by Terry Kay
He smiled smugly. “You’re right. Pisses me off that it was you and not me. You don’t deserve it. I do. And I’d know how to handle it. I’d be out there on campus right now, raising hell about Upton’s closed-door policy. I’d be on national television. But you, you just sit around with your thumb up your ass. And that’s why I’m here, to tell you what to do.”
“That’s a comfort,” I said cynically. “I was getting worried, but not now, not with Jack-the-Quack around.”
“You love me and you know it,” he said.
“If you stay here, you’ve got to keep the place clean,” I said.
He laughed. “Yeah, sure. You just sit back and relax. And quit talking to people. Let me handle it. The next couple of days, they’ll be hanging from the rafters around here, and you’re bound to do something so dumb they’ll be writing operas about it. But I’m here, boy. I’ll tell them I’m Cole Bishop. They won’t know the difference.” He flicked ashes on the back of the sofa. “You going to work today?”
“No,” I answered. “They called me, told me to take the day off.”
He cocked his head toward me, took a draw from his cigarette and rolled a smoke ring above his head. “You know what that means, don’t you?”
“I guess they thought I wouldn’t have my mind on things,” I said.
“Of course, that’s it,” he replied cynically. “Concern in the work place.” He gazed sadly at me. “You stupid shit. The reason they don’t want you down there is because they don’t want to admit you even exist. That ridiculous rag is one of the great jokes of our time, Cole. Do you think there’s going to be a single word in that paper about you working for them? Not one, Cole. Not one. Right now they’re in one of those high-level editorial meetings, tossing your name around like it’s a lit stick of dynamite with a short fuse.”
“What makes you think that?” I asked.
He smiled arrogantly. “Did anybody ask you to write a first-person piece?”
“I’m not a writer,” I argued. “I’m a copy editor.”
“Cole, Cole,” he said painfully. “They should have sent a limousine out to pick you up. They should have given you a typewriter with gold keys. They should have hired a naked copy girl who looks like Sophia Loren to massage your shoulders while you were writing. My God, man, they’ve got the chance to have the story of stories, and they’re passing on it. Why? Because they’re scared to death of it. The only way they’re ever going to cover anything remotely dealing with civil rights is if the whole damn city burns, and even then it’ll be handled as a memorandum from the fire department.”
“Come on, Jack,” I grumbled. “They’re not that bad.”
“Yes, they are, Cole.”
“Well, I can’t help it,” I said.
He smothered his cigarette in an ashtray that he pulled from his coat pocket. “I know.” He looked up at me. “You all right, Brer Rabbit?”
“I’m all right, Jack.”
“That’s a feeling that ain’t gonna last long, my friend. Believe me.”
It was after eleven when he paused in the writing and made a save of it. His legs were sore from balancing the laptop, his wrists ached. Scrolling back over what he had written, he was astonished by the number of words. They had jumped from his fingers in such a fever of memory, he wondered if it was a trick, wondered if the fever was physical, if the sickness was making a return. He stood and stretched, noticed the fire had been reduced to embers, but decided to leave it.
In his kitchen, he made a cup of hot tea, then took it, and his laptop, to his office. From his desk, he removed an album of photographs taken during his years at Upton and found a picture of Jack and Wade, both stripped to their waist, both posing as muscle-builders, both laughing like hyenas. He could not remember the occasion of the pose—an impromptu party, he guessed—but the occasion did not matter. Frozen in the expression was youth and exhuberance.
He replaced the album, opened the drawer containing Marie’s letters, fingered one from its lodging and opened it and read:
Cole,
I write with sadness in my soul.
My father died last week. Ironically, I was at home on a visit, the first I’ve taken with my parents in three years. He was standing in the doorway, about to go outside to give my car one of his fatherly inspections. His body folded and he fell. It was like watching the implosion of a large, magnificent building being razed for some God-awful new thing. And, metaphorically, that is what happened. Some hidden charge of dynamite with the slow-burning fuse of age ignited and exploded in his heart. I tried to save him. I did everything I knew, but nothing worked.
I never talked about loving him, did I?
But I did, Cole. I loved him beyond the words I might have used to describe it, regardless of how sweet they would have sounded.
Do you remember when I wore his dress shirts to school (and on our first so-called date)? It wasn’t a rebellious fashion statement. It was because I was so frightened of being where I was that I needed him with me. And here’s a confession: the shirts I wore were never clean. They were always taken from the clothes hamper on the day after he had worn them. When I left Overton for Boston, I took two of his unwashed shirts with me. I never wore them, but I often went to my closet and touched them.
Is it strange to believe a person’s presence stays in, or on, the clothing they wear?
My mother is at the point of collapse, and I am worried about her. I had no idea she was as devoted to my father as she was, and I do not mean that in a callous way. I knew she loved him. I simply did not know he was the core of her life. Watching her is like watching a one-legged amputee trying to stand for long periods of time. They can’t do it, Cole. Not for long. They need the missing leg for balance, for strength. I want her to move to Columbus to be with me, but she refuses to talk about it. She will not desert the town where his body is buried.
Is there a prosthesis for the soul, Cole?
My mother needs one.
As do I.
Will you try to make one for each of us? Will you go to your workshop of words and take your alphabet tools and fashion something for us?
We have not exchanged photographs so you have no way of knowing my appearance, so I want you to remember me as you last saw me—the shape of my face, the color of my eyes, the length of my hair—and I want you to picture me sitting at my father’s desk as I am writing this.
Do you have that image, Cole?
Can you see what I am wearing?
His shirt. The shirt he was wearing when he fell like a magnificent building from an exploding heart.
You are much in my thoughts. I would like to hold you tonight. No, I would like for you to hold me.
He folded the letter and slipped it back into its envelope and wiggled it into its proper place among the other letters.
He had written a letter of condolence, saying kind words about her father, and he had offered to drive to Columbus to visit her. In his letter, he had said, Please say yes.
She had not replied.
FIFTEEN
He was writing again by nine o’clock, having slept soundly and having taken a breakfast of cheese toast and hot tea. To his surprise, he was eagerly alert and he believed it was because he was still in pursuit of his memories. The thought of it caused him to remember Toby’s love of hunting. It did not matter how hard he had worked on the farm, if a hunt was promised, Toby became jittery with energy.
There was much to compare between a hunt for memories and a hunt for fox.
He wrote:
December 27, morning
I am beginning this with some dread, for it brings me closer to what I believe is the most painful experience of my living, other than the deaths of my parents and my brother.
The killing of Etta Hemsley on a bright April day in 1962, was a story that bellowed across the country, another blood-soaked straw heaped brutally upon the fragile back of the camel disguised as civil rights.
The story, written by Al
Cahill, a crime beat reporter for the Atlanta Chronicle, confirmed that a man named Walter Beasley had been arrested for the murder of Etta Hemsley on the campus of Upton University.
It was a story carefully crafted, lean with facts. The only people quoted were the policemen at the scene. The word allegedly was used seven times. My name was not mentioned by Al Cahill.
Dempsey Rhodes’s sidebar, printed on the third page, was more thoughtful and heavy with sorrow. Dempsey did use my name, yet, as Jack had predicted, he did not acknowledge that I was a part-time employee of the Chronicle. Dempsey praised Etta Hemsley as a child of change and referred to me as an Upton University student—one of the curious, passive millions who could no longer dodge the blood that was being spilled in the nation’s tragic war over equality.
But it was not the stories that made people gasp: it was the photograph Ernie O’Connor had taken from one knee—the open-mouth shock of death frozen on the face of a black girl, blood from her ripped-open neck painting the bewildered face of a white boy. One thick drop, with a comet’s tail, was caught dripping from my chin.
The photograph was printed in a five-column shriek across the front page, beneath a banner headline that read:
Girl Killed in Campus Protest
The caption line under the photograph read:
Demonstration at Upton University Ends in Tragedy
Etta Hemsley, a 21-year-old black girl, lies dying in the arms of Upton University student Cole Bishop after a shooting incident during a campus demonstration. Police at the scene arrested Walter Beasley, an automobile mechanic from Clarkston, GA, and charged him with first-degree murder. The incident occurred during a confrontation with university officials over Upton’s admission policies.
Compared to Ernie O’Connor’s photograph, the stories meant nothing. It was a startling portrait of a savage moment. Before the end of the day, it would appear in newspapers on every continent, and languages I could not read would report indignantly of the new, unending Civil War in America. Over time, the image would become known simply as The Photograph, deserving the capitalizations.
“My God,” Jack said in astonishment as he stared at the picture of me holding Etta Hemsley. “It’s worse than I thought. I didn’t know there was a picture. You’ll never shake this, Cole. Never. And I can’t help. I thought I could, but I can’t. This is going from bad to worse.”
Jack was right.
The call came before my first class the following day. It was from Hoagie Carpenter, managing editor of the Chronicle. Jack reluctantly handed the phone to me.
“Don’t take any shit,” he mouthed.
I waved off the warning. “Yes sir,” I said into the receiver.
“When can you come in today?” Hoagie asked gruffly.
“Two, I guess,” I told him. “My last class is over at one. What’s up?”
“Crawford wants to see us,” Hoagie said.
Crawford was Ray Crawford, publisher of the Chronicle.
“Why?” I asked.
“I guess we’ll find out when we get there,” Hoagie told me. “Two o’clock. Be here.”
“Yes sir,” I said.
I remember that Ray Crawford’s office was on the third floor, left off the elevator, at the end of the corridor. The rest of the floor was occupied by the accounting department, where serious-faced men and women worked in funereal quietness. It was a place without energy, without laughter, without the newsroom yodel and jabber of people making stories out of the brew of rumor and fact. In the newsroom, wire machines and typewriters clattered against paper like finger castanets in a primitive street band—rhythm out of chaos. The world bobbed on a sea of words that had the power of typhoons. In comparison, the accounting department worked in the burping gurgle of swamp bogs.
As I stood outside the elevator with Hoagie Carpenter, I could hear the slow pecking of one typewriter coming from an office with the door opened. Someone coughed from another office, a single hack.
I remember saying to Hoagie, “Quiet, isn’t it?”
I remember Hoagie glaring at me. It was a look of disgust, a look of superiority. He began to stride down the corridor.
A woman I had never seen sat at a receptionist’s desk outside Ray Crawford’s office. She was pudgy, her hair the dry brown color of dead grass. She wore too much makeup.
“Go on in,” she said to Hoagie. “He’s waiting.” She did not look at me.
Hoagie nodded, sucked air deep into his lungs and walked into Ray Crawford’s office. I followed.
Ray Crawford sat behind a large mahogany desk in a high-back leather chair. He was heavy-set, with heavy jowls, heavy folds under his eyes balancing the curve of his wire-rimmed glasses. His combed-back hair had the look of buffed dark steel. His mouth was curled down at the corners. It was a cynical mouth, a cynical face. He did not speak. He nodded toward two leather chairs placed in front of his desk, but several feet from it. He then swiveled in his chair and leaned forward. His hand disappeared under the top drawer of the desk and paused a moment. I sensed he was pushing a button. Behind me, the door closed. I could hear a click locking it.
Ray Crawford wormed his shoulders into the back of his chair, touched his hands together in front of him, fingertips to fingertips. He sat, gazing hard at me. After a moment, he said, “You’re a trouble-maker, aren’t you?”
“Sir?” I said, surprised.
“Trouble-maker,” he repeated. “I think you understand me.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir.”
“I’m talking about that little photo-opportunity you got caught in.”
I looked at Hoagie. Hoagie’s eyes did not move from Ray Crawford. He did not speak and I knew he would say nothing to defend me.
“I assume you’re talking about the picture that ran yesterday,” I said. “I’ve explained that. It was a coincidence, that’s all. I just happened to be there.”
“It seems that everybody who joins one of those marches just happens to be there,” he shot back.
“I don’t know, sir,” I said quietly. “I’d never seen a protest until two days ago.”
“Unless I miss my guess, you’re going to tell me you don’t know the first damn thing about this paper’s stand on getting involved in demonstrations.”
“No sir,” I replied. “I’m just part-time.” It was not a lie.
Ray Crawford sneered. He tapped his fingers together. “This paper encourages staying away from them, unless you’ve been sent there to do a story.” He shifted his eyes to Hoagie. “I’ve been trying to get my managing editor to put that word out, but it’s apparent he didn’t get around to everybody.”
Hoagie dipped his head.
“I tell you what I’ve decided to do,” he continued. “I’ve decided to give you a little help for the rest of the school year.”
“Sir?” I said.
“I’m going to pay you, but you don’t have to come back to work,” he said.
“But—”
“I’m not finished,” he snapped. His face flushed red. He shifted in his chair, dropped his hands to the armrest. “You get paid for doing nothing. All you have to do is sign an agreement that you’ll not mention the name of this newspaper if, and when, you’re asked about any involvement you had in that mess out at Upton.”
I sat back, numbed. I thought about Jack Alewine, could hear Jack’s laughter.
“Well?” he said.
I swallowed hard. My mouth was dry. I could feel my heart pounding. “I, ah, I don’t know,” I whispered.
“It’s simple,” he continued. “You sign a paper, you get a check, and you can spend the rest of the quarter chasing women, or swallowing goldfish, or doing whatever the hell it is you guys do these days to amuse yourself.”
“I don’t know,” I said again.
“Listen, boy, have you got any earthly idea what you’re letting yourself in for?” he asked. He reached for a sheet of paper on his desk. “I’ve got your life’s story right her
e. You’re from a farm community in north Georgia. You’ve made it out this far, and from the grades you’ve been getting, it looks like you’re smart enough to make something out of yourself. They even tell me in the newsroom that you’re a damn good copy editor, that you might have a career in journalism if you want it. You sign this paper, finish your education, and in a couple of years, we’ll see what we’ve got for you. You keep going the way you’re going, and you won’t even be able to go back home for a Christmas visit.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
He spoke slowly, deliberately. “Boy, that little snapshot of you has been in every newspaper in the world that knows how to smear ink and start a press, or it will be before the week is out. I promise you, right now, back in that little one-horse town where you grew up, you’re being called everything from a turncoat to a queer to a nigger lover.”
I remember thinking of Marie Fitzpatrick and of the speech she had made on our day of graduation from Overton High School, warning us of changes that would overwhelm us. Like a tornado, she had said. And I remember the sudden surge of anger that flew through me. “No,” I said quickly.
“What?” Ray Crawford’s voice was a growl.
“I can’t do that,” I told him, and the voice I used surprised me. It was the voice Marie would have used—bold, direct, daring. “You can fire me, and I’m sure you will, but I can’t let you bribe me.”
He leaned back in his chair. His eyes burned into me. After a moment, he hissed to Hoagie, “Get him out of here. Cut his check up to the last day he worked.”
As I was leaving the building, I heard someone call my name. I turned to see Dempsey Rhodes pushing his way through a group of pressmen congregating in the lobby on their break.