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

bastids?" he asked. "Is there?"
    "They's plenty," said Li'l Joe, and David heard an abrupt laugh from his grandmother.
    "And we the ones what knows it," she said. Then, "Lawd! his folks going to tell all their friends how their lily-white chile got beat up by colored. Going to use it to show why their kids is too good for us. I wish God would strike 'em dead. I wish they was all dead and rotting in hell."
    "They bound to be someday," said Li'l Joe reasonably. 'They bound to be. Ain't no God I ever heerd about going to find no places for 'em too close to Him. The whites is lots of things, but there's one thing they ain't—that's Christian." He frowned at his wife. "Ain't no use getting all upsetted. God don't work in no hurry. He'll catch up with 'em, give Him time. Ain't nothing you can do about it, not if you wants to keep on living." He looked across the table into the dark, round puzzlement of his grandson's eyes, and flinched as from a blow. "Next time some white calls you bad names, don't go to fighting, and—"
    "But—but Gramp—you said when Jimmy—"
    "That's different. He's colored. Some white lays a hand on you, you fight back, but don't get in no humbug over bad names. You going to be hearing bad names from whites all your life. Ain't nothing but bad comes from fighting 'em. They ignorant."
    "What's iggerant?"
    "They don't know no better. You getting old enough to learn now how it is. You gets in trouble with the whites, I'll tan your hide so good you can use it for shoe leather. You let 'em alone, y'hear!"
    David nodded, his eyes seeming to be all that there was of his face. He had never heard that tone in Gramp's voice before; had always known that threats to "tan his hide" were joking, that the worst he would get was a right smart switching. He had never been afraid of Gramp before, and now, suddenly, he was. It was a shattering thing—to be afraid of Gramp, to see a real and bitter threat in Gramp's eyes, hear a harsh promise in Gramp's voice of fearful punishment for disobedience to an order he could not comprehend. The foundations of his small world rocked, threatening to disintegrate. He sensed something else behind that harshness. Gramp was no longer Gramp, gentle, loving, kindly; Gramp was a being to fear and yet Gramp, too, was afraid.
    He was sobbing now, and Gram held him close and rocked him fiercely in her arms. "You got no call to cry, baby. All the love you got, you got no call to cry." Her voice was edged and sharp as she spoke over his head to her husband. "You stir yourself, Joseph Champlin, and get down to Antonelli's and get us some ice cream and some of them frosted cookies they got the baby likes."
    Gramp's hands were under his shoulders, setting him on his feet, but Gramp's tone was still strange. "Stop it, son! You going to be crying all your life, you keep on like this. There ain't nothing you can do about it. Reckon me'n' Gram's got to teach you about God some more. Come on, li'l man, right now we gets ourselves some ice cream."
    At Antonelli's he had a peppermint, and Gramp bought ice cream and some cookies to take home. Later, at the table, he warily approached a question he had to ask, a question that came from the depths of a new bewilderment.
    "Gramp." There was a ring of ice cream on the smooth brown of his lips, and the cookie in his hand had a half-moon bite in it.
    "Don't talk with your mouth full, son." David swallowed ice cream and the bite of cookie and tried again. "Gramp, when I says my prayers I says 'God bless Gram and Gramp and Tant' Irene and ol' Miz Jefferson and the Professor and little colored children everywhere.' Don't I, Gramp?"
    "Sure do, baby."
    "Ain't the Professor white, Gramp?"
    Li'l Joe had been expecting this one eventually. "Sometimes they's what they call exceptions, son. The Professor, now, he comes from over the water, where they got all different kinds of countries. They even speaks different languages. I mean different from what we speaks and the