“She go’n pull,” the other one said. “Hi, there, Bird, get them shoulders in there.”
I heard the wagon cross the ditch and enter the yard.
“All right,” I said to the class. “The first one who looks outside will spend an hour in the corner. They can do pretty well without you.”
The wagon came farther into the yard on the other side of the fence, passing the church windows. I could see the two mules—one big and red, the other small and dark brown with long, droopy ears—pulling hard into the chains. Then I saw the long poles of wood stacked high upon the wagon, with one of the old men riding atop the wood while the other, the one who had opened the gate, walked alongside the wagon. They were still joking and laughing.
“Louis Washington junior, get back into that corner and face the wall.”
“But, Mr. Wiggins, now you was looking out that window too, now. I seen you.”
“Just out of the corner of my eye,” I said.
“Now, I was just looking out the corner of my eye too, Mr. Wiggins.”
“In that case I won’t punish you for looking out the window,” I said. “But I’m going to punish you for using bad grammar. You were supposed to say, ‘You were looking out the window, Mr. Wiggins,’ not ‘You was looking out the window, Mr. Wiggins.’ Get back in that corner and face the wall and stay there. One more word out of you, and you’ll spend the rest of the day standing on one leg.”
Sitting at my desk, I could hear the old men unloading the wood, throwing the long poles across the fence and into the churchyard. They were still kidding each other.
“Show me them grits, show me them grits you had this morning.”
“I got my end up.”
“Well, I got the heavy end.”
“You sure got that right.” They both laughed. And I heard the wood come across the fence.
This went on for half an hour, then one of the men knocked on the back door. I went to see what he wanted.
“Professor,” he said, and smiled.
Henry Lewis was a short black man with hardly any teeth. His hands were the color and texture of the legs of a snapping turtle. He wore an old straw hat, a green and brown plaid shirt, khaki pants, and rubber boots. He had grandchildren in the school.
“Some wood there,” he said. “I’m leaving the saw and couple them axes. Your boys can chop it up.”
“Appreciate it, Mr. Lewis,” I said.
“Glad to be of service.”
I spoke to Amos Thomas, who sat on the wagon. The thin, brown-skinned man nodded at me.
“That ought to hold you awhile,” Mr. Lewis said to me. “Just call ’fore it run out. Somebody get you another load.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Bye, Professor.”
“Goodbye, Mr. Lewis. Mr. Thomas.”
I returned to my desk.
“All right,” I said to the class. “It’s a quarter to twelve now. I’m letting you out early because you’ll have to chop wood this afternoon. I want you all back up here by twelve-thirty.”
That afternoon, I stood by the fence while the fifth- and sixth-grade boys sawed and chopped the wood. The smaller boys and all the girls were inside. They wanted to know why they had to study while the older boys were outside having fun. I told them that they could have fun the next day picking up chips and stacking wood while the older boys were inside studying. They did not see this as quite the same, but when I didn’t give them any other choice, they grudgingly relented. I gave them assignments and left Irene Cole in charge.
Standing by the fence, I watched the five older boys saw and chop the wood. Two would saw while another would straddle the wood pole to keep it steady. The other two boys split logs and chopped up small branches with the axes. They laughed and kidded each other while they worked.
And I thought to myself, What am I doing? Am I reaching them at all? They are acting exactly as the old men did earlier. They are fifty years younger, maybe more, but doing the same thing those old men did who never attended school a day in their lives. Is it just a vicious circle? Am I doing anything?
After a while, they exchanged the saw and axes. The ones who had been sawing were now splitting logs, the other two were pulling on the handles of the saw. The smallest boy still held the log as steady as he could with his hands and knees.
With my back to the fence as I watched them, I remembered when it was I who had swung that ax and pulled my end of the saw. And I remembered the others, too—Bill, Jerry, Claudee, Smitty, Snowball—all the others. They had chopped wood here too; then they were gone. Gone to the fields, to the small towns, to the cities—where they died. There was always news coming back to the quarter about someone who had been killed or sent to prison for killing someone else: Snowball, stabbed to death at a nightclub in Port Allen; Claudee, killed by a woman in New Orleans; Smitty, sent to the state penitentiary at Angola for manslaughter. And there were others who did not go anywhere but simply died slower.
The big mulatto from Poulaya had predicted it, hadn’t he? It was he, Matthew Antoine, as teacher then, who stood by the fence while we chopped the wood. He had told us then that most of us would die violently, and those who did not would be brought down to the level of beasts. Told us that there was no other choice but to run and run. That he was living testimony of someone who should have run. That in him—he did not say all this, but we felt it—there was nothing but hatred for himself as well as contempt for us. He hated himself for the mixture of his blood and the cowardice of his being, and he hated us for daily reminding him of it. No, he did not tell us this, but daily he showed us this. As clearly as anything, he showed his hatred for himself, and for us. He could teach any of us only one thing, and that one thing was flight. Because there was no freedom here. He said it, and he didn’t say it. But we felt it. When we told our people how we felt, they told us to go back and learn all we could. There were those who did go back to learn. Others who only went back. And having no place to run, they went into the fields; others went into the small towns and cities, seeking work, and did even worse.
But she told me that I would not be one of the others, that I would learn as much as he could teach me, then I would go away to learn from someone else. But that I would learn as much as he could teach me. And when he saw that I wanted to learn, he hated me even more than he did the others, because I challenged him when the others did not. The others believed what he said. They went out into the fields, went into the small towns and into the cities and died. So you think you can? he said. So you think you can? No, he did not say it with words, only with his eyes. You will be the loser, my friend. Maybe he did not say “friend”; he probably didn’t say “friend”; “fool,” more likely. Anyway, you will be the loser, he said. Yes, I will teach you. You want to learn, I will help you learn. Maybe in that way I will be free, knowing that someone else has taken the burden. Good, good, you want to learn? Good, good, here is the burden.
Even after I had gone away for further education, on returning to the plantation to visit my aunt I could still see the hatred in him. And after he had retired from teaching because of ill health and I would visit him at his home in Poulaya, I would still feel his hatred for himself, for me, for the world. Once, as I sat at the fireplace with him, he said to me, “Nothing pleases me more than when I hear of something wrong. Hitler had his reasons, and even the Ku Klux Klans of the South for what they do. You don’t believe me, do you?” he asked me. “No, sir, I don’t,” I said. “You will one day,” he said. “I told you what you should have done, but no, you want to stay. Well, you will believe me one day. When you see that those five and a half months you spend in that church each year are just a waste of your time, you will. You will. You’ll see that it’ll take more than five and a half months to wipe away—peel—scrape away the blanket of ignorance that has been plastered and replastered over those brains in the past three hundred years. You’ll see.” Then he would be quiet for a long time, while we both stared into the fire.
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“I’m cold,” he said one day while we sat there looking into the fire. I got up to put on another piece of wood. “That’s no good,” he said. “I’ll still be cold. I’ll always be cold.” He looked at me. “You’ll see, you’ll see.” “I must,” I said. “No, you don’t must,” he said. “You want to. But you don’t must.” “You did,” I said. “Yes, I did,” he said. “But I told you not to. I told you to go. God has looked after them these past three hundred years without your help. He won’t—” “God?” I said. Because I had never heard him say God before. Because when we had said our Bible verses for him, he seemed to have hated the very words we spoke. “Sir, did I hear you say—?” “I’m cold”—he cut me off. “I stay cold. You better go. Come back some other time if you like. I made a mistake.” I came back a month later. I remember that it was cold that day too.
Now, about that mulatto teacher and me. There was no love there for each other. There was not even respect. We were enemies if anything at all. He hated me, and I knew it, and he knew I knew it. I didn’t like him, but I needed him, needed him to tell me something that none of the others could or would.
I brought some wine that day. He sent me into the kitchen to get two glasses. “This will warm you up,” I said. “Nothing can warm me up,” he said. He sat in the rocker, gazing down at the fire, with the blanket tight around him. He was a big-boned man, but very skinny now. “To flight,” he said, raising his glass. “But you didn’t go,” I said. “I’m Creole,” he said. “Can’t you tell?” “Was that it?” I asked him. “That was it,” he said. “I’m Creole. Do you know what a Creole is? A lying cowardly bastard. Did you know that?” “No, I didn’t know that,” I said. “I was afraid,” he said, looking into the fire. “I was afraid to run away. What am I? Look at me. Where else could I have felt superior to so many but here?” “Is that important?” I asked him. “It is,” he said. “For everyone. Especially for the whites and the near whites. It is important.” “Do you feel superior to me?” I asked him. “Of course,” he said. “Don’t be a damned fool. I am superior to you. I am superior to any man blacker than me.” “Is that why you hate me?” I asked him. “Exactly,” he said. “Because that superior sonofabitch out there said I am you.” “Do you think he is superior to you?” I asked him. “Of course,” he said. “Don’t you?” “No,” I said. “Just stay here long enough,” he said. “He’ll make you the nigger you were born to be.” “My only choice is to run, then?” I asked him. “That was your choice. But you won’t. You want to prove I’m wrong. Well, you’ll visit my grave one day and tell me how right I was.” “Tell me more,” I said. “What’s wrong with that university?” he asked. “Don’t they tell you?” “They tell me how to succeed in the South as a colored man. They tell me about reading, writing, and arithmetic. I need to know about life.” “I can’t tell you anything about life,” he said. “What do I know about life? I stayed here. You have to go away to know about life. There’s no life here. There’s nothing but ignorance here. You want to know about life? Well, it’s too late. Forget it. Just go on and be the nigger you were born to be, but forget about life. You make me tired, and I’m cold. The wine doesn’t help.”
I visited him again only a month or two before he died, in the winter of ’42. He was forty-three years old. That was my first year as a teacher. I had been teaching two or three weeks when I visited him. We had just gotten our first load of wood for winter. Maybe that’s why I had gone to see him. I could always remember that first load of wood for winter, how we older boys had chopped the wood into smaller pieces while he stood back against the fence, overseeing us. He looked terribly frail that day. I hadn’t seen him in several months. He was being looked after by a relative, who did not care too much for anyone visiting him, and especially darker people. She admitted me into the room and left us. He sat at the fireplace. Summer or winter, he always sat at the fireplace when he was inside. We shook hands. His hand was large, cold, and bony. He was coughing a lot. “We got our first load of wood last week,” I told him. “Nothing changes,” he said. “I guess I’m a genuine teacher now,” I said. He nodded, and coughed. He didn’t seem to want to talk. Still, I sat there, both of us gazing into the fire. “Any advice?” I asked him. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” he said. “Just do the best you can. But it won’t matter.”
9
AT ONE-THIRTY I left school to take Miss Emma into Bayonne. She came out on the porch with Tante Lou, and she had a basket hung over one arm and a handbag in the other hand. Tante Lou closed the door to keep the heat in the room, and she and Miss Emma came down the walk and out to the car. Miss Emma wore her brown overcoat with the rabbit fur around the collar and cuffs. Tante Lou wore only a sweater, so I figured she was not going to Bayonne with us. She opened the door for Miss Emma to get into the back seat, and after shutting it, she leaned against the door to continue their conversation. I am sure they had been talking all day, but still they had things to talk about.
“This way is best,” she said.
Miss Emma may have nodded, but I am not sure. I refused to look into the mirror at them.
“Anything else he need, let me know,” my aunt went on. “They got plenty old socks and shirts round the place.”
“I think we’re supposed to be there around two,” I said, without looking back at them.
I could feel both sets of eyes on the back of my neck.
“Tell him I’m praying,” my aunt said. “Y’all better go. I’ll see you when you get back.”
She was talking to Miss Emma, not to me. She knew how I felt about the whole thing. I drove farther down the quarter and turned around. My aunt was standing where we had left her; she was waving now. You might have thought we were going to China instead of the thirteen miles to Bayonne.
Driving along the St. Charles River, I could feel Miss Emma not looking at me, not looking at anything—just thinking. Maybe once or twice she glanced in my direction, but most of the time she was lost in thought. Like my aunt, she knew how much I hated all this.
So the thirteen miles to Bayonne were driven in silence. I didn’t say anything to her, she didn’t say anything to me. I never looked at her in the rearview mirror. I never turned my head to the river on my right or to the houses on the side of the road to my left. As far up the highway as you could see were stalks of sugarcane that had fallen off the trailers on their way to the mill. The people were gathering pecans on either side of the road, but I looked at them only from a distance. If they waved, I did not wave back. I didn’t want Miss Emma to think for a moment that my mood had changed.
The courthouse, like most of the public buildings in town, was made of red brick. Built around the turn of the century, it looked like a small castle you might see in the countryside somewhere in Europe. The parking lot that surrounded the courthouse was covered with crushed seashells. A statue of a Confederate soldier stood to the right of the walk that led up to the courthouse door. Above the head of the statue, national, state, and Confederate flags flew on long metal poles. The big clock on the tower struck two as I parked opposite the statue and the flags. It took Miss Emma a while to get out of the car, so by the time we came into the sheriff’s office, the clock on the wall there said five after two.
Two deputies, dressed in gray chinos, and a colored prisoner, in green coveralls with the letter “p” on the back, were in the office. The deputy behind the desk was giving the prisoner instructions. The younger deputy, who stood beside the desk, looked at us.
“I come to see Jefferson,” Miss Emma said.
The young deputy nodded to the deputy who was giving orders to the prisoner. It had something to do with the floor of the outside toilet. This toilet was for colored people who came to the courthouse, and it was down in the basement. You entered it from the courthouse parking lot. I had gone in there once or twice myself, but it was always filthy, and like everyone I knew, I tried to avoid going down there. But that was the only place to go. The toilets inside were for whites only
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“I want that done ’fore I leave from here,” the deputy told the prisoner. “I mean that, you hear?”
The prisoner, fifteen or sixteen years old, bowed his head and left.
“I come to see my boy, Jefferson,” Miss Emma told the deputy behind the desk.
“What you got there?” he asked her.
“Just some food, some clean clothes for him,” Miss Emma said.
“Paul,” the older man said.
The deputy who stood beside the desk came toward us.
“How’s he been?” Miss Emma asked the deputy in charge.
“Quiet,” the deputy said.
“Yes, sir,” Miss Emma said.
The deputy grinned.
“Jefferson’s been quiet,” Paul, the young deputy, told Miss Emma.
“Thank you, sir,” Miss Emma said to him.
The deputy went through the basket of food. Fried chicken, bread, baked sweet potatoes, tea cakes. Then he went through the handbag of clothes. There was a pair of old blue jeans, an old overwashed brown shirt, a pair of long johns, and two pairs of my socks, which my aunt had given Miss Emma for Jefferson.
“Empty your pockets,” he said to me.
I had nothing but a wallet, a handkerchief, and some loose change. I had left my keys in the car. I laid the things on the desk.
“Is that it?” the deputy asked me.
He had brown hair and gray-blue eyes, and he appeared to be a couple of years younger than I was. He looked pretty decent. The one behind the desk didn’t look decent at all. His eyes were the color of cement. He had a big neck and a fleshy face. He was much older and much heavier than Paul.
Paul patted me down to see if I had taken everything out of my pockets. Then he told me that I could put my things back.
“Sheriff explained everything to y’all?” the chief deputy asked us.
Lesson Before Dying Page 6
