A Lesson Before Dying (11 page)

17

BETWEEN MONDAY
when I talked to Miss Emma, and Friday, when I visited Jefferson again, something had happened inside me, and I wasn't so angry anymore. Maybe it was the Christmas season and the children rehearsing their parts for the play. Or maybe it was just me. I could never stay angry long over anything. But I could never believe in anything, either, for very long.

At the jail, I had to go through the usual search. Then, while the young deputy and I walked down the corridor to the cellblock, I thought I would feel him out. Of the three of them at the jail, I figured he was the most likely to be honest with me. He was nearer my age, and he seemed better educated than the chief deputy or the sheriff. And I had heard from people in the quarter who knew his people that he had come from pretty good stock.

“How's he doing?” I asked.

“He's doing all right,” the deputy said.

“Does he ever eat the food we bring him?”

“Some of it,” the deputy said. “He leaves a lot of it, and we give it to the other prisoners, like she said. We've all eaten some of it. Good food, too.”

“How do the other prisoners treat him?” I asked.

“They're just curious, that's all. But they don't bother him.”

“Do they ever talk to you about it?”

“The execution?”

“Yes.”

“Sometimes they ask me things. I tell them I don't know a thing about it. I've never seen an execution.”

“Does he ever bring it up?”

“No. I'm sure he doesn't want to even think about it.”

“He must think about it,” I said. “He must, because I know I do. I've seen myself walking to that chair, more than once. I've woken up at night, sweating. How do you take it? That's the question.”

“I suppose every man wonders about death sometimes in his life.”

We came up to the landing just before the big door to the cellblock. The deputy stopped and looked at me.

“Listen,” he said. “We might as well call each other by our names. You're Grant, aren't you?”

“Grant Wiggins,” I said.

“Paul Bonin,” he said.

We shook hands.

“Listen,” he said. “I'm not going to get too close to him—okay?”

“Sure.”

“I've been warned: you don't get too close to somebody going to be executed. Be decent, treat him right, but that's all. This can get messy before it's over, and I will do my duty.”

“I feel the same way,” I said.

We looked at each other a moment, then we continued to the cellblock.

“What's a day like?” I asked Paul.

“He eats one hot meal a day and a sandwich. Lots of beans, cabbage, potatoes, rice—you know. Sometimes the sandwich is the first meal. Ten in the morning, four in the evening. He can come out once a week and spend an hour in the dayroom. Walk, sit-ups, run—anything he wants. Most times he walks or just sits there at the table. Once a week he gets a shower. We have another prisoner give him a haircut. He's had one since he's been here. The barber can shave him, but you can see his face doesn't need shaving. That's about it.”

“He talk at all to the other prisoners?” I asked.

“I never hear him.”

The deputy opened the heavy steel door to the cellblock.

“Well, well, well, if it ain't Mr. Rockefeller,” one of the prisoners said. He wore the green coveralls given to all the prisoners who did not have their own clothes. He also wore a red knit cap, his own. “Mr. Rockefeller always leave you chicken and biscuits,” he went on. “But no bread for the cigarettes.”

“Just cool it, Henry Martin,” the deputy said. “You won't get chicken or biscuits either, you keep that up.”

“I hope you brought some pralines,” another prisoner said.

“Anything,” another one said. “This jailhouse food 'nough to kill a man.”

“Then don't eat it,” Paul said to him.

“What? And starve to death? Uh-uh.” The prisoner laughed.

We came down to the last cell, Jefferson's cell, and Paul let me inside.

“See you in a while,” he said, as he locked the door.

Jefferson sat on the bunk, slumped forward a little, his big hands clasped together down between his legs. He was looking through the barred window toward the sycamore tree, where several black birds were perched on a limb.

“How's it going?” I said to him.

He nodded his head, but he didn't turn to look at me.

“I brought you some food.”

“I ain't hongry.”

“Well, you might get hungry later,” I said, and set the large paper bag of food on the end of the bunk. “I was speaking to Paul, the deputy. He told me you always share with the other prisoners.”

“If they want it, they can have it.”

I looked at his back, then I went by him and stood under the window, facing him. He was still gazing upward, and I noticed his eyes, large and inflamed. Since my last visit he had gotten a very close haircut, which exposed the structure of his almost triangular head.

“Jefferson, we have to talk,” I said.

He continued looking above my head toward the barred window.

“When your nannan came back from seeing you the other day, she broke down crying.”

“Everybody cry,” he said. “I cry.”

“Is that what you want—her to come home crying every time she sees you?”

He didn't answer.

“You can keep her from crying,” I said. “You can make it easier for her. You can do her that favor.”

He continued to look above my head toward the barred window.

“She wants somebody to do something for her before she dies.”

“That's 'fore I die,” he said, lowering his eyes to look at me. He repeated it. “That's 'fore I die.”

“Is it asking too much, Jefferson, to show some concern for her?”

“'Cause I'm go'n die anyhow—that's what you trying to say?”

Now it was I who didn't answer.

“That's what you trying to say, Mr. Teacher?” he asked.

“We're all going to die, Jefferson.”

“Tomorrow, Mr. Teacher, that's when you go'n die? Next week?”

“I don't know when I'm going to die, Jefferson. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe today. That's why I try to live as well as I can every day and not hurt people. Especially people who love me, people who have done so much for me, people who have sacrificed for me. I don't want to hurt those people. I want to help those people as much as I can.”

“You can talk like that; you know you go'n walk out here in a hour. I bet you wouldn't be talking like that if you knowed you was go'n stay in here.”

“In here or out of here, Jefferson, what does it benefit you to hurt someone who loves you, who has done so much for you?”

“I never asked to be born.”

“Neither did I,” I said. “But here I am. And I'm trying to make the best of it.”

“Like coming here vexing me?” he asked.

“Am I vexing you, Jefferson?”

He grunted. “Just keep on vexing me,” he said. “I bet you I say something 'bout that old yellow woman you go with.”

“You're speaking of Vivian?”

“Just keep on vexing me,” he said.

“If you're talking about Vivian, it's Vivian who keeps me coming here.”

“Keep on vexing me,” he said. “See what I won't say. Just keep on vexing me.”

“Go on and say anything you want to say, Jefferson.”

“Keep on vexing me—bet you I'll scream,” he said.

“So Guidry would come up here and tell me to get out, is that it? Is that it, Jefferson?” I had been trying my best not to become angry again. But nothing I said made a difference. He just sat there grinning at me. “Go on and scream, Jefferson. Go on and scream for Guidry, if that's what you want.”

We looked at each other, and I could see in those big reddened eyes that he was not going to scream. He was full of anger—and who could blame him?—but he was no fool. He needed me, and he wanted me here, if only to insult me.

“Her old pussy ain't no good,” he said.

My heart suddenly started pumping too fast. I made a fist of my right hand. If he had been standing, I would have hit him. If he had been anyplace else, I would have made him get up and I would have hit him. I would have hit any other man for saying that. But I recognized his grin for what it was—the expression of the most heartrending pain I had ever seen on anyone's face. I rubbed my fist with my left hand, and gradually I began to relax.

“That lady you spoke of, boy, cares a lot about you,” I said to him. “She's waiting at that school right now for me to bring her news about you. That's a lady you spoke of, boy. That's a lady. Because it's she who keeps me coming here. Not your nannan, not my aunt. Vivian. If I didn't have Vivian, I wouldn't be in this damn hole. Because I know damn well I'm not doing any good, for you or for any of the others. Do you hear what I'm saying to you? Do you?”

I saw that grin slowly fade as he lowered his eyes toward the floor. When he looked up again, I saw tears in those big reddened eyes.

“Manners is for the living,” he said. He looked at me awhile, then he swung around and knocked the bag of food off the bunk. The bag burst open on the floor, and there was fried chicken and biscuits and baked sweet potatoes all over the place. “Food for the living, too,” he said.

When the deputy came back to let me out, I had picked up all the food and put it back into the torn paper bag, and I had placed the bag on the small steel shelf by the washbowl. Jefferson and I had not exchanged a word for fifteen minutes. He had lain down on the bunk facing the wall.

I heard Paul coming down the block, speaking to the prisoners, calling them by their first names, threatening this one with hard work, praising another one for being good. He looked at Jefferson as he let me out of the cell. Jefferson lay with his back toward us.

“How did it go?” he asked.

“Okay.”

We went down the cellblock, and the prisoners asked me what I had brought Jefferson to eat. I didn't answer. Just before we reached the heavy metal door, Henry Martin yelled out to me, “Goodbye, Mr. Rockefeller. I'll be here when you come back.”

“That's for sure,” Paul said to him.

He opened the steel door, and we went out.

“Sheriff wants to see you in his office,” Paul said.

“Is something the matter?”

The deputy shrugged his shoulders. “He just told me that he wanted to see you before you left.”

The sheriff was talking on the telephone when Paul and I came into his office. The chief deputy was talking to the fat man whom I had seen at Pichot's house. The sheriff sat back in his chair, his cowboy boots propped on his desk. He was talking to someone at the state prison in Angola. The chief deputy and the fat man were talking about fishing at Old River. They continued their conversation for another five or ten minutes as if I weren't there. Paul stood beside me awhile, then he went into another office. I stood waiting.

The sheriff hung up the telephone and looked at me over the tips of his boots.

“Well, Professor, making any headway?” he asked.

“I don't know,” I said.

“You been seeing him a month. You still don't know if you're making any headway?”

“No, sir.”

The chief deputy and the fat man had quit talking, and they were looking at me too.

“You wouldn't be trying to hide something, now, would you?” the sheriff asked me.

“No, sir.”

“Glad to hear that,” he said. “Hear that, Frank? He ain't hiding nothing.”

The fat man grunted and looked at me. Guidry drew his boots from the top of the desk and dropped his feet heavily to the floor.

“Women,” he said. “Always coming up with something new. Now they want all y'all to meet in the bull pen—picniclike.”

He looked at me as though I was supposed to know what he was talking about.

“Well, what do you think?” he asked me, when I didn't offer an answer.

“That's up to you, Sheriff,” I said.

“Yes, I know that,” he said. “But the things they come up with. They want to meet him in the dayroom or another comfortable room—‘comfortable room'—where they can all sit down, 'cause they can't all sit down in that cell. You ever heard of anything like that before?”

“I don't know what you're talking about, Sheriff,” I said.

“Don't you, Professor?”

“No, sir, I don't.”

He regarded me awhile, and so did the chief deputy and the fat man. The deputy was looking very mean.

“You don't know they came up to my wife?” the sheriff asked me.

“I don't know a thing that you're talking about, Sheriff.”

“They came up to the house and said they couldn't sit down and could she, ‘please, ma'am,' speak to me about arranging a place so they can sit down—and you don't know anything about that?”

“No, sir, I don't.”

“You playing with me, Professor?” the sheriff asked.

“Sheriff, I just don't know what you're talking about.”

I would learn later. Miss Emma, my aunt, and Reverend Ambrose had visited the sheriff's wife a day after they had last seen Jefferson. The sheriff's wife greeted them graciously and set a precedent by having them sit in the living room, while her maid served them coffee. They talked about little things before they came to their purpose in coming there. The sheriff's wife was stunned. She nearly spilled her coffee. What was wrong with the cell? Wasn't it big enough? Yes, but they couldn't all sit down. Was it necessary that they all sit down at the same time? Couldn't they take turns? She was sure that Reverend Ambrose didn't mind standing. And maybe Jefferson could stand up too, and let Tante Lou and Miss Emma sit down.

It was then that Miss Emma reminded the sheriff's wife of all the things she had done for the family over the years. The sheriff's wife was suddenly taken with a splitting headache. She wondered where the maid had gone to, but she didn't call for her. She frowned and rubbed her temples. She told Miss Emma that she would see what she could do. “But don't count on it,” she said. “The sheriff makes up his own mind in these matters.”