A Different Drummer

  Bennett, Bennett, now we are both lost.

  Saturday, June 23, 1956:

  John Caliban, who worked for our family over fifty years, died today on the bus carrying him to New Marsails.

  Saturday, August 18, 1956, 7:30 A.M. (of the past seven hours):

  I have not yet been to sleep, having just returned from a ride with Tucker. We went out to look at some of my property north of town, where, years ago, before my time even, the Willsons had their plantation. I sold Tucker seven acres of that land at the southwest corner.

  It has been a strange evening. I do not at all understand why, but I have a feeling something special has happened; I imagine this feeling, however, is simply an overdramatization of my own experience which has not been particularly important to anyone. (I suppose I wish it had been.) Well, I might as well set it down as best as I can remember:

  I was alone in the study reading. It was hot and quiet tonight—actually last night—and I had just gotten up to open the window wider, when there was a knock at the door—a quiet knock, almost timid, as if the person outside was afraid to ball his fist, not wanting to be the least bit aggressive, and instead knocked with the back of an open hand, a scraping sound. I called out: “Yes, who is it?”

  “Tucker, Mister Willson.” That high-pitched nasal voice of his!

  I returned to the desk. “What is it, Tucker?”

  “I’d like to see you a minute, sir.”

  “Come in.”

  I watched the door open, and saw him, small, dark, in his chauffeur’s suit, white shirt, and black tie. He looked a child pretending to be an undertaker. He was holding his black cap in front of him in both hands. The desk lamp reflected in his glasses so his eyes looked like giant, flat, golden circles.

  I was already reaching into my pocket for my wallet, taking it for granted he wanted cash to buy gas, oil, or whatever he thought the cars needed—I usually do not waste time asking him; he simply tells me how much he wants. “Yes, Tucker, what is it?” I had the wallet out, pried open to the billfold, and was ready to start counting with my thumb.

  “I want seven acres of your land.” He was almost rude, but that is his way. He had taken only a few steps into the room, enough to close the door behind him, and stood, looking out of those shining disks, his eyes and the expression in them hidden from me. “Seven acres up on the plantation.”

  I looked up surprised. “What on earth for?” I replaced the wallet in my pocket and leaned back in the chair, intent on the two small suns embedded in his face, trying to pierce through them to his eyes.

  Tucker did not move; he seemed a small black statue, seven-eighths life-size. “I want to farm some.” I know, knew then, this was simply an answer, but somehow it did not seem to matter. It did not seem right to baldly call him to task for lying, but I did want to know what he was up to.

  I decided to ridicule him; perhaps he would come out with it. “You farm? You’ve never farmed in your life. You don’t know anything about it.”

  He nodded his head just once, acknowledging the truth of my statement. “I’m planning to try.” He had not moved; he hardly seemed alive he was so still and erect.

  My ridicule had not worked so I decided to be a bit more paternalistic. “Sit down, Tucker.”

  He did not hesitate; walked—marched really—toward the desk, sat in the chair beside it, his back still straight.

  “Where did you get the money?” I leaned on my elbows, knit my hands, and rested my chin.

  “I saved it. My grandpap left me some.” He was annoyed by the question, did not want to be fathered. “Will you sell me the land?”

  “I don’t know.” Perhaps I could have answered just then—Yes or No—but suddenly I had the feeling I was in a play; I had certain lines to speak, and he too, and we had to say them so the play would proceed in a predestined order. “That’s the land Dewitt Willson staked out. No one has ever owned an inch of it. And I’m not sure you’re the right person to be the first.”

  He nodded and started to get up; this too was a kind of act. “All right, sir.”

  It was my “aim” now to stop him. I did. “Wait a minute, Tucker. Perhaps I’m being too hasty. What do you plan to do?” Again I leaned back in the chair, still watching him. I could see his eyes now, but they were as emotionless as the disks of light had been.

  “Plan? I don’t understand, sir.”

  “Plan. What exactly are you planning to do with the land? Why do you want our land? Why can’t you buy someone else’s land?”

  “I just wants to do some farming, is all.”

  “What kind of farming?”

  “Just farming. Corn, cotton, just farming.”

  “But why come to me?” I leaned forward and balled my fists. And this is strange. I found I was taken up very much in this mock drama, found myself caring a great deal. “You must know we’ve never sold that land to anyone. Why should we start now?” He just stared at me. “And why must it be on the plantation? We have land to the south of town. It’s better land anyway.”

  His lips hardly moved. “I don’t want that land. Now will you sell me some land on the plantation?” The tone of his voice was almost irritated, almost angry.

  Perhaps I’m a southerner after all because his almost surly attitude got to me and I snapped at him. “You shouldn’t speak that way, Tucker. It can get you into serious trouble.”

  And he came right back at me, made me feel ashamed of myself. “We ain’t white and black now, Mister Willson. We ain’t here for that.”

  I felt very tired now, and dropped all my defenses. “But don’t you see, Tucker, if I’m to sell you our land, there has to be a concrete reason. You know I can’t just give it to you. I suspect you wouldn’t even take it if I did. You want to pay for it.” I resorted to finance and added, “And I have to know you can meet the payments on it.”

  “I ain’t making no payments. I got enough right now.”

  “How do you know? I haven’t told you the price yet.”

  “I have enough money to buy twenty acres, and besides, you know whatever I got to offer is enough.” We stared at each other for what seemed like a long time.

  “I know, but say it so I can hear it, Tucker. It’s important that I hear it.” I found myself almost pleading with him.

  He nodded. “I want that land on the plantation because it’s where the first Caliban worked, and now it’s time we owned it ourselves.”

  “What else?” I was leaning forward now, anxious.

  But he disappointed me. “I don’t know. When I’m there I’ll know. Now all I can say is my new baby ain’t working for you-all. He’ll be his own boss. We worked for you long enough, Mister Willson. You tried to free us once, but we didn’t go and now we got to free ourselves.”

  I straightened up and looked down at my papers. “How much do you want to pay, Tucker?”

  And so we talked cost. Tucker told me how much he had, which, as he had said, was enough for at least twenty acres. I showed him a map of the area and pointed out where the seven acres were.

  Tucker nodded. “That’s where I wanted it.”

  “Why?” We were closer now than we had ever been. We had come to a very strange kind of agreement that I don’t quite understand except that I was doing something I realize I had always wanted to do, and also because it was almost like those things I wanted to see done twenty years ago. And Tucker, he had realized something was wrong with his life and was trying to set it straight. What each of us wanted so much individually we helped each other to do.

  “Something special there,” he answered, “something my grandpa told me was out there.” He did not go on.

  “Well, it’s yours now. I’ll have a deed drawn up tomorrow.”

  He continued to surprise me. “You draw it up and keep it. I don’t want no deeds. It’s mine and besides, you don’t wan
t it enough to cheat me out of it.” He said that with a smile in his voice, but not on his face.

  It was a nice moment, one of those moments of communication I had experienced so seldom and I wanted to prolong it. I asked him if he wanted to go out there to see the property. “Now, I mean. I’d like to drive you out there.”

  He did not answer; he just stood and started toward the door. I followed him, and then remembered something my father had given me when I first came back to live here. He had gone into his desk and got it out and handed it to me. “This isn’t yours,” he had said. “It belongs to the Calibans. But they’re not ready to have it yet. You give it to them when you think they should have it.” He did not tell me what it was, but I knew as soon as I saw it because I knew the old tall story as well as anyone else; everyone knew it, and enjoyed it, but I doubt if anyone thought it was any more than a story. When my father gave it to me, I was not sure any more. So I went back to the desk and pulled open the drawer and found it under a pile of papers, and a bit dusty, and walking to Tucker, pulled out my handkerchief and it started to shine in the single lamp light. I handed it to him.

  He took it from me, and I watched his eyes closely and saw them cloud a bit, the closest I had ever seen him come to tears or, in fact, to any other emotion. He put the white stone in his pocket, turned abruptly and went out the door.

  On the way out there with Tucker beside me in the front seat, I realized this was the closest I had been physically and alone with a negro in almost twenty years, since the beginning of the Christmas vacation of my senior year. On that time, Bennett was driving, and talking, talking, as I sat beside him worrying that he would not watch where he was going, would not be able to see even an elephant in time through the dark glasses he had suddenly begun to wear for no apparent reason and we would crack up and not even get a chance to start all the things we planned. Both of us shivering like wet kittens in the cab of that truck. The closest I have been to a negro, yes! in more ways than one.

  Perhaps it would have been better if I had not survived that trip. As it turns out, I never accomplished anything anyway. I do not mean, of course, I wish now, at this very second, to be dead. That is a little too melodramatic. I mean only that I have made so many people I loved so unhappy because I did not have the courage to go ahead with my plans. Because I was a coward, I made them all cowards, made them worse than cowards because they waited for a coward to take action.

  Especially Camille, waiting, patient, faithful Camille. She made her stand so much better than I did, told me she would go to New York just as long as I was happy. And I can see now she meant it. But I did not believe her. She had the faith in me I needed, and because I would not accept that faith, she lost faith in her faith too; I cheapened it. It was too late when I realized that, after all, she was actually a human being capable of thought, not just a slave or a pet or a southern woman. I betrayed us both.

  This was one of the things I asked Tucker tonight. I turned to him and found him sitting there staring far out down the road, thinking, as engrossed in his thoughts as I had been in mine, and I asked him what Bethrah thought about all this, about his buying the land.

  “She’s worrying, Mister Willson. I reckon she thinks I gone crazy.” He does not even have it as easy as I had it. Bethrah is a lot more independent than Camille ever was.

  “Doesn’t that bother you at all? Doesn’t that make you want to stop?”

  “No, sir. It’s something I got to do.”

  “Doesn’t she want you to think about it? Buying a farm is a big step, especially since you’ve never farmed before. Does she want you to do it?”

  “No, sir.”

  “How can you then? Don’t you think she has some say in the matter? I mean, you know she’s a very intelligent girl. And she may be right.”

  “Don’t matter if she is right. It don’t even matter if I’m wrong. I got to do it, even if it’s all wrong. If I don’t do it, ain’t none of these things going to stop. We’ll go on working for you forever. And that has got to stop.”

  “Yes, it does, doesn’t it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  We drove on. To our right, above Eastern Ridge, the sky began to get gray, the black lifted, and the country took on the blue color of a stained-glass window, seeming to possess light but not to give it off. We had come almost to the farm. I turned once more to him. “Could anything make you give this up?”

  He did not hesitate. “No, sir.”

  “I don’t imagine anything could, if owning that farm means so much to you.”

  He looked at me. “You only gets one chance. That’s when you can and when you feels like it. When one of them things is missing, ain’t no use trying. If you can do it, but don’t feel like it, why do it? And when you feels like it, and ain’t no opportunity, you just knocking your head against the front of a car going a hundred miles an hour. There ain’t no use in thinking about it if you ain’t got both. And if you had both and missed out, you might as well forget about it; your chance is gone for good.”

  I nodded; I know all about that.

  The Men on the Porch

  THEY HAD NOT GONE HOME.

  They sat now at nine o’clock Saturday evening as the last carloads of Negroes passed by Mister Thomason’s porch through Sutton going north. All afternoon the cars had been moving by in caravan, with the frequency of those in a funeral procession. Now the flow was thinning, not appearing over the Ridge in bunches, but singly like lone vacationing families. There were still more automobiles than usual, but not as many as before. To himself, each man sitting on the porch wondered whether the slackening numbers of vehicles laden with children, old people, adults, and babies, mattresses, blankets, and suitcases meant that New Marsails was vacant of Negroes.

  They knew for certain no Negroes remained in Sutton, for after two that afternoon, only a straggling few had lined Thomason’s porch waiting for the buses, and from where the men sat on the porch, looking toward the Square, they could no longer see any cars coming from where the Negroes lived at the northern edge of town. After Mister Harper left at six, some of the men went home to supper, though most bought something from Thomason, and continued to sit, munching on crackerjack, peanuts, candy, or apples. After they had balled the wrappers and tossed them into the street, some of them had stood and gone up to the Negro section to look around.

  They had found nothing, no houses lit; the Negroes had felt no need even to set lights in the windows as people do to keep burglars away, for they had taken anything they really valued, had left the rest for burglars, making it easy for them by leaving the doors swung open. Some had even left keys in the locks, an invitation to anyone who might want to occupy the house for good. The men from the porch could not bring themselves to enter the houses, retained that respect for house and property that is southern, that kept them from setting foot on Tucker Caliban’s land on Thursday, but they did peer over the thresholds into the darkness and found a great many things inside: chairs, tables, sofas, rugs, brooms, beds, and trash. Most of the walls were empty of the pictures of stern grandparents, or soldiering sons or married daughters, and crucifixes, those things without which people do not feel able to start a new home. If the men had gone inside and looked under beds, they would have found the dustless rectangles where, only a few days before, suitcases had rested. There were no Negroes at all.

  So they came back to the porch. They did not discuss what they had seen, for each man had seen it himself. They sat silently, thinking, trying to figure out what all this had to do with each of them, how tomorrow, next week, or next month would be different from what yesterday, last week, last month, or all their lives had been up to this time. None was able to think it through. It was like attempting to picture Nothing, something no one had ever considered. None of them had a reference point on which to fix the concept of a Negro-less world.

  Then Stewart came, driving up in his wago
n, a jug as squat as he was himself sitting beside him on the seat; they passed it around, each man wiping the nozzle with his sleeve in the old, useless rite of purification and cleanliness.

  That was when they began to get angry, quietly fighting mad, like a bride left at the church, wanting revenge, but having no one on whom to avenge herself, angered by her own frustration more than anything else. They disguised their loss by maintaining it was no loss at all, just as the Governor had done that morning.

  Stewart took another healthy swallow. “Sure! What we need them for anyways? Look what’s happening in Mississippi or over in Alabama. We don’t have to worry about that no more. We got us a new start, like the fellow says. Now we can live like we always lived and don’t have to worry about no nigger come a-knocking at the door, wanting to sit at our supper tables.” He was sitting on the porch steps next to Bobby-Joe, who had been very quiet since Mister Harper left.

  “Look-it, there’ll be plenty of work, plenty land—all the work and all the land them niggers was taking up. We’ll be doing right well soon as we get arranged.” Stewart was sweating now, as he always did, drinking or no, hot weather or cold, and pulled his handkerchief from his pocket.

  “But there might be too much work and too much land.” Loomis pushed his hat forward on his brow and tilted his chair back against the wall of the building. “We might not have enough folks to do it all. That’s some economics I learned upstate. That means we won’t have enough food. There’ll be a parcel of land nobody can use. There’s always been enough land for everybody, leastways enough to break your back on. This ain’t jap-an; you don’t see nobody planting up on the sides of the Ridge, using a rope to keep him from falling off.”

  “We’ll still be better off.” Stewart turned around, squinting to make out Loomis in the shadows of the porch. “Take Thomason there. He’s running the only store in Sutton now. Before, there was two; that nigger up there, he had a store. Now Thomason’s got all the business.”

  Loomis shook his head. “Yes, but there’s less than half the customers.”