John P. Davis, "The Overcoat" (1926)
The Overcoat
John P. Davis
It was late fall. The leaves outside the church lay dead and brown on the frozen earth. There was a smoky greenwood fire in the stove. Somebody, little David didn't know who, was singing Nearer My God to Thee. The whole environment was strange to David: Sybil sitting on one side of him and his father on the other, both looking straight ahead. Their mouths were buttoned tight. His was wide open in curiosity. There were so many people there whom he wanted to see. He wished that he dared look around. He just knew that old, blind Stephen was back there sitting beside the stove. And the green patches over his eyes looked so funny. Everyone was so quiet. He felt like moving around. He wondered why they had had to take his mother all the way in to town and then bring her back out again in that grey box covered with flowers. She would be ever so much more comfortable at home on the couch. He began to kick his tan boots with brass eyelets against the back of the next pew; but his father looked at him. David had seen that look before. It meant: stop. He stopped. Then he began to think of his mother again. Whenever he did, pictures seemed to flash through his head. He always had a choky feeling in his throat like after eating dry bread from Mother's tin breadbox. He remembered everything.
Now he was thinking of the time when Sybil had sent him for the doctor. There he was now: standing down at the crossroads, kicking his feet into the dusty red clay. He had been angry. He imagined his face had been like Father's when he had hit his thumb with a hammer and said "damn." He had gone for the doctor in a hurry. Gee! but he remembered that well. But why shouldn't he? Hadn't Sybil stopped him from playing "Indian" to say that mother was very, very sick? She had sent him running to get Doctor Parker or if he couldn't be found to get . . . (Sybil had frowned a moment before going on) . . . yes, to get Doctor Benson. How he had scurried off to Doctor Parker's. He hadn't stopped on the way either to see if he could make a stone skip three times over a pool of water. Instead he had run a little bit, and even when all out of breath he had trudged on and on—down through the woods a mile and a half and over a cornfield which had been cut down and ploughed under, reveal- ing only the roots of cornstalks. Finally he had come to the little yellow house of the doctor, sitting back between two rows of tall sycamore trees. His heart had bumped up and down inside of him when he had seen the green shutters on the house closed. He felt a dryness in his throat when nobody answered his knock. But he hadn't given up. No! He had gone on back across the cornfield and then up the hill to Doctor Benson's lowrambling white house with a porch all the way round. A dog had barked and a white gardener had yelled to him to go round the back way. Hadn't he resented it though. And he had almost cried when the maid peeking out at him from behind the door of the kitchen had said that Doctor Benson wasn't there and that he would have to go down to Hunt's grocery store to find him.But he had to find a doctor. Sybil said that he must. So he had gone on.
And then standing down there at the crossroads, kicking the toes off of his tan boots, he had seen thin-lipped Doctor Benson sitting in Hunt's store, sipping a bottle of pop with his little yellow-haired boy. He hated the Hunts, who cheated every Negro who bought things on credit at their store. He hated thin- lipped, sneering Doctor Benson. Most of all he hated that Benson boy with his wiry yellow hair. Wasn't he always calling out after him "Nigger, Nigger never die. Snotty nose and shiny eye"?
Hadn't he thrown a stone and hit his spotted white fox terrier? Could he ever forget that day in early fall when he had been walking along the road with his grey, fuzzy chincilla overcoat on his arm—his overcoat that both his mother and father had picked out for him, with its half-red lining and its pearly grey buttons? Oh, he remembered well enough. That yellow-haired Benson brat (that's what he'd heard Father call him) grabbed his overcoat from his arm and stamped all over it, saying: "Niggers lak him oughtn't ter have that kind of an overcoat nohow." And he told him: "Ef he wanted it, to pick it up lak a common Nigger should."
But he wasn't going to take orders from any poor white trash. He had thrown his head back, clenched his fists, and walked away, leaving his overcoat by the side of the road. Hadn't he been proud at that moment? His mother had sent Sybil to look for the coat, but it wasn't there. Then she had whipped him and cried afterwards. She kissed him on his quivering, pouting mouth. How he remembered that kiss! It made up for the whipping, it made up for everything except, except that Benson boy. He didn't care that his mother had had to buy him a drab second-hand overcoat at a Jew store for a dollar ninety-eight cents (the other had cost seven dollars). He had been proud. He had shown that Benson boy that he wouldn't take orders from poor white trash, even if he were smaller. And now Sybil had sent him for this "brat's" father.
What good was this poor white doctor, anyway? He didn't know anything about medicine. Father had said he didn't. All he would do would be to charge Father a lot of money without doing Mother any good. He might poison her. He'd be low down and mean enough to do something like that. What was the use of getting him anyway? Father had said just that morning that he was going to bring a colored doctor home with him after work. Sybil was just a frightened girl. She was always getting excited about something. What did the father of that little "brat" know about curing people?
He had hesitated and wavered—first deciding to get the doctor and then not to. Even when he was a quarter of a mile up the road he had turned to go back, but again he had visions of his overcoat lying torn and dirty on the ground. And everything went black and then red before him.
He wondered what he would tell Sybil when he got home. He couldn't tell her why he hadn't got Doctor Benson. She wouldn't understand. What could he tell her? Well, he'd better make up his mind soon to a straight tale and stick to it. If Sybil caught him lying, she'd tell Father and he'd get an awful licking.
Besides, Sybil hadn't really wanted Doctor Benson. Hadn't she said to get Doctor Parker and hadn't she almost not said Doctor Benson? Well, he'd better hurry home or she'd be worrying about him. He remembered just as plainly how Sybil had acted: how she had paled under her cream color as she said, "But, Buddy,couldn't you get any . . . body?" He hated himself a thousand times since for just shaking his head. Sybil had cried and cried until she went in to Mother; then she bit her lips and wiped her eyes on her gingham apron and went in with her face frozen into a smile. How brave Syb had been! He had always thought of her as brave and oldish-like. He felt mean and sorry. He had even tried to make up for not getting the doctor by drawing a bucket of water and filling the woodbox withchips.
Then Sybil came and took him to see Mother. He shuddered. How pale and white she looked as she lay there —whiter than any white woman he had ever seen. Her eyes were dark and filled with tears. The skin on her face seemed tight, like the cream-colored parlor curtains on a stretcher. She looked as if something was hurting inside of her. And then she had told him to kiss her; and when he did, her lips seemed sticky and queer. How mean he felt then. He wanted to run from the room. He wanted to cry and his eyes welled up with tears. He would have cried, too, if Sybil hadn't pinched him and shaken her head. Instead, he smiled a little. Funny, but somehow he always understood Syb.
He could hear his mother just as plainly making Syb promise to take care of "Davy Boy" (that's what she always called him) and to be a good girl for Mother's sake. Then she made him promise to be "good" and mind Sybil and Father, and get in wood and chips whenever Sybil asked him. To him it seemed very much like the times his mother had got ready to go to town and left him in Sybil's care. But he promised. And his mother ran her long, slim fingers through his hair and kissed him again and again.
Then his father had come home from work, bringing with him a tall colored doctor. They had both gone to Mother's room. How well he remembered Sybil and himself huddled together by the kitchen woodbox, listening to the low tones of the doctor and his father. It seemed such a long time. It grew darker and darker. Soon it became all black and Syb lit the coal-oil lamp on the table and came back to sit beside him.
Finally Father, looking tired, with the comers of his mouth twitching and the little wrinkles under his eyes seeming much darker to David than ever before, called them into Mother's room. Mother was there, trying to say something. Tears choked her, and Sybil brushed back a strand of her long, silken hair that was blowing over her eyes. "Mo . . . ther," she said, her whole body quivering, "Mo . . . ther." And then David remembered something like a wind that blew across his face; and when he looked at his mother again, she had closed her eyes. And he heard the doctor say, shaking his head, "If I'd only been here two hours sooner." David thought of every time his mother had ever kissed him. He thought of himself down at the crossroads watching Doctor Benson sip soda-pop. He fell on the couch and cried and cried and cried, and his father clutched him tightly and tried to soothe him; while Sybil was looking out of the window into the dark night—standing there in her gingham apron, withered like the white flower in the fruit jar on the kitchen table. David didn't know how much time had passed since he had begun thinking all this, but he had been very quiet. Now he cast sidewide glances about the church. Tall Deacon Gant was praying and Sybil made him bow his head. "We has faith in you. Gawd," droned the old man. The rest was only syllables to David. Old Mother Simms was looking out of dark, heavily lidded eyes into his. She looked so sad as tears rolled down the furrows of her black, wrinkled face. But somehow it seemed funny to see her with fluffy purple feathers on her hat and a black lace collar on her starched white dress. Now David felt that something was going to happen. They were standing up, Sybil, Father, and he. Sybil was guiding him past the grey box.
He was looking on his mother's closed eyes. How full her cheeks looked now; not as when she was sick. He could hear voices all around. He thought he heard that Benson boy calUng out after him; he almost saw a red tongue poking out of a pale face, topped by yellow hair. He fancied he heard his mother call him "Davy boy." Everything was in a daze. When next he recognized his surroundings, he was in a black coach drawn by two horses. Sybil was crying; Father, stonily silent.
Published in Opportunity, 1927