3 Day Terror

by Vin Packer

  Gradually he could straighten his body and walk, gradually, inching steps, up the gravel path to his house.

  He found Cass in the kitchen. Johnny-Bob was in the bathroom in the hallway. He could hear the water running. The child hadn’t heard it; he had run ahead.

  “Cass, I — ”

  She looked up at him. She was running water, holding her hand under the faucet at the sink, waiting for it to warm up.

  “People have been calling you all afternoon,” she said. “Your army!”

  He leaned against the table, watching her. The water was steaming and she pulled her hand back quickly, then reached for the sink’s plug. “Johnny-Bob is filthy! Looks as if he’s been rolling in mud! Weren’t you watching him?”

  “What was your father doing here?” he said in a dull tone; his stomach still hurt from the first punch and his jaw was swelling. “Or didn’t you know he was waiting out front for me?”

  “He was waiting all afternoon for you,” she said, with her back turned to him. “He was only one of your visitors.”

  “I know about Dee,” he said.

  She stopped what she was doing, but didn’t look at him. Cass had a great facility for imitating someone’s voice in such perfect mock style that it was hard to suppress laughter, and she was imitating Dee’s now, with all the breathless, husky qualities, standing with the dish towel around her waist: “How nice to see you, Cassandra! I really can’t stay. I came to see Chad on business, something of a personal nature. I hope you’ll understand, Cassandra!”

  She said in her own voice, syrupy-sweet: “Why, Delia, dear old bean-girl, how love-ah-ly to see you once again! Why, of course I understand, ducks. You’ll find I am one of the most understanding women in the whole of Tate County, Delia, lamb! Now, you’ll find my sweet, handsome, virile and irresistible husband is out at the Dip with our child, but don’t let that bother you, dear, ducky Dee-Benny, because our child can’t see anything — ” her voice broke — ”anyway.”

  He went across to her, and it was just as she broke away from his hands that she seemed to explode.

  “I’ve had it, Chad! Up to here! I’ve had it — do you hear me!”

  She did a ridiculous thing then. She began to push sudsy water at him from the sink in front of her, spraying it on his clothes with her hands, like a child in a water-fight.

  From behind them Johnny-Bob said: “Who’s splashing?”

  “Mommie’s splashing!” she shouted, giving the water another wallop with her hand. Then, wild-eyed, she turned and ran from the room, the dish towel trailing in the wet on the floor. He heard her noise on the stairs.

  “Is Mommie playing?” Johnny-Bob asked.

  “That’s right, honey. Mommie’s playing.” Chad wiped the floor with the towel.

  “She was going to wash me,” he said. “I’m all dirty.”

  “C’mere, big fellow, Daddy’11 wash’ you,” Chad answered.

  He guided his son to the kitchen sink, and he reached for his rag and the soap, he saw his face in the mirror — there where his jaw was swelling, was the smudge of lipstick.

  Upstairs the bathroom door slammed shut.

  “Look,” Poppy Porter said at twilight, “I know he’s not there yet, but when he comes there I wish you’d tell him to call me.”

  Arnold Belden stood behind her. “Calm down,” he said. “It’s hard to hear long-distance if you shout, Poppy.”

  She muffled the receiver with her hand. “He’s so stupid! I know just who he is — the big fat one that chews the cigar all the time!”

  She said into the receiver: “When he gets there, will you have him call me, Mr. Hodges? … Well, of course he’s coming there. Didn’t you call him and tell him to? He left late this afternoon for Montgomery? … You don’t?”

  Arnold Belden walked over and sat down, picked up a magazine; then threw it aside. He saw Poppy drop the arm of the telephone back into its cradle.

  “Well,” she said, “well, Daddy, he never called Troy.”

  “You sure Troy said it was Hodges?”

  “He said he had to go to Montgomery on business. That’s who he always stays with — Hodges or that other fat slob!”

  “Easy, honey!”

  “Well, they are fat slobs, Daddy! And if Troy really had any business to go to so suddenly they’d know about it! But they don’t. They said Troy wasn’t coming back for another week, as far as they knew!”

  “Then where is he?”

  “Where do you think he is?” Poppy said. “He’s in hiding someplace. The big old politician, afraid he’ll get his picture in the paper with the Negroes! He’s run out, Daddy! Till the heat’s off! His home and his family and everydab-body be damned, but his praise-be-to-Allah constituents!”

  “I don’t want to believe that of Troy,” Arnold Belden said.

  “Do you think I do?” Poppy was screaming now, at twilight’s end.

  Beneath the tall elms, in the black background of the big tree trunks, with the moon rising, and a bugle sounding the minor four-note call, going two by two like an army of coupled ghosts, the formless flopping sheets moving solemnly in the still night air, at Chandler’s; white robes with pants-legs ends and shoes, yellow pairs with knobby toes, high-tops laced with mud-encrusted ties; shoes that knew the fields and the hills; circling to form an arc near the platform of the gin.

  And there the cross burning; the air heavy with the stink of kerosene; and then the sound:

  “He said it was sick! For niggers to crawl like venom through the corridors of our school! And they took him to jail for it! He said it was sick! For black niggers to watch white legs and lust after white daughters of white fathers and mothers! And they took him to jail for it! He said it was sick! He said it was sick!”

  And the roar: “And it is!”

  And the roar: “And it is!”

  And the roar: “Sick!”

  And the chant: “Sick! Sick! Sick! Sick” of the black silhouettes against the white cloth in the orange light of the flame at night for the stranger knew a Spam sandwich and a cell, and the jailer playing Elvis Presley records off in the back room by himself: “… you’re nothing but a hound dog and you ain’t no good to me.” and night knew a plan to have a dream — a woman like her — like she was, Dee — so beautiful in church, kneeling, never mind, he sank his hands into his pockets, now he could. And she was his right, her kind — a woman like that, a rich, soft expensive woman — his! His heritage!

  When he used to come home on vacation — remember — from the military school in the blue uniform with the gold braid and the visor cap, God! Anyone of them out in Pelham, and all of them out in Pelham — eying him, in the blue uniform with the gold braid, touching the gold buttons with their fingers.

  He knew what her guts were about, and he could have her. He wasn’t afraid now; she was no better than he was. If she didn’t believe him, he had the letter. He could read it out loud in The Wheel, but he wouldn’t. He’d say he would.

  She’d said to the man out front of church: “Arrest him? Are you crazy?”

  Then she did like him; even in church she’d grinned at him. Hadn’t she? When he followed her in?

  Always he’d stood on the fringes of what was rightly his, of what he was born into, and Lennie Gold used to laugh: “Ahhh, forget it, Richard! You’re so rotten drunk. So you had money once! So you could have had any woman you wanted — even Lana Turner! My heart bleeds, for Christ’s sake! And everyone knew who you were back in smelly Pelham! Your story touches my heart, boy!” But Lennie never knew the pain-haunted memories. The way he’d defiled himself — his birthright, trying to recapture its essence.

  Now the night knew a plan to have a dream — a woman like her — and laurel! He’d be gentle with her too. Now he wasn’t afraid any more.

  Standing there in the cell, suddenly he realized the music had stopped. Footsteps came down the corridor.

  “You sure kicked up a riot,” the jailer groaned, itching himself around the wais
t where his shirt was pulled out, exposing his white belly. “The Ku is out marching. Ku ain’t marched around here in some time. You sure did it!” “There’s reporters down from Birmingham, I hear,” Richard Buddy said. “Don’t you have anything better than canned meat?”

  “We ain’t had nothing but niggers in this jail overnight for six months,” the jailer yawned. “Niggers think it’s turkey … Yeah, there’s reporters being put up down to the hotel. You sure kicked up a riot. And let me tell you something else: you gonna be searched.”

  “Searched? I was.”

  “Naw, this time for personal property belonging to Miss Delia Benjamin. Chief’s coming down here. You sure kicked up a riot to get him outa his fat nest on Sunday night, fellow.”

  “When’s he coming?”

  “Phoned up just now,” the jailer said. “And something else too.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I ain’t no nigger-lover myself. Goddam niggers come in here and smell up the place and I gotta wait on ‘em. I ain’t no nigger-lover. I’d ride with the Ku any time — ” he gave a snort — ”if they was ridin’. Go around in cars these days — but that’s ridin’ I guess — ”

  Buddy interrupted him. “What’s the something else?”

  “It’s downstairs,” the jailer said. “I can’t let him up ‘cause it’s against the law. But I can take anything down to him you might want him to keep for you. Duboe’s down there. Come in with the Ku. They’re heading for the Nelly.”

  “Okay,” Richard Buddy said, “but I need a plain envelope, see? And I want you to listen to instructions.”

  “You’d think you was the jailer and I was where you is,” the fellow answered, “but I guess you know your business. Them niggers think Spam is turkey,” he said, shuffling away back down the corridor. “Gobble it up jest like turkey with their big mouths.”

  Richard Buddy looked through bars smiling at night.

  • • •

  Night. Out in his yard he said to her, “But the important thing is I know now, Cass. She doesn’t mean one damn thing any more. I can say that honestly. Will you come on back in the house? You can’t stay out here all night.”

  “How do I know you’re not lying? You must have lied all these years when you said you loved me. You must have!”

  She sat in the canvas-back campchair, her back to him, swatting the mosquitoes as they ate her arms and legs.

  He remembered another night they had stood the war of mosquitoes out in Senior Porter’s backyard, after Troy shoved Poppy into the antique glass collection of his mother’s; that time Poppy had said in drunken anger for everyone to hear: “You’re a Beggsom poor-white, and no war-profit education down at Alabam can clean the smell off you, Cassie! You don’t belong! You look like a Polish maid on Sunday with your hair all frizzed up — look at you!”

  And the mosquitoes had fed on their flesh while she cried: “Poppy’s right, Chad! I’m all wrong! My perm is frizzy and I don’t know how to dress — never did — even the Pi Phi’s couldn’t teach me how to keep from being tacky, and you just feel sorry for me. Everyone says it — not just Poppy!”

  “I want to marry you,” he had told her for the first time. “I want to get us out of this mosquito-night and take you with me, and I’ll never leave you, Cass. Never!”

  “Cassie,” he said, “Cass — listen. Whatever’s happened, and the good Lord knows you and me have been through some big hell together, I love you. I came out in the mosquitoes once before to tell you that, remember? Well, here we are back and I’ve got the same thing to say.”

  He could hear her crying now, but he didn’t go to her yet. She was still in a state. He saw her hand grip the hankie.

  He said a sixth time, must have been: “Dee wanted me to get that letter from that fellow they locked up. That’s all she wanted. And Cass, while we were standing there talking, while I was watching our kid make those leaves into a birthday necklace for you, I suddenly knew I never loved anyone like you — like I love you, Cass. I suddenly knew that. And I felt like telling Dee that I didn’t have any hard feelings about what happened years back — because I meant it. I felt like hearing myself say it because I knew right there it was true. And Cass, she said she was glad — that’s all, and she meant she was. That’s when I got the lipstick on my chin. She said she was glad that things worked out so neither of us regretted what happened, and she kissed my chin. I don’t love Dee, Cass. I love you. Hear?”

  “How come she isn’t Benny any more,” she said.

  He could tell by her voice she was smiling.

  He said, “She just isn’t. Now, will you come in and stop feeding us to the mus’keets!”

  “I’ve got to tell you something else,” she said, turning toward him now, half-sitting on the edge of the campchair, as though she would not budge until everything was settled between them. “Papa says he knows the man behind what’s happening tomorrow. He says you’re going to get in trouble if you escort the Nigra children to school, but he says nothing’s going to happen to Johnny-Bob.”

  “Did you think something was?”

  “We got a threatening note this afternoon mentioning Johnny-Bob. It said our child wouldn’t be safe if you escorted the Nigras to school. Papa took it with him. He wanted to find out who wrote it.”

  “I’ll bet he did!”

  “Chad — ”

  “Okay,” he said. “But have we got to fight that now?”

  “Poppy got one too, threatening the twins. She called me right before you came home. Troy had to go to Montgomery and she was upset, wanted to talk to you.”

  “I’ll call her. Then Troy’s out, hmm? It’s just me and Jud — because honey, I’ve got to do that!”

  “I wanted to tell you,” she said, “that I don’t feel the way I did about it. If you think you have to, well, then — ”

  “Thanks, Cass.”

  “But Chad — ” she stood up now; still by the chair. She said, “Papa isn’t a part of this, Chad. I know he isn’t. I want you to know it. I want you to tell me you know it.”

  Jack Chadwick swallowed hard.

  “All right,” he said, “all right. Maybe for once old John’s keeping his nose clean. But he sure packed me a wallop!”

  “He must have seen the lipstick,” she said, coming toward him in the night.

  • • •

  Night, at the Nelly, with Turner Towers saying, “Naw, no! I won’t go out there and say anything like that!”

  “They’re coming,” Tappie said. “They’re two houses down de road. You gotta, Turner.”

  The deacon said, “Your grandmaw’s right, son. We’re not Birmingham-big; we’re little here in the Nelly. We got to eat crow for this mob, son! Tomorrow maybe, when they’re back in the hills, we can hold our heads up — ”

  “Maybe, Deacon! Maybe! Our kids are going to school here tomorrow!” He slammed his fist into his palm. “Do you think they aren’t?”

  “Tonight’s tonight. Tomorrow’s tomorrow. This is a Ku Klux outside, boy! You have a family to think about now!”

  Doris Towers got up and went across the room to her husband, touched his sleeve. “Turner, I’d tell you if you were right, if I thought you were, and you know that. But we’re just little in number, Turner. Big hope and big in prayer, but awful little in number.”

  “I’m tired of being little and black! God damn it, are we just helpless?”

  “Let dem answer for you,” Tappie said, “Dey coming. Marching wid that cross down de night.”

  Night, with the grotesque black holes for eyes in the sheets and the chant: “Sick! Sick! Sick! Sick!”

  “Here, stop here!” against the moonlight soft drooping willow branches, by the shack at the end of the block.

  “C’mon out!” was shouted.

  And the tension in the minute’s wait, while the door opened on the crack of light, and the dark figure walked slowly toward them, slump-shouldered, head down.

  “Name, boy?”

 
“Towers.” Hot breaths waiting for the “sir” at the end.

  “What are you?”

  “A nigger.” Sigh-pause. “Sir!” Tired.

  “What are you always going to be?”

  “A good nigger, sir.” Resigned.

  “And a good nigger don’t go to school with whites, does he, because that’s sick. Isn’t it, boy?”

  “Yes, sir, it’s sick.”

  “Yes, siree, boy, it is sick!”

  While the cross went back to the shoulders, and the ghosts went on parade; and the chant: “Sick!” and the figure standing before the shack, bent like someone old, and “Sick! Sick! Sick! Sick!” shouted down the night.

  22.

  MONDAY MORNING the pickets appeared outside the Bastrop High School.

  “Just hang on tight,” Jud said, coming up Love Lucy Hill, two children with him, one on either side, holding his hands, “and don’t look to left or right.”

  A crowd formed along the walks of the school — the curious, the angry, the excited.

  “And don’t pay any attention to anyone,” Jack Chadwick said to the pair he walked with. “It’s okay.” They came out of the Nelly.

  Down at the courthouse, the judge was sifting through the evidence against Richard Buddy, and deciding there wasn’t any. His daughter was staying at home until the niggers got the notion of going to school alongside her out of their heads.

  “What’s your favorite subject?” Poppy Porter asked the trio walking with her. “I always liked English best.” Passing over the brim of the hill, facing the long walk that led ahead.

  Someone shouted: “Here come the niggers!”

  And the chanting was drowned out by the wail of a hundred sirens, coming in from State 1, passing the cotton that whitewashed the fields where black faces paused in picking to stare, weaving past the rows of furs and cedars, golden poplars and the elms and Judas trees, up West Tennessee and down Court to another shout:

  “Troopers!”

  And again: “Niggers! Sick Niggers!”

  “Keep ahold,” Jud said.

  Chad said, “Steady, now. It’s okay.”

  And Poppy Porter looked at the man who jumped out of the car behind the troopers and said: “Troy!”