It Occurs to Me That I Am America

by Richard Russo

  The Lecturer interrupted. “Kimberly Elden?”

  “That’s right. Why do you ask? Do you know her?”

  “Never mind. Please continue.”

  Junie sipped her coffee. Anyway, she said, that was the public profile: a white couple and three colored servants. Privately, however, the cadre remained under her command. Paul ranked just beneath her. The others did as they were told. The other thing nobody in Charleston knew was that the house was an arsenal, packed with enough weapons to hold off the state militia for a week.

  That was the profile, she repeated.

  Then she told him about the crime.

  (11)

  Two weeks ago (said Junie) Paul had returned to the house in a frothing fury. At a local country club, he and his “wife” had been introduced to an elderly man whose name was familiar. At the public library Paul had discovered that the man had once been a leader of the local Klan, and although his night-riding days were long behind him, some fifteen years ago he had been suspected but never indicted in the disappearance of the plaintiff in a desegregation case in Clarendon County. Junie warned her cadre that they were not there to seek revenge. They had a mission, which she declined to discuss with the Lecturer. He approved of her discretion: he was an outsider, after all.

  Despite Junie’s order, a few days later Paul, Sharon, and Kimberly arrived back at the safe house with the retired Klansman in the trunk of their car.

  “How had the abduction been accomplished?” he asked.

  “He has a house down by the river. They drove right up to his door. A white couple and their maid wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. As soon as they were sure he was alone, they pulled their guns.”

  “Someone could have seen the car.”

  “I know. I told you, it was stupid.”

  “Did anyone see the car?”

  “I have no idea. I’m trying to find out.”

  “I see.” The Lecturer did not disguise his unhappiness with this answer. “Please continue.”

  Junie gave him a look but went on with the story. When her three subordinates arrived with the Klansman, she was flabbergasted—and, for once, indecisive. She told them to keep him bound and blindfolded and to lock him in the basement. The only entrance was through the kitchen. She ordered that food and water be sent down, then padlocked the door and put the key around her neck. He was not to be bothered, she said. Nobody was to do anything until she’d had a chance to think. She sensed their sullen resentment, but she was the commander, and they had other work to do.

  “You should have killed him at once,” said the Lecturer. “Then you would not be in this mess.”

  “That’s certainly what my cadre thought,” Junie conceded. She and Sharon had to go out that night to a meeting about which she would say no more. There was no way to avoid it. She left Paul in charge. She told him that she was trusting him to see that no harm came to the prisoner. She told him to stand guard in the kitchen until she and Sharon returned. When they got back a few hours later, Junie undid the padlock and went downstairs to check on the prisoner. He was alive. She was sure of that. She came back up and relocked the door. Paul and Hammie were to take turns guarding the kitchen. Then she went upstairs to the room she shared with Kimberly, her fellow colored servant. In the morning the prisoner was dead. Strangled.

  Hammie had stood watch most of the night, but he freely admitted that he had left his post when he heard a trash can fall over outside. He had hurried into the yard. A raccoon, he thought. He swept up the garbage, reclosed the can, and returned to the kitchen. The padlock, he swore, was still in place.

  “The trash can was a diversion,” said the Lecturer.

  “I know that,” said Junie. “I just don’t know who did the diverting.” She fingered her necklace. “Or how the killer got into the basement if I had the key.”

  “You were asleep.”

  “The key was still around my neck.”

  “Is there a second key?”

  “No. This is the only one.”

  “How do you know?”

  His browbeating was starting to annoy her, which they both knew was his intention. “I bought the padlock myself. I threw the other key in the river.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if I ever needed to lock anything up, I wanted to be sure I could control who got at it.”

  The Lecturer pondered. He did his sums. He knew that his sudden silence was irritating her but he wanted to check the addition.

  “That’s your third cup of coffee since I arrived,” he said.

  She looked at her cup. “I suppose. It could be.”

  “Do you drink a lot of it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even at night?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “On the night in question?”

  “Probably.”

  “Your coffee was drugged.”

  Junie gasped. Then laughed. “That’s crazy. Who would drug my coffee? That’s nuts.” She grew serious again. “Besides, drugging me wouldn’t do them any good. Even if I was asleep upstairs, the key would still be around my neck. They couldn’t get it without waking Kimberly. Or did they drug her, too? I don’t— Oh.”

  “Yes. Oh.” The Lecturer looked at her closely. “You are not truly surprised. You are pretending.”

  “That’s not true.”

  He ignored this. “You’ve known all along who it was. I’m not here to solve the murder. I’m here to confirm your diagnosis and help you decide what to do about the disease.”

  “The disease?”

  “When a comrade does not follow orders, Commander, there is a disease. A serious one. Undiscipline. Nothing is more threatening to the revolution.”

  “But—”

  “There are only two possible killers. Kimberly or yourself. And ever since your Cuba speech, your commitment to nonviolence is legendary.”

  She was angry at last. “If it was Kimberly, who created the diversion?”

  “I do not know. But surely you have studied methods of compulsory interrogation.”

  “You’re not going to torture one of my comrades.”

  “I’m not going to do anything, Commander. The question is what you’re going to do.” He was packing his bag. “You have the killer. She must be punished severely. Not for killing the Klansman, for he was a monster and deserved his horrible death. But you must establish discipline, swift and clear discipline. Your comrades should know that they dare not disobey you.”

  “Nobody deserves to die.”

  “This is a revolution, Commander. Not a Broadway musical.”

  “The Klansman was a human being. Kimberly is a human being.” She shook her head decisively. “I won’t do it. I won’t torture a member of my cadre. And I certainly won’t kill her.”

  “It will make no difference what you decide. Hesitate in this matter, and your subordinates will take command and carry out the punishment anyway. A commander unwilling to act when the situation demands it can be no commander.”

  “I can live with that.”

  “Perhaps you can. But even that will no longer be your decision, will it?”

  Her eyes widened. She said nothing.

  “I have been here too long already,” said the Lecturer. “I must be out of the country tonight.”

  “What about Kimberly?”

  “What about her?”

  “Shouldn’t you see her? Talk to her?”

  “She is your problem now, Commander. Not mine. Excuse me.”

  He let himself out, walked around the front of the house. He knew she was watching from the window, and therefore he was careful not to look up. He climbed back into his truck and drove off.

  (12)

  The Lecturer went first to Canada, then to Paris for a conference of socialist comrades, before finally returning to Algeria, which had become his home. Time passed. Rumors were everywhere. Commander M had refused to punish Kimberly Elden, and, just as the Lecturer predicted, she had lost her command. A show trial ha
d been held. She had been demoted to the lowest level, taking orders from everyone in the group. Eventually she disappeared. One report said she was dead. Another had it that she had abandoned radical activism to go in search of the child—children, plural, said some—whom she had borne while underground and put up for adoption.

  Kimberly Elden surfaced in New York late in 1966 and was promptly arrested. Her wealthy family hired the finest lawyers. The government, whatever its suspicions, was unable to prove that she had committed any crimes of violence. She pled guilty to a weapons charge and spent a year and a half in prison. Upon her release at the end of 1968, she was hired as an instructor at a private college in the Midwest.

  In early May of 1969, the Lecturer returned to the States, tasked with helping Agony wind down its operations. He would rather have avoided the job, but his superiors were adamant. He was familiar with Agony, they said. The work had to be done. His instructions were to make contact with elements of Weatherman and explore the possibility of a merger. The negotiations were to take place in Chicago, during the convention of the Students for a Democratic Society. At a barricaded apartment on the South Side, the Lecturer met a couple of people who might or might not have been part of Weatherman. Afterward he went to a bar in Lincoln Park to confer with the representatives of Agony. Sharon he had of course expected. Paul’s presence, too, made sense. Junie was a surprise. The Lecturer prepared himself for enmity. But she was surprisingly friendly and even charming. The negotiations looked unpromising, but Sharon said she would take Weatherman’s terms back to her people.

  Her people. The Lecturer reminded himself to use that one.

  Afterward, Sharon and Paul left. Junie finished her scotch, and the Lecturer his club soda. They went for a walk along the lake. The water was heavy and invisible in the quiet darkness. They talked a bit about old times—Cuba and Algeria but not Charleston—and about radicals who were mutual acquaintances, most of them in prison or in hiding or in the ground. Then they lapsed into a companionable silence as the waves whispered their slow messages along the shore.

  “You’re really not part of it anymore, are you?” he asked after a bit. “Agony. You’ve left all of that behind.”

  “I’m not sure if I’m part of it or not. I come and I go.”

  “And Sharon allows this? It seems undisciplined. Also bad security.”

  “That’s your big thing, isn’t it? Discipline.” Her smile was wan. “Not mine. My dad was a preacher, but I was always the rebel in the family. My brother, my sister—they argued some, sure, but basically they did as they were told. They were good kids. I wasn’t.”

  Unsure how to respond, he decided to say nothing.

  “You’re a revolutionary. It’s different for you.” She spread her palms. “Anyway, as you might have noticed, Sharon’s not all that big on discipline either. She thinks she is, but she’s not. She’s not that big on anything just now.”

  “The drugs,” he intoned.

  “And other things. She’s happy to let me come and go.”

  “She apprises you of her whereabouts?”

  “I know. Bad security, right?”

  She laughed.

  They strolled for another hour. They talked about the prospects for a merger they both knew would not be happening. They talked about the decision of an American publisher to bring out Marighella next year, in English: would that be good or bad for the revolution? They agreed that it was a shame about Kimberly Elden. He wanted to ask Junie whether it was true that she had children, and if she had found them, but found himself unexpectedly shy. He walked her back to the apartment building where she was crashing and stood for a few minutes on the step. Before he quite knew what was happening, the Lecturer heard himself agreeing to meet the group next month back at the safe house in New York.

  “I have to go to New Haven first,” he said, a complete and entirely unprecedented breach of security.

  “Come to Harlem on the way,” said Junie. “Pick me up. I’ll go with you.”

  (13)

  He puts down his pen. He has no more to say. He folds the letter and slides it into an envelope. He writes nothing on the outside. He stands up and stretches, and it occurs to him that this would be the perfect moment for a sniper to catch him from across the street, but no shot is fired. He sits on the sofa with two guns in his lap and lets his eyelids droop.

  Nothing to do now but wait.

  He remembers a small boy who loved his gentle mother and stern father more than anything in the world. He remembers how wounded he was after he watched both being humiliated by the university that then as now dominated New Haven. Because they were colored. Because it was the way things were. People said things were changing, but he knew it was all on the surface, the superstructure of capitalism. All the colleges were promising to admit more black students. Nobody seemed able to see the contradiction. If capitalism was the enemy, then turning more black people into little capitalists would only serve to strengthen the very system that oppressed the working class. The darker nation was excited at the changes in the wind, but deep down the ruling class was laughing at—

  (14)

  This time the footfall on the stair is unmistakable. The pigs have arrived at last. The Lecturer hears a fumbling at the door. He throws himself onto the floor on the far side of the desk. If the knob is turned the wrong way the grenade will go off. He has the Walther in hand. He has pulled the Ruger to the floor with him. He duck-walks backward and grabs the M1, then changes his mind and takes the Gamemaster instead. He kneels. Adjusts the sight. Focuses on the door.

  Which swings half-open.

  No explosion.

  “It’s me,” says Junie. “Don’t shoot.”

  (15)

  They are sitting on the sofa together, underneath a side window, out of line of sight from the door. They are armed to the teeth.

  “You shouldn’t have come back,” he says. They have been sitting in silence for almost an hour. Outside it is full dark.

  “I know.”

  “We’re going to die here.”

  She considers. “Maybe,” she says. “I hope not.”

  He looks at her. “You’re not staying.”

  “No. You shouldn’t either. There’s still time to get away.”

  “Let me guess. You’re not going to the alternate safe house.”

  She shakes her head. “I went to Chicago for Sharon’s sake. I guess that’s why I stayed here, too. But it’s over for me. I’m out of it. I can’t do this anymore.”

  And you found your babies, he thinks but does not say. Perhaps the rumor is true. But he knows she will never tell him.

  “And you’re not here, I suspect, to save my hide.”

  “I know your mind is made up. That’s not why I’m here.”

  “Why, then?”

  “I wanted to thank you,” she says.

  “For what?”

  “For forcing me to admit the truth.”

  “What truth?”

  “That I should never have joined Agony. I should never have been the commander.”

  “I’ve wondered about that,” he says after a bit. “I’ve gone over every one of Agony’s actions, all the way back to 1958. I’ve found an interesting pattern.”

  “What pattern is that?”

  “You were violent without being violent.” He smiles at her evident puzzlement, which he is certain is feigned. “Agony blew things up. You shot up the car of a sheriff who’d beaten demonstrators, or the home of a deputy who’d let the mob have its way with his prisoner. You carried out exactly twenty-two actions during the period when you were commander. And in those twenty-two actions, only one person was killed, probably by accident. Besides, that was at the very end, when others were calling the shots.”

  “You’re forgetting the Klansman.”

  “No, I’m not. I’ll come to him in a moment.” He yawns. The work of waiting has worn him out. He wishes they would come. “I think this pattern was intentional. You never wanted
to kill anyone. How Agony was formed—where the money came from—who placed you in command—these are mysteries the answers to which I will never know. I have my suspicions, but I will never know. Still, whoever it was who chose you did so precisely because you would keep the violence under control. Scare people without killing people. It’s actually rather clever.”

  “It’s not clever at all, and I’m not as pacifistic as you think.”

  “From my point of view as a revolutionary, no. It is not clever. It is remarkably stupid. A waste of resources. Nonviolent actions will rarely suffice to awaken the sleeping conscience of the proletariat.” He holds up a palm to forestall her response. “I know. I know. But listen to me. If your goal is not revolution but reform, then Agony is the perfect vehicle. You scare people but never hurt anyone. If you had your way, nobody would even be scratched. This is not a compliment. You should never have been the commander.”

  “But I was.”

  “Yes. You were the commander. And when you refused to punish Kimberly Elden for disobeying your orders and killing the Klansman, everything was clear.”

  “That I would be deposed, you mean. That Sharon and Paul would take over, and Agony would turn violent.”

  “No, Junie. What was clear was that you were the killer.”

  (16)

  “Look at it from my point of view. I am called to America to solve a murder that is already solved. I am asked how to deal with a comrade who has disobeyed your orders, even though you know my views on the revolution well enough to know what I will say. And then you refuse to carry out the only true option you have.”

  “From which you conclude what?”

  “From which I conclude that you never intended to discipline Kimberly Elden. You needed me to find her guilty, but that was only to divert the suspicion from yourself.”

  She is staring at him now, beautiful brown eyes wide in the gray darkness. She says nothing.