Read Online Gideon - 05 - Blind Judgement by Grif Stockley - Free Book Online
Authors: Grif Stockley
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with a working heating system.
“Even if you don’t sell to Cecil, will you be able to make enough,” I ask, “to get your boys through school?”
From across the kitchen she eyes me suspiciously as if I’m some rich sugar daddy about to make her an offer she doesn’t want to hear.
“I’ll be all right,” she says, closing down suddenly. I feel I can trust her, but for good reason she obviously isn’t ready to go too far with me.
“Does Paul really own half the town?” I ask, deciding to ratchet down this conversation a notch or two. Though I think I understand, it is safer for the moment to talk about the present than the past. Besides, I’m here to learn about the case, not take a trip down memory lane, aren’t I?
My question pulls Angela back to the table.
She wets her lips with her tongue and swallows like a child taking medicine that isn’t as bad as she feared.
“Maybe all of it,” she says ruefully.
“After the boycott by the blacks, people who had been here for decades began to leave Bear Creek.
Oscar had brought Paul in with him by then, and they bought property downtown dirt cheap. Even though it’s been almost twenty-five years a lot of it is still just sitting there. On the other hand, Paul doesn’t seem desperate enough to kill anybody over another business. From the way he travels, he appears to have plenty of money.”
I sip my coffee, now cold, wondering not for the first time today how much time has changed Angela.
“Do other people admire Paul,” I ask, “or are they just afraid of him?”
Angela hunches her shoulders.
“To the white population he’s the air we breathe. He could raise the rents on his buildings, and close the doors on twenty businesses, black and white. The town would almost die completely, and it’s not because we don’t have some talented people here. But all the whites are, by necessity, in bed together. The blacks have unified whites like nothing else could. We’ve got the worst schools in the state, the highest rate of teen pregnancy, the highest infant mortality rate. And the blacks are not going to rest until they’ve taken over politically.”
As she talks about the political gains made by blacks recently in Bear Creek, I remember again how idealistic she was as a teenager. At eighteen Angela said that if the whites in Bear Creek would be willing
to compromise, everything would work out just fine. Doubtless, that was part of her attraction for me. She couldn’t have been more different from the local girls if she had come from Mars. If I preached that summer to her about the virtues of Catholicism, her text was the evils of Southern racism. According to her, blacks had been the victims of slavery, rape, peonage, segregation, usury, in a word or two, total economic and political exploitation, but she hadn’t even gotten warmed up. Separate wasn’t equal, and all she had to do was point to the crumbling school and the gravel streets in the Negro sections of Bear Creek. It was the denial, Angela preached, of basic political rights in a so-called democracy that should shame me the most. Free speech, the right to vote, the right to hold office, these were just empty words in Bear Creek for over half the population. The only Negro in city hall, she pointed out, pushed a broom. We had treated Negroes worse than our dogs, and because it was coming from Angela, and not the NAACP, SNCC, SCLC, or some other civil rights group, I could see for the first time in my life that every word was true. By the time I left for the University of Arkansas I had become that rare animal—a Southern liberal. I didn’t know then that things weren’t exactly wonderful for blacks in the North. It took the TV images of Louise Day Hicks and South Boston years later before it sank in how segregated things were north of the Mason-Dixon line. But no wonder we fell in love that summer! Who could have withstood all that sincerity?
“The county’s now seventy
“Even if you don’t sell to Cecil, will you be able to make enough,” I ask, “to get your boys through school?”
From across the kitchen she eyes me suspiciously as if I’m some rich sugar daddy about to make her an offer she doesn’t want to hear.
“I’ll be all right,” she says, closing down suddenly. I feel I can trust her, but for good reason she obviously isn’t ready to go too far with me.
“Does Paul really own half the town?” I ask, deciding to ratchet down this conversation a notch or two. Though I think I understand, it is safer for the moment to talk about the present than the past. Besides, I’m here to learn about the case, not take a trip down memory lane, aren’t I?
My question pulls Angela back to the table.
She wets her lips with her tongue and swallows like a child taking medicine that isn’t as bad as she feared.
“Maybe all of it,” she says ruefully.
“After the boycott by the blacks, people who had been here for decades began to leave Bear Creek.
Oscar had brought Paul in with him by then, and they bought property downtown dirt cheap. Even though it’s been almost twenty-five years a lot of it is still just sitting there. On the other hand, Paul doesn’t seem desperate enough to kill anybody over another business. From the way he travels, he appears to have plenty of money.”
I sip my coffee, now cold, wondering not for the first time today how much time has changed Angela.
“Do other people admire Paul,” I ask, “or are they just afraid of him?”
Angela hunches her shoulders.
“To the white population he’s the air we breathe. He could raise the rents on his buildings, and close the doors on twenty businesses, black and white. The town would almost die completely, and it’s not because we don’t have some talented people here. But all the whites are, by necessity, in bed together. The blacks have unified whites like nothing else could. We’ve got the worst schools in the state, the highest rate of teen pregnancy, the highest infant mortality rate. And the blacks are not going to rest until they’ve taken over politically.”
As she talks about the political gains made by blacks recently in Bear Creek, I remember again how idealistic she was as a teenager. At eighteen Angela said that if the whites in Bear Creek would be willing
to compromise, everything would work out just fine. Doubtless, that was part of her attraction for me. She couldn’t have been more different from the local girls if she had come from Mars. If I preached that summer to her about the virtues of Catholicism, her text was the evils of Southern racism. According to her, blacks had been the victims of slavery, rape, peonage, segregation, usury, in a word or two, total economic and political exploitation, but she hadn’t even gotten warmed up. Separate wasn’t equal, and all she had to do was point to the crumbling school and the gravel streets in the Negro sections of Bear Creek. It was the denial, Angela preached, of basic political rights in a so-called democracy that should shame me the most. Free speech, the right to vote, the right to hold office, these were just empty words in Bear Creek for over half the population. The only Negro in city hall, she pointed out, pushed a broom. We had treated Negroes worse than our dogs, and because it was coming from Angela, and not the NAACP, SNCC, SCLC, or some other civil rights group, I could see for the first time in my life that every word was true. By the time I left for the University of Arkansas I had become that rare animal—a Southern liberal. I didn’t know then that things weren’t exactly wonderful for blacks in the North. It took the TV images of Louise Day Hicks and South Boston years later before it sank in how segregated things were north of the Mason-Dixon line. But no wonder we fell in love that summer! Who could have withstood all that sincerity?
“The county’s now seventy
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