A Shade of Difference (25 page)

“But I had you worried, didn’t I, old Cullee?” he asked mischievously as they left “Harmony” and started along the Battery toward East Bay Street, one of the Jason Foundation Cadillacs following at a discreet distance a block behind. “You thought I was going to start out and create an incident right tonight, didn’t you?”

He uttered his charming laugh and gave Cullee’s shoulders a fraternal squeeze with one long arm.

“Relax. I wouldn’t do a thing like that to you, my friend. Think of the headlines it would make: ‘CONGRESSMAN AND TERRY INVOLVED IN RIOT.’ I couldn’t do that to
you,
Cullee.”

“I think I could handle it if you did,” the Congressman said, “but it would be simpler if you didn’t.”

“You wish to refrain from disturbances and protect the country,” the M’Bulu said, “even when it does what it does to your people?”

The question hung in the gentle air as they walked along. The Congressman started twice to answer, then stopped. Finally he said with a frown, “You’d never understand, so forget it.”

“But I might. A former graduate student at Harvard? Surely I know something about the United States!”

“Only how to make trouble. I think you know that pretty well.”

“Come,” the M’Bulu said as they reached Tradd Street, taking him by the arm and waving up the Cadillac, which put on a spurt of speed and drew sleekly alongside. “Let us go and see them in their native habitat, your people and mine. I would like to walk there rather than in front of all these fine white houses. I feel more at home. Perhaps it will suggest some thoughts to us. Take us somewhere near the Old Railroad Depot,” he told the chauffeur, who, like all “Harmony’s” servants, received his order without visible reaction. Cullee had no choice but to clamber in, and the Cadillac rolled off.

“Now,” the M’Bulu said, after he had stopped the car and they had alighted and left it, again following discreetly a block behind, “here they are, the happy American Negroes.” A group of youngsters was playing ball down a side street, gossiping neighbors were talking over fences or rocking on porches; a drowsy peace rested on the colored sections of the city. Indeed, the M’Bulu and the Congressman furnished the only excitement of the moment: two such tall and stately men did not often walk with such a lordly air together down those humble streets. A little eddy of comment and discussion followed them as they moved slowly along. Terrible Terry was not disposed to let the mood of the moment rest. “What do you think of this?”

“They look happy enough to me,” Cullee said. “They
are
happy, as a matter of fact.”

“Right now. Oh, yes, surely, right now. As long as they don’t try to stir off their porches or play in some other street. But suppose,” he said dreamily, “suppose someone were to say to them suddenly”—and he half raised his voice as his companion caught his arm—“‘Come with me, my friends, and we will go have a fish fry on the Battery. Come with me to “Harmony,” where they like Negroes, and we will make “Harmony’s” neighbors like them, too.’” His voice dropped and he shrugged off Cullee’s hand. “What then, my friend? Would they be happy then?”

“Keep your voice down,” the Congressman said quietly. “I don’t want to have to slug you.”

Terrible Terry threw back his head and gave a shout of delighted laughter that caused heads up and down the block to turn and a little wave of answering, appreciative laughter to eddy in the wake of his.

“It would be a fair match, Cullee. Six-feet—what, four?—against six-feet-seven, and I guess about equal in weight, give or take a few pounds. Yes, it would be quite a match. But again,” he said with a mischievous chuckle, “that incident. ‘CONGRESSMAN AND TERRY BRAWL IN STREET.’ No, no, we cannot have that, my upright and self-righteous friend … So they are all very happy, are they?”

“No. But they can’t get happier by your methods in this country.”

“And what have they achieved by your methods?” the M’Bulu asked as they strolled along, avoiding a jacks game, detouring around two games of hopscotch, narrowly averting head-on collisions by fast footwork as a flying wedge of boys and girls from eight to twelve came shrieking and laughing down the street. “Well, let us see. One thing, of course, they have,” he said elaborately, “is a Congressman from California. And one from Michigan. And one from New York. And one from Chicago. And also, of course, some of them do drive big cars and many of them have television sets, for all of which they will be paying their own usurers 50 per cent interest for a hundred years to come. And their brave leaders like yourself, aided by some of those desperately enlightened whites, have managed to get
Brer Rabbit
removed from some schools, and nowadays when the white folks sing about Basin Street it isn’t ‘where the dark and the light folks meet’ any more; it’s where the
people
meet. And when somebody beats his feet on the Mississippi mud, it isn’t the
darkies
who do it; it’s the
people
who do it. And a well-picked handful here in the South do attend a few schools now that they didn’t once upon a time, and there’s public transportation they can use now, and some lunch counters where they can eat … Oh, yes, there’s been great progress, Congressman. But does a single one of
them
respect you or want you around?” he demanded with a sudden fierce challenge that made passers-by hesitate and glance at him with a quick curiosity. “Tell me that.
Tell me that!”

“Orrin Knox likes me,” Cullee said with a deliberate sarcasm, “and Ted Jason likes you. There’s two.”

“And both for the same reason,” Terry said spitefully. “For their own political advantage. At least that old fool of a President of yours is honest. He doesn’t think much of me and he won’t pretend he does, no matter what the consequences.” His eyes darkened and he spat out the words: “I hate this pious, pretending country!”

“I know you do,” Cullee Hamilton said in a tired fashion that suddenly made him seem much older than he was, “and I think it is too bad that you have to suffer us and we have to suffer you. I happen to love this country—I was born here; at least with all its faults it’s mine; and even if I didn’t love it, your saying you hate it would make me do so. Now, I’d suggest we get on back. I’m tired and I’m going to read awhile and then turn in. I’m not leaving you loose in Charleston tonight. So come along, Your Royal Highness. Whistle up your Cadillac and let’s us poor oppressed colored folk ride back to the Battery where we belong.”

The M’Bulu looked at him appraisingly, and for a moment Cullee wasn’t sure but what he would have to make good on his threat and persuade him to come by physical means. But Terry once again threw back his head and laughed, turning to wave up the Cadillac as he did so.

“You’re so persuasive, Cullee, friend, and so logical. I just couldn’t refuse Sue-Dan’s husband anything.”

“Fine,” Cullee said, exercising great restraint and managing to make a joke of it, which he knew disappointed his companion; “if I can count on that, we’ll get along.”

“Oh, we’ll get along,” Terry said as they got in the car and started the short ride back to “Harmony.” “No doubt of that …”

“Two numbers in New York for you to call,” the butler said as they reentered the stately house.

“No other calls?” Terry asked sharply.

“No,” the butler said.

“I’ll take them in the library.”

Fifteen minutes later he rejoined Cullee, by now comfortable in pajamas and slippers and starting to read, in the bedroom.

“Well,” he said with an amused air. “Imagine that. My friends in the United Kingdom have just issued a White Paper on Gorotoland. It seems we conduct human sacrifices, we eat people, we deal in slavery, and, worst of all, we’re accepting help from the Communists.”

“It’s all true, isn’t it?” Cullee asked. Terrible Terry didn’t answer directly, but gave him instead a cheerful grin.

“You know very well that not one of those fools who attended the luncheon today will believe it. Nor will most of your press and television. That was the
New York
Post
asking me if I considered it a pack of lies. I said I did. You see, they make it easy for you. They put the words in your mouth and all you have to do is agree.”

“I think you’re not much,” the Congressman observed, without looking up from his book. The M’Bulu’s grin increased.

“But in this country they make it so easy for you to get away with it.”

And as he went whistling and humming about the room getting undressed and ready for bed, his companion reflected that, for all those unscrupulous enough to take advantage of the fact, this was unfortunately all too true. There was a sort of perverse and self-defeating innocence about America, which made her easy game for the phonies, the self-serving criticizers, the sly and subtle enemies of freedom and decency in the world. The eternal baby-faced innocent, waiting wide-eyed for the pie in the face from the villains in the cheap comedy of international errors put on by the Communists and their stooges—that was his country. With a sudden fierce anguish he thought: I will help you. And instantly deflated himself with the thought: What can you do, one little colored Congressman? One little white man’s pet, as LeGage put it? One little nigger, as his wife put it?

“Better call the Secretary and tell him I’ve been a good boy,” Terry suggested cheerfully as he got into bed. “Well!” he added as the phone rang on the nightstand between them. “There he is now.”

But it was not the Secretary, and he was not calling Cullee. The call again was for Terry, and when, in great glee, he told Cullee all about it a moment later the Congressman tried in great alarm and anger to persuade him to abandon what was apparently a carefully conceived plan by the M’Bulu and certain of his friends. Terry, however, would have none of it. All he would do was suggest mockingly that Cullee might like to come along.

“We need our great Negro Congressman at a time like this,” he kept saying. “Your people need you, Cullee.”

The Congressman, terribly disturbed, lay awake long after the M’Bulu had dropped off to sleep and started to snore heavily; for he was torn between what he knew he should do for his country and what he knew he could not do because of his race, and he was aware now that there was no longer anything at all amusing about the visit of Terrible Terry to the United States.

10

In much the same fashion as “Harmony,” the Henry Middleton School had also grown old and dignified with the years, and like “Harmony” it too was experiencing strange things on this fine fall morning following the M’Bulu’s luncheon. Again the soft autumnal haze lay upon the city, lending an atmosphere of somnolent peace drastically challenged by events now proceeding at the stately institution just below Broad Street.

Here, too, the television crews, the reporters, and the press photographers were gathered, indeed had begun to gather as early as 6 a.m. Here too were the gossiping knots of newsmen, the impromptu coffee lines at nearby stores, the peering eyes of television, the atmosphere of expectancy and excitement. But here there was a difference, for there was in the air around Henry Middleton School an ugly unease, a tense and explosive sense of violence that filled the bland morning air with a definite and inescapable menace.

Partly this came from the city policemen who stood about, sullen and nervous, in the streets, on the steps, and on the grounds of the school. More insistently, perhaps, it came from the steadily growing group of white women who clustered near the approaches to the grounds, talking together in hurried, raucous fashion, broken now and again by squeals of excitement and loud, nervous shrieks of laughter. Studied objectively, with an eye to their sloppy clothing, their half-combed hair, and the ostentatious vulgarity of their outcries, it could be seen that these ladies were not the cream of Charleston society. It did not matter; nor was it necessary that gentler ladies should do the task that was being done by these cordial dames. Those who were there were white, and that was quite sufficient to make the point they wished to make to the little gathering of Negroes that stood about, silent, sullen, and equally nervous, at a corner some one hundred yards down the street.

To this little group, which carried one rather shamefaced DEFY banner and could not have numbered more than ten or twelve, the ladies of the schoolyard gave frequent and noisy greeting.

“Go on home, you God-damned niggers!” they would scream, making sure the television cameras were turned upon them. “We don’t want no niggers messing with our kids!” Banners, too, waved gallantly in the breeze: “THIS IS A WHITE SCHOOL: NO NIGERS NEED APPLY” and “KEEP YOUR BLACK BASTIDS IN YOUR OWN BACK YARD.”

Now as the hour neared eight-thirty the excitement increased and the tension mounted. CBS and ABC had by this time interviewed some ten of these Christian souls and were about to extend equal privilege to the Negroes, already tapped by NBC. These operations, too, had provoked a certain attention from the chorus of Graces clustered near the steps. “Why don’t you northern nigger-lovers go home?” one disheveled charmer yelled, while a companion, for no pertinent reason that the cameramen could see, but which they dutifully photographed, made obscene motions with her belly. “Why don’t you take these burrheads back to New York with you? We don’t want ’em!

For these kindly suggestions there did not seem, at the moment, any rational rejoinder that the newsmen and television crews could make, even though a few were provoked to mutter angry comments to one another. One such comment was overheard by a policeman, and the cameraman responsible was promptly arrested for disturbing the peace. This made for a diversionary scuffle as other cameramen sought to take pictures of the police throwing a cordon around their colleague. The outcry of the ladies grew even louder, more excited, and more obscene.

Ten minutes went by in these pursuits, and it was almost time for the school bell to ring. A sudden hush descended upon the raucous crowd as they looked down the street toward the little group of Negroes. The police hurriedly formed parallel lines along the walk that led to the entrance to the school. The Negroes seemed to gather more tightly together. A silence, infinitely tense, infinitely menacing, fell upon the street. The world of reason, the world in which decent people tried to understand and help one another, the universe where kindly folk tried to make sense of humanity’s eternal contradictions, the places where Christians tried to live like Christians, even the many areas where whites and blacks existed tolerantly together, were suddenly far away. Abruptly there was no more world, no more anything but a silent street, filled with anger, blindness, hurt, and hate. Slowly the school bell began to toll and, as if commanded by some great director, there came from everyone, white and black alike, a sudden expulsion of pent-up breath.