And All Our Wounds Forgiven

by Julius Lester

  “I had dropped out of Fisk at the end of my freshman year to follow Cal. I was 18 years old. Eighteen! Can you believe that? Eighteen years old and I go to Shiloh, Mississippi by myself to face down death. I am 19 when I sit there in the dust trying to put Mr. Montgomery’s brains back in his head and six months later, Ezekiel Whitson is murdered.

  “I was too young, Cal. You took my love for you, my eagerness, my naivete, my idealism. You took everything about me that I loved and I’m sorry, Cal, but youth and love and eagerness and idealism are no match for evil and hatred and violence. Yes, we won. Would you believe that the sheriff in Shiloh is a black man now? But, dammit, I think Mr. Montgomery and Mr. Whitson and Mr. Howard and me and George were too high a price.”

  He was crying, and grief swelled in her, unwelcome and unwanted. Grief was not deterred, however. It had waited so long for her to acknowledge its being. It would wait beyond death if it needed to.

  “George,” his voice said dully after the choked sobbing ended and silence calmed them both. “That’s who I wanted to tell you about. Don’t ask me why. It’s like Lisa says: you do what you feel like you need to do; you do what you think is right. Maybe you understand why. Maybe you don’t.

  “I couldn’t stay any longer. That same night I called Cal and he knew I had lost it. He sent Lisa down that night and she drove me from Shiloh straight to a psychiatric hospital in New York. George stayed. He married a local girl. Mamie. Her skin was so black it shone as if it had been polished. She was extraordinarily beautiful. I ended up living with a white girl. Amy. She was beautiful, too. She loved me, which wasn’t easy to do. I have only vague memories of many of those years. If I wasn’t drunk, I was on pills to control my depressions or on pills to control my highs, and when the alcohol and the marijuana and the pills wouldn’t work, I was in the hospital strapped to a bed.

  “During the few times of something resembling lucidity I would leave and come here to Nashville and somewhere in there Kathy and I got together and suddenly, I had a child. Kathy wanted me to be a husband and a father. I could have more easily become white.

  “It was 1973. Clarity. When you can remember the year something happened, you are paying attention to your life. 1973. I was living with Amy again. It was the best time we had together. I wasn’t drinking nonstop. Nothing helps a relationship more than being conscious of what you’re doing and saying.

  “It was spring. George showed up one afternoon at our apartment. Whenever he was in New York raising money for the farmer’s cooperative he had organized, he stayed with us. In New York it was easier for him and me to be together. He still respected my organizing skills and we would talk over problems he might be having in the community. He always made me feel good by telling me that people still remembered when I did this, that or the other. He always seemed to arrive an hour or two before Amy was due home from work, and sometimes he would cook and sometimes she would and we would spend the evening laughing and talking and sharing that incredible intimacy that comes when people know the worst about each other and love survives.

  “This day, however, George called first and wanted to know if Amy was there. When I told him she was at work, he asked if he could come over. When he walked in, he was quieter than usual and his quietness was tight. I wondered who had died or been killed in Shiloh.

  “We sat down at the round oak table in the dining area off the kitchen. I poured him a cup of coffee from the always plugged in percolator. We chit-chatted aimlessly for a few minutes and I waited.

  “Finally, without prelude, he said, ‘I can’t keep quiet about it any longer, Card. It ain’t right. It just ain’t right you being with a white woman. It ain’t right.’

  “But before I could say anything, and I was too stunned to know what to say, he continued. ‘But I guess you say that’s my problem.’

  “’You’re right,’ I said flatly.

  “There was a long heavy silence. Finally, he stood up. ‘Got to be moving on down the road. You take care of yourself, Bobby.’

  “’Yeah, you, too.’ I don’t know if he was waiting for me to offer my hand, or if I was waiting for him to offer his, but we stood there facing each other for a long moment, not moving, not speaking, just waiting. But there was nothing to say. There was nothing to do. He turned and went toward the door. I followed, held it open and closed it softly behind him.

  “That was the last time we saw each other. I was hurt and angry that he had sat there so many times, had eaten Amy’s cooking, had hugged her like an old friend, had laughed and joked with us. I thought he was a total hypocrite. Five years later, after he was dead, I had a new thought. All the time George had spent with me and Amy hadn’t been a lie. It had been love. He had tried to accept what for him was unacceptable. He had tried and it was not that he failed but there came a moment when he did not have the energy or simply could not continue. I, in my self-centeredness, had perceived what I deemed his failure and ignored all the times he had succeeded.

  “Kathy called me when he died. Suicide. I couldn’t believe it. George? Kill himself? I didn’t know what to do. Even though I hadn’t seen or heard from him since that last time at the apartment, I suppose I had counted on him being in the world, being down there in Shiloh carrying on our work.

  “I went to the funeral. It had been fourteen years since I had left Shiloh. The funeral was long and sad as black funerals can be, especially in the South. And someone like George had to have a good send-off and they gave him that. That church rocked with music and words.

  “Late that night, after Mamie was asleep, I went by The Pink Teacup. It hadn’t changed one bit. Even the flies were the same ones. After everyone had welcomed me back and we had reminisced about the old days, which were a helluva lot sweeter in retrospect, I settled down at my customary table in the corner. Somebody got me a bottle of white lightning but I stayed with the ginger ale I was drinking.

  “Wiley came over and sat down. He had been elected county tax assessor. I don’t need to tell you that the last thing you do is rush a southern Negro to tell you anything, even the time of day. We must have talked about an hour. I suppose it took Wiley that long to ascertain whether I would want to hear what he had to say, who I was now as opposed to who I was then.

  “Finally, ‘It was too bad about George.’

  “Wiley wasn’t extending idle sympathy.

  “’What happened?’ I wanted to know.

  “’You know that road what goes out to Jeb Lincoln’s place.’

  “I couldn’t speak. I just nodded.

  “’And you remember how the road goes down a little hill and at the bottom of it, there’s a big ol’ oak tree?’

  “I nodded again.

  “’Well, that’s where they found him. He was sitting in his car parked off the road underneath that tree. A bullet was in his head and the gun was in his hand. Why do you think he went out there to kill himself?’

  “I shook my head again. I had hoped for some answers from Wylie, and it seemed he was hoping for the same from me. What had happened? George was accepted in the community. The farmer’s co-op had white as well as black farmers in it. It didn’t make sense.

  “I’ve read a lot of books on suicide since then because I still don’t understand. From what I can gather it seems that suicide is the ultimate act of anger. So I tried to think what George was angry about. Was he angry that we hadn’t killed Sheriff Simpson and Jeb Lincoln? It took me a while before I realized that I was asking the wrong question. It wasn’t what he was angry about. It was who he was angry at. And there was only one person who understood the significance of the place.

  “The next morning I got in my rental car and drove back to the airport in Memphis where I turned the car in. I got on a plane and came here to Nashville and around one o’clock that afternoon I rang your doorbell. The rest, as they say, is history.”

  And if she could have spoken, what would she have said? Because she did not know, she was glad she could not speak, glad he did
not know that she had heard. However, she suspected his life would resume now. He had heard aloud the worst he could say of himself, and he had survived.

  Suddenly, she was afraid. Was she to die and never have uttered a word of truth? But how could one deprived of speech speak the truths that desperately needed saying? She doubted that she even knew her truths, and now, before it was too late, she so desperately wanted to. But how? How? And the answer came even as the question continued to unfold.

  both lbj and i have been abused by history, we knew we would be. but he knew it almost immediately after he took the oath of office on air force one in dallas on that fateful november day.

  frankly, once he was thrust into the presidency, i did not expect to hear from him anymore during the troubled hours of the night, so i was surprised when the phone rang the night of kennedy’s funeral.

  “cal,” the voice said flatly.

  “mr. president,” i responded.

  “shit! i didn’t call you in the middle of the goddam night to be reminded of what i don’t want to be reminded of. dammit, cal!”

  “better safe than sorry.”

  “you right about that. sitting in the oval office can give a man some dangerous ideas about who he is.”

  i detected a weariness in his voice different from the exasperated weariness of being ignored as vice president.

  “you sound tired,” i told him.

  “worse. scared.”

  “of assassination?” was the logical question.

  “naw. history has dealt me an unplayable hand. no vice president who has come into office after the assassination of the president has ever succeeded. And if that vice prosident is tall and ugly and has a southern accent, and if that president was young and handsome with hair that blew in the wind, that vice president will never be loved by the people. he’ll be damned lucky if they like him, especially after he replaces the president’s brother as attorney general.”

  “you’re going to do that?”

  “generally i would rather have my enemy pissing on the inside. i prefer this one on the outside. there’s a better chance the wind will blow the piss back in his face. however, it’s a no win situation. if i keep him at justice, he’ll use it as a powerbase around which the kennedy crowd can gather and try to undermine me from within. if i kick his ass out, hell try to undermine me by running for the presidency, which he is going to do whether he is in or out of government. jfk’s assassination has elevated the kennedy name to the equivalent of a moral crusade for decades to come. now, you tell me. what chance does a po’ white cracker from texas have against that?”

  “not much,” i had to acknowledge.

  “and what pisses me off is that i am going to get a better and stronger civil rights bill through congress than him and his brother could have ever gotten through, but guess who’ll get all the credit? i’ll be seen as carrying out kennedy’s program. shit!

  “the civil rights bill he was proposing was a crock. i knew it. you knew it! hell, if jack and bobby cared as much about civil rights as they did pussy, every negro would have forty acres and two cadillacs in the garage. i’ve been in politics all my life and i know politicians like to fuck more than most, but i ain’t never seen two boys hunt poontang like them two kennedy brothers.

  “shit! imagine their surprise when edgar pulled out pictures from his private collection. i’ve got to move bobby out of justice. you can’t have the director of the fbi in a position where he can wield power over the attorney general because he has pictures of the sumabitch with a mouthful of pussy. incidentally, edgar was over here today after the funeral. i figured he’d show up the first chance. he come showing me some pictures of you among a lot of others. even had a few of me in compromising positions. i’ve known edgar since 1945 when i bought a house on the same street he lived on. hell, he was like an uncle to luci and linda and me and him had long chats on many a sunday afternoon. between the two of us there probably isn’t anybody who matters that we don’t know something dirty about. even though me and edgar have been friends for a couple of decades, i wasn’t naive enough to think that he didn’t have a file on me. hell, friendship is one thing, but power is damn near as good as sex. but you got to watch out for somebody who thinks it’s better. like that nixon. anyway, i didn’t blink an eye when edgar showed me my file. he expected me to be indignant or embarrassed. to tell the truth, i was disappointed. the photographs were so grainy and out of focus i wasn’t sure it was me, and damned if i could remember who the woman was until i looked through the reports and found her name. got me to wondering what had happened to her and where she was. she had been a good piece. well, anyway, i closed the folder and i know edgar expected me to pass it back to him. i put it in the top drawer of my desk and looked at him benignly. he wanted to say something, but what the hell could he say? i was the president of the muthafucking united states. i’d been waiting for this moment for a long time. i reached in my file cabinet — we met at my office in the executive office building. i don’t want to move into the white house too soon and make it seem like i’m anxious to get mrs. kennedy out. anyway, i reached in my file cabinet and came out with a folder of my own. i threw it on the desk. he opened it slowly and almost shit his pants. i got pictures of him in women’s clothes running around at a faggot party in new york. shit, if jack and bobby had treated me with a little respect i could have gotten edgar off their asses. but fuck ‘em. anyway, you don’t have to worry about edgar. in fact, i told him to keep me updated on all the new pictures he got of anybody so i could add them to my collection, which is almost as good as his.”

  i never told anyone the details of those late night phone calls. only andrea knew of their existence even. i don’t know if it is true of everyone but certainly those of us whose private lives have been swallowed by the public personae need one relationship so unusual and so secret that no one would ever suspect it existed.

  lbj and i genuinely liked each other. we shared that peculiar bond black and white southerners have. northerners do not understand that blacks are as much southerners as are whites. the master and slave historical relationship may appear from the outside to have been one of oppressor and oppressed. from a political perspective that is so. however, lbj and i both were aware that black and white southerners shared and suffered slavery together and that we as its legatees carried the burden of that history. lbj remembered what he had not suffered in the flesh. That is the key if a white man is to relate to a black. to remember another’s story as your own. jfk and bobby never knew there was a story and i think they hated lyndon so fiercely because he did.

  lyndon’s tragedy was that he didn’t understand which story was truly his. he was the wounded healer who tried to live the warrior’s story. he tried to use the sword to arbitrate good and evil. jfk could have. lyndon could not.

  one of the cruelties is that all too often we are remembered either for what we did poorly or for what we did not do at all. lyndon is remembered for vietnam. he is not remembered as the president who put a finish to the legal structure that had been segregation and disenfranchisement. but, if truth be known, he is scarcely remembered at all.

  at least there is a day named for me.

  better to be forgotten.

  no, history has not been kind to either of us. lyndon knew when he took the oath of office, jackie kennedy present in her blood-stained suit. i knew when a young heavyweight champion named cassius marcellus clay announced that he was, in reality, a member of the nation of islam and was henceforth to be called muhammad ali.

  what did i know? that the subterranean stream of racial chauvinism, which had coursed beneath the strata of black existence for a century, had broken through to the surface. and once there, it would drown us all.

  LISA

  Thursday, 10 P.M.

  It says a lot about our marriage that I sit here in a Holiday Inn and choose to communicate with you on my laptop. And who knows? I may even upload this when I’m done and e-mail it to you. Then
again, you may never read it. But it is a sign of something, I suppose, that I want to speak to you, but talking to you on the phone would be too immediate. I can scarcely possess my thoughts and find words to express a fraction of them before being distracted by the jab of one of your “What do you mean?”s or a silence so heavy on my ears I feel I am being pulled to the ocean floor, and when you get silent like that I can become so entangled in what I think you’re thinking that my thoughts turn to sand, run through my fingers and cover the tops of my shoes.

  But electronic mail has all the immediacy of a phone call without the distraction of your emotions, the intimacy of a letter without the hole in time between expression and reception. If e-mail had existed when we met, we could’ve had a wonderful relationship and never needed to marry, or even meet.

  So, where have I been for the past ten days, you want to know? I am at a Holiday Inn in Nashville, Tennessee, sitting at one of those round hotel tables over which hangs a lamp with a two-watt bulb in it. The table is in front of a pair of hotel windows that look like sliding doors until you try to open them. It is impossible to be in a hotel room and have fresh air. Then again, these days the freshest air probably comes through the ducts in hotel rooms.