Lesson Before Dying

by Ernest J. Gaines

  Jefferson sat on his bunk with his head bowed and his arms hanging down between his legs. The deputy opened the door for me to go in, and he reminded me that he would be back within the hour. In case I wanted to leave before then, I could call a trusty, and the trusty would come to get him.

  “Jefferson,” I said.

  He didn’t look up.

  “Your nannan couldn’t make it today,” I said. “She has a bad cold. But she sent you something. How are you feeling, Jefferson?”

  After a while he raised his head, but he didn’t look at me; he looked at the barred window. From the cell, all you could see were the yellow leaves on the sycamore tree and the pale-blue sky between the leaves.

  “You hungry?” I asked.

  “You brought some corn?” he said.

  “Corn?”

  “That’s what hogs eat,” he said, turning his head now to look at me.

  He had not washed his face or combed his hair for days. He wore one of my old khaki shirts and a wrinkled pair of brown pants. He didn’t have on shoes. They were stuck under the bunk.

  “I didn’t bring any corn,” I said. “And you’re not a hog.”

  He looked at me as if I was patronizing him.

  “When was the last time you ate?” I asked him.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Today?” I asked him.

  “I don’t know.”

  He was playing with me, and I knew it.

  “Some chicken in there,” I said. “Biscuits and sweet potatoes. Even some candy she made. You ought to try it. It’ll make her happy.”

  “Hogs don’t eat no candy,” he said.

  “You’re not a hog,” I said. “You’re a man.”

  He grunted deep in his throat and grinned at me.

  “Mind if I have a piece of your chicken?” I asked him. “I left before dinner.”

  He acted as though he had not heard me.

  Since the deputy had already gone through the paper bag, I didn’t have to do too much unwrapping to get to the food. I took out a drumstick and a biscuit and started eating.

  “Your nannan can sure cook,” I said.

  “That’s for youmans,” he said.

  “You’re a human being, Jefferson,” I said.

  “I’m a old hog,” he said. “Youmans don’t stay in no stall like this. I’m a old hog they fattening up to kill.”

  “That would hurt your nannan if she heard you say that. You want me to tell her you said that?”

  “Old hog don’t care what people say.”

  “She cares,” I said. “And I do too, Jefferson.”

  “Y’all youmans,” he said.

  “You’re a human being too, Jefferson.”

  “I’m a old hog,” he said, more to himself than to me. “Just a old hog they fattening up to kill for Christmas.”

  “You’re a human being, Jefferson. You’re a man.”

  He kept his eyes on me as he got up from the bunk.

  “I’m go’n show you how a old hog eat,” he said.

  He knelt down on the floor and put his head inside the bag and started eating, without using his hands. He even sounded like a hog.

  I stood back watching him, while I continued to eat the biscuit and piece of chicken.

  “That’s how a old hog eat,” he said, raising his head and grinning at me. He got up from his knees and went back to his bunk. “That’s how a old hog eat.”

  “All right,” I said. “But when I go back, I’m going to tell her that you and I sat on the bunk and ate, and you said how good the food was. I won’t tell her what you did. She is already sick, and that would kill her. So I’m going to lie. I’m going to tell her how much you liked the food. Especially the pralines.”

  He said nothing. He just grinned at me.

  “Are you trying to hurt me, Jefferson?” I asked him. “Are you trying to make me feel guilty for your being here? You don’t want me to come back here anymore?”

  His expression didn’t change—as though someone had chiseled that painful, cynical grin on his face.

  “That man out there doesn’t want me up here either,” I told him. “He said I will never be able to make you understand anything. He said I’m just wasting my time coming up here now. But your nannan doesn’t think so. She wants me to come up here. She wants us to talk. What do you want? You want me to stay away and let him win? The white man? You want him to win?”

  His expression remained the same—cynical, defiant, painful.

  I could not think of anything else to say to him. But since I had been there less than half an hour, I knew it was too early to call for the deputy. The sheriff would have known that Jefferson and I were not getting along, and that was the last thing I could afford, at least for Miss Emma’s sake.

  The rest of the hour just dragged along. Jefferson was not looking at me anymore; he had lain back down on the bunk, facing the wall. I gazed out the window, at the yellow leaves on the sycamore tree. The leaves were as still as if they were painted there. Between the leaves I could see bits of pale-blue sky. I looked at Jefferson, with his back to me. I looked at his pair of laceless shoes under the bunk. I looked down at the bag of food, trying to remember how many pieces of chicken, biscuits, potatoes, or pieces of candy were still in there. I went to the washbowl and got a handful of water to drink. I tried turning the faucet off completely, but it continued to drip. The water had left a brown stain from the top of the bowl to the drain. I turned to Jefferson again. He was facing the wall, his back to me. I wanted to ask him what he was thinking about.

  When I heard the deputy come down the cellblock, I went to the bunk.

  “Anything you want me to tell your nannan?” I asked him.

  He didn’t answer. His eyes were open and staring at the wall.

  “I’ll tell her how much you enjoyed the food,” I said. “That would make her happy.”

  The deputy came up to the cell and let me out.

  “Y’all doing all right?” he asked, as we walked away.

  “He was glad to get some home cooking,” I said.

  “I can’t blame him for that,” the deputy said.

  12

  I KNEW MISS EMMA expected me to come back and tell her all about Jefferson, but I had not thought of a good lie yet. I couldn’t go there and tell her what had really happened; that would have hurt too much. I couldn’t go there and say that we had had a good talk; she probably wouldn’t have believed it, not after the way he had acted when we were there together. I needed time to think, to think of something. Not a big lie, just a little lie or a number of little lies, but a lie it had to be. Maybe I could tell her he was concerned about her health. She would like that. Maybe I could tell her he had begun to use the brush and comb I had bought for him. Or maybe I could say that the deputy had told me what a good prisoner he was, and that the sheriff himself had said he was a good boy. I needed time, time to get my lies straight. And the best place for that was at the Rainbow. I got into my car and drove back of town.

  The Rainbow Club was quiet, dark and quiet. There were only two old men in the place, besides Joe Claiborne, who was behind the bar. All three stood talking baseball. Jackie Robinson. Robinson had just finished his second year with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

  “What’s happening, Prof?” Claiborne said to me.

  “A Jax,” I said.

  He brought the bottle of beer to me.

  “A little business in town,” I said.

  Claiborne could see that I didn’t want to talk about the business, or maybe he realized what the business was. He nodded his head and went back down the bar where the other customers were. The two old men had continued their conversation, and Claiborne joined them again as if he had never left.

  From where I stood, about halfway down the bar, all I could hear was Jackie this and Jackie that. Nothing about any of the other players, nothing about the Brooklyn Dodgers as a team. Only Jackie. Jackie this and Jackie that.

  I sipped my beer slowly whil
e listening to them. And they were very good. They could recall everything Jackie had done in the past two years. They remembered when he got his first hit, and who it was against. They remembered the first time he stole two bases in one game and the first time he stole home. One of the men backed away from the bar to demonstrate how slow the pitcher was in throwing the ball, which gave Jackie the opportunity to steal home plate. The old man looked over each shoulder, as pitchers do when there are runners on bases. He raised his leg as high as he could, which was only about a foot off the floor, to show how much time the pitcher took to throw the ball to the plate. While the pitcher went through the motion of raising his leg and winding his arm, Jackie was on his way home. Now the old man became Jackie—not running, but showing the motion of someone running at full speed. His arms were doing what the legs could not do. He showed you the motion of Jackie sliding into the plate, the motion of the umpire calling Jackie safe, and the motion of Jackie brushing off his clothes and going into the dugout. The old man nodded his head emphatically, with great pride, and went back to the bar. Claiborne and the other old man told him that he was exactly right.

  Listening to them, I could remember back to the time before Jackie came to the major leagues, when it was Joe Louis that everyone talked about. Yes, I could remember, I could remember when he was the only one. Especially the big fight with Schmeling, that German. I could still remember how depressed everyone was after Joe had lost the first fight with Schmeling. For weeks it was like that. To be caught laughing for any reason seemed like a sin. This was a period of mourning. What else in the world was there to be proud of, if Joe had lost? Even the preacher got into it. “Let us wait. Let us wait, children. David will meet Goliath again.” And everyone told everyone else: “They go’n meet again. Just wait.”

  And we waited and waited, and finally the big fight did come. There were two radios in the quarter, one at the Williams’s house, down the quarter, another at the McVays’, up the quarter. I was down the quarter. I was seventeen then. I was not the youngest, nor surely the oldest. I was just one. Praying and hoping for the only hero we knew. There was much noise, much talking, while the people waited for the fight to begin. Once the announcer said that the fighters were in the ring, everyone became silent without anybody having to tell them to do so. There were small children there too, but even they had quit playing and were silent. We held our breath, remembering the first fight. Could God let it happen again? Would He let it happen again?

  Then it was over. And there was nothing but chaos. People screamed. Some shot pistols in the air. There were mock fights. Old men fell down on the floor, as Schmeling did, and had to be helped up. Everybody laughed. Everybody patted everybody else on the back. For days after that fight, for weeks, we held our heads higher than any people on earth had ever done for any reason. I was only seventeen then, but I could remember it, every bit of it—the warm evening, the people, the noise, the pride I saw in those faces.

  Now, while I stood there listening to the old men in their praise of Jackie Robinson, I remembered something else. The little Irishman. I was at the university then. The little Irishman was giving a series of lectures at white universities, but some way or another, our university got him to visit us. How? Only God knows. But we were all gathered in the auditorium—and there stood this little white man with the thick accent, talking to us about Irish literature. He spoke of Yeats, O’Casey, Joyce—names I had never heard before. I sat there listening, listening, trying to remember everything he said. And a name he repeated over and over was Parnell. And he told us how some Irishmen would weep this day at the mention of the name Parnell. Parnell. Parnell. Parnell. Then he spoke of James Joyce. He told about Joyce’s family, his religion, his education, his writing. He spoke of a book called Dubliners and a story in the book titled “Ivy Day in the Committee Room.” Regardless of race, regardless of class, that story was universal, he said.

  For days after the lecture, I tried to find that book. But it was not in our library and not in any of the bookstores. I went to Mr. Anderson, my literature teacher, and asked him if he knew how I could get a copy. He said he would see what he could do. A week later, he kept me after class and handed me a collection of stories. It was not Joyce’s Dubliners but an anthology of short stories, with “Ivy Day in the Committee Room” included as one of them. Mr. Anderson had gotten a professor at the white university to check the book out of his library for him. “He’s a pretty decent fellow,” Mr. Anderson said about the white professor. “Some of them are, you know. And always remember that. Now take care of that book. You can keep it a week. And it had better come back to me in the same condition in which it left. You do understand me, don’t you, Wiggins?”

  I read the story and reread the story, but I still could not find the universality that the little Irishman had spoken of. All I saw in the story was some Irishmen meeting in a room and talking politics. What had that to do with America, especially with my people? It was not until years later that I saw what he meant. I had gone to bars, to barbershops; I had stood on street corners, and I had gone to many suppers there in the quarter. But I had never really listened to what was being said. Then I began to listen, to listen closely to how they talked about their heroes, how they talked about the dead and about how great the dead had once been. I heard it everywhere.

  The old men down at the end of the bar were still talking about Jackie Robinson. But I was not thinking about Jackie now, or Joe Louis, or the little Irishman; I was thinking about that cold, depressing cell uptown.

  I raised my hand for Claiborne to bring me another beer. He gave me the bottle and looked into my eyes, and he could tell that I didn’t feel like talking. So he went back down the bar to where the old men were still talking baseball.

  I didn’t want to think about that cell uptown; I didn’t even want to think about Miss Emma and the lies I had to tell her. I wanted to think about more pleasant things. I thought about Vivian. Now, there was not a more pleasant thing in the world to think about. Today was Friday, wasn’t it? And wouldn’t it be nice if the two of us could go somewhere and spend the entire weekend? Wouldn’t that be nice? I would be able to forget the whole thing, the whole thing for at least a couple of days.

  Damn it, it would be so good if we could go away and never come back. I knew I could find a job doing something else, and so could she. If we could just get the hell away from here. Just go away.

  The old men down the bar continued to hit the ball, throw the ball, and slide into bases.

  And my mind went back to that cell uptown, then to another cell, somewhere in Florida. After reading about the execution there, I had dreamed about it over and over and over. As vividly as if I were there, I had seen that cell, heard that boy crying while being dragged to that chair, “Please, Joe Louis, help me. Please help me. Help me.” And after he had been strapped in the chair, the man who wrote the story could still hear him cry, “Mr. Joe Louis, help me. Mr. Joe Louis, help me.”

  And down the bar the old men went on hitting the ball, running the bases, and sliding home. And I wondered if the one in that cell uptown would call on Jackie Robinson as the other one had called on Joe Louis.

  “Taking off, Prof?” Claiborne asked me.

  “I have to find my lady,” I said.

  “Take it easy, Prof.”

  I waved my hand to the old men. They nodded to me.

  The school was three or four blocks away, on the main street. But everything back here was pretty close to everything else. The school was on the same street as the Catholic church, the movie theater, the mortuary, a café, and the ice cream parlor. The grocery store was not far from the church, but on another street. The barbershop and a gas station weren’t too far from the mortuary. Everybody knew everybody, everybody knew everybody else’s business.

  I parked in front of the movie theater and watched one of the teachers direct the children onto the school bus. When the bus drove away, I got out of my car.

  “What�
��s happening, handsome?” the teacher said.

  “What’s going on, Peggy?”

  “Thank God it’s Friday,” she said. “She’s still inside.”

  “Having a drink later?”

  “A couple,” Peggy said.

  As we walked up to the entrance of the school, I saw two boys taking in the flag. Peggy told me she would see us at the club later, and I went to Vivian’s classroom. The school had only five rooms, and in some the classes were doubled. Vivian taught the sixth and seventh grades. The children had all gone, and she sat behind her desk, looking over papers. She wore a brown woolen suit and a white blouse. She didn’t raise her head until I was near the desk. Then she smiled. She had the most beautiful and most even teeth I had ever seen. But I thought every bit of her was perfect.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “You ever known a Friday I could stay away from you?” I went around the desk and kissed her.

  “Last boy stood at this desk wouldn’t dare do that,” she said.

  “I better not ever catch anyone else doing it,” I said.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “To see you, what else?”

  She looked up at me, and she could read my face, and she knew that I had been at the jail.

  “Still working?” I asked.

  “Nothing I can’t do later.”

  “I saw Peggy. They were going over for a drink.”

  “Sounds like a good idea,” Vivian said. She put some papers into a briefcase and stood up. “I have to see the principal before she leaves. Do you know how to clean a blackboard?”

  “I’ve done a few.”

  “If you do a good job I’ll give you an apple,” she said.

  “Thanks, teacher.”

  She kissed me lightly on the lips and walked away. At the door she looked back and smiled again.

  A vertical line had been drawn down the blackboard. On one side of the line were French sentences, on the other side English translations. They were simple sentences: “Where is the book?” “Where is the tablet?” “Where is the pencil?” I wiped both halves clean, but you could still see the imprint of the sentences.