by Belva Plain
“For God’s sake, you know better than that. Your mother would disown me, I swear; she’s so against what the Klan stands for.” Bud sighed. “I wish I could talk openly to her—there are women auxiliaries in the Klan, you know—but it’s impossible. She and those aunts of hers, good women, smart women, still don’t see what’s happening in the world around them. Yes, I wish I could be frank with her, bless her. This is the only thing I’ve ever kept from her.” Bud sighed again. “Well, to get back to Uncle Henry. He used to tell stories about rallies back in the twenties, with concerts and picnics where they’d sign up new members by the hundreds. Once he smuggled me to a spot where I could watch a meeting. They had a burning cross, it must have been a hundred feet high. There was an electric feeling in the air, the whole mass of people united. I never forgot it.”
Tom became aware that the cold fingers were still running up and down his spine. It was the way he had felt that night on Fairview, when the mob, screaming like banshees, had assaulted the house where the blacks lived. Could it have been the Klan’s work that night? He had an eerie feeling, a sense of unreality now, about Bud’s words, about the box on the backseat, and the lonely road curving through aisles of live oaks a hundred years old or more, with the moss hanging from them like the long gray hair of an old mad woman. And he hugged Earl closer to his chest.
Bud was reminiscing. “My dad was a preacher, as you know, but a lot of his folks picked cotton not far from here. Gosh, how my dad hated the Pope!” He gave his familiar chuckle. “Well, times change, and these days we don’t hate the Pope all that much anymore. But Jews—that hasn’t changed. Or blacks—my God, that never will.”
Two needs warred in Tom: the need, born of fear, to hear no more, and the need at the same time to know the whole story.
“What—what is it that you actually do?” he asked, stammering a little.
“I personally? I’m the Grand of a Province. But I expect to be promoted soon to be Grand of a Dominion. The Empire is divided into five Departments. It’s like a pyramid right up to the Grand Wizard at the top. All very well organized. Disciplined,” Bud said proudly. “Interested, are you?”
“Oh, yes.” Anybody would be interested in something so mysterious.
“You haven’t asked about purposes or goals, but I suppose that’s because you already know. It’s not too different, after all, from the sort of things you write about in that newspaper of yours. In a sense, we’re the fountainhead. Our ideas trickle down as they’ve trickled down to you already. Someday the trickle will be a mighty stream. Yes,” Bud said, “yes, you’d be surprised at some of the names I could give you—but of course I can’t—of prominent men who belong with us. That’s to say nothing about millions of sympathizers, people who see how our way of life is threatened and who have the guts to join up with us. Because it takes guts. With the media and the FBI snooping, you’re always on guard. You have to be. Why, look at Jim Johnson himself! He used to belong, you’ve heard that, but he’s got to disavow us now if he wants to get elected. He has to condemn us. In a gingerly way, he has to skirt around the issues, never saying all of what he really thinks. But his heart’s in the right place, Jim’s is, and he’s our man.”
Our man. And with a little thrill, Tom recalled that day with Robbie and Jim Johnson, recalled the fine, educated manner, the frank, friendly attitude, the simple—was it too much to say “elegance”?—the simple elegance of his ideas. Our way of life. Contrasted to those Crawfields, to the homely, emotional old man with his tears, tears of the cast-out people whom nobody wanted, consider Jim Johnson’s confident, optimistic smile. A winner’s smile. If Jim Johnson belonged with these people where they were going tonight, it had to be all right. And Bud—Bud wasn’t a man to make mistakes, either. Bud was a doer. He knew what he was about.
It will be all right, Tom thought. There’s no reason to fear. And a soothing relief poured through him from head to foot.
“We’re almost there,” Bud said, “so I’ll hurry and finish what I have to say for now. Tonight I want you to stand back and observe. I think you’re in for a grand thrill. Then, if I’m not mistaken, you’ll want to join us. It’s not easy to be accepted. You have to be worthy, you know. They do a thorough investigation of your connections and family and of your antecedents. But given my position, they’ll be no problem.”
The soothing relief drained away as quickly as it had poured in. Very softly, Tom asked, “Antecedents? What if—”
Bud did not allow him to finish. “That crap again? I told you, forget it, Tom. I mean that. Forget that lying crap.”
But if it was to leak out, not right now but a year from now or ten years from now, what horrors would result! All his life, this threat was to hang over him. He was marked. And his hatred of the Crawfields was like the taste of rot in his mouth.
They had turned off the road onto a dirt lane bordering a swamp. In the eerie black-and-silver night, you could discern the knobby knees of cypress roots rising out of the water, where surely water moccasins lurked and slithered. On the dry side of the lane great tree trunks were covered with wisteria, twisting and gnarled as a rope-veined arm. The hot, wet air seeped under the thinnest cotton cloth and clung to the skin.
Then, unexpectedly, the lane came to an end, and a wide space opened up before them. It was an enormous field, almost half of it taken up by rows of parked cars. Between them and the towering cross at the other end of the field, men in white robes were gathered as if waiting to proceed somewhere. A curious, churchlike silence hung over the scene.
“We’re late,” Bud whispered. “Help me with the box. Hurry.”
Together, they unloaded the groceries. Bud put on the robe and a tall pointed hat that covered his face except for two eye holes. The hat added a foot to his height, and his eyes glittered through the holes. He had been transformed.
“You can join the rest of the spectators as soon as we form our circle,” he said.
Tom watched him move off to join the robed group and become indistinguishable from the mass. He was trying to analyze his own vacillating feelings: his anger because of his personal uncertainties, the return of his fear, and, too, the comforting reassurance that Jim Johnson approved of what was happening here.
Now the hooded men were forming into a line of march, two by two. Each carried a lighted torch in his left hand. With even tread, their feet soundless on the grass, they approached the cross. There was an ominous quality to this united movement, and yet there was also something ridiculous about it that gave rise to a nervous titter in Tom’s throat, a titter swiftly stifled as he became aware of the security guards who stood about. These men, unrobed, were most visibly equipped with knives and handcuffs. No doubt they were invisibly armed with revolvers, too.
Many spectators were walking toward the circle that was now spread before the cross. But filled as he was with this confusion of excitement and uneasiness, he stayed at the outermost fringe of the crowd. To see Bud—Dad—up there laying his torch at the foot of the cross was unreal. Yet it was fascinating. And he stood quite still watching until the final torch had been laid down and the fire had raced up the length of the cross to light the sky.
Far to the front at the base of the cross, a leader took his place, said a long prayer while all heads were bowed, then gave a stiff-armed Nazi salute and began to speak.
“This cross burns for freedom, our freedom,” he was saying, when Tom was abruptly distracted by, of all things, the sight of Earl racing toward the distant circle. One of the van’s doors, not properly shut, had obviously swung open and now here was Earl running, quite certainly in search of Bud. It would disturb the ceremony to run after him, and anyway, Tom thought with some amusement, his nose will pick Bud out of the crowd. Disguised or not, there’s no way to fool a dog’s nose.
“—the struggle against foreign elements who are sucking our strength, the heritage that is ours.” In combat against rising wind, the speaker had begun to shout. “International bankers,
parasites, and swindlers, do we need them?”
From the listeners there came in response a furious “No!”
Surprised, Tom thought, Dad has studied business administration and he must know that, especially now in this new global economy, we do need international bankers. If some of them should be crooked, a lot of other people are crooked, too: doctors, lawyers, teachers, car salesmen, politicians, anybody. So what does that prove? Nothing, except that some people have always been dishonest. No doubt, though, Dad would excuse the speaker. He would say that no movement can be one hundred percent correct all the time and that you have to make allowances for oratory.
So Tom listened to the oratory, thinking that he himself, or Robbie, could have written all these words and done it more fluently, too. Yet these words were far more extreme, far more bloody, than anything he had ever even thought of! He felt his shocked heart racing, and something pulsing in his throat.
“Our brave ancestors shed their blood to make this country what it is, and if we have to shed more to keep it for ourselves, out of the hands of undesirables, we’ll do it.”
Another roar of approval went up as the words flowed on.
“We must prepare! We must have guns and know how to use them without hesitation. No more false, hypocritical mercy, no excuses. The enemy surrounds us, and—”
Clouds driven by the strengthening wind were darkening the field and eclipsing the stars. Tom, looking upward, caught a glimpse of the Milky Way, and his thoughts were distracted from the booming voice, now grown too repetitious to hold his attention. How vast it was, this thick stream of stars, compared with the little earth on which he stood! And how small it was compared with the far galaxies beyond it, the unknown world so far past the reach of even our most powerful instruments! There is so much to know, he thought. We are only at the beginning.
People were singing. The melody was “Home, Sweet Home”; only the words were unfamiliar.
“We all will stand together, forever and for aye, home, home, country and home.
Klansmen, we’ll live and die for our country and home.
Klansmen, we—”
It came as anything totally unexpected comes, incomprehensible as a gunshot or the strike of lightning on a summer afternoon. It came with a mad roar and a rush of air. It was gone before, seconds afterward, anyone realized that a powerful car had sped out of the dark lane and plowed through the circle at the cross. It tore a diagonal path across the field, and on screeching tires, disappeared at the far end before anyone could possibly identify it. Left behind was a momentary silence, followed by screaming bedlam.
For fully half a minute, Tom stood stunned. Moving clouds had passed away from the moon so that in the new flood of light, he saw men throwing off robes and hoods; he saw men lying on the ground, saw people running, some of them fleeing to the parked cars and others gathering around the injured—injured or dead. Then he also ran.
“Not Dad! Oh, please God, not Dad.”
He looked wildly about for Bud, crying, “Who? Where?” into strange faces who did not answer.
There were three inert bodies. He was afraid, paralyzed, his legs not willing to move toward them and his eyes not willing to look at them. Their hoods had been removed, exposing the faces to the greenish light of the moon. And finally he made himself look because he knew. He simply knew.
The first was an unknown. The second, to his horror, was Rod Pitt, the genial general manager of Rice and Son. The third had a bloody head and a broken body, its legs twisted the wrong way, its arms a pulp … Tom fell down howling.
“Jesus!” someone said. “That’s his kid.”
How long he lay there he never knew, but it could not have been very long because the police and ambulances had not yet arrived. He came out of a faint to find himself half hidden in a thicket behind the last rank of parked cars near Bud’s van. Two men raised him to a sitting-up position and held a glass to his lips.
“Drink it,” one said. “You need it.”
His liquor was beer and a very occasional mixed drink; he was unused to anything so strong, and it almost blew him apart. But it cleared his head. The full reality of what had happened came surging back, and he began quietly to sob. Then suddenly, as a thought struck him, he cried out, “Are you sure he’s dead? Maybe he’s just badly hurt, and they can—”
“No, son. No, your dad is dead. Three dead,” the man said grimly, “and seven with broken bones, but they’ll be all right. Somebody went to call for ambulances.”
Tom whimpered, “Who did this? Who?”
“Some bastard. Went like a bat out of hell. Threw a cardboard message on the ground. Said, ‘Die, you scum.’ But never mind, kid. We’ll have our day. When we get him we’ll string him up. Your dad would be the first to say that. Remember it. Remember him and stick with us. You’ll see. We’ll have our day, and it won’t be too goddamn long before we have it.”
And now, like the fire that had swept up the cross, a terrible, vengeful rage swept through Tom. If he could have gotten hold of the men who did that to his dad, to Bud, who, not an hour ago, had put his hand, his hand that was always so warm, on his son’s shoulder and told him how he loved him—oh, if he could get hold of that rotten creature! Tom’s fists clenched and his jaw clenched, even while his cheeks were still wet with his tears.
The rage burst out of him. “Son of a bitch! I want to tear his heart out!”
Both men nodded, and one said, “You’ve got plenty of company. Stay mad. It’ll do you good once you get over your first grieving. Then you can put your shoulder to the wheel for the cause. Bud Rice’s boy will carry on Bud Rice’s work. Stand tall. Be proud. He’d want you to.”
Tom got to his feet. “You’re right,” he said quietly. “You’re right, and I will.”
Looking around, he saw that most of the cars had departed. A few men near the now smoldering remains of the cross were standing guard over the injured and the dead. And he waited uncertainly, not knowing what he was supposed to do.
One of the men took command. “Let’s get him out of here before the cops come with a million questions. Suppose you take Bud’s van and drive him home. He’s in no condition to drive himself.”
“Yes, I can,” Tom protested. “I can drive.”
“No, kid. Do as we say. Get in.”
“I want to stay at least till they take—take my dad away.” Again his voice broke.
“No, kid. Get in.”
He thought of something else. “There was a dog. My brother’s little dog.”
“Was that yours? A little gray mutt? He was there close to Bud. We threw his body into the bushes.”
“You threw it away? But I want it! I have to bring it home.”
“You don’t want it. It’s crushed.”
“Yes, I do. I do,” Tom wailed.
The man shrugged. “Okay. Go bring it to him, Phil, will you, while I turn the van around and get us the hell away from here?”
They laid the small heap of blood-clotted fur on the front seat between Tom and the driver.
“This it? This your dog?”
“Yes, that’s Earl.”
Tom picked him up and held him close on his lap. The red collar was intact, the fine new collar that Timmy had bought with his Christmas money.
About five or six miles down the road they passed three police cars and three ambulances going in the opposite direction.
“Reporters can’t be far behind,” grumbled the driver. “Newspaper bastards will have a field day with this.”
In a few minutes from now, Bud will be carried down this road. They will take him somewhere. To the hospital first, most probably, there to be pronounced officially dead so they can keep records and sign papers. The last of Bud. Never to hear his voice again: Come on, guys, let’s have a catch. This will kill Timmy. How are we going to tell him? The kid’s so frail. How am I going to tell Mom? Oh God, oh Christ, how did this happen? I swear to God I’ll spend my life finding out who did it, and I’l
l kill him. Torture him first.
So Tom sat with his fierce, bitter thoughts and the little dead dog held tight. The engine hummed. The cricket choir sang through the silence.
Laura, in her pink bathrobe, was on the big lounge chair in the bedroom reading when the doorbell rang. She wondered, since it was past nine o’clock, who it could possibly be. Cautiously, she went down and opened the door a few inches with the chain on.
“Police, ma’am. Are you Mrs. Rice?”
She went cold. Through the crack in the doorway she was able to see the uniform and in the driveway the car with flashing lights.”
“Yes,” she said. “Come in.”
He entered the hall and stood there, halting, with his cap in his hand. Very young, younger than Laura, he was as frightened as she.
“There’s been an accident,” he began. “There was a driver’s license with the name of Homer Rice. That is, there was no car, just the license. Is—was—he your husband?”
She stared at him, thinking, He doesn’t know what he’s saying.
In the same instant, apparently, he realized that he was not making sense, so he added gently, “What I meant was, there was a meeting out in the country, out near Ramsey, and it seems that a wild car drove through, ran over some people, and—I wasn’t there, so I only know what I was told.”
There was, fortunately, a row of chairs in the hall, for her knees would not have carried her any farther.
“Homer Rice. My husband. Is he—” And she set her dry lips.
“The report is—he’s dead, ma’am.” The young man caught her arm as she swayed. “Is there—are you alone in the house? Is there anybody to call?”
She thought: I am watching this. I have seen it before. In the movies the woman’s face goes dead, she is still and calm, a zombie who can’t quite believe what has happened.
She said stiffly, “If you will call my friend who lives ten minutes away, she’ll come.” And she gave Betty Lee’s number. Her best friend Betty Lee would come. “The telephone’s in there. No, I’ll just sit here.”