Jesus in the Mist: Stories

The Day J.P. Saved the South

The Day J.P. Saved the South On a Monday morning in 1962, the fall James Meredith brought Mississippi to the point of mania by enrolling at Ole Miss, we sprawled on the high shoulder of Highway 45 North just outside Columbus and watched the federalized National Guard units heading toward Oxford: boys from towns to the south—Meridian, Macon, Lauderdale—in long olive-drab strings of jeeps and trucks and trailers rolling to the north and the showdown we’d dreamed for years would come. Some of us nearly high school age, some much younger, we were charged with a patriotic fervor we found heartening and at the same time frightening, as so many emotions at that age are. We waved and yelled and swung our Confederate flags. Pale faces grinned from the open ends of troop trucks, hands waved back, and an occasional rebel flag whipped from an antenna. “The goverment may think them boys are Federals now,” Billy Stevens observed, “but when the bullets start flying, they’ll be hitting niggers and yankee agitators, bet your ass. Them’s Rebel troops there, by God, and if they didn’t figure they was going up there to help the South, they wouldn’t be going at all.” “Reckon they got real bullets?” Barney Stutts’s eyes were wide with excitement. “I expect so,” somebody behind me said. We all nodded. “I still don’t see why they’re going up there,” Potts continued. “If the goverment figures them boys there are going to pertect that nigger from them Ole Miss boys, they’re crazy.” The Day J.P. Saved the South 145 “I guess they’re more worried about outside agitators stirring up things,” I answered, “yankees and them Northern niggers down here to egg Meredith on. They figure folks from Ole Miss and Oxford are going to raise hell.” Barney swelled. “And you can bet, by God, that they’re right—they’ll hang that nigger and all his agitator friends.” “Boy, it’s gon’ be exciting,” a small voice came from behind. The next morning word spread that the Columbus unit was mobilized and would be moving out before dark. We were gathered outside the cyclone fence surrounding the armory by noon—excitement having built to the point that our teachers simply threw up their hands and said that those who needed to go on home could go for the afternoon—watching the trucks being loaded with racks of M-1’s and carbines, duffel bags, tents, and kitchen gear. An air of nervous excitement pervaded the compound: Officers shouted commands and enlisted men scurried about, swearing and laughing, joking about Negroes and Northern agitators and the federal government. We knew several of the younger soldiers, fellows just a few years older than we were, two or three just out of high school. J.P. was one of them. He hadn’t been in the Guard but about a month—he was afraid he was going to be drafted, he said. Besides, he made some extra money. We yelled at him a few times, but he ignored us, dogged as everybody was by the officers, who knew that for the unit to be on the road by dark some real ass kicking had to be done. Finally, during a lull in the loading, J.P. walked over to where we clung to the fence, a cigarette dangling cockily from the corner of his mouth. “What you little shits doing up here?” He pushed the brim of his steel helmet up at a jaunty angle. “What you wearing your steel pot for, J.P.?” Potts asked him. “Figger you gon’ get shot at by a nigger?” “Never know. The officers said get used to wearing the damn things. Hell, did y’all know that somebody shot at one of the Guard colyums just outside Oxford yesterday? They never seen who it was—got everybody nervous.” “Boy, J.P.,” Stutts stammered, “I wish we could go with y’all.” “Naw, this ain’t the same thing as going swimming or fishing—this is serious stuff. You ain’t big enough to tote a M-1, much less shoot one.” “Y’all got real bullets, J.P.?” somebody asked. 146 Jesus in the Mist “Yeah. I seen some boxes of ammo in the back of one of the trucks. We going loaded for bear...