Five Smooth Stones

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Book: Five Smooth Stones Read Online Free PDF
Author: Ann Fairbairn
Tags: Fiction, General, Historical, African American
in Geneva's eyes the first time he had made this proposal was not there now. The baby had been with them three days, and already her husband was fussing at her about the way she fixed the bottles, getting up in the night, climbing over her to get to the stove and ready the formula when the baby woke up crying. The sounds that came to her as he gentled the child and fed him would have been familiar to his first wife, Josephine. "So-so," he would say. "So-so, little man." Geneva had agreed to the dresser-drawer crib in the daytime, and he had found packing casings to stand endwise under it and make it firm, and it was Li'l Joe who made it up, constructing a mattress from an old blanket and a piece of sheet.
    Geneva watched him when he did things for the baby, and let him instruct her, and when his back was turned winked at the occupant of the dresser drawer, saying to him, when his grandfather was out of hearing: "I can't do nothing with him. Hardheaded as a mule. But you just keep working on him, David. You just keep working on him, we got nothing to worry about."
    The chaos that followed immediately after the bank closings made even Joseph Champlin realize the futility of looking for work. From their friends and from the newspapers they learned of unbelievable situations among the whites: millionaires caught with only a few dollars in their pockets, talk of paper scrip being printed, people making fantastic offers just for cold cash. Some stores were good about credit to a limited extent, but it could not be offered for long. On the second day Hank beckoned him mysteriously to the back of his barroom, and slipped him a paper bag with a quart bottle of homemade wine in it, because now more than ever he dared not be seen serving anyone on credit.
    It was Geneva who suggested that he appeal to the Professor.
    "I ain't going to do it, Neva," he said. "That man's probably no better off than what we are. We are all in the same boat, rich and poor. Where's he going to get cash any more'n anyone else? It ain't like he worked in a store. He's a professor in a college. I know he's rich, but I don't want—"
    "You fixing to say you don't want to ask no favors," Geneva snapped. "That's what you're fixing to say. Since when's a colored person in this town got so Goddamned proud he
    can't ask no favors of a white? Ain't nothing no white gives you any favor anyhow. You knows that."
    Joseph Champlin did not answer, then wished he had. Silence on his part often irritated Geneva to the point where she would talk until it seemed she'd forgotten how to stop, prodding him to answer, then not giving him a chance.
    She was always particularly talkative on the subject of the Professor. Li'l Joe had known him for three years. Odd and different people were common in New Orleans, a seaport whose docks knew the feet of men from every country, whose restaurants and bars and waterfront dives knew as many tongues as Babel had, but even in New Orleans the bristling red beard and hair, the vivid blue eyes, the huge bulk and booming voice of Bjarne Knudsen were conspicuous. Li'l Joe had been playing a gig in a small club when he saw the big man for the first time. It was a Negro club, and Li'l Joe and the other musicians were uneasy and uncomfortable at the presence of a white man. It could, and often did, mean trouble with the law. The man was with Kid Arab, who was without a job that night. Kid's assurance that the bearded stranger was O.K. was enough to admit him, but there were still uneasiness on the stand, and an attitude composed in almost equal parts of downright hostility and reserved, suspicious friendliness in the audience.
    During the course of the evening the big man worked his way forward in the smoky, crowded room until he sat directly in front of Li'l Joe. Li'l Joe remembered watching him from the corner of his eyes, thinking he had never known a white man to respond to the music as this man did, hearing it not as something just to tap a foot
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