Don't come early in the morning
Neither in the heat of the day
But come in the sweet cool of the
Evening and wash my sins away . . .
A whole series of memories started to well up, but I threw them off. There was no time for memory, for all its images were of times passed.
There had been only a few minutes from the time that I'd called in Brother Tarp about the letter and his leaving, but it seemed as though I'd plunged down a well of years. I looked calmly now at the writing which, for a moment, had shaken my total structure of certainty, and was glad that Brother Tarp had been there to be called rather than Clifton or some of the others before whom I would have been ashamed of my panic. Instead he'd left me soberly confident. Perhaps from the shock of seeming to see my grandfather looking through Tarp's eyes, perhaps through the calmness of his voice alone, or perhaps through his story and his link of chain, he had restored my perspective.
He's right, I thought; whoever sent the message is trying to confuse me; some enemy is trying to halt our progress by destroying my faith through touching upon my old southern distrust, our fear of white betrayal. It was as though he had learned of my experience with Bledsoe's letters and was trying to use that knowledge to destroy not only me but the whole Brotherhood. Yet that was impossible; no one knew that story who knew me now. It was simply an obscene coincidence. If only I could get my hands upon his stupid throat. Here in the Brotherhood was the one place in the country where we were free and given the greatest encouragement to use our abilities, and he was trying to destroy it! No, it wasn't me he was worrying about becoming too big, it was the Brotherhood. And becoming big was exactly what the Brotherhood wanted. Hadn't I just received orders to submit ideas for organizing more people? And "a white man's world" was just what the Brotherhood was against. We were dedicated to building a world of Brotherhood.
But who had sent it -- Ras the Exhorter? No, it wasn't like him. He was more direct and absolutely against any collaboration between blacks and whites. It was someone else, someone more insidious than Ras. But who, I wondered, forcing it below my consciousness as I turned to the tasks at hand.
The morning began with people asking my advice on how to secure relief; members coming in for instructions for small committee meetings being held in corners of the large hall; and I had just dismissed a woman seeking to free her husband, who had been jailed for beating her, when Brother Wrestrum entered the room. I returned his greeting and watched him ease into a chair, his eyes sweeping over my desk-with uneasiness. He seemed to possess some kind of authority in the Brotherhood, but his exact function was unclear. He was, I felt, something of a meddler.
And hardly had he settled himself when he stared at my desk, saying, "What you got there, Brother?" and pointed toward a pile of my papers.
I leaned slowly back in my chair, looking him in the eye. "That's my work," I said coldly, determined to stop any interference from the start.
"But I mean that," he said, pointing, his eyes beginning to blaze, "that there."
"It's work," I said, "all my work."
"Is that too?" he said, pointing to Brother Tarp's leg link.
"That's just a personal present, Brother," I said. "What could I do for you?"
"That ain't what I asked you, Brother. What is it?"
I picked up the link and held it toward him, the metal oily and strangely skinlike now with the slanting sun entering the window. "Would you care to examine it, Brother? One of our members wore it nineteen years on the chain gang."
"Hell, no!" He recoiled. "I mean, no, thank you. In fact, Brother, I don't think we ought to have such things around!"
"You think so," I said. "And just why?"
"Because I don't think we ought to dramatize our differences."
"I'm not dramatizing anything, it's my personal property that happens to be lying on my desk."
"But people can see it!"
"That's true," I said. "But I think it's a good reminder of what our movement is fighting against."
"No, suh!" he said, shaking his head, "no, suh! That's the worse kind of thing for Brotherhood -- because we want to make folks think of the things we have in common. That's what makes for Brotherhood. We have to change this way we have of always talking about how different we are. In the Brotherhood we are all brothers."
I was amused. He was obviously disturbed by something deeper than a need to forget differences. Fear was in his eyes. "I never thought of it in just that way, Brother," I said, dangling the iron between my finger and thumb.
"But you want to think about it," he said. "We have to discipline ourselves. Things that don't make for Brotherhood have to be rooted out. We have enemies, you know. I watch everything I do and say so as to be sure that I don't upset the Brotherhood -- 'cause this is a wonderful movement, Brother, and we have to keep it that way. We have to watch ourselves, Brother. You know what I mean? Too often we're liable to forget that this is something that's a privilege to belong to. We're liable to say things that don't do nothing but make for more misunderstanding."
What's driving him, I thought, what's all this to do with me? Could he have sent me the note? Dropping the iron I fished the anonymous note from beneath the pile and held it by a corner, so that the slanting sun shone through the page and outlined the scrawling letters. I watched him intently. He was leaning upon the desk now, looking at the page but with no recognition in his eyes. I dropped the page upon the chain, more disappointed than relieved.
"Between you and me, Brother," he said, "there are those amongst us who don't really believe in Brotherhood."
"Oh?"
"You damn right they don't! They're just in it to use it for their own ends. Some call you Brother to your face and the minute you turn your back, you're a black son of a bitch! You got to watch 'em."
"I haven't encountered any of that, Brother," I said.
"You will. There's lots of poison around. Some don't want to shake your hand and some don't like the idea of seeing too much of you; but goddam it, in the Brotherhood they gotta!"
I looked at him. It had never occurred to me that the Brotherhood could force anyone to shake my hand, and that he found satisfaction that it could was both shocking and distasteful.
Suddenly he laughed. "Yes, dammit, they gotta! Me, I don't let 'em get away with nothing. If they going to be brothers let 'em be brothers! Oh, but I'm fair," he said, his face suddenly self-righteous. "I'm fair. I ask myself every day, 'What are you doing against Brotherhood?' and when I find it, I root it out, I burn it out like a man cauterizing a mad-dog bite. This business of being a brother is a full-time job. You have to be pure in heart, and you have to be disciplined in body and mind. Brother, you understand what I mean?"
"Yes, I think I do," I said. "Some folks feel that way about their religion."
"Religion?" He blinked his eyes. "Folks like me and you is full of distrust," he said. "We been corrupted 'til it's hard for some of us to believe in Brotherhood. And some even want revenge! That's what I'm talking about. We have to root it out! We have to learn to trust our other brothers. After all, didn't they start the Brotherhood? Didn't they come and stretch out their hand to us black men and say, 'We want y'all for our brothers?' Didn't they do it? Didn't they, now? Didn't they set out to organize us, and help fight our battle and all like that? Sho they did, and we have to remember it twenty-four hours a day. Brotherhood. That's the word we got to keep right in front of our eyes every second. Now this brings me to why I come to see you, Brother."
He sat back, his huge hands grasping his knees. "I got a plan I want to talk over with you."
"What is it, Brother?" I said.
"Well, it's like this. I think we ought to have some way of showing what we are. We ought to have some banners and things like that. Specially for us black brothers."
"I see," I said, becoming interested. "But why do you think this is important?"
" 'Cause it helps the Brotherhood, that's why. First, if you remember, when you watch our people when there's a parade or a funeral, or a dance or anything like that, they always have some kind of flags and banners even if they don't mean anything. It kind of makes the occasion seem more important like. It makes people stop look and listen. 'What's coming off here?' But you know and I know that they ain't none of 'em got no true flag -- except maybe Ras the Exhorter, and he claims he's Ethiopian or African. But none of us got no true flag 'cause that flag don't really belong to us. They want a true flag, one that's as much theirs as anybody else's. You know what I mean?"
"Yes, I think I do," I said, remembering that there was always that sense in me of being apart when the flag went by. It had been a reminder, until I'd found the Brotherhood, that my star was not yet there . . .
"Sure, you know," Brother Wrestrum said. "Everybody wants a flag. We need a flag that stands for Brotherhood, and we need a sign we can wear."
"A sign?"
"You know, a pin or a button."
"You mean an emblem?"
"That's it! Something we can wear, a pin or something like that. So that when a Brother meets a Brother they can know it. That way that thing what happened to Brother Tod Clifton wouldn't have happened . . ."
"What wouldn't have happened?"
He sat back. "Don't you know about it?"