Red and Black

by Grace S. Richmond

He had guessed right. Was it a guess? As he had walked at his best speed out of the town and over the highway toward the road upon which Red had taken him that winter night, months ago, he had been saying over and over, “Don’t let me be wrong, Lord—you know I’ve got to find him!” He was remembering something Red had said when he first led him up the trail and out upon the rocky little plateau: “This is a place I’ve never brought anybody to—not even my wife, as it happens—and probably wouldn’t be bringing you if we had time to go farther. I come here sometimes—to thrash things out, or get rid of my ugly temper. The place is littered with my chips.”

He recalled answering, “All right, Doctor. I won’t be looking for the chips.” But he had thoroughly appreciated being brought to the spot at all, recognizing it for one of those intimate places in a man’s experience which he keeps very much to himself. Where, now, would Red be so likely to go if he had something still to “thrash out,” after the two days of storm following the shock of Doctor Buller’s revelation?

At the bottom of the hill, well-hidden in a thicket of trees, Black came upon the car—and suddenly slowed his pace. He was close upon Red, then, and about to thrust himself in where he was pretty sure not to be wanted—at first. He meant to make himself wanted, if he knew how. Did he know how? Ah, that was where he must have help. It was going to take more than human wisdom, thus to try to deal with the sore heart, the baffled spirit, of the man who couldn’t have his own way at what doubtless seemed to him the greatest moment of his life. Black stopped short, close to a great oak, and put up his arm against it, and hid his face in his arm, and asked God mightily that in this hour He would use His servant’s personality as He would use a tool in His workshop, and show him how to come as close and touch as gently—and withal as healingly—as it might be possible for human personality to do when backed and reinforced by the Divine. A pretty big request? Yes, but the need was big. And Black didn’t put it in any such exalted phrasing—remember that. What he said was just this: “Please let me help. I must help, for he needs me—and I don’t know how. But You do—and You can show me.”

Then, after a minute, he went on, springing up the trail, which was plain enough now, even in the fading daylight, to be easily followed. As he reached the top he came in sight of Red through the trees, and stopped short, not so much to regain his breath as because the sight of the man he had come to find made his heart turn over in sympathy, and for that instant he couldn’t go on.

Yet Red was in no dramatic attitude of despair. To the casual eye he would have looked as normal as man could look. He sat upon a log—one of two, facing each other, with a pile of blackened sticks and ashes between, reminiscent of past campfires. There had been no fire there recently—no spark lingered to tell the tale of warmth and light and comradeship that may be found in a fire. And what Red was doing was merely whittling a stick. Surely no tragedy was here, or fear of one.... The thing that told the tale, though, unmistakably, to Black’s sharpened eyes, was this: that the ground was littered deep, all about Red’s feet, with the fresh whittlings of many sticks. “Chips,” indeed! Chips out of his very life, Black knew they were; hewed away ruthlessly, with no regard as to what was left behind in the cutting, or what was made thereof.

He could not stand and look on, unobserved, of course. So he came on, striding ahead; and when Red at last looked up it was to see Black advancing confidently, as a friend comes to join a friend. Red stared across the space; his eyes looked dazed, and a little bloodshot.

“I’ve come,” said Black, simply, “because, Red, I thought you needed me. Maybe you don’t want me, but I think you need me, and I’m hoping you won’t send me away. I don’t think I’ll go if you do.”

Red’s odd, almost unseeing gaze returned to the stick in his hand. He cut away two or three more big chunks from it, leaving it an unsightly remnant; then flung it away, to join the other jagged remnants upon the ground.

“Yes,” he said, in a hoarse voice quite unlike his own, “I guess maybe I do.”

Black’s heart leaped. He had not expected a reception like this. To be kicked out—metaphorically—or to be ungraciously permitted to remain—that was the best he could have hoped for. He sat down upon the other log, took off his hat and ran his hand through the locks on his moist brow; he was both warm and tired, but he was not in the least conscious of either fact. All he knew or cared for was that he had found his man—and had his chance at last! And now that he had it—the chance he had so long wanted, to make this man he loved his friend forever—he was not thinking of that part of his wish at all. He had got beyond that; all he wanted now was to see him through his trouble, though it might make him less his friend than ever.