The black-and-white pulled up behind the Ford. A great big Negro in a deputy sheriff’s uniform got out and swaggered up toward the station wagon. Cecil Price watched him in the mirror, not wanting to turn around. That arrogant strut-and the pistol in the lawman’s hand-spoke volumes about the way things in Mississippi had been since time out of mind.
Coming up to the driver’s-side door, the sheriff peered in through sunglasses that made him look more like a machine, a hate-driven machine, than a man. "Son of a bitch!" he exploded. "You ain’t Larry Rainey!"
"No, sir," Price said. Part of that deference was RACE training-don’t give the authorities an excuse to beat on you. And part of it was drilled into whites in the South from the time they could toddle and lisp. If they didn’t show respect, they often didn’t live to get a whole lot older than that.
Larry Rainey was older than Cecil Price and smarter than Cecil and tougher than Cecil, too. He’d been in RACE a lot longer than Cecil had. The Black Knights of Voodoo probably hated him more than any other white man from this part of the state.
But the way they hated Larry Rainey was like nothing next to the way they hated what they called the black agitators from the North. Even behind the deputy sheriff’s shades, Cecil could see his eyes widen when he got a look at Muhammad Shabazz and Tariq Abdul-Rashid. "Well, well!" he boomed, the way a man with a shotgun will when a couple of big, fat ducks fly right over his blind. "Looky what we got here! We got us a couple of buckra-lovin’ ragheads!"
"Sheriff," Muhammad Shabazz said tightly. He didn’t wear a turban, and never had. Neither did Tariq Abdul-Rashid, who nodded like somebody trying hard not to show how scared he was. Cecil Price was scared, too, damn near scared shitless, and hoped the black man with the gun and the Smokey-the-Bear hat couldn’t tell.
The deputy went on as if the Black Muslim hadn’t spoken: "We got us a couple of Northern radicals who reckon they’re better’n other folks their color, so they can hop on a bus and come down here and tell us how to live. And we got us one uppity buckra, too, sneakin’ around and stirrin’ up what oughta be damn well left alone. Well, I got news for y’all. That don’t fly, not in Neshoba County it don’t. What the hell you doin’ here, anyway?"
"We were looking at what’s left of Mount Zion Church in Longdale," Muhammad Shabazz answered.
"Yeah, I just bet you were. Fat lot your kind cares about churches," the big black deputy jeered.
"We care about justice, sir." Muhammad Shabazz spoke with respect that didn’t come close to hiding the anger underneath. "I do, and Mr. Abdul-Rashid does, and Mr. Price does, too. Do you, sir? Does justice mean anything to you at all?"
"It means I know better’n to call a lousy, lazy, no-account buckra Mister. Ain’t that right, Cecil?" When Price didn’t answer fast enough to suit the deputy sheriff, the man stuck the pistol in his face and roared, "Ain’t that right, boy?"
Muhammad Shabazz had nerve. If he didn’t have nerve, he never would have ridden down to Mississippi from Cleveland in the first place. "We didn’t do anything wrong, sir," he told the deputy. "We didn’t even break any traffic laws. You have no good reason to pull us over. Why aren’t you investigating real crimes, like a firebombed church?"
To Cecil Price’s amazement, the deputy smiled the broadest, nastiest, wickedest smile he’d ever seen, and he’d seen some lulus. "What do you reckon I’m doin’?" he said. "What the hell do you reckon I’m doin’? All three of you sons of bitches are under arrest for suspicion of arson. A charge like that, you can rot in jail the rest of your worthless lives. Serve y’all right, too, you want to know what I think."
"You’re out of your mind," Muhammad Shabazz exclaimed.
"We wouldn’t burn a church," Tariq Abdul-Rashid agreed, startled out of his frightened silence. "That is crazy."
"We’ve got no reason to do anything like that. Why would we, sir?" Cecil Price tried to make the deputy forget his comrades didn’t stay polite.
It didn’t work. He might have known it wouldn’t. Hell, he had known it wouldn’t. "Why? I’ll tell you why," the Negro in the lawman’s uniform said. "So decent, God-fearing folks get blamed for it, that’s why. You agitators’ll try and pin it all on us, make us look bad on the TV, give the Federal government an excuse to stick its nose in affairs that ain’t none of its business and never will be. So hell, yes, you’re under arrest. Suspicion of arson, like I said. I’ll throw your sorry asses in jail right now. You drive on into Philadelphia quiet-like, or you gonna do something stupid like try and escape?"
Cecil Price didn’t need to be a college-educated fellow like the two blacks in the car with him to know what that meant. You do anything but drive straight to jail and I’ll kill all of you. "I won’t do anything dumb," he told the deputy.
"Better not, boy, or it’s the last fuckup you ever pull." The big black man threw back his head and laughed. "Unless you already pulled your last one, that is." Laughing still, he walked back to the black-and-white. He opened the door, got in-the shocks sagged under his bulk-and slammed it shut.
"Let him jail us on that stupid trumped-up charge," Muhammad Shabazz said as Price started the Ford’s engine. "It’ll do just as much to help the cause as the church bombing."
"I hope you’re right," Price said, pulling back onto the highway, "but he’s a mean one. The Neshoba County Sheriff’s meaner, but the deputy’s bad enough and then some."
"You think he’s BKV?" Tariq Abdul-Rashid asked.
"Black Knights of Voodoo?" Price shrugged. "I don’t know for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he goes night-riding with a mask and a shield and a spear."
In Philadelphia, a few people stared at the car with the white and the two blacks in it. Cecil Price didn’t care for those stares, not even a little bit. He didn’t care for any part of what was going on, but he couldn’t do a thing about it. He parked in front of the jail. The deputy’s car pulled up right behind the RACE wagon.
Another black deputy sat behind the front desk when Price and Muhammad Shabazz and Tariq Abdul-Rashid walked into the jail. "What the hell’s goin’ on here?" he asked the man who’d arrested the civil-rights workers.
"Suspicion of arson," the first deputy answered. "I reckon they must’ve had somethin’ to do with torchin’ the white folks’ church over by Longdale."
"That’s the-" What was the man behind the desk about to say? That’s the silliest goddamn thing I ever heard? Something like that-Cecil Price was sure of it. But then the other Negro’s eyes narrowed. "Fuck me," he said, and pointed first to Muhammad Shabazz and then to Tariq Abdul-Rashid. "Ain’t these the raghead bastards who came down from the North to raise trouble?"
"That’s them, all right," said the deputy who’d arrested them. "And this here buckra’s Cecil Price. I thought at first I got me Larry Rainey-you know how all these white folks look alike. But what the hell? If you can’t grab a big fish, a little fish’ll do."
"That’s a fact," said the deputy behind the desk. "That sure as hell is a fact, all right. Yeah, lock ‘em up. We can figure out what to do with ‘em later."
"You betcha." The first deputy marched his prisoners to the cells farther back in the jail. "In here, you two," he told Muhammad Shabazz and Tariq Abdul-Rashid, and herded them into the first cell on the right. He stuck Cecil Price in the second cell on the right. Even at a time like this, even in a situation like this, he never thought to put a white man in with Negroes. That was part of what was wrong in Philadelphia, right there.
After Price and Muhammad Shabazz and Tariq Abdul-Rashid were safely locked away, the man who’d arrested them clumped up the corridor and then out the front door. "Where you goin’?" called the man behind the desk.
"Got to see the Priest," the first deputy answered. "Anybody asks after those assholes, you never seen ‘em, you never heard nothin’ about ‘em. You got that?"
"All right by me," the other deputy said. The first one slammed the door after him as he went out. He seemed to have to slam any door he came to.