A Season for Dying

The Agony at Galloway

Being from here is complicated. I’m aware. A lot of my stories end up being terribly incestuous. That I end up being blood kin to some of the characters, good and bad, sounds suspicious, I’m aware, but that’s what it’s like living here.

A few times a week, I lament that everybody I know is having trouble convincing their children and grandchildren to stay in Mississippi. Even the Governor has commented on it. That being said, if someone asked me if their grandchild should be born here or almost anywhere else, I’d most likely tell them the truth. We haven’t done the best job of making this an ideal place to raise a child.

I try to tell the truth in my stories. To some people, that makes me a terrible Mississippian. I should go along to get along, they think. Telling the truth, as I see it, brings a lot of venom down on my head. I’m aware. I could apologize, but I won’t.

Last Spring, I started thinking that I could make a pretty decent play about the days between Dr. W. F. Selah's resignation from the pulpit at Galloway Methodist Church and the day that the Bishop replaced WJ Cunningham as the pastor at the same church. I even thought I could borrow the title of Cunningham’s book on the subject and call it “Agony At Galloway.”

Most Anglican and Catholic churches are built on the pattern of a cross. Galloway is built on the floorplan of a Roman Theater. It has two great vomitoriums in the middle. Each side has a parados. There are balconies. The orchestra is a great semi-circle, with the altar at its center, and behind it is the proskenion. The front of the church is a great portico with massive Greek columns. Through the doors, you almost expect to see a giant gold statue of Zeus or Apollo.

I imagined the staging of the play with the pulpit in the middle, offices on the side, pews in the middle, and the steps leading to the Greek Portico downstage. That’s where the action takes place.

At issue was whether or not the ancient church should admit Methodist congregants who weren’t white. The door of the church became a battleground with young Methodists on one side and more established Methodists on the other, and most Methodists wishing this decision didn’t fall on them.

“I just want to get through the service and go to lunch, Brother.” Most people were sympathetic to that perspective, but putting the issue off wouldn’t make it go away.

While there’s no record of him commenting, the Governor’s Mansion is a block from Galloway's doors, and the State Capitol is across the street. Seven months before Selah resigned from the pulpit, Ross Barnett stood up at an Ole Miss football game and proclaimed, “I LOVE MISSISSIPPI!” That night, a deadly riot happened in Oxford. Within the week, Barnett would stand between James Meridith and the Registrar at Ole Miss in an attempt to save his reputation for fighting integration despite the President telling him he had no choice.

Although I’d met him several times before, when I was nineteen, Ross Barnett was asked to come to entertain some KA Boys at the Old Capitol. He showed up drunk and began singing songs about cotton and “negras” with this ukulele.

“Have some dignity, man!” I thought to myself. “You were the governor of Mississippi, for God’s sake.” He clasped my shoulder, said, “Hey Campbell!” and continued his song. “Goddamnit, he recognized me.”

My cousin Joan once said she recognized my Daddy’s nose on my face. Sometimes, you hear about power couples in Mississippi. There were quite a few. Buster, her husband, was one of the most important real estate developers in Mississippi. For most other things they were involved in, Joan was the go-to person. That’s a pretty good partnership.

About a quarter of the boys I knew claimed to have had carnal relations with Ross Barnett’s progeny. She was pretty, but not that pretty, and I find it highly unlikely that she was that promiscuous. That boys would say she was because of who her grandfather was was disgusting to me. I didn’t like him either, but that was too far.

Sometimes, I think that I want to write something about Mississippi that doesn’t involve race. It’s kind of hard to do. That seems to be the great obstacle we can’t ever get around.

At Clay Lee's funeral, I met a woman who had worked for Trustmark Bank most of her life. There are church families in Mississippi, and there are banking families. Galloway is part of the Trustmark Family. Their mid-century modern building was a katty corner block away. We’re part of the Watkins firm family as well, which is a katty corner block away in the other direction. I told you these stories are incestuous.

We talked about the deaths of Ben Lampton, Roger Stribling, Annie Laurie Hearin, My Daddy, and finally, Brum Day. Sometimes, Mississippi is about a season of dying.

One night, they gave Bob Hearin a pill so he could sleep. While the FBI was searching for the body of Annie Laurie Hearin, Brum Day and Rowan Taylor came to Daddy’s house for a drink. I stuck around in case they needed ice, or booze, a light, or a smoke. Momma had a book in her room. I sat close enough to be called but not so close that I could hear what they were saying.

“Hey Buddy, tell Brum the story about the orangutan.”

Daddy thought the fact that I could tell funny but dirty stories would heal the world. It never did.

“If we wanted to,” Brum said, “We could each order two hundred men to go out into the streets to search for Mrs. Hearin. But, it wouldn’t do any good.”

Seeing men who I always thought had superhuman strength feel absolutely powerless and useless to help their friend and mentor in the only way that meant anything was a very maturing moment for me, and not one I asked for.

“Who’s that girl I saw you with?” Brum asked.

“She’s a Thomas,” I said. “Not one of those Thomas’s, but the same family from the coast.” Where Brum was concerned, you had to sort of lay claim to the girls you liked. It’s what gentlemen do.

There were two women at Clay’s funeral. One, everyone I knew, including my mother, tried to talk me into falling in love with. That’s hard to do with somebody who has been a buddy since second grade.

Another came that literally everybody I know said I absolutely shouldn’t fall in love with, for my own protection. She was so much fun and so interesting. They were right, though.

I’m happy to announce that both women found somebody far more interesting and far more attractive and attentive than myself. Dealing with me means dealing with all the ways I torment and torture myself, which isn’t something I’d wish on somebody I actually liked.

The funeral home business is more profitable than you realize. It’s pretty much a license to print money, just not in a way you’d ever want to. Moving flowers around and doing things that needed being done at Clay Lee’s funeral were fellas from Mississippi’s oldest funeral home, including a fella who I’m pretty sure they brought out of retirement just for Clay’s service. Their company, for generations, was yet another block away from Galloway. They figured prominently in the great schism that happened at Galloway between the people who thought we should open the doors and the people who thought we should be able to do whatever we wanted to, and they wanted to keep the doors shut.

Seeing their nametags and their faces, I thought, “Here we are again.” Sixty-one years to the day, the broken factions of Galloway were brought back together to bury Clay Lee.

Clay Lee was thirty-three years old the day that William B Selah resigned from the pulpit of Galloway. He was the same age that my stepdaughter is now, and she’ll forever be a little girl to me. Thirty-three is a pretty significant number for Christians. That’s how old Jesus was when they nailed him to the tree.

Thinking things in Jackson were too hot and might damage the career of this promising young pastor, the Bishop moved him, but not before he signed my certificate of baptism as the “associate pastor.” They moved him to the quiet community of Philadelphia, Mississippi, in 1964. It didn’t remain quiet very long.

Bishop Bill McAlilly mentioned this particular turn of fate in the Homily for Clay's funeral. Driving to the church, I thought, “Who on earth are they going to get to preach Clay’s funeral?” Bill’s a Millsaps boy, a few years older than I. He’s seen a lot. He’s done a lot. I can’t imagine anybody more qualified to preach Clay Lee up to heaven.

In the end, just like with my book about the schools in Jackson, I decided that I couldn’t write a play about what happened at Galloway. I love telling a story about people who do the right thing and act heroically. I do it so often that people get tired of it. I’m not so good with stories where people don’t do the right thing and act heroically. It’s hard to tell one story without telling the other.

Most of these people are long since dead, but parts of them live on, and all of your parts never really leave Mississppi, no matter what you do. Maybe parts of that story will show up in another story. I think most writers do that. It’s easy to do. In the end, I can't tell the story of real people not being heroes. Even though they may be sinners, it's not my place to judge.

There’s a lot of agony that comes with living here. It seems that there’s always a season of dying. When I think back on all the ways I’ve known about how people here died, sometimes in my own arms, I wonder why there’s so much venom flowing through our lives.

I’m terrible at saying goodbye. Galloway is strong. We have a powerful new pastor with a remarkably strong message for Christians in the twenty-first century. Hopefully, the path in this century will be easier than it was in the last. I can’t promise that, though. One day, mine will be among the names on the wall at Galloway. My part of the story will be over, but the story itself will go on. That’s how stories in the real world are.