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

  “Bit of a loner,” Jim says, “bit of a loner.”

  “Like, I mean, I’m one, too. But it’s interesting. How do you marry the idea that you think white people have some joint connection, some joint spirit, with the fact that you are a loner?”

  “That’s a good question,” Jim says. He doesn’t say anything more on the matter.

  We return to Jim’s farm. He parks near his trailer.

  “See that?” Jim says. He points to the dirt road stretched along the front of his farm. A black sports coupe is easing past. Jim says the people in the car are probably visiting his brand-new neighbors. The brand-new neighbors are black. “Why is it creeping like that? It’s just suspicious. I mean, it has a right, but it’s just suspicious.”

  Here’s how blacks can’t win (or at least blacks in sports coupes can’t win): I would have thought driving fast would have been the provocative speed. I was just on that road and I crept, too, because it’s a country road and because there are loose stones and a sharp ninety-degree turn twenty meters ahead. Actually, how does Jim even know there are black people in the car? We can’t see who’s in the car from here.

  “So you can see what I mean,” Jim says. “It’s just suspicious.”

  A Fifteen-Second Memory

  I’ve just realized there’s a moment, a fifteen-second memory, that’s coloring everything I read and hear about Richard Barrett. Maybe it meant nothing. It’s mulched up with everything else that happened over the two days in Mississippi filming Race Relations.

  I walk out of the Diplomat Ballroom, where everything was being set up for the Spirit of America Day. And in the lobby Richard’s leaning forward, with his hand on his knee, talking to a boy, a white kid. I’m only drifting by but catch what they’re discussing—how Richard will be giving him a lift home in his pickup. The kid’s eyes, Richard’s eyes—something feels weird and nervous.

  Maybe I misread things. But I can’t unthink it.

  For instance, this fifteen-second memory colors how I interpret a memo from an FBI file.

  It’s four p.m. on Thursday, October 26, 1967. Richard’s on foot. He circles the State Capitol, dragging behind him a United Nations flag in some sort of protest.

  With him is ........., a fifteen-year-old boy. The boy’s dragging a Viet Cong flag.

  They stop. They squirt lighter fluid on the two flags and set them alight.

  A confidential source who has furnished reliable information in the past advised that ......... is the son of ......... of Florence, Mississippi, who is known to have been a member of the United Klans of America . . .

  Source further advised that ......... was extremely upset regarding his son’s association with Richard Barrett and has stated that he will not allow Barrett to return to his residence or contact his son in the future.

  The Clarion-Ledger

  The newspapers in Mississippi still smudge like it’s the 1970s. Ten minutes with the Clarion-Ledger and black ink will stain your fingers, your shirt, and the tip of your nose.

  I’m stretched out on the too-spongy couch in my room. An old man eyeballs me with his wonky eyes from the front page. He is Byron De La Beckwith, Jr. His father, Byron Sr., is the man who fired a bullet into the back of Medgar Evers, killing the black civil rights worker. Two white juries refused to convict him in the 1960s. During the second trial, a former governor of Mississippi strode in, crossed the courtroom floor, and shook Byron Sr.’s hand while Medgar Evers’s widow was giving testimony.

  Decades later, Jerry Mitchell from the Clarion-Ledger niggled and niggled until the case was reopened. In 1994 a black and white jury found Byron Sr. guilty of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life without parole, and in 2001, wheezy Byron Sr., with a decaying heart, passed in prison.

  Now Byron Jr. is teasing Jerry Mitchell, saying that his father may not have been the killer, and that he may be willing to reveal who was, leading to the headline smudging on my hands: EVERS’ ASSASSIN STILL AT LARGE.

  This is not the first I’ve read of Byrons Sr. and Jr. The Nationalist Movement website says Byron Sr. pleaded with Richard Barrett to represent him in court in 1994. Richard declined, saying it would muddy his activist work to free Byron Sr. Richard organized a “Free Byron De La Beckwith, Sr.” petition, which had Richard booted out of his church. He also produced a video celebrating Byron Sr., which led to the lamest battle in the annals of white supremacy (covered in meticulous detail on the Nationalist Movement website), with Byron Jr. attacking Richard for overcharging him on “dubbing costs.”

  So the Byrons were no friends of Richard’s, but over several decades Byron Sr. and Richard were two of the most prominent racists in Mississippi—professional associates. I ring Byron Jr. He tells me, sure, he’ll be happy to meet. He invites me to his auction service business in Aberdeen, a three-hour drive from my spongy couch.

  It takes five minutes of abrasive soap to scrub the Clarion-Ledger from my skin. I leave my room with glowing red hands.

  The Shed in Aberdeen

  An enormous tin shed sizzles in the sun. STANFORD AND SON AUCTION SERVICE reads the sign. The items laid across the outdoor tables are grimy: broken and grubby egg timers and waterlogged coloring books.

  I ask a woman for Byron Jr., and she points to the dark entrance of the shed.

  I drift out of the sun and into the shadows.

  Maybe Half an Hour Later

  Okay, I’m not up at the shed anymore, I’m at the Wendy’s just down from that. Hell! He wouldn’t let me tape! Jesus Christ. I have to write this down before I forget.

  Okay, here’s what just happened:

  I walk into the shed. Three white guys—two fat and one regular—are playing cards. One points to an old man in overalls and a cap with a Confederate patch, standing near a table of knickknacks, including Franklin Mint figurines of a black mother reading Bible stories to her children. There was the same one in the Jackson Advocate office.

  That man is Byron Jr.

  “So where are you from?” says Byron Jr.

  “Well, I work at the ABC, which is like the BBC in Australia. But this is my own solo project,” I say. “I’ve spoken to people who knew of Richard. But I need people who really knew him.”

  “Well, I knew him,” says Byron Jr.

  Every cough and word echoes in the shed.

  I pull out my little Flip camera.

  “Do you mind if—” I say.

  “Well, you just hold it there,” he says. He tells me he’s going to need a percentage of book sales.

  I tell him I don’t even have a book deal, but that I’m not averse to a payment for his services. Why not? The Rankin County Courthouse is getting a buck a page for transcripts.

  He ushers me to the side.

  “Well, my fee,” Byron mumbles gingerly, “is one thousand dollars.”

  His eyes tingle. Is he worried he’s overplayed his hand?

  “Hmmm,” I say.

  “I don’t mind telling you, I told Dr. Phil and Oprah I’d need a hundred thousand plus expenses,” he says.

  “Hmmm,” I say.

  “Maybe,” he says, “I should have gone through this before you drove here for three hours.”

  Rather than haggle, I take a different tack.

  “Do you know Richard’s sister?” I say. (A thousand bucks for Richard’s sister is okay, I reckon.)

  “No,” he says. “I didn’t even know he had a sister until the funeral.”

  “You were at the funeral?”

  “No, I didn’t go. I didn’t know until a few days later.”

  “Do you know where it was?” I ask. “Or who took care of his estate?”

  “No. But Rankin County, their courthouse would have to know. He didn’t even leave anything to his sister. He left it to a man, and the will said if that man didn’t come forward by a certain date, it goes to
the Iraqi government.”

  “The Iraqi government?” I squeak.

  “Richard was peculiar like that,” Byron Jr. says.

  Christ!

  Byron slowed meaningfully over “a man,” too.

  I’m pretty antsy standing in the shed. I’m pretty antsy because I can’t tape this. I’ve already missed gold for the book, including a rant about Martin Luther “Coon” and the Jewish media.

  “I like Australia,” Byron Jr. says. “You messed up, though!” He either says we messed up because we let the Queen have the farms or because we took the farms off the Queen—can’t remember.

  “Australia’s still mainly white, though,” he says.

  He checks me out like one might a girl in a nightclub.

  “Look at you,” he says. “Blue eyes, hair, skin.”

  He says he doesn’t mind talking, but might stop if he thinks something falls more into the one-thousand-dollar category.

  “You know, I’ll need someone to help me write my book one day,” he says. “But I’m telling you, I’m not going to fly over to California to be on The Johnny Carson Show to promote it.”

  Nervously, I mention the Nationalist Movement web page story about Byron Sr. asking Richard to be his attorney.

  Surprise, sur-fucking-prise—this was, says Byron Jr., not quite the truth. “In fact, it was the other way around—Richard was always coming to the jail begging to be my daddy’s attorney. We said no. He wasn’t screwed together right. He was strange.”

  Byron Jr. sucks the air between his teeth and then with a spark in his eye describes how a few years ago he threatened to “stomp” Richard if he ever told lies about his daddy again.

  “You never knew which side Richard was on,” he says. “Or if he was playing both sides against each other for money. I thought maybe he was an FBI informant. But he never told them anything they didn’t already know.”

  A black man is standing a few meters back from Byron Jr.’s stall, looking on.

  “Oh, sorry, were you waiting?” Byron Jr. says. He sounds impeccably sincere and polite. “I’m sorry to make you wait.”

  “My friend has things to sell,” the black man says, “and was wondering, do you guys buy or does my friend set up himself here?”

  “Both can work,” Byron Jr. says. He hands the black man a business card. “Tell your friend to call.”

  The black man’s black female companion is hovering around the entrance of the shed.

  “Oh, hello there, young lady,” Byron Jr. says. “Thank you for stopping in.”

  Byron Jr. turns to me.

  “See, I do business with niggers,” he says. “I don’t mind. I just don’t want them in my home. They can’t come over for lunch.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Because they should be on the porch,” he says. He points at me. “You can come over for lunch. I’d pour you a cola and a tea. But not the niggers.”

  He says nigger like a bondage dominatrix says bitch, with a glint in his eye and a curl in his lip.

  “Nothing in my Bible says there should be desegregation!” he says. “There were twelve tribes! Twelve separate tribes!”

  “Weren’t those tribes Jews?” I say.

  “There were Jews and gentiles, but they were separate,” he says.

  He then rolls through his Jew theory checklist. Including, but not limited to:

  He can’t accept the Jews because they won’t accept Jesus.

  If you check the history, the number doesn’t add up to six million.

  Hitler was queer.

  The “Hitler was queer” point provides an opening to ask about those Richard rumors.

  “Yeah, he was always touching me,” Byron Jr. says.

  He strokes my arm to demonstrate.

  “He’d be, ‘Byron, come over here.’ I’d be, ‘I was going over there anyway, you don’t need to touch me!’”

  One of the men playing cards chuckles and calls out to Byron, “You goin’ to be famous on TV?” Byron is not amused and hisses.

  “People think Southerners are white trash. But if you spend time in Aberdeen, you’ll see—” Byron Jr. interrupts himself. “Well, there is a lot of white trash here, but there’s also blue blood, and you can trace me back to German and English aristocracy.”

  Byron Jr.’s family has all served in the military, except his son, who is as a consequence the “reject of the family.” Byron Jr. doesn’t see him.

  I glance over the black figurines on his knickknack table.

  “Look,” I say. “So many black figurines. There’s even black angels.”

  “Well,” Byron Jr. says, “I’ve never been to heaven, but I imagine there’s black angels there. You know, 80 percent of blacks are okay. It’s just the 20 percent.”

  What? Eighty/twenty? Is an eight-to-two ratio high enough to go to all the effort of being a white supremacist? Maybe Richard worked on the same proportion.

  The Chancery Court

  I nod to the stone Confederate as I pass him by on my way to the Rankin County Chancery Court. Filed in its drawers are the last wills and testaments of the people of Rankin County.

  I sit on a couch in the clerk’s office. I straighten the five pages on my lap.

  Last Will and Testament of Richard Barrett

  I, RICHARD BARRETT, single and not having ever been married, a resident of and domiciled in the County of Rankin and State of Mississippi, being of good, sound, and disposing mind and memory, do hereby make, publish, and declare this to be my Last Will and Testament.

  I express my thanks to my friends and compatriots, who labored selflessly along with me. My regret is that I could not have done more, personally, yet my joy is that we breathed the exhilarating air of the highest climes together. May you and yours complete the tasks I have endeavored to entrust to you, according to the inspiration, if any, which I have given to you.

  It is my desire that I be remembered, if at all, as I was in life, only: therefore, I direct that as soon as practicable my remains be cremated without public or private viewing beforehand, and that any ashes therefrom be dispersed and mingled with the soil, unceremoniously. It is my desire and direction that none of my organs, bodily parts, or any part or parcel of my body, whatsoever, be used for any type of “organ donor.” It is, further, my desire and direction that no military honors or memorials be conducted for me.

  I roll my eyes at Richard positing he’ll have to modestly turn down the parade and medals that the Army were pressing upon him. I flip to page two. Richard hands out his worldly goods.

  I give, devise, and bequeath all of my worldly possessions to VINCE THORNTON of Collins, Mississippi.

  I guess that’s why the electricity bill at the Murder House was in Vince Thornton’s name. A man, said Byron De La Beckwith, Jr., suggestively. I wonder what sort of relationship Richard and Vince Thornton had?

  If, for any reason, the aforesaid VINCE THORNTON predeceases me or is unwilling, unable, or disqualified to receive the bequest, hereunder, then I give, devise, and bequeath all my worldly possessions to JOHN MOORE of Brandon, Mississippi.

  John Moore? I don’t recall him from any Googling or Stormfront posts. I add his name to my list.

  If, for any reason, the aforesaid JOHN MOORE predeceases me or is unwilling, unable, or disqualified to receive the bequest, hereunder, then I give, devise, and bequeath all of my worldly possessions to the GOVERNMENT OF IRAN at Tehran, Iran.

  Christ!

  Well, it’s Iran rather than Iraq, as Byron Jr. had claimed, but that hardly turns down the volume on inexplicable weirdness.

  Richard adds one more note:

  I expressly decline to include any individual member of my family as beneficiary under this, my Last Will and Testament, it being my intent that the same take nothing hereunder paid.

  Curious—he�
��s already left them nothing; why hammer it home? What, I wonder, did his family do to him?

  Men Like That

  A friend back home bought me Men Like That: A Southern Queer History. The writer, John Howard, not only grew up gay in Mississippi, he grew up gay in Rankin County. He thinks outsiders mash together how Mississippians saw blacks and how they saw gays. He says they were two very different things.

  Yes, Mississippians thought homosexuality was a biblical sin. But like many other vices, it was accommodated “with a pervasive, deflective pretense of ignorance.” In contrast, Mississippians didn’t overlook blackness.

  The book covers a case from the 1950s in which two servicemen killed a gay man, claiming he had made sexual advances on them. This defense didn’t stop “the most extensive investigation the Jackson police department has participated in,” according to the city’s chief detective. It didn’t stop the district attorney pushing for the death penalty. One killer got life, the other plea-bargained down to twenty years.

  The same year, Emmett Till was shot in the head and thrown in the Tallahatchie River. Two white supremacists were tried and acquitted of his murder. Soon after, knowing they were protected against double jeopardy, the two struck a deal with a magazine and confessed to the murder. The case was never reopened, and they died old men. A couple of the jurors said they thought the men were guilty but didn’t think they deserved life in prison just for torturing and killing a young black guy.

  I pull into JC’s, a gay bar in Jackson. Men Like That is thrown on the passenger’s seat like a street directory. I’ve underlined the gay bars in the book, wondering which have survived.

  I think JC’s has. The squat and gloomy building hides up a street and is trying to act inconspicuous in the middle of a parking lot. There are no apparent windows and no signage. The reason I reckon this must be the place is an old tin drum out front has been painted in rainbow stripes, dulled by age.