Go tell it on the mountain - James Baldwin [21]
As John approached his home again in the late afternoon, he saw little Sarah, her coat unbuttoned, come flying out of the house and run the length of the street away from him into the far drug-store. Instantly, he was frightened; he stopped a moment, staring blankly down the street, wondering what could justify such hysterical haste. It was true that Sarah was full of self-importance, and made any errand she ran seem a matter of life or death; nevertheless, she had been sent on an errand, and with such speed that her mother had not had time to make her button up her coat.
Then he felt weary; if something had really happened it would be very unpleasant upstairs now, and he did not want to face it. But perhaps it was simply that his mother had a headache and had sent Sarah to the store for some aspirin. But if this were true, it meant that he would have to prepare supper, and take care of the children, and be naked under his father’s eyes all the evening long. And he began to walk more slowly.
There were some boys standing on the verandah. They watched him as he approached, and he tried not to look at them and to approximate the swagger with which they walked. One of them said, as he mounted the short, stone steps and started into the hall: ‘Boy, your brother was hurt real bad to-day.’
He looked at them in a kind of dread, not daring to asked for details; and he observed that they, too, looked as though they had been in a battle; something hangdog in their looks suggested that they had been put to flight. Then he looked down, and saw that there was blood at the threshold, and blood spattered on the tile floor of the vestibule. He looked again at the boys, who had not ceased to watch him, and hurried up the stairs.
The door was half open—for Sarah’s return, no doubt—and he walked in, making no sound, feeling a confused impulse to flee. There was no one in the kitchen, though the light was burning—the lights were on all through the house. On the kitchen table stood a shopping bag filled with groceries, and he knew that his Aunt Florence had arrived. The wash-tub, where his mother had bee washing earlier, was open still, and filled the kitchen with a sour smell.
There were drops of blood on the floor here too, and there had been small, smudged coins of blood on the stairs as he walked up.
All this frightened him terribly. He stood in the middle of the kitchen, trying to imagine what had happened, and preparing himself to walk into the living-room, where all the family seemed to be. Roy had been in trouble before, but this new trouble seemed to be the beginning of the fulfillment of a prophecy. He took off his coat, dropping it on a chair, and was about to start into the living-room when he heard Sarah running up the steps.
He waited, and she burst through the door, carrying a clumsy parcel.
‘What happened?’ he whispered.
She stared at him in astonishment, and a certain wild joy. He thought again that he really did not like his sister. Catching her breath, she blurted out, triumphantly: ‘Roy got stabbed with a knife!’ and rushed into the living-room.
Roy got stabbed with a knife. Whatever this meant, it was sure that his father would be at his worst to-night. John walked slowly into the living-room.
His father and mother, a small basin of water between them, knelt by the sofa where Roy lay, and his father was washing the blood from Roy’s forehead. It seemed that his mother, whose touch was so much more gentle, had been thrust aside by his father, who could not bear to have anyone else touch his wounded son. And now she watched, one hand in the water, and the other, in a kind of anguish, at her waist, which was circled still by the improvised apron of the morning. Her face, as she watched, was full of pain and fear, of tension barely supported, and of pity that could scarcely had been expressed had she filled all the world with her weeping. His father muttered sweet, delirious things to Roy, and his hands, when he dipped them