by Lewis Nordan
She laughed, and so then Mr. Archer laughed, too.
Alice examined her hands for dust.
Mr. Archer said, “I can put those boxes in the trunk of your car for you.”
Alice said, “I’m on foot, as usual.”
He said, “Oh, right, of course.”
She said, “Uncle Runt will pick them up later.”
He said, “If you’d like, I could—”
She said, “No, really.”
He said, “Well—”
Mr. Archer stood up from the little desk.
He said, “You have a very creative mind, you know.”
She said, “Thank you.”
He said, “Well—”
She extended her hand to him. For a moment he looked at her hand as if it were in a display case, and then he quickly took it and gave it a firm handshake and released it.
She said, “Good-bye.”
He said, “Yes, and, well, best of luck.”
School was out. Alice breathed a sweetness of DDT in the sun-drenched Delta air. The school year was finished. Glenn Gregg was dead. Bobo was dead. Alice walked out of the schoolhouse into the June sun, full summer in Mississippi. She left her belongings behind.
Alice was walking now, she didn’t know where. She didn’t want to go home yet, to Uncle Runt’s house. She had not learned to call him Uncle Cyrus yet, and he did not ask her to. She felt sweat collecting in the small of her back, beneath her blouse. She walked a long distance around town.
She laid eyes on everything, as she had laid her hands a final time on the desks, the children’s workbooks. Shanker’s Drug Store; the water tower; the fish camp where the body had been pulled to, behind a motorboat; the Legion Hut with its World War II cannon; the statue of the Confederate soldier looking south; men in overalls spitting into lard cans; the Arrow Hotel, with its tree-shaded veranda, but with Miz Peebuddy out of sight.
Arrow Catcher was empty now, no reporters on the courthouse lawn, no sightseers in the Arrow Cafe.
She walked out on the Roebuck bridge and leaned on the wooden railing and looked down at a line of turtles sunning on a log. With her toe she raked a couple of pieces of loose gravel off the bridge and watched them fall down into the water. They hit and sent wide ripples outward for a long distance.
She left the bridge and walked past the empty fairgrounds, the site of the annual Arrow-Catcher Fair. She walked past the house where the gospel singer died, and past the frozen meat locker where the Pentecostal revival was held. She walked past Harper’s woods, where a one-man band had played for pennies, an accordion, and cymbals on his knees, and a harmonica on a head frame, and an oogah-horn on his belt. On the street where she walked, she watched the ice man, asleep on the ice wagon, as two blind mules pulled him through town with water pouring out of the bed of the wagon, hundred-pound blocks of ice melting beneath canvas tarpaulins. She saw the house that had been visited by a sin-eater, and a corner where a Chinese yo-yo man named Yo had peddled his wares.
When she reached her destination, she knew it was where she had been going all along. She had walked past the colored cemetery, which made her think of Bobo, though he was not buried there, his mama had taken him back to Chicago, and she had kept on walking, past St. George-by-the-Lake, and finally she had walked so far, almost all the way out to Highway 49, that her feet hurt and she had become sweaty in the heat. She was standing outside of Swami Don’s Elegant Junk.
Parked outside the junk store, in the gravelled parking lot, was a big white Cadillac, the car that belonged to Sally Anne Montberclair.
Sally Anne was browsing in Swami Don’s when Alice walked through the door. She looked up and smiled at Alice and spoke to her as if they knew each other.
Sally Anne had taken a pasteboard guitar, with rotted gut strings, down from a wall hook, where it had hung beside several sweat-stained leather horse collars and a rusted plowshare and a Confederate sword.
She said, “Swami Don claims this is Robert Johnson’s first guitar. Do you believe him?”
Alice said, “Robert who?”
Sally Anne said, “Oh, well, it doesn’t matter.” She placed the guitar on the wall hook again.
Alice didn’t know what else to say. She recognized Sally Anne, of course. She liked her at the trial, or believed she would like her if she knew her. You could tell she was a good person. Alice wished she hadn’t been so ignorant when Sally Anne tried to make conversation about the guitar.
Alice said, “This is some store.”
Sally Anne said, “It ought to be listed in Cook’s Tour Guide.”
Alice said, “In what?”
Sally Anne said, “You know, a guide for tourists.”
Alice said, “Oh.”
Alice turned away and moved along one of the narrow, crowded aisles of the store. Sally Anne moved along another aisle. Alice could see her, sort of, through the empty spaces between junk.
Alice seemed to be standing in the iron section. The iron section, for heaven’s sake! Could there be a less interesting section of the junk store? What would Sally Anne think of her?
There were iron skillets of all shapes and sizes (including one in the shape of Mississippi); farm implements, scythes and disks and plows and a pecan separator; irons for ironing; iron anchors for boats; a steam radiator; iron pipes of all lengths; a cannonball; a small cannon barrel; iron wagon wheels; iron hitching posts, with the tops shaped like the heads of horses; an iron pickaninny wearing livery; fire irons from a fireplace; leg irons from a prison; a weight-lifting set from a gymnasium; an Iron Maiden, from a torture chamber; a chastity belt from God-knows-where, with a handprinted sign that said LOST KEY; a cast-iron coffin with MADE IN PITTSBURGH stamped into the lid; an iron statue of a snarling dog that made Alice jump; an iron coupling from a train caboose—it must have weighed a ton!
Through the shelves she could see Sally Anne, browsing, a few feet away. Alice said, “This is just iron.”
Sally Anne said, “My aisle is not much better.”
Alice said, “What’s your aisle?”
Sally Anne said, “Well, it’s hard to say. Come look.”
Alice walked down to the end of the long iron aisle, and looped around into the space where Sally Anne was standing.
She said, Tm Alice.”
Sally Anne said, “I saw you at the trial. I’m Sally Anne. I’m—well, I guess you know who I am, I guess you couldn’t miss me, could you?”
Alice said, “The murderer’s wife.”
Sally Anne turned to look at the junk in her aisle.
She said, “This aisle seems to be magic stuff.” She picked up a walking cane and it popped out into a bouquet of fake flowers.
Alice said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t know what gets into me sometimes.”
She said, “Dexter is gone, I don’t even know where. The house is up for sale. I’m going to go away, too.”
Alice said, “Magic stuff?”
Sally Anne said, “Well, I’m not sure. Look at this.”
There were endless stacks of Tarot cards, maybe a thousand decks altogether, some new and still wrapped in cellophane, others so battered and greasy you could hardly make out the figures.
Sally Anne said, “Swami Don must have hit the Tarot jackpot.”
Alice said, “The Tarot truck must have wrecked out on Highway 49.”
Sally Anne said, “There must have been a good Tarot crop last year.”
Alice said, “Swami Don buys his Tarot cards by the pound.”
The two women laughed together. They said, “Shh. Swami Don is around here somewhere.” They laughed some more. They said, “Shh, shh.”
They walked along together.
There was a steamer trunk filled with magic wands, and a set of leather saddlebags with more magic wands, sticking out of both sides.
Alice said, “I saw a yellow dog dragging a saddlebag full of harmonicas down in Balance Due the day of the murder.”
For a w
hile neither woman said anything. Alice started to be sorry she said this.
Then Sally Anne said, “That dog must have been browsing in the music section of Swami Don’s store.”
They were able to smile again.
There was a long shelf filled with nothing but silk top hats with white rabbits poking their heads out. Sally Anne said, “They’re so cute.” There was a wooden crate filled with joined steel rings. Alice picked up a handful of the rings, and they all separated and fell apart with a clatter. Alice said, “Yikes.” There was another crate, very large, marked FLYING CARPETS DO NOT OPEN. The two women looked at one another and rolled their eyes. There were stacks of neatly folded silk scarves, and another large stack of magic capes, and cigar boxes filled with talismans of various descriptions, and several pairs of Seven League Boots, clearly marked. There were turbans and tea leaves and wall charts with diagrams of open palms. There were signboards with red palms and others with silhouettes of Indian maidens. There was a wooden barrel, and when Alice lifted the lid, she saw a nest of writhing green snakes.
Swami Don, sitting up near the cash register, must have heard Alice slam the lid. He said, “Nonpoisonous, nothing to worry about.”
Alice whispered, “This beats iron, anyway.”
Sally Anne said, “I always wanted to come down here, since I was a little girl.”
Alice said, “Why didn’t you?”
Sally Anne said, “It was considered tacky.”
Alice thought about this. She said, “I guess that’s the one advantage of coming from white trash. ‘Tacky’ really never comes up.”
She said this thoughtfully.
Sally Anne said, “I figure, once you become a murderer’s wife, you gain pretty much the same advantage.”
Alice thought about this, too. She liked Sally Anne. She had known she would.
Alice said, “Well, now, that’s a nice way of looking at it.”
Sally Anne said, “I suppose.”
Swami Don’s Elegant Junk was huge, much larger than it appeared on the outside. Alice and Sally Anne looked at boxes for disappearances, and boxes for sawing women in half, and boxes with slits for swords.
Alice said, “I saw Bobo’s body in a raindrop.”
Sally Anne looked at her.
She said, “In a raindrop?”
Alice said, “I was walking home from school on the day of the murder—you remember how it rained that day?—and for some unknown reason I happened to look right at a particular raindrop on my coatsleeve and I saw a dead child in the lake.”
They moved past bins filled up with disappearing ink and disappearing coins and one large unmarked bin that was completely empty.
Sally Anne said, “Whatever was in this bin seems to have disappeared.”
The two women laughed. They moved on down the aisle, past the magic lanterns, with a sign saying DO NOT TOUCH.
Alice said, “I don’t know what to make of any of it.”
Sally Anne said, “I’ve got to try to put it all behind me.”
Alice said, “I had never even heard of Bobo. I thought the child in the raindrop was Glenn Gregg, Solon’s boy, you know, the child who died during the trial.”
Sally Anne said, “How do you mean ‘in a raindrop’?”
Alice said, “Like a vision or something. Like a crystal ball.”
Sally Anne said, “I don’t know what to say. It’s all so painful to remember.”
Alice said, “Anyway—”
Sally Anne said, “Yeah, anyway—”
They walked on, past the cages full of doves, past the escape tricks, manacles and handcuffs and safes, past the empty tiger cage with heavy iron bars.
Alice said, “This tiger cage ought to be in the iron section, seems like.”
Sally Anne said, “Do you, you know, really believe in magic?”
Alice said, “It does seem a little white-trashy, I guess.”
Sally Anne said, “No, I didn’t mean it like that.”
Alice said, “I never thought I did, but I must. That night—you know—”
Sally Anne said, “The night of the murder.”
Alice said, “Yeah, well, I had this crazy idea of getting up in the middle of the night and coming down here to Swami Don’s and trying to buy a mojo. That’s how scared I felt. That’s how scared I was. I was willing to try anything.”
Sally Anne said, “A what?”
Alice said, “It’s a magic charm. Made from a monkey’s hand.”
Sally Anne said, “A mojo, good Lord.”
Alice said, “Maybe I should have tried. I might have found one, judging from all this junk.”
Sally Anne said, “We could ask Swami Don if he has one.”
The two women smiled together.
Alice said, “Hm.”
They came to a box full of small, bleached-out bones and tiny skulls. The sign said BLACK CATS MIX AND MATCH.
They came to a blue garment of some kind. The sign said ASTRAL FLIGHT COVERLET.
The women shrugged. You crawl under it, maybe, and pop up on another planet, who knows.
They came to a red flannel bag that smelled of oils and spices. The sign said JOHN THE CONQUEROO.
They came to a crystal ball.
Here they stopped.
The ball was pure and clear, about the size of a perfectly round canteloupe. There was only one ball, although most everything else in the store seemed to have been stocked by the gross. The crystal sat on the shelf in a low brass stand.
Alice and Sally Anne stood there, looking at it, into it. They could see nothing, nothing at all.
They continued to walk together through the store. They browsed, they spoke in low voices. They spoke, finally, from their hearts. Maybe, finally, they did weep together, and maybe held each other tight. Nobody but Bobo knows for sure what happened next, but maybe, behind Alice and Sally Anne, the crystal ball in Swami Don’s Elegant Junk shone with the bright blue light of empty interiors and of faraway and friendly stars and all their hopeful planets and golden moons.
Lewis Nordan was fifteen the summer that Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old black child, was lynched in Money, Mississippi, just up the road from Nordan’s hometown. The events of that summer have haunted him all of his life.
WOLF WHISTLE
by Lewis Nordan
A R E A D E R ’ S G U I D E
Contents
Growing Up White in the South an essay by Lewis Nordan
An Interview with the Author
Discussion Points
Further Reading on Emmett Till
Additional Books by Lewis Nordan
Growing Up White in the South
an essay by Lewis Nordan
As I began the first leg of a book tour to promote my third book, Music of the Swamp, I made a joke to a friend that I was traveling around the country explaining how tough it was to grow up white in the South. In fact, despite the irony, that is what that book is about.
It tells about a white boy, Sugar Mecklin, who senses the tragic limitations of a society defined by racial hatred and alcoholism and geographical isolation.
An unexpected answer
So, anyway, early one morning on this book tour, I took a cab from my hotel in Atlanta to a local television station where I was scheduled to be interviewed. I found myself more anxious than usual when I learned that the show was being taped before an audience.
The guest preceding me was a popular entertainer, a handsome black recording star promoting a new album. I could hear him out there, belting out song after song, and the audience was eating out of his hand, cheering for more.
It was intimidating. A nervous, bookish, gray-bearded old cuss in spectacles—me, I mean—didn’t have a chance following this guy, this singer. In fact, I was wondering whether he would hang around long enough for me to ask for his autograph.
Then, when the applause had died down, somebody—the director, the stage manager, I’m not sure who—told me to get ready, it was my turn,
they were getting ready to announce me.
I heard my name called, and so, in fear, walked out onto the stage, in front of those cameras, beneath all those shocking lights, suspicious that my message about growing up white in the South was about to fall flat.
Once I was out there, I discovered one further intimidating detail. The interviewer and every member of this large television audience were black.
My whiteness dimmed the lights. My silly message about Sugar Mecklin’s white-bread tragedy seemed altogether fatuous.
In any case, as part of the talk-show format, the audience was invited to ask questions from microphones placed throughout the studio. In my giddy state, I found myself giving a completely unexpected answer to one of the questions. Unexpected to me, I mean.
A woman stood at the microphone in the audience and said, “What will your next book be about?”
I said, confidently, “It will deal with the death of Emmett Till.”
What? It would deal with what? Who said that?
I added, “Emmett Till was a black child who was murdered near my hometown when I was a boy. The trial of his murderers became a landmark in the civil rights movement.” Words to that effect, anyway.
The remainder of the half hour was taken up with questions and answers related to the unexpected announcement of this work-in-progress.
An anonymous white boy
A year later—in 1993—Wolf Whistle, the book I described on that television show, went to press. It is the book I seem to have been preparing to write for a long time, and yet until the words came out of my mouth I had had no conscious intention of writing such a book.
There is, however, a detail in Music of the Swamp that might have predicted it. Two children in a boat see the feet and legs of a dead body sticking up from the water in a drift of brush beyond the Roebuck Lake spillway.
The narrator reports the body to be that of an old man who had “spells.” I knew it was not. Though I had not given a thought to any future book I might write, I knew when I wrote the chapter that this dead person was none other than Emmett Till, floating upside down at the end of a barbed wire tether that was tied at one end to a hundred-pound gin fan and at the other, around the child’s neck.