South of Haunted Dreams (20 page)

The prudent course might well have been for Joseph, as light-skinned as he was, to try to pass, if he could, for white. But there is no sense denying who you are. There is, in fact, something evil about it.

Even in those hateful days, Joseph couldn't bring himself to do it. Long before black was beautiful there must have been something wonderful about it, about the color, about the skin, about the experience, some joy that was not worth losing or doing without, some hope, some sense of faithfulness, duty, and debt to the ones who had gone before, maybe even to the ones who would come after. Not everything after all can be measured in terms of comfort and self.

And there must have been something too about this place. After all that has been, how else to explain that there is even a single black person remaining in the South?

Why, for example, did Joseph not go north to make his fortune? Would it not have been easier there to find a better life for himself and for the ones who would come after? Why did he stay in the South?

What did he feel about this place that I don't feel, what did he know that I know not?

Of course it might have been not the South that held him, but the North that repelled him.

I was thinking of Roger Taney. Born in Maryland, educated in Pennsylvania, he became Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. In 1857 while deciding the Dred Scott case, Taney wrote that a black man had no rights a white man was bound to respect.

I was thinking of the great race riots in New York (1864) and Chicago (1917), in Boston and Philadelphia and Cleveland. I was thinking of the intense racial hatred that exploded in Boston when public schools were ordered desegregated in the 1970s. I was thinking of present-day Boston, and present-day Chicago, two of the most racially tense places in the world. I was thinking of a cocktail party in Connecticut.

And I was remembering that Malcolm X once noted that the South is anywhere south of the Canadian border.

The rest of the world points an angry finger at the South. The rest of the world sees the cinders only in the eyes of southerners. The rest of the world refuses to see the soot in its own eyes.

The South, in attitude and in effect, is probably not much worse than the North—only in degree and display. It's simply that the South has always been honest about its hatred and its prejudice. Northern intolerance has been subtle, therefore more pernicious and snaring.

Perhaps, as most of us do, Joseph simply preferred what was familiar, even if what was familiar was painful. Perhaps he preferred the devil he knew to the devil he didn't, preferred hatred and despotism pure, and not, as Abraham Lincoln put it, mingled with the base alloy of hypocrisy.

As I find myself inexplicably now doing, perhaps Joseph found himself getting defensive about the South, the way many white southerners are, the way any man will defend his home, his family, and his ideas against outside criticism.

It was Joseph's home, after all. Like any Virginian he would have considered the South—and this state especially—as sacred soil.

When he departed, surely he left a bit of himself here. Just as surely he took a bit of Virginia with him and passed it along. My grandfather's middle name was Virginia.

What irrational love of sacred Virginia and of the South in general have I inherited, do I harbor and long to admit? In what weird ways is the South not just an ancestral home, but my home as well? How much of this place is within me?

In the workings of psychiatry, revealed secrets can suddenly unlock the gates to a flood of emotions and admissions. One little secret is all it sometimes takes.

I lie darkening in the sun. I close my eyes and shut off the outside world. I am alone, isolated, my thoughts humming inside my head like a mantra. I am completely relaxed. There is no sound now but the deep rhythmic breathing of meditation. My thoughts drift in front of me, unaided and unimpeded, floating in and out of focus like images in a dream. I acknowledge them, and they become real. Finally I admit to myself what I, a black man, would never admit to anyone else.

Of all the men who emerged heroic from battlefields in the Civil War to capture my imagination, only one wore a Yankee uniform. All the rest were Confederates. They were the same men glorified in the statues along Monument Avenue. They were Jeb Stuart and Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee.

Forget for a moment the cause for which they fought. They were romantic figures to me. They were outmanned and outgunned and still they managed to avoid defeat during four long years of war. At times they seemed on the edge of victory. They were bold and flamboyant, they were brave and they were lucky. They were passionate about a cause, albeit an unworthy cause, and they had a valor about them that the inept Northern soldiers seemed to lack.

If you can separate the nobility of effort from the nobleness of the desired result, then these men and their Confederates deserve enormous praise for their bravery and for their devotion to duty.

Think of Pickett's charge during the battle at Gettysburg. It was obvious folly from the start.

Quietly General George Pickett urged his men: “Up, men, and to your posts. Don't forget today that you are from old Virginia.”

Thirteen thousand brave men marched across an open field toward the waiting Union lines. It was failure for sure. But they marched on.

“Do not hurry, men,” a Union general ordered his troops. “Let them come up close before you fire. And then aim slow.”

It was impossible to miss. When the Union soldiers finally fired upon the advancing line of Confederates, entire regiments disappeared. By the end of battle, half of the thirteen thousand had fallen or were captured.

Think of Robert E. Lee. He was offered command of the entire Union Army. But his sense of honor and duty, his loyalty to his native country—Virginia—bound him to a lost cause.

We root for the underdog. We praise loyalty. We applaud patriotism. (In those days you were a Virginian, you were a Georgian. Your state was your country.) We honor devotion to duty. Why, then, can we not hold these men in esteem? They were fighting for what they thought was right—personal liberty, self-determination, right to property. But for the slavery issue and a way of thinking which is abhorrent to us today, their principles and ours are not that far apart. Why, then, are we not able to separate what they did from the way they were, their viler side from their nobler natures?

If that separation cannot be made, then we need to exclude from our list of heroes anyone who was born in a time and place whose sensibilities were different from our own, anyone whose ways of thinking were less perfect than our own.

Thomas Jefferson owned slaves.

George Washington owned slaves.

If their philosophies were so wonderful, why didn't they extend into the arena of human justice and equality?

How many great Americans hated Jews?

President after president has dodged the path to heroism, has preferred instead the politically expedient status quo.

Even the U.S. Constitution, so nearly humanly perfect, compromised in the end by declaring that blacks were not citizens, they were nothing more than property, and for the purposes of census-taking they were to be counted as only three-fifths of a whole person—a whole white person.

Does this thinking which is faulty to us now—I hope—tarnish their achievements?

Does their skill at one thing make it irrelevant that their feet were made of clay? Can clay feet keep our heads from rising into the clouds?

Babe Ruth played professional baseball at a time when blacks were not allowed to play in the same leagues with whites.

Babe himself admitted how great the players were in the old Negro Leagues. He could have protested against the color line, could have complained that in order for him to be great he would have to play against the very best, no matter what color. He chose instead to keep his mouth shut. And just by playing he gave legitimacy to the segregation. But it was the world he knew.

It's not a very good excuse, but it's an excuse.

We are formed by the world around us. It forms us, and we form it. We push the edges a little at a time. It is never fast enough for some, too fast for others, but in time we change and we grow, and the world changes with us.

We all have our sins. Not many of us are truly heroic. We all have our viler sides.

And so we grant to our heroes dispensations, the same as we grant to ourselves. Not a single one of us is completely and perfectly heroic.

If we are to have heroes at all we must separate the nobility that is in them from that which makes them just like us. We must pluck the flowers from the weeds and treasure the flowers.

A black man can admire Robert E. Lee for his valor and honor, for his bravery. A black man can love the South for its beauty and charm, and value it for its place—not a good place, but a place—in our history.

I awoke with a start. I awoke with a headache. And I awoke hungry.

It was time to continue on to Goochland and find a place to eat.

When I set out from Richmond I had had another purpose in mind. In the Library and Archives I had seen only photocopies of the documents pertaining to Joseph. In the Goochland County Courthouse I expected I would find the originals. I had wanted to see them, put my hands on them, feel their tangible evidence of Joseph and John Harris. I thought I would feel some great link to them, proof that I was really here.

I was thinking of Joseph as I put my helmet on and climbed back on the bike, as I turned the ignition key and pushed the starter button, as I put the bike in gear and got back on the road. I was thinking of Joseph and of the things he must have seen along his way that might have urged him on, that might have seduced him to stay, the people he met who would have shown him kindness, the towns where every door was closed to him. He would not have wanted the dust of those towns to remain on his boots. He would have knocked it from his shoes and moved on.

I was thinking of Joseph and I remembered Andrew in Raleigh. I remembered what he said about looking at pretty women.

“I don't want to have them,” he said. “I just like to know they are in the world. There is so much ugliness around us. I just like to know that there still is some beauty in the world.”

And maybe Joseph too. Maybe he was looking for a little goodness and a little beauty.

Having been a slave, he had seen enough ugliness to last a lifetime or two or several. Having endured, he had to have been a hopeful man. Having learned to read, he would probably have studied the Bible. He would have known that when God threatened to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham drew near and asked, “Will you condemn the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous in the city? Will you not spare the place for the sake of the fifty?”

And if for fifty, how about for forty or for thirty or for twenty?

And God said, “I will not destroy it for the sake of even ten.”

After all the evil he must have seen, perhaps Joseph was looking for ten just men. If he was to keep his hatred at bay and his hope alive, perhaps the search was necessary. Just to know that with all the ugliness around, there is still some beauty in the world.

Despite all that has been and surely all that will come in the future, I cannot allow myself to hate this place. For the sake of ten just men, I cannot allow myself to hate the South.

We all have a very long way to go. Hating makes the going slower.

Just before entering Goochland the road descends sharply and goes around a curve. Right at the top of that hill lives a family named Harris. They call the place Cedar Knoll. A sign hanging from a wooden post tells me so. I see the sign scarcely a moment before it is too late. I hit the brakes, turning into the gravel roadway at the same time, and skid to a stop. The bike almost falls over.

The house is quaint, hidden from the road by the cedar trees. I cannot really tell cedar trees from most other trees, but why would the Harris family call this place Cedar Knoll if these were chestnut trees?

It is a peaceful setting. There are no neighbors nearby. The air is still but fragrant with the smell of cedar. I would love to sit out on the veranda with these Harrises, sip iced tea and watch the birds soaring across the valley. I tell myself to go up and ring the doorbell. When I stick out my hand to shake I should say, “Hello, cousin.” Some white man would either laugh himself silly or die of a heart attack.

I get off the bike, but only for a second. There's nothing to prove by shocking him. Or by getting myself shot. I already know he's my cousin. And anyway I'm very hungry.

Goochland is a very small town. It's only a few blocks long. There are no shops to speak of. There is a small library, a post office, and a gas station. And there is the Goochland Restaurant.

The restaurant sits away from the road, at the back of a gravelly parking lot. There are a few old cars in the lot, a pickup truck, a big trash container.

Inside, the restaurant is as elegant as it is outside. It is just one big room—and not very big, at that. A chalkboard menu promises home cooking, manicotti, apple cobbler, pork chops. Along the walls there are a few booths with fake wooden tables and orange plastic benches, in the center of the room a few tables with orange plastic seats. The floors are linoleum, and very dirty.

In a big wall case there are sodas for sale. A freezer holds ice cream. There is a rack offering potato chips and candy.

There is a low counter with a cash register on it. And in the rear of the restaurant there is a window behind which is the kitchen. Through this window the waitress shouts orders at the cook.

Apart from her shouting, the place is pretty quiet. In one of the booths there are a few ancient ladies sitting, smoking, gabbing. I can hear them clearly.

“And so some guy comes in here and says the Dumpster was on fire. Virginia went over there with him and he told her he seen the Dumpster was on fire. Now who do you suppose would set a Dumpster on fire?”