A year ago, Neil would certainly not have stopped, would have seen nothing, would have heard nothing. Now, he heard Glenn Tartan explain to the unknown, “Yes, sure, Doc, I know it’s the Minnesota law—and a most unjust and discriminatory law it is, and the legislators who passed it would be sore as goats if there were a law compelling them to shelter people they don’t like in their own homes. It’s the law, but I want you to understand—you look fairly intelligent—that there has been a lot of complaint among our decent guests at you people horning in. So if you could go some place else, we would be very much obliged.”
The husband and wife turned away, silent. Neil caught them at the door, with, “I think you can find fairly clean accommodations at the Blackstone, at Astor and Omaha, in the Five Points.”
The man answered, “If it’s not rude, may I say that my people don’t ordinarily expect such courtesy from a white man!”
“I’m not white. I’m colored, thank God!”
He heard himself saying it.
Chapter 33
He saw his father sweeping up the last of the fallen leaves, only a block away. He strolled over, with his mind blank, as though he had been saying good-bye to a number of people.
Dr. Kenneth Kingsblood’s house was an antiquity in Sylvan Park: thirty years old! It was of brown wood, faded, and it had a lot of assorted architecture that you could never remember, though you might recall the flying balcony on the third story, and a fern in a glazed brown jar between the lace curtains of a plate-glass window looking on the front porch. It was as homelike as the minor poems of Longfellow.
Dr. Kenneth puffed briskly, “Well, my boy, glad to have you drop by and report that you’re still alive. You living up North there, in Grand Republic?”
“If you can call it living, with the thermometer dropping this way.”
“Somebody said you were in the banking line now. You must write and tell me about it.”
“I don’t think you could stand the scandal.”
“Seriously, what you been doing with the research? I don’t take the royal business too much to heart, but I do feel there’s certain duties inherent in your blue blood—your red, white and blue blood. Noblesse oblige!”
Neil spoke tonelessly, with no desire to be cruel but no particular passion to be kind.
“Dad, maybe you have red, white and blue blood, but, according to your own classification, my blood is plain black, and I want it that way.”
“What the–-”
“I find that Mom’s family was part Negro, and I’ve decided that goes for me, too.”
“What is this joke? I don’t like it!”
“Mom is descended on her mother’s side from a frontiersman who was a full-blooded Negro—incidentally, married to a Chippewa. Do you mean she’s never told you?”