The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

by Ernest J. Gaines

  Molly didn’t want nobody else working in that house with her, scared the person would take her place. She had been with the Clyde family ever since she was a young lady. She had been the cook, she had been the nurse. But now she was in her sixties, and they thought she was getting old and needed help. Molly didn’t think she needed help. She was scared if she got help the next thing the other person would be taking over. She had had it pretty easy all her life, and she wasn’t go’n let nobody take it from her. The people tried to show Molly they didn’t want nobody else to take her place. “We love you, that’s why we want people here to help you,” they told her. But Molly didn’t see it that way. And she made everybody who came there to work pay for it. She would spill hot ashes on the floor and swear you was trying to burn the house down. If she heard one of the children crying she would swear you had done him something wrong. If you had to make a fire in the firehalf or you had to make up a bed she would find something wrong with it every time. She did everything to get rid of you; then after she had got you out she couldn’t take care the work by herself.

  Molly tried to get rid of me just like she had got rid of all the others. She had told lies on them till the white people had to let them go. When the white people found out she was telling lies and refused to fire the servants Molly vexed them and vexed them till they quit themself. When that didn’t work on me she went to the white people crying. She was quitting because they didn’t love her no more. She said she had wet nurse Miss Clare and now Miss Clare was the main one trying to put her out in the cold. They told Molly that wasn’t true, they wanted her there, they wanted her there the rest of her life. Molly said they didn’t want her, they wanted me.

  One day she told them she was leaving. They told her she couldn’t leave, she been with them most of her life. She said me or her, one of us had to go. Miss Clare said I wasn’t going, but she didn’t want Molly to go either. She told me herself that she loved Molly much as she loved anybody and she wanted Molly to spend the rest of her life there with them. Molly said me or her, one had to go. I told them let me go in the field. No, they said.

  Molly went to Deritter and got a job looking after an old lady there. I think for the first six months after Molly left, Miss Clare cried for Molly every day. She would go to Deritter every week to see Molly. If she didn’t go to Molly, Molly came there to see her. They would sit in that front room and talk for hours. Molly would spend the night and go back the next day. I went to Miss Clare and told her I was quitting. She told me if I did, she just had to get somebody else. I told her I didn’t care what she did, I was quitting. I went home and told Joe I had quit. Joe told me if I didn’t get back up to that house he was go’n take a stick and run me back up there.

  Molly died four or five years after that. The doctor said she died from old age, but Molly died from a broken heart. They brought her back to the place and buried her in the family plot. One of the things I’ll always regret, me and Molly never got to be friends. Maybe in the Beyond we will meet again and I’ll have a chance to tell her I never meant any harm. I think up there she will understand much better than she did down here.

  A Dollar for Two

  I stayed there about ten years. All that time I worked in the house and Joe broke the horses. They used to get the horses out of Texas. We wasn’t too far off the Luzana-Texas borderline, and they used to get the horses out of Texas and bring them home to break them, then sell them to a boat that went down the Sabine River. Joe was called Chief Breaker. Everybody called him Chief—Chief Pittman. He broke horses nobody else could ride. People used to come from all over just to see him. Bet on him like you bet on rodeo riders. Clyde made as much on his rodeo as he made selling the horses down the river.

  I dreaded the days they went to Texas to get horses. Scared somebody was coming back and telling me Joe was dead. Scared they might bring him in the house all broken up. I had seen it happen. A young boy had been throwed against a fence. Laid in bed a week, suffering, screaming, before he died. Every time Joe went out now I thought about that boy. But when I told him how I felt, all he said was: “What else can I do? I got to make a living doing something. Maybe the Lord put me here to break horses.”

  “And maybe He didn’t,” I said. “Well, till He come down here and tell me different, I reckoned I’ll just go on breaking them,” Joe said.

  Together we was making a dollar a day. We didn’t have to pay rent or buy food, so we could save most of what we made. After we had been there two, three years we had already paid back the hundred and fifty dollars Joe had borrowed. Couple more years, I thought we had enough and we ought to go out and find a little place of our own. Joe said it wasn’t that easy. He was too valuable to just pack up and quit like that. And what would he do? Farm? He didn’t want do no more farming. No, he wanted to ride horses. He was good at it and he liked it.

  When I saw he wasn’t go’n leave I started having dreams about his death. I saw him dead in every way you can think possible. Throwed on a fence, throwed against a tree, dragged through the swamps. Every way possible a cowboy could die, I dreamed it of Joe. Then one dream started coming back over and over, the one where he was throwed against the fence. When I told it to him, he said: “Now, little mama, man come here to die, didn’t he? That’s the contract he signed when he was born—‘I hereby degree that one of these days I’m go’n lay down these old bones.’ Now, all he can do while he’s here is do something and do that thing good. The best thing I can do in this world is ride horses. Maybe I can be a better farmer, but the way things is a colored man just can’t get out there and start farming any time he want. He’s go’n have to take orders from some white man. Breaking horses, I don’t take orders from a soul on earth. That’s why they calls me Chief. Maybe one day one of them’ll come along and get me. Maybe I’ll get too old and just have to step down. Maybe some little young buck’ll come along and take over Chief from me and I won’t have to ride the terrible ones no more. But till that day get here I got to keep going. That’s what life’s about, doing it good as you can. When the time come for them to lay you down in that long black hole, they can say one thing: ’He did it good as he could.’ That’s the best thing you can say for a man. Horse breaker or yard sweeper, let them say the poor boy did it good as he could.”

  Every time he left the house I thought that was the last time I was go’n see him alive. Then a month or two later they would show up with another drove. These was the good times, when the men came riding back. Everybody was happy, the white and the black. The men would put the horses in the corral a few days; then after the men had rested up, after the word was out they had new horses on the place, then they would go out to break them. The corral was between the house and the quarters, and I could see them riding the horses from the yard or from one of the windows at the house.

  Seven or eight years after we had been living there it happened. It was cold that day when they came in with the horses. It was February, a Monday, almost freezing. Any time the men came back, ’specially with a good drove, they had a feast in the kitchen at the big house. Me and Joe went to the feast late that day. When we came up even with the corral, a black stallion ran long the fence whinnying and bobbing his head. I got so weak I almost fell. This was the same horse I had been seeing in my dreams. But when I told it to Joe, all he did was laugh.

  Everybody was already in the kitchen when we got there. Joe sat down at the table and I served him. The women didn’t sit at the table with the men on that day, they served their men. Clyde came back to the kitchen and had a drink, but he didn’t sit down at the table. While he was back there Joe told him what I had said about the horse, and everybody bust out laughing.

  “Well, if Joe don’t ride him, reckoned I’ll have to do it,” Clyde said.

  When he said that the rest of the men laughed even harder. Joe laughed so much he cried. He was Chief. Who was go’n ride something he was scared to ride?

  When we was going back home, the stallion heard us com
ing or he smelt Joe’s scent in the air, and he ran long the fence again. None of the other horses paid us any mind, just him. Tall, slick, and black, just running long the fence. We stopped there and I looked at him awhile. He was the devil far as I was concerned, but Joe stood there grinning at him. Joe said he had gived them more trouble than all the other horses put together. He was stronger and faster than any horse he had ever seen. Run for days and wouldn’t get tired. Leap over a canal that a regular horse wouldn’t even try. After they had been after him about a week some of the men started saying he was a ghost. Maybe even a haint. Clyde said he wasn’t either. He was a horse and they was go’n catch him and take him home. They trailed him a week, night and day. They saw him here, they saw him over there: sometimes right on them; other times far, far away.

  But they cornered him in the mountains. Joe said after they had caught him every last man there looked hurt. Hurt because the chase was over; hurt because they had to break him just like you break any other horse.

  All the time we stood there looking at that horse he was pacing long the fence. After we walked away I looked back over my shoulder and I saw him standing there all tall, slick, and black. I told Joe that horse gived me the chills. Joe said it was just the weather.

  Man’s Way

  I couldn’t sleep that night for worrying over that horse. If I shut my eyes a second I saw him standing there in the corral. If I kept them shut any link of time I saw him throwing Joe against that fence. A cowboy to fall is no disgrace, but I had dreamed of this horse even before I saw him, and that did worry my mind.

  The next day I made pretend I was sick and I asked them to let me go see the doctor. Joe wanted to drive me in town, but I told him it wasn’t that bad. He told me to take Ella with me, but I told him I wanted to go by myself. Because it wasn’t the doctor, it was the hoo-doo in town I wanted to see. I didn’t believe in hoo-doo, I never have, but nobody else wanted to listen to me. I wanted to find out if I was dreaming this just because I wanted Joe to stop riding, or if I was dreaming this because it was go’n happen.

  The hoo-doo lived in a narrow little street called Dettie Street, and the little town where she lived was called Grady. She had flower bushes all over the yard, but no flowers, because it was winter. She had bottles stuck upside down round all the flower bushes, and two rows of bottle side the walk from the gate up to the house. Bottles every color you can mention. She had scrubbed the gallery that morning, and she had sprinkled red brick over the gallery and the steps. She must ’a’ heard me stop the wagon before the gate because she answered the door soon as I knocked. She was a big mulatto woman, and had come from New Orleans. At least, that was her story. She had left New Orleans because she was a rival of Marie Laveau. Marie Laveau was the Queen then, you know, and nobody dare rival Marie Laveau. Neither Marie Laveau mama, neither Marie Laveau daughter who followed her. Some people said the two Maries was the same one, but, of course, that was people talk. Said the first Marie never died, she just turned younger in her later years. Well, from all I’ve heard, Marie Laveau was powerful, helped and hurt lot of people, but I don’t think even she was that powerful.

  This one name was Madame Gautier. Her name was Eloise Gautier, but everybody called her Madame Gautier. She wore a purple satin dress and a gold-color head rag. Two big earrings like the Creole people wear in her ears. She told me to come in. When she heard I had come there for special business she told me to follow her to another room. It was winter and it was cold and she had a fire in the firehalf. She had candles burning in every corner of the room, and she had seven on the mantelpiece. She had another candle burning under a little statue on a little table by the window. She had Saint pictures hanging on the wall with crepe paper round each picture. She nodded for me to sit down. After she had put another piece of wood on the fire she sat down cross from me. I had felt a little scared of her till I saw her put the piece of wood in the fire. Then I told myself, “Well, she can get cold just like anybody else at least.”

  After I told her why I was there, she asked me why hadn’t I stopped Joe in my dream from getting on that horse. I told her I couldn’t stop him in real life, how could she expect me to stop him in a dream.

  “You ever tried?” she asked.

  I told her yes I had tried, but he never heard me. It was too dusty or too dark or too much noise was going on or he was too far away or too something else.

  “Wait,” she said, “before you go another step farther. How many children you done gived to this man Joe Pittman?”

  “I am barren,” I said. And I told her what the doctor had said.

  “Ah,” she said. “Slavery has made you barren. But that is it.”

  “That’s why he ride them horses?” I asked her.

  “That’s why you can’t stop him,” she said. “He probably rides for many reasons. That’s man’s way. To prove something. Day in, day out he must prove he is a man. Poor fool.”

  “Joe is good to me,” I said.

  “Sure he is, my dear,” she said. “But man is foolish. And he’s always proving how foolish he is. Some go after lions, some run after every woman he sees, some ride wild horses.”

  “That horse go’n kill him?” I asked her.

  “Mon sha,” she said.

  I looked at her, waiting.

  “You want the answer?” she said.

  “If it’s good,” I said.

  “There’s just one answer,” she said.

  I looked in her face a long time to see what the answer was, but her face wouldn’t show it. It was quiet, quiet in the room. So quiet you could almost hear them candles burning. Not quite, but almost. The fire popped so loud in the firehalf it made me jump. Now I was scared of the answer, and I was sorry I had come there.

  “You can go if you want,” she said.

  “I want to know,” I said.

  “You brave, my dear?” she asked.

  “That mean he go’n kill him?” I asked.

  “I didn’t say that,” she said.

  “But that’s the answer?” I said.

  “Oui,” she said.

  “And you absolutely sure?” I asked.

  “I don’t give nothing but sure answers,” she said. “I am Madame Eloise Gautier, formerly of New Orleans, and that’s why she got me out.”

  “Nothing can stop it?” I asked.

  “Nothing can stop death, mon sha,” she said. “Death comes. A black horse. Lightning. Guns. And you have grippe.”

  “Grippe?” I said. “What’s grippe?”

  “Grippe is grippe,” she said. “Nothing like it.”

  “Can I kill that horse?” I said.

  “Can you kill death?” Madame Gautier said. “Your Pittman will stand between you and death.”

  “When’s it go’n happen?” I asked her.

  “Mon sha,” she said. “Don’t you know too much already?”

  “No,” I said.

  “When he falls three times,” she said.

  “He go’n fall three times?” I said. “How do you know that?”

  “I am Madame Eloise Gautier, formerly of New Orleans,” she said.

  “If he don’t get up after he fall the first time?” I said.

  “He will,” she said. “Chief—and don’t get up? He will. Even if he must fall ninety times. Chief? he must.”

  “Can’t you give me something to put in his food?” I asked her. She had a little cabinet against the wall, and she had all kinds of bottles and jars in the cabinet. “Some powder or something to make him sick?” I said. “If he’s sick he can’t ride.”

  “You go’n keep him sick?” she asked.

  “Till somebody else break that horse,” I said.

  “Mon sha, mon sha, mon sha, mon sha,” she said. “I have told you the horse is just one. If not the horse, then the lion, if not the lion, then the woman, if not the woman, then the war, then the politic, then the whisky. Man must always search somewhere to prove himself. He don’t know everything is already inside hi
m.”

  “Then he want die?” I asked her. “Because I can’t give him the child?”

  “No, he want to live,” she said. “And not just because you barren. Many reasons. Many. Many. But it’s in here, mon sha,” she said, touching her bosom.

  “But don’t he know that horse can kill him?” I said.

  “He don’t know that,” she said. “And he wouldn’t believe any man on earth who told him so. He believes a horse is made to be broken. All horses made to be broken, true, but not every man can break every horse. This horse your Pittman will not break. Your Pittman has got old and fat now. Not the man he think he is.”

  “He’s all right,” I said.

  “Ah, mon sha,” she said.

  “I know what I’m saying,” I said. “And you can ask anybody else.”

  “We talking about breaking horses, mon sha,” she said. “Your Pittman will not break this horse. Another man will have to do it. If he is true he will be destroyed by some other horse himself. If he’s not true, then something else will take him. It could be grippe.”

  “Grippe again,” I said.

  “Grippe can do it,” she said. “Mon sha, man is put here to die. From the day he is born him and death take off for that red string. But he never wins, he don’t even tie. So the next best thing, do what you can with the little time the Lord spares you. Most men feel they ought to spend them few years proving they men. They choose the foolishes’ ways to do it.”

  “Joe said he wouldn’t mind farming if the white people let him farm in peace.”

  “I know, mon sha, I know,” she said. “That’ll be a dollar if you don’t mind.”

  “I want some powder, too,” I said. “I don’t want nothing too strong—just to keep him off that horse.”

  “Give me a dollar and a quarter,” she said.

  While I was getting the money out of my handkerchief she went to the cabinet. I saw her opening one of the bottles and dumping the powder on a piece of paper. She looked at how much she already had on the paper, then she added a little bit more.