Harry Turtledove - Reincarnations

"We’ve got no reason to do anything like that. Why would we, sir?" Cecil Price tried to make the deputy forget his comrades didn’t stay polite.

It didn’t work. He might have known it wouldn’t. Hell, he had known it wouldn’t. "Why? I’ll tell you why," the Negro in the lawman’s uniform said. "So decent, God-fearing folks get blamed for it, that’s why. You agitators’ll try and pin it all on us, make us look bad on the TV, give the Federal government an excuse to stick its nose in affairs that ain’t none of its business and never will be. So hell, yes, you’re under arrest. Suspicion of arson, like I said. I’ll throw your sorry asses in jail right now. You drive on into Philadelphia quiet-like, or you gonna do something stupid like try and escape?"

Cecil Price didn’t need to be a college-educated fellow like the two blacks in the car with him to know what that meant. You do anything but drive straight to jail and I’ll kill all of you. "I won’t do anything dumb," he told the deputy.

"Better not, boy, or it’s the last fuckup you ever pull." The big black man threw back his head and laughed. "Unless you already pulled your last one, that is." Laughing still, he walked back to the black-and-white. He opened the door, got in-the shocks sagged under his bulk-and slammed it shut.

"Let him jail us on that stupid trumped-up charge," Muhammad Shabazz said as Price started the Ford’s engine. "It’ll do just as much to help the cause as the church bombing."

"I hope you’re right," Price said, pulling back onto the highway, "but he’s a mean one. The Neshoba County Sheriff’s meaner, but the deputy’s bad enough and then some."

"You think he’s BKV?" Tariq Abdul-Rashid asked.

"Black Knights of Voodoo?" Price shrugged. "I don’t know for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he goes night-riding with a mask and a shield and a spear."

In Philadelphia, a few people stared at the car with the white and the two blacks in it. Cecil Price didn’t care for those stares, not even a little bit. He didn’t care for any part of what was going on, but he couldn’t do a thing about it. He parked in front of the jail. The deputy’s car pulled up right behind the RACE wagon.

Another black deputy sat behind the front desk when Price and Muhammad Shabazz and Tariq Abdul-Rashid walked into the jail. "What the hell’s goin’ on here?" he asked the man who’d arrested the civil-rights workers.

"Suspicion of arson," the first deputy answered. "I reckon they must’ve had somethin’ to do with torchin’ the white folks’ church over by Longdale."

"That’s the-" What was the man behind the desk about to say? That’s the silliest goddamn thing I ever heard? Something like that-Cecil Price was sure of it. But then the other Negro’s eyes narrowed. "Fuck me," he said, and pointed first to Muhammad Shabazz and then to Tariq Abdul-Rashid. "Ain’t these the raghead bastards who came down from the North to raise trouble?"

"That’s them, all right," said the deputy who’d arrested them. "And this here buckra’s Cecil Price. I thought at first I got me Larry Rainey-you know how all these white folks look alike. But what the hell? If you can’t grab a big fish, a little fish’ll do."

"That’s a fact," said the deputy behind the desk. "That sure as hell is a fact, all right. Yeah, lock ‘em up. We can figure out what to do with ‘em later."

"You betcha." The first deputy marched his prisoners to the cells farther back in the jail. "In here, you two," he told Muhammad Shabazz and Tariq Abdul-Rashid, and herded them into the first cell on the right. He stuck Cecil Price in the second cell on the right. Even at a time like this, even in a situation like this, he never thought to put a white man in with Negroes. That was part of what was wrong in Philadelphia, right there.

After Price and Muhammad Shabazz and Tariq Abdul-Rashid were safely locked away, the man who’d arrested them clumped up the corridor and then out the front door. "Where you goin’?" called the man behind the desk.

"Got to see the Priest," the first deputy answered. "Anybody asks after those assholes, you never seen ‘em, you never heard nothin’ about ‘em. You got that?"

"All right by me," the other deputy said. The first one slammed the door after him as he went out. He seemed to have to slam any door he came to.

Cecil Price had only thought he was scared shitless before. Not letting anybody know he and his friends were in jail was bad. Going to see the Priest was a hell of a lot worse. The Priest was a tall, scrawny, bald black man who hated whites with a fierce and simple passion. He was also the chief Neshoba County recruiting officer for the Black Knights of Voodoo. Trouble followed him the way thunder followed lightning.

Price wondered whether Muhammad Shabazz and Tariq Abdul-Rashid knew enough to be as frightened as he was. The Priest had been trouble for years, while they’d been down here only a couple of months. The Priest would still be trouble long after they went back to the North… if they ever got the chance to go North again.

It must have been about half past five when the phone at the front desk jangled loudly. "Neshoba County Jail," the deputy there said. He paused to listen, then went on, "No, I ain’t seen ‘em. Jesus Christ! You lose your garbage, you expect me to go pickin’ it up for you?" He slammed the phone down again.

"Deputy!" Muhammad Shabazz called through the bars of his cell. "Deputy, can I speak to you for a minute?"

A scrape of chair legs against cheap linoleum. Slow, heavy, arrogant footsteps. A deep, angry voice: "What the hell you want?"

"I’d like to make a telephone call, please."

A pause. Cecil Price looked out of his cell just in time to see the deputy sheriff shake his head. His big, round belly shook, too, but it didn’t remind Price of a bowlful of jelly-more of a wrecking ball that would smash anything in its way. "No, I don’t reckon so," he said. "You ain’t callin’ nobody."

"I have a Constitutional right to make a telephone call," Muhammad Shabazz insisted, politely but firmly.

"Don’t you give me none of your Northern bullshit," the Negro deputy said. "Constitution doesn’t say jack shit about telephone calls. How could it? No telephones when they wrote the damn thing, were there? Were there, smartass?"

"No, but-" Muhammad Shabazz broke off.

"Constitutional right, my ass," the deputy sheriff said. "You got a Constitutional right to get what’s comin’ to you, and you will. You just bet you will." He lumbered back to the desk.

In a low voice, Cecil Price said, "We’re in deep now."

"No kidding." Muhammad Shabazz sounded like a man who wanted to make a joke but was too worried to bring it off.

"They aren’t gonna let us out of here," Tariq Abdul-Rashid said. "Not in one piece, they aren’t."

"We’ll see what happens, that’s all," Muhammad Shabazz said. "They can’t think they’ll get away with it." To Cecil Price, that only proved the man who’d come down from the North didn’t understand how things really worked in Mississippi. Of course the deputy sheriffs thought they’d get away with it. Why wouldn’t they? Blacks had been getting away with things against whites who stepped out of line ever since slavery days. Times were starting to change; Negroes of goodwill like Muhammad Shabazz and Tariq Abdul-Rashid were helping to make them change. But they hadn’t changed yet-and the deputies and their pals were determined they wouldn’t change no matter what. And so…

And so we’re in deep for sure, Cecil Price thought, fighting despair.

The first deputy sheriff, the one who’d arrested them, returned to the jail not long after the sun went down. He walked back to the cells to look at the prisoners, laughed a gloating laugh, and then went up front again.