The Golden Willow Page 11

  We liked them both just the same, and our liking had grown with the years, and they had been out to Laurelton to visit us several times. Nothing could spoil that friendship. We all felt so on that day.

  IN THE MEANTIME, we had driven a good part of the way. We had left the city behind and were driving north on the parkway through the rolling hills of Westchester, and now and then we caught glimpses of the Hudson River glittering through the trees. Both Fred and Myra were familiar with the area, having visited friends often in the summer colonies that surrounded the Peekskill area. In addition, they had been here only a week ago, so Fred knew the roads well and pretty soon he turned off the parkway and onto a back road that would enable us to reach the picnic grounds without having to go through Peekskill.

  It was a narrow, bumpy dirt road that wound among the hills, with heavy woods on either side, and occasionally here and there a clearing with a shack showing and a clothesline strung across a yard and some ragged kids staring at us. I thought of Tobacco Road but didn't say anything.

  After a few miles of this road Fred turned onto a wider main road and said we had only another mile or so to go. I felt some apprehension as we approached the entrance to the picnic grounds. We were not the only ones arriving, even though it was early. There were many cars ahead of us and several buses loaded with people, most of them African Americans and all singing and in a gay mood. Still, a distance from the entrance we slowed down and the line crawled bumper to bumper, and then we saw the mob gathered around the entrance and heard their ugly shouts and threats. For a while it seemed as if my apprehension was justified, and I could feel Ruby's alarm as she moved closer to me and put her hand in mine.

  However, we were reassured by the sight of the police at the gate, who were seeing to it that the cars and buses got through. Later we learned that some of the arriving people fell into the hands of the mob. These were largely African Americans, and some of them were pulled out of their cars and beaten.

  However, not knowing that at the time, we felt once we were inside the grounds that there was nothing to worry about, and indeed it was a reassuring sight to see so many people there already, thousands of them, with buses and cars already taking up many of the parking spaces. Furthermore, guards, most of them volunteer union men, were posted all around the perimeter of the grounds, and additional guards were lined around the sound truck from which Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger would sing. Then, too, we were further reassured when we saw a small army of state troopers arriving.

  Nothing could happen to us, we thought, and having found a comfortable spot on the side of a hill, we began to enjoy our Sunday picnic. Others were doing the same thing around us, and Fred and Myra knew some of them and waved to them, and several came over and we were introduced to them, and all felt as we did that things looked promising for the concert to be heard this time without the interruption that had taken place at the previous week's attempt.

  And then, as we were talking, we noticed that the sound truck was being moved from its position where it was most visible to the huge audience to a spot nearby under a huge oak tree whose branches would obscure the view for most people.

  We were all puzzled. Why would they want to do that? One of the men went to find out, and came back with the answer. Several scouts from security had found two snipers hiding behind bushes on a hill overlooking the sound truck where it had been before. They were armed with telescopic rifles and obviously planned to kill Paul Robeson. They'd been driven off, but there could be a further attempt, and to protect Robeson as much as possible they had decided to move the truck to where the singer would be less of an easy target.

  It brought back a lot of the uneasiness Ruby and I had felt before, but Fred and Myra made light of the matter, pointing out that with the arrival of the state troopers nobody would take a chance on killing Robeson out in the open and in broad daylight. And there was so much fun and laughter going on around us. Children were scampering around playing games, reminding me of the baseball bat I had brought and left in the car. I reminded Fred of it, and he said there wasn't enough time left for a ball game. It looked as if the concert was about to begin.

  A tall man wearing a jacket and tie came out onto the sound truck to announce the singers and the program, and the picnic grounds grew quiet and the children went back to their parents. Fred whispered to me that the man was Howard Fast, a well-known writer whose books I had read and admired. I found out later that he was chairman of the concert and had been in the forefront of the battle with the mob the previous week. Nevertheless, even though he knew he was risking his own life, he had organized this concert, determined to show the mob, whom he called fascists, that he and the audience were not afraid of them.

  He spoke briefly and in a quiet, firm voice, giving a short background of the performers, and then the concert began. Whatever uneasiness might have remained in our minds vanished as we listened enthralled first to Pete Seeger's folk songs and then to the spirituals in Robeson's voice, which had the deep, rolling quality of an organ.

  Suddenly there came an interruption, the loud, throbbing noise of an engine, and everybody looked up to see a helicopter flying low over the sound truck. There were police markings on it. Fury swept over everyone as the helicopter, apparently quite deliberately, went back and forth. But a smile came over Robeson's face and he went on singing, and someone adjusted the volume on the microphone system to make his voice more audible to everyone. Apparently realizing that their attempt to drown him out had failed, the helicopter eventually left.

  So once more we were caught up in the magic of the great singer's voice, and when it was over there was thunderous applause. We all rose, satisfied that we had accomplished what we came for and that the mob had been defeated this time.

  By this time I had begun to feel as Fred and Myra did, as so many of the audience did, that this was more than just a concert. It was a challenge to the rednecks and Ku Klux Klan, who made up the largest part of the mob, an assertion that we had the right to free speech and we were willing to fight for it. I think Ruby felt the same way, although in the light of what was to follow, we would wonder if this same thing could not have been accomplished in a simpler, more peaceful fashion.

  But we were not thinking of that as we left. We were jubilant over what we considered a triumph, and we joined the crowds heading for the parking lot, and got into the car, looking forward to a pleasant ride home, to coming up to Fred and Myra's apartment for coffee, and then home to our kids.

  “Glad you came?” Fred asked as he got behind the wheel.

  “Yes,” I said, “damned glad,” forgetting all about the earlier fears when we first came and saw the mob at the entrance, then the shift of the sound truck to the oak tree, and the helicopter.

  It was still early, only about five o'clock, the sun lower in the sky but still blazing. The car had no air-conditioning, and so the windows were wide open. As we got into the line of cars heading for the entrance, now the exit, a security guard went from car to car saying, “Keep your windows closed as you leave.”

  He did not explain why, but Fred obeyed and told us to close our windows in the back. I think he knew why but did not want to alarm us. It took quite a long time to reach the gates, and we crawled forward behind the cars ahead of us at a snail's pace. Finally as we reached the gates we understood why the windows had to be closed.

  The mob that had greeted us as we came in had increased by hundreds, and the state police who were stationed there did little to prevent them from surging forward toward the departing cars and blocking their way out, shouting curses, epithets, and profanities, fists banging on the doors and windows. But that was only the start. Fred managed to crawl past them only to find that the road to the right on which he had intended to turn had been blocked with piles of stone, making it necessary for him to turn left onto a narrow road. All the cars had been forced to do the same thing, and once on that road the horrors really began.

  From the distance there came
to us the sounds of splintering glass, screams, shouts, and the crying of children. Soon a rock came crashing through our side window, showering us with fragments of glass. We all let out cries and tried to brush ourselves off.

  I remember yelling to Fred, “Can't you turn off somewhere?”

  “No, I can't,” came Fred's desperate answer.

  We were all trapped on this road and compelled to run a gauntlet that had been cunningly set up for us. Stationed at intervals on either side of the road were groups of men, women, even youngsters gleefully joining the attack, all armed with piles of stones and bricks that they hurled at the slowly passing cars and buses. Their taunts sounded in my ears clearly above all the other clamor, the smashing of glass, the thumping and beating of fists and clubs against the metal of the cars.

  “Nigger bastards.”

  “Jew sons of bitches. Go back to New York.”

  “Hitler didn't do enough.”

  Yes, I heard that too, and it gave a clue as to the makeup of the mob. I heard this: “We're going to finish where Hitler left off.”

  The destruction was terrible. Some cars were turned over and their occupants beaten as they lay on the ground. Children were screaming and crying, but there was no mercy for anyone—the children were beaten too. I remember looking around desperately for the police. They were there, all right, I saw them, but they were doing nothing to stop the onslaught. In fact, I saw them take part in it. When Fred was forced momentarily to a halt, a fat trooper beat on our window with his club and yelled, “Get going, you Jew bastard.” And when we couldn't, he smashed another one of the windows with his club and then laughed.

  If I ever felt like killing someone, it was at that moment. And yet until then there could not have been a stronger champion of the police than I was. I'd believed we relied on them for the safety of our lives, that they were our only means of protection against the criminal element, and that they were brave men who put their own lives on the line to save other people. But all that changed after I witnessed what was going on there, with state troopers actually taking part in the riot against people who had done nothing more than attend a concert. I saw them throwing rocks at the cars and buses and laughing as they did so.

  But as sick and furious as I felt then, the important thing was to get out of the trap we were in—and also, as we discovered, to get some medical attention for Fred. He had been badly cut in the hand from flying glass and was bleeding all over the steering wheel. Myra had received cuts too, but she did not know how to drive a car even if it had been possible for her to take over for Fred. Fortunately, Ruby and I had escaped any injury and either one of us could drive. But if we stopped to change over, they would pounce on us like hunting dogs on their prey.

  Fortunately, we did not have much farther to go before the nightmare was over and we were able to drive without any more injury. But now as we got back onto the main road, I was able to take over at the wheel, and we began to look for a hospital because we had nothing that could stop the bleeding of Fred's hand, and Myra's cuts needed tending to also.

  There was a policeman directing traffic at one corner and I stopped and asked him if he could direct us to a hospital. He looked at me before answering, he looked at the car and saw the damages on it and guessed where we had come from. Word of the riot had spread all over by now and was headline news in newspapers all over the country, in fact, all over the world.

  A look of contempt had come on the officer's face, and he said, “We got no hospitals 'round here.” He meant “for you.”

  “But there's got to be one,” I argued. “There's a man seriously injured.”

  “If you don't get going,” he said, “I'll give you a ticket.”

  We drove on, and only two blocks away I saw the hospital and drove into Emergency. We were not the only ones coming from the concert. The place was filled with others who had been caught by the mob, and the one nurse on duty was cold and unpleasant.

  “Why don't you people stay home where you belong?” she said.

  This, in addition to the long wait we'd have to suffer made Fred decide he didn't want their medical attention. We did get the nurse to give us some bandages and we at least managed to stop some of the bleeding, which obviously needed stitching. Ruby did the bandaging well enough for the time being, and we left.

  I drove back to New York, and since it was so late already, and since we were anxious to get home and clean ourselves up and discard clothes that still contained bits of glass and whatever else had been thrown at us, we left Fred and Myra at their apartment, Fred apologizing profusely for having gotten us into this thing, and I assuring him that we didn't blame him for anything and that perhaps we had learned a great deal from our experience, and that no matter what had happened we had heard Paul Robeson sing, and that really was all that mattered.

  I think I meant it. But what really mattered now was to get home, and never had I felt such urgent desire for my home as I did then. It took us another hour and a half to get back to Laurelton, and Ruby felt as I did—that we couldn't wait to get into that ugly brick bungalow of ours, where we felt safe and comfortable and happy.

  The children were in their beds asleep, and Aunt Lily and Peo were sitting waiting for us anxiously. They knew all about the Peek-skill riot—the whole world knew about it by now, as the news had been broadcast over the radio and was in all the late-night newspapers. Lily and Peo had been afraid we might have been caught in it. Well, we had, and we told them about our experience. Lily listened with horror on her face, but Peo's face was an expressionless mask. I knew, however, what he was thinking. He had been through a lot of similar battles in his years with the IWW. If he were to voice his feelings now, it would be in a bitter tone, and he would say, “What else is new in the capitalist world?”

  But he said nothing. What a good thing it was we hadn't taken the children to the concert, Lily remarked, and she told us of the wonderful time they'd had at Jones Beach, and how quickly and willingly they had gone to bed, so pleasantly tired they were from their swimming.

  As soon as Lily and Peo had gone, and before Ruby and I did anything else, we went to look at our children.

  First, Adraenne in the downstairs bedroom next to ours. We opened the door quietly and tiptoed into the room. She was fast asleep with a thumb in her mouth. Each of us in turn bent down and kissed her lightly, then tiptoed out of the room.

  Charlie next. We went softly up the stairs and opened the door. You could never tell what to expect with him. No matter how late it was, he could be up and reading a forbidden comic magazine. But no, he was sprawled out in his bed sound asleep, the blanket thrown aside, apparently well relaxed, as Adraenne was, from their swim. Ruby adjusted the blanket over him, and we both kissed him lightly, then left the room.

  We tiptoed down the stairs, and when we got to the bottom I put my arms around Ruby and whispered, “Aren't we lucky?”

  “I was just thinking the same thing,” she whispered back.

  And then I kissed her, and we both stood there for a few moments, arms around each other, the same thought in our minds: how lucky we were, and how warm and safe the house was, and how glad we were to be in it.

  Chapter Fifteen

  2005

  HISTORY REPEATED ITSELF AS I BEGAN SENDING MY BOOK TO PUBLISHERS: Each time it was returned with the familiar polite note of rejection. In the post office, however, I was something of a celebrity. The clerk who waited on me the first time I came there to send the book out, a tall, curly-haired fellow with a cheerful manner, asked what the package contained in order to determine the cost of shipping, and when I told him it was a book I had written, his eyes widened.

  “Are you a writer?” he asked.

  I nodded. I was a writer, wasn't I?

  “Wow!” he said. “I've never met a writer before. I always wanted to be a writer.”

  I had met others like him before, people who wanted to be writers but somehow never got around to writing. The postal business was f
orgotten as we chatted away, with a line of customers waiting impatiently behind me. He told me about himself. He'd been a post office clerk for fifteen years. He was married. He had four children. He'd always sworn he'd quit his job and just write. But he'd stuck it out, and here he was, liking his work really, liking the customers and being liked by them, and not suffering too much from unrequited ambition.

  I spoke more sparingly about myself, but I did tell him that I had once worked in the post office in Chicago and had written a story about my post office experiences, and the story had been published in a magazine called The Anvil about a million years ago. And once he knew that, he was stunned with admiration and wanted to read the story.

  “Wow!” he kept saying. “Imagine that! Imagine writing a story about the post office! Imagine being published in a magazine. Wow!” He was so excited about it he insisted on telling his fellow clerks about it, and they were all impressed.

  He begged me to bring the magazine in the next time I came, and I did. The Anvil, one of the more prominent little magazines of the 1930s, had long since ceased publication, and the copy I had, which also featured a story by Nelson Algren, was in a crumbly state, its pages turned yellow, but I gave it to him anyway, and I must say he took good care of it, and so did the others to whom he passed it on, and eventually it was returned to me in no worse condition than what it had been before.

  But after seeing my name in print, the clerk was doubly excited about my being an author, and so were all the others, and from that time on I was treated as a celebrity. Whenever I came in with a book to mail there were respectful greetings, and my curly-haired friend hurried to be the one to wait on me and to talk about my latest achievement as a writer.