Croker Meets Fareek and Refuses His Invitation to Turpmtine

Charlie Croker’s meeting with Fareek Fanon becomes a test of whether personal history can be made to serve a public alliance. Roger White has tried to prepare the two men for common ground, but Fareek turns that preparation into a challenge: he asks Croker to acknowledge what segregation meant for the football records Croker once helped set. Their conversation then shifts from history to Turpmtine, where Fareek wants to see the plantation for himself. Croker declines, and the refusal exposes the strain between the political demand for cross-racial solidarity and the private shame he imagines the visit would bring.

The Meeting at McNutter’s House

The encounter takes place in a room at Buck McNutter’s house, its heavy, ornate dark paneling seeming to absorb the light. Roger White is there, dressed with the formal polish of an ambassador on an official visit; Fareek sits sprawled on a tufted leather couch. McNutter introduces the men, and Croker takes in Fareek’s appearance: a shaved head, broad shoulders, a dark blue double-breasted suit, and no diamond earrings or heavy gold necklace, despite what Croker had heard about him. Fareek offers a limp hand and a wary, bored expression. Croker’s assessment is colored by the public notoriety surrounding the young athlete, while Fareek appears distant from the social world represented by McNutter’s house and its lawns in Buckhead.

McNutter opens with Croker’s old football reputation, recalling that he was called The Sixty-Minute Man for playing both offense and defense throughout a game. Fareek takes up the nickname with a grin, asking whether it is true. The exchange seems, briefly, to offer an easy way into conversation: Croker is a celebrated former athlete, and Fareek is a young athlete who might admire that history. But Roger, who has been trying to manage the meeting, soon sees that Fareek is not following the reassuring script he had hoped for.

A Football Legacy Put on Trial

Fareek asks how many of the athletes whose records Croker remembers were African American. Roger recognizes where the question is leading. He had told Fareek that Black athletes were barred from Southeastern Conference competition in earlier years and had suggested that old records ought to carry asterisks noting their exclusion. Roger had hoped this history would make him seem sympathetic to Fareek and help the young man understand Croker as a potential ally. Instead, Fareek uses the argument directly against Croker.

Croker answers that none of those athletes were African American. The admission lands hard: he stares at Fareek, then looks toward McNutter and Roger, who both appear unwilling or unable to control the direction of the meeting. Fareek presses the implication that the record books should mark the exclusion. Croker’s consternation gives way to anger, but his reply is not a denial of segregation or a claim that the old records were fair. He says he was a young man at the time, did not write the history of the South or run Georgia Tech and the University of Georgia, and would have played against anyone put on the field. He adds that he went to fight in Vietnam soon afterward.

Roger braces for Croker to explode at Fareek, who has invoked Croker’s past through an accusation by implication. Instead, Fareek stares at him, apparently struck by the force of Croker’s answer. Roger then interjects that this is more or less what he had been telling Fareek. The moment complicates the meeting’s roles: Roger’s attempt to broker understanding has failed, yet Croker’s blunt account supplies a version of the point that Fareek seems able to hear.

The Invitation to Turpmtine

The conversation turns to Croker’s upbringing when McNutter suggests that Croker might relate to the hardships Fareek describes. Croker is offended by the comparison. He recalls knowing only one boy who was arrested before Croker left for the Army: Bobby Lee Kite, taken in for disturbing the peace after a Saturday-night rock fight outside a McCrory’s store in Newton. Croker recognizes the irony in offering this as a comparison and wonders why he is holding back what he really means, and whether he is doing so because he is desperate to keep the prospective deal alive.

Fareek then asks whether Croker owns a plantation. Croker confirms that he does. Fareek says Roger has told him about the weekends Croker hosts there and asks to come to one. Croker is caught off guard. He thinks that continued company with Fareek could end in a physical confrontation, but says only that it is a bad time to visit Turpmtine because the weather is hot. Fareek responds eagerly to the name of the place and to the prospect of shooting quail, asking what they shoot them with. Croker answers that they use shotguns and explains that the quail season runs from Thanksgiving to the end of February; at this time of year, there is little to hunt besides insects and flies.

The practical obstacle does not deter Fareek. He says he wants to see the plantation even if he cannot hunt, and describes what Roger has told him: that it is like a place from before the American Civil War, when slavery still existed. Fareek’s interest makes the invitation more than a casual request. For Croker, the thought of bringing Fareek to Turpmtine summons an imagined audience of family, workers, and acquaintances: Durwood, Auntie Bella, Uncle Bud, Mason, Billy Bass, Opey McCorkle, and Inman. He pictures Fareek as an honored guest at the table in the Gun House and imagines everyone discovering that the accused athlete has been welcomed there. The scene remains Croker’s fearful projection, but it shows why the request feels, to him, like a public and personal risk rather than a simple visit.

Refusal and Political Stakes

Croker finally says there is no way he can host Fareek. He gives practical excuses: the place is closed for the season, he could not open it even for the King of England, and he would have to bring in too many people on short notice. As he speaks, however, he knows these explanations imply that another time might have made the invitation possible. He feels himself yielding rather than stating his full objection. To close the conversation, he slaps his knees, rises with a painful lurch, and winces as his knee bones grind together. The bodily difficulty sharpens the scene’s awkwardness: Croker is trying to end a meeting whose emotional and political pressure he cannot comfortably manage.

Fareek asks McNutter whether he is allowed to go to the plantation or not. McNutter does not answer; Roger leads Fareek into the hallway, while Croker prepares to leave. The unanswered question leaves the refusal unresolved as a personal exchange, but McNutter immediately makes its political significance explicit. He tells Croker that the matter cannot be reduced to a dispute between a white woman from a good family and a Black athlete from the Bluff, treated merely as an isolated sex-crime complaint. He argues that there must be a broad community of support for Fareek, crossing the usual divisions of race and class. The meeting thus ends with a contrast between Croker’s private reluctance to host Fareek and McNutter’s public strategy for building a coalition around him.