William Johnstone - Out of the Ashes

“And one of those guys was huge , man! What is it with men, Ben Raines? I mean, sex is good—terrific, when everything is right—but I don’t go around thinking about it all the time. Men do, though, don’t they? Sure they do.”

“I don’t know that we think about it all the time,” Ben said slowly. “But a man is damned sure ready at a second’s notice.” He felt a little ashamed of himself, for he had already mentally undressed Jerre. He rose from the bank and held out his hand. She took it, her small hand soft in his. He pulled her to her feet.

“We’d better get on the road, Jerre. Find us a place to spend the night. Fix us some dinner.”

“All right,” she said quietly, her eyes studying him.

Ben had fixed a tub of water in which she could soak her ankle, and then had set about cooking dinner. She had eaten as if she had not had a morsel of food in days. Ben then shooed her off to bed.

He lay in his bed that night, and had to smile at all that Jerre had said that afternoon and evening. She was, Ben concluded, a teen-age character. Purely one of a kind, with the open honesty that Ben liked in people. He remembered how she had looked at his weapons, then at him.

“You really know how to shoot all these things?” she had asked.

Ben admitted that he not only did, but had done so, and he told her of the things that had happened to him since leaving Louisiana.

She shuddered as Ben told her of the men in Cairo and what they had planned for him. “That’s gross, Ben!”

He recounted his search for his family, described the men and women in Cairo who would not fight for their lives or property, and his experience with his brother in Chicago, and what he and his friends were planning to do.

She had replied, “It wasn’t just blacks chasing me in Wheeling; some of those guys were pretty decent-looking men. But I think I can understand how your brother and his friends feel.”

“Oh?”

“Sure. That doesn’t mean I agree with them—I don’t; I think they’re wrong. But I don’t believe blacks and whites will ever get along. I mean, it’s too late, now. But that’s the way I feel.”

Ben thought of Kasim, and agreed with her. Then he thought of Cecil and Lila and Salina, and silently disagreed with her.

“Why do you think that, Jerre?”

“That we won’t get along? Because we’re two different peoples, that’s why. That’s the main reason. Hey! I’m not a bigot, Ben Raines. Don’t think that, because you’d be wrong. Let me tell you this, Ben. In high school, my best friend, and I mean my very best friend, was a Chinese girl named Sue Ling. From grade school up, all the way to graduation, we were inseparable. Then we went to different schools, but we kept in touch. I tried to find her after… after it happened. But I couldn’t.

“Then in college I had friends of different nationalities, lots of them: East Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, Arabs, American Indians… oh, you know what I mean… lots of different people.”

Ben waited for her to drop the other shoe.

“But I never had a black friend. Do you know why that is, Ben Raines, big-time-author-of-some-importance? And a general, to boot.”

He laughed. “You tell me, Jerre Hunter, girl-who-broke-the-four-minute-mile-while-being-chased-by-fifty-guys-with-their-peckers-out.”

She giggled, then laughed, then put her hand on his forearm. She sobered. “I’m leveling with you, Ben—I don’t know. Lots of reasons, I think. One: I don’t like to walk down the halls of my school and have half a dozen black guys say, ‘Hey, baby! You wanna fuck?’ And that’s happened, Ben. All over this country. But the newspeople, oh, they wouldn’t report anything like that. Or maybe it’s because when one of us is asked out by a black guy and we say no, we’re automatically accused of being a racist. Well, a little of that goes a long way. Does it ever occur to people that the choice of dating is up to the person being asked? That chemistry has a lot to do with it? But Ben, I’ve seen black guys I’d go out with—but they never asked me. It’s like the one bad apple, I guess. I don’t think you’re a racist, but what I’ve said sure makes me seem like one, and I’m not. I guess… I don’t like to be pushed. I choose my friends—they don’t choose me.” She shook her head. “I’m not saying this right.”

“No, Jerre, I don’t believe you’re a racist. You’re not the type.” Is there a type? he silently questioned.

“My daddy wasn’t a racist; neither was my mother. They both worked with black people and the word ‘nigger’ was not in their vocabulary. I said it once and got slapped for saying it. So it wasn’t my home life that made me feel… however I feel.”

“Tell me about your friends of other nationalities, Jerre. You don’t mind if I record this? Good.”

“Well… Sue was just like me—like you—in the way we think. That’s not right. In the way we act . So was Rajah, and Mark Little Bear. They were… were…” She looked at Ben.

“Western?”

“Yeah! That’s it—kind of, but not quite. They acted…” She again looked at Ben.

“Like us?”

“In a way. They still had their identities, but they didn’t try to shove their culture down my throat. What am I trying to say, General?”

“Probably that they conformed to our level of acceptance, but still maintained their own culture. We think alike, Jerre.”

She gazed at him, her eyes serious. “But is our thinking right, Ben? Correct?”

“I don’t know, babe.”

“I think we were a nation of bigots, Ben.”

Ben thought of his brother in Chicago, and of the hate of Kasim. “Still are,” he said. “On both sides.”

He opened his eyes at the sound of her footfall, and looked at her as she stood in the open doorway to the bedroom.

“You’re not like any man I’ve ever met, General-author Ben Raines. I think you’re a tough man, and I think you’re also a sensitive man. Funny combination. You’re a warrior, I guess. But a good one. That woman, back at the motel—the one who kissed you. She was black, wasn’t she?”

“Half and half.” Ben spoke from the bed. “Kasim called her a zebra.”

“Hell with Kasim.” She had not moved from the doorway. “I liked the way you described Cecil and his wife. Lila. They sound like nice people and I believe you liked them. I think I would, too. But just as our race has rednecks and trash, so do the blacks. So that makes Kasim a nigger. But not Cecil and his wife and that other woman. That’s what I was trying to say this afternoon, Ben. No matter what race a person might belong to, there are classes of people. Good people and bad people. I just don’t believe everybody is equal, Ben. I think people—all people—need education. I think education is the key to solving almost every problem.”

“So do I, Jerre.”

She moved closer to the bed. Ben could smell the clean, fresh soap scent of her.

“I’m confused, Ben. If the war hadn’t happened, would the race problem ever have been solved?”

“Not in our lifetime.”

“You sound so certain.” She limped to the bed and sat down.

“I guess I do.”

“I said education is the key to solving problems, Ben. But… I don’t believe you can have one set of rules for some people and another set for other people.”

“Like I said, Jerre, we think alike.”

“But how do you make someone learn?”

“Not constitutionally, I can assure you of that. But short of separate nations… well, let me ask you this: if a baby won’t eat, and will starve unless something is done, what does a doctor do?”

“Well… I guess… hell, he force-feeds it. But, Ben, no one can force a person to learn if that person doesn’t want to learn.”