Southern Cross

by Stephen Greenleaf

Seth reached for the Rolodex on the desk and gave it a spin even though he didn’t seem to be reading it. “A digest of my most incendiary files.” He spun the wheel a second time. “We’re not talking run-of-the-mill, like divorce or a criminal thing, I don’t think. They can explode on you, too, of course, but they usually come at you more directly.”

  “Like how?”

  Seth met my eye. “You can’t call yourself an effective advocate in this part of the country unless someone’s taken a shot at you at some time or other. But this thing with the Alliance seems different.”

  “Political, maybe?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe.”

  I looked at the legal pad on the corner of the desk. “I think I’d better write this down.”

  Seth shoved the pad toward me and dug a pen out of a drawer. “The most controversial case I’ve got right now involves the Palisade,” he said when I was ready.

  “The military school?”

  He nodded. “Steeped in tradition. Fired the first shots in the Civil War; its grads in positions of influence all over the state; its more unsavory aspects supposedly laid bare in Pat Conroy’s novel The Lords of Discipline. And, of significance for my purposes, exclusively male, and funded by the state of South Carolina.”

  “Wasn’t there something in the news recently about a football player who quit school because of hazing?”

  Seth nodded. “It gets rough up there sometimes. The Fourth Class System, they call it—verbal and physical harassment, the product of a century of sadism that goes by the name of tradition. A recent variation was to fill various bodily orifices with Cheez Whiz—one knob almost choked to death on the stuff.” Seth shook his head with disgust. “The alumni say hazing builds good soldiers, of course—hardship and perseverance breed coolness under fire and all that. Hardly a day goes by that there isn’t a letter to the editor to that effect. But other people are looking into the sadism problem—the case I’ve got is a nineteen-year-old black girl who wants to be a Palisade cadet.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. She figures they’ve got women at West Point and Annapolis, why shouldn’t there be some down here?”

  “Sounds like she’s got a point.”

  “Of course she does, and it’s of constitutional dimensions. And most people with half a brain know it, and it’s driving them crazy—I’ve got a stack of hate mail a foot high on that one alone. But none of it from ASP.”

  Seth leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, as if the imbroglio he’d just described was acting as a sedative. “I also represent a Vietnam vet who was denied membership in an American Legion Post because of his race. And some black Cub Scouts who were barred from going with the rest of their pack to a picnic at a private lake on the same basis. Then there’s the guy who claims the Federal Disaster Assistance folks gave preference to whites over minorities in compensating for hurricane damage. And a woman trying to stop development down on Hilton Head Island on environmental grounds—wetlands and water quality and all that. You know Hilton Head, right? God’s gift to golfers?”

  “I’ve seen it on TV.”

  “Next to the Palisade thing, I suppose my most controversial case involves the state legislator who got netted in a sting operation for allegedly selling his vote to support a bill to allow gambling on Sea-brook Island—FBI claims they’ve got a video of the guy pocketing some cash on a yacht up by Myrtle Beach. ‘A business doing pleasure with you,’ was how the undercover agent put it.” Seth laughed dryly. “More than twenty state officials got nailed in the thing—Operation Broken Promise, they called it. Only guy besides mine who’s going to trial instead of copping a plea is defending on the ground that there was no criminal intent because he was too dumb to know he was being bribed.”

  I laughed. “No wonder so many novels get written about this place.”

  Seth’s nod was slow and weary. “Last but not least, I’ve got some animal-rights people busted on a charge of hunter harassment for driving the game out of a private preserve up by Conway and a black cop who thinks the local custom of calling a saloon a private club so they can screen out undesirables, which is to say minorities, is an illegal evasion of the Fourteenth Amendment. Not to mention assorted thieves, prostitutes, burglars, and misdemeanants. Think that’s enough to keep you busy?”

  “I’m a little surprised you’re still alive.”

  “Yeah, well, if this thing with ASP is for real, I may not be for long. You spend much time down here, one thing you learn is to take the crackers seriously.”

  Seth fell silent. His expression was fixed and forbidding, as though he were girding himself for battle; I began to be afraid for him.

  “So what do you think we should do?” he asked after a minute.

  “Who do you know that has a line on the Klan-type groups around here?”

  “The best source is probably Kounter-Klan up in Greenville. They’re an offshoot of the Klan-Watch project out of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Birmingham. Kounter-Klan keeps track of hate groups in the Carolinas.”

  “I’ll give them a call.”

  “Better let me blaze a trail for you. Normally they won’t talk until they run a background check. Lots of paranoia on each side of this race stuff.”

  “Touch base with your clients to see if any of them have had a message from ASP. Same with your Jewish friends.”

  “Will do.”

  “That might indicate whether this is a vendetta against you specifically or whether you’re just one name on a long list of someone’s enemies.”

  He met my look with hooded eyes. “I think they’re mostly after me.”

  “Why?”

  Seth looked more distressed than he had since we’d been busted for stealing cookies. “The voice on the tape?” he said.

  “What about it?”

  “I think it belongs to my son.”

  ELEVEN

  Despite my prompting, Seth was reluctant to tell me any more about his son—why he might be mixed up with a group like ASP, how I could get in touch with him, why he might have lent himself to a bizarre vendetta against his father. All I got was his name, Colin, and the fact that he and Seth had been estranged over the three years since the divorce. I was still pumping for information when Seth stood up, gave me a desultory wave, and left the room. As he closed the door behind him, he was as dispirited as I’d ever seen him.

  Thanks to the tape, I wasn’t in a great mood myself. Naked brutality is bad enough, but the blend of ersatz philosophy with boundless savagery is somehow worse, perhaps because it suggests how easily intelligence can be perverted, that reason remains a fragile flower. I decided the best thing to do was to try to get a good night’s sleep and worry about the rest of it tomorrow.

  I dialed in the aircraft carrier, listened as the church bells chimed ten times, looked out into the deserted courtyard of the Confederate Home, and marveled at the quiet in the center of the lovely city. I pulled out one of the novels Seth had piled beside my bed—Rich in Love, by Josephine Humphreys, a Charlestonian herself, the flap copy informed me—then propped some pillows behind my head and began to read, hoping it would tilt me toward sleep.

  But the novel was far too good—its voice and language captured me from the first page. And even the excellence of Ms. Humphreys’s prose couldn’t ward off the demons loosed by the taped invective out of the mouth of Seth Hartman’s only son.

  Awful in the absolute, the diatribe was made even more chilling by the place where it had found me. Racism is rampant in California, admittedly, and always has been. California refused to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment and barred intermarriage. Indians were treated abominably—driven from their lands, sold into slavery or prostitution, deprived of treaty rights for years. Neither blacks nor Chinese were allowed to give evidence against white people. In 1912, an Alien Land Act prohibited Japanese immigrants from owning property; in 1929, a study by a San Francisco civic club declared Filipinos “unfit for American society.” In the sch
ools, Mexican-American children were segregated because of “matters of personal hygiene.” And racially restrictive covenants ruled real estate for generations.

  A variety of hate groups has found fallow ground in the Golden State over the years—the White Aryan Resistance still spreads its bile from there, as do similar tribes. But still and all, racism and its adherents do not seem a part of California to the degree that the Klan and its ilk seem interwoven with the South: Men in white sheets and pointed hats, flaming crosses lighting a mottled sky beyond a chorus of savage slurs, black bodies hung from trees. But awful as the past has been, the present seems equally depressing.

  Three decades ago, racial hatred as a mainstream message was relegated to a fringe insanity by the airing of its evils and a collective urge toward change, and even reparation. But it has been invited back in recent years, by politicians who court its proponents regardless of the stain to the social fabric and demagogues who profit from its traffic. The sociologists would probably say the issue was more complicated than I realized, more laced with nuance and melioration. But how could any definition of racism’s real dynamic make the words of Colin Hartman less despicable?

  I was still warring with such rhetoric when I heard a knock on my door. Given the hour, it was easy to find a reason not to answer it, but the cage my thoughts had put me in made me needful of diversion.

  “I brought you a wedge of Key lime pie. If there’s a swallow or three of gin left from last time, we can—” That was as far as she got before she realized I wasn’t who she thought I was.

  The words had been headlong and singsong, flirtatious and fun, the prelude to a party. The woman who spoke them was blond and blue-eyed, petite and perky, abubble with mirth and, from the cast in her eye and the lift in her lip, potentially even mischief. Her Levi’s were chopped off and rolled high on her thighs, and her feet were as bare and brown as her arms, which emerged from a shirt with the words STOP STARING across the chest. One hand was holding a covered plastic plate and the other was canted above her eyes in a semblance of a salute, as if to improve her view.

  She squinted in the dim light of the porch, backed away a step to look at the number above the door and confirm it was the one she wanted, then regarded me with more than a dollop of wariness—it was the first sign I’d come across that Charleston might be plagued by the urban uncertainties the rest of us must deal with.

  “Who are you?” she demanded archly.

  “My name’s Tanner. A friend of Seth’s. From San Francisco.”

  She tried to look beyond me. “Is he here?”

  I shook my head. “Just left.”

  “And you’re …?”

  “Spending the night. Seth promised it would provide more color than a hotel, but he didn’t say it included room service.”

  As synchronized as swimmers, we glanced at the pie plate, then as quickly back at each other. In the space of a blink, she made a decision.

  “Pie and people spoil real fast down here, Mr. Tanner; don’t let it go to waste.” She thrust the aim against my chest. “Welcome to Charleston, friend-of-Seth. If you need a utensil, I’ve got one up at my place.” She glanced at the ceiling overhead.

  I took the plate from a hand that was graced with a silver thumb ring and a diamond solitaire. “Thanks very much, Mrs. …?”

  “Raveneau. As opposed to Ravenel, which you have no doubt seen plastered on half the doors in town. That’s eau as in snow. Huguenot. Very antebellum. But to y’all it’s Scar. Short for Scarlett, which tells you as much about my mama as you need to know. The ring is no longer symbolic, by the way; it’s more like a souvenir.” She broke off her essay and laughed. “I seem to be babbling. Enjoy the pie. But don’t let it sit out, or the roaches will haul it home and party with it.”

  “Roaches?”

  Her eyes doubled to the size of walnuts. “No one told you about our roaches? Honey, they’re our pride and joy. They say the Yankees complain about them up in New York City, but down here we think highly of the critters. If I get hungry of an evening, I just toss a saddle on the next one that happens by and ride him to the Piggly Wiggly. They got a corral out back and everything; handy as all get out.” She looked over my shoulder and pointed. “There’s a nice one now.”

  What I saw crawling across the floor toward the credenza was big enough to put the pie in his pocket. I began to have doubts about how restful the night would be.

  For the second time in a minute, Scar put a hand on my arm—like many friendly women, Scar was a toucher. “He won’t bite; probably won’t even climb in bed unless you take the pie in with you. It’s been a grin, Mr. Tanner. Have a nice night.”

  “I’d be happy to hunt up that gin if you give me a hint where to start,” I offered quickly.

  When she had absorbed what I was asking, her countenance contracted. To buy some time, she crossed her arms and tapped a foot. “How do you know Seth?”

  “College. We were just up North at our reunion.”

  “He told me something about that. So how was it?”

  “Don’t know yet.”

  She raised a brow. “That bad?”

  “Depends on what it does to me.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Sounds too psychological to me; I dropped out of high school to run off with the quarterback.”

  “How’d it work out?”

  “About how you’d expect—turned out what he wanted was a football he could fuck.” She brushed bangs from her forehead and looked up and down the veranda. “It is a tad thirsty out tonight. And I seem to remember there’s some Tanqueray in the credenza and tonic in the fridge that’s wedged beneath the desk.”

  “Gin and tonic, coming up,” I said, and backed into the room and let her join me. She walked straight to the chair and sat down—Scar had been there before. I guessed she was the rebel Seth had mentioned, the one enamored of the South’s degeneracy.

  “Do you live in the building?” I asked as I was rounding up the fixings.

  She shook her head. “Got a condo the size of an outhouse over by the medical college. World’s smallest kitchen; world’s largest electric bill.”

  “So what brings you to the Home?”

  “Home?” She frowned. “Oh. The Confederate thing. I have a studio here.”

  “Studio for what?”

  She shrugged. “Art, I guess.”

  “What kind of art?”

  “Watercolors.”

  “Of what?”

  “Why, Charleston, of course. A framed and matted watercolor of one of our precious historical sights is just about the most wonderful gift you can give a person, next to a white leather Bible with their name embossed on it.”

  I tried not to smile because I wasn’t sure I was supposed to, but her next statement gave me some direction. “It’s real fortunate that when God made tourists, He gave them a lot more money than good taste.”

  “Do you exhibit in a gallery?”

  “Fence around St. Philip’s graveyard. It’s the only place I can afford, me and a couple hundred like me.”

  “Are you successful?”

  “I earn more than I spend, if that’s what you mean.”

  “That’s the only definition I know.”

  I presented her with a gin and tonic. The ice had given up its half-life by the time she raised it to her lips.

  “Tell me about Seth,” I said after a minute.

  “I thought he was your friend.”

  “He is, but I haven’t seen him in twenty-five years. I’ve got some catching up to do.”

  She took time to assemble her response. “Seth’s a sweetie,” she offered finally.

  “How’d you meet?”

  “He got me my restraining order. And my divorce. And my share of the assets Luke had stashed in a deposit box in Charlotte. Seth’s a hellion in court.”

  “He’s had some matrimonial troubles himself, he tells me.”

  Scar grinned cryptically. “Callie. Talk about a fish out of water. She thought
we were dumb as posts and raunchy as rabbits.” Scar threw me a wink. “Problem was, she was only half right.”

  “Does she carry a grudge? Over the divorce and all?”

  She raised a brow. “Why should she? Neither of them was working on fidelity hard enough to be good at it, and the guy she’s with now worships the ground she walks on and is rich enough to plant it in platinum. What’s she got to complain about?”

  “Nothing, obviously.”

  Scar scowled. “If you believe that, you’ll believe that bug over there can whistle.” She pointed at another impressive specimen of roach, this one climbing the wall about an inch behind my head.

  “How about Seth’s kids?” I asked as a shudder rippled down my chest.

  “What about them?”

  “How’d they turn out?”

  “Too soon to tell, ’specially with the boy.”

  “Colin.”

  “That’s the one,” she said without affect.

  “What’s his problem?”

  “The divorce, probably. Kids get mad when their folks give up on each other—my daughter didn’t speak to me for six months. I didn’t notice for four, of course, which really pissed her off.”

  “What does Colin do?”

  “Over at the college, last I heard.”

  “What college is that?”

  “College of Charleston, on George Street. Got a late start, Colin did—tried his hand at the music business for a while but couldn’t sing a lick, then had a major involvement with drugs if the rumors were true, which they always are in Charleston. Haven’t seen him for a while; hope he’s stayed straight.”

  “He ever been in trouble?”

  “Like jail or something?”

  “Whatever.”

  “Not that I know of. Why?”

  “Just wondering. How about the girl?”

  “Chantrelle? She’s a real estate lady. Making a mint selling swampland to Canucks, is what I hear. Looks like she is, anyway—I could live for a year on her wardrobe budget.”

  “Married?”

  “Not that I’ve heard and I would have. One of those women who enjoy money more than sex, seems like. Got a sour side to her like her mother.”