The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers [31]
They did not say anything else. Portia left the supper to cook on the stove and sat silently with her long hands dropping down limp between her knees. Doctor Copeland’s head rested on his chest as though he slept. But he was not sleeping; now and then a nervous tremor would pass over his face. Then he would breathe deeply and compose his face again. Smells of the supper began to fill the stifling room. In the quietness the clock on top of the cupboard sounded very loud, and because of what they had just said to each other the monotonous ticking was like the word ‘children, children,’ said over and over.
He was always meeting one of them--crawling naked on a floor or engaged in a game of marbles or even on a dark street with his arms around a girl. Benedict Copeland, the boys were all called. But for the girls there were such names as Benny Mae or Madyben or Benedine Madine. He had counted one day, and there were more than a dozen named for him.
But all his life he had told and explained and exhorted. You cannot do this, he would say. There are all reasons why this sixth or fifth or ninth child cannot be, he would tell them. It is not more children we need but more chances for the ones already on the earth. Eugenic Parenthood for the Negro Race was what he would exhort them to. He would tell them in simple words, always the same way, and with the years it came to be a sort of angry poem which he had always known by heart.
He studied and knew the development of any new theory. And from his own pocket he would distribute the devices to his patients himself. He was by far the first doctor in the town to even think of such. And he would give and explain and give and tell them. And then deliver maybe two score times a week. Madyben and Benny Mae.
That was only one point. Only one.
All of his life he knew that there was a reason for his working.
He always knew that he was meant to teach his people. All day he would go with his bag from house to house and on all things he would talk to them. After the long day a heavy tiredness would come in him. But in the evening when he opened the front gate the tiredness would go away. There were Hamilton and Karl Marx and Portia and little William. There was Daisy, too.
Portia took the lid from the pan on the stove and stirred the collards with a fork. ‘Father--’ she said after a while.
Doctor Copeland cleared his throat and spat into a handkerchief. His voice was bitter and rough. ‘Yes?’
‘Less us quit this here quarreling with each other.’
‘We were not quarreling,’ said Doctor Copeland.
‘It don’t take words to make a quarrel,’ Portia said. ‘It look to me like us is always arguing even when we sitting perfectly quiet like this. It just this here feeling I haves. I tell you the truth--ever time I come to see you it mighty near wears me out. So less us try not to quarrel in any way no more.’
‘It is certainly not my wish to quarrel. I am sorry if you have that feeling, Daughter.’
She poured out coffee and handed one cup unsweetened to her father. In her own portion she put several spoons of sugar. ‘I getting hungry and this will taste good to us. Drink your coffee while I tell you something which happened to us a piece back. Now that it all over it seem a little bit funny, but we got plenty reason not to laugh too hard.’
‘Go ahead,’ said Doctor Copeland.
‘Well--sometime back a real fine-looking, dressed-up colored man come in town here. He called hisself Mr. B. F. Mason and said he come from Washington, D. C. Ever day he would walk up and down the street with a walking-cane and a pretty colored shirt on. Then at night he would go to the Society Cafe. He eaten finer than any man in this town. Ever night he would order hisself a bottle of gin and two pork chops for his supper. He always had a smile for everybody and was always bowing around to the girls and holding a door open for you to come in or go out For about a week he made hisself mighty pleasant wherever he were. Peoples begun to ask questions and wonder about this rich Mr. B. F. Mason. Then pretty soon, after he acquaints hisself, he begun to settle down to business.