The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

by Ernest J. Gaines

  “What do you want?” Ned asked him.

  “Get down,” Cluveau said.

  “You don’t scare me, Cluveau,” Ned said.

  “Get down now,” Cluveau said.

  Ned handed Bam the lines. Bam pushed them back.

  “Let me go,” Bam said. “I don’t care about me.”

  “But I care about you, Bam,” Ned told him. “That’s what I’ve been teaching all the time—I care about you. When will you ever hear me, Bam?”

  “I won’t let you die,” Bam said. “He ain’t got nothing but a double barrel there; he’ll need both of them to bring me down.”

  “Stay here,” Ned said. “Take the lumber home. Finish the school. Talk to my wife. Talk to Mama.”

  “No,” Bam said.

  “I order you to do that,” Ned said. “You must listen to me sometime, Bam.”

  Bam and Alcee both said Ned looked at them a second, then he looked all round him, even glancing at the sky, like he wanted to see everything for a moment. Then he jumped from the wagon and started running toward Cluveau. Cluveau hollered for him to stop and get down on his knees, but he kept running on Cluveau with nothing but his fist. Cluveau shot him in the leg—the white people had told Cluveau to make Ned crawl before killing him. When Cluveau shot him, he fell to one knee, then got back up. Cluveau shot again. This time he tored off half his chest.

  Albert Cluveau swung the mule around and rode away. Bam and Alcee didn’t go after Cluveau, they picked up Ned and laid him on top the lumber. The lumber was red when they got home. Blood dropped through the lumber on the ground. A trail of blood all the way from where Ned was shot clear up to his house. Even the rain couldn’t wash the blood away. For years and years, even after they had graveled the road, you could still see little black spots where the blood had dripped.

  The People

  When the people heard the news they started crying. The ones living side the road followed the wagon to the house. When the others came in from the field and heard what had happened they knelt down right there and cried. They didn’t want go near him when he was living, but when they heard he was dead they cried like children. They ran up to the wagon when it stopped at the gate. They wanted to touch his body, they wanted to help take it inside. The road was full, people coming from everywhere. They wanted to touch his body. When they couldn’t touch his body they took lumber from the wagon. They wanted a piece of lumber with his blood on it.

  I knowed he was dead before Frank Nelson’s boy came there and told me. I was laying down on my bed when I heard this sweeping noise passing through the house. “Now what?” I said. I sat up and looked, and it wasn’t sweeping at all, it was a light on the floor. Like a flashlight, but not shaking like a flashlight would shake, moving smooth, going from the front to the back. “They done killed him,” I said. And I got on Pigeon and started for his house. I met Nelson’s boy coming to tell me. But he could see I already knowed, and he turned around and ran back long side the horse. When I got there they had already took his body inside and had laid it on the bed. Vivian was sitting in the chair just looking at the body. People all round her crying, but she wasn’t hearing a thing. Just looking at the body. I put my arms round her shoulders and I could feel her trembling. It was hot as it could be, but she was trembling like she had chill. I tried to say something to her, but she didn’t hear me. I doubt if she even knowed I was there—just looking at the body. I told the people to get out. Making all that noise wasn’t doing a bit of good—get out. I kept a couple women in there to help me with Ned and Vivian, but I wanted the rest of them out. After we had put Vivian to bed round the other side, I came back in and told the people let me be by myself with Ned awhile. They didn’t want leave me alone, but I told them I was all right, and they went out. I sat down side Ned and held him close and started talking to him like he was still alive. I can’t recall what I said to him—just little talk; I can’t recall when I fell on him, but I remember people pulling me off the bed and my clothes soaking wet with his blood. The took me to the children’s room and made me lay down. Somebody stayed in the room with me, but I can’t recall who it was.

  The sheriff came and examined the body and asked Bam and Alcee some questions. They told him it was Albert Cluveau—like they needed to tell him anything, like he didn’t already know it was Albert Cluveau, like everybody round there didn’t already know it was Albert Cluveau—but he told them he wanted them to come to Bayonne the next day and make a full statement. From what he could see there now everybody was too excited to make sense. The next day Bam and Alcee went to his office. The first thing he asked them, even before they had a chance to say good morning, if they had been to the wake last night. They said yes. He asked them if they had had anything to drink there, coffee or maybe little wine? They said yes, little homemade wine; blackberry. He said, “Uh-hum, now tell me what happened.” They told him the only thing they could tell him was that Mr. Cluveau shot Professor Douglass when Professor Douglass wouldn’t get on his knees and crawl. He asked them if they was sure it was Mr. Cluveau. They said yes they was sure. He asked them if it was a cane field or a corn field. They had already told him it was a cane field, so they said cane again. He told them with cane so high that time of year (July) how could they see a man? They said Mr. Cluveau came out of the cane on the headland. He said he thought they told him Mr. Cluveau shot Ned from the cane field. He said just like they was changing their story from cane field to headland, maybe they would change that story from headland to corn field. And maybe they would change that story from corn field to pecan tree. He said if memory served him right there was a pecan tree close to where Ned was shot. He said was he right or wrong. They said right. He said, “You sure the person didn’t shoot from round the pecan tree?” They said they was sure he didn’t, he shot from the headland of the cane field. He asked them if they had anything to drink the night they stayed in Bayonne. They said they didn’t. He asked them how come. They said they was too young and Professor Douglass would ’a’ frowned on that. He said what they meant they was too young. He said didn’t they just tell him they had drunk exactly one night later at the wake. He said do one night age niggers that fast. Or is it the sight of seeing a dead man that put the gray in their head. Bam and Alcee told him they had the drink because some older men had the bottle. One of the older men said, “Here. Drink. Rejoice when somebody leave this wicked world. Do not weep.” He said, “Rejoice, huh? Do not weep, huh? And maybe y’all did some rejoicing in Bayonne the night before. And maybe y’all was still rejoicing when y’all was coming home yesterday. And with all that rejoicing going on, maybe y’all mistook one man for another.” He said he had heard that had often happened when niggers started rejoicing. Half the time they don’t know what they see. And he said how did he know the two of them hadn’t gotten together and killed the professor. He said from what he had been hearing around there that professor was getting on a lot of people nerve trying to make them vote and go to school. He said how did he know some of these people hadn’t paid them to shoot that drunk professor to make him leave them alone. He said just to show you it couldn’t have been Mr. Cluveau, he had talked to Mr. Cluveau the night before and Mr. Cluveau had told him with his own mouth, mind you, that he had spent all day yesterday and all night the night before gigging frogs on Grosse Tete Bayou. He said to prove it, old man Cluveau had showed him the mosquito bites—his poor old body was just full of welts. He told them he was sure they didn’t want call a nice old man like old man Cluveau a liar, now, did they? They said they could just tell him what they saw. He said he didn’t ask them that. He said he asked them if they wanted to call a God-fearing man like Mr. Albert Cluveau a liar. They said no. He told them to go on back home and he didn’t want hear that kind of talk out of them no more.

  Vivian stayed here till we finished building the school, then she went back to Kansas. She wanted to stay here and do Ned’s work, but we was scared she could get herself killed just like Ned was killed. We mad
e her go and we hired a teacher by the name of Jones. Professor Jones didn’t look nothing like Ned. A little light-skin man about half Ned’s size. Didn’t teach what Ned wanted to teach either. Taught just what them in Bayonne told him to teach—reading and writing and ’rithmetic—and we had to take that or get nothing. He stayed there till the high water destroyed the school in ’27.

  The Chariot of Hell

  I waited till we had put Ned in the ground, then I went out looking for Albert Cluveau. But no matter when I came up to his house, Adeline, the oldest girl, said he had just left. “What you want?” she said. “I want talk to him,” I said. “Daddy just left,” she said. I would turn Pigeon around and go on back home, but that evening or the next day I would go back to his house again. Every time I thought about Ned I would head back to that house. Adeline would be standing on the gallery waiting for me. “I want speak to your daddy.” “Daddy just left.” “Just left again, huh?” “Yes, Jane.” One day I made pretend I was going back home. I went a little piece and came right back. I saw him sitting on that mule back there in the yard. He was just getting ready to get down when he looked up and saw me. He swung that mule around and shot out cross the yard, headed for the swamps. Another time when I went there he didn’t have time to get on the mule. Headed for the swamps and left the mule.

  “Where your daddy?” I asked Adeline.

  “Gone.”

  “Where?”

  “Bayonne.”

  “What George doing back there in the yard?” I said. “You know Albert Cluveau ain’t never went to the toilet if he wasn’t on George’s back.”

  “He walked this time,” Adeline said.

  “I’ll catch him,” I said, and left.

  But I knowed then I would never catch Albert Cluveau at that house. Him or one of them children would see me long before I ever got there. I would have to catch him somewhere else.

  Not to kill Albert Cluveau. That wasn’t it. What would I look like killing Albert Cluveau? Let God kill him; let the devil take him. I just wanted to speak to him. But he did everything to stay out of my way. He kept one of them children looking out for me at his house. If I was fishing or getting water out the river, he wouldn’t even pass on the main road, he would go use the back road. If he knowed it was the time of day I like to sit on my gallery, he would go down the river bank to pass my house. Sometimes I would see him laying down far as he could on that mule to keep me from seeing him. I knowed if I had run out of the yard or if I had jumped on Pigeon he would ’a’ been too far for me to catch him. So I just waited. I bid my time.

  One day the devil fooled Albert Cluveau. Guy Collier was fishing in front of my house. Me and Aunt Guy Collier was about the same size and color and he thought it was me down there. So he turned around and headed for the back road. I was back there on Pigeon, on my way to see Dune White at Grosse Tete. The crop was high and we didn’t see each other till we made the bend and Pigeon almost butt George in the head. Now Albert Cluveau wanted to turn and run. But I had already seen him, and he had no place to go. So he turned his head. I let him turn his head good, but I told him what I had been waiting to tell him for a long time. “Mr. Albert Cluveau, when the Chariot of Hell come rattling for you, the people will hear you screaming all over this parish. Now, you just ride on.”

  The people wanted to say I went to a hoo-doo for Albert Cluveau. But I didn’t go to no hoo-doo, because I don’t believe in no hoo-doo. I went to just one hoo-doo in my life—that was for Joe Pittman and that horse—but even then I didn’t believe in her the way you suppose to. I went to her because nobody else would listen to me. But after I had gone I still didn’t take her advice. Anyhow, the word got back to Albert Cluveau that I had gone to a hoo-doo, and, he, so simple-minded, he started to believe it.

  A year or so later he came down sick and thought he was go’n die, and now he jumped in bed with his two daughters, Adeline and Christine. His wife had been dead and him and his sons had done so much dirt together he was scared to sleep in the same room with them. Adeline and Christine begged and begged Albert Cluveau to get out their bed. It wasn’t nice. What would people think. Albert Cluveau said he didn’t care what people thought, he heard the Chariot of Hell in that other room with his sons. Adeline told him there wasn’t no such thing. Albert Cluveau said he knowed better, he heard it. He dared them to get out the bed and sleep on the floor; they had to sleep on both sides of him and protect him from the Chariot of Hell.

  By and by he started hearing the Chariot of Hell even in this room with the girls. But he heard it in just one ear, the ear that was pointed toward Adeline. So he reckoned Adeline hated him. She had always been ashamed of him, so now she must hate him, too. Besides that he was sure she was messing round with men when he wasn’t at the house. And he didn’t want his daughters to be rotten like him and his sons. He wanted them to stay pure. That’s why he always made them go to church—to keep them pure. But either Adeline wasn’t pure or she hated him. Cluveau: “Adeline, you hate your pap?” Adeline: “No, Papa.” Cluveau: “Adeline, you pure?” Adeline: “I swear by the Holy Mother I’m pure, Papa.” Albert Cluveau would turn over, but still the Chariot of Hell would come from Adeline’s side of the bed. Cluveau: “Adeline, if you so pure; Adeline, if you don’t have no hate in your heart for your papa who never do you no wrong; Adeline, how come that Chariot of Hell he just run over there, huh?” Adeline told him, “Papa, there ain’t no Chariot of Hell.” Cluveau told her she was a damn liar and he jumped out of the bed and started beating her with the strap. The boys had to come round there and pull him off. After a while he would get back in bed, but the chariot would start all over. Poor Adeline would lay on her side of the bed crying in the sheet.

  This went on for days, for weeks. Then one day Adeline came to my house. She would do anything if I took the hoo-doo off her papa. I told Adeline I had no more hoo-doo on Albert Cluveau than I had on my own self. It was just his sinning ways catching up with him. Adeline pulled her dress down over her shoulders and showed me the welt marks where Albert Cluveau had beat her. She told me to please help a little Cajun gal who had done nobody no harm in all her life. I told her I couldn’t do a thing because I had no hoo-doo on Cluveau. I asked her if she wanted some coffee and tea cakes. She said yes. She was a big fine gal, big pretty legs. She was already old enough to be married, but they kept her there to cook for them. I gived her some coffee and tea cakes and we sat right there on my gallery.

  “It’s not me,” she said. “I’m not bad. I’m a true virgin, I believe in my Catholic faith. But Christine—ah, she’s no virgin. No virgin her. She went bad at ’leven. But she is the baby and they like her. None care for poor Adeline. And the chariot, even the chariot, can find no place to run but on my side. Every night he run, every night Papa jump out of the bed and whip me. I want to leave, but where can poor Adeline go? I change sides with Christine. I say, ‘Christine, dearie, sleep here. Let your poor sister Adeline get one night peace.’ Christine’s got a pure soul, poor dear. She says, ‘All right, my dear.’ We change sides—but do that stop the chariot? Christine went bad at ’leven, but that chariot runs right where I sleep. That hoo-doo is against me more than it is against my papa. You must take it off, Jane.”

  “I ain’t got no hoo-doo on your papa,” I told her. “I told him when the Chariot of Hell come for him we will hear him all over this parish. That we will. That I will, less the Lord take me first. Other men who did the dirt your papa done have screamed at that last moment. He will scream, too. Yes, Adeline, he will scream. But that has nothing to do with hoo-doo. It’s hell beckoning.”

  “He’s poor and foolish, Jane.”

  “He shouldn’t’a’ killed my boy.”

  “Do you hate me, Jane?”

  “I don’t hate you,” I said. “I don’t even hate him. But he will pay.”

  “I’m the one paying,” she said. “I’m the one suffering.”

  “You don’t know what suffering is, Adeline,” I told her.
r />   “I showed you the marks on my back,” she said.

  “I wish I could show you the ones on my heart,” I told her.

  “Poor Jane,” she said.

  Cluveau didn’t come to die for ten more years. Died just before the high water there of ’12. Christine had been gone. Had fooled around with every man on that river—black and white. Had gotten more buckets of figs, pecans, muscadines from them black boys on that river than you’d care to name. The one day she got on a wagon with a drummer from St. Francisville. The drummer used to sell pots and pans and sharpen knives and scissors. Him and Christine left here one Sunday evening. But poor Adeline was still at the house. Albert Cluveau wasn’t sleeping in the same bed with her now, she told him when Christine ran off with the drummer he had to go back round the other side. If he didn’t, she was go’n run off too. He went back round the other side and she stayed there to look after him. Just the two of them there now. The boys had run off just like Christine did.

  The weekend Albert Cluveau died, poor Adeline lived in a madhouse. People could hear Cluveau screaming half a mile. He died on a Sunday. Jules Patin passed by my house and told me Cluveau was at the point of death. I asked him how he knowed. He said he had heard him screaming and when he asked a Cajun what was the matter the Cajun told him Cluveau was at the point of death. I had always thought I wanted to hear Cluveau scream. I had told myself that ever since he killed Ned. But that had happened so long ago, and now I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Cluveau—’specially Adeline there. But everybody else heard him screaming. People went by that house all time of day and night just to hear him scream. The doctor came, the doctor went, and still he screamed. Adeline sat on the side of the bed wiping his face with a damp towel, but Cluveau screamed. Just before he came to die he pushed Adeline away and got out of bed. Nobody thought he had that kind of strength left. He had his hands up the way you hold a gun. “I’ll kill him,” he said. “I’ll kill him. I’ll kill him.” He made two steps and fell. He covered his head and screamed and screamed for Adeline to stop the horses. She knelt down on the floor side him. And he died there in her arms.