The Ways of White Folks (21 page)

“What do you mean, talk right?” Bert said.

“I mean talk like a nigger should to a white man,” the Colonel snapped.

“Oh, but I’m not a nigger, Colonel Norwood,” Bert said, “I’m your son.”

The old man frowned at the boy in front of him. “Cora’s son,” he said.

“Fatherless?” Bert asked.

“Bastard,” the old man said.

Bert’s hands closed into fists, so the Colonel opened the drawer where the pistol was. He took it out and laid it on the table.

“You black bastard,” he said.

“I’ve heard that before.” Bert just stood there. “You’re talking about my mother.”

“Well,” the Colonel answered, his fingers playing over the surface of the gun, “what can you do about it?”

The boy felt his whole body suddenly tighten and pull. The muscles of his forearms rippled.

“Niggers like you are hung to trees,” the old man went on.

“I’m not a nigger,” Bert said. “Ain’t you my father? And a hell of a father you are, too, holding a gun on me.”

“I’ll break your black neck for you,” the Colonel shouted. “Don’t talk to me like that!” He jumped up.

“You’ll break my neck?” The boy stood his ground as the father came toward him.

“Get out of here!” The Colonel shook with rage. “Get out! Or I’ll do more than that if I ever lay eyes on you again.” The old man picked up the pistol from the table, yet the boy did not move. “I’ll fill you full of bullets if you come back here. Get off this place! Get to hell out of this county! Now, tonight. Go on!” The Colonel motioned with his pistol toward the door that led to the kitchen and the back of the house.

“Not that way,” Bert said. “I’m not your servant. You must think I’m scared. Well, you can’t drive me out the back way like a dog. You’re not going to run me off, like a field hand you can’t use any more. I’ll go,” the boy said, starting toward the front door, “but not out the back—from my own father’s house.”

“You nigger bastard!” Norwood screamed, springing between his son and the door, but the boy kept calmly on. The steel of the gun was between them, but that didn’t matter. Rather, it seemed to pull them together like a magnet.

“Don’t you …,” Norwood began, for suddenly Bert’s hand grasped the Colonel’s arm, “dare put
your …,” and his old bones began to crack, “black hands on …”

“Why don’t you shoot?” Bert interrupted him, slowly turning his wrist.

“… me!”

“Why don’t you shoot, then?”

The old man twisted and bent in fury and pain, but the gun fell to the floor.

“Why don’t you shoot?” Bert said again as his hands sought his father’s throat. With furious sureness they took the old white neck in their strong young fingers. “Why don’t you shoot then, papa?”

Colonel Norwood clawed the air, breathing hoarsely and loud, his tongue growing stiff and dry, his eyes beginning to burn.

“Shoot—why don’t you, then? Huh? Why?”

The chemicals of their two lives exploded. Everything was very black around them. The white man’s hands stopped clawing the air. His heart stood still. His blood no longer flowed. He wasn’t breathing.

“Why don’t you shoot?” Bert said, but there was no answer.

When the boy’s eyes cleared, he saw his mother standing at the foot of the stairs, so he let the body drop. It fell with a thud, old and white in a path of red from the setting sun.

“Why didn’t he shoot, mama? He didn’t want me
to live. He was white. Why didn’t he shoot then?”

“Tom!” Cora cried, falling across his body. “Colonel Tom! Tom! Tom!”

“He’s dead,” Bert said. “I’m living though.”

“Tom!” Cora screamed, pulling at the dead man. “Colonel Tom!”

Bert bent down and picked up the pistol. “This is what my father wanted to use on me,” he said. “He’s dead. But I can use it on all the white men in Georgia—they’ll be coming to get me now. They never wanted me before, but I know they’ll want me now.” He stuffed the pistol in his shirt. Cora saw what her son had done.

“Run,” she said, rising and going to him. “Run, chile! Out the front way quick, so’s they won’t see you in the kitchen. Make fo’ de swamp, honey. Cross de fields fo’ de swamp. Go de crick way. In runnin’ water, dogs can’t smell no tracks. Hurry, son!”

“Yes, mama,” Bert said slowly. “But if I see they gonna get me before I reach the swamp, then I’m coming back here. Let them take me out of my father’s house—if they can.” He patted the gun inside his shirt, and smiled. “They’ll never string me up to some roadside tree for the crackers to laugh at. Not me!”

“Hurry, chile,” Cora opened the door and the sunset streamed in like a river of blood. “Hurry, chile.”

Bert went out across the wide pillared porch and down the road. He saw Talbot and the storekeeper coming, so he turned off through the trees. And then, because he wanted to live, he began to run. The whole sky was a blaze of color as he ran. Then it began to get dark, and the glow went away.

In the house, Cora started to talk to the dead man on the floor, just as though he were not dead. She pushed and pulled at the body, trying to get him to get up himself. Then she heard the footsteps of Talbot and the storekeeper on the porch. She rose and stood as if petrified in the middle of the floor. A knock, and two men were peering through the screen door into the dusk-dark room. Then Talbot opened the door.

“Hello, Cora,” he said. “What’s the matter with you, why didn’t you let us in? Where’s that damn fool boy o’ your’n goin’, comin’ out the front way liked he owned the place? What’s the matter with you, woman? Can’t you talk? Where’s Colonel Norwood?”

“Let’s have some light in here,” said the storekeeper, turning a button beside the door.

“Great God!” Talbot cried. “Jim, look at this!” The Colonel’s body lay huddled on the floor, old and purple-white, at Cora’s feet.

“Why, he’s blue in the face,” the storekeeper said bending over the body. “Oh! Get that nigger we saw walking out the door! That nigger bastard of
Cora’s. Get that nigger!… Why, the Colonel’s dead!”

Talbot rushed toward the door. “That nigger,” he cried. “He must be running toward the swamps now.… We’ll get him. Telephone town, Jim, there in the library. Telephone the sheriff. Telephone the Beale family down by the swamp. Get men, white men, after that nigger.”

The storekeeper ran into the library and began to call on the phone. Talbot looked at Cora standing in the center of the room. “Where’s Norwood’s car? In the barn? Talk, you black wench, talk!”

But Cora didn’t say a word. She watched the two white men rush out of the house into the yard. In a few minutes, she heard the roar of a motor hurtling down the road. It was dark outside. Night had come.

Cora turned toward the body on the floor. “My boy,” she said, “he can’t get to de swamp now. They telephoned the white folks down that way to head him off. He’ll come back home.” She called aloud, “Colonel Tom, why don’t you get up from there and help me? You know they’re after our boy. You know they got him out there runnin’ from de white folks in de night. Runnin’ from de hounds and de guns and de ropes and all what they uses to kill poor niggers with.… Ma boy’s out there runnin’. Why don’t you help him?” Cora bent over the body. “Colonel Tom, you hear me? You said he was
ma boy, ma bastard boy. I heard you. But he’s your’n, too—out yonder in de dark runnin’—from your people. Why don’t you get up and stop ’em? You know you could. You’s a power in Polk County. You’s a big man, and yet our son’s out there runnin’—runnin’ from po’ white trash what ain’t worth de little finger o’ nobody’s got your blood in ’em, Tom.” Cora shook the dead body fiercely. “Get up from there and stop ’em, Colonel Tom.” But the white man did not move.

Gradually Cora stopped shaking him. Then she rose and backed away from this man she had known so long. “You’s cruel, Tom,” she whispered. “I might a-knowed it—you’d be like that, sendin’ ma boy out to die. I might a-knowed it ever since you beat him that time under de feet of de horses. Well, you won’t mistreat him no more now. That’s finished.” She went toward the steps. “I’m gonna make a place for him. Upstairs under ma bed. He’s ma chile, and I’ll look out for him. And don’t you come in ma bedroom while he’s up there. Don’t you come to my bed either no more a-tall. I calls for you to help me now, Tom, and you just lays there. I calls you to get up now, and you don’t move. Whenever you called
me
in de night, I woke up. Whenever you wanted me to love you, I reached out ma arms to you. I bored you five children and now,” her voice rose hysterically, “one of ’em’s out yonder runnin’ from your people. Our youngest
boy’s out yonder in de dark, runnin’! I ’spects you’s out there, too, with de rest of de white folks. Uh-um! Bert’s runnin’ from
you
, too. You said he warn’t your’n—Cora’s po’ little yellow bastard. But he is your’n, Colonel Tom, and he’s runnin’ from you. Yes, out yonder in de dark, you,
you
runnin’ our chile with a gun in yo’ hand, and Talbot followin’ behind you with a rope to hang Bert with.” She leaned against the wall near the staircase, sobbing violently. Then she went back toward the man on the floor. Her sobs gradually ceased as she looked down at his crumpled body. Then she said slowly, “Listen, I been sleepin’ with you too long not to know that this ain’t you, Tom, layin’ down here with yo’ eyes shut on de floor. You can’t fool me—you ain’t never been so still like this before—you’s out yonder runnin’ ma boy! Colonel Thomas Norwood runnin’ ma boy through de fields in de dark, runnin’ ma po’ little helpless Bert through de fields in de dark for to lynch him and to kill him.… God damn you, Tom Norwood!” Cora cried, “God damn you!”

She went upstairs. For a long time the body lay alone on the floor in the parlor. Later Cora heard Sam and Livonia weeping and shouting in the kitchen, and Negro voices outside in the dark, and feet going down the road. She thought she heard the baying of hounds afar off, too, as she prepared a hiding place for Bert in the attic. Then she came
down to her room and put the most beautiful quilts she had on her bed. “Maybe he’ll just want to rest here first,” she thought. “Maybe he’ll be awful tired and just want to rest.”

Then she heard a loud knock at the door, and white voices talking, and Sam’s frightened answers. The doctor and the undertakers had come to take the body away. In a little while she heard them lifting it up and putting it in the dead wagon. And all the time, they kept talking, talking.

“… ’ll be havin’ his funeral in town … ain’t nothin’ but niggers left out here … didn’t have no relatives, did he, Sam?… Too bad.… Nobody to look after his stuff tonight. Every white man’s able to walk’s out with the posse … that young nigger’ll swing before midnight … what a neck-tie party!… Say, Sam!”

“Yes, sah! Yes, sah!”

“… that black housekeeper, Cora?… murderin’ bastard’s mother?”

“She’s upstairs, I reckon, sah.”

“… like to see how she looks. Get her down here.”

“Yes, sah!” Sam’s teeth were chattering. “And how about a little drink before we start back to town?”

“Yes, sah! Cora’s got de keys fo’ de licker, sah.”

“Well, get her down, double quick, then!”

“Yes, sah!” Cora heard Sam coming up for her.

Downstairs, the voices went on. They were talking about her. “… lived together … ain’t been a white woman here overnight since the wife died when I was a kid … bad business, though, livin’ with a,” in drawling cracker tones, “nigger.”

As Cora came down the steps, the undertakers looked at her half-grinning. “So you’re the black wench that’s got these educated darkie children? Hum-m! Well I guess you’ll see one of ’em swinging full o’ bullet holes before you get up in the morning.… Or maybe they’ll burn him. How’d you like a roasted darkie for breakfast, girlie?”

Cora stood quite still on the stairs. “Is that all you wanted to say to me?” she asked.

“Now, don’t get smart,” the doctor said. “Maybe you think there’s nobody to boss you now. We’re goin’ to have a little drink before we go. Get out a bottle.”

“I take ma orders from Colonel Norwood, suh,” Cora said.

“Well, you’ll take no more orders from him,” the undertaker declared. “He’s outside in the dead wagon. Get along now and get out a bottle.”

“He’s out yonder with de mob,” Cora said.

“I tell you he’s in my wagon, dead as a door nail.”

“I tell you he’s runnin’ with de mob,” Cora said.

“I believe this black woman’s done gone nuts,” the doctor cried. “Sam, you get the licker.”

“Yes, sah!” Sam sputtered with fright. “Co-r-r-ra, gimme …”

But Cora did not move.

“Ah-a-a-a, Lawd hab mercy!” Sam cried.

“To hell with the licker, Charlie,” the undertaker said nervously. “Let’s start back to town. We want to get in on some of that excitement, too. They should’ve found that nigger by now—and I want to see ’em drag him out here.”

“All right, Jim,” the other agreed. Then, to Cora, “But don’t you darkies go to bed until you see the bonfire. You all are gettin’ beside yourselves around Polk County. We’ll burn a few more of you if you don’t watch out.”

The men left and the wheels of the wagon turned on the drive. Sam began to cry.

“Hab mercy! Lawd Jesus, hab mercy! Cora, is you a fool?
Is
you? Then why didn’t you give de mens de licker, riled as these white folks is? In ma old age, is I gonna be burnt by de crackers? Lawd, is I sinned? Lawd, what has I done?” He looked at Cora. “I sho ain’t gonna stay heah tonight. I’s gwine.”

“Go on,” she said. “The Colonel can get his own drinks when he comes back.”

“Lawd God Jesus!” Sam, his eyes bucking from their sockets, bolted from the room fast as his old legs could carry him. Cora heard him running blindly through the house, moaning.

She went to the kitchen where pots were still boiling on the stove, but Livonia had fled, the biscuits burnt in the oven. She looked out the back door, but no lights were visible anywhere. The cabins were quiet.

“I reckon they all gone,” she said to herself. “Even ma boy, Willie. I reckon he gone, too. You see, Colonel Tom, everybody’s scared o’ you. They know you done gone with de mob again, like you did that time they hung Luke Jordan and you went to help ’em. Now you’s out chasin’ ma boy, too. I hears you hollerin’.”