Fairbairn, Ann

by Five Smooth Stones

  "I shoulda known. God damn, I shoulda known. It was too easy. They done it on purpose—let him register so's they could make an example of him—"

  "Any sign of a body, Jim?"

  "No. And that's maybe good. His li'l piece of a car's gone. And his wife—she's gone. Their dog, he went over to the neighbors and they keeping care of him. Fine hound. He was crazy 'bout that dog. Neighbor's milking the cow, too. But they swear they don't know nothing. But nothing, man. Better not go out there, man; you likely to get run off."

  "Any signs of trouble? Like a fight or struggle?"

  "Nary one. I tell you, everything's like it would be if they'd took off right after supper straight up. Even the dishes wasn't washed, and that ain't like her."

  "They got away, Jim."

  "I hope to Christ they did. There was talk in the town about getting him. He musta heard it and got out. I hope he got out. I shoulda known."

  "Don't blame yourself, Jim. Just find out what you can about where he might have gotten to, where he's got relatives and all that, and I'll start looking. We all will. He's got to be hurting for money."

  "He been studying a long time. Been counting on it most of his life. Voting. He was mighty proud that day. So was we. He was the onlies' voter we had—"

  Yet there was intangible progress that would eventually show up as tangible names on the registration rolls. More doors opened than would have opened a few years before; more Negroes listened, not turning away in fear. "You can see their faces now," David said to Luke. "Maybe you can't get what I mean, but you can see their faces because their heads are up. Maybe they aren't moving fast enough to suit you, but their heads are up, and a man sure as hell isn't going to move backward when he starts lifting his head."

  He left field representatives in every area, and he knew that after he had done his own work and gone on, children would be sitting around tables in someone's home—learning; young people would be meeting in churches or social halls— learning; and older people would have hope living with their fear because these were their children who were learning.

  Tents began to spring up here and there, the only shelter left to dispossessed Negroes who had revealed to the white man at last the faith and courage that had been lying dormant within them for a hundred years. Of the tent dwellers David said: "There's greatness in these people, Luke. Greatness. And don't forget it, just because they aren't marching."

  Yet he still felt like a minnow trying to swim upstream against a torrential rush of water. Neither he nor Brad had won a case in court; most of the cases they had appeared in for the defendant were on appeal, a circumstance Les Forsyte and Fred Winters took for granted, but which Brad could not, just as he could not learn to take for granted the presence on southern benches of judges whose sole intent was circumvention of the law, to whom justice meant unthinkable surrender. "Relax, Chief," said David. "Save your energy to fight 'em all the way up."

  He could afford to remember these things now, at the end of two and a half years, with his mind almost made up to return north, at least for a while, and work with Klein and Pennoyer, use the bitter knowledge he had gained to prepare legal defenses, administer fieldwork from there. The things he couldn't afford to remember, and which crept into his mind whenever he left the door ajar, were incidents like the one involving the little pharmacist in a small Alabama city. He was a small man, no bigger than Gramp, who had tried to register himself and his two sons, had been seen riding in a car with a CORE worker, a white woman, and was seen to tear the Confederate battle flags from the bumper of a car parked in front of his store. They had gotten him one night just as he was emptying trash into a barrel in the alley back of his store. Brad, Luke, and David were in the store, stocking up on toothpaste, shaving cream, and sundries for travel. Obadiah Brown had looked even smaller lying in the alley in the light from a streetlamp, his face a red-brown pulp, the bullet wounds only partially responsible for the blood in which he sprawled. Brad and David stood over the body, choking, and then Luke was with them, and Luke's camera recorded the battered face and almost every bullet hole. Not all, because some were in back.

  The next day Luke found a Negro photographer and developed the films himself. That night they had their toughest time with him. By prearrangement Les Forsyte and Fred Winters arrived in town that morning, Les to confer with David and Brad, Fred down from New York to defend one of his field secretaries. And the three men did not return to the motel after dinner until late. Luke had preceded them, and they found him in the room he and David shared—packing. David saw Winter's face set in anger, but Forsyte took it in his stride. "Take it easy," he whispered to David. Brad eventually slowed Luke down, at least temporarily. Watching the scene, David thanked God that Luke was a guy who would listen once he had cooled down. Brad asked no questions, spoke quietly, suggested delay until he could line up transportation. The South, Brad said, had been a moral mess for two hundred years; it could go on being a mess for a couple of more days and Luke could wait those couple of days before saving it. "Come on, son. Shut that suitcase."

  David watched Luke turn to the suitcase that lay open on a chair, bending to take out his shaving kit, and then he was across the room in two strides. He caught Luke from behind, one powerful arm around the youth's slender body, his free hand plunging into Luke's trouser pocket. He slackened his grip, and Luke whirled free, eyes blazing.

  David stood looking at the gun he held in the palm of his hand. "What—the—hell—" he said slowly, then tossed the gun to the bed. "Perhaps I should have asked you for it," he said, still speaking slowly. "But I wasn't about to argue. You hadn't even learned how to protect it, you dope. A guy doesn't carry a gun so that any amateur can take it away from him. Or so a five-year-old could spot it from a block away." He was standing between Luke and the foot of the bed. "Leave it there, Luke. We'll wipe any prints off and throw it along the road after we leave tomorrow. You've got to have lifted it. Where?"

  "Last week. In Chattanooga. In a hock shop where I was looking at cameras." He looked like a small boy, sullenly ashamed.

  No one else had spoken since David made his move. Brad sat in a straight chair near the door, apparently relaxed and without concern. Fred Winters stood leaning against the doorjamb, looking cool and impeccably elegant in spite of a hard day, but there was fresh anger in his eyes. Les Forsyte stood at the side of the bed, looking at the gun. He spoke first, turning to Luke. "Where were you headed for? I mean, aside from the jailhouse?"

  "Get off my back, all of you! What kind of a job is it when a guy sees people getting dead all around and all he's got to fight back with if they come after him is a lousy black box! God damn it, film ain't all we need. We need bullets! You see a guy lying dead in his own blood, in an alley, no nose, no teeth, full of holes. And what the hell do you do? You take a stinking picture of him! And then he's coming at you again in the dark room, coming up at you out of the developer, his face and his eyes, and them bullet holes, coming up at you slow-like, staring at you. And you knew the guy. You were talking to him five minutes before he got it. And you vomit, right there in the dark room, because you can't hold it in any longer, the way you felt when you run out that door and seen him lying there—"

  David turned away, afraid that his face would show the same humanity that was in Luke, show that he wanted to give him back his gun, let him be a human being, make it possible for him to court destruction if need be in one final, instinctive act of self-preservation—and take his destroyer with him. Self-preservation. Self-defense. These meant self-destruction for the Lukes, the Brad Willises, the David Champlins— there was no plea of self-defense in the South when a Negro faced a white killer. Their lives were without value, defense of them indefensible. He felt sick and helpless, the high-pitched, ragged edge in Luke's voice scraping his nerves raw. Brad caught his eye and stood, and David saw the almost imperceptible movement of the head that meant "I'm taking over." He moved quietly away to stand in front of the window, near Fred Winters.<
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  Brad walked over to Luke, stood leaning, then half sitting on the end of the bed. "Luke, no one's blaming you. I wish to God every Negro in the South had a gun. The picture would be different then. But they don't, and a lot of them wouldn't use them if they had them." He reached back and, with a skill that surprised David, unloaded the snub-nosed .38. "Learn all kinds of skills when you're a defense lawyer," he murmured, then tossed the gun back on the bed. "I'm not unloading this gun for your benefit, Luke. It's just that loaded guns scare the devil out of me. You can have the gun and the bullets any time you want them. You stole them fair and square from a white hock shop, and I don't hold that against you any more than I'd hold it against a man without a dime in his pocket if he stole penicillin because he thought he had a fatal infection penicillin would cure. But, Luke, suppose he steals the penicillin and finds out the infection won't respond to it? Some don't."

  He threw the bullets on the bed, watched them roll over its lumpy surface and come to rest beside the gun. Brad repeated Les Forsyte's question. "Where were you headed for, Luke? You don't have to say if you don't want to."

  "Atlanta." He muttered the word so low David could scarcely hear it.

  "Atlanta! Martin Luther King?"

  "God damn it, at least they're doing something—"

  "Good God." Brad's exclamation was in the same low key. "You were going to present yourself to the King organization carrying a gun?"

  "I'm not that stupid—"

  "I didn't think so. Not even the Young People's Committee for Freedom would welcome you under those circumstances. You're a free agent, Luke. If it's going to make you feel happier and more fulfilled to line up with people nearer your age and get into this hassle on a more militant basis, none of us would try and stop you for any other reasons than that we need you, we're fond of you, and we'd hate to see you go. Only, for God's sake, if you're going to join one of these love-conquers-all groups don't do it with a gun in your pocket."

  David, listening, was watching Luke. The boy had taken the suitcase off the chair and was sitting, elbows on knees, eyes on Brad. And that was good. He wasn't looking at the floor in sullen stubbornness. He was listening.

  "Luke," said Brad. "You've taken part in a lot of demonstrations. Of all the damned fine pictures you've taken this year, the best one was the one you took of the woman with tears running down her cheeks, trying to patch up her boy's face after it had been laid open by a chain in that last freedom-rider melee. It's worth fifty bullets in fifty white bastards. I'll be damned if I can see Luke Willis kneeling in prayer with a cop dog's fangs an inch from his face. I'd rather see you kneeling to get a better focus of that dog's fangs and jaws with that camera under your shirt. You could caption it 'A Black Boy's View of the South.' "

  That had done it. Luke's eyes had widened, he'd said, "He-e-ey—Mr. Willis! You got something there. You really got something. I'll bet I could do it—"

  Les spoke up, interrupting: "Look, I don't want to seem nervous or anything like that. All that those red-necks in that big world out yonder want is an excuse to kill us. Nothing mean or petty. And if a gang of bastard cops with Confederate flags on their hats come busting in here—and they see that gun—you know how it is. They've got to defend themselves, haven't they?"

  David laughed. "You chicken?"

  "Man, yes! I'm so chicken I'd lay eggs if I was built right. Let's get the damned hell rid of this gun!"

  "You've been quivering for the past hour, haven't you?" said Winters. "Anyone have a fresh idea about how to get rid of a stolen gun? Shall we advertise?"

  "I'll go round back and bury it."

  "The hell you will! It's past midnight. I've been hearing cars go by on the road, real slow. You can't beat these crackers when it comes to rifle shooting—"

  The bomb had landed then, the explosion rocking the room so that David, in front of the window, was thrown across the bed, and Winters was knocked to the floor. When the sound was gone there was the smell of burning on the damp breeze that came through the shattered window and billowed the sleazy draperies that hung beside it. Somewhere close at hand a woman screamed, not once but again and again, a series of insensate noises, and then there were running feet and the sound of a car's motor racing, then driving away, wide open, on the dark roadway that ran past the motel.

  The force of the explosion had jammed the locked door, and Luke and David kicked and knocked glass out of the window so they could get outside. Les, David learned later, had dropped the gun in the toilet tank before he joined them. The manager of the motel, a heavy-set man, very dark, walleyed, and with patches of white on forehead and cheeks where the skin was losing its pigment, was running around aimlessly, punctuating his curses with, "Anybody hurt? Anybody hurt?"

  The other guests were outside now, and flames were licking up the side of a cypress tree growing close to the front of the building. "Hose, man! Hose!" yelled Luke, and when the manager dragged garden hose over and turned it on he played the stream up and down the tree trunk, through the branches and over the roof and front of the building. The woman who had screamed was sitting on the ground in front of her room, wearing a transparent black nightgown. She was dull with shock now, and a man clad only in Roman-striped shorts was standing over her, holding a bottle of liquor to her mouth.

  The manager, whose little office had been almost annihilated by the bomb, was still chanting, "Anybody hurt? Anybody hurt?" and David snapped irritably, "No! For God's sake, no! See if the phone's working. Call the police."

  "What you saying man!" His voice was high and squeaky. "We ain't even in the city. You want the troopers? You want the sheriffs? Ain't a bomb enough? Say, man, you're hurt— man, you're bleeding—"

  "Who? Me?" David put his hand on the back of his neck and shoulder, conscious of discomfort there now. When he drew the hand away he saw that it was covered with blood. He looked at it stupidly. "Be damned—"

  Les ran over, stripped David's shirt from his shoulders, then whistled. "Looks like a razor job. Long, and"—he poked —"deep. Gotta be sewed up, pal. Must have been that window. Maybe there was a jagged piece left and you ripped yourself open—man, I mean open—getting through."

  When the commotion died down and the few guests had been moved to undamaged rooms, Les announced that he was going to suture David's wound. David roared loudly. "The hell you are!"

  "Sure am, sonny. My first love was medicine before I decided to save the human race. That's us. I took premed.... Luke, press that towel on there hard. Don't be afraid. It's not your neck.... I worked two summers and part-time winters in the emergency ward of a Harlem hospital. Rode the ambulance, too. Saw a lot like this, pal. You want to drive fifty miles to the nearest place where they'll put a stitch in brown skin?"

  "What you think you're going to do this with, you bastard? Sewing needles?"

  "Certainly, dad. Shut up, will you. Back in a few minutes. Stay with it, Luke."

  Tired as he was now, and safe at home, he could still smile, remembering the scene in that shabby room, Les coming back from the kitchen of the motel carrying a small porcelain pie plate in which lay sterilized scissors, needles, and thread. In his other hand he carried the first-aid kit from his car. He was whistling the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" through his teeth. David said, "Look, you guys—Fred, Brad, Luke—get that bloodthirsty sadist the hell out of here! I'll get it fixed tomorrow."

  "Now. Tonight. Immediately, baby. You can toss that towel on the floor of the can now, Luke. Somebody in Shakespeare said something about who'd have known someone had so much blood in 'em—"

  "I'll die of staphylococcus—streptococcus—septicemia—"

  "Not a chance, dad. After this a shot of penicillin. You allergic to it? No? O.K. I carry it as standard equipment, like a flashlight. Head forward a little more. Damn it, man, keep that hard head down—"

  David let out exaggerated howls of pain at each stitch and broke down laughing in between them, addressing himself chiefly to a fascinated, if shaken, Lu
ke, who was assisting.

  "Luke, you sonofabitch, you're enjoying this—Ouch! How many more?"

  "Two more should do it," said Les judiciously.

  "Remind me to seduce those six sisters of yours next time I get north—one for each stitch—"

  CHAPTER 64

  The bombing of the motel had been first blood. After that night his apparent immunity to reprisal and persecution vanished. Les Forsyte's neat sutures had still been in the flesh of neck and shoulder when he was picked up and jailed in the next town. His luck had not deserted him entirely, because a glancing blow from a policeman's club fell on the shoulder where there weren't any stitches. He could not remember now what the charge had been that first time. Two of many subsequent charges were in Brad's hands and, he supposed, would eventually work their way to the Supreme Court.

  One circumstance he hadn't foreseen was the inevitable one of becoming known in the whole region, of having his picture sent from town to town, his activities watched with hostile eyes by police and state troopers, his plans spotted ahead of time through tapped telephone lines. It hadn't helped any when a national news magazine had run his picture in connection with a story about ALEC. After a while he insisted that workers in the various communities make all but the most trivial personal calls from pay telephones, and a different one whenever possible. Nowadays he planned to arrive in town at night when he could arrange it, and to keep out of sight during the day if it could be done, as much for the safety of the workers as for his own. And he was never without the knowledge, when he walked the southern streets and roads, that the companion who hadn't quite caught up with him yet was death.