'What does the Defence have to say?' asked the Klailiff.
The Defence had very little to say, since the Defence, though it tended to like the defendant personally, had its own reasons for supposing Farron's accusations to be true. Pete had heard of Bittle's and the other man's murders, and he'd been all day wondering if he should go to the police and tell them about Owen's visit. Now, it seemed, Owen was the police. So the defence could only suggest weakly that Gann be given a chance to defend himself before his accuser, the nigger whore. He was a white man, after all, and white men were entitled to a fair trial.
'What you say is true,' said the Grand Dragon in a weighty (if unofficial) manner. 'However, we should consider that if he lives to see what we got lined up tomorrow night, and then lives to tell about it in a Federal court, we may find ourselves on trial instead of him. Of course, I don't have any business speaking out. It's your affair, handle it your way.'
'Nevertheless, boys, the Grand Dragon's got a point worth considering,' Farron said with an obsequious smile, invisible behind his hoodwink.
The judges did not spend very much time considering the Grand Dragon's point.
'Death,' said the Kleron, snuffing out one of the candles between his thumb and forefinger.
'Death,' echoed the Klexter, extinguishing a second candle.
'Death,' said the Klailiff cheerfully, putting out the third. 'I think we can trust Farron to look after the details. The important thing is to get rid of Gann without bringing the whole damned F.B.I, down on our necks.'
Farron pulled off his hoodwink with a short predatory laugh. 'I've got it all figured out. Gann's going to have to trail along behind us all day tomorrow, so's he can spy on us, right? It wouldn't surprise me at all, knowing how these niggers have been riled up and agitated by Northerners, if one of them niggers was to shoot his head off. On account of his being in the Klan. Them niggers can be pretty vicious when they get the opportunity.'
He winked broadly, becoming for a moment truly a Cyclops. Then he snuffed out the last candle. The meeting was adjourned.
He lay upon the bed as he had fallen into it, fully dressed. The overalls were soaked with sweat, his hair matted wetly to his brow. He had been dreaming. There had been chains in the dream, but he remembered no more than that. A nightmare, surely. He needed a cigarette. His head felt as though the sutures of the skull were being forced apart by a knife blade, the way an oyster is opened.
It was a hangover, but not from drinking. From guilt. He sat up in the creaking bed to fumble on the table-top for a pack of cigarettes. Inadvertently he caught sight of himself in the dresser mirror. It was not a pleasant sight.
Smile, you sonofabitch, he thought. You deserve every nightmare you get. Obligingly the face smiled. He hated himself. Christ, how he hated himself.
Could it have been only a part of the nightmare perhaps? No, the old Negro man that had been half whipped to death last night had been as solidly flesh and blood as the hand that held the match to the cigarette now, that trembled. The only difference was that this hand was white.
The dream came back then, brief as a flash of lightning. The Klan had been a part of it, except their robes were black instead of white. They wore black hoods, like medieval executioners. The air was perfumed with evil, and the wooden floor was slimed with the blood of their earlier victims, the white man and the coloured man. He was their victim now. He was black. His face, his arms, his fingertips, his bleeding torso, all black, and this metamorphosis was more painful to him than the actual pain that the black-robed Klansmen inflicted on him. And then the memory of the dream, evanescent as the memory of a perfume, slipped out of mind.
The phone rang. He glanced at his alarm clock. It was half past nine. 'Gann here,' he said into the receiver.
'There may be a break in the Raleigh case, Gann.' It was Madding. 'A call came in yesterday from Stan's bookshop on Truslove Street. You probably know the place. The owner's gone to jail a couple of time on pornography charges. He found the copy of Just-So Stories that we advertised for. He called in yesterday when everyone was out at Bittle's cabin, and again this morning. Shrewd fellow—wouldn't give us any idea of how he got hold of it until we'd brought the money over to him.'
'And then—when he'd been paid?'
'His story is that a little girl brought it in. She fits Alice Raleigh's description pretty well except for one small detail. The kid was black as sin. She was wearing a dirty red check dress, and that is the only thing we know besides her colour. It looks like four hundred dollars down the drain. The kid probably found the book in a garbage can, but we're not likely now to find out where that garbage can was. Except we know the Raleigh kid must be in Norfolk. Just thought you should know.'
'I should. Thanks. Any word yet on the girl's father? Is he still missing?'
'Yes, the last I heard. I also heard the meeting last night was pretty rough. That old Negro is in the hospital.'
'I'll write up the report this morning and mail it to you.'
'Do. And cheer up, Gann. This should be the last day of this nightmare.' Madding hung up.
The enlightenment and the horror came upon him in the same instant, as if, this time, the lightning had flickered over the interior landscape of his mind long enough for him to make out the features. He remembered how, in the dream, he had pleaded with his executioners, trying to persuade them that it was only dirt that made his hands black. But it was dirt that would not wash away.
He knew there were pills that would turn a white man dark temporarily. He knew that Alice Raleigh had been made to take such a pill, and that she had been the little coloured girl that had sold Just-So Stories to Stan's bookshop, the same little coloured girl whom he had seen yesterday at Green Pastures Funeral Home. He tried to remember her features, but in his memory the girl's face was only a dark blur, a composite of all the faces of all the coloured children he had ever seen. He realised what a perfect disguise her black skin had been. It made her well nigh invisible to a man like himself.
But she had worn, he recalled a red check dress, and she had worn sunglasses inside the house. To conceal her blue eyes?
It was, of course, entirely improbable. He knew better than to suggest his theory (though it was already, for himself, a certainty) to Madding. Not till he had proof. And the proof was no farther away than Green Pastures. He could be there by 9.45 if he didn't take time to shave.
Chapter 18
Mrs. Elizabeth McKay was aware of a peculiar sensation, or rather the absence of usual sensations, somewhere in her abdomen. Her heart still beat, her lungs pumped breath, and yet there was a sort of pause, a suspension of some vital inner motion. Had she been forced to find words to describe it, she might have compared it to a drop of water on the end of a faucet, drooping, lengthening, threatening to drop, and still not dropping.
'Yes,' Roderick repeated.'I would appreciate it very much indeed. I was thinking you might drown her in a bath, but do it in whatever manner suits you best. I'll wait here downstairs in the meantime. Naturally, I'll pay you for this—any reasonable price.'
'What do you think, Roderick—that I'm some hired murderer?'
'How about that abortion you were just carrying on about? Don't you call that murder?'
'Maybe it was, maybe it was—the Lord will be my judge. God knows, I've regretted it many a time. But I'm not about to risk my soul—and my life—on any murder charge.'
'Bessy, you already have,' Roderick said, in a tone of wheedling reasonableness. 'As far as the law is concerned—and I should know because I was almost a lawyer once—you're as guilty as I am of Harry Dorman's murder—and of your son's. Once a person has entered a conspiracy, he becomes responsible for whatever anyone else in the conspiracy does. You're as guilty as I am, Bessy—before the law.'
'No!'
The drop of water finally fell, silently into a pool of silence, and silent concentric rings rushed outwards from the point of impact and threatened to engulf the room—and her mind.
Her son was dead: it would not be believed, it could not be borne.
'I killed your son, Bessy. That's perfectly true, and nothing can be done about it now. In return, I'm asking you to kill my daughter.'
Had he actually said that, or had she just imagined it? It was hardly credible that any living soul could ever say anything so foolish and terrible, and yet by the way he seemed to be waiting for an answer, he must have said it. The only answer she could make to him were tears. The tears rolled down her cheeks, but inside she felt that same strange cessation. It was not pain. It was something deeper than pain.
My heart, she thought. My heart is breaking.
'Are you all right? You don't look well'
'Fine. I'm just fine, I...' Her vision steadied, and she wiped her eyes dry. You just couldn't afford to let your emotions run away with you when you were dealing with a son of a bitch like this.
'You wouldn't by any chance,' Roderick asked, 'have a firearm around here?'
'Why, as a matter of fact ... yes!' She marvelled at the irony of it—the little pistol in her dresser drawer, with its mother-of-pearl inlaid handle, had been a gift from Jim Bittle's daddy. Was that the answer then? It did seem that the hand of Providence was guiding her. She sent Clara up to the bedroom to fetch it. (She just couldn't go up those stairs again herself.)
'Is it loaded?' Roderick asked.
'Yes, it's loaded,' she said wearily. She considered Roderick, whose outmoded and strained nattiness seemed so much in keeping with everything else at Green Pastures—the Latin moustache, the black pompadour set on his head askew, the beginnings of a second chin. No, she couldn't do it. However much he might deserve it, she couldn't shoot him down in cold blood.
She laid the gun down on the table.
'Well? Are you going to do what I asked or not?'
'I'll do it' She raised herself wearily out of the wooden chair. She'd had too much liquor and not enough sleep. 'I'll take care of Alice, but not with that. That'll make too much noise.'
'Strangle her then, or smother her. Do what you like, but don't ...' Briefly his composure deserted him. He glanced about, as though he might find the wanting words suspended in the air or scrawled on the wall. 'Don't tell me, afterwards, what you had to do. She is my daughter, after all, and I can't help feeling a little ... sentimental. You know how it is.'
'While I'm taking care of her, you'd better get away from here, don't you think? The police must be wondering what's become of you.'
'Fifteen minutes one way or another aren't very important. You won't want to leave her body here. The police have come
around asking after Harry once; they're bound to come again. I've got a car outside, and we can wrap her up in blankets with a cement block and dump her at another point further along the tidewater. So you take care of what you have to do, and I'll just wait downstairs.'
Reluctantly Bessy followed Roderick into the living-room. She shooed Fay and Clara up to their bedroom. Roderick lay back on the sofa, yawning loudly. Bessy felt heartburn rising up in her throat.
'Well, you just have yourself a good nap, hon,' she said. 'I'll be as quick as I can.'
Roderick nodded, smiling abstractedly.
There was no question of killing anybody, least of all the child, but Lord, what was she doing to do? Lord, she thought, Lord, deliver me from the unjust and deceitful man. A spasm of giddiness overtook her then, and she rested her head on the hand that gripped the banister. She felt as if she had been left all alone, as if the Lord had hidden himself from her. But be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord. It was a comfort to know that.
As soon as Roderick heard Bessy locking her bedroom door, he went back into the kitchen. After putting one of the gloves back on, he pocketed the pearl-handed revolver. He had a presentiment that he would have occasion to use it.
'I don't like it, I don't like, it a damned bit,' Clara whispered fiercely. 'If it don't work just exactly so, what you think is going to happen? He ain't playing games down there, you know.'
'Then what you got to suggest better, Clara?' Bessy asked. 'That we go ahead and do what he wants? You think he don't mean to do the same with you and me and Fay as he did with Harry and Jim Bittle? Like hell he don't!'
Alice's fingers shook as she buttoned up the back of Fay's pink organdie party dress. Though Bessy had been careful that she should not overhear her and Clara discussing their plight, she could not help but have suspicions concerning her father's intentions.
'We're going to look like a goddamned circus parade,' Clara complained.
'We'd look less like one, if you'd change out of those denim overalls,' Bessy suggested. Clara made a suggestion of her own in reply.
'Are we going to the circus?' Fay asked eagerly, all buttoned at last.
'You remember everything I told you to do?' Bessy asked of Alice. She nodded. 'And you're not afraid?'
'Only a little.'
'I'm not at all afraid,' Fay assured Bessy. The animals will all be inside cages, so there isn't anything to be afraid of.' But no one seemed to pay any attention to her today. She began to chew on her hair fretfully.
Bessy began to tie Alice up in one of the sheets from the bed, while Clara began knotting another sheet to this one, then to the second sheet a third.
'What if she runs off and leaves us stuck up here?' Clara asked. Then what will we do? Jesus Christ, who would have thought yesterday that I'd be helping the kid escape today!'
'You won't do that, will you, Dinah? Promise me.'
Alice criss-crossed her heart and pointed to God. Bessy helped her sit on the window sill. The ground was a fearful distance down, but this time she wouldn't have to jump.
'Don't be afraid,' Bessy said. 'We'll be holding on tight.'
'Are we going to the circus?' Fay asked loudly.
'Sssh, child. Clara, can't you keep Fay quiet? Clara, where'd you go?'
Clara came out of the bath that adjoined her own bedroom. She was holding a boot. 'I got this for her to knock on the door with. If she only uses her hand, it won't sound like no F.B.I, man.'
'What a clever idea,' Alice said, smiling uncertainly at Clara, who frowned back at her fiercely. 'Ready?' Bessy asked.
Alice nodded her head. Clara caught her up under her armpits and lowered her outside the window until the sheet pulled taut. Then she and Bessy together began lowering Alice by the rope of sheets to the marshy ground fifteen feet below.
Roderick walked to the foot of the stairs. 'What are you doing up there?' he called out. 'You've been half an hour!'
'We won't be long now,' Bessy answered.
He returned to the sofa, but the minute he sat down he found himself dropping off to sleep again. That would be a hell of a note: to let the police come by and find him asleep on the sofa—with his daughter's dead body upstairs! He went into the kitchen and threw some cold water on his face.
There was knocking at the front door, a sound portentous and heavy with authority. He was about to call and ask Bessy if it had been her making the noise, then checked himself. If it weren't she, if it were someone at the front door ...
Clara came charging down the steps, wearing her denim pants and jacket and a single boot. 'Stay away from that window,' she hissed at Roderick, who had been about to peek through the Venetian blinds to see who was at the door. 'You want people to see you here?" She pushed him away from the window and lifted a single slat of the blinds. 'Jesus Christ,' she whispered.
'What is it?' Roderick asked.
The F.B.I. The man who was here yesterday asking after you. You'd better hide.'
He looked about the room helplessly. 'Where?'
'You can't go out the back way 'cause you might get caught in the mud. It's happened before. You better get into that closet.' She pointed to a door opening on to the brief foyer.
Reluctantly he went to the closet door and opened it. It was crammed with raincoats and heavier, wintry clothes. 'There's no room,' he protested.
The knocking came again. It seemed incredibly loud—as though, Roderick thought, someone were pounding on the door with Clara's missing boot. But its loudness was probably due entirely to his own fear.
'Of course there's room,' Clara said, pushing him inside. 'Now, don't for Christ's sake move around in there or make the least noise. Get yourself comfortable now.'
'But suppose he looks in here?' Roderick whispered urgently, as she pushed the door closed.
'I'll lock the door and tell him the key is lost.'
'No!'
But Clara paid him no heed, and he did not dare protest any louder. In the stifling, woollen-musty darkness he listened to the key moving the tumblers of the lock. Clara opened the front door then, but he couldn't hear what she said to the man who'd been knocking, because the sound of Bessy coming down the stairs drowned it out. Shadows passed back and forth in front of the key-hole, but putting his eye up to it Roderick could see nothing but the forty-five phonograph laying smashed on the floor on the other side of the living-room. The front door slammed shut, and all was silence. 'Clara,' he whispered. 'Clara, let me out of here. Do you hear?'
But how could he expect her to hear him if he only whispered?
He woke up all in a sweat. Someone was moving around the house. He had not wanted to sleep, but the air in the closet was so close, he was so tired, his bed of overcoats so comfy. Had he slept long? It was too dark in the closet to read the face of his watch. He pressed his eye, gummy with sleep, to the key-hole. The living-room was strident with daylight. He blinked, seeing that phonograph collapsed upon the floor, remembering, and wanting not to remember.
He had been putting the finishing touches to his initials, carved on the kitchen door, when the screams began coming from upstairs. Bessy, who had just then been putting another stack of records on the brand-new, phonograph (Tenderly had just finished playing) stood up suddenly, jarring the end table and sending the record player crashing to the floor. Automatically (record players are expensive) she bent down to recover it, and so it had been Roderick who got up the stairs first. The screams continued to come out of the bedroom, shrill soprano agonisings that must have torn blood from the girl's lungs. The door was unlocked.
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