“Seven Spots,” I said.
“That’s a rough joint,” Munford said.
“They’re all rough joints,” Hattie said. “That’s all you have—rough joints. No decent places for someone like him.”
“Who’s your uncle?” Munford asked.
“Martin Baptiste. Medlow plantation.”
“Martin Baptiste?” Munford said.
I could tell from the way he said it, he knowed my uncle. I looked at him now. He was looking back at me with his left eye half shut. I could tell from his face he didn’t like my uncle.
“You same as out already,” he said.
He didn’t like my uncle at all, and now he was studying me to see how much I was like him.
“Medlow can get you out of here just by snapping his fingers,” he said. “Big men like that run little towns like these.”
“I killed somebody,” I said.
“You killed another old nigger,” Munford said. “A nigger ain’t nobody.”
He drawed on the cigarette, and I looked at the big scar on the side of his face. He took the cigarette from his mouth and patted the scar with the tip of one of his fingers.
“Bunch of them jumped on me one night,” he said. “One caught me with a straight razor. Had the flesh hanging so much, I coulda ripped it off with my hands if I wanted to. Ah, but before I went down you shoulda seen what I did the bunch of ’em.” He stopped and thought a while. He even laughed a little to himself. “I been in this joint so much, everybody from the judge on down know me. ‘How’s it going, Munford?’ ‘Well, you back with us again, huh, Munt?’ ‘Look, y’all, old Munt’s back with us again, just like he said he’d be.’ They all know me. All know me. I’ll get out little later on. What time is it getting to be—’leven? I’ll give ’em till twelve and tell ’em I want get out. They’ll let me out. Got in Saturday night. They always keep me from Saturday till Monday. If it rain, they keep me till Tuesday—don’t want me get out and catch cold, you know. Next Saturday, I’m right back. Can’t stay out of here to save my soul.”
“Places like these are built for people like you,” Hattie said. “Not for decent people.”
“Been going in and out of these jails here, I don’t know how long,” Munford said. “Forty, fifty years. Started out just like you—kilt a boy just like you did last night. Kilt him and got off—got off scot-free. My pappy worked for a white man who got me off. At first I didn’t know why he had done it—I didn’t think; all I knowed was I was free, and free is how I wanted to be. Then I got in trouble again, and again they got me off. I kept on getting in trouble, and they kept on getting me off. Didn’t wake up till I got to be nearly old as I’m is now. Then I realized they kept getting me off because they needed a Munford Bazille. They need me to prove they human—just like they need that thing over there. They need us. Because without us, they don’t know what they is—they don’t know what they is out there. With us around, they can see us and they know what they ain’t. They ain’t us. Do you see? Do you see how they think?”
I didn’t know what he was talking about. It was hot in the cell and he had started sweating. His face was wet, except for that big scar. It was just laying there smooth and shiny.
“But I got news for them. They us. I never tell them that, but inside I know it. They us, just like we is ourselves. Cut any of them open and you see if you don’t find Munford Bazille or Hattie Brown there. You know what I mean?”
“I guess so.”
“No, you don’t know what I mean,” he said. “What I mean is not one of them out there is a man. Not one. They think they men. They think they men ’cause they got me and him in here who ain’t men. But I got news for them—cut them open; go ’head and cut one open—you see if you don’t find Munford Bazille or Hattie Brown. Not a man one of them. ’Cause face don’t make a man—black or white. Face don’t make him and fucking don’t make him and fighting don’t make him—neither killing. None of this prove you a man. ’Cause animals can fuck, can kill, can fight—you know that?”
I looked at him, but I didn’t answer him. I didn’t feel like answering.
“Well?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Then answer me when I ask you a question. I don’t like talking to myself.”
He stopped and looked at me a while.
“You know what I’m getting at?”
“No,” I said.
“To hell if you don’t,” he said. “Don’t let Medlow get you out of here so you can kill again.”
“You got out,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said, “and I’m still coming back here and I’m still getting out. Next Saturday I’m go’n hit another nigger in the head, and Saturday night they go’n bring me here, and Monday they go’n let me out again. And Saturday after that I’m go’n hit me another nigger in the head—’cause I’ll hit a nigger in the head quick as I’ll look at one.”
“You’re just an animal out the black jungle,” Hattie said. “Because you have to hit somebody in the head every Saturday night don’t mean he has to do the same.”
“He’ll do it,” Munford said, looking at me, not at Hattie. “He’ll do it ’cause he know Medlow’ll get him out. Won’t you?”
I didn’t answer him. Munford nodded his head.
“Yeah, he’ll do it. They’ll see to that.”
He looked at me like he was mad at me, then he looked up at the bars in the window. He frowned and rubbed his hand over his chin, and I could hear the gritty sound his beard made. He studied the bars a long time, like he was thinking about something ’way off; then I saw how his face changed: his eyes twinkled and he grinned to himself. He turned to look at Hattie laying on the bunk.
“Look here,” he said. “I got a few coppers and a few minutes—what you say me and you giving it a little whirl?”
“My God, man,” Hattie said. He said it the way a young girl would’ve said it if you had asked her to pull down her drawers. He even opened his eyes wide the same way a young girl would’ve done it. “Do you think I could possibly ever sink so low?” he said.
“Well, that’s what you do on the outside,” Munford said.
“What I do on the outside is absolutely no concern of yours, let me assure you,” the freak said. “And furthermore, I have friends that I associate with.”
“And them ’sociating friends you got there—what they got Munford don’t have?” Munford said.
“For one thing, manners,” Hattie said. “Of all the nerve.”
Munford grinned at him and looked at me.
“You know what make ’em like that?” he asked. “No.”
He nodded his head. “Then I’ll tell you. It start in the cradle when they send that preacher there to christen you. At the same time he’s doing that mumbo-jumbo stuff, he’s low’ing his mouth to your little nipper to suck out your manhood. I know, he tried it on me. Here, I’m laying in his arms in my little white blanket and he suppose to be christening me. My mammy there, my pappy there; uncle, aunt, grandmammy, grandpappy; my nan-nane, my pa-ran—all of them standing there with they head bowed. This preacher going, ‘Mumbo-jumbo, mumbo-jumbo,’ but all the time he’s low’ing his mouth toward my little private. Nobody else don’t see him, but I catch him, and I haul ’way back and hit him right smack in the eye. I ain’t no more than three months old but I give him a good one. ‘Get your goddamn mouth away from my little pecker, you no-teef, rotten, egg-sucking sonofabitch. Get away from here, you sister-jumper, God-calling, pulpit-spitting, mother-huncher. Get away from here, you chicken-eating, catfish-eating, gin-drinking sonofabitch. Get away, goddamn it, get away …’ ”
I thought Munford was just being funny, but he was serious as he could ever get. He had worked himself up so much, he had to stop and catch his breath.
“That’s what I told him,” he said. “That’s what I told him.… But they don’t stop there, they stay after you. If they miss you in the cradle, they catch you some other time. And when they catch you, th
ey draw it out of you or they make you a beast—make you use it in a brutish way. You use it on a woman without caring for her, you use it on children, you use it on other men, you use it on yourself. Then when you get so disgusted with everything round you, you kill. And if your back is strong, like your back is strong, they get you out so you can kill again.” He stopped and looked at me and nodded his head. “Yeah, that’s what they do with you—exactly.… But not everybody end up like that. Some of them make it. Not many—but some of them do make it.”
“Going to the pen?” I said.
“Yeah—the pen is one way,” he said. “But you don’t go to the pen for the nigger you killed. Not for him—he ain’t worth it. They told you that from the cradle—a nigger ain’t worth a good gray mule. Don’t mention a white mule: fifty niggers ain’t worth a good white mule. So you don’t go to the pen for killing the nigger, you go for yourself. You go to sweat out all the crud you got in your system. You go, saying, ‘Go fuck yourself, Roger Medlow, I want to be a man, and by God I will be a man. For once in my life I will be a man.’ ”
“And a month after you been in the pen, Medlow tell them to kill you for being a smart aleck. How much of a man you is then?”
“At least you been a man a month—where if you let him get you out you won’t be a man a second. He won’t ’low it.”
“I’ll take that chance,” I said.
He looked at me a long time now. His reddish-brown eyes was sad and mean. He felt sorry for me, and at the same time he wanted to hit me with his fist.
“You don’t look like that whitemouth uncle of yours,” he said. “And you look much brighter than I did at your age. But I guess every man must live his own life. I just wish I had mine to live all over again.”
He looked up at the window like he had given up on me. After a while, he looked back at Hattie on the bunk.
“You not thinking ’bout what I asked you?” he said.
Hattie looked up at him just like a woman looks at a man she can’t stand.
“Munford, if you dropped dead this second, I doubt if I would shed a tear.”
“Put all that together, I take it you mean no,” Munford said.
Hattie rolled his eyes at Munford the way a woman rolls her eyes at a man she can’t stand.
“Well, I better get out of here,” Munford said. He passed his hand over his chin. It sounded like passing your hand over sandpaper. “Go home and take me a shave and might go out and do little fishing,” he said. “Too hot to pick cotton.”
He looked at me again.
“I guess I’ll be back next week or the week after—but I suppose you’ll be gone to Medlow by then.”
“If he come for me—yes.”
“He’ll come for you,” Munford said. “How old you is—twenty?”
“Nineteen.”
“Yeah, he’ll come and take you back. And next year you’ll kill another old nigger. ’Cause they grow niggers just to be killed, and they grow people like you to kill ’em. That’s all part of the—the culture. And every man got to play his part in the culture, or the culture don’t go on. But I’ll tell you this; if you was kin to anybody else except that Martin Baptiste, I’d stay in here long enough to make you go to Angola. ’Cause I’d break your back ’fore I let you walk out of this cell with Medlow. But with Martin Baptiste blood in you, you’ll never be worth a goddamn no matter what I did. With that, I bid you adieu.”
He tipped his derby to me, then he went to the door and called for the guard. The guard came and let him out. The people on the block told him good-bye and said they would see him when they got out. Munford waved at them and followed the guard toward the door.
“That Munford,” Hattie said. “Thank God we’re not all like that.” He looked up at me. “I hope you didn’t listen to half of that nonsense.”
I didn’t answer the freak—I didn’t want have nothing to do with him. I looked up at the window. The sky was darkish blue and I could tell it was hot out there. I had always hated the hot sun, but I wished I was out there now. I wouldn’t even mind picking cotton, much as I hated picking cotton.
I got out my other sandwich: nothing but two slices of light bread and a thin slice of baloney sausage. If I wasn’t hungry, I wouldn’t ’a’ ate it at all. I tried to think about what everybody was doing at home. But hard as I tried, all I could think about was here. Maybe it was best if I didn’t think about outside. That could run you crazy. I had heard about people going crazy in jail. I tried to remember how it was when I was in jail before. It wasn’t like this if I could remember. Before, it was just a brawl—a fight. I had never stayed in more than a couple weeks. I had been in about a half dozen times, but never more than a week or two. This time it was different, though. Munford said Roger Medlow was go’n get me out, but suppose Munford was wrong. Suppose I had to go up? Suppose I had to go to the pen?
Hattie started singing. He was singing a spiritual and he was singing it in a high-pitched voice like a woman. I wanted to tell him to shut up, but I didn’t want have nothing to do with that freak. I could feel him looking at me; a second later he had quit singing.
“That Munford,” he said. “I hope you didn’t believe everything he said about me.”
I was quiet. I didn’t want to talk to Hattie. He saw it and kept his mouth shut.
If Medlow was go’n get me out of here, why hadn’t he done so? If all he had to do was snap his fingers, what was keeping him from snapping them? Maybe he wasn’t go’n do anything for me. I wasn’t one of them Uncle Tom-ing niggers like my uncle, and maybe he was go’n let me go up this time.
I couldn’t make it in the pen. Locked up—caged. Walking round all day with shackles on my legs. No woman, no pussy—I’d die in there. I’d die in a year. Not five years—one year. If Roger Medlow came, I was leaving. That’s how old people is: they always want you to do something they never did when they was young. If he had his life to live all over-how come he didn’t do it then? Don’t tell me do it when he didn’t do it. If that’s part of the culture, then I’m part of the culture, because I sure ain’t for the pen.
That black sonofabitch—that coward. I hope he didn’t have religion. I hope his ass burn in hell till eternity.
Look how life can change on you—just look. Yesterday this time I was poon-tanging like a dog. Today—that black sonofabitch—behind these bars maybe for the rest of my life. And look at me, look at me. Strong. A man. A damn good man. A hard dick—a pile of muscles. But look at me—locked in here like a caged animal.
Maybe that’s what Munford was talking about. You spend much time in here like he done spent, you can’t be nothing but a’ animal.
I wish somebody could do something for me. I can make a phone call, can’t I? But call who? That ass-hole uncle of mine? I’m sure Grinning Boy already told him where I’m at. I wonder if Grinning Boy got in touch with Marie. I suppose this finish it. Hell, why should she stick her neck out for me. I was treating her like a dog, anyhow. I’m sorry, baby; I’m sorry. No, I’m not sorry; I’d do the same thing tomorrow if I was out of here. Maybe I’m a’ animal already. I don’t care who she is, I’d do it with her and don’t give a damn. Hell, let me stop whining; I ain’t no goddamn animal. I’m a man, and I got to act and think like a man.
I got to think, I got to think. My daddy is somewhere up North—but where? I got more people scattered around, but no use going to them. I’m the black sheep of this family—and they don’t care if I live or die. They’d be glad if I died so they’d be rid of me for good.
That black sonofabitch—I swear to God. Big as he was, he had to go for a knife. I hope he rot in hell. I hope he burn—goddamn it—till eternity come and go.
Let me see, let me see, who can I call? I don’t know a soul with a dime. Them white people out there got it, but what do they care ’bout me, a nigger. Now, if I was a’ Uncle Tom-ing nigger—oh, yes, they’d come then. They’d come running. But like I’m is, I’m fucked. Done for.
Five years, fi
ve years—that’s what they give you. Five years for killing a nigger like that. Five years out of my life. Five years for a rotten, no good sonofabitch who didn’t have no business being born in the first place. Five years …
Maybe I ought to call Medlow myself.… But suppose he come, then what? Me and Medlow never got along. I couldn’t never bow and say, “Yes sir,” and scratch my head. But I’d have to do it now. He’d have me by the nuts and he’d know it; and I’d have to kiss his ass if he told me to.
Oh Lord, have mercy.… They get you, don’t they. They let you run and run, then they get you. They stick a no-good, trashy nigger up there, and they get you. And they twist your nuts and twist them till you don’t care no more.
I got to stop this, I got to stop it. My head’ll go to hurting after while and I won’t be able to think anything out.
“Oh, you’re so beautiful when you’re meditating,” Hattie said. “And what were you meditating about?”
I didn’t answer him—I didn’t want have nothing to do with that freak.
“How long you’re going to be in here, is that it?” he said. “Sometimes they let you sit for days and days. In your case they might let you sit here a week before they say anything to you. What do they care—they’re inhuman.”
I got a cigarette out of the pack and lit it.
“I smoke, too,” Hattie said.
I didn’t answer that freak. He came over and got the pack out of my shirt pocket. His fingers went down in my pocket just like a woman’s fingers go in your pocket.
“May I?” he said.
I didn’t say nothing to him. He lit his cigarette and laid the pack on my chest just like a woman’d do it.
“Really, I’m not all that awful,” he said. “Munford has poisoned your mind with all sorts of notions. Let go—relax. You need friends at a time like this.”
I stuffed the pack of cigarettes in my pocket and looked up at the window.
“These are very good,” the freak said. “Very, very good. Well, maybe you’ll feel like talking a little later on. It’s always good to let go. I’m understanding; I’ll be here.”