It was a scene from the Arizona Territory being played out in a small Alabama town. It was an old-fashioned stickup, the robbers looking for targets for easy money from small-town America.
Two robbers had gone from one small town to another hoping they could make a hit and move on quickly to the next town. As they had rehearsed and done with other robberies, one robber would threaten the clerk at a lodging place or at a train station, and the other robber would stand in the back as a customer scouting the customers’ movements, and the lead robber would force the clerk at gunpoint to disclose where the money was located.
The lead robber, a young man with severe acne and shaggy blond hair, stood behind a counter pointing a Remington .36 caliber pistol at the woman clerk working for the Cullman Interurban. He told her it was a stickup and then shouted at the ten or so unsuspecting people in the small station to sit on the floor and not to make any sudden movements, and that they’d be shot dead if warranted.
A woman screamed profanities at the robber and the robber screamed back, telling her, as he waved his gun in the air, to shut up. Moments later, John tapped her on the shoulder and shot her a reassuring look with eyes that had grown cold like the eyes Monsieur Billingsly radiated at John at Sloss as he aimed to send John into the inferno. He had by now come to hate robbers and thieves, though he of course had been one back at Billingsly and that had caused him a lot of angst and nightmares.
Hearing a lot of commotion, an elderly bowlegged man of about seventy-five, emerged from behind a wall near the ticket counter and saw the robber pointing his pistol at Gretchen, his ticket counter clerk. He told the robber he was in charge and that there was no need for violence. Although the station had opened for business not long ago, the elderly man had been beaten by a robber a few weeks earlier and needed a cane to help him walk. It was then that the elderly man kept a couple of pistols nearby.
The lead robber pistol-whipped the operator on the side of his right jaw and demanded that he go to the safe and open it. At that point, a young lady and her toddler walked into the station, and the lead robber pointed his pistol at her and shouted for her to stand with the other hostages.
On the way to the nearby safe, the operator made a feeble attempt to grab his pistol that was hidden under a newspaper on a shelf under the ticket counter. The lead robber struck him again and told him he’d shoot him and the clerk if he got out of line again.
With the safe open, the robber handed the operator a loot bag, and the operator quickly filled the bag with all the money in the safe.
The second robber had gone unsuspected as an accomplice. He wore a bolero tie and a business suit, and his young face portrayed innocence. He walked to the ticket counter carrying his pistol in his right hand and a bag that contained rope in the other. He tied the clerk’s hands behind her back as the lead robber held a pistol steady at the operator’s head. Then the owner’s hands were bound similarly.
With the clerk and the owner tied up and the loot secured, they were not finished.
Addressing his hostages, he said, “Listen up, we gonna make this quick. Stand up and empty your pockets and bags, take off all jewelry; necklaces, watches.…Put everything on the floor.”
No one complied.
The young accomplice shot a bullet from his pistol into the ceiling, causing the hostages to face life or death; they began to comply.
The toddler cried and the robber’s attention was drawn to him and the mother.
“Psst,” John said to the man with the cane in front of him.
Nothing.
“Psst,” John said again.
The man turned slightly toward John.
Talking softly, John said, “I’m going to try something. I need you to fall to the floor and pretend you can’t breathe.”
John had noticed a whiskey bottle in the man’s jacket; he removed it and put it in his pants pocket.
“Fall to the floor,” John whispered. The man was old, and he wasn’t going to fall to the floor on his own. He needed help. John quickly kicked him in the back of the right knee, sending the man to the floor.
“This man needs help,” John yelled. “He’s not breathing!”
Both robbers walked to John and the man lying prostrate on the floor.
“How ’bouts I put a bullet in him to make sure?” the lead robber said.
“Please,” John pleaded, “you don’t have to do that.”
As the lead man moved closer, John removed the whiskey bottle from his pants pocket and struck the lead robber on the head with it, sending him crashing to the floor. As the young robber lifted his gun to aim it at John, John quickly picked up the lead robber’s gun that was surrounded by broken glass and said, “You don’t want to do that. Drop it.”
Someone yelled, “Shoot the sons of bitches.”
John looked down at the man on the floor rubbing the back of his right knee. “Sorry about that.”
The man grinned and said, “You wasted a damn good bottle of Jack Daniel’s.”
With John now in control, the hostages untied the clerk and owner, and the same rope was used by two hostages to tie the robbers’ hands.
The police came, the robbers were arrested, the hostages were interviewed, and the police later closed the station, but not before they returned the money to the owner.
John had missed his ride to Mount Hope.
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John lay on patches of grass under a shade tree near the station; he used the valise as a pillow, and his haversack stayed tucked at his side. He had dozed off for a couple of hours when the clerk accosted him and woke him by kicking his brogans with her moccasins.
John sat up.
“Hey, you,” she said in a throaty German rumble. “That’s a brave thing you did.”
“Not really. But thank you.”
“I’m Gretchen. I was on my way back to check on the doors to the station, and I saw you lying here.”
She was a comely twenty-one-year-old, with sand-colored brown hair, which she wore in ringlets. She was petite and had full lips. She wore a blue cotton dress that stopped at mid-calf, revealing nicely shaped calves. She had come to the United States from Germany ten years before.
“You are …?”
“John.”
“What are you going to do now?” she asked.
“Don’t reckon I know at the moment. I’ll catch the interurban tomorrow to Mount Hope. You will be open for business tomorrow?”
“Of course. Have you eaten?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Well, a strong man like yourself needs to eat. I can fix you something at my place. I’m a really good cook.”
John had been concerned that he could meet the fate of Professor Bodie if a certain white man got the wrong idea. The South was the South, and he had to tread carefully. He didn’t want to die before making it to Mount Hope to fulfill his mother’s request to find Cousin Riley and to live a bigger life that must be out there somewhere.
He walked alongside Gretchen carrying his haversack on his back and valise in his right hand as they walked a half mile to Gretchen’s brick duplex home that she shared with her mother. She told John her mother had recently traveled to Germany to tend to her father. She had told him not to worry walking with her because if anyone had any questions, she’d just say he was her helper. Though the walk to her home was brief, his head remained on a swivel looking for any lurking danger regardless of what she had said.
John sat at a small round kitchen table. Gretchen removed a skillet from the cabinet and retrieved three eggs and one pound of sausage from the ice box.
They dined on omelets, biscuits, and bacon.
John told her about his trip from Richmond, and she told him about life in Germany and why she came to the United States.
“You’re right,” John said.
“About what?”
He peered into her gray eyes and thanked her for sating his appetite.
She bowed her head as a gesture of appreciation.
The specter of Professor Brodie popped into his head. “I best be moving on.”
“Where’re you going?”
“Don’t know.”
“Why don’t you stay here tonight, wake up in the morning, and be on your way. You can sleep in my Bett. I’ll sleep in Mutter’s Bett.”
John felt his neck tighten with the same rope that had sucked the life out of Professor Brodie.
He shook his head no and pounded the small table where they had just eaten. “No,” he snapped.
She stood and placed her hand on John’s left shoulder. John hunched his shoulders and swayed to remove her hand.
Gretchen was unmoved. “Let’s go for a ride to the lake. You can decide later.”
The day would be long, so it would be many hours before the interurban would depart to Mount Hope.
Expressing a slight interest, John said, “A ride?”
“It’ll be fun. We’ll take Mutter’s carriage. I’ll make a meal in case we get hungry later.”
John wanted a way to fill the time before catching the interurban the next day. And he didn’t want to stay closeted in the house with a white woman. He figured he’d spend most of his time outside as her assistant or driver, return for good night’s rest, and walk the half mile to the station in the morning.
He threw caution to the side. “Okay, we’ll go for a ride, but,” he said, holding up his right forefinger, “I’m the driver.” Gretchen placed the food in the back of the hansom, and John assumed the driver’s seat. He snapped the reins and the nag moved forward.
She liked colored people because they were the underdogs, and because they felt a pain no other race experienced.
“How old are you?” she asked.
“Mama told me I was born in eighteen-seventy.”
“You’re two score. I’m two score plus one.”
“What’s a score?”
“Twenty years.”
“Oh … ”
“John, you’re a tall and handsome man.”
John felt obliged to return the compliment. “You’re a pretty girl.”
“I’ve known you for a few short hours, and I can tell you are a special colored man, a special man, period.”
Ann surfaced in his mind, and he knew that whatever he was or was to become was because of her. And as much as he’d hate to admit it, the Billingslys also played a part.
John did not respond.
She moved to another topic. “Do you read books?”
“Yes,” he said, recalling how he had become a strong reader with Father Murphy’s help.
She asked another topic that had no connection to the last:, “Have you heard of Frederick Douglass?”
“I can’t say that I have.”
“He is a famous colored man, born a slave. He married a white woman.” She paused, then added: “Love … affairs of the heart should respect no color line.”
“What about affairs of the head?”
“See, you are a thinking man. But sometimes it’s good to think with the heart. You have wunderbar qualities that a girl finds attractive.”
They reached Gretchen’s destination, a lake which was surrounded by dense trees and shrubbery. John was pleased.
Gretchen alighted from the hansom first. “Let’s go for a swim.”
John looked around; he didn’t see anyone.
“Don’t worry, no one will see us,” she said.
He wasn’t hungry, but he offered a pretext. “No, you go. I’ll eat one of the sandwiches now.”
She divested her clothes piece by piece. John caught a glimpse of her round bottom. As his eyes moved upward, she turned, and his eyes landed on her small breasts. She smiled at seeing John avert his eyes to avoid her nakedness.
She waded into the water, then turned around to John and said, “C’mon, get in, the water feels wunderbar,” she said, capering in the water.
John looked at her, but he quickly turned away.
“You’re impossible,” she said.
As the seconds ticked by in John’s mind, he worried that he’d be caught in the presence of a white woman and a naked one at that. No breach of a written law, but certainly a breach of Southern mores.
His anxiety began to lessen slightly as Gretchen finally emerged from the water. She retrieved her clothes and hopped in the hansom where she slowly donned them. “The water was exhilarating,” she said. “Next time we swim together.”
John was silent, but his eyes were filled with worry.
Nighttime did not come soon enough for John, but it arrived at last. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to bed,” he said.
“Of course.” She pointed to her bedroom.
John soon doffed his shoes, pants, and shirt, leaving on only his union suit. He peeled back the counterpane and climbed into bed.
No sooner had he adjusted the thin pillow for his comfort than Gretchen entered her bedroom to retrieve her camelhair brush. She ambled toward the door, turned around, and said in a coquettish voice, “You must let me know if you need anything.”
John smiled and nodded.
Suddenly, she turned around, sauntered closer to John, puckered her full rouge-colored lips, and said, “Kussen sie mich.”
The dappled bedroom light enlightened her smile. John’s loins throbbed. You should think with your heart, she had said to him earlier. John picked her up, and gently sat her on the bed. She doffed her nightshift and slipped under the counterpane. John lifted the counterpane and tossed his union suit to the floor.
As Gretchen stroked John’s chest, the spectral image of his nemesis—Madame Billingsly—appeared in front of him, hovering above him like a mythical beast flapping its wings and belching fire. He hated her all over again. Then the spectral image of Professor Brodie surfaced; he had a clear vision of the hanging preacher talking about how Southern white women must be protected from colored men—the white race could not be commingled with Negro blood, thereby diluting the dominant white blood.
Gretchen raised her head and looked into his distressed eyes. “It’s okay, I want this,” she said.
John didn’t move.
“You know, Mutter told me to wait for the right man.”
She had only known him for a few hours. But he wanted to believe that her motives were sincere.
“Did Mutter say anything about the right color?”
“Only to follow my heart.”
She batted her eyes a few times in an added effort to inveigle John by breaking open his locked heart.
“You can have a lot of men; you’re beautiful. And from what I can tell, head smart, too.”
She rolled on top of him cheerfully naked. He felt her warm breasts pressed against his chest.
“I don’t think we should …,” his unfinished sentenced died; only a muted disturbance in his head lived on.
After a few minutes, he cast her aside and sat up in bed with a panicked look on his face. His mind boiled with alternatives, schemes, solutions, each more hopeless than the last.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
Although John had come to believe her motives were sincere, that didn’t matter. She was a roadblock to his fever to finally getting to Mount Hope.
There’d be no post-coital contentment for him. He rolled over and went to sleep. Gretchen kissed him on the chest, put on her clothes, and went to sleep in her Mutter’s bedroom.
Gretchen toddled into the kitchen in the morning, where she was surprised to see John dressed and sitting at the kitchen table. His haversack and valise were at his feet.
“Guten Tag, John.”
“That means … ?”
“Good morning.”
“Same to you.”
She massaged his shoulders. “Listen to me. I want you to stay with me. I really like you. We can be like Frederick Douglass.”
As he had ruminated all along about his need to move on, he knew that was best for his safety. Above all, he needed to find the life that would satisfy his injured soul. He extended his right hand and touched her right hand. He stood up and faced her. No need to discuss it. “I must be moving on.”
“Fie, John! You don’t have to leave.”
He stood up and looked into her portentous eyes.
Two hours later, John was on board the interurban to Mount Hope.
Standing alongside the interurban, Gretchen shouted her valediction as the car pulled away. “Auf Wiedersehen!”