by C. D. Wright
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I want people of twenty seven languages walking back and forth saying to one another hello brother how’s the fishing and when they reach their destination I don’t want them to forget if it was bad
—The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You, Frank Stanford
There are people in small rooms all over the world, in impersonal cubicles in large offices, in malls, in ghettos, and behind fenced mansions—who thrive on a little chaos, enjoy the occasional taste of 220 volts, live for the beauty of the flaw in the grain.
—It Came from Memphis, Robert Gordon
No, I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.
—“How It Feels to Be Colored Me,” Zora Neale Hurston
Herein lie buried many things.
—The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. DuBois
Contents
Title Page
Note to Reader
One With Others
About the Author
Books by C.D. Wright
Links
Acknowledgments
Copyright
Special Thanks
Some names were changed or omitted in light of the interpretive nature of this account. Others because they still live there. People may have been rendered as semblances and composites of one another. And others, spoken into being. Memories have been tapped, and newspapers consulted. Books referenced. Times fused and towns overlaid. This is not a work of history. It is a report full of holes, a little commemorative edition, and it aspires to the borrowed-tuxedo lining of fiction. In the end, it is a welter of associations.
Up and down the towns in the Delta, people were stirring. Cotton was right about shoe top. Day lilies hung from their withering necks. Temperatures started out in the 90s with no promise of a good soaking. School was almost out. The farm bells slowly rang for freedom. The King lay moldering in the ground over a year. The scent of liberation stayed on, but it was hard to bring the trophy home. Hard to know what came next; one thing, and one thing only was known, no one wanted to go home dragging their tow sack; no one wanted to go home empty-handed.
Over at the all-Negro junior high, a popular teacher has been fired for “insubordination” for a “derogatory” letter he wrote the superintendent saying the Negro has no voice. No voice at all. It was the start of another cacophonous summer.
It smells like home. She said, dying. And I, What’s that you smell, V. And V, dying: The faint cut of walnuts in the grass. My husband’s work shirt on the railing. The pulled-barbecued evening. The turned dirt. Even in this pitch I can see the vapor-lit pole, the crape myrtle not in shadow. My sweet-betsy. That exact streaked sky. The mongrel dog being pelted with rain. Mine eyes pelted. All fear. Overcome. At last. No scent. That’s what she said. Dying in the one-room apartment in Hell’s Kitchen.
MR. EASTER, AN OUTLIER [with FISH 4 SALE]: It’s probably a rat snake. Had a couple in the old storm cellar. My son-in-law accidentally caught it on fire and it killed ever one of my snakes.
+ + +
I came in by the old road from Memphis, the old military road. Across the iron bridge. No one in the field. Not a living soul.
I drove around with the windows down. The redbuds in bloom. Sky, a discolored chenille spread. Weather, generally fair.
The marchers step off from the jailhouse at Bragg’s Spur, 8:17 a.m. More police than reporters. More reporters than police.
The self-described Prime Minister of the Invaders, 31, and five others have begun their trek. SWEET WILLIE WINE’S WALK AGAINST FEAR is on the move.
V: We had the water and the shoes in my car. There was a black man named Stiles. [He was a midget.] He kept that water good and cold [for the marchers].
The threat they say is coming from the east [of the six Negroes walking to Little Rock and the white woman driving a station wagon].
It was something you came through that.
V: It was invigorating. It was the most alive I ever felt in my life.
FBI followed me for a long time. Stringers for the Gazette and the Appeal trailed me for a year. Once every ten or twelve years, I will get a caller. I used all of my life. I told my friend Gert, you’ve got your life until you use it.
I park in a spot of shade and walk around.
Downtown half shut down.
Cotton gin still going, not strong, but going.
Tracks working, neglected, but working.
The infamous overpass brought down.
September 15, 2004, Hell’s Kitchen, her life surrendered to her body. September 15 the day Padre Hidalgo uttered the famous Grito that kicked off the Mexican Revolution. She would have liked that, going off the air on a day marking a great struggle for independence.
The river rises from a mountain of granite.
The river receives the water of the little river.
The house where my friend once lived, indefinitely empty.
Walnuts turning dark in the grass. Papers collected on the porch.
If I put my face to the glass, I can make out the ghost
of her ironing board, bottle of bourbon on the end.
+ + +
HER FORMER HUSBAND: I’d come home from work and she would be in a rage and I just couldn’t understand it.
They were a poor match. He says so to this day. She said so then. They barely tolerated one another. But they were Catholic [another “error bred in the bone”]. If he looked at her, and she looked at him, in nine months she was back at the lying-in.
[My best guess: She woke up in a rage, eight days a week.]
Her friends—the musician, the poet, the actor:
GERT: She taught me how to live. Now she has taught me how to die.
And I: She was my goombah. My rafiki. It was the honor of my life to know her. Honor of my life.
ELLIS:
A crowd/ Will gather, and not know it walks the very street
Whereon a thing once walked that seemed a burning cloud.
[Yeats she knew inside out. Inside out.]
A MAN KNOWN AS SKEETER [his whole life]: Oh yeah, I remember her, she celebrated all her kids’ birthdays on the same day.
I talked to a number of people. In person. On the phone. Mostly, the phone. When I could get anyone to talk to me. I made so many calls:
Can we talk later because I’m trying to cook for my family
He’s not here now
He’s fishing
I’ve got to go to the hospital to see my brother
He’s about to pass
I’ve got to go to Memphis
I’ve got to work the night shift
&n
bsp; Out at the big pen
I work there since the plant shut
Can we talk later
I’m on Neighborhood Watch
And the kids are walking out
There’s no food here
I’m left holding the baby
You’ll have to speak to the hand
This was my rest day
He’s fishing
I’m working at the polls I’m on poll watch
I’ve got to go to Little Rock for my checkup
My pressure’s gone up
Since he got laid off
He’s always fishing
When he can’t go he’s home watching
The fishing channel
So, how is the fishing
Oh well, you know
It’s lots worse elsewhere
The woman who lived next door to the old house came outside to pick up her paper. I asked if she had known my friend V who lived there in the 1960s, and she allowed that she did.
Flat out she says, She didn’t trust me and I didn’t trust her.
Then she surprised me, saying, She was right. We were wrong.
[I heard just a fraction of the terrible things that happened back then. A fraction.]
Then she shocked me, saying, They have souls just like us.
I see my friend, midthirties, waking up in stifling heat. Her seven towheaded children balled up in their dreams. Socks and shorts dropped across scuffed-up floors. The funk of high-tops bonding with the wallpaper.
She wakes up seething but eases the screen door to. I see my friend breaking a stem off the bush at the side of the house and breathe in, sweet-betsy. She nudges a slug with her toe.
MR. EASTER: I’m about like you though about a snake. All these years on the river I only saw a poison one about three times.
The chaplain for the state police brings up the rear in his own car with refreshments for the men.
The only sure thing were the prices [and the temperatures]:
2 pounds of Oleo costs 25¢.
And 5 cans of Cherokee freestone peaches are $1.
The Cosmos Club president held a tea at her lovely lakeside home.
Two more Big Tree boys make fine soldiers.
A Rolling Stone was found in the bottom of his swimming pool.
Rufus Thomas and his Bear Cats will headline at the Negro Fair.
And Miss Teenage Arkansas [a comely young miss] is saluted once again for her charm and pulchritude.
Sunshine fresh Hydrox cookies, 1 lb for 59¢.
The assistant warden, at 300 pounds, is the one identified for administering the strap at the Arkansas pen [a self-sustaining institution]. Several say they were beaten for failing [to meet cotton quotas]. Others more often than not did not know why [they were beaten]. One testified to more than 70 [beatings]. The strap is not in question. In question is when it is to be administered.
THE VERY REVEREND PILLOW [at Bedside Baptist]: The injury that the rock-hard lie of inequality performs is unspeakable; it is irremediable, can be insurmountable. And very very thorough. No peculiar feeling to the contrary can be permitted to gain hold. You get my meaning.
Back then, in case of rain, I would be lying if I did not say to you—you would be ill-advised to step under the generous eave of certain stores or [in the unforgiving heat] to take a drink from a cooler or even try to order catfish [at Saturday’s]. And don’t even think about applying for the soda jerk job [at Harmon’s] or playing dominoes [at the Legion Hut].
Back then we could not be having this conversation. You get what I’m getting at.
Back then I would not be at this end of town unless I was pushing a mower or a wheelbarrow, the teacher [retired] told me over a big Coke at the Colonel’s; even at that, back then, I would not be here, if the sun was headed down.
[How far did a man have to walk just to pass his water, back then?]
The river is impounded by
the lake; below the lake the river
enters the lowlands, it slithers
through cypress and willow. And the air
itself, cloudy or clear, stirring
with smoke or dust or malathion,
if you get my drift, must not
be construed to be indivisible. No more
than blood. There is black blood
and white blood. There is black air
and white air; this includes
the air in the tires blowing out
over the interstate between town and
river, the air that riddles the children
when a crop duster buzzes
a schoolyard, the air that bellows
from the choir of robes
when the Very Reverend Pillow
bids, Be seated, and even the air socked
from the jaw of the champ, born
seventeen miles west, in Sand Slough,
when he took that phantom punch
the year in which this particular round
of troubles began.
Today, Gentle Reader,
the sermon once again: “Segregation
After Death.” Showers in the a.m.
The threat they say is moving from the east.
The sheriff’s club says Not now. Not
nokindofhow. Not never. The children’s
minds say Never waver. Air
fanned by a flock of hands in the old
funeral home where the meetings
were called [because Mrs. Oliver
owned it free and clear], and
that selfsame air, sanctified
and doomed, rent with racism, and
it percolates up from the soil itself,
which in these parts is richer than Elvis,
and up on the Ridge is called loess
[pronounced “luss”], off-color, windblown stuff.
This is where Hemingway penned some
of A Farewell to Arms, on the Ridge
[when he was married to Pauline]. Where
the mayor of Memphis moved after
his ill-starred term. After they slew
the dreamer and began to slay
the dream. Once an undulant kingdom
of Elberta and Early Wheeler peaches.
Hot air chopping
through clods of earth with
each stroke of the tenant
boy’s hoe [Dyess Colony] back
when the boy hadn’t an iota
of becoming the Man in Black.
Al Green hailed from here;
Sonny Liston, 12th of 13 kids,
[some say 24th of 25]
born 17 miles west,
in Sand Slough. Head hardened
on hickory sticks. [And Scott Bond,
born a slave, became a millionaire.
Bought a drove of farms
around Big Tree. Planted potatoes.
When the price came back up,
planted cotton. Bought gravel. Felled
his own timber. A buy-and-sell individual.
When you look close at his picture, you
can’t tell if he was white
or black. You can just tell he was a trim,
cross-eyed fellow.] And the Silver Fox,
he started out in Colt.
Mostly up-and-down kind of men.
[Except for Mr. Bond, he went in one
direction when it came around
to making money.]
+ + +
GRADUATE OF THE ALL-NEGRO SCHOOL: Our teacher would tell us, Turn to page 51. That page wouldn’t be there.
GRADUATE OF THE ALL-WHITE SCHOOL, first year of Integration-By-Choice: Spent a year in classes by myself. They had spotters on the trampoline. I knew they would not spot me. You timed your trips to the restroom.
+ + +
She woke up in a housebound rage, my friend V. Changed diapers. Played poker. Drank bourbon. Played duplicate bridge. Made casseroles, grape salad, macaroni and cheese. Played cards with the priest. Made an argument for school
uniforms, but the parents were concerned the children would be indistinguishable. She was thinking: affordable, uniforms. You can distinguish them, she argued, by their shoes. It was a mind on fire, a body confined.
And on the other side of Division, a whole other population in year-round lockdown.
A girl that knew all Dante once
Live[d] to bear children to a dunce.
[Yeats she knew well enough to wield as a weapon. It would pop out when she was put out. Over the ironing board. Over cards. Some years the Big Tree Catholic foursome would all be pregnant at once, playing bridge, their cards propped up on distended stomachs. Laughing their bourbon-logged heads off.]
She had a brain like the Reading Room in the old British Museum. She could have donned fingerless gloves and written Das Kapital while hexagons of snowflakes tumbled by the windowpanes. She could have made it up whole cloth. She could have sewn the cotton out of her own life. While the Thames froze over.
