With this success I was pushed forward at a dizzy pace. My name spread like smoke in an airless room. I was kept moving all over the place. Speeches here, there, everywhere, uptown and down. I wrote newspaper articles, led parades and relief delegations, and so on. And the Brotherhood was going out of its way to make my name prominent. Articles, telegrams and many mailings went out over my signature -- some of which I'd written, but most not. I was publicized, identified with the organization both by word and image in the press. On the way to work one late spring morning I counted fifty greetings from people I didn't know, becoming aware that there were two of me: the old self that slept a few hours a night and dreamed sometimes of my grandfather and Bledsoe and Brockway and Mary, the self that flew without wings and plunged from great heights; and the new public self that spoke for the Brotherhood and was becoming so much more important than the other that I seemed to run a foot race against myself.
Still, I liked my work during those days of certainty. I kept my eyes wide and ears alert. The Brotherhood was a world within a world and I was determined to discover all its secrets and to advance as far as I could. I saw no limits, it was the one organization in the whole country in which I could reach the very top and I meant to get there. Even if it meant climbing a mountain of words. For now I had begun to believe, despite all the talk of science around me, that there was a magic in spoken words. Sometimes I sat watching the watery play of light upon Douglass' portrait, thinking how magical it was that he had talked his way from slavery to a government ministry, and so swiftly. Perhaps, I thought, something of the kind is happening to me. Douglass came north to escape and find work in the shipyards; a big fellow in a sailor's suit who, like me, had taken another name. What had his true name been? Whatever it was, it was as Douglass that he became himself, defined himself. And not as a boatwright as he'd expected, but as an orator. Perhaps the sense of magic lay in the unexpected transformations. "You start Saul, and end up Paul," my grandfather had often said. "When you're a youngun, you Saul, but let life whup your head a bit and you starts to trying to be Paul -- though you still Sauls around on the side."
No, you could never tell where you were going, that was a sure thing. The only sure thing. Nor could you tell how you'd get there -- though when you arrived it was somehow right. For hadn't I started out with a speech, and hadn't it been a speech that won my scholarship to college, where I had expected speechmaking to win me a place with Bledsoe and launch me finally as a national leader? Well, I had made a speech, and it had made me a leader, only not the kind I had expected. So that was the way it was. And no complaints, I thought, looking at the map; you started looking for red men and you found them -- even though of a different tribe and in a bright new world. The world was strange if you stopped to think about it; still it was a world that could be controlled by science, and the Brotherhood had both science and history under control.
Thus for one lone stretch of time I lived with the intensity displayed by those chronic numbers players who see clues to their fortune in the most minute and insignificant phenomena: in clouds, on passing trucks and subway cars, in dreams, comic strips, the shape of dog-luck fouled on the pavements. I was dominated by the all-embracing idea of Brotherhood. The organization had given the world a new shape, and me a vital role. We recognized no loose ends, everything could be controlled by our science. Life was all pattern and discipline; and the beauty of discipline is when it works. And it was working very well.
Chapter 18
Only my Bledsoe-trustee inspired compulsion to read all papers that touched my hands prevented me from throwing the envelope aside. It was unstamped and appeared to be the least important item in the morning's maiclass="underline"
Brother,
This is advice from a friend who has been watching you closely. Do not go too fast. Keep working for the people but remember that you are one of us and do not forget if you get too big they will cut you down. You are from the South and you know that this is a white man's world. So take a friendly advice and go easy so that you can keep on helping the colored people. They do not want you to go too fast and will cut you down if you do. Be smart...
I shot to my feet, the paper rattling poisonously in my hands. What did it mean? Who'd send such a thing?
"Brother Tarp!" I called, reading again the wavery lines of a handwriting that was somehow familiar. "Brother Tarp!"
"What is it, son?"
And looking up, I received another shock. Framed there in the gray, early morning light of the door, my grandfather seemed to look from his eyes. I gave a quick gasp, then there was a silence in which I could hear his wheezing breath as he eyed me unperturbed.
"What's wrong?" he said, limping into the room.
I reached for the envelope. "Where did this come from?" I said.
"What is it?" he said, taking it calmly from my hands.
"It's unstamped."
"Oh, yes -- I saw it myself," he said. "I reckon somebody put it in the box late last night. I took it out with the regular mail. Is it something that wasn't for you?"
"No," I said, avoiding his eyes. "But -- it isn't dated. I was wondering when it arrived -- Why are you staring at me?"
"Because looks to me like you seen a ghost. You feel sick?"
"It's nothing," I said. "Just a slight upset."
There was an awkward silence. He stood there and I forced myself to look at his eyes again, finding my grandfather gone, leaving only the searching calm. I said, "Sit down a second, Brother Tarp. Since you're here I'd like to ask you a question."
"Sure," he said, dropping into a chair. "Go 'head."
"Brother Tarp, you get around and know the members -- how do they really feel about me?"
He cocked his head. "Why, sure -- they think you're going to make a real leader --"
"But?"
"Ain't no buts, that's what they think and I don't mind telling you."
"But what about the others?"
"What others?"
"The ones who don't think so much of me?"
"Them's the ones I haven't heard about, son."
"But I must have some enemies," I said.
"Sure, I guess everybody has 'em, but I never heard of anybody here in the Brotherhood not liking you. As far as folks up here is concerned they think you're it. You heard any different?"
"No, but I was wondering. I've been going along taking them so much for granted that I thought I'd better check so that I can keep their support."
"Well, you don't have to worry. So far, nearly everything you had anything to do with has turned out to be what the folks like, even things some of 'em resisted. Take that there," he said, pointing to the wall near my desk.
It was a symbolic poster of a group of heroic figures: An American Indian couple, representing the dispossessed past; a blond brother (in overalls) and a leading Irish sister, representing the dispossessed present; and Brother Tod Clifton and a young white couple (it had been felt unwise simply to show Clifton and the girl) surrounded by a group of children of mixed races, representing the future, a color photograph of bright skin texture and smooth contrast.