Southern Cross Page 6

  Most of the structures were built of stone and brick—on Broad Street every other one seemed to house a lawyer or a real estate agent—but they were not nearly as old as the city. From eavesdropping on a carriage driver, I learned that in addition to the destruction wrought by the siege of Charleston during the Civil War, a series of more organic calamities—five fires, ten hurricanes, two earthquakes—had destroyed the city time and again as well, the most devastating being the earthquake of 1868. Most structures in the city dated from that year rather than from the period after the Civil War or the time of original settlement, which still made them older and more fascinating than most of the architecture of the city in which I lived.

  Thanks in part to the most recent hurricane and even more to the coins of the tourists who now flocked to the city in droves, most of the old section had been refurbished. The paint on the homes was bright, the piazzas looked cool and comfortable, the gardens were lush and bubbling with blossoms. Indeed, the restoration was so slick that an air of unreality polished the place—it was hard to believe people had ever really lived like this, regardless of their station.

  On every corner, historic markers on the long, grand houses sported names that dripped with history—Calhoun, Rutledge, Pinckney, Beauregard. Each step brought me next to something new: One building had once been a powder magazine and another advertised itself as fireproof; the Slave Mart Museum was a block from the provost dungeon, which was behind the Exchange Building, which was next to the spot where the slaves had been bought and sold. At the time of the Civil War, more people in Charleston had owned slaves than in any other city in America, although true to its complex origins, three thousand free blacks resided in the city then as well. Illustrative of the diverse origins of the city’s founding families, the headquarters of the German Friendly Society was near the more elaborate gathering places of the Hibernians and the Huguenots.

  The past as present, history as religion, the future as a continuum of myth and ancestor worship—I had never been in a place that celebrated its past so passionately. I was not from a family that kept track of who and what it was—I don’t know what my great-grandfather did for a living, for example, or even where he was born—so it was difficult to understand the nostalgic vapor that occupied the city like an army. This was particularly true because for some of us, the history the South so raptly worshiped sported one distinction that made all others trivial in comparison.

  Fairly or not, for people of my age and inclination, the South remains the symbol of America’s greatest shame, the stain left unremoved, the virus that debilitates us more than any other. Despite the accomplishments of the civil-rights movement, and the deaths of its martyrs and the statutes and court decisions that it spawned, racism remains an aneurism, as the Rodney King debacle demonstrated. Its dimensions are increasingly denied, and its elimination is increasingly problematic. Whites stubbornly refuse to acknowledge their bigotry and blame the victim instead of the victimizer; blacks find racism an excuse for everything, including self-destruction. And in an age of sound-bite journalism and political correctness, the issues can’t be meaningfully discussed.

  The most crippling legacy is the way race still perverts our politics. Whites flee one party in droves because the other is perceived as too solicitous of blacks. To court additional defectors, Republicans brandish cries of “No more taxes” and “No more quotas,” which are interpreted by some as race-based slogans that promise further alienation by implying the government will no longer seek to redress the deprivations imposed on people of color throughout our twisted history. The swing vote that elects our politicians is increasingly made up of those who support the candidate most likely to keep minorities on the rung below them and begrudge all federal expenditures on persons other than themselves.

  Although, unlike Seth, I hadn’t been a player in the racial drama, I had always been fascinated by the subject, had searched the books for explanations and for answers, sought evidence in signs and symbols, and been shamed by the manifestations of my own store of racial fears and stereotypes. Which was why my attentions soon turned from Charleston’s heroic monuments and pristine buildings and focused on its peoples.

  If not as dominant as they’d seemed on the way in from the airport, blacks were nonetheless plentiful in the more exclusive part of town. Most seemed to be running errands, some were performing menial tasks, several were carrying mail, and a few looked to be professionals, serious and businesslike, dressed for the state they aspired to. Unfailingly, when one black person would meet another on the sidewalk, a greeting, not negligent but heartfelt, would be exchanged. The whites were not as friendly, even with each other. On the whole, the mood among black people seemed less of oppression than endurance, less of resistance than accommodation, less of hostility than circumspection, less of hope than resignation.

  In the midst of such musings, I began to laugh. Despite Seth’s explicit warning, after only an hour in this most Southern of Southern cities I was already trying to decipher its racial coding. Whatever the truth might be, and whatever the likelihood that I was capable of unearthing it, I had to admit that in Charleston, South Carolina, on a sunny Sunday in a middle day of June, James Baldwin’s fires of racial Armageddon seemed an unlikely prospect. An invisible lubricant seemed to smooth the social engine, to create an easy intercourse both among and between the races that was in clear contrast to the scraping confrontations that grate in Northern cities, where the sense of imminent antagonism creates a pall that all but mugs you.

  A similar tension had to exist down here, didn’t it? This was where it started, after all, the state whose need and greed had caused the problem in the first place.

  So why wasn’t it repulsive?

  TEN

  Seth tapped on the door at nine sharp, came in without a word, looked around to make sure I had settled in, then stood behind the desk, diffident and uneasy, uncertain where to begin. There was a briefcase in his hand and a crease across his forehead.

  “Comfortable?” he asked finally.

  “Yep.”

  “Have everything you need? Towels? Toothpaste? Trashy novels?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Have a chance to look around a little?”

  “Yep.”

  “What’d you think?”

  “Nice place.”

  He raised a brow. “That’s it?”

  I smiled. “I’m reserving judgment.”

  “Until?”

  “Until you tell me what the hell’s going on with you and this ASP outfit.”

  Seth surveyed the room, slowly and critically, as though he had expected it to prompt more enthusiasm than I was demonstrating and was upset that it had let him down. “We can still move you to the Mills House,” he repeated absently. “Shall I call and tell them we’re coming over?”

  I shook my head. “If it’s okay with you, I’d just as soon stay here. I’m pretending I’m a cavalry major just back from Appomattox. Ten horses were shot out from under me. I have a limp, a goatee, and a swagger stick. And a pocketful of worthless money.”

  Seth’s grin was halfhearted. “How’s your repatriation coming along?”

  “Slowly. Sherman burned the farmhouse to the ground, and I can’t seem to find my slaves.”

  “Sherman sacked Savannah and set fire to Columbia, but he left Charleston to the devices of the navy. And the slaves aren’t slaves anymore.”

  “How inconvenient.”

  “Depends on how you look at it, they tell me.”

  Our farce fell into a fragile silence. I sat down on the daybed and leaned against the hard, cool wall and waited for Seth to take us where he wanted us to go.

  After a long look out the window, he put his briefcase on the desk, examined the contents long enough to make me wonder what they were, then extracted an object that was flat, rectangular, and plastic. He sat in the desk chair, swiveled, fit the object into the cassette deck on the credenza behind him, then pressed a button.

/>   “This is going to be unpleasant,” he said. When I started to respond, he raised his hand after the first word. “Just listen a minute.”

  A buzz and a hum and then a voice—accented, officious, fat with self-importance but bearing far less sophistication than it tried to project—began reading from what sounded like a prepared text, muffing several pronunciations along the way:

  “This is Supplement Number One to Directive Seven from the Office of the First Field Marshal of the Alliance for Southern Pride:

  “The Alliance has determined, after consultation at the highest councils of its staff and field units, that a preponderance of the evidence proves that Seth Hartman—attorney-at-law, Yankee, Jew, whoremonger, Antichrist—is and has been since at least 1966, an enemy of the Great White Race. The Alliance has further determined that Seth Hartman has been and continues to be engaged in plots and actions which constitute a clear and present danger to the Southern Way of Life.

  “Evidence accumulated by the Purification Brigade establishes beyond doubt that Seth Hartman is and has been for many years intent upon destroying the most honorable and Christian institutions in the city of Charleston and the state of South Carolina, and has been and is now acting as a paid agent of the international conspiracy of the forces of Zion, in cooperation with allied mud peoples. Hartman has proven ties to the Trilateral Commission and to the heirs of the Illuminati, and is an active agent of the Zionist Occupation Government.

  “Unless foreclosed immediately, Hartman and those acting in concert with him intend to bring about a Second Reconstruction of the social and political life of the Low Country, in accordance with the perverted and alien ideas of Northern liberals and their regional co-conspirators, who continue to have as their mission the destruction of our Christian heritage and the Southern Way of Life.

  “Hartman’s conduct constitutes a sufficient threat to Christian values, to Saxon Israel and the Great White Race, and to the purity of the young white minds of the Carolina Low Country, that the Charleston Field Office of ASP has declared him a traitor to the South and has further declared the elimination of Seth Hartman to be the chief priority of its purification campaign.

  “In keeping with ASP policy, means and methods will not be disclosed. But be assured that ASP will deal appropriately with this menace: Seth Hartman will fall before the year is out. The Alliance for Southern Pride must, and swears on the texts of the True Scriptures that it shall, wage unrelenting war against the forces of darkness until it liberates the Holy City from the alien ideas and degenerate behavior of Seth Hartman and his ilk.

  “Southern pride is white power.

  “White power is Christian patriotism.

  “ASP—over and out.”

  The tape hissed like an imperiled reptile till Seth pressed another button and achieved a blessed silence. My heart was pounding; my stomach burned—I felt as if I’d been poisoned. “Jesus,” I managed.

  Seth couldn’t meet my eyes. “Indeed.”

  “They’re serious, I suppose.”

  “I think we have to assume so.”

  Without intending to, I did what I usually do when I’m upset, which is try to make light of it. “Are you really a whoremonger?”

  Seth’s smile was infirm; his shrug was infinitesimal.

  “Maybe that’s all this amounts to,” I hurried on. “A jealous husband rearing his ugly head.”

  Seth looked at me. “You don’t really think it’s that simple, do you?”

  Chastened, I shook my head. “Do you think it has to do with you being Jewish?”

  “I don’t know, but I assume there must be more to it than that. I’m hardly active in temple; I’m not even sure many people know I am Jewish.” He managed a small smile. “Among other things I’ve done since receiving that tape is talk to a rabbi about receiving instruction in the Torah.”

  I finally had enough of my wits about me to begin to practice my profession. “How long have you had that thing?”

  “The tape? Less than a month.”

  “Does anyone else know about it?”

  He shook his head. “Not from me.”

  “Did anything come with it?”

  “The first thing they sent was the Notice of Racial Judgment I showed you at the reunion. Then came the tape. Then a phone call later on.”

  “From whom?”

  “From the First Field Marshal himself, supposedly.”

  “Ever heard of this ASP outfit before?”

  He shook his head. “But I don’t pay much attention to that crap. The Klan marches through town every other year or so, but there’s usually five cops for every Kleagle along the route, so it doesn’t amount to much but bad burlesque. The Klan people look so pathetic it’s hard to take them seriously.”

  “The media’s thrall with David Duke seemed to give the hate crowd new life.”

  “That’s probably all it is—some Klan spin-off flexing its muscles.” Seth’s words were deliberately offhand, as though we were discussing abstractions. In a way, we were, I suppose, but the inner winds that had iced my flesh since the venom had spewed from the tape indicated I was already convinced that ASP and its fulminations were more than theoretical.

  “It would be nice to know for sure if this judgment against you was real,” I said.

  Seth smiled. “Why do you think you’re here?”

  I expected him to provide more evidence on the issue, one way or another, but instead he leaned over and opened a drawer. “Drink?”

  “Double.”

  He got two glasses and a bottle of Ballantine from the desk and poured us both a healthy shot. “To better days,” I said.

  “And restful nights.”

  I took two quick sips. “Any idea why they’re doing this?”

  “To coerce me into doing something I don’t want to do, I presume.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know yet. So far they mostly seem to want me to leave town.”

  “That was the gist of the phone call?”

  He nodded.

  I thought things over, looking for a lead I could use. When I didn’t find an obvious one, I asked Seth to start at the beginning.

  He took a deep breath, exhaled heavily, then walked to the door, opened it, and looked up and down the hall. Certain that no one was lurking, he closed the door and returned to the desk.

  “The tape arrived three weeks ago—marked ‘Personal and Private.’ Local postmark; no note; no markings on the cassette. When I saw what it was, I put it aside—I’ve represented some musicians over the years, so I thought it was something from one of them, a demo tape someone wanted me to send to Clint Black’s manager or something. I only got around to listening to it a couple of days later.”

  “What did you think when you heard it?”

  “That it was some rednecked nut who had bought into the Jewish Conspiracy nonsense. Or maybe a client who’d been convicted for drunk driving and blamed me because he had to serve time. But when I listened to it a second time, it seemed too … skilled to be that.”

  “What happened next?”

  Seth drained his drink and poured another. “Two days before I left for the reunion, a man called the office and asked if I’d received the tape. I told him I had. He asked if I’d listened to it. I told him I had. Then he asked what I thought. I told him I wasn’t in the habit of devoting much thought to racist lunacy.”

  “What did he say to that?”

  “He laughed. And told me I’d hear from him soon regarding how I could keep the brigade from executing its judgment. I told him I was going out of town for a week. He told me I’d hear from him when I got back. I told him if he harmed my family or friends in any way, or made any attempt to communicate with my clients, I’d make sure he was prosecuted for extortion and assault and every other offense I could think of. He told me I was the one committing the crimes. Then he advised me to consult the Bible to learn the error of my ways. Then he hung up.”

  “No idea who it w
as?”

  “None.”

  “Educated?”

  “Yes. Somewhat.”

  “Southern?”

  “Yes.”

  “White?”

  “I think so.”

  “Same voice as the one on the tape?”

  “No. Older.”

  “The Field Marshal.”

  “So he claimed.”

  “So what’s your best guess?”

  “About who’s behind it?” Seth stood up and walked around the room, as though its nooks and crannies might hold an answer.

  “As I said, I’m an outsider in this town,” he began after a minute. “The Alliance is right: I’m Jewish and I’m a Yankee, so in many ways I am an alien—always have been; always will be. The upside is I don’t have to curry favor with the establishment—I don’t depend on them for either my livelihood or my self-esteem. But I’m smart. And I make a lot of money. So I’m not a pariah, either. What I am is a house nigger, as folks used to say—better off than most of my peers, but a nigger all the same.”

  “You’ve lived down here too long, Hartman,” I said softly. “That sounds like something out of another century.”

  He met my glance. “Charleston lives most of its life in another century.”

  I walked to the window to stretch my legs. The birds in the trees in the park were the ugliest creatures I’d ever seen. The people lounging on the benches below them didn’t seem to mind: Maybe the South was more tolerant of birds than people.

  “This is getting pretty Gothic,” I said, just to be saying something.

  Seth didn’t seem to hear me. “What I’ve become is the champion of causes the Sons of the Confederacy won’t touch,” he continued grimly, the essay as much for himself as for me. “I’ve inspired a lot of umbrage over the years, exposing sores the gentry would have liked to keep hidden.”

  “In other words, you’ve pissed people off.”

  “Practically the whole town, at one time or another.”

  “Give me a sampler. Of some current stuff you’re involved with.”