Charles Beaumont: Selected Stories (26 page)

First guy I saw was Parnelli. He was blowing his trombone. The rest of the boys- all but two-were there, jamming.
Parnelli quit and came over. He was shaking good now.
"Where's Davey?" I asked.
He looked at me, then at Lorraine.
"Where is he?"
"You're too late," Parnelli said. "It looks like the Big M pushed a mite too far, Just a mite."
Lorraine started to tremble, I could feel her arm; and somebody was slicing into my guts. The blues were still rolling "Deep Shores." The kid's tune.
Parnelli shook his head. "I went out after him the minute you left," he said. "But I was too late, too."
"Where's Davey?" Lorraine said, like she was about to scream.
"In his room. Or maybe they've got him out by now-" Parnelli stared at me with those eyes. "He didn't have a gun so he used a razor. Good clean job. Fine job. Doubt if I'll be able to do any better myself…"
Lorraine didn't say a word. She took it in, then she turned around slow and walked out. Her heels hit the dance floor like daggers.
"You figured it out now?" Parnelli said.
I nodded. I was hollow for a second, but it was all getting filled up with hate now. "Where is he?"
"In his room, I guess."
"You want to come along?"
"I might just do that," he said. He blew a sour note and the session stopped. Bud Parker came down, so did Hughie and Rollo and Sig.
"They know?" I asked.
"Uh-huh. But, Deek, knowin' isn't enough sometimes. We've been waiting for you."
"Let's go then."
We went upstairs. Max's door was open. He was sitting in a chair, his collar loose, a bottle in his hand.
"Et tu, Deck?"
I grabbed a handful of shirt. "Davey's dead," I said.
He said, "I've been told." He lifted the bottle and I slapped the left side of his face, praying to God he'd want to fight. He didn't.
"You did it," I said.
"Yes ."
I wanted to put my hands around his neck and squeeze until his eyes ran down his face, I wanted to give him back the pain. But all of a sudden I couldn't. "Why?" I said.
Max tilted the bottle and let a lot of the stuff run down his throat. Then, very slowly, and in that soft voice, he said: "I wanted to make music. I wanted to make the best music that ever was."
"That's why you lied to Davey about the girl?"
"That's why," Max said.
Parnelli took away the bottle and killed it. He was shaking, scared. "See, Deck, you thought you were in a band," he said. "But you weren't. You were in a traveling morgue."
"Tell me more, Parnelli. Tell me how in the name of the sweet Lord this has anything to do with Davey and Lorraine."
"It had everything to do with it. Dailey went over to the chick's place and gave her one of his high-voltage snow jobs. Got her to go along with the lie and stay away from Green."
I tried to grab some light; it wouldn't come. My head was pounding. "Why?"
"Simple. She'd be taking the kid's talent and tossing it in the crud-heap. He'd be telling things to her, not to the box. And she didn't want to rob the world of a Great Genius, did she?"
Parnelli sucked a few more drops out of the bottle and tossed it in a corner.
"Here's the thing, Deck-our boss has quite a unique little approach to Jazz. He believes you've got to be brought down before you can play. The worse off you are, and the longer you stay that way, the better the music is. Right, Max?"
Max had his face in his hands. He didn't answer.
"Look around you. You: ten years ago-it was ten, wasn't it, Deek?-you got drunk one night and got in a car and hit a little girl. Killed her. Rollo, over there-he's queer and doesn't like it. Hughie, what's your cross?"
Hughie stayed quiet.
"Oh, yeah: cancer. Hughie's gonna die one of these days soon. Bud Parker and Sig, poor babies: hooked. Main stream. And me-a bottle hound. Max picked me out of Bellevue. Shall I go on?"
"Go on," I said, I wanted to get it all straight.
"But for some reason Max couldn't find a real brought-down piano man. They pretended to be miserable, but hell, it turned out they only had a stomach ache or something. Then-he found David Green. Or you did, Deck. So we were complete, at last. Eight miserable bastards. See?" Parnelli patted Max's head, and hiccupped. "But you don't get bugged because you didn't catch on. Ol' Dailey's smart. You might have pulled out of your wing-ding years ago, only ke kept the knife in. Every now and then he'd give it a twist-like winding us up, so we'd cry about it out loud, for the public."
Hughie Wilson said. "Bull. It's all bull. I can play just as good happy as-"
Max brought his hands down on the chair, and that was the last time he ever looked powerful and strong. "No," he said. He was trembling and red. "Look back, Deacon Jones. Who were the great pianos? I mean the great ones. I'll tell you. Jelly Roll-who they said belonged in a whorehouse. Lingle-a hermit. Tatum-a blind man. Who blew the horns that got under your skin and into your bones and wouldn't let you be? I'll tell you that, too. A rum-dum boozie named Biederbecke and a lonely old man named Johnson. And Buddy Bolden-he went mad in the middle of a parade. Look back, I'm telling you, find the great ones. Show them to me. And I'll show you the loneliest, most miserable, beat and gone-to-hell bastards who ever lived. But they're remembered, Deacon Jones. They're remembered."
Max glared at us with those steady eyes of his.
"Davey Green was a nice kid," he said. "But the world is full of nice kids. I made him a great piano-and that's something the world isn't full of. He made music that reached in and touched you. He made music that only God could hear. And it took the trouble out of the hearts of everybody who heard him and everybody who will hear him-"
His hands were fists now. The sweat was pouring off him.
"There never was a great band," he said, "until this one. Never a bunch of musicians who could play anything under the goddamn sun and play it right and true. And there won't be another one. You were all great and I kept you great."
He got to his feet unsteadily. "Okay, it's all ripped now. It's over. I've screwed up every life in this room and made you prisoners and cheated and lied to you-okay. Who hits me first?"
Nobody moved.
"Come on," he said, only not in the soft voice. "Come on, you chicken-hearted sons of a bitches! Let's go! I just murdered a fine clean kid, didn't I? What about you, Parnelli? You've been on to me for a long time. Why don't you start things off?"
Parnelli met his eyes for a while; then he turned and picked up his horn and went to the door.
Sig Shulman followed him. One by one the others left, nobody looking back. And they were gone, and Max Dailey and I were alone.
"You told me something early tonight," he said. "You told me you were going to come back and kill me. What's holding you up?" He went over to the bureau, opened a drawer, took out an old .38. He handed it to me. "Go on," he said. "Kill me."
"I just did," I said, and laid the gun down on the table where he could get at it. Max looked at me. "Blow out of here, Deck," he said, whispering. "Be free." I went outside and it was pretty cool. I started walking. But there wasn't any place to go.

Introduction to

THE INTRUDER
by Roger Corman

I first met Chuck Beaumont when I read his novel, The Intruder, and decided to make a picture of it. His novel concerned the integration of a school in a small southern town, and was critically hailed as a penetrating social study. I contacted Chuck and we discussed it, agreeing as to what we were trying to do. Chuck wanted to see his book brought to the screen exactly as he had written it: "No toning down of the events.., no glossing over the basic attitudes of southern bigots, no whitewashing of the antipathetic Negro who calls himself 'nigger'   A deal was signed and Chuck wrote the screenplay.
I had never believed in any picture as much as I believed in this one. We shot it on location and Chuck came along to help as production assistant and to play the part of the high school principal; he'd never acted before but was quite good.
The picture was done on a very low budget. I had enough money to shoot the film in three weeks on location in Missouri, in 1961, when the situation in the south was considerably different than what it is now, and the racial situation was still very explosive. We chose a town on what is called the "boot-heel" of Missouri, a place which dips down between Arkansas and Kentucky, a town that had a southern look. For the bit parts, I would get local citizens with southern accents but, being in Missouri, the film crew would still be protected by the laws of a midwestern state. The schools in our chosen town had been integrated for six years-but it was token integration. In other schools in the area there was no integration at all and not likely to be any as long as it could be avoided.
Arrangements were quickly made with the superintendent of one local school for the rental of facilities, with no mention made of the subject matter of the film. It didn't work out. Some of the people were very friendly, but there was a great deal of opposition; during the climax of the film, when people started to catch on what the movie was really about, we began to have problems.
We were to shoot the climax for two days in front of a high school in East Prairie, Missouri. After the first day, the sheriff called us and said we weren't going to be allowed back. I told him we had a contract with the East Prairie school district. He said he didn't care anything about it, that we were communists and we were trying to promote equality between whites and blacks, and that was not going to be allowed in East Prairie; and if anybody came back, they would be immediately arrested. We then started shooting matching shots in a public park in Charleston, Missouri, but after a single morning, the chief of police told us to get out. We were in the middle of shooting one sequence and I said to my brother, Gene, who was working as co-producer, "Talk to him while I finish this sequence." I was shooting as fast as I could and Gene was saying, "Now officer, we don't really understand. Is there anything we can do? Can't we go to the mayor?" The officer was saying, "No. Get the hell out of here." Gene: "Well, there must be some way-" "Get outta here, or I'm running you all in!" And Gene was just talking. Making up conversation. He later told Chuck and me he didn't know what he was saying. He was just talking until I got the last shot-not of the sequence, but of the pattern I had to finish.
Toward the end, we were getting threatening phone calls and letters; and so I had to hold a Klu Klux Klan parade until the last night of shooting. Then we left. We didn't even return to the hotel. We had it arranged to leave after shooting, because the threats were very heavy, and we drove in the middle of the night up to St. Louis.
Critically, the film was extremely successful; but it was not successful financially.
Chuck went on to write more scripts for me. He was intelligent and creative and very sensitive, and, at the same time, highly enthusiastic. He did not get blase after a number of years in Hollywood, as it is easy for a writer to do. Had he lived, he probably would have become a very respected and established screenwriter, who would have written an occasional novel or short story.
It's hard to say.

THE INTRUDER

(Chapter 10)
by Charles Beaumont

When the bell in the steeple rang to mark the half hour that had passed since six P.M., Caxton wore the same tired face that it always wore in the summer. The heat of the afternoon throbbed on. Cars moved up and down George Street like painted turtles, and the people moved slowly, too: all afraid of the motion that would send the perspiration coursing, the heart flying.
Adam Cramer sat in the far booth at Joan's Cafe, feeling grateful for the heat, trying to eat the soggy ham sandwich he had ordered. He knew the effect of heat on the emotions of people: Summer had a magic to it, a magic way of frying the nerve ends, boiling the blood, drying the brain. Perhaps it made no sense logically but it was true, nonetheless. Crimes of violence occurred with far greater frequency in hot climates than in cold. You would find more murders, more robberies, more kidnapings, more unrest in the summer than at any other time.
It was the season of mischief, the season of slow movements and sudden explosions, the season of violence.
Adam looked out at the street, then at the thermometer that hung behind the cash register. He could see the line of red reaching almost to the top.
How would The Man on Horseback have fared, he wondered, if it had been twenty below zero?
How would Gerald L.K. go over in Alaska?
He pulled his sweat-stained shirt away from his body and smiled. Even the weather was helping him!
He forced the last of the sandwich down, slid a quarter beneath the plate, and paid for his meal; then he went outside.
It was a furnace.
A dark, quiet furnace.
He started for the courthouse, regretting only that Max Blake could not be there. Seeing his old teacher in the crowd, those dark eyes snapping with angry pleasure, that cynical mouth twitching at the edges-damn!
Well, I'll write you about it, he thought. That'll be almost as good.
The picture of the man who had set his mind free blurred and vanished and Adam walked faster.
The Reverend Lorenzo Niesen was the first to arrive. His felt hat was sodden, the inner band caked with filth; his suspenders hung loosely over his two-dollar striped shirt; his trousers were shapeless-yet he was proud of his appearance, and it was a vicious, thrusting pride. Were someone to hand him a check for five thousand dollars, he would not alter any part of his attire. It was country-honest, as he himself was. Whoever despised dirt despised likewise the common people. God's favorites.
Was there soap in Bethlehem?
Did the Apostles have nail files and lotions?
He sat down on the grass, glared at the bright lights of the Reo motion picture theatre across the street, and began to fan himself with his hat. Little strands of silver hair lifted and fell, lifted and fell, as he fanned.
At six thirty-five, Bart Carey and Phillip Dongen appeared. They nodded at Lorenzo and sat down near him.
"Well, it's hot."
Others drifted into the area, some singly, some in groups.
"Hot!"
By six forty, over one hundred and fifty residents of Caxton were standing on the cement walk or sitting on the grass, waiting.
"You see 'em this morning?"
Fifty more showed up in the next ten minutes.
"Christ, yes."
At seven a bell was struck and a number of cars screeched, halted, discharging teenage children. They crowded at the steps of the courthouse.
It was quiet.
Ten minutes passed. Then, a young man in a dark suit walked across the empty street. He nodded at the people, made his way through the aisle that parted for him, and climbed to the top step. He stood there with his back to the courthouse door.
"That's him?" Phil Dongen whispered.
Bart Carey said, "Yeah."
Lorenzo Niesen was silent. He studied the young man, trying to decide whether or not he approved. Awful green, he thought. Too good of a clothes on him. Like as not a Northerner.
I don't know.
The crowd's voice rose to a murmuring, then fell again as the young man in the dark suit lifted his hands in the air.
"Folks," he said, in a soft, almost gentle voice, "my name is Adam Cramer. Some of you know me by now and you know what I'm here for. To those I haven't had a chance to talk with yet, let me say this: I'm from Washington D.C., the Capital, and I'm in Caxton to help the people fight the trouble that's come up."
He smiled suddenly and took off his coat. "I wish one thing, though," he said. "I wish school started in January. I mean, it is hot. Aren't you hot?"
Hesitant, cautious laughter followed.
"Well," Adam Cramer said, dropping his smile, "it's going to get hotter, for a whole lot of people. I'll promise you that. This here little town is going to burn, what I mean; it's going to burn the conscience of the country, now, and put out a light that everyone and everybody will see and feel. This town, I'm talking about. Caxton!" He paused. "People, something happened today. You've all heard about it now. Some of you saw it with your own eyes. What happened was: Twelve Negroes went to the Caxton high school and sat with the white children there. Nobody stopped them, nobody turned them out. And, friends, listen; that makes today the most important day in the history of the South. Why? Because it marks the real beginning of integration. That's right. It's been tried other places, but you know what they're saying? They're saying, Well, if it works in Caxton, it'll work all over, because Caxton is a typical Southern town. If the people don't want integration, they'll do something about it! If they don't do something about it, that means they want it! Two plus two equals four!
"Except there's one thing wrong. They're saying you all don't give a darn whether the whites mix with the blacks because you haven't really got down to fighting; but I ask you, how can somebody fight what he doesn't see? They've kept the facts away from you; they've cheated and deceived every one of you, and filled your heads with filthy lies. It has all been a calculated campaign to keep you in the dark, so that when you finally do wake up, Why, we're sorry, it's just too late!
"All right; I'm associated with the Society of National American Patriots, which is an organization dedicated to giving the people the truth about desegregation. We've been studying this situation here ever since January, when Judge Silver made his decision, and I'm going to give that situation to you. Of course, many present now are fully aware of it. Many have done what they consider their best to prevent it from happening. But there are quite a few who simply do not know the facts; who don't know either what led up to that black little parade into the school today, or what real significance it has for everyone in the country.
"I ask you to bear with me, folks, but I give you fair warning now. When you do know the truth, you're going to be faced with a decision. You don't think you've got one now, but you do, all right, and you'll see it. And it'll get inside your blood and make it boil and you won't be able to run away from it! Because I'm going to show you that the way this country is going to go depends entirely and wholly and completely on you!"
Tom McDaniel put away his note-pad and walked over to his friend, the lawyer James Wolfe. Wolfe, he noticed, was staring, strained and curious and expectant, like all the others. And, for some reason, this annoyed him. "Sound familiar?" he said.
Wolfe started. "Oh-Tom. Yes, he seems to be a pretty smart kid."
"But a phony," Tom said.
"Oh?"
"Absolutely. The accent's fake; I talked with him earlier. He thinks it's going to work!"
"What?"
"The plain-folks routine."
"And you don't?" Wolfe nodded toward the crowd. "I can't say I entirely agree."
"Do you think it's trouble, Jim?"
"No," Wolfe said, glancing away from Tom. "The time for trouble's over."
"Everything," Adam Cramer was saying, "has got to have a beginning. And the beginning to what you saw today was almost seventeen years ago. In 1940, a Negro woman named Charlotte Green, and her husband, let it be known that they didn't care much for the equal facilities that were being offered to their children. No sooner were the words out of their mouths but the NAACP swooped down. You all know about this organization, I imagine. The so-called National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is now and has always been nothing but a Communist front, headed by a Jew who hates America and doesn't make any bones about it, either. They've always operated on the 'martyr' system, which is: They pick out trouble spots or create them where they never existed, and start putting out publicity. Like take the Emmet Till case. A nigger tries to rape a white woman and tells her husband he'll keep on trying and nobody is going to stop him. The husband can't go to the police with just a threat, so he makes sure, like any of us would, that no nigger is going to rape his wife. Now those are the facts. But what happens? The NAACP moves in and says that the white man is a murderer! Yeah, for protecting his own wife! And you know the bitter tears was shed over that poor, mistreated little colored boy, poor Emmet Till whose only crime was being dark! Any of you read about it?" Adam Cramer shook his head in mock consternation. "The coon was made into a martyr, what they call, and things were rolling along real good, until somebody with some brains showed how Emmet Till's Hero Daddy-you remember how they said that's what he was, and he died in line of duty overseas?-was hanged and given a dishonorable discharge for, see if you can guess it: rape! Uh-huh! Of course, the jury wasn't hoodwinked and declared those men who taught the nigger boy a lesson (and it wasn't ever even proved they'd done anything more!) innocent. But the old N-double-A-C-P almost had it knocked.
"Anyway, that's how those guys work. For all I know, they hired this Green woman (she lives on Simon's Hill) to stir things up in the first place. They put the pressure on between 1940 and 1949, pretending that all they wanted, you see, was really equal separate facilities. Farragut County said all right and helped the Negroes send their kids to an accredited school, Lincoln High, in Farragut. I visited this school, friends, and there isn't a thing wrong with it. It's a whole sight cleaner and neater that any place these nigger kids ever saw before, like as not; and that's for sure! But the Commie group tipped its hand right then and showed, for all to see, that it was after something different. Does September 1950 mean anything to you people? Well, it was the second big step toward today. In September 1950 a bunch of Negro boys tried to enroll in Caxton High! Remember?"
There was a murmuring from the crowd.
"Why?" Adam Cramer asked, modulating his voice to its original softness. "Do you think it was something they thought up by themselves? Would any Southern Negro have that much gall? No, sir. No. The NAACP engineered the whole operation, knowing in advance what would happen! The students were turned away; the county board of education refused to let them in-putting it on the line-and the usual arrangements were made for the Negroes to attend Lincoln. Then, three full months later, five of these kids-with the full backing of the NAACP-filed suit against the Farragut County School Board. And that's when the ball really got rolling. The Plaintiffs, these Negroes, claimed that the out-of-county arrangements didn't meet the county's obligation to furnish equal facilities. The District Court said they were crazy and ruled accordingly. All during 1952 and 1954 the case, which had been appealed, was held in abeyance, pending the United States Supreme Court's action in five school segregation cases under consideration at the same time.
"Well, the Commies didn't waste a second. They had most of the world, but America was a pocket of resistance to them. They couldn't attack from outside, so, they were attacking from inside. They knew only too well, friends, that the quickest way to cripple a country is to mongrelize it. So they poured all the millions of dollars the Jews could get for them into this one thing: desegregation.
"In August of 1955, the NAACP demanded a final judgment. Judge Silver, who is a Jew and is known to have leftist leanings-"
"Who says so?" a voice cried.
"The record says so," Adam Cramer said tightly. "Look it up. Abraham Silver belongs, for one thing, to the Quill and Pen Society, which receives its funds indirectly from Moscow."
Tom McDaniel grinned. He said to Wolfe, "He'll hang himself!"
"You think so?"
"Oh, hell, Jim-people love the judge around here. He's a public idol, and you know it. Everybody knows it wasn't his fault about the ruling!"
"I'm not so sure."
"Well, anyway; the Quill and Pen-that's really stretching it."
"I'm not so sure of that, either," James Wolfe said, in a rather grim voice. "Don't forget, Tom: 'You can fool some of the people all of the time…"
. . . so what did the Judge do? He instructed the county school board to proceed with reasonable expedition to comply with the rule to desegregate. In spite of the complete disapproval of the PTA, in spite of the protests of the Farragut County Society for Constitutional Government, in spite of petitions presented by Verne Shipman, one of Caxton's leading citizens, and Thomas McDaniel, the editor of the Caxton Messenger-Judge Abe Silver went right ahead and ordered integration for Caxton High School, at a date no later than fall, 1956.
"Mayor Harry Satterly could have stopped it, but he didn't have the guts to, because he knew the powers that were and are behind Silver. He knew how much his skin was worth.

"The Governor could have stopped it in a second, but I don't have to tell you about him; I hope I don't, anyway.
"And the principal of the high school, Harley Paton-he could have brought the whole mess to a screaming halt. But he's too lily-livered to do the right thing."
"That's a dirty lie!" A young man in a T-shirt and blue jeans walked up to the lower step and glared at Adam Cramer. "The principal done everything he could!"
"Did he? Did he close down the school and refuse to open it until the rights of the town were restored?"
"No, he didn't do that. But-"
"Did he bring the students together and tell them to stay away?"
"Hell, he couldn't do that."
"No," Adam Cramer said, smiling condescendingly. "No; he couldn't do that. It would take courage. It would mean risking his fine job and that fat pay-check!"
The young man bunched his fists, reddened, and when someone shouted, "Git on away, let 'im speak his piece, kid!" walked back into the crowd.
"Just a moment," Adam Cramer said. "I know that Harley Paton has a lot of friends. And if I were here for any other purpose than to bring the truth, I'd be smart enough to leave him alone. Wouldn't I? Now I don't say that the principal of Caxton High is necessarily a dishonest man. I merely say, and the facts bring this out, that he is a weak man. And weakness is no more to be tolerated than dishonesty-not when we have our children's future at stake, leastwise! I warned you that the truth would be bitter. It always is. But I ain't going to quit just because I've touched a sore point. No, sir. There's a whole lot of sore points that are going to be touched before I'm through!"
"Keep talking," Lorenzo Niesen called. "We're listening."
"All right. Now, you may think that the problem is simply whether or not we're going to allow twelve Negroes to go to our school; but that's only a small, small part of it. I'm in a position to know because I've been with an organization that's studied the whole thing. You don't see the forest for the trees, my friends; believe me. The real problem, whether you like it or not, is whether you're going to sit back and let desegregation spread throughout the entire South…"
Verne Shipman stood on the sidewalk, hidden behind the rusted lawn cannon, and listened to Adam Cramer. He listened to the same speech he'd heard earlier, the same statistics, and he observed that the people who comprised the crowd were listening also. Intently. Which, of course, they ought to do, for the words made sense.
However, there was yet no mention of money. No word about the joining of this organization and the parting with hard-earned funds.
I will listen, he thought, but that will be the test.
". . . and it's an indisputable fact," Adam Cramer spoke on, "that there could be no other result. The Negroes will literally, and I do mean literally, control the South. The vote will be theirs. You'll have black mayors and black policemen (like they do in New York and Chicago already) and like as not, a black governor; and black doctors to deliver your babies-if they find the time, that is-and that's the way it'll be. Did you even stop to think about that when you let those twelve enter your white school? Did you?"
The miniscule festive note that had marked the beginning of the meeting was now instantly dissolved. Bart Carey and Phil Dongen wore deep frowns, and Rev. Lorenzo Niesen was shaking his head up and down, up and down, signifying rage.
"Some of us did!" Carey said, in a husky, thickly accented voice.
"I know," Adam Cramer granted. "The Farragut County Federation for Constitutional Government was a step in the right direction. But it didn't accomplish much because the liars have done their jobs well. They've made you think your hands are tied. You couldn't afford fancy lawyers, so you failed. But, Mr. Carey, I'm not talking specifically to you or to those like yourself who have worked to fight this thing. I'm talking to the people who are still confused, in the dark, who haven't fully realized or understood or grasped the meaning of this here ruling. To those, Mr. Carey, who have been soft and who have trusted the government to do right by them. It's a natural thing, you understand. We all love our country, and it's natural to believe that the people who run it are a hundred per cent square. But our great senator from Wisconsin showed us, I think, how wrong that view happens to be. He proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are skunks and rats and vermin in the government! Didn't he?"
"That's right!" shouted Lorenzo Niesen. "That's right. God bless the senator!"
"Yes," Adam Cramer said. "Amen to that, sir. We know now that there are men with fine titles and with great power, wonderful power, who are doing their level best to sell our country out to the Communists. And it's these men, folks, and nobody else, who're cramming integration down your throats. There isn't any question in the world about that."
Slowly Adam Cramer's voice was rising in pitch. Perspiration was running down his face, staining his collar, but he did not make any effort to wipe it away.
"Here's something," he said. "I'll bet you all don't know. In interpreting the school decisions of May 17, 1954 and May 31, 1955, by the United States Supreme Court, Judge John J. Parker of the Fourth Circuit Court of the United States, speaking in the case-" he removed a note from his breast pocket-"of Briggs versus Elliot, said:
'. . . it is. important that we point out exactly what the Supreme Court has decided and what it has not decided in this case. It has not decided that the Federal Courts are to take over and regulate the public schools of the states. It has not decided that the states must mix persons of different races in the schools or must require them to attend schools or must deprive them of the right of choosing the schools they attend. What it has decided, and all it has decided, is that a state may not deny to any person on account of race the right to attend any school that it maintains. This, under the decision of the Supreme Court, the state may not do directly or indirectly; but if the schools which it maintains are open to children of all races, no violation of the Constitution is involved even though the children of different races voluntarily attend different schools, as they attend different churches. Nothing in the Constitution or in the decision of the Supreme Court takes away from the people freedom to choose the schools they attend. The Constitution, in other words, does not require integration…'
"You get that, people? 'The Constitution does not require integration!' That's an accurate record of a legal statement. A judge with a sense of justice and fairness said it. But I'm just a-wondering if Abraham Silver mentioned those little teeny things to you. Did he?
"We've got to follow the big law, the ruling and all that; except, I'll say it again, loud and clear, and you listen, every one of you listen: The Constitution don't require integration!"
Adam Cramer stopped talking. His voice had risen sharply on the last five words; now angry silence filled the air above the courthouse lawn.
He continued, almost in a whisper: "Now I'll tell you what this whole long thing is about. It isn't about integration at all-in spite of what that would mean, and I've showed you, I hope, what it would mean. It isn't about the Negroes or having anything against them, either. I don't, any more than you people do. No: the real issue at stake here, friends, is the issue of States' rights. That's what it comes to. According to the Constitution, each state in the union is supposed to have local control of itself, isn't that so? That's supposed to be the point of a democratic government. Look at Article One, Section Eight, Paragraph Five, of the U.S. Constitution. Read over your government books in the library. States' rights is the whole meaning behind America-local control of purchasing power, local control of state and county politics, local control of schools. Okay! Now, you let the Federal Government step in and start to give orders-like they're doing now-and you may think it's just a step toward socialism, but that ain't so. It's a step toward Communism! The Soviet Union-Russia!-works just that way. A couple of the big boys decide that so much tax is to be levied in every town, or they decide the Siberians are going to share the schools with the whites-or whatever-and nobody can open their mouth. Why? Because in Communist Russia, no one single county has any rights of its own. It can't veto any judgments or stop any orders. It can't do anything but sit there and take it.
"You may think I'm getting off the point, or being a little far-fetched, but you're wrong! Friends, the eyes of the world are on Caxton. I've been in Washington, D.C., and I know that to be true. You all are the country's test tube, the guinea pig! That's why I say you've got the future, not only of Caxton, but of America in your hands!"
Lucy Egan nudged Ella secretively and smiled. "Boy," she said, "he is really some talker. I mean, he honestly is."
Ella had been listening with a peculiar mixture of pride and uneasiness, and the truth was, she did not know whether to be pleased or displeased. Tom had not seen her yet, for which she was, oddly, grateful (there being no reason to be grateful); he and Mr. Wolfe and some of the others, a few, did not appear to be very happy with the speech Adam Cramer was making, though most of the people were. You could see that.
"Sort of, if you squint, like Marlon Brando," Lucy Egan said, squinting. "Like, mean. A little."
It made no particular sense to Ella, the speech. This dry type of thing that her father and Cramp were always talking about, that was always in the newspapers these days, mostly bored her, and she would have gone back home (where, she supposed, she ought to be, anyway) except that the speaker was Adam Cramer. And she knew, sensed, that she would be seeing him again soon.
"He's really getting them worked up," Lucy Egan said. "There hasn't been anything like this in Caxton in I don't know how long. Don't you think he looks like Brando?"
"Kind of," Ella said.
"Did he kiss you good night?" Lucy Egan asked suddenly.
Ella hesitated, noting the anxiousness in her friend's eyes. Then she said: "Sure."
"Boy, I don't guess there was anything else, like."
"Oh, Lucy, come on."
"There was?"
"No, no."
"A lot of what you say makes sense," James Wolfe said, stepping forward during a dramatic pause. "And certainly we all agree with you that this ruling was illconsidered. But it is a ruling, and can't be abrogated. I assure you we've tried everything."
"Who are you, sir?" Adam Cramer asked.
"My name is Wolfe, James Wolfe. I'm a lawyer. I spoke personally, you may be interested to know, with Judge Silver, and I'd like to correct you on at least one point. You're giving the impression that a district judge has authority to overrule a federal ruling. That's entirely wrong." James Wolfe turned toward the crowd. "The judge had absolutely no choice in the matter. As a matter off the record, he doesn't think any more of the decision than we do."
"Abraham Silver is a clever man, Mr. Wolfe. You'd have to have studied the situation and all of its ramifications to understand that, as we do, We-"
"Just a moment. Just a moment. As it happens, Mr. Cramer, I and a group of other qualified men have studied the situation. It's all very clear-cut. The Judge Parker quote that you take such stock in is ridiculous as applied to conditions in Caxton. Unless you propose to subrogate legal action with illegal action, I can't see that you've presented anything in the form of a positive idea."
Adam Cramer smiled tolerantly.
"As it happens, Mr. Wolfe," he said, "I do have ideas. And they're absolutely legal. They take courage and daring, now, I'll tell you all right off the bat. But they're legitimate."
"All right, then, let's have them."
"First, I want to get one thing clear." Adam Cramer spoke distinctly, addressing himself to the entire assemblage. "Do you people want nigras in your school? Answer yes or no!"
There was a roar from the crowd. "No!"
"No," Adam Cramer said, and smiled. "Fine. Now, are you willing to fight this thing down to the last ditch and keep fighting until it's conquered?"
Another roar, like a giant wave: "Yes!"
"Yes. Fine!" Adam Cramer raised his hands, and the people were quiet. "Well, I'm willing to work with you. Maybe you want to know why. After all, I'm not a Southerner. I wasn't born in Caxton. But I am an American, friends, and I love my country-and I am ready to give up my life, if that be necessary, to see that my country stays free, white and American!"
Phillip Dongen, who has seldom been moved to such emotional heights, led off the applause. It was a frantic drum roll.
"Friends, listen to me for a minute." The young man's voice was soft again. It rose and fell, the words were soothing, or sharp as gunfire. "Please. Mr. Wolfe, over there, has mentioned something about keeping the attack legal. As far as I'm concerned, something is legal or illegal depending on whether it's right or wrong. If nine old crows in black robes tell me that breathing is against the law, I'm not going to feel like a criminal every time I take a breath. The way I see it, the people make the laws, hear? The people!"
The car, bearing an out-of-county license plate, swung slowly onto George Street from the highway. It was a 1939 Ford, caked with dust and rusty, loud with groans of dry metal. It had come a long way. The five people within were limp with the heat, silent and incurious. Only a small part of their minds, like icebergs, were above the conscious level of thought.