Four Spirits (13 page)

RYDER JONES HAD HOPED TO SEE HIS BROTHER ON TV.
He'd had Bobby, his little son, stay up late, in hopes of seeing Uncle LeRoy. Bull Connor had sent LeRoy's division downtown, and LeRoy claimed he'd whacked plenty of niggers, but the camera just showed a stupid press conference with nigger ministers, and then replays of the dog-handler police and droves of niggers singing “We Shall Overcome.”
Over my dead body,
Ryder muttered, his jaw muscles so rigid they hurt. He kissed his son on his cheek and sent him to bed.

He heard the snip of his wife's sewing scissors in the kitchen. He didn't want to talk to Lee; he wanted to be alone, to think about the world and what it was coming to. His feet took him to stand before his bedroom closet. He took down his Klan robe on its hanger and made the robe flutter in the air like a ghost. The way it rippled was noble, like a flag.
Over their dead body
.

That first time he had stepped out from behind a tree wearing his white robe, he had relished the man's terror. When Smith had stepped out, and then another, and another, each from behind a tree, it must have looked as though they were passing through tree trunks. And Ryder himself had said slowly, “Time to teach you a lesson, nigger. Think you can learn a lesson?” Then the black fella saw the whips, the belts dangling from their hands and started to run. But they were on him, dragged him to the cemetery to do it.

Alone in his bedroom, Ryder lifted his robe high over his head. He wiggled the coat hanger so the air would swivel the cloth. He twirled around in fast circles, bumped his leg against the side of the bed. He wished he really
could fly. While he played with his robe, he hummed, “An old cowpoke went riding out, one dark and windy night.” Ryder sang softly—he really loved that song, this part of it: “Ghost riders in the sky.” He sang the song twice before he flew his robe back into the closet and sauntered back to the living room. Then he felt foolish. That was the way Bobby played, using a towel for Superman's cape.

TV was showing some jungle place; he turned it off. Black soldiers under netted helmets.

He heard Lee's scissors opening and closing. From a bolt of white cotton cloth she'd gotten on sale, she was cutting out robes on the cook table. She made gowns nice and full and stitched them sturdy—double seams. Starched and ironed them so a man would be proud to wear his robe. They gave them away—Christmas, birthday presents. But this was a rush order. He told her she could stay up till eleven-thirty working on them. All the uppity nigger trouble meant new Klan members. He had told Lee she had to do her part, had to finish up those robes.

No need to check on her. Ryder was back in their bedroom. Wasn't much place to go in the house, a rectangle divided into four parts.
Quadrants,
he remembered his high school math;he'd been good at it. Their bedroom was on the front and opened into the living room. The kitchen also opened into the living room, the three kids shared the smaller back bedroom that opened into the short hall to the kitchen. The bathroom had a window on the back of the house, and its plumbing backed up against the kitchen plumbing of course, and its door opened into the short hall. The two bedrooms were divided by two closets, one opening their way, one opening toward the kids. It was a neat house plan.

Here he was back in their bedroom. He glanced at the bedside Big Ben, on top of his stack of comic books, and saw it was 10:00
P.M.
He had to be ready to pump gas by 6:00
A.M
. No, tomorrow was Sunday. Rest. He was already tired because they'd called him in early to the filling station; somebody sick on Ryder's off-day. He was afraid not to go, afraid he'd lose his job. Some gas stations in white neighborhoods were letting the black window-washer boys start to pump gas. They'd do it for fifty cents an hour instead of sixty-five.

When they pumped, the colored boys took the money right out of white customers' hands.

Ryder went to the kitchen calendar on the closet door to be sure the next
day was Sunday. The calendar had a fine picture of the Grand Teton Mountains, Jackson, Wyoming, with snow on top and green grass in front. Yes, on the wall calendar Saturday had a big
X
through it. First thing he did every morning was cross out the day. Made it seem like it was over, with the work already done. His spirit leapt ahead every morning after he x-ed out the day. Then he didn't have to think about what he had to do. He just had to make his body go on and do the work.

Snip-snip,
nice little sound, steady but careful. You could hear anything all over the house. She had her work; he had his. He went to the kitchen to watch.
Hi,
he said softly.
Hi there,
she answered, but she didn't look up. She was absorbed—clipping the inside of a curved seam. Her forehead was frowned up. She ought to have looked up, been glad to see him. The points of the scissors were perpendicular to the machine stitches.
Perpendicular
. He'd always liked that word, so long but easy to say. Learned it from his high school math teacher.
Math,
that was a high school word, not
Arithmetic.
On his report card, all spelled out:
Mathematics.
And then a big capital letter
A
.

IT'S BEEN A WEEK NOW SINCE THE DEMONSTRATIONS
ceased. But I do not want to write about that. I didn't participate.

I'm thinking about change more generally.

My challenge is shyness. My mother says she used to be shy, still is, but it gets better in time. She said she chose an occupation where she didn't have to meet the public; she chose to be an accountant. We're both short and full-breasted. I'm probably shy like her, too.

But when I play the cello, I'm never shy. It's like a great big voice for me. And it's like a shield for me, between me and the audience. The bow is my magic wand, and the fingers of my left hand are like the four legs of a pony let out to pasture, running along the fence.

I want a teacher who is worthy of me!

My hand is trembling. I cannot believe my boldness. On the typewriter I can't let my thoughts out, only in handwriting, and I wrote that sentence boldly, but now the writing is quavering. I will pretend this pen is my wand. It lets my feelings out.

Last year, 1962, James Meredith became a student at the University of Mississippi. What I would like is to become a student at the University of Alabama, and to study cello with Margaret Christy. She was a student of Pablo Casals. Then I would be a grandchild of Pablo Casals. Or go north to study cello. Two people were killed when James Meredith integrated Ole Miss.

Once I heard Miss Christy play with the Alabama String Quartet in the auditorium of the Liberty National Life Insurance Building. I have never seen
such a pretty auditorium; it had oak wooden paneling, and the lights were against the walls and shone upward along the grain of the wood. I was disguised as a maid. My Aunt Lil' Bit lent me her uniform. My mother went with me in Clarise's maid clothes. We took a long-handled dustpan and a broom and messed around in the lobby with a dust cloth.

That broom was my magic wand. Open sesame! Just after the lights went out, I slipped in and stood at the back of the auditorium. I got a program. Nobody noticed.

They opened with the addition of a pianist and played the Schubert “Trout” Quintet. I had never heard such joyful, playful music. When the cello is the trout, the music is droll. Floppy and leaping, perfectly fishlike. Standing there in the back, I started to cry. Mama took my hand and squeezed. It was so beautiful I wanted to shriek for joy and beautifulness. Like at country church. I
knew
I could play that music.

I love chamber music so much more than orchestral music. Every part stands out; every part is important. The weaving of the four voices! It's like my aunts singing quartet gospel music but infinitely more complex. It's what I need.

When the time is ripe, my parents will help me go where I need to go. I don't feel the time is ripe yet. I owe something here. I owe Christine and her student Charles Powers something because they stood up to the blast of the fire hoses till they were knocked down. I owe them for lying on the pavement, wet and hurt. I owe Lionel Parrish some work in the night school. I owe Rosa Parks and Jo Ann Robinson. Professor Robinson organized and helped run off 35,000 handbills: she launched the Montgomery bus boycott. At least I could turn the crank on a mimeograph machine. There's a seed in me, and it's starting to grow. Make a contribution, it says. Here in my own town.

That phrase “the time is ripe” is very important to me and my family. When I was a little girl and we still lived in the country, my daddy used to drink a lot. We lived with my grandparents, and he helped work the farm, but he never had any money. He couldn't buy anything. When he did get money, he'd go to the shack they called the tavern and buy shots of moonshine. One night he came home and hit my mother. I don't remember it. They've told me the story. Both of them. Then he passed out. The next morning when he woke up, he said, “The time is ripe.” He apologized to my mother, and she forgave him. “Just once,” she said. “Just this once I'll accept your apology.” Then they decided
they would both work, take correspondence courses, save everything, and move to Birmingham.

When he said “the time is ripe,” he meant the time was ripe for him to change and take charge of his life. I want to be an independent woman doing work that she loves.

“Education is the key to the future.” I wonder if they've told me that a million times.

TIME NOW FOR RYDER TO GO TO THE VACANT HOUSE IN
Fountain Heights. Dynamite Bob might be there, might show him something new about bomb making. Ryder had the basics down pat, but the house itself scared him. Like a haunted house. Creepy when you were in there by yourself with all that dynamite. Big old house with rooms stacked around all over the place. Ryder thought about mad-scientist comic books—a mad scientist connecting wires.

 

WHILE HE DROVE THROUGH
the neighborhood at night, Ryder checked the skin color of the people on the sidewalks. Made sure no niggers were out. Had he seen a black man, he would have done nothing. He was alone. But he would have felt his hate surge, rise up from his very balls.

Just a dim light shone from the shrouded basement window. Ryder whistled three times to give the signal. No answer. He opened the door with his key and clomped down the basement steps. Nobody was there.

He hated a deserted house. In the silence, he imagined screaming coming from the walls. Stupid somebody had left the light on over the workbench. A roll of fine electric line bounced light off its curve. Two boxes of dynamite sat, very still it seemed, beside the big spool. Five plastic fishing bobbers, red and white, lay in a row. It was easy to picture how Dracula might come busting through the window, right through the shade, if you were alone.

Ryder dipped his fingers into a small box and fished out a blasting cap. He
knew a boy years ago who blew his hand off with a blasting cap he'd found on a construction site. Good-looking boy. That was long ago. The walls of the secret house rose up still and steep to the high old ceiling. He'd wanted to take solid geometry but they put him in Shop.

Beside the workbench, a sealed carton of little bedside clocks sat on the floor. Just to use his nervous hands, Ryder picked up the X-Acto knife and slit the brown-tape seal. All the clocks were neatly packed inside, still in their individual boxes.

Hadn't he been supposed to meet somebody here?

Ryder took a beige clock out of its little box; the small round face read three o'clock. When he wound it up, he found the clock had a quiet tick, almost just a clucking. Just for something to do, he twisted the scored stem on the back of the clock to twirl the hands around. He watched time fly. He wondered before the factory workers packed them up, had they set all the clocks at three o'clock?

He wouldn't mind to have such a neat little clock.

After Ryder squeezed the little circular clock headfirst into his jeans pocket, he closed its empty box and put it back in the shipping carton with the others. Somebody else would think, down the line,
Hey, one box is a dud. Like at the plant they forgot to fill one box and just packed it empty.
Since he'd cut the tape sealing the big carton, the top flaps didn't want to lie down, but Ryder lifted the roll of electric wire and used it to weight the flaps shut.

Close to the dynamite boxes, he moved his hands very carefully. Suddenly, the silent walls screamed as though somebody were being attacked in the empty house. The screams sounded like a rabbit, he decided, a brown rabbit with a white cottontail he'd snared as a boy.

Well, he'd better drive on back home, with his little clock ticking in his pocket. What time was it, really? He hoped he hadn't got the time mixed up. Lord, that would be bad.
You're almost too stupid to do this,
Bob said to him once.
Can't you tell time?

Just remembering Bob's snide voice make Ryder cringe. Bob didn't talk like that to Blanton or Cherry. Hidden deep in Ryder's chest, a tiny spot about the size of a dime glowed with anger.

 

WASN'T ANY DOUBT
who was in charge, once he was behind the wheel. Ryder was glad to be back in his car. Ryder guessed a man had to be mean like
Bob Chambliss to stand up for right the way Bob did. What with the way the world was going.

Car radio said the niggers had gone back on some of their demands.

Radio said King said he was calling off the demonstrations.

They were
negotiating
, like King was some kind of foreign power.

Ryder wanted to hurt somebody. Well, niggers
always
needed straightening out. Always had and always would. Police wouldn't touch him or Chambliss or any of them. Never had and never would. While he drove the car toward home, Ryder checked the face of anyone he saw on the sidewalk.
Better not be too many colored. Niggers always trying to take over.

Ryder felt scared, but it wasn't the blacks. He could imagine a huge, elongated dark shape flying just over the treetops. It was like the shadow of Dracula had passed over the roof of his car. Ryder stepped on the gas.

 

AS HE ENTERED
his kitchen, Ryder thought how the police were the one good thing about Birmingham. He measured himself a shot of Gentry's whiskey and sat at the kitchen table. The metal tabletop was bare and clean, wiped down. Ryder liked the delicate way the tabletop was covered with little scratches.

In Birmingham, the police were on your side. Not just LeRoy, his brother—all the police. He'd heard that Atlanta had started importing police from Chicago and New York City.

Saturday night at the kitchen table. Awful quiet. Not a sound in the house. He contemplated the little scratches all over the metal tabletop. The way his whiskey bottle sat there like a king.

LeRoy knew Bull.

Here it was, Saturday night, his bottle, his shot glass, and him. Peace and quiet. Nobody telling him to do nothing.

Hell, Bull used to
speak
at rallies. Used to stand on the hood of a car so everybody could see him. Hosts of white sheets, pointed hoods moved all mysterious in the woods. Three crosses, the big ten-foot one in the middle, wrapped in cloth soaked with gasoline. Somebody tossed a lighted match, and
whoosh
. Then two small whooshes. Ryder pitched another shot of whiskey into the back of his throat. Better than church, three crosses burning in the woods. The big one for Jesus.
With the Cross of Jesus going on before:
he loved that song.

The Klan's little kids' faces glowed with awe, the burning crosses teaching them. They were white, and what this was about was White Supremacy, right here, tonight, and forever. The glowing on their little faces reflected the flames of the burning crosses.

Sometimes Ryder pictured Evil flying high above the dark woods where the Klan was meeting, but it couldn't come down no matter what his power because they had crosses. The folks were gathered around burning crosses.

He wished he'd had something like Klan meetings when he was a kid. He never saw his dad stand up for anything. His dad didn't love the Bible, he didn't love the flag. All he loved was moonshine, till it killed him. Niggers could hold a job better than his dad, and he let the whole family sink down. Ryder wished he could have gone on being a Cub Scout. He'd saved pennies and bought himself the neckerchief. They'd let him wear just that around his throat, for a while, and then they said he had to get the whole uniform or drop out. That was when he first felt the burning dime, like it was inside his upper chest under the tails of his Scout neckerchief. He had a red-hot dime in his chest. It was a button he could press and rage like an atom bomb would explode.

From the bedroom, Ryder heard the sudden rackety of his wife's sewing machine commence. She was just starting up! That was why the house was so goddamned quiet. That wasn't right! Him gone only half an hour, and her quitting on him, going to bed. She must have slipped off to bed 'bout as soon as he went out. She'd took the cloth off the kitchen table and just sneaked off to bed. Didn't work on the new robes like she was supposed to. While he gathered his thoughts, Ryder stared at how the little scratches in the metal tabletop made a pattern of circles.

He'd better teach her.

Bob Chambliss sure taught his woman when she needed it. He'd say that for old Bob.

Relentlessly, Ryder crept up behind his wife. Oh, she heard him coming, pedaled the machine harder, faster. But nobody can make up for lost time.

“Too late, Lee,” he said softly. “You oughta been sewing when I come home.” His hand closed around the back of her neck. “Reckon you thought I wouldn't come back till midnight, didn't you?”

He lifted her up by the neck with his left hand; she rose partly on her own. Partly her rising up from the machine was her hypnotized obedience, not the
strength of his arm. He turned her—her eyes were sleepy—smacked her cheek with his open hand. Why, she was already in her nightgown, probably snuck off to bed soon as he left the house.

“Don't, Ryder. I love you, Ryder,” she pleaded. She was quiet about it so as not to upset him.

He threw her on her back onto the bed; her eyes were wide, her legs bent at the knees, feet on the floor. Her big eyes, silent, looked down her body at him, her mouth open just a little. He lifted the gown, pulled her panty leg wide. When he unzipped his jeans, he felt the bulge of the little stolen clock in the front pocket. Took less than two seconds to drop his trousers.

He liked to get her through the panty leg.