Rock Island Line. David Rhodes
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“Look, they’re coming over here.”
“They’ve seen us!”
“What do they want?”
“They’re coming over here!”
“Get away from that window!”
Emma Pearson jumped out of the view through the window to the safety of the wall.
“Settle down. This is stupid. This is my house. They aren’t coming here. This is stupid.” Lois watched them walk across the front lawn.
Emma Pearson went back to the window. “There’s still one in the car!”
“Stop it, Emma.”
Then the knocking started. Both women stopped breathing, and at each pound their hearts lurched. Then there was a pause.
“Don’t answer it, Lois,” whispered Emma emphatically.
“This is my house,” announced Lois, but without quite the conviction she had planned. She took a step toward the door.
“Whatever you do,” said Emma, “don’t open that door.”
“I will,” said Lois, and crossed to the door. Just as she was about to touch the handle, the knocking began again and she jumped backward.
“No,” said Emma, nearly inaudibly. “They’ll go away.”
Lois pulled the door open when the pounding stopped. Standing directly in the middle of the doorway as though preparing, if need be, to thrust them sprawling onto the lawn with a single body block if they tried to come in, she smiled and said hello very quickly.
“Could you tell us where John Montgomery lives?”
“Who?” she asked, not having comprehended enough of what they’d asked to say more. They looked at each other. Emma came over and stood behind Lois. One of the men handed a piece of torn newspaper to another one and he held it out. Lois stared at it momentarily as though it were a shrunken head, and then accepted it, and read it over seven or eight times (the part circled by a black pen) before she understood it. Then Emma snatched it from her. It was an advertisement in the confidential column of a newspaper in Burlington.
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:
IT CANNOT BE POSSIBLE THAT YOUR FEELINGS ARE MORE INTENSE THAN MY OWN.
John Montgomery
Sharon Center
“So what—what does that mean?” asked Emma.
“He lives in that house on the corner. Down there.” Lois pointed, taking the piece of newspaper from Emma and giving it back to them.
“The white one?”
“Yes, that’s it. The white one.”
“Thank you.” They turned to walk away.
“Thank you. No, I mean, you’re welcome,” said Lois.
“He works across the street,” sang out Emma. “You may have to look for him there.” They shut the door and went back to the window.
“Look how they walk!” said Emma. “It’s indecent.”
“It comes from their oppression,” said Lois, as though she understood and had compassion for the world and all its people. “They’re miserable people. It’s such a crime the way they’re treated—they are so frightened of us.”
“You know what they say about them. The men, I mean—” “Emma!”
John was alone when the three came into the garage.
“You John Montgomery?” said the tallest, pushing the newspaper clipping toward him.
John took it in his own hand and put it down. “Yes,” he said.
Without talking, one of them left. The other two watched John and smiled when he looked directly at them and shuffled their feet with their hands in their pockets—making themselves out to be buffoons. John marveled at the subtlety with which they had learned to appear physically unthreatening, making themselves into clownish figures. But beneath that lay hate, maybe so far down that it would never come out, but, through John’s eyes, undeniably, irrevocably there. He felt the impasse—the barriers. The men had told him that two weeks ago, but he hadn’t believed them. They’d kill you just for the chance. He looked at them and wondered if it would be true. There was no way of telling. Too much hidden.
These thoughts filled his mind. Then into the open doorway stepped the fourth—the one who had not come in with the other three—and in the first instant of looking at him John knew why they’d come. They’d brought a champion—someone whose feelings, they thought, could outstrip even a dying saint’s. John looked at him again and decided no, it had been his own idea to come. He was slightly bigger than a person needed to be and three inches blacker than any of his companions. John could see why they had wanted him to stay in the car. He was conspicuous—the kind of man a band of hooligans would love to tear apart and hang up in a tree—the kind of man who would never be safe outside his own neighborhood. As might be imagined, his hate was very close to the surface. Handsome and proud.
“That’s him,” said his friend, coming in behind him.
“I can see that,” he said, staring at John.
He’s presumptuous, thought John. I didn’t really mean for them to come here. They should’ve written or something first.
“How do you want to hol’ this here thing?”
“What?” asked John, knowing at the same time what he meant. But before the champion could answer, five Sharon Centerites from a bigger crowd across the street came in and sat down and began pulling out sodas from the machine.
“ ’Lo, John,” said Marion.
“Sure is hot,” said Phil Jordan.
“You ought to get a fan put in here,” said Sy.
“And a swimming pool.”
“I didn’t think you’d be working today, Marion,” said Henry Yoder, walking in and over to the machine. “ ’Lo, John.”
All of this as if there were no one else for ten miles. Across the street was a group of men and women trying to look natural standing at the very edge of Mrs. Miller’s lawn, next to the corner, nearest the garage door without being on the same side of the street.
Ernie came in the side door without knowing, and had to walk in among the black men to get over to the others. “Excuse me,” he said. “Excuse me,” and passed through them looking at his hands, as though he were walking around four rain barrels which, after he got out of their area, were rolled away by four invisible barrel-rollers.
“Afternoon, Ernie,” said Marion.
“Afternoon,” said Ernie. “I see you’re not working today. That makes me feel better, because when a hard worker like you—”
“Listen to that! Listen to that!” said Marion.
John stuffed the advertisement into his back pocket, and blushed.
Somehow he managed to get rid of his neighbors and close his garage door, sealing the building in a cloak of mystery. The champion sent his friends out to the car to wait for him, as a returned courtesy. They closed the side door and faced each other.
“How you want to begin this here thing?”
“I can lift that anvil,” said John. “I can pick it up by the horn.”
“Come on, man, that kind of thing ain’t it.” Pause. “Sure, OK. I’ll pick it up.”
“Forget it,” said John. “You’re right. It doesn’t have much to do with that.”
“No you don’t.