3 Day Terror (16 page)

D
EAR
Maur,

This, over a nightcap …

I’ve been thinking, all the way down here — oh, and long before that, when we first spoke of divorce, and all through the divorce, and during the dismal aftermath, that it all started when we got mixed up with the couch clique. Remember? I can remember so damn clearly the night we had drinks with Julie at The Drake, and he said: “No kidding, analysis made a new man of me,” and I saw that little light bulb go on in your head, and you said: “How do you go about it?”

Julie said, “What do you mean?”

You said, “I mean, how do you start it? Do you just walk in and say, ‘Look, I’m all screwed up?’ and I knew that’s exactly what’d you be just walking in and saying the next afternoon to some psychiatrist.

Because we were having terrible fights then, weren’t we, Maur? I remember it because every place we went that song from
High Noon
was playing (Do not desert me, O my darling) and we were always in the midst of an argument when it would come singing over the radio in our bedroom, or come pumped into some cocktail lounge when we were raging at each other. And if we were on a street corner, someone would come by humming it, and it seemed to haunt the days and nights. We’d been to see
The Shrike
the night we met Julie, and I remember what you said during inermission:

“I brought the original with me,” and a week later there was an intruder in our house, an uninvited guest who stayed with us until we split up, ate meals with us, fought with us, made up with us, went out with us, made up our party lists with us, even tried making love with us — we fooled him there, though — and sent us a bill for $420 a month. How well I remember the figure, every month on the check stub, and the name: Dr. Feldman.

It was Dr. Feldman would say this and Dr. Feldman would say that, and Dr. Feldman thinks this, and Dr. Feldman thinks that, and before very long we had another guest to keep Dr. Feldman busy, and her name was Dr. Mannerheim. She was my check stub.

Then we didn’t even bother arguing with each other any more. We just mixed our nightcaps and let Dr. Feldman and Dr. Mannerheim argue, like proper mediums, never interfering with the messages, but rolling them out rote-style, until pretty soon it had nothing to do with Maur and Deel, but with what was left of Maur and Deel. The neuroses.

I was a neurosis who married a father-image because I feared sex, translated from the Freud as incest, and you were a neurosis who satisfied me because you were impotent and I had nothing to fear from you because you too feared sex, translated from the Freud as incest.

We wiggled and squirmed under the microscopes as pretty as any two neuroses could for the doctors, and in our new-found microcosm we collected dreams and slips of speech and prescriptions for tranquilizers, and we told time by the fifty-minute hour.

None of it seems real now, Maur, nor fair, nor honest — just glib and pat and too much like tennis. Anyone can play.

I always hated taking the scalpel to emotions, and I still don’t like it — but you accused me, right before our split, of still holding back. And you were right. So if we can save anything, if all the sawdust hasn’t spilled out by now, let’s patch it with facts.

I told you at Missouri about the abortion, told you then about this thing I had for types like Duboe and how I made Jud feel responsible. I told you too that I couldn’t marry Chad because I was afraid of that side of me. I knew how strong it was. But you said I couldn’t go through with my marriage with Chad because I didn’t love him — that much was true —
I
never loved anyone but you — and you said I didn’t love him because I didn’t want any kind of relationship but the kind we had. You wanted to believe that. I did too — even that, instead of the truth that Dr. Mannerheim dug out with her pad and pencil.

But there were things in the way: a cab driver one night — the night you were sick after we came back from our honeymoon, and I’d gone down to London Terrace for dinner at Dru’s. A TV repairman, one afternoon, six months later. In Juan les Pins, the beach bum who paraded as the squash player, and in Florence, Emilio — the guide from the Pitti Palace. There was a deck steward on the Liberté, and a fellow I met down in the Village when I was buying you a pair of space shoes. Others, too.

And Maur, every time I hated myself afterward, but it didn’t stop me.

For a while Mannerheim had me thinking I was a Lesbian and you were a fairy — and then I began to think Mannerheim was a Lesbian and Feldman was a fairy — and all the while this was going on, you were saying we were getting better.

Our nightcaps went from four to six a night that spring, and in June for an anniversary present, you gave me a gold pillbox from Cartier — for my Milt own.

You said we were getting better.

I don’t remember when it was we got well enough, in your opinion, to start talking about divorce. Maybe you do. Because I never felt well enough for that, if that’s what it took.

When you called me in Las Vegas and asked me to come back, when you said — remember, Maur? — ”I guess we’re both pretty peculiar people, Deel, but I know something. I love you!” I was too battle-scarred, or too proud, or maybe just too goddam tranquilized to do anything but hang up on you — and after it was over, I was dazed.

Now I’m back home, or back in Bastrop — because home isn’t here, there’s nothing here but unpleasantness to remember, except for the day you came here and took me away — and Maur, that seemed as much a miracle then as our getting together again seems now — but you came. I would have married Chad, I suppose, and gone on living the image other people saw, and he saw — and probably one day I would have gotten into trouble, real small-town trouble, like the last time when he was at war, but you got the vibrations, didn’t you? Remember how we used to believe we had E.S.P. or
folie à deux;
or that we were enchanted — our own magic?

Now it’s gone. But Maur, I haven’t been taking those don’t-give-a-damn pills any more, and I find I do give a damn. If we needed pills at all, maybe we needed do-give-a-damn ones. Because we lost something, Maur. Maybe it wasn’t much, but it was all I ever had, or wanted — you. And you!

Deel.

T
WILIGHT AND HE
pulled himself to his feet, holding his jaw where he’d been punched, leaning against the fence, breathless, with his stomach still aching, sometime after six; still light out.

He heard the pickup go down the street at a wild pace and remembered the angry words: “You dare show up looking that way, do you?”

Gradually he could straighten his body and walk, gradually, inching steps, up the gravel path to his house.

He found Cass in the kitchen. Johnny-Bob was in the bathroom in the hallway. He could hear the water running. The child hadn’t heard it; he had run ahead.

“Cass, I — ”

She looked up at him. She was running water, holding her hand under the faucet at the sink, waiting for it to warm up.

“People have been calling you all afternoon,” she said. “Your army!”

He leaned against the table, watching her. The water was steaming and she pulled her hand back quickly, then reached for the sink’s plug. “Johnny-Bob is filthy! Looks as if he’s been rolling in mud! Weren’t you watching him?”

“What was your father doing here?” he said in a dull tone; his stomach still hurt from the first punch and his jaw was swelling. “Or didn’t you know he was waiting out front for me?”

“He was waiting all afternoon for you,” she said, with her back turned to him. “He was only
one
of your visitors.”

“I know about Dee,” he said.

She stopped what she was doing, but didn’t look at him. Cass had a great facility for imitating someone’s voice in such perfect mock style that it was hard to suppress laughter, and she was imitating Dee’s now, with all the breathless, husky qualities, standing with the dish towel around her waist: “How nice to see you, Cassandra! I really can’t stay. I came to see Chad on business, something of a personal nature. I hope you’ll understand, Cassandra!”

She said in her own voice, syrupy-sweet: “Why, Delia, dear old bean-girl, how love-ah-ly to see you once again! Why, of course I understand, ducks. You’ll find I am one of the most understanding women in the whole of Tate County, Delia, lamb! Now, you’ll find my sweet, handsome, virile and irresistible husband is out at the Dip with our child, but don’t let that bother you, dear, ducky Dee-Benny, because our child can’t see anything — ” her voice broke — ”anyway.”

He went across to her, and it was just as she broke away from his hands that she seemed to explode.

“I’ve had it, Chad! Up to here! I’ve had it — do you hear me!”

She did a ridiculous thing then. She began to push sudsy water at him from the sink in front of her, spraying it on his clothes with her hands, like a child in a water-fight.

From behind them Johnny-Bob said: “Who’s splashing?”

“Mommie’s splashing!” she shouted, giving the water another wallop with her hand. Then, wild-eyed, she turned and ran from the room, the dish towel trailing in the wet on the floor. He heard her noise on the stairs.

“Is Mommie playing?” Johnny-Bob asked.

“That’s right, honey. Mommie’s playing.” Chad wiped the floor with the towel.

“She was going to wash me,” he said. “I’m all dirty.”

“C’mere, big fellow, Daddy’11 wash’ you,” Chad answered.

He guided his son to the kitchen sink, and he reached for his rag and the soap, he saw his face in the mirror — there where his jaw was swelling, was the smudge of lipstick.

Upstairs the bathroom door slammed shut.

“Look,” Poppy Porter said at
twilight,
“I know he’s not there yet, but when he comes there I wish you’d tell him to call me.”

Arnold Belden stood behind her. “Calm down,” he said. “It’s hard to hear long-distance if you shout, Poppy.”

She muffled the receiver with her hand. “He’s so stupid! I know just who he is — the big fat one that chews the cigar all the time!”

She said into the receiver: “When he gets there, will you have him call me, Mr. Hodges? … Well, of course he’s coming there. Didn’t you call him and tell him to? He left late this afternoon for Montgomery? … You don’t?”

Arnold Belden walked over and sat down, picked up a magazine; then threw it aside. He saw Poppy drop the arm of the telephone back into its cradle.

“Well,” she said, “well, Daddy, he never called Troy.”

“You sure Troy said it was Hodges?”

“He said he had to go to Montgomery on business. That’s who he always stays with — Hodges or that other fat slob!”

“Easy, honey!”

“Well, they are fat slobs, Daddy! And if Troy really had any business to go to so suddenly they’d know about it! But they don’t. They said Troy wasn’t coming back for another week, as far as they knew!”

“Then where is he?”

“Where do you think he is?” Poppy said. “He’s in hiding someplace. The big old politician, afraid he’ll get his picture in the paper with the Negroes! He’s run out, Daddy! Till the heat’s off! His home and his family and everydab-body be damned, but his praise-be-to-Allah constituents!”

“I don’t want to believe that of Troy,” Arnold Belden said.

“Do you think I do?” Poppy was screaming now, at
twilight’s end.

Beneath the tall elms, in the black background of the big tree trunks, with the moon rising, and a bugle sounding the minor four-note call, going two by two like an army of coupled ghosts, the formless flopping sheets moving solemnly in the still night air, at Chandler’s; white robes with pants-legs ends and shoes, yellow pairs with knobby toes, high-tops laced with mud-encrusted ties; shoes that knew the fields and the hills; circling to form an arc near the platform of the gin.

And there the cross burning; the air heavy with the stink of kerosene; and then the sound:

“He said it was sick! For niggers to crawl like venom through the corridors of our school! And they took him to jail for it! He said it was sick! For black niggers to watch white legs and lust after white daughters of white fathers and mothers! And they took him to jail for it! He said it was sick! He said it was sick!”

And the roar: “And it is!”

And the roar: “And it is!”

And the roar: “Sick!”

And the chant: “Sick! Sick! Sick! Sick” of the black silhouettes against the white cloth in the orange light of the flame at
night
for the stranger knew a Spam sandwich and a cell, and the jailer playing Elvis Presley records off in the back room by himself: “…
you’re nothing but a hound dog and you ain’t no good to me.”
and
night
knew a plan to have a dream — a woman like her — like she was, Dee — so beautiful in church, kneeling, never mind, he sank his hands into his pockets, now he
could.
And she was his right, her kind — a woman like that, a rich, soft expensive woman — his! His heritage!

When he used to come home on vacation — remember — from the military school in the blue uniform with the gold braid and the visor cap, God! Anyone of them out in Pelham, and all of them out in Pelham — eying him, in the blue uniform with the gold braid, touching the gold buttons with their fingers.

He knew what her guts were about, and he could have her. He wasn’t afraid now; she was no better than he was. If she didn’t believe him, he had the letter. He could read it out loud in The Wheel, but he wouldn’t. He’d say he would.

She’d said to the man out front of church: “Arrest him? Are you crazy?”

Then she
did
like him; even in church she’d grinned at him. Hadn’t she? When he followed her in?

Always he’d stood on the fringes of what was rightly his, of what he was born into, and Lennie Gold used to laugh: “Ahhh, forget it, Richard! You’re so rotten drunk. So you had money once! So you could have had any woman you wanted — even Lana Turner! My heart bleeds, for Christ’s sake! And everyone knew who you were back in smelly Pelham! Your story touches my heart, boy!” But Lennie never knew the pain-haunted memories. The way he’d defiled himself — his birthright, trying to recapture its essence.

Now the night knew a plan to have a dream — a woman like her — and laurel! He’d be gentle with her too. Now he wasn’t afraid any more.

Standing there in the cell, suddenly he realized the music had stopped. Footsteps came down the corridor.

“You sure kicked up a riot,” the jailer groaned, itching himself around the waist where his shirt was pulled out, exposing his white belly. “The Ku is out marching. Ku ain’t marched around here in some time. You sure did it!” “There’s reporters down from Birmingham,
I
hear,” Richard Buddy said. “Don’t you have anything better than canned meat?”

“We ain’t had nothing but niggers in this jail overnight for six months,” the jailer yawned. “Niggers think it’s turkey … Yeah, there’s reporters being put up down to the hotel. You sure kicked up a riot. And let me tell you something else: you gonna be searched.”

“Searched? I
was.”

“Naw, this time for personal property belonging to Miss Delia Benjamin. Chief’s coming down here. You sure kicked up a riot to get him outa his fat nest on Sunday night, fellow.”

“When’s he coming?”

“Phoned up just now,” the jailer said. “And something else too.”

“What’s that?”

“I ain’t no nigger-lover myself. Goddam niggers come in here and smell up the place and I gotta wait on ‘em. I ain’t no nigger-lover. I’d ride with the Ku any time — ” he gave a snort — ”if they was ridin’. Go around in cars these days — but that’s ridin’ I guess — ”

Buddy interrupted him. “What’s the something else?”

“It’s downstairs,” the jailer said. “I can’t let him up ‘cause it’s against the law. But I can take anything down to him you might want him to keep for you. Duboe’s down there. Come in with the Ku. They’re heading for the Nelly.”

“Okay,” Richard Buddy said, “but I need a plain envelope, see? And I want you to listen to instructions.”

“You’d think you was the jailer and I was where you is,” the fellow answered, “but I guess you know your business. Them niggers think Spam is turkey,” he said, shuffling away back down the corridor. “Gobble it up jest like turkey with their big mouths.”

Richard Buddy looked through bars smiling at night.

• • •

Night. Out in his yard he said to her, “But the important thing is I
know
now, Cass. She doesn’t mean one damn thing any more. I can say that honestly. Will you come on back in the house? You can’t stay out here all night.”

“How do I know you’re not lying? You must have lied all these years when you said you loved me. You
must
have!”

She sat in the canvas-back campchair, her back to him, swatting the mosquitoes as they ate her arms and legs.

He remembered another night they had stood the war of mosquitoes out in Senior Porter’s backyard, after Troy shoved Poppy into the antique glass collection of his mother’s; that time Poppy had said in drunken anger for everyone to hear: “You’re a Beggsom poor-white, and no war-profit education down at Alabam can clean the smell off you, Cassie! You don’t belong! You look like a Polish maid on Sunday with your hair all frizzed up — look at you!”

And the mosquitoes had fed on their flesh while she cried: “Poppy’s right, Chad! I’m all wrong! My perm is frizzy and I don’t know how to dress —
never
did — even the Pi Phi’s couldn’t teach me how to keep from being tacky, and you just feel sorry for me. Everyone says it — not just Poppy!”

“I want to marry you,” he had told her for the first time. “I want to get us out of this mosquito-night and take you with me, and I’ll never leave you, Cass. Never!”

“Cassie,” he said, “Cass — listen. Whatever’s happened, and the good Lord knows you and me have been through some big hell together, I love you. I came out in the mosquitoes once before to tell you that, remember? Well, here we are back and I’ve got the same thing to say.”

He could hear her crying now, but he didn’t go to her yet. She was still in a state. He saw her hand grip the hankie.

He said a sixth time, must have been: “Dee wanted me to get that letter from that fellow they locked up. That’s all she wanted. And Cass, while we were standing there talking, while I was watching our kid make those leaves into a birthday necklace for you, I suddenly knew I never loved anyone like you — like I love you, Cass. I suddenly knew that. And I felt like telling Dee that I didn’t have any hard feelings about what happened years back — because I meant it. I felt like hearing myself say it because I knew right there it was true. And Cass, she said she was glad — that’s all, and she meant she was. That’s when I got the lipstick on my chin. She said she was glad that things worked out so neither of us regretted what happened, and she kissed my chin. I don’t love Dee, Cass. I love you. Hear?”

“How come she isn’t Benny any more,” she said.

He could tell by her voice she was smiling.

He said, “She just isn’t. Now, will you come in and stop feeding us to the mus’keets!”

“I’ve got to tell you something else,” she said, turning toward him now, half-sitting on the edge of the campchair, as though she would not budge until everything was settled between them. “Papa says he knows the man behind what’s happening tomorrow. He says you’re going to get in trouble if you escort the Nigra children to school, but he says nothing’s going to happen to Johnny-Bob.”

“Did you think something was?”

“We got a threatening note this afternoon mentioning Johnny-Bob. It said our child wouldn’t be safe if you escorted the Nigras to school. Papa took it with him. He wanted to find out who wrote it.”

“I’ll bet he did!”

“Chad — ”

“Okay,” he said. “But have we got to fight that now?”

“Poppy got one too, threatening the twins. She called me right before you came home. Troy had to go to Montgomery and she was upset, wanted to talk to you.”

“I’ll call her. Then Troy’s out, hmm? It’s just me and Jud — because honey, I’ve got to do that!”

“I wanted to tell you,” she said, “that I don’t feel the way I did about it. If you think you have to, well, then — ”

“Thanks, Cass.”

“But Chad — ” she stood up now; still by the chair. She said, “Papa isn’t a part of this, Chad. I know he isn’t. I want you to know it. I want you to tell me you know it.”