Doctor Copeland took down the white china dishes from the shelf and began to wrap them in a newspaper. ‘Have you enough pots and pans to cook all the food you will need?’
‘Plenty,’ Portia said. ‘I not going to any special trouble.
Granpapa, he Mr. Thoughtful hisself--and he always bring in something to help out when the fambly come to dinner. I only going to have plenty meal and cabbage and two pounds of nice mullet.’
‘Sounds good.’
Portia laced her nervous yellow fingers together. ‘There one thing I haven’t told you yet. A surprise. Buddy going to | be here as well as Hamilton. Buddy just come back from Mobile. He helping out on the farm now.’
‘It has been five years since I last saw Karl Marx.’
‘And that just what I come to ask you about,’ said Portia. ‘You remember when I walked in the door I told you I come to borrow and to ask a favor.’
Doctor Copeland cracked the points of his fingers. ‘Yes.’
‘Well, I come to see if I can’t get you to be there tomorrow at the reunion. All your childrens but Willie going to be there.
Seem to me like you ought to join us. I sure will be glad if you come.’
Hamilton and Karl Marx and Portia--and William. Doctor Copeland removed his spectacles and pressed his fingers against his eyelids. For a minute he saw the four of them very plainly as they were a long time ago. Then he looked up and straightened his glasses on his nose. Thank you,’ he said. ‘I will come.’
That night he sat alone by the stove in the dark room and remembered. He thought back to the time of his childhood.
His mother had been born a slave, and after freedom she was a washerwoman. His father was a preacher, who had once known John Brown. They had taught him, and out of the two or three dollars they had earned each week they saved. When he was seventeen years old they had sent him North with eighty dollars hidden in his shoe. He had worked in a blacksmith’s shop and as a waiter and as a bellboy in a hotel.
And all the while he studied and read and went to school. His father died and his mother did not live long without him. After ten years of struggle he was a doctor and he knew his mission and he came South again. He married and made a home. He went endlessly from house to house and spoke the mission and the truth. The hopeless suffering of his people made in him a madness, a wild and evil feeling of destruction. At times he drank strong liquor and beat his head against the floor. In his heart there was a savage violence, and once he grasped the poker from the hearth and struck down his wife. She took Hamilton, Karl Marx, William, and Portia with her to her father’s home. He wrestled in his spirit and fought down the evil blackness. But Daisy did not come back to him. And eight years later when she died his sons were not children any more and they did not return to him. He was left an old man in an empty house.
Promptly at five o’clock the next afternoon he arrived at the house where Portia and Highboy lived. They resided in the part of town called Sugar Hill, and the house was a narrow cottage with a porch and two rooms. From inside there was a babble of mixed voices. Doctor Copeland approached stiffly and stood in the doorway holding his shabby felt hat in his hand.
The room was crowded and at first he was not noticed. He sought the faces of Karl Marx and Hamilton. Besides them there was Grandpapa and two children who sat together on the floor. He was still looking into the faces of his sons when Portia perceived him standing in the door. ‘Here Father,’ she said.
The voices stopped. Grandpapa turned around in his chair. He was thin and bent and very wrinkled. He was wearing the same greenish-black suit that he had worn thirty years before at his daughter’s wedding. Across his vest there was a tarnished brass watch chain. Karl Marx and Hamilton looked at each other, then down at the floor, and finally at their father.
‘Benedict Mady--’ said the old man. ‘Been a long time. A real long time.’
‘Ain’t it, though!’ Portia said. ‘This here the first reunion us is all had in many a year. Highboy, you get a chair from the kitchen. Father, here Buddy and Hamilton.’ Doctor Copeland shook hands with his sons. They were both tall and strong and awkward. Against their blue shirts and overalls their skin had the same rich brown color as did Portia’s. They did not look him in the eye, and in their faces there was neither love nor hate. It sure is a pity everybody couldn’t come--Aunt Sara and Jim and all the rest,’ said Highboy. ‘But this here is a real pleasure to us.’
‘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.’