Revisiting Midnight
It had been 22 years since I approached the Forsythe Fountain, at that time with a 35 millimeter in hand and the glow of a first born in my belly. I recall a photo my then husband took of me, with my black and white Kodak film, seated on an iron bench in front, sleeveless and peaceful in the Georgia heat of August. Now, the 22 year old trailed behind me with his younger brother, in the cool of December under the canopies of live oaks. Watching the moss sway it occurred to me this city, once dubbed the, “The Forest City” has at its heart, a soul of trees. The drapes of these behemoths, like tears, melancholic, joyful and everything in between. The coverings so plentiful, as if the monoliths are crying for us, shedding what needs to be shed while we walk through as their guests.
I soon found myself walking down Abercorn Street where an antique bookseller magnetized my feet to its entrance. “Books on Bay,” with West Bay Street Lower crossed out on paper bookmarks and replaced in handwritten text, the new address. A crouching black cat on top of three books as its logo, boasting specialties in The Civil War & The South, Literary Greats and Whodunnits from the 1600s to the 1900s. A silvery haired waif of a woman greeted us with a warm smile and in trademark hospitality offered us cookies and hot cocoa upon our entrance. The interior space, a shutterbugs dream filled with first editions stacked on perfectly mismatched wooden shelves on top of creaky floors. After the sensory overload of such fine collections, my eyes caught ‘The Book’ as Savannahians call it. Not the good book, no, though it may as well have been, as John Berendt’s 1994, fact is stranger than fiction novel, brought this once spared city from General Sherman’s wrath, from a southern respite to full Hollywood glory. I could not resist the original print hardcover, sold with a hand scripted receipt containing serial number and notations “with dust jacket.” From my trip some 22 years earlier, what remained in my mind of Midnight in the Garden and Good and Evil was the Bonaventure cemetery and a distant memory of a walking tour past the Mercer House. The book as it were, would reopen this city to me, and the underpinnings of writing as an art, to be the ever present observer, a journeyman in unfamiliar landscape.
Like all movies, Clint Eastwood’s adaptation, condenses the many years our NY “yankee” writer spent in this enchanting riverside town to a smaller array of the personalities involved with shots ringing out to court room drama. The personal anecdotes of the characters, the society that forms the fabric of our cast and the nuanced oddity of what lays just below the surface can only be gleaned from the pages themselves. With the egocentricity of my younger self in the rear view mirror, I could see how this novel turns the paradigm of the south on its head. What inspiration Mr. Berendt must have felt in watching such multilayered institutions unravel before his eyes from his front row orchestra seat.
For those unfamiliar with Midnight, it is the tale of Jim Williams, an antiques dealer who pulled himself up by the bootstraps to high society of Savannah through his role in restoring the downtown grand homes of the city. The most famous of his projects being the earlier mentioned Mercer House, originally constructed in 1860 for General Hugh Mercer, great grandfather of songwriter Johnny Mercer. In 1969, Williams acquired the property and restored it as his own private residence. Williams became known for his elaborate Christmas parties, for which being on the invitee list meant you had arrived. The house and its history would ironically cast That Old Black Magic in no uncertain terms upon anyone who favors a story of grandeur, gossip, sex, lies, murder and scandal. In other words, who wouldn’t? It would seem that only in Savannah could the scene of a murder, turn into a historic tour of the house that ultimately passed to William’s sister.
The novel does not start with the murder that would become central to the novel, but of Berendt’s arrival in the city. We watch him become indoctrinated to the eccentricities of the town from his neighbor Joe Odom and his raucous piano parties that continued well into the morning hours to pedestrians walking invisible dogs. Odom would host so many people in his home, that once, he awakened to persons in his own bed who asked him how he got there!
Berendt is adept at detailing the persons that fall upon his path while remaining an objective witness to the shenanigan’s. Knowing that he writes for a prestigious NY periodical, the locals are all too willing to share their secrets and the secrets of everyone else. We see Berendt slip into conversations seamlessly, and we sit along with our narrator in the local jaunts, such as Clary’s drugstore, where he sips his coffee and watches strangeness unfold in the form of Luther Driggers. Driggers, a talented chemist we learn, invented the flea collar, but lost out on the profits not having the patent before big business got a hold of his invention. He walks around the city with a deadly vial of poison he appropriated from his work on insecticides and the locals fear the day this creepier than creepy character might decide to unleash it in the city’s water supply. To judge if it might be the day, waitresses catalogue whether he does or does not eat the same breakfast he orders every morning.
Of course, the most colorful of characters, is the Lady Chablis who Berendt meets coming out of her doctor appointments where, we learn, she receives her estrogen shots. Ms. Chablis, you see, was once Frank and in the days before there was a color on the flag for this seen but unseen population, this revelation is both tantalizing and entertaining for Mr. Berendt who becomes what Chablis calls, her “personal chauffeur.” Hope springs eternal indeed. Chablis would become a celebrated performer in Georgia nightclubs before the term Drag Queen was cancelled. Midnight is not just filled with zaniness but it also teaches about the politics and economics of gentrification. The book describes intimately how a city that was once described on a visit in 1946 by Lady Waldorf Astor, “Savannah is very much like a beautiful woman with a dirty face” rose to Southern charm and distinction (even if arguably second fiddle to nearby Charleston).
The plot of Midnight then revolves around the shooting of Danny Hansford, who worked in William’s shop and was also his hustler sidepiece. Williams shot Danny in his study in 1981 after a violent argument between the two. Williams stood his first trial in 1982 for first degree murder which he claimed was in self defense and was tried a record 4 times for the same crime. The trials themselves a true sign of the times, as they were shrouded in politics and perhaps an undertone of lynching a gay man who had integrated into Southern society (we will accept you only as long as you play by our rules).
Wrapped tightly in down coverings in my 1865 built air b n b, I found my nose buried deep in the book, a fireplace lit, splintering and glowing at the foot of my bed. The sounds of football on a t.v. travelled up low hung ceilings and a spiral staircase from my boys below. They, ripe with the vigor of young adulthood, while I lay intently enjoying the stillness of the little things. It is in the reflection of events past that we may see with new eyes the splendor of the details. The pieces we missed, the history that is always there for the taking. The colors of us all that bend and glint in angles in plain sight to anyone with a watchful eye. At that hour, as we are told in the book, before midnight, when good is done and the hour after where there is bad, I soaked up the words of a fellow traveler.
