Invisible man - Ralph Ellison [143]
"That's right," he said. "When things get rough it kind of helps to know you got support --" His voice broke off and he seemed to stare down at me, although he faced me at eye level acrosis the desk.
"What is it, Brother Tarp?"
"You from down South, ain't you, son?"
"Yes," I said.
He turned in his chair, sliding one hand into his pocket as he rested his chin upon the other. "I don't really have the words to say what just come into my head, son. You see, I was down there for a long time before I come up here, and when I did come up they was after me. What I mean is, I had to escape, I had to come a-running."
"I guess I did too, in a way," I said.
"You mean they were after you too?"
"Not really, Brother Tarp, I just feel that way."
"Well this ain't exactly the same thing," he said. "You notice this limp I got?"
"Yes."
"Well, I wasn't always lame, and I'm not really now 'cause the doctors can't find anything wrong with that leg. They say it's sound as a piece of steel. What I mean is I got this limp from dragging a chain."
I couldn't see it in his face or hear it in his speech, yet I knew he was neither lying nor trying to shock me. I shook my head.
"Sure," he said. "Nobody knows that about me, they just think I got rheumatism. But it was that chain and after nineteen years I haven't been able to stop dragging my leg."
"Nineteen years!"
"Nineteen years, six months and two days. And what I did wasn't much; that is, it wasn't much when I did it. But after all that time it changed into something else and it seemed to be as bad as they said it was. All that time made it bad. I paid for it with everything I had but my life. I lost my wife and my boys and my piece of land. So what started out as an argument between a couple of men turned out to be a crime worth nineteen years of my life."
"What on earth did you do, Brother Tarp?"
"I said no to a man who wanted to take something from me; that's what it cost me for saying no and even now the debt ain't fully paid and will never be paid in their terms."
A pain throbbed in my throat and I felt a kind of numb despair. Nineteen years! And here he was talking quietly to me and this no doubt the first time he'd tried to tell anyone about it. But why me, I thought, why pick me?
"I said no," he said. "I said hell, no! And I kept saying no until I broke the chain and left."
"But how?"
"They let me get close to the dogs once in a while, that's how. I made friends with them dogs and I waited. Down there you really learn how to wait. I waited nineteen years and then one morning when the river was flooding I left. They thought I was one of them who got drowned when the levee broke, but I done broke the chain and gone. I was standing in the mud holding a long-handled shovel and I asked myself, Tarp, can you make it? And inside me I said yes; all that water and mud and rain said yes, and I took off."
Suddenly he gave a laugh so gay it startled me.
"I'm tellin' it better'n I ever thought I could," he said, fishing in his pocket and removing something that looked like an oilskin tobacco pouch, from which he removed an object wrapped in a handkerchief.
"I've been looking for freedom ever since, son. And sometimes I've done all right. Up to these here hard times I did very well, considering that I'm a man whose health is not too good. But even when times were best for me I remembered. Because I didn't want to forget those nineteen years I just kind of held on to this as a keepsake and a reminder."
He was unwrapping the object now and I watched his old man's hands.
"I'd like to pass it on to you, son. There," he said, handing it to me. "Funny thing to give somebody, but I think it's got a heap of signifying wrapped up in it and it might help you remember what we're really fighting against. I don't think of it in terms of but two words, yes and no; but it signifies a heap more . . ."
I saw him place his hand on the desk. "Brother," he said, calling me "Brother" for the first time, "I want you to take it. I guess it's a kind of luck piece. Anyway, it's the one I filed to get away."