Lonely Crusade (31 page)

“Aw, they’re good boys,” Paul intervened.

“That’s right, this black one here is one of your boys, ain’t he?”

Paul grinned. “I’m looking out for you, Luther.” When Luther failed to reply, his smile came off.

“How’s you boys’ grandfather Stalin?” Walter taunted. “I always knew that kike had nigger blood. Now here’s the proof—two black grandchildren. Confidentially,” he leered, “I want to ask you is there any truth in the Communists making you boys turn pansy after you become members of the Party?”

Failing to get a rise out of either of them in this manner, they reverted to the traditional barbarism of racial abuse.

“Did you ever see a nigger who looked as much like an ape as this nigger?”

“These two are getting all the apes together to start a second front. It’ll be what they call the baboon brigade.”

“Nigger, goddamnit, why don’t you say something!” Walter roared with rage.

“Aw, let him alone,” Paul cautioned. “You see the nigger’s scared.”

“Who was your father, boy?” Walter spoke to Lee.

“How does he know? His mother was a whore,” Ray said. “How does he know who his father was?”

A tiny hammer began tapping at the base of Lee’s brain, but he kept his body under control, his voice under wraps. “I wouldn’t talk about your mother,” he said.

“By God, if I thought you even thought about it—” Ray made a threatening motion and again Paul intervened, “Aw, let the boys alone. These are good boys. They’re the two organizers for the union.”

Ray grinned at this. “What you say we run ‘em in for rape, Paul. You can see they’re dirty nigger rapists.”

“Not these boys; they’re my boys.”

“Why the hell didn’t you say so?”

“I was just letting you get yourself off.”

“Why, you son of a bitch! Just for that I oughta beat the hell out of both of ’em!”

Though realizing that the deputy was in deadly earnest, there were such tones of a bloody humoresque within this blatant baiting that Lee felt the creepy impulse to laugh, as at an idiot attempting to milk a fly. But the voice of Paul quelled the impulse and drew him back to the urgent danger.

“How much do you want, Gordon?”

For a moment Lee made no reply, then his curiosity got the better of him. “I don’t understand?”

“You understand, all right! For selling out the union!”

“Give him twenty-five dollars,” Ray said, then turned to Lee, “That’ll be fine, won’t it, fellow?”

Lee laughed aloud.

“Well, fifty then,” Paul offered, his face getting red.

“That’s enough to buy his mother,” Walter said.

“I’ve asked you fellows once before not to talk about my mother,” Lee Gordon said. “Now I’ve had enough of this!”

“Did you hear that!” Ray exclaimed. “He’s had enough!”

“Okay, a hundred then,” Paul said. “And that’s the top.”

Lee looked Paul in the eyes and said: “I wouldn’t sell out the union for a hundred thousand dollars.”

For an instant Paul was impressed by the sincerity in his voice, and then he laughed it off. “Your buddy did and all he got is what I’m offering you.”

And now Lee Gordon could not say a word, for if all McKinley got was a lousy hundred dollars to quit his job and leave the city, it was an awful thing to be a Negro.

Thinking that Lee was about to succumb, Paul became confidential. “This boy here got his little piece of dough. What are you waiting for?”

Lee turned and looked at the stolid face of Luther and laughed for the second time. “Nuts!” he said, because now he was convinced that they were only taunting him.

Paul also turned to look at Luther. “Tell this boy what Mr. Foster gave you,” he demanded.

Luther gave no sign that he had heard.

Thwarted and enraged, Paul drew his service revolver and dug the barrel deep into Luther’s belly. “I will blow out your guts, you black son of a bitch!” he threatened in a murderous voice. “What did Mr. Foster give you?”

“Five hunnered dollahs,” Luther replied, and now his voice was flat.

“You’re a goddamned liar!” Paul accused. “He gave you a hundred.”

“Have it yo’ way,” Luther conceded in that flat black voice. “Uh hunnered then.”

“Now that’s more like it,” Paul crowed triumphantly, swinging the pistol at his side.

Lee’s first emotion was one of thankfulness to know that it was not Lester, after all. And then looking from the black defeatism of Luther’s face to the red exultation of Paul’s, he went sick and utterly afraid. This was one time he hated being a Negro.

Paul extended a folded hundred-dollar bill. “Mr. Foster wants you boys to break up the next meeting.”

So deep were Lee’s thoughts in racial torment that he did not see the money.

“Here, here’s your money!” Paul snapped. “Take it!”

“Take de money, man!” Luther muttered. “Doan be no fool!”

“You goddamned rat!” Lee cried, as tears came into his eyes.

Paul slapped him across the face with the pistol barrel, catching him unawares. He reeled back, stepped beyond the edge of the shallow gully, and fell. Landing on his right side and forearm, he rolled over and started up on his hands and knees. The deputy Walter jumped flatfooted into the gully and kicked him on the shoulder.

“Son of a bitch!” Lee growled and got to his feet. A sixth sense caused him to duck. Paul’s pistol barrel landed on his shoulder bone where Walter had kicked him. The sharp, acid ache ran down into his groin. He fell forward into Walter, wrapped both arms about his waist, and carried him back, falling down the steep embankment into the muddy ravine. Lee got one arm loose and hit him twice in the face.

By then Ray had scrambled down from the ledge, taking care of his shined shoes. He leaned forward and gripped Lee’s coat tail. Lee kicked back, striking him in the chest.

“Get aside, goddamnit, and let me shoot the nigger!” Paul screamed, sliding down the steep embankment in a shower of gravel and dust.

Terror brought Lee to his feet and he broke away from Walter’s grip. Turning with the wild sheer strength of panic, he closed with Ray. They spun, clawing, twisting, gasping, and butted into Paul. The three of them went down in a biting, kicking, cursing melee. Walter came out of the stream, dripping mud like a deep-sea ghoul, and pointed his pistol at the squirming fray. Murder was in his face, not the intent but the deed, he had already killed the black bastard in his mind before his finger could squeeze the trigger.

“Walter!” Ed screamed from above.

The raw, rasping urgency in his voice stilled them all. In the sudden tableau of suspended fury, Lee’s gaze went above. He saw Luther standing there looking down at them, the flat black features of his face set in Negroid negativism. The next instant he was on his feet fighting again. What had he to fear from these four incidental white men, he thought, that Luther McGregor had not already done to him.

Then Walter closed in and struck him across the head like a man hammering down a nail. Lee reeled back from the force of the blow, stunned but not down. Then Ray and Paul got to their feet. The three of them beat Lee Gordon twenty yards back down through the twisting ravine, pistol-whipped him until he didn’t have the strength to raise his hands. Once he moaned but he did not cry. And then he just started going away.

As he lay unconscious, face down in the muddy water, Walter kicked him twice in the body with sadistic savagery.

“Don’t kill him,” Paul cautioned. “There’d be hell to pay.”

Ray reached down and clutched him by the coat collar, dragged his inert body from the water so he would not drown. Then leaving him there, they started up the steep embankment. Muddy and disheveled, all bearing marks of the conflict, their tempers were at murderous pitch.

Walter stalked toward Luther and growled in his face: “Did you like what we did to your buddy?”

Luther’s set expression did not waver and his muddy eyes did not blink. “Yassuh.”

“You know your place, don’t you, boy?” Ray closed in from the side.

“Yassuh.”

Paul returned from the official car with a pint bottle. Taking a swallow, he passed it around. Ed took the last drink and passed it to Luther.

“Drown your troubles, Luther, boy. We’re not going to hurt you.”

Luther took the bottle and tilted it to his mouth. Then he passed it back to Ed.

“Goddamnit, keep it! Who the hell you think wants to drink after you!”

Luther held the bottle in his hand.

“Luther’s a good boy,” Paul taunted. “Aren’t you a good boy, Luther?”

“Dass ri’.”

“What’d you do with that hundred you got from Mr. Foster? Spend it on the little nigger gals?”

“Sho did.”

“You didn’t give it to those Communists, did you?” Walter asked.

“No suh.”

The four deputies started off. Then Paul stopped and turned again. “Maybe your buddy’s got some sense now. Bring him ‘round to see me.”

“Yassuh.”

When they had driven off, Luther got his own pistol from the glove compartment of his car and stuck it into his pocket. Then he went down into the ravine where Lee lay, with the bottle of whisky in his hand.

Lee was moaning slightly. Luther raised his head and forced some whisky down his throat. Lee strangled and coughed, but did not regain consciousness. Lifting him easily, Luther carried him up the embankment and laid him gently on the back seat. Then he turned the car around and drove back to the union council hall. Leaving him in the car, he went in search of Smitty. But Smitty had gone out to Comstock to work in a sound truck, the secretary informed Luther, and she did not know when he would return. Luther said nothing to her about Lee, but instead looked into the regional offices of the various unions for fellows he knew.

It was the noon hour and most of the union representatives were at lunch. Luther returned to the main floor and telephoned Bart for instructions. Bart directed him to take Lee to an emergency hospital that served all of the unions, and he arrived there himself in time to help Luther carry Lee inside.

After putting Lee in the charge of a young staff doctor, they returned to the lobby. Bart pulled Luther down onto one of the hard wooden benches and demanded, “Let’s have it, son.”

“Four deputies waylaid us on the road to Pedro and sapped Lee up a little,” Luther said. “That’s all.”

Bart massaged his jaw. “About the union?”

Luther hesitated for a moment and then replied, “Yeah. One of ‘em tried to buy him out.”

“But he told them off?”

“Somp’n like that.”

“What did they expect with you present?”

“Well, that’s it. I may as well tell you, old-timer. I took five yards from Foster a coupla weeks back.”

“Luther, confound it! What did you do that for?”

“Hell! the son of a bitch stopped me one day as I was going out to help Lee at the gates and ast me how much I wanted to double-cross the union and I said five hundred, thinking that’d discourage him. So he pulls out his wallet and hands me five C notes. What else could I do? It was like finding money in the street.”

“Luther, you are an incorrigible thief,” Bart reprimanded, but there was a twinkle in his usually cold eyes. “Did you tell anyone else?”

“No.”

“Mollie?”

“Hell no. I have a hard enough time getting a little money out of that bitch as it is.”

“Is this how the rumor started?”

“Aw hell, Bart, you know better’n that. Foster’s had his shop foremen priming it since the first day of the campaign. It just all of a sudden took hold, that’s all.”

“How does all this figure with Gordon? How did he know?”

“One of the bastards went and told him I got a hundred from Foster, then put his gun on me and made me admit it.”

“How did Gordon take it?”

“Well now, that’s the trouble, old-timer. He took it as hard as a man takes a hanging. You see, when they jumped on him and started sapping him there wasn’t nothing I could do. So he thinks I’m up with all of it.”

“Why didn’t you help the boy, Luther?”

“Bart, you know me. If he didn’t have sense enough to take their rotten money then spit in their face afterwards, he didn’t need no help.”

“That’s not the point. You should have denied it and then helped him fight and he’d be convinced then that it wasn’t true. Now he’s probably convinced that you’ve been selling out the union straight along.”

“Sure as hell is. But lemme tell you one thing, old-timer. The first white man ever hits me loses sight on the world. And that’s final. No need of me killing four white men no matter what the punk might believe.”

“Well, now we have to deny it straight through. Smitty isn’t going to like this.”

“Lee ain’t either, far as that goes.”

“What about your other plan?”

“McKinley’s gone.”

“And Gordon is not going to help.”

“Don’t give ‘im up. That l’il pink frau can make a monkey eat cay’n pepper.”

“Well, you let it alone,” Bart said. “And now I had better call Smitty.” They stood to their feet, two thick black men who were always looked upon as strangers in their native land. “And let me warn you, Luther. This is the last time.”

“You know me, old-timer. I always learns the first time.”

Bart entered the telephone booth and Luther went down the hallway toward Minor Surgery and halted respectfully in the doorway.

“Hi do, Dr. Greenbaum,” he addressed the young staff doctor. “Member me?”

“Hello, Luther,” the doctor replied cheerfully, looking up from the hand he was dressing. “How could I ever forget you, boy? You had a sprained back from lifting a sack of cement. Did you get your compensation?”

“They didn’t believe it.”

The doctor laughed. “We did the best we could.”

“I know, doc.” Then he asked: “How’s the fellow we just brought in?”

“The colored fellow? He’s fine, just bruised up a little. I gave him a sedative and want him to rest for a while. You can take him home this evening. What happened, anyway?”

“He ran into some cops.”

“Oh! He seems pretty upset. They beat him up, eh?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, we’ll have to make a report. Who’s taking care of it?”

“The union. Smitty’ll be here after a while. What I wanna know is can I talk to him ‘fore he goes to sleep?”