Blues for Mister Charlie (12 page)
(Juanita leaves the stand. Mother Henry helps her to her seat.)
This court is adjourned until ten o’clock tomorrow morning.
(Chaos and cacophony. The courtroom begins to empty. Reporters rush to phone booths and to witnesses. Light bulbs flash. We hear snatches of the Journalists’ reports, in their various languages. Singing from the church. Blackout. The next and last day of the trial. Even more crowded and tense.)
CLERK
(Calls)
: Mrs. Wilhelmina Henry!
(Mother Henry, in street clothes, walks down the aisle, takes the stand.)
THE STATE
: You are Mrs. Wilhelmina Henry?
MOTHER HENRY
: Yes.
THE STATE
: Mrs. Henry, you—and your husband, until he died—lived in this town all your lives and never had any trouble. We’ve always gotten on well down here.
MOTHER HENRY
: No white man never called my husband Mister, neither, not as long as he lived. Ain’t no white man never called
me
Mrs. Henry before today. I had to get a grandson killed for that.
THE STATE
: Mrs. Henry, your grief elicits my entire sympathy, and the sympathy of every white man in this town. But is it not true, Mrs. Henry, that your grandson arrived in this town armed? He was carrying a gun and, apparently, had carried a gun for years.
MOTHER HENRY
: I don’t know where you got that story, or why you keep harping on it. I never saw no gun.
THE STATE
: You are under oath, Mrs. Henry.
MOTHER HENRY
: I don’t need you to tell me I’m under oath. I been under oath all my life. And I tell you, I never saw no gun.
THE STATE
: Mrs. Henry, did you ever see your grandson behaving strangely—as though he were under the influence of strong drugs?
MOTHER HENRY
: No. Not since he was six and they pulled out his tonsils. They gave him ether.
He
didn’t act as strange as his Mama and Daddy. He just went on to sleep. But they like to had a fit.
(Richard’s song)
I remember the day he was born. His mother had a hard time holding him and a hard time getting him here. But here he come, in the wintertime, late and big and loud. And my boy looked down into his little son’s face and he said, “God give us a son. God’s give us a son. Lord, help us to raise him to be a good strong man.”
JUDGE
: The witness may step down.
CLERK
(Calls)
: Reverend Meridian Henry!
(Blackout. Meridian, in Sunday School. The class itself, predominately adolescent girls, is in silhouette.)
MERIDIAN
: —And here is the prophet, Solomon, the son of David, looking down through the ages, and speaking of Christ’s love for His church.
(Reads)
How fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse! How much better is thy love than wine! and the smell of thine ointments than all spices!
(Pause. The silhouette of girls vanishes)
Oh, that it were one man, speaking to one woman!
(Blackout. Meridian takes the stand.)
BLACKTOWN
: I wonder how he feels now about all that turn-the-other-cheek jazz. His son sure didn’t go for it.
WHITETOWN
: That’s the father. Claims to be a preacher. He brought this on himself. He’s been raising trouble in this town for a long time.
THE STATE
: You are Reverend Meridian Henry?
MERIDIAN
: That is correct.
THE STATE
: And you are the father of the late Richard Henry?
MERIDIAN
: Yes.
THE STATE
: You are a minister?
MERIDIAN
: A Christian minister—yes.
THE STATE
: And you raised your son according to the precepts of the Christian church?
MERIDIAN
: I tried. But both my son and I had profound reservations concerning the behavior of Christians. He wondered why they treated black people as they do. And I was unable to give him—a satisfactory answer.
THE STATE
: But certainly you—as a Christian minister—did not encourage your son to go armed?
MERIDIAN
: The question never came up. He was not armed.
THE STATE
: He was not armed?
MERIDIAN
: No.
THE STATE
: You never saw him with a gun? Or with any other weapon?
MERIDIAN
: No.
THE STATE
: Reverend Henry—are you in a position to swear that your son never carried arms?
MERIDIAN
: Yes. I can swear to it. The only time the subject was ever mentioned he told me that he was stronger than white people and he could live without a gun.
BLACKTOWN
: I bet he didn’t say how.
WHITETOWN
: That liver-lipped nigger is lying. He’s lying!
THE STATE
: Perhaps the difficulties your son had in accepting the Christian faith is due to your use of the pulpit as a forum for irresponsible notions concerning social equality, Reverend Henry. Perhaps the failure of the son is due to the failure of the father.
MERIDIAN
: I am afraid that the gentleman flatters himself. I do not wish to see Negroes become the equal of their murderers. I wish us to become equal to ourselves. To become a people so free in themselves that they will have no need to—fear-others—and have no need to murder others.
THE STATE
: You are not in the pulpit now. I am suggesting that you are responsible—directly responsible!—for your son’s tragic fate.
MERIDIAN
: I know more about that than you do. But you cannot consider my son’s death to have been tragic. For you, it would have been tragic if he had lived.
THE STATE
: With such a father, it is remarkable that the son lived as long as he did.
MERIDIAN
: Remarkable, too, that the father lived!
THE STATE
: Reverend Henry—you have been a widower for how many years?
MERIDIAN
: I have been a widower for nearly eight years.
THE STATE
: You are a young man still?
MERIDIAN
: Are you asking me my age? I am not young.
THE STATE
: You are not old. It must have demanded great discipline—
MERIDIAN
: To live among you? Yes.
THE STATE
: What is your relationship to the young, so-called student, Miss Juanita Harmon?
MERIDIAN
: I am her old friend. I had hoped to become her father-in-law.
THE STATE
: You are nothing more than old friends?
WHITETOWN
: That’s right. Get it out of him. Get the truth out of him.
BLACKTOWN
: Leave the man
something.
Leave him something!
THE STATE
: You have been celibate since the death of your wife?
BLACKTOWN
: He never said he was a monk, you jive mother!
WHITETOWN
: Make him tell us all about it.
All
about it.
MERIDIAN
: Celibate? How does my celibacy concern you?
THE STATE
: Your Honor, will you instruct the witness that he is on the witness stand, not I, and that he must answer the questions put to him!
MERIDIAN
:
The questions put to him!
All right. Do you accept this answer? I am a man. A
man!
I tried to help my son become a man. But manhood is a dangerous pursuit, here. And that pursuit undid him because of
your
guns,
your
hoses,
your
dogs,
your
judges,
your
law-makers,
your
folly,
your
pride,
your
cruelty,
your
cowardice,
your
money,
your
chain gangs, and
your
churches! Did you think it would endure forever? that we would pay for
your
ease forever?
BLACKTOWN
: Speak, my man! Amen! Amen! Amen! Amen!
WHITETOWN
: Stirring up hate! Stirring up hate! A
preacher
—stirring up hate!
MERIDIAN
: Yes! I
am
responsible for the death of my son. I—hoped—I prayed—I struggled—so that the world would be different by the time he was a man than it had been when he was born. And I thought that—then—when he looked at me—he would think that I—his father—had helped to change it.
THE STATE
: What about those photographs your son carried about with him? Those photographs of himself and naked white women?
BLACKTOWN
: Man! Would I love to look in
your
wallet!
WHITETOWN
: Make him tell us about it, make him tell us
all
about it!
MERIDIAN
: Photographs? My son and naked white women? He never mentioned them to me.
THE STATE
: You were closer than most fathers and sons?
MERIDIAN
: I never took a poll on most fathers and sons.
THE STATE
: You never discussed women?
MERIDIAN
: We talked about his mother. She was a woman. We talked about Miss Harmon.
She
is a woman. But we never talked about dirty pictures. We didn’t need that.
THE STATE
: Reverend Henry, you have made us all aware that your love for your son transcends your respect for the truth or your devotion to the church. But—luckily for the truth-it is a matter of public record that your son was so dangerously deranged that it was found necessary, for his own sake, to incarcerate him. It was at the end of that incarceration that he returned to this town. We know that his life in the North was riotous—he brought that riot into this town. The evidence is overwhelming. And yet, you, a Christian minister, dare to bring us this tissue of lies in defense of a
known pimp, dope addict, and rapist! You are yourself so eaten up by race hatred that no word of yours can be believed.
MERIDIAN
: Your judgment of myself and my motives cannot concern me at all. I have lived with that judgment far too long. The truth cannot be heard in this dreadful place. But I will tell you again what I know. I know why my son became a dope addict. I know better than you will ever know, even if I should explain it to you for all eternity, how I am responsible for that. But I know my son was not a pimp. He respected women far too much for that. And I know he was not a rapist. Rape is hard work—and, frankly, I don’t think that the alleged object was my son’s type at all!
THE STATE
: And you are a minister?
MERIDIAN
: I think I may be beginning to become one.
JUDGE
: The witness may step down.
(Meridian leaves the stand.)
CLERK
(Calls)
: Mr. Parnell James!
(Parnell in his bedroom, dressed in a bathrobe. Night.)
PARNELL
: She says I called somebody else’s name. What name could I have called? And she won’t repeat the name. Well. That’s enough to freeze the blood and arrest the holy, the liberating orgasm! Christ, how weary I am of this dull calisthenic called love—with no love in it! What name could I have called? I hope it was—a
white
girl’s name, anyway! Ha-ha! How still she became! And I hardly realized it, I was too far away—and then it was too late. And she was just looking at me. Jesus! To have somebody just looking at you—just looking at you—like that—at such a moment! It makes you feel—like you woke up and found yourself in bed with your mother! I tried to find out what was wrong—poor girl! But there’s nothing you can say at a moment like that—really nothing. You’re caught. Well, haven’t I kept telling
her that there’s no future for her with me? There’s no future for me with anybody! But that’s all right. What name could I have called? I haven’t been with anybody else for a long time, a long time. She says I haven’t been with her, either. I guess she’s right. I’ve just been using her. Using her as an anchor—to hold me here, in this house, this bed—so I won’t find myself on the other side of town, ruining my reputation.
What
reputation? They all know. I swear they all
know.
Know what? What’s there to know? So you get drunk and you fool around a little. Come on, Parnell. There’s more to it than that. That’s the reason you draw blanks whenever you get drunk. Everything comes out. Everything. They see what you don’t dare to see. What name could I have called? Richard would say that you’ve got—black fever! Yeah, and he’d be wrong—that long, loud, black mother. I wonder if she’s asleep yet—or just lying there, looking at the walls. Poor girl! All your life you’ve been made sick, stunned, dizzy, oh, Lord! driven half mad by blackness. Blackness in front of your eyes. Boys and girls, men and women—you’ve bowed down in front of them all! And then hated yourself. Hated yourself for debasing yourself? Out with it, Parnell! The nigger-lover! Black boys and girls! I’ve wanted my hands full of them, wanted to drown them, laughing and dancing and making love—making love—wow!—and be transformed, formed, liberated out of this grey-white envelope. Jesus! I’ve always been afraid. Afraid of what I saw in their eyes? They don’t love me, certainly. You don’t love them, either! Sick with a disease only white men catch. Blackness. What is it like to be black? To look out on the world from
that
place? I give nothing! How dare she say that! My girl, if you knew what I’ve given! Ah. Come off it, Parnell. To
whom
have you given? What name did I call? What name did I call?
(Blackout. Parnell and Lyle. Hunting on Parnell’s land.)
LYLE
: You think it’s a good idea, then? You think she won’t say no?
PARNELL
: Well, you’re the one who’s got to go through it.
You’ve
got to ask for Miss Josephine’s hand in marriage. And then you’ve got to live with her—for the rest of your life. Watch that gun. I’ve never seen you so jumpy. I might say it was a good idea if I thought she’d say no. But I think she’ll say yes.
LYLE
: Why would she say yes to me?
PARNELL
: I think she’s drawn to you. It isn’t hard to be—drawn to you. Don’t you know that?
LYLE
: No. When I was young, I used to come here sometimes—with my Daddy. He didn’t like
your
Daddy a-
tall!
We used to steal your game, Parnell—you didn’t know that, did you?
PARNELL
: I think I knew it.
LYLE
: We shot at the game and your Daddy’s overseers shot at us. But we
got
what
we
came after.
They
never got
us!
PARNELL
: You’re talking an awful lot today. You nervous about Miss Josephine?
LYLE
: Wait a minute. You think I ought to marry Jo?
PARNELL
: I don’t know who anybody should marry. Do you want to marry Jo?
LYLE
: Well—I got to marry somebody. I got to have some kids. And Jo is—
clean!