Rayber wanted to lift his foot under the man’s chin. “You ever heard about reasoning?” he muttered.
“Listen,” the man said, “you can talk all you want. What you don’t realize is, we’ve got an issue here. How’d you like a couple of black faces looking at you from the back of your classroom?”
Rayber had a blind moment when he felt as if something that wasn’t there was bashing him to the ground. George came in and began washing basins. “Willing to teach any person willing to learn—black or white,” Rayber said. He wondered if George had looked up.
“All right,” the barber agreed, “but not mixed up together, huh? How’d you like to go to a white school, George?” he shouted.
“Wouldn’t like that,” George said. “We needs sommo powders. These here the las’ in this box.” He dusted them out into the basin.
“Go get some then,” the barber said.
“The time has come,” the executive went on, “just like Hawkson said, when we got to sit on the lid with both feet and a mule.” He went on to review Hawkson’s Fourth of July speech.
Rayber would like to have pushed him into the basin. The day was hot and full enough of flies without having to spend it listening to a fat fool. He could see the courthouse square, blue-green cool, through the tinted glass window. He wished to hell the barber would hurry. He fixed his attention on the square outside, feeling himself there where, he could tell from the trees, the air was moving slightly. A group of men sauntered up the courthouse walk. Rayber looked more closely and thought he recognized Jacobs. But Jacobs had a late afternoon class. It was Jacobs, though. Or was it. If it were, who was he talking to? Blakeley? Or was that Blakeley. He squinted. Three colored boys in zoot suits strolled by on the sidewalk. One dropped down on the pavement so that only his head was visible to Rayber, and the other two lounged over him, leaning against the barbershop window and making a hole in the view. Why the hell can’t they park somewhere else? Rayber thought fiercely. “Hurry up,” he said to the barber, “I have an appointment.”
“What’s your hurry?” the fat man said. “You better stay and stick up for Boy Blue.”
“You know you never told us why you’re gonna vote for him,” the barber chuckled, taking the cloth from around Rayber’s neck.
“Yeah,” the fat man said, “see can you tell us without sayin’, goodgovermint.”
“I have an appointment,” Rayber said. “I can’t stay.”
“You just know Darmon is so sorry you won’t be able to say a good word for him,” the fat man howled.
“Listen,” Rayber said, “I’ll be back in here next week and I’ll give you as many reasons for voting for Darmon as you want—better reasons than you’ve given me for voting for Hawkson.”
“I’d like to see you do that,” the barber said. “Because I’m telling you, it can’t be done.”
“All right, we’ll see,” Rayber said.
“Remember,” the fat man carped, “you ain’t gonna say, goodgovermint.”
“I won’t say anything you can’t understand,” Rayber muttered and then felt foolish for showing his irritation. The fat man and the barber were grinning. “I’ll see you Tuesday,” Rayber said and left. He was disgusted with himself for saying he would give them reasons. Reasons would have to be worked out—systematically. He couldn’t open his head in a second like they did. He wished to hell he could. He wished to hell “Mother Hubbard” weren’t so accurate. He wished to hell Darmon spit tobacco juice. The reasons would have to be worked out—time and trouble. What was the matter with him? Why not work them out? He could make everything in that shop squirm if he put his mind to it.
By the time he got home, he had the beginnings of an outline for an argument. It would be filled in with no waste words, no big words—no easy job, he could see.
He got right to work on it. He worked on it until suppertime and had four sentences—all crossed out. He got up once in the middle of the meal to go to his desk and change one. After supper he crossed the correction out.
“What is the matter with you?” his wife wanted to know.
“Not a thing,” Rayber said, “not a thing. I just have to work.”
“I’m not stopping you,” she said.
When she went out, he kicked the board loose on the bottom of the desk. By eleven o’clock he had one page. The next morning it came easier, and he finished it by noon. He thought it was blunt enough. It began, “For two reasons, men elect other men to power,” and it ended, “Men who use ideas without measuring them are walking on wind.” He thought the last sentence was pretty effective. He thought the whole thing was effective enough.
In the afternoon he took it around to Jacob’s office. Blakeley was there but he left. Rayber read the paper to Jacobs.
“Well,” Jacobs said, “so what? What do you call yourself doing?” He had been jotting figures down on a record sheet all the time Rayber was reading.
Rayber wondered if he were busy. “Defending myself against barbers,” he said. “You ever tried to argue with a barber?”
“I never argue,” Jacobs said.
“That’s because you don’t know this kind of ignorance,” Rayber explained. “You’ve never experienced it.”
Jacobs snorted. “Oh yes I have,” he said.
“What happened?”
“I never argue.”
“But you know you’re right,” Rayber persisted.
“I never argue.”
“Well, I’m going to argue,” Rayber said. “I’m going to say the right thing as fast as they can say the wrong. It’ll be a question of speed. Understand,” he went on, “this is no mission of conversion; I’m defending myself.”
“I understand that,” Jacobs said. “I hope you’re able to do it.”
“I’ve already done it! You read the paper. There it is.” Rayber wondered if Jacobs were dense or preoccupied.
“Okay, then leave it there. Don’t spoil your complexion arguing with barbers.”
“It’s got to be done,” Rayber said.
Jacobs shrugged.
Rayber had counted on discussing it with him at length. “Well, I’ll see you,” he said.
“Okay,” Jacobs said.
Rayber wondered why he had ever read the paper to him in the first place.
Before he left for the barber’s Tuesday afternoon, Rayber was nervous and he thought that by way of practice he’d try the paper out on his wife. He didn’t know but what she was for Hawkson herself. Whenever he mentioned the election, she made it a point to say, “Just because you teach doesn’t mean you know everything.” Did he ever say he knew anything at all? Maybe he wouldn’t call her. But he wanted to hear how the thing was actually going to sound said casually. It wasn’t long; wouldn’t take up much of her time. She would probably dislike being called. Still, she might possibly be affected by what he said. Possibly. He called her.
She said all right, but he’d just have to wait until she got through what she was doing; it looked like every time she got her hands in something, she had to leave and go do something else.
He said he didn’t have all day to wait—it was only forty-five minutes until the shop closed—and would she please hurry up?
She came in wiping her hands and said all right; all right, she was there, wasn’t she? Go ahead.
He began saying it very easily and casually, looking over her head. The sound of his voice playing over the words was not bad. He wondered if it were the words themselves or his tones that made them sound the way they did. He paused in the middle of a sentence and glanced at his wife to see if her face would give him any clue. Her head was turned slightly toward the table by her chair where an open magazine was lying. As he paused, she got up. “That was very nice,” she said and went back to the kitchen. Rayber left for the barber’s.
He walked slowly, thinking what he was going to say i
n the shop and now and then stopping to look absently at a store window. Block’s Feed Company had a display of automatic chicken-killers—“So Timid Persons Can Kill Their Own Fowl” the sign over them read. Rayber wondered if many timid persons used them. As he neared the barber’s, he could see obliquely through the door the man with the executive assurance was sitting in the corner reading a newspaper. Rayber went in and hung up his hat.
“Howdy,” the barber said. “Ain’t this the hottest day in the year, though!”
“It’s hot enough,” Rayber said.
“Hunting season soon be over,” the barber commented.
All right, Rayber wanted to say, let’s get this thing going. He thought he would work into his argument from their remarks. The fat man hadn’t noticed him.
“You should have seen the covey this dog of mine Bushed the other day,” the barber went on as Rayber got in the chair. “The birds spread once and we got four and they spread again and we got two. That ain’t bad.”
“Never hunted quail,” Rayber said hoarsely.
“There ain’t nothing like taking a nigger and a hound dog and a gun and going after quail,” the barber said. “You missed a lot out of life if you ain’t had that.”
Rayber cleared his throat and the barber went on working. The fat man in the corner turned a page. What do they think I came in here for? Rayber thought. They couldn’t have forgotten. He waited, hearing the noises flies make and the mumble of the men talking in the back. The fat man turned another page. Rayber could hear George’s broom slowly stroking the floor somewhere in the shop, then stop, then scrape, then. . . . “You er, still a Hawkson man?” Rayber asked the barber.
“Yeah!” the barber laughed. “Yeah! You know I had forgot. You was gonna tell us why you are voting for Darmon. Hey, Roy!” he yelled to the fat man, “come over here. We gonna hear why we should vote for Boy Blue.”
Roy grunted and turned another page. “Be there when I finish this piece,” he mumbled.
“What you got there, Joe?” one of the men in the back called, “one of them goodgovermint boys?”
“Yeah,” the barber said. “He’s gonna make a speech.”
“I’ve heard too many of that kind already,” the man said.
“You ain’t heard one by Rayber,” the barber said. “Rayber’s all right. He don’t know how to vote, but he’s all right.”
Rayber reddened. Two of the men strolled up. “This is no speech,” Rayber said. “I only want to discuss it with you—sanely.”
“Come on over here, Roy,” the barber yelled.
“What are you trying to make of this?” Rayber muttered; then he said suddenly, “If you’re calling everybody else, why don’t you call your boy, George. You afraid to have him listen?”
The barber looked at Rayber for a second without saying anything.
Rayber felt as if he had made himself too much at home.
“He can hear,” the barber said. “He can hear back where he is.”
“I just thought he might be interested,” Rayber said.
“He can hear,” the barber repeated. “He can hear what he hears and he can hear two times that much. He can hear what you don’t say as well as what you do.”
Roy came over folding his newspaper. “Howdy, boy,” he said, putting his hand on Rayber’s head, “let’s get on with this speech.”
Rayber felt as if he were fighting his way out of a net. They were over him with their red faces grinning. He heard the words drag out—“Well, the way I see it, men elect. . . .” He felt them pull out of his mouth like freight cars, jangling, backing up on each other, grating to a halt, sliding, clinching back, jarring, and then suddenly stopping as roughly as they had begun. It was over. Rayber was jarred that it was over so soon. For a second—as if they were expecting him to go on—no one said anything.
Then, “How many yawl gonna vote for Boy Blue!” the barber yelled.
Some of the men turned around and snickered. One doubled over.
“Me,” Roy said. “I’m gonna run right down there now so I’ll be first to vote for Boy Blue tomorrow morning.”
“Listen!” Rayber shouted, “I’m not trying. . . .”
“George,” the barber yelled, “you heard that speech?”
“Yessir,” George said.
“Who you gonna vote for, George?”
“I’m not trying to. . . .” Rayber yelled.
“I don’t know is they gonna let me vote,” George said. “Do, I gonna vote for Mr. Hawkson.”
“Listen!” Rayber yelled, “do you think I’m trying to change your fat minds? What do you think I am?” He jerked the barber around by the shoulder. “Do you think I’d tamper with your damn fool ignorance?”
The barber shook Rayber’s grip off his shoulder. “Don’t get excited,” he said, “we all thought it was a fine speech. That’s what I been saying all along—you got to think, you got to. . . .” He lurched backward when Rayber hit him, and landed sitting on the footrest of the next chair. “Thought it was fine,” he finished, looking steadily at Rayber’s white, half-lathered face glaring down at him. “It’s what I been saying all along.”
The blood began pounding up Rayber’s neck just under his skin. He turned and pushed quickly through the men around him to the door. Outside, the sun was suspending everything in a pool of heat, and before he had turned the first corner, almost running, lather began to drip inside his collar and down the barber’s bib, dangling to his knees.
Wildcat
Old Gabriel shuffled across the room waving his stick slowly sideways in front of him.
“Who that?” he whispered, appearing in the doorway. “I smells fo’ niggers.”
Their soft, minor-toned laughter rose above the frog’s hum and blended into voices.
“Cain’t you do no bettern that, Gabe?”
“Is you goin’ with us, Granpaw?”
“You oughter be able to smell good enough to git our names.”
Old Gabriel moved out on the porch a little way. “That Matthew an’ George an’ Willie Myrick. An’ who that other?”
“This Boon Williams, Granpaw.”
Gabriel felt for the edge of the porch with his stick. “What yawl doin’? Set down a spell.”
“We waitin’ on Mose an’ Luke.”
“We goin’ huntin’ that cat.”
“What yawl huntin’ him with?” old Gabriel muttered. “Yawl ain’t got nothin’ fit to kill a wildcat with.” He sat down on the edge of the porch and hung his feet over the side. “I done tol’ Mose an’ Luke that.”
“How many wildcats you killed, Gabrul?” Their voices, rising to him through the darkness, were full of gentle mockery.
“When I was a boy, there was a cat once,” Gabriel started. “It come ’round here huntin’ blood. Come in through the winder of a cabin one night an’ sprung in bed with a nigger an’ tore that nigger’s throat open befo’ he could holler good.”
“This cat in the woods, Granpaw. It jus’ come out to git cows. Jupe Williams seen it when he gone through to the sawmill.”
“What he done about it?”
“Started runnin’.” Their laughter broke over the night sounds again. “He thought it was after him.”
“It was,” old Gabriel murmured.
“It after cows.”
Gabriel sniffed. “It comin’ out the woods for mo’ than cows. It gonna git itssef some folks’ blood. You watch. An’ yawl goin’ off huntin’ it ain’t gonna do no good. It goin’ huntin’ itssef. I been smellin’ it.”
“How you know that it you smellin’?”
“Ain’t no mistakin’ a wildcat. Ain’t been one ’round here since I was a boy. Why don’t yawl set a spell?” he added.
“You ain’t afraid to stay here by yosef, is you, Granpaw?”
Old Gabriel stiffened. He
felt for the post to pull himself up on. “Ef you waitin’ on Mose an’ Luke,” he said, “you better git goin’. They started over to yawl’s place an hour ago.”
II
“Come in here, I say! Come in here right now!”
The blind boy sat alone on the steps, staring ahead. “All the men gone?” he called.
“All gone but ol’ Hezuh. Come in.”
He hated to go in—among the women.
“I smells it,” he said.
“You come in here, Gabriel.”
He went in and walked to where the window was. The women were muttering at him.
“You stay in here, boy.”
“You be ’tractin’ that cat right in this room, settin’ out there.”
No air was coming through the window, and he scratched at the shutter latch to open it.
“Don’t open that winder, boy. Us don’t want no wildcat jumpin’ in here.”
“I could er gone wit ’em,” he said sullenly. “I could er smelled it out. I ain’t afraid.” Shut up wit these women like he one too.
“Reba say she kin smell it herself.”
He heard the old woman groan in the corner. “They ain’t gonna do no good out huntin’ it,” she whined. “It here. It right around here. Ef it jump in this room it gonna git me fust, then it gonna git that boy, then it gonna git. . . .”
“Hush yo’ mouth, Reba,” he heard his mother say. “I look after my boy.”
He could look after hissef. He warn’t afraid. He could smell it—him an’ Reba could. It’d jump on them fust; fust Reba an’ then him. It was the shape of a reg’lar cat only bigger, his mother said. An’ where you felt the sharp points on a house cat’s foot, you felt big knife claws in a wildcat’s, an’ knife teeth, too; an’ it breathed heat an’ spit wet lime. Gabriel could feel its claws in his shoulders and its teeth in his throat. But he wouldn’t let ’em stay there. He’d lock his arms ’round its body an’ feel up for its neck an’ jerk its head back an’ go down wit it on the floor until its claws dropped away from his shoulders. Beat, beat, beat its head, beat, beat beat. . . .