The murmuring in the throng before him was swelling.
Ivan Allen held up his hands.
“Men of good faith may sometimes come slowly to righteousness but sooner or later they will see the light. Across the South things will change. Things must change!”
Now he had to wait for the cries of the multitude to subside.
“Our lives are the true tests of our faith. Two years ago I flew to France to help identify and to bring home the bodies of over a hundred of this city’s leading citizens, many of whom had been close personal friends. They had gone to Paris as ambassadors for Atlanta and our great country and died when Air France Flight 007 crashed at Orly Airport. I knew few of the dead of Bedford Pine Park personally but I grieve no less for them; their only sin was to dream of a better future for us all. Many of the dead of Bedford Pine Park were young, the flower of our city, state and nation. The agony I experienced walking along the rows of the bodies of the innocent victims of the disaster was no less than that I experienced in Paris as I walked along the rows of the bodies of my dead friends and neighbors. I pray to God that I never have to experience it again.”
The murmuring approbation of the first ranks in the crowd was almost musical, a low rumbling base note washing towards the podium.
“Our great country has survived the ‘war to end all wars’. Am I alone in believing that providence has saved us for some greater purpose than simply surviving? I think not. I believe we are better than that! My personal journey to see the light was long; but I got there in the end!”
Allen had stopped reading from his notes.
“When I ran for Mayor my liberalism on the issue of race and segregation was based on common sense, not any kind of moral imperative to right ancient wrongs. I wanted Atlanta to be an ‘open city’ because I believed it would be good for business and that what was good for business would benefit every citizen of the city. I wanted Atlanta to be a ‘city too busy to hate’, a city that grew and became so prosperous that its poorest people no longer needed to claim city or state reliefs. That is still my dream; but now I know that this is not enough!”
He was sweating heavily, breathless, carried along on the euphoria of the moment.
“Doctor King has pointed the way ahead. Now it is time for the Administration and the Congress in Philadelphia to act. Whatever else is going on in the World we cannot dodge the real issue. We cannot forever be looking back over our shoulder, turning the clocks back to the eighteen-sixties or to laws that were passed when William Tecumseh Sherman was still alive. At stake is the future of our children and generations as yet unborn. At stake is the moral authority, the very soul of our country. In this generation we must abolish slavery’s misbegotten stepchild. We must eliminate segregation in all its hateful, invidious forms and make all Americans as free under the law of this land as they already are under God’s sight!”
Chapter 6
While, during and after Nathan Zabriski attacked her many thoughts had roiled and flown like tumbleweed in a storm thought Caroline Konstantis’s mind but most of them fell into one of two camps.
This is insane!
Please don’t stop!
It was not any kind of consensual sexual intercourse; he had shut the door behind her and before she could react his hands were under her dress, she was against the wall and he was inside her. But if she had not said ‘yes’, neither had she said ‘no’. In moments she had thrown her arms around his neck and basically let it happen. In retrospect she could hardly claim to be surprised — other than by the clumsy violence of the act — that he had… raped her.
The last time they had been in this house in Berkeley she had been stupid, reckless in her attempts to draw him out. She had grown impatient with his martyr’s guilt, and confused because almost from the first moment she had encountered him at Offutt Air Force Base six months ago she had been, well, a little… crazy. The boy was in her head all the time; he had inadvertently touched something dormant in her, splintered her carefully crafted idea of self. Her professional training told her it had to be connected with some kind of twisted mother-son thing, an Oedipal complex reversed or turned on its head, guilt-driven by her self-evident failure as a mother and a wife, combined with years upon desultory years of self-repression manifesting in itself in a bizarre fetish. And then there was Nathan’s miserable childhood, in which he had continually been handed off to relatives and Air Force welfare services by a schizophrenic mother incapable of coping with life herself, let alone mothering a child as she and Nathan’s coldly disinterested father perambulated between bases at the ends of the earth…
Except that it was probably simpler than that and a lot less perverse; she found him sexually attractive, she had broadcast — both inadvertently and overtly — the fact, and in the end he had reacted in the way a fit, lonely, deeply troubled, sexually active young man in the prime of his life might be expected to respond. A little over three weeks ago she had run away when he had reached out to her, touched her, but today she had come to him. It was like lighting the blue touch paper and waiting to see what happened…
She had not realized how strong he was. Even if she had wanted to resist it would have been useless. He hurt her to start with and then it was almost as if she was outside herself looking down, unresisting, acquiescent and despite the rush of events and the whirling of her thoughts she was coolly rational. She had wanted this — albeit hot necessarily in this way — and that made her compliant, totally to blame and responsible for everything.
She clung to the man as he fucked her up against the wall.
Her world was full of noise, insane…
And then everything was quiet again.
The man was sucking in air, sweating, trembling, inside her still and she was moaning, attempting to clamp her thighs against his hips, shaking with exertion, as breathless and as disorientated as him, her face nuzzling against his.
The hem of Caroline’s party frock was up around her waist, Nathan’s jeans were around his ankles and his weight pinned her against the wall.
“I’m… Sorry… ”
She did not register his words for several seconds.
All the air had been crushed out of her lungs and she was sucking in ragged breaths, her head spinning. She felt faint, thought she was going to pass out. Her vision began to return as she stared into the dimness of the hallway. All the drapes were still drawn; had he planned this?
No, he was not that sort of man.
“I’m sorry… I don’t know what… ”
Caroline Konstantis blinked, clung to the man’s heaving torso with desperation.
I’m wet…
From the tang in the air she had emptied her bladder during the…
Rape?
She groaned involuntarily, as much in sudden humiliation to have lost control of her…
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry… ”
“Stop saying sorry,” she gasped, groaning again.
The man withdrew from her.
She sagged to the floor, nearly collapsing.
“Oh God, I… ” Nathan grabbed her and held her close. “I’m so sorry, I… ”