Go tell it on the mountain - James Baldwin [72]
Royal was now as tall as Gabriel, broad-shouldered, and lean. He wore a new suit, blue, with broad, blue stripes, and carried, crooked under his arm, a brown-paper bundle tied with string. He and Gabriel stared at one another for a second with no recognition. Royal stared in blank hostility, before, seeming to remember Gabriel’s face, he took a burning cigarette from between his lips, and said, with pained politeness: ‘How-de-do, sir.’ His voice was rough, and there was, faintly, the odor of whisky on his breath.
But Gabriel could not speak at once; he struggled to get his breath. Then: ‘How-de-do,’ he said. And they stood, each as though waiting for the other to say something of the greatest importance, on the deserted corner. Then, just as Royal was about to move, Gabriel remembered the white men all over town.
‘Boy,’ he cried, ‘ain’t you got good sense? Don’t you know you ain’t got no business to be out here, walking around like this?’
Royal stared at him, uncertain whether to laugh or to take offense, and Gabriel said, more gently: ‘I just mean you better be careful, son. Ain’t nothing but white folks in town to-day. They done killed … last night …’
Then he could not go on. He saw, as though it were a vision, Royal’s body, sprawled heavy and unmoving for ever against the earth, and tears blinded his eyes.
Royal watched him, a distant and angry compassion in his face.
‘I know,’ he said abruptly, ‘but they ain’t going to bother me. They done got their nigger for this week. I ain’t going far noway.’
Then the corner on which they stood seemed suddenly to rock with the weight of mortal danger. It seemed for a moment, as they stood there, that death and destruction rushed toward them: two black men alone in the dark and silent town where white men prowled like lions—what mercy could they hope for, should they be found here, talking together? It would surely be believed that they were plotting vengeance. And Gabriel started to moved away, thinking to save his son.
‘God bless you, boy,’ said Gabriel. ‘You hurry along now.’
‘Yeah,’ said Royal, ‘thanks.’ He moved away, about to turn the corner. He looked back at Gabriel. ‘But you be careful, too,’ he said, and smiled.
He turned the corner and Gabriel listened as his footfalls moved away. They were swallowed up in silence; he heard no voices raised to cut down Royal as he went his way; soon there was silence everywhere.
Not quite two years later Deborah told him that his son was dead.
And now John tried to pray. There was a great noise of weeping and of song. It was Sister McCandless who led the song, who sang it nearly alone, for the others did not cease to moan and cry. It was a song he had heard all his life:
‘Lord, I’m traveling, Lord,
I got on my traveling shoes.’
Without raising his eyes, he could see her standing in the holy place, pleading the blood over those who sought there, her head thrown back, eyes shut, foot pounding the floor. She did not look, then, like the Sister McCandless who sometimes came to visit them, like the woman who went out every day to work for the white people downtown, who came home at evening, climbing, with such weariness, the long, dark stairs. No: her face was transfigured now, her whole being was made new by the power of her salvation.
‘Salvation is real,’ a voice said to him, ‘God is real. Death may come soon or late, why do you hesitate? Now is the time to seek and serve the Lord.’ Salvation was real for all these others, and it might be real for him. He had only to reach out and God would touch him; he had only to cry and God would hear. All these others, now, who cried so far beyond him with such joy, had once been in their sins, as he was now—and they had cried and God had heard them, and delivered them out of all their troubles. And what God had done for others, He could also do for him.
But—out of all