Schembri
sighed resignedly and leaned back in his chair.
'It
was a time of huge political dissent and social unrest, people wanted someone
to target, and the Klan effectively did what the National Socialists did in
Germany in the 1930s. They gave people a reason, a target, somewhere to direct
their frustration and hatred. Combined with the natural sense of xenophobia
that people felt, they couldn't help but hit home. They had money, they bribed
officials, they held marches, they burned crosses, they dragged people from
their houses and flogged them in public. They got away with it for a short
while, and then the papers got hold of what was going on and a Congressional
inquiry was instigated in 1921. The Klan changed their tactics, and as a result
of the publicity they received from that inquiry the membership exploded. By
1924 the Klan claimed a membership in excess of three million. The National
Convention of the Democratic Party denounced the Klan, and attempted to outlaw
them once again. That attempt was defeated.'
Schembri
smiled knowingly and leaned forward. 'The government, whatever they might have
said in public, didn't want the Klan disbanded. The Klan kept folks in line,
they terrorized the trade unions, and the government was all in favor of that
kind of activity. They didn't want the blacks to be equal, whatever the result
of the Civil War might have indicated. That was clear when they whacked Martin
Luther King.'
Schembri
spooned a mess of chicken and potato into his mouth. His eyes were alight, on
fire almost. He was in his element.
'The
Depression of the '30s reduced the membership greatly, apparently, and the Klan
was rife with internal corruption, immoral leadership, all manner of travails.
They didn't fold however, and they continued to attack their primary targets -
trade union organizers and blacks trying to vote. In 1940 they affiliated
themselves with the German-American Bund, a group financed by the German
National Socialist Party. They held a huge rally at Camp Nordland in New
Jersey, and it was believed at that point that the Klan had never been so
organized or well-funded as it was then. The U.S. government knew exactly what
was going on, they knew exactly where the money was coming from, and with that
kind of network being strengthened they could so easily have investigated and
prosecuted the ringleaders. But they didn't. The Klan were like the hydra, cut
one head off and another one would grow, and it was estimated that in excess of
thirty percent of Congressional and Federal officials were either part of, or
in favor of, the Klan's actions.'
Schembri
raised his spoon and emphasized each word with a downward motion.
'Shit
like this doesn't happen because it happens. Shit like this happens because
people want it to happen, you know?'
I
nodded. I knew.
'The
Federal government kicked up a fuss about unpaid taxes after World War Two and
Georgia revoked the Klan Charter in 1947. The Klan's current leader, Samuel
Green, died and the structure of the Klan weakened for a short while. However,
with the Supreme Court ruling in May of 1954 that racial segregation in schools
was illegal and unconstitutional, the Klan got all stirred up again,
re-established itself, and went on a heightened recruitment drive. They started
bombing places, stepped up the reprisal killings and terrorist activities, and
after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 they experienced a huge resurgence in
membership. It was estimated that the Klan was as strong in the mid-'60s as it
had been in the '20s, though folks obviously didn't publicize their membership
so it was hard to determine exactly how big they had become. By the 1970s they
were big enough to put known and acknowledged Klan leaders up for Federal and
local elections, and these people amassed huge voting constituencies. They now
possessed a unity of voice, and whether it was the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
or the National Klan or the United Klans of America, it was still the same
thing. And now you have the Union of the Snake, the Valkyrie Charter, the Grand
Order of White Supremacy, all these white Anglo- Saxon Protestant neo-Nazi
groups right across the country, and they have money, and they have allies and
members in the Senate, in Congress, everywhere you look.'
Schembri
smiled knowingly and cynically.
'And that,
my friend, was what you ran into in North Carolina.'
I
looked up. Before speaking to him I had no idea Schembri even knew who I was,
let alone the fact that I'd come from North Carolina.
'You think
you were targeted because you were there, well you're right. Only thing they
might have regretted was that you weren't a nigger. But hell, you were a hippy,
as good as damn it, and hippies were communists or Jews or homosexuals
whichever way they looked at it. You got involved with someone you shouldn'a
gotten involved with, that's the truth my friend. You stuck your little candy
cane in a beehive and they done stung your pecker, eh?'
Schembri
laughed coarsely and shovelled some food into his mouth.
'And
I understand they're planning to kill you, right?'
I
nodded. I talked about it with no real connection to what it meant. The death
penalty had been presented as the only acceptable penalty by the prosecuting
attorney. I knew someone, somewhere had already made the decision.
Characteristically, I would be the last to know. At that time it all seemed so
unreal and distant and beyond belief that I could have been talking about
someone else. It would not be for the best part of a year that the actual truth
of what would happen to me would become real.
'You
gon' go to your Maker with a clean heart, right?'
I
nodded.
'Shee-it,
boy, I heard you didn't even put up a fight,' Schembri said.
I
opened my mouth to say something, but he cut me short.
'Seems
to me anyone who knows anything about you knows you were railroaded, boy… but
the fact that they know ain't gonna help you none. People you pissed off are an
awful lot more powerful than a few convicts and a couple of Penitentiary wardens.'
He
spoke the truth.
'So
don't go gettin' yourself involved with any politicians' daughters again, eh?
Let that be your lesson this time around.'
Schembri
spooned the last mound of chicken into his mouth and stood up.
I
opened my mouth to speak, to ask any one of the ten thousand questions I had
planned to ask him.
'I
gotta go take a piss now, boy… been nice talkin'. I'll see y'around.'
He
stepped out from behind the table and started walking.
And
then he stopped, suddenly, as if someone had tugged him with a rope, and he
turned, slowly, silently, and looked at me with such a strange and
disconcerting expression.
He
started back towards me, his expression focused, intent, and when he reached
the table he leaned towards me.
His
voice was a whisper, barely that much.
'One
more thing,' he said. 'When you go up there -' he nodded towards D-Block on the
other side of the building '- you're likely to meet someone. His name is West,
Mister West, and he runs that place all by hisself. He's the bossman up there,
don't let anyone tell you different. He's a bad, bad man, the very worst… and
some long time back he was working for the government on things the government
don't like to tell you about. He was employed to take care of certain - shall
we say - embarrassments, for folks like Cavanaugh, Young and Goldbourne.'
I was
stunned into open-mouthed silence.
Schembri
continued.
'Not
a word, my boy, not a word of this. You got yourself involved with those
people, people who I believe may as well have pulled the trigger on the
Kennedys themselves. And look what happened to you and your buddy, eh? West is
born out of the same egg, and you let him know what I just told you and they'll
find you hanged in your cell just like they found Frank Rayburn. There ain't
nothin' you can do about it so I wouldn't even try. You keep that secret, take
it to your grave if you have to, 'cause you ain't never gonna prove nothin' an'
the only one who'll hurt for it is you.'
Schembri
stood up straight.
He
nodded his head.
'Not
a word,' he repeated, and walked away.
He
didn't look back. His stride was purposeful and determined.
As I
watched him go, I was none the wiser, all the more frustrated for realizing I
really knew nothing significant at all about what had taken place. I wanted to
speak with him again, I
needed
to speak with him, but I never found him
again.
A
little more than a month later he went up against the Warden of Sumter
Penitentiary with an armful of legal books and some quotes from the
Constitution. Apparently he intended to sue North Carolina State for violation
of his basic human rights.
Two
days after that particular conversation he collapsed in his cell with a massive
coronary seizure. The bruising he suffered to his chest and back was apparently
the result of falling against the sink when he went down. How someone can fall
both backwards and forwards simultaneously I don't know, but Robert Schembri
did it, and did it with style.
He was
buried in a Penitentiary plot. No-one came. Apparently he had no living
relatives. He was one of a kind.
Some
months after his death I was moved to D-Block, the place of my execution, and I
would look back and recall the people I knew and realize that, aside from
Schembri, I never really connected with anyone. I had spoken to the man no more
than three or four times, and more often than not there was that feeling that
he didn't even know I was there. But what he said influenced my thinking,
broadened my perspective of the world from which I'd come, the world from which
I would depart. And above all this he had placed a belief in my mind. That
perhaps this Mr. West knew something of Nathan Verney, that he might have been
involved in the very reason I was there. But I could not let myself believe
that, could not dare to imagine that such a thing could run in so concentric a
circle. But the thought was there, and as someone once said
a mind stretched
by an idea never again regains its former proportions.
My
mind was stretched. It would never again be the same.
The
world was crazy. We knew that in Florida. We knew that when we heard of the
tens of thousands of dead in some far-away war that possessed neither motive
nor meaning.
It
was becoming harder and harder to gain anchorage.
I
took some sense of comfort in the belief that there was a reason for
everything.
Shame
that no-one told me what it was.
Christmas
Eve 1969.
I
remember standing on the porch of my house watching a dog run back and forth
across the road. Crazy fucking dog. Chasing something I couldn't see.
Eventually it paused right there in the middle of the road and started barking.
It vanished as soon as a car appeared around the corner.
I
turned and walked back into the house.
Nathan
was upstairs, sleeping off whatever had happened the night before. Linny had
gone early, a little after six, said she'd be back before the middle of the
day, would bring food, make us a meal.
I
couldn't have cared less whether I saw her again. Her enthusiasm had begun to
grate on me.
I sat
in the kitchen for a little while. The house was silent. I smoked, drank some
coffee, closed my eyes and remembered times I had sat there before. Times when
things had been simpler, less complicated, times when things had seemed to make
some kind of sense.
Reality
challenged me. I felt an injustice had been perpetrated, and though I cared for
Nathan Verney perhaps more than for any other person alive, I was concerned
that he hadn't considered the effect his burgeoning relationship with Linny
Goldbourne might have had upon me.
I
wanted to feel nothing about it. I wanted it to be of no consequence at all. I
wanted to be strong and independent and uninfluenced by anything anyone said or
did. But I was not. I knew that. Perhaps that was the real source of my
irritation.
Nathan
came down a little later. I said nothing. If Linny Goldbourne felt the same way
about Nathan that she had evidently once felt about me, then she would be gone
in a month, perhaps less.