Читаем Ginny Gall полностью

He was a short man, slim, maybe hiding a secret flaw or vice he wanted no one to find out about. Maybe he owed money, maybe he had recently hurt somebody he cared for. Soon he’d be naked in a room he’d never visited, might never have thought of. Washed and cleaned of his last bit of earthly dirt and dust. Mr. Oliver always left just a little place of unwashed skin so the deceased could be recognized, he said, by the dust that awaited him.

This was not true but he wrote it anyway.

He stopped writing. A little boy in blue shorts stared at him from the street. Delvin waved — the boy continued staring at him — and went back to his letter.

I’ve felt for the last hour or so that somebody’s following me. It’s an odd feeling, but familiar, and that’s odd. When I saw the man fall down — when I saw he was dead — I thought What does it matter what you do? I hate thinking that. It’s got to matter. I felt so frustrated. It was like the words were written in the dirt and I wanted to rub them out. But they were in my head. I want to rub them out of there but I can’t. What does it matter? Aren’t we supposed to. .

He stopped. No one out in the street looked suspicious; maybe his tracker had ducked into a house or store. Or maybe it was a different kind of follower. What kind was that?

I’m on my way back to Chattanooga, he wrote.

I think of you off at school. It’s hard to picture. Big buildings I guess. I saw a college once — on top of a mountain, but it was a blacksmith’s college. They had fires in caves. Where was that? I studied with Mr. Oliver at home. We read all of Shakespeare and many of the classics like Sir Walter Scott and those boys. Fielding and Tobias Smollett, who wrote a very funny book. Englishmen. Except for Othello they didn’t have any colored folks over there. Daniel Defoe. He wrote a scary book about the black plague. It had nothing to do with negro folk.

He was rambling, passing time, making up his life. Out in the street a small man with a shiny black head stood looking at him. He was fanning himself with a large yellow straw hat. When he saw Delvin notice him he started toward him. He walked straight up the little two-track church driveway, came up to Delvin and stuck out his hand.

“What’s that?” Delvin said. He shook the man’s small puffy hand.

“My name is Ornelio P. Rome,” the man said in a high, slightly hollow voice with a little stuttery wheeze toward the end (pleasant for all that). His shaved head, the color of the dark shine on a crystal ball, gleamed.

“Did the professor send you?” Delvin asked, suddenly sure that was it.

“Sho nuff he did.”

Mr. Rome put his hat back on. It dwarfed his face and made him look like a wise child. Delvin just caught himself from laughing. Mr. Rome was wearing a stained and rumpled slightly shiny green linen suit.

Raring back into a squared-off stance, chest thrust forward so his flesh pressed against the buttons of his dirty ruffled sky-blue shirt, with his hands on his hips, the little man in a cracked approximation of the professor’s voice said, “Professor Carmel has this to say to you: ‘Continue on, my boy. Do not be daunted and do not feel as if you have to catch up to me. Life takes us in the direction we are meant to go. We do not know who we may meet, how long we may travel along side by side, or when we may part. If you and I have come to a parting, then fare thee well, my boy, godspeed and thanks for your company.’”