True Fires (14 page)

29

Fridays, the day Ruth and Hugh put the weekend edition of the
Towncrier
to bed, start too early and end late.

Five-fifteen,
the clock on Ruth’s side of the bed shows. But she needn’t have looked. Greenwich could set their bells by Hugh’s movements at this time of the morning: Five A.M., out of bed and into the kitchen to start brewing the coffee the way Ruth likes it—“darker than dirt and thicker than mud.” Five-ten, shave. Five-fifteen, shower. Five-twenty, out of the shower and back into the kitchen to pour the first of the three cups that it takes to get Ruth out the door and on their way to the office.

“Rise and shine,” he says quietly, handing her the steaming mug. In a fog, she sits upright and takes it, watches him don undershorts and shirt, then return to the foot of the bed to put his socks on.

Most other mornings, except Tuesdays, the day they wrap up Wednesday’s paper, Ruth sleeps in. But, Fridays are somehow worse. “Rain?” she asks, squinting at the window.

“All night,” he tells her, buttoning his shirt. Their pre-coffee conversations rarely involve complete sentences. Precaffeine, he believes, she’s functionally illiterate. Or is it literally ill-functioning?
This time of day, who the hell cares?

“All right,” she grouses, tossing back the covers, padding to the bathroom with mug in hand. By the time she’s out of the shower, he’s refilled her cup and the fog has begun to lift. By six o’clock, gulping down the last of her third cup, they’re on their way.

The rain has stopped. But the streets of their subdivision are shiny wet; the drainage ditches, on either side of the blacktop into town, glittering with runoff.

Familiar pub-day tasks lie ahead of them: While typesetter Walt VanZant punches out the linotype, Hugh will be hunched over the makeup bench, assembling the chases for pressman Joe Stephens and the big flatbed press that will run through midnight. Ruth’s role is to prep the last-minute ads, classified and otherwise; assemble the local social notes into the column “Tidbits from Around Town”; proof the initial pages off the proofing press; and, for the rest of the day, fend off unnecessary phone calls so the guys in the back can work uninterrupted.

“Thank God it quit raining,” Ruth says.

Hugh nods. Rainy days play hell with the newsprint, jam the presses, slow down the process.

“Donny’s gonna have to bag, though,” she says. The ground is too wet for the home-delivery guy to get by with rubber bands.

“Supposed to be sunny later,” Hugh suggests. “Might dry out.”

Ruth squints out at the relative wetness of the roadside, always more cynical than he is. “We’ll see. Beats the hell out of snow, I suppose.”

“I don’t know, Ruthie. Sometimes a good snowstorm can warm the heart . . . feed the soul . . .”

“Ruin your life?”

He shoots her a sly wink. “I think not, my sweet.”

Ruth feels herself flush—
like a goddamn schoolgirl!
—over Hugh’s oblique reference to the night the boys in the Philly newsroom called “The Big Thaw.” When a freak snowstorm stranded the famous muckraking reporter turned crusty editor, then in his late fifties, and the tough-as-nails feature writer and confirmed careerist, in her late forties, both never married and not looking, in the City Room overnight.

Somehow, after hours of verbal jousting, she and Hugh discovered they shared a passionate love for hard work, high principles, rare books (especially those by Elbert Hubbard’s defunct Roycroft Press), and each other. Upon their marriage, a fellow reporter quipped, “They say stranger things have happened. But I don’t know any.”

In minutes, Hugh wheels up to the back gate of the office. Ruth gets out, keys in hand, and undoes the padlock. “Gordon, here boy!” she whistles.
Where’s he gone off to?
she wonders, expecting the Doberman to appear, tail stub wagging, any second.

Hugh drives in. Ruth closes the gate behind him then whirls at the screech of tires, the slam of car door, as Hugh runs forward.

“What is it?” she calls.

“Oh, God,” he says, dropping to his knees in front of the car. “God!”

“What’s wrong?” She strides toward him, then sees the dog. “Did you hit him?”

“Of course not, but look at him. God, would you look!” On the ground in front of them, Gordon lies twitching in a puddle of vomit, lips drawn hideously back, exposing his teeth. His sleek black body jerks in violent convulsion, his spine twists in a spastic backward arch.

“Gordon!” Ruth cries, dropping down to lay a comforting hand on his heaving ribs. Instantly, he recoils and cries piteously, a high keening whine of intense pain and distress.

“Get Doc Denby over here!” she shrieks at Hugh. The town vet lives on Chestnut, just two blocks away. “We don’t dare move him!”

But Hugh is already up and running, taking the steps to the loading dock two at a time, fumbling for his keys to unbolt the back door.

“Poor thing,” Ruth croons, her eyes clouding with tears. “Poor, poor thing. Oh, what can I do for you?” She scrambles up, ransacks the car for something, anything, to slip beneath his head, soothe his pain. She settles for an old newspaper to cover up the vomit. But, once again, the dog keens horribly at her touch.

Hugh reappears, his face lock-jawed, and moves to reopen the gate.

In another minute, Dr. Charles Denby, pajama top tucked into his trousers, drives in and drops down beside her. One look and he shakes his head. “Strychnine,” he says in quiet anger and disgust. “Sprinkled over raw meat. He’ll be dead within an hour, maybe two. Unless”—the vet looks from Ruth to Hugh—“I put him out of his misery now.”

Hugh nods, grimly. The doc rises wearily to retrieve his bag from his car.

“Poison? Somebody poisoned him?” Ruth is unbelieving. “Who would do such a thing?”

“No doubt”—Hugh’s voice is ragged—“the same folks who painted a couple of big, bloodred K.K.K.’s across our front windows.”

“Oh, Hugh, no,” Ruth whispers, in horror. And then, as if from the bottom of a deep well, she hears the chilling echo of Billy Hathaway’s threat, “Sheriff ain’t the only one around to help me settle your hash.”

TWO HOURS AND A PACK OF PALL MALLS LATER, Ruth is still shaken by the numbing revulsion of Gordon’s poisoning, and the pained relief of his final, labored breath at Doc Denby’s hands. Her first inclination, after the vet removed the body for burial, after she saw for herself the large red K.K.K.’s on the front windows, was to grab razor and paint solvent and scrape the place clean of the vandals’ graphics.

“No,” Hugh told her quietly. “We’ll leave it up, at least for the weekend.”

In the center of the lobby window, they hung a poster, on top of the Klan’s red paint, in big, black-on-white type: Sheriff DeLuth: This Is Law and Order? In the other window, in front of her own off-the-lobby office, Hugh had added the Page One headline from the
Towncrier:
KKK Vandalizes
Free Press, Poisons Guard Dog.

Standing on the sidewalk, admiring the effect, Hugh turns to her with an old City Editor’s gleam in his eyes. “Now!” he tells her, “we’ll see what this town’s made of.”

Ruth wants to, tries to, match Hugh’s fervor. But worry presses on her like a vise. This is not the day to show him the stack of subscription-cancellation notices piling up in her bottom-left desk drawer. So far, he hasn’t noticed the drop-off in display-ad inches. And God bless Lila Hightower for keeping the print shop busy with Fred Sykes’s political flyers, brochures, and bumper stickers. But, soon, very soon, there’ll have to be a reckoning.

30

It doesn’t take long—twenty minutes, tops—for word of the Towncrier’s challenge to reach the ears of Sheriff K. A. DeLuth, holding court at the Sit-A-Spell coffee shop off Old Dixie Highway. It’s cattleman Mac Grubbs, a late arrival to the usual Friday-morning gabfest, who tells it. And the Sheriff, not by nature a thinking man, merely winks broadly ’round the table, then, after a time, makes his excuses and leaves early to “have it out with the Pinko Press.”

As he parks, smack-dab in front of the
Towncrier
’s door, he’s certain it’s Ruth Barrows’s mousy little face—owl eyes filling black-rimmed glasses—that appears briefly in an unpainted patch of the window. Her expression makes him smile, as he checks his teeth in the rearview mirror. Of course, there was no mistaking the rumble of his souped-up gray-and-green Chrysler squad car—
fastest car in the county
.
Ain’t a moonshiner
in three states can outrun this baby.

Taking his time, he unfolds himself out of his seat, retrieves his hat, straightens his string tie, and stands on the sidewalk to, in his mind,
admire the boys’ handiwork
.

After a while, giving Miz Barrows time to, no doubt, collect her husband from the back, he strolls into the newspaper office lobby and grins at the golden-haired girl at the desk.

“Mr. and Miz Barrows in?” he asks.

“Of course, we are.” Ruth Barrows says it curtly from the open door of her office. “Please come in.”

“Miz Barrows.” DeLuth smiles and arcs off his hat. “Mister,” he adds, nodding to the gray-haired, stoop-shouldered husband—
a weak-looking intellectual type
—who stands beside her.

Ruth Barrows—
hippy little thing
—quits the doorway to move behind her desk. As DeLuth takes his seat on the opposite side, Hugh Barrows quietly closes the door and rounds the desk to lean against the bookcase beside the wife. Both watch him with angry eyes.

Inwardly delighted, DeLuth places his hat on the empty seat to his right, leans back lazily, and says, “Got your invitation,” nodding at the painted and postered front window. “Your party,” he concedes, amiably giving them the floor.

The woman, brown eyes unblinking behind those ugly black glasses, speaks first. “Sheriff, two nights ago I received a threatening phone call from Billy Hathaway. He was upset by my telling the truth about his bogus military record. And he warned me that an insult to him was an insult to you, that his local friends would, quote, ‘settle’ my ‘hash.’ Last night, somebody maliciously poisoned our dog. Hamburger laced with strychnine, Doc Denby says. They also left their calling card all over our storefront. Care to comment on your connection to these events?”

“Didn’t know about the dog. And, as you know, my initials are K.A., not K.K.K.” DeLuth drawls and gives them a grin.

“Is this your idea of Law and Order?” she demands.

“Well, no, ma’am. I’d never condone the destruction of private property. But, a little paint solvent oughtta do the trick.”

“Is that your
official
response?!” she slings at him, acid in her voice. Her husband lays a quiet hand on her shoulder.

“Sheriff,” he says, “what’s the game here? Children yanked out of school with no recourse. Crosses burned. Businesses vandalized. Constitutional rights trampled right and left. This is hardly the way to campaign for reelection in a political democracy.”

“Whoa, ho!” DeLuth throws back his head and chuckles. “Slow down. Any minute now you goin’ t’ accuse me of throwin’ the switch on those Rosenberg traitors, too? Which I’d’ve gladly done, by the way, given half a chance. But, did I burn a cross, poison your dog, paint your windows? Course not! I do, however, freely admit to removing those mule-otto children from the white school. And will, most assuredly, stand beside our Governor against that Jew-blinded Supreme Court and their asinine attempt to abolish States’ Rights, destroy the U.S. Constitution, and ruin the White Race! Yessirree-Bob, you can count on that!”

DeLuth watches the two of them exchange disbelieving looks. This was his favorite backroom stump speech, herding the unknowing into the corral of Truth. “What you people in the press forget is this: In a
real
democracy, majority rules. And, in this county, the majority of white people don’t hold with some Marxist idea of mixing the races, which, of course, is nothing more than Jewry’s plot to mongrelize the rest of mankind!”

“Excuse me?” the little hen sputters.

“Good God! Don’t you see what’s happening? This ain’t about a couple of half-breed schoolkids. We’re talking the future of the White Race here. In all God’s creation, is there any other creature that disobeys the divine law of segregation? Does the lark nest with the sparrow? The goat go at the sheep? The bull cover the mare? Course not! The Jews know that. They got their own laws about mixing blood. But, that don’t stop ’em from trying to mix ours. They know the White Race is God’s chosen people. They’ve known it ever since the Garden of Eden when Eve lay down with Satan to create Cain, and with Adam to create Abel.
We, the Adamites,
are the ones made in God’s image. And
they’re
descendants of the Devil, don’t you see?
They’re
the ones who laid down with the animals to create the other races.
We’re
the ones who God Almighty gave dominion over the earth!”

The husband turned ashen. “You can’t be serious . . .” he says, scarcely above a whisper.

DeLuth stands, drops both fists, straight-armed, onto the desk. The little owl jumps. He leans forward and lowers his voice to make it clear that this next point is the most telling of all—“Dead serious. Whether you know it or not, there’s a war going on, for the very soul of mankind. It’s us against the Hebrew Communists, who preach race-mixing and the ruin of miscegenation. Either you’re with us or against us. You
need
to
choose
.”

The little owl-eyed woman, the bushy-browed man stare at him with tight lips, their breath shallow, and, he’d bet, the backs of their necks prickling.

Set them straight, didn’t I?
he thinks. “Sorry about your dog,” he says. “Casualty of war.” DeLuth retrieves his hat from the nearby chair, bows his good-bye, turns on his heel, winks at the pretty girl in the lobby, and is gone.

SATURDAY MORNING, DeLuth drops his wife, Birdilee, off at Lucille’s LaMonde Salon de Beaute for her weekly appointment (“See you at noon, darlin’.”) then heads toward Lake George for his usual post-Friday-night exchange with Big Nick Pop-a-Dop, the Bolita King.

Along the way, he squints in his rearview mirror at the hind ends of several passing cars bearing green-and-white bumper stickers for “I Like Sykes, Our Future Sheriff.”
More this week
than last.
Would they make any difference in the ten-days-away election?
Not a chance,
he decides.

Off Lake George, at the outskirts of Big Scrub, DeLuth enters the old logging road and pulls into the clearing of the abandoned camp. Just ahead, Big Nick—short, stocky, wavy-haired, hook-nosed, the color the locals call high yaller—leans against his shiny new Mercury coupe, waiting.

Everybody in town, colored and white, knows the racy story of Big Nick’s parentage: The colored Baptist preacher’s daughter visiting her aunt outside Ybor City; seduced by a handsome Greek sponge exporter from Tarpon Springs; secretly married, spurned by her Orthodox in-laws and, eventually, her husband; returned in disgrace to raise the boy whose last name nobody could pronounce, something like Pop-a-Dop, which is what it became. A smart child, he grew into a savvy young man, possessed of both his Baptist grandfather’s way with words and his Greek grandfather’s skill with money. Early on, he established himself with the Tampa Cubans as the county’s most reliable numbers operator for the popular game out of Havana. Ten years ago, when the last Bolita king turned up mysteriously dead, Nick was the natural next in line. His ascension to prominence in the colored community had, almost exactly, paralleled DeLuth’s on the white side, both under the expert tutelage of Judge How-High. Nick ran Bolita, private game rooms in the backs of half a dozen county jooks, and two whorehouses, popularly called fun houses, down by the river, one each for coloreds and for whites. Big Nick’s and DeLuth’s mutually beneficial relationship was, for the most part, cordial. Though both would balk at the term “friends.” Especially today.

“Mornin’.” DeLuth takes in Big Nick’s crisply tailored suit, his gleaming shoes, the diamond pinky ring that winks on his manicured right hand, as Nick, arms crossed, remains against his car. DeLuth, the son of an unruly, forever-falling-down drunkard, favored neatness, practiced orderliness in every detail of his personal appearance, and appreciated it in others. “Nice suit.” He nods.

Big Nick nods back, dropping impassive eyes from the Sheriff’s face down to his gun belt. It was unusual for DeLuth to come to these meetings armed. DeLuth was making a point. And Big Nick had taken note.

“How’d we do this week?” DeLuth asks.

“Not as good as we might’ve.” Big Nick purses his lips. On Thursday night, the night the boys had visited the newspaper office, they’d also swung ’round the game room behind Number Five Jook and busted up the slot machines, card booths, and the big green-felt crap table in the back. “Why’d you do it?” Big Nick asks quietly.

“Well, I’ll tell you, Nick.” DeLuth rocks back on his own gleaming heels, crosses his arms, and leans against his own shiny car. “My wife, Birdilee, heard from our maid, Ceely, who heard from her hairdresser, Hattie, who got it from the barber-shop next door, that the Big Bolita Man’s backing the wrong man for Sheriff.”

“Not true,” Big Nick says smoothly.

Those damned, hooded eyes of his, DeLuth thinks, never give up a
thing.
“That’s exactly what I told Birdilee. But, then, I heard the same thing from the boy that shines my boots downtown, who got it from the cousin of one of your bartenders.”

“Not true, I say,” Big Nick repeats, straightening up off his car, squaring his shoulders for emphasis.

“Well, y’know, Nick. I’m real glad to hear that. I’m sure the boys didn’t mean to do any serious damage. Just wanted to be in on the game, that’s all. You don’t discriminate against white boys playin’ a little craps, d’yuh?”

“Of course not, Sheriff. Your friends are welcome anytime. Though it’s less expensive for both of us, if they behave themselves.” Big Nick, a full head shorter than DeLuth, looks up innocent-eyed, with a rueful grin.

Goddamn Greek Nigger’s got balls, DeLuth thinks, and finds himself grinning back. “See the receipts?” he asks.

“Of course.” Big Nick’s already reaching into his backseat for the bulging paper sack. “Not a bad week, all things considered.”