Blues for Mister Charlie (14 page)
(Blackout. As Lyle approaches the witness stand, the lights in the courtroom dim. We hear voices from the church, singing a lament. The lights come up.)
JUDGE
: Gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?
FOREMAN
: We have, Your Honor.
JUDGE
: Will the prisoner please rise?
(Lyle rises.)
Do you find the defendant, Mr. Lyle Britten, guilty or not guilty?
FOREMAN
: Not guilty, Your Honor.
(Cheering in
WHITETOWN.
Silence in
BLACKTOWN.
The stage is taken over by Reporters, Photographers, Witnesses, Townspeople. Lyle is congratulated and embraced
,
BLACKTOWN
files out silently, not looking back
,
WHITETOWN
files out jubilantly, and yet with a certain reluctance. Presently, the stage is empty, except for Lyle, Jo, Mother Henry, Meridian, Parnell, Juanita, and Lorenzo.)
JO
: Let’s get out of here and go home. We’ve been here just for days. I wouldn’t care if I
never
saw the insides of a courtroom again! Let’s go home, sugar. We got something to celebrate!
JUANITA
: We, too, must go—to another celebration. We’re having a prayer meeting on the City Hall steps.
LORENZO
: Prayer meeting!
LYLE
: Well, it was touch and go there for awhile, Parnell, but you sure come through. I knew you would.
JO
: Let’s go, Lyle. The baby’s hungry.
MERIDIAN
: Perhaps now you can ask him to tell you the truth. He’s got nothing to lose now. They can’t try him again.
LYLE
: Wasn’t much sense in trying me now, this time, was there, Reverend? These people have been knowing me and my good Jo here all our lives, they ain’t going to doubt us. And you people—you people—ought to have better sense and more things to do than running around stirring up all this hate and trouble.
That’s
how your son got himself killed. He listened to crazy niggers like you!
MERIDIAN
: Did you kill him?
LYLE
: They just asked me that in court, didn’t they? And they just decided I didn’t, didn’t they? Well, that’s good enough for me and all those white people and so it damn sure better be good enough for you!
PARNELL
: That’s no answer. It’s not good enough for me.
LYLE
: What do you mean, that’s no answer? Why isn’t it an answer? Why isn’t it good enough for you? You know, when you were up on the stand right now, you acted like you doubted my Jo’s word. You got no right to doubt Jo’s word. You ain’t no better than she is! You ain’t no better than me!
PARNELL
: I am aware of that. God knows I have been made aware of that—for the first time in my life. But, as you and I will never be the same again—since our comedy is finished, since I have failed you so badly—let me say this. I did not doubt Jo’s word. I knew that she was lying and that you had made her lie. That was a terrible thing to do to her. It was a terrible thing that I just did to you. I really don’t know if what I did to Meridian was as awful as what I did to you. I don’t expect forgiveness, Meridian. I only hope that all of us will suffer past this agony and horror.
LYLE
: What’s the matter with you? Have you forgotten you a white man? A white man! My Daddy told me not to
never
forget I was a white man! Here I been knowing you all my life—and now I’m ashamed of you. Ashamed of you! Get on over to niggertown! I’m going home with my good wife.
MERIDIAN
: What was the last thing my son said to you—before you shot him down—like a dog?
LYLE
: Like a dog! You a smart nigger, ain’t you?
MERIDIAN
: What was the last thing he said? Did he beg you for his life?
LYLE
:
That
nigger! He was too smart for that! He was too full of himself for that! He must have thought he was white. And I gave him every chance—every chance—to live!
MERIDIAN
: And he refused them all.
LYLE
: Do you know what that nigger said to me?
(The light changes, so that everyone hut Lyle is in silhouette. Richard appears, dressed as we last saw him, on the road outside Papa D.’s joint.)
RICHARD
: I’m ready. Here I am. You asked me if I was ready, didn’t you? What’s on your mind, white man?
LYLE
: Boy, I always treated you with respect. I don’t know what’s the matter with you, or what makes you act the way you do—but you owe me an apology and I come out here tonight to get it. I mean, I ain’t going away without it.
RICHARD
: I owe
you
an apology! That’s a wild idea. What am I apologizing for?
LYLE
: You know, you mighty lucky to still be walking around.
RICHARD
: So are you. White man.
LYLE
: I’d like you to apologize for your behavior in my store that day. Now, I think I’m being pretty reasonable, ain’t I?
RICHARD
: You got anything to write on? I’ll write you an IOU.
LYLE
: Keep it up. You going to be laughing out of the other side of your mouth pretty soon.
RICHARD
: Why don’t you go home? And let me go home? Do we need all this shit? Can’t we live without it?
LYLE
: Boy, are you drunk?
RICHARD
: No, I ain’t drunk. I’m just tired. Tired of all this fighting. What are you trying to prove? What am I trying to prove?
LYLE
: I’m trying to give you a break. You too dumb to take it.
RICHARD
: I’m hip. You been trying to give me a break for a great, long time. But there’s only one break I want. And you won’t give me that.
LYLE
: What kind of break do you want, boy?
RICHARD
: For you to go home. And let me go home. I got things to do. I got—lots of things to do!
LYLE
: I got things to do, too. I’d like to get home, too.
RICHARD
: Then why are we standing here? Can’t we walk? Let me walk, white man! Let me walk!
LYLE
: We can walk, just as soon as we get our business settled.
RICHARD
: It’s settled. You a man and I’m a man. Let’s walk.
LYLE
: Nigger, you was born down here. Ain’t you never said sir to a white man?
RICHARD
: No. The only person I ever said sir to was my Daddy.
LYLE
: Are you going to apologize to me?
RICHARD
: No.
LYLE
: Do you want to live?
RICHARD
: Yes.
LYLE
: Then you know what to do, then, don’t you?
RICHARD
: Go home. Go home.
LYLE
: You facing my gun.
(Produces it)
Now, in just a minute, we can both go home.
RICHARD
: You sick mother! Why can’t you leave me alone? White man! I don’t want nothing from you. You ain’t got nothing to give me. You can’t eat because none of your sad-assed chicks can cook. You can’t talk because won’t nobody talk to you. You can’t dance because you’ve got nobody to dance with—don’t you know I’ve watched you all my life?
All my life!
And I know your women, don’t you think I don’t—better than you!
(Lyle shoots, once.)
Why have you spent so much time trying to kill me? Why are you always trying to cut off
my
cock? You worried about it? Why?
(Lyle shoots again.)
Okay. Okay. Okay. Keep your old lady home, you hear? Don’t let her near no nigger. She might get to like it. You might get to like it, too. Wow!
(Richard falls.)
Juanita! Daddy!
Mama!
(Singing from the church. Spot on Lyle)
LYLE
: I had to kill him then. I’m a white man! Can’t nobody talk that way to
me!
I had to go and get my pick-up truck and load him in it—I had to carry him on my back—and carry him out to the high weeds. And I dumped him in the weeds, face down. And then I come on home, to my good Jo here.
JO
: Come on, Lyle. We got to get on home. We got to get the little one home now.
LYLE
: And I ain’t sorry. I want you to know that I ain’t sorry!
JO
: Come on, Lyle. Come on. He’s hungry. I got to feed him.
(Jo and Lyle exit.)
MOTHER HENRY
: We got to go now, children. The children is already started to march.
LORENZO
: Prayer!
MERIDIAN
: You know, for us, it all began with the Bible and the gun. Maybe it will end with the Bible and the gun.
JUANITA
: What did you do with the gun, Meridian?
PARNELL
: You have the gun—Richard’s gun?
MERIDIAN
: Yes. In the pulpit. Under the Bible. Like the pilgrims of old.
(Exits.)
MOTHER HENRY
: Come on, children.
(Singing)
(Pete enters.)
PETE
(Stammers)
: Are you ready, Juanita? Shall we go now?
JUANITA
: Yes.
LORENZO
: Come here, Pete. Stay close to me.
(They go to the church door. The singing swells.)
PARNELL
: Well.
JUANITA
: Well. Yes, Lord!
PARNELL
: Can I join you on the march, Juanita? Can I walk with you?
JUANITA
: Well, we can walk in the same direction, Parnell. Come. Don’t look like that. Let’s go on on.
(Exits.)
(After a moment, Parnell follows.)
Curtain
THE END
James Baldwin was born in 1924. He is the author of more than twenty works of fiction and nonfiction. Among the awards he received are a Eugene F. Saxon Memorial Trust Award, a Rosenwald Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a
Partisan Review
Fellowship, and a Ford Foundation grant. He was made Commander of the Legion of Honor in 1986. He died in 1987.
Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)
Notes of a Native Son (1955)
Giovanni’s Room (1956)
Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (1961)
Another Country (1962)
The Fire Next Time (1963)
Nothing Personal
(with Richard Avedon)
(1964)
Blues for Mister Charlie (1964)
Going to Meet the Man (1965)
The Amen Corner (1968)
Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone (1968)
One Day When I Was Lost (1972)
No Name in the Street (1972)
If Beale Street Could Talk (1973)
The Devil Finds Work (1976)
Little Man, Little Man
(with Yoran Cazac)
(1976)
Just Above My Head (1979)
The Evidence of Things Not Seen (1985)
Jimmy’s Blues (1985)
The Price of the Ticket (1985)
J
AMES
B
ALDWIN
THE AMEN CORNER
For years Sister Margaret Alexander has moved her congregation with a mixture of personal charisma and ferocious piety. But when her estranged husband, Luke, comes home to die, she is in danger of losing both her standing in the church and the son she has tried to keep on the godly path.
The Amen Corner
is an uplifting, sorrowful, and exultant masterpiece of the modern American theater.
Drama
ANOTHER COUNTRY
Set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France, among other locales,
Another Country
is a novel of passions sexual, racial, political, artistic that is stunning for its emotional intensity and haunting sensuality, depicting men and women stripped of their masks of gender and race by love and hatred at their most elemental and sublime.
Fiction/Literature
BLUES FOR MISTER CHARLIE
In a small Southern town, a white man murders a black man, then throws his body in the weeds. With this act of violence Baldwin launches an unsparing and at times agonizing probe of the wounds of race. For where once a white storekeeper could have shot a “boy” like Richard Henry with impunity, times have changed. In
Blues for Mister Charlie
, Baldwin turns a murder and its aftermath into an inquest in which even the most well-intentioned whites are implicated and in which even a killer receives his share of compassion.
