After the War (12 page)

“Not the greatest place for an interview,” was Derek’s comment.

Is that why they were there? Cynthia murmured, “Oh dear, I’m afraid not,” in a helpless, innocent way which she knew to be unconvincing, and she looked up and smiled at him. They sat across from each other in a high-backed, hard-seated booth, where the streaky table smelled of beer and of catsup. Officially, The Pines served only beer, but if you knew what to say and paid enough you could get thick coffee mugs of rotgut bourbon, which is what they did.

What she was feeling as they sat there—in the cave of jukebox noise and student noise and the smells of everything, everyone there—Cynthia knew to be crazy, this blood-racing frenzy of jealousy and suspicion. For in a practical way (Cynthia prided herself on practicality), she wondered how much or indeed what at all could have gone on between Deirdre and Derek? (She was even alarmed by the alliteration of their names.) In Russ’s house, as they waited for a lawyer who might have shown up at any minute—as well as, possibly, Melanctha? But crazy or not, Cynthia did feel that frenzy, that race of blood, and tightness in her chest.

At a table not far from theirs a group of students began to sing. “Violate me, in violet time, In the vilest way that you know! Rape me, ravage me, brutally savagely—”

Cynthia shuddered. “What a dreadful song, really.”

Derek leaned forward. “You knew Russ pretty well?”

As though she had planned a speech, Cynthia told him,
“Actually hardly at all. Although”—and she laughed a little, a girlish, confessional laugh—“I had a sort of distant crush on him, and that’s one of the reasons we moved to Pinehill in the first place. I’d read a lot of his poetry. Honestly, I even knew a lot of it by heart.” She repeated the laugh. “But the times we met—well, I felt shy. I guess he was sort of shy too. Also, I guess people have told you, he drank quite a lot.”

But: had someone told Derek otherwise, about her and Russ? Could someone have hinted anything of the sort? Could Russ—this was a horrid, unlikely, but possible speculation—could Russ have said anything to Deirdre, a marital confession? “Darling, it didn’t mean anything, I just fell into it, and she’s rather aggressive.” Surely not, Russ didn’t talk like that; still, Cynthia inwardly quailed and told herself that it would not have happened, given Russ’s strict Southern notions of honor—
unless
two of those notions came into conflict, I-must-not-tell-anyone pitted against I-should-tell-my-wife-everything. The latter was most hard to imagine, though—Russ telling anyone everything.

Derek, sounding irritated, broke into her somewhat complicated stream of thoughts. “Of course he drank a lot. Russ was drunk when he died, remember? He couldn’t hold his liquor, as they say down here.”

Now the singing group was doing “The Ship Titanic”: “… husbands and wives, little children lost their lives. It was sa-ad when that great ship went down.”

Another horrible song. “What will happen to that Negro sergeant, do you think?” asked Cynthia.

Derek frowned. “The evidence against him is that he had a lot of money in his billfold. Close to a thousand. He said he’d cashed his discharge check in L.A., but still, it doesn’t look good.”

“Why not? ‘Colored’ sergeants aren’t supposed to go around with a lot of money?”

Derek ignored her. “The bad part is, Russ’s billfold was just about empty. Just a couple of single dollar bills.”

“But that’s just like Russ. He always went around with no money on him. It was sort of an affectation. Part of his pose, I’m just a poor country boy.”

“I don’t think they’d take that into account. Not in the current climate.”

“But—but that’s totally unfair. Russ wasn’t in good shape. He could just have had a heart attack, like that man in the Deke House. No one said anything about Melanctha killing
him.
”

“No—”

“And Russ would never pick a fight, especially not with a Negro man he didn’t even know. That just wasn’t in him.” Cynthia spoke more passionately than she had meant to.

Which Derek caught. “Come on, you said you hardly knew him.”

She forced a giddy laugh. “My instincts are very quick and accurate.” But then very seriously she asked him, “Can’t you do anything?”

“To help this Negro sergeant I’ve never met?—when I never met Russ Byrd either, and can hardly attest to his good character? Christ, Cynthia, sometimes—”

In an unfriendly way, they stared at each other across the booth. Derek reached for his mug as Cynthia thought, feared, that he could get really drunk.

The barbecue sandwiches that they had both forgotten arrived. “Here y’are, folks,” announced the grinning, small bald red-faced waiter—at whom Derek glared.

Derek said, “I never saw anything so repulsive in my life.”

The waiter blinked, then recovered his grin. “Well, I always say it takes all kinds,” he said before he scuttled away.

The waiter didn’t make those sandwiches, was Cynthia’s first thought; why take it out on him?

Her second was from ten to fifteen minutes back; she thought, Why
not
help a Negro sergeant you’ve never met, if he’s being unjustly accused? You’re a reporter, and you could help. Harry would, if he could, and I would, especially if I were a lawyer.

She took a dutiful bite of her sandwich, which was as bad as it looked. Chewing, trying to swallow, Cynthia imagined her own clean warm quiet kitchen, herself alone there, eating a couple of nice fresh scrambled eggs.

Looking across at Derek, she observed that he was doing everything in slow motion, trying for control, or at least to look controlled.

Too drunk to drive, she thought, and she experienced one long moment of panic before she got to her feet and said, “Come on, I’ll drive us home.” Tactfully adding, “You look tired.”

“This is the worst sandwich,” he muttered, but at the same time, surprisingly, he got up, reaching into his pocket, and handed her the keys—her keys, they had come in her car. “You’re right,” he told her. “Let’s get out of here.”

And they started back, not talking, as Cynthia concentrated on the drive in the dark and increasing rain. Among other things, she was thinking that Derek was probably unaware of her plan, which was to drop him off at the Pinehill Hotel.

Which is what she did—before going home to her scrambled eggs and relative peace, a peace somewhat troubled by persistent, anxious thoughts of Derek’s hours with Deirdre—
and of the so far unknown Negro sergeant, unhappily with Russ when he died. And who was now being held in jail for questioning, in Texas. Her own raging sense of injustice kept Cynthia awake for hours, as she listened to rain on her roof—ordinarily a soothing, soporific sound, but tonight it sounded threatening, even accusatory: why didn’t she go and help? And what on earth was she doing with Derek in the first place?

She was able to salvage some of her pride, at least, by replaying in her mind the small scene of her leaving Derek at the hotel. For she had done just that, left him there. She just reached for the door for him to get out. No thanks for the barbecue (certainly not). No gesture or good-night kiss (most certainly not). She left him there and she drove off into the rain, which seemed appropriate (in some B-movie way).

10

“H
ARRY!” Cynthia shouted into the telephone. Awakened at 3 a.m. by an operator who asked her name, then announced an overseas call, she had at first thought it must be some terrible, cruel joke—or, much worse, some terrible news of Harry. But then, though wavering and distorted, came Harry’s voice.

“Baby, did I wake you? I got this chance to call you, so I didn’t even calculate the time. What time is it there?”

“About three. But, Harry, this is marvelous, how are—?”

“Baby, I can’t hear you either. You’re okay?”

His voice came back and forth, in and out of focus, as though tossed on all those monstrous black Atlantic waves, then strung along wires and swaying tall poles all across the gigantic continent.

She shouted, “I’m fine! So is Abby, she loves it at Swarthmore, and I think she’s in love with a nice boy, a physicist.” And then, irrelevantly, “Russ died. Russ Byrd?”

“A physicist—isn’t he too old for Abby? Not Oppenheimer?” She thought she heard him laugh.

“Oh no, he’s about her age, just a little older.”

“Russ had a heart attack?”

“I think so, but he was out on the platform of a train with
this Negro soldier—a sergeant, actually—so it’s all going to be investigated. In Texas. Some people of course think that the sergeant knocked him down and robbed him. There’ll be a trial, I’d even like to go—”

“Baby, darling Cynthia, I can’t hear a word you’re saying. Come back, I miss you!”

“You
come back, I miss
you.
”

“Now I can’t hear you at all, are you gone back to sleep? Christ, I wish I were there—”

“Harry, where are you?”

“We’d better hang up, I can’t hear a fucking thing—”

Minutes later, as Cynthia curled up in her bed, alone, she thanked God that she was alone, no Derek at her side: Harry would somehow have felt that, felt some unfamiliar constraint, even guilt. But then she thought, It’s not even God that I have to thank, it’s myself; nevertheless, she retained a semi-superstitious gratitude—to fate. After all, she had tried to bargain with God, or whoever, about the safety of Harry, and so far it looked as though he, or
He
, would keep his side of the bargain.

The circumstances of Russ’s death indeed were, as Cynthia had said to Harry, an awful mess. The fact of its taking place in a small town in East Texas was, as many observed, very unfortunate. In that particular town, there had already been a certain amount of “trouble”—trouble including a couple of razor fights and more than a couple of rock-throwing riots, all having to do with the occasional presence of Negro soldiers, many of whom were from the North, Detroit or someplace like that, and not used to Southern ways.

The local paper announced that in the “sudden death” of
the “promising” Southern poet, novelist, and playwright, James Russell Lowell Byrd, “foul play” was suspected, thus getting almost everything wrong, including the list of his children: nine, instead of the actual seven, and SallyJane Caldwell Byrd as the surviving wife, instead of Deirdre. The fact that the coroner had announced a heart attack was not mentioned.

As Dolly Bigelow put it, “However can they call a man of Russ Byrd’s age promising? Promising what? More children? You reckon he had some more that we don’t even know about, maybe out there in Hollywood? Like those novels that he was supposed to be the author of. You reckon they got him confused with Jimmy Hightower?” But Dolly too thought something was wrong. “Something suspicious, Russ just dying like that, out there with that colored soldier, and no money on him. And the colored soldier with a whole big wad on him, upwards of one hundred dollars, the way I heard it.”

The “colored soldier” was actually Edward Faulkner, from Roxbury, Massachusetts, at twenty-eight one of the youngest Negro sergeants in the Army. And the dispute in Texas seemed to be, at first, about whether a civil or a military team should investigate—which was soon settled. Since he had been discharged, the Army could not try him.

All this came through to Pinehill in snippets, small paragraphs wedged in among the more important pieces of real news, about the war. News from Leningrad, from the Marshall and Solomon Islands, from the Ukraine and Crimea.

Since Deirdre was away, no one knew what she thought about anything.

• • •

Having wondered and worried about Melanctha, Cynthia at last decided simply to call her. If Melanctha didn’t want to talk or to be seen, she could say so.

But what Melanctha said was, “Tea? I’d really like that. No, don’t come for me. I can drive Russ’s car.”

“Russ.” Had she ever called him Daddy, or Father? Cynthia couldn’t remember. In any case, it was strange, very strange, to see what had been Russ’s old dark green Chevy pull into her driveway, and to watch the brisk emergence of Melanctha, in a new blue coat.

“She sure do favor him,” murmured Odessa, also watching, at Cynthia’s side; they both stood near a window in the front of the house.

“The dead spit, as Dolly would say. Or almost,” Cynthia murmured in return. And both women smiled, acknowledging mutual affection as well as the tacitly agreed on foolishness of Dolly.

Once inside the house, though, divested of her coat and sitting with the tea that Odessa almost immediately brought in, Melanctha looked less like Russ and more like an extremely pretty, almost beautiful girl—herself, pale and somewhat strained (her mouth especially showed strain, in its compression, tight corners); her eyes looked larger, a darker blue, and intense—hers were passionate eyes. Too intense, too passionate, Cynthia judged. That girl will have a lot of trouble; well, she already has. Melanctha’s hair was pulled back smoothly (Cynthia approved of this), the thick curls (Russ’s curls) all under control.

After some preliminary weather conversation—they agreed that the rain seemed ended, spring was almost there—Cynthia gently inquired, “Well, how’re you doing, generally? You’re feeling okay?”

“I’m really upset—” Melanctha flushed, and looked down. “I mean of course about Russ, but about that Negro, the sergeant. Those Texas people are saying all this terrible stuff, and there isn’t anything anyone can do. Especially me, everyone says. Russ’s lawyer—I guess he’s my lawyer now—said for me to go down there or even call would be ‘most unbecoming.’ Can you imagine? Most unbecoming, when we’re talking about a man who may be on trial for something he absolutely did not do.”

The flush on her face was attractive, as was the animation with which Melanctha spoke. Still, her concentrated excitement made Cynthia uneasy—it seemed so clearly a cover for darker, deeper feelings, related to Russ.

“Actually,” Melanctha confessed, “I did call one of the papers down there, and—you won’t believe this—he said they didn’t need any ‘outside agitators.’ God, what does he think I am, a Russian Communist?”

“Probably it’ll all just die down, don’t you think?”