“It’s just so goddamn dark.”
“Dark of the moon,” he answered and took another drink out of the bottle and passed it to me. I took a sip and shuddered, then chased it down with Coke and took another sip. The two-lane asphalt road wound up into the hills of Warwick County. This land had never been under cultivation. All people out here did for a living was raise a few hogs or pigs or chickens or maybe cows. It was the stronghold of the Klan, where the main obsession morning, night, and noon was keeping the white race pure. This was partially achieved by incest. But the main work was keeping the Negroes in their place, keeping the night as dark as it could be. We turned off the asphalt onto a gravel road and drove a few miles and came to a stop before a country store. Cars and pickup trucks were parked all around the building. A jukebox was playing. The porch was filled with groups of men wearing overalls and dark pants. Some of them were wearing capes. Long white satin capes with hoods and designs in red. Light shone from the windows of the store onto the figures on the porch.
“No,” I said. “We can’t go in. Turn around, Charles William. Let’s go back.”
“You need to see this, Dee. You’re safe. They won’t hurt you. Junior’s here.” As he spoke a man released himself from the crowd and came down the wooden steps and walked up to the car. A dark face leaned into the window on the driver’s side.
“Who you looking for?” he asked. “What’d you need?”
“I’m looking for Winston Strange. We’re supposed to meet him here. We came to bet on the fights.”
“You got a girl with you?”
“Winston said she could come.” I moved back into the seat. I had dealt with white trash before. They worked for my father at his coal mines in Kentucky, but I had never been alone with them in a place where I wasn’t the boss’s daughter. You couldn’t tell what white trash would do. Up in Kentucky they still had feuds and killed each other.
“I don’t care if I come or not,” I said. “It doesn’t matter to me if I see a fight. I just came along for the ride.”
“Park over there by that Chevy,” the man said, indicating a white car under a tree. “I’ll see if Winston’s here.”
“I don’t think we should be out here,” I said when he was gone. “They’re wearing capes, Charles William. They’ve got those capes on. They look like vampire movies. Let’s go.”
“We went to all this trouble. Let’s just look at what they’re doing. We don’t have to stay long. Junior and Winston won’t let anybody hurt me. Jesus Christ, Dee. Don’t look like that. Nothing’s going to hurt you.”
“Charlie-Boy.” A second face was peering in the window. “I’m glad you made it. Who’s that with you? Who you got in there?” The face came all the way into the window. I shrank further back into the seat. The dark-faced white trash of the Delta always made me feel this way, as though some disaster was already happening, as though at any moment I might be captured and become one of their pale frightened women.
“This is Rhoda. She wants to see a cockfight.”
“No, I don’t. I mean, I don’t care if I do or not.”
“Well, get on out. It’s okay. Kleet didn’t scare you, did he? He’s an Avenger. We had a meeting called but it’s over now. Some niggers over in Huntsville acting up. Come on, get on out.” He opened the door on Charles William’s side.
“So what happened to little Irise?” he went on. “She quit on you?”
“Her momma won’t let her out at night. Rhoda snuck out, didn’t you, Rhoda?”
“We don’t need to get out of the car. We could just sit here.”
“Get out,” Winston said. “Come in the store. Have a beer.”
“It’s okay, Dee,” Charles William said. “You’re with me. Nothing can hurt you here.”
“What are we going to do?”
“See a fight. The cocks love to fight. They fly at each other. You can’t keep them from fighting.” He came around to my side of the car and helped me out and took my arm and we walked up on the porch. The groups of men parted as we passed. Winston stood in the doorway holding open the door. He had taken off his cape and laid it across a chair. It sat upon the chair, just as evil on the chair as it had seemed when he was wearing it. The hem was muddy and the hood hung down into the satin folds. On the front was a red satin cross inside a circle. I walked around the room, smiling as hard as I could at the men sitting at the tables. When in Rome, I counseled myself. The Romans were drinking beer and eating pickled eggs and pickled pig’s feet from filthy-looking glass jars on the bar.
“You want an egg?” Winston asked.
“I’d like some of those potato chips if I could have them. And a Coke. Could I have a Coke?”
“You want anything in it?”
“No. A Coke will do. Just a plain old Coke.” The bartender reached down into an ice chest and brought up a Coca-Cola and popped the top and handed it to Winston, who handed it to me. “What about my potato chips,” I said. “I’d like them too.” The bartender reached behind himself and took down a package of potato chips and handed it to Winston and he handed it to me.
“Oh, Dee, look at this. Isn’t this hilarious?” Charles William had a punchboard in his hand. On the front was a photograph of an aircraft carrier. There was a small metal punch attached to the board. “You want a punch? You can win a hundred dollars or ten or five. You want to try? I’m paying for it.” He handed the board to me. The men at the tables were all watching us. I moved closer to Winston. I concentrated on my potato chips. “Come on, Dee,” Charles William insisted. “Have a punch. I’m paying for it.” He held the board out toward me. I took it from him and punched out a number. I unrolled the tiny piece of paper and read out loud. “Not today. Better luck next time.”
“Oh, God,” Charles William said. “Isn’t that great? Here, let me try.” He took the board from me and zeroed in on number seven. “You win five,” the paper said. “Pay this man and let him go. Where he lands nobody knows.”
“I won.” Charles William brandished the paper toward the bartender. “Who pays for this?”
“I’ll take it.” The bartender took the paper and deposited it underneath some cash in the cash register and handed Charles William a five-dollar bill.
“You lucky stiff,” Winston said. “I haven’t won anything in six months off them goddamn boards.”
“Let’s go find Junior,” Charles William said. “I want to show him this.”
We went around back to where men were gathered around a wire enclosure. There were fires going farther back from the store and a burning cross from which smoke seemed to endlessly ascend, a black burning cross against the sky. It was the most evil thing I had ever seen. Somewhere, I could not remember where, I had seen a photograph of such a thing or heard a story of it. There was a blackened corpse on it in my memory. A figure hanging from a rope. “I want to get out of here, Charles William,” I said. “I can’t stay here. I want to leave.”
“Oh, come on, Rhoda. We’ll just watch one fight. I want you to see this. We’ll see one fight and then we’ll leave.”
“What’s wrong?” Winston asked. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Nothing. There’s nothing wrong.”
“I have to get home,” I said. “The mayor of Dunleith is coming to see my dad. My father is a good friend of the mayor’s.”
“She’s all right,” Charles William said. “I’m taking care of her.” He led me over to a circle about ten feet in circumference. Men were gathered around it in groups of two and three. On one side a man was squatting, holding a small bird that was trying to peck his hand. The bird’s beak was taped with adhesive tape and its feet were tied. The man held the bird with one hand and stroked its head with the other. On the opposite side of the circle a second man had a bird upside down and someone was tying something onto its feet. They were little knives, very small two-edged razor-sharp knives. Even from a distance of several feet and between the backs of the onlookers I could see the tiny glints of steel
in the lantern light. I looked away. All around it was dark.
Dark of the moon. July twenty-fifth. I wanted to turn and run, but I could not move. I was transfixed. I thought that at any moment a rooster would escape and come flying at me, cutting my face to ribbons with his deadly legs. I backed away. Charles William put his arm around me and pulled me to his side again. “Don’t be scared, Dee. They won’t hurt you. They want to kill each other.”
“How will they stop them? Who will catch them with those things on their legs?”
“Nobody wants to catch them,” Winston said. “It’s a fight.”
We were joined by a man who turned out to be Junior and the story of Charles William’s luck with the punchboard had to be told and exclaimed over. Junior was still wearing his cape. He had it rolled back from his shoulders. The hood fell down his back like a crumpled camellia. Keep away from me, voodoo and witch, I began reciting. Steer my path from the jailhouse gate. “I think we ought to go now,” I said, hanging tighter and tighter onto Charles William’s arm. “I need to get on home.”
“Not yet, Dee. They’re about to start.” The cock owner had finished arming the second bird. A man stepped into the ring and began to announce the rules. “No poking the birds from the sidelines. No loud yelling. Stand back. Stay back behind the circle. Everybody ready? Okay, on three. One, two, three.” The cocks were released and began to circle. Suddenly, one spread its wings and flew at the other. They met in the middle. The crowd moved back. “I’m going,” I said. “I’m not watching this.”
“No, wait. You have to see it. It’s their nature, Dee. This is nature. This is what really happens.” He stood there in the firelight, perfectly at ease. Junior and Winston stood on either side of him, two scrubby little terriers. Charles William was only nineteen years old but somehow he had power over these grown men. Not just his father’s money either or because he was the late boss’s son. He had some other kind of power, some self-assurance or will that made him safe even in this primitive unsafe place. Because of that I held on to his sleeve and let him make me stay. “Okay,” I said. “But just one fight. Then we’re leaving.” The cocks were circling again. Then they flew into each other and blood flew out in all directions. It splattered all over Charles William’s white shirt and on my hand. Before I could scream the birds were at our feet and blood was all over me. “Oh, goddammit,” I screamed. “Goddammit all to hell. Oh, no, not this.” I turned and ran toward the store, wiping blood from my face with my hand. Charles William came after me. “Come back, Dee,” he called. “Come let me help you.”
“You better take me home this minute,” I screamed. “Come and take me home. YOU TAKE ME HOME THIS MINUTE. I HAVE TO GO HOME THIS VERY SECOND, DO YOU HEAR?”
He caught up with me. “Okay, Dee, calm down. It’s okay. I’m sorry about the blood. We shouldn’t have been so close. Come here. It’s okay. Everything’s okay. You want anything from the store before we leave?”
“No. I want to go to the bathroom but not in there. We might get lice or something. Just get me in the car and get me out of here.”
“Well, let’s go in and get some paper towels and wipe off the blood so we won’t ruin Momma’s car. Do you mind waiting that long? Can I go in the store?”
“Sure. Go on. It’s okay. No, wait a minute, I’ll go with you. I don’t want to be alone.”
The crowd on the porch had thinned. There were only three men left and only the bartender was in the store. We got two plain Cokes and another bag of potato chips and took some paper towels and wiped off the blood as well as we could.
“The bathroom’s right there,” Charles William said. “Go on in. You won’t catch anything, Dee. Go on. Don’t be miserable.”
I went into the bathroom and urinated and tried not to read the nasty graffiti. Then I washed my hands with soap and water and looked up into the mirror. A terrified Rhoda looked out at me. An initiate of some pagan blood cult, kidnapped, plundered, pressed into service, recruited from my dreams into the rank and file of White Trashdom, Inc. I looked into the cheap wavy mirror lit by a yellow electric light bulb festooned with dead insects and knew that I was lost. I was in some great swamp or marsh, walking without direction. A wide marshland stretching out as far as I could see. In one direction only, toward the morning sun, it looked as though there might be slivers of land, islands I could step upon. If only I could reach them.
I looked at myself without expression. I was not a part of this bathroom or this store or this goddamn cockfight. I could leave anytime I wanted to. I breathed in the terrible odors of toilet cleaner and rusted sink and unwashed board floors, of a thousand drunken urinations and the skull and crossbones on the label of the bottle of lye sitting on the floor. I turned the rusted handle on the door, knowing past all biology that I was touching something which all the Roget and Gallet’s sandalwood soap in my mother’s linen closet would not erase.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said, coming out the door. “Come on, Charles William. Take me home.”
“I’m coming.” He was holding the punchboard. “You want one more punch? I’m paying.”
“No, goddammit, I want to get out of here.” I grabbed him by the arm and dragged him behind me out the door and walked over to the car and got into my side and scrunched down into the seat. “Start driving,” I said. “Get me out of here.”
We were ten miles down the road before either of us spoke. “You wanted to go,” he said. “You wanted to go with me.”
“You didn’t tell me about the capes. I didn’t know they were going to be wearing capes.”
“I didn’t know it either. For God’s sake, Dee. Don’t be mad at me.”
“I’m going to throw up,” I said, “so you better stop this car.” He pulled over to the side of the road and I tore open the door and began to throw up into a ditch. The terrible sweet taste of Coke and bourbon filled my nose and throat. I threw up for what seemed an eternity, then I got back into the car and rolled up in a ball and fell asleep. Did they really kill people? Did they really march around in those capes and kidnap people and hang them from trees? What a terrible dark world it was. How could I live in a world with terrible dark things in it? What a mess I was in.
In the morning I resolved to change my ways. I cleaned up my room and helped my mother take care of the baby, Johnny, and even offered to polish silver. When Charles William called I told him I was busy. It was almost four o’clock that afternoon before I called him back and told him to come on over.
“That was really bad,” I said. “That was a terrible thing to do.”
“Why do you always feel guilty?” he answered. “You feel guilty about everything you do.”
“I don’t know. But I know one thing. I have to start swimming again. Starting tomorrow I’m going to the pool every morning and swim at least four miles.”
“You’re getting so thin. You’re almost too thin, Dee. Maybe you should go off your diet.”
“No. All I need to do is start back swimming. No more sneaking out after this, Charles William. From now on I’m going to be a lady.” I poured tea for him from the silver service I had brought out onto the screened porch. Irise was coming across the street wearing a pink sundress. People were starting to come over to have a drink with my parents. It was all right. We were not in Warwick County. Warwick County had nothing to do with us. We were right here on the porch of my momma’s house in Dunleith.
Chapter
6
It was so hot that summer it was easy to keep a promise to start swimming. I started going to the pool every morning. I would swim laps for a while, then smear myself with Coppertone suntan lotion and lie by the pool and order bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches and sign the chits. I had never signed chits before and I thought it was very grand. I thought the Dunleith Country Club was very grand. I forgot all about the pool I had worked so hard to have built in Franklin, Kentucky. This was a private club without any weird people hanging around the dressing rooms. Yes, perhaps
my father had been right and it was good we had moved home to Alabama. He had begun to corner me in the evenings and campaign for me to leave Vanderbilt and go to school in the state. “It would save me a lot of money, Sister,” he would say. “You could have a car and more money for your clothes. Of course, Auburn’s my first choice, but you can go down to Tuscaloosa with little Irise, if you like.”
“I won the freshman writing contest,” I would say. “I think I should go back.”
“I wouldn’t mess with those sapsuckers if I was you. Your momma says there’s an ace chapter of Chi Omega at Tuscaloosa. Well, you think about it.”
I was thinking about it. Meanwhile, I was swimming every morning at the country club. I would dive into the cool water of the pool and begin my count, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. I would go out early while the pool was deserted and swim sometimes for an hour. I think now it was the only time of the day when I actually understood what I was doing. The rest of the time I floated in and out of consciousness, being acted upon by any influence at any moment, floundering in search of grace.
There was an exotic woman who came to the pool that summer. Her name was Patricia Morgan and she had had polio and wore steel braces on her legs. She was from Massachusetts and had come to Dunleith because her husband was a physicist at Chemistrand, the new industry that was going to save the town. She wore gorgeous white linen blouses and khaki-colored skirts and brown and white saddle oxfords. If a Chinese mandarin had decided to start dropping by the pool in the mornings it would not have been stranger or more seductive to me. She represented something I longed for, but barely knew existed, a world of rational thought, coolness, Puritan simplicity. I had known a girl in Kentucky whose older sister had gone off to Massachusetts to school, to a place called Wellesley. She had come home from her freshman year in. college bringing notebooks full of notes concerning a book called Ulysses and had let us read the notes. I lay in the sun and thought it over. Devoe Tyson and the Ulysses notes, the possibility of a place like Wellesley, this strange, exotic woman in her saddle oxford shoes. The heat played with my brain, mixed with the smell of chlorine from the pool and the melting mayonnaise on my half-eaten sandwich.
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