American Gothic, page 73
“Not unless I died.”
Again something within him trembled. “Do you believe you are going to die young?” he blurted out.
But she would not answer.
He entered the nursery abruptly the next day and found her packing her dolls. When she saw him, she sat down and began to weep hopelessly. He knew then that his fate was sealed. And when, a year later, he received her last little scrawl, he was almost glad that she went when she did.
Notes
THE BELL IN THE FOG
1 An inexpensive paperback edition.
2 Waxed cloth used for cerements, in which corpses are wrapped.
3 The erlking, in various German legends, is an evil spirit that haunts the forest. In a poem by Goethe, the erlking kills the young son of a man riding through the woods.
Anonymous (Folk Tale)
This African American folk tale is part of the cycle “John and Old Marster,” which describes the interaction of a slave-owner and his most trusted slave. In some of these stories John outwits his master; in others, as obviously in this instance, he does not.
“Talking Bones” is a cautionary tale that teaches secrecy and silence as a survival strategy of the oppressed. Secrecy retains an element of control, while failure to hold one’s tongue, as the story shows, can be catastrophic. The lesson was well learned. This tale was not revealed to white folklorists until the 1950s, when Beulah Tate told it to Richard Dorson.
Text: Richard M. Dorson (ed.), American Negro Folktales (Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Publications, 1967).
Talking Bones
They used to carry the slaves out in the woods and leave them there, if they killed them – just like dead animals. There wasn’t any burying then. It used to be a secret, between one plantation and another, when they beat up their hands and carried them off.
So John was walking out in the woods and seed a skeleton. He says: “This looks like a human. I wonder what he’s doing out here.” And the skeleton said, “Tongue is the cause of my being here.” So John ran back to Old Marster and said, “The skeleton at the edge of the woods is talking.” Old Marster didn’t believe him and went to see. And a great many people came too. They said, “Make the bones talk.” But the skeleton wouldn’t talk. So they beat John to death, and left him there. And then the bones talked. They said, “Tongue brought us here, and tongue brought you here.”
Charles W. Chesnutt (1858–1932)
Chesnutt’s life has two main geographical focal points: Cleveland, Ohio, where he was born, and Fayetteville, North Carolina, the original home of his parents, each of whom was the child of a white father and an enslaved mother. Both settings appear in his fiction. The Chesnutts returned to Fayetteville when Charles was eight years old. He was a precocious and ambitious student, and, while in his teens, began a career as an educator, which ultimately might have resembled, on a smaller scale, that of Booker T. Washington. But he abandoned this career in favor of one in the north combining literature and law. Ultimately he was back in Cleveland, a member of the Ohio bar, running a successful legal-documents business, and writing fiction. The stories and novels he produced are among the most subtle and thoughtful explorations of race in American letters.
A cycle of Chesnutt’s stories concerns a white Ohioan, John, who has settled in North Carolina and who has employed an elderly former slave, Julius McAdoo, as his coachman. In most of these tales, John’s narration frames an inner tale, told by Julius, about the old days of slavery. Since many of these tales involve “conjure,” magic, Chesnutt published a volume of them (1899) as The Conjure Woman. Readers of the Atlantic, where most of these stories were published, would have assumed that Chesnutt was a white local colorist, like Joel Chandler Harris. Chesnutt revealed his racial background with the publication of The Marrow of Tradition (1901), a novel about the Wilmington race riots, and his popularity declined. But a careful reader should have seen that John and his breezy sense of entitlement are objects of Chesnutt’s satire, and that the crafty Julius, not John, is the moral center of these tales.
“The Dumb Witness” is an unusual John and Julius story, and one of the best. It was not published in Chesnutt’s lifetime. There is no magic, and less of Julius’s dialect voice. As in the other tales in this cycle, however, we see the blighting legacy of slavery, which John’s hearty optimism cannot dispel. This true Southern Gothic contains a decades-long revenge plot, and an incestuous tangle that Julius (the oral historian of this black community) presumably understands, but we can barely penetrate.
“The Sheriff’s Children” is from another collection, The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line (also 1899), a series dealing with characters who were, like Chesnutt, of mixed race. “The Sheriff’s Children” is not a frame story, but as it begins we are hearing a narrative voice that has many of the qualities of John’s: it is bland, cheerful, and seemingly in full sympathy with the values of the “new south.” This tone is always to be distrusted in Chesnutt’s fiction; ominous, dissonant notes can be heard in the background almost from the first sentence. We move quickly from an apparent celebration of the heroic sheriff to revelations that greatly complicate the moral landscape. Soon we find ourselves in a claustrophobic setting where old secrets are revealed – familiar territory of the Gothic.
Both of these stories have at their core silence, the refusal to speak. The reader may recall the mute skeleton of the folk tale “Talking Bones.”
Texts: “The Dumb Witness,” from The Conjure Woman and Other Conjure Tales, ed. Richard H. Broadhead (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993), 158–71. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. “The Sheriff’s Children,” from The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line (New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1899).
The Dumb Witness
The old Murchison place was situated on the Lumberton plank road, about two miles from my vineyard on the North Carolina sandhills. Old Julius, our colored coachman, had driven me over one spring morning to see young Murchison, the responsible manager of the property, about some walnut timber I wished to purchase from him for shipment. I had noticed many resources of the country that the easy-going Southerners had not thought of developing; and I took advantage of them when I found it convenient and profitable to do so.
We entered the lane leading to the house by passing between two decaying gateposts. This entrance had evidently once possessed some pretensions to elegance, for the massive posts had been faced with dressed lumber and finished with ornamental tops, some fragments of which still remained; and the one massive hinge, handing by a slender rust-eaten nail, had been wrought into a fantastic shape. As we drove through the gateway, a green lizard scampered down from the top of one of the posts, where he had been sunning himself, and a rattlesnake lying in the path lazily uncoiled his motley brown length, and, sounding his rattle the meanwhile, wriggled slowly off into the rank grass and weeds.
The house stood well back from the road, on the crest of one of the regular undulations of the sandhill country. It was partly concealed, when approached from the road, by intervening trees and shrubbery, which had once formed a well ordered pleasaunce, but now grew in wild and tangled profusion, so that it was difficult to distinguish one bush or tree from another. The lane itself was partially overgrown, and the mare’s fetlocks swept the dew from the grass, where it had not yet been dried by the morning sun.
As we drew nearer, the house stood clearly revealed. It was apparently of more ancient date than any I had seen in the neighborhood. It was a large two-story frame house, built in the colonial style, with a low-pitched roof, and a broad piazza along the front, running the full length of both stories and supported by huge round columns, and suggesting distantly, in its general effect, the portico of a Greek temple. The roof had sunk on one side, and the shingles were old and cracked and moss-grown; while several of the windows in the upper part of the house were boarded up, and others filled with sash from which the glass had apparently long since been broken.
For a space of several rods on each side of the house the ground was bare of grass and shrubbery, and scarcely less forbidding than the road we had traveled. It was rough and uneven, lying in little hillocks and hollows, as though it had been dug over at hazard, or explored by some vagrant drove of hogs. At one side, beyond this barren area, lay an enclosed kitchen garden, in which a few collards and okra-plants and tomato vines struggled desperately against neglect and drought and poverty of soil.
A casual glance might have led one not informed to the contrary, to believe the place untenanted, so lonely and desolate did it seem. But as we approached we became aware of two figures on the long piazza. At one end of it, in a massive arm-chair of carved oak, a man was seated – apparently a very old man, for he was bent and wrinkled. His thin white hair hung down upon his shoulders. His face was of a high-bred and strongly marked type, with something of the hawk-like contour usually associated with extreme acquisitiveness. His eyes were turned toward the opposite end of the piazza, where a woman was also seated. She seemed but little younger than the man, and her face was enough like his, in a feminine way, to suggest that they might be related in some degree, unless this inference was negatived by the woman’s complexion, which disclosed a strong infusion of darker blood. She wore a homespun frock and a muslin cap and sat bolt upright, with her hands folded on her lap, looking toward her vis-à-vis at the other end of the piazza.
As we drew up a short distance from the door, the old man rose, as we supposed, to come forward and greet us. But, instead of stopping at the steps and facing outward, he continued his course to the other end of the piazza and halted before the woman.
“Viney,” he said, in a sharply imperative voice, “my uncle says you will tell me where he put the papers. I am tired of this nonsense. I insist upon knowing immediately.”
The woman made no reply, but her faded eyes seemed to glow for a moment, like the ashes of a dying fire fanned by some random breath of air.
“Why do you not answer me?” he continued, with increasing vehemence. “I tell you I insist upon knowing. It is imperative that I should know, and know at once. My interests are suffering for every day’s delay. The papers – where are the papers?”
Still the woman sat silent, though her figure seemed to stiffen as she leaned slightly toward him. He grew visibly more impatient at her silence, and began to threaten her.
“Tell me immediately, you hussy, or you will have reason to regret it. You take liberties that cannot be permitted. I will not put up with it,” he said, shaking his fist as he spoke. “I shall have to have you whipped.”
The slumbrous fire in the woman’s eyes flamed up for a moment. She rose from her seat, and drawing herself up to her full height – she was a tall woman, though bowed somewhat with years – began to speak, I thought at first in some foreign tongue. But after a moment I knew that no language or dialect, at least none of European origin, could consist of such a discordant jargon, such a meaningless cacophony as that which fell from the woman’s lips. And as she went on, pouring out a flood of sounds that were not words, and which yet seemed now and then vaguely to suggest words, as clouds suggest the shapes of mountains and trees and strange beasts, the old man seemed to bend like a reed before a storm, and began to expostulate, accompanying his words with deprecatory gestures.
“Yes, Viney, good Viney,” he said in soothing tones, “I know it was wrong, and I’ve always regretted it – always from the very day I did it. But you shouldn’t bear malice, Viney, it isn’t Christian. The Bible says you should bless them that curse you, and do good to them that despitefully use you. But I was good to you before, Viney, and I was good to you afterwards, and I know you have forgiven me – good Viney, noble-hearted Viney! – and you are going to tell me. Now, do tell me where the papers are,” he added, pleadingly, offering to take her hand, which lay on the arm of the chair.
She drew her hand away, as she muttered something in the same weird tones she had employed before. The old man bent toward her, in trembling eagerness, but seemed disappointed.
“Try again, Viney,” he said, “that’s a good girl. Your old master thinks a great deal of you, Viney. He is your best friend.”
Again she made an inarticulate response. He seemed to comprehend, and turning from her, came down the steps, muttering to himself, took up a spade that stood at one end of the steps, passed by us without seeming conscious of our presence, and hastening with tottering footsteps to one side of the yard began digging furiously.
I had been so much interested in this curious drama that I had forgotten for the time being the business that brought me there. The old woman, however, when the man had gone, rose from her seat and went into the house, without giving us more than a look.
“What’s the matter with them, Julius?” I said, returning with a start to the world of reality.
The old man pointed to his head.
“Dey’s bofe ’stracted, suh,” he said, “out’n dey min’. Dey’s be’n dat-a-way fer yeahs an’ yeahs.”
At that moment the young man of the house came out to the door, and greeted us pleasantly. He asked me to alight from the carriage and led me to the chair the old man had occupied. It was a massive oak affair, with carved arms and back and a wooden seat, and looked as though it might be of ancient make, perhaps an heirloom. I found young Murchison was a frank and manly young fellow, and quite capable of looking out for his own interests. I struck a bargain with him, on terms that were fair to both. When I had concluded my business and invited him to call and see me sometime, I got into the carriage, and Julius drove down the lane and out into the road again. In going out, we passed near the old man, who was still muttering to himself and digging rapidly, but with signs of weariness. He did not look up as we went by, but seemed entirely absorbed in his strange pursuit.
In the evening, after supper, Julius came up to the house. We sat out on the porch, my wife and her sister and Julius and I. We cut a large watermelon, and when Julius had eaten the half we gave to him, he told us the story of old man Murchison’s undoing. The air was cool, the sky was clear, the stars shone with a brightness unknown in higher latitudes. The voices of the night came faintly from the distant woods, and there could have been no more romantic setting for the story of jealousy, revenge and disappointment which the old white-haired negro told us, in his own quaint dialect – a story of things possible only in an era which, happily, has passed from our history, as, in God’s own time – and may it be soon! – it will from all the earth. Some of the facts in this strange story – circumstances of which Julius was ignorant, though he had the main facts correct – I learned afterwards from other sources, but I have woven them all together here in orderly sequence.
The Murchison family had occupied their ancestral seat on the sandhills for a hundred years or more. There were not many rich families in that part of North Carolina, and this one, by reason of its wealth and other things, was easily the most conspicuous in several counties. The first great man of the family, General Arthur Murchison, had won distinction in the war of independence, and during all the Revolutionary period had been one of the most ardent of the Carolina patriots. After peace was established he had taken high place in the councils of the State. Elected a delegate to the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia in 1787, it was largely due to his efforts that North Carolina adopted the Federal Constitution the following year. His son became a distinguished jurist, whose name is still a synonym for legal learning and juridical wisdom in North Carolina. Roger Murchison, the son of Judge Murchison – the generations had followed one another rapidly in a country of warm skies and early marriages – was the immediate predecessor of Malcolm Murchison, the demented old man who was nominal owner of the estate at the time of my visit to the house.
In Roger Murchison the family may be said to have begun to decline from the eminence it had attained in the career of Judge Murchison. In the first place, Roger Murchison did not marry, thus seemingly indicating a lack of the family pride which would have made him wish to continue the name in the direct line. Again, though his career in college had been brilliant; though the wealth and standing of the family gave him social and political prestige; and though he had held high office under the State and National governments, he had never while in public life especially distinguished himself for eloquence or statesmanship, but had, on the contrary, enjoyed a life of ease and pleasure and had wasted what his friends thought rare gifts. He was fond of cards, of fast horses, of rare wines, and of gay society. It is not surprising, therefore, that he spent very little time on his property, preferring the life of cities to the comparative dullness of plantation life with such colorless distractions as a neighboring small town could offer.
He had inherited a large estate, including several plantations, and numerous slaves. During his frequent absences from home, in the last fifteen years of his life, he left his property under the management of a nephew, Malcolm Murchison, the orphan son of a younger brother, and his own prospective heir. Young Malcolm was a youth of unusual strength of character and administrative capacity, and even before he had attained his majority showed himself a better manager than his uncle had ever been. So well, indeed, did he manage the estate that his uncle left it for ten years practically in his hands, looking to him only for the means he required to lead his own life in other places. It is true he appeared periodically and assumed the role of proprietor, but Malcolm was the man to whom the community and the slaves looked as both the present and the future master.
Young Murchison kept bachelor’s hall in the great house. The only women about the establishment were an old black cook, and the housekeeper, a tall, comely young quadroon – she had too a dash of Indian blood, which perhaps gave her straighter and blacker hair than she would otherwise have had, and also perhaps endowed her with some other qualities which found their natural expression in the course of subsequent events – if indeed her actions needed anything more than common human nature to account for them. The duties of young Murchison’s housekeeper were not onerous; compared with a toiling field hand she led a life of ease and luxury. The one conspicuous vice of Malcolm Murchison was avarice. If he had other failings, they were the heritage of the period, and he shared them with his contemporaries of the same caste. Perhaps it was his avarice that kept him from marrying; it was cheaper to have his clothing and his table looked after by a slave than by a woman who would not have been content with her food and clothing. At any rate, for ten or fifteen years he remained single, and ladies never set foot in the Murchison house. Men sometimes called and smoked and drank, played cards, bought and sold produce or slaves, but the foot of a white woman had not touched the floor for fifteen years, when Mrs. Martha Todd came from Pennsylvania to the neighboring town of Patesville to visit a cousin living there, who had married a resident of the town.
