Fairbairn, Ann

by Five Smooth Stones

  "How about me phoning from Washington later?" asked Chuck. "I'm supposed to fly there tonight for a conference with the rest of my group."

  "If we have to, yes. But it should be me. Or David, for whom he has a high regard. Thinks he's a legal genius. Probably the best plan will be for me to drive to Heliopolis and call from that motel there."

  "Wire first—" said Chuck, and Brad broke in. "Still naive after all this time, Chuck? Scoggins would have the full text of the wire ten minutes after it was sent. It's not so much the text as it is the identity of the man it's going to."

  "Stall and betray," said David slowly. "Stall and betray." Then, without preliminary smile or chuckle, laughter took hold of him and shook him like a gale; it threw his head back and doubled him over, shook the pain from his belly and the soreness from his body, and cleansed and healed him momentarily. It carried Chuck and Brad along with it, and when at last he could speak, Chuck said, "I'm damned forever; forever damned. Charles Beauregard Martin, an ordained minister of the Lord!" He sobered completely. "My people, my own people, have made a conniving so-and-so out of me—and I'm eating it up. Maybe its funny—and maybe it isn't."

  CHAPTER 79

  Twenty minutes later David came back from showering and shaving, bath towel around his middle. Winters and Les Forsyte were in the room now, talking to Chuck and Brad. It was evident there had been no developments downtown. He opened his suitcase in the dingy side bedroom, found clean snorts and khaki trousers, and slipped into them, and as he sloshed the clothes he had been wearing in a basin of suds at the sink he said to Winters, "Watchman, what of the night?" Winters shrugged. "Still talking."

  Garnett, back now at his self-appointed post at the side door, mopped his forehead and the top of his head with a handkerchief, then the back of his neck, finishing off with a swipe under his chin. "Those bastards must be really putting on the pressure," he muttered.

  "God damn it!" Brad's voice was rough, sharp with exasperation. "Don't you trust your own people?"

  Garnett whirled to face him, eyes hot with antagonism. "No, I don't. I'm not faulting them. There's not a Negro in that room in City Hall who isn't tied into the white economy, isn't dependent on some Goddamn' white for his income. Even Haskin with that little store of his. Day before yesterday the bank cut off his credit, you know that? Soon's they found out he was active in this. Cracked down on him on a loan."

  "And just what in hell do you think keeps the white economy healthy?" David tried to keep his voice level, tried to turn Garnett's antagonism on himself and away from Brad. "Where would they be—where will they be without cheap labor, damned near slave labor, without Negro buying, without Negro bus fares? Remember Montgomery? Retail trade's already off fifty-six percent in a week here. That hurts." His eyes narrowed. "Maybe I just came in on this picture, but whose idea was it in the first place that we give in to them, keep outsiders out of the meeting, subject vulnerable people to pressure and threats? How did that setup in City Hall come about?"

  "An outsider negotiator was something they wouldn't—" began Garnett, but David's voice, rasping with tension and suppressed anger, cut him off.

  "Negotiate!" It was almost a snarl. "Negotiate! For Christ's sake, how often have I got to say it! You don't 'negotiate' rights! An American citizen doesn't 'negotiate' his right to vote, the right to use tax-supported facilities. Does the United States Government negotiate his right to pay taxes? His right to wear an Army uniform, his right to get shot to protect his second-class citizenship! 'Negotiate' hell! I wish you guys would quit using that word. Every time you do it weakens us."

  "You got a better one?" Garnett used the question for an exit line, letting the front door slam behind him, then in a moment racing the motor of his car viciously, driving off with a squeal of brakes at the turn into the roadway.

  David wrung out the now rinsed clothes and slapped them down on the drainboard. It was too damned hot to get that angry. He spoke to the room at large. "Where's the reverend? I mean Hummer Sweeton."

  Les Forsyte answered: "As soon as we got here I made him go into that little back room and take a nap. He's no youngster, and he looked like hell. Abra'm offered him a room at his mother's where he could get some good food and a little peace and quiet, but he turned it down."

  "He would," said David. "No sense exposing an old lady to guns and bombs and arson. Save 'em for the kids in Sunday school." He pumped cold water into the washbasin and splashed his face and neck with it. "Christ, what in hell are we fighting? What in hell are we fighting? Berserk dinosaurs? Critters from another planet? Not humans, that's for certain."

  A few minutes later, in the musty, airless bedroom, Chuck and David dressed. Chuck held up his newly washed, freshly starched white suit on its hanger and shook his head sadly. " 'So cool, so white, so fair,'" he said. "And in ten minutes— Still, I suppose I better wear 'em, turnaround collar, rabat and all."

  "Sure had," said David. The blue cotton-mesh sport shirt he had put on had been, a year before, tight across his chest; now it fitted loosely. He had learned that crepe-soled sports shoes were cooler on his feet, and he slipped into a pair now and entered the front room in time to pick up the ringing telephone. It was Haskin.

  "What's going on, Haskin?"

  "Nothing much. They was an hour and a half late. They've been setting there, being kind, worrying about us and what we going to do, how we going to take care of our families and all if we keeps on like this, threatening we'd all get fired from our jobs."

  "God damn them to hell," said David dispassionately. "Tell 'em to start worrying about how they're going to keep their stores open, keep their buses running with an economic boycott going on."

  "Williams, he said something about that, and this city attorney guy what keeps coming in and out, Elmore's his name, Thomas Elmore, he says a boycott's a criminal conspiracy."

  "Balls! Did you tell him that?"

  "What you just said? You think I'm crazy!"

  "How long will the lunch break be?"

  "Dunno for sure. About two hours, I guess."

  "Two hours!" The whole thing was going sour, thought David. The whole lousy thing was going sour. The longer the kids were in the stockade and the jail in this heat, the harder it would be to control the crowd, the closer to the breaking point their men in City Hall would be. Stall and betray; stall and betray. It was the same old lily-white story. But he could not let Haskin sense for a moment the way he was feeling. "Keep the people cheered up if you can, Haskin. And listen. Well be there in a few minutes. But if something delays us or we don't make it, here's what you must do. When you go back in there, stop talking. Don't bargain. Tell them to turn the youngsters loose, and well talk. Only one bargaining point, remember. Reasonable bail. That we have to go for. If they weasel on that—" He stopped. He had been going to say "Give 'em Article Eight of the Bill of Rights." Haskin probably did not even know it. He thought that if Garnett had been in the room he might conceivably have killed him. Someone should have been there with those men, someone who could cram facts down the stinking gullets of the Mayor's committee.

  "You still there, Lawyer Champlin?"

  "Yes, I'm here. Just sit tight and we'll be down there. You're doing fine, Just tell everybody who asks you that— wait a minute. Haskin, did anyone call you, anyone tell you to take a lunch break for two hours?"

  "Sure. Reverend Sweeton."

  "Reverend Sweeton? Hummer Sweeton? He's been here, asleep. Right here in this house."

  "I dunno about that. Garnett, he telephoned just a bit ago and he said 'We'—that's what he say, 'We'—thought there ought to be a break for a couple of hours. Called me to the phone over there in City Hall. Seemed kinda funny to me, but then I thought mebbe there was something cooking over here on this side and he didn't want to say nothing 'bout it on the phone, so I went along."

  "Sure," said David. "I can see how you would." His own voice came to him through a pounding of blood in his ears. "We'll be there soon. Just tell every
one you see that you've quit talking. That the next time you go over it'll be turn the kids loose, talk afterward."

  He hung up the receiver and found Sweeton standing beside him. The minister's face seemed even more haggard than it had that morning. "Isn't that what they did?" he said. "Isn't that what they did?"

  David shook his head. He concentrated on a small abrasion on the back of the hand that still held the receiver. He needed to think for a minute. Until now he hadn't been able to figure out exactly what the hell Garnett was up to. Now he was sure he knew. They had gotten to him when he was in jail. Now that David was reasonably sure of what was going on, the picture began to become clear, like one of Luke's photographs in the developing bath. He would never know the details for certain, but it must have been a case of turning Garnett loose, dropping the charges against him—trumped up though they had to have been. He could hear how they must have done it, kindly, reasonably, dealing in implied threats instead of actual brutality. They might have offered other inducements, a job perhaps, even though they knew he was an outsider. They would have told him they weren't really planning to keep the young people in the stockade any longer than was necessary but that everyone's welfare, and especially the Negroes', depended on the economic well-being of the entire community. They would have flattered him, and he would have known the flattery for what it was, being Negro—not even a Garnett could be fooled by a white's self-seeking flattery—but he would have pretended to swallow it, his eyes on the safety they offered. An indeterminate stretch in a Cainsville jail at the mercy of the Cainsville jailers and police would be more than Alonzo Garnett could face.

  Now the telephone call purporting to be from Sweeton was understandable. Either by prearrangement or by getting word to him somehow they had asked him to call for a breathing spell. It was probably the reason for his abrupt leave-taking. The white committee's reasoning seemed clear enough: given a long morning of fruitless talk, then a long break with the young people still in the stockade, the pressures against the Negro committee from their own people would be so great they would give in on other points. It would also give the men on the other side of Main Street additional time to get their heads together and try to work out still greater leverage to apply on the Towers land deal.

  This had to be the story. The counteraction would have to be taken by feeling their way, playing it by ear.

  He became aware that Sweeton had been trying to get his attention and that his voice was becoming louder and more insistent. "I told them," he was saying, "I told them plain this morning they was to stay with it till they turned them young uns loose—"

  Now David dared look up, control returning. "You told Garnett,'' he said gently. "You told Garnett to tell them, didn't you?"

  Sweeton nodded, not speaking, and David laid a hand on the thin shoulder. "Hummer, will you do something for us, for those kids, for the people here?"

  "Whatever I can."

  "Let Forstye take you back to the motel for an hour's more sleep." He saw the protest in Sweeton's eyes, but went on. "We need you, Hummer, need you like hell. What's happened so far Brad and I can handle, you know that. It's what may happen later that's worrying me. And that's when you'll be needed. You're damned close to collapse, man. It's not fair to us—to the kids—to the people—for you to take chances. I swear to you that if something comes up and you're wanted immediately, we'll get you."

  "All right," said Sweeton. He turned away, and David knew it was to hide from him the look in his eyes of a man let down by someone he trusted. "Send Garnett to me," he said.

  "We'll straighten him out, Hummer; we'll straighten him out." David raised his voice. "Les!"

  "Front and center!"

  "The Reverend Sweeton's under house arrest. Sleep's the sentence. Drive him to the motel for an hour's more rest."

  "Right."

  They left by the side door, and Sweeton did not speak again, did not turn back with his usual wave of the hand.

  Brad came out of the bedroom, buttoning a drip-dry shirt. "All I do is wash clothes," he said.

  "Let's get going," said David. "Where's Winters?"

  "Getting ready to take a shower. He'll stay here to watch the phone and write some reports. You coming with us, Chuck? My God, you look pious in that outfit."

  "Which is more than I can say for either of you," said Chuck. "I'm taking my own car. Going over to the enemy camp, see what I can spy out. Also, see what I can do."

  "You can't," said David flatly. "They hate your guts worse than they do ours."

  "Spitting on my grandfather's grave again, that's what," said Chuck. He walked, long-legged, big, lumbering, to the car that had been David's, and waved at them as he opened its door. "With my shield or on it!" he called back, and then clambered in, awkward as a young elephant.

  CHAPTER 80

  As they approached the town from the west, David and Brad saw people on the porches of the homes and in the yards, standing, sitting, leaning. Some of the people waved to Brad and he returned the wave; others stood or sat without moving, silent, watching them pass without apparent emotion, and in some of the faces David thought he saw hostility. Whether the hostility was for what they had done or what they had left undone there was no way of telling, or whether it was because they had moved too fast or too slowly. Some of these houses, most of them rundown, many of them little more than cabins, he knew were home to the children in the stockade and in the jail.

  At the start of the straight unpaved stretch of Calhoun Road that led to the center of town, Brad slowed abruptly. "My God," he said, without emphasis. "My God."

  David put a hand on his arm. "Stop here," he said. "Pull over into the weeds and turn it around and stop."

  Brad obeyed without comment, and David stepped out, turning his back to the sun just beginning to slip to the west from overhead, catching the scene before him in the full heat and blaze of its rays. "Jesus!" he said. "Sweet Jesus!"

  He saw no faces, only the backs of what seemed, in that first glimpse, to be thousands of quiet, waiting people, almost unmoving in their silent grimness. There were male backs in sweat-soaked shirts and blue jeans, khaki, T-shirts gray with dust and sweat; female backs in cotton dresses, sweat-soaked like the clothes of the men, once-bright prints dark with dampness. Here and there sunshades and umbrellas held back the sun, and scarves and old straw hats, and here and there bare heads took its full attack. The crowd was faceless because each man and woman looked toward the east and the stockade where their children waited.

  David stood without advancing, his feet lead weights and his belly crawling, knotting with tension.

  Brad came up to him and David jerked a thumb over his shoulder, westward. "I wanta go thataway," he said. "Way back yonder."

  "You think I don't? At least we can admit it to each other."

  David ran somber eyes over the crowd, the backs of the quiet people. "I wonder," he said. "I wonder if they know that in Leesburg, Georgia, twenty girls, young ones like those in that stockade, were kept for a month in a single jail room without bed or blankets? Do they know what's happened to kids like that in Jackson? In Planterstown? In Birmingham? In Maryland and Virginia? Do they?"

  "Of course they do, David. What are you getting at?"

  "Courage. That's what I'm getting at. Courage, for God's sake. After what we've seen, Brad, I'll spit in the eye of the first man or woman who gives me the 'self-preservation is the first law of nature' routine."

  Brad started forward, but David remained standing, making no move. "There's no hurry, Brad. We've got fifty years; we've got a century." He smiled, and the teeth his lips parted over were clenched.

  Brad turned, waiting. "We'd better get going and account for a day of it," he said.

  For the first time there was a definable sound from the crowd, a woman's high-pitched, carrying "Yoo-hoo!" and near the front of the massed people a brown arm shot up, a brown hand waved, and David thought that he could hear, more faintly, from the direction of the stockade, an
answering "Yoo-hoo!", like a distant echo. He moved forward then to join Brad.

  They walked slowly. They both knew that to run or seem to hurry could mean trouble. There was no sound from the crowd in front of them now except that of moving feet, shuffling, shifting to ease strain. A man on the edge of the crowd looked over his shoulder, saw them, and came to meet them, a craggy black cliff of a man. He shook hands with Brad and without waiting for an introduction turned to David.

  "How you feeling, young fella?"

  "Who, me?" The inanity of his own response made him smile. "I'm fine." The man must have been in the crowd last night. "Been thrown out of a helluva lot of places lately. Getting used to it."

  "You're Mr. Champlin, ain't you?" asked the man. "Lawyer fella?"

  David nodded.

  "We been hearing about you. Jenkins is my name. They calls me Topper. Topper Jenkins." They shook hands, and the man they called Topper turned and walked between them toward the crowd. "We're doing our best," he went on. "Yes-sir, doing our best. Trying to make it right, do it right, till the law helps us. The law of the land and the law of the Lord. That's what Reverend Sweeton says. Tired of waiting for the law of the land to catch up with the law of the Lord; got to give it a shove here and there. We sure appreciates it, you guys coming down here."

  "Getting tossed on our cans," said David. He smiled and felt some of the tension going from him. The man who had come out of the crowd to join them had made the people real, made the crowd more than a massed symbol of dark and patient anger, had divided it into individuals, men and women like him who could say "How you feeling, young fella?" and "We're doing our best." Now that Topper Jenkins had joined them the crowd had broken down into men and women, become more—and less—than a silent, brooding menace.