Chesapeake (145 page)

His parents were delighted to see him, for Luta Mae was once more in jail, this time in Michigan, and they had feared that he might fall into her revolutionary ways. ‘How tall he is!’ Julia cried, trying to restrain herself from embracing the self-conscious young man who stood before her, his dark skin glistening.

‘You pretty much a real marine,’ his father said admiringly. ‘I bet you seen some adventures in Korea.’ But Hiram thought: How old they’ve
become. Seventy-one, their lives worn out with working, and he judged that he had been correct in citing them as epitomes of the black problem.

His two years of wandering had not improved his chances for employment, for he had mastered no trade nor improved his education in any specific field. His learning had consisted of long night sessions arguing radical philosophies, and weekend retreats with Black Muslims, listening to their theories. He had returned home prepared for only one job: to agitate the minds of blacks younger than he and to direct them in the analysis of their community.

In spite of his desire not to upset his parents, who had made their adjustment to the system, he could not refrain from raising questions which disturbed them. ‘Pop, let’s suppose you been slothful all your life. You’d be about as well off as you are now. Do you realize how you’ve been cheated? Not even a television after all these years of labor. Mom, I never knew a day you didn’t work.’

When old Will Nesbitt, the bandleader, came by one night to warn them that their son was attracting unfavorable attention from the town authorities, Jeb and Julia nodded. ‘From us, too.’

They asked Will what he thought they should do about Hiram, and the old man said, ‘Get him out of here. Trouble is, he’s growed faster than Patamoke.’

For a brief spell they dreamed that he would land a good position with Steed’s or the boatyard, but neither of those establishments needed a philosophical young black who might have been contaminated by his unexplained residence in the North, and townspeople supposed that he would hang around for a while, then drift away, as his criminal sister Luta Mae had done.

But in the summer of 1967 Hiram Cater was still on hand, spending a few pennies now and then—no one could say where he acquired them—and arguing at night with other young blacks, also without jobs and no prospects of any. Patamoke now had two black policemen, and their reports on Hiram were ominous: ‘Born troublemaker, probably in cahoots with his sister in Michigan.’

That guess was wrong. All the Caters were dismayed that Luta Mae had now been in jail four times, and despite the fact that they knew her to be one of the finest girls in Maryland, they were ashamed that she had so fallen athwart the law. It had not yet occurred to them that it was the system that was wrong, not Luta Mae, and in their familial shame they tried to forget her, even though her flaming words continued to reverberate in Hiram’s consciousness.

He might have negotiated this long summer without incident had not Reverend Jackson and Will Nesbitt arranged for an August rally to replenish church funds. Signs went up in the Steed store, rope was found for cordoning off Frog’s Neck, and Julia Cater began preparing for the
crab cakes she would offer to the church she loved so well. It was these crab cakes that got Hiram into trouble.

On a hot, mosquito-ridden Friday afternoon he watched as his mother and Helen slaved in their kitchen so that the congregation could earn a few pennies, and the procedure seemed so ridiculous and unrewarding that he asked, ‘Why you breakin’ your backs for such foolishness?’

Old Julia, bent and heavy, explained, ‘Because we likes to do God’s will’

‘You sell a dollar crab cake to them whites for twenty-five cents, you call that God’s will?’

‘Many a time, Hiram, you wouldn’t be alive ’ceptin’ the church gave us the money.’

‘I will not accept life on those terms,’ he stormed. He would not remain in the kitchen, watching his mother pay such painful allegiance to outworn customs, and he stomped out of the house. Next night, when the rally flourished, with rich white families tiptoeing past the kiosks on their yearly condescension to the blacks of Frog’s Neck, his fury rose.

At nine o’clock Will Nesbitt’s creaking band uttered some ruffles, whereupon an avuncular Father Caveny produced his clarinet for a rendering of ‘Bye Bye, Blackbird.’ When the audience cheered not the music but the fact of the priest’s having put in an appearance, Hiram muttered to a lanky young black named LeRoy, ‘How contemptible!’ When LeRoy asked what he meant, Hiram said harshly, ‘The condescending priest. Selling our good crab cakes for pennies. And most of all, them lousy whites slidin’ down here to see how us niggers live.’

Very softly LeRoy whispered, ‘Why don’t we run the whole lot out of here?’

The words were like the detonation of a dynamite cap, for without comprehending how he reached the top of a table, Hiram Cater found himself facing the crowd and shouting, ‘Get out of here! The party’s over!’

His mother, proudly selling her cakes, was one of the first to see her frenzied son, and from his behavior during the past week she knew that he was in some kind of torment. ‘Hiram, no!’ she cried, but her voice was weak and late.

The two black policemen had been watching Hiram and now moved briskly to drag him from the table, lest he wreck the rally, but before they could grab his knees, LeRoy and three other solemn-faced blacks blocked their way, and LeRoy shouted, ‘Kick ’em out, Hiram!’

‘We don’t want your charity,’ Hiram bellowed. ‘Take your pennies and go home.’

Up to this point his commotion had produced no effect upon the rally, for only a few patrons had heard him, but one of the policemen, irritated and perhaps frightened by the actions of LeRoy and his gang, began
blowing a whistle, and this penetrating, mournful sound produced confusion. Whites began running away from what they feared might be a riot, and as they left the scene Hiram remained atop his table, staring at the ancient, weather-worn school which the white authorities had utilized for half a century as an instrument of oppression and denied opportunity. All Hiram could see was the bleakness of this place, the abbreviated sessions, the ill-prepared teachers and the crowded classrooms in which he had rarely owned a book.

With no plan, no preparatory thought, he cried, ‘That damned school!’ And before the words died, LeRoy took them up, shouting belligerently, ‘We ought to burn the damned thing down!’ Hiram, hearing Luta Mae’s words, and knowing from his own patient analysis that they would accomplish little, started to warn LeRoy, but the gang was already on its way to the schoolhouse, where fires were lit and wild cries uttered as dry timbers flamed upward in the night.

The effect was intoxicating, and many blacks rushed blazing fagots to ignite other buildings, but when LeRoy himself and two others took their brands to the old A.M.E. Church, Hiram leaped from the table and tried to intercept them. ‘Not that! We need it!’

Someone knocked him down, and when he got to his feet he saw his mother and father among those trying vainly to quench the fire. They were powerless and had to withdraw, watching from a distance as the church they loved trembled in the scarlet glow and came crashing down.

Houses were burned, and the corner store which extended credit, and the police substation from which the two black cops operated.

In the hot night the flames roared upward, producing a wild excitement, and irresponsible children began throwing timbers already flaming, and it appeared that all of Frog’s Neck might be destroyed.

The town fire engines clanged down the narrow road to the Neck, but rioting blacks held them off, so after two frustrated attempts the firemen departed with the threat: ‘We’ll let the whole damned place go up.’ One of the first of the abandoned spots to go was the Cater cabin, built by the freedman Cudjo long before the Civil War. In one mighty gasp the raging fire consumed what might have become a black shrine, for it contained the room in which Eden Cater had recited
Fourteen Journeys North.
Hiram, watching the cabin disappear, muttered, ‘Eden would understand.’

The burning of Patamoke was a curious affair, for the enraged blacks did not throw the torch at a single building occupied by whites; their fury was directed only at the intolerable conditions in which they were forced to live. They burned not because they wanted revenge on whites, but because they hoped that if they destroyed Frog’s Neck, something better might take its place. In pursuit of this dream they were willing to sacrifice their homes, their church and their historical heritage.

But as the fire blazed, catching a pine tree now and then and flaming far into the sky, the wind carried sparks westward, and by ugly chance they fell upon the roof of the Paxmore Boatyard, lodging on the shingles and setting the desiccated old structure ablaze.

Now the firemen were free to operate their engines, for no blacks opposed them, but the boatyard was so inflammable, its boards soaked with a century of turpentine and oil, that salvage was impossible. Vast walls of flame swept along the sheds to burst through ceilings and explode roof coverings. Fire companies roared in from a dozen towns, the awed firemen whispering as they raced down country lanes, ‘The niggers is burnin’ Patamoke.’

Along the Choptank it had always been feared, since the arrival of slaves in 1667, that some night the niggers would rise in rebellion and set fire to white establishments, and now it was happening. Threescore of Turlocks congregated in terror to watch the burning, and untold Cavenys, and when the visiting fire companies were assembled, powerless to fight the blaze, grim Amos Turlock moved among them, issuing guns and one simple command: ‘If the niggers try to burn the rest of the town, kill ’em.’

One citizen viewed the fire with numb horror. He was Pusey Paxmore, home from his duties in Washington, and he watched white-faced as his family business crumbled in smoking ash. From time to time he would try to speak, but his mouth would hang open, his eyes riveted on the desolation.

‘Mr. Paxmore!’ the mayor cried, running up in a night robe. ‘We’ve got to get the National Guard here. You know the right people in Annapolis.’ Pusey was unable to respond, and the mayor pleaded, ‘Get the troops here, Pusey, or this whole town is gonna go up.’

Paxmore mumbled a name and the mayor ran off, but now a team of firemen grabbed Pusey by the arms and dragged him backward, just in time to escape the last wall as it came crashing with new bursts of flame.

All Pusey Paxmore could see was the death of an enterprise dating back to the 1660s. This boatyard had survived Indian raids, pirate attacks, the force of the British fleet in 1813, even assaults by Confederate freebooters in 1864. Now it was lost, a whole way of life destroyed in one foul night by neighbors. He could not believe that the blacks of Patamoke, to whom his family had been so considerate, could have done this evil thing.

‘They did it,’ a policeman assured him. ‘Who?’

‘Our black policemen say it was started by Hiram Cater. Brother to that girl in jail.’

‘Arrest him!’ And he raged off to telephone friends in the F.B.I.

Hiram was not arrested that night, for as soon as he saw that the fire had spread to the boatyard, he knew he must quit this town, and as he ran to find some car he might commandeer for a swift run to Pennsylvania, he was joined by LeRoy, who gloated over what he had accomplished.

‘You shouldn’t have burned the church,’ Hiram said as they ran. ‘It all had to go,’ LeRoy replied.

‘But not the boatyard. You can burn black homes and get away with it. But when you burn a white man’s business …’

LeRoy spotted a Buick he thought he could start, and as he finagled with the wires, Hiram looked back on the blaze. ‘We are in big trouble,’ he said.

ON JULY 2, 1976, AMANDA PAXMORE SET FORTH TO
recover a husband who had brought contumely upon himself, his wife, his children and his nation, and that was a burden which might have destroyed a lesser person.

She was equal to the task and never once did she try to avoid it. When news reached Peace Cliff that she could send someone, she controlled herself, coughed slightly and told the government prosecutor who had left Washington for the small town in Pennsylvania, ‘Three tomorrow afternoon? I’ll be there.’

‘You’re coming? Yourself?’ he had asked.

‘Who better?’

Replacing the phone, she had gone to the yard to call Martin Caveny, brother to the priest, who was mowing the grass so the place would look presentable on the Fourth. ‘I’ll need the motorboat. Seven tomorrow morning. To Annapolis.’

‘Can I bring Amos Turlock?’ Caveny asked quickly, for he liked to share excursions with his crony. ‘Since we’ll be crossing the bay, that is.’

‘Isn’t he rather old for such work?’

‘With Amos it’s never work.’

‘Bring him along. He’ll be a companion while you wait for me in Annapolis.’

When she reached the door to the house she looked back to see Caveny scurrying to put away the lawn mower, then rushing off to find his playfellow. She judged accurately that on the morrow, while she drove the rented car to Scanderville, they would be getting merrily drunk in some Annapolis bar.

‘God bless them,’ she said in a sudden wave of compassion. ‘The sots.’

As soon as Caveny disposed of the mower, he jumped into his shattered Chevy and roared into Sunset Acres, yelling at each filling station, ‘You seen Amos?’ No one knew where the vagrant was, but finally a black boy said, ‘He down at the river, fishin’.’ And when Caveny ran out to the edge of the river, there was Amos, propped against a tussock, his hat well over his face.

‘Amos!’ Caveny shouted. ‘We’re goin’ to Annapolis.’

Turlock half rolled sideways, propped himself on his arm and said, ‘Now that’s good news. Who’s takin’ us?’

‘We got Mrs. Paxmore’s motor launch.’

Amos looked at his accustomed partner suspiciously. ‘How come she let you have it?’

‘Because she’s goin’ along.’

‘What’s she to do in Annapolis?’

‘I wondered myself. She told me, “You two can wait at the dock. We’ll sail back at six.” You know what I think?’