Les Blancs

by Lorraine Hansberry

  ZEB You gonna be surprised to find out how fast these people kin learn to change their ways. And any hand who don’t learn fast enough will learn it fast enough when I get through with ’em.

  COFFIN Yessuh! They sho’ will, suh! They got inta some bad habits, though, on accounta the way this here place been run. We got some hands, suh, that jes takes advantage of po’ Marster Sweet. Breakin’ his tools and runnin’ off all the time—

  ZEB (With incredulity) Running off—? Who runs off?

  COFFIN Oh, Lord, suh! You don’t know the carryin’ ons what goes on ’round this here place. Some of these here folks done got so uppity they think Marster Sweet should be out there hoein’ for them, that’s what. (Pointing out HANNIBAL in a nearby row) There’s one there, suh. Lord, that one! You’ll see what I mean soon, suh. Once a week he jes pick hisself up and run off somewhere, big as he please. I done told Marster and told him and it don’t do a bit of good.

  ZEB Ain’t he been flogged?

  COFFIN Hmmmph. Floggin’ such as Marster ’low don’t mount to much. That one there, shucks, he jes take his floggin’ and go on off next time like befo’. He’s a bad one, suh.

  ZEB (Looking to HANNIBAL and calling to him) Come here, boy.

  HANNIBAL (Straightening up and looking around as if he is not certain who is being summoned) Who?

  ZEB WHO?—YOU, that’s who! Get yourself over here!

  HANNIBAL puts down his bag with a simmering sullenness and comes to the overseer.

  What’s the matter with your cap there?

  HANNIBAL draws off his cap, keeping his eyes cast down to the ground. The other slaves sense trouble and slow down to watch. ZEB notices them.

  Who called a holiday around here? Get to work!

  They stir with exaggerated activity for a few minutes and gradually slow down, more interested in the incident.

  Raise your eyes up there, boy!

  HANNIBAL raises his eyes and looks in the other man’s eyes.

  What’s his name?

  COFFIN This be Rissa’s boy, Hannibal. He got a brother who’s a runaway.

  HANNIBAL looks at COFFIN with overt hostility.

  ZEB (Getting down from his horse, with his whip) Well, now, is that so? Well, what you doin’ still hangin’ ’round here? Ain’t your brother never come back and bought you and your mama and carried you off to Paradise yet?

  One or two of the drivers giggle.

  Maybe you jus’ plannin’ to go on off and join him some day?

  He reaches up and with the butt end of his whip turns HANNIBAL’s face from side to side to inspect his eyes.

  You carry trouble in your eyes like a flag, boy.

  He brings the whip up with power and lands it across HANNIBAL’s face. An involuntary murmur rises from the watching slaves. To them all.

  That’s right, for nothin’!

  HANNIBAL is doubled up before him, holding his face.

  I hope y’all understand it plain! From now on this here is a plantation where we plant and pick cotton! There ain’t goin’ to be no more foolin’, no more sassin’ and no more tool breakin’! This is what kin happen to you when you misbehave. Now, everybody get to work! And let’s have a song there!—make noise, I say!

  Singing comes up. He turns to the drivers.

  Keep ’em at a good pace till the break, and for God’s sake keep ’em singin’! Keeps down the grumblin’! (Noticing HANNIBAL still clutching at his face) And that’s enough of your playactin’ there, boy. Get on back to your work in the rows.

  HANNIBAL obeys and goes to his row. We come down for a medium-close shot of ZEB remounted, one hand poised on his hip, surveying the fields before him, gun at his hip, whip still in his fingers, watching the land that is not his.

  DISSOLVE TO:

  EXTERIOR. THE VERANDA.

  EVERETT is lounging in a porch chair, sipping a drink. ZEB stands before him with his field hat in his hand.

  EVERETT All the same, it would have been better to have picked another boy. His mother is one of my father’s favorite house slaves, and they have a way of getting him to know about everything that goes on in the fields.

  ZEB (Hotly) I reckon there’s some things have to be left up to me if you want this here plantation run proper, Mister Sweet.

  EVERETT (Slowly turning his eyes on the man and moving them up the length of his body in inspection which overtly announces his disgust at the sight of him) And, as you say, “I reckon” you had better reckon on knowing who is master here and who is merely overseer. Let us be very clear. You are only an instrument. Neither more nor less than that. This is my plantation. I alone am responsible, for I alone am master. Is that clear?

  ZEB (Looking back at his employer with hatred in kind) Yes, sir, I reckon that’s pretty clear.

  They are interrupted by COFFIN coming onto the veranda at a run.

  COFFIN ’Scuse me, suhs, ’scuse me, but I got somethin’ most pressin’ to tell you, Marster.

  ZEB NOW what?

  COFFIN He’s gone agin, suh. He’s out in the fields like I told you he do all the time!

  ZEB HANNIBAL!

  COFFIN Yessuh! Even with what you showed him an’ all the other day, he done run off from the fields again t’day. But I fix him t’day, suh! Old Coffin knowed it was time for him to pull something like this again. I followed him, suh, yessuh. Coffin know whar he be—

  ZEB Well, don’t stand there like a dumb ape. Fetch him and put him in the shed and strip him and—(Looking with triumph at his employer)—I’ll attend to him there. (To EVERETT, bitterly again) That is, with your permission, sir.

  COFFIN (Truly agitated) You don’t understand. He’s with young Marster, suh!

  EVERETT (Sitting up with interest for the first time) He is with whom?

  COFFIN Young Marster Tom, suh!

  EVERETT (With incredulity) My brother?

  COFFIN Yessuh!

  ZEB Let’s go!

  EVERETT (Rising abruptly) I’m coming with you.

  CUT TO:

  HANNIBAL’s clearing in the woods as per opening frame before titles. Simultaneously with a close-up shot of his head framed with a banjo neck are introduced stark, spirited banjo rhythms. Now the camera moves back to show the books and papers lying about where HANNIBAL and TOMMY sit. He finishes playing with a flourish and hands the instrument to the child, who puts it awkwardly in his lap and carefully begins to finger it in the quite uncertain manner of one who is learning to play. He plucks a few chords as his teacher frowns.

  HANNIBAL AW, come on now, Marse Tommy, get yourself a little air under this finger here. You see, if the fat of your finger touch the string, then the sound come out all flat like this.

  He makes an unpleasant sound on the instrument to demonstrate and to make the boy laugh, which he does.

  Okay, now try again.

  TOMMY tries again and the slave nods at the minor improvement.

  That’s better. (Comically cheating) That’s all now, time for my lessons.

  TOMMY Play me another tune first, please, Hannibal?

  HANNIBAL (Boy to boy) Aw, now, that ain’t fair, Marse Tom. Our ’rangement allus been strictly one lesson for one lesson. Ain’t that right?

  The child nods grudgingly.

  And ain’t a genamum supposed to keep his ’rangement? No matter how bad he wants to do something else?

  TOMMY Oh, all right. (Holding out his hand) Did you do the composition like I told you?

  HANNIBAL (With great animation, reaching into his shirt and bringing up a grimy piece of paper) Here. I wrote me a story like you said, suh!

  TOMMY (Unfolding it and reading with enormous difficulty the very crude printing) “The—Drinking—Gourd.”

  (He looks at his pupil indifferently)

  HANNIBAL (A very proud man) Yessuh. Go on—read out loud, please.

  TOMMY Why? Don’t you know what it says?

  HANNIBAL Yessuh. But I think it make me feel good inside to hear somebody else read it. T’know somebody
else kin actually make sense outside of something I wrote and that I made up out my own head.

  TOMMY (Sighing) All right—“The Drinking Gourd. When I was a boy I first come to notice”—All you have to say is came, Hannibal—“the Drinking Gourd. I thought”—There is a u and a g in thought—“it was the most beautiful thing in the heavens. I do not know why, but when a man lie on his back and see the stars, there is something that can happen to a man inside that be”—Is, Hannibal—“bigger than whatever a man is.” (TOMMY frowns for the sense of the last) “Something that makes every man feel like King Jesus on his milk-white horse racing through the world telling him to stand up in the glory which is called—freedom.

  HANNIBAL sits enraptured, listening to his words.

  “That is what happens to me when I lie on my back and look up at the Drinking Gourd.” Well—that’s not a story, Hannibal …

  HANNIBAL (Genuinely, but less raptured because of the remark) Nosuh?

  TOMMY No, something has to happen in a story. There has to be a beginning and an end—

  He stops midsentence seeing the legs of three male figures suddenly standing behind HANNIBAL. HANNIBAL looks into his eyes and leaps to his feet in immediate terror.

  EVERETT (In an almost inexpressible rage) Get back to the house, Tommy.

  TOMMY (Reaching for the banjo) Everett, you wanna hear how I can play already? I was going to surprise you! Hannibal said we should keep it a secret so I could surprise you!

  EVERETT Get home, at once!

  The child looks quizzically at all the adults and gathers up his books and goes off. HANNIBAL backs off almost involuntarily from the men. EVERETT turns to HANNIBAL.

  So you told him it would be your little secret.

  HANNIBAL I was jes teachin’ him some songs he been after me to learn him, suh! (Desperately) He beg me so.

  EVERETT (Holding the composition) Did you write this—?

  HANNIBAL What’s that, suh?

  EVERETT (Hauling off and slapping him with all his strength. ZEB smiles a little to himself watching) THIS! … Don’t stand there and try to deceive me, you monkey-faced idiot! Did you write this?

  HANNIBAL Nosuh, I don’t know how to write! I swear to you I don’t know how to write! Marse Tommy wrote it …

  EVERETT Tommy could print better than this when he was seven! You’ve had him teach you, haven’t you …

  HANNIBAL Jes a few letters, suh. I figger I could be of more use to Marster if I could maybe read my letters and write, suh.

  EVERETT (Truly outraged) You have used your master’s own son to commit a crime against your master. How long has this been going on? Who else have you taught, boy? Even my father wouldn’t like this, Hannibal.

  A close-up shot as EVERETT’s hand reaches out and takes HANNIBAL’s cheeks between his fingers and turns his face from side to side to inspect his eyes.

  There is only one thing I have ever heard of that was proper for an “educated” slave. It is like anything else; when a part is corrupted by disease—

  Suddenly with all his energy HANNIBAL breaks for it.

  ZEB Get him, Coffin!

  The driver tackles HANNIBAL and throws him to the ground, and ZEB comes over to help subdue him, while EVERETT stands immobile, slapping his leg with his riding crop.

  EVERETT … when a part is corrupted by disease—one cuts out the disease. The ability to read in a slave is a disease—

  HANNIBAL (Screaming at him, at the height of defiance in the face of hopelessness) You can’t do nothing to me to get out my head what I done learned … I kin read! And I kin write! You kin beat me and beat me … but I kin read … (To ZEB) I kin read and you can’t—

  ZEB wheels in fury and raises his whip. EVERETT restrains his arm.

  EVERETT He has told the truth. (To ZEB, coldly) As long as he can see, he can read …

  ZEB arrests his arm slowly and slowly frowns, looking at EVERETT with disbelief.

  You understand me perfectly. Do it now.

  Astonished and horrified, ZEB looks from the master to the slave. EVERETT nods at him to proceed and the man opens his mouth to protest.

  Proceed.

  ZEB looks at the master one more time, takes the butt end of his whip and advances slowly toward the slave, who comprehends what is to be done to him. EVERETT turns on his heel away from the scene, and with a traveling shot, we follow his face, as he strides through the woods and as, presently, the tortured screams of an agonized human being surround him …

  Fade out

  End of Act Two

  ACT THREE

  FADE IN:

  EXTERIOR. PLANTATION GROUNDS—

  LATE NIGHT.

  The shadow of a man ingeniously strung by all four limbs between two saplings, each of which is bent to the ground away from the other. Two male shadows loom near and a voice says: “All right, guess we might as well cut him down now … gangrene must’ve set in.”

  DISSOLVE TO:

  INTERIOR. HIRAM SWEET’S BEDROOM.

  He is in bed and conducting a violent tirade. A medicine bottle smashes against the fireplace and we move across to his bed where he is in the midst of an angry denunciation of ZEB and EVERETT, who both stand in the center of the floor affecting various moods of defiance, fear and impatience. MARIA stands near her husband’s bedside, wringing her hands for fear of what the mood will do to a cardiac. EVERETT reaches out in a restraining gesture toward his father.

  HIRAM Don’t you put your murderous hands on me!

  EVERETT (To his mother quietly) Who in the name of God told him about it?

  MARIA (Shrugging) One of them, of course.

  They look at the one lone house servant in the room, who casts his eyes quickly away.

  HIRAM None of your business who told me! Should have been told before of your doings. Should have been told when you hired this —this—GET THIS CREATURE OUT OF MY SIGHT AND OFF MY LAND BEFORE I SHOOT HIM!

  ZEB All I got to say is that I done as I was told, sir. I was just following instructions …

  SWEET Get him out of here!

  MARIA Please leave, Zeb.

  ZEB Yes ma’am—but you got to tell him I just done as I was told.

  EVERETT Oh, get out.

  (ZEB exits)

  MARIA Now, darling, just calm yourself—

  HIRAM (To his son) So this is the way you took over the plantation.

  SERVANT Dr. Bullett, suh.

  MACON BULLET enters in a jubilant mood, with a newspaper.

  BULLETT Have you all heard the news—?

  MARIA Why, Macon, wherever are your manners today—?

  BULLETT I’m so sorry, Maria, my dear.

  He bows to her a little and greets the two men, and then resumes his excitement.

  Have you heard the news?

  EVERETT What news—

  BULLETT Why, my dear friends, the conflict has come to life! Gentlemen, ma’am, we fired on Sumter two days ago. The South is at war!

  There is total silence for a second, and then EVERETT and MACON whoop with joy, and EVERETT climbs up and pulls a scabbarded sword from above the mantelpiece and begins to wave it about, alternately embracing MACON.

  MARIA Son, will you have to go?

  EVERETT Oh, Mother, of course, if I am offered a commission!

  MARIA (Handkerchief to her eyes) Oh, my little darling.

  Then, slowly, all notice HIRAM, who has been stricken quiet and sober by the news.

  HIRAM (With great sadness) You fools … you amazing fools …

  MARIA Now, Hiram—

  HIRAM The South is lost, and you two are jumping around like butterflies in your happiness.

  EVERETT Lost! The South is going to assert itself, Papa. It is going to become a nation among nations of the world—

  HIRAM Don’t you know that whoever that idiot was who fired on Sumter set the slaves free? Well, get out the liquor, gentlemen, it’s all over. (Pause) A way of life is over. The end is here and we might as well drink to what it was.
>
  BULLETT Now, look here, Hiram—

  HIRAM Look where? What do you want me to see? You look. You step to the window there and look at all those people that you and your kind have just set free.

  EVERETT Oh, Papa, what is all this nonsense?

  HIRAM (Slowly pulling on his robe) I give you my word that they already know about it in the quarters. (Sadly) They do not know who or how or why this army is coming. They do not know if it is for them or indifferent to them. But they will be with it. They will pour out of the South by the thousands—dirty, ignorant and uncertain what the whole matter is about. But they will be against us. And when those Yankee maniacs up there get up one fine morning feeling heady with abolitionist zeal and military necessity and decide to arm any and every black who comes ambling across the Confederate lines—and they will—because they will have to—because you will put on your uniforms and fight like fiends for our lost cause … But when the Yankees give them guns and blue uniforms, gentlemen, it will be all over.

  MARIA Hiram, what are you doing? Where do you think you are going?

  HIRAM (Pulling himself fully out of the bed) I am going out to see Rissa.

  BULLETT As your physician, Hiram, I expressly forbid you to leave that bed.

  HIRAM Macon, shut up. My time is over. I don’t think I want to see that which is coming. I believed in slavery. But I understood it; it never fooled me. It’s just as well that we die together. Get out of my way now.

  BULLETT stands back and he exits slowly.

  CUT TO:

  EXTERIOR. RISSA’S CABIN.

  HIRAM stands outside a moment. Somewhere in the distance, a slave sings plaintively.* He goes into the cabin. RISSA is at the fire, boiling something in a pot. HANNIBAL lies flat on a bed, his eyes covered by a cloth. One or two slaves file out wordlessly as the master enters. Occasionally HANNIBAL cries out softly. RISSA methodically tastes an extract she is preparing. She then dips a fresh white cloth in a second pot and wrings it out lightly and starts toward her son. Her eyes discover the master standing clutching at the collar of his robe, himself in panting pain. He is looking down at Hannibal. She looks at the master with uncompromising indictment and he returns her gaze with one of supplication, and drops his hands in a gesture of futility. She ignores him then and goes to the boy and removes the old cover and replaces it with a fresh one. The song continues.