Mississippi Trial, 1955 Read online

  Sometimes at night, late, when it seemed like the house was covered with a heavy damp blanket of darkness, I would hear Grampa moving around downstairs. Sounds in the kitchen. Then muffled movement in the living room. Once in a while I’d hear the front door open and close. It made my chest ache to think of my grandpa down there, lost and looking for his wife, searching their familiar places for memories of her.

  That turned out to be my last year in Greenwood. When school was out in Oxford, Mom came down to live with me and Grampa, and Dad announced that he was almost done with graduate school. He figured he’d finish everything up by the middle of July, right after my ninth birthday. He’d already started hearing back from some colleges about jobs, and at the end of June he called us from Ole Miss to say that he’d received a letter and contract from Arizona State College, and we’d be moving to Tempe in August, just in time for the new school year. “It’s going to be a new life,” he said. “A whole new life.”

  A life without Grampa, a life away from my home. I knew I’d hate it, and I hated my dad for all his plans to rip me out of Greenwood and ruin my life. Right then I swore that I’d never be happy in Arizona.

  That night, mad and sad, I went to the Fulton Street Bridge for the first time since Gramma died. I stood in the spot Naomi had described and watched the dark water of the Yazoo swirl under the bridge. I thought about Gramma and Grampa and how much I’d miss them when we left Mississippi. I prayed to be able to stay. I begged God to stop Dad from dragging me to Arizona.

  And I prayed that Naomi would show up at the bridge that night so I could explain why we were leaving, so I could say good-bye. More than anyone, she would understand how I felt.

  I stayed on the bridge as late as I dared. Naomi never came, and before I left, I looked down into the Yazoo one last time and whispered, “Gramma, Grampa, Naomi, I’ll come back. I promise.”

  CHAPTER 4

  The last time Grampa and Dad talked to each other was when Dad announced he was moving us to Arizona.

  Grampa blew his stack. “Arizona! Why in hell would you want to live in that desert? That’s my only grandchild you got there, Harlan. How can you take him away from his home, from his grampa?” They argued for a while, Grampa swearing and shouting, Dad yelling right back. As usual, the only thing their arguing did was make them both madder.

  On the morning that we left, Grampa refused to help us load up the car; he just stood on the front porch and watched. When it was time to leave, Dad slid behind the wheel and said, “Say good-bye to your grampa, Hiram. No telling when you’ll see him again.” Mom glared at Dad a moment and then sighed and walked over to hug Grampa. She whispered something in his ear that made him smile and pat her on the back. “Thanks, Earl,” she said as she walked back to the car. “Thanks for everything, especially for taking good care of Hiram.”

  Then it was my turn to say good-bye, and I didn’t want to. “Come here, boy,” Grampa said as he opened his arms to welcome me. I ran to him and wrapped my arms around his wide body, burying my face in the bib of his blue overalls. I felt him tremble. “I’m going to miss you, son,” he said with a catch in his voice. “You be a good boy in Arizona, and make sure you don’t go forgetting your grampa.”

  “I won’t, Grampa.” I struggled not to cry. “I promise.” I gave him one last hug and ran back to the car.

  “Harlan, Dee,” Grampa called to my parents, “ya’ll know that boy is welcome here anytime. I’d be awful glad to have him spend summers with me, and I’d treat him right.” Mom nodded and waved as Dad drove us away from the house without even looking back. Grampa stood on the porch and waved until we turned the corner onto Cotton Street.

  We survived our first Arizona summer and settled into Tempe quickly. Dad started work at Arizona State College, and Mom stayed home and started having babies. It always seemed ironic to me that once we left the Delta in fertile Mississippi for the barren Arizona desert, Mom and Dad suddenly started producing kids at the rate of one per year for four years: Joseph was born about a year after we got to Tempe, 1949; then came Emma, Eliza, and finally Brigham in 1952. Arizona turned out to be everything Dad had hoped it would be. He seemed happier than ever, and I wasn’t sure if it was because of his job at the college, our new lives in Arizona, or just being away from Mississippi.

  It took me a year to get over leaving Grampa and Greenwood, and even though I eventually adjusted to living in Tempe, the annual invitation from Grampa to spend the summer in Greenwood would get me mad all over again. When I turned into a teenager, I got older and bolder, and I’d argue with Dad about it, but he was stubborn as a stump.

  “This is your home now, Hiram. Your family’s here, and you’re staying here. If Grampa really wants to see you, he’ll come out here and visit on my terms. I will not have you spending three months in Mississippi getting a head full of your grampa’s Southern nonsense.”

  “But he’s my grampa.”

  “That’s enough, Hiram Hillburn. You say one more word on this, and you’ll be mighty sorry!” Dad’s eyes got wide and mean-looking, and his face turned red just like it used to when he argued with Grampa, and even though I was older and bolder, I knew there’d only be trouble if I pushed him any more.

  Except for the regular fights with Dad, the last few years went smooth enough. I grew a few inches, did pretty well in school, and learned how to avoid Dad. Those years, our worst battles always started over my wanting to visit Grampa and Mississippi. The last time we fought about it, I used every excuse I could think of. Finally, I said, “He’s your dad, my grampa. It’s family, even if you don’t like it. You ought to want to go back as bad as I do.”

  “I don’t need you to be telling me what I should and should not do. There are some things, Hiram, you just can’t understand. Maybe when you’re older, you will.”

  “But Grampa invited me. You’ve got to let me go.”

  “You listen to me: I will not have one of my children giving me orders, understand? Don’t you be bothering me about this again.” He glared at me with that mean look I’d seen him use with Grampa. “And I mean it!”

  I wanted to bother Dad about it, I wanted to bother him bad. He should be the one trying to get to Greenwood; he should be the one most concerned about Grampa. It made me furious that he didn’t care at all about his own father or about what I wanted.

  I was almost sixteen in April 1955, when Grampa’s annual invitation to Greenwood arrived, but this letter was different. He’d had a small stroke. Not a serious one, he said, but he’d need someone to help him for a while until he got his strength back. “The stroke and the diabetes Doc Peterson says I’ve got have slowed me down some,” he wrote. “There’s plenty of work that needs doing, son, and until I get feeling good again, I don’t know how much I’ll be able to do by myself .”

  He’d also written to Mom, and whatever he said must have convinced her, because she took it up with Dad as soon as he got home from work. Before he even set his briefcase down by the door, she started on him. “Earl is going to need some more help, Harlan; Ruthanne’s already got her hands full.”

  “You know I don’t like the idea of Hiram being in Greenwood,” Dad said.

  “It’s his being with your father that you don’t like. Your dad is not going to poison him one bit and you know it. Hiram’s nearly sixteen, and you know better than anyone that he’s got his own mind. It’ll be good for him to spend some time with his grandfather, and it will do wonders for Earl.”

  “I don’t like it, Dee, not one bit.”

  “How can you not like it? He’s your father, Hiram’s grandfather. And we owe it to him. If he hadn’t been willing to tend Hiram those years we were in Oxford, I don’t know what we would’ve done. You wouldn’t have finished Ole Miss, that’s for sure. Besides, maybe doing service for someone else all summer will be good for Hiram.”

  Dad said nothing. Mom had him backed into a corner.

  “Harlan, let the boy go. Help your father. Maybe it’ll soften h
is heart. . . . Maybe it’ll soften yours too.”

  Dad sighed. “All right, but not until school’s out, not for the entire summer, and he’s got to be back before school starts again.”

  I couldn’t believe Mom had won.

  I couldn’t believe Dad had given in.

  I smiled, not because Dad had lost, but because I was actually going to Greenwood. Dad noticed my grin, and when Mom left the room, he said, “You think you won something big, don’t you? Well, you’re going to find out that I know some things you don’t. Greenwood’s not going to be what you expect, Hiram. You’re older now, you’ll see. And I’m sorry for what you’ll see.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about, and I didn’t care. All I knew was that finally I was going back to Greenwood . . . and to Grampa.

  Dad stalled my trip as long as he could. When school was out in June, he said we couldn’t afford the train fare to Mississippi. It wasn’t until the middle of July that he announced that we had enough money for me to go. He’d already booked a ticket on the Santa Fe Rail Line and told me I’d be leaving August nineteenth.

  When the nineteenth arrived, Mom took me to the train station in Phoenix. It was no surprise that Dad wasn’t there. He said he had some meetings on campus, but I was sure that he just didn’t care enough about me to come. That didn’t bother me, because I felt the same way about him. I was looking forward to seeing Grampa again, but more than anything, I was glad to be away from Dad for a while.

  “Your grandfather said Ruthanne will meet you at the station in Greenwood,” said Mom. “Behave yourself on the train, and be sure to pay attention to the stops. I know you’ll be good to Grampa, Hiram, but you make sure you look after him the best you can. And mind him and Ruthanne while you’re in that house.” Then she quickly hugged me. The train’s steam whistle sounded and the porters called all aboard. “I love you, son,” she said as I stepped up into the passenger car. “Have a wonderful time with Grampa.”

  After I stowed my bags and found my seat, I felt excited and sad at the same time; I would miss Mom and the kids, but I couldn’t wait to get back home to Grampa and Mississippi.

  CHAPTER 5

  I was surprised by how little I remembered of Mississippi. I’d forgotten the heat, the heavy humidity that made me sweat all the time. The deep green bushes and trees everywhere seemed foreign, and it was strange to look out the train window and not see mountains anywhere. When our train finally pulled into Greenwood, I started worrying. What had I done, I wondered, leaving Arizona for a place I hardly remembered?

  I collected my bags and stood on the platform of the Greenwood station. A few cars lined the redbrick street in front of the station, and across the street I recognized one building at least, the Crystal Grill, one of Grampa’s favorite restaurants. I sat down on a bench to wait for Ruthanne and to try to make some sense of this town my dad and I had grown up in. Most women on the sidewalks wore dresses and large hats. Many of the men wore baggy short-sleeved white shirts, a few had on ties. It was early afternoon, and people seemed in a hurry to get somewhere—probably to find a place to escape the heat. I could hear snatches of conversation in the same heavy Mississippi accent that Mom and Dad sometimes lapsed into when they talked to each other at home, and it seemed like the most natural kind of speech in the world. I couldn’t figure out why Dad hated it here; it seemed like the homiest place on earth to me, and the longer I stood there, the happier I was to be away from Dad and back where I belonged.

  Another big difference between Greenwood and Tempe was the Negroes. There had been a few Negro porters on the train, but I was surprised by how many I saw around the Greenwood station. The freight workers on the platform were all Negroes, of course, but so were almost half the people around the station. The Negro women wore simple cotton farm dresses without hats; most of the Negro men and boys wore blue bib overalls, the same kind Grampa always wore.

  “Hiram. Hiram Hillburn, is that you?” It was Ruthanne, and I turned to greet her. She smiled, reached out, and held me by my shoulders. “Child, have you grown! Arizona surely has been good to you.” I was nearly six feet tall; when I was a boy, Ruthanne used to tower over me, but now I was able to look her in the eye. “You’re just like Mr. Harlan; if you weren’t so fresh-looking, I’d swear you were Mr. Hillburn’s own boy, not his grandchild.”

  That was the last thing I wanted to hear. “I’m nothing like my dad, Ruthanne. Nothing at all.”

  “Shucks, you’re your daddy’s son whether you like it or not, Mr. Hiram, but I guess at your age, you’d just as soon not admit it.” She pointed to my bags. “Let’s get those down into the truck and get you home. Your grampa can’t wait to see you.”

  When I tried to pick them up, she stopped me. “You been riding that train for three days. Let Bobo over here carry them; he’s got nothing to do right now.” She nodded to a Negro boy who looked about my age standing near the edge of the platform. “Bobo,” she called, “come on over here and carry Mr. Hiram’s bags down to the truck.”

  He gave her a bored look and didn’t move.

  “Get yourself over here this minute,” she snapped, “and don’t you be giving me any of that sass.”

  Bobo sauntered over. His clothes set him apart from the other Negroes I had seen around the station. Wearing black leather dress shoes, pants, and white shirt, he looked nothing like a country boy from the Delta. He smirked at me as he stood next to Ruthanne.

  “Mr. Hiram,” Ruthanne said, “this here is Bobo Till, my cousin’s nephew; he just come down from Chicago and’s been waiting on his train up to Money.”

  “Hi, Bobo,” I said.

  He only nodded in return, and Ruthanne didn’t like it. “Don’t you get on so rude,” she said as she nudged him in the side with her arm, “you talk when you been talked to.”

  Bobo rolled his eyes and then stuttered, “H-hi, H-Hiram.”

  “That’s better,” said Ruthanne. “Now, you pick up Mr. Hiram’s things and help me get them down to the truck. And hurry up, or you’re liable to miss your train.”

  “I b-b-been on the train all the way from Chicago, Ruthanne. I’m too tired to be carrying somebody else’s old b-bags.”

  “That’s okay, Ruthanne,” I said, “I can handle my own things. Just got this duffel and the one suitcase. They’re not heavy at all.”

  “See,” Bobo said with a smirk. “No need for me to be carrying his b-bags. B-besides, it’s too hot down here for me to be hauling stuff all over.”

  Ruthanne turned on him with her hands on her hips. “Emmett Till, you do what you’re told to do, when you’re told to do it. You’ve been raised better than that, and I know it.” She glared at him until he went over and picked up my duffel bag. Satisfied that he had done at least part of what she had asked, Ruthanne turned and headed down the stairs off the platform and into the street.

  “Ain’t b-been raised to be nobody’s old p-porter,” he muttered so Ruthanne couldn’t hear. Then he looked at me and said, “Don’t see nobody carrying my b-bags around for me,” and followed Ruthanne.

  I picked up my suitcase and walked alongside Bobo. “So you’re from Chicago, huh? You a Cubs fan?”

  “Naw.” Bobo shrugged. “It’s dang hard to be a Cubs fan these days. What are they, twenty-something games behind B-Brooklyn? Unless they have a decent chance at the p-pennant, I’ve decided b-being a Cubs fan is a waste of time. B-b-besides, I got b-better things to do back home than worry about b-baseball. Hey, do me a favor,” he said as he paused at the top of the stairs, “and hold this for a second.” He handed me my duffel bag. I took it and he went down the stairs without me. I stood there feeling dumb as a brick.

  Bobo stayed a few steps ahead of me as we walked down the street to Grampa’s blue Ford pickup. Ruthanne had just dropped the tailgate when we arrived, and right before she turned around to see us, Bobo took my duffel bag from me and winked. “Thanks,” he said before he handed it to Ruthanne to put into the bed of the truck. He turned and
headed back to the train platform without saying good-bye.

  As we pulled away from the station, we drove past a blonde-haired girl about my age. She walked with her head down like she was trying to be invisible. “Who’s that girl?” I asked Ruthanne.

  “Naomi Rydell.” Ruthanne shook her head and sighed. “Too bad about that little girl; the things she’s been through make a body wonder if God’s in heaven.”

  “R.C.’s sister? I would’ve never recognized her.” Seeing Naomi, even for a moment, stirred a warm spot in my chest and made me remember that there was more than just Grampa that I cared about in Greenwood. “But what things are you talking about?”

  “Same old, same old. Her no-account brother is in one scrape after another, and if that wasn’t enough, her low-down father treats her worse than a family mule. Sleeps all day, drinks all night, and never does a lick of work. Poor girl’s running that house, trying to keep that pitiful family together the best she can. Lord knows it can’t be nothing but misery in that shack out there on River Road.”