Death in the Delta: Uncovering a Mississippi Family Secret

CHAPTER TEN: Yet Another Version

103 YetAnotherVersion Oh, my God. For the second time that day, my body registered new information with a shudder, my stomach tightening into a hard knot. My grandfather, whom I never knew, seemed to have been adored by his wife and children, though they rarely spoke of him. Had he cheated on my grandmother? Had he taken a black woman as his lover? Pat continued, “It seems that your grandfather deeded land on the north side of Ashland Plantation to Simon. Your dad and his brothers went to the Pan Am station to kill him. It had nothing to do with alcohol.” Before I could fully register what she said, she went on, “Now. Emma Harris called me while you were out. She found out about your being here, and she wants you to come to see her. Her mother and her aunt are Simon’s nieces. Let me get her on the phone for you.” ��� On the way to Emma Harris’s house, I bought a sandwich and a cup of coffee at a gas station. I took two Tylenol to slow down the express train headache coming on and an antacid tablet for the bile collecting in my stomach. I took out my notebook and wrote down Charles Weissinger’s twist on the story. I had to clear my head. I had to find a way to be present mentally. More people. More stories. How much more outrageous could this tale become? I fought strong urges to shut down or throw up. chapter ten yet another version 104 ��� I drove the five miles from Rolling Fork to Anguilla, smoking and hoping they wouldn’t be able to detect the stench on my breath or clothing, hoping my tired bloodshot eyes wouldn’t make me out to be as unhinged as I felt. I thought about how I didn’t have time to be afraid. Women. They would be less threatening. But I braced myself when I pulled into the gravel driveway to the right of the small, pale blue house with bright blue trim. I hoped that no new information would surface. Emma met me at the door. Though she was stockier than I, her lustrous, flawless skin disguised the fact that we were almost the same age. She introduced me to her mother, Rose Cooper, and to her aunt, Inez Files. We settled ourselves on the sofas in the living room where photos of Emma’s grown son lined the mantle. It seems that there were lacy, crocheted doilies lying against the headrests of stuffed chairs, and a braided rug filled the space on the open floor. Emma, the former and only black, only female mayor of Anguilla, spoke proudly of her accomplishments in bettering the education of black boys and girls. They asked about my family, my “chillen,” a term my own grandmother lovingly used. I looked from Emma to Rose, her mother, another large, darkskinned , pretty woman. Inez, her sister, was taller, lean, with milkchocolate skin and more angular features. She had the presence of an educator. Teaching high school English in Greenville for most of her life gave her an air of authority. I recounted the story as I’d heard it. Inez was first to speak. “From what I gather and I actually don’t know—the Fields boys decided that they were going to close the town that night and my uncle and David Jones had just come back from the military and they were all sitting around the table drinking. And the Fields boys came in and said they were going to close the town. It always struck me as strange as to what authority did the Fields boys have to close the town. So they told my uncle and David Jones to leave and they said, ‘We are going to leave as yet another version 105 soon as we finish our drinks.’ But they said, ‘No, you are going to leave now,’ and they told them to run and having just come back from fighting in the war—I guess to them it was different from what they had been doing and what they had been encountering and to come back home and not receive any kind of respect, you know. My husband talked about it but he said he actually saw it. “Now, the only other thing I heard as a teenager was that...