Chapter 19

'Hold on tight,' Bessy said, gripping Alice by her right and Fay by her left hand, while she tried to forge a path through the jostling crowd around the news-and-tobacco counter at the front of the station. 'Did you ever see such a crowd! Where they all going on the 4th July?'

'Where's my baby?' Fay demanded petulantly.

'Dinah's got your baby, honey. You ain't got no cause to fret.'

'I want it!'

'Soon as we sit down you can have it, but Dinah ain't big enough to carry that suitcase, and you are.'

'Why can't Clara carry the old suitcase?'

' 'Cause Clara's already carrying three suitcases, honey-bunch. Now try and behave.'

In the crowd of grown-ups Alice could see very little but midriffs and behinds. Even so, it seemed to her that there were a lot more coloured people here than one usually found in a crowd this size. And it wasn't like the crowd on the street yesterday. That crowd, with its hymn-singing and bright costumes, had had something of a holiday mood about it, while today everyone, white and black, wore tense expressions and talked in whispers. At the back of the station, in front of a glass door with a plastic number 1 above it, was someone she recognised—the policeman who had made her spill her milk into the gutter. In the press of bodies she was quite unnoticeable, so she stuck her tongue out at him.

There were long lines in front of the ticket windows. Even so, no one was being waited on. Behind the counter, the ticket sellers—three middle-aged men in shirt sleeves—were discussing something with a younger man in a black suit. The man in the black suit said something very loud and definite, and the three ticket sellers returned to their windows, and each of them hung a small plastic sign across the round speaking-hole in the glass: this window closed, please use next window. The people waiting in line groaned.

The man in the black suit (the manager of the station?) came forward and very earnestly requested that everyone go home. They would all be much happier at home. The bus station was nowhere to carry on violent quarrels, and in any case all bus services were cancelled for the day. The effect of his speech was vitiated somewhat by the arrival at just that moment of a bus. The heavy engine sputtered to silence, followed by the hiss and thud of its door opening. The policeman standing at number 1 entrance twirled his night stick nervously.

A few people, blacks and whites, straggled in through the door, looking up in surprise at the mob. (Actually, Alice could see now, there were two mobs: one almost entirely black; the other unexceptionably white.) And the mobs, in turn, looked surprised and, almost in unison, sighed. Everyone stayed where they were, except those who'd just dismounted from the bus, who bore their children and luggage out of the station through the side doors.

'What's everybody waiting around here for?' Bessy asked of the man ahead of her in the line.

'You mean to say you ain't heard! Them ministers and all them other CORE people are coming down here from Washington, just like they said they was.'

Outside the station Alice could see the bus driver changing the sign on the bus. Norfolk was wound back till it became Baltimore. She tugged at Bessy's hand.

'What is it now, child?'

'Where are you getting tickets to, Bessy? Have you decided yet?'

'Lord knows. I got some friends in Atlanta that should put us up for a few days. Leastways, they'll take Fay and Clara off my hands. After that, 1 just don't know. But don't you worry, sweety-pie—I'm going to look after you.'

'Because, you see, that bus is returning to Baltimore.'

'Dear God, I ain't taking you up North! I might just as well go hand myself over to that policeman there. You don't want Bessy going to prison, do you, darling? Course not.'

'But you don't have to go with me. Just get me a ticket and put me on the bus and when I get there I can call up my uncle, and it's all perfectly safe and sure, and I promise that no matter what I won't tell on you. Criss-cross my heart. But as for Daddy...'

Bessy nodded grimly. On that subject nothing more needed to be said between them. 'I'd feel safer if you was with me, but I s'pose that don't necessarily mean you'd be safer. So if that man'll open the ticket window, I'll just get you a ticket to Baltimore, but it looks like we picked just about the worst time we could to come here.'

'Oh, look!' said Fay, beside herself with excitement. 'Here's some of the clowns from the circus!'

It was the Klan. They pushed in through the side doors (the front of the station was one solid wall of waiting mob now), the majority in white robes with red crosses, a few in red, and a single Klansman in lime green. This last figure, as though to make up for the general scarcity of green, was far and away the largest of them all. For sheer bulk he rivalled Bessy.

None wore masks, though they did have on their pointy witch-hats.

The green Klansman walked to Gate 1 and talked to the policeman there, who seemed almost to be relieved at their arrival, though he should have known that they would bring nothing but trouble. After all, he'd seen what they'd done yesterday. After they'd talked, the policeman left the bus station through the door the Klansmen had come in at.

The green Klansman was helped to stand on one of the benches, from which he addressed everyone in the bus station. 'All right! Shut up and listen to me. We warned you dumb niggers—Shut up, I said!—yesterday, and we've been warning you right along, to stay home today. Some of you have got pretty thick heads, and don't remember so well. Well, that's a damned shame. Because now it's too late, Nobody's leaving this bus station now until we've welcomed the nigger ministers to our fair city. Is that understood?'

Somebody from the crowd shouted out, 'No!' 

'Then this will make it understood,' the Klansman said, puckering fat lips into a smile that looked like a cluster of grapes. From underneath his green robes he took a shotgun; several of the attendant Klansmen took out shotguns or rifles as well.

There had been something about the green Klansman's voice, or his manner, that made Alice think of her father. On those rare occasions when he had undertaken to punish her he had spoken in just that way.

'Come on, children,' Bessy said, grabbing hold of Alice's and Fay's hands. 'We better get out of here. We'll get us a bus later on.'

But the Klansmen had moved in front of all the side doors. The mob at the front of the station was a mob of white men, who blocked the way to any coloured person trying to push through it.

Clara chuckled and set down the three suitcases. 'Well, that's that. At least we can be sure Ole Roderick is gonna have just as much trouble getting in here as we'll have getting out.'

If we're going to wait, we might as well wait sitting down,' Bessy said, heaving a sigh. She led her three charges to a bench at the periphery of the crowd of Negroes.

'Just a minute!' exploded the Klansman in green. 'Just a god-damned minute! Is that a white woman sitting down there in the middle of all those niggers? Is she going to let them niggers feel her up? What is this?'

A Klansman in candy-apple red pushed his way forward to speak to the lime-green Klansman. Alice recognised him: it was Farron Stroud. 'No cause to be alarmed. Grand Dragon, sir,' Farron said. 'She's just a hoor, and sort of simple besides. She don't know no better.'

But the Grand Dragon paid Farron no heed. 'You! White woman! Come here! Yes, you!'

Trembling but smiling prettily (Hadn't Bessy always told her she had to smile no matter what the men told her to do?) Fay stepped forward.

'Just what the hell do you think you're doing here with ail these niggers?'

'I don't know,' Fay confessed. 'But I think you're nice.'

The Grand Dragon blushed brilliantly. As he regarded Fay in her snug, peppermint-stripe party-dress, sucking on a strand of her own blonde hair, he seemed to be choking on something. At least, he found speech difficult.

'Can I go now?' Fay asked, when his colour seemed to have subsided.

'Back to them niggers? A pretty girl like you shouldn't be running with a bunch of dirty niggers and Commies and I don't know what-all!'

'But I have to! I have to get my baby and feed her, and it's time for her nap. Oh, it's way past time for her nap already, and she's very sleepy.'

The green Klansman looked from Fay to the person he supposed to be her baby—Alice, black Alice. 'She's your baby?' he gasped. Then, with full explosive force: 'Your baby?'

The colour returned to his face more richly than before. Like a ripening plum, it seemed to be passing from red to the violet band of the spectrum. With his shimmering regalia and funny hat, he had taken on an altogether clownish appearance.

Fay giggled. 'Are you one of the clowns?' she asked, believing sincerely that he was.

The Grand Dragon snorted wrathfully, and raised an arm to strike Fay but the blow was never to fall. A thin black shadow materialised suddenly into the air before him, slammed into his fat body, toppling him. It was Ku Klux Klara. Her knee came up against the Grand Dragon's groin, her nails raked his face, her voice whispered obscene endearments.

White silk robes closed in around Clara, and Alice could see nothing then but a rush and tumble of midriffs and behinds, as the crowd broke for the unguarded doors. A bus was pulling into the station, and somewhere a policeman was blowing his whistle.

Owen Gann was getting into his truck having searched the house on North Tidewater Road to no purpose, when someone hailed his name, and a car pulled over to the opposite kerb.

'Gann, it's a damned good thing I found you.' It was Jenks, the Knight-Hawk, a pox-faced man with bad teeth and extreme halitosis. Even at a distance of several feet Owen was sure he could catch a whiff of him.'I been at your rooming house. I been at the Spengler's loading docks but they was shut down for the 4th. And where do I find you? In Niggertown! You ain't forgotten where we're all supposed to be this morning, have you?'

'We're going to the African Church tonight? Owen protested, feigning not to understand.

'I'm talking about the bus station, not the church. Jesus Kee-rist, you got a head as thick as...' He looked up and down North Tidewater Road for a metaphor. '... as thick as thieves. You drive this truck to somewhere you can park it—behind Farron's Bar would be a good idea—and then you can drive on to the bus station with me.'

Gann would have demurred, but he could think of no convincing reason for not doing as Jenks said. Today of all days he should not miss out on the Klan's activities. He began to wonder if it were possible that his whole brainstorm about the Negro girl he'd seen yesterday being Alice Raleigh might not have been a devious tactic of his subconscious seeking to avoid an unwelcome task.

He drove behind Jenks for the three miles to Stroud's Bar and Grill, where a Klansman (though not in regalia) stopped him as he pulled the truck into the driveway.

'Ayak?' asked Owen.

'Akia,' responded the man, ritually. 'What is the Oath of Allegiance?'

'Obedience, Secrecy, Fidelity, and Nishness,' said Owen, completing the time-honoured formula. The man waved him past.

Peter Boggs, wearing a white robe, was alone in the parking lot. He explained to Jenks that everyone else had left already for the bus station: could he come along in Jenks' car? For some reason Jenks seemed reluctant, but it was impossible to refuse so reasonable a request.

'Where's your own car?' Jenks asked.

'Sold it,' Boggs said laconically. He darted a look at Gann, as though there were something he was about to say to himself —but then, why didn't he?

Probably, Gann thought, he wants to apologise for having sold the car without giving me another chance at it.

The nearest parking space to the bus station that they could find was four blocks off. While Boggs rolled down the car windows, Jenks took out a sawed-off shotgun and a bundle wrapped in newspapers from under the car's front seat. The bundle contained two robes. Jenks tossed one of them to Gann.

In the brief instant when Jenks was slipping his robe over his head, Boggs sidled up to Gann and whispered something, of which Gann caught only the two words, they know. Who were 'they', and what did they know? It was something to do, most likely, with the bodies that had been discovered in Bittle's cabin. Boggs, not knowing Gann's reason for visiting the cabin, must have been wondering what the connection was between his visit and the two murders. But Gann was hardly in a position to explain to him that it was not a sinister connection.

When all three men were in their robes, they started off towards the bus station. Whenever Jenks could not see him, Boggs would make exaggerated faces and point at him—or at the gun that was now concealed beneath his robes. Gann didn't know what to make of his behaviour. They arrived at the bus station just as the Grand Dragon was saying, 'You! White woman! Come here!' 'Jesus Christ,' Boggs said, in a tone more reverent than profane. 'Will you look at that?'

'What?' Gann's view was blocked by another Klansman's tall hat.

'At that angel from heaven! I'd swear it was her, except that I know she must be an old woman by now. But, glory, she's the spit-and-image of her!'

'Of who?'

'Of that girl I told you about in Birth of a Nation, the one who threw herself off a cliff to escape being raped by that nigger. Mae Marsh, her name was, and she was an angel of...' Pete gasped. 'No, he can't do that!'

It was then that Clara, being of the same opinion, actively prevented the Grand Dragon from striking the lovely angel from heaven, after which, as we know, was pure pandemonium. Pete fought his way to the front of the crowd of Klansmen, who seemed to be in some confusion whether to remove Clara from on top of their leader or to kick her to death then and there. It was then, too, that the busload of ministers and leaders of CORE arrived from Washington. The thirty of them, blacks and whites in nearly equal proportions, filed in through Gate 1, singing We shall Overcome. At first weak, the song grew in volume as the Negroes already in the station picked up the strain. Soon it quite dominated the room. Caught by surprise the shouters and screamers, the brawlers and kickers, stopped shouting, screaming, bawling, kicking.

When the song was ended, a Negro Minister (his face seemed strangely familiar to Gann; had he.seen it in newspapers?) walked forward in silence till he was stopped by the main body of the crowd of whites. 'May I pass through, please?' he said softly.

'Pass back to Washington, you black sonofabttch,' someone shouted, though it was no one standing immediately in his path. Gann could feel the violence in the air as tangible as rain. The other Klansmen, all but himself and Peter Boggs, had lowered their hoodwinks.

A group of Klansmen in red approached the Negro minister, encircling him. A boot flashed out from under a silk robe, aimed at the minister's crotch, but he sidestepped it neatly. Then, as if on signal, the entire group of Civil Rights workers sat down, huddling themselves in the familiar protective positions of foetuses. They took up their song once more with even greater emphasis and volume. In a moment the other Negroes in the station had joined in. The Caucasian mob, not to be outdone, began chanting: 'Two, four, six, eight! We don't want to integrate!' But their chant followed the rhythm set by the singers and served rather to accompany than to disrupt the hymn.

Peter Boggs approached Gann. 'It ain't right, Gann! Did you see him, did you see the Grand Dragon? He was going to hurt that sweet little thing! I couldn't believe my eyes. And these folks: what have they done that's so awful wrong? I don't understand what the Klan is for any more. Honest I don't. It ain't right! I guess I don't have to tell you though, do I?'

'Why?' Owen asked, bewildered by Boggs's outpouring.

'Well, 'cause you've known it was wrong all along.'

'I don't understand what you're talking about, Boggs.'

'Jesus Christ, what do I have to do to make you understand? You, of all people!' A light dawned in Peter Boggs's eyes: he had just realised what he had to do to make everyone understand.

Solemnly, with a full sense of the significance of the gesture, the old man pushed his way to the front of the crowd of Klansmen. Then, hiking up his white robe, he sat down alongside the Negro minister and joined in the singing.

Farron Stroud and a few others who knew Pete, laughed as if in anticipation of the punch-line of a joke, but when the song had droned on a while longer and they were still waiting they began to grow uneasy.

'Kladd Boggs!' Farron shouted. 'What do you think you're doing? Get on your feet, you son of a bitch, and shut your mouth with that singing.'

Negroes and whites were crowding around Boggs and the Negro minister to see the cause of this new excitement. For different reasons, laughter rippled through both mobs. A Negro youth sat down on the other side of Boggs, and soon others had joined him. Their voices took on a new, exultant note.

Gann felt sick. If it had been Pete's intention to set the crowd rioting once again, he could not have acted with more cunning. At this point, clearly, there was no remedy but the State Police. He looked about for the patrolman he had glimpsed when he'd entered the station. Now he was beyond the ticket windows, standing by a bank of phone booths at the very rear of the building. He ran over to him, self-conscious in his swirling silks.

'Have you called in more police?' he asked hopefully.

'Can't,' the policeman said smugly. 'Those niggers have cut the lines.'

'There's another booth outside, on the corner.' 

'My job is to prevent nigger violence right here in this building. I can't go traipsing off now. That's just common sense.' Owen blushed with anger, though he'd expected no other answer than this.

'Besides,' the policeman went on confidentially, 'Farron Stroud told me to let him handle this, him and that big-wheel friend of his. So what can I do? Farron stands a good chance of being our next sheriff, of being my boss.'

Owen left the bus station by Gate 4, the rearmost exit, then circled it on the boarding platform, passing the two parked buses. He did not run for fear of attracting attention to himself —though he could hardly hope, wearing Klan regalia, to melt into the crowd.

Here outside the station, however, there were no crowds at all. Up and down the empty street flags and bunting flapped desultorily in the salt breeze—and that was all the activity there was.

'Where you going, Gann?' said the Knight-Hawk, Jenks, stepping out from behind a parked car. Caught downwind of him, Gann's impulse was to choke.

'I've gone ... I'm going to call the State Police. There's getting to be too many niggers around here. We're outnumbered. It isn't safe.' It was not, he had to admit to himself, very convincing.

'Is that so?' said Jenks, exhaling powerfully. 'Is that so? I think I'll come down to the corner with you, if you don't mind. With that robe on, you stand a good chance of getting in trouble yourself. But with me along ...' Jenks raised the barrel of the shotgun concealed beneath his robe ... you won't have anything to worry about.'

Owen felt uneasy about the Knight-Hawk's easy acquiescence. Outside the phone booth he lifted his robe and found a dime in his trousers pocket. Jenks took a position several feet from the glass door. He was peering up and down the empty street as though looking for someone ... or as though making sure no one was there.

Owen understood, too late, what Pete had been trying to tell him: they know. The Klan had found out that he had been spying on them. In fact, it had probably been Boggs who'd figured it out. And when the Klan found itself betrayed there was little question how they would deal with the traitor.

At the double tinkle of the dime entering the coin-box, Jenks stiffened like a Pavlovian log. He lowered the shotgun barrel till it pointed at the sidewalk rather than at Gann, who quickly dialled O for Operator. Jenks seemed to regard the telephone as a potential witness to the murder he was about to commit.

'Operator,' said the operator.

'Operator, I want to be connected with the State Police,' he said. This is an emergency—please connect me directly.'

After a very short pause a male voice drawled, 'State Police, Norfolk. Sergeant Bradford here.'

'Hello, this is Owen Gann. I am an agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.' Gann and Jenks exchanged wintry smiles. 'And I want to report a race riot at the Green Line bus station in Norfolk.'

'Fine. We'll check into that.'

'Check into it!' he echoed indignantly.

He was about to read the riot act to Sergeant Bradford when he saw his chance for escaping from Jenks. A Buick turned the corner sharply and stopped only a few yards away, double-parking. Owen hung up the phone, and Jenks took a step forward but without raising the shotgun. The driver got out of the car and walked towards the bus station. He glanced over his shoulder at the two Klansmen curiously, an ironic smile playing on his lips. At first, because he was not wearing his toupee, Gann did not recognise him. When he did he swore.

'You can say that again,' said Jenks.

Gann set off after Roderick Raleigh, intending to question him. Perhaps the man was still trying to get his daughter back from the kidnappers. Or perhaps (as his disappearance and the double murder in Bittle's cabin made it seem more and more probable), he was one of the kidnappers. In either case...

'Where do you think you're going?' Jenks asked.

'I've got to follow that man,' Owen replied, not without a sense of how ridiculous he sounded.

Jenks laughed odorously. 'You ain't going to do nuthin, Owen Gann, except get killed.'