Heart Is a Lonely Hunter Part 5

Dialectic materialism--Jesuitical prevarication'--Jake rolled the syllables in his mouth with loving solemnity--'teleological propensity.'

The mute wiped his forehead with a neatly folded handkerchief.

'But what I'm getting at is this. When a person knows and can't make the others understand, what does he do?'

Singer reached for a winegla.s.s, filled it to the brim, and put it firmly into Jake's bruised hand. 'Get drunk, huh?' Jake said with a jerk of his arm that spilled drops of wine on his white trousers. 'But listen! Wherever you look there's meanness and corruption. This room, this bottle of grape wine, these fruits in the basket, are all products of profit and loss. A fellow can't live without giving his pa.s.sive acceptance to meanness.

Somebody wears his tail to a frazzle for every mouthful we eat and every st.i.tch we wear--and n.o.body seems to know.

Everybody is blind, dumb, and blunt-headed--stupid and mean.'

Jake pressed his fists to his temples. His thoughts had careened in several directions and he could not get control of them. He wanted to go berserk. He wanted to get out and fight violently with someone in a crowded street.

Still looking at him with patient interest, the mute took out his silver pencil. He wrote very carefully on a slip of paper, Are you Democrat or Republican? and pa.s.sed the paper across the table. Jake crumpled it in his hand. The room had begun to turn around him again and he could not even read.

He kept his eyes on the mute's face to steady himself. Singer's eyes were the only things in the room that did not seem to move. They were varied in color, flecked with amber, gray, and a soft brown. He stared at them so long that he almost hypnotized himself. He lost the urge to be riotous and felt calm again. The eyes seemed to understand all that he had meant to say and to hold some message for him. After a while the room was steady again.

'You get it,' he said in a blurred voice. 'You know what I mean.'

From afar off there was the soft, silver ring of church bells.

The moonlight was white on the roof next door and the sky was a gentle summer blue. It was agreed without words that Jake would stay with Singer a few days until he found a room.

When the wine was finished the mute put a mattress on the floor beside the bed. Without removing any of his clothes Jake lay down and was instantly asleep.

FAR from the main street, in one of the Negro sections of the town, Doctor Benedict Mady Copeland sat in his dark kitchen alone. It was past nine o'clock and the Sunday bells were silent now. Although the night was very hot, there was a small fire in the round-bellied wood stove. Doctor Copeland sat close to it, leaning forward in a straight-backed kitchen chair with his head cupped in his long, slender hands. The red glow from the c.h.i.n.ks of the stove shone on his face--in this light his heavy lips looked almost purple against his black skin, and his gray hair, tight against his skull like a cap of lamb's wool, took on a bluish color also. He sat motionless in this position for a long time. Even his eyes, which stared from behind the silver rims of his spectacles, did not change their fixed, somber gaze. Then he cleared his throat harshly, and picked up a book from the floor beside his chair. All around him the room was very dark, and he had to hold the book close to the stove to make out the print. Tonight he read Spinoza. He did not wholly understand the intricate play of ideas and the complex phrases, but as he read he sensed a strong, true purpose behind the words and he felt that he almost understood.

Often at night the sharp jangle of the doorbell would rouse him from his silence, and in the front room he would find a patient with a broken bone or with a razor wound. But this evening he was not disturbed. And after the solitary hours spent sitting in the dark kitchen it happened that he began swaying slowly from side to side and from his throat there came a sound like a kind of singing moan. He was making this sound when Portia came.

Doctor Copeland knew of her arrival in advance. From the street outside he caught the sound of an harmonica playing a blues song and he knew that the music was played by William, his son. Without turning on the light he went through the hall and opened the front door. He did not step out on the porch, but stood in the dark behind the screen. The moonlight was bright and the shadows of Portia and William and Highboy lay black and solid on the dusty street. The houses in the neighborhood had a miserable look. Doctor Copeland's house was different from any other building nearby. It was built solidly of brick and stucco.

Around the small front yard there was a picket fence. Portia said goodbye to her husband and brother at the gate and knocked on the screen door.

'How come you sit here in the dark like this?'

They went together through the dark hall back to the kitchen.

'You haves grand electric lights. It don't seem natural why you all the time sitting in the dark like this.'

Doctor Copeland twisted the bulb suspended over the table and the room was suddenly very bright. 'The dark suits me,' he said.

The room was clean and bare. On one side of the kitchen table there were books and an inkstand--on the other side a fork, spoon, and plate. Doctor Copeland held himself bolt upright with his long legs crossed and at first Portia sat stiffly, too.

The father and daughter had a strong resemblance to each other--both of them had the same broad, flat noses, the same mouths and foreheads. But Portia's skin was very light when compared to her Father's.

'It sure is roasting in here,' she said. 'Seems to me you would let this here fire die down except when you cooking.'

'If you prefer we can go up to my office,' Doctor Copeland said.

'I be all right, I guess. I don't prefer.'

Doctor Copeland adjusted his silver-rimmed gla.s.ses and then folded his hands in his lap. 'How have you been since we were last together? You and your husband--and your brother?'

Portia relaxed and slipped her feet out of her pumps. 'Highboy and Willie and me gets along just fine.'

'William still boards with you?'

'Sure he do,' Portia said. 'You see--us haves our own way of living and our own plan. Highboy--he pay the rent. I buys all the food out of my money. And Willie--he tends to all of our church dues, insurance, lodge dues, and Sat.u.r.day Night. Us three haves our own plan and each one of us does our parts.' Doctor Copeland sat with his head bowed, pulling at his long fingers until he had cracked all of his joints. The clean cuffs of his sleeves hung down past his wrists--below them his thin hands seemed lighter in color than the rest of his body and the palms were soft yellow. His hands had always an immaculate, shrunken look, as though they had been scrubbed with a brush and soaked for a long time in a pan of water.

'Here, I almost forgot what I brought,' Portia said. 'Haves you had your supper yet?'

Doctor Copeland always spoke so carefully that each syllable seemed to be filtered through his sullen, heavy lips. 'No, I have not eaten.'

Portia opened a paper sack she had placed on the kitchen table. 'I done brought a nice mess of collard greens and I thought maybe we have supper together. I done brought a piece of side meat, too. These here greens need to be seasoned with that. You don't care if the collards is just cooked in meat, do you?'

'It does not matter.'

'You still don't eat nair meat?'

'No. For purely private reasons I am a vegetarian, but it does not matter if you wish to cook the collards with a piece of meat' Without putting on her shoes Portia stood at the table and carefully began to pick over the greens. This here floor sure do feel good to my feets. You mind if I just walk around like this without putting back on them tight, hurting pumps?'

'No,' said Doctor Copeland. 'That will be all right'

'Then--us'll have these nice collards and some hoecake and coffee. And I, going to cut me off a few slices of this here white meat and fry it for myself.'

Doctor Copeland followed Portia with his eyes. She moved slowly around the room in her stockinged feet, taking down the scrubbed pans from the wall, building up the fire, washing the grit from the collards. He opened his mouth to speak once and then composed his lips again.

'So you and your husband and your brother have your own cooperative plan,' he said finally.

'That's right.'

Doctor Copeland jerked at his fingers and tried to pop the joints again. 'Do you intend to plan for children?'

Portia did not look at her father. Angrily she sloshed the water from the pan of collards. 'There be some things,' she said, 'that seem to me to depend entirely upon G.o.d.'

They did not say anything else. Portia left the supper to cook on the stove and sat silently with her long hands dropping down limp between her knees. Doctor Copeland's head rested on his chest as though he slept. But he was not sleeping; now and then a nervous tremor would pa.s.s over his face. Then he would breathe deeply and compose his face again. Smells of the supper began to fill the stifling room. In the quietness the clock on top of the cupboard sounded very loud, and because of what they had just said to each other the monotonous ticking was like the word 'children, children,' said over and over.

He was always meeting one of them--crawling naked on a floor or engaged in a game of marbles or even on a dark street with his arms around a girl. Benedict Copeland, the boys were all called. But for the girls there were such names as Benny Mae or Madyben or Benedine Madine. He had counted one day, and there were more than a dozen named for him.

But all his life he had told and explained and exhorted. You cannot do this, he would say. There are all reasons why this sixth or fifth or ninth child cannot be, he would tell them. It is not more children we need but more chances for the ones already on the earth. Eugenic Parenthood for the Negro Race was what he would exhort them to. He would tell them in simple words, always the same way, and with the years it came to be a sort of angry poem which he had always known by heart.

He studied and knew the development of any new theory. And from his own pocket he would distribute the devices to his patients himself. He was by far the first doctor in the town to even think of such. And he would give and explain and give and tell them. And then deliver maybe two score times a week. Madyben and Benny Mae.

That was only one point. Only one.

All of his life he knew that there was a reason for his working.

He always knew that he was meant to teach his people. All day he would go with his bag from house to house and on all things he would talk to them. After the long day a heavy tiredness would come in him. But in the evening when he opened the front gate the tiredness would go away. There were Hamilton and Karl Marx and Portia and little William. There was Daisy, too.

Portia took the lid from the pan on the stove and stirred the collards with a fork. 'Father--' she said after a while.

Doctor Copeland cleared his throat and spat into a handkerchief. His voice was bitter and rough. 'Yes?'

'Less us quit this here quarreling with each other.'

'We were not quarreling,' said Doctor Copeland.

'It don't take words to make a quarrel,' Portia said. 'It look to me like us is always arguing even when we sitting perfectly quiet like this. It just this here feeling I haves. I tell you the truth--ever time I come to see you it mighty near wears me out. So less us try not to quarrel in any way no more.'

'It is certainly not my wish to quarrel. I am sorry if you have that feeling, Daughter.'

She poured out coffee and handed one cup unsweetened to her father. In her own portion she put several spoons of sugar. 'I getting hungry and this will taste good to us. Drink your coffee while I tell you something which happened to us a piece back. Now that it all over it seem a little bit funny, but we got plenty reason not to laugh too hard.'

'Go ahead,' said Doctor Copeland.

'Well--sometime back a real fine-looking, dressed-up colored man come in town here. He called hisself Mr. B. F. Mason and said he come from Washington, D. C. Ever day he would walk up and down the street with a walking-cane and a pretty colored shirt on. Then at night he would go to the Society Cafe. He eaten finer than any man in this town. Ever night he would order hisself a bottle of gin and two pork chops for his supper. He always had a smile for everybody and was always bowing around to the girls and holding a door open for you to come in or go out For about a week he made hisself mighty pleasant wherever he were. Peoples begun to ask questions and wonder about this rich Mr. B. F. Mason. Then pretty soon, after he acquaints hisself, he begun to settle down to business.'

Portia spread out her lips and blew into her saucer of coffee. 'I suppose you done read in the paper about this Government Pincher business for old folks?'

Doctor Copeland nodded. 'Pension,' he said.

'Well--he were connected with that. He were from the government. He had to come down from the President in Washington, D. C, to join everbody up for the Government Pinchers. He went around from one door to the next explaining how you pay one dollar down to join and after that twenty-five cents a week--and how when you were forty-five year old the government would pay you fifty dollars ever month of your life. All the peoples I know were very excited about this. He give everbody that joined a free picture of the President with his name signed under it. He told how at the end of six months there were going to be free uniforms for ever member. The club was called the Grand League of Pincheners for Colored Peoples--and at the end of two months everbody was going to get a orange ribbon with a G. L. P. C. P. on it to stand for the name. You know, like all these other letter things in the government. He come around from house to house with this little book and everbody commenced to join. He wrote their names down and took the money. Ever Sat.u.r.day he would collect In three weeks this Mr. B. F. Mason had joined up so many peoples he couldn't get all the way around on Sat.u.r.day. He have to pay somebody to take up the collections in each three four blocks. I collected early ever Sat.u.r.day for near where we live and got that quarter. Course Willie had joined at the beginning for him and Highboy and me.'

'I have come across many pictures of the President in various houses near where you live and I remember hearing the name Mason mentioned,' said Doctor Copeland. 'He was a thief?'

'He were,' said Portia. 'Somebody begun to find out about this Mr. B. F. Mason and he were arrested. They find out he were from just plain Atlanta and hadn't never smelled no Washington, D. C, or no President. All the money were hid or spent. Willie had just throwed away seven dollars and fifty cents.'

Doctor Copeland was excited. 'That is what I mean by--'In the hereafter,' Portia said, 'that man sure going to wake up with a hot pitchfork in his gut. But now that it all over it do seem a little bit funny, but of course we got plenty reason not to laugh too hard.'

'The Negro race of its own accord climbs up on the cross on every Friday,' said Doctor Copeland.

Portia's hands shook and coffee trickled down from the saucer she was holding. She licked it from her arm. 'What, you mean?'

'I mean that I am always looking. I mean that if I could just find ten Negroes--ten of my own people--with spine and brains and courage who are willing to give all that they have--' Portia put down the coffee. 'Us was not talking about anything like that'

'Only four Negroes,' said Doctor Copeland. 'Only the sum of Hamilton and Karl Marx and William and you. Only four Negroes with these real true qualities and backbone--'

'Willie and Highboy and me have backbone,' said Portia angrily. 'This here is a hard world and it seem to me us three struggles along pretty well.'

For a minute they were silent. Doctor Copeland laid his spectacles on the table and pressed his shrunken fingers to his eyeb.a.l.l.s.

'You all the time using that word--Negro,' said Portia. 'And that word haves a way of hurting people's feelings. Even old plain n.i.g.g.e.r is better than that word. But polite peoples--no matter what shade they is--always says colored.'

Doctor Copeland did not answer. 'Take Willie and me. Us aren't all the way colored. Our Mama was real light and both of us haves a good deal of white folks' blood in us. And Highboy--he Indian. He got a good part Indian in him. None of us is pure colored and the word you all the time using haves a way of hurting people's feelings.'

'I am not interested in subterfuges,' said Doctor Copeland. 'I am interested only in real truths.'

'Well, this here is a truth. Everybody is scared of you. It sure would take a whole lot of gin to get Hamilton or Buddy or Willie or my Highboy to come in this house and sit with you like I does. Willie say he remember you when he were only a little boy and he were afraid of his own father then.'

Doctor Copeland coughed harshly and cleared his throat.

'Everbody haves feelings--no matter who they is--and n.o.body is going to walk in no house where they certain their feelings will be hurt. You the same way. I seen your feelings injured too many times by white peoples not to know that.'

'No,' said Doctor Copeland. 'You have not seen my feelings injured.'

'Course I realize that Willie or my Highboy or me--that none of us is scholars. But Highboy and Willie is both good as gold.

There just is a difference between them and you.'

'Yes,' said Doctor Copeland.

'Hamilton or Buddy or Willie or me--none of us ever cares to talk like you. Us talk like our own Mama and her peoples and their peoples before them. You think out everthing in your brain. While us rather talk from something in our hearts that has been there for a long time. That's one of them differences.'

'Yes,' said Doctor Copeland.

'A person can't pick up they children and just squeeze them to which-a-way they wants them to be. Whether it hurt them or not. Whether it right or wrong. You done tried that hard as any man could try. And now I the only one of us that would come in this here house and sit with you like this.' The light was very bright in Doctor Copeland's eyes and her voice was loud and hard. He coughed and his whole face trembled. He tried to pick up the cup of cold coffee, but his hand would not hold it steadily. The tears came up to his eyes and he reached for his gla.s.ses to try to hide them. Portia saw and went up to him quickly. She put her arms around his head and pressed her cheek to his forehead. 'I done hurt my Father's feelings,' she said softly. His voice was hard. 'No. It is foolish and primitive to keep repeating this about hurt feelings.' The tears went slowly down his cheek and the fire made them take on the colors of blue and green and red. 'I be really and truly sorry,' said Portia. Doctor Copeland wiped his face with his cotton handkerchief. 'It is all right.'

'Less us not ever quarrel no more. I can't stand this here fighting between us. It seem to me that something real bad come up in us ever time we be together. Less us never quarrel like this no more.'

'No,' said Doctor Copeland. 'Let us not quarrel.' Portia sniffled and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. For a few minutes she stood with her arms around her father's head. Then after a while she wiped her face for a final time and went over to the pot of greens on the stove. 'It mighty nigh time for these to be tender,' she said cheerfully. 'Now I think I'll start making some of them good little hoecakes to go along with them.' Portia moved slowly around the kitchen in her stockinged feet and her father followed her with his eyes. For a while again they were silent. With his eyes wet, so that the edges of things were blurred, Portia was truly like her mother. Years ago Daisy had walked like that around the kitchen, silent and occupied. Daisy was not black as he was--her skin had been like the beautiful color of dark honey. She was always very quiet and gentle. But beneath that soft gentleness there was something stubborn in her, and no matter how conscientiously he studied it all out, he could not understand the gentle stubbornness in his wife. He would exhort her and he would tell her all that was in his heart and still she was gentle. And still she would not listen to him but would go on her own way.

Then later there were Hamilton and Karl Marx and William and Portia. And this feeling of real true purpose for them was so strong that he knew exactly how each thing should be with them. Hamilton would be a great scientist and Karl Marx a teacher of the Negro race and William a lawyer to fight against injustice and Portia a doctor for women and children.

And when they were even babies he would tell them of the yoke they must thrust from their shoulders--the yoke of submission and slothfulness. And when they were a little older he would impress upon them that there was no G.o.d, but that their lives were holy and for each one of them there was this real true purpose. He would tell it to them over and over, and they would sit together far away from him and look with their big Negro-children eyes at their mother. And Daisy would sit without listening, gentle and stubborn.

Because of the true purpose for Hamilton, Karl Marx, William, and Portia, he knew how every detail should be. In the autumn of each year he took them all into town and bought for them good black shoes and black stockings. For Portia he bought black woolen material for dresses and white linen for collars and cuffs. For the boys there was black wool for trousers and fine white linen for shirts. He did not want them to wear bright-colored, flimsy clothes. But when they went to school those were the ones they wished to wear, and Daisy said that they were embarra.s.sed and that he was a hard father.

He knew how the house should be. There could be no fanciness--no gaudy calendars or lace pillows or knickknacks --but everything in the house must be plain and dark and indicative of work and the real true purpose.

Then one night he found that Daisy had pierced holes in little Portia's ears for earrings. And another time a kew-pie doll with feather skirts was on the mantelpiece when he came home, and Daisy was gentle and hard and would not put it away. He knew, too, that Daisy was teaching the children the cult of meekness. She told them about h.e.l.l and heaven. Also she convinced them of ghosts and of haunted places. Daisy went to church every Sunday and she talked sorrowfully to the preacher of her own husband. And with her stubbornness she always took the children to the church, too, and they listened.

The whole Negro race was sick, and he was busy all the day and sometimes half the night. After the long day a great weariness would come in him, but when he opened The front gate of his home the weariness would go away. Yet when he went into the house William would be playing music on a comb wrapped in toilet paper, Hamilton and Karl Marx would be shooting c.r.a.ps for their lunch money, Portia would be laughing with her mother. He would start all over with them, but in a different way. He would bring out their lessons and talk with them. They would sit close together and look at their mother. He would talk and talk, but none of them wanted to understand.

The feeling that would come on him was a black, terrible, Negro feeling. He would try to sit in his office and read and meditate until he could be calm and start again. He would pull down the shades of the room so that there would be only the bright light and the books and the feeling of meditation. But sometimes this calmness would not come. He was young, and the terrible feeling would not go away with study.

Hamilton, Karl Marx, William, and Portia would be afraid of him and look at their mother--and sometimes when he realized this the black feeling would conquer him and he knew not what he did.

He could not stop those terrible things, and afterward he could never understand.

'This here supper sure smells good to me,' said Portia. 'I expect us better eat now because Highboy and Willie liable to come trooping in any minute.'

Doctor Copeland settled his spectacles and pulled his chair up to the table. 'Where have your husband and William been spending the evening?'

They been throwing horseshoes. This here Raymond Jones haves a horseshoe place in his back yard. This Raymond and his sister, Love Jones, plays ever night. Love is such a ugly girl I don't mind about Highboy or Willie going around to their house any time they wishes. But they said they would come back for me at quarter to ten and I expecting them now any minute.'

'Before I forget,' said Doctor Copeland. 'I suppose you hear frequently from Hamilton and Karl Marx.'

'I does from Hamilton. He practically taken over all the work on our Grandpapa's place. But Buddy, he in Mobile--and you know he were never a big hand at writing letters. However, Buddy always haves such a sweet way with peoples that I don't ever worry concerning him. He the kind to always get along right well.'