Dreamboat Dad

by Alan Duff

  I told her of my Mississippi experiences. A day later she called me to come and look at some amazing poems written by Negroes, years back, one by a Richard Wright about a man coming upon the remains of a Negro who had been lynched and burnt. She read to me, sitting in her new man's library, of a man being tarred and feathered, and cooled mercifully . . . by a baptism of gasoline. Till it was set alight.

  Then I got a letter from Marion Williams, giving me the bad news: my father's capture. She enclosed pages from an American weekly magazine, a vivid write-up by a white man who saw what happened — a colour piece, the newsmen call it.

  Murder in Mississippi

  by Bradley J Heath

  The word would have hummed down the telephone wires, whizzed back and forth over his head. The wires, the wires would have sung with directions saying exactly where, which part of town it was and every gory detail of what had taken place. Excitement and gladness conveyed at near the speed of light—

  As fast as a murdered man's soul departs? Quicker than the forced, violent passing of an innocent life?

  Hanging from the cross bar of that same telephone pole, his body would not have brought to mind a black Jesus, nor suggest an injustice had been done, nor a genius or good man had been wrongly put to death. Those who gathered saw simply a corpse with human features; killed justly, they believed, because he took the lives of two good citizens, two fine men with a name for caring for their community, for looking after its morals and its virtuous white ways. Never dare mention, in the South, their ritual of wearing white robes and hoods with eye slits, of chanting hate-filled mantras mixed with God's name, like flavoring sprinkled on babyback pork ribs.

  He was just hanging there, clothes shredded from him, blood that had run down his legs caked by the drying wind, a prevailing wind from the south transporting dead leaves and clinging insects and other things powerless against its force, carrying smells and odors along its way.

  That wind swirled over his blood, blood that used to flow into his member when he was sexually aroused. The mob had cut off his offending manhood with a knife, severing penis and testicles clean away. They cut off his ears to deafen him, perhaps to his own screams — or the sounds of their evil deed.

  You'd think that 1965 should be more civilized than 1905. Back then, after a Negro lynching, the pastor of a church in this same town said: The failure of the authorities to maintain law and order made the lynching necessary for the infliction of justice.

  But a rope's a rope. This one was half-inch hemp, looped by deft hands to form a hangman's noose.

  They broke him out of jail against the lame protest of the sheriff they all knew, had all gone to school with; whose children played with their children. He sat in church the day after, no doubt, with some of those men who had taken the nigger's life. None would consider it murder.

  Are they so different from their forefathers fifty years ago? Words from another Southern sermon, uttered in those early years of our century: Last night a sifted band of men, sober, intelligent, of established good name and character — good American citizens — did this hamlet a powerful good. They did remove the life of an inferior member of the Negro race by God-ordained means of lynching.

  Today's victim swayed in keeping with a wind that would not let up. The smallest of movements to and fro was witnessed by the townsfolk, by those who had rushed from outlying hamlets and small towns, all connected by telephone and culture and outlook. Ordinary American citizens.

  From the telephone pole where the figure hung, the wires looped from pole to pole and ran alongside roads, as far the eye could see, to dwellings near and far, sending the news: something good took place last night. Keen eyes could see the dust trails of vehicles hurrying to the town, the occasional puffs of dust kicked up by horses carrying men of set mind and cruel ways.

  A crow landed and gazed for some time at the shape below, or at the mass of human shapes, more arriving like a stain spreading on good tarred Southern ground. It dropped on to the corpse's shoulder and started pecking at an eye. The crowd's exclamations and glad cries scared the crow away like a soul fleeing too late. People wondered if the bird got an eye, strained to see if an empty socket confirmed the theft.

  But the dark gash midway down the body took greater claim. They had shucked his manhood like whipping the insides out of an oyster.

  Someone cracked a joke about a de-sexed nigger being a tamer beast. Laughter like a vast broken cask spilling every drop of goodwill to all mankind.

  They did this —

  Bradley Heath wrote as though to me, Yank, personally

  — to someone's father, someone's son. To a fellow American.

  He went on:

  That day at the village circus, a Negro woman dared stumble across the railway tracks, howling, bringing gravel stones rolling down with her as she sagged at the knees, from imbalance or grief. She wore a dress of rough denim and the polka-dot scarf that niggers call a rag. Flauntin' the rag, they call it — in other circumstances, not on arriving at the aftermath of a murder.

  By natural courtesy, before they could consider her only a nigger, the crowd cleared a path, closing up again after her like a change of mind. A boy asked, face mischievous and foot raised, should he trip her? No, his elders said. No, you better not, kid. But they could have said yes just as easily. Besides, she'd not yet run the gauntlet.

  Maybe she was a freshly made widow, this woman vexed amid a crowd not her color, not her species: looking at her husband hanging up there like a sight not even the lowest can get used to. But already she looked too old to be his wife, or his lover. She looked more like a mother might. Except surely she'd be calling out, son! Son!

  Then she saw the unimaginable absence of loins. Oh, Lord, did she see the ugly wound. And she screamed, a sound from some place deeper than any present had ever heard.

  Jess had written me.

  My dear son . . . what a joy it was having you . . . what a brief time it was and yet momentous, in a way only a Negro would understand since we live that life daily, so many of us. Epic, even when we are most ordinary, dramatic, even in living life most mundane. Tragic, more often than joyful. I have never succumbed to indulging after I beat the demon drink. Yet tragedy would now appear to be happening to me. I have another term for it, however: standing tall.

  I have become infamous and yet there is no mention of you, other than I had an overseas visitor residing with me. None at Piney Woods is talking, not to the police, now out to take another of us down. Good old Marion, the preacher's wife, she's got them all sworn to silence on the subject of Jess and his boy. And two dead rednecks have no tale to tell.

  Nor do I have any regret, except that you were caught up in it. But now you are safe in a country that is blessed. Though I know the Maori people have some problems, they are minor in comparison.

  I had to threaten you to get on that bus, I'm sorry. Or you would be on the run with me. It is the strangest feeling to be wanted for murder when you served your country killing the enemy.

  Who are my enemies? This is the question I have asked and found answer for.

  An enemy is he who denies me my dignity and deprives me of my basic rights. Just as I would deserve to be so described should I act against others in an unjust manner. He is my enemy who judges me on the color of my skin and not, as Martin Luther King has said, the content of my character.

  The men who died that night are one and the same beast who might have killed us at the club, when those hoodlum niggers took dislike to your pale skin. Klan members or mixed up and fucked up niggers are one and the same. We should aim for higher things, always.

  But it is not the fight you were born to. You will have your own, more tempered fights but struggles for good just the same.

  Who knows how long before they catch up with me. I stay on the move, have grown a beard and look disheveled like I did when I was a drunk. You would not recognize me. No, perhaps you would. I like to think you would.

  I have no
money for you, only my deepest love. I thank you for coming into my life before circumstances would have it end, possibly, in the near future. Guess they'll string me up as an example to other niggers, another strange fruit hung from a tree.

  Will write again. But, if you don't hear from me, know my love for you is three centuries strong. Listen out for me singing for you, as if you are the baby I'm putting to sleep with gentle Negro lullaby.

  Your loving father, Pops.

  Marion wrote:

  Then started the sniggering, from a low note rising to a breathing and form of giggling only they would recognize of their own kind.

  I screamed: What have you done to him! How could you DO this?

  This is of your daddy hanging there, God bless his soul, God give him peace and suffering no more. The newsprint photographs I enclose with my apologies, Mark, but felt you must see them. Make yourself stare at them so you will know never to be such a person who would do this to another human being of whatever race or creed.

  Then I heard — and soon saw — a man about sixty, of age to know better and kinder, drawl in voice loud enough to gain a hundred or more in his coarse net: He won't be raping no white woman again.

  Again? Not your father, son. He'd never do such a thing to a woman. He respected women.

  A hundred and more chorused: He sure as hell won't. A murderer too. Killed two white men he did. Know I've met many a fine white Southerner. This is just a certain type all too prevalent down these parts.

  The other hundreds took it up as a resounding echo. Which got another whipped up, this time a woman. I spotted her on account she was tall and she stood out because the good Lord did not exactly bless her with good looks, far from it. Made ugly, I think, by her thoughts, her sick moral state.

  She said: I'm thinking . . . ! Then she bellowed: I'M THINKING, folks, that this here nigger woman would like to join him?

  This is me she is referring to. As in joining your poor daddy strung up there like curing meat.

  Up dere in heben!

  Using how my generation's parents used to pronounce words. Up dere in heben.

  Oh, Mark, it was like being in a cave echoing with their howls and low moans, those who murdered your daddy.

  Out of this pack a man toting a pistol like a short spear started forcing a way through to me the nigger woman stupid enough to turn up. They were making way for him, parting their own seas for him to walk through clear to me.

  The one with the gun got to me, ordinary Marion Williams in a state about a murdered Negro taken like that, and he pointed the thing at my head.

  Y'all wanna join him up dere in heben, nigger bitch?

  He was roaring in amusement at repeating that scorn, trying to elicit another outbreak of laughter, some kind of approval. But the mob had already tired of that one and they just stared. They went silent in the instant that gun barrel pressed cold upon my temple flesh.

  You his momma? the man asked.

  No, I answered. I am the preacher's wife, of his community, Piney Woods. I'm begging you to give a man his last piece of dignity — I beg you. He fought for this country, was wounded, endured years of war hardship, endured racial hatred just like this in the hope that, one day, black people would walk free — and you did that to him?

  It was accusation of, I knew, a deed already owned. Caught the crowd for a few seconds, they moved this way and that like the wind had picked up hard and shook them a little, moved them a fraction physically, not at all in their fixed minds.

  The gunman just pushed his weapon harder against my temple, his lips peeled back in some kind of grin.

  I told him: So you do it. Fire that bullet right into me.

  He said, I will if you don't depart from here.

  I am not leaving until this man is given his dignity, I told him, quite ready to join your father in heaven.

  Now this was daylight and cowards don't operate in that medium. They soon melted away. The gunman spit his departure in my face. I flinched not. Let his liquid run down my face.

  Soon other Negroes emerged, like always, out of the shadows to quietly cut down Jess's body, give him dignity in his last. Lord, my heart was broke in two, for I loved that boy, your father.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  I GUESS MEETING JESS CHANGED my view of Henry: made me realise how your birthplace, your culture, can make you.

  Henry's changed too: lives by a higher code of conduct these days. Since my mother left him we've talked, though we'll never be close; how, after all those years of his silence?

  He never mentions my mother, though I hear on the grapevine he accepts she was quite unlike the usual Waiwera village person and they were never suited. He's not the jealous type, not about Ralph's money at any rate. And as he can't see the changes in my mother he'll not know what a happier person she is. To my eyes she was always beautiful, but I swear living with Ralph has made her even more so.

  My sister Wiki intends to marry Chud one of these days. Chud is different — like the boy I grew up knowing so well, but now a man. Though I'm not sure he can overcome his parents, both still drunks, lately in poor health. Seems to me it's similar to being black in America: the odds are stacked against you. But who knows, if he tries hard enough, he might make it.

  Isobel and her husband have split up. She came and said goodbye, and we made love one last time, though it was not the same. She moved to Auckland. Her son has left the band, gone to Auckland too, formed his own group. We were moving in different directions and anyway he is the superior musician.

  Whenever I am with Giselle, I say a little thanks to Isobel for her teachings on how to really love a woman. I've taken Giselle over our steaming acres many times, and always I find something new. A fissure that has widened, our old circular bath finally succumbing to the collapsing terrain around it, now a dry hole. Always we call in on Merita, who has mind enough to pepper Giselle with questions about her country and compliment her beauty. Compares her to my mother, puts them on equal footing. Says she is so glad for my mother going and living with Ralph, look at the change in her. I agree. My mother is a different person. My special mother.

  Merita, still going strong in her eighties now, says my mother has finally realised her potential. Confesses she'd sweetened life's bitter pill by telling me my Maori ancestors were of high birth. Now you're strong enough to accept being ordinary, which is not such a bad thing, eh, Yank? Merita points out what I'd noticed already: that Barney, his voice regained, won't shut up, and is all too fond of an audience. But it takes all sorts to make a village.

  When I come across Henry back in Waiwera we'll have a chat, a beer at his hotel sometimes.

  I can hear Marion singing Take my hand, precious Lord, which she told me in her letter she sang as my father's body was taken down from its wooden telephone-pole cross. Who am I to say her Lord did not take up her plea? If God didn't take heed then the folk assisting with my father's last journey would remember the good woman's vocal tribute and her courage too.

  Maybe one day I'll follow the dream and go to New York. Go to Whitecave, find out where my father is buried. Call on the good folk of Piney Woods, especially Marion.

  He lives on in me. I'll have children, name the first boy after his grandfather. A girl I'll name her Jessie.

  I'll listen out for your lullaby from time to time, Pops. Three hundred years in the making. So glad you came into my life too.

  Your son, Mark.

  BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME

  RICHARD WRIGHT

  And one morning while in the woods I stumbled suddenly upon the thing,

  Stumbled upon it in a grassy clearing guarded by scaly oaks and elms.

  And the sooty details of the scene rose, thrusting themselves between the world and me. . . .

  There was a design of white bones slumbering forgottenly upon a cushion of ashes.

  There was a charred stump of a sapling pointing a blunt finger accusingly at the sky.

  There were torn tree limbs, tiny ve
ins of burnt leaves, and a scorched coil of greasy hemp.

  A vacant shoe, an empty tie, a ripped shirt, a lonely hat, and a pair of trousers stiff with black blood.

  And upon the trampled grass were buttons, dead matches, butt-ends of cigars and cigarettes, peanut shells, a drained gin-flask and a whore's lipstick;

  Scattered traces of tar, restless arrays of feathers, and the lingering smell of gasoline.

  And through the morning air the sun poured yellow surprise into the eye sockets of a stony skull. . . .

  And while I stood my mind was frozen with a cold pity for the life that was gone.

  The ground gripped my feet and my heart was circled by icy walls of fear—

  The sun died in the sky; a night wind muttered in the grass and fumbled the leaves in the trees; the woods poured forth the hungry yelping of hounds; the darkness screamed with thirsty voices; and the witnesses rose and lived:

  The dry bones stirred, rattled, lifted, melting themselves into my bones.

  The grey ashes formed flesh firm and black, entering into my flesh.

  The gin-flask passed from mouth to mouth; cigars and cigarettes glowed, the whore smeared the lipstick red upon her lips,

  And a thousand faces swirled around me, clamouring that my life be burned. . . .

  And then they had me, stripped me, battering my teeth into my throat till I swallowed my own blood.

  My voice was drowned in the roar of their voices, and my black wet body slipped and rolled in their hands as they bound me to the sapling.

  And my skin clung to the bubbling hot tar, falling from me in limp patches.

  And the down and quills of the white feathers sank into my raw flesh, and I moaned in my agony.

  Then my blood was cooled mercifully, cooled by a baptism of gasoline.

  And in a blaze of red I leaped to the sky as pain rose like water, boiling my limbs.