A Passionate Girl (25 page)

Suddenly we heard the pounding of hooves on Main Street. Dan seized my arm, and we rushed to the front door. Half a hundred horses were prancing past, their riders each wearing a white hood over his head, with two eyes and a mouth cut in it. “Ku Klux,” one of them cried when he saw me and Dan. I was sure it was John Kennedy.

The hooded horsemen swung east at the foot of Main Street and galloped toward the Negro quarter of Memphis. Within minutes there came a volley of shots, followed by the ringing of church bells and a glimpse of flames flickering against the darkened sky. Screams and shouts and rebel yells echoed faintly in the night-shrouded streets. From the opposite end of town, where the black soldiers were camped, came cries of alarm. Soon the blacks appeared on Main Street, rushing furiously past the hotel, guns in hand. A tremendous crash of rifles broke their charge. From buildings on both sides of the street, hidden marksmen poured bullets into them. It was a well-laid ambush. Some tried to return the fire, but it was a lost cause. Dozens toppled before the devastating volleys. The survivors broke and ran in terror. Their enemies emerged to pursue them, whooping like Indians. I was dismayed to see that they were mostly policemen in uniform.

For the rest of the night, Memphis was a city in chaos. White and black men fought from rooftops and store-fronts, while flaming terror reigned in the Negro quarter. Screams of pain and fear, shouts of anger and defiance, and bursts of gunfire shattered the darkness.

Not until dawn did General Stoneman send white troops into the city to restore order. We stared from our hotel at a sight that made Vicksburg's single dead Negro seem trivial. At least twenty black soldiers sprawled on Main Street in various postures of agony. Among them lay one or two whites. When army wagons took away the dead, I ventured down to the Negro quarter with Red Mike Hanrahan, who was gathering facts for a report to the
Irish-American.
There lay more Negro dead, and one or two whites, their hoods still on their heads. The blacks had fought here, too, but equally in vain. Their shanties and tumbledown houses had been put to the torch. Almost the entire quarter was in ruins, including Miss Simpson's school house. We found her weeping in the wreckage, smeared with dirt and ashes, trying to salvage a few charred books and writing slates.

“We'll build a better school,” she said, when she saw me. “We'll build a better school. Wait and see.”

“Are you all right yourself? Did they—insult you?” I asked.

“Only with words,” she said. “They did far worse to at least five colored women, including the daughter of my—my friends. Where I was staying.”

She began to weep uncontrollably. “We'll make them pay for this,” she said, raising her clenched fist. “I'm going to write to the president, to every man in Congress. I'm going to tell them what happened in Memphis. We'll make these people pay.”

She glared with wild eyes up the hill toward the white section of the town. All traces of angelic innocence were gone from her face. She looked capable of murder.

I felt capable of it myself when Red Mike and I returned to the hotel. Who should I encounter strutting across the lobby but Captain Kennedy. “I see you took my advice and stayed out of harm's way,” he said.

“I did because I had no choice,” I said. “I have no training as a soldier. But if I had, I know where I would have gone.”

“Where is that?” he said with his complacent smile.

“Down to the Negro quarter to shoot a few more of you hooded heroes out of your saddles,” I said. “I have strong opinions about men who attack defenseless women and children.”

“You
are
a little nigger lover, aren't you,” Kennedy said. “People like you will be much safer out of Tennessee. Out of the whole South, in fact. This is only the beginning. We're going to teach Sambo and Sambo lovers like you that the white race has no intention of letting niggers into our courts or legislatures or schoolrooms.”

By now I was too furious to think about caution. “You're a swine and deserve nothing but slaughter,” I said.

“If you were a man, I'd ask you to answer that insult with a pistol,” Kennedy said.

“I would do so gladly, in the name of those black women you abused last night.”

“All right, all right,” Mike Hanrahan said, drawing me away. “She's overwrought. No sleep.”

“Of course,” Kennedy said.

Red Mike escorted me to my room, lecturing all the way. “These fellows are dangerous,” he said. “Do y'want to get us all killed? Dan tells me that this Ku Klux thing is racing across the state like a flame up a fuse.”

At lunch Mike reported on what we had seen in the Negro quarter and added a picturesque account of my collision with Captain Kennedy, in which he had us drawing pistols at ten paces. John O'Neil decided that there was no hope of staging a Fenian rally in Memphis now—nor was it advisable. Northern reporters were no doubt rushing to the city. Our best move was an immediate departure for Nashville, where things were hopefully quieter. I opined that it might be a good idea to abandon Tennessee entirely, but O'Neil said that he had promised his wife to stop at Nashville. From there we would have no difficulty proceeding west to Kentucky, Ohio, and Illinois.

That afternoon we boarded a train for Nashville. It had none of the comforts of the parlor car we had ridden to Washington. We sat on hard wooden seats with straight backs. The flimsy coach was not much more than a wooden crate on iron wheels. The interior was like an oven. When we opened the windows, soot blew in our faces. The railroad had carried only freight and troops during the war years, when there was little cause for amenities.

Adding to my displeasure was the discovery that Captain Kennedy was on the train. He was drunk and went up and down the cars offering people a swig from the bottle of bourbon he was carrying. It had something to do with celebrating last night's victory in Memphis, from snatches of conversation I overheard. He pretended to be surprised when he encountered us.

“Join me in a toast?” he said, proffering the bottle. “The South will rise again.”

John O'Neil shook his head. “I wish you well, but I can't drink to that. Nor can my friend here,” he said, gesturing to Mike. “He was in the Irish Brigade.”

“I won't bother to ask Harriet O'Beecher McStowe here.” Kennedy said. “How 'bout you, Dan?”

“Not thirsty, Jack,” Dan said. “And I wouldn't call this lady here any more names. She just might rename your creek for you.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

Dan pointed out the window at a meandering stream. “'Bout a hundred years ago, a settler family camped by that creek. The old man was a mean cuss, and he beat his wife somethin' awful. He gave a big cocka-doodle-do and decided that to celebrate his victory he'd call it ‘Daddy's Creek.' Next night the old lady got together with some of her half-grown sons, and they laid into the old varmint till he was beggin' for mercy. To make sure he remembered, they changed the name to Mammy's Creek—and that's what it's still called.”

“Those days are gone forever,” Kennedy said. “In modern Tennessee we have ways of dealin' with uppity women same as with uppity niggers.”

I heard menace in his voice, but if Dan heard it, he chose to ignore it. “Stay away from her, Jack,” he said, lighting a cigar. “She's got a little nickel-plated gun that could put more holes in you than this train's got windows.”

“Sounds like you agree with her sentiments, old friend,” Kennedy said.

Dan examined the cigar for a moment. “Don't go much for the kind of cavalry fightin' you Kluxers did at Memphis. Down in Virginia, General Stuart and General Hampton kind of drew the line on women and children, no matter what their color.”

“That kind of thinkin' could make you real unpopular in Tennessee these days.”

“My dad didn't worry much about popularity when he stood with the Confederacy,” Dan said. “I don't reckon I should change my ways without changin' my name, do you?”

“No, I guess not,” Kennedy said. He swigged from his bottle and departed.

It was growing dark when we reached Jackson, which was about halfway to Nashville. There the conductor informed us that we were going no further. Earlier in the day some robbers—bushwhackers, he called them—had waylaid a train in the mountains, and General Stoneman had telegraphed orders to make no more trips without an armed guard, which would not arrive from Memphis until tomorrow morning.

Groaning with impatience, we debarked and hustled into the town to find beds for the night. Happily we had no trouble. Jackson was a junction for five railroads, and there were several taverns for travelers who had to wait overnight for trains. We lost track of Captain Kennedy in the midst of our transfer, and I thought no more about him. After a poor supper of scorched beef and rancid coffee, I pronounced myself exhausted, having gotten scarce two hours' sleep the previous night in Memphis, and went to bed. The others said they would soon imitate my example.

I fell asleep instantly and dreamt of Ireland, a habit that was beginning to distress me. I saw dozens of familiar faces, Old Malloy and Patrick Dolan, my ex-suitor, looking sad, and Mother and Father, also in some great distress, for reasons I could not understand. If I were with you, how happy I would be, thought the watcher-dreamer in Tennessee.

Suddenly I was staring awake in the darkness, struggling to breathe. A dirty, tobacco-smelling hand was over my mouth and nose. “I got her,” whispered a voice. Someone struck a match. A half dozen men in white hoods confronted me. The hand was abruptly replaced by an equally dirty rag, which was shoved into my mouth, all but choking me. Another dirty rag was tied over it to prevent me from spitting the first one out. I was rolled over on my face and my hands tied behind my back, while someone else tied my ankles. A big fellow slung me over his shoulder like a sack of meal and carried me along the upper hall and down a back stairs. Outside waited two more men with horses. I was tied over the back of a saddle, head down one side, feet down the other, and they rode away.

I lost track of how long we rode. I was in constant pain from the horse's haunches pounding into my stomach. Occasionally stones flew up and struck me in the face. Dust blinded and almost choked me. Finally we slowed and picked our way up a trail in some woods. In a moment we were in a clearing, where pine-knot torches blazed. They cut me off the horse and loosed the ropes on my hands and feet. They also removed my foul gag. I gazed at a dozen hooded figures, grouped around a ruler who sat on a crude throne. He wore not only a hood but a long white robe.

“Kneel before the Grand Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan of Jackson, Tennessee,” I was told.

I knelt. I was thoroughly frightened.

“Do you know why you have been brought here?” asked the Cyclops.

“No.”

“You have been accused on good grounds of defamin' the noble order of the Ku Klux and maintainin' the dangerous lie that the black man is equal to the white man. Is that true?”

“I insist on being returned to my inn immediately,” I said.

“We consider a refusal to defend yourself the same as a plea of guilty. In our benevolence, we are goin' to give you a chance to repent of your ways, and learn a lesson in the bargain. Bring out the other prisoner.”

A husky Negro was shoved into the circle of torch-light. He wore city clothes, which were much the worse for wear, and his shoes were missing. “This nigger ran away from a man around here in '58,” the Cyclops said. “Went to Ohio and got himself an education at Oberlin College. Now he's come back down here to teach equality to other niggers. Before we're through with him, he's goin' to be teachin' on his knees, and it won't be equality. First we're goin' to give you a chance to find out just how lovable niggers is. Kiss him.”

“What?” I said dazedly.

“Kiss him,” said the Cyclops.

I shook my head. I heard a hiss, and a terrible stroke of fire raced across my back. Someone had laid a whip to me. I whirled, and another stroke came from the opposite direction. I cried out in agony.

“Kiss him,” said the ruler.

I walked slowly toward the black man. Rivulets of perspiration ran down his square, craggy face. His squashed nose and his thick reddish lips loomed gigantically before me. His skin was as grimy and grainy as a piece of old shoe leather. I could smell him, a peculiar, smoky odor, like a drying coat after a rain. At the last moment I turned my face away. The lash struck me, and I fell to my knees, weeping.

Gently, calmly, the black man reached down and lifted me to my feet. “It's all right, Miss. It won't hurt you.”

I could not tell him my real torment, or rather, my shame: My revulsion against his blackness. Trembling, I closed my eyes and kissed him gingerly on the lips. I stepped back, and the whip struck me across the shoulders, driving me into his arms.

“Shit,” said the Cyclops. “You call that a kiss? That didn't even tickle his pecker. I mean a real kiss. Wrap your arms around him. Shove that little ole cunt of yours into him.”

“Let's take off that there nightgown,” someone else said. “That'll get things goin'.”

“Let it be done,” said the Cyclops.

Two of them stepped to my side and ripped the nightgown over my head. I stood naked before them. The whip came out of the night to strike my bare back. I screamed in anguish.

“You better kiss him real quick before these boys get too excited,” the Cyclops said.

“Hey, wait. Let's take off the nigger's clothes, too.”

“Let it be done,” the Cyclops said.

In seconds the black man was naked, too. He had a muscular squarish torso, thick chested and slim waisted, a workingman's body.

“Now kiss him good,” the ruler said.

I hesitated. The whip struck me again. With a cry I flung myself against the black man and kissed him with a desperate mixture of fervor and loathing and fear. I stepped back, my head bowed, my eyes closed. They could beat me to death, I vowed. I would do no more.