“I don’t think he’s crazy, I don’t think he likes cold rain neither,” Virgina said. “I think you making all that up ’cause you didn’t get that seventy-five cents yesterday.”
Fletcher told that same story to others that day, and like Virginia not many wanted to believe him. Two days later everyone did. Monday at Thelma’s café, Abe Matthews told the people how he had seen Virginia’s new tenant standing under one of the big oak trees in the cemetery. He had seen him there on Sunday evening just as it was getting dark, so he was not ready to swear on the Bible that it was the tenant, but if it wasn’t, then it was a ghost wearing a long overcoat and a knitted cap pulled all the way down to his ears. Evalena Battley, on her way to work at the St. Adrienne laundry, saw him at six o’clock in the morning standing on the bank of the St. Charles River. The rain had been falling steadily the past two weeks, and now the river was high and rough, flowing swiftly south toward New Orleans. The tenant stood on the bank among the hanging branches of the weeping willow, oblivious to Evalena, to everything else round him except the swift-flowing river.
That same evening, Dago Jack, on his way home from Brick O’Linde’s grocery store, saw him standing out in the street watching Phillip Martin’s house. Dago mentioned it to the people at the store the next day, but since they had seen him practically everywhere else already they didn’t think much of it.
He had two meals at Thelma’s café. On Saturday, the day after he arrived in St. Adrienne, he came into the café around noon and sat down at a table in the corner. When Thelma told him what she had on the menu for the day, he told her to bring him a plate of red beans and rice, mustard greens, and a piece of cornbread. The next day he came back about the same time, and he ordered giblets, rice, greens, and cornbread. He sat at the same table as before, a little red-and-white-checkered, oilcloth-covered table in the corner. Neither time did he take off his cap or his coat. Both times he paid for his meals with change money. The money, quarters, nickels, dimes, was black with age.
Monday he started buying his food at Brick O’Linde’s grocery store. Several men, including the cab driver Fletcher Zeno, sat or stood round the heater talking. They had been talking about him just before he came in, but now they were quiet, one then another glancing at him standing at the counter. He bought sausage, cheese, bread, and a bottle of cheap muscatel wine. After he had paid for his groceries he left the store without saying a word to anyone.
“More of that black money?” Fletcher asked Brick.
Brick O’Linde looked at the money in the palm of his hand and nodded his head.
That evening they saw him walking again. He never spoke to anyone. He never asked anyone about anyone else. Yet, day and night, whether it was raining or not, they would meet him or pass him walking the street. Several people had seen him on St. Anne Street, not far from the house where the minister and civil rights leader Phillip Martin lived.
2
Elijah Green, a teacher at the elementary school in St. Adrienne, lived with Phillip Martin and his family. He gave piano lessons to the minister’s ten-year-old daughter, Joyce Anne, as payment for his room and board. He was also choir director at the church and worked in the civil rights program. He gave regular parties at the house for the workers and their supporters, and the next one would be held that coming Saturday.
Thursday evening, two days before the party, he was driving up St. Anne Street when the lights of his car flashed on Virginia’s new tenant walking up ahead of him. He recognized the overcoat from a block away. He had seen him several times before, but like everyone else he had been apprehensive about approaching him. He told himself that this time he would. He stopped just ahead of the tenant and leaned over to the passenger door to speak to him.
“Give you a lift?” he asked.
The tenant stuck his narrow, beaded face into the window, then straightened up to look back down the street. Elijah couldn’t see his face now, so he couldn’t tell what he was looking at or looking for. But the next moment he had opened the door and gotten in. Elijah smiled timidly as he reached out his hand. Their hands were opposites. The tenant’s fingers were long and skeletal, the knuckles as prominent as knots on a stick. Elijah, who was short and very dark, had small, soft hands.
“You going far?” he asked, after driving off.
“Just walking,” the tenant said, as if he knew that Elijah had picked him up only to ask him questions.
“Walk a lot, huh?” Elijah asked.
The tenant looked at him and nodded his head. “I walk a lot,” he said.
“Pretty bad weather to be walking in,” Elijah said, after glancing out of the window up at the sky. “Been like this now couple of weeks.”
“I don’t mind the weather,” the tenant said. “You mind the weather?”
Elijah grinned to himself. “Don’t reckon you can do much about it,” he said. “But I rather have it warm and sunny.”
“For what?” the tenant asked him.
“It just feels better,” Elijah answered.
“It all feels the same to me,” the tenant said.
Elijah looked at the scraggly, bearded face. The tenant was gazing out in front of the car. Elijah couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Your house back there?” the tenant asked, after they had been silent a while.
Elijah realized now why he had looked back just before getting into the car. He had seen a car parked before the minister’s house, and he had to be sure that this was the same one.
“What house?” Elijah asked, as if he didn’t know what the tenant was talking about.
“The brick house,” he said without looking at Elijah.
“No, I just have a room there,” Elijah said. “That’s Reverend Martin’s house.”
“Reverend Martin?” the tenant asked, still not looking at Elijah.
“Our civil rights leader round here,” Elijah said. “Our Martin Luther King, you might say.”
“That’s pretty high class,” the tenant said.
“We feel he’s in that class,” Elijah told him.
“How do you come to that?” the tenant asked.
“By his work,” Elijah said. “His leadership, political and moral. His character.”
“His character?” the tenant asked. “Do you ever know a man’s character?”
“I think I know his,” Elijah said. “I’ve known him ten years. Been living with them five years. I think I know something about him.”
The tenant grunted and nodded his head as he gazed out at the light in front of the car.
“Heard you were from Chicago?” Elijah asked him. “Visiting some people here in St. Adrienne?”
Elijah knew better. Like everyone else in St. Adrienne who had seen Virginia’s new tenant walking the streets, he knew that he had not visited anyone. But Elijah wanted to hear how he would answer.
“I’m here for a conference,” he said.
“What kind of conference?”
“A black man’s conference.”
“Here in St. Adrienne?”
“I’m meeting a man here in St. Adrienne.”
“Does he live here? Do we know him?”
The tenant didn’t answer him, and Elijah thought it was best not to ask any more questions for a while. He turned off St. Anne Street, which was very wide and well-lighted, onto a narrow dark street with ditches on either side. Weathered-gray shotgun houses, their doors shut tight against the cold, sat only a few feet from the ditches. Hardly any light could be seen anywhere on the street or from the houses.
“Going to be here long?” Elijah asked, after they had gone a couple more blocks.
“It depends,” the tenant said.
“We’re having a little party at the house Saturday evening,” Elijah told him. “Drop by if you’re still around.”
His passenger turned quickly to look at him. For the first time since getting into the car he seemed very interested in what Elijah was saying.
“You mean tha
t brick house back there?” he asked.
Elijah nodded. “Yes, Reverend Martin’s house.”
The tenant smiled from the side of his mouth and narrowed his eyes as he looked down at Elijah. “You don’t think he’d mind, somebody like me coming in his house?”
“Mind?” Elijah asked.
The tenant nodded his head. “Mind.”
“Mind for what?” Elijah asked him. “That’s why we’re giving the party, so people can come there.”
“Even people like me?” the tenant said, and touched his chest.
“Anybody and everybody,” Elijah said. Then he looked up at him. “Long as you don’t bite people. You don’t bite people, do you?”
The tenant shook his head. “No, I don’t bite people.”
Elijah grinned at him. “Then you welcomed,” he said.
Up ahead of them, Elijah could see the green-and-yellow neon lights flashing over the door of the Congo Room. He could tell by the cars parked before the door and to the side that the other teachers were already at the bar.
“Care to have a drink?” he asked his passenger.
“No, thanks.”
“Can I drop you off anywhere?”
“No, I’ll walk.”
Elijah stopped before the Congo Room, but his passenger did not get out of the car. He sat very erect, looking at the lights flashing over the door. Elijah figured he was sitting there because he had no place to go, other than back to that room or to walk the streets.
“Sure you won’t have that drink?” he asked him again.
“No. I’ll see you Saturday,” the tenant said, and got out.
After shutting the door, he nodded back to Elijah through the glass.
“I’ll have one of my friends pick you up,” Elijah said.
“I’ll be there,” he answered, and walked away.
Elijah sat watching him go up the street, until the coat became the same color as the darkness, then he got out of the car and went into the bar. He had no sooner stepped inside when he heard someone call his name, and he pushed his way through the crowd over to the table where the other teachers were sitting. There were about a half dozen men and women at the table. They were in their twenties or early thirties, and they taught at either the elementary school or the junior high school in St. Adrienne. They came into the Congo Room every evening to drink and talk. It was the best nightclub in St. Adrienne for blacks and the only one where the teachers would go.
“What kept you so long?” a man wearing a plaid sport jacket asked Elijah. “The bottle’s almost gone.”
On the table was about a quarter of a fifth of whiskey, a half pitcher of water, a couple of bottles of soft drinks, and a plastic bowl of ice cubes. Elijah fixed himself a drink and sat down.
“I met Virginia’s new tenant, Robert X,” he said.
“You walking too?” the young man in the sport jacket asked, and laughed. His name was Chuck Allen.
“I gave him a lift,” Elijah said. “Tried to get him to come in and have a drink, but he had somewhere to go.”
“Maybe he had to get in some more walking,” Chuck Allen said, and laughed again.
“He’s here for a conference,” Elijah said.
“Here in St. Adrienne?” Chuck asked. “What kind of conference?”
“Some kind of black man’s conference,” Elijah said. “He’s here to meet somebody. I suppose the conference is somewhere else.”
“Here to meet who?” Chuck asked.
“He didn’t say,” Elijah said, and drank.
“If the other person walk much as he does, maybe they’ll bump into each other,” a light-skinned man named Guy Christophe said from the other end of the table.
“Niggers have more conferences than the President,” Chuck said, after drinking. “But you never hear of a damned thing come out of them.”
“One thing always come out of them,” Christophe said. “They always make plans for the next conference.”
Several of the other teachers laughed.
“I invited him to the party, Shep,” Elijah said to the teacher sitting directly across from him.
Shepherd Lewis, wearing a green cardigan over a brown open-collar shirt, sat at the table with a hand on his glass and the other arm on the back of the chair of the woman sitting next to him. He looked across the table at Elijah and frowned. He knew Elijah had some plan for him.
“Your party,” he said. “Invite who you want.”
“I would like for you to bring him when you come,” Elijah said.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Shepherd said.
“I’ll probably be busy all day,” Elijah said. “I told him one of my friends would bring him over.”
“Your friend didn’t pick him up,” Shepherd said.
“I didn’t think you’d mind,” Elijah said, apologizing.
“I do mind,” Shepherd said.
“Don’t worry, Elijah, he’ll bring him over,” the woman sitting next to Shepherd said.
“Will I?” he asked her.
“Sure,” she said, looking up at him.
Her name was Beverly Ricord. She had very light skin, and her long brown hair was twisted and pinned into a bun on the back of her head. She and Shepherd had been lovers ever since their days at Southern University in Baton Rouge where he was a football hero. He was a handsome fellow, and there were many girls, but he loved her most. After graduating from the university he tried out for professional football, but he couldn’t make it and he got a job teaching at the same school where she was. They had been working together now over seven years, and she had been trying to get him to marry her ever since.
“About time you did something nice for somebody,” she said.
“I’m not nice, huh?” he asked, looking down at her.
“Sometimes. Sometimes no,” she said, and fixed her own drink. She drank and looked at him. “Sometimes no.”
Shepherd turned to Elijah, but Elijah had discreetly looked away. No one else at the table said anything for a while.
“What you go’n have at your party to drink, Elijah?” Chuck asked.
“Eggnog. Punch,” Elijah said. He didn’t look at Chuck, because he would have to look past Shepherd to do so.
“Anything in that eggnog and punch?” Chuck asked.
Elijah shook his head. “No.”
“Well, don’t expect to see me,” Chuck said.
“And ditto for me,” Christophe said from the other end of the table.
“That whole thing’s over with,” Chuck said, after he had fixed himself another drink. “He did some good work, but it’s all over with now. What you say, Shep?”
Shepherd shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. He was still mad at Elijah, and he didn’t feel like talking.
“The man’s beautiful, so much courage,” Beverly said. “I wish I had courage like that. I’d give anything to have courage like that.”
“Well,” Chuck said, raising his glass. “Here’s to good old courage. All the luck in the world to good old courage.”
“I think it’s a shame,” Beverly said. “We being the teachers, we ought to be the ones out there in front.”
“Well, you can represent me, baby,” Chuck said. He turned and raised his hand so the bartender would notice him and bring another bottle. The bartender nodded his head. Chuck looked back at Beverly. “That shit’s over with, kiddo. Them honkies gave up some, because of conscience, because of God. But they ain’t giving up no more. Nigger’s already got just about everything he’s getting out of this little town. Anything else he want he better go look somewhere else for it.”
The bartender brought the bottle.
3
After Virginia’s new tenant left Elijah Thursday evening, no one saw him again until Shepherd went to the house Saturday to bring him to the party. Why he had suddenly stopped walking the streets no one knew. But now he stayed in his room. The people on either side of him could hear him pacing the floor day and night. Friday night,
sometime between twelve and one o’clock, they heard him scream. Virginia heard it too and ran out into the hall. Someone told her where the noise had come from, and she went upstairs and knocked on his door. He didn’t answer. She knocked again and put her ear to the door this time. She could hear him crying quietly, as though he might be lying on the bed with his face in the covers. She knocked and listened. She told one of the men to knock. The man knocked very hard with his fist. Then both he and Virginia put their ears to the door. But now even the crying had stopped.
Virginia didn’t get any sleep the rest of the night, and all day Saturday she was nervous and tense. When she was under stress, she either cooked food all day or spent the day fixing her hair. That day she did both. When Shepherd came up to the house she had straightened her hair, but she hadn’t finished curling it. There were curls only on one side; the other side looked like so many porcupine quills. Shepherd would have laughed at her, but he could see she was scared.
“Something the matter?” he asked her.
“I don’t know,” she said, looking up at him and shaking her head. “I don’t know.”
Shepherd was a little over six feet tall, and Virginia threw her head back to look up at him. Her round black face was shining from the hot comb that she had put down only a moment ago.
“He pushed some money under my door for another week, but I don’t know,” she said, looking up at Shepherd.
“I guess he’s still waiting for that other person—his friend—to show up,” Shepherd said.
“What friend?” Virginia said. “He ain’t got no friend. He ain’t got nobody. And he ain’t going to no conference neither. I know it, you know it, and everybody else round here know it.”
“All I know, Elijah invited him to the party, and he wants me to bring him there,” Shepherd said.