Coming of Age in Mississippi (18 page)

The tension lasted for about a month before anything happened. Then one day, a rumor was spread throughout town that a Negro had been making telephone calls to a white operator and threatening to molest her. It was also said that the calls had been traced to a certain phone that was now under watch.

Next thing we heard in the Negro community was that they had caught and nearly beaten to death a boy who, they said, had made the calls to the white operator. All the Negroes went around saying, “Y’all know that boy didn’t do that.”

“That boy” was my classmate Jerry. A few months later I got a chance to talk to him and he told me what happened.

He said he had used the telephone at Billups and Fillups service station and was on his way home when Sheriff Ed Cassidy came along in his pickup truck.

“Hey, buddy,” Cassidy called, “you on your way home?”

“Yes,” Jerry answered.

“Jump in, I’m goin’ your way, I’ll give you a lift.”

Then Jerry told me that when they got out there by the scales where the big trucks weigh at the old camp intersection, Cassidy let him out, telling him that he had forgotten something in town and had to go back and pick it up. At that point, Jerry told me, he didn’t suspect anything. He just got out of the truck and told Cassidy thanks. But as soon as the sheriff pulled away, a car came along and stopped. There were four men in it. A deep voice ordered Jerry to get into the car. When he saw that two of the men were Jim Dixon and Nat Withers, whom he had often seen hanging around town with Cassidy, he started to run. But the two in the back jumped out and grabbed him. They forced him into the car and drove out into the camp area. When they got about five miles out, they turned down a little dark dirt road, heavily shaded with trees. They pushed Jerry out of the car onto the ground. He got up and dashed into the woods but they caught up with him and dragged him farther into the woods. Then they tied him to a tree and beat him with a big thick leather strap and a piece of hose pipe.

I asked him if they told him why they were beating him.

“No, not at first,” Jerry said, “but when I started screamin’ and cryin’ and askin’ them why they were beatin’ me Dixon told me I was tryin’ to be smart and they just kept on beatin’ me. Then one of the men I didn’t know asked me, ‘Did you make that phone call, boy?’ I said no. I think he kinda believed me ’cause he stopped beatin’ me but the others didn’t. The rest of them beat me until I passed out. When I came out of it I was lying on the ground, untied, naked and bleeding. I tried to get up but I was hurtin’ all over and it was hard to move. Finally I got my clothes on that them sonofabitches had tore offa me and I made it out to the main highway, but I fainted again. When I woke up I was home in bed.

“Daddy them was scared to take me to the hospital in Centreville. I didn’t even see a doctor ’cause they were scared to take me to them white doctors. Wasn’t any bones or anything broken. I was swollen all over, though. And you can see
I still have bruises and cuts from the strap, but otherwise I guess I’m O.K.”

When I asked him whether they were going to do anything about it, he said that his daddy had gotten a white lawyer from Baton Rouge. But after the lawyer pried around in Centreville for a few days, he suddenly disappeared.

Jerry’s beating shook up all the Negroes in town. But the most shocking and unjust crime of all occurred a few months later, about two weeks before school ended.

One night, about one o’clock, I was awakened by what I thought was a terrible nightmare. It was an empty dream that consisted only of hollering and screaming voices. It seemed as though I was in an empty valley screaming. And the sounds of my voice were reflected in a million echoes that were so loud I was being lifted in mid-air by the sound waves. I found myself standing trembling in the middle of the floor reaching for the light string. Then I saw Mama running to the kitchen, in her nightgown.

“Mama! Mama! What’s all them voices? Where’re all those people? What’s happening?”

“I don’t know,” she said, coming to my bedroom door.

“Listen! Listen!” I said, almost screaming.

“Stop all that loud talking fo’ you wake up the rest of them chaps. It must be a house on fire or somethin’ ’cause of all the screamin’. Somebody must be hurt in it or somethin’ too. Ray is getting the car, we gonna go see what it is,” she said and headed for the back door.

“You going in your gown?” I asked her.

“We ain’t gonna git out of the car. Come on, you can go,” she said. “But don’t slam the door and wake them chaps up.”

I followed her out of the back door in my pajamas. Raymond was just backing the car out of the driveway.

When we turned the corner leaving the quarters, Raymond drove slowly alongside hundreds of people running down the road. They were all headed in the direction of the blaze that reddened the sky.

The crowd of people began to swell until driving was utterly impossible. Finally the long line of cars stopped. We were about two blocks away from the burning house now. The air was so hot that water was running down the faces of the people who ran past the car. The burning house was on the rock road, leading to the school, adjacent to the street we stopped on. So we couldn’t tell which house it was. From where we sat, it seemed as though it could have been two or three of them burning. I knew every Negro living in the houses that lined that rock road. I passed them every day on my way to and from school.

I sat there in my pajamas, wishing I had thrown on a dress or something so I could get out of the car.

“Ray, ask somebody who house it is,” Mama said to Raymond.

“Hi! Excuse me.” Raymond leaned out of the car and spoke to a Negro man. “Do you know who house is on fire?”

“I heard it was the Taplin family. They say the whole family is still in the house. Look like they are done for, so they say.”

Didn’t any one of us say anything after that. We just sat in the car silently. I couldn’t believe what the man had just said. “A whole family burned to death—impossible!” I thought.

“What you think happened, Ray?” Mama finally said to Raymond.

“I don’t know. You never kin tell,” Raymond said. “It seems mighty strange, though.”

Soon people started walking back down the road. The screams and hollering had stopped. People were almost whispering now. They were all Negroes, although I was almost sure I had seen some whites pass before. “I guess not,” I thought, sitting there sick inside. Some of the ladies passing the car had tears running down their faces, as they whispered to each other.

“Didn’t you smell that gasoline?” I heard a lady who lived in the quarters say.

“That house didn’t just catch on fire. And just think them
bastards burned up a whole family,” another lady said. Then they were quiet again.

Soon their husbands neared the car.

“Heh, Jones,” Raymond said to one of the men. “How many was killed?”

“About eight or nine of them, Ray. They say the old lady and one of the children got out. I didn’t see her no-where, though.”

“You think the house was set on fire?” Raymond asked.

“It sho’ looks like it, Ray. It burned down like nothing. When I got there that house was burning on every side. If it had started on the inside of the house at some one place then it wouldn’t burn down like it did. All the walls fell in together. Too many strange things are happening round here these days.”

Now most of the people and cars were gone, Raymond drove up to the little rock road and parked. I almost vomited when I caught a whiff of the odor of burned bodies mixed with the gasoline. The wooden frame house had been burned to ashes. All that was left were some iron bedposts and springs, a blackened refrigerator, a stove, and some kitchen equipment.

We sat in the car for about an hour, silently looking at this debris and the ashes that covered the nine charcoal-burned bodies. A hundred or more also stood around—Negroes from the neighborhood in their pajamas, night-gowns, and housecoats and even a few whites, with their eyes fixed on that dreadful scene. I shall never forget the expressions on the faces of the Negroes. There was almost unanimous hopelessness in them. The still, sad faces watched the smoke rising from the remains until the smoke died down to practically nothing. There was something strange about that smoke. It was the thickest and blackest smoke I had ever seen.

Raymond finally drove away, but it was impossible for him to take me away from that nightmare. Those screams, those faces, that smoke, would never leave me.

———

The next day I took the long, roundabout way to school. I didn’t want to go by the scene that was so fixed in my mind. I tried to convince myself that nothing had happened in the night. And I wanted so much to believe that, to believe anything but the dream itself. However, at school, everybody was talking about it. All during each class there was whispering from student to student. Hadn’t many of my classmates witnessed the burning last night. I wished they had. If so, they wouldn’t be talking so much, I thought. Because I had seen it, and
I
couldn’t talk about it. I just couldn’t.

I was so glad when the bell sounded for the lunch hour. I picked up my books and headed home. I couldn’t endure another minute of that torture. I was in such a hurry to get away from the talk at school I forgot to take the round-about way home. Before I realized it, I was standing there where the Taplins’ house had been. It looked quite different by day than it had at night. The ashes and junk had been scattered as if someone had looked for the remains of the bodies. The heavy black smoke had disappeared completely. But I stood there looking at the spot where I had seen it rising and I saw it again, slowly drifting away, disappearing before my eyes. I tore myself away and ran almost all the way home.

When I walked in the house Mama didn’t even ask me why I came home. She just looked at me. And for the first time I realized she understood what was going on within me, or was trying to anyway. I took two aspirins and went to bed. I stayed there all afternoon. When it was time for me to go to work after school, Mama didn’t come in. She must have known I wasn’t in the mood for Mrs. Burke that evening. I wasn’t in the mood for anything. I was just there inside of myself, inflicting pain with every thought that ran through my mind.

That night Centreville was like a ghost town. It was so quiet and still. The quietness almost drove me crazy. It was
too quiet for sleeping that night, yet it was too restless for dreams and too dry for weeping.

A few days later, it was reported that the fire had started from the kerosene lamp used by Mrs. Taplin as a light for the new baby. Nobody bought that story. At least none of those who witnessed that fire and smelled all that gasoline. They were sure that more than a lampful of kerosene caused that house to burn that fast.

There was so much doubt and dissension about the Taplin burning that finally FBI agents arrived on the scene and quietly conducted an investigation. But as usual in this sort of case, the investigation was dropped as soon as public interest died down.

Months later the story behind the burning was whispered throughout the Negro community. Some of the Taplins’ neighbors who had been questioned put their scraps of information together and came up with an answer that made sense:

Living next door to the Taplin family was a Mr. Banks, a high yellow mulatto man of much wealth. He was a bachelor with land and cattle galore. He had for some time discreetly taken care of a white woman, the mother of three whose husband had deserted her, leaving her to care for the children the best way she knew how. She lived in a bottom where a few other poor whites lived. The Guild during one of its investigations discovered the children at home alone one night—and many other nights after that. Naturally, they wondered where the mother was spending her nights. A few days’ observation of the bottom proved she was leaving home, after putting the children to bed, and being picked up by Mr. Banks in inconspicuous places.

When the Taplin family was burned, Mr. Banks escaped his punishment. Very soon afterward he locked his house and disappeared. And so did the white lady from the bottom.

———

I could barely wait until school was out. I was so sick of Centreville. I made up my mind to tell Mama I had to get away, if only for the summer. I had thought of going to Baton Rouge to live with my Uncle Ed who was now married and living there with his family.

A few days before school ended I sat in the midst of about six of my classmates who insisted on discussing the Taplin family. By the time I got home, my nerves were in shreds from thinking of some of the things they had said. I put my books down, took two aspirins, and got into bed. I didn’t think I could go to work that evening because I was too nervous to be around Mrs. Burke. I had not been myself at work since the Emmett Till murder, especially after the way Mrs. Burke had talked to me about the Taplin family. But she had become more observant of my reactions.

“What’s wrong with you? Is you sick?” Mama asked me.

I didn’t answer her.

“Take your shoes off that spread. You better git up and go to work. Mrs. Burke gonna fire you.”

“I got a headache and I don’t feel like going,” I said.

“What’s wrong with you, getting so many headaches around here?”

I decided not to wait any longer to tell Mama my plan.

“Mama, I am gonna write Ed and see can I stay with him this summer and get a job in Baton Rouge. I am just tired of working for Mrs. Burke for a dollar a day. I can make five dollars a day in Baton Rouge and I make only six dollars a week here.”

“Ed them ain’t got enough room for you to live with them. Take your shoes off,” Mama said, and left me lying in bed.

As soon as she left, I got up and wrote my letter. About five days later I received an answer from Ed. He said I was welcome, so I started packing to leave the next day. Mama looked at me as if she didn’t want me to go. But she knew better than to ask me.

I was fifteen years old and leaving home for the first time. I
wasn’t even sure I could get a job at that age. But I had to go anyway, if only to breathe a slightly different atmosphere. I was choking to death in Centreville. I couldn’t go on working for Mrs. Burke pretending I was dumb and innocent, pretending I didn’t know what was going on in all her guild meetings, or about Jerry’s beating, or about the Taplin burning, and everything else that was going on. I was sick of pretending, sick of selling my feelings for a dollar a day.