The Third Life of Grange Copeland (29 page)

“Not
this
year,” said Helen.

“Where you
from,
girl?” Grange asked sharply.

“Green County,” she answered sweetly, laughing at him.

“Well, I be damned,” said Grange. He felt he had been caught sleeping, and that his nap had lasted twenty or forty years.

“Who your peoples?” he asked, thinking that perhaps she was lying.

“My mother’s name is Katie Brown. My father’s name was Henry. They lived on old man Thomas’s place.”

Grange remembered the Thomases, but not the Browns. “You say your pa’s name
was
Henry?” he asked.

“He was killed in ’55,” she said. “Shot down right in front of the voting booth.”

“Where’s your ma at?” he asked.

“She couldn’t be dragged away from Green County.”

“She ain’t still on the white man’s place?”

Helen laughed. She laughed a lot. She seemed as carefree as a bird. “She was until we got there last summer,” she said. “We moved in with her. All of us. Me and Quincy and Bill and Carol. But that was too much for the Thomases. They had said how sorry they were that old Henry was shot down thataway and had helped me when I went away to college, but when they saw me with Bill and Carol they kicked Ma off the place.”

“And then?” asked Grange, leaning forward in his chair. He wanted to reach out and touch Helen, she was so calm. He felt her calmness
meant
something, and he wanted desperately to know what.

“And
den,”
Helen said, chuckling,
“den,
Ma hauled off and cussed old man Thomas out and his ancestors back through the Civil War and spit on his wife and they had her locked up.”

“She got out,” said Quincy. “We had some smart lawyers come down from New York. When she got out she moved to a little house just down the road from the Thomases. She browbeat the preacher who owned it into letting her set up a center for us. It was full of all kinds of people all summer long. She’s there still.”

“That woman’s plainly done lost her mind,” said Grange. “You all ought to go get her.”

“She loves it there,” said Helen, shrugging her shoulders. “If anything she wants us to come ‘home’ and settle down beside her.”

“And one day we might,” said Quincy.

“Quincy’s going to run for Mayor,” said Helen. “I’m going to be first lady of Green County.”

“You’re all crazy,” said Grange. “You best be spending your energy in getting yourselves out of here. How long you think you going to be able to laugh like you do?” he asked Helen.

“I ain’t going to let
them
make me stop!” she said.

And Grange thought, You may keep being able to laugh when other peoples is around, but when you and your husband and the baby is all alone dodging bullets and jumping out of your skin at every noise, will you be able to laugh
then
? He imagined Helen in ten years, her young husband maybe buried in some swampy unmarked grave, her child hounded by grownups and children who hated niggers. He saw her at the mercy of some white town whose every gesture would mean she was worthless, an intruder, an American on good behavior. Suppose she couldn’t ever become “first lady” of anything. Then where would her laughter be?

“We want you to register,” said Quincy. “I even got my mother to register, though she swears she’s been hexing the
bad
crackers all along!”

“I can’t promise you,” said Grange. He felt a deep tenderness for the young couple. He felt about them as he felt about Dr. King; that if they’d just stay with him on his farm he’d shoot the first cracker that tried to bother them. He wanted to protect them, from themselves and from their dreams, as much as from the crackers. He would not let anybody hurt them, but at the same time he didn’t believe in what they were doing. Not because it wasn’t worthy and noble and inspiring and good, but because it was impossible.

“What I’m scared of, children, is the bitterness; the taste of bile thrown up by the liver when you finds out the fight can’t be won.”

Quincy put his arm around his wife, his hand moving up and down her side. He held her loosely yet completely, as if she meant everything to him, and the glow in her eyes was pure worship when she looked up at him. Grange was touched almost to tears by the simplicity and directness of their love and he shuddered with fear for them.

“If you fight,” she said, placing soft black fingers on Grange’s arm, “if you fight with all you got, you don’t have to
be
bitter.”

Grange walked out to the car with them and opened the door for Helen. “Wait a minute,” he said. He turned and went into the house and pulled a watermelon from under the bed. It was cool and green and heavy. He took it out to the car and handed it into the back seat. Helen was laughing again and all of them thanked him profusely. Grange still couldn’t quite look at the white girl but he gave a short nod to the boy. And when he waved good-bye he waved to all of them.

He turned, smiling, and saw Ruth sitting dejectedly on the steps.

“I bet
all
the
good
ones have got taken!” she moaned, frowning at him.

“You really got a kick out of him, didn’t you, girl?” asked Grange. “One day another one’ll come and he won’t have a wife and you can grab him before he starts looking for one.”

“I don’t expect a whole stream of ’em to come passing by
here,”
she said with dismay. “I think I’m going to have to go out an’
find
the one I want.”

“What about this farm?” Grange asked.

“Oh, good grief!” she said, and stormed into her room, slamming the door and throwing herself across her bed.

48

O
N THE MORNING
they were to confront Brownfield in court, Grange helped Ruth tidy up the house with a reserved concentration. Both found it difficult to speak. Grange’s hair, as white as any snow but more silvery and of course crinkled and bristly electric, was combed in the fashion Ruth so loved, brushed straight back on the top and sides, neat but bold. Combed back this way, flatly, his hair would rise again slowly, crinkle by crinkle, so that soon, with the sun making it shine, he would look like Ruth’s idea of God. He was wearing his best and only dark suit with vest to match and his coat flared over his hips, emphasizing the leanness of his long legs and the tense long strides that somehow reminded Ruth of Randolph Scott.

They had an old 1947 Packard, black, chromeless, which they parked on the street near the courthouse. The courthouse was in the center of the square in the middle of town. It was red brick, made something like a big dusty box. Its corners were decorated with concrete cornices full of ornate scrolls: the steps were tall and wide, though hopelessly unimpressive. They were beginning to crack.

Because it was a Saturday morning few people were in town. The cotton farmers and dairymen would come in later. On the top of the steps Ruth turned for a last look at the town.

“I wish they’d move their damn stone soldier,” she said, glaring at the Southern soldier facing his old and by now indifferent enemy of the North. “I can’t see what time it is.” There was a new electric clock the size of a stop sign across the street in the window of the drugstore, but the stone soldier’s meager hips were enough to cover it.

“But I got my watch,” Grange said with some surprise, drawing out a heavy gold watch on a chain. Then he took her elbow firmly, too firmly for her to pull away. “Don’t you worry,” he said, shaking her gently. “I wouldn’t be worth nothing if I couldn’t take care of my own. And I want you to always remember—you is my own.” Grange kissed her on the top of her hair, lightly, and they walked together into the house of justice.

The judge was a kindly eyed, sallow-faced condescending water sportsman. A picture of him holding a fat glistening string of fish was the “in color” photograph that graced the front of the Baker County
Messenger
the week before. His face was the alert, watchful and yet benign face of a man who had started out in life with nothing and who had added positions as he added weight until he came to rest with heavy jowls and a judgeship in the same county where he was born penniless fifty years before. Behind his benign look was a door, never publicly opened, which led back into a soul so empty of charity and so full of dusty conceits that his townspeople could hardly have stood the sight. Not that their own souls’ doors were securely fastened enough to allow them to wonder about someone else’s. Even that of their judge. All in all, however, he was not a bad man, as bad men in the South go. He had never personally trafficked in violence; he had not even strenuously condoned it. He had, however, meted out unjust sentences and had been the beneficiary of much yard labor and housework which the city paid for and which he was able to secure from his position on the bench. In short, he was a petty person, with all the smallness of mind that went with being so. He was capable of stealing the labor of innocent people, almost always black, sometimes poor white, but was not capable of stealing large sums of money. Because of this honesty his townspeople respected him and made him a deacon in the First Presbyterian Church. Among the black boys for whom he felt responsible he was affectionately known as “Judge Harry.” His relationship with the “nigras” was generally good.

It was over so quickly! The judge showed them to his colored chambers. He and Brownfield exchanged jovialities. Grange stared beyond them, his face pale.

“How old are you, Ruth?” the judge asked.

“Sixteen.”

“You won’t be a grown woman in the state of Georgia till you’re two years older,” the judge said.

The room was quiet, except for Josie’s breathing. She wheezed.

“You want to be with your
real
daddy, don’t you, Ruth?” the judge asked kindly, looking at her with eyes that neither asked questions nor cared about answers.

“No, sir,” she said firmly.

Grange started to speak of his sons criminal
record,
of his neglect of his children, of his threats.

“This man killed his wife, your Honor!” said Grange, out of order.

“Now, I didn’t ask you nothing yet,” the judge said pleasantly, hurt. “You don’t have no right to go making unsolicited speeches in my chambers.” He looked at Brownfield solemnly and winked. Ruth knew it was over for her and Grange; she held tightly to her grandfather’s hand. She could not look up into his face for she could feel the tremors running through his body and knew he was crying.

“Hush,” she whispered under her breath, “hush, old baby.” His breath caught in a sob; she knew it was from helplessness. Ruth was so angry she couldn’t cry.

What the judge and Brownfield and Josie were doing was not important to Ruth. Not while she leaned her soul toward Grange and encouraged him to share her resignation. When she looked at the judge again he was taking a pair of tall slick boots from a closet near his desk.

“But no rough stuff now, Brown, you hear me?” He was smiling in that way Southern white men smile when they control everything—birth, life and death. Ruth hated him forever. She had been given in all speedy “justice” to a father who’d never wanted her by a man who knew and cared nothing about them. Any of them. Just a man who was allowed to play God. Ruth felt something hot standing in front of her. It was Josie, flushed and vermillion.

“You got to go with your daddy now,” she said, relieved, and Ruth was annoyed to see a pitying tear in Josie’s eyes.

“But don’t worry,” Josie continued, venturing to sit on the bench next to Grange, “I’ll take care of him.”

Brownfield came toward them grinning. “Got you this time,” he said, gloating.

Grange slowly raised his head and slowly stood. He looked down coldly at his son. One thumb strayed to and fro under his belt.

“Touch her and I lay you out,” he said; with one long arm he pushed Ruth behind him. Brownfield looked around for Judge Harry, who was just going toward the door.

“Judge Harry!” Brownfield called confidently. Judge Harry glanced back, took in the situation and walked purposefully to the door. Grange’s next words were like a cold blast against his back.

“Halt,
Justice!”
said Grange. The contempt in his voice was as tangible as the floor on which the judge stood.

Brownfield made a lunge for Ruth and managed to catch her arm for half a second. Then he felt himself thrown back as if by a great gush of wind. He saw lightning and thought he smelled a bitter smoke. He sank limply to the floor and did not manage to get a word out before he died. Underneath his flared tail coat Grange had carried his blue steel Colt .45. With it he had shot down his son.

“You can’t do this in a court of law,” the judge began to babble; he was still holding his fishing boots. His eyes bulged when he saw Brownfield’s blood spreading along the floor.

“Shet up,
Justice,
” said Grange, “or you sure ’nough going to be deaf, dumb and blind.” He grabbed Ruth by the arm, stepped around Josie, who was sobbing over Brownfield, and headed for the door.

“We’ll catch you, Copeland,” said the judge. “You can’t run away.”

“I ain’t running away,” said Grange, briefly, “I’m going
home
, and the first one of you crackers that visit me is going to get the rest of what I got in this gun.”

“We don’t have a chance,” said Ruth, as they raced home, sirens already sounding behind them.

“I ain’t,” said Grange, “but you do.” He ran his hand over his eyes. “A man what’d do what I just did don’t deserve to live. When you do something like that you give up your claim.” He slumped on the seat. “And what about that judge?” he asked bitterly. “Who will take care of him?”

Out of the car and into the house they ran. Police cars were racing down the dirt road to the house. Grange combed the house for guns and took off in a trot through the woods toward the cabin. Immediately cars circled the house; Ruth waited quietly on the bed. Grange had not even left her gun, knowing as she knew that she would live longer without it, at least in this battle. Ruth heard the men begin the sweep toward the house and then she heard a shot from far back in the woods. Grange leading the police away from her. Suddenly the air rang with the rush of bullets and a few minutes later, just as suddenly, everything was still.