Viola made no sound, but she did turn and get the sphygmomanometer.
What happened next unfolded with the unreality of dreams. Anna Mae screamed when she opened the door for the ambulance crew. The two attendants shook their heads and said Knox should have been taken to the hospital. Anybody could see the man was mortally wounded. Sonny Thornfield stood in the door and cursed the forklift operator who’d spilled the load of batteries, then himself for not taking Knox to the hospital, and finally the ambulance men for not getting to the clinic sooner. Glenn Morehouse cried like a little boy who’d lost his father until Thornfield cursed him for being a baby and dragged him out of the clinic to take the news back to the boys at the plant.
Eventually—after Dr. Ross had put in his two cents and all the office girls had glommed all the details they could spread later as gossip—Tom was left in his private office with Viola, who sat on the couch like the rape victims he’d treated during his internship at Charity Hospital at New Orleans. It was as though whatever the Klansmen had done to her had happened only an hour ago, not two days earlier.
“Tell me,” he pleaded.
“What’s the use?” Viola asked.
“Why didn’t you call the police after it happened?”
She closed her eyes, and by this simple gesture communicated that Tom might be the stupidest man on the planet. At length she said, “You can’t rape a black woman in this state. Not if you’re white. Ain’t no such thing. Don’t you even know that, Tom Cage?”
The coldness in her voice startled him. “I guess I thought—”
“Thought? You didn’t think. You’re walking around with blinders on! That’s what you’re doing.”
“But—”
“No, Tom.” The face that had always seemed so serene was now distorted by pain and grief. “You’ve got to face how things are. They came at me to get to Jimmy. They couldn’t find him, so they hurt the only thing they knew would matter to him. And if Jimmy finds out what they done to me, he’s as good as dead. Pacifist or not, he’ll do just what they want—go after them—and they’ll kill him. I’m worried he may already have heard.” Viola’s eyes blazed suddenly, and she leaned forward, stabbing the air with her forefinger. “So you can’t ever tell him! Swear it.”
“Viola—”
“Swear it, before God!”
“I swear, Viola. I’ll never tell Jimmy.”
“Or Luther!”
“Luther, either. I swear.”
She collapsed against the sofa back.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “Physically, I mean?”
Viola turned her head and wiped tears on her sleeve. “I don’t really know. They beat me. Everywhere but where it would show. I had to come up here and steal some antibiotics. You reckon Dr. Lucas will fire me for that?”
“Viola, please don’t—”
“You can’t help me, Tom. You want to, but what can you do? You’ve got a wife and kids to take care of. You want to fight the Ku Klux Klan for me? I know you’re brave. But are you that kind of hero?”
Until that moment, Tom had never quite realized how high the risks of becoming involved with Viola were. She seemed to want an answer to her question. Her unblinking gaze probed him like an X-ray beam.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said. “You’re probably right about the police not believing you. It would be your word against Knox’s buddies, and they’d all give each other alibis.”
She gave him the most cynical look he had ever seen.
“To be honest,” he said, “about the only thing we could do … is kill them.”
Viola nodded slowly. “I got one of them.”
Tom shuddered as the magnitude of what they had done hit home. “There’ll almost certainly be an autopsy,” he thought aloud. “An experienced pathologist might discover the true cause of death, but this post will probably be done by Adam Leeds. With Knox’s massive injuries, Leeds won’t be looking for anything exotic. I doubt he’ll notice the air escaping when he cuts open Knox’s heart.”
Viola seemed unconcerned by the risk of being found out.
“Where’s Jimmy now?” Tom asked. “Still in Freewoods?”
“I don’t know. I’ve stopped calling him, in case the klukkers on the police force are tapping my phone.”
Viola was right about the police department having Klansmen in its ranks. “What do you want to do now? Do you want to go home?”
Her eyes had been flat and lifeless for so long that it stunned Tom to see some depth come back into them. “What do I want?” she asked softly. “I want you to take me away from here. I want you to take me to a place where we can have children and grow old together. A place where my brother can come live and be safe, and play music all day long. A place where I can love you like you ought to be loved, and you can love me the same.”
Tom felt himself shaking.
“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Don’t I look the same to you anymore? Do I look different to you, now that you know them rednecks used me?”
“No.”
“Do I look different now that I killed somebody in front of you?”
“No. I’m as guilty as you of that crime.”
She stared relentlessly at him, as though waiting for him to admit that he could not give her what she wanted. But she was only waiting for him to face what she’d known all along.
“You finally see, don’t you?” Viola said. “It was just a dream. Every time we made love, we were just children pretending. This is the truth, right here. My torn genitals. That dead man on his way to the morgue. My brother running for his life. And you going back to Peggy and your babies. That’s the truth, Tom. There ain’t no place for me in that picture. I’m on my own. I always have been.”
“Please tell me what I can do,” he said uselessly.
She stood, wavered on her feet, then straightened up. “Nothing. There’s nothing in your power.”
He walked around his desk, but she held up a warning hand, just like a traffic cop. “A hug won’t help.”