Nobody Said Amen (14 page)

“I wouldn’t miss it. I want to know what niggers are goin’ to show up for that agitator. So what did Mack and the reporter want from you?”

“They wanted me to promise that the police will stay outside because it’s a legal meeting on private property. And if it is, the reporter said we got no right to be inside unless we’re invited in. They think the police will be intimidating to a lot of the people who are coming.”

“Well, who gives a shit what they think? They’re agitators!”

“I do.” His voice was metallic. “I said that no police are going to come in unless there is trouble. And I meant nobody, Stanley. What happens at that meeting is going to be reported every damn place, and we are not going to fuck it up. You are not going to fuck it up, Bronko.”

“You want me to play nice with these Communists?” His voice was incredulous.

“I want you to protect my ass, Bronko. That’s what you are paid to do.”

Summer had moved across the Delta. The dwarf cotton plants had stretched in vain, seeking the rain that never came. Dirt had caked in the fields but it was hidden by the myriad of leaves that now touched row on row. Mendelsohn drove slowly through the Sanctified Quarter and out to the highway heading north to the Claybourne plantation, passing Martha Honey, Jim Dann, and a clutch of volunteers from the Freedom School, still walking the dusty roads, fanning out, one more time, to talk freedom with the blacks. They walked slowly now, finally in rhythm with the ebb and flow of breath here in the Mississippi Delta. The kids had ceased to be remarkable to white Shiloh. And Andy and Mickey and James? Almost too painful to think of. Where were they? At every dark crossroad, at every strange car that wheeled into the Quarter, at every dusk when the Angelus chimed, at every passing over-heated day, at every finish of an exhausting week, the nagging, terrifying question that mirrored that whole summer: Where were they? When the town constable passed with the police dog pacing in the truck bed now, it occasioned hardly a glance from the blacks or the white students. Now FBI agents moved in their black cars through the languorous heat. And the TV networks had crews on the ready, their antenna trucks in shady places where they could find the students and the blacks. Ted Mendelsohn heard a lot of whispering that the FBI might have found some talkers out in the country who maybe remembered certain things, and he was trying to check it out. Andy, Mickey, James . . . Where are you, guys?

Even the caravans of committed blacks going down to the County Courthouse had become routine. But now July was melting into August and the tempo of activity at the Freedom House was freshening. Jimmy Mack had decided the nagging uncertainty was stifling the mission they had come for. It was time to challenge the very heartland of the Delta. Mack organized a Freedom Meeting for his dusty troop in the abandoned Baptist school. “It’s not a mile from the White Citizens’ Council headquarters, Ted! Freedom Train’s a-rollin’, and it leaves on Sunday. Everybody invited to come!”

Ted watched the black youngster, so vulnerable, daring a future he couldn’t imagine, striding forward without a map or a back-up. “Jimmy, how about my coming with you and we go visit the sheriff before the meeting?”

Jimmy grinned and nodded. “Don’t know that I need someone to ride shotgun in planning for a nonviolent meeting, but it couldn’t hurt.”

Apprehensive, Ted had called Max. “There’s never been such a meeting in Indianola. These kids are putting themselves on the line, half a mile from the White Citizens Council headquarters. I don’t know.”

Max interrupted with exasperation, “They’re not kids! They’re organizers, for Christ’s sake! They’re not your kids.” He hesitated. “Just write your story. And be careful, Teddy.”

Ted had replied, “Stay tuned. And have some bail money ready.” Now he eased past the courthouse, studying the faces of the townspeople. The facade of the white community was as monolithic in August as it had been in June. If there were strains of passion or conscience within the structure, they sure as hell remained fraternal secrets. They all shared the handshake. Only this morning he had wired
Newsweek
:

The overt hostility of violence has been replaced by the quiet intransigence of the sheriff and the police. The white face the students have learned to know so well remains unmoved and unchanged. It’s as full of loathing and hate as on the day they arrived.

And yet there were the Claybournes. And what of them? He wheeled onto the gravel driveway of their home and parked in the shade of the great willow, wanting to walk a ways. From day one, Lucas and Wilson Claybourne had posed more questions for him than they had answered.

Eula sauntered out on the veranda, seeking in vain any errant breeze. Mendelsohn spotted her and waved from the walk. Jimmy’s girl, still here, in the belly of the beast? Smart as hell, and looks so fine. “How’s it going, Eula? You’re still here?”

She came to meet him. “Things are going well, Ted. I’ve moved in here because I promised the Claybournes I’d help them till the baby gets here. Another month, I suspect.” She grinned. “That’s my excuse. What’s yours?”

“Being a conscientious member of the press. I trust your bosses to level with me and tell me what they think. Not many white folks I’ve met are like that. I’m trying to wrap up the story about Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney, Eula. Those kids are still missing.”

“That’s just so awful. I have cousins down in Meridian, friends of the Chaney family. I met James in the spring.” Her eyes clouded. “He was so excited about the northern students coming down here.”

Ted nodded. “But people forget so quick. The only reason my boss is hanging on to the story is because two of those kids are white and from the North. But news is news only because it’s happening today. And they’ve been gone now since June.”

They walked together and paused at the step to the veranda. Eula touched his arm and raised her troubled face. Her voice had softened. “Do you think James and the others are dead?”

“We may never know. It’s the kind of a story that’s not new in your Mississippi. You remember Emmett Till? Just fifteen years old?” He wanted to reassure the girl but couldn’t find the words to do it. His gut was roiling at the obscenity of the crime, but when he spoke it was with the dispassionate advice of a journalist. “Maybe this will be different. More people are paying attention this time. We can only hope.”

Eula’s silence made him turn. When she looked up, her eyes were damp. Ted knew she was not thinking about Emmett Till.

He squeezed her hand. “Jimmy is going to be fine, Eula. People are watching now.” He glanced at the house. “Are the Claybournes home?”

“Miss Willy is. Let me tell her you’re here. She’ll be glad to see you.”

Mendelsohn chuckled. “But not Mr. Luke, huh?”

She smiled. “Mr. Luke refers to you as the ‘Hebrew gentleman caller’ or the ‘red journalist,’ depending on what you wrote that week. But he’s not home. He’s out in the fields, worried sick about the drought. Swears he’ll never even make a crop this year less it rains. Over breakfast this morning he asked me, ‘What in the world will all our families at Claybournes’ do if we can’t make a crop?’ And I sure didn’t have an answer for the poor man. His friend Dick Perkins is inside, waiting for him to come back. Come on in.”

He followed her down the long cool hall, hearing the hoarse rasp of Louie Armstrong coming from the living room.

Moonlight shining on the fields below

Banjos humming so soft and low

A lean man with salt-and-pepper hair was bent over the phonograph, holding a small pile of records. He straightened, smiling, and moderated the sound as Ted and Eula entered the room. Eula said, “Mr. Perkins, this is Mr. Mendelsohn, the writer from
Newsweek
? Let me go get Miss Willy.”

Perkins set the records on the table and walked over to greet him. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Mendelsohn. Friend Claybourne has told me about you, and so has Willy. From New York, right? I’m surprised we haven’t met before this.” His smile was knowing. “You must be the outside agitator that Lucas described.”

“I think Mr. Claybourne refers to me as the Hebrew outside agitator, Mr. Perkins. But I am unmistakably he.” He settled in an easy chair. “I’m just a working stiff, hardly a card-carrying agitator. But the Claybournes have been very hospitable. Are you the Perkins from the Perkins plantation?”

Perkins sat down in a facing chair, holding up a hand in protest. “Well, I prefer to be known as the Perkins from the Perkins farm. I never could get comfortable with the word plantation, Mr. Mendelsohn.”

“Not a son of the gallant South? Maybe you’re the outside agitator!”

“I’m afraid I’m a son of the gallant West. I arrived here seven years ago from Colorado and bought my farm. One of the last carpetbaggers.”

Mendelsohn glanced at the phonograph. “I never thought I’d hear Satchmo in this living room, Mr. Perkins. Lucas Claybourne would call that jungle music.”

Perkins smiled. “Nobody’s beyond redemption, Mr. Mendelsohn. I’m determined to broaden Luke’s horizons. Willy has a lot more daring.”

The reporter nodded. “Yes, she has. She picked me up at a gas station and invited me home. That doesn’t happen a lot in New York, and I’ve found that it doesn’t happen down here with an outsider at all.”

Perkins threw back his head and laughed. “No. I think maybe it’s never happened before! She’s a woman with great curiosity and no sense of fear. I took the Claybournes to a juke joint in Clarksdale to hear some Delta blues, something I like a lot. And Willy loved it! She even got me out on the floor with her. I don’t think Luke quite appreciated it, but he’s a harder case. It’s why I brought some Leadbelly, Armstrong, and B.B. King for my friend to listen to—if he’ll listen.” He measured the reporter. “With a name like Mendelsohn, you must like music. Do you like the music from the Delta?”

“I like all kinds of good music. I haven’t really heard authentic blues since I came down to the Delta. I’ve been running practically on empty down here, chasing this story about the boys’ disappearance.”

Perkins frowned and leaned forward. “We don’t usually get a lot of northern journalists down here. Of course we don’t usually have the kind of story you’ve been covering, either. A sad business.”

“A sad business? You think it’s a sad business?” Angry and impatient, Mendelsohn got up and turned to face him. “Do you know that’s the first time anyone white in Magnolia County has said that? Three innocent kids, grabbed and probably lynched, and nobody this side of highway 49 seems to think that’s a sad business. Don’t you find that astonishing?”

Perkins remained silent, watching Ted struggle to rein in his anger. “I’ve been down here long enough to not be astonished, Mr. Mendelsohn,” he said quietly.

“A sad business, but nothing to be astonished by? You don’t find that troubling?”

Perkins frowned. “You’re putting words in my mouth. I didn’t say it wasn’t troubling. I’m an agricultural expert, not a clergyman. I worry about improving the soil and making the harvest more bountiful. I leave the perfectibility of the human condition to those who are better qualified.”

Mendelsohn took his seat again, but perched at its edge. “Point taken. But after living in this garrison society on the other side of the highway, I begin to wonder how come most of the wisdom I find down here is among the least educated and least favored. And smart white people like Lucas Claybourne don’t seem to know the score. Being a carpetbagger, Mr. Perkins, maybe you have a perspective I can’t seem to manage.”

“Carpetbaggers are just businessmen who know a good thing when they see it, Mr. Mendelsohn. They don’t come to change the situation, they come to exploit the situation. I’m just one of those businessmen, not a seer. I try in my own way to do no harm, like a doctor. I do know this much. If you think Lucas Claybourne doesn’t know the score, you’re sadly mistaken. In some ways, he’s one of the most savvy political people I’ve ever met. But he comes out of a different history and a different values system. No, the Lucas Claybournes clinging to this Delta know the score. They just don’t like the score.”

From the hallway they heard Willy’s cheerful exclamation: “Satchmo!” The two men rose, watching with amusement as she came into the room. Dressed in a long bathrobe, a towel wrapped around her hair, she entered in a rush, pausing only to call to Richard, “You brought us Louis!” Half closing her eyes she lifted her arms to an imaginary partner and danced across the room, stopping to plant an affectionate kiss on the smiling Perkins. She turned to greet Mendelsohn. “Sorry I took so long, Ted. I was in the shower when Eula told me you were downstairs. I see you’ve met our friend Richard.” Taking Perkins’s arm, she said very formally, “Richard is our compadre, Mr. Mendelsohn.” She grinned and looked for assurance from Perkins. “Compadre, right?”

Perkins nodded. “Compadre. You now own two Spanish words, Willy.”

She laughed as she noticed the quizzical look on Mendelsohn’s face. “The other one is ‘si.’ And that one Richard has forbidden me to use when we get to Mexico and meet those hot-looking Spanish types. He’s very protective, Ted. He’s the only man in the world who has been able to persuade Lucas to leave Shiloh and fly off on a vacation in Acapulco once the baby has arrived. And we’re going!” She paused. “Forgive me, Ted. I haven’t even offered you a cup of coffee. Eula! We’re all dying for some coffee. What brings you here so early in the morning?”

“I wanted to say thanks to you and Mr. Claybourne before I go back to New York. My boss wants me at the office, and who knows when I’ll get back to Mississippi. You made me welcome, and I appreciate it.”

“It was our pleasure, Ted. Sit a minute and you’ll be able to see Luke.” She smiled and winked at Richard. “Those two seemed to have a lot to talk about!”

The front door swung open and Luke rumbled into the room. “Eula, get me a cup of coffee!” He stopped and surveyed the three sitting around the coffee table. “Looks like you’re waiting for a fourth for bridge.” As he settled heavily into a chair, Eula brought a large carafe of coffee.