The Intruder

by Charles Beaumont

  “Our organization agrees with you. We believe that the ruling is one of the greatest wrongs this government has ever perpetrated.”

  Shipman could see that it wouldn’t do to display his indifference to a Northern outsider. Might be a newspaperman, or something. “It’s a damn shame, all right.”

  “More than that, Mr. Shipman. We feel that it is the first big step toward the mongrelization of the entire white race in America.”

  Such a thing had never occurred to Shipman. He nodded noncommittally, and said “Yeah.” It was odd to hear this sort of talk from so young a kid. When he was Adam Cramer’s age, he was concerned with girls, mostly, and independence—for himself. Political issues then, as now, fell into the same category as mathematics and philosophy and the like. Certainly he had never had such a serious expression!

  “That’s why it’s so important,” the visitor said.

  “Uh-huh. Well, I own the newspaper in town—I guess you know that—and we fought the thing right straight down the line. Then we got a delegation together and put in appeals and did, well, everything under the sun, but we might just as well have kept our mouths shut for all the good it accomplished.” It was beginning to come back now. For a while he had been a little steamed up, a little annoyed; but the battle was hopeless, it always had been. “The way I figure, though, is like this. There’s close to four thousand people in Caxton, and out of that four thousand, there’s maybe three hundred and fifty nigras. See, they don’t move in here any more because we don’t use them at the mill any more, except as janitors, and what else is there for them to do? I mean, you know people don’t have domestics like they used to. Can’t afford it. So what’ll happen? The same thing that’s been happening—they’ll drift off to Oakville. That’s government oper­ated, I suppose you know that; and they can get work there. But that’ll be the end of it.”

  The young man shook his head. The gesture made Verne Shipman glad of his desk, suddenly. “If you don’t mind my saying it, sir, there’s a lot more to the problem than that. Don’t you see? The government is using Caxton as a sort of test-tube case. If integration works here, then they’ll order it everywhere in the South.”

  Shipman removed his pipe. “I don’t—”

  “If it works here, that will be the beginning of the end, believe me. We’ve studied the question and talked to people in Washington, and that’s the way they’re thinking. You say it will stop with the high school? You’re wrong. Next will come the grade school. Pretty soon separate facilities will start disappearing everywhere. You know niggers as well as I do, better, even, and you know what happens when you give them an inch. Look at Alabama, and that bus business. Or just look at the whole picture in the North. Is it pretty?”

  “Well, now, that’s a good deal different.”

  “Certainly it is. Why? Because of all the niggers in America, only fifteen per cent of them are in the North. I don’t imagine I have to tell you what trouble that fifteen per cent has caused . . .” The young man’s voice was level and calm, but something was happening to his words. Shipman couldn’t tell what it was. But he felt it.

  He started to remark that he was quite familiar with the consequences of the situation, but again he was interrupted.

  “Just add it up, Mr. Shipman. The vote will get easier for them, won’t it, with desegregation? Washington is working on that. And remember, there might be only three hundred niggers here, but there are fifteen million of them in the United States. Did you know that?”

  “I knew the figure was something close to that, yes.”

  “All right now, here’s something perhaps you don’t know. By actual statistics, Negroes represent only nine point nine per cent of the total U. S. population. The total population, see. But what per cent do you think they represent in the South? In Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Tennessee?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Well, let’s put it this way. Out of the fifteen million in America, over seventy-five per cent of them are right here in the South. Over seventy-five per cent.” The young man rose. “With desegregation, the next thing you know, they’ll all be here. And the vote will be right in their back pocket! And then we are really going to see some changes. . . .”

  A hot redness was creeping into Shipman’s face; a long-­forgotten tension growing slowly inside him. “I never thought about it exactly that way,” he admitted.

  “I know,” the young man said, “most folks don’t. They don’t realize.­ That’s the trouble with the South—the people are too open and honest and trusting. They just can’t believe that the government would betray them. But that’s what’s happening.”

  “Well,” Shipman said angrily, “we tried to stop it. We did every­thing we could. It’s a damn law now.”

  “Is it?” the visitor asked.

  “What do you mean, ‘is it’? Of course it is. Hell, the Attorney-General—”

  “I thought this was a Democracy,” Adam Cramer said softly, almost innocently. “And I thought a Democracy was a government based on the collective will of the people.”

  “Of course, of course.”

  “And is it the collective will of the people of Caxton that niggers are to be allowed to mix with whites right under the same roof? Study with them, eat with them, maybe even sleep with them? No. Mr. Shipman, laws can be changed; decisions can be altered—it’s happened in the past. Labor unions have shown us that.”

  Shipman knocked the dottle out of his pipe. “You’re gonna have a hard time selling me on labor unions, fella. I’ll tell you that.”

  “I was only using them as an example,” the young man said quickly. “I mean that group action, group will, can have a positive effect. It created the law in the first place, didn’t it?”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “Well, what do you think, that those nine old men on the bench just happened to sort of get the idea of integrating schools? They didn’t. The Jew politicians behind the NAACP started it, Mr. Shipman, and they put the pressure on. But they were a group, you understand? They were organized. I figure that if a bunch of Communists—whose aim, I don’t have to tell you, is to mongrelize and destroy the United States—if they can create a law, then I figure a bunch of white Americans can get it changed!”

  There was a knock at the door. Shipman stared for a moment, then swiveled his head. “Yes? What is it?”

  Edna Mennen came into the room. She did not look at Adam Cramer. “I thought I ought to remind you that you’re supposed to be practicing with the dogs,” she said. “I got Lucas to interrupt his work. He’s waiting.”

  “Tell him to stop waiting,” Shipman said, after a momentary pause. “Or, here—tell him to work the dogs himself. He knows more about it than I do, anyway.”

  “All right.”

  “And, Mrs. Mennen—I don’t want to be disturbed for a while. No phone calls.”

  The old woman took a breath. “All right,” she said, and looked at Adam Cramer and went out.

  “Close the door!” Shipman waited for the footsteps to recede. “Okay,” he said, “what you say may make some sense—in theory, anyway—but what can we do?”

  The young man smiled. “A great deal,” he said. “If you’re serious about wanting to stop integration—”

  “But it’s going to start tomorrow,” Shipman said, remembering.

  “I know. It can start; let it. That’s even better. But, as I say, if you’re serious—then you’ll listen to what I have to tell you. Because there is a way.”

  “Yes?”

  The young man walked over to the window and stood quietly for a time. “Mr. Shipman,” he said, “I don’t want you to think that I’m encouraging you on something you don’t really feel. Are you seriously concerned?”

  “Of course I am. Always have been. But you haven’t said anything yet. When you say something, I’ll listen.”

  “All right, that’s fair enough. I spoke of SNAP—”

  “What?”

&
nbsp; “The Society of National American Patriots.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Well, we have no state charter here; we’ve operated on a nonprofit basis since the beginning, doing what we could. Now here’s the thing. If we’re able to get a charter, and funds for promotion, we can organize the people of Caxton into a fighting force. We can weld the strength of the town together into one strong unit, and—in different ways; in ways I’ll explain—we can show the Supreme Court that desegregation is never going to work in the South.”

  Some of the tension faded from Shipman. He smiled, a cold, cynical smile. “I see,” he said. “In other words, you want money.”

  “As a matter of fact,” the young man said, “no. We’ll need your acknowledged support now, and your financial support eventually—because this sort of work can’t be done without capital. But I certainly don’t expect you to take what I’ve said on faith. I don’t want a penny from you now.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  “Just this. Mr. Shipman, I’m going to go to the people of Caxton, from house to house. I’m going to introduce myself and tell them about SNAP; and then I’m going to ask them if they want to join the organization. If they do, it will cost them ten dollars membership fee. That’s all. When I get fifteen hundred dollars, then I’ll come back here and ask you to triple that amount. But—this could be a cagey little move, too, couldn’t it? That is, you’re thinking I could already have the fifteen hundred and just wait a while and come back with my song-and-dance. Maybe you’d believe I actually did raise the money, maybe you’d trust me and go along with the idea; then maybe I’d sort of disappear. Isn’t that what you’re thinking?”

  “Maybe.”

  “So we’ll work it another way. When I raise my part of it, I’ll turn it in to you. And you’ll know exactly where I got it and from whom. You’ll hold the money in your bank and simply guarantee SNAP the rest, as it’s needed.”

  “That would make me treasurer,” Shipman said.

  The young man grinned. “That’s right,” he said. “It would.”

  “I . . . don’t know; I’ll have to think a good deal more about it. We’ve had the best lawyers in the state on our side, you know, and they couldn’t do anything.”

  “That’s no surprise, believe me. Lawyers are mostly fools: they work on entirely the wrong principle. Who do they talk to? Politicians. Officials. Bureaucrats. Judges. If you wanted to make your way through a jungle, Mr. Shipman, what would you do—try to talk the bushes into going somewhere else, or hire yourself some people to go out and cut those bushes away? I mean, did your lawyers ever once go to the people and enlist their aid?”

  “I don’t think that’s the point.”

  “Of course it’s the point. It’s why they failed. We don’t work that way; we know a lot better than to try to buck the red tape thrown around by all those government Jews. They’re a minority race themselves, don’t you see, that’s one of the reasons they’re so damned anxious to desegregate the South!”

  Verne Shipman walked to the door, feeling, knowing, that a decision of considerable importance had suddenly been thrust upon him. He wasn’t used to making decisions.

  “We’re going to show Caxton what’s happened in the North, what’s going to happen here, too. Like this—” The young man reached into his breast pocket, extracted a large newspaper photograph from one of the envelopes.

  He put it down on the desk. “Look at it, Mr. Shipman. See how it makes you feel—even if you don’t have children.”

  Verne moved to the desk and picked up the clipping. It showed a Negro soldier in the act of kissing a white girl. He stared at the photograph, then threw it back onto the desk.

  “That’s what’s coming,” the visitor said, “if we don’t put a stop to it now. That, and a lot more.”

  “Do you have a working list?” he asked in a businesslike voice, after a long pause.

  “Not yet,” the young man said.

  “Go to the Farragut County Federation for Constitutional Government, upstairs, next to the Reo Theatre. Find Bart Carey and tell him to phone me.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “I’m not promising a goddamn thing, mister. So far you’ve made noise; good noise, but not much else. I don’t think you’ll get a penny out of this town for any organization of any kind, frankly. Unions aren’t popular in Caxton. But Bart Carey has a list of parents with school kids. If you can get them to go along with you, even for five hundred, I’ll—be willing to lend a hand.”

  “That’s all I ask.”

  “Okay. Now when do you think you’re going to have this thing rolling?”

  The young man smiled. “The money will be pledged before midnight tomorrow, Mr. Shipman. And at least a hundred and fifty new members of SNAP.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it? I tell you what—you drop by the courthouse at seven-thirty tomorrow night. Just take a little drive into town, and drop by. I understand there’s going to be some kind of a meeting.”

  The visitor took another sheet of paper from his pocket.

  “Meanwhile,” he said, “you might look this over.”

  Shipman took the paper, walked with the young man to the door, shook hands.

  Then he went back into the library and sat down. He unfolded the paper, saw the large heading: Integration of Negroes with Whites Unconstitutional!! and read the smaller print carefully.

  He read it three times.

  And each time he read it, his heart beat a little faster.

  6

  Ella was sexing up her hair, giving it that loose, wind-whipped look, when the doorbell rang. In a way, she had not actually expected to hear from Adam Cramer again—he was too unreal; too much a figure out of a movie, for belief—but she’d put on her best dress, just in case. Now she was glad. And, a little frightened. She’d told her father that a stranger might be by and that she might go out with this stranger, provided Tom agreed; still there was that feeling of an improbable fancy coming true. For there could be no doubt that it was Adam Cramer.

  She waited a decent feminine interval, then came out. He stood in the living room, looking exactly as he had yesterday; perhaps a bit more relaxed. He was talking with Tom.

  “. . . hadn’t realized Ella’s father was the editor of the Messenger. I was planning to call on you this week.”

  Gramp hadn’t looked up; he was deeply engrossed in an old Western movie on the TV set. Occasionally he grunted his annoyance at all the ruckus.

  Adam saw Ella and smiled. “Hi.”

  “Hi,” Ella said, with great uncertainty.

  “Why didn’t you tell me that your dad was a celebrity?”

  “Huh? Oh—I don’t know. I guess you two have met?”

  “Yes, indeed,” Adam said. “At least we’ve introduced ourselves.”

  “Well, wait a second; I’ll get my wife,” Tom said.

  Ruth came in from the kitchen, drying her hands on her apron.

  “This is Mr. Adam Cramer,” Tom said slowly. “He wants to take Ella to a motion picture.”

  Ruth blinked. “How do you do,” she said. “You’re—the young fellow that called us yesterday, aren’t you?”

  Adam looked up. “Did I? Gosh, I don’t know. I made quite a few calls. Trying to get things rolling.” He turned to Tom. “I’m sorry I didn’t have a chance to drop by in person today; there are so many houses to canvas. But we can have our talk tomorrow. I’ll stop by your office—that is, if it’s all right.”

  Tom rubbed his chin. “What exactly about, Mr. Cramer? You apparently didn’t make yourself any too clear to my wife.”

  “About the situation at the school, primarily. You see, I’m the executive secretary of an organization in Washington, and we believe we can help Caxton, help the people fight this ruling. That’s it, mainly.”

  “I see.”

  Ella wondered if this was another joke, decided it wasn’t. “Come on, now, let’s not talk politics and stuff when
I’m supposed to be going out on a date. Or am I?”

  “I’m not sure,” Tom said. He turned again to Adam. “Mr. Cramer, it’s pretty unusual, you just dropping into town and setting up my daughter for a date. Is there any good reason why I shouldn’t refuse? She’s only sixteen, you realize.”

  The young man smiled, winningly. “That’s a good attitude, Mr. McDaniel. Where I come from—”

  “Where is that, by the way?”

  “Los Angeles. There, I mean, the parents usually don’t give a darn where their children go. Or what they do. I admire that quality in you, and after I talked with Ella, with Miss McDaniel, I sensed it. That’s why I insisted on coming over so you could get a look at me.”

  “We still don’t know anything about you,” Tom said.

  “Well,” Adam laughed, “I’m twenty-six, which I guess is old compared to Ella; but it’s fairly young to most people. I’m a white American, Norwegian stock. And like I said, I’m in, you might say, social work. I’ll be living in Caxton for quite a while, so I thought it would be nice to make a few friends. Frankly, sir, I’d hoped your daughter could tell me a little about the town, maybe show me some of it.”

  “In the dark?” Tom asked.

  “Sure,” Ella said, winking. “We’re going to use a flashlight.”

  Ruth McDaniel’s face assumed an expression of composure; at any rate, the apprehension was gone. “Would you care for a cup of coffee, Mr. Cramer?” she said.

  “I’d love one.”

  Tom glanced at Ella. “Kitten, why don’t you go and wash your face or press your dress or something. Mr. Cramer and I are going to chat a little.”

  Ella said, “Okay. But the movie starts at 8:17.”

  The visitor’s relaxed manner seemed to reassure Tom. He motioned­ him to the couch.

  “Let’s be honest with one another, young man. Why are you calling people up, going through all this funny routine?”

  “That’s simple enough to answer, sir. We’re on limited funds, and I felt—the organization felt—that it would be better to get a sort of cross-section of opinion before attempting any work.”