"Well," Clatoo said. "What we go'n do? Y'all can see the man's patient done run out."
"Ain't we go'n do what we was go'n do from the start?" Johnny Paul said. Johnny Paul was standing in the back of the room with some of the others. "If Mathu go to jail, we going, too—ain't that's what we said?"
"Now, listen," Clatoo said.
"Ain't that's what we said?" Johnny Paul said, from the back of the room.
I was kinda short, so I had pushed myself up closer to the firehalf. I had Yank on one side of me, Tucker on the other side of me, and Dirty Red right behind me. Clatoo looked over all of us at Johnny Paul in the back of the room.
"Give me one minute," Clatoo said. "One minute. Now, listen. Y'all know I love this man," he said, and nodded toward Mathu. "Y'all know I'd do anything for this man. Y'all know I respect this man like I don't respect too many men. And y'all know why. He always stood up. Stood up to Fix, stood up to anybody who tried to do him wrong. Even to the Marshalls out there at the front, he stood his ground. That's why Jack Marshall don't like Mathu today, Mathu always stood up. Stood up to Jack Marshall, too. And that's why I come here today, to stand with this man. To die with him, 'side him, if I have to. That's why we all come here—out of respect for him. To fight 'side him. To fight, gentlemen. But now fight who? There ain't nobody to fight, gentlemen. Nobody to fight." Clatoo looked at all of us now. We all had our guns. All of us ready. "Gentlemen," he said. "Let's call it a day and go back home."
All of a sudden I got knocked almost in the firehalf. It was Johnny Paul pushing his way up to the front. He had pushed against Dirty Red, Dirty Red had fell against me, and I had almost fell over in the firehalf.
"Now what the hell you think you saying, Clatoo?" Johnny Paul asked him. Johnny Paul and Clatoo was about same height. They could look each other eye to eye. "What the hell we come here for if not to stand to the end?"
The rest of us went along with Johnny Paul. We all said we came to stay to the end. Clatoo picked up Mathu's old field cup and rapped it on the mantelpiece.
"Give me one more minute, one more minute, and I'll shut up if you want me to shut up," he said.
We all got quiet.
"Now, y'all heard the man," Clatoo said. "He's going to take Mathu in."
"Then we go, too," Johnny Paul said.
"Go for what, Johnny Paul?" Clatoo asked him. "Do what when we get there?"
"Same thing we was go'n do before," Johnny Paul said.
Clatoo took in a deep breath and shook his head. "Johnny Paul, that man won't even lock us up now. You know why? Because tomorrow this time he know he can prove most of us
wasn't nowhere around this place. He just went along with us out there because of Fix. He didn't want us in Bayonne with these shotguns, because he didn't want Fix to come and find us there. But now Fix ain't showing up, and he ain't worried about us no more. He never took us serious, not for once. Fix was on his mind, not us. Fix, Johnny Paul."
"I don't care what was on Mapes's mind, or what's on y'all mind, but this is what's on my mind. If Mathu leave from here tonight, I'm leaving with him. We all had good reason to kill Beau."
"But we didn't do it," Clatoo said.
"Nobody can say I didn't do it," Johnny Paul said. "I got the same make gun."
"But you know you didn't do it, Johnny Paul," Clatoo said. "You know in your heart you didn't do it." He looked over the room. "Can't the rest of y'all understand what I'm trying to say? Jacob? Mat? Y'all understand what I'm trying to say, don't you?"
"I see your point," Mat said, from over by the door. "But we come here to stand, Clatoo. I don't feel like going back home empty-handed. We'll never gather like this ever again."
"But we've already done it, Mat," Clatoo said. "Don't you see, we've already done it? Nobody is leaving here empty-handed. We've already stood. Go to Bayonne now for what? Do what in Bayonne when we get there? March around that courthouse and sing—with loaded guns? Guns made for fighting with, but we ain't got a enemy to fight."
"I already said what I'm go'n do," Johnny Paul said. "If Mathu go to Bayonne, I go to Bayonne with him."
He pushed his way back to the back of the room.
It was quiet for a while. I was thinking how I was picking up pecans behind the quarters when my wife sent and called for me. I was thinking how scared I was when she told me I had to go find a shotgun somewhere, and how scared I was when I went up to Aunt Lena and asked her to borrow it. I was thinking now about all the hurt I had suffered, the insults my wife had suffered right in front of my face. I was thinking about what all the old people musta gone through even before me. I was thinking about all that—and this was the day we was go'n get even. But now here Clatoo was saying we ought to go back home. Go back home and do what? I hadn't even fired a shot. Just one, in that pecan tree, so I could have a empty shell. No, that wasn't enough. Not after what I had put up with all these years. I wanted me a fight, even if I had to get killed.
"There ain't no more to prove," I heard Mathu saying. "Y'all done already proved it."
I had been looking down at the floor. Now I looked up at Mathu. He leaned against the mantelpiece. He was tired, his voice weak and shaky. He looked right at me, smiling. He never thought much of me. Used to call me Little Red Rooster all the time. People even said him and Beulah had fooled around some behind my back. I never asked him, I never asked her—I was too scared. But I wasn't scared now. He knowed I wasn't scared now. That's why he was smiling at me. And that made me feel good.
"I never thought I woulda seen this day," he said. "No, I never thought I woulda seen this day. Rooster with a gun, Dirty Red with a gun—Chimley, Billy. No, I never thought I woulda seen this day."
I looked up at him, holding my gun tight to my side and feeling proud.
"Till a few minutes ago, I felt the same way that man out there feel about y'all—you never would 'mount to anything. But I was wrong. And he's still wrong. 'Cause he ain't go'n ever face the fact. But now I know. And I thank y'all. And I look up to you. Every man in here. And this the proudest day of my life."
He stopped. His voice got hoarse. Couple times his lips moved, but nothing came out. We waited. My heart was beating fast and hard. I helt my gun tight, looking up at him. No, he wasn't the proudest man in this house. I was.
"I ain't nothing but a mean, bitter old man," he said. "No hero. Lord—no hero. A mean, bitter old man. Hating them out there on that river, hating y'all here in the quarters. Put myself above all—proud to be African. You know why proud to be African? 'Cause they won't let me be a citizen here in this country. Hate them 'cause they won't let me be a citizen, hated y'all 'cause you never tried. Just a mean-hearted old man. All I ever been, till this hour."
He stopped and looked down at me again, looked at me a good while, nodding his head.
"I been changed," he said. "I been changed. Not by that white man's God. I don't believe in that white man's God. I been changed by y'all. Rooster, Clabber, Dirty Red, Coot— you changed this hardhearted old man."
He stopped again, looking across the room at the people.
"Clatoo is right, I want y'all to go home." His voice was getting hoarse again, and he had to stop and clear his throat. His lips moved, but nothing came out till he cleared his throat again. "Go home, Johnny Paul," he said. He looked at Johnny Paul a good two or three seconds; then he looked at somebody else. He would call that person's name, look at him awhile, then turn to somebody else. "Go home, Dirty Red. Aunt Jude and Unc Francois happy tonight." Then to somebody else for two or three seconds. "Go home, Rufe. Go home, Yank, Jacob, Mat, Clabber—y'all go home. You Bing and Ding, go back to that bayou."
After looking across the room at everybody, he turned back to Clatoo standing at the other end of the firehalf.
"Do what you can with all this old junk around here," he said. "If the people want it, give it to them. If they don't, throw it away. I'm tired, like all y'all must be tired. And the law done waited long enough."
We all
looked at him, but nobody moved.
Then Charlie spoke from back in the kitchen. "You don't have to go nowhere, Parrain."
We all turned. Charlie had been standing back there in the dark. Then he came to the front. He was so big, so tall, he had to duck his head to come through that middle door. He was taller than any man in that room and bigger than any man in that room, and we all had to look up to him. He had on blue denims, the shirt hanging out his pants. He had been running, and he had laid down on the ground. I could smell the sweat, the field, the swamps in his clothes.
He sat down on the bed.
"One of y'all standing round ain't doing nothing, go find the law," he said.
Lou Dimes
It was dark now . She sat on the passenger side, and I was in the other seat beside her. I had tried several times to speak to her, but she refused to answer. Mapes came out of the yard and went by the car without saying anything to us. I watched him go farther down the quarters until he had crossed the railroad tracks; then I couldn't see him anymore.
I looked at Candy sitting over in the other seat.
"Maybe you don't know it," I told her. "But after tonight there's going to be a big change in your life. That old man is free of you now. When he pulled your hands off his arm and went into that room, he was setting both of you free. Do you know what I'm saying? He doesn't need you to protect him anymore, Candy. He's an old man, and what little time he's got left he wants to live it his own way."
She just sat there all tight-lipped, staring out into the darkness.
"Before I leave here tonight, I want a yes or no to where our relationship is going. If I don't get any answer at all, I won't be coming back here anymore."
She looked at me now.
"You bastard," she said. "You bastard."
"That's possible," I said. "I wasn't there. But after tonight ..."
She slapped me. It came without warning. I had noticed her face trembling, but I hadn't expected her to hit me. I raised my hand quickly, but I stopped it in midair. And instead of hitting her back, I rubbed the side of my face.
"Thank you, Ma'am," I told her. "But I will stick around until Mapes takes him into Bayonne. That's all I'll need to end my story."
Just about then one of the old men from inside the house came out onto the porch and asked for the sheriff. I heard Aunt Glo saying that the sheriff had gone down the quarters. The old man was standing in the light from inside the room. The light threw his shadow across the porch and out into the yard. Everyone else was in darkness.
"Y'all still have a couple more minutes," I heard Griffin saying. "In case y'all wanta sing, or pray, or something."
"We're ready now," the old man said. It was Gable. I could tell by his quiet, even voice.
"Well, you go'n have to wait awhile," Griffin said. "Don't worry. He won't keep you waiting long."
Gable came down the steps. He had his gun with him.
"Where you think you going?" Griffin asked him.
Gable didn't answer him. He came out to the car where Candy and I were sitting.
"Y'all seen which way the sheriff went?" he asked.
"Down there," I said, nodding toward the field. "Wait, I'll get him for you."
While I blinked the lights a couple of times, Candy tried to get some information from Gable about what had gone on inside the house. He shook his head and told her that he was supposed to talk only to the sheriff. After blinking the lights again, I saw Mapes walking back. Gable went toward him, and they stood a moment talking, then came back together.
"Come on inside," Mapes said to me. "You might as well come along, too," he said to Candy. "Seems like you did all that work for nothing."
"What happened?" I asked, getting out of the car.
"Let her tell you," Mapes said, jerking his head toward Candy.
"I did it," Candy said. She had gotten out on the other side. "I'll swear to it in court."
"And Charlie?" Mapes asked her.
"Charlie?" I said. "Big Charlie?"
"That's right," Mapes said. "Big Charlie."
We went into the yard. Mapes told the women and children they could come inside, too. He went into the room first, then Candy, then me, and the rest followed. The place was stuffy and crowded. Everything about the place said the occupant was an old man, without a woman.
Charlie was sitting on the bed when we came in. Even sitting down, he was nearly as tall as some of the old men standing around him. After we came in, he stood up and pressed his shirttail inside his pants. He was about six seven, he weighed around two hundred and seventy-five pounds, he was jet black, with a round cannonball head and his hair cut to the skin; the whites of his eyes were too brown, his lips looked like pieces of liver. His arms bulged inside the sleeves of his denim shirt, and his torso was as round as a barrel. He and Mapes weighed about the same, but Mapes had twice as much belly. He was the quintessence of what you would picture as the super, big buck nigger.
"I'm a man, Sheriff," he said. "I'm a man."
"All right," Mapes said. "I believe you. Now, I want some of you folks to go back into the kitchen or out on the porch so we can have some room in here."
The people would not move until Mapes started calling their names individually. When they did step back, it was only a couple of inches, and soon they were pressing in closer again.
"Say, sport," Mapes said to Snookum. "How about some more of that ice water?"
"Don't start till I get back, hear, Charlie?" Snookum said,
"I'm a man, Sheriff," Charlie said. "I want the world to know I'm a man. I'm a man, Miss Candy. I'm a man, Mr. Lou. I want you to write in your paper I'm a man."
"I'll write it, Charlie," I said, looking up at him. He was three or four inches taller than I, and outweighed me, I'm sure, by at least a hundred pounds.
"I'm a man," he said. "I want the world to know it. I ain't Big Charlie, nigger boy, no more, I'm a man. Y'all hear me? A man come back. Not no nigger boy. A nigger boy run and run and run. But a man come back. I'm a man."
Snookum brought the water jug and a glass. Mapes drank two glasses of water and handed the glass back.
"Thanks, sport," he said.
"Hand it here," Charlie told Snookum.
He took the jug and raised it to his mouth, and he didn't bring it down until it was empty. He handed Snookum the empty jug.
"I'm a man, Sheriff," he said. "That's why I come back. I'm a man. Parrain. I'm a man, Parrain."
Mathu, standing in the corner by the fireplace, nodded his white head.
"You want to tell us about it, Charlie?" Mapes asked him.
"I'll tell you about it, Sheriff," Charlie said. He started, then stopped, because something else had suddenly popped in his mind. "Sheriff, I'm a man," he said to Mapes. "And just like I call you Sheriff, I think I ought to have a handle, too—like Mister. Mr. Biggs."
"Sure," Mapes said, nodding. "At this point, anything you say ... Mr. Biggs. That goes for the rest of y'all around here,"
Mapes said to us. He was serious, too; he wasn't winking. He looked back at Charlie. "What about Candy?"
"I call her Miss Candy," Charlie said. "She can say Mr. Biggs, too."
Mapes looked back at Candy, who was standing next to Mathu. When she first came into the room, she hesitated a moment to search for him; then she pushed her way through the crowd to where he stood by the fireplace. I was too far away to hear her question, if she asked one at all; and I did not hear Mathu's answer, if he gave one. I saw only a slight nod of his head.
"Well?" Mapes said to Candy.
She nodded. I don't think she really understood why Mapes had spoken to her. But that did not matter. What did matter was that Mathu was free. She did not care about anything else.
Mapes turned back to Charlie.
"Tell me about it, Mr. Biggs," he said. "Start from the beginning, back there in the field."
"It didn't start back there in the field, Sheriff," Charlie said. "It started fifty years ago. No, not f
ifty; more like forty-four, forty-five years ago. 'Cause that was about the first time I run from somebody. I'm fifty now, and I'm sure I musta run when I was no more than five, 'cause I know Parrain was beating me for running when I was six. 'Cause I can remember the first time he beat me for running. You remember the first time you beat me for running, Parrain? That time Ed-de took my 'tato on my way to school?"
Mathu was looking at him as though he was not absolutely sure he was seeing him there. He nodded his head.
"All my life, all my life," Charlie said. Not to Mapes, not to us, but to himself. "That's all I ever done, all my life, was run from people. From black, from white; from nigger, from Cajun, both. All my life. Made me do what they wanted me to do, and 'bused me if I did it right, and 'bused me if I did it wrong—all my life. And I took it. I'm fifty now. Fifty years of 'busing. All my natural-born black life I took the 'busing and never hit back. You tried to make me a man, didn't you, Parrain? Didn't you?"
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