3 Day Terror (15 page)

“We’re beginning to catch on to each other, aren’t we?” he said. “Finally!”

“Maybe we are,” she said. “Give me your glass.” She reached for it. “I’m going to rinse them out and go to bed. The party’s over.”

“Why don’t you scald mine. Might have germs.”

“Oh, come on, Mr. Buddy,” she said. “Richard, boy, give me the glass and let’s not play gangbusters any longer. I’m tired.”

He reached across and caught her arm, yanking her away from the kitchen door so that it swung shut behind her. They were in the hallway, an he pushed her away from the living room in the direction of the unlighted dining room. In her other hand she was carrying her glass, and she threw the melting ice from it toward him.

Instantly he slapped the glass out of her hand.

“Who do you think you are?” he said. He took hold of her shoulders. “Who in hell do you think you are?”

She looked at his face. He was perspiring and his eyes were bright and narrowed and angry. She didn’t answer him.

“Who in hell do you think you are?” he said “You tell me that?”

She said nothing still.

Again he shook her shoulders against the wall. The china in the dining room bureau rattled. She heard him hoik and felt the wet spittle on her cheek.

“That’ll show you,” he said.

“Show me what?” She hadn’t meant to speak.

“I can spit on your kind,” he said. “Nouveau riche! Is this barn here your ancestral manor! Is it? I can spit on it — ” again he spat — ”I ought to teach you a lesson.”

“You’re hurting my arm, damn you — ”

“Who do you think you are to look down on me; Who? You’re sick, did you know that? You think that sick Plaza Hotel is important, don’t you? It’s a sick, sick place, and it’s dull and stupid and vulgar! It’s vulgar!”

He shoved her against the wall again. “I’ll fix you,” he said, “I’m going to fix you — ”

He put his hands on her at the exact moment Flo Benjamin burst through the kitchen door brandishing an egg-beater.

Then later, after he had run to his car, his shoes thrown at him by Dee’s mother, as she berated him in a squeaky high voice which was shaking with the tumultuous indignation of outraged Southern womanhood, Dee realized something that sent sudden fear through her.

She had never mentioned the Plaza to him. She had never told him that that was where Maur was living now.

M
ORNING CAME EARLY
down at Suggs’s store; twenty after seven, in the back room, the sun kept from entering by the crust of filth on the windows, and Duboe laughing: “Hell, I’d ever seen this here supply room, Crabb, I’d buy my stuff over to Towers nigger heaven myself. Whew-wee, this shore is a seedy hole, man!”

“Sure,” Suggs said, “ ‘cause I lost my best business since the nigger opened his nigger store. Can’t even afford help!”

Gus Chandler hated being up at this hour; on a Sunday looked forward to going back and getting more sleep. “We all know what we’re supposed to do,” he said. “I can see my names from the county s’afternoon. They’ll all show up on Monday.”

Duboe said, “Even in in-season, Pa?”

“Hell, enough’ll show to scare the niggers. What the hell we need?”

“I ain’t worried about enough to scare the niggers,” Duboe said. “I’m worried about them dad-dum state troopers — somethin’ like that. The guard or somethin’. What if they get called in?”

“They won’t,” Gus answered, tapping the dottle out of his pipe. “They won’t because they don’t think them that was in at the Wheel on Sunday will be around on Monday. They figure it’ll be just a dozen or so of us kicking up.”

Suggs said, “At the most, maybe they’ll swear in Chadwick or Troy Porter, or some others as deputies. Nothin’ bigger than that.”

“Where’s Buddy, anyhow?” Gus Chandler said.

“Sleeping off last night,” John Beggsom laughed. “They was out to my place earlier in the evenin’ — him and Easy-Dee.”

“Lord, I just hope he got her drunk ‘fore she got him drunk,” Duboe said. “She can drink Texas.”

At seven twenty-three in the morning prayer ended. Jud sank back in the throne chair on the altar while the choir sang:

and he saw her then.

An usher escorted her to a pew near the front; and he saw her face, under the immense black picture hat, look up at him — look straight into his own with the same serious eyes he used to see everywhere when he shut his and let the darkness make dreams, and then he saw her head bow, and the white gloves touch the pew’s back in front of her as she knelt:

and he thought, welcome back, Delia. But then someone had joined her.

Jud recognized the stranger. He could feel the familiar murmur and rustle of the congregation that came whenever something was wrong; and he saw heads turn, heard the coughing. Always there was the coughing at a time like this, at ten-fifty in the
“Morning”
he said to her, kneeling beside her.

“Where did you come from?”

“From your house. I followed you. I want to talk to you.”

She said, “You know I want it back, and I intend to get it back.”

“Shhh,” he said, “the lady with the yellow eyes two seats over is about to lose them out of her head. I like you because you’re smart, Dee,” he whispered. “How’d you know?”

She sat back in the pew, her program covering her mouth. “The Plaza,” she said. “You mentioned it and I never had. But the letter was addressed there. Where is it?”

“I mailed it,” he smiled.

“You’re a damn liar,” she said.

“Shhhhh, Delia,” Richard Buddy whispered. “I’m sick in bed about the language you use in church.”

“Morning,”
Flo Benjamin said to Senior and Gay out front of Second Methodist Church. “Isn’t it a lovely Sunday morning?”

“We thought Dee might come along with you this morning,” Gay said, “I was saying to Senior only just a minute ago, wonder why Delia didn’t join her mama for service?”

“Oh, the young folks are partial to Jud, now, and you know that s’well as I do, Gay. Law, Dee got herself up with the birds to get all dollied up for the Episcopalians.”

“I was just hoping,” Gay said, “everything come out all right last night. Mmmm? Did everything?”

“As it turned out there was nothing at all to worry about,” Flo Benjamin said. “Dee wasn’t even with him, as it turned out, but home the whole time.”

“Law, no, really?” Gay exclaimed. “What you know about that?”

“It sure is lovely,” Flo Benjamin said walking along now, it sure is a lovely
morning.”

“Morning,”
Jack Chadwick said passing Cass on his way to the bathroom.

She said:
“Morning.
Cold with the sun out and it up in the nineties at noon.”

J
UST AFTER
noon, he looked up and saw her in the doorway of the vestry, just as he was changing.

“Jud? Hi,” she said, walking across the thick gray carpet, offering her hand. “Thanks.” She smiled when he felt the touch of her again. “I know you didn’t have to do that. Everyone would have liked it better if you hadn’t.”

That was true. He said, “That’s not true, Dee.” He finished yanking off his clerical collar, reaching for the tie over the arm of his leather high-back chair. “Everyone’s glad you’re home again. I just made it official.”

“Put the tie on,” she said, “then tell me what in hell is wrong, Jud? Will you tell me that?”

He slipped the tie under his shirt collar and waved his hand at the couch near the window. “Is someone waiting, or can you sit down, Dee?”

“Someone”
she said, “was just arrested.” Reaching in her bag for a cigarette, she walked across to the couch. “For a minute I thought they were going to arrest me, too. What is it with everyone Jud? When you stood up there and said you’d like to welcome back Deila Benjaman, I could swear I heard the hair bristling! And suddenly everyone had colds and St. Vitus dance and ants crawling over them! I felt like Fatty Arbuckle or Carry Nation at a bartenders’ convention.”

“No,” Jud said. “You felt like someone who was with Fatty Arbuckle or Carry Nation at a bartenders’ convention.”

She lit her cigarette and inhaled. “So that’s it.”

He watched her from where he sat, remembering that he had taught her how to inhale — and lots more. How to dance, how to drink so she could stand the taste of liquor, and how to make love.

She had thrust him into a long anguish through years of picking him up and setting him down like some rainy-day toy; smiling on him for favors and frowning on him out of boredom; letting him wind his long, love-trembling legs around her impassive body in any way he knew how, with her body marked off like a play court of some serious sport — the foul lines and the out of bounds — and always in the heat of his own passion and in the unbelievable lack of it in her reactions, she would interrupt to change the radio station and get better music; and ultimately after their clothes were twisted and gapping and wet with the perspiration of his dear work, she would say:
Jud? Hadn’t we better start back?

Then Chad came, and he had thought it would end there.

Delia Benjamin said, from the couch: “What I don’t understand is all the heroics, Jud?”

What I’ll never understand, Jud thought, is why she decided on it after Chad went off to war. What made her come to him that day, and say that?

“Heroics?” he said. “Dee, this fellow — whoever he is — has stirred up a lot of trouble. I don’t think you realize.”

“He’s against the Negroes going to school — well, so are a lot of people,” she said, “and he’s made speeches down at the Wheel, and he’s damn uncouth. But after all, Jud — since when do we arrest someone for that? Oh, I’ve got my own bone to pick with him, a good meaty one. But after all — ”

She had said simply:
Jud, do you still love me? You always claimed you’d never stop.

“Have you seen the pamphlets he’s distributing?” Jud pulled open his desk drawer. “I’ve got one here you can look at.” He got up and walked over to the couch, handing one to her. “He’s been behind all the threats people have been getting, too,” Jud said. “They’re too clever — most of them — in their wording and presentation, for folks around here, in sympathy with him, to think of. Look at that.”

Yes, you know I love you,
he had said.

Then take me out tonight, Jud. Will you?

And it was crazy the way he knew exactly what she meant; just didn’t know why. Never did.

He watched her face in its growing concern and faint alarm rising in the features now: “You’ve been away a long time, Dee,” he said. “You’ve forgotten how things like this can pull the trigger on all the guns people have always had loaded around here. You’ve forgotten about the rednecks who hate the townspeople because credit’s hard for them to get in the stores, or the poor whites who are even worse off than the Negro and blame the Negro for it —
hate
him! Or the backswoodsman who just plain likes any old lawless uprising that can help him blow off steam; or the farmer, Dee, who believes in keeping the Negro in his place as fervently as I believe in keeping Sunday sacred, and who’ll go against any law that goes contrary to that belief! You’ve forgotten about these loaded guns back in the closets, a lot of us had — but they were always there. And now this fellow’s managed to pull the triggers!”

Jud sat down beside her on the couch. And maybe, he thought, you’ve forgotten the old Negro woman’s shack outside Morrow and the rain-racked night afterwards on the weeping-ride home through the vine-hung back roads;
you should have seen it, Jud, she showed it to me, held it up with her black hands, like a little wet rat. And it was a boy! Did you know you could tell at three months? Our son, Jud, and she put him down the hole in the outhouse behind the place
…

“And I managed to meet him — first thing,” she said looking up from the pamphlet. “Lord, how do I always manage to go head-first toward trouble, Jud?”

“You have a knack for it, I guess.”

She put her head down: “God, I wish I’d never come back here!”

“Dee — ” he touched her hair — ”don’t feel that way,” he said, feeling that way himself, wishing she’d never come back; like an albatross, he thought, for the first time thought that in
how
long?

“I wish I’d never come back,” Troy Porter said after dinner that afternoon, as he sat out on Belden’s back porch, watching the twins play on the lawn. “I was thinking of staying in Montgomery through Monday, but I hated to leave Poppy alone. Now, this mess!”

“Pam and I understand your position,” Arnold Belden told him. “I want you to know that, Troy. Poppy ought to know a man can’t be a politician and a hero at the same time.”

“Oh, now, I wouldn’t put it that way, Arnold.” Troy leaned forward in the wicker chair, frowning. “I mean, I never
was
for integration, you know that. So why should I lead the Nigra kids to school? I mean, look at it that way. I’ve always had a very clear picture of how I felt about the Nigra. You know, Arnold, during the war when I was laid up outside Cannes, I met up with the Towers boy, right in the same hospital. Uniform and all. I had my leg busted and I was sitting out on the porch and they brought him out to me — this French boy did. Had the idea we’d be thrilled to see each other because we were from the same home town. You know, Arnold, that colored boy was just plain miserable out there talking to me. I tried to put him at his ease best I could, but you know the Nigras feel stronger about what’s proper even than we do. He just didn’t feel right, Arnold. Felt things were way out of proportion. I could tell. Way after the war I met him in the drugstore — I was with Poppy, and he was back to himself again, back to normal. All smiles and wanting to know if he could take care of any odd jobs around the house.” Troy bit off the end of a cigar and struck a match. “I tell you, for the Nigra’s sake, as well as for what I believe is right, I oppose integration.”

Arnold said, “Well, that’s not exactly the point being made, Troy. It’s the law now. It’s whether we go by it, or go against it.”

“Oh, I’ll go by it,” his son-in-law answered, sucking smoke through the cigar, “but I can’t see helping it be enforced. That’s not my job.”

Arnold thought a moment, studying his nails. He said finally, “That’s not the point, either, Troy. It’s just that we seem to be in trouble in Bastrop. Jack Chadwick thought — ”

Troy Porter pulled his cigar out of his mouth and said sharply: “And I’m sick of what Jack Chadwick said!”

“We all thought,” Arnold Belden said quietly, “that it’d be a way to counteract the trouble!”

Troy didn’t say anything.

“Pam and I understand your position,” Arnold Belden said.

“I wish
I
did,” Troy answered. “I wish I knew what I’m supposed to do tomorrow. Here’s my father-in-law threatened, and my neighbors threatened, and Poppy promising my career away to a Nigra escort service, and a reporter from the Birmingham
Post-Herald
down at the hotel. I wish I knew what I’m supposed to do. I did the one thing I thought would help) — got that Yankee locked up. But what’m I supposed to do tomorrow?”

“Pam and I understand your position.” Arnold Belden had said that too many times already.

But the third time it didn’t irk Troy because he was thinking of something else now; something he could do about that position by just making one phone call.

• • •

“Afternoon is nice, Daddy,” the boy said, standing by the oak. “Is this brown?”

“That’s brown,” Jack Chadwick answered. “Smell the air, son? Smell the brush burning? Well, those leaves are all colors — red, like the sun is hot; and green, like grass feels, and yellow, like lemons smell, and brown — ”

“Like the tree,” the boy said.

“Yes, like the tree. And when folks rake them up and burn them, all those colors smell like the air, Johnny, like it smells now. Isn’t that a good smell!”

“I want to make Mommie a necklace,” the boy said. “Can I?”

Jack bent over and picked up some leaves. “C’mon,” he said. “help me gather up these leaves and lay them in a pile, and then you can start to work.”

“Tomorrow’s Mommie’s birthday,” Johnny said.

“It is? You sure of that?”

“Ginnie Lee says so. Says she’s baking a orange-frosting cake. So I’m going to make a bracelet and a necklace for Mommie.”

“Well, that’s a good idea,” his father answered.

“Where you going, Daddy?”

“Just off a minute,” he said. “Just down here a ways.”

“You going away, Daddy?”

“Just down here to help someone,” his father said. “Someone’s lost the way.”

“Will you come right back?”

“I’ll be right back, son. You make Mommie a birthday present.”

“A lady’s lost the way,” Johnny talked to himself, “I can smell a lady.”

He wove the leaves into a long necklace, tying the ends together, and then more into a bracelet, and he could feel afternoon going. It was a long time before Daddy came back and when he did, he was whistling.

“You happy?” he called out. “Daddy, you happy?”

“I guess I am, big fellow,” his father said. “I guess I am, all right.”

“It isn’t afternoon any more.”

“It still is,” Jack said, “It’s just very late in the
afternoon.”

Afternoon
near five-thirty and the stranger ripped the Scotch tape from the letter, sitting in the cell in the courthouse near the Wheel.