3 Day Terror (2 page)

“I guess you think I’m a little wild?” she said.

“Cass mentioned something about it earlier. But I wouldn’t know.”

“You and Cass must have had a good time tonight talking about me.”

“You kept bumping into us,” he answered.

“Well, she’s right about one thing,” Delia Benjamin said. “I am a little wild. But she’s wrong about Alabam and these coffin closing sororities. I wouldn’t belong to one.”

“How old are you, anyway?” Jack Chadwick asked.

“Going on seventeen.”

He put the car in gear, looked away from her to the rear-view mirror.

“You’re all right,” she said. “Plenty of room on both sides … Chad?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re going to be a great newspaperman some day,” she said. “There’s something about you that makes me know that.”

Chad’s insides did flips, the first of hundreds of thousands of flips to come in the space of seven years from that night.

Pulling his blue Dodge out of the lot, going slowly up the circular gravel drive to the steps of the Yellowhammer, Chad thought, I’m going to marry Delia Benjamin. Some six weeks after that moment, there wasn’t anyone in Bastrop who didn’t think the same thing.

Chad never showed that he had succumbed, in the beginning. He enjoyed the chase, because Dee was doing the chasing, using every wile known to woman, and some known only to Dee. But through it all, he could hardly believe that Delia imagined she would have to do any more than crook her little finger to bring him to his knees. For she was possessed with a breath-catching kind of fabulous beauty, that haunted even strangers who had seen her no oftener than once, and that quivered like a just-thrown dagger in the hearts of those who had become obssessed by her, and ultimately dedicated. Judge Benjamin’s family was rooted in the traditional and the respectable, and Delia’s blood was the good kind that told well. Even more incredible to Jack’s mind was the fact that Dee read the national news in the Bastrop
Citizen,
as well as “Social Notes All Around;” and finding that scanty, read her father’s copy of the Birmingham
Post-Herald;
that she thought she might go to law school somewhere up North; that she didn’t compare Roosevelt with Christ; and that she knew who D. H. Lawrence was, even quoted him on their second date:
You tell me I am wrong. Who are you, who is anybody to tell me I am wrong? I am not wrong
…
In Syracuse, rock left bare by the viciousness of Greek women. No doubt you have forgotten the pomegranate trees
- - -

Jack Chadwick’s family was new in town, and while it was rich by Bastrop standards, it was
nouveau riche.
Chad’s father sold furnaces out of Birmingham; their only ancestor to fight in the Civil War was some second cousin of Chad’s grandfather; and Chad’s mother was bedridden with arthritis, a fact that kept her off church committees and away from bridge teas. When Dee wore heels, Chad was shorter. Because he had not gone to high in Bastrop, his “best friends” were back in Bolivar, Missouri. People said that he was a good-looking boy, but not especially handsome; nice enough, but not particularly outstanding.

Yet when Chad and Dee became a steady couple, no one in Bastrop could imagine either going with anyone else.

They were the most devoted pair in town. Neighbors of the Benjamins’ on Clock Hill could tell time by the blue Dodge parked in front of Number Nine. When Chad and “Benny” (his name for her) arrived at a dance at the Yellowhammer, folks sighed and felt the evening was finally in full swing. The two of them strolling down Court Street on their way to Porter Drugs for a soda, were as indigenous to Bastrop as the tolling of the tower chimes at the courthouse. They were as bright and alert as a pair of hounds in a duck blind, always amused and off to somewhere, and always seeming to possess some superior secret unavailable to others, who neither loved as much as they did, laughed as often as they did, nor seemed so certainly satisfied within the cocoon of
their
individual pairs.

Enchanted, inseparable, inevitable; admired, envied and extolled — Jack Chadwick and Dee Benjamin were
the ones.
When Chad went off to war, Dee mooned around listening to “Saturday Night Is The Loneliest Night of The Week” on the phonograph, knitted socks furiously for Bundles for Britain, and only occasionally went to a picture at the Alabama, or a dance at the Yellowhammar with Judson Forsythe, who had long since established a “pals” relationship with her. When Chad returned, Bastrop’s principal hero, holder of the Purple Heart, the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal with four oak culsters, and a personal commendation from General Twining, no one was surprised. Special got more special, as the rich got richer; and by the same token, Jack Chadwick and Dee Benjamin took up where they left off, only more so. Judge Benjamin was credited with possessing a shrewd sort of compassionate wisdom when he agreed to allow his daughter to attend the University of Missouri with Chad, on condition they did not marry until after they graduated.

• • •

Triumphantly they returned at the end of four years; Jack with a Phi Beta Kappa key dangling from his gold watch chain; Dee with scholastic honors and a cardboard beauty queen’s crown painted silver and bedecked with papier-maché roses. They were both unchanged, seemingly the same enamoured couple Bastrop had always smiled on; matured now, with ambitions to revive the floundering Bastrop
Citizen,
taking to it the knowledge they had acquired in journalism school.

Time had failed to raise new idols in their absence.
The

ones
remained unchallenged. That they would make a success of their business venture; that Second Methodist Church would resound with the Wedding March’s booming finale “almost any time now”; and that Dee Benjamin would ultimately give birth to any number of wildly healthy, and impossibly beautiful redheaded babies, seemed the only conceivable ending to this idyl.

What had happened between them? Nobody knew the answer; only the facts. Delia Benjamin had called off the wedding two days after she gave the print order for the invitations. She had gone North, run off with a rich New Yorker named Maurice Granger, who had divorced her after three and a half years. She didn’t even come home for the judge’s funeral in 1952. Nobody referred to her as Dee any more, certainly not as Benny either. She had broken Jack Chadwick’s heart into a million sore pieces. People said her two names now — Delia Benjamin — when they spoke of her. She was a bad taste in their mouths, a nervous memory.

That evening in Porter Drugs so many years later, the memory was revitalized. Those few who saw Jack Chadwick wave at Delia Benjamin, saw her walk back and stand talking at the booth, Chad standing chivalrously beside her in the aisle, while Cass stayed seated, regarding her with a certain placid resignation — those few would ultimately describe the scene to the rest, in widely varying ways; but all would agree on one thing: Delia Benjamin was back in town, and the first person she was seen talking with was Jack Chadwick. It was a situation that bore watching.

When Dee got back in the car, her mother said, “So you did get two packs after all. That’s just like you, not to heed anything I say. Well, the North didn’t change you in that respect.”

Dee watched the rain-riddled streets with a steady profile.

“Who was the young man opened the door for you, Delia? Looked almost like Judson Forsythe.”

“I don’t know who he was,” she answered. “I didn’t know him.”

“See anyone you did know?”

Dee waited until she had touched the match’s flame to her cigarette, drew in and let the smoke out slowly. “Chad was there,” she said. “and Cass. I said hi to them for a second.”

Mrs. Benjamin turned right at the Wheel and headed up

Clock Hill. After a moment she said, “How did he seem to take it?”

Flo Benjamin was a woman who understood everyone’s life but her own, and very probably never actually considered the fact that she had one. When Dee was younger, Poppy Belden, or Jud — and even Chad, like all her other friends, would say: “I wish my mom was like yours. You can tell her anything. She’s so interested!” And Dee would think of how difficult it was to confide in her mother, to hold her attention. Until she understood that Mrs. Benjamin simply could not concentrate on anything pertaining to herself or the judge or Dee, because what other families did and thought was twice as fascinating. She saw her husband, her daughter and herself, through
their
eyes.

When Dee married Maury, it was as though Dee had ceased to exist. She was a letter, and an occasional voice on long-distance; but to Mrs. Benjamin she was unreal, because Mrs. Benjamin didn’t really know Maury, nor anyone who did know him; and after their marriage, few people in Bastrop talked about Delia to Flo Benjamin’s face. So she found it difficult to have any opinion of her daughter, any solid basis on which to think of her, save for random thoughts she could not always focus, dutiful thoughts which required a certain strained concentration and were never prolonged; and reminiscences, which were the easiest of all, for they involved other people: Gay Porter’s saying,
“Dee and Jack certainly are smitten, Flo. Do you think it’s still innocent?”
Or Poppy Belden saying:
“Dee looked so pretty at the dance the other night, Mrs. Benjamin. Everyone and his brother were after her.”
Or Jack himself saying — on
that
day —
”I’m empty without her. I’m a shell, Mrs. Benjamin. And I still don’t know why she did it.”

Now Delia was home again, and in Mrs. Benjamin’s eyes rose like a Phoenix from the ashes, for
they
had met after all these years. People had seen them meet and people would have something to say about it. Mrs. Benjamin, in turn, would have something definite to think about the prodigal. People would come up to Flo Benjamin and mention Dee again in some way, however subtle. She was back and Bastrop would talk about her
to
Flo’s face now.

Dee knew this and should have anticipated the way in which her mother would frame the question. Not “how did you feel?”
“What
did it seem like to you, Delia?” But “How did
he
seem to take it?”

Dee said, “You mean was he surprised? I guess he was. We both were.”

“No, I mean, how did he seem?”

“You mean did his face turn red, break out in a sweat? Did his hands shake? Knees tremble? I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mama. He was pleasant, calm, and quite poised.” Dee knocked the ashes off her cigarette. “Why shouldn’t he be? He’s married to Cass, and he loves Cass. It’s over between us, been over a long time. Over, Mama, and forgotten.”

At that precise moment Senior Porter was in the telephone booth in the back of the drugstore, listening to his wife’s reaction to the news.

Gay Porter was saying: “Don’t think for a moment Jack Chadwick ever forgot Delia Benjamin, or her him! Those kind of
passion
romances are never over, mark my word. At least we can thank God our Troy never got himself into anything like that, even though Poppy wasn’t our choice for him. He still married with his head and heart and not because he was under some kind of spell like they were. I used to tell Flo myself I didn’t think it was as innocent as she fooled herself into believing, never was and still isn’t. Don’t care how many years have passed. Notice that Maury didn’t keep her long either; even he must have known he got second-hand goods. No, I’m not saying things I don’t know, Senior. I’m just saying there’s some reason Delia Benjamin is back in Bastrop, and I’d be curious to know.” Mrs. Porter gave a high giggle. “Law, right during Music Emphasis Month too — with Flo elected Terpsichore and all!”

• • •

In the rain the Benjamin car stopped at the top of Clock Hill. Dee looked through the window at the big, square, three-story red brick house, surrounded by huge boxwoods. It seemed incredible that she would enter there and not find the judge; seemed incredible that she would be alone in that house with her mother.

Almost as though Flo Benjamin had the same thought, she asked with a certain glum finality to her tone, “Ready?” — though she was really thinking: Jack
must
have felt
something
— opening the door on her side.

“Ready,” Dee sighed.

The question she had asked herself earlier that evening was no longer vaguely framed, nor answered with some random lines from some forgotten poem. As she went through the wrought-iron gate and entered the yard, it sat in her mind like a yellow-eyed cat leering out from the dark: Why did I come back? What did I come back to Bastrop for?

Mrs. Benjamin, clutching her raincoat around her large body, skipping puddles on her way to the porch steps behind Dee, said, “Everyone said he never loved Cassandra Beggsom; said at the time he was only marrying her out of pity.”

The stranger finished his ham on rye, perched on the stool in Porter Drugs; he spooned his coffee and stared at his reflection in the mirror behind the counter. He straightened his black knit tie, smoothed the lapels of his gray flannel suit. Beside him, a man in a T-shirt and worn jeans, drinking a bromo, watched him. The stranger glanced at the man and smiled, but the man looked away.

The stranger wanted a cup of hot coffee; his had cooled while he had been munching his sandwich and watching the girl who had entered the drugstore with him. She’d been standing at the back booth talking to the red headed fellow and the lady with him, and the stranger had taken her all in, from her white collar down the beige suit to the good-looking legs and the blue-strutting high heels. Class, the stranger had decided; hard-assed, big-titted, soft-skinned, long-legged class. Looked like a stranger herself, but knew folks, obviously.

The stranger couldn’t get the hot coffee. The druggist was in the phone booth, and the colored boy was in back.

He said to the man in the T-shirt, “How can I get that nigger’s attention? Want some hot coffee.” ….

The man answered, “Deacon Allen got his mind on tail comes the end of the evening. Can’t nobody but a black bitch in heat get
his
attention, tell yah. But Senior be back in a minute. You a stranger?”

“My name is Richard Buddy,” the stranger said.

“Hi-dee! Name’s Duboe Chandler.”

Chandler toyed with the half-gone glass of bromo, studying the stranger. “In town long?”

“For a time,” the stranger said.

“Got business hereabouts?”

The stranger nodded. “In a way …” He sipped some of his cold coffee, set the cup on the saucer with a decisive gesture, swung on the stool and faced the man. “Hear you’re going to desegregate your schools this coming Monday?”

“That’s the rumor.”

“Hear it’s a fact.”

“It’s a nigger fact,” the man said, “and a nigger idea.”

“And it’s going to stand?” the stranger asked.

“What the hell we gonna do?”

“I can tell you,” the stranger said, “if you got the time.”

Duboe Chandler said, “Shoot!”