a mississippi story

      My name is Charles Bell. Well, not exactly. Bell is an Anglicism of something more redolent of the Pale of Settlement. Indicative of a people of a different persuasion, if I may use that terminology. Something like Bielecki, Bielcyzk, Belinsky… something not clear as a bell.

      After law school, I went to at work for a large corporation that provided office equipment worldwide. I worked out of New York City and I dealt with the sales branches of the company in the southern and eastern part of the United States.

This is the second work of fiction we have published on WritingAboutOurGeneration.com. We’re open to publishing more—if they shed light on what it means to have grown up over the last 75 years or so.

      I hadn’t previously travelled in the south at all, but one day I got a call sometime in the late ‘70s from our branch office in Jackson, MS, It was from the guy in charge of sales to state and local governments in Mississippi. Apparently, we had submitted our normal form contract for annual approval to some bureaucratic office at the state level, as Mississippi law required, but had verbally been told the state attorney general’s office had “problems” with the contract and it was not yet approved for use. In the interim no sales could be made to state agencies.

      As this was a very large percentage of the local branch’s revenue, this was a very big problem for them. Would I please come down to Jackson as soon as possible and clear this up with the lawyers for the state? Well, our corporation might not have had perfectly clear policies, but we knew how to take planes.

      I asked the manager in the Jackson branch to send me copies of the form contracts our competitors were using. The competitors seemingly were able to use their own contracts and were taking business from our branch, hobbled as it was by the delay in approval.     I can’t recall what technology was in place, but I think a facsimile machine got me several different competitors’ form contracts. I found nothing functionally different in our contract than in theirs and made arrangements to fly to Jackson and meet first with our branch sales people.

      The branch office arranged a later meeting with the state attorney general’s office. I planned to arrive on Thursday afternoon and hoped to get on a late Friday afternoon plane back to New York. In the back of my mind was a variation of an old refrain: I spent a week one day in Jackson, Mississippi.

      State capital. A population of about 200,000. A large percentage African-American. I was met at the airport late on Thursday afternoon. My greeting party was three or four guys in their thirties all dressed in dark suits, white shirts and unremarkable ties and looked like precursors of what would become the Blues Brothers.

      That was the approved uniform of the company. The idea was to blend in with your customers or at the very least not distract them one way or another by your choice of clothing. I wore something similar but with the flair of dark loafers rather than the standard clunky Oxford style preferred by the salesmen. The sale of the equipment was the key and distracting clothing would be just that…a distraction.

      They were all white men and although not a policy of the company in Jackson, anything other than a white male might have been a distraction to a sale to heavily white government agency personnel. After introductions and names like Percy, Clyde, Cliff, Vernon and maybe Johnny Reb flew by, we got my luggage and walked to the parking lot. Each of them apparently owned a relatively new black Cadillac sedan, as they quickly informed me, but had come together in one such luxury automobile driven by the sales manager I had spoken to on the phone. We were all going right to dinner after getting me to the hotel so a designated driver seemed appropriate.

      Apparently, the black Cadillac was de rigueur for a successful young Jacksonian salesman as a sign of achievement and just about the easiest item with which to make an adequate and daily statement of conspicuous consumption. My mind flashed back to 1955 when my father, apparently having had one of his few financially successful years, bought a new Cadillac sedan. For him it was a validation and a vindication and that feeling clearly was evident in Jackson.

      There seemed to be one main highway into Jackson proper and as we headed to the hotel, the conversation immediately took on an ominous tone.

      “Chuck, this is a very important contract for us, if a guy didn’t clear it up, he might find himself in a ditch.” “Yeah,” chimed in another, “he could be hit upside the head and be bleeding in that ditch.”

      It didn’t seem the right time to mention that I went by “Charles” not “Chuck.” In fact, it seemed to be the time to point out that rather than “Chuck,” they might want to use “Huck” or even “Arlo” to put us all on a level field of southern camaraderie.

      But I ignored their use of the diminutive. I also left aside mentioning the obvious point that we all worked for the same company, as in “on the same team.” It was harder to put aside the veiled threats which continued into the evening and seemed more menacing and Deliverance-like as night fell.

      As it turned out those kinds of threats became a not-so-light motif of the evening. But I simply ignored the statements and asked about Jackson and their dealings with the state generally. After a quick check-in and bathroom stop at the hotel, we headed for what I was assured was the best catfish place in Jackson.

      The restaurant was informal with sawdust on the floor and a rowdy bar in front, but we were seated at a table in the rear. Immediately one of my companions yelled out: “Clyde, come on over here. We got a Yankee from New York City we want you to meet.”

      Clyde was the combination host and bouncer and certainly had the qualifications for the second job. He was about 6-7 and had biceps the circumference of my entire body on display in his confederate flag-decorated muscle shirt. He placed himself behind me and gave me a welcoming shoulder squeeze that he must have been reserving for any ancestors of General Sherman. “Welcome to Jackson.”

      Then he drawled a few ununderstandable phrases about the social problems of New York City and his admiration of Charles Bronson in Death Wish before being called away to settle a dispute on the bar area floor involving two guys only slightly smaller than he was. Our fried and breaded catfish accompanied by generous portions of French fries and hush puppies and sweet tea arrived. We were served by a buxom young blonde woman with Dolly Parton hair who was literally falling out of a uniform the best catfish restaurant in Jackson provided for their female wait staff.

      Other than the permanent damage done to my shoulder and the beginnings of an elevated cholesterol count in later life, I survived this round of southern hospitality. I thanked Divine Providence when I was dropped at the hotel rather than in a ditch, and got to sleep after saying prayers for the first time in 30 years.

      The next morning after a light hotel-provided breakfast of buttermilk biscuits, tomato gravy, creamy grits and ham (I passed on the okra) and a quick read of the Clarion-Ledger, I was picked up by one of the Blues Brothers and driven to the local branch office. There I met the branch manager, no small figure in the local community as the head of our local office which employed quite a few people. The gravity of the issue was discussed and some background on the two members of the attorney general’s office we would be meeting with.

      The branch manager would attend the meeting to underscore the importance of the issue, along with the sales manager for state and local agencies, and one other senior member of the sales team. The branch manager was clearly concerned but did not feel the need to warn me about ending up in a ditch. We continued our discussion of the problem over a lunch of sandwiches served in the conference room. No catfish.

      We got to the imposing state capitol sitting on a hundred yards of lawn and were ushered into a large but somewhat faded office. I met the two assistant attorney generals who were handling this weighty matter. Here were two middle-aged southern gentlemen very focused on being southern gentlemen.

      After introductions, Mr. Southern Gentleman #1 welcomed me in a fulsome manner: “Mr. Beeellle” (which I understood to be “Bell” but drawled out in such a way that I was already concerned about making my 4:30 p.m. plane back to New York). “Welcome to our humble city which must seem a far cry from the metropolis from which you traveled to grace us with your legal presence.”

      I acknowledged his welcome and thanked them for their time. Now, however, we entered into what must be an iron law of southern conversation: a rundown of the family members and potential connections. Turning to one of the three people from our local office, Mr. Southern Gentleman #2 turned and asked “Vern, your folks still down in Tupelo?”

      We found out about the parents, siblings and cousins to the second degree of consanguinity of everyone in the room, except me. So Meridian, Biloxi, Oxford and several other Mississippi locations were touched on. No one had seemed to leave the state. I was wondering about myself; a 4:30 p.m. flight was becoming aspirational.

      After this lengthy round of amenities, Mr. Southern Gentleman #1 said to me:

      “Mr. Beeellle, your company’s contract appears to have been written by a person of the Hebrew Persuasion in New York City.” What an interesting use of language, I thought. Perhaps I could explore the semiotics by asking, “Do you mean a Talmudic scholar? Or are you referring to Shylock and his demands for a bond? Or do you simply mean a dirty kike in Hebe town?”

      But I thought better of this tack, and instead said: “One thing I don’t understand is that our competitors are using similar language to the clause you find problematic, however, they are signing contracts with the state agencies without a problem.” Here Mr. Southern Gentleman #1 gave me a sad, but kindly, look and a soft smile and said, “Mr Beeellle, let me tell you a story. On your way to the building this afternoon did you cross a circular driveway, just before that large verdant expanse of lawn?”

      “Yes.”

      “And did you notice that there was a state marshal standing on the grass at the center of that circular driveway.”

      “Yes.”

      “Well, that marshal is Billy Bob Baker.” At this point the southern geography lesson recommenced and there was a flurry of commentary from all sides. “Oh, his people are from Meridian.” “Right, but his uncle was from Oxford.” “I went to school with his cousin, but she lives in Corinth now.”

      I started to feel that my 4:30 p.m. flight to New York was fading from my grasp and that we might go back to Billy Bob Baker’s family involvement in the Civil War, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, Plessy versus Ferguson and other landmarks along the highway of the Lost Cause. But Mr. Southern Gentleman #1 soon picked up the story line with the surety of Chekhov.    

      “Well, Mr. Beeellle, did you notice the sign that said “No Parking”?

      “No, I didn’t.”

      “Well, one day toward the end of the day a man pulled up and parked his car. He had a few files in his hand and shouted to Billy Bob: ‘Officer, I’m just going to drop these off, not staying, I’ll be back in under five minutes, okay?’”

      “Well, Mr. Beeellle, Billy Bob pointed to the sign and said ‘Sorry, sir, there is no parking here.’” The man again insisted he would only be a few minutes, wasn’t really going to talk to anyone and couldn’t he just park. Billy Bob just pointed to the sign again and shook his head. Then the man said to Billy Bob ‘Officer, what about these other cars that are already parked here.’ And Mr. Beeellle, do you know what Billy Bob said to that man?”

      “No.”    

      “Billy Bob told the man: ‘They didn’t ask’.”

      Mr. Southern Gentleman #1 gave me a somewhat sadder, but still kindly look, and soft smile.

     I quickly stood up, thanked the two gentlemen for their insights and time, shook hands and all members of our group paid their good-byes. I waited until we exited the building, headed across the verdant lawn toward Billy Bob and the circular driveway and the parking lot far beyond and told my colleagues: “Withdraw the request for approval and just start using our contract.”

      As these were all salesmen and know how to stop selling once you’ve won the sale, they simply thanked me profusely for my brilliant legal work and took me to the airport.

      Years later I read, for the first time, William Faulkner’s early novels set in a Mississippi county of the author’s invention. However, I recognized immediately in those novels the importance of family, racism both knee-jerk and real, violence both latent and manifest, ethnic and racial passing, and most crucially, the importance of a story.