Original Sins (20 page)

“Let's dance,” he suggested, steering Emily onto the floor as the band swung into “Sweet Little Sixteen.”

As she and Raymond did their best to simulate chickens scratching after grain, Emily saw a Negro boy in a white waiter's jacket by the refreshment table gathering up used cups. He looked up, as though feeling her stare, and glanced around.

“Look, Raymond. It's Donny.”

They stopped dancing and stared. Donny, long and lanky, was grinning and serving someone punch. “Christ,” Raymond muttered.

“Maybe we should go say hello?”

“Let's get out of here,” Raymond said, dragging her toward the door.

“But why? We just got here.” Raymond was a drag, always wanting to leave parties early and refusing to join in while he was there. No wonder Ingenue hadn't given her a bid. Maybe she needed to break up with him and find another boyfriend who wasn't so determined to be a creep.

“Why is he grinning like that?”

“Maybe he's having a good time. Some people do at dances, you know.”

“It's bad enough that he's doing it at all. But it's terrible if he's enjoying it.”

“But why?”

“They're trying to fit him into his slot, same as they're trying to do to me. I know a slot when I see one.” That week at school classmates had begun squealing through the halls waving college acceptances. Raymond was starting to feel frantic over the topic of what to do with himself for the rest of his life.

Donny sloshed punch into cups, grinning grimly. His grandmaw had taken to telling him lately, “Good manners is the best life insurance a colored person can have.” Besides, a grin set you free. As long as you grinned, you could think whatever you wanted. And at this particular moment, he was wondering if these white boys was knocking off their girlfriends or what. So many of them looked so awkward out there, jerking around like they was half paralyzed or something. Even if they got it in, they'd never be able to keep it in, lurching around like that. No wonder Blanton was out after his mama. He felt the rage begin to rise in his throat. He squelched it, listened to a few bars of “Long Tall Sally,” did a couple of loose-limbed dance steps, and flashed his teeth at the white boy whose cup he was filling.

“What you so happy about?” the boy asked, smiling back. “You having a good time?”

“Yes sir, I sure is!”

As far as his mama knew, he wasn't here tonight. His grandmaw had come home with Sally's message offering him this job. His mama yelled, “Why, that little slut! Who she think she's talking to?”

“Ten bucks, Mama, for one evening.”

“I don't care if it's ten thousand bucks. You write back and tell her to go douche with her fruit punch!”

“Kathryn! You watch that mouth of yours in front of your little boy!” Ruby snarled.

Donny was laughing. “I ain't so little, Grandmaw.”

“That's twice what I make in a day,” Ruby pointed out. “You put on a white jacket, and you dump punch in cups, and they pay you ten dollars. Law, I don't see a thing wrong with that.”

“I don't neither,” Donny said.

“If you don't see, I can't tell you. But I'm still your mama, Donny, and I forbid you to take that job.”

Their eyes locked, Donny's amazed. “Mama, I'm sixteen years old. You ain't been around here for four years. I decide what I gon do.”

“If you take that job, I don't want to know about it.”

If this was what New York City did to people, made them too picky to earn a living, then he thought he'd better stay put. As far as he could see, his mama had turned plumb hysterical up there.

It was early morning, too early for other boats to be out, but not too early for the sun to be scorching. The inlet was surrounded by wooden cliffs. Buzzards wheeled around nests high overhead. Jed cut the motor and drifted alongside the ski jump. He tied the boat to a leg of the jump and hopped out, then helped Sally onto the sloping canvas surface.

They lay side by side, half-dozing, the hot sun burning into their tired bodies. In keeping with tradition they'd been out all night at post-ball parties that eventually became breakfasts. They were well fed on scrambled eggs and sweet rolls.

Jed took Sally's hand. She squeezed his. “Wasn't it wonderful?” she sighed. “Everything went so beautifully. I can't believe it's all over.”

Jed rolled over, nibbled at her neck and ears, and pushed the damp blonde hair back from her forehead. “You're so beautiful.”

“Of course, it isn't really over, is it? We have to go clean up this afternoon. How will we stay awake?”

Jed lowered his mouth onto hers. They kissed for a long time, their tongues playing hide-and-seek. “I want you so much, Sally.”

“The band was OK, but I liked the Dukes last year better.”

Jed worked a knee between her legs. He slid his hand down her bathing suit top and stroked a nipple.

“You won't forget to borrow that truck for the clean-up this afternoon, will you, Jeddie?”

“No,” he murmured, rubbing his erection against her thigh.

The sun beat down. Through half-closed eyelashes Sally could see the surrounding cliffs, sun-struck and shimmering in the heat. The ski jump rocked gently in the swells. The deep green water was penetrated by shafts of sunlight

She dozed, and awoke to discover that her own and Jed's bathing suits had been removed. Jed was kneeling between her legs, lowering himself.

“No, Jed,” she murmured faintly.

“Please, Sally,” he whispered.

“Please don't, Jed.”

“Please.”

“Please. No,” she whispered, as he pushed himself slowly into her.

“Please,” he gasped as he moved ever less tentatively in and out.

Sally lay absolutely still. If she didn't participate, if she didn't enjoy this in any way whatsoever, it would be OK. It would be as though it hadn't even happened. Jed jerked and shuddered and gasped and sighed and lay silent.

And in fact, it was exactly as though it hadn't happened. She felt nothing. Except terror. But this wasn't how she'd always imagined. it That song last night:
“When you hold me so tight, / I just know this is right
…” This conviction was lacking. What had gone wrong?

“Will you always love me, Jed?” she whispered in a fearful voice.

He was lying on her, absently stroking her hair and trying to fathom the enormity of what he'd just done. Mr. Prince's daughter. It hadn't been as good as with Betty Boobs. It hadn't even been as good as jerking off. She just lay there, like a corpse. The Chuck Berry song last night that all the boys had hooted at, and all the girls had blushed at:
“She said, ‘O yeah, daddy, that sure feels fine!'”

“Yeah, Sally, I will. You know I will.” God, he had no choice now. He'd taken her virginity. She was his for life. They looked at each other uneasily.

Raymond and Emily drove in the golden light of early evening down a valley of well-tended farms toward Donley to a meeting Raymond was covering for the newspaper. A lazy river wound through the valley. Forested hills rose up on either side. Tiny figures in the distance threw hay bales onto wagons.

They drove into the sleepy little town, a shopping community for coal miners and farmers. It consisted of a shopping street, an old brick courthouse, a street of dignified frame houses, and lots of drooping elms. Abruptly they found themselves in a traffic jam, unheard of for Donley.

Hearing the roar of a crowd on the courthouse green, they found it packed with several hundred white people—men in khakis and short-sleeved white sports shirts with the sleeves rolled up, white socks, black pointy shoes, long sideburns, and slicked-down hair. Women in housedresses and white socks and flats. Babies in diapers. Signs waved: “We won't go to school with no niggers!” “Get rid of the Supreme Court.” Men were yelling, “Yeah, he's right!”

Raymond snapped pictures hurriedly while daylight lasted. Emily worked her way through the crowd, across the grass, toward the courthouse steps, where a man identical to the others stood shouting. A woman handed her a pamphlet headlined “Beware of the Unholy Three.” It was a harangue against fluoridated water and polio serum and mental hygiene—all Yankee Communist plots to undermine the health and will of a free people.

“They's three of us Anglo-Saxons to every seven niggers on this earth! But we pure-blooded Anglo-Saxons is the only ones who run free guvmints for free men!”

“Tell it, buddy!”

“These here nigger-loving Reds on our Donley school board, they tell us we gonna have
coons
in our schools next year. Setting up against the fair white bodies of our defenseless little daughters. Well, I say we ain't!”

The crowd roared.

“When Ham gazed on Noah in his nakedness, friends, and mocked and reviled him, Noah put a curse on the sons of Ham. In Genesis he said, ‘Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren/ Now, I ask you, does that sound like the Lord meant for us to send our sweet little children to
school
with them black devils?”

“No!”
roared the crowd.

“No, naturally not!” roared back the man. “Hit's a plot by them Jews up at Washington, D.C., to weaken Caucasian manhood by mixing up our blood with a bunch of lazy savages! The Lord meant for em to keep to theirselves. Why, he says rat cheer in Joshua, ‘Let em be hewers of wood and drawers of water.' He don't say
nothing
bout letting em go to school with our children and letting em mongrelize the white race!”

“No, He don't!”

“We got to let them Reds running our schools and running our federal guvmint know what we think down here! We been pushed around just about long enough! We done had Yankees ordering us around long as anyone in these parts can remember—set your slaves free and elect em to public office! Move your family offen your farm cause we gon flood it to make these here TVA lakes for rich people to water ski on! We gon turn your farms into that there Smoky Mountain National Park—so's we can come down from Washington and take pictures of bars! We gon turn you off your land and put up big ole fences and build us an atom bomb—so's if it blows up, yall is the ones that gits killed! We gon chop up your stills and put you in jail! We gon run a turnpike through your cornfield! We gon put niggers in your schools! We gon destroy the South altogether! Friends, they ain't no stopping em—these Yankee radical Communists. I don't know bout yall, but my family is been moved around four times in the last hunnert years to make room for all these fancy projects. We don't want no trouble. We never has. We just want to be left alone. We just want to live out our lives. We just trying to run a farm and raise our kids up to be decent God-fearing Amuricans …”

A cavalcade of cars crawled by the green, horns blowing. From their radio antennas fluttered banners reading “Whites for Whiter Schools.” The blaring was too much for the crowd. They surged in all directions, like a cell about to divide. A loud angry hum filled the square.

“… They trying to
destroy
our Southern way of life! They won't be content till they've wiped us off the face of this earth!” screamed the speaker.

A young boy sitting on an older man's shoulders threw a rope over an elm branch. He fitted the noose around the neck of a dummy wearing a sign reading “‘Justice' Earl Warren.” The crowd fell silent, watching. The dummy dangled and twisted in the dusk. The boy dumped kerosene on it and held a match to it. As it was enveloped in leaping flames, the crowd howled.

Emily, standing on the steps looking around frantically for Raymond, saw a car containing three Negroes—man, woman, and child—drive along the edge of the square. They looked terrified and were trying to turn around to go back in the direction they'd come from. The crowd saw them first. They surged over and surrounded the car and began rocking it. The driver gunned the engine and roared straight ahead, narrowly missing several people, further enraging the crowd, which pursued the car. A rock came hurtling through the twilight and shattered the rear window. With screeching tires the car shot down a side street, pursued by several men.

Emily was in a state of near-collapse. She had not known this was possible. In Newland Negroes and white people were unfailingly polite and kind to each other, liked and respected each other. In many cases, they helped each other out. Who were all these people, their faces contorted with hatred? What swamp had they crawled out of? She located Raymond in the middle of the mob, snapping pictures. How could he? Why didn't he
do
something? Why didn't
somebody
do something?

Raymond noted that he was functioning like a machine. He waited for his shots, like a basketball player, his finger clicking of its own accord. His personal reactions—disgust with the crowd, pleasure to be getting a good story—were in abeyance.

As the crowd broke up, he found Emily sitting with her back against the courthouse wall, her eyes tightly shut.

“Let's get out of here,” he suggested.

“Who are all these horrible people?”

“Our neighbors. Our cousins.”

“Not mine, they aren't.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Of course I'm sure. Nobody I know would behave like this.”

The next day, at lunch after church, Emily told her parents what had happened at Donley. Her father said grimly, “Charming.”

“But I don't understand why they'd do that,” said Emily.

“Because they hate Negroes.”

“But why?”

He shrugged. “Human nature.”

“But I'm human, and I don't hate anybody.”

“You're not trying to earn a living yet either.”

“Huh?”

“Sally darling, are you all right?” Mrs. Prince asked.

Sally had said nothing all morning and was now toying with her peas with her fork. She looked up, smiled her famous smile and said, “Yes ma'am, I'm just fine, thank you!”