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Many times Doctor Copeland talked to Mr. Singer. Truly he was not like other white men. He was a wise man, and he understood the strong, true purpose in a way that other white men could not. He listened, and in his face there was something gentle and Jewish, the knowledge of one who belongs to a race that is oppressed. On one occasion he took Mr. Singer with him on his rounds. He led him through cold, narrow passages smelling of dirt and sickness and fried fatback. He showed him a successful skin graft made on the face of a woman patient who had been severely burned. He treated a syphilitic child and pointed out to Mr. Singer the scaling eruption on the palms of the hand, the dull, opaque surface of the eye, the sloping upper front incisors. They visited two-room shacks that house as many as twelve or fourteen persons. In a room where the fire burned low and orange on the hearth they were helpless while an old man strangled with pneumonia. Mr. Singer walked behind him and watched and understood. He gave nickels to the children, and because of his quietness and decorum he did not disturb the patients as would have another visitor.

The days were chilly and treacherous. In the town there was an outbreak of influenza so that Doctor Copeland was busy most of the hours of the day and night. He drove through the Negro sections of the town in the high Dodge automobile he had used for the past nine years. He kept the isinglass curtains snapped to the windows to cut off the draughts, and tight around his neck he wore his gray wool shawl. During this time he did not see Portia or William or Highboy, but often he thought of them. Once when he was away Portia came to see him and left a note and borrowed half a sack of meal.

There came a night when he was so exhausted that, although there were other calls to make, he drank hot milk and went to bed. He was cold and feverish so that at first he could not rest. Then it seemed that he had only begun to sleep when a voice called him. He got up wearily and, still in his long flannel nightshirt, he opened the front door. It was Portia.

‘The Lord Jesus help us, Father,’ she said.

Doctor Copeland stood shivering with his nightshirt drawn close around his waist. He held his hand to his throat and looked at her and waited.

‘It about our Willie. He been a bad boy and done got hisself in mighty bad trouble. And us got to do something.’

Doctor Copeland walked from the hall with rigid steps. He stopped in the bedroom for his bathrobe, shawl, and slippers and went back to the kitchen. Portia was waiting for him there. The kitchen was lifeless and cold.

‘All right. What has he done? What is it?’

‘Just wait a minute. Just let me find brain room so I can study it all out and tell it to you plain.’

He crushed some sheets of newspaper lying on the hearth and picked up a few sticks of kindling.

‘Let me make the fire,’ Portia said. ‘You just sit down at the table, and soon as this here stove is hot us going to have a cup of coffee. Then maybe it all won’t seem so bad.’

‘There is not any coffee. I used the last of it yesterday.’

When he said this Portia began to cry. Savagely she stuffed paper and wood into the stove and lighted it with a trembling hand. ‘This here the way it is,’ she said. ‘Willie and Highboy were messing around tonight at a place where they got no business being. You know how I feels like I always got to keep my Willie and my Highboy close to me? Well, if I’d been there none of this trouble would of come about. But I were at the Ladies’ Meeting at the church and them boys got restless. They went down to Madame Reba’s Palace of Sweet Pleasure. And Father, that is sure one bad, wicked place. They got a man sells tickets on the bug—but they also got these strutting, bad-blood, tail-shaking nigger gals and these here red satin curtains and——’

‘Daughter,’ said Doctor Copeland irritably. He pressed his hands to the sides of his head. ‘I know the place. Get to the point.’

‘Love Jones were there—and she is one bad colored gal. Willie he drunk liquor and shimmied around with her until first thing you know he were in a fight. He were in a fight with this boy named Junebug—over Love. And for a while they fights there with their hands and then this Junebug got out his knife. Our Willie didn’t have no knife, so he commenced to bellow and run around the parlor. Then finally Highboy found Willie a razor and he backed up and nearbout cut this Junebug’s head off.’

Doctor Copeland drew his shawl closer around him. ‘Is he dead?’

‘That boy too mean to die. He in the hospital, but he going to be out and making trouble again before long.’

‘And William?’

‘The police come in and taken him to the jail in the Black Maria. He still locked up.’

‘And he did not get hurt?’

‘Oh, he got a busted eye and a little chunk cut out his behind. But it won’t bother him none. What I can’t understand is how come he would be messing around with that Love. She at least ten shades blacker than I is and she the ugliest nigger I ever seen. She walk like she have a egg between her legs and don’t want to break it. She ain’t even clean. And here Willie done cut the buck like this over her.’

Doctor Copeland leaned close to the stove and groaned. He coughed and his face stiffened. He held his paper handkerchief to his mouth and it became spotted with blood. The dark skin of his face took on a greenish pallor.

‘Course Highboy come and tell me soon as it all happened. Understand, my Highboy didn’t have nothing to do with these here bad gals. He were just keeping Willie company. He so grieved about Willie he been sitting out on the street curb front of the jail ever since.’ The fire-colored tears rolled down Portia’s face. ‘You know how us three has always been. Us haves our own plan and nothing ever went wrong with it before. Even money hasn’t bothered us none. Highboy he pay the rent and I buys the food and Willie he takes care Saturday Night. Us has always been like three-piece twinses.’

At last it was morning. The mill whistles blew for the first shift. The sun came out and brightened the clean saucepans hanging on the wall above the stove. They sat for a long time. Portia pulled at the rings on her ears until her lobes were irritated and purplish red. Doctor Copeland still held his head in his hands.

‘Seem to me,’ Portia said finally, ‘if us can just get a lot of white peoples to write letters about Willie it might help out some. I already been to see Mr. Brannon. He written exactly what I told him to. He were at his café after it all happened like he is ever night. So I just went in there and explained how it was. I taken the letter home with me. I done put it in the Bible so I won’t lose it or dirty it.’

‘What did the letter say?’

‘Mr. Brannon he wrote just like I asked him to. The letter tell about how Willie has been working for Mr. Brannon going on three year. It tell how Willie is one fine upstanding colored boy and how he hasn’t ever been in no trouble before now. It tell how he always had plenty chances to take things in the café if he were like some other type of colored boy and how——’

‘Pshaw!’ said Doctor Copeland. ‘All that is no good.’

‘Us just can’t sit around and wait. With Willie locked up in the jail. My Willie, who is such a sweet boy even if he did do wrong tonight. Us just can’t sit around and wait.’

‘We will have to. That is the only thing we can do.’

‘Well, I know I ain’t.’

Portia got up from the chair. Her eyes roved distractedly around the room as though searching for something. Then abruptly she went toward the front door.

‘Wait a minute,’ said Doctor Copeland. ‘Where do you intend to go now?’

‘I got to work. I sure got to keep my job. I sure have to stay on with Mrs. Kelly and get my pay ever week.’

‘I want to go to the jail,’ said Doctor Copeland. ‘Maybe I can see William.’

‘I going to drop by the jail on my way to work. I got to send Highboy off to his work, too—else he liable to sit there grieving about Willie all the morning.’

Doctor Copeland dressed hurriedly and joined Portia in the hall. They went out into the cool, blue autumn morning. The men at the jail were rude to them and they were able to find out very little. Doctor Copeland then went to consult a lawyer with whom he had had dealings before. The following days were long and full of worried thoughts. At the end of three weeks the trial for William was held and he was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon. He was sentenced to nine months of hard labor and sent immediately to a prison in the northern part of the state.

* * *

Even now the strong true purpose was always in him, but he had no time in which to think on it. He went from one house to another and the work was unending. Very early in the morning he drove off in the automobile, and then at eleven o’clock the patients came to the office. After the sharp autumn air outside there would be a hot, stale odor in the house that made him cough. The benches in the hall were always full of sick and patient Negroes who waited for him, and sometimes even the front porch and his bedroom would be crowded. All the day and frequently half the night there was work. Because of the tiredness in him he wanted sometimes to lie down on the floor and beat with his fists and cry. If he could rest he might get well. He had tuberculosis of the lungs, and he measured his temperature four times a day and had an X-ray once a month. But he could not rest. For there was another thing bigger than the tiredness—and this was the strong true purpose.

He would think of this purpose until sometimes, after a long day and night of work, he would become blank so that he would forget for a minute just what the purpose was. And then it would come to him again and he would be restless and eager to take on a new task. But the words often stuck in his mouth, and his voice now was hoarse and not loud as it had been before. He pushed the words into the sick and patient faces of the Negroes who were his people.

Often he talked to Mr. Singer. With him he spoke of chemistry and the enigma of the universe. Of the infinitesimal sperm and the cleavage of the ripened egg. Of the complex million-fold division of the cells. Of the mystery of living matter and the simplicity of death. And also he spoke with him of race.

‘My people were brought from the great plains, and the dark, green jungles,’ he said once to Mr. Singer. ‘On the long chained journeys to the coast they died by the thousands. Only the strong survived. Chained in the foul ships that brought them here they died again. Only the hardy Negroes with will could live. Beaten and chained and sold on the block, the least of these strong ones perished again. And finally through the bitter years the strongest of my people are still here. Their sons and daughters, their grandsons and great grandsons.’

* * *

‘I come to borrow and I come to ask a favor,’ Portia said.

Doctor Copeland was alone in his kitchen when she walked through the hall and stood in the doorway to tell him this. Two weeks had passed since William had been sent away. Portia was changed. Her hair was not oiled and combed as usual, her eyes were bloodshot as though she had partaken of strong drink. Her cheeks were hollow, and with her sorrowful, honey-colored face she truly resembled her mother now.

‘You know them nice white plates and cups you have?’

‘You may have them and keep them.’

‘No, I only wants to borrow. And also I come here to ask a favor of you.’

‘Anything you wish,’ said Doctor Copeland.

Portia sat down across the table from her father. ‘First I suppose I better explain. Yesdiddy I got this here message from Grandpapa saying they all are coming in tomorrow and spend the night and part of Sunday with us. Course they been mighty worried about Willie, and Grandpapa feel like us all ought to get together again. He right, too. I sure do want to see our kinfolks again. I been mighty homesick since Willie been gone.’

‘You may have the plates and anything else you can find around here,’ Doctor Copeland said. ‘But hold up your shoulders, Daughter. Your carriage is bad.’

‘It going to be a real reunion. You know this the first time Grandpapa have spent the night in town for twenty years. He haven’t ever slept outside of his own home except two times in his whole life. And anyway he kind of nervous at night. All during the dark he have to get up and drink water and be sure the childrens is covered up all right. I a little worried about if Grandpapa will be comfortable here.’

‘Anything of mine you think you will need——’

‘Course Lee Jackson bringing them in,’ said Portia. ‘And with Lee Jackson it going to take them all day to get here. I not expecting them till around supper-time. Course Grandpapa always so patient with Lee Jackson he wouldn’t make him hurry none.’

‘My soul! Is that old mule still alive? He must be fully eighteen years old.’

‘He even older than that. Grandpapa been working him now for twenty years. He done had that mule so long he always say it just like Lee Jackson is one of his blood kin. He understand and love Lee Jackson like he do his own grandchildrens. I never seen a human who know so good what a animal is thinking as Grandpapa. He haves a close feeling for everthing that walks and eats.’

‘Twenty years is a long time to work a mule.’

‘It sure is. Now Lee Jackson is right feeble. But Grandpapa sure do take good care of him. When they plows out in the hot sun Lee Jackson haves a great big straw hat on his head just like Grandpapa—with holes cut for his ears. That mule’s straw hat is a real joke, and Lee Jackson won’t budge a step when he going to plow without that hat is on his head.’

Doctor Copeland took down the white china dishes from the shelf and began to wrap them in 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. Grandpapa, 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 joints 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. And 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 everbody 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 his 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 about 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 an 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 cuffs 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 hog-pen 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 good-bye 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.