Juneteenth (45 page)

Sweeping on, with smoke and flame pouring from its stack, the engine screamed again as it plunged toward a rise of rocky country that lay to the west. And suddenly it was as though he were watching a scene from a silent movie—with the train hurtling toward a point in the rocks where, as it approached, a spot grew like that which blossoms in a paper napkin at the touch of a lighted cigarette. Widening mysteriously around its periphery, the hole was turning rapidly inward upon itself and in a flash the three figures, the train and sunlit surrounding scene had vanished, leaving behind only the cindered grade, the cross ties and gleaming rails, now running in steely convergence into the darkness of a void
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For a moment the Senator had the impression of gazing toward a huge rumpled sheet which hung against the landscape with a mysterious hole burned in its center, but still hearing the muffled, clicking sound of the receding train he got to his feet and plunged in jolting, stiff-legged bounds down the grade and into the trees
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The Senator was moving through deep country now, the sound of the train a faint rumble in the distance. Here in the shade of the trees the air was clear and cool and he walked beneath stands of towering walnuts, oaks and cottonwoods that grew in clumps broken by parklike spaces of grass accented by bushes and trailing vines. His leg and palms smarted from his fall but now he moved ahead with a sense of relief, breathing the spicy air and trying to recall when he had passed through such woods before
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Off to his right an abandoned apple orchard stood with gnarled limbs in surreal disarray and farther beyond he could see a stand of elders displaying clusters of dark red berries in the sunlight. He was moving in silence, brushing embedded cinders from his palms and stepping carefully to protect his injured leg—when, suddenly, a covey of quail flushed at his feet, breaking the cathedral quiet with a roar that caused his heart to pound and his nerves to hum as he watched the rocketing birds reel off and sail with set wings into a nearby thicket. A dampness broke over his skin, chilling him as he watched where the birds had blended magically into the background, and for a moment he stood silent, searching in vain for the slightest telltale motion from the quail
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Now the afternoon was motionless, the brown and green foliage where the birds had gone inscrutable. But for the distant cry of a single bird the only sound was that of his own breathing and the Senator’s mind stirred with excitement, thinking: Surprise, speed and camouflage are the faith, hope and charity of escape, and the essence of strategy. Yes, and scenes dictate masks and masks scenes. Therefore the destructive element offers its own protective sanctuary. Hunting codes are a concern of human hunters or otherwise. To imaginate is to integrate negatives and positives into a viable program supporting one’s own sense of value. Flown before the unseeing hand the bird crouches safe in the bush. Therefore freedom is a willful blending of opposites, a conscious mixing of ungreen, unbrown things and thoughts into a brown-green shade.… Where’s the light? What’s the tune? What’s the time?

For a moment he mused, his eyes playing along the quiet hedge. There was something missing from the formula but he would work it out later, for now he must move ahead
.

But hardly had he approached a mossy clearing in the trees than the Senator froze again. Before him two foxes were moving past at a leisurely trot, their elegant brushes floating weightlessly upon the quiet air. One fox carried a limp rabbit retriever-wise in its jaws and he could see the lazy flopping of the rabbit’s leaf-veined ears, observed its white powder puff of a tail. And now, reaching the center of the clearing the animals paused, delicately sniffing the air as they regarded him quietly out of the amber remoteness of vulpine eyes. One of the animals was gravid and the forgotten image of plump fox puppies playing upon the hard bare bone- and feather-strewn earth before a rocky burrow flashed through his mind and a fragment from the scriptures sang in his head:

Oh, the foxes have holes in the ground
But son of man … son of man …

And before the quiet confrontation of their eyes the Senator stood breathless, feeling a breeze passing over the dampness of his arms and watching a lazy rippling begin to play through the fur of the foxes. And he felt the hairs stirring lightly along his own forearms as the breeze blew slowly past pointed muzzles and alerted ears to part with a gentle, silklike ruffling the long fine fur of the high-held tails
.

Oh, the foxes have holes in the ground
But son of man, son of man …

Then imperceptibly the foxes moved, becoming with no impression of speed twin streaks of red moving past the thicket of green, and he watched their brushes floating dreamlike into the undergrowth
.

All this I’ve known, the Senator thought, but had forgotten.… Then in the sudden hush, accented by a pheasant’s cry, he felt as though no trains nor towns nor sermons existed. He was at peace. Here was no need to escape nor search for Eden, nor need to solve his mystery. But again he moved, somehow compelled to go ahead….

Soon the Senator was beyond the woods, his throat throbbing with nameless emotion stirred by the foxes, and he moved with inward-turning eyes—until, high above, where it flashed like a minnow in an inverted bowl of a clear blue lake, a small plane caught his eye and he moved beneath the boughs of a pine tree, watching the plane bank languidly into the sun to write in smoke across the sky:

Niggers

     
Stay
Away
     
From
The Polls

And watching the words expand and drift in ghostlike shapes he shook his fist at the sky and ran again, cursing the taut constriction of the sand
.

Following the upward slant of the terrain the Senator found himself approaching a crowd gathered below the terrace of a clubhouse resting on the broad, level surface of a cliff which overlooked a winding river. Below the cliff and atop the river’s farther bank, a flock of grazing sheep was strung out along a rolling meadow, making dark foreshortened shadows against the green; and far below, past the brown and gray outcroppings of the meadow’s rocky edge, he could see the dark swirl and sparkle of the river as it flowed past a pile of boulders which protruded white and brilliant in the sun
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There was a feeling of holiday in the air now, and on the terrace he could see uniformed waiters serving pale yellow melon, frosted drinks and ices to smiling couples who lounged at tables set in the pastel shade of brightly colored parasols
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Moving painfully through the fashionable crowd the Senator squeezed past handsome women clad in sports clothing, and tweedy, heavily tanned men sporting alpine hats decorated with the feathers of a game bird, silver-mounted brushes of badger fur or tiny medals celebrating the hunt, and was suddenly aware of the fresh scents the women wore, the fine, smooth texture of their complexions. Then he had pressed to the front of the crowd and found himself leaning against a low barrier that fenced off the broad semicircle of a grassy shooting ring
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To his right, just inside the barrier a group of men with guns cradled in the crooks of their arms were looking out to the center of the ring where three workmen knelt in the grass working over a device attached to a length of rubber hosing. The hosing ran back to a truck parked at the rear where it was attached to the storage tank of a mobile air compressor. Other workmen, wearing black berets and blue coveralls, were standing in groups of three at four stations arranged at equal distances across the ring, all marked, like that where the men were working, by stacks of bright yellow dovecotes. They too were looking toward the kneeling, frantically busy men; and back near the compressor truck the Senator could see dozens of dovecotes stacked high on a wagon before which a small, bony horse with docked tail, wearing a farmer’s straw hat in which holes had been cut for its twitching ears, dozed wearily between the shafts. Then, as though someone had pulled a switch, the Senator was aware of the throbbing sound made by the cooing of many birds. The dovecotes were crammed with pigeons and he could see the nervous motion of their beaked heads thrusting back and forth between the bars. The air throbbed with the sound of their cooing reminding him of a crowd of summer passengers looking out of the grill of a trolley car as they commented on something out in the passing scene
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And now as the annoyed voices of the spectators began drowning out the noise of the birds, he saw the men drawing erect and heard one of them call out to the men with guns:

“O.K., gentlemen, it’s now in working order.”

“And it’s damn well time,” a spectator called; then a bell sounded and the
Senator could see a uniformed official wearing a green sun visor stepping across the springing turf and signaling to a marksman who took the firing line and the action was resumed
.

Suddenly at the cry of “MARK!” the Senator heard a fierce sound like that of air bursting from a punctured tire and saw a surprised pigeon bouncing some twenty feet into the air above the trap, hanging there for an instant of flurried indecision then taking off on a swift, rising course to the right; and he could see the marksman now, taking his time, his feet precisely placed, swinging smoothly onto and past the rising bird, and at the sound of the shot the bird abruptly folding on its course and as a second shot exploded, bursting apart in the air
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“Onesie, twosie, it’s a doosie,” a supercilious voice called behind him, but before he could turn to see who it was, the cry of “MARK!” came again and he was watching a pigeon taking off to the left and halting suddenly as though struck by a baseball bat, its feathers flying, as yet another bird shot aloft on a screeching jet of air
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Having dropped his final bird, the smiling marksman stepped back with lowered gun waving as applause and shouts of “Bravo!” erupted from the spectators; and now, as another gunman took the firing line, the action accelerated, moving so swiftly that the Senator had an uneasy feeling that things were getting out of hand. A fateful accuracy marked the match, disturbing him profoundly as the gunners, coming and going in swift rotation, took continued advantage of second shots and made great slaughter on the grass
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Suddenly, as a huge marksman wearing baggy seersucker pants took the line, a small, stooped, stiff-necked man appeared smoking a long cigar. As he came prancing along just inside the ring and waving a sheaf of banknotes about, he yelled, “Heads, gentlemen! I’m taking bets on heads alone!”

Heads, the Senator thought, what does he mean …?

“What! Are you kidding?” another man called
.

“Not kidding, sir,” the little man said. “I’m betting a thousand that he
leads the next bird so precisely that the pattern alone will take off the head and leave the body untouched.”

“You’re nuts and you’re covered,” the second man called; and now as the next pigeon sprang free the Senator watched the huge marksman wave his gun about like a weighted pool cue, wait until the bird had leveled, then cut loose shooting from the hip. And now he could see something fly away from the bird to sail across the ring as its body continued a few feet in headless flight and then collapsed
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There was wild applause and the Senator watched the little man laughing and dancing a jig step as he waved a fistful of money and yelled:

“Heads today and tails tomorrow! Heads! Heads! Heads! Who’ll bet three grand that he touched nairy a tail feather, a breast feather, nor nairy a feather in either wing? Speak up!”

“What’s the bet?” someone called from the rear
.

“No breast! No tail! No wing! And ding-a-ding-ding at three thousand bucks a number seven shot,” the little man called
.

“Covered!” the voice called, and as the Senator watched the little man scampering around the ring to where an attendant was picking up the headless bird the betting became furious
.

Returning with the bird now plucked of its feathers, the little man displayed it proudly, pointing to the unblemished state of its skin and collecting his bets with an air of fierce satisfaction
.

“How about you, sir,” he called to the Senator, his teeth clamped fiercely upon his long cigar, “you look like a man of quality, a betting man. Clarence has one bird left in the set and I’ll bet you ten thousand that he’ll turn him over easy, or turn him over slow. He’ll hit him high, he’ll hit him low—tip, tail, wing or duster—as you please, sir. Just say the word.”

“No,” the Senator said, “not today or ever.”

The little man laughed, revealing a set of wolfish teeth. “Smoked you out, didn’t I,” he said. “Four little children and a very nowhere wife, is that it?”

But when the Senator started to answer he moved quickly back into the
crowd—which was stirring about and roaring so loudly that the Senator quickly lost sight of him
.

Out in the ring now the traps were being sprung in no discernible order and the firing becoming so rapid that windrows of ejected cartridge hulls were piling up near the firing line. Rings of sweat showed at the armpits of the gunners’ jackets and the Senator could see waves of heat dancing along the vented gun barrels. Things were getting so much out of hand that he felt that the officials should do something to restore order, or at least slow the pace, but none were to be seen. And as fast as one stack of dovecotes was emptied of birds the handlers rushed replacements to the traps
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