South of Haunted Dreams

by Eddy L. Harris

  I certainly do not need a piece of paper to give me legitimacy or to prove that Joseph existed. I am living and loving proof that he was here. But something touched me as I touched that page. Joseph’s breath fanned my cheek. I think my heart stopped.

  When it resumed, it beat at a much slower pace, calmer and quieter. My heart became still and serene.

  I had expected more, I think. I had thought I might want to shout, beat my fists upon my chest and howl like, a happy dog for an hour. But it was such a peaceful moment, and I don’t know why, that I just wanted to run my hand across the page over and over and over.

  Something that Joseph had touched, I was now touching. The parched paper that had emancipated Joseph so many years ago was now emancipating me. It could very easily have said: Know all men that by these presents Eddy L. Harris is hereby manumitted, emancipated and liberated from the shame and degradation of slavery. Joseph, like Jesus, has suffered in your stead. He has borne your shame. You are set free.

  At the same time this deed was fastening me. I was tied now to Joseph in a way that blood could never bind me. I was his debtor.

  Because of the way other folks see us I have always been linked to black people. Now I am linked because of how I see us. And I see now that being black is not only about slavery. It is about strength and patience, about pain and survival and connectedness. It is about courage. It is about sacrifice and it is about love. Being black is about hope.

  Because of all that has been, people of color live in constant danger. Our lives are serious, our talk is serious, our thinking ought to be very serious. We can never assume that the world is one thing or another, nor that the world is all black, nor that it is all white, nor that the world is safe and that everything is rosy. We must not forget that our collective life is a war.

  We must never forget how long the road has been. We must never forget that we are still on that road. And we must not forget that if we are ever to arrive at our destination, we are responsible for one another.

  When I graduated from high school, the headmaster in his final report urged me to go forth and be a credit to my race. It was one more shred of evidence that who I was and what I did would only be seen in the context of color. At the time I took as an insult the assumption that I could only be a source of pride and honor to black people.

  Now I see that I am just a rung on the ladder. As I am seen, others will be seen. What I do matters. As I now stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before, others who come after will stand on mine. I hope my shoulders are somehow broad enough.

  I took a deep breath and closed the book containing Joseph Harris’s original records. I had found my roots.

  What has passed is not entirely gone. It lives within us. The future is born of us. Time is not so rigid as we pretend. I come south to see what lies ahead and I touch the past.

  * * *

  Several weeks later, deeper into spring, I went to an Easter Sunday service in Atlanta.

  Looking back on it, the chronology of my journey had taken on the fluidity of memory, the fluidity of a dream.

  I had arrived in Atlanta and the delicate scent of lilac flooded my helmet, filled my senses. I had ridden through a patch of heavy shade. The air was cool. Over the road hung clusters of wild lilac bushes, the great clumps of purplish pink flowers dangling from the branches. Their perfume surrounded me and made my Easter Sunday smell like Easter ought to smell.

  I had come into Atlanta the night before, come in a driving wind that left me exhausted. When I went to mass the next morning, boring Catholic mass at Immaculate Heart of Mary, I nearly fell asleep. The sermon said nothing to me, did not touch me, did not speak to me, did not rouse me, was not relevant to the world around me.

  This was not what I had in mind for Easter.

  I wanted some joy, I wanted some noise, I wanted a celebration.

  So the idea came to me that I should go to a black church for a second Easter service. And what better church in Atlanta to attend than Ebenezer Baptist Church, the church in which Martin Luther King had been pastor?

  But the service that day had been moved to the Martin Luther King International Chapel at Morehouse College, a black school near downtown. I got directions and went, not knowing what to expect.

  The place was not a chapel at all, it was an auditorium—huge, impersonal, cold. And it was packed. I felt I was in a theater awaiting some kind of performance.

  A big symphony orchestra crowded the stage, strings and brass and tympani drums and a thin man wielding a baton. Behind them was a large choir. A few white faces were sprinkled throughout, but not many: a white lady playing the cello, a white lady violinist, a white lady singing in the choir. Off to one side was the children’s choir, a big group of well-mannered boys and girls in white shirts and dresses.

  At the front of the stage, in the robes of their office, sat the clergy.

  When the music began, trumpeters searched for the right notes, sounding tinny. The strings scraped and grated. The music, European in tradition, was uninspired.

  Surely it had been a mistake for me to come.

  Lawrence Carter spoke first. “Christianity,” he said, “is the only religion in the world with a holiday dedicated to the day death died.”

  I started to doze.

  There were a couple of readings, then the next piece of orchestra music began. When it was over, Assistant Pastor Sharon Austin recognized visiting ministers and out-of-town groups that had made the journey specially to be here. In a minute she was asking for donations.

  Then all of a sudden the choir was singing. No orchestra, just an accompanying piano. The music had more emotion. I perked up.

  From somewhere in the hall an old woman’s voice rang out and started wailing with the music. Sharon Austin invited us all to sing. The people seemed to know the song. I closed my eyes and swayed with the soaring voices. I forgot I was in church. I forgot that the prayers invoked the name of Jesus. And in their place I heard prayers and thanksgivings to my great-grandfather Joseph.

  Sharon Austin prayed: “Yet you reminded us this morning, [Great-Grandfather Joseph], that it’s all right, that you’ve fixed it, that you’ve paid the price.”

  As she prayed the choir continued to sing, and the congregation clapped hands to keep time.

  “It’s all right to sing, oh yes,” Sharon Austin cried. “We’re in worship. Why don’t you all stand and give praise this morning?”

  And everyone stood, singing, clapping.

  Then the music stopped and things quieted for Edward Reynolds.

  “I don’t know what your circumstances may be today, but on Good Friday there was a man who went to a rugged cross. And even though they put a spear in his side, he said not a mumbling word—because he knew of his purpose in this life.”

  Joseph again.

  “And so it is that we come today and say thank you.”

  Thank you, Joseph.

  “Thank you for allowing us to see another day. It is by your grace that we stand here this morning. Thank you for your love.

  “Because you were willing to die, it means now I know I have a right to be here. We can’t do it without your spirit. Because you lived, all hurt is gone; because you lived, I know what the future will be; that life is worth living because you lived.”

  And then a song to remind us in the chorus that there was no easier way.

  Now it was Pastor Joseph Roberts who stood to speak.

  First he thanked the whole world for coming, then he thanked the choir, and the children’s choir, the orchestra and the college and anyone else he could think of. Then he mumbled a prayer, invoking the spirit to move him this morning.

  Joseph Roberts, middle-aged, balding, metal-rimmed glasses around his eyes, a gray Vandyke around his mouth. From time to time, he stroked the beard or scratched it, took off the glasses and gestured with them. He was what I expected in a black Baptist preacher, starting softly, starting simply—talking about Mary Magdalene and her low
ly station and why she was the one to receive the gospel message that Jesus had risen—building nicely, becoming more forceful, more expressive and unrestrained, then bouncing around wildly until he was almost apoplectic, and coming to a violent crescendo.

  “When you fall down…” he said, and he was still talking about Mary Magdalene’s sinful past, but he could have been talking about black people who had been locked in slavery once and were forever disparaged because of it.

  “When you fall down, some people will never remember that you were ever up. They’ll always remember when you were down.”

  Mary Magdalene was certainly nothing to us, he said. She was possessed by demons and was an inhabitant of a faraway and unimportant city near the border with gentiles. But perhaps we have missed something about her, some quality which we fail to see and appreciate.

  Can you imagine what it must have been like to be demon-possessed—or to be a slave, I thought—forced to live the life of a pariah?

  Mary was called worthless and evil because of her wicked lifestyle. She was never loved for herself. And so Mary must have been often depressed and disillusioned.

  People never forgot who Mary was, Joseph Roberts said.

  “There was a man who was roaming in the tombs and when that person was healed the people said, ‘We don’t want to have anything to do with him. We are mad because you [Jesus] exorcised the demons and put them in the hogs instead and caused us to have an economic downturn. Get him out of here.’

  “And the people remembered who he was, and wouldn’t forgive him and wouldn’t let him alone.”

  Then Joseph Roberts quieted down.

  “I’m wondering if you know some people this morning,” he said, “who have something in their past that they might rightfully be ashamed of, but they’re trying to overcome it, they’re trying to live beyond it, but you say, ‘Oh, that’s just so and so.’ But you never know who God is going to send to deliver a message to you.”

  He paused. Then he started to get violent, hollering and gesturing wildly, and the congregation could feel his fire. The hot coal had touched his lips, and the spirit was moving him.

  “Don’t ever feel that somebody is so low that they can’t teach you something,” he said. “Maybe it’s because they’ve seen the downside of the mountain that they know more than you do on the upside of the mountain. Always remember where you came from.”

  His voice took on more energy and force. He was talking about Joseph. And he was talking directly to me.

  “Always remember that if it had not been for [men like Joseph] on your side you wouldn’t be sitting up here this morning. Always remember that it was [a man like Joseph] who brought you from a mighty long way. And it is especially necessary…”

  He halted. Sweat was on his brow. He took his glasses off. He made a kind of fist and gesticulated passionately, and he said it again. The crowd was with him, erupting in a frenzy.

  “It is especially necessary for those black people who have the opportunity to go to universities.”

  He was pointing at me, shouting wildly.

  “It is especially necessary for the little buppies [black urban professionals] of our race who are finally getting the key to the executive washroom to remember where you came from, to remember that if it had not been for [men like Joseph] on your side, you couldn’t be anything.”

  The crowd went crazy. They were yelling and screaming and applauding with abandon. And so was I.

  If this had happened a year ago, or even half a year ago, I might have slumped in my seat or slithered out of there. But this Easter morning I knew that Pastor Roberts was right.

  Joseph Harris is nothing to be ashamed of. The millions of other slaves whose names I will never know are all to be proud of. If not for them and their lessons of love and endurance, I would be nothing at all.

  I had indeed found my roots.

  I had touched the past, which is one thing. The difficult part is carrying the past into the future, carrying it without pain and without shame, remembering how we came to be here, remembering that without the past there is no present, no future. It is here in the present, in us, that past and future meet.

  I understood then that Joseph’s emancipation deed is a monument to both past and future. It is a reminder of his responsibility to me, and of mine to my children’s children. It is a symbol.

  That Joseph was a slave is important. That Joseph was black matters. His courage and his farsightedness underscore my debt to him. And while I cannot celebrate slavery, I can surely celebrate the slave.

  I recalled running my hands over the dried, crinkly paper, and a surge of pride flowed through me. There was a lot to be sad about and angry about, but there was a lot be proud of, too. A lot to be joyful for. A lot to celebrate.

  I went outside and leaned against a tree that Joseph might have leaned against. I lay on the southern grass. The wind caressed my cheek. I looked up at the cloudless sky and breathed in the cool moist air of afternoon. It smelled like home.

  XII

  The past is history, the future is perfect.

  —Orel Hershieser

  Somewhere in the South a man is waiting to call me nigger. A man who does not know me. A man, perhaps a woman, perhaps a child. Waiting to reject me without knowing a single thing about me except that I am black, not caring to get to know me, not caring enough even to try. Waiting to hate me, or someone who looks like me—some other man, some woman, some child. Waiting to tell us we don’t belong. Waiting to call us nigger.

  His mind is already made up.

  Evil lives in the world. Always has. Always will. But evil is not all there is.

  Before she let me get on my way, Gwendoline told me one last thing. She whispered it, spoke it almost to herself, as her lips grazed my ear in our embrace.

  “Racism exists,” she said. “It is not the worst thing there is. It can be overcome.”

  I had wanted to ask what she thought was worse than racism, had wanted to ask how she thought it could be overcome. But I never did. I got on my bike and rode away, rode down a narrow lane until the road ran out. I rode down roads with numbers for names, rode down roads with no names at all. I rode until the heat of day stole my strength, rode until the cool evening air brought it back. I rode until the midnight light was the only light there was, and I was deeper and deeper into the South.

  The South had always meant one hateful thing to me. I had never considered the possibility that it would mean anything else.

  Suppose, I asked myself now, suppose that somewhere in the South someone is waiting to offer me a cool drink, to invite me home, to be my friend. Suppose someone is waiting to understand me a little. Suppose somewhere in the South the future is taking root, a flower among the weeds. Suppose somewhere someone is sorry.

  I did not ask Gwendoline what is worse than racism. I did not ask her how it can be overcome. I think now I know. The answers are simple and intertwined. Worse than the racism itself is believing in racism and affirming it, losing yourself, letting racist ways and racist thinking define who you are and what you think and feel, until instead of acting, you can only react.

  There is evil in the world—yes. But evil is not all there is. And yes! Evil can be overcome.

  Great-Grandfather Joseph had seen evil, more in a single day probably than I will ever know in a lifetime, more than enough to last several generations. Yet when the time came, he did not let the evil block his way. He loaded his wagon with whatever possessions he owned and carried on down the road deeper into the South. He took his tools and his clothes. He took the name that would not have been his but for slavery and made the best of it, took the life that would not have been his but for slavery and made the best of it, took the circumstances that would not have been his but for slavery and overcame them. And all this without a mumbling word. He had a life to get on with. He had a star to aim for, a star to stand on, a destiny to follow, a fortune to find.

  There were men waiting to call him nigger, m
en waiting to refuse him, men willing to hate him for the color of his skin. But he would not be denied.

  There were men waiting to humiliate him, to threaten him for no reason, to lynch him for getting out of line. But they could not take his soul.

  He was born here—in this South. He belonged here.

  And he had become my hero.

  I relaxed in the saddle now and rode on. My heart slowed. My breathing came easily. Stars appeared. The breeze picked up. It was going to be a beautiful night.

  That next morning I headed back to Raleigh to find Andrew. There was plenty I wanted to tell him.

  Thinking he would come to the train station as he usually did, I went there and waited for him. The afternoon train to Washington and New York came and went. Andrew never showed up.

  It didn’t matter. I don’t know exactly what I would have said to him anyway, but something. I just wondered what had made him break his routine that day; something I had said the last time, perhaps. Or something he had said.

  I imagined him sitting in another part of the city, perhaps on a bench near North Carolina State University. Doubtless he was watching the pretty young women sauntering to class, reminding him that there is still beauty in the world. But I preferred to think he had strolled over to the east side of the capitol, to the black side of town, to take in the beauty that was there.

  I didn’t wait for him. I got on the bike and rode out of town. There was someplace else I wanted to go. And this time, with Joseph’s hand on my shoulder to guide me, his guardian eye protecting me, I knew where I was going.

  After that, the rest was easy.

  It is a three-hour ride from Raleigh to Wilmington on the Atlantic coast. It took me three days.

  The wind had shifted. It blew a stiff and steady stream from west to east. I didn’t want to head into it, didn’t want to fight the wind all day, and I didn’t want it hitting me from the side and shoving me back and forth across the road. I thought it would be nice to have the wind at my back for a change and so I made my way east along Highway 64.