Black Alice

by Thomas M. ; Sladek Disch; Sladek Disch

  'How come,' she asked, when she could no more contain her curiosity, 'you two come down here and let folks kick you around and get put in these jails? How come you don't stay at home?'

  The boy's smile included Fay, who was sitting across the aisle from him. 'I don't know myself sometimes. Sometimes I think I'm just being dumb. Other times I know that I do it because I have to.' He seemed quite sad.

  'I'm dumb too,' Fay said, smiling back. 'And I do it because I have to.'

  'Hush,' said Bessy.

  This your first demonstration?' he asked Fay, who knitted her brows with earnest incomprehension. 'Is this your first sit-in?'

  'You'll have to ask Bessy,' Fay said cautiously. 'And I can't do anything unless you pay first. Hey!'

  'What?' said the boy, rather startled.

  'You've got chin-whiskers!'

  With an embarrassed laugh the boy turned away to gaze out of the tinted window as the neon-lighted walls of the tunnel flickered past.

  At the first-aid station everyone was allowed off the bus to have coffee and sandwiches inside a wire enclosure. Fay, Bessy, and Alice were allowed into the' little brick building to see Clara, who was lying on the cot next to the renegade Klansman. He had stiff, spiky hair, white with streaks of yellow, like a nicotine-stained moustache. Like many of the demonstrators he had been wearing only overalls and a denim shirt beneath his white robe.

  A doctor came and examined Clara and the Klansman. He said that they were neither in any danger, but that they would have to go to the hospital for X-rays and a short rest. He touched the bumps swelling on Clara's face, and you could see how much his touch hurt her, but she didn't say a thing. Alice started to cry again, sympathetically.

  'Clara,' she said, reaching over hesitantly to put a hand on hers, 'I'm sorry. I really am.'

  'So am I, kid,' said Clara, with something of her old manner, and winked.

  Alice realised that Clara was smiling. Actually smiling. Not in any sarcastic way nor out of that unspoken inner pain that customarily gnawed at her but a friendly, cheerful, well-intentioned smile. It was queer, she reflected, that the very first time she'd seen Clara spontaneously nice to other people was now, with her head all bloody, after people had been so very bad to her.

  'Time to go,' said the state policeman coming into the little brick building.

  'Oh, but I can't go,' Fay protested. 'Not unless Clara can come with me. I have to look after her. She's hurt. And this poor old man here too. I'm the nurse, you see.'

  The poor old man rolled over in his cot to stare raptly at Fay. 'The name is Boggs,' he said in a shaky voice. 'Peter Boggs.'

  'I'm very glad to meet you, Mr. Boggs. My name is Fay.' Time to go,' the policeman repeated.

  'Are you a nurse?' the doctor asked of Fay, with considerable scepticism.

  'Of course I'm a nurse!' Fay said, offended. 'And Clara needs me.'

  'I need her too,' said Peter Boggs, and with such earnestness that the policeman could be seen to relent. The doctor, however, remained unpersuaded. Fay began to run a comb through Pete's spiky hair, being temporarily unable to think of any more nurse-like task.

  Bessy went to the doctor and whispered in his ear. 'All right,' he agreed at last. 'We'll let that nurse stay with them.' Fay clapped her hands delightedly.

  The nurse stays,' the policeman said. 'But you and you'— indicating Bessy and Alice—'have got to come along. Everyone else is in the bus, waiting.' Bessy obeyed him unthinkingly. After a squeeze of Clara's hand and a whispered word of advice to Fay (who was obviously tormenting the poor old Klansman by running her comb across his bruised head) she led Alice out to the bus.

  At the very last moment Alice ran back into the first-aid station. Bending down over her cot Alice planted a light kiss on Clara's chin. 'Good-bye, Clara.'

  The Negress looked surprised. Then, grinning, she made a thumbs-up sign just like a wounded pilot on the Late Late Show assuring his buddies in the Flying Tigers that he'd be back up in the air in no time. 'So long, kid. Keep fighting.'

  Shortly after the bus pulled away, Clara was unconscious again. Fay turned her attention from her to her new-found friend, Peter.

  'May I ask,' he asked shyly, 'what your ... uh ... last name is?'

  'MacKay,' Fay replied, with some uncertainty. She seldom had occasion to use her last name.

  'Miss MacKay, I don't think what you may think of an old man like myself, and I know I have no right to ... uh ... to ask ...'

  'Oh, I think you're nice," Fay protested earnestly. And truly, she always had liked men better who were shy.

  'You'll probably think I'm off my rocker, coming out with a question like this when I hardly know you. But you see, it's as though you'd stepped down from heaven. Yes sir, you're just like an angel from heaven. And I'm afraid you're going to disappear just as sudden as you came.'

  Fay squealed at the unaccustomed compliment.

  'I can hardly believe you're real. An Angel. Miss MacKay, do you think you might ever consider marrying ... an old man like me?'

  'Why, Mr. Boggs, I'd love to! And can we have lots of babies?'

  'I sure hope so.'

  She clapped her hands with anticipation Can we get married today?'

  'The courthouse is closed for the Fourth, but I reckon we can find a minister somewheres.'

  Fay embraced the old man and devoured him with kisses. In an ecstasy of mingled pain and happiness, he swooned.

  Some were singing folksongs, some were sleeping, Bessy among them. It was beastly hot. Alice stared out of the window at the unending dullness of the highway. Occasionally she would be overcome with a strange sense of deja vu, since the bus was taking the same route her father had driven last night. A sign announced that the toll bridge across the Potomac was only a mile ahead. It would be such a relief to leave Virginia! Once in Washington Bessy had agreed that Alice might turn herself in to the F.B.I, headquarters. Why, with luck she might even be able to meet J. Edgar Hoover and get his autograph!

  Within sight of the bridge the bus hissed to a stop. There were three police cars parked on the shoulder of the road ahead of the bus—and soldiers everywhere, with bayonets on their rifles. Was it possible that these were the soldiers of Maryland trying to keep the demonstrators out of their state? Civil rights could become very confusing. While the driver, the policeman, and the leading minister left the bus, everyone woke up and the close, hot air buzzed with conflicting theories.

  The minister and a white man in a grey business suit came into the bus and conferred with some of the other leaders of the demonstration. Someone made a joke, and for the first time since they'd left Norfolk there was a sound of honest laughter in the bus. The minister said they could all go out and stretch their legs, but not to go very far.

  'Ain't you coming out?' Bessy asked Alice.

  Alice shook her head. She could remember, too clearly, her father beckoning her to come off the bus. So long as she stayed inside she felt safe.

  'Well, I got to find out what's going on. If you're staying in here, you just say a prayer that this bus goes on to Washington, hear?'

  The air-conditioning in the bus was off again, and it became hotter and hotter. Outside everyone was arguing. The soldiers argued with the state police, the bus driver argued with the soldiers, and then he argued with the police. Alice eavesdropped on some of the conversations through the bus's open windows, but she could only grasp faint threads of the controversy. The man in the grey business suit was, it seemed, from the Attorney-General's office, and he was more or less on the side of the demonstrators, who wanted to make the bus go back to Norfolk. The police (and the bus driver, at first) wanted to take the demonstrators to the other side of the toll bridge, then leave them there in Maryland, standing beside the highway. As for the soldiers, they seemed to favour both alternatives alternately, and it was their vacillations that kept the bus from going either forwards or back. Dinner time came and went, but the only food Bessy could find for herself and Alice was pea
nuts and soda pop from a near-by filling station. The young couple in the seat ahead offered to let Alice and Bessy share the little water melon they'd brought with them in honour of the Fourth.

  At seven o'clock everyone was gathered back into the bus. The state policeman was no longer riding with them; the man from the Attorney-General's office had taken his place. They were returning to Norfolk.

  'Oh no !' Alice said, on the verge of tears. 'Oh, no!'

  'I'm sorry, honey. I prayed we'd go on to Washington, but I had four preachers praying the other way. There wasn't no help for it.'

  'Bessy, he knows we're on this bus. He saw me through the window, back at the bus station.'

  'I know, child. When I went out of the bus I saw him too. Wasn't more than half an hour ago. He was just driving back and forth. He's got a new car, but it was him all right. I guess the time's come for me to tell them all just who you are.'

  'No!' Alice said, for she knew that this would also mean Bessy's arrest. 'If you tell that to anyone I'll say you made it up. I'll say I'm just a little black girl and that you're crazy. I'll say that you're my mother.'

  Bessy chuckled and rumped Alice's wiry curls. 'You're a sweetheart,' she said.

  Alice burst into tears, and at the same moment everyone on the bus started to sing Bringing in the Sheaves in a merry, deafening chorus. This time Bessy joined in. Drying her eyes, Alice couldn't help but wonder: what in the world were sheaves anyhow?

  Chapter 21

  Came, thick night, Roderick whispered, and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell... But what came after that? For the life of him he couldn't remember. Small difference for already, quite uninvoked, the darkness was well advanced: the western horizon was tinged by only the slightest slimmer of indigo. How about: Come, you spirits that tend on moral thoughts! unsex me here ...? No, fine as it was, that wasn't quite what he wanted either.

  Remarkable, how one always seemed to come back to William Ernest Henley's Invictus!

  Things had not been going exactly the way he would have liked. Things seemed to be getting rather out of hand. He wasn't worried, not at all ... but did feel slightly resentful at having to make such an effort.

  The African Church was a small, white-frame structure set back agreeably from the street and shaded by two gloomsome oaks. On each side of the church were vacant lots; the buildings formerly occupying these sites seemed rather to have collapsed than been torn down, for something vaguely architectural still lingered on at the centre of each lot. Roderick had parked his newly acquired '61 Dodge (rented from its astonished owner for a price far exceeding what he could have sold it for) on the farther side of the small park fronting the church, and he sat in it now, waiting.

  The night was going to be clear, but moonless: the luck wasn't all against him. In fact, since his escape from the closet he'd had more than his share of good fortune: sighting Alice at the bus station; being able to find, so quickly after abandoning Bittle's cursed Buick, a replacement; and—his best piece of luck—finding out from the young highway patrolman, when he'd been stopped after his third or fourth passage before the stopped bus, that the demonstrators were to be returned to Norfolk, not the station but directly to the doors of the African Church.

  That the patrolman had not recognised him meant that his description was not yet being generally circulated. Soon, inevitably, a search would begin for him, and by that time he had to be sure that Bessy and Alice were disposed of.

  And then: was it better to buy a forged passport and seek comfortable oblivion in Rio or to take the risk of returning to Delphinia? With Alice dead, her trust funds would be dispersed among the several charities specified in Morgan Duquesne's will, so there was no material advantage to be gained. There were, however, considerations of a more idealistic nature: if he returned to Baltimore and suffered the indignity of an inquiry into Alice's kidnapping and death (and nothing, surely, would be proven against him, though much might be suspected) then he need not abandon his identity and good reputation to lead a life of exile and disgraceful anonymity. Besides, what was the use of committing a perfect crime if immediately afterwards you made tacit confession of your guilt by absconding? Indeed, the whole point of murdering Alice was getting away with it. Nietzsche, somewhere, had said something much to the same effect, had he not?

  Roderick was very tired. Hadn't slept for ... how long? Macbeth, as he recalled, had also complained about not getting enough sleep. Heroism took a lot out of a man.

  The trampled patch of parkland between Roderick and the African Church was not entirely empty tonight. As the darkness deepened, the number of sheeted woodland figures— Klansmen certainly—increased. They flitted among the trees and teeter-tottered like so many midsummer sprites. Roderick, in his heart, welcomed them. They boded confusion, rioting, opportunities.

  The bus arrived, and the busy sprites hid themselves behind trees and parked cars. The church doors opened and the demonstrators filed out of the bus and up the half-flight of steps. By some quirk of group behaviour, each person upon reaching the entrance stopped and turned halfway round to glance at the darkness of the park. At such moments, with the light behind them, they were exemplary targets. Roderick left his car and advanced through the park. He felt the same godlike calm descending upon him that he had known in Bittle's cabin, the same absolute self-possession.

  Alice and Bessy were the last ones to leave the bus. There was no mistaking Bessy's gross, hobbling figure nor the slight dark child holding her hand. They stood at the top of the stairs, framed in the doorway, longer than any of the others had. Roderick used a tree trunk to steady the hand holding the little pearl-handled revolver. Silhouetted so, the target was an almost irresistible temptation.

  'You don't want to do that, cousin,' said a voice in his ear, a voice that betrayed the barbarous accents of a redneck.

  The two figures disappeared from the doorway, and the doors were closed. It was just as well: it had been a risky shot. With a sigh Roderick turned to confront the Klansman. 'My good man ...' he began pacifically.

  The Klansman laughed and nudged Roderick's belly rudely with the barrel of his shotgun. 'Come on. Tell that one to the Grand Dragon.'

  As soon as he satisfied the Norfolk police that he was, as he had claimed, a Federal agent Owen called up Madding and told him of seeing Roderick Raleigh near the bus station, as well as of his suspicions concerning the manner of the Raleigh girl's 'disguise'. Madding thought Gann's theory wildly improbable, and in support Gann could only offer the dream that had inspired it. The state police, who were still, hours after the demonstrators had been shipped back to Washington, guarding the bus station, were given Raleigh's description but he was, expectably, no longer to be found in that area; the Buick, however, was discovered where Raleigh had left it, double-parked and tagged. The steering wheel and dashboard had been wiped clean of prints, but analysis elsewhere showed clear prints of Dorman, Bittle, and the child. This evidence alone seemed to confirm the father's complicity in the kidnapping plot, but unfortunately it did not suggest any new directions for tracking down either the child or her abductors.

  Gann was ordered to return to Stroud's Bar where the Klansmen had reassembled to wait out the afternoon. Though the Klan had seen through his disguise, they were not aware (so long as Jenks was held incommunicado) that he knew this and their ignorance was, in a sense, his advantage. Madding regretted (he said) sending Gann into the midst of his would-be assassins like a lamb to the slaughter, but there was no one else who could take Gann's place while anyone could be detailed to continue the Raleigh investigation. Gann said he understood and, when Madding said good-bye, made a bleating sound in answer. Then he was off to the stockyards.

  At the bar Farron welcomed the strayed lamb back to the fold with great conviviality and cold beer. Owen was introduced to the Grand Dragon, who was holding court to a chosen inner circle in the black-out room at the back of the bar. Here Gann spent the rest of the hot afternoon drinking and listening to selections
from the Grand Dragon's inexhaustible store of dirty jokes.

  At dusk the Klan formed a Klavalcade to drive through Norfolk's niggertown on the way to the African Church. Gann was to ride in Farron's car. He was given the front seat next to the driver—the death seat, he reflected, without humour.

  Despite the Klan's repeated warnings, perhaps because of them, the streets of niggertown were swarming. The crowds jeered at the passing Klavalcade. 'We'll demolish them sons of bitches,' Farron muttered in the back seat. Murmuring agreement, the driver speeded up perceptibly, closing the interval with the next car in the procession. The jeering grew louder. It was a most unsatisfactory Klavalcade.

  Further on, they came to a row of shops that seemed to have been looted, though they were deserted now—except for the policemen.

  'Hey!' Owen called out, as they passed a sidestreet. 'Look down that way. Is it a fire?'

  'Sure enough,' the driver agreed, slowing. 'But it wouldn't be any of our boys. Not down there. Not as early as this.'

  'Hell,' said Farron, 'it's as plain as day—they done it. Like them niggers in Watts, they're burning down their own houses. Saves us the trouble and it'll keep the police away from the African Church besides. Them dumb niggers is doing our work for us.'

  A few blocks farther on the Klavalcade passed within a hundred feet of another fire—at the back of a looted hardware and paint store. In the eerie blue and blue-green flames they could make out small knots of figures locked in struggle. A fat policeman appeared in silhouette clubbing a prone figure with metronomic regularity. Alsatians bayed at the speeding Klavalcade.

  When they arrived at the African Church it was filled with worshippers though the bus from Washington was still awaited. There wasn't a policeman in sight.

  'Beautiful,' said Farron, which was for him a highly uncharacteristic expression. 'Now here's what me and the Grand Dragon decided. A few of us is going over by that church later on, when everyone's inside, and we'll bring along a little something for the collection box.' Farron held up a gasoline can.'I understand they're going to set off some fireworks in the park after the church service, and we'll just hurry things up a mite. But they'll have fireworks, won't they, boys?'