AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter 76
THE SECOND NIGHT I WAS at the Gill house, after a supper of leftover chicken parts and grits, Jacob suggested we go for “a walk, a smoke, and a nip.”
First he poured whiskey from the big bottle into a half-pint bottle, which he stuck in his trouser pocket.
He walked and drank. I walked and looked anxiously down every dark alley.
“You sure are one hell of a nervous critter tonight,” Jacob said.
“You’d be nervous too, if they beat you half to death and strung you up and left you for dead,” I said. “Excuse me if I tend to be a bit cautious after almost being lynched.”
A man came down the steps of the First Methodist church, looking as if he had been waiting for us.
I recognized him: Byram Chaney, a teacher at the grammar school. Byram had to be well up in his seventies by now; I had thought of him as elderly years ago, when he was teaching me how to turn fractions into decimals.
“Evening, Jacob,” he said. “Ben.”
Jacob turned toward the streetlight to roll a cigarette. “I hope Byram didn’t startle you, Ben,” he said.
“Glad you could join us this evening, Ben,” Byram said. “I think getting a firsthand look at things will be worthwhile for you. Jacob spoke up for you.”
Suddenly I realized that Byram Chaney had, in fact, been waiting for us. I turned to Jacob to find out why.
“I haven’t told him yet,” Jacob said to Byram.
“Told me what?”
“You’d best go on and tell him,” said Byram. “We’ll be to Scully’s in a minute.”
I knew Scully as a man who owned a “kitchen farm” on the road south of town. Everybody who didn’t have his own garden went to Scully’s for whatever vegetables were in season.
“What’s going on here, Jacob?”
“Calm down, Ben. We’re just going to a little meeting. Me and Byram thought it might be a good idea if you came along. I did speak up for you.”
“What kind of a meeting?”
“Just friends and neighbors,” he said. “Keep your mind open.”
“Pretty much half the people in town,” put in Byram.
“But they don’t like to be seen by outsiders,” said Jacob. “That’s why you’ll have to wear this.”
From his knapsack he pulled a white towel.
Then I realized it wasn’t a towel at all. It was a pointed white hood with two holes cut for eyes.
I stopped dead in my tracks.
“A Klan meeting?” I said.
“Keep your voice down, Ben,” Jacob said. “We’re standing right here beside you. We can hear.”
“You must be insane,” I said. “I’m not going to any Klan meeting. Don’t you know it’s illegal? The Klan’s been outlawed for years.”
“Tell the sheriff,” said Jacob. “He’s a member.”
As soon as I got over my shock at finding that my old best friend was a Ku Klux Klansman, I knew Chaney was right. I had to go along. This was exactly the
