The Sacrifice (31 page)

Among the gathering of disparate individuals, a number of whom were white, there were those who challenged the Reverend more sharply than usual; one was a tall white straggly-haired heckler in a soiled parka who tried to interrupt the Reverend several times, charging him with “race-baiting” and “race-mongering”—shouting, “Remember what happened to Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.! Got to pay a price for not knowing your place, Reverend Marus Mudrick! One day you might—I’m just saying
might
—have to pay that price . . .”

These shocking words, an obvious threat against Reverend Mudrick’s life, roused much indignation among the crowd, who shouted down the heckler. Reverend Mudrick, however, only just smiled at his adversary, and said, “No, let the man speak! This is the white-racist speech that is too often silenced, allowing the assassins to do their work without warning.” Bravely Reverend Mudrick opened his camel’s hair coat, that had not been fully buttoned, and said, “Sir, I am not afraid of you. I am not afraid of the lynch mob that backs you and the white establishment that tacitly condones you. I am not wearing a bulletproof vest, and I am not myself armed . . .”

Quickly the heckler backed off, and walked away, as if the courage of the harassed Reverend had demoralized him. Infuriated individuals shouted after him. Sullen-faced police officers assigned to protect the Reverend and to forestall violence had been moving purposefully toward him but did not follow him as he broke stride and began to run away.

“If you stand up to a racist, he will always back down. At the heart of the racist is a sniveling coward.” Reverend Mudrick spoke breathlessly as if, now that the threat had dissolved, he was able to reveal his vulnerability.

After a heated hour the news conference began to disband, and a TV journalist for WHNY-TV asked if he might interview Reverend Mudrick for another half hour, on the courthouse steps.

It was this interview that Byron Mudrick saw that afternoon, in his Newark law office.

Byron Mudrick had known nothing of the news conference called for the steps of the Passaic County courthouse. He had known nothing of his brother’s abrupt decision to accuse a Passaic County assistant district attorney of rape, with the announcement that the rape victim had identified “Julio Ramos.”

So quickly the accusation had come, following Ramos’s statement about Jerold Zahn’s alibi, it could not help but seem, to even the more sympathetic observers, that Marus Mudrick was retaliating against the young Hispanic prosecutor.

To endure this nightmare interview, Byron had to pour himself a small glass of whiskey. In recent weeks he’d been bringing a bottle—bottles—to his law office, to calm his nerves.
Self-medicate
it was called. Klarinda would understand, would pity him and (possibly) forgive him. Not immediately but—in time. Klarinda would say
Didn’t I warn you, Byron! Your brother.

Byron had received a phone call from an alarmed law school colleague, to turn on his television, quickly. The press conference in Pascayne had more or less ended, but the live WHNY interview was just beginning. Through a roaring in his ears Byron heard the interviewer ask if Marus Mudrick and his brother Byron were not afraid of “defamation lawsuits”—“charges of slander or libel”—“publicly charging two individuals of rape”—and there was Marus Mudrick’s boastful answer, “Brother, I am not afraid of justice. Reverend Marus Mudrick has never been afraid of justice. And there is no libel of the dead, my attorney-brother Byron will explain to you.”

“But of the living?—Julio Ramos?”

“When the Crusade finishes exposing that rapist-race-criminal, Ramos will think he
is dead
.”

Marus Mudrick spoke with zest, rubbing his hands together. On
the wrist of his left hand, a handsome gold-banded wristwatch was visible, and at the cuffs of both shirtsleeves, gleaming gold monogrammed cuff links.

Much of this interview Byron would not recall afterward. The shock was too great, like a blow on the head with a hammer. His hand shook as he lifted the whiskey to his mouth—so clumsy and uncoordinated, he couldn’t locate his mouth with the glass.

Already the phone was ringing. Quickly Byron removed the receiver from the hook.

Imagining a phone ringing, ringing, ringing in some vast empty space—a morgue.

In the paralysis of that terrible hour foreseeing: professional shame, disbarment, public and sustained pillorying in the (responsible) press, the disintegration of his marriage and the embarrassment of his children. Worse, a defamation lawsuit brought by Julio Ramos against the Mudrick brothers that would leave them both penniless and their reputations shattered.

At least, Byron Mudrick penniless and his reputation shattered.

He swallowed a large mouthful of whiskey. With a shaking hand he poured another drink.

F
irst glance, he was a young white man in tight dark clothes, with a shaved head. Out of nowhere veering purposefully in the Reverend’s direction.

Second glance, as the Reverend was to see him, close-up from a distance of less than three inches, he was a very light-skinned black man, easy to mistake for Caucasian; not young, but so slender and lithe as to seem young, like a dancer, or a skater. He was just slightly taller than the Reverend. His eyes were tawny lynx-eyes. His nose was a Roman nose just slightly flat and broad at its tip. On his upper lip a thin mustache and beneath his lower lip a small triangle of a goatee of scarcely more substance than a shadow. He appeared to be smiling with unusually white, small teeth—
Rev’end Mudick?
This person, this stranger, whom Reverend Mudrick seemed to recognize, the kind of hip mixed-blood black boy, Caribbean most likely, and not an urban-American-born black like the Reverend himself, for whom the Reverend felt a confused but pleasurable swirl of emotion, and to
whom he was (irresistibly, inexorably) drawn.
Rev’end Mudick? This for you
as out of the stranger’s tight dark-suede coat there came a swift-flashing blade of twelve inches of which at least ten inches were sunk into the fatty flesh between the Reverend’s ribs in less time than was required for the breathy message murmured kiss-close in the Reverend’s ear
The Prince tell you, man—God is good.

Abruptly on his knees on the cold unyielding pavement. In utter astonishment as pain came too quick and too vast for the stricken man to realize. Initially he’d thought that he had been hit—struck—by a boy’s tight fist—which would have wounded him sufficiently in his pride, for he’d imagined that in the stranger’s lynx eyes there had been a sly look of recognition, and of desire; fumbling his hands to clutch at the stranger wiping with rude expediency the bloodied knife blade on the Reverend’s clothing (the camel’s hair coat which the youngish-seeming man had managed to tug open just enough to thrust the blade inside). He tried to call for help but no words came—a hoarse croaking sound as of asphyxiation. Tried to heave himself to his feet, to assure staring observers that Reverend Marus Mudrick was unharmed, had not been stabbed to the heart by one for whom he’d felt an unwise instant’s attraction.

Tried to heave himself to his feet, though now blood was flowing down his trouser-leg, and onto the pavement, that he might relive those last, incomprehensible several seconds, and comprehend them; and reverse his fate; his brain brightly flooding with ideas, alternatives—how descending the ten or so concrete steps at the conclusion of the rally he might have turned to the right, and not to the left; might have walked with aides from the Care Ministry, and not by himself as he often preferred at such public moments amid a battery of flash cameras that then, inexplicably it seemed, hardly a minute later, had abandoned him to the dark-clad smiling stranger who’d seemed at first glance to be
white
and to be extending his hand to be
shaken—a
friendly white
. And his limousine at a curb at least thirty feet away. (Why wasn’t the driver outside, and attentive to him? Didn’t he pay Manuel to act as a kind of bodyguard, as well as a part-time chauffeur?) There were individuals awaiting him with whom in the triumphant adrenaline-surge following the applause of the rally Reverend Mudrick didn’t much want to speak—the good, boring faithful, converts to the Reverend’s cause, black faces shiny with tears, white faces hopeful that the revered Reverend would pause as he sometimes did to warmly shake their hands, embrace them and call them
Brother, Sister
!

But—he’d turned away. Away from safety. Away from those who were known to him, and whom in his complacency Reverend Mudrick might take for granted to continue to revere him, even if, fairly obviously, he
was
ignoring them, or at least pretending not to see them—their smiling faces, their tears of sympathy and hope.

Turned away, feeling vigorous, terrific—buoyed up by waves of applause, and a mostly adulatory (if somewhat small) audience (though fewer media people than he’d anticipated, and most of these black). Broad smile aimed at cameras, hand uplifted in victory. He’d worn a new suit tailor-made for his “unique” figure, at J. Press in Manhattan—svelte dark wool-flannel, double-breasted coat, waistcoat tight-fitting and “slimming.” He’d been lavishly barbered earlier that day. In his rich strong baritone he’d led the chant at the conclusion of the rally—
Crusade for Justice for Sybilla Frye! Crusade for Justice for Sybilla Frye!
His sense was that the ad hoc collection had been a generous one—(he’d check later that night). Not a major rally—Thursday evening in the Newark-North Community Center—sponsored by local non-profit “Good Neighbors Mission” whose director Reverend Mudrick knew well, from previous crusades; neither Sybilla Frye nor her mother Ednetta had shared the stage with Reverend Mudrick tonight; nor was Reverend Mudrick’s attorney-brother Byron with
him. (Marus had to smile: his younger brother was furious with
him
. See how long that lasted! Byron Mudrick was of zero interest to the world without Marus Mudrick promoting him, and he knew it. And stuck-up Klarinda knew it.
They all did.
) Not a major rally but the following Sunday he’d be taking the Crusade to a new, other level in conjunction with the New York City–based activist organization CUAR—Citizens United Against Racism—at the New School where there was the possibility—(Marus would know in another forty-eight hours) that Norman Mailer might appear to introduce Reverend Mudrick . . . And then, turning to the dark-clad stranger, expecting his hand to be vigorously and warmly shaken, he felt—instead—

Such shock! On his knees, and clutching at the arm of the stranger, as if to forestall falling to the pavement; clutching at the man’s legs, absurdly stretching his fingers, as the assassin leapt away.

Yet not thinking
assassin
. In the shock of the moment confusing the dark-clad stranger with the homeless alcoholic white man whom he’d paid twenty-five dollars to “heckle” him in Pascayne a few days ago—memorably, he’d thought—very convincingly; so convincingly, no one on his staff apart from the staffer who’d hired the man, and certainly no one in the audience, had known that the “heckler” was shouting prepared words.

Even Byron hadn’t known. Though possibly, Byron had suspected, since Marus had occasionally hired white individuals to heckle him at public events, always with dramatic results, and if Byron learned, he’d disapproved.

Marus smiled bitterly, thinking of his brother.
Marus you are going too far. This is hubris, Marus. Do you know what
hubris
means?

And Marus had replied with scarcely disguised contempt
Yes, Brother. I know what
hubris
means. Do you know what
cowardice
means? Do you know what
prig
means? Do you know what
race-traitor
means?

But—this stranger was not in the Reverend’s hire. This stranger was not a white man but one chosen perhaps because he resembled a white man. Insolently wiping his bloodied knife on the Reverend’s coat and concealing it then inside his own coat as he walked with that air of almost gravity-less grace to a waiting minivan, and was driven away south on Ferry Street in the direction of the Passaic River visible only as a wide dark band emptying into further darkness.

He a white man, we all saw him!—happened too fast for anybody know what was happenin he just come up to the Rev’end an it look like the Rev’end knew him an was goin to shake his hand, then next thing the Rev’end on his knees and on the sidewalk an the man gone—he just gon like some ghost. And he white—we saw that.

S
he say, You find some answer to this. Some way to explain this. Whatever Anis do to you, he aint the one hurt you bad as you is, you hear me? Some other ones came along and did this to you, hurt you worsen he hurt you, ’cause he your daddy and he aint gon hurt you so bad, that’s a fact. So you find it.

Find what, Ma?

She’d heard the screams upstairs. Just come into the house and the younger children with her, she’d sent them back outside to run play in the alley and not come back till she called them. Hearing the man’s shouts overhead. The girl’s screams and pleas. Starting up the stairs she’d felt the violent thuds and thumps and heard the sound of something breaking. And she thought
He will kill me, too.
And in terror hanging back not knowing what to do until the screams came so bad, she rushed blindly into the room and there came Anis head-on
charging
her
—struck her with just his body, blind drunk fury in his face as he propelled himself at her to exit the room and next thing she knew she was on the floor, blood drops like dark rain falling from—where, she wasn’t sure—between her teeth? Head ringing and buzzing but she pulled herself to her feet, and was all right. Saying to herself
’Netta you all right.

He’d slammed out of the house. He was gone, she knew he would not return for a night and a day at least and possibly a second night and a second day. And desperately she thought
He will get hisself killed. They will shoot him dead.

The sobbing girl she found huddling in a corner of the room behind the torn-apart bed. Wedged between the bed and the wall. One of the girl’s old dolls split-headed, broken and crushed on the floor like the man had set his heavy foot upon it, and his weight.