Cape Fear Rising

by Philip Gerard

  “Wait,” she said. “Please.” She was losing herself—she had to stop before she was gone completely.

  “What is it?” He was so worked up he could hardly speak.

  “I can’t,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” he said. Was she ever going to let him off the hook? Still, she had tried. She wanted to be a good wife.

  She touched his cheek and pulled away at the same time. “Soon,” she said. “I promise.”

  “Never mind,” he said. He got up from the bed and pulled on his trousers.

  “Where are you going?”

  “For a walk. I don’t think I can sleep just now.”

  Couldn’t he see that what she needed was to be let alone, not left alone? “Suit yourself,” she said. She waited till she heard his footsteps at the bottom of the stairs, the front door creak open then bump closed, before she cried.

  Out on the street, Sam shivered with the chill. He should have worn his jacket, but he couldn’t very well go back for it now. If ever he needed a stiff drink, now was the time. He felt completely aroused, tingling. He walked fast up Ann Street, not noticing his direction, not going anywhere in particular. He felt lightheaded. If he walked fast enough, long enough, he would calm down, lose the thirst for a drink, go back to his bed and sleep without dreams.

  The street was empty at this hour. He realized all at once that he had crossed into the Negro section. He’d heard there was some sort of meeting over in Brooklyn tonight. Clawson always seemed to know about everything that went on among the Negroes, almost as if he were getting daily reports. Sam still couldn’t figure him out. There was Gray Ellen’s school on the right, Ebenezer Baptist Church cater-corner across the intersection. He stopped and watched his breath cloud the still air in front of him. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted movement—somebody walking. The figure crossed Ann Street and was illuminated briefly under the weak gas street lamp. The light glanced off her spectacles: Saffron King James.

  He coughed loudly to announce himself, then crossed the street toward her.

  “Mr. Jenks?” she said. “That you?” She watched warily as he approached.

  “Good evening, Miss Saffron,” he said pleasantly. “Yes, it’s me. Sam.”

  She stood in the middle of the street under the light. All the windows around them were dark. She gathered her shawl tightly around her shoulders. “Chilly night to be out for a promenade,” she said, and giggled.

  She was headed in the direction of the Record office. “Going to work at this hour?” he said.

  She nodded. “Takes a long time to set the type. Do it right. I’m just a ’prentice—my fingers ain’t learned yet. Got too many chores, most days.”

  He could see only one of her hands. The other was wrapped in her shawl, holding onto something.

  “Mind if I walk with you awhile?”

  “What will people think?” She giggled again, a high, sweet giggle.

  “Who’s going to see us? Let me walk you over there.”

  “Suit yourself. It’s only a couple of blocks.”

  He fell into step beside her. She walked briskly.

  “What do you have in your hand?”

  She stopped and turned, slipped out her hand and opened it. She tossed a smooth rock into the air and caught it like a baseball. “Mama calls it my rock of virtue.”

  “Anybody tries to get fresh, you sock ’em?”

  “Girl got to look after herself in this hard world.”

  The Record office was dark. Saffron reached down the neck of her dress, pulled out a string with a key tied to it, and opened the door. He hesitated.

  “Come on in,” she said. “I don’t mind. Too cold out here.”

  “Just for a minute. Then I’ve got to get back.” Gray Ellen would be lying awake, waiting for him. He looked around—were the Manlys here?

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “Nobody else around tonight. Frank went home, and Alex is over at the church meeting. I got hours to work in peace.”

  She took his hand and led him upstairs in the dark. “Don’t move,” she said. She dropped her shawl on a chair, clunked down her rock, and lit a kerosene lamp but trimmed it low. He stood next to her, unsure what to do. Being so close to her in the confined space, he was overwhelmed by her physical presence. “Now, what is it you really want, Mr. Samuel Jenks?” She was close. Her breath smelled of peppermint candies.

  “I told you, I was just out walking.” Sam watched her body move, slender with young muscle.

  “I saw you giving me the look. You best not be getting ideas.”

  “I just wanted company, that’s all.”

  “That’s what you cruising the street for, all right.” She picked up her rock and tossed it up and down easily in her small hand.

  Sam reached into his pocket and pulled out a thin fold of bills. “I’ve got some money,” he said, before he even realized it.

  She backed away. “I didn’t think you were that kind.” She sounded disappointed in him.

  He put away his money, embarrassed. “Don’t know what I was thinking. I’m sorry.”

  “Just ’cause I’m a poor colored girl, you think I don’t have pride? You think I don’t have aspirations?” She’d heard the word from the Reverend Grant, and this was the first time she’d had a chance to use it. “I’m going to nursing college someday.”

  He was confused. “Then why work for a newspaper?”

  “That’s my business,” she said.

  “Of course.” He felt ashamed.

  “So I can learn proper words. Ideas. I told you, I got aspirations. Now, get out of here.”

  Sam left without saying anything more. He walked home slowly. A cold drizzle had begun. It soaked his shirt, but he hardly noticed. Once home, he hesitated to go in. He walked twice around the block and then opened the front door and went upstairs to bed.

  As he was undressing, Gray Ellen stirred in the dark and said, “Are you all right, Sam?”

  “Don’t worry,” he said, unsure of his voice, “I didn’t take a drink.”

  “I know,” she said, “but are you all right?”

  “Go to sleep.”

  We have been amazed, confounded, and a little ashamed of the acquiescence and quiescence of the men of North Carolina at the existing conditions; and more than once have asked ourselves wonderingly: Where are the white men and the shotguns?

  Rebecca Cameron, in a letter to Colonel Alfred Moore Waddell

  CHAPTER TEN

  Monday, October 24

  “A MAN CAN SIT IDLE and watch things fall apart only so long,” Colonel Alfred Moore Waddell said, slapping the latest edition of the Daily Record on the linen tablecloth next to Sam’s place. “‘Every Negro man with pride in his race must vote Republican in November, or else forfeit all claims to Manhood.’ Indeed! Where do those darkies get off?”

  Bessie King hovered at his elbow, trying to serve the soup.

  Sam could read the headline: 30 Negroes Discharged From Employment Because of Their Determination to Enjoy Citizen Rights.

  Gabrielle, seated at the other end of the dinner table, nodded toward Bessie and admonished gently, “Colonel, please.”

  Waddell chuckled. “Aunt Bessie’s not political. She doesn’t hold with those rabble-rousing Negroes—do you, Aunt Bessie?”

  “No, suh,” she replied dully, eyes on the bowl of hot soup in her hand, poised over his lap. She thought, Lord, deliver me from temptation, hesitated, then set down the bowl.

  “Still, we have guests. May we not leave politics for the brandy?”

  “You’re right, Miz Gabby. As usual. I was forgetting myself.” He sipped wine and tossed the newspaper onto the sideboard.

  Gray Ellen sat opposite Sam, and to her right was Father Christopher Dennen. Sam was alone on his side of the table. The soup was delicious—a white soup made with eggs and veal knuckle, one of Gabrielle’s own recipes. Sam complimented her.

  She said only, “I’m very lucky
to have Bessie in the kitchen.” Bessie, making the rounds with a water pitcher, beamed.

  Gabrielle looked so lovely tonight that Sam had to make a conscious effort not to stare at her. Her black satin dress was cut low at the bodice and finished with sheer, gauzy lace that buttoned to her throat. The full rise of her breasts was apparent, even accented, under the bright chandelier. He thought it a daring dress to wear in such a close room. In a ballroom, among dancing, flirtatious women, it would have simply been part of the whirling elegance, drawing no more attention than a bathing dress on a beach. But here, it made her shine provocatively.

  Her complexion glowed rose, her brown eyes caught the light, shimmering—even her hair shone. He admired the way she wore it swept up over her small ears, exposing the full curve of her neck. Her shapely hands were set off by small lace ruffles at the sleeves, and on her fingers glinted a polished yellow ivory cameo and a blue sapphire engagement ring, doubled onto the same finger as her wedding band.

  Gray Ellen wore a plain black dress that revealed nothing.

  Sam wore his old dark wool suit, newly brushed. The Colonel wore tails and a bow tie. His hair and goatee were oiled. Sam felt distinctly outclassed. He envied Father Dennen, with his careless red hair—he could wear the same cassock for all occasions.

  “Father Dennen and I have an ongoing argument,” Colonel Waddell announced, after Bessie had served a main course of Spanish onions stuffed with ham, heavy cream, and breadcrumbs, along with a platter of St. Charles cornbread. “Regarding eternal punishment for the damned.”

  Great, Sam thought—small talk.

  Father Dennen buttered a slab of bread. “The Scriptures are quite clear. I don’t know why you persist.”

  “If I may play the Jesuit,” Colonel Waddell said, and smiled foxily. “The Scriptures speak of eternal life, the resurrection of the body: ‘Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body.’ St. Paul to the Philippians.”

  St. Paul, Gray Ellen thought—another true believer who had no use for women.

  “Nicely quoted, as usual,” Father Dennen said.

  “And St. John tells us, ‘Whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.’”

  As he talked, Colonel Waddell sliced his entrée into strips with quick, sure strokes of his knife.

  “Right so far,” Father Dennen said, and bolted a slab of cornbread.

  The women were talking low between themselves. “What a lovely dress,” Gabrielle said.

  “It’s nothing,” Gray Ellen said, “compared to yours. So elegant.”

  “I mean, the way you wear it.”

  Gray Ellen was taken off-guard by Gabrielle’s directness, her sincere tone. She’d expected a haughty whiff of old money. “You’re very gracious.”

  Gabrielle patted her arm and let her hand rest there a moment. “I’m glad you came tonight. You’re not what I expected.” What had she expected?

  “I mean, when Sam came by the house that day looking for Alex Manly, I guess I expected a blonde. Someone more Nordic.” Gabrielle squeezed her arm. “I mean it as a compliment. You’re so warm.”

  Gray Ellen felt herself blush. This woman was so much smoother, so much more adept at the social graces. For the first time in years, she felt like a bumpkin.

  “Forgive me—I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

  Gray Ellen relaxed. “It’s just that, well, down here, I haven’t felt at my best. No one has seen me at my best. Have you ever felt that way?” What was it about this woman that drew her out so easily?

  Gabrielle took her hand and squeezed it quickly. “I know perfectly. This town, it can be hard on a woman.”

  “But nowhere in Scripture are we told that the damned will live forever in hell,” Colonel Waddell declaimed with gusto, brandishing his fork. “That’s an invention of medieval folklore.” He laughed. “The image of hideous, malformed misérables roasting forever in unquenchable flames.”

  Bessie, refilling wineglasses, thought, I know one miserable white billy goat I’d like to see roasting on a pitchfork, praise Jesus.

  Father Dennen gulped a big swallow of wine and said, “What of St. Mark? ‘But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.’”

  “Ah!” said Waddell, flashing his knife. “But the language of Scripture is all thesis and antithesis! Do this, or else that will happen—eh, Father? Clear dichotomies of choice, time after time. Everything defined by what it is not. If damnation is the opposite of eternal life, then it must not only be punishment but an equally eternal death.”

  “You’re stretching a point,” Father Dennen said, taking another stuffed onion, big as an orange, from Bessie. “The Bible’s more than rhetoric.”

  Sam was impressed that Father Dennen could be so civil—he’d never seen the priest be anything but fierce. But that’s the mistake we always make, he thought. People are complicated, full of contradictions. It’s what made it so hard to trust them, or to condemn them.

  Still talking under the men, Gabrielle said, “I’ll help you get along.”

  “When will I stop feeling like an outsider?”

  Gabrielle smiled, her eyes crinkling. She whispered, “They say you’re no longer a newcomer in this town when everybody who remembers that you moved here from someplace else is dead.”

  They laughed together. “That’s a comfort,” Gray Ellen said.

  “Isn’t it, though? After supper, we can walk in the garden.”

  Colonel Waddell said, “I still believe the terms of the Final Judgment will be realized by those who deliberately reject the plan of salvation.”

  “No clergyman would deny that. That’s why it’s called the Last Judgment,” Father Dennen said impatiently. Under his clear tenor was now a gravelly edge.

  “But I also believe that these terrors will end in eternal death.” Waddell was all heated up. His gray eyes had the shine of a zealot’s.

  “But Colonel,” Sam said mildly, “do you mean to claim that the human soul is not immortal?” He’d been trying, without success, to overhear the women’s conversation. Whatever she was saying, Gabrielle was having an immediate effect on Gray Ellen—Gray looked animated, full of color.

  Colonel Waddell smacked his hand on the tabletop, startling the women, who momentarily ceased talking. “Exactly!” He smiled at Father Dennen in triumph. “The human soul is not necessarily immortal.”

  The way he said it, with such logical bravado, made it sound to Sam like incontrovertible fact. Waddell’s mind was so quick, his reasoning so clear.

  Father Dennen wiped his lips with his napkin. “Well, if I can’t make a promise to a man’s immortal soul, then what have I got to offer? Where’s my leverage?”

  Standing by the sideboard, Bessie nodded. She would walk through fire for Father Dennen.

  “The soul of a man who dies in grace can become immortal,” Waddell said. “That’s what redemption is!”

  “Two sides of the same coin, if you ask me. Redemption, or damnation. Both will last a powerful long time.”

  Colonel Waddell said, “Immortality is earned, Father Dennen.”

  And you aim to earn yours, no matter what, Sam thought. Still, he was impressed with the breadth of the man’s mind. Waddell had all sorts of theories about everything, and he read widely, even obscure works. He was always quoting some classical scholar nobody else had ever heard of. This room wasn’t big enough for his voice. Lately, Sam couldn’t hear enough of him.

  Gabrielle said, “You’ve both been over this ground before.” To Gray Ellen, she said, “They used to write letters back and forth in the newspaper. For a whole year, they weren’t even on speaking terms.”

  “Still aren’t,” Father Dennen said, and Sam wasn’t sure whether he was kidding. He couldn’t fathom what had brought Father Dennen to this house for supper.

  Gabrielle said, “None of us at this table plans to find out how long damnation take
s—am I right, Father?”

  He laughed. “Point well taken, Mrs. Waddell.”

  Bessie crossed herself and poured more wine.

  Sam was glad to hear the subject change—with Bessie fussing over the table, he couldn’t forget how he’d tried to betray his wife with Saffron.

  Bessie cleared the plates and poured coffee, then served wedges of rum raisin cake glazed with warm sugar icing.

  After dessert, Gabrielle took Gray Ellen’s hand and led her into the garden. The night air was cool, but not yet frosty. They strolled along the narrow brick path past hedges of azalea and Confederate jasmine that had long since lost their bloom, and now looked gray in the ambient light from the windows.

  “You teach over at the colored school, don’t you?”

  Gray Ellen immediately became defensive. She’d understood too late that her job made her something of a social pariah. This was the first dinner invitation they’d had since arriving. Even Cousin Hugh had pointedly ignored them. She was still waiting to be invited to his home. Not that she wanted to go, but she felt she was entitled to be included. “Williston,” she said. “It’s a very progressive school.”

  “That kind of work, it must be very satisfying.”

  Gray Ellen studied her face for any sign of irony, but found none. “It does keep me sane.”

  Gabrielle laughed shortly. “I could use something like that.”

  For the first time all evening, Gray Ellen dropped her guard completely. She hadn’t even considered that the wife of so prominent a lawyer, a former congressman at that, might be unhappy. “You haven’t been married long.”

  “Two years next month. The Colonel was twice a widower.”

  “I see.”

  “Sisters. Dull as pumpkins, both of them, from what I’ve been told.” She smiled. “But dutiful wives. Wonderful housekeepers.”

  “I know the sort.”

  “I’m lucky to have Bessie. Without her, the house would fall down around us. I can’t bear to stay indoors all day.”

  “The children are like that for me. When I’m in front of the classroom, it feels like being outdoors.”