Introduction
‘The balloon of experience is tied to the earth,’ wrote Henry James in The American, ‘andunder that necessity we swing, thanks to a rope of remarkable length, in the more or lesscommodious car of imagination.’ In 1949 James Baldwin was living in Paris – a measure of ropehaving been unfurled – yet his ties to Harlem grew stronger by the day. There was little of Hemingway or Gertrude Stein in Baldwin’s sojourn; though he enjoyed a little more freedomthere, and adventure too, he wasn’t there for friendship or freedom or adventure either, but forwriting. Baldwin came to Europe in search of his own voice. He came for a clear view of the past.
　　And this exile suited him, sentences at once beginning to bleed out of memory ands imagination,old wounds opening into new language.
　　Baldwin’s father was a lay preacher; to his eldest son he was ‘handsome, proud, andingrown’. The son was born into a religious community, a world where duty joined with pride,where sin battled with high hopes of redemption, where the Saved sang over the Damned, wherelove and hate could smell similar, and where fathers and sons could be strangers for ever. ‘I haddeclined to believe,’ Baldwin wrote in his famous Notes of a Native Son, ‘in that apocalypse whichhad been central to my father’s vision.’
　　… I had not known my father well. We had got on badly, partly because we shared,in different fashions, the vice of stubborn pride. When he was dead I realized I had hardlyever spoken to him … He was of the first generation of free men. He, along with thousandsof other Negroes, came North after 1919 and I was part of that generation which had neverseen the landscape of what Negroes sometimes called the Old Country.
　　Baldwin was the kind of writer who couldn’t forget, He remembered everything, and thepulse of remembering, and the ache of old news, makes for the beat of his early writing. At the ageof fourteen he underwent what he called later ‘a prolonged religious crisis’, a confusion too deepfor tears, but not for prose. ‘I then discovered God, His saints and angels, and His blazing Hell,’ hewrote, ‘I suppose Him to exist only within the wall of a church – in fact, of our church – and I alsosupposed that God and safety were synonymous.’ At this point Baldwin became a preacher too. Heknew that something important happened when he stood up and entered deeply into the languageof a sermon. People listened, they clapped. ‘Amen, Amen,’ they said. And all of it remained withhim: the smell of church wood and the crying out, the shimmer of tambourines; the heat ofdamnation; the songs of the Saved, his father’s face; and the New York world outside with itswhite people downtown who’d say ‘Why don’t you niggers stay uptown where you belong?’ Butmore than anything it was his father’s face. ‘In my mind’s eye,’ hw writes in Notes, ‘I could seehim, sitting at the window, locked up in his terrors; hating and fearing every living soul includinghis children who had betrayed him, too, by reaching toward the world which had despised him.’
　　Some novelists, in their early work especially, set out to defeat the comforts of invention:
　　they refuse to make anything up. Go Tell It on the Mountain is James Baldwin’s first novel, ashadow-album of lived experience, the lines here being no less real than those on his mother’sface. For Baldwin, as for Proust, there is something grave and beautiful and religious about thelove of truth itself, and something of sensual joy in bringing it to the page. Baldwin’s career as anovelist was spent walking over old territory with ghosts. Things became new to him this way.
　　‘Mountain is the book I had to write if I was ever going to write anything else,’ he said years later.
　　‘I had to deal with what hurt me most. I had to deal with my father.’
　　The novel is centred around a “tarry service’ at the Temple of the Fire Baptised in Harlemin 1935. Fourteen-year-old John Grimes, dubious, fearful, and already bitter, is about to walk thepath to salvation. There are high expectations of John, ‘to be a good example’, and to ‘comethrough’ to the Lord. The service will last the whole night, and John is there in the company of theelder ‘saints’ of the church, and with his father and mother and Aunt Florence. There is a strongsense of John being one of the anointed, but we absorb his slow, terrible doubts about himself.
　　Altogether he is not a happy child on this special night:
　　Something happened to their faces and their voices, the rhythm of their bodies, and tothe air they breathed; it was as though wherever they might be became the upper room, andthe Holy Ghost were riding in the air. His father’s face, always awful, became more awfulnow, his father’s daily anger was transformed into prophetic wrath. His mother, her eyesraised to heaven, hands arked before her, moving, made real for John that patience, thatendurance, that long suffering, which he had read in the Bible and found so hard to image.
　　Between the novel’s opening and closing – the beginning of the service, with ‘the Lord high on thewind tonight’, and the closing, the morning, with John writhing for mercy on the threshing floor infront of the altar – we read the stories of his relatives: Florence, his aunt; Gabriel, his father; andhis mother Elizabeth. In three long chapters we come to know the beliefs, the leave-takings, theloves, the honour and dishonour, that had made up the lives of these three people, lives which haveanimated a host of other lives, and which, by and by, have come to animate the life of John Grimestoo. There are secrets in the novel, as they emerge in a beautiful, disturbing pattern, uncoveredwords speaking clearly, soulfully, of this one family’s legacy of pain and silence.
　　In Go Tell It on the Mountain, John has a certain dread of the life that awaits him; he feelsdoomed and he dreams of escape. He has made decisions. ‘He will not be like his father, or hisfather’s father. He would have another life.’ It might be said that this has been a vain dream ofartists – and teenagers – since the beginning of time, but in Baldwin it is neither vain not merely adream, for John Grimes represents, in all the eloquence of his wishes, a new kind of American. Hisfather’s fathers were slaves. John’s father, Gabriel, is free, bur he is expected to swear allegianceto the flag that has not sworn allegiance to him, and he lives in a racist land. On this front,Baldwin’s America was to become a battleground, but John, given the date of events in the novel,can never be a Civil Rights cipher. He feels guilty for failing to share Gabriel’s unambivalenthatred of white people, but John has additional freedoms in mind – freedom from the localoppressions of Gabriel being first among them. Go Tell It on the Mountain is not a protest novel, itis a political novel of the human heart. White men may be evil, but they are not the beginning northe end of evil. Baldwin was interested at this point in corruption at the first level of legislativepower – the family.
　　Baldwin wrote about black people. He did not write novels which understood the lives ofblack people only in terms of white subjugation. At the same time he recognized every terror ofsegregation, and Go Tell It on the Mountain is a shocking, and shockingly quiet, dramatization ofwhat segregation meant in the years when the novel is set. Early on we see John contemplating the forbidden world inside the New York Public Library, a world of corridors and marble steps and noplace for a boy from Harlem. ‘And then everyone,’ Baldwin writes, ‘all the white people inside,would know that he was not used to great buildings, or to many books, and they would look at himwith pity.’ This is a strong thing for a writer to remember, or to imagine, and Baldwin brings it tothe page with a sense of anger, and regret. The novel is marked by the dark presence of ‘downhome’, the Old South, where all of John’s family came from in search of a new life. This wasBaldwin’s primary milieu: the Harlem of migrant black Americans, bringing with them the storiesof their fathers and mothers, one generation away from slavery.
　　This Northerness was important to Baldwin. It was the world he knew from his childhoodand the world he cared most about. He had a feeling for the hopes that were invested in the journeyNorth – ‘North,’ where, as Gabriel’s mother says, ‘wickedness dwelt and Death rode mightythrough the streets’. In one of his essays, ‘A Fly in the Buttermilk’, Baldwin wrote of anotherSoutherner’s contempt for the North, a man he tried to interview for a piece on the progress ofCivil Rights: ‘He forced me to admit, at once, that I had never been to college; that NorthernNegroes lived herded together, like pigs in a pen; that the campus on which we met was a tribute tothe industry and determination of Southern Negroes. “Negroes in the South form a community.” ’
　　Baldwin’s sensibility, his talent for moral ambivalence, his taste for the terrifying patternsof life, the elegant force of his disputatious spirit, as much Henry James as Bessie Smith, was notalways to find favour with his black contemporaries. Langston Hughes called Go Tell It to theMountain ‘a low-down story in a velvet bag’. ‘A Joan of Arc of the cocktail party’ was AmiriBaraka’s comment on Baldwin. Some of this could be constructed as standard resentment –reminiscent of the kind expressed by Gabriel towards John for not hating whites enough – andsome was a reaction against Baldwin’s popularity with the white literary establishment. But thatwasn’t all. By the time he was writing novels, and writing these essays – works of magical powerand directness – Baldwin had come to feel that the black ‘protest’ novel was breathlesslyredundant. In a recent essay about Baldwin’s writing, the novelist Darryl Pinckney comments onBaldwin’s rejection of Richard Wright, the author of Native Son:
　　In retrospect Baldwin praises Wright’s work for its dry, savage folkloric humour andfor how deeply it conveys what life was like on Chicago’s South Side. The climate that hadonce made Wright’s work read like a racial manifesto had gone. Baldwin found whenreading Wright again that he did not think of the 1930s or even of Negroes, because Wright’scharacters and situations had universal meanings.
　　In ‘Alas, Poor Richard’, an essay in the collection Nobody Knows My Name, Baldwin concludesthat Wright was not the polemical firebrand he took himself to be. Many of Baldwin’s blackcontemporaries hated this view.
　　Baldwin’s first novel, in respect of all this, demonstrates a remarkable unit of form andcontent; the style of the novel makes clear the extent to which he was turning away from hisliterary forefathers. It may be sensible to see the novel as a farewell not only the Harlem of hisfather, but to the literary influence of Richard Wright and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Baldwin was unremitting on this point, and these several goodbyes, offered from his Paris exile, became thecreed of his early writing. ‘In most of the novels written by Negroes until today,’ he wrote, ‘thereis a great space where sex ought to be; and what usually fills this space is violence.’
　　Go Tell It on the Mountain is a very sensual novel, a book soaked in the Bible and theblues. Spiritual song is there in the sentences, at the head of chapters, and it animates the voices onevery side during the ‘coming through’ of John Grimes. As he steps up to the altar John issuddenly aware of the sound of his own prayers – ‘trying not to hear the words that he forcedoutwards from his throat’. Baldwin’s language has the verbal simplicity of the Old Testament, aswell as its metaphorical boldness. The rhythms of the blues, a shade of regret, a note of pain risingout of experience, are deeply inscribed in the novel, and they travel freely along the lines ofdialogue. There is a kind of metaphorical, liturgical energy in some novels – in Faulkner’s TheSound and the Fury, in Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, in Elizabeth Smart’s ByGrand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, in Toni Morrison’s Beloved – which is utterlyessential to the art. It may seem at first overpowering, to waft in the air like perfume, or to have thetexture of Langston Hughes’s velvet bag, but it is, in each of the cases, and especially in the caseof Baldwin’s first novel, a matter of straightforward literary integrity. Every word is necessary.
　　Every image runs clear in the blood of the novel.
　　Take John’s mother Elizabeth. Look at the shape of her thoughts on the page, as broughtout in Baldwin’s third-person narrative:
　　‘I sure don’t care what God don’t like, or you, either,’ Elizabeth heart replied. ‘I’mgoing away from here. He’s going to come and get me, and I’m going away from here.’
　　‘He’ was her father, who never came. As the years passed she replied only: ‘I’m goingaway from here.’ And it hung, this determination, like a heavy jewel between her breasts; itwas written in fire on the dark sky of her mind. But, yes – there was something she hadoverlooked. Pride goeth before destruction; and a haughty spirit before a fall. She had notknown this: she had not imagined that she could fall.
　　When reading this novel I am always aware of the charge that sex gives to religion, a bond thenovel explores and confirms. We think of Baldwin as a figure of the 1960s, a literary embodimentof outrage in the face of American segregation, but actually, Baldwin, in his novels, writes more ofsex and sin than he does of Civil Rights. Gabriel, a preacher speaking fiery words from the pulpit,is actually a secret sinner, fallen in ways that are known to his sister Florence, and known to hiswife Elizabeth too. When younger, ‘he drank until hammers rang in his distant skull; he cursed hisfriends and his enemies, and fought until blood ran down; in the morning he found himself in mud,in clay, in strange beds, and once or twice in jail; his mouth sour, his clothes in rags, from all ofhim rising the stink of his corruption’.
　　The novel tells the story of how John comes to know this. Gabriel uses the church not toraise but to conceal his true character: his hypocrisy is everywhere around him, and nowhere morethan in the minds of the women who had suffered him, and increasingly, too, in the mind of John,his ‘bastard’ son. Florence’s lover Frank was similarly corrupt, yet he, at least, in ‘the brutality of his penitence’, tried to make it up to Florence. It is John’s terrible fate – and everyone else’s – thatGabriel can neither inspire forgiveness nor redeem himself. He goes on with his lying. He inspiredfear. He is hated.
　　Novels about the sins of men often turn out to be novels about the courage of women.
　　Florence, Elizabeth, Deborah, and the tragic Esther, who is made pregnant by Gabriel and sentaway to die, are the novel’s moral retainers, keeping faith with humanity, whilst all around themFaith rides on his dark horse, cutting down hope and charity. Florence says something for all thewomen in the novel, and for James Baldwin, one suspects, contemplating the fate of the women inhis early life, when she looks at the face of Frank. ‘It sometimes came to her,’ Baldwin writes,‘that all women had been cursed from the cradle’; all, in one fashion or another, being given thesame cruel destiny, born to suffer the weight of men.’ Florence remembers the beginning of herown cruel destiny. It began with the birth of Gabriel. After this her future was ‘swallowed up’, andhe life was over: ‘There was only one future in that house, and it was Gabriel’s – to which, sinceGabriel was a man-child, all else must be sacrificed.’
　　Baldwin is unusual – and controversial, for more traditional black writers, as well as thecountercultural ones ahead of him – in making the African-American bid for freedom complicated.
　　For Florence, and for her nephew John Grimes, ‘free at last’ would have to mean several things,not only free from the Old South, or free from the evils of segregation, but the freedom to enter theworld outside, and freedom from the hatreds of the family kitchen. ‘And this because Florence’sdeep ambition: to walk out one morning through the cabin door, never to return.’ But the novelknows there is a price to be paid for this too. Elizabeth, a long time away from the South, enjoyedwalking in Central Park, because ‘it recreated something of the landscape she had known’.
　　Baldwin never got over his religious crisis at the age of fourteen. He didn’t forget. ‘Thatsummer.’ he writes in The Fire Next Time, ‘all the fears with which I had grown up, and whichwere now a part of me and controlled my vision of the world, rose up like a wall between theworld and me, and drove me into the church.’ He surrendered to a spiritual seduction, falling downbefore the altar, and thereafter preaching for three years. Baldwin recalls his father one dayslapping his face, ‘and in that moment everything flooded back – all the hatred and all the fear, andthe depth of a merciless resolve to kill my father rather than allow my father to kill me – and Iknew that all those sermons and tears and all that repentance and rejoicing had changed nothing’.
　　Baldwin put the essence of all of this into Go Tell it on the Mountain. Gabriel has thepreacher’s traditional love of helplessness, and traditional anger in the face of self-sufficiency. Yetthe central issues of Gabriel’s life are his hypocrisy, and the sexual desire that accompanies therejoicing of religious life. His treatment of Esther combines the two (‘I guess it takes a holy man tomake a girl a real whore,’ she say) but only Florence seems aware of the truth after Ester is dead.
　　At the close of the novel she seeks to name the tree by its fruit. And John, who is not strange fruitof that tree, might live to curse all lies and go free into the world.
　　Baldwin, all his writing, insisted he wrote only from experience. That was the kind ofwriter he was: he meant every word. There would always be something of the pulpit on Baldwin’swriting, and something too of the threshing floor. Go Tell It on the Mountain is a beautiful,enduring, spiritual song of a novel, a gush of life from a haunted American church. Like manywriters with a religious past, the young man who wrote this novel was stranded in the space between his own body and the body of Christ, and strung between the father he hated and theFather who might offer him salvation. John Grimes finds the beginning of his redemption in thevery place where his father lived out his hypocrisy, the church, where Gabriel spawned so much ofthe trouble in their lives. Here, at last, after all is said and done, John Grimes can go in search ofthe Everlasting, ‘over his father’s head to Heaven – to the Father who loved him’.
　　Andrew O’HaganAndrew O’Hagan was born in Glasgow in 1968. He is the author of The Missing, a bookabout missing persons, and Our Fathers, a novel shortlisted for the Booker Prize, a WhitbreadAward, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the IMPAC Dublin International Literary Award. He isa contributing editor to the London Review of Books.
　　For My Father and Mother They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength;they shall mount up with wings like eagles;they shall turn and not be weary,they shall walk and not faint.
Part 1 The Seventh Day
And the Spirit and the bride say,Come. And let him that heareth sayCome. And let him that is athirstcome. And whosoever will, let himtake the water of life freely.
　　I looked down the line,    And I wondered   Everyone had always said that John would be a preacher when he grew up, just like his father. Ithas been so often that John, without ever thinking about it, had come to believe it himself. Notuntil the morning of his fourteenth birthday did he really begin to think about it, and by then it wasalready too late.
　　His earliest memories—which were in a way, his only memories—were of the hurry andbrightness of Sunday mornings. They all rose together on that day; his father, who did not have togo to work, and led them in prayer before breakfast; his mother, who dressed up on that day, andlooked almost young, with her hair straightened, and on her head the close-fitting white cap thatwas the uniform of holy women; his younger brother, Roy, who was silent that day because hisfather was home. Sarah, who wore a red ribbon in her hair that day, and was fondled by her father.
　　And the baby, Ruth, who was dressed in pink and white, and rode in her mother’s arms to church.
　　The church was not very far away, four block up Lenox Avenue, on a corner not far fromthe hospital. It was to this hospital that his mother had gone when Roy, and Sarah, and Ruth wereborn. John did not remember very clearly the first time she had gone, to have Roy; folks said thathe had cried and carried on the whole time his mother was away; he remembered only enough tobe afraid every time her belly began to swell, knowing that each time the swelling began it wouldnot end until she was taken from him, to come back with an stranger. Each time this happened shebecame a little more of a stranger herself. She would soon be going away again, Roy said—heknew much more about such things than John. John had observed his mother closely, seeing no swelling yet, but his father had prayed one morning for the ‘little voyager soon to be among them,’
　　and so John knew that Roy spoke the truth.
　　Every Sunday morning, then, since John could remember, they had taken to the Streets, theGrimes family on their way to church. Sinners along the avenue watched tem—men still wearingtheir Sunday-night clothes, wrinkled and dusty now, muddy-eyed and muddy-faced; and thewomen with harsh voices and tight, bright dresses, cigarettes between their finger or held tightly inthe corners of their mouths. They talked, and laughed, and fought together, and the women foughtlike the men. John and Roy, passing these men and women, looked at one another briefly, Johnembarrassed and Roy amused. Roy would be like them when he grew up, if the Lord did notchange his heart. These men and women they passed on Sunday mornings had spent the night inbars, or in cat houses, or on the streets, or on the rooftops, or under the stairs. They had beendrinking. They had gone from cursing to laughter, to anger, to lust. Once he and Roy had watcheda man and woman in the basement of a condemned house. They did it standing up. The womanhad wanted fifty cents, and the man had flashed a razor.
　　John had never watched again; he had been afraid. But Roy had watched them many times,and he told John he had done it with some girls down the block.
　　And his mother and father, who went to church on Sundays, they did it too, and sometimesJohn heard them in the bedroom behind him, over the sound of rat’s feet, and rat screams, and themusic and cursing from the harlot’s house downstairs.
　　Their church was called the Temple of the Fire Baptized. It was not the biggest church inHarlem, not yet the smallest, but John had been brought up to believe it was the holiest and best.
　　His father was head deacon in this church—there were only two, the other a round, black mannamed Deacon Braithwaite—and he took up the collection, and sometimes he preached. Thepastor, Father James, was a genial, well-fed man with a face like a darker moon. It was he whopreached on Pentecost Sundays, and led revivals in the summer-time, and anointed and healed thesick.
　　On Sunday mornings and Sunday nights the church was always full; on special Sundays itwas full all day. The Grimes family arrived in a body, always a little late, usually in the middle ofSunday school, which began at nine o’clock. This lateness was always their mother’s fault—atleast in the eyes of their father; she could not seem to get herself and the children ready on time,ever, and sometimes she actually remained behind, not to appear until the morning service. Whenthey all arrived together, they separated upon entering the doors, father and mother going to sit inthe Adult Class, which was taught by Sister McCandless, Sarah going to the Infants’ Class, Johnand Roy sitting in the Intermediate, which was taught by Brother Elisha.
　　When he was young, John had paid no attention in Sunday school, and always forgot thegolden text, which earned him the wrath of his father. Around the time of his fourteenth birthday,with all the pressures of church and home uniting to drive him to the altar, he strove to appearmore serious and therefore less conspicuous. But he was distracted by his new teacher, Elisha, whowas the pastor’s nephew and who had but lately arrived from Georgia. He was not much older thanJohn, only seventeen, and he was already saved and was a preacher. John stared at Elisha allduring the lesson, admiring the timbre of Elisha’s voice, much deeper and manlier than his own, admiring the leanness, and grace, and strength, and darkness of Elisha in his Sunday suit,wondering if he would ever be holy as Elisha was holy. But he did not follow the lesson, andwhen, sometimes, Elisha paused to ask John a question, John was ashamed and confused, feelingthe palms of his hands become wet and his heart pound like a hammer. Elisha would smile andreprimand him gently, and the lesson would go on.
　　Roy never knew his Sunday school lesson either, but it was different with Roy—no onereally expected of Roy what was expected of John. Everyone was always praying that the Lordwould change Roy’s heart, but it was John who was expected to be good, to be a good example.
　　When Sunday school service ended there was a short pause before morning service began.
　　In this pause, if it was good weather, the old folks might step outside a moment to talk amongthemselves. The sisters would almost always be dressed in white from crown to tow. The smallchildren, on this day, in this place, and oppressed by their elders, tried hard to play withoutseeming to be disrespectful of God’s house. But sometimes, nervous or perverse, they shouted, orthrew hymn-books, or began to cry, putting their parents, men or women of God, under thenecessity of proving—by harsh means or tender—who, in a sanctified household, ruled. The olderchildren, like John or Roy, might wander down the avenue, but not too far. Their father never letJohn and Roy out of his sight, for Roy had often disappeared between Sunday school and morningservice and has not come back all day.
　　The Sunday morning service began when Brother Elisha sat down at the piano and raised asong. This moment and this music had been with John, so it seemed, since he had first drawnbreath. It seemed that there had never been a time when he had not known this moment of waitingwhile the packed church paused—the sisters in white, heads raised, the brothers in blue, headsback; the white caps of the women seeming to glow in the charged air like crowns, the kinky,gleaming heads of the men seeming to be lifted up—and the rustling and the whispering ceasedand the children were quiet; perhaps someone coughed, or the sound of a car horn, or a curse fromthe streets came in; the Elisha hit the keys, beginning at once to sing, and everybody joined him,clapping their hands, and rising, and beating the tambourines.
　　The song might be: Down at the cross where my Savior died!
　　Or: Jesus, I’ll never forget how you set me free!
　　Or: Lord, hold my hand while I run this race!
　　They sang with all the strength that was in them, and clapped their hands for joy. There hadnever been a time when John had not sat watching the saints rejoice with terror in his heart, andwonder. Their singing caused him to believe in the presence of the Lord; indeed, it was no longer aquestion of belief, because they made that presence real. He did not feel it himself, the joy theyfelt, yet he could not doubt that it was, for them, the very bread of life—could not doubt it, that is,until it was too late to doubt. Something happened to their faces and their voices, the rhythm oftheir bodies, and to the air they breathed; it was as though wherever they might be became theupper room, and the Holy Ghost were riding on the air. His father’s face, always awful, becamemore awful now; his father’s daily anger was transformed into prophetic wrath. His mother, hereyes raised to heaven, hands arked before her, moving, made real for John that patience, thatendurance, that long suffering, which he had read of in the Bible and found so hard to imagine.
　　 On Sunday mornings the women all seemed patient, all the men seemed mighty. WhileJohn watched, the Power struck someone, a man or woman; they cried out, a long, wordlesscrying, and, arms outstretched like wings, they began the Shout. Someone moved a chair a little togive them room, the rhythm paused, the singing stopped, only the pounding feet and the clappinghands were heard; then another cry, another dancer; then the tambourines began again, and thevoices rose again, and the music swept on again, like fire, or flood, or judgment. Then the churchseemed to swell with the Power it held, and, like a planet rocking in space, the temple rocked withthe Power of God. John watched, watched the faces, and the weightless bodies, and listened to thetimeless cries. One day, so everyone said, this Power would possess him; he would sing and cry asthey did now, and dance before his King. He watched young Ella Mae Washington, the seventeen-year-old granddaughter of Praying Mother Washington, as she began to dance. And then Elishadanced.
　　At one moment, head thrown back, eyes closed, sweat standing on his brow, he sat at thepiano, singing and playing; and then, like a great black cat in trouble in the jungle, he stiffened andtrembled, and cried out. Jesus, Jesus, oh Lord Jesus! He struck on the piano one last wild note, andthrew up his hands, palms upward, stretched wide apart. The tambourines raced to fill the vacuumleft by his silent piano, and his cry drew answering cries. Then he was on his feet, turning, blind,his face congested, contorted with this rage, and the muscles leaping ands swelling in his long,dark neck. It seemed that he could not breathe, that his body could not contain this passion, that hewould be, before their eyes, dispersed into the waiting air. His hand, rigid to the very fingertips,moved outward and back against his hips, his sightless eyes looked upward, and he began to dance.
　　Then his hands close into fists, and his head snapped downward, his sweat loosening the greasethat slicked down his hair; and the rhythm of all the others quickened to match Elisha’s rhythm; histhighs moved terribly against the cloth of his suit, his heels beat on the floor, and his fists movedbeside his body as though he were beating his own drum. And so, for a while, in the centre of thedancers, head down, fists beating, on, on, unbearably, until it seemed the walls of the church wouldfall for very sound; and then, in a moment, with a cry, head up, arms high in the air, sweat pouringfrom his forehead, and all his body dancing as though it would never stop. Sometimes he did notstop until he fell—until he dropped like some animal felled by a hammer—moaning, on his face.
　　And then a great moaning filled the church.
　　There was sin among them. One Sunday, when regular service was over, Father James haduncovered sin in the congregation of the righteous. He had uncovered Elisha and Ella Mae. Theyhad been ‘walking disorderly’; they were in danger of straying from the truth. And as Father Jamesspoke of the sin that he knew they had not committed yet, of the unripe fig plucked too early fromthe tree—to set the children’s teeth on edge—John felt himself grow dizzy in his seat and couldnot look at Elisha where he stood, beside Ella Mae, before the altar. Elisha hung his head as FatherJames spoke, and the congregation murmured. And Ella Mae was not so beautiful now as she waswhen she was singing and testifying, but looked like a sullen, ordinary girl. Her full lips were looseand her eyes were black—with shame, or rage, or both. Her grandmother, who had raised her, satwatching quietly, with folded hands. She of the pillars of the church, a powerful evangelistandverywidelyknown.Shesaidnothi(was) ngin(one) Ella Mae’s defense, for she must have felt,as the congregation felt, that Father James was only exercising his clear and painful duty; he wasresponsible, after all, for Elisha, as Praying Mother Washington was responsible for Ella Mae. It was not an easy thing, said Father James, to be the pastor of a flock. It might look easy to just situp there in the pulpit night after night, year in, year out, but let them remember the awfulresponsibility placed on his shoulders by almighty God—let them remember that God would askan accounting of him one day for every soul in his flock. Let them remember this when theythough he was hard, let them remember that the Word was hard, that the way of holiness was ahard way. There was no room in God’s army for the coward heart, no crown awaiting him who putmother, or father, sister, or brother, sweetheart, or friend above God’s will. Let the church cryamen to this! And they cried: ‘Amen! Amen!’
　　The Lord had led him, said Father James, looking down on the boy and girl before him, togive them a public warning before it was too late. For he knew them to be sincere young people,dedicate to the service of the Lord—it was only that, since they were young, they did not know thepitfall Satan laid for the unwary. He knew that sin was not in their minds—not yet; yet sin was inthe flesh; and should they continue with their walking out alone together, their secrets andlaughter, and touching of hands, they would surely sin a sin beyond all forgiveness. And Johnwondered what Elisha was thinking—Elisha , who was tall and handsome, who played basket-ball,and who had been saved at the age of eleven in the improbable fields down south. Had he sinned?
　　Had he been tempted? And the girl beside him, whose white robes now seemed the merest,thinnest covering for the nakedness of breasts and insistent thighs—what was her face like whenshe was alone with Elisha, with no singing, when they were not surrounded by the saints? He wasafraid to think of it, yet he could think of nothing else; and the fever of which they stood accusedbegan also to rage him.
　　After this Sunday Elisha and Ella Mae no longer met each other each day after school, nolonger spent Saturday afternoons wandering through Central Park, or lying on the beach. All thatwas over for them. If they came together again it would be in wedlock. They would have childrenand raise them in the church.
　　This was what was meant by a holy life, this was what the way of the cross demanded. Itwas somehow on that Sunday, a Sunday shortly before his birthday, that John first realized thatthis was the life awaiting him—realized it consciously, as something no longer far off, butimminent, coming closer day by day.
　　John’s birthday fell on a Sunday in March, in 1935. He awoke on this birthday morning with thefeeling that there was menace in the air around him—that something irrevocable had occurred inhim. He stared at a yellow stain on the ceiling just above his head. Roy was still smothered in thebedclothes, and his breath came and went with a small, whistling sound. There was no other soundanywhere; no one in the house was up. The neighbors’ radios were all silent, and his mother hadn’tyet risen to fix his father’s breakfast. John wondered at his panic, then wondered about the time;and then (while the yellow stain on the ceiling slowly transformed itself into a woman’snakedness) he remembered that it was his fourteenth birthday and that he had sinned.
　　His first thought, nevertheless, was: ‘Will anyone remember?’ For it had happened, once ortwice, that his birthday had passed entirely unnoticed, and no one had said ‘Happy Birthday,Johnny,’ or given him anything—not even his mother.
　　 Roy stirred again and John pushed him away, listening to the silence. On other mornings heawoke hearing his mother singing in the kitchen, hearing his father in the bedroom behind himgrunting and muttering prayers to himself as he put on his clothes; hearing, perhaps, the chatter ofSarah and the squalling of Ruth, and the radios, the clatter of pots and pans, and the voices of allthe folk nearby. This morning not even the cry of a bedspring disturbed the silence, and Johnseemed, therefore, to be listening to his own unspeaking doom. He could believe, almost, that hehad awakened late on that great getting-up morning; that all the saved had been transformed in thetwinkling of an eye, and had risen to meet Jesus in the clouds, and that he was left, with his sinfulbody, to be bound in hell a thousand years.
　　He had sinned. In spite of the saints, his mother and his father, the warning he had heardfrom his earliest beginnings, he had sinned with his hands a sin that was hard to forgive. In theschool lavatory, alone, thinking of the boys, older, bigger, braver, who made bets with each otheras to whose urine could arch higher, he had watched in himself a transformation of which hewould never dare to speak.
　　And the darkness of John’s sin was like the darkness of the church on Saturday evenings;like the silence of the church while he was there alone, sweeping, and running water into the greatbucket, and overturning chairs, long before the saints arrived. It was like his thoughts as he movedabout the tabernacle in which his life had been spent; the tabernacle hated, yet loved and feared. Itwas like Roy’s curses, like the echoes these curses raised in John: he remembered Roy, on somerare Saturday when he had come to help John clean the church, cursing in the house of God, andmaking obscene gestures before the eyes of Jesus. It was like all this, and it was like the walls thatwitnessed and the placards on the walls which testified that the wages of sin was death. Thedarkness of his sin was in the hardheartedness with which he resisted God’s power; in the scornthat was often his while he listened to the crying, breaking voices, and watched the black skinglisten while they lifted up their arms and fell on their faces before the Lord. For he had made hisdecision. He would not be like his father, or his father’s fathers. He would have another life.
　　For John excelled in school, though not, like Elisha, in mathematics or basket-ball, and itwas said that he had a Great Future. He might become a Great Leader of His People. John was notmuch interested in His people and still less in leading them anywhere, but the phrase so oftenrepeated rose in his mind like a great brass gate, opening outward for him on a world where peopledid not live in the darkness of his father’s house, did not pray to Jesus in the darkness of hisfather’s church, where he would eat good food, and wear fine clothes, and go to the movies asoften as he wished. In this world John, who was, his father said, ugly, who was always the smallestboy in his class, and who had no friends, became immediately beautiful, tall, and popular. Peoplefell all over themselves to meet John Grimes. He was a poet, or a college president, or a moviestar; he drank expensive whisky, and he smoke Lucky Strike cigarettes in the green package.
　　It was not only colored people who praised John, since they could not, John felt, in anycase really know; but white people also said it, in fact had said it first and said it still. It was whenJohn was five years old and in the first grade that he was first noticed; and since he was noticed byan eye altogether alien and impersonal, he began to perceive, in wild uneasiness, his individualexistence.
　　 They were learning the alphabet that day, and six children at a time were sent to theblackboard to write the letters they had memorized. Six had finished and were waiting for theteacher’s judgment when the back door opened and the school principal, of whom everyone wasterrified, entered the room, No one spoke or moved. In the silence the principal’s voice said:
　　‘Which child is that?’
　　She was pointing to the blackboard, at John’s letters. The possibility of being distinguishedby her notice did not enter John’s mind, and so he simply stared at her. Then he realized, by theimmobility of the other children and by the way they avoided looking at him, that it was he whowas selected for punishment.
　　“Speak up, John,’ said the teacher, gently.
　　On the edge of tears, he mumbled his name and waited. The principal, a woman with whitehair and an iron face, looked down at him.
　　‘You’re a very bright boy, John Grimes,’ she said. ‘Keep up the good work.’
　　Then she walked out of the room.
　　That moment gave him, from that time on, if not a weapon at least a shield; he apprehendedtotally, without belief or understanding, that he had in himself a power that other people lacked;that he could use this to save himself, to raise himself; and that, perhaps, with this power he mightone day win that love which he so longed for. This was not, in John, a faith subject to death oralteration, nor yet a hope subject to destruction; it was his identity, and part, therefore, of thatwickedness for which his father beat him and to which he clung in order to withstand his father.
　　His father’s arm, rising and falling, might make him cry, and that voice might cause him totremble; yet his father could never be entirely the victor, for John cherished something that hisfather could not reach. It was his hatred and his intelligence that he cherished, the one feeding theother. He lived for the day when his father would be dying and he, John, would curse him on hisdeath-bed. And this was why, though he had been born in faith and had been surrounded all his lifeby the saints and by their prayers and their rejoicing, and though the tabernacle in which theyworshipped was more completely real to him that the several precarious homes in which he and hisfamily had lived, John’s heart was hardened against the Lord. His father was God’s minister, theambassador of the King of Heaven, and John could not bow before the throne of grace without firstkneeling to his father. On his refusal to do this had his life depended, and John’s secret heart hadflourished in its wickedness until the day his sin first overtook him.
　　In the midst of all his wonderings he fell asleep again, and when he woke up this time and got outof bed his father had gone to the factory, where he would work for half a day. Roy was sitting inthe kitchen, quarrelling with their mother. The baby, Ruth, sat in her high chair banging on the traywith an oatmeal-covered spoon. This meant that she was in a good mood; she would not spend theday howling, for reasons known only to herself, allowing no one but her mother to touch her.
　　Sarah was quiet, not chattering to-day, or at any rate not yet, and stood near the stove, arms folded,staring at Roy with the flat black eyes, her father’s eyes, that made her look so old.
　　 Their mother, her head tied up in an old rag, sipped black coffee and watched Roy. Thepale end-of-winter sunlight filled the room and yellowed all their faces; and John, drugged andmorbid and wondering how it was that he had slept again and had been allowed to sleep so long,saw them for a moment like figures on a screen, an effect that the yellow light intensified. Theroom was narrow and dirty; nothing could alter its dimensions, no labor could ever make it clean.
　　Dirt was in the walls and the floorboards, and triumphed beneath the sink where the cockroachesspawned; was in the fine ridges of the pots and pans, scoured daily, burnt black on the bottom,hanging above the stove; was in the wall against which they hung, and revealed itself where thepaint had cracked and leaned outward in stiff squares and fragments, the paper-thin undersidewebbed with black. Dirt was in every corner, angle, crevice of the monstrous stove, and livedbehind it in delirious communion with the corrupted wall. Dirt was in the baseboard that Johnscrubbed every Sunday, and roughened the cupboard shelves that held the cracked and gleamingdishes. Under this dark weight the walls leaned, under it the ceiling, with a great crack likelightning in its center, sagged. The windows gleamed like beaten gold or silver, but now John saw,in the yellow light, how fine dust veiled their doubtful glory. Dirt crawled in the gray mop hungout of the windows to dry. John thought with shame and horror, yet in angry hardness of heart: Hewho is filthy, let him be filthy still. Then he looked at his mother, seeing, as though she weresomeone else, the dark, hard lines running downward from her eyes, and the deep, perpetual scowlin her forehead, and the downturned, tightened mouth, and the strong, thin, brown, and bonyhands; and the phrase turned against him like a two-edged sword, for was it not he, in his falsepride and his evil imagination, who was filthy? Through a storm of tears that did not reach hiseyes, he stared at the yellow room; and the room shifted, the light of the sun darkened, and hismother’s face changed. He face became the face that he gave her in his dreams, the face that hadbeen hers in a photograph he had seen once, long ago, a photograph taken before he was born. Thisface was young and proud, uplifted, with a smile that made the wide mouth beautiful and glowedin the enormous eyes. It was the face of a girl who knew that no evikl could undo her, and whocould laugh, surely, as his mother did not laugh now. Between the two faces there stretched adarkness and a mystery that John feared, and that sometimes caused him to hate her.
　　Now she saw him and she asked, breaking off her conversation with Roy: ‘You hungry,little sleepyhead?’
　　‘Well! About time you was getting up,’ said Sarah.
　　He moved to the table and sat down, feeling the most bewildering panic of his life, a needto touch things, the table and chairs and the walls of the room, to make certain that the roomexisted and that he was in the room. He did not look at his mother, who stood up and went to thestove to heat his breakfast. But he asked, in order to say something to her, and to hear his ownvoice:
　　‘What we got for breakfast?’
　　He realized, with some shame, that he was hoping she had prepared a special breakfast forhim on his birthday.
　　‘What you think we got for breakfast?’ Roy asked scornfully. ‘You got a special cravingfor something?’
　　 John looked at him. Roy was not in a good mood.
　　‘I ain’t said nothing to you,’ he said.
　　‘Oh, I beg your pardon,’ said Roy, in the shrill, little-girl tone he knew John hated.
　　‘What’s the matter with you to-day?’ John asked, angry, and trying at the same time to lendhis voice as husky a pitch as possible.
　　‘Don’t you let Roy bother you,’ said their mother. ‘He cross as two sticks this morning.’
　　‘Yeah,’ said John, ‘I reckon.’ He and Roy watched each other. Then his plate was putbefore him: hominy grits and a scrap of bacon. He wanted to cry, like a child: ‘But, Mama, it’s mybirthday!’ He kept his eyes on his plate and began to eat.
　　‘You can talk about your Daddy all you want to,’ said his mother, picking up her battlewith Roy, ‘but one thing you can’t say—you can’t say he ain’t always done his best to be a fatherto you and to see to it that you ain’t never gone hungry.’
　　‘I been hungry plenty of times,’ Roy said, proud to be able to score this point against hismother.
　　‘Wasn’t his fault, then. Wasn’t because he wasn’t trying to feed you. Than man shoveledsnow in zero weather when he ought’ve been in bed just to put food in your belly.’
　　‘Wasn’t just my belly,’ said Roy indignantly. ‘He got a belly, too, I know—it’s a shame theway that man eats. I sure ain’t asked him to shovel no snow for me.’ But he dropped his eyes,suspecting a flaw in his argument. ‘I just don’t want him beating on me all the time,’ he said atlast. ‘I ain’t no dog.’
　　She sighed, and turned slightly away, looking out of the window. ‘Your Daddy beats you,’
　　she said, ‘because he loves you.’
　　Roy laughed. ‘That ain’t the kind of love I understand, old lady. What you reckon he’d doif he didn’t love me?’
　　‘He’d let you go right on,’ she flashed, ‘right on down to hell where it looks like you is justdetermined to go anyhow! Right on, Mister Man, till somebody puts a knife in you, or takes youoff to jail!’
　　‘Mama,’ John asked suddenly, ‘is Daddy a good man?’
　　He had not known that he was going to ask the question, and he watched in astonishment asher mouth tightened and her eyes grew dark.
　　‘That ain’t no kind of question,’ she said mildly. ‘You don’t know no better men, do you?’
　　‘Looks to me like he’s a mighty good man,’ said Sarah. ‘He sure is praying all the time.’
　　‘You children is young,’ their mother said, ignoring Sarah and sitting down again at thetable, ‘and you don’t know how lucky you is to have a father what worries about you and tries tosee to it that you come up right.’
　　‘Yeah,’ said Roy, ‘we don’t know how lucky we is to have a father what don’t want you togo to movies, and don’t want you to play in the streets, and don’t want you to have no friends, and he don’t want this and he don’t want that, and he don’t want you to do nothing. We so lucky tohave a father who just wants us to go to church and read the Bible and beller like a fool in front ofthe altar and stay home all nice and quiet, like a little mouse. Boy, we sure is lucky, all right. Don’tknow what I done to be so lucky.’
　　She laughed. ‘You going to find out one day,’ she said, ‘you mark my words.’
　　‘Yeah,’ said Roy.
　　‘But it’ll be too late, then,’ she said. ‘It’ll be too late when you come to be … sorry.’ Hervoice had changed. For a moment her eyes met John’s eyes, and John was frightened.. He felt thather words, after the strange fashion God sometimes chose to speak to men, were dictated byHeaven and were meant for him. He was fourteen—was it too lat? And thus uneasiness wasreinforced by the impression, which at that moment he realized had been his all along, that hismother was not saying everything she meant. What, he wondered, did she say to Aunt Florencewhen they talked together? Or to his father? What were her thoughts? Her face would never tell.
　　And yet, looking down at him in a moment that was like a secret, passing sign, her face did tellhim. Her thoughts were bitter.
　　‘I don’t care,’ Roy said, rising. ‘When I have children I ain’t going to treat them like this.’
　　John watched his mother; she watched Roy. ‘I’m sure this ain’t no way to be. Ain’t got no right tohave a houseful of children if you don’t know how to treat them.’
　　‘You mighty grown up this morning,’ his mother said. ‘You be careful.’
　　‘And tell me something else,’ Roy said, suddenly leaning over his mother, ‘tell me howcome he don’t never let me talk to him like I talk to you? He’s my father, ain’t he? But he don’tnever listen to me—no, I all the time got to listen to him.’
　　‘Your father,’ she said, watching him, ‘knows best. You listen to your father, I guaranteeyou you won’t end up in no jail.’
　　Roy sucked his teeth in fury. ‘I ain’t looking to go to no jail. You think that’s all that’s inthe world is jails and churches? You ought to know better than that, Ma.’
　　‘I know,’ she said, ‘there ain’t no safety except you walk humble before the Lord. Yougoing to find it out, too, one day. You go on, hardhead. You going to come to grief.’
　　And suddenly Rot grinned. ‘But you be there, won’t you, Ma—when I’m in trouble?’
　　‘You don’t know,’ she said, trying not to smile, ‘how long the Lord’s going to let me staywith you.’
　　Roy turned and did a dance step. ‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘I know the Lord ain’t as hardas Daddy. Is he, boy?’ he demanded of John, and struck him lightly on the forehead.
　　‘Boy, let me eat my breakfast,’ John muttered—though his plate had long been empty, andhe was pleased that Roy had turned to him.
　　‘That sure is a crazy boy,’ ventured Sarah, soberly.
　　‘Just listen,’ cried Roy, ‘to the little saint1 Daddy ain’t never going to have trouble with her—that one, she was born holy. I bet the first words she ever said was: “Thank you, Jesus,” Ain’tthat so, Ma?’
　　‘You stop this foolishness,’ she said, laughing, ‘and go on about your work. Can’t nobodyplay the fool with you all morning.’
　　‘Oh, is you got work for me to do this morning? Well, I declare,’ said Roy, ‘what you gotfor me to do?’
　　‘I got the woodwork in the dining-room for you to do. And you going to do it, too, beforeyou set foot out of this house.’
　　‘Now, why you want to talk like that, Ma? Is I said I wouldn’t do it? You know I’m a rightgood worker when I got a mind. After I do it, can I go?’
　　‘You go ahead and do it, and we’ll see. You better do it right.’
　　‘I always do it right,’ said Roy. ‘You won’t know your old woodwork when I get through.’
　　‘John,’ said his mother, ‘you sweep the front room for me like a good boy, and dust thefurniture. I’m going to clean up in here.’
　　‘Yes’m,’ he said, and rose. She had forgotten about his birthday. He swore he would notmention it. He would not think about it any more.
　　To sweep the front room meant, principally, to sweep the heavy red and green and purpleOriental-style carpet that had once been that room’s glory, but was now so faded that it was all oneswimming color, and so frayed in places that it tangled with the broom. John hated sweeping thiscarpet, for dust rose, clogging his nose and sticking to his sweaty skin, and he felt that should besweep it for ever, the clouds of dust would not diminish, the rug would not be clean. It became inhis imagination his impossible, lifelong task, his hard trial, like that of a man he had read aboutsomewhere, whose curse it was to push a boulder up a steep hill, only to have the giant whoguarded the hill roll the boulder down again—and so on, for ever, throughout eternity; he was stillout there, that hapless man, somewhere at the other end of the earth, pushing his boulder up thehill. He had John’s entire sympathy, for the longest and hardest part of his Saturday mornings washis voyage with the broom across this endless rug; and coming to the French doors that ended theliving-room and stopped the rug, he felt like an indescribably weary traveler who sees his home atlast. Yet for each dustpan he so laboriously filled at the door-still demons added to the rug twentymore; he saw in the expanse behind him the dust that he had raised settling again into the carpet;and he gritted his teeth, already on edge because of the dust that filled his mouth, and nearly weptto thinl that so much labor brought so little reward.
　　Nor was this the end of John’s Labor; for, having put away the broom and the dustpan, hetook from the small bucket under the sink the dust rag and the furniture oil and a damp cloth, andreturned to the living-room to excavate, as it were, from the dust that threatened to bury them, hisfamily’s goods and gear. Thinking bitterly of his birthday, he attacked the mirror with the cloth,watching his face appear as out of a cloud. With a shock he saw that his face had not changed, thatthe hand of Satan was as yet invisible. His father had always said that his face was the face ofSatan—and was there not something—in the lift of the eyebrow, in the way his rough hair formed a V on his brow—that bore witness to his father’s words? In the eye there was a light that was notthe light of Heaven, and the mouth trembled, lustful and lewd, to drink deep of the wines of Hell.
　　He stared at his face as though it were, as indeed it soon appeared to be, the face of a stranger, astranger who held secrets that John could never know. And, having thought of it as the face of astranger, he tried to look at it as a stranger might, and tried to discover what other people saw. Buthe saw only details: two great eyes, and a broad, low forehead, and the triangle of his nose, and hisenormous mouth, and the barely perceptible cleft in his chin, which was, his father said, the markof the devil’s little finger. These details did not help him, for the principle of their unity wasundiscoverable, and he could not tell what he most passionately desired to know: whether his facewas ugly or not.
　　And he dropped his eyes to the mantelpiece, lifting one by one the objects that adorned it.
　　The mantelpiece held, in brave confusion, photographs, greeting cards, flowered mottoes, twosilver candlesticks that held no candles, and a green metal serpent, poised to strike. To-day in hisapathy John stared at them, not seeing; he began to dust them with exaggerated care of theprofoundly preoccupied. One of the mottoes was pink and blue, and proclaimed in raised letters,which made the work of dusting harder:
　　Come in the evening, or come in the morning,Come when you’re looked for, or come without warning,A thousand welcomes you’ll find here before youAnd the oftener you come here, the more we’ll adore you.
　　And the other, in letters of fire against a background of gold, stated:
　　For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoevershould believe in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
　　John iii, 16These somewhat unrelated sentiments decorated either side of the mantelpiece, obscured alittle by the silver candlesticks. Between these two extremes, the greeting cards, received year afteryear, on Christmas, or Easter, or birthdays, trumpeted their glad tidings; while the green metalserpent, perpetually malevolent, raised its head proudly in the midst of these trophies, biding thetime to strike. Against the mirror, like a procession, the photographs were arranged.
　　These photographs were the true antiques of the family, which seemed to feel that aphotograph should commemorate only the most distant past. The photographs of John and Roy,and of the two girls, which seemed to violate this unspoken law, served only in fact to prove itmost iron-hard: they had all been taken in infancy, a time and a condition that the children couldnot remember. John in this photograph lat naked on a white counterpane, and people laughed andsaid that it was cunning. But John could never look at it without feeling shame and anger that hisnakedness should be here so unkindly revealed. None of the other children was naked; no, Roy lay in the crib in a white gown and grinned toothlessly into the camera, and Sarah, somber at the ageof six months, wore a white bonnet, and Ruth was held in her mother’s arms. When people lookedat these photograph and laughed, their laughter differ from the laughter with which they greetedthe naked John. For this reason, when visitors tried to make advances to John he was sullen, andthey, feeling that for some reason he disliked them, retaliated by deciding that he was a ‘funny’
　　child.
　　Among the other photographs there was one of Aunt Florence, his father’s sister, in whichher hair, in the old-fashioned way, was worn high and tied with a ribbon; she had been very youngwhen his photograph was taken, and had just come North. Sometimes, when she came to visit, shecalled the photograph to witness that she had indeed been beautiful in her youth. There was aphotograph of his mother, not the John liked and had only once, but taken immediatelyafterhermarriage.Andthere(one) wasaphotographofhisfat(seen) her, dressed in black,(one) sittingon a country porch with his hands folded heavily in his lap. The photograph had been taken on asunny day, and the sunlight brutally exaggerated the planes of his father’s face. He stared into thesun, head raised, unbearable, and though it had been taken when he was young, it was not the faceof a young man; only something archaic in the dress indicated that this photograph had been takenlong ago. At the time this picture was taken, Aunt Florence said, he was already a preacher, andhad a wife who was now in Heaven. That he had been a preacher at that time was not astonishing,for it was impossible to imagine that he had ever been anything else; but that he had had a wife inthe so distant past who was now dead filled John with wonder by no means pleasant. If she hadlived, John thought, then he would never have come North and met his mother. And this shadowywoman, dead so many years, whose name he knew had been Deborah, held in the fastness of hertomb, it seemed to John, the key to all those mysteries he so longed to unlock. It was she who hadknown his father in a life where John was not, and in a country John had never seen. When he wasnothing, nowhere, dust, cloud, air, and sun, and falling rain, not even thought of, said his mother,in Heaven with the angels, said his aunt, she had known his father, and shared his father’s house.
　　She had loved his father. She had known his father when lightning flashed and thunder rolledthrough Heaven, and his father said: ‘Listen. God is talking.’ She had known him in the morningsof that far-off country when his father turned on his bed and opened his eyes, and she had lookedinto those eyes, seeing what they held, and she had not been afraid. She had seen him baptized,kicking like a mule and howling, and she had seen him weep when his mother died; he was a rightyoung man then, Florence said. Because she had looked into those eyes before they had looked onJohn, she knew that John would never know—the purity of his father’s eyes when John was notreflected in their depths. She could have told him—had he but been able form his hiding-place toask!–how to make his father love him. But now it was too late. She would not speak before thejudgment day. And among those many voices, the stammering with his own, John would care nolonger for her testimony.
　　When he had finished and the room was ready for Sunday, John felt dusty and weary andsat down beside the window in his father’s easy chair. A glacial sun filled the streets, and a highwind filled the air with scraps of paper and frost dust, and banged the hanging signs of stores andstore-front churches. It was the end of winter, and the garbage-filled snow that had been bankedalong the edges of pavements was melting now and filling the gutters. Boys were playing stickballin the damp, cold streets; dressed in heavy woolen sweaters and heavy trousers, they danced and shouted, and the ball went crack as the stick struck it and sent I speeding through the air. One ofthem wore a bright-red stocking cap with a great ball of wool hanging down behind that bouncedas he jumped, like a bright omen above his head. The cold sun made their faces like copper andbrass, and through the closed window John heard their coarse, irreverent voices. And he wanted tobe one of them, playing in the streets, unfrightened, moving with such grace and power, but heknew this could not be. Yet, if he could not play their games, he could do something they could notdo; he was able, as one of his teachers said, to think. But this brought him little in the way ofconsolation, for to-day he was terrified of his thoughts. He wanted to be with these boys in thestreet, headless and thoughtless, wearing out his treacherous and bewildering body.
　　But now it was eleven o’clock, and in two hours his father would be home. And then theymight eat, and then his father would lead them in prayer, and then he would give them a Biblelesson. By and by it would be evening and he would go to clean the church, and remained for tarryservice. Suddenly, sitting at the window, and with a violence unprecedented, there arose in John aflood of fury and tears, and he bowed his head, fists clenched against the window-pane, crying,with teeth on edge: ‘What shall I do? What shall I do?’
　　Then his mother called him; and he remembered that she was in the kitchen washingclothes and probably had something for him to do. He rose sullenly and walked into the kitchen.
　　She stood over the wash-tub, her arms wet and soapy to the elbows and sweat standing on herbrow. Her apron, improvised from an old sheet, was wet where she had been leaning over thescrubbing-board. As he came in, she straightened, drying her hands on the edge of the apron.
　　‘You finish your work, John?’ she askedHe said: ‘Yes’m,’ and thought how oddly she looked at him; as though she were looking atsomeone else’s child.
　　‘That’s a good boy,’ she said. She smiled a shy, strained smile. ‘You know you’re yourmother’s right-hand man?’
　　He said nothing, and he did not smile, but watched her, wandering to what task thispreamble led.
　　She turned away, passing one damp hand across her forehead, and went to the cupboard.
　　Her back was to him, and he watched her while she took down a bright, figured vase, filled withflowers only on the most special occasions, and emptied the contents into her palm. He heard thechink of money, which meant that she was going to send him to the store. She put the vase backand turned to face him, her palm loosely folded before her.
　　‘I didn’t never ask you,’ she said, ‘what you wanted for your birthday. But you take this,son, and go out and get yourself something you think you want.’
　　And she opened his palm and put the money into it, warm and wet from her hand. In themoment that he felt the warm, smooth coins and her hand on his, John stared blindly at her face, sofar above him. His heart broke and he wanted to put his head on her belly where the wet spot was,and cry. But he dropped his eyes and looked at his palm, at the small pile of coins.
　　‘It ain’t much there,’ she said.
　　 ‘That’s all right.’ Then he looked up, and she bent down and kissed him on the forehead.
　　‘You getting to be,’ she said, putting her hand beneath his chin and holding his face awayfrom her, ‘a right big boy. You going to be a mighty fine man, you know what? Your mama’scounting on you.’
　　And he knew again that she was not saying everything she meant; in a kind of secretlanguage she was telling him to-day something that he must remember and understand to-morrow.
　　He watched her face, his heart swollen with love for her and with an anguish, not yet his own, buthe did not understand and that frightened him.
　　‘Yes, Ma,’ he said, hoping that she would realize, despite his stammering tongue, the depthof his passion to please her.
　　‘I know,’ she said, with a smile, releasing him and rising, ‘there’s a whole lot of things youdon’t understand. But don’t you fret. The Lord’ll reveal to you in His own good time everythingHe wants you to know. You put your faith in the Lord, Johnny, and He’ll surely bring you out.
　　Everything works together for good for them that love the Lord.’
　　He had heard her say this before—it was her text, as Set thine house in order was hisfather’s—but he knew that to-day she was saying it to him especially; she was trying to help himbecause she knew he was in trouble. And this trouble was also her own, which she would never tellto John. And even though he was certain that they could not be speaking of the same things—forthen, surely, she would be angry and no longer proud of him—this perception on her part and hisavowal of her love for him lent to John’s bewilderment a reality that terrified and a dignity thatconsoled him. Dimly, he felt that he ought to console her, and he listened, astounded, at the wordsthat now fell from his lips:
　　‘Yes, Mama. I’m going to try to love the Lord.’
　　At this there sprang into his mother’s face something startling, beautiful, unspeakably sad—as though she were looking far beyond him at a long, dark road, and seeing on that road atraveler in perpetual danger. Was it he, the traveler? or herself? or was she thinking of the cross ofJesus? She turned back to the wash-tub, still with this strange sadness on her face.
　　‘You better go on now,’ she said, before your daddy gets home.’
　　In Central Park the snow had not yet melted on his favorite hill. This hill was in the center of thepark, after he had left the circ le of the reservoir, where he always found, outside the high wall ofcrossed wire, ladies, white, in fur coats, walking their great dogs, or old, white gentlemen withcanes. At a point that he knew by instinct and by the shape of the buildings surrounding the park,he struck out on a steep path overgrown with trees, and climbed a short distance until he reachedthe clearing that led to the hill. Before him, then, the slope stretched upward, and above it thebrilliant sky, and beyond it, cloudy, and far away, he saw the skyline of New York. He did notknow why, but there arose in him an exultation and a sense of power, and he ran up the hill like anengine, or a madman, willing to throw himself headlong into the city that glowed before him.
　　 But when he reached the summit he paused; he stood on the crest of the hill, hands claspedbeneath his chin, looking down. Then he, John, felt like a giant who might crumble this city withhis anger; he felt like a tyrant who might crush this city beneath his heel; he felt like a long-awaited conqueror at whose feet flowers would be strewn, and before whom multitudes cried,Hosanna! He would be, of all, the mightiest, the most beloved, the Lord’s anointed; and he wouldlive in this shining city which his ancestors had seen with longing from far away. For it was his;the inhabitants of the city had told him it was his; he had but to run down, crying, and they wouldtake him to their hearts and shoe him wonders his eyes had never seen.
　　And still, on the summit of that hill he paused. He remembered the people he had seen inthat city, whose eyes held no love for him. And he thought of their feet so swift and brutal, and thedark gray clothes they wore, and how when they passed they did not see him, or, if they saw him,they smirked. And how the lights, unceasing, crashed on and off above him, and how he was astranger there. Then he remembered his father and his mother, and all the arms stretched out tohold him back, to save him from this city where, they said, his soul would find perdition.
　　And certainly perdition sucked at the feet of the people who walked there; and cried in thelights, in the gigantic towers; the marks of Satan could be found in the faces of the people whowaited at the doors of movie houses; his words were printed on the great movie posters that invitedpeople to sin. It was the roar of the damned that filled Broadway, where motor-cars and buses andthe hurrying people disputed every inch with death. Broadway: the way that led to death wasbroad, and many could be found thereon; but narrow was the way that led to life eternal, and fewthere were who found it. But he did not long for the narrow way, where all his people walked;where the houses did not rise, piercing, as it seemed, the unchanging clouds, but huddled, flat,ignoble, close to the filthy ground, where the streets and the hallways and the rooms were dark,and where the unconquerable odor was of dust, and sweat, and urine, and home-made gin. In thenarrow way, the way of the cross, there awaited him only humiliation for ever; there awaited him,one day, a house like his father’s house, and a church like his father’s, and a job like his father’s,where he would grow old and black with hunger and toil. The way of the cross had given him abelly filled with wind and had bent his mother’s back; they had never worn fine clothes, but here,where the buildings contested God’s power and where the men and women did not fear God, herehe might eat and drink to his heart’s content and clothe his body with wondrous fabrics, rich to theeye and pleasing to the touch. And then what of his soul, which would one day come to die andstand naked before the judgment bar? What would his conquest of the city profit him on that day?
　　To hurl away, for a moment of ease, the glories of eternity!
　　These glories were unimaginable—but the city was real. He stood for a moment on themelting snow, distracted, and then began to run down the hill, feeling himself fly as the descentbecame more rapid, and thinking: ‘I can climb back up. If it’s wrong, I can always climb back up.’
　　At the bottom of the hill, where the ground abruptly leveled off on to a gravel path, he nearlyknocked down an old white man with a white beard, who was walking very slowly and leaning onhis cane. They both stopped, astonished, and looked at one another. John struggled to catch hisbreath and apologize, but old man smiled. John smiled back. It was as though he and the old manhad between them a great secret; and the old man moved on. The snow glittered in patches all overthe park. Ice, under the pale, strong sun, melted slowly on the branches and trunks of trees.
　　 He came out of the park at Fifth Avenue where, as always, the old-fashioned horse-carriages were lined along the kerb, their drivers sitting on the high seats with rugs around theirknees, or standing in twos and threes near the horses, stamping their feet and smoking pipes andtalking. I summer he had seen people riding in these carriages, looking like people out of books, orout of movies in which everyone wore old-fashioned clothes and rushed at nightfall over frozenroad, hotly pursued by their enemies who wanted to carry them back to death. ‘Look back, lookback,’ had cried a beautiful woman with long blonde curls, ‘and see if we are pursued!—and shehad come, as John remembered, to a terrible end. Now he stared at the horses, enormous andbrown and patient, stamping every now and again a polished hoof, and he thought of what it wouldbe like to have one day a horse of his own. He would call it Rider, and mount it at morning whenthe grass was wet, and from the horse’s back look out over great, sun-filled fields, his own. Behindhim stood his house, great and rambling and very new, and in the kitchen his wife, a beautifulwoman, made breakfast, and the smoke rose out of the chimney, melting into the morning air.
　　They had children, who called him Papa and for whom at Christmas he bought electric trains. Andhe had turkeys and cows and chickens and geese, and other horses besides Rider. They had a closetfull of whisky and wine; they had cars—but what church did they go to and what would he teachhis children when they gathered around him in the evening? He looked straight ahead, down FifthAvenue, where graceful women in fur coats walked, looking into the windows that held silkdresses, and watches, and rings. What church did they go to? And what were their houses like inthe evening they took off these coats, and these silk dresses, and put their jewelery in a box, andleaned back in soft beds to think for a moment before they slept of the day gone by? Did they reada verse from the Bible every night and fall on their knees to pray? But no, for their thoughts werenot of God, and their way was not God’s way. They were in the world, and of the world, and theirfeet laid hold on Hell.
　　Yet in school some of them had been nice to him, and it was hard to think of them burningin Hell for ever, they who were so gracious and beautiful now. Once, one winter when he had beenvery sick with a heavy cold that would not leave him, one of his teachers had bought him a bottleof cod-liver oil, especially prepared with heavy syrup so that it did not taste so bad: this was surelya Christian act. His mother had said that God would bless that woman; and he had got better. Theywere kind—he was sire that they were kind—and on the day that he would bring himself to theirattention they would surely love and honor him. This was not his father’s opinion. His father saidthat all white people were wicked, and that God was going to bring them low. He said that whitepeople were never to be trusted, and that they told nothing but lies, and that no one of them hadever loved a nigger. He, John, was a nigger, and he would find out, as soon as he got a little older,how evil white people could be. John had read about the things white people did to colored people;how, in the South, where his parents came from, white people cheated them of their wages, andburned them, and shot them—and did worse things, said his father, which the tongue could notendure to utter. He had read about colored men being burned in the electric chair for things theyhad not done; how in riots they were beaten with clubs; how they were tortured in prisons; howthey were the last to be hired and the first to be fired. Niggers did not live on these streets whereJohn now walked; it was forbidden; and yet he walked here, and no one raised a hand against him.
　　But did he dare to enter this shop out of which a woman now casually walked, carrying a greatround box? Or this apartment before which a white man stood, dressed in a brilliant uniform? John knew he did not dare, not to-day, and he heard his father’s laugh: ‘No, nor to-morrow neither!’ Forhim there was the back door, and the dark stairs, and the kitchen or the basement. This world wasnot for him. If he refused to believe, and wanted to break his neck trying, then he could try untilthe sun refused to shine; they would never let him enter. In John’s mind then, the people and theavenue underwent a change, and he feared them and knew that one day he could hate them if Goddid not change his heart.
　　He left Fifth Avenue and walked west toward the movie houses. Here on 42nd Street it wasless elegant but not less strange. He loved this street, not for the people or the shops but for thestone lions that guarded the great main building of the Public Library, a building filled with bookand unimaginably vast, and which he had never yet dared to enter. He might, he knew, for he was amember of the branch in Harlem and was entitled to take books from any library in the city. But hehad never gone in because the building was so big that it must be full of corridors and marblesteps, in the maze of which he would be lost and never find the book he wanted. And theneveryone, all the white people inside, would know that he was not used to great buildings, or tomany books, and they would look at him wit pity. He would enter on another day, when he hadread all the books uptown, an achievement that would, he felt, lend him the poise to enter anybuilding in the world. People, mostly men, leaned over the stone parapets of the raised park thatsurrounded the library, or walked up and own and bent to drink water from the public drinking-fountains. Silver pigeons lighted briefly on the heads of the lions or the rims of fountains, andstrutted along the walks. John loitered in front of Woolworth’s, staring at the candy display, tryingto decide what candy to buy—and buying one, for the store was crowded and he was certain thatthe salesgirl would never notice him—and before a vendor of artificial flowers, and crossed SixthAvenue where the Automat was, and the parked taxis, and the shops, which he would not look atto-day, that displayed in their windows dirty postcards and practical jokes. Beyond Sixth Avenuethe movie houses began, and now he studied the stills carefully, trying to decide which of all thesetheaters he should enter. He stopped at last before a gigantic, colored poster that represented awicked woman, half undressed, leaning in a doorway, apparently quarreling with a blond man whostared wretchedly into the street. The legend above their heads was: ‘There’s a fool like him inevery family—and a woman next door to take him over!’ He decided to see this, for he feltidentified with the blond young man, the fool of his family, and he wished to know more about hisso blatantly unkind fate.
　　And so he stared at the price above the ticket-seller’s window and, showing her his coins,received the piece of paper that was charged with the power to open doors. having once decided toenter, he did not look back at the street again for fear that one of the saints might be passing and,seeing him, might cry out his name and lay hands on him to drag him back. He walked veryquickly across the carpeted lobby, looking at nothing, and pausing only to see his ticket torn, halfof it thrown into a silver box and half returned to him. And then the usherette opened the doors ofthis dark palace and with a flashlight held behind her took him to his seat. Not even then, havingpushed past a wilderness of knees and feet to reach his designated seat, did he dare to breathe; nor,out of a last, sick hope for forgiveness, did he look at the screen. He stared at the darkness aroundhim, and at the profiles that gradually emerged from this gloom, was so like the gloom of Hell. Hewaited for this darkness to be shattered by the light of the second coming, for the ceiling to crackupward, revealing, for every eye to see, the chariots of fire on which descended a wrathful God and all the host of Heaven. He sank far down
Part 2 The Prayer Of The Saints
THE PRAYER OF THE SAINTSAnd they cried with a loud voice,saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true,dost thou not judge and avengeour blood on them that dwell on the earth1 FLORENCE’S PRAYERLight and life to all He brings,Risen with healing in His wings!
　　Florence raised her voice in the only song she could remember that her mother used to sing:
　　‘It’s me, it’s me, it’s me, oh, Lord, Standing in the need of prayer.’
　　Gabriel turned to stare at her, in astonished triumph that his sister should at last behumbled. She did not look at him. Her thoughts were all on God. After a moment, the congregationand the piano joined her:
　　‘Not my father, not my motherBut it’s me, oh, Lord.’
　　She knew that Gabriel rejoiced, not that her humility might lead her to grace, but only thatsome private anguish had brought her low: her songs revealed that she was suffering, and this herbrother was glad to see. This had always been his spirit. Nothing had ever changed it; nothing everwould. For a moment her pride stood up; the resolution that had brought her to this place to-nightfaltered, and she felt that if Gabriel was the Lord’s anointed, she would rather die and endure Hellfor all eternity than bow before His altar. But she strangled her pride, rising to stand with them inthe holy space before the altar, and still singing:
　　‘Standing in the need of prayer.’
　　Kneeling as she had not knelt for many years, and in this company before the altar, shegained again from the song the meaning it had held for her mother, and gained a new meaning forherself. As a child, the song had made her see a woman, dressed in black, standing in infinite mistsalone, waiting for the form of the Son of God to lead her through the white fire. This woman nowreturned to her, more desolate; it was herself, not knowing where to put her foot; she waitedtrembling, for the mists to be parted that she might walk in peace. That long road, her life, whichshe had followed for sixty groaning years, had led her at last to her mother’s starting-place, thealtar of the Lord. For her feet stood on the edge of that river which her mother, rejoicing, hadcrossed over. And would the Lord now reach out His hand to Florence and heal and save? But,going down before the scarlet cloth at the foot of the golden cross, it came to her that she hadforgotten how to pray.
　　Her mother has taught her that the way to pray was to forget everything and everyone butJesus; to pour out of the heart, like water from a bucket, all evil thoughts, all thoughts of self, allmalice for one’s enemies; to come boldly, and yet more humbly than the little child, before theGiver of all good things. Yet, in Florence’s heart to-night hatred and bitterness weighed likegranite, pride refused to abdicate from the throne it had held so long. Neither love nor humility hadled her to the altar, but only fear. And God did not hear the prayers of the fearful, for the hearts ofthe fearful held no belief. Such prayers could rise no higher that the lips that uttered them.
　　Around her she heard the saints’ voices, a steady, charged murmur, with now and again thename of Jesus rising above, sometimes like the swift rising of a bird into the air of a sunny day, sometimes like the slow rising of the mist from swamp ground. Was this the way to pray? In thechurch that she had joined when she first came North one knelt before the altar once only, in thebeginning, to ask for forgiveness of sins; and this accomplished, one was baptized and became aChristian, to kneel no more thereafter. Even if the Lord should lay some great burden on one’sback—as He has done, but never so heavy a burden as this she carried now—one prayed in silence.
　　It was indecent, the practice of common niggers to cry aloud at the foot of the altar, tears streamingfor all the world to see. She had never done it, not even as a girl down home in the church they hadgone to in those days. Now perhaps it was too late, and the Lord would suffer her to die in thedarkness in which she had lived so long.
　　In the olden days God had healed His children. He had caused the blind to see, the lame towalk, and He had raised dead men from the grave. But Florence remembered one phrase, whichnow she muttered against the knuckles that bruised her lips: ‘Lord, help my unbelief.’
　　For the message had come to Florence that had come to Hezekiah: Set thine house in order,for thou shalt die and not live. Many nights ago, as she turned on her bed, this message came toher. For many days and nights the message was repeated; there had been time, then, to turn to God.
　　But she had thought to evade him, seeking among the women she knew for remedies; and then,because the pain increased, she had sought doctors; and when the doctors did no good she hadclimbed stairs all over town to rooms where incense burned and where men or women in trafficwith the devil gave her white powders, or herbs to make tea, and cast spells upon her to take thesickness away. The burning in her bowels did not cease—that burning which, eating inward, tookthe flesh visibly from her bones and caused her to vomit up her food. Then one night she founddeath standing in the room. Blacker than night, and gigantic, he filled one corner of her narrowroom, watching her with eyes like the eyes of a serpent when his head is lifted to strike. Then shescreamed and called on God, turning on the light. And death departed, but she knew he would beback. Every night would bring him a little closer to her bed.
　　And after death’s first silent vigil her life came to her bedside to curse her with manyvoices. Her mother, in rotting rags filling the room with the stink of the grave, stood over her tocurse the daughter who had denied her on her deathbed. Gabriel came, from all his times and ages,to curse the sister who had held him to scorn and mocked his ministry. Deborah, black, her body asshapeless and hard as iron, looked on with veiled, triumphant eyes, cursing the Florence who hadmocked her in her pain and barrenness. Frank came, even he, with that same smile, the same tilt ofhis head. Of them all she would have begged forgiveness, had they come with ears to hear. Butthey came like many trumpets; even if they had come to hear and not to testify it was not they whocould forgive her, but only God.
　　The piano had stopped. All around her now were only the voices of the saints.
　　‘Dear Father’—it was her mother praying—‘we come before You on our knees this evening to askYou to watch over us and hold back the hand of the destroying angel. Lord, sprinkle the doorpostof this house with the blood of the Lamb to keep all the wicked men away, Lord, we praying forevery mother’s son and daughter everywhere in the world but we want You to take special care of this girl here to-night, Lord, and don’t let no evil come nigh her. We know you’s able to do it,Lord, in Jesus’ name, Amen.’
　　This was the first prayer Florence heard, the only prayer she was ever to hear in which hermother demanded the protection of God more passionately for her daughter than she demanded itfor her son. It was night, the windows were shut tightly with the shades drawn, and the great tablewas pushed against the door. The kerosene lamps burned low and made great shadows on thenewspaper-covered wall. Her mother, dressed in the long, shapeless, colorless dress that she boreevery day but Sunday, when she wore white, and with her head tied up in a scarlet cloth, knelt inthe center of the room, her hands hanging loosely folded before her, her black face lifted, her eyesshut. The weak, unsteady light placed shadows under her mouth and in the sockets of her eyes,making the face impersonal with majesty, like the face of a prophetess, or like a mask. Silencefilled the room after her ‘Amen,’ and in the silence they heard, far up the road, the sound of ahorse’s hoofs. No one moved. Gabriel, from his corner near the stove, looked up and watched hismother.
　　‘I ain’t afraid,’ said Gabriel.
　　His mother turned, one hand raised. ‘You hush, now!’
　　Trouble had taken place in town to-day. Their neighbor Deborah, who was sixteen, threeyears older than Florence, had been taken away into the fields the night before by many white men,where they did things to her to make her cry and bleed. To-day, Deborah’s father had gone to oneof the white men’s house, and said that he would kill him and all the other white men he couldfind. They had beaten him and left him for dead. Now, everyone had shut their doors, praying andwaiting, for it was said that the white folks would come to-night and set fire to all the houses, asthey had done before.
　　In the night that pressed outside they heard only the horse’s hoofs, which did not stop; therewas not the laughter they would have heard had there been many coming on this road, and nocalling out of curses, and no one crying for mercy to white men, or to God. The hoofbeats came tothe door and passed, and rang, while they listened, ever more faintly away. Then Florence realizedhow frightened she had been. She watched her mother rise and walk to the window. She peered outthrough a corner of the blanket that covered it.
　　‘They’s gone,’ she said, ‘whoever they was.’ Then: ‘Blessed be the name of the Lord,’ shesaid.
　　Thus had her mother lived and died; and she had often been brought lo, but she had neverbeen forsaken. She had always seemed to Florence the oldest woman in the world, for she oftenspoke of Florence and Gabriel as the children of her old age, and she had been born, innumerableyears ago, during slavery, on a plantation in another state. On this plantation she had grown up asone of the field-workers, for she was very tall and strong; and by and by she had married andraised children, all of whom had been taken from her, one by sickness and two by auction; andone, whom she had not been allowed to call her own, had been raised in the master’s house. Whenshe was a woman grown, well past thirty as she reckoned it, with one husband buried—but themaster had given her another—armies, plundering and burning, had come from the North to set them free. This was in answer to the prayers of the faithful, who had never ceased, both day andnight, to cry out for deliverance.
　　For it had been the will of God that they should hear, and pass thereafter, one to another,the story of the Hebrew children who had been held in bondage in the land of Egypt; and how theLord had heard their groaning, and how His heart was moved; and how He bid them wait but alittle season till He should send deliverance. Florence’s mother had known this story, so it seemed,from the day she was born. And while she lived—rising in the morning before the sun came up,standing and bending in the fields when the sun was high, crossing the fields homeward when thesun went down at the gates of Heaven far away, hearing the whistle of the foreman and his eeriecry across the fields; in the whiteness of winter when hogs and turkeys and geese were slaughtered,and lights burned bright in the big house, and Bathsheba, the cook, sent over in a napkin bits ofham and chicken and cakes left over by the white folks—in all that befell: in her joys, her pipe inthe evening, her man at night, the children she suckled, and guided on their first short steps; and inher tribulations, death, and parting, and the lash, she did not forget that deliverance was promisedand would surely come. She had only to endure and trust in God. She knew that the big house, thehouse of pride where the white folks lived, would come down; it was written in the Word of God.
　　They, who walked so proudly now, had nor fashioned for themselves or their children so sure afoundation as was hers. They walked on the edge of a steep place and their eyes were sightless—God would cause them to rush down, as the herd of swine had once rushed down, into the sea. Forall that they were so beautiful, and took their ease, she knew them, and she pitied them, who wouldhave no covering in the great day of His wrath.
　　Yet, she told her children, God was just, and He struck no people without first giving manywarnings. God gave men time, but all the times were in His hand, and one day the time to forsakeevil and do good would all be finished: then only the whirlwind, death riding on the whirlwind,awaited those people who had forgotten God. In all the days that she was growing up, signs failednot, but none heeded. ‘Slaves done ris,’ was whispered in the cabin and at the master’s gate: slavesin another county had fired the masters’ houses and fields and dashed their children to deathagainst the stones. ‘Another slave in hell,’ Bathsheba might say one morning, shooing thepickaninnies away from the great porch: a slave had killed his master, or his overseer, and hadgone down to Hell to pay for it. ‘I ain’t got long to stay here,’ someone crooned beside her in thefields, someone who would be gone by morning on his journey north. All these signs, like theplagues with which the Lord had afflicted Egypt, only hardened the hearts of these people againstthe Lord. They thought the lash would save them, and they used the lash; or the knife, or thegallows, or the auction block; they thought that kindness would save then, and the master andmistress came down, smiling, to the cabins, making much of the pickaninnies and bearing gifts.
　　These were great days, and they all, black and white, seemed happy together. But when the Wordhas gone forth from the mouth of God nothing can turn it back.
　　The Word was fulfilled one morning, before she was awake. Many of the stories her othertold meant nothing to Florence; she knew them for what they were, tales told by an old blackwoman in a cabin in the evening to distract her children from their cold and hunger. But the storyof this day she was never to forget; it was a day for which she lived. There was a great running andshouting, said her mother, everywhere outside, and, as she opened her eyes to the light of that day, so bright, she said, and cold, she was certain that the judgment trumpet had sounded. While shestill sat, amazed, and wondering what, on the judgment day, would be the best behavior, in rushedBathsheba and behind her many tumbling children and field hands and house niggers, all together,and Bathsheba shouted: ‘Rise up, rise up, Sister Rachel, and see the Lord’s deliverance! He donebrought us out of Egypt, just like He promised, and we’s free at last!’ Bathsheba grabbed her, tearsrunning down her face; she, dressed in the clothes in which she had slept, walked to the door tolook out on the new day God had given them.
　　On that day she saw the proud house humbled; green silk and velvet blowing out ofwindows, and the garden trampled by many horsemen, and the big gate open. The master andmistress, and their kin, and one child she had borne were in that house—which she did not enter.
　　Soon it occurred to her that there was no longer any reason to tarry here. She tied her things in acloth that she put on her head, and walked out through the big gate, never to see that country anymore.
　　And this became Florence’s deep ambition: to walk out one morning through the cabindoor, never to return. Her father, whom she scarcely remembered, had departed that way onemorning not many months after the birth of Gabriel. And not only her father; every day she heardthat another man or woman had said farewell to this iron earth and sky, and started on the journeynorth. But her mother had no wish to go North where, she said, wickedness dwelt and Death rodemighty through the streets. She was content to stay in this cabin and do washing for the whitefolks, though she was old and her back was sore. And she wanted Florence, also, to be content—helping with the washing, and fixing meals and keeping Gabriel quiet.
　　Gabriel was the apple of his mother’s eye. If he had never been born, Florence might havelooked forward to a day when she would be released from her unrewarding round of labor, whenshe might think of her own future and go out to make it. With the birth of Gabriel, which occurredwhen she was five, her future was swallowed up. There was only one future in that house, and itwas Gabriel’s—to which, since Gabriel was a man-child, all else must be sacrificed. Her motherdid not, indeed, think of it as sacrifice, but as logic: Florence was a girl, and would by and by bemarried, and have children of her own, and all the duties of a woman; and this being so, her life inthe cabin was the best possible preparation for her future life. But Gabriel was a man; he would goout one day into the world to do a man’s work, and he needed, therefore, meat, when there was anyin the house, and clothes, whenever clothes could be bought, and the strong indulgence of hiswomenfolk, so that he would know how to be with women when he had a wife. And he needed theeducation that Florence desired far more than he, and that she might have got if he had not beenborn. It was Gabriel who was slapped and scrubbed each morning and sent off to the one-roomschoolhouse—which he hated, and where he managed to learn, so far as Florence could discover,almost nothing at all. And often he was not at school, but getting into mischief with other boys.
　　Almost all of their neighbors, and even some of the white folks, came at one time or another tocomplain of Gabriel’s wrongdoing. Their mother would walk out into the yard and cut a switchfrom a tree and beat him—beat him, it seemed to Florence, until any other boy would have fallendown dead; and so often that any other boy would have ceased his wickedness. Nothing stoppedGabriel, though he made Heaven roar with his howling, though he screamed aloud, as his motherapproached, that he would never be such a bad boy again. And, after the beating, his pants still down around his knees and his face wet with tears and mucus, Gabriel was made to kneel downwhile his mother prayed. She asked Florence to pray, too, but in her heart Florence never prayed.
　　She hoped that Gabriel would break his neck. She wanted the evil against which their motherprayed to overtake him one day.
　　In those days Florence and Deborah, who had come close friend after Deborah’s ‘accident,’
　　hated all men. When men looked at Deborah they saw no father that her unlovely and violatedbody. In their eyes lived perpetually a lewd, uneasy wonder concerning the night she had beentaken in the fields. That night had robbed her of the right to be considered a woman. No manwould approach her in honor because she was a living reproach, to herself and to all black womenand to all black men. If she had been beautiful, and if God had not given her a spirit so demure, shemight, with ironic gusto, have acted out that rape in the field for ever. Since she could not beconsidered a woman, she could only be looked on as a harlot, a source of delight more bestial andmysteries more shaking than any a proper woman could provide. Lust stirred in the eyes of menwhen they look at Deborah, lust that could not be endured because it was so impersonal, limitingcommunion to the area of her shame. And Florence, who was beautiful but did not look with favoron any of the black men who lusted after her, not wishing to exchange her mother’s cabin for oneof theirs and to raise their children and so go down, toil-blasted, into, as it were, a common grave,reinforced in Deborah the terrible belief against which evidence had ever presented itself: that allmen were like this, their thoughts rose no higher, and they lived only to gratify on the bodies ofwomen their brutal and humiliating needs.
　　One Sunday at a camp-meeting, when Gabriel was twelve years old and was to be baptized,Deborah and Florence stood on the banks of a river along with all the other folks and watched him.
　　Gabriel had not wished to be baptized. The thought had frightened and angered him, but hismother insisted that Gabriel was now of an age to be responsible before God for his sins—shewould not shirk the duty, laid on her by the Lord, of doing everything within he power to bringhim to the throne of grace. On the banks of a river, under the violent light of noon, confessedbelievers and children of Gabriel’s age waited to be led into the water. Standing out, waist-deepand robed in white, was the preacher, who would hold their heads briefly under the water, cryingout to Heaven as the baptized held his breath: ‘I indeed have baptized you with water: but He shallbaptize you with the Holy Ghost.’ Then, as they rose sputtering and blinded and were led to theshore, he cried out again: ‘Go thou and sin no more.’ They came up from the water, visibly underthe power of the Lord, and on the shore the saints awaited them, beating their tambourines.
　　Standing bear the shore were the elders of the church, holding towels with which to cover thenewly baptized, who were then led into the tents, one for either sex, where they could change theirclothes.
　　At last, Gabriel, dressed in an old white shirt and short linen pants, stood on the edge of thewater. Then he was slowly led into the river, where he had so often splashed naked, until hereached the preacher. And the moment that the preacher threw him down, crying out the words ofJohn the Baptist, Gabriel began to kick and sputter, nearly throwing the preacher off balance; andthough at first they thought that it was the power of the Lord that worked in him, they realized ashe rose, still kicking and with his eyes tightly shut, that it was only fury, and too much water in hisnose. Some folks smiled, but Florence and Deborah did not smile. Though Florence had also been indignant, years before when the slimy water entered her incautiously open mouth, she had doneher best not to sputter, and she had not cried out. But now, here came Gabriel, floundering andfurious up the bank, and what she looked at, with an anger more violent than any she had feltbefore, was his nakedness. He was drenched, and his thin, white clothes clung like another skin tohis black body. Florence and Deborah looked at one another, while the singing rose to coverGabriel’s howling, and Deborah looked away.
　　Years later, Deborah and Florence had stood on Deborah’s porch at night and watched avomit-covered Gabriel stagger up the moonlight road, and Florence had cried out: ‘I hate him! Ihate him! Big, black, prancing tomcat of a nigger!’ And Deborah had said, in that heavy voice ofhers: ‘You know, honey, the Word tell us to hate the sin but not the sinner.’
　　In nineteen hundred, when she was twenty-six, Florence walked out through the cabindoor. She had thought to wait until her mother, who was so ill now that she no longer stirred out ofbed, should be buried—but suddenly she knew that she would wait no longer, the time had come.
　　She had been working as cook and serving-girl for a large white family in town, and it was on theday her master proposed that she become his concubine that she knew her life among thesewretched people had come to its destined end. She left her employment that same day (leavingbehind her a most vehement conjugal bitterness), and with part of the money that with cunning,cruelty, and sacrifice she had saved over a period of years, bought a railroad ticket to New York.
　　When she bout it, in a kind of scarlet rage, she held like a talisman at the back of her mind thethought: ‘I can give it back, I can sell it. This don’t mean I got to go.’ But she knew that nothingcould stop her.
　　And it was this leave-taking that came to stand, in Florence’s latter days, and with othermany witness, at her bedside. Gray clouds obscured the sun that day, and outside the cabin windowshe saw that mist still covered the ground. Her mother lay in bed, awake; she was pleading withGabriel, who had been out drinking the night before, and who was not really sober now, to mendhis ways and come to the Lord. And Gabriel, full of the confusion, and pain, and guilt that were hiswhenever he thought of how he made his mother suffer, but that became nearly insupportablewhen she taxed him with it, stood before the mirror, head bowed, buttoning his shirt. Florenceknew that he could not unlock his lips to speak; he could not say yes to his mother, and to theLord; and he could not say no.
　　‘Honey,’ their mother was saying, ‘don’t you let your old mother die without you look herin the eye and tell her she going to see you in glory. You hear me, boy?’
　　In a moment, Florence thought with scorn, tears would fill his eyes, and he would promiseto ‘do better.’ He had been promising to ‘do better’ since the day he had been baptized.
　　She put down her bag in the center of the hateful room.
　　‘Ma,’ she said, ‘I’m going. I’m a-going this morning.’
　　Now that she had said it, she was angry with herself for not having said it the night before,so that they would have had time to be finished with their weeping and their arguments. She hadnot trusted herself to withstand the night before; but now there was almost no time t. The center of her mind was filled with the image of the great, white clock at the railway station, on which thehands did not cease to move.
　　‘You going where?’ her mother asked sharply. But she knew that her mother hadunderstood, had indeed long before this moment known that this time would come. Theastonishment with which she stared at Florence’s bag was not altogether astonishment, but astartled, wary attention. A danger imagined had become present and real, and her mother wasalready searching for a way to break Florence’s will. All this Florence knew in a moment, and itmade her stronger. She watched her mother, waiting.
　　But at the tone of his mother’s voice Gabriel, who had scarcely heard Florence’sannouncement, so grateful had he been that something had occurred to distract from him hismother’s attention, dropped his eyes and saw Florence’s traveling-bag. And he repeated hismother’s question in a stunned, angry voice, understanding it only as the words hit the air:
　　‘Yes, girl. Where you think you going?’
　　‘I’m going, she said, ‘to New York. I got my ticket.’
　　And her mother watched her. For a moment no one said a word. Then, Gabriel, in achanged and frightened voice, asked:
　　‘And when you done decide that?’
　　She did not look at him, nor answer his question. She continued to watch her mother. ‘I gotmy ticket,’ she repeated. ‘I’m going on the morning train.’
　　‘Girl,’ asked her mother, quietly, ‘is you sure you know what you’s doing?’
　　She stiffened. seeing in her mother’s eyes a mocking pity. ‘I’m a woman grown,’ she said.
　　‘I know what I’m doing.’
　　‘And you going,’ cried Gabriel, ‘this morning—just like that? And you going to walk offand leave your mother—just like that?’
　　‘You hush,’ she said, turning to him for the first time, ‘she got you, ain’t she?’
　　This was indeed, she realized as he dropped his eyes, the bitter, troubling point. He couldnot endure the thought of being left alone with his mother, with nothing whatever to put betweenhimself and his guilty love. With Florence gone, time would have swallowed up all his mother’schildren, except himself; and he, then, must make amends for all the pain that she had borne, andsweeten her last moments with all his proofs of love. And his mother required of him one proofonly, that he tarry no longer in sin. With Florence gone, his stammering time, his playing time,contracted with a bound to the sparest interrogative second, when he must stiffen himself, andanswer to his mother, and all the host of Heaven, yes or no.
　　Florence smiled inwardly a small, malicious smile, watching his slow bafflement, andpanic, and rage: and she looked at her mother again. ‘She got you,’ she repeated. ‘She don’t needme.’
　　‘You going north,’ her mother said, then. ‘And when you reckon on coming back?’
　　‘I don’t reckon on coming back,’ she said.
　　 ‘You come crying back soon enough,’ said Gabriel, with malevolence, ‘soon as they whipyour butt up there four or five times.’
　　She looked at him again. ‘Just don’t you try to hold your breath till then, you hear?’
　　‘Girl,’ said her mother, ‘you mean to tell me the Devil’s done made your heart so hard youcan just leave your mother on her dying bed, and you don’t care if you don’t never see her in thisworld no more? Honey, you can’t tell me you done got so evil as all that?’
　　She felt Gabriel watching her to see how she would take this question—the question that,for all her determination, she had dreaded most to hear. She looked away from her mother, andstraightened, catching her breath, looking outwards through the small, cracked window. Thereoutside, beyond the slowly rising mist, and farther off that her eyes could see, her life awaited her.
　　The woman on the bed was old, her life was fading as the mist rose. She thought of her mother asalready in the grave; and she would not let herself be strangled by the hands of the dead.
　　‘I’m going, Ma,’ she said. ‘I got to go.’
　　Her mother leaned back, face upward to the light and began to cry. Gabriel moved toFlorence’s side and grabbed her arm. She looked up into his face and saw that his eyes were full oftears.
　　‘You can’t go,’ he said. ‘You can’t go. You can’t go and leave your mother thisaway. Sheneed a woman, Florence, to help look after her. What she going to do here, all alone with me?’
　　She pushed him from her and moved to stand over her mother’s bed.
　　‘Ma,’ she said, ‘don’t be like that. Ain’t a thing can happen to me up North can’t happen tome here. God’s everywhere, Ma. Ain’t no need to worry.’
　　She knew that she was mouthing words; and she realized suddenly that her mother scornedto dignify these words with her attention. She had granted Florence the victory—with apromptness that had the effect of making Florence, however dimly and unwillingly, wonder if hervictory was real. She was not weeping for her daughter’s future, she was weeping for the past, andweeping in an anguish in which Florence had no part. And all of this filled Florence with terriblefear, which, which was immediately transformed into anger. ‘Gabriel can take care of you,’ shesaid, her voice shaking with malice. ‘Gabriel ain’t never going to leave you. Is you, boy?’ and shelooked at him. He stood, stupid with bewilderment and grief, a few inches from the bed. ‘But me,’
　　she said, ‘I got to go.’ She walked to the center of the room again, and picked up her bag.
　　‘Girl,’ Gabriel whispered, ‘ain’t you got feelings at all?’
　　‘Lord!’ her mother cried; and at the sound her heart turned over; she and Gabriel, arrested,stared at the bed. ‘Lord, Lord, Lord! Lord, have mercy on my sinful daughter! Stretch out yourhand and hold her back from the lake that burns forever! Oh, my Lord, my Lord!’ and her voicedropped, and broke, and tears ran down her face. ‘Lord, I done my best with all the children whatyou give me. Lord, have mercy on my children, and my children’s children.’
　　‘Florence,’ said Gabriel, ‘please don’t go. You ain’t really fixing to go and leave her likethis?’
　　 Tears stood suddenly in her own eyes, though she could not have said what she was cryingfor. ‘Leave me be,’ she said to Gabriel, and picked up her bag again. She opened the door; thecold, morning air came in. ‘Good-bye.’ she said. And then to Gabriel: ‘Tell her I said good-bye.’
　　She walked through the cabin door and down the short steps into the frosty yard. Gabriel watchedher, standing frozen between the door and the weeping bed. Then, as her hand was on the gate, heran before her, and slammed the gate shut.
　　‘Girl, where you going? What you doing? You reckon on finding some men up North todress you in pearls and diamonds?’
　　Violently, she opened the gate and moved out into the road. He watched her with his jawhanging, and his lips loose and wet. ‘If you ever see me again,’ she said, ‘I won’t be wearing ragslike yours.’
　　All over the church there was only the sound, more awful than the deepest silence, of the prayersof the saints of God. Only the yellow, moaning light shone above them, making their faces gleamlike muddy gold. Their faces, and their attitudes, and their many voices rising as one voice madeJohn think of the deepest valley, the longest night, of Peter and Paul in the dungeon cell, onepraying while the other sang; or of endless, depthless, swelling water, and no dry land in sight, thetrue believer clinging to a spar. And, thinking of to-morrow, when the church would rise up,singing, under the booming Sunday light, he thought of the light for which they tarried, which, inan instant, filled the soul, causing (throughout those iron-dark, unimaginable ages before John hadcome into the world) the new-born in Christ to testify: Once I was blind and now I see.
　　And then they sang: ‘Walk in the light, the beautiful light. Shine all around me by day andby night, Jesus, the light of the world.’ And they sang: ‘Oh, Lord, Lord, I want to be ready, I wantto be ready. I want to be ready to walk in Jerusalem just like John.’
　　To walk in Jerusalem just like John. To-night, his mind was awash with visions: nothingremained. He was ill with doubt and searching. He longed for a light that would teach him, foreverand forever, and beyond all question, the way to go; for a power that would bind him, forever andforever, and beyond all crying, to the love of God. Or else he wished to stand up now, and leavethis tabernacle and never see these people any more. Fury and anguish filled him, unbearable,unanswerable; his mind was stretched to breaking. For it was time that filled his mind, time thatwas violent with the mysterious love of God. And his mind could not contain the terrible stretch oftime that united twelve men fishing by the shores of Galilee, and black men weeping on theirknees to-night, and he, a witness.
　　My soul is a witness for my Lord. There was an awful silence at the bottom of John’s mind,a dreadful weight, a dreadful speculation. And not even a speculation, but a deep, deep turning, asof something huge, black, shapeless, for ages dead on the ocean floor, that now felt its restdisturbed by a faint, far wind, which bid it: ‘Arise.’ And this weight began to move at the bottomof John’s mind, in a silence like the silence of the void before creation, and he began to feel aterror he had never felt before.
　　 And he looked around the church, at the people praying there. Praying Mother Washingtonhad not come in until all the saints were on their knees, and now she stood, the terrible, old, black ,above his Aunt Florence, helping her to pray. Her granddaughter, Ella Mae, had come in with her,wearing a mangy fur jacket over her everyday clothes. She knelt heavily in a corner near the piano,under the sign that spoke of the wage of sin, and now and again she moaned. Elisha had not lookedup when she came in, and he prayed in silence: sweat stood on his brow. Sister McCandless andSister Price cried out every now and again: ‘Yes, Lord!’ or: ‘Bless your name, Jesus!’ And hisfather prayed, his head lifted up and his voice going on like a distant mountain stream.
　　But his Aunt Florence was silent; he wondered if she slept. He had never seen her prayingin a church before. He knew that different people prayed in different ways: has his aunt alwaysprayed in such a silence? His mother, too, was silent, but he had seen her pray before, and hersilence made him feel that she was weeping. And why did she weep? And why did they come here,night after night, calling out to a God who cared nothing for them—if, above this flaking ceiling,there was any God at all? Then he remembered that the fool has said in his heart, There is no God—and he dropped his eyes, seeing that over his Aunt Florence’s head Praying Mother Washingtonwas looking at him.
　　Frank sang the blues, and he drunk too much. His skin was the color of caramel candy. Perhaps forthis reason she always thought of him as having candy in his mouth, candy staining the edges ofhis straight, cruel teeth. For a while he wore a tiny mustache, but she made him shave it off, for itmade him look, she thought, like a half-breed gigolo. In details such as this he was always veryeasy—he would always put on a clean shirt, or get his hair cut, or come with her to Uplift meetingswhere they heard speeches by prominent Negroes about the future and duties of the Negro race.
　　And this had given her, in the beginning of their marriage, the impression that she controlled him.
　　This impression had been entirely and disastrously false.
　　When he had left her, more than twenty years before, and after more than ten years ofmarriage, she had felt for that moment only an exhausted exasperation and a vast relief. He had notbeen home for two days and three nights, and when he did return they quarreled with more thantheir usual bitterness. All of the rage she had accumulated during their marriage was told him inthat evening as they stood in their small kitchen. He was still wearing overalls, and he had notshaved, and his face was muddy with sweat and dirt. He had said nothing for a long while, andthen he had said: ‘All right, baby. I guess you don’t never want to see me no more, not a miserable,black sinner like me.’ The door closed behind him, and she heard his feet echoing down the longhall, away. She stood alone in the kitchen, holding the empty coffee-pot that she had been about towash. She thought: ‘He’ll come back, and he’ll come back drunk.’ And then she had thought,looking about the kitchen: ‘Lord, wouldn’t it be a blessing if he didn’t never come back no more.’
　　The Lord had given her what she said she wanted, as was often, she had found, His bewilderingmethod of answering prayer. Frank never did come back. He lived for a long while with anotherwoman, and when the war came he died in France.
　　Now, somewhere at the other end of the earth, her husband lay buried. He slept in a landhis fathers had never seen. She wondered often if his grave was marked—if there stood over it, asin pictures she had seen, a small white cross. If the Lord had ever allowed her to cross that swelling ocean she would have gone, among all the millions buried there, to seek out his grave.
　　Wearing deep mourning, she would have laid on it, perhaps, a wreath of flowers, as other womendid; and stood for a moment, head bowed, considering the unspeaking ground. How terrible itwould be for Frank to rise on the day of judgment so far from home! And he surely would notscruple, even on that day, to be angry at the Lord. ‘Me and the Lord,’ he had often said, ‘don’talways get along so well. He running the world like He thinks I ain’t got good sense.’ How had hedied? Slow or sudden? Had he cried out? Had death come creeping on him from behind, or facedhim like a man? She knew nothing about it, for she had not known that he was dead until longafterwards, when boys were coming home and she had begun searching for Frank’s face in thestreets. It was the woman with whom he had lived who had told her, for Frank had given thiswoman’s name as his next-of-kin. The woman, having told her, had not known what else to say,and she stared at Florence in simple-minded pity. This made Florence furious, and she barelymurmured: ‘Thank you,’ before she turned away. She hated Frank for making this woman officialwitness to her humiliation. And she wondered again what Frank had seen in this woman, who,though she was younger than Florence, had never been so pretty, and who drank all the time, andwho was seen with many men.
　　But it had been from the first her great mistake—to meet him, to marry him, to love him asshe so bitterly had. Looking at his face, it sometimes came to her that all women had been cursedfrom the cradle; all, in one fashion or another, being given the same cruel destiny, born to sufferthe weight of men. Frank claimed that she got it all wrong side up: it was men who sufferedbecause they had to put up with the ways of women—and this from the time that they were bornuntil the day they died. But it was she who was right, she knew; with Frank she had always beenright; and it had not been her fault that Frank was the way he was, determined to live and die acommon nigger.
　　But he was always swearing that he would do better; it was, perhaps, the brutality of hispenitence that had kept them together for so long. There was something in her which loved to seehim bow—when he came home, stinking with whisky, and crept with tears into her arms. Then he,so ultimately master, was mastered. And holding him in her arms while, finally, he slept, shethought with the sensations of luxury and power: ‘But there’s a lots of good in Frank. I just got tobe patient and he’ll come along all right.’ To ‘come along’ meant that he would change his waysand consent to be the husband she had traveled so far to find. It was he who, unforgivably, taughther that there are people in the world for whom ‘coming along’ is a perpetual process, people whoare destined never to arrive. For ten years he came along, but when he left her he was the sameman she had married. He had not changed at all.
　　He had never made enough money to buy the home she wanted, or anything else she reallywanted, and this had been part of the trouble between them. It was not that he could not makemoney, but that he would not save it. He would take half a week’s wages and go out and buysomething he wanted, or something he thought she wanted. He would come home on Saturdayafternoons, already half drunk, with some useless objects, such a vase, which, it had occurred tohim, she would like to fill with flowers—she who never noticed flowers and who would certainlynever have bought any. Or a hat, always too expensive or too vulgar, or a ring that looked asthough it had been designed for a whore. Sometimes it occurred to him to do the Saturday shopping on his way home, so that she would not have to do it; in which case he would buy aturkey, the biggest and most expensive he could find, and several pounds of coffee, it being hisbelief that there was never enough in the house, and enough breakfast cereal to feed an army for amonth. Such foresight always filled him with such a sense of his own virtue that, as a kind ofreward, he would also buy himself a bottle of whisky; and—lest she should think that he wasdrinking too much—invite some ruffian home to share it with him. Then they would sit allafternoon in her parlor, playing cards and telling indecent jokes, and making the air foul withwhisky and smoke. She would sit in the kitchen, cold with rage and staring at the turkey, which,since Frank always bought them unplucked and with the head on, would cost her hours ofexasperating, bloody labor. Then she would wonder what on earth had possessed her to undergosuch hard trial and travel so far from home, if all she had found was a two-room apartment in a cityshe did not like, and a man yet more childish than any she had known when she was youngSometimes from the parlor where he and his visitor sat he would call her:
　　‘Hey, Flo!’
　　And she would not answer. She hated to be called ‘Flo,’ but he never remembered. Hemight call her again, and when she did not answer he would come into the kitchen.
　　‘What’s the matter with you, girl? Don’t you hear me a-calling you?’
　　And once when she still made no answer, but sat perfectly still, watching him with bittereyes, he was forced to make verbal recognition that there was something wrong.
　　‘What’s the matter, old lady? You mad at me?’
　　And when in genuine bewilderment he stared at her, head to one side, the faintest of smileson his face, something began to yield in her, something she fought, standing up and snarling at himin a lowered voice so that the visitor might not hear:
　　‘I wish you’d tell me just how you think we’s going to live all week on a turkey and fivepounds of coffee?’
　　‘Honey, I ain’t bought nothing we didn’t need!’
　　She sighed in helpless fury, and felt tears springing to her eyes.
　　‘I done told you time and again to give me the money when you get paid, and let me do theshopping—’cause you ain’t got the sense that you was born with.’
　　‘Baby, I wasn’t doing a thing in the world but trying to help you out. I thought maybe youwanted to go somewhere to-night and you didn’t want to be bothered with no shopping.’
　　‘Next time you want to do me a favor, you tell me first, you hear? And how you expect meto go to a show when you done brought this bird home for me to clean?’
　　‘Honey, I’ll clean it. It don’t take no time at all.’
　　He moved to the table where the turkey lay and looked at it critically, as though he wereseeing it for the first time. Then he looked at her and ginned. ‘That ain’t nothing to get mad about.’
　　 She began to cry. ‘I declare I don’t know what gets into you. Every week the Lord sendsyou go out and do some foolishness. How do you expect us to get enough money to get away fromhere if you all the time going to be spending your money on foolishness?’
　　When she cried, he tried to comfort her, putting his great hand on her shoulder and kissingher where the tears fell.
　　‘Baby, I’m sorry. I thought it’d be a nice surprise.’
　　‘The only surprise I want from you is to learn some sense! That’d be a surprise! You thinkI want to stay around here the rest of my life with these dirty niggers you al the time bring home?’
　　‘Where you expect us to live, honey, where we ain’t going to be with niggers?’
　　Then she turned away, looking out of the kitchen window. It faced an elevated train thatpassed so close she always felt that she might spit in the faces of the flying, staring people.
　　‘I just don’t like all that ragtag … looks like you think so much of.’
　　Then there was silence. Although she had turned her back to him, she felt that he was nolonger smiling and that his eyes, watching her, had darkened.
　　‘And what kind of man you think you married?’
　　‘I thought I married a man with some get up and go to him, who didn’t just want to stay onthe bottom all his life!’
　　‘And what you want me to me to do, Florence? You want me to turn white?’
　　This question always filled her with an ecstasy of hatred. She turned and faced him, and,forgetting that there was someone sitting in the parlor, shouted:
　　‘You ain’t got to be white to have some self-respect! You reckon I slave in this house like Ido so you and them common niggers can sit here every afternoon throwing ashes all over thefloor?’
　　‘And who’s common now, Florence?’ he asked, quietly, in the immediate and awful silencein which she recognized her error. ‘Who’s acting like a common nigger now? What you reckon myfriend is sitting there a-thinking? I declare, I wouldn’t be surprise none if he wasn’t a-thinking:
　　“Poor Frank, he sure found him a common wife.” Anyway, he ain’t putting his ashes on the floor—he putting them in the ashtray, just like he knew what a ashtray was.’ She knew that she had hurthim, and that he was angry, by the habit he had at such a moment of running his tongue quicklyand incessantly over his lower lip. ‘But we’s a-going now, so you can sweep up the parlor and sitthere, if you want to, till the judgment day.’
　　And he left the kitchen. She heard murmurs in the parlor, and then the slamming of thedoor. She remembered, too late, that he had all his money with him. When he came back, longafter nightfall, and she put him to bed and went through his pockets, she found nothing, or almostnothing, and she sank helplessly to the parlor floor and cried.
　　When he came back at times like this he would be petulant and penitent. She would notcreep into bed until she thought that he was sleeping. But he would not be sleeping. He would turn as she stretched her legs beneath the blankets, and his arm would reach out, and his breath wouldbe hot and sour-sweet in her face.
　　‘Sugar-plum, what you want to be so evil with your baby for? Don’t you know you donemade me go out and get drunk, and I wasn’t a-fixing to do that? I wanted to take you outsomewhere to-night.’ And, while he spoke, his hand was on her breast, and his moving lipsbrushed her neck. And this caused such a war in her as could scarcely be endured. She felt thateverything in existence between them was part of a mighty plan for her humiliation. She did notwant his touch, and yet she did: she burned with longing and froze with rage. And she felt that heknew this and inwardly smile to see how easily, on this part of the battlefield, his victory could beassured. But at the same time she felt that his tenderness, his passion, and his love were real.
　　‘Let me alone, Frank. I want to go to sleep.’
　　‘No you don’t. You don’t want to go to sleep so soon. You want me to talk to you a little.
　　You know how your baby loves to talk. Listen.’ And he brushed her neck lightly with his tongue.
　　‘You hear that?’
　　He waited. She was silent.
　　‘Ain’t you got nothing more to say than that? I better tell you something else.’ And then hecovered her face with kisses; her face, neck, arms, and breasts.
　　‘You stink of whisky. Let me alone.’
　　‘Ah. I ain’t the only one got a tongue. What you got to say to this? And his hand strokedthe inside of her thigh.
　　‘Stop.’
　　‘I ain’t going to stop. This is sweet talk, baby.’
　　Ten years. Their battle never ended; they never bought a home. He died in France. To-night sheremembered details of those years which she thought she had forgotten, and at last she felt thestony ground of her heart break up; and tears, as difficult and slow as blood, began to tricklethrough her fingers. This the old woman above her somehow divined, and she cried: ‘Yes, honey.
　　You just let go, honey. Let Him bring you low so He can raise you up.’ And was this the way sheshould have gone? Had she been wrong to fight so hard? Now she was an old woman, and allalone, and she was going to die. And she had nothing for all her battles. It had all come to this: shewas on her face before the altar, crying to God for mercy. Behind her she heard Gabriel cry: ‘Blessyour name, Jesus!’ and, thinking of him and the high road of holiness he had traveled, her mindswung like a needle, and she thought of Deborah.
　　Deborah had written her, not many times, but in a rhythm that seemed to remark each crisisin her life with Gabriel, and once, during the time she and Frank were still together, she hadreceived from Deborah a letter that she had still: it was locked to-night in her handbag, which layon the altar. She had always meant to show this letter to Gabriel one day, but she never had. Shehad talked with Frank about it late one night while he lay in bed whistling some ragtag tune and she sat before the mirror and rubbed bleaching cream into her skin. The letter lay open before herand she sighed loudly, to attract Frank’s attention.
　　He stopped whistling in the middle of a phrase; mentally, she finished it. ‘What you gotthere, sugar?’ he asked, lazily.
　　‘It’s a letter from my brother’s wife.’ She stared at her face in the mirror, thinking angrilythat all these skin creams were a waste of money, they never did any good.
　　‘What’s them niggers doing down home? It ain’t no bad news, is it? Still he hummed,irrepressibly, deep in his throat.
　　‘No … well, it ain’t no good news neither, but it ain’t nothing to surprise me none. She saysshe think my brother’s got a bastard living right there in the same town what he’s scared to call hisown.’
　　‘No? And I thought you said you brother was a preacher.’
　　‘Being a preacher ain’t never stopped a nigger from doing his dirt.’
　　Then he laughed. ‘You sure don’t love your brother like you should. How come his wifefound out about this kid?’
　　She picked up the letter and turned to face him. ‘Sound to me like she been knowing aboutit but she ain’t never had the nerve to say nothing.’ She paused, then added, reluctantly: ‘Ofcourse, she ain’t really what you might call sure. But she ain’t a woman to go around thinkingthings. She mighty worried.’
　　‘Hell, what she worried about it now for? Can’t nothing be done about it now.
　　‘She wonder if she ought to ask him about it.’
　　‘And do she reckon if she ask him, he going to be fool enough to say yes?’
　　She sighed again, more genuinely this time, and turned back to the mirror. ‘Well … he’s apreacher. And if Deborah’s right, he ain’t got not right to be a preacher. He ain’t no better’nnobody else. In fact, he ain’t no better than a murderer.’
　　He had begun to whistle again; he stopped. ‘Murderer? How so?’
　　‘Because he done let this child’s mother go off and die when the child was born. That’show so.’ She paused. ‘And it sounds just like Gabriel. He ain’t never thought a minute aboutnobody in this world but himself.’
　　He said nothing, watching her implacable back. Then: ‘You going to answer this letter?’
　　‘I reckon.’
　　‘And what you going to say?’
　　‘I’m going to tell her she ought to let him know she know about his wickedness. Get up infront of the congregation and tell them too, if she has to.’
　　He stirred restlessly, and frowned. ‘Well, you know more about it than me. But I don’t seewhere that’s going to do no good.’
　　 ‘It’ll do her some good. It’ll make him treat her better. You don’t know my brother like Ido. There ain’t but one way to get along with him, you got to scare him half to death. That’s all. Heain’t got no right to go around running his mouth about how holy he is if he done turned a tricklike that.’
　　There was silence; he whistled again a few bars of his song; and then he yawned, and said:
　　‘Is you coming to bed, old lady? Don’t know why you keep wasting all your time and my moneyon all them old skin whiteners. You as black now as you was the day you was born.’
　　‘You wasn’t there the day I was born. And I know you don’t want a coal-black woman.’
　　But she rose from the mirror, and moved toward the bed.
　　‘I ain’t never said nothing like that. You just kindly turn out that light and I’ll make you toknow that black’s a mighty pretty color.’
　　She wondered if Deborah had ever spoken; and she wondered if she would give Gabriel theletter that she carried in her handbag to-night. She had held it all these years, awaiting some savageopportunity. What this opportunity would have been she did not; at this moment she did not wantto know. For she had always thought of this letter as an instrument in her hands which could beused to complete her brother’s destruction. When he was completely cast down she would preventhim from ever rising again by holding before him the evidence of his blood-guilt. But now shethought she would not live to see this patiently awaited day. She was going to be cut down.
　　And the thought filled her with terror and rage; the tears dried on her face and the heartwithin her shook, divided between a terrible longing to surrender and a desire to call God intoaccount. Why had he preferred her mother and her brother, the old, black woman, and the low,black man, while she, who had sought only to walk upright, was come to die, alone and in poverty,in a dirty, furnished room? She beat her fists heavily against the altar. He, he would live, andsmiling, watch her go down into the grave! And her mother would be there, leaning over the gatesof Heaven, to see her daughter burning in the pit.
　　As she beat her fists on the altar, the old woman above her laid hands on her shoulders,crying: ‘Call on Him, daughter! Call on the Lord!’ And it was as though she had been hurledoutward into time, where no boundaries were, for the voice was the voice of her mother but thehands were the hands of death. And she cried aloud, as she had never in all her life cried before,falling on her face on the altar, at the feet of the old black woman. Her tears came down likeburning rain. And the hands of death caressed her shoulders, the voice whispered and whispered inher ear: ‘God’s got your number, knows where you live, death’s got a warrant out for you.’
　　2 GABRIEL’S PRAYERNow I been introducedTo the Father and the Son, And I ain’tNot stranger now.
　　When Florence cried, Gabriel was moving outward in fiery darkness, talking to the Lord.
　　Her cry came to him from afar, as from unimaginable depths; and it was not his sister’s cry heheard, but the cry of the sinner when he is taken in his sin. This was the cry he had heard so manydays and nights, before so many altars, and he cried to-night, as he had cried before: ‘Have yourway, Lord! Have your way!’
　　Then there was only silence in the church. Even Praying Mother Washington had ceased tomoan. Soon someone would cry again, and the voices would begin again; there would be music byand by, and shouting, and the sound of the tambourines. But now in this waiting, burdened silenceit seemed that all flesh waited—paused, transfixed by something in the middle of the air—for thequickening power.
　　This silence, continuing like a corridor, carried Gabriel back to the silence that hadpreceded his birth in Christ. Like a birth indeed, all that had come before this moment waswrapped in darkness, lay at the bottom of the sea of forgetfulness, and was not now countedagainst him, but was related only to that blind, and doomed, and stinking corruption he had beenbefore he was redeemed.
　　The silence was the silence of the early morning, and he was returning from the harlot’shouse. Yet all around him were the sounds of the morning: of birds, invisible, praising God; ofcrickets in the vine, frogs in the swamp, of dogs miles away and closed at hand, roosters on theporch. The sun was not yet half awake; only the utmost tops of trees had begun to tremble at histurning; and the mist moved sullenly before Gabriel and all around him, falling back before thelight that rules by day. Later, he said of that morning that his sin was on him; then he knew onlythat he carried a burden and that he longed to lay it down. This burden was heavier than theheaviest mountain and he carried it in his heart. With each step that he took his burden grewheavier, and his breath became slow and harsh, and, of a sudden, cold sweat stood out on his browand drenched his back.
　　All alone in the cabin his mother lay waiting; not only for his return this morning, but forhis surrender to the Lord. She lingered only for this, and he knew it, even though she no longerexhorted him as she had in days but shortly gone by. She had placed him in the hands of the Lord,and she waited with patience to see how He would work the matter.
　　For she would live to see the promise of the Lord fulfilled. She would not go to her restuntil her son, the last of her children, he who would place her in the winding-sheet, should haveentered the communion of the saints. Now she, who had been impatient once, and violent, who hadcursed and shouted and contended like a man, moved into silence, contending only, and with thelast measure of her strength, with God. And this, too, she did like a man: knowing that she hadkept the faith, she waited for Him to keep His promise. Gabriel knew that when he entered shewould not ask him where he had been; she would not reproach him; and her eyes, even when sheclosed her lids to sleep, would follows him everywhere.
　　 Later, since it was Sunday, some of the brothers and sisters would come to her, to sing andpray around her bed. And she would pray for him, sitting up in bed unaided, her head lifted, hervoice steady; while he, kneeling in a corner of the room, trembled and almost wished that shewould die; and trembled again at this testimony to the desperate wickedness of his heart; andprayed without words to be forgiven. For he had no words when he knelt before the throne. And hefeared to make a vow before Heaven until he had the strength to keep it. And yet he knew that untilhe made the vow he would never find the strength.
　　For he desired in his soul, with fear and trembling, all the glories that his mother prayed heshould find. Yes, he wanted power—he wanted to know himself to be the Lord’s anointed, Hiswell-beloved, and worthy, nearly, of that snow-white dove which had been sent down fromHeaven to testify that Jesus was the son of God. He wanted to be the master, to speak with thatauthority which could only come from God. It was later to become his proud testimony that hehated his sins—even as he ran toward sin, even as he sinned. He hated the evil that lived in hisbody, and he feared it, as he feared and heated the 
Part 3 The Threshing-floor
    Then said I, Woe is me! for I amundone; because I am a man of uncleanlips, and dwell in the midst of apeople of unclean lips; for mine eyeshave seen the king, the Lord of hosts.
　　Then I buckled up my shoes,And I startedHe knew, without knowing how it had happened, that he lay on the floor, in the dusty space beforethe altar which he and Elisha had cleaned; and knew that above him burned the yellow light whichhe had himself switched on. Dust was in his nostrils, sharp and terrible, and the feet of saints,shaking the floor beneath him, raised small clouds of dust that filmed his mouth. He heard theircries, so far, so high above him–he could never rise that far. He was like a rock, a dead man’sbody, a dying bird, fallen from an awful height; something that had no power of itself, any more,to turn.
　　And something moved in John’s body which was not John. He was invaded, set at naught,possessed. This power had struck John, in the head or in the heart; and, in a moment, wholly,filling him with an anguish that he could never in his life have imagined, that he surely could notendure, that even now he could not believe, had opened him up; had cracked him open, as woodbeneath the axe cracks down the middle, as rocks break up; had ripped him and felled him in amoment, so that John had not felt the wound, but only the agony, had not felt the fall, but only thefear; and lay here, now, helpless, screaming, at the very bottom of darkness.
　　He wanted to rise—a malicious, ironic voice insisted that he rise—and, at once, to leave histemple and go out into the world.
　　He wanted to obey the voice, which was the only voice that spoke to him; he tried to assurethe voice that he would do his best to rise; he would only lie here a moment, after his dreadful fall,and catch his breath. It was at this moment, precisely, that he found he could not rise; something had happened to his arms, his legs, his feet—ah, something had happened to John! and he began toscream again in his great, bewildered terror, and felt himself, indeed, begin to move—not upward,toward the light, but down again, a sickness in his bowels, a tightening in his loin-strings; he felthimself turning, again and again, across the dusty floor, as though God’s toe had touched himlightly. And the dust made him cough and retch; in his turning the centre of the whole earthshifted, making of space a sheer void and a mockery of order, and balance, and time. Nothingremained: all was swallowed up in chaos. And: Is this it? John’s terrified soul inquired—What isit?—to no purpose, receiving no answer. Only the ironic voice insisted yet once more that he risefrom the filthy floor if he did not want to become like all the other niggers.
　　Then he anguish subsided for a moment, as water withdraws briefly to dash itself oncemore against the rocks: he knew that it subsided only to return. And he coughed and sobbed in thedusty space before the altar, lying on his face. And still he was going down, farther and fartherfrom the joy, the singing, and the light above him.
　　He tried, but in such despair!—the utter darkness does not present any point of departure,contains no beginning, and no end—to rediscover, and, as it were, to trap and hold tightly in thepalm of his hand, the moment preceding his fall, his change. But that moment was also locked indarkness, was wordless, and should not come forth. He remembered only the cross: he had turnedagain to kneel at the altar, and had faced the golden cross. And the Holy Ghost was speaking—seeming to say, as John spelled out the so abruptly present and gigantic legend adorning the cross:
　　Jesus Saves. He had stared to this, an awful bitterness in his heart, wanting to curse—and the Spiritspoke, and spoke in him. Yes: there was Elisha, speaking from the floor, and his father, silent, athis back. In his heart there was a sudden yearning tenderness for holy Elisha; desire, sharp andawful as a reflecting knife, to usurp the body of Elisha, and lie where Elisha lay; to speak intongues, as Elisha spoke, and, with that authority, to confound his father. Yet this had not been themoment; it was as far back as he could go, but the secret, the turning, the abysmal drop was fartherback, in darkness. As he cursed his father, as he loved Elisha, he had, even then, been weeping; hehad already passed his moment, was already under the power, had been struck, and was goingdownAh, down!—and to what purpose, where? To the bottom of the sea, the bowels of the earth,to the heart of the fiery furnace? Into a dungeon deeper than Hell, into a madness louder than thegrave? What trumpet sound would awaken him, what hand would lift him up? For he knew, as hewas struck again, and screamed again, his throat like burning ashes, and as he turned again, hisbody hanging from him like a useless weight, a heavy, rotting carcass, that if he were not lifted hewould never rise.
　　His father, his mother, his aunt, Elisha—all were far above him, waiting, watching historment in the pit. They hung over the golden barrier, singing behind them, light around theirheads, weeping, perhaps, for John, struck down so early. And, no, they could not help him anymore—nothing could help him any more. He struggled, struggle to rise up, and meet them—hewanted wings to fly upward and meet them in that morning, that morning where they were. But hisstruggles only thrust him downward, his cries did not go upward, but rang in his own skull.
　　Yet, though he scarcely saw their faces, he knew that they were there. He felt them move,every movement causing a trembling, an astonishment, a horror in the heart of darkness where he lay. He could not know if they wished him to come to them as passionately as he wished to rise.
　　Perhaps they did not help him because they did not care—because they did not love him.
　　Then his father returned to him, in John’s changed and low condition; and John thought,but for a moment only, that his father had come to help him. In the silence, then, that filled thevoid, John looked on his father. His father’s face was black—like a sad, eternal night, yet in hisfather’s face there burned a fire—a fire eternal in an eternal night. John trembled where he lay,feeling no warmth from him from this fire, tremble, and could not take his eyes away. A wind blewover him, saying: ‘Whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.’ Only: ‘Whosoever loveth and maketh alie.’ And he knew that he had been thrust out of the holy, the joyful, the blood-washed community,that his father had thrust him out. His father’s will was stronger than John’s own. His power wasgreater because he belonged to God. Now, John felt no hatred, nothing, only a bitter, unbelievingdespair: all prophecies were true, salvation was finished, damnation was real!
　　Then Death is real, John’s soul said, and Death will have his moment.
　　‘Set thine house in order,’ said his father, ‘for thou shalt die and not live.’
　　And then the ironic voice spoke again, saying: ‘Get up, John. Get up, boy. Don’t let himkeep you here. You got everything your daddy got.’
　　John tried to laugh—John thought that he was laughing—but found, instead, that his mouthwas filled with salt, his ears were full of burning water. Whatever was happening in his distantbody now, he could not change or stop; his cheat heaved, his laugher rose and bubbled at hismouth, like blood.
　　And his father looked on him. His father’s eyes looked down on him, and John began toscream. His father’s eyes stripped him naked, and hated what they saw. And as he turned,screaming, in the dust again, trying to escape his father’s eyes, those eyes, that face, and all theirfaces, and the far-off yellow light, all departed from his vision as though he had gone blind. Hewas going down again. There is, his soul cried out again, no bottom to the darkness!
　　He did not where he was. There was silence everywhere—only a perpetual, distant, fainttrembling far beneath him—the roaring perhaps, of the fires of Hell, over which he was suspended,or the echo, persistent, invincible still, of the moving feet of the saints. He thought of themountain-top, where he longed to be, where the sun would cover him like a cloth of gold, wouldcover his head like a crown of fire, and in his hands he would hold a living rod. But this was nomountain where John lay, here, no robe, no crown. And the living rod was uplifted in other hands.
　　‘I’m going to beat sin out of him. I’m going to beat it out.’
　　Yes, he had sinned, and his father was looking for him. Now, John did not make a sound,and did not move at all, hoping that his father would pass him by.
　　‘Leave him be. Leave him alone. Let him pray to the Lord.’
　　‘Yes, Mama. I’m going to try to love the Lord.’
　　‘He done run off somewhere. I’m going to find him. I’m going to beat it out.’
　　Yes, he had sinned: one morning, alone, in the dirty bathroom, in the square, dirt-graycupboard room that was filled with the stink of his father. Sometimes, leaning over the cracked, ‘tattle-tale gray’ bath-tub, he scrubbed his father’s back; and looked, as the accursed son of Noahhad looked, on his father’s hideous nakedness. It was secret, like sin, and slimy, like the serpent,and heavy, like the rod. Then he hated his father, and longed for the power to cut his father down.
　　Was this why he lay here, thrust out from all human or heavenly help to-night? This, andnot the other, his deadly sin, having looked on his father’s nakedness and mocked and cursed himin his heart? Ah, that son of Noah’s had been cursed, down to the present groaning generation: Aservant of servants shall be unto his brethren.
　　Then the ironic voice, terrified, it seemed, of no depth, no darkness, demanded of John,scornfully, if he believed that he was cursed. All niggers had been cursed, the ironic voicereminded him, all niggers had come from this most undutiful of Noah’s sons. How could John becursed for having seen in a bath-tub what another man—if that other man had ever lived—had seenten thousand years ago, lying in an open tent? Could a curse come down so many ages? Did it livein time, or in the moment? But John found no answer for this voice, for he was in the moment, andout of time.
　　And his father approached. ‘I’m going to beat sin out of him. I’m going to beat it out.’ Allthe darkness rocked and wailed as his father’s feet came closer; feet whose tread resounded likeGod’s tread in the garden of Eden, searching the covered Adam and Eve. Then his father stood justabove him, looking down. Then John knew that a curse was renewed from moment to moment,from father to son. Time was indifferent, like snow and ice; but the heart, crazed wanderer in thedriving waste, carried the curse for ever.
　　‘John,’ said his father, ‘come with me.’
　　Then they were in a straight street, a narrow, narrow way. They had been walking for manydays. The street stretched before them, long, and silent, going down, and whiter than the snow.
　　There was no one on the street, and John was frightened. The buildings on this street, so near thatJohn could touch them on either side, were narrow, also, rising like spears into the sky, and theywere made of beaten gold and silver. John knew that these buildings were not for him—not to-day—no, nor to-morrow, either! Then, coming up this straight and silent street, he saw a woman, veryold and black, coming toward them, staggering on the crooked stones. She was drunk, and dirty,and very old, and her mouth was bigger than his mother’s mouth, or his own; her mouth was looseand wet, and he had never seen anyone so black. His father was astonished to see her, and besidehimself with anger; but John was glad. He clapped his hands, and cried:
　　‘See! She’s uglier than Mama! She’s uglier than me!’
　　‘You mighty proud, ain’t you,’ his father said, ‘to be the Devil’s son?’
　　But John did no listen to his father. He turned to watch the woman pass. His father grabbedhis arm.
　　“You see that? That’s sin. That’s what the Devil’s son runs after.’
　　‘Whose son are you?’ John asked.
　　His father slapped him. John laughed, and moved a little away.
　　‘I seen it. I seen it. I ain’t the Devil’s son for nothing.’
　　 His father reached for him, but John was faster. He moved backward down the shiningstreet, looking at his father—his father who moved toward him, one hand outstretched in fury.
　　‘And I heard you—all the night-time long. I know what you do in the dark, black man,when you think the Devil’s son’s asleep. I heard you, spitting, and groaning, and choking—and Iseen you, riding up and down, and going in and out. I ain’t the Devil’s son for nothing.’
　　The listening buildings, rising upward yet, leaned, closing out the sky. John’s feet began toslip; tears and sweat were in his eyes; still moving backward before his father, he looked about himfor deliverance; but there was no deliverance in this street for him.
　　‘And I hate you. I hate you. I don’t care about your golden crown. I don’t care about yourlong white robe. I seen you under the robe, I seen you!’
　　Then his father was upon him; at his touch there was singing, and fire. John lay on his backin the narrow street, looking up at his father, that burning face beneath the burning towers.
　　‘I’m going to beat it out of you. I’m going to beat it out.’
　　His father raised his hand. The knife came down. John rolled away, down the white,descending street, screaming:
　　Father! Father!
　　These were the first words he uttered. In a moment there was silence, and his father wasgone. Again, he felt the saints above him—and dust in his mouth. There was singing somewhere;faraway,abovehim;singingslowandmourn(was) ful. He lay silent, racked beyondendurance, salt drying on his face, with nothing in him any more, no lust, no fear, no shame, nohope. And yet he knew that it would come again—the darkness was full of demons crouching,waiting to worry him with their teeth again.
　　Then I looked in the grave and I wondered.
　　Ah, down!—what was he searching here, all alone in darkness? But now he knew, for ironyhad left him, that he was searching something, hidden in the darkness, that must be found. Hewould die if it was not found; or, he was dead already, and would never again be joined to theliving, if it was not found.
　　And the grave looked so sad and lonesome.
　　In the grave where he now wandered—he knew it was the grave, it was so cold and silent,and he moved in icy mist—he found his mother and his father, his mother dressed in scarlet, hisfather dressed in white. They did not see him: they looked backward, over their shoulders, at acloud of witnesses. And there was his Aunt Florence, gold and silver flashing on her fingers,brazen ear-rings dangling from her ears; and there was another woman, whom he took to be thatwife of his father’s, called Deborah—who had, as he had once believed, so much to tell him. Butshe, alone, of all that company, looked at him and signified that there was no speech in the grave.
　　He was a stranger there—they did not see him pass, they did not know what he was looking for,they could not help him search. He wanted to find Elisha, who knew, perhaps, who would help him—but Elisha was not there. There was Roy: Roy also might have helped him, but he had beenstabbed with a knife, and lay now, brown and silent, at his father’s feet.
　　 Then there began to flood John’s soul the waters of despair. Love is as strong as death, asdeep as the grave. But love, which had, perhaps, like a benevolent monarch, swelled thepopulation of his neighboring kingdom, Death, had not himself descended: they owed him noallegiance here. Here there was no speech or language, and there was no love; no one to say: Youare beautiful, John; no one to forgive him, no matter what his sin; no one to heal him, and lift himup. No one: father and mother looked backward, Roy was bloody, Elisha was not here.
　　Then the darkness began to murmur—a terrible sound—and John’s ears trembled. In thismurmur that filled the grave, like a thousand wings beating on the air, he recognized a sound thathe had always heard. He began, for terror, to weep and moan—and this sound was swallowed up,and yet was magnified by the echoes that filled the darkness.
　　This sound had filled John’s life, so it now seemed, from the moment he had first drawnbreath. He had heard it everywhere, in prayer and in daily speech, and wherever the saints weregathered, and in the unbelieving streets. It was in his father’s anger, and in his mother’s calminsistence, and in the vehement mockery of his aunt; it had rung, so oddly, in Roy’s voice thisafternoon, and when Elisha played the piano it was there; it was in the beat and jangle of SisterMcCandless’s tambourine, it was in the very cadence of her testimony, and invested that testimonywith a matchless, unimpeachable authority. Yes, he had heard it all his life, but it was only nowthat his ears were open to this sound that came from darkness, that could only come from darkness,that yet bore such sure witness to the glory of the light. And now in this moaning, and so far fromany help, he heard it in himself—it rose from his bleeding, his cracked open heart. It was a soundof rage and weeping which filled the grave, rage and weeping from time set free, but bound now ineternity; rage that had no language, weeping with no voice—which yet spoke now, to John’sstartled soul, of boundless melancholy, of the bitterest patience, and the longest night; of thedeepest water, the strongest chains, the most cruel lash; of humility most wretched, the dungeonmost absolute, of love’s bed defiled, and birth dishonored, and most bloody, unspeakable, suddendeath. Yes, the darkness hummed with murder: the body in the water, the body in the fire, the bodyon the tree. John looked down the line of these armies of darkness, army upon army, and his soulwhispered: Who are these? Who are they? And wondered: Where shall I go?
　　There was no answer. There was no help or healing in the grave, no answer in the darkness,no speech from all that company. They looked backward. And John looked back, seeing nodeliverance.
　　I, John saw the future, way up in the middle of the air.
　　Were the lash, the dungeon, and the night for him? And the sea for him? And the grave forhim?
　　I, John saw a number, way in the middle of the air.
　　And he struggled to flee—out of this darkness, out of this company—into the land of theliving, so high, so far away. Fear was upon him, a more deadly fear than he had ever known, as heturned and turned in the darkness, as he moaned, and stumbled, and crawled through darkness,finding no hand, no voice, finding no door. Who are these? Who are they? They were the despisedand rejected, the wretched and the spat upon, the earth’s offscouring; and he was in their company,and they would swallow up his soul. The stripes they had endured would scar his back, their punishment would be his, their portion his, his their humiliation, anguish, chains, their dungeonhis, their death his. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once I was stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, anight and a day I have been in the deep.
　　And their dread testimony would be his!
　　In journeying often, in perils of waters, inn perils of robbers, in perils by mine owncountrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils inthe sea, in perils among false brethren.
　　And their desolation, his:
　　In weariness and painfulness, in watching often, in hunger and thirst, in fasting often, incold and nakedness.
　　And he began to shout for help, seeing before him the lash, the fire, and the depthlesswater, seeing his head bowed down for ever, he, John, the lowest among these lowly. And helooked for his mother, but her eyes were fixed on this dark army—she was claimed by this army.
　　And his father would not help him, his father did not see him, and Roy lay dead.
　　Then he whispered, not knowing that he whispered: ‘Oh, Lord, have mercy on me. Havemercy on me.’
　　And a voice, for the first time in all his terrible journey, spoke to John, through he rage andweeping, and fire, and darkness, and flood:
　　‘Yes,’ said the voice, ‘go through. Go through.’
　　‘Lift me up,’ whispered John, ‘lift me up. I can’t go through.’
　　‘Go through,’ said the voice, ‘go through.’
　　Then there was silence. The murmuring ceased. There was only this trebling beneath him.
　　And he knew there was a light somewhere.
　　‘Go through.’
　　‘Ask Him to take you through.’
　　But he could never go through this darkness, through this fire and this wrath. He nevercould go through. His strength was finished, and he could not move. He belonged to the darkness—the darkness from which he had thought to flee had claimed him. And he moaned again,weeping, and lifted up his hands.
　　‘Call on Him. Call on Him.’
　　‘Ask Him to take you through.’
　　Dust rose again in his nostrils, sharp as the fumes of Hell. And he turned again in thedarkness, trying to remember something he had heard, something he had read.
　　Jesus saves.
　　 And he saw before him the fire, red and gold, and waiting for him—yellow, and red, andgold, and burning in a night eternal, and waiting for him. He must go through this fire, and into thisnight.
　　Jesus saves.
　　Call on Him.
　　Ask Him to take you through.
　　He could not call, for his tongue would not unlock, and his heart was silent, and great withfear. In the darkness, how to move?—with death’s ten thousand jaws agape, and waiting in thedarkness. On any turning whatsoever the beast may spring—to move in the darkness is to moveinto the moving jaws of death. And yet, it came to him that he must move; for there was a lightsomewhere, and life, and joy, and singing—somewhere, somewhere above him.
　　And he moaned again: ‘Oh, Lord, have mercy. Have mercy, Lord.’
　　There came to him again the communion service at which Elisha had knelt at his father’sfeet. Now this service was in a great, high room, a room made golden by the light of the sun; andthe room was filled with a multitude of people, all in long, white robes, the women with coveredheads. They sat at a long, bare, wooden table. They broke at this table flat, unsalted bread, whichwas the body of the Lord, and drank from a heavy silver cup the scarlet wine of His blood. Then hesaw that they were barefoot, and that their feet were stained with this same blood. And a sound ofweeping filled the room as they broke the bread and drank the wine.
　　Then they rose, to come together over a great basin filled with water. And they divided intofour groups, two of women, and man before man, to watch each other’s feet. But the blood wouldnot wash off; many washings only turned the crystal water red; and someone cried: ‘Have youbeen to the river?’
　　Then John saw the river, and the multitude was there. And now they had undergone achange; their robes were ragged, and stained with the road they had traveled, and stained withunholy blood; the robes of some barely covered their nakedness; and some indeed were naked.
　　And some stumbled on the smooth stones at the river’s edge, for they were blind; and somecrawled with a terrible wailing, for they were lame; some did not cease to pluck at their flesh,which was rotten with running sores. All struggled to get to the river, in a dreadful hardness ofheart: the strong struck down the weak, the ragged spat on the naked, the naked cursed the blind,the blind crawled over the lame. And someone cried: ‘Sinner, do you love my Lord?’
　　Then John saw the Lord—for a moment only; and the darkness, for a moment only, wasfilled with a light he could not bear. Then, in a moment, he was set free; his tears sprang as from afountain; his heart, like a fountain of waters, burst. Then he cried: ‘Oh, blessed Jesus! Oh, LordJesus! Take me through!’
　　Of tears there was, yes, a very fountain—springing from a depth never sounded before,from depths John had not known were in him. And he wanted to rise up, singing, singing in thatgreat morning, the morning of his new life. Ah, how his tears ran down, how they blessed his soul!
　　—as he felt himself, out of the darkness, and the fire, and the terrors of death, rising upward tomeet the saints ‘Oh, yes!’ cried the voice of Elisha. ‘Bless our God for ever!’
　　And a sweetness filled John as he heard this voice, and heard the sound of singing: thesinging was for him. For his drifting soul was anchored in the love of God; in the rock that enduredfor ever. The light and the darkness had kissed each other, and were married now, for ever, in thelife and the vision of John’s soul.
　　I, John, saw a city, way in the middle of the air,Waiting, waiting, waiting up there.
　　He opened his eyes on the morning, and found them, in the light of the morning, rejoicingfor him. The trembling he had known in darkness had been the echo of their joyful feet—thesefeet, bloodstained for ever, and washed in many rivers—they moved on the bloody road for ever,with no continuing city, but seeking one to come: a city out of time, not made with hands, buteternal in the heavens. No power could hold this army back, no water disperse them, no fireconsume them. One day they would compel the earth to heave upward, and surrender the waitingdead. They sang, where the darkness gathered, where the lion waited, where the fire cried, andwhere blood ran down:
　　My soul, don’t you be uneasy!
　　They wandered in the valley for ever; and they smote the rock, for ever; and the waterssprang, perpetually, in the perpetual desert. They cried unto the Lord for ever, and lifted up theireyes for ever, they were cast down for ever, and He lifted them up for ever. No, the fire could nothurt them, and yes, the lion’s jaws were stopped; the serpent was not their master, the grave wasnot their resting-place, the earth was not their home. Job bore them witness, and Abraham wastheir father, Moses had elected to suffer with them rather that glory in sin for a season. Shadrach,Meshach, and Abednego had gone before them into the fire, their grief had been sung by David,and Jeremiah had wept for them. Ezekiel had prophesied upon them, these scattered bones, theseslain, and, in the fullness of time, the prophet, John, had come out of the wilderness, crying that thepromise was for them. They were encompassed with a very cloud of witnesses: Judas, who hadbetrayed the Lord; Thomas, who had doubted Him; Peter, who had trembled at the crowing of acock; Stephen, who had been stoned; Paul, who had been bound; the blind man crying in the dustyroad, the dead man rising from the grave. And they looked unto Jesus, the author and the finisherof their faith, running with patience the race He had set before them; they endured the cross, andthey despised the shame, and waited to join Him, one day, in glory, at the right hand of the Father.
　　My soul! don’t you be uneasy!
　　Jesus going to make up my dying bed!
　　‘Rise up, rise up, Brother Johnny, and talk about the Lord’s deliverance.’
　　 It was Elisha who had spoken; he stood just above John, smiling; and behind him were thesaints—Praying Mother Washington, and Sister McCandless, and Sister Price. Behind these, hesaw his mother, and his aunt; his father, for the moment, was hidden from his view.
　　‘Amen!’ cried Sister McCandless, ‘rise up, and praise the Lord!’
　　He tried to speak, and could not, for the joy that rang in him this morning. He smiled up toElisha, and his tears ran down; and Sister McCandless began to sing:
　　‘Lord, I ain’tNo stranger now!
　　‘Rise up, Johnny,’ said Elisha, again. ‘Are you saved, boy?’
　　‘Yes,’ said John, ‘oh, yes!’ And the words came upward, it seemed, of themselves, in thenew voice God had given him. Elisha stretched out his hand, and John took the hand, and stood—so suddenly, and so strangely, and with such wonder!—once more on his feet.
　　‘Lord, I ain’tNo stranger now!’
　　Yes, the night had passed, the powers of darkness had been beaten back. He moved amongthe saints, he, John, who had come home, who was one of their company now; weeping, he yetcould find no words to speak of his great gladness; and he scarcely knew how he moved, for hishands were new, and his feet were new, and he moved in a new and Heaven-bright air. PrayingMother Washington took him in her arms, and kissed him, and their tears, his tears and the tears ofthe old, black woman, mingled.
　　‘God bless you, son. Run on, honey, and don’t get weary!’
　　‘Lord, I been introduced,To the Father and the Son,And I ain’tNo stranger now!’
　　Yes, as he moved among them, their hands touching, and tears falling, and the music rising—as though he moved down a great hall, full of a splendid company—something began to knockin that listening, astonished, newborn, and fragile heart of his; something recalling the terrors ofthe night, which were not finished, his heart seemed to say; which, in this company, were now tobegin. And, while his heart was speaking, he found himself before his mother. Her face was full oftears, and for a long while they looked at each other, saying nothing. And once again, he tried toread the mystery of that face—which, as it had never before been so bright and pained with love,had never seemed before so far from him, so wholly in communion with a life beyond his life. He wanted to comfort her, but the night had given him no language, no second sight, no power to seeinto the heart of any other. He knew only—and now, looking at his mother, he knew that he couldnever tell it—that the heart was a fearful place. She kissed him, and she said: ‘I’m mighty proud,Johnny. You keep the faith. I’m going to be praying for you till the Lord puts me in my grave.’
　　Then he stood before his father. In the moment that he forced himself to raise his eyes andlook into his father’s face, he felt in himself a stiffening, and a panic and a blind rebellion, and ahope for peace. The tears still on his face, and smiling still, he said: ‘Praise the Lord.’
　　‘Praise the Lord,’ said his father. He did not move to touch him, did not kiss him, did notsmile. They stood before each other in silence, while the saints rejoiced; and John struggled tospeak the authoritative, the living word that would conquer the great division between his fatherand himself. But it did not come, the living word; in the silence something died in John, andsomething came alive. It came to him that he must testify: his tongue only could bear witness tothe wonders he had seen. And he remembered, suddenly, the text of a sermon he had once heardhis father preach. And he opened his mouth, feeling, as he watched his father, the darkness roarbehind him, and the very earth beneath him seem to shake; yet he gave to his father their commontestimony. ‘I’m saved,’ he said, ‘and I know I’m saved.’ And then, as his father did not speak, herepeated his father’s text: ‘My witness is in Heaven and my record is on high.’
　　‘It come from your mouth,’ said his father then. ‘I want to see you live it. It’s more than anotion,’
　　‘I’m going to pray God,’ said John—and his voice shook, whether with joy or grief hecould not say—‘to keep me, and make me strong … to stand … to stand against the enemy … andagainst everything and everybody … that wants to cut down my soul.’
　　Then his tears came down again, like a wall between him and his father. His Aunt Florencecame and took him in her arms. Her eyes were dry, and her face was old in the savage, morninglight. But her voice, when she spoke, was gentler that he had ever known it to be before.
　　‘You fight the good fight,’ she said, ‘you hear? Don’t you get weary, and don’t you getscared. Because I know the Lord’s done laid His hands on you.’
　　‘Yes,’ he said, weeping, ‘yes. I’m going to serve the Lord.’
　　‘Amen!’ cried Elisha. ‘Bless our God!’
　　The filthy streets rang with the early-morning light as they came out of the temple.
　　They were all there, save young Ella Mae, who had departed while John was still on thefloor—she had a bad cold, said Praying Mother Washington, and needed to have her rest. Now, inthree groups, they walked the long, gray, silent avenue: Praying Mother Washington withElizabeth and Sister McCandless and Sister Price, and before them Gabriel and Florence, andElisha and John ahead.
　　‘You know, the Lord is a wonder,’ said the praying mother. ‘Don’t you know, all this weekHe just burdened my soul, and kept me a-praying and a-weeping before Him? Look like I justcouldn’t get no ease nohow—and I know He had me a-tarrying for that boy’s soul.’
　　 ‘Well, amen,’ said Sister Price. ‘Look like the Lord just wanted this church to rock. Youremember how He spoke through Sister McCandless Friday night, and told us to pray, and He’dwork a mighty wonder in our midst? And He done moved—hallelujah—He done troubledeverybody’s mind.’
　　‘I just tell you,’ said Sister McCandless, ‘all you got to do is listen to the Lord; He’ll leadyou right every time; He’ll move every time. Can’t nobody tell me my God ain’t real.’
　　‘And you see the way the Lord worked with young Elisha there?’ said Praying MotherWashington, with a calm, sweet smile. ‘Had that boy down there on the floor a-prophesying intongues, amen, just the very minute before Johnny fell out a-screaming, and a-crying before theLord. Look like the Lord was using Elisha to say: “It’s time, boy, come on home.” ’
　　‘Well, He is a wonder,’ said Sister Price. ‘And Johnny’s got two brothers now.’
　　Elizabeth said nothing. She walked with her head bowed, hands clasped lightly before her.
　　Sister Price turned tom look at her, and smiled.
　　‘I know,’ she said, ‘you’s a mighty happy woman this morning.’
　　Elizabeth smiled and raised her head, but did not look directly at Sister Price. She lookedahead, down the long avenue, where Gabriel walked with Florence, where John walked withElisha.
　　‘Yes,’ she said, at last. ‘I began praying. And I ain’t sopped praying yet.’
　　‘Yes, Lord,’ said Sister Price, ‘can’t none of us stop praying till we see His blessed face.’
　　‘But I bet you didn’t never think,’ said Sister McCandless, with a laugh, ‘that little Johnnywas going to jump up so soon, and get religion. Bless our God!’
　　‘The Lord is going to bless that boy, you mark my words,’ said Praying MotherWashington.
　　‘Shake hands with the preacher, Johnny.’
　　‘Got a man in the Bible, son, who liked music, too. And he got to dancing one day beforethe Lord. You reckon you going to dance before the Lord one of these days?’
　　‘Yes, Lord,’ said Sister Price, ‘the Lord done raised you up a holy son. He going to comfortyour grey hairs.’
　　Elizabeth found that her tears were falling, slowly, bitterly, in the morning light. ‘I pray theLord,’ she said, ‘to bear him up on every side.’
　　‘Yes,’ said Sister McCandless, gravely, ‘it’s more than a notion. The Devil rises on everyhand.’
　　Then, in silence, they came to the wide crossing where the tramline ran. A lean cat stalkedthe gutter and fled as they approached; turned to watch them, with yellow, malevolent eyes, fromthe ambush of a dustbin. A gray bird flew above them, above the electric wires for the tram line,and perched on the metal cornice of a roof. Then, far down the avenue, they heard a siren, and the clanging of a bell, and looked up to see the ambulance speed past them on the way to the hospitalthat was near the church.
　　‘Another soul struck down,’ murmured Sister McCandless. ‘Lord have mercy.’
　　‘He said in the last days evil would abound,’ said Sister Price.
　　‘Well, yes, He did say it,’ said Praying Mother Washington, ‘and I’m so glad He told us Hewouldn’t leave us comfortless.’
　　‘’When ye see all these things, know that your salvation is at hand,’ said SisterMcCandless. ‘A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand—but it ain’tgoing to come nigh thee. So glad, amen, this morning, bless my Redeemer.’
　　‘You remember that day when you come into the store?’
　　‘I didn’t think you never looked at me.’
　　‘Well—you was mighty pretty.’
　　‘Didn’t little Johnny never say nothing,’ asked Praying Mother Washington, ‘to make youthink the Lord was working in his heart?’
　　‘He always kind of quiet,’ said Elizabeth. ‘He don’t say much.’
　　‘No,’ said Sister McCandless, ‘he ain’t like all these rough young one nowadays—he gotsome respect for his elders. You done raised him mighty well, Sister Grimes.’
　　‘It was his birthday yesterday,’ Elizabeth said.
　　‘No!’ cried Sister Price. ‘How old he got to be yesterday?’
　　‘He done made fourteen,’ she said.
　　‘You hear that?’ said Sister Price, with wonder. ‘The Lord done saved that boy’s soul onhis birthday!’
　　‘Well, he got two birthdays now,’ smiled Sister McCandless, ‘just like he got two brothers—one in the flesh, and one in the Spirit.’
　　‘Amen, bless the Lord!’ cried Praying Mother Washington.
　　‘What book was it, Richard?’
　　‘Oh, I don’t remember. Just a book.’
　　‘You smiled.’
　　‘You was mighty pretty.’
　　She took her sodden handkerchief out of her bag, and dried her eyes; and dried her eyesagain, looking down the avenue.
　　‘Yes,’ said Sister Price, gently, ‘you just thank the Lord. You just let the tears fall. I knowyour heart is full this morning.’
　　‘The Lord’s done give you,’ said Praying Mother Washington, ‘a mighty blessing—andwhat the Lord gives, can’t no man take away.’
　　 ‘I open,’ said Sister McCandless, ‘and no man can shut. I shut, and no man can open.’
　　‘Amen,’ said Sister Price. ‘Amen.’
　　‘Well, I reckon,’ Florence said, ‘your soul is praising God this morning.’
　　He looked straight ahead, saying nothing, holding his body more rigid than an arrow‘You always been saying,’ Florence said, ‘how the Lord would answer your prayer.’ Andshe looked sideways at him, with a little smile.
　　‘He going to learn,’ he said at last, ‘that it ain’t all in the singing and the shouting—the wayof holiness is a hard way. He got the steep side of the mountain to climb.’
　　‘But he got you there,’ she said, ‘ain’t he to help him when he stumbles, and to be a goodexample?’
　　‘I’m going to see to it,’ he said, ‘that he walks right before the Lord. The Lord’s done puthis soul in my charge—and I ain’t going to have that boy’s blood on my hands.’
　　‘No,’ she said, mildly, ‘I reckon you don’t want that.’
　　Then they heard the siren, and the headlong, warning bell. She watched his face as helooked outward at the silent avenue and at the ambulance that raced to carry someone to healing,or to death.
　　‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that wagon’s coming, ain’t, one day for everybody?’
　　‘I pray,’ he said, ‘it finds you ready, sister.’
　　‘Is it going to find you ready?’ she asked.
　　‘I know my name is written in the Book of Life,’ he said. ‘I know I’m going to look on mySavior’s face in glory.’
　　‘Yes,’ she said, slowly, ‘we’s all going to be together there. Mama, and you, and me, andDeborah—and what was the name of that little girl who died not long after I left home?’
　　‘What little girl who died?’ he asked. ‘A lot of folks died after you left home—you leftyour mother on her dying bed.’
　　‘This girl was a mother, too,’ she said. ‘Look like she went north all by herself, and had herbaby, and died—weren’t nobody to help her. Deborah wrote me about it. Sure, you ain’t forgottenthat girl’s name, Gabriel!’
　　Then his step faltered—seemed, for a moment, to drag. And he looked at her. She smiled,and lightly touched his arm.
　　‘You ain’t forgotten her name,’ she said. ‘You can’t tell me you done forgot her name. Isyou going to look on her face, too? Is her name written in the Book of Life?’
　　In utter silence they walked together, her hand still under his trembling arm.
　　 ‘Deborah didn’t never write,’ she at last pursued, ‘about what happened to the baby. Didyou ever see him? You going to meet him in Heaven, too?’
　　‘The Word tell us,’ he said, ‘to let the dead bury the dead. Why you want to go rummagingaround back there, digging up things what’s all forgotten now? The Lord, He knows my life—Hedone forgive me a long time ago.’
　　‘Look like,’ she said, ‘you think the Lord’s a man like you; you think you can fool Himlike you fool men, and you think He forgets, like men. But God don’t forget nothing, Gabriel—ifyour name’s down there in the Book, like you say, it’s got all what you done right down there withit. And you going to answer for it, too.’
　　‘I done answered,’ he said, ‘already before my God. I ain’t got to answer now, in front ofyou.’
　　She opened her handbag, and took out the letter.
　　‘I been carrying this letter now,’ she said, ‘for more than thirty years. And I beenwondering all that time if I’d ever talk to you about it.’
　　And she looked at him. He was looking, unwillingly, at the letter, which she held tightly inone hand. It was old, and dirty, and brown, and torn; he recognized Deborah’s uncertain, tremblinghand, and he could see her again in the cabin, bending over the table, laboriously trusting to paperthe bitterness she had not spoken. It had lived in her silence, then, all those years? He could notbelieve it. She had been praying for him as she died—she had sworn to meet him in glory. Andyet, this letter, her witness, spoke, breaking her long silence, now that she was beyond his reach forever.
　　‘Yes,’ said Florence, watching his face, ‘you didn’t give her no bed of roses to sleep on, didyou?—poor, simple, ugly, black girl. And you didn’t treat that other one no better. Who is youmet, Gabriel, all your holy life long, you ain’t made to drink a cup of sorrow? And you doing itstill—you going to be doing it till the Lord puts you in you grave.’
　　‘God’s way,’ he said, and his speech was thick, his face was slick with sweat, ‘ain’t man’sway. I been doing the will of the Lord, and can’t nobody sit in judgment on me but the Lord. TheLord called me out, He chose me, and I been running with Him ever since I made a start. You can’tkeep your eyes on all this foolishness here below, all this wickedness here below—you got to liftup your eyes to the hills and run from the destruction falling on the earth, you got to put your handin Jesus’ hand, and go where He says go.’
　　‘And if you been but a stumbling-stone here below?’ she said. ‘If you done caused soulsright and left to stumble and fall, and lose their happiness, and lose their souls? What then,prophet? What then, the Lord’s anointed? Ain’t no reckoning going to be called of you? What yougoing to say when the wagon comes?’
　　He lifted up his head, and she saw tears mingled with his sweat. ‘The Lord,’ he said, ‘Hesees the heart—He sees the heart.’
　　‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but I done read the Bible, too, and it tells me you going to know the treeby its fruit. What fruit I seen from you if it ain’t been just sin and sorrow and shame?’
　　 ‘You be careful,’ he said, ‘how you talk to the Lord’s anointed. ’Cause my life ain’t in thatletter—you don’t know my life.’
　　‘Where is your life, Gabriel?’ she asked, after a despairing pause. ‘Where is it? Ain’t it alldone gone for nothing? Where’s your branches? Where’s your fruit?’
　　He said nothing; insistently, she tapped the letter with her thumbnail. They wereapproaching the corner where she must leave him, turning westward to take her undergroundhome. In the light that filled the streets, the light that the sun was now beginning to corrupt withfire, she watched John and Elisha just before them, John’ listening head bent, Elisha’s arm abouthis shoulder.
　　‘I got a son,’ he said at last, ‘and the Lord’s going to rise him up. I know—the Lord haspromised—His word is true.’
　　And then she laughed. ‘That son,’ she said, ‘that Roy. You going to weep for many aeternity before you see him crying in front of the altar like Johnny was crying to-night.’
　　‘God sees the heart,’ he repeated, ‘He sees the heart.’
　　‘Well, He ought to see it,’ she cried, ‘He made it! But don’t nobody else se it, not evenyour own self! Let God see it—He sees it all right, and He don’t say nothing.’
　　‘He speaks,’ he said, ‘He speaks. All you got to do is listen.’
　　‘I been listening many a night-time long,’ said Florence, then, ‘and He ain’t never spoke tome.’
　　‘He ain’t never spoke,’ said Gabriel, ‘because you ain’t never wanted to hear. You justwanted Him to tell you your way was right. And that ain’t no way to wait on God.’
　　‘Then tell me,’ Said Florence, ‘what He done said to you—that you didn’t want to hear?’
　　And there was silence again. Now they both watched John and Elisha.
　　‘I going to tell you something, Gabriel,’ she said. ‘I know you thinking at the bottom ofyour heart that if you make her, her and her bastard boy, pay enough for her sin, your son won’thave to pay for yours. But I ain’t going to let you do that. You done made enough folks pay for sin,it’s time you started paying.’
　　‘What you think,’ he asked, ‘you going to be able to do—against me?’
　　‘Maybe,’ she said, ‘I ain’t long for this world, but I got this letter, and I’m sure going togive it to Elizabeth before I go, and if she don’t want it, I’m going to find some way—some way, Idon’t know how—to rise up and tell it, tell everybody, about the blood the Lord’s anointed id goton his hands.’
　　‘I done told you,’ he said, ‘that’s all done and finished; the Lord done give me a sign tomake me know I been forgiven. What good you think it’s going to do to start talking about itnow?’
　　‘It’ll make Elizabeth to know,’ she said, ‘that she ain’t the only sinner … in your holyhouse. And little Johnny, there—he’ll know he ain’t the only bastard.’
　　 Then he turned again, and looked at her with hatred in his eyes.
　　‘You ain’t never changed,’ he said. ‘You still waiting to see my downfall. You just aswicked now as you was when you was young.’
　　She put the letter in her bag again.
　　‘No,’ she said, ‘I ain’t changed. You ain’t changed neither. You still promising the Lordyou going to do better—and you think whatever you done already, whatever you doing right at thatminute, don’t count. Of all the men I ever knew, you’s the man who ought to be hoping the Bible’sall a lie—’cause if that trumpet ever sounds, you going to spend eternity talking.’
　　They had reached her corner. She stopped, and he stopped with her, and she stared into hishaggard, burning face.
　　‘I got to take my underground,’ she said. ‘You got anything you want to say to me?’
　　‘I been living a long time,’ he said, ‘and I ain’t never seen nothing but evil overtake theenemies of the Lord. You think you going to use that letter to hurt me—but the Lord ain’t going tolet it come to pass. You going to be cut down.’
　　The praying women approached them, Elizabeth in the middle.
　　‘Deborah,’ Florence said, ‘was cut down—but she left word. She weren’t no enemy ofnobody—and she didn’t see nothing but evil. When I go, brother, you better tremble, ’cause I ain’tgoing to go in silence.’
　　And, while they stared at each other, saying nothing more, the praying women were uponthem.
　　Now the long, the silent avenue stretched before them like some gray country of the dead. Itscarcely seemed that he had walked this avenue only (as time was reckoned up by men) some fewhours ago; that he had known this avenue since his eyes had opened on the dangerous world; thathe had played here, wept here, fled, fallen down, and been bruised here—in that time, so farbehind him, of his innocence and anger.
　　Yes, on the evening of the seventh day, when, raging, he had walked out of his father’shouse, this avenue had been filled with shouting people. The light of the day had begun to fail—the wind was high, and the tall lights, one by one, and then all together, had lifted up their headsagainst the darkness—while he hurried to the temple. Had he been mocked, had anyone spoken, orlaughed, or called? He could not remember. He had been walking in a storm.
　　Now the storm was over. And the avenue, like any landscape that has endured a storm, laychanged under Heaven, exhausted and clean, and new. Not again, for ever, could it return to theavenue it once had been. Fire, or lightening, or the latter rain, coming down from these skies whichmoved with such pale secrecy above him now, had laid yesterday’s avenue waste, had changed itin a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, as all would be changed on the last day, when the skieswould open up once more to gather up the saints.
　　 Yet the houses were there, as they had been; the windows, like a thousand, blinded eyes,stared outward at the morning—at the morning that was the same for them as the mornings ofJohn’s innocence, and the mornings before his birth. The water run in the gutters with a small,discontented sound; on the water traveled paper, burnt matches, sodden cigarette-ends; gobs ofspittle, green-yellow, brown, and pearly; the leaving of a dog, the vomit of a drunken man, thedead sperm, trapped in rubber, of one abandoned to his lust. All moved slowly to the black gratingwhere down it rushed, to be carried to the river, which would hurl it into the sea.
　　Where houses were, where windows stared, where gutters ran, were people—sleeping now,invisible, private, in the heavy darkness of these houses, while the Lord’s day broke outside. WhenJohn should walk these streets again, they would be shouting here again; the roar of children’sroller skates would bear down on him from behind; little girls in pigtails, skipping rope, wouldestablish on the pavement a barricade through which he must stumble as best he might. Boyswould be throwing ball in these streets again—they would look at him, and call:
　　‘Hey, Frog-eyes!’
　　Men would be standing on corners again, watching him pass, girls would be sitting onstoops again, mocking his walk. Grandmothers would stare out of windows, saying:
　　‘That sure is a sorry little boy.’
　　He would weep again, his heart insisted, for now his weeping had begun; he would rageagain, said the shifting air, for the lions of rage had been unloosed; he would be in darkness again,in fire again, now that he had seen the fire and the darkness. He was free—whom the Son sets freeis free indeed—he had only to stand fast in his liberty. He was in battle no longer, this unfoldingLord’s day, with this avenue, these houses, the sleeping, staring, shouting people, but had enteredinto battle with Jacob’s angel, with the princes and the powers of the air. And he was filled with ajoy, a joy unspeakable, whose roots, though he would not trace then on this new day of his life,were nourished by the wellspring of a despair not yet discovered. The joy of the Lord is thestrength of His people. Where joy was, there strength followed; where strength was, sorrow came—for ever? For ever and for ever, said the arm of Elisha, heavy on his shoulder. And John tried tosee through the morning wall, to stare past the bitter houses, to tear the thousand gray veils of thesky away, and look into that heart—the monstrous heart which beat for ever, turning the astoundeduniverse, commanding the stars to flee away before the sun’s red sandal, bidding the moon to waxand wane, and disappear, and come again; with a silver net holding back the sea, and out ofmysteries abysmal, re-creating, each day, the earth. That heart, that breath, without which was notanything made which was made. Tears came into his eyes again, making the avenue shiver,causing the houses to shake—his heart swelled, lifted up, faltered, and was dumb. Out of joystrength came, strength that was fashioned to bear sorrow; sorrow brought forth joy. For ever? Thiswas Ezekiel’s wheel, in the middle of the burning air for ever—and the little wheel ran by faith,and the big wheel ran by the grace of God.
　　‘Elisha?’ he said.
　　‘If you ask Him to bear you up,’ said Elisha, as though he had read his thoughts, ‘He won’tnever let you fall.’
　　 ‘It was you,’ he said, ‘wasn’t it, who prayed me through?’
　　‘We was all praying, little brother,’ said Elisha, with a smile, ‘but yes, I was right over youthe whole time. Look like the Lord had put you like a burden on my soul.’
　　‘Was I praying long?’ he asked.
　　Elisha laughed. ‘Well, you started praying when it was night and you ain’t stopped prayingtill it was morning. That’s a right smart time, it seems to me.’
　　John smiled, too, observing with some wonder that a saint of God could laugh.
　　‘Was you glad,’ he asked, ‘to see me at the altar?’
　　Then he wondered why he had asked this, and hoped Elisha would no think him foolish.
　　‘I was mighty glad,’ said Elisha soberly, ‘to see little Johnny lay his sins on the altar, layhis life on the altar and rise up, praising God.’
　　Something shivered in him as the word sin was spoken. Tears sprang to his eyes again.
　　‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I pray God, I pray the Lord … to make me strong … to sanctify me wholly … andkeep me saved!’
　　‘Yes,’ said Elisha, ‘you keep that spirit, and I now the Lord’s going to see to it that you gethome all right.’
　　‘It’s a long way,’ John said slowly, ‘ain’t it? It’s a hard way. It’s uphill all the way.’
　　‘You remember Jesus,’ Elisha said. ‘You keep your mind on Jesus. He went that way—upthe steep side of the mountain—and He was carrying the cross, and didn’t nobody help Him. Hewent that way for us. He carried that cross for us.’
　　‘But He was the Son of God,’ said John, ‘and He knew it.’
　　‘He knew it,’ said Elisha, ‘because He was willing to pay the price. Don’t you know it,Johnny? Ain’t you willing to pay the price?’
　　‘That song they sing,’ said John, finally, ‘if it costs my life—is that the price?’
　　‘Yes.’ said Elisha, ‘that’s the price.’
　　Then John was silent, wanting to put the question another way. And the silence wascracked, suddenly, by an ambulance siren, and a crying bell. And they both look up as theambulance raced past them on the avenue on which no creature moved, save for the saints of Godbehind them.
　　‘But that’s the Devil’s price, too,’ said Elisha, as silence came again. ‘The Devil, he don’task for nothing less than your life. And he take it, too, and it’s lost for ever. For ever, Johnny. Youin darkness while you living and you in darkness when you dead. Ain’t nothing but the love ofGod can make the darkness light.’
　　‘Yes,’ said John, ‘I remember. I remember.’
　　 ‘Yes,’ said Elisha, ‘but you got to remember when the evil day comes, when the floodrises, boy, and looks like your soul is going under. You got to remember when the devil’s doing allhe can to make you forget.’
　　‘The Devil,’ he said, frowning and staring, ‘the Devil. How many faces is the Devil got?’
　　‘He got as many faces,’ Elisha said,’ as you going to see between now and the time you layyour burden down. And he got a lot more than that, but ain’t nobody seen them all.’
　　‘Except Jesus,’ John said then. ‘Only Jesus.’
　　‘Yes,’ said Elisha, with a grave, sweet smile, ‘that’s the Man you got to call on. That’s theMan who knows.’
　　They were approaching his house—his father’s house. In a moment he must leave Elisha,step out from under his protecting arm, and walk alone into the house—alone with his mother andhis father. And he was afraid. He wanted to stop and turn to Elisha, and tell him … something forwhich he found no words.
　　‘Elisha——’ he began, and looked into Elisha’s face. Then: ‘You pray for me? Please prayfor me?’
　　‘I been praying, little brother,’ Elisha said, ‘and I sure ain’t going to stop praying now.’
　　‘For me,’ persisted John, his tears falling, ‘for me.’
　　‘You know right well,’ said Elisa, looking at him, ‘I ain’t going to stop praying for thebrother what the Lord done give me.’
　　Then they reached the house, and paused, looking at each other, waiting. John saw that thesun was beginning to stir, somewhere in the sky; the silence of the dawn would soon give way tothe trumpets of the morning. Elisha took his arm from John’s shoulder and stood beside him,looking backward. And John looked back, seeing the saints approach.
　　‘Service is going to be mighty late this morning,’ Elisha said, and suddenly grinned andyawned.
　　And John laughed. ‘But you be there,’ he asked, ‘won’t you? This morning?’
　　‘Yes, little brother,’ Elisha laughed, ‘I’m going to be there. I see I’m going to have to dosome running to keep up with you.’
　　And they watched the saints. Now they all stood on the corner, where his Aunt Florencehad stopped to say good-bye. All the women talked together, while his father stood a little apart.
　　His aunt and his mother kissed each other, as he had seen them do a hundred times, and then hisaunt turned to look for them, and waved.
　　They waved back, and she started slowly across the street, moving, he thought withwonder, like an old woman.
　　‘Well, she ain’t going to be out to service this morning, I tell you that,’ said Elisha, andyawned again.
　　‘And look like you going to be half asleep,’ John said ‘Now don’t you mess with me this morning,’ Elisha said, ‘because you ain’t got so holy Ican’t turn you over my knee. I’s your big brother in the Lord—you just remember that.’
　　Now they were on the near corner. His father and mother were saying good-bye to PrayingMother Washington, and Sister McCandless, and Sister Price. The praying woman waved to them,and they waved back. Then his mother and his father were alone, coming toward them‘Elisha,’ said John, ‘Elisha.’
　　‘Yes,’ said Elisha, ‘what you want now?’
　　John, staring at Elisha, struggled to tell him something more—struggled to say—all thatcould never be said. Yet: ‘I was down in the valley,’ he dared, ‘I was by myself down there. Iwon’t never forget. May God forget me if I forget.’
　　Then his mother and his father were before them. His mother smiled, and took Elisha’soutstretched hand.
　　‘Praise the Lord this morning,’ said Elisha. ‘He done give us something to praise Him for.’
　　‘Amen,’ said his mother, praise the Lord!’
　　John moved up to the short, stone step, smiling a little, looking down on them. His motherpassed him, and started into the house.
　　‘You better come on upstairs,’ she said, still smiling, ‘and take off them wet clothes. Don’twant you catching cold.’
　　And her smile remained unreadable; he could not tell what it hid. And to escape her eyes,he kissed her, saying; ‘Yes, Mama. I’m coming.’
　　She stood behind him, in the doorway, waiting.
　　‘Praise the Lord, Deacon,’ Elisha said. ‘See you at the morning service, Lord willing.’
　　‘Amen,’ said his father, ‘praise the Lord.’ He started up the stone steps, staring at John,who blocked the way. ‘Go on upstairs, boy,’ he said, ‘like your mother told you.’
　　John looked at his father and moved from his path, stepping down into the street again. Heput his hand on Elisha’s arm, feeling himself trembling, and his father at his back.
　　‘Elisha,’ he said, ‘no matter what happens to me, where I go, what folks say about me, nomatter what anybody says, you remember—please remember—I was saved. I was there.’
　　Elisha grinned, and looked up at his father.
　　‘He come through,’ cried Elisha, ‘didn’t he, Deacon Grimes? The Lord done laid him out,and turned him around and wrote his new name down in glory. Bless our God!’
　　And he kissed John on the forehead, a holy kiss.
　　‘Run on, little brother,’ Elisha said. ‘Don’t you get weary. God won’t forget you. Youwon’t forget.’
　　The he turned away, down the long avenue, home. John stood still, watching him walkaway. The sun had come full awake. It was waking the streets, and the houses, and crying at the windows. It fell over Elisha like a golden robe, and struck John’s forehead, where Elisha hadkissed him, like a seal ineffaceable for ever.
　　And he felt his father behind him. And he felt the March wind rise, striking through hisdamp clothes, against his salty body. He turned to face his father—he found himself smiling, buthis father did not smile.
　　They looked at each other a moment. His mother stood in the doorway, in the long shadowsof the hall.
　　‘I’m ready,’ John said, ‘I’m coming. I’m on my way.’
　　The End