J.W. Milam as they sat playing poker.
“Moe Wright says you and Roy took one of his boys out for a whipping and didn’t bring him back. Is that true?”
J.W. rolled his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other. He smoothed his hand over the bald part of his head, but kept his eyes on his cards.
“Yeah, we took him and then brought him back.”
“You brought him back to the house?”
“Nah, we let him out down the road some.”
“Oh,” the sheriff sounded, and then abruptly folded his hand.
Three days later, the Sunday morning sky was splattered with thick clouds when Carson Long woke up determined to get some fishing in before church.
At the river, he cast his line out over the water and sat down on the old wooden crate that doubled as a stool. A breeze rattled the tree limbs and filled Carson’s nose with the putrid stench of rotting flesh, causing him to double over and puke up the fine breakfast his wife had made for him.
He dragged his shirttail over his mouth and then used it to cover his nose. Figuring it was a dead animal— possibly a dog—he set out in search of the corpse.
Barely thirty paces away from his fishing spot, Car-son came upon a thick swarm of blue bottle flies. He combed his arms through the air and the flies scattered. When he looked down, his stomach lurched again.
He couldn’t drive. Not after seeing what he’d just seen. His hands were trembling too badly and his eyes kept tearing up. So he walked to Moe Wright’s house on shaky legs.
Moe opened the door and offered Carson a somber good morning. He stepped out onto the porch tugging the straps of his overalls over his shoulders. There were circles beneath his eyes as thick and dark as crude oil.
Carson looked into the man’s strained face. If there was another way to say it, an easier way, Carson would have done so, but there wasn’t.
“I think I found your boy.”
Moe scratched his stomach. “Where?”
“Down by the river.”
Moe excused himself and disappeared back into the house. When he returned he was wearing a blue cotton shirt and a brown baseball cap with a picture of an elk on the lid.
“We have to take your truck,” Carson said.
When they reached the river, Carson offered his hand to the old man as they descended the short hill that led to that place where the blue bottle flies were feeding.
“That him, ain’t it?”
Moe placed the hat over his face. When he spoke, his words were muffled. “I can’t be sure.”
The clouds parted and a shaft of sunlight beamed straight down onto Emmett’s dead body and bounced off the silver ring on his finger.
“Yeah,” Moe managed to choke out. “That’s him.”
Moe Wright went home and called Emmett’s mother and she screamed and screamed until he couldn’t take it anymore and laid the phone down on his lap.
Tass heard the screen door squeak open and bounce softly closed again.
“I got coffee made,” Hemmingway said.
“No, too hot for that. Thanks though.”
Silence.
“He dead, ain’t he?”
“Yeah.
“Jesus.”
“I was the one who found him.”
“Mercy,” Hemmingway cried, and then, “Where?”
“In the river.”
“They butchered that boy. Even Moe Wright wasn’t sure it was him, and that’s his kin.”
“Goddamn crackers!”
“One of his eyes was hanging out …”
“Humph.”
“Look like they took a butcher knife or something to his nose and across the top of his head—”
“My God, my God!”
“Took it to his private parts too.” Carson let off a weary sigh. “Shot him through the temple, tied him to a cotton gin fan, and tossed him in the Tallahatchie.”
Hemmingway started to weep.
“Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.”
* * *
In her bedroom, Tass pushed her face into her pillow and screamed.
The coroner placed his body into a pine box and sealed it shut. When his mother arrived at the funeral home where they stored the body, they stopped her at the door and informed her that she could not see her dead son and that there was a law that required the body to be buried immediately.
Mamie Till pursed her lips, pulled the handles of her pocketbook up over her shoulder, and left.
Back at Moe’s house she called a cousin in Chicago.
“They killed my boy and now they telling me I can’t bring him home.”
The cousin said, “Sons of bitches! You wait right there by the phone. I’ma call you back.”
The cousin knew people in local authority in Illinois and those people knew people in the state legislature. When Moe Wright’s telephone rang again, Mamie Till answered. “Hello?”
“You don’t worry, Mamie, things have been set in motion.”
At the sheriff’s department and in the office of the undertaker, one call after another came in from people neither man had ever heard of.
Some of the callers were cordial; many others were downright nasty. One man threatened, “Heads will roll!” Another promised, “You and your family will be dead by dawn.”
When Mamie Till answered the phone early the following morning, it was the undertaker’s voice she heard.
“I done already made the arrangements. The casket will be placed on the next train headed to Chicago.”
Click.
In Chicago, Mrs. Till placed a call to John H. Johnson, the president and CEO of the Johnson Publishing Company. In 1955, Johnson’s Jet Magazine had a circulation in the black community that counted in the hundreds of thousands.
