Les Blancs

by Lorraine Hansberry

  SARAH Say he gona tell Marster Sweet in the mornin’! You gona catch you another whippin’, boy …! (In a mood to ignore peril, Hannibal goes on eating his food) Hannibal, why you have to run off like that all the time?

  HANNIBAL (Teasing) Don’t run off all the time.

  SARAH Oh, Hannibal!

  HANNIBAL (Finishing the meager supper and reaching out for her playfully) “Oh, Hannibal. Oh, Hannibal!” Come here. (He takes hold of her and kisses her once sweetly and lightly) H’you this evenin’, Miss Sarah Mae?

  SARAH You don’t know how mad old Coffin was today, boy, or you wouldn’t be so smart. He’s gona get you in trouble with Marster again.

  HANNIBAL Me and you was born in trouble with Marster. (Suddenly looking up at the sky and pointing to distract her) Hey, lookathere!—

  SARAH (Noting him and also looking up) What—

  HANNIBAL (Drawing her close) Lookit that big, old, fat star shinin’ away up yonder there!

  SARAH (Automatically dropping her voice and looking about a bit) Shhh. Hannibal!

  HANNIBAL (With his hand, as though he is personally touching the stars) One, two three, four—they makes up the dipper. That’s the Big Dipper, Sarah. The old Drinkin’ Gourd pointin’ straight to the North Star!

  SARAH (Knowingly) Everybody knows that’s the Big Dipper and you better hush your mouth for sure now, boy. Trees on this plantation got more ears than leaves!

  HANNIBAL (Ignoring the caution) That’s the old Drinkin’ Gourd herself!

  Releasing the girl’s arms and settling down, a little wistfully now.

  HANNIBAL Sure is bright tonight. Sure would make good travelin’ light tonight …

  SARAH (With terror, clapping her hand over his mouth) Stop it!

  HANNIBAL (Moving her hand)—up there jes pointin’ away … due North!

  SARAH (Regarding him sadly) You’re sure like your brother, boy. Just like him.

  HANNIBAL ignores her and leans back in the grass in the position of the opening shot of the scene, with his arms tucked under his head. He sings softly to himself:

  HANNIBAL

  “For the old man is awaitin’

  For to carry you to freedom

  If you follow the Drinking Gourd.

  Follow—follow—follow …

  If you follow the Drinking Gourd …”

  SARAH (Over the song)—look like him … talk like him … and God knows, you sure think like him. (Pause) In time, I reckon—(Very sadly)—you be gone like him.

  HANNIBAL (Sitting bolt upright suddenly and peering into the woods about them) You think Isaiah got all the way to Canada, Sarah? Mama says it’s powerful far. Farther than Ohio! (This last with true wonder) Sure he did! I bet you old Isaiah is up there and got hisself a job and is livin’ fine. I bet you that! Bet he works in a lumberyard or something and got hisself a wife and maybe even a house and—

  SARAH (Quietly) You mean if he’s alive, Hannibal.

  HANNIBAL Oh, he’s alive, all right! Catchers ain’t never caught my brother. (He whistles through his teeth) That boy lit out of here in a way somebody go who don’t mean to never be caught by nothin’!

  (He waits. Then, having assured himself within) Wherever he is, he’s alive. And he’s free.

  SARAH I can’t see how his runnin’ off like that did you much good. Or your mama. Almost broke her heart, that’s what. And worst of all, leavin’ his poor little baby. Leavin’ poor little Joshua who don’t have no mother of his own as it is. Seem like your brother just went out his head when Marster sold Joshua’s mother. I guess everybody on this plantation knew he wasn’t gona be here long then. Even Marster must of known.

  HANNIBAL But Marster couldn’t keep him here then! Not all Marster’s dogs and drivers and guns. Nothin’. (He looks to the woods, remembering) I met him here that night to bring him the food and a extry pair of shoes. He was standin’ right over there, right over there, with the moonlight streamin’ down on him and he was breathin’ hard—Lord, that boy was breathin’ so’s you could almost hear him on the other side of the woods. (A sudden pause and then a rush in the telling) He didn’t say nothin’ to me, nothin’ at all. But his eyes look like somebody lit a fire in ’em, they was shinin’ so in the dark. I jes hand him the parcel and he put it in his shirt and give me a kind of push on the shoulder … (He touches the place, remembering keenly) … Here. And then he turned and lit out through them woods like lightnin’. He was bound out this place!

  He is entirely quiet behind the completion of the narrative. SARAH is deeply affected by the implications of what she has heard and suddenly puts her arms around his neck and clings very tightly to him. Then she holds him back from her and looks at him for the truth.

  SARAH You aim to go, don’t you, Hannibal?

  He does not answer and it is clear because of it that he intends to run off.

  H’you know it’s so much better to run off? (A little desperately, near tears, thinking of the terrors involved) Even if you make it—h’you know what’s up there, what it be like to go wanderin’ ’round by yourself in this world?

  HANNIBAL I don’t know. Jes know what it is to be a slave!

  SARAH Where would you go—?

  HANNIBAL Jes North, that’s all I know. (Kind of shrugging) Try to find Isaiah maybe. How I know what I do? (Throwing up his hands at the difficult question) There’s people up there what helps runaways.

  SARAH You mean them aba—aba-litchinists? I heard Marster Sweet say once that they catches runaways and makes soap out of them.

  HANNIBAL (Suddenly older and wiser) That’s slave-owner talk, Sarah. Whatever you hear Marster say ’bout slavery—you always believe the opposite. There ain’t nothin’ hurt slave marster so much—(Savoring the notion)—as when his property walk away from him. Guess that’s the worst blow of all. Way I look at it, ever’ slave ought to run off ’fore he die.

  SARAH (Looking up suddenly, absorbing the sense of what he has just said) Oh, Hannibal—I couldn’t go! (She starts to shake all over) I’m too delicate. My breath wouldn’t hold out from here to the river …

  HANNIBAL (Starting to laugh at her) No, not you—skeerified as you is! (He looks at her and pulls her to him) But don’t you worry, little Sarah. I’ll come back. (He smoothes her hair and comforts her) I’ll come back and buy you. Mama too, if she’s still livin’.

  The girl quivers in his arms and he holds her a little more tightly, looking up once again to his stars.

  I surely do that thing!

  CUT TO:

  INTERIOR. THE DINING ROOM OF THE “BIG HOUSE.”

  HIRAM SWEET and his wife, MARIA, sit at either end of a well-laden table, attended by two male servants. The youngest son, TOMMY, about ten, sits near his father and across from his older brother, EVERETT, who is approaching thirty. A fifth person, a dinner guest, is seated on EVERETT’s left. He is DR. MACON BULLETT. The meal has just ended, but an animated conversation which characterized it lingers actively.

  EVERETT —by Heaven, I’ll tell you we don’t have to take any more of it! (He hits the table with his fist for emphasis) I say we can have 600,000 men in the field without even feeling it. The whole thing wouldn’t have to last more than six months, Papa. Why can’t you see that?

  HIRAM (A man in his mid-sixties, with an overgenerous physique and a kind, if somewhat overindulged, face) I see it fine! I see that it’s the river of stupidity the South will eventually drown itself in.

  BULLETT (A man of slightly quieter temperament than the other two men; with an air of deeply ingrained “refinement”) I don’t see that we have much choice, however you look at it, Hiram. They’ve pushed our backs against the wall. Suddenly every blubber-fronted Yankee industrialist in New England has begun to imagine himself the deliverer of the blacks—at least in public speeches.

  At the epithet, HIRAM looks down at his own stomach and then back at his friend with some annoyance.

  The infernal hypocrites! Since all they want is the control of Congress, they ought to
call a snake by its name.

  EVERETT Hear, hear, sir!

  HIRAM (Eating something) The only thing is—it doesn’t make sense to fight a war you know you can’t win.

  EVERETT is so exasperated by the remark that he jumps up from the table. His mother laughs.

  EVERETT (With genuine irritation) Whatever are you laughing about, Mother?

  MARIA Forgive me, darling. It’s just that it always amuses me to see how serious you have become now-a-day. (To BULLETT) He was so boyish and playful for so long. (Innocently) Right up until his twenty-first birthday he used to love to have me come to him and—

  EVERETT Mother, please. Papa, how can you constantly talk about our not winning when—(On his fingers)—we have the finest generals in the country and a labor force of four million who can just go on working undisturbed. Why, don’t you see—if we had to, we could put every white man in the South in uniform! Will the North ever be able to boast that? (Smiling at BULLETT) What will happen to that great rising industrial center—if its men go off to war? (He bends close to BULLETT so they can laugh together) Who will run the machines then? New England schoolmarms?

  They laugh heartily together. HIRAM watches them and folds his hands on his stomach.

  HIRAM And may I ask something of you, my son? When you and the rest of the white men of the South go off to fight your half of the war, who is going to stay home and guard your slaves? Or are they simply going to stop running away because then, for the first time in history, running away will be so easy?

  EVERETT’s mouth is a little ajar from the question, though it is far from the first time he has heard it. He and BULLETT are merely exasperated to hear it asked again. They begin to smile at one another as though a child had once again asked a famous and tiresome riddle.

  BULLETT (Waving his hands at absurdity) Hiram, you know perfectly well that that is not a real consideration. Abolitionist nonsense that any slaveholder should know better than worry about!

  HIRAM I see. Tell me something, Macon. How many slaves did you lose off your plantation last year?

  BULLETT Why—two. Prime hands, too, blast them!

  HIRAM Two. And Robley hit the jackpot with his new overseer: he lost five. And one from the Davis place. And I lost one. Let’s see … two, seven, eight, nine—from this immediate district … in spite of every single precaution that we know how to take …

  BULLETT Oh, come on now, Sweet, everyone knows that the ones who run away are the troublemakers, the malcontents. Usually bad workers …

  HIRAM Mmm-hmm. Of course. Then why are there reward posters up on every other tree in this county? Come, man, you’re not talking to a starry-eyed Yankee fool! You’re talking to a slaveholder!

  BULLETT I don’t follow your point.

  HIRAM You follow my point! We all follow my point! Or else will somebody here stop laughing long enough to tell me why you and me and Robley and all the others waste all that money on armed guards and patrols and rewards and dogs? And, above all, why you and me and every other planter in the cotton South and the Border States tried to move heaven and earth to get the fugitive slave laws passed? Was it to try and guarantee the return of property that you are sitting there calmly and happily telling me doesn’t run off in the first place!

  EVERETT Well, Papa, of course a few—

  HIRAM A few, my eyelashes! What’s the matter with you two! I believe in slavery! But I also understand it! I understand it well enough not to laugh at the very question that might decide this war that you are just dying to start.

  EVERETT You forget, Papa, it’s not going to be much of a war. And if it is, then we can always arm the blacks!

  HIRAM puts down his cup with astonishment and even MACON looks at EVERETT askance for his naïve remark.

  HIRAM (With undiluted sarcasm) I have to admit that my boy here is as logical as the rest of the leaders of our cause. For what could be more logical than the idea that you can give somebody a gun and make him fight for what he’s trying like blazes to run away from in the first place. (Dryly) I salute you, Everett. You belong in Washington—immediately—among your peers.

  MARIA Now, Hiram—

  EVERETT You don’t have to be insulting, Papa.

  HIRAM I’ll be what I please in this house and you’ll mind your manners to me in the face of it!

  EVERETT looks to his mother in outrage for support.

  MARIA Well, dear, you shouldn’t sass your father.

  EVERETT Mother, I am not Tommy! I am a grown man. Who, incidentally, any place but this would be running his father’s plantation at my age.

  HIRAM You’ll run it when I can depend on you to run it in my tradition. And not before.

  EVERETT Your “tradition” is running it to ruin!

  MARIA (Upset) Everett, I’ll not have it at the table. I simply won’t have it at the table. (To the younger boy to get him away from the argument) You may excuse yourself and go to your room if you are through, Tommy. Say good night to Dr. Bullett.

  TOMMY Good night, sir.

  (He exits)

  HIRAM (Immediately) So I am running it to ruin, am I! You hear that, Macon! This polished little pepper is now one of the new experts of the South. Knows everything. Even how to run a plantation. Studied it in Paris cafés!

  BULLETT At this point, Hiram, I hear only that you must quiet yourself. (Looking at his watch) In fact, let’s get upstairs and get it over.

  HIRAM I don’t feel like going upstairs and I don’t feel like being poked all over with your little sticks and tubes.

  BULLETT I came over this evening to examine you, Hiram, and I am going to examine you if we have to do it right here at the table.

  (He rises and gets his black bag and MARIA sits nodding her appreciation of his forcefulness with the difficult man)

  MARIA He’s been eating salt again, too, Macon. I declare I can’t do a thing with him.

  HIRAM (To his wife) Yahhhhhh.

  EVERETT (Watching his father’s antics) Stubbornness, backwardness, disorder, contempt for new ways. It’s the curse of the past and it is strangling us.

  HIRAM All I can say is that if you are the spirit of the Future, it sure is going to be talkative.

  MARIA Can’t you ever talk nicely to him, Hiram?

  EVERETT I don’t want him to talk “nice” to me. For the eighty-thousandth time, I am not a little boy!

  HIRAM (To MACON) Isn’t there something you are always quoting to me from your Shakespeare about people protesting too much? (To EVERETT) Seems to me, son, that I haven’t done too badly with what you seem to think are my backward ways. You can testify to that, can’t you, Macon? Came into this country with four slaves and fifty dollars. Four slaves and fifty dollars! (He becomes mellow and a little grand whenever he recalls this for the world) I planted the first seed myself and supervised my own baling. That was thirty-five years ago and I made this one of the finest—though I am the first to admit, not one of the biggest—plantations in this district. So I must know a little something about how to run it.

  EVERETT Maybe you knew about running it.

  HIRAM I know about running it!

  BULLETT Calm down now, Hiram.

  HIRAM (To MACON) You know what HIS idea is of running this place? It’s simple. I’ts the “modern” way. It’s what everybody does. You put the whole thing in the hands of overseers! That’s all! Then you take off for Saratoga or Paris. Those aren’t planters who do that—those are parasites! I’m a cotton grower, and I’ll manage my own plantation until I’m put under. And that I promise God!

  EVERETT Papa, can I ask you a simple unemotional question—when is the last time our yield came anywhere near ten bales to the hand? When, Papa? You tell me.

  HIRAM Well, the land is just about finished. Five bales to the hand is pretty good for our land at this point.

  EVERETT (Looking triumphantly from his father to the other) And when are we going to buy new land?

  HIRAM (Troubled in spite of himself) Next year, if the crop is good
.

  EVERETT And if the crop is poor? Listen close to this circular conversation, Macon.

  (He waves his hand to point up the absurdity)

  HIRAM Well, we’ll borrow.

  EVERETT Yes—and then what?

  HIRAM We’ll buy more land.

  EVERETT And who will work the extra land? You going to buy new slaves too?

  HIRAM (Rubbing his ear) Well, if those Virginia breeders weren’t such bandits we could take on one or two more prime hands—

  EVERETT But they are bandits, and until such time as we can get some decent legislation in this country to reopen the African slave trade we have to meet their prices. So now what?

  HIRAM Don’t goad me!

  EVERETT Don’t goad you! What do you expect me to do, sit around and watch you let this place go bankrupt! You don’t seem to understand, Papa, we don’t have much choice. We have got to up our yield or go under. It’s as simple as that. (To the doctor) You know what this place is, Macon? A resort for slaves! You know what they put in the fields here? I am ashamed to tell you. Nine and one half hours!

  HIRAM Nine and a half hours is plenty of labor for a hand!

  EVERETT (Almost shouting) Not on that cotton-burned land it isn’t! (Then fighting to hold himself in check) Sure, I know—there was a time when the land was pure and fertile as a dream. You hardly had to do anything but just poke something in it and it grew. But that is over with. It has to be coaxed now, and you have to keep your labor in the fields a decent length of time. Nine and one half hours! Why the drivers stroll around out there as though it were all a game. (Looking at his father) And the high-water mark gets higher and higher and higher. But he doesn’t care! This is his little farm, run in his little way, by his dear old friends out there who understand him and love him: Fa-la-la-la-la!

  MARIA I think that will do, son.

  EVERETT Yes, that will do! That will do—!

  (He jumps up as if to leave the room)

  HIRAM Where are you going?

  EVERETT I am going to find John Robley and his brother and—

  HIRAM —drink and gamble the night away! Is that the way you would be master here! Sit down!