Going to Meet the Man by James Baldwin Page B

the bone and stood up, whistling for the dog; who moved away from his master and took the bone between his teeth. Jamie watched with a smile and opened the bottle of whiskey and poured himself a drink. Eric sat on the ground beside the dog, beginning to be sleepy in the bright, bright sun.
    “Little Eric’s getting big,” he heard his father say.
    “Yes,” said Jamie, “they grow fast. It won’t be long now.”
    “Won’t be long
what?
” he heard his father ask.
    “Why, before he starts skirt-chasing like his Daddy used to do,” said Jamie. There was mild laughter at the table in which his mother did not join; he heard instead, or thought he heard, the familiar, slight, exasperated intake of her breath. No one seemed to care whether he came back to the table or not. He lay on his back, staring up at the sky, wondering—wondering what he would feel like when he was old—and fell asleep.
    When he awoke his head was in his mother’s lap, for she was sitting on the ground. Jamie and his father were still sitting at the table; he knew this from their voices, for he did not open his eyes. He did not want to move or speak. He wanted to remain where he was, protected by his mother, while the bright day rolled on. Then he wondered about the uncut birthday cake. But he was sure, from the sound of Jamie’s voice, which was thicker now, that they had not cut it yet; or if they had, they had certainly saved a piece for him.
    “—ate himself just as full as he could and then fell asleep in the sun like a little animal,” Jamie was saying, and the two men laughed. His father—though he scarcely ever got as drunk as Jamie did, and had often carried Jamie home from The Rafters—was a little drunk, too.
    Eric felt his mother’s hand on his hair. By opening his eyes very slightly he would see, over the curve of his mother’s thigh,as through a veil, a green slope far away and beyond it the everlasting, motionless sky.
    “—she was a no-good
bitch
,” said Jamie.
    “She was beautiful,” said his mother, just above him.
    Again, they were talking about Jamie’s wife.
    “Beauty!” said Jamie, furious. “Beauty doesn’t keep a house clean. Beauty doesn’t keep a bed warm, neither.”
    Eric’s father laughed. “You were so—poetical—in those days, Jamie,” he said. “Nobody thought you cared much about things like that. I guess she thought you didn’t care, neither.”
    “I cared,” said Jamie, briefly.
    “In fact,” Eric’s father continued, “I
know
she thought you didn’t care.”
    “
How
do you know?” asked Jamie.
    “She told me,” Eric’s father said.
    “What do you mean,” asked Jamie, “what do you mean, she told you?”
    “I mean just that. She told me.”
    Jamie was silent.
    “In those days” Eric’s father continued after a moment, “all you did was walk around the woods by yourself in the daytime and sit around The Rafters in the evenings with me.”
    “You two were always together then,” said Eric’s mother.
    “Well,” said Jamie, harshly, “at least that hasn’t changed.”
    “Now, you know,” said Eric’s father, gently, “it’s not the same. Now I got a wife and kid—and another one coming—”
    Eric’s mother stroked his hair more gently, yet with something in her touch more urgent, too, and he knew that she was thinking of the child who lay in the churchyard, who would have been his sister.
    “Yes,” said Jamie, “you really got it all fixed up, you did. You got it all—the wife, the kid, the house, and all the land.”
    “I didn’t steal your farm from you. It wasn’t my fault youlost it. I gave you a better price for it than anybody else would have done.”
    “I’m not blaming you. I know all the things I have to thank you for.”
    There was a short pause, broken, hesitantly, by Eric’s mother. “What I don’t understand,” she said, “is why, when you went away to the city, you didn’t
stay
away. You didn’t really have anything to keep