One Night in Mississippi (7 page)

Amblan, 2008

The storm came in the night
like an old dream. The snow and the dark fell in concert across Amblan. The streetlights came on as if in warning, but the flakes fluttered past, at first large and lazy and soft, then as the wind picked up, fast and sharp. The town was typically quiet after dark, but the few people who were caught outside pulled their hoods tight against the sting of sleet and headed to the comfort of their homes. By morning, the snow had taken the town. Eight fresh inches rested on what had already accumulated. It had blown in from the east and it hung moss-like off the side of every tree, signpost, and parking meter. Trucks parked along the side streets had been swallowed up except for one headlight, and one side door, and still the snow continued to fall.

I rolled over, banging my elbow against the wall, and woke, disoriented. I had moved the bed to the far corner of the room, away from the cracked window. I rubbed my elbow and went over to look through the glass, wrapping the sheets around me. My bare feet slapped against the wood floor. The wind made a sharp whistling sound as it pushed through the crack, and I could feel the cold of it as I peered out over the desk.

My right hand ached, and I flexed it absentmindedly, trying to warm it. After I was showered and dressed, I went downstairs to fix coffee. The forecast on the radio called for more snow with no expectation of it letting up for days. Schools were open, but were expected to close early, and snowploughs were working around the clock to clear the streets. If the lady in the coffee shop was right, the roads into the hills would soon be impassable. I poured the rest of the coffee into a thermos.

It had snowed and melted and snowed again, creating treacherous conditions. The surface was almost blue and reflected the weak sunlight in soft and crystalline hues. It crunched under my boots, but beneath the upper crust the snow was soft enough to sink clean through to the bottom. Each time I took a step, I had to lift my leg back up to free it from the nearly perfect footprint. I walked to the parking lot that way, my arms out to the side as I shifted back and forth to maintain my balance, like slogging through a mud-soaked field, hunched over between the rows of cotton.

The parking lot had been cleared except for a thin sheet of packed and tire-rutted snow, and when I reached it, my legs felt suddenly light. I unplugged the block heater from the post and let the cord retract until only its plug hung out from the grill, lolling there like the tongue of a friendly dog. I started the Explorer, then started scraping the ice from the windows. By the time I got in the vehicle, my arms and legs burned with the effort from the short trek through the deep drifts.

There were very few cars. Most of the vehicles I passed were SUVs or oversized pickup trucks with roof-mounted lights and gun-racks on the cab. The traffic had turned the streets a slushy brown, and the bottom third of every vehicle, moving or parked, was marked with the same colour.

I pulled out the card on which I'd scribbled all of Etta's contact information. The post office attendant watched me curiously while I faxed the photo. When the fax confirmation printed out, I crumpled the sheet, put it in my pocket, and left, bypassing the garbage can by the door.

In the Explorer, I pulled out a notebook from my satchel and flipped to a roughly sketched map that I'd made of the town, studying it as I sipped coffee from the thermos. Earl Daniel's house was more than two miles outside of town, but the drive was probably about six miles, due to the way the road wound through the hills and brush, at one point dropping down to a single lane with the occasional turnout where cars could pull off to let oncoming cars pass. I looked out the window at the fresh snow that was already starting to fall and guessed that the road would probably not be open for much longer. I took one more look at the map, then set the notebook down on the passenger seat and turned the key in the ignition.

I edged the rented SUV up through the hills, focussed on the road ahead. The storm had reduced the road to a column of hard-packed snow, lined with parallel tracks of brown slush, marking the treads where previous cars had passed. The snow still appeared to be falling heavily, but it was impossible to tell how much of it was fresh and how much was being blown off the stands of evergreens that flanked the road. The snow swirled violently in front of my vehicle, and the gusts of wind were strong enough at times that I could feel their impact as they struck against the doors. The windshield wipers offered conical and intermittent glimpses of the path ahead.

I hunched over the steering wheel and before long my back ached with the strain, but I stayed in that position. Even then, I could only make out dark shapes in the shifting white curtain in front of me, unable to distinguish their source until I was almost directly upon them. I came upon a pickup truck that had missed the bend in the road and plunged into a short ditch beneath a bank of trees. The front half and the cab of the truck had been nearly engulfed. The bed was tilted, one rear tire rested on the edge of the road, the other suspended. The word
Ford
was still visible on the tailgate, and the right taillight blinked, as if it were a street sign pointing the way towards the town of Ford. The two muddy lines that had marked the road stopped at that point, and I had to navigate the rest of the way simply by keeping my vehicle centered between the trees.

The ridges of the hard-packed snow pushed the tires left and right, and the softer snow collecting on the surface provided little purchase with which to stop the skidding. I veered along the centre of the road as if I were crashing into invisible bumpers on either side that kept pushing me back to the middle. It required such concentration that I almost drove past the posts marking the entrance to Earl Daniel's driveway.

Mississippi, 1964

One other thing
happened that summer that had consequences, both immediate and lasting.

Seeing Graden stand calmly in the midst of the prison, seeing how the older people responded to him, seeing him step proudly out of the back of the state car: all these things inspired me immensely in the moment. But later at night, lying safely back in my bed and staring at the familiar criss-crossed beams in the ceiling, they troubled me.

My worries were twofold. First, there was the simple matter of safety. The warning my father had issued after the cotton-selling incident continued to play in the back of my mind. About the value of prudence. About the danger of courage. About survival. I knew now, though, that there was very little that I could do to protect Graden. He had chosen a path, and he had committed himself to it completely.

That led to my second worry. There was doubt in my mind as to whether or not I wanted to be a part of this. I felt the same stirrings of passion when Graden and the others spoke, the same anger at the rights and freedoms that had been denied us, and the same thrill at the glimpses they offered of a more optimistic future. But I lacked Graden's surety of purpose, and I knew that this would always be so. This cause was his, not mine.

Graden and the others continued to meet after the failed rally, and I continued to go, but not as regularly and not with the same conviction. I never wanted to be on that bus again, never wanted to be in the midst of that mob. I told myself that Papa was right, that it was just common sense, but in my heart I knew that it was fear. I couldn't bring myself to face those people because I felt that that they would look at me and know I was afraid.

Graden would get up in the darkness and wait for me to join him, but more and more often I would stay behind, and after he'd slipped away, I would get up and cross the woods to the gin shack at the top of the hill.

The shack was a small, abandoned grain shed when we had found it. The floor was filthy with bits of rotted corn and old mice droppings. We had scrubbed the floor clean and sanded the inside walls. We did not want to attract attention by changing the outside appearance too much, but we replaced a handful of the most damaged boards. We cut up old pallets and staked them down over the floor to make it a more level surface, but there were wide seams between the planks at some points, and at the end of a night of dancing, almost everyone was coated from the knees down in spilled drink and dust. The roof was composed of overlapping sheets of corrugated metal nailed onto crooked beams, and it pushed the music down onto us like a scratchy echo.

It was three boys and me to begin with — the Tittle brothers, Sam and Ronnie, and their cousin, John Young. A few more had become regulars since then. It was John who invited Faye Raigan, who in turn invited two of her friends, Sandra and Nancy. Before long we had a pretty decent crowd. We set up a couple of tables that we had salvaged from scrap, and we built a simple pine bar.

On a typical night, Sam and Ronnie would bring in two or three jugs of homemade gin, John would set up his radio and fiddle with the antenna until he could pick up something danceable, and one of the other boys would come rolling in with two girls on his arms, as if the old grain shed were the Cotton Club itself. We would sit at the bar and listen to music, take turns dancing with the girls, or sit at the tables and play cards, sipping gin and trying not to make sour faces at the taste. There would be others present from time to time as well, but generally they were friends or family or someone who had been invited by one of the core group.

On rare occasions a stranger would show up, based solely on having heard that a good time was to be had, but we treated those people warily and they usually left disappointed. It was during that last summer that Penny Newcome walked in.

She was a sliver of moonlight in the doorway, thin and pale. Strands of her long blond hair fell in front and behind her ears. She wasn't a true beauty, but she moved with an alluring confidence, her mouth parted suggestively, her wiry frame and heavy breasts exuded sex.

There were two friends as well, but they stood back, huddled meekly behind her. No one spoke when she entered. The others looked around, then looked at their feet, but I couldn't take my eyes away, and maybe that's why she chose me. She waited for a moment in the doorway, peered into the makeshift hall, then smiled giddily, and strolled into the room. She chewed on her bottom lip and continued to soak in her surroundings with a strange kind of awe while the hem of her dotted dress swayed about her knees. Ronnie and Sam had been on the dance floor with Faye, but they stepped aside and pressed themselves to the walls.

Penny's friends entered more hesitantly, holding each other by the arm. One of them called Penny's name in a harsh whisper, but Penny just smiled and trailed her finger along the top of the bar. She turned to look at me, and I felt locked in place. I was drunk, but not so drunk that I was unafraid. I simply could not look away. The truth is, I wanted her to choose me. There was a part of me that wanted her to choose anyone but me, but in the hungriest part of my soul, I didn't care about the risk.

She sat down beside me on the knotted bench. Her eyes were dull with whiskey. I could smell it on her as well, but beneath that there was a citrusy scent that urged me to lean closer. She curled the loose hair back behind her ear, and I could see the smooth plane of her neck. I wanted to put my lips on it and taste the saltiness of her skin. I finally looked away, searching the room for help, but there was none. I stood up, and she stood up with me. She was a small girl, the top of her head barely reaching my chin.

“You shouldn't be here, Miss.” My throat was a desert, and each word was a stone dragged across its cracking surface.

“From what I hear, your parties are a little more fun than ours. What's your name?”

“Warren.”

“Well, Warren, do you dance?”

Sam slid behind her and glanced at me over her shoulder, the warning clear in his eyes. She put her hand on my chest. I swallowed hard and reached for her. I moved stiffly at first, trying to minimize the contact. I could feel every set of eyes on me — my friends lined up along the bar and the back wall, tense and rigid; her friends, hovering just inside the doorway, uncertain and ready to flee.

Penny pressed up on her toes and whispered to me, “Not like that. Dance with me like you dance with them.”

My hand was a dark stain on her upper arm. Her short, shallow breaths fluttered against my collarbone, and I closed my eyes. I felt the tension in my shoulders slide away beneath her touch. I twirled her and swung her back close to me. I moved my hand to her hip. It felt different. Not meaty and powerful like the girls I had danced with before, but supple and elegant. Fragile. A bone carving moving rhythmically against my palm. Seductive rather than aggressive.

I focussed just on the music and on her. Her ankles were already patterned with dust. She dipped her head then rolled it back, revealing again the swath of smooth skin along her neck and collarbone. The length of her hair fell across the back of my hand as I held her and sent a charge up my entire arm. I felt myself growing hard, but I couldn't pull away from her. She turned to me, her shoulders against my chest, my hands on her waist, her blond hair beneath my chin. I breathed deep, taking in all of her that I could. Then the music stopped.

John stood by the radio, his hand still on the button. The eyes that had been on us now turned away.

“Penny.”

Her friends were still only a few feet from the doorway, having never moved from that spot.

“Penny, I think we should leave.”

On the way home that night, I slipped off the side of road to the spongy underbrush to masturbate. I spilled myself against the base of a withered pine tree, urgent and awkward, face flushed with the shame of the act and the memory of Penny's body pressed against mine.

The relief allowed me to finally think clearly, and I ran through scenarios in my mind of what would happen if she or her friends ever told anyone. Every black boy in Mississippi knew about Emmett Till, the fourteen-year-old from Chicago who had whistled at a white girl while visiting family here in Mississippi and was later found in the Tallahatchie River with a seventy-pound cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barb wire. I'd done far more than whistle. By the time I reached home, I was crazed with fear and furious at my carelessness. I worked the field the next day, glancing over my shoulder every few minutes, expecting to see a pickup appear carrying an angry father or brother. My distractedness did not go unnoticed, by either Graden or my father, though neither would ever guess at the cause.

Although it was never talked about, by then Papa knew that we were sneaking out at night — Graden to attend meetings and me to drink cheap gin — and he disapproved equally of both of us. He would glare at us each morning, daring us to look back at him. Then we would eat breakfast while Mama, Glenda, and Etta chatted cheerily to try to raise the mood, and Papa, Graden, and I were silent.

I stayed away from the gin shack for several weeks after the dance with Penny, but I avoided Graden's meetings as well. On the nights that he edged his way out of the bedroom and across the backyard, I would conjure Penny again, the two of us alone this time in the old shack, my hand sliding up beneath her dress, feeling the firmness of her milky inner thigh, hooking my fingers around the band of her cotton panties …

I returned to the gin shack after a while, but when I was there, every noise, every stray headlight, added an additional beat to my heart. Instead of dancing and laughing, I sat quietly in the corner, drinking. Before I would come home buzzed and slightly tired, but now I was coming home roaring drunk. Not tiptoeing but singing and shouting as I stumbled through the backyard and into the hallway, daring someone to say something. Once, I did not come home at all. I woke in the morning on the shack's sticky floor, ants crawling across my chest and legs.

Graden was outside the shack, sitting on a rock.

“Figured this is where you'd be.”

“You here to rescue me, then?”

“From what? Ants?” Graden laughed, and I brushed the ants and dirt off my clothes. I shielded my eyes from the brightness of the sun.

“I guess I must be a sight.”

“Sure are.”

“What'd you tell Papa?”

“They don't know you're gone. I had Etta fake sick. She wailed and moaned and begged for Mama and Papa to take her into town to see the doctor. She might be an actress, that one.”

“Glenda?”

“Well, she didn't think you were worth all the trouble, but she won't squeal. I hope you're ready for a long day of work. Papa's still expecting the field to get hoe'd, and I ain't doing your share.”

“You remember when I used to do yours? When you were sneaking off to school?”

Graden smiled. “I remember. But I'm not paying you back to come here. Told you this place was no good.”

“You just say that 'cause you don't know how to have fun. You can't dance like me.” I teased. I tapped out a few exaggerated steps in the heat, snapping my fingers and watching Graden laugh.

“You're going to be doing some real dancing if Papa finds out you slept here. You better hope Etta's the actress I think she is. Come on.”

He put his arm around my shoulder. We walked home together that day, and from then on Graden came to fetch me every Tuesday night, showing up at the shack after his own secret meetings were done, sometimes half-pulling me along the road as I stumbled beside him.

Each time we walked past the old pine that marked the halfway point between the shack and home, I thought about Penny Newcome. I didn't know anyone else who had danced with a white girl, and there was a little pride in that. I wanted to tell Graden, but I knew he would just think it was trouble.

When the trouble did come, it was not a father or a brother, as I had feared, but a boyfriend.

Mama was prepping her fruits and vegetables like she did at the end of every summer, preserving some in water and salt, pickling or stewing others, or turning some into jams. Glenda and Etta worked with her as she cut, peeled, pressed, and stirred, filling the kitchen with an overpowering sweetness. She slid a couple of dollars into my hand and asked me to go in to town to get her a few more jars. Mama sometimes got an extra dollar or two from the white families that she cleaned for, and she would hide the money away in a rolled-up apron in the cupboard, kept for just such expenses, a secret about as poorly kept as our late-night excursions.

I drove our old truck into town, parking it close to Greely's grocery store, where I found what I needed as quickly as possible. Greely was a stern-looking man, with a hard jaw and dark hair streaked with grey, face pock-marked from long-forgotten acne. He never took his eyes off me. I took the jars to the counter and slid the money towards him, careful to keep my eyes down. He handed me a bag in which to carry the jars, and I exited the store into the dusty street.

On the other side of the road, three young white men milled about outside the service station, drinking cokes and leaning against the freezer outside the door. One of them was talking to a slim, dark-haired girl in a flowered dress. Our eyes met, and I recognized her as one of Penny's reticent friends from the gin shack. She stopped mid-sip, the bottle held just short of her mouth. We stared at each other from across the street. The man she was talking to turned his head to see what she was looking at. I hugged the grocery bag high and tight to my chest with both arms, trying to cover my face, then headed towards the truck as quickly as I could without drawing any attention to myself.

I heard a shout coming from behind me, but kept walking. Heard the slap of running feet against the sun-baked ground, felt a hand on my shoulder, spinning me. I fell to the ground and the bag slipped from my hands, crashing in front of me. The three of them stood over me. I remember the smell of hair gel and cologne, the brightness of light reflected off the shards of broken glass jars, the tightening of skin at the back of my head as a hand pulled me by the hair. Breath in my face, hot and threatening, then a dull thud, and the taste of blood. Rustling of pant legs, flurry of boots, pain in my ribs, my back, my groin. My own hands in front of my face like shadows.