by Adam Makos
John Brown was lumbering around the main room, placing glass jars under leaks from the roof. The cabin’s main room was for living, cooking, and sleeping. At night, Jesse’s parents slept there on a pull-out bed, while the children slept in a smaller room in back. The shack lacked plumbing; an outhouse served that role.
Jesse and his brothers wiped their bare feet with a rag that was kept near the door. Their brown shoes sat nearby and were being saved for Sundays, when the family attended church services. Jesse’s shoes had holes and so did his brothers’ shoes, but the holes had been filled with patches of cardboard and painted over with shoe polish.
“Look after your things, boys,” John Brown shouted over the rain that pinged against the metal roof. Julia Brown, the boys’ mother, was cooking on a wood-burning stove on the other side of the room. She was petite and trim and wore her short black hair curled behind her ears. Her face was strong and certain, with high cheekbones and intelligent eyes.
The boys greeted their mother.
“Hi, loves,” she said back. She was unfazed by the clatter on the roof and her toothy smile stretched widely.
Credit 4.2
John and Julia Brown
Jesse and his brothers ran to the smaller room in the back of the cabin. Between two beds sat a lantern on top of an apple box. The boys’ books and magazines lay in piles next to their beds. At night, Lura and Fletcher shared a bed with their older sister, Johnny, who was away helping her boyfriend’s family.* On the other side of the room, Jesse shared the other bed with his older brother William, who was shoveling coal for the railroad and wouldn’t come home until much later.
Jesse gathered up his dog-eared copies of Popular Aviation and stacks of how-to books—how to do magic, jujitsu, woodworking, and athletics—while Fletcher scooped up his mystery novels and Lura rescued his newspapers. The boys moved their effects to the driest corner of the room and then dragged their beds over their books. They had slept in wet sheets before and it was miserable.
Jesse and his brothers ran to join their father in aligning the jars under the leaks. On a clear night, they could see stars through the cracks, but now all they saw were flashes of lightning. With the leaking roof under control, the boys congregated near their mother. The warmth from the cast-iron stove dried their skin. Julia was almost finished with supper. Jesse’s favorite dish was his mother’s chicken pot pie.
“How was your day, boys?” Julia Brown asked.
Jesse shot his brothers a quick glance and answered for them. He told his mother that they had made good progress on the field. On their walk home, Jesse and his brothers had agreed not to mention the cornstalk incident.
Jesse knew that his actions had been dangerous. In the Depression-era Deep South, a black kid couldn’t just hit a white kid without inviting trouble. The white kid might go home and come back with his father and his father’s friends, or worse. There’d been a lynching six months earlier, just thirty miles down the road.
—
After dinner, Jesse, Fletcher, and Lura sat around the table with their mother and enjoyed dessert. The family grew their own sugarcane and made syrup, so sweets were never in short supply. Sweet potato pie was a family favorite.
John Brown rocked his oversized frame in a chair while reading a newspaper. As he read, he sipped sweet tea from a mason jar. A churchgoing Baptist, he served as deacon for the family’s forty-member church and never drank alcohol. Beside him, a wind-up Victrola record player played softly. When the record player slowed, John reached down and cranked it back to life. His favorite record was a musical containing the song “Ol’ Man River.”
After dessert, the boys and their mother always played what she called “the word game,” Julia’s attempt to make up for the schooling her boys missed during planting season. Before she married John Brown she had taught public school, and when Jesse and her boys were old enough, she resumed teaching Sunday school at the church.
Jesse, Lura, and Fletcher passed around a dictionary. Each chose a word and read its definition. Julia then attempted to spell it. The harder the word, the greater the challenge, and the boys groaned time and again as she spelled every word correctly. The boys’ older brother Marvin was away on scholarship at the all-black Alcorn College, intent on becoming a science teacher. But when he came home, even he couldn’t stump his mother. Embedded in the game was Julia’s hope that through education her boys could escape the fields forever.
Fletcher took the dictionary. He usually chose a word pertaining to medicine, as his dream was to be a doctor. His mother had always told him he could do anything he set his mind to—provided he got an education. When Lura took his turn, he often chose a word relating to geography. Jesse was usually the most excitable player. He’d look up aviation terms like dihedral and dirigible. But that night, he was mellow. His mind was in another place as the day’s events chewed at him.
“People judge you by the words you use,” Julia reminded Jesse and his brothers. “So choose the right words and say them correctly, the way they’re spelled. No ain’t. No whatcha doin’.” She looked at Fletcher, who laughed because he was the guiltiest.
Frustrated, Jesse pushed aside the dictionary. “Mama, sometimes people don’t judge you by the words you use. They just judge you.” He folded his arms.
“Of course they do,” Julia said. She could see that Jesse was holding something back.
She looked him in the eyes.
“Well, I’ve been called a ‘dumb nigger’ by a dozen different people,” Jesse said, “and that’s just this week.”
John Brown looked up from his paper. Fletcher and Lura glanced at the floor.
Jesse’s mother leaned across the table. “When someone calls you a ‘nigger,’ then you feel sorry for him,” she said. “You have to pity him because his mind has such a sorry way of expressing itself.”
Jesse frowned and looked away. He knew his mother had endured far worse than he had. Before her days teaching school, she had been a missionary who had traveled to every corner of Mississippi and encountered every sort of verbal abuse.
Julia smiled and put a hand on Jesse’s shoulder. “Even when folks call you the most hateful things, they’re still only words,” she said. “Words can have all the power in the world or—none at all. That’s up to you.”
—
One night soon after, the Brown family gathered on the porch to brush their teeth before bed—everyone but Jesse, who lingered inside. Julia sprinkled baking soda onto John’s toothbrush and Lura’s and Fletcher’s too. A water basin sat on a nearby chair for them to dip their brushes into. John and the boys began scrubbing their teeth and spitting over the porch railing.
Inside, Jesse faced the family’s only mirror, on the wall near the kitchen. That night he began a habit he would practice for years. From time to time, his mother spied his secret routine through the window.
“Hey, nigger!” Jesse said to his reflection in the mirror, lowering his eyebrows. “Run, nigger!” he said.
Jesse’s jaw tightened. His shoulders lifted. His eyes narrowed and he glared at himself.
“Stupid nigger boy!” Jesse snapped at the mirror, his mouth contorted into a sneer.
Then Jesse took a deep breath.
Then another. And another. His shoulders dropped, his jaw relaxed, and his lips receded to their normal calm. He gazed into his own brown eyes.
Every night he could sneak away, Jesse practiced cursing himself until his eyes remained steady, until he could shrug away the vilest insult without flinching. He knew those words were sure to come.
For what he dreamed of doing, the insults would be coming in planeloads.
* * *
* Johnny Brown would marry that year. Tragically, both she and her first child would die a year later during childbirth.
CHAPTER 5
THE RENAISSANCE MAN
Five years later, spring 1944
Near Lux, Mississippi
UNDER HIS BREATH JESSE SANG as he weeded the young wate
rmelon plants. He was now eighteen, and five feet eight. His face flowed to a pointy chin. Lura, Fletcher, and John Brown worked nearby as the sun was setting. It was a weekend evening and only the Brown family was still toiling in the fields.
Sporadically, Lura, Fletcher, and John Brown stopped and looked at Jesse. Each was trying to discern the tune he was singing. It was a strange song, almost operatic, probably something he’d learned in school.
A year earlier, Jesse had moved into the nearby city of Hattiesburg to attend a better high school for blacks and his parents had arranged for him to stay with his aunt and uncle. It was his senior year, yet every Saturday morning he walked home to help his family and every Sunday night he walked back to the city to begin the school week.
The words from Jesse’s mouth sounded foreign.
“What in the heck are you singing?” Fletcher blurted from his row. “Ain’t nobody happy in these damn fields!”
In the fields, his mother’s grammar lessons went right out the window.
Jesse looked up and beamed a guilty smile. “I’m practicing a song for choir,” he said. “Leander and I are going to sing in an assembly.” Leander was his close friend.
“In front of the whole school?” Lura said and raised an eyebrow.
Jesse nodded sheepishly.
Fletcher was intrigued. “If you’re gonna sing in front of all them, at least let us hear it first!”
“Come on, son,” Jesse’s father called over from his row. “Practice on us.”
Jesse suddenly became interested in the leafy plants near his foot. “Nah, I’m too tired,” he said.
They were all tired, but Jesse especially. His weeks were grueling.
In school, he maintained a top-three ranking in his class, ran track in the spring, played football in the fall, and still every evening reported to the Holmes Club, a bar and honky-tonk south of Hattiesburg. There, he worked until midnight, carrying beers to tables of rowdy soldiers from nearby Camp Shelby. With World War II raging, more than a million men and women had flowed into Mississippi for training. Every so often Jesse needed to dodge a fistfight or deal with a drunken soldier’s racial slurs, but he shrugged it all off.
Jesse planned on fighting in World War II himself, if the war continued. He wanted to enlist as an officer, which required a higher education; otherwise, he could end up slinging corned beef hash in a mess tent or driving shells to the front lines, the jobs black soldiers usually received. So Jesse had applied to The Ohio State University in hopes of attending the same university as his idol—Olympic track star Jesse Owens—if the university would grant him admission.
Lura and Fletcher stopped picking weeds. They folded their arms and insisted that Jesse sing before they would return to work.
Jesse knew he couldn’t talk his way out of giving them a performance. Besides, they heard him sing every Sunday in the church choir.
Jesse cleared his throat and stood straight, revealing a lean physique beneath his tattered overalls. The rows of watermelon plants separated him from his father and brothers like seats in a theater.
He began to sing.
Ave Maria…gratia plena…
His baritone voice was deep and smooth, and each Latin word rolled perfectly off his tongue and danced across the field.
Maria…gratia plena…
The song was “Ave Maria,” by Schubert, a musical prayer to the Virgin Mary.
Jesse’s last lyric trailed softly to silence. He wiped his brow and an embarrassed grin spanned his face. After a stunned pause, Fletcher, Lura, and John Brown clapped and cheered. Jesse jokingly bowed across the rows of watermelons.
CHAPTER 6
THIS IS FLYING
Nearly three years later, January 1947
U.S. Territory of Hawaii
THE SILVER SNJ TRAINER PLANE flew low and fast over the waters of Pearl Harbor. The plane was stubby with square wings, an open round nose, and NAVY painted on each flank. Both canopies were open over the front and back seats.
In the back seat, Tom Hudner eagerly leaned over the cockpit railing to see the sights of the harbor. He was now twenty-two, and his chin and jaw had thickened, his face had grown more rugged. Beneath his tan cloth helmet his blue eyes devoured the sights. Afternoon clouds dotted the bright sky and their shadows stretched like oil slicks across the water. Lush fields with gaps of reddish soil surrounded the harbor, broken only by the short white buildings of Honolulu to the north.
Tom’s black tie flapped wildly over his tan shirt and gold collar bar, the insignia of an ensign, the entry-level officer grade in the U.S. Navy. Tom was a sailor now, and this was his first real plane ride. He had flown in the belly of a C-47 airliner when he first came west for shipboard duty, but to him that didn’t count.
Credit 6.1
Navy SNJ trainers
The growl of the engine filled his ears. He glanced beyond the pilot’s head and through the flickering propeller. Ahead, gray navy warships were anchored in the harbor’s center. The pilot banked a wing as he approached a cruiser with three square gun turrets. She was the USS Helena—Tom’s ship—and she looked peaceful with shadows draping her sharp lines and sailors milling about her deck.
The sailors waved upward as the SNJ soared overhead. Tom focused on the ship’s signal bridge. This had been his home for the past six months. He was a junior officer on the ship whose job was to decode incoming messages and signal other ships with a lamp.
At the rear of the ship sat a kingfisher floatplane on a small ramp. Tom’s pilot friend normally flew the kingfisher when the ship was at sea, and he logged extra flight time when the ship was ashore. Today, he had invited Tom along.
The plane dipped its left wing and pulled into a gentle turn. “There’s the Arizona,” the pilot said into his microphone as he pointed leftward.
Tom looked down the wing and saw the yellow outline of the USS Arizona’s deck below the water. The sunken battleship rested beside her moorings. Just five years earlier, more than twelve hundred men had died on the Arizona after the Japanese sneak attack, and most were still entombed there.
Tom snapped a salute.
—
The pilot steered the plane into the island’s heart for some sightseeing. Rich green mountains slipped past the wingtips and a dark storm brewed in the background. Tom marveled at the tropical ambiance and knew he had made the right choice when he chose the navy.
Four years earlier, in 1943, he had preregistered to attend Harvard University. His father was a Harvard man and everyone expected Tom to follow in his footsteps. But to his family’s surprise, Tom contacted his congressman and secured a nomination to the Naval Academy. He was accepted and had graduated in May 1946, just nine months after World War II ended. In accordance with the academy’s rule, all graduates were required to do their first posting aboard a ship, and Tom wound up aboard the Helena.
The plane began bucking in the rough mountain air. Tom floated from his seat and felt his gut hanging. His smile retreated and his head felt heavy. The pilot dipped a wing and pointed out a waterfall. Tom looked where he was told and thanked the pilot.
The pilot dipped the other wing and pointed out something else. Tom looked but couldn’t tell what he was seeing—his vision was becoming blurry. He glanced forward at the instrument panel and could have sworn that the yellow numbers were spinning. Tom lowered his chin and braced his arms against the cockpit walls. Sweat slipped from his helmet. “Sir, I’m not feeling so good,” he said over the intercom.
The pilot leveled the plane. “Sorry, Tom, these mountains have some chop because of the coming storm—I’ll turn us around.”
Tom tried to focus his gaze ahead, but his vision seemed to float. Through a wave of dizziness, he looked down and saw his knees bouncing. The plane swerved back and forth as the pilot steered through the roughs. Tom felt hot around his neck. He opened his shirt and sucked in deep breaths, thirsty for fresh air.
Credit 6.2
Tom Hudner, now a naval offi
cer
The plane leapt and dipped again. Tom closed his eyes but his head was spinning. He gagged and then shot a hand to his mouth. He scanned the cockpit frantically for an airsickness bag but found none. He knew enough about flying to know that ground crewmen hated nothing more than to have to clean up a pilot’s puke. I can’t do this to them, Tom thought.
With a hand across his mouth, Tom leaned over the right ledge of the canopy and vomited down the side of the plane.
He threw up again and again. His seat harness barely held him from falling out. He heaved so loudly the pilot turned to check out the action.
Finally, Tom wiped his mouth and flopped back inside the cockpit. He leaned his head against his seatback as the world spun around him. “I tossed my cookies,” he groaned.
The pilot laughed. “Next time, eat bananas! They taste the same going down as when they’re coming back up!”
Too exhausted to reply, Tom vowed there wouldn’t be a “next time.” As far as flying went, he had made up his mind—he just wasn’t built for it.
Three months later
Drink in one hand, officer’s hat in the other, Tom passed through the officers’ club wearing a crisp blue blazer over a white shirt and black tie. The club was furnished like an upscale steakhouse but with the Hawaiian touch of palm leaves and tiki statues.
Tom approached a round table and took a seat with his buddies—Carl, Bill, and Doug. Tom’s friends were well mannered and neatly groomed, with their hair slicked back. They were ensigns too, and dressed like Tom. Each night, Tom and his buddies enjoyed scotch and sodas in the club after a day’s work for their boss, Admiral Kitts, the commander of the Pacific Fleet. For Tom, the posting was new, his first since the Helena.
As it did most nights, the talk centered on flying. Tom’s buddies had each served on carriers previously and discussed aviation more than real aviators did. The young men turned to Tom. Their unofficial leader, Carl, had an announcement to make. “Tom, we’re done with paper pushing. We’re doing it, we’re putting in our chits for aviation.”