That Day

It was a day of fantastic good luck. Such marvelous fortune as I could hardly remember in all my 38 years. I almost got a kind of religious feeling about it, as if you could see the Hand of God. I remember when I heard the news I just sat there in my desk chair like I was in a trance, just as if I could see the clouds roll by, the black waters recede, the sun break through and the trees and meadows turn green with hope. That was the way it struck me, sort of like a vision.

The day hadn't begun in any special way that I recall--at least there weren't any special omens around. I remember that I got out of bed and touched my toes 20 times, the way I always do. Then I wandered around the house not in such a good humor. I knocked at Sissy's door and yelled at her to get up. Kid would stay there until she got bedsores if somebody didn't yell at her. Then I went out on the sun porch and saw Bud bouncing a tennis ball against the garage door instead of finishing up the homework he hadn't done last night. At that rate, they'll have to give him an old-age pension to get him out of the seventh grade. I opened the window and told him what I thought about people who bounced a damn tennis ball around instead of doing their work.

It sure was a pretty November day, I had to admit. And maybe, after all, it did you more good to fool around with a tennis ball than study some of those half-baked things they give them in school nowadays. He had to write a report on the UN last month; I wouldn't be surprised if there were Communists in the schools even down here.

The sun made me feel a little better, though. And there was a good, rich smell in the kitchen--Georgina with the coffee perking and the eggs and bacon on. "Miz Huber just get up. She say you go ahead and eat," Georgina told me. No news--it happens that way every morning, but Georgina knows it makes (continued on page 213)That Day(continued from page 113) me nervous the way everybody in our family goofs off in the morning, and this is her way of telling me the world is in working order. I like Georgina. She hasn't got mean and pushy the way a lot of them have lately.

And all the rest of it went along in the everyday way, insofar as I can remember. I went into the dining room and pulled the front news section off the paper. Gives me a rotten stomach half the morning if I look at it--I know by experience. The kind of thing that goes on unchecked these days. It's a nice room. From where I sit by the French windows. I can look out and see the big oak, all our stretch of green lawn down to the tennis court, and it's mighty pretty. Don't bother me; don't let me see the news; give me some good bacon and eggs and corn bread and coffee, and I'll start the day just as cheerful as any man.

Just as usual. Sissy and Bud came to the table a little later than they should, but still before their mother showed up. Louise was just in time to give me a goodbye peck on the cheek as I was going out the door. I got the Cadillac out of the garage, got onto the highway, made the three miles into town in less than ten minutes, parked behind the office and went in. Until around noon, as I said, it was just an ordinary morning, no different from any other if you happened to be a pretty well-off lawyer with a nice practice, an apartment-house owner, club member, ex-councilman, member of the First Methodist, and what they call in the papers "solid citizen" of Gallinas. Georgia. At noon, the whole world changed.

• • •

Three years ago, Simms and Huber bought an old brick house in the center of town and fixed it up into a mighty smart office. We had the old floors sanded down and refinished, the old woodwork repaired, put in lots of rich-looking rugs and drapes, filled the place with authentic antiques, and even got a fairy up from Atlanta to do "the decor." There's a Yankee musket ball, souvenir of Sherman, buried in the wainscot in the hall. We had a glass plate put over it and a silver wreath hung to mark the spot.

(Actually, old Major Beard, who used to own the house, was a real bad drunk in his later years. He used to keep a loaded pistol on the table by his chair, and when he was drinking, he'd take it into his head to get rid of one of the servants, or maybe one of his family. I've never been so sure that Sherman was to blame.)

Some people thought we ought to have an office in the new all-glass-and-steel Commercial Building. Not me. I like this old-fashioned setting. Or did until the marches started.

Then things got rough. They came down Forrest Street onto Jackson and right past our office on the way to the courthouse. We had a flower border out front--Miss Munson's idea--and they trampled that down. They pushed against the fence so it began to sag in some places. They sang and screamed and waved their signs like monkeys let loose from the zoo. We stood it the first time: had to--the town wasn't really prepared. That night somebody, one of the drunk ones I guess, threw a brick into our big front window. Yon can bet Len and I were in Clemson Todd's office first thing next morning. He looked green. He never bargained for this kind of trouble when he put up his name for mayor. I'll always remember him as a big-ass kid in high school, scared of the teacher. And we scared him some that morning ourselves.

But even with twice the number of police in riot helmets and squad cars around, tear gas and dogs when things got ugly, they still raised hell the whole month long. I don't know why the worst of it had to happen right outside our windows. One day a tear-gas bomb in our front yard and the next day blood all over our front steps where the police got one of them. That's when I bought a shotgun for the office, hired Nash Petti-grew for night watchman and gave Clemson holy hell about getting them off our street.

After he brought in the fire trucks with the hoses and the town got a real riot squad organized, things got a sight better and the demonstrations tapered off. Better, but not permanent-better. On the outside things were quiet, but I began to have the feeling that sleep at night would never quite be the same thing again. Lots of folks at the club said that it was just the outside agitators--and if we got shed of them, things would go back to normal. But I knew different. It appeared to me like we were living in the middle of a huge dry forest, dry as tinder. You could stop some people who started fires, but then there would be lots of fires that sprang up here and there just of themselves. What was needed was a big thing, like a real seven-day torrent, to give us some peace again.

• • •

Well, that particular morning I en and I spent in my office going over some cases due to come up on the next docket. I don't recall a thing else. Len left a little before noon because he had to see a man about buying a piece of land out on the Gainesville Road. A little later. I sent Peggy Munson out for some roast-beef sandwiches and a bottle of beer. Sometimes I just like to have a quiet lunch alone in my office and play the radio some, restaurants in this town being what they are. I got settled down. The girls went away to lunch and the place was quiet. There was some kind of show-tune music on the radio. And right up to that point it had been a common kind of morning without anybody, least of all me, suspecting any different. Suddenly the music broke off and, great God, it began to happen.

I don't remember anything except sitting there listening, awe-struck, for maybe the better part of an hour. Then I snapped the radio off and just sat there in that new kind of silence, not thinking any particular thoughts but carried off in that kind of wonderful trance.

What brought me out of it finally was a kind of tapping at my door. I said. "Come in," and it was Peggy Munson, not saying a thing, just standing there. She looked like somebody had hit her on the skull with a baseball bat. I could tell there was something awful wrong with her.

"Good Lord. Peggy." I said. "What's the matter?" Her hands hung down and her eyes kept staring at me with a kind of concussed look. I got up and started over toward her.

She started to speak in a queer voice. It was something like, "Did you . . . no . . . what. . . ." Then she said, "I feel sick, Mr. Huber. I'm going home."

I said. "Lie down. Peggy. Let me call Doc Thurman. Or maybe I'd better run you over to the hospital right away."

"No, no!" she said. "I'll be all right. Just let me go home. Mary's taking me in her car." And she almost ran out to the sidewalk, where Mary was waiting with the motor running.

So that's it. I thought--could it be? Nice girl like Peggy, from a good family. After the other, it was almost too much to take in. The phone was ringing and I went back into my office.

It was Louise, and she sounded almost hysterical, even more than she usually docs on the telephone. "Have you heard the news?" she said. "Praise God, isn't it just the most exciting thing?" I managed to get in the fact that I had heard it.

"I was having lunch at Lois Graves'--five of us girls--and you should've seen the faces around the table. Kind of scary to begin with, but when it began to percolate through what this meant, you never saw five happier souls in your life. Babbling and hugging each other like crazy. And listen. Charlie Ray."

"I'm still listening."

"I came right home and I've been on the phone ever since. I got a report from June Sugden, who happened to be over at the school. She said it was just impressive how they all reacted. They understood right away. They know. The whole seventh grade stood up, just as solemn and happy as can be, and you know what they did? They sang, My Country 'Tis of Thee first and they cheered after-ward. Buddy right there in the front row. Seventh graders and they realized right off what a lot of older folks are still too dumb to realize. You know what, Charlie Ray, it gives me hope. Just after everything was looking so bad. It's God's way of telling us. Oh, don't be so tongue-tied. Don't you think it's a marvel? You come home right away and we'll go over to the club for drinks. I just have to hear what people are saying."

Len came in as I was hanging up. He didn't say anything, but, with the big smile on his face, he didn't have to. We shook hands silently. Then he said. "I'll see you at the club. All of us are going over--a kind of victory celebration, you might say."

The streets were pretty well deserted, and I wheeled the big Cadillac right through town at a good clip and out to the highway. No cop would be mean enough to give me a ticket at a time like this.

When I got to our lane. I slowed down--you never can tell about dogs or kids there. I came up past the Weiners' place going about 20 and I saw Doc Weiner out digging in his garden--it crossed my mind to stop and ask him if he'd heard the news.

They are our nearest neighbors, but we've made it a point not to have much to do with them, of course. As neighbors, we've never had anything to complain about--they keep to their side of the grove and we keep to ours. As Louise points out. they are rich Yankee Jews and, you know, give them an inch. . . . But I had a sudden curiosity to speak to Weiner and so I slowed up and stopped.

Then I noticed something mighty funny about what he was doing. He was digging furiously in one spot, spading out big chunks of dirt like he had to have a foxhole in the next five minutes. He wasn't very used to digging, but he sure was putting his heart into this one.

I opened the car door, started to get out, and called to him. "Hey. Doc, did you hear the news?"

At that he looked up, and I think he noticed me for the first time. I couldn't believe my eyes. The man was crying. He turned away quickly without so much as a word, and walked stiff-legged back toward his house.

Well. Frau Weiner, whatever her name is. doesn't look like an easy one to get along with. That was my first thought. Then I remembered that they had a boy in the Army, and I wondered if something had happened to him. Unlikely--they don't see much action in the Quartermaster Corps, where this kid undoubtedly was. Anyway, why worry, it could be anything. They are an emotional race. I climbed back in the car and went on home.

• • •

The scene at the club was like New Year's Eve. I don't think the bar had done so much business since the day Repeal came in. Everybody was sitting around talking a mile a minute, laughing, slapping each other on the back. I grabbed a waiter first thing, literally grabbed him by the arms and hauled him over to a table where the Simms. Pete and Martha McIntyre and the Whit-laws were sitting. They had just come and hadn't been served yet.

"Listen, you bring us four of the biggest, coldest bottles of champagne you can find." I said to the waiter. We sat down and everybody began to babble at once. It was like they all couldn't quite believe it. They knew it was good, but they didn't know quite how good or quite what to make of it. It was like one of those things you have to get drunk over before you can begin to make sense of it. And it seemed to me that we'd all got a little drunk right when we were first hit.

The champagne came. I picked up a bottle and when I popped the cork, there were loud mock screams and wild laughs from all over the room--then hand clapping.

We all had a glass, but the men soon turned to bourbon and branch. We were all old friends, lived alike and thought alike, but now we seemed to have an even closer bond than ever before. It was turning into one of the warmest, most heartfelt thanksgiving parties I've ever had the good fortune to witness.

I think we were all on the way to being stoned before they began to serve dinner. Louise sang Happy Days Are Here Again and her hair came down over her face. Pete did an imitation that everybody hugely enjoyed.

Just as we were getting up, I mean staggering up, to leave the bar and go in to the dining room. Len came back from the lounge where he'd been checking the TV program.

He pulled me aside and said. "Listen, Charlie. The news isn't so good."

I said something like, "Waddya mean, no good? Don't poop the party."

"I'm serious," he said. "They caught the guy."

"In a barn near Bowling Green," I said.

"No. I'm not kidding. They caught the guy and he wasn't one of ours."

"What was he, then?"

"The guy who fired the shots was a Commie. It was on TV. Don't you see how that changes everything, Charlie? Don't you see. goddamn it?"

It kind of spoiled that day for me.