Daybreak (18 page)

“She what? God Almighty. She never told me!”

“I guess she knew you’d make a fuss.”

“Damn right I would! Suppose the Ordways had seen her! They’re all wrought up over those people, and Mrs. Rice, my wife, brings a welcome basket. For all I know, they may have seen her. It’s just when you don’t want to be seen that you are seen.”

This remark jolted Tom. Somehow he had managed to put out of his mind the image of Dr. Foster’s wife. He had fallen asleep and awakened without thought of her; now, at his father’s words, the woman’s startled white face loomed in the air before him. Immediately, then, he squashed the image. With all the controversy over this neighborhood event, such trivia would be overlooked.

“So the visit was to be a secret.”

“I don’t know. Betty Lee didn’t say so. She said Mom was an angel.”

“She is an angel, I agree to that. She has the softest heart of anyone I know. The truth is, she’s not very practical, though, not realistic. She’d better stay away from those blacks up there. If there’s to be any more trouble, it’d be her luck to get hurt, God forbid.”

They drew up at the plant, past the long sign over the entrance:
PAIGE AND RICE
.

“Yes, I remember the day that sign went up,” Bud said.

He was proud of that sign. Tom thought, almost tenderly: I must have heard him say that a thousand times.

“There’s a big load coming in from United Wire, Tom. Get the copper separated from the rest and set it in Number Two warehouse. There are two sizes, and the Austin Constructions man will be coming today or tomorrow to decide which size they want. Okay?”

“Got it,” Tom said.

He liked working here. Certainly he was aware of many things that made it pleasant for him: the fact that he had the privilege, which he did not abuse, of taking time off whenever he wanted to, the fact that most of his time, when midday heat was at its worst, was spent in the air-conditioned retail shop, and the ultimate fact, from which these others derived, that he was the son of the owner.

Walking around the four-acre spread, he often felt the swell of pride. When his time came, he would be the fourth-generation owner. But this place was far different, Mom’s aunts were the first to say, from the business that his great-grandfather had founded, and it was Bud Rice who had made it what it was today. Because of him, there was this bustle of arriving and departing trucks, these warehouses, these sheds crammed with tools, gravel, lumber, and cement, this parking lot filled up, this traffic of customers in and out all day. Bud had caused it, and his son was proud.

The workers were friendly to Tom. However uncomfortable they might feel about his presence, they naturally did not show it, so he hoped that they might sincerely like him. After all, he never shirked, he joined in their talk and jokes, he ate his sandwich
lunch not in the office with his father but in a shed with them.

Today as they sat down in the shade, they talked about the incident on Fairview Street, and this time, remembering Bud’s admonition about political discussions, Tom stayed out of it, which was just as well because the men were hotly divided.

Then one of them produced a transistor radio, and the twelve o’clock news came on.

“The police stopped a car at four o’clock this morning speeding eastward out of the northwestern section of the city. Ku Klux Klan regalia, hoods and gowns, were found in the trunk of the car, but no weapons or ammunition or any illegal objects. The occupants were given a ticket for speeding in a residential zone.

“Ralph Mackenzie, running for the state senate, deplpred the criminal attack upon the Edgewood family’s home last night, condemning it as brutal, inhumane, and un-American. He expressed some wonder that it occurred simultaneously with a rally for his opponent that was taking place across the street.

“In an interview this morning, Jim Johnson expressed ‘outrage’ at Mr. Mackenzie’s attempt by implication to link a legitimate political rally with what he himself called ‘a criminal attack.’ He said, ‘Neither I nor any of my supporters condone any behavior that Mr. Mackenzie himself called “un-American.” We are entirely and completely American.’ ”

“Good for Jim,” someone said. “That’s telling them.”

Someone else said, “Telling them a lot of bull if you ask me.”

“I didn’t ask you.”

“Well, I’m telling you all the same.”

The first man laid his lunch down and made two fists.

“Hey,” Tom said, “no sense fighting about it.”

The words slipped out of his own accord, slipped out because violence repelled him, and violence was in both men’s faces.

An older man spoke up. “Tom’s right. We’ll vote the way we want. A fistfight won’t turn the vote one way or the other.”

The second man got up and walked away, grumbling something under his breath that sounded like, “Yeah, get in solid with the boss’s kid.”

Obviously a Mackenzie man, Tom thought. His mother’s words flashed:
This is going to be a nasty election
. Not necessarily nasty, he thought, but very, very emotional.

The owner of the radio switched it off, and the talk turned more happily to baseball. And a few minutes later, Bud unexpectedly appeared with an announcement.

“Knock off work for a second after lunch. We’re having a little ceremony, kind of, that I want you all to see.”

On the front of the main building the
PAIGE AND RICE
sign had been taken down. Two ladders were propped up on either side of the entrance, and a new sign lay on the grass ready to be hoisted. Tom craned to read it upside down:
RICE AND SON
, it said, causing a hot flood of embarrassment to creep up his back to the roots of his hair.

“What, so soon?” he blurted.

Bud slapped him on the back. “Why not? You are my son, aren’t you?”

The men laughed, and Tom stood abashed before
them as the sign was hoisted and fastened into place. It was so conspicuous, with its bold gilt letters glittering in the sun!

One of the men called out, “Hurray!” And there was brief clapping. The three women who worked in the office clapped, calling, “Speech, Tom, speech!” And when he shook his head, the old one, who had been there since his mother was a child, reproved him, smiling the reproof. “Come on, Tom, I knew you before you were born.”

“I don’t deserve this,” he said. “Not yet, anyway. So I really don’t know what to say.”

Bud roared, “Of course you deserve it. You work here, don’t you? You give us an honest day’s work. Otherwise Bud Rice wouldn’t put you up on that sign, you can damn well depend on that. Right, guys?”

The men laughed again, nodding, no, Bud Rice wouldn’t. You sure could depend on that.

And Bud put his arm around Tom’s shoulder. “This is my son, guys. He’s good stuff. Otherwise, son or no son, I wouldn’t reward him. I’d love him, yes, but a reward is something different. I just want to say this—hell, I’m being too sentimental, I know, but a lot of you have sons, so you know the feeling—I just want to say that if anything happens to me, Tom here will take over, and he’ll be as fair and square, as decent as I hope I’ve been. I’ve tried to be, anyway.”

A wave of love passed over Tom. Suppose it was sentimental! Suppose it was embarrassing! It was real. My father, he thought. If anything ever happened to him, I’d—I don’t know what I’d do. And in that instant, he didn’t care a damn what anybody else thought. He put his arms around Bud and hugged him.

“Okay,” Bud said, “it’s too blasted hot to keep you
all here in the sun. There’s beer inside to cool you off before we get to work. That’s the celebration.”

   After Tom and Bud left, Laura was alone, for Timmy had been invited to a friend’s house for the day. Or she had thought she was alone. For when she took the newspaper and went out to the veranda, she was followed by Betty Lee.

“I didn’t hear you come in,” Laura said.

“I know. You were all talking. And when you came to breakfast I hid upstairs.”

The tone combined with the word “hid” was so strange that Laura put the paper aside and looked toward Betty Lee. The old woman’s dark face was overcast with gray. She had been crying.

“What’s wrong? What happened?” There must have been an accident or another death in her large family. “Tell me. Sit down and tell me.”

“I almost can’t, Miss Laura. It hurts my heart.” And Betty Lee covered her face with her hands.

“Whatever hurts will hurt less if you let it out,” Laura said gently.

The hands went down and the wet eyes turned piteously to Laura.

“I heard—heard what he—he said.”

Not those words about blasting and drowning? Not those?

“You mean—”

“When he said he was sick of every—every one of them, of
us
, he meant
me
. I never thought, I would never believe that anyone in this house—You’re my family. You were. But now, not anymore.” Betty Lee wrung her hands. “How can I stay here now, Miss Laura? I can’t, I can’t.”

To be numb, to be stunned, is to lose the use of language. There were no words that could assuage this woman’s grief and disillusionment; her world, the bright little world of her adopted family with its births and deaths, its celebrations, the flow of its days and years, had been wiped away. Bud, in a matter of seconds, had done it. And Laura was absolutely silent.

Then Betty Lee stood up and laid her hand on Laura’s bowed head.

“You think I don’t understand you have nothing to do with it? Oh, I’ve been sad for you! You were my baby girl. I took you in my arms when your mother died, I made finger curls in your yellow hair. I taught your Tom to walk, and I watched him grow, and yes, I opened a page or two in those books he has in his room. But I never told you. I thought, well he’s young, they grow a bit crazy, with crazy ideas like our Black Power kids who hate all whites. Then they get out in the world and learn better, we hope. But when a grown man in a family like this one—Oh, if Miss Cecile or Miss Lillian ever heard that, they’d—I don’t know what they’d do.”

Over and over the warm hand stroked Laura’s head, until at last she was able to look up and speak.

“If I could undo this, oh if I could undo what you heard today!”

“I know.”

“Listen, listen, Betty Lee. He didn’t mean you. What he said was awful, but often people say things they don’t mean.”

“He meant them.”

“He didn’t mean you! I promise! He knows how wonderful you are, he says so.”

“What difference does it make after all whether he meant me or not?” Betty Lee’s mouth was grim.

She is right, of course, Laura thought, and it was stupid of me to make the point.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said, with a question in her voice, as if to hope for an answer.

“I don’t know what you can do. That’s why I’m so sad for you. It’s hard when a husband and wife—” Betty Lee did not finish.

“But he is really, really a good man in many ways. You’ve seen—” said Laura, and broke down.

Then Betty Lee put her arms around her, comforting with the old, old refrain, “Don’t cry, nothing’s worth crying like that, it’ll be all right, you’ll see—”

“You didn’t mean it when you said you can’t stay, did you?”

It was a moment before the reply came. “Yes. I wouldn’t be comfortable anymore. Would you if you were in my place?”

Another difficult moment passed. “No,” Laura said. And another moment passed. “I can’t imagine this house without you.”

The other smiled sadly. “I was getting older anyway. Almost time to quit working.”

“No, you’re not that old. You weren’t thinking of quitting. Let’s admit the whole truth.”

“All right, we have. You know I’ll always be here for you just the same, don’t you?”

Laura nodded and wiped her eyes. “And I for you …”

“Now maybe I’d better go.” Betty Lee bent and kissed Laura’s cheek. “You take care of yourself, hear? And call me if you ever need me. Will you?”

“I will,” Laura whispered, and did not look as Betty Lee went out.

She heard her walk through the kitchen, call goodbye to Earl in his basket and close the back door.

Gone. The dignity of a dignified woman had been offended.

The world had so little mercy. Betty Lee, and that child with the cornrow hair, sitting at the piano … Why? Rocks and taunts and bullets. In God’s name, why? And Laura sat there staring from the ghastly photograph on the front page to the receding shape of Betty Lee going homeward down the street.

After a while she got up and left the house. The morning was fresh and moist. When she reached Fairview, there was a brisk little wind beneath the arch of the trees. The street was quiet. A gardener trimmed a hedge. A lawn sprinkler sprayed diamond drops as it circled and spat, and it was hard to believe that anything ever could disturb the peace of a place like this.

A car slowed as it passed the old Blair house. Most probably it would be years before people stopped calling it the Blair house, for it had belonged to the Blairs so long. Another car passed slowly enough to get a good look, and then went on its way. Curiosity seekers. But I am more than that, Laura told herself. I know those people; at least, I mean, they are more than a name to me.

She came to the wrought-iron fence. A truck was parked in the driveway, and men were already working on the windows. Broken glass lay on the lawn, pointed shards as lethal as carving knives.

“Careful, lady,” a workman warned as she went up the walk.

On the white front door there was a splash of black
paint. Something had been written there, and someone had effaced enough of it so that it was illegible except for a letter that looked like an “n.” Perhaps the father of the family had gotten up early to hide what had been written. She rang the bell.

She waited awhile and rang again. The door opened just enough for a child’s head to appear. Startled eyes met Laura’s.

“Cynthia,” said Laura.

The door moved to close.

“Cynthia,” Laura said again, “don’t you remember me?”

“My mother said not to let anybody in except the men who are fixing the windows.”

“Please tell her who it is. The lady who came the other day, the lady who’s going to give you piano lessons. You do remember me, don’t you?”