have the right to vote.”
“Who in hell asked them to come?” Luke looked at Eula by the kitchen door. “You ever ask them to come, Eula? Any of your kin over in Sanctified Quarter? No, indeed. I’ll tell you who asked them to come. The Communists.”
Em chimed in. “That’s sure right. Bobby Joe showed me an article in the Clarion sayin’ J. Edgar Hoover himself says these freedom riders are all Communist dupes. Saw it myself, Luke!”
Mendelsohn listened attentively before replying. “From what I’ve seen, I think Hoover’s wrong. I’m getting to know these kids. I came with them. They’re smart kids, and they’re nobody’s dupes. But some of them are more smart-ass than smart. One of the kids from Cornell, a pre-law student, was pulled over by the Highway Patrol when he was going 25 miles an hour down Highway 49 at midnight. He was so angry that he tried to lecture the patrolman about the patrolman’s infringement of his constitutional rights. For his trouble, he was busted and sent to the work farm over in Sunflower. He’s still there. I went to see him and he’s a mess. A good kid who won’t be smart-ass again while he’s down here. But he’s nobody’s dupe. I’d bet my paycheck he’s never met a Communist.”
Willy shook her head. “It wasn’t a work camp that made all those kids scruffy. I never saw white kids look like that. Where’d they find these characters, Ted?”
He shrugged. “Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, Howard. . . . Doesn’t matter. They’re middle-class kids who are stealing a summer to work down here. And they’re not staying at the Jackson Sheraton.”
“There’s no excuse for being unclean. Soap doesn’t cost much.”
“No excuse? But there are reasons, Willy. Those kids are on the roads every day, knocking on doors, trying to register voters. Roads aren’t paved in the Sanctified Quarter. The only showers they get are when it rains. Most of the kids do their laundry in kettles over the fire in the backyard.”
Luke’ s face was livid. “Not everybody in the Quarter does their laundry in kettles! A lot of them work for me. They live different from us. They are different from us.” He paused, his eyes fixed on the reporter. “I know my people and they know me, and you don’t know them and you don’t know me. People down here know their place, Mendelsohn. We do. And the Nigras do. We’ve learned to get on together over generations, and we don’t need or want people ridin’ in and tearin’ up everything we’ve built.”
“Amen!” Em’s face was high in color. “Tell him about seeing the congressman’s son, Willy.”
Willy turned to Mendelsohn. “You act like you believe Mississippi is enemy territory, Ted. You don’t really understand what we feel, or why we feel it. Early last week Luke and I were watching television and there was an interview with Robert Carter, the congressman’s son. He had just arrived in Shiloh with your people. Looked like such a nice clean-cut kid. I said to Luke we ought to bring him out here, have him meet our son, Alex, get to know us down here.”
Luke snorted in disgust, imitating Willy. “Let’s bring him here! Another great idea from the hostess of the Delta, Wilson Claybourne!”
Willy grew pink but plunged ahead. “Well, the very next day Em and I were drivin’ through the Quarter on the way to pick up Eula, and we see Robert Carter, big as life, walkin’ hand in hand with a nigger girl! I could have killed him!” She stopped, embarrassed by her outburst. “Maybe not. But I wanted to!” Eula’s attentive but serene expression never altered. Silently, she pushed back on the swinging kitchen door and disappeared. No one but Mendelsohn seemed to notice.
“You just don’t understand, Ted. I can see it in your face. But you weren’t born and raised in a place that is mostly black. Every day, growing up in Shiloh, I was surrounded by Nigras. Thousands of them. And I had to be special, feel special, or I would have drowned. I couldn’t stand them shoving against me, touching me.”
Em’s voice rose in anger. “Willy’s right! You don’t understand. You judge. And magazines like yours crucify us. They read in your northern papers that we’re all bigots down here. They lump us all together and never miss giving us a black eye.”
“You’re wrong,” Ted said. “Mississippi gives Mississippi a black eye.”
“That’s what I mean!” Em interrupted, almost shouting. “’Cording to you, it’s always us poor redneck fools who are wrong!”
When Mendelsohn broke the silence he sought to answer the distraught Emily. “Let me ask you a question, Miss Kilbrew. What do you think my editor was going to do with the story I filed from Shiloh last week? I’d gone over to Greenville to check some court records and when I pulled out of the courthouse parking lot in the evening I was chased, ninety miles an hour, all the way back to the Sanctified Quarter. I had to outrun a souped-up pickup truck with two guys leaning out the windows with shotguns. Two shots I heard, but I wasn’t counting, I was too busy watching my rear view mirror.”
Em’s brittle laugh hung in the room. “Down here that’s what we call the good ol’ boys just havin’ sport.”
Mendelsohn stared at Emily who busied herself with her glass of iced tea. “Sport?” His voice was acid. “When I made it back to the Quarter I hid my car behind the Chapel and spotted the truck that had chased me. It was parked at your brother’s gas station. And when I reported what happened to the sheriff the next morning, he laughed. ‘Somebody just havin’ some good, clean fun.’ I ought to lighten-up, he said.”
Em lifted her chin. “See? Just like I said!”
Mendelsohn looked slowly at each of them. “That is the ‘black eye’ which will appear in next Tuesday’s Newsweek. Three columns. And tell your brother, Miss Kilbrew, the story’s going to run with my picture of the pickup truck parked in front of the Kilbrew gas station.”
Fuming, Em stood and headed for the front door. “Thanks a hell of a lot for inviting me to your party, Willy.” She nodded to Luke. “Great guest list, Lucas. Make sure Mr. Mendelsohn is invited to the country club.” In a moment, the door slammed behind her.
Willy sat quietly, leaning back against the couch, her eyes still fixed on the front door. She appeared startled when Luke broke the silence. His voice was quiet and sober. The anger in the room seemed to have left with Emily.
“There are bad elements down here, Mendelsohn. And some of them are violent people. ’Spect you have a few yourself up in New York. But there are a lot of very frightened white folks down here, too.” His eyes were questioning. “They watch these agitators coming in. They watch a whole stirring about voting and organizing and race-mixing. You don’t have to be Klan to see all these things. Willy sees them. I see them. Not just Bobby Joe Kilbrew. None of us knows what’s coming next. A lot of frightened people. As a reporter, you should know that. And they’re not all black.”
Eula opened the kitchen door and stood silent, waiting for Willy to notice. Willy turned and beckoned her. “Come in, Eula. I think we’re done.”
“Anything I can do before I leave, Miss Willy?”
“Just help me up from this floor. After seven months I feel like a lead balloon, about to burst.” She laughed, “Can a lead balloon burst, Ted?”
Eula helped her to her feet and then turned to Luke. “Good night, Mister Luke.” She turned and reentered the kitchen. They heard the back door close and Eula’s steps fade gradually on the gravel outside.
Willy
