God'll Cut You Down (5 page)

I journey the length and breadth of the barbed wire. There’s no walk-in entrance. The vehicle entrance is bolted shut. No one comes out.

The shrieks of the hellhounds are faint and far behind. I park under a hunchbacked tree and pull my phone from my pocket. My thumb taps out a reverse-psychology e-mail. (
If he’s e-mailing me he can’t have been snooping just then.
)

Hi Jim,

I’m an Australian writer, in Mississippi at the moment, trying to contact you regarding Richard Barrett. Would you be able to get back to me, please?

All the best,

John

I drive off, twiddling the dial to American Family Radio. A man explains, point by point, why Mormons aren’t Christian, so no one should be fooled by presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

I curve into a Walmart to buy some groceries. A set of bulbous black twins, in matching pink denim, totter to the entrance in matching cherry high heels.

Jackson is roughly 80 percent black, 18 percent white, and 2 percent everyone else. The lack of everyone else really hits you. I noticed it while filming for
Race Relations
. It’s like if a tornado in Australia sucked away the Greeks, Italians, Asians, and Arabs and all that was left were the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants and Aboriginal Australians gawking at one another.

I feel a tickle in my pocket.

Hello John,

I will be on the air in the morning and would be happy to speak with you live. I’ll try to reach you by Skype in the morning between seven and nine a.m. CST.

Yours Truly,

Jim Giles

The white separatist has done what the Jewish writer would probably have done and made danger into a show. I go home and, riding my luck, make some calls to the answering machines of the lawyers Precious and Chokwe, and the DA.

Then I read about another case Chokwe’s working on—the Scott sisters, who sixteen years ago were sentenced to double life for armed robbery. Chokwe saw racism and prized a pardon out of the governor just this month. The governor placed one condition on their release: Gladys had to agree to have her kidney scooped out, to be then sewn up into her sick sister, Jamie. This is being reported as “touching” in the Mississippi media and “erghh” in all non-Mississippi press.

It’s seven a.m. and I poke my face out the window of my room. Jackson still insists on being sunny enough to burn your eyes while cold enough to wear gloves.

“If it pleases the court, this is Jim Giles, and you’re listening to
Radio Free Mississippi
,” Jim announces live from my laptop. “I have an inquiry from someone. I’ve mentioned him to you before.”

“What!” I say, turning from the window.

“His name is John Safran. I’ve some concerns about him. And if he’s listening, well, I’ll just air them now. ‘Well-known for pranks and indelicate handling.’ I believe this is from his Wikipedia page.”

Uh-oh.

“So, this might be an attempt on his part to make me look bad,” Jim continues. “John, that’s real hard to do. I do a good job with that myself. I don’t really need any help from you. I’m not so much like probably anybody you’ve dealt with. I’m certainly no Richard Barrett.

“Barrett was not a legitimate voice for the local people here in Mississippi. I’ve long suspected him of being a police informer. Something
that—John, I hope I don’t hurt your feelings—but honestly, I think that’s probably what you are as well, John—a police informer.”

He pauses.

“Let me just break this to you delicately if you are listening now. I do not use the
J
word here because it confers upon those folks two things I don’t think they deserve. That is victim status and a religion. Rather, I use the term
Israeli
, stripping them of both their victim status and their religion. It’s my argument here, John, that Israelis are first and foremost a foreign and alien race of people.

“And that’s who you are.

“John, don’t get your feelings hurt. I’ll still be nice and respectful to you if you want to talk with me. You can ask me a question and I’ll answer. And you can chop it up and put it out there and say, ‘This is the redneck from Mississippi I interviewed. Don’t you just love the way they talk down there in Mississippi?’

“John, I’m used to people making fun of me. Thinking low of me. Thinking I’m kind of stupid and ignorant.”

I lean forward, hunching over my computer on the little coffee table.

“Okay. I am gonna go get some orange juice and then I will try to reach Mr. Safran if he’s reachable. Mr. Safran, if you are listening, I am about to try to reach you as soon as I get through getting some orange juice.”

There’s dead air. Then a slurp.

“All right, let’s give Mr. Safran a ring-a-ling,” he says.

My laptop starts to bleep and bloop.

“Ha-ha,” Jim says. “I think he has got a gun and a baseball bat over his shoulder.”

I forgot about my Skype profile picture. I’m Photoshopped as the Bear Jew from
Inglourious Basterds
.

“Good morning, Mr. Safran,” Jim says, like a coyote feeling out another coyote who has wandered onto his prairie. And for all I know he may be dressed as a coyote—his video is flicked off.

“Is this one of your spoofs?” he asks.

“No, no. That’s why I should tell you my connection to Richard Barrett. Because it’ll explain why I’m calling you.” I take him through the whole
Race Relations
story, how I announced at the Spirit of America Day that Richard had African DNA.

“That’s funny.” Jim laughs. “That’s actually funny.” He takes a sip of juice and laughs some more. “You might have a best seller on your hands with your book, given the market out there. There seems to be a hearty appetite for this sort of thing.”

Jim starts one of his trademark pauses, which make you think his equipment has broken, or yours.

“Richard Barrett, even in death, lives on,” Jim says finally. “And so my concern about your focus is he continues to haunt and do what he did best. And that is tar and tarnish anyone who is—and I hate, I don’t use the
W
word here, I use
European
.
W
is just . . . I have concluded that
W
, to use the
W
word, is just too frightening for most people.”

Jim claims he’s no Richard Barrett, but he can’t come out and say what he means, either.

I tell Jim that there was something that didn’t stack up about the Spirit of America Day. Not everyone seemed in on the deal.

“He was forever doing that,” Jim says. “That was his MO. All geared around young white males, too. He was forever clinging to young white males. And one of them got charged with . . . some kind of bomb crime.”

“Oh really? Who is that?” Immediately I scribble down
Bomb Crime
.

“I’ve forgotten the boy’s name, but . . . And I knew another young boy that was associated with him, very troubled boy, and yeah, he is just, you know, the whole thing with Barrett—nothing smacked of wholesome, he was anything but wholesome. Richard never failed to make Europeans look stupid and goofy. Richard Barrett was tampering with something that was very important to the lives and fortunes of the people who live here in Mississippi in a hurtful way. He has made my tasks harder.”

“Is your family from Mississippi?” I ask.

Jim pauses.

“I am a very open and direct person; there is nothing that I shirk from talking about.”

Jim tells me how he got to be a white separatist living in a trailer.

One thing about poor folk, you don’t always know about your past. My father was illegitimate. He didn’t know who his father was. So any kind of knowledge certainty is cut off there. I’m pretty sure my father and his mother were born in Wayne County, Mississippi. And I’m pretty sure my mother’s parents were born in Mississippi. But I couldn’t begin to tell you who my people are beyond those simple facts. And I’m not even sure about that. That’s the plight of people who aren’t landed aristocracy. I heard my mother say not long ago they live hand-to-mouth. They struggle in their life and they do good to put food on the table. So they’re really ill-equipped when it comes to organizing themselves politically.

I live in a trailer. I have got a barn behind my trailer. That’s just a barn for my cows. I’ve got four Jerseys. Three Jersey cows and a Jersey bull. That’s where I keep my puppies, under there. I have ten bluetick coonhounds. I have two puppies I am not counting in that number. I’ve got six Great Pyrenees.

One route to my home is the road where my mother’s mother lived. There is squalor there that you won’t see anywhere. There is nothing that looks any worse in Haiti.

I’ve been coming down here to this farm ever since I was about seven or eight years old, when my grandparents first bought this property and built the house. My mother lives next to me, in the two-story house that I speak of. Her home is a very nice home.

I had a pretty regular childhood. They integrated the schools when I was about in the fifth grade. My recollection when I was a kid in school, the classrooms, the hallways, they were quiet places. A school is a place
where you go and study and it’s supposed to be quiet. Slowly after integration everything seems to be very loud. And I think that is a function of Africans just being basically, you know . . . their natural tendencies come out—they are loud people.

My father was killed in a car wreck when I was eleven.

I talked about Madison Avenue before. After I finished school that was the job I sought and obtained. I was working for IBM, the computer company, in the capacity of a systems engineer, which is somewhat of a technical sales job.

Anytime you would open your mouth in New York they would look at you kind of funny. They would say, “Where are you from?” and draw attention to it. Some did it in a friendly, nice way, and others were rather malicious in their views of Mississippians.

Aged nineteen, I went to Paris for one year. I was studying French at the Sorbonne. Mitterrand had just been elected, and I recall running through the streets of Paris going from one bonfire to another, because they didn’t like the policies he enacted as president. They turned over those little French cars and set them on fire. But we don’t have that kind of activist group here in Mississippi.

You ask about my wife. I have spoken about all of this on the radio in a very open way. There is nothing that I don’t talk about. My lack of a woman. My ex-wife. My mother. My ex-friends, who have abandoned me because of my political views.

My wife was a beautiful Swedish-German woman that I met when I was working for IBM in New York. And being a young, insensitive husband, I screwed that relationship up. That was my fault.

We were married a year.

Did I have an affair? No, no. Really, a lot of it had to do with us moving multiple times with IBM and her ending up in Atlanta, unhappy, and me being insensitive to her unhappiness. Those young brides, there’s a make-or-break point in there where you have to treat them right. And if you don’t act right, you can lose your girl. And I didn’t act right, so I lost my girl.

I have run for Congress three times. I was ignored by the media. But I did capture people’s attention with the large trailer I pulled around. Had the Confederate battle flag on it. This was when I was arrested for pointing my finger at that black cop. She said I pointed a loaded .357 at her, when in point of fact all I did is point my finger at her.

I did not have a good showing at the polling booth.

I didn’t move here into this trailer until 1996, when my grandfather got so old he couldn’t see well enough to go to the doctor and I had to come home and start shuttling him and my grandmother, really, basically, taking care of them. And that turned out to be a fifteen-year, sixteen-year job.

My grandparents have both now died. The death of my grandfather is a rather recent event. And now I have to go out and get a real job. I existed off of their pensions. I was able to stay here and care for them. They didn’t have to go to a nursing home. That was really my job in large part, even though I have engaged in organic farming here and I have done Internet radio.

I am working now on finding another girl. I have put in a concerted effort—I have joined dating sites and I am diligently pursuing an attractive female as we speak. But honestly there are two things holding me back. Number one, I have very high taste in regard to women. Number two, I have a lot of baggage in regard to all this public speaking. Most pretty girls, most people in general, I don’t think necessarily want to be associated with somebody who is so out there and so vocal on such a controversial subject as race.

I soon will be fifty-two years old.

Jim begins dialing a number, live on air.

“Well, if it’s meant to be a straight book,” Jim says, “and you are looking for somebody who actually knew Barrett, I have a friend in
particular, to this day, who sings Richard Barrett’s praises. And I don’t understand him and I am a little, to be honest with you, worried about him. His name is Joe McNamee. One second, Mr. Safran.”

Jim gets through to Joe.

“Joe. I am on air now,” Jim tells him. “I have got this writer from Australia, and he is writing a book, so he says, about Richard Barrett. And he is Jewish. He is not a friend of . . . He is not a, you know . . . He is not one of us, Joe, is all I can tell you! But he comes across as real nice and he has got a reputation for playing pranks on people. What would you have to say to a Jewish book writer on Richard Barrett, who is in Mississippi right now?”

“Well, I got nothing about . . . I got nothing against Jews,” says Joe, “other than what they are doing to us over here. Me and Richard was long-running buddies. Richard was really my attorney.”

“Why did you need an attorney?” I ask.

“Trying to have my voice, my opinion,” Joe says. “And now’days they claim you can’t say nothing.”

Joe says he struck trouble fighting to keep the Confederate flag at Ole Miss football games.