Bloodline: Five Stories

by Ernest J. Gaines

  “You right again,” Gran’mon says.

  “Amy?” Daddy calls. “Can you hear me, honey?”

  “She can hear you,” Gran’mon says. “She’s standing right there by that fireplace. She can hear you good’s I can hear you, and nigger, I can hear you too good for comfort.”

  “I’m going in there,” Daddy says. “She got somebody in there and I’m going in there and see.”

  “You just take one more step toward my door,” Gran’mon says, “and it’ll take a’ undertaker to get you out of here. So help me, God, I’ll get that butcher knife out of that kitchen and chop on your tail till I can’t see tail to chop on. You the kind of nigger like to rip and run up and down the road in your car long’s you got a dime, but when you get broke and your belly get empty you run to your wife and cry on her shoulder. You just take one more step toward this door, and I bet you somebody’ll be crying at your funeral. If you know anybody who care that much for you, you old yellow dog.”

  Daddy is quiet a while, and then I hear him crying. I don’t feel good, because I don’t like to hear Daddy and Mama crying. I look at Mama, but she’s looking down in the fire.

  “You never liked me,” Daddy says.

  “You said that before,” Gran’mon says. “And I repeat, no, I never liked you, don’t like you, and never will like you. Now, get out my yard ’fore I put the dog on you.”

  “I want see my boy,” Daddy says, “I got a right to see my boy.”

  “In the first place, you ain’t got no right in my yard,” Gran’mon says.

  “I want see my boy,” Daddy says. “You might be able to keep me from seeing my wife, but you and nobody else can keep me from seeing my son. Half of him is me and I want see my—I want see him.”

  “You ain’t leaving?” Gran’mon asks Daddy.

  “I want see my boy,” Daddy says. “And I’m go’n see my boy.”

  “Wait,” Gran’mon says. “Your head hard. Wait till I come back. You go’n see all kind of boys.”

  Gran’mon comes back inside and goes to Uncle Al’s room. I look toward the wall and I can hear Daddy moving on the gallery. I hear Mama crying and I look at her. I don’t want see my mama crying, and I lay my head on Uncle Al’s knee and I want cry, too.

  “Amy, honey,” Daddy calls, “ain’t you coming up home and cook me something to eat? It’s lonely up there without you, honey. You don’t know how lonely it is without you. I can’t stay up there without you, honey. Please come home.…”

  I hear Gran’mon coming out of Uncle Al’s room and I look at her. Gran’mon’s got Uncle Al’s shotgun and she’s putting a shell in it.

  “Mama?” Mama screams.

  “Don’t worry,” Gran’mon says. “I’m just go’n shoot over his head. I ain’t go’n have them sending me to the pen for a good-for-nothing nigger like that.”

  “Mama, don’t,” Mama says. “He might hurt himself.”

  “Good,” Gran’mon says. “Save me the trouble of doing it for him.”

  Mama runs to the wall. “Eddie, run,” she screams. “Mama got the shotgun.”

  I hear Daddy going down the steps. I hear Spot running after him barking. Gran’mon knocks the door open with the gun barrel and shoot. I hear Daddy hollering.

  “Mama, you didn’t?” Mama says.

  “I shot two miles over that nigger’s head,” Gran’mon says. “Long-legged coward.”

  We all run out on the gallery, and I see Daddy out in the road crying. I can see the people coming out on the galleries. They looking at us and they looking at Daddy. Daddy’s standing out in the road crying.

  “Boy, I would’ve like to seen old Eddie getting out of this yard,” Uncle Al says.

  Daddy’s walking up and down the road in front of the house, and he’s crying.

  “Let’s go back inside,” Gran’mon says. “We won’t be bothered with him for a while.”

  It’s cold, and me and Uncle Al and Gran’mon go back inside. Mr. Freddie Jackson and Mama don’t come back in right now, but after a little while they come in, too.

  “Oh, Lord,” Mama says.

  Mama starts crying and Mr. Freddie Jackson takes her in his old arms. Mama lays her head on his old shoulder, but she just stays there a little while and then she moves.

  “Can I go lay ’cross your bed, Uncle Al?” Mama asks.

  “Sure,” Uncle Al says.

  I watch Mama going to Uncle Al’s room.

  “Well, I better be going,” Mr. Freddie Jackson says.

  “Freddie?” Gran’mon calls him, from the kitchen.

  “Yes, ma’am?” he says.

  “Come here a minute,” Gran’mon says.

  Mr. Freddie Jackson goes back in the kitchen where Gran’mon is. I get between Uncle Al’s legs and look at the fire. Uncle Al rubs my head with his hand. Mr. Freddie Jackson comes out of the kitchen and goes in Uncle Al’s room where Mama is. He must be sitting down on the bed because I can hear the springs.

  “Gran’mon shot Daddy?” I ask.

  Uncle Al rubs my head with his hand.

  “She just scared him,” he says. “You like your daddy?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Your daddy’s a good man,” Uncle Al says. “A little foolish, but he’s okay.”

  “I don’t like Mr. Freddie Jackson,” I say.

  “How come?” Uncle Al says.

  “I just don’t like him,” I say. “I just don’t like him. I don’t like him to hold my mama, neither. My daddy suppose to hold my mama. He ain’t suppose to hold my mama.”

  “You want go back home?” Uncle Al asks.

  “Uh-huh,” I say. “But me and Mama go’n stay here now. I’m go’n sleep with you.”

  “But you rather go home and sleep in your own bed, huh?”

  “Yes,” I say. “I pull the cover ’way over my head. I like to sleep under the cover.”

  “You sleep like that all the time?” Uncle Al asks.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Even in the summertime, too?” Uncle Al says.

  “Uh-huh,” I say.

  “Don’t you ever get too warm?” Uncle Al says.

  “Uh-uh,” I say. “I feel good ’way under there.”

  Uncle Al rubs my head and I look down in the fire.

  “Y’all come on in the kitchen and eat,” Gran’mon calls.

  Me and Uncle Al go back in the kitchen and sit down at the table. Gran’mon already got us food dished up. Uncle Al bows his head and I bow my head.

  “Thank Thee, Father, for this food Thou has given us,” Uncle Al says.

  I raise my head and start eating. We having spaghetti for dinner. I pick up a string of spaghetti and suck it up in my mouth. I make it go loo-loo-loo-loo-loo-loo-loop. Uncle Al looks at me and laugh. I do it again, and Uncle Al laughs again.

  “Don’t play with my food,” Gran’mon says. “Eat it right.”

  Gran’mon is standing ’side the stove looking at me. I don’t like old Gran’mon. Shooting at my daddy—I don’t like her.

  “Taste good?” Uncle Al asks.

  “Uh-huh,” I say.

  Uncle Al winks at me and wraps his spaghetti on his fork and sticks it in his mouth. I try to wrap mine on my fork, but it keeps falling off. I can just pick up one at a time.

  Gran’mon starts singing her song again. She fools round the stove a little while, and then she goes in the front room. I get a string of spaghetti and suck it up in my mouth. When I hear her coming back I stop and eat right.

  “Still out there,” she says. “Sitting on that ditch bank crying like a baby. Let him cry. But he better not come back in this yard.”

  Gran’mon goes over to the stove and sticks a piece of wood in the fire. She starts singing again:

  Oh, I’ll be there,

  I’ll be there,

  When the roll is called in Heaven, I’ll be there.

  Uncle Al finishes his dinner and waits for me. When I finish eating, me and him go in the front room and sit at the fire.

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sp; “I want go to the toilet, Uncle Al,” I say.

  I get my coat and cap and bring them to the fireplace, and Uncle Al helps me get in them. Uncle Al buttons up my coat for me, and I go out on the gallery. I look out in the road and I see Daddy sitting out on the ditch bank. I go round the house and go back to the toilet. The grass is dry like hay. There ain’t no leaves on the trees. I see some birds in the tree. The wind’s moving the birds’s feathers. I bet you them little birds’s some cold. I’m glad I’m not a bird. No daddy, no mama—I’m glad I’m not a bird.

  I open the door and go in the toilet. I get up on the seat and pull down my pants. I squat over the hole—but I better not slip and fall in there. I’ll get all that poo-poo on my feet, and Gran’mon’ll kill me if I tramp all that poo-poo in her house.

  I try hard and my poo-poo come. It’s long. I like to poo-poo. Sometimes I poo-poo on my pot at night. Mama don’t like for me to go back to the toilet when it’s late. Scared a snake might bite me.

  I finish poo-poo-ing and I jump down from the seat and pull up my pants. I look in the hole and I see my poo-poo. I look in the top of the toilet, but I don’t see any spiders. We got spiders in us toilet. Gran’mon must be done killed all her spiders with some Flit.

  I push the door open and I go back to the front of the house. I go round the gallery and I see Daddy standing at the gate looking in the yard. He sees me.

  “Sonny?” he calls.

  “Hanh?”

  “Come here, baby,” he says.

  I look toward the door, but I don’t see nobody and I go to the gate where Daddy is. Daddy pushes the gate open and grabs me and hugs me to him.

  “You still love your daddy, Sonny?” he asks.

  “Uh-huh,” I say.

  Daddy hugs me and kisses me on the face.

  “I love my baby,” he says. “I love my baby. Where your mama?”

  “Laying ’cross Uncle Al’s bed in his room,” I say. “And Mr. Freddie Jackson in there, too.”

  Daddy pushes me away real quickly and looks in my face.

  “Who else in there?” he asks. “Who?”

  “Just them,” I say. “Uncle Al’s in Gran’mon’s room by the fire, and Gran’mon’s in the kitchen.”

  Daddy looks toward the house.

  “This the last straw,” he says. “I’m turning your Gran’mon in this minute. And you go’n be my witness. Come on.”

  “Where we going?” I ask.

  “To that preacher’s house,” Daddy says. “And if he can’t help me, I’m going back in the field to Madame Toussaint.”

  Daddy grabs my hand and me and him go up the quarter. I can see all the children going back to school.

  “… Lock her own daughter in a room with another man and got her little grandson there looking all the time,” Daddy says. “She ain’t so much Christian as she put out to be. Singing round that house every time you bat your eyes and doing something like that in broad daylight. Step it up, Sonny.”

  “I’m coming fast as I can,” I say.

  “I’ll see about that,” Daddy says. “I’ll see about that.”

  When me and Daddy get to Reverend Simmons’s house, we go up on the gallery and Daddy knocks on the door. Mrs. Carey comes to the door to see what we want.

  “Mrs. Carey, is the Reverend in?” Daddy asks.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Carey says. “Come on in.”

  Me and Daddy go inside and I see Reverend Simmons sitting at the fireplace. Reverend Simmons got on his eyeglasses and he’s reading the Bible. He turns and looks at us when we come in. He takes off his glasses like he can’t see us too good with them on, and he looks at us again. Mrs. Carey goes back in the kitchen and me and Daddy go over to the fireplace.

  “Good evening, Reverend,” Daddy says.

  “Good evening,” Reverend Simmons says. “Hi, Sonny.”

  “Hi,” I say.

  “Reverend, I hate busting in on you like this, but I need your help,” Daddy says. “Reverend, Amy done left me and her mama got her down at her house with another man and—”

  “Now, calm down a second,” Reverend Simmons says. He looks toward the kitchen. “Carey, bring Mr. Howard and Sonny a chair.”

  Mrs. Carey brings the chairs and goes right on back in the kitchen again. Daddy turns his chair so he can be facing Reverend Simmons.

  “I come in pretty late last night ’cause my car broke down on me and I had to walk all the way—from the other side of Morgan up there,” Daddy says. “When I get home me and Amy get in a little squabble. This morning we squabble again, but I don’t think too much of it. You know a man and a woman go’n have their little squabbles every once in a while. I go to work in the field. Work like a dog. Cutting cane right and left—trying to make up lost time I spent at the house this morning. When I come home for dinner—hungry ’s a dog—my wife, neither my boy is there. No dinner—and I’m hungry’s a dog. I go in the front room and all their clothes gone. Lord, I almost go crazy. I don’t know what to do. I run out the house because I think she still mad at me and done gone down to her mama. I go down there and ask for her, and first thing I know here come Mama Rachel shooting at me with Uncle Al’s shotgun.”

  “I can’t believe that,” Reverend Simmons says.

  “If I’m telling a lie I hope to never rise from this chair,” Daddy says. “And I reckon she would’ve got me if I wasn’t moving fast.”

  “That don’t sound like Sister Rachel,” Reverend Simmons says.

  “Sound like her or don’t sound like her, she did it,” Daddy says. “Sonny right over there. He seen every bit of it. Ask him.”

  Reverend Simmons looks at me but he don’t ask me nothing. He just clicks his tongue and shakes his head.

  “That don’t sound like Sister Rachel,” he says. “But if you say that’s what she did, I’ll go down there and talk to her.”

  “And that ain’t all,” Daddy says.

  Reverend Simmons waits for Daddy to go on.

  “She got Freddie Jackson locked up in a room with Amy,” Daddy says.

  Reverend Simmons looks at me and Daddy, then he goes over and gets his coat and hat from against the wall. Reverend Simmons’s coat is long and black. His hat is big like a cowboy’s hat.

  “I’ll be down the quarter, Carey,” he tells Mrs. Simmons. “Be back quick as I can.”

  We go out of the house and Daddy holds my hand. Me and him and Reverend Simmons go out in the road and head on back down the quarter.

  “Reverend Simmons, I want my wife back,” Daddy says. “A man can’t live by himself in this world. It too cold and cruel.”

  Reverend Simmons don’t say nothing to Daddy. He starts humming a little song to himself. Reverend Simmons is big and he can walk fast. He takes big old long steps and me and Daddy got to walk fast to keep up with him. I got to run because Daddy’s got my hand.

  We get to Gran’mon’s house and Reverend Simmons pushes the gate open and goes in the yard.

  “Me and Sonny’ll stay out here,” Daddy says.

  “I’m cold, Daddy,” I say.

  “I’ll build a fire,” Daddy says. “You want me build me and you a little fire?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Help me get some sticks, then,” Daddy says.

  Me and Daddy get some grass and weeds and Daddy finds a big chunk of dry wood. We pile it all up and Daddy gets a match out his pocket and lights the fire.

  “Feel better?” he says.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “How come you not in school this evening?” Daddy asks.

  “I wee-weed on myself,” I say.

  I tell Daddy because I know Daddy ain’t go’n whip me.

  “You peed on yourself at school?” Daddy asks. “Sonny, I thought you was a big boy. That’s something little babies do.”

  “Miss Hebert want see you and Mama,” I say.

  “I don’t have time to see nobody now,” Daddy says. “I got my own troubles. I just hope that preacher in there can do something.”


  I look up at Daddy, but he’s looking down in the fire.

  “Sonny?” I hear Mama calling me.

  I turn and I see Mama and all of them standing out there on the gallery.

  “Hanh?” I answer.

  “Come in here before you catch a death of cold,” Mama says.

  Daddy goes to the fence and looks across the pickets at Mama.

  “Amy,” he says, “please come home. I swear I ain’t go’n do it no more.”

  “Sonny, you hear me talking to you?” Mama calls.

  “I ain’t go’n catch cold,” I say. “We got a fire. I’m warm.”

  “Amy, please come home,” Daddy says. “Please, honey. I forgive you. I forgive Mama. I forgive everybody. Just come home.”

  I look at Mama and Reverend Simmons talking on the gallery. The others ain’t talking; they just standing there looking out in the road at me and Daddy. Reverend Simmons comes out the yard and over to the fire. Daddy comes to the fire where me and Reverend Simmons is. He looks at Reverend Simmons but Reverend Simmons won’t look back at him.

  “Well, Reverend?” Daddy says.

  “She say she tired of you and that car,” Reverend Simmons says.

  Daddy falls down on the ground and cries.

  “A man just can’t live by himself in this cold, cruel world,” he says. “He got to have a woman to stand by him. He just can’t make it by himself. God, help me.”

  “Be strong, man,” Reverend Simmons says.

  “I can’t be strong with my wife in there and me out here,” Daddy says. “I need my wife.”

  “Well, you go’n have to straighten that out the best way you can,” Reverend Simmons says. “And I talked to Sister Rachel. She said she didn’t shoot to hurt you. She just shot to kind of scare you away.”

  “She didn’t shoot to hurt me?” Daddy says. “And I reckon them things was jelly beans I heard zooming just three inches over my head?”

  “She said she didn’t shoot to hurt you,” Reverend Simmons says. He holds his hands over the fire. “This fire’s good, but I got to get on back up the quarter. Got to get my wood for tonight. I’ll see you people later. And I hope everything comes out all right.”

  “Reverend, you sure you can’t do nothing?” Daddy asks.

  “I tried, son,” Reverend Simmons says. “Now we’ll leave it in God’s hand.”