Lesson Before Dying

by Ernest J. Gaines

  “You watch your tongue, sir,” my aunt said.

  I sat back in the chair and looked at both of them. They sat there like boulders, their bodies, their minds immovable.

  “He don’t have to,” Miss Emma said again.

  “He go’n do it,” my aunt said.

  “Oh?” I said.

  “You go’n do it,” she said. “We going up there and talk to Mr. Henri.”

  “Talk to Henri Pichot? For what?” I asked her.

  “So you have the right to visit Jefferson.”

  “What’s Henri Pichot got to do with this?”

  “His brother-in-law is the sheriff, ain’t he?”

  I waited for her to say more, but she did not. I got up from the table.

  “And where you think you going?” Tante Lou asked me.

  “To Bayonne, where I can breathe,” I said. “I can’t breathe here.”

  “You ain’t going to no Bayonne till you go up the quarter,” she said. “You go’n see Mr. Henri with me and Emma, there.”

  I had walked away, but now I came back and leaned over the table toward both of them.

  “Tante Lou, Miss Emma, Jefferson is dead. It is only a matter of weeks, maybe a couple of months—but he’s already dead. The past twenty-one years, we’ve done all we could for Jefferson. He’s dead now. And I can’t raise the dead. All I can do is try to keep the others from ending up like this—but he’s gone from us. There’s nothing I can do anymore, nothing any of us can do anymore.”

  “You going with us up the quarter,” my aunt said, as though I hadn’t said a word. “You going up there with us, Grant, or you don’t sleep in this house tonight.”

  I stood back from the table and looked at the both of them. I clamped my jaws so tight the veins in my neck felt as if they would burst. I wanted to scream at my aunt; I was screaming inside. I had told her many, many times how much I hated this place and all I wanted to do was get away. I had told her I was no teacher, I hated teaching, and I was just running in place here. But she had not heard me before, and I knew that no matter how loud I screamed, she would not hear me now.

  “I’m getting my coat, and I’ll be ready to go,” she said. “Em-ma?”

  3

  MY GRAY ’46 FORD was parked in front of the house. Tante Lou, in her black overcoat and black rimless hat, and Miss Emma, in her brown coat with the rabbit fur around the collar and sleeves and her floppy brown felt hat, followed me out to the car and stood back until I had opened the door for them. Not only was I going up to Henri Pichot’s house against my will, but I had to perform all the courtesies of chauffeur as well. After they had settled in the back seat, filling it completely, I slammed the door and went around to the other side and got in. I could feel my aunt’s eyes on the back of my neck for shutting the door as I did. Miss Emma probably would have looked at me the same way, but her mind was on other things.

  As I drove by the church where I taught school, I thought about all the work I had to do. And I reminded myself that I had to see one of the men on the plantation about getting a load of firewood for the heater. I tried to remember who had brought us the last wagonload of wood. Fifteen or twenty families sent their children to the school, and I always made it a point—they expected it of me—to ask them to do something for the school during the six-month session. I would ask one of the older children to tell me who had brought in the last load of wood.

  I stopped at the side gate to Henri Pichot’s large white and gray antebellum house. When my aunt started to get out of the car to open the gate for me, I told her to keep her seat because I had nothing to do all that day but serve. I felt her eyes on the back of my neck again, then on the side of my face as I pushed open the gate, and on me directly as I came back to the car. After driving into the yard, I had to get out again to shut the gate. Since the side entrance led from the quarter to the house, Henri Pichot never used this gate. Only tractors, wagons, and trucks used this entrance, and over the many years, they had cut just as many ruts across the yard. I must have hit every one of them, driving up to the house. My aunt never said a thing, but I could feel her eyes on the back of my neck. I was not aiming for the ruts, but I wasn’t avoiding them either. I could hear them bouncing on the back seat, but they never said a word. After parking under one of the great live oaks not far from the back door, I turned around to look at my aunt.

  “Am I supposed to go in there too?”

  She looked at me, but she didn’t answer me. She thought I had hit those ruts on purpose.

  “It was you who said you never wanted me to go through that back door ever again.”

  “Do I have to keep reminding you, Grant, this ain’t just another day?”

  “He don’t have to go,” Miss Emma said for about the hundredth time. She was looking at me but not seeing me, and not meaning what she was saying, either.

  “He’s going,” my aunt said. She was definitely seeing me. “Mr. Henri won’t come to him.”

  “Oh, yes, I keep forgetting that,” I said. “Mr. Henri won’t come to me.”

  After a minute of grunting and straining, they were able to get out of the car. I followed them into the inner yard, up the stairs to the back door. The maid, Inez Lane, had seen us come into the yard, and she opened the door for us. Inez was in her early forties, I suppose. She wore a white dress, white shoes, a blue gingham apron, and a kerchief on her head. She had a dark mole on her left cheek. She nodded to my aunt and me and spoke to Miss Emma.

  “I heard,” she said.

  “I would like to speak to Mr. Henri if he’s home,” Miss Emma said.

  “Talking to Mr. Louis in the library,” Inez said.

  “Like to speak to him if he don’t mind,” Miss Emma said.

  Inez nodded and left us. I looked around the kitchen. I had come into this kitchen many times as a small child, to bring in wood for the stove, to bring in a chicken I had caught and killed, eggs I had found in the grass, and figs, pears, and pecans I had gathered from the trees in the yard. Miss Emma was the cook up here then. She wore the white dress and white shoes and the kerchief around her head. She had been here long before I was born, probably when my mother and father were children. She had cooked for the old Pichots, the parents of Henri Pichot. She had cooked for Henri and his brother and sister, as well as for his nieces and nephews; he did not have any children of his own. She cooked, she ran the house; my aunt washed and ironed; and I ran through the yard to get the things they needed to cook or cook with. As a child growing up on this plantation, I could not imagine this place, this house, existing without the two of them here. But before I left for the university, my aunt sat me down at the table in our kitchen and said to me, “Me and Em-ma can make out all right without you coming through that back door ever again.” I had not come through that back door once since leaving for the university, ten years before. I had been teaching on the place going on six years, and I had not been in Pichot’s yard, let alone gone up the back stairs or through that back door.

  I saw both my aunt and Miss Emma looking around the kitchen. Some things had changed since they left, others had not. The big black iron pots still hung against the wall. But the wood-burning oven that I had known and that they had known had been exchanged for a gas range. And a big white refrigerator had taken the place of a smaller icebox. The war had changed all that. After so many of the young colored men had gone into military service or left the plantation, there was no one to chop the wood and haul the ice. And when they left, so did the old people, my aunt and Miss Emma.

  I did not hear Inez knock on the library door or hear her call, but I did hear Henri Pichot’s voice: “Yes, Inez, what is it?” Then, a moment later: “Who?” And a moment after that: “Did she say what she wanted?” And later: “Go back there and ask her what she wants.”

  Inez came back into the kitchen.

  “Just tell him I like to speak to him,” Miss Emma said. “It’s important.”

  Inez started back up the hall, but Henri
Pichot had already left the library. He was a medium-size man, of medium weight. He wore a gray suit, a white shirt, and a gray and white striped tie. He could have been in his mid-sixties; his hair was white and long. He held a drink. Louis Rougon, who followed him into the kitchen, was taller, heavier, and maybe a year or two younger. He wore a black pin-striped suit, and he also held a drink. Louis Rougon’s people owned a bank in St. Adrienne, a small town about fifteen miles west of Henri Pichot’s plantation.

  “Mr. Henri, Mr. Louis.” Miss Emma spoke to them. My aunt nodded. I didn’t. I stood back near the door.

  “What can I do for you, Emma?” Pichot asked her. He seemed annoyed that he had been disturbed while he had company.

  “I want ask you a favor, Mr. Henri,” Miss Emma said.

  He drank from his glass and looked at her.

  “It’s Jefferson,” she said.

  “Yes, I heard,” he said. And waited.

  “I want ask you a favor.”

  “I can’t change what has been handed down by the court,” he said. “I spoke up before the trial; I can’t say any more.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “But that’s not what I come to ask you for. I come to ask you something else.”

  Miss Emma looked tired. She was tired. She wanted to sit down at the table, but no one had offered her a chair. My aunt put her arm around her shoulders to comfort her and to help her stand. I looked at the two white men, who raised their glasses. Henri Pichot finished his drink and stuck out his hand. Inez knew what it meant, and she came forward to get the empty glass. Then she turned to Louis Rougon, who had stuck out his glass, empty of everything except two or three small cubes of ice. She took the glasses to a liquor counter to refresh the drinks.

  “They called my boy a hog, Mr. Henri,” Miss Emma said. “I didn’t raise no hog, and I don’t want no hog to go set in that chair. I want a man to go set in that chair, Mr. Henri.”

  He looked at her, but he didn’t say anything. He was waiting for his drink.

  “I’m old, Mr. Henri,” she went on. “Jefferson go’n need me, but I’m too old to be going up there. My heart won’t take it. I want you talk to the sheriff for me. I want somebody else take my place.”

  “That’s up to you and Mr. Sam, isn’t it?” Pichot said, and he took the drink off the tray that Inez held before him.

  “I need you speak for me, Mr. Henri,” Miss Emma said. “I want the teacher visit my boy. I want the teacher make him know he’s not a hog, he’s a man. I want him know that ’fore he go to that chair, Mr. Henri.”

  Henri Pichot glanced at me, then looked back at her.

  “I done done a lot for this family and this place, Mr. Henri,” she said. “All I’m asking you talk to the sheriff for me. I done done a lot for this family over the years.”

  “I can’t promise anything,” he said, and sipped his drink.

  “You can speak to your brother-in-law.”

  “And say what?”

  “I want the teacher talk to my boy for me.”

  He looked over her head at me, standing back by the door. I was too educated for Henri Pichot; he had no use for me at all anymore. But just as Miss Emma had given so much of herself to that family, so had my aunt. So Henri Pichot, who cared nothing in the world for me, tolerated me because of my aunt.

  “And what do you plan to do?” he asked me.

  I shook my head. “I have no idea.” He stared at me, and I realized that I had not answered him in the proper manner. “Sir,” I added.

  “You think you can change him from a hog to a man in the little time he’s got left?”

  “I have no idea—sir,” I said.

  “But you’re willing to try if I can get Mr. Sam to let you go up there?”

  “That’s what she wants, sir.”

  “But you didn’t put her up to this?”

  “No, sir, I did not,” I said.

  He was finished talking to me. Now he wanted me to look away. I lowered my eyes. When I raised my head, I saw his eyes on her again.

  “I would forget all this if I were you,” he said. “Let Mose visit him, and keep it at that.”

  “Reverend Mose will visit him,” Miss Emma said. “But no, sir, I won’t keep it at that.”

  “At this point, I would be more concerned about his soul if I were you,” Henri said.

  “Yes, sir, I’m concerned for his soul, Mr. Henri,” Miss Emma said. “I’m concerned for his soul. But I want him be a man, too, when he go to that chair.”

  Louis Rougon, standing next to Henri Pichot, held his drink without drinking. He could not believe what he was hearing.

  Henri Pichot looked at me again. He was sure I had put her up to this. I shifted my eyes, and I didn’t look in his direction until I heard him speaking to her.

  “Go on home, forget all this foolishness,” he told her. “You have done all you could to raise him. Let the law have him now.”

  “The law got him, Mr. Henri,” Miss Emma said. “And they go’n kill him. But let them kill a man. Let the teacher go to him, Mr. Henri. I done done a lot for this family over the years.”

  “I know what you’ve done for this family over the years,” he told her. “And I also know what he did. Or have you forgotten that?”

  “I ain’t forgotten nothing, Mr. Henri,” she said. “I know what they say he did.”

  “He did it,” Henri said, leaving no doubt in his mind. “I spoke for him because of you, but all the time I knew he did it.”

  “If you say so, Mr. Henri.”

  “I say so,” he said.

  “That’s not what I come up here for, Mr. Henri,” Miss Emma said to him. “I’m not begging for his life no more; that’s over. I just want see him die like a man. This family owe me that much, Mr. Henri. And I want it. I want somebody do something for me one time ’fore I close my eyes. Somebody got do something for me one time ’fore I close my eyes, Mr. Henri. Please, sir.”

  From where I stood, back by the door, I could see my aunt tightening her grip around Miss Emma’s shoulders to give her comfort.

  “I’ll speak to him,” Henri said. “But it’s up to him, not me.”

  “Tell him what I done done for this family, Mr. Henri. Tell him to ask his wife all I done done for this family over the years.”

  “I said I would speak to him,” Henri said, obviously becoming more and more impatient with her.

  “When?” she asked.

  Henri Pichot had started to raise his glass, because for him the conversation was over. But when Miss Emma spoke again, his hand stopped inches away from his mouth, and he lowered the glass.

  “What?”

  “When?”

  “Whenever I see him, that’s when,” he said. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have a guest.”

  He drank and turned away.

  “Mr. Henri?” Miss Emma called him. But he kept walking. “I’ll be up here again tomorrow, Mr. Henri. I’ll be on my knees next time you see me, Mr. Henri.”

  But she was speaking to empty space. Henri Pichot and Louis Rougon were already in the library.

  Miss Emma continued to stare up the hall for a moment, then she and my aunt turned away, and I held the door open for them to go outside. The sun had gone down, and it was getting colder.

  4

  I TOOK THEM BACK down the quarter. When I stopped in front of Miss Emma’s house, my aunt got out of the car with her.

  “I’m going to Bayonne,” I told my aunt.

  She had not shut the door yet.

  “I’ll be home to cook in a little while,” she said.

  “I’ll eat in town,” I told her.

  Tante Lou held the door while she stood there looking at me. Nothing could have hurt her more when I said I was not going to eat her food. I was supposed to eat soon after she had cooked, and if I was not at home I was supposed to eat as soon as I came in. She looked at me without saying anything else, then she closed the door quietly and followed Miss Emma into the yard.

  I tur
ned the car around and started up the quarter again. There was not a single telephone in the quarter, not a public telephone anywhere that I could use before reaching Bayonne, and Bayonne was thirteen miles away.

  After leaving the quarter, I drove down a graveled road for about two miles, then along a paved road beside the St. Charles River for another ten miles. There were houses and big live oak and pecan trees on either side of the road, but not as many on the riverbank side. There, instead of houses and trees, there were fishing wharves, boat docks, nightclubs, and restaurants for whites. There were one or two nightclubs for colored, but they were not very good.

  As I drove along the river, I thought about all the schoolwork that I should have been doing at home. But I knew that after being around Miss Emma and Henri Pichot the past hour, I would not have been able to concentrate on my work. I needed to be with someone. I needed to be with Vivian.

  Bayonne was a small town of about six thousand. Approximately three thousand five hundred whites; approximately two thousand five hundred colored. It was the parish seat for St. Raphael. The courthouse was there; so was the jail. There was a Catholic church uptown for whites; a Catholic church back of town for colored. There was a white movie theater uptown; a colored movie theater back of town. There were two elementary schools uptown, one Catholic, one public, for whites; and the same back of town for colored. Bayonne’s major industries were a cement plant, a sawmill, and a slaughterhouse, mostly for hogs. There was only one main street in Bayonne, and it ran along the St. Charles River. The department stores, the bank, the two or three dentists’ and doctors’ and attorneys’ offices, were mostly on this street, which made up less than half a dozen blocks.

  After entering the town, which was marked by the movie theater for whites on the riverbank side of the road, I had to drive another two or three blocks before turning down an unlit road, which led back of town to the colored section. Once I crossed the railroad tracks, I could see the Rainbow Club, with its green, yellow, and red arched neon lights. Several cars were parked before the door; one of them, a big white new ’48 Cadillac, belonged to Joe Claiborne, who owned the place. A man and a woman came through the door as I got out of my car to go inside. There were probably a dozen people in the place, half of them at the bar, the rest of them sitting at tables with white tablecloths. I spoke to Joe Claiborne and went through a side door into the café to use the telephone. The tables in the café had checkered red and white tablecloths. Thelma Claiborne was behind the counter. Thelma ran the café, and her husband, Joe, ran the bar. I asked her what she had for supper.