The Intruder

by Charles Beaumont

  “I understand,” Griffin said, holding the gun steady.

  “I hoped you would. Excuse the way I’m talking: put yourself in my shoes, for a minute. I mean, I’m not too comfortable!”

  Griffin said nothing.

  “So I slept with her. Okay. I admit it. But you’ve got to know this. However much you blame me and hate me and want to shoot me, it wasn’t all my fault. And there’s something else. I shouldn’t tell you, because you’ll probably be so sore you’ll pull that trigger without thinking. But I’ve got to. She told me . . . oh, never mind. Let it go.”

  Griffin did not move or speak.

  “No,” Adam said, “no, it wouldn’t be right for me to keep it from you. Sam, so help me God, this is the truth. Mrs. Griffin told me that I wasn’t the first—I mean, since you’ve been married. She’s slept with plenty others, and she said she knew it didn’t matter because you’d never catch on. I’m forcing myself to say this to you, Sam. It’s the truth.”

  Sam Griffin transferred the gun to his left hand, took four steps forward and slammed the back of his right hand against Adam Cramer’s cheek.

  Adam felt a sharp pain, then a spreading hot numbness. He was terribly afraid now. But when he looked up, he saw that Sam Griffin was smiling.

  “Sit down,” the big man said, and suddenly all the warm good nature and pleasantness returned. He laughed. “You know, you missed your calling, boy. You would have made a fine pitchman. Where you learned it, I don’t know, but you know just the right way to work on folks’ weak spots, the way a piano player goes through a piece—soft and loud, soft and loud, gentle and hard. But you forgot the first rule. Never try to con another con-man!”

  “Sam, listen to me for a minute, listen: I’m not lying to you.”

  Griffin laughed even more heartily.

  “It’s the truth!”

  “I ought to kill you,” the big man said. “As a matter of fact, I’ll tell you something—that’s the reason I come to your room. I was gonna beat you to death, and I could do it, I think. I got pretty strong arms. But then I started getting kind of bored, so I went through some of your things. It was very interesting stuff!” His eyes twinkled. “I found the gun and I thought, Well, why not just shoot him instead? Blow his brains out.”

  “Sam—”

  “ ‘Why not?’ I said, so I aimed to do that. But you didn’t show up, and I didn’t have anything to do but sit around and wait. And think. You know? Just sit around and think. First time I done it since I was in school!” The big man shook his head. The air had gone from the room, and there was only a thick mold of heat, prickling Adam’s flesh, and the seeping sweat.

  Griffin looked at the gun, twirled it on his finger, tossed it onto the pillow.

  “Really fooled you, didn’t I!” he said.

  Adam opened his mouth.

  “No, I mean, you really thought you was in for it when you seen me here. Then it turned out old Sam was even stupider than you imagined! Right? ‘Poor sap, he still hasn’t caught on!’ Right? But, boy—you should of seen your face when I turned around with that pistol!” Griffin laughed. “That was a study. Right now, you just don’t know what to think, do you?”

  The sound of the courthouse bell rode the silence, briefly.

  “Well, it should be a lesson,” Griffin continued. “One of the first things a pitchman’s got to learn is never to underestimate anybody. I remember once I conned a wall-eyed farmer into buying fifty dollars’ worth of automobile gimmicks. He was a real yokel, you know what I mean? Freckles and a straw hat and overalls all covered with dirt. Told me, ‘Let me take ’em home to the wife so she can see; then I’ll bring you back your money.’ I said sure, because I figured anybody this dumb would simply have to be honest. Only, I was wrong. He never come back at all. And the name he had give me, nobody ever heard of. So I was out fifty dollars. But I figure it was money well spent, because it taught me something I won’t ever forget. You know what it was?”

  Adam was silent.

  “This,” Griffin said. “When you act like a clown, everybody trusts you. They take it for granted you’re straight. And that makes things so much easier! People get to laughing so hard with you, why, hell, they don’t even feel it when you dip into their pockets!” He guffawed loudly. “But anyway,” he said, “I was gonna kill you. Only I had this time to think. And I realized, see, I’d been playing this part so long I was fooling myself! That’s a danger. I realized that when I asked you to take good care of my little girl, and all, all I was doing was planning this whole thing. Of course, I didn’t know it up here.” He tapped his forehead. “Sometimes you get so clever and secrety, you’re afraid even to let yourself in on it! But that’s the way it was. The minute I seen you, I started working things so you’d think I was just a big, stupid loudmouth, understand. Because I caught all that went on between you and Vy’s eyes. I caught every bit of it.

  “So, you might say, I set everything up. But how come? Why would I do a thing like that?” Griffin wiped his face with a handkerchief, and puffed.

  “I think it’s because we always been afraid of this. Afraid because we never knew if we’d be able to take it. So we shut our eyes, you might say, and pretended it really wasn’t ever gonna happen, not really. But at the same time, both of us knew it would. And the longer we waited, the harder it got. After a while, it was like a black cloud hanging over us . . .” Griffin wiped his face again. “Now,” he said, “it’s all over. And Vy’s proved she loves me. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t of ran away. She’d of kept it to herself. But it’s right out in the open now and we can fight it together.”

  Griffin got up.

  “She’s gone,” he said, “but you know what? I’ll find her. I know I will because I know her, everything about her, the way she feels, the way she thinks. It’s a funny thing: people got the whole world to hide in, but they can’t get away from somebody who knows them and really wants to find them. ’Course, it may take a while. But I’ll keep looking and when I do get her, we’ll be closer than ever. So I think I’m going to say thanks. You done us a great favor!”

  He moved very close to Adam.

  “Truth is, though,” he said, “the best way to return the favor’d be to put a bullet through your head right now. It’d be a whole sight easier on you, take old Sam’s word on that. A whole sight. See: we’re both in the same line, you and me, Adam—only I been at it longer, and I can see where you’re making mistakes. They’re beginning to pile up on you now. In a little while, they’ll smother you.”

  “Get out of here,” Adam said.

  Griffin did not make a move. “I been studying your pitch,” he said, “and I admire it. You got technique, fine technique. But you know what’s wrong? You’re missing another one of the basic rules! That’s right. You can sell people something they don’t need, but you can’t sell them something they don’t want, leastways, you can’t keep on selling it to ’em. And the people—most of them, anyway—don’t want what you’re selling. Maybe they think they do, right now, but they’ll get over that. Then, just watch out.”

  Griffin went to the sink, poured a glass of water, drank it.

  “Right now, I bet you think you’re right on top of the heap, don’t you?” he said. “Everything going smooth, clicking right along. Uh? Well, let me tell you something. You’re wrong. You’re on the way down, boy, and it’s going to be a real long trip.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Adam said angrily, wondering why he was angry. He ought to feel relieved.

  “Come on now, you’re a smart boy, you went to college. They taught you how to read, didn’t they? Well, read. The handwriting’s on the wall, big as life. You ain’t the boss any more, and you won’t be, either. These fellas, Carey and, what’s his name, Dongen—and the Jumpin’ Preacher—they’re all just dumb tools to you. They sprung you out of jail—”

  “How did you know that?”

  Griffin continued smiling. “I said, I been studying you. Beside
s, Mrs. Pearl Lambert knows a few things. She’s got a little telegraph system inside her head: nothing happens she don’t hear about it a few minutes afterwards. Nothing.”

  Adam remembered that Mrs. Pearl Lambert had not greeted him when he came in.

  “So, okay, Carey and Dongen and that other fella get you sprung, and this means you’re still the big cheese. Don’t it?”

  “It happens that they mortgaged their homes, and—”

  Griffin laughed. “Sure,” he said. “Sure. Those ignorant little old tools! They’re just gonna hop every time you say hop, aren’t they, and before we know it, you’ll have Shipman in the Governor’s chair and then—why, hell, maybe we’ll even make him President! You will, that is. Mr. Adam Cramer will.”

  Adam leaped from the chair, ran to the bed, picked up the gun and pointed it at Sam Griffin’s belly. “I’m sick of listening to you rave,” he said. “Now get the hell out of here before I pull this trigger.”

  Griffin laughed even louder. “People,” he said, “are wonderful. Adam, you couldn’t pull that trigger if your life depended on it. Because when you get right down to it, you’re gutless—and you know you’re gutless, too. That’s why you’re doing all this: to prove you ain’t.”

  “I’ll give you five,” Adam said. “If you’re not out of here by then, I’ll shoot. One. Two. Three—”

  Sam Griffin scratched his arm.

  “Four—”

  Sam Griffin began to walk toward Adam. “Five,” he said, and plucked the gun away. “See what I mean? Of course, you never want to be too sure of anything, either—” He reached into his shirt pocket and took out five bullets.

  “Fuck you,” Adam said.

  “Now I sure wish I’d of gone to college and learned useful words like that. I sure do,” Griffin said. “Once when Vy and me were traveling through Georgia, we run into an evangelist by the name of Stevens, and he listened to us pitching a special fuel filter and come over afterwards and told me I’d made a total of seventy-­nine errors in English. He knew because he’d counted ’em! But then he said that if I ever got an education, I’d stop selling filters. Maybe that’s part of your trouble. You think? Maybe when you get educated your head’s so full of knowledge there ain’t any room for intelligence. Because if you was intelligent, you’d be able to see that it isn’t Carey and Dongen who’s the suckers—it’s you. They’re using you and your name and this Snap thing, and the whole kaboodle for themselves. What I mean, like with the King of England—you’re nothing but a figurehead, Adam.”

  “That’s a lie!”

  “Did you order ’em to blow up the church?”

  “No. But—”

  “Well, that’s just the beginning. Plenty more’ll happen without you having any say. Only when the troops come in—guess who’ll get the blame. Except there won’t be nobody around to spring you then. These boys don’t give a hoot for all this fancy line you been feeding out. I mean the real bosses don’t. All they want is a good fight, a chance to kill some nigras, right here in Caxton. When they get it, just where do you think young Mr. Cramer’s gonna be?”

  Sam Griffin laughed one more time; then he walked across the room and opened the door.

  “In a way,” Adam said coldly, “it’s a shame you’ve got to go looking for your wife. I’d love to have you stick around for the show. You might be surprised.”

  Griffin’s laughter hardly diminished, but a strange, hard look came into his eyes. “Now, you ought to know me better than that, Adam,” he said.

  “Which is supposed to mean?”

  “Well, like I said with the gun: You never want to be too sure of anything. Rule of the trade, boy. I never told you I was going after Vy right away, did I?”

  Adam looked at the heavy sweating man with the red face.

  “No, boy. I’ll find her just as easy a day from now—or a week from now. In the meantime, just in case old Sam is wrong, in case you got a little high card stashed away somewheres, I believe I will stick around. You won’t see me, likely, but I’ll be here.” He winked and started down the hall; then he turned. “Always did like fireworks,” he said; and Adam could hear his laughter long after the door had slammed.

  23

  It was when he paused to rest, to wait for his breathing to return to normal, that he was first aware of the silence. And suddenly this was all he could think of. Up ahead, submerged in the gray dawn, sat the village; and nowhere could he find a sign of life, a sign that anyone was truly here. The gravel street was empty. Dogs should have been frisking in the littered yards, but there were no dogs, and there were no chickens, either. Just the houses, with their eyes closed, and the store fronts, and the street, and, high above, the telephone wires still as harpstrings.

  Tom held his breath a moment, listened, then walked to the third apartment, went up the steps and knocked on the door.

  It opened slowly.

  A middle-aged Negro man stood tall in the gray light. “Yes?”

  “Are you Mr. Green?” Tom said.

  “That’s right.” The door did not open farther.

  “My name is McDaniel. I think we met once. I’m editor of the Messenger.”

  The man frowned. “What do you want?”

  “To talk with your son Joey. If I may.”

  “What for?”

  Tom looked downward, wondering how he could answer the question. It took all of last night, lying awake, thinking, sorting things out and putting them in orderly piles and examining them, to reach a decision; and even then, he was afraid it was not the thinking that had done it. He only knew that when the first cool wash of sun had spread across the sky, he’d thought of the frightened children and realized that there was only one thing for him to do. So, in a sense, it wasn’t a decision after all. And it wasn’t an act of bravery, either, for he knew equally well that if he did not do this thing he would never be able to face himself.

  So quietly he’d dressed and started out. And when Ruth had awakened and asked him the question, he’d answered it truthfully. And she had stared at him, saying nothing, her eyes searching and full of fear.

  “What do you want with my son, Mr. McDaniel?”

  “I want to accompany him down to school,” Tom said.

  The man shook his head. “He ain’t going to school.”

  A young boy appeared at the door. “I’m going,” he said.

  “I said no!” Abel Green clenched his hands, looked at his son for a moment, then back at Tom. “You come here to gloat?” he said. “Well, get on back to town, hear? Get on back. You all done your job. Put it in the paper—us niggers give up. You don’t have to kill any more of us, we—”

  “Pop!”

  “Mr. Green,” Tom said, “I know that you don’t have any reason to trust me. I don’t have any right to expect you to, either. Like a lot of people, I’ve been pretty mixed up by this thing. But I’m not mixed up any more. I’m on your side—”

  The man laughed harshly.

  “Please! Please believe me,” Tom said. “I don’t know who planted that dynamite. But neither do you. It isn’t fair for you to blame me—”

  “You talking about fair, mister?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe you think it was a colored man killed the reverend and blown up his church, huh?”

  “No, no, no. It was a white man, I’m sure of that. But—it was just one man, or one small group. It wasn’t the people of Caxton. They’re not that way. I mean—if one of the men here on the Hill came into town and shot the sheriff, would you feel responsible? Would it be right to blame everyone here for it who happened to be the same color? There’s a bunch of bad apples in town, Mr. Green—you’ll find them in every town. They’re hateful and mean and vicious. But you mustn’t judge the town by them! The people of Caxton are good.”

  “Sure. Down deep, what they want more’n anything is to see our kids go to their schools, don’t they?”

  “No. I’ve heard that you’re an intelligent man, Green. You have
sense enough to know that it’s going to take time for this thing to start working smoothly. Most of the people don’t want this form of integration. But most of them are law-abiding citizens, and if the Supreme Court gives an order, they’ll obey it.”

  “Except for blowing up a few churches and riding the Klan through town, you mean.”

  “Pop!” Joey Green stepped forward. “Give the man a chance. Maybe he’s telling the truth.”

  “I am,” Tom said. “If you give up now, Mr. Green, you’ll lose everything you’ve been fighting for all these years. It won’t be the town that beat you, though. It’ll be a little bunch of ignorant fanatics­ who think they’re strong enough to defy the United States government. Are you going to help them do this? Are you going to give them the power they think they have?”

  “That’s a lot of nice talk,” Abel Green said. “I been hearing it from my wife for twenty years. But ain’t all the talk in the world going to bring Finley Mead back to life! Whether it was a little group like you say, or every white man in Caxton, that church was dynamited and that preacher was killed. Them are facts. And if whoever done it decides to do it again, that’s what’ll happen. Maybe we’ll be next. What’ll you do then?”

  Tom tried, desperately, to find the words. “I understand your feelings,” he said. “I know it’s hard. And I can’t promise you that no one else will get hurt—maybe they will, I don’t know. But you mustn’t give up. Your boy and all the other children here have got to go to school this morning. It means everything!”

  “Easy for you to say,” Abel Green said. “Even if you do mean it, and I ain’t sure you do. For all I know, you got a gang waiting down below. But if you talking what you believe, I say it’s easy! What have you got to lose, white man?”

  Tom looked at him. “My job,” he said. “My home. And,” he paused, “maybe my family. Is that enough?”

  Joey Green went back into the living room and returned with three books.

  “Joey—”

  “Don’t try to stop me, Pop. You know he’s right and so do I. We can’t give up now.” He turned to Tom and said, “We better hurry. I got a feeling it’s going to take a lot more talking to get the rest to come along.”