Rock Island Line. David Rhodes

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      Mrs. Pearson saw them first. Dusting off one of her seven-foot rubber plants by the window facing the street, looking out, she saw a green Ford moving at a walking pace in front of her house. She ran to the kitchen to keep its progress in view, saw it stop two houses away and three men get out. She ran out the back door and into her neighbor’s house. “Lois!” she yelled, coming through to the living room. “Blacks! They’re black!” Both of them went to the window and looked out.

      The men were looking up and down Sharon Center nervously as though they were lost and looking for a signpost to tell them where they were, but not quite. They also looked as though they had decided nothing should move them from that spot of street.

      “What are they doing?” asked Lois.

      “I don’t know.”

      “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 СКАЧАТЬ