One Mississippi (20 page)

When I got to our room Tim was flipping lights on and off, flushing the toilet, running brownish water in the tub. The room smelled of knotty pine and scratchy blankets. There were two saggy beds, not quite doubles. The TV was an old black-and-white Westinghouse set that received one station, sort of, and the telephone was a kind I hadn’t seen in years, a heavy black grandma model with a thick cloth-wrapped cord, like the cord for an electric iron.

Tim danced in from the bathroom, singing, “She wore an Itta Bena teena weena yella polka-dot bikeena . . .”

After all this time he still knew how to crack me up. Along with his song he performed a dance routine complete with high kicks, ending up on his back on the bed, wiggling hands and feet in the air.

“Okay then,” I said, “that’s your bed since you just messed it up.”

He bounded back onto his feet. “Where’s the applause, Durwood? Where’s the appreciation? Where is the loooove?”

“You are not Roberta Flack. You’re not even Donny Hathaway.”

He peered out the door. “Hey c’mere, look at Passworth! Man is she unbelievably PO’d about something!”

I looked down to the glass-walled office, where Mrs. Passworth was gesticulating at the phone, raving at whoever was on the other end. We were too far away to hear much.

“Hurry back,” Tim said.

Halfway down the rank of rooms, I glanced through an open door and saw Ted Herring making out with Alicia Duchamp. Ted’s hands were roaming all over Alicia’s bouncy butt. He saw me looking and grinned. I gave a thumbs-up and kept walking.

Eddie Smock was just outside the office listening to Passworth yell into the phone. “Irene, what is wrong?” he kept saying.

“But he can’t do that!” she shouted. “He can’t just leave us in the middle of nowhere!”

“Would you please tell me what’s wrong!” Eddie cried.

“Don’t you understand, I have forty-two children with me! I am responsible for all of them! Now your man has left us in the lurch, and I want to know what you’re going to do about it! You are the manager, aren’t you?”

Eddie tried to get her attention.

Mrs. Passworth waved him away. “But I have told you — the man is lying!
He
made an impertinent remark, and I ignored it. For him to have the nerve to accuse me . . . well it’s just beyond belief!”

I pointed across the parking lot to a jumble of stuff — Byron’s drums, our Combo gear, the chorus’s tambourines, costumes, props. Everything from the bus was heaped on the sidewalk.

“The bus is gone,” I said.

“Gone?” said Eddie. “What do you mean gone?”

“Look there. Do you see a bus? I think the driver dumped our stuff and took off.”

Eddie said, “Why would he do that?”

“I have no idea.” Of course I had an excellent idea, but I wasn’t going to be the one to tell Eddie. I remembered the simmering look in the driver’s eyes. He must have decided he could not abide one more minute of Passworth.

“But that’s absurd, he can’t just be
gone,
” Eddie was saying. “Maybe he went to get gas.”

I shook my head. “He wouldn’t dump all our stuff.”

I watched as the fear dawned in Eddie that I could be right, this could mean real trouble for
Christ!
“Oh my goodness,” he said. “Gosh! What are we gonna do?”

“You better get another bus up here now,” Passworth demanded, “and I do mean
now
— or I’m gonna jump through this phone and come down to where you are — are you listening? — I’m coming down there and I’m gonna make you want to crawl back up inside your mama!”

She gave that a moment to sink in.

“And tell whoever’s in charge of your company that you will never — ever! — do business with Full Flower Baptist again! Yes? How long? Well, you’d better get him here quicker than that. Goodbye!” She slammed the phone so hard the bell went
ding!

When she saw us, her face twisted into a smile. “Hello, boys!”

Eddie said, “Irene, what on earth?”

“Oh Eddie, the most ridiculous mix-up. Our bus driver just up and left! Ha! Can you believe it? Took off! Abandoned us! Apparently he thought — well, heavenly days, I don’t pretend to know
what
he thought. They’re very sorry in Jackson, they’re sending another bus, but it won’t be here for hours. So for how we’re getting over to the college — we’re going to have to be creative.”

One hour and twenty minutes later we were still dragging our instruments and amps and costumes along the shoulder of the county road — hot, sweaty, bug-eaten, swatting at flies zooming up from the weeds.

I kept thinking how incredibly brave or stupid of that driver, to drive away just because Passworth made him mad. He would lose his job for sure.

“Wouldn’t you think they’d have a sign or something?” Ted Herring said. “I mean, most colleges would at least have a sign.”

“Eddie,” said Passworth, “let’s flag down the next car we see, and find out if we’re even going the right way.”

“You know what we need, people?” Eddie cried.

“A bus!” Matt Smith yelled.

A lot of people agreed with Matt.

“No! We need to sing!”

Sneakers made the sound of trudging on hot asphalt.

“Instead of complaining about it,” Eddie said, “we can get warmed up while we walk! Who’s with me?”

It was August in Mississippi. We were plenty warmed up.

“Okay, then I’ll start.” Eddie found the opening note on his harmonica. He sang the first lines of Matt Smith’s Act II closing number:

I might as well be king of the Jews

As a carpenter I gotta admit I’m really bad news

My cabinets won’t open, my drawers all get stuck

I hope when I’m Messiah I’ll have better luck

No one joined in. Eddie’s voice trailed off.

There was just enough daylight to make out a hand-stenciled sign in a patch of kudzu:

HAROLD P. WAYNE BIBLE
100 YD.

“Here we go!” Eddie sang. “Thank you Jesus!”

We gazed with suspicion upon the two-track dirt road leading off into the piney woods.

“Hallelujah,” said Mrs. Passworth. “Now can everybody please stop giving me dirty looks?” She got dirty looks just for saying that.

We followed the track and soon came to a clearing with a square red-brick building at the center — churchlike, solid, two stories high, fat white columns on two sides, a wide flight of brick steps. A few beaten-up cars in the yard. Patches of red sand showed through gaps in the grass.

On the steps was a group of black men not much older than we were. College age, I suppose. They wore white short-sleeve shirts, skinny dark ties, black pants. From a distance their skin looked extremely black and shiny. They left off chatting when they saw us coming up the road.

Mrs. Passworth said, “My Lord, what do we have here? Are these workmen? They don’t look like workmen.”

Eddie said, “Maybe the college is on beyond here. Let me find out.”

“Good idea.” Passworth held out her arm to keep us back. We gathered behind her while Eddie went to speak with them.

Tim leaned in to my ear. “I’ll stay with the Land Rover while Jim wrestles the giant anaconda to the ground,” he said. “Good luck, Jim!”

For the first time I noticed how white we were. Full Flower Baptist was an all-white church, always had been — I’d never even noticed. Come to think of it, every church in Mississippi was all white or all black. That’s just how it was, even after buses and schools and stores were integrated. I guess the government couldn’t make you go to church with anybody you didn’t want to.

Here came Eddie to report that this was indeed Harold P. Wayne Bible College, an all-male institution founded fifty years ago to train Negro circuit preachers for the Mississippi Delta. This building was the campus. They were expecting us.

I thought Mrs. Passworth might faint. “You mean we’re supposed to perform for these — oh Eddie, did it not occur to you to ask whether this was a Negro college?”

“No,” he said, “honestly, it didn’t. I’m sorry. I had no idea. The man sounded white on the phone.”

Above us, the double doors burst open — more young black men in white shirts and skinny ties flooded down the steps to greet us, spreading their arms in warm, evangelical hugs. They didn’t seem the least surprised by our whiteness. “Welcome, brother! Welcome, sister!” They grabbed our hands, patted our shoulders.

I’d never seen so many brawny young black men in one place. If this crowd had assembled in downtown Jackson, the governor would have called out the National Guard.

Eddie tried to pretend that everything was going just as he’d planned. He kept glancing past the preacher-men to Mrs. Passworth.

Every time one of the black men hugged her, she shrank a little more, until she stood hobbled and bent over like the Wicked Witch melting.

She was helpless to keep the rest of us from being swallowed up in the crowd of men. They moved us up the steps, into the building. The place smelled of old Bibles, floor wax, old air that had never been air-conditioned or even stirred by a ceiling fan. Truly the sweat of black people is spicier and more pungent than white people’s sweat. This large room was steamy as a tent revival, fifty years of young men learning to preach in here.

I suppose we were one anxious-looking bunch of white kids.

The sanctuary was two stories high, with pews and a pulpit at one end. The men steered us toward the pulpit. Instead of a piano they led me to an antique pump organ, with foot pedals.

There were lightbulbs dangling from wires overhead, but Mickey and Ben couldn’t find a place to plug in their amps. “We thought about putting in some outlets,” said the fat man who had hugged me first, “but we figure this old place would burn down in two minutes. Give me yo plugs, we got extension cords. We’ll get you hooked up outside.”

Eddie stepped to the pulpit. “Okay, people,” he called. “Could I ask our audience members nicely to move back and give us a little breathing room? There’ll be plenty of time for us all to meet after the performance, okay? Right now we need to have our preshow confab. All right? Thank you so much!”

“We’re here to help, Brother Eddie,” called one of the preachers. “Just tell us what you need.”

“Well, if you could just give us some breathing room,” he said, a little louder. “We didn’t realize we were gonna have to walk all the way out here. Frankly we’re a little discombobulated.”

“Easy, brother.” The man was still smiling, but the twinkle in his eye sharpened a little. “We’ll give you all the room you need. We are filled with joy to have you-all here tonight.”

“Of course you are!” Eddie cried. “Of course! And we’re delighted to be here too, let me say! I think you’re gonna love our show! You, sir — sorry, what’s your name?”

“R. T. Frederick.” The man pronounced the initial R as “Arra.” “You and I have corresponded, Brother Eddie.”

“Oh my gosh — Mr. President!” Eddie cried. “Well hello sir! So sorry, I had no idea that was you! We’re very glad to be here, and in just a few minutes we’ll be ready to go. Irene Passworth, this is President Frederick!”

“What Eddie is trying to say,” said Passworth, “is the sooner you let us get on with it, the sooner we can get it over with and get out of here.”

“I understand,” said the reverend. He led his students toward the double doors. They milled about on the broad porch, peering back in at us as we formed up a huddle.

Mrs. Passworth said, “Girls, I want you over there in that room. Get changed quick with no fuss. You boys can change in the pews. Move it!”

“I don’t know what’s your big hurry, Irene,” said Eddie. “We can’t leave until the bus comes to get us. Or were you planning to make us walk all the way back in the dark?”

Her voice went up five notes on the scale. “I swear, Eddie, don’t you push me!”

We members of the Combo put on loud plaid slacks and lime green turtleneck pullovers, neon-colored fringed vests, red-white-and-blue headbands. We were a “musical band of hippies,” according to Alicia Duchamp’s mother, the costume designer.

This was the first time we’d all seen each other in costume. The effect was disturbing. Some of the girls wore black turtlenecks and white miniskirts, white pantyhose, and black knee-boots. They looked like Beatniks, or Oreo cookies. Others were dressed as flappers from the Roaring Twenties, with sacky dresses and long strands of pearls. Some of the guys were cowboys, with guns and boots and jingling spurs. Some wore Bible-ish clothes, burlap tunics with rope belts. Four or five boys wore dark suits and nerdy black sunglasses, like FBI agents, with angel wings on their backs. Matt Smith as Jesus sported a flowing white robe that looked more like a wedding dress than he realized or he would not be wearing it.

I don’t know what Alicia’s mother was thinking. Perhaps she was making some kind of statement on modern culture, but how these outfits related to the Jesus story, I could not fathom.

Oh — not to forget Carol Nason! Our Mary Magdalene was definitely a whore, not a prostitute but a real whore, her minidress ripped open halfway to her navel, fishnet stockings, high heels, hair teased and flying in an unruly cloud around her head. She had on so much makeup that she looked plasticized, like a Whore Barbie. It was impossible not to stare at her. I felt a certain tingle. I had heard about whores but this was the first one I’d ever seen in the flesh. It was like seeing a rattlesnake for the first time, or a whale: there’s no mistaking it for anything else.