Макс Коллинз - Quarry in the Black

“Maybe,” I said, “but only if there are no pictures.”

The dark eyes were focused on me. “You really don’t want your picture taken, do you, Jack?”

“It’s just that my dad is a former military man who these days is real involved in Republican politics back home in Idaho. That’s where I grew up.”

“I remember,” she said.

She’d been the Coalition repository of my fake background, which was based on my real one but not enough so to provide any leads back to me.

“It would really embarrass my dad,” I said, “and as you’d imagine, we already have a strained enough relationship as it is.”

Nodding, she said, “Because of your involvement with the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.”

“Right.”

We were on I-55 now, the bus rumble steady but not quite so loud that we had to speak way up or anything. “Betcha By Golly, Wow” floated back to us.

“Now, Jack,” she said, her dark eyes very earnest, and she touched my hand, in what I’m sure she thought was a non-sexual way (she was wrong), “if there’s any trouble from pro-war, pro-Nixon demonstrators, please don’t get involved.”

“Oh, I won’t.”

“If you were to... mix it up with some other Vietnam vets, protesting against what we’re doing — or maybe some redneck bigot spouting racial b.s. — well, that would attract cameras more than anything. So keep your father in mind and your temper in check.”

She was preaching to the choir, but I frowned, nodding my willingness to suppress my better avenging angels.

“So,” I said, “where’s the big man?”

“Pardon?”

“Everybody seems to be on the bus but Reverend Lloyd.”

“Oh, he doesn’t travel with us. He goes by car.”

“That big black Grand Prix?”

“That’s right. He has a driver and two armed bodyguards.”

“Really, armed?”

She nodded; the way her Afro bounced reminded me of all that red hair of Becky’s. Not that those girls would hit it off.

“ You know what it’s like out there,” she said, frowning toward the window as we rolled by a brown post-harvest landscape, a crushed floor of dead corn stalks. “You wouldn’t believe how many death threats Raymond gets.”

“Actually I would believe it,” I said. “I saw something on TV just the other day about American Nazis.” I shrugged. “But I guess that must be pretty isolated stuff.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh, some of those crazies are right here in St. Louis,” she said, even though right now we were in Illinois. “Ever hear of Zachary Taylor Starkweather?”

I pretended to think. “They may have mentioned him on that TV program. That creep with the corncob pipe? I can’t imagine he has many followers.”

Last night he’d only had two. Three, counting Becky. Of course, that could have been that caution he liked to brag about taking.

“There are more of them than you’d think,” she said with a shiver. “There are thousands in his organization, nationwide. And they’re affiliated with the local Ku Klux Klan.”

“You’re kidding. The KKK? Aren’t they ancient history?”

“Not hardly, Jack. They have hundreds of members in the St. Louis area alone. They mostly operate out of Ferguson.”

“Where?” I asked innocently.

Joe Tex was singing, “I Gotcha!” on the portable radio.

“It’s a white enclave,” she explained. “Ten years ago, in Ferguson? Black people were forbidden entry after dark. They actually closed off incoming roads from black neighborhoods.”

“Ten years ago this was?”

“More like eight. Four years ago, the first black person was allowed to buy a house. Even now the black population is something like maybe one percent of its twenty-eight thousand or so good Christian residents. That’s the home of Starkweather and his followers.”

“Wow.” Betcha by golly.

“So,” she said almost sternly, “we have people who want to kill Raymond right in our own back yard.”

Not to mention the next seat.

We both relaxed for a while — six hours is a long fucking time on a 1948 bus — and she burrowed into a book she’d brought along, Invisible Man . I’d never read that, but dug the old Claude Rains flick. I went back to my latest western, The Daybreakers , which I’d be through with before long. Maybe I could pick up another Louis L’Amour when we pulled in at a truckstop.

Just outside of Springfield, we did just that. The invasion of young people into the restaurant, a good share of them black, got some wide-eyed looks from the farmers and truckers here on the outskirts of this town Abraham Lincoln had called home. All the staffers streamed in and found tables and booths. I wound up in one of the latter with Ruth, room for four but nobody made a move to join us.

“Is it my breath?” I asked her, peering over the top of a menu.

“No. It’s the company you keep.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m a sort of pariah.”

“What does that mean?”

“Outcast.”

“Because you’re Raymond’s girl, you mean.”

She dropped her menu and her cheeks turned an attractive shade of maroon.

Leaning toward me with a stricken expression, she whispered, “Who... who have you been talking to?”

“You. You call him Raymond, not ‘the Reverend,’ and the other day, when you saw his wife making a scene — people shouldn’t live in glass offices — you damn near cried.”

She was about damn near crying now.

She started to slide out of the booth and I reached out and took her by a wrist. Not hard, just enough to stop her, and get her to look at me.

“Please don’t,” I said. “Don’t give the assholes anything else to talk about. I apologize for bringing it up.”

She froze. Swallowed. Nodded. Slid back into the booth. Trembling some.

I ordered the meatloaf plate and a Coke and she had a small chef’s salad and sweet iced tea. We didn’t talk for a while. Halfway through the salad, she pushed it to one side, like it disgusted her, and then she leaned toward me again. Whispered again.

“It was... I hate the stupid word, but... a fling. We were together at work a lot, he was having trouble at home, I admired him, still do admire him, I could tell he liked me... and it just, you know... happened. It lasted all of a week and we both came to an awareness that there were things bigger and more important than both of us and our... petty desires.”

That sounded like somebody else’s words not hers. Somebody who had something in his pants that had gotten bigger than both of them.

“But you stayed on with the Coalition,” I said.

She nodded vigorously. “Yes. The cause really is more important than some personal relationship that... that...”

“Doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world?”

“What?”

“Nothing. Something from an old movie. When was this? The fling, the breakup?”

She sighed. “Last month. It’s been a strain at headquarters ever since. His wife wants... wants me fired... guess I can’t blame her... but so far Raymond has refused. I’m hoping I can just, just weather it.”

I raised my Coke glass. “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

She lit up. “Oh. That movie.” She grinned but her eyes were moist. “I don’t think anybody ever looked at me and thought of Ingrid Bergman before.”

“Oh I don’t know. I think maybe there’s a Swede in the woodpile.”

Her mouth dropped like a trapdoor and she tried to be offended, but could only smile. “Jack, you can be so outrageous sometimes.”

“I’m out there, all right.”

Before we left the truckstop, I picked up a L’Amour novel that was new to me, The Broken Gun .