I might well have waited until the end of the services, for I hadn't gone far when I heard the dim, bright notes of the orchestra striking up a march, followed by a burst of voices as the students filed out into the night. With a feeling of dread I headed for the administration building, and upon reaching it, stood in the darkened doorway. My mind fluttered like the moths that veiled the street lamp which cast shadows upon the bank of grass below me. I would now have my real interview with Dr. Bledsoe, and I recalled Barbee's address with resentment. With such words fresh in his mind, I was sure Dr. Bledsoe would be far less sympathetic to my plea. I stood in that darkened doorway trying to probe my future if I were expelled. Where would I go, what would I do? How could I ever return home?
Chapter 6
Down the sloping lawn below me the male students moved toward their dormitories, seeming far away from me now, remote, and each shadowy form vastly superior to me, who had by some shortcoming cast myself into the darkness away from all that was worthwhile and inspiring. I listened to one group harmonize quietly as they passed. The smell of fresh bread being prepared in the bakery drifted to me. The good white bread of breakfast; the rolls dripping with yellow butter that I had slipped into my pocket so often to be munched later in my room with wild blackberry jam from home.
Lights began to appear in the girls' dormitories, like the bursting of luminous seeds flung broadside by an invisible hand. Several cars rolled by. I saw a group of old women who lived in the town approaching. One used a cane which from time to time she tapped hollowly upon the walk like a blind man. Snatches of their conversation fluttered to me as they discussed Barbee's talk with enthusiasm, recalled the times of the Founder, their quavering voices weaving and embroidering his story. Then down the long avenue of trees I saw the familiar Cadillac approaching and started inside the building, suddenly filled with panic. I hadn't gone two steps before I turned and hurried out into the night again. I couldn't stand to face Dr. Bledsoe immediately. I was fairly shivering as I fell in behind a group of boys going up the drive. They were arguing some point heatedly, but I was too agitated to listen and simply followed in their shadows, noticing the dull gleam of their polished shoe-leather in the rays of the street lamps. I kept trying to formulate what I would say to Dr. Bledsoe, and the boys must have turned into their building, for suddenly finding myself outside the gates of the campus and heading down the highway, I turned and ran back to the building.
When I went in he was wiping his neck with a blue-bordered handkerchief. The shaded lamp catching the lenses of his glasses left half of his broad face in shadow as his clenched fists stretched full forth in the light before him. I stood, hesitating in the door, aware suddenly of the old heavy furnishings, the relics from the times of the Founder, the framed portrait photographs and relief plaques of presidents and industrialists, men of power-fixed like trophies or heraldic emblems upon the walls.
"Come in," he said from the half-shadow; then I saw him move and his head coming forward, his eyes burning.
He began mildly, as if quietly joking, throwing me off balance.
"Boy," he said, "I understand that you not only carried Mr. Norton out to the Quarters but that you wound up at that sinkhole, that Golden Day."
It was a statement, not a question. I said nothing and he looked at me with the same mild gaze. Had Barbee helped Mr. Norton soften him?
"No," he said, "it wasn't enough to take him to the Quarters, you had to make the complete tour, to give him the full treatment. Was that it?"
"No, sir... I mean that he was ill, sir," I said. "He had to have some whiskey..."
"And that was the only place you knew to go," he said. "So you went there because you were taking care of him..."
"Yes, sir..."
"And not only that," he said in a voice that both mocked and marveled, "you took him out and sat him down on the gallery, veranda -- piazza -- whatever they call it now'days -- and introduced him to the quality!"
"Quality?" I frowned. "Oh -- but he insisted that I stop, sir. There was nothing I could do..."
"Of course," he said. "Of course."
"He was interested in the cabins, sir. He was surprised that there were any left."
"So naturally you stopped," he said, bowing his head again.
"Yes, sir."
"Yes, and I suppose the cabin opened up and told him its life history and all the choice gossip?"
I started to explain.
"Boy!" he exploded. "Are you serious? Why were you out on that road in the first place? Weren't you behind the wheel?"
"Yes, sir..."
"Then haven't we bowed and scraped and begged and lied enough decent homes and drives for you to show him? Did you think that white man had to come a thousand miles -- all the way from New York and Boston and Philadelphia just for you to show him a slum? Don't just stand there, say something!"
"But I was only driving him, sir. I only stopped there after he ordered me to..."
"Ordered you?" he said. "He ordered you. Dammit, white folk are always giving orders, it's a habit with them. Why didn't you make an excuse? Couldn't you say they had sickness -- smallpox -- or picked another cabin? Why that Trueblood shack? My God, boy! You're black and living in the South -- did you forget how to lie?"
"Lie, sir? Lie to him, lie to a trustee, sir? Me?"
He shook his head with a kind of anguish. "And me thinking I'd picked a boy with brain," he said. "Didn't you know you were endangering the school?"
"But I was only trying to please him..."
"Please him? And here you are a junior in college! Why, the dumbest black bastard in the cotton patch knows that the only way to please a white man is to tell him a lie! What kind of education are you getting around here? Who really told you to take him out there?" he said.
"He did, sir. No one else."
"Don't lie to me!"
"That's the truth, sir."
"I warn you now, who suggested it?"
"I swear, sir. No one told me."
"Nigger, this isn't the time to lie. I'm no white man. Tell me the truth!"
It was as though he'd struck me. I stared across the desk thinking, He called me that ...
"Answer me, boy!"
That, I thought, noticing the throbbing of a vein that rose between his eyes, thinking, He called me that.
"I wouldn't lie, sir," I said.
"Then who was that patient you were talking with?"
"I never saw him before, sir."
"What was he saying?"
"I can't recall it all," I muttered. "The man was raving."
"Speak up. What did he say?"
"He thinks that he lived in France and that he's a great doctor..."
"Continue."
"He said that I believed that white was right," I said.
"What?" Suddenly his face twitched and cracked like the surface of dark water. "And you do, don't you?" Dr. Bledsoe said, suppressing a nasty laugh. "Well, don't you?"
I did not answer, thinking, You, you...
"Who was he, did you ever see him before?"
"No, sir, I hadn't."
"Was he northern or southern?"
"I don't know, sir."
He struck his desk. "College for Negroes! Boy, what do you know other than how to ruin an institution in half an hour that it took over half a hundred years to build? Did he talk northern or southern?"
"He talked like a white man," I said, "except that his voice sounded southern, like one of ours..."
"I'll have to investigate him," he said. "A Negro like that should be under lock and key."
Across the campus a clock struck the quarter hour and something inside me seemed to muffle its sound. I turned to him desperately. "Dr. Bledsoe, I'm awfully sorry. I had no intention of going there but things just got out of hand. Mr. Norton understands how it happened..."