The Ways of White Folks

by Langston Hughes

  “Why, he’s blue in the face,” the storekeeper said bending over the body. “Oh! Get that nigger we saw walking out the door! That nigger bastard of Cora’s. Get that nigger!… Why, the Colonel’s dead!”

  Talbot rushed toward the door. “That nigger,” he cried. “He must be running toward the swamps now.… We’ll get him. Telephone town, Jim, there in the library. Telephone the sheriff. Telephone the Beale family down by the swamp. Get men, white men, after that nigger.”

  The storekeeper ran into the library and began to call on the phone. Talbot looked at Cora standing in the center of the room. “Where’s Norwood’s car? In the barn? Talk, you black wench, talk!”

  But Cora didn’t say a word. She watched the two white men rush out of the house into the yard. In a few minutes, she heard the roar of a motor hurtling down the road. It was dark outside. Night had come.

  Cora turned toward the body on the floor. “My boy,” she said, “he can’t get to de swamp now. They telephoned the white folks down that way to head him off. He’ll come back home.” She called aloud, “Colonel Tom, why don’t you get up from there and help me? You know they’re after our boy. You know they got him out there runnin’ from de white folks in de night. Runnin’ from de hounds and de guns and de ropes and all what they uses to kill poor niggers with.… Ma boy’s out there runnin’. Why don’t you help him?” Cora bent over the body. “Colonel Tom, you hear me? You said he was ma boy, ma bastard boy. I heard you. But he’s your’n, too—out yonder in de dark runnin’—from your people. Why don’t you get up and stop ’em? You know you could. You’s a power in Polk County. You’s a big man, and yet our son’s out there runnin’—runnin’ from po’ white trash what ain’t worth de little finger o’ nobody’s got your blood in ’em, Tom.” Cora shook the dead body fiercely. “Get up from there and stop ’em, Colonel Tom.” But the white man did not move.

  Gradually Cora stopped shaking him. Then she rose and backed away from this man she had known so long. “You’s cruel, Tom,” she whispered. “I might a-knowed it—you’d be like that, sendin’ ma boy out to die. I might a-knowed it ever since you beat him that time under de feet of de horses. Well, you won’t mistreat him no more now. That’s finished.” She went toward the steps. “I’m gonna make a place for him. Upstairs under ma bed. He’s ma chile, and I’ll look out for him. And don’t you come in ma bedroom while he’s up there. Don’t you come to my bed either no more a-tall. I calls for you to help me now, Tom, and you just lays there. I calls you to get up now, and you don’t move. Whenever you called me in de night, I woke up. Whenever you wanted me to love you, I reached out ma arms to you. I bored you five children and now,” her voice rose hysterically, “one of ’em’s out yonder runnin’ from your people. Our youngest boy’s out yonder in de dark, runnin’! I ’spects you’s out there, too, with de rest of de white folks. Uh-um! Bert’s runnin’ from you, too. You said he warn’t your’n—Cora’s po’ little yellow bastard. But he is your’n, Colonel Tom, and he’s runnin’ from you. Yes, out yonder in de dark, you, you runnin’ our chile with a gun in yo’ hand, and Talbot followin’ behind you with a rope to hang Bert with.” She leaned against the wall near the staircase, sobbing violently. Then she went back toward the man on the floor. Her sobs gradually ceased as she looked down at his crumpled body. Then she said slowly, “Listen, I been sleepin’ with you too long not to know that this ain’t you, Tom, layin’ down here with yo’ eyes shut on de floor. You can’t fool me—you ain’t never been so still like this before—you’s out yonder runnin’ ma boy! Colonel Thomas Norwood runnin’ ma boy through de fields in de dark, runnin’ ma po’ little helpless Bert through de fields in de dark for to lynch him and to kill him.… God damn you, Tom Norwood!” Cora cried, “God damn you!”

  She went upstairs. For a long time the body lay alone on the floor in the parlor. Later Cora heard Sam and Livonia weeping and shouting in the kitchen, and Negro voices outside in the dark, and feet going down the road. She thought she heard the baying of hounds afar off, too, as she prepared a hiding place for Bert in the attic. Then she came down to her room and put the most beautiful quilts she had on her bed. “Maybe he’ll just want to rest here first,” she thought. “Maybe he’ll be awful tired and just want to rest.”

  Then she heard a loud knock at the door, and white voices talking, and Sam’s frightened answers. The doctor and the undertakers had come to take the body away. In a little while she heard them lifting it up and putting it in the dead wagon. And all the time, they kept talking, talking.

  “… ’ll be havin’ his funeral in town … ain’t nothin’ but niggers left out here … didn’t have no relatives, did he, Sam?… Too bad.… Nobody to look after his stuff tonight. Every white man’s able to walk’s out with the posse … that young nigger’ll swing before midnight … what a neck-tie party!… Say, Sam!”

  “Yes, sah! Yes, sah!”

  “… that black housekeeper, Cora?… murderin’ bastard’s mother?”

  “She’s upstairs, I reckon, sah.”

  “… like to see how she looks. Get her down here.”

  “Yes, sah!” Sam’s teeth were chattering. “And how about a little drink before we start back to town?”

  “Yes, sah! Cora’s got de keys fo’ de licker, sah.”

  “Well, get her down, double quick, then!”

  “Yes, sah!” Cora heard Sam coming up for her.

  Downstairs, the voices went on. They were talking about her. “… lived together … ain’t been a white woman here overnight since the wife died when I was a kid … bad business, though, livin’ with a,” in drawling cracker tones, “nigger.”

  As Cora came down the steps, the undertakers looked at her half-grinning. “So you’re the black wench that’s got these educated darkie children? Hum-m! Well I guess you’ll see one of ’em swinging full o’ bullet holes before you get up in the morning.… Or maybe they’ll burn him. How’d you like a roasted darkie for breakfast, girlie?”

  Cora stood quite still on the stairs. “Is that all you wanted to say to me?” she asked.

  “Now, don’t get smart,” the doctor said. “Maybe you think there’s nobody to boss you now. We’re goin’ to have a little drink before we go. Get out a bottle.”

  “I take ma orders from Colonel Norwood, suh,” Cora said.

  “Well, you’ll take no more orders from him,” the undertaker declared. “He’s outside in the dead wagon. Get along now and get out a bottle.”

  “He’s out yonder with de mob,” Cora said.

  “I tell you he’s in my wagon, dead as a door nail.”

  “I tell you he’s runnin’ with de mob,” Cora said.

  “I believe this black woman’s done gone nuts,” the doctor cried. “Sam, you get the licker.”

  “Yes, sah!” Sam sputtered with fright. “Co-r-r-ra, gimme …”

  But Cora did not move.

  “Ah-a-a-a, Lawd hab mercy!” Sam cried.

  “To hell with the licker, Charlie,” the undertaker said nervously. “Let’s start back to town. We want to get in on some of that excitement, too. They should’ve found that nigger by now—and I want to see ’em drag him out here.”

  “All right, Jim,” the other agreed. Then, to Cora, “But don’t you darkies go to bed until you see the bonfire. You all are gettin’ beside yourselves around Polk County. We’ll burn a few more of you if you don’t watch out.”

  The men left and the wheels of the wagon turned on the drive. Sam began to cry.

  “Hab mercy! Lawd Jesus, hab mercy! Cora, is you a fool? Is you? Then why didn’t you give de mens de licker, riled as these white folks is? In ma old age, is I gonna be burnt by de crackers? Lawd, is I sinned? Lawd, what has I done?” He looked at Cora. “I sho ain’t gonna stay heah tonight. I’s gwine.”

  “Go on,” she said. “The Colonel can get his own drinks when he comes back.”

  “Lawd God Jesus!” Sam, his eyes bucking from their sockets, bolted from the room fast as his old legs could
carry him. Cora heard him running blindly through the house, moaning.

  She went to the kitchen where pots were still boiling on the stove, but Livonia had fled, the biscuits burnt in the oven. She looked out the back door, but no lights were visible anywhere. The cabins were quiet.

  “I reckon they all gone,” she said to herself. “Even ma boy, Willie. I reckon he gone, too. You see, Colonel Tom, everybody’s scared o’ you. They know you done gone with de mob again, like you did that time they hung Luke Jordan and you went to help ’em. Now you’s out chasin’ ma boy, too. I hears you hollerin’.”

  And sure enough, all around the Big House in the dark, in a wide far-off circle, men and dog-cries and auto-horns sounded in the night. Nearer they came even as Cora stood at the back door, listening. She closed the door, bolted it, put out the light, and went back to the parlor. “He’ll come in by de front,” she said. “Back from de swamp way. He wont’ let ’em stop him from gettin’ home to me agin, just once. Po’ little boy, he ain’t got no place to go, no how. Po’ boy, what growed up with such pride in his heart. Just like you, Colonel Tom. Spittin’ image o’ you.… Proud!… And got no place to go.”

  Nearer and nearer the man-hunt came, the cries and the horns and the dogs. Headlights began to flash in the dark down the road. Off through the trees, Cora heard men screaming. And suddenly feet running, running, running. Nearer, nearer. She knew it was him. She knew they had seen him, too.

  Then there were voices shouting very near the house.

  “Don’t shoot, men. We want to get him alive.”

  “Close in on him!”

  “He must be in them bushes there by the porch.”

  “Look!”

  And suddenly shots rang out. The door opened. Cora saw flashes of fire spitting into the blackness, and Bert’s tall body in the doorway. He was shooting at the voices outside in the dark. The door closed.

  “Hello, Ma,” he said. “One or two of ’em won’t follow me no further.”

  Cora locked the door as bullets splintered through the wood, shattered the window panes. Then a great volley of shots struck the house, blinding head-lights focused on the porch. Shouts and cries of, “Nigger! Nigger! Get the nigger!” filled the night.

  “I was waitin’ for you, honey,” Cora said. “Quick! Your hidin’ place’s ready for you, upstairs in de attic. I sawed out a place under de floor. Maybe they won’t find you, chile. Hurry, ’fore your father comes.”

  “No time to hide, Ma,” Bert panted. “They’re at the door now. They’ll be coming in the back way, n too. They’ll be coming in the windows. They’ll be coming in everywhere. I got one bullet left, Ma. It’s mine.”

  “Yes, son, it’s your’n. Go upstairs in mama’s room and lay down on ma bed and rest. I won’t let ’em come up till you’re gone. God bless you, chile.”

  Quickly, they embraced. A moment his head rested on her shoulder.

  “I’m awful tired running, Ma. I couldn’t get to the swamp. Seems like they been chasing me for hours. Crawling through the cotton a long time, I got to rest now.”

  Cora pushed him toward the stairs. “Go on, son,” she said gently.

  At the top, Bert turned and looked back at this little brown woman standing there waiting for the mob. Outside the noise was terrific. Men shouted and screamed, massing for action. All at once they seemed to rush in a great wave for the house. They broke the doors and windows in, and poured into the room—a savage crowd of white men, red and wild-eyed, with guns and knives, sticks and ropes, lanterns and flashlights. They paused at the foot of the stairs where Cora stood looking down at them silently.

  “Keep still, men,” one of the leaders said. “He’s armed.… Say where’s that yellow bastard of yours, Cora—upstairs?”

  “Yes,” Cora said. “Wait.”

  “Wait, hell!” the men cried. “Come on, boys, let’s go!”

  A shot rang out upstairs, then Cora knew it was all right.

  “Go on,” she said, stepping aside for the mob.

  IX

  The next morning when people saw a bloody and unrecognizable body hanging in the public square at the Junction, some said with a certain pleasure, “That’s what we do to niggers down here,” not realizing Bert had been taken dead, and that all the fun for the mob had been sort of stale at the end.

  But others, aware of what had happened, thought, “It’d be a hell of a lot better lynching a live nigger. Say, ain’t there nobody else mixed up in this here Norwood murder? Where’s that boy’s brother, Willie? Heh?”

  So the evening papers carried this item in the late editions:

  DOUBLE LYNCHING IN GEORGIA

  A large mob late this afternoon wrecked vengeance on the second of two Negro field hands, the murderers of Colonel Thomas Norwood, wealthy planter found dead at Big House Plantation. Bert Lewis was lynched last night, and his brother, Willie Lewis, today. The sheriff of the county is unable to identify any members of the mob. Colonel Norwood’s funeral has not yet been held. The dead man left no heirs.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, in 1902. After graduation from high school, he spent a year in Mexico with his father, then a year studying at Columbia University. His first poem in a nationally known magazine was “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” which appeared in Crisis in 1921. In 1925, he was awarded the First Prize for Poetry of the magazine Opportunity, the winning poem being “The Weary Blues,” which gave its title to his first book of poems, published in 1926. As a result of his poetry, Mr. Hughes received a scholarship at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, where he won his B.A. in 1929. In 1943, he was awarded an honorary Litt. D. by his alma mater; he has also been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship (1935), a Rosenwald Fellowship (1940), and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Grant (1947). From 1926 until his death in 1967, Langston Hughes devoted his time to writing and lecturing. He wrote poetry, short stories, autobiography, song lyrics, essays, humor, and plays. A cross section of his work was published in 1958 as The Langston Hughes Reader.

  THE PANTHER AND THE LASH

  The last—and the most explicitly political—book of verse by one of the great poets of our century. Hughes’s last collection of poems, originally published just before his death in 1967, addresses the racial politics of the 1960s. It includes “Prime,” “Motto,” “Dream Deferred,” “Frederick Douglass: 1817-1895,” “Still Here,” “Birmingham Sunday,” “History,” “Slave,” “Warning,” and “Daybreak in Alabama.”

  0-679-73659-X/$10.00

  SELECTED POEMS OF LANGSTON HUGHES

  The classic collection by the lyric voice of the Harlem Renaissance, whose poetry launched a revolution among black writers in America. Hughes celebrates the experience of men and women who had previously been invisible, in language that merges the spoken with the sung.

  0-679-72818-X/$10.00

  AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR CALL TOLL- FREE TO ORDER:

  1-800- 733-3000 (CREDIT CARDS ONLY). PRICES SUBJECT TO CHANGE.