CHAPTER FOUR

A rope of bloody saliva forming a shape like an undiscovered continent drooled upon the leather and I wiped it quickly away. I felt and importance that I had never dreamed.

"Open it and see what's inside," I was told.

My fingers a-tremble, I complied, smelling the fresh leather scholarship to the state college for Negros. My eyes filled with tears and I ran awkwardly off the floor.

I was overjoyed; I did not even mind when I discovered that the gold pieces I had scrambled for were brass pocket tokens advertising a certain make of automobile.

When I reached home everyone was excited. Next day the neighbours came to congratulate me. I even felt safe from grandfather, whose deathbed curse usually spoiled my triumph. I stood beneath his photograph with my brief xase in hand and smiled triumphantly into his stolid black peasant's face. It was a face that fascinated me. The eyes seemed to face everywhere I went.

That night I dreamed I was at a circus with him and that he refused to laugh at the clowns no matter what they did. Then later he told me to open the brief case and read what was inside and I did, finding an official envelope stamped with the state seal; and inside the envelope I found another and another endlessly, and I thought I would fall of the weariness. "Now open that one." And I did and in it I found an engraved document containing a short message in letters of gold. "Read it," my grandfather said. "Out loud!"

"To Whom It May Concern," I toned. "Keep This Nigger Boy Running."

I awoke with the old man's laugher ringing in my ears. (It was a dream I was to remember and dream again for many years after. But at that time. I had no sight into its meaning. First I had college I had to attend.)

It was a beautiful college. The buildings were old and covered with vines and the roads gracefully winding, lined with hedges and wild roses that dazzled the eyes in the summer sun. Honeysuckle and purple wisteria hung heavy from the trees and white magnolias mixed with their scents in the bee humming air. I've recalled it often, here in my hole. How the grass turned green in the springtime and how the mocking birds fluttered their tails and sang, how the moon shone on the buildings, how the bells in the chapel tower rang out the precious short-lived hours; how the girls in bright summer dresses promenaded the grassy lawn. Many times, here at night, I've walked along the forbidden road that winds past the girl's dormitory; it was a grievous crime for male student to be seen there, but I'm a girl after all. Past the hall with the clock in the tower, it's windows warmly aglow, on down past the small white Economics practice cottage, whiter still in the moonlight and down the road with sloping and turning paralleling the black powerhouse with it's engines droning earth-shaking rhythms in the dark, it's Windows red from the glow of furnace, on to where the road became a bridge over w dry riverbed, tangled with brush and clinging vines; the bridge of rustle logs, made for trysting, but virginal and untested by lovers; on up the road, past the buildings, with the Southern veranda half-a-city-block long, to the sudden forking, barren of buildings, birds or grass, where the road turned off the insane asylum.

I always come this far and open my eyes. The spell breaks and I try to re-see the rabbits, so tame through having never been hunted, that played in the hedges and along the roads, And I see the purple and silver of thistle-growing between the broken glass and sun heated stones, the ants moving nervously in a single file and I turn and retrace my steps and came back to the winding road past the hospital, where at night in certain wards the gay students nurses dispensed a far more precious thing than the pills to lucky boys in the know; and I come to a stop at the chapel. And then it is suddenly winter, with the moon high above and chimes in the steeple ringing and a sonorous choir of trombones of rendering a Christmas carol; and over all is a quietness and an ache as though all the world were loneliness, And I stood and listened beneath the high-hung moon, hearing "A mighty Fortress Is Our God," majestically mellows on four trombones, and then the organ. The sound floats over all, clear like the night, liquid, serene and lonely. And I stand as for an answer and see in my mind's eye the cabins surrounded by empty fields beyond red clay roads, a and beyond a certain road a river, sluggish and covered with algae more yellow than green in stagnant stillness; past more empty fields, to the sun-shrunk shacks at the railroad crossing where the disabled veterans visited the whores, hobbling down the tracks on crutches and cane; sometimes pushing the legless, thigh less one in a wheelchair. And sometimes I listen to hear if music reaches that far, but recall only the drunken laughter of sad whores. And I stand in circle where three roads coverage near the statue, where we drilled four abreast down the smooth asphalt and pivoted and entered the chapel on Sundays, our uniforms pressed, shoes shined, minds laced up, eyes blind like those of roots to visitors and officials on the low, whitewashed reviewing stand.

It's so long ago and far away that here in my invisibility. I wonder if it all happened at all. Then in my mind's eye I see the bronze statue of the college Founder, the cold father symbol, his hands outstretched in breath-taking gesture of lifting a veil that flutters in hard, metallic fold above the face of a kneeling slave; I am standing puzzled, unable to decide whether the veil is really being lifted, or lowered more firmly in place; whether I'm witnessing a revelation or a more efficient blinding. And as I gaze, there is a rustle of wings and I see flock of starlings fighting before me and, when I look again, the bronze face, whose empty eyes look upon a world I never seen, runs with liquid chalk-creating another ambiguity to puzzle my groping mind: Why is a bird-soiled statue more commanding than one that is clean?

Oh, long green stretch of campus. Oh, quite songs at dusk. Oh, moon that kissed the steeple and flooded the perfumed nights. Oh, bugle that called in the morning, Oh, drum that marched us military at noon- what was real, what solid ,what have been real if now I am invisible? If real why is it that I can recall in all that island of greenness no fountain but one that was broken, corroded and dry? And why does no rain fall through my recollections, sound through my memories, soak through the hard dry crust of the still so recent past? Why do I recall instead of the odour of seed bursting in springtime, only the yellow contents of the cistern spread over the lawn's dead grass? Why? And how? How and why?

The grass did grow and the green leaves appeared on the trees and filled the avenue with shadows and the shades as sure as the millionaires descended from the North on Founders' Day each spring. And how the arrived! Came smiling, inspecting, encouraging, conversing in whispers speech making into the wide-open ears of our black and yellow faces - and each leaving a sizeable check as he departed. I'm convinced it was the product of a flower- studded wasteland, the rocks sunken, the dry winds hidden, the lost crickets chirping to yellow butterflies.

And oh, oh, oh, those multimillionaires!

They were all such a part of that other life that's dead that can't remember them all. (Time was as I was, but neither that time nor that "I" are anymore.) But thus one I remember near the end of my junior year I drove for him during the week he was on campus. A face pink like St. Nicholas' topped with a shock of silk white hair. An easy, informal manner, even with me. A Bostonian, smoker of cigars, teller of polite Negro stories shrewd bankers, skilled scientist, director, philanthropist, forty years a bearer of the white man's burden, and for sixty a symbol of the Great Traditions.

We were driving, the powerful motor purring and filling me with pride and anxiety. The car smelled of mints and cigars smoke. Students looked up and smelled in recognition as we rolled slowly past. I had just come from dinner and bending forward to suppress a belch, I accidentally pressed the button on the wheel and belch became a loud and shattering blast of the horn. Folks on the road turned and stared.

I'm awfully sorry sir, " I said, worried lest he reports me to Dr. Benson, the president, who would refuse to allow me drive again.

"Perfectly all right. Perfectly."

"Where shall I drive you, sir?"

Let me see..."

Through the rear-view mirror I could see him studying a wafer-thin watch, replacing it in the pockets of his checker waistcoat. His shirt was soft silk, set off with a blue and white polka dotted bow tie. His manner was aristocratic, his movement appear and suave.

"It's early to go in for the next session," he said. "Suppose you just drive. Anywhere you like."

"Have you seen all the campus, sir?"

"Yes I think so. I was one of the original Founders you know."

"Gee! I didn't know that, sir. Then I'll have to try some of the roads."

Of course I knew he was a founder, but I knew also that it was advantageous to flatter rich white folks. Perhaps he'd give me a large tip, or a suit, or a scholarship next year.

"Anywhere else you like. The campus is part of my life and I know my life rather well.

"Yes, sir"

He was still smiling.

In a moment at green campus with its vine-covered buildings was behind us. The car bounded over the road. How was the campus part of a wondered. And how did one learn his life "rather well"?

"Young man, you're part of a wonderful institution. It is a great dream become reality..."

"Yes sir," I said.

"I feel as lucky to be connected with it as you no doubt do yourself. I came here years ago, when all your beautiful campus was barren ground. There were no trees, no flowers, no fertile farmland. That was years ago before you were born..."

I listened with fascination, my eyes glued to the white line dividing the highway as my thoughts attempted to sweep back to the times which he spoke.

"Even your parents were young. Slavery was just recently past. Your people did not know what direction to turn and, I must confess, many of mine didn't know in what direction they should turn either. But your great founder did. He was my friend and I believed in his vision. Sometimes I don't know whether it was his vision or mine..."

But of course it was his; only assisted. I came down with him to see the barren land and did what I could to render assistance. And it had been my pleasure to fate to return each spring and observe the changes that the years have wrought, That has been more pleasant and satisfying to me than my own work. It has been a pleasant fate, indeed."