The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

by Ernest J. Gaines

  The damage from that high water was caused by man, because man wanted to control the rivers, and you cannot control water. The old people, the Indians, used to worship the rivers till the white people came here and conquered them and tried to conquer the rivers, too. Now, when I say they used to worship the river I don’t mean they used to call the river God. There’s just one God and He’s above us. But they thought the river had extra strength, and I find no fault in that. Because I find that in some things, too. There’s an old oak tree up the quarters where Aunt Lou Bolin and them used to stay. That tree has been here, I’m sure, since this place been here, and it has seen much much, and it knows much much. And I’m not ashamed to say I have talked to it, and I’m not crazy either. It’s not necessary craziness when you talk to trees and rivers. But a different thing when you talk to ditches and bayous. A ditch ain’t nothing, and a bayou ain’t too much either. But rivers and trees—less, of course, it’s a chinaball tree. Anybody caught talking to a chinaball tree or a thorn tree got to be crazy. But when you talk to an oak tree that’s been here all these years, and knows more than you’ll ever know, it’s not craziness; it’s just the nobility you respect.

  So they tell me the Indians used to respect the rivers that same way. They used to catch fish out the river and eat the fish and put the bones back. They used to say, “Go back and be fish again.” And when they caught another fish they thought it was one of the same ones they had already ate. But when the white man came here, so they say, he conquered the Indians and told them that no such thing as bone can become fish again. The Indians didn’t believe what he said so he killed them off. After he had killed them he tried to conquer the same river they had believed in, and that’s when the trouble really started.

  I don’t know when the first levee was built—probably in slavery time; but from what I heard from the old people the water destroyed the levee soon as it was put there. Now, if the white men had taken heed to what the river was trying to say to him then, it would have saved a lot of pain later. But instead of him listening—no, he built another levee. The river tored that one down just like the first one. Built another one; river tored that one down. Here, the river been running for hundreds and hundreds of years, taking little earth, maybe few trees, maybe a cabin here and there when the water got too high, maybe a cow, horse, but never, never a whole parish—till the white man came here and tried to conquer it. They say he was French. And that’s why, up to this day, I don’t have too much faith in any Frenchman. Now, what possessed him to come from way ’cross the sea to come here and mess with our rivers. They tell me he said, “This here water got to be confined.” But he said it in French—he was a Frenchman. “We can’t let the rivers run wild like this, taking our trees like that.” Our trees, mind you, like he planted a tree here. He didn’t know the river had been taking a tree here and there for a hundred years or more. “We got to get that water to running where it’s suppose to run. Suppose to run in the river, and we got to keep it there.” Like you can tell water where to go. “Now, what we got to do is fill these here sacks full of sand and stack them all long the river where we think it might flood over. When we do that we got her licked.” Well, they stacked sacks and stacked sacks, and every time the river got ready to break through it went right on and broke through that Frenchman’s little levee like it was made of matchsticks.

  I remember the high water of ’12 well enough, but the high water of ’27 I won’t ever forget. Because in ’26 it rained and rained and rained. And that same winter we had a big freeze. Early next spring we got more rain, and the water couldn’t seep in the ground because the ground was already full from the year before, and the water had to go to the rivers. The Mi’sippi, the Red River, the ’Chafalaya River. But after so much rain that spring even the rivers couldn’t take all the water. And the water had to find somewhere else to go.

  The people said when the levee first broke—it broke at McCrea—they could hear that water coming for miles. Coming like a whirlwind, coming like a train, like thunder, like guns roaring. Taking everything up in its way—showing that little Frenchman who had lived long before who was still boss. Taking up big trees by the roots, taking houses with the people still in them. Nothing to see mules, cows, dogs, pigs floating on the water. Nothing to see people in trees, people on top of houses waiting for boats to pick them up. Days and days, I don’t know quite how long, before it stopped. But it hadn’t really stopped. The force had just gone out of the water. The water was still there. It was just flowing now smooth and quiet. Like a snake in the grass, like a shadow, like a cloud. The sun was out, the sky was blue, and you said to yourself: “Thank the Lord; over at last.” But that was before you looked over your shoulders. You turned. What’s that? A sea. A whole sea creeping up on you.

  The water covered the swamps and the fields here at Samson, but it never got in the quarters. Because Robert Samson had the men build a dike ’long the railroad tracks from one end of Samson to the other. The men worked day and night to keep the water back, and the women had to keep hot food and coffee going to the men. The old men and the children who couldn’t work on the railroad tracks had to take sticks and guns and keep back the wild animals that was trying to reach higher ground at the front. The animals that couldn’t swim or climb trees had to seek higher ground, and the only high ground was at the front. Robert Samson’s orders was: not one stray animal, not even a tadpole, was to cross them tracks. He told every man, the old men, to take his own gun, and he, himself, supplied the bullets. He told them to shoot anything and everything on four legs coming toward them. And all times of day and night we, here in the quarters, could hear the guns firing.

  The birds left the swamps just like the rest of the animals did. The water, quiet as it was, just by sweeping up the leaves, scared the birds. We could hear their little cries long before we saw them, and when they flew overhead it was like a black cloud passing over the sun. For days and days, and even at night, we could hear their shrill little cries. Olive Jarreau said it was Judgment Day. It wasn’t Judgment Day. Man had just gone a little too far.

  Now he’s built his concrete spillways to control the water. But one day the water will break down his spillways just like it broke through the levee. That little Frenchman was long dead when the water broke his levee in ’27, and these that built the spillways will be long dead, too, but the water will never die. That same water the Indians used to believe in will run free again. You just wait and see.

  Huey P. Long

  Huey Long came in the year after the high water. Nothing better could ’a’ happened to the poor black man or the poor white man no matter what they say.

  Oh, they got all kinds of stories about him now. He was a this, he was a that. Nothing but a dictator who did this and that to the people. When I hear them talk like that I think, “Ha. You ought to been here twenty-five, thirty years ago. You ought to been here when poor people had nothing. You wouldn’t be running off at the mouth so. Ha.”

  Even them children going round here saying what they got to respect Long for—didn’t he used to call our people nigger? I agree he did call the colored people nigger. But when he said nigger he said, “Here a book, nigger. Go read your name.” When the other ones said nigger they said, “Here a sack, nigger. Go pick that cotton.”

  They don’t know what the poor people went through. They think they always had a school bus, they always had a school. I can tell you when poor people didn’t get two months of school a year. And to even get that little bit they had to walk five and six miles.

  What they think the rich people killed Long for? Because he called the colored people nigger? They killed him for helping the poor, the poor black and the poor white. Because you’re not suppose to help the poor. Let the poor work, let the poor fight in your wars, then let them die. But you’re not suppose to help the poor.

  Now, they want say Dr. Weiss killed Long. Well, they ain’t go’n make me believe that. Want say he killed Long because Long sa
id Dr. Weiss wife’s granddaddy had nigger blood in his vein. Well, they got white people round here’ll kill you for saying much less than that, but they ain’t go’n make me believe that’s why Long died. I know them rich people got them guards to kill Long. All the poor know that. Telling the poor he was killed because he said the old judge had nigger blood in his veins. They said that because they thought the poor might rise. They knowed how much the poor loved him, and they said that to keep them from rising up. Well, they didn’t fool the poor people, and they don’t need to think they did.

  I remember the night they shot him, remember it well. I was down the quarters sitting up with Grace Turner. She wasn’t feeling too good, and me, Olive Jarreau and Lena Washington was sitting up with her. We was inside talking when Etienne Bouie came by and knocked on the end of the gallery. I went to the door to see what he wanted and he told me what had happened. He said, “Jane, guess what? They done shot Long.” I said, “Don’t tell me that, Etienne. Don’t tell me that, no. Don’t tell me that, now.” He said, “Yes, they shot him. He’s not dead, but they fear for his life.” He said he had just seen Manuel Ruffin and Manuel had heard it over the radio in Bayonne. Manuel had got in his car and come home because he was scared the white people might start war over this. Etienne and Manuel was going through the quarters telling the people what had happened. They tried to get Just Thomas, the head deacon, to go ring the church bell, but Just told them he wasn’t getting in white folks’ business. Grace told Etienne to come in and have some coffee, and before you knowed it the house was full of people. Unc Gilly got down on his knees and told us to pray for Long. But do you think they was go’n let him go on living? Not after what he had done for the poor.

  Now, you mean to tell me out of all the doctors you got in a hospital, not one of these doctors know what he’s suppose to do—if to go in the front or the back of a man to keep him from bleeding to death? You trying to tell me that? What you got them there for if they don’t know how to operate? No, they didn’t want stop the bleeding. They had paid them guards to kill him, and now they sure wasn’t go’n save his life in no hospital. I wouldn’t be a bit surprise if one day they don’t find out them doctors didn’t help kill him in that place.

  Look like every man that pick up the cross for the poor must end that way.

  Miss Lilly

  After Long came in office and gived us free books we got our first teacher here on the place—Miss Lilly. Miss Lilly stayed up the quarters with me all the time she was here. When they made me cook I had to move up the quarters because they wanted the cook to live closer to the front. Since I didn’t need all of the house for myself I let the teacher have one half and I kept the other half. Every teacher that ever taught here, long as I was the cook, stayed up there with me.

  Miss Lilly was a little bowlegged mulatto woman from Opelousas. A big pile of black hair, she used to pin in a roll on top her head. The people used to go up to the church and look through the window at her teaching the children. Half of the people on the place had never been in a school, and for a while everybody wanted to know what Miss Lilly was like. Sometimes you would find somebody standing at every window up there looking inside at her. After they got used to her up there, though, they stopped going. The children was about ready to stop, too. Miss Lilly was too tough on everybody. She didn’t just want lesson, she wanted the girls to come there with their dresses ironed, she wanted ribbons in their hair. The boys had to wear ties, had to shine their shoes. Brogans or no brogans, she wanted them shined.

  The children put up with that a couple months, then they stopped going to school. Everybody got sick. If it wasn’t cold, it was headache; if it wasn’t headache, it was belly ache. Miss Lilly started taking medicine to school. A little brown bottle of asafetida, a little clear bottle of castor oil. When she called roll and missed somebody she went out looking for him. She wouldn’t teach the children who was already there, she had to go out looking for the lost lamb. When the children saw her coming, they let out cross the field. Sometimes they headed the other way, toward the river. I would see them from the big house. The boy first, then a little while later Miss Lilly. She could really run for being bowlegged like she was. Poor thing.

  Now the next thing she wanted, she wanted everybody to have a toothbrush. People didn’t have money to buy bread with, but Miss Lilly wanted them to have toothbrushes. She gived everybody a week. The end of the week, nobody had a toothbrush. Some of the children had been rubbing soda over their teeth; some of them rubbed charcoal over their teeth; but none of this was good enough for Miss Lilly. She wanted them brushed. She went to the store and asked for two dozen toothbrushes. She was go’n pay for them herself and the children could pay her back when they got the money. Clarence Samson, the brother who used to run the store, told her he didn’t have no toothbrushes and he wasn’t ordering none. People found out he was ordering toothbrushes for niggers they would tar and feather him and run him out of the parish on a rail. Miss Lilly asked him what if he said he was ordering the toothbrushes for white folks. Clarence said they would laugh at him so hard he would pack up and leave of his own. Miss Lilly didn’t argue with him, she walked out of the store, and that weekend she went to Bayonne and got a brush for every child.

  Poor Miss Lilly.

  One evening Miss Lilly was coming from down the quarters when she heard Oscar Haynes’ two boys, Tee Bo and Tee Lo, crying up there in the tree. It was getting dark, she couldn’t see them, but she could hear them plain as day. One cry a little while and stop, then the other one start off. This one a little while, then the other one. Miss Lilly stood at the gate looking in the yard. Oscar had green moss burning under the tree. People used to keep a smoke like that in the summer to keep away mosquitoes, but tonight it wasn’t mosquitoes. Miss Lilly stood at the gate a while, then she came in the yard. Oscar and Viney and them sitting out there on the gallery. Nobody saying a word. Just sitting there in the dark. Up in the tree Tee Bo and Tee Lo crying. One a little while, then the other. One a little while, then the other. When Miss Lilly got closer to the tree she saw the two sacks up there.

  “What’s going on up there?” she asked.

  “That’s you, Miss Lilly?” Tee Bo said. Miss Lilly could hardly understand him with his mouth pressed up against the sack.

  “That’s me,” Miss Lilly said. “What’s going on up there?”

  “Daddy smoking us,” Tee Bo said.

  “Come out of that tree,” Miss Lilly said.

  “These sacks tied,” Tee Bo said.

  “Stop fooling with me,” Miss Lilly said. “Come down from there.’

  Nobody on the gallery said a thing. Just sitting there in the dark. Not even looking at Miss Lilly out there in the yard.

  “Do I have to come up there?” Miss Lilly said. “Come out of there.”

  “These sacks tied, Miss Lilly,” Tee Bo said.

  Miss Lilly made two little jumps to reach the sacks, but didn’t come nowhere near reaching them. Then she went up to the gallery and looked at Oscar and them sitting there in the dark. She wouldn’t say a thing. They didn’t say a thing. Acting like she wasn’t even there.

  “All y’all crazy?” she asked.

  Nobody answered.

  “I asked is all y’all crazy?” she said again.

  “No business sassing old people,” Aunt Julie said. Aunt Julie was Oscar’s mama.

  “No business sassing old people?” Miss Lilly said. “You whip children when they sassy old people, you don’t smoke them. Get them children down.”

  Nobody answer.

  “You hear me?” she said to Oscar.

  “I’m hearing everything you saying,” Oscar said.

  “Well?” Miss Lilly said.

  “You better go on up the quarters to Miss Jane,” Oscar said. “Teacher or no teacher.”

  “I leave when them children come down,” Miss Lilly said.

  Oscar didn’t say another word. When he got up, Viney said: “Oscar be careful. The law on
her side.” He didn’t say nothing to her, either. He came on down the steps, picked up Miss Lilly with one hand and started with her toward the gate. Miss Lilly screaming and kicking now. “What you doing to me? Put me down. Animal, animal. Put me down. Help. Help.” Oscar pushed the gate open and set her on the ground, then he gived her a big whack on the behind and went on back in the yard. Just before he went on the gallery he throwed another piece of green moss on the fire to keep the smoke going up the tree.

  Miss Lilly went from house to house, trying to find somebody to go down there and make Oscar stop smoking his children. When she couldn’t find nobody down there she came up to the house and asked me to come go with her to see Robert Samson. I told her the same thing Robert Samson was go’n tell her—leave it alone. She asked me if I knowed what I was saying. I told her I knowed what I was saying—leave it alone. She said she still wanted to talk to Robert. I took her over there. Robert told her to stick to her teaching and let people raise their children the way they wanted to. We came back home. Miss Lilly taught the rest of the year, then she went home to Opelousas and never came back.

  After Miss Lilly, then came Hardy. Joe Hardy was one of the worst human beings I’ve ever met. A little short, oily-face black man with a’ open crown gold tooth right in front. Telling poor people the government wasn’t paying him much, so he would ’preciate it if they could help him out some. Poor people selling all their little gardening to give Joe Hardy money; selling eggs, selling chickens, killing hogs and selling the meat, to give Joe Hardy money. This wasn’t enough for him, he had people raising onions and potatoes for him. Used to take the children out in the field in the evening to hoe and plow his onions and potatoes. Telling the children that one of the lessons our great leader Mr. Booker T. Washington taught was for children to learn good honest labor.