Cape Fear Rising

by Philip Gerard

  The crowd roared. Waddell waited till the applause reached its crescendo, then held up a single finger to begin counting off the seven resolutions. The crowd stilled.

  The resolutions were predictable. The genius lay in codifying them as articles of popular government backed by the full weight of the law. The genius was in doing it right here in court.

  The first resolution called for respectable taxpayers to once again control the city’s fate. The second warned that whites stirring up Negro unrest would be summarily dealt with. The third stated that the Negro was a renegade element in the city.

  Once more, Waddell had to wait for the surfy roar of the assembly to die down.

  “‘Fourth—That the progressive element in any community is the white population and that the giving of nearly all the employment to Negro laborers has been against the best interests of this city and county.’”

  The Red Shirts, led by Dowling, erupted in a chorus of hip-hip-hoorays.

  “‘Fifth—That we propose in future to give to white men a large part of the employment heretofore given to Negroes.’”

  The Red Shirts whistled and cheered.

  “‘Sixth—’” Waddell continued, the first phrases lost in the din, “‘—we are prepared to treat the Negroes with justice and consideration—’”

  All over the courtroom, men and women were on their feet, cheering him on. He had them. He was their hero.

  “‘—but we are equally prepared now and immediately to enforce what we know to be our rights.’” He caught his breath and looked around. His heart was wild with exhilaration. He was a one-man oratorical cavalry charge. He could read the joy on their faces. Their noisy approval vibrated in his chest. This city now belonged to him.

  He paused for a minute, three minutes, five whole minutes before the courtroom was quiet enough for him to continue with the last resolution. “‘Seven—That a climax was reached when the Negro paper of this city published an article so vile and slanderous that it would—in most communities—have resulted in the lynching of the editor.’”

  He finished slowly, calling for the Record to be shut down for good: “‘We demand that Alex Manly leave this city forever within twenty-four hours.’”

  Hurrahs, cheers, applause. The walls and ceiling vibrated with human noise.

  “‘If the demand is agreed to within twelve hours, we counsel forbearance on the part of all white men.’” Pause. “‘If, however, the demand is refused, or if no answer is given within the time mentioned, then the editor, Manly, will be expelled by force.’ So say we all!”

  Even Waddell was not prepared for the ovation that now cascaded over him. The sheer force of it bowed his head and pushed him back physically into the bench. The men from the jury box crowded around him, pummeling his back and wringing his hand.

  Before he knew what was happening, a contingent of Red Shirts mobbed the bench and lifted him onto their shoulders. They paraded him back and forth before the bench, then carried him up and down the aisles, where men and women reached out to shake his hand, pat him on the back, kiss him, thump his shoulders, touch him. He was breathless, filled with a rapture of adoration, scared to death of being torn limb from limb.

  Solomon Fishblate was momentarily dismayed. Had Waddell known about the declaration all along? No, he couldn’t have. He just had that dumb actor’s luck. He could walk through hellfire and come out with a lit cigar. Fishblate used the confusion to collect his wits, then once again seized the moment. “I propose an eighth resolution!” he called from the bench, over and over, until at last the crowd realized he was speaking and gradually quieted.

  The Red Shirts gently lowered Waddell back onto his feet. He was as startled as anybody, for the first time in his life at a loss for words. He had gotten what he’d come for. Dumbly, he stretched out his hand, indicating that Fishblate should continue.

  “I move that Mayor Wright, Chief of Police J. R. Melton, and the entire Board of Aldermen be notified to vacate immediately!”

  “Hear, hear!”

  “Throw the rascals out!”

  “No more nigger lovers in city hall!”

  A minor din ensued. George Rountree saw the opening he had been waiting for. He jumped up and asked to be recognized. Waddell, still in a mild euphoric stupor, obliged. “I move we appoint a committee of five to take Mr. Fishblate’s resolution under consideration.”

  MacRae’s men, eager to brake the frenzied momentum of the Waddell-Fishblate faction, approved. Rountree was appointed chairman, and four others were quickly called to join him.

  While they retired to the judge’s chambers to deliberate, Waddell spoke again to the courtroom. The euphoria was wearing off now, and he was a little frightened of what he had set in motion. “Let us not be hasty in resorting to violent measures,” he said without his previous fire. “The editor of the Record will be dealt with.”

  Others took turns delivering brief orations endorsing the declaration. Within a half-hour, the committee of five returned. Rountree had reworded Fishblate’s amendment to keep it within the law. Now, the mayor, police chief, and Board of Aldermen were charged with “being a constant menace to the peace and welfare of this community.” Therefore, they would be notified that they ought to resign.

  The best men of the community lined up at the bench to affix their signatures to the completed declaration. In addition to the party in the jury box, almost half those present in the courthouse—445 white men—signed, including Walker and J. Allan Taylor, Mike Dowling, Tom Clawson, the Reverend Peyton Hoge, Captain Thomas James, and William Rand Kenan. Virtually every prominent name in town was represented: Bellamy, Bryan, Cameron, Collier, Corbett, Davis, deRosset, Duke, French, Mayo, Moore, Nutt, Rivenbark, Savage, Worth, Yopp.

  Conspicuous by their absence were other names: Keith, Foster, Sprunt, Chadbourn, Calabash, Jenks.

  When the courtroom at last began to empty, Hugh MacRae’s Secret Nine, Waddell, Fishblate, and Rountree remained behind.

  Rountree said, “We had better present this to a delegation from the Negro community right away, or it will lose force.”

  “Exactly right,” Waddell said. “Round up some niggers that can read.”

  Rountree said, “Summon them to meet a duly appointed committee.”

  “I’ve got a committee in mind, George,” Waddell said. He had a lot to say about things now. He put an arm around Hugh MacRae. “Hugh, will you serve?”

  MacRae recognized Waddell’s invitation as a peace offering for the stunt he had pulled earlier. It was not enough, but it was a start—Waddell wasn’t forgetting who was in charge of this show. “Certainly I’ll serve.”

  They haggled for another fifteen minutes. In the end, Waddell’s committee included all of MacRae’s Secret Nine. But not George Rountree.

  Sam Jenks and Harry Calabash had watched the whole thing from front-row seats. On his way out of the courthouse, Waddell waved Sam over. “We’ll need a neutral observer. Get your pencil ready.” Harry started to say something, but Waddell cut him off.

  “One observer will be sufficient.” He looped an arm around Sam’s neck and escorted him up the aisle toward the door.

  It was unprecedented that a delegation of Negroes be ushered into the Cape Fear Club through the front door. It was Waddell’s idea: bring them into the big house, let them see firsthand the world they were up against. MacRae made sure to decorate the foyer and front parlor with two squads from the Wilmington Light Infantry in full kit—just in case.

  Among the thirty-two black leaders rounded up by Dowling’s Red Shirts and escorted to the meeting were barber Carter Peamon, pawnbroker Tom Miller, lawyers Armond Scott and W. E. Henderson, and Jim Telfair of the Record. The others included a postal clerk, a butcher, a coal dealer, two undertakers, several laborers, and an alderman, Elijah Green. Only one minister, Sam noticed. There were key faces missing: the Manlys, most obviously, but also John Norwood, the Reverend J. Allen Kirk, the other ministers. Probably they were unavailable on
such short notice. The Red Shirts had cast their net and dragged in whomever they caught.

  The black men, nearly all wearing suits, were directed into the largest meeting room and told to sit against the wall in two rows behind a long board table. Waddell sat at the head of the table, hands folded on a sheaf of papers.

  Across the table from the Negro delegation sat the newly formed Committee of Twenty-five—bank directors, railroad presidents, mill owners, insurance men, attorneys, brokers, two ministers, and a doctor.

  Sam stood near the door. When everyone had crowded into the room, Waddell addressed the Negroes without preliminaries: “There will be no talking. No discussion. No argument. We are presenting an ultimatum.”

  Then, without heat or fire, he read the White Man’s Declaration of Independence. The black men listened, first puzzled, then angry, then full of fear. Lawyer Henderson stood. “Colonel, you’ll be pleased to know that the Manlys have already left town.”

  “Who’s that sitting next to you?” Hugh MacRae demanded.

  “Carter Peamon, sir,” Peamon said.

  “If you’re not the spitting image …”

  Henderson continued trying to make his point. “The Daily Record is now defunct.”

  “Sit down!” Waddell said. “I don’t want to hear a damned word out of you. Give us your answer in writing.”

  “But Colonel—”

  “Sit down! I’m not finished.”

  Henderson slumped into his seat. Carter Peamon shifted nervously in his chair—MacRae kept staring at him. Sam had to admit Peamon looked a lot like Manly—same light complexion, same stylish moustache, same slight build.

  Waddell read the amendment encouraging the present mayor and aldermen to resign. Alderman Elijah Green opened his mouth to protest, but nothing came out. He turned his hat in his hands. To Sam, he looked like a defendant who had just read the guilty verdict in the faces of the jury.

  “You will have until tomorrow morning at seven-thirty to reply in writing. Deliver it to my house on Fifth Street.” Waddell looked into their faces. Nobody said anything. “If you comply with all our demands, we may avoid violence. Otherwise,” he said, glancing back at Hugh MacRae, “we will take strong measures.”

  Sam waited for the discussion, the argument, the heated debate. For a change, nearly everybody who mattered was assembled in one room together across a table. Surely, now was the time to talk things out, negotiate, come to some kind of understanding everybody could live with.

  He understood Waddell’s tactic: start with an unequivocal, impossible demand. He had seen union negotiations, political haggling, railroad commission budget hearings, congressional debates. Always, they started from a fixed point. Always, they declared irreconcilable differences, then proceeded—over the course of hours of tedious, wearing talk—to reconcile them.

  But nobody on either side of the table said anything. The Negroes sat, polite as kids in Sunday school, waiting to be dismissed. Come on, Sam thought—say something! Now’s your chance! Prove you can’t be pushed around.

  But nobody objected or protested or even cursed. Then get what you deserve, Sam thought.

  The whites sat tense and upright.

  At that precise moment, in the unbearable silence of a room full of fifty-eight grown men who all tacitly agreed they had nothing to say to one another, Sam understood the South.

  Waddell sat rigid, enforcing the silence. When even he couldn’t stand it any longer, he abruptly presented a typewritten copy of the declaration to lawyer Henderson and stood up, a signal to the others. The white men exited first, collecting down the corridor at the bar. Sam stood at the doorway next to an armed guard. The Negroes filed past him with their heads down, except for Tom Miller, who paused, looked him in the eye, and shot him with his index finger. Sam remembered him from the tugboat. Now, he was part of this, too.

  Sam joined the other white men at the bar. Hand trembling, he drank a tall glass of mineral water to soothe his dry throat. George Rountree appeared across the room, talking heatedly with Hugh MacRae and J. Allan Taylor. As Sam watched them wag their fists and shake their heads in the filtered, golden light of late afternoon, as he tried to comprehend the shifting alliances of this affair, Harry Calabash stole up on him.

  “I take it events have escalated to a new level.”

  “Jesus, Harry—I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

  “Seen what? Bartender!”

  “Somebody who really won’t give in. I mean, everybody always says they won’t give in, but sooner or later everybody gives in on something.”

  “Maybe there’s still some hope for your soul.”

  “They won the election,” Sam said. “What more do they want?”

  Harry sighed. “You haven’t been listening, Samuel. They’ve never been subtle about it. What do you think all that white supremacy talk was about?”

  “Talk, that’s what. I thought it was just talk. People don’t actually believe that crap, do they?”

  “Don’t ask me to tell you what people believe. I can’t even say for sure what I believe. How about you? You’ve been having it both ways for some time now.”

  “Harry, philosophy doesn’t help. Leave me out of it.”

  “I believe a man can convince himself he believes in something—”

  “Goddamnit, Harry—make sense.” He shoved Harry’s glass out of reach. “Lay off the sauce.”

  “—if what he convinces himself he believes will get him ahead in the world.” Harry stood and stretched to retrieve the glass.

  Sam raised his glass of mineral water. “The hell with you.”

  “To vectors of ambition.”

  Sam drank the rest of his water and still felt parched. “Now what, Harry?”

  “You tell me. I wasn’t at the secret meeting.”

  “You heard the whole thing at the courthouse. They’ve got till tomorrow morning to give in to the demands. In writing.”

  “Yes, we must have it in writing. Make it all neat and legal.”

  “That’s the plan, all right.”

  “Well, you should be glad. Colonel Waddell apparently likes the cut of your jib. You’ll be sailing right along with the new wind that’s blowing.”

  “You don’t think much of me, do you?”

  “You don’t care what I think,” Harry said. “You look at me and you pray, ‘Lord, don’t let me end up like that.’ You’re young. You want the good life.”

  “I want something to show for it.”

  “For what?”

  “It. You know. Work, labor, toil, strain, worry. Love.”

  “Ah, love. Now we’re down to the nut.”

  “Cut it out, Harry. What do you know about it?”

  “More than you realize, my boy.”

  “Spare me more stories about the old plantation. Some goddamn tale of lost love—jilted under the magnolias by a buxom Southern belle.”

  Harry held his glass in both hands and bent over the bar, not drinking, staring into the sparkling crystal. “There’s another kind of love, Sam. Maybe you’ve never run across it.”

  “I’ve seen all kinds.”

  Harry sighed. “I’m talking about love of a place.”

  “Patriotism,” Sam said. “You’re very big on that down here.”

  Harry shook his head. “No, not patriotism. You’re not listening. Not love of country. Love of a place.”

  “This place.”

  Harry rubbed the glass between his palms as though he were trying to ignite it from friction. “Yes, this place. Does that surprise you?”

  Sam shrugged. “I’ve moved around quite a lot. One place is pretty much like another.” But the soft ocean breeze had stuck in his nostrils, as the deep green of the pine tops against the opal sky had stuck in his eyes.

  The colored bartender freshened Harry’s whiskey without being summoned and stood with his back to them, a few paces away. Sam could feel him listening. The man’s green jacket was flat and smooth as a billiard
felt.

  “You’re wrong,” Harry said quietly. “I feel sorry for you—to be as old as you are, and not to know that.”

  Sam laughed. “You just said how young I was.”

  Harry was staring into the crystal again, frowning, as if this were very important to him and he must get it right. “A man can live his whole life in a place and not belong to it. Nor it to him.” He squinted at Sam to see if he was paying attention. “Or he can step off the train in a place he’s never laid eyes on before and belong to it body and soul, world without end.”

  “Amen.” Sam smiled.

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “Sure—the first part. Seems to me that’s where Alex Manly comes in.”

  “Not just him.”

  “Oh, stop being so serious, Harry.”

  “It doesn’t get any more serious than this. It’s time you understood that.”

  “You love this place.”

  Harry nodded slowly, looking him in the eye. “So do you.”

  “Not me,” Sam lied.

  He gestured for more mineral water. The bartender leaned over slowly to pour it from a quart bottle, and Sam half expected him to put in his two cents. He had intelligent eyes and the soft hands of an intellectual. Probably studying at night to be a lawyer, Sam figured. He had no idea what these people did at night—not just the blacks, but the whites, too. They drank and talked, he knew that. And the ones like his neighbor, Farley, beat up their women. But what else? What made them stay here? What made them love it here so bad they’d suffer almost anything to live out their lives between the river and the sea?

  Harry said, “It’s the sound of your childhood, gets in your blood. The smell of mint under the kitchen window. The rotten stink of the river at low tide. The chatter of cicadas and pine borers on a humid night. In your imagination, you always live in the place where you were brought up.”