Parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, old uncles and aunts remembered the south fondly in tales they recounted to each other and their progeny, down-home tales full of laughter, pats, hugs, dance steps, pantomimes, mmmmm-mmmm good food, clear air, clean water, black soil my Virginia grandfather, John French, said he believed sweet enough to eat when he was a boy staring at the Blue Ridge Mountains, daydreaming on the back porch of his father’s house. Good hunting fishing funerals songs sermons weddings baptisms moonshine. Huh-uh. Forget about all that once-upon-a-time backwoods mess. Urban boys like me, like Emmett Till had heard other stories too.
* * *
I said, No sir, and Thank you, Grandpa. Can’t go this summer, declining many summers my grandfather’s invitation to accompany him south. Dodged a trip until Grandpa Harry, born in South Carolina and baptized Hannibal not long after slavery days, got too old to go and stopped asking. We missed the opportunity to travel together, hang out together in his briar patch, Promiseland. Grandpa was deprived of a chance to show off his grandson, first northern-born male child of the extended clan. Maybe Emmett Till took my place. Took my trip. Plunged into the jungle full of peckerwoods riding around in white sheets to hunt down black boys, cut off our balls, string us up. Dixie, wish I was in Dixie. No thanks, Grandpa. That Hannibal who after he settled up north, called himself Harry out of shyness or maybe shame because Hannibal sounded too much like Cannibal. I missed him on the droning bus south. Missed our golden summer together. Sorry, Grandpa. Wish you were here.
* * *
The U.S. Army’s Disciplinary Training Center at Metato, near Pisa in Italy, where Louis Till was held prisoner, is a dark site like the south, like Africa, frozen outside of time. Another piece of alien territory where the Till project would land me. During World War II the DTC was a black hole. Colored soldiers made up twenty-five percent of the four thousand unlucky inmates at the mercy of white officers who ran the camp, by all reports, as if they were possessed by devils.
Uncountable miles away from the known, the everyday, the acceptable, the DTC an American prison on conquered Italian soil, a terrain ominous and unsafe for colored boys as any mythical Dark Continent, or the south. Colored inmates of the camp, exposed to bitter cold, withering heat, never-ending labor, humiliation, beatings, were born again slaves. White guards were vicious slave drivers in the DTC time warp. But if a famous American poet imprisoned with Louis Till was correct, a different Africa was also abounding in the Metato inferno. Luminous traces of dark speech, dark faces, dark music, the dark generosity of kind acts that dark hands dared to perform. Africa surviving but only if, like the poet, you paid attention, looked around yourself, inside yourself, and knew how to look. The poet’s desk a gift from an African spirit disguised as a colored prisoner. A writing desk ingeniously fashioned from a packing crate just appeared one morning, no warning, in the poet’s bare cell, compliments of quiet fellow prisoner Saunders, whose gleaming, bronze forehead, the poet wrote, belonged on a Benin mask.
Whereas the sight of a good nigger is cheering, wrote the captive poet, Pound, who plays Mistah Kurtz in my movie of the DTC camp, an endangered soul I must rescue, bring back alive as a witness for the defense to recite his Pisan Cantos at the court-martial of Privates Till and McMurray.
Ain’ committed no federal crime,
jes a slaight misdemeanor
* * *
The DTC part of a story about James Thomas, Junior, began forming before I traveled south. It’s likely that Private Thomas sees Private Louis (NMI) Till only once, if at all, after the court-martial in Leghorn, Italy. Sees him because a truck transporting Thomas and other recently released prisoners to rejoin their units probably routed through the MTOUSA (rhymes with Medusa) Disciplinary Training Center at Metato in order to pick up soldiers who had served out their terms there.
I peek through a hole where a loop of rope has come undone from one of the steel poles to which the truck’s canvas sides and top are lashed, a missed stitch stretched wider for a merciful breath of air and probably also out of curiosity, too, since men sweating under the truck’s canopy would want to check out the camp where they’ve halted, the granddaddy prison, largest and meanest of an archipelago of camps, a facility where some of them probably had been interned before. A place all of them certainly would have heard tales about. Hellish acres dusty and broiling in summer, bitter cold, wet and muddy in winter. DTC at Metato especially notorious because colored GIs attempting to escape had been machine-gunned by guards posted in one of the towers that jut up next to the gate and at each corner of the razor-wired perimeter fence.
Through the improvised peephole James Thomas sights a group of prisoners mustered at the far end of the DTC’s football-field-long yard. This group gathered for a punishment not a work detail since the men’s hands are empty and no tools are stacked nearby. To Thomas, who squints through the hole, the scene is a wobbly movie projected on a washboard. Men disintegrating in a buckling haze of heat, dust and glare, are colored men he guesses, like all the guys crammed in the truck, like the guys they wait for. He’s certain it’s a colored detail over there across the yard when a colored soldier double-times past to join the group. No mixed details in the DTC.
Thomas sucks air, drips sweat. Soldiers crowded beside him shove in slow motion, crabs in a barrel, silently, insistently squeezing closer to the privileged spot, the little riff of less stale air. For a minute his chance to look and breathe, breathe and look, but soon he’ll have to shift, lose sight of men whose black silhouettes shiver and crack in the yard’s heat.
Colored soldiers in rows over there face an officer who’s white. Thomas knows he’s white because all officers white. Baton in one hand, glint of silver whistle in the other. The whistle shrieks. Rows of men drop to the ground as if an invisible sickle slashed their ranks. All the prisoners, maybe twenty-five, thirty, freeze in the push-up position, a posture, a drill, a punishment way too familiar to Thomas. They are waiting for the whistle’s next blast to commence the cadence count every man in the detail must shout at the top of his lungs. Loud enough to satisfy the officer or the whistle will throw a toot-toot shrieking fit, the count will go back to zero, the sentence of ten or thirty or fifty push-ups will start all over again. Hup-one-two-One-hup-one-two-Two-hup . . . All the troops mowed down except one. One sticks up like a hair the razor blade of whistle missed. For three or four counts two dark shapes stand face to face, white officer, colored soldier above rows of prone bodies that dip and rise in unison. Two silhouettes, too far away, too much hazy shimmer and glare to pick out features, but Thomas has no doubt one is Louis Till. Thick body, big head Till. Till ignores the count. Till’s upright like the officer. Meets the officer’s stare. Matches hate for hate. Hate that would kill if it could. Thomas hears it hiss, catch fire. Like white heat from the blowtorches they used in the 379th.
Hate zaps back and forth three, maybe four beats while Till refuses to drop to the ground. Time enough for Thomas to think, Gotta tell the fellas this shit. Till crazy, boy. And Thomas wonders how many years he’ll need to finish being a soldier, finish his life, finish with Louis Till.
Till, no doubt about it. Goddamn St. Louis Till on his feet after all the other men down. Till eye to eye with a peckerwood officer, hate traded for hate for an instant, an eternity before Till drops to his hands, arms extended under his chest, the push-up position held one beat, then two, his big head looking round side to side like what the fuck all this shit spozed to be, before he begins to pump up and down, up and fucking down. Hup-one-two-Six-Hup-one-two-Seven. Faster and faster, chasing shrieks of the officer’s whistle chasing him.
* * *
Junior Thomas named names. Nods Uh-huh. Louis Till. Yes sir, he says again after the officer reads out Till’s name and serial number. Yes, sir. Put on navy hoods and masks. Carried guns. Yes, sir. They busted in, fucked those Italian women at the Waterpoint. Yes sir. The Cisterna. Yes, sir, they did it. Till and them did just what you say they did and I didn’t
do nothing. No sir. Not me. Swear to God it was the others inside the shack done it and I didn’t do nothing but watch. Just standing at the door but I could sorta see little corners of what’s going down. Just like you say it happened. Yessir. Pulled the door shut behind me. Lit a match so I could kinda see. Dark in there. Had my back to the door where the four of us come in at. Yessir. Till, McMurray, the English guy go inside but I didn’t go no further than the door. Four of us through the door, sir, not three like them Italian peoples say. They wrong, sir. Four not three. Them Italians inside the shack ain’t seen me at the door, I guess. Cause I stopped. The others run in right away when the door opened. Went after the women in there, beat down the old man. But I stopped at the door.
First Till sent McMurray and the English guy, Chappie, we called him. No, sir. Never knew no other name. He call everybody Chappie, so we call him Chappie. Yes sir. Till said you two go round to the back and listen, check out who inside. McMurray come back said he heard what might be a man snoring and two, three women talking he said when him and the Englishman come back to where me and Till sat on the stone wall where we been sitting since dark, drinking vino. Four of us by the wall after McMurray come back with the English guy from sneaking up to the shack. McMurray said there’s women in there, and Till said, C’mon then, said vino said pussy said raid. Louis Till don’t talk much so when he says something you best listen. And do what he say do. Till’s wild crazy. Got a .45 automatic in his pocket. Took it from a whiteboy sailor he punched out that night. Till snatched the .45 out the sailor’s belt when the sailor reached for it. Knocked him down, stomped him, dared him to get up. Till just might have killed him if I didn’t pull Till off. I saved that sailor boy’s life. Let him be, man, I said. Nothing but trouble, I said to Till. Said, C’mon, man, let’s go on up the hill to the Italian camp and cop some vino.
Till said raid and it’s four us, not three, creep up on the shack. Then Pow. Boom. Boom. Guns, sirens, searchlights bright as day. Forty millimeters, nineties. Boom. Pow-pow-pow-pow. Shack door pops open.
* * *
Hey, Till. Don’t roll your evil eyes at me, man. Bet you singing away, man. Fuck you, man. All you niggers singing. So fuck it. Fuck your evil eyes. I ain’t the one started it. Hite started it. Hite tell the whole motherfucking world everything in his dumb, nappy head.
Don’t roll those cold eyes at me. Leave me be, Till. Paper I signed ain’t shit, man, just a couple, three words. Why you up in my face. G’wan away, Till. Somebody got to look out for James Thomas, Junior. Yessir. Zackly, sir. You got it, right, sir. What you say is surely what happened. I don’t want to hang by the neck until I’m dead. Who do. Do you, Till. Goddamn that Hite.
* * *
Must be near morning before they bring the statement to sign. CIDs took a long break for dinner around five, six. Never mind he’s hungry, too. Gone a good, long while then more questions soon’s they come back. No lunch, no dinner, not a fucking Coke for him, just questions all night. Yessir, nosir, same shit over and over or different shit, no sir, yes sir, none of it making no damn sense no more. The more he says, the more he can’t remember from one story to the next and the white boys pick, pick, picking at each story as if he knew, as if he cared. Like any bit of truth anywhere in any of it. Don’t matter what the fuck he say or don’t say. One story same as another. Like Till always said it don’t mean shit no way. Tell the same lie or a different lie. Fuck it.
When they bring a paper to sign he play reads the words because they say read. Signs because that’s what CIDs order Private Thomas to do. Second statement no hassle. Three weeks or so after the first statement another CID in charge and then another one who bops in a second at the end to sign on the line below the line Junior Thomas signs. Thomas in and out quick, too. At attention in front of the CID behind the desk. A fan moves the air, moves officer stink. No talk, talk, talky, talking. Minute all it takes the CID to say, We cleaned up your first statement, Private. You forgot a few things we put in. We took out a few things we know you don’t want to say. Read it if you want to read it, but I’ve just told you everything you need to know.
Yessir. Thank you, sir.
Good. You’re doing yourself a favor, Private. Sooner we finish this business, better it will be for everybody concerned. Herlihy, c’mon. Need your John Hancock. Right. Good. Dismissed.
* * *
I was not in the CID lieutenant’s office. Nor anywhere else in the DTC. I’m reporting imagination as fact. Unscrupulous as any army investigator. Worse because I claim to know better. Want my fictions to be fair and honest. As if that desire exempts me from telling truth and only truth. The United States Army’s not exempt either, even if the army’s duty to win a war and keep peace after war a more admirable excuse than mine for bending facts, inventing truth.
* * *
What would have happened if Louis Till had spoken, denied James Thomas’s story, challenged it when interviewed by CID agents. What if Till had accused his accuser, Thomas, in a sworn statement of his own. What if, during investigation of the sugar theft that became an investigation of rape, color, and murder, Till had scared Junior Thomas, shut him up with an evil stare or wasted him in a dark alley in Naples the moment Till caught the glint, the hangdog Iago smirk of complicity and betrayal in the eyes of Junior Thomas. The innocent, imploring look of determination and helplessness in the eyes of a man who’s fallen hopelessly in love and understands he is not loved in return and that nothing the loved or unloved can do, good or evil to the other, will ever unknot unrequited love.
* * *
Let it go. Resist temptation. Don’t announce the unhappiness of Junior Thomas like it’s good news. No. Let poor James Thomas, Junior, dead or not, rest in peace. He’s a man, not a lesson. Lessons aplenty every minute of every day of each person’s life. Let each of us teach ourselves, speak for ourselves, fabricate our file of lies. No fiction of evil James Thomas on the gallows or Saint Louis Till on the cross can spare us.
* * *
Anyway, truth is that on my journey south to gather facts, the closest I got to Junior Thomas was the coincidence of a last name he shared with Money Thomas, a jitney driver I hired to show me around Promiseland, South Carolina.
When I asked a young woman behind the reception desk of Greenwood’s Marriott Inn how to get to Promiseland, she told me she didn’t know, almost as if she was not aware a place called Promiseland existed. While I stood staring out the motel’s glass entrance at a parking lot and driveway, a porter in a Marriott vest came up behind me and whispered in my ear. She know, mister. I followed him outside and he repeats, louder this time:
She know. A local and she know how to get to Promiseland. They all know. Black gals. White gals like her, too. They all know. Still got they white joints and black joints but nowadays they all got Shuggs, too. She know how to get to Sugars.
Is Sugars . . . Shuggs . . . in Promiseland.
Yes and no. No Promiseland no more. Not the way it once was. You got a row of raggedy shacks nobody lives in. Shuggs after-hours club out behind them. Old schoolhouse sits a little ways off and that’s it, all that’s left of Promiseland. Empty shacks, rusty railroad tracks, school, and some little bitty farms nobody works no more. So if you ask the whereabouts of Promiseland, some folks say Promiseland gone. Not on the state highway map what they mean. But everybody local knows about Promiseland, remembers Promiseland and could take you right to it. Some might wish Promiseland long gone and good riddance but it ain’t. Little sign just up the road a piece from where we stand says Route 10. Take 10 to the right and before you know it you there, Promiseland. No sign telling you you there. You might easy could miss it. Not much to see. Ain’t no mystery neither if you know how to look. Promiseland sit where it always sat. Don’t matter they mark it on the state map or not.
See that red Dodge van. Fella in it my friend, Money Thomas. Know his way everywhere around here. Give old Money a couple dollars the man show you anything you want to see.
* * *
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The day I checked out of Greenwood’s Marriott and on a bus back north I realized I hadn’t told anyone—including Money Thomas, who drove me to old Mount Zion and waited while I bumbled around in tall weeds and high grass behind the abandoned church—about my family roots in Promiseland. Why I didn’t, I still haven’t figured out. Still scared of the south. Cat got my tongue. Who knows. The point is I did not claim the family name that appears in the community’s earliest records, years before Promiseland became a community with a name and a school, years before someone had the idea of breaking up the old Willis plantation into small parcels and giving away or selling the land cheap to newly freed slaves to farm, years before a rumored promise of forty acres and a mule for every ex-slave family got sidetracked by the state of South Carolina into a moneymaking scam to benefit local whites who had previously owned both land and human beings who worked it.
As far back as 1867, documents attest, a Robert bearing my family name had presented himself and registered his X at the polling place. This despite the fact that roads and voting sites were patrolled by vigilantes. Armed, hooded white men on horseback who vowed, Never. Not here, nigger.
My people were among the first in line during Reconstruction when a few scanty plots of the Willis plantation’s worst land were doled out to former slaves, and some of my ancestors were among the very few who managed to hold on to their farms in spite of decades of punishing taxation, debt, intimidation and swindles organized to systematically restore the land and colored people who worked it to their former lords and masters. So why didn’t I introduce myself as a homeboy. Say my family from down here. Say my grandfather Hannibal left Promiseland in 1898 and went north. Say I’m the prodigal son come back to hear your stories and tell you mine. Hey, cuz. Hi auntie and uncle and great-grandma and great-great-granddaddy. We’s all kin folks. Who knows what went down here. After dark in these woods. Mama’s baby, Daddy’s maybe, names and blood ringing the changes generation after generation of marriages and coupling and whatnot. Some folks gone for good, some never left home, some mixed half-white, some mixed half-black, some return from faraway places to die, some die in faraway places. Nobody knows and who cares, so here I am, and youall my people.
Writing to Save a Life Page 13