“Come here, Copper,” I called.
He came a little farther out on the gallery, then he stopped again. He just wanted to make sure who was out there.
“You don’t think he’s coming down those steps, do you?” Frank said.
“Copper? Come here,” I said.
“Save your breath,” Frank said.
He mashed on the door handle and got out before I could get out and help him. I jumped out on my side and opened the gate. The tall, sick, white man went in the yard with his head high. Copper stood there wide-legged, with his chest out, with his hands on his hips, and watched Frank come up the steps. Frank stood before Copper, leaning on the cane and breathing hard. A few drops of sweat had already settled on his forehead. It had taken everything out of him to come up those steps.
“Uncle,” Copper said. They stood face to face. They was about the same height—maybe Frank was a little taller. “I don’t see my aunt,” Copper said.
“I made her stay at the house,” Frank said.
“You made her stay there, huh?”
Then they just stood there looking at each other. You could see Frank wanted to raise that cane and bring it down on Copper’s head or his shoulder. But he didn’t have the strength to do it. And even if he had, he probably wouldn’t ’a’ done it then. What he wanted more than anything else, now, was to find out what Copper was doing here.
Copper had said “Uncle” to Frank just like he would ’a’ said “Aunt” to ’Malia. It was like he had been calling him that all his life. He was no more scared of Frank than Frank was scared of him. They was both Laurents. A Laurent wasn’t supposed to be scared of any man.
“Please sit down, Uncle,” Copper said.
Frank still wouldn’t move for a while. You didn’t ask a Laurent to sit down, just like you didn’t ask him to stand up or shut his mouth. The Laurents moved when they wanted to move. But once he had gone to that chair, I could see how glad he was to sit down. To get dressed, to come down the stairs at the big house, to come up the steps here had taken everything out of him.
“I’m sorry you found me like this,” Copper said, “but I had just come in from the field. Would you like a glass of ice water while I change clothes? I also have some lemonade there.”
“Water is fine,” Frank said.
“Get some water,” Copper said to me.
He didn’t talk to me like he was talking to a’ old man, he spoke to me like he was speaking to a slave. I went back in the kitchen to get the water. On my way back I met him coming in the house. I had to step out his way to keep him from walking over me. I’m sure he didn’t see me at all. He was looking at something far away, or like he was listening to something far away. If you’ve seen people walking in their sleep, that’s the way he looked.
I went out on the gallery and handed Frank the glass of water.
“I used to come here when I was a young man,” he said, after he had drunk. “I used to sit on those steps. That mulberry tree there is old as I am.”
“I remember it from ’way back,” I said.
“I never thought I’d ever sit here again,” Frank said.
He looked at all the things round him, then he finished drinking the water and handed me the glass.
Copper came back on the gallery a few minutes later. He had put on more khakis. Not the cheap khakis people wore in the field—the good kind officers wore in the Army. He had on another pair of shoes. They shined better than the other pair did this morning. He stood in the door a second before he came over to the bannister and sat down. He sat a little to the right of Frank’s chair. I stood near the steps and leaned back against the post.
“You have two chairs there,” Frank said. “Aren’t you going to sit down?”
“The bannister is perfectly all right,” Copper said. “The other chair was for my aunt.”
“Well, she’s at the house,” Frank said.
“Yes, you made her stay there,” Copper said.
“Can Felix sit in the chair?”
“Would you have let Felix sit on the gallery at your house?”
“He was sitting in my living room just before we came here,” Frank said.
“I’m sure he was,” Copper said. “Was he sitting in the living room yesterday? Will he sit there tomorrow?”
“No,” Frank said.
They looked at each other like two rams locking horns. But Frank wasn’t mad with Copper now; he was just playing round with words. He had caught his breath and had even gotten a little color in his face.
Frank raised the walking cane and tapped the bannister two or three inches away from where Copper was sitting. Copper looked straight at Frank all the time. I said he was looking at Frank, I didn’t say he was seeing Frank; because even when he was looking at you, even when he was talking to you, it looked like he was listening to something ’way off.
“What do you want, boy?” Frank asked Copper.
“My birthright,” Copper said.
Now, Frank sat ’way back in the chair. He rested one of his arms, his left arm, on the arm of the chair. Then he squinted up at Copper. He had heard Copper quite well, but he didn’t believe what he had heard.
“Your what?” he said.
“My birthright,” Copper said, looking straight at him.
“That nigger of mine told me he thought you were crazy,” Frank said.
Copper didn’t say anything, but he never took his eyes off Frank.
“Well?” Frank said.
“What do you think?” Copper said.
“I think he’s a good judge of character,” Frank said.
Copper raised his hand to his left temple. But I noticed just before he touched his face, his mind drifted away a moment. He didn’t rub his temple, he touched it lightly—the way Frank touched at his chest every so often.
“You know anything about the history of this country, boy?” Frank asked him.
“I know a little history,” Copper said.
“Then you know because your mon was black you can’t claim a damn thing. Not only birthright, you can’t even claim a cat.”
“Maybe I can’t claim my birthright today,” Copper said. “But I’ll claim it tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Frank said.
Copper nodded. “Tomorrow.”
“How do you expect to perform that miracle?”
“No miracle, Uncle,” Copper said. “My men and I’ll just do it.”
“Your men?”
“My men.”
“And who are these men, Copper?”
“The name is Christian, Uncle,” Copper said. “Laurent. Christian Laurent. General Christian Laurent.”
“Who are these men, General?” Frank said.
“All those who’ve been treated as I’ve been treated,” Copper said. (When Copper was talking to you, he wasn’t seeing you, he was seeing something ’way off.) He touched at his temple again. Frank watched his hand go up and come back down. “There are many just like me. So many just like me,” he said.
Frank let his eyes shift from Copper’s face down to his clothes. His khakis was starched and ironed; his shoes shined like new tin.
“Copper,” Frank said, leaning closer toward him, “you’re insane, aren’t you, boy? There aren’t any men, are there?”
“The name is Christian, Uncle.”
“There aren’t any men, are there, Christian?”
“Yes and no,” Copper said. “Spiritually, yes, and they’re waiting for me. Physically, in the sense of an organized Army, no.”
“How do you know that your imaginary Army will ever materialize, Christian?”
“Just smell the air, Uncle.”
Frank looked at Copper a while, like he was letting all this soak in. Then he raised his head and took a deep breath.
“No, I don’t smell a thing,” he said. He turned to me. “You, Felix?”
I didn’t answer him. I didn’t believe in getting in kinfolks’ squabbles. They always turned against you in the end.
“It’s there, Uncle,” Copper said. “Only a fool, and a damn one at that, can’t smell what’s in the air.”
I looked at Frank and I saw a little color shoot out of his face. He probably would ’a’ had another heart attack if anybody else had called him a damn fool; but Copper had said so much already, to hear Copper call him a damn fool didn’t shock him too much.
“Any more water in that glass, Felix?” he asked me.
“No sir; I’ll get some.”
I hurried inside and got the water and hurried back. Frank drank a little and handed me the glass. I moved back against the post.
Frank tapped the bannister with the walking cane and looked up at Copper.
“And you’re the General?” he said.
“I am the General,” Copper said.
“Suppose I kill this General, which I can do as easily as snapping my fingers, then what?”
“You won’t kill this General, or you would have done it before now, Uncle,” Copper said. “And that’s a grave mistake, not killing him. But even if you did kill this General, another General would only spring up.”
“Not on my place, claiming birthright,” Frank said.
“If not on your place claiming birthright, then on somebody else’s place claiming birthright,” Copper said. “It was not only on your place he was denied his birthright. That’s been denied him all over this country.”
“I see you have the answers, General,” Frank said.
“That’s why I am a General, Uncle,” Copper said.
Frank squinted up at Copper a second, then he sat back in the chair and sniffed at the air again. Copper raised his left hand and rubbed his finger lightly over his temple. For a second there, his mind drifted away from him again. He might ’a’ been listening to something far off.
11: “You know, you almost killed half of my men on this place,” Frank said.
Copper had been looking at Frank, but he had been thinking about something else. Frank woke him out of a dream.
“Men?” he said.
Frank nodded. “Men.”
“Since when have you started calling them men, Uncle?” Copper asked.
Frank didn’t answer him then; he squinted up at Copper a while. “So that’s why you did it?” he said.
“When they act like men, I’ll treat them like men,” Copper said. “When they let you make them act like animals, then I’ll treat them like animals.”
“I see,” Frank said. “You’re going to change it all. You, one, are going to change what’s been drilled into their brains the past three hundred years? You, one?”
“That’s my intention,” Copper said.
“Using chains and sticks?” Frank asked him.
Copper didn’t answer him then; he let Frank think about what he had said. Then I saw this slow grin coming on Copper’s face.
“Did you say chains and sticks—Uncle?” he said.
“Yes.”
“I thought you said chains and sticks,” Copper said. “I thought I heard you right.”
He didn’t go on for a while; he wanted Frank to think some more.
“Those are your creations, Uncle—the chains and sticks. You created them four hundred years ago, and you’re still using them up to this day. You created them. But they were only a fraction of your barbarity—Uncle. You used the rope and the tree to hang him. You used the knife to castrate him while he struggled with the rope to catch his breath. You used fire to make him squirm even more, because the hanging and the castration still wasn’t enough amusement for you. Then you used something else—another creation of yours—that thing you called law. It was written by you for you and your kind, and any man who was not of your kind had to break it sooner or later.… I only used a fraction of your creations. You have imbedded the stick and the chain in their minds for so long, they can’t hear anything else. I needed it to get their attention. I think I have it now—and I won’t have to use it any more. From now on I’ll use the simplest words. Simple words, Uncle; a thing you thought they would never understand.”
All the time Copper was talking, he kept his voice calm and even. But it was a strain for him, just like it was a strain for him to sit in one place. I don’t mean he was squirming round on the bannister; but you had the feeling he might ’a’ jumped up from there any moment. I noticed once how his mind drifted away, stayed away for a while, before it came back again.
Frank put the palm of his hand on the end of the walking cane and pressed it against the floor. If this was out in the yard, the point of the cane would ’a’ made a slight hole in the ground. He squinted up at Copper. He was like a lawyer in the courtroom. Maybe the other lawyer had said something that was the truth, and maybe he felt like telling the lawyer he had said some true things, but that wasn’t going to change his feelings at all.
“That nigger of mine told me you had a notebook,” he said. “What were you doing, mapping out plans for battle?”
“Just making a few notes on the place,” Copper said. He could see Frank was trying to play with him, but he didn’t mind this at all. Because everything he said, himself, he meant it. “The condition of the houses, the crops, the fertility of the land,” he said.
“And what do you think of the place?” Frank said, looking at the little mulberry tree, not at Copper.
But when he did that he forgot Copper was a Laurent. He thought Copper was going to answer him like I would ’a’ answered him, or like one of his sharecroppers had to answer him. Copper just sat there, looking down at him in that extra calm way he possessed. Frank kept on looking at the tree, waiting. But when the answer didn’t come, I could see his eyes shifting down the tree near the ground. He wasn’t seeing the tree now, he was waiting for something, a sound or something, to make him face Copper again. Since he had turned his head from Copper, he needed something to make him turn back. That was supposed to be my job, I reckoned, but I wasn’t getting in it. Let him get out of it the best way he could. After a while, he looked back on his own.
“The land has been wasted and is still being wasted, but it’s not beyond saving,” Copper said. If he took what Frank had done as a’ insult, he wasn’t showing it. “As for the houses, they’ll have to be torn down and built from the ground up,” he said.
“Corn?” Frank said. “That nigger told me you ate a few grains of my corn back there.”
“I did,” Copper said. “Most of it is bad. Not terrible, but it could be better.”
“Cotton?” Frank said.
“It can be improved.”
“Cane?” Frank said.
“Same as the cotton and corn.”
“Hay?” Frank said.
“Yes.”
“Berries?” he said.
Copper nodded.
“Did you get into the swamps?”
“I would have,” Copper said. “But I was being continually interrupted.”
“J. W. and Little Boy?” Frank said.
“Was that their names?”
“Yes,” Frank said, “that was their names.”
“They didn’t introduce themselves,” Copper said.
Frank poked the cane in the floor again. If this was out in the yard, it would ’a’ made a hole in the ground ’a’ inch deep. He squinted up at Copper.
“When did this birthright notion come into your head?” he asked.
You could see in Copper’s face how his mind went and came back. He was looking at Frank one second and seeing him; then the next second he was seeing something ’way off.
“I always knew who my father was,” he said, keeping his voice level. Now his mind had drifted ’way again. He made a painful frown, and I saw the left side of his face trembling.
“But I knew I couldn’t say a thing about it It would have gotten me in trouble, and probably gotten my mother in more trouble. Then one day in the field we were picking up potatoes. I had gone to the bayou to get some water out of the barrel. When I came back to the row where my mother and I were working,
she wasn’t there. I asked where she was, and a woman—I forget who she was—started laughing at me. I walked away crying, looking for my mother. I found them in another patch of ground, Walter Laurent on top of her. They didn’t see me, but that night I told her one day I was going to kill him. That’s why we moved from here. Her, her husband and me. Her husband’s name was the name I carried up until recently.”
Copper raised his hand up to his face to touch both of his temples. I could see him frowning behind his hand.
“Two years after we left here, my mother died,” Copper went on. He was looking at Frank, but he wasn’t seeing him; he was seeing past Frank. Like he was talking to Frank, but at the same time listening to another voice. “My suppose-to-be father, who had been too nutless to say I wasn’t his while we lived in the South, kicked me out of the house before my mother was cold in her grave. He was not going to support any white man’s child. He was tired supporting a white man’s child. I was fourteen years old then. A fourteen-year-old black child out on his own. Not a soul in the world to turn to, not one.”
He stopped and looked down at Frank again. Frank wasn’t looking at him now; he had folded his hands over the end of the walking cane and he had propped his chin on his hands. Even when Copper had quit talking, even when he knowed Copper was looking down at him, he kept his head bowed.
“For the last ten years I’ve been everywhere,” Copper said, looking at the trees over in the other yard—looking at them, but not seeing one of them. “I’ve seen a little bit of everything in this world, but suffering more than anything else. There’re millions just like me. Maybe not my color, but without homes, without birthrights, just like me. And who is to blame?” he said, looking down at Frank. “Men like my father. Men like Walter Laurent.”
Frank raised his eyes to look at him. He didn’t move his chin from his hands. He looked at Copper long and carefully, then he looked down again.
“Rapists,” Copper said. “Murderers, plunderers—and they hide behind the law. The law they created themselves.”
He got up from the bannister and went to the other end of the gallery. I saw him looking across the yard toward the big house. I saw him raising both of his hands and pressing them hard against his face.