Blues for Mister Charlie

by James Baldwin

  MOTHER HENRY: Let’s file up, children, and say goodbye.

  (Song: “Great Getting-Up Morning.” Meridian steps down from the pulpit Meridian, Lorenzo, Jimmy and Pete shoulder the bier. A dishevelled Parnell enters. The Congregation and the Pallbearers file past him. Juanita stops.)

  JUANITA: What’s the matter, Parnell? You look sick.

  PARNELL: I tried to come sooner. I couldn’t get away. Lyle wouldn’t let me go.

  JUANITA: Were you trying to beat a confession out of him? But you look as though he’s been trying to beat a confession out of you. Poor Parnell!

  PARNELL: Poor Lyle! He’ll never confess. Never. Poor devil!

  JUANITA: Poor devil! You weep for Lyle. You’re luckier than I am. I can’t weep in front of others. I can’t say goodbye in front of others. Others don’t know what it is you’re saying goodbye to.

  PARNELL: You loved him.

  JUANITA: Yes.

  PARNELL: I didn’t know.

  JUANITA: Ah, you’re so lucky, Parnell. I know you didn’t know. Tell me, where do you live, Parnell? How can you not know all of the things you do not know?

  PARNELL: Why are you hitting out at me? I never thought you cared that much about me. But—oh, Juanita! There are so many things I’ve never been able to say!

  JUANITA: There are so many things you’ve never been able to hear.

  PARNELL: And—you’ve tried to tell me some of those things?

  JUANITA: I used to watch you roaring through this town like a St. George thirsty for dragons. And I wanted to let you know you haven’t got to do all that; dragons aren’t hard to find, they’re everywhere. And nobody wants you to be St. George. We just want you to be Parnell. But, of course, that’s much harder.

  PARNELL: Are we friends, Juanita? Please say that we’re friends.

  JUANITA: Friends is not exactly what you mean, Parnell. Tell the truth.

  PARNELL: Yes. I’ve always wanted more than that, from you. But I was afraid you would misunderstand me. That you would feel that I was only trying to exploit you. In another way.

  JUANITA: You’ve been a grown man for a long time now, Parnell. You ought to trust yourself more than that.

  PARNELL: I’ve been a grown man far too long—ever to have dared to dream of offering myself to you.

  JUANITA: Your age was never the question, Parnell.

  PARNELL: Was there ever any question at all?

  JUANITA: Yes. Yes. Yes, once there was.

  PARNELL: And there isn’t—there can’t be—anymore?

  JUANITA: No. That train has gone. One day, I’ll recover. I’m sure that I’ll recover. And I’ll see the world again—the marvelous world. And I’ll have learned from Richard—how to love. I must. I can’t let him die for nothing.

  (Juke box music, loud. The lights change, spot on Parnell’s face. Juanita steps across the aisle. Richard appears. They dance. Parnell watches.)

  Curtain

  END OF ACT TWO

  ACT III

  TWO MONTHS LATER. The courtroom.

  The courtroom is extremely high, domed, a blinding white emphasized by a dull, somehow ominous gold. The judge’s stand is center stage, and at a height. Sloping down from this place on either side, are the black and white TOWNS-PEOPLE: the JURY; PHOTOGRAPHERS and JOURNALISTS from all over the world; microphones and TV cameras. All windows open: one should be aware of masses of people outside and one should sometimes hear their voices—their roar—as well as singing from the church. The church is directly across the street from the courthouse, and the steeple and the cross are visible throughout the act.

  Each witness, when called, is revealed behind scrim and passes through two or three tableaux before moving down the aisle to the witness stand. The witness stand is downstage, in the same place, and at the same angle as the pulpit in Acts I and II.

  Before the curtain rises, song: “I Said I Wasn’t Going To Tell Nobody, But I Couldn’t Keep It To Myself.”

  The JUDGE’S gavel breaks across the singing, and the curtain rises.

  CLERK (Calling): Mrs. Josephine Gladys Britten!

  (Jo, serving coffee at a church social. She passes out coffee to invisible guests.)

  JO: Am I going to spend the rest of my life serving coffee to strangers in church basements? Am I?—Yes! Reverend Phelps was truly noble! As usual!—Reverend Phelps has been married for more than twenty years. Don’t let those thoughts into your citadel! You just remember that the mind is a citadel and you can keep out all troubling thoughts!—My! Mrs. Evans! you are certainly a sight for sore eyes! I don’t know how you manage to look so unruffled and cool and young! With all those children. And Mr. Evans. How are you tonight?—She has a baby just about every year. I don’t know how she stands it. Mr. Evans don’t look like that kind of man. You sure can’t tell a book by its cover. Lord! I wish I was in my own home and these were my guests and my husband was somewhere in the room. I’m getting old! Old! Old maid! Maid!—Oh! Mr. Arpino! You taken time out from your engineering to come visit here with us? It sure is a pleasure to have you!—My! He is big! and dark! Like a Greek! or a Spaniard! Some people say he might have a touch of nigger blood. I don’t believe that. He’s just—foreign. That’s all. He needs a hair cut. I wonder if he’s got hair like that all over his body? Remember that your mind is a citadel. A citadel. Oh, Lord, I’m tired of serving coffee in church basements! I want, I want—Why, good evening, Ellis! And Mr. Lyle Britten! We sure don’t see either of you very often! Why, Mr. Britten! You know you don’t mean that! You come over here just to see little old me? Why, you just go right ahead and drink that coffee, I do believe you need to be sobered up!

  (The light changes.)

  REVEREND PHELPS (Voice): Do you, Josephine Gladys Miles, take this man, Lyle Britten, Jr., as your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, to love and to cherish, in sickness and in health, till death do you part?

  JO: I do. I do! Oh, Lyle. I’ll make you the best wife any man ever had. I will. Love me. Please love me. Look at me! Look at me! He wanted me. He wanted me! I am—Mrs. Josephine Gladys Britten!

  (The light changes again, and Jo takes the stand. We hear the baby crying.)

  BLACKTOWN: Man, that’s the southern white lady you supposed to be willing to risk death for!

  WHITETOWN: You know, this is a kind of hanging in reverse? Niggers out here to watch us being hanged!

  THE STATE: What is your relationship to the accused?

  JO: I am his wife.

  THE STATE: Will you please tell us, in your own words, of your first meeting with the deceased, Richard Henry?

  WHITETOWN: Don’t be afraid. Just tell the truth.

  BLACKTOWN: Here we go—down the river!

  JO: Well, I was in the store, sitting at the counter, and pretty soon this colored boy come in, loud, and talking in just the most awful way. I didn’t recognize him, I just knew he wasn’t one of our colored people. His language was something awful, awful!

  THE STATE: He was insulting? Was he insulting, Mrs. Britten?

  JO: He said all kinds of things, dirty things, like—well—just like I might have been a colored girl, that’s what it sounded like to me. Just like some little colored girl he might have met on a street corner and wanted—wanted to—for a night! And I was scared. I hadn’t seen a colored boy act like him before. He acted like he was drunk or crazy or maybe he was under the influence of that dope. I never knew nobody to be drunk and act like him. His eyes was just going and he acted like he had a fire in his belly. But I tried to be calm because I didn’t want to upset Lyle, you know—Lyle’s mighty quick-tempered—and he was working in the back of the store, he was hammering—

  THE STATE: Go on, Mrs. Britten. What happened then?

  JO: Well, he—that boy—wanted to buy him two Cokes because he had a friend outside—

  THE STATE: He brought a friend? He did not come there alone? Did this other boy enter the store?

  JO: No, not then he didn’t—I—

  BLACKTOW
N: Come on, bitch. We know what you going to say. Get it over with.

  JO: I—I give him the two Cokes, and he—tried to grab my hands and pull me to him, and—I—I—he pushed himself up against me, real close and hard—and, oh, he was just like an animal, I could—smell him! And he tried to kiss me, he kept whispering these awful, filthy things and I got scared, I yelled for Lyle! Then Lyle come running out of the back—and when the boy seen I wasn’t alone in the store, he yelled for this other boy outside and this other boy come rushing in and they both jumped on Lyle and knocked him down.

  THE STATE: What made you decide not to report this incident—this unprovoked assault—to the proper authorities, Mrs. Britten?

  JO: We’ve had so much trouble in this town!

  THE STATE: What sort of trouble, Mrs. Britten?

  JO: Why, with the colored people! We’ve got all these northern agitators coming through here all the time, and stirring them up so that you can’t hardly sleep nights!

  THE STATE: Then you, as a responsible citizen of this town, were doing your best to keep down trouble? Even though you had been so brutally assaulted by a deranged northern Negro dope addict?

  JO: Yes. I didn’t want to stir up no more trouble. I made Lyle keep quiet about it. I thought it would all blow over. I knew the boy’s Daddy was a preacher and that he would talk to the boy about the way he was behaving. It was all over town in a second, anyway! And look like all the colored people was on the side of that crazy boy. And Lyle’s always been real good to colored people!

  (Laughter from Blacktown.)

  THE STATE: On the evening that the alleged crime was committed—or, rather, the morning—very early on the morning of the 24th of August—where were you and your husband, Mrs. Britten?

  JO: We were home. The next day we heard that the boy was missing.

  COUNSEL FOR THE BEREAVED: Doesn’t an attempt at sexual assault seem a rather strange thing to do, considering that your store is a public place, with people continually going in and out; that, furthermore, it is located on a public road which people use, on foot and in automobiles, all of the time; and considering that your husband, who has the reputation of being a violent man, and who is, in your own words, “mighty quick tempered,” was working in the back room?

  JO: He didn’t know Lyle was back there.

  COUNSEL FOR THE BEREAVED: But he knew that someone was back there, for, according to your testimony, “He was hammering.”

  JO: Well, I told you the boy was crazy. He had to be crazy. Or he was on that dope.

  BLACKTOWN: You ever hear of a junkie trying to rape anybody?

  JO: I didn’t say rape!

  COUNSEL FOR THE BEREAVED: Were you struggling in Mr. Henry’s arms when your husband came out of the back room, carrying his hammer in his hand?

  JO: No. I was free then.

  COUNSEL FOR THE BEREAVED: Therefore, your husband had only your word for the alleged attempted assault! You told him that Richard Henry had attempted to assault you? Had made sexual advances to you? Please answer, Mrs. Britten!

  JO: Yes. I had—I had to—tell him. I’m his wife!

  COUNSEL FOR THE BEREAVED: And a most loyal one. You told your husband that Richard Henry had attempted to assault you and then begged him to do nothing about it?

  JO: That’s right.

  COUNSEL FOR THE BEREAVED: And though he was under the impression that his wife had been nearly raped by a Negro, he agreed to forgive and forget and do nothing about it? He agreed neither to call the law, nor to take the law into his own hands?

  JO: Yes.

  COUNSEL FOR THE BEREAVED: Extraordinary. Mrs. Britten, you are aware that Richard Henry met his death sometime between the hours of two and five o’clock on the morning of Monday, August 24th?

  JO: Yes.

  COUNSEL FOR THE BEREAVED: In an earlier statement, several months ago, you stated that your husband had spent that night at the store. You now state that he came in before one o’clock and went to sleep at once. What accounts for this discrepancy?

  JO: It’s natural. I made a mistake about the time. I got it mixed up with another night. He spent so many nights at that store!

  JUDGE: The witness may step down.

  (Jo leaves the stand.)

  CLERK (Calls): Mr. Joel Davis!

  (We hear a shot. Papa D. is facing Lyle.)

  LYLE: Why’d you run down there this morning, shooting your mouth off about me and Willa Mae? Why? You been bringing her up here and taking her back all this time, what got into you this morning? Huh? You jealous, old man? Why you come running back here to tell me everything he said? To tell me how he cursed me out? Have you lost your mind? And we been knowing each other all this time. I don’t understand you. She ain’t the only girl you done brought here for me. Nigger, do you hear me talking to you?

  PAPA D.: I didn’t think you’d shoot him, Mr. Lyle.

  LYLE: I’ll shoot any nigger talks to me like that. It was self defense, you hear me? He come in here and tried to kill me. You hear me?

  PAPA D.: Yes. Yes sir. I hear you, Mr. Lyle.

  LYLE: That’s right. You don’t say the right thing, nigger, I’ll blow your brains out, too.

  PAPA D.: Yes sir, Mr. Lyle.

  (Juke box music. Papa D. takes the stand.)

  WHITETOWN: He’s worked hard and saved his money and ain’t never had no trouble—why can’t they all be like that?

  BLACKTOWN: Hey, Papa D.! You can’t be walking around here without no handkerchief! You might catch cold—after all these years!

  PAPA D.: Mr. Lyle Britten—he is an oppressor. That is the only word for that man. He ain’t never give the colored man no kind of chance. I have tried to reason with that man for years. I say, Mr. Lyle, look around you. Don’t you see that most white folks have changed their way of thinking about us colored folks? I say, Mr. Lyle, we ain’t slaves no more and white folks is ready to let us have our chance. Now, why don’t you just come on up to where most of your people are? and we can make the South a fine place for all of us to live in. That’s what I say—and I tried to keep him from being so hard on the colored—because I sure do love my people. And I was the closest thing to Mr. Lyle, couldn’t nobody else reason with him. But he was hard—hard and stubborn. He say, “My folks lived and died this way, and this is the way I’m going to live and die.” When he was like that couldn’t do nothing with him. I know. I’ve known him since he was born.

  WHITETOWN: He’s always been real good to you. You were friends!

  BLACKTOWN: You loved him! Tell the truth, mother—tell the truth!

  PAPA D.: Yes, we were friends. And, yes, I loved him—in my way. Just like he loved me—in his way.

  BLACKTOWN: You knew he was going to kill that boy—didn’t you? If you knew it, why didn’t you stop him?

  PAPA D.: Oh. Ain’t none of this easy. What it was, both Mr. Lyle Britten and me, we both love money. And I did a whole lot of things for him, for a long while. Once I had to help him cover up a killing—colored man—I was in too deep myself by that time—you understand? I know you all understand.

  BLACKTOWN: Did he kill that boy?

  PAPA D.: He come into my joint the night that boy died. The boy was alone, standing at the juke box. We’d been talking—(Richard, in the juke box light) If you think you’ve found all that, Richard—if you think you going to be well now, and you found you somebody who loves you—well, then, I would make tracks out of here. I would—

  RICHARD: It’s funny, Papa D. I feel like I’m beginning to understand my life—for the first time. I can look back—and it doesn’t hurt me like it used to. I want to get Juanita out of here. This is no place for her. They’re going to kill her—if she stays here!

  PAPA D.: You talk to Juanita about this yet?

  RICHARD: No. I haven’t talked to nobody about it yet. I just decided it. I guess I’m deciding it now. That’s why I’m talking about it now—to you—to see if you’ll laugh at me. Do you think she’ll laugh at me?

  PAPA
D.: No. She won’t laugh.