Nobody Said Amen

by Tracy Sugarman

  The driver squatted beside him, exploring the cut on Ted’s forehead, trying to stop the bleeding with a handkerchief soaked from his canteen. “Doesn’t seem deep. I don’t think it’s much to worry about. I got a truckload of medic supplies, but you’re not going to need them.” He sighted down the empty and silent highway, seeing only the clouds of dust from his convoy that still lingered like ghosts in the dusk. “Gotta catch up with the trucks in Chartres and then I got a detail to deliver to a place called Dachau. You know Dachau?”

  “Dachau? Never heard of it. But if you’re really going into Germany can I hitch a ride with you? I’ve been stuck in Normandy since D-Day and I’d like to see Hitler’s playground and the Supermen. The Krauts have just been mostly the invisible bastards who’ve kept me from going back to Atlanta.”

  “Atlanta! You must be kidding. You’re going back to see my mammy in old Dixie? You really from Atlanta? I can’t believe that! I’m from the south side. Went to Carver High.” He grinned. “Don’t guess you went there, too. Wrong color, man. Name is Sam. Sam July.”

  Ted took his extended hand. “Ted Mendelsohn.”

  “Climb aboard. I can always use a back-up driver.” July threw the truck in motion. “We ought not be out here alone. The krauts love to surprise us.” He stared out the grimy windshield. “Watch the sky on your right.” When the convoy came into view he lit a cigarette and passed Ted the deck. “What did you do in Atlanta?”

  “I worked for Eli Dairy.”

  July slapped his hands against the wheel. “Best damn milk in all of Atlanta!” He turned and looked at Mendelsohn with a new interest. “Mendelsohn,” he said, “Eli Dairy Mendelsohn?”

  Ted tried to smile. “Eli Dairy Mendelsohn.”

  “My Grandpa Phineas on my mama’s side had a route with Eli, horse-drawn,” said July. “Horse’s name was Moses.” He laughed. “Used to let me feed Moses once in a while. He and Moses delivered for Eli for twenty-seven years.” He smiled, watching Ted out of the corner of his eye. “Hey, now you can deliver for me!”

  “I’m not as dependable as Moses,” said Mendelsohn. “But I do land in the bulrushes.”

  They were laughing as they rolled into Chartres.

  From Yank magazine:

  KILROY WAS HERE

  There is no way, no way I know, for an American born in the twentieth century to really understand what I am seeing. This is the concentration camp of Dachau, a German invention. It was erected as the very first camp for political prisoners by Adolph Hitler in 1933. Just beyond these bullet-riddled and now deserted guard towers is an unrecognizable nightmare world, created by the same nation that blessed us with Bach, with Beethoven, with Mozart. There is no way.

  What I enter now is a killing ground, an extermination camp with a still-warm crematorium, rail tracks still shivering from the last transport of the men, women, and children who have been delivered here to be murdered. In front of me is a rotting pile of 2300 human corpses, and the riddled bodies of wild carrion dogs who had been feeding on the flesh, shot by outraged GI’s when they broke into the camp, and the ashes of 400 innocents whose bodies were set on fire by the terrified Nazi guards as our troops stormed the gates. I wondered if some of them were Mendelsohns who never reached America. There is no way.

  There was no way for General Eisenhower either. The unspeakable horror assaulted him when we liberated Dachau. In his fury he ordered our troops to go outside the camp and round up every German male in the village and march them slowly, one by one, through the entire slaughterhouse. The Nazi commandant was laid on the top of the rotting corpses, and the villagers were forced to spit upon him. Even for this five-star General, born in Abilene, Kansas, just before this century began, a man from a family rooted in Germany, there was no way. Dachau was such an obscenity that his very humanity felt assailed. No way to understand how his family’s spiritual home could be so profoundly defiled.

  There was no way. There is no way.

  The guards who survived recalled that during the forced showers, when the tens of thousands of children, women, and men were suffocated by gas, the loudspeakers in the camp would play Bach. And Beethoven. When the next trains arrived, they would play Mozart.

  Mendelsohn was nearly overwhelmed by the human disaster he encountered everywhere, the cruel consequences of the Master Race mythology, the unspeakable barbarism it had unleashed. Dazed and shattered remnants of the Jews, Gypsies, and liberals who miraculously had escaped the fires of Dachau, Treblinka, Auschwitz, and Buchenwald filled every by-way and turgid refugee camp in the heart of Europe. It was a desolate and desperate journey into the dark heart of racism, and he wanted to capture that reality in his “Kilroy Was Here” columns that now had begun to appear in Newsweek. The heartbreaking powerlessness of the skeletal survivors seeded a fierce resolution. Mendelsohn knew he would resist the horror of racism whenever and wherever he found it.

  On his last week on the continent, Max Miller had sent him a cable.

  Teddy,

  Soon as you can shake the clan after your visit home, there’s a chair for you at Newsweek. Folks here are eager to meet Kilroy because your stuff has been so alive and on-target. We got a lot to do, pal. Come.

  Max

  When he returned to Atlanta at the end of the year, Ted Mendelsohn was nearly a stranger to his family. Although they ravenously reclaimed him, he found the norms of Atlanta life stultifying and surprisingly difficult. He had changed, and Atlanta was changing. The city was racing into a buoyant postwar prosperity, reaching out to new suburbs and greenery. But beneath the euphoria, he could detect the old truisms of caste and race that he remembered from his childhood.

  It was soon apparent that the subject of racism in any form was a source of irritation to his parents.

  “Let the schwartze get the laundry, Teddy darling. You ought to rest.”

  He reacted abruptly and loudly, startling his mother. “Christ, Mom, stop that! Clementine is not a schwartze. She’s an American who happens to be Negro!”

  His mother’s eyes widened; she was clearly wounded by the sharpness in his rebuke. “All right, darling. I understand. I won’t use that word. I won’t say schwartze again.” She cocked her head, seeking to find the boy who had gone off to war, then smiled. “I should have my mouth washed out with soap.”

  Ted looked tenderly at his mother. “When is the last time you told me that, mom? Probably when I called Paddy McElroy a lousy harp when he called me a kike after Boy Scout camp!”

  She kissed him then and walked briskly to the door. “Get washed up, Teddy. We’re going to the club for dinner.”

  Relieved and grateful to have him home safe, she brought her young veteran into the social swim of the synagogue and the country club, eager to have him meet the young men and women who could relaunch him into the community. “He’s very high-strung,” she confided to her husband that night as they were retiring. “He’s been through a lot.” But fatigued by the daily struggle to keep Eli Dairy running through the long war when all the young men had been gone, his father was ailing now. Ted watched with distress as proud Irving Mendelsohn’s strength seemed to be betraying him. “Help me, Teddy.” The words were so needy that Ted became more and more involved with Eli Dairy. In his first letter to Max Miller after returning stateside, he wrote of his dilemma.

  Max,

  The wandering Jew has returned to the family and to the South that still won’t hire Teddy Wilson. I’m trying to pass the buck of Eli Dairy to a younger cousin who likes it here, but my old man is a hard case who believes in tradition, responsibility, loyalty, early bedtime, and the separation of the races. Not sharing much of that, I’m not getting much traction. As to the separation of the races, that’s now a no-man’s-land where conversation dies. So keep my seat warm, but I won’t be able to use it until something changes.

  Teddy

  Irving Mendelsohn died late in December, and Max received another letter from Ted.

  Max

  Life gets
in the way of life. So much to tell you when we get together. Arriving with my sweetheart, Julia, and will call you from Grand Central. Dust off the chair.

  Ted

  In the Spring of 1951, Julia Berg and Ted Mendelsohn were married in the living room of Max and Maggie Miller. “Your wedding present is a year’s subscription to Newsweek,” toasted Max with great ceremony. “Oh, and something I almost forgot to mention. Kilroy here is getting the Washington beat, no shabby beginning.” He grinned at the wide-eyed couple. “Newsweek thinks you and Washington will be a great fit, Teddy. We’re planning on keeping you real busy. And that should keep your bridegroom close enough, Julia honey, so he can pick up the groceries on the way home!”

  For four years the Mendelsohns reveled in the excitement and glamour of the postwar capitol, only retreating to the quieter Maryland suburbs to replant their burgeoning family in a greener soil. The Kilroy of Yank magazine became the now bylined Ted Mendelsohn of Newsweek, leading the frantic bifurcated life of the commuter. Dogged and determined to create the nest that Julia had dreamed of since leaving Atlanta, he seemed to be constantly racing home for picnics, birthday parties, parents’ nights, and Little League games, all the demanding small-town happenings that seemed to overspill from the family calendar. Julia was radiant, intimately involved with the warp and woof of her kids’ lives. But the world of the newsroom was beginning to tremble with a new urgency of a “cold war” abroad and a roiling civil liberties conflict where charges of “Communist sympathizers” were erupting from Senator Joe McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee. When Ted found the names of friends and colleagues on “black lists” that made them unhireable, his eagerness to get actively back on the scene and in the field became ever more at odds with his insulated life in the suburbs.

  Max was nervously alive to the tremors, goading his reporters to “dig harder, dig deeper, and dig faster. You’re getting paid to keep us in front of the news, not sucking hind tit!” Max’s demands became the frantic focus of Mendelsohn’s life, and Mendelsohn’s idyll on the outskirts of the world skidded to an end. As segregation was being challenged in the schools and in the public accommodations of the South, as pray-ins and sit-ins exploded, and as the right of blacks to vote in elections were being asserted and denied, Mendelsohn’s bylines ricocheted from the Carolinas, Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia, and back to Washington, where the Senate was still debating whether to pass anti-lynching legislation.

  Briefly back at home, he found Laurie to be shy in his presence and Richard unfamiliarly cool. Julia tried to be welcoming, but her exasperation at the changes in the normal routines he had forced on their lives could not be hidden.

  “What has happened to you, Ted? What is happening to us? You missed Richard’s father-son banquet at the temple. Again. Last time it was sit-ins in Tennessee. This time it was Little Rock. Where the hell will you be when Laurie graduates? Damn it. It’s not fair!” She sat, desolate, on the edge of the bed, next to his half-empty Valpack. “It’s not what we planned, sweetheart.”

  He nodded. “I know that, Julia. I feel like I’m tied to a runaway train. I’m on the cusp of something that I feel I’ve got to cover, to understand. It’s why I do what I do, darling. Why I’m not peddling milk. Why I’m a journalist. History is not waiting for me, and I find myself running like mad.” His voice broke. “Looking like a stranger to my daughter and missing father-son suppers with my kid, whom I adore. Feeling guilty. And not knowing what to do about it.”

  Julia touched his hand. “I didn’t marry Lowell Thomas. I married you. I love you, but I spend most of my time missing you.” She rose and stopped at the door. “Your kids deserve more than that. Laurie does. Richard does. And so do I. Your job is becoming your wife, and the wife you married is becoming a goddam widow.” As she left the room the phone rang in the hall.

  Julia answered. “It’s for you.” Her voice was brittle. “It’s your boss and good friend, Max.” She handed him the phone, turned on her heel, and went swiftly down the stairs.

  Max’s voice was brisk. “The tickets for Oxford are at the airport, Teddy. Flight is at 7:40. Fly good and for Christ’s sake keep me in the loop. Oh, and say hi to Julia for me. She was off the phone before I had a chance.”

  Everyone stood in the June sunshine in front of the Administration building, a puddle of humanity on the deserted Oxford, Ohio, campus. The talk was muted, people uneasy about what was about to take place. Kids smoked and shifted nervously, edging aside as Ted made his way over to Dale Billings, a young, black SNCC field worker who stood quiet and watchful on the edge of the lawn. “What are they going to do, Dale?”

  Dale nodded toward a group of the staff who were carrying chairs from the dining hall into the center of the crowd. “They’ll set up a make-believe lunch counter,” Dale replied, squinting in the bright glare.

  “Then they’ll integrate it.” He nudged Ted. “Like I was doing in Washington when we met. But this is about what happens when I do that in Mississippi.” He nodded toward a stocky young black who stepped into the clearing. “That SNCC kid is Jimmy Mack. He lives in the town of Shiloh in the Delta.”

  Jimmy Mack held up his arms for silence, and Mendelsohn could hear the whir of the newsreel cameras that had arrived the day before. “This is the way you protect your body.” His voice was flat. “The vital parts of your body are your head, your neck, and your groin. You can protect them best by curling up like a baby, your legs together, your knees pulled up to protect your gut and your privates, your hands and arms shielding your head and the back of your neck.”

  Mack bent forward, rolling into a fetal position, his arms lacing across his dark bent head and his hands cradling the back of his head and neck. The girl standing next to the reporter sucked in a deep breath. Mack rose from the lawn and led a volunteer from the crowd into the center. “Let me see you protect yourself.” The student assumed the position, and the young black pulled back his sneakered foot, gently tapping the exposed areas of the supine volunteer. “Your legs, your thighs, your buttocks, your kidneys, your back can take a kick or a billy club. So can your arms and your hands. Your head can’t. Your neck can’t. Your groin can’t. When your companion is being beaten or stomped while lying on the ground, you must protect him or her. You do it by shielding his head with your body. Your back can take it.”

  Ted became aware again of the whir of the newsreel cameras. Everything would be recorded for the great spectator public except the nausea and the outrage of having to learn the art of protecting yourself from a Mississippi lynch mob or from American police who were waiting to assault you. When he turned to Dale Billings he saw that the young man was standing, arms folded, watching him.

  Ted’s hand was shaking as he wrote in his notebook, seeking the words to convey to Max and Newsweek what he felt. When he looked across the tight circle of students there was not a sound. Their eyes stayed riveted on the tableau of a violence that until that moment had existed for them only in grade-B movies and tabloid spreads.

  “It’s a nightmare theater. The loveliness of this June afternoon won’t be remembered by the students in the days and nights ahead in Mississippi. The sky is a delicate blue, and the sun-washed breeze is moving gently across the children who are play-acting on the green lawn. But it’s a nightmare theater.”

  At the end of the week Ted called Max to let him know he was heading for Shiloh, Mississippi. “It’s going to be a hell of a story,” Max said. Then he added something very un-Max like. “Drive carefully Teddy. I’ve been to the Delta. You can bet your ass they know you’re coming.”

  Chapter Two

  A Trailways bus took them to Memphis, and when they got there Dale Billings, another SNCC field worker from Shiloh named Harold Parker, and Johnny Buckley, a red-headed volunteer from Seattle, joined Ted at the Hertz counter. The Hertz lady was blond and pretty. “Yes, we have a car for you. No, we don’t have any with Mississippi plates.”

  Johnny Buckley leaned over Ted’s sh
oulder and smiled at the woman. “You certain, pretty lady?”

  Her eyes flicked from Buckley to the two Negroes waiting beside him. “I’m absolutely certain.” Her voice had altered. “Why don’t you try one of the other agencies? You planning a long trip?”

  “Several weeks,” Ted said. “Thank you. I’ll check the other agencies.”

  She watched them move to the other rentals. “No, sir. No car with Mississippi plates.” “No, sir. No car at all.” The cool blonde stood, arms crossed, as Ted returned to the Hertz counter. “Ma’am, I’d like to rent a car with Tennessee plates.” Deadpan, she reached for the form and filled it out. Without a word she pushed it toward him and held out a pen for him to sign with. As he thanked her, a small smile flitted across her face. “Y’all will find the car parked across the road in space 49.” She paused just a moment, leaned back on the counter and crossed her arms again. “It’s a yella Chevy. Bright yella, with Tennessee plates.” With a dimpled smile, Buckley said, “Thank you, pretty lady.” She looked at the engaging redhead and her eyes were clouded. “Y’can’t fool ’em, y’know.” When Buckley and Ted picked up the keys from the counter, Dale and Parker were already out the door.

  The neat geometry of the Delta unfolded as they moved at 55 miles per hour into the heartland of Mississippi. Dwarfed cotton plants stretched in symmetric rows almost to the horizon, the dark soil between the rows cartwheeling like black spokes as the Chevy moved down Highway 49. Next to Ted, Dale Billings stretched his legs under the dashboard, looping his arm carelessly over the back of the seat. The attitude of repose was deceptive, for his eyes were quick and alert, scanning the road ahead and behind for any vehicles. “Take it easy,” he cautioned. “The car traveling toward us could be the Highway Patrol who move up and down this route.”