Nobody Said Amen (40 page)

“A kid at the academy asked me if my mama knew a nigger named Jimmy Mack. Said he heard my mama was going to be introducing Jimmy Mack at a politics meeting.”

Luke carried his coffee to the table and nodded for the boys to sit down. He turned to Alex. “A black man named Jimmy Mack is running for Congress. You use that word? Nigger?”

The boy hesitated. “No, Billy Cosgrove did. He’s the one asked me.”

“How about you, Benny? You say nigger?”

Benny grinned. “Not since I came home and told mama a nigger joke I heard in school and she said that’s not funny. She said that’s a dirty word. Said her daddy taught her that. He said you have to use soap to get rid of dirt and if she kept using that dirty word he’d have to wash her mouth out with soap. Yuck!”

“Did mama ever get her mouth washed out with soap?” Alex asked.

Luke chuckled. “I don’t think so. She’s smart, like me. Ignorant people say nigger. Your ma’s not ignorant.” He pushed back his chair. “Get your jackets and meet me at the truck. I want to pick something up, and I need your strong backs. No questions.”

The boys got their jackets and hurried to the truck. Luke drove, savoring the unusual silence of his sons, knowing their curiosity would leach out. It’ll be Alex, he thought. Before they headed north on 49, Alex said, “Daddy, you just passed our old driveway! Where we going?”

Luke said, “I’m taking you to a part of the old place you boys have never been to.”

Benny craned his neck to see out the truck window as the Ford swung to the right, bouncing its way further and further through the rows of cotton. The fields were a pale blue in the moonlight, the light so bright that Luke turned off the headlights as he carefully maneuvered the truck over a slight rise and then coasted down to a stop. Benny said, “Look at that old tree! Looks like a skeleton.” The tree was like chalk against the sky. “Scary-looking.”

Alex snorted. “What’s scary? Just a dead tree. We getting out here, daddy?”

“Keep your voices down. We don’t want to upset anybody. This place doesn’t belong to us anymore.” Luke opened the door. “Bring the shovels and the crow bar, and stay close. It gets wet down there in the hollow. There’s a spring there. That’s where our brook came from.”

Luke led them to the clearing. “This was my secret place when I was a boy. Even your ma’s never been here.” He looked at his wide-eyed sons and smiled. “I think it’s time the sons of Claybourne and Sons learn about our family history. It was your Grandpa Lucas who brought me here the first time. It was sort of his secret place, too. A place to talk together.” A cloud passed briefly across the wafer of moon. “The last time was two days before he died.” Luke picked up a shovel and stepped closer to the spring. “We had a special place to talk. Come over here.”

The boys moved closer as Luke felt before him with the shovel. When there was a dull clang, he chuckled. “Right where I left them twenty years ago!” Partly hidden by the swamp grass were two flat stones. “My history, sons. Your history, too.” He grinned at the questioning faces. “Let’s dig them out and bring them to the truck.”

Alex said, “These big rocks? Why?”

Luke handed him his shovel. “Just dig.”

More and more clouds curtained the moon, and a chill rain began to fall as they struggled to free the stones. When Luke’s crowbar finally wrestled them from their grave, the boys hauled the stones to the truck. Luke went into the cab and turned on the headlights as rain washed the mud from the stones. Then he knelt with the boys around the glistening rocks.

“Grandpa Lucas always said the bigger stone was his, and that the smaller one was mine.” He grinned at the two intent faces before him. “Now both of them belong to both of you. Let me show you something on the smaller one. Grandpa showed me there was the print of a fossil on my rock. He said it was me, two million years ago when this Delta was the bottom of a huge ocean.”

“You mean right here?” Benny stared at his father.

“Right here,” said Luke, nodding. “So I asked him if I was a fish two million years ago. And he said no, I was a crustacean. And he showed me the little ridges on this fossil.”

Benny tapped his father on the shoulder. “It does look a little like you, daddy,” and Alex yelled, “It sure does!”

Once the rocks were secured in the bed of the Ford, Luke made his careful way back to the highway. It was raining hard now. “Tomorrow we’ll drop these historical monuments at the catfish farm. They’re part of our history.”

“Those rocks really go back two million years, daddy?”

“Yeah. They do. So in a certain way, we go back two million years, too.” He looked at Alex. “Something to be said about looking back. It’s not all bad. I do quite a lot of that. Your ma is big on looking ahead.”

He turned into the driveway and parked next to Willy’s Chevy.

Learning to navigate the rocks, shoals and shallows that came with my desire to pursue the life of an artist has led me into a turbulent stream that has been both daunting and wondrous. The perspective has constantly shifted as I have moved from capturing the visual image to seeking words to define my vision. My perception of the people and landscapes along the way has been heightened by the demands of my many years as a working illustrator. Learning to really see has been a challenging and unending quest, and I think now of myself as a journalist whose task is to perceive what is true in my life and time. Now, at an advanced age, I find myself once again in flux, impatient with the “what is” and eager to explore the “what ifs” in my vision. I continue in the search for the reality beneath the journalism that has always intrigued me. If I am an elderly Don Quixote, then my journey has needed the strength and wisdom of many Sancho Panzas.

Without the compassionate guidance and encouragement of my journalist wife, Gloria Cole Sugarman, I would never have found the confidence to venture further in the unknown landscape of fiction. Her hand was always on my back as I was writing
Nobody Said Amen
.

The generosity and vast editorial experience of Sally Ateseros helped me in so many ways to navigate the entanglements of time and place that occur when one is creating a narrative. She was a teacher I cherish.

Sybil Steinberg, whose professional life has been devoted to educating the reading public about the innovative creators of today’s often challenging fiction, has helped me to seek out and find the paths forward which have made me a surer traveler.

Martha Aasen, whose own life has been shaped by a youth spent in a politically vigorous and enlightened family in Mississippi, and by her professional years in the international community of the United Nations, has lent insight and authenticity in seeking the truth about Mississippi culture and traditions.

Mary Selden Evans has been stalwart in shepherding my journey from art to literature. Her understanding of the delicate balance necessary to wed the two into one compelling voice resulted in the publication of two books of important reportage,
We Had Sneakers, They Had Guns
, and
Drawing Conclusions, One Man’s Discovery of America
. I will miss her enthusiasm and support.

As an artist and journalist, I have borne intimate witness to two seminal events that have changed the political and moral landscape of our world.

The struggle of World War II was to triumph over the military might of the fascism that had taken all of democratic Europe hostage, and to overcome the Japanese after their attack on America and dominance of Asia.

A generation later, the emergence of a non-violent civil rights revolution in the United States was a challenge to the very premise of
e pluribus unum
, rupturing the course of millions of lives in the South as it tore asunder expectations and habits of civil and communal behavior that had held sway since the Civil War.

As a reportorial artist, I was a participant and keen observer during both struggles, seeking to be honestly critical and truthful in the imagery I created to tell the story I saw. After a number of years of living in and visiting Mississippi, I came to recognize that this state was a Petri dish that revealed much more than the DNA of a poor, post–Civil War rebel state. It was a dramatic caldron of American passions, contradictions, and aspirations—and a uniquely American story.

Later, as an artist for the movement, I drew and painted more than a hundred pictures of Freedom Summer in the Mississippi Delta, wrote two books about the blacks and whites who were involved, and co-authored, with my wife, Gloria,
Look Away, Dixieland
, a play about the changing roles of men and women as a consequence of the movement.

The urgency of the continuing revolution I first saw in 1964 remains a living presence in my life. The images of bravery and idealism, the human fallibilities, the defeats, the frustrations, the changing moral landscapes were all colorblind. As a result,
Nobody Said Amen
was born to tell that uniquely American story.