A Meeting in Meridian

He wouldn't come out of his cell.  I traveled all the way there, stayed in a hotel, had a friend take off work to go with me, and he wouldn't come out of his cell.

This was the one variable that I had not prepared myself for.  The paperwork was processed.  We went through the crazy security process, where the guards were sure to subtly remind us over and over again that they could curtail our visit.  In the end, just when I knew we'd jumped through all the hoops, word came down from his floor that he would not see me, he would not come out of his cell.

I don't know if it's a game or fear or maybe something else.  I felt stupid.  I put myself in a position with him where he had the power.  I gave him that and he used it.  Maybe he was afraid.  He hasn't had a visitor in years.  I want to have sympathy for him and to assume the best, but I'm not there yet.  I'm angry and sad.  I promised myself that no matter how things went that day, that I would let go of this piece of the puzzle, I would stop looking so closely at the murder.  I said that when I thought I would see him.

I'm still on the fence about next steps.  I'm focusing on other things...working on other chapters...pulling my book together without the answers I was hoping for.

I want to write to him to ask what happened.  But I wonder why he hasn't written to me to tell me.  I don't want to be in relationship with a mad man, with the man who shattered my family with a blast of pellets.  I feel like I started something that I want to stop, but can't.  I feel like a fool.

Silence

I’ve been silent because I know that I need to write about what happened when I went to see Cork.  I can’t write about that, yet.  That’s it.  I’ve written down the details, but nothing else.  They’re waiting on my laptop for me to revisit them and bring them to life with more details and a description of my emotions.  I just can’t to it, yet.  That’s the story. 

Guilt

I keep writing about this meeting that I’m going to have on Sunday because I feel numb every time I think about it and in my mind, feeling numb means covering something up.  I think, or I hope, that in these writings I am getting closer to the core of what’s eating at me.

Last night I was sitting on a friend’s couch trying to find the words to describe my apprehension.  Whenever I express concern about going, people usually remind me that there will be guards, etc.  But I’m not afraid that Cork will harm me.  Deep, deep down I feel a certainty that when I sit across from him I will be assaulted, not by him, but by a suffocating sadness. 

Cork started getting arrested when he was 14.  The first time was because he’d stolen pots from a department store and was caught trying to sell them.  He was extremely poor.  I often wonder what he was going to buy with that money.  Drugs weren’t prevalent in Greenwood back then.  I keep thinking that maybe he was just hungry.  Maybe he needed money for food.  Maybe he needed help instead of punishment.

By the time he was 22 he’d been arrested 18 times, and then he killed Booker Wright.  He went to jail, then prison, and has been incarcerated for the last 39 years.  What kind of a life is that?  What bothers me about our visit is that I don’t really care about him, and I don’t think that anyone else does either.  I'm meeting with because I want to take something from him, his memories. 

I will walk in there with my Nordstrom jeans on, and sit across for him for as long as it pleases me to do so, then I will leave and never look back.  I will step into this life of loss and tragedy for my own gain.  What will it be like to sit across from someone who hasn’t been able to spend their time how they want to, or hop in a car and go for a drive on a whim?  It’s like realizing all of a sudden that I am coated with a putrid, nose-burning, un-concealable stench of privilege.  I wonder if this is what white guilt feels like. 

This Sunday

I've been quiet lately.  I've been telling myself for a few days that I need to blog before my next trip.  Really, there's only one thing going on right now, one topic to write about.  This Sunday I will share a table with the man who blasted a hole into my grandfather and our family as well.

This past week I distracted myself by trying to see if I could get cameras in to film my meeting with Cork.  Three state representatives and two state senators called the Mississippi State Commissioner on my behalf.  The final answer was no. Then I was writing or working hard to build Booker's Place. I've also been setting up interviews with more people who knew my grandfather.  I found the guy who worked as a DJ at Booker's restaurant.  I've been volunteering at my kids' school, shopping for groceries, watching A LOT of The Walking Dead (which, by the way, presents some really complex questions about what it means to lose ones sense of humanity), and so on.

What I have not done is thought about what's going to happen this Sunday.

Someone asked me today how one prepares to meet the man who murdered their grandfather in cold blood.  I said, "I don't know.  I guess this is how I prepare, I don't."  I have hopes for what may come of my meeting with him, but no expectations.

I hope he tells me the whole truth.  I hope he provides the monumental final piece to my grandfather's murder story, the piece that will complete the picture so that I can finally make sense of it.  But maybe there is no making sense of death, especially murder.

I know I won't get "closure."  I don't think I even like that word anymore.  It sounds like a place to stand, a perspective from which one can observe, from a distance, a devastating hurt and examine it without emotion.

The raw intensity of the feelings are gone.  The loud blast, the shattering glass, the blood that pooled on the floor, all of it gone.  Left in its wake is supposed to be a peaceful silence.  A hazy, sepia-toned version of the memory.  One that brings back only a faded replica of what once was, with none of the hard hitting, vivid color of it all.

But with closure, I lose him.  These feelings are all I have to connect me to him.  Solving his murder, or finding out whether or not it even needs to be solved, sometimes seems like the only gift I can give to him.  The logical side of me says that my children are a gift to him.  Every time I speak about him to a crowd of students I am planting a seed of him and that is a gift as well.

Sometimes I feel stupid about this whole murder question.  At times the answers have been clear, like a face on the other side of a freshly cleaned piece of glass.  Then a bit of dirt gets kicked up and I can't quite see the answer anymore, but I remember it and I'm holding to it tight.  Then mud is splashed on the glass and suddenly the answer is ripped from my sight.  Thankfully, someone cleans the glass.  I look through it excitedly only to find a different answer, someone else's face staring back at me.  Each new face seems less real than the one before it.  I can't seem to get as excited as I was the first time.  I wonder if, after I meet with Cork, I will look through that glass again only to find that no one is there at all.

Murder Theories Abound

As if I wasn't already chasing a multitude of leads, last night someone gave me something else to think about. First let me say that a lot of people believe that Lloyd Cork was hired to do what he did.  Primarily because Booker was notorious for kicking people out of his club if they were acting up or simply didn't have the money to buy anything.  This simple fact was common knowledge.  The idea that he would go in there, act up, and get kicked out smells fishy to a lot of Greenwood locals.

I've been told a few ideas about who may have hired Cork to do it and why.  I've also been given another idea about why would Cork himself would be motivated to commit murder and maybe he thought that getting thrown out (Booker hit him with the butt of his gun) would provide him with some sort of defense.

Last night I was presented with another idea.  A few days (either two or three) before Booker was shot, something terrible happened in a small town not too far from Greenwood.  Booker's half brother committed  a triple homicide.  He killed a prominent business owner, his daughter and his his sister.  Booker's half brother was on the run when Booker was shot.  Last night, someone who lived in Greenwood then and continues to live there now, someone who was very, very close to Booker - told me that they always thought that Cork was hired to murder Booker as revenge for the triple homicide committed by Booker's half-brother.

I guess I have one more question to ask Cork when I sit across from him in a week and a half.

Photographs

In the last year or so I’ve collected all the photos of Booker Wright that I could get my hands on.  I made numerous calls, visited people, and had relatives send pictures from their homes around the country.  All of that work produced a total of six photos of my late grandfather. 

Today I saw eight more.  They were all taken at the same time.  In them, my grandfather is lying on a table without a shirt on.  His stomach has eight lines in it that look like wounds that have been stapled shut.  Each one is about three inches wide and there is about an inch separating them.  They are all in a row from his chest down past his navel.  It’s hard to describe these stapled wounds because there is something in front of them, blocking my view.  It looks like an organ or maybe two. 

Someone who saw these photos briefly a few months ago said that it was intestines.  Seeing them for myself today, I know it’s not his intestines.  Someone else thought it may be his liver.  I can’t look at the photos long enough to make a guess.  I’ll show them to a doctor when I get back home. 

His side is riddled with pellets from the shotgun blast.  His eyes are closed.  I can’t tell whether or not he is dead or alive.

There is a tube and bottles of things around him.  It looks like he is in a closet or a makeshift morgue, but the Chief of Police insists that’s what hospital rooms looked like in the sixties here in Greenwood.  I need to take these photos to an expert.  

I broke down when I saw these photos.  Part of my mind is screaming.  Part of my mind is numb.  I needed to see these to get to the bottom of things, I think.  I don’t know.  Does uncovering every stone get me further to the truth or just more exposed to the horrific reality of loss?  I have tears and I don’t know why.  I can’t pinpoint the feeling.  It has no name. 

My mother can never see these photos. 

We're Going

I just got a call from the East Mississippi Correctional Facility.  Lloyd "Blackie" Cork has added my name to his visitor list.

This post is called "We're Going" because I was too afraid to go alone.  I have a good friend, Sherry Rankins-Robertson, who has actually spent a lot of time in prisons working with inmates on creative writing.  Sometime in October she and I will go to this prison for the mentally ill and we will sit across a table from the man who murdered my grandfather.

The visiting room is one in which physical touch is allowed.  I'll be able to shake his hand, if I want to.

A Prison for the Insane

Freaking out just a little bit, okay A LOT!  I was talking to a friend of mine and he mentioned that Cork is in a hospital for the mentally ill.  I checked on wikipedia and it turns out that the East Mississippi Corrections Facility, where Cork is housed, is the place where all of the prisoners in their system are sent when they have a mental illness.

I called the woman who runs Cork's floor and I said, "So, is your facility a prison for the criminally insane?"

She said, "Basically.  Especially on this floor, we have the worst cases here.  Many of them are patients," I guess she meant as opposed to prisoners.  She may be referring to people who are legally labeled as criminally insane.  Her floor, Cork's floor, is the worst one.  He lives on the floor that houses the most severe, most dangerous prisoners.

I am physically ill.  I want to face him and I will not back down, but I am really nervous.  Flashbacks of the movie Shutter Island keep racing through my mind.

I figured that he'd be a little off, simply because he's been incarcerated for so long. I was trying to prepare for that.  But this, this new revelation, I don't know how to prepare for it.  Is he schizophrenic?  Does he have multiple personalities?  Is he violent?

I find myself wondering whether or not he can tell me anything useful.  What if he just sits there in a puddle of his own drool?  Is the Cork of 1973 who killed my grandfather even inside of the Cork of 2012?  I picture myself sitting across from him, using words, body language, and facial expressions to try to delve deeper into his mind, to try to get to the truth.  Will he be able to help me or will I just get lost in there?

Sometimes I wonder whether or not he has Internet access and, if so, if he has read this blog.  Does he know what I wrote about him here?  Does he know that I'm afraid?

Meeting a Murderer

I wrote this a few weeks ago:

Sometimes writing it like being lost.  Not turned around or momentarily confused.  It is like being seriously, frighteningly lost, uncertain of which is way is up, how to get out, how far or how deep or wide the thing is that I’m inside of.  Sentences don’t do this to me, although, a paragraph has been known to leave me stumped.  A chapter can definitely make me feel lost.  Sometimes, however, I am lost in an entire book.  What once seemed like the perfect layout now feels sophomoric.  The story itself can start to feel thin and pointless.

When I’m lost I’m usually also exhausted, physically and mentally.  I can’t remember why I started and I just want to stop.  For lots of reasons, I can’t.  

At some point, I’ll usually remember the last time that I was lost, and the time before that, and the time before that.  With relief, I’ll recall that each time I was lost before I didn’t find my way out, the way out found me.  Sometimes a person will make a comment in passing about the weather or life in general and I’ll realize that their statement is the answer to my writing challenge.  Sometimes someone will read my work and make a simple statement that changes everything.  Other times, I just wake up one morning and know what needs to be done.

Today, I am lost and tired.  1% of my brain knows that it won’t last.  Change is on the horizon and I will find a way out.  99% of my brain is convinced that there is no way out.  Like being locked in a coffin I am anxious, sweating, desperate, and unable to remain calm.  I want to move, act, talk, eat, change my clothes, anything, I just have to keep going because the weight of being lost is heaviest when I am still and silent. 

I am fried and late and lost. 

I wrote the above piece because the ending of my book was lame.  In the first half of my book I learn about my grandfather and all about Greenwood, and then the second half  of the book is about me trying to uncover the story of his murder.  Then the book switches gears and sort of ends.  In the final chapter I write my theory about the murder and talk about how I’ll continue to research it.  Blah, blah, blah.  

Last year I was supposed to go visit Cork, the man who murdered my grandfather (I think).  I chickened out.  Read this and this.  Recently though, out of the fog of confusion I've felt about the ending to my book I realized something.

My book is unfinished because the story is unfinished.

In an excel file I have a list of chapters and the other day I added a new one called “Meeting a Murderer,” then I put a certified letter in the mail to Cork, asking him if I can meet with him.

Part of me doesn’t want to meet him because Cork may say or do something that marks the end of the road.  It's like I've been racing down a freeway that doesn't have a speed limit and meeting Cork is a brick wall falling into my path.  My work to understand my grandfather’s life and the murky circumstances surrounding his death may stop on a dime with the words of a man who could be insane.  Was he hired?  Did he do it for no reason or the oldest reason?  All of my questions might get answered when I sit across from a murderer.

But pushing that meeting off into infinity is not fair to the readers who will follow my quest.  It’s also not fair to Booker Wright.

In October I'm traveling to Mississippi and, if Cork agrees to it, I am meeting with a murderer.  Typing that feels profound.  I’m setting my plans in stone and this time, I will not turn back.  

Stained.

I'm sitting at my laptop studying photos of Booker's Place.  They were taken by the Greenwood Police Department the morning after my grandfather was shot.  My eye kept going back to something on the floor.  It looks as though he had concrete flooring, but part of it looked strange.

I realized that it was wet.  There's a long, wide path of moisture as if someone had tossed buckets of water on the floor.  In the middle of the water stain is a thin, red circle. It looks like an outline from a blood puddle that someone tried to wash clean.

I feel like I might throw up.

Who Killed Booker Wright

There's been lots of talk about whether or not Booker was murdered because of his appearance in Frank's film, Mississippi: A Self-Portrait. This is one of the ideas that's explored in Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story.  To be clear, seven years passed between Booker's 1966 news appearance and his murder in 1973.  That's a long time for someone to wait for revenge.

Nevertheless, there are a whole host of strange details about the murder, and some Greenwood residents still believe today that Lloyd "Blackie" Cork was hired to kill my grandfather.  Who hired him?  I don't know.  One lifelong Greenwood resident told me that a white cop hired Blackie to commit the murder.  Interestingly, people who witnessed the murder are really uncomfortable talking about it.  Even though Booker's Place had lots of customers that night and McLaurin Street was hopping with activity, only one person testified to actually seeing Blackie fire a gun.  She's alive and she's avoiding me.  The cop who pistol-whipped Booker Wright still lives just a short 45 minute drive from Greenwood.

If I could drop this, I would.  I don't want to create a story where there isn't one, but I also don't want to be naive and believe a tale that's full of holes.  I have an indescribable, difficult to explain passion for my grandfather.  My love for him is fierce.  I am tormented by his murder, by the loss of a man who surely would've embraced me had he been given the chance.  I'm trying to think of the word to describe my feelings.  It's more than duty, it's more than feeling tasked, it's more than being compelled.  I know that I may never get to the bottom of his murder.  Or maybe I already have.  Maybe the odd, yet simple story is the truth.  What I know for certain, is that I won't have peace until I've done all that I can get to the truth.

I'm hoping to sit down with Cork where he lives in a Mississippi State prison in late September to ask finally, face-to-face, exactly what happened that night.  I hope to God that he tells me the truth.

Dateline Promo

Here's the promo for the Dateline episode this Sunday:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032600/

Corked

Today I spoke with the woman who oversees Cork's unit and she agreed to shred the visitation forms for me.  Honestly, I hate even writing this post.  I feel like a total wimp.  Pursuing Cork, however, just makes me feel too exposed.  Yesterday my kids were playing in the backyard and I kept wondering what I'd do if, at that exact moment, an ex-con knocked on my door with an unfriendly message for me from the man who murdered my grandfather.

The odds are slim that he would get his hands on my home address.  The odds are even slimmer that he'd be able to somehow "get" to me.  But I just feel a little less safe knowing that my personal data is in the same building with him.  Actually, I feel a lot less safe.

This is a hunt, a real journey, an honest search for me to get as close as I can to the truth of my grandfather's life and death.  But this journey is not and never will be the center of my life.  I have a family that moves and breathes regardless of what happened 38 years ago.  I've been blessed beyond my wildest dreams with an amazing life.  I don't want to put even the smallest portion of it in jeopardy for what really amounts to a hobby that's lasted for four and a half years.

I'm sad.  I'm feeling quite reflective about all of this.  I've devoted so much time and so many hours and so many resources to this journey with the hope that it would yield something rich for me.  In many ways it has and it many ways it hasn't. Making that call today brought me relief that I could protect my info from a murderer, shame for being so fearful, and a sadness because I was closing a door that I'd hoped for so long would open.

I don't know how much longer I'll continue to post here.  I thought I was finished "making the movie", but the producer mentioned the other day that we need to shoot just one more on-camera interview of me.  There are a few moments that need to be explained more clearly, and then Raymond is trying to work out some final moments to sum up my thoughts on Booker's life.  That's the hardest part.

It used to be that whenever I thought of my grandfather I swelled with pride.  Now it's different.  I picture a man who smiled for everyone.  He protected and taught his children, all the while showering them with joy and good times.  But this same man was beaten by the police and possibly harassed by them more than I will ever know.

Just before he died, my grandfather told my aunt that if anything ever happened to him she should know that he'd lived a good life.  Who says things like that when they're only 46 years old?  I keep wondering whether or not he endured continual harassment from the police.  Was he receiving threats?  Did he think someone was coming for him?

He just strikes me as lonely.  I wish I could find someone who he talked to about the beating.  I wish someone could tell me that he'd made peace with it all.  But if he never talked about these things, if he just kept them inside, could he have ever really found peace?

I often think of him as someone who was given a life of sour lemons (separated from his mother, raised on a plantation in poverty, working full time at 14, living in a town where whites took a hard stance against integration), but he took those lemons and he made lemonade.  Whenever I try to stop my summation of Booker Wright's life there, another voice always seems to echo back to me, "Who could he have been had he been given something besides lemons?"

This brings me to another thought.  Not that my grandfather was necessarily a civil rights hero - he was an everyday guy who simply did the right thing.  But, I think the danger of focusing so much on the heroes of the civil rights movement is that we forget the reason why there even had to be a movement in the first place.  We celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. for his accomplishments, but maybe all he wanted out of his life was to watch his children grow up.  Or maybe he would've been the first black president.  We will never know.

I am proud that Booker Wright owned his own business and was able to spend the last several years of his life working for himself.  Booker's Place was on one of the roughest streets in town.  My grandfather did his best to ensure that it was the nicest place on that street.

What kind of a place could he have opened if banks back then lent money to blacks?  What could Booker's Place have been if all restaurants were integrated? Who could Booker Wright have been if more than two jobs (waiter or cotton picker) were available to him in Greenwood all those years ago?

He was a big fish in a small, black pond.  But who could he have been if the pond had always been integrated?

Freaking Out

It's Saturday.  Yesterday I sent the forms to the prison that will enable me to visit Lloyd Cork.  As I was filling out the forms I felt a little uncomfortable because they needed my social security number, home address, and maiden name.  I called the prison to ask them whether or not these forms might ever end up being viewed by the prisoner.  They woman on the phone said, "He shouldn't be able to see them."

However, she informed me that my application for visitation would become a part of Cork's permanent prison file.

It dawned on me that since I was already headed out to to mail a letter to Mississippi that I may as well write Cork back.  I received his second letter almost a full month ago.  I grabbed the letter and quickly reread it.

Maybe my mind is completely going.  Maybe I have too much on my plate.  But somehow, the first time I read the letter, I'd missed two or maybe three really inappropriate moments in it.  First, he tells me a story of a time before he went to prison when he met a girl who looked old, then she put her hair down revealing that she was quite young, and then the two of them had sex for a really long time.

Later in the letter he mentions that his pen is running out of ink, then he goes back to talking about my letter, and then says that he lent it to a fellow prisoner.  The way his letter reads, it makes it sound as if he lent my note to a prisoner, not the pen.

Then I got to the end of the letter.  He talks about being so excited that he went "off".

I started to write him back, realized I needed more time to process what I'd just read, grabbed the visitation forms and ran out of the house.  My first stop was to the drive-thru post office, I dropped the visitation forms in the mailbox without giving it a second thought.

Now that I'm sitting alone in my house, the address to which is on its way to a building that houses murderers, I am feeling as though this whole thing needed a lot more thought.  Cork has mentioned in both of his letters that he has a stash of money somewhere.  In his first letter the said that he just needed a nice girl to spend it on.  I think it's crystal clear that Cork wants to do more with me than just talk about Booker Wright.

My instincts, my gut instincts in situations when men make unwanted advances, is to shut them down quickly with clarity and assertiveness.  This situation is made even stickier by the fact that Cork's an imprisoned murderer.  Do I give this whole thing extra weight because I'm the granddaughter of the man Cork is in prison for murdering?  In other words, is he even sicker than I thought because he's willing to reach out sexually to Booker Wright's granddaughter?

Everyone says he's crazy.  I heard this from many people in Greenwood, they all said that he'd gone crazy.  He still denies that he murdered my grandfather even though so many people saw him do it.  So, I know that I won't get the "truth" from him.  This whole time I've just wanted to see his reaction to the question, "Did someone hire you to kill my grandfather?"

To be honest, there is a little theater in all of this.  I'm writing a book and making a movie.  Dramatic moments are critical for both.  I'm really trying to search myself to find out if I'm doing this to "punch up" the drama or if I'm really on a search for answers.  It may be a little of both.

After all these years I am never going to know for certain what the truth is about my grandfather's murder.  I am never going to know if he was regularly harassed by cops or if it only happened a few times.  On some level, visiting Cork is almost ceremonial.  It feels like the next logical step in my search, but I'm not sure that it's an authentic choice for me or if it's a wise choice considering that I do have young children to protect.

What do I mean by an authentic choice?  Since I am so convinced that he's not going to tell me anything significant, there is a part of me that's prepared to let the connection with him go cold.  I have a whole lot of other things to do with my time and going to see him may be a waste of it.  Also, he still denies murdering my grandfather.  Something about that really just doesn't sit well with me.  It feels disrespectful.  It frustrates me.

There was a part of me that was burning to meet him, to look him in the eye. Knowing that he's trying to start some sexual letter writing campaign with me makes me want to throw up.  I don't think his last letter mentioned my grandfather even once.

I am so deeply and utterly conflicted.  He's a sicko.  I live a nice, simple, safe life.  Why am I inviting him into it?  Why am I giving an audience to the man who killed my grandfather and is now talking about sex with his victim's granddaughter?  It would seem that not only does he have no remorse, but he also has no dignity either.

The forms are on their way.  I may need to see if I can stop what I've started.

He Wrote Back Again and Again

Several weeks ago I received a second letter from Lloyd Cork, the man who murdered my grandfather.  I'd been waiting on a response to my second letter for what felt like an eternity.  I'd started to believe that I wouldn't hear from him.  I even wondered if maybe he'd found my blog and decided that he didn't want to be a part of any of this.

After much waiting and worrying I finally received a second letter from him in early October.  Like before, I was initially really excited to get it, I was still standing in the post office when I tore it open.  There wasn't anything groundbreaking in it.  He talked about how he spends his days and asked again for my phone number so that he could call me.

I haven't written back because my life has been fairly nuts and I didn't want to write back again without having set up a way for him to call me.  Getting an untraceable phone and corresponding number is surprisingly simple, but I also have to create an account with the prison so that he can make the calls from his end.  This is a little more time consuming.

Yesterday I checked my P.O. box because I was expecting something from someone else and there inside was another letter from Cork.  This one contained nothing besides the forms that must be filled out by anyone who plans to visit him.  I've been doing a lot of procrastinating when it comes to Cork, but these forms must be returned within 14 days.

I've set something in motion and now it's game time.  Whenever I tell people that I want to sit down with the man who murdered my grandfather their eyes widen and they ask me why I'd want to do that and if I feel afraid.  I always respond as if it's no big deal and I tell them that I just have a few questions to ask him.

Obviously, it is a big deal.  I've been busy, but I could have gotten the whole phone thing set up weeks ago.  On some level I feel fearful for my safety.  I know that we'll be in a secure situation, but he'll see my face, he'll learn more about me.  What if I slip up and give him information that allows an outside contact of his to find my home, my children?

On some level I know that the odds of this are highly unlikely.  I met his mother and he really comes from a deep, seemingly relentless poverty.  The idea that he would have the resources to get to me or my family from prison is kind of silly.  But it's not impossible.

What if I travel all the way there only to find that he's crazy and he doesn't have a thing to tell me?  What if I ask him whether or not he was hired to kill my grandfather and he says yes?

This entire journey has been full of peaks and valleys.  Today it feels like both.  Like always, I am busy.  But there's a deadline on this form.  I can't hem and haw because the window will close.  I can't ignore this chance because it may not come again.

I was in a car accident the last time I was in Mississippi.  I actually hate talking about it because I drove away from it with only minor injuries and the whole thing turned out to be little more than an inconvenience in the big scheme of things. However, the accident itself lasted a long time and it really did leave me feeling quite shook up.

I'm usually a very confident driver, but since the accident I find myself feeling hesitant about driving in inclement weather.  Several years ago I was talking to my aunt Vera about coming to Mississippi in the winter to visit and to conduct some research into Booker Wright's life.  She was more than happy to pick me up at the airport any time during the year except during the winter months.  She told me that sometimes the roads get ice on them when it's really cold and she was afraid to drive too far from home.

Cork's prison is several hours drive from the nearest airport.  Also, if I'm in Mississippi I'll certainly want to travel to Greenwood to visit family and friends.  If, by the time the forms get approved, Mississippi is unusually cold and the roads are too dangerous to drive on, I may be forced to push this off until sometime next year.  If not, I may be getting on a plane as early as next month to sit across from the man who forever altered my family's history with a single shot.

Wanting to Know More

When this journey started I wanted to find my grandfather so that I could have some sort of moment or relationship with him.  I know this sounds odd and had I articulated this idea to myself, really written it out, I would've realized that it was a goal that was completely unattainable.  One night in Greenwood I was talking about this with Raymond and he looked up at me and said, "But of course, you know that you can't have a relationship with a dead person." I remember feeling as though someone had just made the lights flicker.  Of course, how silly of me.

Now, I'm here waiting for what's next.  The filmmakers are finishing the movie and I'm working on a book of sorts - I'm writing out what happened.  Sometimes this writing is fun and it reminds me of the laughs and the drama of making the film.  I'm reminded of people I initially didn't trust and then came to adore and people I initially adored only to realize that I needed to be a little less trusting.

I'm writing through the mystery.  I had no idea when this journey started that there were any questions about my grandfather's death.  When I boarded the plan that took me to the making of this film, I had no idea that my grandfather had been beaten so badly by a white cop that he had to be hospitalized.  There was so much that I didn't know before the first Greenwood trip.

Tonight I was thinking about my grandfather and I still feel as though there is so much that I don't know. 

I'm writing the story of my search to find him.  I'm writing about what I learned and when and how I felt when I learned those things.  But the thing that I set out to do years ago, the thing that I always wanted to do, is the thing that I still cannot do.  I cannot write about Booker Wright.  Everyone knew of him but it seems that nobody really knew him.  A white judge, a man who I'm sure my grandfather never hung out with, is the one who told us about the beating.  A man removed from my grandfather's way of life gave us one of the most shocking and critical pieces of data we found on our search.  This information did not come from my family because my family did not know.

As I sit here on the foot of my bed, I feel kind of deflated.  I've dealt with the crazy hope of "meeting" my grandfather's spirit on this journey, but I never dealt with the other hope that went unmet.  I had a hope to learn more about him.  I hoped that people would share conversations they had with him, conversations that would reveal his sense of humor, his quirks, and his worries.

Initially, I searched for him so that I could piece him together and know him like a granddaughter would know a grandfather.  Now I simply wonder about his thoughts.  Did he fear for his life?  It seems the answer would be yes because he had those end of life talks with my mother and my aunt.  But, what specifically did he fear?  Who did he fear?  Did he expect the beating he got after the NBC documentary aired?  Or was he surprised and left shaken?

There are a few more sources who may know the answers.  My family members have asked me not to pursue these leads.  They fear that if these voices make it into the film that they might sully Booker Wright's memory.  Well, the film is almost done.  The Greenwood researchers are off the case.  The resources have all but dried up.  But there are four people who might know more.  They might have pieces that could complete the puzzle.  They might be the ones he confided in.  

I love and respect my family.  During the making of this film I respected their wishes even when they did not respect mine.  But I feel as though Booker Wright has been silent for all these years.  The work we've done with the filmmakers has brought one piece of his story to the masses.  He said in the NBC film that he didn't want his children to go through what he went through.  Was he talking only about being called the "n" word?

I still have so many questions.  Is it wrong for me to want the answers?  I just don't think I'm finished with this.  As much as my family wants him to be the hero and wants his life to be tied up neatly with a little bow, I can't help but wonder if someone out there can tell me what he really thought and felt.  

Did he confide in anyone?

Update on Cork

Every couple of days I stop by the Post Office, search through my purse for a tiny, golden key, unlatch my kids from their car seats, and head into the building with a hope that I'll find a letter from Lloyd Louis Cork waiting for me in this little box.

This image is what I see on most of those visits.  Sometimes I find junk mail or random bills in there. But, the odd excitement I felt when I received his first letter has yet to be duplicated.

I keep thinking about the first letter I sent to him this past June.  I was nervous about reaching out to the man who murdered my grandfather.  I tried as hard as I could to remove emotion or the possibility of blame from my initial letter.  I tried to give the impression that my interest in Cork and his relationship to my grandfather was just pure curiosity or maybe even mildly academic.  I didn't give the impression that I desperately wanted to have him answer some vital questions about what happened the night that Booker Wright was shot in cold blood in his own restaurant.

Cork seemed to buy it.  In late July I received a somewhat lengthy letter from him that was thoughtful and detailed.  In the letter he seemed, for lack of a better word, nice.  I got the impression that he wanted  me to like him.  He spoke highly of my grandfather and of Booker's Place.  He also explained his version of how the events unfolded that led up to my grandfather's shooting.  He asked me how old I was and said that he needed my phone number so that he could add me to his call list - this would allow the two of us to connect over the phone.

I wrote back about a week later.  In my letter I asked him to begin the procedure that would allow me to meet him in person - an idea that he was open to according to what was written in his first letter.  I didn't tell him how old I was or offer him my phone number.  It's been well over a month and I haven't heard back from him.

Last week I wrote to him again.  Usually, I take a piece of computer paper and write to him in longhand.  This time I used a blank card with flowers on it and asked if he received my previous letter.

I am waiting on pins and needles for correspondence from a murderer.  I am anxiously anticipating word from the man who shattered my family.

I simply need to know whether or not I'm ever going to see him.  If he writes back, then I know that eventually I'll be sitting across from him.  The question that keeps coming to me is how long do I hold out hope that he'll write me back.  I could get a letter from him in two months or in two decades.  I've opened a door that may remain open for as long as I have that PO Box.

Without intending to, I've given Lloyd Cork a bit of power in my life.

The other day I found a letter leaning on the sidewall of that PO Box.  I was more than a little excited when I thrust my hand into the box and pulled the letter out.  It wasn't from Cork.  Why hasn't he written back?  Is he toying with me?  Is he taking the opportunity to hurt Booker Wright one more time by leaving his granddaughter in limbo?  Or maybe he's just working to pull together the paperwork that would allow us to meet.  Does it even matter?  Whether he knows it or not, he's in the driver's seat in this situation.

I am at his mercy.

The Word on the Street

...is don't be interviewed for this movie...

The weirdest thing is happening.  The fillmmakers and I are going back to Greenwood to shoot some more scenes.  We have a list of over 40 people who we'd like to interview about Booker Wright and his restaurant/club called Booker's Place.  Almost every one on that list has at one time or another already agreed to be interviewed.  We (me, David, and a production coordinator) have spent the last couple of weeks contacting these people to pre-interview them and to arrange an exact time to sit down with them.

They're dropping like flies.  Don't get me wrong, many of the people who said they'd sit down with us are still planning to do just that.  For instance, GL agreed to meet with us, although after our call in July I'm not quite sure if he's going to give us much on Booker, but hopefully he can give a colorful account of McLaurin Street - the famous street where Booker's Place was located.  But Irene B., one of the eyewitnesses to the murder is back and forth about her willingness to participate.  Booker's lifelong companion is still unwilling to even let us scan photographs of him in her own home and so on and so on.

When we were there the last time there were a few sources we were having trouble reaching over the phone. So, the producer, his amazingly efficient production manager, one of the cameramen, and I spent half a day driving around in an SUV trying to find some of these people.  We did several "on the spot" interviews and the filmmakers got some great footage of me running around asking complete strangers how to find people, etc.

It looks like at least a few days this next trip may very well be in the same style.  I may need to pack fewer high heels and more flats.

I Just Want To See Him

I wanted to get a different perspective on Lloyd Cork's letter so I read it to a good friend who's taught English for 11 years at the college level.  Over the last couple of years she's developed a writing program for prisoners so I definitely wanted to get her reaction.

Immediately she began talking about literacy levels.  She said that the letter really indicated to her that he had low levels of literacy and that he was unfamiliar with how to organize his thoughts in writing.  There were sections of his letter that seemed scattered and almost insane to my ear.  She simply heard a man who was struggling to get his thoughts into words.

It dawned on me how difficult it is to truly communicate with anyone in writing or even over the phone.  I'd originally thought that maybe I'd interview Lloyd Cork in letters, but I don't want to limit his ability to communicate with me because I'm expecting him to exercise a muscle that he's never had the chance to develop. I don't know what kind of education he had.  I do know that when I met his mother the filmmakers asked her to sign a release for the interview and she had to make a mark because she didn't know how to write her own name.

There's a good chance that the best I can hope for with Lloyd Cork is a phone interview.  The telephone, however, has its own problem.  Silence.  If I ask a question and he goes quiet over the phone I won't know if he's shifting out of discomfort or if he's looking into the distance in an effort to remember.

I just want to see him.

I tell myself that I'm hoping a meeting with Lloyd Cork will bring me peace, but I know now that nothing about this process (making the film, doing the research, writing about it) will ever bring me peace.  Then I tell myself that if I can hear economic and social desperation in Cork's life story that maybe I'll see that he and Booker were both affected by the same lack of opportunities for blacks and that they just took different paths.  But I already know the answer to this, I got it from Erlene.

I'm just not that naive anymore.  The journey is not the thing.  Maybe I'm just inquisitive and I want to look a known murderer in the eye because I can.

Or maybe there is more.  Yes, Lloyd Cork probably murdered Booker Wright.  I strongly suspect that the murder was unplanned.  If I was 100% certain I would probably save myself the hassle of filling out forms and figuring out travel.  As tired as I am of chasing ghosts, I just feel that something awaits me in a face-to-face meeting with him.  A nugget not made of peace or of understanding, but maybe another link to the puzzle.  Maybe a final dead end that closes the door on the questions.

As tired as this whole thing makes me, as soon as this post is finished I will write another letter to Lloyd Cork to start the arduous process of getting approval so that I can meet with him.  The honest to goodness truth is that I don't even know why.

He Wrote Back

Today I received a letter in the mail from the man who murdered my grandfather.  Actually, I should say that today I received a letter from the man who is serving a life sentence for murdering my grandfather.  I don't know if Lloyd Cork killed Booker Wright.  I know that when my grandfather was dying in his hospital bed that he told people that Lloyd Cork shot him.

If you're not familiar with what's odd about the murder then here's some background.  First, 38 years after it happened, eyewitnesses to the murder seem reluctant to talk about it.  See this post and this one.  Second, the trial itself seemed to raise more questions than it answered.  Third, Booker's lifelong companion is being less than helpful with this research.

At some point in my life I watched a TV show in which a person was asked to place their hand in a box that either had a snake in it, jello, or a boatload of cash.  That's kind of how I felt when I reached out to Lloyd Cork.  That's actually how I still feel.  In the letter Cork claims that he didn't kill Booker.  But this line is the anthem of most prisoners, so does it really mean anything in this case?

In the letter he sent me, Cork explains that he let Booker borrow a car of his even though it had $100k in the trunk.  If he'd have said that the car had $1k in the trunk it would've sounded suspicious from what I know about this man's economic background.  Saying that he had $100k sounds almost insane.  The most important thing in the letter is that Cork said he'd be willing to talk on the phone with me and/or meet me face-to-face.

I definitely want to meet him in person.  The filmmakers are trying to figure out a way for me to call him and record the call so that they can include it in the movie.  I'm wrestling with the best course of action.  I really want to see the look on his face.