“Is there a telephone I could use please,” she asked her hosts after her companion had yet again put his foot in his mouth. The man was an idiot and she had no idea why she had to put up with him.
There were no plush meeting rooms at the Third Baptist Church of San Francisco. The coffee was not real and Gerry Devers had made up his mind about the prospective CCRF, the neighbourhoods through which they had driven to get to the meeting and his hosts’ worth and character based on the color of their skin before he and Miranda had left Sacramento.
Terry Francois had conducted himself as if he was oblivious to Miranda’s sidekick’s presence but the faces of Dwayne John, and the other NCAAP members crowded into the stuffy bare-walled little vestry behind the church had quickly hardened with hostility.
It was the big man who escorted Miranda to the Pastor’s office, a Spartan, spic and span room with table and a couple of chairs and nothing much else other than a bookcase filled with well-thumbed hymnals.
“I am so sorry!” Miranda cried. “I want to slap that man’s face,” she hissed angrily the moment she was alone with the hulking black man.
“The Lord sends us new trials every day,” Dwayne John concurred, permitting himself a wry grin.
Miranda scowled at him; irritated that he could be so calm.
The man and the woman looked at each other, the memory of their brief encounter to set up today’s exploratory meeting in Sacramento still crystal fresh in their minds.
Dwayne John had been surprised to see other blacks, and people of color sitting in the long refectory of the State Capitol Building, although none of them seemed to have white friends or co-workers. He and Miranda had stood out like sore thumbs; a negro and a blond white woman sitting together, publicly sharing a table, talking with each other like normal people.
Miranda had insisted on paying the tab for their two coffees.
She had been all business.
‘We should meet with the people in San Francisco as soon as possible.’
‘How soon do you think?’
‘Why not tomorrow? Is it easier if I drive over to you?’
He had honestly believed she would be put off by the idea of any meeting in the Fillmore District but she had not batted a single golden eyelash when he had suggested the Third Baptist Church as a venue.
‘That’s fine.’
A time was agreed and the place confirmed. Yes, she knew where the Third Baptist Church was; in fact she had already seemed to know almost as much about the NAACP in California as he did which was a little bit unsettling even though Terry Francois had taken him aside and warned him ‘this girl is sharp enough to cut you if you don’t pay attention’.
As Dwayne John had sat in the refectory at the State Capitol with the woman he had girded his courage and broached the thing which had troubled him ever since the night of the war.
‘That night, Miss Sullivan?’
‘At Johnny Seiffert’s place on Haight Street?’ She had shot back like a bullet from a .357 Magnum.
Dwayne had winced.
‘Look, that was my dark time. That man isn’t who I am now.’
She had thought about it for a few moments.
‘I don’t ever want to talk about that night again,’ she had informed him in a hissing whisper. ‘That’s the deal, okay? I can’t go there again. I just can’t!’
For a split second she had been horribly, heart-wrenchingly vulnerable.
Now she was just achingly, perfectly beautiful and Dwayne had absolutely no idea how he was going to get her face out of his head; or if actually he would ever find it in his soul to even attempt to expunge it.
“You’re giving me that look again, Mister John,” Miranda said, frowning at her companion in the vestry as she waited for somebody to pick up the phone in Sacramento.
“Sorry,” the big man murmured and turned away, unwilling to meet the challenge in the woman’s topaz stare.
Presently, Miranda’s boss, the Governor’s Chief-of-Staff came on the line. He was not happy, evidently having been called out of a meeting.
“What is it Miranda?”
“Gerry Devers is an ignorant, bigoted pig and if he goes on the way he’s going he’s going to get himself lynched from a lamp post on McAllister and Fillmore!” Miranda drew breath. “Always assuming I don’t shoot him first, sir!”
“Oh,” Miranda’s boss was knocked off his stride. “For goodness sake! Who on earth sent that young idiot with you?”
“I have no idea,” she reported truthfully. “I know the Governor doesn’t like female staffers going to ‘certain’ places on their own. Maybe, that’s it. But I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself, sir.” She almost added ‘I lived in much worse places than the Fillmore District before the war’.
“You two better come back to Sacramento.”
“That’s not necessary, sir. Gerry can take the car…”
“No, he can’t. Just tell the idiot to come back to Sacramento. He can find his own way back. No,” a second thought. “Would you tell him to come to phone please.”
Gerry Devers stormed out of the Third Baptist Church of San Francisco approximately three minutes later but only after he had stopped to give Miranda what he probably hoped was an ‘if looks killed’ sort of look. His anger bounced off her much like a pebble would have bounced off the front glacis plate of an M60 Patton main battle tank.
“Ma’am,” Dwayne John had whistled softly, “you surely are a force of nature.”
The older she got the worse Miranda became accepting compliments.
This one she brushed off with scorn.
“Men!” She sighed in unfeigned exasperation.
Back in the cramped meeting room she forced a smile.
“I owe you all an apology. I am personally very, very sorry for my, er, colleague’s attitude and behaviour. It was inexcusable. All I can say is that my boss, the Governor’s Chief-of-Staff was as angry as I am about what has just happened. I’m sure that when the Governor is informed he will be very angry, too. Mr Devers will have nothing further to do with the California Civil Rights Forum. Respectfully, may I suggest that we start all over again?”
Fifty-one year old Terry Francois had been elected President of the San Francisco chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1959. The Louisiana-born former Marine had returned home to study at Xavier University in New Orleans after the Second World War, achieved a master’s degree in Business Administration at Atlanta and travelled west to qualify as an attorney in San Francisco in 1949. Since then he had immersed himself in the civil rights movement.
For much of his time in San Francisco — even after the October War — he had been a little out of step with many NAACP members; where he saw the need for a more activist approach others still preferred quiet protest or no protest at all. Whereas, he saw in the ruination of the old World a once in a generation opportunity to advance the cause of the civil rights movement in America; many saw only the pitfalls, and the dangers of pressing so hard that they left themselves vulnerable to the accusation that they lacked patriotism and civil responsibility and were deliberately making a bad situation worse. While Terry Francois understood the feelings of his people — members of the NAACP were no less patriotic and to his mind, a lot less irresponsible, than the majority of their fellow Americans — lately he had felt like he was wading through knee-deep mud.