3 Day Terror

by Vin Packer

  “But Chad’s all for integration,” Jud said. “Chad was for it before you, Arnie, or Troy, or any of us.”

  “I was never for it,” Troy Porter snapped; then, noticing Poppy come back into the room, relaxed his face; thought how lovely and sweet she looked — and vulnerable too, he thought, wincing inwardly at the memory of the hurt she had suffered long ago before their marriage. His tone was milder as he continued. “Hell, over the past five years I been taking time off to help Arnie and the school board fight integration. I fought the suit because I thought it was the right thing to do. That doesn’t mean I believe in violating a court order now, but it doesn’t mean I’m for integration now either.”

  Jud Forsythe sighed, put his palm up much the way he did on Sundays for the Benedictus. “All right, I didn’t mean to say anyone was for integration — ”

  “Chad is, though. That’s always been obvious.” Troy Porter found it difficult to let his anger subside, or to control his hostile impulses whenever Chad’s name came up in conversation. “He doesn’t come right out and say so in the Citizen. Thank God Cass is less radical and has her say in the paper’s policies, but he thinks so!”

  Arnold Belden said, “Well, he’s coming out with it now. That’s what I mean, Jud, about his editorials. I think he’ll stir things up.”

  It was while Belden was speaking that Troy looked up at Poppy’s face, and knew something was wrong. He stood and held her chair out for her, seated her, searching her eyes; whispered, “Kids okay?” She nodded, still frowning; still with that expression that said she wanted to say something. Troy knew that look, knew it could spell trouble or trivia; but to Poppy’s mind meant all was not well.

  Jud was carrying on the conversation, “Chad’s only saying we ought to abide by the court decision, as far as I can see.”

  “Listen” Belden said, “there are all sorts of ways to say that, if it has to be said in the first place. The law’s been passed and people respect the law around here. But that’s different from liking it. There’s something about Chad’s editorials that smacks of rubbing folks noses in it, the way you do a dog’s in his mess.”

  “You all talking about Chad?” Poppy asked.

  “The same old subject,” Troy reassured her. “Integration. The last subject I want to talk about at this point.”

  “That’s the good politician,” Jud grinned.

  Mrs. Belden sipped her coffee, set the cup on the saucer gently and said, “I agree, Troy. Let’s forget Monday for this evening.”

  Behind them the Choctaw Ramblers were playing “Sweet Molly Malone,” and white-coated waiters were clearing the front tables. Jud leaned back and lit his pipe, and Troy ground out a cigarette in the ashtray. There were several slow seconds when no one at the table said anything, then Poppy spoke up. “I just called Gay to see how the children were. She told me the strangest thing.”

  Troy looked down at her, and when she saw his regard she forced a quick little laugh. “Oh, its nothing serious.” She paused, then slipped into the familiar vernacular of the Southern female, her face flushed, “Law, I’d ah liked to die when I heard it.”

  “Well, heard what?” Troy asked.

  “Delia Benjamin,” Poppy said.

  “What’d old Dee do now?” her husband asked. He’d always admired Dee Benjamin’s spunk; always secretly savored the recollection of Dee’s jilting Jack Chad wick.

  She didn’t do anything,” Poppy said. “She’s back.”

  Jud Forsythe said, “Back here in Bastrop?”

  “Yes. Gay said Senior called her, said she was in the drugstore — just a little while ago.”

  “Good!” Troy said. “That’s what the town needs to lift its dragging spirits. You know something about that girl? When I was elected to the legislature she sent me a wire, by golly. Said something about get in there and fight. She was always a fighter.” Troy chuckled, shaking his head, and stretching his long knees out under the table. He was a big man with a husky six-foot frame, built solidly, the sort who seemed to belong in the clothes he was wearing this evening — the white linen dinner jacket and black pants, and well-shined black shoes. He seemed at home in the formal attire most people in Bastrop donned only for special events, and then grudgingly.

  “Poor Flo,” Pam Belden sighed. “She’ll have her hands full.”

  Arnie Belden made a face at her, “Aw, come on, now, Dee’s not wild as all that. What? Just because she married herself a Yankee, and chose to abandon Paradise to go live up in the devil’s territory?”

  “A Yankee — ” Pam Belden smoothed her hair with her hands and said softly — ”and a Jew”

  “Why we got Jews right here in Bastrop,” Arnie said. “Come on, now, Pam.”

  “I never think of them that way.”

  “Well, they are that way. That doesn’t sound like you.”

  Troy broke in, “To see your face, darling, I thought you were going to announce that Duboe Chandler was going to run against me or something! So Dee’s back in Bastrop! Hell, I could use her for a campaign manager.”

  Poppy looked across the table at Jud Forsythe. He met her glance for a brief instant, then turned his eyes away.

  Belden was saying, “Seriously, Troy, I think your chances are pretty good. Of course you’ve got to watch Dave Polk. He’s got a good name in the state, and — ”

  “But he’s a bachelor,” Pam Belden said. “I know I’d never vote for a bachelor. People like a family man; people trust a man more if he’s got a wife and kids. I know — ” but she stopped, aware of how what she had been saying might sound to Jud; she stammered, and finished with: “Law, I don’t know anything about politics. I ought to just keep my big mouth shut, hmm?”

  “No, I think you’re right,” Troy said, “people got to identify with the man they’re voting for. People got to think to themselves, Why he’s just like you and me. And you know full well he can be a bigot, a jellyfish, or a Christ, but if people can just have that first chance to think he’s like them, then from there on in they’ll frost the cake and serve it up. Even God himself had to produce a son to get some respect down here, and a good politician’s got to do a hell of a lot more. He’s got to go to church, and he’d better have gone to war. He’s got to have a wife, kids, a dog and a low-priced car. He can’t get caught sinning, but he better seem capable of it. If he likes a squash game, he better learn golf instead — and in the South, he’s better off learning how to hunt coon. No matter where he is, he better know how to talk.”

  Arnold Belden said, “You don’t have any trouble doing that, my boy.”

  “What worries me — ” Troy Porter continued, and Poppy, reaching across to touch Jud Forsythe’s sleeve, whispered, “Dance, Jud?”

  • • •

  Troy Porter did know how to talk. He had talked so well that he had talked himself into being the youngest member ever elected to the Alabama State Legislature, and in Bastrop — he had talked himself into the hearts of nearly ninety per cent of its citizens. Like people anywhere, hero-hungry and celebrity-beholden, they had hastened to embroider and embellish. Troy became their dream of wish fulfillment, their ego, and in some cases, their id; and he became a kind of living advertisement for their frustrated potentials. They said of him that he was a born winner; won at everything — had, ever since a kid; that he was more handsome than anyone in Hollywood, on TV, or in the picture magazines, and more down-to-earth than Will Rogers, Norman Vincent Peale, or Steve Allen. They said he knew enough to be on the $64,000 Question, and those who weren’t already writing Ralph Edwards to say he ought to be on This Is Your Life, wrote the $64,000 Question. Children bragged they played with his children; teen-agers that they “sat” with his children. The males estimated that Troy could screw five times a night, seven nights a week; and the females spoke of his gentle manner, his cowlick, and his soft-laughing dimples, that they’d like to poke, just once, with their finger; just a little, playful poke. Law, what yah think he’d do!

  He was Ba
strop’s prodigy and Bastrop’s private property, on loan, only, to the government of Alabama. They forgot the wildly undignified episodes between Troy and Poppy before their marriage, just as they forgot lesser embarrassments and all his flaws; and like people awakening sweetly to some remembered dream which had momentarily anesthetized reality, they remembered the dream they had manufactured, in the person of Troy Porter.

  Jud Forsythe never had to recall Troy’s and Poppy’s tempestuous times in the years immediately following Dee Benjamin’s departure. He had watched from the beginning the gradual recurrent appearance of Jack Chadwick’s convertible in front of the Beldens’, attempted aimlessly to avoid answering Troy’s pained questions: Where’s Poppy, Jud? You live across from her, did you see her? Has Poppy talked about it to you, Jud. Look, I’ve got to know Jud. Can’t you level with me? Does she mention it at all? He had seen Poppy slim down to sliver-size when the convertible vacillated between the Beldens’ and the Beggsoms’, seen Poppy stagger through a myriad gay parties with Chad, as drunk and disheartened as he was, as though she too was cracked-heart-haunted by the ghost of Delia Benjamin, grief-ridden and stunned — only to end those evenings off in a corner alone, crying in a lace hanky, while Chad stood swaying across the room, hanging onto a table in a desperate attempt to steady himself before the sober and sympathetic figure of Cass Beggsom.

  Jud — and all of Bastrop — had witnessed the sudden, whip-quick slapping which Troy had administered to Poppy at one such party, seen Troy himself weep immediately after; and heard the crashing of glass Poppy caused as she fell back against the Senior Porters’ antique water-pitcher collection.

  Those were the strange few years when everyone seemed lost and crazy, longing for the license of the youth they were losing that would have exonerated them and made their revels of the night before less depressing. The next morning, made their endeavors less desperate, and made the name of the person they sat beside in Junior year of high — such a seemingly short time ago — seem not at all as important to remember as it did seem. Those were the years at the beginning of the fifties; the short-lived shock-riddled time Jud thought of as the years A.D. — After Delia.

  Now she was back. And Jud knew instinctively why Poppy had suddenly wanted to leave the table and dance, and not say any more than “Poor Chad” about the whole matter. Because Delia Benjamin’s return would revive a great many memories, and Jud couldn’t help recollecting that those were the exact same words Poppy had said when she had first mentioned Jack Chadwick to him.

  She had said, “Poor Chad!” And not very much later, people in Bastrop were shaking their heads and saying, “Poor Poppy!”

  Perhaps no one in Bastrop knew as well as Jud Forsythe did that Troy Porter’s wife had a soft spot for a wounded bird; and perhaps no one in Bastrop knew as well as Poppy Porter did that Jud Forsythe had been one of the most wounded birds around, in the years he called “A.D.” — the terribly painful years when he finally had had to resign himself to the fact he had really lost Dee not just to another man, but to his life; that she was gone out of his sight, he thought, for good; out of his mind, he believed, never.

  What would it be like seeing her again? He looked up and a hundred and thirty-six-odd eyes winked at him.

  PART THREE

  It was still raining when the stranger left Porter Drugs and went back to the Wheel, where his car was parked.

  He made a bed in the hack seat, used a duffle bag filled with clean shorts and shaving equipment for a pillow, and shook out a lightweight topcoat for a blanket.

  On the floor there was a stack of pamphlets, tied with a string, which he cut with his silver penknife. He leafed through them by the dim overhead light attached to the roof of the car.

  One in particular he liked. It was designed like a playbill. Across the front was printed in large letters:

  Could this be

  YOUR FAIR LADY

  in the near future?

  There was a picture of a white woman sitting on a Negro’s lap.

  He turned the page. Another picture of a white woman, kissing the Negro, their arms wrapped around one another. The caption read:

  I’ve grown accustomed to your race

  (It’s second nature to me now.)

  He turned the page. There was a picture of white women dancing rock ‘n roll with Negroes. Above were the words:

  I could have danced all night

  (… spread my wings, and done a thousand things

  I’ve never done before. … ”)

  On the fourth page there was a picture of Negro teen-agers with sprung switch-blades in their hands, and wild laughing faces with leering eyes, jumping over seats in a schoolroom where frightened whites cowered; Negroes pinning whites against the blackboard, cigarettes dangling from their mouths and gin bottles hanging in their hip pockets; Negroes gambling under the desks, dice rolling; and a white teacher with a tortured expression on her face, being bound to her chair with rope by Negroes. The legend ran:

  Wouldn’t it be love-ah-ly!

  (All they want is a schoolroom somewhere …)

  The last page showed a long, tenement-crowded street, with Negroes shoving whites into the gutter;. Negro faces laughing from windows high above; and Negroes lolling on front porches, while whites inside peeped fearfully from behind their curtains.

  The words asked:

  On the street where YOU live?

  The stranger tossed aside the pamphlet. There were countless others, some like it, some different.

  Tomorrow he would distribute them, and the man he had met in the drugstore — Duboe Chandler — had promised to help him. That was luck — to come into a town cold and immediately win support. But it’s like me, too, the stranger thought; always been that way for me, always had a way with people, because I can read them, figure out their sick minds. Sick, sick, sick! Wanting to be well, and know I can help them; need me to tell them; that same way I told Chandler:

  Told him, “Look, Chandler, look at this,” showed him the picture of that nigger banging on the white girl, “This is an actual photograph taken a few weeks ago up in Greenwich Village, New York City. Chandler, that nigger boy you see there — he’s from down in Mobile, Chandler, a Southern jigaboo that went North and learned his wool head the word integration. You know what that word means — integrate? You know what Webster’s Dictionary says is the meaning of that word? Says it means to form into a whole, Chandler, to unite as one, Chandler. Just like that black ape’s uniting as one with that white meat!”

  Told him: “How’s it make you feel, Chandler, to see a picture like this? Sure, makes you mad at that nigger; sure, Chandler, but I’m asking you for your candid opinion, Chandler. I’m talking man-to-man with you. There’s another feeling too, happening to you right now because of that picture; and Chandler — ” looking him deep in the eye, hand on his shoulder — ”it’s a sexual feeling. It is; you know it is! It’s a feeling of lust, Chandler, and you know why? Because the whole subject of integration, of uniting the coons with the white race, which is the meaning of the word integration — and it’s right in Webster’s Dictionary, it’s as basic as all that — why, that whole subject, Chandler, gets folks randy. Gets folks sexed up, Chandler.

  You got to admit it, and I’ve got to admit it.” ….

  Told him: “Ever had a yen for dark shagging Chandler? I’m asking you for your candid opinion on these subjects. You know as well as I do, before God, that the white man has had such a yen, has and does and always will. And, Chandler, it isn’t good. I’m not preaching to you, fellow, I’m just telling you what both of us know. It sure as hell is not good at all when a white man gets a yen to shag a thick-lips, because it’s an overwhelming, God-forgotten, Devil-driven black urge that he can’t subdue in himself, that he can’t throw off by lifting heavy furniture, or taking walks, or showers, or jacking-off — or none of it! It’s an obsession that’ll drive him out of his mind and set him to banging his head into cement if he doesn’t get rid o
f it, and there’s only one way he can get rid of it, Chandler, and that’s by going the hell out and getting some colored gal and giving it to her!”

  Told him: “Well, Chandler, I’ve got something scientific to tell you with regard to all this, and that is, that scientifically it’s been proven, Chandler, actually proven that the white woman is capable of getting this yen herself. Just like the white man. The white woman is capable of getting this yen for a big buck of a nigger, hung like a bull and black as licorice, and that white woman in this very photograph — God help her somehow — is just such a woman. And Chandler, it’s been scientifically proven that it never would have happened to this innocent, pitiful, sick, debased white woman you see here in this picture, if the black apes up North were controlled like they are in the South.

  “It’s a psychological fact,” he told him, “that this yen is capable of starting up in women, Chandler, when niggers are treated like white men.”

  Told him: “I’ve seen it happen to white women, women I knew, and yes, Chandler, women I respected, and I wanted to die, and I wanted to cry, and Chandler, I wanted to kill. I wanted to do murder, Chandler, actually wanted to kill! It could drive a man to. Look at that picture and think of the white girls you know; think of your own woman, Chandler, and think how you’d feel if that yen came over her. Think of that, Chandler, and give me your candid opinion of how you’d feel. And think of it hard and long, Chandler, because next Monday morning could be the first step in that direction. It’s just basic, that’s all. Just basic and sick. It’s so sick I get sick imagining it. God, Chandler, don’t let such a thing happen here in Bastrop, Alabama. Don’t let it, Chandler. Help me to stop it, because it’s so sick!”