I felt like the Cowardly Lion about to face the Wizard.
“I have spoken,” the man with the chain said, holding up his hands. “Our numbers grow. Our cause is God’s and the preservation of a white America under Christ. Now those of you who want to join can step up while our brothers take your names and we administer the pledge.”
There was some movement in the crowd. A man in overalls and a cap with a weary face, led his family out of the crowd and toward the line of cars. The family included an equally tired wife, a boy about fourteen, and a small girl.
“Brother, stop,” called the man in white with the chain around his neck. “We must unite or be mongrelized.”
“Wife’s part Sioux,” the man said, turning, unafraid, as he motioned his family toward and into a pickup truck. “Guess that makes my kids a smaller part. Men are dying in places I’m too uneducated to say right. Men who are dyin’ ain’t just white Christians.”
“Conscripted cowards,” said the man with the chain. “They started this war and they manage to stay alive while we die for them.”
“Ain’t the way I see it,” said the man with the family. “But I ain’t got the words to argue.”
A few of the hooded men had advanced toward the family getting into the pickup. There was a stirring in the crowd and a second man who looked like a farmer stepped out of the crowd with a woman and a teenaged boy.
“Brother, stop,” said the man in the chain, pointing to him.
The second farmer was bigger than the first and older. He stopped and turned toward the burning cross and said in a deep bass, “All of God’s children are equal. Christ preached love and forgiveness, not hate. I read the Bible every night with my family. There’s nothing like this in there.”
“You’re not reading it clear, brother,” the gold-chained Klansman on the platform shouted.
“I can read clear,” said the man, turning his back with his family and heading toward their battered pickup as the first family pulled out. Others in the crowd followed them. I started to turn, but the second burly man barred our way. Over his shoulder I saw a new car pull in, just missing the family in the first pickup. The new car pulled over near a tree, not in line, and the Chimp got out.
I nudged Fields, who followed my eyes. Gunther turned to me and whispered, “We cannot remain.”
A little more than half of the crowd stayed while the others got in their vehicles and pulled away. The Chimp was lost in the dark shadows at the rear of the gathering.
“Though we are small in numbers,” said the talking Clansman, “yet are we strong in our faith and the righteousness of our mission.”
Gunther looked toward the crowd.
“And,” the Klansman with the chain went on, “our numbers throughout the land remain strong. We are joined constantly by even those of rank, power, and station, as we are tonight. Politicians, businessmen, factory workers, farmers, and farmhands. White, Christian, and united.”
The cross continued burning and crackling. A few glowing splinters flew off, but the fire stayed bright. I wondered what they had doused it with.
“Tonight,” said the head Klansman, “we are joined by an obvious sympathizer in our cause, Mr. W. C. Fields, the great comic actor whose interests tonight are not at all comic. We urge Brother Fields to join us and say a few words.”
Fields smiled at the crowd, doffed his hat at their applause, and shook his head, saying to the burly man at our side, “I’m here only as an incognito observer seeking the truth.”
The burly man took Fields’s arm and led him toward the platform. I stepped forward and was stopped by two men in white sheets and hoods who folded their arms and blocked my way.
The man at the microphone stood back and let Fields take his place.
“Testing,” Fields said.
There was a reverberation and a whine from the speaker.
“Friends,” he said, scanning the small crowd for a sign of the Chimp and ready to hit the planks of the platform nose-first if another shot rang out.
“Friends,” Fields repeated. “There has always been much I have admired about the Klan, particularly the uniforms. I’ve heard the muckety-mucks down South get to wear different colors as they move up the spectrum, but I’ve always been partial to the white and wondered at how you keep your sheets cleaner than the ones at the Boiler Hotel in Winnipeg, where Mrs. Bertha Crumpbunny takes such pride in her linens that she washes them daily, by hand, with a crew of chunky Ukrainian girls who can’t speak English. But I digress. Canada is not on today’s agenda. Another thing I have always admired about the Klan is the way you guys keep those hoods pointed. Knew a clown in the circus who wore a hood. Used wires to keep it pointed. Very impressive.”
He paused to scan the crowd more closely.
There was some scattered and confused applause.
“I’ve made a few notes here,” Fields said, fishing into his pocket and coming out with what I could see was the ad for turtles with their names painted on them. Fields made a show of pulling out a pair of rimless reading glasses and perching them on the end of his sizable nose.
“Ah, yes,” he said. “In anecdotal support of your cause, I wish to draw upon a few examples from my own experience. When I was a lad traversing this great land, I found myself starving and cold in Lansing, Michigan. One night I slept in a church pew. The deacon found me, gave me some bread and coffee, said ‘God bless you,’ and sent me on my way. I was huddling in the doorway of a modest grocery during a storm when the door opened and I was taken into the establishment by a family I soon learned was named Rubenstein. Jews, all of them. They took me to the back of the store to a small storeroom, fed me hot soup, and made up a bed for me. Even as a child I could tell there was something cunning going on in their devious brains. They lived upstairs of the store. There was a small fireplace in the back room. One of the family, three girls and the mother, took turns staying by my side for three nights while I recovered. They talked to each other in a strange tongue.”
There was a murmur, more of confusion than understanding, in the crowd.
“Well,” said Fields, “after three days, the weather had broken, the temperature had risen, and I felt almost like my own self again. I told the Rubensteins I wanted to leave. They urged me to stay a while longer. When I insisted, they gave me an old but warm coat and some clothes and a shoebox full of food. The father, a fat man who wore one of those little black hats on his head, no doubt to ward off heavenly spirits, had been amused by my juggling. He told me about another Jew named David something, in Kalamazoo. I walked to Kalamazoo and the Jew named David gave me a job juggling between screenings at his movie house.” -
Fields looked over his glasses at his confused audience. His eyes opened wide and he nodded toward the crowd. The Chimp had slowly made his way forward.
“I had escaped from the Rubensteins with my life,” Fields said. “I left on a Thursday night. The next night would have been Friday, the night of their dark Sabbath. What better to offer as a sacrifice to their false god than a homeless Christian boy who they had done their best to plump up in three days. Who knows how many babies and young virgins the unholy tribe had dispatched over the years? I shall never forget the evil Rubensteins and can only surmise that the Lord had saved me like Isaac for a purpose, maybe to stand up here today.”
There was mild applause. A few of the Klansmen also applauded. Fields looked through his glasses at the turtle ad and went on. “Ah, yes. One day when I first started out and was stranded with a troupe of hapless performers in Cody, Wyoming, not far from Yellowstone National Park—you see we had been abandoned by our road manager, who had paid us nothing—I checked the contents of my small satchel, heavy with bowling pins, cigar boxes, various hats, a shirt, and a pair of socks of dubious longevity. We sat in the train station and those who could bought tickets and prepared to spend the night waiting for buses heading in whatever direction offered them hope. I had a total of a tencent piece and six pennies with the l
ikeness of an Indian on them. On our small bill was a fellow of the Negro persuasion, every bit as devious as the dreaded Rubensteins. This fellow, known as Happy Smith, the World’s Greatest Banjo Player, was an old man. False teeth clacked as he played his foot-tapping medleys on stage. ‘Shine on Harvest Moon’ was his showstopper. But I digress. This Happy Smith motioned me over to him and asked me if I had any money. I showed him my palm with the white dime surrounded by savage copper Indians. My friends, can you imagine what that former slave had the audacity to do then?”
Fields looked up. No one had the slightest clue of what Happy Smith had done. So Fields told them.
“With his gnarled black fingers, he took a small purse out of his pocket, opened it, and asked me where I wanted to go. I told him New York, where the work was, and he gave me the money for the ticket. While accepting money from his lowly race was beneath me, none of the other members of our troupe had made a similar offer. I took the money and promised to return it promptly. The mistake of a young, innocent lad. For it was at that moment, brothers and sisters, that I needed a staunch man with a clean white sheet and finely pointed hood to come to my rescue, to warn me about what I had gotten into by dealing with the creature of inferior race—who, by the way, was one hell of a banjo player. From that day on I was beholden to Happy Smith. The humiliation, which he had obviously intended, haunted me. I could see nothing but his black smiling face as he handed me the tainted money that got me back to New York and a well-paid job as the tramp juggler on the Keith circuit. Needless to say, I soon located Happy Smith with a troupe of entertainers in St. Louis and returned his filthy money with interest. Two days later, the interest was returned to me with a note saying he was glad I was doing well. Insidious. The man had managed to get his nails into me and make me grateful for the rest of my life. My friends, you should not underestimate the evil cunning of the Jew and the treachery of the Negro. The Klan is dedicated to the demise of people like the Rubensteins and the ilk of Happy Smith.”
There was more applause. Fields looked down. The Chimp was in the front of the line, looking around. He saw me, Gunther, and certainly Fields. The Chimp’s hand was in his pocket. He knew he couldn’t make his move surrounded by the crowd. I watched him inch his way to the edge of the crowd toward the line of cars.
“What about the damned Indians?” came a voice from the crowd.
“Yeah, this is Sioux country. They ain’t white. They ain’t Christian and they can’t hold their liquor.”
“We concur,” said Fields, looking in the general direction from which the voice had come. “Something in their genes. Never knew an Indian who could hold his liquor. Even knew one Mohawk named Yellow Buffalo who keeled over dead from a fatal glass of beer. Indians. Savages. Not so long ago in our history, the red men by the hundreds armed with spears, tomahawks, and bows and arrows, along with a handful of rifles, savagely attacked thousands of gallant, uniformed American troops in act after act of bloody war in an attempt to thwart the white people in the rightful pursuit of their manifest destiny. These savages wanted to hold on to land they had lived on for several thousand vears, to keep it from the hands of worthy white Christians like us. They murdered armed but innocent soldiers by the dozens, even attacked innocent settlers plopped peacefully in the middle of the Indian grazing lands. Thousands of the red heathens died. What was left were put in reservations, and yet you and I know that they are even now plotting to regain what is now the United States in secret pacts with other tribes—Navajo, Chippewa, Apache—and the Japs. It must be stopped.”
This time there was real applause. Fields looked at me in bewilderment.
Some of the hooded Klansmen on the platform near the flames of the burning cross stepped forward to usher Fields from the microphone. Fields should have known, and probably did, that some members of the Klan were far from fools.
“To prove my good faith in your cause,” Fields said suddenly, as one of the Klansmen took his arm, “I’ll point out to you a spy in our midst, a reporter from the Daily Worker, ready to distort our words. That man.”
Fields pointed at the startled Chimp at the edge of the crowd. The Chimp stepped back while everyone looked at him.
“A Communist,” Fields said.
The Chimp backed up as the crowd, and some of the men in sheets on the platform, moved toward him. The Chimp pulled out a gun and waved it at the advancing crowd, which stopped abruptly. The Chimp backed away after another look at Fields, who tried to stand behind the Klansman who had taken his arm.
After he had backed off a few dozen yards, the Chimp suddenly turned and ran for the woods.
“Careful,” Fields said into the microphone. “There may be more Bolsheviks in the bushes, armed with rifles, swords, and homemade bombs.”
The small crowd began to disperse in confusion, heading for their vehicles.
The Klansman with the chain repossessed the microphone and shouted, “Stop. We’re not finished. There is no danger.”
But it was all too late.
Fields carefully put his glasses away. The Klansmen were talking animatedly in small groups.
“Glad I could help,” said Fields to the head Klansman.
Fields stepped down from the platform. I had the feeling that the boss with the chain around his neck was going to call for a lynching, but he was surrounded almost instantly by his fellow members asking questions, bewildered. Some of them leapt from the platform, took off their hoods, and headed for their cars.
“Come,” said Fields out of the corner of his mouth as he drew even with us. He patted the shoulder of the nearby burly Klansman and said, “Keep up the good work.”
Gunther and I followed Fields through the confusion to the Cadillac. We got in. I looked up. The cross was still burning, but not as brightly. The head Klansman pointed in our direction. Gunther started the car and pulled in front of an old Ford. There were already a string of cars and trucks on the narrow road leading out of the woods. The Klansmen would have no trouble catching us on foot, trapped between slow-moving vehicles.
Gunther didn’t enter the line. Instead, he headed the car directly at the platform with the burning cross. Klansmen on the ground scrambled out of the way, falling in the dirt and grass.
“Hard to get those stains out,” Fields muttered.
Gunther made a sharp right turn and drove around the back of the cross and platform. He drove around the edge of the grassy clearing, saw an opening, and plunged the Caddy onto a narrow path, but not too narrow to crunch forward as branches scraped the sides of the car and leapt through the front window.
“We can get out and hide,” I said. “Or head in the general direction of the highway to Ogallala. I’ve still got my thirty-eight.”
“Speed forward, little man,” Fields said, strangely exhilarated. “Forward to your destiny. How’d you like my speech?”
“You almost got us killed,” I said.
“Might still,” said Fields, “if we suddenly plunge into a river or a bog or a dead end.”
With no spare tire, we hurtled ahead. In the lights we saw a large animal cross the path and then lope into the forest. A little farther in our headlights we saw, coming straight at us, the Chimp, a pistol in his hand.
He held up a hand to stop us, but Gunther pressed on and the Chimp jumped out of the way.
“Wouldn’t shoot,” said Fields. “Shot would draw the Klansmen like actors to a free meal. Excelsior.”
I wouldn’t call it a miracle, but I’d say we had a lot of luck with us. The path suddenly widened and a gate appeared in front of us. I got out and ran for the gate. There was a lock but the latch was wood and old. I kicked at it five or six times and broke the wood holding the lock. I pushed the gate open and guided Gunther through. The car was now a battle casualty, a scraped, scratched, dented, broken-windowed, and seat-wounded survivor.
I got back in and we drove down a wider road for about five minutes before we hit a double-lane road, probably the same one we had been on w
hen we turned to join the Klan rally.
“We find a hotel,” I said as Gunther speeded up. “I take a bath and tomorrow morning we go to the bank.”
“Correction,” said Fields. “We find lodging, change our clothes, locate the bank president, and convince him that this is an emergency and I must make a major withdrawal tonight.”
“He won’t do it,” I said.
Fields poured himself a drink, downed it in a single gulp, and said, “I can be persuasive where my hard-earned money is involved. There, a motel.” Our single headlight shone over the sign that read: Ogallala Redskin Motel, Vacancy.
Gunther turned the Cadillac into the driveway and parked in front of the motel’s office. There were two other cars in the lot, before the one-story line of rooms.
The clerk behind the counter sat in a chair, asleep. The voice of Raymond on “Inner Sanctum” came over the radio in front of the sleeping clerk. Raymond said tonight’s guest would be Lon Chaney, Jr. That didn’t wake the clerk so I hit the bell on his desk. He jumped up and looked around. He was somewhere in his sixties, losing his hair and gaining a belly. His shirt was flannel and not tucked in.
Gunther and Fields had waited in the car. We figured I was least conspicuous of the three of us.
“Three rooms,” I said.
“Many as you want,” the clerk said. “Two dollars a night each. Radio in every room and a shower. A couple of the rooms have tubs.”
“Three in a row,” I said, taking out six dollars and putting it on the counter.
“How many banks are there in Ogallala?” I said.
He looked at me with new interest now. I looked like a man who might rob a bank.
“One, right now,” he said cautiously.
“The president’s name?” I said.
“Saunders, Mr. Jeffrey Saunders,” he said.
I smiled. It didn’t work. The clerk still looked suspicious.
“I am traveling with a man who wants to build a large hardware store in town,” I whispered, though there was no one around. “We want to set up an account as quietly as possible and get right to work on acquiring land and beginning construction.”
A Fatal Glass of Beer Page 13