"I'm interested in your college; I meant to step in there but—" He stopped talking at the sound of a car's engine in the street outside and leaned forward so that he could see out the front door, remaining there until the car ground into gear and moved away. When he dropped back onto the seat, Sam could see that there were fine beads of sweat in the lines of his forehead. He took a quick drink from his bottle.
"When you were at the bus station, you didn't happen to see a big cop with a big gut, red faced all the time?"
"Yes, I met him, — he talked to me when I got off the bus."
"The bastard!"
"Don't get worked up, Charles, — he is just a policeman doing his job."
"Just a----!" The young man spat a short, filthy word. "That's
Brinkley, — you must have heard of him, toughest man south of Bomb-ingham. He's going to be elected sheriff next fall, and he's already grand knight of the Klan, a real pillar of the community."
"Talking like that's not going to do you any good," Sam said mildly.
"That's what Uncle Tom said — and as I remember he was still a slave when he died. Someone has got to speak up, — you can't remain quiet forever."
"You talk like one of those Freedom Riders." Sam tried to look stern, but he was never very good at it.
"Well, I am, if you want to know the truth of it, but the ride ends right here. I'm going home. I'm scared and I'm not afraid to admit it. You people live in a jungle down here; I never realized how bad it could be until I came down. I've been working on the voters committee, and Brinkley got word of it and swore he was going to kill me or put me in jail for life. And you know what — I believe it. I'm leaving today, just waiting for the car to pick me up. I'm going back north where I belong."
"I understand you have your problems up there too…"
"Problems!" Charlie finished his beer and stood up. "I wouldn't even call them problems after what I've seen down here. It's no paradise iiK New York — but you stand a chance of living a bit longer.
Where I grew up in South Jamaica we had it rough, but we had our own house in a good neighborhood and — you take another beer?"
"No, one is enough for me thank you."
Charlie came back with a fresh beer and picked up where he had left off. "Maybe we're second-class citizens in the North — but at least we're citizens of some kind and can get some measure of happiness and fulfillment. Down here a man is a beast of burden, and that's all he is ever going to be — if he has the wrong color skin."
"I wouldn't say that; things get better all the time. My father was a field man, a son of a slave — and I'm a college teacher. That's progress of a sort."
"What sort?" Charlie pounded the table yet kept his voice in an angry whisper. "So one hundredth of one percent of the Negroes get a little education and pass it on at some backwater college. Look, I'm not running you down, — I know you do your best. But for every man like you there must be a thousand who are born and live and die in filthy poverty, year after year, without hope. Millions of people. Is that progress? And even yourself — are you sure you wouldn't be doing better if you were teaching in a decent university?"
"Not me," Sam laughed. "I'm just an ordinary teacher and I have enough trouble getting geometry and algebra across to my students without trying to explain topology or Boolean algebra or anything like that."
"What on earth is that Bool. . thing? I never heard of it."
"It's, well, an uninterpreted logical calculus, a special discipline. I warned you, — I'm not very good at explaining these things though I can work them out well enough on paper. That is my hobby, really, what some people call higher mathematics, and I know that if I were working at a big school I would have no time to devote to it."
"How do you know? Maybe they would have one of those big computers — wouldn't that help you?"
"Perhaps, of course, but I've worked out ways of getting around the need for one. It just takes a little more time, that's all."
"And how much time do you have left?" Charlie asked quietly, then was instantly sorry he had said it when he saw the older man lower his head without answering. "I take that back. I've got a big mouth. I'm sorry, but I get so angry. How do you know what you might have done if you had the training, the facilities…" He shut up, realizing he was getting in deeper every second.
There was only the murmur of distant traffic in the hot, dark silence, the faint sound of music from the radio behind the bar. The bartender stood, switched the radio off and opened the trap behind the bar to bring up another case of beer. From nearby the sound of the music continued like a remembered echo. Charlie realized that it was coming from the cigar box on the table before them.
"Do you have a radio in that?" he asked, happy to change the subject.
"Yes — well, really no, though there is an RF stage."
"If you think you're making sense — you're not. I told you, I'm majoring in economics."
