Saints and Villains

by Denise Giardina

  “Jesus H. Christ,” said Adam Junior. He dug in his pocket.

  And Fred for some reason he was too drunk to figure out wanted to rush the dance floor and gather Dietrich into a great hug. The song ended and Dietrich slid Yolanda between his legs, lost hold of her with his sweaty hands as he tried to pull her back. She went skittering on her back across the polished maple floor, skirt up to her waist and a big smile on her face.

  Gratias agimus tibi

  propter magnam

  gloriam tuam

  We give thee thanks

  We praise thee for thy glory

  The White Tunnel

  1931

  SABINE. IT IS PROBABLY NO GOOD sending this letter, as I am on board the Bremen, and may arrive home before the post. But I must get my thoughts on paper. We are off the coast of Newfoundland, near the place, I am told, where the Titanic sank. I fancy I can see lights beneath the dark water, hear the screams and alarms. Hear even the flight of souls. It gives one pause, especially when making even the most likely assumptions about safe passage.

  My thoughts turn in such a direction because of what I have experienced this past year, and especially the last month, in the America I am leaving. When I came aboard ship my professor Reinhold Niebuhr was on the dock to see me off. He told me I was a greatly changed man from the one he first met, and joked with me in his forthright way about my “conversion” to his point of view with regard to theology and society. But it is much more than that, Sabine, much more, though a conversion to be sure.

  I am lying on my bunk with the porthole open to the warm sea air. Though you are so far away, I feel you close at this moment, as though we were back in our beds in the Wangenheimstraße, trying to guess each other’s thoughts through the wall that divided our rooms and then hanging out our windows above the garden, whispering back and forth to see if we’d got it right.

  I did write last month to tell you of my plans for the end of the school term, how I would travel to Mexico and back to New York through the American South with my fellow exchange student Jean Lasserre. You would have laughed to see me in a rattletrap Oldsmobile that must be fed a can of oil every hundred miles, in the company of a French pacifist who wants to be a saint. In addition, I was reading Dostoevsky. All this together was a bit surreal.

  The flatness of the Deep South affected me strangely. The landscape is much like our mother’s ancestral Prussia, and so seemed familiar. But in June Prussia would still know cool nights and damp, breezy days. In the American South, the heat rose in waves to distort the distant horizon like some troubled dream. Breathing was quite difficult. The Fatherland seemed very far away, and very comfortable.

  Although I have read a week-old copy of the Börsen Zeitung on board ship, Sabine…

  On their way back from Mexico, Dietrich and Lasserre met Myles Horton outside Knoxville. Lasserre was to go on to the Kentucky coalfields, where Myles had gone to work after graduation, and Dietrich would drive on alone to Fred’s new home in West Virginia. For their last night together they pitched tents in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains. Fireflies—“lightning bugs,” Myles called them—were so plentiful they lit the night air like the stars on a Van Gogh canvas. The air was cool and smelled of fresh water and honeysuckle. They ate bacon, potatoes, and onions for their supper, and a corn pone Myles baked in the hot coals. Then they stretched full-length on the ground to smoke and watch the stars. Myles was unusually quiet, and his face was drawn and pale.

  “Tell Myles about Louisiana,” Dietrich said to Lasserre.

  “Mon dieu! Louisiana!” Lasserre sat up. “We stopped outside Shreveport to spend the night. We had just set up our tent when a police car arrived. A very large officer asked us our business and we explained we were touring the countryside. He informed us we were in fact Communist agitators and should—how did he say—move our Red asses back North or pay the price. His hand rested on the butt of his pistol the entire time. Tell me, what had we done?”

  Myles said, “Between your accents and your New York license plate, I reckon that was sufficient. There’s a big push to organize the woodcutters and sawmills down there. They’d be checking anybody from outside. I’d say you were lucky.”

  “It is crazy,” said Lasserre.

  “And these Scottsboro Boys,” Dietrich added. “It seems Southern white people will enjoy hanging them. And yet the churches preach against alcohol and bad language.”

  “Don’t pull any European superiority on me,” Myles said. “You burned some folks in your time.”

  They fell silent, pondering the anger in his voice. Then Dietrich said, “We stayed with Fred’s father in Birmingham. He reminded me of my own father. A man who knows he is a leader in his community. He’s proud of Fred, although it wasn’t easy for him to show it.”

  Myles said nothing.

  “What’s wrong?” Dietrich asked.

  Myles pulled his cloth cap over his eyes. He said, “Got a puzzler for you boys. Especially you, Lasserre, since you’re a pacifist. Pretend like it’s ethics seminar.”

  “All right,” Lasserre said.

  “Here it is. Take a coal town, like where you live in France. The miners are on strike and the president of the local union is your buddy. He’s well liked in the community, and he gets called on a lot to speak out about what’s going on.

  “Now, the company has hired gunmen, and they’re heard claiming they’ll kill this union man. So he moves out of his house to try to keep his family out of it. People guard him, but nobody can be protected twenty-four hours a day. Not forever. And he won’t back down, won’t hide. Says he has to stay involved with the strike. So you know it’s just a matter of time.

  “You also know who these gunmen are. They walk around with their pistols in their belts like old-time cowboys. Everyone knows where they stay. So do you ambush them? Kill them first so they won’t kill your buddy?”

  “Violence is never the answer,” Lasserre said.

  Myles sat up suddenly, plucked a smoldering stick from the fire, and flung it, a fiery wheel, into the night. “Damn it, Jean, that’s just what I thought you’d say! Think about it for two seconds first, why don’t you!”

  “Do you imagine I don’t agonize over such questions?” Lasserre said, sounding hurt.

  Myles leaned forward until his forehead rested on his knees. He said, “I’ve been back in the coal fields a month. First week back I went to Tennessee to visit the place I worked last summer. They’d just found out the thugs were gunning for Barney. Everyone was asking me what I thought they should do. ‘You been studying on what’s right and wrong,’ they said, like seminary prepares you for this. ‘You say it’s okay,’ they said, ‘we’ll shoot the sonsofbitches tomorrow morning.’ I thought about it all night. Tried to figure what would Reinie say. What you would say. Next morning I told them if they shot these three, there’d just be three new ones come in. And they’d take it on theirselves to shoot a few more miners, and hang people for murder besides. I said you don’t just walk up and shoot a man because you think he might do something first. And I said they might be bluffing, trying to scare Barney. And Barney, who’d been real quiet, said, ‘Myles is right. We can’t kill ’em in cold blood.’”

  Myles lay back down and turned on his side.

  “And?” Dietrich asked.

  “And. Two days ago they shot Barney in the back while he was walking down the street.”

  “Mon dieu,” Lasserre whispered.

  “Yeah,” Myles said. “I traded three gun thugs for Barney. Three human beings for one, so if arithmetic’s all that counts, I did right. Although I suppose I should figure Barney’s wife and kids in there somewhere. You still want to come with me, Jean? You could always go with Dietrich there to visit Fred instead. Good old Fred. I can just see him now, sitting in his new office planning Bible studies for the Ladies’ Sewing Circle. But at least Fred hasn’t got anybody killed.”

  “What could you have done?” Dietrich asked. “Could you have been the
one to shoot those guards?”

  “No,” Myles said. “Not then.”

  “Then how advise someone else to do it? You mustn’t punish yourself. You did what any of us would have done.”

  The next morning Lasserre left with Myles, hitchhiking north, wearing the look of a man soon to confront a challenge to all he holds sacred. Dietrich drove on alone toward West Virginia and Fred, reproaching himself for his very safe life and yet glad he was not going with them.

  Charleston’s situation between emerald-green hills and broad river reminded Dietrich of towns he had known in German river valleys, on the Neckar or Rhine. It was a working river with towboats and barges loaded with coal and sternwheelers stroking the water, taking their time. The streets of the town were narrow but lined with handsome buildings of brick and stone. Dietrich’s only unfavorable initial impression was the stink that blew in from the chemical plant downriver.

  Fred took Dietrich to dinner at the Ferguson, a “colored” hotel one block from his new parsonage. They sat at a round table with a white cloth and pink flower vase and stuffed themselves with roast beef and blackberry cobbler.

  “Wish I could take you in the back to the Alhambra Club,” Fred said, “and sip mountain-grown whiskey, but if someone from the church heard I was there, that would be it. Count Basie played back there two weeks ago and I was afraid to go to that too.”

  “You must miss Harlem,” Dietrich said, “and the freedom you had there.”

  “Oh yeah. And I miss Mavis—or at least, the dream of Mavis. Or the notion I’ve had for years of going off someplace where nobody knows me and I can be totally free. Which I thought would happen when I got away from my father, but I know now it’s impossible when you are the minister of a church. I don’t care what kind of dictatorship you live under, you got more freedom than a preacher.”

  “Didn’t you expect that? You grew up a preacher’s son.”

  “Yeah, but it’s different to expect it and to be in the middle of it. And there’s more than just the expectations. I recall that first dinner we had together at Craig’s. Telling you I had a call. Told that to the deacons here at First Baptist too, when I came for my interview. Every time I say it now, I know it’s a load of crap. A call can be what any poor fool thinks God or the Devil is telling him to do. Voices inside your head. How do you tell who’s holy and who’s possessed by demons and who’s just plain crazy?”

  “I don’t know,” Dietrich said. “I’ve never felt such a call. When I decided to study theology, it was because that’s what I wanted.”

  Fred was shaking his head. “Knew it was wrong,” he said, “moment they ordained me. First time somebody called me Reverend. Knew it was wrong. Must be like when people getting married say ‘I do’ and know right then they should walk away instead.”

  “Perhaps,” said Dietrich, holding his cigarette between two fingers, “every one feels like walking away at such times.”

  “Not like this. I want to run.”

  “How long have you been here?” Dietrich said. “Just five weeks. It needs time.”

  Fred nodded. “Maybe. But all I can think is, I have not been me since I came here and was ordained. Not me at all. An actor, somebody answering to the name of the Rev. Albert Frederick Bishop, but not me.”

  Dietrich listened, his big face puckered with concern. “Have you made friends?” he asked.

  “A few. Can’t really be friends with anyone in the congregation. Can’t get too close, you know? I mean, I’m already under their magnifying glass.”

  “Who are these friends?”

  “Well, only one, actually. A doctor, older guy who never even comes to church. Got an office around the corner. Quiet man, but the things he’s seen, mmm.” Fred told Dietrich about Dr. Booker, a Socialist who had worked for years in the southern part of the state, where he had been in some big coal strikes. “Lot like where Myles is. I wish old Myles was here to meet Doc Booker. He’d love the old sonofabitch.” Then he grew solemn. “Actually, there’s a story attached to this, a kind of scary one. I’ve been wanting to tell it to you.”

  Dietrich folded his napkin neatly and said, “Let’s go back to your house and I shall unpack my suitcase while you tell me more. I have a present for you from Mexico.”

  They strolled through a darkblue June evening cooled by breezes from the nearby hollows, past “the church,” as Fred called it—he couldn’t yet say “my church”—a miniature stone cathedral across Washington Street. The parsonage was a block away up Shrewsbury. Fred pointed out Doc Booker’s office above the M&S Pharmacy. The shades were drawn at the upstairs windows and no lights showed.

  The parsonage was a large wood-frame house with room enough for a man with a wife and several children. Fred rattled around in it, had only collected enough furnishings for the parlor and one bedroom. The church women who took turns cleaning for him would tsk-tsk about the empty rooms and bare walls, hint that the new pastor was in desperate need of a wife, and of course each of them had a daughter, sister, niece….

  Fred had brought in a second bed and spare sheets when he learned Dietrich was coming. The guestroom didn’t have another piece of furniture, so Dietrich knelt and opened his suitcase on the floor. Even though he’d been traveling for weeks, all his clothes were pressed and folded as neatly as if they were new, and Fred couldn’t help but think that Dietrich was the one who would make a good wife.

  He took a carton from the bottom of his suitcase, opened it, and handed Fred a large bottle of mescal with a fat white worm in the bottom.

  “Jesus Christ,” Fred said. “How’d you get that through customs?”

  Dietrich smiled. “I pretended very great ignorance of American language and American Prohibition. And then I bribed the guard.”

  “Hey, those suckers are mean down in Texas. They could have locked you away.”

  Dietrich’s smile widened. “It was a very large bribe, and I had a bottle for him too.”

  “I better appreciate this, what you’re telling me.”

  He shrugged, said, “It’s for me as well. Get some glasses.”

  When Fred was downstairs washing two of the three glasses he owned, there was a knock at the door. He opened it to Doc Booker. Fred stood aside and motioned for him to enter, but Doc waved him off.

  “I won’t come in,” he said. “I know you’ve got company.”

  “How do you know I’ve got company?”

  “Everybody in the neighborhood knows there’s a white man staying at the parsonage.”

  “You been gone,” Fred said testily. “How do you know?”

  “Been back an hour,” the old man said. “One of the first things I heard.”

  Fred cursed under his breath.

  “Get used to it,” said Doc. “Like I told you before. You may have only been here a little while, but right now you’re one of the most influential men in this community. That’s why we got to talk.”

  “Did Earl Harvey come back with you? Was he telling the truth?”

  “Earl’s back, all right. And let’s just say he ain’t so crazy as some folks think. I’ll tell you about it after your company’s gone home.”

  “He’s staying all week,” Fred said. “You want to wait that long?”

  Dr. Booker thought a minute. “No. This won’t keep that long. You mind?”

  “No. Actually, this is a friend from the seminary. German guy. I’d be glad for him to hear what you got to say. I wouldn’t mind some advice.”

  “All right,” Doc said. “But it’s late. I’ll let you be tonight. I promised Earl a cheeseburger and fries tomorrow. We’ll meet you at the M&S at noon.”

  “Right,” Fred said. He shut the door and went back to the kitchen thinking how badly he needed a drink.

  They sat up late sipping mescal and lemon slices out of tall iced tea glasses because there was no way to keep shot glasses around a parsonage.

  Fred said, “This is how I met Doc Booker. I’d been here three weeks. Preached my sermons,
spent the rest of my time visiting people at home. I used to enjoy that in Harlem, but not here.”

  “Why?” asked Dietrich.

  “Because I’m not visiting out of concern for them. I’m presenting myself for inspection like a side of beef. Over and over. I come back here after a visit, stuffed full of somebody’s fried chicken or ham, and I throw up. Stomach churns now every time I walk across a strange threshold.

  “Anyway. Doc Booker found me at the church one day. I’ll show you the office tomorrow. It’s nice, big desk, dark oak bookcases. Window looks out on a little garden with a birdbath at the side of the church. Flowers. Blue jays and robins hang around. I look out the window a lot.

  “I saw Doc out the window first. Dark man with hair like a curly white helmet. Old gray suit too hot for this weather, red tie. He was fanning himself with his hat and looking up at the window like he could see me, but I sensed he couldn’t. I stepped back from the window.

  “He came on up, heavy on the stairs, slow and steady like there was no way to keep him out. Stood in the door, hat in hand, looking me over.

  “‘I heard you were young,’ he said.

  “I said, ‘That right?’

  “‘You went to a white school,’ he said. ‘Reckon that impressed them. Otherwise…’

  “I knew a polite young minister should be making over this guy, shaking hands, inviting him to church. But something held me back. Riled, I guess, at the way he challenged me, like he was seeing if I measured up to something.

  “I said, ‘How come you know so much?’

  “‘Evenings, I sit under an awning on Shrewsbury Street and play checkers,’ he said. ‘Not to mention looking after sick people in the neighborhood. Not much goes on I don’t know.’

  “He stepped closer then and stuck out his hand.

  “‘Dr. Toussaint Booker. Folks call me Doc. And you’re the Rev. Albert Bishop.’

  “Instead of answering I said, ‘I haven’t seen you around. You don’t go to First Baptist?’