Blues for Mister Charlie (7 page)

LYLE
: What’s all this commotion going on in my house?

JO
: Oh, Lyle, good morning! Some folks just dropped in to see you.

LYLE
: It sounded like they was about to come to blows. Good morning, Reverend Phelps, I’m glad to see you here. I’m sorry I wasn’t up, but I guess my wife might have told you, I’ve not been sleeping well nights. When I
do
go to sleep, she just lets me sleep on.

REV. PHELPS
: Don’t you apologize, son—we understand. We only came by to let you know that we’re with you and every white person in this town is with you.

JO
: Isn’t that nice of them, Lyle? They’ve been here quite a spell, and we’ve had
such
a nice time.

LYLE
: Well, that
is
mighty nice of you, Reverend, and all of you—hey there, Ellis! Old George! And Ralph and Susan—how’s married life suit you? Guess it suits you all right, ain’t nobody seen you in months, ha-ha! Mrs. Proctor, Mrs. Barker, how you all? Hey! Old Parnell! What you doing up so early?

PARNELL
: I was on my way to church, but they seemed to be having the meeting here. So I joined the worshippers.

LYLE
: On your way to church, that’s a good one. Bet you ain’t been to bed yet.

PARNELL
: No, I haven’t.

LYLE
: You folks don’t mind if I have a little breakfast? Jo, bring me something to eat! Susan, you look mighty plump and rosy, you ain’t keeping no secrets from us, are you?

SUSAN
: I don’t think so, Lyle.

LYLE
: I don’t know, you got that look—like a real ripe peach, just right for eating. You ain’t been slack in your duty, have you, Ralph? Look at the way she’s blushing! I guess you all right, boy.

ELLIS
: You know what time they coming for you tomorrow?

LYLE
: Sometime in the morning, I reckon. I don’t know.

REV. PHELPS
: I saw the Chief of Police the other day. He really doesn’t want to do it, but his hands are tied. It’s orders from higher up, from the North.

LYLE
: Shoot, I know old Frank don’t want to arrest me. I understand. I ain’t worried. I know the people in this town is with me. I got nothing to worry about.

ELLIS
: They trying to force us to put niggers on the jury—that’s what I hear. Claim it won’t be a fair trial if we don’t.

HAZEL
: Did you
ever
hear anything like that in your
life?

LYLE
: Where they going to find the niggers?

ELLIS
: Oh, I bet your buddy, Parnell, has got that all figured out.

LYLE
: How about it, Parnell? You going to find some niggers for them to put on that jury?

PARNELL
: It’s not up to me. But I might recommend a couple.

GEORGE
: And how they going to get to court? You going to protect them?

PARNELL
: The police will protect them. Or the State troopers—

GEORGE
: That’s a good one!

PARNELL
: Or Federal marshals.

GEORGE
: Look here, you really think there should be niggers on that jury?

PARNELL
: Of course I do, and so would you, if you had any sense. For one thing, they’re forty-four percent of the population of this town.

ELLIS
: But they don’t vote. Not most of them.

PARNELL
: Well. That’s also a matter of interest to the Federal government. Why
don’t
they vote? They got hands.

ELLIS
: You claim Lyle’s your buddy—

PARNELL
: Lyle
is
my buddy. That’s why I want him to have a fair trial.

HAZEL
: I can’t listen to no more of this, I’m sorry, I just can’t. Honey, I’ll see you all tonight, you hear?

REV. PHELPS
: We’re all going to go now. We just wanted to see how you were, and let you know that you could count on us.

LYLE
: I sure appreciate it, Reverend, believe me, I do. You make me feel much better. Even if a man knows he ain’t done no wrong, still, it’s a kind of troublesome spot to be in. Wasn’t for my good Jo, here, I don’t know what I’d do. Good morning, Mrs. Barker. Mrs. Proctor. So long, George, it’s been good to see you. Ralph, you take good care of Susan, you hear? And name the first one after me—you might have to bring it on up to the jail house so I can see it.

SUSAN
: Don’t think like that. Everything’s going to be all right.

LYLE
: You’re sure?

SUSAN
: I guarantee it. Why they couldn’t—
couldn’t
—do anything to you!

LYLE
: Then I believe it. I believe
you.

SUSAN
: You keep right on believing.

ELLIS
: Remember what we said, Parnell.

PARNELL
: So long, Ellis. See you next Halloween.

LYLE
: Let’s get together, boy, soon as this mess is over.

ELLIS
: You bet. This mess is just about over now—we ain’t going to let them prolong it. And I know just the thing’ll knock all this clear out of your mind, this, and everything else, ha-ha! Bye-bye, Mrs. Britten.

JO
: Goodbye. And thanks for coming!

LYLE
: They’re nice people.

JO
: Yes. They are.

PARNELL
: They certainly think a lot of you.

LYLE
: You ain’t jealous, are you, boy? No. We’ve all had the same kind of trouble—it’s the kind of trouble you wouldn’t know about, Parnell, because you’ve never had to worry about making your living. But me! I been doing hard work from the time I was a puppy. Like my Mama and Daddy before me, God rest their souls, and their Mama and Daddy before them. They wore themselves out on the land—the land never give them nothing. Nothing but an empty belly and some skinny kids. I’m the only one growed up to be a man. That’s because I take after my Daddy—he was skinny as a piece of wire, but he was hard as any rock. And stubborn! Lord, you ain’t never seen nobody so stubborn. He should have been born sooner. Had he been born sooner, when this was still a free country, and a man could really
make
some money, I’d have been born rich as you, Parnell, maybe even richer. I tell you—the old man struggled. He worked harder than any nigger. But he left me this store.

JO
: You reckon we going to be able to leave it to the little one?

LYLE
: We’re going to leave him more than that. That little one ain’t going to have nothing to worry about. I’m going to leave him as rich as old Parnell here, and he’s going to be educated, too, better than his Daddy; better, even, than Parnell!

PARNELL
: You going to send him to school in Switzerland?

LYLE
:
You
went there for a while, didn’t you?

JO
: That’s where Parnell picked up all his wild ideas.

PARNELL
: Yes. Be careful. There were a couple of African princes studying in the school I went to—they did a lot more studying than I did, I must say.

LYLE
: African princes, huh? What were they like? Big and black, I bet, elephant tusks hanging around their necks.

PARNELL
: Some of them wore a little ivory, on a chain—silver chain. They were like everybody else. Maybe they thought they were a little
better
than most of us—the Swiss girls certainly thought so.

LYLE
: The
Swiss
girls? You mean they didn’t have no women of their own?

PARNELL
: Lots of them. Swiss women, Danish women, English women, French women, Finns, Russians, even a couple of Americans.

JO
: I don’t believe you. Or else they was just trying to act like foreigners. I can’t stand people who try to act like something they’re not.

PARNELL
: They were just trying to act like women—poor things. And the Africans were men, no one had ever told them that they weren’t.

LYLE
: You mean there weren’t no African women around at
all?
Weren’t the Swiss people kind of upset at having all these niggers around with no women?

PARNELL
: They didn’t seem to be upset. They seemed delighted. The niggers had an awful lot of money. And there weren’t many African girls around because African girls aren’t educated the way American girls are.

JO
: The American girls didn’t
mind
going out with the Africans?

PARNELL
: Not at all. It appears that the Africans were excellent dancers.

LYLE
: I won’t never send no daughter of mine to Switzerland.

PARNELL
: Well, what about your son?
He
might grow fond of some little African princess.

LYLE
: Well, that’s different. I don’t care about that, long as he leaves her over there.

JO
: It’s
not
different—how can you say that? White men ain’t got no more business fooling around with black women than—

LYLE
: Girl, will you stop getting yourself into an uproar? Men is different from women—they ain’t as delicate. Man can do a lot of things a woman can’t do, you know that.

PARNELL
: You’ve heard the expression, sowing wild oats? Well, all the men we know sowed a lot of wild oats before they finally settled down and got married.

LYLE
: That’s right. Men
have
to do it. They ain’t like women. Parnell is
still
sowing his wild oats—I sowed mine.

JO
: And a woman that wants to be a decent woman just has to—wait—until the men get tired of going to bed with—harlots!—and decide to settle down?

PARNELL
: Well, it sounds very unjust, I know, but that’s the way it’s always been. I
suppose
the decent women were waiting—though nobody seems to know
exactly
how they spent the time.

JO
: Parnell!

PARNELL
: Well, there
are
some who waited too long.

JO
: Men ought to be ashamed. How can you blame a woman if she—goes wrong? If a decent woman can’t find a decent man—why—it must happen all the time—they get tired of waiting.

LYLE
: Not if they been raised right, no sir, that’s what my Daddy said, and I’ve never known it to fail. And look at you—
you
didn’t get tired of waiting. Ain’t nobody in this town ever been able to say a word against you. Man, I was so scared when I finally asked this girl to marry me. I was afraid she’d turn me out of the house. Because I had been pretty wild. Parnell can tell you.

JO
: I had heard.

LYLE
: But she didn’t. I looked at her, it seemed almost like it was the first time—you know, the first time you really
look
at a woman?—and I thought, I’ll be damned if I don’t believe I can make it with her. I believe I can. And she looked at me like she loved me. It was in her eyes. And it was just like somebody had lifted a great big load off my heart.

JO
: You shouldn’t be saying these things in front of Parnell.

LYLE
: Why not? I ain’t got no secrets from Parnell—he knows about men and women. Look at her blush! Like I told you. Women is more delicate than men.
(He touches her face lightly.)
I know you kind of upset, sugar. But don’t you be nervous. Everything’s going to be all right, and we’re going to be happy again, you’ll see.

JO
: I hope so, Lyle.

LYLE
: I’m going to take me a bath and put some clothes on. Parnell, you sit right there, you hear? I won’t be but a minute.

JO
: What a funny man he is! It don’t do no good at all to get mad at him, you might as well get mad at that baby in there. Parnell? Can I ask you something?

PARNELL
: Certainly.

JO
: Is it true that Lyle has no secrets from you?

PARNELL
: He said that
neither
of you had any secrets from me.

JO
: Oh, don’t play. Lyle don’t know a thing about women—what they’re really like, to themselves. Men don’t know. But I want to ask you a serious question. Will you answer it?

PARNELL
: If I can.

JO
: That means you won’t answer it. But I’ll ask it, anyway. Parnell—was Lyle—is it true what people said? That he was having an affair with Old Bill’s wife and that’s why he shot Old Bill?

PARNELL
: Why are you asking me that?

JO
: Because I have to know! It’s true, isn’t it? He had an affair with Old Bill’s wife—and he had affairs with lots of colored women in this town. It’s
true.
Isn’t it?

PARNELL
: What does it matter who he slept with before he married you, Jo? I know he had a—lot of prostitutes. Maybe some of them were colored. When he was drunk, he wouldn’t have been particular.

JO
: He’s never talked to you about it?

PARNELL
: Why would he?

JO
: Men talk about things like that.

PARNELL
: Men often joke about things like that. But, Jo—what one man tells another man, his friend—can’t be told to women.

JO
: Men certainly stick together. I wish women did. All right. You can’t talk about Lyle. But tell me this. Have
you
ever had an affair with a colored girl? I don’t mean a—a
night.
I mean, did she mean something to you, did you like her, did you—love her? Could you have married her—I mean, just like you would marry a white woman?

PARNELL
: Jo—

JO
: Oh! Tell me the truth, Parnell!

PARNELL
: I loved a colored girl, yes. I think I loved her. But I was only eighteen and she was only seventeen. I was still a virgin. I don’t know if she was, but I think she was. A lot of the other kids in school used to drive over to niggertown at night to try and find black women. Sometimes they bought them, sometimes they frightened them, sometimes they raped them. And they were proud of it, they talked about it all the time. I couldn’t do that. Those kids made me ashamed of my own body, ashamed of everything I felt, ashamed of being white—

JO
: Ashamed of being white.

PARNELL
: Yes.

JO
: How did you meet—this colored girl?

PARNELL
: Her mother worked for us. She used to come, sometimes, to pick up her mother. Sometimes she had to wait. I came in once and found her in the library, she was reading Stendhal.
The Red and The Black.
I had just read it and we talked about it. She was funny—very bright and solemn and very proud—and she was
scared
, scared of me, but much too proud to show it. Oh, she was funny. But she was bright.

JO
: What did she look like?

PARNELL
: She was the color of gingerbread when it’s just come out of the oven. I used to call her Ginger—later. Her name was really Pearl. She had black hair, very black, kind of short, and she dressed it very carefully. Later, I used to tease her about the way she took care of her hair. There’s a girl in this town now who reminds me of her. Oh, I loved her!

JO
: What happened?

PARNELL
: I used to look at her, the way she moved, so beautiful and free, and I’d wonder if at night, when she might be on her way home from someplace, any of those boys at school had said ugly things to her. And then I thought that I wasn’t any better than they were, because I thought my own thoughts were pretty awful. And I wondered what she thought of me. But I didn’t dare to ask. I got so I could hardly think of anyone but her. I got sick wanting to take her in my arms, to take her in my arms and love her and protect her from all those other people who wanted to destroy her. She wrote a little poetry, sometimes she’d show it to me, but she really wanted to be a painter.

JO
: What happened?

PARNELL
: Nothing happened. We got so we told each other everything. She was going to be a painter, I was going to be a
writer. It was our secret. Nobody in the world knew about her
inside
, what she was like, and how she dreamed, but me. And nobody in the world knew about
me
inside, what I wanted, and how I dreamed, but her. But we couldn’t look ahead, we didn’t dare. We talked about going North, but I was still in school, and she was still in school. We couldn’t be seen anywhere together—it would have given her too bad a name. I used to see her sometimes in the movies, with various colored boys. She didn’t seem to have any special one. They’d be sitting in the balcony, in the colored section, and I’d be sitting downstairs in the white section. She couldn’t come down to me, I couldn’t go up to her. We’d meet some nights, late, out in the country, but—I didn’t want to take her in the bushes, and I couldn’t take her anywhere else. One day we were sitting in the library, we were kissing, and her mother came in. That was the day I found out how much black people can hate white people.

JO
: What did her mother do?

PARNELL
: She didn’t say a word. She just looked at me. She just looked at me. I could see what was happening in her mind. She knew that there wasn’t any point in complaining to my mother or my father. It would just make her daughter look bad. She didn’t dare tell her husband. If he tried to do anything, he’d be killed. There wasn’t anything she could do about me. I was just another horny white kid trying to get into a black girl’s pants. She looked at me as though she were wishing with all her heart that she could raise her hand and wipe me off the face of the earth. I’ll never forget that look. I still see it. She walked over to Pearl and I thought she was going to slap her. But she didn’t. She took her by the hand, very sadly, and all she said was, “I’m ready to go now. Come on.” And she took Pearl out of the room.

JO
: Did you ever see her again?

PARNELL
: No. Her mother sent her away.

JO
: But you forgot her? You must have had lots of other girls right quick, right after that.

PARNELL
: I never forgot her.

JO
: Do you think of her—even when you’re with Loretta?

PARNELL
: Not all of the time, Jo. But some of the time—yes.

JO
: And if you found her again?

PARNELL
: If I found her again—yes, I’d marry her. I’d give her the children I’ve always wanted to have.

JO
: Oh, Parnell! If you felt that way about her, if you’ve felt it all this time!

PARNELL
: Yes. I know. I’m a renegade white man.

JO
: Then Lyle could have felt that way about Old Bill’s wife—about Willa Mae. I know that’s not the way he feels about me. And if he felt that way—he could have shot Old Bill—to keep him quiet!

PARNELL
: Jo!

JO
: Yes! And if he could have shot Old Bill to keep him quiet—he could have killed that boy. He could have killed that boy. And if he did—well—that
is
murder, isn’t it? It’s just nothing but murder, even if the boy
was
black. Oh, Parnell! Parnell!

PARNELL
: Jo, please. Please, Jo. Be quiet.

LYLE
(Off)
: What’s all that racket in there?

PARNELL
: I’m telling your wife the story of my life.

LYLE
(Off)
: Sounds pretty goddamn active.

PARNELL
: You’ve never asked him, have you, Jo?

JO
: No. No. No.

PARNELL
: Well, I asked him—

JO
: When?

PARNELL
: Well, I didn’t really
ask
him. But he said he didn’t do it, that it wasn’t true. You heard him. He wouldn’t lie to me.

JO
: No. He wouldn’t lie to you. They say some of the niggers have guns—did you hear that?

PARNELL
: Yes. I’ve heard it. But it’s not true.

JO
:
They
wouldn’t lie to you, either? I’ve just had too much time to worry, I guess—brood and worry. Lyle’s away so often nights—he spends so much time at that store. I don’t know what he does there. And when he comes home, he’s just dead—and he drops right off to sleep.