Chapter 21

Came, thick night, Roderick whispered, and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell... But what came after that? For the life of him he couldn't remember. Small difference for already, quite uninvoked, the darkness was well advanced: the western horizon was tinged by only the slightest slimmer of indigo. How about: Come, you spirits that tend on moral thoughts! unsex me here ...? No, fine as it was, that wasn't quite what he wanted either.

Remarkable, how one always seemed to come back to William Ernest Henley's Invictus!

Things had not been going exactly the way he would have liked. Things seemed to be getting rather out of hand. He wasn't worried, not at all ... but did feel slightly resentful at having to make such an effort.

The African Church was a small, white-frame structure set back agreeably from the street and shaded by two gloomsome oaks. On each side of the church were vacant lots; the buildings formerly occupying these sites seemed rather to have collapsed than been torn down, for something vaguely architectural still lingered on at the centre of each lot. Roderick had parked his newly acquired '61 Dodge (rented from its astonished owner for a price far exceeding what he could have sold it for) on the farther side of the small park fronting the church, and he sat in it now, waiting.

The night was going to be clear, but moonless: the luck wasn't all against him. In fact, since his escape from the closet he'd had more than his share of good fortune: sighting Alice at the bus station; being able to find, so quickly after abandoning Bittle's cursed Buick, a replacement; and—his best piece of luck—finding out from the young highway patrolman, when he'd been stopped after his third or fourth passage before the stopped bus, that the demonstrators were to be returned to Norfolk, not the station but directly to the doors of the African Church.

That the patrolman had not recognised him meant that his description was not yet being generally circulated. Soon, inevitably, a search would begin for him, and by that time he had to be sure that Bessy and Alice were disposed of.

And then: was it better to buy a forged passport and seek comfortable oblivion in Rio or to take the risk of returning to Delphinia? With Alice dead, her trust funds would be dispersed among the several charities specified in Morgan Duquesne's will, so there was no material advantage to be gained. There were, however, considerations of a more idealistic nature: if he returned to Baltimore and suffered the indignity of an inquiry into Alice's kidnapping and death (and nothing, surely, would be proven against him, though much might be suspected) then he need not abandon his identity and good reputation to lead a life of exile and disgraceful anonymity. Besides, what was the use of committing a perfect crime if immediately afterwards you made tacit confession of your guilt by absconding? Indeed, the whole point of murdering Alice was getting away with it. Nietzsche, somewhere, had said something much to the same effect, had he not?

Roderick was very tired. Hadn't slept for ... how long? Macbeth, as he recalled, had also complained about not getting enough sleep. Heroism took a lot out of a man.

The trampled patch of parkland between Roderick and the African Church was not entirely empty tonight. As the darkness deepened, the number of sheeted woodland figures— Klansmen certainly—increased. They flitted among the trees and teeter-tottered like so many midsummer sprites. Roderick, in his heart, welcomed them. They boded confusion, rioting, opportunities.

The bus arrived, and the busy sprites hid themselves behind trees and parked cars. The church doors opened and the demonstrators filed out of the bus and up the half-flight of steps. By some quirk of group behaviour, each person upon reaching the entrance stopped and turned halfway round to glance at the darkness of the park. At such moments, with the light behind them, they were exemplary targets. Roderick left his car and advanced through the park. He felt the same godlike calm descending upon him that he had known in Bittle's cabin, the same absolute self-possession.

Alice and Bessy were the last ones to leave the bus. There was no mistaking Bessy's gross, hobbling figure nor the slight dark child holding her hand. They stood at the top of the stairs, framed in the doorway, longer than any of the others had. Roderick used a tree trunk to steady the hand holding the little pearl-handled revolver. Silhouetted so, the target was an almost irresistible temptation.

'You don't want to do that, cousin,' said a voice in his ear, a voice that betrayed the barbarous accents of a redneck.

The two figures disappeared from the doorway, and the doors were closed. It was just as well: it had been a risky shot. With a sigh Roderick turned to confront the Klansman. 'My good man ...' he began pacifically.

The Klansman laughed and nudged Roderick's belly rudely with the barrel of his shotgun. 'Come on. Tell that one to the Grand Dragon.'

As soon as he satisfied the Norfolk police that he was, as he had claimed, a Federal agent Owen called up Madding and told him of seeing Roderick Raleigh near the bus station, as well as of his suspicions concerning the manner of the Raleigh girl's 'disguise'. Madding thought Gann's theory wildly improbable, and in support Gann could only offer the dream that had inspired it. The state police, who were still, hours after the demonstrators had been shipped back to Washington, guarding the bus station, were given Raleigh's description but he was, expectably, no longer to be found in that area; the Buick, however, was discovered where Raleigh had left it, double-parked and tagged. The steering wheel and dashboard had been wiped clean of prints, but analysis elsewhere showed clear prints of Dorman, Bittle, and the child. This evidence alone seemed to confirm the father's complicity in the kidnapping plot, but unfortunately it did not suggest any new directions for tracking down either the child or her abductors.

Gann was ordered to return to Stroud's Bar where the Klansmen had reassembled to wait out the afternoon. Though the Klan had seen through his disguise, they were not aware (so long as Jenks was held incommunicado) that he knew this and their ignorance was, in a sense, his advantage. Madding regretted (he said) sending Gann into the midst of his would-be assassins like a lamb to the slaughter, but there was no one else who could take Gann's place while anyone could be detailed to continue the Raleigh investigation. Gann said he understood and, when Madding said good-bye, made a bleating sound in answer. Then he was off to the stockyards.

At the bar Farron welcomed the strayed lamb back to the fold with great conviviality and cold beer. Owen was introduced to the Grand Dragon, who was holding court to a chosen inner circle in the black-out room at the back of the bar. Here Gann spent the rest of the hot afternoon drinking and listening to selections from the Grand Dragon's inexhaustible store of dirty jokes.

At dusk the Klan formed a Klavalcade to drive through Norfolk's niggertown on the way to the African Church. Gann was to ride in Farron's car. He was given the front seat next to the driver—the death seat, he reflected, without humour.

Despite the Klan's repeated warnings, perhaps because of them, the streets of niggertown were swarming. The crowds jeered at the passing Klavalcade. 'We'll demolish them sons of bitches,' Farron muttered in the back seat. Murmuring agreement, the driver speeded up perceptibly, closing the interval with the next car in the procession. The jeering grew louder. It was a most unsatisfactory Klavalcade.

Further on, they came to a row of shops that seemed to have been looted, though they were deserted now—except for the policemen.

'Hey!' Owen called out, as they passed a sidestreet. 'Look down that way. Is it a fire?'

'Sure enough,' the driver agreed, slowing. 'But it wouldn't be any of our boys. Not down there. Not as early as this.'

'Hell,' said Farron, 'it's as plain as day—they done it. Like them niggers in Watts, they're burning down their own houses. Saves us the trouble and it'll keep the police away from the African Church besides. Them dumb niggers is doing our work for us.'

A few blocks farther on the Klavalcade passed within a hundred feet of another fire—at the back of a looted hardware and paint store. In the eerie blue and blue-green flames they could make out small knots of figures locked in struggle. A fat policeman appeared in silhouette clubbing a prone figure with metronomic regularity. Alsatians bayed at the speeding Klavalcade.

When they arrived at the African Church it was filled with worshippers though the bus from Washington was still awaited. There wasn't a policeman in sight.

'Beautiful,' said Farron, which was for him a highly uncharacteristic expression. 'Now here's what me and the Grand Dragon decided. A few of us is going over by that church later on, when everyone's inside, and we'll bring along a little something for the collection box.' Farron held up a gasoline can.'I understand they're going to set off some fireworks in the park after the church service, and we'll just hurry things up a mite. But they'll have fireworks, won't they, boys?'

The boys cheered zestfully.

'Owen Gann! Don't you go getting lost again. You and me and the Kleron are volunteering to set that fire. If that's all right by you?' Farron's tone was almost openly jeering. There was less and less need, as the moment of his assassination approached, to keep up appearances.

Somewhere Gann had heard that of all deaths the most excruciating was to be burned alive. Despite that the evening was by no means cool, he shivered as he stooped to pick up the two gasoline cans.

'Here comes the bus,' announced the Kleron.

The church doors opened. The demonstrators filed in. When the door closed upon the last of them, Owen, Farron, and the Kleron moved forward through the darkness to the strains of Hark! From the Tombs a Doleful Sound.

After the hymn the Negro minister stood up and preached and like all the sermons Alice had ever heard it was very dull. If she'd been in her own church on Gwynn River Falls Drive or in the chapel at school, at least there would have been something pretty to look at, but the decorations in this church were simply silly. Right above the main altar, where the tabernacle should have been, there was a doll wearing a sleazy gold dress and a spiky gold-foil halo. It was meant to be Baby Jesus, she supposed.

She watched the minister, who was wearing a red robe like one of the Klansmen at the bus station. He had bushy white hair, pruned close on the sides of his head but thick on top like a lamb's fleece. He was talking about St. Paul.

And do you suppose it was easy for him to turn the other cheek? Paul, who used to go around persecuting Christians? It was easy for Jesus, you say, to love His enemies, because He had a loving nature. But the rest of the world isn't like that. The rest of the world is human and weak, and if you turn the other cheek, chances are you'll just get hit again. Wiiat's Jesus saying anyhow? Does He want us to sell ourselves back into slavery?

There was a subdued murmur of pious No's about the church, but somebody whispered quite clearly into Alice's ear: 'That's exactly it!'

Alice turned to confront the whisperer, a black girl somewhat older than herself, with braces on her teeth. Alice was rather shocked, since at St. Arnobia's it was thought very bad form ever to discuss anything that Reverend Burbury said. She held

up a finger to her lips. The girl with braces stuck out her tongue.

When Jesus went into the Temple of Jerusalem and drove out the money-changers, how did He do it? With soldiers and police dogs? With tanks and tear gas? No—with a little switch. Those money-changers were afraid of Him, not because of that switch, but because in their hearts they knew their own guilt and shame.

The girl with braces hissed at Alice: 'Aunt Jemima!' Alice retaliated with, 'Atheist!'

'That's right,' said the girl, with a proud tilt of her head. 'I am an atheist.'

Alice was utterly confounded and no little bit impressed. She'd never met an atheist before. 'Are you really?"

The girl nodded. 'Really.' Then, topping it: 'And I'm a Communist too.'

Now let's look at what St. Paul really had to say about this business of loving our enemies. Let's turn to Romans, chapter 12, verses 19 and 20. Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath

'But you can't be a Communist! You're too little.'

'This is a democracy, and I can be anything I like. I don't always follow the party-line but I'm a lot less deviationist than my parents. They're Trotskyites. I'll bet you don't even know what that means.'

Alice shook her head, smitten with admiration.

'My name is Tildy,' the girl said, 'but I'm going to have it changed when I'm older. It's a finky name. I'm going to be called Ivan, and that's what you should call me if you want to be friends. What's your name?'

Alice hesitated. It was important what name you gave to a new friend. 'Would it be all right if my name was Dinah?'

'Sure. But it isn't a very revolutionary name, is it?'

St. Paul doesn't promise some far-off, by-and-by heaven, does he? He says coals of fire are going to be heaped on our enemy's head. Coals of fiery shame and guilt, and when he's burned long enough under those coals, he'll be cleansed, the way the lips of Isaiah were cleansed. He's going to die—when he sees that other cheek turned to him, our enemy's going to die inside himself, roasted on the coals of his own guilt, but out of that fire is going to come a new friend. It will be a long time before white men and black are truly friends, but that time will come. That time must come. We will make that time come.

There was a burst of sound, like ragged applause, and the window above the flimsy wood altar collapsed, knocking over the doll in the gold dress.

'Get down!' roared the minister.

'Get down!' Bessy yelled, yanking Alice from her seat on the pew to the floor. But most of the other people in the church ignored the minister's command and were thronging around the windows and the door, trying to see what was happening.

'Dear me,' said Alice. 'What in the world is going on?'

'They're shooting at us, comrade,' Tildy replied. She had crawled under the pew with Alice. 'A bunch of piggy ofay bastards are shooting at us. Coals of fire! If we heaped coals of fire on their heads, they'd just use them to set one of their crosses burning.'

'What does ofay mean?'

'Jesus, where you been all your life, Dinah? Ofay means white. White people are anack-narisms, that's what I say. They're throwbacks to the ape. It's a fact. They'll disappear from the face of the earth some day. The man of the future is black. I'm an African Nationalist, and when I grow up I'm going to join the Black Muslims.'

Alice, for the moment, was rather glad she was black. Then another explosion rocked the church and she wished, with much more force, that she were any other colour at all.

The fat Klansman stood in the shadow of a tree. The only light was a muted flicker from a street lamp filtered through rustling leaves; it was not possible, therefore, to see what colour his silk robe was, except that it was not white like the majority of Klansmen's.

This is the Grand Dragon,' said Roderick's captor, pushing him forward to that august presence.

'What am I supposed to do—bow down and kiss his feet?' Roderick asked, out of humour.

'I found him in the middle of the park, Brother Dragon, aiming this little revolver at the niggers.' He handed the gun to the Grand Dragon who pocketed it indifferently.

'I wouldn't have thought the Klan would concern itself over a nigger or two being shot down,' Roderick said sarcastically.

'We do if it's us who have to take the blame,' the Grand Dragon replied. 'Sam, you can leave us alone together. He knows which side of this shotgun he's standing on—he won't make any trouble.' When Sam had left, the Grand Dragon went on: 'By the sound of your voice, I'd say you were a Northerner.'

Roderick made no reply, for there was something ... something about the man's voice ...

'Sounds to me like you're a Yankee agitator. One of Martin Luther Coon's boys, I'll lay odds. And you probably got a card in your wallet says you belong to the National Association for the Advancement of Coons and Piccaninnies.'

'Probably,' Roderick said scornfully.

'Let's have a look-see. Stay standing where you are and throw it to me.'

'Rather an indirect way of picking pockets, isn't it?' Roderick said, tossing his wallet to the Grand Dragon.

The Klansman set aside the shotgun and raising his hoodwink looked through Roderick's wallet with a pen torch.

'Roderick Raleigh,' he read from a driver's licence. He took the money out and tossed the empty husk back to Roderick. Then, coming a few steps closer he aimed the beam of the torchlight at Roderick's face.

At first he was dazzled, but soon he was able to see, dim in the backwash of light, the fat weary face of the Grand Dragon, all pouches and jowls. The grape-cluster lips were puckered in a fleering smile, just as Roderick had always remembered them.

'Donald Bogan,' he whispered. 'You.'

The torchlight went out, and in the intenser darkness that followed Donald Bogan hooted like an owl. 'Well, Roderick, my brother, long time no see. Can't say I haven't been hearing about you though. Matter of fact, one of the reasons we're out here tonight is because that Nigger-boy Bittle made off with you and your daughter. We're revenging you, brother. That's what it said in the newspaper, anyhow. Of course, Nigger-boy Bittle will never tell anybody different. He's paid the price for his deed already. You wouldn't know how that happened, would you, Roderick my brother?'

Roderick cleared his throat, to no better purpose than to punctuate the awkward silence.

'Remember, Roderick, that night in the fraternity house? Good old Kappa Kappa Kappa—those were our golden days. Remember that night that you'd just got done reading Crime and Punishment for Humanities 1-2-3, and we were shooting the breeze about whether it was possible to kill a person just for the hell of it and not feel guilty afterwards? I remember that night very well, Roderick, because it was one of the few times you and I were in agreement about anything. Do you remember?' 'I remember,' said Roderick.

'Well, how about it, Hot Rod? Do you feel guilty or not?'

'Not in the least,' Roderick said aloofly. 1 don't know what you're talking about.'

'Like hell you don't! You're going to make me a rich man, you horse's ass! Where you got that million dollars hid? You got a car around here? Is it there?'

'As I've been sensible enough to hide it elsewhere, you're welcome to look in my car. Don't worry, Bogan—I'll cut you in. I always have, haven't I?'

'Cut me in! Why you stupid asshole, you're going to give it to me. All of it.'

'That will be as it will be. A strange thing, Bogan, but as it happens I was asking after you only the other day. I'd been under the impression, for some reason, that you were dead.'

'Might as well have been. Dad cut me out of his will—not on account of that fiasco at the cathouse but for something serious that happened later on, and afterwards he told people I was dead. He probably believes I am by now. It's been eight years. Eight rotten years. But you—you haven't had it so bad from what I gather. Marrying that Duquesne bitch

'And being cut out of her father's will. Oh, I've done very well!'

Bogan chuckled.'I heard about that, too. Serves you right.' He bent down to retrieve the shotgun he propped against the tree trunk. 'But we've got the rest of our lives to reminisce in. Just now we should be shooting niggers, right? Right! You wouldn't like to join our little turkey hunt?'

Roderick realised that Bogan was holding out the shotgun to him. Was it going to be as easy as that? He accepted it, with sincere thanks.

'Mind you don't take a shot at me, now.' Then the dumb bastard deliberately turned his back. Didn't Bogan realise how many years he as fantasied such a scene as this? Had his position as a leader of the Klan in some way given him delusions of invulnerability? Only outright madness could explain such folly.

'First thing we do,' Bogan explained, as he moved in a crouch towards the African Church, 'is shoot in the windows.

That's just to throw a scare into them. Aim high, 'cos some of the boys are going to be gathered round the church setting up Act Two. Raleigh? You with me, Raleigh?' 'Absolutely,' Roderick said. 'Don't drag-ass, or they'll start without us.' The first volley of shot splintered the July night and the windows of the African Church. Roderick stepped forward quickly, pressed the gun against the back of Bogan's head and pulled the trigger.

Bogan laughed. 'Oh, you dumb bastard, I knew you'd try that. You didn't think I'd hand you a loaded gun.'

Roderick swung at Bogan's head with the shotgun but the fat man moved faster than a fat man should. The gun barrel came down harmlessly against his shoulder. Then, quite unaccountably, Roderick's lungs collapsed and the dark Mendelssohnian scene swam before his eyes. Again Bogan's fist dug into his stomach and seemed to stop only after reaching the interior of his ribcage. Bogan was laughing. Roderick kneed him viciously—at least his intentions were vicious—but Bogan's laughter continued without a pause:

'You poor dumb bastard, Raleigh. A fellow like you is just made to be torn apart.' But this rhetoric made Bogan careless, and the side-hand blow that he had intended for Roderick's throat, the blow that would have driven him.to his knees, ready to be kicked, glanced off the side of his head clumsily. Considering his inexperience in these matters, Roderick acted in a manner that even Nietzsche would have been compelled to admire. Though it had been above a decade since Roderick's one and only judo lesson, his hip block worked. The heap of bones and fat that was Donald Bogan flopped, fishlike and breathless, at Roderick's feet, and Roderick's feet lashed out in alternation at that heap of bones and fat and blood. He was rewarded by the solid gnashing sound of heel against bone, Bogan's responsive cry, a prayer beseeching more pain, a prayer Roderick answered, answered with supererogation, kicking the corpse till, out of breath, he could kick no more.

He found the shells for the shotgun in Bogan's shirt pocket. He let him keep the gun and the money he had taken, for when the police found Bogan's mangled body (he would be supposed, surely, the just victim of a Negro's rage) it would be evident immediately that he, Donald Bogan, Roderick's immemorial enemy, had been the master-mind of Alice's kidnapping. There had always been superficial points of resemblance between Bogan and Roderick so that if, by some mischance, there should prove to have been witnesses to Roderick's conduct today (if, for instance, that young highway policeman who'd stopped him should remember his face), it might be plausibly argued that the witness had seen not Roderick but Bogan.

God, Roderick thought, helps those who help themselves.

Roderick helped himself to the Grand Dragon's robe and hoodwink. Wearing these, he need fear no witnesses for anything he might have to do tonight.

'Drenched, you say? The front steps too?' asked Farron Stroud.

Owen Gann replied by dropping the emptied gasoline can to the grass.

'Then it looks like we're about ready to have ourselves a little weenie roast. Got a book of matches, Kleron?'

With the over-emphatic miming of an unskilled actor, the Kleron searched his pockets. 'Damned if I do, Farron!'

Then it seems you'll have to do us that service, Brother Gann.' All day Farron had been bearing down heavily on that 'Brother' like someone who has just discovered a new word and wants to decorate every sentence with it. 'I'll have to give the signal for the boys to shoot in the windows, 'cos it's beginning to look like something's holding up the Grand Dragon. When you hear the guns go off drop a lit match to that pile of tinder. Any questions, Brother?'

Bile, not questions, rose to Owen's mouth. Reluctantly, but with a feeling that he was performing an action for which his whole life had been a preparation, he took the matches from his shirt pocket. Strange, that he, of all these Klansmen, should be the one to light this holocaust. An irony that Farron Stroud, beneath his hoodwink, was undoubtedly enjoying as well.

Farron whistled and shotguns replied to his melody. After the echoes had died the Kleron had still not fired, though his rifle was aimed now at Gann's chest. He was not to be allowed his punishment until he had committed the crime that was demanded of him.

He struck a match against the side of the box and dropped it, flaming, into the gasoline-drenched tinder. The flames at once leaped to chest height and he stepped back.

'Just stay right there, Brother,' Farron called out. If you back away from that fire any more, the Kleron here has orders to shoot you. We'd like to see you burn though.'

There were many things he might have done but he did none of them. He realised that his bleating over the phone earlier had been more than a joke, that even then he'd been preparing himself for such a moment—or such a moment for himself.

He would have preferred, abstractedly, a martyrdom by fire —such a martyrdom as he had himself kindled for those inside the church—but his flesh, assaulted by the mounting flames, flinched, and he retreated that single step that Farron had warned against. The Kleron's aim could not fail at this range. A second fire ringed his heart and swept up the mesh of his nerves to the brain there to be extinguished in an utter and instant dark.

Against all expectation, he awoke. He was lying on his back, the whole of his field of vision occupied by the solid sheet of flame that the church had become. Through the roaring a few individual cries and screams could be heard and Owen knew a moment of relief. He was certain that no one had been killed by the fire. Had anyone died he, who would have borne the guilt, would not have been allowed to go on living, for he had faith in a Providence that governs events with strict accountancy.

Belatedly he realised that the pillar of fire on his left was no part of the general conflagration, but instead Farron Stroud in his red silk robe. Farron held up his hoodwink in order better to view the fire. The customary cruelty of his lips was slackened; the lower lip drooped in a smile of sated happiness.

No longer disposed towards a non-violent, violent death (should he dispute with Providence?), Gann reached for the automatic he kept in his shoulder holster. The Kleron's bullet had made of the gun a tangle of steel little better than shrapnel. Inside its holster, the gun had saved his life; now, in his hand, it might cost him no less; for by his gesture in drawing it from under his robe he had betrayed to Farron that he was other than a dead man.

Suddenly the air about them was filled with traceries of coloured flame. The fire had reached the store of fireworks in the basement of the church, and such of the explosives as were self-propelling had been set off, to escape through the basement windows. On green flare flew directly at Farron, tangled in the

folds of his silk robe and exploded into fountains of green light. Farron threw up his arms and became for a moment a flaming cross.

Roderick had hoped they would all burn up inside the church, but whoever the damn fool had been who'd spread the gasoline around it had neglected the wooden steps and the whole congregation had escaped, Bessy with the child in tow among the first. Roderick's second hope had been that the Klansmen would use their shotguns on the mob of Negroes. It was just the sort of outrageous action Klansmen seemed to be doing all the time—but not, as luck would have it, tonight.

Now Bessy and Alice were resting in the park, Bessy incongruously fitted into a swing. Alice's head was turned away from Roderick, so it was Bessy who saw him first, in the robes of the Grand Dragon, approaching.

'We ain't making no trouble, believe me!' she protested at once. 'We'se just dumb black folk minding our own business, an'...'

Roderick acted with decision. No last minute qualms could prevent his finger closing over the trigger, nor could his aim, so close as this, err. The child's corpse tumbled boodily to the ground, half her head shot away.

Bessy lurched forward to prevent what had already happened, but she took no account of how unsteadily she was perched in the swing. She found herself falling backward. Roderick repressed a snicker at the absurd spectacle of her fall. 'I'm afraid, Bessy, that I shall have to use the other cartridge on you.'

Bessy, flat on her back, her legs projecting into the air, began to pray.

'Oh, really now! You don't believe in that sort of nonsense, do you? Only weak people need a god to believe in. It shows a slave-mentality. Try to face death with dignity. You, of all people!'

'For Christ's sake, Roderick, shut your mouth and do...' 

She stopped speaking abruptly as though the words had been wrested from her mouth. Her eyes widened with horror, then lowered with thankfulness as she felt the last heavy drop of pain fall from the faucet and splash into the dark pool beneath.

She'd always somewhat blamed the Lord for giving her a bad heart. Not till this moment had she known it was meant to be a blessing, not till the moment it stopped.

Roderick pressed his hand into Bessy's immense bosom, searching for a heartbeat. 'Dead,' he announced to the night air.

Overhead, as though in honour of the deed, the fireworks began to explode, not serially as at an ordinary Fourth of July exhibition, but hordes of them in the space of one minute—red, white, blue, green, gold—cannoning, illuminating the night for that moment more brightly than even the fire.

A pity, he thought, that Alice can't see this. Fireworks are meant for children.

He regarded the child bleeding at his feet with some tenderness. She had collapsed into an awkward position, and Roderick bent down to dispose her limbs more becomingly. She seemed oddly larger dead than she had been alive. Ordinarily Roderick would have expected the reverse to be true: that a dead person would seem smaller.

He crossed the two hands upon the never-to-ripen breasts, realising with some solemnity the enormity of the thing he had done. He had gone beyond—oh, well beyond! —mere good and evil, transcended the human, all-too-human limitations, of other men. Human? It was a word that scarcely could be said to apply to Roderick Raleigh. To him humanity was no more than an object that he could use as he saw fit—an object no more innately significant than the bauble he toyed with in his fingers, the identification bracelet on the girl's wrist.

Alice had never had an identity bracelet.

He read the name engraved on it by the light of the blazing church: Matilda James. As the suspicion of his error grew, Roderick became distinctly upset. Then, persuading himself that this had been part of Alice's 'disguise', he relaxed. A clever idea—cleverer than Roderick would have given Bessy credit for. It showed a sort of Germanic perfectionism not at all like the old woman.

Now he seemed to see everything about the child askew: her clothes, her face, even the size of her body seemed wrong. He pulled her into a sitting position by the braid across the top of her head. The dead girl's mouth gaped open and Roderick saw the braces on her teeth. With a cry almost of horror Roderick stood up. The hand that had held the braid came away sticky with blood, which he wiped on the silk of the robe.

Had Bessy deliberately tricked him? Had she, during the panic in the church, caught up the wrong child by accident or on purpose? Had she meant this child to be a scapegoat for Alice? Had she been ready, in her anxiety to save Alice, to sacrifice one of her own people? Roderick cursed the dead woman for having once again made a fool of him—and for having fled so far beyond retort.

An alternative explanation occurred: Roderick saw, coming around from the side of the church, a Klansman in a white robe that was ripped down the back. The Klansman ran to the top of the steps and stared down the fiery aisle. Through the tear in his robe were visible most of the letters composing the trademark of Spengler's Beer. Madness? Hallucination? Certainly it was too much to suppose that the F.B.I, man pursuing Roderick was a member of the Ku Klux Klan?

But when this utterly improbable phantasm came bounding across the street into the park Roderick ignored the improbability, ignored the demands of an heroic morality, ignored everything but the adrenal fear that overwhelmed him, and, stumbling over Matilda James, he turned on his heel and ran towards his car.

It was the most terrible thing, terrible beyond belief. Burning down a church and killing people. Because they were black. For no other reason than that. They had done no one harm. They had all been in church. To set a church on fire! And killing people, children, me.

She tried to think, to make sense of the madness going on about her, but the madness was too extreme. It scattered distinct thought like a hammer shattering a looking-glass: afterwards nothing could be made out in it but the pattern of the fractures.

The old man who had taken her by the hand when the panic started in the church had paused beside the car to catch his breath. He had been hurt where the Klansman had clubbed him, and though he told her to be brave there were tears in his eyes. Despite his blackness, he reminded Alice of her uncle. He was even older and more wrinkled than Jason, even more infirm, but beneath the weakness that came of age there was a strength that was also the product of age, though not so invariably.

Another Klansman came out of the park. Alice wanted to run from him, but she did not wish to leave the old man who had been so good to her all by himself. This Klansman's robe was darker than the others', though in the murky glow from the fire, it was hard to see what colour exactly...

Green! Then was this the terrible man who had tried to hit Fay at the bus station? He seemed to have become smaller, to have shrivelled like a green grape that has been put in the oven.

Silently (and it did not seem quite right, somehow, for a Klansman to be so long silent) the green Klansman wrested Alice away from the old Negro, who had very little strength left for any sort of battle. The Klansman's hand circled Alice's upper arm, and he dragged her away from the car and out of the park. She screamed, but among so many other screams hers was inaudible.

She knew him now, this green Klansman. She knew the soft-skinned hand with its onyx ring; she knew the pointy-toed shoes with perforated patterns that tripped on the hem of the over-size robe; she knew the hasty stride that forced her to run along at his side, taking three steps for every two of his. They had been through this same scene already, in another place and context: he had dragged her home once in just this way from a birthday party at her dearest friend's house. She remembered how, on the former occasion, he kept muttering, 'You just wait. Just wait till we get home!' She remembered the incredible injustice of it.

They stopped. They were on a street of ramshackle houses. The windows were dark and the Klan had shot out the streetlight at the corner. Alice tried to squirm free but her father kept a firm grip on her arm. It was quieter here so she began screaming again. He slapped her across the face.

Then he let go of her. It happened so suddenly that she was mistrustful. Why would he let her go so easily unless, for some reason, it suited him? She did not notice the ring of men who'd gathered around them until she bumped into one of them and even then she continued to scream, unable to grasp the fact that she was no more in danger.

'Raping little girls now, Mister Dragon?' one of the men said. He took away Roderick's shotgun. He ripped off the hoodwink from his head, and the toupee came with it. Roderick tried to retrieve, the hairpiece, but when he bent over one of the Negroes hit him in the face and another kicked him from behind. 'So that's what a dragon looks like, is it?' the first man went on. 'I hope I got your title right—you're the Grand

Dragon, aren't you? Of the Invisible Empire?' 'No, I.. .'

'He calls himself a Grand Dragon, but I call him a child-rapist, a gangster, a goddam mother ...

'I'm not a Klansman. For heaven's sake, I wish you'd give a person a chance to explain. Don't judge by appearances.'

'Sure enough, and we're not niggers. It's just appearances that are against us. Oh, I'd like to kick in your clean white face. Instead, I'm just going to blow if off your neck with this shotgun, the way you blew out the brains of that little girl in the park.'

'No. Listen to me ...'

'I'll bet you didn't think anyone was watching you there? Well, that's one advantage of being a nigger, Mister Dragon. Niggers are hard to see in the dark.'

'Oh, pow'ful haahd tuh see,' mocked another of the men.

'Stop making jokes,' a third said gruffly. 'Shoot the bastard, Tommy, and let's get out of here.'

'I'm not the Grand Dragon. Really, you boys are making a tragic mistake. And as for your notion that I'm a child-rapist, well, I must say! That girl there—she's my daughter'

Silence could be the only response to so stupendous a lie.

'Ask her! Alice, tell them you're my daughter.'

The Negroes looked at Alice. 'Yeah, tell us that!' one said mockingly.

She lowered her eyes. 'My name ain't Alice,' she said. 'It's Dinah.' 

'Alice!'

'And my father's back there by the car. The old man that he pushed down. My father's a black man.'

'Got anything else you'd like to say, Grand Dragon?' the man called Tommy asked, raising the shotgun he'd taken from Roderick.

'Alice! Alice, have pity on me! I'm your father!' She looked up, smiling at Roderick's mistake.

'Hold it!' A white man in overalls that advertised Spengler's Beer stepped into the circle of men gathered around Roderick. National Guardsmen followed at a distance. 'Congratulations, men, on capturing this man. He's a killer wanted by the F.B.I., and as I am the F.B.I, that winds things up for tonight. If you'll disperse at once, we'll forget that you were threatening this man when I arrived. As a matter of fact, I don't much blame you. He's a son of a bitch.'

Alice waved good-bye to the black men. The soldiers put handcuffs on Roderick. The Spengler's Beer man was talking to her about something, but since she knew she was safe at last she didn't really have to listen.

'Miss Raleigh, try to understand. You're going home now— to Baltimore.'

'Oh no, you don't understand. The very first thing I must do is to find Bessy. To thank her for saving my life.'

'Bessy's dead,' Roderick said. 'I killed her.'

'No! That isn't true. She was in church with me, just minutes ago. Please, you'll say it isn't true?'

But the man in the Spengler's Beer overalls would only say, to her father: 'Raleigh, you are a slimy monster.'

The soldiers began to lead Roderick away. He said, 'I'm glad of one thing at least.'

'What?' Gann asked.

'That the kid I killed was only a nigger, after all. I won't be convicted by any jury in this state on a charge of killing a nigger.'

Gann's fist came down solidly at the base of Roderick's skull. Roderick collapsed in a swirl of green silk. 'I'm sorry, Miss Raleigh. Please forgive me—you've been witness to too much violence already this evening.'

Alice shook her head. She took his hand and, smoothed out the clenched fist, then put her small hand into his confidingly. 'It's quite all right,' she assured him. 'He was a slimy monster.'