Dark Don't Catch Me (24 page)

N
OW THAT
it is over, dark comes gently again in Paradise. Dark comes without strangers. The streets are quiet and sleepy at nine o'clock near Thanksgiving time. The courthouse under the harvest moon is stately and still; its green laws cleared of the debris of camera wires and the big gleaming machinery of television mobile units. Faces along Main are familiar ones; and talk at the drugstore centers once more about the new moonshine drive; crops, and the livestock show over in Manteo.

The early night freight chuffs south toward Galverton, clanking its short-lived signal of commerce as it passes; and in the East the line of pinelands casts its shadows on the spent fields, picked clean of cotton. North on the hill red lanterns warn that the hole is dug for the basement of the new Negro school, now under construction. West in The Toe, blue supper smoke curls up from the shacks of the colored.

At the Ficklin's, Marianne glances across the living room as her husband drops the evening paper on the pile beside his chair and yawns, stretching. “Want to watch T.V. honey?” he says.

“Ummm. Guess so.” She balances a small white pad on her lap, licking the tip of a pencil. “Fick, just don't let the papers stack up like that. We've got enough to start a dump already.”

“I told you, honey. Get a boy in.” He walks across to snap on the TV. “How about getting Cindy Bennett's brother?” “I just can't imagine it,” she says.

“Why not? Cindy's been with the Pirkles for years. Colonel says she's right reliable, and the boy is too.”

“Naw, I mean — Major Post going up North like that with his Northern uncle.”

“Oh, that again … Well, I suppose he'll sort of be like a son to the fellow, now that he lost his own … Picture's kind of blurry tonight,” he says, fooling with the set's knobs, frowning. “Major deserves the chance he'll get up North. He's a smart boy.”

“Too smart. If he'd hung around long, I'd probably get the same thing Vivian Hooper got.”

“Look, Marianne,” her husband says emphatically, “I don't know what you and some of the others
think
Vivian Hooper got; it doesn't excuse murder!”

“Rape
doesn't?”

“Oh, cut it out! It makes me sick!”

“A lot you know! I can tell you, Fick, I had to watch myself every minute even with Major. The way he'd look at me sometimes — ”

“It's the first I've heard of it … If you're still trying to get me to change my mind about Saturday, you may as well forget it. They're not coming!”

She slaps the pad down on the table beside her. “We can't just ostracize them! We can't! Besides, we owe them for the barbecue.”

“Just forget it!”

“You're the only one around here feels Thad and Doc Sell didn't do right.”

“No, I'm not the only one. Not by a damn sight!” “Oh, if you mean Hollis Jordan …”

“I don't mean Hollis. I mean men and women in this county who abhor the killing of that child! Men and women who live here, and are going to continue to live here — not just blow up at what happened and skip town. Men and women who are going to wear this murder like an albatross around their necks.”

“Fick, don't be so dramatic. Honestly.”

“And Thad himself isn't going to find it easy. We respected Thad, thought a lot of him, had him to our homes. Well, we never respected Doc Sell one whit, and he never got asked around either. Now Thad's in the same category.”

“As far as we're concerned — not as far as others are. Not as far as I am, Fick, we got to forgive and forget. I saw him today on Main. Looked pale as a ghost.”

“Oh, he knows how we feel. Town stood by him, but
he
knows what we think of him.”

“You keep saying we. Who's
we?”

“Time'll tell that … One thing's sure, he's not coming to this house. No more.”

“I'm not going to be able to face Vivie.”

“Yes, well, I admit. It's too bad for Vivie and the kids. Best thing they could do would be to move on out of Paradise.” Ficklin walks away from the set. “Thad ought to move away … There, picture's fine now.”

His wife reaches for the lamp chain and pulls it, darkening the room. “Law,” Marianne Ficklin murmurs, “Poor Vivie …

• • •

At the Bailey's, Kate looks up from the checker board set out on the card table in the sun parlor, and says, “It's your move.”

“Hmmm? Oh, sure.”

“You're not concentrating, dear. I jumped you three times in a row.”

“I just can't seem to get my mind fixed on the game, Kate.”

“Storey, you're not still thinking about Thad?”

Storey Bailey sighs, rubbing his forehead. “I don't know. I saw him today, stopped out for gas. Some folks around here aren't even buying their gas from him now. It's awful. I don't know. And Thad was kinda different acting with me. Sorta snappy.”

“Oh, he'd have
liked
to have had
you
mixed up in it all.”

“I keep thinking if I'd gone along, Kate, it never would have happened. But there was just Thad and Doc Sell — Thad, all worked up in a rage, and Doc Sell heaping coals on the fire. If I'da been along — ”

“Thank God you weren't!”

“Then I keep thinking about what you said about Vivs walking into band rehearsal today … I don't know.”

“Storey,
everyone
was very nice to her.”

“Well, why shouldn't they be! She didn't have anything to do with it!” he snaps.

She looks across the table at him with a fixed stare.

“Aw, heck.” He pushes the checker board back, getting up, beginning to pace. “I feel sorry for her. I can't help it. I don't know, it's crazy. I just feel — well, like
I'd
done something.”

Kate Bailey begins to place the checkers back in the box. He says, “I wish I'd never told you anything about that night.”

“You owed me some explanation, Storey,” she answered quietly.

“Well, maybe I exaggerated … I
did
exaggerate.” He digs his hands down into his trousers. “And now people are saying she went and enticed that nigger. Do you know people are actually saying that? I wonder how come. Wonder who's been telling things.”

Kate puts the top of the box on and folds the checker board over. “If you're trying to say that
I
am, Storey, you're mistaken.”

“Then who is?”

“I heard it from Marianne Ficklin.” “And you believe it, I suppose?”

“I don't have any opinion; just that I don't condone what Thad did with Doc Sell … I'll never feel the same about Thad.”

“I think the world and all of Thad,” Storey says. “We were best friends. I think if I'd been with them — hell! Hell!”

“Please, Storey, there's no need to shout!”

“Well, hell — heck, I just can't help thinking of Vivs walking into band rehearsal and starting to play the saxophone.”

“She didn't just walk in and play the saxophone. She'll have to learn it first. A musical instrument isn't an easy accomplishment. Not as easy as other things.”

“Kate, I wish you'd stop talking like that.”

She gets up and crosses the room, saying, “Well, I can't see that a musical instrument will do anything but improve Vivian.”

“Maybe she doesn't need to be improved.” “What do you mean by that?” She stops, staring at him. Storey shrugs. “Oh. I just mean I can't imagine Vivs playing in a band.”

“Well,
thank
you.” Kate Bailey stands and walks over to the piano.

“And I just wish you'd stop making dirty insinuations about Vivs,” Storey says. “After all, they're our best friends. I think the world and all of Thad, and they're our best friends!”

Kate Bailey begins to play, lightly, at first, softly; then gradually more loudly, until all the other noise is drowned out, save for the resolute strains of “Old Hundredth.”

It is quiet in the rectory. Joh Greene hardly looks up as his wife opens the door quietly, slipping into the room with a tray of hot chocolate and crackers.

Then he says, “Oh, thank you, Guessie.”

“Working hard, darling?”

“I don't know why next Sunday's sermon is giving me so much trouble. But it seems important to me.” “Of course it is.”

“I've got my basic selling points, but I can't seem to write the copy.”

“Want me to try and help?”

“Well, if you'd sit down and discuss this, it might do me a lot of good. Somehow I've got to get the idea of almighty Christ's great gift of forgiveness across. Do you understand that?”

“Because of Thad and Doc Sell?”

“Not just them. Dix, too.”

“Yes, Dix … I'd almost forgotten.”

“Most everybody did. Nobody put any credence in the James girl's testimony, but you and me know what Dix musta gone through up there. Somehow we got to help Dix forgive himself.”

“He's young, Joh. He'll have to grow out of it. Then he'll see he did right. For Colonel's sake, he did.”

“That's just it. It's between loyalty to his own blood and loyalty to the law, and Dix chose his own. But it wasn't easy for him.”

“It hasn't been easy for anyone — none of it has.”

“That's why I got to give people peace of mind again. I just don't seem to know how to do it. I got my selling point — the almighty Christ's great gift of forgiveness,” he says, sinking back into the leather swivel chair, “but I can't seem to write my copy so that it has any punch. I got my product, Guessie, but I can't seem to hit on a way to present it.”

“Maybe you ought to wait, Joh. Give your apple one this Sunday. You haven't given that one in a long time.”

Joh Greene shakes his head wearily. “Nope, Guessie, this hasn't got anything to do with apples. This is a real hard one ot figure out.”

• • •

Through the darkness she makes her way down to The Toe, passing the tall empty field off Brockton Road, when the figure lurches out and grabs her wrist.

“Barbara,” he moans, pulling her into the field with him, back near the clump of bushes. “Oh, my God, Barbara.”

Her voice breaks as she says softly, “Hello, Dixon.” She looks down at his hand on her arm. “Do you have to do that?” she asks.

“I have to talk to you, Barbara.”

“You're drunk, Dixon. Very drunk.”

“I've been drunk a long time. Ever since — they say you're going away. You're not going away and leave me, are you?”

“You don't have to hold on to me, Dixon,” she says quietly.

He sways, looking at her, then lets his grip on her loosen.

“You're going away. You're going to wherever Hollis Jordan went. That's what they say.”

“That's what they
would
say.”

“Is it the truth?”

“No, of course it isn't. I don't even know him.” “He took up for you. He acted like he — Why'd he take up for you?”

She looks away from him, off at the fields. “I don't know. Maybe he just cared about the truth.”

“I couldn't help it, Barbara. I
couldn't!
My dad was — he was like a ghost around the house. It coming on top of my mother's death. You shoulda seen my dad's face, Barbara.”

“I saw
my
dad's when he came back from looking at that boy's burned body.”

“You think I'm a coward? You don't know. It took courage. I love you, Barbara. God, when I sat across from you — It took — ” he sways, steadies himself, placing his hand on her shoulder — ”courage.”

“Good-by, Dixon. We don't have anything to talk about.” She shakes his head off her shoulder, and he grabs her wrist again.

“We don't have anything to talk about? I love you. I love you, Barbara.” His voice is a half-sob. “I couldn't be any other way in that courtroom. I couldn't! Barbara, listen — ” He pulls her toward him, lurching. “You're so white. I always thought of you as white. I loved you. I still do.”

“I used to love you too, Dixon. I always thought of you as colored,” she says.

He laughs, his shoulders shaking, his black hair tossing over his forehead. “Me a nigger! You thought that, thought of me as colored, God!” he exclaims, laughing, and then drawing his breath in and giving a dry sob, he says, “Barbara! Barbara! Help me! Put your hands on my head. I'm hot, honey. Your hands are cool. Let's forget all of it. I need you, Barbara. Barbara.”

“You're very drunk, Dixon,” she says. “I wish you'd let me go.”

“I take after my mother. Don't you know? I'm going to be a lush like her. Drink and drink and drink.” “Let me go, Dixon.” “Where? Where are you going?” “Just down to see the Posts to say good-by.” “When are you going to leave Paradise?” “Tomorrow.” “Going up North, huh?” “Yes.”

“No!” he pulls her to him again, trying to kiss her, while she struggles out of his reach.

He says, “You love me.”

“No, I don't, Dixon. I don't love you.”

“I love you!” he says angrily. “If I love you, you love me. You're a — nigger. That's right. If I love you, you love me.”

“You're hurting me, Dixon.”

“I want you to love me.”

“I can't. I can't love you again, Dixon.”

“You're not going away if you don't love me. You're like a disease.” He begins to talk in a husky, panting way. “You got into me like a disease. Now you want to walk out on me. Well, you're not going to!”

“Dixon, you're hurting me.”

“Love me! Kiss me, Barbara.”

“No.”

“You're not up North yet.” “Please, Dixon, you're hurting me.” “Then love me. Then kiss me.”