Breakheart Hill (18 page)

“Oh.”

“We understand you moved here from Gadsden,” I said. “That’s what we wanted to talk to you about.”

Noreen looked puzzled. “You want to talk to me about Gadsden?” She gave a short, faintly amused laugh. “There’s nothing to say about Gadsden.”

“Well, it’s not exactly about Gadsden itself,” Kelli explained. “It’s more about what’s going on there.”

Noreen stared at her blankly.

“The demonstrations,” Kelli said.

“Oh, I don’t know anything about that,” Noreen said.

“But the demonstrations are going on near where you lived, right?” I asked. “At that shopping center outside of town.”

“Yeah, that’s where they are,” Noreen answered, “but once that all started, I didn’t go to the shopping center anymore.”

“Why not?” Kelli was leaning forward, her eyes trained intensely on Noreen.

“ ’Cause my daddy said not to,” Noreen answered. “He said there might be trouble. But as far as I ever saw, the colored people were just marching back and forth.” She thought a moment, then added, “Sometimes a few white people would show up and hang around. You know, just looking at them.”

“When do they march?” Kelli asked.

“Pretty much all the time, I guess,” Noreen answered. “Just marching back and forth until the shopping center closes.”

“When is that?”

“At nine, I think,” Noreen said. Her eyes narrowed questioningly. “Ya’ll going to write about it?”

“We’re thinking about it,” I told her.

“Why?”

“Because we think we should,” Kelli said bluntly.

Noreen seemed satisfied by the answer. “Well, if you want me to, I’ll go down there with you,” she told us, “but don’t expect much.”

N
OREEN WAS BUNDLED UP IN A DARK GREEN COAT WHEN
I picked her up that same night. She was not a pretty girl, but there was undoubtedly something about her that was attractive, a firmness of character that gave her face an undeniable strength. Because of that, even Luke sometimes passed a glance in Noreen’s direction, and I have often thought that had he not been so thoroughly connected to Betty Ann by the time Noreen moved to Choctaw, it might have been she who now goes strolling with him in the evening, the two of them making lazy middle-aged circles around the lake at Turtle Grove.

Noreen shivered. “You know, they may not be doing anything tonight. It may be too cold for it.”

Kelli was waiting at the window when we arrived at her house. I could see her body framed against the interior light, very still, peering toward us as we pulled into her driveway.

She came out quickly, bounding down the wooden stairs to the car. Noreen scooted over to let her climb into the front seat.

“It’s really cold tonight,” Kelli said, rubbing her hands together rapidly.

“Noreen thinks they might call things off because of it,” I told her.

“But they may not,” Noreen said. “There’s no way to tell.” Her shoulder was pressed against mine, and I was
surprised that she left it there rather than pulling away slightly, as most girls would have done.

It was around seven o’clock, and the narrow road to Gadsden was all but deserted. Darkness had fallen almost an hour before, and a thick cloud cover made it even darker than usual. Still, on either side, we could see the lights of the few rural villages that dotted the valley between Choctaw and Gadsden, and farther out, a scattering of remote farmhouses.

I felt my fingers tighten around the steering wheel as we neared Gadsden. I knew that we were heading toward something volatile and unpredictable. Kelli and Noreen felt it, too, though neither of them mentioned it. Instead, Noreen gave her impression of Choctaw while Kelli listened silently, her eyes trained on the approaching town.

It was just after eight when we reached the outskirts of Gadsden. It was nearly six times as large as Choctaw, a “big city” of over thirty thousand people, with large factories, a Catholic church and a smattering of people who had not been born there, even a few with other than Celtic or Anglo-Saxon names.

The small shopping center rested nearly half a mile from the center of town, and as we approached it, Noreen leaned forward, peering at the flat line of brick buildings that came toward us in the distance.

There were only a few cars in the parking lot, almost all of them gathered in front of Penney’s, the shopping center’s only department store, the rest of the strip taken up by small shops that sold everything from shoes to sporting goods.

The world seemed to grow silent as we closed in on the little wall of buildings, their interior lights barely able to penetrate the thick, wintry darkness. I rounded a group of parked cars, swung to the right, and suddenly they were directly in front of me, as if they’d charged forward out of nowhere, a line of Negroes moving up and down
the sidewalk in front of Penney’s, their flimsy cardboard placards flapping in the icy breeze.

I pulled into the first available space, and stopped. No one spoke, but I could feel the tension that had suddenly heightened around us.

Finally I leaned forward and looked at Kelli. “Now what?”

Kelli didn’t answer me. Instead, she kept her eyes trained on the line of march. I had never seen her look more concentrated, as if she were gathering in every texture of the scene before her, using her eyes like fingertips.

But if Kelli appeared oddly galvanized by what she saw, I felt cheated by its utter lack of drama. There were no speeches, no cheering crowds. The line of march itself was a monotonous circle. Even the marchers seemed inadequate to the occasion, their struggle made pitiable in the way they trudged wearily through the numbing cold, their crude, hand-painted placards snapping in the cruel breeze.

“It doesn’t seem like there’s much to write about,” I said.

Kelli continued to watch the marchers. “Yes, there is,” she said.

“They’re just going in a circle,” I said. “It’s nothing.” I reached for the ignition. “We might as well go back to Choctaw.”

Kelli’s eyes shot over to me. “Go back?” she snapped.

“There’s nothing to do, Kelli,” I told her. “It’s just a bunch of people walking back and forth.”

Kelli shook her head determinedly. “I’m getting out,” she said.

I started to argue with her, but in an instant, she was out the door and striding toward the line of march, her checked scarf flowing behind her.

Noreen glanced at me. “You getting out, too?”

“I guess I have to,” I answered a little irritably.

Kelli was almost halfway to the march when I caught up with her. “What are you going to do?” I asked as I trotted along beside her.

“I don’t know. Talk to them, maybe.”

I took her arm and turned her toward me. “You can’t do that,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not something you should get involved in.”

She answered with a question that was absolutely firm. “Then what is, Ben?”

I had no answer for her, and so she pulled away from me and continued toward the marchers.

“Kelli,” I called. “Wait.”

She slowed her pace as she neared the marchers, then stopped before reaching them, the two of us standing stiffly in the cold, the nearly deserted lot behind us, and nothing but the slowly flowing line of march in front.

I glanced back toward the car. Noreen still sat in the front seat, but she had leaned forward to keep us in view, and I could see that she was staring at us intently, as if we might disappear at any moment.

“Someone has to be in charge,” Kelli said, clearly improvising a plan. “That’s who I’ll talk to first.” She looked at me evenly. “Are you coming with me?”

Even now, I’m not sure what my answer would have been. As it turned out, I had no time to think about it.

I first noticed the car as it turned into the shopping center lot from some distance away, the yellow beams of its headlights sweeping over the dark pavement like twin searchlights.

Six months later I described that moment to Mr. Bailey when he put the question directly to me in Judge Thompson’s packed courtroom.

And you say you saw a car pull into the shopping center, is that right, Ben?

Yes, sir
.

Did that car come toward you and Miss Troy?

Yes, it did
.

Could you see who was driving it?

When it came closer, I could
.

Who was driving that car, Ben?

Lyle Gates
.

I had seen his face even before the car came to a halt a few yards away, and when I think of it now, I see it as disembodied, a pale, ghostly face balanced on the rim of a dark green steering wheel, his eyes strangely dead and lightless, like two blue marbles.

“Oh, shit,” I said.

Kelli glanced at me hurriedly, then back to the line of marchers. “Who is it?”

“Lyle Gates,” I said grimly. “He’s probably down here to start trouble.”

“How do you know?”

“He talks about ‘the niggers.’ I heard him once at Cuffy’s.”

But Lyle was not alone. Eddie Smathers was sitting in the passenger seat, the short black stub of a cigar held firmly in his mouth, his eyes wide with surprise at seeing Kelli and me before him.

“What do you think they’re going to do?” Kelli asked.

“I don’t know.”

And so we simply stood in place and watched as the two of them got out of the car and began to come toward us.

Eddie was empty-handed, but Lyle had a baseball bat dangling from his right hand.

Kelli glanced at me silently, apprehensively, and for an instant I felt her fingers clutch my hand with unmistakable urgency. A few yards away, the marchers continued in their frigid rounds, but at that moment, they vanished from my mind. I saw only Lyle, and he suddenly seemed
immensely tall and threatening, a figure capable of unimaginable destruction.

“Just don’t say anything about what we’re doing down here,” I whispered frantically to Kelli.

She nodded coolly as she released my hand, but I know she was afraid, and that everything about Eddie and Lyle heightened that fear. Their loose-limbed swaggers, the smoke that trailed behind Eddie, the physical power sheathed within their jeans and denim jackets, the unthinkable violence behind their boyish grins.

I heard her whisper, “Ben?”

I had no time to answer, for by then Lyle and Eddie had closed in on us.

“How ya’ll doing,” Eddie said. He flipped the cigar into the parking lot and smiled at Kelli. “Stinky old things. Right, Lyle?”

Lyle didn’t answer. Instead, his eyes swept over to Kelli, lingered there, then returned to me. “What ya’ll doing way down here?” he asked.

I gave Kelli a quick warning glance. “We just decided to take a ride.”

Lyle looked at Kelli, his eyes motionless as they gazed at her. “You from Choctaw?”

Eddie grinned, and answered for her. “Hell, no, Lyle. She’s that new girl I told you about. The one from up north.”

Lyle gave a short, oddly brittle laugh. “Well, in that case I take back what I said.”

What he’d said, of course, was that he would not “fuck a Yankee,” a remark that I found myself repeating in the crowded courtroom six months later.

Those were his exact words, Ben?

Yes, sir
.

And he’d said that some weeks before, when you’d seen him in the parking lot at Choctaw High, is that right?

Yes
.

So you might say that the night you met up with him at
the shopping center, that at that particular time he indicated that he’d changed his mind, that he was willing to have sexual relations with Miss Troy, is that correct?

That is correct
.

But Lyle had done no more than that, and for the next few minutes, as the four of us stood in the frigid parking lot, he looked at Kelli almost sweetly, and certainly from the great distance he knew separated them.

“Hi” was what he said to her, his voice soft, respectful, not at all in the tone that Mr. Bailey’s questions later suggested to the jury. There was no threat in his voice. He had not looked at her suggestively, and certainly not with that lustful, vaguely murderous gleam Mr. Bailey wanted the jury to see. Instead, he watched her quietly, politely, as if trying to assure her that he was not a crude redneck, but a young man who’d learned his manners, who knew how to behave in front of a teenage girl.

“Hi,” Kelli answered a little stiffly.

Suddenly the marchers began to sing, clapping softly to the words of an old hymn, their voices low and steady.

Eddie giggled. “Just like Ray Charles,” he said.

Lyle did not seem to hear him. His eyes remained on Kelli. “My name’s Lyle,” he said. “Lyle Gates.”

Kelli nodded. “Kelli Troy.”

“Are you really from up north, like Eddie says?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Whereabouts?”

“Baltimore.”

Lyle smiled. “Baltimore, huh?” Suddenly he lifted the bat and thrust it toward Kelli, a gesture that made her flinch.

“Look at that,” Lyle said. “See what it says just above the grip? ‘Baltimore Orioles.’ ” He laughed. “I bought it for my kid yesterday, and it cracked on the first hit.” He drew the bat away from her and returned it to his side. “So I’m bringing it back for another one.”