The Tragedy of Brady Sims

by Ernest J. Gaines

  “Teddy Man was settin’ at the other end of the counter. I looked at him, he looked back at me, and we shot out of there to see what was going on. Mapes had already got in his car, was driving a hundred miles a’ hour. He was headed uptown, and we figured he was going to the courthouse. Me and Teddy Man started humping it, but I can’t pick ’em up and put ’em down like I used to, and Teddy Man can’t run any faster either. By the time we got to the courthouse, Mapes had already gone inside. People standing on the grass ’round the flagpole told us how Brady had shot up the place and drove out of town cool as a cucumber. And nobody had tried to stop him or follow him.”

  It was quiet for a while, until Jamison said: “It was bound to happen, bound to happen. Two hours?”

  “That’s what he asked for,” I said. “And Mapes said he could have his two hours.”

  “I don’t get it,” the man with the fresh haircut said.

  “So much water under that bridge—eh, Lucas?” Jamison said.

  Lucas made a short agreeing grunt.

  “Bridge—what—?” the man with the fresh haircut tried to ask.

  “When did it get started?” Jamison went on, not paying any attention to the man with the fresh haircut. “Way before I started insurancing. Sometime during the war.”

  “War?” The man with the fresh haircut tried to speak. “When—war—what war?”

  “I say tractor,” Joe Celestin said.

  Jamison stood there, transfixed, his mouth still open because he was about to say something before old Celestin interrupted him. He stood motionless, quiet, for a couple seconds, then he turned and got a chair from against the wall and placed it in front of the old man and sat down facing him. All of this was done cool and quietly, and everyone else in the place was as quiet as though they were at a wake. Then suddenly Jamison screamed, “WAR, WAR, you old baldhead bastard. WAR.”

  “TRACTOR, you old wooly head, wooly head—something else,” Joe Celestin tried to throw back the insult.

  The rest of the men laughed.

  The argument between Jamison and Joe Celestin had been going on for years. I had been hearing it ever since I had been coming to the barbershop. Jamison claimed that it was the Second World War that took the young men and women from the plantations to go into the military and to military plants up north for work. Those who went into the military had a chance to go to school to further their education and get good jobs. None of this could have been possible had it not been for the war.

  Old Celestin said because the white man had money to buy machines—the tractor—and the black man didn’t have the money to buy machines, he couldn’t compete with that tractor, and so he had to leave. Old Celestin said the land kept the people together; the city didn’t. He said that it made no difference whether it was in the North or down here—city was no school.

  “Why don’t both of y’all call it draw,” Lucas Felix said.

  “Lucas, you have been saying that for years, and nothing been solved,” Jamison said. “WAR, old bastard.”

  “TRACTOR, old, old, old nothing.”

  The men laughed again. But no one laughed harder than Sam Hebert. And I’m sure he had heard the argument a dozen times or more.

  “Do you know how precious an education is, old man?” Jamison asked in a controlled voice.

  “Do you know how wicked that city is out there?” Joe Celestin asked just as calmly.

  “I been out there,” Jamison said.

  “Me too,” the old man said.

  “A man is proud when he gets an education,” Jamison continued. “Come home with pride. Good food on the table. Can send his children to school. Proud of that.”

  “And how ’bout all them out on the street?” the old man said. “Ain’t trained for any kind of city work. Young ladies got to sell they bodies; young men drinking and on dope, ’cause they can’t find any work to do. Eating all that old junky food; half of them skinny as a rail; young ladies fat and bloated up. The land gived them good food, kept them in shape.”

  “Yeah—picking cotton. No education; pick cotton; cut cane.”

  “I didn’t say nothing ’bout picking no cotton.”

  “Right, you didn’t. Machines doing all of that now. So what’s they going to do on the land? Grow a garden—eat potatoes, cabbage, collard greens? All healthy food. But where the money coming from? When they get sick and need a doctor? You can’t grow dollar bills in a garden.”

  “Gov’ment.”

  “The government? The government? The government gives you just enough money to survive on.”

  “And I still say—Tractor,” old Celestin said. “Done put poor people in them cities with no kinda training, and they don’t know which way to turn. They get in trouble—they end up in the pen or in the grave. Tractor.”

  Jamison looked at him a moment, then he got up and replaced the chair against the wall.

  “You must concede to your elders,” he said. “Where was I?”

  “Tractor,” old Celestin said.

  The man with the fresh haircut raised a finger.

  “What’s that got to do with—”

  No one paid him any attention.

  “When he first started whipping children,” Lucas Felix reminded Jamison. “ ’Bout the time when Bo-Boy came back from Angola.”

  “I think you’re right—just about that time,” Jamison said.

  “Called him Bo-Boy because old Alcie Ruffin, his grampa on his mama side, used to stutter, and couldn’t get ‘boy’ out on the first try, so had to say ‘bo-boy.’ And we all started calling him Bo-Boy. Still don’t know what that old boy right name was. You remember, Sweet?”

  “Amos Bouie,” Sweet Sidney said, without looking up from his paper.

  “You’re right again there, Sweet,” Jamison complimented him. “Old boy could cut cane and pick cotton with the best of them. Lena Jackson could do some picking—”

  “Don’t forget Vera Domino,” one of the old men said.

  “Yeah, both of them was right there with him, but no better,” Jamison agreed. “Then he got into that trouble, sent to Angola—over what? Poontang. Caught that li’l short-hair woman he used to mess around with with that funny-looking boy from Patin Dike. One punch, and that old boy fell and hit his head on that concrete step, and died two days later. Sent Bo-Boy to Angola for five years. Weighed a good two hundred pounds when they sent him up. When we seen him again—a hundred and thirty pounds at most. Broke, broke, broke. Body and mind—broke. I’m telling the truth, Lucas?”

  “I’m a witness.”

  “Now all he want to do is chew sugarcane and eat pecans,” Jamison went on. “Go back in the field and break a whole armful of cane, sit on that ditch bank front of the house and peel cane with them few old rotten teeth he still had and chew on sugarcane all day long. Go back under them pecan trees, stuff pecans in his overall and jumper pockets, come back, set on ditch bank front of his house and eat pecans ’til Aunt Ducy got to come out in the dark and lead him back to the house. People keep telling her she ought to take him to Jackson, but she keep telling them he ain’t hurting anybody, and that she could take care of him all by herself.”

  Jamison was quiet for a moment. Joe Celestin got up and went to the bathroom. The man with the fresh haircut went to the fountain to get some water. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and sat down in the chair next to me.

  “You follow what’s going on?” he whispered in my ear.

  I nodded.

  “Must be some kinda secret code in this part of Louisiana.”

  I caught a whiff of the lotion that Lucas Felix had put around his neck after cutting his hair.

  “Who was preaching then, Lucas?” Jamison asked.

  “Better ask the man there,” Lucas said.

  “Hanh, Sweet?”

  “When?”

  “The War—when it was just getting started?”

  “Tractor,” old Celestin said, coming out of the bathroom.

  Sam Hebe
rt laughed.

  “Tyree,” Sweet Sidney said. “Banks came after the war.”

  “You’re sure?” Jamison asked.

  Sweet Sidney didn’t say another word. Take it or leave it.

  The fellow with a fresh haircut made a clicking sound as if he was trying to get something from between his teeth.

  “Yeah—right—Tyree,” Jamison said. “Big, healthy fellow—black as tar.”

  “When’s he going to say something about the boy who was killed?” the fellow beside me whispered. Again, I could smell the lotion around his neck. I didn’t answer him.

  Jamison went on: “One Sunday after church service, Tyree told the people not to leave just yet. He had been getting complaints about children the old people couldn’t control. The mamas and the papas had gone to war or up north for work, leaving the children with the old people. Now, the children stayed in trouble. Always going to jail; some going to Angola. They brought up Bo-Boy for an example what happened when they went to Angola. And they didn’t want to see that happening to their children. They wanted Tyree to tell them what to do. Tyree told them that if they couldn’t control the children—get somebody on the place who could. But who? Then they came up with Brady. Brady Sims. Brady could stop them. None of Brady’s kids ever got into trouble. Brady was the man to do the job. They went to Brady. Brady said if that’s what they wanted. They said that’s what they wanted. And they warned their children: ‘Keep it up, keep it up, just keep it up. You’ll meet with Mr. Brady whip. You just keep getting in trouble.’ ”

  Jamison looked back at Lucas Felix.

  “You still with me, Lucas? You mighty quiet in that chair.”

  “I’m with you all the way, man,” Lucas Felix said. “You got it to a T.”

  “I wish I knowed what’s he talking about,” the fresh haircut man said to himself, but loud enough for me to hear.

  “First one he had to whip on the place was Aunt Tobias’s old lazy grandson, Nelson. Mon and Pa had gone to California for work. Aunt Tobias could hardly move around with her walking stick, and now she had this old boy on her hands. Old boy would steal a nickel off a dead man’s eye. Stole that dollar that Lizzy Ann wanted to send to her sister, Irene, on the Island. Time was hard then, time was hard for poor people. If you didn’t make a garden, and you didn’t have a few chickens, a hog, or a cow, you saw some hard days. I was selling insurance then—had that stretch from Gross Stete to Mulatto Bend, and over on the Island. I was on the Island when Irene told me to tell Lizzy Ann to please send her two dollars for medicine the doctor had told her she had to have. I didn’t collect the quarter that day, she didn’t have it.

  “When I came back on this side of the river I told Lizzy Ann what Irene had said. She said she couldn’t spare two dollars, but maybe she could scrape up one. She asked me when I was going back on the Island. I told her not for another week. She said she would try to mail it. She asked me if I had a stamp. I didn’t have one on me, but I gave her a nickel. Stamps cost three cents at that time. She put the old wrinkled dollar bill in the envelope with another piece of paper so you couldn’t see the money. She asked me to write the address because I wrote so much better than she did. Then she got that old boy Nelson to mail the letter for her. She gave the old boy the envelope and the nickel for the stamp, and she told him he could buy some candy with the two pennies left over. At that time you could buy those little penny sticks of peppermint candy. Old boy tore open that envelope, took that dollar, bought him some sausage and moon cakes and a bottle of pop, and sat under that pecan tree—at that time you had a big pecan tree right by the store—he set there with his legs crossed and had himself a feast. People visiting the store saw him sitting there. Some of them asked him where did he get the money from. He told them that it was none their business. He told other people that he found it in the road.

  “Three, four days later, I went back on the Island. Irene asked me if I had spoke to Lizzy Ann. I told her that Lizzy Ann couldn’t send her two dollars, but could send her one. Irene said she never seen any money. When I came back on this side I told Lizzy Ann. Lizzy Ann went to Aunt Tobias. Aunt Tobias was too weak to catch and whip Nelson, so she went to Brady. When Brady finished with him Aunt Tobias had to bathe his back in Epsom salt water for a week. That old boy saved up enough money to visit his folks in California. Aunt Tobias died not long after that, and Nelson and his mon and pa came back for the funeral. When Nelson got up to speak, he thank Brady for changing his life. He thank him over and over. You was at the funeral, Lucas, am I right or wrong?”

  “Right—every word.”

  Jamison got some water from the fountain and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “I was on my way to N’Awlens,” the man with the fresh haircut whispered in my ear. I got a faint whiff of the lotion. “When’s he go’n get to the part—where the boy was killed?”

  I didn’t answer him.

  “Yep,” Jean Lebouef said to himself and laughed. “Saved some, lost some; and sometimes it was just funny. Settin’ here thinking ’bout the time Brady tried to whip P.J.”

  Several of the men laughed, Sam Hebert was one of them. He laughed harder than anyone else.

  “That was some day, that was some day—I tell you,” one of the other old men, Jake Williams, said.

  Jamison sat in Sam Hebert’s barber chair, crossed his legs, and started talking again.

  “Old boy stayed hungry,” he said. “Dinnertime, he could eat a half a pound of sausage and a half loaf bread without stopping.”

  “Now, he could pick some cotton, though,” one of the old men said.

  “You telling me,” Jake Williams said. “Up there with the best of them.”

  “And stole cotton out of other people sacks out on the headland,” Jean Lebouef said.

  “He the one he killed?” the man with the fresh haircut asked me.

  I didn’t answer him.

  “But when it rained, you couldn’t pick cotton,” Jamison went on. “Old boy missed that half loaf of bread and that half pound of baloney sausage, so he stole it. Went out to the store, and when old Billy Boudreau was on the telephone back in his office, that old boy leapt over that counter and grabbed a hunk of sausage, and leapt back over and grabbed a loaf of French bread and a couple bottles of pop, and headed for the quarter. He knowed all the time that they was going to find out who did it, so he got some bricks and broke them up in chunks, and he took food and bricks under the house and started eating and waiting. Big old boy, nineteen or twenty. Who was his paw? Sweet?”

  “Louis Paul,” Sweet Sidney said, without looking up from his paper.

  “Yeah, right,” Jamison agreed. “Did favor them Pauls from Loddio. All of them, big fellows, always in trouble. Couple of them even served time in Angola.”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” I heard behind me. “You say you follow what he’s talking ’bout? You sure you work for a newspaper—the paper that fellow over there can’t stop reading? Positive?”

  I ignored him.

  Jamison never stopped talking. “Cousin Mama ’Nita who was raising him was going to keep him out of Angola no matter what it cost. And that’s when Brady comes in. Had rained that day—won’t never forget. Ground soaking wet. Brady had to get down on his stomach to look under the house. Was dark way under there, but Brady could make him out. Him under there still eating that French bread and baloney sausage. Brady had that whip, that eight-plat bullwhip. He popped under there—po’yow. Old boy went on eating his bread and sausage.

  “ ‘Come out from under there,’ Brady told him. ‘Don’t make me have to come and drag you from under there.’

  “Old boy went on eating his bread and sausage and drinking his pop—Nehi. He knowed he was out of reach of Brady’s whip. Brady musta swung under there three or four times, but it never come anywhere near that old boy.

  “A lot of people had gathered now, standing there on that wet grass watching this. I reckoned half of them was pulling for Brady, the other ha
lf for P.J. Brady started crawling under the house, and that’s when that old boy throwed that first brick. It missed. Brady stopped a second, then started crawling again. That second one didn’t miss, caught Brady on the arm. You remember all them Pauls used to play baseball. We had baseball parks then—one here, another one at Caledonia, Port Allen, the Island—everywhere. Those was the good old days. And them Pauls, all of them, was good. Skeeter played shortstop, Juney was on second, the rest was either pitchers or in the outfield. All good. Coulda gone to the majors if they had good training. All big healthy boys—strong arms. You with me, Lucas?”

  “All the way,” Lucas Felix said.

  “Why the barber keep agreeing with him?” I heard behind me. “Can’t he see that man’s crazy? You sure he didn’t break out of Jackson?”

  Jamison went on talking. “That second brick made Brady back off from under the house. He pretended he was going to leave, then he went tippy-toeing to the other side of the house. By the time he got down on his stomach, that old boy had changed sides, too, holding on to his food and his Nehi pop and a couple of bricks. The rest of the people went to that side, too, just to see what was going to happen. Brady popped that whip under there couple times, then he tried to rush that old boy. The first brick hit him on the arm, the second brick right square on the forehead. Brady just laid there, laid there, ’til couple men grabbed holt of his legs and pulled him out. Jake, you was one?”

  “Me and Ned Brooks,” Jake Williams said.

  “Brady had nothing else to do with P.J., and P.J. had nothing else to do with Brady. Old Boy went to Texas, stayed there a while, then went to California. Was murdered there in Oakland, California, in a bar fight.”

  “Leaving home, going to them streets—dying,” old Celestin said.

  “They’re dying here, too—or haven’t you notice that?” Jamison said.

  “Tractor,” old Celestin said.

  The old men were quiet for a while. So was I. But I was still waiting for something else. What was the meaning of those two hours?