“And that’s not you, what you’re saying?”
“That’s not any kind of me, Mr. Moses. I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, and I don’t eat swine. I don’t want to make babies for the Welfare to feed. I save my money. And I got plans.”
“Everybody around here knows you’ve got a brain, Rufus,” the elderly man said, calmly. “But there’s a world of difference between smart and slick.”
“Fair enough. Just ask me what you want to know, and I’ll tell you. Then you can make up your own mind.”
“Let me give you an example,” the old man said, unruffled. “You’ve been knowing me for years, from your first day on the job. Before today, you speak to me, you call me ‘Moses,’ right? Or ‘man’ or some other kind of jive talk. Today, what comes out your mouth? It’s all ‘sir’ and ‘Mr. Moses.’ Like, all of a sudden, lightning struck you and you got all this respect. Now,” he said, drawing on his pipe unsuccessfully, then pausing to relight it, “that’s either get-over game, or you got another reason.”
“Rosa Mae—”
“—been calling me ‘Daddy Moses’ for a long time, Rufus. She didn’t start today.”
“I know that. But it wasn’t until I . . . knew I had feelings for her that it . . . meant anything to me. I’m not going to lie.”
“Because you got no other reason to show me respect.”
“You’re just like she is,” Rufus said. “Making things hard. What do you want me to say?”
“The truth. Like you promised.”
“All right,” Rufus said, moving closer to the old man. “Here’s some truth: I was raised to respect my elders, but that was all about manners—what you say, not what you feel. Why should I respect someone just because they’re older than me? That never made any sense.”
“Don’t make no sense to me, neither,” Moses said, surprising the younger man. “You know what experience is?”
“Of course I know what it is.”
“Yeah? So, you got something wrong with your car, you want to take it to an experienced mechanic?”
“Sure . . .” Rufus agreed, warily.
“Let’s say the man been working on cars for thirty years. You call a man like that ‘experienced,’ right?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, now let’s say he been working on cars for thirty years but he never was no good at it. In fact, he so lousy a mechanic that he had himself a hundred different jobs. Kept getting fired, one place after the other, because he couldn’t do a job without messing it up. He got a lot of experience, but no knowledge. Lots of old people like that. If they ain’t learned nothing, just being old don’t make them people you should be listening to.”
Rufus stared at the old man for a long time. Moses looked back, unperturbed, at peace within himself.
“Can I sit down? On that crate, there?” Rufus asked. “I got some things I need to tell you.”
* * *
1959 October 06 Tuesday 18:20
* * *
“It’s going to be Nixon for the Republicans,” Beaumont said.
“Sure, and who else? But he’s no war hero, like Ike was. And our guy, well, he is.”
“You’re positive that’s such a good thing?” Beaumont challenged his visitor. “If the voters think your guy’s going to get us into another mess like Korea, he’s dead in the water.”
“No, no, no,” Shalare answered, quickly. “That’s all been talked over. We know how to wrap a package, Roy. Our man’s going to be a tiger on national defense, sure, but that’ll be self-defense, not sticking our nose into another meat-grinder like Korea.”
“Nixon’s no Eisenhower in more ways than one,” Beaumont said, warningly. “And one of those is, he’s a whole lot smarter.”
“An election’s not an IQ test. If it was, Stevenson would have won the last couple of times, wouldn’t he?”
“There’s all kinds of smart,” Beaumont said. “I never met the man, but, with television, you can get a read on someone even at a distance. I’ll tell you this: you’re not going to find a craftier man in all of politics than Richard Nixon.”
“He’s a ferret-faced schemer, no doubt,” Shalare said. “And that’s a plus for him. The minus is, he looks like what he is. And, like you said, television. That’s going to play a big role in what’s to come.”
Beaumont nodded his concurrence.
“The timing is right,” Shalare continued. “The Taft machine pretty much died off when Ike got the nomination away from them. A lot of them crossed over after that. Look at Warren. They took care of him, and, soon as he got on the Supreme Court, he ambushed the lot of them.”
“That was Eisenhower’s mistake. Nixon wouldn’t make the same one.”
“If we all pull together, Nixon won’t get the chance.”
“Tell me again why I should be part of that,” Beaumont said, lighting another cigarette.
“Didn’t I already?”
“Dioguardi? He’s not such a problem, for what you’re asking.”
“It’s not the person, it’s the . . . situation. Look at this Castro, over in Cuba. The great revolutionary he is, freeing his people from the yoke of oppression. Mark what I say: he’ll be the same as the man he removed. He’ll use different words, dress different, maybe. But he didn’t take over that country to free it, Roy. He took it over to rule it.”
“So, even if Dioguardi . . . disappeared, there’d be another to take his place?”
“You know that’s true as well as I do,” Shalare said. “It’s not Dioguardi himself who has to disappear; it’s the reason he was sent that has to go.”
“Here we’re talking about elections, and you want to make me a promise,” Beaumont said, smiling to take some of the sting out of his words.
“That’s right, I do,” Shalare said, not rising to the bait. “For starters, there won’t be any more squabbling about jukebox rents. Nobody else trying to handle the pinball machines or the punch cards, either.”
“Pennies.”
“Pennies add up to dollars, don’t they? And nobody likes to pay the same landlord twice. Dioguardi’s people are going to stop selling protection insurance, too. For starters,” Shalare reminded Beaumont.
“Because . . . ?”
“Because he’s going to be told to stop. And he will. Everything. This whole town will go back to its rightful owner. You, Roy.”
“He never took it. And he never could.”
“He never did. But he was coming, and you know it. Now he stops.”
“One door opens and another one—”
“He stops everything, Roy. The only thing Salvatore Dioguardi’s going to do in Locke City from now on is pay his taxes.”
“How’s he going to keep his men, with no income?”
“Then I guess he’ll lose some of them.”
“The way he already has?”
“I told you, we had nothing to do with that,” Shalare said. “Anyways, losing a few men wouldn’t keep him off you—that’s just the cost of doing business.”
“I don’t know how that whole Mafia thing works. Is Dioguardi some kind of big shot, or just their stalking horse?”
“I’m not sure. What difference does it make?”
“If he’s a stalking horse, one they put in here to see if they could find a soft spot, they’ll learn soon enough that they made a mistake. But if he’s a big shot, and this was his own idea, that’s different.”
“Because, if he’s a big shot, he might be too stubborn to pull out? Or even big enough to call in more troops?”
“There’s that. But I was thinking of something different.”
“And that would be . . . ?”
“You know how they sell cattle? Price them at so much a head?”
“Yeah . . .” Shalare said, cautiously.
“Well, with people, it’s not like that. Because some heads are worth a lot more than others. Especially when there’s a gesture of good faith involved.”
“Ah.”
“My sister always tells me, when someone gives you a gift, it’s low-class to look at the price tag. It’s the thought that counts, you’ve heard that?”
“Sure. I was raised the same way.”
“But that’s gifts, not business. In business, a man never wants to get shorted on a deal.”
“So, if you traded for a . . . single head of cattle, you’d want to know if you got the best bull of the herd?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“I would. In an undertaking as big as this one, there’s a lot that has to be overlooked. You deal with men you wouldn’t have in your home,” Shalare said, glancing around the spacious room as if to underscore the bond between them. “The Jews killed Christ, and we’re dealing with them on this. What’s going further than that?”
“What did the coloreds ever do?” Beaumont said.
“I don’t under—”
“You deal with the coloreds, too, don’t you? Maybe not you, personally, but this whole ‘effort’ you’ve been talking about, the people running the show, they had better be doing that, if they want to pull this off.”
“Well, sure and you’re right,” Shalare said. “I didn’t mean we only deal with our enemies, just that we have to go outside the tribe—all of us do, to make this happen.”
“ ‘Tribes.’ That’s just a word, too. Like ‘blood,’ ” said Beaumont, contempt strong in his iron eyes. “Wasn’t it one of your own that shopped the Molly Maguires to the Pinkertons?”
“Huh!” Shalare said, surprised. “You’re a historian, for sure. But he was a—”
“—Protestant? So am I, I suppose. I know I’m not a Catholic or a Jew, so what’s left, being a Buddhist? You’re right, Mickey. I am a man who studies the past. I studied Centralia. I studied the trial of the McNamara brothers. Sacco and Vanzetti.”
“They were—”
“What? Italians? Anarchists? Catholics? Innocent? What does it matter? My point is, when you try and change governments, whether you’re assassinating a dictator or winning an election, you’ve got to be able to carry through after you take over.”
“We’ll have our own—”
“All I care about is my own,” Beaumont interrupted. “Dioguardi getting out of my hair isn’t a fair trade. But getting his people to stay out of Locke City forever, now, that could be one.”
“You have my word, Roy,” Shalare said. “My sacred word. And if that’s not enough, I’ll throw in a head of cattle, if you want. The finest of its kind for many miles around.”
* * *
1959 October 06 Tuesday 18:29
* * *
“You know what a pilgrimage is?” Rufus said.
“A holy journey,” Moses answered, as if he had been expecting the question.
“That’s right,” Rufus said, surprised. “And I took mine on September 3, 1955. On that day, I went to Chicago. So I could see that little boy, Emmett Till. See him in the coffin where the white man had put him.”
“I remember that.”
“His mother left the casket open so people could see—so the whole world could see—how they had tortured her child before they murdered him,” Rufus said, his voice throbbing. “It was supposed to be because the boy had whistled at a white woman. Not raped her, not killed her—whistled at her. Men came in the night and took him; didn’t make no secret about it. Everybody knew who they were. And they bragged about it all over town, too. Took some cracker jury about ten minutes to find them not guilty. Probably some of them on that jury, they were along for the ride that night themselves.”
“Mississippi,” Moses said.
“Yeah, Mississippi. And then the men who did it, they got paid for it. I read it in Look magazine, the whole thing. After that jury cut them loose, some reporter paid them to tell the true story, because you can’t try a man twice for the same crime. Every cracker’s dream, kill a black boy and get paid for it, too. Like a bounty on niggers.”
“I read that story,” Moses said, evenly.
“Didn’t it make you want to . . . kill a whole lot of whites?”
“I don’t believe in killing by color.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, if I could pick, there’d be a whole lot of whites I’ve met in my life that needed killing. But I wouldn’t go kill a bunch of white men for what some other white men did.”
“You mean, like they do us?” Rufus said, every syllable a challenge.
“That’s not why they kill us,” Moses said, a teacher correcting a pupil. “Not for anything we ever did. That’s just their excuse. Like that ‘wolf whistle’ the Till boy was supposed to have done to that white woman.”
“There’s plenty of them would kill all of us, they had the chance,” Rufus said.
“Sure. Or put us back on the plantations. Or ship us back to Africa. But no matter how much they hate us, things is never going back to the way they was—the way they liked it. If things was going backwards, then that evil Faubus bastard would be running for president. I’ll bet he thought he was, when he stood there on the steps and barred our children from his schools. But he guessed wrong. All the crackers in this country put together couldn’t put their own man in the White House, not today.”
“You’re right about that,” Rufus said, thinking, This isn’t just an old river, it’s a damn deep one. “There’s too many of us now. Too many that vote, I mean. Maybe not down there, but up here, the white people—the bosses, I’m talking about—they got to pay attention. That’s why Eisenhower sent the troops in. It wasn’t for our people in Arkansas, it was for our people in Chicago. And Detroit, and New York, and Cleveland, and . . . everyplace we migrated to. That’s the way the NAACP wants us to think, too. Wait our turn. Be good Negroes, so the good white people can see they should be letting us go to their schools.”
“So they can learn how Lincoln freed the slaves.”
“Yeah!” Rufus said, his voice thick with hate. “And whatever other lies they want to put in our nappy little heads. You know a lot more than I thought, Moses.”
“You can’t tell what a man knows until you get with him,” the elderly man said, puffing on his pipe. “Just watching, that’s nothing. Ofay been watching us since we were picking his cotton, under the lash. But he never knew us, ’cause we learned to keep our thinking off our faces. That’s what I was telling you before, Rufus. The difference between experience and knowledge. I know about the Scottsboro Boys, too. And a lot of other things.”
“But you Tom it up, man. I see you, every day.”
“And you don’t?”
“I don’t do it because that’s me, man. I’m not just surviving, I’m playing a part.”
“How do you know I’m not?”
“Because you never . . . I mean . . .” Rufus sat silently for a moment, then admitted, “I . . . I guess I don’t.”
“I was born on the seventeenth day of August, in the year 1887,” Moses said, a resonant timbre entering his voice. “Does that date mean anything to you?”
“The Civil War was over, but your parents, they were slaves?”
“They were, but that’s not what I’m saying. A great man was born on the same day as me. Marcus Garvey. You ever hear of him?”
“Well, damn, man, of course I heard of him. Marcus Garvey, he’s our spiritual father.”
“I was in that,” Moses said. “The Universal Negro Improvement Association. Before they came and took it all down. But I never forgot. And I was with Wallace Fard Muhammad himself, when I was in Detroit, back in ’34.”
“Then you’re a Muslim?”
“No, son,” Moses said, sadly. “I didn’t say I met Wallace; I said I was with him. It was just too neat, him signing everything over to Elijah and then just vanishing, like the earth swallowed him up. The night Wallace disappeared, I caught the first thing smoking. Been right here in Locke City ever since.”
Rufus got slowly to his feet. “I was going to tell you something today,” he said. “But I got a better idea. That is, if
you’re willing to take a ride with me, later on tonight.”
Moses leaned back in his chair, reading the face of the young man before him. Decoding.
“I’d be honored if you would,” Rufus said, holding out his hand.
Moses grasped the younger man’s hand for a long second. Then he rose from his chair.
* * *
1959 October 06 Tuesday 18:44
* * *
As Luther was escorting Shalare back to the front of the house, a sliding panel behind Beaumont’s desk opened, and Cynthia stepped out.
“What do you think?” Beaumont asked, without preamble.
“He’s the kind of man they used to call a silver-tongued devil, Beau. Two-faced, with a lie in each mouth.”
“For all that, he was being honest with me . . . to a point.”
“Yes. The point about what he wants. The only question is, is that all he wants?”
“From us? It just might be, girl. Shalare’s outfit was never after our rackets. He’s a political man.”
“You mean, the elections?”
“No. I mean, yes, sure, that’s what he wants—now. But Mickey Shalare’s a man who plays the long game, Cyn. His roots aren’t here.”
“In Locke City?”
“In America, honey. Remember what he said about getting his own back? That’s what Mickey Shalare’s all about. I’m sure of it.”
“So you think he would take care of—?”
“Dioguardi? I think he’s got the horsepower to make him back off, no question about that. I mean, what’s the point of lying to us about that? We’d see the truth of things in a few days, anyway. It’s the rest of his promise—you know, that after the election Dioguardi, or another of his kind, won’t come back. That one I’m not so sure about.”
“That he can deliver?”
“Or that he even intends to. Shalare’s a man who understands power. And he knows, if our organization puts together the landslide he needs here, we’re going to leave our own people in place for the next time. Even stronger, we’d be. This is America. Nobody gets elected president for life, not since Roosevelt.”
Two Trains Running Page 37
