Greg Iles - The Devils Punchbowl

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.”

The Communion service has ended. Father Mullen is walking around Tim’s casket, sprinkling holy water. Rising like a sleepwalker, I take my place beside the casket and help roll it down the long aisle to the cathedral doors.

I recognize almost every face in the pews. As I pass, dozens of eyes seek mine with a beseeching look. What are they asking? How did Tim die? Why did he die? Or do they have deeper questions? In their puzzled faces, I sense a longing to know why the feeling of unity they experience on occasions like this cannot be sustained throughout the year, as it once was in this town. But the answer is sitting among them. A town that cannot sustain its children through adulthood cannot survive, except as a shadow of itself.