The Third Life of Grange Copeland

  "Why," said Brownfield, "you old bastard!"

  Josie had pulled out a handkerchief too small for her. She soon watered it through with tears. "Grange," she said, dabbing at her eyes with the small wet ball, "you know you got some blame; which, actually, you always did admit--"

  "Shut up," said Brownfield.

  "--and you know you used to blame the white folks too. For they is the cause of all the dirt we have to swallow... ."

  "Every bit," said Brownfield.

  Grange continued to speak to Ruth, his shoulder to Brownfield and Josie. He spoke rapidly, breathlessly, his hands doing their jabbing dance.

  "By George, I know the danger of putting all the blame on somebody else for the mess you make out of your life. I fell into the trap myself! And I'm bound to believe that that's the way the white folks can corrupt you even when you done held up before. 'Cause when they got you thinking that they're to blame for everything they have you thinking they's some kind of gods! You can't do nothing wrong without them being behind it. You gits just as weak as water, no feeling of doing nothing yourself. Then you begins to think up evil and begins to destroy everybody around you, and you blames it on the crackers. Shit! Nobody's as powerful as we make them out to be. We got our own souls, don't we?"

  "For a old man what could eat ten of 'em for breakfast, from what Josie tells me, you sure done turned into a cracker lover!" said Brownfield.

  "I don't love but one somebody, black or white," said Grange, turning briefly to his son. "An' what I'm talking about ain't love but being a man!" He turned once more to Ruth. "I mean," he said, "the crackers could make me run away from my wife, but where was the man in me that let me sneak off, never telling her nothing about where I was going, never telling her I forgave her, never telling her how wrong I was myself?"

  "You never cared nothing for my ma!" said Brownfield.

  "And the white folks could have forced me to believe fucking a hundred strumpets was a sign of my manhood," said Grange, "but where was the man in me that let me take Josie here for such a cheap and low-down ride, when I didn't never care whether she lived or died, long as she did what I told her and I got me my farm!"

  "Ah, Grange, baby," said Josie, reaching out to him, "it not too late for us now, don't say that."

  "Will you shut your slutty trap!" said Brownfield, pushing at her hand.

  "And with your pa," Grange continued, "the white folks could have forced him to live in shacks; they might have even forced him to beat his wife and children like they was dogs, so he could keep on feeling something less than shit. But where was the man in him that let Brownfield kill his wife? What cracker pulled the trigger? And if a cracker did cause him to kill his wife, Brownfield should have turned the gun on himself, for he wasn't no man. He let the cracker hold the gun, because he was too weak to distinguish that crackers will from his! The same was true of me. We both of us jumped our responsibility, and without facing up to at least some of his wrong a man loses his muscle."

  Grange's eyes were misty now; he turned to face his son. "If I had my life to live over," he said, "your ma and me would maybe have starved to death in some cracker's gutter, but she would have died with me holding her hand! For that much I could have done--and I believe she would have seen the man in me."

  Grange was shaking as much as his granddaughter, and this unsteadiness where he had always seen strength, emboldened Brownfield.

  "You kinky-haired son of a bitch," said Brownfield, who was annoyed that his father wore his hair long, "a heap of good it would have done my ma for you to hold her hand when she was dying! When a man's starving he don't need none of that hand-holding shit."

  "But my answering for everything had to be to her, don't you understand yet how it go? Nobody give a damn for me but your ma, and I messed her up trying to be a big man! After two years of never gitting nothing on the plantation I turned my back on what I did have. I just couldn't face up to never making no progress. All I'm saying, Brownfield," said Grange, his voice sinking to a whisper, "is that one day I had to look back on my life and see where I went wrong, and when I did look back I found out your ma'd be alive today if I hadn't just as good as shot her to death, same as you done your wife. We guilty, Brownfield, and neither one of us is going to move a step in the right direction until we admit it."

  "I don't have to admit a damn thing to you," said Brownfield, "and I ain't about to let the crackers off the hook for what they done to my life!"

  "I'm talking to you, Brownfield," said Grange, "and most of what I'm saying is you got to hold tight a place in you where they can't come. You can't take this young girl here and make her wish she was dead just to git back at some white folks that you don't even know. We keep killing ourselves for people that don't even mean nothing to us!"

  "The court say I can have her back. Old man, I'll fight you on it! I wanted to give you a chance at a fair exchange, your old lady for her." He reached out to touch Ruth and she shied miserably away. "Too good for me, is you?" he wanted to know, scowling at her. Throughout this ghastly interview she had not been able to say a word. She wanted to tell Brownfield how she despised him for killing Mem and for making her suffer by being shunned and friendless, but nothing came out. She was too terrified that somehow he would make good his threat and she would be forced to leave Grange and go live with him.

  "He'll never have you again," Grange said, as Josie and Brownfield stalked away. But he was holding his heart as if it hurt him, and the look he gave her was unsure.

  In tears they stumbled home through the woods, where they collapsed momentarily together. They sobbed as if they knew already what was to come; and just as Ruth could finally envision a time when Grange would not be with her, she knew Grange was imagining a time when his powers of protection and love would be no more and she would be left again an orphan with a beast for a father--a beast Grange himself had created.

  That night Grange pored over Ruth's Bible for hours before he went to bed. He had great admiration for the Hebrew children who fled from Egypt land. For perhaps the hundredth time he told Ruth the story of the Hebrew exodus. "They done the right thing," he said.

  "Did they?"

  "Got out while they still had some sense and cared what happened to they spirit. Also to one 'nother. I may be wrong, but nothing ain't proved it yet." He looked thoughtfully over the book at the fire.

  "What?" asked Ruth.

  "We can't live here free and easy and at home. We going crazy."

  "Here?"

  "I don't mean this farm; I mean in this country, the U.S. I believe we got to leave this place if we 'spect to survive. All this struggle to keep human where for years nobody knowed what human was but you. It's killing us. They's more ways to git rid of people than with guns. We make good songs and asylum cases."

  "Maybe it would be better if something happened to change everything; made everything equal; made us feel at home," said Ruth.

  "They can't undo what they done and we can't forget it or forgive."

  "Is it so hard to forgive 'em if they don't do bad things no more?

  "I honestly don't believe they can stop," said Grange, "not as a group anyhow." He lounged back in his chair and stuck a hand in his pocket. "Even if they could," he said slowly, "it'd be too late. I look in my heart for forgiveness and it just ain't there. The close as I can come to it is a kind of numbness where they concerned. So that I wouldn't add kindling to a fire that was roasting them, but I wouldn't hear 'em calling me neither."

  Ruth chuckled.

  "That ain't no feeling to be proud of," Grange said sternlv, "not if you going to call yourself a human." He leaned forward, looking sadly into the fire.

  "When I was a child," he said, "I used to cry if somebody killed a ant. As I look back on it now, I liked feeling that way. I don't want to set here now numb to half the peoples in the world. I feel like something soft and warm an' delicate an' sort of shy has just been burned right out of me."

  "Numbness is probably better
than hate," said Ruth gently. She had never seen her grandfather so anguished.

  "The trouble with numbness," said Grange, as if he'd thought over it for a long time, "is that it spreads to all your organs, mainly the heart. Pretty soon after I don't hear the white folks crying for help I don't hear the black." He looked at Ruth. "Maybe I don't even hear you."

  "You'd hear me all right!" said Ruth.

  "Your daddy don't, do he?" asked Grange, returning to the story of the Hebrew children.

  "If the foundations be destroyed,'" he read after a few minutes, " 'what can the righteous do?'"

  "Rebuild 'em?" asked Ruth.

  "Too late to rebuild," said Grange, "for the righteous was there when they was destroyed." He turned to another part of the Bible and read: " 'Thou hath repaid me evil for good to the spoiling of my soul.'" He looked up at Ruth. "The Lord knowed that you could dump shit on a fellow for just so long before he begin to stink from within. It's the spoiling of the soul that make forgiveness impossible. It just ain't in us no more," he said with a sigh. "How can the young 'uns stay fresh here? That's what got me bothered."

  "It'll be okay," said Ruth, taking the Bible from him and putting it away. "For a man who don't like church, you sure like to thumb this book."

  "This is serious business, though," said Grange, looking steadily at her. "You been protected on this farm... . You don't know how tired you be after years of strugglin'. I want you to fight 'em every step of the way when they tries to abuse you. An' they will, 'cause you'll be a nigger to 'em. Damn! I hates they guts already for making you feel bad! But I don't want you to fight 'em until you gits completely fagged so that you turns into a black cracker yourself! For then they bondage over you is complete. I'd want you to git out before that happened to you!"

  "Why didn't you get out?" asked Ruth.

  "The world wasn't as big then as it is now. I thought the U.S. covered the whole shebang. Besides," said Grange, grimly, "I wouldn't give the mothers the satisfaction!"

  "Aw," said Ruth, standing behind him and tugging playfully at his big ears, "you know you caught your soul in the nick of time, before it spoilt completely."

  "I wish I did know that," said Grange, rising to wind the clock, "but I look at Brownfield and Josie an' I know I was way too slow."

  In the middle of the night Ruth was awakened by a noise.

  "You 'sleep?" her grandfather asked. He was standing over the bed. "I couldn't git off to sleep. I just kept thinkin' about what happened today."

  Ruth sat up and turned on the light. Grange was standing in his long nightshirt, with a stocking cap on his head. "What's the matter?" she asked sleepily.

  "I wanted to give you this," said Grange, handing her a small booklet.

  "What is it?"

  "A bankbook. I put away a few dollars for you to go to college on. Your daddy's up to something an' I don't know-how long I can keep 'im away from you."

  Ruth rubbed her eyes and opened the bankbook. Her name and Grange's were on the inside. There were nine hundred dollars.

  "That's just from the bootlegging," he said. He went back into his room and returned with a battered cigar box that rattled and clinked. He opened it and began to count the bills and quarters, half dollars and dimes, nickels and pennies. He counted out four hundred dollars and then took twenty dollars and some change for himself. "An' this much I winned at poker." He'd gambled almost every week since she came to live with him. Ruth took the cigar box and eased it down under her bed.

  "You put it in the bank tomorrow," Grange said.

  "Okay," she promised lightly, though she felt tears rising in her throat.

  "I beat all my old gambling partners so bad I made 'em make over they straight life policies to you too," said Grange, holding his little bit of money in one hand and shyly holding his nightshirt away from his body with the other. "I figure if they starts to die at the rate of one a year after the next few years they money can keep you comfortable. I know a girl in college need things."

  "I couldn't do that!" said Ruth. "What about their own children? They going to need things too!"

  "Well, that's left up to you. If you needs the money it yours, I winned it." He was silent for a minute, looking at the floor. "You don't think I done wrong to do that, do you?" he asked. He looked down at the bills in his hand. "I s'pose it wasn't too human of me."

  "I don't blame you," she said quickly. "I know you did it for me. But I won't need it with all this you already gave me! Don't be so worried about anything happening," she added, reaching out to touch his hand. "Brownfield's probably so drunk by now he can't even remember I am his daughter!"

  "You go to the bank first thing in the morning," he said again, turning away. "I'll git up and drive you."

  "You go to sleep," she ordered.

  "You too," he said. But for hours the house was tense and awake, and neither of them slept.

  The running of the house acquired a certain orderliness it lacked before. Bills were paid in full and Grange's bookkeeping explained to Ruth. Old acquaintances were hunted and found and made to cough up monies owed. Ruth's bank account grew in tiny bounds. Two dollars from Fred Hill, five from Manuel Stokes, sixteen from Davis Jones for that pig he ran over three years ago. The fence was inspected with care, rotting posts replaced, the wire restrung to make it more taut. Even the wine crocks were taken out of hiding and reburied under Ruth's direction. Two stills were closed down, the small remaining one, not very productive, easily destroyed. For her sixteenth birthday, when her fear of Brownfield had abated somewhat, Grange made her sole owner of their old car. He had already taught her to drive, and now it became her duty to drive into town to do the shopping, confronting for the first time, alone, the whites who owned and ran the town. Grange's plan was to teach her everything he knew. Already, he liked to boast, "Your aim's a heap better than mine!"

  For all that he liked to see her self-sufficient, he was against her acting boyish. He grumbled when she spoke of cutting her hair, an unruly, rebellious cloud that weighted down her head. He insisted she trade her jeans for dresses, at least on weekends, and placed jars of Noxzema and Pond's hand cream on her dresser. He became softer than Ruth had ever known him, reflectively puffing on his pipe for hours without saying a word. He spent evenings examining maps, wondering about the places in the world he would never see, and gradually what he was groping for became almost tangible. Believing unshakably that his granddaughter's purity and open-eyedness and humor and compassion were more important than any country, people or place, he must prepare her to protect them. Assured, by his own life, that America would kill her innocence and eventually put out the two big eyes that searched for the seed of truth in everything, he must make her unhesitant to leave it.

  And still, in all her living there must be joy, laughter, contentment in being a woman; someday there must be happiness in enjoying a man, and children. Each day must be spent, in a sense, apart from any other; on each day there would be sun and cheerfulness or rain and sorrow or quiet contemplation of life. Each day must be past, present and future, with dancing and wine-making and drinking and as few regrets as possible. Her future must be the day she lived in. These were the thoughts he thought, sitting before the fire, pulling on his pipe, or hunched up on his bed clipping his toenails. Survival was not everything. He had survived. But to survive whole was what he wanted for Ruth.

  46

  ONE DAY ON her way to school Ruth saw her father alone. He was waiting beside the road, squatting near the asphalt like a hobo over his fire, his face brightened and cleared by the clean softness of the eight-thirty sun. When Ruth saw him her heart jumped, and a nervous habit she had acquired recently, of pressing her hand against her forehead, was repeated several times before she found herself abreast of him. She quickened her pace and averted her head. She imagined herself treading cautiously around a bull in a pasture and would soon have been in a trot, but Brownfield stopped her; not by reaching out to touch her, which she could not have stood, but
by simply standing alone and mute there beside the road.

  Against the high green shoulder of the road he looked smaller than when she'd last seen him. She felt herself larger, because at sixteen she was no longer a child, but smaller somehow too, because she faced him alone. Brownfield was sober and that surprised her. He wore a clean shirt that fitted him loosely, as if he had lost weight or wore someone else's, and she noticed for the first time knotted coils of gray-black hair growing up from his chest to the base of his creased and dry-looking neck. As her eyes traveled up and down his face she wondered at this hair on her father's chest; she latched onto this discovery to save for a moment the shock of looking into his eyes. His eyes, which frightened her, and which she always avoided, were full of a pained sadness, which surprised her, and she felt they were trying to speak to her. Her answer was to shudder and to hug her books to her bosom with both arms. Seeing her confusion he looked down at his shoes. The air around them was filled with the sweet motey smell of hay and red dust and flowers that is Georgia's in the spring. There was the timeless sound of birds and the noise of children from the direction of the school.

  "What do you want?" she asked, feeling fear and anger and hope all at once. She could not understand the hope. Surely there had never been any reason for it that her father had provided. There is something about my father that makes me pity him today, she thought, and knew a momentary wariness and more surprise. Brownfield wet his lips with his tongue. So wet with whiskey he was usually, so dry he seemed today!

  "You--" he began, and faltered, "you looks just like your mama."