“Oh, Rachel, I’m so glad to hear your voice. This is Mrs. Ewing—Mrs. Roy Ewing over on Georgia Avenue. I’ve been trying to get you for half a hour. Has your son come home from Atlanta yet?”
The voice went chattering on while Kenneth tried to moisten his parched throat sufficiently to speak. It seemed to him that his saliva-producing gland must have died along with his hope of a peaceful existence in Central City. Finally, he was able to speak. He answered Mrs. Ewing wearily:
“This isn’t Mrs. Harper, Mrs. Ewing. This is Dr. Harper.”
“Oh, my God! Why did you come back?” she exclaimed.
Puzzled at her tone, Kenneth abruptly answered: “Why shouldn’t I have come back?”
She laughed nervously.
“Nothing—oh, nothing. But I’m awfully sorry about what’s happened.” At a disbelieving grunt that came to her over the wire, she hastened to add: “Really I am—I am from the very bottom of my heart!”
She went on philosophically before Kenneth could reply.
“But everything’ll come out all right, don’t you fear. Doctor, I’m so glad for one reason you’re back. Mary’s had a setback and she’s in an awful fix. Dr. Bennett can’t do nothing for her. I know it’s awful hard to ask you, but can’t you come over and see what you—”
“No, damn it, no!” shouted Kenneth into the mouthpiece. His voice mounted higher and higher in the rage that possessed him. “No, I hope she’ll die—I hope she’ll die! And every other white beast that’s living! No! No! No! No!” he shouted as though mad.
He started to slam the receiver down upon its hook. The voice of Mrs. Ewing came to him in an agonized moan and made him pause.
“Oh, Doctor, don’t take it out on my po’ little Mary. I know just how you feel, but don’t blame it on her! Please, Doctor, please come over and I’ll never bother you again! If you don’t come, I jus’ know she’ll die!” she begged.
Kenneth’s fit of passion had passed. In its stead there came a cold, terrifying calmness that was but another form of the raging torment and fury in his breast. He spoke with biting directness into the telephone:
“Mrs. Ewing, if by raising one finger I could save the whole white race from destruction, and by not raising it could send them all straight down to hell, I’d die before I raised it! You’ve murdered my brother, my sister’s body, my mother’s mind, and my very soul! No, I know that,” he said to her interjected remark, which he repeated. “I know you didn’t do it with your own hands! But you belong to the race that did! And the race that’s going to pay for every murder it’s committed!”
He paused for breath and then continued his vitriolic diatribe against the white race. It was relieving his brain, he found, to be able thus to vent his spleen on a white person. He went on in the same voice of deadly calm and precision of statement:
“And where’s that cowardly husband of yours?” he demanded in a voice of rising fury. “Why didn’t he come and ask me to save your daughter? No, he’s like the rest of the damned cowards—makes his wife do it, thinking I’m fool enough not to know he’s there at the telephone telling you what to say. No, no, wait until I’m through! … He’s where? Atlanta? What’s he doing there? Why did he leave his daughter when he knew she might die any minute? Oh, no! You can’t feed me any bait like that! I’m through, I tell you—I’m through listening to the lying flattery you white folks use to fool ignorant and blind Negroes like me! What? Why—I don’t see—don’t understand! Oh, well, I suppose I might as well, then. Yes, I’ll be over within ten minutes. Tell Dr. Bennett to wait there until I come. What? He’s gone! All right, I’ll come! Goodbye!”
Slightly puzzled, he hung up the receiver and sat for a minute gazing at the desk pad in front of him, but seeing nothing. Why should Roy Ewing have gone to Atlanta to see him? Ewing knew he’d be back on Friday. He had told him so before leaving. It was mighty strange for him to act that way.
His mother entered the room, awakened by the sound of his shouting over the telephone. She spoke to him apologetically for having left him so long.
“Mamie was so restless,” she explained, “and when I got her quiet at last, I must have fallen asleep sitting there by her bed.” On her face there came a wistful smile. “You see, I haven’t been to sleep for three days now.”
Kenneth went to her and put his arm around her.
“That’s all right, mamma, that’s all right. I’m glad you did get a minute’s rest. You needed it. What’s that? Oh, yes, I feel much better now. The storm has passed for a time, I reckon. I’m going to run over to the Ewings’ for a minute—Mary’s in a bad way. Oh, that’s all right, you needn’t worry,” he hastily interjected at his mother’s cry of alarm. “The streets are empty now—everybody’s in bed. I’ll go there and come straight back as soon as Mary’s resting easily again,” he promised in order to quiet her fears. “There won’t be anybody for me to see on the streets, much
