The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

by Ernest J. Gaines

  “When do they break the horses?” she asked me.

  “Saturday,” I said.

  “Early or late?”

  “Late. When the people get there.”

  “When the cock crow Saturday morning, get up and sprinkle some of this on the floor so Pittman will have to cross it,” she said. “His side of the bed is best. Go to the corral gate and sprinkle some there while the cock is still crowing.”

  “And that’ll keep him from riding the horse?” I asked.

  “He will not ride him, my dear.”

  I paid her and left. My powder in my handkerchief, I felt good. All day I felt good. That night I didn’t sleep, but it was just because I felt good. But the next day I felt shaky. How did I know that powder was go’n work? Maybe she had just gived it to me because I was worrying her so much. She didn’t take time to pick a bottle, she just grabbed the first one she came to. Matter of fact I wanted some powder out of that little green bottle, not that red one. I got more and more shaky. Joe asked me if I was all right.

  “Sure, I’m all right,” I said. “What you got to be asking me that for?”

  “Just asked you,” he said.

  At the house Miss Clare asked me the same thing.

  “Something the matter with you, Jane?”

  “Just tired,” I said.

  “Go home and come back tomorrow,” Miss Clare said.

  That was Thursday. Thursday night I didn’t sleep at all. The next day I felt even worse.

  “Go back home, Jane,” Miss Clare said.

  Joe went hunting that day, and I sat round the house by myself. If I laid down on the bed and shut my eyes a second time I saw that black devil standing in the corral. That night we went to bed early because the next day was Saturday, the day they broke the horses. Joe was tired from hunting and went right off to sleep. The two girls was asleep in their bed. I was the only one laying there awake. Probably the only one awake on that whole place.

  I knowed I never would get any sleep that night, and I got up and put on some clothes. I was go’n sit at the firehalf, but the next thing I know I was outside. It was freezing out there, and the night clear as day. I didn’t know why I had come out there. I knowed when I got up that was not in my mind. Now, out there, I found myself headed toward the corral.

  All the other horses was standing together to stay warm, all but him. He walking round inside the corral like he was some kind of majesty. When he got a whiff of my scent he stopped walking and looked up. I stood there looking at him, my arms folded because it was near freezing. The next thing I knowed I had opened the gate and I was in the corral trying to get him out.

  I was in the corral, waving my arms, going “Shoo, shoo, shoo,” but he wouldn’t go near that gate till Joe came there. Soon as he caught sight of Joe they started for the gate at the same time. He won by a foot and lit out cross the field. The ground was frozen and you could hear him pounding that hard ground a mile. Joe came in there and knocked me down, then he picked me up and throwed me over the fence. I laid down there numb awhile, and when I got up I saw that he had swung upon his own horse and was going after the stallion. I started hollering and running after him. “Don’t get back on him, don’t get back on him, Joe.” The people came out to see what was the matter. When they heard the stallion was loose they saddled their horses and went after him. I ran after Joe till I came up to the swamps, then I turned around and come on back home. I sat by the firehalf all night waiting for them to come back.

  Early the next morning they came back with the stallion and with Joe tied to his own horse. They said Joe had cornered and roped the stallion, but with no saddle to tie the rope on, the stallion had jecked him off his horse and had dragged him through the swamps. When they found him he was tangled in the rope, already dead. The horse still had the rope round his neck, eating leaves off a bush to the side.

  They waked Joe Pittman that night and buried him that Sunday, and the rodeo went on that next Saturday. Before it started they toned the bell one minute for Pittman. Every man took off his hat. The ladies bowed their heads. Soon as the minute was up a young boy called Gable got on the stallion. The stallion throwed him, but he got back on. The stallion throwed him again and he got back on him again. He kept getting back on till the stallion couldn’t throw him no more. Not long after that him and Ella got married and moved to Texas. They took Clara with them.

  When Joe Pittman was killed a part of me went with him to his grave. No man would ever take his place, and that’s why I carry his name to this day. I have knowed two or three other men, but none took the place of Joe Pittman. I let them know that from the start.

  A couple years after Joe Pittman was killed I met a man called Felton Burkes who was a fisherman on the seine boat. Felton and his crew was moving to the St. Charles River and I followed him here. That’s how I got to this part of the State. Me and Felton lived together about three years, then one day he was gone. Didn’t say a word. I didn’t know he was gone for good till he didn’t come back for a month. But that didn’t bother me none; not long after he left, Ned showed up with his family.

  Professor Douglass

  Ned used to write me, send me money all the time, bue he never said anything about coming home. Not even he knowed he was coming back here till after he came from that war in Cuba. That war ended in 1898. He came here that next summer. And a year later, almost to the day, Albert Cluveau shot him down. Albert Cluveau and his gang patrolled the river from Johnville to Bayonne. Gustave Maurios and his bunch took over Johnville all the way to Creole Place. They used to get contracts to kill people just like you get contracts to cut wood.

  I was fishing that day when the boy came down the river bank and told me some people was at my house. I asked him who they was. He said he didn’t know; they had come there in a wagon. I pulled in my line and went up the bank.

  I hadn’t seen Ned in twenty years, but I knowed it was him the moment I saw him standing on the gallery. Not from the way he looked. He didn’t look nothing like he did when he left here for Kansas. He was a great big man now. Powerfully built: broad shoulders, thick neck. I knowed it was him because I felt it was him.

  Ned and his wife was standing on the gallery talking. I knowed it was about me because they was looking at me all the time. Ned still had on his Army uniform. He used to wear his uniform everywhere he went. When he was shot down he was in his Army uniform. His wife had on a red dress and a yellow straw hat. The three children was playing in the yard.

  I don’t know how I came in the yard because I don’t remember pulling that gate open. But I remember walking up the walk saying, “I know that ain’t nobody but you, Ned. You can’t fool me. That ain’t a soul but you.” I couldn’t stop saying that, and I couldn’t say nothing else. That over and over: “I know that ain’t a soul else in this world but you.”

  He met me in the yard and picked me up and swung me around. Me with that pole and bucket still in my hand. I could hear them children laughing.

  “Put me down,” I kept saying. But I was having much fun as the rest of them was having. “Put me down,” I said.

  He let me down slowly, and when my head stopped spinning I stood back and looked at him again. He still didn’t look like the Ned I knowed. Even when he smiled he didn’t look like the one I remembered. But I knowed it was him because I felt deep inside me it was him.

  We went on the gallery and I met his wife. Her name was Vivian. A little brown-skin woman, very quiet. Then I met the children. Jane, Laura, and Tee Man. The girls was named after me and his mama; Tee Man was a junior.

  We went inside and Ned gived me a package and told me to open it right away. I untied the ribbon and unwrapped the paper—and you never have seen such beautiful cloth. Of all colors. Lines, blocks, flowers in bloom; leaves. While I was admiring the cloth, Ned opened a wooden box and took out some dishes. He told Vivian about the time he had to go borrow a plate for the professor because I didn’t want the professor to eat out a pan.


  “You still remembered that?” I asked him.

  “It was me who had to walk up and down the quarters looking for that plate, I remember,” he said.

  I cooked supper, but I didn’t eat with them. I stood back looking at Ned. Still didn’t look like him. A boy had left here, a man had come back. Even his hair was turning gray. But when I looked at Tee Man I saw the resemblance. He was black just like Ned. Ned’s teeth, Ned’s grin, Ned’s kinky hair. Looking at him was like looking at Ned when Ned was that size.

  While Ned was drinking coffee he told me why he had come back to the South. He had come back to teach. We didn’t have a school on the river then. The closest school was in Bayonne, and even then the children only went about three months out of the year. Ned asked me what was the people talking about. What was the preachers in church teaching the people? Was they teaching Mr. Booker T. Washington or was they teaching Mr. Frederick Douglass? Like I was suppose to know that. All I knowed was Mr. Booker T. Washington and Mr. Frederick Douglass was two great colored spokesmen. What they taught the people, I had no idea. Ned said Mr. Booker T. Washington taught that all colored ought to stay together, work together, and try to improve their own lot before they tried to mix with the white folks. Mr. Frederick Douglass taught that everybody ought to work together. Ned had always believed in Mr. Douglass’s teaching, and after he went to that war in Cuba he believed in it even more. This place was much his as it was for the white man. That’s what he had come here to teach.

  I looked at Ned sitting there, at his wife sitting there with her head bowed, at his children listening to everything he was saying. In my heart I was so happy to see them. They was like my own, because Ned was like my own. But hearing Ned talking like that scared me.

  Early the next morning he got on the horse and started traveling over the parish. The first day he went toward Bayonne; the next day toward Creole Place. But the people wasn’t listening. Not that they didn’t believe in what he was talking about, but they had already seen too much killing. And they knowed what he was preaching was go’n get him killed, and them too if they followed. The churches wouldn’t help him either. They told him no when he asked them to let him use the church till he had built his school.

  Ned bought a house on the road and started teaching in his house at night. At the same time he bought a piece of land on the river bank to build his school. Maybe when the people saw what he was willing to do by himself they would join him.

  But the white people was already following Ned. They knowed everywhere he went; they knowed everything he did.

  Albert Cluveau

  Albert Cluveau had already killed more than a dozen people, black and white. Everybody knowed he had done it, and he wasn’t hiding it either. Telling everybody: “Oh, yeah, yeah, I have killed. Killed a few there in my time I have.” Hadn’t he told me the same thing—and how many times?

  I was taking in washing then, I wasn’t cooking for nobody. I had my little horse, Pigeon, I used to ride to go pick up the laundry. Then I brought them to my house and washed them out there in the yard. To get water all I had to do was go draw it out the river. All the good water I needed, right across the road in front my house. After I had washed and ironed the clothes I would get back on Pigeon and go take them back to the people. Had that whole stretch of the river from where I lived clear into Bayonne. In the evening when it was cool I would go down the river bank and fish. In the summer and when it was warm enough in the winter I fished practically every day. Fish I couldn’t eat I used to give to other people. But I reckoned I done ate much fish round here as anybody. It’s good for you—fish. Fish and work. Hard work can kill you, but plain steady work never killed nobody. Steady work and eating plenty fish never killed nobody. Greens good, too. Fish and greens and good steady work. Plenty walking, that’s good. People don’t walk no more. When you don’t walk you don’t drink enough water. Good clean water and greens clear out your system.

  I used to go fishing just about every day the weather permitted. Turned my water pail upside down and sat on it till I got ready to go back home. Then I would put my string of fishes in the pail and go on up the bank. Albert Cluveau used to fish right there side me. If the water was shallow he would roll up his pants legs and wade out a piece. But most of the times he sat on the ground fishing right there side me. A short bowlegged Cajun. Face looked like somebody had been jabbing in it with an ice pick. Had that big patch of hair out the left side of his head, his head white where the hair had been. Sitting there telling me about the people he had killed. I wasn’t a Christian then, I didn’t join the church till I came to Samson, but I used to say to myself: “My Lord, my Lord, will you just listen to this? You hear this man talking about killing men like you talk about killing snakes?” But no matter how he talked I would sit there and listen to him. Sometimes he would follow me up to the house and sit on my gallery and talk. Sometimes he would go round the house and sit in the back door while I fried fish for supper. If I said, “Mr. Albert, chop me piece of wood,” he would get out there and cut enough wood to last me a week. If I needed something from the store he would swing upon that mule and go get anything I needed. Sack of rice, flour, it didn’t matter, he would bring it all back. After I had cooked, he would sit right there in the back door and eat. Then we had our coffee. He liked his coffee strong, sweet sweet and black.

  Sometimes I got him off talking about killing. I would make him talk about fishing and raising crop. He could talk about anything. Because most of the people round here either fished or farmed for a living anyhow. But in the end killing always came back in Albert Cluveau’s mind. He wasn’t bragging about it, but he wasn’t sorry either. It was just conversation. Like if you worked in the sawmill you talked about lumber more than you talked about cane. If you worked at the derrick, naturally, you talked about cane more than you talked about trees. Albert Cluveau had killed so many people he couldn’t talk about nothing else but that.

  One day while we was out there fishing, he said: “The people talking ’bout your boy, there, Jane. Just think I ought to tell you that.”

  We was fishing in shallow water that day, and both of us was standing out there in the river. It was hot and I could feel the hot river water on my legs. When Albert Cluveau said that about Ned my heart started beating so fast I thought I might fall. I held on tight to the fishing pole till I was steady, then I pulled in my line and went back home. I never did go in the house, I just sat down in my chair on the gallery. I’m sitting there only a minute and here he come. Leaned his fishing pole against the end of the gallery and sat down on the steps.

  “Any coffee there, Jane?”

  I didn’t answer Albert Cluveau—what do you say to a fool? I sat there looking out at the river. After a while he forgot he had asked me for coffee; now he started talking about the people he had killed. He talked and talked; sundown before he left my house. I got on Pigeon that night and went to see Ned. Ned was staying farther up the road, closer to Bayonne. Just across the road from where he’s buried now. I could see the horses and mules in the yard when I rode up there. The children had ridden from all over the parish to attend classes. Ned used one of the rooms in his house for his school. I sat in the sitting room with Vivian and the children, and we could hear Ned talking to his students in the other side. After Vivian had put the children to bed, me and her sat up there by ourself. She was never one to talk much, so we sat up there listening to Ned. ’Leven o’clock he dismissed class, but some of the children stayed there till midnight. I sat there with Vivian till the last one had gone home, then I got up and went round the other side. Ned was sitting at the table with his head propped in his hands. He looked up when I came in. He thought I was Vivian.

  “I didn’t know you was here, Mama,” he said.

  “Just dropped by.”

  I had come in there to tell him what Albert Cluveau said, but I could see how tired he was. I didn’t want add a burden to his mind.

  “Something the matter?” he asked
me.

  “Nothing the matter,” I said. “I got here early. I just didn’t want to disturb you.”

  “I’ll ride back home with you,” he said.

  “Pigeon know his way home,” I said.

  He rubbed his hand hard over his face. I stood there looking at him. I still wanted to tell him about Albert Cluveau.

  “It’s been a long day,” he said.

  “I’m leaving,” I said.

  “You ought to stay here tonight,” he said.

  “I’m going to my own house,” I said.

  He went outside with me and led Pigeon up to the gallery so I could get on.

  Next Sunday Albert Cluveau came to my house and sat on the steps. I gived him some coffee. Strong, sweet sweet and black. He sipped and sipped at that coffee, then he said: “They talk ’bout your boy there, Jane. They don’t want him build that school there, no. They say he just good to stir trouble munks niggers. They want him go back. Back where he come from. They don’t know Albert tell you this.”

  Week or so later I was in the yard heating water when I saw him getting off the mule. He came up to me and spoke, then he just stood there looking at the water steaming in the pot.

  “They want me stop him, Jane,” he said.

  “You mean kill my boy?” I said.

  “If they say do it I must do it, Jane.”

  “Raise your head, Mr. Albert,” I said.

  He wouldn’t.

  “Mr. Albert?” I said.

  He raised his head slowly and looked at me. Great killer he was and scared of me. I didn’t say a thing, I just looked at Albert Cluveau. Gray beard all over his old wrinkled face. Watery old blue eyes. That old felt hat, sweat-stink, torn at the top. An old man who ought to be sitting in the sun—here talking about killing.

  “Speak. Mr. Albert,” I said.

  “I tell them me, you, we all time fish there in the St. Charles River,” he said. “I tell them I eat at your house. I tell them you make Albert good Creole coffee. I tell them, I say: ‘Jane good nigger woman just like you see me there.’ I say. ‘If he must stop, let Maurios stop him. Not Albert. Albert and Jane, side by side, fish there in the St. Charles River.’ They say: ‘Albert Cluveau, this your patrol. Maurios patrol farther down the river. If we say, Albert, stop that nigger, Albert, you stop him. If you don’t, Albert—.’ ”