Original Sins (42 page)

Raymond sat in the sun on the roof, reading about himself in the Chattanooga and Newland papers. He was covered with dark bruises. His nose and several ribs had been broken, and he had stitches in his scalp. He was a hero. Justin offered to shake wrists with him. Maria invited him to the roof for a blow job, which he declined. All he could think about was the gratitude he'd felt toward those guys. It baffled and appalled him. He stared at his high school graduation picture on the front page of the paper, his eyes shifting to the date under the logo—May 2, 1964.

He looked out across the fields, carpeted by bright yellow dandelions. 1964. A hundred years ago these fields had been filled with marching soldiers and booming artillery.

At this time of year in Tatro Cove he and Jed and their cousins used to climb the hills filling paper sacks with dandelion blossoms, which their grandpa would make into wine. In his cellar dandelion wine from previous years would start fermenting again, as though somehow aware that the fields were abloom. A few corks would blow, spewing wine around the cellar.

Those boys had beaten him shitless thinking he was a Yankee. But he was actually one of them—a redneck, cracker, peckerwood, clay eater, poor white, white trash, hillbilly, ridge-runner, rebel, stumpjumper. All labels pinned on Southern working people by the Yankees. He'd grown up surrounded by boys like those who'd beaten him up. Any of the three could have been Jed. He knew all about their stubborn pride, their trigger-quick anger, their resentment of outside criticism and coercion, their loathing of men who didn't display these characteristics. He understood what had provoked them into attacking him. They were descendants of the fierce over-mountain men who'd routed the British at King's Mountain. And so, by God, was he.

He climbed down from the roof and walked over to the Randalls', trying to decide what to do now that it was clear to him that his participation in the project was a bad joke. He watched the children playing house and snapped an occasional picture. Looking up, he saw Mr. Randall striding across the yard to say in a low trembling voice, “What you always hanging around here for, son?”

Raymond looked at him with surprise. “I …”

“Gwan. Get out of here. We don't want you round no more, hear?”

“But I …”

“Can't you hear me, son? I said gwan.”

Raymond backed toward the road. As he turned to walk away, Mr. Randall caught up with him and handed him a crumpled piece of paper. The childish scrawl read “
THIS CAN HAPPEN TO RED-LOVING NIGGERS TO
.”

“What can?”

“Killed our cat. Hung her up from a tree in the woods and set her on fire.” His face crumpled, then quickly resumed its facade.

“Who did?”

“Whoever writ that note. Probably the same gentlemens who beat you all black and blue like that. So don't come out here no more. Please.”

“I won't.” He backed away, sweeping the surrounding woods and fields with his eyes. “I… shit, I'm sorry.”

“Yeah, me too, son. Watch out now, hear?”

This was a result of the project, Raymond concluded. How he wasn't sure, but he meant to figure it out.

The project people concurred with his decision to return early to New York. Back there he spent hours studying the pictures he'd taken of sharecroppers. White or Negro, their houses, their crops, their clothes, their children's games and toys were identical. He put together a book juxtaposing photos of the Randalls and of white tenant families in identical poses in front of similar houses, and a publisher accepted it.

The others were soon back from Tennessee, and FORWARD meetings resumed. Raymond felt confused to be a hero as a result of an undertaking he now repudiated. Because Justin was being sarcastic to him, Raymond saw that he now had sufficient clout to influence the course of FORWARD—if only he understood in what direction to exert that influence. Unfortunately, he lacked Justin's brains and education.

Justin for the time being had them focusing on fund raising. Carson came up to see Maria, and FORWARD had a cocktail party at Justin's parents' penthouse on Central Park West. The large living room was packed with businessmen and college professors, writers and dancers, Louis XIV antiques and Aubusson carpets. Raymond, talking with a woman in a pale green silk suit, became riveted by her brooch—a silver turtle studded with diamonds.

As caviar and toast points were passed and Chivas Regal flowed, Carson in his Howard sweatshirt described his participation in the Montgomery bus boycott, and his experiences in the field registering voters. Raymond told his tired old story about growing up in a racist society and coming to see the light. Justin described the incident next to the pond and somehow emerged sounding like the hero. Maria glanced at Raymond and suppressed a grin. Raymond didn't grin back: She had her arm through Carson's.

Justin's father called the maid, whom he introduced as Mrs. Walters, in from the kitchen. She wore a wool dress instead of a uniform. The idea was that she was a friend who just happened to stop by to fix hors d'oeuvres. Mr. Lawson seated her on the couch and brought her some Scotch. A fat man in a pinstriped suit said as he sat down beside her, “Mrs. Walters, I want you to call me Luther.” Justin began playing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” on his new guitar.

As people in the room began pulling out checkbooks, things clicked into place for Raymond. He looked at Carson and himself, performing like dancing bears for these Yankees in their jewels and Gucci shoes. In an instant, like a chemical solution crystallizing, he stopped seeing people as Negro or white—and instead saw them as rich or not. The Wilbur canning factory, the Newland mill, the Clayton mines—these Yankees with their pens poised over checkbooks probably owned them! These checks were a minute portion of their profits. As long as Negroes and whites in the South were kept busy hating each other because of skin color, they'd never recognize their shared exploitation. The violence those guys had unleashed on him by the pond—it was nothing compared to the quiet day-by-day draining away of the human and material resources of an entire area.

Raymond spent much of the following week in the Columbia Business School library on a pass Maria's father wrote for him. The Newland mill where his father had sweated blood for thirty-five years was now owned by a New York-based conglomerate. The corporation that owned the Wilbur canning factory was on the New York Stock Exchange. The Clayton mines where his grandfather had lost his arm were owned by a multinational oil corporation whose headquarters at Columbus Circle had towered over several of the rallies last fall.

Raymond drew up wall charts. One showed the board of directors of the corporation that owned the canning factory, and the other corporations on whose boards those directors sat. It looked like the web of a spider on amphetamines. Another illustrated the interlocking directorates of supposedly competing oil companies. A third chart listed social clubs to which directors of competing textile firms belonged: the Weston, Connecticut, Country Club; the Cohasset, Massachusetts, Yacht Club; the New York Yacht Club; the Princeton Club; the Westchester Golf Club; the New York Athletic Club; the New York Racquet and Tennis Club; the Harvard Club. A fourth chart listed the ten largest stockholders for the three corporations; almost all were New York banks, investment firms, and insurance companies.

As he carried his charts up the steps to the loft, Raymond was proud to have done a political analysis at last. Everybody would be impressed. Maria would fall in love with him on the spot and get rid of Carson.

Raymond finished by quoting how many millions of dollars in profits from the Newland mill, the Clayton mines, and the Wilbur canning factory were going to stockholders in the North: “Much of the hostility between races in the South concerns how to divide up a pie that's too small. The reason it's so small is that profits are leaving the region. FORWARD activities have pitted Negroes and poor whites against each other. I recommend we suspend our current operation and formulate new plans, based on a fresh analysis.” He waited for hosannahs.

They looked at him as though he were an escapee from maximum security at the Bronx Zoo.

“I think he may have a point,” murmured Maria.

“Are you out of your mind, Tatro?” inquired Morris.

“I think your beating has addled your brain,” agreed Justin.

Emily gazed at him with uncomprehending sympathy.

Raymond looked back at them. His conclusions were self-evident. How could they fail to be overwhelmed? “But just think about these cats up here sitting on their asses in yacht clubs and getting dividend checks in the mail. While my father, who's worked for that mill for thirty-five years, is living in a wooden box on cinder blocks.”

“So what?” asked Morris.

“What about you, Justin?” demanded Raymond. “That mansion in Newport built on money from the slave trade.”

Justin looked startled. “That was over a hundred and fifty years ago.”

“What was?” asked Maria.

Justin ignored her. “Besides, I'm using the bread the system yields me to try to alter that system.”

“But I don't see why Emily and I are responsible for what goes on in the South if yall aren't responsible for what's going on up here.”

“Thanks for the analysis, Raymond,” said Justin. “OK, now what about this benefit next month, people?”

Raymond's book came out and received modest reviews. At a meeting Justin said, “Saw your book today, Raymond. A very handsome ego trip.”

Raymond looked at him with distress. “I was trying to make a political statement.”

He chuckled. “What about?”

“About the similarities between Negroes and poor whites in the South.”

“Not a bad rationalization for ripping off the project.”

“Ripping off the project?”

“All that time you spent wandering around the woods playing Hamlet, while the rest of us had to canvass your territory.”

“I was non-functional, Justin. You could see that.”

“Yeah, you let your personal emotional dramas destroy your revolutionary potential.”

“I guess I did.” “I don't guess, I know.”

“Man,” said Morris, “you really did a job with that book, Raymond.”

“What do you mean?” Raymond asked warily. “Well, I mean, the way you romanticize poverty, man.” He laughed derisively.

During the meeting Raymond thought about his book. He hadn't meant to romanticize his subjects. But he had intended to convey their dignity and decency and generosity, whether in spite of, or because of, their material deprivation. Wasn't that a valid point? Apparently not, to FORWARD. Was there nothing he could do to earn Justin's and Morris's respect?

Maria came up afterward. “You did a nice job with the book, Raymond.”

“Thank you.” He'd just been thinking about those farm wives—their loyalty, fidelity, forbearance. Maria, he'd finally realized, was nothing more than a camp follower, running from man to man as his stock rose and fell on the power exchange. It was no coincidence that she'd taken up with Carson right after that day when Justin had put Raymond down about registering the Randalls. Even if his penis was about to fall off from disuse, Raymond wouldn't entrust it to Maria again. Let's face it, he reflected, she was just along for the writhe.

“You're such a strange guy, Raymond. So aloof and lonely and determined to be an outsider. Newland's really scarred you.”

He stared at her with disdain. “Everything that's best about me is a gift from Newland.”

She shrugged. “OK, if you say so.”

The next day he stayed home from work to go with his camera to the tip of Manhattan to the cotton exchange, to stand in the balcony looking down at the trading floor. Men formed tiered rings around the central desk and shouted and gestured frantically with their hands. They raced back and forth to telephones. The floor was littered with wadded papers. A hum like a swarm of angry bees filled his ears. Men like those at the party the other night were making and losing thousands of dollars gambling on the cotton crops that the farmers in his book hadn't even planted yet, crops the farmers themselves would earn several hundred dollars on, after months of tilling, hoeing, spraying, and picking in the hot sun.

He climbed on an uptown bus. When the driver handed him a transfer, he smiled and said, “Thank you, sir.” The driver looked at him through narrowed eyes: What are you a nut or something, buddy? The bus passed through the Bowery, where drunks lay sprawled in doorways and up against mission walls and staggered through the traffic asking drivers for quarters at stoplights. He got off the bus in the East Fifties and walked west, past the elaborate townhouses of the corporate executives. He stood on Park Avenue and stared at the businessmen walking in and out of the glass and steel office buildings. On Fifth Avenue he paused in front of Tiffany's. In the display window was a turtle like that worn by the woman at Justin's party. He walked inside. The guards eyed him and fondled revolver handles. He asked a startled clerk how much the turtle brooch cost. The answer was twelve thousand dollars. He headed for Times Square. A woman in a tight dress with thick makeup handed him a card. On one side was a price list. On the other, a photo of her, naked, lying on a leopard skin, smiling. A Negro man in a flashy suit and slouch hat sidled up and said from the corner of his mouth, “Hey, white boy, you want you some brown pussy?”

“No, thanks.”

“I can give you a real good price on it.”

“No, thanks.”

Up Broadway. The benches in its center strip were filled with old people. He'd been forgetting to take pictures. On the sidewalk at Eighty-fifth Street stood an aged ex-whore feeding an ice cream cone to a poodle in a jacket and matching tarn. He put on a telescopic lens and raised the camera to his eye and focused. Before pressing the button, he lowered the camera and stared at it. He took the strap from around his neck. If Maria or Emily had been there, he'd have dumped it in a trash basket or handed it to the nearest junkie. Since they weren't, he took it into a pawn shop and made a vow to send the money to the Randalls.