1948–1949
BEFORE STEVE MOVED from his chair they had burst into the room, seized him, clapping a hand over his mouth, and now they carried him, limp with terror, out of the small yellow apartment. He saw the cracked ceiling plaster pass over him. Twisting his head violently he broke his mouth free, and, instantly, as they struggled him out the door, he saw the walls of his retreat, thumbtacked with pictures of strong men from Strength and Health and, on the floor, wildly strewn by the brief fight, the copies of Flash Detective he had been reading when their footsteps sounded outside his door.
He hung like a dead man between the four of them now. For a long time he was so sick with fear that he couldn’t move, he was a dead weight they carried out into the night air. And Steve thought, This is all wrong, this is the South, I’m white, they’re white, and they’ve come to my place and grabbed me. This can’t be. Things like this don’t happen. What’s wrong with the world when a thing like this can happen?
The sweating palm clung to his mouth as they jolted him drunkenly across the lawn. He heard a casual laughing voice say, “Evening, Miss Landriss. It’s our friend Steve Nolan. Drunk again, ma’am. Yes, ma’am!” And everybody laughed their pretending laughs.
He was thrown into the back of a car,
and the men plunged in around him, pressing him among them like something closed into the pages of a book on a hot summer evening. The car lurched away from the curb, and then the voices were talking, and the hand came away from Steve Nolan’s mouth so he could lick his lips and look at them with jittering, glassy eyes.
“Wh-what you going to do?” he gasped, stiffening his legs against the floorboards, as if to stop the car by this action.
“Stevie, Stevie.” One of the men shook his head slowly.
“What you want with me?” cried Steve.
“You know what we want, Stevie boy.”
“Let me out of here!”
“Hold on to him!”
They rushed down a country road in the dark. Crickets sounded on both sides and there was no moon, only a great number of stars in the black warm air.
“I didn’t do nothing. I know you. You’re them damned liberals, you’re them Communists! You going to kill me!”
“We wouldn’t think of doing that,” said one of the men, patting Steve’s cheek with a deadly soft pat, affectionate.
“Me,” said another. “I’m a Republican. What are you, Joe?”
“Me? I’m a Republican too.”
They both smiled cat-smiles at Steve. He was very cold. “If it’s about that nigger woman Lavinia Walters—”
“Who said anything about Lavinia Walters?”
Everybody looked at everybody else, so surprised.
“You know anything about Lavinia Walters, Mack?”
“No, you?”
“Well, I heard tell something about how she had a kid recently. Is that the one you mean?”
“Now, now, look, boys, look, stop the car, stop the car, and I’ll tell you all about this Lavinia Walters—” Steve’s tongue moved, trembling over his lips. His eyes were frozen wide. His face was the color of clean bone. He looked like a corpse propped between the sweating, pressing men, out of place, ridiculous, gaunt with fear.
“Look here, why just look here!” he cried, laughing shrilly. “We’re southerners, all of us, and we southerners got to stick together, now ain’t that right? I mean now, ain’t that the truth!”
“We are sticking together.” The men looked at one another. “Aren’t we, boys?”
“Wait a minute.” Steve squinted at them. “I know you. You’re Mack Brown, you drive a truck for that carnival down at the creek. And you, you’re Sam Nash, you work the carnival too. All of you from the carnival, and all local boys, you shouldn’t be acting this way. Why, it’s just the summer night. Now, you just park at that next crossroads and let me out and, by God, I won’t say nothing about this to nobody.” He smiled with wild generosity at them. “I know. Hot blood and all. But we’re all from the same place, and who’s that up in the front seat with Mack?”
A face turned in the dim cigarette light.
“Why, you’re—”
“Bill Colum. Hello, Steve.”