Writing to Save a Life

by John Edgar Wideman

  Dear Professor Kaplan,

  In your account of a visit to Plot E of the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery and Memorial on Sunday afternoon in January 2004, you relate that the look-alike white gravemarkers were engraved with gray numbers and not names. How could you identify the person buried beneath a particular stone. More specifically, how did you know Louis Till was under stone 73. Had you obtained a directory, a guidebook, some official document matching names with numbers. If you possess such a source, where did you discover it. Would you be willing to share it. Does it contain facts about the dead other than names and numbers. Did you have in hand a map of Plot E so that you anticipated finding Louis Till’s grave at the corner of row four. Were you touched equally by the Till grave and the grave, number thirteen, of Private James Hendricks, the colored soldier whose trial you feature in your book about French novelist Monsieur Louis Guilloux, the interpreter at James Hendricks’s court-martial. Were you struck, Professor Kaplan, by the coincidence that both Mr. Guilloux and Mr. Till bear the given name Louis or by the resemblance between Guilloux and guillotine. Did you feel on the Sunday afternoon you explored Plot E that the life of each one of us no matter how tightly we clutch it, is an unanchored thread that does not guide us out of the labyrinth. I thank you in advance for any information you’re able to offer about these matters. Your book The Interpreter led me to Plot E of the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery and Memorial, and in a very real sense I have been wandering since in a limbo inhabited by shades of men buried there.

  Several years after that letter—never sent—I was shaving and the TV news talking in another room announced a black father declared guilty of protecting his son. A carful of mad white boys rolls up to the black man’s suburban Long Island driveway and they demand he surrender his son to them because the son they say insulted the sister of one of the boys. A sexual, racial trespass, thus unforgivable, thus the son must pay. But the daddy, an old-time emigrant from the deep south, got a long memory, got him a little pistola cached away for just such emergencies. No. No. Never again. Get thee gone, ye whited sepulchers, he goes or says other words to provoke a predictable riposte such as, Nigger, you better move your scrawny old black nigger ass out of the way, boy, an exchange I imagine escalating rapidly to nastier imprecations and threatening gestures terminated abruptly by a single gunshot. One white boy down, bleeding on the black man’s driveway. The other boys in his crew rush him to the hospital, but it’s too late. He dies on the way, and this morning the breaking news: a judge has pronounced the black father guilty.

  Familiar script. Offended white males go after black boy accused of molesting white female. Same ole, same ole Mississippi Till story repeating itself, but with the roles, the scenario sort of scrambled—north not south, day not night, black guy not white guy the one with a pistol in his hand, white accuser dies, accused black boy survives, and the court in this New York case declares black shooter guilty, not like Mississippi law declared the white shooter of Emmett Till innocent. This latest version of the script altered but not enough to obscure its resemblance to the original. Then the point would be lost, wouldn’t it. Just enough alike and different to appear as if festering ugliness between blacks and whites changes. Though it really doesn’t change, except maybe for the worse. This is what I heard from the TV in the other room as I shaved.

  And getting even worse day by day it seems when I pay attention—one more colored victim declared guilty without a trial falls, fallen, falling dead, here, there, everywhere . . .

  * * *

  This text will not become the Emmett Till fiction I believed I was working on. All the words that follow are my yearning to make some sense out of the American darkness that disconnects colored fathers from sons, a darkness in which sons and fathers lose track of one another.

  * * *

  When I call the National Archives in Washington, D.C., the person, a specialist in military service records a friend suggested and whose extension I ask for, is unavailable. The phone of an alternative clerk, to whom I’m referred by a friendly human operator whose voice identifies him as alive and colored, picks up after three rings. A recorded message offers another extension that plunges me into a cycling menu of instructions, the product of Starquest Answering Service that’s either unintelligible by design or designed to make me pay for my sins—sins of age, of poor hearing and unnimble fingers, of unfamiliarity with the latest maneuvers necessary to wield control over recorded voices offering choices. Each set of options is so lengthy I forget them if I listen to the entire list. Or choose prematurely, always incorrectly, if I don’t listen to the bitter end. I feel like poor Ulysses roped to the mast, teased by a chorus of sirens or baffled, like Ralph Ellison’s invisible man by voices whose job is to keep me running. Voices that chirp, chatter, lecture, and sometimes, I’m sure, chortle at my efforts to steer through them and obtain information about Louis Till.

  Turns out the backup person I seek is not available either, I learn later from the friendly colored operator. The alternate person’s mother died suddenly and he’s away burying her in Alabama. The toll mounts. Casualties jinxed perhaps by mere association with the grim subjects of my inquiry: kidnap, rape, murder, execution by hanging.

  After weeks of calling and reaching no one, I complain again to the live voice. He offers yet a third number and bingo, persistence seems about to pay off. The original archivist who’d been reported gravely ill is either back at his desk or at a virtual desk in heaven where he’s able to receive calls. His voice is music to my ears even though it’s recorded music. He/it promises to return missed calls promptly, and sure enough my call’s returned. A recorded voice offers a number, recited twice to make sure I get it. I’m elated. Hang up immediately, punch in the twice-repeated number, and alas, find myself adrift in Starquest again.

  * * *

  Leghorn, Italy, a.k.a. Livorno, the site of Louis Till’s court-martial, say documents arriving at last, at last, after I put my request to the government in writing. The Louis Till file mailed to me also states that the executions of Till and his codefendant, Fred A. McMurray, occurred in Aversa, Italy, near Naples. I welcomed such facts though they only led to more questions. According to the death certificates of Privates Till and McMurray, the men were hanged the same day—July 2, 1945. Little else about the executions in Aversa appears in the copious file. Did Till and McMurray drop simultaneously, each through his own trapdoor, at the conclusion of the same . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 countdown. Who counted. One countdown or two. One double scaffold or two scaffolds, separate and equal. Were the condemned offered a last chance to speak. Did either avail himself of the opportunity. Who witnessed the ceremony. Did the U.S. Army invite townsfolk and town officials, as was occasionally the practice at executions of American soldiers in occupied France. In Brittany, for example, the public execution site of a colored G.I. is remembered in the Breton language as park an hini du, black man field.

  Was a real doctor or army-trained medic assigned to listen for the absent pulses of dead Till and McMurray. Sunshine or rain that day. Did the condemned meet their fate resolutely or falter. What thoughts were they thinking on the gallows steps. How many steps. Were the steps wooden. Portable. Were photos taken of the living prisoners, dead prisoners. What archive holds them if they still exist. Much later I would find in a book, The Fifth Field, a few photos claiming to document the hangings of Till and McMurray. Are the photos authentic. Is Louis Till’s face truly one of the faces in the blurry snapshots.

  * * *

  A copy of a Battle Casualty Report (July 20, 1945) appears on an early page of the Till file and registers Louis Till’s death. The words “in Italy” are typed crookedly into the Place of casualty box. An asterisk occupies the box where Type of casualty is supposed to be recorded. At the bottom of this page, just beyond the Casualty Report’s edge, a footnote, indexed by the asterisk above, contains two phrases, “judicial asphyxiation” and “sol died in a non-battle status due to his own misconduct.” Mrs. Till
asserted on numerous occasions that only the second phrase was included in the telegram of July 13, 1945, sent to inform her of her husband’s death.

  Given many such willful or unavoidable or contested or careless or premeditated aporias in the official account, how could the most diligent researcher hope to accurately reconstruct a double hanging in Aversa, Italy, over a half century after it happened.

  Where there’s life, there’s hope, my mom used to say, even though my father, if he happened to be around, would always interject: And for every tree, there’s a rope, a rejoinder that would have irritated Mom even more if she had known (and probably she did) it was the punch line of a joke making fun of a southern darky ha-ha-ha obsessed with copping him a taste of white pussy ha-ha before he dies.

  Where there’s life, there’s hope

  * * *

  Did Louis Till ever cop a taste of leghorn. Some historians contend the city of Leghorn is named for chickens its earliest settlers found in residence when they arrived to erect a fortified town in the middle ages. Others argue leghorn chickens—a small, hardy domestic fowl noted for prolific egg production—are named for the city where they were originally bred. Though the city of Leghorn, near Genoa in northwestern Italy on the Ligurian Sea, played a prominent role in his short (twenty-three years) life, it’s probably safe to conjecture Louis Till could not have cared less whether chickens or city bore the name leghorn first. But did he ever sample the local bird. Louis Till probably knew chicken in the sense Charlie Parker (a.k.a. Bird for love of them) knew chicken, but whatever Louis Till thought about leghorns or the city of Leghorn is lost in the silence that confronted me when I sought his voice in documents from the file.

  Malcolm (a.k.a. Malcolm X) who shares a family name Little with the famously paranoid bird Chicken Little, was not literally present at Louis Till’s trial and execution, but Malcolm informed the world in no uncertain terms why proverbial chickens on their way home to roost in America would have paused in Leghorn/Livorno and clucked disapproval of the kangaroo court-martial conviction and hanging of colored privates Louis Till and Fred A. McMurray. Louis Till, my father and most other veterans of World War II, colored and not, are gone now and humankind is no closer to solving problems created by the conundrum of race than we are to figuring out whether leghorn chickens or their eggs came first. I attempt to smile and nod reassuringly as I promise Louis Till, Mamie Till, my father, brothers, sister, mother, Emmett Till, Malcolm, Martin, Mandela et cetera, that some of us are absolutely not satisfied by the prospect of remaining forever in the dark. Darkness as deep and sinister as the dark in which many colored soldiers, executed like Till and McMurray and James Hendricks, lie buried.

  * * *

  All stories are true. As far as I’ve been able to glean, Louis Till possessed no knowledge of that particular Igbo proverb, nor a general familiarity with the customs and folklore of the Igbo, a West African ethnic group whose homeland is southeastern Nigeria (a.k.a. Biafra). Even if Till had been a prolific reader, he would not have come across all stories are true in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, where I first read the proverb. Achebe’s novel, set in a traditional Igbo village at the beginning of the twentieth century, was not published until 1958, thirteen years after Louis Till’s death. Yet it seems that Till was privy to the wisdom of all stories are true. In the only direct quote attributed to him by army officers in the entire Till file, Louis Till articulates a very Igbo understanding of the predicament in which he found himself.

  According to report #41 (Criminal Investigation Division/Rome Allied Army Command, United States Army—7 August, 1944) filed by CID/RAAC agents I. H. Rousseau and J. J. Herlihy and included in the Till documents I received, Louis Till didn’t open up to any extent when Herlihy, posing as a fellow prisoner, confined himself (10 July 1944) in the brig with Till to gain information about the crimes—assault, rape, murder—of June 27–28 in Civitavecchia, Italy. Another attempt to secure a statement from Till on 23 July 1944, the report continues, also met with negative results. Till remained adamantly silent, offering no information about the crimes being investigated nor providing an alibi to establish his whereabouts on the night of June 27. A stubborn silence that must have puzzled and frustrated his army interrogators since all the other accused colored soldiers were busy accusing one another. Breaking his silence once in response to the agents’ repeated demands for a statement, Louis Till allegedly said to Rousseau, “There’s no use in me telling you one lie and then getting up in court and telling another one,” a remark that clearly conveys to me and should have conveyed to Rousseau, Till’s Igbo sophistication, his resignation, his Old World, ironic sense of humor about truth’s status in a universe where all truths are equal until power chooses one truth to serve its needs.

  If not in Achebe’s book, where did Louis Till learn the proverb’s wisdom. Louis Till was probably not good at reading. Not a devourer of paperback westerns like my father. Different as they were, both men were the same deep brown color, I believe, and both boxed. Both men, like traditional Igbo wrestlers, honed their bodies to school their minds. Both were good enough with their fists to try amateur boxing. My father in Pittsburgh, Till in Chicago, according to Mamie Till’s autobiography.

  I see Louis Till in a gym—bobbing, weaving, feinting, throwing punches. Hear him training as I turn pages of the Till file. Heavy bag—whomp, whomp. Speed bag—blippidity—blip—blippidity—blip—blip. Sugar Ray fast hands flick out quick, quicker. Till up on his toes, leans in, dips back, circling—blip—blip—blip—blippidity—the bag can’t get away quick enough. Till tags it. Stings it. Snaps his punches. Sweat flicks off his dark shoulders. Then hop-hop-hop-hop he’s skipping rope—arc of jump rope cuts slices of air, tongue-shaped, round-shouldered tombstone slices inscribed a thousand perfect times. They hiss over him, behind him, portals of frozen air which frame a snapshot of Louis Till each time the rope whips by. Only inches to spare. Top of Till’s head sliced clean off if he doesn’t duck, step, lean, hip-hop through the whizzing rope.

  Been there, done a little boxing myself. Recall how a jump rope dies a split-second whap as each arc strikes the floor. Whap-whap-whap under Till’s feet. In canvas shoes, quick hop after little quick hop seems like the boy don’t hardly touch the ground—he’s flying—the spinning rope whaps the gym’s wood floor—whap—whap—like slaps in the face. Wooden handles of jump rope gripped in taped fists, Louis Till carves the shape—tombstone, tongue—one last time. Ducks under, ducks through. He’s winded. Sweat drips. He freezes. Still as stone a couple counts, then attacks the speed bag again, relentless until he’s finished and lets the bag wobble to a stop. Walks away wet head to toes. Skinny calves, thick thighs, thick torso, a pigeon-toed walk like they say the fastest runners walk. Till heavyset, but light on his feet, sneaky quick, a silent Indian kind of walk and isn’t that why she’s so quiet, Mamie Till so still, holding her breath, waiting for Louis to return.

  Mamie Till is difficult to pick out in the apartment’s deepest shadowed corner where she’s slumped. She doesn’t want Louis Till to see her before she sees him. Quiet as a mouse so he won’t hear her before she hears him and launches her attack or counterattack, she tells herself, hiding from her husband in the darkness with a butcher knife and pot of boiled water with a lid to stay hot, scald his sorry ass, his mean soul. He hurt her first. Louis Till hurt her bad and she’s still hurting an hour later, back pushed against the wall, knees pulled up, chin resting on her swollen breasts, breasts resting on her big belly, the poor little child inside her made to go through all this ugly shit, too. Not even born yet but here’s her baby, his baby in the dark crying and hurting like she is, her poor baby inside her moaning like she’d moan out loud if the noise wouldn’t give away her hiding place. Mamie Till is all drawn up inside herself, quiet-quiet, hard-soft ball of herself, round and crowded up with the scared baby inside, she waits. Mamie righteous, fierce, because to save her child she must save herself. She must counterattack and drive Louis Ti
ll out the door.

  Mamie Till told an interviewer Emmett almost missed his train to Mississippi. She said they had to hurry to get to the Twelfth Street Station on time. I believe I’ve seen that station, that it’s in the documentary I watched, Say Amen, Somebody, about the origins of gospel music, featuring Willie Mae Ford, legendary Chicago singer. I replay a scene in which the middle-aged daughter and son of Willie Mae Ford drive down a ramp into a train station’s underground parking lot. Stroll with them up to street level. Peer with them into a window near an unused entrance to the station. Our faces press close to the glass. With tissues from her purse, the daughter scrubs at a thick coat of grime. Boy, oh boy. Look at that. The camera meanwhile previews the station’s dark interior—an old-fashioned passenger coach abandoned on the tracks where it was uncoupled last, giant cylindrical metal containers stacked against a wall, unrecognizable debris scattered everywhere, gathering dust and rust in the gloom. Coming down here and seeing this decay, based on what it used to be, my, my, puts it all in one package, the man says to his sister, both of them standing inside the station now, eyes panning like the camera. My, my, the man sighs, close to tears. He recalls for his sister the station’s better days, a busy hub of activity when their mother was a star on the gospel music circuit, funny how every time those redcaps be knocking each other out the way to pick up Mama’s luggage. Not about tips. No, no. You know Daddy. Daddy didn’t believe in tips. Huh-uh. A dime sometimes maybe, most they gon get, if they got that.

  Grainy clips earlier in the documentary had shown Willie Mae Ford, gospel queen in furs and feathered hats, departing or returning home to Chicago. Freedom trains full of colored emigrants from the south used to land many times a day in Chicago, trains whose sounds are embodied in the old, new music Willie Mae Ford sings, music baptized “gospel” by Reverend Thomas Dorsey, a.k.a. Georgia Tom, a blues troubadour in his younger days. Dorsey’s gospel music too bluesy for some folks. Too much Bessie Smith, Mamie Smith, Ida Smith hip-shaking, home-breaking in it, explains Say Amen, Somebody, and not everybody ready to hear it inside their churches. I remember when lots of them wouldn’t have Mama to sing let alone preach, the sister says to her brother.