A Lesson Before Dying (7 page)

9

AT ONE-THIRTY
I left school to take Miss Emma into Bayonne. She came out on the porch with Tante Lou, and she had a basket hung over one arm and a handbag in the other hand. Tante Lou closed the door to keep the heat in the room, and she and Miss Emma came down the walk and out to the car. Miss Emma wore her brown overcoat with the rabbit fur around the collar and cuffs. Tante Lou wore only a sweater, so I figured she was not going to Bayonne with us. She opened the door for Miss Emma to get into the back seat, and after shutting it, she leaned against the door to continue their conversation. I am sure they had been talking all day, but still they had things to talk about.

“This way is best,” she said.

Miss Emma may have nodded, but I am not sure. I refused to look into the mirror at them.

“Anything else he need, let me know,” my aunt went on. “They got plenty old socks and shirts round the place.”

“I think we're supposed to be there around two,” I said, without looking back at them.

I could feel both sets of eyes on the back of my neck.

“Tell him I'm praying,” my aunt said. “Y'all better go. I'll see you when you get back.”

She was talking to Miss Emma, not to me. She knew how I felt about the whole thing. I drove farther down the quarter and turned around. My aunt was standing where we had left her; she was waving now. You might have thought we were going to China instead of the thirteen miles to Bayonne.

Driving along the St. Charles River, I could feel Miss Emma not looking at me, not looking at anything—just thinking. Maybe once or twice she glanced in my direction, but most of the time she was lost in thought. Like my aunt, she knew how much I hated all this.

So the thirteen miles to Bayonne were driven in silence. I didn't say anything to her, she didn't say anything to me. I never looked at her in the rearview mirror. I never turned my head to the river on my right or to the houses on the side of the road to my left. As far up the highway as you could see were stalks of sugarcane that had fallen off the trailers on their way to the mill. The people were gathering pecans on either side of the road, but I looked at them only from a distance. If they waved, I did not wave back. I didn't want Miss Emma to think for a moment that my mood had changed.

The courthouse, like most of the public buildings in town, was made of red brick. Built around the turn of the century, it looked like a small castle you might see in the countryside somewhere in Europe. The parking lot that surrounded the courthouse was covered with crushed seashells. A statue of a Confederate soldier stood to the right of the walk that led up to the courthouse door. Above the head of the statue, national, state, and Confederate flags flew on long metal poles. The big clock on the tower struck two as I parked opposite the statue and the flags. It took Miss Emma a while to get out of the car, so by the time we came into the sheriff's office, the clock on the wall there said five after two.

Two deputies, dressed in gray chinos, and a colored prisoner, in green coveralls with the letter “p” on the back, were in the office. The deputy behind the desk was giving the prisoner instructions. The younger deputy, who stood beside the desk, looked at us.

“I come to see Jefferson,” Miss Emma said.

The young deputy nodded to the deputy who was giving orders to the prisoner. It had something to do with the floor of the outside toilet. This toilet was for colored people who came to the courthouse, and it was down in the basement. You entered it from the courthouse parking lot. I had gone in there once or twice myself, but it was always filthy, and like everyone I knew, I tried to avoid going down there. But that was the only place to go. The toilets inside were for whites only.

“I want that done 'fore I leave from here,” the deputy told the prisoner. “I mean that, you hear?”

The prisoner, fifteen or sixteen years old, bowed his head and left.

“I come to see my boy, Jefferson,” Miss Emma told the deputy behind the desk.

“What you got there?” he asked her.

“Just some food, some clean clothes for him,” Miss Emma said.

“Paul,” the older man said.

The deputy who stood beside the desk came toward us.

“How's he been?” Miss Emma asked the deputy in charge.

“Quiet,” the deputy said.

“Yes, sir,” Miss Emma said.

The deputy grinned.

“Jefferson's been quiet,” Paul, the young deputy, told Miss Emma.

“Thank you, sir,” Miss Emma said to him.

The deputy went through the basket of food. Fried chicken, bread, baked sweet potatoes, tea cakes. Then he went through the handbag of clothes. There was a pair of old blue jeans, an old overwashed brown shirt, a pair of long johns, and two pairs of my socks, which my aunt had given Miss Emma for Jefferson.

“Empty your pockets,” he said to me.

I had nothing but a wallet, a handkerchief, and some loose change. I had left my keys in the car. I laid the things on the desk.

“Is that it?” the deputy asked me.

He had brown hair and gray-blue eyes, and he appeared to be a couple of years younger than I was. He looked pretty decent. The one behind the desk didn't look decent at all. His eyes were the color of cement. He had a big neck and a fleshy face. He was much older and much heavier than Paul.

Paul patted me down to see if I had taken everything out of my pockets. Then he told me that I could put my things back.

“Sheriff explained everything to y'all?” the chief deputy asked us.

“Sir?” Miss Emma said.

The chief deputy could see that I didn't like him, and I could tell he didn't like me. But he knew who was in charge and that I would have to take anything he dished out.

“No knives, no forks, no plates. Pans,” he said to Miss Emma. That was after he had looked at me a long time to let me know what he thought of me. “No hatpins, no pocket knives, no razor blades, no ice picks,” he said, looking at me again.

“Jefferson won't never do nothing like that,” Miss Emma said.

“You can't ever tell,” the deputy said. “Take them on up, Paul.”

“Follow me,” the young deputy said.

We followed him down a long, dark corridor, passing offices with open doors, and bathrooms for white ladies and white men. At the end of the corridor we had to go up a set of stairs. The stairs were made of steel. There were six steps, then a landing, a sharp turn, and another six steps. Then we went through a heavy steel door to the area where the prisoners were quartered. The white prisoners were also on this floor, but in a separate section. I counted eight cells for black prisoners, with two bunks to each cell. Half of the cells were empty, the others had one or two prisoners. They reached their hands out between the bars and asked for cigarettes or money. Miss Emma stopped to talk to them. She told them she didn't have any money, but she had brought some food for Jefferson, and if there was anything left she would give it to them. They asked me for money, and I gave them the change I had.

There was an empty cell between Jefferson and the rest of the prisoners. He was at the end of the cellblock and was lying on his bunk when we came up. The deputy unlocked the door for us, and Miss Emma and I went in. The deputy told us that he would have to lock us in, and that he would return within an hour. Miss Emma thanked him, and he locked the door and left. Jefferson still lay on his bunk, staring up at the ceiling. He didn't look at us once.

“How you feel, Jefferson?” Miss Emma asked him.

He didn't answer, and kept his eyes on the ceiling. The cell was roughly six by ten, with a metal bunk covered by a thin mattress and a woolen army blanket; a toilet without seat or toilet paper; a washbowl, brownish from residue and grime; a small metal shelf upon which was a pan, a tin cup, and a tablespoon. A single light bulb hung over the center of the cell, and at the end opposite the door was a barred window, which looked out onto a sycamore tree behind the courthouse. I could see the sunlight on the upper leaves. But the window was too high to catch sight of any other buildings or the ground.

“I come to see you and brung you something,” Miss Emma said.

We were standing, because there was no place to sit.

“You been all right?” she asked him.

He lay there looking up at the ceiling. His hair had grown out since the trial, but I am sure he had not combed it once. I told myself that I would bring him a comb next time I came.

“I brought Professor Wiggins,” Miss Emma said. “I brought you some fried chicken, some good old yams, and I brought you some tea cakes too.”

He looked up at the ceiling.

“Ain't you go'n ask me to sit down, Jefferson?”

He looked up at the ceiling, but he wasn't seeing the ceiling.

Miss Emma put the handbag of clothes and the basket of food on the floor and sat down on the bunk beside him. I should say that she sat as much of herself on the bunk as she could. About half, I would say. She passed her hand over his forehead and over his hair.

“Ain't you go'n speak to me, Jefferson?” she asked.

He remained quiet. She stroked his hair again.

“You want to just talk to me? You want Professor Wiggins to leave?”

He didn't answer her.

“You want me to go, and you just talk to Professor Wiggins?”

He still didn't answer.

She looked up at me. She was ready to cry. And I wished I were somewhere else.

“Hand me that basket, Grant,” she said.

I passed her the basket, and she took out a piece of chicken wrapped in brown paper. She unwrapped the drumstick and held it before Jefferson.

“Look what I brought you,” she said. “I knowed how much you like my fried chicken. Brought you some yams and some tea cakes, too. Ain't you go'n try some of it?”

“It don't matter,” I heard him say. He was looking up at the ceiling.

“What don't matter?”

He didn't answer.

“What don't matter, Jefferson?”

“Nothing don't matter,” he said, looking up at the ceiling but not seeing the ceiling.

“It matter to me, Jefferson,” she said. “You matter to me.”

He looked up at the ceiling, not seeing it.

“Jefferson?”

“Chicken, dirt, it don't matter,” he said.

“Yeah, it do, Jefferson. Yeah, it do. Dirt?”

“All the same,” he said. “It don't matter.”

“My chicken?” she said. “I'm tasting it right now.” She took a small bite. “You always liked my chicken. Every Sunday.”

He was quiet.

“You like a yam?” she asked him.

He didn't answer her.

“You want a tea cake? You don't have to eat no chicken if you don't want. You don't have to eat no old yam neither. But I know how much you like my tea cakes. I didn't bring no clabber, but—Jefferson?”

“When they go'n do it? Tomorrow?”

“Do what, Jefferson?”

He was quiet, looking up at the ceiling but not seeing it.

“What, Jefferson?”

He turned toward her. His body didn't turn, just his head turned a little. His eyes did most of the turning. He looked at her as though he did not know who she was, or what she was doing there. Then he looked at me. You know what I'm talking about, don't you? his eyes said. They were big brown eyes, the whites too reddish. You know, don't you? his eyes said again. I looked back at him. My eyes would not dare answer him. But his eyes knew that my eyes knew.

“You with 'em?” he asked me.

“With who?” I said.

His eyes mocked me. They were big brown eyes, and the whites were too reddish, and he had been thinking too much the past few weeks, and the eyes mocked me.

“You the one?” he asked me.

“The one for what?” I said.

His big brown eyes with reddish whites mocked me.

“Go'n jeck that switch?” he said, looking at me.

“What switch?” Miss Emma said.

He was looking at me, not at her. His eyes told me that I knew what switch he was talking about.

“That's Professor Wiggins, your teacher—what switch?” she asked.

He turned his head and began staring up at the ceiling again.

The deputy came back and stood just outside the cell. Miss Emma still sat on the bunk. But now Jefferson had turned his back to her and was facing the gray concrete wall. Miss Emma passed her hand over his hair again, then she pushed herself up from the bunk.

“I'm leaving, Jefferson,” she said. “I'll come back soon.”

The deputy opened the cell door to let us out.

“Can I leave the food?” Miss Emma asked him.

“Sure,” the deputy said.

“If he don't eat it all, can you give it to the rest of them children?”

“Sure,” the deputy said.

He locked the cell door.

“I'm leaving, Jefferson,” Miss Emma said, looking back into the cell.

He faced the gray concrete wall and didn't answer her.

“Oh, Lord Jesus,” she cried. “Oh, Lord Jesus, stand by, stand by.”

The deputy and I exchanged glances. With his eyes and a nod, he told me to put my arms around her. Which I did.

10

OUR NEXT TWO VISITS
went pretty much as the first one did. I picked up Miss Emma at her house at around one-thirty—my aunt was always there with her—and after she had settled down into the back seat of the car, we drove in silence all the way into Bayonne. Each time, we arrived five or ten minutes before the hour. The food was searched, I was asked to take everything out of my pockets, then told to put everything back into my pockets, and we were led down the narrow dark-wood corridor, passing opened office doors where white men and white women carried on their daily routines. The deputy walked a step ahead of us, with Miss Emma directly behind him, and me beside her. At the end of the corridor we would climb the steps to the first landing, where the deputy would wait a minute to allow Miss Emma to catch her breath, then we would continue on up to the next floor and through the heavy steel door to the cellblock. The prisoners would hear us coming, and they would stand at the cell doors with their hands stuck out between the bars. As she had done the first time, Miss Emma promised that they could have the food Jefferson did not eat. As I had done the first time, I gave them the change I had in my pockets, which was always less than a dollar. Then we would move down the line to the last cell. Jefferson always lay on the bunk, either looking at the ceiling or facing the wall. Each time, the deputy opened the door and locked us in. Jefferson had no more to talk about the second or third time than he did the first, and after we had spent an hour with him, we were let out. Each time, Miss Emma left the cell crying, and both times she told the young deputy to give the food to the other children.

On Friday, our fourth visit, I left Irene Cole in charge of the school and instructed her to let the children go at three. If she felt that they had done all their schoolwork before three, she could dismiss them early, because it was getting colder and most of the children would have work to do at home. I had to go down to my aunt's house to get my car, then I drove back up the quarter to Miss Emma's. Usually she was waiting for me, but not today. I sat out there in the car a good five minutes, but no Miss Emma. I didn't want to blow the horn; I thought that might show impatience and disrespect. But still no Miss Emma. The door was shut and the only thing to give the place any sign of life was a trickle of white smoke rising occasionally out of the chimney.

After sitting out there another couple of minutes, I put patience and respect aside. I pressed on the horn hard and long enough for everybody in the quarter to hear it. I had given up my class to take her to Bayonne, and she was not ready, and I wanted them all to know about it.

Finally, the door did open. My aunt came out on the porch and pushed the door shut behind her. She stood there watching me. I knew that stand, I knew that look. I knew that she was not coming one step farther and that I would have to come to her. She still watched me as I got out of the car and came up the walk. I stopped short of the porch.

“Something wrong with you?” she asked me.

I wanted to ask that same question about Miss Emma, but I held my tongue.

“Don't you know if she was able she would be out here?”

“Then why didn't she tell me she wasn't going? I could be teaching my class.”

“Nobody said you wasn't going.”

“You're saying I'm supposed to visit him alone? He's no kin—”

“Come on in here, boy, and get that bag,” my aunt said.

She watched me come up on the porch and go by her, then she followed me into the house. Miss Emma was sitting at the fireplace in a rocking chair. She had on two sweaters, a black one over a green one. She had some kind of rag, possibly a baby's diaper, tied around her head. I stood in the center of the room near the hanging light bulb. I had the feeling that Miss Emma was not nearly as sick as she was pretending to be. For one thing, I had seen her that morning picking up chips in the yard, and she didn't look sick at all. And now I could smell fried chicken and baked potato, and I knew she could not have done all that if she was dying.

My aunt sat down in the rocker next to Miss Emma's. Now, both of them peered into the fireplace, at the two half-burned logs that gave about as much fire as a candle would. Neither said a thing, as if they were sitting alone in deep thought. Then Miss Emma coughed twice—short and dry—to let me know that she was on her deathbed. Then silence again.

There was smoke in the room, and I must have cleared my throat or something, because my aunt used that moment to speak.

“That food waiting.”

I didn't know where the food was waiting for me; I didn't look for it. I just stood back looking at them.

“He don't have to go,” Miss Emma said. She coughed again, reminding me that she was still on her deathbed. “Not if it go'n be a burden.”

My aunt looked back at me. “I said that food waiting.”

“Miss Emma's dying. But you can go with me,” I said.

“I don't have on my good dress,” my aunt said.

“I can wait,” I said.

“No you won't,” she said.

“Don't force him,” Miss Emma said. “When I'm able to get on my feet—God willing—I'll get somebody else to take me up there. I don't want to be a burden on nobody.”

As I stood there listening to her, I realized that this had been planned from the beginning. All that other stuff I went through was to lead up to this day. Going up to Pichot's house, meeting the sheriff, the three visits to the jail with her—all that was nothing but preparation for today. Didn't she say it that first night at Pichot's? “I'm old. My heart won't take it. I want somebody else to take my place.” Didn't she say it? Sure she did. Because it was planned even then. But she had had help. My aunt.

She coughed again—quick, dry, faked as before.

I told myself that what she needed was more wood on the fire. I went to the corner of the room where the wood was stacked, and I piled as many logs on my arms as I could stand up with, then I threw them all into the fireplace. Sparks of fire shot across the hearth into the room, and smoke and ashes shot up the chimney. I brushed off my clothes and stood there until the wood had started burning.

“Can I do anything else, Miss Emma?” I said. “Maybe some cough syrup?”

“You can watch your tongue, sir,” my aunt said.

“I just want Miss Emma to get better,” I said.

“He don't have to go,” Miss Emma said.

“He's going,” my aunt said.

“If it's a burden,” Miss Emma said.

“Maybe I'll go halfway,” I said. “Maybe I'll dump the food out there in the river. Fishes don't get much to eat in winter. Maybe they like fried chicken.”

“You better get that food and get out of here if you know what's good for you,” my aunt said.

I went back into the kitchen and snatched the bag off the table. There was enough food in it to feed everybody in the jail.

“Everything you sent me to school for, you're stripping me of it,” I told my aunt. They were looking at the fire, and I stood behind them with the bag of food. “The humiliation I had to go through, going into that man's kitchen. The hours I had to wait while they ate and drank and socialized before they would even see me. Now going up to that jail. To watch them put their dirty hands on that food. To search my body each time as if I'm some kind of common criminal. Maybe today they'll want to look into my mouth, or my nostrils, or make me strip. Anything to humiliate me. All the things you wanted me to escape by going to school. Years ago, Professor Antoine told me that if I stayed here, they were going to break me down to the nigger I was born to be. But he didn't tell me that my aunt would help them do it.”

She got up slowly, heavily, and went to Miss Emma, who had begun to shake her head and cry. Miss Emma sincerely did not want me to go now, but my aunt had not changed her mind for a moment.

“I'm sorry, Mr. Grant, I'm helping them white people to humiliate you. I'm so sorry. And I wished they had somebody else we could turn to. But they ain't nobody else.”