J. Powers: The Stories of J.F. Powers

Then I got hold of a funny idea. I told myself the trouble is somebody gets cheated or insulted or killed and everybody else tries to make it come out even by cheating and insulting and killing the cheaters and insulters and killers. Only they never do. I did not think they ever would. I told myself that I had a very big idea there, and when the riot was over I would go to the public library and sit in the reading room and think about it. Or I would speak to Old Gramma about it, because it seemed like she had the same big idea and like she had had it a long time, too.

The doctor was standing by me at the window all the time. He said nothing about what Old Gramma did, and now he stepped away from the window and so did I. I guess he felt the same way I did about the white man and that’s why he stepped away from the window. The big idea again. He was afraid the coloreds down below would yell up at us, did we see the white man pass by. The coloreds were crazy mad all right. One of them had the white man’s bugle and he banged on our door with it. I was worried Old Gramma had forgot to lock it and they might walk right in, and that would be the end of the white man and the big idea.

But Old Gramma pulled another fast one. She ran out into the alley and pointed her old yellow finger in about three wrong directions. In a second the alley was quiet and empty, except for Old Gramma. She walked slowly over against our building, where somebody had kicked the brown bag, and picked it up.

Old Gramma brought the white man right into our room, told him to sit down, and poured herself a cup of hot water. She sipped it and said the white man could leave whenever he wanted to, but it might be better to wait a bit. The white man said he was much obliged, he hated to give us any trouble, and, “Oh, oh, is somebody sick over there?” when he saw Mama, and that he’d just been passing by when a hundred nig — when he was attacked.

Old Gramma sipped her hot water. The doctor turned away from the window and said, “Here they come again,” took another look, and said, “No, they’re going back.” He went over to Mama and held her wrist. I couldn’t tell anything about her from his face. She was sleeping just the same. The doctor asked the white man, still standing, to sit down. Carrie only opened her eyes once and closed them. She hadn’t changed her position in the good chair. Brother George and the baby stood in a corner with their eyes on the white man. The baby’s legs buckled then — she’d only been walking about a week — and she collapsed softly to the floor. She worked her way up again without taking her eyes off the white man. He even looked funny and out of place to me in our room. I guess the man for the rent and Father Egan were the only white people come to see us since I could remember; and now it was only the man for the rent since Father Egan died.

The doctor asked the white man did he work or own a business in this neighborhood. The white man said, No, glancing down at his feet, no, he just happened to be passing by when he was suddenly attacked like he said before. The doctor told Old Gramma she might wash Mama’s face and neck again with warm water.

There was noise again in the alley — windows breaking and fences being pushed over. The doctor said to the white man, “You could leave now; it’s a white mob this time; you’d be safe.”

“No,” the white man said, “I should say not; I wouldn’t be seen with them; they’re as bad as the others almost.”

“It is quite possible,” the doctor said.

Old Gramma asked the white man if he would like a cup of tea.

“Tea? No,” he said, “I don’t drink tea; I didn’t know you drank it.”

“I didn’t know you knew her,” the doctor said, looking at Old Gramma and the white man.

“You colored folks, I mean,” the white man said, “Americans, I mean. Me, I don’t drink tea — always considered it an English drink and bad for the kidneys.”

The doctor did not answer. Old Gramma brought him a cup of tea.

And then Daddy came in. He ran over to Mama and fell down on his knees like he was dead — like seeing Mama with her arm broke and her chest so pushed in killed him on the spot. He lifted his face from the bed and kissed Mama on the lips; and then, Daddy, I could see, was crying — the strongest man in the world was crying with tears in his big dark eyes and coming down the side of his big hard face. Mama called him her John Henry sometimes and there he was, her John Henry, the strongest man, black or white, in the whole damn world, crying.

He put his head down on the bed again. Nobody in the room moved until the baby toddled over to Daddy and patted him on the ear like she wanted to play the games those two make up with her little hands and his big ears and eyes and nose. But Daddy didn’t move or say anything, if he even knew she was there, and the baby got a blank look in her eyes and walked away from Daddy and sat down, plump , on the floor across the room, staring at Daddy and the white man, back and forth, Daddy and the white man.

Daddy got up after a while and walked very slowly across the room and got himself a drink of water at the sink. For the first time he noticed the white man in the room. “Who’s he?” he said. “Who’s he?” None of us said anything. “Who the hell’s he?” Daddy wanted to know, thunder in his throat like there always is when he’s extra mad or happy.

The doctor said the white man was Mr Gorman, and went over to Daddy and told him something in a low voice.

“Innocent! What’s he doing in this neighborhood then?” Daddy said, loud as before. “What’s an innocent white man doing in this neighborhood now? Answer me that!” He looked at all of us in the room and none of us that knew what the white man was doing in this neighborhood wanted to explain to Daddy. Old Gramma and the doctor and me — none of us that knew — would tell.

“I was just passing by,” the white man said, “as they can tell you.”

The scared way he said it almost made me laugh. Was this a white man , I asked myself. Alongside Daddy’s voice the white man’s sounded plain foolish and weak — a little old tug squeaking at a big ocean liner about the right of way. Daddy seemed to forget all about him and began asking the doctor a lot of questions about Mama in a hoarse whisper I couldn’t hear very well. Daddy’s face got harder and harder and it didn’t look like he’d ever crack a smile or shed a tear or anything soft again. Just hard, it got, hard as four spikes.

Old Gramma came and stood by Daddy’s side and said she had called the priest when she was downstairs a while ago getting some candles. She was worried that the candles weren’t blessed ones. She opened the brown bag then, and that’s what was inside — two white candles. I didn’t know grocery stores carried them.

Old Gramma went to her room and took down the picture of the Sacred Heart all bleeding and put it on the little table by Mama’s bed and set the candles in sticks on each side of it. She lit the candles and it made the Sacred Heart, punctured by the wreath of thorns, look bloodier than ever, and made me think of that song, “To Jesus’ Heart All Burning,” the kids sing at Our Saviour’s on Sundays.

The white man went up to the doctor and said, “I’m a Catholic, too.” But the doctor didn’t say anything back, only nodded. He probably wasn’t one himself, I thought; not many of the race are. Our family wouldn’t be if Old Gramma and Mama didn’t come from New Orleans, where Catholics are thicker than flies or Baptists.

Daddy got up from the table and said to the white man. “So help me God, mister, I’ll kill you in this room if my wife dies!” The baby started crying and the doctor went to Daddy’s side and turned him away from the white man, and it wasn’t hard to do because now Daddy was kind of limp and didn’t look like he remembered anything about the white man or what he said he’d do to him if Mama… or anything.