The Intruder

by Charles Beaumont

  Jim Wolfe had stared.

  “Tom, are you saying you think the decision was a good one? Are you saying that?”

  “For the sake of the argument, maybe.”

  “Well, it’s a pretty fast switch, that’s all I can say. Hell, anyone with an ounce of sense can see that it’s the worst thing that’s happened since Roosevelt! Understand: I’m not in the least prejudiced. When I said I wouldn’t have, well, Louie Armstrong over for the evening, I was taking a lot of factors into consideration. What I mean is, well, like: maybe I’ve got nothing personal against spiders, you understand? I might even like them and realize that they’re man’s friend, eaters of insects, harmless, docile, see? But I certainly would think twice before I decided to bring one of them home as a pet . . . at least I would until Mary, and Beth, and—well, you and Ruth—and all my neighbors got over their fear. There might not be any basis for it at all, but it’s a plain fact that most people are scared to death of spiders. They hate ’em. All right—let me pursue this a little further. It’s an interesting parallel. Since there’s no real reason why people should hate spiders, the Supreme Court decides that spiders are being persecuted, and this persecution has got to stop. Instead of setting examples, instead of sending scientists all over to talk to the people, to let them understand that their prejudices are wrong and giving them time to adjust, instead of this, the Court all of a sudden drops a nest of the hairy bastards down every chimney! Step on just one, they say, and we put you in jail!”

  “We’re not dealing with insects, we’re dealing with human beings!”

  “The spider doesn’t happen to be an insect. It’s an arachnid. But, all right. What I’m saying—and you’ve been saying it, too!—is, it’s naïve, man, naïve to suppose that generations of tradition can be dissolved simply because somebody gives an order to that effect! But that isn’t the only trouble. No matter whether we’re responsible for it or not, it remains that the Negroes as they are today are definitely inferior to whites. Not potentially, no; but in actuality. In ratio, they’ve got more crime, more incest, more divorce, more disease, less morals and less intelligence. Period. Is this condition going to change automatically with the inception of integration? Is it?”

  Tom had remained silent.

  “Answer: No. Instead, since they can’t be expected to jump up to our standards all of a sudden, the standards will have to be lowered. Look at what happened in Washington, if you doubt it. Of course, that’s taking the happiest view. That’s assuming the most probable result won’t occur—I mean an outbreak of violence; the worst kind of violence we’ve known in the South since 1860!”

  Wolfe had sucked on his pipe, looking both serious and intelligent. He is intelligent, Tom had thought.

  And he had known, suddenly, that this was the face of the Enemy.

  “I hesitate even to mention the significance of all this in terms of international relations,” Wolfe had continued. “The Communists have already made Jim Crow as well known as Uncle Sam. Better known, by God. Just with the situation we’ve had. But you just watch what happens when the fighting starts! They’ll have a damned field day! Ten to one that kid from the Hill, that Vaughan kid they had to expel—I’ll bet his name gets more publicity than Marilyn Monroe, all over the world. I’m telling you, Tom, American prestige is going straight to hell with this business. Every minor skirmish, every little incident . . . it’ll be the next best thing to another War Between the States. Every day another Emmet Till will bite the dust— And when the whole miserable thing explodes in our face, it’ll be heard in every corner of the earth! This is common sense. And you tell me—even for the sake of argument—that ‘maybe’ the decision was a good idea!”

  Wolfe had removed his pipe and stared at Tom.

  “Well,” he’d said, “do you care to challenge any of these points?”

  And Tom, given no choice, had been forced to answer: “Yes.”

  “By all means then,” his friend had said, stiffly courteous. “I’d be delighted to listen.”

  “I’m—not going to tear your argument down piece-by-piece, or even try. It’s basically true. But all you’ve said, in essence, is: A wrong that has stood so long that it can’t be corrected without a lot of trouble ought to be allowed to stand.”

  “Absolutely not! No, that isn’t right. When I say that I disapprove of this legislation, I mean I disapprove of it as a means of correcting the wrong. It’ll only compound it, because of the sure result; don’t you see? Look, Tom—you know as well as I do that an idealist without a plan is a dangerous person. Any half-baked neurotic can look at something he doesn’t like, even if it’s four thousand miles away, even though he knows nothing whatsoever about the factors involved, and say: ‘That’s wrong! Change it by three o’clock tomorrow!’

  “Now I personally didn’t much care for the way California treated its Japanese citizens right after Pearl Harbor. You remember? But I at least had sense enough to know that maybe there were things I didn’t understand. Maybe they had reasons of their own that would have justified tossing everyone of Japanese descent into what amounts to concentration camps. Who knows? But these same California people aren’t hesitating to throw rocks at us!”

  “A wrong,” Tom had said, knowing how feeble it sounded, “is a wrong, whether it’s justified or not. All crimes have got their reasons. You could carry that to ridiculous lengths and show that every murderer and every petty thief and every dictator in the world does what he does for very damn good personal reasons. Hitler probably could have given you a pretty logical explanation why he burned millions of Jews, why it was necessary to the economy and the moral health of Germany. A man who has just raped my wife could produce great psychological excuses, I’m sure. And maybe I couldn’t judge him—but I sure as hell could stop him from doing it again!”

  “Aren’t you reaching a bit, old man?”

  “I don’t think so. There are reasons why we brought the Negroes­ over here as slaves in the beginning, and there are reasons for the situation that exists now. But it’s morally wrong, nonetheless. And whatever is morally wrong must be redressed at once, regardless of the consequences.”

  “This ‘at once’ business,” Wolfe had said, “is the whole difficulty. Some things, by the very nature of them, simply can’t be changed ‘at once.’ What we have now didn’t just pop up, for God’s sake; it was over a hundred years in the making! It’s easy to stop a man from raping your wife. But what if you had to stop him from hating her? What would you do then? Besides, you’re still talking all around the point. Which is: the wrong can be corrected, it is being corrected, it will be corrected . . . if only they will let us alone! Things are better now than they were five years ago. They’ll be better in another five, or would have been, anyway. The strain of prejudice is getting weaker with every generation, Tom. We don’t laugh at midgets in a circus any more. Why? Because we’re more sophisticated than our fathers were; we know that midgets are caused by a general endocrine deficiency. The same thing holds true here. We used to have a fundamental, economy-based need for segregation and prejudice; now we don’t. Since prejudice is an unnatural thing, it follows—”

  “Do you believe that?” Tom had asked.

  “Believe what?”

  “That prejudice is unnatural?”

  Jim had risen, then, and walked toward the cabinet that held the hi-fi components. “Why, anyone of intelligence—” he’d begun.

  “What about the Jews? Around here, the Catholics? The Chinese? The Mexicans? The Poles? In some places, even the Irish? No; it isn’t unnatural. This ‘progress’ of yours is a nice little argument, only it doesn’t happen to be true. I believed it, until this business started; then I realized I was mistaken. Because if it was true, the decision wouldn’t have kicked up much trouble. The fact that it did kick up trouble—and that there might be more: how’d you say? ‘the worst kind of violence the South has known since 1860’—proves—can’t you see that, Jim?—that there hasn’t been any real
progress, that it’s just an illusion we’ve hung onto to justify our failure to do anything about the matter. Your failure and mine. It’s us, the nice people, the intelligent, sophisticated people—we’re the ones to blame for this, not the ignorant hillbillies and the cheap neurotics! They have no power to act; we have, and always have had. But we didn’t act. The guilt is ours, and we’ve got to keep this thing alive because if we don’t, then we’ll know the guilt is ours and that wouldn’t be pleasant, would it! Not a damn bit pleasant.”

  His voice had been tense, while Jim’s had remained for the most part calm and relaxed; now they both knew, with certainty, that the friendship that had been theirs was gone, forever and irretrievably gone.

  Jim had not even tried: “I’m sorry,” he’d said, “that this has happened. At the moment the most important reason is that I’m forced to take sides. And I’m not on yours, Tom.”

  Now Tom McDaniel wondered how many people there were, not only in the South, but all over, who had to ‘take sides’ and found themselves for a faceless legion of strangers and against those whom they loved: against their friends and wives and the selves that they had been.

  He talked with Ruth for an hour, and she listened quietly, and he told her the same things he had told Jim Wolfe; but robbed of their righteous anger, the words sounded false, and he was almost ashamed. Still, they had to be said. All of them.

  When he finished, Ruth sat perfectly still. She breathed softly.

  Then she said: “What are you going to do?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not sure.” And it was true. In every other matter, he had been ruthlessly honest; the Messenger had won prizes for its liberal, forthright views; his blistering, knowledgeable editorials had achieved a measure of renown. In this matter, however, he had not been honest. Far from stating his belief that accepting the decision was a moral duty, he had not even stated that it was also a legal duty—not recently, anyway.

  He was a pimp now, peddling diseased goods.

  Why?

  He started the engine, switched on the lights and pulled back onto the road.

  If I have so little regard for a small town newspaper, if these people are my enemies, why don’t I move away? I could accept Lubin’s offer. In New York. On a pro-integration paper.

  Is it because, he asked himself, you like Caxton, and you like these people—even if they are enemies—and editing the Messenger is exactly what you want to do?

  “Shipman won’t let me tell the truth,” he said to Ruth, to himself. “If I do, I’ll be fired.” He looked down at his wife. “Well, what do you think of me now? What do you think of a man who’s a nigger-lover and doesn’t have the guts to say it out loud?”

  Ruth was silent.

  “Go on! I know what you’re thinking. Why don’t you say it!”

  “I’m—confused,” she said, pressing her hand to her forehead. “If you’d told me any of this before, or even hinted—if you’d tried to make me understand—”

  Tom nodded. “Instead of ‘jamming it down your throat’ . . . I know.” He felt angry and disgusted. “It’s all ruined now, I suppose,” he said.

  Ruth did not answer. He could see the tears that had fallen, unchecked, down her face.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Please believe that. I’m sorry.”

  They drove home, then. They went into the darkened house and did not speak or look at one another; neither knew what to say, what to do: We’re strangers, Tom kept thinking; strangers.

  “Dad!”

  He turned and saw Ella standing in the bedroom doorway. She was in her pajamas, but she had not been sleeping.

  “Dad, call Mr. Allardyce right away. He’s been trying to get you for an hour.”

  “All right, thank you, kitten. You go on to sleep now; it’s late.” Tom picked up the phone. “He didn’t say what it was, did he?”

  “Huh-uh. But he said it was real important. You two been warring?

  Ruth wiped her face with a handkerchief and smiled. “No. Come on, now, off to bed.”

  Ella shrugged. “Okay,” she said dubiously, and closed the door.

  “Tom?” Jack Allardyce’s voice was loud with excitement.

  “Yes. Ella says you were—”

  “Tom, you better get over to Simon’s Hill right away.”

  “Why?”

  “You ain’t heard about it?”

  “Heard about what?”

  The old man almost shouted the words.

  Tom said, “All right,” and put down the phone slowly.

  “What is it?” Ruth asked.

  “The Baptist church on Simon’s Hill has been dynamited,” he said. “The preacher was inside.”

  19

  They drove slowly past the cemetery into the section known as Death Row. It was like any other section of Los Angeles—old, gray, quiet—except that the streets were lined with funeral parlors. They began as rather ornate establishments, mostly in the colonial style, but as you proceeded toward the Civic Center they grew smaller, less fancy and more to the point.

  From the third block onward, they dropped their disguises entirely. The barbered lawns and Southern mansions gave way to bleak little structures of plaster and wood, and there was no attempt made at a cheerful atmosphere.

  Peter Link said, “If you ever plan to die, Driscoll, this would be the neighborhood to do it in.”

  Ed Driscoll nodded. He had instinctively cut his speed down to twenty-five miles per hour, and he noticed that the other cars were moving slowly also. There were few pedestrians to be seen. Few signs of life.

  He drove another hundred yards, then parked in front of an old frame house with a sign in front of it which read: Haller Bros.—Mortuary.

  “You want a shot of it?” Link asked.

  “Might as well.”

  Link got out of the car and took a number of pictures of the establishment; then he and Driscoll walked to the front door.

  A balding Negro in a black suit answered. His voice was soft. “Yes?” he said. “Can I help you, gentlemen?”

  “In a way,” Driscoll said. “We’re looking for a fellow named Preston Haller.”

  “That’s my son,” the man said. “He’s in the back, working. You want me to call him?”

  “We’d appreciate it.”

  “Certainly. Come in, gentlemen.”

  Driscoll and Link stepped into a dimly lit living room. It was neat and heavy with the sweet smell of flowers. They sat down on a couch and waited quietly. Then a young, handsome man in his middle twenties came in.

  “I’m Preston Haller,” he said. “Dad says you wanted to see me.”

  Driscoll proffered his hand. “We’re reporters, Mr. Haller,” he said. “We’re doing a story on Adam Cramer. Maybe you’ll help us.”

  The young man’s expression grew suddenly hard.

  “He’s a friend of yours, isn’t he?” Driscoll asked.

  “Who told you that?”

  “It’s true, isn’t it?”

  Preston Haller walked over to the window and stood there for a time. “It used to be true,” he said finally.

  “Then I suppose you’ve read about his activities.”

  “Yes, I’ve read about them.”

  There was a silence. “Mr. Haller, Adam Cramer is a pretty big news item these days. We’re trying to do a story on him, but we’re not going to be able to unless you give us a hand. You can see why, can’t you?”

  “I think so. Because I’m colored.”

  “Because you’re colored and because you were close to him. If the two of you are friends and he’s out to stop integration, well—there are quite a few questions to be answered.”

  Preston Haller smiled, but without amusement. “I’m afraid I can’t be of much assistance to you. I don’t know the answers to those questions.”

  “But you do know Cramer well?”

  “No. I thought I did, once; but I was wrong. So were a lot of other people.”

  “Will you tell
us about it?”

  “About what? I could only tell you what he was, mister, or what I, anyway, thought he was. That fellow in the South—he doesn’t know me and I don’t know him.”

  Driscoll shrugged. “Frankly, Mr. Haller,” he said, “I don’t believe you. I think you’re telling us this because you know what we can do with your story, and you don’t want to see that done to your friend—no matter how he’s behaved. Of course, I may be wrong. We can’t force you to talk, in any case. But I’d like to submit something to you. May I?”

  Preston Haller said nothing.

  “If you tell us your story—and it’s a long one; we picked that much up from the kids at the university; some of them remembered—Adam Cramer will get hurt. It may not stop him, but it’ll slow him up. If, on the other hand, you decide to respect the friendship that you had with him and refuse to tell the story, a lot of people are going to get hurt. More than you can imagine, maybe. The choice is yours.”

  Preston Haller rubbed his forehead, walked to the large couch and sat down.

  The scent of flowers became heavier on the air.

  A clock ticked loudly.

  “Well?”

  “All right.” Preston Haller sighed, and it was, clearly, a sigh of immense relief. He rose. “But let’s go somewhere to talk. Wait here and I’ll tell Dad.”

  He returned in a while and they walked down the street to a small, dark bar called Ada’s and ordered beer.

  Preston Haller said, “He’s got to be stopped?” It was almost a question.

  “He’s got to be stopped,” Driscoll said.

  “Yeah.” The young man took a large swallow of beer and licked his lips slowly. Then he said: “I met him in Switzerland. We were both attending the University of Zurich. Adam—”

  “Never mind about Adam for a while,” Driscoll interrupted. “Tell us about you first. It’s important.”

  “Well, I was there on a scholarship. I’d been majoring in philosophy at the university here and, I don’t know, they had a lot of lectures lined up, a lot of important people. The truth is, I went there to get away from death.”