TIME NOW FOR RYDER TO GO TO THE VACANT HOUSE IN Fountain Heights. Dynamite Bob might be there, might show him something new about bomb making. Ryder had the basics down pat, but the house itself scared him. Like a haunted house. Creepy when you were in there by yourself with all that dynamite. Big old house with rooms stacked around all over the place. Ryder thought about mad-scientist comic books—a mad scientist connecting wires.
WHILE HE DROVE THROUGH the neighborhood at night, Ryder checked the skin color of the people on the sidewalks. Made sure no niggers were out. Had he seen a black man, he would have done nothing. He was alone. But he would have felt his hate surge, rise up from his very balls.
Just a dim light shone from the shrouded basement window. Ryder whistled three times to give the signal. No answer. He opened the door with his key and clomped down the basement steps. Nobody was there.
He hated a deserted house. In the silence, he imagined screaming coming from the walls. Stupid somebody had left the light on over the workbench. A roll of fine electric line bounced light off its curve. Two boxes of dynamite sat, very still it seemed, beside the big spool. Five plastic fishing bobbers, red and white, lay in a row. It was easy to picture how Dracula might come busting through the window, right through the shade, if you were alone.
Ryder dipped his fingers into a small box and fished out a blasting cap. He knew a boy years ago who blew his hand off with a blasting cap he’d found on a construction site. Good-looking boy. That was long ago. The walls of the secret house rose up still and steep to the high old ceiling. He’d wanted to take solid geometry but they put him in Shop.
Beside the workbench, a sealed carton of little bedside clocks sat on the floor. Just to use his nervous hands, Ryder picked up the X-Acto knife and slit the brown-tape seal. All the clocks were neatly packed inside, still in their individual boxes.
Hadn’t he been supposed to meet somebody here?
Ryder took a beige clock out of its little box; the small round face read three o’clock. When he wound it up, he found the clock had a quiet tick, almost just a clucking. Just for something to do, he twisted the scored stem on the back of the clock to twirl the hands around. He watched time fly. He wondered before the factory workers packed them up, had they set all the clocks at three o’clock?
He wouldn’t mind to have such a neat little clock.
After Ryder squeezed the little circular clock headfirst into his jeans pocket, he closed its empty box and put it back in the shipping carton with the others. Somebody else would think, down the line, Hey, one box is a dud. Like at the plant they forgot to fill one box and just packed it empty. Since he’d cut the tape sealing the big carton, the top flaps didn’t want to lie down, but Ryder lifted the roll of electric wire and used it to weight the flaps shut.
Close to the dynamite boxes, he moved his hands very carefully. Suddenly, the silent walls screamed as though somebody were being attacked in the empty house. The screams sounded like a rabbit, he decided, a brown rabbit with a white cottontail he’d snared as a boy.
Well, he’d better drive on back home, with his little clock ticking in his pocket. What time was it, really? He hoped he hadn’t got the time mixed up. Lord, that would be bad. You’re almost too stupid to do this, Bob said to him once. Can’t you tell time?
Just remembering Bob’s snide voice make Ryder cringe. Bob didn’t talk like that to Blanton or Cherry. Hidden deep in Ryder’s chest, a tiny spot about the size of a dime glowed with anger.
WASN’T ANY DOUBT who was in charge, once he was behind the wheel. Ryder was glad to be back in his car. Ryder guessed a man had to be mean like Bob Chambliss to stand up for right the way Bob did. What with the way the world was going.
Car radio said the niggers had gone back on some of their demands.
Radio said King said he was calling off the demonstrations.
They were negotiating, like King was some kind of foreign power.
Ryder wanted to hurt somebody. Well, niggers always needed straightening out. Always had and always would. Police wouldn’t touch him or Chambliss or any of them. Never had and never would. While he drove the car toward home, Ryder checked the face of anyone he saw on the sidewalk. Better not be too many colored. Niggers always trying to take over.
Ryder felt scared, but it wasn’t the blacks. He could imagine a huge, elongated dark shape flying just over the treetops. It was like the shadow of Dracula had passed over the roof of his car. Ryder stepped on the gas.
AS HE ENTERED his kitchen, Ryder thought how the police were the one good thing about Birmingham. He measured himself a shot of Gentry’s whiskey and sat at the kitchen table. The metal tabletop was bare and clean, wiped down. Ryder liked the delicate way the tabletop was covered with little scratches.
In Birmingham, the police were on your side. Not just LeRoy, his brother—all the police. He’d heard that Atlanta had started importing police from Chicago and New York City.
Saturday night at the kitchen table. Awful quiet. Not a sound in the house. He contemplated the little scratches all over the metal tabletop. The way his whiskey bottle sat there like a king.
LeRoy knew Bull.
Here it was, Saturday night, his bottle, his shot glass, and him. Peace and quiet. Nobody telling him to do nothing.
Hell, Bull used to speak at rallies. Used to stand on the hood of a car so everybody could see him. Hosts of white sheets, pointed hoods moved all mysterious in the woods. Three crosses, the big ten-foot one in the middle, wrapped in cloth soaked with gasoline. Somebody tossed a lighted match, and whoosh. Then two small whooshes. Ryder pitched another shot of whiskey into the back of his throat. Better than church, three crosses burning in the woods. The big one for Jesus. With the Cross of Jesus going on before: he loved that song.
The Klan’s little kids’ faces glowed with awe, the burning crosses teaching them. They were white, and what this was about was White Supremacy, right here, tonight, and forever. The glowing on their little faces reflected the flames of the burning crosses.
Sometimes Ryder pictured Evil flying high above the dark woods where the Klan was meeting, but it couldn’t come down no matter what his power because they had crosses. The folks were gathered around burning crosses.
He wished he’d had something like Klan meetings when he was a kid. He never saw his dad stand up for anything. His dad didn’t love the Bible, he didn’t love the flag. All he loved was moonshine, till it killed him. Niggers could hold a job better than his dad, and he let the whole family sink down. Ryder wished he could have gone on being a Cub Scout. He’d saved pennies and bought himself the neckerchief. They’d let him wear just that around his throat, for a while, and then they said he had to get the whole uniform or drop out. That was when he first felt the burning dime, like it was inside his upper chest under the tails of his Scout neckerchief. He had a red-hot dime in his chest. It was a button he could press and rage like an atom bomb would explode.
From the bedroom, Ryder heard the sudden rackety of his wife’s sewing machine commence. She was just starting up! That was why the house was so goddamned quiet. That wasn’t right! Him gone only half an hour, and her quitting on him, going to bed. She must have slipped off to bed ’bout as soon as he went out. She’d took the cloth off the kitchen table and just sneaked off to bed. Didn’t work on the new robes like she was supposed to. While he gathered his thoughts, Ryder stared at how the little scratches in the metal tabletop made a pattern of circles.
He’d better teach her.
Bob Chambliss sure taught his woman when she needed it. He’d say that for old Bob.
Relentlessly, Ryder crept up behind his wife. Oh, she heard him coming, pedaled the machine harder, faster. But nobody can make up for lost time.
“Too late, Lee,” he said softly. “You oughta been sewing when I come home.” His hand closed around the back of her neck. “Reckon you thought I wouldn’t come back till midnight, didn’t you?”
He lifted her up by the neck with his left hand; she rose partly on her own. Partly her rising up from the machine was her hypnotized obedience, not the strength of his arm. He turned her—her eyes were sleepy—smacked her cheek with his open hand. Why, she was already in her nightgown, probably snuck off to bed soon as he left the house.
“Don’t, Ryder. I love you, Ryder,” she pleaded. She was quiet about it so as not to upset him.
He threw her on her back onto the bed; her eyes were wide, her legs bent at the knees, feet on the floor. Her big eyes, silent, looked down her body at him, her mouth open just a little. He lifted the gown, pulled her panty leg wide. When he unzipped his jeans, he felt the bulge of the little stolen clock in the front pocket. Took less than two seconds to drop his trousers.
He liked to get her through the panty leg.