That’s how Mom was. Naturally he would have loved that car except for the fact that it was a Mercedes, and he knew in his bones that Robbie would have very mixed feelings about that.
The ride led down the highway, spotted on either side with clusters of new little houses; then, leaving the highway for an old blacktop road, it led through two or three shabby villages built a century or more ago, in which boxy large houses were interspersed with mobile homes scattered in dry brown fields. Tom began to wonder why anyone would want to open a bookstore here in this place.
In the third village at a two-story house where an American flag hung prominently, Robbie directed him to stop. The house had a deserted look; curtains were drawn shut at the windows, and in the meager plot of grass the weeds had grown knee-high.
“This is it,” Robbie said. And no doubt because Tom looked puzzled, she explained, “We do mainly a mailorder business. We don’t expect transient traffic way out here.”
When she knocked at the door, it was opened by an elderly man who by reason of his surly, down-turned mouth Tom assumed was Mr. Dudley.
“This is Tom,” Robbie said. “He’s a good friend. Is anyone here yet?”
“He’s on his way, though. You’re early.”
“Better early than late,” Robbie said breezily. “Come, I’ll show you upstairs.”
The whole upper floor had been gutted to make one large room lined on all sides with bookshelves. The only pieces of furniture were a desk and a chair occupied by a woman who now stood graciously to greet them.
“Adeline, this is Tom. We’re at college together. He’s been a big help on the paper, and he’s going to be a bigger help next year.”
“I’m glad to know you, Tom.”
She was a lady. That was the immediate word, almost outmoded now, that occurred to him as he took her narrow, light hand. Why, she looks like Mom, he thought. Her fine oval face, her fair hair, even the cream-colored linen dress and the delicate pearl earrings were like his mother’s. There was a curious contrast between the woman and the place.
“Mrs. Irons is a volunteer,” Robbie explained. “And she works harder than any of us.”
“The name is Adeline, and I don’t work harder than anybody else, Robbie. But I do work hard because what we’re doing here is so important. What’s at stake is the kind of country that young people like you are going to inherit. I don’t mean to sound pompous, but it’s the truth.”
Tom glanced at a pile of books on the desk. There was one with “Hitler” in the title, another about World War II, another with the word “negro”—
Mrs. Irons interrupted his glance. “Feel free to browse. If you want to buy anything today, I’ll be glad to recommend. Or maybe you’d like to show your friend our mail-order department in the basement. We generally keep fifteen hundred to two thousand books down there, ready to go.”
“I’d like to see it,” Tom said.
The three went downstairs. “Your friend knows, of course, that we don’t talk about this place,” Mrs. Irons said, addressing Robbie, who replied that most certainly Tom knew.
“Not that we’re doing anything illegal in this organization, but we do have enemies, and the less they know about our private business, the better.”
A long row of cartons, partially filled with books, stood against the walls.
“We fill orders from every corner of the country. It’s been quite amazing to see how the business in our own state has picked up since Jim Johnson started his campaign.”
“Is he affiliated with you here?” asked Tom.
“Oh dear no, he’s a completely independent man. Completely. Let me make that perfectly clear. Oh, there are plenty of points at which our philosophies do meet, but Jim has his own ideas. He only drops in here very quietly now and then when he happens to be in this part of the state. And when he does, it’s only for old friendship’s sake. He and I went to school together. I hear his car now. He always parks in back of the house and uses the basement door.”
Jim Johnson was handsome. His pictures didn’t begin to do him justice. From a clear, wide forehead, bright hair swept back in natural waves, as crisp as if they had been made with a curling iron. He was tall and fit. His light gray summer suit was obviously expensive, and Tom was glad he had worn his own best suit.
“Hi, Robbie!” Johnson said. “And you have to be Tom.” He looked straight into Tom’s eyes and pumped his hand. “Friend Roberta here tells me you’re a first-rate man on that great Independent Voice.”
“Well, sir, I don’t know about being first-rate, but I try and intend to try harder.”
“Good, good. Let me tell you, we need more right-thinking young people like yourselves in the universities. Need all we can get if I’m to reach the state senate this fall. I assume you want me to.” And Johnson cocked his head in a gesture that was both humorously appealing and absolutely certain of receiving the right response. When they both nodded, he went on, “The important thing about your paper is that it has so much support from alumni who are scattered all over the country. Many of them won’t be very aware of the election in this state, and your paper can make them aware. We have a program, we have things to say that make as much sense in the other forty-nine as they do here. Of course, the hope is that your readers will be induced to help along our campaign with their dollars. So that’s where you young folks come into the picture, why I wanted to meet you together, answer your questions and say thanks.”
“This is a great honor for us,” Tom said respectfully.
Johnson smiled. “It’s about time for lunch, and so why don’t we go down the road a way for a hamburger. There’s a fellow who knows me from when my wife and I lived in this part of the state. He keeps a couple of booths in a back room so people who don’t want to attract a crowd—and I don’t today, I want to have a little private time with you—can eat unseen. Come on, he’s expecting us.”
They squeezed into Johnson’s car, which was piled high with papers and pamphlets, and stopped a couple of miles away at a barbecue shack set back among scrub trees. At the rear door they were admitted by a bulky man in a soiled apron who took their hamburger order; after it was brought, they were alone in the room. A large Coca-Cola poster hung on the wall opposite the booth, and from the ceiling there dangled a long strip of flypaper.
Johnson smiled. “Not exactly elegant, but I’ve been in worse.” He put a notepad and pen in front of Robbie. “Make notes on what I’m going to tell you. These are the points you should include in your editorials.” His eyes sharpened. “It probably is not necessary for me to repeat, but I will anyway, that on no account should my name appear on any personal piece of paper that you own. We don’t want some snooper to find stuff like that and link me up with any organization, any at all, you understand? I am not affiliated with anything except the party that nominated me for the state senate.”
Johnson paused. His eyes, between which a small frown was gathering, looked off into space. He seemed suddenly to be trying to reach a decision. Then apparently he reached one.
“I’m going to talk straight from the shoulder. I trust you to understand this, Robbie. You’ve been very well recommended. And so, because of you, I am going to trust Tom. That’s what politics is—a network of trust and obligation.” He made a neat little steeple of his hands. “The reason I cannot have my name linked with any groups, even a—a bookstore like the one we were just in is that there already is a dirty smear campaign against me. The opposition has been trying from the beginning of my career to link me with the Ku Klux Klan. What am I saying? From the beginning of my career? I made enemies while I was still in college. The liberals didn’t like me, the school-busing crowd didn’t like me, the housing crowd didn’t like me. I worked on a paper much as you do, and being of a talkative bent, I did a lot of talking. But I never belonged to the Klan, that I didn’t.”
Robbie said thoughtfully, “Certainly I understand what you’re driving at, but just between ourselves, I often think there’s a good
deal of sense in the Klan’s agenda. We have a heritage in this country that’s being diluted by all sorts of foreign strains who haven’t a grain of Americanism.”
“Exactly,” Johnson said. He smiled. “But it doesn’t pay to say such things loudly if you want to get elected. You have to appeal broadly, and not offend. And the Klan is far too extreme. After all, I’m not an anti-Semite, and I don’t want to lynch blacks, for God’s sake. But you know,” he said thoughtfully, “it does pay to read every point of view. I’ve been a reader since I was ten years old. I’ve read Hobbes, Nietzsche, Adam Smith, Taine, Schopenhauer—and what I found is that you can get a worthwhile idea from every single one of them, even though you may not completely agree. I daresay you can find worthwhile ideas even in communism—no, probably that’s the one philosophy that’s entirely wrong. But my advice to you is to read everything and then think hard. I already tell that to my children, young as they are. By the way, the bookstore back there has some fascinating material.” He looked at his watch. “Uh-oh. I’ve got to get to a rally. Can I make one hundred fifty miles by four without getting a ticket? The last thing a candidate needs is a ticket for speeding. I’ll drop you folks off so you can get your car at the store and get on my way.”
“Now there’s a real leader,” Tom said as Johnson drove off. “A reasonable, articulate, educated man. I don’t know how anyone can get the idea that he’s a redneck populist.”
“Yeah. Well, it was a nice day. And night, too.”
“It always is. Will I see you Friday? I can drive out late Friday after I take Tim to a ballgame.”
Robbie said sympathetically, “You really do care about the kid, don’t you?”
“He’s my brother,” Tom answered simply.
“I heard,” Robbie said over the telephone, “there’s going to be a rally for Johnson next Wednesday in your city.”
“There is? I haven’t seen anything in the paper.”
“It’ll be there. A man came in the store this morning and told us. I want to be there and make a feature article out of it, something personal, something creative for our paper. I’ll write it and save it for the first issue in the fall.”
“Good idea. You do that, and I’ll follow up on the next meeting.”
“Yes, but you should be at this one, too. Dudley’s going, so I’ll ride over with him, and we’ll pick you up at your house. West Oak Street, isn’t it? What number?”
He didn’t want Robbie to meet his parents, especially not Mom. When he asked himself why that was so, what difference it would make, he was unable to answer.
“No, I’ll wait for you on the corner. The folks are having relatives here next week, and I’d rather slip out quietly. Make it the corner of West Oak and Tilden Street. Let me know what time, and I’ll be there.”
On Wednesday his parents sat reading in the living room. His father looked up from the newspaper. “Going somewhere, Tom?”
“No place special.”
“Well, have a good time.” As he went down the walk, he heard his father’s laugh. “Going out to chase chip pies. What else at nineteen?”
Under a lamppost where moths bumped and burned themselves on the weak yellow bulb, he waited. Before long, a broken-down sedan appeared with Dudley at the wheel and Robbie next to him. She opened the door.
“I’ll shove over. There’s room for three in the front.”
“No need. I’ll hop in back.” There was something unappetizing, something greasy about Dudley, and he didn’t want Robbie to be pressed up against the man.
The car began to move. “You’ll have to direct me to Fairview. I don’t know this town too well,” Dudley said.
“Fairview!” Tom exclaimed. “I thought there was going to be a rally downtown in the Civic Auditorium.”
“No,” Dudley said. “Johnson had a conflicting date, so we’re going to this instead.”
“To what? What’s happening on Fairview? You didn’t tell me, Robbie.”
“I didn’t know until this morning when somebody came to the store and said we should go here. It seems some young guy is having a protest meeting at his house. It’s not an official campaign rally, it has nothing to do with Johnson,” she explained. “But he’s a Johnson supporter. Young and rich. Name of Anderson. A very important supporter, it seems.”
Greg Anderson. Tom had a general recollection of a flamboyant kid, said to be very smart, straight A’s, who had left high school in his junior year and had been sent away to a prep school in the North. He had a sense of uneasiness. Whatever this was, it was too close to home.
“It sounds cockeyed to me,” he said. “What’s he protesting?”
“Maybe it is cockeyed, but we won’t know until we see for ourselves, will we? Which way, left or right?”
In the few seconds while the car waited at the intersection, Tom’s thoughts coalesced. A protest on Fairview; possibly, very possibly, it had something to do with those blacks who had moved in there. And if so—
He gulped. “Gee, this is tough on me. I live here, a couple of minutes away. My father’s got friends on that street, his banker—gee, he’ll kill me if I get mixed up in a protest meeting.”
When Dudley turned around, Tom could see his eyes glitter. “Which way?” he demanded, cutting the two words apart as with a knife. “I’m not going to stand here all night while you shake like an old woman.”
“Left. Then another four or five intersections and a tennis club on the corner. Turn left again there, and that’s Fairview.”
Alarm had definitely hastened Tom’s heartbeat. At the same time, the very existence of this alarm infuriated him. He had allowed himself to be insulted. “Old woman,” was he? He had shown weakness in front of Robbie, who was so vigorous and determined.
“I’m far from shaking,” he said stiffly. “And I’m not thinking only of my father. I’m looking a whole lot further. It won’t do our work any good at college, Robbie, or our work with the paper, if we get the wrong publicity, whatever this thing may be about.”
“Tom’s got a point, Mr. Dudley,” Robbie said thoughtfully after a moment. “And Jim Johnson wants to use us in the campaign. If we get our names mixed up in any mess on that street, he’s not going to like it at all.”
“Okay, we’ll drive along the street, see what’s happening, park the car and walk, depending on what’s going on. Should be interesting, anyway.”
It was quite dark, a cloudy night made darker by the heavy leafage of the old oaks that, meeting one another, arched a ceiling over these fine streets. On either side of Fairview, two or three dozen cars and vans, mostly vans, were parked with nobody in them. Far down the street a crowd had gathered, vague shapes in the lighted circles thrown by the streetlamps.
Seventy-five to a hundred people were standing on a lawn that sloped up toward a great stone house. At the crest of the lawn on a podium improvised out of boxes, a young man wearing a red shirt was haranguing the audience. The scene was theatrical: the imposing house with its balustraded terrace and its flare lights on the corners that, illuminating the crowd, only deepened the blackness of shrubbery as dense, as secretive as a wilderness. The scene was eerie.
“That’s Greg Anderson. I was in high school with him until he left,” whispered Tom.
The speech must have been going on a long time, for the listeners were restless, milling about and whispering among themselves, while the speaker’s voice as he tried to keep their attention and struggled to rise above the rustle of the wind in the trees, verged almost on the soprano.
“What do these people want? Preference in jobs, in the universities, in government—what else? Shoved ahead by the liberals, they’ll end up owning us, body and soul. Look at that house across the street, turn your heads and take a good look at it. Then ask yourselves how many of you can afford to live in a house like that. How much farther do they want to go? To the White House, maybe? Well, and they will if we keep electing the dolts and fools who’ve been running this state and are running it
right now. I hope you will all have brains enough to do something about the muddle we’re in, to get out and put more men like Jim Johnson in office. Then maybe, just maybe, we will be able to turn this evil tide—”
As if the listeners had become one body, every head turned toward the street. For a second, Tom thought he was hearing the clatter of horses, but then came the hoot and cry of young male voices; a troop, no more than twenty strong, wearing heavy military boots and dark glasses, was racing down the middle of the street. In the next second, all twenty had vaulted over the low wrought-iron fence of the property that had once belonged to the Blairs.
The house had been dim, as if the occupants were readying for bed, but suddenly the entire front flared into light so that Tom could see the figures racing over the lawn with caps drawn down over their faces. They were screaming. The hideous, wordless cry raised gooseflesh on Tom’s back. He saw their upraised throwing arms, he heard the crash of glass, and he heard the wail of a child. In seconds they had smashed every first-floor window of that elegant Georgian house.
“What the hell—” cried Greg Anderson. “Quiet, folks! Let’s mind our own business, this has nothing to do with us, you hear?”
But his audience was already fleeing, melting away into the darkness. It was every man for himself.
“Who? What?” Tom panted as, with Robbie, he went stumbling back toward the car.
Dudley grumbled under his breath, “Damn idiots. Fools.”
Cars parked on both sides of the street were trying to pull away, backing, filling and bumping, in a rush to vanish before the certain arrival of the police. A van tried to make a U-turn; drivers entering the street, who were naturally unaware that anything out of the ordinary was taking place, blew horns frantically and tried to back up, inching away from the chaos.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Robbie said anxiously, as they stood helplessly beside Dudley’s car, which was blocked in.
Tom blinked into the headlights of a car that was slowly approaching. When it passed, he had a glimpse of the occupants and ducked.