Lesson Before Dying

  “Randy still on?” he asked, looking at the wall, not at me.

  “Yes, he’s still on,” I said. “I was listening to him just the other night. I have to play the radio low so Tante Lou can’t hear it. These old people, you know—all music except church music is sinning music. So I play it so low I can hardly hear it myself.”

  I laughed to make him laugh. But he did not.

  “Do you want me to bring you a little radio next time I come?” I asked him.

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Edwin’s has these little Philcos. Not too big,” I said, and I boxed my hands to show him the approximate size of the radio. “Would you like one of those?”

  He nodded.

  “I wish I had the money on me,” I said. “I’d go and get it right now.”

  “Don’t bother,” he said. He said it as though he didn’t believe I really wanted to get it for him.

  “I’ll get it tomorrow,” I said. “I’ll have them bring it to you so you’ll have music over the weekend.”

  He didn’t have anything more to say. He sat there, not looking out the window now but looking down at the floor as if he had forgotten about the radio, about the ice cream, about Gable—about everything.

  I wanted to leave then to go home for the money to buy the radio, but I was afraid that the sheriff and his deputies might misinterpret my reason for leaving so early. I was sure they were paying closer attention to everything now, and they would not have understood my reason for leaving earlier than I usually did. So I just stood there until the deputy came to let me out. Paul wanted to know how everything had gone between Jefferson and me, and I told him it was better than ever. He looked at me as if he felt I was making this all up, but I could see in his face that he wanted to believe it. I told him that I had promised Jefferson a radio and that I would go home and get the money to buy one. I would get it from Edwin’s department store and then leave it here for one of them to take to Jefferson so that he would have music over the weekend. Paul thought it was a good idea, and he promised to give the radio to Jefferson himself.

  I didn’t go home. I thought I would borrow the money from Vivian, and I went back of town to the Rainbow Club, to wait until she got out of class. The bar was in semidarkness as usual, with the usual two or three old men, talking more than drinking, and Claiborne behind the bar, talking with them. I ordered a beer and told Claiborne about the radio. He didn’t charge me for the beer, and he went back down the bar and spoke to the old men, then he came back with a couple of dollar bills and some change. He took five dollars out of an old leather wallet that had once been light brown but had turned almost black over the many years that it had gone in and out of Claiborne’s back pocket.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll get it back to you sometime this weekend.”

  The muscle in his left jaw moved a little to show that he had smiled. Then he jerked his head toward the wall, a sign that I should go around to the other side and see what I could get in there. So after finishing the beer, I went through the side door into the café. It was much more brightly lit than the bar, warmer, and you could smell the food from the kitchen. A man and a woman ate at one of the tables, another man sat eating alone at the counter, and Thelma was behind the counter, near the cash register.

  “Well, well, look what the cat dragged in,” she said.

  I had been at the Rainbow quite a few times lately, but I had not eaten in the café.

  I told Thelma about the radio, and I told her that Claiborne had donated something. She listened patiently, and I could see her face changing from patience to sadness to anger. Her mouth tightened as she looked around the room at her three customers, then back at me again. The anger had left.

  “You hungry?” she asked. It was stern, but loving too.

  “No. I ate before I came,” I told her.

  She didn’t believe me. “I got some smothered steaks there,” she said. “Shrimps. Chicken.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “You want to get that radio now?”

  “I would like to get it this afternoon.”

  “How much they cost?”

  “About twenty dollars.”

  “Eat something. I’ll make up the rest,” she said.

  She went back into the kitchen and dished up some rice and beefsteak and sweet peas, and she added a little lettuce-and-tomato salad and couple of slices of light bread.

  “How much more you need?” she asked, after she had set the food down before me.

  “About ten bucks,” I said. “But listen, Thelma, I can borrow some of that money from Vivian.”

  “Vivian got them children,” she said. “I can let you have it.”

  “I’ll bring it back tomorrow.”

  “I ain’t in no hurry.”

  I ate the food hungrily because I had not had dinner, and I sopped up the gravy with the light bread. Thelma watched me all the time. When I was finished, she put a wrinkled ten-dollar bill on the counter by my plate.

  “Here.”

  It was the kind of “here” your mother or your big sister or your great-aunt or your grandmother would have said. It was the kind of “here” that let you know this was hard-earned money but, also, that you needed it more than she did, and the kind of “here” that said she wished you had it and didn’t have to borrow it from her, but since you did not have it, and she did, then “here” it was, with a kind of love. It was the kind of “here” that asked the question, When will all this end? When will a man not have to struggle to have money to get what he needs “here”? When will a man be able to live without having to kill another man “here”?

  I took the money without looking at her. I didn’t say thanks. I knew she didn’t want to hear it.

  I went out to my car and drove back uptown. Edwin’s was not the best store in town, but it was the place where most people bought what they needed. Those with money went either to Morgan’s department store or to Baton Rouge and New Orleans. As you came into the store, you saw clothes for women on the left and clothes for men on the right, all set out neatly.

  There were no other customers, and just one saleswoman, who did not show much interest in me. I went to the back of the store, passing the furniture department, with its chairs, couches, beds, chifforobes, dressers, then the refrigerators and iceboxes, gas and wood-burning stoves, washing machines. Then there was the garden and yard equipment—hoes, rakes, shovels, ax handles, mowing machines, yoyo blades, cane knives. And at the very end of the store were the radios and kitchen appliances, on shelves against the wall. I saw the little radio that I had in mind, and I took it down from the shelf to look at it more closely and feel its weight. Then I set it back on the shelf and turned on the knob, and after warming up for a few seconds it started playing. I moved the lighted dial to get another station. I could find only three, two in Baton Rouge and one in New Orleans. But that was normal for this time of day. At night you were able to tune in others. You could get one as far west as Del Rio, Texas, and another as far east as Nashville. I was still listening to one of the Baton Rouge stations when the saleswoman came up behind me.

  “You go’n buy that?”

  I looked around at the short, stout, powdered-faced white woman.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Her face changed, but only a little.

  “How much is it?” I asked.

  “Twenty dollars, plus tax.”

  “Do you have one in a box?”

  “That one’s brand-new,” she said. Her face was getting hard again.

  “It’s a present,” I said. “I would like one in a box.”

  “I can put this one in a box,” she said.

  “No, ma’am, I want a brand-new one,” I said. “If you have one.”

  “You can have this one for a dollar less,” she said.

  “I prefer a brand-new one, please, ma’am,” I said.

  She snapped the radio off and turned away. She was gone about fifteen minutes. I knew it couldn’
t possibly take her that long to find another radio, but because I had refused to take the used one, and because she felt quite sure there was no place in Bayonne where I could find another one, she knew I had little choice but to wait until she got back.

  “Brand-new one,” she said behind me. “Seal ain’t even broke.”

  “Does it have batteries?” I asked her.

  “It’s ready to play,” she said. “You want it?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  She started up the aisle toward the cash register, but just about then another white woman came into the store. The clerk set the radio beside the cash register and went to see what the white woman wanted. The other woman was not buying anything; she only wanted to talk. So they stood there about ten minutes before the clerk came back to wait on me. After ringing up the bill, she asked me if I needed a bag. But she asked it in a way that I knew she didn’t want to give me one. No, thanks, I told her, and after paying, I tucked the little radio under my arm and left.

  The courthouse was to the right and across the street from the store. I walked between the parked cars and passed the statue of the Confederate soldier and the state, national, and Confederate flags. Paul and Sheriff Guidry were in the office. Paul saw the package under my arm, and I could see that he was happy that I had remembered. The sheriff looked up at me from his desk.

  “Well, Professor, is that the radio?”

  “Yes, sir. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “No, I don’t mind this time,” he said. “But from now on, you ask permission before you bring anything else in here.”

  “I spoke to the deputy.”

  “The deputy can’t give you permission to bring things in here. I do,” he said.

  I was quiet.

  “Leave it,” the sheriff said. “I’ll see that he gets it. Batries, I hope.”

  “Yes, sir, batries,” I said. I had almost said “batteries.”

  “How did it go today?” he asked.

  “All right,” I said.

  The sheriff nodded.

  “I’ll see he gets it.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  I looked at Paul. He nodded and smiled. He probably would have said something encouraging if the sheriff had not been there.

  I went to my car and drove back to the Rainbow, hoping that Vivian would be there and that we would have a drink and just sit there in the semidarkness alone together.

  23

  MISS EMMA FELT well enough on Monday to accompany my aunt and Reverend Ambrose to visit Jefferson. After the usual search, Paul led them to the dayroom, then went to the cell for Jefferson. Jefferson asked if he could take the radio. The deputy said no. Jefferson said he wouldn’t go.

  I would hear later that Jefferson had not turned the radio off since Paul brought it to him on Friday evening. The other prisoners could hear the radio at all times of the day and night. No one else had a radio, and the prisoners wished he would play it louder, but no one would dare say anything to him. The prisoners nearest his cell could faintly hear the music he played, but the ones farther away could only hear static, though he searched, day and night, for stronger stations.

  “You want me to bring them here?” Paul asked Jefferson.

  Jefferson went on listening to the radio without answering him.

  The deputy returned to the dayroom and told Miss Emma what had happened. She had already set the table, and she and my aunt and Reverend Ambrose had taken their places, leaving a space for Jefferson. The food—beef stew and Irish potatoes—was still in the pot and covered. A tablespoon and a paper napkin lay beside each tin pan, on a white tablecloth.

  “Radio?” Miss Emma asked Paul.

  “Grant bought him one.”

  “When?”

  “Last Friday.”

  “That mean he ain’t coming?”

  “That’s what he said,” the deputy told her.

  Miss Emma sat staring at the space where Jefferson was supposed to sit, then she looked up at Paul again.

  “Can we go to him?” she asked.

  “Sure,” he said. “But it’s going to be uncomfortable, y’all trying to eat out of them pans standing up.”

  “We don’t mind,” Miss Emma said, and pushed herself up from the table.

  My aunt helped her collect everything, then the three of them followed the deputy back to the cell. Jefferson lay on his bunk, listening to music on the radio.

  Forty-five minutes later, when Paul returned to the cell, he found the radio turned off and Jefferson lying on his side, facing the wall, his back to the people. The deputy opened the door to let them out, and Jefferson turned from the wall and snapped on the radio. Paul told Miss Emma that the sheriff wanted to see her.

  The sheriff was sitting behind his desk. There were two empty chairs, but he did not ask anyone to sit down.

  “He give you any trouble back there?” the sheriff asked Miss Emma.

  “No, sir.”

  “I said from the start I didn’t want any trouble,” the sheriff said. “If that radio is causing any trouble, I’ll get it out of there.”

  “It ain’t causing no trouble,” Miss Emma said.

  “He didn’t come to the dayroom.”

  “We went to him. We managed.”

  “Standing up?”

  “Yes, sir. We didn’t mind.”

  “You minded before,” the sheriff said. “That’s why you went and worried my wife.”

  “Yes, sir,” Miss Emma said.

  “Listen,” the sheriff said, pointing a finger across the desk. “He hasn’t got much time. I don’t want any trouble. Y’all have to work together—with that teacher.”

  “We go’n work together,” Miss Emma said. “I’ll talk to Grant when I get back.”

  “What about you, Reverend?” the sheriff asked.

  “My duty to stand by Sis’ Emma,” Reverend Ambrose said.

  “And what about Jefferson?” the sheriff asked. “What about his soul?”

  According to Paul, who told me this later, Reverend Ambrose lowered his eyes and did not answer.

  “All right,” the sheriff said. “Y’all work it out your way. Any problems, and I’ll take that radio, or stop the visits.”

  Reverend Ambrose came back to the quarter between two-thirty and three o’clock, and when I dismissed school one of the boys came back to tell me that my aunt wanted to see me at Miss Emma’s house before I went home. All three of them were sitting around the kitchen table when I came in. They had already finished their coffee. The cups were still on the table, but empty.

  “You know what you done done?” my aunt asked me. I could tell by her face and her voice that she was mad.

  “What did I do?” I asked.

  “Why?”

  “Why what, Tante Lou?”

  “That radio!” she said. “That radio!”

  “What’s wrong with the radio?”

  “What’s wrong with it?” Reverend Ambrose cut in. “What’s wrong with it? That’s all he do, listen to that radio, that’s what’s wrong with it.”

  “And what’s wrong with that?” I asked.

  “He didn’t have time to come sit down with us today, that’s what’s wrong with that,” the minister said. “He ain’t got time for nothing else, that’s what’s wrong with that.”

  “Jefferson needs something in that cell,” I said.

  “Yes, he do,” the minister said. “You hit the nail on the head, mister. Yes, he do. But not that box.”

  “And what do you suggest, Reverend Ambrose?” I asked.

  “God,” the minister said. “He ain’t got but five more Fridays and a half. He needs God in that cell, and not that sin box.”

  “What sin box?” I said.

  “What you call that kind of music he listen to?” the minister asked. “Us standing in there trying to talk to him, and him listening to that thing till she got to reach over and turn it off—what you call it?”

  “I call it company, Reverend Ambrose,”
I said.

  “And I call it sin company,” he said.

  “And I don’t care what you call it!” I said to him.

  “Grant!” my aunt said. I could see that she was becoming more and more angry with me. Now she got up from her chair.

  “You don’t talk like that!” she said. “Never!”

  “Louise,” Miss Emma called to her. “Louise?”

  “I didn’t raise you that way,” my aunt said, coming toward me.

  “Louise, please. Lord—don’t!” Miss Emma pushed up from her chair.

  My aunt stopped a step or two away from me, though it was clear she wanted to slap me.

  “We have to get something straight around here,” I said.

  “And right now. I don’t know a thing about God or sin. What I do know is—”

  “My Lord,” the minister said, looking at me as if I were the devil himself. “Listen to the teacher of our children.”

  “Last Friday,” I continued, “was the first time, the very first time, that Jefferson looked at me without hate, without accusing me of putting him in that cell. Last Friday was the first time he ever asked me a question or answered me without accusing me for his condition. I don’t know if you all know what I’m talking about. It seems you don’t. But I found a way to reach him for the first time. Now, he needs that radio, and he wants it. He wants something of his own before he dies. He wants a gallon of ice cream for his last supper—did he tell you that? Did he tell you he never had enough ice cream? Did he tell you that he never had a radio of his own before? Did he tell you any of this? He wants those things before he dies. He has only a month to live. And all I’m trying to do is make it as comfortable as I can for him.”

  “And after that radio and that ice cream, how ’bout his soul, mister?” my aunt asked me.

  “I don’t know a thing about the soul,” I said.

  “Yes you do,” she said. She tightened her mouth. She wanted to cry. And she wanted to slap me. Not only for this moment, but for all those years that I had refused to go to her church. “Yes you do,” she said, shaking her head. “’Cause I raised you better.”

  “And you sent me to him, Tante Lou,” I said. “And I’m only trying to reach him the best way I can.”