Invisible man - Ralph Ellison [134]
"He sounds like a good man to have around," I said.
"You'll see," he said and lapsed into a silence that lasted until we reached my door.
THE committee was assembled in the hall with the high Gothic ceiling when I arrived, sitting in folding chairs around two small tables pushed together to form a unit.
"Well," Brother Jack said, "you are on time. Very good, we favor precision in our leaders."
"Brother, I shall always try to be on time," I said.
"Here he is, Brothers and Sisters," he said, "your new spokesman. Now to begin. Are we all present?"
"All except Brother Tod Clifton," someone said.
His red head jerked with surprise. "So?"
"He'll be here," a young brother said. "We were working until three this morning."
"Still, he should be on time -- Very well," Brother Jack said, taking out a watch, "let us begin. I have only a little time here, but a little time is all that is needed. You all know the events of the recent period, and the role our new brother has played in them. Briefly, you are here to see that it isn't wasted. We must achieve two things: We must plan methods of increasing the effectiveness of our agitation, and we must organize the energy that has already been released. This calls for a rapid increase of membership. The people are fully aroused; if we fail to lead them into action, they will become passive, or they will become cynical. Thus it is necessary that we strike immediately and strike hard!
"For this purpose," he said, nodding toward me, "our brother has been appointed district spokesman. You are to give him your loyal support and regard him as the new instrument of the committee's authority . . ."
I heard the slight applause splatter up -- only to halt with the opening of the door, and I looked down past the rows of chairs to where a hatless young man about my own age was coming into the hall. He wore a heavy sweater and slacks, and as the others looked up I heard the quick intake of a woman's pleasurable sigh. Then the young man was moving with an easy Negro stride out of the shadow into the light, and I saw that he was very black and very handsome, and as he advanced mid-distance into the room, that he possessed the chiseled, black-marble features sometimes found on statues in northern museums and alive in southern towns in which the white offspring of house children and the black offspring of yard children bear names, features and character traits as identical as the rifling of bullets fired from a common barrel. And now close up, leaning tall and relaxed, his arms outstretched stiffly upon the table, I saw the broad, taut span of his knuckles upon the dark grain of the wood, the muscular, sweatered arms, the curving line of the chest rising to the easy pulsing of his throat, to the square, smooth chin, and saw a small X-shaped patch of adhesive upon the subtly blended, velvet-over-stone, granite-over-bone, Afro-Anglo-Saxon contour of his cheek.
He leaned there, looking at us all with a remote aloofness in which I sensed an unstated questioning beneath a friendly charm. Sensing a possible rival, I watched him warily, wondering who he was.
"Ah so, Brother Tod Clifton is late," Brother Jack said. "Our leader of the youth is late. Why is this?"
The young man pointed to his cheek and smiled. "I had to see the doctor," he said.
"What is this?" Brother Jack said, looking at the cross of adhesive on the black skin.
"Just a little encounter with the nationalists. With Ras the Exhorter's boys," Brother Clifton said. And I heard a gasp from one of the women who gazed at him with shining, compassionate eyes.
Brother Jack gave me a quick look. "Brother, you have heard of Ras? He is the wild man who calls himself a black nationalist."
"I don't recall so," I said.
"You'll hear of him soon enough. Sit down, Brother Clifton; sit down. You must be careful. You are valuable to the organization, you must not take chances."
"This was unavoidable," the young man said.
"Just the same," Brother Jack said, returning to the discussion with a call for ideas.
"Brother, are we still to fight against evictions?" I said.