by Troy Soos
I was startled when the front door opened, and Margie came in. I quickly hid the pamphlets under a Sporting News; I didn’t even want to be seen reading Klan literature.
But I needn’t have worried. Margie barely gave me a glance.
“How was dinner?” I asked.
“Fine.” She stalked off to the bedroom without another word.
I stayed up a little longer, and briefly debated whether I should sleep on the sofa. I opted for the bed, though. There’d be plenty of space, I knew, especially between Margie and me.
CHAPTER 14
There was even more space when I woke up in the morning. Margie’s side of the bed was empty. I felt reassured when I heard her moving about in the kitchen; at least she was still in the house.
I groggily remembered our argument of yesterday, although the reasoning behind it escaped me. The aroma of brewing coffee sparked some life in my brain, but even with my head clearer, I couldn’t grasp exactly what Margie and I had been angry about. As I listened to the sizzle of frying bacon, a hunger stirred my stomach. Then I realized I might have to end up making my own breakfast; just because Margie was cooking didn’t mean she was cooking for both of us.
I pulled my robe around me and shuffled into the kitchen.
Margie shot me a look, and a curt, “Good morning.”
“Morning.” I could be just as terse as she.
I continued on to the bathroom. When I got back, I saw she’d set two cups of coffee and two plates of eggs and bacon on the table. At least we’d be having breakfast together.
As we sat down, I said, “Sorry about yesterday.”
“Me too,” she replied.
Neither of us had much conviction in our voices, though, and we began eating in silence.
I broke first. I gave Margie a report on my meeting with Franklin Aubury and Karl Landfors. “It doesn’t look like things are going to blow over peacefully,” I concluded.
“Thank heaven no one was killed in the fire, at least,” Margie said.
“Not this time.” I poked at the eggs with my fork, breaking the yolks. “But there’ll be more.”
“Is that what Karl thinks?”
I nodded. “And Aubury.” My talk with Tater Greene had also left me convinced that should there be any retaliation for the arson, the Elcars would strike again, even harder. “I’m going to do whatever I can to try to stop anything else from happening.”
“You think you can?”
Realistically, no, I had to admit to myself. “Maybe not stop it,” I said. “But slow it down some. I hope.” I looked at Margie. “I gotta try anyway.”
“Why?”
There were several reasons. One was that I’d read in the Argus to what horrific extremes the violence could escalate. I briefly considered showing the articles to Margie, but decided against it; the way they’d remained in my mind, I knew she would be even more upset by them. Besides, maybe it wasn’t what I read about incidents in Texas or North Carolina that affected me. I had the feeling it was more because I’d looked into the faces of Slip Crawford and Denver Jones, and had imagined them in every story I’d read. “I just have to,” I said.
“This isn’t like anything you’ve been involved in before,” Margie said. “You’d be up against a lot of people—not only those who might have been part of the mob, but those who sympathize with them.”
“I’ll drop it if I think I’m in too deep, or if I’m not getting anywhere.”
Margie rolled her eyes; she knew me better than to believe my last statement. Then she offered, “I’ll help—if you like.”
“No.” My answer came out sharper than I’d intended.
She tried again. “I think I know a way to get some information that you might not have—”
“No. Like you said, this is going to be tougher than anything before.” I thought again of the atrocities the Klan committed. Even though they claimed to be protectors of womanhood, I had little doubt that anyone who opposed them, of either gender, would feel their wrath.
Margie pushed her half-eaten meal aside. She wasn’t happy at my reaction to her offer. “Maybe there are other things for you to be paying some attention to.”
I knew full well what she meant, but I asked, “Like what?”
“Like the problem we’ve been having. I think we should talk about it.”
I dug into the eggs, as if to show that I was too occupied to talk right then. “Okay,” I said. “Maybe later.”
“Why not now?”
“I don’t want to right now.”
“Things can’t continue the way they are,” she said. “And the sooner we ...” Her voice trailed off when she saw me shaking my head no. “Excuse me.” She got up from the table.
“Where are you going?”
“To get dressed. I have an appointment at the nursing school.”
“Are you still going to enroll?”
“I don’t know,” she muttered as she went into the bedroom.
I guess she didn’t want to talk after all.
After Margie left, I was tempted to try to get a bit more sleep before going to the ballpark. I’d had little rest during the night; my thoughts kept bouncing around from the argument with Margie to the stories I’d read of Klan brutality to the recent violence in East St. Louis. I didn’t get anywhere trying to figure out what was going on with Margie and me, but I did have an idea about Slip Crawford’s death.
Instead of going back to bed, I took a long shower, then called Franklin Aubury. He was back at his office, and I made an appointment to meet him there after the game.
I got there a little after four o’clock. To my disappointment, Aubury didn’t ask how the game went; I was eager to tell somebody that I’d hit two doubles while filling in for Marty McManus.
“Karl couldn’t be here,” the lawyer said. “He’s been detained in a meeting at Congressman Dyer’s office.”
“That’s all right,” I said. Karl wouldn’t have thought to ask me about the game either. “I read those newspapers you gave me, and I had a couple of ideas.”
A hint of a smile indicated Aubury was pleased that I’d already read them.
“There’s a difference,” I began, “between the lynchings and violence in the South and what’s been going on here. In most cases, the Klan is open about what they do—not open about who they are under the hoods, but about the fact that the Klan is behind the lynchings. They even brand some of their victims with ‘KKK,’ like signing their work. They want people to know it’s them, don’t they? To show how powerful they are?”
Aubury nodded.
“But here, even if some of the men involved in lynching Slip Crawford and burning Jones’s house are in the Klan, they don’t want anyone to think it was done by the Klan.”
Aubury’s eyebrows arched above the rims of his glasses. “Do you know something about who was responsible for burning down Denver Jones’s home?”
“Yes, I talked to one of them last night.” I didn’t give Tater Greene’s name. “He tells me it wasn’t officially a Klan activity. This was a bunch of guys who blamed the Cubs for damaging Enoch’s cars, so they wanted to hit back at a Cub player.”
“Not officially a Klan activity,” Aubury said. “They publicly disavow violence, but secretly encourage it.”
“I don’t know. The fellow I talked to said the local Klan leaders gave strict orders not to do anything violent.”
“If so, that’s only for the time being. Most likely they want to keep their reputation ‘clean’ until their membership has increased. Then, when they have police officers and potential jurors as members, they can commit whatever crimes they wish to with impunity.” Aubury removed his pince-nez. “Did your friend tell you anything about the Crawford lynching?”
“He’s not a ‘friend,’ ” I corrected. “He says he wasn’t there when Crawford was killed and doesn’t know anything about it.”
“Do you believe him?”
“I’m not sure. I think he told me
the truth, but I wouldn’t bet my life on it.” As I said it, I told myself that was probably something I should keep in mind. “Anyway, since the Klan is publicly claiming they’re not behind the violence—and for now they are telling their members to keep things peaceful, according to my contact—then maybe they really weren’t behind the Crawford lynching.”
“You think it was the Elcars’ players, then?”
“Could be. But I expect most of them are in the Klan. I don’t think they’d risk getting their leaders mad at them by doing anything that could be pinned on the Klan. And they had to know the KKK would be suspected in the lynching, even if it wasn’t officially a Klan action.”
“Then what do you think?”
“Maybe it was somebody who wanted to murder Slip Crawford for a personal reason. And he figured by making it look like a lynching, he could get away with it.”
“You mean to say you believe one person killed him and staged it to look like a lynching?”
I considered that for a moment; from the circumstances, I doubted that one person could have handled Crawford alone. “I guess it had to be more than one.”
“So several people wanted to murder him and collaborated on it?”
That didn’t make much sense either. “Or,” I said, “one person got a mob incited against Crawford and basically used the mob as a murder weapon.”
“With all respect,” Aubury said, “perhaps you simply want to believe that there has to be a motive for Crawford to have been killed. That’s not the way it is. I’ve lived my whole life knowing that a colored man can be beaten or killed because some white men don’t care for his pigmentation.”
I couldn’t argue with Aubury’s experience, but the news reports did support my belief. “From what I read in the Argus,” I said, “there usually was some reason given for what the Klan did, even if it was a piss-poor one.” Most often, the justification was that their Negro victim was suspected of insulting or assaulting a white woman.
“That’s true,” Aubury said. “But I don’t know what cause there could have been for killing Slip Crawford, other than the fact that he’d won a game from a white team.”
I asked Aubury what else he knew about the dead pitcher. He told me that Crawford had a wife Hannah who owned a hair salon in St. Louis, and that the two of them were among the many who’d crossed to this side of the Mississippi after the East St. Louis riot. Most of what he knew about Crawford involved his baseball career.
Maybe I should find out more about Crawford, I thought. “I’d like to talk to some of his teammates on the Stars,” I said. “Maybe they’d know if somebody had a quarrel with him.”
“They won’t be in town for some time,” Aubury said.
“Hasn’t their season started yet?”
“If you’d read the sports pages of the Argus, you’d know that they’re playing the first two months on the road.”
“I didn’t get past the front pages,” I admitted.
From the satisfied expression on Aubury’s face, I had the feeling he’d given me the papers primarily to learn about the atrocities, not about colored baseball. “This is the Stars’ first season,” he explained, “and they don’t have a home ballpark yet. Ground was broken last week, but it won’t be ready until the end of June.”
I was still thinking of the stories I’d read, and they gave me an idea. “For whatever reason, the Klan wants to pretend they’re not violent, right?”
Aubury nodded.
“Why? Because people won’t join if they think the KKK is about killing and torturing. So they keep quiet about that and try to present themselves as some kind of patriotic society.”
He nodded again.
“Then why don’t we get some stories into the local papers—the, uh, white papers—saying that the Klan is suspected in Crawford’s death and the house-buming.”
“And what will that accomplish?”
“Maybe they’ll crack down on their members to keep them from doing anything more for a while.” I wished Karl was there; he knew the newspaper business. “I’ll bet Karl has contacts he can use to plant some stories,” I said.
“What about your earlier theory—that the Klan wasn’t involved? That would make the planted stories lies.”
“I’m not worried about giving the Klan a bad name,” I said. Judging from their literature, they didn’t care about presenting themselves accurately, so why should we?
Aubury flashed a smile. Even though he was an attorney, I don’t think he was worried about libeling the Ku Klux Klan either.
CHAPTER 15
I didn’t think it was possible, but over the next day and a half, things between Margie and me only got worse. We barely spoke, barely even acknowledged each other’s presence.
When I awoke in an empty bed Saturday morning, there was no aroma of breakfast in the air, just the same chilly atmosphere that had permeated the apartment for the last several days.
I heard Margie moving around, but the sounds weren’t the usual. I propped myself up on my elbows and listened closely. There was no clatter of kitchen utensils, no running water in the bathroom. The noises were coming from the parlor.
Glancing around the bedroom, I saw a wide gap on her side of the clothes closet. Her nightclothes and robe weren’t on the corner chair where they usually lay either.
I got up and quietly walked to the parlor doorway. Margie was packing an oversize leather trunk and a canvas satchel with clothes. I stood for a few moments, watching. To my surprise, I was more relieved than upset. Then she looked up at me with red, swollen eyes. And I immediately felt guilty that I wasn’t upset by her leaving.
Margie put down the middy blouse she’d been folding. In a hoarse whisper, she said, “I think we need to be apart for a while.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s probably a good idea.”
Margie looked as if I’d stabbed her, and I realized that I’d agreed too promptly. She started crying in ragged sobs.
I rushed over and tried to put my arms around her. “I didn’t mean—”
She stepped back. “Get away from me.”
I stopped in my tracks. What do I do now? Stand here and watch her cry? That seemed cruel, somehow. Go to the kitchen and brew some coffee? No, too callous.
While I debated with myself, Margie got her tears under control, blew her nose, and waved me away. “Go get dressed or something.”
I did as she said. While I put my clothes on, I overheard Margie call a cab company for a taxi. She didn’t give a destination.
Fully dressed, I went back to the parlor, where Margie had resumed packing. “Where are you going?” I asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“When are you coming back?”
“I don’t know.”
I almost asked, “Are you coming back?” but I knew she had a lot more stuff still in the apartment. She’d at least have to come back to get it all.
Margie had finished fastening the suitcase straps when a cab pulled up in front of the apartment. I wasn’t sure if I should offer to carry the luggage for her—if I did, it might give the impression that I was eager for her to go.
Fortunately, the driver came to the door and took the bags to his Model T.
Margie pinned a small straw bonnet over her hair. “I’m sorry about ... everything.” She choked down a sob.
“Me too.”
I went over to her again; this time she didn’t back away. We hugged tight and long, and she kissed me, leaving my cheek moist from fresh tears. Then she left.
The cab probably hadn’t gotten more than two blocks before I changed my mind about her leaving. I suddenly did not think it was a good idea anymore.
I hoped Margie would come to the same conclusion just as quickly. I even held off taking my morning bath, so that I could greet her at the door.
I kept waiting until I had to leave for Sportsman’s Park. And, as I walked out of the apartment, I realized that Margie didn’t need to come back for the rest of her things—s
he could simply send for them.
This morning might have been the last time I would ever see her.
After the game, I hurried back to Union Boulevard to find that what yesterday had been a home was now only an apartment. Margie hadn’t returned.
I paced around for more than an hour, listening to the telephone not ring and watching the front door not open. My eyes noted everything of Margie’s: the bronze mantel clock, her collection of old photographs on the wall, the silver candlesticks, and a dozen decorative knickknacks. At first, I found their presence comforting; Margie would have to contact me again even if only to have them shipped to her. But soon they only served as reminders of her, reminders that she’d gone.
I got a wooden crate from the back porch, and went through the parlor, taking down everything of Margie’s. I put the filled crate in the closet, and even wheeled her Victrola into the pantry.
With nothing of hers visible in the parlor, I settled into my Morris chair with a ginger ale and the latest Police Gazette to enjoy the solitude. But the soft drink proved to be tasteless, the magazine merely smudges of ink, and the room was stark and lonely.
I had an impulse to go out somewhere, if only to a picture show, but didn’t want to miss Margie in case she did come back.
As a last resort, I called Karl Landfors.
“Karl,” I said when he got on the line, “I know it’s short notice, but you want to come over for dinner tonight?”
“I wish I could,” he said, “but I’m writing a piece for McClure’s. I need to have it in by Wednesday.”
“You got plenty of time, then. Take a break.”
“Well ... I haven’t eaten yet. So I suppose I could—”
“Great! How soon can you be here?”
“Half an hour. Less if Margie doesn’t mind dirty shirt cuffs.”
“She won’t mind. She’s not here anymore.”
“What?”
“Margie left this morning.”
“Why? What happened?”