Five Smooth Stones by Ann Fairbairn Page A

ain't going no place now, but mebbe he could have, thinking the way he does, quick like he is."
    "Is he doing well in school, Joe?"
    "He's doing fine, just fine. I tried to teach him a little myself, best I could, before he even went to school. I taught him his alphabet and how to spell little words like 'cat' and 'dog' and 'God.'"
    Knudsen's lips twitched. "In that order?"
    "Sort of. A chile knows a cat and a dog, chile just learning about God. Seemed like if I could make him see a cat and a dog had names you could spell out, then seemed like if I could make him see God did, too, why then God would be more real." He smiled apologetically. "He caught on quick. My mamma always said I caught on quick, too; only in them days schools for colored weren't as good as they are now, and Gawd knows they ain't much now. And she was working all the time, and I had to start rustling up money before I even got out of the fourth grade." He hesitated and went on: "They tells me my daddy was like that. Taught himself to read and write, with my mamma helping him."
    "Do you remember your father, Joe?" Knudsen was sparring for time, trying to get the other man's worry into some kind of perspective, trying to find an answer to the problem, knowing it was not nearly so great a problem as Joseph Champlin believed it to be, but respecting Li'l Joe's concern over it.
    "No," said Joseph Champlin. "No, I don't remember my daddy. Ain't no one alive now remembers him excepting one or two of the real old folks in the Quarter, ol' Miz Jefferson, folks like that."
    "He died when you were small?" It occurred to Knudsen that he had never heard Joseph Champlin mention his father before. He did not know what drove him to ask further questions. He pressed the questions as he would have with no other Negro but Joseph Champlin, and he could sense that even with him he was endangering a friendship that must always remain fragile.
    "He died before I was even small," said Li'l Joe. "He died before I was born, while my mamma was carrying me. He died away from here, not even in Louisiana." There was no sound in the little room except Knudsen's breathing. Joseph Champlin did not seem to be breathing at all. "My daddy's name was David, too. He was a real good man, but they burnt him; burnt him alive on a pile of logs in the middle of a field. Made them a bonfire out of David Champlin."
    Bjarne Knudsen felt the room sway around him, could for a moment see nothing, not even the man in the chair in front of him. He tried to speak, but emotion clogged his throat. He choked on his own horror. He felt the house in which he sat, with its high ceilings, its classic grace, its perfect proportions, fall away from him and leave him alone and shuddering at the edge of something unknown.
    It was Joseph Champlin's voice that came to him, called to him, brought back the walls of the room, set his house around him again with its galleries and lacy ironwork, its staircase, its grace, its slave quarters in the rear. He knew it would never be free again of the evil he had just glimpsed.
    "Prof," said the gentle voice of Li'l Joe, "Prof. I'm sorry. Swear to Gawd I didn't mean you to get upsetted like that. You asked me, Prof. I thought you knew till you asked me."
    He had spent years in the United States, but now Bjarne Knudsen's adopted language failed him. He spoke in Danish briefly, profanely, not to Li'l Joe or to himself, but to what was in the room, and then, in English, said, "You have lived with it. All your life you have lived with it."
    "Wasn't nothing I could do about it," said Li'l Joe reasonably. "It's in the past now, Professor. Don't do no good thinking on it too much. Things like that happened. Still happening, here and there, if you wants the truth."
    "Always, Joe? Do you believe they will always happen?"
    Joseph Champlin did not answer at first; then he shrugged. "Always will, I reckon, less'n we gets help, less'n we gets educated, learns how to fight it with law and stuff.