Bloodline: Five Stories

by Ernest J. Gaines

  He went back to his bunk and laid down.

  Toward three o’clock, they let the women out of the cells to walk around. Some of the women came down the block and talked to the men through the bars. Some of them even laughed and joked. Three-thirty, the guard locked them up and let the men out. From the way the guard looked at me, I knowed I wasn’t going anywhere. I didn’t want to go anywhere, either, because I didn’t want people asking me a pile of questions. Hattie went out to stretch, but few minutes later he came and laid back down. He was grumbling about some man on the block trying to get fresh with him.

  “Some of them think you’ll stoop to anything,” he said.

  I looked out of the window at the sky. I couldn’t see too much, but I liked what I could see. I liked the sun, too. I hadn’t ever liked the sun before, but I liked it now. I felt my throat getting tight, and I turned my head.

  Toward four o’clock, Unc’ Toby came on the block with dinner. For dinner, we had stew, mashed potatoes, lettuce and tomatoes. The stew was too soupy; the mashed potatoes was too soupy; the lettuce and tomatoes was too soggy. Dessert was three or four dried-up prunes with black water poured over them. After Unc’ Toby served us, the guard locked up the cell. By the time we finished eating, they was back there again to pick up the trays.

  I laid on my bunk, looking up at the window. How long I had been there? No more than about twelve hours. Twelve hours—but it felt like three days, already.

  They knowed how to get a man down. Because they had me now. No matter which way I went—plantation or pen—they had me. That’s why Medlow wasn’t in any hurry to get me out. You don’t have to be in any hurry when you already know you got a man by the nuts.

  Look at the way they did Jack. Jack was a man, a good man. Look what they did him. Let a fifteen-cents Cajun bond him out of jail—a no-teeth, dirty, overall-wearing Cajun get him out. Then they broke him. Broke him down to nothing—to a grinning, bowing fool.… We loved Jack. Jack could do anything. Work, play ball, run women—anything. They knowed we loved him, that’s why they did him that. Broke him—broke him the way you break a wild horse.… Now everybody laughs at him. Gamble with him and cheat him. He know you cheating him, but he don’t care—just don’t care any more …

  Where is my father? Why my mama had to die? Why they brought me here and left me to struggle like this? I used to love my mama so much. Her skin was light brown; her hair was silky. I used to watch her powdering her face in the glass. I used to always cry when she went out—and be glad when she came back because she always brought me candy. But you gone for good now, Mama; and I got nothing in this world but me.

  A man in the other cell started singing. I listened to him and looked up at the window. The sky had changed some more. It was lighter blue now—gray-blue almost.

  The sun went down, a star came out. For a while it was the only star; then some more came to join it. I watched all of them. Then I watched just a few, then just one. I shut my eyes and opened them and tried to find the star again. I couldn’t find it. I wasn’t too sure which one it was. I could’ve pretended and choosed either one, but I didn’t want lie to myself. I don’t believe in lying to myself. I don’t believe in lying to nobody else, either. I believe in being straight with a man. And I want a man to be straight with me. I wouldn’t ’a’ picked up that bottle for nothing if that nigger hadn’t pulled his knife. Not for nothing. Because I don’t believe in that kind of stuff. I believe in straight stuff. But a man got to protect himself … But with stars I wasn’t go’n cheat. If I didn’t know where the one was I was looking at at first, I wasn’t go’n say I did. I picked out another one, one that wasn’t too much in a cluster. I measured it off from the bars in the window, then I shut my eyes. When I opened them, I found the star right away. And I didn’t have to cheat, either.

  The lights went out on the block. I got up and took a leak and got back on my bunk. I got in the same place I was before and looked for the star. I found it right away. It was easier to find now because the lights was out. I got tired looking at it after a while and looked at another one. The other one was much more smaller and much more in a cluster. But I got tired of it after a while, too.

  I thought about Munford. He said if they didn’t get you in the cradle, they got you later. If they didn’t suck all the manhood out of you in the cradle, they made you use it on people you didn’t love. I never messed with a woman I didn’t love. I always loved all these women I ever messed with.… No, I didn’t love them. Because I didn’t love her last night—I just wanted to fuck her. And I don’t think I ever loved Marie, either. Marie just had the best pussy in the world. She had the best—still got the best. And that’s why I went to her, the only reason I went. Because God knows she don’t have any kind a face to make you come at her …

  Maybe I ain’t never loved nobody. Maybe I ain’t never loved nobody since my mama died. Because I loved her, I know I loved her. But the rest—no, I never loved the rest. They don’t let you love them. Some kind of way they keep you from loving them …

  I have to stop thinking. That’s how you go crazy-thinking. But what else can you do in a place like this—what? I wish I knowed somebody. I wish I knowed a good person. I would be good if I knowed a good person. I swear to God I would be good.

  All of a sudden the lights came on, and I heard them bringing in somebody who was crying. They was coming toward the cell where I was; the person was crying all the way. Then the cell door opened and they throwed him in there and they locked the door again. I didn’t look up—I wouldn’t raise my head for nothing. I could tell nobody else was looking up, either. Then the footsteps faded away and the lights went out again.

  I raised my head and looked at the person they had throwed in there. He was nothing but a little boy—fourteen or fifteen. He had on a white shirt and a pair of dark pants. Hattie helped him up off the floor and laid him on the bunk under me. Then he sat on the bunk ’side the boy. The boy was still crying.

  “Shhh now, shhh now,” Hattie was saying. It was just like a woman saying it. It made me sick a’ the stomach. “Shhh now, shhh now,” he kept on saying.

  I swung to the floor and looked at the boy. Hattie was sitting on the bunk, passing his hand over the boy’s face.

  “What happened?” I asked him.

  He was crying too much to answer me.

  “They beat you?” I asked him.

  He couldn’t answer.

  “A cigarette?” I said.

  “No—no—sir,” he said.

  I lit one, anyhow, and stuck it in his mouth. He tried to smoke it and started coughing. I took it out.

  “Shhh now,” Hattie said, patting his face. “Just look at his clothes. The bunch of animals. Not one of them is a man. A bunch of pigs—dogs—philistines.”

  “You hurt?” I asked the boy.

  “Sure, he’s hurt,” Hattie said. “Just look at his clothes, how they beat him. The bunch of dogs.”

  I went to the door to call the guard. But I stopped; I told myself to keep out of this. He ain’t the first one they ever beat and he won’t be the last one, and getting in it will just bring you a dose of the same medicine. I turned around and looked at the boy. Hattie was holding the boy in his arms and whispering to him. I hated what Hattie was doing much as I hated what the law had done.

  “Leave him alone,” I said to Hattie.

  “The child needs somebody,” he said. “You’re going to look after him?”

  “What happened?” I asked the boy.

  “They beat me,” he said.

  “They didn’t beat you for nothing, boy.”

  He was quiet now. Hattie was patting the side of his face and his hair.

  “What they beat you for?” I asked him.

  “I took something.”

  “What you took?”

  “I took some cakes. I was hungry.”

  “You got no business stealing,” I said.

  “Some people got no business killing, but it don’t keep the
m from killing,” Hattie said.

  He started rocking the boy in his arms the way a woman rocks a child.

  “Why don’t you leave him alone?” I said.

  He wouldn’t answer me. He kept on.

  “You hear me, whore?”

  “I might be a whore, but I’m not a merciless killer,” he said.

  I started to crack him side the head, but I changed my mind. I had already raised my fist to hit him, but I changed my mind. I started walking. I was smoking the cigarette and walking. I walked, I walked, I walked. Then I stood at the head of the bunk and look up at the window at the stars. Where was the one I was looking at a while back? I smoked on the cigarette and looked for it—but where was it? I threw the cigarette in the toilet and lit another one. I smoked and walked some more. The rest of the place was quiet. Nobody had said a word since the guards throwed that little boy in the cell. Like a bunch of roaches, like a bunch of mices, they had crawled in they holes and pulled the cover over they head.

  All of a sudden I wanted to scream. I wanted to scream to the top of my voice. I wanted to get them bars in my hands and I wanted to shake, I wanted to shake that door down. I wanted to let all these people out. But would they follow me—would they? Y’all go’n follow me? I screamed inside. Y’all go’n follow me?

  I ran to my bunk and bit down in the cover. I bit harder, harder, harder. I could taste the dry sweat, the dry piss, the dry vomit. I bit harder, harder, harder …

  I got on the bunk. I looked out at the stars. A million little white, cool stars was out there. I felt my throat hurting. I felt the water running down my face. But I gripped my mouth tight so I wouldn’t make a sound. I didn’t make a sound, but I cried. I cried and cried and cried.

  I knowed I was going to the pen now. I knowed I was going, I knowed I was going. Even if Medlow came to get me, I wasn’t leaving with him. I was go’n do like Munford said. I was going there and I was go’n sweat it and I was go’n take it. I didn’t want have to pull cover over my head every time a white man did something to a black boy—I wanted to stand. Because they never let you stand if they got you out. They didn’t let Jack stand—and I had never heard of them letting anybody else stand, either.

  I felt good. I laid there feeling good. I felt so good I wanted to sing. I sat up on the bunk and lit a cigarette. I had never smoked a cigarette like I smoked that one. I drawed deep, deep, till my chest got big. It felt good. It felt good deep down in me. I jumped to the floor feeling good.

  “You want a cigarette?” I asked the boy.

  I spoke to him like I had been talking to him just a few minutes ago, but it was over an hour. He was laying in Hattie’s arms quiet like he was half asleep.

  “No, sir,” he said.

  I had already shook the cigarette out of the pack.

  “Here,” I said.

  “No, sir,” he said.

  “Get up from there and go to your own bunk,” I said to Hattie.

  “And who do you think you are to be giving orders?”

  I grabbed two handsful of his shirt and jerked him up and slammed him ’cross the cell. He hit against that bunk and started crying—just laying there, holding his side and crying like a woman. After a while he picked himself up and got on that bunk.

  “Philistine,” he said. “Dog-brute.”

  When I saw he wasn’t go’n act a fool and try to hit me, I turned my back on him.

  “Here,” I said to the boy.

  “I don’t smoke—please, sir.”

  “You big enough to steal?” I said. “You’ll smoke it or you’ll eat it.” I lit it and pushed it in his mouth. “Smoke it.”

  He smoked and puffed it out. I sat down on the bunk ’side him. The freak was sitting on the bunk ’cross from us, holding his side and crying.

  “Hold that smoke in,” I said to the boy.

  He held it in and started coughing. When he stopped coughing I told him to draw again. He drawed and held it, then he let it out. I knowed he wasn’t doing it right, but this was his first time, and I let him slide.

  “If Medlow come to get me, I’m not going,” I said to the boy. “That means T. J. and his boys coming, too. They go’n beat me because they think I’m a smart aleck trying to show them up. Now you listen to me, and listen good. Every time they come for me I want you to start praying. I want you to pray till they bring me back in this cell. And I don’t want you praying like a woman, I want you to pray like a man. You don’t even have to get on your knees; you can lay on your bunk and pray. Pray quiet and to yourself. You hear me?”

  He didn’t know what I was talking about, but he said, “Yes, sir,” anyhow.

  “I don’t believe in God,” I said. “But I want you to believe. I want you to believe He can hear you. That’s the only way I’ll be able to take those beatings—with you praying. You understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You sure, now?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I drawed on the cigarette and looked at him. Deep in me I felt some kind of love for this little boy.

  “You got a daddy?” I asked him.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “A mama?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then how come you stealing?”

  “ ’Cause I was hungry.”

  “Don’t they look after you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You been in here before?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You like it in here?”

  “No, sir. I was hungry.”

  “Let’s wash your back,” I said.

  We got up and went to the facebowl. I helped him off with his shirt. His back was cut from where they had beat him.

  “You know Munford Bazille?” I asked him.

  “Yes, sir. He don’t live too far from us. He kin to you?”

  “No, he’s not kin to me. You like him?”

  “No, sir, I don’t like him. He stay in fights all the time, and they always got him in jail.”

  “That’s how you go’n end up.”

  “No, sir, not me. ’Cause I ain’t coming back here no more.”

  “I better not ever catch you in here again,” I said. “Hold onto that bunk—this might hurt.”

  “What you go’n do?”

  “Wash them bruises.”

  “Don’t mash too hard.”

  “Shut up,” I told him, “and hold on.”

  I wet my handkerchief and dabbed at the bruises. Every time I touched his back, he flinched. But I didn’t let that stop me. I washed his back good and clean. When I got through, I told him to go back to his bunk and lay down. Then I rinched out his shirt and spread it out on the foot of my bunk. I took off my own shirt and rinched it out because it was filthy.

  I lit a cigarette and looked up at the window. I had talked big, but what was I going to do when Medlow came? Was I going to change my mind and go with him? And if I didn’t go with Medlow, I surely had to go with T. J. and his boys. Was I going to be able to take the beatings night after night? I had seen what T. J. could do to your back. I had seen it on this kid and I had seen it on other people. Was I going to be able to take it?

  I don’t know, I thought to myself. I’ll just have to wait and see.

  Bloodline

  1: I figured it was about time she was coming to work, so I went to the door to look out for her. There she was, pushing the gate open and coming in the yard. She had on her long gray dress and the blue gingham apron. The apron was almost long as the dress and almost the same color—she had washed it so many times. She had on her big yellow straw hat, and I could see piece of the white rag on her head sticking out from under the hat. I stood in the shop door with a file and a plowshare and watched ’Malia come up the walk. She walked slow and tired, like any moment she might stop and go back. When she came in the shade of that big pecan tree, she raised her head and looked toward the tool shop. She knowed I’d be standing there.

  “Making it on up, huh?” I said.


  “Trying to,” she said, and stopped to catch her breath.

  Every morning when she came up to the yard like this, she stopped and we had a few words. Sometimes I went out in the yard where she was, sometimes I talked with her from the door. This morning I went out there because I wanted to ask her about that boy. I still had the file and the plowshare in my hand.

  “I see Copper didn’t come with you,” I said.

  “No,” she said.

  “No more than I expected from him,” I thought to myself.

  ’Malia turned around and looked back toward the gate.

  “That little incline getting steeper and steeper,” she said. “It get little steeper every day now, ’Malia,” I said. “Yes, Lord,” she said.

  It wasn’t much of a incline. To them children who came to the yard to pick figs and pecans, it wasn’t a incline at all. They could run it just like running on flat ground. But when you got old as she was—she was seventy-two, I was seventy—everything looked like a incline. Even walking downhill looked like a incline.

  “Well, I better get on up there,” she said, looking toward the house now. But she still didn’t move, just standing there looking at the house behind the trees. You couldn’t see much of the house for the moss hanging on the trees.

  “How is he in there?” I asked her.

  “Same,” she said.

  “He didn’t come out yesterday.”

  “He wasn’t feeling too strong,” she said.

  “You think this the last go round, ’Malia?”

  “I hope not,” she said. She spoke like she was very, very tired. “If it is, God pity every last one of us.”

  “She’ll really let them Cajuns take over, won’t she?”

  “Won’t she,” ’Malia said.

  “If Copper was white, then this plantation would go to him, not to her,” I was thinking to myself. “But he’s the wrong color to go round claiming plantations.”

  “Is Copper coming here at all today?” I asked ’Malia.

  “No,” she said.

  “You told him Mr. Frank wanted to see him?”

  “I told him,” she said, looking up at me. I could see she was worried and scared. “ ‘Not that back door,’ he said. ‘Not that back door?’ I said. ‘I been going through that back door nigh on fifty years, Copper.’ ‘That’s not for me,’ he said. ‘What would my soldiers say if they caught me going through a back door?’ ”