Catfish Alley (37 page)

I wonder where my
brother, J.R., is. Why was he not at home? Did he disappear so that he wouldn't
have to do what I'm doing right now? Why is this job such a secret? Helping in
the darkroom, I've seen a lot of Daddy's photographs — tent revivals, circus
freak shows, baptisms. He even went out to the Dooleys' house and took pictures
of little Johnny Dooley in his casket after he died of diphtheria. What could be
so strange now that it requires all of this mysteriousness?

As we move deeper into
the woods, I realize we're going toward the river. I can smell the water and I
hear it running fast from the recent rains. The air has gotten colder and
wetter. Dogs barking in the distance and the muffled sounds of men's voices
float toward us. I stumble as I set my foot down in a deep muddy hole in the
road and I almost drop the tripod. Daddy reaches to help me and curses under
his breath. I think I hear him say "your brother."

We come out on a
clearing at the edge of the woods, and I have to stop to set the heavy tripod
down and catch my breath. I look over at Daddy and he's stopped, too. He's
staring across toward the water. We're right at the banks of the Tombigbee River.
I can hear the dogs and the men's voices louder now below us, but I can't see
anything beyond where the steep bank drops to the water's edge.

I follow Daddy as he
approaches the edge of the bank. He stops dead still to look at the scene
below, and I don't think he meant for me to hear him say, "Damn!" As
I come up behind him, I squint at the mist rising up off the river, trying to
see what he's looking at. There's a group of men, I'm not sure how many,
standing around the base of a big live oak tree. Curls of smoke are coming from
their cigarettes as they stand around talking and laughing. Two boats are
pulled up on the bank of the river. Is Daddy taking pictures of some big fish
they've caught? But they wouldn't be fishing at night, would they? A coon hunt,
maybe? Men around here always hunt raccoons at night.

Daddy says, "Come
on, Jimalee," and starts down the bank, picking his way through the thick
clumps of dead winter underbrush. I start to follow him and I glance once more
at the men below, who are milling around talking with each other in different
combinations, and that's when I see him. I stand frozen to the ground and I
cannot will my legs to move.

A colored man hangs from
a rope wrapped around a thick live oak branch that extends beyond him out over
the river. His muddy boots dangle above the water's edge. The man's back is to
me and I can see the white palms of his hands tied tight behind him with thick
rope. His shoulders are slumped and his head is twisted at an odd angle from a
rope that cuts deeply into the back of his neck and holds the weight of his
body suspended from
the tree.

Daddy turns and sees me
standing still. "Move, I say!" he yells. I jump at his words, and
drag my eyes away from the man hanging in the tree and start down the hill. The
men below hear Daddy yell and look up at us.

"Hey, Ray,"
one of them calls to a man standing near the tree. "Purvis's here."

I recognize the man who
walks over to my daddy. It's Ray Tanner. He's probably twenty now, but he went
to our school when I was little. I remember him because he was always so mean
to us little girls. I was only nine then, but I remember how glad I was when he
dropped out of school to work at the sawmill. I shudder as he claps Daddy on
the back.

"Hey there, Purvis.
We got us a dead nigger for you to take pictures of."

"What
happened?" Daddy asks in a flat voice, pushing his hat back and looking up
at Ray Tanner. It seems to me Daddy's avoiding looking at the colored man
hanging in the tree.

"Oh, me and the
boys had to teach this nigger a lesson. He was messing in white folks'
business." Ray says this matter-of-fact-like. "This your boy?"
he asks, pointing at me.

I cringe and pray Ray
Tanner doesn't get any closer to me. I can already smell the stink of his
moonshine whiskey and cigars. I duck behind Daddy as he replies, "Yep. I
reckon
we'd
better get set up."

I move in a daze,
following Daddy's instructions. We get the tripod set up, and Daddy sets the
big camera on top of it and clamps it down. The men laugh and push each other,
trying to be in the front of the photograph. In the end, it's Ray Tanner who's
front and center, grasping the colored man's boots and swinging him around to
face the camera. My stomach lurches as the rising sun lights up the swollen
bloody black face of the man hanging above a smiling Ray Tanner. One of the men
behind Ray says, "They'll sure enough let you in the Klan after
this."

"Yep," Ray
answers, never taking his eyes off the camera. "I think this'll show 'em
I'm ready."

Finally, it's over and
we start to leave. I want to run up the riverbank and never stop until I'm home
in my bed with the covers over my head. I'm so ashamed of my daddy right now I
feel like I'm dying inside. As I'm dragging the tripod up the bank, I hear
Daddy say to Ray Tanner, "Oh, yeah, need to know his name."

"Zero Clark,"
says Ray proudly. "He won't be bothering no white women no more."

All that silent ride
home, as the slow-climbing winter sun lights up the hoarfrost on the pastures,
I can't get Ray Tanner's words and the laughter of those men out of my mind.

I don't know what that
colored man did to deserve to die like that, but the image of his bloody,
lifeless body will come to haunt me for the rest of my life.

Del
Tanner

I can't look at her and there ain't nothing I can say.
Jimalee Purvis has stopped talking and I can feel her eyes on me, looking to
see what I'm gonna do. What
can
I do? Daddy's dead. Purvis's dead. I reckon all this died with them. I sure
don't want no part of it. Now that I know what happened, I wish again I'd never
found that damn postcard, wish I'd gone over to the cemetery and buried it with
Daddy. Maybe it would haunt him instead of me. Zero Clark's blood is on my
daddy's hands, not mine. Thinking about that man's name makes me wonder.

"You say that black man was named Clark?" I
ask her.

"Yes. His given name was Thomas Clark, but people
around here called him Zero," she says, studying me.

I'm feeling like a grasshopper pinned on a Styrofoam
board. "He any relation to that Clark woman was a schoolteacher at some
school called the ... uh ... what was it?" I search my mind trying to
remember what she and the Reeves woman called that school.

"The Union School? That was the elementary school
for black children. It was established right after the War. As a matter of
fact, it was on your property."

"Yes, ma'am, that one."

"Zero Clark was Grace Clark's brother."

My head is starting to ache. "Does she know? I
mean ... that my daddy ... you know ..."

Jimalee Purvis ain't cutting me no slack. "You
mean does she know that your father lynched her brother?"

"Yes'm."

"I don't know the answer to that, Mr. Tanner. It's
something I've asked myself for seventy-one years. I've never talked to a soul
about what happened that night until today. Other than leaving Clarksville to
finish college at Tougaloo, Grace Clark has lived in Clarksville all of her
life, just like you and me. I can't imagine that she wouldn't have some idea of
what happened."

"There weren't nothing ever done about it? To my
daddy, I mean?" I ask, knowing what the answer will probably be.

She's looking me dead in the eye and I can't look away.
"Mr. Tanner. No jury in the state of Mississippi would have convicted a
white man for a crime against a black man in 1931. A black man could not even
testify in court against a white man. Everyone just turned their heads. My own
father, who justified taking that photograph by saying he was documenting
history, took Ray Tanner's guilt to his grave."

She pushes herself up in her chair like she's getting
ready to leave. There's one more thing I got to know before she goes. "Why
did your daddy make a postcard?" I ask.

Her shoulders slump and she shakes her head. "Near
as I could tell, it was like an initiation. Ray Tanner wanted to be a Klansman,
and that was part of what he did to prove himself to the Grand Dragon. The Ku
Klux Klan circulated postcards like that one all over the South during the
twenties and thirties."

I sit with this for a minute, not knowing how to take
in that hanging a man was something to brag about — something to be proud of.

Miss Purvis gets to her feet and leans on her cane.
"Well, Mr. Tanner, now you know exactly what kind of man your father was.
And now you know that a black man died at his hands, for no other reason than
the color of his skin. You'll have to decide for yourself what to do with this
knowledge. Most prefer to close their eyes to it — it's just too ugly for most
people to acknowledge. Some of us keep it to ourselves, like I have, and it
haunts us and makes us bitter. Some try to make things better, like my brother
has with his legal work. It's yours to wrestle with now. I'll be going."

I hold the door open for her as she leaves my office.
The young girl rushes to help her into the car. As I stand and watch them drive
away, my employees are starting to pull in to the lot. Eddie Davis and Mac
Sullivan get out of an old beat-up Dodge pickup, laughing and talking. They're
probably about the same age as that boy in the picture was, nineteen, maybe
twenty. Those two black men been working for me for two years. It hits me —
ain't neither one of them ever missed a day or been late.

I make up my mind and step out of the office.
"Hey," I holler to them. They both freeze and stare at me real
scared-like. It turns my stomach today to see that look in their eyes. Am I
that much like my daddy? Do they know? As they walk over to me, I'm feeling all
mixed-up.
Hell!

"I need y'all to start clearing out that warehouse
where I keep the old wood. You know, the stuff I get from old houses and barns
around here."

They're looking at me sort of relieved, like they're
glad they ain't in trouble and sort of like I've lost my goddamn mind. Maybe I
have.

"Yessir, Mr. Tanner," Eddie says. "Uh
... what you want us to do with that wood, sir?"

"Oh, hell, I don't know," I say, getting
frustrated. "Just put it behind the bay where we store the two-by-fours.
We'll put tarps over it 'til I can figure something out."

"Yessir," they say as I turn and walk away.
When I stop to look back at them they're shrugging their shoulders and shaking
their heads, but they're headed for the warehouse.

Billy Webster

The November wind has a bitter edge today and Travis
and I wrap our coats tightly around ourselves, holding our hats as we rush up
the steps of the old brownstone row house in Bronzeville. I ring the bell,
praying this is the right place. After days of searching everything from the
Chicago phone directory to dozens of bars and music venues, last night Travis
and I stumbled across a South Side hangout called the Chat Room. One of the
group of ancient men at the bar said he knew Slider Jackson.

"We go way back," he bragged. "Slider
don't come out much no more. Keeps to himself in that old house of his. I can't
even get him to play a game of checkers." The other men nod and listen as
I explain my connection with Mr. Jackson, and one of them gives Travis
directions to Mr. Jackson's house. As we thank them and prepare to leave, the
man who seems to be the spokesman for the group says, "Yep, since his
woman died, seems like all he do is sit around smoking them cigars he likes and
listening to old records. Maybe you young folks can get him out of that
house."

I couldn't help but feel a twinge of sadness when I
heard those words "his woman." I thought of Grace Clark and all the
years she'd wasted loving a man who had obviously completely detached and made
a new life for himself here in Chicago. Why did he do that? Why would he leave
behind a loving family and a woman who doted on him and never return, not even
for a visit? I was curious last night to hear more about this woman the old man
referred to, but decided to save my questions for Mr. Jackson — if he answers
the door, that is. Travis steps back and studies the architectural details
around the porch and windows while we wait, shivering in the cold.

"This place is amazing," says Travis,
reaching out to touch the stones making up the arched entrance. "It's got
to be one of the first of these built around here."