A Passionate Girl

by Thomas Fleming

  “You are a little nigger lover, aren’t you,” Kennedy said. “People like you will be much safer out of Tennessee. Out of the whole South, in fact. This is only the beginning. We’re going to teach Sambo and Sambo lovers like you that the white race has no intention of letting niggers into our courts or legislatures or schoolrooms.”

  By now I was too furious to think about caution. “You’re a swine and deserve nothing but slaughter,” I said.

  “If you were a man, I’d ask you to answer that insult with a pistol,” Kennedy said.

  “I would do so gladly, in the name of those black women you abused last night.”

  “All right, all right,” Mike Hanrahan said, drawing me away. “She’s overwrought. No sleep.”

  “Of course,” Kennedy said.

  Red Mike escorted me to my room, lecturing all the way. “These fellows are dangerous,” he said. “Do y’want to get us all killed? Dan tells me that this Ku Klux thing is racing across the state like a flame up a fuse.”

  At lunch Mike reported on what we had seen in the Negro quarter and added a picturesque account of my collision with Captain Kennedy, in which he had us drawing pistols at ten paces. John O’Neil decided that there was no hope of staging a Fenian rally in Memphis now—nor was it advisable. Northern reporters were no doubt rushing to the city. Our best move was an immediate departure for Nashville, where things were hopefully quieter. I opined that it might be a good idea to abandon Tennessee entirely, but O’Neil said that he had promised his wife to stop at Nashville. From there we would have no difficulty proceeding west to Kentucky, Ohio, and Illinois.

  That afternoon we boarded a train for Nashville. It had none of the comforts of the parlor car we had ridden to Washington. We sat on hard wooden seats with straight backs. The flimsy coach was not much more than a wooden crate on iron wheels. The interior was like an oven. When we opened the windows, soot blew in our faces. The railroad had carried only freight and troops during the war years, when there was little cause for amenities.

  Adding to my displeasure was the discovery that Captain Kennedy was on the train. He was drunk and went up and down the cars offering people a swig from the bottle of bourbon he was carrying. It had something to do with celebrating last night’s victory in Memphis, from snatches of conversation I overheard. He pretended to be surprised when he encountered us.

  “Join me in a toast?” he said, proffering the bottle. “The South will rise again.”

  John O’Neil shook his head. “I wish you well, but I can’t drink to that. Nor can my friend here,” he said, gesturing to Mike. “He was in the Irish Brigade.”

  “I won’t bother to ask Harriet O’Beecher McStowe here.” Kennedy said. “How ’bout you, Dan?”

  “Not thirsty, Jack,” Dan said. “And I wouldn’t call this lady here any more names. She just might rename your creek for you.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  Dan pointed out the window at a meandering stream. “’Bout a hundred years ago, a settler family camped by that creek. The old man was a mean cuss, and he beat his wife somethin’ awful. He gave a big cocka-doodle-do and decided that to celebrate his victory he’d call it ‘Daddy’s Creek.’ Next night the old lady got together with some of her half-grown sons, and they laid into the old varmint till he was beggin’ for mercy. To make sure he remembered, they changed the name to Mammy’s Creek—and that’s what it’s still called.”

  “Those days are gone forever,” Kennedy said. “In modern Tennessee we have ways of dealin’ with uppity women same as with uppity niggers.”

  I heard menace in his voice, but if Dan heard it, he chose to ignore it. “Stay away from her, Jack,” he said, lighting a cigar. “She’s got a little nickel-plated gun that could put more holes in you than this train’s got windows.”

  “Sounds like you agree with her sentiments, old friend,” Kennedy said.

  Dan examined the cigar for a moment. “Don’t go much for the kind of cavalry fightin’ you Kluxers did at Memphis. Down in Virginia, General Stuart and General Hampton kind of drew the line on women and children, no matter what their color.”

  “That kind of thinkin’ could make you real unpopular in Tennessee these days.”

  “My dad didn’t worry much about popularity when he stood with the Confederacy,” Dan said. “I don’t reckon I should change my ways without changin’ my name, do you?”

  “No, I guess not,” Kennedy said. He swigged from his bottle and departed.

  It was growing dark when we reached Jackson, which was about halfway to Nashville. There the conductor informed us that we were going no further. Earlier in the day some robbers—bushwhackers, he called them—had waylaid a train in the mountains, and General Stoneman had telegraphed orders to make no more trips without an armed guard, which would not arrive from Memphis until tomorrow morning.

  Groaning with impatience, we debarked and hustled into the town to find beds for the night. Happily we had no trouble. Jackson was a junction for five railroads, and there were several taverns for travelers who had to wait overnight for trains. We lost track of Captain Kennedy in the midst of our transfer, and I thought no more about him. After a poor supper of scorched beef and rancid coffee, I pronounced myself exhausted, having gotten scarce two hours’ sleep the previous night in Memphis, and went to bed. The others said they would soon imitate my example.

  I fell asleep instantly and dreamt of Ireland, a habit that was beginning to distress me. I saw dozens of familiar faces, Old Malloy and Patrick Dolan, my ex-suitor, looking sad, and Mother and Father, also in some great distress, for reasons I could not understand. If I were with you, how happy I would be, thought the watcher-dreamer in Tennessee.

  Suddenly I was staring awake in the darkness, struggling to breathe. A dirty, tobacco-smelling hand was over my mouth and nose. “I got her,” whispered a voice. Someone struck a match. A half dozen men in white hoods confronted me. The hand was abruptly replaced by an equally dirty rag, which was shoved into my mouth, all but choking me. Another dirty rag was tied over it to prevent me from spitting the first one out. I was rolled over on my face and my hands tied behind my back, while someone else tied my ankles. A big fellow slung me over his shoulder like a sack of meal and carried me along the upper hall and down a back stairs. Outside waited two more men with horses. I was tied over the back of a saddle, head down one side, feet down the other, and they rode away.

  I lost track of how long we rode. I was in constant pain from the horse’s haunches pounding into my stomach. Occasionally stones flew up and struck me in the face. Dust blinded and almost choked me. Finally we slowed and picked our way up a trail in some woods. In a moment we were in a clearing, where pine-knot torches blazed. They cut me off the horse and loosed the ropes on my hands and feet. They also removed my foul gag. I gazed at a dozen hooded figures, grouped around a ruler who sat on a crude throne. He wore not only a hood but a long white robe.

  “Kneel before the Grand Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan of Jackson, Tennessee,” I was told.

  I knelt. I was thoroughly frightened.

  “Do you know why you have been brought here?” asked the Cyclops.

  “No.”

  “You have been accused on good grounds of defamin’ the noble order of the Ku Klux and maintainin’ the dangerous lie that the black man is equal to the white man. Is that true?”

  “I insist on being returned to my inn immediately,” I said.

  “We consider a refusal to defend yourself the same as a plea of guilty. In our benevolence, we are goin’ to give you a chance to repent of your ways, and learn a lesson in the bargain. Bring out the other prisoner.”

  A husky Negro was shoved into the circle of torch-light. He wore city clothes, which were much the worse for wear, and his shoes were missing. “This nigger ran away from a man around here in ’58,” the Cyclops said. “Went to Ohio and got himself an education at Oberlin College. Now he’s come back down here to teach equality to other niggers. Before
we’re through with him, he’s goin’ to be teachin’ on his knees, and it won’t be equality. First we’re goin’ to give you a chance to find out just how lovable niggers is. Kiss him.”

  “What?” I said dazedly.

  “Kiss him,” said the Cyclops.

  I shook my head. I heard a hiss, and a terrible stroke of fire raced across my back. Someone had laid a whip to me. I whirled, and another stroke came from the opposite direction. I cried out in agony.

  “Kiss him,” said the ruler.

  I walked slowly toward the black man. Rivulets of perspiration ran down his square, craggy face. His squashed nose and his thick reddish lips loomed gigantically before me. His skin was as grimy and grainy as a piece of old shoe leather. I could smell him, a peculiar, smoky odor, like a drying coat after a rain. At the last moment I turned my face away. The lash struck me, and I fell to my knees, weeping.

  Gently, calmly, the black man reached down and lifted me to my feet. “It’s all right, Miss. It won’t hurt you.”

  I could not tell him my real torment, or rather, my shame: My revulsion against his blackness. Trembling, I closed my eyes and kissed him gingerly on the lips. I stepped back, and the whip struck me across the shoulders, driving me into his arms.

  “Shit,” said the Cyclops. “You call that a kiss? That didn’t even tickle his pecker. I mean a real kiss. Wrap your arms around him. Shove that little ole cunt of yours into him.”

  “Let’s take off that there nightgown,” someone else said. “That’ll get things goin’.”

  “Let it be done,” said the Cyclops.

  Two of them stepped to my side and ripped the nightgown over my head. I stood naked before them. The whip came out of the night to strike my bare back. I screamed in anguish.

  “You better kiss him real quick before these boys get too excited,” the Cyclops said.

  “Hey, wait. Let’s take off the nigger’s clothes, too.”

  “Let it be done,” the Cyclops said.

  In seconds the black man was naked, too. He had a muscular squarish torso, thick chested and slim waisted, a workingman’s body.

  “Now kiss him good,” the ruler said.

  I hesitated. The whip struck me again. With a cry I flung myself against the black man and kissed him with a desperate mixture of fervor and loathing and fear. I stepped back, my head bowed, my eyes closed. They could beat me to death, I vowed. I would do no more.

  “Look at that nigger’s thing,” someone said. “Shows what he’d like to do to every white woman in Jackson County.”

  “Only one way to make sure that don’t happen,” said the Cyclops.

  I stood there, refusing to look, half mad with terror and shame. How could such men exist? What could drive men here in the center of America to such acts of loathsome cruelty?

  “Hey, the Irish beauty ain’t lookin’.”

  “Got her eyes closed.”

  “Open your eyes, Ireland,” said the Cyclops.

  The whip struck me. I opened my eyes and looked at my fellow prisoner. His sexual organ was half erect. “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s only nature.”

  I looked him in the face, amazed by his calmness. I saw an indomitable pride there, which was prepared to survive every kind of humiliation and defeat, even death. My revulsion for him vanished. I felt a great bond with him and his people. I felt capable of loving him in a better time. Did he see any of this on my face? I will never know.

  “We got the proof we need,” the ruler said. “We have seen this nigger lustin’ after a white woman. He’s got to be made an example to his kind. Take him away.”

  Two of them dragged the black man into the darkness. “Give Ireland her nightdress,” the ruler said. “And take her back to her bed. If she knows what’s good for herself and her friends, she won’t say a word about this little lesson she’s learned tonight.”

  They threw my nightdress at me. I put it on, and two of them tied my hands and feet and inserted the foul gag in my mouth again. I was tied over the haunches of a horse and carted back to Jackson. At the tavern, the two cut me loose and carried me up the back stairs to my bedroom. They threw me unceremoniously on the bed and paused. I instantly knew what they were thinking.

  “Seems a shame to just say good night, don’t it,” one of them whispered.

  “The Cyclops said…”

  “What he don’t know won’t hurt him. We’ll take turns. You watch the door.”

  He cut away the ropes tying my feet and pulled my nightdress up to my waist. I could just make out his shadowy bulk in the darkened room as he fumbled with his pants. Then he loomed over me, his hand groping along my thigh. I drew both my legs together almost to my breasts and drove my feet into his face. He went crashing out of the bed on his back. “You goddamn bitch,” he snarled. He lunged back into the bed, but I was no longer there. I had rolled out of it and across the floor to the wall on the other side of the room. My hands were still tied, my mouth gagged, but I was able to pound with my head. Dan McCaffrey and Mike Hanrahan were sleeping next door. My one hope was to wake them.

  The Kluxer came after me. I rolled away from him into the night table on which sat a pitcher and bowl. All went over with a crash. “Jesus Christ, let’s get outta here,” called the man at the door. At that moment his friend managed to get one hand on me. He swung at me with his other hand, cuffing me cruelly on the side of the face. With that farewell the hero followed his friend out the door.

  “Bess. Are you all right?” came Dan McCaffrey’s voice a moment later. He found me slumped against the wall still bound and gagged, tears streaming down my face. I looked up at him by the glow of the single candle he was carrying and thought of the tender love I had felt for him not so long ago and the bestiality I had just confronted. I began to weep uncontrollably.

  Dan rushed back to his room and returned with a knife that freed my hands and the gag from my mouth. “What happened?” he said.

  “Ku Klux,” I sobbed.

  “What did they do?”

  “They warned me to tell no one. They said it could be the death of all of us.”

  “You let me worry about that. Tell me.”

  I told him. He cursed savagely for a full minute. “Let me see your back,” he said.

  I turned and let him pull up my nightdress. “Jesus,” he said. “You’ve got welts a quarter inch deep. Only one thing for them. Bear grease.”

  He went downstairs and woke the tavern owner, who had a supply of this sovereign Tennessee remedy on hand. By the time he returned I was aware of my wounds. They gripped my back in a web of pain. He rubbed the grease gently, tenderly, across them, and their ache diminished somewhat. Perhaps it was simply the sense of his concern that helped. “They won’t be so stiff in the mornin’. Heal a lot faster, too,” he said.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Can’t do nothin’ for that blue and black mouse on your face.”

  “You could hold me in your arms for a minute.”

  He put his arms around me with alacrity. “Seein’ as we got to fight the whole world, maybe we should stop fightin’ with each other,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  He kissed me gently and pressed me back on the pillow. “Get some sleep,” he said. “If you can.”

  I slept poorly and awoke in the dawn, thinking of the black man. When the sun was well up I rose and examined myself. I was appalled. My nightdress was a grimy mess. I smelled like a stable. My back was striped by a half dozen ugly welts, and my right cheek was bluish and puffy where my would-be rapist had struck me. But the bear grease did make my welts more limber. I was able to bathe and dress myself with only moderate discomfort.

  At breakfast, I was greeted with solemn looks by John O’Neil and Mike Hanrahan. Dan had told them of my night. Mike was mortified that he had slept through it all. He agreed with Dan and John that the instigator of my ordeal had to be Captain Kennedy.

  “Can’t we have him arrested?” I asked.

&nbs
p; “What evidence have we to offer a court?” John O’Neil said. “You can’t name a single one of your abductors.”

  “This is Tennessee,” Dan said. “We don’t settle this sort of thing in a court of law.”

  “What are you going to do?” I asked nervously.

  “We’ll let you find out when it happens,” Dan said.

  “I don’t want us killed on my account. I brought some of the trouble on myself with my bold tongue,” I said.

  “Just go upstairs, get packed, and come on down to the train with us,” Dan said.

  I did as I was told. Mike Hanrahan carried my bag and his own to the station, telling me funny stories of army days, like the time his friend Tim O’Toole asked the captain for a leave to see his wife. The captain told Tim that his wife had written him a letter, telling him not to let Tim come home because all he did was get drunk. “Sure the two biggest liars in the army are face-to-face here,” said Tim. “I’ve never been married in me life.”

  “What is Dan planning to do, Mike?” I asked, refusing to be distracted by such blather.

  “He’s going for him. Kennedy. The worst gouger in Tennessee.”

  “What’s a gouger?”

  “He’s got a fingernail on his thumb like the blade of a Bowie knife. It can cut a man’s eye out of his head with a flick.”

  “I won’t let him.”

  Dan was striding ahead of us with John O’Neil. I started for him and Red Mike caught my arm. “It would be a waste of breath,” he said, “and might distract him.”

  At the station our fellow passengers—about twenty in number—were milling about, waiting for the train to start. Snuffling steam, the engine and the four wooden coaches were before the depot. We learned that the detachment of Union soldiers had not arrived from Memphis. They were expected within the hour.

  “Hello, Kennedy,” Dan said.

  The captain stepped out of the crowd, looking fresh and self-satisfied. “Greetings, Danny-boy,” he said. “How is the Fenian band this morning? Did Miss Harriet McBeecher O’Stowe have a pleasant night in Jackson?” His sneering smile was a tribute to his gall. He apparently expected me to have been terrorized into silence.