by Odie Lindsey
Jessica, a name given in dialogue with her grandmamma: Jessamine, wife of Gabe.
The old window unit chuffed that last draft of coolant, yet the room remained hot. Doc stared toward the textured ceiling and spinning fan, and tried to calm himself down. He’d been thinking about a long-ago afternoon at the Pitchlynn CC, where he had worked for a time back in high school. He hadn’t driven past the club or into the surrounding suburb in years. His conversation with Hare had brought the memory to mind.
Doc had been posted to the tepid men’s room, where he administered white towels that smelled like blossoms of industrial detergent. He would stack the linens with precision on a chrome wire rack. His other duties were to refill the translucent blue Barbasol jar, the lavender hand soap, and the mints, and to wipe the soiled linen baskets with watered-down cedar oil. Club members were good to him. He was in high school and he was earnest, and he was concerned about the proper execution of every task. They came in stinking and he had helped them to be clean.
He turned a blind eye when he caught them stealing toilet paper, hand towels, and the like, smuggling little freebie caches into their overpriced gym bags. Toilet paper, he would think. How silly. Why did they do this, given that they didn’t need to? When did such a habit develop? Doc’s mother would have whipped him to shreds!
The members were good to him, mostly. The men came in tipsy, sometimes, and told him jokes. Man jokes, dirty jokes. Mississippi State jokes that he was allowed in on. A racist joke was sometimes overheard—and, usually, apologized for. (At the least, a “no offense to you” was generally offered.) They flipped him coins often enough, and wished him well. They looted bars of soap and Barbasol, disposable razors and lighters, club-monogrammed hand towels . . . and if he saw them do so they winked back in reply, or put finger to mouth, Shhh, and he would grin and look away. On his break, Doc ate prime leftovers at the staff table in back of the clubhouse kitchen. Skin-in mashed potatoes. Lamp-warmed roast beef with grilled asparagus. Delicious.
He folded towels in the locker room, holding them to his face now and again, inhaling the detergent and bleach. He had never smelled anything so leached of soil, so fragrant with inhumanity. Once, as he was doing so, a pair of familiar men walked in, their bangs and shirt bellies sweated, their golf cleats clicking the locker room mat. They reeked of whiskey and filth, and seemed very happy. Doc had smiled as they passed en route to their lockers. With this, one of them had stopped, the motion of his gait carrying into a brief, tipsy wobble.
“What?” the man had asked Doc, smiling.
“Sir?” Doc responded. He offered up the towel he’d been sniffing.
“Did you just wipe your face with that one?”
“Nossir.”
The man had pointed to the hamper. “Put it in there if you did, right?”
Doc had met the man’s eyes and nodded, and he put the towel in the hamper, just in case. The man had then followed his golf partner into the locker area, disrobing for the showers, while Doc went back to tidying up. Moments later, clean and dressed, the two men had again passed the basin area. Doc had looked at them and smiled.
The man’s index finger hit Doc’s temple like a bolt. “Look at me,” he demanded. “Boy, I swear to god if you look at me.”
Doc looked only to the reflection in the mirror, at the finger that jabbed into the side of his head.
“I swear,” the man had continued. “You ever look me in my eyes again, and I’ll . . .”
Doc began to sweat, to shake. He had wished to Christ he could look at the man. To stare at him, and through him. Instead, he had only considered his cowed face in the mirror as the man’s finger jammed him again and again.
“Don’t you never,” the man had repeated, now holding his fingertip against Doc’s head. “Don’t you never look at me.”
His buddy had admonished him slightly, Come on, now, Wallis, and then pulled the man off of Doc and toward the exit. Let’s get us another drink and cool off.
IN THE dead-air bedroom of Doc’s prefab house, Jessica’s sleep was defined by whimpers. Lying beside her, he felt awful for the way she was raised. Dragged place to place, made landless after Gabe’s murder, de facto landless anyway, given the fear of rampant slaughter that had consumed Wallis Farm. He thought of her mother’s consequent search for kinship, and work, and basic relief; of the driving of her people to and fro over middle America, Pitchlynn to Chicago to Detroit to Greenville, Mississippi, then back to Chicago to Memphis to . . .
Doc’s mother-in-law, ambitious for the next rung of stability, availability, had at times left Jessica with a series of surrogates. Over the years, the very definition of parents had become mutable for the child, as had school or friend, or home. And although these variables had for the most part inhabited their meaning and position—if you looked at it right, the child’s life had been in most ways a bounty of loving kin, both blood and social—one of the stand-ins had not caretaken her as promised. And this betrayal, a nightmare of fractured love and space, had scarred her inside. It now dictated her sleep.
All of this, a legacy of Gabe’s murder on Wallis Farm, and the exodus of families that had followed. All of it the doing of Hare Hobbs.
Doc reached over and stroked Jessica’s bare shoulder. He knew that, as always, she would wake throughout the night with no idea of where she was. So many years later, and she still had no idea.
“But you’re home now, babe,” he whispered. “Don’t you know?”
Doc lay awake for hours, until the alarm clock screeched.
6
“Bring him in!”
Two guards escorted Hare into the visitation corridor as gently as they would have an elder woman to a church pew. The old man’s back bowed out in the orange jumpsuit, and his thin legs were fettered. As with his cellblock, the visitation area had been blocked off for Hare alone, to prevent disturbances and to limit further media leaks. The room was silent save for the squeal of shoes on lacquered concrete, and the metallic crumble of Hare’s leg chains. The old man was seated, then bolted down to a metal bench at a partitioned desk, a cubicle of sorts, with a perforated fiberglass wall. Once he was in place, a woman and a little girl were escorted to the opposite side of the partition.
Hare’s daughter Winnie was dressed in jeans and a shapeless pink T-shirt. Her arms were slim but slack, and one of them bore the crepe-like crinkles of a burn scar. She looked much too old to be the little girl’s mother, though she was. The child was seven but small, her blond hair near-white. Her clothes were as frayed as dishrags, yet she beamed with ambition. When she saw Hare, she pulled free of Winnie’s grip, then ran up and slapped the partition glass.
“Baba!” she shrieked.
“Ladybug,” Hare responded, smiling. “How’s my favorite gal? How’s them grades, baby?”
“Got A’s in everythin’—except maps.”
“You mean geography?”
“Yup. Maps.”
“Well, what’s wrong with geography?” Hare asked.
“Welp . . .” The child sighed. “Them shapes all look the same.”
“Maybe. But you can find a Miss’ippi map, cain’t you?”
“Sure.”
“And you can find America on a globe map?”
“Oh yeah, Baba. That’s easy.”
“Then you’re gonna be all right, Ladybug! Don’t fret.” Hare turned to his daughter. “None the other family wantin’ to come visit?”
“You know.” Winnie shrugged.
“Did you call Derby like I told you?”
“Tried. Didn’t get him. But it ain’t like Derby’s gonna call me back or anything. If you want to see him, you gonna have to get through to him yourself.”
“Oh, I’ve reached out.” Hare snorted. “I’ve sent a message or more. But he won’t respond to me, either, so. However you need to do it, you had better get Derby over here. Come to think of it, get that pregnant vet of his over, too. Folks need to know that I’m a real, live person. A family man
, just like everybody else. Problems, successes. Growth. Love. Regret. Redemption.”
She nodded. “Colleen ain’t gonna let me near their place.”
“Change her mind,” Hare said. “Carrot or stick—I don’t care. Christ, Winnie, get creative. Tell Derby it’ll be his last chance to make amends. To ask questions, or say his peace. Or to scream at me—whatever he needs to do. Tell him to do it for Ladybug here, so she can have some kin.”
Winnie rolled her eyes. “Check and check, Dad. Okay? Now how ’bout you? You doin’ all right?”
“Been worse. You?”
She spoke of bills and jacked rent, a busted head gasket and the like. When the child got fidgety, Winnie gave her some paper and a couple of crayons.
“We’re gonna have to take her outta class,” Winnie said. “Homeschool her.”
“Now, why on earth would you do that?” Hare replied. “She just said she was earnin’ all A’s.”
“Daddy, you got no idea. A boy shoved her the other day, and the teacher didn’t do a thing. The black kids call her names and the white won’t have nothin’ to do with her.”
“But they can’t do that. They—”
“Well, they do do that, Daddy. In other words, she’s already a Hobbs.”
The child was cowed by her mother’s agitation, so Hare tapped the glass. “Ladybug? Hey, girl? You hadn’t got anything to worry about at school, okay? Nothin’ at all. Just be strong. Keep on earnin’ those A’s, and it’ll be fine. Promise, baby.”
When Ladybug nodded an okay, Hare looked back to Winnie. “Don’t you dare pull her outta school. We both know how that’ll turn out.”
“What do you want me to . . .” Her words fell dead against his glare.
Again, Hare changed the subject. “Did I ever tell you that we get the newspapers in here, time to time?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s funny how you can read about yourself—only, without ever having talked to any reporter.”
Winnie motioned to the guard. “These walls must have ears.”
“Naw,” Hare said. “I’m talking ’bout things only family knows.”
She wondered if Hare could still reach out, if there were any men left to pay his retribution. Six hundred and fifty dollars, she thought. Long way. That money goes a long way.
Winnie had told some Atlanta-based, Black girl reporter about the Platz, the space her father had built behind their house. Fifteen feet high and forty long, cinder-block. Erected between their little place and the near-identical house of the Black family next door. It had featured massive painted images of the Confederate Battle Flag and Mississippi state flag crossed at arms. In the upper corners were smaller versions of the Gadsden and Bonnie Blue. When she and Derby were kids, the Platz had greeted their every glance out of bedroom or kitchen window, and was the framework of every game played in the backyard.
The wall was based on a structure Hare had learned about in a Time Life photo book on World War II. It was a thing he had wished to have seen when deployed there. Only, versus the Greek-theater-inspired, German-built amphitheaters on the pages, grand vehicles of nationalist Volksgemeinschaft, the Platz was just a backdrop to their flat weedy yard.
This was when Hare still needed to speak, at a time when he still roused the men. Her daddy had been so potent back then. A soldier of sorts, near-legendary to an indulgence of people who winked when they spoke of what he’d done. (Nobody really knew if Hare had murdered that man; they only knew that her daddy had walked out of court in 1965, set free by a jury of his peers, one-to-eleven, a grin on his face, and with an entire state of citizens lauding justice, an entire caste of them positioning Hare’s acquittal as the glorious rebuke to Johnson’s Voting Rights Act.) Back when Hare was still an icon to some, despite the water on his knees and his sour breath. When to some he remained both a hero of Wallis Farm, and of the Battle of the Bulge, to boot.
Back at that outskirt-y house she grew up in, the men had brought farm vegetables and venison to aid the family. Winnie remembers watching her mother stab a small knife into the meat, again, again, before stuffing the slits with rolled strips of streak o’ lean bacon. Mother had been sixteen when she gave birth to Derby, 1978, the next-to-the-last in a series of spurned, angry girls who had sought Hare out, and who had treated him as landed treasure. His cache. His heroism. Their fathers having all but arranged them as tribute.
Hare’s idea had been to erect the Platz as both a barrier and stage. A symbol and physical show of force. Inspired by his vision, the men had come to his house en masse over a series of Saturdays, almost celebratory efforts, and he had fed them whole hog and beer, and they in turn had laid concrete, and metal poles, and cinder block. Winnie and Derby and her mama had watched the structure rise, blocking out the neighboring house, transforming their own backyard into a rally space, a so-called “Mississippi thingplätze” where Hare could rail, inspire.
This was 1980, in the wake of Reagan’s speech at the Neshoba County Fair, just outside of Philadelphia, Mississippi. Hare had not attended the event, but he, like the rest of them, had seen the frenzy on television: candidate Reagan, August 1980, speaking in front of ten thousand in the swelter, their paper fans wagging, their cheers in legion when the Republican candidate had proclaimed, “I believe . . . in states’ rights.”
It was a revolution, a national outcry.
A tribute to be erected in the sunlight.
Reagan’s speech had re-radicalized Hare’s power, breathing life into his limp narrative. Hare saw this, and knew that he could rekindle himself, his lust for acceptance—or rather, their lust for him. For days, they had seen candidate Reagan on television and in the papers. Footage of ten thousand in the news clips from Neshoba, screaming Reagan’s name. The candidate had issued formal cover fire for their cause, a call for a return to their massive resistance.
It was genius, this so-called Southern Strategy. Within a week, Hare had summoned a few men to the house. He drank, and he raved like a preacher; he claimed that the states’ rights speech had turned them all back into, well, men. He waved his arms in revival, and implored them to consider, to simply consider what Reagan’s words had meant, and why every decent White in the South was now ordered to be a Republican. He challenged them as to why every coon and Jew journalist out of Washington, D.C., was by then flooding the airwaves with protest of the phrase.
“I,” Hare had repeated, punctuating each word with a clap. “Believe. In. States’. Rights.”
He then called for a toast and they drank. The men teemed with hope as Hare had promised a homecoming, a crawling back out of the heaped dirt and disrespect; he swore to a resurgence of state-based pride, that which the feds had snatched away in the ’60s—both 18- and 19-. He cursed the government, the outsiders, the force-fed multiculturalism, and the rigged system of leftist revolution and federal redistribution. He quoted candidate Reagan, again, again.
“The signal,” Hare had called it. “The return.”
The future President’s dog-whistle speech had been broadcast nationwide, as was delivered from right there in Neshoba County. Of all the places he could go, candidate Reagan had spoken to the South, the nation, and the world, from Mississippi, 1980.
The men were drunk, their bodies humming with love and promise. They were baptized in awe when Hare had shared with them his vision: practical yet symbolic. Definitive and strong. He had enlisted them into action, and they in turn recruited neighbors and cousins, coworkers and congregation. And together, they commenced to building the Platz. Steel poles in cement. Cinder block mortared and stacked and painted: Battle Flag and state flag crossed at arms, beneath a single slogan of power: RESIST!
News of the structure had soon spread throughout the region. The monument was photographed for certain pamphlets, or captured on Polaroid. Men drove themselves and their families to Hare’s place on the weekend, to see the visionary and his comrades speak in front of the gleaming, towering Platz. Squads of them began to ride aroun
d in search of small actions, late at night, mostly, helping to reestablish old codes of pride and violence.
Soon enough, local and regional candidates were showing up to glad-hand and sing praise, and fund-raise, of course. (Somebody even floated the rumor of an Atwater visit, on behalf of then–President Reagan—thought the appearance was canceled after word had spread too wide for the press secretary’s liking.) One year, Old Man Wallis had even dropped by to collect a bundle of small bills for his reelection campaign.
And the Democrats were eradicated on the national ballot. And the years passed and the paint faded, as did the applause. Crowds and candidates stopped paying Hare much mind, and the folks in town began to deny him. Both the Platz and the little house had fallen into neglect, with the family following suit. Ultimately, their mother had left, not a word, as had the next of Hare’s wives, the last of the young women who would take up with him, keep house.
Hare’s response to this bleed-out was to stand by the mural in the middle of the night, drunk and slathered in July sweat, babbling about the war, about having been made to mend combat boots like some mascot, some runt. He would scream at the Platz, and the family who lived behind it.
Some nights, he dragged his kids out of bed and into the yard, ordering both Winnie and Derby to line up at attention in the moonlight and dead summer air. Bruises had banded their skinny arms from being yanked into formation, from being made to stand drill-parade-still. Battle of the Bulge! Hare would scream. Hero of Wallis Farm! He had forced the kids to memorize and recite history and edict, rhetoric, and epithet, and when they failed to meet his pleasures, he reminded them that he had a better child and bitch somewhere else; he swore that he was gonna abandon Derb and Winnie, then take back up with these others. And the more the children had cried on those nights, the more Hare had ranted about finding his only real child, his good child, Sonny, the one to save him . . . and then never coming back.
