Read Online Five Smooth Stones by Ann Fairbairn - Free Book Online Page A

first." 
    Silence.
    "Well, is there?"
    "No—no, sir."
    As he left the room slowly, reluctantly, he heard his grandmother's voice raised shrilly: "You crazy, Joseph Champlin? That Jimmy's twice as big as him—and bad." And his grandfather's slow, quiet, "Chile's got to learn sometime. Chile's got to learn there's coming a time won't no one stand up for him but his own self." But he heard soft footsteps, and knew that Gramp was following him, then was standing at the door, quiet, alert.
    David went to bed that night nursing his first black eye.
    Several times, after he had been guided through his prayers by Geneva, he climbed out of his cot and over the foot of his grandparent's bed, looking at his bruises in the mirror, seeing himself as a hero in the dim light that filtered in from the kitchen. He had not followed his grandfather's implied advice to hit first. Instead he had marshaled his strength, and at the first taunt from the bully—a light-skinned boy, overloaded with soft, flabby flesh—had taken a running start and, goatlike, butted the soft belly with his head backed by all the momentum he could muster. The results were even more than Gramp could have hoped for. He was not clear in his mind how he had gotten the black eye, because the sight of the neighborhood scourge lying winded on the banquette had started a free-for-all.
    The fight had taught him something, though, and it was his first real secret, a something he could not share with Gramp, something only he would know: He did not like to fight. All that he could tell Gramp and take pride in was that he was not afraid to fight and that he could fight. Gramp had been, according to his own stories, which Tant' Irene acknowledged to be true, "One helluva fighter" when he was young. "Used to go out looking for 'em if they didn't happen natural," he'd say, and usually add, "Ain't but two things makes me want to fight now I'm older and come to my senses—that's seeing somebody hurt a young un or an old person."
    The process of teaching David Champlin to live in a divided world was begun when he was still too young to walk down the street without holding the protecting hand of Gram or Gramp. It was the first order of the business of upbringing. That he had white playmates with whom he romped on terms of equality only made it more urgent. He was told to take off his hat to all adults and call them "sir" or "ma'am" whether they were white or colored, but in dealing with white adults he was to keep his eyes to himself and never on them, and he must never look a white woman squarely in the face. Once his business with any white person was over he was to get out of their company, even though at that age the business might be no more than the purchase of an ice-cream cone. He learned early that lying to Gram or Gramp or those entrusted with his care was a bad thing and brought a stinging whipping; lying to a white, except the Professor, was glossed over, and therefore it was not a bad thing as lying to his own was a bad thing. The inevitable "why" of childhood's logic was never adequately answered.
    "What's a nigger bastid?" he asked his grandparents at supper one night.
    "Lawd!" said Geneva. "Lawd!" There was the sound of keening in her voice.
    Joseph Champlin finished flavoring his stew with hot sauce, and carefully replaced the bottle in the cruet stand. "Why you ask, son?"
    "Tommy Lucido called me a nigger bastid."
    It was not the "bastid" that made the muscles of Li'l Joe's jaws set; it was the lisp of childhood in the epithet. "What you do?" he asked.
    "I hit him," said his grandson. "I hit him and he runned away. I didn't want to hit him but I did."
    "You should of come home, baby," said Geneva. "You should have come home. Don't play round with him no more, y'hear! How many times I got to tell you—stay in your own courtyard; nev' mind what the white kids do."
    David paid no attention. He was looking at his grandfather, the source of all wisdom.
    "Is there white