The Intruder

by Charles Beaumont

  “See, now, if they’d shot these guys right away, it would have been okay. But no, they let the damn thing drag on; they let the monsters talk and let the people listen and look at them in the morning.

  “When we finally got around to hanging them, Linker, nobody really gave a rat’s ass. Nobody who’d attended the trials, anyway. It was a dull circus, and we were all relieved to see it end. That was the only thing we felt deeply. Relief.”

  Driscoll honked his horn loudly and angrily at a car that had cut in front of him from the next lane. “That’s what I mean about this job,” he said, grinning. “It muddles your thinking. You have to talk to people and then you start understanding them. Once that happens, there’s just nobody around to hate. And I ask you—without hate, where the hell would the world be now?”

  18

  “You all saw what happened last night,” the tall man said, “and you all know what it means. Now, I’m for law and order, always have been; and so is Georgia, my wife; and no matter what we might have thought personally to ourselves about the ruling, we tried to abide by it. ’Most everybody in Caxton did. But it seems pretty clear that it isn’t going to work. Attendance at the school is down from eight hundred to four hundred and twenty—four hundred and twenty! It’s going to keep dropping, too. Every day.”

  Tom looked at the man who had been his friend for eight years and tried, as Dave Masters continued to speak, to remember the times they had shivered in duck blinds together, slept in fields and talked all night. He could remember the times well, but somehow, he could not connect them with this thin, stuttering, apologetic person. Dave wasn’t a coward, not the Dave he’d known! Where’d this guy come from, anyway?

  He glanced at Ruth. She was listening, as she had been listening all evening, intently.

  So were the others: tense in their chairs, silent, hanging onto the words. Randolph Underwood and Mrs. Underwood; the Moodys; the Perkinses.

  Listening.

  “Well,” Masters went on, “what I’m saying is, I feel that we’re on the brink of something pretty terrible here. And it scares me. Not for my sake, though; for my daughter’s sake. Judy. She tells me that with everything upset the way it is, I mean right now, she isn’t learning anything at all! They go through the motions, but since the opening of school, she says she just might as well have stayed home and listened to records. Okay. I thought, like everybody, Well, you have to expect that kind of thing at first. It’s bound to happen. But, listen: school’s been open for quite a little while now, and instead of conditions getting better, they’re getting worse. Okay. So let’s look at the long view. My wife and I talked about it, and I believe it’s something every parent here ought to talk about, too. I mean to say, about the long view: Where do we go from here? What’s going to happen? Where are we headed?”

  The tall man took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his palms. He met Tom McDaniel’s gaze briefly, and there was, or seemed to be, a flicker of guilt. It came out as anger.

  “Let’s be realistic for a minute here,” he said. “Judging from what we’ve seen so far, I think we can say there are only a few possibilities. One, of course, is that everything quiets down suddenly and the kids go back to school and everything is fine. It’s a possibility, but I’ll tell you the truth, I don’t think it’s a very good one.”

  There was a slight murmuring.

  “Second thing is: Attendance drops even more, and we get into real gang fighting. You all know that there’s been three incidents already. Just today, they expelled a nigra named Archibald Vaughan for pulling a knife.”

  “Just a second now, Dave,” Tom said, trying to control his voice. “That’s the way it’ll read in the Northern papers, but the facts are a little different. We know that the Vaughan kid was attacked by three white boys in the bathroom. Jake Nolan’s son saw the whole thing. Archie Vaughan was only trying to protect himself.”

  “I know, Tom, I know. But—”

  “And in addition, we have information that Adam Cramer and Bart Carey have both offered twenty-five dollars to any white kid who can prove he hit a Negro. Fifty dollars if the Negro hits back.”

  “I know! But that doesn’t change what I’m saying, Tom. Violence is violence. I’m only trying to put across that it exists now in Caxton High and might get worse. Whether anybody’s paid or not, or whatever, doesn’t alter the fact that there have been three incidents and there might be more and kids might get hurt.”

  Tom closed his mouth and tried to hold the fury down. It was white-hot inside him.

  “Okay,” Masters said, “the next possibility is that we go on exactly like we have been. No worse, no better. Then maybe two months from now, when everybody sees it isn’t working and can’t work—but those people in Washington won’t cancel the ruling—maybe the Governor steps in and closes the school. Or the other way: if there is a flare-up in fighting, or what have you, he sends state troops. So then we got the town full of soldiers. Or even this, and don’t think it isn’t possible, because it is. Plenty stranger things have happened. These boys with the citizens’ councils might just decide to tear up the school for good.

  “Well, I’ll go back to what I said at the beginning. I’m for law and order. Right or wrong—and it’s wrong; we all know that—we’ve been given a ruling and it’s our duty to try to carry it out. Okay. But it isn’t a black and white problem, and I don’t mean that as a joke. It isn’t cut and dried. Because we have got to think now not only about how we feel, but about our children’s education and maybe even their lives!”

  Dave Masters paused, and glared at Tom.

  “You see,” he went on, “even if there was a chance this business of forcing integration down our throats like a big horse pill could work, it would still mean that our kids would suffer. The government has got the right to try an experiment to see whether it’s going to fail, and in theory I’m for that. I really am. In practice, though, since we know the thing’s bound to fizzle out and end worse than it ever was, I wonder if it’s right for us to sit and watch and do nothing.

  “If our children don’t get killed, they’ll be wasting their time at school, and I don’t think much of either way. I figure, let somebody else pay for the mistake: not my Judy.

  “That’s why I’m withdrawing her from school, and that’s why we’re moving away. If enough of us do that, maybe they’ll get the point. If not,” Masters cleared his throat, “we may be headed for a second Civil War.”

  There was applause and the people gathered around the speaker, and Tom wanted very much to grab his friend’s lapels and scream the truth at him; but his anger had become something else, something that did not spread anxious strength through him but instead drained this strength and left him with a feeling of sadness.

  He took his wife’s hand and left the hall.

  When they had driven for three blocks, Ruth said: “You know, Tom, there’s a lot in what Dave said. Maybe we ought to withdraw Ella, too.”

  In a sense he’d been waiting for it, and was not surprised; in another, he was no less surprised and shocked than if his right hand had suddenly risen of its own accord and slapped him. It was horrible enough to hear your friends talking hateful nonsense, but—

  “Tom?”

  “I’m sorry. A little heartburn.”

  “Probably it was the fried onions. You know you should never eat fried onions.”

  “Go on with what you were saying.”

  “I was only thinking that maybe it would be best to take Ella out of school for a while. Just for a while. Until we see how this thing is going to go.”

  He pulled over to the side of the road, cut the engine, pulled on the brake. “Do you mean that?” he asked.

  “Why yes,” Ruth said. “After all, it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it, that Dave’s right?”

  She waited.

  “Tom, what is the matter with you?”

  Something inside exploded, and he could not check the force of it. “Forget it,” he said. “
Ella goes to school and that’s that. Do you understand?” He reached for the ignition key.

  “No,” Ruth said, slowly, “I don’t understand.” She paused. “Would you like to talk about it?”

  “There’s nothing to talk about. Ella stays at school. Period.”

  She touched his arm. “Darling,” she said, “please. You’ve been so upset the past week that we’ve hardly exchanged a word. It seems to me that this is important enough to discuss. I mean—Tom, don’t you think you’re being a little unfair? You’ve had problems before, all sorts of problems, and you always told me about them. And we’ve had differences of opinion, too—but we talked them over, together. We’re not together any more,” she said, and he could see the tears gathering in her eyes. “I don’t know you any more. I used to think I did, but—”

  Still he could not find words, and he could not bring himself to comfort Ruth, to put his arm about her, pull her head to his shoulder.

  “This is the biggest thing that’s ever come into our lives,” she said. “I didn’t realize that at first, but I do now. We have a decision to make. I don’t want to make it alone. But you’re forcing me to. I asked to discuss it a thousand times, but every time you’ve turned me down. You wouldn’t talk with me, and you won’t talk now. I decided what I thought we’d both consider best, and now you’re angry. Why?” Her voice was rising. “There isn’t anything illegal about removing a child from school, and you know it. That doesn’t break the precious law! Does it?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Well, then, what are you so mad about? Why are you looking at me as if you hated me?”

  “I don’t hate you,” Tom said.

  “Then talk to me! Tell me what I’ve done that’s wrong. Tell me why you’ve shut yourself away from me and all our friends. Tom—I love you, and I want to do what’s right. But I can’t do it by myself. I need your help.”

  Peculiarly, Tom McDaniel found himself remembering, as his wife spoke, a time when he was nineteen years old and how, although he’d long since given up belief in God and Heaven, he could not keep from crossing himself whenever he passed a church. He knew that it was merely an extension of the childish habit of stepping on cracks in the sidewalk, for magic reassurance, for luck, still he could not stop, for to do so would be to admit, irrevocably, that he was an atheist. Eventually, however, Paul Strauss caught him and asked what he was doing and then asked, point-blank, whether or not he was a Christian. And he had to answer, voicing it for the first time: “No.”

  “All right,” he said, looking at his wife. He saw the urgency and love in her eyes and knew, as he had known with Paul, that there could be no more hiding, no more fence-walking, no more comforting self-deception. “I haven’t talked with you,” he said, “because I’ve been afraid. Afraid of what I’d say and of what I’d hear. I don’t think it’s something new, either, because”—the thoughts formed as he spoke—“we’ve never really talked about this.”

  Ruth nodded. “I know,” she said.

  “We didn’t have to, before. It wasn’t necessary, nothing depended on it. But now all that is changed. It’s come too fast, I guess; or we went too long avoiding it, or something. You say it’s important. It’s more than that. Maybe I’m afraid we won’t be able to stand up under it. And maybe we won’t. After tonight, we may be so far apart, Ruth, that we’ll never get back together again. Do you want to risk that?”

  She nodded her head slowly. “Yes.”

  He loosened his tie and watched a car roll past and disappear into the darkness.

  “Tell me first,” he said, “what you think about the question. I mean the whole question.” His heart was beating fast; his palms were perspiring.

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “About integration,” Tom said. “And—be honest.”

  Ruth appeared to be confused, nervous; but, he sensed, also somewhat relieved. “Well, I—I think it’s a terrible thing,” she said.

  And it was said, and there was no turning back now.

  “Why?” Tom asked.

  “Why?” She stared at him wonderingly. “Because it isn’t right, that’s all.”

  “Do you feel that you’re prejudiced?”

  “Against the Negroes?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, certainly not. You know that. Tom, that isn’t what you think, is it?”

  “But you believe it’s wrong for them to go to our schools.”

  “Of course! So do you!”

  He could not blame her for saying it: all she knew of his feeling on the matter was what she read in his editorials. And his editorials were and had always been pro-law and pro-segregation. “What do you think should have been done?” he asked.

  “Instead of this?”

  “That’s right. I mean, you don’t think things were very fair before, do you?”

  “No. But—well, they should have raised the money to improve the schools.” She paused. “And the homes, and jobs.”

  “Then it would be fair?”

  “Tom, I don’t see what you’re getting at, really I don’t. This is just what everybody thinks, isn’t it?”

  He forced the words out. “You still haven’t said why you believe it’s wrong for the Negroes and whites to go to the same school together. You’ve said it’s a terrible thing, but I still haven’t heard why.”

  Ruth was silent.

  “You’re not prejudiced, but you don’t want them in the same school with Ella. Do you have a reason?”

  “Of course I have a reason!”

  “Honey, please; I’m not arguing. We’ve simply got to get these things out, or talking won’t mean much. Now—what is the reason?”

  “I—” She fumbled with a handkerchief. “For heaven’s sake, Tom, you know as well as I do. There’ll be intermixing for one thing . . .”

  “And you object to that.”

  “Intermixing? Why—”

  He hoped she wouldn’t ask how he’d like his daughter to marry a Negro.

  “Are you being serious? Are you really asking me if I object to it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I certainly do,” she said in a firm voice. Then she said: “I think you’d better talk now.”

  The wound of hearing what, in fact, he’d known, hurt badly; but he feared the moments that were coming. I’m a coward! It was something he’d only suspected before, and had been able to bury beneath a routine of work and diversion. . . .

  “Tom, are you in favor of integration?”

  The question stunned him, silenced him for moments. Then he heard his voice say: “Yes.”

  He began to tell her, then, in the slow, hesitant tones of a confession, everything. How he had been raised the way most people in the South had been, had taken segregation for granted in the way that you take the elements or mother love for granted, how in high school he had met Paul Strauss and, through this friend, had begun to think about the question.

  “Paul was a Jew,” he said. “From Milwaukee. He knew about persecution, and hated it. ‘We’ve got the easy kind,’ he used to say. ‘But sometimes the easy kind is the worst. You go along thinking you’re free and everybody’s equal, then suddenly a hotel clerk tells you there aren’t any rooms when you know there are, and you remember that you’ve just been dreaming. You aren’t free.’ We didn’t talk a lot about it, or anything, but it did start me wondering. I’d always thought, you know, the Negroes have got it fine. All of a sudden I wasn’t so sure. You never met Paul, did you?”

  Ruth shook her head.

  “He was killed in the war. Someone dropped a grenade in front of him in—I forget, some Italian town they were occupying. Blew his stomach apart. Anyway—”

  Paul! Were two friends ever closer? Tom thought instantly of all the night-long sessions, the electric talk, the plans they’d had for working together on the same paper; and the big, friendly horse-face of Paul Strauss lived for a moment in his mind.

  “In Caxton, it was easy to forget these t
hings. The Negroes stayed on the Hill, no one ever saw them. We did an occasional obit, once in a while a robbery or a fight; otherwise, they might not even have existed. There were no complaints. And I was so busy with the paper that I guess I never allowed myself to think too much about what was happening in other places. When the Supreme Court decision came, I was like everyone else. I didn’t believe anything would come of it.”

  Ruth said, “But you wrote that you thought it was a bad idea. I remember your editorials. You said—”

  “—what you’ve just said. I know.” Tom tapped his pocket, took out an empty cigarette package and crumpled it. “The same as everyone, I thought it was a mistake.”

  “I didn’t believe him,” Ruth said suddenly.

  “What?”

  “Jim. I went over to see Mary, and he was there and told me. But I didn’t believe him. I said he must have misunderstood. He said . . .”

  Tom knew what he’d said; he remembered vividly the conversation he and Jim Wolfe had had the previous evening. He’d gone over—why? To get away from Ruth, to get away from the responsibility of picking Gramp out of the saloon—let the old bastard take a taxi!—and they’d listened to an old recording of “Beale Street Blues”; and then, incredibly, Tom had said: “You’ll collect their records, but you wouldn’t let any of them stay overnight at your house, would you?”

  And Jim had frowned and said carefully, “No. Would you?”

  And so the discussion had begun.

  “. . . in the first place, those fellows on the Supreme Court are a motley crew, Tom. All you have to do is study their records. One of them was even a member of the Klan. Politicians, that’s all; not a damn one of them qualified to serve. You take this—”

  “Hold on, now, damn it. Just because you’re a lawyer and you say they’re not qualified doesn’t mean they’re not. And what’s the difference, anyway? If a cop stops a thief and brings him in, does it matter how many years he’s been on the force, or what his record was, or what he eats for breakfast? He brought in the thief—that’s all that counts, isn’t it?”