A Lesson Before Dying (3 page)

4

I TOOK THEM BACK
down the quarter. When I stopped in front of Miss Emma's house, my aunt got out of the car with her.

“I'm going to Bayonne,” I told my aunt.

She had not shut the door yet.

“I'll be home to cook in a little while,” she said.

“I'll eat in town,” I told her.

Tante Lou held the door while she stood there looking at me. Nothing could have hurt her more when I said I was not going to eat her food. I was supposed to eat soon after she had cooked, and if I was not at home I was supposed to eat as soon as I came in. She looked at me without saying anything else, then she closed the door quietly and followed Miss Emma into the yard.

I turned the car around and started up the quarter again. There was not a single telephone in the quarter, not a public telephone anywhere that I could use before reaching Bayonne, and Bayonne was thirteen miles away.

After leaving the quarter, I drove down a graveled road for about two miles, then along a paved road beside the St. Charles River for another ten miles. There were houses and big live oak and pecan trees on either side of the road, but not as many on the riverbank side. There, instead of houses and trees, there were fishing wharves, boat docks, nightclubs, and restaurants for whites. There were one or two nightclubs for colored, but they were not very good.

As I drove along the river, I thought about all the schoolwork that I should have been doing at home. But I knew that after being around Miss Emma and Henri Pichot the past hour, I would not have been able to concentrate on my work. I needed to be with someone. I needed to be with Vivian.

Bayonne was a small town of about six thousand. Approximately three thousand five hundred whites; approximately two thousand five hundred colored. It was the parish seat for St. Raphael. The courthouse was there; so was the jail. There was a Catholic church uptown for whites; a Catholic church back of town for colored. There was a white movie theater uptown; a colored movie theater back of town. There were two elementary schools uptown, one Catholic, one public, for whites; and the same back of town for colored. Bayonne's major industries were a cement plant, a sawmill, and a slaughterhouse, mostly for hogs. There was only one main street in Bayonne, and it ran along the St. Charles River. The department stores, the bank, the two or three dentists' and doctors' and attorneys' offices, were mostly on this street, which made up less than half a dozen blocks.

After entering the town, which was marked by the movie theater for whites on the riverbank side of the road, I had to drive another two or three blocks before turning down an unlit road, which led back of town to the colored section. Once I crossed the railroad tracks, I could see the Rainbow Club, with its green, yellow, and red arched neon lights. Several cars were parked before the door; one of them, a big white new '48 Cadillac, belonged to Joe Claiborne, who owned the place. A man and a woman came through the door as I got out of my car to go inside. There were probably a dozen people in the place, half of them at the bar, the rest of them sitting at tables with white tablecloths. I spoke to Joe Claiborne and went through a side door into the café to use the telephone. The tables in the café had checkered red and white tablecloths. Thelma Claiborne was behind the counter. Thelma ran the café, and her husband, Joe, ran the bar. I asked her what she had for supper.

“Smothered chicken, smothered beefsteaks, shrimp stew,” she said.

There was only one other person in the café, and he sat at the counter eating the stewed shrimps.

“Shrimps any good?” I asked Thelma.

“All my food's good,” she said.

“Shrimps,” I told her.

While Thelma dished up my food, I went to the telephone in the corner by the toilet. It took Vivian a while to answer, and she didn't sound too happy about it.

“Did I get you at a bad time?” I asked her.

“Getting these children something to eat,” she said. “Where are you?”

“The Rainbow Club.”

“Tonight?”

“I need to see you, baby. I need to talk,” I said.

“Is something the matter?”

“I just need to talk to you, baby, that's all.”

“You want to come over here? I can fix you a sandwich.”

“No, I'm going to eat here at the café.”

“I'll see if I can get Dora,” she said. “If I can't, you'll have to come over here. I can't leave the children alone.”

“I understand.”

Thelma had the stewed shrimps, a green salad of lettuce, tomato, and cucumber, a piece of corn bread, and a glass of water on the counter, waiting for me.

“Anything else to go with that?” she asked.

“This'll do.”

“Here or a table?” she asked.

“The counter is good.”

“What you doing in town on Monday?” she asked. “Calling Miss Fine Brown?”

I nodded.

“Figgers,” Thelma said, and smiled.

Thelma's mouth was full of gold teeth, solid gold as well as gold crowned. She also wore perfume that was strong enough to keep you a good distance away from her. I figured that's where most of their money went, on those gold teeth, that perfume, and payment on the new white Cadillac that Joe had parked before the door. But they were good people, both of them. When I was broke, I could always get a meal and pay later, and the same went for the bar.

I talked with Thelma awhile after I finished eating, then I paid her and went back to the other side.

“Usual?” Claiborne asked me. He knew what I drank, but he would always ask.

I nodded.

“What you doing here on Monday?” he asked, while pouring me a brandy.

“I needed a drink,” I said.

“Sure,” he said.

He poured a glass of ice water and set it on the bar beside the brandy.

“I think I know now,” he said.

Car lights had just flashed upon the front of the club, and I could hear the tires on the crushed seashells just right of the door, and sure enough it was Vivian, and the men at the bar looked around at her when she came in. She was quite tall, five seven, five eight, and she wore a green wool sweater and a green and brown plaid skirt, and both fit her very well. She had soft light brown skin and high cheekbones and greenish-brown eyes, and her nostrils and lips showed some thickness, but not much. Her hair was long and black, and she kept it twisted into a bun and pinned at the back of her head. Vivian Baptiste was a beautiful woman, and she knew it; but she didn't flaunt it, it was just there. She came up to me, and a couple of the other men at the bar nodded and spoke to her. One tipped his hat and called her Miss Lady.

“You made it,” I said.

“I got Dora.”

“Usual?” Claiborne asked her.

She nodded toward my drink.

“Shirley can bring it to your table,” Claiborne said.

“It won't tire her out, I hope.”

Claiborne grunted at me.

It was a slow night. The few people at the bar were holding on to their glasses and not buying any more. Shirley, the waitress, was sitting on a barstool at the far end, and she had not moved once since I had been there. Vivian and I went to a table far over into the corner, where we could be alone.

“I'm glad you came,” I said, and kissed her.

Shirley brought the drinks and set them before us on paper napkins. Before leaving, she looked at me out of the corner of her eye to let me know she didn't like my remark at the bar.

Vivian and I touched glasses and drank.

“What is the matter, Grant?” she asked.

“I just had to see you.”

“Is something the matter?”

“When was the last time I told you I loved you?”

“A second ago.”

“I should say it more often,” I said.

“What is the matter, Grant?” she asked me again.

“You want to leave from here tonight?” I asked her. “You want to go home and pack your clothes and get the children and leave from here tonight?”

She looked at me as though she was trying to figure out whether I was serious or not.

“No,” she said.

“Why not?” I asked her.

“Because the whole thing is just too crazy,” she said.

“People do it all the time. Just pack up and leave.”

“Some people can, but we can't,” she said. “We're teachers, and we have a commitment.”

“You hit the nail on the head there, lady—commitment. Commitment to what—to live and die in this hellhole, when we can leave and live like other people?”

“How much have you had to drink, Grant?”

“A whole fucking barrel of commitment,” I said, and raised my glass.

“Do you want me to leave, Grant?” she asked. “You know I don't like it when you talk like that.”

“No, I don't want you to leave. Please don't leave me,” I told her.

She reached over and touched my hand, then she began to rub the knuckles with her fingers.

“I need to go someplace where I can feel I'm living,” I said. “I don't want to spend the rest of my life teaching school in a plantation church. I want to be with you, someplace where we could have a choice of things to do. I don't feel alive here. I'm not living here. I know we can do better someplace else.”

“I'm still married,” Vivian said. “A separation is not a divorce. I can't go anywhere until all this is over with.”

“That's not what's keeping you here. Even after the divorce, you'll still feel committed,” I said.

“And you, Grant?”

“I'm tired of feeling committed.”

“Then why haven't you gone?”

“Because of you.”

“That's not true, Grant, and you know it,” she said. “We met only three years ago. I was still married—pregnant with my second child. You told me then how much you always wanted to get away. And you did, once. You remember that? You went to California to visit your mother and father—but you wouldn't stay. You couldn't stay. You had to come back. Why did you come back, Grant? Why?”

“I want to go now, and I want you to go with me.”

“I'm still married, Grant.”

“After the divorce?”

She nodded. “After the divorce I'll do whatever you want me to do—as long as you're responsible for what you do.”

“In other words, if I fail, I would have to blame myself the rest of my life for trying, is that it?”

“I'll leave all that up to you, Grant, if you still want me after the divorce.”

“I'll always want you,” I said, and touched her hand. “And if you don't know that by now, I don't know what you do know about me.”

A couple from one of the other tables had gotten up and chosen a record on the jukebox. It was a blues, the tempo slow, and the two people danced close together. I needed Vivian closer to me than she was now, and I asked her if she wanted to dance.

We left the table, and I took her in my arms, and I could feel her breasts through that sweater, and I could feel her thighs through that plaid skirt, and now I felt very good.

We danced for a while. I didn't want to say it, but I had to say it.

“They gave him death,” I said.

She and I had talked about it on the weekend, and I did not want to talk about it now, or even think about it now, but it was the only thing that stayed on my mind. I could feel her body go tense against me.

We danced awhile.

“They want me to visit him.”

“That would be nice, Grant.”

“They want me to make him a man before he dies.”

She stopped dancing, and she stood back to look at me. Her face was twisted into a painful, questioning frown.

“The public defender, trying to get him off, called him a dumb animal,” I told her. “He said it would be like tying a hog down into that chair and executing him—an animal that didn't know what any of it was all about. The jury, twelve white men good and true, still sentenced him to death. Now his godmother wants me to visit him and make him know—prove to these white men—that he's not a hog, that he's a man. I'm supposed to make him a man. Who am I? God?”

The record ended, and we went back to our table.

“I still don't know if the sheriff will even let me visit him. And suppose he did; what then? What do I say to him? Do I know what a man is? Do I know how a man is supposed to die? I'm still trying to find out how a man should live. Am I supposed to tell someone how to die who has never lived?”

Vivian lowered her head.

“Suppose I was allowed to visit him, and suppose I reached him and made him realize that he was as much a man as any other man; then what? He's still going to die. The next day, the next week, the next month. So what will I have accomplished? What will I have done? Why not let the hog die without knowing anything?”

Vivian raised her head to look at me, and she was crying. I took one of her hands in both of mine.

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do this to you. I don't want to do this to you. I just didn't know where else to turn.”

“I want you to come to me, Grant,” she said. “I want you to always come to me.”

Shirley walked over to the table to pick up our empty glasses.

“Y'all want anything mo'?” she asked.

“Another round,” I told her. She left.

“I want you to go up there,” Vivian said.

“They make those decisions, sweetheart, I don't.”

“If they say yes, I want you to go for me.”

“For you?”

“For us, Grant.”

I looked at her, and she looked back at me. She had meant what she said.

“I don't know if I can take it. I really don't.”

“I know you can.”

“I'll need you every moment.”

“I'll be here.”

Shirley came back with the drinks and set them on clean, dry paper napkins. She looked at me again that same way, to let me know she didn't like my remark at the bar earlier.