Now, Then, and Everywhen (Chronos Origins)

by Rysa Walker

  FROM THE MANUAL OF THE UNITED KLANS OF AMERICA (1964)

  KLANSMAN’S OATH

  Section II. SECRECY.

  I most solemnly swear that I will forever keep sacredly secret the signs, words, and grip; and any and all other matters and knowledge of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, regarding which a most rigid secrecy must be maintained, which may at any time be communicated to me and will never divulge same nor even cause the same to be divulged to any person in the whole world, unless I know positively that such person is a member of this Order in good and regular standing; and not even then unless it be for the best interest of this Order.

  I most sacredly vow and most positively swear that I will not yield to bribe, flattery, threats, passion, punishment, persuasion, nor any enticements whatever coming from or offered by any person or persons, male or female, for the purpose of obtaining from me a secret or secret information of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. I will die rather than divulge same. So help me, God. Amen!

  OBJECTS AND PURPOSES (Article II, The Constitution)

  VI. RACIAL:

  “To maintain forever white supremacy.” Or as the Declaration proclaims it, “To maintain forever the God-given supremacy of the white race.”

  ∞19∞

  TYSON

  MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE

  AUGUST 18, 1966

  Flipping through the Log of Stable Points, which looks a lot like a standard-issue diary, is a CHRONOS historian’s first step any time we research a new city. And while I’ve never actually counted, I’d be willing to bet that at least 20 percent of the thousands of locations in the Log are inside hotels. It makes sense, if you think about it. There are always a lot of new people coming and going at a hotel, and the buildings are often in the same spot for hundreds of years with minimal renovations to the public areas. You can usually find a helpful concierge to flag you a taxi or give you detailed information about local areas of interest. Plus, if you’re coming in for more than just a day trip, you don’t have to lug your bags around.

  Someone put some major thought and effort into these stable points. The one here at the Peabody, located in downtown Memphis, is a good example. When you jump in, you find yourself in a secluded nook on the mezzanine level where there’s less foot traffic, so you’re very unlikely to be seen. An early version of the hotel was located a few blocks down the street, with active dates from 1869 to 1924, making it a prime location for historians of the postbellum South. The current location at Union and Second Street opened in 1925, and it’s listed as stable until the mid-twenty-first century, with the exception of a brief period in the late 1970s, when the hotel was vacant.

  This stable point at the Peabody is one of two active jump locations at Memphis hotels during this time period. The other is just behind the Lorraine Motel, which was a whites-only establishment under a different name from 1925 until 1945, when it was converted into a motel catering to black travelers. Later still, it would become the National Civil Rights Museum, with a wreath marking the approximate spot where Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed on April 4, 1968.

  Or at least, that was the historical trajectory of that building in the old timeline. I browsed that stable point yesterday, while we were running our simulations, panning around until the word Lorraine, in a very midcentury yellow neon oval, came into view. The lights on that sign went out for good in 1976, and the building and sign both came down in 1979. Early the next year, the space was taken over by a Burger King and a gas station.

  That has me wondering how many of our stable points are still stable for the durations noted in the Log. I guess we should have run a simulation for that before we left HQ, although there probably won’t be major changes until a few decades from now, once the casualties increase and erasures start to kick in.

  Rich and Katherine have already stepped out of the stable point and are at the banister overlooking the lobby. “Come on,” Rich says. “We need to hurry or we’ll miss it.”

  “Miss what?” Katherine asks, but he just grabs her elbow and steers her toward the stairs. A crowd is gathering near the large, ornate fountain in the center of the lobby.

  A John Philip Sousa march begins playing over the loudspeaker, and a couple of the children start clapping, their eyes fixed on the elevator. The elevator dings, and then the door opens. A man clad in livery steps out and dramatically unfurls a long red carpet. As soon as the path is spread in front of them, five ducks waddle out of the elevator, paying no attention at all to the people gathered on either side of the red carpet. They march down the runway, flapping their wings slightly to steady themselves as they hop up the stairs and dive happily into a fountain lined with small, brightly colored tiles. Marble cherubs support the upper basin, which rains gently down on the green-headed drake and four brown hens.

  Katherine grins up at Rich. “What was that all about?”

  Rich, who has stayed here twice before, chuckles. “Happens every morning. The ducks own the place. Most of the time, they’re in a penthouse suite on the roof, but they take the elevator to the lobby each morning.”

  She gives him a skeptical look.

  “I’m not kidding,” he says. “Well, except for them owning the place. The duck march has been a thing since the 1930s. Some say even before that.”

  Katherine pulls out her key and sets a stable point. “Now I can roll it back and watch it all over again later.”

  Rich smiles back at her, looking ridiculously pleased at having made her happy.

  The hotel has one room with two double beds available. Not ideal, because I have no doubt it means I’ll be sharing a bed with Richard, but it will have to do. We take the room, and once we’re settled, I scan the yellow pages of the phone book for a rental-car agency nearby.

  While Richard calls to reserve a car, I continue thumbing through the phone books, this time searching the white pages. Toni’s dad introduced himself as Lowell Robinson when he was thanking me for saving Toni, and, sure enough, there’s a Lowell Robinson on Keel Avenue.

  “Tyce?” Richard says. “You looking for something?”

  “Nope. Just browsing.”

  “We probably need to get a move on,” he says, “if you’re still planning to go in search of that contact of Glen’s.”

  Rich knows damn well I’m still going, so the remark is obviously designed to get temptation out of my hands. Which isn’t necessary. I wasn’t actually planning to call her. I’m just curious. But I slide the phone book back into the nightstand drawer, giving him an annoyed look as I do.

  Once we have the car, I drop Rich and Katherine off at a diner a few blocks from the Coliseum. Katherine has pen and paper in hand, and Rich has a massive camera around his neck, which kind of makes me wonder whether there was any room for a change of clothes inside the suitcase he brought along. Their press credentials are with teen magazine Tiger Beat, a relatively new publication that probably isn’t sending reporters into the field, so there’s less chance of them bumping into anyone who can blow their cover. I’m also pretty sure it means no one will take them very seriously, and that’s probably a good thing. If they were with the New York Times, they would attract a lot more curiosity. The plan is to set a few dozen observation points inside the auditorium—or, as they plan to tell the security guy they’ll bribe, get a few photographs of the Coliseum when it’s empty to show next to the one when it’s teeming with teenyboppers the next day. Since it would no doubt raise some suspicion if they walked around with their CHRONOS keys out, setting observation points with the guard watching, they’ll just set a single location. Then, they can go back to the hotel, scan forward to tonight when the place is empty, and set a few dozen more.

  Katherine is in a better mood than she’s been. I think the idea of sneaking around like a detective amuses her. And Rich is definitely psyched. He gets to spend the day with the girl he loves, while Saul Rand is four hundred miles and more than five decades away. Aside from the fact that we now have a major rift in the timeli
ne to contend with, that’s pretty much the scenario he had in mind when he originally set up this research trip.

  My task for the afternoon is to drive to Collierville, about forty-five minutes outside the city. The notes I have from field training with Glen included one contact, a guy named Buster Wilson, in the Shelby County Klan.

  I called Glen just before we left to double-check the name and see if he had any other information. Glen, who has been in the analysis section since he retired from fieldwork, was a little surprised to hear from me. We were never super close, given the age difference and the fact that Glen was a little disgruntled about being near the end of his time as an active field agent. But normally, I’d have stopped in his office if I had a question, rather than calling. And I’d have chatted with him for a while and filled him in on my latest research. The clock was ticking on our departure, however, so I didn’t have the luxury of an extended visit. I’ll have to call back and apologize once we fix this, if we fix this, although he may have a pretty good idea why I was acting weird by that time.

  The trip where he met the contact mentioned in my notes was about ten years ago for Glen, but only a few weeks back in terms of the actual date. Robert Shelton, Imperial Wizard of the United Klans, spoke at a rally in Memphis on July 23. Glen wound up at a bar with several of the men afterward. Buster had a bit too much to drink and missed his connection for a ride home, so Glen offered to drive him—before realizing he’d committed to a two-hour round trip that was much farther away from his stable point than he’d planned to travel. Glen told me the story partly as a cautionary tale, but he also noted that he’d learned a lot about the organization of local klaverns outside of North Carolina during that drive, because Buster was still half-tanked and much chattier than he might have been otherwise. When I spoke with him this morning, Glen said he had no clue whether Buster Wilson has a telephone in 1966, but suggested that my best bet would be to ask around at one of the restaurants on the town square where Buster eats dinner most nights when his shift at the toy factory is over.

  Glen sent over his notes from the trip, so I flip my diary to audio mode and listen as I drive. I suspect the section on Buster would be a lot more interesting if Glen had just recorded the man talking, but instead I’m treated to a half-hour discussion on evolving race relations in rural Tennessee, a bit on gender roles, and a side plot on economic development. I wonder if my reports are this boring for those who have to read them. There are only a few things of real use in Glen’s narrative. The first is that Buster’s wife took up with a sailor from the Mid-South Naval Base a few months back. That’s why he’s eating out so much these days. Buster apparently spent a good portion of the drive complaining that the Klan needed to focus on all parts of its constitution. That the sections about enforcing morality ought to pertain to whites, too, and maybe then Cindy wouldn’t have run off. Because she’d have known there were consequences. She’d have been too afraid to leave. If she’d run off with a black man, the Klan would have helped him, and he’s still a little annoyed that they turned him down when he asked for a “corrective action.” Even told in Glen’s boring academic writing style, it’s clear that Buster is one messed-up individual, and I’m glad that this Cindy is free of him.

  The second thing I glean from the report is that even though the “more popular than Jesus” quote wouldn’t blow up in the US media for another week, several of the men at the bar had been grumbling about flyers they’d seen at the venue for the Klan rally, advertising the Memphis Country Blues Festival being held there the next week. It featured both black and white performers on the roster, and that had gotten one of them who had a teenage daughter talking about how she wouldn’t be going to the upcoming Beatles concert for that same reason. There was no talk of sabotage or a protest at that point, however. Or if there was, it’s not in Glen’s notes.

  It’s not all that hot for mid-August, certainly nothing like the heat I had to put up with when I worked at Ida’s. The air conditioner in the car is feeble, though, so once the audio is over, I strip down to my white T-shirt and crank the windows down instead. When I reach the edge of town, I park near a phone booth, pull my shirt back on, and check the white pages to see if there’s a listing for Buster Wilson. There are seven Wilsons, none of them Buster. While Buster is probably a nickname, in my experience with southern names, that’s not a safe bet.

  It’s a little before five when I arrive at the town square. There’s a small bandstand in the park, so I sit on the edge and smoke one of my bogus cigarettes, mostly because it gives me something to do with my hands while I wait. After about ten minutes, I get bored and start to pace around the perimeter of the park, checking to see how many restaurants I’ll need to scope out.

  The first one is an ice-cream shop, so it’s probably not a candidate. There’s also a drugstore, although that seems like more of a lunch thing to me. Dyer’s Cafe, which appears to specialize in hamburgers, is almost directly opposite the spot where I parked the rental car, and it seems the most likely candidate until I spot a very familiar sign down the block. A large yellow hen in an apron emblazoned with the Confederate flag is perched atop the words The Dixie Chicken.

  My first thought is that I didn’t realize the place was a chain, but then I remember Phelps’s comment about his younger sister living outside of Memphis. It may just be a family business with two far-flung locations. Either way, I know which restaurant I’ll be checking first. And even though I hate to give them my money (again), I have to know.

  The woman who owns this place apparently isn’t as proud as her older sister, or maybe the recipes weren’t hers to begin with, so pride wasn’t an issue. Chicken, hush puppies, biscuits . . . even the coleslaw is good enough that it could have come straight from Miss Ida’s kitchen at the Southside. Or maybe I’m just extra hungry.

  No one matching the description Glen gave me enters The Dixie Chicken while I’m eating, so I go back up and ask one of the two people working the counter for a refill on the iced tea. When the guy, who looks like he’s still in high school, comes back with the pitcher to top off my cup, I ask him if he knows Buster Wilson.

  “A friend of mine met him at an event in Memphis a couple weeks back,” I say. “He told me I might want to look him up while I’m in town.”

  The boy’s eyes narrow slightly. “Sure. Buster usually comes in around this time. Although sometimes it’s later, depending on when Mr. Ayak shuts down the factory line.”

  He’s a good-looking kid, tall and clean-cut, with a friendly grin, and he seems bright enough. But he put such a strong emphasis on the word Ayak that anyone listening would have known he was passing some sort of message.

  I don’t know who came up with the Klan code, but they were pretty awful at it. In this case, the word is an acronym for a question—Are you a Klansman?—and I’m expected to respond with some sentence including the acronym AKIA, for A Klansman I am. The problem is AYAK and AKIA aren’t easy to work into conversation. You have to treat them as proper nouns, and most towns with an active Klan in 1966 don’t have people with last names like Ayak and Akia. Glen searched for options, and said it would have been easier during the resurgence of the Klan in the early twenty-first century, because you could ask if he was “driving a Kia,” but by then, they just ask for a token kept on your cell phone rather than these elaborate ruses.

  “Isn’t Buster working at the Akia factory in Memphis now?” I ask.

  The kid smiles when he hears the response and gives me a thumbs-up. I respond in kind, even though that’s not the usual hand signal.

  “Nah. He’s still makin’ them bouncy horses here in town. He’ll be in later tonight if the weather doesn’t turn . . .” His face squinches up, like he’s trying to remember something, probably another code; then his voice drops down to where it’s almost inaudible. “Six. He’ll be here at six with the others.” Then he sticks out his hand, and I shake it. “Billy Meeks. My dad’s the klaliff.”

  “Troy Rayburn. Good to m
eet you.”

  “You want some banana puddin’ while you wait? On the house. Mama made it this mornin’, and it’s real good.”

  I say sure, more because I think he’ll be offended if I don’t than because I’m still hungry. When he comes back with the pudding, he says, “Where you from?”

  “Over near Raleigh.”

  “Dang. Didn’t know we had Tar Heels comin’ in, too. My Uncle Lenny came in this morning. You may know him . . . He’s been in Raleigh a lot lately.”

  “Lenny Phelps?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hey, Billy!” a woman calls from the back. “Are you workin’ or talkin’? Pam cain’t run the counter all by herself.”

  “Sorry, Mama.” He frowns, clearly troubled, then leans forward over the counter and whispers, “This don’t mean they’re turning tomorrow over to a wrecking crew, does it?”

  Wrecking crew is code for actions involving death or serious harm. Within United Klans, it’s not unusual for a request to come down for a few extra hands to travel for any actions that might get violent. Basically, they pull in outside help for the kinds of things where you don’t want to use locals, because they might be recognized by the police or bystanders. The fact that Billy looks worried about the prospect of a wrecking crew, and maybe even a little disappointed, makes me wonder if he has grown up with the Klan but is now questioning it, or at least some of the more extreme actions.

  “Not sure,” I say. “I’ll let you get back to work before your mama gets onto you again.”

  He hurries back to the cash register, and I return to my table, trying to decide how to play this. On the one hand, the fact that Phelps is here—and presumably Scoggin, too—gives me an excellent opportunity to get inside information. They know me. On the other hand, it could get a little complicated, since Buster hung out with Glen less than a month ago, from his perspective, and the people in the Carolina Klans all think he’s been living in Chicago for the past eighteen months. Also, I’ve got this weird feeling that anything I do could make things worse—what if this attack on Lennon was supposed to be simple harassment and it becomes a wrecking crew simply because they now believe they have enough out-of-towners to make it one?