Unwritten Laws 01(26)

This tense emotional stalemate took a shocking turn in 1967, when Viola’s husband was drafted and sent to Vietnam. James Turner was an auto mechanic, but he’d spent a year working on helicopters in the peacetime army in 1960, and that made him valuable in Southeast Asia. In 1967 the army recalled him. Tom vividly remembered a conversation with Viola’s anxious husband before he left for New Orleans and his commercial flight to Vietnam. James Turner knew Tom had seen action in Korea, and he wanted to get the best advice he could about staying alive in combat. Tom’s cautions were simple and based on experience. “First, don’t volunteer for anything. Second, keep your head down and listen to your sergeant. Third, if you’re ever ambushed, run toward the fire, not away from it. The first shots are meant to drive you into the waiting machine guns. Your best chance is forward. Fourth, every war’s different, so listen to your sergeant. Fifth … listen to your sergeant. Are you getting the message?” James had laughed, but Tom could see he was scared to death, and no man in his right mind would have wanted to leave Viola to spend a year in a hostile jungle ten thousand miles away.

For the first month after James’s departure, Viola had seemed a different woman. The romantic tension between her and Tom dissipated as though it had never existed, and he felt its absence like a troubling tooth that had finally been pulled, leaving an aching socket. Viola’s thoughts were clearly with her husband—yet Tom’s jaw still throbbed. She lived with a new tension, one that waxed and waned with Cronkite’s daily report on the conflict on the far side of the world. James sent regular letters, and his tone was always upbeat, so after a while Viola settled into a sort of low-grade anxiety. At work she kept up a cheerful front that could have won her an Academy Award. But five months after James Turner left Natchez, two army officers wearing dress uniforms showed up at Viola’s home. When they told Viola that her husband was dead, she gave a slight shake of the head—one small gesture of denial—then collapsed to the floor. Dr. Lucas told her to take the week off, and Tom concurred. But the next morning, Viola was back at work, perfectly coiffed and acting with her usual professionalism. The only indication of her loss was a black ribbon worn on the left side of her uniform collar.

From that point forward, Tom had no idea how to behave. Viola’s stoicism had moved him beyond words, and from his own war experiences he knew better than to try to lessen her grief. Looking back, Viola’s heroic response to young widowhood had probably pushed him further toward love than any physical attraction. But strangely, Viola seemed even more preoccupied over the next months than she had when her husband was in Vietnam. Only after several awkward attempts did Tom finally discover the reason for Viola’s worry.

She had a younger brother named Jimmy Revels, and Jimmy was “in trouble.” When Tom asked what kind of trouble, Viola shook her head and refused to say. But over the course of a week she finally revealed that Jimmy was involved in the civil rights movement. This worried her on several fronts. Not least was her fear that Dr. Lucas would fire her if he learned she was related to a civil rights activist. Tom assured her that he could protect her job, but Viola thought he was naïve. “Dr. Lucas might have let you desegregate the waiting room,” she said, “but that was just good business, since you pull in so many colored patients. Working in the movement is something else.”

Viola also worried about the Ku Klux Klan, which had grown rabidly active across the state during the past four years. Jimmy was a musician, but he’d become obsessed with the Reverend Martin Luther King, adopting both his nonviolent philosophy and his habit of putting himself in harm’s way. Jimmy’s nocturnal activities were making Viola a nervous wreck. Tom tried to reassure her, but the danger could not be denied. As the company doctor for Triton Battery (a deal negotiated by Dr. Lucas), Tom had discovered that a significant fraction of the company’s white workers were racists of the first order. They didn’t even try to hide their membership in the Klan, or the fact that they were “taking a stand” in the battle for white supremacy. Because Tom was white, they simply assumed that he shared their prejudices.

The tension between Tom and Viola mounted in concert with the racial tension on the streets of Natchez, but whatever barrier remained between their professional and personal lives was shattered not long after a black man was murdered by a white deputy in a barbecue restaurant across the river. On a night when the KKK and the black Deacons for Defense were preparing for armed conflict, a midnight phone call awakened Tom from an uneasy sleep.