The liars! The fiends! “White civilization”! Paugh! Black and brown and yellow hands had built it! The white fed like carrion on the rotting flesh of the darker peoples! And called their toil their own! And burned those on whose bodies their vile civilization was built!
Bob had been right! Bob had been a man! He’d fought and died like a man! He, Kenneth, with all his professed and vaunted wisdom, was the coward! He cursed himself! Building a fool’s paradise! A house of cards! To hell with everything! What was life worth anyway? Why not end it all in one glorious orgy of killing?
In his agonized fulmination against the whites and in his vow of vengeance on those who had dealt him so cruel and heart-sickening a blow, Kenneth forgot those who had been and were true friends of the black man—who had suffered and died that he might be free. He forgot those who, though few in number and largely inarticulate, were fighting for the Negro even in the South. Kenneth’s grief, however, was too deep and the blow too crushing for him to think of these in his hour of despair.
At length his raging subsided a little. His mother was pleading with him with a fervour he had never believed she possessed. Snatches of her words penetrated his mind.
“… and who’ll protect Mamie and me? … all alone … you’re all we’ve got! … need you … need you now as never before … mustn’t leave us now … mustn’t leave …”
He sank to the floor exhausted by the fierceness of his rage. A feeble cry came from above stairs. “It’s Mamie!” his mother whispered, frightened. She left him lying there to rush to her other child. Before she left she made Kenneth promise he wouldn’t go out before she returned. He lay on the floor as in a stupor. It was his Gethsemane. He felt as though some giant hand was twisting his very soul until it bled. He thought of the hours Mamie had lain in the field after the fiends had accomplished their foul purpose on her. Bleeding, torn, rayished! Mamie, always tender, so unselfish, so unassuming—God, why hadn’t he thought more of her and been more considerate of her? No, he’d been so wrapped up in his own happiness and future he’d never given her much attention or thought. Why hadn’t he? Why had he been so selfish? How could he make up to her for all his remissness of the past?
That brought to his mind what his mother had said. They did need him now! More than ever before! How could he have started on his rampage of revenge had his mother not held him? Where and on whom would he have begun?
But wasn’t this cowardice not to exact some kind of revenge? He hated himself at the mere thought of cowardice at this time. Good God, he had had enough of that all along! Wouldn’t Bob in death curse him if he failed now to play the man? Or wouldn’t it take more courage to live? The thought comforted him.
As though the sounds were worlds away, he heard his mother moving in the room above as she ministered to Mamie’s wants. He heard the noises of the street. Miles away a dog barked. Nearer a rooster crowed. He thought of a sermon Reverend Wilson had preached the Sunday before. Of the Christ in his hour of betrayal. Of Peter denying his Lord. And the cock crowing thrice. Wasn’t he denying his duty—his family—his conscience—his all? Back again over the same ground he had already travelled so thoroughly, his mind went. …
For hours he lay there. The noises of the street ceased. He heard no more his mother above. Exhausted with the ordeal through which she had passed, she had probably fallen asleep. … And yet he did not move. He heard the clock in the hall strike eleven. … He counted the strokes, marvelling the while that time was yet measured in hours and minutes and days. … His soul was even as the body of a woman in travail. …