The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (18 page)

‘Wagon too full,’ said one of the children. ‘Us had to walk a long piece cause the wagon too full anyways.’

Grandpapa scratched Ms ear with a matchstick. ‘Somebody got to stay home.’

Nervously Portia licked her dark, thin lips. ‘It our Willie I thinking about. He were always a big one for any kind of party or to-do. My mind just won’t stay off our Willie.’

Through the room there was a quiet murmur of agreement.

The old man leaned back in his chair and waggled his head up and down. ‘Portia, Hon, supposing you reads to us a little while. The word of God sure do mean a lot in a time of trouble.’

Portia took up the Bible from the table in the center of the room. ‘What part you want to hear now, Grandpapa?’

‘It all the book of the Holy Lord. Just any place your eye fall on will do.’

Portia read from the Book of Luke. She read slowly, tracing the words with her long, limp finger. The room was still.

Doctor Copeland sat on the edge of the group, cracking his knuckles, his eyes wandering from one point to another. The room was very small, the air close and stuffy. The four walls were cluttered with calendars and crudely painted advertisements from magazines. On the mantel there was a vase of red paper roses. The fire on the hearth burned slowly and the wavering light from the oil lamp made shadows on the wall. Portia read with such slow rhythm that the words slept in Doctor Copeland’s ears and he was drowsy. Karl Marx lay sprawled upon the floor beside the children. Hamilton and Highboy dozed. Only the old man seemed to study the meaning of the words. Portia finished the chapter and closed the book. ‘I done pondered over this thing a many a time.’ said Grandpapa. The people in the room came out of their drowsiness. ‘What? ‘ asked Portia. ‘It this way. You recall them parts Jesus raising the dead and curing the sick? ‘ ‘Course we does, sir,’ said Highboy deferentially. ‘Many a day when I be plowing or working,’ Grandpapa said slowly, ‘I done thought and reasoned about the time when Jesus going to descend again to this earth. ‘Cause I done always wanted it so much it seem to me like it will be while I am living. I done studied about it many a time. And this here the way I done planned it. I reason I will get to stand before Jesus with all my childrens and grandchildrens and great grandchildrens and kinfolks and friends and I say to him, ‘Jesus Christ, us is all sad colored peoples. ‘And then he will place His holy hand upon our heads and straightway us will be white as cotton. That the plan and reasoning that been in my heart a many and a many a time.’

A hush fell on the room. Doctor Copeland jerked the cuff of his sleeves and cleared his throat. His pulse beat too fast and his throat was tight Sitting in the corner of the room he felt isolated and angry and alone.

‘Has any of you ever had a sign from Heaven?’ asked Grandpapa.

‘I has, sir,’ said Highboy. ‘Once when I were sick with the pneumonia I seen God’s face looking out the fireplace at me. It were a large white man’s face with a white beard and blue eyes.’

‘I seen a ghost,’ said one of the children--the girl ‘Once I seen--’ began the little boy.

Grandpapa held up his hand. ‘You childrens hush. You. Celia--and you, Whitman--it now the time for you to listen but not be heard,’ he said. ‘Only one time has I had a real sign.’

And this here the way it come about. It were in the summer of last year, and hot. I were trying to dig up the roots of that big oak stump near the hogpen and when I leaned down a kind of catch, a misery, come suddenly in the small of my back. I straightened up and then all around went dark. I were holding my hand to my back and looking up at the sky when suddenly I seen this little angel. It were a little white girl angel--look to me about the size of a field pea--with yellow hair and a white robe. Just flying around near the sun. After that I come in the house and prayed. I studied the Bible for three days before I went out in the field again.’

Doctor Copeland felt the old evil anger in him. The words rose inchoately to his throat and he could not speak them. They would listen to the old man. Yet to words of reason they would not attend. These are my people, he tried to tell himself--but because he was dumb this thought did not help him now. He sat tense and sullen.

‘It a queer thing,’ said Grandpapa suddenly. ‘Benedict Mady, you a fine doctor. How come I get them miseries sometime in the small of my back after I been digging and planting for a good while? How come that misery bother me?’

‘How old are you now?’

‘I somewhere between seventy and eighty year old.’

The old man loved medicine and treatment Always when he used to come in with his family to see Daisy he would have himself examined and take home medicine and salves for the whole group of them. But when Daisy left him the old man did not come anymore and he had to content himself with purges and kidney pills advertised in the newspapers. Now the old man was looking at him with timid eagerness.

‘Drink plenty of water,’ said Doctor Copeland. ‘And rest as much as you can.’

Portia went into the kitchen to prepare the supper. Warm smells began to fill the room. There was quiet, idle talking, but Doctor Copeland did not listen or speak. Now and then he looked at Karl Marx or Hamilton. Karl Marx talked about Joe Louis. Hamilton spoke mostly of the hail that had ruined some of the crops. When they caught their father’s eye they grinned and shuffled their feet on the floor. He kept staring at them with angry misery.

Doctor Copeland clamped his teeth down hard. He had thought so much about Hamilton and Karl Marx and William and Portia, about the real true purpose he had had for them, that the sight of their faces made a black swollen feeling in him. If once he could tell it all to them, from the far away beginning until this very night, the telling would ease the sharp ache in his heart. But they would not listen or understand.

He hardened himself so that each muscle in his body was rigid and strained. He did not listen or look at anything around him.

He sat in a corner like a man who is blind and dumb. Soon they went into the supper table and the old man said grace.

But Doctor Copeland did not eat. When Highboy brought out a pint ,bottle of gin, and they laughed and passed the bottle from mouth to mouth, he refused that also. He sat in rigid silence, and at last he picked up his hat and left the house without a farewell. If he could not speak the whole long truth no other word would come to him.

He lay tense and wakeful throughout the night. Then the next day was Sunday. He made half a dozen calls, and in the middle of the morning he went to Mr. Singer’s room. The visit blunted the feeling of loneliness in him so that when he said goodbye he was at peace with himself once more.

However, before he was out of the house this peace had left him. An accident occurred. As he started down the stairs he saw a white man carrying a large paper sack and he drew close to the banisters so that they could pass each other. But the white man was running up the steps two at a time, without looking, and they collided with such force that Doctor Copeland was left sick and breathless.

‘Christ! I didn’t see you.’

Doctor Copeland looked at him closely but made no answer.

He had seen this white man once before. He remembered the stunted, brutal-looking body and the huge, awkward hands. Then with sudden clinical interest he observed the white man’s face, for in his eyes he saw a strange, fixed, and withdrawn look of madness. ‘Sorry,’ said the white man. Doctor Copeland put his hand on the banister and passed on.

WHO was that?’ Jake Blount asked. ‘Who was the tall, thin colored man that just come out of here? ‘ The small room was very neat. The sun lighted a bowl of purple grapes on the table. Singer sat with his chair tilted back and his hands in his pockets, looking out of the window. ‘I bumped into him on the steps and he gave me this look--why, I never had anybody to look at me so dirty.’ Jake put the sack of ales down on the table. He realized with a shock that Singer did not know he was in the room. He walked over to the window and touched Singer on the shoulder.

‘I didn’t mean to bump into him. He had no cause to act like that.’

Jake shivered. Although the sun was bright there was a chill in the room. Singer held up his forefinger and went into the hall.

When he returned he brought with him a scuttle of coal and some kindling. Jake watched him kneel before the hearth.

Neatly he broke the sticks of kindling over his knee and arranged them on the foundation of paper. He put the coal on according to a system. At first the fire would not draw. The flames quivered weakly and were smothered by a black roll of smoke. Singer covered the grate with a double sheet of newspapers. The draught gave the fire new life. In the room there was a roaring sound. The paper glowed and was sucked inward. A crackling orange sheet of flame filled the grate.

The first morning ale had a fine mellow taste. Jake gulped his share down quickly and wiped his mouth with file back of his hand.

There was this lady I knew a long time ago,’ he said. ‘You sort of remind me of her, Miss Clara. She had a little farm in Texas. And made pralines to sell in the cities. She was a tall, big, fine-looking lady. Wore those long, baggy sweaters and clodhopper shoes and a man’s hat. Her husband was dead when I knew her. But what I’m getting at is this: If it hadn’t been for her I might never have known. I might have gone on through life like the millions of others who don’t know. I would have just been a preacher or a linthead or a salesman.

My whole life might have been wasted.’

Jake shook his head wonderingly.

To understand you got to know what went before. You see, I lived in Gastonia when I was a youngun. I was a knock-kneed little runt, too small to put in the mill. I worked as pin boy in a bowling joint and got meals for pay. Then I heard a smart, quick boy could make thirty cents a day stringing tobacco not very far from there. So I went and made that thirty cents a day.

That was when I was ten years old. I just left my folks. I didn’t write. They were glad I was gone. You understand how those things are. And besides, nobody could read a letter but my sister.’

He waved his hand in the air as though brushing something from his face. ‘But I mean this. My first belief was Jesus.

There was this fellow working in the same shed with me. He had a tabernacle and preached every night. I went and listened and I got this faith. My mind was on Jesus all day long. In my spare time I studied the Bible and prayed. Then one night I took a hammer and laid my hand on the table. I was angry and I drove the nail all the way through. My hand was nailed to the table and I looked at it and the fingers fluttered and turned blue.’

Jake held out his palm and pointed to the ragged, dead-white scar in the center.

‘I wanted to be an evangelist. I meant to travel around the country preaching and holding revivals. In the meantime I moved around from one place to another, and when I was nearly twenty I got to Texas. I worked in a pecan grove near where Miss Clara lived. I got to know her and at night sometimes I would go to her house. She talked to me.

Understand, I didn’t begin to know all at once. That’s not the way it happens to any of us. It was gradual. I began to read. I would work just so I could put aside enough money to knock off for a while and study. It was like being born a second time.

Just us who know can understand what it means. We have opened our eyes and have seen. We’re like people from way off yonder somewhere.’

Singer agreed with him. The room was comfortable in a homey way. Singer brought out from the closet the tin box in which he kept crackers and fruit and cheese. He selected an orange and peeled it slowly. He pulled off shreds ‘ of pith until the fruit was transparent in the sun. He sectioned the orange and divided the plugs between them. Jake ate two sections at a time and with a loud whoosh spat the seeds into the fire. Singer ate his share slowly and deposited his seeds neatly in the palm of one hand. They opened two more ales.

‘And how many of us are there in this country? Maybe ten thousand. Maybe twenty thousand. Maybe a lot more. I been to a lot of places but I never met but a few of us. But say a man does know. He sees the world as it is and he looks back thousands of years to see how it all come about.

He watched the slow agglutination of capital and power and he sees its pinnacle today. He sees America as a crazy house.

He sees how men have to rob their brothers in order to live.

He sees children starving and women working sixty hours a week to get to eat. He sees a whole damn army of unemployed and billions of dollars and thousands of miles of land wasted.

He sees war coming. He sees how when people suffer just so much they get mean and ugly and something dies in them. But the main thing he sees is that the whole system of the world is built on a lie. And although it’s as plain as the shining sun--the don’t--knows have lived with that lie so long they just can’t see it.’

The red corded vein in Jake’s forehead swelled angrily. He grasped the scuttle on the hearth and rattled an avalanche of coal on the fire. His foot had gone to sleep, and he stamped it so hard that the floor shook.

‘I been all over this place. I walk around. I talk. I try to explain to them. But what good does it do? Lord God!’ He gazed into the fire, and a flush from the ale and heat deepened the color of his face. The sleepy tingling in his foot spread up his leg. He drowsed and saw the colors of the fire, the tints of green and blue and burning yellow. ‘You’re the only one,’ he said dreamily. ‘The only one.’

He was a stranger no longer. By now he knew every street, every alley, every fence in all the sprawling slums of the town.

He still worked at the Sunny Dixie. During the fall the show moved from one vacant lot to another, staying always within the fringes of the city limit, until at last it had encircled the town. The locations were changed but the settings were alike--a strip of wasteland bordered by rows of rotted shacks, and somewhere near a mill, a cotton gin, or a bottling plant. The crowd was the same, for the most part factory workers and Negroes. The show was gaudy with colored lights in the evening. The wooden horses of the flying-jinny revolved in the circle to the mechanical music. The swings whirled, the rail around the penny throwing game was always crowded.