Bloodline: Five Stories

by Ernest J. Gaines

  But he tied you and Joby together and sent you on your way.”

  Little Boy started shaking his head and giggling.

  “Mr. Frank, you too much,” he said.

  Frank looked at ’Malia sitting in the other chair. He was probably wondering if he ought to accuse her of helping me and Copper. ’Malia just sat there with her head bowed. Poor woman.

  “Me and Joby followed him down to Aunt Johnson after he got through writing up Compaa house, and I told him what you said again,” Little Boy said. “He didn’t pay me no mind, he just went right on writing. Aunt Johnson sitting out there on that gallery, looking at him, not saying a word. Just sitting there shelling beans in that lard bucket and smoking that corb pipe.”

  Frank looked from ’Malia to Little Boy. He was hearing Little Boy, but he was thinking about something else. Probably who Aunt Johnson was and what a corb pipe was. Then I could see, by the way his eyes shifted, he remembered Aunt Johnson was so and so—probably the old lady who used to come out to the store and argue with Mr. Pichot all the time. A corb pipe was probably a corn cob pipe.

  “When he got through with her house, he went on down to Samson,” Little Boy said. “It was there, in front of Samson, Joby, there, thought ’bout th’owing him down and toting him back up here.”

  Joby jerked up his head. “Me?” he said. “Me? How come it’s always me? You the one say let’s th’ow him down and car’ him back up there. You the one. You. Not me. You.”

  “All right, I said it,” Little Boy said. He turned to ’Malia. “I’m sorry, Miss Amalia.”

  ’Malia looked in his face and looked at his clothes. His blue denim shirt was a line of ribbons, little ribbons and big ones. A big chunk of cloth was ripped from his left pant leg, and you could see a big cut just under his knee. After ’Malia had looked at him a moment, she nodded her head to show him she understood, and she lowered her eyes again.

  “I tripped him over,” Little Boy went on. “He jumped back up quicker than any human being you ever seen and slammed into Joby. Two quick chops ’cross Joby shoulder blade with the side of his hand, and down went Joby. I tried to grab him again, but the first thing I knowed I was tangled in Samson wire fence. Joby got up to help me, and the next thing I knowed Joby was tangled there, too.

  “He made us untangle each other, then he made us take off us belts and he tied us hands behind us back. He told Samson to bring him a chain or a rope. Samson leaned the broom ’gainst the wall and went out in the back yard and brought a chain like he said. He tied us together with the chain and gived Samson a quarter to bring us up here. The last thing I seen, he was sharpening that pencil again.”

  “How much did Copper pay you niggers to come back up here with that tale?” Frank asked.

  “Pay us?” Joby said, jerking up his head and jingling the chains. “Pay us? He didn’t pay nobody but Samson.”

  “How much is Felix paying you?” Frank asked.

  Both of them looked at me like two scared children. Two men, both of them close to two hundred pounds, looking at me like two scared children. They didn’t know what to say, what to think; they turned to Frank again.

  “Do you know what Mr. Walter would have done with you two trifling niggers?”

  Neither one of them answered him.

  “Well?” he said.

  “No sir,” Little Boy said.

  “He would have hanged one of you. Right out there in the yard. The other one would have gone back down there and brought Copper up here gently as a baby.” He looked at them a long time to let his words soak in. “Get out of here,” he said.

  They turned to leave. I gived Little Boy the end of the chain I had been holding. They went out with the chain jingling.

  Frank looked at me again.

  “Go back to that store and get me six more,” he said. “Hot as it is—Saturday, too—you probably have the whole plantation over there drinking soda water.”

  “Why don’t you leave Copper ’lone, Mr. Frank,” ’Malia said. “If he don’t want come see you, I wouldn’t force him. Leave him ’lone.”

  “Leave him alone, hell,” Frank said. “Not on my place will I leave him alone. Get moving, you traitor.”

  “Mr. Frank, please,” ’Malia said.

  “Well?” he said to me.

  “You the authority,” I said, and went out.

  “Is that any way to talk to Felix?” I heard ’Malia saying through the door. “Is that any way to talk to Felix? Who you got beside me and Felix, Mr. Frank? Who?”

  “Nobody,” I heard him saying.

  7: More of them had gathered round the store when I came over there. If they wasn’t laying on the gallery, they was standing under that big pecan tree to the side. All of them was talking about what had happened down the quarters. J. W. Hudson, that big-mouth boy of Aunt Jude Hudson, was leading the talk. He was showing everybody else what Little Boy and Joby had done wrong. They had gone on Copper wrong, he said. They shouldn’t ’a’ talked so much. They should ’a’ just got him by surprise and brought him on back up the quarters.

  I sat on the end of the gallery, smoking a cigarette and listening to J. W. By the time I had finished my cigarette, I figured Mr. J. W. had convinced everybody out there he knowed the best way to capture Copper. I went over to the tree and told him Frank wanted him at the house.

  “Me? For what?” he said. “What I done?”

  I didn’t answer him. I counted out five more and told them to follow me.

  When we came back to the house, that yellow gal was standing by the kitchen table wrapping a bandage over Little Boy’s shoulder. She had bathed the scratches in Epsom-salt water, she had put salve on them, and now she was wrapping the shoulder with a piece of bar cloth. She had already fixed up Joby and he was standing to the side holding the trace chain.

  “I guess he trying to get y’all killed now, huh?” Little Boy said.

  “Be still,” Dee-Dee said. “Letting one man beat two. Bet he couldn’t beat you eating.”

  I knocked on the library door, and when ’Malia answered, I nodded for J. W. and his gang to go in. When the last one had stepped inside, I moved in and shut the door.

  “You know why you’re here?” Frank asked them.

  “Copper, sir?” J. W. said.

  “Yes. Copper. You know he’s tough, don’t you?”

  “No one man can beat no six, Mr. Frank; I don’t care how tough he is,” J. W. said.

  “I hope you’re trying to convince me and not yourself,” Frank said. “I want him brought up here. I don’t care if you have to drag him from one end of the quarters to the other. If he get hooked in the fence, drag him through it. If you catch him hiding in somebody’s house, drag him down the steps. But bring him back up here. Then stand him on his feet at the foot of those stairs. He will walk through that back door.”

  “He will, Mr. Frank,” J. W. said. “You don’t have to worry ’bout that.”

  “I’m not worrying,” Frank said. “You worry if you don’t get him up here.”

  “He’ll be up here, sir. You can rest your mind on that.”

  Frank looked at J. W. a long time, like he wanted to be sure to remember him. J. W. couldn’t take Frank’s glaring at him, and he lowered his head.

  “What’s your name?” Frank asked.

  J. W. raised his head. “I’m J. W., Mr. Frank,” he said, grinning. “Renton Hudson boy.”

  “How is Renton?”

  “Papa dead, Mr. Frank. Been dead couple years now. Mama, she living, though.”

  Frank nodded and grunted.

  “You can leave,” he said.

  “Yes sir,” J. W. said, and turned to the others. “Come on, fellows; let’s go find that tush-hog.”

  They went out. I started to follow them, but Frank stopped me.

  “Go back there and tell that gal to fix you up some food,” he said. “Should be round your dinner time, shouldn’t it?”

  “Don’t b’lieve I’m hungry,” I said.

/>   He wanted to make up for the way he had talked to me just before I went to get J. W., and I wanted him to know it wasn’t going to be that easy.

  “Well, you might as well sit down over there,” he said.

  “I was thinking I ought to get back in the shop,” I said. “Since I ain’t done too much today, yet.”

  “Can’t you stay a minute?” he said. “Or do I have to beg you, too?”

  “Sit down, Felix,” ’Malia said quietly.

  I went to the chair in the other corner, and I brushed off my pants before I sat down. It was the first time I had ever sat in the library, but I had sat in the living room two or three times when they had wakes there.

  It was quiet in the room now. ’Malia went on stitching the dress. Frank went to the window to look out in the yard. Once there, I caught him rubbing at his chest. He was always doing that now. Like he had to do that to keep his heart beating.

  “I didn’t write the rules,” he said, looking out the window. He wasn’t talking to us, he was just talking out loud. “And I won’t try to change them. He must come through that back door.”

  I looked at ’Malia in her corner, but she kept her head down. Frank turned from the window and looked at me.

  “And you don’t think he will?”

  “No sir,” I said. “Not him.”

  “You’re pretty sure of that, aren’t you, Felix? Aren’t you?”

  “Yes sir,” I said. “Because you never would ’a’ gone through a back door, Mr. Frank; neither Mr. Walter, neither y’all daddy.”

  “Keep talking, Felix.”

  “That’s about all,” I said.

  “You didn’t finish,” Frank said. “You forgot to mention his mon, Felix. She was black.”

  “She born him, Mr. Frank, that’s all,” I said. “Copper is a Laurent. No Laurent’s walking through any back door—’specially one he half figures belong to him, anyway.”

  “So you did send for him?” Frank said.

  “No sir,” I said. “No more than you or ’Malia did, Mr. Frank. But I took a good look at him when I went down to that house. And I looked at him yesterday when he got here. Not that one, Mr. Frank.”

  “We’ll see,” Frank said.

  “Can I leave now?”

  “You’ll leave when I tell you to leave.”

  “You the authority,” I said.

  Then it got quiet again—too quiet. I looked at ’Malia stitching on the dress, but I could tell Frank was still looking at me from the window. I could tell he was mad, I could tell he was getting madder.

  “What am I supposed to do?” he said, when he couldn’t hold back any more. “Change the rules? Do you know how old these rules are? They’re older than me, than you, than this entire place. I didn’t make them, I came and found them here. And I—an invalid—am I supposed to change them all? Haven’t I fed you when you were hungry, given you a place to sleep? If you’re sick I give you medicine whether you have money or not. I don’t charge you a penny rent, I don’t charge a cent for the food you raise in your gardens. What more am I supposed to do—give you the house and move into the quarters? Do you think you’ll live better then? Well?”

  “You better watch your heart,” ’Malia said, very softly, and never raising her head.

  “To hell with my heart,” Frank said. “To hell with you, the place, Felix—everything.”

  “That ain’t being too smart,” ’Malia said, still very softly, and still not looking at him.

  “So today is my day to be criticized, eh?” he said. “Is that what it’s coming to?”

  “Nobody’s trying to criticize you, Mr. Frank,” ’Malia said. “I just said your heart.”

  “Like hell, nobody’s trying to criticize me,” Frank said. “What the hell’s Felix been doing ever since he got up this morning?”

  “Can I leave now?” I said.

  “You start toward that door, Felix, so help me God I’ll get that gun out of that desk drawer and shoot your goddamn head off.”

  “You the authority,” I said.

  “You must have the last damn word every time, mustn’t you?” Frank said.

  I got quiet. I could see he was mad.

  “Ain’t it ’bout time you had your dinner?” ’Malia said, to break the silence.

  “I eat when I damned well please,” Frank said, turning on ’Malia now. “I hope I still have that privilege in my own house.” When ’Malia didn’t say anything, he said: “Well, aren’t you going to say, ‘You the authority,’ just to have the last word?”

  “You know who you is, Mr. Frank,” ’Malia said.

  “I’m an invalid,” he said. “I’m an invalid who everyone laughs at soon as my back is turned.”

  “I never laughed at you in my life, Mr. Frank,” ’Malia said. “And I’m sure Felix never done either.”

  It got quiet again. I rubbed my hand over my old black cap I had hanging on my knee. Then I just looked at my hands a while. I guess I never would ’a’ done that if I was out in the shop or at my own house. But in here, with all these books and furnitures and fine things, I just, all of a sudden, looked at both of my hands. How rough they looked. Knotted, old, hard, and wrinkled.

  “How come you didn’t protest?” Frank asked ’Malia.

  “Protest what, Mr. Frank?”

  “Their dragging him back up here, that’s what.”

  “They ain’t go’n drag Copper nowhere,” she said.

  “And why not?”

  “I’m sure I don’t need to even answer that, Mr. Frank,” ’Malia said, with her head down.

  “You better answer that, damn you,” he said. “And I wish you would look up when I’m talking to you, Amalia.”

  ‘Malia stuck the needle in the dress and raised her head.

  “Copper both of us nephew, Mr. Frank,” she said. “And they know that. And they know ain’t nowhere in the world for them to go if they hurt him.”

  “You and Felix seem to be throwing that nephew stuff pretty heavily round here today,” Frank said. “You better mind your tongue doesn’t slip at the wrong time.”

  “I know my place,” ’Malia said.

  “Do you?” Frank said. “I thought you had forgotten it. For a moment there, I thought everybody in here was white.”

  “No sir, I’m not white,” she said.

  “You sure now?”

  “I’m sure, Mr. Frank. You the only white person in here.”

  “Thank you,” he said, nodding his head.

  Somebody knocked on the door, and ’Malia told him to come in. Stateman pushed the door open and told Frank his dinner was ready. Frank left the window. A tall, slim man with thin, gray hair. A very weak man; a very sick man.

  “Tell that gal to fix up something for Felix in the kitchen,” he said to Stateman.

  “Yes sir,” Stateman said, standing to the side to let Frank go out first.

  Frank stopped at the door and looked back at me.

  “When you get through eating, you go to that living room and sit down,” he said. “Don’t you dare leave this house until I see that boy.”

  “You the authority,” I said.

  “And you keep remembering that, too,” he said, and went out.

  Stateman followed him.

  “One ain’t no better than the other one,” ’Malia said. “They the same, that same blood in ’em. Didn’t I used to sing at Copper and sing at Copper ’fore he left here. Him fighting them white children on the river like he fight them black ones in the quarter. Didn’t I used to sing and sing and sing at him. My singing didn’t do no good then; now he’s back here doing worse.”

  “What I can’t understand, what Mr. Frank want see him so bad for. If nobody wanted to see me, I sure wouldn’t go through that much trouble to get him in my house.”

  “He know he’s going to die soon,” ’Malia said. “He want leave something for Copper in his will. In my name.”

  “Not this place, I’m sure?”

  “Lord, no,” ’Ma
lia said. “Something small. Maybe no more than a few dollars.”

  “To pay for what Walter did to his mon?”

  “I reckon so.”

  “But Copper got to come through the back to get it?”

  “Yes,” ’Malia said.

  “He won’t see that day,” I said.

  “Copper scares me, Felix,” ’Malia said.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Look what he did Little Boy and Joby. Look how he beat them and put them in chains. He would do that to anybody who got in his way. I think he would even do that to me.”

  “Not to you—no,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “To me. Something’s in Copper. Something happened to Copper. Things he talk about. Rights. Wrongs. Soldiers. Generals. Who the earth for. Who the sun belongs to. That kind of talk scares me, Felix.”

  “Maybe he’ll hurry up and go back,” I said.

  “I hope so,” she said. Then she lowered her head and started crying. “My own blood—I want my own blood to leave my house.”

  I went to her and put my hand on her shoulder. I started to tell her it wasn’t her blood making Copper act like that, but I didn’t know if that was the thing to say then.

  “Let’s go eat something,” I told her. “You ought to be hungry, too.”

  She stood up, and we went back in the kitchen.

  8: When I finished eating, I went to the living room and sat down. It was a big room with big, old, dark furnitures. They had all the curtains drawn back, but still there wasn’t enough light in there. The trees in the yard kept sun from ever getting into that house. I sat in a big, old, high-back chair, facing the fireplace. No matter where you looked in the room, you saw pictures of the family. Pictures of soldiers everywhere—probably from all the wars. There was a picture of Greta Jean standing in front of the house with two young men on both sides of her. She looked happy as she could be, because she knowed she was going to get this place after Frank died. On the mantelpiece was a picture of Walter on that stallion, Black Terror. And how I remember them two. I remembered how he used to race that horse through the quarters and how the people had to fall out his way when they heard him coming. I remembered how he used to pick fights with the colored boys in the field for no reason at all—just for the sake of fighting them. And the women, married or single—what did he care? They was on his place and they belong to him. And nobody, white or black, would dare tell him he was wrong. It took that horse he loved to stop him. One day, just before a storm, he rode the horse back in the field. Something scared the horse—probably a clap of thunder—and the horse threw him from the saddle. But he never got his foot out of the stirrup, and the horse dragged him all the way to the front. I still remembered how I heard that horse’s hoofs pounding that hard ground, coming back to the yard. Will Henderson saw him first and started hollering: “Head him. Head him. He dragging Mr. Walter. Head him.” We stopped the horse, all right, but by the time we got Walter loose from the stirrup, he was already dead. His back and his skull, both broke.