A Gathering of Old Men

by Ernest J. Gaines

  “Do you?” he said. “Do you? Do you hear that church bell ringing?”

  “Are you all right?” Mapes asked him. “And maybe I shoulda asked you that before. Maybe I shoulda asked all y’all that before,” he said, looking at the rest of us. Then back to Johnny Paul. “Church bells, Johnny Paul?”

  “I hear him,” Beulah said from the steps. “He’s making sense.”

  “Then tell me in English what he’s saying in Gri-gri,” Mapes said.

  “Let him tell you,” Beulah said. “He talks good as I do.”

  “You want to go too, huh?” Mapes asked her.

  “That’s right,” Beulah said. “I don’t mind going. I been to the pen before. You was saying, Johnny Paul?”

  “Y’all remember how it used to be?” Johnny Paul said. He wasn’t answering Beulah, he wasn’t even speaking to her, or to Mapes now. He was just thinking out loud, the way a man talk to himself plowing the field by himself or hunting in the swamps with nothing but a gun, not even a dog. “Remember?” he said. “When they wasn’t no weeds—remember? Remember how they used to sit out there on the garry—Mama, Papa, Aunt Clara, Aunt Sarah, Unc Moon, Aunt Spoodle, Aunt Thread. Remember? Everybody had flowers in the yard. But nobody had four-o’clocks like Jack Toussaint. Every day at four o’clock, they opened up just as pretty. Remember?” He stopped, thinking back. The rest of us all thinking back. I had spent many, many days on the end of Jack’s garry, facing that bush. But you wouldn’t never catch it opening. It opened while you was sitting there, but you never saw it. Like trying to watch a hour hand move on a clock. You never see it move, but it was moving all the time.

  “That’s why I kilt him, that’s why,” Johnny Paul said. “To protect them little flowers. But they ain’t here no more. And how come? ’Cause Jack ain’t here no more. He’s back there under them trees with all the rest. With Mama and Papa, Aunt Thread, Aunt Spoodle, Aunt Clara, Unc Moon, Unc Jerry—all the rest of them. But y’all do remember, don’t y’all?” He turned to Glo. Glo sat there on the steps, still wearing her apron, her little grandchildren at her side. She was looking down at the ground, remembering. She nodded. “Remember the palm-of-Christians in Thread’s yard, Glo? Other people had them, but they didn’t grow nowhere thick and dark like they did in her yard. Remember, Glo?” Glo nodded again, not looking at him. She was seeing the palm-of-Christians. I was seeing the palm-of-Christians. That’s when you was a little boy, you used to drag a little girl under them leaves. It was the coolest place in summer. If it was raining, storming, the leaves was so big, they kept the water off you. “Remember Jack and Red Rider hitting that field every morning with them two mules, Diamond and Job?” Johnny Paul asked us. He wasn’t looking at Glo now; he was looking way off again. “Lord, Lord, Lord. Don’t tell me you can’t remember them early mornings when that sun was just coming up over there behind them trees? Y’all can’t tell me y’all can’t remember how Jack and Red Rider used to race out into that field on them old single slides? Jack with Diamond, Red Rider with Job—touching the ground, just touching the ground to keep them slides steady. Hah. Tell me who could beat them two men plowing a row, hanh? Who? I’m asking y’all who?”

  “Nobody,” Beulah said. “That’s for sure. Not them two men. Them was men—them.”

  Johnny Paul nodded his head. Not to Beulah. He wasn’t looking at her. He was looking way off again, down the quarters toward the field.

  “Thirty, forty of us going out in the field with cane knives, hoes, plows—name it. Sunup to sundown, hard, miserable work, but we managed to get it done. We stuck together, shared what little we had, and loved and respected each other.

  “But just look at things today. Where the people? Where the roses? Where the four-o’clocks? The palm-of-Christians? Where the people used to sing and pray in the church? I’ll tell you. Under them trees back there, that’s where. And where they used to stay, the weeds got it now, just waiting for the tractor to come plow it up.”

  Johnny Paul had been looking down the quarters. He looked at Mapes again. The people had been nodding their heads, going along with him all the time.

  “That’s something you can’t see, Sheriff, ’cause you never could see it,” he said. “You can’t see Red Rider with Job, Jack with Diamond. You can’t see the church with the people, and you can’t hear the singing and the praying. You had to be here then to be able to don’t see it and don’t hear it now. But I was here then, and I don’t see it now, and that’s why I did it. I did it for them back there under them trees. I did it ’cause that tractor is getting closer and closer to that graveyard, and I was scared if I didn’t do it, one day that tractor was go’n come in there and plow up them graves, getting rid of all proof that we ever was. Like now they trying to get rid of all proof that black people ever farmed this land with plows and mules—like if they had nothing from the starten but motor machines. Sure, one day they will get rid of the proof that we ever was, but they ain’t go’n do it while I’m still here. Mama and Papa worked too hard in these fields. They mama and they papa worked too hard in these same fields. They mama and they papa people worked too hard, too hard to have that tractor just come in that graveyard and destroy all proof that they ever was. I’m the last one left. I had to see that the graves stayed for a little while longer. But I just didn’t do it for my own people. I did it for every last one back there under them trees. And I did it for every four-o’clock, every rosebush, every palm-of-Christian ever growed on this place.”

  He went over to the garden fence to stand by himself. The people stayed quiet. Even Mapes was quiet. Mathu was still there before Mapes, Candy not too far from Mathu, and her boyfriend, Lou, not too far from her side.

  Mapes grunted. Not loud. Quiet. He was starting to feel what was going on. If he felt it right, he knowed he had to wait. He kept the Life Saver quiet, waiting. Then Tucker spoke up. And Mapes started moving the candy around in his mouth again.

  Tucker was a small, brown-skinned fellow. I hadn’t seen Tucker in—Lord, let me see—say, maybe two, three years. Last time was at Edna Zeno’s funeral down the road at Little Zion. He used to live here, him and his family, twenty-five, thirty years ago, but most of his people was dead now, and he lived at Jarreau, about eight miles from here, going toward Bayonne.

  “Y’all remember my brother Silas, don’t y’all?” he said. “I’m talking to the old, not to the young. You don’t remember him, Candy. They got rid of him ’fore you was born. He was the last black man round here trying to sharecrop on this place. The last one to fight against that tractor out there.”

  Some of us looked at the tractor and the two loads of cane. Mapes didn’t; he was looking down at the ground. He was getting tired; he was getting tired fast. Tired listening, tired standing, tired of niggers. But he didn’t know what to do about it. He could take Mathu to jail, but what about the rest of us—specially Candy? So now he was just looking down at the ground, thinking. He had already used his only little knowledge he knowed how to deal with black folks—knocking them around. When that didn’t change a thing, when people started getting in line to be knocked around, he didn’t know what else to do. So now he just stood there, a big fat red hulk, looking down at the ground.

  “We told him to stop,” Tucker was saying. “We all told him the rest of us had gived up, and he ought to give up, too—we all told him that. We tried to show him how it couldn’t work. We had got the worst land from the start, and no matter how hard we worked it, the people with the best land was go’n always be in front. All you old people know this already. After the plantation was dying out, the Marshalls dosed out the land for sharecropping, giving the best land to the Cajuns, and giving us the worst—that bottomland near the swamps. Here, our own black people had been working this land a hundred years for the Marshall plantation, but when it come to sharecropping, now they give the best land to the Cajuns, who had never set foot on the land before.”

  He stopped and looked at Candy. Candy was standing by Mathu, her mo
uth tight, grim—she was looking over the yard, down the quarters, toward the fields. She knowed Tucker was telling the truth. She hadn’t witnessed it, she was born too late to witness it, but she had heard about what had happened. She had heard about it from Mathu, from the rest of us—and she knowed he was telling the truth.

  “I’m stating facts,” Tucker said. “Facts. ’Cause this is the day of reckonding, and I will speak the truth, without fear, if it mean I have to spend the rest of my life in jail.”

  Mapes grunted—a grunt that said you might.

  “Yeah, you can go on and grunt all you want,” Tucker said to Mapes. “But all you can do is lock me up. Here, you want lock me up?” he said, coming on Mapes with his hands out. “Here, I’m ready. Go on and lock me up.”

  Mapes just looked at him, and moved that candy around in his mouth.

  “I wish I was the sheriff round here,” the deputy said. All this time, he had been standing to the side, looking mad, but staying quiet. “I bet you wouldn’t be talking to me like that.”

  “And what would you do, you little no-butt nothing?” Tucker said to the little deputy.

  The people laughed. That little deputy turned red.

  “Shut up,” Mapes said to him.

  “I ain’t used to no niggers talking to me like that,” the deputy said.

  “Just stick around long enough,” Beulah said, from the steps.

  “We go’n just stand here and take this?” the deputy asked Mapes.

  “You can go for a walk,” Mapes said. “I’ll call you if I need you.”

  “I don’t feel like walking,” the deputy said. “Left just to me, that old coon woulda been in jail an hour ago. And I’d shoot the first one tried to get him loose.” He looked at Candy.

  Candy stared at him from over by the steps. She looked at him slow and hard, that Marshall way of looking at you. The little deputy stood his ground for a while, but when he saw Candy wasn’t going to back down, he turned from her and looked back at Tucker again. Now he was trying to make Tucker look down.

  “Take a walk,” Mapes said.

  “I don’t feel like walking,” the deputy said.

  “Then just be quiet,” Mapes said. “Let them work out their gall. You was saying?” he said to Tucker.

  “That boy through?” Tucker asked Mapes.

  “He’s through,” Mapes said.

  “You through, boy?” Tucker asked the deputy himself.

  That little deputy didn’t answer. He just looked at Tucker. Tucker looked right back at him.

  “Y’all know what happened,” Tucker said. He wasn’t looking at Mapes; he was still looking at that little deputy. But after a while he didn’t think that little deputy was worth looking at, and he turned to us. “Y’all remember how he drove his wife and children, trying to keep up with the machine.

  Drove her till he drove her crazy. But even that didn’t stop him. He wouldn’t stop till one day they caught him and beat him in the ground.”

  He stopped—not looking at us now—looking away. We all stayed quiet. Everything was quiet—the weeds, the fields, the swamps—everything quiet, quiet. Waiting for him to go on.

  “Y’all don’t know ’cause y’all wasn’t there, and I ain’t been able to talk about it before,” he said. He turned to us again. “Been in here all these years, boiling in me,” he said, hitting his chest. “Done spoiled my intrance. Fear. Fear. Done spoiled my intrance. I don’t know how come I’m still alive.”

  He turned to Glo. Glo nodded her head. She knowed what he was talking about. We all knowed what he was talking about.

  “How can a man beat a machine?” he asked. “No way? Hanh? That’s what you say? Well, my brother did. With them two little mules, he beat that tractor to the derrick. Them two little mules did all they could, like my brother did. They knowed it was the end if they couldn’t make it. They could hear the machine like everybody else could hear the machine, and they knowed they had to pull, pull, pull if they wanted to keep going. My brother and mules, mules and my brother. So they pulled for him and pulled for him and pulled for him, sweating, slipping, falling, but pulling for him. Slobber running from their mouths, the bit cutting their lips, the slobber and blood mixing and falling to the ground, yet they pulled, pulled, pulled in all that mud for him. And yes, they did win. They won. But they wasn’t supposed to win. How can flesh and blood and nigger win against white man and machine?

  “So they beat him. They took stalks of cane and they beat him and beat him and beat him. I was there, and I didn’t move. I was loading cane for Tony O’linde, me and Joe Taylor. I saw the race, I saw my brother beat Felix Boutan on his tractor. I wouldn’t be lying this day for nothing in the world. I saw my brother win that race. But he wasn’t supposed to win, he was supposed to lose. We all knowed he was supposed to lose. Me, his own brother, knowed he was supposed to lose. He was supposed to lose years ago, and because he didn’t lose like a nigger is supposed to lose, they beat him. And they beat him, and they beat him. And I didn’t do nothing but stand there and watch them beat my brother down to the ground.”

  He stopped again. He looked at all of us. But none of us looked back at him. We had all done the same thing sometime or another; we had all seen our brother, sister, mama, daddy insulted once and didn’t do a thing about it.

  Tucker had been standing near the steps all the time he was talking. Now he went to the far end of the garry and looked toward the graveyard. You couldn’t see a thing from here for the weeds. But we all knowed where his eyes was; we all knowed who he was talking to. All of us had stood here—in one of these old yards—and we had all hollered toward that graveyard.

  “Forgive me!” He had both hands over his head, the gun in one hand, the other hand clenched to a fist. “Forgive this nothing!” he called. “Can you hear me, Silas? Tell me, can you hear me, Silas?”

  Beulah got up from the steps and went to get him, and led him back. They sat down, and she put her arm around his shoulders, holding him like you do a little child.

  “Where was the law?” he said, looking up at Mapes. He was crying now. “Where was the law? Law said he cut in on the tractor, and he was the one who started the fight. That’s law for a nigger. That’s law.” He looked at Mapes. He wanted Mapes to face him. Mapes wouldn’t. Mapes sucked on his candy. “How can a man on a wagon with mules—made of flesh and blood—cut in on a tractor, a machine? Ain’t no way. No way. But that’s what they said. And in my fear,” Tucker said, looking at the rest of us, “in my fear, even after I had seen what happened—in my fear, I went along with the white folks. Out of fear of a little pain to my own body, I beat my own brother with a stalk of cane as much as the white folks did.”

  He looked at all of us, one after another. He wanted us to pass judgment over him for what he had done. Us judge him? How could any of us judge him? Who hadn’t done the same thing, sometime or another?

  We stayed quiet. Mapes was quiet. His little deputy was quiet. No air was stirring, so the trees, the bushes, everything was quiet.

  Then Yank spoke. Mapes jerked his head around to look at Yank. He had thought the talking was over. He started to say something to Yank, maybe even wanted to cuss him. But he didn’t, just looked at him, long and hard. Yank didn’t pay him any mind.

  “That’s right,” he said. “Anybody needed a horse broke, they called on Yank. In the parish, out the parish, they called on Yank. Anytime they needed a horse broke for a lady they called Yank, ’cause they knowed I knowed my stuff. Lot of these rich white folks you see riding these fine horses in Mardi Gras parades, prancing all over the place, I broke them horses. I, Sylvester J. Battley—me. Mathu, Rufe, Tucker, Gable, Glo there, they can ’count for that.” He turned to Mathu. Mathu was nearly a foot taller than Yank; Mathu, tall and straight; Yank, short, stocky, and bowlegged. He looked up at Mathu, his brownish weak eyes pleading with Mathu to go along with what he was saying. Mathu nodded. Didn’t say a thing, didn’t even look down at him, just nodded. But that was g
ood enough for Yank. “I broke all the horses, all the mules,” he said. He wasn’t talking to us now. He was thinking back, back when he was a younger man, when he used to do all this. “I broke ’em all. I broke Snook and Chip for Candy. Chip almost killed me when he throwed me ’gainst that fence. But I got back up. It had to be me or him. He’s up in that pasture right now, too old to do nothing but eat grass. But you go up there and ask him who broke him—go on.”

  He stopped again. He nodded his head thoughtfully. He was still thinking back back.

  “They ain’t got no more horses to break no more. The tractors, the cane cutters—and I ain’t been nothing ever since. They look at you today and they call you trifling, ’cause they see you sitting there all the time not doing nothing. They can’t remember when you used to break all the horses and break all the mules. Snook, Chip, Diamond, Job. I broke Tiger, Tony, Sally, Dot, Lucky, Cora, John Strutter, Lottie, Hattie, Bird, Red, Bessie, Mut, Lena, Mr. Bascom. For Dr. Morgan, I broke Slipper, Skeeter, Roland. I broke ’em all. But the ones around here now don’t remember that. Well, I remember. I remember. And I know who took it from me, too.”

  “You ever heard of progress?” Mapes asked him. Mapes had been wiping his face and neck again.

  “I ain’t thinking ’bout no progress. I’m thinking ’bout breaking horses,” Yank said.

  “You couldn’t break a horse now if your life depended on it,” Mapes said. He put the handkerchief back in his pocket. The handkerchief wasn’t white anymore; it was gray now, and dirty.

  “Maybe I can’t break no more horses,” Yank said. “Maybe that’s why I shot the man who took the horse from me.”

  “Remember that for the record, Griffin,” Mapes said, over his shoulder.

  “I got it,” Griffin said. “Yank. Y-a-n—”

  “Sylvester J. Battley,” Yank said. “Be sure and spell Sylvester and Battley right, if you can. When my folks read about me up North, I want them to be proud.”