Only the Strong (31 page)

Shaking her head, she went back to the counter. The clerk, a heavy-chested girl wearing Afro puffs, chewed her gum like she was mad at it. “You're a freshman, huh?”

“Yeah,” Charlotte replied. “That obvious?”

The girl smiled. “Well, I saw you playing Percy Patrol.”

“Playing what?”

“Percy Patrol. It's fun on a slow night.”

“What exactly is it?”

“You go around the library trying to find a book that doesn't have his name in it. Last year a fraternity sent its pledges on patrol. It took them until closing time.”

“You mean to say he's read every book in here?”

“No, but damn near.”

“How do you know he's not just signing his name?”

The clerk finished stamping due dates in Charlotte's books. She slid the stack toward her. “Have you ever talked to him? Asked him a question? He remembers everything he sees, maybe everything he hears.”

Charlotte sighed. “Why would anyone want to do that?”

“What makes you think he wants to? Can you imagine carrying all that around in your head?”

“Poor baby.”

“Yeah, be careful. He gets that a lot. If you're looking for him, he'll be with the Soldiers.”

In commemoration of the River Valley founders, a life-size sculpture of three black Union soldiers stood in a plaza surrounded by a circle of benches. At one of them, Percy sat with his eyes closed.

Charlotte waited several long moments in hopes he would stir or open his eyes. No luck. Finally, gathering her wits, she approached.

“Excuse me,” she said.

He opened his eyes, saw her, and pretended to be alarmed. “Uh-oh, here comes Trouble.”

“Hardly. Unless you've done something wrong.”

“If I had, I sure wouldn't tell you. For all I know, you could be FBI. Or worse: an FBI informant. COINTELPRO, don'tcha know.”

“Right, I'm a fed. What are you doing?”

“If you must know, I'm dreaming of boats.”

“Boats? Here on the plaza.”

“Closest thing to water we got.”

“Are you a music major?”

“Nope.”

“How do you know all those songs?”

He chuckled. “Two songs and suddenly I know them all.”

“Three,” Charlotte corrected. “It was three. And you obviously knew more but Dr. Harrison made you quit.”

He shrugged. “Talk about a killjoy. Do you mean how do I know all those songs or how do I know so much about so many things?”

“I don't know that you know all that. I'm talking about the songs.”

“Then this is one case in which my reputation has failed to precede me. It would take far less time to ask me what I don't know than to ask me how I know what I know.”

“Okay, what don't you know?”

“For starters, your name.”

Shortly after Artinces had taken Charlotte under her wing, she began to impress upon her young protégée the centrality in medicine of what she called the Hippocratic principle. The essence of it, according to Artinces, was that physicians must do good, and must do no harm. Charlotte found that the principle also served as a useful gauge when evaluating potential boyfriends. For her the bottom line became,
Will this boy do me harm
? The less likely he was to hurt her, she reasoned, the more likely he was to do good. The better the boy, the better his chances. Of the boys who approached her in high school, Ed Jones's deep-rooted, unassailable kindness elevated him above his peers, and she ultimately granted him full access to her charms. She believed she detected similar qualities in Percy Conway.

“I should walk you home, lest you catch the vapors,” he said to her that first night, after she'd cornered him at the Soldiers. In his
language and mannerisms, she found no hint of the forced swagger that most young men hid behind. In its place, an unabashed gentleness flourished, a willingness to regard the world and himself with a healthy sense of humor. His conversation unfolded in a rough music of complete paragraphs and compact, ornate nuggets as he strolled with her books tucked under his arm. Every breath and motion suggested to her a celebration of the life of the mind.

“You talk funny,” she said. “I mean, a little bit.”

“I won't tell you how many times I've heard that.”

“I like it, though. It's nice.”

“I'm glad someone thinks so, especially someone as lovely as you. However, I have to confess an abiding fear of our fair state's statutory laws. Therefore, although my intentions are completely honorable, I must ask, exactly how old are you?”

“I'm 18.”

“Aha. Sounds like trouble.”

“I may be young and I might even be trouble. But I'm not illegal. I'm not even a vir—”

“
Whoa
. Cease and desist. A few facts at a time, please. That's so much better, don't you think? Speaking for myself, once I know a thing it's stuck with me.”

“Okay, then, how old are you?”

“I'm 23.”

Charlotte eyed him carefully. “Really?”

“Boyish demeanor aside, don't the gray temples give me away?”

Charlotte laughed. His hair was completely brown. “How come you're so old? Why haven't you graduated?”

“I took a couple years off to take care of a loved one.”

As the semester unfolded, they each became what the other needed. For her, a wise guide to the rudiments of college life; for him, an affectionate witness who could listen tirelessly and without judgment. While other coeds had proved themselves unequal to the task, Charlotte found joy in her service. She stood in the windy plaza while he performed monologues for an audience of one. She was certain that his luminous speech made the bronze faces of the Union soldiers glow with enlightenment. She was convinced that everyone, even inanimate objects, could detect Percy's
incandescence; she just appreciated it more. His intelligence burned so brightly that he gave off sparks.

That first nighttime stroll went way too quickly for Charlotte. She'd hardly taken a breath between the Soldiers and Taplin Hall, an all-freshman girls' dorm that horny young male students referred to as the Virgin Vault. At a lamppost adjacent to the entrance, he paused and handed over her books.

“What's your major?” he asked.

“Pre-med. And you?”

“Philosophy and religion.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

“Are you trying to find something to believe in?”

“Not exactly,” he replied. “I believe that I don't believe. I'm at peace with that. But I am interested to find out what makes others believe. Stepping out on faith, I think they call it.”

Charlotte scratched the side of her nose. “So you read a lot of books, the Bible and other books like it, and you think that will tell you? Why not just ask people?”

“The reading's for background. In grad school, I'll do real fieldwork, like Du Bois. When he did
The Philadelphia Negro
, he knocked on dozens of doors. Can you imagine that?”

“Good thing he did that in Philly,” Charlotte said with a smile. “If he'd done that in my hometown, somebody would've gone upside his head.”

Without warning, Percy swooped in on her, gently cupping her head in his hands. He pressed his lips against hers, then pulled away. “Power to the people!” he said.

“You're crazy,” she said, grinning.

He whirled around the lamppost, a brown Gene Kelly revving up for a song. “Ah,” he said, “crazy like Mamie Smith.”

Students crossing the plaza during the fall semester, swaddled against the cold and exhaling fat plumes of steam, often saw the two of them engaged in passionate discussions, trading arguments as if the fate of the world hung in the balance.

“We don't have the weapons,” Percy would say with a sigh. “We don't have the resources, we don't have the
wherewithal
. It takes
all that to overcome systematic oppression. And all that talk of revolution doesn't sufficiently address our complicity in our own mistreatment. For Du Bois, this was an unavoidable question: whether or nor the slavery and degradation of Negroes in America has not been unnecessarily prolonged by the submission to evil. We put up with it, in other words.”

“So we're all Uncle Toms,” Charlotte would offer in return, prompting Percy to shake his head.

“No, no, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying let's put aside all the bluster about offing whitey and face the fact that our real gift is endurance. It's the only thing we have real confidence in. We pray without ceasing, sister, that slow and steady will one day win the race.”

By October, passersby likely would have missed them hunkered down in a dimly lit corner of the chapel, with little beside body heat and rhetoric to keep them warm. Percy would be standing, gesturing dramatically, or pacing with his hands deep in his pockets. Charlotte would be sitting comfortably (as comfortably as possible, that is) on a blanket, wrapped up in her oversize men's coat and wondering when Percy would pause in his delivery and lean in for a kiss.

“Life is solitary, nasty, brutish, and short,” he'd exclaim. “Hobbes hit it on the head, didn't he? He was no James Brown but he wasn't half bad.”

Charlotte would toss him an exaggerated come-hither look. “Is that how you make a move on a woman? You just keep quoting philosophers? Funny.”

“Maybe,” he'd say, finally leaning closer. “But you know what's funnier? You keep listening.”

Finally, acting on an anonymous tip, the maintenance man got wise to their makeshift camp in the chapel and chased them out. They ran, puffing and giggling until they collapsed at the feet of the Soldiers. They shared shots of cocoa from Percy's battered aluminum thermos. Savoring the heat rising from the thermos cap in her cupped hands, Charlotte asked him why he chose River Valley.

“I'm a legacy, bound by blood. You're looking at the son of a bricklayer who taught his craft right here on this venerable campus.
The Conways have gone from tradesman to aspiring philosopher in a single generation. I'm telling you, the Talented Tenth's got nothing on us.”

Charlotte sighed, watching the steam vanish into the frigid air. “That's way more than I can claim,” she said.

“Aw, don't be so hard on your people. No doubt you're familiar with the spirit of the age. How does the song go? Oh, yes, ‘We shall overcome.' Any and all obstacles, including humble origins. Greek societies, Black and Tans, colored aristocracies—all exposed as corrupt traditions, the blueblood perversions of a bygone age. If straw can be made into bricks, then men and women, no matter how lowly, can be molded into models of purpose and accomplishment. Just don't call us New Negroes.”

Charlotte looked at the ground, her jaw clenched. He lowered himself beside her. “I'm sorry,” he said. “Sometimes I don't know when to stop.” He put his arm around her and waited.

“I don't know my father,” she said. “Mother either. Somebody left me on a doorstep.”

“Who? How?”

She shook her head. “Your guess is as good as mine. They put me in different foster houses. I refuse to call them homes. Sometimes I was an excuse for a check; sometimes the man of the house had eyes on me. If I fought or ran away, they put me down as a troublemaker. Nobody wants someone like that sharing a room with their
real
children, disturbing their peace. I got too big, too old. Everybody wanted babies. I lived at a children's home until Dr. Noel took me in.”

They sat in silence. The cocoa cooled and Charlotte's fingers grew numb inside her gloves.

“Do you ever think about finding them?”

“I used to. Not anymore.”

“If you did find them, what would you say?”

“I'd tell them that I wasn't looking for anything, especially love. I'd tell them it's too late for that. I'd just want to know who they were. Why they gave me up.”

“I couldn't imagine that.”

Charlotte shifted her hips and looked him in the eye. “Imagine what? Not knowing your people?”

“No. Giving you up.”

C
HARLOTTE DISCOVERED THAT
being unable to
imagine
giving her up was not the same as being unable to actually cut her loose. The campus grapevine told her that Percy devoted the fall semester of every year to seducing some starry-eyed freshman with his amazing mind and golden tongue. The speeches he'd given Charlotte, the grapevine said, he had most certainly given before. The ultimate result was always the same. Percy would get in the wind while the smitten girl sobbed all the way to her sophomore year.

Charlotte knew that wasn't the complete picture. Percy delighted in her, but with a genial affection that fell short of devotion. He could take her or leave her, and some days he left her. He'd slink in quietly to Music Appreciation after Dr. Harrison's lecture had already begun, and race out without so much as a glance in Charlotte's direction. She felt him go without turning around, sensed him sprinting feverishly down the hall in a headlong rush to who knows where.