Charles Beaumont: Selected Stories (27 page)

Ginger Beauchamp did not move the gear lever from high as they commenced the hill, nor was he concerned with the misfires and rattles that followed. His foot was numb on the accelerator pedal. He could think only of getting through the seventy miles that remained, of falling, exhausted, onto the cot. There was no damn sense to visiting his mother. She didn't appreciate it. If she was so anxious to see him, why didn't she ever try to be a little nice? he thought. Well, she's old.
I say I ain't going to make this drive no more, but I am. And Harriet will want to come along and bring Willie and Shirley and Pete.
Now, damn. If I could go just myself, then maybe it wouldn't be so damn bad. But I can't. She just don't want to see me, she wants to see the kids, And-.
Ginger Beauchamp saw the people gathered on the lawn in front of the courthouse and slowed down.
"What is it?" Harriet said. She opened her eyes, but did not move.
"Nothin'. Go back to sleep, get you plenty of sleep."
He glared at his wife and swore that next week he would make her learn to drive. That would take some of the strain off. Then he could sleep a little, too.
"What is it, Ginger?"
"Nothin', I said."
The car moved slowly, still coughing and gasping with its heavy load. The overhead traffic light turned red. Ginger pumped the brakes three times and put the gear lever in neutral.
Sure a lot of people.
He started to close his eyes, briefly, when out of the engine noise and murmur of the crowd, he heard a sharp, high voice.
"Hey-a, look!"
Then another voice, also high-pitched: "Git 'em, now. Come on!"
Ginger looked around and saw a group of young boys sprinting across the street toward his car. They were white boys.
What the hell, now, he thought.
"Ginger, it's green, Ginger."
He hesitated only a moment; then, when he saw the running people and heard what they were yelling, he put his foot down, hard, on the accelerator.
But he had forgotten to take the car out of gear. The engine roared, ineffectively.
"You niggers, hey. Wait a second, don't you run off, don't do that!"
Suddenly, the street in front of him was blocked with people. They surrounded the car in a cautious circle, only the young ones coming close.
"What's the trouble?" Ginger asked.
"No trouble," a boy in a T-shirt and levis answered. "You looking for trouble?"
"No, I ain't looking for no trouble," Ginger said. The exhaustion had left him. Harriet was staring, getting ready to cry. The children were asleep. "We just goin' on to Hollister."
"Oh, you jes' a-goin' on to Hollister? How do we know that?"
One of the boys put his hands on the window frame and began rocking the car.
"Don't do that now," Ginger said. He was a thin man; his bones poked into his dark black skin like te.ntpoles. But the muscles in his arms were hard; years of lifting heavy boxes had made them that way.
"Sweet Jesus," Harriet Beauchamp said. She had begun to tremble.
"Hush," Ginger said.
Another boy leaped on the opposite running board, and the rocking got worse.
"Cut it out, now, come on, you kids," Ginger said. "I don't want to spoil nobody's fun, but we got to get home."
"Who says you got to?"
The circle of people moved in, watching. Some of the men peeled away and approached the car. Their throats were knotted. Their hands were clenched into fists.
A small white man with a crushed felt hat said, "Nobody gave you no permission to drive through Caxton, niggers. They's a highway to Hollister."
"Well, sure," Ginger said. "I know that. But-"
"But nothin'. How come you in our street, gettin' it all messed up?"
The two boys were rocking the car violently now. Pete Beauchamp, aged seven, woke up and began to cry.
Ginger looked at the small man in the crushed hat. "What's the matter with you folks?" he said. "We ain't done nothin'. We ain't done a thing."
"You got our street all dirty," the small man said.
Ginger felt his heart beating faster. Harriet was staring with wide eyes, shuddering.
"Awright," Ginger said. "We sorry. We won't come this way no more."
"That's what you say," another man said. "I figure you lying."
"I don't tell nobody lies, mister," Ginger said. He was trying very hard to hold the anger that was clawing up from his stomach. Dimly he heard a voice calling, "Stop it. Stop all this, leave them alone!" but it seemed distant and unreal. "You all just please get out the way, now, and we'll be gone."
"You tellin' us?" a boy shouted. "Hey, the coon's tellin' us what to do."
Two more young whites leaped onto the running boards. The Ford rocked violently, back and forth.
"State your business here," the small man said.
"I did," Ginger said. "I told you, we trying to get home."
"That's a crock of plain shit!"
Ginger Beauchamp felt it all explode inside him. He clashed the gear lever into first and said, "You all drunk or crazy, one. I'm driving through here. If you don't want to get yourself run over, move out the way!"
The boy in levis and T-shirt reached in suddenly and pulled the keys out of the ignition. Ginger grabbed him, but a fist shot into his neck. He gagged.
Young men with knives began to stab the tires of the Ford, then.
Others threw pebbles into the window. The sharp, hard little stones struck Ginger's face and Harriet's, and the children in the back seat were all awake now, shrilling.
"You crazy!" Ginger shouted. "Gimme back my keys!"
"Come and get it, black man!"
"Sure, come on out and get it!"
A stone glanced off Ginger's forehead. He felt a small trickle of warm blood. Now the circle had engulfed the car, and the people were all shouting and yelling, and the Ford was lifted off its wheels.
"Maybe you learn now, maybe you learn we don't want you here!"
"Look at him, chicken!"
"Yah, chicken!"
Ginger forced the door open. The grinning boys jumped back, stared, waiting.
"Honey, don't, please don't!"
Ginger stood there, and a quiet came over the people. They stared at him, and he saw something in their faces that he had never seen before. He was thirty-eight years old, and he'd lived in the South all his life, and his mother had told him stories, but he had never seen anything like this or dreamed that it could happen.
It occurred, suddenly, to Ginger that he was going to die.
And standing there in the middle of the crowd of white people, he wondered why.
The word came out. "Why?"
The small man hawked and spat on the ground. "You ought t'know, nigger," he said.
There was no air. Only the heat and the smell of sweat and heavy breath,
The silence lasted another instant. Then the young men laughed, and ambled loosely over to the car. One of them supported himself on two others, lifted his feet and kicked the rear window. Glass exploded inward.
Ginger Beauchamp sprang, blind with fury. He pushed the two boys away and confronted the one who had kicked the glass. He was a gangling youth of no more than sixteen. His face was covered with blackheads and his hair hung matted over his forehead like strips of seaweed. He saw Ginger's rage and grinned widely.
"Don't you do it," Harriet cried. "Ginger, don't!"
The thin Negro knew what it would mean to strike a white man; but he also knew what it would mean if he did not fight to protect his family. All of this passed through his mind in a flash. As quickly, he decided.
He was about to smash his fist into the boy's face, when a voice cried, "Awright, now, break it up! Break it up!" and the people began to move.
"Nigger here come a-lookin' for trouble, Sheriff!"
"Which?"
"This one."
"Awright, Freddy, you go on home now. We'll take care of it."
"He like to run over me!"
"Go on home."
The circle of people gradually broke off, moved away, some standing and watching from the corner, others disappearing into the night.
Ginger Beauchamp stood next to his automobile, his hands still bunched solidly into fists, the cords tight in his neck and in his arms.
A large man in a gray suit said, "You better get along."
Ginger could see only the red faces and the angry eyes, and hear the words that had fallen on 'him like whiplashes.
"I think he's hurt, Sheriff."
"Naw, he ain't hurt. Are you, fella?"
Ginger couldn't answer. Someone was talking to him, the kids were crying, Harriet was looking at him-but he couldn't answer.
The large man in the gray suit nodded to a uniformed policeman. "Tony," he said, "get 'em out of here quick. Send one car along."
"Yes, sir."
"Don't waste any time."
The policeman walked over to Ginger Beauchamp and said, "Let's go."
Ginger nodded.
Suddenly he was very tired again.
"Tom, I know how you feel," the sheriff said, "but we don't want to go flying off the handle."
"Why not?" Tom McDaniel's heart was still hammering inside his chest, and the fury at what he had seen filled him. "Those people might have been killed if I hadn't dragged you out when I did."
"What people?"
"The Negroes in the car!"
Sheriff Parkhouse gave Tom a sidelong glance. He began to fill his pipe with tobacco, slowly, rocking in the cane-bottomed chair. "I been living here for thirty years," he said, "and in all that time, I ain't never seen a nigger get hurt. Have you?"
Tom found himself actively disliking the large man. He particularly disliked the easy, slow movements, the unruffled calm. A little tobacco, up and down, gently, with the silver tool, a little more tobacco… "That hasn't got anything to do with it." he said.
"Maybe not, maybe not. But answer the question, Tom. Have you ever seen a nigger get hurt in Caxton?"
"Yes," Tom said. "Tonight."
The sheriff sighed. His leathery, country flesh had begun to sag from the high cheekbones, and there was something incongruous about the crewcut that kept his white hair short and flat on his head. Here, Tom thought, in this jail, he's king. People fear him. People actually fear this ignorant man.
Parkhouse sucked fire into the scarred bowl of the pipe, released a cloud of thick, aromatic smoke. "Well," he said, smiling, "what you got in your mind for me to do?"
"Take action," Tom said. "Keep the peace. That's what you're getting paid for."
Parkhouse stopped smiling.
"That's right," Tom said angrily. "You're mighty quick to pick a drunk off the street, Rudy, some poor fella that doesn't care any what happens to him. But when it comes to real trouble, you just can't bring yourself to move off that seat."
The chair came forward with a crack. Parkhouse stared for a moment, and his eyes were hard and small. "That," he said slowly, "ain't very polite."
"Polite!" Tom walked to the window and turned. "Let me get this straight. A family was attacked in this town tonight. You know who did the attacking and so do I. Property was destroyed and people were injured. There was blood. And you don't intend to do a thing about it. Not a single goddamn thing. Is that correct?"
"Yeah, that's correct! Now listen, it's real easy for you to sit back and say 'Take action.' Yeah. But you don't even know what you're talking about. What kind of action?" The sheriff began to jab the air with his pipestem. "There was at least fifty people around that car. You want to arrest all of them?"
Tom opened his mouth to answer.
"Okay, let's say we do that. I arrest all of them fifty people. Charge 'em with disorderly conduct. Then what? This jail here was built in 1888, Tom. The doors are steel, but the walls are partly adobe: a thirteen-year-old could bust out in twenty minutes if he put his mind to it. Okay, fifty people. And they're hoppin' mad, too, don't think they ain't. I'd be. Now we got nine 18 by 18 cells and two runarounds, mostly filled as it is. You begin to get the drift?"
The sheriff brought his pipe to life again. "I like to see a real civic-minded citizen, Tom, I do. Somebody all the time thinking about the community. Shows real fine spirit. I just wish that you and your paper had of seen to it that we got us a decent jail before you come in here bellering for me to arrest half the town…"
Tom ran a hand through his hair. The sheriff's word stung, for it was true. He hadn't ever taken much interest in the condition of the jail. The man had a point, anyway.
"But let me tell you something else," Parkhouse went on dryly. The way he looked, sitting there, made it suddenly easy to understand why certain people feared him. "Even if we had a calaboose the size of San Quentin, I still wouldn't go out and start hauling everybody in. Tom, you don't seem to see. Half of those people were kids. School kids. Throwing them in jail would be like giving them a Christmas present."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, every kid wants to get put in a cell for a night or so. It's a lark. Hell, they'd have so much fun they'd probably tear this old place down to the ground!"
"Maybe so, but-"
"And here's something else that I guess you ain't thought about. Who, exactly, do we arrest? The ones who was actually touching the car? The ones in the street, whether they did anything or not? Or, just to be on the safe side, should we arrest everybody who attended the meeting?" Parkhouse chuckled. "That'd include you and your daughter. She was there, I heard."
"Who told you that?"
"Jimmy, or somebody. What's the difference? I'm just trying to show you why I can't 'take action.' And I wouldn't waste my time this way, either, if I didn't know you was a man with some sense."
Somewhere in the jail, somewhere upstairs, a voice was raised in song. It was not a particularly mournful or moving sound.
"But one thing still remains. A crime was committed and nobody's been punished. They got away with it, clean. So what's to stop them from doing the same thing tomorrow night?"
The sheriff took a bottle of pop from the refrigerator behind the desk and removed the cap.

"The people in this town are good," he said. "I ought to know that better than anyone else, ain't that so? They're good. But it's hot, and somebody just got them riled, that's all. Now it's out of their system. We-"
"That's right," Tom snapped. "Somebody got them riled. You might even say, somebody talked them into doing what they did."
Parkhouse nodded.
"You know what that's called, Rudy?"
"I don't get you."
"That's called 'inciting to riot.' It's a crime. If you don't believe me, look it up."
"I know what's a crime and what isn't," the sheriff said. "I don't have to look nothing up."
"Then why don't you throw Adam Cramer into jail?"
"Who?"
"Oh, for Christ's sake!" Tom slammed his palm down on the desk. "The kid who gave the speech! The kid who started the whole thing in the first place, who got the people all inflamed. Adam Cramer!"
"Oh." The sheriff emptied half of the bottle of Dr. Pepper down his throat and leaned back in his chair. "Well," he said, "I can't very well do that, either, Tom."
"You can't very well do that, either-why not?"
"Just take it easy, now, and I'll explain-just like I explained the other things. I can't arrest Cramer because he wasn't even around when the niggers drove up. To get him for sedition and inciting to riot, we'd have to catch him right there at the front of the mob, leading 'em on. As it was, he was in Joan's Cafe, having a cup of coffee with Verne Shipman, when it happened."
"With Verne?" The anger in Tom gave way suddenly to confusion, and fear.
"That's right," the sheriff said. "And you know, Tom, you can't put a man in jail for speaking his mind. If you don't believe me, look it up." He smiled. "Maybe you and me don't go along with that, now, but it's in the Constitution. If a man wants to, he can get out on a street corner and call the President of the United States a son of a bitch-and nobody can stop him. He can say America is no good and we ought to all be Communists-hell, he can say anything-and nobody's allowed to touch him. It's what's called Freedom of Speech. Besides, the way I heard it, this fella didn't say one solitary thing that everybody in town ain't been saying right along. What have you got against him, anyway?"
"Adam Cramer is a rabble-rouser," Tom said, in a hopeless voice.
"Well, hell, maybe we need a little rabble-rousing here!" The sheriff laughed goodnaturedly. "But it could be I didn't get my facts straight. You were there. Did he tell those folks to stop the niggers in the car?"
"No."
"Did he tell them to do anything except maybe join this organization of his?"
"I-no. No, that's all he told them."
"Well, see, that ain't hardly grounds for arrest. Just good old Freedom of Speech in action, Tom!"
"Yes," Tom said.
"That's Democracy."
"Yes."
The sheriff slapped Tom's shoulder affably. "Don't get me wrong," he said. "I hate to see anybody get hurt in my town. I don't care whether he's white or black. But I personally think this particular nigra must of been one of those wise ones that are moving into the county from the North; I think he must of started shooting off his mouth: otherwise nothing like this would of happened, and you know it. They're good people here, but they won't put up with a smart-ass nigra. I can't blame them for that. Can you, Tom?"
"No, I can't blame them for that," Tom said and started out the door.
"Get some sleep," the sheriff called. "And don't worry. They got it all out of their system tonight!"
Got what out of their system? Tom thought.
The night air was moist and hot and windless, and the dark streets were empty now. Tom McDaniel walked to his car, got in and lit a cigarette.
The people I've lived with most of my life would have murdered that Negro, he thought, if I hadn't called Parkhouse. That's certain.
What is it that the people have to get out of their systems? What is it that stays so close to the surface that a few words from a Yankee stranger can send it flooding out?
Tonight, he thought, was the beginning.
A war is coming to my town; and I don't even know whose side I'm on.