Joey thought, No!
“Yes,” he said.
“Dr. Henderson and I spent quite a while trying to restore what we call basic somatic balances. And we managed it. But there is no way of telling whether or not he will have the strength to overcome the shock, because he’s still in a very deep coma. There has been nothing to indicate that he will come out of it.”
“He can’t die,” Joey said.
“I’m afraid he can,” the doctor said, staring levelly. “We don’t know exactly the degree of the injury to the brain, but it’s very severe. You say his head struck the edge of a desk?”
“It looked that way.” Joey had blotted out the memory; now it returned, in a quick wave.
He’d been lying on the couch, trying to sleep, when he heard the explosion. For some reason, he knew what had happened. Within moments his trousers were on, and he was rushing down the gravel path, heart hammering, toward the church.
It had caught fire, and was burning, a deep orange against the night sky. Joey leaned against the radio tower, got his breath back, and saw that both the damage and the fire were relatively slight.
There was a jagged hole on the left side of the church.
He rushed to the door. It was locked. He screamed: “Reverend Mead! Reverend Mead!” and waited; then he kicked the ancient lock, broke it, and went inside.
The smoke was bad. He put a handkerchief to his mouth and walked to Reverend Mead’s study.
The old man was lying on the floor, silent and unmoving. A bright wash of blood covered his face.
Joey lifted him into his arms and walked back outside. By this time, people were gathering.
“Call an ambulance,” Joey said and waited eternities for the ambulance to come, while buckets quenched the small flames.
No one said much. Joey did not think of who had done this, or why: he thought only of getting the preacher to a hospital and curing him. He tried to stanch the wound, but was unsuccessful. Blood continued to flow. So he put his handkerchief against the gaping hole and pressed softly, and hoped he was doing the right thing.
Within an hour, the heavy doors of St. Vincent’s were pushed open (and they had to go to St. Vincent’s, there was no choice) and the preacher, under woolen blankets, was wheeled into the emergency room. There was no expression on his face.
Joey waited.
Later, they wheeled the preacher out and past the waiting room, and in a while they said that Joey could see him.
He lay breathing hard. A blood transfusion was being made. Bandages covered his skull.
“We can’t tell you anything yet,” one of the doctors said, and he stayed a long time, looking down at the dark, expressionless face; then he heard the voice that was not a voice and went out and walked through Jeremiah Street. . . .
“I wish I could offer some hope,” Doctor Grant said, “but—it’s a strange thing about head injuries, Mr. Green. There are only two kinds: bad and very bad. The human head is like an egg. You can’t ‘almost’ crack it, or crack it halfway. Your friend is an old man. He has sustained compound fractures, and the shock to the brain—”
Joey nodded. “Can I go in?”
“It won’t do any harm. But if you want my opinion, you’re putting yourself through a lot of unnecessary discomfort.”
“You mean he won’t wake up?”
“Very probably not. He might, but the chances are slim.”
“I can’t leave him alone.”
“He isn’t alone. The nurses—”
Joey turned and walked down the hall and carefully opened the door.
There was no change in Reverend Finley Mead. He lay in exactly the same position, still as a discarded doll. No longer did he seem tall and brave and strong. No longer the man who had told Joey about the Tiger.
Doctor Grant appeared in the doorway, nodded at the nurse; she walked out.
Joey heard: “Tracheotomy may be needed; Dr. Henderson—”
And: “I’ve talked to Dr. Henderson. There doesn’t seem much point to it.”
The old man’s breathing was ragged.
Between breaths, there would come a silence deeper than any other silence, for Joey would hold his breath also, automatically, waiting.
He sat and stared at the preacher.
Now was the time to think. The others had been turned away; a night would pass before the relatives’ arrival; time to think.
But he could not. Only the despair he’d felt before was in him; the futility; and the red words trailing through his mind: I’ll find them and I’ll kill them for this.
The vigil lengthened and still the old man did not move. From time to time the doctor came in and checked him and went out again.
I’ll kill them, said the words.
Then, so much later, after he had waited for that breath and it had, incredibly, finally come, Joey tore himself away from the bed and glared down at the preacher.
“Well, die, for Christ’s sake! Die!” he cried. “And don’t blame anybody, you stupid old fool—don’t blame anybody but yourself! You wouldn’t see the way things are. I tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t see. So they blew up your church! Where was your blessed God when they were doing that, preacher? Where was He then?” Joey’s arm raised; the finger of his hand stiffened and pointed at the old man. “Where will your dear Lord be when those same guys come and plant dynamite under the other homes, when they blow up Simon’s Hill and everybody on it?”
The preacher stirred.
“Right now, right now, Reverend—maybe my own mother and father are dead. Maybe their guts are all over the floor! Is it worth it, all them words? Freedom!”
He rushed to the bed and shook his arm away from the nurse’s grip, and screamed at the still figure: “Tell me about our rights now, you old son of a bitch! Oh, Christ, tell me about them now!”
“Doctor!”
“Leave me alone. He did it himself. He killed all of us. My mother’s dead, they blew her up—”
Strong hands pulled him away. He felt the hot tears on his cheeks and he began to fight, when suddenly the doctor froze.
There was the ghost of a sound from the bed.
“Joey,” the sound said.
They waited.
Again: “Joey Green.”
He tried to pull away, but the hands held him firmly.
“He’s calling me!”
“You’re in no condition to—”
“I’m all right now, I am, I’m okay. He’s calling—”
“He won’t recognize you, Mr. Green.”
Joey pushed the doctor aside angrily and knelt by the bed.
The old man’s eyes flickered, opened; there was a light behind them, but it was a dim light.
“Joey . . . must not blame them all. A few . . .”
He strained to hear.
“A few. Tell Irma, tell her I don’t mind. Are you here, Joey?”
“I’m here.”
The doctor and the nurse stood very still, watching.
“Joey, you remember . . . you remember once I told you everybody got a test . . . for him alone?”
“I remember, Reverend.”
“This is your test.”
The voice stopped; there was a long pause; then some hidden strength inside the preacher pulled more air into his lungs.
“Promise me,” he said, so softly only Joey Green could hear. “Promise me you see the job gets done.”
Joey’s teeth were clamped together tightly; he was holding off the scream that was a solid thing within his throat.
“You’re the only one . . . can do it now. Joey? Promise?”
He tasted the salt and thought of all the Jeremiah Streets and felt the shudder then that chilled along his arms. He put his head against the white sheet, heard his own voice say:
“I promise.”
21
He sat on the bunk in the cell and absorbed the experience, relishing, in order, the faraway sounds of conversation (muffled, as though coming from midgets
and dwarfs), the metal smells and dirt smells and the stale, leftover, unidentifiable smells; the gray door and green walls and actual real-life bars; relishing the role of the revolutionary jailed for his patriotic fervor. Thus it had been (exactly!) with De Valera and Paine and, yes, Dostoevski and Seneca . . .
They also had sat in tiny cryptlike rooms, trapped by the unjust many, punished for their courage and their wisdom.
Yes!
Of course, it hadn’t been difficult to read the poor sheriff. Any one of a dozen possible approaches would have sufficed, probably the best being a shocked reaction followed by a nicely humble statement of his whereabouts at the time of the blast (“I was watching a mystery on television, sir. Mrs. Pearl Lambert and I do that quite a lot. She was with me. You can ask her, if you’d like. But—gosh, I just can’t believe what you say!”) and a sincere expression of faith in the sheriff’s ability to round up the culprit.
Instead, he’d called him a strutting martinet with a power complex and warned him that if he didn’t get out of the room in a hurry, he’d have a lot to answer for.
The alibi stuck, but Rudy Parkhouse had had his pride wounded; so he’d booked Cramer on the charge of inciting to riot.
Which was fine.
Adam dropped the cigarette and squashed it with his heel. He prepared to lie down on the bunk when the heavy steel door opened.
“All right, Rudy. You can leave us alone.”
“Ten minutes,” the sheriff said. “That’s the limit.”
“All right, Rudy.”
Verne Shipman waited until the door was locked again; then he walked over and sat down on the bunk.
Adam smiled. “How are you, Verne?” he said, putting out his hand.
Shipman avoided it. “I might as well tell you right off the bat,” he said, “that I don’t cotton to any of this. I figured you were smart. I strung along with you because that’s what I figured. Now I’m beginning to wonder.”
“Oh?”
Shipman gestured about the cell. “Smart people don’t end up here,” he said.
Adam got up from the bunk and walked to a corner of the cell. He looked outside and smiled even more broadly. “But I’m not ‘ending up’ here, Verne. This is only a little visit.”
“Don’t be too sure of that. The way you smarted off to Rudy, I wouldn’t be surprised at anything. He told me what you said. With an alibi like that Lambert woman, you could have kept out of here easy!”
“I know that.”
Shipman stared.
“Look, Verne,” Adam said, “it’s a little difficult to explain, but this is actually a vital part of the operation. It’s a big step forward.”
“Getting tossed in jail is a step forward?”
“Uh-huh.” Adam chuckled. “I don’t know whether you’ve ever studied political history, but it so happens that an occasional jail sentence can do more good for the leader of a cause than a dozen speeches. The theory has been proved out time and again. See: the people, Verne, the people have always hated cops. Cops are supposed to be our protectors, keepers of the peace, enforcers of the law—and that’s what they are in theory, you see what I mean. But the truth is, folks think of ’em only as enemies. Enemies. They get respect born of hate; and the hate is grounded in fear.”
Adam saw that the big man was not following him. “Try looking at it this way,” he said. “Everybody in America is afraid of being thrown into jail. Right? It’s something they have nightmares about. Okay, so when a person they know is held unjustly, when it’s perfectly clear he’s innocent, they empathize—put themselves in his shoes.”
Shipman continued to stare.
“The whole thing will help turn them against the authority they’re afraid of. It’ll break down their resistance to our organization—and quite a few have resisted, you know. Just because of the fear-respect of this so-called ‘law’ . . .”
“I don’t know. That’s a lot of fancy talk.”
“It’s true, nonetheless. The value of jail shouldn’t be underestimated by anyone who wants to get ahead in this country.”
Shipman took a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose. “Well,” he said, “I still don’t know. Bail is ten thousand dollars. What if I don’t put it up? What if I decide to—”
“Forget it, Verne. I don’t want your money.”
There was a stunned silence.
“You have ten thousand dollars?” the large, baby-faced man asked.
“No!” Adam laughed. Then, quickly, he sobered.
“You know, I’m a little disappointed in you, Verne,” he said. “I’d expected a certain amount of faith by this time. Haven’t things gone as I told you they would?”
“Well, yes, I suppose so.”
“Haven’t I kept my word straight down the line?”
“Sure. But—”
“Then—if you’re still interested in being a part of this—I would suggest that you show a bit more trust. I didn’t call you here, remember. You came on your own accord.” Adam grinned suddenly and clapped Shipman on the shoulder. “But cheer up now,” he said. “And save your money: there’ll be a need for it—and for you—later on. This is only the beginning.” He held out his hand for the second time.
Shipman accepted it hesitantly; then he rose, and walked halfway across the cell.
“Where are you going to get the bail?” he asked.
Adam shrugged and gestured toward the window.
Below, on the sidewalk in front of the jail, was a crowd of men and women and children. Many of them held placards.
The placards read: FREE ADAM CRAMER! JUSTICE FOR CRAMER! CRAMER INNOCENT!
They were moving slowly, circling, like pickets.
Shipman stared out the window until the steel door opened.
“Time,” said Rudy Parkhouse impatiently.
Shipman looked back one time, then he went out of the cell.
Three hours later, Adam was informed that Bart Carey, Al Holliman and Phillip Dongen had deposited the ten thousand dollars in bail money.
Twenty minutes after that, he walked out of the jail and drank in the sweet music which the crowd made for him. They roared and yelled and hit him on the back; and even though there weren’t more than twenty of them, they seemed an army.
Adam walked with Bart Carey to Joan’s Cafe.
The back room was filled to capacity.
The Rev. Lorenzo Niesen shouted a greeting, and stepped away from the central table.
Adam raised his hands.
“I want to thank Mr. Carey and Mr. Dongen and Mr. Holliman,” he said, “for what they done for me. Our friend Verne Shipman offered to get me out, but I told him no, I told him, ‘Looky here, the people will see to it!’ Now, listen, he’s a good man; but he didn’t believe me. And now I want you to know, I’m mighty glad to show him I was right. He knows for sure the folks in Caxton won’t stand still for no injustice!”
“Yah!” called someone.
“Yah! It’s so!”
Adam’s hands lifted again.
“What the sheriff thought,” he said, “was that I was responsible for that dynamiting up on Simon’s Hill. I couldn’t hardly believe he was serious! Said to him, ‘Sheriff, whoever planted that bomb, it wasn’t anybody in SNAP, I can tell you that right here and now!’ ‘Who was responsible?’ he wanted to know. Said, ‘I wouldn’t want to say for sure. But it’s my notion it was one of them nigger-lovin’ integrationists!’ ”
He looked about the suddenly quiet room.
Rev. Lorenzo Niesen was beginning to fidget. Adam saw him throw a glance at another man.
“Well, sir, the sheriff didn’t understand at first. He was so dumb he asked me why an integrationist would want to kill a nigger! Honest! I told him. ‘Sheriff,’ I said, ‘it’s simple. We all are fighting integration. Good God Almighty, we got sense enough to know that killing a nigger preacher and blowing up a church can’t do us nothing but harm!’ But he still didn’t catch on. ‘How you figure that?’ he as
ked.
“I didn’t hardly know what to say, it was so clear—clear as the nose on his stupid face. ‘Sheriff, instead of jawing with me, why don’t you take a run down to the N-double-A-C-P,’ I said, ‘and see what alibis they can give you! This is their style. They know that the best way to hurt the cause of segregation is to use the martyr system. Like with Emmet Till, when they killed him and tried to pin it on a Southern white man. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if they engineered this bombing, too. Because now that old nigger preacher will be a martyr, see what I mean? People will feel sorry for him. He’ll be mourned, like an assassinated hero! So you can see, I hope, Sheriff,’ I said, ‘that nobody in my organization and nobody with any brains had a thing to do with it.’ He got the point then, but I guess it was so obvious that he was sore at me for havin’ to spell it out for him.”
The silence deepened, as Adam gazed at the men.
“Well,” he said, “that was what I thought, anyway. But while I was in jail, I got to studying. And it occurred to me that maybe I was wrong. I began to wonder: could it be—now, just for an instance; could it be—that somebody in SNAP actually did have something to do with this? Somebody who acted, you might say, on impulse, and didn’t consider the consequences? It didn’t seem possible, of course. But I knew that people sometimes do crazy things and think they’re absolutely right, even though what they do is bound to go against ’em, in the long run. So, even though I don’t believe it, I’m gonna pretend that somewhere here in this room is the man who bought that dynamite and hauled it over to the church and lit it. It’s him I’m gonna talk to, and you-all please just bear with it. I don’t mean it for those of you with common sense.”
Rev. Lorenzo Niesen shifted his position, fingered a sprig of Beech Nut Chewing Tobacco from a crumpled package and began to chew quickly. His eyes seemed filled half with amusement, half with anger.
Adam knew, without any doubt, that it was this poor rooster of a man who had been responsible. He could see Niesen crawling up to the church, carrying his bundle of death; and all in the name of Jesus, sweet dirty-nailed leather-fleshed unwashed Jesus of Nazareth, Who spat streams of tobacco accurately into the eye of falseness and caused the fig tree to wither because it would not yield fruit.
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