Lesson Before Dying

by Ernest J. Gaines

  The children returned from dinner as I had asked them to do, and at ten minutes to twelve, I lined them up before the door. When the last one had marched into the church, I went to my desk to face them.

  “In a couple of minutes it will be twelve o’clock. I will ask you to get down on your knees and remain on your knees until I ask you to get up. Are there any questions?”

  Louis Washington, Jr., raised that grimy little hand again.

  “Is you go’n bow down too, Mr. Wiggins?”

  “The proper way to ask that question is, ‘Are you going to bow down too, Mr. Wiggins?’”

  “You go’n bow down too?”

  “I’ll be outside,” I told the class. “Irene, you, Odessa, and Clarence are in charge. All right, please, on your knees. I’ll tell you when to get up.”

  “We need to pray?” Louis Washington, Jr., wanted to know.

  “Yes,” I told him. “But quietly, to yourself.”

  Several of the larger girls knelt on scarves or handkerchiefs. I took up my Westcott and went out through the front door. I had no idea what I would do while I waited to hear from Bayonne, but I found myself out in the road and walking up the quarter. It was a couple of minutes after twelve, and I was trying not to think. But how could I not think about something that had dominated my thoughts for nearly six months? It seemed that I had spent more time with him in that jail cell than I had with the children in the church school.

  Where was he at this very moment? At the window, looking out at the sky? Lying on the bunk, staring up at the gray ceiling? Standing at the cell door, waiting? How did he feel? Was he afraid? Was he crying? Were they coming to get him now, this moment? Was he on his knees, begging for one more minute of life? Was he standing?

  Why wasn’t I there? Why wasn’t I standing beside him? Why wasn’t my arm around him? Why?

  Why wasn’t I back there with the children? Why wasn’t I down on my knees? Why?

  At the mouth of the quarter, there was shade from a pecan tree in the corner of the fence surrounding Henri Pichot’s yard. A shallow ditch ran between the fence and the road. The people from the quarter had sat under that tree as far back as I could remember. Men had gambled there with cards and dice. Others had stood or sat there to get out of the hot sun or the rain. Before I had a car, I had stood there many times waiting for the bus. The bus driver always blew the horn about a mile before he got there, and I would have time to cross the highway to wave it down. There would always be someone there, but today I sat alone.

  Behind me was Henri Pichot’s gray and white antebellum house, sitting on its foundation high above the ground. His car was parked on the grass in the front yard. I figured that he would be the first to hear, and maybe he would come into the quarter. I looked back over my shoulder when I sat down, and I looked back every minute or two afterward.

  It must have been twelve-fifteen by now. I didn’t want to look at my watch anymore. Had it already happened? Or was he still waiting, sitting on the bunk, hands clasped together, waiting? Was he standing at the cell door, listening for that first sound of footsteps coming toward him? Or was it finally, finally over?

  Don’t tell me to believe. Don’t tell me to believe in the same God or laws that men believe in who commit these murders. Don’t tell me to believe that God can bless this country and that men are judged by their peers. Who among his peers judged him? Was I there? Was the minister there? Was Harry Williams there? Was Farrell Jarreau? Was my aunt? Was Vivian? No, his peers did not judge him—and I will not believe.

  Yet they must believe. They must believe, if only to free the mind, if not the body. Only when the mind is free has the body a chance to be free. Yes, they must believe, they must believe. Because I know what it means to be a slave. I am a slave.

  I looked back. But there was no movement at Henri Pichot’s house. It must have been close to twelve-thirty, but I refused to look at my watch.

  Several feet away from where I sat under the tree was a hill of bull grass. I doubted that I had looked at it once in all the time that I had been sitting there. I probably would not have noticed it at all had a butterfly, a yellow butterfly with dark specks like ink dots on its wings, not lit there. What had brought it there? There was no odor that I could detect to have attracted it. There were other places where it could have rested—there was the wire fence on either side of the road, there were weeds along both ditches with strong fragrances, there were flowers just a short distance away in Pichot’s yard—so why did it light on a hill of bull grass that offered it nothing? I watched it closely, the way it opened its wings and closed them, the way it opened its wings again, fluttered, closed its wings for a second or two, then opened them again and flew away. I watched it fly over the ditch and down into the quarter, I watched it until I could not see it anymore.

  Yes, I told myself. It is finally over.

  I waited another few minutes for Henri Pichot to come out, but he did not. I stood up and stretched and looked across the highway at the river, so tranquil, its water as blue as the sky. The willows near the edge of the water were just as still, and no breeze stirred the Spanish moss that hung from the cypresses. I could hear the horn as the bus came around the big bend a mile away on its way into Bayonne. I looked toward Pichot’s house again, and I started back down the quarter. I knew it was over, but I would wait until I heard from the courthouse. I looked back several times, but no Henri Pichot. I was the only person in the road. Just me, and my gray car parked farther down the quarter, in front of my aunt’s house.

  I took my time walking, and occasionally slapped my leg with the Westcott. When I came up even with the church, I stopped out in the road to look at Miss Emma’s house again. The door was still shut, the curtain hung limp in the window. I wondered if she knew it was finally over.

  Just before going into the churchyard, I looked back up the quarter. And now I did see a car coming toward me. The driver drove slowly to keep down the dust. It didn’t look like Pichot’s car, and I knew it was not Reverend Ambrose’s. I moved into the ditch as Paul came up even with me and stopped. We looked at each other, and I knew he had come to bring me the news. I didn’t go up to the car, as I was supposed to do; I waited for him to make his move. I saw him reach for something on the seat beside him, then he opened the door and got out. He had a notebook, just like the one I had given Jefferson. I waited for him to come to me.

  “He wanted me to bring you this.”

  Paul looked directly at me, his gray-blue eyes more intense than I had ever seen them before. I took the notebook from him, and he continued to stare at me, like someone in shock.

  “Do you have a minute?” he asked me.

  “Yes. But I’ll have to go inside first. I left the children on their knees. I’ll be right back.”

  The children all looked at me as I walked up the aisle to the table. I told them to rise from their knees. When they had all sat down, some of them rubbing their knees before sitting, I told them I had to speak to someone, and I wanted them to remain quiet until I got back. I told them that Jefferson had sent a notebook to me, and I was going to leave it on the table, and later we would talk. I left Irene Cole in charge and went back outside.

  Paul and I started walking down the quarter. We were both quiet. I waited for him to begin.

  “It went as well as it could have gone.” He spoke slowly as we walked abreast, he looking up ahead, I down at the ground. “There was no trouble. He was a little shaky—but no trouble.”

  Paul was quiet a moment, then suddenly he stopped walking. After going another step, I stopped, too, and looked back at him.

  “He was the strongest man in that crowded room, Grant Wiggins,” Paul said, staring at me and speaking louder than was necessary. “He was, he was. I’m not saying this to make you feel good, I’m not saying this to ease your pain. Ask that preacher, ask Harry Williams. He was the strongest man there. We all stood jammed together, no more than six, eight feet away from that chair. We all had each othe
r to lean on. When Vincent asked him if he had any last words, he looked at the preacher and said, ‘Tell Nannan I walked.’ And straight he walked, Grant Wiggins. Straight he walked. I’m a witness. Straight he walked.”

  Paul stopped talking. He was breathing heavily. He was looking at me but seeing Jefferson in that chair. We started walking again. We were passing by Miss Emma’s house, but Paul didn’t know this. He had never been in the quarter before.

  “After they put the death cloth over his face, I couldn’t watch anymore. I looked down at the floor,” Paul was saying. His voice was quieter, less intense now. “I heard the two jolts, but I wouldn’t look up. I’ll never forget the sound of that generator as long as I live on this earth.”

  We came to the end of the quarter and stood on the railroad tracks while gazing across the field at the rows of early cane. Paul got in front of me to look in my face.

  “You’re one great teacher, Grant Wiggins,” he said.

  “I’m not great. I’m not even a teacher.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You have to believe to be a teacher,” I said, looking at the rows of new cane. To the right of where we were standing were the tall pecan trees in the cemetery. There would be another grave there within a day or two.

  “I saw the transformation, Grant Wiggins,” Paul said.

  “I didn’t do it.”

  “Who, then?”

  “Maybe he did it himself.”

  “He never could have done that. I saw the transformation. I’m a witness to that.”

  “Then maybe it was God,” I said.

  Paul continued to look at me. He did not like the way I had used the name of God. He came from good stock. He believed. But he didn’t say anything.

  “You’re ready to start back?” I asked him.

  “I didn’t open his notebook,” Paul said. We had turned and were walking up the quarter now. “I didn’t think it was my place to open the notebook. He asked me to bring it to you, and I brought it to you. But I would like to know his thoughts sometime—if you don’t mind.”

  “After I read it,” I said.

  “I suppose this has been very hard on everybody.”

  “Hard on the people here,” I said.

  “School is just about ready to end, huh?” Paul asked, after a while.

  “Yes,” I said. “We start a month later and get out two months earlier than the whites do.”

  “What are you going to do when school is over? Go on a vacation?”

  “I don’t know. It depends on Vivian. Whatever she wants.”

  “She’s beautiful,” Paul said. “You’re a lucky fellow there, Grant Wiggins.”

  “Yes, I’m lucky,” I said. “Some of us are.”

  “I’m sorry,” Paul said. “I am very, very sorry.”

  We had stopped for a moment. Now we started walking again.

  “If I could ever be of any help, I would like you to call on me. I mean that with all my heart.”

  We were passing by Miss Emma’s house. Reverend Ambrose’s car was parked before the door.

  “Isn’t that the preacher’s car?” Paul asked.

  “That’s where Jefferson lived. That’s his nannan’s house.”

  Paul looked at the house as we went by. He looked at it again over his shoulder. We came up to the church and stopped at his car.

  “Well, I better go in to the children,” I said.

  Paul stuck out his hand.

  “Allow me to be your friend, Grant Wiggins. I don’t ever want to forget this day. I don’t ever want to forget him.”

  I took his hand. He held mine with both of his.

  “I don’t know what you’re going to say when you go back in there. But tell them he was the bravest man in that room today. I’m a witness, Grant Wiggins. Tell them so.”

  “Maybe one day you will come back and tell them so.”

  “It would be an honor.”

  I turned from him and went into the church. Irene Cole told the class to rise, with their shoulders back. I went up to the desk and turned to face them. I was crying.

  Also by ERNEST J. GAINES

  A Gathering of Old Men

  In My Father’s House

  A Long Day in November

  The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

  Bloodline

  Of Love and Dust

  Catherine Carmier

  Acclaim for

  ERNEST J. GAINES’s

  A

  LESSON

  BEFORE

  DYING

  “A strongly felt and—in the best sense—ambitious novel.”

  —Newsday

  “A quietly moving novel [that] takes us back to a place we’ve been before to impart a lesson for living.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “The lesson is valuable and apt, presented in the modest but forceful terms that we have come to expect from Ernest J. Gaines.”

  —Washington Post Book World

  “Gaines has a gift for evoking the tenor of life in a bygone era and making it seem as vivid and immediate as something that happened only yesterday.”

  —Christian Science Monitor

  ERNEST J. GAINES

  A

  LESSON

  BEFORE

  DYING

  Ernest J. Gaines was born on a plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish, near New Roads, Louisiana, which is the Bayonne of all his fictional works. His previous books include A Gathering of Old Men, In My Father’s House, A Long Day in November, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Bloodline, Of Love and Dust, and Catherine Carmier. He divides his time between San Francisco and the University of Southwestern Louisiana, in Lafayette, where he is writer-in-residence.

  FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, JUNE 1994

  Copyright © 1993 by Ernest J. Gaines

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, in 1993.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Gaines, Ernest J., 1933—

  A lesson before dying / Ernest J. Gaines.—

  1st Vintage contemporaries ed.

  p.cm.—(Vintage contemporaries)

  1. Afro-American men—Louisiana—Fiction. 2. Death row inmates—Louisiana—Fiction. 3. Friendship—Louisiana—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3557.A355L47 1994

  813'.54—dc20 93-42201

  CIP

  Please visit our website at www.randomhouse.com

  eISBN: 978-1-4000-7770-0

  v3.0