Passing through Perfect (Wyattsville #3)(70)

This kind of hatred is a terrible thing. It corrupts people from the inside out. Boils on the skin are better than bigotry. At least you can lance a boil and get the poison out. With bigotry there’s nothing you can do.





The Petitioners





The next morning Sidney pulled an old address book from the drawer in his nightstand and dialed Martin Hinckley’s telephone number. It had been two, maybe three years since they’d spoken, but in some ways it seemed like yesterday. He placed the first call before they left for the store. When there was no answer, he slid the address book in his pocket with plans to call later.

For three days he carried that address book in his pocket. Sometimes he called in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, and twice after supper in the evening. It was nine o’clock Wednesday evening when Elsie Hinckley finally answered the telephone.

“I’ve been calling for days,” Sidney said. “Is everything okay?”

“No.” She sniffed. “It’s terrible. Marty had a heart attack. Sunday night I was sitting there laughing at the Jack Benny show and all the while I thought Marty was asleep but when I went to wake him—”

“Is he okay?” Sid asked anxiously.

“He’s in the hospital.” Elsie gave a long sad sigh. “I told him. A thousand times I told him, ‘Marty, you work too hard’.”

“He’s always been that way,” Sid said.

“He’s not getting any younger you know. He’s fifty-eight next June.”

Once Sid learned that Marty was on the mend and due to be released later in the week, he asked if there was anything he could do, any way to help.

“You could stay in touch,” Elsie said fondly. “And you can tell Marty not to be working so hard. He might listen to you,” she added. “He never listens to me.”

Sid replaced the receiver and smiled. Same old Marty, he thought.





Exactly one week after he’d spoken with Elsie, all hell broke loose. It started on Wednesday evening at seven-thirty. Sid knew the precise time because with the clock chiming for the half hour, he’d not heard the doorbell the first time. It was only after a fist started pounding on the door that he came to answer it. When he snapped on the porch light and opened the door, he came face to face with a crowd of people. Darlene stood smack in the middle of the pack.

She waved a copy of the signed petition in the air. “Mama don’t want niggers living next door,” she yelled. “Nobody else does neither!”

There was a low grumble going through the crowd, but it was the sound of Darlene’s voice that brought Carmella scurrying to the door. She came up behind Sid and spotted Martha standing next to her daughter.

“Martha,” she exclaimed, “what in the world is going—”

“You don’t need to be talking to my mama,” Darlene snarled. “She’s not one bit interested in anything you have to say!”

“Martha?” Carmella looked toward the woman she’d known for so many years, but Martha lowered her face and took a step back into the crowd.

Sid looked at the crowd and called out the names of his neighbors as he scanned the faces. “Tom, is this what you want to do? And Henry, you too?”

“It ain’t what we want to do,” somebody in the back yelled. “It’s what we’ve got to do!”

In a booming voice weighted with anger and resentment, Sid said, “Well, then, where are your hoods? Where’s the burning cross? Isn’t that the way this is supposed to be done?”

“It ain’t like that,” Henry Jacobs answered. “We’re just trying to keep the neighborhood safe for our families.”

“And you think I’m a threat?” Sid asked.

“Not you but that colored fella—”

“That colored fella,” Sid echoed cynically, “saved Paul’s life. He didn’t stop to check if he was black or white, he just pulled him out of a burning car and brought him home.”

“Bullshit,” a gruff voice yelled. “I heard they was friends from a bar.”

“Yeah,” a woman added, “I figure the nigger gave him that broken arm in a fight!”

A guffaw came from the back, but before anything more could be said Paul pushed past Sid and stepped out onto the porch, forcing some of the crowd to back down a step or two. In the glow of the porch light the white plaster cast looked yellowish and considerably larger.

“Benjamin is not a nigger,” Paul said angrily. “He’s a Negro man who’s a daddy just like most of you. He didn’t ask to come here, and he didn’t ask to stay here. He’s here because I asked him to help us out in the store.”

“Bullshit,” the gruff voice repeated.

Sid stepped out onto the porch and stood beside Paul. He recognized the voice and nodded in the direction it came from. “Bob, I didn’t hear you yelling ‘bullshit’ when you had that broken leg and Paul mowed your grass all summer.”

“I said I’d pay him.”

“You never did and he never asked you for a dime, did he?”

In a considerably smaller voice, Bob Paley answered, “No, but—”

“But nothing,” Sid cut in. “That’s what decent people do, help each other, lend a hand when it’s needed.” He took a step sideways and peered around Darlene so that he was looking straight at Martha.