Strange Fruit, page 32
Somebody had brought over a spray of August lilies and laid them on the mantel, and earlier Mrs. Pusey had brought a bowl of Cape jasmines and put them on the piano, sweetening the room, she had whispered. And now and then someone would interrupt the talk to go into the living room and up to the coffin and back again. She knew the old ritual so well … And then the conversation would be resumed, and as the night wore on somebody would begin to tell old Maxwell legends—she knew them all too … Time the black cat appeared at the window of Miss May Brown’s room and with a curving leap through the air sprang upon her coffin, landing with a soft thud; only—when driven out—to appear again and again, until finally the nerves of the three young men sitting up with Miss May’s corpse capitulated to these attacks upon rationality; and the gentlemen fled through the night, abandoning Miss May to a lonely vigil with her immortal soul.
Someone walking up and down in the hall upstairs. It must be Dad … “Poor old Dad”—and wondered why she had whispered it. She could see her mother lying quietly in her bed. She would not be asleep. No one would sleep much tonight. Yes … it is a good thing, if you can, to guard a family against its dead … against those memories that are loosened as are the seeds of decay when life leaves the body—as if all the unspoken thoughts, the hurts, the failures of the dead have been freed and, like wasps out of a broken nest, fly back to sting the living forever.
If she could go back far enough … there’d be a place where she would find a Tracy and a Laura who had been, maybe, fond of each other. Surely if she could get back far enough, she’d find a time when maybe they’d played together as little children and enjoyed each other. And beginning there, she could take his path and travel it until she found out why it led—where it did. And yet she knew that she did not want to do it. If she began to see it, his way, she would travel his path again and again and again, all her life, trying to understand, assuming all he had felt, hurting with his pain. No, it was easier, easier to keep on feeling resentment—or nothing. As he must always have felt toward her. Strange … death doesn’t break off relationships … they’re still there … changing with the dead, changing as the living change.
Sitting there in her black dress, waiting, she grew uneasy, as if she had done something wrong or should be doing something she had not done. Perhaps she should go and see about things. There must be things to be done—and here she was leaving it all to the neighbors. After all they weren’t responsible for Tracy’s death … after all! Why did she keep thinking that—Why did she keep on punishing herself with—When had she dreamed the thing? Last night … or before … When? Maybe it was a childhood dream … maybe she had made it up. She could find no point in time for it, for it seemed as familiar a part of her as her hair, or the color of her eyes, as the old rag doll she used to sleep with … the dream of watching Tracy drown. The slow sinking, her suspended breath, the coming together of the water, the last bubble, like a sigh … her indrawn breath. Sometimes the face going down was her mother’s. Once it had been her own—she remembered that clearly now, it was once when—Now when was it? She had known a moment ago, and now it was gone …
She should leave this room and go out there. She should go out and take up the task of weaving the small threads of Maxwell custom into a cover for death’s nakedness. Something to hide life’s failures under. Something to hide the obscene triumph of death under … Drop a little clod of dirt … drop a tear … a flower …
When she passed her mother’s room she was sitting at her desk, head bowed in prayer. Gathering strength. For what? What lay ahead of Mother that would take more strength for the doing than she had already in such depthless amount? What? What could it be now? And Laura was afraid … fearing the energy that was free now to turn all of itself upon her. She hates what I like …
She must have spoken aloud, for Miss Belle hurried across the crowded living room, paused, and in a stage whisper asked her if she had called. Laura shook her head in dumb denial, knowing words would bring Miss Belle inside the room and over to her chair as inevitably as a handful of com thrown out will draw all the chickens clucking around one’s skirts.
She wanted to think about her father. To grasp and hold tight to him, until once more she found a security. Out at the back of the barn now probably, piddling around with the animals and chickens. That was his way. Mother turned to God. Dad to the little rituals of earth. And she had nowhere to turn … no God to believe in … no earth to walk on that would give her strength.
Strange … how you can live in the house with a brother all your life and not know him. That girl Nonnie must have known him so much better than any of them. It’s queer to think of a colored girl knowing your brother better than you do. Why had she killed him? Not the kind to flare up in anger. She did not look like that. He must have done something very dreadful to have made her do it. And she must have done it slowly, so sure she was doing what had to be done. No one had said it. No one ever would … and yet they must know … Mother must know … Dad … that she did it. Strange … you know your family … you think you do … and then suddenly it is only a fragment that you know. As if you had opened an unread book at a casual page and left it opened there for a lifetime, reading again and again that one page, as you passed casually back and forth …
It was almost time. It was almost time to stage that little brave mortal gesture against death. Almost time to shout aloud, “Oh, death, where is thy sting … grave … thy victory!” as a child shouts in defiance before bursting into helpless tears. For they would weep. She would weep and they, when they sang, as they would sing, those old tunes which mat about your heart and your memories in childhood and squeeze so tightly after you are grown, when you hear them. She knew that the crowd out there, the Puseys and Miss Belle, the Culpeppers and the pallbearers—all now quietly cheerful, decorously smiling and at ease, shields well up against the enemy—would fall as one man when the singing began, leveled by a common mortality.
Someone in white was standing near the library door, in the outer room, as if uncertain where to go. With a sheaf of red and white flowers in her arms. It was the Browns’ maid … that girl! Someone was taking the flowers now, smelling them and saying how pretty, saying how sweet, walking with them into the music room.
The girl had not moved. Now Miss Belle had come over. Nonnie was speaking, softly, monotonously. “Mrs. Brown is very sorry. Little Boysie is sick today. She cannot come. She sends her love to Mrs. Deen and Miss Laura.”
“Yes … yes …” Miss Belle paused, looked the silent girl over, curiosity picking at the pale face, suddenly inclined her head toward the flower-covered casket. “Would you like to see the body?” Miss Belle hissed.
Laura stood up. “Miss Belle,” she called. “Miss Belle,” as quietly as she could press down her voice, “please tell Nonnie to come here.”
What could she say? Now that she had called her to safety, what could she say?
The girl walked in. Her thin hands were locked together until the knuckles showed white through amber skin. Her eyes looked at Laura but beyond her, as if the white girl were merely something in her line of vision.
As if she’s walking in her sleep. Laura could find nothing to say. She pressed back the question, struggling to keep it from forming words that might slip through her lips. What did he do that gave you the courage? Nobody loved him much, except you, but you must have loved him. You have to love a thing—you have to love someone a great deal to kill her, don’t you? You have to love and hate what you kill, a great deal, don’t you—
“—before you can find the courage—”
She spoke the words aloud and was utterly confused at the sound of her voice. Then, perceiving that the girl had not heard—for Nonnie’s lips were apart, her eyes concentrated, as if she listened to words Laura could never hear—she forced herself back into the conventional attitude of white mistress and colored maid.
“Please tell Mrs. Brown that the flowers are lovely. And tell her, please, that we are so sorry about Boysie.”
“Thank you.” Words effortlessly came from Nonnie’s lips, but she did not move, nor did the expression of her face change.
Laura watched her. Beyond them, from the other rooms, came a chirr of voices, restrained below a level of cheerfulness but steadily increasing in volume, as though many people now were entering the house.
“It’s time …” Miss Belle hissed from the door. “Call your mother, Laura, it’s time. Brother Summers and Brother Dunwoodie are here. I’ve never seen so many flowers in all my life, Laura! Honey, you must come see the flowers. They’re so pretty. You must come, dear. They’ll comfort you so just to look at them and realize how much everybody loved—Honey, you—”
“Yes, Miss Belle, I’ll come.”
“Nonnie,” Laura said after Miss Belle had hurried out, “Nonnie,” in a smooth white voice, “that will be all.”
Nonnie turned, walked quickly through the living room and out of the back door. Laura saw her pause in the strong glare of the backyard, as if she had lost her way, then turn and walk into the side street toward the Brown home.
And as she stood at the window watching her, unable to draw her mind away from this girl, she heard other voices beyond the backyard, back of Henry’s cabin.
“Naw, ain’t hair or hide of him here. I tell you somebody’s hid him som’ers!”
“Maybe he’s in the privy—Been there?”
“Been everwheres—barn—everwheres. Tell ye, he ain’t nowheres on this place, less he’s in that house.”
“Can’t go in there now—you know that—can’t go yit—they’ll be gone soon to the burying.”
Two men walked out of Henry’s cabin, started down the path, came as near as the lily bed, turned, went back beyond the old privy which had been left for Henry’s use after plumbing was put in the Deen home.
They were still looking. She had read a story about a lynching once; she had read a story, and it had seemed more real than this. More real than that grotesque half hour last night when Jane had driven Mr. Harris to the house and he had beckoned Laura to the kitchen. They stood there talking—while Henry sat on the woodbox back of the range with his face buried in his hands. She had heard Mr. Harris’s words: “Get me one of your mother’s old dresses, Laura, and a big hat and veil and some powder.” And when she brought the articles they had gone into the pantry and called Henry. And with the shade drawn and the door locked they had dressed him in her mother’s gingham housedress and put her own big floppy leghorn hat on his head and had made him powder his tear-smeared face until it was white, and then she had tied the veil on him. All the feeling she had had was when she saw Henry’s miserable reddened eyes peering out of all that white powder. And suddenly she had not known whether her body would surrender to sobs or wild laughter, though it did neither. Then Laura and Mr. Harris had walked out of the dining room with Henry between them and down the back-porch steps and around to the car at the side entrance. It was dark, and even if they had been seen, no one would have noticed anything extraordinary about the group. They had put him between Jane and Mr. Harris, and Jane had driven off to the jail, where Henry was to be hidden. That was Mr. Harris’s plan. Mr. Harris had confidence in the sheriff’s keeping his mouth shut—she knew Mr. Harris had had a lot to do with putting him into office, so maybe everything now would be all right. And she had not felt deeply about it, though her mind knew that this is what happens down here in our South sometimes. This is what happens. And she had wondered which of the boys and men she knew belonged to the Ku Klux Klan … which ones of them would take part in a manhunt. And then someone had called her and she had gone into the house.
When she now entered the other room her mother was already there, standing near the casket with her father. Both were composed and grave. Only Tut’s long hands gave evidence of his perturbation as with one he smoothed the red hairs on the other. Mrs. Deen did not move. Yes, Mother would have herself under control. Mother would always be able to keep herself under control. She was nearer them now and, looking more closely at her mother, she saw a difference. Not much. A sagging of cheek muscle; just that—but enough to make Alma Deen look bewildered and old. And suddenly Laura wanted to run to her, as she had done as a child, run and pat her cheek and kiss her and kiss her …
Dorothy Pusey stood near by with Mrs. Pusey. Dorothy’s handkerchief was already a wet little sop as she moved it, like a small white ball, restlessly from one hand to the other. Greenish circles deepened the pallor beneath her reddened eyes. She had on a black and white dress, and somehow she looked very widowed and bereaved. And as she passed her, Laura touched her arm, and knew at once that she had done the wrong thing, for Dottie buried her face in her hands and her thin shoulders shook with silent sobs.
It was time now. The pallbearers looked at each other, and at the ministers. The ministers gravely looked at the undertaker, and somehow a silent agreement was arrived at that it was time … it was time …
Slowly the pallbearers approached the casket. Little Pug Pusey hitched up his pants, blew his nose, and stooped for his share of the burden. Gus Rainey, snuffling, could not get at his handkerchief as both big strong red hands, used to heaving haunches of bloodied beef and pork, busied themselves now lifting the body of his lifelong friend. Charles Harris, grave and silent, went on the other side, and others and others, until eight men bore the burden of Tracy Deen to its grave, forever lifting its weight off of the Deen family.
Miss Belle, who had been cheerful and helpful up to now, was crying too as she filled her arms with flowers; and the other women, most of them, followed with wreaths and sprays, crosses and stars of roses and Cape jasmines and lilies, through which tear-stained, reddened faces peered as they sought their way down the steps.
There’d be no more the click of the door late at night, or at dawn the stealthy slow steps up to his room. Tracy is out late … Tracy’s been out there … Manaos is on the Amazon River … Cape Town in Africa … no more than that. Statements of facts—that is all Tracy had ever been to any of them—a statement of a remote fact.
Laura fell into line behind her parents. In faltering rhythm they followed the pallbearers as the cortege moved slowly down the steps. They paused as the casket slid easily from long practice into the hearse under the porte-cochere. And standing there waiting for their car to pull up, Laura saw, hovering close behind her, Eenie, dressed in solid black and—on this hot day—with a long widow’s veil draped over her straw hat; and behind her Susan, the Harrises’ cook, draped as blackly and as mournfully; and just behind Susan, Dessie, wide-eyed and wan, in a black skirt, pink silk waist and a hat with roses bobbing on it. And behind them, most of the cooks and house-servants on College Street. Eenie was sobbing. Eenie, who had never liked Tracy, was sobbing, “Lawd Gawd, Lawd Gawd.” Scared. Everybody’s scared. Something bad is happening, and they are not going to be left behind for it to happen to while white folks bury their dead. She wanted to smile … and then she too was weeping, for the dead; weeping for the living.
TWENTY-SEVEN
They waited until the family went to the burying, Bill Talley and Dee and the others.
Maxwell lay white and hot and empty, stores closed for the funeral, and most of College Street and the side streets at the church. College Street and the side streets would follow the body to its last resting place. They would stand in the white glare of hot sand until the grave in the new lot, bought hurriedly the day before, was filled. And then there would be a slow scattering. Some would get in their cars and go home to dinner. Some would linger … pulling a strand of moss from a limb … reading old names … whispering, “The Browns never clean their lot.” And others would empty vases of rotted water and sweep the dirt off of slabs and pull a few sandspurs, or with their handkerchief rub a date clean in wistful genuflection to their own immortality.
Down the sand roads of the county they had come. Bill and Dee, and the others. From Sug Rushton’s turpentine farm, and the cotton fields … from Harris’s sawmill … from a shanty back of Shaky Pond … and Ellatown … from Old Cap’n Rushton’s commissary, and the logging camp. Roads threading whitely through the county, curving around oak-black lake and pond, pushing across swamp and hammock, tying its cotton and little grayed cabins, its barrels of rosin and its turpentine and tall pines, mule and church and bank, white folks and black, to Maxwell, and to each other. Down these roads they came, shadows falling foreshortened and stubby on palmetto clumps as they plodded along in the heat, hearts as slashed as the pines under which they paused now and then, bodies as drained as the sand on their feet. But white. God—white and immaculate … white … white as Jesus … as an unborn child’s soul … And now they were on their way to put the nigger in his place … once more to put the nigger in his place.
And sometimes there was laughter, or drawled words of voices not unkind in sound and not without humor; but eyes were hard and hating as they hunted a black victim to sacrifice to an unknown god of whom they were sore afraid.
But College Street and the side streets buried their dead and then went home and ate dinner and opened their stores and the bank, the drugstore and the warehouse and the cotton gin. Tom Harris’s sawmill blew its noon whistle as it always did, and the planer sounded a shrill note for one o’clock. Dan went on his afternoon route delivering ice, ringing his bell in front of hot houses, and old Uncle Pete dozed on the dray in front of the Supply Store, and Brother Dunwoodie prepared his sermon for the next service.
And some knew and some did not know that they were after him and they’d git im … they’d git im … sho …
Through the hot afternoon they hunted, moving quietly as moss swings in the wind, through back yard and shanty, Lodge and Pressing Club and Salamander’s Cafe, and out again to privy and pigpen, stable, and barn, cane patch and ditch, into shanty … weaving back and forth a grotesque slow design of hate and lust and fear. There were forty men, they said, and six bloodhounds down in the swamp, but word came back that no track had been found, no scent picked up. And every tongue muttered, “He’s here sho. Right here som’ers … and we’ll git im. Bound to …”
