Dissident Gardens (20 page)

Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney were buried in an earthen dam in the woods, and their bodies located only after a massive FBI search of a hundred-square-mile area of backwoods Mississippi. Before their discovery, how many bodies of unidentified black men, presumably other victims of Klan lynchings, were unearthed in the search? Untold numbers, of which no one could bear to keep count
. Miriam, having come to fairly regard herself as a whiz at games and puzzles, genius taker of standardized tests and filler-out of standardized forms, master of negotiation with bureaucracies both of the New York civic infrastructure and of the Organized Left, and above all a dervish at one-on-one interlocutive repartee,
at always having the answers, always clearing the hurdle
, thanks to the long ferocious experiment in Rose Zimmer’s laboratory of childhood—her collapse on the quiz program calls up that other shameful moment when she’d failed. The encounter in CORE’s offices was a follow-up, actually an appeal she’d requested after being stupefyingly denied in her application to join the Mississippi Summer Project. To enlist in one capacity or another was 1964’s sensation, after Martin Luther King’s march on the Mall, where they’d all been the summer before, Tommy a little burned up to see Bobby Dylan get the gig, but that was how it went with Dylan then—he’d rocketed from the human pavement of their
world. You had to get accustomed to spotting his gawky figure, constellation of elbows and harmonica holder, in the distant sky. Tommy took it personally even if he shouldn’t.
Andrew Goodman was a drama student at Queens College in the early sixties. For thirty-five dollars at two-to-one odds, did you know him personally? No, I wouldn’t say personally, but I did find out later from some friends in common that we’d picketed LBJ together at New York Pavilion at the World’s Fair, a couple of months before Goodman was killed … Mario Savio, also Queens College, was supposed to be there as well …

Miriam’s examiner in her self-instigated appeal was a slim, proud, scholarly Negro close to her age named John Rascoe. At CORE headquarters he’d led her to a windowless, closet-size office to sit in scuffed white plastic chairs, no desk between them, while he paged through her application file as if he’d never read it, though it held nothing new besides a letter of support from Rose. Miriam at twenty-four technically needed no parental waiver, as would have a college student like Goodman or so many other volunteers, but once she’d been turned down she figured a letter from Rose couldn’t hurt—Rose pounded out, God only knew, a strong letter on her cursive manual Olympia. Miriam, waiting for Rascoe to unfurrow his brow and ask her a question—much as she waited now for Art James to throw her another opportunity—felt in that small office the ready expansion of her persuasive self, the insinuating worldly aura with which she’d grown accustomed to seducing down the doors before her. Really, who better to go and transform Mississippi? Miriam was a sovereign in the cause of equality, a legacy from Rose. So for the council’s error to be repaired, she merely let her certainty be felt by Rascoe. Talk was hardly needed, really, except as a medium for conveyance of this mood. She’d been welcomed to the Corona Park parlor of the Reverend Gary Davis, listening as the blind singer plucked his guitar, while the reverend’s wife served them coffee and sugar cookies. To mention such a thing might nearly be unfair to John Rascoe. He looked about as uptight as they come. Now Rascoe coughed into his hand and explained wincingly that the council had “not seen fit to revise their estimation.”

“It’s sort of crazy, you couldn’t find someone more ready for whatever kind of thing is likely to go down down there—”

“Miss Gogan, the council examiner’s impression appears to be that you’d be surpassed by no one in your zeal for the effort.”

“Mrs. Gogan. I’ve been on all sorts of front lines.”

“Excuse me, Mrs. I don’t doubt you’ve nerves of steel. The conditions for our workers”—he coughed again—“this is a situation where what’s sought is a certain temperance, a capacity to abide with the local population, and in many cases precisely a willingness not to assume a position on any kind of ‘front line.’ Instead one must allow oneself to be led by the black field directors, even to put oneself primarily in a listening attitude with those you meet in the field.”

Black or white, a classic bureaucrat in the making. An egghead. She couldn’t resist tweaking him. “
Field
is a funny word in this case, don’t you think?”

“I don’t think it’s funny at all.”

“Listen, I’ve lived in all kinds of privations, most recently in secrecy in illegal loft buildings, and in fact my whole life fearing the knock on the door of both the Nazis and the FBI, which I was taught to believe were more or less the same thing. I’ve attended more meetings beginning before I was even born than you can possibly imagine. As far as a listening attitude, you can consider yourself to be staring at a gigantic walking human ear, like from a monster movie. Nobody’s had to do more listening than me.”

He said nothing.

“What?”

“I’m wondering if there’s more you wish to tell us.”

“You could use me is your bottom line here.”

“I admire your confidence. But the necessities of this present cause require keeping free of distraction, being capable of blending into a certain environment.”

“Is it my last name?”

“I’m sorry?”

“My husband’s famous as a singer. Is CORE worried the reactionaries will find out who I am?”

“I see, I see.” Rascoe paged through the file. “I appreciate the concern, but no. There’s no suggestion that’s the difficulty.”

“He’s written a song or two mentioning Mississippi, of course.”

“I’m not familiar with his work.”

“Do you know who the Reverend Gary Davis is?”

He stared at her blankly.

Miriam wondered nonetheless if she should have come as Zimmer. Not have surrendered the surname that gave evidence of her place in the fundamental Negro-Jew alliance. CORE was taking Jews all over the place.

“You mention a difficulty,” she said.

“I’m sorry?”

“What is it? The difficulty. You used the word, not me.”

Cough. “Mrs. Gogan, there’s a matter of a certain amount of ill-considered bragging about certain family relationships. A liaison of your mother’s.”

“Liaison?”

“Of your mother’s. A certain excessive pride in the matter. Unbefitting the circumstances of the work we are trying to do here.”

“I’m stunned.”

“It’s mentioned again in a letter just now.”

“Wow.”

“You do know the great taboo in the region, the great myth with which we do battle?”

“Now you’re going to tell me men have died for less, aren’t you?”

“Precisely.”

Miriam saw abruptly that any expansion of her confidential persuasive self into the space of the little office had been apt, under the circumstances, to be misread. She couldn’t win for losing. As in the lingo of the one acting class she’d sat in on, she’d come in “big” when they wanted “small.” Rascoe’s rectitude contained more than a little distaste.

“Let me get this straight.” She was done making her appeal, but not quite done with him.

“Yes?”

“You’re telling your people down there to hand out the line that sex between Negroes and whites is a
myth
?”

College Football: The Bowl Games
. Miriam might just as well leave actuality unattended for the moment.

Matusevitch $235 Gogan $45 Stone $215

Rose Angrush Zimmer
. The second of her imagined categories consists of nothing less than Miriam’s life study.
To whom does Rose Angrush Zimmer make love? To Douglas Lookins, police lieutenant. Are they married? Yes, but to other persons. To whom is Rose Angrush Zimmer married? Her first husband was Albert Zimmer. Were they not divorced? They were divorced. Is he still alive? Albert Zimmer still lives in East Germany. Vee vould prefer to pass over zis matter in zilence, jah? Jah. Her second marriage, after divorce from Albert Zimmer, is to Abraham Lincoln. Correction—to Carl Sandburg’s
Lincoln.
Rose Angrush Zimmer is married to a book? Yes, that is correct. A Person of the Book, she has also chosen to marry one. In Rose’s utopian scheme you can marry whom you want. Only, a rabbi has to officiate
.

Goats in Fact and Fable
. Art James says jauntily, “We’ll see who knows their goats!” and Miriam, aware the show is nearing its close, thinks
Fuck it
, bets her remaining forty-five dollars, again on “Who,” at the nice odds of three-to-one. When the question comes up, “The novel
Giles Goat-Boy
is a parable about a young man raised as a goat who later learns he is human, and commits himself to learning life’s secrets. For one hundred and thirty-five dollars, and at risk of elimination, name the author,” she arches her eyebrow and bats out “John Barth,” just as if she has been dominating this proceeding as she’d expected to all along. The payout somewhat salves the humiliation the scoreboard advertises above her head, the applause of the studio audience breaks like surf over her head—their relief on her behalf explosive in its fervor—and Miriam, coming down from both the fugue of drug effects and her fury of disappointment, returning
to her body under the bright plasticky light, surrendering her hard-won separation from the absurd immediacy of Art James’s tie and the boinging musical transitions, measures what she can salvage here. Even losing, she can use the dough. Something better than nothing. Hell, she’s
in the game
. Never mind that the others score as well—they all three of them know their goats.

Matusevitch $285 Gogan $180 Stone $265

The Works of Charles Dickens
. Graham Stone nails “Fagin.” Peter Matusevitch bets too much and falters on “Jarndyce v. Jarndyce.” Then Art James presents Miriam with the following: “After a trip abroad in 1842 Dickens published a volume of travel sketches that were well received in England but gave great offense in the country he had visited. Name this country.” Miriam lingers for an instant on the resemblance to the earlier question concerning “Babylon piled on Imperial Rome”:
You are to be presented with an unrecognizable image of yourself which you must not fail to claim as yourself
.