“I’ll tell you the difference.” He pulled slowly forward, looking very tired; when he spoke he took me by surprise with the sadness and resentment in his voice. “You spoke of the Tuckers not needing you, not needing their leaders. Did you ever think that a person like myself, a so-called religious leader needs the Tuckers to justify his existence? The day is fast coming, Mister Willson, when people will realize there isn’t any need for me and people like me. Perhaps for me that day has come already. Your Tuckers will get up and say: I can do anything I want; I don’t need to wait for someone to give me freedom; I can take it myself. I don’t need Mister Leader, Mister Boss, Mister President, Mister Priest, or Mister Minister, or Reverend Bradshaw. I don’t need anyone. I can do whatever I want for myself by myself.”

I was still too enthralled by it all to realize I couldn’t ever convince him. “But this is what you always wanted, what you Negro leaders worked for. These are your people and they’re freeing themselves.”

“Yes, and they’ve made me obsolete. How would you like to awake to find yourself obsolete? It’s not particularly heartening or pretty, Mister Willson. Not pretty in the least.”

I could only stare at him, seeing his eyes lighted sad by the reflection of the head lamps, his fist clenched.

Then I couldn’t look at him any more. I turned away and found we were hooking down into Sutton, that already the car lamps were lighting the fronts of the stores on the western side of the street. I could see the yellow band that the bulb in Mister Thomason’s store laid out across the Highway.

And when, after a few seconds, I turned back to Reverend Bradshaw, he was even more sad, his eyes glassy and faraway.

Camille Willson

LAST NIGHT was almost like twenty years ago. We didn’t have that wonderfully open feeling we used to have, but we talked; and we haven’t done that in a long time. And today, walking down the platform, going to meet Dewey’s train, I felt his hand on my elbow, then sliding down my arm until he was holding my hand. He was almost like the David I loved so much, not young again of course—we won’t ever make up the years we lost—but that David I married aged twenty years in the same way that David would have aged. And I felt a little of the same things, like when we were first married, and I couldn’t hardly wait to get him in bed with me. If he got anywhere near me, I’d be putting my arms around him, getting real close to him or rubbing up against him so only the points of my breasts touched him. I’d squirm around until I knew he could feel them on his chest. And then I’d let him go and act like nothing had happened, like I didn’t know what I was doing. I guess that was all silly, but I loved him so much I couldn’t get enough of being near him.