Part 14

They were taking the cross-road and now the whole ragged, pathetic procession could be seen at the top of the crest, from the tall, broad-shouldered bucks guarding the mule carts in the front to the two old women in the rear. The moon, round and bright, fell on their exodus and painted them into a column of shadows, with bowed heads, moving slowly onward. The fence rails of a field were down. Robert dimmed his lights, parked his car beside the road, jumped out and cut across the field to a clump of bushes. The mules thudded slowly, switching their flanks, along the clay. Harness slapped from side to side, wagon wheels creaked. In the wagons were stoves, beds, the heavier articles of furniture and the sick. Everyone carried something--enormous bundles, worn suitcases. A tattered youth in overalls and undershirt, staggered beneath a soldier’s haversack and roll, piled high and strapped to his shoulders, and pulled a toy express wagon filled with rattling kitchenware.

Stolid men with brown faces and fear in their eyes. Weeping women. A ragged preacher moaning at the top of his voice and invoking “De Lor’ Jehovah.” Sorrowful, musical voices responding. Children crying. A woman moaning. A pregnant woman, with set mouth, pulling a mulatto child by the hand. A child with high nose and thin lips, but bearing the brand of Canaan--woolly hair and dark skin. There they marched, black, brown, yellow--negroes and mulattoes--their entire wealth wrapped in these rude bundles.

The mulatto child. It haunted him. Soft, wondering eyes in the moonlight, looking up at its mother. An idea, a grotesque idea, came to Robert. What mob had howled about the faggot pile of the father of this half-breed child? What white-robed knights had paraded before his door in warning? No! He had been white. And, a horrible thought, perhaps some white father, sometime, somewhere, unknowingly, of course, had paraded in warning before the home of his half-breed son or, it was conceivable, had kindled the flames about his brown limbs! Moonlight and the shadows moving on.

A tall, straight-shouldered negro leaned forward against a push cart, overflowing with bedding and on top of which rode a gray-haired, sobbing woman. He was comforting her, crooning to her as one might to a terrified child. His eyes turned toward the row of bushes and a memory burned in Robert’s brain. Who was it? Where had he seen him? Was it? Was it the black who had saved his life? The pale light fell full on his features--the high cheek bones, the slightly thickened lips. No, thank God! No, it was not Williams. No, it was not Williams!

Robert turned, ran back across the field and jumped into his car without looking around. What if it had been Williams? Why couldn’t it have been? He sped through the village. The crowd had dispersed into smaller groups that gossiped in doorways and porches.

The east room was lit when Robert drove the car into the garage. Laughing voices drifted out to him. He stole up the back way into his room. He wanted to be alone. The moon sent moving black masses interlaced with silver upon the walls. Robert hurriedly switched on the lights. As the door closed, a paper on the table rose and fell. His notes for the Fourth of July oration. Land of freedom. Washington, Jefferson, Jackson. Independence of tyranny.--It must be hell to be a nigger.

It was too gruesome to tell about at the breakfast table the next morning, but in the afternoon Robert described the flight of the Negroes of Carthage. They were walking about in the garden.

“My God, dad, if I had ever known what was coming, I’d never have joined the Tribe!”

“Well, son, the Tribe wasn’t really responsible. They simply wanted to warn the Negroes to be careful, to be law-abiding. They thought that they would be impressed, but I’m sure that even Griffith didn’t imagine anything like that.”

“But, God, it was horrible, weird, like something out of the dark ages. Even a slave-owner wouldn’t do a thing like that.”

“No, certainly not, no decent man would. But, Bob, they didn’t mean it. They wanted to prevent something worse. There have been too many lynchings in Corinth lately and we want to prevent that.”

Robert’s face was flushed.

“Dad, I don’t know. This is simply one example, just one example of what the Tribe means. We have our tribunal. We decide a man’s guilt. But we’re all in masks. We’re--we’re a tribe. Not a law court. We may try to be, but we’re dealing with justice like savages. Our courts may be slow, imperfect; but anyway, they keep us from being a mob like that, or a tribe. Think of the hundreds of years during which human wisdom has built up our laws and our court procedure.” He was conscious of footsteps coming up the walk. “Why do we need any other tribunal than our own courts? Why do we need a Tribe to try men? It’s natural that the Tribal concilium should be swayed by prejudices and fears and hatreds. In the courts, justice is regulated by laws, by precedent, by the wisdom of ages. In the Tribe, it is the moment’s sentiment--right or wrong--sympathy or hate or revenge. Tribesmen may think they’re impartial, but they’re men, acting with only their own wisdom, often acting unwisely, sometimes cruelly. I--I think that I’ll resign from the Tribe!”

His father cleared his throat and held up his hand. Robert looked around. It was Margaret, dark eyes ablaze, cheeks flushed, hands clenched.

“So you will resign from the Tribe?” She tossed back her head. Her voice was clear, impassioned. “You will turn against the only force that can preserve the white South and white America from the alien? I thought you were a soldier. Don’t you see where your duty lies?”

“But Margaret, I’m not opposing--”

“You are,” she cried. “If you are not with the Tribe in its crusade, you are against it. It was the same way in the war. You were either a one hundred per cent American or you weren’t an American. And now you are either for one hundred per cent Christian, white civilization or against it.”

“Why--where--?”

She went on: “The Trick Track Tribe is only a test. It shows how you stand. Don’t ask me how I know. Someone--yes, Howard--said the Tribe is going to show exactly where every man in the South stands. Every man who isn’t a member by the time the drive is over, isn’t a member for some good reason--and it isn’t a reason to be proud of.” Her voice choked. She raised her hands and began fumbling at the engagement ring, then suddenly let them fall again, her fists still clenched. Her nostrils quivered. Robert could hear her breathing.

“I--I don’t want my husband to belong to the class that isn’t--isn’t--” Her voice broke. She turned suddenly and hurried up the walk into the house.

“Why--why?” Robert stared after her. What had he said? What had he done? Was resigning from the Tribe some form of treason or heresy--or infidelity?

The older man laughed.

“She’s got a temper, regular daughter of Dixie!”

“But did I say anything to make her flare up like that? Can’t a man quit an organization if he wants to?”

“I guess not. Not if you want Margaret.”

“But what has that got to do with me--with us? It’s--it’s unreasonable!”

“Oh, well, when you have as many gray hairs as I have, you’ll learn that the most reasonable thing to expect of a woman is unreasonableness. Suit your own conscience. But--” he put his arm on his son’s shoulder, “but don’t take it so hard. Just think it over.”

XXVIII

Robert was on his way to Chicago, with his credentials as Grand Bogey of the Trick Track Tribe secure in his breast pocket. In a large, black leather bag were his propaganda supplies, booklets and cards about the black peril, the yellow peril, the political activities of the Knights of Columbus, the Jewish problem, the menace of foreign immigration. He had scarcely time to look at them. Most of his supplies had, of course, been sent by express directly to the office of the Dearborn Statistical Bureau.

Before leaving Corinth, Griffith and Lister had both given him a new conception of the scope of the Trick Track Tribe. Its sphere had been called the Fourth Dimension, because like the fourth dimension it was to be invisible to outsiders, yet it was to form a part of the entire political, economic and social fabric of the country. It was to support good government against bad, combat radicalism and immorality, uphold the best traditions of Anglo-Saxon civilization. The Bogeys were to go forth like knights of old, except that they were to work unseen, in the Fourth Dimension, fighting for God and their country.

Robert had been provided with a number of cards to distribute among his prospects--cards resembling those which he had received, with the motto _Non Silba Sed Anthra_ on them. Griffith had suggested that he begin proselytising on the train, and accordingly Robert studied his fellow passengers.

“Get the young fellows,” Griffith had advised. “As many of the ex-service men as you can and of fellows who weren’t drafted, but who would like to get in with men who were in the army. In the cities, of course, you’ll have to work systematically. First, get a few of the big guns: a big minister, a public official, a prominent business man. Then you can use their names in getting the rest. But on the train I’d try the young fellows.”

In the smoking car Robert tried to manipulate the conversation so as to sound the feelings of the men with whom he conversed. Everyone, of course, approved of such a generalization as Americanism, although each had his own solution of his idea of what that problem constituted.

“What we need is to get down to work and do less shouting,” was one choleric old gentleman’s rather vague recipe.

A drummer from Chicago--big cigar, diamond stickpin, dominant joviality and a talent for smutty stories--denounced the Bolsheviki--but his nose was Semitic and his name was something with a “son” on the end of it.

The thin, blond man with horn-rimmed spectacles--an advertising copywriter on his way back to Chicago from a vacation--said business was unusually good, it was simply a problem of going after it. None of them, in fact, had felt that the integrity of the American nation was being subverted. They were hopelessly optimistic.

When he referred to the Negro question, two men who were from the South began to take interest. One was an old gentleman--he seemed at least seventy-five--the other, a young man, perhaps Robert’s junior by three years, on his first trip north--to Louisville.

“That’s a real problem,” said the young man, taking part in the conversation for the first time that evening. “Some times I think they should all be shipped over to Africa--the whole bunch of ’em. Send ’em to Liberia. Africa’s the place for ’em all.”

He related an incident of how a Negro had stolen a hen from an uncle’s roost. A policeman, with a sense of humor, saw the darkey waddling down the street, suspiciously fat.

“Good-evening, Rastus,” said the policeman. “Nice evening.” It was the first time in his life that a policeman had ever said “good evening” to him, or, in fact, any white man.

“Yes, sah, pow’ful fine evenin’,” said the nigger uneasily, trying to conceal the hen, make a getaway and be polite to the guardian of the law at the same time.

“You’re looking fine,” said the policeman, playfully prodding him. “Wife’s cooking must agree with you.”

“Yes, pow’ful fine cooking. I gain thuty pound in one week. But I must be going home. I heah de poke chops frying on de pan and a-calling me. Good-night.”

At this moment the hen began to cackle.

“What’s that?” cried the patrolman.

“Tuck-tuck-a-wack!!”

“I’se just imitatin’ a chicken clackin’. (Tuck-tuck, tuck, tuck awah’)--hear dat? Folks says I’se de bes’ natural bo’n animal imetator in de--(Tuck, tuck, a wack.) Some folks say it’s a gift to imetate an animal so natural. Folks say I imetate better than the animal itself.--(Tuck, tuck a wack.)”

“I think if you unbuttoned your coat you could give a much better imitation.”

“No, _sah_! I must have it tight around my abdomen to get de true, natural soun’. (Tuck, a, luck.)”

The darky’s coat was agitated by the struggling hen, a button popped off and the bird suddenly thrust its head into view. Rastus slowly scratched his head.

“Now whare do you t’ink dat come from? I _thought_ I was givin’ an onusually fine impersonation.”

Everyone laughed.

“They’re awfully funny, those coons,” said the young man. “You-all ought to see them jigging in the moonlight, playing on their banjos and dancing, all impromptu. It beats any minstrel show you-all ever saw. And they have beautiful voices. But they will lie and steal.”

He became serious.

“Of course, every race has its good sides, but the nigger has got to go, or else there won’t be any white America. In the meantime, he’s got to be kept in his place. He’s got to learn to respect the white man. Why, I read just the other day where they’re four million mulattoes in this country.”

“Well,” remarked the advertising man, dryly, “you know where they come from.”

He winked at the other Northerners, with a slight feeling of belonging to a superior group.

“What d’ye mean?”

“Well, the mulattoes come from either black mothers or white mothers. Therefore--”

The young Southerner grew very red.

“Sir, do you mean to insinuate that any white woman of the South--”

“Certainly not. I must say that I found the standards of morality in the South higher even than in Chicago or in the little Northern village where I was born. No, sir, the mulattoes are born in the South of black mothers. They are born among the purest, highest type of Anglo-Saxon manhood, upholding its traditions of race, religion and womanhood. I haven’t the least idea who their fathers are.”

The young man’s eyes blazed. Hamilton felt himself growing angry, but before he could say anything, the young man had half risen and was striking his palm excitedly with his fist.

“Sir,” he was crying, “you’ve made an insinuation against an entire class.”

He sputtered, he became unintelligible. He was going to make the other man eat his words. He denied that any respectable Southerner had ever begotten a mulatto child. Poor whites, perhaps. White trash! A white gentleman would never touch a colored woman.

“Well,” said the advertising man, with the least bit of a twinkle, “I hadn’t the least idea that I was insulting you. But what is your idea of the phenomenon?”

The youth glowered. The choleric old gentleman thrust in his oar.

“Why! Why! I observed that it was quite common for young gentlemen to ‘touch’ black women. In fact, I got the idea that it was one of your Southern traditions. Why, look here, young man, I’ve talked to twenty overseers if I’ve talked to one, and they all told me the same thing. They certainly extended true Southern hospitality to me.” He went into details. “Why, damn it, they admitted doing it themselves, not with any feeling of making a confession, either. One overseer said he always went to another plantation so as not to spoil the morale of his help!

“Now, I don’t give a whoop what you do. Black, brown, red. It’s none of my business. But what I do hate is this damn hypocrisy, all this bunk about your splendid manhood and high morality. Doggone it, I’ll bet you can’t show me a single white man south of the Mason-Dixon line--”

The young man flung his cigarette on the floor and walked out of the smoking car, muttering that if the Northerner weren’t old enough to be his grandfather he’d mop the car up with him.

Hamilton rose. “Here’s one, right here!” he said, looking the choleric gentleman in the eye.

“An exception, all right. But without getting mad about it and without putting on a high and mighty pose, tell me truthfully, aren’t you an exception? Take your own set!”

Hamilton wavered. The standards in Corinth had not been very high. Perhaps the set he knew was not a fair group. In general, it had not been considered particularly immoral. It had been the attitude of Greek or Roman gentlemen to their slaves.

“Well,” he said, “perhaps the white man is to blame. To be frank, I guess we are. Yes, it is a serious situation, and that’s exactly what we must combat.” He wished that the Jewish drummer were out of the car. It was a fine opening to talk Tribe. He could tell what the Tribe was going to do to raise moral standards and prevent the mingling of white blood with black by rigid enforcement of the code. Why were Jews excluded from membership, anyway?

The old Southerner coughed.

“I haven’t taken any part in your little argument, yet,” he said, stroking his long white beard, “for I reckon that’s something for younger and fightinger folks. But they say: Young men for fightin’ and old men for counsel. I sort o’ figgered that you fellows was sort of teasing this youngster that got mad.”

“Sure, that’s all I was doing, dad, having a little fun with him,” said the ad man. “Have a cigar?”

“No, thanks. Had enough. Too much tobacco bad for my heart. I sort-a liked the spunk o’ that young fella at that. Although nobody would a got mad at a thing like that in my day. But he’s right and you, too, young man. The nigger problem is a coming one. It’s been under cover for many years, but it’ll bob up again, sure as you’re born. Now, you might not know it, but I fit with the boys in gray; ’listed in ’65. I was a youngster, but I got in. I got a wound in my right thigh by a Yank musketball, I can show you, in the last engagement of the war--but I’ve no feelings against the North for that. Not any more. No, the South has forgotten the war. We’re all one country now.”

He went into a circumlocutory account of his experiences in the Civil War, of his home-coming and of the first post bellum days, while the rest listened respectfully and asked questions from time to time to show that they were still interested.

“You’re wondering where all this is leading to, well, you were talking about the nigger problem. But I saw a real nigger problem, compared to which this one isn’t a hill o’ beans. No, sir, not a hill o’ beans. Although this one may get to be like it. But we had a real problem.”

It was after the war. The Southern States had been compelled reluctantly, not merely to liberate, but to enfranchise the Negroes. Yankee carpetbaggers had descended from the North, both to invest money in enterprises and real estate that could be bought for a song and to obtain political control.

“Well, I lived in Tennessee, little town of Pulaski. When we got back, a few of us young bucks got together one May day in 1866, and formed a secret society, just for the dickens of it. I don’t know if you ever heard of it--”

“You don’t mean them Ku Kluxers?” broke in the Jewish drummer.

“That’s right!” exclaimed the old gentleman joyously. “How did you know? Knights of the Ku Klux Klan we called ourselves. Kuklux was a Latin word, meaning circle, and one of the boys who’d been to college thought it’d be appropriate.”

“Oh, ‘kuklos’! That’s Greek for circle,” said Hamilton.

“Oh, everyone has heard of the Ku Klux Klan,” put in the advertising man. “We even read about it in our histories, dad.”

“Well, that’s the same Klan, and I was one of the first members. Well, our first object was just to have a little fun, a little mystery to keep the other folks guessing. Then, by accident, someone discovered that if you wanted to scare a nigger into doing what you wanted him to do, all you had to do was to dress up in a sheet like a ghost.

“We scared a few bad niggers. You should have seen our rigs. White masks, high cardboard hats, long white robes. And we had a white cover for our horses and padded their feet. The best fun, of course, was the initiations. But that’s all secret.” He chuckled at the memory.

“Soon other Klans were started around Pulaski. By an’ by Tennessee, and then the entire South was covered with them. So by the time the reconstruction acts o’ ’67 were passed, we had a right smart of a military organization. Why, sir, the niggers, the old slaves, were in the state militia and we had to walk between rows of their bayonets to get at the voting polls. They and the Northern carpetbaggers stuffed the ballot boxes and won over the state and city government. And there were a few scalawags from the South that joined ’em. We had organized just for fun. But as soon as the niggers and carpetbaggers began making our laws and robbin’ the public treasury, the Klan spread like wildfire over the entire South. And like organizations were also formed. Knights of the White Camellia was one, Pale Faces, White Leaguers.”

“Trick Track Tribe,” suggested Hamilton.

“Yes, that was one of ’em. But they all had one purpose--to uphold the supremacy of the white race.”

“Well, you made a good job of it,” said someone. The old gentleman was getting winded.

“Yes, we did. Tar and feathers. Public hangings. A few judicious notes o’ warnin’. We put the fear o’ God and respect for law and order in their souls. It might not of been strictly ethical, but it worked in its day, and if ever the niggers start kickin’ up a rumpus, the same thing can be used against ’em again.”

The Jewish drummer took out another cigar and cut off the end with a little gold cigar-cutter attached to a chain and Robert knew that he would have to bide his time. The old gentleman’s words had given him moral confirmation. Not that he needed it, exactly, but it established the Tribe as of honorable tradition, an institution of which any Southerner could be proud. He wished that the Jewish drummer would go, or at least that he would get a chance to talk to the old Klansman alone. When the latter, therefore, excused himself to return to his seat because the smoke was getting too thick for his lungs, Robert followed him.

“I was interested in what you said about the Trick Track Tribe,” he said, falling into the seat opposite him.

“That’s because you’re a Southerner. Every loyal Southerner is.”

“Perhaps you’ll be glad to know that we--that the Tribe is being revived.”

“Revived? Well, well, well. But you know it was run out of business by the law, the whole shooting match of ’em--Klan, Tribe and all, by Congress.”

“No, I didn’t know that. Let’s see! There was something like that in our American history. Let’s see, the Force bill.”

“Sure thing. The damn Yankee general, Grant, done it. So I wouldn’t say much about it. I suppose it’s still illegal.”

“Oh, no, this has been reorganized and incorporated, although it’s got the same name and the same traditions. Here, let me show you some of our cards.”

The old Confederate soldier puzzled over the Latin motto and demanded why all those questions were being asked.

“We didn’t ask all them questions about religion and where a man was born. An’ what’s this card?”

It was a card the size of a playing card, headed “Do You Know?” and containing a list of “that’s”:

_That the Pope is a political autocrat._

_That a secret treaty made by him started the war._

_That he is enthroned and crowned and makes treaties and sends and receives ambassadors._

_That 116 princes of his government are enthroned in our cities._

_That he has courts here enforcing the canon law._

_That he controls the daily and magazine press._

_That he denounces popular government as inherently vicious._

_That his canon law condemns public schools and forbids children to attend them._

_That popery enthroned in great cities controls politics._

_That our war industries were placed exclusively in Roman Catholic hands._

_That no sectarian body or fraternal order but Knights of Columbus were permitted to do war relief work in the army and navy._

_That Roman Catholics compose one-sixth of the population and hold three-fourths of the public offices, being entrenched in national, state and city governments throughout the country._

_That they are pouring into our land as immigrants at the rate of two millions a year._

_That Knights of Columbus declare they will make popery dominant in the United States._