Quint Mitchell 01 - Matanzas Bay (16 page)

“You don’t have to explain any—”

“It’s important to me,” she interrupted. “There’s an amazing man in the living room waiting to tell you his story. He’s my Uncle Walter, my father’s brother.”

She went on to tell me both her father and uncle had grown up in St. Augustine, but they moved after her uncle suffered a terrible experience. I tried to get more details, but she put me off, saying, “You’ll hear it all from him in a minute. But I wanted you to know the background. After what happened to Uncle Walter, my father left St. Augustine and moved up north.”

Eight years younger than his brother, Serena’s father moved to Chicago while still in his early twenties. He joined the army and later met Helen Nilsen. He’d been smitten by the lithe blond who seemed like a door into another world to the young man from the segregated South. Her parents had been very much in love, but she said the marriage was doomed from the start. They brought with them a clash of cultures that seemed dangerously romantic at first, but quickly moved into a dark stalemate of quiet bitterness.

Serena grew up not fully accepted by either world. “As a girl, I felt caught in the grip of a cultural tornado. Things were a lot different back then. You have to remember that this was before Tiger Woods and Barak Obama shifted America’s view of African-Americans. I tried to cope with attitudes and judgments shaped by something beyond my control.”

I pondered that as she pulled a tea bag from a ceramic bowl with a cork stopper, put it in the coffee mug, and poured steaming water over it. I finally said, “It’s easy to forget what happened below the Mason-Dixon Line when you grow up in the white bread world of the Connecticut suburbs like I did.”

She didn’t respond, instead dribbled a long stream of honey into the mug from a plastic container shaped like a bear.

“That’s pretty much it for the family history,” she told me. “Dad and I moved back to St. Augustine, and shortly after that I went off to college. I returned to St. Augustine after graduating, but it took some time to grow up and accept myself.”

We walked into her living room, an open area with a creamy leather couch, a matching wing back chair, and a low coffee table. On the wall over the couch was a triptych painting alive with swirling colors and long-necked birds that never flew anywhere except in the artist’s imagination. Sunlight from a pair of sliding glass doors filled the room. An elderly man stood silhouetted in front of the doors, one hand resting on the leather chair. Although his back was to me, judging by his small frame and stooped shoulders, I’d guess he was in his mid- eighties.

She placed the tea on the coffee table before moving behind the old man and tapping him on the shoulder. “Uncle Walter,” Serena said, raising her voice and bending close to his ear. “This is Quint Mitchell. The man I told you about.”

He turned slowly, pivoting from the waist as though his neck was fused. He smiled shyly at Serena before turning his attention to me through thick lenses and cloudy dark eyes that held mine for a full thirty seconds. The old man’s skin had the texture and color of an over-ripe eggplant. A strange discoloring covered the left side of his creased and crinkled face. Pale yellow patches, like bleach dribbled onto a dark towel, spattered his cheek, trickled along his neck, and disappeared under his collar.

I held out my hand, and Walter Howard grasped it tentatively. His hand had the feel of ancient parchment.

“Let’s sit down, please.” She helped her uncle who hobbled slowly, one hand gripping the chair, the other on Serena’s arm. After he sat down and Serena and I were seated on the couch, she turned toward me.

“Quint, I wanted you to hear my uncle’s story. He doesn’t like to talk about the things he endured while fighting for our people’s freedom, but he’s doing it as a favor for me.” She reached across and laid a reassuring hand on his knee.

Howard’s left hand trembled as he lifted it from the arm of the chair and placed it atop his niece’s. He licked his lips before speaking. “My name is Walter Howard,” he began in a quiet, dignified voice. “I fought for my country in Korea before coming home and teaching school.”

Behind the thick glasses, Howard’s eyes blazed with the vision of distant memories. “I was young and filled with a hunger for justice. We would gather together in our homes and in our churches to listen to Dr. King telling us change was coming. Dr. King knew our suffering, and we listened when he said our people had been imprisoned for too long. That freedom would wash over us like a giant wave.”

Howard slowly bent to pick up the cup of tea with both trembling hands and brought it to his lips.

“Uncle Walter was elected president of the NAACP in nineteen-sixty-three,” Serena added.

“It was time for the white folks to give us our rights,” Howard said. “St. Augustine still had a plantation mentality. I knew if we didn’t demand our rights, these people would never give them to us.” He paused and stared at me, possibly wondering if this white man had any idea what he was talking about.

“Back then, the Association was filled with scared old folks who didn’t want to rock the boat. The young people were ready, though. They knew what was happening across the south, and didn’t want to wait any longer. I pushed the others into taking action.”

Throughout 1964, he told me, they organized demonstrations outside McCrory’s and Woolworth’s stores. Then the sit-ins began, and fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen year olds were dragged from their seats and taken to jail. This led to marches in the heart of the old city, fiery speeches, and swim-ins at white-only beaches.

“We made the national news and got Dr. King’s attention. He came here to help us. Sat down with the mayor and the other white leaders and they did a lot of talking. But when Dr. King went home, nothing had changed.” Howard paused in his story and looked at his niece. “Nothing had changed,” he repeated.

Things got so bad, Howard told us, that he sent his family to live in Daytona Beach to protect them from the hate-mongers. His gaze drifted toward the triptych, tracing the flight of the exotic birds. I guessed he was thinking back to those days. Thinking back, as he would tell me, to how his life had changed abruptly one summer night in 1964.

In a quiet voice, Walter Howard recounted how he returned home from his meeting that night, locked the door on his 1959 Bel Air sedan, and glanced in both directions. He remembered Washington Street as a quiet residential area with modest one-story homes. Most of the homes were already dark, and he didn’t notice any strange cars parked along the street. He had promised his wife Aletia that he’d be careful, although he knew there wasn’t much he could do if the Klan decided to make him their next target.

As he stood in front of the boarded-up windows of his home and fumbled for the door key, he thought of how his little girl had been nearly killed the night his house was shotgunned. I listened as his memories took him back and he told me about the oppressive humidity on that July night, and a star-filled sky flickering with far-away heat lightning. He remembered the sweet scent of night blooming jasmine and then hearing footsteps pounding the walk behind him.

He said he turned to see four hooded men. The closest one, a man with huge forearms and a massive chest, held a club resembling a miniature baseball bat. The club flew toward his head, and he instinctively jerked away. While he avoided a solid blow, the bat bounced off the side of his head, stunning him, sending flashes of pain coursing through his skull.

Everything happened so fast after that, he said. “One of the men forced a coarse sack over my head. Someone clamped a hand on my mouth, and they dragged me to their car.”

“I can’t imagine what you went through,” I said.

“I did a lot of praying. I knew if they got me into that back seat it would be the last ride I ever took. I tried to fight back. I kicked out at them and managed to put one foot against the doorframe hoping to fight them off. But it was four against one. Next thing I knew, something hit my shin, probably the club, and I was inside the car.”

He said they drove for about thirty minutes before the car stopped, and he heard doors opening and felt hands clutching his arms and legs.

They threw him to the ground and pulled the sack from his head. “I expected to see a tree and a rope waiting for me. Instead, I was in a plowed-up field, rows and rows of black soil.” In the moonlight, he saw a stand of pines ringing the field. Nearby, he saw a pick-up truck and an old Ford sedan, its back doors hanging open.

“They’d tied my hands together and I couldn’t do anything to protect myself. When I started to scream one of the men grabbed me by the neck and forced a dirty rag into my mouth. It smelled of gasoline, so powerful it made me gag.” He stopped and held a hand to his mouth. I thought he would be sick.

“Uncle Walter, you don’t have to keep talking if it’s too painful for you.” She rose and put a protective arm around her uncle.

“That’s all right, child. I want to tell the story.”

Serena retreated to the couch as he continued.

His eyes watering from the gasoline fumes, he blinked away the tears and stared at the men in the white hoods. “I remember thinking that the glow of the moon made the men in their hoods look like the bellies of dead fish,” he said.

“And that’s when the big man with the bat stepped toward me. He might have had his Klan hood on, but I knew it was that racist deputy sheriff. The one they called Bat Marrano. He gave me a little push with the end of the bat and said, ‘You’ve been shooting your mouth off all summer, nigger. Don’t you have nothing to say now?’”

Howard licked his lips and held the mug in both hands, taking comfort, I hoped, from the warmth of the tea.

“I tried to answer him, but with the gag in my mouth I could only grunt. That made them all laugh. One of them called me a monkey and kicked me in the side. After that, they took turns kicking and punching me until I passed out.”

I heard quiet sobs coming from Serena. She sat with one hand over her mouth, shaking slightly. I wanted to comfort her. Wanted to say something to her uncle that would bring him relief, but I remained mute, muzzled by my own state of shock.

This time Howard offered solace to his niece. He reached out and patted her knee. “S’alright, girl. It was a long time ago. All them men are dead now, but I’m still here. The Lord does indeed move in mysterious ways.”

Serena nodded and offered him a brave smile.

“What happened then?” I asked.

“They woke me up by throwing whiskey in my face. Deputy Marrano was slapping that bat into his hand. He said, ‘You know you’ve got this coming, don’t you, boy?’

“I couldn’t answer him, only stare at the club. He tapped it against his shoe like a baseball player knocking dirt from his cleats. I could see he was getting ready to hurt me.”

“Oh, God,” I murmured. “I’m so sorry.”

Howard looked up at me for the first time since he began telling his story. “Even though I knew good men like Medgar Evers had been killed fighting for their rights, I didn’t believe it would ever happen to me. I wanted to hold my wife and daughter again, tell them I loved them. I didn’t want to die.”

He told me he looked at the four men clustered around him, searching for a shred of humanity. But there was no humanity or help to be found. “As I looked at these men, I saw movement behind them. My heart jumped thinking maybe someone had come to save me, but what I saw was two boys back in the shadows near the truck.”

“Boys?” I couldn’t believe they’d bring children to a lynching.

Howard nodded. “One of the boys was only about six years old. The other one, he might have been twelve or thirteen. The older boy was tall and skinny with long wavy hair growing over his ears. He was bouncing from one foot to the other like he’d been touched by the spirit.”

Howard gazed at his niece. “You know what I mean, Serena. Like some of those church ladies carried away by the preacher’s sermon?”

She told him she did.

“What happened then?” I asked.

“Bat Marrano saw me looking at the boys, and he waved his club at them. I thought he was chasing them away. But instead he said, ‘Which of you boys want to take the first swing?’”

Howard cleared his throat and let his gaze settle between Serena and me. “As soon as Marrano said that, the older boy ran toward us. He stuck his hand out. Marrano gave him the bat and pointed at my left knee.

“I tried to scream, but nothing came out. I watched the boy raise the bat while I shook my head, thinking this child couldn’t do such a thing, not even to a black man. I closed my eyes before it hit, but …”

Howard’s voice trailed off, and he placed a hand on his knee as if the pain of that night still haunted him. I suspected that it did.

“When I opened my eyes,” Howard continued, “I saw the younger boy, who’d been right behind his older brother, if that’s who he was, staring at me like he’d been the one hit in the knee. His eyes were wide, and I almost felt sorry for him. He squawked something I couldn’t make out and climbed into the pick-up truck.

“The pain was almost too much to bear,” Howard said. “I screamed and cried for Jesus to help me. Of course, my misery made them laugh even harder. I was twisting and rolling when Marrano kicked me in the back. He bent down close to me and said, ‘Can you still hear me, Mr. NAACP President? Consider yourself lucky.’ He told me they thought about burning me alive or hanging me from a tree, ‘But we wanted you to remember this night for the rest of your life.’”

“I knew that was the one true thing he’d said all night. I’d never forget it. Then he said, ‘I promise you’ll remember us every time you even think about making trouble for your betters.’ He lifted the club and swung it down against my other knee.”

Howard looked directly at me, his watery stare gnawing at my gut. “I passed out.” Then he began sobbing quietly. Serena moved to the arm of the chair and tenderly embraced the frail old man. She held him like a mother holds her child, his head against her breast, a warm reassuring word in his ear.

TWENTY-TWO

A few minutes later, I thanked Walter Howard for sharing his story with me and said goodbye. Serena walked me to the front door. Her apartment was on the second floor, and I stepped outside onto the long walkway overlooking the parking lot and a circle of palm trees. She sagged against the doorframe, her right hand gripping the knob.