Five Smooth Stones (110 page)

"All right, go on. Or shall I?"

"As it was in the beginning? When I used to insist on reviewing a case detail by detail, before trial, and put the screws on the starry-eyed young idiot—"

"I like Luke's phrase better."

"It's more imaginative, I'll give him that. You were right, of course. It's northern industry. But a group of white city and county officials and the town's leading banker have apparently—I say 'apparently' because I haven't a shred of proof—banded together to buy the property, or acquire it somehow, then sell it. And, again apparently, they have given the impression that they have, or are in the process of acquiring, title. And they probably think they are. My God, these people are stupid when they deal with Negroes!"

"I've said it for years, Brad. I mean years. Long before I ever went to college. Basically, it isn't the hate, it's the stupidity."

"Right. They're pressed for time. Any minute it might occur to the interested parties to search title for themselves. The local people want to make some move, put over some gimmick, that will put them in control."

"How about Miz Towers? Abraham?"

"So far she's been adamant, but the pressure's mounting. It's the reason I stopped off before coming here."

"I assume it's still in the benign phase? People she used to work for suddenly remembering her with little gifties, if they're kin to, or friends of, the locals involved. Abraham getting white business, maybe offers of an easy deal for new equipment, farm machinery, that kind of thing."

"That's about it. Abraham says when his mother dies he wouldn't mind 'being shet of all that land. But he doesn't want to be cheated."

"Another question. How did you learn all this?"

"Jim Towers, Abraham's nephew. The Grand Hotel, where' he works, is everything the name implies, used in the old sense. Old, built by slave labor, derived from Greek architecture, porticoed, pillared, still the luncheon and cocktail hangout for the town's leading business and professional men.

Rotary meets there, that sort of thing. It's even so old-fashioned they have a smoking room where ladies aren't allowed. That's where the spittoons are that Luke mentioned. The hotel is on Main Street, directly facing the colored section. A few months ago a man came down from the North and stayed at the new hotel uptown, but conferred frequently with the town's leading banker, a man named Spangler, at the Grand. Couple of weeks later he came back with two other men, and this time the luncheon and dinner conferences, the talks over drinks in the smoking room, were with the banker, the mayor, the city attorney, and a few other assorted local rascals. Practically everything that was said in the smoking room after a certain date got back to the dinner table in Jim's house, where Abraham eats every night, after the old lady goes to bed at sundown."

"You know, Brad, I don't know whether to pray, and I do sometimes, for my own people or the blasted whites."

"I know. I'm getting dry. More coffee? Jim probably wouldn't have paid any attention if it hadn't been for a crack by Spangler. Jim's not the curious type. All he wants is to get the day's work over, pick up a few tips, and get the hell out. One afternoon in the smoking room one of the outsiders reprimanded the local characters rather sharply. That room is usually deserted in midafternoon, and Jim picks that time to dust and tidy up for the cocktail period. On this day he was the only person in the room besides the aforementioned group. However, the reprimand was unmistakable; the man took them to task for discussing the project so freely in the presence of outsiders. Spangler looked around, said, 'But there's no one here,' and the visitor indicated Jim."

"And the banker said, 'Lord, that's only Jim. He don't count.' Or words to that effect."

"Yes. Jim moseyed on out through the curtains to the bar —Chuck says they still call them portieres—and naturally from that time on never missed a chance to listen. He said it riled him considerable. And, of course, after that they made it difficult for an eavesdropper. Jim even took to going through the wastebaskets after a meeting broke up. The only thing of value he found was an envelope with the return address of the man who had come down first. He brought that home. His mother, God help us, threw it out. No one seems to remember what was on it. Abraham says he remembered for a time, then disremembered.

"I had him trying to remember so hard he was losing weight. Then I told him to put it out of his mind, as I would tell a witness, forget it, then someday I'd ask him and it would pop to the surface of his mind. Or it would do so spontaneously. So far it hasn't."

"There ought to be some way. If this man, Murfree, is such an upstanding liberal, couldn't he get at the register of the other hotel? Don't answer. He couldn't. They wouldn't give him a damn thing. No idea, no idea at all, what the whole thing is?"

"The gov'mint's involved, according to Jim. And, I gather, the reaches of outer space. Or maybe missiles. Hell, I don't know, except it's big, it's important, it's fairly secret and, Jim says, these outsiders seem to be becoming impatient. Which means the Cainsville syndicate is going to have to come up with the property soon." Brad stood up, sighed, and said: "I haven't talked this much since the last time I was in court. I'm going to shower and shave. Meanwhile, you can come up with the solution. Think."

He left the room, and David called after him. "It's easy— hey, Brad!"

He heard a voice from the bathroom call, "Think!" then the sound of the door closing and the rush of water in the shower.

***

Brad came back into the kitchen while David was washing up. "Ready, brat?"

"You mean to leave? It's too early."

"I mean with a solution to the problem of how to keep ol' Miz Towers's property and save her and Abraham from pressure."

"Oh, that," said David airily. "If you'd listened you'd have heard it half an hour ago. Option."

"That's what I told Abraham."

"You'd already thought of it. I should have known."

"Of course I had. I wanted you to come to the same conclusion. Abraham agrees. I explained it to him carefully, and he's waiting until his mother is in the right mood. Murfree can draw it up. Abraham trusts him, and trusts me, but not all of the colored trust me."

"That's the way it would be."

"I told him to tell his mother an option would be like a steel wall around the property. It would be better if someone who hasn't been connected with present activities took it. Only a nominal sum would be involved. Then we'd be in a position to deal directly with the principals, get a fair price for the old lady, if she changes her mind, or stymie the whole deal indefinitely."

"Options expire."

"And can be renewed. When she does die—"

"They'll have picked a site in Wyoming, and someone's left holding the option. Now I know it was your idea first, I'll shoot holes in it."

"You think if it's desirable enough for these people that others won't be interested? If that happens we'll be acting for Abraham."

David stopped wiping a plate and looked at Brad closely. "Listen, Chief, what's this 'we' routine you're sneaking into?" He laid the plate down on the drainboard with exaggerated care and said, "Why you low-down, conniving, illegitimate, legal son of a bitch!"

"I've heard you do better—"

David turned his head, called "Chop-bone!" There was an answering chirrup from the living room, and Chop-bone came padding rapidly into the kitchen. "Chop-bone, y'all want to be a cat of property? Y'all want about steen dozen acres to hunt mice in? Your old Uncle Bradford's real thoughtful that way."

"I'll put up the dough. You can see why, if it got out, my own motives in being there might not appear disinterested. You're so identified with ALEC now, they might think you were fronting for ALEC. Which would be all right. There's already been talk about ALEC building a school for social and governmental studies."

"All right, all right. I won't argue. You can even use my dough. I haven't spent any for more than a month. Just get me off the hook when the time comes. If there's one thing I don't want, it's real property in any place called Cainsville."

David returned the last plate to its allotted place in the cupboard over the drainboard.

"And furthermore," he went on, "after I get to Boston next week I don't want to leave for a long, long time."

"You really mean it, David?"

"This time, yes."

"My God, sense at last. I never thought it would come."

"You underestimate me, Chief. Me'n Chop-bone are taking off. If he doesn't like snow and ice, I'll get him a set of thermal underwear."

CHAPTER 70

David drove to the picnic grounds from the airport, wishing heartily that Li'l Joe Champlin had not brought him up to such a keen sense of responsibility. "Any guy with any sense who feels the way I do would go home and watch a ball game on TV and go to bed," he told himself. Anyhow, it would be over eventually and he could go home, get another night's sleep and day's rest before he tackled the job of getting the house ready for renting or sale. He was grateful to Brad for making no attempt to get him up to Cainsville, although even Brad, trained to hide his emotions as he had been, had not been able to conceal the fact that in this particular fight, perhaps more than any other, he would have liked to have David with him.

As he neared the picnic grounds he could tell there was a good turnout in spite of the uncertain weather, the muggy heat and humidity. He parked under a tree about a hundred yards from the entrance and as he entered the grounds he sighed, contemplating the gregariousness of his people. There were probably only scores of children running around underfoot, but it looked like hundreds. Lunches had already been eaten by many of the people; Isaiah had told him it was a bring-your-own-lunch picnic instead of a community meal. Only the coffee had been prepared by Isaiah's wife to be served to everyone.

He stood, watching, searching for the Watkins family group whose lunch he had been invited to share. It seemed at first glance as though the shade of every tree that did not shelter a family sheltered a group of young people clustered around someone with a guitar. He thought of his speech. Should he tell them, he wondered, what half-a-hundred teenagers just like them looked like squatting on a pavement, arms linked, teeth bone white in dark faces, looking up at the bayonets in the hands of armed men in khaki? Somewhere near him a child raised a spoiled, whining cry. Should he tell them how the sound of the voice of a terrorized child sounded, a child who ran, screaming, not knowing where he was running, blinded and vomiting from gas?

He made a mighty effort to discipline a mind that was becoming more and more difficult to control these days. The smell of brewing coffee came to him and he saw that he was standing near the table where it was being served. That would do it, a cup of strong black coffee. He'd have coffee, find Isaiah, and talk a little with the family; he wanted no lunch, no food, until he could get home to peace and quiet, but he supposed that no matter how he felt the smell of freshly brewed coffee would always draw him. He remembered how, in jail, the guards used to make coffee in the night, and how its aroma cut through the rank smell of the cell blocks. He could tell them about that in his speech, he thought as he held the paper cup of steaming coffee in his hands; tell of the stench of a jail tank and what it was composed of, tell them of the cold feel of a filthy cement floor where the pools of liquid were not always water, where humans were crowded in like hens in a crate on the way to slaughter; tell them of a frightened boy, retching and vomiting in a corner, and of how sweet and deep had been that same boy's voice when at last he joined the rest, and sang with them. And he could tell them how one man felt about these things, how they tore at him and sickened him and would not leave him and how at last they had drained and defeated him.

And he wouldn't; he knew that these were the things he would not tell of, hint at perhaps, but not tell of in all their pristine horror. Somewhere someone once had said, "God help us, for we knew the worst too young—" These youngsters, here on the picnic ground, like the David Champlin of a thousand years ago, had not even touched the outermost edges of that worst; let them learn it for themselves.

His speech would be moderate, measured, objective. Because it was an ALEC-sponsored gathering the speech must, he knew, deal with citizenship, but it would not, while he was conscious, deal with the obligations of a citizen to his country, but instead with the obligations of a country to citizens who were expected to be generous with that "last full measure of devotion." He might even use that phrase. He'd bring in that battered overworked character, the first to die in the American Revolution, a Negro. And he'd bring in—oh, crap!

—he'd bring in taxation without representation, and then he'd tell them, tell those dark intent faces, that they must study hard like good little boys and girls so they could present literate, pleasant images of a black and stricken people. And it doesn't work that way; God knew, He knew full well, it didn't work that way.

A voice so close it startled him and made him spill his coffee sounded in his ear. He looked down into Isaiah's round and homely face, a face that was smiling, the eyes clear and happy.

"You a million miles away, son," said Isaiah.

"No, I wasn't. I was up there on that damned platform trying to make the right speech." He laid a hand on Isaiah's shoulder. "You'll be sorry you asked me, man."

"Give you odds," said Isaiah. They turned and walked slowly across the grass, Isaiah with the clumsy, lurching gait that threw his big buttocks almost in a half-circle with every other step; David, thinner, still graceful, limping on his one stiff ankle. "Been worried about you, son," said Isaiah. "Made 'em hold back on the food so's there'd be some for you. Everybody and his cousin's brought fried chicken, but Annie figured it was too damned hot for anything like that. She's got cold smoked turkey, and cold crab, and ham. Stuff like that. And beer—"

"I'm not hungry, 'Saiah. Just want to make my speech and get back home for some rest. I'll eat later."