Daybreak (16 page)

L
uxuriating in the tumbled bed that Robbie had just left, Tom watched her get dressed.

“It’s more fun to watch you get undressed, but this is kind of interesting, too, in its way.”

She flipped a towel at him. “Come on, what’s making you so lazy today?”

“Not lazy, just relaxed. Sex in the morning does that to me. I wish you’d come back in here.”

“You are just plain greedy, Tom Rice.” She bent over him, he pulled her down, and they tussled, kissing and laughing until she pulled herself loose. “I promise you we’ll be back here early this afternoon, but it’s going to take twenty minutes to get there, and it’s already half-past.” She turned away to face the mirror, fluffing her hair. “Put on your good suit and your best tie. Jim Johnson’s stylish.” She stepped far enough away from the mirror to see herself at full length. “I wish I had a decent dress,” she said, pouting.

“Why? What’s wrong with that one? I like red, and it shows your shape.”

“Ah, Tommy, you don’t know anything about it. A
girl needs
clothes
! If I had a father in some rich racket like that Jew Enid, I’d have a closetful, I can tell you. Well, I’ll have to go on making the best of it as I always have.”

The plaint continued. “I was thinking. If I can get my father to loosen up some more, I might be able to afford that room near the campus without having a roommate. Then you and I could have some real time together. I could fix it up with good curtains and a new bed. I hate cheapness. Look at this. Cheap. Dingy.”

Tom looked where she was pointing. The dresser had lost two drawer pulls, and the bilious green paint that was supposed to cover the nicks and chips was peeling. He was reminded, looking first at this object and then at the sagging bottom of the easy chair and the ugly, faded purple bedspread, of his mother’s household in which every object that could be laundered or waxed was cared for. Because he had always lived with such crisp cleanliness, he had never really thought about it until this minute in which the absence of it was suddenly depressing. And with equal suddenness, he felt the pity of Robbie’s deprivation. She was herself so clean. It was one of the reasons—he realized that now for the first time—that she had so attracted him.

“Of course, this place is only for the summer, so I mustn’t mind it too much. I was lucky to get anything at all so near to the bookstore. There’s nothing else within five miles of it, you’ll see.”

And abruptly, in the quick change of mood so typical of her and so alluring to Tom, she became animated. Her face sparkled, and she spun around so fast that her full skirt rounded like an opening parasol.

“Isn’t this the craziest, the most wonderful thing today?
Me unpacking books in the back room when who walks in but Jim Johnson. And it was really nice of Mr. Dudley to call me out and introduce me as an editor on the
Independent Voice
. Really nice. Dudley looks grumpy, so don’t mind him. He has to be on guard all the time against left-wing snoopers. They like to come in to look over our books. It’s funny how you can always spot them. I suppose they think we keep bombs on the shelves. Actually”—Robbie lowered her voice—“he does have a thirty-eight in the desk drawer.”

“You must have made some impression on Johnson for him to invite you to lunch.”

“It wasn’t really an invitation, nothing as formal as that. He just said something like, ‘I have to be back here tomorrow, so if you’re around, we can have a Coke and talk about your paper.’ He’s wonderful, Tom. Sexy. Wait till you meet him.”

“I’m saving my wages to get a car by the end of the summer,” Tom said as they climbed into the pickup. “In the meantime, this’ll have to do.”

“As long as it gets us there,” Robbie said cheerfully.

Mom had offered him her car. “I know you’re visiting a girl out of town, Tom, and since it’s none of my business, I’m not asking any questions. I’ll lend you my car overnight so you won’t have to take her out in Dad’s pickup.”

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.”