Tashi Coleman

Thin Air podcast

Episode 4: THE TEACHER

HUBIE PHILLIPS: It was the worst-kept secret in Jericho. Everyone in town knew I was gay but didn’t seem to give a damn as long as I didn’t make much of it. Folks joked with me, wanting to know when I was going to settle down with a nice lady or wanting me to help them pick out curtains or furniture because I had great style. Some even referred to me as the town queer behind my back. But let me tell you something. If they thought I was the only queer man in town, they were sadly mistaken. Maybe the only one who hadn’t tried to hide it by getting married, having children, sneaking around on the side. Funny how people see only what they want. As long as I was funny, eccentric, and nonthreatening, everyone left me alone. I was an important part of the Tibbehah High faculty, a member of the chamber of commerce, and the president of our local film festival. The year Brandon died, I’d just put in to have Claude Jarman Jr. come to town. We were going to show The Yearling and Intruder in the Dust. Nobody seemed to give me much trouble until Brandon disappeared. That’s when rumors started and I found out how many friends I actually had. Not just the ones who wanted to gay up their Christmas parties.

TASHI: What did they say about you?

HUBIE: Oh, you know. “Don’t you think it’s strange a grown man would spend that much time with a teenage boy? Why would a young boy want to go over to that man’s house and say he was watching movies?” Let me tell you something, Brandon Taylor was one of the brightest young minds I’d ever met. His interest in film, books, and art could never even be fathomed by a man like Tim Taylor. Tim Taylor was the kind of man you’d see in an old Republic Western. The first cowboy to yell, “String ’em up.”

TASHI: But that didn’t come until he found the money?

HUBIE: Yes. But he’d found the money some months before. He was incensed by it. He called me up and called me all sorts of names. He blamed me for paying his son to perform unnatural acts. And I had to be smart with him, saying what he was insinuating wasn’t unnatural if you knew the right way to do it. He threatened to beat me up. But of course he didn’t. They dropped the money issue for then. But, of course, it came back up.

[A BELL RINGS. A MUFFLED BIT OF GREETINGS AND TALK, BRIGHT LAUGHTER FROM FAR OFF.]

TASHI: How much money did he find?

HUBIE: I can’t say for sure. I never could get a straight answer from Brandon. But I had a feeling it was in the thousands, hundred-dollar bills rolled and wrapped with rubber bands, crammed in a shoe box and hidden in the top of his closet. I don’t know how he got that kind of money.

NARRATOR: The money. No one in Brandon’s family mentioned this to us, but Hubie Phillips said the money Tim Taylor found in his son’s closet was a major point of contention in the Taylor family just before Brandon died. How could a teenage boy from a modest family have thousands of dollars—in cash—hidden in his room?

HUBIE: When I asked him, he said he’d been saving for a while. I figured he was lying. But I didn’t push him. That was our relationship. We were friends. I wasn’t a parental or authority figure.

TASHI: What were you, then?

HUBIE [SIGHING]: I think my home and my classroom was a haven. Brandon need a break from his parents and their pedestrian, straight-ahead life. He was a wonderful young photographer and I introduced him to all kinds of movies. I remember watching The 400 Blows with him. You know the Truffaut film?

TASHI: Of course.

HUBIE: Well, it was all new to Brandon. Truffaut. France. New Wave cinema. A revelation there was a world outside Tibbehah County, Mississippi. And he never had to be like his father. He never had to admit to himself that one day his youthful shell would crack away and he’d turn into a fat, bitter old fool like Tim Taylor. I wanted him gone. I had just started helping him research schools out of state. Good schools.

TASHI: You miss teaching?

HUBIE [LONG PAUSE]: Some. But I miss being someone. I’d spent a long time developing a reputation. After Brandon died, everything was destroyed.

NARRATOR: Hubie Phillips told us about the humiliation of being picked up at the high school and driven in a patrol car back to the sheriff’s office. He spent two days in the jail without ever being charged. He told us of the humiliation of being asked personal questions by Sheriff Beckett about his love life and relationship with Brandon. On the third day, Phillips finally secured a lawyer in town and he was released.

HUBIE: I thought I could resume my life at the high school. We all desperately wanted to find Brandon. I helped some with the search parties, brought food to the volunteers, and distributed fliers in three other counties.

NARRATOR: But two days before Brandon Taylor’s body was found, Tim Taylor walked into Tibbehah High School, bypassed the main office, and marched right toward the yearbook lab.

HUBIE: It was after lunch and we were all hanging out, looking at photos from earlier in the year. Many of them taken by Brandon. It was sort of a somber mood, but also hopeful, everyone so religious. Everyone had prayed as hard as they could that he’d be safe. And in rushed Tim Taylor in front of all my kids. He knocked a sixteen-year-old girl out of the way to get to me. He grabbed me by my shirt, ripping away my buttons, and dragged me down the hallway to the bathroom. Then he stuck a big black gun in my mouth. He demanded to know what I’d done with his son.

TASHI: What did you say?

HUBIE: Well, I couldn’t talk. And once I could, he didn’t want to listen to me. Coach Bud Mills pulled him off me. That seemed to mean something to Tim Taylor, as everyone in town worshipped the evil son of a bitch.

NARRATOR: As an aside, Tibbehah High School football coach Bud Mills actually did sexually abuse young boys, according to the acting sheriff, Lillie Virgil, who arrested him a couple of years ago for that and other crimes. Virgil, the first female sheriff in the state of Mississippi, was running for election at the time and her arrest of the beloved coach killed her chances. She withdrew, and the current sheriff, Quinn Colson, entered the race. Many in the community didn’t believe what she alleged about Mills could be true. He didn’t fit the stereotype. But let’s get back to Hubie Phillips, who did.

At first, the threats against Hubie were small and impersonal. Heavy breathing on a late-night phone call, someone dumping FOR SALE signs in his yard. Other times, they were wild and up close. Twice someone shot into his living room. He was asked to give up his status as yearbook adviser. Members of the chamber of commerce thought it best for him to resign until things settled. And even his church shunned him. He sang in the choir and often practices and performances were scheduled without him being notified.

HUBIE: It takes a lot of people to let a man know he doesn’t really exist. Even after Sheriff Beckett ruled Brandon’s death a suicide, folks blamed me. Even if he’d taken his own life, I was the one responsible. After all, who else could’ve exposed him to such regret and humiliation?