It was then that he decided to leave before it would be impossible to look over this wall at all. He was not coming home. No, the South was not home, it had not been home for a long time now. But he had chosen the South because he knew people there, and because he had to go somewhere to think for a while. He had finished college now, and he had to leave San Francisco to think about what he was going to do from then on.
But could Mary Louise understand any of this if he tried to explain it to her? He looked at her sitting forward on the steps. He remembered how they had sat like this the night before he left for California. She was his girlfriend then, and they had exchanged many kisses, whispers, and many hugs and touches, which would have been frowned on by Charlotte if she had seen them. But sitting there beside her now, he felt none of this. He only felt a deep respect for her that he might have felt for someone in his family.
“It’s getting late,” he said.
“Oh, I’m not sleepy.”
She looked at him and smiled. But it was hard to smile, because only a moment ago she had been crying.
“Don’t you have to go to work tomorrow?”
“Yes, but couple hours’ sleep all I need. Don’t take me much.”
“Well, I better let you get them,” he said, standing up, and looking across the yard at Charlotte sitting on the porch. “Aunt Charlotte is still up.”
“She’ll be up till you come back.”
Jackson looked at Charlotte, wondering when he would tell her he was going back. Maybe he would do so tomorrow. He did not feel like talking to anyone any more tonight. He turned to Mary Louise again.
“Well, I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said.
Mary Louise nodded, and Jackson went out of the yard. When he turned to shut the gate, he saw Mary Louise still sitting there watching him. He waved at her, and she waved back. Jackson walked away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Jackson could feel the warm sun on his face. But he did not know whether it was the sun or the footsteps in the room that had awakened him. He tried to figure out what was going on without opening his eyes. The footsteps came into the room, went back out, then in, and out on the porch again. He heard someone in the road asking about him and his aunt saying that he was still asleep. He opened his eyes and he saw the opened suitcase near the chifforobe. His aunt was taking his clothes out of the suitcase and hanging them on the porch to air out.
“See you woke?” she said, coming back into the room. “Yes.”
“How did you sleep?”
“Like a log.”
She went to the washstand and picked up the deck of cards that she had found in the suitcase. She turned toward the bed with the cards.
“Gambling?” she said.
“I play a little.”
“Ain’t that the same thing?”
“No, we were playing whist. Some guys and I were playing on the train. Just for fun. When we separated, they gave me the cards.”
“Where this go’n lead to, Jackson?”
“Everybody plays cards, Aunt Charlotte. There’s no harm in that.”
“Everybody don’t play,” she said.
“It was only for fun.”
“That’s how it always start. But how do it end?”
She came to the bed and sat down beside him.
“They done had mo’ people killed over cards ’an anything else you can think of,” she said, looking down at him. “You know that, don’t you?”
“You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll never die over a deck of cards.”
“How do you know?”
He did not answer. He reached for the deck of cards, but she drew them back and laid them on the small table beside the bed.
“I want to have a talk with you, Jackson.”
“Can I get up and put on my clothes?”
“No. Stay there.”
“All right,” he said, and lay back down.
She did not like the way he said “all right.” It was too impatient. He said it the same way he said “yes” instead of “yes, ma’am” and “no” instead of “no, ma’am.” She knew he did not mean to be disrespectful when he talked like this, but she wished he would change.
“You everything, Jackson,” she said. “You know that, don’t you?”
A sermon coming up, he thought; and God knows I don’t want to hear it.
“They ain’t never been nobody in the whole family to go far’s you done gone; to get your kind o’ learning, to travel like you done traveled. Nobody.”
She looked at him, waiting for him to say something. But he did not make the slightest gesture. He was looking across the foot of the bed toward the mantelpiece.
“In ever’ family they ought to be somebody to do something. We ain’t had that somebody in this family yet. All the others, they been drunks, gamblers—and your pa, there, even ’fore you was born, he had packed up and left your mon …”
She was silent a moment, looking at him.
“I don’t mean to be preaching. You know I never liked to preach to you. I never had to, ’cause you always knowed right from wrong. But I just want you to know … you all they is left, Jackson. You all us can count on. If you fail, that’s all for us.”
Again she waited for him to say something, but he was as silent as he had been before. He had begun to perspire from the heat, and she dabbed his face with the end of the sheet.
“You still blonks to church?” she asked him.
“No.”
Her heart seemed to stop beating for a moment.
“How come, Jackson?”
“My subjects, I suppose.”
“Your subjects?”
“My schoolwork.”
“They had school up there on Sundays?”
“No. But I had to study on Sundays just like any other day.”
“You couldn’t take out a few minutes, Jackson?”
“I had to study. My classes were very hard. You sent me up there to study, to get a good learning. I studied.”
“I didn’t send you up there to quit the church.”
“I had a choice. One or the other.”
Charlotte looked at him and shook her head. “Don’t say that, Jackson. Please don’t say that.”
He looked across the foot of the bed toward the mantelpiece. A calendar with the picture of Christ hung above the mantelpiece. The picture was supposed to represent Christ kneeling in the garden of Gethsemane. Jackson thought both the idea and the portrait were disgusting, and he looked away.
“Without Him, Jackson, they ain’t nothing,” she said. “They ain’t nothing, Jackson.”
“I couldn’t do both,” he said.
“Plenty people done done both.”
“I couldn’t.”
She looked at him a long time, biting her lips to keep from crying.
“Jackson, I rather hear you say anything in the world ’an say that. I would.”
He started not to say it, but he said it anyway. “You sent me there,” he said. “I didn’t want to go. I cried, I cried to keep from going. You wanted me to go. So I went. You wanted me to study, so I did.”
“Yes, I wanted you to go. I wanted you to study. I wanted you to get a good learning, the kind o’ learning you couldn’t get here. But I didn’t want you to forget God, Jackson. I didn’t send you up there to do that.”
“I haven’t forgotten God. But Christ, the church, I don’t believe in that bourgeois farce—”
Suddenly her hand came out and slapped him across the mouth. She had not intended to hit him. The hand had jerked forward to shut him up.
“I didn’t hear that,” she said; and tears were already running down her face. “I didn’t hear that. The Lord in heaven knows I didn’t hear that.”
Jackson looked at his aunt and rubbed the place where she had hit him. His eyes told her if she were anyone else, he would not have taken that insult.
“I didn’t hear that,” she said. “Tell me I didn’t hear that. Tell me I didn’t he
ar that, Jackson.” She waited. “Tell me that, Jackson.”
But all he did was exhale noisily and look away. And for a long time Charlotte sat there looking down at him and crying.
“Kneel down with me, Jackson,” she said. “Kneel down with me.”
“I can’t.”
“You can’t kneel?”
“I don’t,” he said.
“You don’t even kneel?”
He was silent. Why should he say more. He had already said he didn’t.
“What they did to you, Jackson? What they did to you up there?”
He was silent.
“What they did to you, Jackson?”
He was silent. He was looking toward the mantelpiece. Though he did not look for the calendar, he could see it at all times. He heard his aunt getting up off the bed and kneeling on the floor.
“Will you pray with me, Jackson?”
He did not answer her. She did not ask him again, but waited to see if he would change his mind. He remained silent, looking toward the mantelpiece. Charlotte clasped her hands together in much the same way that Christ did on the picture, and began praying. It was almost unbearable to Jackson to listen to her, but he was absolutely motionless throughout the prayer. When she was through praying, she stood up and looked at him.
“He heard me once. He sent you back. I’m sure He’ll hear me again.”
Jackson remained silent. Charlotte stood by the bed a moment longer and went out of the room.
Jackson stared at the calendar over the mantelpiece. Only a few days ago the calendar hung on the wall in the other room. But when Charlotte heard that Jackson was coming back, she brought it into this side. The calendar was old—her insurance man had given it to her four years ago—but it was beautiful, she thought, and there was something about looking at the Master on his knees that did something to the soul. She had thought that the picture would be encouraging to Jackson as he started out each day for his teaching.
After slipping into a pair of denim trousers and a short-sleeved shirt, Jackson stood by the window, looking into the garden. The half-dozen rows of beans that ran beside the house were nearly dry. Everything else in the garden had that half-green, half-yellow color.
I should have told her, he was thinking. I should have told her then that I’m going back. How can anyone stay here? Just look at this place. Everything is drying up; everything is half dead.
Am I any better off? Am I any more alive than either one of these hills of beans—accusing an old woman for wrecking this wretched life, and the only sin she ever committed was loving me? Am I any better off? I’m in the same class … dry, dead.
Part Two
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
DURING the next few days he tried to think of a way to tell Charlotte that he was going back to California. He tried the very next day when they were sitting on the porch together; but he could not bring himself to do it. That evening when she and Mary Louise were getting ready for church, he tried then, but he could not tell her. And the next morning at breakfast—a good time to tell her, since she had already mentioned his teaching—again he failed to do so. His reason was, he told himself, he did not want to hurt her any more than he had done already. He had hurt her enough when he told her that he did not believe in the church any more.
At the same time that Jackson was trying to think of a way to tell Charlotte that he was going back to California, Charlotte was trying to get him to go to church with her and Mary Louise. But she had no more success than he did, because each time she asked him, he had something else to do, or somewhere else to go. Saturday night, he and Brother were going to a house party at Morgan Bend. Sunday night, they were going to a dance in Bayonne. Monday night, they were going to listen to a jazz band in Baton Rouge. Tuesday night, Bayonne again. And Wednesday night, somewhere else. After the first two or three times Charlotte expected him to say no, and when he did she would look at him hopelessly and turn away. At church the people asked her about him, and she told them that any day now he would show up, but first he had to rest himself. When she and Mary Louise were walking back home, she would say, “I hate lying to these people like that, but what else can I say?”
“He might come yet,” Mary Louise would say.
“I doubt it,” Charlotte would say.
But the following day she would ask him again, and again he would have somewhere else to go.
In the afternoon when it was cool, he went for walks across the field. But he hardly recognized the old place any more. The old houses that had once stood back there had been torn down. Many of the trees had been cut down and sold for lumber and firewood, and the places where he used to pick pecans and blackberries were now plowed under. Patches of corn, cotton, and sugar cane had taken the place of everything. He would stand on one of the headlands, trying to remember whether or not a house once stood in a certain place, but there was nothing there to assure him that it did, and later that afternoon, just before sundown, he would start back for the quarters. If he thought Charlotte had already left for church, he would go directly home. If not, he would stop at Madame Bayonne’s. Madame Bayonne was always glad to see him, and as soon as he came in, she offered him something to eat or a glass of her homemade wine. Jackson would accept the wine, and he and Madame Bayonne would sit at the kitchen table drinking and talking. Madame Bayonne wanted to hear his opinion of the Freedom Riders and the sit-in demonstrations by the Negro students in the South. He would sit there talking with her until he was sure that Charlotte had left, then he would leave for home. He would find his food dished and sitting on the back of the stove where Charlotte had left it to keep warm. After eating he would go to his room to read or out on the porch to sit in the swing. If Brother showed up later, they would go out riding somewhere and would not return until after midnight. Usually Charlotte would be waiting up for him on the porch. If Mary Louise was out there with her, Jackson would sit with them until Mary Louise got ready to leave. If Charlotte was out there alone, Jackson would speak to her, linger a moment, and go into his room. Since he could not make up his mind to tell her he was going back, he kept away from her as much as he could.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Mary Louise seemed to stay at the house now. Before going to work each day she stopped by the house to see if Jackson was up. When she came from work in the afternoon, she stopped by the house before going home. If Jackson was not there, she would talk to Charlotte until he came back. If he did not show up before it was time for her to go to church, then after church she would come back to the house again. She was constantly-reminding herself that it was only a friendship affair. That was what he wanted, and she would not make anything else of it. After all, where could it go? He was leaving within a few weeks, and what would become of it then? No, he was right. It should not be any more than what it was.
But something happened to her whenever they were alone. If Charlotte or Brother was there, everything seemed to go all right. But whenever he and she were alone, she felt tense and nervous. Once he brushed against her, and she drew away from him as if she had touched something hot. He had not noticed this at all; he had never stopped talking.
They usually talked about the place and about old people who had died and about those who had moved away. If she asked him anything about the other place, he would shrug his shoulders as if the other place did not exist.
Sometimes they went to the store together. She felt good walking beside him. No, he was not her man, but she could pretend he was, since no one else knew he was going back.
She never talked about his going back. She never talked about the church with him. Many times she thought she should, since he and Miss Charlotte did not seem to be able to talk to each other, but then she did not want to irritate him. She knew he had left the church, and to mention it to him might have made him angry. She would do nothing to spoil their friendship.
One day while they were at the store drinking a Coke, Catherine Carmier came out there. Catherine and
Jackson looked at each other in a way that she did not particularly like; then Catherine went inside the store. When she came back out, she walked past them as though they were not even there.
“Y’all ain’t speaking?” Mary Louise asked.
Jackson only smiled. When they were through drinking their Cokes, Jackson took the empty bottles inside, and he and Mary Louise started down the quarters.
I see, Mary Louise thought. They in love. That’s it. They in love.
“Church again tonight?” he asked her.
“Yes. Every night for another month or two.”
“How many candidates do you have?”
“Two.”
“When is baptism?”
“September.”
“I’m sure you’ll have many more by then,” he said. “Especially with you praying for them.”
She looked up at him, and something seemed to grip her heart. But why should she feel that way? Why? He was going back, wasn’t he? And wasn’t it she who was walking in the street with him, and not Catherine? So why should she feel cheated?
When they came up to the house, they saw Charlotte sitting out on the porch. Mary Louise sat down in the swing, but Jackson went inside the house.
“How was the walk?” Charlotte asked.
“Fine. Went to the store.”
“I saw y’all coming from there time you turned down the quarters. Look like y’all had a lot to talk about.”
“Just talking,” Mary Louise said.
Charlotte continued looking at her. Mary Louise felt uncomfortable, and pressed her foot against the floor to move the swing.
“What do y’all talk about, Mary Louise?”
Mary Louise shrugged her shoulders. “Things, that’s all.”
“What kind o’ things?”
“Nothing much, Miss Charlotte.”
“About y’all?”
Catherine Carmier Page 8
