by R.J. Ellory
And later we did go. We went down to Savannah on the Georgia state line. It was two days before Christmas. People were drunk wherever we went. No-one was paying much of a mind to anything except what they themselves were involved in. That was fine by me. I felt I passed through those bars like a ghost.
I drank like a ghost too - a short here, a beer there - but Linny and Nathan drank like they'd seen the sign Drink Canada Dry, and taken it as an instruction. They'd start in Georgia and work their way north until they reached the St. Lawrence Seaway and Montreal.
They were loud, they sang together, and when we left some place called The Watering Hole a little before 1 a.m. they appeared incapable of standing without one another's assistance.
I steered them like new-born heifers to the car, their legs giving way beneath them, all elastic knees and rubber feet.
They lay across one another on the back seat of Linny's car, side by side, their faces touching, and in the cool light cast by the streetlamps they appeared to be one entity, two- headed and multi-limbed.
I drove us back. My head was clear. I smoked a couple of cigarettes, I watched the world unfold through each window - the Christmas lights, the trees, the fields that seemed to gather along the edges of the highway to guard my return. Like they'd been waiting. Like they wanted to make sure I got home safely before they slept.
I felt insubstantial against all of this. I felt I could have been anyone, anyone at all. Tonight I was the chauffeur, the help, nothing more than that, and when we arrived back at my house I was almost tempted to leave them out there in the car.
There was a color to my thoughts that had not been present for many years. Perhaps the last time I had really felt this way was a Summer Dance when Caroline Lanafeuille reputedly lost her virginity to Larry James. It should have been me. That was my thought then. It should have been me. Then it was Larry James, Marty Hooper's sidekick, and now it was Nathan, Nathan Verney, my brother, my blood, the man I had left Greenleaf for eighteen months earlier.
But I was strong, and I cast such thoughts aside. I hadn't left Greenleaf for no reason. I had left because I believed my own burden would arrive imminently, but most of all because of the friendship between me and Nathan - I would have expected him to come with me had I gone first, and thus felt I should afford him the same. I convinced myself that I felt nothing for Linny Goldbourne, and that night - sitting in her car smoking a cigarette and turning recent events over in my mind for a few minutes before I hauled them out the back and helped them to their beds - I forced myself to believe that I couldn't care less what happened between them.
'But you did care?'
I nodded. I reached forward and ground the end of my cigarette into the ash tray.
'How much?' Father John asked.
'How much did I care?'
Father John nodded.
'More than I realized. I wanted to be part of everything that was going on. I didn't want to feel on the outside, even on the edge. I wanted to be right in the middle of everything.'
'And what happened between Nathan and Linny was an exclusion?'
I smiled. 'I don't know how they could have made me feel more excluded than that.'
'When did it happen?'
'The day after.'
'The day after you drove back from Savannah?'
'Right,' I said. 'The day after I drove back from Savannah.'
'Tell me what happened.'
I arched my back. The muscles in my shoulders and neck were tense. There was that unmistakable taste in my mouth from too many cigarettes.
'You think there's any way to get a drink, a cup of coffee or something?'
'Sure,' Father John said.
He reached behind him and pushed the buzzer set just beneath the one-way window.
It was less than a minute before the door was unlocked and a guard stepped in.
'Any hope of some coffee?' Father John asked.
'You can use the machine down the corridor by Incoming Administration,' the guard said.
'Would you wait here while I go down and get some?'
'Sure, Mister Rousseau,' the guard said.
Father John smiled, stood up. He took a step towards the guard and pointed at his own collar. 'Father Rousseau,' he said. 'Father Rousseau.'
The guard looked awkward for a second. 'I'm sorry, Father… I'm so used to Mister this and Mister that -'
Father John slapped him on the shoulder as he stepped out through the door. 'Should attend your church a little more often perhaps,' he said. 'Now keep an eye on him, son… I'll be back in five.'
And he was, less than five even, and with him came two styrofoam cups of coffee, and after the guard had left he produced a packet of Orio Cookies from his jacket.
The coffee was good, machine or otherwise, and out of four cookies Father John ate only one. I ate three, barely tasted them, but hell they were good, as good as anything I'd tasted in months.
'So tell me what happened after you came back from Savannah,' Father John said.
I smiled. These memories had so long been folded neatly in some drawer at the back of my mind. Now, as I unfolded them, held them up, aired them to the breeze of my words, I was so aware of their tone and smell, their colors and sounds and feelings. It was amazing to me that I could close my eyes, close my eyes and almost reach out and touch these things. They were that real.
I wondered what would happen to these memories when I was dead.
'After Savannah,' I said, and for a moment my voice sounded like someone else's. 'After Savannah things went strange…'
* * *
Chapter Twenty-Four
'The Invisible Empire,' Robert Schembri whispered across a plastic tray of boiled chicken pieces and dry mashed potato. It was our third meeting in August of 1972, and I was filled to bursting with questions.
'That's what they considered they possessed… an Invisible Empire.'
I glanced over my shoulder. Someone was arguing on the other side of the mess hall. Apparently someone-or-other was gonna get themselves bitch-slapped if they didn't mind their fucking mouth.
Schembri was oblivious to all distractions.
'After the Civil War six Confederate officers got together in Pulaski, Tennessee, December 24th 1865 it was, and they formed this society. The name was based on the Greek word kuklos which meant circle. They were opposed to the Republican representatives of the Reconstruction governments that came into power in 1867. They regarded the Reconstruction governments as hostile and oppressive, and they believed in the innate inferiority of the blacks. They saw their own former slaves rising to positions of civil equality and political influence and this galled them. They committed themselves to destroying the Reconstruction from the Carolinas to Arkansas. They all dressed in white cloaks and hoods, terrorized people, doing everything they could to prevent undesirables from voting and holding office. They burned crosses near the homes of those they wanted to scare up. They started flogging people, mutilating them, killing them sometimes; anything that would produce the desired degree of fear to prevent a continuation of the black-white integration and equalization that was building momentum.
'In Nashville in 1867 they adopted a declaration which upheld their belief in the Constitution, and their determination to "protect the weak, the innocent and defenseless, to relieve the injured and oppressed, and to succor the suffering". They called themselves the Invisible Empire and elected a senior official called the Grand Wizard of the Empire. He carried almost autocratic power and back of him were ten lieutenants called the Genii. They also elected the Grand Dragon of the Realm who was assisted by eight Hydras, the Grand Titan of the Dominion who had six Furies, and the Grand Cyclops of the Den who had two Nighthawks.'
Schembri smiled. 'Fuckin' nuts, eh?'
I smiled and nodded, but once again felt that I could have been anyone, could have been anywhere. Schembri was going to talk any which way as long as he considered someone was listening.
'Anyways, from 1868 to 1870, as the Federa
l occupation troops were being withdrawn from the Southern states and Democratic administrations were being established, the Klan was infiltrated by elements which the Klan themselves considered distasteful and dangerous. The local organizations, the klaverns, became so out of control that the Grand Wizard, Confederate General Nathan Forrest, officially disbanded the Klan in 1869. The klaverns operated independently then, and in 1871 Congress passed the Force Bill to implement the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which guaranteed rights to all citizens. President Grant made a request to all illegal organizations to disarm and disband, and hundreds of Klansmen were arrested.
'In 1915 a new organization appeared in Georgia. A preacher and soldier, Colonel William Simmons, established the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Membership requirements were simple. The new Klan was open to native-born, white Protestant males, sixteen years old and above. Roman Catholics and Jews were excluded, and these people joined the ranks of the blacks and themselves became targets of defamation and attack. They sort of existed somewhere in the background until about 1920, and after World War One, the whole financial and economic slide that occurred in the '20s, the Klan expanded rapidly and appeared strong in Oregon, Kansas, Texas, and down through the South, across Georgia, into Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania… all over the country. They opposed the Roman Catholic Church heavily, said that the Catholics actively threatened the American way of life. They attacked liberals, trade unions, any non-nationals; even striking workers were labeled subversives and targeted for terrorism and hate campaigns.'
Schembri sighed resignedly and leaned back in his chair.
'It was a time of huge political dissent and social unrest, people wanted someone to target, and the Klan effectively did what the National Socialists did in Germany in the 1930s. They gave people a reason, a target, somewhere to direct their frustration and hatred. Combined with the natural sense of xenophobia that people felt, they couldn't help but hit home. They had money, they bribed officials, they held marches, they burned crosses, they dragged people from their houses and flogged them in public. They got away with it for a short while, and then the papers got hold of what was going on and a Congressional inquiry was instigated in 1921. The Klan changed their tactics, and as a result of the publicity they received from that inquiry the membership exploded. By 1924 the Klan claimed a membership in excess of three million. The National Convention of the Democratic Party denounced the Klan, and attempted to outlaw them once again. That attempt was defeated.'
Schembri smiled knowingly and leaned forward. 'The government, whatever they might have said in public, didn't want the Klan disbanded. The Klan kept folks in line, they terrorized the trade unions, and the government was all in favor of that kind of activity. They didn't want the blacks to be equal, whatever the result of the Civil War might have indicated. That was clear when they whacked Martin Luther King.'
Schembri spooned a mess of chicken and potato into his mouth. His eyes were alight, on fire almost. He was in his element.
'The Depression of the '30s reduced the membership greatly, apparently, and the Klan was rife with internal corruption, immoral leadership, all manner of travails. They didn't fold however, and they continued to attack their primary targets - trade union organizers and blacks trying to vote. In 1940 they affiliated themselves with the German-American Bund, a group financed by the German National Socialist Party. They held a huge rally at Camp Nordland in New Jersey, and it was believed at that point that the Klan had never been so organized or well-funded as it was then. The U.S. government knew exactly what was going on, they knew exactly where the money was coming from, and with that kind of network being strengthened they could so easily have investigated and prosecuted the ringleaders. But they didn't. The Klan were like the hydra, cut one head off and another one would grow, and it was estimated that in excess of thirty percent of Congressional and Federal officials were either part of, or in favor of, the Klan's actions.'
Schembri raised his spoon and emphasized each word with a downward motion.
'Shit like this doesn't happen because it happens. Shit like this happens because people want it to happen, you know?'
I nodded. I knew.
'The Federal government kicked up a fuss about unpaid taxes after World War Two and Georgia revoked the Klan Charter in 1947. The Klan's current leader, Samuel Green, died and the structure of the Klan weakened for a short while. However, with the Supreme Court ruling in May of 1954 that racial segregation in schools was illegal and unconstitutional, the Klan got all stirred up again, re-established itself, and went on a heightened recruitment drive. They started bombing places, stepped up the reprisal killings and terrorist activities, and after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 they experienced a huge resurgence in membership. It was estimated that the Klan was as strong in the mid-'60s as it had been in the '20s, though folks obviously didn't publicize their membership so it was hard to determine exactly how big they had become. By the 1970s they were big enough to put known and acknowledged Klan leaders up for Federal and local elections, and these people amassed huge voting constituencies. They now possessed a unity of voice, and whether it was the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan or the National Klan or the United Klans of America, it was still the same thing. And now you have the Union of the Snake, the Valkyrie Charter, the Grand Order of White Supremacy, all these white Anglo- Saxon Protestant neo-Nazi groups right across the country, and they have money, and they have allies and members in the Senate, in Congress, everywhere you look.'
Schembri smiled knowingly and cynically.
'And that, my friend, was what you ran into in North Carolina.'
I looked up. Before speaking to him I had no idea Schembri even knew who I was, let alone the fact that I'd come from North Carolina.
'You think you were targeted because you were there, well you're right. Only thing they might have regretted was that you weren't a nigger. But hell, you were a hippy, as good as damn it, and hippies were communists or Jews or homosexuals whichever way they looked at it. You got involved with someone you shouldn'a gotten involved with, that's the truth my friend. You stuck your little candy cane in a beehive and they done stung your pecker, eh?'
Schembri laughed coarsely and shovelled some food into his mouth.
'And I understand they're planning to kill you, right?'
I nodded. I talked about it with no real connection to what it meant. The death penalty had been presented as the only acceptable penalty by the prosecuting attorney. I knew someone, somewhere had already made the decision. Characteristically, I would be the last to know. At that time it all seemed so unreal and distant and beyond belief that I could have been talking about someone else. It would not be for the best part of a year that the actual truth of what would happen to me would become real.
'You gon' go to your Maker with a clean heart, right?'
I nodded.
'Shee-it, boy, I heard you didn't even put up a fight,' Schembri said.
I opened my mouth to say something, but he cut me short.
'Seems to me anyone who knows anything about you knows you were railroaded, boy… but the fact that they know ain't gonna help you none. People you pissed off are an awful lot more powerful than a few convicts and a couple of Penitentiary wardens.'
He spoke the truth.
'So don't go gettin' yourself involved with any politicians' daughters again, eh? Let that be your lesson this time around.'
Schembri spooned the last mound of chicken into his mouth and stood up.
I opened my mouth to speak, to ask any one of the ten thousand questions I had planned to ask him.
'I gotta go take a piss now, boy… been nice talkin'. I'll see y'around.'
He stepped out from behind the table and started walking.
And then he stopped, suddenly, as if someone had tugged him with a rope, and he turned, slowly, silently, and looked at me with such a strange and disconcerting expression.
He started back toward
s me, his expression focused, intent, and when he reached the table he leaned towards me.
His voice was a whisper, barely that much.
'One more thing,' he said. 'When you go up there -' he nodded towards D-Block on the other side of the building '- you're likely to meet someone. His name is West, Mister West, and he runs that place all by hisself. He's the bossman up there, don't let anyone tell you different. He's a bad, bad man, the very worst… and some long time back he was working for the government on things the government don't like to tell you about. He was employed to take care of certain - shall we say - embarrassments, for folks like Cavanaugh, Young and Goldbourne.'
I was stunned into open-mouthed silence.
Schembri continued.
'Not a word, my boy, not a word of this. You got yourself involved with those people, people who I believe may as well have pulled the trigger on the Kennedys themselves. And look what happened to you and your buddy, eh? West is born out of the same egg, and you let him know what I just told you and they'll find you hanged in your cell just like they found Frank Rayburn. There ain't nothin' you can do about it so I wouldn't even try. You keep that secret, take it to your grave if you have to, 'cause you ain't never gonna prove nothin' an' the only one who'll hurt for it is you.'
