Russell Banks - Cloudsplitter

And before long I did indeed think that I was dreaming, for our reality that morning corresponded uncannily to a nighttime dream that I frequently had in those years. Father and I were the only white people in a crowd of well-dressed Negroes. As we moved through the large gathering of black, brown, and tan men, women, and children, they parted for us and nodded respectfully, some of the men touching the brims of their hats, the women politely averting their gazes, the children looking at us with surprised eyes — lovely people of all the many Negro shades, from pale butterscotch and ginger all the way to ebony and even a few of that most African hue of blue-black. It was as if every tribe of the continent of Africa, from Egypt to the southernmost tip, were represented there. Father walked cleanly through the crowd in his usual manner — back straight as a hoe handle, head pitched slightly forward and led by his out-thrust jaw, arms swinging loosely at his sides, like a man pacing out a field for a survey — and I struggled to keep up, my feet heavy and difficult to move, as if I were wading through mud or walking underwater.

Soon the crowd closed around him and filled in between us, and I found myself cut off from him, falling further and further back, and suddenly I became afraid, not so much of the Negroes who surrounded me as of being separated from Father. Like a small child, I cried out to him, “Father! Wait!” At that, the crowd seemed to part again and to open up a corridor between us. Father slowly turned and peered at me. Then, impatiently waving me on, he resumed walking up the broad steps of a small brick church and entered and disappeared from my view into the darkness of the sanctuary. The narrow corridor through the crowd remained open, however. Laboriously, I made my way along it, sweating from the effort and the heat of the day and the many aches and pains of my beating the night before, when I had walked another gauntlet, that one amongst white people. I was never so conscious as I was then, during those few moments that I spent traversing the short, paved space at the entrance to the Negro church of Boston, of the difference between the faces of the oppressors and the oppressed, or the faces of my white-skinned brethren and my black. And I was never so conscious of my own bewildering, sad difference from both. My face was invisible to me. Father! I nearly cried out. Wait for me! I cannot bear to be so alone! Without thee beside me, I seem not to exist at all! Without thee to look upon me, whether I am amongst white people or black, I am invisible!

I found him inside the church, of course, seated in a pew close to the front, and I took the empty seat next to him, fairly collapsing into it. He studied my face with sudden concern and felt my brow. “You’re unwell, son|’ he said. “Perhaps you should have stayed at the Howes’ today.”

“No, no, I want to be here. I’m very happy here, Father,” I said to him. And I was. Frightened of nameless things; and filled to overflowing with chaotic emotions; yet happy! I felt an inexplicable readiness, as if for a religious awakening, as if for an infusion of light and power. I sensed it coming, not from a truly divine source like Father’s God, but from some other, up to now wholly unknown source of light and power, which lay outside myself and beyond all my previous experiences of awakening, beyond all my earlier resolves and oaths, all the sudden stages of my moral growth, all my old degrees and kinds of enlightenment and the pledges that had followed hard upon them. Filled with trembling expectation, then, I waited to become a new man. Or, perhaps, for the first time, a man.

And, indeed, it happened there, on that Sunday morning in September, in the African American Meeting House on Belknap Street in Boston, Massachusetts. While the choir sang a familiar old Methodist hymn, I began to shake and shiver and then experienced a great seizure. I remember the beautiful Negro voices pealing like heavy, dark bells, like distant thunder rolling down the valleys and across the fields of North Elba, coming closer and closer to me:

Come, O thou Traveler unknown,

Whom still I hold but cannot see;

My company before is gone,

And I am left alone with thee.

With thee all night I mean to stay

And wrestle till the break of day!

The fingers of both my hands tingled and buzzed, and I believed that the power of movement had returned to my long-dead arm, and I looked down and saw it move unbid, saw it bend at the elbow for the first time since boyhood, saw it rise and fall as easily as my right arm, until I was clapping my hands together and swinging both arms like the rest of the congregation and like Father beside me. The choir sang, and the preacher, a large, white-haired, full-faced man the color of mahogany, joined in at the second verse, and the rest of the people sang, too, including Father, who knew the words well, for it was one of his favorites.

I could not sing, however. I knew the hymn by heart, but it was as if I had been struck dumb. I opened my mouth, and no sound came. In silence, I made the words:

I need not tell thee who I am;

My sin and mis’ry declare;

Thyself has call’d me by my name;

Look on thy hands and read it there.

But who, I ask thee, who art thou?

Tell me thy name, and tell me now.

I did not believe in ghosts then, nor angels nor spirits of any kind, but it was as if I myself had become one, ghost, angel, or spirit, as if I had been lifted by the music and the clapping and swaying of the congregation and now hovered above them all, like a spot of reflected sunlight. Way down below, standing amongst the crowd of black and brown people, I saw clearly the two white men, my father and his large, red-haired son, swaying and clapping and singing with the others. For a few moments, I was split off from my body, entire and yet wholly invisible to the others, who sang with a mighty voice:

In vain thou strugglest to get free;

I never will unloose my hold;

Art thou the Man who died for me?

The secret of thy love unfold;

Wrestling, I will not let thee go,

Till I thy name, thy nature, know’.

All the universe seemed contained for those moments in that room, and the room was filled with music. I watched as my body below began to quake, and I saw my head snap back and my eyes roll in their sockets. I saw Father stare at me with alarm, and when my body stiffened and jerked about as if in a death-dance, I saw him place his arms around my shoulders to calm and comfort me, for he could not know that I was insensible of him and as much at peace as I had ever been in my life. I wished that I could reassure him of that, but I could not. The standing crowd, intent on its singing and in perfect unison swinging their arms and clapping their hands, appeared not to notice the grimly anxious white man in the snuff-colored suit and his large, flailing son.

What though my shrinking flesh complain

And murmur to contend so long?

I rise superior to my pain: When I am weak, then am I strong.!

And when my all of strength shall fail,

I shall with the God-man prevail.

Slowly, I descended and re-entered my body, and it seemed to soften somewhat and then to resume its former comportment, and Father eased me back down into my seat. When I opened my eyes, there he was, looking earnestly into my face. I smiled up at him.

“Son? Truthfully, now. Have you been brushed by an angel of the Lord?” was his whispered question.

I said, “Yes.”

He let a triumphant smile pass over his face and turned back to the front, where the members of the choir had now taken their seats and the preacher was moving towards the altar to begin his sermon. With a great barrel of a voice, large and round, he began. “My children. My brothers and sisters. Let me speak today on this question. Let me ask, let all of us ask, ‘Why should the children of a King go mourning all their days?’“