Nobody Said Amen

by Tracy Sugarman

  Ted’s eyes moved once more to the mirror, once more to the road ahead and the approaching vehicle, and then to the shivering needle of the speedometer. You can bet your ass they know you’re coming. For the first time he began to feel the tension in his neck. It was a Ford pickup truck. The two white men in farmers’ straw hats studied their license as they sped past, one craning his neck to see who was inside the Chevy. As Ted read his mirror, the man next to the driver turned and watched them. Dale saw the Ford grow small in the distance. “They’re gone, Ted. But watch your speed.”

  Watch his speed! Christ, he’d never monitored his speed so carefully in his up-till-now long life. He was getting a stiff neck watching his speed.

  “Doesn’t matter a hell of a lot whether you going fifty-five or sixty-five,” said Parker from the back seat. “If the Mississippi Highway Patrol arrests you and says you were going eighty-five, you were going eighty-five.”

  “So why am I breaking my stiff neck going fifty-five, Dale?”

  Dale Billings laughed. “Okay by me. Go eighty-five and we’ll get there quicker.”

  “Maybe,” said Buckley.

  A Negro kid was sitting next to him, and he was driving down Highway 49 in the Mississippi Delta. It was a new feeling, edgy, uncomfortable. Did Dale feel as exposed as he did? Safer if he sat in the back? So approaching cars wouldn’t notice? Ted was ashamed to think this way. Christ, he couldn’t take his eye off that damned rearview mirror! He tapped Dale’s knee and stepped on the gas. “Joe Louis said it, Dale. You can run but you can’t hide.”

  Dale laughed. “Look at that country out there, Ted. Good for running, terrible for hiding!” It was suddenly very clear. He couldn’t work down here this summer if he was going to be running scared. His story was right here—young kids moving into “who knows what” to try to register black Americans so they could vote. They were all silent now. Just watching. And he had work to do. When they reached Clarksdale, Dale made the decision for him.

  “We’re getting close to Klan country, Buckley. You get up here. I’ll hunker down in the back with Parker when we’re approaching Shiloh so it looks like it’s just two white guys in the car. When you see the Kilbrew gas station on your right, Ted, take the next left and you’ll pass the Sojourner Chapel. Jimmy Mack said we’ll meet there at seven tomorrow night.” Dale’s eyes swept the car. “Meanwhile, get to know the families you’ll be staying with.”

  Ted Mendelsohn breathed easy for the first time since he’d left Memphis. He had brought the wheels they’d need. Now the baton had been passed.

  Chapter Three

  On Sunday, right after service, Jimmy Mack had come up to Percy and Rennie, bursting with the news. “They’re arriving tomorrow, Mr. Williams. Driving in from Memphis. Can you believe it, Sister Rennie? And I’m hoping the journalist can stay with you. He’s an older man than the students, I don’t think he’ll be a bother. Has kids of his own up in Washington, D.C. Got to know him a little at the orientation.” Jimmy had run out of breath then, looking expectantly at Mr. Williams. “Is it still okay with you?”

  Rennie had looked at Percy, knowing he would do the Christian thing. And of course he had. As for her, if Jimmy Mack had asked her to do it, she would have anyhow. So on Monday Ted Mendelsohn had arrived with Jimmy Mack, and Percy had told him, “You are very welcome in this house.” And Rennie had said, “You can share our granddaughter Sharon’s room, Mr. Mendelsohn. She don’t take much space.”

  “Mr. Mendelsohn is my father, Mrs. Williams. Please call me Ted.” And it was done. “’Course Percy still calls him Mr. Mendelsohn and he calls Percy Mr. Williams,” she told Jimmy later. But from the get-go, he was Ted to her and she was Rennie to him. She couldn’t help laughing, watching Sharon. The way that baby was carrying on with that white man! Ted Mendelsohn never did seem strange to Sharon.

  By Friday morning the rest of the summer volunteers for Shiloh were arriving, so Ted rose early, eager to move outside to get the feel of the neighbors about their coming. Rennie was outspoken and scornful of the two black teachers on the block. They had told her, “You shouldn’t let that Communist stay at your house.”

  “I tol’ them he’s just a vetrin like my Percy. He’s got kids. He ain’t no Communist. He’s a reporter.” And when the electric company had come around and told her if she didn’t get the Communist out of her house, they’d have to tote up her back bills and she wouldn’t like that, Rennie told them to go read their Bible and study up on charity. “They all just scared folks, Ted, and they ought to be ashamed!”

  Mendelsohn wondered how many others were like the teachers and the electric company. And how many Rennie Williamses there’d be to run interference for him. It was important to know because tonight was the first meeting at the Sojourner Chapel.

  From behind her cracked glasses, Rennie Williams watched the tall reporter gathering his notebooks and camera, gulping the coffee she had warmed on the little stove. She smiled at the spectacle as he moved across their tiny living room, his head bent because the ceiling was very close.

  “Hi, Sharon baby!” he called, and Rennie’s little granddaughter came running, laughing, clasping his legs in her chubby arms. Rennie grinned, shaking her head. She’d never thought the ceiling was low before. But so much was new in her thinking since the white man had arrived. Mendelsohn squatted, taking Sharon’s hand and then blowing on it to make her giggle. When he rose he paused at the screen door and called back to the kitchen. “I’ll pick up the corn meal and hamburger meat, Rennie. I’m going cross-town near the grocery. See you later.”

  “Thank you, Ted.” She watched him back the Chevy off the lawn and across the drainage ditch. Ted. The first white person who’d ever been in her house in 51 years. Ted. She couldn’t help smiling, it was just too strange. Nice looking man, too. Dark, curly hair, but losing some. A little gray at the temples. She took the coffee cup and washed it under the one water faucet in the small kitchen. Better feed the family early tonight. Jimmy said the meeting would start at seven.

  Right after supper Ted Mendelsohn headed for the Sojourner Chapel. Mr. Williams, Rennie, and Sharon would follow as soon as Sharon was fed and changed. Panting in the heavy damp of the late afternoon, he approached the chapel. It appeared nearly deserted. Only a gaggle of neighborhood kids playing on the baked clay out front, their shouts and cries mixing with the music of a single piano and the muffled sound of singing from inside. Mendelsohn paused, checking his notebook. Jimmy had said seven o’clock. Looking down the dirt road he saw several volunteers ambling toward the chapel, but hardly any blacks. Puzzled, he climbed the stairs and entered.

  In the back of the room an elderly woman bent intently over an upright, out of tune, piano, playing and singing softly with two women companions, “Precious Lord, lead me on.” Mendelsohn scanned the rows of empty benches that added to the melancholy of the unadorned chapel. The only color in the room was the faded lettering of a Sunday school poster and an American flag that hung limply in the oppressive heat on the wall behind the podium. He sat down on a bench near the entrance, listening to the thrum of the ancient piano and the gentle singing of the three old women. Outside the two windows behind the lectern, the brilliance of the afternoon glare dimmed, turning first to rose, then to lavender. Mendelsohn’s eyes grew heavy. When the music stopped, he stirred and sat erect. The sky beyond the windows was turning to coal as the day expired. One of the women moved through the darkening room and switched on the naked bulbs in the ceiling. Surprised to see Mendelsohn, she nodded and murmured, “Good evening, suh.” She paused, then stepped closer. “Can ah help you?”

  “No, thanks, I’m just waiting for the meeting to start. I was enjoying hearing you sing.”

  She glanced at the window and nodded. “The meeting should be starting soon. Trucks from the fields came back about a half hour ago.”

  When Mendelsohn stepped outside, Jimmy Mack was at the bottom of the steps, greeting the men and women of Shiloh who were filtering back f
rom the fields or from the small houses down the dusky dirt roads. Jimmy had passed the word, summoning them to come to meet the volunteers who had just arrived, and they looked curiously at the group of northerners who waited just beyond the steps. Young! How young the volunteers looked! Some younger even than Jimmy.

  “You know what you’re doin’, Mack?” a man asked, pausing at the door. “Look like some of ’em ain’t even shaved yet.”

  Jimmy laughed. “They didn’t come all the way to Shiloh to shave, Munroe. They’re here to work.”

  “Well, I ain’t seen this many whites this side of the highway since there was a raid on Huey Johnson’s still back in ’58. And these kids look like they not old enough to drink!”

  Jimmy grinned. “Huey’s still is long gone, Munroe. Naw, they’re here to work, and we got a whole lot of work to do.”

  Mendelsohn lingered at the chapel door after Jimmy and the volunteers had moved inside and down the narrow aisle, standing tentatively on either side of the platform. He noted that the older women, chatty and smiling, most at home in the chapel, had moved confidently to the front benches, stirring the heavy air with their funeral parlor fans. Behind them were most of the young women and girls, many in bright summer cottons, giggling and whispering as they stole glances at the boys who lingered restlessly at the entrance, not yet deciding to settle in. When Mr. Williams led his family into Sojourner Chapel the elderly men at the rear obligingly made room for the deacon.

  Like the rest of the old men, Percy craned his neck to see the volunteers. “They’re Davids, come to slay Goliath,” Rennie had said to Percy on their walk to the church, but Mr. Williams frowned when he looked at the young whites, noting that only Mack and Dale Billings were Negroes. He’d never before seen whites in Sojourner Chapel. When the door closed behind him, Mendelsohn estimated there were perhaps 150 souls in the uncomfortably warm room.

  The wide-eyed volunteers stood awkwardly, scanning the faces of these strangers they realized they must get to know. But . . . all these women? All these kids? Jesus! What do they think we can do? Where are the men? There was a hush of expectancy as Jimmy stepped to the podium. With a loud slap of his hands he sang out in his husky voice: “Go tell it on the mountain . . . ”

  Startled, the crowd quickly responded: “Over the hills and everywhere!”

  And now the clapping and singing soared as Jimmy brought the volunteers on to the platform with him, confidently exhorting the crowd: “Go tell it on the mountain . . . ”

  Mendelsohn’s eyes misted, caught up with the wonder of this moment as every voice began to join in a sweet commonality not hinted at only minutes before. Here, in this wretchedly needy church, weary heads lifted and unbelieving eyes were shining. Filling the place with a joyous noise were the poorest of the poor and America’s most favored children, smiling at each other and shouting out, “To let my people go!”

  Mendelsohn watched Jimmy Mack, who seemed to throb with aspiration and optimism, believing in himself, but even more believing in all of them, making them braver.

  “These folks on the platform with me,” he cried out, “have left their own families to come to Shiloh because they think we are being cheated down here! They know, like you know, that we are being kept from registering to vote because Mr. Charley wants it that way!”

  “Oh, yes!”

  “And Mr. Charley’s going to try to put us down whenever we stand up and say out loud, ‘We want to have what other Americans have!’”

  “That’s right! Preach, son!”

  “Well Mr. Charley’s gonna have to stop all of these volunteers standing here when you go up the stairs at the courthouse to try to register because they’re going to be right with you. And then the whole country will know about it!” He paused, searching the audience until he spotted Mendelsohn and waved him forward. Making his way up the aisle to the platform, Mendelsohn saw a look of pride in Rennie Williams as she held up Sharon to see.

  Jimmy said, “This is Ted Mendelsohn, and you’re gonna see a lot of him this summer. He’s a reporter from Washington and he’s here to tell the truth about Shiloh and the Delta, and what’s happening to brave folks like you that want to change things!”

  By meeting’s end, each of the volunteers had been introduced to Shiloh, and the excited chatter of a new beginning seemed to follow them all as they began cascading out into the darkness.

  The only light visible was across the highway at the Kilbrew gas station and Mendelsohn could see three men, silhouetted in the open door of the office, watching them exit Sojourner Chapel. Two cars idled at the entrance of the Kilbrew garage. Rennie Williams came down the chapel steps, carefully cradling Sharon, who was asleep in her arms. Mr. Williams followed behind. His head nodding, he stopped in front of Ted, meeting his eyes directly. “That was something I never saw before.” His voice was gentle but firm. “I’m seventy-one, Mr. Mendelsohn.”

  The two idling cars suddenly raced their motors, wheeling to hurtle into the neighborhood. Screaming curses, the men in the cars hurled empty beer bottles at the lighted target of the open church door. Bottles crashed against the doorjamb, showering glass on the scattering crowd as Mr. Williams pushed Rennie and the baby to the safety of the darkened road. Ted saw them disappear behind a neighboring house. The summer volunteers froze at the door.

  Jimmy yelled to Hollis Watkins, “Kill the lights!” Mendelsohn thought, There’s a smart kid, good reflexes he learned in Korea. In the sudden darkness they watched the tail-lights of the two cars disappear down the rutted road. Johnny Buckley led a weeping child and her terrified mother across the shattered glass to the sheltering darkness beyond the road, then trotted back to the wide-eyed volunteers, who made a ring around Jimmy. “Who, Jimmy? Rednecks? Klan?” The questions hung in the dark.

  “Rednecks? The Klan? Don’t matter,” Jimmy said sharply. “Get home and keep your lights off. Try and get some sleep. After canvassing during the day tomorrow, we’ll meet at the chapel at eight, tomorrow night.” With no further word, the students fled down the road but Mendelsohn could hear Dale Billings’s voice, ripe with contempt, “Missafuckingsippi!”

  From the shadow of the chapel, Jimmy Mack and Mendelsohn watched the two cars barrel back onto the highway, tires squealing as they swung into the gas station. Hooting and gesturing at the darkened chapel, the boisterous men disappeared into the office. A moment later the outside lights of the Kilbrew station were turned off. Only the pale light of the office window was visible.

  Jimmy and Ted walked together, hugging the side of the road, half-waiting for another run by the cars from the Kilbrew station. When they reached the Williams house, Jimmy Mack touched Ted’s arm in the dark. “They’re coming back, but not tonight. Those bottles were just meant to let us know they’re watching.” He heard Mack’s low chuckle. “Why don’t you go meet the mayor tomorrow?” he suggested. “Let him know you’re here, writing it all down. Let him know we’re watching.” His laugh was so surprisingly boyish, it startled Mendelsohn. It was easy to forget how young the always composed Jimmy Mack really was. “Time he welcomed you to Shiloh, Mississippi, Ted. Southern hospitality.”

  Chapter Four

  When he left Mr.Williams’s house it was barely nine o’clock in the morning, yet the yellow Chevy already felt like an oven. Little Sharon was pushing on the screen door, waving as though he was leaving her forever. Rolling down the dusty window, Ted waved back. “See you later, baby!”

  Easing past the deserted Sojourner Chapel, he squinted through the shimmering heat at the Kilbrew station across the highway. Nothing seemed to move in the breathless air. The dusty town square was nearly deserted as he parked next to a lonely pay telephone outside the feed store, where he called the office of Mayor Burroughs. The secretary said that the mayor was not yet in, but she would take the information and make sure to tell him that Mr. Mendelsohn, a reporter from Newsweek, wanted to meet him and would come to his office at 11:00.

  The damp heat seemed to smother the
town. When he got back in the overheated car, he eased out from the curb, and drove slowly around the square. Life in Shiloh appeared listless, its existence justified by the few stores and services it offered to the great plantations that stretched regally from horizon to horizon. Guarding one end of the square, the Tildon Bank threw its shadow, offering a brief blessing of shade to the black men who were now carrying bales from the Brion Brothers’ feed store to waiting trucks, and to the few housewives making their way on the steamy sidewalk to the small Stop and Save grocery. Mendelsohn stared at the small, well-appointed bank building, the launch pad for the political behemoth of Senator Sterling Tildon. On the opposite end of Shiloh’s melancholy downtown, a three-story tan building, the Shiloh Arms, stood rooted. Once the finest Delta hotel to be found by the drummers who came to do business with the great plantations, it was now shuttered, a plaintive echo of a more prosperous time in the ’20s. On the parched town green, just beyond the gaunt, pigeon-stained statue of a Confederate soldier, the town constable coaxed a police dog from the police pickup truck, trying to exercise the reluctant animal in the sweltering air. East of the square were the comfortable, ample homes of the merchants and managers of Shiloh. With large, shaded porches nestling under great maples and elms, the neighborhoods were an oasis of cool green that ended abruptly at Highway 49.

  On the other side of the highway was the Sanctified Quarter, home of the Negroes of Shiloh, where Percy and Rennie Williams lived. Ted had learned about the Sanctified Quarter before he ever came to the Delta. But now it was here before him, a visible history that was as exotic to him as it was tragic.

  When the out-gunned and exhausted Confederate troops had been forced to flee south from the Delta, they left behind a smoldering land of burning buildings, thousands of abandoned fields with rotting cotton, and a hungry, bewildered, and rootless population of slaves. So when the pursuing Union troops swept through the cotton hamlet of Shiloh, they left behind a small garrison to secure the vital Delta crossroad and offer protection to the thousands who were newly free.