Cape Fear Rising

by Philip Gerard

  From out of nowhere appeared Father Dennen, waving his arms to stop them. “For the love of Jesus, boys, you can’t do this!” he shouted. “You can’t do this!”

  Waddell’s horse shouldered past him, and the priest went sprawling onto the oyster shells. He picked himself up and brushed himself off in a cloud of lime dust, grabbing men by the elbow, pleading for tolerance. But the sheer momentum of the mob carried him along and spit him out into the gutter, where he lay, stunned, watching hundreds of wild-eyed men stream past.

  Seventh was a quiet residential street. The mob flowed noisily along the narrow, tree-shaded corridor between modest frame houses, moving fast. They trampled flower beds, scattered stray dogs, sent whole flocks of blackbirds exploding out of the twisted live oaks in black, frenzied bursts.

  A Red Shirt fired his rifle into the air. Pretty soon, a dozen ragged shots cracked into the overhanging branches. A shotgun boomed twice, bringing down a rain of twigs and shredded leaves. Men hooted and yelled. A frightened horse kicked down a picket fence at the corner of Dock. At Orange Street, a team of matched grays pulling a landau reared up at the sudden appearance of the mob, and the carriage fetched up against a porch, its front wheel busted. Dr. Silas Wright, the mayor, peered out of the landau, clutching the useless reins in his white gloves, praying to go unrecognized.

  The mob rushed through the neighborhood like a flash flood, carrying away everything in its path. White women stared out from behind curtains. Occasionally, men ran outside to join the mob, buttoning their flies as they ran, pulling on coats, their pockets bulging with shotgun shells.

  Past Orange Street, the faces turned darker. Negro workingmen, sleeping after the late shift at the mills, were roused abruptly. They fled out their back doors barefoot, wearing only flannel union suits. Many of the women were already at work in the better homes across town. Children dived under beds, stared through the broken boards of slat fences.

  By the time it roared past Williston School on Ann Street, the mob had swelled to almost a thousand men. Now, Waddell could see a church and a white building just in front of it that must be Free Love Hall. The sign proclaiming The Record Publishing Company still hung from the second floor. A face appeared in the upstairs window, then disappeared. Waddell reined up at a distance from the front door, men milling so close around him that he could not move his feet in the stirrups. All at once, he realized he was unarmed. The upraised barrel of a Winchester was bobbing out of the crowd on his right. He gripped the barrel, hauled the weapon out of the owner’s hands, and planted the butt on his thigh.

  As the mob fetched up and surrounded the building, it went deathly silent all at once, as if its angry roar had been caused by the constant movement. Waddell looked behind him onto a sea of hats. Rifle barrels poked up among the hats, here and there a brickbat.

  Waddell held up his hand—an old cavalry habit. He drew himself up in the saddle and addressed the closed door. “Open up, in the name of the white citizens of Wilmington!”

  On cue, a dismounted Red Shirt hammered at the door with a brickbat.

  “We want Manly!” Waddell proclaimed. Nobody answered.

  He gave a casual signal with his left hand. The mob spit out two men in overalls, each hefting a fire ax. Taking turns, they whacked at the door until it splintered off its hinges. Inside stood a lone Negro, transfixed, wide-open mouth bubbling with saliva. A voice shouted, “Manly!” A little pistol cracked, and the Negro grabbed his neck, reeling as if he’d been punched. Then he vanished.

  The mob rushed into Free Love Hall after him, but he was gone out the back. They slipped on his blood.

  They smashed chairs and tables with nine-pound railroad mauls, gouged the walls with axes, shattered the windows with rifle butts and brickbats. They swarmed upstairs to the printing room and found the Hoe press. Four men heaved against it, but they could not budge it. So they overturned the drawers full of type, scattering the heavy letters across the floor. They smashed more windows, busted every piece of furniture in sight, swept carefully filed stacks of back numbers of the Record off the shelves, then pulled down the shelves. Swinging axes and mauls, they pulverized two typewriters, a beer mug filled with sharpened pencils, an old desk, and a glass paperweight.

  Mike Dowling was so caught up in the melee that, by the time he finished smashing things, the Winchester in his hand had a broken stock and a bent barrel. He flung it away, gave a bloodcurdling rebel yell, and crawled out the window toward The Record Publishing Company sign. Hands gripped him by the belt as, swimming in thin air, he tore it loose from its chains and flung it down into the street. The mob axed it into kindling.

  Downstairs, two Red Shirts discovered a storage closet. They smashed the padlock with a maul and raked cans of kerosene and turpentine off the shelves. Other men shouldered them aside, grabbed the kerosene and turpentine, and doused the broken furniture. Somebody struck a match. The men upstairs barely got out as the flames flared into the rafters.

  Outside Free Love Hall, Waddell was furious. The mob was out of control. They had come to get Manly, and Manly had fled. Somebody had already been shot—what had become of him? Was he Alex Manly? Other men were firing freely into the flames. “Call the fire brigade!” he yelled to one of Dowling’s men, who merely grinned at him and popped off another round.

  Solly Fishblate found Waddell. “I’ve put in a call to the Negro fire brigade!” he shouted.

  “Can’t you do something about these Red Shirts?”

  “Should have thought of that before.”

  The flames were leaping out of the roof now, and the northerly breeze threatened to spread the fire to the church next door. That would never do—you could not burn down a church and expect the world to bless your cause. Hundreds of rifles were firing now. Men and boys were cheering. Horses reared and plunged, neighing in fear. To Waddell, the clamor had an old, familiar taste.

  Sam Jenks, who had finally worked his way to Waddell’s side, said, “I thought there wasn’t supposed to be any violence.” He hadn’t been this scared since Cuba.

  Waddell bent from his horse. “Welcome to the chaos of battle, son.”

  “Manly doesn’t even seem to be here.”

  “It’s gone beyond that now. Men are going to die today.”

  A block north, at the intersection of Ann Street, a horde of Red Shirts surrounded the horse-drawn fire engine of Phoenix Hose Reel Company No. 1 as it turned onto Seventh. The Negro crew clutched the brass handrails, as if they could not be harmed unless they let go. A dozen men grabbed the horses and held them. The others trained their rifles on the firemen and shouted obscenities. The firemen didn’t reply—they hugged their machine.

  Free Love Hall blazed so hot that the crowd fell back. The cool air rushed past their ears toward the suction of the fire, and the heat gusted back into their faces. Flames shot fifty feet above the roof. The pine clapboards, saturated with natural resin, burned blue and orange. Boards crackled and spit. Rafters buckled with claps like pistol shots. The flames sucked at the cool air with a sound like heavy surf. The shake roof erupted in half a dozen places, the shingles fluttering onto the heads of the mob. Some of the clapboards literally exploded, rocketing embers into the crowd. The embers arced out from the building and bloomed like fireworks. The crowd cheered each one and danced out of the way.

  The fire spit out flaming splinters. Little white boys scrapped over them, ran in gleeful circles trailing plumes of smoke.

  All at once, a great tearing sound split the air—the joists were buckling. Waddell’s horse heard it and reared, almost tossing him off. He got the horse under control and listened: the upstairs floor was giving way.

  A thousand men and boys stopped their spree. Then they heard a great boom as the Jonah Hoe press crashed through.

  At the intersection of Seventh and Ann, the Red Shirts backed away from the fire brigade and let them through unmolested. For two hours, they fought the blaze, but they didn’t have a chance—Free Love Hall was alrea
dy a ruin by the time they arrived. They worked under the guns of the mob, concentrating on their apparatus.

  Hugh MacRae watched the firemen work. “Such discipline,” he observed.

  One of the Red Shirts said, “You dress those monkeys up, they are crackerjack.”

  Sam could not turn away—his eyes were captured by the spectacle. When at last the heat made him look away, he spied the woman in the crimson Eaton jacket grinning toward the flames, scrawling onto her notebook pages with a blind hand.

  Back at Colonel Waddell’s house, Bessie King fretted. Her hands needed to be doing something. Those high-and-mighty men who had followed the Colonel out the door had murder in their eyes. She didn’t want to know where they were going, or why. “Lord, bring my boy back to this house before the reckoning,” she prayed out loud as she cleaned up the kitchen and rinsed the breakfast dishes at the sink. The cold water sloshed out of the pump and splashed her apron, but she didn’t notice.

  The parlor carpet was soiled from boots and men’s heavy shoes. She fetched the vacuum sweeper, the newest gadget the Colonel had procured for the household. She could get the carpet much cleaner by hauling it out to the back porch, folding it over the banister, and whacking it with her broom, but her back was too tired today. She rolled the mechanical sweeper back and forth over the carpet, listening to the roller brush spin and the dirt rattle up into the metal canister. When she stopped, the house was silent. She rolled the gadget back into the kitchen closet and closed the door on it.

  It was a powerful lonely morning. Her boy was out on the streets somewhere. Her little girl, too—slipped out during breakfast.

  She sighed and held back tears. Humming softly to quiet her nerves, she climbed the stairs to see about Miz Gabrielle. Surely, she must crave some company, too.

  A man’s life, his whole integrity, comes down to little moments when he could have done the right thing, but didn’t—because he wasn’t paying attention.

  Samuel Jenks, Pulitzer Prize winner for journalism, addressing the University of Delaware class of 1922

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Thursday, November 10

  THE VIGILANTES MARCHED BACK to the Wilmington Light Infantry Armory in a boisterous, ragged column, men falling out here and there along the way to take a drink or do mischief to the Negroes’ homes. As the last elements accumulated in the armory yard, Waddell faced them from the marble steps, hands clasped behind his back, plumed hat cocked over his right brow.

  Sam stood off to the side watching the mob, taking notes. He picked out the crimson Eaton jacket of the lady reporter.

  “Gentlemen!” Waddell announced sternly. “We have done what we set out to do! The Negro newspaper is finished. From this moment on, the editor Manly is declared by this community to be an outlaw, to be shot on sight—”

  Their cheering interrupted him. He rocked back on his heels, and Sam could tell he was not savoring the cheers. He had lost control this morning, and he knew it. For a few minutes, Sam reflected, it had been like Cuba—the confusion of violence, the stomach-clenching fear, and afterward the guilt. It must not happen again. It might already be too late. Waddell, impatient, started talking again before the crowd had quieted.

  “I assure you, whoever bags that black rascal shall not be prosecuted under law!”

  This time, the cheering went on for some time, the Red Shirts chanting, “Kill Manly! Kill Manly!”

  Waddell held up his hands for silence. “You called upon me to lead you. You have performed your duty. Now, go quietly about your business. Obey the law—unless we are forced to defend ourselves.”

  Here, he paused for a predictable round of hurrahs. Waddell desperately wanted to keep his audience assembled within the sound of his voice, yet part of him feared what he had inspired them to do, what they still might do. This morning, the clamor of battle had revisited him, and he had loved it. The kerosene smoke still burned his nostrils. Following his lead, the mob had displayed a power like a natural force. A man could get drunk on that power—and he must keep his head. There was intricate work to be done yet.

  At first, the crowd knotted together, talking excitedly about what they had just accomplished. Captain James held the infantry inside the building.

  His mouth suddenly cotton-dry, Waddell turned on his heels and went inside to fetch a glass of water. Sam followed. The mob began to disperse, men in small bands heading for their jobs, their neighborhoods. A good many of them lived in Brooklyn among the Negro workmen.

  Waddell stomped the length of the marble hall into the back kitchen and drank from a tin ladle he filled at the pump. He slurped the water carelessly, splashing his shirt and lapels. His collar was already slippery with perspiration, and he smelled of horse sweat. His thighs were sore from the ride, and his knees ached. He was breathing hard.

  Sam stood behind him, hands clasped in front, saying nothing. When Waddell turned, he said, “Thirsty work, eh, Colonel?”

  Colonel Waddell rehung the ladle and dabbed his lips with a dishtowel. “You don’t approve?”

  “Didn’t figure you for a vigilante.”

  Waddell heard the disappointment in his voice. He snapped the towel into the sink. “This is not what I had in mind. But men are men. You can lead them so far, but in the end they will do what they will do.”

  “You’re resigned to it.” Sam felt lightheaded from adrenaline.

  Waddell stepped close to him, and Sam saw the power building again in his eyes, the light being turned up brighter. “I’m resigned to nothing,” Waddell said. “Nothing is changed. Somebody got carried away. A building has been burned.”

  “A pretty big nothing.”

  “What exactly are you saying? Are you with me, or not?” He cocked his head and squinted one eye, as if he were sighting over a rifle. “I don’t like your tone.”

  “A man was shot,” Sam said. And Alex Manly soon would be, he thought—if he were stupid enough to still be in town.

  “We don’t know that.”

  “The blood.”

  “He rabbited right out the back window, though, didn’t he? Pretty damned spry for a dead darky.”

  Sam hadn’t meant to bully Waddell with his own guilty conscience. “You’re right—what’s done is done. But what happens now?”

  Hugh MacRae shouldered his way into the kitchen next to Sam. “My question exactly,” he said.

  Waddell smiled, taking control again. MacRae wondered how he’d ever managed to get control in the first place. Now, he owned the mob.

  Waddell said quietly, “I think we’re about due for a meeting of the aldermen—say, this afternoon? Meantime, I’m going home to wash up properly.”

  Sam gathered his notes and went to the Messenger office, where he typed up the story of what he’d seen. What, exactly, was the story? There were lots of stories. It depended on your point of view. White men calling a halt to Negro domination. A judgment of fire to satisfy the honor of white women all over the Old North State. That was one story. Waddell’s heroic version.

  That’s how he wrote it. It would have been easier to do it with a drink.

  Tired but in high spirits, Waddell retired to his home, where Bessie had just brought in the mail. Among the bills and correspondence was a broad envelope addressed to him and bearing the carefully penned notation, “Please deliver at House.” He knifed it open and read it quickly, smiled, and folded it into the outside pocket of his clawhammer coat. It changed nothing.

  Meta Rountree clambered up the stairs and banged open the bedroom door. “George! George, get up!”

  George Rountree opened his eyes and jerked his head off the pillow. He felt the cold thrill of calamity in his heart. “What?” he stammered. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know for sure,” she said, already laying his suit and a clean, boiled shirt across the arm of a chair. “Something’s happening downtown. Gunshots. The whole north side is burning. The Negroes are in a riot!”

  He regarded her stupidly, trying to cle
ar the sand out of his burning eyes. “How—?”

  “Chadbourn called on the telephone.” The postmaster. “Come on, get up—get up!”

  Rountree struggled into his clothes, then went into the indoor privy to urinate and splash water on his face. There was no time to shave. He burst out the door onto Front Street and jogged the three blocks to the post office, arriving out of breath. His old friend W. H. Chadbourn met him on the steps.

  Chadbourn had dallied briefly with the Republicans and then backed off when the party fused with the Populists and the Negroes. He had no use for white supremacy, but he believed in civil order. It was Chadbourn who, leaving the Board of Audit and Finance to become postmaster, had turned over his vacant seat to a Democrat, setting up the current stalemate between the two boards.

  “All hell’s breaking loose, George,” he said. “They burned out Manly. They say there’s fires all over the north side. They say the Negroes are marching on city hall.”

  “Those goddamn cowboys! This puts everything in jeopardy.”

  “Too late for the fine points, George. Go home. Protect your family.”

  Rountree was thinking fast. “We’ve got to stop this foolishness. Can you get Mayor Wright to resign?”

  “I can try.”

  “Can you get the board to go along?”

  “I told you, I’ll try.”

  Rountree grabbed his friend’s arm. “If they don’t, this city won’t be here by nightfall.”

  Rountree hurried back home and searched the front hall closet for one of the Winchesters he had bought wholesale for the Businessmen’s Committee back in August. He’d never fired it. He hadn’t fired a gun in years. He couldn’t remember whether he’d loaded it or not. He pumped the lever, and a bullet sprang up from the magazine into the open receiver. But it was already loaded, ready to be cocked and fired. The round in the chamber didn’t eject, and the gun jammed. He swore. For five minutes, breathing hard and fighting panic, he worked at the jam with a silver pocketknife. At last, the jammed bullet popped free, and he carefully closed the lever. Then he let down the hammer, so he wouldn’t accidentally shoot his foot off.