Evan Hunter - Sons

Goldwater did nothing to help the confusion. Talmadge was a Republican town but essentially sensible, anyway, except for the Lake Abundance crowd and the four faggots on Javelin Road and the wife-swappers who had lived in brief discreet bliss on Caramoor Way. So now the Party in conclave high and solemn had nominated for its presidential candidate a man who had: 1- Voted against the civil rights bill (there were only three Negro families in all Talmadge and perhaps a bushelful of Jews, but everyone in town nonetheless liked to think of himself as highly democratic, small d), and 2- Advocated the defoliation of Vietnam (the people in Talmadge, tree-worshipers all, visualized a vast unsightly parking lot in Southeast Asia, probably in a two-acre residential zone) and 3- Promised to give his commanders in the field all the support they needed, even if it meant the tactical use of nuclear weapons (that giant mushroom specter rose over the twin steeples of the First Congregational Church — wherein David Regan had taken for his bride the young and doubtless giggling Katherine Bridges — and scared the population witless).

The British publisher who was bringing out my father’s De Gaulle book in London, visiting our house at the end of June, solemnly asked, “You people aren’t serious about this Goldwater person, are you?” and my father had pooh-poohed the Arizonan’s chances, figuring even then that Scranton would surely get the nomination, especially now that Lodge was coming home to help him campaign. But in July, there was Goldwater, boasting — as the current joke had it — that come November he would ride triumphantly into Washington in his coach and four. And nobody in Talmadge knew what the fuck to think.

My mother’s daily letters to me in Mississippi were a form of cursive whistling in the dark. She had told my father that he owed it to me to grant me my manhood, but now that I was actually in the South and violence was breaking out everywhere around me, her courage was beginning to falter and she filled page after page with Talmadge’s reactions to the nomination, gossipy, endearing, her tiny precise handwriting only inadvertently betraying the fears she later confided to me. The situation was not helped when she received a letter from the very organization I was serving, warning of the dangers I might encounter, and announcing that because of the “tense situation,” they were not accepting any further volunteers for their program. Then, to put the maraschino cherry on it, a New York detective shot and killed a fifteen-year-old Negro boy, and a cry of police brutality roared all the way from Yorkville into black Harlem where full-scale rioting erupted on the loneliest night of the week, which also happened to be hot and sticky like most July nights in New York, there has to be a connection between heat and violence.

In July, Talmadge pondered the Republican platform promising “full implementation and faithful execution of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” while brick-throwing, looting, burning Negroes in Harlem were passing out leaflets that proclaimed: “We don’t have to go to Mississippi because Mississippi is here in New York.”

And in August, I was in Mississippi in a moving car on a deserted highway as dusk deepened the sky and birds chattered wildly in the treetops.

(Wat Tyler, nattily dressed for travel in southern climes, rests his weary head against the back of the seat. In black and white, the sun glancing through the trees casts a leafy filigree upon the windshield.)

The automobile was parked at the side of the road ahead, the headlights on even though it was not yet dark. A man stood casually leaning against the side of the car as we approached. Seeing us, he stepped into the middle of the road and held up his hand. He was wearing gray trousers and a white shirt open at the throat. A gun was slung in a holster on his hip, and there was a deputy sheriff’s star pinned to his shirt pocket. Luke stopped the car. The man walked over. His hair and mustache were the color of his dusty boots. His eyes were a bright blue.

“Evening,” he said.

“Good evening,” Luke said.

“Mind if I have a look at your license and registration?”

“Is something wrong?” Luke asked.

“Nothing at all,” the deputy answered, and glanced into the back seat. “You coming from Philadelphia?” he asked.

“That’s right,” Luke said.

The deputy accepted Luke’s license and registration. In the beam of his own headlights, he studied both and then walked back to our car. “This’s a New York driver’s license,” he said.

“That’s right,” Luke said again.

“You from New York?”

“Brewster,” Luke said.

“That in New York?”

“Upstate New York.”

“Guess that’s how come you ain’t familiar with the law here in Miss’ippi.”

“What law is that?” Luke said.

“Lights on at dusk,” the deputy said.

Immediately, Luke readied for the dashboard switch and turned on the headlights.

“Well, it’s a little late now,” the deputy said. He glanced at his watch. “Close to seven o’clock,” he said, “that’s a long way past dusk.”

(Wat Tyler, sitting beside Luke on the front seat of the silent automobile, feels a sudden lurch of fear. He wets his lips. The deputy stands motionless outside the car. In the woods lining the road, an owl hoots and falls silent.)

“Want to come along with us?” the deputy asked.

“What for?”

“I jus’ tole you. Lights on at dusk.” The deputy smiled pleasantly. “Yours were off.”

“Well, they’re on now,” Luke said.

“But too late.”

“Look, officer...”

“I jus’ think y’all better come along with us, huh?” the deputy said, still smiling. “For your own p’tection, huh?”

“We’re supposed to be in Clayton by...”

“Oh, were you heading for Clayton?”

Luke was silent for a moment. Then he merely nodded.

“Huh?” the deputy asked.

“Yes,” Luke said.

“What you going to Clayton for?” the deputy asked.

“We’re going there on business,” Luke said.

“What kind of business?”

“Personal business.”

“Nigger business?” the deputy asked. Glancing at Larry in the back seat, he grinned and said, “Oh, ’scuse me, boy. Didn’t see you sitting there in the dark and all.” Turning his attention back to Luke, he said, “Been a lot of agitation down this way, maybe you heard about it. I think y’all be safer with us tonight, ’stead of cruising the roads.”

“We’re not cruising the roads,” Luke said. “We’re driving directly to Clayton.”

“No,” the deputy said, and shook his head. “Maybe you was driving to Clayton, but you ain’t driving to Clayton no more. What you’re doing is you’re letting my partner there take the wheel, and you’re coming along with us. Now that’s what you’re doing, you see?” The deputy smiled again. “I think you sec,” he said.

Casually, he sauntered over to the other car and whispered a few words to his partner behind the wheel. The front door opened. His partner, wearing identical gray trousers and white shirt open at the throat, came out of the car and tugged at his undershorts. He was almost entirely bald, a fringe of reddish hair circling his tanned pate. A dead cigar stub was clamped between his teeth. He ambled over to our car, smiled at Luke, and said, “Evening. My partner says I’m to drive you into town.”

“I guess so,” Luke said, and sighed.

“It’s for your own p’tection,” the second deputy said, almost apologetically, and then looked into the back seat. “Nigger,” he said, “you mind getting out?”

“What for?” Luke asked.