Death of Innocence : The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America (9781588363244) (24 page)

Emmett’s murderers had tied a gin fan around his neck to weigh him down, figuring he never would be found. But they figured wrong. They had failed to weigh his feet down. Papa Mose was summoned to the scene by Tallahatchie County Sheriff H. C. Strider, a gruff, overweight, sweaty redneck. Leflore County Deputy Sheriff John Ed Cothran also was there. Several Delta counties would be involved before it was all said and done. Strider told Mose to look over the body sprawled out in the little boat there at the riverbank and tell him if that was the boy from Chicago. The body was facedown, and had to be turned over so Papa Mose could get a good look. From what I understand, Papa Mose saw nothing he could recognize until he came upon the one thing he thought he could. It was the ring, Louis Till’s ring, the one I had given Emmett just before he left for Mississippi. Papa Mose thought he recognized it because Emmett was so proud of it, he had been showing it off to everyone. And he had let Simeon wear it, so they would need Simmy’s help in making sure that was the ring, and that would tell them for sure that the body was Emmett’s.

Papa Mose gazed down at the body. He never flinched in the face of this painful duty. Papa Mose knew the code. He and every other black person in the Delta knew it and lived by it. Never show emotions. You couldn’t show joy. That would be suppressed. You couldn’t show anger. That would mean defiance. You couldn’t show sorrow. That would mean weakness. I guess as far as Southern whites were concerned, blacks had no feelings.

So Mose, looking down at Emmett, said very simply that he believed this, indeed, was his grandnephew, the one he had promised to look after and get home to Chicago safely. And Papa Mose dammed up his feelings, as he was so used to doing, holding back until later, until he couldn’t hold back any longer.

Once the identity was confirmed, a black undertaker would be called in to handle things. Strider turned to walk back to his car with one last order, one last indignity: Get that body in the ground immediately.

Papa Mose was bound to oblige. The body was picked up by a local undertaker in Greenwood and preparations were being made to carry out
Sheriff Strider’s command. Now, Curtis Jones, Emmett’s cousin from Chicago, was down there since Saturday and saw how things were unfolding. He knew something about the way things worked in Mississippi, and he knew a lot about me. He knew how I would feel and how I would express my feelings, no matter who was around. He knew above all that I would not want Emmett buried in Mississippi. But they were racing against time. Preparations were under way. The grave was being dug. Papa Mose was considering the eulogy. What followed was a frantic relay of calls, from Curtis to Willie Mae, to my apartment, where my aunt Mamie got the message and told us.

“They’re getting ready to bury Bo’s body.”

“No,” I insisted. “I want the body here. I’ll bury Bo.”

We contacted Uncle Crosby and he promised to take care of everything, vowing to get Emmett’s body back to Chicago if he had to pack it in ice and drive it back in his truck. He would work out the arrangements on that end, to put everything on hold. That gave me time to put things together in Chicago. Aunt Mamie suggested that we call A. A. Rayner, one of the biggest and most highly respected black funeral directors in Chicago. Mr. Rayner agreed to handle everything and told me he would call me back as soon as he figured it all out. He did call me back, to let me know that getting the body back was going to cost thirty-three hundred dollars. Oh, God. That was devastating. I wasn’t even making four thousand a year. But I didn’t have to think about it more than a second, really.

“Mr. Rayner,” I said, “if I live, I will pay you. And if I don’t live, somebody else will pay you.”

Mr. Rayner accepted my assurances and then contacted people in Mississippi to have the body transferred from the Greenwood undertaker to one in Tutwiler, who made the arrangements for the shipment. Uncle Crosby made sure the body was placed on the train Thursday night with him for the long, sorrowful ride back to Chicago.

They were not going to bury my boy in Mississippi. He would be coming home. Finally, Bo would be coming home.

By the time we reached the train station at Twelfth Street early that Friday morning, there already was a huge crowd. The local papers had been carrying the story. So had the radio and television stations.
I Love Lucy
was interrupted with a news bulletin when they found Emmett’s body. I wound up getting hate mail for that. It seemed to me that there were about a thousand people there in the train yard when we arrived. This was the first place so many black people saw when they stepped off the
City of New Orleans
from the South. This was their first glimpse of a new life, a new beginning. I only wish it had been such a joyful arrival for Emmett. There were so many people in such a small place, there was hardly room to move. I’m not sure what people expected. I didn’t know what to expect myself.

I had to be brought up in a wheelchair. I was too weak and just couldn’t stand up at the moment the train pulled in. But I was quite alert. I was aware of everything,
everything
that was going on. Even with that large crowd of people milling about, if a tiny mouse had peeked his head up, I would have noticed that, too. My father was there with me, and Gene Mobley, Rayfield Mooty, a few cousins. Bishop Louis Henry Ford and Bishop Isaiah Roberts were also there. And, of course, Uncle Crosby. Mama didn’t come. She couldn’t, but I had to.

Somewhere, Mr. Rayner was handling the details to accept the body and have it taken to his funeral home. Somehow, I was able to get the message out. To make sure he knew that I was going to be there, too. He knew why. We’d talked about it.

It had been something of a misunderstanding. Or, better said, Mr. Rayner had understood something I could not be made to understand. They were not planning to open the box to examine Emmett’s body. The box would have to be buried intact, as it was being shipped. Oh, that could not be. I
wanted
that box opened. I insisted.

“Oh, Mrs. Bradley,” Mr. Rayner had said, “we can’t open that box.”

Can’t
open it? “What do you mean?” I had asked.

He was very patient with me. He set it all out for me. It was being sent locked up with the seal of the State of Mississippi, which couldn’t be broken. Promises had been made just to get the body out of Mississippi. “Mrs. Bradley,” he explained, “I had to sign papers, the undertaker had to sign papers, your relatives had to sign papers.”

I was not bending. That box had to come open. I mean, I didn’t even know what we would find inside. There could have been bricks, mud, someone else’s body. I would spend the rest of my life not knowing. Besides, I had heard so many things over the past couple of days, I had to see for myself what they had done to my son.

“Oh yes,” I said, “I’m going to look at the body.”

“But the box cannot be opened,” he kept insisting.

Well, I couldn’t take it anymore because I was really spent. Finally, I told him that if I had to take a hammer and open that box myself, it was going to be opened.

“You see, I didn’t sign any papers,” I said, “and I
dare
them to sue
me
. Let them come to Chicago and sue me.” I just couldn’t imagine a judge anywhere finding me guilty of viewing the body of my baby.

Finally, they unloaded the box that my son was in and placed it on a flatbed truck, a simple train-yard wagon that seemed so much like a caisson. I just lost it.

I looked up, saw that box, and I just screamed, “Oh, God. Oh, God. My only boy.”

And I kept screaming, as the cameras kept flashing, in one long explosive moment that would be captured for the morning editions. It was as if everything was pouring out all at once. All the tension that had built up since Emmett left for Mississippi, all the fear that had grown in me since we had gotten word of his abduction, all the sorrow of a thousand people in that train yard, began bursting out of me. The box was huge. It seemed to me to be nearly half the size of the train car itself. Such a big box for such an itty-bitty boy. I couldn’t imagine how they ever thought they could have buried that huge box intact. It would have taken up nearly three grave sites. That’s the way it looked to me. At that moment, there was nothing in the world but that giant crate. Death to me was so much larger than life. It was overpowering. It was terrifying. It seemed that, if I could scream loudly enough, I could get that feeling out of me.

I reached out, as if to embrace the box moving toward us. I stood and I nearly fainted. Gene was right there, standing over me, helping me. So many other people rushed to my aid. People were trying to comfort me and keep the large crowd back to give me air. I wanted to pray.

The ministers helped me to my knees. “Lord, take my soul,” I began, “show me what you want me to do, and make me able to do it.”

Everything, everyone, the entire yard, fell silent.

It was the most terrible odor. We began to smell it about two blocks from the funeral home as we drove toward it. At first, I thought about the stockyards, where they slaughtered hogs and cattle. There was always a lingering odor from the stockyards that you could pick up even fifteen blocks away. This was much worse. This was overpowering. And the closer we got, the worse it got. It was the smell of death and it was everywhere. It seemed to cut a pathway right to the top of my skull. I will never forget that smell. It was Emmett.

At Rayner’s funeral parlor, they were shooting off bombs so people wouldn’t become ill from the smell.

As it turns out, the reason the box was so big was that there was a lot of
packing inside. Locked and sealed. Somebody in the state of Mississippi wanted to make sure we didn’t see what was inside that box. I had defied the people of Mississippi. I had insisted on taking one last look at the body of my son. What could they charge me with, anyway? Breaking and entering? I didn’t care. The Mississippi officials were the ones with something to hide. What on earth was it? What was I about to witness? The rumors had grown and grown as they had made their way to me. Unspeakable, indescribable horrors. And now I was about to find out for myself.

Mr. Rayner directed me to the waiting room to give them more time to make the final preparations. I didn’t think I could bear to wait any longer. I had already built up the strength and the determination to see this through. The longer I waited, the more difficult this was going to be for me. This emotional roller coaster was making my head ache and my stomach turn. But Mr. Rayner was doing his very best to help me. He was concerned about me and I knew that. He really didn’t think I should look at Emmett like this. But I had kept insisting.

He just looked at me and he kind of shook his head. “You know, if you’re
that
determined, I will get the body ready and let you view it.”

They went back into a special room where they prepare bodies. I had no idea what kind of preparation was still needed. I certainly wasn’t expecting to see a body dressed for funeral visitation. But then, I really wasn’t sure what to expect. I took out the pictures I had brought with me. The ones we had taken at Christmas. I brought them to help me, as if I needed help to identify my son. When I was finally escorted to the other room, I found out why they had needed time. I found out why he had cautioned me so. I paused at the door. This was the moment I had insisted on and now I had to brace myself for the impact of it. There were two parts of me at war at that moment. One part that kept wanting to fight, one part that wanted to surrender. I dreaded the horror of recognizing my son, but I had to identify his body. While I wanted so much for my son to be alive, I desperately needed to make it all certain, to make it all final. I had to face the terrible reality: Emmett was dead, and the body was right there, just a few steps away, waiting for me.

To steady me, Gennie held one of my arms and my father held the other. I could see across the room on the table that the body had been hosed off. We moved in, closer to the table, and I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I could see that there were these little white beady things all around. Of course, I had to ask about those things first. I wanted to know everything, every detail. Mr. Rayner explained that it was what the body had been packed in. Lime, I think he said, to make the body deteriorate faster, to make it even harder to identify. I guess those officials down in Mississippi
felt a need to do that just in case the seal and lock didn’t scare me off. Well, I was glad Mr. Rayner had gotten that white stuff off him. This was going to be hard enough as it was. When we reached the table, I told Gennie and Daddy to release me. I needed to stand alone. They didn’t have to worry. I wasn’t going to faint. I wouldn’t let myself. I had a job to do.

At a glance, the body didn’t even appear human. I remember thinking it looked like something from outer space, something you might see at one of those Saturday matinees. Or maybe that’s only what I wanted to think so that I wouldn’t have to admit that this was my son. Suddenly, as I stood there gazing down at the body, something came over me. It was like an electric shock. In fact, it was terror. I felt it through every bone in my body. I stiffened. The horror of this moment was as overwhelming as the smell had been before all this, and the sight of the box before that. And it was not because this body looked like something out of a horror movie. It was because I was getting closer to discovering, to confirming, that this body had once been my son. And I couldn’t let anyone in the room know what I was feeling right then. I didn’t want them to think even for a moment that I was not up to this. They might try to take this moment away from me. I couldn’t let them stop me from going through with it. If I was stopped one more time, I don’t know what I would have done. I’m not sure that I could have worked myself back up to it again. I had to steel myself like a forensic doctor. I had a job to do.

Quickly, I diverted my eyes down to his feet. That’s how I needed to handle it. I decided that I would examine him from his feet to his head. I knew I could do it that way. I needed to do it that way. I just could not bear to examine his face. Not yet. I would have to get my courage back, let it build up again slowly as I moved back up his body to his head. So, I looked at the feet first and they were so familiar, and then the ankles. I knew those ankles because I had been so glad to see that they weren’t like mine. I’d always thought of my ankles as rather fat in the back. Bo’s were always shaped so nicely, so slender, so well tapered. I had always admired the shape of his little ankles, and I had always wished mine were like his. I examined them very carefully, the way a mother might check a newborn. Just to be sure.
I felt
them, so cold, so hard now. In the back where the tendon runs to the heel, I could put my finger in there and feel the indentation. Not like mine, round without that dip. Then I came on up the leg. How strong his legs had become. I recalled how worried I had been when he was stricken with polio. There weren’t many people who had come back from polio the way Bo had, but he had been such a strong little boy, so full of life, so determined. And his knees. I paused at the knees. They weren’t knobby knees, they were nice, fat, round knees and rather flat.
And they were
my
knees. I would know them anywhere. How the doctors had frightened me so, when Bo was born, and his knee had gotten tangled in the umbilical cord and had become so swollen. We showed them how wrong they had been. We proved that Bo didn’t have to be institutionalized. Oh, how we showed them. He wasn’t crippled for life, not crippled at all, the way they said he would be. I moved on up a little farther and stopped at his private area. Just long enough, really, to see that everything was still there. That had been one of the terrible rumors that had spread—that Emmett had been castrated. I was relieved for a moment before I caught myself. Oh, my God. Emmett would have a
fit
if he knew I was looking at him like this. He was
so
independent, especially after the polio. He always wanted to show me he could take care of himself. He even told me that he could bathe himself. At six. So young. He didn’t need me to do that for him anymore. How hard that was for me, to suffer in silence, to give him his space and pray to God that he was getting everything clean. As I continued moving on up, I wondered how I had become so intimately aware of all the details of Emmett’s body. It was as if I had just always known them, the way only a mother can know her child—by heart. In a way, it was better that I had let go earlier, let so much emotion pour out of me at the train yard, because I couldn’t allow myself to get emotional, to lose control now. I had to get through this. There would be no second chance to get through this. I noticed that none of Emmett’s body was scarred. It was bloated, the skin was loose, but there were no scars, no signs of violence anywhere. Until I got to his chin.