Go tell it on the mountain - James Baldwin [104]
‘It was his birthday yesterday,’ Elizabeth said.
‘No!’ cried Sister Price. ‘How old he got to be yesterday?’
‘He done made fourteen,’ she said.
‘You hear that?’ said Sister Price, with wonder. ‘The Lord done saved that boy’s soul on his birthday!’
‘Well, he got two birthdays now,’ smiled Sister McCandless, ‘just like he got two brothers—one in the flesh, and one in the Spirit.’
‘Amen, bless the Lord!’ cried Praying Mother Washington.
‘What book was it, Richard?’
‘Oh, I don’t remember. Just a book.’
‘You smiled.’
‘You was mighty pretty.’
She took her sodden handkerchief out of her bag, and dried her eyes; and dried her eyes again, looking down the avenue.
‘Yes,’ said Sister Price, gently, ‘you just thank the Lord. You just let the tears fall. I know your heart is full this morning.’
‘The Lord’s done give you,’ said Praying Mother Washington, ‘a mighty blessing—and what the Lord gives, can’t no man take away.’
‘I open,’ said Sister McCandless, ‘and no man can shut. I shut, and no man can open.’
‘Amen,’ said Sister Price. ‘Amen.’
‘Well, I reckon,’ Florence said, ‘your soul is praising God this morning.’
He looked straight ahead, saying nothing, holding his body more rigid than an arrow
‘You always been saying,’ Florence said, ‘how the Lord would answer your prayer.’ And she looked sideways at him, with a little smile.
‘He going to learn,’ he said at last, ‘that it ain’t all in the singing and the shouting—the way of holiness is a hard way. He got the steep side of the mountain to climb.’
‘But he got you there,’ she said, ‘ain’t he to help him when he stumbles, and to be a good example?’
‘I’m going to see to it,’ he said, ‘that he walks right before the Lord. The Lord’s done put his soul in my charge—and I ain’t going to have that boy’s blood on my hands.’
‘No,’ she said, mildly, ‘I reckon you don’t want that.’
Then they heard the siren, and the headlong, warning bell. She watched his face as he looked outward at the silent avenue and at the ambulance that raced to carry someone to healing, or to death.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that wagon’s coming, ain’t, one day for everybody?’
‘I pray,’ he said, ‘it finds you ready, sister.’
‘Is it going to find you ready?’ she asked.
‘I know my name is written in the Book of Life,’ he said. ‘I know I’m going to look on my Savior’s face in glory.’
‘Yes,’ she said, slowly, ‘we’s all going to be together there. Mama, and you, and me, and Deborah—and what was the name of that little girl who died not long after I left home?’
‘What little girl who died?’ he asked. ‘A lot of folks died after you left home—you left your mother on her dying bed.’
‘This girl was a mother, too,’ she said. ‘Look like she went north all by herself, and had her baby, and died—weren’t nobody to help her. Deborah wrote me about it. Sure, you ain’t forgotten that girl’s name, Gabriel!’
Then his step faltered—seemed, for a moment, to drag. And he looked at her. She smiled, and lightly touched his arm.
‘You ain’t forgotten her name,’ she said. ‘You can’t tell me you done forgot her name. Is you going to look on her face, too? Is her name written in the Book of Life?’
In utter silence they walked together, her hand still under his trembling arm.
‘Deborah didn’t never write,’ she at last pursued, ‘about what happened to the baby. Did you ever see him? You going to meet him in Heaven, too?’
‘The Word tell us,’ he said, ‘to let the dead bury the dead. Why you want to go rummaging around back there, digging up things what’s all forgotten now? The Lord, He knows my life—He done forgive me a long time ago.’
‘Look like,’ she said, ‘you think the Lord’s a man like you; you think you can fool Him like you fool men, and you think He forgets, like men. But God don’t forget nothing, Gabriel—if your name’s down there in the Book, like you say, it’s got all what you done right down there with it. And you going to answer for it, too.’
‘I done answered,’ he said, ‘already before my God. I ain’t got to answer now, in front of you.’
She opened her handbag,