A Fatal Glass of Beer (17 page)

“What about the damned Indians?” came a voice from the crowd.

“Yeah, this is Sioux country. They ain’t white. They ain’t Christian and they can’t hold their liquor.”

“We concur,” said Fields, looking in the general direction from which the voice had come. “Something in their genes. Never knew an Indian who could hold his liquor. Even knew one Mohawk named Yellow Buffalo who keeled over dead from a fatal glass of beer. Indians. Savages. Not so long ago in our history, the red men by the hundreds armed with spears, tomahawks, and bows and arrows, along with a handful of rifles, savagely attacked thousands of gallant, uniformed American troops in act after act of bloody war in an attempt to thwart the white people in the rightful pursuit of their manifest destiny. These savages wanted to hold on to land they had lived on for several thousand vears, to keep it from the hands of worthy white Christians like us. They murdered armed but innocent soldiers by the dozens, even attacked innocent settlers plopped peacefully in the middle of the Indian grazing lands. Thousands of the red heathens died. What was left were put in reservations, and yet you and I know that they are even now plotting to regain what is now the United States in secret pacts with other tribes—Navajo, Chippewa, Apache—and the Japs. It must be stopped.”

This time there was real applause. Fields looked at me in bewilderment.

Some of the hooded Klansmen on the platform near the flames of the burning cross stepped forward to usher Fields from the microphone. Fields should have known, and probably did, that some members of the Klan were far from fools.

“To prove my good faith in your cause,” Fields said suddenly, as one of the Klansmen took his arm, “I’ll point out to you a spy in our midst, a reporter from the
Daily Worker
, ready to distort our words. That man.”

Fields pointed at the startled Chimp at the edge of the crowd. The Chimp stepped back while everyone looked at him.

“A Communist,” Fields said.

The Chimp backed up as the crowd, and some of the men in sheets on the platform, moved toward him. The Chimp pulled out a gun and waved it at the advancing crowd, which stopped abruptly. The Chimp backed away after another look at Fields, who tried to stand behind the Klansman who had taken his arm.

After he had backed off a few dozen yards, the Chimp suddenly turned and ran for the woods.

“Careful,” Fields said into the microphone. “There may be more Bolsheviks in the bushes, armed with rifles, swords, and homemade bombs.”

The small crowd began to disperse in confusion, heading for their vehicles.

The Klansman with the chain repossessed the microphone and shouted, “Stop. We’re not finished. There is no danger.”

But it was all too late.

Fields carefully put his glasses away. The Klansmen were talking animatedly in small groups.

“Glad I could help,” said Fields to the head Klansman.

Fields stepped down from the platform. I had the feeling that the boss with the chain around his neck was going to call for a lynching, but he was surrounded almost instantly by his fellow members asking questions, bewildered. Some of them leapt from the platform, took off their hoods, and headed for their cars.

“Come,” said Fields out of the corner of his mouth as he drew even with us. He patted the shoulder of the nearby burly Klansman and said, “Keep up the good work.”

Gunther and I followed Fields through the confusion to the Cadillac. We got in. I looked up. The cross was still burning, but not as brightly. The head Klansman pointed in our direction. Gunther started the car and pulled in front of an old Ford. There were already a string of cars and trucks on the narrow road leading out of the woods. The Klansmen would have no trouble catching us on foot, trapped between slow-moving vehicles.

Gunther didn’t enter the line. Instead, he headed the car directly at the platform with the burning cross. Klansmen on the ground scrambled out of the way, falling in the dirt and grass.

“Hard to get those stains out,” Fields muttered.

Gunther made a sharp right turn and drove around the back of the cross and platform. He drove around the edge of the grassy clearing, saw an opening, and plunged the Caddy onto a narrow path, but not too narrow to crunch forward as branches scraped the sides of the car and leapt through the front window.

“We can get out and hide,” I said. “Or head in the general direction of the highway to Ogallala. I’ve still got my thirty-eight.”

“Speed forward, little man,” Fields said, strangely exhilarated. “Forward to your destiny. How’d you like my speech?”

“You almost got us killed,” I said.

“Might still,” said Fields, “if we suddenly plunge into a river or a bog or a dead end.”

With no spare tire, we hurtled ahead. In the lights we saw a large animal cross the path and then lope into the forest. A little farther in our headlights we saw, coming straight at us, the Chimp, a pistol in his hand.

He held up a hand to stop us, but Gunther pressed on and the Chimp jumped out of the way.

“Wouldn’t shoot,” said Fields. “Shot would draw the Klansmen like actors to a free meal. Excelsior.”

I wouldn’t call it a miracle, but I’d say we had a lot of luck with us. The path suddenly widened and a gate appeared in front of us. I got out and ran for the gate. There was a lock but the latch was wood and old. I kicked at it five or six times and broke the wood holding the lock. I pushed the gate open and guided Gunther through. The car was now a battle casualty, a scraped, scratched, dented, broken-windowed, and seat-wounded survivor.

I got back in and we drove down a wider road for about five minutes before we hit a double-lane road, probably the same one we had been on when we turned to join the Klan rally.

“We find a hotel,” I said as Gunther speeded up. “I take a bath and tomorrow morning we go to the bank.”

“Correction,” said Fields. “We find lodging, change our clothes, locate the bank president, and convince him that this is an emergency and I must make a major withdrawal tonight.”

“He won’t do it,” I said.

Fields poured himself a drink, downed it in a single gulp, and said, “I can be persuasive where my hard-earned money is involved. There, a motel.” Our single headlight shone over the sign that read: Ogallala Redskin Motel, Vacancy.

Gunther turned the Cadillac into the driveway and parked in front of the motel’s office. There were two other cars in the lot, before the one-story line of rooms.

The clerk behind the counter sat in a chair, asleep. The voice of Raymond on “Inner Sanctum” came over the radio in front of the sleeping clerk. Raymond said tonight’s guest would be Lon Chaney, Jr. That didn’t wake the clerk so I hit the bell on his desk. He jumped up and looked around. He was somewhere in his sixties, losing his hair and gaining a belly. His shirt was flannel and not tucked in.

Gunther and Fields had waited in the car. We figured I was least conspicuous of the three of us.

“Three rooms,” I said.

“Many as you want,” the clerk said. “Two dollars a night each. Radio in every room and a shower. A couple of the rooms have tubs.”

“Three in a row,” I said, taking out six dollars and putting it on the counter.

“How many banks are there in Ogallala?” I said.

He looked at me with new interest now. I looked like a man who might rob a bank.

“One, right now,” he said cautiously.

“The president’s name?” I said.

“Saunders, Mr. Jeffrey Saunders,” he said.

I smiled. It didn’t work. The clerk still looked suspicious.

“I am traveling with a man who wants to build a large hardware store in town,” I whispered, though there was no one around. “We want to set up an account as quietly as possible and get right to work on acquiring land and beginning construction.”

“We’ve already got a hardware store,” the man said. “Bainbridge’s.”

“We know all about Bainbridge’s,” I said. “We are in the process of buying out Bainbridge’s. This is all hush-hush.”

The man looked perplexed. I took out a five-dollar bill and handed it to him.

“People find out about what we’re doing and prices are going to go up,” I said. “Be best if no one knows we’re in town.”

“Gotcha,” said the man with a wink, pulling in the five spot.

I registered as Ronald, Richard, and Ryan North, took the keys, and reminded the clerk that our business was of the greatest secrecy and that we would be needing a man who could keep a secret as manager of the store.

“Name’s Floyd Simpson,” he said, tucking in his shirt.

“I won’t forget it, Floyd,” I said, taking the keys.

Gunther parked the battle-scarred car around the end of the last room, where it wouldn’t be seen by anyone coming down the highway.

“Everyone freshen up,” Fields said, taking his key for room 3.

“We congregate in twenty minutes for our meeting with the president of the bank, whose name is …”

“Jeffrey Saunders,” I said.

“I’m sure he’s in the phone book,” said Fields, looking back at the car and patting its dented and bruised left fender. “Stout warriors, these Cadillacs.”

Gunther looked exhausted. He went into room 4 with his bag and I went into room 2 with mine.

I washed, shaved, wiped my dirty shoes with a frayed wash-cloth, and sat in a chair with my .38 in my lap, waiting for what was left of the twenty minutes to pass. They passed quickly.

There was a knock on the door and Fields’s voice said, “It is I.”

I opened the door and there he stood. The whole dangerous adventure had brought him to life. He looked fresh, clean, and alert.

“We have a rendezvous with Mr. Saunders at the bank in fifteen minutes,” he said. “I did not speak directly with Mr. Saunders, who was occupied, but with his wife, who relayed my plight with great success and the requisite show of emergency. Shall we repack so that we can make a hasty departure from our possible pursuers after I collect my cash?”

I agreed and we had everything back in the car within five minutes.

I wasn’t too happy about driving into town in the Caddy. One of the Klansmen might recognize it, but it was Sunday night and the town was quiet. Gunther found the small bank. A man in a dark suit stood on the steps. He was about fifty, magnificent mane of dark hair, and a ruddy face that suggested a fondness for a beer or two, or something even stronger.

Gunther let us out and pulled around the corner onto a dark street.

Fields moved in front of me to the waiting man, who smiled and held out his hand.

“Mr. Saunders, I presume?” said Fields. “This is my associate, Mr. Peters. Another associate, Mr. Wherthman, is parking our vehicle and will join us.”

“Pleasure to meet you all,” Saunders said, taking my hand after he shook Fields’s.

I nodded. It was no pleasure. The voice of Mr. Jeffrey Saunders was definitely the voice of the head Klansman with the chain around his neck.

Whenever a lion starts chasing you, don’t stop to change your clothes.

Gunther came hurrying to the front of the bank and I watched Saunders’s face. The small benevolent smile he had perfected over many years, the bank official’s smile, remained.

“Sorry to get you out on a Sunday night,” I said.

Saunders took out his keys and opened the front door of the bank. We stepped in.

“For a man of Mr. Fields’s stature, and on the basis of this being an emergency, I am most willing to be of service,” said Saunders, closing the door and switching on the light. “I have already informed the police that we are here so that no officer will come running in when he sees the lights.”

“Thought of everything,” said Fields.

“Not everything,” said Saunders, still smiling, “but it is almost always possible to rectify errors or learn to live with them and go on to other endeavors.”

The bank was small, the smallest we had been in yet. Two tellers’ cages, a wooden table around arm height where people could make out their checks or calculate their wins and losses, a pair of doors to our left, both to offices with clear glass windows so the occupant could look out at the bank and directly at customers and the tellers.

Saunders opened his office door and stepped back, after turning on the light, to let the three of us in. The office wasn’t large, but it would do. An oak desk and chair with a barred window behind them, a small round table, also oak, with three plain chairs.

“Humble, but adequate for a town this size,” he said. “We get a substantial business from the farm community. Shall we sit?”

He pointed to the table. We sat and he went behind his desk to a solid-looking swivel chair. With my hand under the table, I pulled out my .38 and aimed it across at Saunders.

“A quaint establishment,” Fields said, looking around as he had in the lobby. “Character. Small and neighborly.”

“That’s what we strive for,” said Saunders, his smile growing a bit larger. “Now, what can I do for you?”

“I wish to make a withdrawal,” Fields said. “Many years ago, under the name of Oscar Treadmill, I opened an account when I passed through your delightful community while on tour. I should now like to liquidate that account of six thousand dollars, plus all interest incurred.”

Saunders stopped smiling.

“I have been president of this bank for twenty-two years,” he said. “Only once before have I been called upon to come in on a Sunday to conduct a transaction. Today I have been called in twice.”

“He’s been here,” I said with a sigh.

“Someone calling himself Oscar Treadmill appeared here today and made a withdrawal?” asked Fields.

“Called this morning,” Saunders said. “Said it was a matter of life and death, could only stay in town a few hours and then had to get back to New Orleans to pay for an operation for one of his children. Said he planned to drive all night to get the money in the doctor’s hands by sometime tomorrow. I pointed out that it was highly irregular, but he was almost in tears. I met him late in the morning. He produced the bankbook and signed for the withdrawal.”

“You gave him my money,” said Fields.