Wolf Whistle

by Lewis Nordan

Genres: Historical Fiction; Literary Fiction; Mystery

Synopsis

ALA Notable Book; 1994 Mississippi Writers Award for Fiction; 1994 Southern Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. In WOLF WHISTLE, Lewis Nordan unleashes the hellhounds of his prodigious imagination on one of the most notorious racial killings of the century, the Emmett Till murder. Soon we're on a magical mystery tour of the Southern psyche of the mid-1950s and the dawning of guilt and recognition in a whole generation of white Southerners. "An immense and wall-shattering display of talent. WOLF WHISTLE will help usher Lewis Nordan into the Hall of Fame of American Letters."--Randall Kenan, The Nation.

Release date: October 5, 2003

Publisher: Algonquin Books

Print pages: 312

Sample

“Nordan bathes his characters with an ornery love, made all the more remarkable since his aim is high comedy. By ‘high comedy,’ I mean to imply Shakespeare and Zora Neale Hurston, Calderon and Eudora Welty … for his goal is to get us to laugh at the whole of human existence — the pity, the horror, the vanity, the courage — and leave us with a more profound sense of it all.”

— Randall Kenan, The Nation

“A stunning and translucent novel, a gem. Nordan’s take uncannily transforms the Till murder into universal experience.”

—Willie Morris, author of North Towards Home and New York Days

“Lewis Nordan has come as near as any writer yet—maybe nearer—to displaying the naked heart of this country’s embedded racism.”

—Reynolds Price, author of Kate Vaiden and Blue Calhoun

“Approaches the beauty and emotional reverberations of a cantata.”

—Alan Cheuse, Dallas Morning News

“Wolf Whistle is flat-out wonderful.”

— Leon Rooke, Washington Post Book World

“Races down the track like the Dixie Flyer.”

— Newsweek

“A high-wire act — of surprising tenderness — that can only enhance Nordan’s reputation.”

— Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“Why does Wolf Whistle succeed against all odds? Nordan has an exceptional ear, a tightrope walker’s balance and, most important, a decency so certain it disarms us.”

— Los Angeles Times

“Sad, violent, funny, fascinating, most of all compassionate—Nordan has written true history, he has tracked the emotional interior of his homeland.”

— Men’s Journal

“Nordan displays some of Faulkner’s lyricism and Flannery O’Connor’s surreal humor but emerges as a unique and powerful Southern storyteller in his own right.”

—Library Journal starred review

“A masterful, penetrating retelling of an American tragedy.”

— The Boston Globe

“Lewis Nordan has turned notorious fact into scorching fiction.”

—The Virginian-Pilot and Ledger-Star

“An unforgettable story by a writer of great talent.”

—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Nordan never condescends, never even blinks… You will believe every word.”

— Chicago Tribune

“Proves that Lewis Nordan belongs in the first rank of American fiction writers. That’s just how wonderful this novel is.”

—Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

“The book Nordan was born to write.”

— The Cleveland Free Times

“Stylistic and storytelling genius.”

— The Seattle Times

“I have been saying for a long time now that Lewis Nordan is the best prose writer in the United States, and maybe the galaxy.… He can break your heart and make you break down laughing at the same time, with the very same line.… American fiction will never be the same. And after you’ve read Wolf Whistle, you’ll never be the same again either.”

— Jack Butler, author of Jujitsu for Christ

“Miracle of miracles, there’s something like greatness in our midst.”

—Independent Weekly

“Nothing is sacred, off-limits, for Lewis Nordan.”

—Nashville Banner

WHEN SCHOOL started in September, Alice Conroy’s fourth graders missed their injured classmate, Glenn Gregg.

Alice had just graduated from the Normal and knew all the latest techniques of modern education. She encouraged the children to talk about Glenn and the accident whenever they wanted to. Alice had come to live with her Uncle Runt and to keep house for him, since her Aunt Fortunata had moved out.

“Don’t hold back,” she told the children, her fourth graders. “Ask anything you like.”

So they said, “Is he dead?” and “Is he still on fire?” and “Am I going to die?” and “Are we all alone in the world?”

Her education was already paying off, Alice thought. See how they opened up? See how inquisitive, how willing to reveal their innermost thoughts and feelings?

She wished she could call Dr. Dust, her old professor at the Normal, to tell him of her success. Last year, when she cried, naked in his arms, he had told her, “There is great pain in all true love, Alice, but we don’t care, do we, because it’s worth it.”

He was right, too. Alice knew that. Love was worth anything, everything, no pain was too great in the service of true love. The problem with calling Dr. Dust, though, was that Mrs. Dust always answered the telephone and called Alice a slut in a loud voice and slammed the receiver in her ear. If Mrs. Dust would only be a little forgiving, Alice thought, they might be friends. They might share many things.

Early in the term, one day during the art lesson, when the children were busy with three-by-five cards and Magic Markers and big safety pins, making name tags for themselves, Alice surprised everyone and made a name tag for Glenn Gregg as well, the child who was injured and had not returned to school.

The minute Glenn’s name tag was done, well, somehow, wouldn’t you just know it, things brightened up around Alice Conroy’s schoolroom. The filthy flaking yellow plaster of the walls seemed to turn to sunlight. The children seemed truly happy for the first time since Glenn stopped coming to school.

Next, Alice looked up Glenn’s reading scores from third grade, in the secretary’s file, and assigned Glenn to the Bluebirds reading group, just as if he were sitting there among them. She assigned him a desk, too, right on the second row. She put his name tag on it.

And Glenn’s name was taped beneath an empty hook in the cloakroom. Glenn had his own “boot bin” for galoshes on rainy days, his own dental hygiene chart on the bulletin board, just waiting to have Checkup #1 entered on it as soon as he returned.

Then Alice got the idea of making Get Well cards. And what an idea it was! It was the best idea anybody at Arrow Catcher Elementary School had had for a long, long time. Everybody had to agree.

Mr. Archer, the vice principal, came down each day and stood in the doorway of the room while the children bent over their construction paper and scissors and Elmer’s glue. He beamed, he glowed! Alice Conroy was working out just fine, he was forever announcing in public places. Alice Conroy was a wonderful new teacher, experienced teachers could learn a few things from Alice Conroy. Mr. Archer had a habit of picking at his scalp and making his head bleed.

Every child in Alice’s class poured his or her whole heart into the Get Well cards, and each was an object of art. One card showed a brilliant ball of gold glitter, which represented the gasoline fire at the Greggs’ home. The gold ball was connected by a long streak of silver glitter to the tiny stick figure of a little girl. This was the artist trying to put out the fire with a stream from a garden hose. The caption said, Get Well Soon, Glenn Gregg.

Another child had cut from different colors of construction paper flamelike shapes of red and yellow and orange and black. Behind the flames Glenn’s smiling face was visible. The caption said, “I’m fine,’ said Glenn, ‘but boy this fire is hot!’”

Other cards carried simple messages of “I miss you, Glenn” and “I hope you feel better” and “Come back to school soon” and even “I love you.” These were decorated with blocky, brick-colored drawings of Arrow Catcher Elementary, and trees and sunshine and fluffy white clouds, and bees that said “Buzz buzz” upon flowers.

At the end of the school day, when the final name had been signed to the final finished greeting card, Alice went down to Mr. Archer’s office to use the telephone. She intended to call Mrs. Gregg, though she had been warned by other teachers that Mrs. Gregg was impossible in conversation because of a bad stammer.

Mr. Archer was an athletic man, with a crew cut. He was a family man. He sent out Christmas cards each year with a color photo of himself and Mrs. Archer and their four happy children under the Christmas tree. He had last year’s Christmas card blown up to eight-by-ten and framed on his desk. The whole family was happy, you could tell. Alice couldn’t help but wish she was one of those children under Mr. Archer’s tree, with a big curly-haired doll or a shiny new Western Flyer bicycle for a present.

When Alice came in to use the telephone, Mr. Archer was having a heart-to-heart talk with one of the older children, a sixth-grade boy named Benjamin, with crossed eyes and Bucky Beaver teeth. You just wanted to squeeze him, he was so cute.

Mr. Archer was trying to make Benjamin confess that he had written “Mr. Crites sucks cocks” on the restroom wall. Mr. Crites was the shop teacher. Mr. Archer kept picking his head and examining the blood under his fingernails and talking to Benjamin.

He was asking Benjamin for a writing sample of the offending phrase, but when he saw Alice, he looked up and smiled and motioned to her to go ahead, go right ahead and use the telephone all you want to, no problem, no need to ask, make yourself at home.

Benjamin carefully wrote “Mr. Crites sucks cocks” on a page of notebook paper for the writing sample.

Mrs. Gregg answered after ten rings.

She had a stammer all right, and it was more serious than even strong warnings had prepared Alice for. Mrs. Gregg was saying, “Hngh, hngh, hngh, hngh, hngh,” trying to say “hello,” but she could not make the word come out of her mouth.

Alice pressed on with her message. The children had made Get Well cards for Glenn today, Alice said, and she wondered whether it would be all right to drop them by Mrs. Gregg’s house on the way home from school.

It was no use. Mrs. Gregg was stuttering her fool head off. Now she was saying, “Ynuh, ynuh, ynuh, ynuh.” Maybe she only meant yes. Nobody knows.

Alice told Mrs. Gregg that Glenn was very well liked among his classmates, that she knew from his previous teachers that Glenn was a smart boy, and a hard worker, and kind to others, and courageous and loyal, and had many other fine attributes. She took a wild guess and said that he was popular.

Mrs. Gregg declined further comment. Her breathing was heavy with exertion.

Alice said, “Mrs. Gregg, excuse me. Please. All I really need to know is this. Can I stop by your house in the next half hour or so and drop off these cards? It would mean a whole lot to the children.”

On the other end of the line, nothing.

Alice said, “If you’ll just give me some sign, a signal that it’s okay, I’ll drop the cards off this afternoon.”

Mrs. Gregg continued to breathe hard into the telephone.

Alice said, “If you hang up right now, right this minute, Mrs. Gregg, I will take that for a no.”

Alice waited. Mrs. Gregg did not hang up.

She said, “Okay, good, good. That’s real good. I know where you live, from the school’s files. Thank you so much.” MRS. GREGG’S house was a clapboard shack in Balance Due, the white-trash ghetto of Arrow Catcher. Scumtown, it was sometimes called. Even Alice’s Uncle Runt, whom Alice boarded with, lived a street or two outside of Balance Due.

Filthy, violent men in shirtsleeves sat in doorways. They staggered, they leered, they drank out of sacks, they worked in muddy yards on junker cars with White Knights bumper stickers. Bottle-trees clanked in the breeze. A hundred-year-old voodoo woman wearing a swastika stirred a cauldron above a fire in a yard nearby. A young man tried to convince a woman, a girl really, to let him shoot an apple off her head with a pistol.

The tiny shack of Mrs. Gregg seemed scarcely habitable. The front yard was utterly without grass. A burned-out car sat like the husk of a huge dead insect in the front yard. All the window screens of Mrs. Gregg’s shack were rusted and ripped out, and some of the windows themselves were broken. Shards of glass lay on the ground beneath them.

No one answered when Alice knocked. She pulled open the busted-out screened door and stuck the sheaf of colorful pages behind it and propped the door back in place as well as she could.

Her hands shook, and her step was quick as she hurried away.

The Nazi voodoo woman yelled after her, “Are you the Lard Jesus?”

Alice said, “No!” and started to run.

The voodoo woman hollered after her. “Lard Jesus was a white child.”

Alice Conroy hollered right back at her. “And he didn’t have tits, either, did he, Miss Smartypants!”

THAT NIGHT she lay down on the narrow cot in her room in Uncle Runt and Aunt Fortunata’s house and thought about her old professor at the Normal, Dr. Dust, and the good college life, and peeled the newspaper off the wall by her bed, strip by strip for a while, and then cried her guts out and buried her face in her pillow and said I love you I love you I love you and fell asleep. It was all that she could think to do.

A few days later, Alice received a surprising note in the mail from Mrs. Gregg.

Written in a cramped little white-trash script on coarse, lined paper from a Blue Horse notebook, it was an invitation for Alice to bring the entire class to the Greggs’ home to visit their fallen mate, little Glenn.

The message was simple: Come see Glenn. This Friday morning, I guess. Bring everybody, it don’t matter.

This would be the first anyone at all had seen of Glenn since before the accident.

If it were any other teacher on the staff, Mr. Archer declared, he wouldn’t allow it, he simply would not. Never on this earth would he allow fifteen nine-year-olds to walk into Balance Due, even in the early morning, no way, not a chance, no siree bobtail. He was making a mistake, he said, he knew it, it was against his better judgment, he shouldn’t allow it, he didn’t know what was in his mind, he ought to have his head examined.

But he did it. He gave his permission. The class could go and visit Glenn Gregg. “You can go,” Mr. Archer said, “but for God’s sake, Miss Alice, be careful” The visit would be considered a field trip.

On the day of the field trip, Alice called the roll. She assigned a child to erase the chalkboards. She collected the last of the field-trip permission slips and took up milk money and lunch money and workbook money. She announced the winners of the creative writing awards and shushed the children quiet while Mr. Archer made the announcements over the intercom.

Mr. Archer warned all children, grades K through Six, against improper activities in the restrooms, including cussing, smoking, loitering, writing cocksucker on the walls, and standing behind stall doors with a friend.

He led the Pledge of Allegiance, announced the annual airplane turkey drop, gave the date of the next P.T.A. meeting, and said that teachers would be sending home reminders to parents of the Rainbow Tea scheduled for later in the year and that he hoped many would volunteer to help out.

Finally it was time to leave. The weather was not perfect, but it was not terrible yet, either. A strong wind had come up and there were low clouds and a threat of rain. The trees were as bare as skeletons, a little unearthly for so early in the Mississippi autumn.

Fifteen children, little white boys and white girls, followed Alice in a single, wavery line, out the big front doors and down the front sidewalk and across Arrow Catcher, Mississippi, in the direction of Balance Due, where their friend was consumed by fire.

Alice made a game of their walking. “We are a snake,” she said, and the children weaved down the walk and caused their single-file line to wriggle like a snake.

They cut down an alley and took a shortcut behind McNeer’s Grocery, where Mrs. McNeer, who had once owned a gorilla, kept a big cage with iron bars.

Alice raised her right arm as she walked, and fifteen children’s right arms lifted up as well. Dogs barked from behind fences as they passed.

Alice raised her left arm, then, and fifteen left arms raised up. Her arms swayed, and their arms swayed like slender trees. They danced this silent dance along the wide sidewalks.

They passed Red’s Goodlookin Bar and Gro., which was a bootleg whiskey store that sometimes kept a loaf of bread and a can of Vienna sausages on the shelves, and Alice looked inside and saw her Uncle Runt there, through the screened door, drinking from a pint of Old Crow. Blues singers were tuning up on the front porch to sing Robert Johnson tunes.

Alice and the children kept on, down the graveled streets, into Balance Due.

A skinny yellow dog dragged a saddlebag full of harmonicas down the street in its teeth.

At the front stoop of the Greggs’ house, the line of children broke up, and they moved uncertainly about for a moment, and then they stood clumped together, shy and embarrassed. Alice yanked open the dreadful screened door and knocked with her knuckles against the wood.

Mrs. Gregg opened the door, a tiny, dark little person with a pointy nose and pointy chin. She might have been made of pipe cleaners, she was so thin.

When she spoke, there was a tinny nasality, but, surprisingly, no trace of a stammer. The absence of a stammer was the first thing Alice noticed. Mrs. Gregg said, “Here is the fourth grade! Here is the fourth grade! Right at our front door!”

Mrs. Gregg called back into the house for her own children. “Dougie and Wanda, and all you children, Wayne and Gresham, too!”

They were all ages, the Greggs, when they emerged from the tiny, dumpy recesses of the little house, which smelled suspiciously of petroleum. Wanda, the only girl among them, was fifteen. She was beautiful. Her breasts were full. There was a small scar on her upper lip. Alice wondered why she was not in school.

The others were much younger. Gresham was still in diapers. Dougie and Wayne were not old enough for kindergarten. All of them were pretty, with dark, bright eyes and sidelong grins.

The oddest thing was, Mrs. Gregg was talking. Not just talking, she was yakking up a storm.

She talked about the weather. She talked about the local arrow-catching team, its prospects for the playoffs. She said that she had a black cat that was too shy to come out to meet strangers. She apologized for the meagerness of her home. She hoped the children were not frightened by the condition of the neighborhood, the rubbish and ruined lives.

She asked each of the children to tell her their names, and she made much of each, as if each were especially pretty or interesting. She commented on the children’s heights and smiles and clothes. She asked them which subjects they liked best in school and whether they kept pets or had hobbies.

She spoke of more astonishing things, of the difficulty of having a physical handicap, the stammer that she had so recently been silenced by, the loneliness, alienation, the shock of being so afflicted in adulthood.

Then, if that were not amazing enough, she told of marrying young, of her disappointment in marriage, of never having danced with her husband, or any man. She told of her failed dreams of romance and the joyless mechanics of sex.

The fourth graders fell in love with Mrs. Gregg. Alice did, as well.

When Mrs. Gregg spoke, winter scenes, unlike anything Alice had ever actually observed in tropical Mississippi, appeared before Alice’s mind’s eye. Snow fell through forest trees. One-horse open sleighs jingled along country roads. Chestnuts roasted on open fires. City sidewalks were dressed in holiday decorations. Little hooves clattered upon rooftops. Corncob pipes and button noses would not be suppressed. Toyland Towns rose up around the base of conifers.

On and on Mrs. Gregg talked, and as she did Alice found herself irresistibly drawn to burst into holiday song.

Mrs. Gregg told of the progressive tyranny of her husband, the sarcasm and mockery and intrusions into her smallest privacies. Whenever she spoke on the phone with a friend, Mr. Gregg interrupted to ask who she was speaking to. Finally she had no friends.

He mocked her hill accent, and the color and texture of her hair, her thinness, her height and small breasts, the poor clothes she wore.

And then one day she realized that she was having difficulty speaking. It was a funny thing at first. Even Mrs. Gregg thought so.

She began to speak in clichés. Scarcely a sentence came out of her mouth that was not a cliché. “A penny saved is a penny earned,” she found herself saying, often without relevance. “A rolling stone gathers no moss.” “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” She seemed to have no thought that was her own.

Who could fail to listen? Not Alice. No one at all, not the wiggliest rascal-child gathered in this poor shack took an eye off of Mrs. Gregg. Some of the children reverted to thumbsucking and hair-twisting and speaking in baby-talk. One cried, one wet his pants. But not one child lost interest. They were fascinated. A low, quiet music of humming could be heard, a sentimental silence of carols and holiday tunes.

Mrs. Gregg continued her strange story. The clichés multiplied, s. . .