Adam Cramer said, “To the jail, Paton. We—”
“Later on, maybe, to jail,” Shipman said.
Adam Cramer faced the big man. “What do you mean?”
“I mean we’re taking a little trip to the river first. Going to jail won’t mean much unless this boy’s sorry for what he did. But he isn’t sorry. He don’t even admit he’s guilty.” Shipman smiled at Harley Paton. “You know the old story, Paton: ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child.’ ”
Al Holliman reached out and ripped Joey’s shirt off. He tore it into three sections and used the sections to tie the boy’s hands behind his back.
“You’re going to regret this,” the principal said. “Every one of you!”
“Maybe you’d like to come along, you so worried about the jig!” West said.
Niesen said, “Yes, yes. Why don’t you do that, Mr. Paton, just join our little party and make sure nobody hurts nobody!”
Paton slumped weakly. His eyes burned deep into the eyes of the young man in the neat dark suit. Miss Angoff, who had come out, stood watching helplessly.
The hour rang out from the clock in the courthouse then, and someone shouted “Let’s go!” and the crowd rushed in a tide.
They were halfway across the lawn, halfway to the street, when a single voice, louder than the angry murmuring, louder, it seemed, than the courthouse bell, cried: “Wait a minute!”
Joey Green looked up, saw two figures walking toward him. One, he recognized instantly: the girl. The other, a red-faced, fat-bellied man, he’d never seen before. The man was breathing hard. He held the girl in a firm grasp and pulled her along, like a cotton doll, and breathed hard.
When he reached the crowd, the man removed his hand from the girl’s wrist and raised it in an odd salute to Adam Cramer. “Like I told you,” he said, smiling, “you never want to be too sure of anything.”
Shipman snapped “Who are you?” in an angry voice.
“Nobody too important. The name is Griffin. Sam Griffin.”
“Well, what do you want?”
Sam stared at Adam for a long moment, then said: “Nothing, now.”
“Then move aside. We’ve got important business to attend to.”
“What kind of business, Mr. Shipman?”
Shipman glanced at Ella McDaniel, at Joey. A muscle in his cheek began to twitch.
“You fellas aim to do anything to this nigger-boy?” Sam asked quietly.
“Griffin, I don’t know who you think you are, and I don’t know why you’ve brought this girl—”
“Because,” Sam went on, “if you do, I think maybe there’s something you ought to hear. It just might affect that business you’re on.” He turned to Ella. “Tell them, Miss McDaniel,” he said. “Tell them what you told me.”
She was crying, her eyes were red and puffed, and her face was streaked; but when Ella looked at Joey, she caught her breath and said: “It was a lie.”
There was, at first, no reaction whatever to the words. Then Shipman’s hands curled slowly into fists. “What’s that?” he said. “What are you talking about?”
“It was a lie,” Ella repeated. “Everything. Everything I said about”—she pointed—“him. All of it.”
Still Shipman did not seem to understand. He took a step. “What the devil you mean?”
“She means,” said Adam Cramer quickly, “that her father told her to cover up for the nigger; and that’s what she’s doing.” He gestured at Sam Griffin, who continued to smile. “That man, I happen to know, is in the pay of the NAACP. He’s a pro-integrationist. Don’t believe a word he says to you!”
The Reverend Lorenzo Niesen called, “What’s all this talk? If we’re gonna do something, let’s do it and be about our business!”
“Right!” said Adam. “Verne, listen: If McDaniel was willing to go to the hospital for this thing, you know and I know goddamn well he isn’t going to mind letting his daughter get raped!”
The crowd stirred, moved forward slightly. Bart Carey said, “Hell yes, that’s it.”
“We’re wasting time,” shouted another.
But Shipman did not move. His face was pale now. To Ella he said, “Girl, listen here to me. Why’d you ever want to go and tell a story like that in the first place, if it wasn’t true?”
Sam Griffin chuckled. “That’s what I asked myself,” he said. “And that’s why I went to visit Miss McDaniel—”
“What’s your interest in this, anyway?” interrupted Shipman.
“Personal,” Sam replied, winking at Adam. “But, y’see, it didn’t smell right to me, just like all of a sudden it don’t smell right to you, Mr. Shipman. That was the thing: Why would she tell such a story if it wasn’t true?”
“Well?”
“Well, hold on, now. She wouldn’t talk at first, and her grand-daddy give me a pretty rough time. But, see, I deal with people; have for years. It’s my job. So I give her plenty of line and reeled in slow, so she wouldn’t notice. I told her I been looking around, sort of studying this whole thing, and I had a theory. My theory was that young Mr. Cramer here had made her tell that lie—”
“Verne, look! This guy’s a nut. I—”
Shipman glared at Adam. “Shut up,” he said; then: “Go on, Griffin. We’re listening.”
“Well, that’s about it,” Sam said. “Old Adam, he’s a pretty clever bird. What he done was, he told Miss McDaniel that her father would be killed if she didn’t play along; that’s all. After what happened to Tom McDaniel already, who could blame her for believing him? She just got scared. Like anyone else would of. Anyone here.”
Shipman turned to Ella. “Is that right?” he said.
She nodded. “He promised me there wouldn’t be any trouble. I mean, nothing would happen, he said, except that the boy would be expelled from school. I’m sorry.” She looked at Joey. “Sorry; I didn’t . . .”
“Go on back to the car,” Sam said. “I’ll be along directly.”
Ella glanced once at Adam, then ran.
“Don’t make sense,” Shipman was saying, to no one in particular.
Sam shook his head. “You’re right, it don’t, when you get down to it. But you got to understand, Mr. Shipman, that your boy here was desperate. I mean, he was teetering on the verge of losing every single thing he built up. And the truth of it is, you was desperate, too—because you hooked up with him. The both of you were—”
“Verne!”
“—in bad trouble, Mr. Shipman. I ain’t saying you knew anything about this little play: maybe you did, but I don’t think so. I think it takes a real special kind of brain for something this dirty. . . .” Sam faced Adam. “It don’t matter, though,” he said, “really. Even if I hadn’t got Miss McDaniel to tell the truth. Because the people never was with you, boy. And they’d of turned against you in time, just like they always do when somebody tries to sell them something they don’t want. Remember? It would of turned out just the same whether I stuck my nose in it or not. Except there’d be an innocent boy dead and some stupid people with blood on their hands. . . .”
The crowd was silent.
It was frozen.
Adam Cramer looked at them standing there, like unfinished statues in the sunlight, and screamed, “Lies!” suddenly, without meaning to. “Lies! I swear to Christ this man is lying to you!”
No one answered.
“Are you all crazy?” He rushed over to Sam Griffin and took the fat man’s shirt in his fist. “Tell them the truth,” he said. “Come on, you son of a bitch! Tell them about your Jew wife, maybe they’d like to hear about that!”
Sam Griffin remained motionless.
“Tell them about the nigger women you kissed on the mouth! You did, I’ve got proof. Proof, you hear me, you understand what I’m saying?” Adam stepped back. His breathing had become quick and heavy and his eyes were wild. “Oh, you don’t think for a minute you’re fooling these people, do you, Griffin? Because if you do, you’re wrong. They’re too smart for you and
your filth. Believe me. I know them. I know they’re too smart. They laugh at you, Griffin. Understand? Because you are nothing on this earth; nothing, nothing.” His voice had risen to a high pitch now, and the people stared. “Folks!” he cried. “They think they’ve got us scared. But they haven’t. We’re not about to give up, not now nor ever, no sir! Hear that, Griffin? Paton, you hear what I’m saying?”
Harley Paton and Agnes Angoff walked over to Joey Green and untied his hands and led him away, back toward the school.
“Go on, you miserable cowards. Run!” Adam clutched Verne Shipman’s sleeve. “You talk to them,” he said. “Tell them, listen, Verne—tonight! a meeting, at Joan’s; seven-thirty! We’re—Paton! You and your nigger better listen to this! We’re gonna show you you can’t stop justice and right, no matter what you do. This is only the beginning! We—”
Suddenly Shipman drew back his hand and slapped Adam’s face. The sound was sharp. He slapped him again, harder.
Then, slowly, he turned and began to walk across the lawn toward town, the way men walk in their sleep.
Bart Carey opened his mouth, but he said nothing. He and the Reverend Lorenzo Niesen squinted at the others and followed Shipman.
The crowd broke, dispersed, the men and women walking off singly, by themselves, in all directions.
In a while they were gone.
“Boy?”
Adam Cramer opened his eyes. Sam Griffin was standing over him, reaching down his hand and smiling in the old way, without the hardness.
“Boy, you’re gonna get grass stains all over those trousers if you don’t get up.”
Adam felt himself being lifted, gently. He did not resist.
“I figure our work in this town is just about cleaned up,” Griffin said. “If you pack in a hurry, you can grab a bus to Farragut. They got trains to Los Angeles there.” He paused. “If you’re a little light on ticket money, I’d be proud to—”
Adam pulled his arm away.
“Right certain now?” Sam Griffin waited; then he sighed and reached into his pocket. “Here.”
His hand unfolded. In the center was a gleaming copper fire.
“I wouldn’t want to steal from you,” he said, and tipped his palm. The bullets spilled out, one by one, and fell in their bright skins without a sound.
“They’re yours, boy.”
Adam watched until the man had gone. But even then he did not move, or think except of all the scarlet horses he would never ride.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Charles Beaumont was born Charles Leroy Nutt in Chicago in 1929. He dropped out of high school in the tenth grade and worked at a number of jobs before selling his first story to Amazing Stories in 1950. In 1954 his “Black Country” became the first work of short fiction to appear in Playboy, and his classic tale “The Crooked Man” was featured in the same magazine the following year. Beaumont published numerous other short stories in the 1950s, both in mainstream periodicals like Playboy and Esquire and in science fiction and fantasy magazines.
His first story collection, The Hunger and Other Stories, was published in 1957 to immediate acclaim and was followed by two further collections, Yonder (1958) and Night Ride and Other Journeys (1960). He also published two novels, Run from the Hunter (1957, pseudonymously, with John E. Tomerlin), and The Intruder (1959).
Beaumont is perhaps best remembered for his work in television, particularly his screenplays for The Twilight Zone, for which he wrote several of the most famous episodes. His other screenwriting credits include the scripts for films such as The Premature Burial (1962), Burn, Witch, Burn (1962), The Haunted Palace (1963), and The Masque of the Red Death (1964).
When Beaumont was 34, he began to suffer from ill health and developed a baffling and still-unexplained condition that caused him to age at a greatly increased rate, such that at the time of his death at age 38 in 1967, he had the physical appearance of a 95-year-old man. Beaumont was survived by his wife Helen, two daughters, and two sons, one of whom, Christopher, is also a writer.
Beaumont’s work was much respected by his colleagues, and he counted Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, Richard Matheson, Robert Bloch, and Roger Corman among his friends and admirers. His work is in the process of being rediscovered with collector’s editions of several of his works from Centipede Press, three reissues from Valancourt Books, and a new collection from Penguin Classics.
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