The Sacred Place

by Daniel Black

  He chuckled, and said, “I mean … everybody likes to hear a good story about … a nigger beating.”

  Immediately the boys relaxed, and the big one continued: “It was funny the way they told it, Mr. Rosenthal. They said they took him out in de woods somewhere near the river and his eyes was big as full moons. He was kickin’ and hollerin’, Granddaddy said, and that made beatin’ him even funner.”

  Rosenthal felt bile gather in his stomach, but he couldn’t bail out now. The joy the boys described was hauntingly familiar.

  “They cracked him over the head with a two-by-four,” Redhead bellowed. “He squirmed somethin’ awful, they said, then they put a noose around his neck.”

  “They hanged him?” Rosenthal almost yelled.

  “Naw, they didn’t hang him,” Redhead explained. “They jes wanted him to think they would. They said he was cryin’ and screamin’ all kinds of different names.”

  Rosenthal asked cautiously, “Did they say what names?”

  “Naw. They jes said he was screamin’ names. Then they said they let him go.”

  “What? They released him?” Anticipation colored his question. The boys laughed. “They released him all right,” said Redhead. “He took off runnin’, and they counted to ten and played like he was a ’coon in the dark. They had dogs and guns and everything.”

  In his head, Rosenthal was screaming, “No! No!” How could children glory in such brutality, he wondered.

  “He ran like a wild boar hog, Granddaddy said, but they caught him. I forgot who they said did it, but somebody beat his left eye plumb out o’ his head. He fell on the ground kickin’ and screamin’ like a scalded chicken. Can you imagine that, Mr. Rosenthal?”

  Had Rosenthal opened his mouth, he would have wept, so he forced a smile and continued listening.

  “But that ain’t the good part,” Redhead continued. Rosenthal braced himself by wiping imaginary sweat from his forehead. “Granddaddy said, before they beat him, the nigger gave all of ’em a good blow job!”

  “Dear Lord,” Rosenthal mumbled, covering his mouth in shame.

  “Yeah, they said they promised to let him go if he’d do it, and so he started suckin’ like a newborn babe!” The other two doubled over with laughter. “They said he moaned and groaned as he was suckin’, so bustin’ a nut was pretty easy—”

  “That’s enough!” Rosenthal declared.

  “Oh, we didn’t mean to be disrespectful, Mr. Rosenthal. We apologize.” The boys stared at him strangely.

  Rosenthal couldn’t bear another word. “I … um … need to get my store goods home.” He put the car in gear.

  “Nice talkin’ to ya, Mr. Rosenthal. You take care now,” the big one said.

  Rosenthal sped away, leaving a mountain of dust behind. He ignored the tears skiing down his red cheeks, and several times he considered turning around abruptly and telling the boys how wrong they and their grandfather had been. Instead, he retreated into his quiet home, both angry at himself for letting the Greer boys believe he was one of them and thrilled to learn news, however horrible, concerning the colored boy’s fate.

  Sitting at his kitchen table, he thought of all the chances he had over the years to alter the state of the world or, at least, Money, Mississippi. He wondered if God would condemn him to hell not because of his shortcomings, but because of his refusal to help when he could. Actually, Rosenthal had convinced himself, years prior, that heaven, hell, the devil, and all other such biblical notions were constructs of fear that possessed absolutely no validity at all. He told a friend at Harvard that surely God hadn’t written the Bible. If so, he was disappointed.

  Suddenly, Rosenthal picked up his car keys and hat. He would have to search diligently, he resolved, but he wanted to see the place where Clement was dismembered. He hadn’t figured out exactly why, but something within him compelled him to want to revisit the moment, the place, and the torture, in hopes of … something.

  Instead of driving down Talley Lane and turning right onto Fish Lake Road—the most direct route to the river—Rosenthal parked at the corner and decided to walk through the woods until he found whatever his spirit was looking for. He waited until no cars were in sight before he exited his own, having grabbed a flashlight from under the front seat. His plan was to return home before dark, but, just in case, he didn’t intend to get caught deep in the forest at night without a light.

  Go home, he kept telling himself. Yet the trees summoned him onward. Fifteen minutes later, he found himself engulfed in green darkness. From what the boys described, Rosenthal gleaned that the mob of men had taken Clement somewhere near the intersection of Chapman’s land and the Tallahatchie River. He began to inspect the earth like a homicide detective, trying desperately not to miss any clues. “What am I looking for?” he murmured, tossing his arms in the air. Nonetheless, he continued, propelled by some external force to discover something his senses told him was out there. After several minutes, Rosenthal’s heart and head began to battle for governance over him until, aloud, he said, “Enough” and granted his heart leadership. He wondered what his father would have said about his attempt to help a colored boy, especially one who had supposedly disrespected a white woman. He probably would have warned him not to take his Harvard liberalism too far, Rosenthal conjectured.

  After an hour—maybe two—he decided that the search was more guilt than reason. Besides wild ferns and fallen tree limbs, he hadn’t found anything that would corroborate the boys’ tale, much less indict the perpetrators. Dusk forced him to use the flashlight now as Rosenthal looked around one last time. He scampered hurriedly, sure he had missed something. Finding nothing, he turned to exit and tripped clumsily over a rotten log. “Shit!” bellowed from his throat as he plummeted, facedown, into the soft forest mulch. “Just go home,” he chafed in exasperation. Resolving that the whole idea had been erroneous, Rosenthal placed both hands on the earth, in push-up position, preparing to lift himself quickly and go home when suddenly he released a scream loud enough to vibrate the tallest trees, for, on the ground, just below his nose, was a human eye staring boldly up at him. “Oh fuck!” he said as he rose to his feet. His hands trembled too badly to hold the flashlight steady, and his feet shuffled the dance of dismay. “Oh my God! What is this?” he mumbled in horror.

  Rosenthal folded his arms and prayed for someone or something to tell him what to do next. He stared at the eye, which studied him from every direction. At times, he could have sworn the eye blinked as though resting comfortably within its original socket, then another time the eye appeared glazed over with tears. Stay calm, he told himself. Everything’s going to be fine.

  Of course it had to be the colored boy’s, Rosenthal deduced, but what was he to do? “Those fuckin’ idiots!” he proclaimed to no one, and explored the heavens for a sign of how to proceed. He bent cautiously to examine the eye once again and calmed to note that a colored eye looked like any other. It was mostly white, streaked with dark purple blood vessels and round like a marble. The pupil seemed larger outside of a human head, Rosenthal marked, and the leaf on which the eye rested held a small pool of fluids at once nauseating and unidentifiable. While in squatting position, he wondered if colored people’s eyes saw the world differently from white people’s eyes. He pondered the possibility that this eye had seen something, in its short tenure, which seventy years of living had never brought before him. Rosenthal smiled involuntarily as he contemplated how much more of the world he might know if he exchanged eyes with someone of a different race. It would be difficult to hate, he reasoned, if people could just exchange eyes for a day—

  “Stop it!” he yelled, bringing himself back to reality. “Just go home and forget about this!” Rosenthal’s hands gestured like a teacher trying desperately to explain a difficult concept.

  He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and stood in preparation to depart. His feet, however, felt bolted to the earth and his conscience was not inclined to abandon the eye quite so abruptly.
As if in obedience to an unseen ruler, he stooped again to study the eye and, this time, it hypnotized him. Somewhere in his head, he heard the cry of thousands of unknown children, begging, weeping, and moaning for things indiscernible, and Rosenthal grabbed his head tightly. “No!” he answered the call, but the voices petitioned him nonetheless, having waited a lifetime for his audience. The eye begged for mercy, Rosenthal ascertained, although he knew not how to dispense such favor. In its pupil was a longing for love, understanding, hope … something foundational to human thriving. “What is it?” he implored on his soul’s behalf. “I have nothing to give.” The eye ignored his empty confession and, instead, beseeched Rosenthal to nurture and forgive both himself and a world for centuries of transgressions unspoken. “Fine,” he relented and, without entertaining why he shouldn’t, Rosenthal reached tenderly for the eye and placed it in his left hand. It seemed now to be looking beyond him, far into his ugly past, interrogating him on issues he hadn’t thought about in years. He examined the eye with the light from the flashlight, bringing his own eye only inches from the colored boy’s. The brown surprised him, since he thought all colored people’s eyes were black, and then he noticed that the outer ring of the iris was actually golden. The pupil alone was black, and as Rosenthal lifted the eye even closer, he gasped when he saw his own reflection. Staring now in wonder and confusion, he looked deeper into the pupil and saw that, actually, it wasn’t black at all but rather clear and transparent, for, like a mirror, it reflected his image exactly as he knew himself. The closer he examined the eye, the deeper it probed into his soul until his image was reduced to nothing. He noticed that, somewhere, somehow, in the black abyss of the colored boy’s translucent eye, he had completely disappeared.

  Rosenthal pulled a handkerchief from his pants pocket and wrapped the eye carefully. Afraid of bruising it, he carried it cautiously in his left hand like a child might handle a fragile egg. Night had fallen, and Rosenthal gave thanks for the shield it provided against those who might have discovered him. Although his sight was severely hindered, he found his way in the dark more quickly than he had in the light, only now understanding how his blind grandfather had painted so beautifully.

  At home, Rosenthal undressed and lay naked upon his bed with the eye in his right palm. Although there were now three eyes instead of two that beheld him, he felt no shame. The colored boy’s eye extolled his nakedness, he convinced himself, and insisted upon vulnerability he had never yielded.

  He placed the eye on a nightstand and leaned across the bed to turn on the radio. Soft jazz broke the room’s stale silence and helped Rosenthal regain his senses. He then brushed the eye with his fingertip and smiled at it like a long-lost friend returned.

  “Hello,” he whispered with his mouth close enough to kiss the eye. “I hate the bastards who did this to you. It didn’t have to be this way.” He rose from the bed and returned with a small, but obviously expensive glass stand, upon which he set the eye.

  “Now,” he said contentedly. “Fit for a king.” Rosenthal rolled over on his back. “I’ll return you tomorrow.” He couldn’t figure it out, but something about the eye was eerily familiar. When it hit him, he cried, “Oh my God! Oh my God!” and lifted himself to a sitting position. “It’s you! I knew I’d get another chance one day. I always knew it!” He placed the eye in the joined palms of his hands. “Oh, Sutton! I’m so sorry!” he wailed. “I remember this eye the night we … um … hurt you.” He pressed the eye gently against his flabby chest and drifted back fifty years. “I didn’t mean for you to die. I really didn’t. And now you’ve come back.” He returned the eye to its throne and sat on the bed’s edge in thankful bliss. “But I’m not going to spoil this chance. I’m going to love you and nurture you and treat you royally. I owe you that much.”

  Again, he reclined and said, “Wow. Who would have thought I’d find you in Mississippi? I’d know your eyes anywhere. I’m sorry I never called you by your proper name, but now I get the chance to. Sutton Griggs, Jr., Sutton Griggs, Jr.,” he repeated countless times. “You said it so eloquently that day. That’s why I hated you—because you were more articulate than I was. I was white, and I was supposed to be smarter, but you proved me wrong. And I couldn’t handle that. So I … hurt you.” Rosenthal’s sobbing came and went quickly. “You will forgive me, won’t you? I’ll never call you a colored boy again. I promise. I’ll call you Sutton or even Mr. Griggs if you like.”

  He paused. “Then Sutton it is. Like best friends. You can even call me Edgar if you want, but I prefer Rosenthal. It just sounds better you know?”

  He glanced at the eye, resting atop its grand Imperium.

  “This is great!” He smiled. “Of course you’re really Jeremiah’s grandson, but since I don’t know his name, what difference does that make? For all I know, you, Jeremiah, Sutton, and all colored people are probably related. And since you look just like Sutton’s eyes looked that night, that’s what I’ll call you. And now I can redeem myself.” He smiled again.

  After several minutes, Rosenthal folded his hands behind his head and told Sutton, “I know I’m old and ugly now, but I used to be quite a lover, you know.” He closed his eyes to summon the memory of bygone days of prowess. “I’ve always liked closeness. There’s nothing more beautiful than two human bodies meshed together in search of needs neither can find alone. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  Rosenthal strained his neck to look at Sutton. Thinking he saw corroboration, he continued, “All my lovers have been white women, but I’d guess that colored people do it pretty much the same. I’ll never know now anyway.” He rolled onto his left side and stratched his hairy right butt cheek.

  “Someone made love to get you, you know? I bet it was beautiful, those caramel brown bodies sweating in the fight to create life. I bet they dreamed of you even before you were conceived. They surely worried about you growing up in a place where people like me usually despise you.” He smirked at the thought. “They probably swore they’d protect you from me and promised each other to give you the best life possible. Now, they’ll conclude they failed. But it isn’t so. Do you think it’s so?”

  Every time Rosenthal asked a question he looked at Sutton. The eye seemed like a being in itself, he thought, who simply had no mouth or voice with which to speak.

  “I’m sorry about our sheriff, Larry Greer, and whoever else did this to you,” he said again and picked up Sutton like one would pick a rare, delicate flower. “I used to do it, too. I don’t know why. We were taught to hate coloreds and to remind all of you of how wonderfully superior we are. I know it sounds ridiculous, but everything from the Bible to the White House reinforces white beauty and Black ugliness. But I don’t think you’re ugly.” He touched Sutton sensually and shuddered at its rubbery texture. “I think you’re beautiful. I’ll never forget the day you explained the Hamlet passage. I was so envious of your insight and your vernacular that I planned how I’d destroy you. But now I have to take care of you. I owe that to your people.”

  He returned Sutton to his glass throne. “Since you never have to blink or sleep, I guess you’ll see everything now.” He closed his eyes. “I’m sorry, Sutton. I really am. I can’t believe I did that to you. We white men … we’re all alike. I hate to say it, but it’s true. What they did to you I did years ago, so what’s the difference?” Rosenthal hesitated. “Or maybe the difference is that I’ve changed while Billy and the others haven’t. I hate scum like him—now. Can you believe he’s the sheriff? I wish we could take all the racist rednecks and let your people have their way with them. But I guess that would make your people racist black necks!” He chuckled.

  Thunder rolled and rain soon fell in sheets while the radio played easy-listening melodies.

  “Naw, it’s been enough killing in America. No need in coloreds becoming murderers, too. Y’all are good, nice people. I’d hate for you to ruin your reputation trying to get back at bad folks like me.” Rosenthal closed the bedroom windows.

  �
��I used to play the guitar,” he told Sutton, smiling. “When I was a teenager, I thought I’d grow up to be a famous pop musician like Elvis Presley is now. You ever heard of him? I loved the big bands, and I taught myself to play the guitar so I could join one one day. My daddy said it was downright sinful to play the devil’s music, but he never stopped me. Momma, on the other hand, loved it. She wanted nothing more than her children’s happiness however we chose to get it. So I started writing my own songs and singing them for Momma who ranted and raved about how talented I was. But, in the end—as in the beginning—Daddy’s hope for my life prevailed, and I read more than I sang.” Rosenthal checked to make sure Sutton was still paying attention.

  “That’s how I ended up at Harvard. If Dad had known that was where I would learn to question his belief system, he surely would have sent me elsewhere. But Dad wanted the benefit of the name more than the fruit of a Harvard education in me. We never really saw eye to eye anyway, but after I returned from a four-year sojourn up North, we clashed irresolvably. Because he was my father, I acquiesced and acted like other Southern white men who harass colored people for fun. I’m so, so sorry. You will forgive me, won’t you?”

  Rosenthal sat up with his back against the headboard and his hands buried between his legs.

  “I saw what they did to Joshua Redfield. I was there. I shouldn’t have been, but I was.”

  He started crying again.

  “This was more than fifty years ago, Sutton, so please forgive me.” He blew his nose. “Some of the local boys came by one evening and asked me if I wanted to go for a ride. At first I refused, but boredom compelled me to relent. We drove for miles down Highway 3, then turned off on an obscure dirt road. I asked them where we were going and they said to have a little fun, so I thought the adventure harmless. But when they parked the truck and we got out, they uncovered the colored boy tied up in the truck bed. My eyes must have revealed my horror, for one of them said, ‘Aw, Rosenthal. Be a man!’ I didn’t know what to do, so I went along.”