Tishomingo Blues

4

"I STARTED TELLING YOU ABOUT this man name Kirkbride," Robert said. "He started his business from what he made owning trailer parks. But you go back a couple of generations the Kirkbrides are farmers. Was Mr. Kirkbride 's grandpa, the first Walter Kirkbride, owned land over in Tippah County and had sharecroppers working it for him-one of 'em being my great-granddaddy. Worked forty acres of cotton, what he did his whole life. He's the one I'm named for, the first Robert Taylor. Lived with his wife and children in a shack, five little girls and two little boys, my granddaddy being number seven, Douglas Taylor."

Dennis said, "This is a true story?"

"Why would I make it up?"

They turned off the highway to approach Tunica, leaving open country and the night sky for trees lining the road and the lights that showed Main Street.

"That's the police station," Dennis said, "coming up on the left. The squad cars we saw were county, they didn't come from here."

Robert said, "Like you been checking up on crime yourself."

"Go up past the drugstore and turn left, over to School Street and turn left again." "You want to hear my story or not?" "I want to get home."

"You gonna listen?"

"You're dying to tell it. Go ahead."

"See if you can keep quiet a few minutes."

Dennis said, "I'm listening." But then said, "Is this how the Taylors came to Detroit and your granddad went to work at Ford?"

"Was Fisher Body, but that isn't the story. I'm holding on to my patience," Robert said. "You understand what the consequence could be, you keep talking?"

Dennis was starting to like Robert Taylor. He said, "Tell the story."

"Was my granddaddy brought his family later on to Detroit. He's the one told me this story when he was living with us. About how my greatgranddaddy had a disagreement with Kirkbride's grandpa-a black man accusing the white man of cheating him on his shares-and the white man saying, `You don't like it, take your pickaninnies and get off my land.' "

"This is School Street."

Robert said, making the turn, "I can see it's School Street."

"The house is on the right-hand side, end of the block."

"You through talking?"

"Yeah, go on. No, wait. There's a car up there,"

Dennis said, "in front of the house."

"Man, what's your problem?" "I don't know whose it is." "Your landlady's." "She drives a white Honda." "Well, it ain't a cop car." "How do you know?"

"It doesn't have all that shit on top." "Stop a couple of houses this side."

Robert crept the Jaguar down this street of tall oaks and old one-story homes set back among evergreens, drifted to the curb and killed the engine. The headlights showed the rear end of a black car. Robert said, `96 Dodge Stratus, worth maybe five," turned the lights off and said, "You happy now?"

"Your grandfather," Dennis said, "got in an argument with Kirkbride's grandfather, and?"

"Was my great-grandfather. They have a disagreement over shares and the man tells my great granddaddy to get off the property."

"With his pickaninnies," Dennis said.

"That's right. Only he didn't feel he should take this shit off the man. Where they suppose to go? He's got his wife and seven children to feed. What he does, he takes a drink of corn and goes up to the house, see if he can reason with the man. Goes to the back door. The man ain't home, but his woman is and maybe Robert Taylor gets ugly with her. You know what I'm saying? Ugly meaning disrespectful, like he raises his voice. The woman becomes hysterical a nigga would talk to her like that. Keeps screaming at him till Robert Taylor says fuck it and walks away. Goes home. He believes that's the end of it, they may as well pack up the few things they own and go on down the road. Except that night men come with torches and set his house on fire, his shack, with his family inside."

Dennis said, "Jesus." No longer looking at the black Dodge or Vernice's house.

"He gets his wife and the kids out, the little children screaming scared to death. Can you see it?"

Dennis said, "That kind of thing happened, didn't it?"

Robert said, "Few thousand times is all. They told my great-granddaddy this is what you get for molesting a white woman. That's the word they used, molesting. Like he'd want any of that grandma. They stripped him naked, tied him to a tree and whipped him, cut him up, cut his dick off and left him tied there through the night. In the morning they lynched him."

Dennis said, "Jesus-Kirkbride did it?"

"Kirkbride, men that worked for him, people from town, anybody wanted to see a lynching. But you know why they waited till morning? See, they didn't lynch him right there." Robert stopped. His gaze moved, inched away, and Dennis turned his head to look toward the house, Robert saying, "I believe that's the cowboy."

It was, coming down the walk from the house, Vernice by the front door holding it open.

"One of the dudes," Robert said, "wanted a free show."

Dennis said, "It could be, but I don't know him."

"He knows your landlady, if that's her."

"Vernice," Dennis said.

The one in the cowboy hat looked back at the house and waved as he reached his car and Vernice went inside, Dennis noticing she didn't wave back. The one in the cowboy hat glanced this way as he opened the door of his car, stared a moment, got in and drove away.

"Man would like to know who the fuck around here owns a Jag-u-ar."

Dennis watched the taillights going away.

"I don't have any idea who it is."

"You keep reminding me of that," Robert said, "in case I forget."

"It doesn't matter," Dennis said. "I know he didn't come by to see me."

Robert said, "Dennis?"

"Yeah?"

"Look over here at me."

Dennis turned his head.

"What?"

"That man gives you any shit, tell me."

Dennis almost said it again, insisting he did not know the man. But he saw Robert's expression, Robert's cool showing, his confidence, Robert knowing things he didn't have to be told, and it was strange, the feeling it gave him, that he could rely on this guy, the guy maybe drawing him into something, using him, but so what; he liked the feeling of not being on his own-standing exposed on the perch, the two rednecks looking up at him. Dennis said, "They waited till morning to lynch your great-granddaddy."

"You know why?"

Dennis shook his head saying no.

"So a man from the newspaper could take pictures. Get all these white trash people standing there, some with grins on their ignorant faces, alongside Robert Taylor hanging from a tree, the way it's mostly done. Can you see it?"

Dennis nodded.

"But then the photographer had an idea-the way photographers to this day fuck with you taking your picture, put you in poses that don't make any sense. What they did, they took Robert Taylor down to a bridge over the Hatchie, the river east of here some, tied one end of the rope around his neck, the other end to the iron rail, and lifted him over the side. He's hanging there in the picture naked, his neck broken, a bunch of people lining the rail."

Dennis said, "You have the picture?"

"The one took it had postcards made and sold 'em for a penny apiece. Yeah, I have one."

"You brought it with you?"

"Yes, I did."

"You're gonna show it to Mr. Kirkbride?"

There was Robert's smile again, in the dark.

"Yes, I am."