Daybreak (12 page)

Robbie squirmed and turned to kiss Tom’s neck. He felt her eyelashes brush his skin, and he felt the soft movement of her lips murmuring, “You’re so sweet, Tom. I’m crazy about you. I’m going to miss you all summer.”

“Hey! I’ll be seeing you! Working in the business, I can get time off pretty much when I want it. Dad’s easy that way. And I always can get one of the vans. That’s the reason I don’t have a car of my own. No need to. How far is this bookstore where you’ll be working?”

“Shouldn’t take you more than an hour to get to. Straight out Highway Nine, then about three miles east, that’s all. I’ll give you directions. And I’ve got a room, not too bad, but the best thing is, no roommate. Got it all to myself.”

“Summer’s looking better and better.” Tom chuckled. “How about some sleep? My eyes are closing.”

“Sure.” Robbie laughed. “We worked hard tonight.”

His body lay easily, not the least bit cramped in this bed, just comfortably intertwined with Robbie, neatly fitted, like a pair of spoons. His thoughts floated peacefully. The day had been wonderful, from the morning’s astronomy exam, in which he was confident he had done very well, to the blood-pounding rally at the Civic Center, to the last delicious hours in this room.

And he began to feel a sense of mounting power and
joy. Home again! Working with Dad. His mother’s good meals, a steak and a chocolate cake, for a change from college food. Sunday afternoons, he’d find a cool place and take Timmy swimming. Home. Five more days.

5

D
own the great central boulevard through the city’s heart, they marched, they strutted, plodded, and swung. Some of them from time to time in response to cheers raised their straight arms in the fascist salute. But for the most part, they were stone faces, closed faces like those of men on their way to battle. Flanking them on either side came police on sputtering motorcycles, and behind these came more police in cars with top lights flashing. On the sidewalk their supporters, chiefly teenage boys, old men, and housewives in loose cotton dresses—for this being a weekday morning, ablebodied men were at work—kept up with them all the way to their destination at the monument in the center of the circle.

Unknowingly, Laura had come upon this parade. On her way back to the parking lot after shopping, she had been blocked here at the avenue. Now, fenced in by the crowd that had seemed to collect from nowhere—as crowds are always drawn to an ugly accident, she thought with scorn—she was unable to get away. She had, in fact, a ringside view of an event she had no wish to view.

The monument, a memorial to the dead young men of an old war, towered over the living men at its base. These, while waiting for the arrival of the parade, held American flags, hawked pamphlets, and shouted their slogans.

“Americans only! Whites only! Power! Power for Americans!”

As if someone had put some slimy insect or a wet garden slug down her back, Laura felt a shudder of disgust. Drab, angry, ignorant men! They were an insult to the flags they carried, an insult to the memorial before which now lay a wreath of dark green laurel leaves.

“My father wasn’t fighting for the likes of you when he died,” she muttered.

A woman standing next to her had overheard and, catching Laura’s embarrassed glance, nodded in sympathy.

“Nothing but troublemaking scum, that’s all they are.”

“Who are they? I mean, what’s the occasion today?”

“It’s a national convention of right-wingers. Far, far right, like the Crusaders and the Guardsmen, that type. They’re meeting this weekend at a motel out on the highway near where I live. My uncle’s with the police. He says there are six or seven hundred of them. He says they’re ready for trouble, too.”

“Who are? They or the police?”

The woman smiled. “Both, I should say.”

The vanguard of the procession now appeared. It began formation, lining the perimeter of the enormous circle. Slow feet trod with ceremonial solemnity, as if at some ancient religious rite. Only the words were
incongruous to Laura’s ears. “Power! Power!” they chanted.

And the many voices were indeed powerful, thought Laura. In unison, the straight arms shot up, Mussolini’s arms and Hitler’s arms; she had seen them often enough in old movies, and a chill went down her spine.

A bugle blared, commanding attention to a small gray man who was trying to begin a speech. At the same time there was a happening on the other side of the circle, a pushing and jostling altercation that drew attention away from the speaker.

“Boo! Boo!” From all sides more voices rumbled. “Boo! Boo!”

And now came ominous roars. “Quiet, down there. We can’t hear. Shut up.”

Whose side were they on? It was impossible to tell.

“Bastards!”

“Shut up!”

“Can you make me? You shut up, shut your dirty mouths or you’ll find out what’s good for you!”

Far up in front a group of men began to fight. One fell to the ground, and women screamed. Laura looked at the faces close around her; there were menacing scowls and curiosity and fright. She began to look for a way out of the crowd, but they were pressing and pushing in both directions. She felt the terror of being trapped. A police car broke into the circle with its siren wailing. She looked about in terror, looked into the face of a rather decent-looking man as if somehow he might help her.

“Ma’am, this isn’t a good place to be,” he said. “Follow me. I’m going to try to wiggle through to the back and get over to that side street if I can.”

The pale sun strained through sultry clouds; in the
humid air, fighting the pressure of stubborn, sweating bodies, all in uproar, all struggling, Laura struggled to follow the good citizen who had advised her. But the narrow passage he forged soon closed behind him and she lost him. The crowd surged and shoved, pushing her along, now here, now there.

The crowd was turning into a mob; people were trying to flee while others were forcing themselves closer to the center of the circle, where the action was. Anyone who stumbled in this melee would be trampled, and no one would care.

“Please may I squeeze through?” Laura cried, close to panic. “Please may I get through to the street, I need—”

And a terrible roar went up. “They’ve got the paddy wagon! They’re bringing the paddy wagon!” People were panicking. At the same time there were those who were pushing toward the front to join the attack on the police. Out of the corner of her eye, as she clutched a stranger’s jacket to keep from falling, Laura saw the man who had begun to speak, the gray little man—she was sure it was he—reach and snap the antenna from one of the police cars. A team of young fellows were rocking the cars; one, overturned, lay on its side with its wheels spinning. A club swung and a man toppled to the ground.

“They’re arresting them!” someone cried near her ear as she ran. “It’s the guy who laid the wreath. I’ve seen him before. There goes another into the paddy wagon.”

In the swirl of escape, nothing mattered. Fear had become frenzy. Laura’s breath was almost gone, and the heel of her right shoe had come off. But she fought her way through, losing her packages in her flight, and
made her way to the side street. There for a few minutes she stood panting, leaning against a lamppost.

Then, recovering as her heartbeat came slowly back to normal, she made her way across the avenue, far beyond the turmoil, and headed for the parking lot.

A woman came panting up behind her. “Laura? I thought it was you over there. Wasn’t this awful? My heart was in my mouth. It still is. I’ve never been so terrified in all my life.” It was Lou Foster, the minister’s wife.

“Of course I’ve read about what crowds can do, but being in the middle of one like this is something else again. I could never have imagined it.”

“Johnson’s people,” Lou said contemptuously.

“I thought these were more Klan types.”

“Same thing. Johnson’s people talk more respectably, but as the Chinese say, they all eat from the same pot.”

A child came pedaling his tricycle down the sidewalk. From an open window came the whine of a vacuum cleaner. It seemed that such a street, lined by quiet houses and shady oaks, could not possibly be so short a distance away from the hideous explosion of hatred that was occurring still on the boulevard. And Laura, reflecting on the other woman’s words, said nothing for a moment.

“Yes, they’re all the same,” repeated Lou.

“My husband approves of Johnson. He says Johnson has nothing at all to do with the Klan. He’s a victim of malicious propaganda.”

“My husband could tell him differently. Johnson was a fighting tough. Now he’s remade himself into a middle-class gentleman. But you have only to look back ten years to when he worked for Fred Bartlett’s printing
press. You remember Bartlett? He went from the Klan to an organization of his own, the Sons of Zeus, some kind of crazy religion that he founded. He was on the Secret Service list of dangerous persons. They’re all intertwined. No, I wouldn’t trust Johnson any farther than I can throw your beautiful piano, Laura.”

In the parking lot they paused before parting. Suddenly Lou said, “I’m worried, Laura. That black couple who bought the Blair house on Fairview Street are finally moving in and there’s so much angry talk going on that I’m worried. No, not worried. Scared.”

“What do you think is going to happen?”

“Heavens, people like you and me are the last to know. But there are plenty of agitators ready to make an issue out of something like this, you can be sure.”

Laura sighed. “Well, it’ll be a first for Fairview Street, that’s certain.” And recalling the fine classic facade of the old Blair place, she remarked that the new owners must be well off to think of maintaining it.

“I believe they are. She’s a schoolteacher, but he’s got a big executive job with Searle Computers. They’re from Cincinnati, I heard.”

“Well, let’s just hope all goes well,” said Laura.

Suddenly she remembered that she had no coffee ice cream, Tom’s favorite. He could eat a pint in five minutes. “Lou, I’ve got to rush. Tom’s coming home tonight. Bud went with a van to fetch him. And my aunts are driving up from Pensacola tomorrow to see him. They haven’t seen him since Christmas vacation.”

“Ah, a family dinner tomorrow.”

“A big one, and I’d better hurry home and get busy. Maybe it’ll take my mind off this horrendous morning.”

* * *

From the back veranda Laura and the aunts watched the touch football game on the lawn.

“Would you have believed that Clem at his age could keep up with Tom?” cried Cecile, proud of the husband she had, in late middle age or early old age, acquired.

Clem Hanson looked like the navy man he had been, tall, thin, silver-gray, and still crew-cut. A good-natured person, he accepted Lillian kindly when she moved to Pensacola to be near her sister. Indeed, Lillian often accompanied the couple at her own expense when they went traveling. Close knit, we surely are, thought Laura; to think they had all driven this distance to welcome Tom home from college!

Their coming made her aware of how much she missed the aunts, her twin mothers with their big hearts and their funny ways, the fussy domestic habits so out of keeping with their business persona, their determined, efficient hold on money, the getting and keeping of it.

“Tom gets handsomer every time I see him,” observed Lillian. “And so like your father, Laura. More and more, the older he gets, with those eyes, those dark, haunting eyes,” she said as if quoting poetry.

Laura smiled. It was true. Except when he was being stubborn, when his mouth got thin and hard, Tom was something to behold. And now, with his face laughing and gleaming as he swerved and darted, he gave delight.

Cecile clapped for Clem when he evaded Tom and clapped again when Tom caught up with Bud. Her pretty hair that had been pepper and salt was now mostly salt, yet she seemed to grow younger with each
year of her marriage. Laura wondered if that was what happened when the marriage was wonderful.…

“It’s good to be here in the old house,” remarked Lillian, who had definitely grown older with each year. “Look at that magnolia! I remember the day I planted it. Nothing but a stick, it was, high as my waist.”