Southern Cross

by Stephen Greenleaf

  “It’s not laying down some terror on the blacks that’s important, it’s activating the anger of the whites. Once they’re mobilized, we can direct them to more fruitful targets.”

  “Such as?”

  “The Canaanites.”

  “Who are?”

  He shrugged. “Jews, lemon niggers, Arabs. Whoever stands in the way of white supremacy will fall.”

  “The Jews and Arabs will be pleased to learn they’re on the same side for a change.”

  Bedford’s cheeks broiled with insult. “I hope you’re still laughing when we decide to cut your throat. I’ll be sure to reserve you a body bag.”

  I shook my head. “You’re not going to touch a hair on my head; the big boss wouldn’t like it. What you are going to do is lay off the Hartmans.”

  “You’re in no position to dictate terms, Mr. Tanner. I believe it’s time for you to leave.”

  I shook my head. “The target of the cross was a young lady named Alameda Smallings. She’s the black woman who’s filed suit to be admitted to the Palisade. She’s also the woman you had Colin send a tape to.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Alameda is young, she’s smart, she’s politically prominent, and she’s not about to be intimidated. Which means the law-enforcement people in Charleston are going to be under pressure to shut down whoever was responsible for harassing her, especially after I give them the tape you sent. This is a tourist town. They don’t like people who do things that make folks from Cleveland and Chicago decide to go to Disney World instead. The black Jewish police chief will put you and your brigade out of commission so fast it will bleach the stripes out of your tiger suit.”

  Bedford frowned. “I don’t get it. What does any of that have to do with me? I wasn’t on Johns Island tonight.”

  I waited until he was eager for an answer. “I can prove you were.”

  His brow ignited as the glow of the lantern light blazed across his forehead. “Impossible. After I left the bunker, I came straight here.”

  “I can prove you were on Johns Island, setting fire to a homemade cross.”

  “How?”

  “The Biology of the Race Problem.”

  He frowned. “I’ve read it, and it’s persuasive. But what does it have to do with anything?”

  I stayed silent and let him twitch.

  After a moment, his frown of worry evolved into a grin of conquest. “It doesn’t matter anyway. The Supreme Court just ruled cross-burning isn’t a crime. Even if they do think I did it, there’s nothing they can do about it.”

  I tried not to show my concern over the likelihood that his sense of the law was accurate. “You don’t have it quite right, Mr. Field Marshal. Talk to your lady lawyer. Ask her what the court really said in that case. Ask her if it was anything that will keep you out of jail for what happened on Johns Island last night.”

  His cockiness shrank to the size of a pea. “You’re lying,” was all he said.

  “It’s a simple deal. Let the Hartmans alone, and I keep the proof to myself. I’m not saying you have to close up shop entirely—the Canaanites and the pre-Adamics are going to have to hire their own P.I. I work for the Hartmans, and as of now they’re off your list.”

  “I don’t know. I need to talk to …”He stopped himself before he blurted the name I no longer needed.

  “You’re concerned about the money man. Well, don’t worry; I’m going to shut him down, too.”

  I gestured with the weapon in my hand, the one with the duct tape wound around the grip that was etched with the shapes of my fingers. “The next time you send someone out on an assignment with this thing, be sure to show him how to use it first.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  All I intended to do was stop by my room and take a shower and make some calls. I got the first part done in good order; but somewhere between drying off and getting dressed, I managed to fall asleep. By the time I woke, it was late afternoon, and someone had come in while I was sleeping and draped me with a cotton blanket. The Southern samaritan also left a note: Stop up when you’re aroused, Sleeping Beauty. I finished dressing as fast as I could, made the calls I needed to make to be sure the people I needed to reach would be where I could reach them when I needed to, then followed instructions.

  Scar Raveneau’s entire attire consisted of a surgeon’s shirt, a butcher’s apron, and a pair of bikini panties. Each item of clothing was coequally spattered with paint—yellow and green and red, mostly—which combined in a particularly interesting pattern on the backside of the panties, a phenomenon I only became aware of after she’d kissed my cheek and squeezed my arm and led me to the core of her studio.

  “Hey, stranger,” she said as she offered coffee from an airpot. “You seem to be getting into this Southern thing full time. I stopped down to see you at a pretty ungodly hour, but no one was home. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’ve been on the prowl all night.”

  “Not quite all night,” I said. “Thanks for the blanket.”

  “I’m glad to know there’s something going on around here that’s interesting enough to lose sleep over. I don’t come across that kind of action myself.” She dropped her pixie pose, walked to the window and opened it, and stared across the veranda to the park. The paint on the panties suddenly seemed bathetic.

  When she spoke again, her voice held a tremor of regret. “I’ve been wondering how much longer you’re going to be around.”

  “I’m leaving tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Afraid so. Would you like to have dinner tonight?”

  She sighed, once and deeply, then turned to face me with a plucky smile. “Won’t Seth and Jane Jean want to give you a Southern send-off?”

  “I don’t think they’re going to be in the mood.”

  “You sound like something bad is going to happen.”

  “Something bad has already happened.”

  “To Seth?”

  “To lots of people.”

  “You sound like a good cop in a bad novel. You’re not going to tell me about it, are you?”

  Without waiting for an answer, she walked to the couch and sat down heavily, creating a cloudlet of dust in the process. “I don’t know what to say. About tonight, I mean. You already know I like you. Maybe even more than like. But a long good-bye might be too … masochistic, don’t you think?”

  “Why don’t I call when I wrap up my business and see how you feel about it then? If things go the way I hope they will, I’ll have done all the damage I’m going to do by seven.”

  “You’re not going to come back, are you?”

  “To Charleston? Probably not.”

  “Which means it would be foolish to try to make this into something.”

  “If something is better than nothing, it wouldn’t.” I went to the door and waved back at her with far more nonchalance than I felt. “I’m off to hunt down a historian.”

  “A what?”

  “Some guy who’s down here researching a book on the civil-rights days.”

  “You mean Stan.”

  “Stan?”

  “Professor Mickelson. The guy doing the book.”

  “You know him?”

  “We met in a bar one night.”

  “When?”

  “Couple of weeks ago.”

  “And?”

  “We talked.”

  “And?”

  “We had some laughs. I had some, at any rate; Stan’s wrapped a little too tightly to be real good at horseplay.”

  “And?”

  “We went our separate ways.”

  “You don’t happen to know which way was his way, do you?”

  “Quality Inn.”

  “What room?”

  Her look was as pointed as a tusk. “How should I know?”

  I held up my hands to surrender the implication. “What did you and the professor talk about?”

  “What he wanted to talk about was Seth and Jane Jea
n. When he saw that was my least favorite subject, we talked about the war.”

  “The War of Northern Aggression, I assume.”

  She was pleased I’d remembered the euphemism. “We agreed that contrary to two hundred years of Yankee propaganda, it wasn’t about slavery at all.”

  “What was it about?”

  “States’ rights.”

  “The right to own slaves, you mean.”

  “The right to be free from federal interference.”

  “To be free to own slaves, you mean.”

  She thumbed her nose. “You Yankees have a one-track mind,” she said, then joined me at the door.

  “You’re right about that,” I said, and flipped up her apron and slapped at her buttocks. “But the war we’re obsessed with didn’t end at Appomattox. And the uniforms are much more attractive.”

  I kissed Scar on her forehead before she could laugh or cry, then went to my room and called the Quality Inn. When they rang the professor, he didn’t answer. The operator asked if I wanted to leave a message. I was still debating the point when she said, “Are you Professor Lawton, by any chance?”

  The lie came easily. “Yes, I am.”

  “Then I have a message from Professor Mickelson. He says you can reach him at the Panther any time after six.”

  “The what?”

  “The Panther. That’s a bar. On Upper King? You all might want to take someone with you.”

  Since I had some time to kill, I drove back to the hospital. When I peeked in Colin’s room, it looked like he was sleeping, so I went off in search of his nurse.

  I found her in another hallway, strolling beside a woman whose body was so curled and twisted she needed a walker to keep from falling over. “I’d like to speak to you when you have some time,” I said. “It’s about Colin Hartman.” I pointed. “I’ll be at the nurses’ station.”

  Nurse Bunting joined me five minutes later, her face gleaming from the heat of her ministrations, her eyes hostile with the memory of my prior visit.

  “I got carried away when I was here before,” I said as she sat on the couch beside me. “It won’t happen again.”

  “Your name is Tanner, right?”

  “Right.”

  “You’re a friend of Mr. Hartman’s.”

  “Right.”

  “Colin claims he tried to kill you last night. Is it true?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “It might.”

  “To whom?”

  “His therapist, for one. It might help Dr. Gilman understand how … extreme Colin was feeling when he got here.”

  “Extreme’s a good word for it. Colin’s seeing a psychiatrist?”

  “Yes.”

  “At whose request?”

  “His. And mine. I take it you object.”

  “On the contrary, it’s one of the reasons I’m here—to make that suggestion.”

  Her nod was approving, but her eyes were remote and cautious. “There’s a man standing guard by Colin’s room,” she said. “How necessary is he?”

  “Less so than he was this morning.”

  “But not totally redundant?”

  “No.”

  She shook her head with skepticism. “I suppose it’s too much to ask for you to tell me what’s going on.”

  “I work for his father. My report should be ready this evening. How much of it he thinks you should know is up to him.”

  She wasn’t pleased with the brush-off. “That leaves Colin a bit in the lurch, doesn’t it?”

  “I hope not, but I don’t have any say in the matter. Seth and the therapist should talk; I’m sure Seth will be cooperative. In the meantime, I have a suggestion that might help.”

  “What kind of suggestion?”

  I hesitated, wondering for the millionth time if I was doing the right thing in bending the rules of my profession to satisfy the needs of my person. “I wouldn’t want this to become public knowledge,” I said, “and I wouldn’t like it traced back to me.”

  “You need have no worries on that score.”

  It was easier to accept the assurance from her than from most people I’ve dealt with. “I think Colin’s underlying problem has to do with sex.”

  Her look was sardonic. “Doesn’t everyone’s?”

  I tried a dash of mirth. “Speak for yourself, Ms. Bunting.”

  Her lapse was only momentary; she rebuffed the reference to her private life by crossing her arms across her breasts. “You’re speaking of his sexual orientation, I take it,” she said stiffly.

  “You know about that?”

  “We’ve discussed it.”

  “How? I thought his jaw was broken.”

  “The swelling has been reduced to the point that he can form some words without moving his mandible. It’s not a problem, really; many of my patients are victims of abuse. I have quite a lot of experience communicating with people who have that difficulty.”

  “So Colin told you he’s gay.”

  “He’s indicated his sexual orientation is sufficiently confusing to disturb him. Yes.”

  “His father doesn’t know about it.”

  “I know.”

  “Neither does anyone else that I know of, except his buddy Broom. Has he mentioned her?”

  “No.”

  “She’s been his friend since high school. She’s known he was … confused for a long time. She might be of help if therapy gets difficult.”

  “Thank you for telling me.”

  “No problem. Well, I guess I’ll take off. I thought I was going to point you in the right direction, but I see you’re already going that way.”

  I made a move to leave, but Nurse Bunting wasn’t ready. “Why did you come to me with this? Why not go to his father?”

  I shrugged. “Colin’s been hanging around with a hate group of late. I figured if he’s reached the point where he’d let a black woman hold his hand, he might let her into some other corners of his life as well. The group is homophobic as well as racist, by the way. Strange that he’d hang out with them, given what he knows about himself.”

  She shook her head. “Over the years, I’ve discovered that for some people in Colin’s position, particularly males, there’s a period of rather intense self-loathing that occurs before an understanding and acceptance of their sexual status is achieved. Based on the button he was wearing, I’d say Colin’s urges in that regard were being met quite well by indulging in this organization’s rhetoric.”

  I reached in my wallet and handed her a card. “I’m leaving for San Francisco tomorrow. If you think of any way I can be of help from out there, don’t hesitate to call.”

  “Thank you for your concern.”

  “And the same for yours,” I said. “Tell Colin I said good-bye. Tell him the brigade is standing down, and Bedford’s been relieved of command.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  I drove to Upper King Street accompanied only by an inchoate sense of what lay behind the travails of Seth Hartman and a more explicit urge, one that had blossomed before I realized it existed, to exchange the brume of the Southern sump for some San Francisco summer fog.

  The neighborhood got increasingly black, increasingly decrepit, increasingly kinetic. Pocket crowds were gathered next to minimarts and liquor stores to pass the evening sharing bluster and bullshit and bottles in brown bags. Rakish vehicles crossed my path on uncertain errands made ominous by the smoked-glass windows that masked the intents and purposes of their drivers. Children romped in grassless yards; broken vehicles were stacked like cordwood around the husks of abandoned buildings; police cars lurked in peculiar places.

  Half a mile north of the freeway overpass, I came to the Panther Bar, which occupied the ground floor of a weather-beaten clapboard structure in the middle of an empty block. The black enamel paint job had peeled with sufficient frequency to make the Panther’s skin look more like an ocelot’s. The roof was tin; the doors and windows were masked with iron bars. In the lot next door, the vehicles rang
ed from soft-top Cadillacs to pockmarked pickups that seemed to have survived a war. I parked next to a low-slung Honda and went inside the bar.

  The room swelled at its seams with merrymakers and the noise spun off by their frolic. The neon lights that laced the ceiling were so dimmed by smoke and grease that the gender and age of the occupants was indeterminate except for the waitresses, who wore short black skirts and revealing white blouses and stockings with seams up the back. The fan in the ceiling was tasked to shoo the stench of cigarettes and fried foods through the vent in the roof, but it was too puny to get the job done. The music from the jukebox was loud and primordial; the dancers matched its abandon.

  With one exception, the faces in the room were black—I headed his way like a freighter for a channel marker, slow and steady and alert for floating obstacles. Along the way, I passed a lot of people who didn’t like it that I was there, and nary a one who welcomed me.

  My destination sat alone at a table near the back—the only clearing in the bar was the four-foot perimeter around him. He was clasping and unclasping his hands, crossing and uncrossing his legs, trying to look composed and carefree but not getting within miles of it. His eyes darted around the room like bees, hopping on and off the source of every outburst to make sure it wasn’t perilous. When I sat in the chair across from him, he was more relieved than surprised by the encroachment.

  “Professor Mickelson, I presume,” I said.

  He acknowledged the reference with a bow. “At your service.”

  “My name’s Tanner. I’d like to speak with you a minute.”

  “About what?”

  “The Columbia Field Office of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the summer of 1966.”

  He waited for his surprise to subside, then glanced briefly toward the door. “I’m expecting someone to join me momentarily, but I suppose we can talk till he gets here.”

  “Aldee,” I said.

  He raised a brow. “Do you know Mr. Blackwell?”

  “We’ve met.”

  “In what connection?”

  “In connection with a crime.”

  He licked his lips. “He’s a criminal?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “I don’t understand.”