The Ways of White Folks

by Langston Hughes

  One day he met the boy coming back from the river where he had been swimming. The Colonel lit into him with all the cuss words at his command. He told him in no uncertain language to get down in the South Field to work. He told him there would be no more school at Atlanta for him; that he would show him that just because Cora happened to be his mother, he was no more than any other nigger on the place. God damn him!

  Bert stood silent and red in front of his father, looking as the Colonel must have looked forty years ago—except that he was a shade darker. He did not go down to the South Field to work. And all Cora’s pleadings could not make him go. Yet nothing happened. That was the strange thing about it. The Colonel did nothing—to Bert. But he lit into Cora, nagged and scolded her for days, told her she’d better get some sense into her boy’s head if she wanted any skin left on his body.

  So the summer passed. Sallie, having worked faithfully in the house throughout the hottest months, went away to school again. Bert remained sullenly behind.

  The day that ends our story began like this:

  The sun rose burning and blazing, flooding the earth with the heat of early autumn, making even the morning oppressive. Folks got out of bed feeling like over-ripe fruit. The air of the morning shimmered with heat and ill-humor. The night before, Colonel Norwood had been drinking. He got up trembling and shaky, yelling for Cora to bring him something clean to put on. He went downstairs cussing.

  The Colonel did not want to eat. He drank black coffee, and walked out on the tall-pillared porch to get a breath of air. He was standing there looking through the trees at his cotton, when the Ford swept by in a cloud of dust, past the front of the house and down the highway to town. Bert was driving.

  The Colonel cussed out loud, bit his cigar, turned and went into the house, slamming the door, storming to Cora, calling up the stairs where she was working, “What the hell does he think he is, driving off to town in the middle of the morning? Didn’t I tell Bert not to touch that Ford, to stay down yonder in the fields and work?”

  “Yes, suh, Colonel Tom,” Cora said. “You sure did.”

  “Tell him I want to see him soon as he comes back here. Send him in here. And tell him I’ll skin his yellow hide for him.” The Colonel spoke of Bert as though he were still a child.

  “Yes, suh, Colonel Tom.”

  VII

  The day grew hotter and hotter. Heat waves rose from the fields. Sweat dampened the Colonel’s body. Sweat dampened the black bodies of the Negroes in the cotton fields, too, the hard black bodies that had built the Colonel’s fortune out of earth and sun and barehanded labor. Yet the Colonel, in spite of the fact that he lived on this labor, sat in his shaded house fanning that morning and wondering what made niggers so contrary—he was thinking of Bert—as the telephone rang. The fat and testy voice of his old friend, Mr. Higgins, trembled at the other end of the wire. He was calling from the Junction.

  Accustomed as he was to his friend’s voice on the phone, at first the Colonel could not make out what he was saying. When he did understand, his neck bulged and the palms of the hands that held the phone were wet with sweat. Anger and shame made his tall body stoop and bend like an animal about to spring. Mr. Higgins was talking about Bert.

  “That yellow nigger …” Mr. Higgins said. “One of your yard-niggers sassed …” Mr. Higgins said. “I thought I’d better tell you …” Mr. Higgins said. “Everybody …” Mr. Higgins said.

  The whole town was excited about Bert. In the heat of this over-warm autumn day, the hot heads of the white citizens of the town had suddenly become inflamed about Bert. Mr. Higgins, county politician and Postmaster at the Junction, was well qualified to know. His Office had been the center of the news.

  It seemed that Bert had insulted the young white woman who sold stamps and made out money-orders at the Post Office. And Mr. Higgins was telling the Colonel about it on the phone, warning him to get rid of Bert, that people around the Junction were getting sick and tired of seeing him.

  At the Post Office this is what happened: a simple argument over change. But the young woman who sold the stamps was not used to arguing with Negroes, or being corrected by them when she made a mistake. Bert said, “I gave you a dollar,” holding out the incorrect change. “You gave me back only sixty-four cents.”

  The young woman said, counting the change, “Yes, but you have eight three-cent stamps. Move on now, there’re others waiting.” Several white people were in line.

  Bert said, “Yes, but eight times three is not thirty-six. You owe me twelve cents more.”

  The girl looked at the change and realized she was wrong. She looked at Bert—light near-white nigger with grey-blue eyes. You gotta be harder on those kind than you have on the black ones. An educated nigger, too! Besides it was hot and she wasn’t feeling well. A light near-white nigger with grey eyes! Instead of correcting the change, she screamed, and let her head fall forward in front of the window.

  Two or three white men waiting to buy stamps seized Bert and attempted to throw him out of the Post Office. Bert remembered he’d been a football player—and Colonel Norwood’s son—so he fought back. One of the white men got a bloody mouth. Women screamed. Bert walked out of the Post Office, got in the Ford and drove away. By that time, the girl who sold stamps had recovered. She was telling everyone how Bert had insulted her.

  “Oh, my God! It was terrible,” she said.

  “That’s one nigger don’t know his place, Tom,” Mr. Higgins roared over the phone. “And it’s your fault he don’t—sendin’ ’em off to school to be educated.” The Colonel listened to his friend at the other end of the wire. “Why that yellow buck comes to my store and if he ain’t waited on quick as the white folks are, he walks out. He said last week standin’ out on my corner, he wasn’t all nigger no how; said his name was Norwood—not Lewis, like the rest of Cora’s family; said your plantation would be his when you passed out—and all that kind o’ stuff, boasting to the niggers listening about you being his father.” The Colonel almost dropped the phone. “Now, Tom, you know that stuff don’t go ’round these parts o’ Georgia. Ruinous to other niggers hearing that sort of talk, too. There ain’t been no race trouble in our county for three years—since the Deekins lynching—but I’m telling you, Norwood, folks ain’t gonna stand for this. I’m speaking on the quiet, but I see ahead. What happened this morning in the Post Office ain’t none too good.”

  “When I get through with him,” said the Colonel hoarsely, “you won’t need to worry. Goodbye.”

  The white man came out of the library, yelled for Sam, shouted for Cora, ordered whisky. Drank and screamed.

  “God damn that son of yours! I’m gonna kill him,” he said to Cora. “Get out of here,” he shouted at Sam, who came back with cigars.

  Cora wept. The Colonel raved. A car shot down the road. The Colonel rushed out, brandishing a cane to stop it. It was Bert. He paid no attention to the old man standing on the steps of the pillared porch waving his stick. Ashen with fury, the Colonel came back into the house and fumbled with his keys at an old chest. Finally, a drawer opened and he took out a pistol. He went toward the door as Cora began to howl, but on the porch he became suddenly strengthless and limp. Shaking, the old man sank into a chair holding the gun. He would not speak to Cora.

  VIII

  Late in the afternoon, Colonel Norwood sent Cora for their son. The gun had been put away. At least Cora did not see it.

  “I want to talk to that boy,” the Colonel said. “Fetch him here.” Damned young fool … bastard … of a nigger.…

  “What’s he gonna do to my boy?” Cora thought. “Son, be careful,” as she went across the yard and down toward Willie’s cabin to find Bert. “Son, you be careful. I didn’t bear you for no white man to kill. Son, you be careful. You ain’t white, don’t you know that? You be careful. O, Lord God Jesus in heaven! Son, be careful!” Cora was crying when she reached Willie’s door, crying all the way back to the Big House with her son.

&n
bsp; “To hell with the old man,” Bert said. “He ain’t no trouble! Old as he is, what can he do to me?”

  “Lord have mercy, son, is you crazy? Why don’t you be like Willie? He ain’t never had no fusses with de Colonel.”

  “White folks’ nigger,” Bert said.

  “Why don’t you talk sense?” Cora begged.

  “Why didn’t he keep his promise then and let me go back to school in Atlanta, like my sister? You said if I came home this summer he’d lemme go back to the Institute, didn’t you? Then why didn’t he?”

  “Why didn’t you act right, son? Oh-o-o!” Cora moaned. “You can’t get nothin’ from white folks if you don’t act right.”

  “Act like Willie, you mean, and the rest of these cotton pickers? Then I don’t want anything.”

  They had reached the back door now. It was nearly dark in the kitchen where Livonia was making biscuits.

  “Don’t rile him, Bert, child,” Cora said as she took him through the house. “I don’t know what he might do to you. He’s got a gun.”

  “Don’t worry ’bout me,” Bert answered.

  The setting sun made long paths of golden light across the parlor floor through the tall windows opening on the West. The air was thick and sultry with autumn heat. The Colonel sat, bent and old, near a table where there were whisky and cigars and a half-open drawer. When Bert entered he suddenly straightened up and the old commanding look came into his eyes. He told Cora to go upstairs to her room.

  Of course, he never asked Bert to sit down.

  The tall mulatto boy stood before his father, the Colonel. The old white man felt the steel of him standing there, like the steel of himself forty years ago. Steel of the Norwoods darkened now by Africa. The old man got up, straight and tall, too, and suddenly shook his fist in the face of the boy.

  “You listen to me,” he said, trembling with quiet. “I don’t want to have to whip you again like I did when you were a child.” He was almost hissing. “The next time I might kill you. I been running this plantation thirty-five years and never had to beat a nigger old as you are. Never had any trouble out of none of Cora’s children before either, but you.” The old man sat down. “I don’t have trouble with my colored folks. They do what I say or what Talbot says, and that’s all there is to it. If they turn in crops, they get a living. If they work for wages, they get paid. If they spend their money on licker, or old cars, or fixing up their cabins—they can do what they choose, long as they know their places and it don’t hinder their work. To Cora’s young ones—you hear me, boy?—I gave all the chances any nigger ever had in these parts. More’n many a white child’s had, too. I sent you off to school. I gave your brother, Willie, that house he’s living in when he got married, pay him for his work, help him out if he needs it. None of my darkies suffer. You went off to school. Could have kept on, would have sent you back this fall, but I don’t intend to pay for no nigger, or white boy either if I had one, that acts the way you been acting.” Colonel Norwood got up again, angrily. “And certainly not for no black fool! I’m talking to you like this only because you’re Cora’s child—but you know damn well it’s my habit to tell people what to do, not discuss it with them. I just want to know what’s the matter with you, though—whether you’re crazy or not? And if you’re not, you’d better change your ways a damn sight or it won’t be safe for you here, and you know it—venting your impudence on white women, ruining my niggers, driving like mad through the Junction, carrying on just as you please. I’m warning you, boy, God damn it!… Now I want you to answer me, and talk right.” The old man sat down in his chair again by the whisky bottle and the partly opened drawer. He took a drink.

  “What do you mean, talk right?” Bert said.

  “I mean talk like a nigger should to a white man,” the Colonel snapped.

  “Oh, but I’m not a nigger, Colonel Norwood,” Bert said, “I’m your son.”

  The old man frowned at the boy in front of him. “Cora’s son,” he said.

  “Fatherless?” Bert asked.

  “Bastard,” the old man said.

  Bert’s hands closed into fists, so the Colonel opened the drawer where the pistol was. He took it out and laid it on the table.

  “You black bastard,” he said.

  “I’ve heard that before.” Bert just stood there. “You’re talking about my mother.”

  “Well,” the Colonel answered, his fingers playing over the surface of the gun, “what can you do about it?”

  The boy felt his whole body suddenly tighten and pull. The muscles of his forearms rippled.

  “Niggers like you are hung to trees,” the old man went on.

  “I’m not a nigger,” Bert said. “Ain’t you my father? And a hell of a father you are, too, holding a gun on me.”

  “I’ll break your black neck for you,” the Colonel shouted. “Don’t talk to me like that!” He jumped up.

  “You’ll break my neck?” The boy stood his ground as the father came toward him.

  “Get out of here!” The Colonel shook with rage. “Get out! Or I’ll do more than that if I ever lay eyes on you again.” The old man picked up the pistol from the table, yet the boy did not move. “I’ll fill you full of bullets if you come back here. Get off this place! Get to hell out of this county! Now, tonight. Go on!” The Colonel motioned with his pistol toward the door that led to the kitchen and the back of the house.

  “Not that way,” Bert said. “I’m not your servant. You must think I’m scared. Well, you can’t drive me out the back way like a dog. You’re not going to run me off, like a field hand you can’t use any more. I’ll go,” the boy said, starting toward the front door, “but not out the back—from my own father’s house.”

  “You nigger bastard!” Norwood screamed, springing between his son and the door, but the boy kept calmly on. The steel of the gun was between them, but that didn’t matter. Rather, it seemed to pull them together like a magnet.

  “Don’t you …,” Norwood began, for suddenly Bert’s hand grasped the Colonel’s arm, “dare put your …,” and his old bones began to crack, “black hands on …”

  “Why don’t you shoot?” Bert interrupted him, slowly turning his wrist.

  “… me!”

  “Why don’t you shoot, then?”

  The old man twisted and bent in fury and pain, but the gun fell to the floor.

  “Why don’t you shoot?” Bert said again as his hands sought his father’s throat. With furious sureness they took the old white neck in their strong young fingers. “Why don’t you shoot then, papa?”

  Colonel Norwood clawed the air, breathing hoarsely and loud, his tongue growing stiff and dry, his eyes beginning to burn.

  “Shoot—why don’t you, then? Huh? Why?”

  The chemicals of their two lives exploded. Everything was very black around them. The white man’s hands stopped clawing the air. His heart stood still. His blood no longer flowed. He wasn’t breathing.

  “Why don’t you shoot?” Bert said, but there was no answer.

  When the boy’s eyes cleared, he saw his mother standing at the foot of the stairs, so he let the body drop. It fell with a thud, old and white in a path of red from the setting sun.

  “Why didn’t he shoot, mama? He didn’t want me to live. He was white. Why didn’t he shoot then?”

  “Tom!” Cora cried, falling across his body. “Colonel Tom! Tom! Tom!”

  “He’s dead,” Bert said. “I’m living though.”

  “Tom!” Cora screamed, pulling at the dead man. “Colonel Tom!”

  Bert bent down and picked up the pistol. “This is what my father wanted to use on me,” he said. “He’s dead. But I can use it on all the white men in Georgia—they’ll be coming to get me now. They never wanted me before, but I know they’ll want me now.” He stuffed the pistol in his shirt. Cora saw what her son had done.

  “Run,” she said, rising and going to him. “Run, chile! Out the front way quick, so’s they won’t see you in the kitche
n. Make fo’ de swamp, honey. Cross de fields fo’ de swamp. Go de crick way. In runnin’ water, dogs can’t smell no tracks. Hurry, son!”

  “Yes, mama,” Bert said slowly. “But if I see they gonna get me before I reach the swamp, then I’m coming back here. Let them take me out of my father’s house—if they can.” He patted the gun inside his shirt, and smiled. “They’ll never string me up to some roadside tree for the crackers to laugh at. Not me!”

  “Hurry, chile,” Cora opened the door and the sunset streamed in like a river of blood. “Hurry, chile.”

  Bert went out across the wide pillared porch and down the road. He saw Talbot and the storekeeper coming, so he turned off through the trees. And then, because he wanted to live, he began to run. The whole sky was a blaze of color as he ran. Then it began to get dark, and the glow went away.

  In the house, Cora started to talk to the dead man on the floor, just as though he were not dead. She pushed and pulled at the body, trying to get him to get up himself. Then she heard the footsteps of Talbot and the storekeeper on the porch. She rose and stood as if petrified in the middle of the floor. A knock, and two men were peering through the screen door into the dusk-dark room. Then Talbot opened the door.

  “Hello, Cora,” he said. “What’s the matter with you, why didn’t you let us in? Where’s that damn fool boy o’ your’n goin’, comin’ out the front way liked he owned the place? What’s the matter with you, woman? Can’t you talk? Where’s Colonel Norwood?”

  “Let’s have some light in here,” said the storekeeper, turning a button beside the door.

  “Great God!” Talbot cried. “Jim, look at this!” The Colonel’s body lay huddled on the floor, old and purple-white, at Cora’s feet.