Wolf Whistle (20 page)

They wiped their faces and necks with white handkerchiefs. They said, “Humid.”

They looked at the retired farmers sitting on benches on the square, men in Big Smith overalls and wearing brogans on their feet. Men with sun-creased faces and a pack of Red Man stuck out of a back pocket.

The reporters said, “Amazing.”

They looked at the loiterers around the courthouse. They noticed the white men with unshaven chins and crumpled straw hats, standing about the courthouse green. They noticed the coloreds segregating themselves beneath the Confederate statue.

They said, “Do you believe this?”

They noticed the statue of the Confederate soldier in front of the courthouse, with a hand up to his brow to shade the sun.

Somebody said, “That old boy is facing south.”

Somebody else said, “He's planning his retreat.”

This gave them a laugh. They had a few good, strong male laughs about this. “He's planning his retreat!” they said, many times.

They went into the Arrow Cafe and looked at the menu.

They whispered to one another, “Fried catfish.”

They whispered, “Collard greens.”

To the girl behind the counter, they said, “Do you have any grits?”

This gave them a good laugh, too. They laughed their heads off about this joke. Grits!

“How about selling us some grits, sweetcheeks,” they said.

These boys never had such a good laugh.

The girl said, “just at breakfast.”

She knew they were making fun of her, she just wasn't sure what the joke was all about.

They looked at the trees in a small park in the center of town. They said, “Which one of these trees is a magnolia tree?”

They said, “Are there any alligators around here?”

“Snapping turtles?”

These boys knew how to laugh.

They asked colored men standing on a corner if they would sing a verse or two from “Old Man River.” They were serious. They said they'd be willing to pay two dollars just to hear a verse or two of “Old Man River” by an authentic soul of the South.

The colored men said they couldn't recollect ever having heard of that song.

The reporters said, “Amazing.”

They wrote dispatches for their newspapers and magazines. They wrote that the scenery itself was hostile.
The scenery is as oppressive as the moss that hangs from the cypress trees,
they wrote.
The silence is like taut skin,
they wrote,
and the faint heart startles, when that silence is cracked by the hiss of a suddenly opened Coke.

That's the way they wrote about Arrow Catcher, Mississippi. It was pure-dee poetic.

They shook their heads in disbelief at everything they saw.

They said, “Faulkner was only a reporter.”

They said, “Faulkner was only the camera's eye.”

They went up to men sitting on benches in front of Wooten's Cobbler Shop. They said, “Where is the nearest motel?”

The men on the benches considered the question. They leaned down between their legs and spit into a lard bucket and wiped snuff drippings off their chin.

The men on the benches said, “The nearest whut?”

The out-of-town visitors repeated this story many times. “And so then this old guy spits, you know, down into a pail of some kind, and then he looks up, real thoughtful, you know, and he says—get this, it's going to kill you—he says, ‘The nearest
whut?
'” Oh boy, what a joke! “‘The nearest
whut?
'”

So the tourist season had fallen upon Arrow Catcher, Mississippi.

The Arrow Hotel was back in business.

Miss Peabody was back in business.

The old lady who owned the Arrow Hotel, who pronounced her name Miz Pee-buddy, had not been seen or heard from in years. A ghost might as well have been picking up the occasional two dollars from beneath the shot glass beside the register-book, her presence was so scarce.

Now, one morning, Miz Peebuddy showed up on the
front porch sitting in a high-backed rocking chair, as if she had never been gone. She was fanning herself with a church fan and watching all the commotion. She was wearing dollar signs in her eyes.

Miz Peebuddy complained to one reporter that there used to be a sign on the outskirts of town that said
ARROW CATCHER A GOOD PLACE TO RAISE A BOY
.

She said nobody knew where that sign was anymore, didn't know what went with it. She said it was a shame, too, a crime and a shame to misplace a nice sign like that.

She said the sign had been shot several times from passing cars—she said Big Boy Chisholm, the marshal, had confirmed this fact—and then it was taken down, for some unknown reason, she said, and it had never been replaced.

“Now nobuddy knows where the old sign went, let alone a new one. Just when we need some good publicity around here, all you kind strangers arriving in our little town, we ought to be making our best impression on you, and nobuddy seems to be able to find the sign.”

Miz Peebuddy said, “A few bullet holes don't make the message unreadable if the message is strong.”

Miz Peebuddy was hot news. Miz Peebuddy made the New York papers two days in a row. Miz Peebuddy hit the AP wires.

Miz Peebuddy didn't care. She didn't notice. There was
a new sign above the register-book at the Arrow Hotel. It replaced the sign that said $2. The new sign, with its own strong message, said $5.

Miz Peebuddy carried a little metal strongbox full of money around with her.

She said, “I hope you boys like biscuits and ham gravy. That's what we're having for breakfast tomorrow.”

They looked at one another. When Miz Peebuddy was out of the room, they broke up. They said, “Biscuits and ham gravy! For breakfast!”

New details about one thing and another came out in the newspaper every day—a federal judge was chosen, Durwood Swinger.

The prosecutor was a local boy, a graduate of Arrow Catcher High. He had a deep limp, from a case of polio when he was a child. He gave a little skip to his step when he walked. People who knew him called him Hopalong Cassidy, because of that skip in his step. The paper even reported this.

A New Orleans lawyer was named for the defense. Poindexter Montberclair could afford it. Solon Gregg was flying on Lord Montberclair's coattails.

The two defendants were being tried together, the papers said.

Now that was a surprise, people said. It didn't look like
Lord Montberclair would want his name attached to the Gregg name in this public way, people said. Even if they did do the killing together, those people said. White trash like Gregg and a fine man like Lord Montberclair, well, my gracious, what won't they think of next.

The two defendants admitted taking the boy out of the house. The newspapers learned this through their New Orleans lawyer. Mr. Gregg had been kind enough to report the infraction in a local hangout, the problem, the breach of etiquette, the wolf whistle, whatever you want to call it, and the two together had gone to speak to the boy, the New Orleans lawyer said.

My clients only meant to scare him, their lawyer told the reporters. That was reasonable, wasn't it?—after what the boy said to Lady Montberclair? Whistling like that? But they sure didn't kill him, the New Orleans lawyer told the newspapers. They warned him, well sure, they admitted doing that, but then they let him go, right after they gave him a good talking-to, a good scare.

They said they told him, “Now you git on back home, boy, and don't let us never catch you doing such of a thing again.” They said they didn't know what happened to the boy after that. They figured he walked on back home, like they told him to. He seemed like an obedient child, so they just figured he went on home. All they did was scare him.

People talked about this all over the county.

People said, “Well, now, I can see their point there. If all they done was take the boy out and give him a scare, a good strong warning, well, there wont really no harm in that, now was there. That boy needed some sense shook into his head. Wonder where he went after they left him go?”

The out-of-state press reported every word. When Delta people saw their words in print, they were astonished, some of them.

One man had repeated the joke about a nigger trying to swim across Roebuck with a gin fan he had stolen, and then a couple of days later, there it was, his words, printed on the front page of
The New York Times.

The report made the statement seem as though the man actually believed this to be true, that he believed a colored person had actually done this foolish thing and had drowned as a result of it. And there was his name, his full name, right beside what he had said and supposedly believed!

The reporter who filed the report handed the newspaper to the man at the marble soda fountain in Mr. Shanker's Drug Store.

The man said, “What'd you want to write a thing like that for? That was just a joke.”

The reporter said, “It wasn't much of a joke.”

The man said, “Well, I grant you that.”

The reporter said, “What have you got to say about it?”

The man said, “Well, it looks like to me all this attention you been giving to this little town is about as bad as a durn nigger murder.”

And then the next day, this statement appeared in the newspaper as well, and again the man's name was right beside it.
DELTA MAN SAYS REPORTING TRUTH THE SAME AS MURDER
.

There came a hunkering down, a defensiveness.

Bumper stickers started to appear around the Delta.

They said,
MISSISSIPPI—THE MOST LIED ABOUT STATE IN THE UNION
.

They said,
BOBO'S BLOOD IS ON THE HANDS OF THE SUPREME COURT
.

The Supreme Court became the villain. The
Brown v. Board of Education
decision.

The local press latched onto this idea.

The
Greenwood Commonwealth
reporter wrote, “For the Negro vote in such places as Harlem, these Men of Expediency on the Court have been willing to put into serious jeopardy the peace of the Southland.”

This particular reporter seemed to think Supreme Court judges were elected. It didn't matter. Mississippi was on dee-fence.

Jars with March of Dimes messages on them were taken
down from shelves and dusted off and printed with the words
DEFENSE FUND
and set out on counters of stores to collect money to help pay the New Orleans lawyer.

Not much money was collected, considering Lord Montberclair was one of the richest men in the Delta, but some was, a few quarters and dollar bills showed up in the jars, as a means of protesting all the outside interference, all the agitation.

During jury selection, Uncle and Auntee went into hiding.

The young prosecutor, the boy with a limp, said, “Uncle, put your grief aside and find yourself a hiding place. We need you alive for this trial.”

O
UTSIDE, ON
the courthouse steps, a child asked his daddy, “How come they let Mr. Runt bring his parrot to the courthouse?”

His daddy said, “You delving into some areas where I ain't got much expertise, punkin.”

The child said, “How can it be a hunnert percent humidity and it don't be raining?”

His daddy said, “Well—”

The child said, “Who would win in a fight between Jesus Christ and Superman?”

His daddy said, “Jesus Christ would kick Superman's steel ass, and don't you forget it, podner.”

The child said, “Are they gone electrocute these murderers?”

His daddy said, “Naw, honey, they probably ain't, although they richly deserve it.”

The child said, “How come Charlie McCarthy's buddy is called Mortimer Snerd?”

His daddy said, “Everybody's got to be called something.”

The child said, “How come Mr. Runt's gone change his name?”

His daddy said, “I'm gone start calling you Mortimer Snerd, what I'm own do. Call you Snerd for short.”

The child said, “What's that expression mean when you say somebody is ugly as hammered shit?”

His daddy said, “Well—”

The child said, “What's a turd tapper?”

His daddy said, “You the onliest turd tapper I know about, you little turd tapper.”

The child said, “What's that expression mean when you say somebody's breath is so bad it can back shit up a hill?”

His daddy said, “I'd say that one's more or less self-explanatory.”

The child said, “How come Mr. Runt don't call hisself Digger O'Delve, like on Life of Riley?”

His daddy said, “O'Delve is an Irish name, Runt comes from Scotch-Irish descent, seem like I remember. I think
that would be the main reason for not choosing Digger O'Delve.”

The child said, “What would it feel like to murder somebody?”

His daddy said, “Let's go over to Mr. Shanker's and get us a cone of cream, hell with this durn trial.”

The child said, “Do you think we'll ever escape?”

His daddy said, “Not me, punkin, it's too late for me. Maybe you.”

The child said, “When you die, what happens?”

His daddy said, “I don't know, sweetnin. Maybe Jesus holds you in his arms and tells you a story about Effie and Peffie.”

The child said, “What would be the meaning of the expression where you say somebody went under the limbo stick?”

His daddy said, “Where did you hear about a limbo stick?”

The child said, “I don't remember.”

His daddy said, “It mought have something to do with the expression when you say somebody looks like he got beat with an ugly stick, do you reckon?”

The child said, “I own know. Maybe.”

His daddy said, “Yew own know, maybe. Come on, how about a cone of Mr. Shanker's cream?”

The child said, “When you die and get buried in Miss-sippi, are you still, you know,
in
Miss-sippi?”