I saw them as we approached the short stretch that lay between the railroad tracks and the Golden Day. At first I failed to recognize them. They straggled down the highway in a loose body, blocking the way from the white line to the frazzled weeds that bordered the sun-heated concrete slab. I cursed them silently. They were blocking the road and Mr. Norton was gasping for breath. Ahead of the radiator's gleaming curve they looked like a chain gang on its way to make a road. But a chain gang marches single file and I saw no guards on horseback. As I drew nearer I recognized the loose gray shirts and pants worn by the veterans. Damn! They were heading for the Golden Day.
"A little stimulant," I heard behind me.
"In a few minutes, sir."
Up ahead I saw the one who thought he was a drum major strutting in front, giving orders as he moved energetically in long, hip-swinging strides, a cane held above his head, rising and falling as though in time to music. I slowed the car as I saw him turn to face the men, his cane held at chest level as he shortened the pace. The men continued to ignore him, walking along in a mass, some talking in groups and others talking and gesticulating to themselves.
Suddenly, the drum major saw the car and shook his cane-baton at me. I blew the horn, seeing the men move over to the side as I nosed the car slowly forward. He held his ground, his legs braced, hands on hips, and to keep from hitting him I slammed on the brakes.
The drum major rushed past the men toward the car, and I heard the cane bang down upon the hood as he rushed toward me.
"Who the hell you think you are, running down the army? Give the countersign. Who's in command of this outfit? You trucking bastards was always too big for your britches. Countersign me!"
"This is General Pershing's car, sir," I said, remembering hearing that he responded to the name of his wartime Commander-in-Chief. Suddenly the wild look changed in his eyes and he stepped back and saluted with stiff precision. Then looking suspiciously into the back seat, he barked,
"Where's the General?"
"There," I said, turning and seeing Mr. Norton raising himself, weak and whitefaced, from the seat.
"What is it? Why have we stopped?"
"The sergeant stopped us, sir . . ." "Sergeant? What sergeant?" He sat up.
"Is that you, General?" the vet said, saluting. "I didn't know you were inspecting the front lines today. I'm very sorry, sir." "What . . . ?" Mr. Norton said.
"The General's in a hurry," I said quickly.
"Sure is," the vet said. "He's got a lot to see. Discipline is bad. Artillery's shot to hell." Then he called to the men walking up the road, "Get the hell out of the
General's road. General Pershing's coming through. Make way for General Pershing!" He stepped aside and I shot the car across the line to avoid the men and stayed there on the wrong side as I headed for the Golden Day.
"Who was that man?" Mr. Norton gasped from the back seat.
"A former soldier, sir. A vet. They're all vets, a little shellshocked."
"But where is the attendant?"
"I don't see one, sir. They're harmless though."
"Nevertheless, they should have an attendant."
I had to get him there and away before they arrived. This was their day to visit the girls, and the Golden Day would be pretty rowdy. I wondered where the rest of them were. There should have been about fifty. Well, I would rush in and get the whiskey and leave. What was wrong with Mr. Norton anyway, why should he get that upset over Trueblood? I had felt ashamed and several times I had wanted to laugh, but it had made him sick. Maybe he needed a doctor. Hell, he didn't ask for any doctor. Damn that bastard Trueblood.
I would run in, get a pint, and run out again, I thought. Then he wouldn't see the Golden Day. I seldom went there myself except with some of the fellows when word got out that a new bunch of girls had arrived from New Orleans. The school had tried to make the Golden Day respectable, but the local white folks had a hand in it somehow and they got nowhere. The best the school could do was to make it hot for any student caught going there.
He lay like a man asleep as I left the car and ran into the Golden Day. I wanted to ask him for money but decided to use my own. At the door I paused; the place was already full, jammed with vets in loose gray shirts and trousers and women in short, tight-fitting, stiffly starched gingham aprons. The stale beer smell struck like a club through the noise of voices and the juke box. Just as I got inside the door a stolidfaced man gripped me by the arm and looked stonily into my eyes.
"It will occur at 5:30," he said, looking straight through me.
"What?"
"The great all-embracing, absolute Armistice, the end of the world!" he said. Before I could answer, a small plump woman smiled into my face and pulled him away.
"It's your turn, Doc," she said. "Don't let it happen till after me and you done been upstairs. How come I always have to come get you?"
"No, it is true," he said. "They wirelessed me from Paris this morning."
"Then, baby, me an' you better hurry. There's lots of money I got to make in here before that thing happens. You hold it back a while, will you?"
She winked at me as she pulled him through the crowd toward the stairs. I elbowed my way nervously toward the bar.
Many of the men had been doctors, lawyers, teachers, Civil Service workers; there were several cooks, a preacher, a politician, and an artist. One very nutty one had been a psychiatrist. Whenever I saw them I felt uncomfortable. They were supposed to be members of the professions toward which at various times I vaguely aspired myself, and even though they never seemed to see me I could never believe that they were really patients. Sometimes it appeared as though they played some vast and complicated game with me and the rest of the school folk, a game whose goal was laughter and whose rules and subtleties I could never grasp.
Two men stood directly in front of me, one speaking with intense earnestness. ". . . and Johnson hit Jeffries at an angle of 45 degrees from his lower left lateral incisor, producing an instantaneous blocking of his entire thalamic rine, frosting it over like the freezing unit of a refrigerator, thus shattering his autonomous nervous system and rocking the big brick-laying creampuff with extreme hyperspasmic muscular tremors which dropped him dead on the extreme tip of his coccyx, which, in turn, produced a sharp traumatic reaction in his sphincter nerve and muscle, and then, my dear colleague, they swept him up, sprinkled him with quicklime and rolled him away in a barrow. Naturally, there was no other therapy possible." "Excuse me," I said, pushing past.
Big Halley was behind the bar, his dark skin showing through his sweat-wet shirt.
"Whatcha saying, school-boy?"
"I want a double whiskey, Halley. Put it in something deep so I can get it out of here without spilling it. It's for somebody outside."
His mouth shot out, "Hell, naw!"
"Why?" I asked, surprised at the anger in his thyroid eyes.
"You still up at the school, ain't you?"
"Sure."
"Well, those bastards is trying to close me up agin, that's why. You can drink till you blue in the face in here, but I wouldn't sell you enough to spit through your teeth to take outside."
"But I've got a sick man out in the car."
"What car? You never had no car."
"The white man's car. I'm driving for him."
"Ain't you in school?"
"He's from the school."
"Well, who's sick?"
"He is."
"He too good to come in? Tell him we don't Jimcrow nobody."
"But he's sick."
"He can die!"
"He's important, Halley, a trustee. He's rich and sick and if anything happens to him, they'll have me packed and on my way home."
"Can't help it, school-boy. Bring him inside and he can buy enough to swim in. He can drink outta my own private bottle."
He sliced the white heads off a couple of beers with an ivory paddle and passed them up the bar. I felt sick inside. Mr. Norton wouldn't want to come in here. He was too sick. And besides I didn't want him to see the patients and the girls. Things were getting wilder as I made my way out. Supercargo, the white-uniformed attendant who usually kept the men quiet was nowhere to be seen. I didn't like it, for when he was upstairs they had absolutely no inhibitions. I made my way out to the car. What could I tell Mr. Norton? He was lying very still when I opened the door. "Mr. Norton, sir. They refuse to sell me whiskey to bring out." He lay very still.
"Mr. Norton."
He lay like a figure of chalk. I shook him gently, feeling dread within me. He barely breathed. I shook him violently, seeing his head wobble grotesquely. His lips parted, bluish, revealing a row of long, slender, amazingly animal-like teeth.
"SIR!"
In a panic I ran back into the Golden Day, bursting through the noise as through an invisible wall.
"Halley! Help me, he's dying!"
I tried to get through but no one seemed to have heard me. I was blocked on both sides. They were jammed together.
"Halley!"
Two patients turned and looked me in the face, their eyes two inches from my nose.
"What is wrong with this gentleman, Sylvester?" the tall one said.
"A man's dying outside!" I said.
"Someone is always dying," the other one said.
"Yes, and it's good to die beneath God's great tent of sky."
"He's got to have some whiskey!"
"Oh, that's different," one of them said and they began pushing a path to the bar. "A last bright drink to keep the anguish down. Step aside, please!" "School-boy, you back already?" Halley said.
"Give me some whiskey. He's dying!"
"I done told you, school-boy, you better bring him in here. He can die, but I still got to pay my bills."
"Please, they'll put me in jail."
"You going to college, figure it out," he said.
"You'd better bring the gentleman inside," the one called Sylvester said. "Come, let us assist you."
We fought our way out of the crowd. He was just as I left him.
"Look, Sylvester, it's Thomas Jefferson!"
"I was just about to say, I've long wanted to discourse with him." I looked at them speechlessly; they were both crazy. Or were they joking? "Give me a hand," I said.
"Gladly."
I shook him. "Mr. Norton!"
"We'd better hurry if he's to enjoy his drink," one of them said thoughtfully. We picked him up. He swung between us like a sack of old clothes.
"Hurry!"
As we carried him toward the Golden Day one of the men stopped suddenly and Mr. Norton's head hung down, his white hair dragging in the dust.
"Gentlemen, this man is my grandfather!"
"But he's white, his name's Norton."
"I should know my own grandfather! He's Thomas Jefferson and I'm his grandson—on the 'field-nigger' side," the tall man said.
"Sylvester, I do believe that you're right. I certainly do," he said, staring at Mr. Norton. "Look at those features. Exactly like yours—from the identical mold. Are you sure he didn't spit you upon the earth, fully clothed?"
"No, no, that was my father," the man said earnestly.
And he began to curse his father violently as we moved for the door. Halley was there waiting. Somehow he'd gotten the crowd to quiet down and a space was cleared in the center of the room. The men came close to look at Mr. Norton.
"Somebody bring a chair."
"Yeah, let Mister Eddy sit down."
"That ain't no Mister Eddy, man, that's John D. Rockefeller," someone said.
"Here's a chair for the Messiah."
"Stand back y'all," Halley ordered. "Give him some room."
Burnside, who had been a doctor, rushed forward and felt for Mr. Norton's pulse. "It's solid! This man has a solid pulse! Instead of beating, it vibrates. That's very unusual. Very."
Someone pulled him away. Halley reappeared with a bottle and a glass. "Here, some of y'all tilt his head back."
And before I could move, a short, pock-marked man appeared and took Mr. Norton's head between his hands, tilting it at arm's length and then, pinching the chin gently like a barber about to apply a razor, gave a sharp, swift movement. "Pow!"
Mr. Norton's head jerked like a jabbed punching bag. Five pale red lines bloomed on the white cheek, glowing like fire beneath translucent stone. I could not believe my eyes. I wanted to run. A woman tittered. I saw several men rush for the door.
"Cut it out, you damn fool!"
"A case of hysteria," the pock-marked man said quietly.
"Git the hell out of the way," Halley said. "Somebody git that stool-pigeon attendant from upstairs. Git him down here, quick!"
"A mere mild case of hysteria," the pock-marked man said as they pushed him away.
"Hurry with the drink, Halley!"
"Heah, school-boy, you hold the glass. This here's brandy I been saving for myself."
Someone whispered tonelessly into my ear, "You see, I told you that it would occur at 5:30. Already the Creator has come." It was the stolid-faced man.
I saw Halley tilt the bottle and the oily amber of brandy sloshing into the glass. Then tilting Mr. Norton's head back, I put the glass to his lips and poured. A fine brown stream ran from the corner of his mouth, down his delicate chin. The room was suddenly quiet. I felt a slight movement against my hand, like a child's breast when it whimpers at the end of a spell of crying. The fine-veined eyelids flickered. He coughed. I saw a slow red flush creep, then spurt, up his neck, spreading over his face.
"Hold it under his nose, school-boy. Let 'im smell it."
I waved the glass beneath Mr. Norton's nose. He opened his pale blue eyes. They seemed watery now in the red flush that bathed his face. He tried to sit up, his right hand fluttering to his chin. His eyes widened, moved quickly from face to face. Then coming to mine, the moist eyes focused with recognition.
"You were unconscious, sir," I said.
"Where am I, young man?" he asked wearily.
"This is the Golden Day, sir."
"What?"
"The Golden Day. It's a kind of sporting-and-gambling house," I added reluctantly.
"Now give him another drinka brandy," Halley said.
I poured a drink and handed it to him. He sniffed it, closed his eyes as in puzzlement, then drank; his cheeks filled out like small bellows; he was rinsing his mouth.
"Thank you," he said, a little stronger now. "What is this place?" "The Golden Day," said several patients in unison.
He looked slowly around him, up to the balcony, with its scrolled and carved wood. A large flag hung lank above the floor. He frowned. "What was this building used for in the past?" he said.
"It was a church, then a bank, then it was a restaurant and a fancy gambling house, and now we got it," Halley explained. "I think somebody said it used to be a jail-house too."
"They let us come here once a week to raise a little hell," someone said.
"I couldn't buy a drink to take out, sir, so I had to bring you inside," I explained in dread.
He looked about him. I followed his eyes and was amazed to see the varied expressions on the patients' faces as they silently returned his gaze. Some were hostile, some cringing, some horrified; some, who when among themselves were most violent, now appeared as submissive as children. And some seemed strangely amused.
"Are all of you patients?" Mr. Norton asked.
"Me, I just runs the joint," Halley said. "These here other fellows . . ."
"We're patients sent here as therapy," a short, fat, very intelligent-looking man said. "But," he smiled, "they send along an attendant, a kind of censor, to see that the therapy fails."
"You're nuts. I'm a dynamo of energy. I come to charge my batteries," one of the vets insisted.
"I'm a student of history, sir," another interrupted with dramatic gestures. "The world moves in a circle like a roulette wheel. In the beginning, black is on top, in the middle epochs, white holds the odds, but soon Ethiopia shall stretch forth her noble wings! Then place your money on the black!" His voice throbbed with emotion. "Until then, the sun holds no heat, there's ice in the heart of the earth. Two years from now and I'll be old enough to give my mulatto mother a bath, the half-white bitch!" he added, beginning to leap up and down in an explosion of glassy-eyed fury.
Mr. Norton blinked his eyes and straightened up.
"I'm a physician, may I take your pulse?" Burnside said, seizing Mr. Norton's wrist.
"Don't pay him no mind, mister. He ain't been no doctor in ten years. They caught him trying to change some blood into money."
"I did too!" the man screamed. "I discovered it and John D. Rockefeller stole the formula from me."
"Mr. Rockefeller did you say?" Mr. Norton said. "I'm sure you must be mistaken." "WHAT'S GOING ON DOWN THERE?" a voice shouted from the balcony. Everyone turned. I saw a huge black giant of a man, dressed only in white shorts, swaying on the stairs. It was Supercargo, the attendant. I hardly recognized him without his hard-starched white uniform. Usually he walked around threatening the men with a strait jacket which he always carried over his arm, and usually they were quiet and submissive in his presence. But now they seemed not to recognize him and began shouting curses.
"How you gon keep order in the place if you gon git drunk?" Halley shouted.
"Charlene! Charlene!"
"Yeah?" a woman's voice, startling in its carrying power, answered sulkily from a room off the balcony.
"I want you to git that stool-pigeoning, joy-killing, nut-crushing bum back in there with you and sober him up. Then git him in his white suit and down here to keep order. We got white folks in the house."
A woman appeared on the balcony, drawing a woolly pink robe about her. "Now you lissen here, Halley," she drawled, "I'm a woman. If you want him dressed, you can do it yourself. I don't put on but one man's clothes and he's in N'Orleans."
"Never mind all that. Git that stool pigeon sober!"
"I want order down there," Supercargo boomed, "and if there's white folks down there, I wan's double order."
Suddenly there was an angry roar from the men back near the bar and I saw them rush the stairs.
"Get him!"
"Let's give him some order!"
"Out of my way."
Five men charged the stairs. I saw the giant bend and clutch the posts at the top of the stairs with both hands, bracing himself, his body gleaming bare in his white shorts. The little man who had slapped Mr. Norton was in front, and, as he sprang up the long flight, I saw the attendant set himself and kick, catching the little man just as he reached the top, hard in the chest, sending him backwards in a curving dive into the midst of the men behind him. Supercargo got set to swing his leg again. It was a narrow stair and only one man could get up at a time. As fast as they rushed up, the giant kicked them back. He swung his leg, kicking them down like a fungohitter batting out flies. Watching him, I forgot Mr. Norton. The Golden Day was in an uproar. Half-dressed women appeared from the rooms off the balcony. Men hooted and yelled as at a football game.
"I WANT ORDER!" the giant shouted as he sent a man flying down the flight of stairs.
"THEY THROWING BOTTLES OF LIQUOR!" a woman screamed. "REAL LIQUOR!" "That's a order he don't want," someone said.
A shower of bottles and glasses splashing whiskey crashed against the balcony. I saw Supercargo snap suddenly erect and grab his forehead, his face bathed in whiskey, "Eeeee!" he cried, "Eeeee!" Then I saw him waver, rigid from his ankles upward. For a moment the men on the stairs were motionless, watching him. Then they sprang forward.
Supercargo grabbed wildly at the balustrade as they snatched his feet from beneath him and started down. His head bounced against the steps making a sound like a series of gunshots as they ran dragging him by his ankles, like volunteer firemen running with a hose. The crowd surged forward. Halley yelled near my ear. I saw the man being dragged toward the center of the room.
"Give the bastard some order!"
"Here I'm forty-five and he's been acting like he's my old man!"
"So you like to kick, huh?" a tall man said, aiming a shoe at the attendant's head.
The flesh above his right eye jumped out as though it had been inflated.
Then I heard Mr. Norton beside me shouting, "No, no! Not when he's down!"
"Lissen at the white folks," someone said. "He's the white folks' man!"
Men were jumping upon Supercargo with both feet now and I felt such an excitement that I wanted to join them. Even the girls were yelling, "Give it to him good!" "He never pays me!" "Kill him!" "Please, y'all, not here! Not in my place!"
"You can't speak your mind when he's on duty!"
"Hell, no!"
Somehow I got pushed away from Mr. Norton and found myself beside the man called Sylvester.
"Watch this, school-boy," he said. "See there, where his ribs are bleeding?" I nodded my head. "Now don't move your eyes."
I watched the spot as though compelled, just beneath the lower rib and above the hip-bone, as Sylvester measured carefully with his toe and kicked as though he were punting a football. Supercargo let out a groan like an injured horse.
"Try it, school-boy, it feels so good. It gives you relief," Sylvester said. "Sometimes I get so afraid of him I feel that he's inside my head. There!" he said, giving Supercargo another kick.
As I watched, a man sprang on Supercargo's chest with both feet and he lost consciousness. They began throwing cold beer on him, reviving him, only to kick him unconscious again. Soon he was drenched in blood and beer.
"The bastard's out cold."
"Throw him out."
"Naw, wait a minute. Give me a hand somebody."
They threw him upon the bar, stretching him out with his arms folded across his chest like a corpse.
"Now, let's have a drink!"
Halley was slow in getting behind the bar and they cursed him.
"Get back there and serve us, you big sack of fat!"
"Gimme a rye!"
"Up here, funk-buster!"
"Shake them sloppy hips!"
"Okay, okay, take it easy," Halley said, rushing to pour them drinks. "Just put y'all's money where your mouth is."
With Supercargo lying helpless upon the bar, the men whirled about like maniacs. The excitement seemed to have tilted some of the more delicately balanced ones too far. Some made hostile speeches at the top of their voices against the hospital, the state and the universe. The one who called himself a composer was banging away the one wild piece he seemed to know on the out-of-tune piano, striking the keyboard with fists and elbows and filling in other effects in a bass voice that moaned like a bear in agony. One of the most educated ones touched my arm. He was a former chemist who was never seen without his shining Phi Beta Kappa key.
"The men have lost control," he said through the uproar. "I think you'd better leave."
"I'm trying to," I said, "as soon as I can get over to Mr. Norton."
Mr. Norton was gone from where I had left him. I rushed here and there through the noisy men, calling his name.
When I found him he was under the stairs. Somehow he had been pushed there by the scuffling, reeling men and he lay sprawled in the chair like an aged doll. In the dim light his features were sharp and white and his closed eyes well-defined lines in a well-tooled face. I shouted his name above the roar of the men, and got no answer. He was out again. I shook him, gently, then roughly, but still no flicker of his wrinkled lids. Then some of the milling men pushed me up against him and suddenly a mass of whiteness was looming two inches from my eyes; it was only his face but I felt a shudder of nameless horror. I had never been so close to a white person before. In a panic I struggled to get away. With his eyes closed he seemed more threatening than with them open. He was like a formless white death, suddenly appeared before me, a death which had been there all the time and which had now revealed itself in the madness of the Golden Day.
"Stop screaming!" a voice commanded, and I felt myself pulled away. It was the short fat man.
I clamped my mouth shut, aware for the first time that the shrill sound was coming from my own throat. I saw the man's face relax as he gave me a wry smile. "That's better," he shouted into my ear. "He's only a man. Remember that. He's only a man!"
I wanted to tell him that Mr. Norton was much more than that, that he was a rich white man and in my charge; but the very idea that I was responsible for him was too much for me to put into words.
"Let us take him to the balcony," the man said, pushing me toward Mr. Norton's feet. I moved automatically, grasping the thin ankles as he raised the white man by the armpits and backed from beneath the stairs. Mr. Norton's head lolled upon his chest as though he were drunk or dead.
The vet started up the steps still smiling, climbing backwards a step at a time. I had begun to worry about him, whether he was drunk like the rest, when I saw three of the girls who had been leaning over the balustrade watching the brawl come down to help us carry Mr. Norton up.
"Looks like pops couldn't take it," one of them shouted.
"He's high as a Georgia pine."
"Yeah, I tell you this stuff Halley got out here is too strong for white folks to drink." "Not drunk, ill!" the fat man said. "Go find a bed that's not being used so he can stretch out awhile."
"Sho, daddy. Is there any other little favors I can do for you?" "That'll be enough," he said.
One of the girls ran up ahead. "Mine's just been changed. Bring him down here," she said.
In a few minutes Mr. Norton was lying upon a three-quarter bed, faintly breathing. I watched the fat man bend over him very professionally and feel for his pulse.
"You a doctor?" a girl asked.
"Not now, I'm a patient. But I have a certain knowledge."
Another one, I thought, pushing him quickly aside. "He'll be all right. Let him come to so I can get him out of here."
"You needn't worry, I'm not like those down there, young fellow," he said. "I really was a doctor. I won't hurt him. He's had a mild shock of some kind."
We watched him bend over Mr. Norton again, feeling his pulse, pulling back his eyelid.
"It's a mild shock," he repeated.
"This here Golden Day is enough to shock anybody," a girl said, smoothing her apron over the smooth sensuous roll of her stomach.
Another brushed Mr. Norton's white hair away from his forehead and stroked it,
smiling vacantly. "He's kinda cute," she said. "Just like a little white baby." "What kinda ole baby?" the small skinny girl asked.
"That's the kind, an ole baby."
"You just like white men, Edna. That's all," the skinny one said.
Edna shook her head and smiled as though amused at herself. "I sho do. I just love 'em. Now this one, old as he is, he could put his shoes under my bed any night." "Shucks, me I'd kill an old man like that."
"Kill him nothing," Edna said. "Girl, don't you know that all these rich ole white men got monkey glands and billy goat balls? These ole bastards don't never git enough. They want to have the whole world."
The doctor looked at me and smiled. "See, now you're learning all about endocrinology," he said. "I was wrong when I told you that he was only a man; it
seems now that he's either part goat or part ape. Maybe he's both."
"It's the truth," Edna said. "I used to have me one in Chicago —"
"Now you ain't never been to no Chicago, gal," the other one interrupted.
"How you know I ain't? Two years ago . . . Shucks, you don't know nothing. That ole white man right there might have him a coupla jackass balls!"
The fat man raised up with a quick grin. "As a scientist and a physician I'm forced to discount that," he said. "That is one operation that has yet to be performed." Then he managed to get the girls out of the room.
"If he should come around and hear that conversation," the vet said, "it would be enough to send him off again. Besides, their scientific curiosity might lead them to investigate whether he really does have a monkey gland. And that, I'm afraid, would be a bit obscene."
"I've got to get him back to the school," I said.
"All right," he said, "I'll do what I can to help you. Go see if you can find some ice.
And don't worry."
I went out on the balcony, seeing the tops of their heads. They were still milling around, the juke box baying, the piano thumping, and over at the end of the room, drenched with beer, Supercargo lay like a spent horse upon the bar.
Starting down, I noticed a large piece of ice glinting in the remains of an abandoned drink and seized its coldness in my hot hand and hurried back to the room.
The vet sat staring at Mr. Norton, who now breathed with a slightly irregular sound.
"You were quick," the man said, as he stood and reached for the ice. "Swift with the speed of anxiety," he added, as if to himself. "Hand me that clean towel—there, from beside the basin."
I handed him one, seeing him fold the ice inside it and apply it to Mr. Norton's face.
"Is he all right?" I said.
"He will be in a few minutes. What happened to him?" "I took him for a drive," I said.
"Did you have an accident or something?"
"No," I said. "He just talked to a farmer and the heat knocked him out . . . Then we got caught in the mob downstairs."
"How old is he?"
"I don't know, but he's one of the trustees . . ."
"One of the very first, no doubt," he said, dabbing at the blue-veined eyes. "A trustee of consciousness."
"What was that?" I asked.
"Nothing . . . There now, he's coming out of it."
I had an impulse to run out of the room. I feared what Mr. Norton would say to me, the expression that might come into his eyes. And yet, I was afraid to leave. My eyes could not leave the face with its flickering lids. The head moved from side to side in the pale glow of the light bulb, as though denying some insistent voice which I could not hear. Then the lids opened, revealing pale pools of blue vagueness that finally solidified into points that froze upon the vet, who looked down unsmilingly. Men like us did not look at a man like Mr. Norton in that manner, and I stepped hurriedly forward.
"He's a real doctor, sir," I said.
"I'll explain," the vet said. "Get a glass of water."
I hesitated. He looked at me firmly. "Get the water," he said, turning to help Mr. Norton to sit up.
Outside I asked Edna for a glass of water and she led me down the hall to a small kitchen, drawing it for me from a green old-fashioned cooler.
"I got some good liquor, baby, if you want to give him a drink," she said.
"This will do," I said. My hands trembled so that the water spilled. When I returned, Mr. Norton was sitting up unaided, carrying on a conversation with the vet.
"Here's some water, sir," I said, extending the glass.
He took it. "Thank you," he said.
"Not too much," the vet cautioned.
"Your diagnosis is exactly that of my specialist," Mr. Norton said, "and I went to several fine physicians before one could diagnose it. How did you know?" "I too was a specialist," the vet said.
"But how? Only a few men in the whole country possess the knowledge —" "Then one of them is an inmate of a semi-madhouse," the vet said. "But there's nothing mysterious about it. I escaped for a while—I went to France with the Army Medical Corps and remained there after the Armistice to study and practice." "Oh yes, and how long were you in France?" Mr. Norton asked.
"Long enough," he said. "Long enough to forget some fundamentals which I should never have forgotten."
"What fundamentals?" Mr. Norton said. "What do you mean?"
The vet smiled and cocked his head. "Things about life. Such things as most peasants and folk peoples almost always know through experience, though seldom through conscious thought . . ."
"Pardon me, sir," I said to Mr. Norton, "but now that you feel better, shouldn't we go?"
"Not just yet," he said. Then to the doctor, "I'm very interested. What happened to you?" A drop of water caught in one of his eyebrows glittered like a chip of active diamond. I went over and sat on a chair. Damn this vet to hell!
"Are you sure you would like to hear?" the vet asked.
"Why, of course."
"Then perhaps the young fellow should go downstairs and wait . . ."
The sound of shouting and destruction welled up from below as I opened the door. "No, perhaps you should stay," the fat man said. "Perhaps had I overheard some of what I'm about to tell you when I was a student up there on the hill, I wouldn't be the casualty that I am."
"Sit down, young man," Mr. Norton ordered. "So you were a student at the college," he said to the vet.
I sat down again, worrying about Dr. Bledsoe as the fat man told Mr. Norton of his attending college, then becoming a physician and going to France during the World War.
"Were you a successful physician?" Mr. Norton said.
"Fairly so. I performed a few brain surgeries that won me some small attention." "Then why did you return?" "Nostalgia," the vet said.
"Then what on earth are you doing here in this . . . ?" Mr. Norton said, "With your ability . . ."
"Ulcers," the fat man said.
"That's terribly unfortunate, but why should ulcers stop your career?"
"Not really, but I learned along with the ulcers that my work could bring me no dignity," the vet said.
"Now you sound bitter," Mr. Norton said, just as the door flew open.
A brown-skinned woman with red hair looked in. "How's white-folks making out?" she said, staggering inside. "White-folks, baby, you done come to. You want a drink?"
"Not now, Hester," the vet said. "He's still a little weak."
"He sho looks it. That's how come he needs a drink. Put some iron in his blood." "Now, now, Hester."
"Okay, okay . . . But what y'all doing looking like you at a funeral? Don't you know this is the Golden Day?" she staggered toward me, belching elegantly and reeling. "Just look at y'all. Here school-boy looks like he's scared to death. And white-folks here is acting like y'all two strange poodles. Be happy y'all! I'm going down and get Halley to send you up some drinks." She patted Mr. Norton's cheek as she went past and I saw him turn a glowing red. "Be happy, white-folks."
"Ah hah!" the vet laughed, "you're blushing, which means that you're better. Don't be embarrassed. Hester is a great humanitarian, a therapist of generous nature and great skill, and the possessor of a healing touch. Her catharsis is absolutely tremendous—ha, ha!"
"You do look better, sir," I said, anxious to get out of the place. I could understand the vet's words but not what they conveyed, and Mr. Norton looked as uncomfortable as I felt. The one thing which I did know was that the vet was acting toward the white man with a freedom which could only bring on trouble. I wanted to tell Mr. Norton that the man was crazy and yet I received a fearful satisfaction from hearing him talk as he had to a white man. With the girl it was different. A woman usually got away with things a man never could.
I was wet with anxiety, but the vet talked on, ignoring the interruption.
"Rest, rest," he said, fixing Mr. Norton with his eyes. "The clocks are all set back and the forces of destruction are rampant down below. They might suddenly realize that you are what you are, and then your life wouldn't be worth a piece of bankrupt stock. You would be canceled, perforated, voided, become the recognized magnet attracting loose screws. Then what would you do? Such men are beyond money, and with Supercargo down, out like a felled ox, they know nothing of value. To some, you are the great white father, to others the lyncher of souls, but for all, you are confusion come even into the Golden Day."
"What are you talking about?" I said, thinking: Lyncher? He was getting wilder than the men downstairs. I didn't dare look at Mr. Norton, who made a sound of protest.
The vet frowned. "It is an issue which I can confront only by evading it. An utterly stupid proposition, and these hands so lovingly trained to master a scalpel yearn to caress a trigger. I returned to save life and I was refused," he said. "Ten men in masks drove me out from the city at midnight and beat me with whips for saving a human life. And I was forced to the utmost degradation because I possessed skilled hands and the belief that my knowledge could bring me dignity—not wealth, only dignity—and other men health!"
Then suddenly he fixed me with his eyes. "And now, do you understand?" "What?" I said.
"What you've heard!"
"I don't know."
"Why?"
I said, "I really think it's time we left."
"You see," he said turning to Mr. Norton, "he has eyes and ears and a good distended African nose, but he fails to understand the simple facts of life. Understand. Understand? It's worse than that. He registers with his senses but short-circuits his brain. Nothing has meaning. He takes it in but he doesn't digest it. Already he is—well, bless my soul! Behold! a walking zombie! Already he's learned to repress not only his emotions but his humanity. He's invisible, a walking personification of the Negative, the most perfect achievement of your dreams, sir! The mechanical man!"
Mr. Norton looked amazed.
"Tell me," the vet said, suddenly calm. "Why have you been interested in the school, Mr. Norton?"
"Out of a sense of my destined role," Mr. Norton said shakily. "I felt, and I still feel,
that your people are in some important manner tied to my destiny." "What do you mean, destiny?" the vet said.
"Why, the success of my work, of course."
"I see. And would you recognize it if you saw it?"
"Why, of course I would," Mr. Norton said indignantly. "I've watched it grow each year I've returned to the campus."
"Campus? Why the campus?"
"It is there that my destiny is being made."
The vet exploded with laughter. "The campus, what a destiny!" He stood and walked around the narrow room, laughing. Then he stopped as suddenly as he had begun.
"You will hardly recognize it, but it is very fitting that you came to the Golden Day with the young fellow," he said.
"I came out of illness—or rather, he brought me," Mr. Norton said.
"Of course, but you came, and it was fitting."
"What do you mean?" Mr. Norton said with irritation.
"A little child shall lead them," the vet said with a smile. "But seriously, because you both fail to understand what is happening to you. You cannot see or hear or smell the truth of what you see—and you, looking for destiny! It's classic! And the boy, this automaton, he was made of the very mud of the region and he sees far less than you. Poor stumblers, neither of you can see the other. To you he is a mark on the score-card of your achievement, a thing and not a man; a child, or even less—a black amorphous thing. And you, for all your power, are not a man to him, but a God, a force —"
Mr. Norton stood abruptly. "Let us go, young man," he said angrily.
"No, listen. He believes in you as he believes in the beat of his heart. He believes in that great false wisdom taught slaves and pragmatists alike, that white is right. I can tell you his destiny. He'll do your bidding, and for that his blindness is his chief asset. He's your man, friend. Your man and your destiny. Now the two of you descend the stairs into chaos and get the hell out of here. I'm sick of both of you pitiful obscenities! Get out before I do you both the favor of bashing in your heads!" I saw his motion toward the big white pitcher on the washstand and stepped between him and Mr. Norton, guiding Mr. Norton swiftly through the doorway. Looking back, I saw him leaning against the wall making a sound that was a blending of laughter and tears.
"Hurry, the man is as insane as the rest," Mr. Norton said.
"Yes, sir," I said, noticing a new note in his voice.
The balcony was now as noisy as the floor below. The girls and drunken vets were stumbling about with drinks in their hands. Just as we went past an open door Edna saw us and grabbed my arm.
"Where you taking white-folks?" she demanded.
"Back to school," I said, shaking her off.
"You don't want to go up there, white-folks, baby," she said. I tried to push past
her. "I ain't lying," she said. "I'm the best little home-maker in the business."
"Okay, but please let us alone," I pleaded. "You'll get me into trouble."
We were going down the stairs into the milling men now and she started to scream, "Pay me then! If he's too good for me, let him pay!"
And before I could stop her she had pushed Mr. Norton, and both of us were stumbling swiftly down the stairs. I landed against a man who looked up with the anonymous familiarity of a drunk and shoved me hard away. I saw Mr. Norton spin past as I sank farther into the crowd. Somewhere I could hear the girl screaming and Halley's voice yelling, "Hey! Hey! Hey, now!" Then I was aware of fresh air and saw that I was near the door and pushed my way free and stood panting and preparing to plunge back for Mr. Norton—when I heard Halley calling, "Make way y'all!" and saw him piloting Mr. Norton to the door.
"Whew!" he said, releasing the white man and shaking his huge head.
"Thanks, Halley —" I said and got no further.
I saw Mr. Norton, his face pale again, his white suit rumpled, topple and fall, his head scraping against the screen of the door.
"Hey!"
I opened the door and raised him up.
"Goddamit, out agin," Halley said. "How come you bring this white man here, school-boy?" "Is he dead?"
"DEAD!" he said, stepping back indignantly. "He caint die!"
"What'll I do, Halley?"
"Not in my place, he caint die," he said, kneeling.
Mr. Norton looked up. "No one is dead or dying," he said acidly. "Remove your hands!"
Halley fell away, surprised. "I sho am glad. You sho you all right? I thought sho you was dead this time."
"For God's sake, be quiet!" I exploded nervously. "You should be glad that he's all right."
Mr. Norton was visibly angry now, a raw place showing on his forehead, and I hurried ahead of him to the car. He climbed in unaided, and I got under the wheel, smelling the heated odor of mints and cigar smoke. He was silent as I drove away.