THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
WALTER F. WHITE
NEW YORK
ALFRED • A • KNOPF
MCMXXIV
COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
PUBLISHED, SEPTEMBER, 1924
SET UP, ELECTROTYPED, PRINTED AND BOUND
BY THE VAILBALLOU PRESS, INC., BINGHAMTON N. Y.
PAPER FURNISHED BY W. F. ETHERINGTON & CO., NEW YORK.
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO MY WIFE
"The fire in the flint never shows until it is struck."
—_Old English Proverb._
THE FIRE IN THE FLINT
CHAPTER I
KENNETH HARPER gazed slowly around his office. A smile of
satisfaction wreathed his face, reflecting his inward contentment.
He felt like a runner who sees ahead of him the coveted goal towards
which he has been straining through many gruelling miles. Kenneth
was tired but he gave no thought to his weariness. Two weeks of hard
work, countless annoyances, seemingly infinite delays—all were now
forgotten in the warm glow which pervaded his being. He, Kenneth B.
Harper, M.D., was now ready to receive the stream of patients he
felt sure was coming.
He walked around the room and fingered with almost loving tenderness
the newly installed apparatus. He adjusted and readjusted the
examining-table of shining nickel and white enamel which had arrived
that morning from New York. He arranged again the black leather pads
and cushions. With his handkerchief he wiped imaginary spots of dust
from the plate glass door and shelves of the instrument case, though
his sister Mamie had polished them but half an hour before until
they shone with crystal clearness. Instrument after instrument he
fondled with the air of a connoisseur examining a rare bit of
porcelain. He fingered critically their various parts to see if all
were in perfect condition. He tore a stamp from an old letter and
placed it under the lens of the expensive microscope adjusting and
readjusting until every feature of the stamp stood out clearly even
to the most infinite detail. He raised and lowered half a dozen
times or more the lid of the nickelled sterilizer. He set at various
angles the white screen which surrounded the examining-table, viewed
it each time from different corners of the room, and rearranged it
until it was set just right. He ran his hand over the card index
files in his small desk. He looked at the clean white cards with the
tabs on them—the cards which, though innocent now of writing, he
hoped and expected would soon be filled with the names of
innumerable sick people he was treating.
His eye caught what he thought was a pucker in the
grey-and-blue-chequered linoleum which covered the floor. He went
over and moved the sectional bookcase containing his volumes on
obstetrics, on gynæcology, on _materia medica_, on the diseases he
knew he would treat as a general practitioner of medicine in so
small a place as Central City. No, that wasn't a pucker—it was only
the light from the window striking it at that angle.
"Dr. Kenneth B. Harper, Physician and Surgeon." He spelled out the
letters which were painted on the upper panes of the two windows
facing on State Street. It thrilled him that eight years of hard
work had ended and he now was at the point in his life towards which
he had longingly looked all those years. Casting his eyes again
around the office, he went into the adjoining reception room.
Kenneth threw himself in utter exhaustion into one of the
comfortable arm-chairs there. His hands, long-fingered, tapering to
slender points, the hands of a pianist, an artist, whether of brush
or chisel or scalpel, hung over the sides in languid fashion. He was
without coat or vest. His shirt-sleeves were rolled back above his
elbows, revealing strongly muscled dark brown arms. His face was of
the same richly coloured brown. His mouth was sensitively shaped
with evenly matched strong white teeth. The eyes too were brown,
usually sober and serious, but flashing into a broad and friendly
smile when there was occasion for it. Brushed straight back from the
broad forehead was a mass of wavy hair, brown also but of a deeper
shade, almost black. The chin was well shaped.
As he lounged in the chair and looked around the reception room, he
appeared to be of medium height, rather well-proportioned, almost
stocky. Three years of baseball and football, and nearly two years
of army life with all its hardships, had thickened up the once
rather slender figure and had given to the face a more mature
appearance, different from the youthful, almost callow look he had
worn when his diploma had been handed him at the end of his college
course.
The reception room was as pleasing to him as he sat there as had
been the private office. There were three or four more chairs like
the one in which he sat. There was a couch to match. The wall-paper
was a subdued tan, serving as an excellent background for four
brightly coloured reproductions of good pictures. Their brightness
was matched by a vase of deep blue that stood on the table. Beside
the vase were two rows of magazines placed there for perusal by his
patients as they waited admittance to the more austere room beyond.
It was comfortable. It was in good taste—almost too good taste,
Kenneth thought, for a place like Central City in a section like the
southernmost part of Georgia. Some of the country folks and even
those in town would probably say it was too plain—didn't have enough
colour about it. Oh, well, that wouldn't matter, Kenneth thought.
They wouldn't have to live there. Most of them would hardly notice
it, if they paid any attention at all to relatively minor and
unimportant things like colour schemes.
Kenneth felt that he had good reason to feel content with the
present outlook. He lighted a cigarette and settled himself more
comfortably in the deep chair and let his mind wander over the long
trail he had covered. He thought of the eight happy years he had
spent at Atlanta University—four of high school and four of college.
He remembered gratefully the hours of companionship with those men
and women who had left comfortable homes and friends in the North to
give their lives to the education of coloured boys and girls in
Georgia. They were so human—so sincere—so genuinely anxious to help.
It wasn't easy for them to do it, either, for it meant ostracism and
all its attendant unpleasantnesses to teach coloured children in
Georgia anything other than industrial courses. And they were so
different from the white folks he knew in Central City. Here he had
always been made to feel that because he was a "nigger" he was
predestined to inferiority. But there at Atlanta they had treated
him like a human being. He was glad he had gone to Atlanta
University. It had made him realize that all white folks weren't
bad—that there were decent ones, after all.
And then medical school in the North! How eagerly he had looked
forward to it! The bustle, the air of alert and eager determination,
the lovely old ivied walls of the buildings where he attended
classes. He laughed softly to himself as he remembered how terribly
lonesome he had been that first day when as an ignorant country boy
he found himself really at a Northern school. That had been a hard
night to get through. Everybody had seemed so intent on doing
something that was interesting, going so rapidly towards the places
where those interesting things were to take place, greeting old
friends and acquaintances affectionately and with all the boisterous
bonhomie that only youth, and college youth at that, seem to be able
to master. It had been a bitter pill for him to swallow that he
alone of all that seething, noisy, tremendous mass of students, was
alone—without friend or acquaintance—the one lonely figure of the
thousands around him.
That hadn't lasted long though. Good old Bill Van Vleet! That's what
having family and money and prestige behind you did for a fellow! It
was a mighty welcome thing when old Bill came to him there as he sat
dejectedly that second morning on the campus and roused him out of
his gloom. And then the four years when Bill had been his closest
friend. He had been one wonderful free soul that knew no line of
caste or race.
His friendship with Van Vleet seemed to Kenneth now almost like the
memory of a pleasant dream on awaking. Even then it had often seemed
but a fleeting, evanescent experience a wholly temporary arrangement
that was intended to last only through the four years of medical
school. Those times when Bill had invited him to spend Christmas
holidays at his home they had been hard invitations to get out of.
Bill had been sincere enough, no doubt of that. But Bill's
father—his mother—their friends—would they—old Pennsylvania Dutch
family that they were would they be as glad to welcome a Negro into
their home? He had always been afraid to take the chance of finding
that they wouldn't. Decent enough had they been when Bill introduced
him to them on one of their visits to Philadelphia. But—and this was
a big "but"—there was a real difference between being nice to a
coloured friend of Bill's at school and treating that same fellow
decently in their own home. Kenneth was conscious of a vague feeling
even now that he had not treated them fairly in judging them by the
white people of Central City. Yet, white folks were white folks—and
that's that! Hadn't his father always told him that the best way to
get along with white people was to stay away from them and let them
alone as much as possible?
Through his mind passed memories of the many conversations he had
had with his father on that subject. Especially that talk together
before he had gone away to medical school. He didn't know then it
was the last time he would see his father alive. He had had no way
of knowing that his father, always so rugged, so buoyantly healthy,
so uncomplaining, would die of appendicitis while he, Kenneth, was
in France. If he had only been at home!
He'd have known it wasn't a case of plain cramps, as that old
fossil, Dr. Bennett, had called it. What was the exact way in which
his father had put his philosophy of life in the South during that
last talk they had had together? It had run like this: Any Negro can
get along without trouble in the South if he only attends to his own
business. It was unfortunate, mighty unpleasant and uncomfortable at
times, that coloured people, no matter what their standing, had to
ride in Jim Crow cars, couldn't vote, couldn't use the public
libraries and all those other things. Lynching, too, was bad. But
only bad Negroes ever got lynched. And, after all, those things
weren't all of life. Booker Washington was right. And the others who
were always howling about rights were wrong. Get a trade or a
profession. Get a home. Get some property. Get a bank account. Do
something! Be somebody! And then, when enough Negroes had reached
that stage, the ballot and all the other things now denied them
would come. White folks then would see that the Negro was deserving
of those rights and privileges and would freely, gladly give them to
him without his asking for them. That was the way he felt. When Bill
Van Vleet had urged him to go with him to dinners or the theatre, he
had had always some excuse that Bill had to accept whether he had
believed it or not. Good Old Bill! They never knew during those more
or less happy days what was in store for them both.
Neither of them had known that the German Army was going to sweep
down through Belgium. Nor did they know that Bill was fated to end
his short but brilliant career as an aviator in a blazing,
spectacular descent behind the German lines, the lucky shot of a
German anti-aircraft gun.
Graduation. The diploma which gave him the right to call himself
"Dr. Kenneth B. Harper." And then that stormy, yet advantageous year
in New York at Bellevue. Hadn't they raised sand at his, a Negro's
presumption in seeking that interneship at Bellevue! He'd almost
lost out. No Negro interne had ever been there before. If it hadn't
been for Dr. Cox, to whom he had had a letter of introduction from
his old professor of pathology at school, he never would have got
the chance. But it had been worth it.
Kenneth lighted another cigarette and draped his legs over the arm
of the chair. It wasn't bad at all to think of the things he had
gone through—now that they were over. Especially the army. Out of
Bellevue one week when the chance came to go to the Negro officers'
training-camp at Des Moines. First lieutenant's bars in the medical
corps. Then the long months of training and hard work at Camp Upton,
relieved by occasional pleasant trips to New York. Lucky he'd been
assigned to the 367th of the 92nd Division. Good to be near a real
town like New York.
That had been some exciting ride across. And then the Meuse, the
Argonne, then Metz. God, but that was a terrible nightmare! Right
back of the lines had he been assigned. Men with arms and legs shot
off. Some torn to pieces by shrapnel. Some burned horribly by
mustard gas. The worse night had been when the Germans made that
sudden attack at the Meuse. For five days they had been fighting and
working. That night he had almost broken down. How he had cursed
war! And those who made war. And the civilization that permitted
war—even made it necessary. Never again for him! Seemed like a
horrible dream—a nightmare worse than any he had ever known as a boy
when he'd eaten green apples or too much mince pie.
That awful experience he had soon relegated to the background of his
mind. Especially when he was spending those blessed six months at
the Sorbonne. That had been another hard job to put over. They
didn't want any Negroes staying in France. They'd howled and they'd
brought up miles of red tape. But he had ignored the howls and
unwound the red tape.
And now, Central City again. It was good to get back.
Four—eight—sixteen years had he spent in preparation. Now he was all
ready to get to work at his profession. For a time he'd have to do
general practising. Had to make money. Then he'd specialize in
surgery—major surgery. Soon's he got enough money ahead, he'd build
a sanitarium. Make of it as modern a hospital as he could afford.
He'd draw on all of South Georgia for his patients. Nearest one now
is Atlanta. All South Georgia—most of Florida—even from Alabama. Ten
years from now he'd have a place known and patronized by all the
coloured people in the South. Something like the Mayo Brothers up in
Rochester, Minnesota!
"Pretty nifty, eh, Ken?"
Kenneth, aroused suddenly from his retrospection and day-dreams,
jumped at the unexpected voice behind him. It was his younger
brother, Bob. He laughed a little shamefacedly at his having been
startled. Without waiting for a reply, Bob entered the room and sat
on the edge of the table facing Kenneth.
"Yep! Things are shaping up rather nicely. Everything's here now but
the patients. And those'll be coming along pretty soon, I believe,"
replied Kenneth confidently. He went on talking enthusiastically of
the castles in the air he had been building when Bob entered the
room—of the hospital he was going to erect—how he planned attending
the State Medical Convention every year to form contracts with other
coloured doctors of Georgia—how he was intending to visit during the
coming year all the coloured physicians within a radius of a hundred
miles of Central City to enlist their support. He discussed the
question of a name for the hospital. How would Harper's Sanitarium
sound? Or would the Central City Infirmary be better? Or the
Hospital of South Georgia?
On and on Kenneth rambled, talking half to Bob, half in audible
continuation of his reverie before Bob had entered. But Bob wasn't
listening to him. On his face was the usual half-moody,
half-discontented expression which Kenneth knew so well. Bob was
looking down the dusty expanse of the road which bore rather poorly
the imposing title of State Street. The house was located at the
corner of Lee and State Streets. It was set back about fifty feet
from the streets, and the yard outside showed the work of one who
loved flowers. There was an expanse of smooth lawn, dotted here and
there with flowering beds of pansies, of nasturtiums. There were
several abundantly laden rose-bushes and two of "cape jessamine"
that filled the air with an intoxicating, almost cloying sweetness.
Though it was a balmy October afternoon, the air languorous and
caressing, Bob shared none of the atmosphere's lazy contentment. All
this riot of colours and odours served in no manner to remove from
his face the dissatisfied look that covered it. He listened to
Kenneth's rhapsodies of what he intended accomplishing with what was
almost a grimace of distaste. He was taller than Kenneth, of
slighter build, but of the same rich colouring of skin and with the
same hair and features.
In spite of these physical resemblances between the two brothers,
there was a more intangible difference which clearly distinguished
the two. Kenneth was more phlegmatic, more of a philosophic turn of
mind, more content with his lot, able to forget himself in his work,
and when that was finished, in his books. Bob, on the other hand,
was of a highly sensitized nature, more analytical of mind, more
easily roused to passion and anger. This tendency had been developed
since the death of his father just before he completed his freshman
year at Atlanta. The death had necessitated his leaving school and
returning to Central City to act as administrator of his father's
estate. His experiences in accomplishing this task had not been
pleasant ones. He had been forced to deal with the tricksters that
infested the town. He had come in contact with all the chicanery,
the petty thievery, the padded accounts, that only petty minds can
devise. The utter impotence he had felt in having no legal redress
as a Negro had embittered him. Joe Harper, their father, had been
exceedingly careful in keeping account of all bills owed and due
him. Yet Bob had been forced to pay a number of bills of which he
could find no record in his father's neatly kept papers. These had
aggregated somewhere between three and four thousand dollars.
Various white merchants of the town claimed that Joe Harper, his
father, owed them. Bob knew they were lying. Yet he could do
nothing. No court in South Georgia would have listened to his side
of the story or paid more than perfunctory attention to him. It was
a case of a white man's word against a Negro's, and a verdict
against the Negro was sure even before the case was opened.
Kenneth, on the other hand, had been a favourite of their quiet,
almost taciturn father. Always filled with ambition for his
children, Joe Harper had furnished Kenneth, as liberally as he could
afford, the money necessary for him to get the medical education he
wanted. He had not been a rich man but he had been comfortably fixed
financially. Starting out as a carpenter doing odd jobs around
Central City, he had gradually expanded his activities to the
building of small houses and later to larger homes and business
buildings. Most of the two-story buildings that lined Lee Street in
the business section of Central City had been built by him. White
and coloured alike knew that when Joe Harper took a contract, it
would be done right. Aided by a frugal and economical wife, he had
purchased real estate and, though the profits had been slow and
small, had managed with his wife to accumulate during their
thirty-five years of married life between twenty and twenty-five
thousand dollars which he left at his death to his wife and three
children.
Kenneth had been furnished with the best that his father could
afford, while Bob, some ten years younger than his brother, had had
to wait until Kenneth finished school before he could begin his
course. Bob felt no jealousy of his favoured brother, yet the
experiences that had been his in Central City while Kenneth was away
had tended towards a bitterness which frequently found expression on
his face. He was the natural rebel, revolt was a part of his creed.
Kenneth was the natural pacifist—he never bothered trouble until
trouble bothered him. Even then, if he could avoid it, he always
did. It was not strange, therefore, that he should have come home
believing implicitly that his father was right when he had said
Kenneth could get along without trouble in Central City as long as
he attended to his own business.
Kenneth talked on and on, unfolding the plans he had made for the
extending of the influence of his hospital throughout the South.
Bob, occupied with his own thoughts, heard but little of it.
Suddenly he interrupted Kenneth with a sharply put question.
"Ken, why did you come back to Central City?" he asked. He went on
without waiting for a reply. "If I had had your chances of studying
up North and in France, and living where you don't have to be A
afraid of getting into trouble with Crackers all the time, I'd
rather've done anything else than to come back to this rotten place
to live the rest of my life."
Kenneth laughed easily, almost as though a five-year-old had asked
some exceedingly foolish question.
"Why did I come back?" he repeated. "That's easy. I came back
because I can make more money here than anywhere else."
"But that isn't the most important thing in life!" Bob exclaimed.
"Maybe not the most important," Kenneth laughed, "but a mighty
convenient article to have lying around. I came back here where the
bulk of coloured people live and where they make money off their
crops and where there won't be much trouble for me to build up a big
practice."
"That's an old argument," retorted Bob. "Nearly a million coloured
people went North during the war and they're making money there hand
over fist. You could make just as much money, if not more, in a city
like Detroit or Cleveland or New York, and you wouldn't have to be
always afraid you've given offence to some of these damned ignorant
Crackers down here."
"Oh, I suppose I could've made money there. Dr. Cox at Bellevue told
me I ought to stay there in New York and practise in Harlem, but I
wanted to come back home. I can do more good here, both for myself
and for the coloured people, than I could up there." He paused and
then asserted confidently: "And I don't think I'll have any trouble
down here. Papa got along all right here in this town for more than
fifty years, and I reckon I can do it too."
"But, Ken," Bob protested, "the way things were when he came along
are a lot different from the way they are now. Just yesterday Old
Man Mygatt down to the bank got mad and told me I was an ‘impudent
young nigger that needed to be taught my place' because I called his
hand on a note he claimed papa owed the bank. He knew I knew he was
lying, and that's what made him so mad. They're already saying I'm
not a ‘good nigger' like papa was and that education has spoiled me
into thinking I'm as good as they are. Good Lord, if I wasn't any
better than these ignorant Crackers in this town, I'd go out and
jump in the river."
Bob was working himself into a temper. Kenneth interrupted him with
a good-natured smile as he said:
"Bob, you're getting too pessimistic. You've been reading too many
of these coloured newspapers published in New York and Chicago and
these societies that're always playing up some lynching or other
trouble down here—"
"What if I have? I don't need to read them to know that things are
much worse to-day than they were a few years back. You haven't lived
down here for nearly nine years and you don't know how things are
changed."
"It's you who have changed—not conditions so much!" Kenneth
answered. "What if there are mean white folks? There are lots of
other white people who want to see the Negro succeed. Only this
morning Dr. Bennett told mamma he was glad I came back and he'd do
what he could to help me. And there're lots more like"
"That's nice of Dr. Bennett," interjected Bob. "He can afford to
talk big—he's got the practice of this town sewed up. And, most of
all, he's a white man. Suppose some of these poor whites get it into
their heads to make trouble because you're getting too
prosperous—what then? Dr. Bennett and all the rest of the good white
folks around here can't help you!"
"Oh, yes, they can," Kenneth observed with the same confident smile.
"Judge Stevenson and Roy Ewing and Mr. Baird at the Bank of Central
City and a lot others run this town and they aren't going to let any
decent coloured man be bothered. Why, I'll have a cinch around this
part of Georgia! There aren't more than half a dozen coloured
doctors in all this part of the country who've had a decent medical
education and training. All they know is ladling out pills and fake
panaceas. In a few years I'll be able to give up general practising
and give all my time to major surgery. I'll handle pretty nearly
everything in this part of the State. And then you'll see I'm
right!"
"Have it your own way," retorted Bob. "But I'm telling you again,
you haven't been living down here for eight or nine years and you
don't know. When all these Negroes were going North, some of these
same ‘good white folks' you're depending on started talking about
‘putting niggers in their place' when they couldn't get servants and
field hands. You'll find things a lot different from the way they
were when you went up North to school."
"What're you boys fussing about? What's the trouble?"
Bob and Kenneth turned at the voice from the doorway behind them. It
was their mother. "Nothing, mamma, only Bob's got a fit of the blues
to-day."
Mrs. Harper came in and looked from one to the other of her sons.
She was a buxom, pleasant-faced woman of fifty-odd years, her hair
once brown now flecked with grey. She wiped the perspiration from
her forehead with the corner of her apron, announcing meanwhile that
supper was ready. As he rose, Kenneth continued his explanation of
their conversation.
"Bob's seeing things like a kid in the dark. He thinks I'll not be
able to do the things I came back here to accomplish. Thinks the
Crackers won't let me! I'm going to solve my own problem, do as much
good as I can, make as much money as I can! If every Negro in
America did the same thing, there wouldn't be any race problem."
Mrs. Harper took an arm of each of her sons and led them into the
dining-room where their sister Mamie was putting supper on the
table.
"You're right, Kenneth," Mrs. Harper remarked as she sat down at the
table. "Your father and I got along here together in Central City
without a bit of trouble for thirty-five years, and I reckon you can
do it too."
"But, mamma," Bob protested, "I've been telling Ken things are not
what they were when you and papa came along. Why—"
"Let's forget the race problem for a while," Kenneth interrupted.
"I'm too hungry and tired to talk about it now."
"That's right," was Mrs. Harper's comment. "Draw your chairs up to
the table. You're not goin' to have any trouble here in town, Ken,
and we're mighty glad you came back. Mrs. Amos was in this afternoon
and she tells me they're having some trouble out near Ashland
between the coloured sharecroppers and their landlords, but that'll
blow overjust as it's always done."
"What's the trouble out there?" asked Kenneth. He wasn't much
interested, for he could hear Mamie, in the kitchen beyond, singing
some popular air to the accompaniment of chicken-frying.
"It's a case where coloured farmers claim they can't get fair
settlements from their landlords for their crops at the end of the
year," explained his mother.
"Why don't they hire a lawyer?" Kenneth asked, with little interest.
"That shows you've forgotten all about things in the South," said
Bob with mingled triumph and despair at his brother's ignorance.
"There isn't a white lawyer in Georgia who'd take a case like this.
In the first place, the courts would be against him because his
client's a Negro, and in the second place, he'd have to buck this
combination of landlords, storekeepers, and bankers who are getting
rich robbing Negroes. If a white lawyer took a case of a Negro
share-cropper, he'd either sell out to the landlord or be scared to
death before he ever got to court. And as for a Negro lawyer," here
Bob laughed sardonically, "he'd be run out of town by the Ku Klux
Klan or lynched almost before he took the case!"
"Oh, I don't know so much about that!" Kenneth replied. "There are
landlords, without doubt, who rob their tenants, but after all there
are only a few of them. And furthermore," he declared as Mamie
entered the room with a platter of fried chicken in one hand and a
plate of hot biscuits in the other, "supper looks just a little bit
more interesting to me right now than landlords, tenants, or
problems of any kind."
Mamie divested herself of her apron and sat down to the table. She
was an attractive girl of twenty-two or twenty-three, more slender
than Bob, and about Kenneth's height. Her hair was darker than that
of either of her brothers, was parted in the middle and brushed down
hard on either side. Though not a pretty girl, she had an air about
her as though she was happy because of the sheer joy of living. She
had graduated from Atlanta University two years before, and with two
other girls had been teaching the seven grades in the little
ramshackle building that served as a coloured school in the town.
That hard work had not as yet begun to tell on her. She seemed
filled with buoyant good health and blessed with a lively good
nature. Yet she too was inclined to spells of depression like Bob's.
She resembled him more nearly than Kenneth. As has every comely
coloured girl in towns of the South like Central City, she had had
many repulsive experiences when she had to fight with might and main
to ward off unwelcome attentions—both of the men of her own race and
of white men. Especially had this been true since the death of her
father. Often her face overclouded as she thought of them. She, like
Bob, felt always as though they were living on top of a volcano—and
never knew when it might erupt. …
The four sat at supper. Forgotten were problems other than the
immediate one of Kenneth's in getting his practice under way.
Eagerly they talked of his plans, his prospects, his ambitions. Bob
said nothing until they began to discuss him and his plans for
returning to school the following fall, now that Kenneth was back to
complete the settling of the small details that remained in
connection with Joe Harper's estate. …
It was a happy and reasonably prosperous, intelligent family
group—one that can be duplicated many, many times in the South.