Embracing Darkness (45 page)

“Who would do such a thing?” said Father Poole, unable to find any other words.

“None of the men are talking, Father. In fact, they’re all providing each other with alibis, saying that when they left the barracks at 8:00 on the night in question, Private Gunther was asleep in his bed. They were the ones who found him dead the next morning. A knife was in his hand, and his penis was… .” The sergeant paused for a moment, cleared his throat, and continued. “His penis was cut off and shoved halfway down his throat.”

Sister Ignatius gasped, but Father Poole remained silent. He only closed his eyes.

“We’ve ruled it a suicide,” added the sergeant.

Father Poole put down the letter and turned away from the Bensons’ front door, sitting hunched over in the antique chair in which Sister Ignatius had sat just a short while before. Just then he heard a thump upstairs, which told him that Jessie was still in her room. That sound was that of General Lee’s jumping off her bed. The two were getting ready to come downstairs. Suddenly Father Poole felt an overwhelming sadness come over him. He decided to go into the kitchen, for only a few kisses from Ellen would dispel this abrupt melancholy.

Leaning his elbows against his thighs, he grunted as he got up. Entering the kitchen, he again dropped his wallet, this time not bothering to pick it up. Lying unconscious on the floor was Sister Ignatius.

“ELLEN!” screamed Phineas, rushing to her side. He picked her up as if she weighed almost nothing and took her into the living room.

Jessie ran downstairs faster than she’d ever done before. She knew something was wrong as soon as she’d heard Father Poole shout. General Lee followed hard on her heels. In the living room she saw Father Poole trying to revive Sister Ignatius by slapping her cheeks rather hard. Jessie began to sob.

Father Poole turned to her quickly and said, “Go in the kitchen and get me a cold cloth.”

Jessie and the General raced into the kitchen, where she grabbed a dishrag and ran it under the cold tap. As she turned to leave, she saw Father Poole’s wallet and its contents on the floor. One thing in particular caught her eye. It was an opened letter whose seal reminded her of that on a letter she’d received from Rex two days before they heard he’d been killed. She had never showed it to Father Poole or Sister Ignatius.

Rex’s letter read as follows:

Dear Jessie,

I miss you, Theo, Father Fin, and Sis. I need to air my frustrations, and I don’t want Fin and Sis to know, since they went through so much to get me here. I hate Biloxi and don’t know whether I want to stay. The guys are all teasing me about my having tits and a voice higher than their sisters’. At first it was just giggling and pointing, but now they’ve gone so far as shitting on my pillow and putting dead animals in my locker. Just this morning I found a dead possum wrapped up in my blanket that I kept stored on the top shelf.

They’re all pretty mean, but no one nearly as mean as the ringleader. This asshole’s got a real hold on the others. In fact, I think he was the one who put the possum in my locker. He’s mean enough to hurt animals, I’m sure. His name is Private Zachary Black. If anything happens to me, remember his name.

Pray for me.

Love always,

Rex

Twenty-One
Broken Angels,
Broken Hearts
 

The newspaper came late to the Howell residence on the morning of February 25, 1942. Marshall Howell was proprietor of the largest pig farm in Mississippi this side of Jackson, or at least that’s what he claimed to his neighbors and customers. It was a title, whether accurate or not, that the semi-affluent Negro took seriously.

At the time young men were enlisting or being drafted left and right. People were taking this new and more widespread world war seriously. To most Americans it was no longer simply Europe’s problem. Now, with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Americans were united as never before. Mothers and fathers said goodbye to their sons as they marched off to war, proud that their own flesh and blood would be defending the cause of liberty.

Marshall Howell, who had no kin to speak of, found himself in a unique position. With the war raging, the forty-eight-year-old had less competition from his fellow agriculturists, whose young farm hands, whether sons, nephews, grandsons, or hired help, were leaving in droves to go to war.

Somewhere Mr. Howell had read a statement by President Roosevelt, citing America’s unshakable determination and unity in a time of war. FDR’s speeches galvanized a nation and gave such hope to people that the United States once again felt invincible. This was all good news for Mr. Howell.

With so many white farmers now shorthanded, Marshall Howell thought that he was poised to become the highest profit-turner in Hinds County, or at least the wealthiest Negro in those parts. Regardless of what transpired, however, he would continue slopping the pigs in the morning, reading his paper over coffee and cornbread, and then going back out to clean the troughs and tend to the pigpens.

He liked to read but hadn’t always known how, since he never attended school. At age thirty-one, while shining shoes in Jackson, Marshall would kneel in front of white folks who read their newspapers to pass the time while he polished and buffed their shoes. He’d constantly turn his attention away from his work to study the words on the paper held in front of him. Over the years he was able to learn a couple of their sounds, and he soon got so engrossed that his buffing would slow down, nearly to just resting the brush on top of the customer’s foot.

While shining a Mr. Chambers’ shoes, Marshall paused to decipher a few letters on the front page of his cigar-smoking, heavy-set customer. He brought his eyes to within inches of the newspaper and tried to put together the sounds of three letters to make one word: N-O-T. He even went so far as to say it out loud.

Chambers not only heard this but also noticed that Marshall was no longer shining his shoes, for which he’d already paid a nickel.

He pulled the journal away violently, something Marshall was used to, since this wasn’t the first time he’d been distracted by trying to read a client’s newspaper.

“B-beggin’ your pardon, sir!” Marshall Howell said.

The fat white man just grunted, flicked a large cigar ash on top of his foot, and said in a nasty voice, “You call that a shine? You missed a spot. Now do it over! And since you’re taking up so much of my time, I’ll be wantin’ a refund of two cents on that nickel.”

Although this wasn’t the first time Marshall had been scolded for taking his mind off his work to read a client’s newspaper, it was the last.

Marshall Howell subsequently took up work with his dead father’s ex-employer, Mr. Orville Smith. He and his wife were getting on in years and needed someone to maintain their mansion, along with maids Betsy and Selma, whose grandparents, like Marshall’s, had been slaves on that same plantation. The Smiths had given up the cotton business a few years back and were looking forward to retirement. Marshall agreed to help with upkeep of the grounds and house if Mrs. Smith would teach him how to read. Having been a school teacher until she met and married Orville in 1913, the childless Velma Smith enjoyed taking Marshall under her wing. Although she hadn’t taught grammar school in nearly three decades, it felt good to tutor someone whom she could mold into a better-educated person, someone who would be better off than he was before once she was done with him.

Although Marshall considered himself an avid reader, writing was not his forte. He spelled fairly well, but always seemed to have trouble wording things. The proposed sign for his business was as much a testament to this truth as any you could find.

“MARSHALL HOWELL’S FAMOUS PIG STOCK! ANY HOG OF ANY SIZE! PORK! SAUSAGE! BACON! PIG’S FEET! I TAG THE EAR AND RAISE THE LITTLE BUGGERS UNTIL THEY’RE NICE AND FAT AND THEN… .”
That’s
too
much,
son!
he thought to himself. He put the sheet of paper aside and started again with a blank one. As he chewed on the eraser of his pencil, there came a thump at his front door, which caused him to lose all concentration. When Marshall opened the door, to his astonishment no one was there. Something caught his eye, however, on the stoop below. It was the
Jackson
Daily
Gazette
that he’d always received by the time he sat down for breakfast at six in the morning. Now it was now almost nine, and the paper had just arrived.

“Mus’ be a new boy,” Marshall muttered to himself as he bent down slowly to pick it up, not wanting to wrench his back as he’d been known to do when he leaned forward too fast. Returning to the kitchen, he opened the newspaper and scanned the headline: “
FDR
AUTHORIZES
INTERNMENT
OF
JAPANESE
AMERICANS
WITH
EXEC.
ORDER
9066
.”

“Jap bastards,” Marshall thought as he turned the page with one hand while simultaneously wiping a few beads of sweat from his brow.

The air was unseasonably warm for February and Marshall began talking to his overweight tabby, a habit he found hard to break for someone who lived as isolated a life as he did.

“Gonna be a hot one, Jethro.” he said to the cat, who walked as casually as most cats do, and rubbed the side of his body against his master’s shins.

“
WARNING
ISSUED
AGAIN
FOR
CALIFORNIA
COAST.
DANGER
OF
INVASION
FROM
JAPANESE
FLEET.
”

“Sons o’ bitches!” He turned another page. “
EXEC.
ORDER
9066
” (continued from front page):

WHEREAS the successful prosecution of the war requires every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage, . . . I hereby authorize and direct the Secretary of War… to prescribe military areas in such places and of such extent as he may determine, from which any or all persons may be excluded, and with such respect to which, the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave shall be subject to whatever restrictions the Secretary of War or the appropriate Military Commander may impose in his discretion. The Secretary of War is hereby authorized to provide for residents of any such area who are excluded therefrom, such transportation, food, shelter, and other accommodations as may be necessary… to accomplish the purpose of this order.

Forget
the
Japs
, thought Marshall.
Folks
like
me
needs
protection
from
the
fuckin’
Ku
Klux
Klan
.

On the next page something caught his eye. It was an article that had nothing to do with the war but instead with the Army barracks down in Biloxi. He read the headline: “
DEATH
OF
PRIVATE
AT
BILOXI
RULED
SUICIDE
.” Marshall Howell then read the article twice. As he finished it, he sighed. “Poo’ bastard. Ain’t no one deserves to die like dat
.
”

He drank the rest of his coffee and walked over to the counter to pour himself another cup. As he did so, he heard his front door open. He spun around, startled by the creak of the door hinge. Although he was near-sighted, he could make out that it was a tall white man. The blotches of dark on his face told Marshall that the man was dirty.

The stranger panted heavily as he shut the door behind him. Marshall kept his back pressed against the edge of the counter and slowly shuffled sideways away from his unwelcome guest.

“YOU!” the stranger said angrily. “What you got to eat around here?”

The white man walked slowly past Marshall and entered the living room.

“Now see here!” Marshall said. “I ain’t got nuttin’ for you! You head on outta here now, or I be callin’ the police!” This was an idle threat because he didn’t have a telephone. “You hearin’ me, son?” Marshall said more loudly, followed by a brief meow from Jethro.

The intruder had disappeared for the moment. Marshall then heard a faint sound coming from his bedroom, whose door lay just beyond the living room. It sounded like breaking glass. Mr. Howell walked faster toward his bedroom, determined to confront the stranger. As he reached the threshold, he heard the sound of a gun’s being cocked. An arm reached out from the blackness of the room and pointed the muzzle between Marshall’s eyes. The thief held one of Marshall’s pillow cases in his other hand, and Marshall could tell there were some items stuffed inside it.

“I’m making my way north,” the stranger said. “I need money. You got any money, boy?”

“I-I ain’t got none about.”

Now that he was closer to him, Marshall was able to make out the young man’s clothes. They appeared to be a dark green uniform, possibly military. A name was emblazoned in large print on the stranger’s breast pocket. Being an avid reader, Marshall Howell wanted to read what it said. He was able to make out the words “U.S. Army,” and before the gun discharged, instantly killing Mr. Howell, he was able to make out the name on the stranger’s uniform: BLACK.

Father Poole got up to refill his coffee cup and came back to the table in the Benson kitchen to read his newspaper dated February 25, 1942. Sister Ignatius sat in her chair completely still save for blinking, which even then she did only after long intervals of staring into empty space.

Coffee in hand, the priest collapsed noisily into his chair on purpose, hoping that would cause Ellen to snap at him to be more careful. He’d even settle for something along the lines of, “Don’t be such a clumsy ass, Phineas. You’re just as bad as the kids when you’re not watching what you’re doing.”

Phineas longed for her to be her old self, either of her old selves in fact. He was desperate to see her come out of her catatonic stupor, even for just a moment. She’d been this way ever since they’d found out about Rex’s death a few days before.