Lesson Before Dying

by Ernest J. Gaines

  (The star dipped down and came back up. Shepherd One looked at the person holding the light, and looked back at me to be sure I had seen it too.)

  Shepherd One: Let us kneel down. Nothing will bother the flock tonight.

  The shepherds kneel as the curtain closes. The curtain opens immediately afterward. We see Mary sitting on a bench holding baby Jesus. Joseph stands beside her, looking down upon the baby. A hammer hangs from Joseph’s overall loop. Offstage right, people are heard approaching.

  First Speaker: The star points yon.

  Second Speaker: We close now.

  Third Speaker: Yon. Yon. The stable.

  The three wise men enter from stage right and immediately kneel down before Mary and baby Jesus.

  Wise Man One: Surely, He come.

  Wise Man Two: (Nodding) Him, all right.

  Wise Man Three: Our Savior.

  All Three: We bring Thee gifts, O Lord. (Each places a penny on the bench beside Mary.)

  Mary: (Surprised) My little baby? Savior?

  Wise Man One: (Nodding) Your little baby.

  Mary: (Happy) My little baby. (She holds Him up to Joseph.) Look, Joseph. My little baby. Savior.

  Joseph nods but does not speak.

  Mary, rocking baby Jesus in her arms, begins to sing “Joy to the World, the Lord is come.” The wise men stand and join her, and so does Joseph and the shepherds and the choir and all the others, including the boy who held the flashlight. As the song ends, they all bow to the audience.

  While the children remained onstage, I asked Reverend Ambrose if he had any last remarks. Again he thanked God for allowing so many people to come out tonight. Again he reminded us that we were not all saved from sin. Even with book learning, we were still fools if we did not have God in our hearts. Again he asked God to go with those locked up in prison cells. He thanked God for all his blessings. And the congregation responded with “Amen, Amen, Amen.”

  I thanked the minister and told the congregation that that was our program for this year, and I reminded them that there were refreshments in the back.

  The children waited onstage to hear what I thought of the program. I told them that it was fine, just fine. The children left the stage to get in line for food.

  “Do you want me to bring you something, Mr. Wiggins?” Irene asked me.

  “No, thanks,” I said.

  “Something the matter, Mr. Wiggins?”

  “No. Why?” I said.

  “You don’t look too happy.”

  “I’m okay,” I said. “Go on and get something to eat.”

  Irene left to get in line, but she looked back at me over her shoulder.

  She was right; I was not happy. I had heard the same carols all my life, seen the same little play, with the same mistakes in grammar. The minister had offered the same prayer as always, Christmas or Sunday. The same people wore the same old clothes and sat in the same places. Next year it would be the same, and the year after that, the same again. Vivian said things were changing. But where were they changing?

  I looked back at the people around the tables, talking, eating, drinking their coffee and lemonade. But I was not with them. I stood alone.

  I saw one of the little Hebert girls coming up the aisle toward me, balancing a napkin of food on both her hands. She had to pass by the tree before reaching the pulpit. She watched the food all the time to be sure she did not drop anything.

  “Miss Lou say bring you this.”

  “Thanks, Gloria.”

  I sat on a chair inside the pulpit, eating fried chicken and bread. The people were still laughing and talking. Just outside the pulpit was the little pine Christmas tree with its green and red strips of crepe paper for lights, its bits of lint cotton for snow, and the narrow strings of tinsel for icicles. And there was the lone gift against the tub of dirt.

  20

  IT WAS LATE FEBRUARY, and we were just over a month into the spring semester. I sat at the table, going over fourth-grade arithmetic papers while the children were out at recess. The older children could be heard playing ragball behind the church. In front, a group of smaller boys were shooting marbles, and several girls were jumping rope beside the church. I could hear the rope hitting the ground and the rhythmic handclapping and singing. The marble game was barely audible, but the ragball players behind the church were loud and clear, and it took all my concentration to go on with my work. The children had been outside about ten minutes, when I felt that one of them had come back inside and was standing down the aisle in front of me. I finished correcting the paper before looking up.

  Farrell Jarreau stood in front of the table with his hat in his hand.

  “Mr. Farrell?” I said, standing quickly.

  He looked very small and very sad. He had come to tell me something, but he didn’t know how to say it.

  “Didn’t mean to barge in,” he said.

  “I was just sitting here,” I said, trying to put him at ease.

  He looked at me and batted his eyes a few times.

  “Is something the matter, Mr. Farrell?”

  “They want you up there,” he said.

  He wanted me to read more into what he had said than he had told me.

  “At the front?” I asked him.

  He nodded. He wanted me to read more into his nod. I waited for him to go on.

  “That boy.” He fidgeted with his hat. He didn’t want to say any more.

  I waited.

  “They done set the date,” he said, but not wanting to say it. “They want you and Mose up there. They want y’all to tell her.”

  “When?”

  “Right now, I reckon.”

  “I still have another hour of class.”

  “I just take they message, Professor.”

  He lowered his eyes and fidgeted with his hat again.

  “Thank you, Mr. Farrell.”

  He nodded and started up the aisle, stoop-shouldered and very small. I saw him put on his hat as he went down the steps into the yard. When he came out into the road, he looked up the quarter toward the big house, but instead of going back to work, he turned left and went home.

  I had followed him to the door, and now I went outside to tell the children that recess was over. They formed a double line, boys in one line and girls in the other, according to grades and sizes. After they had come in and sat down, I gave them assignments and told them I had to go up to the big house and that I was leaving Irene in charge. If anybody caused any trouble, I would deal with that tomorrow. I asked Irene to walk with me to the door, and I told her to dismiss the children at three o’clock. I didn’t tell her why I had to go to the house.

  The sky was overcast, and there was a chill in the air. Grinding was over, and the people had begun to chop up the ground for new planting. Flocks of blackbirds followed the tractors, searching in the fresh, uncovered earth for insects and worms. The plum tree in the Coles’ front yard and the cherry tree in the Freemans’ side yard were covered with blossoms, white and lavender. The pecan trees were bare, gray and leafless, but the live oaks and magnolias were full of leaves. The road was fairly dry, but the ditches on either side still held water from the heavy rain we had had during the past couple of months.

  When I came up to Henri Pichot’s house, I saw Reverend Ambrose’s black Ford parked under the tree in the backyard. Inez opened the kitchen door when I knocked. The preacher sat at the table, drinking coffee. Inez asked me if I wanted a cup of coffee, but I said no. She left the kitchen. Reverend Ambrose asked me about my aunt. He had seen her at church only a few days before, but he didn’t know what else to talk to me about. I told him she was all right. He wanted to know about school, and I said that everything was going pretty well there too. We were quiet then, because he could not think of anything else to say to me, and I had nothing to say to him. Inez came back into the kitchen and told us that Henri Pichot had called the sheriff and that the sheriff would be here in fifteen to twenty minutes.

  “I hope this is
not one of those days,” I said. “I thought he was already here.”

  “You sure I can’t get you a cup of coffee?” Inez offered again.

  “No, thanks,” I said. “I have a lot of work to do at school. I hope I don’t have to hang around here all day.”

  “I’m sure he’s on his way,” Inez said.

  Reverend Ambrose, who sat very close to the table, raised his coffee cup to his mouth, then returned it to the saucer quietly.

  As promised, the sheriff was knocking on the front door about fifteen minutes later. His knock was not a request for entry; it was an announcement that he was already coming in. Inez sighed deeply, thanking God, and went to the front of the house. I heard the sheriff asking her if we were there, and a moment later she came back into the kitchen.

  “They want y’all in the front,” she said.

  This was the first time I had been in any part of Pichot’s house other than the kitchen, and I was sure that it was the first time for the minister as well. I waited for him to move first, but he was waiting on me. I made a respectful gesture for him to precede me, but he would not move, was afraid to move, until Inez took the lead.

  Henri Pichot and the sheriff stood by the fireplace, talking. Pichot wore a brown and tan plaid jacket, a tan vest, an open-collar shirt, and dark trousers. Sheriff Guidry wore a gray suit, a string tie, and black cowboy boots. He held his cowboy hat against his leg. He and Pichot looked at us as we came into the room. I had never seen Pichot look so worried.

  “Have a seat,” he said. “The sheriff has something to say.”

  All the furniture in the room was old. Faded overstuffed chairs; an old overstuffed love seat; an overstuffed couch; and a rattan rocker with a pillow. The lamp tables were old, and the lamps and lamp shades looked just as old. Reverend Ambrose and I sat on the edge of the couch.

  The sheriff sat in one of the chairs and held on to his hat, so I figured that what he had to say was not going to take very long. Henri Pichot stood at the fireplace, his back against the mantel. Behind him, a couple of smoldering logs sent a thin stream of gray smoke and an occasional spark up the chimney.

  “The warrant came down from the governor today.” Guidry spoke hesitantly. “It happens second Friday after Easter.”

  Inez came into the room with two cups of coffee on a silver tray. Pichot added sugar and milk to one cup and removed it from the tray. The sheriff rested his hat on one knee as he took the other cup from the tray. He added sugar, stirring slowly.

  “I want things to go on as they have. Don’t cause trouble for him.” The sheriff looked at me. “When I left him he was calm, he seemed to understand. I want to keep it that way. Any questions?”

  Reverend Ambrose and I exchanged glances, but neither of us had a question now.

  “What about her?” Guidry asked. “The wife said she might need a doctor.”

  “That’s mighty kindly,” Reverend Ambrose said. “My thanks to Miss Edna.”

  “I’ll send Dr. Gillory when I get back to town,” the sheriff said. “Any other questions? I want us to have an understanding.”

  “Why that date?” I asked.

  Guidry drank from his cup and looked over the rim at me. He did not like me; I was one of the smart ones. He and Pichot exchanged glances. I could tell that they had been talking about it before Reverend Ambrose and I came into the room. Pichot left the explanation up to the sheriff.

  “Easter,” he said. He did not want to go on, but he felt he should. After all, a man was going to be put to death. “It had to be before or after Easter. It couldn’t happen during Lent.”

  I would learn later from the young deputy that the governor had originally signed an execution order to be carried out two weeks before Ash Wednesday. But one of his aides pointed out that another execution was scheduled during that time, and because of our state’s heavily Catholic population, it might not go well to have two executions just before the beginning of Lent.

  “Can we still visit him like we’ve been doing?” I asked.

  “Sure,” the sheriff said. “But just remember, keep it down. I don’t want you aggravating him. He’s got just over a month. April eighth.”

  “April eighth,” I said to no one. “April eighth.”

  “Friday, April eighth, between noon and three,” the sheriff said.

  “Between noon and three,” I said to no one.

  “Well, if there ain’t no more questions, I’ll have to get on back to town,” Guidry said.

  He finished his coffee and set the cup and saucer on a lamp table.

  “You won’t forget the doctor, Sheriff?” Reverend Ambrose asked.

  “You think she’ll need him?”

  “She ain’t been too well lately,” the reverend said.

  “I’ll call him from here,” Guidry said. “Can he drive down the quarter?”

  “It’s passable,” Pichot said. “I went down there yesterday.”

  The sheriff went to the telephone table and made his call to Bayonne. I could hear only part of what he was saying, because I could not get that date and time out of my mind. How do people come up with a date and time to take life from another man? Who made them God?

  “Audrey, let me speak to Sid,” Guidry was saying over the telephone.

  Twelve white men say a black man must die, and another white man sets the date and time without consulting one black person. Justice?

  “The old woman,” the sheriff was saying to the doctor. “I think she is the one who attended the trial. Worked for the family.”

  “His nannan,” Reverend Ambrose said weakly.

  The sheriff did not hear the minister. “Yes, it’s passable, Sid. You won’t get your brown and white shoes dirty.”

  They sentence you to death because you were at the wrong place at the wrong time, with no proof that you had anything at all to do with the crime other than being there when it happened. Yet six months later they come and unlock your cage and tell you, We, us, white folks all, have decided it’s time for you to die, because this is the convenient date and time.

  “Oh, she’s all right, and how is Lucy?” the sheriff asked the doctor about his wife.

  And on Friday too. Always on Friday. Same time as He died, between twelve and three. But they can’t take this one’s life too soon after the recognition of His death, because it might upset the sensitive few. It can happen less than two weeks later, though, because even the sensitive few will have forgotten about their Savior’s death by then.

  “Give Lucy my love,” Guidry said. “I owe you one.”

  The sheriff hung up the telephone and turned to us.

  “He’s on his way. And I have to head on back myself. No other questions?”

  We had no more questions.

  “Thank you all for coming,” Pichot said.

  But he was not thanking us for gracing his home with our presence so much as he was telling us that it was time to leave. Reverend Ambrose and I got up from the couch and went back into the kitchen. Inez looked at us, crying.

  “We must all show courage for Sister Emma’s sake,” Reverend Ambrose said to her.

  Inez raised the end of her apron and wiped her eyes.

  “You drove?” Reverend Ambrose asked me.

  “I walked.”

  “Well, you can ride back down the quarter with me,” he said.

  “I’m not going back down there right now,” I said. “I’m not going back down there and tell her he’s going to die April eighth. Not me.”

  “You’d have the strength if you had God,” Reverend Ambrose said.

  “That’s where you come in, Reverend,” I said. “I’m going for a walk, a long walk in the opposite direction. Excuse me.”

  I went across the backyard out to the road, and I turned left and walked over to the highway and down to the river. The river still ran high from all the rain we had had in the past couple of months and from the water that drained into it from the bayous and fields. I walked in the ankle-high grass a saf
e distance from where the water flowed upon the bank, until I found a good place to stop. I could see the houses and trees on the other bank, and the cars moving on the road behind them. I tried wiping that away. I wanted to see nothing but miles and miles of clear, blue water, then an island where I could be alone. Or Vivian and me, just the two of us, and absolutely no one else. No one else.

  But the river remained the same, high and muddy, and I started walking again. When I could go no farther without getting my feet wet, I went up the bank and walked alongside the road. I must have gone three or four miles before turning back. I figured that by now the minister and my aunt had seen Miss Emma, and the doctor had probably visited her, and other women in the quarter had gone to look after her too. It was near dark when I reached the quarter, and I went back to the church to get my satchel. Irene had collected all the papers and stacked them neatly on the table and had left me a note saying that the children had been orderly. I stuffed the note and the papers inside my satchel and left the church.

  21

  TWO CARS WERE PARKED in front of Miss Emma’s house, and as I got closer I saw that one was Reverend Ambrose’s. The porch light was on, and though I didn’t feel like going into the house, I thought I owed Miss Emma that respect. The door was shut against the cold, but someone opened it immediately when I knocked. The room was crowded and warm from a nice fire in the fireplace. People spoke quietly, but still it was noisy. Inez was there, and I asked her about Miss Emma. She nodded toward the bed.

  Miss Emma lay under a quilt, her head resting on two pillows. The mosquito bar hung on the bed behind her. I asked her how she felt. She did not answer; only a slight movement at the corners of her mouth showed that she had heard me. Her eyes were looking at something that was not in the room. I left the bed and went into the kitchen, where most of the talking was going on. My aunt was in charge back there. As Miss Emma’s best friend, she was taking over now that Miss Emma had taken to her bed. She was at the stove, making coffee. You could smell that Luzanne coffee all over the kitchen.

  Reverend Ambrose was sitting at the table, talking to a couple of people who did not live in the quarter. He gave me a long, hard look to let me know what he thought of me, but I already knew what he thought of me, and I turned away from him. Irene, who was helping my aunt in the kitchen, asked me if I wanted a cup of coffee. I told her no, and I thanked her for taking over the class for me that afternoon. She told me she liked the practice; I knew that she wanted to be a teacher. My aunt heard us talking and turned from the stove to look at me. I could see in her face that she and Reverend Ambrose had had a conversation about me, and he had probably said some things that I would not care to hear. She told me that my food was on the back of the stove at home, but I would have to warm it if I wanted to eat. She had nothing else to say to me, and started talking to someone else. After I had been there ten minutes, I left the house.