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.