“Willy, these last years have been like a nightmare to me. You know that. Now I want to get back to where we were before everything went to hell.” His eyes were pleading. “Willy, I want what we had. I want to be what we were.”
“Don’t do this, Luke. Don’t push me back. I’m forty-three and I’ve paid a lot being the Claybourne woman in Shiloh. But when I go to Parchman, I’m not being Lady Bountiful. I’m being me. I work with these women because they’re people I care about, women who’ve never been treated with the respect they deserve. At least now they know that someone cares whether they live or die. They know that I care. They know they have a friend.”
“You’re not their friend! Are you so blind?” His voice snapped. “You’re a white woman who is married to a white businessman in Shiloh, Mississippi. What is the matter with you?”
“No. I’m not blind. There’s a world inside the Delta I’m just learning how to see.” She paused when the back door slammed, and they heard the boys racing up the stairs to their room. When she heard their door close, she settled on the edge of the couch. “And there’s a world outside the Delta, full of interesting people I’ve never met, and fascinating places I’ve never seen. Luke, I want to be part of it all. Wilson McIntire Claybourne is not about to be Miss Willy again. If you can’t see me for what . . . ”
He stared at her. “What?”
“I won’t stay here.” The words were naked.
“On this day of all days, you’re giving me an ultimatum?” His voice was incredulous. “For twenty years I’ve been getting nothing but goddam ultimatums! First the blacks, then the bank, then the damn prison, and now my own wife, who apparently loves the orphans of the world more than she loves me!” He thrust his thumb toward the door. “You’re going to bail out?” The words were nearly shouted and Willy’s gaze flicked to the ceiling where the boys were romping overhead.
“No. I want to be in, really in, not out. I want all of us to be in. All around us the world is changing, Luke. You have to be deaf not to hear it, blind not to see it. Whether it’s here in Mississippi or someplace out there for me is up to you.”
Luke’s rough hands covered his face .When he lifted his head, his reddened eyes looked steadily at Willy and his words were slow and deliberate. “There is a place for you, Willy. You’ve been in this family for more than twenty years. You should know it by now. Claybourne women have always known what was appropriate behavior. No Claybourne woman ever left her husband in my family. No Claybourne woman ever left her kids in my family. And no Claybourne woman ever will.”
“Ever is a long time, Lucas.” She moved to the bottom of the stairs and turned to look at him. “I just may have to go and find out what is appropriate for a Claybourne woman. Damned if I know. I may just have to go back to New Orleans and look for Willy McIntire.”
Chapter Fifty-Four
The last driver had pulled into the parking area and logged out, and for the first time since early morning the yard was silent enough for Jimmy to hear the angelus carillon from St. James over in town. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound. He wondered if Eula was hearing it. Her favorite. He eased back in his chair, feet on the desk, eyes drifting to the construction schedules on the wall. He smiled, counting the completions, humming with the old spiritual. . . . Was blind, but now I see.
A tapping on his office door roused him and he glanced at his watch. Almost six. Who the hell could it be? The shadow on the frosted glass was large. The tapping grew louder. Annoyed, he swung his feet off the desk and crossed to the door, grabbing his jacket from the hook as he went.
Luke Claybourne’s face was in shadow against the late afternoon glare. “You have a few minutes, Mack? I hoped I’d catch you before you locked up. Is this a bad time?”
“No. Come on in. I have a few minutes.” He watched Lucas cross to the chair and then took his own seat behind the desk. “I’m meeting an old friend of yours for a drink at the Shiloh Club at seven,” he said, suppressing a smile as Claybourne’s questioning eyes widened. “Ted Mendelsohn’s in town.”
Luke shrugged. “Yeah, I heard that. I’m not sure I’d call Mendelsohn an old friend, but he did spend time at the plantation in the sixties. Not a bad fellow, if misguided.” He shifted in his chair. “The word around town is that he’s down here to talk to you about politics. Is that so?”
Jimmy was clearly annoyed. “That’s of interest to you?”
“I found that troubling.”
“You found that troubling.” Jimmy stared at the man. “Jesus Christ! Should I be honored to hear what you have to say about my political discussions with my old friend?”
Angry now, Luke leaned toward the desk. “No need for that tone, Mack. I came here to share some information I thought might be important to one of Shiloh’s new, successful contractors.” He started to rise from his chair. “But maybe I’m wasting your time.”
“Why don’t you just say what you came here to say, Claybourne? I’m really flattered by the attention of the new president of the Shiloh Chamber of Commerce. After all, Claybournes have been pillars of this town for a hundred years.” His dislike for Claybourne could not be throttled. “Hell, your daddy and Eula’s mama were such good friends you and I could almost been kin!”
“You’ve got a dirty mouth, boy.” Luke’s fingers tightened on the arms of his chair. “Bein’ the newest member of the Chamber doesn’t give you the right to talk that way.”
“Hardly know my place anymore, Claybourne? I sure wouldn’t have been voted onto the old White Citizens’ Council like you were.” Jimmy leaned forward on his desk, noting an unwelcome tremor in his hand. He cleared his throat. “Before you leave, why don’t you enlighten this poor old darkie about why you crossed the highway to see me?”
Luke remained silent. When he finally spoke, his words echoed in the quiet office. “I got a call from Senator Tildon’s office about your contract with HUD.” He nodded to the completion charts on the wall. “The senator’s aide said there seems to be a problem about the allocation of the funds for the Shiloh housing. As president of the Shiloh Chamber, I found that troubling. Some influential members of the House seem to think a man who was once on the FBI list as a known radical ought not to be getting rewarded for his Red activities.” He paused, watching Jimmy closely. “Tildon says he’s trying to sort it out, Mack.”
“Well, well, well.” Jimmy’s eyes met Luke’s. “Tryin’ to sort it out.”
“My caller said the senator was going to call his old friend J. Edgar Hoover and clear the brush away, straighten out any misunderstanding.”
“And what do you guess the senator’d like me to do to help him ‘sort it out’?”
Lucas nodded. “I thought you might be interested.” He stood up and moved toward the door, pausing at the threshold. “Young Timmy Kilbrew is announcing he’s putting his hat in the ring for Congressional representative from Magnolia County.”
Jimmy Mack nodded. “So that’s it.” He leaned back in his chair, half smiling at Claybourne. “I remember Timmy Kilbrew when he came to the Freedom House in ’64, wanting to find out what we were doing. He was one of the few whites from Shiloh who had the guts to come and ask. And I remember his cousin, Bobby Joe Kilbrew. I’m sure you remember him, too, Claybourne. He served time for the conspiracy to kill Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney. Yeah, I remember the Kilbrews.”
Claybourne flushed. “There are black sheep in every flock. But the Kilbrews are an old family down here, Mack, and they’ve been good for the senator’s long political career. I’m sure you can understand that Sterling’d like to help Oscar Kilbrew’s young nephew.”
Jimmy followed him out into the sunshine and locked his office door. “So having a strong, successful black businessman running for the same seat would be . . . ”
“Foolish.” Luke said.
“Inconvenient?”
“Counter-productive.” Luke paused as he reached his car. “It would likely make it difficult for the senator to sort out the d
ifficulties with your funding. And that would be bad for the Magnolia County housing and—”
“And for the J. Mack Construction Company.” Jimmy shook his head and grinned at Claybourne. “Not like the old days is it, Lucas? Can I call you Lucas? Back when I was organizing on Tildon’s plantation, the senator would have told Timmy Kilbrew’s daddy at the Klan what was necessary and that would be that. Now we got all this foolishness like elections.”
Luke said quietly, “Yes, we do. But it doesn’t have to be foolish.”
Jimmy chuckled. “Never did. I always wondered what all the fussin’ was about.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
For Willy, Dick Perkins had been the escape from the web of Mississippi constriction she had always longed for—a prince out of the west, knowing in the way that the men at the Shiloh Club were not, amused to share his outside world with an ardent and captivating listener. Perkins had been a sent-from-heaven Baedeker for Wilson Claybourne, who longed to know the things he knew. Tell me about New York. And tell me about the theater, and tell me about skiing at Aspen, about chamber music at Telluride, about riding in the Rockies, and did you really know Duke Ellington? Tell me about the Savoy Ballroom! For Willy, Perkins’s presence at any time in any setting had always been felt, acknowledged only in her most private musings, when she was most alone and the dream of outside seemed almost in touch. Not once had she cheated on Luke. Not yet. But if she ever really ventured outside, she knew the hand that would reach for hers would be the hand of Dick Perkins.
Willy’s telegram had made him laugh. He could almost see her as she’d gone to the high counter at Western Union. “Hi, Vera darling,” she would’ve said. “Be an angel and send this right out. Got a Prince Charming waitin’ to get it!” And Vera would have gone to the key to send it, grinning. “That Willy Claybourne is a caution!”
From the beginning, for Perkins it had been a dance without words, a meeting not quite a meeting, a flirtation without real consequence. By nature he was a reticent suitor, and any amorous longings since Helen’s death had remained unspoken, unacknowledged, and unfulfilled. It wasn’t guilt. Who was he cheating? He had married young, and was untutored in the cotillion of bachelorhood. Sex outside of the comfortable marital frame he’d known and enjoyed was simply behavior outside of his experience. Yet the attraction to Willy Claybourne was real, seeding thoughts about his friend’s wife that he could control but not suppress. He’d known it to be so from that first brush with Willy at the Shiloh Club, from the first dance at Fatback’s Platter, a full decade gone. He knew his role to be “the good friend of the Claybournes,” the man made welcome to the gentried insularity of the affluent Delta world by their inclusive generosity. He was the available companion for the single women at the Claybourne dinner parties, the seasoned traveler who could show them Acapulco, the buddy who would hunt quail with Luke, the outsider who had come and profited with them from the largesse of the Delta. So how could he long so for Luke’s wife? For ten years the dance had continued, the flirtation without real consequence. And now there was this telegram:
Dear Prince Charming:
This hapless damsel is in great distress. If you still love me, please rescue. Can I come to your castle?
The Cotton Queen of Magnolia County.
The cotillion was over.
He watched her step from the cab, her blond hair floating in the breeze that moved across the lawn from the Gulf. When she stepped back to look at the casino, she spotted him on the balcony and grinned. “Hey, Prince, can a poor white girl come into the kingdom?”
“What’s a poor white girl doing at a gambling casino? I think I’ve got to check your credit rating. I’ll be right down.” He smiled and waved her toward the front door.
Perkins took her bag and embraced her. “I’m so glad to see you, Willy.” He stepped back and gazed at her. “You look terrific.”
She smiled. “You always make me think I look terrific. Maybe that’s what friends are for.”
He answered her smile with his own. “From what I read in the telegram, it was more than friends. If you still love me, can I come to your castle? The answer is yes.” He took her in his arms, and for the first time he kissed her.
When he’d led her to the terrace, she moved to the rail overlooking the Gulf, watching the slow caravan of shrimp boats returning to the wharves beyond the grove of palmettos. “Lordy, lordy. You live with this all the time? It’s almost heathen it’s so beautiful.”
“It’s never looked more beautiful to me than just this minute.” When she turned to face him, he repeated quietly, “Never.”
Willy moved from the rail and settled on the edge of the brightly striped chaise. “I’ve never had to play games with you, Dick. You’ve known all my secrets from the day you arrived from Colorado. You knew I loved you from way back. I guess I always will. But the friendship part is the most special of all. You know I’ve loved Luke, and you know he’s loved me. But he’s not been ready to be the good friend I need. You’ve been that from the get-go.”
“I wanted to be, Willy, from the time I first met you. And we did become wonderful friends. I knew you loved Luke. In a lot of ways, I did, too. It’s why I never thought of moving between you. But that was then, Willy. You’re here now because you decided to come.”
She looked at the glinting water that was making smudges of the shrimpers as they moved across the setting sun. “It’s more lovely than I ever dreamed. Willy McIntire is a long way from home.”
“And now?”
“Now it’s hard to picture Shiloh, and, looking at you, it’s hard to picture Luke. And now I don’t know what to do.”
“Times change, life changes.” He gently raised her face. “We have to change with it.”
She nodded. “It’s all about change, isn’t it? You manage it so wonderfully well.” She rose and walked thoughtfully to the far edge of the patio, watching the last boat as it disappeared behind the trees. She turned and leaned back against the railing, “I struggle and struggle with it. And Luke, dear Luke, is just bewildered by it and hangs on to what used to be certain.”
Perkins said, “He’s like you, born and raised Mississippi White, Willy. Change is hard, real hard. It’s tough biting the bullet if you’re a Luke Claybourne. And he’s had a lot of bullets to bite these last years.”
“I know that. I came out of that soil, and growin’ up was slow and hard. And there wasn’t much change possible for me for a long time. Not till somebody noticed and said, ‘You’re pretty, Willy McIntire.’” Her laugh was tight and brittle. “Pretty! Let me tell you, Prince, pretty in Mississippi can take you a very long way. It can take you from choppin’ cotton for shares at the Stennis plantation to sellin’ cotton at the Claybourne plantation. And then you discover you are forty-three and that you can see in a way that you never could before, and pretty isn’t enough.”
He reached for her now and held her very close. “What is enough, Willy?”
Wrapped in his arms, her voice was muffled. “That’s what I came to find out.”
She followed him as he carried her bag to his apartment. When she hesitated at the door, he grinned. “This is my room, the one with the etchings. Yours is through that connecting door.” She entered a room filled with sun and the sound of lapping water. A large bowl of hyacinths on the bed stand scented the salt breeze that ruffled the curtains. She sat on the edge of the bed and breathed deeply. “Not a lot of incentive to ever leave this room, Prince.”
He chuckled. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
For three days, Willy navigated the world of Richard’s Rook. Perkins kept her at his side at every meeting as the opening of the Rook got nearer. “Meet my dear friend, Wilson,” he’d say to the decorators, the architect, the advertising committee, the sound engineer, the lighting expert. “Are you enjoying Gulfport?” they’d ask. “The Rook is going to be something special down here, don’t you think? Gonna be like Café Society Downtown in New York! Richard’s got great taste.”
And they’d look at her admiringly and smile. Perkins would beam. For Willy, it felt like being back at the Club in Shiloh, when Luke was introducing her as “my bride, the Cotton Queen.”
The days were a welter of blueprints and schedules, paint samples and frantic phone calls. When is Nefertiti arriving? How do I reach her? And how do I handle the billing? And is the apartment across the hall ready for her? Perkins was racing, dashing from crisis to crisis, insisting on results. Willy was increasingly aware that he hardly looked back. He assumed she was following in the wake of these events in his exciting new life. The evenings were a lot better. Perkins was once again the sympathetic friend who had listened and counseled Willy for a decade. What was different now was that Perkins was an advocate, rather than an intermediary in the Claybourne household. He yearned for the intimacy with Willy that he had so long envisioned. “I love being with the most adorable woman I know. I even love having everyone envying me for having you with me. I love you, Willy.”
She placed her hand on his, moved by the simple words. “And you know I love you.” Her voice was hushed and her eyes sought his. “But I’m a clueless woman in my forties, Dick, with two children, a jealous husband, and a career working with desperate, nearly defeated women in a Mississippi prison.” Her hand moved to touch his face. “So what am I doing here with you?”
“Being Willy. Being the most adorable woman I know.”
That night she moved into his room. Over coffee the next morning she asked the question again. “So what am I doing here with you?”
Nobody Said Amen Page 29