“Stop it!” said Ash. “Neil, her jungle blood is pure fake, and so is her aversion to the whites—a heterogeneous group with many virtues. Sophie is a conscientious uplifter and record-keeper. But–-”
There was a “But” in everything Ash and Sophie said—not in what Martha said, because Martha didn’t say anything. The nearer Neil came to them, the more complex they seemed in their dual attitude toward him as a friend to be protected and as a convert to be exploited as publicity for the race. Without much reference to his feelings, they speculated whether “Even though it might be hard—just a little hard—just at first—might it not be a good thing if you did come out frankly as a Negro?”
But they thought they might let him off for a while.
It had not occurred to him that the news that he was a Negro, with its public branding or crowning, could come from anyone save himself. He realized that the words had gone out of his mouth, swift and unrecapturable, and that it depended only on the whim of these three and of the Woolcapes—any Woolcape—whether he should be betrayed. But if he was slightly in fear, he was also relaxed in accepting Sophie and Ash and Martha as his own people. When Sophie rose, he said, “I’ll trot out to your car with you.”
He sat with her in her shaky coupé and held her hand, warmer than any hand he had ever known, with the curious warmth that has nothing to do with the thermometer, that is cool and smooth while it is hot and seamed.
But the Sophie who had just been advertising the unrestrained joys of the jungle was reluctant. When he urged, “If I do get known all over as a Negro, can I count on you to make up for the people I’ll lose?” she burst into shrill scolding:
“Damn it, you won’t lose anybody that’s worth keeping! Man, don’t expect us brownskins to be sorry for a person who’s lucky enough to become a brownskin!” She relented: “There, there, mother’s baby!” It was too exactly the wifely tone of Vestal. “Didums get crestfallen—crest shot to pieces? Mother make it well!”
She kissed him. He had not known a kiss like that, the closeness of it and the softness and the frankness of what it said. But she hastily drew back.
“Sorry! I don’t kiss white men, and even if your heart is good and black, your poor brains are still white, like a baby’s. Good night!”
He looked after her car as it rattled off.
–-I can’t do this to Vestal—so excited about her little gas-stove! I’ve got to get out of this African world. It’s too complex for country-folks like Vestal and me. Prutt, I’m coming home!
Chapter 28
They were all back from the wars, all his friends: Rod Aldwick, the sturdy Judd Browler, “Elegant Eliot” Hansen. They were back, and they powerfully assumed that no matter how rackety the rest of the world, Good Old Neil would not have changed.