Cape Fear Rising

by Philip Gerard

  Today’s Messenger reported that certain New York businessmen were reneging on a major investment in Wilmington railroads and factories. The reason? Too many Negroes were flocking to the city, destabilizing the labor base. Whatever that meant. The situation, said the article—datelined New York—was volatile.

  In another piece, datelined Raleigh, John Dancy was reported to advocate intermarriage between whites and blacks. Dancy was the Negro who had taken over Buck Kenan’s old job as customs inspector. He denied ever making such remarks, but the denial didn’t make the paper.

  A story out of Charlotte—run beside yet another installment of Manly’s infamous editorial—tallied up the Negroes who held offices in New Hanover County: four city aldermen, four deputy sheriffs out of a six-man department, the county coroner, the register of deeds and two clerks, a township constable, forty city and county magistrates, thirteen of twenty-four city police officers, the collector of customs, four health officers, and various assistants. Some eighty-six in all. An outrage, concluded the piece: “The Negroes of New Hanover County are ‘too big for their britches’!”

  “Why does he run that stuff?” Harry Calabash folded his copy of the newspaper and laid it on the table. “Wondered where you were off to so early yesterday, Samuel,” he said laconically, sipping a neat whiskey. “I don’t any longer get invited on such outings.”

  “Wasn’t such a big honor.”

  The piece was out in today’s Messenger: Wilmington Light Infantry Unveils Instrument of Civil Order. No mention of Clawson, Rountree, MacRae, or Walker Taylor. Kenan was referred to only as an officer in the army. The Negro men were named: John Norwood, Frank Manly, Carter Peamon, Tom Miller, David Jacobs, Jim Telfair, Norman Lindsay, and Armond Scott.

  Clawson had given him the list of names—another list to keep track of. Sam had then pored over the city directory and asked Harry for whatever information wasn’t listed there.

  Armond Scott was the lawyer he had seen around town and then at the Manly near-lynching. Clean-cut, short-cropped hair, about thirty, innocent eyes. Graduate of Shaw University, admitted to the bar at twenty-one. Scott was the one who had pissed himself.

  Norman Lindsay was a foreman at Wilmington Cotton Mills, MacRae’s outfit. A working stiff.

  Jim Telfair, a lay minister, was also manager of Sprunts’ Champion Compress and a part-time copyeditor for Manly’s Daily Record. Busy fellow, Sam reflected.

  David Jacobs, a barber, was the county coroner.

  Carter Peamon, another barber, was a ward boss in Brooklyn.

  Tom Miller dabbled in real estate, but his bread and butter was his loan and pawn business.

  John Norwood was Gray Ellen’s boss over at Williston. She spoke highly of him.

  And of course, he’d already met Frank Manly. The way Manly had glared at him still queered his stomach.

  Harry wasn’t paying much attention to Sam. He sat hunched over his drink, elbows propped on the table, brooding. Remembering, Sam was sure—a man like that must have plenty of things to remember, a lifetime all used up in one place.

  “I’m no longer considered reliable,” Harry said, with great regret. “Time was, nobody who was anybody would make a move without consulting Harry Calabash. Not in the whole damned county.”

  “Well, I felt like a fool.” Sam played with the navy Colt in his pocket. He was already in the habit of carrying it. He picked up bad habits like his trousers picked up lint. “Makes me mad just to think about it.”

  “‘Ira furor brevis est.’”

  “I know. I read my Horace at school, too: ‘Anger is a brief madness.’”

  “You’re a man of principles, Samuel. I respect that.”

  If he only knew about Cuba, Sam thought. “One of the Negroes pissed his britches. Lawyer Scott.”

  “I’ve pissed myself over less.”

  Sam’s ears still rang. “Made a din, all right.” Blasted logs as thick as telegraph poles into toothpicks. What would such a gun do to human flesh? He could still see the pumpkins bursting.

  “The gentlemen do love their toys.” Harry ordered a second whiskey.

  “A strange deal all the way around. I mean, who’s in charge of what in this city?”

  “That’s a question, all right,” Harry said. “‘I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.’”

  “Plato?”

  “Socrates. Sorry, I can’t give you the Greek. Too many years.”

  “Take Captain Kenan. He’s with the State Guard, right?”

  “After a fashion. Reserve status, or whatever they call it.”

  “But he’s not part of the Wilmington Light Infantry.”

  “Oh, sure—he’s one of the mucky-mucks.”

  “Is it a regiment, or what?” Sam said.

  “Oh, I’d call it more of a club.”

  “A club?”

  “You have to be a man of ‘morally upright character.’ Nominated and seconded. Then all the members vote. They each put either a white ball or a black ball in the box. Three black balls, you’re out.”

  “Have they ever fought a battle?”

  “Lord, the thought of those toy soldiers marching off to a real war. Where the other fellows have guns.” Harry’s laughter started him coughing.

  “But the Civil War …”

  “Oh, they mobilized. But the men just got absorbed by real regiments.”

  “And Cuba?”

  “Never fired a shot. Volunteered, though—give ’em credit for that. Sweated out the war in Georgia.”

  “Then what are they doing with an armory?”

  “Every club’s got to have a clubhouse, Sam. Place to drink bad whiskey and smoke good cigars. Get away from their womenfolk.”

  “And a Gatling gun?”

  “No,” Calabash admitted, “that makes it a special club.”

  Sam drank his iced tea. He was getting awfully tired of tea. It was worst in the afternoon, when his mouth craved the bittersweet, frothy taste of lager beer. The heat made him so damned thirsty. “After that business yesterday, there’s talk, Harry. Secret vigilante clubs. You ever heard of anything like that?”

  Harry put down his glass and rocked back, leaning his chair against the wall, tucking his hands behind his neck. “Well, now, which clubs might you have in mind?”

  “Secret clubs, Harry.”

  “You mean with spy codes? Secret handshakes? Mysterious symbols?”

  “Don’t make fun. This is serious. Maybe they do have secret codes or passwords—how do I know? I’m asking you.”

  “Well, let me see. There’s the Masons—three or four lodges, pretty sinister boys. Then there’s the Knights Templars, still searching for the Holy Grail. Hell, maybe they found it, tucked it away in their basement. We could walk over and check, it’s only up on Front Street.”

  “Harry—”

  “You got your Knights of the Golden Eagle, your Knights of Pythias, your Woodmen of the World—now, there’s a cadre of revolutionary scoundrels.”

  “Harry, I didn’t mean—”

  “For pure deviltry, nobody beats the Fraternal Mystic Circle. They meet right across from city hall. Up to no good, I suspect.”

  “You know damn well what I mean.”

  “How about the Improved Order of Redmen?”

  “Harry—”

  “See, we Southern boys are joiners. About once a week, we need to sit ourselves down inside a room full of fellows just like ourselves who agree with everything we say.”

  “Sarcasm won’t get it done, Harry.”

  “Course, we haven’t even scratched the ladies’ societies, the veterans’ brigades, the church social clubs, the amateur theatrical troupes, or the Jews—the Jews are always up to something.” He drank. “If it’s juvenile delinquents you want, check out Walker Taylor’s Boys Brigade, marching around in Rough Rider clothes, carrying wooden rifles.”

  Sam let him rattle on until he was dry for whiskey and reached for his glass, then said evenly, “How about the Secr
et Nine?”

  “What?” Harry said, coughing out the whiskey right into his bare hand. He dried the hand elaborately with his handkerchief and replaced it in his pocket.

  “Group Six, Harry? Ever hear of them?”

  Harry reached across the table, grabbed Sam’s arms above the elbows, and pulled him in close. Harry could be strong when he wanted to be. “Lower your voice, if you please. Now, who you been talking to besides me?”

  “I came to you first, Harry.” No sense in dragging anyone else into this. He just needed to know if it was true.

  “Three can keep a secret if two are dead.” Harry let go. “You have to take care about who you’re fooling with.”

  “I’m tired of fooling, Harry. I’m supposed to be a reporter.”

  “Tom Clawson doesn’t want a reporter. He’s got no use for bad news. He answers to MacRae. Haven’t you figured that out?”

  Sam glared at him. “What’s the Secret Nine, Harry? Who are they?”

  Harry Calabash shot the whiskey into the back of his throat and stood up. “Come on. Let’s you and me take a walk.”

  They walked slowly in the oppressive heat, up the hill toward city hall and the courthouse, where they spotted Colonel Waddell hurrying inside. Harry said, pointing his cane at Waddell, “I’ll tell you one gentleman who isn’t in the club, and it’s killing him.”

  Sam watched Waddell open the heavy door and disappear into the shadowy interior. Mentally, he added the Colonel to his list. He was starting to worry that Harry didn’t know as much as he thought he knew. Or maybe he just wasn’t telling Sam everything.

  “You trust me, don’t you, Harry?”

  Harry looked the other way. “You have no idea what you are dealing with down here. The kind of money. How tight a circle you’re trying to break.”

  “Do you trust me?”

  “I don’t trust myself. Or any man who drinks.”

  “I told you, I’ve taken the cure. Months ago. I’m dry.”

  “I don’t trust any man who can’t take a drink.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “First time you fall off the wagon, all sorts of things will come spewing out of your mouth.” He spoke with the taste of experience bitter on his tongue. “‘Trust in God, and keep your powder dry.’ Cromwell.”

  “They’re going to use that Gatling gun, aren’t they? Against the coloreds.”

  Harry turned and looked him square in the eye. In the gray sun, he looked old and used up, his face marked with deep lines scrawled haphazardly. The tousled white hair was lank. “Does that surprise you?”

  “When, Harry? Election Day? Before?”

  Harry turned away and shook his head slowly. He rubbed his eye briefly with the heel of his hand.

  “When, Harry? Tell me.”

  Harry blew his nose and coughed. Sam was getting annoyed at the constant hacking—he wondered if Harry had the consumption. “No, I’m not tubercular,” Harry said irritably, “though I soon will be if I keep sucking in this lime dust. The political fate of this city may well turn on which party declares for macadam.”

  “I want to get to the bottom of this.”

  “By God, you are arrogant. You believe you can come down here and get to the bottom of this thing in a few weeks. Well, I’ve been living here for sixty-three years, and I haven’t gotten to the bottom of this city yet. It’s a mystery. Anything that matters in this life is a mystery.”

  Harry got his breath. “Who knows when it will happen? I doubt if even the ones who are going to do it know when it’s actually going to happen.”

  Sam touched Harry’s sleeve. Under the thin fabric, the flesh was soft and loose. “Make a guess.”

  “My God, I’m tired of walking.” Harry sat down on a bench across from the courthouse, and Sam joined him. Harry sighed long and thoughtfully, tapping his walking stick on the ground. “There are three possibilities. Or at least three that I count.”

  “Go on.”

  “All depends on how many cooks are stirring this particular stew. That’s the trouble with planning a thing like this—everybody has his own recipe.”

  Sam recalled what Harry had called Rountree: a vector of ambition. How many other vectors of ambition were running around loose at night, or sitting behind closed doors, making clandestine appointments, circling dates on their private calendars?

  “One,” Harry said. “Next month, Governor Russell and his two pals, Oliver Dockery and Jeter Pritchard, are supposed to make speeches at Thalian Hall. Russell, he’s the one we have to thank for the current crowd at city hall. If Dowling is back in town by then, if the Red Shirts are part of it, this city will lynch all three of them.”

  “White men?”

  “Of course, white men. This isn’t about race—it’s about politics. I already told you that. Politics is just a kind of snobbery—who’s in, who’s out.”

  “A matter of class,” Sam said. “Another club.”

  “You could say that. A man’s class is the most important club of all. Got to be born into it, or buy your way in, if they’ll let you. Like that place your cousin takes you for lunch.”

  “The Cape Fear Club.”

  “The second city hall. The real headquarters of the men that run this town. You notice how the regular city hall and the playhouse are in the same building? Where do you think the script is written?”

  “I take it you don’t belong.”

  “Course I belong. Where else am I going to do business?”

  Every conversation with Harry seemed to go this way—it started out making sense, but, at some point, Sam was defeated by the logic. All he could do was listen and sort it all out later.

  “You’re some kind of cynic, all right,” Sam said.

  “I’m a newspaperman. You want the rosy view, go to church.”

  “Not my church. You must be thinking of the Protestants.”

  “Racism, that’s just a special case of class snobbery. The people you don’t want in your club,” Harry said. “I thought you said you went to school.”

  “Once upon a time.”

  “Well, you’re getting the graduate course now.”

  Sam wanted to get him back on track. “So that’s one scenario for when.”

  “Number two. On Election Day. If Governor Russell is foolish enough to come back here to vote, he will be taken by a mob. And he might—matter of honor and all.”

  “Of course.” Honor, Sam thought. He was hearing that word a lot. “And the third scenario?”

  “The most likely one. Just ask yourself two questions: who are they, and what do they want?”

  “The men on the tugboat.”

  “Maybe others, too. We both know what they want. And a simple drunken mob won’t get it for them.”

  “They want their city back.”

  Harry thumped his walking stick on the ground. “You have poetry in your soul, Samuel. Exactly. They can take back the state and national offices in the election, but they’re stuck with the crowd in city hall for two more years. Business won’t wait that long. There are bonds to issue, deals to make.”

  “MacRae? Or Walker Taylor?” Were the Secret Nine and Group Six working together? Or were they at odds?

  “Whoever, they’re going to need big Buck Kenan and his magical gun.” Harry gazed off into the gray clouds and spoke as if he were quoting: “On a quiet day, after the election, when everybody has forgotten about secret clubs and nasty editorials, when everybody has let out their breath and is giving thanks to their Maker for peace and goodwill among men.”

  “Translation?”

  “When the weather turns cold enough to clear the streets, and soldiers can maneuver in rank.”

  At that moment, Colonel Waddell emerged from the courthouse and took the steps in a fast, limping stride.

  “Samuel, remember your Ovid: ‘Medio tutissimus ibis.’”

  “I know, ‘The middle path is safest.’” He’d been in the middle plenty lately.

  He left Harr
y ruminating on the bench and followed Colonel Alfred Moore Waddell to his law office at Front and Princess streets.

  “Mr. Jenks! A pleasure to see you. I was hoping you’d come calling one of these days.” Waddell stood up behind his cluttered desk and reached across to shake Sam’s hand. His jacket hung on a hook by the window. The armpits of his shirt were stained yellow with old sweat. The collar and cuffs were frayed.

  “They have kept me busy.”

  Waddell waved the latest Messenger. “Crackerjack stuff. Terse, economical, precise. You should have been a lawyer.”

  “There’s enough lawyers in the world already.”

  “Like they say, the only lawyer in town will starve to death—”

  “And two lawyers will starve the town.”

  Waddell laughed dryly. “May I offer you a glass of spring water—or perhaps a splash of Tennessee sour mash? It’s five o’clock somewhere.”

  “Water will be fine, thanks.”

  Waddell poured from a pewter pitcher into a dusty glass. He refilled his own chipped crystal wineglass with water and held it by the stem to drink. “Gabrielle tells me you came visiting.”

  Sam drank. The water tasted of tin and gave him a headache, it was so cold. Where did they get such cold water? “Looking for Manly. Talked to your servants.”

  “Of course, of course. They have an underground telephone, those darkies. Sometimes, I think we badly underestimate them.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “Did you know that, after the War, I advocated giving educated Negroes the vote?”

  “I didn’t realize.”

  It had come back to haunt him. Fat Dan Russell had used Waddell’s own speech to unseat him from Congress, calling him soft on Negroes. Now, Russell was the champion of the Negro cause. Given time, every noble aspiration got twisted. “I’m sure our ways must seem quaint to a Yankee,” he said.

  Odd, Sam reflected, draining the cold water: he’d never thought of himself as a Yankee till he’d come down here. Maybe that was the difference. These people thought of themselves as Southerners from the day they were born.

  “Please, have a seat,” Waddell said. Sam obliged. “And what brings you round today?”