A Lesson Before Dying (15 page)

“Yes, ma'am,” I said.

She started up the aisle toward the cash register, but just about then another white woman came into the store. The clerk set the radio beside the cash register and went to see what the white woman wanted. The other woman was not buying anything; she only wanted to talk. So they stood there about ten minutes before the clerk came back to wait on me. After ringing up the bill, she asked me if I needed a bag. But she asked it in a way that I knew she didn't want to give me one. No, thanks, I told her, and after paying, I tucked the little radio under my arm and left.

The courthouse was to the right and across the street from the store. I walked between the parked cars and passed the statue of the Confederate soldier and the state, national, and Confederate flags. Paul and Sheriff Guidry were in the office. Paul saw the package under my arm, and I could see that he was happy that I had remembered. The sheriff looked up at me from his desk.

“Well, Professor, is that the radio?”

“Yes, sir. I hope you don't mind.”

“No, I don't mind this time,” he said. “But from now on, you ask permission before you bring anything else in here.”

“I spoke to the deputy.”

“The deputy can't give you permission to bring things in here. I do,” he said.

I was quiet.

“Leave it,” the sheriff said. “I'll see that he gets it. Batries, I hope.”

“Yes, sir, batries,” I said. I had almost said “batteries.”

“How did it go today?” he asked.

“All right,” I said.

The sheriff nodded.

“I'll see he gets it.”

“Thank you, sir.”

I looked at Paul. He nodded and smiled. He probably would have said something encouraging if the sheriff had not been there.

I went to my car and drove back to the Rainbow, hoping that Vivian would be there and that we would have a drink and just sit there in the semidarkness alone together.

23

MISS EMMA FELT
well enough on Monday to accompany my aunt and Reverend Ambrose to visit Jefferson. After the usual search, Paul led them to the dayroom, then went to the cell for Jefferson. Jefferson asked if he could take the radio. The deputy said no. Jefferson said he wouldn't go.

I would hear later that Jefferson had not turned the radio off since Paul brought it to him on Friday evening. The other prisoners could hear the radio at all times of the day and night. No one else had a radio, and the prisoners wished he would play it louder, but no one would dare say anything to him. The prisoners nearest his cell could faintly hear the music he played, but the ones farther away could only hear static, though he searched, day and night, for stronger stations.

“You want me to bring them here?” Paul asked Jefferson.

Jefferson went on listening to the radio without answering him.

The deputy returned to the dayroom and told Miss Emma what had happened. She had already set the table, and she and my aunt and Reverend Ambrose had taken their places, leaving a space for Jefferson. The food—beef stew and Irish potatoes—was still in the pot and covered. A tablespoon and a paper napkin lay beside each tin pan, on a white tablecloth.

“Radio?” Miss Emma asked Paul.

“Grant bought him one.”

“When?”

“Last Friday.”

“That mean he ain't coming?”

“That's what he said,” the deputy told her.

Miss Emma sat staring at the space where Jefferson was supposed to sit, then she looked up at Paul again.

“Can we go to him?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said. “But it's going to be uncomfortable, y'all trying to eat out of them pans standing up.”

“We don't mind,” Miss Emma said, and pushed herself up from the table.

My aunt helped her collect everything, then the three of them followed the deputy back to the cell. Jefferson lay on his bunk, listening to music on the radio.

Forty-five minutes later, when Paul returned to the cell, he found the radio turned off and Jefferson lying on his side, facing the wall, his back to the people. The deputy opened the door to let them out, and Jefferson turned from the wall and snapped on the radio. Paul told Miss Emma that the sheriff wanted to see her.

The sheriff was sitting behind his desk. There were two empty chairs, but he did not ask anyone to sit down.

“He give you any trouble back there?” the sheriff asked Miss Emma.

“No, sir.”

“I said from the start I didn't want any trouble,” the sheriff said. “If that radio is causing any trouble, I'll get it out of there.”

“It ain't causing no trouble,” Miss Emma said.

“He didn't come to the dayroom.”

“We went to him. We managed.”

“Standing up?”

“Yes, sir. We didn't mind.”

“You minded before,” the sheriff said. “That's why you went and worried my wife.”

“Yes, sir,” Miss Emma said.

“Listen,” the sheriff said, pointing a finger across the desk. “He hasn't got much time. I don't want any trouble. Y'all have to work together—with that teacher.”

“We go'n work together,” Miss Emma said. “I'll talk to Grant when I get back.”

“What about you, Reverend?” the sheriff asked.

“My duty to stand by Sis' Emma,” Reverend Ambrose said.

“And what about Jefferson?” the sheriff asked. “What about his soul?”

According to Paul, who told me this later, Reverend Ambrose lowered his eyes and did not answer.

“All right,” the sheriff said. “Y'all work it out your way. Any problems, and I'll take that radio, or stop the visits.”

Reverend Ambrose came back to the quarter between two-thirty and three o'clock, and when I dismissed school one of the boys came back to tell me that my aunt wanted to see me at Miss Emma's house before I went home. All three of them were sitting around the kitchen table when I came in. They had already finished their coffee. The cups were still on the table, but empty.

“You know what you done done?” my aunt asked me. I could tell by her face and her voice that she was mad.

“What did I do?” I asked.

“Why?”

“Why what, Tante Lou?”

“That radio!” she said. “That radio!”

“What's wrong with the radio?”

“What's wrong with it?” Reverend Ambrose cut in. “What's wrong with it? That's all he do, listen to that radio, that's what's wrong with it.”

“And what's wrong with that?” I asked.

“He didn't have time to come sit down with us today, that's what's wrong with that,” the minister said. “He ain't got time for nothing else, that's what's wrong with that.”

“Jefferson needs something in that cell,” I said.

“Yes, he do,” the minister said. “You hit the nail on the head, mister. Yes, he do. But not that box.”

“And what do you suggest, Reverend Ambrose?” I asked.

“God,” the minister said. “He ain't got but five more Fridays and a half. He needs God in that cell, and not that sin box.”

“What sin box?” I said.

“What you call that kind of music he listen to?” the minister asked. “Us standing in there trying to talk to him, and him listening to that thing till she got to reach over and turn it off—what you call it?”

“I call it company, Reverend Ambrose,” I said.

“And I call it sin company,” he said.

“And I don't care what you call it!” I said to him.

“Grant!” my aunt said. I could see that she was becoming more and more angry with me. Now she got up from her chair.

“You don't talk like that!” she said. “Never!”

“Louise,” Miss Emma called to her. “Louise?”

“I didn't raise you that way,” my aunt said, coming toward me.

“Louise, please. Lord—don't!” Miss Emma pushed up from her chair.

My aunt stopped a step or two away from me, though it was clear she wanted to slap me.

“We have to get something straight around here,” I said.

“And right now. I don't know a thing about God or sin. What I do know is—”

“My Lord,” the minister said, looking at me as if I were the devil himself. “Listen to the teacher of our children.”

“Last Friday,” I continued, “was the first time, the very first time, that Jefferson looked at me without hate, without accusing me of putting him in that cell. Last Friday was the first time he ever asked me a question or answered me without accusing me for his condition. I don't know if you all know what I'm talking about. It seems you don't. But I found a way to reach him for the first time. Now, he needs that radio, and he wants it. He wants something of his own before he dies. He wants a gallon of ice cream for his last supper—did he tell you that? Did he tell you he never had enough ice cream? Did he tell you that he never had a radio of his own before? Did he tell you any of this? He wants those things before he dies. He has only a month to live. And all I'm trying to do is make it as comfortable as I can for him.”

“And after that radio and that ice cream, how 'bout his soul, mister?” my aunt asked me.

“I don't know a thing about the soul,” I said.

“Yes you do,” she said. She tightened her mouth. She wanted to cry. And she wanted to slap me. Not only for this moment, but for all those years that I had refused to go to her church. “Yes you do,” she said, shaking her head. “'Cause I raised you better.”

“And you sent me to him, Tante Lou,” I said. “And I'm only trying to reach him the best way I can.”

“Turning him 'gainst God?”

“Tante Lou, that radio has nothing to do with turning Jefferson against God,” I said. “That radio is there to help him not think about death. He's locked up in that cage like an animal—and what else can he think about but that last day and that last hour? That radio makes it less painful. Now, if you all want that radio out of there, you just go on and take it from him. But I won't go back up there anymore.”

“We got to have it your way or else, that's it?” Reverend Ambrose cut in.

“No,” I said. “You can have it your way. You can take it from him. But you won't reach him if you do. The only thing that keeps him from thinking he is not a hog is that radio. Take that radio away, and let's see what you can do for the soul of a hog.”

“Then I'm the one that's not needed,” the minister said.

“No,” Miss Emma said. “You have to go, Reverend Ambrose. I'll make him see.”

“You saw today how it was,” the minister said. “He can't hear me through that wall of sin.”

“I'll make him see,” Miss Emma said. “He needs you. Maybe he don't know it yet, but he needs you. Maybe you don't know it yet either, Grant.”

“All I know, Miss Emma, is that last Friday was the first time I reached him,” I said. “It was the first time he didn't call himself a hog.”

“And that whole gallona ice cream?” the minister said. “You sure you reached him?”

I didn't know how to answer that.

“Well, Mr. Teacher?” Reverend Ambrose said. “I'm waiting for your answer.”

My aunt and Miss Emma were also waiting.

I went back to see Jefferson again on Wednesday. On Tuesday, I had asked the children at the school to bring large pecans and roasted peanuts for me to take to him. Some brought pecans in paper bags, some brought them in little flour and rice sacks, others brought them in their pockets. There were about twenty-five pounds of pecans, about half that many pounds of roasted peanuts. I took a few pounds of each and left the rest to be distributed among the children after school. In Bayonne I bought a half-dozen apples, some candy, and two or three comic books.

You did not hear the music until you got near the cell. He was lying on his bunk, the little radio on the floor at his head. Paul let me in and left.

“How's it going, partner?” I said. “The children sent you some pecans and peanuts. I bought you some apples and a couple candy bars. Some funny books.”

He let his feet slide to the floor as he sat up on the bunk. I stood there awhile, then I sat down at the foot of the bunk and handed him the bag. He took it without saying anything and set it on the floor. The radio was still playing.

“Doing all right?” I asked him.

He sat there staring at the wall in front of him, his big hands clasped together. He nodded his head.

“How's the radio?” I asked him.

“All right.”

“Did you get Randy over the weekend?”

“Yeah, I caught him.”

“I listened to him a little bit myself,” I said. “You didn't have any trouble getting the station, did you?”

“No, I got him all right,” he said.

We were quiet. He stared at the concrete wall. The radio was playing western music on a station out of Baton Rouge.

“You want to ask me anything?”

He shook his head. I waited a moment, until I thought it was a good time to speak.

“I saw your nannan the other day after she came back from seeing you, Jefferson. She said you didn't have dinner with them in the dayroom. They had to come here, and they couldn't sit down.”

He didn't say anything.

“When they come back, can you meet them in there, Jefferson? She needs that.”

“All right.”

“You'll do it for me, for her?” I asked.

“All right.”

“She would love that, Jefferson. And Reverend Ambrose—will you let him talk to you?”

“All right.”

I didn't know anything else to talk about, and he had nothing to say, so we just sat there quietly awhile.

“Jefferson,” I said finally, “I want to be your friend. I want you to ask me questions. I want you to say anything that comes to your mind—anything you want to say to me. I don't care what it is—say it. I'll keep it to myself if you want, I'll talk about it to other people if you want. Will you do that for me?”

He nodded his head. He was staring at the wall.

“I just thought of something,” I said. “Sometimes at night—sometimes when you're thinking about something and may not be able to remember it when I come back—I was just thinking maybe I could bring you a little notebook and a pencil. You could write your thoughts down, and we could talk about it when I came back. Or maybe you could talk to Reverend Ambrose about it when he came to visit you. Would you like that?”

“All right.”

“You want me to bring it?”

“If you want.”

“And you would write down your thoughts? Anything you want to talk about?”

He nodded his head. But he was still looking at the wall.

“Do you believe I'm your friend, Jefferson?” I asked him. “Do you believe I care about you?”

He didn't answer.

“Jefferson?”

But he was not listening.

I looked around the cell—at the seatless brown-stained commode, the washbowl whose faucet never stopped dripping, the little metal shelf over the bowl, which held his pan, tin cup, and spoon. Through the barred window I could see the branches of the sycamore tree stirring from a soft breeze. There was still a chill in the air, and Jefferson wore one of my heavy wool shirts. On the floor, the little radio had been playing one western song after another.

“You like that country stuff, huh?”

“It don't matter.”

“Me, I go for Randy,” I said. “I like those low-down blues.”

I heard someone opening the big steel door at the other end of the cellblock. And as he came down the aisle, I could hear Paul speaking to the prisoners.

“Well, I guess I'll be taking off,” I said. “Anything you want me to tell your nannan?”

I had stood. Now he looked up at me. There was no hate in his face—but Lord, there was pain. I could see that he wanted to say something, but it was hard for him to do. I stood over him, waiting.