Daybreak (36 page)

So Tom sat with his fierce, bitter thoughts and the little dead dog held tight. The engine hummed. The cricket choir sang through the silence.

   Laura, in her pink bathrobe, was on the big lounge chair in the bedroom reading when the doorbell rang. She wondered, since it was past nine o’clock, who it could possibly be. Cautiously, she went down and opened the door a few inches with the chain on.

“Police, ma’am. Are you Mrs. Rice?”

She went cold. Through the crack in the doorway she was able to see the uniform and in the driveway the car with flashing lights.”

“Yes,” she said. “Come in.”

He entered the hall and stood there, halting, with his cap in his hand. Very young, younger than Laura, he was as frightened as she.

“There’s been an accident,” he began. “There was a driver’s license with the name of Homer Rice. That is, there was no car, just the license. Is—was—he your husband?”

She stared at him, thinking, He doesn’t know what he’s saying.

In the same instant, apparently, he realized that he was not making sense, so he added gently, “What I meant was, there was a meeting out in the country, out near Ramsey, and it seems that a wild car drove through, ran over some people, and—I wasn’t there, so I only know what I was told.”

There was, fortunately, a row of chairs in the hall, for her knees would not have carried her any farther.

“Homer Rice. My husband. Is he—” And she set her dry lips.

“The report is—he’s dead, ma’am.” The young man caught her arm as she swayed. “Is there—are you alone in the house? Is there anybody to call?”

She thought: I am watching this. I have seen it before. In the movies the woman’s face goes dead, she is still and calm, a zombie who can’t quite believe what has happened.

She said stiffly, “If you will call my friend who lives ten minutes away, she’ll come.” And she gave Betty Lee’s number. Her best friend Betty Lee would come. “The telephone’s in there. No, I’ll just sit here.”

Bud. A meeting near Ramsey. A car. Bud is dead. How queer. No, of course it’s not true. It’s somebody’s stupid mistake. The wrong name. The wrong place.

Then something struck her, and she screamed, “Tom! Tom!” rose from the chair and sank back with her hand on her heart.

The policeman came running. “Let me get your doctor. You shouldn’t be here like this. You—”

She stared up at him, crying wildly, imploring him, “Where’s my son? What happened to Tom?”

“I don’t know, ma’am. Nobody said anything. Only Mr. Homer Rice. Nothing about any Tom. I’m sure they would have if—”

Yes, of course they would have. They wouldn’t have sent the man here with only one name to report if there had been two. Would they? Would they? She gripped the arms of the chair and straightened her back. She whispered out loud.

“Hold on. Don’t make a spectacle of yourself. You have to wait. Something awful happens, and people
have to wait until something else can be done about it. That’s all it is. Wait, Laura.”

Then as she saw the anxious expression on the young man’s face (he thinks I’m about to go mad), she fell silent, holding her gaze toward the photographs opposite, the ones of her father in uniform and of her mother who waited at home, not knowing as each day’s sun rose, whether he was still alive.

When the doorbell rang, the officer answered, and she heard him murmuring in the vestibule to Betty Lee, so that when Betty Lee rushed to her, it was unnecessary to say a word, only to hold on to the strong shoulder.

“You can leave us, Officer,” Betty Lee told him. “I’m here.” And she told Laura to drink brandy. “I know you hate it, but even a thimbleful will help. Take my word.”

“They say Bud is dead. I don’t know what to do. Betty Lee, I don’t know what to do.”

“You need somebody here to tell you what happened, if it’s happened. You need somebody.”

Then it came to Laura: Fordyce would find out for her. He knew everyone. He wouldn’t like being called at home, but no matter.

“Our lawyer, Mr. Fordyce. His number’s in the book. Will you call him for me? I can’t seem to move off this chair. My legs have gone all strange. They won’t hold me.”

She heard wheels on the ground. A motor came up the rise, chugging like Bud’s van, and this time her legs did hold her as far as the kitchen door, where she fell upon Tom as he came in weeping at sight of her, sobbing in unintelligible gasps as she sobbed, too, and clasped him.

“Tom! Tom!”

“Oh Mom, what they did to him! If you could see—oh Jesus, what they did! But it was fast, so fast that I know he couldn’t have been scared, because he couldn’t have known it was coming. Like a knife in the back, the dirty bastards. They wouldn’t harm anybody, all those people, only a little while before they’d been praying in front of the cross, imagine it! And then the dirty, murdering bastards—”

It took five minutes to quiet this hysteria. Now, because Tom was alive, because he needed her, Laura’s legs began sturdily to hold her again, and her thoughts began to function.

In the library, as though the presence of a thousand books had some quieting effect, Tom spoke coherently. When Laura asked what kind of meeting it had been, he answered with only a trace of hesitation or reluctance.

“It was a gathering of the Ku Klux Klan. Dad was a member. I never knew that until he told me in the car on the way there.”

“The Ku Klux Klan!”

“Yes.” At Laura’s exclamation, Tom raised his head with elevated chin, in a movement either of pride or of defiance. “He didn’t want you to know because he said you wouldn’t approve.”

So you could live all these years with a person and not know a thing as fundamental as this …

“He held high office,” Tom said, “and he was about to be promoted. He’d been a member since the time I was born.”

The boy was not ashamed. There was an ignited spark in his wet eyes. And a shudder of fearful dismay shook through Laura.

“I plan to spend the rest of my life getting even. They killed my father.” And Tom clenched his fists. “He knew what he was talking about when he told me that enemies are everywhere. Little did he know they were coming after him. That very minute, they were on their way, while we were riding along minding our own business and he was telling me how he loved me.” Tom’s voice rose loud and cracking.

“What’s the matter?” asked Timmy. “You woke me up. What’s the matter, Tom? You’re crying.”

Tom sprang up and grabbed his brother into a tight hug. “Timmy, you’ve got to be brave. We’ve both got to be. We’ve lost our father, lost Dad.”

“What do you mean ‘lost’? Is he dead?”

“He’s dead, Timmy. We were at an outdoor meeting, there was a crowd and then a kill-and-run driver came through as fast as a bullet and ran right over people. Oh God, it was the worst thing I ever saw!”

Tom sobbed again, Timmy screamed, and Laura put her hands over her face to shut out the sight. And the three stayed huddled in the dim, lamp-lit room.

When Fordyce arrived, he was as efficient as always, quick to get the expected commiseration over with and to come to the point.

“I collected the reports by car phone on the way here. There are no suspects and not likely to be any found. There are three dead. Homer, your manager Pitt, and, to my astonishment, Luther Tyson, of all people, from the Merchants and Providence Trust. I would never have guessed it in a million years. The Ku Klux Klan! Not that I would have guessed it about Homer, either,” Fordyce added with his nose wrinkled in disdain.

Much as Laura otherwise disliked the man’s habitual
cold arrogance, she could hardly fault him for his disdain of the Ku Klux Klan and for anyone, for any “gentleman” who would identify himself with it. Besides, she knew Fordyce hadn’t thought much of Bud lately; he had scarcely tried to hide his exasperation with him because of his conduct in the Crawfield affair.

Tom spoke up. “Dad held an important office. He was soon to be the Grand of a Dominion.”

Fordyce did not answer, but addressing Laura instead, asked whether she had known about Bud’s membership.

Tom answered for her. “Dad said he didn’t tell Mom because he knew she wouldn’t approve. She doesn’t—didn’t—even approve of his supporting Johnson for the senate.”

Fordyce gave him an angry look. “Suppose you let your mother speak for herself,” he said.

This harshness, slight as it was, brought fresh tears to Laura’s eyes; she was abruptly conscious of herself, a pitiable figure, disheveled in her dressing gown, an instant widow with a frail, sick boy and a defiant one. She could read the pity in Fordyce’s eyes.

“Tom,” she said firmly, “don’t interrupt, please. I am at sea, and Mr. Fordyce has come here to the rescue.”

Fordyce looked grateful. “So you were not aware at all.”

“Not at all. He always said he had almost no interest in politics.”

Fordyce nodded. “This will cause some stir in the business community. I’m afraid a lot of respectable people are going to come under suspicion. When a man in Tyson’s position hides under a robe and hood, it makes you wonder. Well,” he said briskly, “that’s
none of your concern tonight, is it? I was wondering, is there anybody you’d like me to inform? Save you the task? Your aunts, of course.”

“No, I’m not going to send a cable to Egypt or wherever they might be now and frighten the life out of them. To say nothing of spoiling their once-in-a-lifetime trip.”

“You’ll make your own—arrangements, then? I suppose you’ll want it at Foster’s church?”

“Yes, Bud was an active member.” How can that have been? It made no sense, mixing the Klan with a church that stood for everything directly opposite.

“I’ll be happy to call him for you. I go to church at the other end of town, but I know Foster well. We were at prep school at the same time, he a year behind me. As a matter of fact, I think I should call him right now. It might help you to have a talk with him tonight.”

“Thank you. I’d like that.”

Tom and Timmy also needed a kind, strong voice. Timmy looked like a forlorn young bird, sitting there with his wide mouth, Bud’s mouth, hanging open.

In spite of his courtesy, there was no comfort in Fordyce’s flat, brief sentences. No doubt he would prefer to wash his hands of clients like us, Laura thought. This was the second time in weeks that the Rices had given him work he would much rather not do.

At that moment, Timmy burst forth with a cry so piercing that everyone jumped.

“What happened to Earl? Tom, is Earl dead, too?”

“Earl?” asked Fordyce.

“His dog.” And Laura turned a questioning look toward Tom, who made a helpless gesture.

“He was standing with Dad.”

“So they killed him, too?” Timmy shrieked.

“Yes.” Tom’s arm drew Timmy close. “I brought him home. I thought you might want to bury him in the backyard.”

Timmy wrested himself away, demanding, “Where is he? I want to see him.”

Betty Lee, who had come running in from the kitchen, interposed. “No, you don’t, honey. I looked, and I think you should remember him as he was.”

But Timmy was already brushing past her. Laura heard the backdoor slam, Tom’s and Betty Lee’s protests, and last, Timmy’s anxious wail at the sight of Earl’s body, which Tom had apparently left where the van was parked.

Frightened, Laura murmured, “He’s still weak, just out of the hospital. This is too much for him.”

“You have your hands full.”

The remark was banal and Fordyce regretted it immediately. But he was no good at this sort of thing, uncomfortable with what one might call “human interest” problems. He was a lawyer’s lawyer, adept at the unraveling of knots, and would be helpful in the crisis that would inevitably occur at Rice and Son. With Pitt dead, there’d be no one left to manage it.

He was glad, though, that he had at least been able to keep the Crawfield matter out of the newspapers, so far, anyway. It was all she needed, to have that affair leaked to the world! Poor woman. He was relieved when the bell rang and Foster arrived.

   At midnight Laura and Tom were still in the library with the minister. The doctor, whom Foster consulted over the telephone, had recommended hot milk for Timmy and bed rest at once. Against his will, Betty Lee had managed to get him to bed and he was now asleep.

“I remember you in Sunday school when you were in first grade,” Foster told Tom. He was by now so weary that even his voice was weak. “Why ever do you think that you can stand out in my mind from so many other children after all this time? Well, for one thing, because you were such a bright little boy, and for another I suppose, because I knew your parents so well. They were involved, always involved, in the community.”

“That’s what makes no sense!” Laura cried yet again. “How Bud could be—and to think that his father was a preacher, too!”

“The religion that Bud grew up with is not yours and not mine,” Foster said quietly. “It was fire and brimstone, mostly. Those were narrow lives in narrow places.”

“But to have dissembled all these years!” And she clasped her hands together as if beseeching an explanation from Foster.

“That’s not uncommon, Laura, unfortunately.”

Tom had been fidgeting, trying to control himself in the minister’s presence. Now he gave in to anger.

“You talk, both of you, as if Dad had been some sort of monster. How can you talk that way about him? You, especially, Mom. I can’t believe the things I’m hearing you say.”

“I never said he was a monster. He was my husband. But the things he obviously believed in—guns, blood, hate—those things are monstrous. To hate another human being because he’s not quite like you, when he has as much right to live on earth as you have!”

“He hasn’t. That’s hogwash. People aren’t equal, and one man is not as good as another.”

Dr. Foster interrupted. “When you were in Sunday
school, we didn’t teach you anything like that, Tom. And I, too, have read some of the Klan’s program, supposedly written in God’s name, and it’s heresy, that’s what it really is. I’m astonished that you don’t see it, Tom,” he finished.

“I didn’t say I believe in the Klan.” He felt naked in the chair with those two pairs of sorrowful eyes judging him. He felt martyred for Bud’s sake. My father, he thought, and continued, “But some kinds of people
are
better than others. I’ll stand by that. And those people who killed my father—” His anger flowed into a rage. “I’m going to find out who did that and torture him to death.”