One Night in Mississippi (13 page)

Amblan, 2008

It took me a few minutes
to realize that Earl was gone, but he wasn't hard to follow. I tracked his steps to the edge of the woods. From there his footprints were shallower and less distinct, but I moved forward, guided by which branches had the snow brushed off them and which hadn't. Searching was my life. I had found him across decades and miles, and I would find him again across these woods.

I could hear the howl of the wind, but underneath the trees it was calm. The snow was luminescent beneath the three-quarter moon, bright enough that I could easily see the way forward. My knee ached with the uphill grade, and my socks were wet from having trudged through Earl's yard, but the stillness allowed me to focus, one step at a time.

When I faltered, I thought of the night I had lost Graden. I replaced the snow-laden trees with dew-slicked reeds, the rotted, fallen logs with moss-covered rocks, the eerie silence with the cacophony of crickets and toads. The thought of Graden and of all that I owed him allowed me, each time, to take one more step.

When the hill started to flatten, I stopped to rest. I couldn't feel my hands or my feet. The blood pooled in my upper arms, causing them to ache. I felt nauseous, and so I sat down for a moment, my back against the trunk of an evergreen. I removed my gloves and examined my hands. The lines on my palms were white. The skin on my knuckles had cracked and begun to bleed, and my fingers were too stiff to bend. On my right hand, the curled and crippled fingers had turned blue, and the scar running down the length of the hand had split open. My breath was shallow. I tried to check my boots to see whether or not the snow was getting in, but I couldn't work the laces with my fingers. I leaned back and closed my eyes, giving myself permission to rest.

“C'mon,” Graden said. “It's time to go home.”

He was standing there, just a few feet away from me. I couldn't make him out very well in the swirling snow, but it was him. I laughed just at hearing his voice again. The snow cleared for a moment, and I could see him distinctly now, standing in front of the old grain shed.

“It's time to go home.”

I downed my gin and said a loud farewell to the half-dozen others who were gathered there. I patted John Young on the back, blew a kiss to Faye. I stumbled out the door, leaning on my brother as we walked.

“You know I wish you wouldn't come to this place.”

“And you know I don't need you to lecture me,” I slurred.

I took my arm off his shoulder, teetered, then straightened and continued on alone. Graden trailed a few steps behind. When we reached the old pine, I stopped.

“Gotta piss,” I called out over my shoulder.

I waded through the tall grass towards the tree, placed my right hand on it to steady myself, undid my pants, and released a stream of urine against the base. I wavered in my relief, then pulled my pants back up.

I knew what was coming next — the sound of a car engine, the headlights punching two holes in the darkness, the men in the black cars taking my brother away while I hid by the tree, trying unsuccessfully to will myself to move forward, to do something, anything. I felt dizzy and light-headed. My vision blurred, and my thoughts turned sluggish.

I was on the porch beside my father, who was drunk, smoking cigarettes, and warning me about challenging whites. I was seated beside Graden on the bus going to Jackson, listening to hymns sung out in strong, clear voices. I was crouching in the grass beneath the pine tree, head swimming with gin. I was resting with my back against an evergreen behind Earl's house with my boots and gloves removed, feeling the sharp, cold stab of snow down the back of my coat.

Shivering, I tried to stand up so I could warn Graden about the men who were coming, but I found I couldn't budge. A short distance away my brother stood patiently, waiting for me to join him on the walk home.

“I'm gonna go on ahead,” he called. “You come when you're ready.”

He shone that smile at me, and I felt as if the sun had risen inside my chest. I wasn't cold any more. I didn't worry about the cars coming around the bend or the men smiling on the courthouse steps. I no longer had to remember him as the torn-up body in the coroner's photo. He was here and he was whole, and I knew that they could no longer touch him.

“Wait,” I called out. “I'm coming.”

I tried to make it to my feet, but the snow was soft and deep, and I stumbled, falling forward on to my hands and knees. And so I began crawling towards him like I had on that New Year's Day so long ago, when everything was buried in white, and the world seemed fresh and bright and ready to begin anew. I tried to tell him how sorry I was. How much I loved him and missed him. I could see him just a few feet ahead, where he had stopped once again to wait for me.

“You shouldn't have come to get me,” I said.

His smile was a light, pushing away the darkness.

“I wouldn't leave without you,” he said. “Come on. It's time to go.”

He reached out his hand to me and hauled me up so that I was finally standing beside him. Then we turned to walk home.

Amblan, 2008

When we got to
the
hospital, I told them my name was Earl Olsen, but the doctor recognized me and had the nurse correct the information on my sheet. They kept me overnight to treat mild hypothermia and released me in the morning.

Two weeks passed before Warren's body was found. The tracks he'd left were long since covered over, and the rifle was lying in the snow a few feet away from him. Just another hunter who lost his way. Not unusual in these parts.

I wasn't happy to know he was gone, but I wasn't sad about it either. I wished I could say different, but the truth was it didn't affect me much at all to hear about it. My only sympathy was for the young man hiding by the old pine tree, staring out from the darkness, too frightened to act. That was who Warren Williams really was. His whole life after that was just the consequence.

A few reporters from down in the States poked around for a bit, but they didn't stay long or pry hard, and the folks up here tend to be pretty tight-lipped around strangers anyway.

About a week after he was discovered, I saw an interview with his sister. There was a postcard in his pocket that she had sent him years ago, the only personal effect they found on him. She was on the front steps of her house in Philadelphia, dressed simply in a plain brown skirt and a white blouse, her hair done up in a bun. The reporter was off-camera.

“Is there a reason he was in Amblan?”

She hesitated before answering, looking deliberately into the camera. I waited to hear my name, and I was OK with it. After waking in the hospital I had gone back to using Earl Daniel, but if the police came for me, I wouldn't deny it. I'd done that for too long. Every man is convinced of his own innocence. It takes someone else to show him otherwise. I looked at the screen, and Etta seemed to look out of it, right at me.

“Probably not. No. Warren moved around a lot. There isn't anywhere that he'd turn up that I'd say is surprising.”

I wasn't sure if I was relieved by her answer or not.

“Warren dedicated his later years to bringing your younger brother's killers to justice. Did he find peace in that?”

“Well, peace isn't something Warren had a relationship with. He was always too hard on himself. I hope it gave him some comfort, though.”

“How do you want your brother to be remembered?”

She paused to think. I watched her draw herself together, her poise apparent even on the screen.

“I want him to be remembered for what he was. A good man. A dedicated man. One with flaws, certainly, just like anyone else, but a man who set his mind to something and wouldn't let anyone deter him from it. I know he got a lot of mail from folks who just wanted him to stop stirring things up, but he believed that what he was doing was right, and he had the courage to keep doing it. That's one thing that both my brothers had in common, Graden and Warren. They were both brave men.”

I would like to thank the following people and organizations for their role in this process:

The School for Writers at Humber College for its dedication to supporting and developing new writers and, in particular, Joan Barfoot for her invaluable advice and guidance.

Margaret Hart, formerly of the HSW Literary Agency, who was tireless in her efforts on my behalf. I could not have asked for a better representative.

All the staff at TAP Books and Dundurn for their support, including those who work behind the scenes.

A special thank you to my editor, Diane Young, for her patient and thoughtful treatment of the material. Your insight has greatly strengthened the work.

And finally to Jim Holling, Jan Metcalfe, Brian Henry, Emily Donaldson, and Christine Walde for having read prior manuscripts and offered helpful advice, and to my friends and family for their support.

NOTE

I have tried to avoid writing a history book, and so in this story I have only tangentially touched on the struggle to mobilize black voters that took place in rural Mississippi in the early sixties. Although the Freedom Summer efforts of 1964 are the best known, local organizers had been working on similar voter registration projects for years before then. The imported students and the local volunteers risked everything during that time to change Mississippi, and the world. Their courage and sacrifice are inspiring and, in some cases, unimaginable. For more information about Freedom Summer and the projects that preceded it, I recommend consulting the Mississippi Department of Archives and History (http://mdah.state.ms.us) or www.freedom50.org.

Copyright © Craig Shreve, 2015

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of TAP Books Ltd. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real persons or real events — with the exception of references to historical figures and events that are now part of the public record — is purely coincidental.

Editor: Diane Young

Design: Laura Boyle

Epub Design: Carmen Giraudy

Cover Design: Laura Boyle

Image credits:
Oriontrail
/istockphoto.com

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Shreve, Craig, author

One night in Mississippi / Craig Shreve.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-4597-3099-1 (pbk.).--ISBN 978-1-4597-3100-4 (pdf).-- ISBN 978-1-4597-3101-1 (epub)

I. Title.

PS8637.H735O54 2015 C813'.6 C2014-906617-1

C2014-906618-X

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