Charles Beaumont - Selected Stories Part 50

Introduction to

THE INTRUDER.

by Roger Corman

I first met Chuck Beaumont when I read his novel, _The Intruder_, and decided to make a picture of it. His novel concerned the integration of a school in a small southern town, and was criticallyhailed as a penetrating social study. I contacted Chuck and we discussed it, agreeing as to what we were trying to do. Chuck wanted to see his book brought to the screen exactly as he had written it: "No toning down of the events.., no glossing over the basic att.i.tudes of southern bigots, no whitewas.h.i.+ng of the antipathetic Negro who calls himself 'n.i.g.g.e.r' A deal was signed and Chuck wrote the screenplay.

I had never believed in any picture as much as I believed in this one. We shot it on location and Chuck came along to help as production a.s.sistant and to play the part of the high school princ.i.p.al; he'd never acted before but was quite good.

The picture was done on a very low budget. I had enough money to shoot the film in three weeks on location in Missouri, in 1961, when the situation in the south was considerably different than what it is now, and the racial situation was still very explosive. We chose a town on what is called the "boot-heel"

of Missouri, a place which dips down between Arkansas and Kentucky, a town that had a southern look. For the bit parts, I would get local citizens with southern accents but, being in Missouri, the film crew would still be protected by the laws of a midwestern state. The schools in our chosen town had been integrated for six years--but it was token integration. In other schools in the area there was no integration at all and not likely to be any as long as it could be avoided.

Arrangements were quickly made with the superintendent of one local school for the rental of facilities, with no mention made of the subject matter of the film. It didn't work out. Some of the people were very friendly, but there was a great deal of opposition; during the climax of the film, when people started to catch on what the movie was really about, we began to have problems.

We were to shoot the climax for two days in front of a high school in East Prairie, Missouri. After the first day, the sheriff called us and said we weren't going to be allowed back. I told him we had a contract with the East Prairie school district. He said he didn't care anything about it, that we were communists and we were trying to promote equality between whites and blacks, and that was not going to be allowed in East Prairie; and if anybody came back, they would be immediately arrested. We then started shooting matching shots in a public park in Charleston, Missouri, but after a single morning, the chief of police told us to get out. We were in the middle of shooting one sequence and I said to my brother, Gene, who was working as co-producer, "Talk to him while I finish this sequence." I was shooting as fast as I could and Gene was saying, "Now officer, we don't really understand. Is there anything we can do? Can't we go to the mayor?" The officer was saying, "No. Get the h.e.l.l out of here."

Gene: "Well, there must be some way--" "Get outta here, or I'm running you all in!" And Gene was just talking. Making up conversation. He later told Chuck and me he didn't know what he was saying. He was just talking until I got the last shot--not of the sequence, but of the pattern I had to finish.

Toward the end, we were getting threatening phone calls and letters; and so I had to hold a Klu Klux Klan parade until the last night of shooting. Then we left. We didn't even return to the hotel. We had it arranged to leave after shooting, because the threats were very heavy, and we drove in the middle of the night up to St. Louis.

Critically, the film was extremely successful; but it was not successful financially.

Chuck went on to write more scripts for me. He was intelligent and creative and very sensitive, and, at the same time, highly enthusiastic. He did not get blase after a number of years in Hollywood, as it is easy for a writer to do. Had he lived, he probably would have become a very respected and established screenwriter, who would have written an occasional novel or short story.

It's hard to say.

THE INTRUDER.

(Chapter 10) by Charles Beaumont--------------------------- When the bell in the steeple rang to mark the half hour that had pa.s.sed since six P.M., Caxton wore the same tired face that it always wore in the summer. The heat of the afternoon throbbed on. Cars moved up and down George Street like painted turtles, and the people moved slowly, too: all afraid of the motion that would send the perspiration coursing, the heart flying.

Adam Cramer sat in the far booth at Joan's Cafe, feeling grateful for the heat, trying to eat the soggy ham sandwich he had ordered. He knew the effect of heat on the emotions of people: Summer had a magic to it, a magic way of frying the nerve ends, boiling the blood, drying the brain. Perhaps it made no sense logically but it was true, nonetheless. Crimes of violence occurred with far greater frequency in hot climates than in cold. You would find more murders, more robberies, more kidnapings, more unrest in the summer than at any other time.

It was the season of mischief, the season of slow movements and sudden explosions, the season of violence.

Adam looked out at the street, then at the thermometer that hung behind the cash register. He could see the line of red reaching almost to the top.

How would The Man on Horseback have fared, he wondered, if it had been twenty below zero?

How would Gerald L.K. go over in Alaska?

He pulled his sweat-stained s.h.i.+rt away from his body and smiled. Even the weather was helping him!

He forced the last of the sandwich down, slid a quarter beneath the plate, and paid for his meal; then he went outside.

It was a furnace.

A dark, quiet furnace.

He started for the courthouse, regretting only that Max Blake could not be there. Seeing his old teacher in the crowd, those dark eyes snapping with angry pleasure, that cynical mouth twitching at the edges--d.a.m.n!

Well, I'll write you about it, he thought. That'll be almost as good.

The picture of the man who had set his mind free blurred and vanished and Adam walked faster.

The Reverend Lorenzo Niesen was the first to arrive. His felt hat was sodden, the inner band caked with filth; his suspenders hung loosely over his two-dollar striped s.h.i.+rt; his trousers were shapeless--yet he was proud of his appearance, and it was a vicious, thrusting pride. Were someone to hand him a check for five thousand dollars, he would not alter any part of his attire. It was country-honest, as he himself was. Whoever despised dirt despised likewise the common people. G.o.d's favorites.

Was there soap in Bethlehem?

Did the Apostles have nail files and lotions?

He sat down on the gra.s.s, glared at the bright lights of the Reo motion picture theatre across the street, and began to fan himself with his hat. Little strands of silver hair lifted and fell, lifted and fell, as he fanned.

At six thirty-five, Bart Carey and Phillip Dongen appeared. They nodded at Lorenzo and sat down near him.

"_Well, it's hot_."

Others drifted into the area, some singly, some in groups.

"_Hot!_"

By six forty, over one hundred and fifty residents of Caxton were standing on the cement walk or sitting on the gra.s.s, waiting."_You see 'em this morning?_"

Fifty more showed up in the next ten minutes.

"_Christ, yes_."

At seven a bell was struck and a number of cars screeched, halted, discharging teenage children.

They crowded at the steps of the courthouse.

It was quiet.

Ten minutes pa.s.sed. Then, a young man in a dark suit walked across the empty street. He nodded at the people, made his way through the aisle that parted for him, and climbed to the top step.

He stood there with his back to the courthouse door.

"That's him?" Phil Dongen whispered.

Bart Carey said, "Yeah."

Lorenzo Niesen was silent. He studied the young man, trying to decide whether or not he approved. Awful green, he thought. Too good of a clothes on him. Like as not a Northerner.

I don't know.

The crowd's voice rose to a murmuring, then fell again as the young man in the dark suit lifted his hands in the air.

"Folks," he said, in a soft, almost gentle voice, "my name is Adam Cramer. Some of you know me by now and you know what I'm here for. To those I haven't had a chance to talk with yet, let me say this: I'm from Was.h.i.+ngton D.C., the Capital, and I'm in Caxton to help the people fight the trouble that's come up."

He smiled suddenly and took off his coat. "I wish one thing, though," he said. "I wish school started in January. I mean, it is _hot_. Aren't you hot?"

Hesitant, cautious laughter followed.

"Well," Adam Cramer said, dropping his smile, "it's going to get hotter, for a whole lot of people.

I'll promise you that. This here little town is going to burn, what I mean; it's going to burn the conscience of the country, now, and put out a light that everyone and everybody will see and feel. This town, I'm talking about. Caxton!" He paused. "People, something happened today. You've all heard about it now.

Some of you saw it with your own eyes. What happened was: Twelve Negroes went to the Caxton high school and sat with the white children there. n.o.body stopped them, n.o.body turned them out. And, friends, listen; that makes today the most important day in the history of the South. Why? Because it marks the _real_ beginning of integration. That's right. It's been tried other places, but you know what they're saying? They're saying, Well, if it works in Caxton, it'll work all over, _because Caxton is a typical Southern town_. If the people don't want integration, they'll do something about it! If they don't do something about it, that means they want it! Two plus two equals four!

"Except there's one thing wrong. They're saying you all don't give a darn whether the whites mix with the blacks because you haven't really got down to fighting; but I ask you, how can somebody fight what he doesn't see? They've kept the facts away from you; they've cheated and deceived every one of you, and filled your heads with filthy lies. It has all been a calculated campaign to keep you in the dark, so that when you finally do wake up, Why, we're sorry, it's just too late!

"All right; I'm a.s.sociated with the Society of National American Patriots, which is an organization dedicated to giving the people the truth about desegregation. We've been studying this situation here ever since January, when Judge Silver made his decision, and I'm going to give that situation to you. Of course, many present now are fully aware of it. Many have done what they consider their best to prevent it from happening. But there are quite a few who simply do not know the facts; who don't know either what led up to that black little parade into the school today, or what real significance it has for everyone in the country.

"I ask you to bear with me, folks, but I give _you_ fair warning now. When you do know the truth, you're going to be faced with a decision. You don't think you've got one now, but you do, all right, and you'll see it. And it'll get inside your blood and make it boil and you won't be able to run away from it! Because I'm going to show you that the way this country is going to go depends entirely and wholly and completely on _you!_"Tom McDaniel put away his note-pad and walked over to his friend, the lawyer James Wolfe.

Wolfe, he noticed, was staring, strained and curious and expectant, like all the others. And, for some reason, this annoyed him. "Sound familiar?" he said.

Wolfe started. "Oh--Tom. Yes, he seems to be a pretty smart kid."

"But a phony," Tom said.

"Oh?"

"Absolutely. The accent's fake; I talked with him earlier. He thinks it's going to work!"

"What?"

"The plain-folks routine."

"And you don't?" Wolfe nodded toward the crowd. "I can't say I entirely agree."

"Do you think it's trouble, Jim?"

"No," Wolfe said, glancing away from Tom. "The time for trouble's over."

"Everything," Adam Cramer was saying, "has got to have a beginning. And the beginning to what you saw today was almost seventeen years ago. In 1940, a Negro woman named Charlotte Green, and her husband, let it be known that they didn't care much for the equal facilities that were being offered to their children. No sooner were the words out of their mouths but the NAACP swooped down. You all know about this organization, I imagine. The so-called National a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Colored People is now and has always been nothing but a Communist front, headed by a Jew who hates America and doesn't make any bones about it, either. They've always operated on the 'martyr' system, which is: They pick out trouble spots or create them where they never existed, and start putting out publicity. Like take the Emmet Till case. A n.i.g.g.e.r tries to rape a white woman and tells her husband he'll keep on trying and n.o.body is going to stop him. The husband can't go to the police with just a threat, so he makes sure, like any of us would, that no n.i.g.g.e.r is going to rape his wife. Now those are the facts. But what happens? The NAACP moves in and says that the white man is a murderer! Yeah, for protecting his own wife! And you know the bitter tears was shed over that poor, mistreated little colored boy, poor Emmet Till whose only crime was being dark! Any of you read about it?" Adam Cramer shook his head in mock consternation. "The c.o.o.n was made into a martyr, what they call, and things were rolling along real good, until somebody with some brains showed how Emmet Till's Hero Daddy--you remember how they said that's what he was, and he died in line of duty overseas?--was _hanged_ and given a dishonorable discharge for, see if you can guess it: rape! Uh-huh! Of course, the jury wasn't hoodwinked and declared those men who taught the n.i.g.g.e.r boy a lesson (and it wasn't ever even proved they'd done anything more!) innocent. But the old N-double-A-C-P almost had it knocked.

"Anyway, that's how those guys work. For all I know, they hired this Green woman (she lives on Simon's Hill) to stir things up in the first place. They put the pressure on between 1940 and 1949, pretending that all they wanted, you see, was really equal separate facilities. Farragut County said all right and helped the Negroes send their kids to an accredited school, Lincoln High, in Farragut. I visited this school, friends, and there isn't a thing wrong with it. It's a whole sight cleaner and neater that any place these n.i.g.g.e.r kids ever saw before, like as not; and that's for sure! But the Commie group tipped its hand right then and showed, for all to see, that it was after something different. Does September 1950 mean anything to you people? Well, it was the second big step toward today. In September 1950 a bunch of Negro boys tried to enroll in Caxton High! Remember?"

There was a murmuring from the crowd.

"Why?" Adam Cramer asked, modulating his voice to its original softness. "Do you think it was something they thought up by themselves? Would any Southern Negro have that much gall? No, sir. No.

The NAACP engineered the whole operation, knowing in advance what would happen! The students were turned away; the county board of education refused to let them in--putting it on the line--and the usual arrangements were made for the Negroes to attend Lincoln. Then, three full months later, five ofthese kids--_with the full backing of the NAACP_--filed suit against the Farragut County School Board.

And that's when the ball really got rolling. The Plaintiffs, these Negroes, claimed that the out-of-county arrangements didn't meet the county's obligation to furnish equal facilities. The District Court said they were crazy and ruled accordingly. All during 1952 and 1954 the case, which had been appealed, was held in abeyance, pending the United States Supreme Court's action in five school segregation cases under consideration at the same time.

"Well, the Commies didn't waste a second. They had most of the world, but America was a pocket of resistance to them. They couldn't attack from outside, so, they were attacking from inside.

They knew only too well, friends, that the quickest way to cripple a country is to mongrelize it. So they poured all the millions of dollars the Jews could get for them into this one thing: desegregation.

"In August of 1955, the NAACP demanded a final judgment. Judge Silver, who is a Jew and is known to have leftist leanings--"

"Who says so?" a voice cried.

"The record says so," Adam Cramer said tightly. "Look it up. Abraham Silver belongs, for one thing, to the Quill and Pen Society, which receives its funds indirectly from Moscow."

Tom McDaniel grinned. He said to Wolfe, "He'll hang himself!"

"You think so?"

"Oh, h.e.l.l, Jim--people love the judge around here. He's a public idol, and you know it.

Everybody knows it wasn't his fault about the ruling!"

"I'm not so sure."

"Well, anyway; the Quill and Pen--that's really stretching it."

"I'm not so sure of that, either," James Wolfe said, in a rather grim voice. "Don't forget, Tom: 'You can fool some of the people all of the time . . ."

. . . so what did the Judge do? He instructed the county school board to proceed with reasonable expedition to comply with the rule to desegregate. In spite of the complete disapproval of the PTA, in spite of the protests of the Farragut County Society for Const.i.tutional Government, in spite of pet.i.tions presented by Verne s.h.i.+pman, one of Caxton's leading citizens, and Thomas McDaniel, the editor of the Caxton _Messenger_--Judge Abe Silver went right ahead and _ordered_ integration for Caxton High School, at a date no later than fall, 1956.

"Mayor Harry Satterly could have stopped it, but he didn't have the guts to, because he knew the powers that were and are behind Silver. He knew how much his skin was worth.

"The Governor could have stopped it in a _second_, but I don't have to tell you about him; I hope I don't, anyway.

"And the princ.i.p.al of the high school, Harley Paton--he could have brought the whole mess to a screaming halt. But he's too lily-livered to do the right thing."

"That's a dirty lie!" A young man in a T-s.h.i.+rt and blue jeans walked up to the lower step and glared at Adam Cramer. "The princ.i.p.al done everything he could!"

"Did he? Did he close down the school and refuse to open it until the rights of the town were restored?"

"No, he didn't do that. But--"

"Did he bring the students together and tell them to stay away?"