Go Tell It on the Mountain Read Online Free PDF

irreverent voices. And he wanted to be one of them, playing in the streets, unfrightened, moving with such grace and power, but he knew this could not be. Yet, if he could not play their games, he could do something they could not do; he was able, as one of his teachers said, to think. But this brought him little in the way of consolation, for today he was terrified of his thoughts. He wanted to be with these boys in the street, heedless and thoughtless, wearing out his treacherous and bewildering body.
    But now it was eleven o’clock, and in two hours his father would be home. And then they might eat, and then his father would lead them in prayer, and then he would give them a Bible lesson. By and by it would be evening and he would go to clean the church, and remain for tarry service. Suddenly, sitting at the window, and with a violence unprecedented, there arose in John a flood of fury and tears, and he bowed his head, fists clenched against the windowpane, crying, with teeth on edge: “What shall I do? What shall I do?”
    Then his mother called him; and he remembered that she was in the kitchen washing clothes and probably had something for him to do. He rose sullenly and walked into the kitchen. She stood over the washtub, her arms wet and soapy to the elbows and sweat standing on her brow. Her apron, improvised from an old sheet, was wetwhere she had been leaning over the scrubbing-board. As he came in, she straightened, drying her hands on the edge of the apron.
    “You finish your work, John?” she asked.
    He said: “Yes’m,” and thought how oddly she looked at him; as though she were looking at someone else’s child.
    “That’s a good boy,” she said. She smiled a shy, strained smile. “You know you your mother’s right-hand man?”
    He said nothing, and he did not smile, but watched her, wondering to what task this preamble led.
    She turned away, passing one damp hand across her forehead, and went to the cupboard. Her back was to him, and he watched her while she took down a bright, figured vase, filled with flowers only on the most special occasions, and emptied the contents into her palm. He heard the chink of money, which meant that she was going to send him to the store. She put the vase back and turned to face him, her palm loosely folded before her.
    “I didn’t never ask you,” she said, “what you wanted for your birthday. But you take this, son, and go out and get yourself something you think you want.”
    And she opened his palm and put the money into it, warm and wet from her hand. In the moment that he felt the warm, smooth coins and her hand on his, John stared blindly at her face, so far above him. His heart broke and he wanted to put his head on her belly where the wet spot was, and cry. But he dropped his eyes and looked at his palm, at the small pile of coins.
    “It ain’t much there,” she said.
    “That’s all right.” Then he looked up, and she bent down and kissed him on the forehead.
    “You getting to be,” she said, putting her hand beneath his chin and holding his face away from her, “a right big boy. You going to be a mighty fine man, you know that? Your mama’s counting on you.”
    And he knew again that she was not saying everything she meant; in a kind of secret language she was telling him today something thathe must remember and understand tomorrow. He watched her face, his heart swollen with love for her and with an anguish, not yet his own, that he did not understand and that frightened him.
    “Yes, Ma,” he said, hoping that she would realize, despite his stammering tongue, the depth of his passion to please her.
    “I know,” she said, with a smile, releasing him and rising, “there’s a whole lot of things you don’t understand. But don’t you fret. The Lord’ll reveal to you in His own good time everything He wants you to know. You put your faith in the Lord, Johnny, and He’ll surely bring you out. Everything works together for good for them