3 Day Terror (11 page)

“… and now I’m going to mention the name of Noah!” the stranger said, under the ginkgo, down at the Wheel, “and I’m going to tell you something about myself. I’m only a man; I’m no more than a man, I’m no less than a man. I’ve done things that were wonderful, and things that were mediocre; things that were sinful, and things that were foolish. I’m not a saint and I don’t know any saints. But, I’ll tell you something — I don’t like atheists. I don’t feel comfortable around atheists. Okay, maybe they’re brilliant, some of them, maybe they know all about this Sigmund Freud, and this nuclear fission, and this theory of evolution — but I’m going to tell you something else. I don’t feel at home with people who try to tell me that the way I court a girl has got something to do with the way I sat on the toilet when I was five years old; and — don’t laugh, because the Freud clan will tell you a lot of things sicker than that — and, I don’t feel at home with people who tinker with foul-colored liquids in test tubes, and come up with split atoms; and I’ll tell you something else —
I
don’t care what the schoolbooks say, or what the eggheads say, or what those bespectacled, bow-tied bowlegged, absent-minded Harvard professors say, I don’t feel at home with people who say my ancestors hung from trees! I just don’t!”

The stranger paused for the spontaneous applause, unsmiling, head up, eyes turned toward the flag on top of the pole across the street on the courthouse lawn; then raised his palm and looked to his audience.

He said, “Thank you.”

He stuck one hand in the pocket of his gray flannel trousers, and shifted his weight from one leg to the other, straight-standing and tall, and in his deep, sure tone, continued: “I feel at home with folks who like God. I’ve always known that kind. I feel at home with folks who fear God. I’ve always been that kind.

“Now,” he said, “I’m going to talk about Noah. Noah had three sons, and one of them was called Ham. Whether or not you people know it, Ham is the reason I came all the way down here to see you. It’s in the Bible — the story of what Ham did, and I suppose you all remember it. Remember, one day. Noah was taking a nap — a hot day, like today. Now, how many of us on a blistering hot day have been known to go on into the bedroom, and peel our clothes off, and take a nice nap? Well, that’s what Noah was doing when Ham walked in his room. Walked in and saw his father there and stood there and looked at his father’s nakedness. And then, ran off giggling and laughing and telling dirty stories about what he’d seen to his brothers. His brothers, mind you, respected their father, and they went in and covered him up.”

The stranger sighed. “I don’t blame Noah for being mad. I don’t blame him for being disappointed. And I don’t blame him for deciding that Ham just wasn’t up to bearing the responsibility of an independent man of integrity and good moral nature.”

“So — ” the stranger took his hand out of his pocket and rested it on his hip — ”Noah said, ‘Ham, you — and all your sons, all those who come after you and are your blood, are to be servants.’ To quote Noah’s exact words ‘Cursed be Ham; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren!’ “

The stranger lowered his hand to his side. “Ham is the Egyptian word for “black,” ladies and gentleman. Ham was a Nigra, ladies and gentleman, the first Nigra on this earth — and his own father knew him for what he was! His own father knew Ham was always going to be giggling and telling dirty stories and peeking around trying to see nakedness — unless someone took him under his wing and put him to work and saw to it he behaved. His own father knew he wasn’t fit to be anything but a servant! His own — ”

A husky voice from the audience yelled: “How come Noah had a nigger for a son!”

The stranger paused a moment, straightened his thin, navy-blue tie; then said in a calm, voice: “I’m glad you asked me that. I meant to mention it. You see, in the beginning, folks, God was just as willing to give the Nigra an equal footing. God made one of Noah’s sons black for that reason, to see if the Nigra wasn’t just as healthy, and moral, and responsible as the white man. Never mind what the atheists tell you, and never mind what the eggheads tell you, and never mind what the Supreme Court tells you, ladies and gentlemen. God put the Nigra to test way back when the earth was created, and the Nigra just wasn’t up to par! God decided then and there that the Nigra should be a servant! God, ladies and gentlemen, gave his views on integration right in the Bible, Genesis Nine, Verse Twenty-five. Go home tonight and read it, and then sit down and ask your heart — search your heart — and ask yourself if what is about to happen right here in Bastrop on Monday morning is what God would have wanted!”

The Wheel exploded with hoots and hooray’s and hand-aching applause.

The stranger still did not smile.

H
E SHUT
the door of his office behind him. “I hated to treat Poppy like that.”

Delia Benjamin sat in the wooden chair beside his desk, the ashtray at her elbow filled with stubbed-out cigarettes, their tips red with her lipstick.

She said, “I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have come here.”

“I’m glad you came, Benny,” he said. He walked over to the window, his black copy pencil still stuck behind his ear, the green plastic eye-shade pushed back on his brush-cut, rust-colored hair; and he thought how inadequate words were, how they deceived and said nothing so often; and how well they camouflaged thoughts. For when she walked in that door some fifteen minutes ago, and when Jack Chadwick looked up and saw her face, his stomach had turned over, and his brain had stopped any thinking, and instantly he had had a sensation of fear, diluted with joy. It was strange that all the times in the past when he had tried to imagine this moment, it had never occurred to him that fear would have a part in it. He had sat at his desk worrying whether his hands would be steady enough to light her cigarette, and thinking simply how incredibly beautiful she was, marveling that he could have forgotten that about Benny. For it was equally strange that all the times in the past, when he had remembered her, he had remembered something they had done together, something she had said, or some way about her — the almost naive way she talked about her fear of death, the way she lit one cigarette from another, or the way she peeled off her nail polish from her fingers, leaving little red specks in her lap. He hadn’t ever actually remembered the features of her face, or her figure; never actually framed her in his memory as a woman he saw with his eyes, the way he saw her that Saturday afternoon.

She had come to him about a letter she had lost while she was taking a walk that morning out at the Dip. There was no one else, she said, to whom she could go. It was a letter which she had written to Maur, and the contents were not very pleasant. Was there any way he could think of for her to find it? She had searched every inch of ground which she had covered during her walk, and the only thing that had occurred to her was that someone had found it; maybe mailed it — ”God, I hope not!” she had said — and maybe hadn’t mailed it.

She had pleaded: “Chad, couldn’t you help me see if it’s at the post office? Or couldn’t I advertise in your paper? Anything to get it back!”

“My next edition comes out Monday,” he had said. “That wouldn’t be much help.”

“The post office is closed, Chad.”

“I know. I guess I can call Doc MacMillan and see if he can help you. Maybe someone did mail it.”

“I have to have it, Chad.”

“I’ll try to help,” he had said. “Maybe someone picked it up and will drop it off at your place.”

She couldn’t remember whether or not she had written a return address on the envelope.

Chad had dialed MacMillan and exacted from him a promise to watch out for the letter; all the while aware so keenly of her presence that he had had to swing his chair around and face the window while he spoke to the postmaster, and it was as he was doing so that he saw Poppy’s car pull up out front.

Then, as he hung up, Delia Benjamin said, “I think I owe you some kind of explanation, Chad. I mean — ” grinding out her cigarette with a determined gesture, “Oh, Lord, Chad, I’m sorry about what happened between us. I want you to know — ”

He had had to interrupt her. “Poppy Porter’s on her way in,” he had said. “I’ll put her off”; thinking, I’ve got to tell Cass myself that Benny was here, not let her hear it somewhere; thinking, now, finally, I’ll know why Benny married him; now, finally — And rising to go to the door and head off Poppy out in the corridor, felt the sudden limpness through him, and his heart pounding in a crazy way.

• • •

Now he walked from the window and sat back down behind his desk. Benny was lighting another cigarette.

While her eyes were lowered and hidden from his face, he looked at her again, closely. He had the hollow thought, She was mine once. He had been a boy then; and now as a man he was jealous of that boy, and angry with him for losing Benny by some clumsy bungling. A bitter nostalgia enveloped him, and he did not want to believe that it
had
been his fault, his failing that was the reason she was not his now. He felt cheated — more cheated at that moment than he had felt the day she left him. And he knew then that fear was the only possible reaction he could have had seeing her again.

“Is Poppy happy?” she said, blowing a smoke cloud as she looked up at him again.

There’s so much you don’t know, Benny, he thought, so much I could never tell you, even if I were to fill you in on the years you were away; and those years sit between us in this room. Once we were young enough to push them aside and go on talking between ourselves; now we have let time and circumstances trap us, and we stall until we can see an opening in the wall. We tiptoe around yesterday in our stocking feet, afraid to wake it up-too soon. We say:

“Yes, Poppy’s happy.”

“I always liked Troy.”

“He’s running for the State Senate next term.”

“No!”

He wanted to say, “Now, Benny. Tell me
why!”

“She came to tell me about this fellow who’s come to Bastrop because the high school’s integrating on Monday,” he said. “Just got a ride with him this morning out near — ”

“Buddy!” she broke in suddenly. “My God, I’d completely forgotten!”

“You know him.”

“He was with me this morning, out at the Dip! I forgot!”

“Then you
do
know him?”

She got up, tossing her cigarettes into her purse. “I left him there. He might have the letter. Oh, Chad, I completely forgot!”

Chad said, “Poppy said he was down at the Wheel.”

“Yes, of course. Look, I’m going to hurry down there, and see if I can catch him. Do you want to come?”

“I don’t think so,” Chad said.

“Thanks,” she said smiling, hurrying. “Thanks, Chad. It was good to see you again.”

The door slammed shut behind her.

Chad sat staring at the cigarette butts in the ashtray, reached out and picked one up, touching the lipstick stain with his finger.

Buddy!
she had said …
He was with me this morning, out at The Dip.

She was back…. Now Jack Chadwick wondered why she had come back, and if she had come alone. She had seemed to know that this stranger would be speaking at the Wheel.
Yes, of course,
she had said.

He dropped the cigarette butt into the ashtray and sat there for a moment, hearing the rusty wall clock tick, and the fan’s motor grind on the window sill. He leaned forward and rested his chin on his hands, and the note which Poppy had given him fell on the desk blotter.

Jud had said about the stranger: “He’s from New York. A young fellow — doesn’t look like a bum. Handsome, dresses well.”

Chad picked up the wrinkled paper and unfolded it:

It said:

Chad said aloud: “God, Benny, no!”

“… because the Nigra,” the stranger continued, “is happy when he’s living the way God intended him to live. The Supreme Court didn’t create the Nigra, God created him, and God intended him to live the way he’s inclined to live by his nature!

“Now there’s a story,” the stranger said, “about a visiting King who came to our country, and during his stay, took sick up in Washington, D. C. He was from a faraway land and he had one of those mysterious illnesses that is cured in a mysterious way. A spiritual way. He had his own doctor with him, and his own doctor told the President of our land, ‘The King can get well only if he wears the shirt of the happiest nigger in the United States of America.’

“Well, folks,” the stranger said, “we are a diplomatic people, and we are a friendly people, and we are an obliging people. So a search was inaugurated to find this happy nigger — the happiest one in our United States. And after a good deal of time — because we are a big land, and a heavily populated land — and because there are so many happy niggers living in this land, that it was no easy job finding the happiest. But after a good deal of time, he was located.

“Folks,” the stranger said, “the President himself took that nigger, who was the happiest nigger in our land, into the White House, and up to where the King was sitting, sick.

“The President went into the King’s room,” the stranger said, “and he said ‘King, I got the happiest nigger right outside the door. Shall I bring him on in?’

“The King said, ‘I don’t want him, I want his shirt,’ “ the stranger said. “ ‘Bring me his shirt.’

“And then, folks,” the stranger said, “The President had to tell him. He had to say, ‘The happiest nigger in the United States doesn’t have a shirt on his back!’ “

A fat, shirt-sleeved, man shouted: “Just give him gin and chicken, s’all, and a chocolate bar to lick and hug!”

And behind him, another yelled: “What happened to the King? He still up in Washington sick?”

There was more laughter.

The stranger held his hand up again. “I’m glad you asked me that,” he said, “because I’m going to tell you what happened to that King. He’s still in Washington and he’s still sick. He’s very damn sick! And the President never knew what to do with him, so he gave him a seat on the Supreme Court.”

The audience howled.

“The Supreme Court is sick!” the stranger said, “and going to school with niggers is sick!”

“Niggers are sick!” the fat man in shirt sleeves shouted. “Sick with syph — all of them got it. Everyone knows it!”

“Integration is sick!” the stranger yelled. “Do you know it is?”

A dozen or more yelled back. “Yes!”

“What is it?” Buddy asked.

The answer came. “Sick!”

“Niggers will be your brother first, and then your brother-in-law,” the stranger said, “and what’s that if it isn’t sick?”

“It’s sick!” the answer came.

“Integration is the first step toward mongrelization of the races!” the stranger said. “And how’d you like to see your daughter, or your sister, or your girl give her breast to a little black pickaninny.”

“Sick!” was a roar now.

“Sick! Sick! Sick! the stranger’s voice raised. “Niggers kissing whites! God, help me, don’t let this happen in Bastrop! It’s sick! What is it — you tell me — you people who live here — ”

They told him, thundering their answer.