The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (32 page)

“I’m not sleep,” I said.

Lena didn’t hear me because she knocked on the door and said, “Jane, you wake in there?”

“Come in, Lena,” I said.

She pushed the door open and I told her to turn the light on. She was a big woman, but not well. Her health had been failing her now four, five years. I watched her pulling the rocking chair closer to the bed. I knowed she had come there to talk about Jimmy. I wondered what I could say to give her courage.

“You talked to Brady, too?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Won’t take you either?”

“You going?” I asked.

“I have to go,” she said. “I don’t want go; I don’t want see them kill him in front of me, but I have to go.”

“Nothing’s go’n happen, Lena,” I said.

“They go’n kill him,” she said. “I held him to my breast longer than his mon ever done, and I know when something go’n happen.”

She was holding her hand and looking down at the floor like she was praying.

“I don’t care if I ever use that toilet up there,” she said. “What I care about water? I drink before I go to Bayonne; I drink when I come back home. That’s what I been doing all my life anyhow.”

I looked at her. I didn’t know what to say.

“Why he got to be the one?” she said. “All the others want it, why him?”

“He wrote the letters for us, Lena,” I said. “He read the newspapers and the Bible for us. And we never chastized nobody else like we chastized him.”

“We didn’t do that for this,” she said.

“Did we know what we was doing it for?” I asked her.

“I knowed what I was doing it for,” she said. “I wanted him to be a teacher or something.”

“He is a teacher,” I said.

“You can’t teach from the grave,” she said.

“Jimmy’s not dead, Lena,” I said.

“Not dead yet, you mean,” she said. “I’m almost forced to go out there and tell Robert to stop this thing from happening.”

“That won’t stop Jimmy,” I said.

“It’ll stop him from getting killed tomorrow,” she said.

“Look at them other children,” I said. “They didn’t get killed.”

“You mean all of them didn’t get killed,” she said. “And they wasn’t in Bayonne either. The likes of Albert Cluveau has not vanished from this earth.”

We didn’t say nothing for a long time. She just sat there holding her hand, looking down at the floor. I reckoned she had already cried all she could cry.

“How you going?” I asked.

“Going up and see Olivia,” she said. “If not her, reckoned I’ll catch the bus.”

“I’ll go with you,” I said.

“Get your rest,” Lena said. “I’ll let you know what she say.”

Albert was getting ready to leave, too, and Lena got Albert to walk up the quarters with her. About an hour later she came back and told me Olivia said she would take us.

“She don’t mind if they put her off the place?” I asked.

“She done saved up a few dollars,” Lena said.

Mary got up the next morning just after sun-up and told me if I was going to Bayonne with her I better get up and get myself ready. I asked her when did she make up her mind to go. She said she made up her
mind when she saw nothing was go’n keep me from going. Who was go’n look after me when they knocked me down. I said the Lord. She said the Lord might be busy helping somebody else, and it wouldn’t look right for Him just to drop that person and come help me. I got up and said my prayers. After I had pushed back my bar and made up my bed I went in the kitchen to have my coffee.

“You better eat something solid,” Mary said. “You might have to do some fast shuffling.”

“You can give me a bisquit with my coffee,” I said.

“I mean grits and eggs,” Mary said. “When you fall I want to make sure it’s a billy club, not hungriness.”

“Don’t give me too much,” I said.

Mary had opened the back door and cool air came in. I looked out at the sun, orange color on the grass. Usually I liked this time of day, the freshness, but today I felt something funny in the air. My heart was jumping too much. I wasn’t scared I might get hurt—when you get to be a hundred and eight or a hundred and nine you forget what scared is: I felt something funny in the air, but I didn’t know what it was. I just sat there looking out at the grass, and I could remember the times when I used to bend over and run my hands in the dew. But of course that was long long ago. Now, all I can do is walk in it sometime, and I got to be careful doing even that.

“Air feels funny,” I said.

“How do funny air feel?” Mary said.

“Just feel funny,” I said.

Mary brought the food to the table and she sat down across from me.

“I know I cause you trouble,” I said.

“Don’t start that,” Mary said. “You don’t cause me no trouble.”

“You don’t have to go, Mary,” I said.

“Staying on this place don’t mean that much to me,” she said.

“Where you going if they put you off?” I asked her.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Probably be somewhere close ’round you.”

“Everything I own is yours when I die,” I said.

“Don’t try to pay me, Miss Jane,” she said. “I was brought up too good for that.”

“I’m not trying to pay you,” I said. “But I love you much as you love me, and that’s all I have to give. I want you to have my all.”

“I have your love and your respect, and that’s enough,” she said.

“I want you to have my rocking chair and my sewing machine,” I said.

“All right,” Mary said. “But they’ll have to kill me first. Then somebody else can get everything.”

“I didn’t mean today,” I said.

“That’s right, today we secured,” Mary said. “I wonder what we go’n do to turn them back—sing?”

“And maybe little clapping,” I said.

“Well, I got a feeling them things in Bayonne go’n want more than just spirituals today,” Mary said. “Lot lot more.”

“You feel death in the air, too, Mary?” I said.

Mary felt death just like I felt it, but she didn’t want answer. She got up and washed the dishes, then she swept out the kitchen.

Lena called for us ’round eight thirty. Mary helped me on with my sweater and I found my walking stick and we went out on the gallery. The place was quiet the way it is on Sunday nights when you don’t have church. I leaned on Mary till I reached the ground. When we came out in the road, there was Etienne standing there in his best clothes.

“Well, Etienne?” I said.

“Miss Jane,” he said, tipping his hat.

I looked at him and nodded, and I was very proud of Etienne.

Just the four of us started up the quarters to Olivia’s. It was still cool, and the dust in the road was
cool and soft. The sun hadn’t come above the trees, yet, and the shadows from the trees and the crop was on the road. I could see where drops of water had dripped from the weeds hanging over the rim of the road.

We had been walking quietly all the while, but just before we came up to Strut’s house, Etienne looked back and said it looked like somebody else was coming that way. The person was too far for me to make out who it was; all I could see was a dark form in the white dust. We hadn’t gone too much farther when Etienne said it looked like two or three more people was coming that way. I looked back again. I still couldn’t recognize them, just dark forms in that white dust. Before we got to Joe Simon’s house I looked back, and this time I stopped and leaned on my walking stick. This time it was not one or two, it was many. They was not marching, they was not hurrying; it didn’t look like they was even talking to each other. They was walking like every last one of them was by himself and any little noise could turn him around. But the longer I stood there looking, the more I saw coming toward me. Men, women, children. I couldn’t recognize who they was way down there, but I could tell dresses from pants, and I could tell grown people from children. No, not everybody in the quarters was headed that way—Brady’s car was still down there. Probably half of the people was still down there. But the number of people I saw coming toward me was something I never would ’a’ dreamed of. I wouldn’t ’a’ believed nobody if he had told me this could happen. I stood there watching them, thinking: Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy. Look what you’ve done. Look what you’ve done. Look what you’ve done, Jimmy.

They came up and stood all ’round us. Most of them was scared and they wasn’t shame to show it. But they was standing there, and that’s what mattered. And I felt like telling each one of them thank you, thank you, thank you. I told myself when I got to the courthouse I was going up to Jimmy and say,
“Jimmy, look at your army from Samson. Did you think they was go’n show up?” And he was go’n look at me in that sad-sweet way and say, “Sure, I knowed they wasn’t go’n let me down.”

I looked at them all there and I was so happy I started crying. Mary and them saw me crying, but they didn’t say nothing to me because they knowed it was from joy, not sorrow.

Olivia came out the house and saw us all there and said she was sorry, she wouldn’t be able to take nearly half that many. The people said they would catch the bus, and said tell Jimmy don’t start till they got there. Olivia asked them if they all had money. They had forgot about money. Olivia told them wait—she was going back in the house to get her pocket-book—but just as she turned to go back inside, Robert Samson drove his car down the quarters.

I heard Lena scream, and I saw her running heavy heavy straight toward the car. Mary and Olivia and Merle Anne went after her and pulled her out the way. She screamed and screamed and tried to get away from them. Robert got out of the car and looked at all us standing there.

“Go back home,” he said.

“What happened to my boy?” Lena asked him. “What happened to my boy?”

“Go back home,” Robert said.

“What happened, Mr. Robert?” Etienne asked.

Robert was looking at Lena, and I could tell something bad had happened.

“No,” Lena started screaming. “No. Lord, no.”

“Take her home,” Robert said.

“We got a right to know, Mr. Robert,” Etienne said.

“Where’s my boy?” Lena asked Robert. “I want to see my boy.”

“You’ll see him tomorrow,” Robert said. “I’ll take you there tomorrow.”

“Is he dead?” Etienne asked.

“They shot him eight o’clock this morning,” Robert said.

Then she fell. Even with Mary and them holding her up she fell. They picked her up and took her inside the house.

“Who shot him?” Etienne asked.

“Who knows?” Robert said.

“Somebody knows,” Etienne said. “Somebody knows, Mr. Robert.”

“Well, I didn’t shoot him,” Robert said. “I didn’t know nothing about it till they called the house.”

He stood by the car looking at all us standing there.

“Go back home,” he said.

“You mean get off, don’t you?” I said.

“I mean go on back home,” he said.

“I’m going to Bayonne, me,” Strut’s boy said.

“I’ll follow Alex,” I said.

“Them who want go to Bayonne, let’s go to Bayonne,” Alex said. “Let’s go to Bayonne even if we got to come back here to nothing.”

“What you think you go’n find in Bayonne, boy?” Robert said.

“Jimmy,” Alex said.

“Jimmy is dead,” Robert said. “Didn’t you hear me say Jimmy was killed at eight o’clock?”

“He ain’t dead nothing,” Alex said.

“You know better,” Robert said to me.

“Just a little piece of him is dead,” I said. “The rest of him is waiting for us in Bayonne. And I will go with Alex.”

Some of the people backed away from me when I said this, but the braver ones started for the road. They had forgot about bus fare again, and since I didn’t have enough money for everybody I sent one of the children in the house to Olivia. He came back with a ten dollar bill and said Olivia said she would be up there later. I stuck the money in my pocketbook. Me and Robert looked at each other there a long time, then I went by him.

This book is dedicated
to the memory of
My grandmother,
Mrs. Julia McVay
My stepfather,
Mr Ralph Norbert Colar, Sr
.
and
to the memory of
My beloved aunt,
Miss Augusteen Jefferson
,
who did not walk a day in her life
but who taught me the importance of standing.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

E
RNEST
J. G
AINES
was born on a Louisiana plantation in 1933 and can remember working in the fields for fifty cents a day as a child of nine. He is a graduate of San Francisco State College and a recipient of a Wallace Stegner Creative Writing Fellowship to Stanford University.

Mr. Gaines’s first novel,
Catherine Cormier
(1964), was awarded the Joseph Henry Jackson Literary Prize. His other works include a novel,
Of Love and Dust
(1967), and a collection of short stories,
Bloodline
(1968). His stories have appeared in
Southern Writing of the Sixties, The Best Short Stories by Negro Writers
and
American Negro Short Stories
.

Mr. Gaines lives in San Francisco but returns to his boyhood home in Louisiana once a year.