Carson McCullers

by Carson McCullers

  “I think he’ll be all right,” the hospital doctor said.

  “Is I too sick to march?” the boy asked.

  “You’ll be okay,” Harry said. “These wonder drugs will put you in good shape. But you’ll have to stay here and rest until the doctors say you can go home.”

  When the boy dozed off, Harry left him. The march was straggling, and it took some time to get into formation again.

  “How many miles to go?” asked Harry.

  “I don’t know how many miles,” Miss Rosa said, “but it’s two more days, and everybody is footsore. Was the boy all right?”

  “He will be. But I had to slug that bigot down the road to get to the telephone.”

  The afternoon was broiling, as usual. The main problem was how to get food for their supper. The towns they passed were filled with jeering crowds, and a storekeeper spat at them when they tried to enter his shop. At the next town there was no country store, and for the first time, as the sun went down, the marchers knew they would have to go supperless. Then Jim, Miss Rosa and Mr. Thompson veered off from the road and—another miracle—they found a peach grove with half-ripe peaches. They filled their knapsacks and carried all they could back to the place where the others had already lighted campfires.

  “This may give us the runs,” Jim said as he ate one of the peaches.

  “We really ought to cook them,” the doctor said. “But there is no pot to cook them in.”

  “Scrounge around, everybody,” said Miss Rosa, “and see if you can find tin cans or vessels of any description.”

  They all scattered, and finally several tin cans were brought back. There was water a short distance away and they washed the cans, cut the peaches and let them simmer over the fires. Although the green-peach supper tasted of tin, at least it was something to eat.

  George Thompson said, “Once I traveled to the Holy Land and marched every place where Jesus had marched.” He had turned to Miss Rosa and was addressing her, and for some reason the words “Holy Land” and “Jesus” thrilled her and seemed intimate and somehow dear. She smiled at him, and Miss Rosa’s smile, though rare, lighted up her face with a hidden sweetness.

  “These peaches reminded me of it,” he went on. “All the food there is greasy and sweet-tasting. It was the year my wife died, and I felt I had to get away, but the food, my dear lady, was not a bit like Paris, I can tell you.”

  “I’ve always wanted to go to the Holy Land, but it seems so far away——”

  “Oh, yes! Everything was so different from anything I had seen before. They still wear the same garments that they wore at the time of Jesus. The women wear elaborately embroidered gowns, with embroidery work that goes down in colorful straight lines to the feet; they give any scene in Jerusalem a multicolored aspect. The men’s robes and belts are exactly as they were two thousand years ago, as is the way they fix on their heads light veils with thick black ropes, in order to protect their necks from the sun.”

  Miss Rosa looked so interested that he plunged on.

  “I looked for Ephraim, where Jesus went on his last retreat before his Crucifixion, and found that the name of the town had been changed to Tayibeh. It was hard to get to, the road narrow and steep, and when I finally got there I realized why Jesus had chosen that spot. You can see from the highest lines of the mountains to the deepest point of the Jordan Valley. You can see all of Jesus’ land, the land he loved so well, the Holy Land.”

  “The way you describe it is so beautiful, George.”

  “Thank you for saying so, Rosa.”

  It was the first time they had called each other by their first names, and each of them wondered at it.

  There was little singing that night—the marchers were too tired, too hungry—and soon they all turned in.

  All, that is, except Rosa and George and Janet and Jim. Rosa and George still sat by the fire and talked. Janet and Jim had withdrawn from the campfire into the woods, and there they kissed.

  “I wish, I wish . . .” she whispered. “But, Jim . . . is this right?”

  “I guess not,” he muttered. “Not on a March, anyway.” He clenched his fists and they drew apart.

  They went back to the campsite, and Janet slept next to Miss Rosa and Jim slept restlessly next to Odum.

  The next day was fresh, pure and cloudless. The heat of the sun did not strike for another hour and then the heat was merciless, but in every marcher’s mind there was the thought, Just one more day to go. The rhythm of the march quickened. They were hungry because of the lack of food the night before, but that didn’t stop the quickening. Then at eleven o’clock, when the heat was brutal, a Negro farmer going to market with his vegetables came clopping with his tired mule down the road. The wagon was filled with fresh vegetables—corn, tomatoes, okra and peas. Miss Rosa, who had charge of the common purse, paid him liberally. Again there was the problem of cooking vessels, and again they found some old cans and made a meatless stew.

  “We’re wasting time,” Mr. Miller said.

  “Time for what?” Miss Rosa snapped, for she was starved.

  “Next time I go on a Freedom March, or any march, I’ll know what to take,” said George Thompson. “A dipper and a cooking vessel are as important as a toothbrush and tooth paste.”

  Miss Rosa and George Thompson wandered a little bit away and there was a tense silence between them. Each seemed to be trying to speak, but they could not find the words. They paused under a tree, and finally Miss Rosa pointed at a toadstool growing at its roots.

  “You know, I’ve never been able to distinguish between a mushroom and a toadstool.”

  “Since you can’t tell them apart, for heaven’s sakes don’t eat them.” But he added in a softened voice, “I’ll teach you.”

  There was definitely something unspoken in the air between them, and when the stew was ready they were both disappointed and relieved.

  Everyone ate so much that they had to rest for half an hour before they could march again. Rhythmically the tired feet kept marching, and the faces looked straight ahead. They were relieved to think of the end of the march, and almost buoyant—when suddenly there was another barricade. Again there were sheriffs on each side; again the marchers sang a song. A mob had already gathered, and one youth bawled out through a megaphone, “Sing, you canaries! You’ll soon be singing another tune.” He was a tall, skinny boy with wild, idiot eyes. “You’ll get what’s coming to you!”

  “But what have we done?” Miss Rosa asked in her best teacher’s voice. “We’re just marching peacefully.”

  “Nigger-lovers ain’t very popular around these here parts.”

  “They ain’t no niggers, they’re marchers. I’d be marching myself, except I have a sprained ankle.”

  This voice was Mary Hall’s—Miss Big, she was sometimes called. Her mother had first used the nickname because Mary had said she was going to be like Marian Anderson. She sang in the church choir and practiced on her own. But because she had a voice like a crow, that dream had soon vanished. Still, she was going to be somebody big! So Miss Big got all the schooling she could get, graduated from high school. But the best job she could find was in the cannery in Flowering Branch—there she was not called Miss Big. But although she no longer even thought about Marian Anderson, and although she was not called Miss Big any more, she still thought of herself as a dedicated woman. Somebody who would go far in life. So the cause of civil rights had become her new dream of glory; she attended all the meetings and had become, in her own way, Miss Big again—secretary of Voters’ Registration in Flowering Branch and a tireless worker. She got up at six in the morning to talk to the field hands, spent her lunch hour proselytizing and her evenings with members of CORE.

  “That’s enough out of you, nigger,” the sheriff said.

  “Don’t you call me nigger. If you stand in their way, there’ll be trouble.”

  “Trouble for who, big mouth?”

  Already cherry bombs were being thrown, and firecrackers
were loud in the hot air. Some dogs were let loose and a rotten egg hit Mr. Miller on his shoulder. Fist fighting broke out. A dog bit Odum on the shin and Odum kicked at him. The dog yelped and attacked again.

  Dr. Farrell snatched the megaphone from one of the hecklers and said, “We’re marching peacefully, doing no harm to anybody. This is a nonviolent affair.”

  Three deputies closed in on him, swinging their clubs, and he sank to the ground.

  Meanwhile trucks had arrived and were hauling the marchers off to jail.

  Jim had a bad bruise on his thigh, and in the melee he had lost Janet.

  “Janet!” he yelled. “Janet!”

  Miss Rosa called out, “I can’t find her, Jim.”

  So Jim resisted being put in the truck. A deputy hit him on the head. As they drove off to jail Jim’s only thought was for Janet. What would they do to her? Why had he ever let her go on the March in the first place?

  At the jail at Flowering Branch he saw Miss Rosa being hauled off, resisting every step by walking stiff-legged. And there was Janet.

  He screamed, “Janet!” and she turned her head toward him and smiled.

  Berrel Miller was in a strange way relieved. He was relieved because now the NAACP, SNCC, and possibly even the National Guard, would come to their defense. There would be no more utter vulnerability; after this melee the marchers would be protected. He thought, I never thought I’d be so glad to go to jail.

  The sheriff was a man named Bull Brown, and when the marchers began to sing he bawled at them, “Shuddup! Ain’t gonna be no singing in this jail.”

  They were singing freedom songs, and after a while they sang, “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

  “No singing,” Bull hollered, “or you’ll get it from me! I’m boss of this here jail, and you gotta understand that.”

  They stopped singing and Berrel Miller began to pray aloud.

  “And no praying either!”

  Berrel Miller went on praying. “Heavenly Father, having delivered us from so much, please deliver us safely from this jail.”

  Everyone listened and waited. It was almost sundown and the afternoon was stifling. The windows were closed and there was not a breath of air. Bull Brown turned on the heat, and soon the temperature was close to a hundred and twenty degrees. Some marchers fainted. Jim’s head pounded from the blow he had received.

  A delegation of lawyers from civil rights organizations arrived, inspected the jail and made Bull turn off the heat. They also insisted on food and water. With them was a Federal marshal who did most of the talking, and who began arranging for the prisoners’ release.

  Bull started processing them. It took a long time. They were charged with creating a public disturbance and marching without a permit. They were fined fifty dollars apiece, and the NAACP put up the money for them.

  “Expensive articles, we are,” Jim said. He was still worried about Janet. Would those damned bastards touch her or insult her in any way? Would Miss Rosa be in the same cell?

  His own cell was overcrowded and smelly. If he could just draw a breath of fresh air . . .

  Nobody slept that night.

  Early in a tender summer morning the authorities began releasing the prisoners, and Jim was the fifth one to be let out. He waited in the town square as, one by one, the marchers assembled. The stifling air throughout the night had made him nauseated, and his head still hurt.

  The women were finally coming out, and at the sight of Janet there was again that curious vault in his heart. He ran to her.

  “Are you all right? Did anybody touch you or insult you?”

  “No—not unless you call one-hundred-and-twenty-degree heat an insult.”

  After they had hugged each other with relief, they went to a drugstore to take care of the two things uppermost in their minds—tall, cold drinks for their terrible thirst and a telephone call to their families. They knew the news of their night in jail would reach Stillwater and Hilton.

  After several glasses of ice water and sodas, both spoke briefly and somewhat sheepishly to their families. Then they returned to the square.

  Miss Rosa was finally released. She was one of the last, for she had had a set-to with the sheriff—taken that Bull by the horns, as a matter of fact.

  In the meantime a canteen had been set up in the square by the women of the civil rights groups, and all the marchers drank and ate as they were released. Never had they drunk so gratefully.

  It was then that they heard of the burning of Miss Lula’s house. Racists had first taken axes to the house and furniture, then set it afire. Miss Lula herself was all right, but Miss Rosa burst into tears.

  George Thompson was moved, and suddenly he said, “She’ll be our first houseguest at the parsonage.”

  Miss Rosa stared at him.

  It was hard for George to insist on a declaration when it was so ignored.

  “Shall I say it bluntly, Miss Rosa Culpepper? I am proposing to you.”

  “Proposing?” she asked. And because it was something she wanted so much and was not sure she deserved, she could hardly believe what she had heard, and continued to stand there mutely—her hair in disorder from her night in jail, a hot dog in one hand, a paper cup in the other.

  With a rush Miss Rosa let herself understand. She drew herself up to look as dignified as possible and said with her sweet smile, “I accept with pleasure.”

  He burst into laughter and so did she. Gently he removed the hot dog and cup from her hands, put them carefully down and hugged her right there in the public square.

  Odum limped over to Jim, and when Jim found out about the dog bite on his leg, he called the doctor. Dr. Farrell treated the nasty wound.

  Jim said, “You’ve got guts, Odum,” and that made Odum grin.

  “It was hot in that jail,” he said. “I mean hot! Jim, you haven’t learned me to speak like you yet.”

  “You speak all right.”

  “But like you,” Odum insisted.

  “Okay, Odum. I’d be proud to help you.”

  Flowering Branch was only three miles from Atlanta. The March was almost done. Sympathizers in the town were ready with cars for the last lap, but few accepted.

  “I not gonna ride in no car now,” Odum said. “My own feet’s done all right.”

  Jim smiled and said to Odum in a stilted voice that was not a bit like his usual Southern drawl, “I’m not going to ride either. My own feet have taken me this far.”

  Odum repeated Jim’s words carefully, laughed and threw his arms around Jim’s shoulders.

  Now the crowd milled about and got into formation. But before the March started for the last miles, the Reverend Mr. Miller quieted the hubbub and in a loud, clear voice gave the briefest sermon he had ever preached.

  “Thank Thee, Lord, for delivering us from evil, and may the rocky places in our lives be smoothed, if Thou be willing.”

  They began to sing “We Shall Overcome” as they started toward Atlanta.

  It was not a March that would, by itself, change history, or even the civil rights movement. But there was a change in each person who had participated. They had risked their lives, many had risked their jobs and their property, and they had ignored the risks. One marcher, old and unknown, had died, so that the March would always be veiled in sorrow. But sorrow was not the dominant emotion. Although it was not a famous March, somehow, in the soul of each marcher, there had come a swift but magical transmutation by love.

  THE MEMBER OF THE WEDDING: A PLAY

  To

  Reeves McCullers

  CHARACTERS

  BERENICE SADIE BROWN

  FRANKIE ADDAMS

  JOHN HENRY WEST

  JARVIS

  JANICE

  MR. ADDAMS

  MRS. WEST

  HELEN FLETCHER

  DORIS

  SIS LAURA

  T. T. WILLIAMS

  HONEY CAMDEN BROWN

  BARNEY MACKEAN

  TIME: August, 1945

&
nbsp; PLACE: A small Southern town

  ACT ONE

  A late afternoon in August

  ACT TWO

  Afternoon of the next day

  ACT THREE

   Scene One

  The wedding day—afternoon of the next day following Act Two

   Scene Two

  4 A.M. the following morning

   Scene Three

  Late afternoon, in the following November

  The Member of the Wedding was first produced in New York on January 5, 1950 at the Empire Theater by Robert Whitehead, Oliver Rea and Stanley Martineau. The play was directed by Harold Clurman, with sets designed by Lester Polakov. The opening cast was as follows:

  BERENICE SADIE BROWN Ethel Waters

  FRANKIE ADDAMS Julie Harris

  JOHN HENRY WEST Brandon de Wilde

  JARVIS James Holden

  JANICE Janet de Gore

  MR. ADDAMS William Hansen

  MRS. WEST Margaret Barker

  HELEN FLETCHER Mitzie Blake

  DORIS Joan Shepard

  SIS LAURA Phyliss Walker

  T. T. WILLIAMS Harry Bolden

  HONEY CAMDEN BROWN Henry Scott

  BARNEY MACKEAN Jimmy Dutton

  ACT ONE

  A part of a Southern back yard and kitchen. At stage left there is a scuppernong arbor. A sheet, used as a stage curtain, hangs raggedly at one side of the arbor. There is an elm tree in the yard. The kitchen has in the center a table with chairs. The walls are drawn with child drawings. There is a stove to the right and a small coal heating stove with coal scuttle in rear center of kitchen. The kitchen opens on the left into the yard. At the interior right a door leads to a small inner room. A door at the left leads into the front hall. The lights go on dimly, with a dream-like effect, gradually revealing the family in the yard and BERENICE SADIE BROWN in the kitchen. BERENICE, the cook, is a stout, motherly Negro woman with an air of great capability and devoted protection. She is about forty-five years old. She has a quiet, flat face and one of her eyes is made of blue glass. Sometimes, when her socket bothers her, she dispenses with the false eye and wears a black patch. When we first see her she is wearing the patch and is dressed in a simple print work dress and apron.