Daybreak

by Belva Plain

  “God Almighty, Robbie, that was the minister and his wife. She’s a friend of my mother’s.”

  “So what? You haven’t done anything.”

  “My God, if she saw me!”

  “Get in the car. Nobody saw you. It’s black as hell unless somebody shines a light directly in your face.”

  “I’m sure she saw me, though.”

  “Get in the car, will you?” Dudley was in a rage. He got behind the wheel, started the engine, and began to rock the car back and forth until he had squeezed it out of the space.

  “Listen,” Robbie said, “you didn’t break any windows. It’s not the end of the world. If they did see you, well, they were here on this street, too.”

  “That’s different. They live near here, just around the corner.”

  With furious defiance, Dudley had forced his way into a U-turn, and, grazing a fender, ignoring protests and curses, fled out of Fairview Street. Bent over the wheel as he sped, he said to himself, “Goddamn mess …”

  The car screeched around a corner, raced and squealed around another corner. From a distance behind them, police sirens wailed.

  Tom spoke. “You’re going toward the highway. I live the other way.”

  “For Christ’s sake, give me directions, then.” Dudley was scared. You could smell his sweat.

  “Next right and down the hill. You can stop at the bottom. I’ll walk the rest of the way.”

  Dudley kept muttering. “Last thing we need is to be mixed up in an attack on blacks. Last thing.”

  The car went hurtling down the hill, and Tom gripped the seat. These last few minutes had the feel of unreality, the shattered summer night, shouts, cries, the running feet in unified attack upon that house, the broken glass … He saw his parents as he had just left them, reading in the silence and safety of their home, then stones slamming through the windows … His mother would scream …

  “I wonder whether anybody in that house was hurt,” he said.

  “And if they were, what difference?” Robbie’s tone was sharp.

  “You can make your point without hurting people.”

  Dudley laughed. “Listen, those people knew they’re not wanted there and yet they forced their way in. So you have to use force to get them out. Nobody wants to injure anyone, but that’s the chance you have to take to get your message through. Those people don’t belong in that neighborhood any more than you belong in Buckingham Palace.”

  Well, probably so. Those people really didn’t belong there with the Ordways, the minister, and the Andersons, families like that. And as Dad always said, if this kept up, they’d be taking over the whole neighborhood. Everything would change, and Tom didn’t want things to change. Things were fine as they were now.

  That guy Greg has guts, he thought. My age, and he holds a meeting for Johnson on his lawn. His parents, naturally, are behind him. Not like my parents. Then he wondered aloud, “What do you suppose is happening back there now?”

  “They’ll arrest the guys if they catch them. And your friend Greg may be called as a witness. That’s all,” Robbie said. “But right across the street from a Johnson rally! Tough luck.”

  Dudley reprimanded her. “Don’t worry about Jim. He can take care of himself. Here’s your corner, Tom. You won’t have to walk far.”

  The “Fairview incident,” as it came to be called, was the talk of the city and beyond. Tom rose early the next morning to catch the newspaper as it thumped onto the front lawn. Stunned by the headline, he sat down on the veranda steps and read about the night’s events.

  By the time the police arrived, the stone-throwers had left. A photograph showed the shattered windows and the family gathered, huddled at the front door talking to the police. But that was not all. Much later, after the police had left, another attack had been made upon the house, this time with bullets that had gone through the broken windows and embedded themselves in a baby grand piano.

  When Laura and Bud came out onto the veranda, Tom gave them the paper.

  “We just heard it upstairs on the radio. Some excitement,” Bud said.

  Well, they have to be crazies to do that, Tom thought. Protests are one thing, but bullets are something else again.

  “What do you think? The Klan?” he asked.

  Bud shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe some neighbors—no.” He laughed. “I can hardly imagine Ordway creeping out at night with a rifle slung over his hand-tailored shoulder.”

  “You’re laughing?”

  At his mother’s tone, Tom, still seated on the steps, looked up. There were tears in her eyes.

  “Those animals! No, that’s wrong. Animals don’t do such things.” She wiped her eyes. “I will never understand. Not as long as I live.”

  “What won’t you understand, Mom?” asked Timmy, coming onto the veranda.

  “This. In the paper. It’s unbelievable. If I could get my hands on those people, I would—I don’t know what I’d do. Scum of the earth. They deserve to die.”

  “Death penalty? That’s pretty strong. They didn’t kill anybody,” Bud said.

  “I’m talking morals, not laws. I’m no lawyer,” Laura said vehemently. “Oh,” she cried, “don’t you see, it’s not only the cruelty to that one family? It’s much more. It’s a whole poisonous atmosphere, like a cloud.” She made a wide gesture with her arms. “A cloud that spreads and spreads. Don’t you see?”

  “I see,” Bud replied, “that if—listen, I’m not saying it’s right to shoot up somebody’s house—but if people upset the applecart, they shouldn’t wonder why the apples are smashed all over the ground. Anyway, I’m sick of hearing about blacks. I’m sick of them, every damn one of them. Blow them all up into space or drown the lot in the Atlantic. I won’t miss them.”

  Timmy had a puzzled, worried expression, looking from father to mother and then to Tom. The atmosphere was heavy; you felt, Tom thought, as if an actual storm were coming, when the wind stirs the quiet trees and the leaves turn inside out. With a glance at his mother he saw the storm rising. And then as quickly as it rose, it sank.

  Her cheek muscles tightened; she spoke with measured calm.

  “I’ve got the pancakes mixed. Blueberry this morning. So come on. The Rice family’s front-porch arguments aren’t going to solve the world’s problems.”

  “Your mother gets too upset. She takes everything too much to heart,” Bud said as Tom and he rode to work. “I hate to see it.”

  “Betty Lee told me Mom brought cake and stuff over to those blacks on Fairview.”

  “She what? God Almighty. She never told me!”

  “I guess she knew you’d make a fuss.”

  “Damn right I would! Suppose the Ordways had seen her! They’re all wrought up over those people, and Mrs. Rice, my wife, brings a welcome basket. For all I know, they may have seen her. It’s just when you don’t want to be seen that you are seen.”

  This remark jolted Tom. Somehow he had managed to put out of his mind the image of Dr. Foster’s wife. He had fallen asleep and awakened without thought of her; now, at his father’s words, the woman’s startled white face loomed in the air before him. Immediately, then, he squashed the image. With all the controversy over this neighborhood event, such trivia would be overlooked.

  “So the visit was to be a secret.”

  “I don’t know. Betty Lee didn’t say so. She said Mom was an angel.”

  “She is an angel, I agree to that. She has the softest heart of anyone I know. The truth is, she’s not very practical, though, not realistic. She’d better stay away from those blacks up there. If there’s to be any more trouble, it’d be her luck to get hurt, God forbid.”

  They drew up at the plant, past the long sign over the entrance: PAIGE AND RICE.

  “Yes, I remember the day that sign went up,” Bud said.

  He was proud of that sign. Tom thought, almost tenderly: I must have heard him say that a thousand times.

  “There’s a big load coming in from United Wire, Tom. Get
the copper separated from the rest and set it in Number Two warehouse. There are two sizes, and the Austin Constructions man will be coming today or tomorrow to decide which size they want. Okay?”

  “Got it,” Tom said.

  He liked working here. Certainly he was aware of many things that made it pleasant for him: the fact that he had the privilege, which he did not abuse, of taking time off whenever he wanted to, the fact that most of his time, when midday heat was at its worst, was spent in the air-conditioned retail shop, and the ultimate fact, from which these others derived, that he was the son of the owner.

  Walking around the four-acre spread, he often felt the swell of pride. When his time came, he would be the fourth-generation owner. But this place was far different, Mom’s aunts were the first to say, from the business that his great-grandfather had founded, and it was Bud Rice who had made it what it was today. Because of him, there was this bustle of arriving and departing trucks, these warehouses, these sheds crammed with tools, gravel, lumber, and cement, this parking lot filled up, this traffic of customers in and out all day. Bud had caused it, and his son was proud.

  The workers were friendly to Tom. However uncomfortable they might feel about his presence, they naturally did not show it, so he hoped that they might sincerely like him. After all, he never shirked, he joined in their talk and jokes, he ate his sandwich lunch not in the office with his father but in a shed with them.

  Today as they sat down in the shade, they talked about the incident on Fairview Street, and this time, remembering Bud’s admonition about political discussions, Tom stayed out of it, which was just as well because the men were hotly divided.

  Then one of them produced a transistor radio, and the twelve o’clock news came on.

  “The police stopped a car at four o’clock this morning speeding eastward out of the northwestern section of the city. Ku Klux Klan regalia, hoods and gowns, were found in the trunk of the car, but no weapons or ammunition or any illegal objects. The occupants were given a ticket for speeding in a residential zone.

  “Ralph Mackenzie, running for the state senate, deplpred the criminal attack upon the Edgewood family’s home last night, condemning it as brutal, inhumane, and un-American. He expressed some wonder that it occurred simultaneously with a rally for his opponent that was taking place across the street.

  “In an interview this morning, Jim Johnson expressed ‘outrage’ at Mr. Mackenzie’s attempt by implication to link a legitimate political rally with what he himself called ‘a criminal attack.’ He said, ‘Neither I nor any of my supporters condone any behavior that Mr. Mackenzie himself called “un-American.” We are entirely and completely American.’ ”

  “Good for Jim,” someone said. “That’s telling them.”

  Someone else said, “Telling them a lot of bull if you ask me.”

  “I didn’t ask you.”

  “Well, I’m telling you all the same.”

  The first man laid his lunch down and made two fists.

  “Hey,” Tom said, “no sense fighting about it.”

  The words slipped out of his own accord, slipped out because violence repelled him, and violence was in both men’s faces.

  An older man spoke up. “Tom’s right. We’ll vote the way we want. A fistfight won’t turn the vote one way or the other.”

  The second man got up and walked away, grumbling something under his breath that sounded like, “Yeah, get in solid with the boss’s kid.”

  Obviously a Mackenzie man, Tom thought. His mother’s words flashed: This is going to be a nasty election. Not necessarily nasty, he thought, but very, very emotional.

  The owner of the radio switched it off, and the talk turned more happily to baseball. And a few minutes later, Bud unexpectedly appeared with an announcement.

  “Knock off work for a second after lunch. We’re having a little ceremony, kind of, that I want you all to see.”

  On the front of the main building the PAIGE AND RICE sign had been taken down. Two ladders were propped up on either side of the entrance, and a new sign lay on the grass ready to be hoisted. Tom craned to read it upside down: RICE AND SON, it said, causing a hot flood of embarrassment to creep up his back to the roots of his hair.

  “What, so soon?” he blurted.

  Bud slapped him on the back. “Why not? You are my son, aren’t you?”

  The men laughed, and Tom stood abashed before them as the sign was hoisted and fastened into place. It was so conspicuous, with its bold gilt letters glittering in the sun!

  One of the men called out, “Hurray!” And there was brief clapping. The three women who worked in the office clapped, calling, “Speech, Tom, speech!” And when he shook his head, the old one, who had been there since his mother was a child, reproved him, smiling the reproof. “Come on, Tom, I knew you before you were born.”

  “I don’t deserve this,” he said. “Not yet, anyway. So I really don’t know what to say.”

  Bud roared, “Of course you deserve it. You work here, don’t you? You give us an honest day’s work. Otherwise Bud Rice wouldn’t put you up on that sign, you can damn well depend on that. Right, guys?”

  The men laughed again, nodding, no, Bud Rice wouldn’t. You sure could depend on that.

  And Bud put his arm around Tom’s shoulder. “This is my son, guys. He’s good stuff. Otherwise, son or no son, I wouldn’t reward him. I’d love him, yes, but a reward is something different. I just want to say this—hell, I’m being too sentimental, I know, but a lot of you have sons, so you know the feeling—I just want to say that if anything happens to me, Tom here will take over, and he’ll be as fair and square, as decent as I hope I’ve been. I’ve tried to be, anyway.”

  A wave of love passed over Tom. Suppose it was sentimental! Suppose it was embarrassing! It was real. My father, he thought. If anything ever happened to him, I’d—I don’t know what I’d do. And in that instant, he didn’t care a damn what anybody else thought. He put his arms around Bud and hugged him.

  “Okay,” Bud said, “it’s too blasted hot to keep you all here in the sun. There’s beer inside to cool you off before we get to work. That’s the celebration.”

  After Tom and Bud left, Laura was alone, for Timmy had been invited to a friend’s house for the day. Or she had thought she was alone. For when she took the newspaper and went out to the veranda, she was followed by Betty Lee.

  “I didn’t hear you come in,” Laura said.

  “I know. You were all talking. And when you came to breakfast I hid upstairs.”

  The tone combined with the word “hid” was so strange that Laura put the paper aside and looked toward Betty Lee. The old woman’s dark face was overcast with gray. She had been crying.

  “What’s wrong? What happened?” There must have been an accident or another death in her large family. “Tell me. Sit down and tell me.”

  “I almost can’t, Miss Laura. It hurts my heart.” And Betty Lee covered her face with her hands.

  “Whatever hurts will hurt less if you let it out,” Laura said gently.

  The hands went down and the wet eyes turned piteously to Laura.

  “I heard—heard what he—he said.”

  Not those words about blasting and drowning? Not those?

  “You mean—”

  “When he said he was sick of every—every one of them, of us, he meant me. I never thought, I would never believe that anyone in this house—You’re my family. You were. But now, not anymore.” Betty Lee wrung her hands. “How can I stay here now, Miss Laura? I can’t, I can’t.”

  To be numb, to be stunned, is to lose the use of language. There were no words that could assuage this woman’s grief and disillusionment; her world, the bright little world of her adopted family with its births and deaths, its celebrations, the flow of its days and years, had been wiped away. Bud, in a matter of seconds, had done it. And Laura was absolutely silent.

  Then Betty Lee stood up and laid her hand on Laura’s bowed head.

  �
��You think I don’t understand you have nothing to do with it? Oh, I’ve been sad for you! You were my baby girl. I took you in my arms when your mother died, I made finger curls in your yellow hair. I taught your Tom to walk, and I watched him grow, and yes, I opened a page or two in those books he has in his room. But I never told you. I thought, well he’s young, they grow a bit crazy, with crazy ideas like our Black Power kids who hate all whites. Then they get out in the world and learn better, we hope. But when a grown man in a family like this one—Oh, if Miss Cecile or Miss Lillian ever heard that, they’d—I don’t know what they’d do.”

  Over and over the warm hand stroked Laura’s head, until at last she was able to look up and speak.

  “If I could undo this, oh if I could undo what you heard today!”

  “I know.”

  “Listen, listen, Betty Lee. He didn’t mean you. What he said was awful, but often people say things they don’t mean.”

  “He meant them.”

  “He didn’t mean you! I promise! He knows how wonderful you are, he says so.”

  “What difference does it make after all whether he meant me or not?” Betty Lee’s mouth was grim.

  She is right, of course, Laura thought, and it was stupid of me to make the point.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she said, with a question in her voice, as if to hope for an answer.

  “I don’t know what you can do. That’s why I’m so sad for you. It’s hard when a husband and wife—” Betty Lee did not finish.

  “But he is really, really a good man in many ways. You’ve seen—” said Laura, and broke down.

  Then Betty Lee put her arms around her, comforting with the old, old refrain, “Don’t cry, nothing’s worth crying like that, it’ll be all right, you’ll see—”

  “You didn’t mean it when you said you can’t stay, did you?”

  It was a moment before the reply came. “Yes. I wouldn’t be comfortable anymore. Would you if you were in my place?”

  Another difficult moment passed. “No,” Laura said. And another moment passed. “I can’t imagine this house without you.”

  The other smiled sadly. “I was getting older anyway. Almost time to quit working.”