For six weeks Portia had waited to hear from William. Every evening she would come to the house and ask Doctor Copeland the same question: ‘You seen anybody who gotten a letter from Willie yet?’ And every night he was obliged to tell her that he had heard nothing.

At last she asked the question no more. She would come into the hall and look at him without a word. She drank. Her blouse was often half unbuttoned and her shoestrings loose.

February came. The weather turned milder, then hot. The sun glared down with hard brilliance. Birds sang in the bare trees and children played out of doors barefoot and naked to the waist. The nights were torrid as in midsummer. Then after a few days winter was upon the town again. The mild skies darkened. A chill rain fell and the air turned dank and bitterly cold. In the town the Negroes suffered badly. Supplies of fuel had been exhausted and there was a struggle everywhere for warmth. An epidemic of pneumonia raged through the wet, narrow streets, and for a week Doctor Copeland slept at odd hours, fully clothed. Still no word came from William. Portia had written four times and Doctor Copeland twice.

During most of the day and night he had no time to think. But occasionally he found a chance to rest for a moment at home. He would drink a pot of coffee by the kitchen stove and a deep uneasiness would come in him. Five of his patients had died. And one of these was Augustus Benedict Mady Lewis, the little deaf-mute. He had been asked to speak at the burial service, but as it was his rule not to attend funerals he was unable to accept this invitation. The five patients had not been lost because of any negligence on his part. The blame was in the long years of want which lay behind. The diets of cornbread and sowbelly and syrup, the crowding of four and five persons to a single room. The death of poverty. He brooded on this and drank coffee to stay awake. Often he held his hand to his chin, for recently a slight tremor in the nerves of his neck made his head nod unsteadily when he was tired.

Then during the fourth week of February Portia came to the house. It was only six o’clock in the morning and he was sitting by the fire in the kitchen, warming a pan of milk for breakfast. She was badly intoxicated. He smelled the keen, sweetish odor of gin and his nostrils widened with disgust. He did not look at her but busied himself with his breakfast. He crumbled some bread in a bowl and poured over it hot milk. He prepared coffee and laid the table.

Then when he was seated before his breakfast he looked at Portia sternly. ‘Have you had your morning meal?’

‘I not going to eat breakfast,’ she said.

‘You will need it. If you intend to get to work today.’

‘I not going to work.’

A dread came in him. He did not wish to question her further. He kept his eyes on his bowl of milk and drank from a spoon that was unsteady in his hand. When he had finished he looked up at the wall above her head. ‘Are you tongue-tied?’

‘I going to tell you. You going to hear about it. Just as soon as I able to say it I going to tell you.’

Portia sat motionless in the chair, her eyes moving slowly from one corner of the wall to the other. Her arms hung down limp and her legs were twisted loosely about each other. When he turned from her he had for a moment a perilous sense of ease and freedom, which was more acute because he knew that soon it was to be shattered. He mended the fire and warmed his hands. Then he rolled a cigarette. The kitchen was in a state of spotless order and cleanliness. The saucepans on the wall glowed with the light of the stove and behind each one there was a round, black shadow.

‘It about Willie.’

‘I know.’ He rolled the cigarette gingerly between his palms. His eyes glanced recklessly about him, greedy for the last sweet pleasures.

‘Once I mentioned to you this here Buster Johnston were at the prison with Willie. Us knowed him before. He were sent home yesdiddy.’

‘So?’

‘Buster been crippled for life.’

His head quavered. He pressed his hand to his chin to steady himself, but the obstinate trembling was difficult to control.

‘Last night these here friends come round to my house and say that Buster were home and had something to tell me about Willie. I run all the way and this here is what he said.’

‘Yes.’

‘There were three of them. Willie and Buster and this other boy. They were friends. Then this here trouble come up.’ Portia halted. She wet her finger with her tongue and then moistened her dry lips with her finger. ‘It were something to do with the way this here white guard picked on them all the time. They were out on roadwork one day and Buster he sassed back and then the other boy he try to run off in the woods. They taken all three of them. They taken all three of them to the camp and put them in this here ice-cold room.’

He said yes again. But his head quavered and the word sounded like a rattle in his throat.

‘It were about six weeks ago,’ Portia said. ‘You remember that cold spell then. They put Willie and them boys in this room like ice.’

Portia spoke in a low voice, and she neither paused between words nor did the grief in her face soften. It was like a low song. She spoke and he could not understand. The sounds were distinct in his ear but they had no shape or meaning. It was as though his head were the prow of a boat and the sounds were water that broke on him and then flowed past. He felt he had to look behind to find the words already said.

‘. . . and their feets swelled up and they lay there and struggle on the floor and holler out. And nobody come. They hollered there for three days and three nights and nobody come.’

‘I am deaf,’ said Doctor Copeland. ‘I cannot understand.’

‘They put our Willie and them boys in this here ice-cold room. There were a rope hanging down from the ceiling. They taken their shoes off and tied their bare feets to this rope. Willie and them boys lay there with their backs on the floor and their feets in the air. And their feets swelled up and they struggle on the floor and holler out. It were ice-cold in the room and their feets froze. Their feets swelled up and they hollered for three nights and three days. And nobody come.’

Doctor Copeland pressed his head with his hands, but still the steady trembling would not stop. ‘I cannot hear what you say.’

‘Then at last they come to get them. They quickly taken Willie and them boys to the sick ward and their legs were all swelled and froze. Gangrene. They sawed off both our Willie’s feets. Buster Johnson lost one foot and the other boy got well. But our Willie—he crippled for life now. Both his feet sawed off.’

The words were finished and Portia leaned over and struck her head upon the table. She did not cry or moan, but she struck her head again and again on the hard-scrubbed top of the table. The bowl and spoon rattled and he removed them to the sink. The words were scattered in his mind, but he did not try to assemble them. He scalded the bowl and spoon and washed out the dishtowel. He picked up something from the floor and put it somewhere.

‘Crippled?’ he asked. ‘William?’

Portia knocked her head on the table and the blows had a rhythm like the slow beat of a drum and his heart took up this rhythm also. Quietly the words came alive and fitted to the meaning and he understood.

‘When will they send him home?’

Portia leaned her drooping head on her arm. ‘Buster don’t know that. Soon afterward they separate all three of them in different places. They sent Buster to another camp. Since Willie only haves a few more months he think he liable to be home soon now.’

They drank coffee and sat for a long time, looking into each other’s eyes. His cup rattled against his teeth. She poured her coffee into a saucer and some of it dripped down on her lap.

‘William——’ Doctor Copeland said. As he pronounced the name his teeth bit deeply into his tongue and he moved his jaw with pain. They sat for a long while. Portia held his hand. The bleak morning light made the windows gray. Outside it was still raining.

‘If I means to get to work I better go on now,’ Portia said.

He followed her through the hall and stopped at the hatrack to put on his coat and shawl. The open door let in a gust of wet, cold air. Highboy sat out on the street curb with a wet newspaper over his head for protection. Along the sidewalk there was a fence. Portia leaned against this as she walked. Doctor Copeland followed a few paces after her and his hands, also, touched the boards of the fence to steady himself. Highboy trailed behind them.

He waited for the black, terrible anger as though for some beast out of the night. But it did not come to him. His bowels seemed weighted with lead, and he walked slowly and lingered against fences and the cold, wet walls of buildings by the way. Descent into the depths until at last there was no further chasm below. He touched the solid bottom of despair and there took ease.

In this he knew a certain strong and holy gladness. The persecuted laugh, and the black slave sings to his outraged soul beneath the whip. A song was in him now—although it was not music but only the feeling of a song. And the sodden heaviness of peace weighted down his limbs so that it was only with the strong, true purpose that he moved. Why did he go onward? Why did he not rest here upon this bottom of utmost humiliation and for a while take his content?

But he went onward.

‘Uncle,’ said Mick. ‘You think some hot coffee would make you feel better?’

Doctor Copeland looked into her face but gave no sign that he heard. They had crossed the town and come at last to the alley behind the Kellys’ house. Portia had entered first and then he followed. Highboy remained on the steps outside. Mick and her two little brothers were already in the kitchen. Portia told of William. Doctor Copeland did not listen to the words but her voice had a rhythm—a start, a middle, and an end. Then when she was finished she began all over. Others came into the room to hear.

Doctor Copeland sat on a stool in the corner. His coat and shawl steamed over the back of a chair by the stove. He held his hat on his knees and his long, dark hands moved nervously around the worn brim. The yellow insides of his hands were so moist that occasionally he wiped them with a handkerchief. His head trembled, and all of his muscles were stiff with the effort to make it be still.

Mr. Singer came into the room. Doctor Copeland raised up his face to him. ‘Have you heard of this?’ he asked. Mr. Singer nodded. In his eyes there was no horror or pity or hate. Of all those who knew, his eyes alone did not express these reactions. For he alone understood this thing.

Mick whispered to Portia, ‘What’s your father’s name?’

‘He named Benedict Mady Copeland.’

Mick leaned over close to Doctor Copeland and shouted in his face as though he were deaf. ‘Benedict, don’t you think some hot coffee would make you feel a little better?’

Doctor Copeland started.

‘Quit that hollering,’ Portia said. ‘He can hear well as you can.’

‘Oh,’ said Mick. She emptied the grounds from the pot and put the coffee on the stove to boil again.

The mute still lingered in the doorway. Doctor Copeland still looked into his face. ‘You heard?’

‘What’ll they do to those prison guards?’ Mick asked.

‘Honey, I just don’t know,’ Portia said. ‘I just don’t know.’

‘I’d do something. I’d sure do something about it.’

‘Nothing us could do would make no difference. Best thing us can do is keep our mouth shut.’

‘They ought to be treated just like they did Willie and them. Worse. I wish I could round up some people and kill those men myself.’

‘That ain’t no Christian way to talk,’ Portia said. ‘Us can just rest back and know they going to be chopped up with pitchforks and fried everlasting by Satan.’

‘Anyway Willie can still play his harp.’

‘With both feets sawed off that about all he can do.’

The house was full of noise and unrest. In the room above the kitchen someone was moving furniture about. The dining-room was crowded with boarders. Mrs. Kelly hurried back and forth from the breakfast table to the kitchen. Mr. Kelly wandered about in a baggy pair of trousers and a bathrobe. The young Kelly children ate greedily in the kitchen. Doors banged and voices could be heard in all parts of the house.

Mick handed Doctor Copeland a cup of coffee mixed with watery milk. The milk gave the drink a gray-blue sheen. Some of the coffee had sloshed over into the saucer, so first he dried the saucer and the rim of the cup with his handkerchief. He had not wanted coffee at all.

‘I wish I could kill them,’ Mick said.

The house quieted. The people in the dining-room went out to work. Mick and George left for school and the baby was shut into one of the front rooms. Mrs. Kelly wrapped a towel around her head and took a broom with her upstairs.

The mute still stood in the doorway. Doctor Copeland gazed up into his face. ‘You know of this?’ he asked again. The words did not sound—they choked in his throat—but his eyes asked the question all the same. Then the mute was gone. Doctor Copeland and Portia were alone. He sat for some time on the stool in the corner. At last he rose to go.

‘You sit back down, Father. Us going to stay together this morning. I going to fry some fish and have egg-bread and potatoes for the dinner. You stay on here, and then I means to serve you a good hot meal.’

‘You know I have calls.’

‘Less us just this one day. Please, Father. I feels like I going to really bust loose. Besides, I don’t want you messing around in the streets by yourself.’

He hesitated and felt the collar of his overcoat. It was very damp. ‘Daughter, I am sorry. You know I have visits.’

Portia held his shawl over the stove until the wool was hot. She buttoned his coat and turned up the collar about his neck. He cleared his throat and spat into one of the squares of paper that he carried with him in his pocket. Then he burned the paper in the stove. On the way out he stopped and spoke to Highboy on the steps. He suggested that Highboy stay with Portia if he could arrange to get leave from work.

The air was piercing and cold. From the low, dark skies the drizzling rain fell steadily. The rain had seeped into the garbage cans and in the alley there was the rank odor of wet refuse. As he walked he balanced himself with the help of a fence and kept his dark eyes on the ground.

He made all of the strictly necessary visits. Then he attended to office patients from noon until two o’clock. Afterward he sat at his desk with his fists clenched tight. But it was useless to try to cogitate on this thing.

He wished never again to see a human face. Yet at the same time he could not sit alone in the empty room. He put on his overcoat and went out again into the wet, cold street. In his pocket were several prescriptions to be left at the pharmacy. But he did not wish to speak with Marshall Nicolls. He went into the store and laid the prescriptions upon the counter. The pharmacist turned from the powders he was measuring and held out both his hands. His thick lips worked soundlessly for a moment before he gained his poise.

‘Doctor,’ he said formally. ‘You must be aware that I and all our colleagues and the members of my lodge and church—we have your sorrow uppermost in our minds and wish to extend to you our deepest sympathy.’

Doctor Copeland turned shortly and left without a word. That was too little. Something more was needed. The strong, true purpose, the will to justice. He walked stiffly, his arms held close to his sides, toward the main street. He cogitated without success. He could think of no white person of power in all the town who was both brave and just. He thought of every lawyer, every judge, every public official with whose name he was familiar—but the thought of each one of these white men was bitter in his heart. At last he decided on the judge of the Superior Court. When he reached the courthouse he did not hesitate but entered quickly, determined to see the judge that afternoon.

The wide front hall was empty except for a few idlers who lounged in the doorways leading to the offices on either side. He did not know where he could find the judge’s office, so he wandered uncertainly through the building, looking at the placards on the doors. At last he came to a narrow passage. Halfway through this corridor three white men stood talking together and blocked the way. He drew close to the wall to pass, but one of them turned to stop him.

‘What you want?’

‘Will you please tell me where the judge’s office is located?’

The white man jerked his thumb toward the end of the passage. Doctor Copeland recognized him as a deputy sheriff. They had seen each other dozens of times but the deputy did not remember him. All white people looked similar to Negroes but Negroes took care to differentiate between them. On the other hand, all Negroes looked similar to white men but white men did not usually bother to fix the face of a Negro in their minds. So the white man said, ‘What you want, Reverend?’

The familiar joking title nettled him. ‘I am not a minister,’ he said. ‘I am a physician, a medical doctor. My name is Benedict Mady Copeland and I wish to see the judge immediately on urgent business.’

The deputy was like other white men in that a clearly enunciated speech maddened him. ‘Is that so?’ he mocked. He winked at his friends. ‘Then I am the deputy sheriff and my name is Mister Wilson and I tell you the judge is busy. Come back some other day.’

‘It is imperative that I see the judge,’ Doctor Copeland said. ‘I will wait.’

There was a bench at the entrance of the passage and he sat down. The three white men continued to talk, but he knew that the sheriff watched him. He was determined not to leave. More than half an hour passed. Several white men went freely back and forth through the corridor. He knew that the deputy was watching him and he sat rigid, his hands pressed between his knees. His sense of prudence told him to go away and return later in the afternoon when the sheriff was not there. All of his life he had been circumspect in his dealings with such people. But now something in him would not let him withdraw.

‘Come here, you!’ the deputy said finally.

His head trembled, and when he arose he was not steady on his feet. ‘Yes?’

‘What you say you wanted to see the judge about?’

‘I did not say,’ said Doctor Copeland. ‘I merely said that my business with him was urgent.’

‘You can’t stand up straight. You been drinking liquor, haven’t you? I smell it on your breath.’

‘That is a lie,’ said Doctor Copeland slowly. ‘I have not——’

The sheriff struck him on the face. He fell against the wall. Two white men grasped him by the arms and dragged him down the steps to the main floor. He did not resist.

‘That’s the trouble with this country,’ the sheriff said. ‘These damn biggity niggers like him.’

He spoke no word and let them do with him as they would. He waited for the terrible anger and felt it arise in him. Rage made him weak, so that he stumbled. They put him into the wagon with two men as guards. They took him to the station and then to the jail. It was only when they had entered the jail that the strength of his rage came to him. He broke loose suddenly from their grasp. In a corner he was surrounded. They struck him on the head and shoulders with their clubs. A glorious strength was in him and he heard himself laughing aloud as he fought. He sobbed and laughed at the same time. He kicked wildly with his feet. He fought with his fists and even struck at them with his head. Then he was clutched fast so that he could not move. They dragged him foot by foot through the hall of the jail. The door to a cell was opened. Someone behind kicked him in the groin and he fell to his knees on the floor.

In the cramped cubicle there were five other prisoners—three Negroes and two white men. One of the white men was very old and drunk. He sat on the floor and scratched himself. The other white prisoner was a boy not more than fifteen years of age. The three Negroes were young. As Doctor Copeland lay on the bunk looking up into their faces he recognized one of them.

‘How come you here?’ the young man asked. ‘Ain’t you Doctor Copeland?’

He said yes.

‘My name Dary White. You taken out my sister’s tonsils last year.’

The icy cell was permeated with a rotten odor. A pail brimming with urine was in a corner. Cockroaches crawled upon the walls. He closed his eyes and immediately he must have slept, for when he looked up again the small barred window was black and a bright light burned in the hall. Four empty tin plates were on the floor. His dinner of cabbage and cornbread was beside him.

He sat on the bunk and sneezed violently several times. When he breathed the phlegm rattled in his chest. After a while the young white boy began to sneeze also. Doctor Copeland gave out squares of paper and had to use sheets from a notebook in his pocket. The white boy leaned over the pail in the corner or simply let the water run from his nose onto the front of his shirt. His eyes were dilated, his clear cheeks flushed. He huddled on the edge of a bunk and groaned.

Soon they were led out to the lavatory, and on their return they prepared for sleep. There were six men to occupy four bunks. The old man lay snoring on the floor. Dary and another boy squeezed into a bunk together.

The hours were long. The light in the hall burned his eyes and the odor in the cell made every breath a discomfort. He could not keep warm. His teeth chattered and he shook with a hard chill. He sat up with the dirty blanket wrapped around him and swayed to and fro. Twice he reached over to cover the white boy who muttered and threw out his arms in sleep. He swayed, his head in his hands, and from his throat there came a singing moan. He could not think of William. Nor could he even cogitate upon the strong, true purpose and draw strength from that. He could only feel the misery in him.

Then the tide of his fever turned. A warmth spread through him. He lay back, and it seemed he sank down into a place warm and red and full of comfort.

The next morning the sun came out. The strange Southern winter was at its end. Doctor Copeland was released. A little group waited outside the jail for him. Mr. Singer was there. Portia and Highboy and Marshall Nicolls were present also. Their faces were confused and he could not see them clearly. The sun was very bright.

‘Father, don’t you know that ain’t no way to help our Willie? Messing around at a white folks’ courthouse? Best thing us can do is keep our mouth shut and wait.’

Her loud voice echoed wearily in his ears. They climbed into a ten-cent taxicab, and then he was home and his face pressed into the fresh white pillow.