EARLY Friday morning Kenneth left for Central City, before the
Atlanta _Constitution_ appeared on the streets for sale. Soon after
his train left Macon on the way South, the engine blew out a
cylinder head. They remained there until another could be dispatched
from Macon to replace it. There had come to his stopping-place in
Atlanta, a few minutes after he had left, a telegram which had been
sent from a town twenty miles distant from Central City, telling him
to remain in Atlanta until further notice. Jane had paid a man
liberally to drive through the country to get the telegram off in
time. It would not have done to send such a wire from Central City.
All these things had so happened as though the very fates themselves
were in league against Kenneth.
In total ignorance of what had happened to Mamie and Bob and the
eventful chain of happenings since he had left Central City three
days before, Kenneth sat in the stuffy, odorous, and dirty Jim Crow
car, busied with his thoughts. A noisy and malodorous Negro sat next
to him who seemed to know some person at every one of the thousand
and one stations at which they stopped. Kenneth sat next to the
window. His companion leaned over him to stick his head out of the
window to shout loud-mouthed and good-natured greetings to his
friends on the ground. At those few stations where he knew no one,
he would ask foolish, sometimes humorous questions of those he did
not know. Kenneth stood it as long as he could and then requested
the troublesome fellow to be less annoying. Kenneth, though vexed,
was amused at the man's complaint to another of his kind behind him.
"Humph!" he grunted. "Tha's whut I say ‘bout a dressed-up
nigger—thinks he owns the train. I paid jes' as much," he declared
more aggressively, "as he did, an' ef he don't like it, he can git
off and walk." At this, a long laugh at his own witty remark, but
Kenneth looked out of the window and paid no attention to him. His
thoughts were busy with other things.
Every few minutes he would feel the lump in the lower right-hand
vest-pocket with a touch that was almost loving in its tenderness.
He hoped Jane would like the ring—it had cost a little more than he
had expected to pay or could afford, but the best was none too good
for a girl like her. He could see Jane's eyes now when he opened the
little box and she for the first time saw the glittering facets of
the beautiful stone. He smiled in anticipation of her joy. And then
he'd put it on her finger and she'd put her arms around his neck and
he'd feel again her warm, soft, passionate, clinging lips. Lucky he
didn't get too deeply tied up with that girl years ago in New York.
She had kissed as though she'd had long practice at it. Too
sophisticated—nothing like Jane. Jane wasn't experienced in
kissing—but the thrill it gave him! It was funny about girls. Most
of them didn' think a kiss meant very much. He had kissed
one—two—three—four—oh, lots of them! But all of them put together
couldn't begin to equal in warmth, the vividness of one kiss from
Jane.
And just think of it—six weeks from now, and Jane would be
Mrs. Kenneth B. Harper! My, but that sounded good! Reverend Wilson
would marry them. Then they'd go to Atlantic City for their
honeymoon.
Hoped the cotton crop would turn out well. Then he'd be able to
collect some of those long-outstanding accounts from the farmers.
That money would come in mighty handy right now. That's the devil of
being a country doctor. You had to wait until the cotton crop was
gathered and sold before you could collect the bulk of what's due
you. And if the cotton failed or the market was so flooded the price
was down, you'd have to wait on the most of them until the next
year. Sometimes two or three years. Dr. Johnson over at Vidalia had
some accounts that're six years old. Oh, well, they're good anyway.
Couldn't expect to practise in the country districts unless you were
willing to wait for your money.
Wonder why this darned train doesn't make better time. Slow as all
outdoors. Like molasses in winter-time. If it only gets in on time,
I'll surprise Jane by running in on her on the way home. Due in at
five-fifty. Let's see, it's four-thirty now. Where are we now?
Hoopersville. Nearly ninety miles yet to go. Good Lord, won't get in
until nearly eight o'clock! Hope we won't lose any more time. Don't
see why so darned many people are travelling to-day anyhow. Just
slows up the train, getting on and off with their ten bundles and
suitcases each.
Wonder how Bob feels about going to school.
Hope he'll like the shirts I bought him. Ought to. Cost four dollars
apiece. Prices are certainly high. Few years ago you could get the
best shirts on the market for a dollar and a half apiece—not more
than two dollars.
I can see Jane now. Let's see, it's five o'clock. Probably getting
supper. Glad she can cook so well. Most girls nowadays can't boil
water without burning it.
He reflected on the unusual conversation he had had the night before
with Dr. Scott, John Anthony, and Gordon. It was good to know there
were some white men who were thinking seriously on the race problem.
And trying to be fair. Most white Southerners were modern Pontius
Pilates. Figuratively and literally, mentally and morally, they
washed their hands of all personal responsibility for the increasing
complexities of the race question. He wondered how many more men
there were in the South like those three. Broadminded but afraid to
speak out. Ewing, Judge Stevenson, Scott, Anthony, Gordon—all by
word or action seemed mortally afraid lest the public know they were
even thinking of justice. How soon, he wondered, would they gain
sufficient courage to take a manly stand? Would that time come
before the inevitable clash that continued oppression would cause?
Coloured folks weren't going to stand it much longer. They were
organizing up North and even in the South to use legal means to
better their lot. But some of them were getting desperate. Armed
resistance would be foolish. Would be certain death. At any rate,
even that would be better than what has been going on.
Good Lord, he reflected, let's forget the race problem awhile! A
Negro never gets away from it. He has it night and day. Like the
sword of Damocles over his head. Like a cork in a whirling vortex,
it tosses him this way and that, never ceasing. Have to think about
something else or it'll run him crazy. Guess Mary Ewing's about out
of danger now.
Glad when she's all right again. Don't like to be going over there
to those white folks' house. Neighbours might begin to talk. How
much can I charge Roy Ewing? Two hundred dollars? Yes, he can stand
it. Hope he'll pay me soon. Can use it when Jane and I go on our
honeymoon. Just about cover our expenses. Honeymoon. Always thought
it a darned silly name. But it doesn't sound so bad now. Not when it
was mine and Jane's.
Thank Goodness, there's Ashland! Next stop's Central City. Be home
in an hour. Guess I'll go home first and take a bath and put on some
clean clothes. Feel dirty all over and there are a thousand cinders
down my back. Ugh, but this is a nasty ride! Hope Bob'll be at the
train with the car. …
Kenneth descended from the train and looked for Bob. He wasn't
there. He looked around for some other coloured man to drive him
home. He knew it was useless to try and get any of the white
taxi-drivers to take him home—they would have considered it an
insult to be asked to drive a Negro. He thought it strange that
there were no Negroes to be seen. Usually there were crowds of them.
It formed the biggest diversion of the day for white and coloured
alike to see the train come in. It was the familiar longing for
travel—adventure contact with the larger and more interesting things
of the outside world, though none of them could have given a
reasonable statement of the fundamental psychological reactions they
were experiencing when they went to the station. They never thought
of it in that light—it was simply a pleasurable item in the day's
course. That was enough.
When he found no one around, Kenneth picked up his bag and started
down the platform to the street. He noticed, but paid little
attention to, the silence that fell over the various groups as he
passed. He heard a muttered oath but it never occurred to him that
it might have any possible connection with himself. Intent on
reaching home, seeing the folks, telephoning Hiram Tucker that his
wife had passed safely through her operation and was resting
well—eager to get freshened up and go over to Jane's, he cut across
a field that would save a half-mile walk instead of going the longer
route through Lee Street and town. Swinging along in a long, free
stride reminiscent of his army days, he continued the musing he had
done on the train.
He thought nothing of the fact that his house was darkened. He rang
the bell but no one answered. Thinking his mother and Mamie were out
visiting in the neighbourhood, he dug down in his bag, got his keys,
and let himself into the house. His mother was coming down the
stairs, an oil lamp in her hands. As he went up to kiss her, he
noticed her eyes were sunken and red. Anxiously he inquired the
reason.
"Oh, Kenneth, my boy—my boy—haven't you heard?"
She burst into a torrent of weeping, her head on his shoulders. He
took the lamp from her hand perplexedly and placed it on the table.
"Heard what, mamma? What's the matter? What's happened? Why are you
crying like this? What's wrong?"
The questions poured out of him like a flood. For some time his
mother could not speak. Her sobs racked her body. Though she tried
to control herself, every effort to do so but caused her to weep the
more. Kenneth, puzzled, waited until she could gain control of
herself. He thought it funny she carried on this way—she'd never
acted like this before. She had always been so well poised. But his
alarm and feeling of impending disaster increased to definite
proportions when the flood of tears seemed endless.
"Where's Bob?" he asked, thinking that he could find out from his
brother what had gone wrong. At this a fresh burst of weeping
greeted him. He led her into his reception room and sat her down on
the lounge and himself beside her. At last, between body-tearing
sobs, she told him.
"Great God!" he shouted. "No! No! Mamma, it can't be true! It can't
be true!" But even as he demanded that she tell him it was not true,
he knew it was. …
Mrs. Harper's lamentations were even as those of that other Rachel
who wept for her children because they were not. Kenneth sat
stunned. It was too terrible—too devastating—too cataclysmic a
tragedy to comprehend! Mamie—his own dear little sister—torn,
ravished, her life ruined! Bob—with all his fire and ambition, his
deep sensitiveness to all that was fine and beautiful, as well as
his violent hatred of the mean, the petty, the vicious, the unjust,
the sordid-Bob-his brother—dead at the hands of a mob! Thank God, he
had died before they laid hands on him!
He laughed—an agonized, terrible mockery that made his mother look
at him sharply. He had been a damned fool! He thought bitterly of
his thoughts on the train a few hours before. Good God, how petty,
how trivial they seemed now! Surely that couldn't have been just
hours ago? It must have been centuries—ages—æons since. He heard the
crickets chirping outside the window. From down the street there
floated a loud laugh. His wilted collar annoyed him. Cinders from
the train scratched his back. He wondered how in such a circumstance
he could be conscious of such mundane things.
He laughed again. His mother had ceased her loud wails of grief and
sat rocking to and fro, her arms folded tightly across her breast as
though she held there the babe who had grown up and met so terrible
a fate. Low, convulsive sobs of anguish seemed to come from her
innermost soul. … She anxiously touched Kenneth on the shoulder as
he laughed. It had a wild, a demoniacal, an eerie ring to it that
terrified her. …
What was the use of trying to avoid trouble in the South, he
thought? Hell! Hadn't he tried? Hadn't he given up everything that
might antagonize the whites? Hadn't he tried in every way he could
to secure and retain their friendship? By God, he'd show them now!
The white-livered curs! The damned filthy beasts! Damn trying to be
a good Negro! He'd fight them to the death! He'd pay them back in
kind for what they had brought on him and his!
He sprang to his feet. A fierce, unrelenting, ungovernable hatred
blazed in his eyes. He had passed through the most bitter five
minutes of his life. Denuded of all the superficial trappings of
civilization, he stood there the primal man—the wild beast,
cornered, wounded, determined to fight—fight—fight! The fire that
lay concealed in the flint until struck, now leaped up in a
devastating flame at the blows it had received! All the art of the
casuist with which he had carefully built his faith and a code of
conduct was cast aside and forgotten! He would demand and take the
last ounce of flesh—he would exact the last drop of blood from his
enemies with all the cruelty he could invent!
His mother, whom he had forgotten in the intensity of his hatred,
became alarmed at the light in his eyes. He shook off the hand with
which she would have restrained him.
"Oh, Ken!" she cried anxiously. "What're you going to do?"
"I'm going to kill every damned ‘Cracker' I find!" She fell to her
knees in an agony of supplication and clung to him, the while he
tried to loose her arms from around his knees. He shook as with a
chill—his face had become vengeful, ghastly. Filled with a Berseker
rage, he was eager to tear with his hands a white man—any white
man—limb from limb.
"Kenneth, my boy! My boy!" cried his mother. "You're all I've got
left! Don't leave me! Don't leave me! My little Bob is dead! My
Mamie is ruined! You're all I've got! You're all I've got! Don't
leave me, lambkins! Don't leave your old mother all alone, honey!"
In her torture at the prospect of losing this, her last child, she
used again the endearing names she had called him when he was a babe
in her arms—endearments she had not used since.
"Mamma, I've got to! I've got to! God, if I only can find those who
killed him!" he shouted. She, like a drowning person, clutched at
the fragile straw his last words implied. Her voice was almost a
prayer.
"But you don't know, Ken, you don't know who was in the mob!" she
cried. "That Jim Archer and Charley Allen—they're the only ones
Mamie recognized! And they're dead—they've paid! My little Bob
killed them! Who're you going to get? How're you going to find out
to-night who the others were? You can't, Ken, you can't!".
She realized this was her only hope. If she could only keep him in
the house the rest of the night, when morning came she was sure he
would be more calm. He would realize then how foolish and foolhardy
his intentions of the night before had been. She pleaded—she
begged—she moaned in her terror. He tried to shake her off. He did
loosen her grip around his knees where she had clung like death
itself. As he leaned over to pry her hands loose and was about to
succeed, she grasped his arm and held on. He tried to jerk his arm
loose and rush from the house. She was struggling now with that
fierce, grim, relentless tenacity and courage of the mother fighting
for her young. She held on. His jerks dragged her over the floor but
she was conscious neither of the act nor the pain. She would have
died there gladly if by so doing she could restrain her boy from
rushing forth to certain death. Oh, yes, he might get one or two
before he died. Maybe five or ten. But the odds were all against
him. Death would most surely overtake him before morning.
Kenneth raged. He cursed in spite of himself. She did not even
comprehend what he said nor the significance of his words. She did
not even consciously hear them. He damned without exception every
white man living. The damned cowards! The filthy curs! The stinking
skunks, fighting a thousand against one!
"Superior race"! "Preservers of civilization"! "Superior," indeed!
They called Africans inferior! They, with smirking hypocrisy,
reviled the Turks! They went to war against the "Huns" because of
Belgium! None of these had ever done a thing so bestial as these
"preservers of civilization" in Georgia! Civilization! Hell! The
damned hypocrites!
The liars! The fiends! "White civilization"! Paugh! Black and brown
and yellow hands had built it! The white fed like carrion on the
rotting flesh of the darker peoples! And called their toil their
own! And burned those on whose bodies their vile civilization was
built!
Bob had been right! Bob had been a man! He'd fought and died like a
man! He, Kenneth, with all his professed and vaunted wisdom, was the
coward! He cursed himself! Building a fool's paradise! A house of
cards! To hell with everything! What was life worth anyway? Why not
end it all in one glorious orgy of killing?
In his agonized fulmination against the whites and in his vow of
vengeance on those who had dealt him so cruel and heart-sickening a
blow, Kenneth forgot those who had been and were true friends of the
black man—who had suffered and died that he might be free. He forgot
those who, though few in number and largely inarticulate, were
fighting for the Negro even in the South. Kenneth's grief, however,
was too deep and the blow too crushing for him to think of these in
his hour of despair.
At length his raging subsided a little. His mother was pleading with
him with a fervour he had never believed she possessed. Snatches of
her words penetrated his mind.
"… and who'll protect Mamie and me? … all alone … you're all we've
got! … need you … need you now as never before … mustn't leave us
now … mustn't leave …"
He sank to the floor exhausted by the fierceness of his rage. A
feeble cry came from above stairs. "It's Mamie!" his mother
whispered, frightened. She left him lying there to rush to her other
child. Before she left she made Kenneth promise he wouldn't go out
before she returned. He lay on the floor as in a stupor. It was his
Gethsemane. He felt as though some giant hand was twisting his very
soul until it bled. He thought of the hours Mamie had lain in the
field after the fiends had accomplished their foul purpose on her.
Bleeding, torn, rayished! Mamie, always tender, so unselfish, so
unassuming—God, why hadn't he thought more of her and been more
considerate of her? No, he'd been so wrapped up in his own happiness
and future he'd never given her much attention or thought. Why
hadn't he? Why had he been so selfish? How could he make up to her
for all his remissness of the past?
That brought to his mind what his mother had said. They did need him
now! More than ever before! How could he have started on his rampage
of revenge had his mother not held him? Where and on whom would he
have begun?
But wasn't this cowardice not to exact some kind of revenge? He
hated himself at the mere thought of cowardice at this time. Good
God, he had had enough of that all along! Wouldn't Bob in death
curse him if he failed now to play the man? Or wouldn't it take more
courage to live? The thought comforted him.
As though the sounds were worlds away, he heard his mother moving in
the room above as she ministered to Mamie's wants. He heard the
noises of the street. Miles away a dog barked. Nearer a rooster
crowed. He thought of a sermon Reverend Wilson had preached the
Sunday before. Of the Christ in his hour of betrayal. Of Peter
denying his Lord. And the cock crowing thrice. Wasn't he denying his
duty—his family—his conscience—his all? Back again over the same
ground he had already travelled so thoroughly, his mind went. …
For hours he lay there. The noises of the street ceased. He heard no
more his mother above. Exhausted with the ordeal through which she
had passed, she had probably fallen asleep. … And yet he did not
move. He heard the clock in the hall strike eleven. … He counted the
strokes, marvelling the while that time was yet measured in hours
and minutes and days. … His soul was even as the body of a woman in
travail. …