Authors: Tracy Sugarman
“Hot off the fire, Mr. Luke,” she said. “And the cream is fresh from the barn.”
Luke lifted his cup. “Dick, you and I gotta talk. You been out in those fields? More like bakelite than soil. It’s gonna kill us if we don’t get rain,” he growled, “and soon.” He turned and faced Mendelsohn, his face impassive. “Haven’t seen you in weeks. Thought you would have left since they never did find those missing kids.” For the first time he ventured a brief, satisfied smile. “I haven’t won my bet yet, but my hole card still looks good. You gonna hang around to write about the labor organizing these pinkos are starting that’s gonna break our balls?”
Mendelsohn put down his coffee. “Not my beat, Mr. Claybourne. I’m heading back to New York this weekend and just stopped to say goodbye to you and Mrs. Claybourne.”
“You could write a story about this goddam heat. I don’t think it’s been this hot for this long since your Hebrews built those pyramids.” He slumped dejectedly back in his chair. “Nothin’s growin’ out there, Dick. If we make a crop it’ll be a large miracle. And now my Nigras are talkin’ union! Union! And we haven’t had a rain longer than a piss in three months.”
“You’re hurting worse than you had to, Luke,” Perkins said. “You should have invested in those automated sprinklers when I told you to. No way of surviving this kind of drought without automation. You’d have to hire on twenty times the hands you have now to keep those plants healthy.”
Luke exploded from his chair. “And what about the forty families I got to feed now, for Christ’s sakes?”
Willy rose and came over to refill Luke’s coffee. “Darling, don’t get so upset.”
“I’m not upset. I’m worried is all.” The querulousness had retreated from his voice. Looking deeply troubled, he returned to his seat. “I owe it to them, Richard. They’ve been with our family from the get-go. Nothin’ to do with union. Everything to do with responsibility. My daddy taught me about what they owe me and what I owe them. It’s sad, but the money’s not there for them and the machines. End of story.” He turned to the reporter. “What do you know about this union thing?”
Mendelsohn raised his hands. “Never heard about it till last week when I was down in Jackson at the FBI office. All I heard was rumors that a union might grow out of the Freedom Democratic Party that’s been organizing around the state. The talk in Jackson was that it might start up here in the Delta. The whole history of organizing sharecroppers in Mississippi never got off the ground in the ’30s when the AFL tried. The guess in Jackson is that, if it happens, the SNCC kid Jimmy Mack, who’s leading the voting drive, might get involved. When I asked him if it was true—” He fumbled for his notebook. “Mack said, ‘When we get the vote we’ll elect people who will bring justice to the Delta. My job is to make that happen.’”
“Son of a bitch! I knew there was gonna be trouble the minute I saw Mack coming on to my place. Said he was going to see Lottie and Justin and meet some of their friends, Willy. ‘Just a little organizing meeting,’ he said. Yeah. A little meeting to castrate us. What are they lookin’ for, Mendelsohn?”
“In Jackson they’re saying a dollar fifteen an hour. That’s the minimum wage. Is that a lot?” The question was asked innocently.
“Is that a lot?” His jaw tight, Claybourne glared at him. “Do you have any idea what folks get down here for workin’ in the fields?” In exasperation he turned to Perkins. “Can you believe it, Dick? A dollar fifteen! That’s going to hurt the Nigras. Hurt them bad. In the end they’ll be the ones to suffer. Help me explain it to this journalist from New York so he understands.”
Perkins nodded. “Luke’s got forty tenant families, Mendelsohn. Except for the littlest kids, all of them go to the fields. Each one’s got to get paid. Only Senator Tilden’s got more tenant families than Luke.”
Willy intervened softly. “Luke’s worried we’ll have to let a lot of them go if the farm hands organize, Ted. A dollar fifteen an hour is a whole lot more than seven dollars a day. And we have long days down here in the Delta.”
Perkins added, “That’s an arithmetic that looks staggering to folks here in Shiloh, Mr. Mendelsohn. And if you’re not mechanized, you depend on those huge numbers of stoop labor.”
Luke shook his head in annoyance. “They’re not stoop labor. They’re people, families. And I’d have to run twenty of them off my place.” He looked at Willy. “And Jimmy Mack’s family among them. I’d hate like hell to do it, too. What’s going to happen to those families? Just forget them? Christ. I’ve known most of those folks all my life.”
Perkins’s voice was sympathetic. “It’s not personal, Luke.” He turned to Mendelsohn. “The old plantation system created a monster of cheap, unskilled labor. Without it, those fields out there would still be swamp and scrub, and the country would be importing cotton from all over the world instead of exporting it. Luke’s daddy got rich on it. And some of us have done very well enjoying the fruits of all that labor. It was a system that worked then. But it’s got to change now or it’ll strangle the South.”
Luke snorted, “Well, thank you, Dr. Perkins, for that enlightening sociological analysis. How come none of us rednecks who’ve been living with this exploitive system all our lives seem to have your remarkable insights? After all, you must know something we don’t since you came from the great cotton state of Colorado!”
“Stop that, Lucas.” Willy’s voice was like a slap. “Richard was simply commenting on what he’s seen. You make it sound like he’s attacking you.”
Claybourne’s angry silence seemed to fill the room. Mendelsohn stood up and extended his hand to Luke. “I’ve got to get back to New York, where there are no cotton fields. I’ll tell them what I’ve learned, Mr. Claybourne.” He shook hands with Willy. “Thanks for the coffee and the good conversation, Willy.”
As Perkins rose to say goodbye, the front door slammed and a shrill woman’s voice called out, “Willy? Luke? Are you here?” They could hear footsteps in the hallway and a distraught Emily burst into the room.
Frightened, Willy exclaimed, “Em! What in the world . . . ?”
Shaken and pale, Emily stopped at the door, struggling to speak. “It’s Bobby Joe.” The words were like a cry.
Luke strode over and brought her to the couch. “It’s all right, Em. Take a deep breath. Now, what about Bobby Joe?”
She licked her lips and cleared her throat, her frightened eyes on Luke’s concerned face. “Mama says he’s been arrested.” Her eyes darted to Mendelsohn and then to Willy. “Willy, mama said it was the FBI that came and took him away. ‘For questioning,’ she said.”
Willy was silent, but Luke spoke sharply. “About what, for Christ’s sake? Questioning about what, Em?”
She began to weep. “Something about those three civil rights workers.”
“Can I use your phone, Willy?” Mendelsohn crossed to the telephone table. “I’ll call an agent I know down at the FBI in Jackson and check it out.”
Everyone strained to hear as they watched him scribble notes, speaking at length on the phone. When he hung up, he looked at the distraught Emily. “I’m sorry, Miss Kilbrew. Your brother was picked up as a material witness to murder. He’s being held in Jackson at a federal facility.”
“Murder? Bobby Joe? That’s ridiculous!” Luke’s voice was hard. “What are you talking about, Mendelsohn?”
“It’s not me, Mr. Claybourne.” He held up his notes. “It’s Mr. Hoover’s FBI. They say that someone in the Klan finally talked. And this morning they found the three kids.”
Willy’s eyes widened. She put a comforting arm around Emily who was sobbing now. When she spoke her voice was thin and quiet. “Where, Ted?”
“Buried in an earthen dam in Neshoba County. They’d been executed, Mr. Claybourne.” He turned and left the room, nearly colliding with a startled Eula. In another moment he was running on the gravel to his car.
The call from Max was waiting when he got back to his room. “Tell me everything, Teddy. Hoover’s office is trumpeting about how FBI vigilance broke this case. That sure as hell will have to be proved, but meanwhile we’ve got the inside track on what it all means to the blacks, the whites, and the whole country. It’s your narrative, baby, and I want you to wrap it the way you see it, hear it, touch it. James Chaney’s funeral is early next week in Meridian, and I want you there. This story has legs and it’s going to go on for a long time. But I want the heart of this story. And I’ve got my best guy to tell it.”
Jimmy lay still, his eyes tracing the pale yellow under the edge of the shade as it started to brighten. Almost real dawn. His hand moved gently along the soft curve of Eula’s back, and he felt her stir.
“Jimmy,” she murmured and rolled over to face him. Her hand found his face and pulled it to her. “Jimmy.” Her breath was sweet. Inches apart, they lingered, searching each other’s faces, pleased with what they saw. Without a word she moved into his arms. Jimmy, Jimmy. The dream had scared her, and she was not going to share it. He kissed her. A long kiss and the tip of her tongue aroused him. His hand moved to her breast and he looked at her. She was smiling, and he answered her smile with a shake of his head. “Oh, baby, I want to. I always want to with you. But I can’t. I’ve got to get out of here. It’s almost seven.” She took his hand from her breast and kissed it. “There’s more where that came from,” she whispered. She sat up and reached for her robe.
“You best get out of here before the rooster wakes the Claybournes,” she said. She watched him climb into his jeans and pull the T-shirt over his shoulders. What good shoulders. She grinned and pointed to the door. “Time for my rooster to get out of the hen house.”
He leaned back against the door. She could see his troubled face in the light that began to flood the room. “We didn’t finish what we talked about last night, baby. I want you to be at the organizing meeting at the school on Sunday. It’s really important to me that you come.”
Eula crossed from the bed and stood before him. “You know I can’t, Jimmy. If it wasn’t for Mrs. Claybourne, I would have been thrown off the plantation already, just for registering to vote. If Luke Claybourne found out I was at a union-organizing meeting, I would be out of this job. And Willy Claybourne would back him up.”
“But I need you. I need your support, ” His voice was insistent. “Everybody in the Sanctified Quarter knows we’re a couple. How will it look if my girl doesn’t show up at the most important meeting of the summer?”
“I can’t help it, darling. I need this job. And I’m hoping the Claybournes will help me out with my college expenses if I get into Delta State.”
He put his hands on her arms, his head touching hers. His voice was a supplication. “But can’t you see, baby, that this organizing thing is bigger than that? This is the whole future of the Delta. Maybe even Mississippi. Maybe even the whole South. We have to show solidarity or this won’t work. It’s risky for everybody. But sometimes we have to take risks to make any gains.” When she remained silent, he found himself angrier than he ever thought he could be with this precious woman. “Christ, you knew James Chaney. You knew he was out there somewhere, taking risks. He’s dead, Eula!”
She flinched, and tears filled her eyes. “I pray for James. And I so believe in what you are all trying to do.” Her eyes were beseeching him. “I love you, Jimmy. But I just can’t do it with you.”
Unbidden, the hateful words spilled out from him. “Do you want to be somebody’s house nigger for the rest of your life?”
She closed her eyes as if he had slapped her. “No, of course not. That’s why I want to go to college so that what happened to my mama won’t happen to me.”
“But you going to college just helps one person, honey. You. Organizing is going to help all of us.”
Eula wiped away the tears with an impatient hand. “No. You’re wrong. My going to college is so I can help our people, all of us, which is what I plan to do.”
Jimmy gently wiped away a final tear. How much he loved this woman, and what kind of craziness were they living in? He blinked hard so as not to weep himself. “And what about us? You and me?”
Her voice trembled. “We’ll just have to see.”
He opened the door to leave and then stopped. “You know I love you, Eula May. I have right from the beginning. And one day I want us to be married. I want you to be the mother of my children.”
Through new tears, she struggled to answer. “I love you, too, Jimmy. And I’m very proud of what you’re doing. But I’m not ready.”
“When will you be, Eula?”
Her voice was small and forlorn. “I don’t know. All I know is not now.”
The days leading to the mass meeting were melting away, and Jimmy was in a dizzying rush to put everything in place; calls to the preachers, meetings with the nervous volunteers, strategy sessions with SNCC headquarters, establishing a minimal security for the Baptist school. And then this stupid arrest, which could shatter everything!
Jimmy was furious with himself. He should have known better. Hell, he did know better, and he wasn’t thinking. Trying to build support for the upcoming strike with blacks on the senator’s plantation, for Christ’s sake. Of course the police would be watching. Jimmy glanced at Dale Billings and muttered, “Sorry, brother.” They stood rigid, blinking in the light of the police car as the two officers stepped from the car and approached them, hands on their holsters. The taller one said, “Put your fucking hands on the hood and keep them there. Now!” They leaned over the hood as he patted them down. “They’re clean,” he said.
The shorter policeman pulled out his notebook. In a soft voice he said, “All right, boys, give me your names.”
“Dale Billings.”
“Mack. James Mack.”
The taller one grinned. “Jimmy Mack! No shit!” He pulled Mack by the shirt and hustled him roughly into the back seat of the cruiser. Very deliberately, the other officer finished his writing, then turned to Dale,
“Get in the back seat. You’re both under arrest for trespassing.” The tall cop watched them in his rear view mirror. “You niggers so dumb you go agitating on the Tildon plantation?” Jimmy groaned and closed his eyes and Dale stared straight ahead. “Luther,” the tall one said. “This is the Jimmy Mack that’s the organizer. The organizer!” He hooted. “Just another dumb fucking nigger.”