Five Smooth Stones

  "It figures," said David. "Any of the white doctors take colored?"

  "A few. On an off-hours, in-the-side-door, basis. Why?"

  "Because some of the people in the South, with a better than average doctor with a dark skin to consult, will go cross town, go in side doors, De patronized, just because it's a white doctor."

  "Yes. Why?"

  David shrugged. "That's us." He glanced over at Brad, smiled. "Not criticizing, Chief, not criticizing. Just accepting."

  ***

  They drove back to Calhoun Road and headed east, for Haskin's store. As the high fencing of the stockade came into view, David slowed to a crawl, watching the pedestrians on Main Street as they passed it. Almost all stopped to look. Two men stood together talking, then slapped each other on the back and laughed; one or two passed it looking straight ahead, the set of their heads showing they were as conscious of it as those who had stopped, but in a different way.

  The motor of the car stalled just before they reached the Haskin store. David said, "Damn!" and Brad said, "Let's get moving. It's hot—" David reached for the ignition key but did not turn it. "Watch," he said. "Watch."

  As they had drawn nearer to the stockade a wide gate, not discernible the first time he had seen the fence, became clear. Now a car drove along and parked in front of the gate. It was a green convertible, top down, about four or five years, old. The stars and bars of the Confederacy flew from each side of the front bumper. The back seat held what appeared to be hunting gear, and two rifles were racked behind the front seat. The man driving the car was middle-aged, rangy, with a ruddy, thin-lipped face. He wore a green sport shirt. His passenger was a youth in jeans and green striped shirt, his tow-colored hair brush cut on top, swept back in duck wings on each side. As Brad and David watched, the younger man flung open the door of the car and ran to the stockade's gate, a large square of cardboard in one hand. When he turned to run back to the car the square of cardboard was fastened to the steel links of the gate, its message easily read by David and Brad: niggers only. The lettering was not crude, had been worked on carefully, and below it had been drawn the figure of a man hanging from the bough of a tree, head grotesquely bent, face painted black, kinky hair depicted by exaggerated scrolls.

  When the youth returned to the car the green-shirted man gunned the motor, and the convertible sped out of sight, screaming around a curve just past City Hall.

  Brad said at last: "There go two happy citizens. And the older is involved in the Towers land deal."

  "Sweet Jesus!" breathed David.

  "That driver," said Brad. "One of the Twelve Just Men."

  "One of the what, for God's sake?"

  "There's so much that's vile, one forgets." David had never heard so much emotion in Brad's voice. "To take vileness for granted, and forget it. Christ!"

  "Brad," said David. "Snap out of it. Tell me about these —what did you call them? Twelve Just Men?"

  Brad's voice was a monotone when he answered. "A while back, probably while you were in jail or you would have heard about it, a new organization was formed in this county. 'Conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition—'"

  "Brad."

  "All right, brat. It's a Klan-type thing, perhaps an offshoot of the Klan. They called themselves the Twelve Just Men because that was the number involved in its founding. It's spreading throughout the state. All of the original twelve wear green shirts, and don't ask me why green. I suppose black or brown or yellow didn't seem appropriate. Or red either. And blue's too damned wishy-washy. As I say, they wear green shirts, except of course the two or three who are state troopers. The junior members, like that kid we just saw, wear green somewhere, green stripes, tie, scarf, something." Brad laughed, a bitter sound. "Poor Haskin is stuck with a couple of dozen green shirts he ordered three months ago. Not a Negro would dare wear them."

  David tried to keep it light. "Be sure and tell Luke so he'll get rid of that horror he wears."

  "I will."

  "Twelve Just Men." David scratched his head reflectively. "Sort of blasphemous, isn't it?"

  "Now you mention it, yes. I hadn't thought of it in that light. The thing that struck me was its horrid parody of 'twelve good men and true.' It's so damned adolescent."

  "That's what they said about Hitler." David was quiet for a moment. "Green. What a lousy stinking trick to play on the Irish."

  CHAPTER 73

  As David crossed the long porch of the rectangular wooden building that housed Haskin's store, he noticed a structure on the other side of Main Street he had not seen before. It must once have been a huge barn, perhaps the barn of a large dairy; now it apparently was used as a warehouse. Under the sloping roof wide, closed doors indicated the former hayloft, and these doors overlooked the length of Main Street and the area in front of City Hall and the stockade. David remembered a novel he had read once, the scene laid in the time of World War I, and an incident that told of American soldiers entering a small French town and being picked off, one by one, by snipers in the loft of an abandoned barn. "Sure wish we could burn that place down," he said to Brad.

  Now he had a clearer view of the Grand Hotel, where men who would have been lobby loungers on a cool or rainy day sat now in comfortable rockers on its wide veranda.

  Inside the store the air was kept moving by a window fan set high in the wall above a counter behind which a short, slender dark-skinned man was wrapping a package for a stout gray-haired woman. When he gave her change, she put the coins in an old-fashioned coin purse that she snapped shut and dropped into a huge and shabby handbag. She turned from the counter, almost bumping into David, and smiled up at him. "Evenin', son. How you doin'—" and without waiting for an answer she bustled on, a stranger, still smiling, not knowing him but reaching out for a bright moment in the universal communion of his people. Steady, Champlin, he told himself. Steady. God, but he was shot, brought down, when for even a brief moment he could want above all things to follow a gray-haired kindly woman to whatever warm and shabby home she lived in, and there stay.

  Brad, beside him, was leaning on the counter, and he heard the slender dark man behind it say, "Evenin', Lawyer Willis. How you making it?"

  "Fine. Fine," answered Brad. "Everything all right here, Haskin?"

  "Near's I can tell."

  Brad introduced David, who saw immediately why Haskin was the community leader, why he had been selected as top man in the upcoming project. There was a sharp, discerning intelligence in the small dark eyes that, without being in the least shifty, seemed to move constantly, taking in everything that was happening in the big room. The grip of the wiry, thin hand was strong and sure; the lines in the middle-aged face were those of a man who has fought hard for a living, but fought clean. Enough Haskins, thought David, enough men like him, and we'll make it. All the way.

  He stood to one side, waiting while Brad and Haskin talked between the demands of customers, enjoying the smell of the big room, a smell composed in part of old wood, beer, lunch meat, cheese, produce fresh from the earth, tobacco smoke, heat, and people. There was far more space in the Haskin General Department Store than there appeared to be from outside. Across the main room, opposite the counter against which he was leaning, half-open floor-length curtains hung in a double doorway, and through it David could see part of a smaller room with notion counters and dress racks. In the rear two doors led to what must be storerooms and the rear entrance.

  The room was well filled, though not crowded, and suddenly he realized how quiet it was. What should have been the steady loudness of human voices was, instead, a low hum, and there were no familiar bursts of sudden laughter, deep from the men, shrill and exclamatory from the women. There should be some laughter; there was always its sound in a place like this at the end of the day, but now there was none.

  He heard his name and turned to see Haskin leaning over the counter. "I was just tellin' Lawyer Willis we'd be mighty proud if you-all would have dinner with us. It ain't going to be f
ancy but it'll be good. Y'all like chittlins?"

  "Sure do."

  "Hog jowls?'" said Brad, and David turned wide surprised eyes toward him.

  "You? Hog jowls? You told Peg? She'll dee-voce you."

  "Well," said Brad defensively, "if you're going to eat part of a pig, you might as well—"

  "Go whole hog? Forget it. I'll tell Peg you've gone native."

  Haskin laughed. "He sure has. Ain't nothing we've had so far he don't eat like it was some fancy kind of restaurant food."

  "It's probably a hell of a lot better," said David. "You fix those chittlins crisp?"

  "Gracie does. That's my son's wife. Widow, I should say. She stays with us, her and the boy, keeps the house."

  "Tell Gracie two more for dinner."

  David found a seat on an upturned nail keg near the counter and sat quietly watching the people come and go, most of them hurrying now. Six thirty. He remembered the "emergency" seven o'clock curfew ordinance. That, he thought, was asking for trouble. Not even the strictest parents he had ever been acquainted with expected young people to stay at home after seven o'clock on a hot midsummer night. Could these people make their kids understand that right now it was important that they obey? Had Hummer gotten anywhere, really gotten anywhere, with them last night and this morning? Had someone else done a better job?

  Almost in answer to his mental questions he saw the plump silhouette of a man entering the front door. It was unmistakably Garnett, the bald head tilted to one side like a fat bird's, the narrow, fleshy shoulders and, now that the light was no longer behind the other man, he could see the too quick smile.

  "Lawd! If it ain't young Champlin!" If it had been on a woman his mouth would have been the best feature of the round face. Now it was smiling broadly. "How ya doin', man!"

  David had been sitting with elbows on thighs, hands hanging slack between his knees, and he did not change his position. He said, without smiling, "Hi, Garnett. What are you doing here?"

  "Didn't no one give you the word? I'm here with Hummer, with the Reverend Sweeton, he'ping him out. Man, we really got something going here. Too bad you ain't been in on it."

  "Never too late. I'm here now." He saw the quick distress in Garnett's face, wanted to chuck him under the fat chin and say, "Wassa matter, baby? You-all hurtin' someplace?"

  Garnett's laugh was nervous, close to a giggle. "Sue-Ellen's in town. Bet she don't even know you're here yet—"

  "I know." He wished he didn't, and it would relieve his mind no end if he was sure Garnett would win his bet.

  Garnett's stubby fingers gripped his shoulder, then massaged it, and he was glad when Brad came over and said: "Hello, Garnett. Let's go, David. Mrs. Haskin has already gone over and we're to go on in. Haskin will be along in a few minutes."

  David wondered if Garnett would have the nerve to follow them to the house. Then Brad turned toward the front door and waved a hand in greeting, and David saw Hummer Sweeton and Les Forsyte entering. Garnett duck-waddled over to them, listened to something they were saying, nodded, and went out at a faster waddle.

  Sweeton and Les joined them and they started for the house, which stood behind and a little to one side of the store. They passed through a rear door and into a yard that ran, on their right, to Main Street. Cyclone fencing enclosed this loading area, and on the Main Street side, a wide double gate served as entrance for laden trucks. There were a side door and small narrow porch at the side of the house that gave directly on this loading area. He could see the battered warehouse across the street even better from this point, its walls plastered with torn and peeling posters, and painted with soft-drink and patent-medicine ads.

  The Haskin house had a large front living room that was entered directly from the front porch, a dining room behind it, and beyond that the kitchen and back porch. From the exterior David could tell that, like the Towers house, other rooms had been added on through the years.

  Mrs. Haskin, a heavy, quick-spoken, smiling woman, greeted them, and as they passed through the kitchen on their way to wash up for dinner, introduced them to her daughter-in-law, Gracie. Gramp would have called Gracie "a fine woman, sure fine." When Gramp said "fine" about a woman he had generally been referring to figure and build. The word came back to David now. Gracie was a "fine" woman, and besides being fine she was, in spite of her youth, a comfortable woman. Few women as young and good looking as Gracie gave a man the feeling that she was mothering them, that even while he was looking upon her with more or less lustful intent he was at the same time resting his head on her shoulder.

  A child stood beside her, and when she told him, "Say 'Good evenin' to the gentlemen," he hid his face in her skirt, then freed one round brown eye to peek at them. Haskin had entered the room now, and he picked the child up and carried him on his shoulder. "He's shy but he'll come out of it once he knows you. Name's Shadrach. Ain't that a shame! His mamma's grandmaw insisted on it and didn't none of us have the stren'th to fight the old lady. Pore li'l helpless chile. We calls him Shad."

  They sat in the living room before dinner, David on the floor. He tried not to let his face reveal the inner uneasiness that kept him nervously turning a coin over and over in his fingers. He found he was not listening to the others, was listening to—no, for—something else. He knew when he spoke that he was rudely interrupting something Brad was saying, but he could not hold back the question. "What're you people doing about this curfew?"

  "We're observing it," said Hummer. "If some of them young folks wants to break it and get in trouble, that's something we can't help. But at the church meeting this morning and in Salvation Hall this afternoon the word went out. Observe it, we says."

  "Many at the meeting?" asked David.

  "Lord, Lord, there was plenty. I mean plenty people."

  "Older people or young folks?"

  Les Forsyte answered, concern in his voice. "Mostly older. A lot of women. I'll say one thing, though. I had the feeling we've got them with us. And that's a lot in this matriarchal society."

  "If only a small number go along on this work-stoppage deal, you just might face charges of vagrancy—and jail sentences."

  "I thought of that," said Brad. "But a man in jail is still a nonproducer."

  "And he's a damned vulnerable one," said David.

  "Don't think that'll happen," said Hummer. "Nossir, don't think it will. And, like I say, the word's gone out to observe the curfew. 'Wise as serpents and harmless as doves—' " He smiled, and David smiled into the deep eyes, the trust in them, and the faith.

  Haskin was on his feet headed for the door. "We're closing early," he said. "I'm going back over to the store and give the kid a hand. Don't you-all wait for me when dinner's ready."

  David said to Sweeton, "There's a woman here now, name of Sue-Ellen Moore—"

  "You know her, son?" Hummer smiled. "She's sort of hard to handle. But I'm not worrying myself about her, not now."

  "If I were you I'd worry about her twenty-four hours a day," said David.

  "We're not about to get in a fuss with any other organization. We gave her a job with us, training those young uns, teaching 'em how to protect theirselves, how to march so's the line'll be harder to break up, things like that. The whites give her twelve hours to get out of town, and can't none of us go for that. She's still here."

  David would have felt a lot better without Hummer's last words. "Out of town" was where he would like Sue-Ellen to be permanently.

  Gracie came in, telling them dinner was ready. While they were filing into the dining room, Haskin reentered the house, hurrying, his face dark and set.

  "Town's crawling with po-lice," he said. "Plumb crawling with 'em. All of a sudden. Regular po-lice and special deputies with badges, and I swear to God I saw a trooper's uniform back of the old warehouse. They don't need all them po-lice just to enforce a curfew."

  "Set down, Jim, set down," said Hummer. "They just looking for trouble, not finding it. They like a man squared off for a punch,
and when he lets fly the other man ain't there."

  "All of you set down," said Mrs. Haskin. "Eat your dinners. Worry don't do nothing but rile up the stomach." She hurried into the kitchen, and after they were seated Haskin, his face still showing the lines of worry and anxiety, said, "Pass your plates, folks."

  "Daddy Jim." Gracie had entered from the kitchen. "You ain't asked the blessing yet."

  "Lawd! So I ain't—" and there was sudden quiet in the room.

  The blessing was long and earnest, and while Haskin's voice went on, David glanced across the table from under lowered eyelids and saw the solemn dark eyes of Shadrach fixed on him. He opened his own eyes wide, then closed one in a broad wink. Shad covered his mouth with a chubby hand; the eyes danced, then closed dutifully at a whispered reprimand from Gracie, sitting beside him.

  It was then that David heard the sounds.

  ***

  The sounds were not loud, but they were sharpened and made meaningful by a mind alert with apprehension: the steady thud of feet past the front of the house muffled but clearly audible, the same sound from the direction of Main Street barely distinguishable. Placing the heels of his palms against the table's edge, he pushed back his chair. "Trouble," he said, and walked quickly into the dining room. He heard Brad say, "David, what—" but did not slow down. When he reached the living-room window Brad and Haskin were just behind his shoulders, and he could hear the others hurrying from the dining room to join them. He thought, This is it again, Champlin! God! Here you go again—

  Only the area in front of the house was clearly visible, but by twisting his neck he could see the dusty end of Calhoun Road, and the portion of Main Street in front of the stockade. Several white men were walking briskly along the sidewalk on the other side of Main Street. They wore khaki pants and white shirts and each had a revolver holstered on one hip. Four more were walking in Calhoun Road, two-by-two, in opposite directions. On these men the badges pinned on shirt pockets were clearly visible. He remembered seeing two of them in Heliopolis just before he was jailed.