Go Tell It on the Mountain (26 page)

John looked with a child’s impenetrable gravity into the preacher’s face, as though he were turning this question over in his mind and would answer when he had thought it out. Gabriel smiled at him, a strange smile—strangely, she thought, loving—and touched him on the crown of the head.

“He a mighty fine boy,” said Gabriel. “With them big eyes he ought to see everything
in
the Bible.”

And they all laughed. Florence moved to deposit John in the easy chair that was his Sunday throne. And Elizabeth found that she was watching Gabriel, unable to find in the man before her the brother whom Florence so despised.

They sat down at the table, John placed between herself and Florence and opposite Gabriel.

“So,” Elizabeth said, with a nervous pleasantness, it being necessary, she felt, to say something, “you just getting to this big city? It must seem mighty strange to you.”

His eyes were still on John, whose eyes had not left him. Then he looked again at Elizabeth. She felt that the air between them was beginning to be charged, and she could find no name, or reason, for the secret excitement that moved in her.

“It’s mighty big,” he said, “and looks to me—and
sounds
to me—like the Devil’s working every day.”

This was in reference to the music, which had not ceased, but she felt, immediately, that it included her; this, and something else in Gabriel’s eyes, made her look down quickly to her plate.

“He ain’t,” said Florence, briskly, “working no harder up here than he worked down home. Them niggers down home,” she said to Elizabeth, “they think New York ain’t nothing but one long, Sunday drunk. They don’t
know
. Somebody better tell them—they can get
better moonshine right there where they is than they likely to here—and cheaper, too.”

“But I
do
hope,” he said, with a smile, “that you ain’t taken to drinking moonshine, sister.”

“It wasn’t never
me
,” she said, promptly, “had
that
habit.”

“Don’t know,” he persisted, still smiling, and still looking at Elizabeth, “tell me folks do things up North they wouldn’t think about doing down home.”

“Folks got their dirt to do,” said Florence. “They going to do it, no matter where they is. Folks do lots of things down home they don’t want nobody to know about.”

“Like my aunt used to say,” Elizabeth said, smiling timidly, “she used to say, folks sure better not do in the dark what they’s scared to look at in the light.”

She had meant it as a kind of joke; but the words were not out of her mouth before she longed for the power to call them back. They rang in her own ears like a confession.

“That’s the Lord’s truth,” he said, after the briefest pause. “Does you really believe that?”

She forced herself to look up at him, and felt at that moment the intensity of the attention that Florence fixed on her, as though she were trying to shout a warning. She knew that it was something in Gabriel’s voice that had caused Florence, suddenly, to be so wary and so tense. But she did not drop her eyes from Gabriel’s eyes. She answered him: “Yes. That’s the way I want to live.”

“Then the Lord’s going to bless you,” he said, “and open up the windows of Heaven for you—for you, and that boy. He going to pour down blessings on you till you won’t know where to put them. You mark my words.”

“Yes,” said Florence, mildly, “you
mark
his words.”

But neither of them looked at her. It came into Elizabeth’s mind, filling her mind:
All things work together for good to them that love the Lord
. She tried to obliterate this burning phrase, and what it made her feel. What it made her feel, for the first time since the death of
Richard, was hope; his voice had made her feel that she was not altogether cast down, that God might raise her again in honor; his eyes had made her know that she could be again—this time in honor—a woman. Then, from what seemed to be a great, cloudy distance, he smiled at her—and she smiled.

The distant gramophone stuck now, suddenly, on a grinding, wailing, sardonic trumpet-note; this blind, ugly crying swelled the moment and filled the room. She looked down at John. A hand somewhere struck the gramophone arm and sent the silver needle on its way through the whirling, black grooves, like something bobbing, anchorless, in the middle of the sea.

“Johnny’s done fell asleep,” she said.

She, who had descended with such joy and pain, had begun her upward climb—upward, with her baby, on the steep, steep side of the mountain.

She felt a great commotion in the air around her—a great excitement, muted, waiting on the Lord. And the air seemed to tremble, as before a storm. A light seemed to hang—just above, and all around them—about to burst into revelation. In the great crying, the great singing all around her, in the wind that gathered to fill the church, she did not hear her husband; and she thought of John as sitting, silent now and sleepy, far in the back of the church—watching, with that wonder and that terror in his eyes. She did not raise her head. She wished to tarry yet a little longer, that God might speak to her.

It had been before this very altar that she had come to kneel, so many years ago, to be forgiven. When the fall came, and the air was dry and sharp, and the wind high, she was always with Gabriel. Florence did not approve of this, and Florence said so often; but she never said more than this, for the reason, Elizabeth decided, that she had no evil to report—it was only that she was not fond of her brother. But even had Florence been able to find a language unmistakable in which to convey her prophecies, Elizabeth could not have heeded her because Gabriel had become her strength. He watched
over her and her baby as though it had become his calling; he was very good to John, and played with him, and bought him things, as though John were his own. She knew that his wife had died childless, and that he had always wanted a son—he was praying still, he told her, that God would bless him with a son. She thought sometimes, lying on her bed alone, and thinking of all his kindness, that perhaps John was that son, and that he would grow one day to comfort and bless them both. Then she thought how, now, she would embrace again the faith she had abandoned, and walk again in the light from which, with Richard, she had so far fled. Sometimes, thinking of Gabriel, she remembered Richard—his voice, his breath, his arms—with a terrible pain; and then she felt herself shrinking from Gabriel’s anticipated touch. But this shrinking she would not countenance. She told herself that it was foolish and sinful to look backward when her safety lay before her, like a hiding-place hewn in the side of the mountain.

“Sister,” he asked one night, “don’t you reckon you ought to give your heart to the Lord?”

They were in the dark streets, walking to church. He had asked her this question before, but never in such a tone; she had never before felt so compelling a need to reply.

“I reckon,” she said.

“If you call on the Lord,” he said, “He’ll lift you up, He’ll give you your heart’s desire. I’m a witness,” he said, and smiled at her, “you call on the Lord, you wait on the Lord, He’ll answer. God’s promises don’t never fail.”

Her arm was in his, and she felt him trembling with his passion.

“Till you come,” she said, in a low, trembling voice, “I didn’t never hardly go to church at all, Reverend. Look like I couldn’t see my way nohow—I was all bowed down with shame … and sin.”

She could hardly bring the last words out, and as she spoke tears were in her eyes. She had told him that John was nameless; and she had tried to tell him something of her suffering, too. In those days he had seemed to understand, and he had not stood in judgment on
her. When had he so greatly changed? Or was it that he had not changed, but that her eyes had been opened through the pain he had caused her?

“Well,” he said, “I done come, and it was the hand of the Lord what sent me. He brought us together for a sign. You fall on your knees and see if that ain’t so—you fall down and ask Him to speak to you tonight.”

Yes, a sign, she thought, a sign of His mercy, a sign of His forgiveness.

When they reached the church doors he paused, and looked at her and made his promise.

“Sister Elizabeth,” he said, “when you go down on your knees tonight, I want you to ask the Lord to speak to your heart, and tell you how to answer what I’m going to say.”

She stood a little below him, one foot lifted to the short, stone step that led to the church entrance, and looked up into his face. And looking into his face, which burned—in the dim, yellow light that hung about them there—like the face of a man who has wrestled with angels and demons and looked on the face of God, it came to her, oddly, and all at once, that she had become a woman.

“Sister Elizabeth,” he said, “the Lord’s been speaking to my heart, and I believe it’s His will that you and me should be man and wife.”

And he paused; she said nothing. His eyes moved over her body.

“I know,” he said, trying to smile, and in a lower voice, “I’m a lot older than you. But that don’t make no difference. I’m a mighty strong man yet. I done been down the line, Sister Elizabeth, and maybe I can keep you from making … some of my mistakes, bless the Lord … maybe I can help keep your foot from stumbling … again … girl … for as long as we’s in this world.”

Still she waited.

“And I’ll love you,” he said, “and I’ll honor you … until the day God calls me home.”

Slow tears rose to her eyes: of joy, for what she had come to; of anguish, for the road that had brought her here.

“And I’ll love your son, your little boy,” he said at last, “just like he was my own. He won’t never have to fret or worry about nothing; he won’t never be cold or hungry as long as I’m alive and I got my two hands to work with. I swear this before my God,” he said, “because He done give me back something I thought was lost.”

Yes, she thought, a sign—a sign that He is mighty to save. Then she moved and stood on the short step, next to him, before the doors.

“Sister Elizabeth,” he said—and she would carry to the grave the memory of his grace and humility at that moment, “will you pray?”

“Yes,” she said. “I been praying. I’m going to pray.”

They had entered this church, these doors; and when the pastor made the altar call, she rose, while she heard them praising God, and walked down the long church aisle; down this aisle, to this altar, before this golden cross; to these tears, into this battle—would the battle end one day? When she rose, and as they walked once more through the streets, he had called her God’s daughter, handmaiden to God’s minister. He had kissed her on the brow, with tears, and said that God had brought them together to be each other’s deliverance. And she had wept, in her great joy that the hand of God had changed her life, had lifted her up and set her on the solid rock, alone.

She thought of that far-off day when John had come into the world—that moment, the beginning of her life and death. Down she had gone that day, alone, a heaviness intolerable at her waist, a secret in her loins, down into the darkness, weeping and groaning and cursing God. How long she had bled, and sweated, and cried, no language on earth could tell—how long she had crawled through darkness she would never, never know. There, her beginning, and she fought through darkness still; toward that moment when she would make her peace with God, when she would hear Him speak,
and He would wipe all tears from her eyes; as, in that other darkness, after eternity, she had heard John cry.

As now, in the sudden silence, she heard him cry: not the cry of the child, newborn, before the common light of earth; but the cry of the man-child, bestial, before the light that comes down from Heaven. She opened her eyes and stood straight up; all of the saints surrounded her; Gabriel stood staring, struck rigid as a pillar in the temple. On the threshing-floor, in the center of the crying, singing saints, John lay astonished beneath the power of the Lord.

PART THREE
The Threshing-Floor

Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for mine eyes have seen the King, seen the King, the Lords of hosts.

H
E KNEW
,
WITHOUT
knowing how it had happened, that he lay on the floor, in the dusty space before the altar which he and Elisha had cleaned; and knew that above him burned the yellow light which he had himself switched on. Dust was in his nostrils, sharp and terrible, and the feet of the saints, shaking the floor beneath him, raised small clouds of dust that filmed his mouth. He heard their cries, so far, so high above him—he could never rise that far. He was like a rock, a dead man’s body, 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 not endure, that even now he could not believe, had opened him up; had cracked him open, as wood beneath the axe cracks down the middle, as rocks break up; had ripped him and felled him in a moment, so that John had not felt the wound, but only the agony, had not felt the fall, but only the fear; and lay here, now, helpless, screaming, at the very bottom of darkness.