Go tell it on the mountain - James Baldwin [105]
‘I been carrying this letter now,’ she said, ‘for more than thirty years. And I been wondering all that time if I’d ever talk to you about it.’
And she looked at him. He was looking, unwillingly, at the letter, which she held tightly in one hand. It was old, and dirty, and brown, and torn; he recognized Deborah’s uncertain, trembling hand, and he could see her again in the cabin, bending over the table, laboriously trusting to paper the bitterness she had not spoken. It had lived in her silence, then, all those years? He could not believe it. She had been praying for him as she died—she had sworn to meet him in glory. And yet, this letter, her witness, spoke, breaking her long silence, now that she was beyond his reach for ever.
‘Yes,’ said Florence, watching his face, ‘you didn’t give her no bed of roses to sleep on, did you?—poor, simple, ugly, black girl. And you didn’t treat that other one no better. Who is you met, Gabriel, all your holy life long, you ain’t made to drink a cup of sorrow? And you doing it still—you going to be doing it till the Lord puts you in you grave.’
‘God’s way,’ he said, and his speech was thick, his face was slick with sweat, ‘ain’t man’s way. I been doing the will of the Lord, and can’t nobody sit in judgment on me but the Lord. The Lord called me out, He chose me, and I been running with Him ever since I made a start. You can’t keep your eyes on all this foolishness here below, all this wickedness here below—you got to lift up your eyes to the hills and run from the destruction falling on the earth, you got to put your hand in Jesus’ hand, and go where He says go.’
‘And if you been but a stumbling-stone here below?’ she said. ‘If you done caused souls right and left to stumble and fall, and lose their happiness, and lose their souls? What then, prophet? What then, the Lord’s anointed? Ain’t no reckoning going to be called of you? What you going to say when the wagon comes?’
He lifted up his head, and she saw tears mingled with his sweat. ‘The Lord,’ he said, ‘He sees the heart—He sees the heart.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but I done read the Bible, too, and it tells me you going to know the tree by its fruit. What fruit I seen from you if it ain’t been just sin and sorrow and shame?’
‘You be careful,’ he said, ‘how you talk to the Lord’s anointed. ’Cause my life ain’t in that letter—you don’t know my life.’
‘Where is your life, Gabriel?’ she asked, after a despairing pause. ‘Where is it? Ain’t it all done gone for nothing? Where’s your branches? Where’s your fruit?’
He said nothing; insistently, she tapped the letter with her thumbnail. They were approaching the corner where she must leave him, turning westward to take her underground home. In the light that filled the streets, the light that the sun was now beginning to corrupt with fire, she watched John and Elisha just before them, John’ listening head bent, Elisha’s arm about his shoulder.
‘I got a son,’ he said at last, ‘and the Lord’s going to rise him up. I know—the Lord has promised—His word is true.’
And then she laughed. ‘That son,’ she said, ‘that Roy. You going to weep for many a eternity before you see him crying in front of the altar like Johnny was crying to-night.’
‘God sees the heart,’ he repeated, ‘He sees the heart.’
‘Well, He ought to see it,’ she cried, ‘He made it! But don’t nobody else se it, not even your own self! Let God see it—He sees it all right, and He don’t say nothing.’
‘He speaks,’ he said, ‘He speaks. All you got to do is listen.’
‘I been listening many a night-time long,’ said Florence, then, ‘and He ain’t never spoke to me.’
‘He ain’t never spoke,’ said Gabriel, ‘because you ain’t never wanted to hear. You just wanted Him to tell you your way was right. And that ain’t no way to wait on God.’
‘Then tell me,’ Said Florence, ‘what He done said to you—that you didn’t want to hear?’
And there was silence again. Now they both watched John and Elisha.
‘I going to tell you something, Gabriel,’ she said. ‘I know you thinking at the bottom of your heart that if you make her, her