Nobody Said Amen (33 page)

Ted met his eyes. “Maybe nowhere.” He rose from his chair and walked to the window, scanning the always exciting dazzle of New York at night. “I’ve been more and more preoccupied with ‘nowhere,’ Max. At home. On the road. At my desk.”

Max frowned. “Are you all right?”

Ted turned, held his arms wide, and returned to his seat. “No palpitations. No shortness of breath, Heart of a young man, Doc Adler says. But if I’m all right, why am I preoccupied with ‘nowhere’?”

“I think you’re worn out, maybe need some time away. This is not like you, Teddy.”

“Max, I’m not worn out. I’m unhappy.”

“Is it Julia? The kids?”

Ted pondered, shaking his head slowly in the negative. “No. They don’t make me unhappy. I make me unhappy.”

Max remained silent, sympathy softening his usually taciturn editor’s face. “What can I do to help, Teddy?”

Ted leaned forward, his eyes bright. “Fire me, Max.”

Max met his gaze. “You’re not serious.”

Ted said, “Fire me.”

“You can’t be serious.” Max was angry now. “You know I could never fire you. I could never do that to you or to me. We’re a team, for Christ’s sake, maybe the best in the business. What kind of shit is this?”

“Max, I’m fifty-three. Free, white, and luckier than I deserve. I’ve got a family I love and hardly know. I’ve got a job that’s paid my way and shown me the world. I’ve got a boss who’s been my best friend. And all together they haven’t made me happy. I’m haunted by my arm’s-length relation with my life, Max.” His voice broke. “Having a wife I love during the occasional intervals when I’m not in Karachi or Mexico City or Biloxi. Having kids who knew me better when they were two than when they’re experimenting with pot at sixteen. Making my crisis visits to the trouble spots of the world and the people who are suffering, and I kiss them good-bye and say, ‘Sorry, I’ve got a deadline.’”

“Teddy, you need a shrink . Or maybe a priest. Or a marriage counselor. Just don’t ask me to fire you.”

Ted rose and walked to the door. “You’re making it harder for me, Max. You’ve got a reporter here who’s trying to finish his story, and fucking up. And his editor won’t help. So I’ll do it myself. You‘ve got my notice, Max. I’m gone in a month.”

A letter from Ted reached Max at his home:

FYI Max,

I got a letter from the provost at Jackson State inviting me to come down for a symposium on nonviolence and the civil rights movement in Mississippi. He thinks the Fourth Estate can offer some perspective. You will not be surprised to learn that I think I’ll go. It will be great seeing old friends like Jimmy Mack, who will be part of the symposium. He wrote me that he’s considering a move into politics, sign of the times. I have been contemplating my future now that the smoke is clearing, and there is a nagging itch to maybe pick up those threads in the Delta and see how they get woven. Free, white, and 53—right? What I’ll miss most is reporting to you, pal. A whole lot.

Ted

Ted picked up the rental car at the airport, eager to see it all fresh again, to recapture the rhythm of Mississippi in August. He left the air-conditioning off, letting the warm, damp air move through the Chevy’s windows, watching the low hills around Jackson slowly flatten as he moved up the highway into the heart of Magnolia County. The familiar cotton began to unfold like an endless mural of velvety greens, stretching forever, the rows slowly spinning as he eased the car toward Shiloh. And then he saw the first series of what appeared to be small lakes, surprising flashes of cerulean in the green, mirrors for the pale blue sky that arched overhead. When he braked the Chevy at the first exit road, the sign announced the Ol’ Reb Catfish Farm. Catfish were what the folks fished for in the muddy creeks when he had left Shiloh. A catfish farm in Magnolia County? It was a startling first, and he decided to ask Mayor Burroughs about it.

He drove slowly into Shiloh. Nothing seemed to have changed. He parked near the empty police truck in the shade of the bank and headed for the mayor’s office, wondering what had ever happened to the aging police dog that used to prowl in its rear and exercise on the baking lawn of the square.

Burroughs rose and turned to face him after he knocked. In the years since their first bristly meeting, the mayor’s salt-and-pepper hair had become grayer, the clean-shaven jowls more pronounced, but the watchful face was as he remembered it. His narrowed eyes regarded Mendelsohn over the wire-rimmed glasses.

“Mendelsohn,” he said, nodding slightly. And motioned him to a chair.

“I’m pleased you remembered me,” Mendelsohn said. “It’s been quite a while.”

With a fugitive half-smile, the mayor pulled open his desk drawer. He lifted a sheaf of newspaper clippings and spread them like cards on the desktop, his mouth tight. “Oh, I keep up with you, Mendelsohn. And when I don’t, folks send me clippings from around the country.” His voice was flat. “You’ve been busy.”

Mendelsohn’s bylined
Newsweek
stories had datelines from Cape Town, Detroit, Newark, Los Angeles, and a stapled stack were all from Shiloh. He smiled at Burroughs. “I’m flattered, Mayor. I didn’t know you were a fan.”

Burroughs lolled back in his seat and lit a cigar. “Not exactly a fan. You could say, more a collector. I’ve got several from Mr. J. Edgar Hoover’s office. I guess he’s a collector, too.”

Mendelsohn smiled. “We didn’t pick our readers. We just appreciated having them. Looking at all this, you know a whole lot about what I’ve been doing since our last time together. But I don’t know anything about what you all have been doing down here. It’s the reason I wanted to revisit Shiloh, see some old friends if they’re still around. I missed this place.”

In an aggrieved voice Burroughs said, “You mean our little town is to get another humiliating exposure from this world-traveling journalist?” He swept the clippings back into the drawer and closed it sharply. “It’s not like when you left here, Mendelsohn.”

“No, sir. From what I’ve seen out there, the whole world’s not like it was. But Shiloh’s not my beat any more. I’ve left the magazine. I’m just down here for a symposium on nonviolence at Jackson State. The rest is pleasure and recreation.”

Burroughs regarded him, his eyebrows arched. “For pleasure and recreation?”

Ted opened his hands. “No agenda other than sharing my wisdom on the tactic of turning the other cheek. No paycheck. No deadline. Just curiosity.”

“The ‘tactic of turning the other cheek.’ Interesting choice of words, Mendelsohn.” Burroughs frowned. “You regard nonviolence as a tactic?”

“I do. When the country becomes the loving community envisioned by those kids I covered in Mississippi, you won’t need a tactical approach for surviving the violence of a closed society. Nonviolence will be just commonplace.”

Burroughs soberly regarded Mendelsohn. “And from your perspective, the invasion of ideologues, revolutionaries, and a radical national media into a peaceful, law-abiding state was not an act of violence?”

Mendelsohn hesitated, then thrust ahead. “I don’t regard Madison, Jefferson, and Adams as ideologues, but they were revolutionaries. As for the press that drew pictures of Mississippi for the nation, I don’t regard them as radical. They were very reluctant witnesses, but the truth was unassailable. If Mississippi in 1964 was a ‘law-abiding state,’ all the protections of the Bill of Rights did not apply to your citizens of color.”

Burroughs smiled for the first time. “I’m relieved to see that the implacable certainty and self-righteousness of the Fourth Estate continues to be your hallmark, Mendelsohn. But let’s move on from Appomattox. You said curiosity without an agenda, a paycheck, and a deadline. That seems like a neighborly way to visit our little town. What do you want to know, Lieutenant?”

Ted answered his smile. “It’s been thirty years since I was a lieutenant, Mayor. Seems to me by now I’d be a colonel.”

The mayor chuckled. “Down here, colonels are very southern, Mendelsohn. I don’t reckon you’d make colonel around here!”

“Mayor, I saw what I think were four different catfish farms driving up. They looked like nothing I ever saw before. Where did they come from?”

“Necessity. Our one-crop economy is too old and too fragile. Between weather and agitation among the laborers for unrealistic wages, there’s a whole lot of hurt throughout the Delta. We’ve been losing a lot of good folks who never would have thought of leaving if things had stayed the way they were. But with the walkouts and the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights bills, things don’t stay the same.”

“But where do catfish come in?”

“When some fast-food chains up North started to expand from hamburgers and hotdogs to fried fish, the demand for catfish just exploded, and they discovered what we had to offer. So we became the desirable virgin. You want land? We got lots of land. You want to invest in an economy that needs some help and can give you cheaper labor than in Illinois? We’re your girl. You want to start an aqua-business and get some tax breaks? Hell, you’ve come to the right place. And colleges in the area are now starting courses to create the aqua-business managers they’re going to need. Like I said, Mendelsohn, it’s not like when you left. Let me show you something.”

He walked across the room and pulled down a wall map of Shiloh. “You know something about the Sanctified Quarter, since you were living there. Look at this.” A great swath on the side of the highway that was the beginning of the Sanctified Quarter was isolated with a green marker.

“That’s all land that HUD is buying in order to build affordable housing for the black citizens of Shiloh. All those nontaxable shanties gonna come down and the new taxable housing is going to go up. Town’s going to do good and do well. We’re even paving the roads in the Quarter.” He was watching Mendelsohn’s astonished face with amusement. “You’re not going to recognize the place.”

“What am I missing?” asked Mendelsohn. “When did the frog get kissed and turn into the prince? And who did the kissing?” He rose and moved to the window, looking out on the Shiloh green. “The Sanctified Quarter was a dusty, muddy ghetto with sub-standard houses for more than a century, Mayor.” Finally he turned to Burroughs, “And nobody this side of the highway seemed to know or give a damn.”

Burroughs wrinkled his nose in distaste. “It wasn’t a prince. It was that son of a bitch Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, his ‘war on poverty,’ ‘we shall overcome.’ Elections, Mendelsohn. Lot of people held their nose and pulled his lever. And it opened the spigots down here.” He watched Mendelsohn, clearly enjoying his moment. “And this Republican mayor found the connection that could get us to HUD and closer to the trough.”

Ted suppressed a smile. “Good for you, good for Shiloh. Who’s the connection?”

“A black named Dale Billings who had a lot of family over near Neshoba. You must have known him when he was Communications Director over at the Commie’s freedom house in ’64.”

“Dale! Sure I knew him. I saw him in Washington when he went back to law school.”

“Well, he became a confidant of Bobby Kennedy and an enabler for the Democrats up in Washington when it comes to Mississippi.”

“How’d you get to him?”

“Through your old friend Jimmy Mack. He came to me at the bank, looking for seed money for a construction company. He said he’d met some HUD folks through an old friend, and they’d likely be coming this way. There’s no moss on that boy. Sharp as hell and hot to trot. We decided we could probably help each other, and we did.”

Mendelsohn rose to his feet and extended his hand to Burroughs. “It beats all, doesn’t it, Mayor? You wouldn’t have believed any of that possible last time I was here. And I would have thought you were crazy if you did!”

Burroughs walked him to the door. “I don’t rightly know,” he said. “I read once in an article in
Newsweek
that politics was the art of the possible.”

“You believe everything you read in
Newsweek
?”

“Depends on who wrote it.” The mayor laughed and closed the door.

The voice on the phone made Willy smile. “I’m just like the others. But I’m ten years older.”

“Not to me, Ted! You were very old even when you were very young! How wonderful to hear your voice. Where in heaven are you calling from? Soweto? London?”

“I’m calling you from the Fannie Lou Hamer Day Care Center in Ruleville, Willy.” He chuckled. “What the winds of change bring! I can remember when you had never heard of Fannie Lou Hamer. Now she’s part of history and has daycare centers named after her. News still travel that slow in Shiloh?”

Willy laughed. “Yes, it does. But I’ve heard of her. I’ve even heard of you, big shot! You’ve been all over the papers. But why are we talking on the telephone? Come on over. Luke will be back by two. He’d love to see his ‘Hebrew journalist.’ We have a lot of catching up to do.”

“You found us, Ted.” Willy’s merry voice had not changed. “Not the big house you remember, but nobody shot at you as you approached. Our family motto is ‘You’re safe at the Claybournes’.’”

“I always was,” he said and embraced her. Over her shoulder he saw Luke Claybourne approaching. Gained some years, Ted thought. A little heavier, grayer. But there was a new relaxation, a quiet confidence in the way he walked, an absence of the suppressed emotion that had always seemed about to erupt when Ted was in his presence. When they shook hands, Ted’s was lost in the grip of Luke’s large and muscular hands. Tough and calloused, they were the hands of a farmer who had wrestled with the Delta for a lifetime.

Luke’s voice was as deep and resonant as Ted remembered. “Welcome, Ted!” He stopped and surveyed Mendelsohn, cocking his head and squinting. “The horns are gone, Willy. I guess we can let him in.”

Guided by old memories, the conversation that afternoon began as wary explorations of terrain incognita. Mendelsohn was back from lands and revolutions that had only been stories told in newspapers and magazines like
Newsweek
. Willy’s eyes gleamed as Ted’s personal encounters with Mandela, Fidel Castro, and Golda Meier came alive in her living room.