Strivers Row by Kevin Baker Read Free Book Online Page B

a good-looking man in his youth and he could see, in the photograph, the same elements that people said made Jonah himself handsome—the gracefully rounded cheeks, the noble brow; a prominent nose and full, sensuous lips. Nearly the same face—save for the color, and the scars.
    I am not capable of anything like what he did. So what does he want from me? Even to name me as he did. A Jonah man, I’m a Jonah man—
    He was gripped in the old fear then. Knowing that his father was the church, that he could not possibly replace him, and on impulse he walked the rest of the way down the hall into Preston’s room, wanting desperately to ask Adam if he had ever felt the same way.
    The moment he was through the door, though, he realized it was pointless. It was impossible to believe that Adam Clayton Powell had ever felt incapable of succeeding anyone, right up to God Almighty, should He ever get tired of the job. He sat now in a low rocking chair in a corner of his adopted son’s room—the very picture of self-assurance, lighting up a cigarette while he watched over his boy.
    â€œIt’s so easy to sleep at their age,” he said softly when Jonah entered, gesturing to where Preston was sprawled out on the bed, one arm flung heedlessly over his head.
    â€œHe gets so tired, just being out on the boat. Swimming all day. They have all the energy in the world, then when it’s time to sleep they nod right off. It’s natural. It’s not till we’re adults that we learn to clutter up our minds with so many worries and ambitions.”
    â€œHard not to worry, these days,” Jonah said.
    â€œYou mean about the world?” Adam shrugged, fanning the smoke away so it wouldn’t reach his sleeping son. “ ‘ Let the day’s own worries be sufficient for the day. ’ You just have to see to what’s closest to you, to do what you can do.”
    â€œDid you really believe what you said out there?” Jonah asked abruptly—a little offended though he told himself he shouldn’t be, that it was just Adam, quoting Scripture not five minutes after he had denied the whole divinity of the Bible.
    â€œHmm? About what?”
    â€œYou know. About the afterlife .”
    He felt like a child even saying the word.
    â€œSure,” Adam said matter-of-factly. “Heaven and hell are both right here, in the span of years that we spend in this body, on this earth. That’s all there is, and after it’s over we’re gone.”
    Jonah flinched, hating to hear such things—though it was how his father usually talked about God. Jonah himself really believed, much as he hated to admit it before someone as worldly as Adam. He knew how ridiculous so much of it sounded—all those kings slaughtering each other at God’s command in the Old Testament, Paul railing about the godliness of chastity. All that mystical nonsense in Revelation—
    But he loved the Christ—His words, and the very idea of Him. Jonah had never had some burning revelation, so far as he knew it. No blinding light, or life-changing conversion, like so many of his brother ministers, or his fellow students back at the Angel Factory in Pennsylvania claimed to have experienced—like so many of the men and women in his congregation knew they had experienced. He had had nothing more than a feeling of Christ, which he was intelligent enough and honest enough to admit might be no more than his own inchoate longing. But still he believed.
    â€œBesides, how could there be a God?” Adam was saying, looking up at him. “What God could let what’s happening go on now? Why, today it’s almost an insult to God to believe in him.”
    â€œI know,” Jonah nodded grimly. “I’ve been talking to Jakey Mendelssohn. He has a cousin who got out of Europe somehow, works in his store now. He says it’s true. The Nazis have whole camps where they’re