Stymie’s was only two blocks from Grant Park, which was where the Obama people would hold tonight’s rally. Bob had chosen it for convenience—Janeka probably already knew the area.
But he realized as he came through the door that at some level, he had also chosen it to send this woman a message. Stymie’s was an old-fashioned steakhouse done up in wood the color of dark chocolate, with high-backed booths and brass fixtures. Its menu depicted a drawing of a cow seen in cross-section, with the various cuts of meat delineated. Its owner had contributed heavily to the doomed effort to defeat the state smoking ban that had gone into effect on January 1. If a building could vote, this one would vote—it would scream—Republican.
Not that Bob was a Republican—or, for that matter, a Democrat. A registered Independent, he didn’t identify with either party. But if Janeka was still spouting the hippie rhetoric of their youth, if she now embraced some Left Coast, free-range, organic food ethos, or if, God forbid, she had gone vegan on him, then walking into this temple of red meat and cholesterol would tell her emphatically that times had changed. That he had changed.
At his request, the maître d’ seated him in a booth in the back where he took a seat facing the front door. As the server was pouring his water, Bob opened his menu and asked, “What is your fish of the day?”
It was salmon, seared over wine-soaked cedar planks, served with grilled asparagus and pine nut couscous.
“Sounds good,” said Bob.
“Will you be eating alone?” the server asked. He was a lanky kid with long hair.
“No,” said Bob. “I’m meeting someone. I’m a little early.”
“Very good, sir.”
Bob was, in fact, early by design. He had not wanted to walk in and find her already sitting there, scrutinizing him while he stood in the doorway waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, searching the lunchtime crowd for her. To allow that would be to surrender a tactical advantage, like a general who allowed an enemy to seize the high ground. No. He wanted to see her first.
Hearing himself think these things, Bob was mildly appalled. Was Janeka really his enemy? Was that how he thought of her now?
He had certainly not regarded her as such in that sweet fall and winter of ’67 and ’68. No, she had been his deepest friend. She had been his future. Or at least, this was what he had very soon come to believe.
They made love for the first time three weeks after they saw In the Heat of the Night together. He was her first and she was his and they had agonized over the decision, both of them being good Christian kids from good Christian homes whose parents would be hurt and mortified at the thought that their son and daughter were down here breaking commandments and sinning their fool heads off. Plus, there was pregnancy to worry about.
In the end, however, reluctance and good intentions had been overmatched by simple lust. And dawning love.
Once the decision was made, they had to figure out where they would do it. The dorms were out. They were strictly segregated by gender and the monitors were known to be humorless and incorruptible. No visitor of the opposite sex was allowed past the front desk, period, ever, end of discussion.
So they settled on a hotel near campus—the only hotel near campus, this being Mississippi, where a ten-minute drive in any direction put you in the middle of cotton fields.
Bob had gone to the registration desk that afternoon, carrying an empty suitcase to make it look real. He registered, then went to the room and called Janeka’s dorm. When she came on the line, he said simply, “254,” feeling not unlike a spy in some Cold War novel. She said, for the benefit of the dorm monitor, “Jim! How good to hear from you, little brother. How’s mom and dad?” He could picture her standing in the hallway leaning against the cinderblock wall, smiling so the monitor could see there was nothing out of the ordinary here. He wondered if she were as nervous as he was.
Two hours later, there was a knocking at the door of Room 254, two hours having been the amount of separation they felt was needed between his arrival and hers so that it would not look suspicious. Bob had been sitting on the bed with the television on, half watching a rerun of I Love Lucy. Now, feeling almost as if he were in a dream, he opened the door and there she was and he could hardly believe she was real. She came in and he closed the door and there was an endless moment. Then Bob swept her into his arms, and by God, she was real. Indeed, he was overcome by the realness of her, the thereness of her, and they kissed with a passion and an abandon, all the while going at buttons and hooks and clasps in delicious haste. And they fell into bed…
…and what happened next was, of course, an unmitigated disaster, as how could it be otherwise with two kids who had never done anything like this before and had only the vaguest idea of how it went and had to read the helpful instructions on the box even to get the condom on? All that was bad enough. Then it got worse. She lay down, she opened herself to him, and Bob pushed eagerly inside her. He shuddered, his eyes rolled, and it was over.
Just like that.
Over.
Mortification made him very still. His cheeks flamed. And a second later when she asked, “Did you…did you…finish already?” his humiliation was complete. Bob groaned with unutterable self-loathing, buried his face in the pillow and prayed very fervently that God allow him to tunnel through the floor, through the crust, mantle, and core of the Earth and out the other side in China where he could flee to some hinterland village and live under an assumed name for the rest of his life.
“It’s okay,” she said, realizing now what had happened, trying to be helpful.
“No, it’s not,” he said, his voice muffled by the pillow.
“It’s okay,” she insisted.
He rolled off her and lay there staring at the ceiling. This was the worst moment of his entire existence.
Janeka placed her head on his chest. After a moment, he put an arm around her.
They lay together for a few minutes and then, somewhat to his surprise, Bob felt…a stirring. Janeka saw. “Do you want to try again?” she asked. After a moment, Bob nodded.
So they tried again. And later, they tried yet again.
And by the end, it was glorious.
And Bob and Janeka became inseparable. They also became increasingly bold about showing their feelings, race be darned, walking around campus hand in hand, even going across the street together to the launderette to wash their things, or to the burger joint next to it with the clean rectangular spot above the door where the Whites Only sign had hung until just two years before.
Some older white woman with cat’s-eye glasses stared at them one day as they sat across from one another in the cracked vinyl booth, Janeka idly poaching French fries from Bob’s basket. Finally, she came up to them. Ignoring Janeka, she addressed herself to Bob and spoke without preamble. “You’re such a fine-lookin’ boy,” she said in a voice of tender, grandmotherly concern. “I’m sure you could have any white girl you wanted. Why would you want to date outside your race?”
Bob had always been proud of how he responded to that. He smiled sweetly and spoke in a placid voice. “Ma’am,” he said, “my race is human. What’s yours?”
The woman colored. She clutched her purse tightly and walked away, her steps pinched and quick. He looked at Janeka. Janeka looked at him. They managed to wait until the door closed behind the old woman before they broke out laughing.
“There’s this girl,” Bob told his mother.
This was a few days later and Mom was calling long distance, wanting to know why he wasn’t coming home for Christmas.
“Girl?” She pronounced it like a word in some exotic foreign language. He could all but hear her eyebrows arching.
“I’ll write you about her,” he said. “This is probably costing a fortune.”
“Never mind that,” she said, and her voice mingled curiosity and concern. “Tell me about this ‘girl.’”
Bob sighed. He had been standing at the wall phone in the hallway next to the dorm monitor’s desk. Now, resignation pushed him down to the floor, where he sat cross-legged. This earned him a sympathetic smile from the monitor.
“Her name is Janeka,” he said. “Janeka Lattimore.”
“Janeka? What an odd name. Tell me more.”
So he did. He told her how Janeka was from California and her family couldn’t afford for her to come home for the holiday and he didn’t want her to have to spend Christmas here by herself.
“That’s very sweet,” said his mother, her voice measured like baking powder. “This girl is obviously special to you, Bobby. What’s she like?”
Bob heaved another sigh and told her still more. He told her Janeka was majoring in political science. He told her Janeka was about the smartest person he knew. He told her Janeka and he were working together on a voter registration project. And he told her, when she pressed him on it, that, yes, Janeka could indeed be The One.
He didn’t tell her Janeka was black.
Even when his mother asked him what she looked like, he said only that she was petite with brown hair and dark eyes and was just about the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
“She sounds lovely,” said Bob’s mother.
“She is,” said Bob.
On Christmas Eve, five days later, Bob walked out of his dorm into a biting winter afternoon to meet Janeka. She was standing out front waiting for him. They kissed, he took her gloved hand in his, and they were about to set out for chapel, where there was to be a holiday service. Then a woman’s voice called his name, but made it a question.
“Bobby?”
He looked up and there they were at the curb, his mother and father, Mom holding a tin of her famous Christmas cookies, both standing stock still with mouths agape. And there, behind them, were his three younger brothers grinning behind their hands and punching each other in the shoulder.
“Dad? Mom? What are you doing here?”
“We came to surprise you,” said his mother. There was a helpless note in her voice. The surprise was on her.
The next three seconds took an hour to pass, the longest, most excruciating hour of Bob’s life. Finally, his father recovered his power of speech, reaching for Janeka’s hand. “I’m Robert Carson,” he said, his big fist swallowing her tiny one and pumping it. “I’m Bobby’s father. These are my other boys, Sidney, Reed, and Stevie. And this is my wife, Estelle.”
It was right then that Estelle Carson finally recovered her own power of speech, to Bob’s everlasting regret. “You’re black,” she said. She said this in a tone that suggested Janeka would find it as much a surprise as she herself did.
“Yes,” said Janeka. She looked at Bob. “All day long and seven days a week.”
They all laughed at this, relieved at how artfully she had defused the moment. Janeka smiled, but there was ice at the edge of it that only Bob saw.
“I’m sorry,” his mother said, embarrassed, “but we didn’t know. Bobby didn’t tell us.”
‘I see,” said Janeka.
His mother shook Janeka’s hand. “Do you watch I Spy?” she asked. “We’re all crazy about that Bill Cosby.”
“Yes,” said Janeka, “we like him, too.”
If a truck had come barreling down the street just then, Bob would have stepped calmly in front of it and thanked God for sending it.
His mother clapped her hands together. “Well,” she said, and her voice was brighter than a klieg light, “who wants dinner?”
She had made reservations at a swanky restaurant in Memphis. Memphis was an hour away. They drove toward it in a rented station wagon, Estelle Carson filling half the drive with questions until Bob was sure Janeka must have felt like a suspect in an FBI interrogation. She wanted to know where Janeka was from (San Diego), what her parents did for a living (her father published a black newspaper, her mother was a housewife), if she had any siblings (a brother who was older and two sisters, both younger).
Panic coursed through Bob’s veins. He wished his mother would shut up. His mother had ruined everything.
Halfway to Memphis, thankfully, the interrogation ended and his mother started telling stories about her oldest son as a child, beginning with the 26 hours of labor it took to bring him into the world, and going on through such family favorites as the time Bob opened a lemonade stand and charged $50 a glass on the theory that he might not get many customers but at that price, wouldn’t need many. Ordinarily, Bob would have preferred death by firing squad than to have his mother telling a girl these hoary, embarrassing tales.
But given the alternative, he was happy to have her dredge up the misadventures of his childhood. Even if she whipped out the second-grade picture of him when his teeth looked like the New York City skyline, he was willing to take it, so long as she didn’t mention Bill Cosby again.
Pretty soon, his mother had them all laughing, and by the time the lights of Memphis appeared on the horizon, Bob was beginning to feel a little better. Yes, conversation stuttered to a stop when they entered the restaurant with Janeka in tow, but they were able to ignore that. And yes, at one point, some man two tables away did stare at Janeka as if she was some odd species of dog and he was trying to figure out how she had gotten in to such a swank restaurant. But by this time, Bob’s father was feeling so protective of her that the mild-mannered dentist from Minneapolis threw down his napkin and went over there, ignoring his wife’s, his son’s, and Janeka’s protests. They heard him promise to knock the man’s teeth out if he didn’t find something else to stare at.
The other man said, “Well, shit fire.” But he stopped staring.
Robert Carson, Sr. came back to the table and calmly finished his coffee. Bob’s mother stared at him as if wondering who he was and what he had done with her husband. But the expression on her face was not displeased.
A little over an hour later, the rented station wagon pulled up in front of Bob’s dorm and disgorged him and Janeka. He leaned into the passenger window to accept his mother’s kiss and to promise that he would join them for Christmas at the hotel in the morning. It struck him dimly that his parents or his brothers might wind up sleeping tonight on the same bed where he and Janeka had made love. The thought made his stomach hurt and he resolved to never think it again.
As the station wagon pulled away, he turned to face Janeka and saw what he expected. Her face had gone to stone.
“I’m sorry,” said Bob, cold smoke leaking from the side of his mouth. “I apologize for them. They’re not usually that bad.”
Janeka was incredulous. “You apologize for them? You need to apologize for yourself.”
“Me? What did I do?”
“Never mind,” she said. “Just forget it, all right?”
Janeka spun around to walk away. It was the first inkling Bob had of just how angry she was. He put a hand lightly on her shoulder. He had misread something—that much was obvious. But what it was, he had no idea.
“Janeka, what is it?”
She came back around, her eyes large and filled with anger. No. It wasn’t anger, was it? Disappointment. That’s what was in those eyes. Somehow, he had let her down. But…how?
He felt himself teetering as at the edge of a cliff. “Janeka?” There was a soft insistence in his voice. “What did I do? If it was the surprise, I’m sorry. I didn’t know anything about it.”
She shook her head and there was pity in the gesture. “Bob,” she said, “why didn’t you tell them I was black?”
It surprised him. “That’s what you’re upset about? Why should I tell them that?”
“Are you ashamed of it, Bob? Is that it?”
Panic stabbed his heart that she could even think such a thing. “No!” he said. “Never. Of course not.”
“Then why didn’t you tell them?”
“Because,” he said after a moment, “if I tell them, it’s like I’m warning them. It’s like I’m saying, ‘Oh, here’s something you better prepare yourself for. You might want to sit down for this. She’s…black.” He waggled his fingers on the last word, pronounced it with horror movie exaggeration, like the name of some monster from a black lagoon. He waited for her to laugh. Instead, she regarded him with sober, unblinking eyes.
“That’s exactly what you should have done, Bob. You should have warned them. The way you did it was extremely unfair.”
Bob sighed. But she had a point, didn’t she? “I guess you’re right,” he said. “That was unfair to you. But in my own defense, I didn’t expect them to just show up out of the blue.”
She shook her head. “You still don’t get it,” she told him. “It wasn’t just unfair to me. It was also unfair to your family. Your poor mother, I felt sorry for her. Did you see her, for heaven’s sake, stammering about how much she loves Bill Cosby?” Janeka chased the memory with a sad laugh.
“I didn’t tell them,” said Bob, “because telling them is like saying it means something.”
“It does mean something,” she said.
“It doesn’t,” he insisted. “It can’t. That’s the whole point of what we’re doing, isn’t it? With the voting rights and the whole freedom movement? We’re saying it doesn’t matter. I’m Bob, you’re Janeka, and we love each other and that’s all that’s important.”
She didn’t answer. She folded her arms across her chest and looked away. A thought struck him then. “So wait a minute,” he said. “Are you’re saying you’ve told your parents that I’m white?”
Janeka looked at him as though he were an idiot. “Of course I have,” she said.
Bob was shocked. “And?”
“My mother’s okay with it,” said Janeka. “Daddy’s trying to be okay with it, but it’s going to take him a minute. But my older brother, David…” The words dissolved in a rueful, private smile.
“He doesn’t like it?”
“He said he’s ashamed to see a sister of his consorting with the white devil. He said if I ever bring you home, he’s going to knock your block off.”
“Nice guy,” said Bob.
“David’s been hanging around with the Black Muslims. I think he ate too many bean pies or something. Mom and Daddy are really worried about him.”
She regarded Bob for a moment. Her arms were still folded. “You should have told your family,” she said. Her voice was quiet but definitive. “The fact that you didn’t makes me wonder if you really understand the struggle the way I thought you did.”
“Wait a minute,” said Bob. This was going too fast, veering off into crazy new directions that made no sense. What did this have to do with the struggle? “Of course I understand,” he said. “I told you: I just didn’t want it to mean anything.”
He hated the pity he saw in her smile just then. “But it does, Bob. You have to see that and deal with it. It has always meant something and it always will, even when people are well intentioned, even when they don’t want it to mean anything, even when they say it doesn’t mean anything. It always does.”
Her words set off a dull ache inside of him. “So, is that what you think of me?” he asked. “Just some clueless white boy who doesn’t get it?”
She looked up at him. “What I think of you,” she said, “is that you are the sweetest, gentlest, most thoughtful and caring man I have ever known, and I am truly crazy about you. But I also think you’re naïve and you really haven’t thought about what it means for us to be together, what it means for you to be with me.”
“Because it doesn’t mean anything,” insisted Bob. He was conscious of repeating himself, but he could not understand why she didn’t see this.
“My God,” she said, incredulous. “You don’t even see it, do you? The ability to say that, and to believe it, to think it’s true, that’s a luxury you have only if you are white. Only then.”
“Janeka…”
“I don’t have that luxury, Bob.”
“Janeka, come on…”
But she was already moving away from him.
“Janeka, please…”
But she was already gone.
Christmas Day dawned bleak and cold. Bob rose early. He got dressed and hiked over to the girls’ dorm on the far side of campus, hoping that a night’s sleep had soothed her. He rang the bell, got the dorm monitor out of bed (she was not happy about this), and asked her to ring Janeka’s room and tell her Bob was there. The dorm monitor did this. Then she listened. Then, instead of handing the receiver to Bob through the sliding glass window of her booth, she hung it back on the wall.
“She doesn’t want to talk to you,” she said.
“But…”
The middle-aged face that stared back at him from beneath a crown of pink curlers was unyielding. “She doesn’t want to talk to you.”
“Can you try her again? I’m sure there’s some mistake.”
This, the woman didn’t even deign to answer. She simply stared at Bob until he got the message. His shoulders rounded. He left the dorm and dutifully hiked into town to meet his parents and brothers at their hotel. The Carson family sat in the lobby beneath a fir tree, one of three or four clusters of people unlucky enough to spend the holiday in this place. They exchanged gifts and talked about maybe driving down to Jackson for dinner.
Bob barely heard any of it. All he heard was the woman at the dorm pronouncing his doom over and over again.
She doesn’t want to talk to you.
She doesn’t want to talk to you.
She doesn’t want to talk. To you.
“Honey?” His mother approached him delicately now, the way you might an unfamiliar dog. He caught his father and his brothers exchanging worried glances. “Where’s Janeka? We had thought she was going to be with you today.”
“She couldn’t come,” said Bob.
His mother’s face creased. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I must have made a terrible impression, didn’t I? I don’t know what got into me, rattling on like that about Bill Cosby. And the funny thing is, we don’t even like him that much. It was just the only thing I could think of to say.”
Bob looked up at his mother. “It’s not you she’s mad at,” he said. He felt tears pooling in his eyes and turned away so that she would not see.
“She’s angry with you? What did you do?”
Bob only shook his head. He could not have answered the question even if he’d wanted to.
His parents and brothers flew home the following day. They stopped at Bob’s dorm on the way to the airport to say goodbye, the back of the station wagon crammed with suitcases. Standing there on the sidewalk in front of the dorm, Bob’s mom kissed his cheek and promised him everything would be all right. His father clapped his shoulder and told Bob the same thing he had always told him for 19 years whenever things got rough.
“This too shall pass,” he said and went to get behind the wheel of the rented car. Then he seemed to think better of it. He came back to Bob and leaned his mouth toward his son’s ear. “Do you love this woman?” he asked in a private voice.
“Yes, sir,” said Bob. He was afraid to say more.
“You really think she’s the one?”
Bob nodded.
“Then go get her,” his father said. Like it was the simplest, most obvious thing in the world.
Bob’s head came up. Father’s eyes met son’s. Father nodded once, as if in confirmation. Bob nodded once, as if in receipt. Then his father got behind the wheel and, with a chorus of goodbyes and arms waving from every window, the car pulled away from the curb.
Bob watched them until they were out of sight.
Go get her.
Three words, but it was like a pep talk from Vince Lombardi.
Go get her.
Bob marched over to the women’s dorm under a full head of steam and asked the dorm monitor to please call Janeka Lattimore and tell her Bob Carson would like to see her. The dorm monitor did this. Janeka would not see him. Bob nodded and marched away.
He marched back the next day, Wednesday. Janeka would not see him.
He marched back on Thursday. Janeka would not see him.
He marched back on Friday. Janeka would not see him.
He marched back on Saturday. Janeka would not see him.
He marched back on Sunday. The dorm monitor listened at the phone for a long moment before returning the receiver to its cradle. She gave Bob a searching look.
“Well?” he said.
“She said she’ll meet you tonight on The Hill at 11:30.”
Bob pumped his fist at the news. He thought the dorm monitor almost smiled.
The Hill was the closest thing the campus had to a make-out spot. It was, as the name suggested, the highest point on campus—in fact, the only high point on campus—a grassy slope at the top of which a 15-foot-tall white granite Christ stood with palms spread in a “come unto me” gesture. During the day, people went up there to read or have lunch or nap in the grass. At night, they went up there to kiss and, well…not much more. It was difficult to think of rounding the bases with a girl when Jesus himself was watching you.
Bob climbed the slope at precisely 11:30. Janeka was already there, sitting in the grass leaning against Jesus. Lights from the walkway below painted the scene in a faint orange glow.
“Hey,” said Bob.
“Hey,” said Janeka.
Bob sat down next to her, careful not to be too close. He didn’t know if closeness was allowed. “Listen,” he said, “I just want to thank you for meeting me.”
She gave a little smile. “You’re persistent. I’ll give you that. You impressed the heck out of Mrs. Hooper.”
“The old lady with the glasses?”
“Gladys Hooper, yeah. I think she was secretly rooting for you.”
“Nice to know I had somebody on my side,” he said.
They were silent together for a long moment. They had The Hill to themselves tonight, which was not surprising. It was New Year’s Eve, after all. Most people had gone home for the holiday or they had found parties to go to, or they were in their dorm lobbies watching Guy Lombardo on television. Faintly, Bob could just make out the sound of a party from somewhere in town. “I’m a Believer” by the Monkees was playing on the stereo.
Janeka’s right hand was on the grass between them. Bob covered it with his own. “I’m so sorry,” he began. “I’d rather die than hurt you. You have to understand that. I guess there’s just things I didn’t know. And the worst part is, I didn’t know I didn’t know them.”
She looked at him, and his heart thumped when he saw she was smiling. “It’s my fault, too,” she said. “I shouldn’t have assumed you would somehow magically understand. I should have taken more time, explained it to you.”
He shot a frustrated breath through his nostrils. “It shouldn’t be this hard,” he said.
“Should be and shouldn’t be have nothing to do with it,” she told him. “You’re white and I’m black and as long as that’s true, it’s going to be hard. We may love each other, we may want the same things and believe the same things, but we’ve come from different worlds and we bring different perspectives and expectations to the table.”
Bob tried to swallow past the golf ball that had lodged in his windpipe. “Does that mean it’s hopeless?” he asked her.
She scooted over, closing the distance between them until their shoulders were touching. “No,” she said, “of course not. But it does mean we’re going to have work at it.”
He thought about this for a moment. “I think we’re worth it,” he told her.
“I think so, too,” she said.
He put an arm around her and they sat quietly for a long time, not speaking and not needing to. The tinny sounds of music still drifted up from the house party in town. Lulu was singing “To Sir With Love.”
Bob looked at his girlfriend. Relief flooded him. He felt a fullness, a rightness, unlike anything he had ever known in his life. “I love you, Janeka,” he said, because it seemed to need saying.
Her eyes were large and tender in the soft light. “I love you too, Bob.”
All at once, from below, there came the sound of whoops and cheers. Car horns blared and there was scattered gunfire.
Bob and Janeka were kissing as 1968 began.
“Would you like an appetizer while you wait for your friend?”
Bob shook off the memory. The lanky server with the long hair was standing above him, placing a basket of warm black bread on the table.
“No,” said Bob. “That’s fine.” He glanced at his watch. It was a little after noon. “She’s late, though.”
“Your wife?”
“A friend,” said Bob.
“Tell me what she looks like and I’ll keep an eye out for her.”
“I have no idea,” said Bob. When the young man gave him a quizzical look, he explained, “I haven’t seen her in 40 years.”
“Wow,” said the server, impressed.
“Yeah,” said Bob. “‘Wow’ is right. All I can tell you is that she’s about my age. She’s African American.” Pause. “And she’s beautiful.”
Something in his face as he said this made the server grin. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I’ll steer her your way if I see her.”
Bob was embarrassed. He was grateful when the young man—boy, really—walked away. He picked a piece of bread from the basket, thought about butter, thought about cholesterol, decided to eat it dry. Idly, he watched the server bantering with the couple at the next table. So young he was. Probably not yet 25. Probably not even 23. Barely bruised yet. Probably thought that because things were a certain way, they would be that way all his life—because he felt a certain thing now, he would feel that thing always. Too young to understand how life can turn itself inside out and upside down so that all the things you thought you knew, the bedrock upon which you built, could come tumbling out and flying about like the contents of a woman’s upended purse.
And you could learn that you didn’t know nearly what you thought you did.
Kissing Janeka in those first seconds of 1968, he had been absolutely certain they stood at the beginning of something transformative and new. He’d had no way of knowing that they actually stood very near the end.
They threw themselves into their voter registration program, trundling in his car down the back roads of the Delta, walking the black earth of January-dead cotton fields to the tar-paper shacks where shoeless children watched from corners as he and Janeka made the case to wary-eyed parents and grandparents that they should support the formation of a new political party that had their interests at heart.
They listened patiently, the women sometimes bringing their hands up self-consciously to cover gapped teeth when they smiled, the men often flinty and suspicious but not willing to simply turn polite, well-mannered young people away from their door. Especially when one of the young people was white.
Still, it was frustrating work. For every person who agreed to sign a petition of support—an “Agreement for Change,” Janeka titled it—there were five who nodded when the presentation was done and then said they would have to think about it. Which, in practice, meant no. And the two of them would have to trudge on down to the next tar-paper shack and try again.
Sometimes, Bob forgot they were in Mississippi. Sometimes, looking at the bloated bellies of children too listless even to bat away the flies that crawled brazenly upon their faces, he felt like he was doing missionary work in Ethiopia. It took an effort of will to remember that this was America, too.
Janeka’s little committee numbered five in all. Besides herself and Bob, there was a white girl, Rebecca Spivey, and two black guys, Hank Cates and Parker Ross. Janeka tried sending her teams out in different configurations, hoping to tap some personal or racial chemistry that might induce these reluctant tenant farmers to do more than listen.
She went into the field herself with Hank and Parker and Rebecca. She sent Bob out with Rebecca. She sent Hank and Parker out together. She never, of course, sent either of the two black guys out with the white girl. Not that there was any reason to believe doing so would have made a difference. Nothing else had. No matter the racial or gender configuration of the teams that showed up at their doors, the tenant farmers were apt to do the same thing: listen politely and then say, “Well, you let me study on that for awhile.”
Janeka fumed. “It’s as if these people have been exploited for so long it’s become habit to them,” she told Bob once as they were sitting on The Hill watching clouds roll by. “It’s as if it’s become second nature.”
“Maybe there aren’t enough of us,” said Bob. “Maybe it’s going to take a larger operation or a more concrete program like with Freedom Summer in ’64. They had—what? Dozens of people? Hundreds of people, maybe? We have five.”
This brought a rueful smile from Janeka. “We be small, but we be mighty,” she said.
Bob laughed. “Aye, Captain. That we be.”
It was a good moment, a moment that bonded them in shared frustration and laughter. Those moments came less frequently now than they once had.
The truth—and Bob didn’t dare acknowledge this, even in the privacy of his own thoughts—was that there was something fragile in their relationship in that early part of 1968. It was like a broken plate that has been glued back together and looks more or less the same as it always did, but will always be just a little weaker at the point of the break.
Yes, they still laughed together. Yes, they still held hands as they walked across campus. Yes, they still loved.
And yet…what had been easy and unforced once upon a time now sometimes felt—sometimes felt—mannered, formal, and on guard, particularly when they were talking about race. Bob had never before felt that he was “white” in those discussions. He had felt only that he was who he had always been: himself.
Now he sometimes caught himself being careful, caught himself weighing his words for blind spots and hidden traps. He caught himself being on guard. He did not like the feeling.
And as Bob had never felt he was “white,” he had also never felt Janeka was “black.”
He knew better than to say any of this out loud. He knew enough to realize it would insult her, though for the life of him, he could not say why. But at any rate, the point was moot; these days, it sometimes seemed to him that she went out of her way to force him to think of her as black, as if she would not allow him to think of her in any other terms. He had the sense sometimes that she was testing him.
At the end of January came the stunning news out of Vietnam. The Cong had broken a holiday ceasefire—it was the lunar New Year, what the Vietnamese called Tet—to launch a major offensive strike against more than 100 cities across the war-torn nation, battles raging in Hue, in Khe-Sahn and even in Saigon, on the grounds of the US embassy.
There was a protest on their campus, as there were on campuses around the country, demonstrators carrying signs denouncing the war, denouncing the president, and demanding the withdrawal of US troops. Janeka was one of the speakers, and instead of just condemning the unjust and unnecessary war, she spent most of her allotted ten minutes complaining that black soldiers were fighting and dying in disproportionate numbers.
Bob understood that this disparity was happening and that it was wrong. But as far as he was concerned, it was secondary to the overall issue—the wrongness of the war itself. He wondered why Janeka could not see this. But he kept that question to himself.
In February, during one of the twice-a-month meetings of SOUL, Janeka floated a resolution. She wanted to invite Stokely Carmichael to speak on campus. The meeting erupted.
Someone wanted to know if the fiery black power advocate was even a Christian.
Someone else asked if they shouldn’t invite Martin Luther King if they were going to invite a black leader.
Even members of her own committee sharply challenged the resolution.
“When he was chairman of SNCC, didn’t they vote out all the white people?” demanded Rebecca Spivey. “What’s the difference between that kind of discrimination and the discrimination we’re all fighting against?”
“And this whole black power thing,” said Parker Ross, “just seems to me like a cover for a philosophy of Negro supremacy. I don’t believe in Negro supremacy any more than I believe in white supremacy.”
This brought a snort of derision from Hank Cates. “Stop Tomming, Park. It’s not about Negro supremacy and you know it. It’s about black self-sufficiency, about us getting our own instead of always having to crawl to them.”
“I don’t think there’s any need for name calling,” said Parker, stiffly.
Rebecca said, “Am I a ‘them’ now, Hank? Is that what I am to you?”
Bob caught Janeka staring at him then across the room. It was a look that implored him. But to do what? Did she really think he would stand up and say, “Yes, by all means, let’s invite Stokely Carmichael, who preaches black supremacy and violence, to the campus of our Christian university?” Did she really think that might happen?
He loved her. God, he loved her. And he believed she loved him, too.
But it was in moments like this that he felt the distance between them, and he had no idea if the love they felt would be enough to bridge it. So he did the only thing he could. He turned toward the imploring look and hunched his shoulders in a helpless shrug. And he wondered if she knew that the impotence and inability it expressed were not just about this moment in this meeting, but about many things far beyond.
“Bob Carson? Is that you? Lord have mercy.”
The voice came to him over the muted rumble of restaurant chatter. Memory broke. Bob blinked, startled. And just like that, 40 years had passed and he was looking up into the face of Janeka Lattimore.