A Gathering of Old Men

by Ernest J. Gaines

  I started my dusting again, ’cause that’s what I was doing ’fore that boy come up there making all that racket. I hadn’t picked up the mop more than ten minutes when I heard the car drive up in the front yard. I ran out on the front garry and seen it was Miss Merle, and looked like a heavy load just fell off my shoulders. I ran down the steps to meet her in the yard.

  She was smiling. Always smiling. Just a good-natured person. The nicest I have ever known.

  “Lord, have mercy, I’m so glad you got here,” I said.

  She seen I had been crying, and she stopped smiling.

  “What’s the matter?” she said.

  She was a fat lady with a nice round face and she had a little pointed nose and a little red mouth and gray eyes. She looked like a owl more than anything else, and that’s what the people in the quarters called her behind her back—Miss Owl.

  “Something the matter?” she asked again. She looked at the Major all curled up in the swing. “Jack drunk,” she said. She looked at the gold watch on her short, fat arm. “Not even twelve-thirty yet,” she said.

  “I been calling and calling your house,” I told her.

  “I was on my way over here,” she said. “What’s the matter? What happened?”

  “Candy,” I said.

  “What about Candy?”

  “They been a killing,” I said.

  “What?” she said. Her gray eyes looked hard at me, but behind all that hardness I could see she was scared. “Candy?” she said.

  “No’m. Beau,” I said.

  “Beau?” she said. “Candy? Beau? What happened?”

  “Beau dead,” I said.

  “Candy?” she said.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Where’s Candy?”

  “In the quarters,” I said.

  “What’s she doing down there?”

  “That’s where it happened,” I said. “Mathu’s house.”

  “Oh, my God, my God,” she said, and throwed her hand up to her mouth. She looked toward the garry where the Major was curled up in the swing sleeping. “Jack?” she called to him. “Jack? Jack?”

  “He can’t hear you,” I said.

  “Where’s Bea?” Miss Merle asked me.

  “In the back yard looking for pecans,” I said. “Miss Merle, Candy want you down the quarters right away.”

  “Who else know about this?” Miss Merle asked.

  “Just the people in the quarters,” I said. “She wanted me to notify you and Mr. Lou, but nobody else.”

  “You got Lou?” she asked me.

  “He’s at dinner,” I told her.

  “Oh, shit,” she said, and looked toward the garry again. “Jack? Jack?” she called.

  “He don’t hear you,” I said. “He’s been like that since ’leven o’clock.”

  “I better get down there,” Miss Merle said.

  She got back in the car. She was so fat she had a hard time doing it.

  “Pray,” she said. “Pray, Janey.”

  I knowed she was talking about Fix and his drove.

  “Pray, Janey,” she said, swinging that car around. She was backing over flowers, over little bushes, little trees, spraying gravel all over the place, all over me, too. “Pray,” she said, going out the yard. “Pray.”

  I went back in the house. She didn’t have to tell me to pray. I was doing that long ’fore she got there.

  Myrtle Bouchard

  aka

  Miss Merle

  I had Lucy bake me an apple pie, because I knew how much Jack just liked his apple pie. I told Lucy when she came to work that morning if she baked me the best apple pie she ever baked in her life I would give her half the day off. She told me don’t worry. And I’ll be darn if she didn’t bake the best one I had ever seen or tasted. Golden brown and sweet, but not too sweet—just sweet enough. I told her, at twelve o’clock sharp, she could take off because I am a woman of my word. She said, “Don’t I already know that, Miss Merle?” Bless her heart. She said, “Why you think I baked the best apple pie I ever baked in my life? And the next one go’n be twice as good.”

  We both left the house at the same time, she going to her place at Medlow, and I on my way to Marshall to see Jack and Bea. The pie was for Jack—and, Lord, I wished he liked me much as he did apple pie. But I had been saying that for years and years now.

  When I drove into the yard, I saw Janey coming out of the house in a hurry. I knew something was wrong, and when she came out into the yard I could see that she had been crying.

  Then she told me. And I thought to myself, My Lord, my Lord. I looked at Jack asleep there in the swing, and I thought to myself, My Lord, my Lord.

  I forgot all about the apple pie. I hurried back into the car and sped out of the yard. Turning down into the quarters, I could see the tractor in the middle of the road, and I could see Candy’s black LTD parked in the ditch on the right. But I didn’t see any of the people as I drove past the old houses. Just like little bedbugs, I told myself. Just like frightened little bedbugs now. But when I stopped before Mathu’s house, I could see they were not bedbugs after all. They were all there, in the yard, and on the porch. Three of them had shotguns—Mathu, Johnny Paul, and Rufe. None of the women had guns; they and the children just sat there watching me. Candy was in the road by the time I got out of the car.

  “I killed Beau,” she said.

  I was still looking past her at Mathu and Rufe and Johnny Paul with those old shotguns. Mathu squatted against the wall by the door, the gun cradled in his arms. Squatting, not sitting or standing, was his favorite position when he was out on the porch. And by the door, against the wall, was his favorite place to be. Johnny Paul sat on the steps with his gun, and Rufe leaned back against the end of the porch with his. I had never seen anything like this in all my life before, and I wasn’t too sure I was seeing it now.

  “What?” I said, still watching the porch.

  “I shot Beau,” Candy said.

  I looked back at her. I didn’t jerk my head around, I looked at her slowly. I had known Candy over twenty-five years. She was no more than five or six when her mother and father were killed in a car wreck, and I had helped raise her. Surely, Mathu here in the quarters, and I at the main house had done as much to raise her as had her uncle and aunt. Maybe even more than they. Yes, he and I had done more than they. So I knew when she was lying to me, and I knew she was lying to me now.

  “Candy, what’s going on down here?” I asked her.

  “Listen,” she said. She was small, not more than five two, and thin as a dime. She wore the wrong clothes, and that hair was cropped too short for a young woman interested in catching a man. But Candy was not. A young man came around, but I had no idea what kind of relationship they had. Probably the same kind Jack and I had. “I don’t know what’s going on,” she said. “I wanted you or Lou here before Mapes got here. I don’t—”

  “What are they doing with those guns?” I asked her.

  “I don’t know, Miss Merle,” she said. “I shot him. But all of a sudden Mathu said he shot him. Then all of a sudden Rufe said he shot him. Johnny Paul was nowhere around here. But after he came here and saw what had happened, he said he had as much reason to shoot Beau as anybody, so he ran home and got his old gun. But I shot him.”

  I looked at him lying over there in the weeds. The weeds were so high I could hardly see anything more than just the tip of his cowboy boots. And I sure wasn’t going any closer to get a better look at the rest of him.

  “Don’t they know who that is?” I said to Candy.

  “They know,” she said. “They just want the credit for shooting him. But I shot him.”

  “Here in Mathu’s yard, Candy? Mapes is no fool, you know.”

  “I shot him,” she said. “You got to believe me. I don’t care if Mapes does or not. I need you to believe me. Clinton can handle Mapes in court.”

  “And who’s going to handle Fix, Candy?” I asked her. “Before you even get t
o court? Fix?”

  “I shot him,” she said. “You must believe that.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. I looked past her at Mathu squatting against that wall with that gun cradled in his arms. He was smoking a cigarette now. He knew I was looking at him, but he was looking past me at the tractor out there in the road. The rest of the people watched quietly from the porch and the steps.

  “I won’t let them touch my people,” she said. “I did it.”

  I looked back at her. She knew that I had been looking at him.

  “That’s how it’s going to be,” she said. She knew that I knew better, though.

  “Candy?” I said.

  “Now, I want you to do something for me,” she said quickly.

  “The best thing I can do for you is make you tell me the truth, Candy,” I said.

  “I told you the truth,” she said. But she knew that I knew better. “Now, you can do one of two things,” she said. “Help me or leave.”

  “Leave?” I said. I didn’t have to look at Beau again. I didn’t have to look at Mathu. She knew I wouldn’t leave, couldn’t leave. “Leave?” I said.

  “Help me, then,” she said.

  “Help you how, Candy?”

  “I need more guns,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Get me more twelve-gauge shotguns,” she said. “Get me more people here.”

  “More people?” I asked her. “More people for what, Candy?”

  “You see what they’re doing?” she said, nodding toward the porch.

  I had already seen them, so I didn’t have to look again. “I see old men with shotguns, I see that,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “And I need more. Mapes come here, he’ll beat up two till they talk, then he’ll take one. I need more people here.”

  “Candy, are you crazy?” I said. “Are you crazy? Do you know what you’re saying?”

  “I know what I’m saying, I know what I’m doing,” she said. “Get me some more people here quick.”

  “Get who?” I said.

  “Who?” she said. She looked at me the way you look at somebody playing dumb. But I was not playing dumb; I didn’t know who she was talking about. “Who?” she said again. “There’s not a black family in this parish Fix and his crowd hasn’t hurt sometime or other. You’re older than I am, you know that better than I do. Get any of them, get all of them. Now is their chance to stand.”

  “And be killed? Is that what you want? Blood all over this place?”

  “Look around you, Miss Merle,” she said, waving her hand toward the porch. I didn’t have to look around to know how quietly they sat, watching and listening. “Aren’t they ready to die?” she asked. “Look at Mathu. Do you know who Mathu is, Miss Merle? Miss Merle, I ask, do you know who Mathu is?”

  “I know who Mathu is, Candy,” I told her. “I knew Mathu long before you were ever born.”

  And I looked at her long enough to let her know that I knew it was he who had done it, and not she. She turned away quickly.

  “Look at Rufe,” she said, trying to throw my mind off Mathu. “Look at Johnny Paul.”

  “Candy?” I said.

  “We don’t have much time,” she said. “We have to notify Mapes sooner or later. I want an hour jump on him at least. I want Lou here before he gets here. I want more people here with twelve-gauge shotguns, and number five shells. Empty number five shells. Empty. Now, you don’t have much time. Talk to Janey.”

  “Talk to Janey about what, Candy?”

  “In case you have forgotten what Fix has done to these people around here, maybe she can remind you. I will not let Mapes or Fix harm my people.”

  “Candy?” I said. I reached out to take her arm, but she moved back out of my reach. “Candy?” I said.

  “No, I won’t let them harm my people,” she said. “I will protect my people. My daddy and all them before him did, and I—”

  “Candy?” I said.

  “I’ll stand alone,” she said. “Before I let them harm my people, I’ll stand alone.”

  “Candy, please. Please, Candy,” I said.

  “I did it,” she said.

  “Nobody in this parish will ever believe that.”

  “I don’t care what people in this parish believe,” she said. “What do I care about what people in this parish believe? I’ll stand alone.”

  I turned from her and looked at Mathu squatting there, black as pitch, with that double-barrel shotgun cradled in his arms. How many times had I stood in that yard talking to him while he squatted there, and she sitting across from him at the end of the porch? How many times had I driven by, not stopping, but waving at him while he squatted there, and she sitting on the steps or at the end of the porch talking to him? How many times had I sat on the porch at Marshall House talking to him while he sat on the steps, holding his hat between his knees, and she sitting on the banister closer to him than she was to me, her aunt, or her uncle? How many times? How many times? How many times?

  I turned back to her. But before I could open my mouth, she was already saying it again. “I did it.”

  “What I ought to do is get away from here,” I told her. “That’s what I should’ve done years ago. But I don’t have any sense. I never had any sense. Have I?”

  “You and Lou are all that I have to turn to,” she said.

  “Sure,” I said. “Two of a kind. Both fools. We both should’ve gone other directions years ago. But no, no.”

  “Go talk to Janey,” she said.

  “I didn’t say anything about going along—”

  “Make her give you some names,” she said. She had not heard one word that I had said. “Lot of names,” she said. “Twelve-gauge shotguns and number five shells. Empty number five shells. When Mapes gets here, I’m going to need a lot of empty number five shells.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Because that’s the size he used on Beau.”

  That quieted her for a second, but only a second. Then she was right back again.

  “Put Janey out on the west gallery to look out for Lou. When Lou passes by the house, call Mapes. Don’t call Mapes till Lou passes by. I want Lou here first. If you ever loved this family, if you ever loved me. Please.”

  “I hope I didn’t,” I said, looking at her. “I hope I had never heard of any of you.”

  I looked across the toes of those cowboy boots at Mathu squatting there with that shotgun. He had lit another cigarette. He wasn’t even looking toward us anymore. He was looking down the quarters. Toward what? There was nothing to see from here but the tall blood weeds that grew on the ditch bank and beside the road. I turned away without saying another word.

  It took me two or three minutes to get back to Marshall House. I started blowing the horn before I came into the yard, and by the time I stopped the car Janey was already out there. Jack was still asleep in the swing.

  “Get that apple pie off the back seat and follow me,” I told her. “Where’s Bea?”

  “The wes’ garry,” Janey said.

  “Jack?” I said, going up the steps. “Jack?”

  “He can’t hear you,” Janey said.

  I went over to the swing and shook him. “Jack? Jack?”

  “It’s no use,” Janey said.

  “Jack?” I called, shaking him again. He didn’t even grunt. “Oh, the hell with him. He never wanted any part of it anyhow.”

  Janey and I went inside. While she took the pie to the kitchen, I went out to the west gallery looking for Bea. I found her sitting in her rocking chair by the door, gazing across the flower garden toward the trees in the outer pasture. Beyond the trees was the road that led you down into the quarters. At the mouth of the road was the main highway, heading toward Bayonne, and just on the other side of the highway was the St. Charles River. A light breeze had just risen up from the river, and I caught a faint odor from the sweet-olive bush which stood in the far right corner of
the garden.

  “Bea, I have to talk to you,” I said.

  “That’s you, Merle?” she said, looking over her shoulder at me. “Good. Now I can have my pea picker. It’s almost one o’clock. Where’s Janey? Oh, Janey?” she called.

  “Bea,” I said, standing in front of her. “We don’t have time for pea pickers, Bea.”

  “Nonsense,” she said. “When didn’t you have time for a pea picker? Where is Janey?”

  “Bea,” I said. “Don’t you know what’s happened?”

  “I don’t care what’s happened,” she said. She looked back toward the screen door. “Janey?” she called.

  “Yes, Ma’am?” Janey said, coming outside.

  “You know what time it is?” Bea asked, looking up at her.

  Janey looked at me. She didn’t know what to do.

  “Bea,” I said. “A man is dead. A man is dead in the quarters, Bea. Beau Boutan is dead.”

  “Well?” she said. “What can I do about it? People die all the time. I’m going to die, you’re going to die. Janey, you know what time it is?”

  “Don’t move, Janey,” I said. “I need you out here, Bea,” I said. “Did you hear me? A man is dead. Beau Boutan was shot down in the quarters. And Candy is down there claiming she did it. Do you understand what I’m trying to say to you?”

  “That gal got spunk,” Bea said. “Always said she had spunk. That’s why she won’t get married, all that spunk. Janey, go in there and get those pea pickers.”