John Sayles - A Moment in the Sun

“They use Baskerville—”

“That will be fine. And the other front-page piece—”

“ ‘Attempted Assault by Black Brutes.’ ” Some colored boys had thrown stones at a trolley on Fourth and Red Cross. “I’ve already set the column.”

“Redo it with a subhead so it looks like a continuation. Then beginning tomorrow we’ll run Manly’s statement in a box, center bottom, front page.”

“Yes, sir.” Milsap turns to go.

“And Drew—”

“Yes sir?”

“Be sure to have them hold onto the slugs. We’ll be reprinting this in every issue till Election Day. Center bottom, first page.” The editor swivels back to smile pleasantly at the Judge. “In a box.”

The justification of the article is terrible, as it always is with the Record , but the text makes it hard for Milsap to concentrate on the borders of the column. His fingers dig into the keys, matrices rattling down the chutes of the Linotype—

We suggest that the whites guard their women more closely, as Mrs. Felton says, thus giving no opportunity for the human fiend, be he white or black. You leave your goods out of doors and then complain because they are taken away.

Milsap is not married, never even engaged, but can imagine the anxiety of leaving a wife or daughter at home unprotected with marauding beasts at large, intent upon rapine and murder. Is that all the provocation necessary, to let them step out into the light of day? Seeing old Manigault has made him think of the Judge’s daughter Sally, strolling past his room with her friends on their way to Bible class, made him think of his own furtive thoughts, the few regrettable instances of self-pollution that have followed them. But to violate another, to touch them against their will—

Poor white men are careless of protecting their women, especially on farms. They are careless of their conduct toward them, and our experience among poor white people in the country teaches us that women of that race are not any more particular in the matter of clandestine meetings with colored men than are the white men with colored women.

Milsap feels dirty just to read this, and setting it into the machine makes him sweat, the seat of his pants sticking damp to his chair. It always makes his stomach go funny if one of them is pressed against him in a crowded trolley car, man or woman, especially on a hot day. They have a smell that is peculiar to their race and are unpredictable in their moods. In Charleston when he visited his Aunt Hepatha they had the Jim Crow rule in effect and everybody seemed comfortable with it. But here—

Meetings of this kind go on for some time until the woman’s infatuation, or the man’s boldness, bring attention to them, and the man is lynched for rape

Milsap stops halfway through the line. His pulse is racing. He tries to imagine what sort of white women would willingly, no, willfully submit to — has he ever met such a creature? Haskins the inker and some of the others who work the cylinder press like to go on about the women in Patty’s Hollow, teasing him about what they could show him if he’d only come along with them some night, but those places are only for white men and as far as he knows the negroes must have prostitutes of their own color. It is not something written about in the newspapers, except for a rare mention of a disorderly house . How debased a woman would have to be to — but that is the point, it is a lie, a projection of this Manly’s own twisted fantasies. A window into the criminal mind—

Every negro lynched is called a Big Burly Black Brute, when, in fact, many of those who have thus been dealt with had white men for fathers, and were not only not “black” and “burly,” but were sufficiently attractive for white girls of culture and refinement to fall in love with them, as is very well known to all.

The light-colored ones were always like that, impressed with themselves, making assumptions. There is a condescension, a challenge in that as is very well known to all that makes Milsap burn. He knows no such thing. That he knows no women of culture and refinement, not personally, is beside the point. Such ladies would naturally be even closer to the feminine ideal than those he is familiar with. When tomorrow’s Messenger reaches the public, with Mr. Clawson’s editorial—

And then he understands it. Understands it all. The daily headlines of outrage, the editor’s meetings with important men, the cartoons reprinted from Raleigh, even the arsenal he stumbled upon the other day in the storage room — cases of shining new Winchesters and Colt pistols. It is a campaign. Not a campaign like the trash collection or the county voting or the smallpox warnings earlier in the year. Intricate plans have been made, strategies devised, and the press, the shining jewel of American democracy, is to be the sharp point of the sword. He should have known. The way Mr. Clawson was with the Judge, so relaxed, a player with all the aces in his hand. He looks at the last line again, seeing now that it is somebody’s death notice, and is thrilled to be here, humble as his part in it will be, the man who feeds the machine.

Milsap yanks the lever and the hot metal flows.

It is Frank, with his usual long face.

“He wants us out.”

Manly sits by the electric lamp, writing. They are so much superior, steadier. Stay with gas light and he’ll be blind by fifty.

“We have a lease,” he answers. Frank can be an alarmist. Frank has assured him, many times, that the newspaper will ruin them all.

“He says there’ll be a county sheriff here at ten o’clock.”

“What gives him license to do that?”

Frank sighs, points at the article he has pinned upon the wall. “Your reply to Mrs. Felton. What do you think?”

“It’s been out for days. Old news—”

“The Messenger just reprinted it. And the Raleigh News and Observer .”

“Ah.”

Manly rises, looks around at the press crowding the tiny room. “I suppose we’ll have to cease operations tomorrow, make arrangements—”

“Anything left in this room,” says Frank, “they destroy or confiscate.”

“They can’t do that.”

Frank keeps staring at him. Of course they can do that, and much worse.

“It’s already dark out.”

“Good,” says Frank, beginning to stack piles of paper on other piles of paper. “Maybe nobody will see us.”

“I have nothing to hide.”

Frank shrugs. “Course not. You’re the one that pass for white, not me.”

His sharpest memory of her is on a train. He was at the station to help his brother Jubal load crates onto the wagon and she called to him from the window of an excursion train, dressed in white like always, the only girl he knew who wore gloves that weren’t for scalding chickens. It was the AME Zion youth group off on a day trip to Lake Waccamaw, laughing and shouting, and he was down on the platform with bare feet and stains on his shirt.

“Royal,” she said, excited, “there’s going to be a boat race!”

Junior is sleeping in the seat by the window as the passenger car clicks over the rail joints and the dark countryside rolls by. They are in uniform, but there have been no parades. The station in Washington was full of soldiers, the hearty, sunburned ones just mustered out from volunteer units that were never shipped to Cuba, and a few of the hollow-eyed men, too, regulars discharged or chasing their regiments, who had made it back. Men, black and white, like Royal, who’d had to punch another hole in their belts and cinch tight to keep their pants up, men who looked dazed as they passed through the crowded waiting room, shades among the living throng.