Will D. Campbell’s Brother to a Dragonfly is both a spiritual autobiography and the story of his brother Joe’s life and death. In the following excerpt, Campbell describes how, after many years as a Baptist preacher, he was “converted” to Christianity with the help of his friend P. D. East, former publisher of a satirical antisegregationist newspaper. The events take place in the 1950s, at P. D.’s home in the small town of Fairhope, Alabama, where Campbell’s brother Joe is staying.
— Ed.
Joe came to the door and called P. D. and me inside. “Brother,” he said, “you know a Jonathan Daniel?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “I know Jon Daniel. Why?”
“Well, he’s dead.”
Joe had heard a news bulletin but no details. It was not hard to believe, for I had been with Jonathan at a conference a few weeks earlier and knew what he was about.
He was a student from the Episcopal Theological Seminary in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who was involved in registering black citizens to vote in Lowndes County, Alabama. A few days earlier, I had learned that Jonathan was in jail in that county, along with twenty-six others. Now we waited to hear the national news, which carried a detailed account.
Jonathan and Richard Morrisroe, a Roman Catholic priest from Chicago, had just been released from the Lowndes County Jail in Hayneville. Because of some confusion in a telephone conversation, there was no one there to meet them when they were released. Jonathan, Father Morrisroe, and two black students who’d been jailed with them stopped at a small grocery store on the edge of the little town. Despite the fact that the majority of the shopkeeper’s trade was black people, she became alarmed at their presence and called a special deputy named Thomas Coleman, who arrived on the scene before the four could finish their cold drinks and leave. Armed with his own shotgun, Coleman fired as the four were leaving the premises, killing Jonathan instantly with the first shot, then turning immediately upon Father Morrisroe and, with the pellets from the second shot, leaving him grievously wounded on the gravel outside the little one-room, unpainted shack of a store. The two young black women fled in terror and were unharmed. Coleman went to the telephone and called Colonel Al Lingo, commissioner of public safety in Alabama, and told him, “You better get on down here. I’ve just shot two preachers.”
That was the news. That was all we knew. My young friend Jonathan Daniel was dead, and Father Morrisroe was listed in critical condition. I sat in stunned silence. Joe snapped off the television and came over and kissed me on the head. “I’m sorry, Brother,” he said. P. D. said nothing.
I made some phone calls to get more details and to see if there was something we should be doing. Joe and P. D. sat quietly in the next room, mourning with me over the death of my friend, saying little, forgetting to turn the lights on when darkness came. When I reentered the room, they were speaking in whispers, like people do in a funeral parlor when there is a casket in the room. I could see them outlined against the street light, which cast a beam through a crack in the venetian blind, reflected off a huge mirror, and returned across the room to bring form to these two big men, sitting facing each other as if playing chess. P. D. spoke first.
“Well, Brother” (he addressed Joe and me the way we did each other), “what do you reckon your friend Mr. Jesus thinks of all this?”
I allowed that I guessed he was pretty sad about it.
P. D. stood up and turned an overhead light on, then went to the kitchen and came back with some beer and cheese. He spoke again as his hulking frame sank into a big chair. “Brother, what about that definition of Christianity you gave me that time? Let’s see if it can pass the test.”
Years before, when P. D. had had his paper going, he used to like to argue about religion. He had long since deserted and disavowed the Methodist Church of his foster parents, had tried being a Unitarian, and had even taken instruction from the local rabbi and was considering declaring himself a Jew. Most of his religious arguments were satirical, but I would often take it upon myself to set him straight on one theological point or another. He referred to the Church as “the Easter chicken.” Each time I saw him, he would ask, “And what’s the state of the Easter chicken, Preacher Will?” I knew he was trying to goad me into some kind of an argument and decided to wait him out. One day, he explained.
“You know, Preacher Will, that Church of yours and Mr. Jesus is like the Easter chicken my little Karen got one time. Man, it was a pretty thing. Dyed a deep purple. Bought it at the grocery store.”
I interrupted to tell him that white was the liturgical color for Easter, but he ignored me.
“And it served a real useful purpose. Karen loved it. It made her happy. And that made me and her mama happy. But pretty soon that baby chicken started feathering out. You know, sprouting little pin feathers. Wings and a tail and all that. And you know what? Them new feathers weren’t purple. No sirree, Bob, that damn chicken wasn’t really purple at all. That damn chicken was a Rhode Island Red. And when all them little red feathers started growing out from under all that purple, it was one hell of a sight. All of a sudden, Karen couldn’t stand that chicken anymore.”
“I think I see what you’re driving at, P. D.”
“No, hell no, Preacher Will. You don’t understand any such thing, for I haven’t got to my point yet.”
“OK. I’m sorry. Rave on.”
“Well, we took that half-purple-and-half-red thing out to her grandma’s house and threw it in the chicken yard with all the other chickens. It was still different, you understand, that little chicken. And the other chickens knew it was different. And they treated it like hell. Pecked it, chased it all over the yard. Wouldn’t have anything to do with it. Wouldn’t even let it get on the roost with them. And that little chicken knew it was different, too. It didn’t bother any of the others. Wouldn’t fight back or anything. Just stayed by itself. Really suffered, too. But, little by little, day by day, that chicken came around. Pretty soon, even before all the purple grew off it, while it was still just a little bit different, that damn thing was behaving just about like the rest of them chickens. Man, it would fight back, peck the hell out of the ones littler than it was, knock them down to catch a bug if it got to it in time. Yes sirree, Bob, the chicken world turned that Easter chicken around. And now you can’t tell one chicken from another. They’re all just alike. The Easter chicken is just one more chicken. There ain’t a damn thing different about it.”
I knew he wanted to argue, and I didn’t want to disappoint him. “Well, P. D., the Easter chicken is still useful. It lays eggs, doesn’t it?”
This was exactly what he wanted me to say. “Yeah, Preacher Will, it lays eggs. But who needs an Easter chicken for that? They all lay eggs. And the Rotary Club serves coffee. And the 4-H Club says prayers. And the Red Cross takes up offerings for hurricane victims. And the mental-health clinic does counseling. And the Boy Scouts have youth programs.”
I told him I agreed and that it had been a long time since I wouldn’t have agreed, but that didn’t have anything to do with the Christian faith.
He looked a little hurt, and that’s when he started asking me to define the Christian faith. He had a way of pushing one for simple answers. “Just tell me what this Jesus cat is all about. I’m not too bright, but maybe I can get the hang of it.” The nearest I ever came to giving him a satisfactory answer was once when I had blasted him for some childish “Can God make a rock so big he couldn’t pick it up?” criticism of the faith. He blasted right back, “OK, if you would tell me what the hell the Christian faith is all about, maybe I wouldn’t make an ass of myself when I’m talking about it. Keep it simple. In ten words or less: what’s the Christian message?” We were going someplace, or coming back from someplace, and he said, “Let me have it. Ten words.”
I said, “We’re all bastards, but God loves us anyway.”
He didn’t comment on my summary except to say, after he had counted the number of words on his fingers, “I gave you a ten-word limit. If you want to try again, you have two words left.”
I didn’t try again, but he often reminded me of what I had said that day.
Now, sitting in the presence of two of the most troubled men I have ever known, I was about to receive the most enlightening theological lesson I had ever had in my life. Not at Louisiana College, Tulane, Wake Forest, or Yale University Divinity School, but sitting here in a heavily mortgaged house in Fairhope, Alabama. P. D. East and Joseph Lee Campbell my teachers. And I their pupil.
“Yeah, Brother,” P. D. said, “let’s see if your definition of the faith can stand the test.”
My phone calls had been to the U.S. Department of Justice, the American Civil Liberties Union, and a lawyer friend in Nashville. I had talked of the death of my friend as a travesty of justice, a complete breakdown of law and order, and a violation of federal and state law. I had used words like redneck, backwoods, wool-hat, cracker, Kluxer, and ignoramus. I was speaking and thinking in concepts I’d studied in sociology, psychology, and social ethics. I had also studied New Testament theology, but I wasn’t thinking about that.
P. D. stalked me like a tiger. “Come on, Brother. Let’s talk about your definition.”
At one point, Joe turned on him: “Lay off, P. D. Can’t you see when somebody is upset?”
But P. D. waved him off, loving me too much to leave me alone. “Was Jonathan a bastard?” he asked me.
I said I was sure that everyone is a sinner in one way or another, but that he was one of the sweetest, gentlest guys I had ever known.
“But was he a bastard?” His tone was almost a shout. “Now, that’s your word, not mine. You told me one time that everybody is a bastard. That’s a pretty tough word. I know, ’cause I am a bastard. A born bastard. A real bastard. My mama wasn’t married to my daddy. Now, by God, you tell me right now, yes or no, not maybe: was Jonathan Daniel a bastard?”
I knew that if I said no, he would leave me alone, and if I said yes, he wouldn’t. And I knew my definition would be blown if I said no. So I said, “Yes.”
“All right. Now, is Thomas Coleman a bastard?”
That one was a lot easier. “Yes, Thomas Coleman is a bastard.”
“OK. Let me get this straight now. I don’t want to misquote you. Jonathan Daniel was a bastard. Thomas Coleman is a bastard. Right?”
Joe, my protector, was on his feet. “God damn it, P. D., that’s a sacrilege. Knock it off! Get off the kid’s back.”
P. D. ignored him, pulling his chair closer to mine, placing his huge, bony hand on my knee. “Which one of those two bastards do you think God loves the most?” His voice was almost a whisper as he leaned forward, staring me directly in the eyes.
I made some feeble attempt to talk about God loving the sinner and not the sin; about judgment, justice, and the brotherhood of all humanity. But P. D. shook his hands in a manner of cancellation. He didn’t want to hear about that.
“You’re trying to complicate it. Now, you’re the one always told me about how simple it was. Just answer the question.” His direct examination would have done credit to Clarence Darrow. He leaned his face closer to mine, patting first his own knee and then mine, holding the other hand aloft in oath-taking fashion. “Which one of those two bastards does God love the most? Does he love that little dead bastard Jonathan the most? Or does he love that living bastard Thomas the most?”
Suddenly, everything became clear. Everything. It was a revelation. The glow of the malt, which we were well into by then, seemed to illuminate and intensify it. I walked across the room and opened the blind, staring directly into the glare of the street light. And I began to whimper. But the crying was interspersed with laughter. It was a strange experience. I remember trying to sort out the sadness and the joy. Just what was I crying for, and what was I laughing for? Then this, too, became clear.
I was laughing at myself, at twenty years of a ministry which had become, without my realizing it, a ministry of liberal sophistication, an attempted negation of Jesus. A ministry of human engineering, of riding on the coattails of Caesar, of playing in his ballpark, by his rules, and with his ball; of looking to government to make and verify and authenticate our morality, of worshiping at the shrine of enlightenment and academia, of making an idol of the Supreme Court; a theology of law and order and of denying, not only the faith I professed to hold, but my history and my people — the Thomas Colemans. For, as much as Jonathan Daniel, they were loved. And if loved, forgiven. And if forgiven, reconciled. Yet Coleman was sitting then in his own jail cell, the blood of two of his and my brothers on his hands. The thought gave me a shaking chill in that non-air-conditioned room in August. I had never considered myself a liberal. I didn’t think in those terms. But that was the camp in which I had pitched my tent. Now I was not so sure.
Joe and P. D. came and stood beside me, Joe pulling me to him in sympathetic embrace, P. D. handing me his half-empty beer. I closed the blind and sat down, taking a sip of the beer and passing it back to P. D., who in turn sipped and passed it on to Joe. And we passed it round and round until it was gone. The lesson was over. Class dismissed. But I had one last thing I had to say to the teacher.
“P. D.?”
“Yeah, Brother?”
“I’ve got to amend the definition.”
OK, Brother. Go ahead. You know, you always had them two words left.”
“We’re all bastards, but you’ve got to be the biggest bastard of us all.”
“How’s that, Brother?”
“Because damned if you ain’t made a Christian out of me. And I’m not sure I can stand it.”
P. D. thought that was just about the funniest thing he had ever heard.
“Reconciled” is excerpted from Brother to a Dragonfly, by Will D. Campbell. © 1977 by Will D. Campbell. It appears here by permission of the Continuum International Publishing Group, Inc.
