Nobody Said Amen (39 page)

“Willy, this is Shiloh, not Gethsemane. We didn’t break all the eggs. You know that. What’s done is done.”

Her anger could not be leashed. “The black toilets are done, Luke! The black water fountains are done! The all-white juries are done!” Her voice rose, and tears were brimming in her eyes. “Segregation is not done!”

He waited for the storm to pass. “Wil, you were raised on a farm, you’re married to a farmer. We both know there are seasons.” He spoke gently. “The land’s got to be prepared. Plants got to be healthy. And you need patience and time, or you never make a crop.”

She stowed the damp handkerchief in her purse. “Some of us think time is all wore out, Luke.” She moved to the door. “And how long do you expect human beings to be patient?”

“As much time as it takes. It’s sure as hell not time yet to elect a black man to represent us, particularly, if the black man is Jimmy Mack. Remember, this is Magnolia County, Mississippi!”

“It’s not about what we choose to remember. There’s a whole lot I choose to forget. But right now I’m going to the Mack rally.” She stepped past him and held open the door. “I wish you would come with me.”

“Don’t do this, Willy.”

“It’s late, Luke. It’s very late.”

As if rooted, he watched her turn at the step, hesitate, and look back at him. He watched as she went down the flagstone walk and started the Chevy. The sound of the motor roused him and he stepped to the stoop.

“Willy!”

She eased her foot from the gas and watched him close and lock the door and start down the walk toward her.

Mendelsohn and Jimmy Mack peered from the wings of the stage. Ted touched him with his elbow. “They’re coming in, Jimmy,” he said, his eyes bright with the moment, “and about a third of them are white. Not shabby at all!”

Jimmy looked down at the 200 seats in the auditorium. “They’re filling the last rows first. How come?”

“There hasn’t been a rally for a black candidate in this town since Reconstruction. They’re not sure if they want to stay, want to be seen. It takes balls for a lot of them just to show up. ”

Jimmy riffled nervously through his notes. Would Willy Claybourne really come? Eula, sitting there in the middle, calmly erect, had said she would: “I know Willy.” Still uncertain, his eyes restlessly searched the filling seats as the evening slowly unreeled.

Fifteen minutes before the meeting would start, Ted saw that the rows were nearly filled. Only the first three had empty seats. There was a buoyant feeling in the room. Friends called to friends, and there was a pleasant murmur of comity as blacks often found themselves seated, remarkably, next to whites, and whites next to blacks, all waiting for the festivities to start.

Ted spotted her first. He expelled his breath, not realizing how concerned he’d felt. “Damn! She looks great!” He grinned as Jimmy stepped closer to see. “Willy is here!” Two steps behind, Luke followed, his face stolid. Ted moved quickly from the wings and extended his hand to Willy. “You really did come!” He grinned broadly. “I should have known. Jimmy said you would.”

At the top of the steps she hesitated, then cocked her head, challenging him with a defiant half-smile. “You don’t look like the others.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“I said you don’t look like the others.”

“I’m just like the others,” he said, his eyes twinkling. “I’m twenty years older, but I’m just like the others.”

She stepped closer. “Take off your sunglasses. I’ve got questions to ask you, and . . . ”

“And I want to see your eyes!” She stepped into his arms as they both exploded with laughter. Ted released her, nodded to Luke, and led her to the back of the lectern where they could talk.

Jimmy moved to the apron of the stage and looked down at Luke. “Mr. Claybourne.”

“Mr. Mack.”

“I’m surprised to see you in this audience, Mr. Claybourne. Timmy Kilbrew would be surprised, too.”

Luke allowed himself a brief smile. “Timmy understands, Mr. Mack. He’s married, too.”

“Been a while, Mr. Claybourne, since the day you brought me the message from Senator Tildon that I was expected to step aside. It was a special day. It made me feel like I’d crossed the bridge from the bad old days.”

For the first time, Luke seemed to respond. “Well, we all pay our dues one way or the other. It’s been a long bridge in Mississippi.” He turned his back, settled into an empty seat in the first row and looked up at the banner behind the podium: JIMMY MACK: A NEW MAN FOR A NEW MISSISSIPPI. He read the words aloud, his voice toneless. “But you’ve done all right, Jimmy Mack. No harm done in the long run.”

Jimmy stared at the man. “That how you see it, Mr. Claybourne?” He descended the steps and sat down in the empty seat beside Luke. “No harm done?” He struggled to steady his voice, aware that people around them were party to the conversation. “Did Mrs. Claybourne ever talk to you about the night I got arrested coming off Senator Tildon’s place?”

“Yes. Well, Sterling would get real agitated about anyone organizing on his property.” He shrugged. “It was another time. Past’s past, Mack.”

“Not when you’re cursed with a good memory for bad times.”

Luke nodded. “I seem to remember that you had a little problem with the police.”

“A little problem.” Jimmy shifted in his seat to face Luke. “I went into our Shiloh jail as a nonviolent freedom fighter and I came out a nigger. Is nigger not a familiar word to you, Mr. Claybourne?”

Luke’s eyes kindled. “Don’t invent things, Jimmy Mack. I never called you nigger.”

“You’re right. It wasn’t your words. It was their words.”

“You’re a man, Mack. And now you want to be a congressman. Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words’ll never hurt me. Get over it!”

Jimmy struggled to moderate his voice. “Get over it? You’ve got the gall to lecture me about being a man?” With an angry glance at the intent faces in the row behind, he turned back to Luke. “When your Shiloh cops beat me with sticks for being a man? And no white man and no white woman I know ever had the courage to say we don’t beat police prisoners in Shiloh? It’s not the way we do it in the gallant South?”

Luke flushed, “We didn’t beat prisoners when I was at Parchman. And you, of all people, know that.”

“Shiloh. Not Parchman.” Jimmy’s words were measured, a teacher speaking to a struggling child. “Shiloh.”

Luke said, “Don’t patronize me.”

“I’m telling you what you never seemed to know about your own home town.”

“For Christ’s sake, Mack.”

“After they beat me, they dropped me out on the highway and I came to your kitchen.” His eyes were unforgiving. “No harm done.”

Luke slowly shook his head, fingers drumming on the arms of his chair. “Terrible.” The word tumbled out, unbidden. “A long, sad time ago, Mack.”

“Sad? Hell, yes. But not so long ago.” He looked up at the stage where Willy and Ted continued their reminiscence. “Your wife got me to Mound Bayou so they could stop the bleeding. Healing the words has taken a lot longer. May even be the reason I’m running for office.”

Luke stood up. “Can this redneck give you a little advice?” His voice was gentle. “Being bitter about the past won’t move this state an inch forward, and it will never get your message across the highway. Blacks have memories and whites have memories, too. You remember my chasing your tail off my place because you were trying to organize my workers to vote. And I remember losing Claybournes because I was trying to stay afloat to keep my black tenants from starving.”

“They weren’t burning your place down. They were asking for the right to vote in an election. I remember,” said Jimmy.

“And I remember when I had to throw in the towel when they walked out because I thought they weren’t qualified to vote.” Luke’s voice was constricted. “It was the end of a hundred years of Claybournes.”

Jimmy rose to face him. “So we just forgive and forget three hundred years of grief?”

Luke looked briefly at the podium and then at Jimmy. “No. We just forgive and remember.” He turned and swiftly made his way up the aisle. When he reached the back door, he turned to watch the stage as the house lights dimmed.

Ted Mendelsohn walked to the lectern, adjusted the microphone, and moved off into the wings. The chatter of the audience began to subside as Willy rose from her chair at the back of the stage and made her approach to the lectern. Luke watched the slender figure step into the spotlight and stand quietly, looking across the darkened audience.

“I’m Wilson Claybourne, Willy to a whole lot of you. But you all know me. You’ve put up with me in some really good times and in some times we wish we never knew.” She paused, peering into the audience. “Looking out at you from here, I don’t know if you’re white, or black, or striped. But I do know what Shiloh was, what Magnolia County was, when it was white Shiloh, white Magnolia. I remember and you can remember what we said to each other, and what we sealed in our hearts and never said.”

Straining to hear, Luke whispered, “Be careful, Wil.”

“I know what we did in Shiloh, and what we didn’t do in Shiloh, and I know what we didn’t want to know.” There was a stirring in the audience as two white couples rose and noisily moved up the aisle toward the door. Willy watched them in silence, then continued. “But history has caught up with us, dear friends. So we need new mapmakers for our beloved Delta. New leaders who can help us find our way to each other and to a finer Mississippi for our kids and our grandkids. New leaders who are not defined by the color of their skin, but by the purity of their vision of what is possible.”

She paused and her eyes sought out Jimmy in the darkness below. “And one of them who tilled this earth, who educated himself in this Delta, who never fled this place for an easier one, who never lost faith that the right kind of Mississippi could be born from our sorrows, our pain, and our common struggles, who believes in a New Mississippi, is a man who is one of our own. It’s with pride and confidence that I introduce to you the next congressman from the Fourth Congressional District, Shiloh’s own Jimmy Mack!”

The listeners rose from their seats and applauded as Jimmy stood, climbed the stairs to the stage, and shook hands with a beaming Willy. He stepped to the microphone and began to speak, and Luke paused at the door and listened, reluctant to leave. As Mack spoke, applause continued to punctuate his speech. Luke finally stepped outside, frowning. The applause became fainter as he made his way down the deserted, moonlit streets, but images of the rally and fragments of Willy’s introduction continued unreeling. The right kind of Mississippi could be born from our sorrows? Our sorrows, Willy? Our struggles?

When he reached his car, he scribbled a note and placed it under the windshield wiper.
See you later at home.

Ted Mendelsohn stood at the front of the stage and watched the chattering and exuberant crowd move down the aisles and out the front doors of the auditorium, eddying about the television crew that was interviewing a flushed and excited Jimmy Mack. Their lights punctuated the autumnal darkness outside and touched the walls of the dimming auditorium. In the sudden quiet, he heard Willy clap and turned to see her. She still sat at the back of the deserted stage, seemingly reluctant to end the triumphant meeting. She was smiling as Ted pulled a folding chair alongside hers.

“You were clapping,” he said. “Why were you clapping?”

She regarded him thoughtfully before answering. “Because I always clap at the end of the first act if I like the play.”

“And you liked the play?”

She nodded. “I loved the play.”

He said, “Not everybody loved the play. Luke was seen leaving his seat when you introduced Jimmy.”

“But he listened at the door. The review is not in yet.”

Ted turned in his seat to face her. “So you think Jimmy Mack is going to be your next congressman?”

“I don’t know.” The words were so forthright that he was startled. “I wish for all the world that I could say yes.” Her eyes followed the still-noisy departing audience, then returned to Ted. “All the world,” she repeated. “All my world. But I honestly don’t know.”

“You’re a caution, Willy Claybourne,” he said. “Were you watching what I was watching? The crowd loved him! The TV crew couldn’t wait to get to him! I thought you loved the play.”

She looked hard at Mendelsohn. “Of course I loved the play. But this is farm country, Ted. My Luke is a farmer. Before coming tonight he said to me: ‘Farmers think seasonally. They learn patience or they don’t make it as farmers.’ Up East in Washington you’re on deadlines and agendas that are immediate or sooner.” She laughed. “Two hours ago Lucas was arguing that it was too soon to get a black man nominated. I thought he was wrong.”

“And now?”

“I think the folks who turned out tonight want Jimmy Mack to be their congressman. I think they’ll nominate him.” Her eyes searched his. “But I don’t know if there are enough of them yet. It’s only the first act, Ted. It may be too soon to get a black man in Shiloh elected in Magnolia County like Luke believes, maybe always will believe. I know Jimmy Mack is ready. But are Mississippians ready yet?” She gathered her purse and stood up. “But the play’s just beginning! I’ve got to get back to my farmer and my kids. Thank you. It’s been a memorable evening.”

He watched her walk to her car. When she swung by the entrance, she waved.

When Luke reached home, he noticed the boys’ shovels lying in a heap in his muddy Ford truck’s bed. A wind sent leaves scampering over the drive, and he shivered in the sudden chill. Leaning on the truck, he looked up at the autumn moon, lonely in the vast sky of the Delta, and then at the house where he could see the boys moving in the warm light of the kitchen. He could use some coffee.

Alex and Benny turned from piling their dishes in the sink when the door opened. “Daddy! We ate without you,” said Benny. “We didn’t know where you were when we got home.”

“And we were starved!” added Alex. “You go to that meeting at the school with mama?”

Luke moved to the stove to warm up the rest of the coffee. “Yeah. How’d you know about the meeting?”