Читать книгу Stranger at the Gates - Tracy Sugarman - Страница 12

I stared from the airplane window till the horizon suddenly tilted and was lost behind the lifting tip of the wing. I closed my eyes, thinking of the two days I had had with June and the kids in Connecticut. Good. Real good. The week end had been full of the sentiment that goes with a high school graduation. Dick and Laurie had been great, keeping it light, masking their concern for the weeks ahead with affectionate teasing. As Dick had adjusted his graduation robe, his eyes met mine. “How do you like my generation, old man?”

For two days June and I had talked, eager to share all I had seen and felt at Oxford. My going to Mississippi was not my commitment. It was ours. Knowing it, I held back nothing. The doubts and fears I had, the opportunity I perceived to make a small contribution through my reportorial drawings, the jolting impact of the committed kids at Oxford. All of it. For I knew I could not spare her by kidding her. Her strength lay in an uncompromising honesty which allowed her to see things as they are. Her clarity of vision did not permit distortions, and I knew that for her there would be no blinking at the dangers of the summer. She had curled up in the crook of my arm that lazy Sunday morning before I left for the airport. Her voice was soft, and it broke just once. “Don’t worry about us. We’ll be here. Hold on tight.”

I stepped from the plane and stood for a moment at the top of the steps. The Memphis depot was modern, elegant, and quite deserted. I searched quickly among the few faces awaiting the plane’s arrival and was disappointed that Dale Gronemeier was not there. The air-conditioned plane had not prepared me for the damp blanket of heat that met me as I descended the ramp and crossed the glaring concrete to the terminal. By the time I had reclaimed my luggage, I was feeling edgy. The airplane coffee tasted metallic and sour in my mouth, and my legs and back felt wet under the weight of my cotton suit. The black and yellow Hertz sign was at the rear of the terminal, and I started toward it across the marble floor.

“Tracy!” A sweat-shirted figure was trotting toward me.

I put down the bag and grabbed the outstretched hand. “Man, am I glad to see you, Dale!”

He grinned back. His nose was red and peeling, and his khaki pants were sooty and oily from the motorcycle.

“I had a wild ride down from Ohio. But beautiful! How was the graduation?”

“A critical success. He made it. All’s well in Connecticut. Come on. Let’s get us a car and go to Mississippi.”

The lady at Hertz was blond and pretty. Yes, we have a car for you. No, we don’t have any with Mississippi plates. I’m absolutely certain. The voice had altered subtly. “Why don’t you try one of the other agencies?”

Her eyes flicked at Dale and returned to me. “You planning a long trip?”

“Several weeks,” I said. “Thank you. I’ll check the other agencies.”

She folded her arms and watched us move to the other rental offices. No, sir. No car with Mississippi plates. No, sir. No car at all. The cool blonde still stood, arms crossed, as we returned to the Hertz counter.

“Ma’am,” I said. “I’d like to rent a car with Tennessee plates.”

Deadpan, she reached for the form and filled it out. Without a word she pushed it toward me and held out a pen for me to sign. As I thanked her, a small smile flitted across her face. “Y’all will find the car parked across the road in front of the building.”

Loyola teacher Dale Gronemeier, Communications Director for the Ruleville project.

She paused just a moment, leaned back against the file, and crossed her arms again. “It’s a yella Chevvy. With Tennessee plates.”

I picked up the receipt form and placed it carefully in my wallet. As I turned to pick up my bag, she spoke again. “Y’can’t fool ’ em, y’know.”

“No, ma’am. I guess not. A yella Chevvy, you said.” I grinned at her and lifted my bag. Dale was already halfway to the door.

Dale pulled alongside, his Honda dusty and panting quietly. “I’m leaving the bike in Reverend Lawson’s garage in Memphis. Follow me.”

We wound our way along the wide boulevards and stopped finally in front of a large, plain brick church. Dale swung from his bike and mounted the porch of the frame house next door. A young white man followed him down the steps, unlocked the chain wire gate that sealed the driveway, and swung it open. He waved us in. Dale gunned his cycle and spun up the drive and into the open garage. The young man introduced himself to me. He was muscular and rangy, and his manner was boyish.

“I’m assisting Reverend Lawson this summer.” He said it with a good deal of pride. “He’s a fine minister, and a great man in the Movement. It’s a wonderful experience working here with him. Are you both on the way in to Mississippi?” We nodded.

“Have you been there before?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “Have you?”

“Yes. A number of times earlier this year. But lately I’ve been involved right here in Memphis. Memphis has a ways to go, but it’s a pretty civilized town and it’s getting there. I’ll tell you something. After you’ve been a while in Mississippi, you’ll feel like you’re back home when you get north to Memphis!”

He smiled as we climbed back into the car. “As they’d say down here, ‘That’s a right pretty yellow!’”

We shook hands, and he leaned for a second against the fender. “If it gets too pressured, come see us for a week end.”

We backed from the driveway and he carefully relocked the fence. I watched him in my rearview mirror. He put his arm around a Negro child, and they started up the steps to the parsonage as I turned the corner.

The neat geometry of the Delta unfolded as we moved at a cautious fifty-five into the heartland of Mississippi. Dwarfed cotton plants stretched in symmetric rows almost to the horizon, the dark soil between the rows cartwheeling, black spokes as the Chevvy moved swiftly down the bright ribbon of road.

Dale stretched his legs under the dashboard and looped an arm carelessly over the back of the seat. The attitude of repose was deceptive, for his eyes were quick and alert, scanning the road carefully ahead and searching the road behind for any approaching vehicle.

“Hey, man, slow down. I want to read the sign coming up.” He chuckled as I lifted my foot from the accelerator. “Welcome to the Magnolia State!”

I studied the rearview mirror and saw only the sun-baked two-lane highway stretching north toward Memphis. The sun was at its height, and the road shimmered and wavered in the heat. I pumped the gas pedal, and the Chevvy raced down the deserted pavement.

“Take it easy,” Dale cautioned. “There’s a car coming toward us, and the Highway Patrol must be moving up and down this route.”

My eye moved once more to the mirror, once more to the road ahead, once more to the shivering needle of the speedometer. Once more I eased to fifty-five, and for the first time I was beginning to feel the tension in my neck. The car approaching moved out of the overheated light and turned out to be a green Ford pick-up truck. Two white men wearing wide, straw farmer’s hats studied our license and squinted at us as the truck whooshed past. As I read my mirror, the man next to the driver turned and watched us move away.

Dale sensed my concern, and he leaned silently across the seat for some moments, watching the Ford grow small in the distance.

“They’re gone,” he said finally. “But watch your speed.”

“I’m watching my speed. Christ, I’ve never watched my speed so carefully in my life. I’m getting a stiff neck watching my speed.”

The windows were rolled down, and the heavy scented air pushed softly through the car.

“What difference does it really make if I’m going fifty-five or sixty- five?” I asked. “If the Mississippi Highway Patrol decides to arrest me and they say I’m going seventy-five, then I’m going seventy-five.” I glanced across at Dale. “So why am I breaking my neck going fifty-five?”

Dale laughed. “You’re the kind of guy Jess Brown was talking about last Thursday in Oxford.”

I remembered, and I laughed with him. Jess Brown, a stringy, grizzled Negro lawyer from Jackson, Mississippi, had been describing the state’s judicial process and what we might expect from the State Police. Brown was one of only three lawyers in Mississippi who would accept a civil rights case. All three were Negroes. His bright eyes snapped with a malicious humor, and he regarded the world from under his craggy brows like a savage sparrow. His bony fingers seemed always in motion; brushing back his drooping moustache, waggling in the air to punctuate a point, rolling a cigar. His face was mobile and weathered, a hook nose jutting boldly out from the network of lines that creased his skin. Brown’s neck was corded and skinny, and his collar and his suit seemed to be a size too large. When the questioning from his bright, college-boy audience began, he sat down, elaborately lit his cigar, and regarded the first questioner from behind a flame that he struck from a stove match.

Many of the students were knowledgeable about constitutional law, and this one was not embarrassed to let the rest of the hall know it. Brown blew a cloud of blue smoke and flicked the ash from the cigar. He rose, a tough, aging bantam, and walked carefully to the edge of the stage. He smiled gently at the student.

“Son, a Mississippi highway at midnight is no place to teach a Mississippi policeman with two years of education the fine points of constitutional law! You just go along with the man and don’t say nothin’. And in the morning you try and get ahold of one of us.”

Dale laughed in recollection and said, “You might just as well not give them excuses for stopping us they don’t already have.” He leaned forward and squinted at the sign which stood boldly alongside the highway. “IMPEACH CHIEF JUSTICE EARL WARREN!” Dale read aloud, “Signed, The John Birch Society.”

“Son, a Mississippi highway at midnight is no place to teach a Mississippi policeman with two years of education the fine points of constitutional law!” –Jess Brown, Mississippi lawyer.

“Welcome to the Magnolia State, Gronemeier!” I drawled.

By the time we reached Aaron Henry’s drugstore in Clarksdale we were damp with sweat and parched. We stood blinking by the car and looked about us for Lafayette Sirney or Jim Jones who were the co-leaders of the Clarksdale district. A handful of Negroes stood on the corner and watched us with frank interest as we moved toward the Fourth Street Pharmacy. I looked hurriedly up and down the block, and pushed open the door.

Lafayette stood just inside. His usually cherubic face was serious and concerned as he dropped a dime into the phone. He looked toward the door as we entered, grinned, and held up a finger in greeting. Once more he cocked his head, frowned, and talked very carefully into the phone. “I’m calling to find out what the charges are against the three boys and a girl who were arrested today.”

His attention shifted from the mouthpiece of the telephone to us. He squinted his eyes and shook his head. He smiled wryly and hung the receiver back on the hook.

Jim Jones waved from the door and joined us at the counter.

“I saw your car down the block. I’m glad you made it down okay. Oh, my! A yellow Chevvy!” He laughed. “I hope it moves!”

Lafayette came across the room and shook hands.

Jim asked quietly, “What did you find out?”

“They keep pickin’ em up. Two this morning and two this afternoon. Wham! The minute they hit the street. All they’d tell me was they were bein’ held. Oh yeah, and to stop botherin’ ’em on the phone or they’d have my nigger ass!”

Jim frowned and he nodded at Dale and me. “Have a drink and we’ll get going to Ruleville.”

A youngster behind the counter poured Coca-Cola syrup from a gallon jug into the glasses, added water and ice, and carefully stirred. He handed us the drinks and stood listening to our conversation. I knew that Aaron Henry’s Fourth Street Pharmacy was the center of civil rights activity in that area of Mississippi, and anyone working there must be part of the Movement. The store was a natural target for the racists’ reprisals, and I knew that only recently the front plate glass had been blown out. I looked at the slender fourteen-year-old behind the counter and wondered how you learned his nonchalance. I glanced at the rear of the store for a glimpse of Aaron Henry, but the prescription counter was empty. I was disappointed that he was not there. I had read about this stubborn man who refused to be intimidated. His store windows continued to carry the Emancipation Proclamation, and I knew it was an ulcerating reminder to Police Chief Ben Collins that an indomitable spirit remained in Clarksdale.

Jim Jones looked thoughtfully into his glass, and his Indian face was serious as he turned to Lafayette.

“Call Jackson and let them know who’s been picked up. Tell them we don’t know the charges yet. They may want to send a lawyer right up. Collins is trying to frighten the workers, and he’s probably succeeding. I don’t think he’ll hold them long. Meanwhile we better keep off the streets.” He walked to the door and watched a police car edge slowly down the block. “I’m going to Ruleville and see Mac.” The police car crept around the corner. “We better move out,” he said.

I left change on the counter and waved to Lafayette who was once more stationed at the phone.

“I’ll see you soon,” he called. “Ruleville’s my home town!”

Once more the car was moving south on Highway 41. Jones and McLaurin had agreed in Oxford that Jim should drive with me to Ruleville. A Negro was sitting with me and we were driving south through the Mississippi Delta. The feeling of exposure I was to know so often in those first days made me feel edgy. Did Jim feel as vulnerable as I, I wondered? Maybe it would be safer if he sat in the back seat so that approaching cars might not notice. I was ashamed at the thought and moved my eyes to scan the road ahead. Why, dammit, should it even occur to me? Joe Louis’s classic line about Max Schmeling popped into my head, and I found myself grinning. “He can run,” rumbled Joe, “but he can’t hide!” If I was to function this summer and not be maimed by a timid caution, I must decide that just as I would not hide, neither would I run. A pickup truck with a long antenna waving from its rear bumper cut in from a crossroad and moved alongside. The white, impassive face looked long and hard. I kept the Chevvy at fifty-five and returned the searching look. A shotgun and rifle were riding easily in a cradle behind the driver’s head. The truck finally moved past, picking up speed.

Highway 41, Ruleville, Mississippi.

I heard Dale exhale a long breath. “Is the antenna for a two-way radio?” he asked.

Jones turned in his seat and nodded. He smiled across at me. “They know you’re here. Let’s see what this baby can do.”

The road behind me was empty, and in the clear afternoon light I could see the pick-up truck turn off and race up a dirt road. The cloud of dust kicked up lay yellow in the air, and the truck disappeared finally behind the low outbuildings of a plantation.

We turned left off 41 soon after we entered Ruleville and eased onto a dirt road that led alongside an open field. Beyond the field a spanking new brick hospital, low and modern, faced the highway, and at the far end of the field a bright covey of monoplanes used for spraying were neatly lined up. Across from the field, two hundred yards off Highway 41, stood a white, white, frame building. Three worn wooden steps led to a double door. Over the entrance a gooseneck pipe held a single hundred-watt bulb. The windows were reflecting the late afternoon sun, the golden western light the only adornment on the stark modesty of the building. The small yard was a patchwork of dirt and clumps of grass. It looked weary.

Jim scanned the building and shook his head. “Mac must be at the Hamers’. Nobody here at Williams Chapel.”

We drove into the Sanctified Quarter, named for the Sanctified Church. The houses were small, neat, most of them white with a colored trim, a few in obvious and desperate need of repair. Their porches sagged, and broken steps were propped by cement blocks. But, in the main, the neighborhood was cheerful and pleasant. Zinnias and geranium fronted most of the homes, and a garden patch usually stretched to meet the kitchen garden of the neighbor on the next block. One could see beanpoles, tomato stakes, small rows of corn, and fresh wash. An air of peace lay over this rural neighborhood. A cloud of dust stirred behind the car and followed, mottling the dry green hedges as it settled. I nodded and tooted at some of the kids that scattered from their play to watch, saucer- eyed, as we drove through the quarter. A few of the older children whooped and ran briefly alongside. The older folks in rockers and on front steps acknowledged my wave with a polite and noncommittal nod.

Jim pointed to a white, frame house that was partly hidden from the road by an immense pecan tree. “Pull off the road and park in the empty yard on the left. They’re all there under the tree, and Mac’s with them.”

McLaurin gave a big grin as he watched me pull in. He walked up to the Chevvy and patted the rear fender lovingly. “We sure can use that!” he said.

“It’s my most important contribution to the Civil Rights Movement, and Mr. Hertz’s. Even if it is yellow!”

“It moves pretty good,” said Jim.

We crossed the road and moved instinctively to the deep shade of the pecan tree. The air was heavy with heat and the whirring murmur of the insects seemed to throb as I squatted in the shadow.

“We’re all here now,” said Mac. “Eighteen—until the Freedom School and community center folks get here next week.”

The kids stretched out under the tree looked unkempt and uncertain. The fatigue of the long trip from Oxford showed plainly in their young faces. They waved and called hellos to Dale and me, but the talk was desultory. The blouses of the two girls in the group were stained with sweat, and the boys, mopping their flushed faces, stripped to their T shirts. Mac, alone, moved comfortably about the group, squatting here and there to answer questions. A faint film of perspiration shone on his dark skin, but his movements were easy, and one knew that the heat of the day never entered his mind. The physical discomfort and spiritual disquiet I had sensed in him at Oxford seemed now to have been discarded. His walk was light, and for the first time McLaurin seemed to me to be a man at peace with himself. He threw back his head and laughed at something that Jones had said, and I wondered at the layers of complexity in this youngster. He made his way to the steps of the porch where Dale and I sat.

“I’m not sure where you’re going to stay eventually, Dale,” he said. “Maybe here at the Hamers’. But for now you and Tracy will stay over in Jerusalem Quarter, across the highway, with the Williams. Once communications are set up you’ll need a phone, and this will probably be headquarters at the beginning.”

Jim Jones came over and extended his hand. “I’m heading back to Clarksdale. Got a ride headin’ north.”

“Good luck,” I said, thinking of the four arrests already made by Ben Collins. “Will I be seeing you again soon?”

He shrugged and grinned. “It’s likely. So long, Mac.”

McLaurin rubbed his chin and nodded slightly. “Take it easy, man.” Jones turned and trotted toward the highway.

McLaurin opened the Chevvy door and called to the group who listened attentively from under the tree.

“We’ll all meet at William Chapel at seven-thirty. Mass meetin’ tonight!”

The volunteers scrambled to their feet. In twos and threes they moved down the dusty road, some breaking off to climb a porch step and disappear into their new homes. The eyes of the Negros followed them as they moved, and the children giggled as some of the students called “Hi!”

The two girl students moved easily down the road. A couple of Negro children, holding hands, zig-zagged after them, laughing when one of the girls would turn and catch their eye. Three Negro women stood at a porch step, their faces shadowed by the wide straw hats they wore. One had been watering a despondent, straggling petunia in a coffee tin, and she paused as she noticed the girls approaching.

“Hi!” called Gretchen. “Is it always this hot in Ruleville?”

The deep shade of the pecan tree in the Hamer yard.

“How do,” chorused the women softly. The one with the watering can stepped to the hedge and the girls stopped. “It is right hot this afternoon. I expects it will cool some when the sun goes down yonder in an hour,” she said.

“That’s good!” said Gretchen laughing. “I don’t want to melt completely away my first day in Mississippi!”

Donna waved at the woman as they resumed their walk down the road to Mrs. Sisson’s house. “See you at the meeting!”

The two women joined the third who held the watering can. They were looking down the road after the girls as I passed them.

We stepped gingerly on the two short plants that crossed the shallow drainage ditch and started across the small front yard. I looked at my new home. It was a small, low house, covered with an imitation, mustard-colored brick. I groaned when I noticed the roof. It was corrugated iron, and I knew it must be an oven inside. Perched on an ancient, listing table in the yard were a variety of houseplants, set out for the summer. A splash of zinnias made the yard cheerful, and they led along the side of the house to a garden in the rear. As I glanced up the block I noticed that the house next door was an immaculate, white clapboard. Its trim was freshly painted, and a television antenna stood astride the blue shingled roof. A bright-eyed ten-year-old leaning against a shiny Pontiac in the driveway was solemnly watching us. Peering from behind the car were a scattering of younger children. The boy held a softball, and an immense glove dangled from his other wrist.

When I called “Hi!” he turned, giggling to his friends.

“Roy! You get in here for supper. Now!”

He fled across the yard, the glove flapping from his wrist. At the top of the steps he paused, grinned, and disappeared inside.