The Great Santini (57 page)

"Please. Please. Please," she said, almost a prayer. Then she began to scream. Every time she screamed, he slapped her and then began to punch her in the face. He came inside her driving himself as deeply into her as he could. She began
to vomit and he began to hit her again and again, stopping only when Emma Lee Givens lay unconscious in the blood-darkened sand. She never saw him leave down the same road Sammy had run minutes before.

At first Sammy had searched for another couple parking
along the beach, but this failing, he began the long run toward town, hoping to intercept a car on the highway. He stopped twice and started back toward Emma Lee, but knew that there
was nothing he could do against a grown man and a knife. It was four miles before he could flag a car down. Two had seen him and avoided him, thinking he was drunk or crazy or both.
Finally, he was picked up by a black foreman who worked on
one of the large tomato farms owned by Philip Turner's father and driven to the nearest house with a phone. Two police cars were dispatched immediately to pick Sammy up. Every patrol
car in the county raced to the beach. A highway patrolman found Emma Lee walking down the beach road with half of her clothes on, hysterical, her face beaten past all recognition.

By morning news of the rape glowed like a wound in the consciousness of the town. Along River Street a harsh silence prevailed as white men clustered in doorways and nodded their heads ruefully, then looked toward the street. The id of the town was bared, gathering into something terrible, fed by the slow accretions that came with a blazing hunger for retribution. In his alley, Toomer unpacked his flowers for the day and began his song to the few shoppers who had come downtown. His voice brought a kind of normality back to the street, but it could not cut through the smell of blood that came off the town like a musk.

In Hobie's restaurant Bull heard a stunned and angry group trade disgusted accounts of the rape. Cleve Goins thought Sammy Wertzberger should be tarred and feathered for leaving Emma Lee to the mercy of a crazy nigger. Half the restaurant agreed with him. A manhunt was in progress at the beach and an army of men scoured the whole island, including the black-gum swamp at the northern end. SLED agents from Columbia were bringing carloads of bloodhounds down to Ravenel. Reporters from the Charleston
News
and
Courier
, the Columbia
State
, and the Savannah
Morning
News
drove into town and were refused interviews by both Sammy's parents and Emma Lee's father. Ford's Hardware Store on the corner of River and Granville streets ran out of ammunition and shotguns an hour after the store was opened. The Ku Klux Klan planned a rally and a march down River Street. Women, black and white, cried in the street when they heard what happened. From the principal's office at Calhoun High, Ben tried three times to call Sammy and each time the phone was busy. The ladies' auxiliary of the Rotary Club canceled the azalea contest which was to be held in the gymnasium of the high school. Sammy Wertzberger received two death threats before eight o'clock in the morning and before his parents took the phone off the hook.

Paradise became a magnetic field for the possibility of violence. Carloads of white men rode up and down the streets of Paradise, three in the front and three in the back seat, slowing down and staring at every black man outside of his house. But there were not many black people visible on this day and Paradise had the look of a town desolated by plague or the rumor of plague.

In the Meecham kitchen, Arrabelle Smalls washed dishes and looked out the sun-filled window and said," It's a bad day to be colored, Miss Meecham. I seen it like this before. The white mens gone nigger-hungry today. The snake is in 'em and he ain't leavin' till they catch up with that man who runnin' around here now not knowin' he as good as dead."

After school, Ben walked over to Sammy's house. Rachel Wertzberger answered the door. Her eyes were bloodshot, raw, and it was easy to interpret the suffering the previous night had brought to her house.

"Where's Sammy, Mrs. Wertzberger?" Ben asked.

"He's gone. We sent him away," she answered. "We had to, Ben. He's so upset."

"How long will he be gone? Where did he go, Mrs. Wertzberger?" Ben asked.

"New York. Where else? Where else do we have relatives besides Charleston and that's too close. All day, Ben, we received phone calls saying that they want to kill Sammy. And for what? For running from certain death for both him and that girl. That poor girl."

"New York! But he won't be here to graduate."

"Just as well. To graduate in New York means that he won't graduate? We put him on the train at one o'clock in Charleston. He left you this note," she said, handing him a sealed envelope. Then she began crying again and Ben made an awkward gesture to comfort her.

"Go now, Ben. Come back soon so we can talk and we can call Sammy on the telephone."

Ben walked toward town forgetting for a moment that he was holding Sammy's note in his right hand. The reality of Sammy's absence came to him slowly, but there was no form or substance to the reality. He had talked to Sammy the night before, had joked with him, had heard the high-pitched laughter and watched his car pull out of sight. It was as though his father had received orders in the night and the Meecham family had broken camp, relying on their old swiftness, the old canniness of flight, and had abandoned their house and all their friends yet another time. But this was different and strange to Ben. In his whole life, no friend had ever left him. Sammy had stolen his role, his birthright.

Then, remembering the note, he tore the envelope open and read," It was awful, Ben. I hope I never see this town again. You'll always be my best friend. If you still want to be. Remember the Bohemian Mountain Approach. Mom and Dad are sending me to New York to live with my Uncle Sidney. They say northern girls just do it and don't ask any questions. If they catch this guy I'll have to come back for the trial. Maybe I'll see you around then. Send me the graduation program. Your friend, Rock Troy."

*
          
*
          
*

"Do you think they'll catch him, Toomer?"

"Catch 'em be the nicest thing they d-d-d-do. Ain't no p-p-place to go much unless he long g-g-gone from these islands. That's gonna be a sad colored b-b-boy when they get up with him."

"Where'd you get the honey, Toomer? You harvested already?"

"No, white b-b-boy. I hold this out from last year. This my last f-f-four jars, I sell 'em to ol' man Fogle at the store by the bridge. He buy this bushel of Mr. Oyster I got in the back of the wagon, too."

"I thought it was too late to gather oysters."

"It ain't May yet. This month still got an 'r' in it. You go shrimpin' with me next F-f-friday?"

"Sure."

"We can c-c-catch us a freezerful of shrimp in just one night. Those creeks are fillin' up with Mr. Shrimp right n-n-now. Then maybe we can gig some f-f-flounder on the way home."

"Great, Toomer. I'll come here Friday after school and just go on to your place with you," Ben said, leaving for home, the ends of his fingers abraded from the crab shells.

"Hey, Toomer," Red said," did you hear that the nigger who raped Emma Lee Givens had a gimp foot and a bad stutter?"

Toomer did not answer but continued toward the back of the store where Mr. Fogle was putting up cans of vegetables.

"Got any singles, Toomer?" Mr. Fogle asked.

"Not too m-m-many," Toomer answered.

"Yeah, she said the n-n-nigger had the worst stutter she ever heard," Red said loudly. "They said that Emma Lee could hardly understand a word that nigger said he was stutterin' so bad."

"Ignore that bastard," Mr. Fogle whispered, eyeing Red nervously.

"I got one more b-b-bushel," Toomer said.

"What's a b-b-b-b-b-b-bushel?" Red asked. "I ain't never heard of a b-b-b-b-bushel. Is that a new word?"

Toomer went outside, brushing by Red with caution and with an understated obeisance, a dropping of the eyes and an expression of half-humility and half-fear that he hoped would defuse the violence in the boy that had not played itself out during the manhunt. As he lifted the second bushel of oysters from the wagon, Red grabbed two of the honey jars and said, "Let me help you, Toomer. I always like to be of some help to a good neighbor. "He was playing for the edification of the men who gathered at the window to watch the drama.

"N-n-no. I don't need help f-f-from you."

"You don't, Toomer?" Red said with mock hurt and winking at the men who watched from the store. "In that case, then I just won't help you."

He dropped the two jars of honey on the cement and waited for Toomer to respond. Toomer did not even look back, but continued into the store where he heard the laughter of these white men whom he had known all of his life. He looked around the store and memorized their faces in a glance, feeling something dangerous gnawing in him, boiling over, and he could sense that the trifurcated vein in his forehead was protruding now, and his bottom lip trembled uncontrollably. He waited until Mr. Fogle paid him for the oysters before he said," I got two more jars of h-h-honey in the w-w-wagon." But then he heard the sound of two jars breaking against the brick walls of the deserted cotton warehouse beside the general store.

"That was mighty clumsy of me," Red said to the other men. "I broke four jars of honey tryin' to help my good buddy-roo, ol' Toomer over there. Toomer, no kiddin', I'm sorry about my butter fingers. "A few of the men were chuckling loudly, but the laughter had a closer kinship to obscenity than to joy.

As Toomer turned to leave the store, Red began following him, imitating his broken walk and his agonized, wavering speech. "T-t-t-t-toomer, I h-h-hope y-y-you n-n-not m-m-m-mad a-a-at m-m-me."

The black man had whirled snake quick and grabbed Red's throat in one hand and Red's testicles in his other. He pulled Red screaming and gagging toward the wagon, then tripped him with his bad leg. Before Red could recover, Toomer was on him again, the black hand coming around the throat with such fury that Red could feel the blood flow cut off from the brain. Toomer twisted Red's neck until the boy's head was square up against the inside of the rubber truck tire of the wagon.

"You move, Red, and I'm gonna tell M-m-man-O-War to get gone and she'll take your h-h-head with her."

The place filled up with white men who had sprinted from both the general store and from Ford's Hardware Store across the street as soon as Toomer had grabbed Red. But Red was screaming for no one to touch Toomer. Red's face was obscured by the shadow of the tire. Finally, Ed Mills came up to the wagon and told Toomer to release Red.

"Just do it, Toomer. None of these boys are going to hurt you. Every one of' em like you better than they do Red Pettus. "And the crowd erupted in laughter.

So Toomer rose, limped to the other side of the wagon, mounted, shook the reins, and climbed the causeway leading to the bridge.

"I'll see you later tonight, you fuckin' gimp nigger," Red screamed at him.

"You make me sick, Pettus," Ed Mills said, walking down toward Hobie's, pausing once to watch Toomer's wagon as it crossed the bridge.

"I hear ol' Toomer whipped you good, baby brother," Mac Pettus giggled.

"He fought dirty, Mac. So how 'bout shuttin' up," Red said.

"Where them fuckin' dogs?" one of the cousins said.

"I thought they'd be all over us by now," Red said.

"You just remember that Daddy said just to put a good scare into Toomer," Mac said to Red.

"I'm gonna scare the black shit out of him," Red said.

Toomer had gathered all the dogs, the largest to the smallest, and secured them inside the bus. The barking became deafening as the four men neared the clearing. Toomer saw the big Gray standing on his hind legs at the rear of the bus wailing at the invisible strangers in a half-human bark that hung in the air, a lower octave that endured through its particular quality of menace. But all of the dogs, the great and the small, the powerful and the weak, locked in the bus with their nostrils filling with the presence of malevolence on their urine-anointed land, bayed together as Toomer sat holding the end of a long rope on the bottom step of the bus. The door of the bus was opened just enough to give the rope free play. He knew if he released the dogs the Pettus brothers would slaughter them with salvos from their repeating shotguns. But he also knew that he was seeing something instinctual and primal taking hold of his penned dogs. The twenty-six dogs were throwing themselves at the windows of the bus and their barking became like a single feral note, except for the whine of the big Gray whose voice was taking on a new dimension of wildness with each step the Pettuses took. Toomer's dogs in the deepening decline of the sun were becoming a pack.