Dewey started to breathe heavily then and I knew he was falling off to sleep. But Tucker was still interested. And even if he had fallen asleep, I think I would’ve continued, just to be able to say these things out loud, even this way.
“The prince was very sad because he’d lost the battle and so the princess was sad too. But she found she couldn’t do anything for the prince. He even stopped talking to her after a while, and they had always talked a lot. So it got very lonely in the castle. Because the princess didn’t have anyone to talk to.” When I think about this I feel quite ashamed of myself. There I was, a grown woman, disguising my own story as a fairy tale and telling it to a small child, confessing, confiding in him. But that wasn’t the worst of it. “She didn’t have anyone to talk to, or to be happy with and so she got very lonely. Every so often she’d think about running away, about going back to her father’s castle, but she really didn’t want to do that because she loved the prince charming very much and she didn’t want to leave him. But she began to think more and more about running away. She even, one time, told the prince what she was thinking, but he didn’t seem to care. He said to her: ‘Cam—’ ” I almost said my own name. I blushed and got warm, in the dark. I stopped then because I knew I was doing wrong. I had thought I was talking to myself, but when I looked up, I could see Tucker’s tiny glasses sparkling. He was still sitting bolt straight in bed. I could feel myself beginning to cry way down deep somewhere. “Well, Tucker, it’s about time you went to sleep, dear.”
“Ain’t you finishing, Missus Willson?”
“That isn’t a very good story. No excitement or fireworks in it. You don’t want to hear the end.”
“Yes, ma’am, I do. I like that story.”
“You do? Why?”
“It’s about really living people. Like I know.”
“Wouldn’t a story about dragons and war be better?”
“No, ma’am. I can’t believe in them kind.”
“Well, dear, the story doesn’t have an ending. You end it. How would you do it?”
“Me?”
“Yes, go on. What do you think the princess should do?” I thought I was playing. I couldn’t really be asking him. He was only nine years old.
I looked across at him. I could see him thinking, there in the moonlight, his covers around his waist like he was standing in waist-deep, white water. He was looking toward the window, and then at me. “I think the princess should wait. She shouldn’t run away.”
“Why?” I wasn’t playing.
He looked straight at me, like an old friend who knew about David and me and was telling me what to do. “Because the prince, he’ll wake up one of these days and he’ll make it all right.”
It made me feel nervous, and stupid, and a little crazy. He couldn’t know; he was only nine. But I felt nervous anyway.
I did wait, living from day to day, promising myself that if nothing happened that next day, I’d go in and see my brother, a lawyer, and tell him to start divorce proceedings. But each night I’d convince myself to wait still another day.
So I waited the years by, until this last March, and then I decided I couldn’t go on any longer, not like that, until I decided I owed myself a little more than I was getting, that twenty years of this kind of marriage was enough for anyone.
And so one Monday night I told Tucker I wanted him to drive me to New Marsails and to please have the car ready at ten the next morning. I got up and dressed in something dark—that was the way I felt, like I was attending a funeral—and had a cup of coffee, and got my purse and went out and climbed in the car. I started to cry then, and kept on crying all the way down the hill into Sutton and up and over the Ridge through Harmon’s Draw. I could see from the top of the Ridge New Marsails in the distance, shifting and blurry. We went all the way into the city and Tucker pulled up in front of my brother’s office. I told him if anything happened to contact me in the law offices of R. W. DeVillet.
That’s when he said it. That’s when he got out of the car and opened the back door for me, when I slid across the seat and he looked straight at me through those thick-rimmed glasses and said it, so softly, so quietly that I couldn’t hear it at first over the roaring of the passing cars and the dull chatter of people, and I asked him to repeat it. Or perhaps I heard him, but hadn’t wanted to believe my ears, because it was impossible that he could remember, or that he had known that long ago, known then when I told him the fairy tale. I looked up, startled, and said, “Excuse me, Tucker?”
And he said it, again: “I think the princess should wait, Missus Willson. Leastways, now when her waiting is almost over.”
I told him to take me to the nearest movie. That’s where I spent the day.
Each day these past several months, I’ve gotten up and tried to convince myself this will be the day the waiting will end, that by nighttime it will all be over. But nothing happened until yesterday. And then I’m not sure anything happened. Last night David came in, stood at the foot of my bed, looking down at me for a long time, looked down at me in the strangest way and said: “Camille, I’ve made a million mistakes. How’d you take it so long?” I couldn’t say anything. “Camille?…” But he didn’t go on. That’s all he said. Not that he loved me, or he hoped that I could still love him. That’s all he said. But it was something.
David Willson
FRIDAY, MAY 31, 1957:
Today started the same as many others, but veered into a triumphant day for me. I feel almost as if I have a new start! as if all these years of waste (I suddenly realize how thoroughly I have wasted them) have been given back to me to live over again. I have always felt what I needed and lacked most twenty years ago was courage and faith, and that I had neither. Not the slightest particle. Of course, I have excuses; I could always say I did the responsible thing, but that rationale never for an instant convinced me.
At times I have vainly (or so I thought) wished someone could have helped me, given me faith in myself and courage to do what I so wanted to do. But I have always believed too that no one person really gives another courage; the leaders of revolutions actually help their followers to find the courage already within themselves. If these followers did not already possess that courage, the leaders’ efforts would be in vain. Courage cannot be given like a Christmas present. But it seems I am wrong—and so thankful to be wrong!—because today I have been given courage I am certain I never possessed before. Or perhaps I did possess the courage, but in what deep abyss of my soul had it dwelt so many years? I despaired of ever finding it. Well, it has now been found, or given, or whatever.
Today, as usual, I left the house to walk to the Thomason Grocery Company and pick up my copy of the A-T. (I do not know why I have to read that particular paper every day, except that it brings back memories of better times. I enjoy reading it, looking for mistakes, errors of make-up; I enjoy seeing, every so often, names of men who started there about the same time as I did; I enjoy it, I imagine, because it is the best paper New Marsails offers and always has those stories, those tiny fillers that start small and work their way slowly toward the front page until they are important news.)
I walked downhill and into the Square and across to the store. (There were two or three men and a boy there this morning, unusual for that hour: about 7:30. I did not speak to them of course; I do not know any of them. None work my land.)
When I returned home with the paper, just as usual, I went into the study and began to read and then, all at once, there it was, something I now realize I have been waiting to see (I hasten to add I did not ever think I would see it, or know what it would look like, but seeing it once was knowing it), tucked high on the twentieth page above advertisements for women’s summer suits and girdles, to the managing editor only one step above a filler, but to me, had I made up the paper today, important enough for page one-column eight, heralded perhaps with type as large as was used to head
line the Pearl Harbor Attack. I have clipped it and pasted it below:
FIRE DESTROYS FARM
Set By Owner?
Sutton, May 30—A fire razed the house of farmer Tucker Caliban, two miles north of here—and none of the thirty-odd spectators made any effort to extinguish it. Witnesses stated the fire was started deliberately by Caliban, a Negro, himself.
Those interviewed said they had watched Caliban most of the day as he salted his own land, shot his animals, destroyed several pieces of furniture, and then, at eight in the evening, went inside and set his own house ablaze. Then, they asserted, he walked away without explanation.
Caliban was not available for comment.
I am sure this article meant very little to anyone else. But in light of what Tucker told me, the feelings he expressed, this is very meaningful at least to him, and to myself. He has freed himself; this had been very important to him. But somehow, he has freed me too. He is only one man, and this, of course, does not make a reality all the things I had dreamed of doing twenty years ago. But it is something. And I contributed to it. I sold him the land and the house. I doubt if he knew what he was going to do when he bought it that night last summer, but that does not matter. Yesterday, his act of renunciation was the first blow against my twenty misspent years, twenty years I have wasted feeling sorry for myself. Who would have thought such a humble, primitive act could teach something to a so-called educated man like myself?
Anyone, anyone can break loose from his chains. That courage, no matter how deeply buried, is always waiting to be called out. All it needs is the right coaxing, the right voice to do that coaxing, and it will come roaring like a tiger.
Tuesday, September 22, 1931:
This is the first entry in this diary even though my father gave it to me on my last birthday (July 17). At the time, he said something about its being time, son, you started to keep a daily record of things you have seen and learned, especially since you will be going up to Massachusetts in September. I did not think too much of that. I reasoned a person would remember the really important things anyway and would forget the rest. But I have been thinking about it and perhaps he is right. It is possible something will happen to you and you will think it unimportant when it happens, and a year later it could go off like a time bomb and be very important after all.
So it might be a good thing to keep a diary.
I decided to start writing here today (this particular day) because tomorrow I will be leaving for Massachusetts to begin four (if I do not flunk out) years at college. This is the time to start things. I’m not quite sure why, that is to say, I cannot quite put it into words and perhaps putting it here will help me, but going to Cambridge is very important to me. Not for the name or the prestige but because from everything my father has told me about it (he went too) and from everything I have heard or read about it, this seems to be the place where I can start some of the things I want to start.
I look around at the South and all I can see is poverty, misery, inequality, and unhappiness. I love the South so dearly and even though it sounds sentimental as all hell, I feel like crying whenever I see what it is and compare it to my concept of what it could be. Even in times as hard as these, what with the Wall Street Crash and the Depression, the South, which was in a worse condition than the rest of the country already, is even worse off now. But that could be can only come about if the people here find and try some new concept to live by. We must get away from the old patterns, must stop worshiping the past and turn to the future. (God, this sounds like a bad speech!) And I hope to discover in Cambridge some ideas, some principles that, in four years, I can bring back here to help pull the South up off its behind and into the twentieth century. I don’t even know what I’m looking for; I can only hope I recognize it WHEN I see it.
Well, that’s all. I have to do some more packing.
Friday, October 23, 1931:
I met an amazing fellow tonight. A negro, Bennett Bradshaw. It is the first time in my life I carried on an intelligent conversation with a negro, and the first time I felt intellectually inferior to a negro. I might resent it except that I learned too much.
I went to a socialist meeting, hoping I might hear something important; I was even considering joining—before I went! But when I arrived I found nothing but a bunch of fellows showing each other how much they knew about Marx.
Just after I got there and found a seat, a negro came in and sat next to me. That’s something I will have to go into at length one of these nights: the absence of segregation. At first, I was disturbed by it, not that I mind its absence so much as when you sit somewhere you usually do not take too much notice of who sits next to you. If you are sitting on a trolley and someone sits next to you, usually you glance at him, then ignore him, that is, if he does not sit on your coattail. But when a negro sits next to me I find myself distracted from what I was reading, or from looking out of the window because I am not used to being that close to a negro in public. And so when this negro sat next to me, I noticed, and continued to notice it. He was portly, almost middle-aged looking, and wore a dark suit.
As the meeting began I tried not to stare at him. (I am trying to get over bugging my eyes out each time a negro gets near me.) But as the meeting continued, and these fellows kept trying to impress everybody, I began to squirm and wanted to leave; I do not have that brand of courage. He must have noticed, must have been looking at me because he leaned over and said, in a voice that seemed quite British (later he told me his family was from the West Indies): “These chaps have nothing to say. Would you like to join me for a cup of tea?”
I turned to him and he was smiling slightly, his eyes twinkling.
I do not yet know why I left with him, why I braved the slight offended silence which accompanied our exit; I suppose it was a combination of the following: (1) that he seemed to feel exactly as I felt about the uselessness of the meeting, (2) that he, a negro, should lean over and speak to me so brazenly, so openly, so friendly, (3) or that he was such an (this word may not be exactly right) exotic figure with his British accent. But I did go with him.
We went through the Yard into the Square, not speaking, walking side by side. I noticed him take out a cigarette, put it into a holder and light up, shielding the wind with his pudgy hands. He walked as if to some music, a march, his arms swinging at his sides. We found a restaurant; he ordered tea; I, coffee.
When we were seated he reached out his hand. “Bennett Bradshaw.” I took his hand and told him my name, the first words I had spoken.
He began to laugh. “My word! A southerner. A kindred soul and yet a southerner.”
At first I was a bit embarrassed, but then I was glad he had commented on the strangeness of the situation, the circumstances, and I began to laugh myself. He asked me what part of the South I was from; I told him and the mind which was to impress me more and more as we talked made a quick conclusion. “You’re related to General Dewey Willson, aren’t you?”
For an instant I was going to “confess” to it, but then I decided I would test him. “Why do you think so?”
“Well, first of all, you’re from his state and your name is Willson.”
“But many people took his name after the war. A lot of folks that weren’t related to him.”
“Yes, but they couldn’t afford to come here, could they? They wouldn’t have inherited his intelligence, would they? Besides that—”
“You win; you’ve got me pigeonholed. He was my great-grand-father.” I chuckled, shook my head.
“And might I add, although I can’t wholly agree with what he fought for, he fought and led admirably. But tell me, David—I may call you David, mayn’t I?” He did not wait for an answer; I would have consented. “Why were you, of all people, at such a meeting?”
I told him how I felt about my poor, lost South and what I hoped I could do for it and some of the things I
had already looked into. He seemed quite pleased and when I had finished, began to explain his own reasons. He was pretty much chain-smoking.
“My people, too, need something new, something vital. In my opinion, their leadership has followed in the footsteps of the negro overseers of plantation times. Each is out for himself and money is the thing. I’ve done a great deal of reading since I graduated from high school.” (It seems he is twenty-one years old and has worked four years to save money to come to school, and is now working in a cleaning and dyeing shop over in Boston.) “But I could find nothing. I had hoped I could find it here. Perhaps socialism or communism holds the answer, but certainly not that hollow variety we witnessed tonight—a new kind—that and trade unionism and other things.”
We continued to talk, through seven cups of coffee, continued to exchange ideas. He suggested a great many books I might read; my pockets are stuffed full of little notes to myself.
He is from New York, comes from a large family, is the oldest.
Tomorrow I am going to meet him at the Union for lunch.
Monday, October 26, 1931:
Met Bennett for dinner. We walked until 3 a.m. God, he knows so much. I’m learning a great deal from him. Even things I did not know about my South.
Wednesday, October 28, 1931:
Bennett dropped by tonight about 9. We talked way late into the night.
Saturday, October 31, 1931:
I went to a Halloween party at the Pudding; they had asked me to come. I met a very nice-looking girl, named Elaine Howe. She is from Roanoke, Virginia. She is about five feet, three and perhaps 125 pounds. I find her very attractive and very nice. She has a wonderful going-in-all-directions walk—it could be described as aimless, meandering. But I think it is her voice that makes me feel so good—it is like “home,” like a sparrow with a cough—not really high, but seeming to crack a little and soft, and aristocratic. She has light brown hair, longish, and nice eyes. I cannot help it; I have to say it; southern girls are the best in the world!
A Different Drummer Page 15