The Devil's Punchbowl (53 page)

 

Skipping the funeral wasn’t an option for me; I’m a pallbearer. Eight of us are sitting behind the Jessup family in the center pews of St. Mary’s, a beautiful Gothic Revival cathedral built in 1843. Most pallbearers in Natchez are old men grown too frail to carry their dead friends, but today I’m seated among seven strapping boys I went to high school with—men now, of course—who have flown in from every corner of the country. Los Angeles, Chicago, Wisconsin, Oregon, Atlanta, D.C., other places. To my surprise and relief, not one man that Tim’s father asked to perform this duty made an excuse not to show. More surprising, at least twenty-five people from our senior class are present, and most have traveled far to be here. Since we had only thirty-two students in our graduating class, this is a significant percentage. Earlier, we held a sort of unofficial reunion outside the cathedral, trading updates on kids, careers, class
gossip. After we pallbearers received our instructions inside, a couple of my old friends asked some pointed questions about what had brought us all together. I told them only that Tim had lost his life while trying to help the city, and that he’d transformed that life before he died.

 

After the processional was complete, I was amazed to find St. Mary’s filled nearly to capacity. I had worried that, like his wake, Tim’s funeral would draw few mourners, but it seems that a decision has been taken by the congregation to support Tim and his family despite the poison being spread by Charlotte McQueen. These people understand that one of their children could easily have killed someone during a drunken drive to the county line during college, as Tim did, and only the grace of God spared them such a tragedy. The Catholics in Natchez have always seemed to me a great extended family, and they’re proving it today.

 

Father Mullen made the right choice in the end: Tim is getting the full Catholic funeral mass. This, along with the presence of my friends and the large turnout, warmed my heart initially. But as the ritual proceeds, that warmth slowly dissipates in the vaulted vastness of the cathedral. Father Mullen, dressed in white vestments, begins a reading through coughs and throat clearings and the stifled cries of infants. He’s chosen a passage from 2 Timothy, one that has more relevance than the name of the book.

 

“Remember the gospel that I carry, ‘Jesus Christ risen from the dead, sprung from the race of David’: it is on account of this that I have to put up with suffering, even to being chained like a criminal. But God’s message cannot be chained up. So I persevere for the sake of those who are chosen, so that they, too, may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. Here is a saying that you can rely on: If we have died with him, then we shall live with him. If we persevere, then we shall reign with him. If we disown him, then he will disown us.”

 

Perhaps my private testimonial to Tim’s heroism moved Father Mullen to be brave. As the priest continues, my gaze drops from his face to the heads and shoulders of the family in front of me. Dr. and Mrs. Jessup are as shattered as any parents whose child precedes them in death. Julia sits beside them with the baby on her lap, bereft and bewildered. She has not made eye contact with me today,
though we’ve stood only a few feet apart more than once. But now her son peeks over her shoulder and finds my eyes, his own filled with bemused innocence. I search for the father in the boy’s face, but where I find Tim is twenty feet closer to the altar, in the gleaming bronze casket I will soon help carry to the cemetery where we met on the night before he was murdered.

 

That night, Tim told me not to blame myself if anything happened to him. But today the very silence of his closed coffin seems a screaming indictment of all my recent failures. Am I the only one who hears it? I probably look normal, even detached, to those assembled here. But inside, a storm of emotion is slowly gathering force. Here in this mystical atmosphere of candles and incense and holy water, other things Tim said that night come back with the accusatory weight of deathbed charges. I had promised the people so much, he reminded me. How could I consider walking away from a battle I’d scarcely even joined? The silent echo of his words makes me bow my head in shame, and with shame comes anger and resentment.

 

Stealing a covert glance at the disinterested faces behind me, I wonder how these people would react if I resigned as mayor. They know nothing of the actions of Jonathan Sands, or of the threat posed by the
Magnolia Queen.
My stepping down would send a short-lived wave of gossip through the city, and then someone else would take over the job. Life would go on as before. Many in these pews would be happy to see me go. Several among them fiercely resisted my early efforts to change the educational system in Natchez, as one would expect from a group that supports a strong Catholic school. And all pointed out the contradiction of my preaching a move to the public schools while supporting my alma mater, which is private.

 

Despite his bold reading, Father Mullen’s homily is vague and aimed squarely at the faithful in the pews. He might have written it specifically not to offend Charlotte McQueen. As he speaks, I sense melancholy regret in the crowd, but not the dazed sorrow people usually feel at the funeral of a man in his forties. Most here today—certainly my peers—always expected Tim Jessup to die young, probably long before now. Except for the lingering questions about how he died, there’s a sense of anticlimax about this ceremony. As people kneel and sit and stand as though controlled by a central computer,
I feel a wild urge to stand, take the pulpit, and do what Dr. Jessup has probably given up hope that I will do—tell the truth about Tim’s life and death.

 

But what would it accomplish? Would these people rise as one, march down Silver Street, and drag Sands and Quinn off the boat to face a rough justice? Would they burn the
Magnolia Queen
where she lies? Such things have happened in Natchez before. Games of chance and horse racing were always popular here, among both the aristocracy on the bluff and the riff-raff below. But in 1835, when the organized gamblers of Vicksburg fled to Natchez Under-the-Hill after several of their number were hanged, prominent Natchez attorney John Quitman led a group of citizens down Silver Street, rounded up the offenders, flogged them savagely, and drove them out of town. Such “clean outs” occurred regularly in the old days, and sometimes involved more than horsewhips. But no similar uprising would happen today. Such things are left to the police now. If the authorities don’t pursue a case, people assume there’s no real wrongdoing, at least none they need concern themselves about.

 

My frustration feels alien after the buoyant exaltation I experienced outside the cathedral, where my old classmates expressed endless admiration for my work as mayor. Seeing so many boyhood friends gathered together was a shock to my system—a different kind of shock than those I’ve endured for the past few days, but a shock nonetheless. For two years, I’ve received a steady stream of calls and e-mails expressing thanks and respect for my commitment to the town. All have written or spoken of how much they miss Natchez, and how badly they would like to return. I never doubted their sincerity, at least during their nostalgic moments. But the fact is, almost none
have
returned. Most can’t, of course. They’re successful, ambitious professionals who cannot earn a living in a town without a thriving economy. They’ve established families elsewhere, most in the suburbs of large cities. During holiday visits over the past two decades, they’ve noted that Natchez has declined from the idyllic years they remember, and they’ve expressed a desire to help save it. Yet this urge passes, and few bother to send annual checks to St. Stephen’s Prep, much less to inquire what they can do for the town. I can’t condemn them for that. Prior to moving back home, I experienced the same sentimental feelings during my own rare visits, yet I
didn’t move back to Natchez with the intention of staying, but rather to give Annie and me a safe haven to grieve over Sarah. I certainly didn’t come back to save the town.

 

And I have not saved it.

 

In fact, I have conspicuously failed to do so. Since I was twelve years old, I’ve known that the key to renewing this city is leading the white population back to the public schools, yet I have proved unequal to the task. The reasons are complex and deeply rooted in the history of the state, but also of the nation as a whole. Sitting with my old classmates, I see that more clearly now. For despite living in suburbs in the north or west, most of their children do not attend public schools. Before the funeral I heard one mother complain (brag) about how long she’d had to camp out to get her youngest child admitted to kindergarten at the most exclusive private school in Portland, Oregon. The petrified truth is that throughout history the affluent have always sent their children to exclusive schools. What makes Natchez’s problem seem special is that the poor and lower-middle-class populations are predominantly black. This results in a system that appears to be racist but which is actually segregated by economics—as are the schools in most other states. Racism may contribute to this economic reality, but that’s a national problem. To imagine that I could solve in four years a problem that the best minds in government have been unable to solve in five decades was pure hubris—as Caitlin pointed out before I ran for office.

 

Father Mullen is preparing to conduct Communion. As ushers begin escorting the Catholics down the outer aisles, I ponder what my old schoolmates said outside the cathedral. The pipe organ fills the foot-shuffling silence, but when the cantor’s voice joins in, I block out both and focus on my memory of the voices I heard on the cathedral steps. At last I recognize the unfamiliar timbre I heard there. It was the tone one uses when speaking to a martyr, or to a fool. Though they don’t verbalize this feeling, the men and women I grew up with are amazed that I’ve been willing to pay the costs of returning home to try to change things. First among those is the education of my child—not because we have a racist school system, but because the first-class education I received at St. Stephen’s is no longer to be had here at any price—
not even at St. Stephen’s.
This
realization steals my breath for a few moments, and to fully accept it is almost more than I can bear.

 

The only thing that could have prevented the present crisis was foresight during the boom years of my childhood. If community leaders had worked
then
to diversify the local economy away from oil production, and if white citizens had supported the public schools, Natchez would be a different city today. Political and economic opportunities were squandered that may never present themselves again. But short of a time machine, what I need to save this town is the people who have flown in for this funeral. Natchez needs the bright young citizens who benefited during her prime to return the favor. She needs their intelligence and energy, their desire to remake the city into the image of their dreams, a place where their children can experience the kind of childhood they enjoyed, but where those kids can also return and raise their own families if they choose to. But that is a pipe dream. The conversations I had a half hour ago told me that. Tomorrow, my old classmates will say good-bye to their aging parents and fly back to their own families. Other towns and cities will be the beneficiaries of their energy and intelligence; other schools will receive the fruits of their labor. They will always speak wistfully of Natchez, and many may retire here after their children leave for college, but with a few exceptions, that’s it. The same is true of most young black people who leave Natchez after high school.

 

So,
I wonder, with a wretched emptiness that borders on despair,
what the hell am I doing here?

 

What does it mean to “save” a town anyway? American towns have been growing and withering since the 1600s. The idea that a city that has survived for almost three hundred years needs me to save it is more than a little egotistical. Natchez will always be here in one form or another. It stands on high ground, well watered and fertile, with a mild climate hospitable to crops. Even in 1927, when the Mississippi swelled to a terrifying seventy miles
wide
at Natchez, the city stood high and dry above the closest thing to Armageddon the Mississippi valley has ever known. In my messianic zeal to resurrect what I saw as the best part of the city’s past, I simply lost sight of the fact that no matter what I do, Penn Cage will be but a footnote in the long history of this once great river town.

 

As the Communion service proceeds, and Father Mullen drones about the body and blood of Christ, my thoughts turn to my own family. For the past two years, I’ve tried not to think about what my political crusade has cost, but the price has been high. I lost Caitlin at the outset, because she didn’t share my vision. I deprived Annie of the culturally rich experience she might have had in a larger city. I put my writing career on hold, giving up an absurdly large amount of money in exchange for a public servant’s salary. And for this I got the privilege of beating my head against a wall of stubborn provincialism and hidebound tradition for two dispiriting years. Ironically, my actions have actually exacerbated some problems. The magic I worked on Mrs. Pierce opened the gates to the
Magnolia Queen
and all its depredations. Tim Jessup lies dead twenty feet away from me, and despite my national reputation as a prosecutor, I’ve been unable to bring his killer to justice.

 

Pathetic.
That’s my verdict on the Penn Cage administration.

 

While I waited for Tim in the cemetery that first night, I reflected that I’d rarely failed at anything, and that I’d never quit. True Southerners, I was always taught, surrender only when the means to fight no longer exist. But the Southern mythos of noble defeat gives me no comfort today. Am I to sacrifice the education of my child in a vain quest to “save” something that is merely changing, as all things do?

 

“Penn?” whispers Sam Jacobs, nudging me in the side. “It’s time to do our thing.”