Look here. Everybody just calm down. And no, Bubba Ray, nobody’s going to kill you. You’re not worth the jail time, is he, Jackson? No, he’s not. But what we are going to do is take aside your boys, that gang of thieves of yours, and give ’em reason to sever all ties with you.
Bubba Ray didn’t think such a maneuver remotely possible.
Fuck you, he said to Mickey Moe, Jackson, and the rest, wresting away from them. Once free, he sprinted to the doctor’s car, hopped in, gunned it, and drove off in a cloud of dust.
Hell, it’s not over yet, Mickey Moe said to a dejected Jackson on the way back to his farm. The boys and I’ll straighten things out, don’t you worry about it.
Alright.
Jackson.
Yes.
What did he mean about you crackin’ his head?
Just what he said.
You tried to kill him?
I wouldn’t say tried.
What for?
I don’t want to say. But he deserved it.
Mickey Moe hit his steering wheel in a gesture smacking of compliment, a gesture that reminded Jackson eerily of Bokay on that fateful night long ago.
Well, damn, Mickey Moe said. Damn. Who knew you had the balls, son? Who knew?
They drove past the southwest corner of the village. Jackson could see its lights through the woods.
Mickey Moe. What happened over there? It looks like a tornado struck. I took Stella past here on the way to your place and it looked like nobody’s living there at all anymore. It’s like a ghost town of mobile homes.
Shoot. They all’s just hidin’ ‘cause they didn’t recognize your vehicle. These days none can be too careful. But I want you to know: No act of nature put the hurt on or the scare in ’em. A tornado of kluckers, more like. When L’il Bokay came back home to collect his family, he brought with him a gang of his Jesus warriors or whatever it is his people call themselves. Biggest, meanest Negroes anybody ever saw around here. Scared the bejesus outta those Hicks and Turner types. Shoot. They scared the bejesus outta me. Once he left with them all, the kluckers had their revenge. Burnt down half the village and tossed Molotovs into L’il Bokay’s church. That place would be an honest-to-God ghost town by now except the Committee of Concern raised funds to resettle them all.
Committee of Concern?
Gang of churchmen. Led by our very own Perry Nussbaum. More the fool, him.
I always liked Rabbi Nussbaum. I’d never call him a fool.
I just mean he’s always stickin’ his neck out. Makin’ Jews look disloyal around here. Believe me, there’s a lot in his own congregation not too happy with him. They’re afraid for their lives on account of him. Mind my words. I don’t know how long it’ll take, but them kluckers’ll have their way with him, too. Sooner or later.
I hope not.
Soon they were winding down the access road to Mickey Moe’s farm and because he couldn’t stand pondering it anymore, Jackson put aside any thought of his family’s trouble and the community’s misery, the better to enjoy the unanticipated pleasures of spending the night in Stella’s bed, courtesy of Mickey Moe and Laura Anne’s guest room up in a corner of the third floor of the big house far away from Aunt Beadie’s eyes and ears.
But he was not to find peace there, either. He crept into the room, got out of his pants and shirt in the dark, and slid into the sheets of the bed in which she lay, still, silent, a real sleeping beauty, he thought, straight out of a fairy tale. He was busy leaning up on one elbow, the better to decide how to wake her while marveling at his blessed good luck when she suddenly shivered, startling him. When she spoke, her voice was alert if ragged.
Jackson, I’m sorry. I don’t want to trouble you in the middle of the night and I do want to know what happened with Bubba Ray, but I’m trying to let go of something here and it’s, it’s hard. Your mother said...
Then she broke into a round of sweet, high-pitched little sighs. What the hell? he muttered, switching on the end-table lamp the better to study the uncommon sight of his bold, forthright fiancée struggling to stifle her thoughts. What is it, baby? What is it? My mama said what?
Stella cleared her throat, rubbed her eyes with the heel of her palm, and spilled her guts: Your mother informed me that the family could not travel north for our wedding. She said it would be too much of a hardship on your father’s mind. But guessing from what you’ve told me about the veiled way she speaks, I’m guessing it’s a financial issue. And I just don’t know what to do about that. I really don’t. My family would certainly be willing to sponsor yours in a trip up north for such an occasion. I’m sure they’d volunteer to do so without any kind of fuss. But much as I really do want to be married at home, I just don’t want to ask. It would make us beholden to them. Can you understand that?
Jackson was taken by surprise by her revelations and had no considered response available for her so, yes I do, he said, yes, I believe I do.
Well, that’s good. I understand that your mother is being as honest with me as she can be without compromising her dignity, and I don’t want to start off with her on a wrong foot. To make a long story short, I agreed. The wedding will take place down south. Here. In Guilford.
She turned a big, soulful look on him then: eyes wide, brows raised, adorable mouth screwed into a posture of determination. Jackson pulled her in to his side. He was terrifically moved, unsure what to say beyond you are so sweet, you are so good. He was a Southern gentleman. He knew what weddings meant to a girl, even a Yankee one. The stunning realization that she would forsake whatever matrimonial daydreams she’d nurtured and embellished in her deepest heart from the age of ten, abandon them not so much for him but for his peculiar family’s sake, filled him with the warmest, most pervasive glow imaginable. He could have broken her in two, he wanted to hug her that hard. He kissed the top of her head and had another brainstorm, an idea that he was sure would do much to ease her disappointments and reward her selflessness.
He was right. As soon as he told her he’d get Rabbi Nussbaum to perform the ceremony, her mood improved dramatically. An honest-to-God civil rights hero, he told her. Wouldn’t she like that, he asked, and her family, too? It amazed him how her flesh went from heavy and slack to alive and electric at the sound of Nussbaum’s name. He capitalized by reciting some of the man’s achievements just for the joy of feeling her blood quicken, her muscles flex with excitement while he held her. In slow, honeyed tones he told her how Perry Nussbaum volunteered for the chaplain job at Parchman after the Freedom Riders were put there. It wasn’t like he already had the job or even that it existed. There weren’t exactly a lot of Jews on any prison farm in Mississippi before. He saw a need and pushed against the tide to fill it. The conditions there were always wretched, but they were worse for the Freedom Riders. They had cramped, hot-as-an-oven quarters, wormy food, filth and bugs everywhere. When the riders took to singing hymns to bolster one another’s spirits as well as annoy the guards, the screens were removed from their windows, allowing an army of mosquitoes to feast on them day and night. These were the same conditions that were constant in the Negro section. No one but Perry Nussbaum was allowed to communicate with the riders, not even family or lawyers. Stella knew the last part, one of her father’s accountants had a son who spent time incarcerated at Parchman, and if it hadn’t been for Nussbaum’s letters the old man would have expired from worry over him. She hadn’t known that the job did not exist until Nussbaum lobbied for it. Wow, she said. Wait’ll Seth and Aaron hear about this.
Stella covered his neck then with kisses. Jackson’s chest expanded. His grin was so broad his cheeks hurt, he was that pleased with himself. Despite his uncertainty that earlier events of the evening had any affect whatsoever on Bubba Ray, he’d solved at least one family problem that night. Or so he thought at the time.
In the weeks before he left for basic training, Mickey Moe assembled a crowd of cousins, sober this time and in broad daylight, led them in an impressive caravan of pickups an
d Cadillacs over to the village. In such company, it did not take long to determine the identities of Bubba Ray’s gang. Employing a combination of threats of exposure, cash bribes, and job offers from a variety of Sassaport businesses, they convinced the crew to cut Bubba Ray off. They weren’t bad boys, he wrote Jackson from boot camp, just hungry from hard times is all. Rest easy, son. We have the situation under control.
Jackson believed him.
ELEVEN
Spring, 1964
AT LUNCH THE DAY AFTER Mickey Moe’s barbecue, Mama and Stella hashed out a suitable date for the wedding, that is, the first Sunday in October, which fell just after the high holidays. Six months wasn’t half enough time to plan a big wedding by Mama’s lights, but Stella argued that a prompt affair would do much to ameliorate Mrs. Godwin’s disappointment in the venue, since long betrothals were seen as morally suspect back home. Mama pointed out that Jackson would not be finished with law school yet. Stella countered that she would be employed in the fall. They would not starve or go without a roof over their heads.
My oh my, Mama said. Things surely have changed since I was a girl. We had names for young men who allowed ladies to support them in those days. Wish I could remember what they were. Daddy? she asked her husband, who was pretending to read the Sunday paper nearby while Stella chewed her lip and fumed, do you recall what they were?
Unfortunately, Daddy was having one of his more lucid moments.
Hmm. Let me think, Mama. Layabouts? Gigolos? Fancy boys? No, I do believe we called homosexuals fancy boys. Useless? Yes, useless is what we called them. That would be it.
Well, I imagine if I’m supporting him, I can call him whatever I wish, replied Stella, and I’ll just call him my brilliant husband with the fabulous future, if you don’t mind.
Mama acquiesced. There followed a flurry of phone calls to Rabbi Nussbaum in Jackson and to the Godwins up north. Back and forth they went, confirming this, changing that, while a symphony of excited feminine squeals in a variety of octaves burnt up the telephone wires. Afterward, Mama and Stella faced Jackson with their arms around each other’s shoulders. Their lips glistened, their chests heaved. We have achieved agreement by all parties, they announced, and broke into ear-to-ear grins, both of them. It was pretty much the first and last time he noticed them in harmony, although it was too early for him to recognize the seeds of the power struggle that would emerge between them over time. During the next six months, he put their near-constant little conflicts of opinion down to the universal phenomenon amongst mamas and brides known as wedding jitters.
As the date grew close, he found he was not without a few jitters of his own. The thing that made Jackson most anxious about the wedding was not how Mama and Daddy would get along with the Godwins, though that was a mighty concern. He’d figured out that Daddy was prone to saying out loud whatever cracked impressions flitted through his damaged cortex, while Mama took pains to flip whatever it was he said on its ear to make it sound alright. This was the way they managed life these days. In the family and in the town, there wasn’t a soul who did not understand, but the Godwins were neither family nor from a town anything like Guilford, Mississippi. He worried some, then decided they’d either like one another or not. If they did, swell, and if they didn’t, there was no reason for their parents to associate with each other after the nuptials, so it hardly mattered. Nor did he worry whether or not the Godwins would offend just about everyone at the wedding party with their Yankee ways and superior attitude. He knew the folks back home would be startled into sheer disappointment if they didn’t behave rudely. He didn’t worry at all about the things that obsessed Mama and Stella—that is, the food, the flowers, or whether the guests would all fit under the tent should it rain. He didn’t even worry about losing the rings. He worried about Bubba Ray.
Bubba Ray hadn’t spoken to him since that night in the woods months before, which under normal circumstances was a very good thing, something for which the Lord should be highly praised. With the wedding preparations and all, Jackson was obligated to travel home a number of weekends with Stella so that she and Mama could hash out the thorny details of ceremony and reception. Every trip was a trial, as both women had their very particular ideas of what was required. He had more than enough to do smoothing the ruffled feathers of each without taking into account Bubba Ray, but like an inconvenient truth, there his brother was anyway, a hulking presence glowering from doorways, out of dark corners, and at table when they ate in—silent, oppressive, exuding odium as naturally as a flower does scent. Oddly, he gave them a very nice wedding present, a silver nut bowl engraved with the initials “HL.” It’s an antique I found, he explained when Stella opened it. She later said to her fiancé: Bubba Ray may hate you, but this is a beautiful bowl. I think he likes me. Jackson could not help feeling the kid’s generosity was a ruse. He was plotting something, Jackson felt sure. Lord alone knew what, but something.
Stella worried about everything. It was only by enlisting the influence of Rabbi Nussbaum that she’d got Missy Fine Sassaport to agree to a kosher wedding supper, for example, and she’d not yet tackled telling her parents to expect the genders to mix together during the service. To tell the truth, it fascinated Jackson to witness the manifestation of his virago’s frailties. The girl who lived to challenge her family, her professors, statesmen in their chambers, bureaucrats behind their paper-laden desks, crumbled around planning a Southern Jewish wedding. She asked his opinion when problems arose, which gave him the uncommon elation of feeling needed, since she nearly always followed his advice. Watching her fret one night, Jackson suggested that when her parents arrived for the festivities everyone sit down with Rabbi Nussbaum, and he could explain the facts of Mississippi life to the Godwins and the sensitivities of the Godwins to his. This struck Stella as an excellent, positively event-saving idea. It helped that she and Perry Nussbaum had grown close during successive visits. She loved his bravery, his politics, his caustic sense of humor, and she was quick to point out to whomever would listen that he was no Torah slouch either. She knew her parents already respected him by virtue of his civil rights reputation. So let it be Perry who told them there would be no best man or maid of honor, that Jackson and Stella would accompany each other down the aisle. They might arch eyebrows, and Mrs. Godwin might dart a disapproving look Stella’s way, but then they’d both nod pleasantly without comment. Let Perry tell them the ceremony would not be at the temple but under the tent pitched on the Sassaport front lawn. She could well imagine her father’s frozen smile when Perry said: Under halachic law all there needs to be is a promise from the groom, acceptance by the bride, and a bridal ring. The presence of a rabbi, even a chupah, is customary only. He would say these things in the stentorian tone he used from the pulpit, a tone that brooked no disagreement. Leonard Godwin would not dare to argue with such a rabbi. No, he was all unctuous concord when it came to confident rabbis.
When the invitations went out, most of the Boston ones were returned promptly with regrets. Nineteen sixty-four was not exactly a good summer for public relations in Mississippi, what with church burnings and murders and all. It was obvious that Stella’s people were afraid to come. To the Sassaports’ credit, they did not rub it in. Well, you know, just after the holidays is a hard time for people to travel, was all Mama said, adding: If only your people married during the month of repentance, we could have had the wedding before the holidays in August, but then, of course, it would have been very hot in the tent. She forgot to mention it would be dang hot in the tent in October, too.
Perry Nussbaum was more forthright.
Stella, he said when she complained, I don’t know if you know this, but I was born in Canada. I studied and worked all over before I settled here. I worked in the Philippines in the Army during the war and Texas just after, but I worked in Massachusetts and New York and New Jersey also. I know Yankees. Yankees are very good at telling other people how to live, especially us backward folk down here. But they don’t
seem to care that they stir up a lot of bad feeling and then skedaddle back home where they feel safe and cozy in their de facto lily-white neighborhoods and schools, issuing speeches and edicts about a thousand miles behind the front lines. Which leaves us on our own to take the blows and put out the fires. I’m not saying we don’t need to change down here, no, not at all, but no one knows as well as I do that we who chose to stand up, stand alone.
Stella blushed, shamed on account of the entire region north of the Mason-Dixon line.
You’ll never stand alone as long as I’m around, Rabbi.
He chuckled, and his eyes with their great bushy brows crinkled. Nussbaum was a man of average height. His hair was salt-and-pepper, short, wiry, his belly round and hard. Chuckling like that, he resembled nothing so much as a bemused gnome.
That’s a real firecracker you’re bringing us, Jackson.
Yes, she is, sir, she is indeed.
Long about August, time sprouted jet wings, flew by, and suddenly it was the week of the wedding. The bridal couple arrived in Guilford the Monday before. Everything was whirlwind. Presents arrived every day in the post. The lawn was manicured, the tables and chairs delivered. By Wednesday, the scaffolding for the tent was erected. A generator arrived for the fans that would be plugged inside the tent to keep them all cool. Stella had the final fitting for her dress, a gown inspired by a photo in Vogue magazine, hand sewn by Annie Althea over in the village, although her mother wanted to see her in one by Priscilla of Boston. She explained to her mother that eventually she and Jackson would like to live in his hometown. I want to have good relations with everybody from the ground up, she told her. Plus, it’s good for the local economy to throw some money over that way. You have no idea how hard life can be for those people, Mom, you really don’t. She’d lost some weight from nerves, so the fitting was more than a pro forma event. The dress was made from an ivory satin chosen for the creamy way it set off her flame-red hair, which she intended to wear down and studded with flowers underneath a half veil fastened to an ivory ribbon beaded with pearls. The veil was a marvel of delicacy, although Stella planned to ditch it the second the ceremony was over. The neckline of the gown was lower than her mother was going to like, she knew that and didn’t care. It had long sleeves that buttoned from the inside of her elbows down to her wrists, and from her breasts to past her hips it fit tight as a wet leather glove dried in the noonday sun. It came to a deep V below her waist front and back then flounced out in a wide skirt that stopped, scandalously her mother was sure to think, above her ankles. Stella liked it because it made her feel half ballerina, half lady of Camelot. Jackson would dress in a black suit with a Nehru collar rather than a tux, and for underneath, Annie Althea had sewn him a collarless shirt of fine cotton the same shade of ivory as Stella’s dress. There were no groomsmen or bridesmaids, which Jackson and Stella insisted upon over the objections of both mothers. Their unspoken reasoning went that with no bridal party, there was no need to come up with an excuse to exclude Bubba Ray.
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