Forty
The cab left the bright neon of the highway from the airport and slowed sharply as it entered the darkened campus.
“You got a kid out here?”
The man in the back seat continued to peer into the darkness. “No,” he said.
“Place’s been deserted since graduation,” said the driver. “Last fare I had out here was two weeks ago.” He caught his eyes in the rearview mirror. “You sure of the address?”
Ted Mendelsohn checked Max’s notes. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
The car’s motor echoed against the silent college buildings as the cab moved slowly ahead behind its probing finger of light. At the rise of a small hill, he tapped the driver’s shoulder. “The hall should be right after the next turn. Let me off at the corner.”
The driver shrugged. “If you say so.”
As the car eased to a stop, two young black men with backpacks crossed from the darkness and trotted toward the single lighted building across the deserted green. The driver turned in his seat. “Not many people around. None of my business, but you sure you want to be out here?”
Mendelsohn watched the two slender figures as they loped into the bright entryway of the orientation building. “Yeah. I’m sure.”
But from the minute he entered the orientation building, he wasn’t so sure. He sensed he wasn’t welcome. As his eyes adjusted to the bright light he saw he was adrift in a sea of khaki and denim, backpacks, knapsacks, and duffle bags, and realized that he was not only the oldest person in the room but the most over-dressed. He heard the hiss of “fuzz,” then, “Watch it. FBI.” What the hell was he thinking when he’d packed for the flight? Christ, he was dressed like he was catching the 8:12 to Grand Central for a meeting with Max at Newsweek. He knew the room was watching and judging. A guy twice their age in a suit and a tie with a Valpack? Going to Mississippi to register black voters? Pissed with himself, he worked his way through the press of bodies and found an uncluttered seat against the wall. He loosened his tie, shed his jacket and stretched his legs, still stiff from the flight. A hell of a way to start, Mendelsohn. He watched the students, and beneath the ripples of laughter and sudden shouts of recognition, he sensed a stifled tension in the room, and it had nothing to do with him. The volunteers looked tentative themselves, doing what he was doing, taking the measure of strangers who would soon be more than strangers.
He got up and crossed to the desk to sign in with the woman from the Council of Churches, remembering meeting her at the New York office. Holmgren? Holstone? “Holstein,” she said with a grin. “Jean Holstein. Glad you could make it, Mr. Mendelsohn.” She checked her pad. “Journalist. Newsweek magazine. Right?”
“Guilty as charged.”
Her eyes drifted across the youthful faces in the chattering room. “Nice to have someone my age going with us, Mr. Mendelsohn.”
He tried not to smile and held out his hand, “At our age, Jean, I think you can call me Ted.”
A short, thin young Negro left a tight knot of blacks. He stood, seriously searching the throbbing hall before approaching the desk.
“Any word?”
Jean nodded. “A message for you, John. Mickey and Rita Schwerner just got in. They asked me to tell you to save them a beer.”
The somber young man nodded, smiling for the first time. “Thanks, Jean. That’s good news. We were hoping they’d make it out. They’ve been checking out the church fires, and they’ve had a rough time.” He nodded briefly to Mendelsohn and trotted to the small black caucus. “Mickey and Rita are here.” Each word seemed newly formed, perhaps a way to eliminate a stutter.
“Who are those kids, Jean?”
“SNCC kids, field workers from Mississippi. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. The young guy is John Lewis. He’s in charge.” And that was how the orientation week started for him in Oxford, Ohio, June 1964.
Later, a long week later, one of the SNCC kids, Dennis Flanagan, told him: “It was the seersucker suit you were wearing, man! Everybody saw you thought FBI,” and grinned at the memory.
“No. It was the hat,” insisted Bobby Willis.
