Fairbairn, Ann

by Five Smooth Stones

  "The store," said Haskin hoarsely. "We can see better from the store—"

  David started on an uneven run for the side door, and when they reached the small side porch Brad's sudden grip on his arm threw him off balance so that he grabbed one of the roof supports to steady himself. He turned and was looking into Brad's eyes, icy, imperious.

  "Stay out of this!" Brad's voice matched his eyes. "Stay out of it, damn you! We need you, understand? We need you. Don't be a damn martyr!"

  "Turn me loose, Brad! For God's sake, you think I'm crazy?" The other men were ahead of them now, running across the rear yard. "Let's go, man, let's go!"

  Haskin, just before he reached the rear door of the store, called: "Gracie! Gracie! Lock them doors and pull the shades! Keep the chile inside, y'hear! Keep the chile inside!"

  (Oh, God, yes! Oh, God, yes! Keep the chile inside, Gracie; keep the small limbs and soft face inside; keep the young eyes and ears inside so they can't see or hear, so the chile won't wake screaming in the night because of what they've seen and heard.)

  The front door of the store was already open, and a youth David knew must be Haskin's nephew was standing on the porch outside. There were the sound of sirens, and the edgy, shrill note of a police whistle. David and the others stood on the porch watching, stunned. Men in the uniforms of city police and sheriff's deputies were spotted every few yards on both sides of Main Street, and on the sidewalks men in khakis and green shirts were walking slowly, in couples, talking; even, God help him, laughing expectantly.

  Hummer Sweeton was standing beside David now, and his eyes were those of a man who feels a deep inner sickness. He did not speak when David gripped his shoulder. Even in the shock of the moment David noted the thinness of that shoulder, the bone beneath too little flesh. He tried to keep his voice light when he said, "There ain't nothing we can do about it, Reverend, not just now—"

  Hummer nodded without speaking, then after a moment said, "I know, I know. I been here before. But I didn't think —" and let the words trail off.

  Les Forsyte said, "Nobody told us—but somebody must have tipped them. Some son of a bitch must have got the word out."

  David did not answer because he was listening now to the sound of chanting in the distance. The heavy, humid heat that now held a threat of rain suddenly became almost too oppressive to bear, and he was conscious of the sweat that trickled down his temples and formed in beads on his forehead.

  Now the source of the chanting came into view, at the far end of Main Street, rounding the curve that marked the end of the pavement and carried the street westward: a massed, orderly phalanx of marchers, six abreast, and when it reached the paved portion of the street the sound of marching feet became the background of the chanting, giving it reality, supporting it. When the last row of marchers rounded the curve, reinforcements from a large building on the west side of the street fell in line with ordered precision.

  Sue-Ellen was marching in the front line, arms linked with those of a young boy and a girl. Just before the marchers reached Third Street the lines became uneven and the parade halted. Two young men, older than the bulk of the marchers, came out of the ranks and trotted down each side, straightening lines. There were few adults in those lines; at least two-thirds were young teen-agers.

  Some of the deputized citizens started to move from in front of Calhoun Road and the stockade across the pavement, heading for the center of the street, and a man in the uniform of the city police barked: "Wait! Let 'em get to the police station! We got the dogs there—"

  Men and women were already gathering below them on Calhoun Road, some of them calling questions up to Haskin, who kept answering, "Gawd knows! We gotta wait and see—"

  Two of the city police started up Calhoun from the intersection, swinging their clubs, ordering the people back to the side of the road or into the yards. David saw a truck rattle to a stop. It was loaded with regular high carpenter's saw-horses and others that were obviously the handiwork of local volunteers. Two of these latter were handed down from the truck to the two men at the intersection. They were waist-high for a tall man, made of heavy boards nailed across the top of two square uprights that were set into large, solid, sturdy wooden blocks. The two barriers reached across the end of Calhoun Road from the edge of a small warehouse in the front corner of Haskin's yard to a low board fence on the other side.

  Les Forsyte said, "My God! They can't do that—"

  "They're doing it," snapped David. "Stay here. Let 'em play with their damned Tinkertoys. We'll get our innings—"

  The police who had been clearing the street were on their way back now, and as they passed the store they looked at the group on the porch.

  "You niggers stay up there!" said one.

  Brad's shoulder was brushing his, and David sensed the stiffening of the other man's entire body. He turned to speak and stopped, mouth half open, stunned at the naked, murderous rage he saw. He put a hand on Brad's arm. "Don't let 'em get to you, Chief," he said quietly. "For God's sake, don't let 'em get to you."

  "Yes," said Brad. His lips scarcely moved. "Yes. I know. But for a minute—"

  "You wanted to kill."

  "I wanted to kill."

  David kept his voice low, without emotion. "Remember me, Chief? I'm the starry-eyed idiot you used to lecture on the evils of getting angry at the opposition."

  His eyes returned to the scene before him, and he saw a small boy he judged to be about five, holding the hand of a sturdy, fat-legged little girl who couldn't, he thought, be more than three years old. She was dressed in bright red corduroy overalls. The two were trotting as fast as the short legs of the little girl could go toward the barrier at the end of the road. As though, thought David, this was a parade where they'd get cotton candy.

  "Haskin!" He did not even try to keep the irritation out of his voice. "Haskin! those two kids on the other side. Somebody get 'em back in!"

  "Lawd!" Haskin ran down the steps, calling, "Patty! Patty! Bobby! Y'all git back here, y'hear!" Then he called to a group standing on the edge of a yard across the road: "Git Loretta out here! Tell her two of them kids done busted loose ag'in!"

  A screen door banged in a house just beyond, and a woman ran out, eyes white-rimmed with fear, mouth open, calling, "Patty! Bobby!" as she started running down the steps, then stopping to Scream at four children who had run out the door after her: "Git back in! Y'all stay in that house, or I'll bust you open!"

  David turned away, forgetting them in the hell that was Main Street now.

  The prearranged police strategy was simple. Law-enforcement officers had patrolled the west side of Main Street, and others had waited in ambush on the side streets on the east side, their greatest numbers concentrated south of Third Street. Now, as it moved again, the front line of the march was past the Grand Hotel, its rear ranks just passing Third Street. From the vantage point on the porch, aided by the slight southward slope of Main Street, David saw police and green shirts moving in at rear and sides. They were armed with hip-holstered guns, but the weapons they carried in their hands were cattle goads and clubs.

  He heard the first high shriek of a goaded boy, could see, even at that distance, the flailing of clubs. The rear lines broke up in panic, the marchers who tried to break to the sides driven back to the center by goads and clubs. There was the sound of shots, and he knew they were fired into the air by trained troopers; these men were in no danger, these men were safe, and knew it.

  There was only one way for the kids to run now, and that was forward, and the milling dark melee that had been the rear lines broke through the still orderly front ranks, the runners knocking some of their fellow demonstrators to the ground, the whole trapped mass pushed inexorably forward, toward the police station where men with dogs straining at leashes stood, toward a solid line of police that stretched across Main Street from the entrance to the City Hall to Haskin's fence, a line that moved forward now with cool intent, blocking any escape. The gate of the stockade had b
een opened, and at each side four men stood, waiting.

  The area between City Hall and the police station was an inferno of black fantasy now, a hell the eye and ear could take in but that the sickening mind rejected.

  At the corner of the porch Haskin's nephew stood, cursing steadily, monotonously. It was not the cursing of a Nehemiah, the easy blasphemy, the exhibitionist obscenity of habit; it was a cursing from the soul, not the cursing of a boy, but of a sick man suffering intolerable pain.

  David heard Haskin call, "Willy! Willy!" and turned in time to see the storekeeper toss a key ring to the youth. "Take them keys and go round back and unlock the loading gate! Stay there! Maybe some of those young uns can break loose and git down there—" The boy ran off, silent now that there was something he could do.

  The wailing of a child close at hand brought his attention back to Calhoun Road, and he saw the boy who, a few minutes before, had been holding the hand of the red-overalled little girl. He was running blindly through the crowd, screaming between wailing gasps, "Mamma! Mamma!" He was alone.

  Brad's sharp, "David! David! Get back here!" came to him as he pounded down the steps and into the roadway. The mother of the boy was in front of him now, running toward the barricade, and he grabbed her roughly, half threw her into the arms of an old man standing, gape-mouthed and frightened, at the edge of the road. "Damn it, woman! You want to get your head split! Hold her, man!"

  His eyes found what they had been searching for in the chaos of Main Street, the flash of a child's red corduroy overalls. The child was running, stopping, running again, sobbing; lost, bewildered, terrified, and disoriented. A trooper picked her up, carried her toward the barrier, set her on her feet and gave her a sharp pat on the bottom, then turned to grab the arm of a running girl and push her roughly back into the melee in front of the stockade.

  As he drew closer David could hear the child's sobs, and he called out, "Patty! Patty! This way!" but the words did not penetrate her terror. Even in his anxiety he noticed the green shirt of the man running toward the edge of the crowd, a length of two-by-four in his hand. He called again, roaring, saw the child waver, then run blindly, saw the plump, red overalled figure strike one leg of the man in the green shirt. The man lost the cadence of his hurrying stride, regained it, not even stopping to see what had caused his stumble. In that moment David recognized him as the driver of the car that had stopped earlier in the day at the stockade gate.

  The child's body hit the pavement face down, and for a split second she lay still, then raised her head. Blood ran from the small nose; the tiny mouth was open, gasping without sound. Around her the running, frantic feet of both whites and blacks were perilously close.

  It was Fred Winters's voice he heard now—"Champlin! David!"—then he was sliding on his belly as he had slid so many times, years before, trying for a base in the Timminses' back lot, when his leg grew stronger and he could run for himself after a fashion. The slide took him under the barrier, and he crawled a few feet farther and encircled the baby's body with one arm, rolled over toward the barricade and half threw, half pushed her to the hands that were held out for her. He started to crawl back, keeping his body low, and heard a staccato, "Get that nigger on the ground!" He felt the blows on head and back, thought, God damn, both kidneys this time. These were not blows from a police club, but from a board with edges; the kicks could have come from any kind of boots that were heavy.

  Someone was calling, "Clete! Clete!" and the blows stopped. David struggled to his knees, groggy, head ringing. They had brought dogs to this side now, and he could hear them close by. Straddled, khaki-clad legs were just in front of him, a tanned, sinewy hand still swung a length of two-by-four. Above the trousers he saw the green shirt, but did not look higher, at the face. He knew it. His doubled fist lashed upward with all the strength he could muster, and the legs that had been straddled over him were writhing on the pavement.

  He dropped both hands to the ground again to finish his crawl to the barrier, sure that he would never reach it, sure that the next assault would knock him out, cripple him, possibly kill him. And then, miraculously, it did not come; no one had seen the blow, no one's attention had been anywhere but on the job of herding a hundred or so youngsters into stockade and jail. He looked sideways and saw someone dragging the man called Clete away, trying to help him. David heard himself laugh foolishly; at this point Clete wouldn't be saying anything, not for a few minutes.

  He was almost at the barrier when a voice barked, "Someone get that nigger yonder on the ground!" and another voice said, "Hell, throw him back over! We got enough on our hands—" A booted foot struck viciously on his ribs; then he felt himself picked up by legs and shoulders, swung through the air and thrown over and clear of the wooden barricade. Though his fall was broken by the hands and arms of men on the other side, still his face slid into the dusty ruts of Calhoun Road.

  Brad was beside him, swearing softly, and Hummer and Haskin and Les. He sat up and tried to wave them off. "O.K.," he said. "O.K." He was on one knee now. "Hell!" He had to throw an arm around Forsyte's shoulder in order to get to his feet because his legs were unsteady. "Hell, I'm O.K. —Christ, you guys, this is routine. This is just routine."

  He walked painfully up the steps of Haskin's store between Brad and Hummer, and shook their support off when they reached the door, wondering as he walked if his kidneys had really had it again or just felt that way.

  CHAPTER 74

  By ten thirty the only sounds from outside that seeped through the open windows of Haskin's house were those of singing from the stockade, the beat of patrolling feet, the occasional wail of sirens from police cars cruising through the west side, and the soft drumming of a steady, relentless rain.

  David sat at one end of the big dining-room table, silent and still except for a hand that slapped softly, steadily, palm down, on the table, not varying its rhythm, slap-slap, slap-slap. He was looking straight ahead, eyes unfocused, hearing snatches of talk only as sounds without meaning. He did not see the owner of the dark hand that slid over his, quieting the slap-slap, lying softly firm on his own hand. He looked up, bringing life into focus again, and saw Gracie standing over him.

  "Vail relax, Mr. David," she said. "Vail relax. Don't do no good staying all tensed up that way. Things'll work out. You'll see."

  She was younger by years than he, but the ample breasts had already suckled a child. He wanted to lay his head on those breasts and close his eyes, never open them again; go to sleep with his face buried in the dark softness of those breasts and never wake up. He bit the inner surface of his lip until the pain brought him back to reality.

  "Thanks, Gracie. Thanks. I'm all right"

  She laughed and took her hand away from his. "Sure you are. You all right, 'cepting maybe for being banged up." She moved toward the kitchen. "Next time you gets in a state I'll get me a switch like I does for Shadrach—"

  "You better not, Gracie. You better not get you a switch, old man like me—" He stopped at the sound of new voices in the living room. One was Chuck's, the other he did not know. It was a white voice, and young, the accent of the region noticeable but not marked, that of a Southerner whose education outside the South had left its imprint.

  He heard Chuck say, "Where's David?" and got to his feet, wincing with the movement. "Here, Chuck." He limped to the archway between living room and dining room. Chuck was standing in the center of the room with another man. Brad, Sweeton, Winters, and Haskin were already there. Chuck's tall, big-boned frame made his companion seem smaller than he actually was. The man's hair was dark; his head and face were small and delicately boned. Emotion, not nature, had given his skin an almost dead-white pallor, and the thinned lips would, under different circumstances, have been full and sensitive. The eyes were large, and intensity made them seem coal black. But this was a white man, no passer, a white man from the white world, in a white suit, its shoulders sodden with rain.

  Gracie edged past David gently as he stoo
d in the archway. "You gentlemen better come in and set down round the table," she said. "There's plenty coffee and beer, and all the talking and planning you-all got to do needs a little lubrification."

  Chuck took his arm as they went into the dining room. "What happened? I just heard about it."

  "Tell you later, pal. I'm all right."

  "Makes a man believe in the old-fashioned hell," said Chuck. "All these rehearsals for it—"

  Hummer Sweeton did not sit down when they all went into the dining room; instead he stood with his back to the window, where Winters joined him. Several men David did not know seemed to materialize, drifting in from living room and side door; they stood leaning against the walls or sat on extra chairs brought in by Les Forsyte. Haskin, at the head of the table, scattered a pile of ashtrays down its length.

  "You all acquainted with Lawyer Murfree? You ain't, Mr. Champlin. Lemme make you acquainted. Lawyer John Murfree, Lawyer David Champlin."

  Murfree was on his feet before David. "Don't get up, Champlin. You must be hurting." But David was already standing, and their hands met across the table. "I've heard about you," said Murfree. "Brad Willis has told me a lot, and I've read a few things. I'm delighted to meet you."

  So this was Murfree, the man from the other side of Main Street that Brad said could be counted on. David kept his eyes on Murfree's face, not caring that it might be rude, wanting to size him up, afraid of a snap judgment, distrusting, doubtful. He'd had a damned bellyful of "moderates." Left to his judgment no so-and-so-ing "moderate" would have been in this room tonight. Then the thought flicked through his mind that no "moderate" would have come there. If Murfree had been a southern "moderate," a small group would have been meeting in his office, listening to words of wisdom and sweet reason. For a moment he wished tiredly that all whites would either suddenly be missing or remain foes. Maybe, he thought, the Black Muslims have something after all. He was tired unto death of knowing that most white hands outstretched to his people wore gloves, that the grip of a white hand on his own was not so strong as the grip of that same hand on the knife handle of betrayal.