ he said, ‘the Lord’s been speaking to my heart, and I believe it’s His willthat you and me should be man and wife.’
And he paused; she said nothing. His eyes moved over her body.
‘I know,’ he said, trying to smile, and in a lower voice, ‘I’m a lot older than you. But thatdon’t make no difference. I’m a mighty strong man yet. I done been down the line, SisterElizabeth, and maybe I can keep you from making … some of my mistakes, bless the Lord …maybe I can help keep your foot from stumbling … again … girl … for as long as we’s in thisworld.’
Still she waited.
‘And I’ll love you,’ he said, ‘and I’ll honor you … until the day God calls me home.’
Slow tears rose to her eyes; of joy, for what she had come to; of anguish, for the road thathad brought her here.
‘And I’ll love your son, your little boy,’ he said at last, ‘just like he was my own. He won’tnever have to fret or worry about nothing; he won’t never be cold or hungry as long as I’m aliveand I got my two hands to work with. I swear this before my God,’ he said, ‘because He done giveme back something I thought was lost.’
Yes, she thought, a sign—a sign that He is mighty to save. Then she moved and stood onthe short step, next to him, before the doors.
‘Sister Elizabeth,’ he said—and she would carry to the grave the memory of his grace andhumility at that moment, ‘will you pray?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I been praying. I’m going to pray.’
They had entered this church;, these doors; and when the pastor made the altar call, sherose, while she heard them praising God, and walked down the long church aisle; down this aisle,to this altar, before this golden cross; to these tears, into this battle—would the battle end one day?
When she rose, and as they walked once more through the streets, he had called her God’sdaughter, handmaiden to God’s minister. He had kissed her on the brow, with tears, and said thatGod had brought them together to be each other’s deliverance. And she had wept, in her great joythat the hand of God had changed her life, had lifted her up and set her on the solid rock, alone.
She thought of that far-off day when John had come into the world—that moment, thebeginning of her life and death. Down she had gone that day, alone, a heaviness intolerable at herwaist, a secret in her loins, down into the darkness, weeping and groaning and cursing God. Howlong she had bled, and sweated, and cried, no language on earth could tell—how long she hadcrawled through darkness she would never, never know. There, her beginning, and she foughtthrough darkness still; toward that moment when she would make her peace with God, when shewould hear Him speak, and He would wipe all tears from her eyes; as, in that other darkness, aftereternity, she had heard John cry.
As now, in the sudden silence, she heard him cry: not the cry of the child, newborn, beforethe common light of earth; but the cry of the man-child, bestial, before the light that comes downfrom Heaven. She opened her eyes and stood straight up; all of the saints surrounded her; Gabrielstood staring, struck rigid as a pillar in the temple. On the threshing-floor, in the center of thecrying, singing saints, John lay astonished beneath the power of the Lord.
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Then said I, Woe is me! for I amundone; because I am a man of uncleanlips, and dwell in the midst of apeople of unclean lips; for mine eyeshave seen the king, the Lord of hosts.
Then I buckled up my shoes,And I startedHe knew, without knowing how it had happened, that he lay on the floor, in the dusty space beforethe altar which he and Elisha had cleaned; and knew that above him burned the yellow light whichhe had himself switched on. Dust was in his nostrils, sharp and terrible, and the feet of saints,shaking the floor beneath him, raised small clouds of dust that filmed his mouth. He heard theircries, so far, so high above him–he could never rise that far. He was like a rock, a dead man’sbody, a dying bird, fallen from an awful height; something that had no power of itself, any more,to turn.
And something moved in John’s body which was not John. He was invaded, set at naught,possessed. This power had struck John, in the head or in the heart; and, in a moment, wholly,filling him with an anguish that he could never in his life have imagined, that he surely could notendure, that even now he could not believe, had opened him up; had cracked him open, as woodbeneath the axe cracks down the middle, as rocks break up; had ripped him and felled him in amoment, so that John had not felt the wound, but only the agony, had not felt the fall, but only thefear; and lay here, now, helpless, screaming, at the very bottom of darkness.
He wanted to rise—a malicious, ironic voice insisted that he rise—and, at once, to leave histemple and go out into the world.
He wanted to obey the voice, which was the only voice that spoke to him; he tried to assurethe voice that he would do his best to rise; he would only lie here a moment, after his dreadful fall,and catch his breath. It was at this moment, precisely, that he found he could not rise; something had happened to his arms, his legs, his feet—ah, something had happened to John! and he began toscream again in his great, bewildered terror, and felt himself, indeed, begin to move—not upward,toward the light, but down again, a sickness in his bowels, a tightening in his loin-strings; he felthimself turning, again and again, across the dusty floor, as though God’s toe had touched himlightly. And the dust made him cough and retch; in his turning the centre of the whole earthshifted, making of space a sheer void and a mockery of order, and balance, and time. Nothingremained: all was swallowed up in chaos. And: Is this it? John’s terrified soul inquired—What isit?—to no purpose, receiving no answer. Only the ironic voice insisted yet once more that he risefrom the filthy floor if he did not want to become like all the other niggers.
Then he anguish subsided for a moment, as water withdraws briefly to dash itself oncemore against the rocks: he knew that it subsided only to return. And he coughed and sobbed in thedusty space before the altar, lying on his face. And still he was going down, farther and fartherfrom the joy, the singing, and the light above him.
He tried, but in such despair!—the utter darkness does not present any point of departure,contains no beginning, and no end—to rediscover, and, as it were, to trap and hold tightly in thepalm of his hand, the moment preceding his fall, his change. But that moment was also locked indarkness, was wordless, and should not come forth. He remembered only the cross: he had turnedagain to kneel at the altar, and had faced the golden cross. And the Holy Ghost was speaking—seeming to say, as John spelled out the so abruptly present and gigantic legend adorning the cross:
Jesus Saves. He had stared to this, an awful bitterness in his heart, wanting to curse—and the Spiritspoke, and spoke in him. Yes: there was Elisha, speaking from the floor, and his father, silent, athis back. In his heart there was a sudden yearning tenderness for holy Elisha; desire, sharp andawful as a reflecting knife, to usurp the body of Elisha, and lie where Elisha lay; to speak intongues, as Elisha spoke, and, with that authority, to confound his father. Yet this had not been themoment; it was as far back as he could go, but the secret, the turning, the abysmal drop was fartherback, in darkness. As he cursed his father, as he loved Elisha, he had, even then, been weeping; hehad already passed his moment, was already under the power, had been struck, and was goingdownAh, down!—and to what purpose, where? To the bottom of the sea, the bowels of the earth,to the heart of the fiery furnace? Into a dungeon deeper than Hell, into a madness louder than thegrave? What trumpet sound would awaken him, what hand would lift him up? For he knew, as hewas struck again, and screamed again, his throat like burning ashes, and as he turned again, hisbody hanging from him like a useless weight, a heavy, rotting carcass, that if he were not lifted hewould never rise.
His father, his mother, his aunt, Elisha—all were far above him, waiting, watching historment in the pit. They hung over the golden barrier, singing behind them, light around theirheads, weeping, perhaps, for John, struck down so early. And, no, they could not help him anymore—nothing could help him any more. He struggled, struggle to rise up, and meet them—hewanted wings to fly upward and meet them in that morning, that morning where they were. But hisstruggles only thrust him downward, his cries did not go upward, but rang in his own skull.
Yet, though he scarcely saw their faces, he knew that they were there. He felt them move,every movement causing a trembling, an astonishment, a horror in the heart of darkness where he lay. He could not know if they wished him to come to them as passionately as he wished to rise.
Perhaps they did not help him because they did not care—because they did not love him.
Then his father returned to him, in John’s changed and low condition; and John thought,but for a moment only, that his father had come to help him. In the silence, then, that filled thevoid, John looked on his father. His father’s face was black—like a sad, eternal night, yet in hisfather’s face there burned a fire—a fire eternal in an eternal night. John trembled where he lay,feeling no warmth from him from this fire, tremble, and could not take his eyes away. A wind blewover him, saying: ‘Whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.’ Only: ‘Whosoever loveth and maketh alie.’ And he knew that he had been thrust out of the holy, the joyful, the blood-washed community,that his father had thrust him out. His father’s will was stronger than John’s own. His power wasgreater because he belonged to God. Now, John felt no hatred, nothing, only a bitter, unbelievingdespair: all prophecies were true, salvation was finished, damnation was real!
Then Death is real, John’s soul said, and Death will have his moment.
‘Set thine house in order,’ said his father, ‘for thou shalt die and not live.’
And then the ironic voice spoke again, saying: ‘Get up, John. Get up, boy. Don’t let himkeep you here. You got everything your daddy got.’
John tried to laugh—John thought that he was laughing—but found, instead, that his mouthwas filled with salt, his ears were full of burning water. Whatever was happening in his distantbody now, he could not change or stop; his cheat heaved, his laugher rose and bubbled at hismouth, like blood.
And his father looked on him. His father’s eyes looked down on him, and John began toscream. His father’s eyes stripped him naked, and hated what they saw. And as he turned,screaming, in the dust again, trying to escape his father’s eyes, those eyes, that face, and all theirfaces, and the far-off yellow light, all departed from his vision as though he had gone blind. Hewas going down again. There is, his soul cried out again, no bottom to the darkness!
He did not where he was. There was silence everywhere—only a perpetual, distant, fainttrembling far beneath him—the roaring perhaps, of the fires of Hell, over which he was suspended,or the echo, persistent, invincible still, of the moving feet of the saints. He thought of themountain-top, where he longed to be, where the sun would cover him like a cloth of gold, wouldcover his head like a crown of fire, and in his hands he would hold a living rod. But this was nomountain where John lay, here, no robe, no crown. And the living rod was uplifted in other hands.
‘I’m going to beat sin out of him. I’m going to beat it out.’
Yes, he had sinned, and his father was looking for him. Now, John did not make a sound,and did not move at all, hoping that his father would pass him by.
‘Leave him be. Leave him alone. Let him pray to the Lord.’
‘Yes, Mama. I’m going to try to love the Lord.’
‘He done run off somewhere. I’m going to find him. I’m going to beat it out.’
Yes, he had sinned: one morning, alone, in the dirty bathroom, in the square, dirt-graycupboard room that was filled with the stink of his father. Sometimes, leaning over the cracked, ‘tattle-tale gray’ bath-tub, he scrubbed his father’s back; and looked, as the accursed son of Noahhad looked, on his father’s hideous nakedness. It was secret, like sin, and slimy, like the serpent,and heavy, like the rod. Then he hated his father, and longed for the power to cut his father down.
Was this why he lay here, thrust out from all human or heavenly help to-night? This, andnot the other, his deadly sin, having looked on his father’s nakedness and mocked and cursed himin his heart? Ah, that son of Noah’s had been cursed, down to the present groaning generation: Aservant of servants shall be unto his brethren.
Then the ironic voice, terrified, it seemed, of no depth, no darkness, demanded of John,scornfully, if he believed that he was cursed. All niggers had been cursed, the ironic voicereminded him, all niggers had come from this most undutiful of Noah’s sons. How could John becursed for having seen in a bath-tub what another man—if that other man had ever lived—had seenten thousand years ago, lying in an open tent? Could a curse come down so many ages? Did it livein time, or in the moment? But John found no answer for this voice, for he was in the moment, andout of time.
And his father approached. ‘I’m going to beat sin out of him. I’m going to beat it out.’ Allthe darkness rocked and wailed as his father’s feet came closer; feet whose tread resounded likeGod’s tread in the garden of Eden, searching the covered Adam and Eve. Then his father stood justabove him, looking down. Then John knew that a curse was renewed from moment to moment,from father to son. Time was indifferent, like snow and ice; but the heart, crazed wanderer in thedriving waste, carried the curse for ever.
‘John,’ said his father, ‘come with me.’
Then they were in a straight street, a narrow, narrow way. They had been walking for manydays. The street stretched before them, long, and silent, going down, and whiter than the snow.
There was no one on the street, and John was frightened. The buildings on this street, so near thatJohn could touch them on either side, were narrow, also, rising like spears into the sky, and theywere made of beaten gold and silver. John knew that these buildings were not for him—not to-day—no, nor to-morrow, either! Then, coming up this straight and silent street, he saw a woman, veryold and black, coming toward them, staggering on the crooked stones. She was drunk, and dirty,and very old, and her mouth was bigger than his mother’s mouth, or his own; her mouth was looseand wet, and he had never seen anyone so black. His father was astonished to see her, and besidehimself with anger; but John was glad. He clapped his hands, and cried:
‘See! She’s uglier than Mama! She’s uglier than me!’
‘You mighty proud, ain’t you,’ his father said, ‘to be the Devil’s son?’
But John did no listen to his father. He turned to watch the woman pass. His father grabbedhis arm.
“You see that? That’s sin. That’s what the Devil’s son runs after.’
‘Whose son are you?’ John asked.
His father slapped him. John laughed, and moved a little away.
‘I seen it. I seen it. I ain’t the Devil’s son for nothing.’
His father reached for him, but John was faster. He moved backward down the shiningstreet, looking at his father—his father who moved toward him, one hand outstretched in fury.
‘And I heard you—all the night-time long. I know what you do in the dark, black man,when you think the Devil’s son’s asleep. I heard you, spitting, and groaning, and choking—and Iseen you, riding up and down, and going in and out. I ain’t the Devil’s son for nothing.’
The listening buildings, rising upward yet, leaned, closing out the sky. John’s feet began toslip; tears and sweat were in his eyes; still moving backward before his father, he looked about himfor deliverance; but there was no deliverance in this street for him.
‘And I hate you. I hate you. I don’t care about your golden crown. I don’t care about yourlong white robe. I seen you under the robe, I seen you!’
Then his father was upon him; at his touch there was singing, and fire. John lay on his backin the narrow street, looking up at his father, that burning face beneath the burning towers.
‘I’m going to beat it out of you. I’m going to beat it out.’
His father raised his hand. The knife came down. John rolled away, down the white,descending street, screaming:
Father! Father!
These were the first words he uttered. In a moment there was silence, and his father wasgone. Again, he felt the saints above him—and dust in his mouth. There was singing somewhere;faraway,abovehim;singingslowandmourn(was) ful. He lay silent, racked beyondendurance, salt drying on his face, with nothing in him any more, no lust, no fear, no shame, nohope. And yet he knew that it would come again—the darkness was full of demons crouching,waiting to worry him with their teeth again.
Then I looked in the grave and I wondered.
Ah, down!—what was he searching here, all alone in darkness? But now he knew, for ironyhad left him, that he was searching something, hidden in the darkness, that must be found. Hewould die if it was not found; or, he was dead already, and would never again be joined to theliving, if it was not found.
And the grave looked so sad and lonesome.
In the grave where he now wandered—he knew it was the grave, it was so cold and silent,and he moved in icy mist—he found his mother and his father, his mother dressed in scarlet, hisfather dressed in white. They did not see him: they looked backward, over their shoulders, at acloud of witnesses. And there was his Aunt Florence, gold and silver flashing on her fingers,brazen ear-rings dangling from her ears; and there was another woman, whom he took to be thatwife of his father’s, called Deborah—who had, as he had once believed, so much to tell him. Butshe, alone, of all that company, looked at him and signified that there was no speech in the grave.
He was a stranger there—they did not see him pass, they did not know what he was looking for,they could not help him search. He wanted to find Elisha, who knew, perhaps, who would help him—but Elisha was not there. There was Roy: Roy also might have helped him, but he had beenstabbed with a knife, and lay now, brown and silent, at his father’s feet.
Then there began to flood John’s soul the waters of despair. Love is as strong as death, asdeep as the grave. But love, which had, perhaps, like a benevolent monarch, swelled thepopulation of his neighboring kingdom, Death, had not himself descended: they owed him noallegiance here. Here there was no speech or language, and there was no love; no one to say: Youare beautiful, John; no one to forgive him, no matter what his sin; no one to heal him, and lift himup. No one: father and mother looked backward, Roy was bloody, Elisha was not here.
Then the darkness began to murmur—a terrible sound—and John’s ears trembled. In thismurmur that filled the grave, like a thousand wings beating on the air, he recognized a sound thathe had always heard. He began, for terror, to weep and moan—and this sound was swallowed up,and yet was magnified by the echoes that filled the darkness.
This sound had filled John’s life, so it now seemed, from the moment he had first drawnbreath. He had heard it everywhere, in prayer and in daily speech, and wherever the saints weregathered, and in the unbelieving streets. It was in his father’s anger, and in his mother’s calminsistence, and in the vehement mockery of his aunt; it had rung, so oddly, in Roy’s voice thisafternoon, and when Elisha played the piano it was there; it was in the beat and jangle of SisterMcCandless’s tambourine, it was in the very cadence of her testimony, and invested that testimonywith a matchless, unimpeachable authority. Yes, he had heard it all his life, but it was only nowthat his ears were open to this sound that came from darkness, that could only come from darkness,that yet bore such sure witness to the glory of the light. And now in this moaning, and so far fromany help, he heard it in himself—it rose from his bleeding, his cracked open heart. It was a soundof rage and weeping which filled the grave, rage and weeping from time set free, but bound now ineternity; rage that had no language, weeping with no voice—which yet spoke now, to John’sstartled soul, of boundless melancholy, of the bitterest patience, and the longest night; of thedeepest water, the strongest chains, the most cruel lash; of humility most wretched, the dungeonmost absolute, of love’s bed defiled, and birth dishonored, and most bloody, unspeakable, suddendeath. Yes, the darkness hummed with murder: the body in the water, the body in the fire, the bodyon the tree. John looked down the line of these armies of darkness, army upon army, and his soulwhispered: Who are these? Who are they? And wondered: Where shall I go?
There was no answer. There was no help or healing in the grave, no answer in the darkness,no speech from all that company. They looked backward. And John looked back, seeing nodeliverance.
I, John saw the future, way up in the middle of the air.
Were the lash, the dungeon, and the night for him? And the sea for him? And the grave forhim?
I, John saw a number, way in the middle of the air.
And he struggled to flee—out of this darkness, out of this company—into the land of theliving, so high, so far away. Fear was upon him, a more deadly fear than he had ever known, as heturned and turned in the darkness, as he moaned, and stumbled, and crawled through darkness,finding no hand, no voice, finding no door. Who are these? Who are they? They were the despisedand rejected, the wretched and the spat upon, the earth’s offscouring; and he was in their company,and they would swallow up his soul. The stripes they had endured would scar his back, their punishment would be his, their portion his, his their humiliation, anguish, chains, their dungeonhis, their death his. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once I was stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, anight and a day I have been in the deep.
And their dread testimony would be his!
In journeying often, in perils of waters, inn perils of robbers, in perils by mine owncountrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils inthe sea, in perils among false brethren.
And their desolation, his:
In weariness and painfulness, in watching often, in hunger and thirst, in fasting often, incold and nakedness.
And he began to shout for help, seeing before him the lash, the fire, and the depthlesswater, seeing his head bowed down for ever, he, John, the lowest among these lowly. And helooked for his mother, but her eyes were fixed on this dark army—she was claimed by this army.
And his father would not help him, his father did not see him, and Roy lay dead.
Then he whispered, not knowing that he whispered: ‘Oh, Lord, have mercy on me. Havemercy on me.’
And a voice, for the first time in all his terrible journey, spoke to John, through he rage andweeping, and fire, and darkness, and flood:
‘Yes,’ said the voice, ‘go through. Go through.’
‘Lift me up,’ whispered John, ‘lift me up. I can’t go through.’
‘Go through,’ said the voice, ‘go through.’
Then there was silence. The murmuring ceased. There was only this trebling beneath him.
And he knew there was a light somewhere.
‘Go through.’
‘Ask Him to take you through.’
But he could never go through this darkness, through this fire and this wrath. He nevercould go through. His strength was finished, and he could not move. He belonged to the darkness—the darkness from which he had thought to flee had claimed him. And he moaned again,weeping, and lifted up his hands.
‘Call on Him. Call on Him.’
‘Ask Him to take you through.’
Dust rose again in his nostrils, sharp as the fumes of Hell. And he turned again in thedarkness, trying to remember something he had heard, something he had read.
Jesus saves.
And he saw before him the fire, red and gold, and waiting for him—yellow, and red, andgold, and burning in a night eternal, and waiting for him. He must go through this fire, and into thisnight.
Jesus saves.
Call on Him.
Ask Him to take you through.
He could not call, for his tongue would not unlock, and his heart was silent, and great withfear. In the darkness, how to move?—with death’s ten thousand jaws agape, and waiting in thedarkness. On any turning whatsoever the beast may spring—to move in the darkness is to moveinto the moving jaws of death. And yet, it came to him that he must move; for there was a lightsomewhere, and life, and joy, and singing—somewhere, somewhere above him.
And he moaned again: ‘Oh, Lord, have mercy. Have mercy, Lord.’
There came to him again the communion service at which Elisha had knelt at his father’sfeet. Now this service was in a great, high room, a room made golden by the light of the sun; andthe room was filled with a multitude of people, all in long, white robes, the women with coveredheads. They sat at a long, bare, wooden table. They broke at this table flat, unsalted bread, whichwas the body of the Lord, and drank from a heavy silver cup the scarlet wine of His blood. Then hesaw that they were barefoot, and that their feet were stained with this same blood. And a sound ofweeping filled the room as they broke the bread and drank the wine.
Then they rose, to come together over a great basin filled with water. And they divided intofour groups, two of women, and man before man, to watch each other’s feet. But the blood wouldnot wash off; many washings only turned the crystal water red; and someone cried: ‘Have youbeen to the river?’
Then John saw the river, and the multitude was there. And now they had undergone achange; their robes were ragged, and stained with the road they had traveled, and stained withunholy blood; the robes of some barely covered their nakedness; and some indeed were naked.
And some stumbled on the smooth stones at the river’s edge, for they were blind; and somecrawled with a terrible wailing, for they were lame; some did not cease to pluck at their flesh,which was rotten with running sores. All struggled to get to the river, in a dreadful hardness ofheart: the strong struck down the weak, the ragged spat on the naked, the naked cursed the blind,the blind crawled over the lame. And someone cried: ‘Sinner, do you love my Lord?’
Then John saw the Lord—for a moment only; and the darkness, for a moment only, wasfilled with a light he could not bear. Then, in a moment, he was set free; his tears sprang as from afountain; his heart, like a fountain of waters, burst. Then he cried: ‘Oh, blessed Jesus! Oh, LordJesus! Take me through!’
Of tears there was, yes, a very fountain—springing from a depth never sounded before,from depths John had not known were in him. And he wanted to rise up, singing, singing in thatgreat morning, the morning of his new life. Ah, how his tears ran down, how they blessed his soul!
—as he felt himself, out of the darkness, and the fire, and the terrors of death, rising upward tomeet the saints ‘Oh, yes!’ cried the voice of Elisha. ‘Bless our God for ever!’
And a sweetness filled John as he heard this voice, and heard the sound of singing: thesinging was for him. For his drifting soul was anchored in the love of God; in the rock that enduredfor ever. The light and the darkness had kissed each other, and were married now, for ever, in thelife and the vision of John’s soul.
I, John, saw a city, way in the middle of the air,Waiting, waiting, waiting up there.
He opened his eyes on the morning, and found them, in the light of the morning, rejoicingfor him. The trembling he had known in darkness had been the echo of their joyful feet—thesefeet, bloodstained for ever, and washed in many rivers—they moved on the bloody road for ever,with no continuing city, but seeking one to come: a city out of time, not made with hands, buteternal in the heavens. No power could hold this army back, no water disperse them, no fireconsume them. One day they would compel the earth to heave upward, and surrender the waitingdead. They sang, where the darkness gathered, where the lion waited, where the fire cried, andwhere blood ran down:
My soul, don’t you be uneasy!
They wandered in the valley for ever; and they smote the rock, for ever; and the waterssprang, perpetually, in the perpetual desert. They cried unto the Lord for ever, and lifted up theireyes for ever, they were cast down for ever, and He lifted them up for ever. No, the fire could nothurt them, and yes, the lion’s jaws were stopped; the serpent was not their master, the grave wasnot their resting-place, the earth was not their home. Job bore them witness, and Abraham wastheir father, Moses had elected to suffer with them rather that glory in sin for a season. Shadrach,Meshach, and Abednego had gone before them into the fire, their grief had been sung by David,and Jeremiah had wept for them. Ezekiel had prophesied upon them, these scattered bones, theseslain, and, in the fullness of time, the prophet, John, had come out of the wilderness, crying that thepromise was for them. They were encompassed with a very cloud of witnesses: Judas, who hadbetrayed the Lord; Thomas, who had doubted Him; Peter, who had trembled at the crowing of acock; Stephen, who had been stoned; Paul, who had been bound; the blind man crying in the dustyroad, the dead man rising from the grave. And they looked unto Jesus, the author and the finisherof their faith, running with patience the race He had set before them; they endured the cross, andthey despised the shame, and waited to join Him, one day, in glory, at the right hand of the Father.
My soul! don’t you be uneasy!
Jesus going to make up my dying bed!
‘Rise up, rise up, Brother Johnny, and talk about the Lord’s deliverance.’
It was Elisha who had spoken; he stood just above John, smiling; and behind him were thesaints—Praying Mother Washington, and Sister McCandless, and Sister Price. Behind these, hesaw his mother, and his aunt; his father, for the moment, was hidden from his view.
‘Amen!’ cried Sister McCandless, ‘rise up, and praise the Lord!’
He tried to speak, and could not, for the joy that rang in him this morning. He smiled up toElisha, and his tears ran down; and Sister McCandless began to sing:
‘Lord, I ain’tNo stranger now!
‘Rise up, Johnny,’ said Elisha, again. ‘Are you saved, boy?’
‘Yes,’ said John, ‘oh, yes!’ And the words came upward, it seemed, of themselves, in thenew voice God had given him. Elisha stretched out his hand, and John took the hand, and stood—so suddenly, and so strangely, and with such wonder!—once more on his feet.
‘Lord, I ain’tNo stranger now!’
Yes, the night had passed, the powers of darkness had been beaten back. He moved amongthe saints, he, John, who had come home, who was one of their company now; weeping, he yetcould find no words to speak of his great gladness; and he scarcely knew how he moved, for hishands were new, and his feet were new, and he moved in a new and Heaven-bright air. PrayingMother Washington took him in her arms, and kissed him, and their tears, his tears and the tears ofthe old, black woman, mingled.
‘God bless you, son. Run on, honey, and don’t get weary!’
‘Lord, I been introduced,To the Father and the Son,And I ain’tNo stranger now!’
Yes, as he moved among them, their hands touching, and tears falling, and the music rising—as though he moved down a great hall, full of a splendid company—something began to knockin that listening, astonished, newborn, and fragile heart of his; something recalling the terrors ofthe night, which were not finished, his heart seemed to say; which, in this company, were now tobegin. And, while his heart was speaking, he found himself before his mother. Her face was full oftears, and for a long while they looked at each other, saying nothing. And once again, he tried toread the mystery of that face—which, as it had never before been so bright and pained with love,had never seemed before so far from him, so wholly in communion with a life beyond his life. He wanted to comfort her, but the night had given him no language, no second sight, no power to seeinto the heart of any other. He knew only—and now, looking at his mother, he knew that he couldnever tell it—that the heart was a fearful place. She kissed him, and she said: ‘I’m mighty proud,Johnny. You keep the faith. I’m going to be praying for you till the Lord puts me in my grave.’
Then he stood before his father. In the moment that he forced himself to raise his eyes andlook into his father’s face, he felt in himself a stiffening, and a panic and a blind rebellion, and ahope for peace. The tears still on his face, and smiling still, he said: ‘Praise the Lord.’
‘Praise the Lord,’ said his father. He did not move to touch him, did not kiss him, did notsmile. They stood before each other in silence, while the saints rejoiced; and John struggled tospeak the authoritative, the living word that would conquer the great division between his fatherand himself. But it did not come, the living word; in the silence something died in John, andsomething came alive. It came to him that he must testify: his tongue only could bear witness tothe wonders he had seen. And he remembered, suddenly, the text of a sermon he had once heardhis father preach. And he opened his mouth, feeling, as he watched his father, the darkness roarbehind him, and the very earth beneath him seem to shake; yet he gave to his father their commontestimony. ‘I’m saved,’ he said, ‘and I know I’m saved.’ And then, as his father did not speak, herepeated his father’s text: ‘My witness is in Heaven and my record is on high.’
‘It come from your mouth,’ said his father then. ‘I want to see you live it. It’s more than anotion,’
‘I’m going to pray God,’ said John—and his voice shook, whether with joy or grief hecould not say—‘to keep me, and make me strong … to stand … to stand against the enemy … andagainst everything and everybody … that wants to cut down my soul.’
Then his tears came down again, like a wall between him and his father. His Aunt Florencecame and took him in her arms. Her eyes were dry, and her face was old in the savage, morninglight. But her voice, when she spoke, was gentler that he had ever known it to be before.
‘You fight the good fight,’ she said, ‘you hear? Don’t you get weary, and don’t you getscared. Because I know the Lord’s done laid His hands on you.’
‘Yes,’ he said, weeping, ‘yes. I’m going to serve the Lord.’
‘Amen!’ cried Elisha. ‘Bless our God!’
The filthy streets rang with the early-morning light as they came out of the temple.
They were all there, save young Ella Mae, who had departed while John was still on thefloor—she had a bad cold, said Praying Mother Washington, and needed to have her rest. Now, inthree groups, they walked the long, gray, silent avenue: Praying Mother Washington withElizabeth and Sister McCandless and Sister Price, and before them Gabriel and Florence, andElisha and John ahead.
‘You know, the Lord is a wonder,’ said the praying mother. ‘Don’t you know, all this weekHe just burdened my soul, and kept me a-praying and a-weeping before Him? Look like I justcouldn’t get no ease nohow—and I know He had me a-tarrying for that boy’s soul.’
‘Well, amen,’ said Sister Price. ‘Look like the Lord just wanted this church to rock. Youremember how He spoke through Sister McCandless Friday night, and told us to pray, and He’dwork a mighty wonder in our midst? And He done moved—hallelujah—He done troubledeverybody’s mind.’
‘I just tell you,’ said Sister McCandless, ‘all you got to do is listen to the Lord; He’ll leadyou right every time; He’ll move every time. Can’t nobody tell me my God ain’t real.’
‘And you see the way the Lord worked with young Elisha there?’ said Praying MotherWashington, with a calm, sweet smile. ‘Had that boy down there on the floor a-prophesying intongues, amen, just the very minute before Johnny fell out a-screaming, and a-crying before theLord. Look like the Lord was using Elisha to say: “It’s time, boy, come on home.” ’
‘Well, He is a wonder,’ said Sister Price. ‘And Johnny’s got two brothers now.’
Elizabeth said nothing. She walked with her head bowed, hands clasped lightly before her.
Sister Price turned tom look at her, and smiled.
‘I know,’ she said, ‘you’s a mighty happy woman this morning.’
Elizabeth smiled and raised her head, but did not look directly at Sister Price. She lookedahead, down the long avenue, where Gabriel walked with Florence, where John walked withElisha.
‘Yes,’ she said, at last. ‘I began praying. And I ain’t sopped praying yet.’
‘Yes, Lord,’ said Sister Price, ‘can’t none of us stop praying till we see His blessed face.’
‘But I bet you didn’t never think,’ said Sister McCandless, with a laugh, ‘that little Johnnywas going to jump up so soon, and get religion. Bless our God!’
‘The Lord is going to bless that boy, you mark my words,’ said Praying MotherWashington.
‘Shake hands with the preacher, Johnny.’
‘Got a man in the Bible, son, who liked music, too. And he got to dancing one day beforethe Lord. You reckon you going to dance before the Lord one of these days?’
‘Yes, Lord,’ said Sister Price, ‘the Lord done raised you up a holy son. He going to comfortyour grey hairs.’
Elizabeth found that her tears were falling, slowly, bitterly, in the morning light. ‘I pray theLord,’ she said, ‘to bear him up on every side.’
‘Yes,’ said Sister McCandless, gravely, ‘it’s more than a notion. The Devil rises on everyhand.’
Then, in silence, they came to the wide crossing where the tramline ran. A lean cat stalkedthe gutter and fled as they approached; turned to watch them, with yellow, malevolent eyes, fromthe ambush of a dustbin. A gray bird flew above them, above the electric wires for the tram line,and perched on the metal cornice of a roof. Then, far down the avenue, they heard a siren, and the clanging of a bell, and looked up to see the ambulance speed past them on the way to the hospitalthat was near the church.
‘Another soul struck down,’ murmured Sister McCandless. ‘Lord have mercy.’
‘He said in the last days evil would abound,’ said Sister Price.
‘Well, yes, He did say it,’ said Praying Mother Washington, ‘and I’m so glad He told us Hewouldn’t leave us comfortless.’
‘’When ye see all these things, know that your salvation is at hand,’ said SisterMcCandless. ‘A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand—but it ain’tgoing to come nigh thee. So glad, amen, this morning, bless my Redeemer.’
‘You remember that day when you come into the store?’
‘I didn’t think you never looked at me.’
‘Well—you was mighty pretty.’
‘Didn’t little Johnny never say nothing,’ asked Praying Mother Washington, ‘to make youthink the Lord was working in his heart?’
‘He always kind of quiet,’ said Elizabeth. ‘He don’t say much.’
‘No,’ said Sister McCandless, ‘he ain’t like all these rough young one nowadays—he gotsome respect for his elders. You done raised him mighty well, Sister Grimes.’
‘It was his birthday yesterday,’ Elizabeth said.
‘No!’ cried Sister Price. ‘How old he got to be yesterday?’
‘He done made fourteen,’ she said.
‘You hear that?’ said Sister Price, with wonder. ‘The Lord done saved that boy’s soul onhis birthday!’
‘Well, he got two birthdays now,’ smiled Sister McCandless, ‘just like he got two brothers—one in the flesh, and one in the Spirit.’
‘Amen, bless the Lord!’ cried Praying Mother Washington.
‘What book was it, Richard?’
‘Oh, I don’t remember. Just a book.’
‘You smiled.’
‘You was mighty pretty.’
She took her sodden handkerchief out of her bag, and dried her eyes; and dried her eyesagain, looking down the avenue.
‘Yes,’ said Sister Price, gently, ‘you just thank the Lord. You just let the tears fall. I knowyour heart is full this morning.’
‘The Lord’s done give you,’ said Praying Mother Washington, ‘a mighty blessing—andwhat the Lord gives, can’t no man take away.’
‘I open,’ said Sister McCandless, ‘and no man can shut. I shut, and no man can open.’
‘Amen,’ said Sister Price. ‘Amen.’
‘Well, I reckon,’ Florence said, ‘your soul is praising God this morning.’
He looked straight ahead, saying nothing, holding his body more rigid than an arrow‘You always been saying,’ Florence said, ‘how the Lord would answer your prayer.’ Andshe looked sideways at him, with a little smile.
‘He going to learn,’ he said at last, ‘that it ain’t all in the singing and the shouting—the wayof holiness is a hard way. He got the steep side of the mountain to climb.’
‘But he got you there,’ she said, ‘ain’t he to help him when he stumbles, and to be a goodexample?’
‘I’m going to see to it,’ he said, ‘that he walks right before the Lord. The Lord’s done puthis soul in my charge—and I ain’t going to have that boy’s blood on my hands.’
‘No,’ she said, mildly, ‘I reckon you don’t want that.’
Then they heard the siren, and the headlong, warning bell. She watched his face as helooked outward at the silent avenue and at the ambulance that raced to carry someone to healing,or to death.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that wagon’s coming, ain’t, one day for everybody?’
‘I pray,’ he said, ‘it finds you ready, sister.’
‘Is it going to find you ready?’ she asked.
‘I know my name is written in the Book of Life,’ he said. ‘I know I’m going to look on mySavior’s face in glory.’
‘Yes,’ she said, slowly, ‘we’s all going to be together there. Mama, and you, and me, andDeborah—and what was the name of that little girl who died not long after I left home?’
‘What little girl who died?’ he asked. ‘A lot of folks died after you left home—you leftyour mother on her dying bed.’
‘This girl was a mother, too,’ she said. ‘Look like she went north all by herself, and had herbaby, and died—weren’t nobody to help her. Deborah wrote me about it. Sure, you ain’t forgottenthat girl’s name, Gabriel!’
Then his step faltered—seemed, for a moment, to drag. And he looked at her. She smiled,and lightly touched his arm.
‘You ain’t forgotten her name,’ she said. ‘You can’t tell me you done forgot her name. Isyou going to look on her face, too? Is her name written in the Book of Life?’
In utter silence they walked together, her hand still under his trembling arm.
‘Deborah didn’t never write,’ she at last pursued, ‘about what happened to the baby. Didyou ever see him? You going to meet him in Heaven, too?’
‘The Word tell us,’ he said, ‘to let the dead bury the dead. Why you want to go rummagingaround back there, digging up things what’s all forgotten now? The Lord, He knows my life—Hedone forgive me a long time ago.’
‘Look like,’ she said, ‘you think the Lord’s a man like you; you think you can fool Himlike you fool men, and you think He forgets, like men. But God don’t forget nothing, Gabriel—ifyour name’s down there in the Book, like you say, it’s got all what you done right down there withit. And you going to answer for it, too.’
‘I done answered,’ he said, ‘already before my God. I ain’t got to answer now, in front ofyou.’
She opened her handbag, and took out the letter.
‘I been carrying this letter now,’ she said, ‘for more than thirty years. And I beenwondering all that time if I’d ever talk to you about it.’
And she looked at him. He was looking, unwillingly, at the letter, which she held tightly inone hand. It was old, and dirty, and brown, and torn; he recognized Deborah’s uncertain, tremblinghand, and he could see her again in the cabin, bending over the table, laboriously trusting to paperthe bitterness she had not spoken. It had lived in her silence, then, all those years? He could notbelieve it. She had been praying for him as she died—she had sworn to meet him in glory. Andyet, this letter, her witness, spoke, breaking her long silence, now that she was beyond his reach forever.
‘Yes,’ said Florence, watching his face, ‘you didn’t give her no bed of roses to sleep on, didyou?—poor, simple, ugly, black girl. And you didn’t treat that other one no better. Who is youmet, Gabriel, all your holy life long, you ain’t made to drink a cup of sorrow? And you doing itstill—you going to be doing it till the Lord puts you in you grave.’
‘God’s way,’ he said, and his speech was thick, his face was slick with sweat, ‘ain’t man’sway. I been doing the will of the Lord, and can’t nobody sit in judgment on me but the Lord. TheLord called me out, He chose me, and I been running with Him ever since I made a start. You can’tkeep your eyes on all this foolishness here below, all this wickedness here below—you got to liftup your eyes to the hills and run from the destruction falling on the earth, you got to put your handin Jesus’ hand, and go where He says go.’
‘And if you been but a stumbling-stone here below?’ she said. ‘If you done caused soulsright and left to stumble and fall, and lose their happiness, and lose their souls? What then,prophet? What then, the Lord’s anointed? Ain’t no reckoning going to be called of you? What yougoing to say when the wagon comes?’
He lifted up his head, and she saw tears mingled with his sweat. ‘The Lord,’ he said, ‘Hesees the heart—He sees the heart.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but I done read the Bible, too, and it tells me you going to know the treeby its fruit. What fruit I seen from you if it ain’t been just sin and sorrow and shame?’
‘You be careful,’ he said, ‘how you talk to the Lord’s anointed. ’Cause my life ain’t in thatletter—you don’t know my life.’
‘Where is your life, Gabriel?’ she asked, after a despairing pause. ‘Where is it? Ain’t it alldone gone for nothing? Where’s your branches? Where’s your fruit?’
He said nothing; insistently, she tapped the letter with her thumbnail. They wereapproaching the corner where she must leave him, turning westward to take her undergroundhome. In the light that filled the streets, the light that the sun was now beginning to corrupt withfire, she watched John and Elisha just before them, John’ listening head bent, Elisha’s arm abouthis shoulder.
‘I got a son,’ he said at last, ‘and the Lord’s going to rise him up. I know—the Lord haspromised—His word is true.’
And then she laughed. ‘That son,’ she said, ‘that Roy. You going to weep for many aeternity before you see him crying in front of the altar like Johnny was crying to-night.’
‘God sees the heart,’ he repeated, ‘He sees the heart.’
‘Well, He ought to see it,’ she cried, ‘He made it! But don’t nobody else se it, not evenyour own self! Let God see it—He sees it all right, and He don’t say nothing.’
‘He speaks,’ he said, ‘He speaks. All you got to do is listen.’
‘I been listening many a night-time long,’ said Florence, then, ‘and He ain’t never spoke tome.’
‘He ain’t never spoke,’ said Gabriel, ‘because you ain’t never wanted to hear. You justwanted Him to tell you your way was right. And that ain’t no way to wait on God.’
‘Then tell me,’ Said Florence, ‘what He done said to you—that you didn’t want to hear?’
And there was silence again. Now they both watched John and Elisha.
‘I going to tell you something, Gabriel,’ she said. ‘I know you thinking at the bottom ofyour heart that if you make her, her and her bastard boy, pay enough for her sin, your son won’thave to pay for yours. But I ain’t going to let you do that. You done made enough folks pay for sin,it’s time you started paying.’
‘What you think,’ he asked, ‘you going to be able to do—against me?’
‘Maybe,’ she said, ‘I ain’t long for this world, but I got this letter, and I’m sure going togive it to Elizabeth before I go, and if she don’t want it, I’m going to find some way—some way, Idon’t know how—to rise up and tell it, tell everybody, about the blood the Lord’s anointed id goton his hands.’
‘I done told you,’ he said, ‘that’s all done and finished; the Lord done give me a sign tomake me know I been forgiven. What good you think it’s going to do to start talking about itnow?’
‘It’ll make Elizabeth to know,’ she said, ‘that she ain’t the only sinner … in your holyhouse. And little Johnny, there—he’ll know he ain’t the only bastard.’
Then he turned again, and looked at her with hatred in his eyes.
‘You ain’t never changed,’ he said. ‘You still waiting to see my downfall. You just aswicked now as you was when you was young.’
She put the letter in her bag again.
‘No,’ she said, ‘I ain’t changed. You ain’t changed neither. You still promising the Lordyou going to do better—and you think whatever you done already, whatever you doing right at thatminute, don’t count. Of all the men I ever knew, you’s the man who ought to be hoping the Bible’sall a lie—’cause if that trumpet ever sounds, you going to spend eternity talking.’
They had reached her corner. She stopped, and he stopped with her, and she stared into hishaggard, burning face.
‘I got to take my underground,’ she said. ‘You got anything you want to say to me?’
‘I been living a long time,’ he said, ‘and I ain’t never seen nothing but evil overtake theenemies of the Lord. You think you going to use that letter to hurt me—but the Lord ain’t going tolet it come to pass. You going to be cut down.’
The praying women approached them, Elizabeth in the middle.
‘Deborah,’ Florence said, ‘was cut down—but she left word. She weren’t no enemy ofnobody—and she didn’t see nothing but evil. When I go, brother, you better tremble, ’cause I ain’tgoing to go in silence.’
And, while they stared at each other, saying nothing more, the praying women were uponthem.
Now the long, the silent avenue stretched before them like some gray country of the dead. Itscarcely seemed that he had walked this avenue only (as time was reckoned up by men) some fewhours ago; that he had known this avenue since his eyes had opened on the dangerous world; thathe had played here, wept here, fled, fallen down, and been bruised here—in that time, so farbehind him, of his innocence and anger.
Yes, on the evening of the seventh day, when, raging, he had walked out of his father’shouse, this avenue had been filled with shouting people. The light of the day had begun to fail—the wind was high, and the tall lights, one by one, and then all together, had lifted up their headsagainst the darkness—while he hurried to the temple. Had he been mocked, had anyone spoken, orlaughed, or called? He could not remember. He had been walking in a storm.
Now the storm was over. And the avenue, like any landscape that has endured a storm, laychanged under Heaven, exhausted and clean, and new. Not again, for ever, could it return to theavenue it once had been. Fire, or lightening, or the latter rain, coming down from these skies whichmoved with such pale secrecy above him now, had laid yesterday’s avenue waste, had changed itin a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, as all would be changed on the last day, when the skieswould open up once more to gather up the saints.
Yet the houses were there, as they had been; the windows, like a thousand, blinded eyes,stared outward at the morning—at the morning that was the same for them as the mornings ofJohn’s innocence, and the mornings before his birth. The water run in the gutters with a small,discontented sound; on the water traveled paper, burnt matches, sodden cigarette-ends; gobs ofspittle, green-yellow, brown, and pearly; the leaving of a dog, the vomit of a drunken man, thedead sperm, trapped in rubber, of one abandoned to his lust. All moved slowly to the black gratingwhere down it rushed, to be carried to the river, which would hurl it into the sea.
Where houses were, where windows stared, where gutters ran, were people—sleeping now,invisible, private, in the heavy darkness of these houses, while the Lord’s day broke outside. WhenJohn should walk these streets again, they would be shouting here again; the roar of children’sroller skates would bear down on him from behind; little girls in pigtails, skipping rope, wouldestablish on the pavement a barricade through which he must stumble as best he might. Boyswould be throwing ball in these streets again—they would look at him, and call:
‘Hey, Frog-eyes!’
Men would be standing on corners again, watching him pass, girls would be sitting onstoops again, mocking his walk. Grandmothers would stare out of windows, saying:
‘That sure is a sorry little boy.’
He would weep again, his heart insisted, for now his weeping had begun; he would rageagain, said the shifting air, for the lions of rage had been unloosed; he would be in darkness again,in fire again, now that he had seen the fire and the darkness. He was free—whom the Son sets freeis free indeed—he had only to stand fast in his liberty. He was in battle no longer, this unfoldingLord’s day, with this avenue, these houses, the sleeping, staring, shouting people, but had enteredinto battle with Jacob’s angel, with the princes and the powers of the air. And he was filled with ajoy, a joy unspeakable, whose roots, though he would not trace then on this new day of his life,were nourished by the wellspring of a despair not yet discovered. The joy of the Lord is thestrength of His people. Where joy was, there strength followed; where strength was, sorrow came—for ever? For ever and for ever, said the arm of Elisha, heavy on his shoulder. And John tried tosee through the morning wall, to stare past the bitter houses, to tear the thousand gray veils of thesky away, and look into that heart—the monstrous heart which beat for ever, turning the astoundeduniverse, commanding the stars to flee away before the sun’s red sandal, bidding the moon to waxand wane, and disappear, and come again; with a silver net holding back the sea, and out ofmysteries abysmal, re-creating, each day, the earth. That heart, that breath, without which was notanything made which was made. Tears came into his eyes again, making the avenue shiver,causing the houses to shake—his heart swelled, lifted up, faltered, and was dumb. Out of joystrength came, strength that was fashioned to bear sorrow; sorrow brought forth joy. For ever? Thiswas Ezekiel’s wheel, in the middle of the burning air for ever—and the little wheel ran by faith,and the big wheel ran by the grace of God.
‘Elisha?’ he said.
‘If you ask Him to bear you up,’ said Elisha, as though he had read his thoughts, ‘He won’tnever let you fall.’
‘It was you,’ he said, ‘wasn’t it, who prayed me through?’
‘We was all praying, little brother,’ said Elisha, with a smile, ‘but yes, I was right over youthe whole time. Look like the Lord had put you like a burden on my soul.’
‘Was I praying long?’ he asked.
Elisha laughed. ‘Well, you started praying when it was night and you ain’t stopped prayingtill it was morning. That’s a right smart time, it seems to me.’
John smiled, too, observing with some wonder that a saint of God could laugh.
‘Was you glad,’ he asked, ‘to see me at the altar?’
Then he wondered why he had asked this, and hoped Elisha would no think him foolish.
‘I was mighty glad,’ said Elisha soberly, ‘to see little Johnny lay his sins on the altar, layhis life on the altar and rise up, praising God.’
Something shivered in him as the word sin was spoken. Tears sprang to his eyes again.
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I pray God, I pray the Lord … to make me strong … to sanctify me wholly … andkeep me saved!’
‘Yes,’ said Elisha, ‘you keep that spirit, and I now the Lord’s going to see to it that you gethome all right.’
‘It’s a long way,’ John said slowly, ‘ain’t it? It’s a hard way. It’s uphill all the way.’
‘You remember Jesus,’ Elisha said. ‘You keep your mind on Jesus. He went that way—upthe steep side of the mountain—and He was carrying the cross, and didn’t nobody help Him. Hewent that way for us. He carried that cross for us.’
‘But He was the Son of God,’ said John, ‘and He knew it.’
‘He knew it,’ said Elisha, ‘because He was willing to pay the price. Don’t you know it,Johnny? Ain’t you willing to pay the price?’
‘That song they sing,’ said John, finally, ‘if it costs my life—is that the price?’
‘Yes.’ said Elisha, ‘that’s the price.’
Then John was silent, wanting to put the question another way. And the silence wascracked, suddenly, by an ambulance siren, and a crying bell. And they both look up as theambulance raced past them on the avenue on which no creature moved, save for the saints of Godbehind them.
‘But that’s the Devil’s price, too,’ said Elisha, as silence came again. ‘The Devil, he don’task for nothing less than your life. And he take it, too, and it’s lost for ever. For ever, Johnny. Youin darkness while you living and you in darkness when you dead. Ain’t nothing but the love ofGod can make the darkness light.’
‘Yes,’ said John, ‘I remember. I remember.’
‘Yes,’ said Elisha, ‘but you got to remember when the evil day comes, when the floodrises, boy, and looks like your soul is going under. You got to remember when the devil’s doing allhe can to make you forget.’
‘The Devil,’ he said, frowning and staring, ‘the Devil. How many faces is the Devil got?’
‘He got as many faces,’ Elisha said,’ as you going to see between now and the time you layyour burden down. And he got a lot more than that, but ain’t nobody seen them all.’
‘Except Jesus,’ John said then. ‘Only Jesus.’
‘Yes,’ said Elisha, with a grave, sweet smile, ‘that’s the Man you got to call on. That’s theMan who knows.’
They were approaching his house—his father’s house. In a moment he must leave Elisha,step out from under his protecting arm, and walk alone into the house—alone with his mother andhis father. And he was afraid. He wanted to stop and turn to Elisha, and tell him … something forwhich he found no words.
‘Elisha——’ he began, and looked into Elisha’s face. Then: ‘You pray for me? Please prayfor me?’
‘I been praying, little brother,’ Elisha said, ‘and I sure ain’t going to stop praying now.’
‘For me,’ persisted John, his tears falling, ‘for me.’
‘You know right well,’ said Elisa, looking at him, ‘I ain’t going to stop praying for thebrother what the Lord done give me.’
Then they reached the house, and paused, looking at each other, waiting. John saw that thesun was beginning to stir, somewhere in the sky; the silence of the dawn would soon give way tothe trumpets of the morning. Elisha took his arm from John’s shoulder and stood beside him,looking backward. And John looked back, seeing the saints approach.
‘Service is going to be mighty late this morning,’ Elisha said, and suddenly grinned andyawned.
And John laughed. ‘But you be there,’ he asked, ‘won’t you? This morning?’
‘Yes, little brother,’ Elisha laughed, ‘I’m going to be there. I see I’m going to have to dosome running to keep up with you.’
And they watched the saints. Now they all stood on the corner, where his Aunt Florencehad stopped to say good-bye. All the women talked together, while his father stood a little apart.
His aunt and his mother kissed each other, as he had seen them do a hundred times, and then hisaunt turned to look for them, and waved.
They waved back, and she started slowly across the street, moving, he thought withwonder, like an old woman.
‘Well, she ain’t going to be out to service this morning, I tell you that,’ said Elisha, andyawned again.
‘And look like you going to be half asleep,’ John said ‘Now don’t you mess with me this morning,’ Elisha said, ‘because you ain’t got so holy Ican’t turn you over my knee. I’s your big brother in the Lord—you just remember that.’
Now they were on the near corner. His father and mother were saying good-bye to PrayingMother Washington, and Sister McCandless, and Sister Price. The praying woman waved to them,and they waved back. Then his mother and his father were alone, coming toward them‘Elisha,’ said John, ‘Elisha.’
‘Yes,’ said Elisha, ‘what you want now?’
John, staring at Elisha, struggled to tell him something more—struggled to say—all thatcould never be said. Yet: ‘I was down in the valley,’ he dared, ‘I was by myself down there. Iwon’t never forget. May God forget me if I forget.’
Then his mother and his father were before them. His mother smiled, and took Elisha’soutstretched hand.
‘Praise the Lord this morning,’ said Elisha. ‘He done give us something to praise Him for.’
‘Amen,’ said his mother, praise the Lord!’
John moved up to the short, stone step, smiling a little, looking down on them. His motherpassed him, and started into the house.
‘You better come on upstairs,’ she said, still smiling, ‘and take off them wet clothes. Don’twant you catching cold.’
And her smile remained unreadable; he could not tell what it hid. And to escape her eyes,he kissed her, saying; ‘Yes, Mama. I’m coming.’
She stood behind him, in the doorway, waiting.
‘Praise the Lord, Deacon,’ Elisha said. ‘See you at the morning service, Lord willing.’
‘Amen,’ said his father, ‘praise the Lord.’ He started up the stone steps, staring at John,who blocked the way. ‘Go on upstairs, boy,’ he said, ‘like your mother told you.’
John looked at his father and moved from his path, stepping down into the street again. Heput his hand on Elisha’s arm, feeling himself trembling, and his father at his back.
‘Elisha,’ he said, ‘no matter what happens to me, where I go, what folks say about me, nomatter what anybody says, you remember—please remember—I was saved. I was there.’
Elisha grinned, and looked up at his father.
‘He come through,’ cried Elisha, ‘didn’t he, Deacon Grimes? The Lord done laid him out,and turned him around and wrote his new name down in glory. Bless our God!’
And he kissed John on the forehead, a holy kiss.
‘Run on, little brother,’ Elisha said. ‘Don’t you get weary. God won’t forget you. Youwon’t forget.’
The he turned away, down the long avenue, home. John stood still, watching him walkaway. The sun had come full awake. It was waking the streets, and the houses, and crying at the windows. It fell over Elisha like a golden robe, and struck John’s forehead, where Elisha hadkissed him, like a seal ineffaceable for ever.
And he felt his father behind him. And he felt the March wind rise, striking through hisdamp clothes, against his salty body. He turned to face his father—he found himself smiling, buthis father did not smile.
They looked at each other a moment. His mother stood in the doorway, in the long shadowsof the hall.
‘I’m ready,’ John said, ‘I’m coming. I’m on my way.’
The End
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