A Flash of Green

Fourteen

The Cable Bank and Trust Company had occupied the new building in 1957. Prior to that move, it had been on the corner of Center Street and Columbia Street, four blocks east of the causeway approach to City Bridge. An antique and idiotic law in Florida prohibits the establishment of branch banks. The new structure was on Center Street, a mile east of the old center of the city. It was an oblong of buff stone, aluminum and glass, set back twenty feet from the sidewalk, framed in grass and flowers. On one side of the building was the large parking area. On the other side were the drive-in windows.

Kat Hubble’s desk was on the central floor area thirty feet inside the front entrance, facing it at a slight angle so that she could also see over into the bull-pen area where the minor executive desks were arranged in a spacious geometry.

Jimmy Wing had bird-dogged the job for her. He had learned that Mrs. Whindler, who had held it previously, had suddenly astonished herself and her husband by becoming pregnant after thirteen barren years of marriage. Jimmy had made Kat go directly to Martin Cable. Martin had been delighted to offer Kat the position. It had not occurred to him that his widowed neighbor would have to work.

The sign on her desk — lacy brass against white formica — said Information. But the job was considerably more complex than merely sitting there answering questions. She was expected to remember names and faces and greet the maximum possible number of customers by name. She was available for all manner of small miscellaneous errands inside the bank and in the neighborhood. She was assigned typing chores by departments which were temporarily overloaded.

It had been very difficult for her in the beginning. Her typing was rusty, her memory uncertain, and the clerical people assumed she was a spy for Martin Cable. But after three months she had learned the rhythms of her job and had gained the liking and the confidence of all the other employees. She worked from nine until three, five days a week. For the last hour and a half of each working day, the outside doors were locked, and the reception and information part of her day was over.

She had learned to like the special flavor and atmosphere of the main floor of the bank. There was a faint blue-green tint to the huge areas of glass, and as further protection against sun glare, there were outside false walls of pierced concrete. The patterned and tinted sunlight came into the coolness, into the spacious area where recorded music was just barely loud enough to cover the whir and chitter of the electric office equipment. Her desk area, with the aluminum railing around it, had become a pleasant and familiar place. She knew the jokes and the kidding and the personal troubles of the people with whom she worked.

On Monday morning, the tenth of July, she was troubled as she drove to work. The children had gone to the Sinnats. In her dismay at Dial’s resignation from the committee, she had overlooked a more homely problem. If Dial and Claire went away, taking Esperanza and the twins, the pleasant summer arrangement would be no longer possible. Natalie could not be expected to hang around and watch the Hubble children. Floss could not be saddled with that responsibility. Any alternate arrangement would cost money, and she was operating on a very narrow margin as it was. During the school year, banking hours and school hours were so close to identical that the children were no problem.

At a few minutes after nine, Dennie McGowan, the elderly guard, moved over to her desk and said, “It’s a blue Monday surely when even the redhead can’t smile.”

“Does it show that much, darn it?”

“What can the McGowan do for the lady?”

“Nothing, thanks, Dennie. It’s just sort of a sitter problem. I have to work something out.”

There was a surprising amount of activity for a Monday morning in the summertime, and she had no time to think about her problem until a little after ten when Claire phoned her.

“I hear that Nat told you the sorry news last night, dear.”

“Yes, she said you were going...”

“He’s in one of his states. Nobody can do anything with him when he’s like this. He’s in town now, churning around about passports and travel bureaus. He’ll probably be in for a letter of credit or whatever he does when we go anyplace. We had one real howling match this morning, Kat, and I won one small concession. I love my children, but inasmuch as I’m being dragged away against my will, I absolutely refused to be a traveling den mother, with or without Esperanza. So my burdens will be staying here, and Nat will stay at the house, and your lambs will be as welcome here as ever. I thought you’d want to know that. I knew you must be worrying about it.”

“I was worrying. It’s so nice of you to let me know.”

“Right now I’d be packing if the damn man would let me know where to pack for.”

“Claire, he’s coming through the door right now.”

“Honey, you nail him and tell him to call his poor confused wife and tell her where she’s being taken.”

Dial Sinnat gave Kat an absent-minded nod and walked by her desk, heading back toward the vice-president compound. Though she kept looking for him to come back, he came up to her unobserved, startling her.

“Can you take a break?”

She glanced at the clock, regretfully discarding her hope of taking her break with Jimmy Wing. One of the girls filled in for her. She walked across Center Street with Di and had coffee in a small booth at the rear of the new drugstore.

Dial Sinnat looked uncomfortable and slightly defiant. “I guess I can assume Tom phoned you.”

“Yes.”

“And Nat saved a lot of explanations, didn’t she? Sorry she had to inflict it on you.”

“I was glad she came to me with it, Di.”

“I told you those people were going to play rough.”

“Is this any answer, though, really? Going away?”

“It’s my answer. I want it known, beyond any possibility of misunderstanding, that I’m all the way out of the picture.”

“And I suppose it makes it easier for you.”

“That’s a low blow, but I guess I left myself open. Yes, it will make it easier. I thought of sending Nat back to her mother and leaving it up to the opposition to try something else. But I’m afraid they would, and I’m afraid it would work. They’ll leave Natalie alone when they find out I’ve left.”

“Who phoned you?”

“Two of them talked to me, and I haven’t the slightest idea who either of them were. The first one was very suave and indirect. The second one lost patience, I guess. He took the phone. He sounded like a mean ignorant man. He was very direct. He had a very dirty mouth.” Dial leaned forward and dropped his voice slightly. “I didn’t tell my daughter this. And I don’t want you to tell her. I’m telling you because... I don’t want you to have too bad an opinion of me, Kat. I want you to stand up for me, with the others, but without telling them what I’m going to tell you. What do you know about the Army of the Lord?”

She was startled. “Just what everybody knows, I guess. It’s sort of a crackpot sect down in the southern part of the county, with a sort of a church near Wister. And a strange man who seems to run it.”

“The so-called Reverend Darcy Harkness Coombs. Yes.” His voice was strange. “It’s quite a militant little group, Kat. They burn books. They preach on street corners. And they have... punished some evildoers.”

“Like that woman last year?”

“And some other women you didn’t hear about, and some drunks and some thieves. I can tell you almost the exact words the second man used. I’ve been hearing them ever since. ‘If’n you don’t unjoin that red Communist committee, Sinnat, we’ll one dark night snatch that black-hair daughter of yourn out from that whore automobile an’ run her off into the piny woods, strip her down, knot her up to a tree and flog the pretty hide off’n her back so as she’ll realize how decent folks treats loose women and fornicators.’ ”

“But... that’s horrible! They wouldn’t!”

“They’ve done it to some other people, Katherine. That man sounded as if he’d enjoy it. You see, I can’t take a chance on it being a bluff.”

“She shouldn’t stay here!”

“She won’t consider leaving. I can’t force her. If I told her what they told me, there’d be no chance of her leaving. You know the spirit she has. And she’s too young to understand what a thing like that can do to any sensitive human being. And they could probably get away with it. There’s been no identification made the other times. He said she would be in absolutely no danger if I quit Save Our Bays, so I’m quitting as obviously and completely as I can. I couldn’t make her promise to stay away from whoever she’s having the affair with, but I have the hunch that if she doesn’t, she’ll at least be a lot more cunning about it. How did she get into such an idiotic thing?”

“Di, I don’t think it’s... anything she’s ashamed of.”

“Obviously,” he said with a bitter smile. “She’s of the most vulnerable breed in the world — an idealist. Somebody sold her some good reasons. I respect her too much to accuse her of having cheap motives. But she can get into a cheap situation from the best of motives, even as you and I, Katherine. And she wouldn’t be stable enough to take a public flogging. Who would? God knows what it would do to her.”

“Have you told Claire all this?”

“Of course not.”

“Are you being fair to her?”

“I am going to tell her the whole thing as soon as we are en route, Kat, when she can’t try to do anything about it. She’s got more fight than is good for her. She acts first and thinks later. We’re getting on a ship late tomorrow afternoon at Port Everglades, en route to Lisbon. Tomorrow evening, when she can’t turn the ship around, I’ll tell her. By the time we get to Lisbon she should be settled down. Am I keeping you here too long? There’s one other thing I want to say. I told you all this for two reasons. I guess you can guess the second one.”

She stared at him blankly, then with a growing comprehension and horror. “Oh, no, Dial! They couldn’t do that to...”

“Those people down there are blinded by their own righteousness, Katherine. But they are not going to go out and select a victim on the basis of rumor. Coombs is a fanatic, but I don’t think he’d turn his army loose on anybody without proof which satisfied him. That’s why they’ve been able to get away with these floggings. In the case of Natalie, they had the proof. I checked it with her. I’m saying that you and Jackie Halley should avoid... I don’t know how to say this... the appearance of evil. You shouldn’t, either of you, do anything which could be interpreted the wrong way. I say this with complete seriousness, Kat. Somebody with a lot to gain out of that bay fill is out to smash the committee completely. They want to take the heart out of everybody in any position to publicly oppose the bay fill. That’s the pattern. That’s what the rest of you are up against. Believe me, they’ve taken the heart out of me.”

“I... I remember what that girl said. There were five of them, dressed in black, wearing black hoods. All they said was ‘Repent, repent.’ They were still trying to find out who the men were when she moved away. She was a nurse, wasn’t she?”

“Having an affair with a married doctor. That was the rumor.”

“I have to get back. I’m late now.”

“Do you understand?”

“Of course I do, Di.”

“Natalie has money of her own. She’d have just moved out of my house. She wouldn’t leave, probably because of the man. I’m trying to keep myself from being the outraged father. I don’t want to make moral judgments. I’ve lived in a lot of glass houses. If she’d had more security, maybe she wouldn’t be in this mess now. I didn’t give it to her. Maybe I could have. Maybe I was too lazy, emotionally. Katherine, keep an eye on her. She respects you.”

“I’m fond of her.”

She was late getting back to her desk. When she had a chance she asked McGowan if Jimmy Wing had looked in.

“Not today. I would have seen him. And he’s not good enough for you anyway.”

“It’s not like that, Dennie. Really. It’s not like that at all.”

He winked at her. “Maybe not for you, sweetheart. But I say it is like that for him.”

At quarter of twelve Burton Lesser and Leroy Shannard came in. Swarthy little Doctor Felix Aigan was with them. The three men were laughing at something as they came in. Doc and Leroy were in sports shirts. Burt wore a necktie and a linen jacket, and looked sweaty. This is three-fifths of the opposition, she thought. Ordinary men in a small southern city on a hot day. There is nothing menacing about them, nothing which could be involved in spying on a young girl or threatening her with flogging by hooded men. She felt the smile of welcome on her mouth.

“Gentlemen?” she said briskly.

“Katherine, dear, check Mr. Martin for us, will you?” Burt Lesser asked.

She picked up her inside phone and punched the button for Martin Cable’s secretary. “Helen? Mr. Lesser, Mr. Shannard and Doctor Aigan are here.”

“We’re early, Mrs. Hubble,” Doc Aigan said.

“Send them right on back,” Helen said.

Katherine hung up and smiled and gave them the message. Leroy said, “Got yourself a burn, Miz Katherine.”

“I’ll never learn,” she said ruefully.

Doc Aigan said, “I’ll have my girl drop off a sample of stuff for you to try, honey. Supposed to make what little melanin you got in your skin do a better job for you. A good house puts it out so it ought to be okay. Matter of fact, I’d like a report on how it works for you.”

“Thanks, Doctor. If it works on me, it’ll work for anybody. I can get blistered looking at a colored photograph of a sunset.”

Aigan hurried along on his short legs, his sandals slapping the terrazzo, catching up with Burt Lesser and Leroy. She turned and watched the three of them. Doc was an affable little man. Burt was a neighbor. Leroy Shannard had been Van’s attorney, and he had been very understanding and helpful when he had handled Van’s estate. Van had designed Doc’s home. All three men had been at Van’s funeral.

“Miss?” a voice was saying. “Miss?”

She turned and saw a man standing in front of her desk. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

“All I want is to rent a box like to put something important in, Miss.”

“You’ll want to talk to Mrs. Harper,” she said. “The lady with the white hair behind that counter over there to your right, sir.”

As she watched Mrs. Harper greet the man and give him an application form, she thought, All I want is to rent a box like to hide in for a while. I don’t want to think about the kind of a world where men like Aigan and Shannard and Lesser could know something about what is happening to Dial Sinnat, and approve of it.

When it was time to go to lunch and Jimmy had not yet appeared, she waited five minutes into her short time allowed and then went back across the street, hoping he would show up before she had to return to work.