Luellen turned again to Milledge. “I don’t like it either. I’m with you, Momma. I’m against him talking to Jacks.”
“If not Jacks, then who?” Bertrand nearly shouted. “We aren’t just going to hang a man out to dry? Just forget about him are we? If Jacks can’t help us, who do we get?”
“There must be a Negro lawyer in Atlanta,” Luellen said. “We write to the NAACP or the ILD.”
“Communists—Shit!—They’ll lynch us all.”
“They’ll do that anyway.”
“Not if Jacks is on our side.”
“You and your almighty Jacks. He’s got you blindsided.”
“I ain’t a mule for nobody.”
“Not even for yourself.” Luellen’s voice seemed to drift away. “I told him to run. I am tired of all of this now. I want to leave. Go up North. Bertrand, I think it’s time to leave this hell hole and go someplace where we can live. Canada or Haiti or back to Africa.”
“Africa? You ain’t African.”
“I am not American, either. Not by the way I’m treated.”
“Well, I didn’t fight a war for Africa.”
Luellen paused, cocked her head. “That’s right. You fought for America, but that doesn’t make you—”
“I am an American! What else am I?”
Luellen waved her hand in dismissal.
“Don’t start talking about moving up North.” Milledge spoke into the quiet. “Listen to me. You can have a good life here. You just got to know how to do it. You got to know where the lines are, what you can do and what you can’t. You got to act right around white people, and when you around your own you can be yourself.”
Bertrand had heard his mother and older relatives say this kind of thing before. Go along to get along, they sometimes called it. He understood well why they had acted that way, living a double life, a subservient one for the white people, and what passed for a normal one among the coloreds. “Momma, I love you, so I’m telling you. I am not fixin’ to act ‘right’ just because some white man wants me to act a certain way. I’m fixin’ to act just like a white man when I think that’s what I want.”
“Only one problem with that,” Luellen said. “You ain’t white.”
“No, son,” Milledge said. “You ain’t white.”
Bertrand rolled his eyes, “I ain’t trying to be white, either. I’m trying to be a man.”
“Your daddy was a man,” Milledge said, “and he worked every day of his life for Jacks—”
“But times have changed now.”
“And I might not be a man, but I am a person and I, too, have worked every day of my life for Jacks.”
“But times have changed.”
“I was there when his daddy died, and I was there during the boll weevil time, there in good times and in bad. He owes me, but that doesn’t mean that I am less a human being because I step and fetch for a white man.”
Luellen held out her hands to Milledge. “You don’t step ’n’ fetch—I didn’t mean—”
“We all do. We do because we have to do it. Things ain’t changed that much.”
Milledge drew her arms tightly around her and started to squeeze between Luellen and the stove. “Don’t burn your cakes.”
“But Momma,” Bertrand said, catching her elbow as she passed him. “Jacks does owe you!” She was his way to Jacks, it occurred to him. Of all the colored people in Talmaedge, his mother was the closest to Jacks. She spent most of her day in his house, caring for it, cooking for him, and she had done it for over twenty-five years. If anyone could appeal to Jacks, it would be she. “Momma, won’t you say something to Jacks?”
“No!” She pulled her arm away. “About what?”
“You know what. Just ask him to keep an eye out for Jimmy Lee. To see that things go fairly. Tell him that Jimmy Lee is family.”
“But he ain’t, and I am not lying.”
“Would you let a man go to jail, or worse, die, if you could prevent it?”
“What can I do?”
“Just talk to Jacks. Like you said, you know him better than anybody. He owes you.”
“If he do, this is not how I want to get paid. Jimmy Lee will get what Jimmy Lee deserves.”
“And what about Beah?”
“She won’t be the first hussy without a husband.”
“But she’s family. What about cousin Deacon? It’ll break his heart.”
“His heart been broke, and his mind, too. I am not getting mixed up in this.”
“What about me, Momma. Won’t you do it for me?”
“You got no business in it.”
“But I am going to be in it. I am going to talk to Jacks this morning.”
“What for!” Milledge raised her hands above her head. “What for? I told you he don’t care. He don’t care about Jimmy Lee. My husband worked all his life for him and he didn’t even come to his funeral. At least his ole daddy would have come and stood in the back of the church. But Jacks didn’t even say he sorry to me. Not one mumbling word. I tell you, he don’t care about nothing but Jacks.”
“Please, Momma, all you have to do is walk in with me. You don’t have to say a word to him. Just stand there when I talk to him.”
“Let her be,” Luellen said. She opened the oven and took out the cake layers, now risen and golden brown. The scent of them suddenly made Bertrand hungry.
“Please, Momma.”
“No.”
“Well, I’ll do it anyway, with or without your help.”
“That will be your last mistake,” Milledge said, leaving the kitchen and slamming the door to her bedroom.
THIRTEEN
He slept only two hours, rose with the sun and shaved, washed himself in the basin, put on a fresh white shirt, gold colored cufflinks, a tie, a suit and his oxfords. He thought that he might wear his army uniform, but now that he had put on a little weight, the pants had become too snug. He hoped his church clothes would not overemphasize the point that Jacks should respect him. Jacks didn’t have to like him, but he had to respect him. Bertrand gritted his teeth. Maybe it was pride, he thought. “Pride proceedeth the fall.” But why shouldn’t he be proud? He had done things to be proud of, damn it, and he was tired of being half a man just because white people wanted to treat him like one. He had been a corporal in the 761 Tank Battalion in General George Patton’s Third Army. He had fought in the Ardennes and had helped to liberate a camp of Jews. He had done as much for his country, this United States, as any man, woman or child in Talmaedge. Half a man was half a life, and he wanted to live fully. Why shouldn’t Jacks listen to him?
When he was dressed, he sat down on the bed next to Luellen. She appeared to be asleep, but he suspected her placid breathing a disguise to avoid him. He kissed her cheek. She seemed to stiffen, the breathing interrupted for a moment, but she did not open her eyes. Her last words to him before falling asleep had been that white men were bound to stick up for one another.
“I don’t believe you give Mr. Jacks enough credit,” Bertrand had said. “Mr. Jacks may be the best friend the colored have in Talmaedge County.” He knew when he said it that he was overstating, but drowsiness was taking him, and he hadn’t the focus to make good sense.
“Then the Lord help Talmaedge County,” Luellen had said.
When he went downstairs, he found that his mother had already left on her two mile walk to Woodbine. She had rekindled the fire in the cooking stove and had made coffee, fried potatoes, and bacon. He poured a cup of coffee and sat on the porch. Looking into the woods, he watched the light play among the trees, light and shadow replacing one another as the foliage moved in the canopy, but always it seemed the same degree of light and shadow. By noon, it would be mostly light as the sun shone directly down on the woods, but at nightfall it would be all darkness. This, though, was nature, he thought, and it didn’t always have to be this way with men. Men could let in as much light or darkness as they chose. They could live their lives in shadow, in ignorance, full of hat
red and small mindedness, or they could embrace light. Wayne Henson embraced light. Who knows, even then, as he was sliding down the embankment with the buckshot riddled through his heart, he might have been reaching out to some great, bright spirit.
Bertrand put his cup beside the chair, rose, and took a deep breath. He would walk to Woodbine, even in his clean oxfords. If he drove the car, he might arrive before his mother, and he didn’t want to get there before she had settled in and was feeding Jacks. He took his good fedora from the hat rack just inside the door. Besides, he thought, the walk would do him good.
The first view of Woodbine from the path was of the pastures. The path bled into a tractor road and led uphill between two fenced pastures, one for cows and the other for sheep. Cresting the hill, the view broadened and Bertrand could see the back of the manor house. Woodbine was a grand enough house by the standards of Talmaedge County, but it was square and white compared to the antebellum mansions with their fluted columns and brick porticos in the southward, cotton farming counties. It looked rather like an ordinary farm house, only larger and graced with a porch that curved from front to back. Its grandeur seemed to have come less from architecture and more from its position at the wooded hill’s crest.
Bertrand stopped in the grove of old trees that populated the backyard. In front of him the path lead to the kitchen door, where through the screen he could see his mother moving about. Would it be too much, he thought, if he went around to the front door and knocked there? But the idea of his mother answering the door for him like a house servant was too much to bear. He wouldn’t like it, and she would think him crazy. He took off his hat and rapped on the screen door. Immediately, his mother was there, her face full of expectancy. She smiled at him, queerly he thought, as if she were both happy and unhappy to see him, both resigned to his task and resistant to it. She did not greet him, but nodded toward a chair in the corner of the kitchen. He had been in this kitchen many times as a child, and it had changed over the years, the wood stove and icebox replaced by a gas stove and refrigerator. The sink now had running water. Still, the kitchen seemed antiquated, a holdover from the days of slavery, with its large fireplace and brick hearth. Woodbine, he knew, had not been a slave house, having been built after the Civil War. Still, its purple bricks and black wainscoting made the room seem as much a dungeon as a kitchen.
“He eating his breakfast,” Milledge said. “You want me to tell him you here?”
“Ma—”
“I’ll tell him. I don’t want to, but I’ll tell him.”
When she came back, she nodded and held the door to the dining room where Jacks had started taking his meals after remodeling the kitchen.
Jacks let out a surprised chuckle. “Where are you going, Bertrand? Today isn’t Sunday. Why look at you. Tie. New hat. Nice links. I hope you didn’t put on all that finery just to see me. School teaching must be treating you well.”
“Yes, sir. Well enough, but.…” Why should he have to defend wearing good clothes? “I got these in New York … with Army pay.”
“Gold links and perforated oxfords? Army must pay mighty well, I’ll say. Wish I had a pair like that.”
Bertrand didn’t know what to say, so he thanked Jacks. He felt his smile wriggle nervously.
“You cook another goat, Bertrand?” Jacks asked, referring to plate of barbecued goat that Milledge had brought to Jacks the summer before the war.
“No, sir. But I heard you liked my goat so much.”
“Sure did enjoy it. You need to do that again, as I don’t see barbecued goat around here much anymore. Times have gotten easy, and people only want to eat pork and beef. And chicken, of course.” He smiled, indicated the fried drumstick on his plate, turned it over as if inspecting it and he lifted it to his mouth. Chewing, he said, “Your momma fries the best chicken in the world. They say that girl at Maribelle’s chicken is good, but I believe that Millie’s got her beat.”
Bertrand wanted to say that the girl was his cousin Beah, and it was Beah that he had come to talk about, but now Jacks was talking about eating fried chicken for breakfast. There was a coyness in his speech, and Bertrand thought that Jacks was toying with him.
Abruptly, Jacks sat back in his chair and asked, “Now, what can I do for you?”
Coming after the casual conversation, the question seemed overly formal, and Bertrand, in spite of having planned his speech, was thrown. Of course, he thought, Jacks knew why he had come, since it wouldn’t have taken long for the news of the stabbing to have gotten around the county. Maribelle Crookshank would have known, since Sheriff Cook and his deputies ate in her restaurant and she supplied her leftover suppers to the prisoners at the jailhouse. If Crookshank knew, then every white person in Talmaedege knew within a few hours. They would already have met and talked it over. The talk would have been one-sided, of course, but not necessarily Venable’s side. It would simply be the “white” side: No colored man is going to do that to a white man and get away with it. If Jimmy Lee had anything going in his favor, it was that no white woman had been involved—even so, Bertrand feared, gossip might invent one.
“You want something for your schoolchildren?” Jacks asked after a pause. “Something I can talk to the school board about?”
He was playing, Bertrand thought. The school board never consulted with him. He took what they gave him, old books, old maps, a bucket of nubs of chalk sticks. He observed Jacks, who appeared to be about forty-five, with fine crow’s feet crinkling the corners of his eyes and a prominent bald spot on the top of this head. His face, though, still appeared ruggedly youthful, tanned, but red on the back of the neck. He was lean and held himself erect even as he ate. Bertrand straightened his own back and held out his chest. He breathed easier. “Well, yes sir. I do. But this is not about the school, sir. This is a very serious situation.”
“You mean Jimmy Lee?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What’s serious about it?”
“I’m concerned, sir.”
“Concerned? Since when has concern been serious?” Jacks stuffed his cheeks with biscuit sopped in the chicken grease and egg yolk.
Bertrand wiped sweat from his mouth with the back of his hand. Why was he letting Jacks get to him? Why didn’t he just come to the point? “I don’t have to tell you, sir, that not all our white citizens are as helpful to the colored as you have been. You have always given us plenty of work and paid us fairly.”
“Get to the point.”
Bertrand sucked in a breath. “I am concerned that Jimmy Lee gets fair treatment for what he did.” Then he added carefully. “Allegedly—”
“Allegedly?” Are you saying he didn’t do it? My friend, Mr. Venable, might object to that idea.”
“I’m not saying he didn’t do it, sir. I am saying that he isn’t guilty of anything until he is proven guilty.”
“Are you a lawyer, Bertrand? Did you study law down in Fort Valley?”
“No—”
“And what about the Army? They teach you anything about the law in the Army?”
“No.”
“So don’t you think you had just better leave the law to the lawyers?”
Bertrand felt sweat trickle from his armpits and down his ribcage. The suit coat was too hot and he wished he could take it off. “Well, see, Mr. Jacks, pardon me, now. We colored people, even we who got a little education, haven’t had much experience with the law. They don’t teach law at Fort Valley.” He didn’t want to seem ignorant. “They do teach a little history and a little civics, so we do get to learn a thing or two. But no, we can’t say that we actually know the law. That’s why I’ve come to you.”
Jacks shook his head, amused. “Bertrand, you are a good talker, you. You would probably make a good preacher, too. But why come to me? I don’t know anything about the law. There’s a mighty fine law school at the University, but I never set foot in it.”
“I was hoping, sir, that you could help to see that things went fairly for him.
” Bertrand hoped he didn’t sound as if he were groveling. Why should he say “sir,” with every sentence? Was Jacks so insecure that he needed every colored man to bend down to him? Bertrand reminded himself that he had fought in a war, and that Jacks hadn’t set foot out of Talmaedge County. “You see, I saw a lot in the war, and I know how people can be—”
“So you’ve been around the world, Bertrand? You don’t think I know that? Who sent you? Do you think you could have gone away to college, and joined the army, and come back here to teach school without my knowing it?”
Suddenly Bertrand’s face felt afire and sweat rolled down his cheeks. He wanted to say “Go to hell.” Jacks was a big man in the county, all right, but he didn’t control everything, much less anything outside of the county. He, himself, had made the decision to join the army. He had discussed it with his cousin John Robert, and Deacon. Deacon had argued against it. He reminded himself that they had enlisted in Atlanta, far from the reach of anyone in Talmaedge County. He swallowed and concentrated on his purpose. “I didn’t mean anything, sir, except that … I ain’t saying what he done”—he realized his grammar had slipped, but didn’t correct it—“was right or wrong, but it ain’t right if he’s not treated fairly … What, you might not know … sir”—He had said ‘sir’ again—“that you … you are tied up in this—”
“Me? How so?”
“Well, of course, Jimmy Lee is your worker—”
“And? …”
“And a good one, too.”
“Yes?”
“And Beah, his woman … she is Deacon’s daughter. Deacon worked for you all of his life right up until he fell sick. I believe he would come back today if he could.”
“Deacon was a good man.”
“And, of course, Beah, is my momma’s kin—so Jimmy Lee is almost family to us, and we have worked for you, my momma and my daddy—”
“Yes,” Jacks said, pushing away his plate. “I get the picture.”
But does he really get the picture? Bertrand thought. He looked over his shoulder to see his mother standing in the kitchen, having left the door open. She appeared busy, but he could tell by her stiffness that she was attentive to every word he and Jacks spoke. She would critique him when he got home, but she would not help him now. “Mr. Jacks, begging your pardon, sir, I am not sure that you do get the picture.” Jacks sat back in his chair. It made a loud squeak. “My concern—” Bertrand put his hands together, prayer-like, and pointed them at Jacks, underscoring his speech. “—is that things happen in this county … things that the law doesn’t always control. And when you have a colored boy like Jimmy Lee attack a white man like Mr. Venable, well … that’s a terribly big thing to happen. People talk about it, and that talk could get out of hand, and then … who knows what might happen, Mr. Jacks? In other words, Jimmy Lee is going to need some protection.”
The Vain Conversation Page 15