God'll Cut You Down : The Tangled Tale of a White Supremacist, a Black Hustler, Amurder, and How I Lost a Year in Mississippi (9780698170537)

by Safran, John

  My eyes fall on the bedside table, as yet untouched by a guest’s hands.

  My God! I skip over and creak open the drawer. Can it be true? Will I be the first to open a brand-new Gideon Bible?

  The spine indeed squeaks a most pleasing never-been-opened squeak. I flick the pristine white pages to John 8:44.

  You belong to your father, the devil.

  Ever since the Grand Dragon quoted that to me, it’s been my fave! Because You is the Jews and John is my name.

  My neck already aches, and I’ve only been lying here two minutes. My lungs clench up. I huff and huff. A green leech crawls from my mouth into my Delta Air Lines serviette.

  I puff my Ventolin puffer five times, rub my neck, and fall asleep.

  The White Supreme

  The sharp winter sun rises. Outside my window, down the road, four black convicts plod and mope. I know they are convicts because CONVICT is printed on the back of their green-and-white-striped shirts. They’re stroking a fresh coat of white paint on a fire hydrant. A black bus with tinted windows, marked SHERIFF, trails the men by a hundred meters or so.

  I flick on the coffee machine in the kitchenette.

  “If it pleases the court, this is Jim Giles, and you’re listening to Radio Free Mississippi,” says my laptop on the kitchenette bench. Jim pulls up his theme song, “Amerika” by Rammstein.

  Jim Giles is a white separatist who lives in Pearl, in Rankin County. More specifically, he lives in a trailer on his mother’s farm. Each weekday morning he hunches over a microphone in that trailer and broadcasts Radio Free Mississippi live over the Internet. This one isn’t live, though. I’m working my way through his old podcasts, from the weeks after Richard’s death.

  “I had a Rankin County deputy sheriff call me from a crime scene,” Jim says, “Richard Barrett’s crime scene where he had been killed, and he was trying to figure out did I do it! He actually lived fairly close to me, Barrett did, I still don’t know where exactly.”

  Jim Giles takes a sip of something in his trailer; I take a sip of coffee in the kitchenette.

  “Who was Richard Barrett?” Jim asks. “Richard Barrett was an asset. Not to white people. He was an asset to the FBI and to the fucking media. He was a sick puppy, and I’m suggesting sexual perversion on his part. He was a little man. He was a lawyer. He was a scrawny man and he had a look in his face that was one of distortion, of perversion. He would call me on the telephone incessantly.”

  You should know, white separatists are always kvetching about one another. In fact, most white supremacists hate: (1) white liberals, (2) white conservatives, and (3) other white supremacists, making it unclear which whites they have in mind when proclaiming their love of the white race. It’s not uncommon for them to accuse one another of working for the FBI, although already I’m hoping it’s true in Richard’s case.

  “Richard Barrett, the most famous European supremacist Mississippi has ever known.” That’s a big claim. Bigger than the Mississippi Burning Klansmen? Maybe he’s being sarcastic. “He is dead now, though, boys, if y’all didn’t know that! An African killed him, and I’d say that’s an appropriate end to his life. His demise was rooted in his conduct as a man. He was somewhere he did not belong. He was from . . . He wasn’t originally from the South. He was a Yankee from up in New Jersey, who came down here like those Freedom Riders.”

  The Freedom Riders were civil rights activists in the 1960s. Odd comparison, but perhaps it’s a white supremacist insult. Barrett was an outsider, coming down to meddle in things that weren’t his birthright to meddle in.

  “I have read brand-new Freedom Riders will be marching on Mississippi this month. Well, let me tell you, folks, this might be called the hospitality state, but I’m not offering you any hospitality. I hope an African kills you dead. And your demise will be rooted very appropriately where Richard Barrett’s demise was rooted. Come on down! I’m praying one of the Africans kills you dead as Abraham Lincoln.”

  I’ve made Jim first on my list of people to pursue. He sounds emotional with nothing to lose. They’re the people who blurt out the truth. Back in Melbourne, I flicked a Facebook message to Jim. He never responded. But his home address is online. Jim had claimed in an interview he’s such a good fighter, he can beat up 95 percent of people in the street. So an antiracist activist posted a smart-aleck poll on a message board.

  POLL: Can you beat up Jim Giles?

  a. Yes

  b. No

  c. Maybe

  Jim Giles responded to the poll.

  In Reply To: POLL: Can you beat up Jim Giles?

  I live at 6 Oakland Lane, Pearl, Mississippi 39208.

  If any of you bitches want to fight me, meet there.

  • • •

  It’s still cement in all directions in downtown Jackson. In the daytime, even the sky is cement. Walking through the motel parking lot, I pull my jacket sleeves over my hands—the air cuts that cold. But when the sun elbows its way through the clouds now and then, it laser-beams my eyes.

  The Stepford Wife inside the GPS says it’s forty-five minutes to Jim Giles’s. I want to know more about why he hated Richard so much. Does he really think that he was a sexually perverted FBI agent who was killed in some horrible misunderstanding? And I want to know what he’s like, the white supreme in the trailer.

  The Stepford Wife directs me past vast abandoned concrete lots in Jackson, where things once were but I don’t know what. In one, the mangled metal innards of a building twist to the heavens. I can’t tell if the building was never fully built or never fully torn down. I’m then directed through a designated “historic district.” It tricks the eye. First glance, you see gorgeous, old-world white cottages, the charming heart of the American South. Second glance, you see they’ve been gutted, vandalized, stripped for firewood. Several sit there collapsed in on themselves.

  By the way, where is everyone? Those extras in your life, lurking the streets, just aren’t here.

  My flavorless red rental weaves onto I-55. Walmarts, Taco Bells, and Red Roof Inns build and build till logos stumble over one another in the blur out my side window. Half a Hank Williams CD later, that thins out and giant golden-tip oak trees take over. Not just lining the road but running thick and deep. Suddenly America has gone and Mississippi has appeared. I’ve crossed from Jackson into Rankin County, where Pearl is.

  A silver castle sparkles in the distance. It rolls closer. Golden sunshine pings off the tips of the barbed wire of the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility. Is Vincent locked up in there? How many jails are there in Mississippi?

  Opposite the prison is a sign saying MORE SWEAT IN TRAINING, LESS BLOOD ON THE STREET, with Sweat dripping sweat and Blood dripping blood. It’s the sign for the police academy.

  I need to talk with the police, too, before the trial, get the lowdown.

  As I push on, the grass bordering the road collapses into marshland. These could even be “backwoods.” I curve off the highway.

  The trees reach over the road to touch one another, blocking out the sun, and now I bolt through green for miles and miles, until a parked fire engine throws a whoosh of red at my windshield. The trees become older and the trunks become thicker, the closer I get to Jim’s. I don’t think it’s just my imagination. Moss has climbed all over the drooping branches; the trees look like they’re dripping green fur.

  I slow from a bolt to a crawl to a stop.

  Jim Giles’s street is a dirt path off the road. Gently, I poke up the path toward a bend.

  I hear before I see.

  A wave of wounded howls bursts from beyond the bend and rolls toward my car.

  Mississippi’s coming to get me.

  Giles Farm

  Ten huge gray dogs yowl and leap in one tangled bundle behind barbed wire. This one airborne, then that one airborne, then that one, then that one, then that, like they are be
ing juggled. Their teeth make it higher than the barbed wire, but the rest of them remains below. The farm is tucked away behind the bend, hidden from the main road and the world.

  I step from the car. The sound of my door slamming behind me is drowned out by the dogs. Their howls shatter through the air and through the ground, through my body and eardrums. My bearings are toppled, leaving me blinking, disoriented.

  First thing. Triggering the hound alarm has tipped me past the point of no return. Any fear I have about Jim and his fighting must be folded away in my pocket for later.

  Okay, the vehicle gate in front of me is shut. Okay, it’s a small farm. Okay, barbed wire holds in the farm on the three sides I can see. Okay, I’ll walk the perimeter to see whether there’s a walk-in gate.

  I affect a confident stride.

  “Jim? Jim! Hello? Hello?”

  I’m reverse-psychology snooping. If he’s shouting he can’t be snooping, I hope Jim is thinking from wherever he is.

  “Jim? Jim!”

  The half of the farm closest to my car is green and open. A white trailer squats in the corner. I assume that’s the trailer where Jim flicks on a microphone and rants Radio Free Mississippi. Is Jim in there? If he is, doesn’t look like he’s coming out.

  The other half of Giles Farm is tightly packed with oak trees, the ground coated with rusty leaves. I squint, and deep behind the black trees, I make out the blur of a two-story wooden house. Is Jim Giles in there, staring at me from the second-story window?

  I journey the length and breadth of the barbed wire. There’s no walk-in entrance. The vehicle entrance is bolted shut. No one comes out.

  Under a Hunchbacked Tree Dripping Green Fur

  The shrieks of the hellhounds are faint and far behind. I park under a hunchbacked tree and pull my phone from my pocket. My thumb taps out a reverse-psychology e-mail. (If he’s e-mailing me he can’t have been snooping just then.)

  Hi Jim,

  I’m an Australian writer, in Mississippi at the moment, trying to contact you regarding Richard Barrett. Would you be able to get back to me, please?

  All the best,

  John

  I drive off, twiddling the dial to American Family Radio. A man explains, point by point, why Mormons aren’t Christian, so no one should be fooled by presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

  I curve into a Walmart to buy some groceries. A set of bulbous black twins, in matching pink denim, totter to the entrance in matching cherry high heels.

  Jackson is roughly 80 percent black, 18 percent white, and 2 percent everyone else. The lack of everyone else really hits you. I noticed it while filming for Race Relations. It’s like if a tornado in Australia sucked away the Greeks, Italians, Asians, and Arabs and all that was left were the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants and Aboriginal Australians gawking at one another.

  I feel a tickle in my pocket.

  Hello John,

  I will be on the air in the morning and would be happy to speak with you live. I’ll try to reach you by Skype in the morning between seven and nine a.m. CST.

  Yours Truly,

  Jim Giles

  The white separatist has done what the Jewish writer would probably have done and made danger into a show. I go home and, riding my luck, make some calls to the answering machines of the lawyers Precious and Chokwe, and the DA.

  Then I read about another case Chokwe’s working on—the Scott sisters, who sixteen years ago were sentenced to double life for armed robbery. Chokwe saw racism and prized a pardon out of the governor just this month. The governor placed one condition on their release: Gladys had to agree to have her kidney scooped out, to be then sewn up into her sick sister, Jamie. This is being reported as “touching” in the Mississippi media and “erghh” in all non-Mississippi press.

  Radio Free Mississippi

  It’s seven a.m. and I poke my face out the window of my room. Jackson still insists on being sunny enough to burn your eyes while cold enough to wear gloves.

  “If it pleases the court, this is Jim Giles, and you’re listening to Radio Free Mississippi,” Jim announces live from my laptop. “I have an inquiry from someone. I’ve mentioned him to you before.”

  “What!” I say, turning from the window.

  “His name is John Safran. I’ve some concerns about him. And if he’s listening, well, I’ll just air them now. ‘Well-known for pranks and indelicate handling.’ I believe this is from his Wikipedia page.”

  Uh-oh.

  “So, this might be an attempt on his part to make me look bad,” Jim continues. “John, that’s real hard to do. I do a good job with that myself. I don’t really need any help from you. I’m not so much like probably anybody you’ve dealt with. I’m certainly no Richard Barrett.

  “Barrett was not a legitimate voice for the local people here in Mississippi. I’ve long suspected him of being a police informer. Something that—John, I hope I don’t hurt your feelings—but honestly, I think that’s probably what you are as well, John—a police informer.”

  He pauses.

  “Let me just break this to you delicately if you are listening now. I do not use the J word here because it confers upon those folks two things I don’t think they deserve. That is victim status and a religion. Rather, I use the term Israeli, stripping them of both their victim status and their religion. It’s my argument here, John, that Israelis are first and foremost a foreign and alien race of people.

  “And that’s who you are.

  “John, don’t get your feelings hurt. I’ll still be nice and respectful to you if you want to talk with me. You can ask me a question and I’ll answer. And you can chop it up and put it out there and say, ‘This is the redneck from Mississippi I interviewed. Don’t you just love the way they talk down there in Mississippi?’

  “John, I’m used to people making fun of me. Thinking low of me. Thinking I’m kind of stupid and ignorant.”

  I lean forward, hunching over my computer on the little coffee table.

  “Okay. I am gonna go get some orange juice and then I will try to reach Mr. Safran if he’s reachable. Mr. Safran, if you are listening, I am about to try to reach you as soon as I get through getting some orange juice.”

  There’s dead air. Then a slurp.

  “All right, let’s give Mr. Safran a ring-a-ling,” he says.

  My laptop starts to bleep and bloop.

  “Ha-ha,” Jim says. “I think he has got a gun and a baseball bat over his shoulder.”

  I forgot about my Skype profile picture. I’m Photoshopped as the Bear Jew from Inglourious Basterds.

  “Good morning, Mr. Safran,” Jim says, like a coyote feeling out another coyote who has wandered onto his prairie. And for all I know he may be dressed as a coyote—his video is flicked off.

  “Is this one of your spoofs?” he asks.

  “No, no. That’s why I should tell you my connection to Richard Barrett. Because it’ll explain why I’m calling you.” I take him through the whole Race Relations story, how I announced at the Spirit of America Day that Richard had African DNA.

  “That’s funny.” Jim laughs. “That’s actually funny.” He takes a sip of juice and laughs some more. “You might have a best seller on your hands with your book, given the market out there. There seems to be a hearty appetite for this sort of thing.”

  Jim starts one of his trademark pauses, which make you think his equipment has broken, or yours.

  “Richard Barrett, even in death, lives on,” Jim says finally. “And so my concern about your focus is he continues to haunt and do what he did best. And that is tar and tarnish anyone who is—and I hate, I don’t use the W word here, I use European. W is just . . . I have concluded that W, to use the W word, is just too frightening for most people.”

  Jim claims he’s no Richard Barrett, but he can’t come out and say what he means, either.r />
  I tell Jim that there was something that didn’t stack up about the Spirit of America Day. Not everyone seemed in on the deal.

  “He was forever doing that,” Jim says. “That was his MO. All geared around young white males, too. He was forever clinging to young white males. And one of them got charged with . . . some kind of bomb crime.”

  “Oh really? Who is that?” Immediately I scribble down Bomb Crime.

  “I’ve forgotten the boy’s name, but . . . And I knew another young boy that was associated with him, very troubled boy, and yeah, he is just, you know, the whole thing with Barrett—nothing smacked of wholesome, he was anything but wholesome. Richard never failed to make Europeans look stupid and goofy. Richard Barrett was tampering with something that was very important to the lives and fortunes of the people who live here in Mississippi in a hurtful way. He has made my tasks harder.”

  “Is your family from Mississippi?” I ask.

  Jim pauses.

  “I am a very open and direct person; there is nothing that I shirk from talking about.”

  Jim tells me how he got to be a white separatist living in a trailer.

  The Ballad of Jim Giles

  One thing about poor folk, you don’t always know about your past. My father was illegitimate. He didn’t know who his father was. So any kind of knowledge certainty is cut off there. I’m pretty sure my father and his mother were born in Wayne County, Mississippi. And I’m pretty sure my mother’s parents were born in Mississippi. But I couldn’t begin to tell you who my people are beyond those simple facts. And I’m not even sure about that. That’s the plight of people who aren’t landed aristocracy. I heard my mother say not long ago they live hand-to-mouth. They struggle in their life and they do good to put food on the table. So they’re really ill-equipped when it comes to organizing themselves politically.