Chapter 2

 

Daddy’s Secrets

 

For a long time after witnessing the Ku Klux Klan in action, Frank pushed his memories of the horrible incident down into the bottom of his mind. He continued to play with Bobby for a while, but a distance had developed between them that no amount of friendship could heal. Frank began to realise that something wider than a river separated them.

Bobby had always known that his people were second-class citizens, but the night Joey Regan died had brought their inferiority home with a vengeance. The whites could stomp all over them and there was nothing they could do about it, just like in the bad old days of slavery. Sure there were a few privileged blacks around, but they worked in the big houses in the north, and were well-treated by their magnanimous white masters. The poor niggers on the south bank of the Promise River were dirt, and modern justice didn’t apply to them. Bobby wanted to keep playing with Frank, but his family started telling him that the boy would only bring trouble, considering who his father was. One day that big-mouthed Reverend would come marching down into the shanty and drag the boy off by his ears, and then … all Hell would break loose.

So Frank Cassidy drifted off on his own, heading out into the fields by himself, where his verdant imagination soon developed a life of its own.

Young Frank had always been interested in soldiers. For his sixth Christmas he received a little box of tin soldiers, which he knew had come from his mother. He soon treasured the soldiers above all else, even the big, thick Bible his father had given him. He began by making battlefields in his bedroom, with matchbox bunkers and play dough hills. Then he took the soldiers outside and staged entire wars in local fields, where he couldn’t hear his father ordering him to stop playing such sinful games of death and destruction. The Rev believed strongly in “thou shalt not kill”, no matter what commie threat the United States happened to be fighting.

As soon as Frank’s reading skills reached a reasonable level, he started visiting libraries and taking out books about war. Because he didn’t have a television like most of his friends – the Rev thought TV was a tool of the Devil – he could spend many hours reading. When he exhausted the elementary school’s meagre supply of war books, he moved on to the local library. Unfortunately Promise Falls’ only library wasn’t very large and Frank had soon read and re-read all the books in its military section. His excellent memory enabled him to recite entire paragraphs off by heart.

Other kids thought he was weird. However he didn’t receive as much teasing as other nerdy kids in his class. Frank had always been big for his age, a stocky boy with a natural aptitude for athletic games. As he grew he became much sought after by coaches for their football and baseball teams. He won footraces at junior athletics carnivals and could toss a shot putt further than any other boy his age. Despite Frank’s obsession with all things military, and his Bible-thumping Dad who blasted their families every Sunday, his classmates began to accept him into their groups. He was even invited over to their houses and introduced to their parents. The father of one boy happened to be a veteran of the Second World War who’d lost a leg during the D-Day landing. Frank badgered him with questions until the battle-scarred old war-hero told him in not so many words to get lost. Frank was never invited there again, much to his disappointment.

Although Frank made many friends on the sporting field, his best friend, the one who stuck by him through the rest of his school years, was a skinny, pale-faced lad named Pinky Robinson. Pinky had earned this strange sobriquet because whenever he went out in the sun he burned instead of tanned. Thus he spent most of his time indoors, reading and writing grisly little stories in which he transformed from a geeky little wiener into a muscle-bound, rather bloodthirsty monster-hunter. He shared Frank’s obsession with war, and they could talk for hours about historical battles. They even created a table-top war game in Pinky’s garage, using dice to add a realistic element of chance.

When Frank turned twelve, he looked fourteen, already as big and husky as a high school boy. He had broad, sloping shoulders and firm muscles from all of his athletic achievements. His thick, curly black hair softened his blocky face and made him more approachable. Not only was he a school’s star athlete, but he had a decent academic record as well. All of his teachers felt that he had the brains to go on to further, if only he paid more attention and took better care with his presentation. When a topic didn’t move fast enough, Frank doodled military insignias and weaponry in the margins of his notebooks.

The Herbert Hoover High School in Waco couldn’t wait to get their hands on him.

 

As Frank grew, his father seemed to become even louder and more obnoxious, seeing his control over his son slipping away. His mother began to shrink into herself, slowly collapsing beneath the weight of verbal, mental and physical abuse. One winter she caught pneumonia, and for a long time she was confined to bed, unable to care for her little family. Frank did all he could, but his grace on the athletics field failed to translate to the kitchen, where his enthusiastic efforts only succeeded in creating spectacular messes. His father, who’d never lifted a finger to help inside the house and wasn’t about to start, enlisted the services of a maid. One night he returned with a fifteen-year-old coloured girl named Charlie. Nora didn’t want a stranger in her house, but she kept her protests to herself. Her wishes had long since ceased to matter. Anyway she couldn’t keep relying on Frank – although he tried hard, she couldn’t stomach his constant influx of sludge-coffees, burnt toast and runny eggs.

Frank was free to return to Pinky’s house and their war-games resumed.

Slowly Nora’s condition improved and she was able to rise for short periods. She tried to help Charlie with some of the easier chores, but the girl kept ushering her back into bed. Charlie may have been quiet, rarely speaking more than two words at a time, but she was very efficient. She seemed desperate to keep her mistress placated all costs. Perhaps she didn’t want to return to whatever drudgery she had been doing before.

However Charlie had another reason for keeping her mistress happy. She felt sorry for her. Charlie might have been a poor coloured girl from the shanty, but at least she came from a loving family. This big, posh house was more luxurious than anything she had ever known, with its shiny, polished floors, hot and cold running water, electric stove, refrigerator and lights in every room, but a deadly sickness lay beneath its beautiful exterior - and it wasn’t Nora’s cold.

At first when Reverend Cassidy asked her to look after his sick wife, Charlie was overjoyed. At last, a chance to start earning some money for my family, she’d thought. They needn’t live in that awful shanty for the rest of their lives. But only two nights after her arrival, the sickness reared its ugly head.

Reverend Cassidy was as two-sided as a coin. On Sundays he blustered about the sanctity of the family unit, and the evils of intercourse outside of marriage, but the words meant little to him. He’d pushed his way into the little room he had given Charlie and raped her with a cool detachment – as though he had raped dozens of women before her. When she opened her mouth to scream, he produced a carving knife as though by magic, and said that he would cut out her tongue if a single sound escaped her lips. Tears coursed unchecked down her cheeks, but they failed to touch a heart as cold and hard as ice.

“Why’re you so upset?” he demanded when he’d finished, and was buttoning up his trousers. “I thought you’d be used to this by now. You Niggers start fucking each other as soon as you can walk, don’t you?” With a disdainful snort, he exited the room.

Charlie curled herself into a ball, blood trickling from between her legs, and cursed the evil man. He may speak God’s words, but he has Satan’s soul, she thought bitterly. She vowed to return home the very next day.

But early the next morning, a crash in the kitchen jerked her from a light, restless sleep. Pulling on a dressing gown, she stumbled out into the hall to find thin, pale Nora, blonde hair frizzing alarmingly around her peaky face, trying to make herself breakfast. The woman had dropped a saucepan of water all over the linoleum, and was miserably trying to mop it up.

“Here Ma’am, let me do that!” Charlie grabbed a mop. “You should be up in bed!”

“I’m all right.” Nora tried to rise to her feet, her bony knees trembling. She stumbled, falling back against the kitchen table, her feet skidding in the spilled water. Charlie had to catch her before she could fall on her backside.

“Come on – let’s get you back into bed right now!” She threw an arm around Nora’s waist and escorted her from the kitchen. Mrs Cassidy didn’t protest as the maid helped her back up the stairs and into bed. It was only when she was lying back on her pillows that she noticed the tears coursing down Charlie’s cheeks.

“What’s wrong, Charleen?” she gasped.

“It’s not Charleen – it’s Charlie,” she sniffed. “Actually it’s short for Charlotte.” She gulped and plonked herself down on the edge of the bed. “Lord, I miss my folks,” she lied.

“Why don’t you go visit them? I’ll be all right.”

Charlie turned, glaring at her skinny, sick mistress. “No Ma’am – you need me here.”

And so Charlie stayed, her loyalty to the mistress eclipsing her disgust of the master. Every night she had to endure that big, hairy monster dropping onto her and pounding away for a good fifteen minutes before coming. The sweat poured from him, his breath invariably stank of whiskey, and more often than not the sheer pressure of his weight made Charlie gasp for breath. The Rev was over six feet tall, olive-skinned, and a good three hundred pounds. He had thick salt-and-pepper curls and was liberally dusted with black body hair. Some reckoned his colouring could only have come from a nigger lurking in his family free somewhere, but they would never have dared say that to his face. John Cassidy’s awful temper was legendary.

 

One night, about a month after Charlie’s arrival the Rev visited her, as usual reeking of booze. He always drank at home because he had a public image to uphold as a clean, sober man of God. But he couldn’t go a single night without downing at least half, sometimes all of a bottle of whiskey. Only when he went out, not returning until the wee hours, did Charlie receive any grace.

When Charlie heard the Rev stomping down the hall, she gritted her teeth and removed her underwear. She didn’t want him to tear it from her, as she only owned a few pairs that hadn’t been repaired over and over again.

He threw her door open with a crash, and the sour stench of him billowed over her almost immediately. He smelled like he had bathed in the stuff. His silhouette almost filled the doorway, looming larger than normal in the darkness. He fumbled for the light switch and the bright glare stabbed into Charlie’s eyes. She retreated under her covers, but the Rev yanked them back. She blinked, trying to focus.

“Don’t know why you’re hidin’, nigger,” the Rev slurred as he fumbled around inside his trousers for his equipment. “You must’ve had at least a hundred men before me.”

Charlie didn’t argue – what was the point? All her protests bounced off the big man as though he was deaf to the sound of her voice. He flopped onto her, driving the air from her lungs. She struggled for breath as he shoved his stiffness into her. She was lucky; the sex was no longer as painful as it had been. But she felt nothing but humiliation as he thrust into her, accompanying each motion with a bestial grunt. She wasn’t a whore. She was a good girl, and until Reverend Cassidy ruined her forever, she had been promised to a young man uptown, with a good job as a motor mechanic. He wouldn’t want her after she’d lost her virginity, would he? “Once a whore from the shanty, always a whore from the shanty,” he would say. Tears of shame burned her eyes.

Because she couldn’t bear to look into the Rev’s ugly, drunken face, she kept her head turned aside, gaze fixed on the old photo of her folks she kept beside her bed. But she soon found she couldn’t draw a proper breath in this position, and had to look up at Cassidy. His pouchy face was beet red, his eyes staring fixedly ahead at nothing as he slammed away. Charlie wondered if he even knew who he was fucking. She managed to suck in a desperate breath, then the Rev gasped too. Was he coming already? Was this indignity over for another night?

The Rev’s eyes bulged from his face as he continued to gulp for air. He almost looked like he was choking. His entire body twitched, and Charlie felt his hot come gush into her. Then he collapsed on her. Usually he pulled out as soon as he’d spent his seed, as though he couldn’t bear another second inside her. But tonight he lay on top of her for a long time.

When Charlie could bear his weight no longer, she tentatively tapped him on a shoulder. She gulped, expecting a mouthful of abuse and the back of his hand across her cheek. Nothing happened.

“Sir?” she whispered, shaking him more urgently. Again nothing.

Charlie sucked in a shallow breath. The big bastard seemed to be getting heavier by the second! What was happening here? Had he fallen asleep on her? “Please – get off me!” she pleaded. “I can’t breathe!”

No response.

Charlie hooked her fingers in the Rev’s curly, white-streaked hair and heaved his heavy head up off her shoulder.

His eyes still bulged from his face, but now they were sightless and dead. Drool spilled from his slack lower lip and splashed onto her chest. Charlie shrieked and started to struggle frantically, but she couldn’t budge the enormous dead weight draped across her. If someone didn’t come to help her soon, he would suffocate her to death. “Help! Help!” she wailed, not caring who came to her aid.

The maid’s hysterical screams startled Nora from a light doze. Her room was directly above the kitchen. She scrambled out of bed and hurried downstairs as fast as her weakened legs could take her. She threw open Charlie’s door to the horrific sight of her husband, sprawled on top of the girl. His trousers were around his ankles, providing the woman in the doorway with a spectacular view of a cavernous ass-crack like a hairy Grand Canyon. For a few seconds she froze in shock.

“Help me – I can’t breathe!” Charlie croaked.

Charlie’s feeble cry galvanised Nora into action. She darted around the bed and grabbed the Rev by a shoulder, pulling him back with all her might. He rolled from Charlie’s body and crashed onto his back on the floor. At the sight of his bulging eyes, Nora screamed and collapsed to her knees.

Charlie sat up, gasping for breath. Might as well start packing and go home to my old home in the shanty, she thought miserably. No doubt I’ll be blamed for this, and it’ll only be a matter of time before the Klan comes after me and lynches me like they did poor Joey Regan. “Nigger whore murders innocent preacher”, they’ll tell everyone.

With trembling fingers, Nora checked the Rev’s thick, flaccid neck for a pulse. As expected, she found nothing. “I’d better call the doctor,” she whispered, rising to her feet and padding from the room.

As soon as she had caught her breath, Charlie grabbed her old carpetbag and began shoving her few things into it. Slinging it over her shoulder, she crept out into the hall just as Nora hung up the phone.

“Where are you going, Charlie?” Nora asked.

Charlie gulped. “Um … home?”

Nora stepped forward, grabbing the girl by her shoulders. Her blue eyes were like huge saucers in her pale, peaky face. “Please don’t leave me,” she begged. “I need you now more than ever.”

Charlie gaped. “But Ma’am – I thought you’d never wanna see me again!”

“Charlie – look me in the eye.”

Charlie gnawed on her lower lip, but did as she was told.

“Did you seduce my husband?”

“No,” the maid whispered.

“I didn’t think so. Now come on – help me drag him from your room before the doctor comes.”

“To – to save his reputation?” Charlie gasped.

“No, yours.”

The two women might have succeeded in their plan if Frank hadn’t chosen that moment to pad downstairs to see what all the fuss was about. He arrived on the scene to see Nora and Charlie dragging Reverend Cassidy across the hall. The big man’s pants were still around his ankles, and his pubic hair matted with cum.

“What the Hell is goin’ on here?” the boy gasped in horror.

 

Nora told Frank not to tell anyone what had happened, but twelve-year-old boys are rarely known for their discretion. Frank had never had much love for his tyrannical father, and the opportunity to humiliate the old bastard after death gnawed at his insides until he couldn’t bear it any longer. One week later he told Pinky Robinson that the Rev hadn’t died in the kitchen while fetching himself a midnight snack. On hearing the whole sordid truth, the boy’s eyes widened in amazement.

“He was a mud-dipper!”

“A what?” Frank gasped.

“Don’t you know anything? A mud-dipper is a fella who likes screwin’ niggers!”

“Please don’t tell anyone,” Frank begged.

“My lips are sealed!” Pinky drew a skinny finger across his mouth.

But Pinky couldn’t keep the secret either, and blabbed it to his cousin, who spread it around Dixon’s Roadhouse where he worked. From there the secret exploded all over Promise Falls. Although the identity of the black maid was never revealed, everyone knew who she was. But they couldn’t understand why she was still working at the Cassidys’ house. Why hadn’t the Rev’s widow kicked her whoring nigger ass out onto the street?

But Nora Cassidy had always been a strange, quiet woman who drifted around town like a frightened ghost, but never said boo to anyone. Perhaps she was glad the Rev was gone. Perhaps he used to beat her in the quiet of their home, so much that he destroyed her will to resist, and created in her an ache for his untimely demise.

 

After Reverend Cassidy’s death, Nora, Frank and Charlie began the onerous task of sorting through the dead man’s things, and deciding what to throw out and what to send to charity. Charlie thought she might be able to salvage a few things for her family, but although she boasted some tall relatives, the sheer girth of some of the garments rendered them useless.

“It would take a month of sewin’ to alter this stuff,” the girl muttered as she tossed yet another pair of trousers into the suitcase. Nora simply nodded in agreement. Since John’s death she hadn’t spoken much, but Charlie could sense a deep, inner peace spreading inside her mistress, which she hoped would eventually find its way to the surface and enable her to bloom as a whole new person. She was like a flower that had struggled to grow in the shadow of an old house. Just when everyone thought the plant was dead the house tumbled down, allowing sunlight to revive it.

Frank sensed the change in his mother as well. For as long as he could remember his father had asserted his authority by berating her for the slightest misdemeanour. No matter how hard Nora tried to appease her husband, he always found an excuse to give her a shout, the back of his hand, or even his clenched fist. He might have been a habitual drunkard, but he never got so insensible that he couldn’t hit his wife.

Frank wasn’t spared the rod either, although his ability to lose himself in the surrounding fields for hours on end granted him longer reprieves. As he worked on clearing his father’s things out of the hall closet, he wished that the old man was still alive – just so he could watch his son grow big enough to fight back.

At twelve Frank was tall for his age, but not nearly strong enough to stand up to a six foot two, three hundred-pound monster. The rickety kitchen chair creaked beneath him as he stretched to reach the top shelf of the cupboard. His fingers brushed against a number of paper bags, and they teetered and tumbled down on top of him. Luckily they were very light, otherwise they would have concussed him.

Probably more clothes, he thought disgustedly. He was sick of sorting out clothes. When were they going to get to the interesting stuff? Like old photographs of John during his sordid youth, with his arms draped around chorus girls, or dressed as a ballerina and singing “The Good Ship Lollipop”. Frank chuckled at the mental image as he tossed down yet another pile of paper bags. Maybe he would find the Rev’s secret retirement fund, consisting of old stock certificates, or a stash of baseball cards still in mint condition, or a pile of records from a time when music was still allowed.

I could listen to the radio now, he thought – or better yet, watch TV! I wonder if Mom will buy us a television. He cleared the uppermost shelf and jumped down to start sorting through the bags clogging the hall. Then I wouldn’t have to go to Pinky’s all the time.

As expected, the paper bags all contained old clothes, from a time when the Rev had been thinner. Since Charlie needed things for her folks, Frank took the bags to her. She thanked him with a big smile.

“He might look like a young version of his Dad, but he’s a completely different person,” Frank heard Nora remark as he left.

“He’s more like you, Ma’am,” Charlie responded.

As Frank sat back down with the bags, he made a solemn vow that he would never, ever end up like his evil, two-faced father. May there only ever be one side to Frank Cassidy, he thought as he reached for another bag and unfolded the end.

This one contained something lovingly wrapped in tissue paper. At first Frank thought he’d found Nora’s wedding dress, because the article was white. But when he pulled it free, he realised it wasn’t a dress. It was a long white robe. With a pointed hood and two little holes for the eyes.

Frank’s blood ran with ice-water as memories rose from the depths of his mind and dusted themselves off, presenting themselves with eternal clarity.

The big Klansman with the shotgun – the one who had smashed Hank Jones’ head in, so afterwards he couldn’t talk or walk properly – who had struck Mama Regan to the ground and then hung Joey Regan high – was Reverend John Cassidy.

 

* * * *