False Entry (46 page)

“Its Nature: Six outstanding features are … are particularized in describing the nature of this Order. Klansmen will do well to fix them in mind … so that they will know the kind of an order they have joined.” I hesitated, went on.

“
Patriotic.
One of the paramount purposes of this Order … is to exemplify a pure patriotism toward our country. Every Klansman is taught from the beginning of his connection with the movement that it is his duty to be patriotic toward our country. And … and when he knelt at the Sacred Altar of the Klan, he was solemnly and symbolically dedicated to the holy service of our country.

“In its influence and its … its teachings and its principles … the Order seeks to generate … impart a spirit of loyalty to America … consecration to her ideals … fealty to her institutions … support of her government … obedience to her laws—and unselfish devotion to her interests.” Now I had it, at a clip.

“
Military
,” I said. “This characteristic feature applies to its form of organization and its method of operations. It is so organized on a military plan that the whole power of the whole Order, or of any part of it, may be used in quick, united action for the execution of the purposes of the Order. There are definite, concrete tasks to be done—”

In the pause I took for breath, Hake cleared his throat, a hoarse sound from those pale business lips. “Can the clerk get all of this down verbatim?”

Boldly I answered for Dobbin. “Mr. Whitlock is the retired clerk of this court, a very experienced man.” Old Clarence Whitlock, known to me as a lightning gabbler of petitions, otherwise as Keeper of the Seal and recording Kligrapp, raised his great bagged eyes, mournfully clowned by death but still bypassed, and bent again to his pencil.

And Dobbin’s face shone with my mastery, as once Demuth’s had done, hearing me on the terms of the Pacification of Ghent, fourteen pages from the Wars of the Roses—all once as swarming with blood-images as this, tracked, one after the other, by processions as alive as this. Standing there, on the steppingstone that lies, ego and innocence had built for me, I may even have seen into that unity of history where all its evils blended, but I had no more time for this than any other man, and chose one. I turned to the new men on the right.

Nearest the middle, a small, round-headed young clerk, he looked to be, sat holding up the large nose that had forged ahead of him, its upturned nostrils as open, aspiring toward knowledge, as his mouth. I spoke to him.

“Pages nineteen to twenty-one,” I said, “treat of The Invisible Empire, its two-fold Significance, Territorial Divisions and Conventions, plus a definition of what is therein termed The Alien World. If you wish, I can give any of this or the following in detail.” But he only stared at me and I went on, softly. “To page twenty-five: Membership in all its categories—which are Racial, Masculine, National, Religious, Mental, Character, Reputation, Vocation, Residence, Age, and How Membership is Attainable.” Still he said nothing, and I left him with that and passed on.

Next to him was a man wearing thick glasses, whom I knew by sight as the pharmacist in the new Walgreen’s at Charlotte—a man always to be heard fuming restlessly back and forth behind his counter while at his compounds, grumbling at everything—from the weather to the state of the nation—on which his pharmacopoeia could give him no answer. He too was here, perhaps, in default of finding a single prescription. “Pages twenty-five to forty-two,” I said to him. “The Emperor of the Invisible Empire, His Responsibilities. The Imperial Klonvokation. The Imperial Kloncilium. Their Powers and Functions. The Imperial Wizard. His Position, Authority and Power.” He remained immobile.

“Revenues, Realms and Provinces,” I said, pleading to those thick lenses. “How a Realm May be Organized. The Initial Klonverse. The Klorero.” I looked up and down their row and I could tell nothing. It must seem to them, as almost now it did to me, that I was reciting the black verse of nightmare, or only the comic thrill of a child’s campfire—at best some cabalism of a star too distant for combat.

In desperation, I turned back to Dobbin. And Dobbin, himself barely wrested from dream, shaking his head like a man emerging from water, understood me. “And now the local Klans themselves,” he said. “The working units.” He brought his fist down, hard, on the table. All along the line, men, lulled in postures of enchantment, awoke.

“Pages forty-two,” I said, “to the end.”

Dobbin, lips parted, stood very close, as if we were to speak in chorus, match theme to theme. “What are the Requirements of a Klansman?”

“Requirements. And all Klansmen are strictly enjoined to valiantly preserve and persistently practice the principles of pure Patriotism, Honor, Klannishness, and White Supremacy, ever keeping in mind and heart the sacred sentiment, peculiar purpose, manly mission and lofty ideals of this Order … loyalty to their Emperor and Imperial Wizard … faithful keeping of their Oath of Allegiance … constant, unwavering fidelity to every interest of the Invisible Empire … the influence of Klankraft to be properly promoted … and that they be blameless in preserving the grace, dignity and intent of their Charter forever.” I looked at Hake. “That’s not verbatim. But it’s the gist.”

“Can you give the Charge?” said Dobbin. How impeccably he had learned last night’s brief lesson! Only now did it occur to me—why it might be he had accepted my story so readily. One man’s special recall, so weird to the general, would be no surprise to another of the same. But there was no time to consider this, now.

“The Charge,” I said. “I (The Imperial Wizard) solemnly charge you to hold fast to the dauntless faith of our Fathers and to keep their spotless memory secure and unstained, and true to the traditions of our valiant sires, meet every behest of Duty … without fault, without fail, without fear and without reproach.”

“What are the Offenses against the Order?” He had quickened the pace. I matched it.

“The Major Offenses are treason against the United States of America, support of any foreign power, relinquishment of citizenship. Violating the Oath of Allegiance, Constitution or Laws of the Order. Disrespect of virtuous womanhood. Habitual drunkenness, profanity or vulgarity during a klonklave. Being responsible for the polluting of Caucasian blood through miscegenation, or the commission of any act unworthy of a Klansman. White men must not mix their blood with that of colored or other inferior races.”

“How are offenses tried?”

“By tribunal. In organized Realms, by a Grand Tribunal, composed of Hydras, Furies, Exalted Cyclops and similar statewide officials. In Klans, by the same on a local scale.”

“Describe the Sitting of the Tribunal. Who are present?”

“Klan officers, and eight Klansmen selected by lot, by a member wearing the hoodwink. A prosecutor. The defendant, represented by a member. Witnesses who are Klansmen.”

“What are the Penalties?”

“Reprimand. Suspension. Banishment. Ostracism in all things, by all members of the Order.”

A low assent came from the left somewhere, like an “Amen” in church. On my right, the phalanx of heads slowly turned in that direction. I did not need to. Frazer again, quickly hushed by someone.

Dobbin waited. “And—now—” he said, ponderous as he had been quick, his tone a signal that the recital was almost over. “The Oath of Allegiance. Will you oblige us?”

“Obedience,” I said. I said it to Lemon, but he was looking elsewhere. “Secrecy.” Rollins also. “Fidelity.” And Nellis, long-chinned Nellis, the same. At Semple. “Nishness.”

“Nishness!” said Hake. Throughout, he had been sitting arms folded, the polished knob of his head scarcely glinting. Now the word whistled from him, as if escaped through the small hole between the lips that Buddhas sometimes had. He leaned forward, in the pale summer suit that was cut like Dobbin’s. The young clerk beside him shifted with uneasy awe—this was the general superintendent. “You sure he isn’t dreaming some of this up? Jesus Christ, Dobbin. Nishness!”

“Yes, I’m sure.” Dobbin said this over his shoulder, on his way to answer a knocking at the door. “Better if he were.” He opened the door on Felix the guard, who managed an inquisitive look round before he handed something over. Dobbin walked back slowly, reading what had been given him. “Better if he were,” he repeated absently, and shoved the yellow form into a pocket. He passed in front of me. “Sit down, will you please!” I sat down. When he was sure that he was the center of interest, he nodded in all the requisite directions, let himself slide by degrees into a chair, as a tall man can, and leaned back, hands clasped at his neck behind, long legs stretched before. He had us all where he wanted us. The clock said four.

“Okay, Mr. Semple,” he said. “Your witness.”

I answered quickly, before Semple could, feeling inordinately nimble, precise. With the recital just done, I thought, my second wind had come; really it was my first—the wind that had been blowing me toward this spot for a long, long time. Upborne in its current, I remembered many things at once—and they were all the same. Once again I felt the hermetic privilege of opening the side door of the Pridden place, the involuntary, peculiar comfort as I stood within the gate, inside. To none of you any longer, I thought, remembering the lesson that was not in German; to all who had asked to be called
du
I had listened, and now I too was speaking. I too entered the world—through a door that no one had expected, and for a brief time I saw that the light of Tuscana could be as brilliant as anywhere on earth.

“There’ll be no need for questions,” I said. “I’ll just tell what happened.”

Semple and I sat opposite, not more than a few yards between. For a moment, or so it seemed, the room ceded us our silence—two cocks, before what hoods were slipped? Had he already thought of Johnny? Neither of us could see the other’s private vision, but surely for him too the room and its men of either side had dropped away, were of no more account than poor Fourchette there, thralled now in his afternoon sleep—and as far. Who sat opposite Semple? Opposite me—who? The adversary? All the villainy and fright of the world, convenient in one neck for hands to squeeze.

I put mine down quietly on the table between us. “As he knows it did,” I said, and I began.

“That day—that day—my mother and stepfather had gone to Memphis for the week, leaving me on my own. It was market day; the stores were supposed to be open till nine. But your store closed early that night, didn’t it, Mr. Semple? And the café never opened up at all. But in the café, behind those windows painted green halfway up, there was plenty going on. I knew, because they’d had me coat the upper parts with Bon-Ami the day before. Anyone could tell there was still something going on, though. Maybe they wanted the niggers to know it. They had the wood piled there—early that morning I’d helped them truck it in from the grove—two-by-fours for the bracing pieces and logs both—pitch pine that had been cut a while back and let season—they always kept the grove well thinned. And the café telephone went all day long. I wasn’t allowed to do any of the phoning of course; my voice hadn’t even changed yet.” Johnny’s had, but he hadn’t been allowed.

“Everyone else took a turn at it. ‘Stay in tonight, nigger!’ was all they had to say, then hang up on them.” Meanwhile, Johnny had done the legwork. “My job kept me running back and forth between the depots where the cars were supposed to line up that evening. Market day was a help; even so, isn’t the easiest thing to round up fifty, sixty cars in a town this size. Ran my feet off in the morning. I didn’t have no—any bike.” Careful. “Then when they found I could drive, they let me—wasn’t far. Trout’s Garage, we used, many private yards as we could, and the M & H Livery.” I caught my breath; surely now he would know me, or whom I stood for. I meant him to. “First time I’d ever driven any car but my uncle’s; if I didn’t remember anything else, I’d never forget that. A sweet job she was—I don’t suppose she’s around town any more.” On the table, my hands moved closer to each other. “Old Packard with a hundred-forty-five-inch wheelbase. Ran like a dream, she did. Came from Montgomery. Built for a man six and a half feet tall.”

His eyelids flickered. He’d got it. I waited. “Maybe you do have a question, Mr. Semple?”

If he made any further move, I did not see it. But his eyes must have looked like that at Johnny—through the slits in the hoodwink.

“Of course, we didn’t go anywhere near your store,” I said. “We had special orders not to. And we didn’t.”

“Why not?” said Hake. “What store is that?”

Even Nellis, whose long muzzle was always pointed sideways at his master, turned with most of the rest of them there on the left, to look at Hake with amazement. Power shifts so quietly, seen only intermittently, even by those who already feel the need to sit together.

“Mr. Semple is the factor for Rhine’s,” I said quickly. “Used to be the biggest store in the county. Before they built the bypass.”

“Oh, I know that place.” It was the clerk with the big nose who spoke up eagerly, in a voice like a young drake’s. “That’s where they hold the cockfights—at least, I’ve never been, but I—” His voice trailed off, suddenly recalling whom, by the chances of citizenship, it sat next to. Equality was not enough. Before our eyes, he shriveled. Hake did not even look at him.

“Easier to close up the café, for one thing,” I said. “And it was nearer the new state road. Tuscana had itself an entrance to that then, before the dams went. Mr. Semple will recall it.”

He said nothing.

“The plan was simple. Cars to line up there at nine o’clock, at the edge of town. Men to dress in them when they got there. Each man had his place in a car, same as a funeral.” Same as a funeral, Johnny had said, sliding a look at me, then away again. “Every car had a number. Pace set at eight to ten miles an hour—it was a mile and a half to where the macadam ended, at the base of the dams, where the procession was to stop and watch. Only the lead cars were to go on to the top. Two farm trucks and two eight-cylinder tourers. One for each dam.” My fingers laced together. “The Packard was at the head of the line. She was almost new then; had an extra gear could pull her put of a ditch like a tractor. She was to carry the Exalted Cyclops and the Night Hawk up to Number Three Dam, the highest.”