The Quiet Game

“That’s kind of you. Do you like Natchez?”

“I do. It’s not sterilized or Disneyfied like Williamsburg. It’s still funky. Gossip, sex, whiskey, and eccentricity, all behind a gossamer veil of Southern gentility.”

I chuckle. “A woman I grew up with decided to move back here after working ten years as a film producer in Los Angeles. When I asked why, she told me she was worried that she was losing her mind, and knew that if she did it in Natchez, no one would notice.”

Caitlin laughs. “That’s exactly it! What about you? Do you like it?”

“That’s like asking someone if they like their mother. I’ve been away for years, but no one who grows up here ever really leaves this town behind.”

She makes a note on her pad. “I was surprised it’s such a haven for gays. But the contrasts are disturbing. You’ve got a real race problem here.”

“So does Los Angeles.”

“But this is a purely white-black race problem.”

“And your paper contributes to it.”

She reddens. “Would you care to elaborate on that?”

“Sure. The Examiner has never dug beneath the surface, never urged people toward their better natures. It was always too afraid to upset the white elite.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“You talk like you don’t.”

“Trust me, I do. Let me ask you something. I’ve been following local politics pretty closely, and there’s something funny going on.”

“Like?”

“You’d think Shad Johnson, the black candidate, would be making race a major issue, trying to mobilize every black vote.”

“How’s he playing it?”

“He’s not even mentioning race. He’s in the former money capital of the slaveholding South, thirty percent of the black population receives some form of public assistance, and he acts like he’s running for mayor of Utopia. Everything is New South, Brotherhood of Man. He’s running as a Republican, for Christ’s sake.”

“Sounds like a shrewd guy.”

“Will African Americans vote for him if he sucks up to the white vote like that?”

I can’t help but laugh. “If Johnson is the only black man in the race, local blacks will vote for him if he buggers a mule at high noon on the courthouse lawn.”

Two pink moons appear high on Caitlin’s cheeks. “I can’t believe you said that. And I can’t believe Johnson would stand for the way things are. The things I hear around here … sitting in restaurants, riding in cars with people. I’ve heard the N-word a thousand times since I’ve been here.”

“You’d hear it in Manhattan if you rode in the right cars. Look, I’d really rather not get into this. I spent eight years in the Houston courts listening to more bullshit about race than I ever want to hear.”

She shakes her head with apparent disgust. “That’s such a cop-out. Racism is the most important problem in America today.”

“Caitlin, you are a very rich, very white girl preaching about black problems. You’re not the first. Sometimes you have to let people save themselves.”

“And you’re a very white guy putting black men on death row for state-sanctioned murder.”

“Only when they kill people.”

“Only when they kill white people, you mean.”

A surge of anger runs through me, but I force myself to stay silent. There’s nothing to be gained by pointing out that Arthur Lee Hanratty is a white supremacist, or that I once freed a black man who had been mistakenly put on death row by a colleague of mine. You can’t win an argument like this. We stare at each other like two fighters after a flurry of punches, deciding whether to wade in again or rest on the ropes.

“Hanratty’s an exception,” Caitlin says, as though reading my mind.

This lady is dangerous. It may be a cliché, but her anger has brought color to her cheeks and fire into her eyes, and I am suddenly sure that a string of broken hearts lie in the wake of this self-assured young woman.

“I want to understand this, Penn,” she says with utter sincerity. “I need to. I’ve read a hundred books by Southern writers, Southern journalists, everything. And I still don’t get it.”

“That’s because it’s not a Southern problem.”

“Don’t you think the answer must be wrapped up in the South somehow?”

“No. Not the way you think, anyway. It’s been thirty years since the last vestiges of segregation were remedied under the law. And there’s a growing feeling that blacks have done damn little to take advantage of that. That they’ve been given special breaks and blown it every time. That they don’t want an even playing field but their turn on top. White America looks at the Vietnamese, the Irish, the Jews, and they say, ‘What’s the problem with the blacks?’ The resentment you hear around this town is based on that, not on old ideas of superiority.”

“Do you feel that way?”

“I used to. I don’t anymore.”

“Why not?”

“The Indians.”

“Indians? You mean Native Americans?”

“Think about it. Indians are the only minority that’s had as much trouble as blacks. Why? Both races had their cultures shattered by the white man. All the other groups—Irish, Italians, Vietnamese, whatever—may have come here destitute, but they brought one thing with them. Their national identities. Their sense of self. They congregated together in the cities and on the plains, like with like. They maintained their cultural identities—religions, customs, names—until they were secure enough to assimilate. Blacks had no chance to do that. They were stolen from their country, brought here in chains, sold as property. Their families were split, their religion beaten out of them, their names changed. Nothing was left. No identity. And they’ve never recovered.”

“And you parallel that with Native Americans?”

“It’s the same experience, only in reverse. The Indians weren’t stolen from their land, their land was stolen from them. And their culture was systematically destroyed. They’ve never recovered either, despite a host of government programs to help them.”

Caitlin stops writing. “That’s an interesting analogy.”

“If you don’t know who you are, you can’t find your way. There are exceptions, of course. Bright spots. But my point is that whites don’t look at blacks with the right perspective. We look at them like an immigrant group that can’t get its shit together.”

She takes a sip of tea as she processes this perspective. “Does Shad Johnson have the right idea, then? Should Natchez simply sweep its past under the rug and push ahead?”

“For Johnson, it’s the smart line to take. For the town … I don’t know.”

“Please try to answer. I think it’s important.”

“If I do, we go off the record.”

She doesn’t look happy, but she wants her answer. “Okay.”