The Song and the Silence

by Yvette Johnson

  “Come on, sit in it. You can turn it on,” he persisted.

  I walked over to the chair, awkwardly bent over, and sat down, but Davis had more instructions for me. “Lean back in it. Take this remote; you can make it move along your back—look at it,” he said, holding the remote in front of my face. “You can make it massage your back, your legs, and so forth.

  “And if you want a deeper massage, push that button there.” He kept talking. He talked about the chair, about Mississippi, about the weather, and in spite of a hint of unnamed desperation, I found him to be somewhat engaging. Warm and subtly funny, Noll Davis was good company.

  As I sat in his dead wife’s chair, I began to sense something familiar in his words, his movements, the quick glances he made in my direction. Something about Davis was familiar to me. Somehow I knew him not from Frank’s film but from somewhere else. Déjà vu tugged at the edges of my memory, making me feel more and more certain that this wasn’t our first encounter. I tried to push this aside, tried to wrap my mind around my questions. I knew that there was something I was supposed to see, but in my selfishness I wanted to coddle my rage. I didn’t want to open myself up to anything else.

  He was watching me with a contented smile. For a moment, I wondered if he could read my thoughts on my face. I started trying out different buttons on the chair’s remote control. I leaned back and closed my eyes, feigning relaxation as I tried to regain the determination that had pulsed through me just minutes before.

  But there was something else, something about Noll Davis that felt remarkably familiar to me. My mind sifted through all that had taken place from the time I’d first entered his house. I recalled how he’d welcomed us. Some of the crew members had repeatedly walked in and out as they unloaded equipment. Davis had greeted each of them, every time. He’d nodded or reminded them of the locations of his multiple bathrooms. He even had a joke about using the one upstairs, and he’d delivered it more than once. He’d been delighted, jovial, almost giddy about us being there.

  Davis was talking again, but when I opened my eyes, I couldn’t bring myself to focus on his words. I looked at his translucent skin, watched as his heavy, thick, pale tongue flopped from his mouth to nervously moisten his lips.

  The realization of where I knew him from came to me not in a rush of emotion or in a jolt of recognition. It felt obvious, as if I’d been searching for my keys only to realize they’d been in my hand all along. At first, I was struck by how long it had taken me to see it, to see him. Then I felt dread. I closed my eyes again, as if not seeing him standing next to me could make it not real. Maybe if I kept them closed long enough, I could rewind, go back to just a few seconds before to undo the knowing.

  Davis was still talking, but now he was watching me. I smiled so that he wouldn’t think anything was wrong as I wondered if he recognized me, too.

  Did he know we were the same?

  Noll Davis and I were fellow countrymen, members of the same tribe, coupled together by something basic and human. We both knew what it felt like to be lonely. Ours was not the kind of loneliness easily cured by an outing with friends. This was a kind of loneliness that burned the soul—not enough to destroy it, but enough to cauterize all the entrances so that easy, natural connection was almost impossible.

  We both carried a loneliness of such magnitude that it left a fissure in the part of us that moved through the world. From that fissure leaked an unending desire and hope to be known, to be tethered, an awkward, gooey shame that soaked through every encounter we had, no matter how random, no matter how short. I watched as he played the role I’d played for so long and was struck to finally know what it looked like from the other side, for people who met me and only wanted a simple friendship but found that I was always in a desperate search for something akin to family; for someone, anyone to pour so much affection into me that I’d become so heavy I’d never again have to worry about floating away.

  I knew then why Noll Davis had agreed to the meeting. Having us in his home would mean that, for a few hours one morning, he could defy the silence.

  My desire to interrogate him was still there, but it was quickly drowning. I searched my mind, trying to recall what I’d prepared and trying to summon the anger I’d felt, the need for revenge, but I couldn’t pull anything together in my head. My thoughts were rushing away from me, receding along with my resolve.

  He moved over to the settee and picked up a picture book about Mississippi mansions. He motioned for me to sit next to him, and I felt myself rising, moving over to him, and sitting beside him. What was I doing? How was I going to leave? Davis was tireless. He went on and on, and I listened and nodded and smiled and acted as if we were old friends. I even laughed at his jokes.

  How had this encounter changed so quickly? This man, who had been on the wrong side of history during a critical time for Blacks, didn’t want this particular Black girl to leave. His loneliness was almost palpable. He wanted company no matter what shade of skin it came in.

  In spite of all that was going on in my mind, I couldn’t help but notice that Noll Davis’s love of Mississippi was profound. He spoke about the state as if he was an impassioned missionary whose life’s purpose was to convert me.

  Never before had I met someone who so deeply treasured something as simple and as random as a place, a patch of land defined by longitude and latitude. He urged me to visit certain locales and experience particular spaces. He wanted to show me Greenwood through his eyes. He was persistent, and his energy and love for the Delta were without end.

  Later, I would have no idea how much time had passed while I sat next to him. It could have been thirty minutes or two hours. That chunk of time with Noll Davis contradicted everything I’d come to Greenwood to do, and for reasons it would take me a long time to discern, something about the moment felt right. Not correct, fine, or okay, but right in the way a painful loss can drip with the absolute, unchangeable certainty of preordainment. Choosing to stay with him, choosing to give the pleasure of my company to a man like Noll Davis without demanding that he answer for his past felt like failure, felt like shame, and felt like absolutely the right thing to do.

  My eyes darted around the room like trapped animals searching for an exit. I was anxious, because I knew there was no way to leave without it being awkward. Without saying a word, I stood up while Davis was in the middle of a sentence. His words trailed off and he looked up at me—his eyes wide with confusion. Then a curtain of realization moved down his face, from his eyes to his blushing cheeks and on to his lips, which said, “Of course, of course, I’ve kept you too long.”

  We exchanged good-byes that were too warm, considering we’d just met. There was lots of hand-holding, smiling, slowly walking toward the door, more shaking of hands, nodding of heads, and finally more smiling. He told me to come again and I promised I would, but I could tell he knew I wouldn’t. We had the same disease, but we were still strangers.

  I turned to exit and was blinded for a moment by the Delta sun before I crossed the threshold. I quickly turned my eyes to the ground and made my way to the car, where I opened the door and climbed in. I looked back and, though it felt excessive, I waved to say good-bye one more time. He waved back and then stood there, watching from his doorway as Nicki pulled the car away from the curb and began driving away. I continued to watch Davis, studying his tall frame until the car rounded a bend and I couldn’t see him anymore.

  As we traveled through the quiet streets, past the thoughtfully decorated houses, I looked down at my lap and tried to process what had just happened.

  I’d expected Noll Davis to be a certain way, and he definitely met my expectations. I thought I was going to explode when he implied that Mexicans were getting more work in Greenwood because at least they were willing to work. In my human calculus, any person who would make those types of remarks was instantly disqualified from . . . from . . . from what?

  We drove into the sun. I could feel my face moving in and out
of shadow as trees blocked the sun’s rays and then let them through again and again.

  As I considered my feelings toward Davis and the feelings I had toward everyone like him, I thought of a quote from a book I’d been carrying around so much that some of the members of the crew had begun teasing me whenever they saw it, calling it my homework. It was my already-worn-out copy of I’ve Got the Light of Freedom by Charles Payne. The five-hundred-fifty-two-page book was full of sticky notes, documents I wanted to refer to, and thoughts I’d jotted down on dog-eared pages. There was one page in particular that I’d read so many times I’d almost memorized it.

  In describing the horrors perpetrated against Blacks by lynch mobs, Payne described those acts as “graphically reinforcing the idea that Negroes were so far outside the human family that the most inhuman actions could be visited upon them.” The horrific treatment of people of color solidified the notion that we were less, that our humanity was not authentic, not as valuable or treasured as that of those with White skin. This allowed so many to watch as Blacks were forced to live in squalor, denied the right to attend schools, languishing in lives of hopelessness peppered with violence.

  The reality of Black life was tolerable to the average White Southerner, at least in part, because they put us in a box, one that defined us as being unable to contribute to society, as being oversexed, filthy, stupid, criminal, illiterate, and on and on and on. Just being Black was the only thing required to arouse disgust and suspicion.

  I’d felt disdain for Noll Davis long before I met him, long before I even knew his name. White Southerners had been on my mind, in one way or another, since that conversation with John T. Edge four years ago, and even more so in the two months since I’d watched my grandfather’s on-camera act of courage.

  In the days before we met, I’d been actively coveting and nurturing scorn and hate for all the Noll Davises of the world. To me, he wasn’t a man, he was an archetype, a template for a monstrous stereotype. I’d placed him in a box, defined him before meeting him. How was my behavior any different than that of the racists who defined all Blacks the same way?

  Nicki parked the car and went into the next interview, leaving me alone. I felt like I was teetering.

  I was supposed to hate Noll Davis. I was supposed to humiliate him the way men like him had humiliated Booker. Instead, I was asking myself why, during my intensive research, it had never occurred to me that lurking behind some of the more vile personalities in Greenwood history, behind the hate, the rhetoric, and even behind the violence, there might possibly be some tiny, infinitesimal traces of humanity.

  Noll Davis and I had come together for a brief moment that ended with neither of us getting what we wanted that day. Instead of answers, I just had different questions, and Davis was left alone again. I felt sad for him. He was a tortured man—that I knew for sure. I also knew that whatever punishment Noll Davis may have deserved for what he did all those years ago was being slowly doled out to him without any help from me.

  Part Eight

  A Twisted Strand

  And so it goes with each generation, a fortunate and treasured strand for many families . . . and a never-ending curse for others.

  Mary Carol Miller

  “A Cloud of Witnesses,” Daughter of the Delta

  Harmony

  Even though Booker’s Place was just eight blocks away from Lusco’s, after Mississippi: A Self-Portrait aired in the spring of 1966, Booker never went back.

  He was already reconnected with Rosie by then. She and her four children were regularly traveling from Chicago to Greenwood to visit him. Years later, Booker’s half sister, Margurite, would reminisce about what it was like for Rosie to finally have her firstborn son in her life. Margurite was convinced, beyond doubt, that the best years of Rosie’s life were the ones she got to spend reunited with Booker. “My mother had some trouble with her children, real trouble. But when he came into our lives, it seemed like she . . . fulfilled her role as a parent and could feel everything that a parent was supposed to feel because she really had it for a while.”

  Booker’s life had turned a corner. He was finally surrounded by family. The commitment he’d made early on to raise his daughters in spite of being divorced from their mother, the promise to always be there for them, was paying off. His daughters continued to spend their summers living with him, and once they reached high school, they began waiting tables alongside their dad at Booker’s Place.

  When Margurite was in town visiting, she often joined Booker’s own daughters waiting tables at Booker’s Place. Whenever her children were traveling to Greenwood, Rosie would remind them that life for Blacks living in the South was different. Her warnings echoed the ones given to young Emmett by his mother, Mamie, almost twenty years earlier. When the family made road trips down to Greenwood, Rosie would pack entire meals for them to eat. This way they wouldn’t have to venture into any unfamiliar restaurants, where they might encounter danger because of the color of their skin.

  When she visited Greenwood, Margurite spent a lot of time with Vera, Katherine, and Gloria—Honey’s daughter from a previous relationship. Whenever Margurite and Gloria made plans to go into town, Booker would warn her not to speak to anyone. He told Margurite that she had to let Gloria do all the talking. At the time, Margurite couldn’t figure out what her brother was so worried about, because she knew she wasn’t going to say anything to offend anyone. To Margurite, the warnings from her mother and from Booker were just adults being overly cautious.

  Since he was no longer working at Lusco’s, Booker shored up his finances with other businesses, like selling illegal whiskey. His house had a side entrance in the bedroom, and throughout the night, random people would come and knock on that door. In a half sleep, Booker would roll out of the bed, grab a pint of moonshine, and pass it through the window, and when he pulled his hand back inside, it was full of loose change.

  When Margurite was staying with him in the summers, she slept in Gloria’s room. Each morning, within minutes of waking up, the two girls would be sitting on the floor in Booker and Honey’s bedroom counting change. They’d separate out the quarters from the dimes, and so forth. Then they’d line them up and wrap the coins in used, ripped, worn-out wrappers. By the time the girls were finished, their hands were covered in black grime from the dirty coins.

  Around this time, the Head Start program came to Greenwood, and Booker realized that kids living on the plantations on the outskirts of town wouldn’t get to participate in the program because they lacked transportation. Booker bought a school bus and then made a deal with the people at Head Start to transport the plantation kids for a nominal fee.

  Booker always had a heart for children, maybe because of what he went through when he was young. Honey had a sister whose husband died, leaving her with several children she couldn’t afford to feed. Each day Booker would say to them, “Don’t you go to school without first coming in here to get your breakfast.” Then, as they were getting ready to leave for school, he’d hand them a sack lunch and say, “Don’t you go home from school without first coming in here to get some dinner.” Margurite got the impression that he kept those children fed for years. Booker even took one of them, a boy named Bo, under his wing by giving him a job at the restaurant and teaching him how to manage it.

  Unfortunately, Bo liked to blow all his pay, and never had enough money to buy decent clothes. After watching this cycle over and over again, Booker began holding back some of Bo’s pay. The following year, when kids were on a break from school, Booker waited till the end of one of Bo’s shifts, handed him a wad of money, and told him to go straight to the store to get some decent clothes.

  Lots of Black kids who went to Booker’s Place grew used to him telling them to take school seriously and to get all they could out of it. Back then, education was on everyone’s mind.

  Even though the Supreme Court had ruled school segregation illegal, Whites in Greenwood had essentially ignored the order. Once aga
in, in an effort to not just have civil rights but to use them, Blacks in Greenwood began making moves to integrate their schools. In the fall of 1967, Black children began trickling into White schools in the single digits. It was clear that, at that rate, it would take another fifty years for the schools to integrate. The Supreme Court intervened, ordering the Greenwood School District and the Greenwood Separate School District to submit a plan “for total integration by February 1 [1970].”

  Almost overnight, enrollment of White students in public schools fell by the hundreds; almost all of them began attending local private schools. “Everything changed in 1970,” Sara Criss wrote in her memoir. “Sports were soon dominated by blacks, as more and more white students dropped basketball and football and track. Attendance at the ball games dropped, as fewer and fewer whites attended the games.”

  In the decades before the movement, Greenwood had been a place where almost every local event was a reason to celebrate or throw a parade. “The high school games had drawn huge crowds, and before the present stadium was built with a larger seating capacity, the local men . . . would get up at four in the morning to go stand in line at Roberts Drugstore to buy season tickets to the football games to be sure of getting seats.”

  While some things were changing, others were still the same. A young activist named Stokely Carmichael was keeping the fire of the movement going. In 1966, he traveled to Greenwood where, while giving a speech, he used the phrase “Black Power.” It was the first time that phrase had been used, at least publicly, and people around the nation took notice. Characteristically, the Ku Klux Klan put out a newsletter that included the following content:

  Now, we have this message for the Negros of this area. The world first heard the revolutionary cry of BLACK POWER shouted from the mouth of a sunbaked Ubangi named STOKLEY CARMICHAEL right here in Greenwood during the “Mississippi March.” If any of you should allow your selves [sic] to become intoxicated with this revolutionary brew, rest assured, you will be promptly sobered up with massive doses of BLACK POWDER, already in the hands of we white, Christian patriots. Do not be fools, black men. We will live here with you in the future as we have in the past or we will fertilize the soil of our beloved Southland with your remains.