Lesson Before Dying

by Ernest J. Gaines

  Vivian sighed. “Well, I guess that’s that,” she said.

  “That’s what, honey?”

  “You’ll have to stay here tonight.”

  “What for?”

  “Because you’re in no condition to go home.”

  “I’m all right,” I said. “I’ll be all right in a minute.”

  “I’m calling Dora. Let her keep the children.”

  “Don’t do that, honey. Please.”

  “She’s kept them before.”

  “Honey, I don’t want you in any trouble.”

  “Well, you should have thought about that at the Rainbow Club,” she said.

  “They were talking about Jefferson, honey. What would you have done?”

  “I would have walked out of there.”

  “No, you would not. You would have said something.”

  “Maybe that’s what you should have done instead of swinging that chair.”

  “Vivian, what about your marriage? What about the school?”

  “All they can do is fire me. Maybe he’ll take the children. But you weren’t thinking about that,” she said.

  “I’m going to leave. I don’t want you in any trouble.”

  “I’m already in trouble. Mr. Gusta running up and down the street calling my name. Come quick. Come quick. And me leading you by the hand out of a barroom fight. What do you call that?”

  “I don’t want you in any deeper trouble.”

  I tried to stand up, but my head felt as if it would burst open, and I sat down on the bed again.

  “I’ll leave in a few minutes,” I said. “If I can’t drive, I’ll call somebody to take me home.”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” she said. “I’m calling Dora to keep the children. I have some red beans and rice back there. Couple of fried pork chops.”

  “I’m not hungry,” I said.

  “Well, I am.”

  “Don’t be mad, honey.”

  “I’m not mad. Just disgusted.”

  “I had to do it, honey. I had to. I just couldn’t take it anymore.”

  “That’s how you all get yourselves killed.”

  “I didn’t start it.”

  “Maybe you didn’t. But you were ready.”

  “It’s been all that other stuff. The jail, the preacher—all of that.”

  She got up from the bed.

  “I’m going to warm the food,” she said. “I’ll be in the kitchen.”

  “Don’t be mad, honey. Please.”

  She didn’t answer. She went into the living room, and I heard her on the telephone, speaking to Dora. Then I heard her hang up the telephone and go into the kitchen.

  I sat on the bed with my head bowed and my left hand holding the towel in place. I didn’t dare look in the mirror again. I glanced over my shoulder toward the window on the other side of the bed, and I could see through the curtain that it was nearly dark outside.

  I got up from the bed and went through the living room and back into the kitchen. I could smell the red beans warming on the stove. I couldn’t smell the rice—you don’t smell rice unless it’s burning—and I didn’t smell the pork chops either. Vivian was at the sink, making a salad. I went up to her and put my right arm around her waist while my left hand held the towel on my head.

  “What are you doing, honey?”

  She knew I could see what she was doing, so she didn’t answer me.

  “Still mad, huh?”

  “I’m not mad.”

  “You still love me?”

  She didn’t answer.

  I kissed her on the jaw. She went on making the salad.

  “Do you want to know what happened today, honey?”

  “I already know what happened today,” she said.

  “At the jail, I mean.”

  She went on with her salad. Now she was slicing up a cucumber to add to the lettuce and tomato.

  “It went well today, honey. It went very well. He and I walked around the room, while I talked to him. Then we ate. His nannan was so proud. I brought him the pencil and notepad I told you about. It went good today, honey. Aren’t you proud?”

  She put the sliced cucumber into the bowl with the cut-up tomato and the lettuce, then she added oil and vinegar. She took the salad to the table. She dished up the rice and spread red beans over the rice and placed a pork chop on each plate. She brought the two plates to the table and sat down. I sat opposite her.

  “You want me to ask the blessing, honey?”

  She didn’t answer. I bowed my head and made the sign of the cross and asked God to bless the food. I looked up at her and started eating. She was not eating.

  “Still mad, huh?”

  “I’m just thinking,” she said.

  I ate and looked at her.

  “I heard from him,” she said. “He won’t give me a divorce unless he can see his children every weekend.”

  My head started throbbing again. “When did you hear from him?”

  “Yesterday. I was going to tell you today when I saw you.”

  “He’s still in Texas?”

  “Yes.”

  “And I suppose he has heard about us?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “And that’s to keep us from going away?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “The sonofabitch,” I said. “All of a sudden he needs to see his children every weekend?”

  I put down my fork. I didn’t feel like eating anymore.

  “I’m going to leave,” I said.

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I don’t want to give him any more fuel to work with.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “Don’t you think that’s best?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “We get hurt no matter what happens.”

  She picked at her food, but she didn’t eat. I sat there looking at her.

  “I need you, honey,” I told her. “I need you to stand with me. He’s got only a few more weeks. I need you now more than ever.”

  She didn’t answer. She held the fork in her hand, but she did not bring it up to her mouth.

  “Well, I better go,” I said.

  She didn’t look at me.

  “Honey, suppose someone said something about you—would you want me to just walk away?”

  Again, nothing from her.

  “Honey, you have anything in here to drink?” I asked her.

  “Bottle in that cabinet,” she said.

  “Honey, you going to fix me a drink?”

  She didn’t move. I got up from the table and got the bottle of Old Forester out of the cabinet. It was three quarters full.

  “You want one, honey?”

  “No.”

  I poured myself a double, then I added some water from the pitcher in the refrigerator.

  “Still mad, huh?” I said, after I sat down.

  “Never was mad. Just disgusted.”

  “About the same thing,” I said. “I’ll finish my drink and leave.”

  “That’s up to you.”

  “I love you, honey, and I need you. But I’m only human.”

  “One day I’ll bring flowers to the graveyard,” she said.

  “That’s not you talking, honey.”

  “No?” she said, looking up at me. She had been holding it in a long time, and now she was going to let it out. I saw it coming as soon as I spoke. “What is me?” she said. “Tell me, what is me?”

  “Honey—”

  “No, tell me,” she said. “Who am I? Who are you? Who are we? Tell me.”

  “All I know is I love you,” I said.

  “That’s not enough,” she said. “What is love?”

  “Honey—”

  “What is it?” she asked. “That bed? That’s love?”

  “Honey—please.”

  “No. Give me some answers. Give me some answers—today. Today I want answers.”

  “Honey, I love you.”

  “That’s no answer. I don’t kn
ow what you mean by love. That bed? The cane field? What is love? Tell me what love is.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Nothing I would say was going to change anything.

  “I’ll leave,” I said.

  “Sure, that’s the easy way out—leave.”

  “Well, what do you want? What the hell do you want from me? What the hell do you all want from me?”

  “I don’t know what the others want. I just want something I don’t have.”

  “I’ve done my best,” I said.

  “No, you have not,” she said. “In bed for a few moments is not enough.”

  “Is that all I’ve ever given you? Is that all?”

  “What else? Any consideration?”

  I got up from the table. I jerked the towel from my head and slammed it down on my plate.

  “You can have your goddamn red beans and rice and towel and everything else. Damn this shit.”

  I went to the front door and jerked it open, and there was the screen. And through the screen I could see outside into the darkness, and I didn’t want to go out there. There was nothing outside this house that I cared for. Not school, not home, not my aunt, not the quarter, not anything else in the world.

  I don’t know how long I stood there looking out into the darkness—a couple of minutes, I suppose—then I went back into the kitchen. I knelt down and buried my face in her lap.

  27

  AFTER CHURCH, the minister came back to the house with my aunt, Miss Eloise, Miss Emma, and Inez for coffee and cake. I lay across the bed in my room, looking out the window at the stack of bean poles in the garden. As far back as I could remember, my aunt would pull up the rows of poles at the end of each season and stack them in that same corner of the garden, until a new crop of beans was ready to be poled. Beyond the poles, on the other side of the road, I could see the tops of the pecan trees in Farrell Jarreau’s backyard. The trees had begun to bud again. The buds looked black from this distance. I could see above the trees how heavy, low, and gray the sky was. I had intended to go for a drive, but I was afraid it might rain while I was gone, making the road too muddy for me to drive back down the quarter. Anyway, I had work to do. But as usual, I ended up doing only a little, because of the singing and praying up at the church. After Tante Lou and her company had been at the house awhile, she came into my room.

  “You ’sleep?” she asked.

  “I’m awake.”

  “Reverend Ambrose like to talk to you.”

  “What about?”

  I lay on my back, gazing up at the ceiling, my hands clasped behind my head so that my arms stuck out, forming a cross.

  “I done told you that’s bad luck,” my aunt said.

  Without shifting my eyes from the ceiling, I unclasped my hands from behind my head and clasped them on my chest. Tante Lou stood there looking at me.

  “He can come in?”

  “Sure. He can come in.”

  “You go’n put on your shoes and tuck in that shirt?” she asked.

  “I’ll put on my shoes and tuck in my shirt,” I said.

  She stood there watching me awhile, then she left the room. I sat up on the bed and passed my hands over my face. When the minister came into the room, I had tucked in my shirt and put on my shoes, and I was standing at the window looking out at the garden. My aunt had prepared a half-dozen rows about thirty feet long for spring planting. She would start her planting the week after Easter if the ground was dry enough.

  The minister stood behind me, and I turned from the window to look at him.

  “Care to sit down, Reverend?”

  There were only two chairs in the room, the one at my desk and a rocker by the fireplace.

  “You go’n sit down?” he asked me.

  “I don’t mind standing.”

  He looked at my desk.

  “I see you been working.”

  “I tried to. Afraid I didn’t get too much done.”

  He sat down in the chair and looked up at me.

  “They learning anything?”

  “I do my best, Reverend.”

  He nodded his bald head. “I do the same. My best.”

  My back to the window, I waited to hear what he wanted to talk to me about. He looked down at his hands and rubbed them together. For a man his size, he had really big hands. He rubbed them again before raising his eyes to me.

  “There ain’t much time.”

  “Jefferson?”

  “Yes.”

  “Three weeks.”

  “Not quite.”

  “Minus couple days,” I said.

  He nodded his head, a small, tired little man. He had preached a long sermon today, and it showed in his face.

  “He ain’t saved.”

  “I can’t help you there, Reverend.”

  “That’s where you wrong. He listen to you.”

  I turned my back on him and looked out on the garden.

  “You ever think of anybody else but yourself?”

  I didn’t answer him.

  “I ask you, ‘You ever think of anybody but yourself?’”

  “I have my work to do, Reverend, you have yours,” I said, without looking around at him. “Mine is reading, writing, and arithmetic, yours is saving souls.”

  “He don’t need no more reading, writing, and ’rithmetic.”

  “That’s where you come in, Reverend.”

  I stared beyond the garden toward the budding pecan trees in Farrell Jarreau’s backyard. The sky was so low the trees seemed nearly to touch it.

  “When you going back?” Reverend Ambrose asked behind me.

  “I don’t know. One day next week, I suppose.”

  “And what you go’n talk about?”

  “I don’t know, Reverend.”

  “I’m going back with Sis’ Emma tomorrow. I’m go’n talk about God.”

  “I’m sure he needs to hear that, Reverend.”

  “You sure you sure?”

  “Maybe not. Maybe I’m not sure about anything.”

  “I know I’m sure,” he said. “Yes, I know I’m sure.”

  I looked out at the newly turned rows of earth, and I wished I could just lie down between the rows and not hear and not be a part of any of this.

  “This is a mean world. But there is a better one. I wish to prepare him for that better world. But I need your help.”

  “I don’t believe in that other world, Reverend.”

  “Don’t believe in God?”

  “I believe in God, Reverend,” I said, looking beyond the rows of turned-up earth, toward the budding pecan trees across the road. “I believe in God. Every day of my life I believe in God.”

  “Just not that other world?”

  I didn’t answer him.

  “And how could they go on? You ever thought about that?”

  I looked at the buds on the trees, and I did not answer him.

  “Well?” he said to my back.

  I turned from the window and looked at him where he sat at my desk. School papers, notebooks, textbooks, and pencils were spread out on the table behind him.

  “She told me to help him walk to that chair like a man—not like a hog—and I’m doing the best I can, Reverend. The rest is up to you.”

  He got up from the chair and came toward me. He peered at me intently, his face showing pain and confusion. He stopped at arm’s distance from me, and I could smell in his clothes the sweat from his preaching.

  “You think you educated?”

  “I went to college.”

  “But what did you learn?”

  “To teach reading, writing, and arithmetic, Reverend.”

  “What did you learn about your own people? What did you learn about her—her ’round there?” he said, gesturing toward the other room and trying to keep his voice down.

  I didn’t answer him.

  “No, you not educated, boy,” he said, shaking his head. “You far from being educated. You learned your reading, writing, and ’rithmetic, but you
don’t know nothing. You don’t even know yourself. Well?”

  “You’re doing the talking, Reverend.”

  “And educated, boy,” he said, thumping his chest. “I’m the one that’s educated. I know people like you look down on people like me, but”—he touched his chest again—“I’m the one that’s educated.”

  He stared at me as if he could not make up his mind whether to hit me or scream.

  “Grief, oh, grief.” He muffled his cry. “When will you cease? Oh, when?” He drew a deep breath, then he began to speak faster. “When they had nothing else but grief, where was the release? None, none till He rose. And He said there’s relief from grief across yon river, and she believed, and there was relief from grief. Do you know what I’m trying to say to you, boy?”

  “I hear you talking, Reverend.”

  “You hear me talking. But are you listening? No, you ain’t listening.”

  His eyes examined me, from the top of my head to my chest, and I could see the rage in his face, see his mouth trembling. He was doing all he could to control his voice so that the others, back in the kitchen, would not hear him.

  “I won’t let you send that boy’s soul to hell,” he said. “I’ll fight you with all the strength I have left in this body, and I’ll win.”

  “You don’t have to fight me, Reverend,” I told him. “You can have him all to yourself. I don’t even have to go back up there, if that’s all you want.”

  “You going back,” he said, nodding his bald head, and still trying hard to control his voice. “You owe her much as I owe her. And long as I can stand on my feet, I owe her and all the others every ounce of my being. And you do too.”

  “I don’t owe anybody anything, Reverend,” I said, and turned toward the window.

  I felt his hand gripping my shoulder and pulling me around to face him.

  “Don’t you turn your back on me, boy.”

  “My name is Grant,” I said.

  “When you act educated, I’ll call you Grant. I’ll even call you Mr. Grant, when you act like a man.” His hand still grasped my shoulder, and I needed all my willpower to keep from knocking it off. He could see what I was thinking, and he slowly released his grip and brought his hand to his side. “You think you the only one ever felt this way?” he asked. “You think I never felt this way? You think she never felt this way? Every last one of them back there one time in they life wanted to give up. She want to give up now. You know that? You got any idea how sick she is? Soon after he go, she’s going too. I won’t give her another year. I want her to believe he’ll be up there waiting for her. And you can help me do it. And you the only one.”