Stuart Porterfield felt the bite of the fiery tip, but he did not look down. Slowly his fingers pulled the paper from the tobacco, crushed the wrinkled flakes, transformed the glowing end to black ash.
“Fifty-seven!” said the husky young man. “Bullshit they ain’t planning somethin’. Listen, why we sitting here like dummies with our women home alone?”
“Don’t move,” said French, “I’m tellin’ you.”
“Don’t move! Like hell!”
“Glad, I seen all this before in other places,” French Rosier said, wiping his hands. “You got no call to be afraid.”
The boy got up and glared and walked across the floor and stood there.
“Listen,” French went on, “all those fellas want to do is scare us. They just like a bunch of kids on Halloween. You remember when you was a little boy, on Halloween?”
Glad Owens did not answer.
“What I bet is, you got yourself one of your mama’s sheets and went outside at night. Now ain’t that true? Why, sure, it is. You made believe you was a spook and hid behind a bush and when somebody passed, you jumped out. ‘Boo!’ We all did that. But think back, Glad. You was with a lot of other spooks, I bet, you wasn’t by yourself.”
“Oh, shut up, French, you talking crazy!”
“No, I ain’t. I’m saying that those fellas out there ain’t no different from the kids at Halloween. They got to be bunched together and they got to hide behind bedsheets because every one of them is scared to death. In the daylight you’d laugh at them; they’d laugh at themselves.”
“I don’t know about all that, French. It might could be: I never said they wasn’t chicken-shit. But they ain’t alone. They together. All it takes is one to say ‘Let’s do it’ and the whole damn bunch’ll do it.”
Stuart Porterfield said, “That’s a fact, French, that’s a fact.”
“They only trying to scare us! Take it easy. There ain’t nothing going to happen tonight; it ain’t the way they work. This here is just a warning, like; a chance to strut a little. Come on, now, forget about them. Finish up your coffee!”
Stuart Porterfield took out a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his forehead slowly, and as all the others did, stared out.
They say they pay a whole lot better in New York, he thought; a plasterer can make himself a pile there, easy. . . .
Up the gravel path the cars rolled, headlights reaching out beyond the farthest rise, the men in sheets inside the cars all straight and silent.
The license plates were varied: some were from Farragut County, some from nearby towns, and several from other Southern states.
But no one looked at the licenses.
“I didn’t know they still had such a membership,” said Elbert Peters, looking down upon the seemingly endless parade.
“I didn’t either,” Charley Hughes said. The cards lay on the table, the half-drunk bottles of beer, the can of peanuts, all untouched since John Holbert’s call, his breathless “Go look out the window!”
Helene Peters, Elbert’s wife, sat in a chair. Her eyes were wide.
“You know, in a way, though,” Charley Hughes said, “I’m kind of glad to see them. When I was in Georgia, oh, it must be twenty years ago, they had all sorts of demonstrations—but I always missed the fun. It got so I didn’t really believe there was a Ku Klux Klan.” He smiled good-naturedly, glanced at his friends, and picked up a bottle of beer.
“Who’s the Dragon in Caxton?” he asked.
“I don’t know. It might be that fella, you know, Carey, that’s been ranting and raving. Or the Jumpin’ Preacher.”
“Niesen?”
“Yeah, it could be him—except the people who would follow him I don’t think could afford those cars.”
They leaned on the windowsill, watching. Suddenly Charley Hughes laughed.
“What is it?”
“Oh, I just thought, now, wouldn’t it be funny if one of them had a flat tire along about now!”
“Man, you have a peculiar sense of humor, that’s all I can say.” Elbert Peters got his bottle of beer and took a swallow, and grinned.
“It would be something, though, wouldn’t it, El? You’re riding along and looking fierce and ugly and then, boom!—a flat. Right in the middle of the parade. You have to get out and change the tire, but look—do you take off the sheet? If you don’t, it’ll get all soiled; and if you do, then everybody sees that you’re the little bookkeeper over at the Mill who’s afraid of his boss. And think about all the others, sitting in back of you, waiting. They can’t even blow their horns—by God, I got me half a notion . . .” He took another swallow of beer and turned toward Helene Peters. “Honey, you got a box of carpet tacks around this place? Elbert and I’re going to wipe out the Ku Klux Klan!”
Eternities were gone before the last car disappeared and the street was empty again and night was night. Above, and creeping toward the Height, a hundred and forty red and angry little eyes grew smaller. Then, at last, they closed.
Joey let the curtain fall.
Albert walked over, chewing a piece of salami.
“What you think of all that down there?” Joey said.
“It’s a pistol,” Albert said.
Charlotte Green was seated in the chair. She was reading, or pretending to read.
“Did you think there really were things like that?” Joey asked.
“Sure. What wrong with you?”
“Were you scared? Are you scared now?”
Albert pulled Joey’s head down. “Listen, I tell you: they try anything, there’s plenty guys around like Glad Owens that they’ve got a whole arsenal, just waiting. I seen some of his stuff, he showed me once. He got a .38 and his brother that’s in Louisville, Arnie, he’s gonna get a machine gun to him. He says. I don’t know if he can do it in time, but that’s what he says.”
Joey looked at his mother and tried to guess what lay beneath the calm, untroubled surface. It was as if she weren’t at all surprised, or worried, or disturbed; as if a line of cars with hooded men inside were the most natural thing in the world.
Charlotte Green did not lift her eyes from the book.
You’ll send me off to school tomorrow, Joey thought, and if I come home with my throat cut, you’ll be sorry but you won’t let up, you won’t stop fighting. Nothing changes, Ma, he tried to say, and couldn’t. There’s a big white wall between you and what you want, always has been, always will be. You can beat your head against it, but that wall won’t crack.
“Would you get me a glass of milk?” Charlotte Green asked.
Joey rose and poured the milk and watched his mother drink it. She looked very small and frail to him, not like the leader of an army.
He lay down on the couch by the window again. Uncle Rowan, he remembered, had gone into the bathroom when the cars appeared. The door was locked, the old man still inside. Joey could picture him, sitting on the toilet, hands folded, certain that this night would be his last.
Well, let it come; that’s all I wish now, let it come and be over with! he prayed.
The automobiles were silent, neatly parked along the side of the road, hand brakes firmly on. The hooded men were walking up the hill, but no one spoke: there was a quiet, priestly slowness to their movements, as if each was thinking, It’s too bad we’ve got to do this, but it must be done. It must be done, and no one else has got the strength or courage: we are forced to show our steel! They walked along the rutted path.
The hill grew steeper, brush and rocks appeared.
The path became invisible.
Inside his chest, the heart of David Parkinson beat quickly. Climbing, and the sharp excitements that had pierced him from the time he’d first picked up the telephone and organized the meeting, drained his strength: but none could see this. He had not walked so straight and sure for years.
When, finally, they reached the small plateau atop the hill, he could not breathe! The pains were fists about his throat. But he was glad of them, and fi
ercely proud.
He raised his hand.
Six men came forward, lifted up the heavy wooden cross and set it down with care.
It had been made by the Reverend Lorenzo Niesen. He’d gone to the McGraw Lumber Company and purchased, with the money given to him by the young man, Adam Cramer, six long planks. A buzz saw had cut them to the proper size. He’d worked on them with nails and braces then until they were quite solid. Then he’d gone to the back of the department store and found the paper-wrapped excelsior that is used in shipping to protect furniture, and wired this material to all sides of the cross.
It was the finest, best-constructed cross, the men admitted, that anyone had seen for years.
“A real professional job,” David Parkinson said, and Lorenzo Niesen was happy that he’d worked so hard.
“Let it burn bright!” called a man when the gasoline had soaked into the wrappings. “Let it burn so they can see!”
Another man produced a box of matches, struck one, shielded the tiny flame from the nonexistent wind.
Again David Parkinson raised his hand.
A leaf of fire grew from the bottom of the cross. Then suddenly it spread, enveloping the structure wholly, carving blackness, filling all the dark and silent night around the hill with brilliance.
Adam Cramer smiled.
He stood beneath the flaming cross and stared down at the feeble lights. At Caxton, at the houses where the people now were looking out their windows, dumb, unmoving, fearful. And the fire was hot upon his face . . .
Silent moments later, the hooded men went back to their cars and drove away.
In time, the hill was dark again.
17
It was a typical Southern California apartment, five years old and falling to decay. The white plaster was streaked with rust from the screens, cracked and crumbling at the foundations, ready, it seemed, to burst at any time like an eggshell. Other, identical apartments, some painted green, some pink, some yellow, lined the block like abandoned crates. There were no trees, no hedges, nowhere any growing things to block the steady, grinning sun.
Ed Driscoll and Peter Link got out of the rental Ford and made their way across the pockmarked lawn. At 11550½ they paused, and Driscoll knocked. The door was opened by a middle-aged woman in a light green dress.
“Yes?”
“Mrs. Cramer?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m Ed Driscoll. I phoned you this morning about an interview.”
The woman smiled. “Yes,” she said. “Come in, please.”
The men stepped inside the apartment, and Ed Driscoll made a swift mental note. Ordinary. Perfectly ordinary. Two bedrooms, dime-store pictures, television. Cluttered with fake antiques. No trace of a child’s presence, or evidence there had ever been a child. No—there.
He stared for a moment at the framed photograph of a two- or three-year-old boy that sat on the mahogany secretary.
“Good-looking kid,” Link said, adjusting his camera. “Mind if I take a shot?”
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
“Why is that, Mrs. Cramer?”
“I’d just rather. He was my boy then, you see. The best and the nicest you could find.”
The men looked at one another briefly.
“He isn’t my boy any more,” Mrs. Cramer said. She sat down on the dark couch and began to fan herself with a Chinese ivory fan. “I suppose that sounds dreadful, but it’s the truth. I don’t even know this fellow you’re writing about. He’s a stranger.”
Driscoll took out a small writing pad and a pencil. “Go on, Mrs. Cramer,” he said; but the woman merely fanned herself slowly.
“I’d like to get a few facts, if you don’t mind. Is Mr. Cramer, your husband, around?”
“No. Adam died four years ago, of a coronary they said. They said a coronary. But that isn’t true. He died of a broken heart!” The woman’s expression did not change. As she spoke, her voice grew softer, lower, became a whisper. “Adam was the best man in the world, Mr. Driscoll, and certainly the best husband. He was a marvelous provider.”
Driscoll nodded. “I thought—”
“We met in Chicago, when I was a young girl. Do you know how old I was then?” She smiled. “I was seventeen. I’d been married before, of course. My first was a charming person, and it all happened very fast; I’m ashamed to say how fast. But we were married, and it seemed to be just fine. Then he started to gamble. With cards. Henry always seemed to lose, he lost all the time, but it didn’t cure him. I’d plead with him and beg him, and he’d say ‘Laura, don’t you worry, I’m finished with that life!’ but it would go on happening. You have never seen such a handsome man. I’ll show you his picture, and you’ll see.”
She rose before Driscoll could stop her, and went into the bedroom. She returned within moments, holding a thick, square photograph album. The pages were an eighth of an inch thick, and the sides were dusted with gold. She turned three pages and gave the book to Driscoll.
“Have you ever seen such a handsome man?”
Driscoll looked at a foxed, stained photograph that could not have been taken any later than 1910. The man was certainly handsome, though the youthful features seemed spoiled by the traditional mustache. He passed it to Link, then said, “Very handsome, Mrs. Cramer. May I ask his name?”
“Henry. He sang, Mr. Driscoll, and his voice was as sweet as the wind in a meadow. But perhaps all Irish people have that ability, I don’t know. Do they?”
Driscoll shrugged.
“He would sing at night, in bed. I’d say, ‘Henry, that’s bad luck!’ and he would kiss me and say that whenever he was next to me he just couldn’t help it, he had to sing. That was the kind of man he was. But, he gambled.” She began to fan herself more quickly. “And then he started to drink, Mr. Driscoll. My mother and my sisters told me then that I had better divorce him because it could only mean trouble, but I didn’t have the heart to, or the strength. He didn’t get drunk the way some people do, you see. Alcohol affected Henry in a different way. It made him gentle and kind. He’d come back from some tavern and tell me that he had never seen such a beautiful place as our home. Our home!” Mrs. Cramer shook her head. “It was a terrible little hotel room, and we owed three months’ rent on it because of his gambling, and Mrs. Gottlieb would not speak to me. We had no furniture, no lovely things. But to Henry it was beautiful!
“He’d ask me to drink with him, too, Mr. Driscoll, and that was the shocking thing. ‘Come on, Laura,’ he would say, ‘join me. You’ll see things straight, for the first time. The ugliness will all go away! You watch, a few snorts, and we won’t have any problems. The bills will vanish! Mrs. Gottlieb won’t exist! And the whole world will be a wonderful place!’ He talked that way. Of course, I never touched a drop, and I have my mother to thank for that.”
“About Adam,” Driscoll said, glancing again at Peter Link. “If you would—”
“Henry,” said Mrs. Cramer, “got so that he was drunk almost every night of the week. Nothing bothered him, nothing at all! I’d ask him for money to pay the grocers and he’d cry and plead for my forgiveness, because, of course, he wouldn’t have a penny left. And that is the way it went for months. I couldn’t begin to count the times he promised he would straighten up and get a job and stick to it, but finally I told him I did not believe him any more, and that is when he stopped crying and making promises. Mother told me to leave him at once. She told me to come home where I belonged—we lived in Washington, my mother and sisters, and I’d gone to Chicago for a lark. I thought it would be fun to work as a secretary, so I went to a school. But I could never seem to learn much. That is when I met Henry.”
Ed Driscoll folded his pad resignedly and replaced his pencil. “Yes, Mrs. Cramer,” he said. “Please go on.”
“Would you gentlemen like some tea?”
“No, thank you.”
“Tea is very nice on hot days. Henry hated it, though. He would never drink it. I loved him.” The wom
an straightened her green dress and stared through Driscoll. Her voice was a distant echo. “I thought I loved him,” she said. “But what does a sixteen-year-old girl know about such things? Do you know what I mean?”
“Yes, certainly,” Driscoll said.
“And, oh, he was wild over me. You might not guess it, but I was a very beautiful woman some years ago. The men said so. Henry worshiped me, he said; he called me his little girl. Isn’t that odd?”
“No.”
“Of course, the truth was, he was the child in the family. Ten years older than I was and yet he had no sense of responsibility. I had to take care of everything! And what if I hadn’t? What if I’d gone along with him and lived his kind of life? We would have starved.” She rubbed her hands together and knotted her fingers tightly. “Well, it finally got so I was losing weight from the worry, and I told Henry I would have to leave him. He got on his knees and begged me not to. I said, ‘If you love me, why do you act this way?’ And he said, ‘Laura, this is my honest, bounden word. So help me God, I’ll give you no more heartache!’ He swore on it, and reminded me that at least, for all his carousing and crazy ways, he had never looked at another woman—which was the truth. So I gave him another chance, I told him I wouldn’t leave him if he’d do the right thing.
“He got a job the next day, at a barbershop, I think. And for a while, I thought he had truly reformed, because he always came home on time and without any liquor on his breath, and he did not gamble any at all that I know about. Then on a Thursday night it was, on a Thursday, the first, he was late. I waited three hours, and supper got cold. Then I knew it was all over, and I started packing. I had packed two suitcases when the doorbell rang. It was Henry. I could hear him singing. And I thought, No, I won’t answer. But I have never been strong, the way some women are. So I went to the door and opened it and there he was, drunk, with his hands behind his back. ‘Hello, my little girl!’ he said, and bent down to kiss me. I went crazy then, I think, because I slapped him. It was the first time I had ever slapped anyone in my entire life. It made my palm sting. He stepped back and put out his hands. Do you know what he had in them?”
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