Writing to Save a Life

by John Edgar Wideman

  * * *

  On December 3, 1944, Mrs. Joyce MB of Bonfire Close, Chard, Somerset, England, married and in her ninth month of pregnancy, left her home to walk to the cinema. She was followed by Corporal Robert L. Pearson and Private Cubia Jones, both colored, of Company A, 1698th Engineer Combat Battalion, United States Army. The men, strangers to Mrs. MB, she said, walked up behind her, grasped her wrists and despite her protests that she was married and pregnant, dragged her into Bonfire orchard and raped her.

  The next day in a lineup at the U.S. camp, Pearson and Jones were identified by Mrs. MB as her assailants and arrested. At trial Mrs. Joyce MB testified that she begged the soldiers repeatedly Don’t do it, but the men ignored her pleas. She said that during the rape, they attempted to calm and console her by saying they loved her.

  Corporal Pearson, twenty-one years old, and Private Jones, twenty-four, despite their contention that Mrs. MB consented to have sex, and despite their claims of love, were both found guilty of rape and subsequently hanged at Shepton Mallet prison, March 17, 1945, part of a wave of executions—including the judicial asphyxiation of Privates Till and McMurray—that resulted from a directive issued by General Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe and later President of the United States of America, ordering expeditious resolution of all pending cases alleging capital crimes committed by U.S. service personnel against foreign nationals.

  * * *

  What if the crimes of June 27–28, 1944, in Civitavecchia were not exactly rape, the criminals not exactly colored. CID agents, determined to prove color and rape, chose not to ask those questions. None of the obvious trails leading away from rape and color are pursued. No witness statement establishes the well-known fact elaborated by GIs’ comments in the Till file that the assaulted shacks were situated in a cluster of hovels frequented day and night by American troops of all colors shopping for women and wine. No victim statement records whether sex for money was offered, requested, expected or obtained the night in question. Apart from accusations by the accused of other accused, no witness claims to have seen the same individuals present at both the rape and murder scenes. Only the perpetrators’ color (or alleged color) links the assaults in one household with murder in another.

  The victims declare that fear, panic, shock, chaos couldn’t diminish their ability to recognize skin color. The victims elaborate upon various shades of colored skin they could discriminate in spite of the stygian gloom. Statements that might impede the agents’ rush to blame color and rape are adjusted. John Masi, an Italian citizen who spoke English and asserted that he could distinguish colored voices from white voices because he’d lived a dozen years in Brooklyn, New York, had sworn in an initial statement (June 30, 1944) recorded by CID agents only forty-eight hours after the Zanchi shooting, that one of the two masked men who had pounded on the Zanchi door demanding sex and wine was white: “The tall one did most of the talking. From his actions and manner of speech I am of the opinion that he was white.” Masi said that he had argued with two hooded, armed men on the porch of the Zanchi house for several minutes before they ordered him back inside and bullets blasted through the door killing his girlfriend’s mother (CID Report #41).

  A second interview (October 27, 1944) is arranged and Masi, by then an employee of the United States Military, reverses himself: “The American soldiers I talked to and who fired their pistols at the door of the casa of the Zanchi family, were colored Americans.” In this second version of events, the version he repeated in his testimony at court-martial, not only has Masi become certain that he recognized a colored man’s colored voice, he swears in effect that while lying on the floor he could see through a closed door the color of the man outside who fired fatal shots through it.

  How many .45s were manufactured for the U.S. military during World War II—Louis Till allegedly stole a .45 automatic from a sailor on the night of June 27 and used it to kill Anna Zanchi—J. W. Milam’s service .45 killed Louis Till’s son—live by the .45, your son dies by the .45—justice or coincidence or irony—or none of the above—J. W. Milam was an MP—did he serve in Italy—did Milam bust colored soldiers from Till’s battalion—could Louis Till and Milam have crossed paths during the war—did the same .45 kill Anna Zanchi and Emmett Till—what was the guilty .45’s serial number—the weapon in the Zanchi shooting was identified as a .45 by shell casings on the ground at the crime scene, by holes in the Zanchi door, a big hole in the stomach of the dead woman—a .45 was never recovered by investigators—no victim identified Louis Till as the intruder who shot Zanchi—did the mysterious English guy Chappie eventually identified by CID agents as Private Frank Emmanuel, 903787, 6th Battalion, Gordon Highlanders, C Company, CMF (Canadian Military Forces), borrow a .45 from Till the night of June 27—was the .45 in the Canadian/Englishman’s possession a month later when he was shot and killed by an Italian civilian at Maenza, near Terracina, Italy, during a holdup attempt—who was robbing whom—did J. W. Milam sneak his army sidearm back to the States or buy a different .45 after he returned home—who sold Milam a .45 in Mississippi—a .45 Milam liked to show off to his sharecroppers, people say—a war souvenir he shoved into Emmett Till’s ear to scare him, smashed across Till’s skull when Emmett didn’t seem scared enough, pulled the trigger and blew out the boy’s brains when scaring wasn’t good enough—was the English-sounding guy a colored gay guy hanging around AWOL in a U.S. Army colored barracks with Louis Till, Fred McMurray and Junior Thomas—was this Chappie, as he was known, fucking Junior Thomas on the sly—did Thomas with his gay lover, the foreign soldier, hustle and rob gay sailors—is that how the Zanchi murder weapon was obtained—after the Mari barracks attack, did Chappie and Thomas, not Till and McMurray, raid the Zanchi shack—did Chappie or Thomas shoot a .45 through the closed door—the plot thickens.

  * * *

  What if the person who prepared the Till file to be read by others had decided not only that Louis Till’s voice must be heard, but that it must be heard first. What if a reader of the file could enter its pages without being assaulted by the same unforgiving tale repeated by three review boards. What if the voices of Till’s wife, Mamie Till, or Till’s son, Emmett, or a buddy of Louis Till from the 379th Port Battalion, a colored GI not on trial for murder, were included in the file. What if the file included the hurry-up memo from General Eisenhower ordering expeditious completion of all capital court-martials in Europe. Or included statistics documenting the stunningly disproportionate number of colored soldiers accused, convicted, and executed for rape. Or included the fact that systematic discrimination limited the number of colored soldiers in the officer corps and thus very few were available to staff court-martials and review boards. Voices recorded in the file have been orchestrated to engage in a conversation solely among themselves, a conversation condemning Till by excluding his voice, a conversation not acknowledging, let alone pondering the meaning of Till’s silence.

  Louis Till an orphan in his file, just as he’d started life as an orphan in New Madrid, Missouri. Guilty of being nobody long before a court-martial tries and convicts him, delivers his death sentence. He is born a colored orphan, and he dies one. A nobody. No voice, no room for Till inside or outside the file’s pages. Till doomed by cracks within cracks within the legal system. Cracks in the yellow-gray transcript. The file’s stuttering, helter-skelter chronology avoids and silences Till, a file already contaminated, problematic once Till’s right of confidentiality scratched off the cover ten years after the document was legally sealed in 1945.

  * * *

  Everybody in the Till file lies. It’s easy to recognize situations that compel lies. Benni Lucretzia’s desperate concern to protect her daughter Elena’s honor and marriageability; Fred McMurray’s last-ditch attempt to keep his neck out of a noose. Junior Thomas blames others to exonerate himself; CID agents’ desire to construct an open-and-shut case to meet a superior officer’s demand for swift justice. If a reward is enticing enough, does the temptatio
n to lie become irresistible. Do extreme circumstances mitigate lies. Do all questions deserve true answers—is that boy from Chicago in there—are you hiding Jews in your cellar—Tutsis in your attic. It’s not easy for a reader of the file to figure out if a false story is being told because the teller believes it’s true. Or to figure out if a story is suppressed because the person not telling it believes it’s false. When is silence a lie. Can silence protect truth from the contamination of lies. It’s exceedingly difficult to figure the how and why of lies. Difficult to accept that a tangle of self-interested deceptions is as close to truth as anybody ever gets.

  Where does one lie end and another lie start. Each party has heavily invested in his or her portion of lies. In the file, until a court-martial passes judgment and decides which version of events wins, all lies are equal. All lies except colored lies. Colored lies (or truth, or fiction) are invalid unless they substantiate white lies. Lying is a weapon nobody in the Till file can afford to surrender. The collective enterprise of lying creates a sort of stock market. A Ponzi scheme. A market trading solely in worthless commodities. The only value and appeal of the stocks is that they postpone temporarily a reckoning of their worthlessness. They can be bought and sold and profit accrued as long as someone listens to the lie or believes the lie or pretends to believe the lie. Ensconced in a make-believe kingdom like Prospero’s enchanted island in The Tempest, stocks are granted substance, habitation, names. Nobody invested in this chimerical market wants it to crash because their profitable lies will come tumbling down with the rest. The players wheel and deal as if the web of lies will never unravel, never unwind or wind up or wind down or do whatever lies do, whatever stocks do, lives do, fictions do, when the game’s over. Like everybody else I’m invested in my own little portfolio of lies, set aside for rainy days. My lies true as any others till Prospero snaps his magic wand.

  * * *

  Will a moment finally emerge in which a collection of lies offers access to truth. More truth, anyway, than a single individual—liar or honest person—is capable of reconstructing. Which lies. Whose lies. The file writes fiction. To mimic reality, the Till file writes fiction.

  * * *

  Cut through the knotted lies. Cut to the chase. Lights. Action. Camera. As in blockbuster movies and novels. Bam. Bloom. Boom. Booming guns snatch half-naked Frieda Mari from sleep, drive her to the door of a shack in Civitavecchia, a door she flings open to escape the terror of ceilings and walls crashing down.

  What Benni Lucretzia sees first from her bed when cannon fire shakes the flimsy wooden shack is a blur of white nightgown, then her daughter, Elena, running towards the door, a little ghost trailing the big ghost of Frieda Mari’s nightdress. Then Frieda and Elena are flying back through the shack, men chasing them who must have piled through the door when Frieda unlatched it.

  Another world bursts into the dark barracks. Men have fallen from the sky, rushed through the open door. Screams. Shouts. A hand grips Benni Lucretzia’s arm. Grunted words she doesn’t understand. The room’s full of huge, dark wings battering the air. A herd of panicked sheep, wolves in pursuit, wolves growling, barking, teeth snapping. The snarl of wolf language.

  She’s grabbed, shoved back down on her bed. Door slams. A match flickers. Shadows lift, lurch, spin. Black masks. White eyes gleam through eyeholes. A blinding flash snuffs the match, restores utter dark. Benni Lucretzia screams, Where is Elena. Where is my girl. Run, Elena. Run and hide. A heavy hand over Benni Lucretzia’s mouth, another hand inside her nightgown. Gown rips when she wrenches away. She struggles to stay upright, her back wedged against the wall. Fights. Tries to flee. Nowhere to go. Loses the fight quickly. Gown a noose. Claws dig into her bare shoulder.

  Another match flares. Black bugs dart back and forth across white eyeballs. A huge, hooded head looms over Benni Lucretzia. Heavy legs straddle her. Bed too small. Bed’s caving in. Elbow digs into her breast. She squirms free enough to kick, to pedal her legs furiously. Going nowhere. Hard hand over her mouth muffles her scream. Takes her breath away. She can’t shout her daughter’s name. Elena. Hide, run, Elena.

  She stops twisting and flopping. She’s pinned to the bed. A great weight crushes down. Stone hand cuts off breath. Don’t kill my baby. Please. Please. Baby inside me. I won’t fight. Won’t run. Tiny heels kick, kick inside her all day long. Don’t scare the baby.

  Mountain sits where it wants to sit. Speaks her language. Bianchi. Tedeschi, Tedeschi. Rides her. Yanks her nightdress up to her shoulders. Fistful of hair he pulls if she bucks and twists. Fiky, fiky. Lavorare.

  Another flash freezes the shape above her. Black an instant before white light blinds her. Hands grip her legs, stretch her wide open. She’s being torn to pieces. She bites down on her tongue. The big one on top grunts. He’s inside her. She lets him. Lets him stay. Run Elena. Run. Too tired to fight. Lets him. No fight left. Is the baby asleep. Don’t hurt my baby.

  Where are you, Elena. Light bright as day an instant then black as storms on summer nights. Elena’s legs a blur behind Frieda’s pale blur. Elena hides under the bed. Black wolf after her. No. No. Please. Let it be Frieda. Frieda down there on the floor eaten by a wolf. Lavorare. Lavorare. Where is she, Frieda. Is my baby dead. Where is my daughter.

  * * *

  Fred McMurray, Louis Till’s codefendant, hanged with Till on July 2, 1945, near Aversa, Italy, testified to CID agents on July 19, 1944: “After we were inside, Till and the English soldier both said, ‘fiky-fiky’ to the women who were inside. The two (2) who were in the front room said, ‘sì.’ One of them caught me by the hand and the other caught the English soldier by the hand and both said: ‘Vieni Qua.’ The old man was lying across the foot of the bed crying, so we all went into the back room where we found another woman in bed. Thomas asked this woman to ‘fiky-fiky’ and she said ‘sì,’ so she and Thomas went into the front room. The woman I had got in the bed and pulled up her dress. I got on the bed and was trying to get my rod out. Just as I got my rod out, Till came up to me with his cock in one hand and the .45 automatic in the other. He told me to get up and after a little argument I did as he said because I was afraid of him (Till is bigger than I am and he also had the gun on me). The Englishman was fucking his woman on the floor so I went back to the front room where the old man, Thomas and his woman were . . . Till, Thomas and the English soldier all got some tail, but I didn’t. The English soldier stated that he was laid twice.”

  * * *

  Drunk soldiers tripping over each other hurry through the door of a shack in Civitavecchia. The door’s flung open from inside while they stagger slow motion, sneaking around outside, then suddenly they are inside, Alice through the looking glass.

  For an hour they had sat on a stone wall. Vino. Talked, laughed. Vino. Planned. Vino. Talked. Vino. Crept through weeds to get closer to the shack, close to doing something they didn’t know exactly what. Just talk. Just mouth. Just Vino. Creep and crawl so nobody sees them. Then the sky lit up like Fourth of July. They’re inside now. It’s pitch dark and now they know what they’re going to do next. Everything they big and bad enough to do.

  It’s one of the women from inside who opens the door, sees them, scoots back into the dark shack. None of the men know the woman’s name is Frieda Mari. They chase her. Push. Grab. She owns no name. Men don’t know their own names. They know women stay here. In this barracks where guys buy vino. Where some niggers lying or maybe not lying claim they buy pussy. Two women and a skinny little girl almost a woman. Close enough to woman to fuck. As they go up and down the Waterpoint hill to the Italian soldiers’ camp for vino when no vino to be copped down below, they often see women around the shack. Women washing clothes. Hanging up GI khakis to dry. Two short, thick heifers. Not pretty. Pussy. Pussy’s pussy. A girl outside sometimes. Girl pussy.

  * * *

  The men are drunk enough to say, Why not. Cop some. Buy. Take. Whatever. We’re soldiers, goddamnit. War, damnit. U.S. Army don’t take no for no answer. Soldiers t
ake. Fiky. Fiky.

  * * *

  An old man fights them. Beat him down in a second. An old, old woman too old to fuck screams, falls on top the old man who’s knocked out cold on the bed.

  * * *

  Dark. Can’t see a goddamn thing. Two women in here somewhere. Not old. Not young. There’s one. A girl. She hollers. Runs. Get her. Light a match, man. Hurry up. Light this motherfucker up.

  * * *

  Buy. Take. Do what you said you were going to do. Or didn’t say. After you finish the vino Till copped up the hill, you sit and talk on the stone wall alongside the road. Pussy. Houseful. Vino bout gone. Cop more. Buy. Take. Get me some. Young girl in there I wants. Fresh meat. Get me some that. Buy. Take. Drunk men sit and drink and scheme a plan to cop and the shack door pops open in their faces. Plan was hoods, masks, some go in the front door or through a hole in the roof. Some in back door, except no back door. Front door blows open. Blows plan. Dark inside. Now what you going to do. Do what. You can do whatever the fuck you want to do. Do it.

  Woman in bed. Wake her up. Wake the fuck up. Work time. Time to go to work. Vino. Fiky. Fiky.

  Work.

  * * *

  Nobody knows who. We’re white, not colored. We’re Germans. Germans. Drunk men doing their business. Hoods so nobody sees. Nobody knows. Do what they came for. What. Who said so. Who says no. Who got money. Who said stop. Who’s chicken. Who ain’t gon do what they said. What they supposed to do. Buy. Sell. Take. In the very dark hard to tell. Who. Black masks. Gun in your pocket shoot off your balls. Ha ha ha. In the dark. Who’s who. Hee-hee. Ha-ha. You do what you came for. Nobody’s business who. Boo-hoo. Shut the fuck up. Work. Fiky-fiky. You know who. We Germans. White. Tedeschi. Do it. Do it.