by Ed Baldwin
“Happy to meet you. Perhaps Mr. Wilson called.” (Kemmons Wilson founded Holiday Inns and lives in Memphis.) “Actually if we could have just a spot more coffee we’ll be through and out of your hair in no time.” As he said this the smile broadened, and froze, waiting for the manager to do something. The manager hesitated just a moment and then headed for the coffee.
When the manager turned the smile on Gerald’s face became a grin for just an instant. We all sat back down at the table and Gerald began discussing the next stop on our trip in subdued tones. None of us gave Mr. Ackerman so much as a glance as he filled all our cups with hot coffee. The waitress and kitchen crew were all watching in amazement through the little window in the kitchen door. Five minutes later we were on the road to Yazoo City.
Yazoo City is where I met Murphy, the FBI agent. He lived in a nice fourplex on a side street in an older section of town I had wandered into to get some shade. New subdivisions are productive, but hot as hell without trees. It was late afternoon and there were no husbands home yet, except Murphy. He seemed eager to invite me in. The coffee table was littered with bank statements and other financial papers, and he and his wife had been having some discussion if not an argument.
He introduced me to Catherine, a strikingly beautiful, tall blonde. She was stylishly dressed and perfectly groomed at a time of day when most of the housewives were yelling at children and cooking supper. She quickly cleared the papers away and went into the kitchen to prepare some tea, leaving me with Murphy and the small talk part of the interview.
While Catherine was in the kitchen, I learned that Murphy was an FBI agent, just out of training. He had joined after finishing law school in New York and had expected something other than a quick assignment in middle Mississippi. I gathered that Catherine was not enthusiastic about their move either. There were two window air conditioners in the living room, and I could hear another going full blast in the bedroom. Their furniture was elegant, but not new, and the accessories were varied and unusual.
“This is interesting, what is it?” I said bluntly. One of the fun things about door to door work is inquiring about things in people’s homes. They are always flattered at your interest and eager to explain. It doesn’t hurt your cause at all to be nosy.
“Oh, that’s a jade carving from China. It s over a hundred years old. Catherine’s parents spent some time there, before the war. This is the best piece we have.” Murphy stepped over to a glass case containing a white vase with intricate painting on it depicting an outdoor scene.
“Wow, that’s something. I’ve never seen anything like that,” I said, and meant it.
“What’s the dynasty this vase is from, honey?” Murphy called into the kitchen. He was obviously not the student of Chinese art in the house.
“That’s Manchu, from the Ch’ien Lung period.” As she said this she emerged from the kitchen with an apron on, correcting a wisp of hair that had somehow worked its way out of place. “It symbolizes the peace and serenity of nature. It always makes me feel so calm. I sit and look at it whenever I get depressed about being in Mississippi.” She looked at me with obvious second thoughts about putting down what was home to me. “I’m sorry, it’s just so oppressively hot here. I just can’t seem to get used to it.” With that she returned to the kitchen. I could smell something good going on in there already.
“I wouldn’t expect to find an FBI agent in Yazoo City,” I said, changing the subject as we sat down again.
“There are seven in my office here and fifteen in Jackson,” he said, pride in his voice.
“What for?” I was incredulous. I associated the FBI with the mafia and Russian spies, and there were none of either that I knew of in the whole state of Mississippi.
“Well,” he paused, trying to select his words carefully, “It’s the race thing.”
“You mean registering voters and all that stuff?”
“Let’s say the influx of college students from the North this summer to rearrange the society in the South has not been appreciated by the locals.”
“I’ve noticed that in my travels, too, but it hardly seems like a job for J. Edgar Hoover.” For some reason I was really anxious to keep this going.
“When people start ending up in the bottom of ponds and lakes it does, or if there’s intent to overthrow the government of the United States.” He said this with a look directly at me as if to convey that there was more but he wasn’t going to discuss it any further.
“Which side are you talking about?”
“Both,” he said, obviously enjoying the fact that he knew something and that he was only giving me bits of it.
“Boy, I don’t understand that. The few college students that I’ve seen down here are long haired and dirty. Even the niggers don’t think much of ’em.”
“The Klan does, though.”
“My sentiments lie more with the Klan,” I said, suddenly angry.
“I don’t blame you. If a bunch of people from Mississippi came to New York with the conviction that they were going to straighten out our way of living, I’d be pissed, too. Somebody seems to be setting those college students up. They’re all coming down here with the same slogans and the same methods, even though they come from different colleges. They quickly fall into disfavor with the locals, particularly the Klan. Then comes the violence and headlines, and I think somebody thinks, revolution.”
He paused for a minute to let that sink in. This was startling news, but luckily Catherine appeared in the doorway with a tray of tea and something cooked on a toothpick so I didn’t have to reply. I was quite hungry so I took one without thinking what it might be. It tasted like boiled liver and I tried to spit it into my napkin as gracefully as I could.
The small talk was pretty much over at that point so I went right into the presentation and closed an easy deal. Catherine was interested in it more out of boredom than the anticipation of children. I’m really not sure why Murphy signed up.
I quit working when I left there and found a barbecue stand. There I ate and played the pinball machine for the next two hours. I was anxious to discuss this new political understanding I had acquired, but the guys were all hot to find some beer when we got together and nobody was interested.
It took us quite a while to find some beer, and we were really annoyed when we had to pay $2 a six pack for it. In this legally “dry” state you could buy beer from a bootlegger, at inflated prices, and every can had “Mississippi State Beer Tax $.05 paid” on the top of it. If the cops caught you with beer they would confiscate it, fine you, and sell the beer back to the bootlegger. It seemed like a law designed to make the bootleggers and the sheriffs rich, and we vowed not to spend another night in Mississippi, at least on this road trip. The next day we crossed the river into Arkansas and checked into a motel in Helena.
There is not a lot of difference in just crossing a river, but at least in 1965 Arkansas had made some provisions for a man to get a legal beer, even if he had to use a fake I.D. to do it. My territory was in a neighboring town. Gerald put me out early, about 3:30 in a fairly ritzy neighborhood. The houses were large, and the lots were big, making for a long walk between prospects, but so few salesmen have the nerve to work that kind of territory it is essentially virgin. I talked with quite a few women; they were all home it seemed and most cordially made appointments for later. A couple did give me a bad time and one lady got very angry that I would disturb her from whatever it was she was doing. I had a premonition and thought it best to leave for a few hours and return after dark. On my way toward another barbecue stand, my walk was interrupted.
The police car had its red light on and rounded the corner in front of me at a fairly high rate of speed so I assumed he was going to an auto accident or a robbery. He stopped with a screech of rubber when he got to me and had me up against the car in a flash.
“What’s the matter?” I asked with real concern. I was afraid he thought I had robbed someone. He didn’t answer.
H
e put me in the car, with handcuffs on, and started toward town.
“Look, what did I do?” I said insistently.
Without turning around he said in a matter of fact way, “I’ve been gettin’ calls about you for two hours. People think you’re one of those college students from up North down here tryin’ to organize the niggers.”
“I’m just trying to organize a living selling books.” My accent had already proven that I was no outsider bent on social realignment.
“They don’t like that any better. I figure anybody causes enough stir to get more than two calls needs to be in the slammer for a few hours just to show who’s in control here. You got a manager or something who can bail you out?”
“Hey! You can’t do that!” I was about to launch into my I’m a legitimate businessman’ routine I had learned from Gerald.
He slowed the car and turned around and without malice but with sincerity said, “You can walk into the jail, or be drug.”
I didn’t say another word until we got to the jail. It was just off the main street and was a one story, older building. We parked at the side and went in a side entrance. Just outside the entrance was a large cage with a German police dog in it that must have weighed 130 pounds. He was easily the largest one I had ever seen and seemed very anxious to get out and get to know me better. Thank God the cage looked secure.
Inside there was a hall. The back half of the building was the jail. There was a door to the right that led into the air conditioned office. The left was just bars. I was led into the office and met a middle aged lady who took down my name and address. The officer sat down at a desk and ignored the proceedings.
“What am I here for?” I was genuinely concerned.
“Disturbing the peace. We’ve had a lot of calls.”
“Is there some law against being a salesman?”
“No. But if we get calls, Bill usually picks ’em up. Don’t worry, you can post bond of $35 and he’ll let you go. We won’t even keep a record of it, so you don’t have to worry about that,” she said as she filled out a form, signed it, gave it to me to sign, and then put it in a filing cabinet.
I felt a little better as I was led back into the jail and locked in with the other prisoners. I hoped Gerald had $35.
The jail consisted of the barred off back half of the building. Inside this large room there was a cage made up of metal latticework instead of bars. It was divided into four separate cells, each with a top and sides of lattice, and a door, which was open. There were two bunks in each one.
I walked around this cage to the back of the room. There was a toilet and one shower head on the wall with a drain in the floor. I walked back to the front along the other side of the cage. There were various personal effects on the bunks, indicating that they were all taken. I hoped I wouldn’t be there long enough to need one.
There was a startling lack of privacy in this place. You could see everything and everybody in the jail from any place in the room. The dozen or so prisoners were leaning up against the cage, lounging in bed or sitting on benches along the front. I took a place on the bench and lit a cigarette.
A few minutes later a young colored guy came in the side door. He had a portable radio held to his ear and kind of danced toward the office. He opened the office door and stuck his head in.
“Got number two washed and the oil is changed and it’s full of gas.” He waited until the policeman nodded, then closed the door, got the key from the wall just outside the door to the jail, opened the main door, replaced the key and closed it behind himself. He walked, or rather danced back to one of the cages where he flopped down on the bed and opened a candy bar he had brought with him.
I glanced at an older man sitting next to me in a quizzical manner.
“That’s Trusty. He gets to clean up around here and keep the police cars washed. He don’t have to work on the road crew with the rest of us.”
I noticed that the man was deeply tanned. “Road crew?”
“Yeah. Every day but Sunday, 6:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. We patch holes, pick up dead dogs and paint bridges.” The poor guy seemed to have no emotion left in him.
“Shit. That sounds like slave labor.” I said, even more glad that I wasn’t going to be here long.
“It’s not so bad. It’s really better than sitting in here all day. And we get paid a dollar a day, for smokes and stuff. I’ve been in worse places. The food’s not bad at all. Comes from The Spot, a greasy spoon around the corner.”
“How long have you been here?” I asked.
He shifted his weight onto his other haunch, crossed his legs and thought for a moment. I took a closer look at him. He was in his fifties and dressed in work clothes. He seemed to be in excellent health.
“Hundred days,” he said, his mind apparently rechecking to make sure his count was accurate. I didn’t blame him for not wanting to lose count.
“How much longer?” I asked.
“Seventy-nine days,” he said, seeming not to mind my nosiness and sure of his count now. “What’d they put you in here for?”
“Well, I was just sellin’ books door to door and they picked me up. Disturbing the peace, they said.”
“Shit. They shouldn’t put boys like you in a place like this. That ain’t right.” He was really incensed about me being there. “That bastard up there. He don’t care about nothin’.” The old man nodded at the door to the office. He was apparently too mad to continue talking so he got up to walk back to the toilet. I could hear him urinating in it and felt a little embarrassed for him. He came back and sat down without saying anything. I had flipped my cigarette out through the bars and was leaning against the door looking out into the parking lot. He sat there for a moment then walked over to the bars, leaned down and picked up my cigarette butt and started to relight it.
“Hey, you don’t need to do that. I’ve got plenty,” I said, sad to see that my new friend would smoke my butts.
“Naw. It’s only half smoked,” he said and continued smoking it.
“I’ll probably be out of here tonight. When my boss finds out where I am, he’ll bail me out.” I said as I sat down beside him again.
“What’d you do?” I said after a period of silence.
“Driving under the unfiuence. Shit. I only had two beers.” He said this in a mechanical voice, looking off into space. He finished the butt and ground it out on the floor.
“The nigger can sweep it up tomorrow.” He smiled. That seemed to make him feel better.
“Where do you live?” I asked, wondering about wife and kids and that sort of thing.
“Over there.” He nodded at the door.
“Over where?” I asked, not understanding.
He got up and walked to the bars. “That little house across the street. It’s mine.”
“You live across the street from the jail?” I said in wonder.
“Yeah. At least I can kind of keep an eye on it from here.”
We talked for a while longer. He had no family and had lived in the house across from the jail for about five years. He compared our accommodations with other jails he had been in, mostly in Texas. He apparently had a weakness for the bottle. The more we talked the more evident it was that he really didn’t mind being in here. It kept him off the booze and he didn’t mind working on highways at all.
“It’s bad on Saturday nights though. That’s when they bring the women in.”
“Women?” I asked, brightening.
“They don’t have facilities for women here so they take ’em to the county jail in Helena—except on Saturday, when they got no way to transport ’em. Then they bring ’em here and lock ’em in one of those cages. The colored ones they do; they never put white women in there.”
I looked back at the latticework in amazement. “If they were willing you could stick it to ’em right through that cage,” I said, knowing I sounded obnoxious, but hell, I was in jail, wasn’t I?
“Oh yeah, they do that, but they’re always d
runk and yellin’ and screamin’ all night. You can’t get any sleep with the racket going on.”
I looked back at the cage again, imagining the positions they would have to assume to consummate things. He smiled at my interest and said, “They climb around that cage like monkeys. That’s what they are, goddamn monkeys.” He didn’t speak this last sentence very loud as there were several colored men standing nearby.
It was about ten o’clock when they brought in Odell. My older friend had gone to bed and the colored men were all clustered in Trusty’s cell listening to WDIA, the colored station in Memphis. “WDIA, 50,000 Watts of SOUL POWER!”
Odell was about my age and came in in handcuffs like I had. He was wearing a Coca Cola uniform. He went into the office, briefly, and was let out of the handcuffs only after he was in the jail. He stood there for a minute, not seeming to know what to do. I moved over on the bench and he sat down. He was crying.
“What happened to you?” I said, ever curious about my fellow man.
“I was just tryin’ to see my baby,” he said, composing himself a little better.
“Your baby?”
“My wife, she’s livin with this big nigger. He sweep up down at the court house. Whenever I come by to see her an’ my baby he calls the police.” The poor man was literally seething with frustration.
“That doesn’t sound fair,” I said, trying to keep him going.
“It ain’t. He’s old as her father. But he knows the police, see. They put me in here for disturbin’ the peace. I was just trying to see my baby.”
“What does your wife say about this?” I couldn’t understand this strange love triangle.
“She love me, but live with him. He’s got a house and all. I ain’t got nothin’.”
“You got a job.” I said, pointing to his uniform.
“Yeah, $25 a week. That don’t buy nothin’.”
We talked about his job for a while.
“I been working for the Coke Company for two years, never missed a day. My boss, he worked there for a month. I drive the truck, unload the bottles, load the machines, carry out the empties and get $25 a week. He takes the money and gets $70. That ain’t right,” he said slowly, puffing on one of my cigarettes.
