tapped Dale’s knee and stepped on the gas. “Joe Louis said it, Dale. You can run but you can’t hide.”
Dale laughed. “Look at that country out there, Ted. Good for running, terrible for hiding!” It was suddenly very clear. He couldn’t work down here this summer if he was going to be running scared. His story was right here—young kids moving into “who knows what” to try to register black Americans so they could vote. They were all silent now. Just watching. And he had work to do. When they reached Clarksdale, Dale made the decision for him.
“We’re getting close to Klan country, Buckley. You get up here. I’ll hunker down in the back with Parker when we’re approaching Shiloh so it looks like it’s just two white guys in the car. When you see the Kilbrew gas station on your right, Ted, take the next left and you’ll pass the Sojourner Chapel. Jimmy Mack said we’ll meet there at seven tomorrow night.” Dale’s eyes swept the car. “Meanwhile, get to know the families you’ll be staying with.”
Ted Mendelsohn breathed easy for the first time since he’d left Memphis. He had brought the wheels they’d need. Now the baton had been passed.
On Sunday, right after service, Jimmy Mack had come up to Percy and Rennie, bursting with the news. “They’re arriving tomorrow, Mr. Williams. Driving in from Memphis. Can you believe it, Sister Rennie? And I’m hoping the journalist can stay with you. He’s an older man than the students, I don’t think he’ll be a bother. Has kids of his own up in Washington, D.C. Got to know him a little at the orientation.” Jimmy had run out of breath then, looking expectantly at Mr. Williams. “Is it still okay with you?”
Rennie had looked at Percy, knowing he would do the Christian thing. And of course he had. As for her, if Jimmy Mack had asked her to do it, she would have anyhow. So on Monday Ted Mendelsohn had arrived with Jimmy Mack, and Percy had told him, “You are very welcome in this house.” And Rennie had said, “You can share our granddaughter Sharon’s room, Mr. Mendelsohn. She don’t take much space.”
“Mr. Mendelsohn is my father, Mrs. Williams. Please call me Ted.” And it was done. “’Course Percy still calls him Mr. Mendelsohn and he calls Percy Mr. Williams,” she told Jimmy later. But from the get-go, he was Ted to her and she was Rennie to him. She couldn’t help laughing, watching Sharon. The way that baby was carrying on with that white man! Ted Mendelsohn never did seem strange to Sharon.
By Friday morning the rest of the summer volunteers for Shiloh were arriving, so Ted rose early, eager to move outside to get the feel of the neighbors about their coming. Rennie was outspoken and scornful of the two black teachers on the block. They had told her, “You shouldn’t let that Communist stay at your house.”
“I tol’ them he’s just a vetrin like my Percy. He’s got kids. He ain’t no Communist. He’s a reporter.” And when the electric company had come around and told her if she didn’t get the Communist out of her house, they’d have to tote up her back bills and she wouldn’t like that, Rennie told them to go read their Bible and study up on charity. “They all just scared folks, Ted, and they ought to be ashamed!”
Mendelsohn wondered how many others were like the teachers and the electric company. And how many Rennie Williamses there’d be to run interference for him. It was important to know because tonight was the first meeting at the Sojourner Chapel.
From behind her cracked glasses, Rennie Williams watched the tall reporter gathering his notebooks and camera, gulping the coffee she had warmed on the little stove. She smiled at the spectacle as he moved across their tiny living room, his head bent because the ceiling was very close.
“Hi, Sharon baby!” he called, and Rennie’s little granddaughter came running, laughing, clasping his legs in her chubby arms. Rennie grinned, shaking her head. She’d never thought the ceiling was low before. But so much was new in her thinking since the white man had arrived. Mendelsohn squatted, taking Sharon’s hand and then blowing on it to make her giggle. When he rose he paused at the screen door and called back to the kitchen. “I’ll pick up the corn meal and hamburger meat, Rennie. I’m going cross-town near the grocery. See you later.”
“Thank you, Ted.” She watched him back the Chevy off the lawn and across the drainage ditch. Ted. The first white person who’d ever been in her house in 51 years. Ted. She couldn’t help smiling, it was just too strange. Nice looking man, too. Dark, curly hair, but losing some. A little gray at the temples. She took the coffee cup and washed it under the one water faucet in the small kitchen. Better feed the family early tonight. Jimmy said the meeting would start at seven.
Right after supper Ted Mendelsohn headed for the Sojourner Chapel. Mr. Williams, Rennie, and Sharon would follow as soon as Sharon was fed and changed. Panting in the heavy damp of the late afternoon, he approached the chapel. It appeared nearly deserted. Only a gaggle of neighborhood kids playing on the baked clay out front, their shouts and cries mixing with the music of a single piano and the muffled sound of singing from inside. Mendelsohn paused, checking his notebook. Jimmy had said seven o’clock. Looking down the dirt road he saw several volunteers ambling toward the chapel, but hardly any blacks. Puzzled, he climbed the stairs and entered.
In the back of the room an elderly woman bent intently over an upright, out of tune, piano, playing and singing softly with two women companions, “Precious Lord, lead me on.” Mendelsohn scanned the rows of empty benches that added to the melancholy of the unadorned chapel. The only color in the room was the faded lettering of a Sunday school poster and an American flag that hung limply in the oppressive heat on the wall behind the podium. He sat down on a bench near the entrance, listening to the thrum of the ancient piano and the gentle singing of the three old women. Outside the two windows behind the lectern, the brilliance of the afternoon glare dimmed, turning first to rose, then to lavender. Mendelsohn’s eyes grew heavy. When the music stopped, he stirred and sat erect. The sky beyond the windows was turning to coal as the day expired. One of the women moved through the darkening room and switched on the naked bulbs in the ceiling. Surprised to see Mendelsohn, she nodded and murmured, “Good evening, suh.” She paused, then stepped closer. “Can ah help you?”
“No, thanks, I’m just waiting for the meeting to start. I was enjoying hearing you sing.”
She glanced at the window and nodded. “The meeting should be starting soon. Trucks from the fields came back about a half hour ago.”
When Mendelsohn stepped outside, Jimmy Mack was at the bottom of the steps, greeting the men and women of Shiloh who were filtering back from the fields or from the small houses down the dusky dirt roads. Jimmy had passed the word, summoning them to come to meet the volunteers who had just arrived, and they looked curiously at the group of northerners who waited just beyond the steps. Young! How young the volunteers looked! Some younger even than Jimmy.
“You know what you’re doin’, Mack?” a man asked, pausing at the door. “Look like some of ’em ain’t even shaved yet.”
Jimmy laughed. “They didn’t come all the way to Shiloh to shave, Munroe. They’re here to work.”
“Well, I ain’t seen this many whites this side of the highway since there was a raid on Huey Johnson’s still back in ’58. And these kids look like they not old enough to drink!”
Jimmy grinned. “Huey’s still is long gone, Munroe. Naw, they’re here to work, and we got a whole lot of work to do.”
Mendelsohn lingered at the chapel door after Jimmy and the volunteers
