3 Day Terror (4 page)

Those were the strange few years when everyone seemed lost and crazy, longing for the license of the youth they were losing that would have exonerated them and made their revels of the night before less depressing. The next morning, made their endeavors less desperate, and made the name of the person they sat beside in Junior year of high — such a seemingly short time ago — seem not at all as important to remember as it did seem. Those were the years at the beginning of the fifties; the short-lived shock-riddled time Jud thought of as the years A.D. — After Delia.

Now she was back. And Jud knew instinctively why Poppy had suddenly wanted to leave the table and dance, and not say any more than “Poor Chad” about the whole matter. Because Delia Benjamin’s return would revive a great many memories, and Jud couldn’t help recollecting that those were the exact same words Poppy had said when she had first mentioned Jack Chadwick to him.

She had said, “Poor Chad!” And not very much later, people in Bastrop were shaking their heads and saying, “Poor Poppy!”

Perhaps no one in Bastrop knew as well as Jud Forsythe did that Troy Porter’s wife had a soft spot for a wounded bird; and perhaps no one in Bastrop knew as well as Poppy Porter did that Jud Forsythe had been one of the most wounded birds around, in the years he called “A.D.” — the terribly painful years when he finally had had to resign himself to the fact he had really lost Dee not just to another man, but to his life; that she was gone out of his sight, he thought, for good; out of his mind, he believed, never.

What would it be like seeing her again? He looked up and a hundred and thirty-six-odd eyes winked at him.

It was still raining when the stranger left Porter Drugs and went back to the Wheel, where his car was parked.

He made a bed in the hack seat, used a duffle bag filled with clean shorts and shaving equipment for a pillow, and shook out a lightweight topcoat for a blanket.

On the floor there was a stack of pamphlets, tied with a string, which he cut with his silver penknife. He leafed through them by the dim overhead light attached to the roof of the car.

One in particular he liked. It was designed like a playbill. Across the front was printed in large letters:

There was a picture of a white woman sitting on a Negro’s lap.

He turned the page. Another picture of a white woman, kissing the Negro, their arms wrapped around one another. The caption read:

He turned the page. There was a picture of white women dancing rock
^‘
n roll with Negroes. Above were the words:

On the fourth page there was a picture of Negro teen-agers with sprung switch-blades in their hands, and wild laughing faces with leering eyes, jumping over seats in a schoolroom where frightened whites cowered; Negroes pinning whites against the blackboard, cigarettes dangling from their mouths and gin bottles hanging in their hip pockets; Negroes gambling under the desks, dice rolling; and a white teacher with a tortured expression on her face, being bound to her chair with rope by Negroes. The legend ran:

The last page showed a long, tenement-crowded street, with Negroes shoving whites into the gutter;. Negro faces laughing from windows high above; and Negroes lolling on front porches, while whites inside peeped fearfully from behind their curtains.

The words asked:

The stranger tossed aside the pamphlet. There were countless others, some like it, some different.

Tomorrow he would distribute them, and the man he had met in the drugstore — Duboe Chandler — had promised to help him. That was luck — to come into a town cold and immediately win support. But it’s like me, too, the stranger thought; always been that way for me, always had a way with people, because I can read them, figure out their sick minds. Sick, sick, sick! Wanting to be well, and know I can help them; need me to tell them; that same way I told Chandler:

Told him, “Look, Chandler, look at this,” showed him the picture of that nigger banging on the white girl, “This is an actual photograph taken a few weeks ago up in Greenwich Village, New York City. Chandler, that nigger boy you see there — he’s from down in Mobile, Chandler, a Southern jigaboo that went North and learned his wool head the word integration. You know what that word means —
integrate
? You know what Webster’s Dictionary says is the meaning of that word? Says it means to form into a whole, Chandler, to unite as one, Chandler. Just like that black ape’s uniting as one with that white meat!”

Told him: “How’s it make you feel, Chandler, to see a picture like this? Sure, makes you mad at that nigger; sure, Chandler, but I’m asking you for your candid opinion, Chandler. I’m talking man-to-man with you. There’s another feeling too, happening to you right now because of that picture; and Chandler — ” looking him deep in the eye, hand on his shoulder — ”it’s a sexual feeling. It is; you know it is! It’s a feeling of lust, Chandler, and you know why? Because the whole subject of integration, of uniting the coons with the white race, which is the meaning of the word integration — and it’s right in Webster’s Dictionary, it’s as basic as all that — why, that whole subject, Chandler, gets folks randy. Gets folks sexed up, Chandler.

You got to admit it, and I’ve got to admit it.” ….

Told him: “Ever had a yen for dark shagging Chandler? I’m asking you for your candid opinion on these subjects. You know as well as I do, before God, that the white man has had such a yen, has and does and always will. And, Chandler, it isn’t good. I’m not preaching to you, fellow, I’m just telling you what both of us know. It sure as hell is not good at all when a white man gets a yen to shag a thick-lips, because it’s an overwhelming, God-forgotten, Devil-driven black urge that he can’t subdue in himself, that he can’t throw off by lifting heavy furniture, or taking walks, or showers, or jacking-off — or none of it! It’s an obsession that’ll drive him out of his mind and set him to banging his head into cement if he doesn’t get rid of it, and there’s only one way he c
an
get rid of it, Chandler, and that’s by going the hell out and getting some colored gal and giving it to her!”

Told him: “Well, Chandler, I’ve got something scientific to tell you with regard to all this, and that is, that scientifically it’s been proven, Chandler, actually proven that the white woman is capable of getting this yen herself. Just like the white man. The white woman is capable of getting this yen for a big buck of a nigger, hung like a bull and black as licorice, and that white woman in this very photograph — God help her somehow — is just such a woman. And Chandler, it’s been scientifically proven that it never would have happened to this innocent, pitiful, sick, debased white woman you see here in this picture, if the black apes up North were controlled like they are in the South.

“It’s a psychological fact,” he told him, “that this yen is capable of starting up in women, Chandler, when niggers are treated like white men.”

Told him: “I’ve seen it happen to white women, women I knew, and yes, Chandler, women I respected, and I wanted to die, and I wanted to cry, and Chandler, I wanted to kill. I wanted to do murder, Chandler, actually wanted to kill! It could drive a man to. Look at that picture and think of the white girls you know; think of your own woman, Chandler, and think how you’d feel if that yen came over her. Think of that, Chandler, and give me your candid opinion of how you’d feel. And think of it hard and long, Chandler, because next Monday morning could be the first step in that direction. It’s just basic, that’s all. Just basic and sick. It’s so sick I get sick imagining it. God, Chandler, don’t let such a thing happen here in Bastrop, Alabama. Don’t let it, Chandler. Help me to stop it, because it’s so sick!”

The stranger leaned back against the back seat and remembered the look in Duboe Chandler’s eyes; remembered the perspiration dotting his forehead and the way he had perched on the stool at the soda fountain, cracking his knuckles, saying, “A-yeah, a-yeah,” in that dry, husky tone, licking the corner of his parched lips, listening, listening.

It was going to be easy. Had he ever doubted it?

The stranger crossed his long legs, letting his foot swing and idly kick the tall pile of white pamphlets. It was cracker country, after all, filled and spilling with red-necked peckerwoods and poor white mud-eaters. All they needed was someone to tell them.

The stranger thought of a poem he had written once:

What had his professor written across the top of the paper when he had handed it back to him?
“Sounds like a bad attack of indigestion, Mr. Buddy.”

Not everyone understood; not many did. But a few did; one in particular — Lenny Gold.

Lenny Gold had said once: “You make me afraid, Buddy. You scare the hell out of me!”

Lenny Gold understood, and before very long he’d have a lot of company.

O
NE
of the ways Ginny Towers occupied her mind at the end of the work day, as she made her way down the bumpy dirt road to Puddin’ Nelly in the dark, was to mull over every little thing that had happened up at Mister Jack’s. In fact, life at Mister Jack’s house not only occupied her mind all the time, more than any other thing, it kept her in a state of perpetual preoccupation. She’d go along doing whatever she was doing and thinking thoughts like: Must be dey had demselves some kinduv arg’ment las night, way they bangin’ them coffee cups down on de saucers s’morning. Wonder what about?

Or, scrubbing the back porch in the afternoon: How come Miz Cass wear red so much de time? All de time wear red like dat. Seem silly, all de colors pick from, pick red time, time again.

And, down doing the marketing along Court Street: Mister Jack like his breakfuss coffee awright. Drink three, four, five cups de stuff. Nebber known nuther man liked his coffee s’well as Mister Jack. Don’t see how he don’t help but git the runs drinkin it cup after cup dat way, first thing the mornin’.

Then finishing up the dishes in the evening: Shame ‘bout dat chile of ders. Eyes nebber seen de light. Poor blind kiddy, ‘n dey jest carry right on like dey don’t mind de least. ‘N he hoppin’ around like de whole world jest like him, laughin’ ‘n all.

Day in day out it was “up at Mister Jack’s,” whether she was remembering what had gone on when she was there, or whether she
was
there, and though everyone in Puddin’ Nelly spoke of their bosses and their ladies, the consensus was that Ginny Lee Polk Ann Towers never could think up another subject. Turner Towers, her older brother — in Ginny’s mind, an uppity nigger if there ever was one — used to try to explain to her that she ought to think of herself as an individual, as Ginny Lee Polk Ann Towers, age, early twenties; religion, Baptist; marital status, hopeful; and looks — Turner would always whistle in this part, wink, and cock an eyebrow, and try to tell her to stop thinking of herself simply as Mister Jack’s hired girl. But since Turner married himself Doris Smith, and since he wasn’t getting anywhere with his sister anyway, he gave up the subject. Duggan Allen, Ginny Lee’s beau, a coal-black, lantern-jawed worker at Chandler’s gin, never listened to what she said, so it didn’t bother him one bit. And the only other person in Puddin’ Nelly who had nothing against Ginny Lee’s one and only topic of conversation was Grandma Towers, called Tappie, after the gnarled black cane she tapped around on, didn’t need and was never without.

The highpoint of Tappie’s day was when Ginny Lee came home after work and told her everything that had happened. Sometimes it wouldn’t amount to anything, and sometimes it
would
amount to something, but Tappie hung on every word, chortling and grunting and uh-huhing, nodding her flocky white head, spitting into the pail at the side of the rocker, and murmuring, “Just like when I worked up to Mister Senior’s;” or “… yea, sho, dat’s de way allus;” and “Aw, naw, d’e do
dat!”

There were the days of crisis, like the day little Master Johnny-Bob got an earache, and Ginny Lee hunted the fruit cellar, hands and knees, for a cockroach, took its head off, split it in half and was just pressing the juice into Master Johnny-Bob’s ear when Miz Cass happened along and carried on as though Ginny were sticking nails in.

Screamed at Ginny Lee: “Don’t you ever —
ever,
you hear —
never try
to doctor this child!”

Shouted: “Stupid, stupid, stupid! How could you have — ” And then, “Just go on. Go on back to Puddin’ Nelly now! Don’t mind dinner. I’m too upset. No Ginny Lee, just
go!”

Tappie, pressing her stricken granddaughter to her skinny, wizened body, had said, “Ain’t yo fault, honey, ‘at she don’t know cockroach juice cure de earache. Cure de abscess in de ear too.”

And there were the “nothing ‘ceptional happened today” days, the ones when Ginny just recounted — fixed butter beans for dinner; had hell’s time gettin Master Johnny-Bob in from the yard, get tin’ more ‘n more stubborn, not good either bein’ blind
and
stubborn; thought Mister Jack looked tired; shoulda heard way he yelled at Miz Cass for leavin de top off de toothpaste tube, haw gee-Gawd, dough, she a sloppy liz, and dat’s de truth — weren’t for de fact ob my presence, she’d wipe de plates wid the cat’s tail. Bought herself a new red sweater, need more red in dat house like rain need water — just recount; on and on — and Tappie listening; the two of them, lost dream-deep, deliciously in the land of “up at Mister Jack’s.”

That night as Ginny hurried down to Puddin’ Nelly — late; way past eleven she’d baby-sat, with the vine-hung trees hanging with shadow hair and pointing shadow fingers in the hazy light of a quarter-moon cut by clouds, walking fast as she could with her corns showing off — that night was a crisis night, no doubt and emphatically. Much as they had tried to conceal it when they had come home, Ginny Lee read it on their faces in big print, and thought right when she saw them, just inside the door, with their wraps still on and their packages and newspapers still under their arms. She thought: Oat-oh, somethin’s swimmin’ in de trouble pond.

Then heard Mister Jack say in the kitchen: “I don’t give a
good
cold shower in hell
what
you meant! Or who’s back in town! Or what the stinking town thinks I think about integration — or the stinking town either, for that matter!”

“Shhh, Jack, honey. Ginny hasn’t left yet … Listen, I didn’t mean anything. What am I supposed to do, look up and see you on your feet, with Delia Benjamin beside you, and suddenly find myself saying hello and how long you in town for; and then — pffft — end of scene. And what am I supposed to do? Not comment at all? Just say nothing at all about it, like she just walked up to our table any day of the week?”

Delia Benjamin! Yipe,
she
back! Ginny Lee took time gathering up her movie magazines, hanging up her apron, lingering in the hallway, and listening.

Heard: “… that at all, and now you know it! First you start on the editorial for the Monday edition, then make something out of the fact some old girl friend I forgot in the Year One comes back home and says hi.”

“Will you keep it low, Jack? You know Ginny carries tales.”

Thought: May carry tales, Miz Cass, but got better tales ‘n the stupid dumb ones I hear in this place; got more to do wid my time ‘n be blabbing ‘bout you or anything to do wit you!

Heard: “Well tell her to get the hell on home then, and get off my neck, Cassie!”

And hustled then, hustled on out the door and halfway down the steps when Miz Cass yelled from the doorway: “Good night, Ginny, and thanks for sitting, hear?”

Galled, “Night, Miz Cass!” Then stopped, called, “An’ Miss Cass — you think I carries tales, you wrong! I got other things to study than tales, and I didn’t hear nothin’ in de first place!”

Miz Cass had sighed and let the screen door bang behind her; and Ginny Lee Polk Ann Towers had sucked in her breath, slapped her thigh with three back issues of
Motion Picture,
and sang:

Puddin’ Nelly was the Negro quarter in Bastrop, west of the courthouse and down by the tracks, below the brow of Love-Lucy Hill. There the shacks of the colored huddled together, hugging one another in shabby, resigned, unpainted squalor along nameless dirt streets; outhouses plugging the rears; broken rocking chairs and trash cartons and spring-popping white folks’ hand-me-down couches squatting in the fronts.

It got its name from an old Negro who lived down there after slavery; said it was better living there than on the white man’s land; said it was pretty nearly living, but not quite. He had pronounced it “puddin’ nelly,” and it stuck.

Love Lucy Hill was lined with dark water oaks and white sycamores, and off to one side was a city dump; and off to the other a stubble field with a yellow creek running through it. Ginny Lee lived creek-side in Puddin’ Nelly, best side, and she was hurrying past the field when the man stepped out from behind the last water oak at the bottom of Love Lucy, and stood straddle-legged in her path.

She had been in the midst of thinking: “… course dat was all a long time ‘go; still dey say Miz Delia ‘n Mister Jack tought each odder were de moon, dey was so sweet-crazy for each odder. Still, Mister Jack seem right fond of Miz Cass — ”

When she saw him — this man. Ginny Lee was uncommonly pretty, a little girl with unusually long legs for someone her size, good legs that were thin but not sticks and showed finely molded ankles. And her breasts above the round hips and thin waist were large for someone her size, not in a way that gave her a top-heavy look, but a proud feminine look, when she remembered to hold her shoulders back and stand straight. Crabb Suggs, who always eyed her with a feverish, lecherous look spread across his fat, stubbled, red face, said she was angel-faced, and whore-proportioned. Ginny Lee, for her own part, was well satisfied with her looks, save for two things. She wished she weren’t as light-colored as she was, because Duggan Allen claimed it made her look washed out and he wished she was black like he was so when they got married their kids would be; and claimed it worried him some. So it worried her. And the second thing was that her eyes needed glasses, and Duggan Allen said a four-eyes gave him the creeps; he didn’t know why, but facts was facts; so that preyed on her mind, whenever it could find access.

Which it did that very night, the moment the man stepped out from behind the tree, and she stood there blinking and squinting to recognize him; thought for a moment it was Duggan kidding with her; feared for another moment it was Crabb Suggs, trying to corner her again, get her down with her arms pinned back, sit on her legs and say the dirty things while he got her blouse open and her skirt up.

“Duggan?” she asked.

He was Duggan’s size, she thought; thought he was, but Lord, she couldn’t see really. “Duggan?” The man laughed.

She felt a little wave of relief; knew by the laugh it wasn’t Suggs because Suggs had asthma and always wheezed when he laughed.

She said, “Who’re you, huh?”

He didn’t come any closer, and she had stopped in her tracks.

“I ain’t that black nigger,” he said. “You like it for me to be that black nigger, huh? A-yeah, a-yeah, you like it, wouldn’t you?” He cracked his knuckles. “What you want?” she said.

“I want to integrate you,” he giggled. “Hah? Wha say?” The clouds cut away from the quarter moon and she stepped closer. Then she recognized him.

She said, “Where
you
learn such a big word?” “Not in no school niggers go to. You know niggers going to park their black asses right alongside white folks come Monday, up in the school, huh? Going to integrate,” he pronounced every syllable of the word. “Going to unite as one, huh?”

“You off your stick t’night, sumpin?” He walked closer, holding something in his hand — a photograph.

“Lookit here, Ginny Towers, see here.”

“I can’t.”

“I’ll scratch a match for you.”

“Naw,” she said. Then the flame lit up the photograph. “You filthy!”

“Want to desegregate with me, Ginny Towers?” He giggled and poked her stomach with his finger. “A-yeah, huh?” “I’se sick of the subject of dissectation,” she said. He reached out and gently tweaked her nipple. “I got my car at the dump,” he said. “ ‘Member the ride we took a while back. ‘Member how you asked? Asked for everything I did, din’t yah, a-yeah!”

“Your car belong in de dump,” she said. She was cupping her breast where he had pinched her, smoothing her hand up and down over it. “I didn’t ask for nothin. You said I should ask.”

“And you asked.”

“Duggan hate you,” she said. “Said you’re meaner ‘n anybody out dere at de gin. Said you’re lazy.”

“Tell Duggan that’s why I’m boss.” The man laughed again.

He took her hand. “C’mon,” he said. “Let’s integrate.”

“Delia Benjamin’s back in town,” she said, as though she were saying it to herself, weighing things in the matter of their importance, thinking: I’ll jest tell Tappie, well dere’s someone in town we all ain’t seen in some time, easy-like; just tell her gradual; den drop de bomb; haw-g, dog, Tappie gonna bust de gut.

The man said, “I know that. I saw her.”

“Whyn’t you ask her to tinnegrate?”

“Because of the fact we done already tinnegrated once before,” he said, “and she’s a dry lay. I got me better tail ‘n that to hump.”

“You a liar,” Ginny Lee said. “She wouldn’t look at you. She was Mister Jack’s — ”

“Don’t start that,” he said. “I tell you the truth. I had Free-Dee; had her when she was engaged to your Mister Jack.”

“You don’t dare swear on your hearing and eyesight,” she said. She shook her hand away from his. “You a phony.”

He stood in a solemn stance and raised his hand. “I swear on my hearing and I swear on my eyesight that I screwed Delia Benjamin.”

“Don’t — ” she had tried to caution him in the middle of what he was saying, but he had gone right on. Now she regarded him carefully. “You gonna be deaf and blind?” she asked.

“I tell you,” he said. “I tell you what I tell you.”

“While Mister Jack was — while he was engaged?” But she already believed him. There wasn’t much she believed she could be sure of about Duboe Chandler, but there Was one thing: she could be sure he wouldn’t swear that swear unless it were a fact he was attesting to.

“Come on,” he said. “Car’s down at the dump.”

A new light hid in her lowered eyes. She was trying to piece things together.

He took her hand, “Coming? We ain’t got all night to integrate, you know,” he laughed.

She walked along with him and he slid his arm around her waist, let his hand stray up under her sweater. “Gawd damn, you’re stacked, nigger!” he said, “I’m going to desegregate you all to hell!”