True Fires (5 page)

12

“Bitch!” Sheriff K. A. DeLuth snarls, slamming the front section of
The Lake Esther Towncrier
onto the breakfast table, causing his wife, Birdilee, who’s skittery this morning anyway, to spill the warm-up coffee she’s pouring into his cup.

“Oh, Kyle-honey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . .” Birdilee snatches a stack of pink paper napkins from the little plastic holder in the middle of the table and sops up the spilled coffee.

“Birdilee, would you look at that nose!” He stabs a finger at the girl in the family photo under the headline
American
History Among Us
. “Ain’t that about the Niggerest nose you ever saw?”

Birdilee wads the wet napkins into a single ball and, cupping them between her palms like a prayer, leans over and looks. “Bless her heart, it’s big all right,” she murmurs.

“You ever seen a nose like that on a white girl?”

“Well, now . . . there was that one, the daughter of those Greeks that had the restaurant downtown for a while, remember? And the new Queen of England; her nose is about that big, but”—she knits her brows—“not near as wide.”

“Birdilee!” DeLuth shakes his head in disgust. There must have been a time when it didn’t irritate him that she was two cards short of a pair, but he couldn’t remember it.

Birdilee, silenced, carries the coffee-soaked napkins to the sink, opens the cabinet door, and deposits them in the trash.

DeLuth watches her stand, back to him, and wash her hands slowly at the sink. He feels the sudden jolt of memory and remorse. This was how he’d first seen her, sunlit, dressed in white from head to toe, washing her hands at the sink beside his hospital bed. His first thought, groggy from the operation and the morphine, was to wonder was he was dead or alive? Was she real or an angel? Hearing him stir, she’d turned smiling, stretching the small satin saddle of freckles across her nose. Angels didn’t have tiny tawny freckles across their noses, did they? He was alive!

His second thought—
Did we win the game?
—was harder to answer. She was a student nurse, interning at the University Hospital for final credits. She didn’t follow football, had never heard of the Gators’ All-American pair of quarterback Louis Hightower and his favorite wide receiver, Kick Ass DeLuth. She was the first girl he’d ever met who was immune to Louis’s charms, preferred him, Kyle DeLuth, son of a piss-poor dirt farmer, to his handsome best friend, son of the power-broking judge back home. She’d made him feel like helping him recuperate from the surgery that stitched his game-torn Achilles tendon (and left him flat-gaited for life) was her reason for living, and he’d married her out of gratitude for being the first woman he’d ever been with who was not one of Louis’s leftovers.

DeLuth looks again, feeling glad that Birdilee hasn’t grown thick and shrill like most women her age. She’s still the same little slip of a thing she was back then, her waist no wider than the span of his hand.

“Birdilee.” She turns from the sink, lured by the soft shift in his tone, and smiles at his outreached hand. He pulls her into his lap, enjoying the rainwater freshness of her hair beneath his chin, and pats her shoulder in apology. “It’s this woman, Ruth Barrows at the
Towncrier,
tryin’ to help these part-Niggers pass for white,” he says, by way of explanation.

“Won’t get past you, though, will she?”

“No, ma’am, she won’t,” he agrees, savoring his wife’s unquestioning faith in him, the sweet press of her small frame against his chest.

“What time do you have to be at the fairgrounds?”

“The rally doesn’t start till two. I told Hathaway we’d meet him around noon, share some fried chicken for lunch. Might need your help with the bunting ’round the stage.”

“Chicken?” she asks, sitting up to face him. “For how many?”

“Ten or twelve, I imagine. I been braggin’ you make the best fried chicken in the county.”

“Ten or twelve? By noon?” She jumps up in a panic. “I better tell Ceely to get a move on!”

While his wife calls up the stairs to tell Ceely, their colored girl, “Forget the beds for now, we need to fry up some chicken!” DeLuth strolls out the back door, across the dirt yard, and past the barn to check on the whereabouts of the herd this morning.

In the south pasture, he sees three of his four gray-white Brahma bulls—Ol’ Ben’s on loan to Clive Cunningham—and most of his two dozen cows. It was the Judge, of course, who’d suggested they go to Texas, take a gander at this odd breed of cattle from India by way of Brazil. Most of the local cattlemen had laughed their heads off at the Brahmas’ looks: hump-backed, goit-necked, hound-eared, the bulls were ugly as sin. But the laughing stopped when the beef boys learned the Brahmas could tolerate heat, with no loss of milk, up to 105 degrees; that they weren’t picky as to pastureland; that their thick, droopy skin naturally repelled the blood-sucking pests that caused most diseases; that the cows could calve and bulls could serve for fifteen years instead of ten; and that, when crossed with traditional European stock, Brahma beef gave the best “cutoff” value available, with a minimum waste of fat. “He who laughs last, laughs best,” the Judge always said. Right again, ol’ man, DeLuth thinks and feels loss, like a whiff of the Judge’s cigar smoke, float through his thoughts.

First Birdilee, now the Judge. What the hell’s goin’ on today, got
me wallowing ’round like a goddamn sow in slop? DeLuth leans over, snaps a stem of sweet grass from the base of the fence post, and sucks on the sugary stalk.

It’s the rally, of course. His first ever without the Judge sitting on the stage or nodding in the wings. Not that he wasn’t ready or hadn’t learned well what the ol’ man had to teach.

Like the Judge’s Number One Campaign Rule—something he called The Terrifying It: “There ain’t a bit of difference between political campaigning and late-night ghost-story telling,” the Judge always said. “You gotta have a first-class boogeyman, something that scares the panties off your constituents. Real or imagined, it don’t make a whit of difference. S’long as it’s
you
against The Terrifying It, and
you’re
their only hope for getting an ounce of sleep after the election.”

Their first campaign, The Terrifying It was those over-proud Nigger war veterans, strutting their stuff up and down Main Street like they owned the place. DeLuth’s stump-thumping promise was to “Put every Nigger in the county back to work!” either on his own volition, or, through vigorously enforced antivagrancy laws, in the Sheriff’s citrus-picking chain-gang. “Hard labor, with no pay, will settle their sulking hash, but good!”

In their second campaign, The Terrifying It presented itself as a unionizing labor leader who complained that the Sheriff ’s chain-gangs were little more than slave camps. The Sheriff promised he’d “rid the county of these Communist Fifth Columnists!” and, on election eve, paraded his handcuffed captive ’round the polls, then personally kicked his Red ass over the county line.

In this, his third campaign, the Supreme Court had handed him The Terrifying It on a silver platter. The very idea of desegregation had everyone, from the Governor on down, up in arms. This fellow Hathaway was riding the reactionary wave with the right idea—beat back the N.Double-A.C.P. with a white-people’s version. Sell memberships, donate the proceeds to prosegregation candidates. On the night DeLuth went to see him up in Jacksonville, Hathaway raised over three thousand dollars in less than ninety minutes! DeLuth can hardly wait to see what Hathaway’s take will be today.

“Kyle-honey?” Birdilee’s calling him from the back porch. “You wearing your uniform? Or should I air out your seersucker suit?”

13

Ruth Cooper Barrows wheels into the fairgrounds’ parking lot just as Birdilee DeLuth is closing her car door, preparing to leave.

“Is the rally over, Mrs. DeLuth?” Ruth calls through her car’s open window. “Didn’t the flyer say two o’clock?”

The Sheriff’s wife has a sunny freckled face that radiates, in intriguing contrast to her husband’s, a warm and wholesome sincerity. She glances over her shoulder toward the milling crowd. “Oh, they’re just gettin’ started. But I . . . well, Ceely and I have things to do at home.”

Ruth leans forward, sees the tall black woman in the rider’s seat of Birdilee’s car, and nods. “Of course.”

“And, to be honest,” Birdilee’s tone is teasing, “politics is Kyle’s cup of tea, not mine.”

Ruth chuckles at the surprising confession. “May I quote you on that, Mrs. DeLuth?”

“Don’t you dare!” The Sheriff ’s wife’s freckle-stretching grin leaves Ruth wondering, not the first time,
How does a seemingly
nice woman like that wind up with a bigmouthed bully like DeLuth?

Out of her car, Ruth picks a spot in the shade, in front of the red-and-white poultry barn, and removes her thick, black-rimmed glasses to wipe the sweat off the bridge of her nose.
It’s mid-October, for God’s sake!
she thinks, feeling nostalgic for fall in Philadelphia, the cool, crisp days, the colorful leaves of her youth. She leans back against barn wood to watch the speaker, Billy Hathaway, warm up his audience in the County Fairgrounds’ center ring.

Big crowd,
she notes,
four, maybe five hundred, predominantly
male, all white.
In a front corner, she spots half a dozen of the county’s big citrus growers, in short-sleeved shirts and string ties, chatting amiably with a number of cattlemen, dressed western, slapping big Stetsons against powerful thighs.
Inter
esting that the Sheriff’s chosen uniform is an amalgam of both styles. The rest of the crowd seems a cross-section of the local male population: a few suits, some ties, mostly plaid, bleached work-shirts, broad suspenders, denim overalls. Was it the Sheriff ’s flyers that brought them out? Or, the loudspeaker-equipped crop-duster plane that spent the morning buzzing the county’s small towns, blaring a come-on for today’s “All White is All Right!” rally?

This guy’s trouble with a capital “T,”
she thinks, eyeing the handsome young man who sports his dark blond hair in a close-cropped military cut, glittering blue eyes, and the kind of chiseled good looks that could sell Sunday Best dress shirts in the Sears or Monkey Wards catalog. Billy Hathaway’s blue serge suit is no mail-order number, however, Ruth notes, as he strides to the edge of the stage, arms wide open in an embracing gesture.

“Folks, in my right hand here, I got the Holy Bible, the Word of God given me by my home church, First Baptist of Houston, Georgia, on the day I accepted Jesus”—
He says it
“JEE-sus,” just like Billy Graham,
Ruth notes—“as my Lord and Savior. I bet you got one just like it, sitting at home by your bedstead.” His smiling eyes poll the crowd and they answer him with nods of acknowledgment.
Yes, yes, of course,
we do.

“In my left hand here, I got a copy of the Constitution of the United States”—
Check rolled piece of paper,
Ruth reminds herself—“given me by my ol’ Drill Sargent, John Wayne Petty, when I left Camp Lejeune to fight the Commies in Korea.” Check J. W. Petty, Camp Lejeune.

“Now, these two things I hold in my hands represent two of the three happiest days of my life. The third is the day my baby boy, Billy, Junior, sleeping right over there in his mamma’s arms—Hold him up, Cassie!—was born.” Baby Billy is a pink-cheeked infant wrapped in a blue-for-boys blanket. Cassie, his pretty blond mother, also pink-cheeked, shows him off proudly then sits back down beside the attentive Sheriff and two members of the local school board, also up for reelection.

“Folks, if I’d abeen here last spring, I woulda stood here before you a happy man—with God,”—He holds up his Bible— “country,”—He waves the rolled sheet of paper—“and family”—He sweeps his Bible-holding hand toward Cassie and the baby—“all, ALL in the divine order which the Good Lord intended.

“But today,”—He drops both arms and shakes his head, mournfully—“I am not happy. And, according to your good Sheriff here, neither are you! NOR SHOULD WE BE!

“My friends, the Supreme Court of our great nation has committed a sin against God and all good Christians. The judges of the Supreme Court have set themselves in judgment of Jehovah’s divine plan. They seek no less than to reverse the curse of Canaan!” At this, the young man drops the rolled paper onto the podium, and forms an angry fist. Striding to the right, he brandishes his Bible high above his head.
“ ‘Cursed be Canaan,’
the Lord says,
‘a slave of slaves shall he be to
his brothers’!”

The crowd responds with a murmured rumble of agreement; the young man lowers his Bible and again shakes his head.

“My friends, the judges of the Supreme Court seek to force the children of the white race to mingle with the children of other races. Yet, God Almighty commands us clearly:
‘Ye shall
not go in to them, neither shall they come in unto you: for surely they
will turn away your heart after their gods’!
”

At this, there’s a syncopation of emphatic calls: “That’s right!” “Yes, Lord!” “Amen, brother!”

“The judges of the Supreme Court have had
their
hearts turned against God! And, in so doing, they’ve turned their backs upon the white race!” Returning to the podium, he flips open his Bible and pretends to read:
“ ‘The Lord thy God hath
chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above ALL people that
are upon the face of the earth’!”

The crowd begins to hoot and holler, “Above all!” “Yes!” “You tell ’em!” On the dais, the Sheriff grins.

“ Now, folks,”—the handsome speaker hushes them— “I’m not making any of this up. Every bit of it’s in the holy and recorded Word of God. You can look it up yourself, easy as I did. And, while you’re at it, flip on over to the New Testament”—Hathaway flips over—“where JEE-sus, our Lord and Savior, commands:
‘Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s,
and unto God that which is God’s.’

“My friends,”—he places his right hand tenderly on the open pages—“just like you, just like JEE-sus says to, I pay my taxes. And, like a whole lotta you out there, when my country called, I paid two years of my life in Korea. Those slant-eyed Commie devils cost me half a hand!” Hathaway holds up his angry left fist and finally opens it, for all to see. The fingers have no nails or upper knuckles. The crowd gasps. “I have rendered unto Caesar that which is his to have!” He thrusts the ugly mitt in their faces. “But, lemme tell you,”—On cue, Cassie stands up, steps forward, cradling the baby in her arms. Hathaway points—“this child is not Caesar’s! This child is a child of God! And, so long as there’s breath in my body, THIS CHILD WILL NOT ATTEND SCHOOL WITH NIGGERS!!!”

Ruth watches the blond madonna and child. It’s clear the young woman knows what’s coming, her bright blue eyes watch for it, wait for it. And when it comes—the communal roar of paternal protection, the howl and bellow of the displaced beast unleashed—she slowly, gratefully bows her head. As the furious men bellow their anger and agreement and intention, pretty Cassie plants a reassuring kiss on her baby’s cheek and awaits her next cue.

Billy Hathaway waits, too. Arms outstretched, he lets the roar rise and swell and wash over him like a roiling wave off the ocean and, as it recedes, he steps right, and tenderly helps Cassie return to her seat.

Striding back to the edge of the stage, he leans forward, eyeballs the crowd, and asks them, softly, “How, you want to know, did this insanity happen? What demon, you want to know, drove the Supreme Court away from one nation under God? The answer is in five little letters.” Hathaway holds up his left mitt, emphasizing each letter with a jabbing thumb or half-finger. “N.Double-A.C.P.”

The crowd growls angrily.

Hathaway’s catalog good looks have become suddenly too sharp to sell Sears church shirts. His tone drips derision. “The National Association for the ADVANCEMENT of Niggers has done its job! In New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, the local school boards have done the Supreme Court’s bidding and let the Niggers in! Let ’em in, I tell you! The question is, will YOU? Will YOU let the Niggers into YOUR local schools?”

“NO!” the beast rises up and roars.

“No, you say? No?” Hathaway’s contempt cracks like a bullwhip above their heads. “Well, lemme tell you, folks, a lot of parents in Baltimore said no, too. But their local school board, their local Sheriff said yes, and, since September, they’ve let the Niggers in!”

“NO!” the beast bellows.

“My friends, in two weeks’ time, you get to choose. In America, we call it a vote. And, make no mistake about it, every single vote from here on out—whether it’s for school board, or Sheriff, or Senator, or Governor, or President—is a vote either for, or against, segregation. It’s a simple choice really. Do you let the Niggers in? Yes or no?”

“NO!”

“Then cast your votes carefully, my friends. Choose the candidates who’ll say no when it counts.” At this, Hathaway makes a sweeping gesture to Sheriff DeLuth and the two other men on the dais. The three of them stand as one and nod confidently to the crowd as if to say, “Trust us—we’ll say no.”

The crowd yells and applauds their own: “Yeh!” “Kick Ass’ll say no!” “Give ’em hell, Kick Ass!”

Hathaway nods to the candidates, who nod to the crowd then sit, serious, in their seats. “And, what shall we do with those who turn against us?” His tone cracks the whip. “How shall we deal with the turncoats, the Commie Fifth Columnists who take up the side of the N.Double-A.C.P.? I’ll tell you what we’ll do—we’ll follow the example of JEE-sus with the money changers in the temple. We’ll cast ’em out! We will CAST THEIR ASSES OUT!”

“YES!” the beast bellows. “CAST ’EM OUT!”

“But that, my friends, takes work, takes organization,” he advises, wiping sweat, eyeballing them into silence. “It takes leadership and membership and airplaned announcements to get out the vote. Now, I don’t mind takin’ on the leadership role—I’m doin’ it as much for Cassie and little Billy as I am for you—but to build a national association, All White is All Right, A.W.A.R.—and make no mistake, this is a war for the soul of this country—we need MEMBERS! And, folks, it don’t take much to be a member.” Hathaway holds up a small white card. “Just five little dollars and you’re full-fledged! Can you do that, folks? Can you spare five bucks to help us fight the war against desegregation, CAST THE NIGGER-LOVERS OUT?”

Ruth Barrows watches as the many-legged beast roars its “YES! YES, WE CAN!” She draws a ragged breath as it reaches into its many pockets and wallets and waves many five-dollar bills high above its many heads.

Catalog-handsome, mitt-handed Billy Hathaway whips a cardboard box out from behind the speaker’s podium. And, with the help of blue-eyed Cassie carting baby Billy to the front, with Sheriff DeLuth and the two prosegregation school-board candidates, Billy Hathaway feeds the beast four, maybe five hundred little white membership cards, five bucks a head.