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MAN
IN THE
CANE
by
MENTIS CARRERE
VANTAGE PRESS • NEW YORK


Univ. Library, Univ. Calif., Santa Cruz
FIRST EDITION
All rights reserved, including the right of
reproduction in whole or in part in any form
Copyright, 1956, by Mentis Carrere
Published by Vantage Press, Inc.
120 West 31st Street, New York 1, N. Y.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 56-5811


3505
A1735
114
To My LATE FATHER
Isadore Carrere


Fighting mosquitoes at every step, Jimmy Dixon left his River
Bend home and walked briskly down the Placquemines Parish
public road. As he proceeded parallel to the west bank of the
Mississippi, he fingered the knapsack on his shoulder, assuring
himself that his book was in the bag.
To his right lay field after field of nearly full-grown sugar cane,
their long, slender leaves creaking under the weight of morning
dew.
Jimmy hadn't been out that early in the morning since his
return in early spring from the Army. Taking a deep breath, he
puffed his lungs with the cleanly rinsed air, then turned off the
road into a narrow winding path through tall bloodweed. Hordes
of mosquitoes came up at him out of the underbrush; he quickened
his steps, flailing at them with a palmetto brush. In a moment he
would see the shanty, and that's all he expected to see; he would
not think of awakening her at this time of morning.
Antonia, sweet little angel! He could still feel her arms locked
about his neck and her pliant body pressed close to his. Her goodby
in the shanty doorway with the lamplight falling across her shoul-
ders, her gentle, light-olive face turned to the starry darkness,
would be with him for a long time. Through her smile he had
seen the tears in her hazel, young-girl eyes.
He turned a bend in the path and there she was, just as he'd
left her the night before in the doorway! He eyed her with
astonishment and delight, then broke into a run, calling out,
“Antonia, you haven't been standing there all night, I hope!”
"I'd be crazy to do that, wouldn't I?” she laughed. “I went
right to bed so's I could be up early to see you again.”
“But we said our goodbys, and I wasn't going to come by
again till I got that hundred dollars. Remember?”
"I knew you'd be by again, Jimmy.”
He stepped close and picked up her hands. “I appreciate it


horse and waited for Jimmy to catch up. Again their eyes met.
Jimmy stared as he walked, Lester as he sat.
“Hop in, Jimmy. I'll give you a lift."
"A lift, eh,” said Jimmy, and threw down his knapsack. He
grabbed the reins and said quietly, “You won't drive off this time
until I've had it out with you."
"Take it casy, fellow,” said Lester, and began grinning.
“It's about time we evened things up,” said Jimmy, and moved
his hundred and eighty-five pounds close to the buggy.
Lester frowned. “You can't settle your beef that way. We might
both get hurt."
"I'll take that chance."
“Why keep fighting about it? We've both been to France,
haven't we?"
“So what?"
“So the big thing I learned there was when bullets were flying
and shrapnel was digging holes right at your feet, you look around
and you see a colored boy in the same kind of uniform as your
own. You look at him and begin doing a little thinking. That's
why I'm offering you a lift. I want to even up things with you
too, but not in the way you do.”
Jimmy spat on the ground. “Pretty speech, but it won't work.
This is pay-off time, and I owe you a pretty good sum."
Lester sat up erect. “Damn it, I ain't afraid of you!"
Jimmy glared at Lester a long while in silence. Abruptly, he
thought of Antonia and he dropped the reins, picked up his knap-
sack and started away.
“Let's be friends, Jimmy," Lester called out, starting up the
horse.
“You mean it?” said Jimmy, looking back.
"I mean it.”
"Okay, I'll ride with you."
After an awkward silence, Lester told Jimmy he was going to
Louise to bid his grandpa goodby before taking the morning train
for New Orleans. “I'm going back to L. S. U. to continue my law
course,” Lester finished.


"You're lucky,” said Jimmy, thinking of his unfinished course
at Tuskegee and what it had cost his dad.
“Lucky, how?"
"You can go to Louisiana State. I can't.”
"Why don't you go to Southern University?”
“Calling that school a university don't make it one."
"We gotta face facts, Jimmy. We still got Jim Crow hereabouts,
and besides, colored people make trouble in mixed schools—just
by being there. You'd be knocking your head against a stone wall
trying to get into a white school.”
“I never tried to get into one. I'm just saying it's something
I can't do."
"All right, make the best of what you can do. Get too bitter
about it and you'll be six feet under before you know it."
“In other words, stay in my place, eh?”
“Only because you have to, Jimmy."
“Plenty reason to be bitter, if you ask me.”
Lester turned his head and eyed Jimmy sharply. “Keep it up,
fellow," he said slowly, "and you're going to be swinging off an
oak tree.”
"Like hell I will!”
They turned a curve in the road and Louise, a plantation almost
two miles wide, loomed before them. At the entrance gate Jimmy
and Lester shook hands. Lester drove off to Big House, while
Jimmy turned into the cart lane and walked to the teamshed across
the pasture.
Field hands were sitting around waiting to be hauled to the
fields. A white man was slouched in his saddle. Jimmy went up
to him.
"Sir, I'm looking for work. You hiring anyone?"
The man looked Jimmy up and down, rolling his wad of tobacco
to the other side of his mouth and grinding it between stained
molars. “Sure I need hands. Need a hell of a lot of 'em.” He hesi-
tated. “But not your kind!"
"I'm a good worker.”
"You talk too smart, like you had book-learnin'. Smart niggers
ain't good for nothin', never.” The overseer turned his horse around.


Jimmy glanced around. Black and brown field hands were
watching him. Turning on his heel, he retraced his steps through
the big gate and continued south on the public road.
“Damned bastard!” he said aloud, and switched angrily at the
mosquitoes all around his head.


Jimmy climbed the levee. He'd go to Saint Agnes, ten miles away.
After a mile of laborious walking on the uneven levee top, he saw
a droopy-headed, razor-back mule pulling a dump cart along the
public road, which was dotted with mudholes-his reason for walk-
ing the levee. The driver looked up.
"Hi yuh, Jimmy! Ain't seen yuh sence us was in France. How's
bidness?”
"Pigbelly, you old scamp! How far down you going?”
“I'ontown. An' yuh?"
“Saint Agnes.”
“Whul, come on. What yuh waitin' fuh?"
Jimmy climbed into the cart while it was still in motion, put
his knapsack on the floor and sat on a board that rested across the
two sides of the lopsided vehicle. South of Rushville, which was
known as “Nigger Bend,” they waved at the truck farmers plowing
between long rows of orange trees—now a white, now a black.
“Them mens don't have no white man ridin' b'hin' 'em,”
said Pigbelly.
"They own their own land, Pigbelly—which makes a big dif-
ference."
"It sure must!"
While the cart was sliding in and out of ruts, Jimmy jumped
to the ground to kill several black flies that were boring into the
back of the mule at a point where her tail couldn't swish them.
Climbing back into the cart, he related his experience with the
Louise overseer.
“Tha's all that white man calls yuh-jis nigger?” asked Pigbelly.
“Wasn't that enough?”
"Ah sees yuh ain't worked on no plantation b'foh. Ah has an'
ah's been cussed at plenty from boss mens which ride in the saddle.
They's gwine cuss yuh too if yuh work on a plantation.”
Sally's shadow was directly in front of her now. It was time for


a bite. Jimmy took two sandwiches from his knapsack and they ate
while the hubs of the two-wheeled cart moved back and forth with
a clumping sound.
“Yuh get riled over jis bein' called a nigger," said Pigbelly
abruptly, pausing in his chewing, “and yuh ain't going to be a live
nigger long."
“That's what you think," said Jimmy. “But I think different."
Leaving Irontown on foot, Jimmy withdrew a book from his
bag and began to memorize a poem he'd pasted on the inside cover:
A capsule of pleasure, a barrel of grief,
So runs the life of man;
None is exempt, there's no relief,
Men try to escape but none ever can.
Climbing to the top of the levee, he saw two smokestacks loom-
ing in the distance. A lightning rod spiraled above a smaller chimney
in the midst of miles of sugar cane. That would be Big House.
Jimmy went on toward it, walking faster, and the house presently
came into full view, its white-painted surface glistening in the after-
noon sun. A black man was trimming rosebushes on both sides
of the three-foot pedestrian lane that led in from the public road.
Another black man in tattered field clothes, his hair knotted into
2 thousand balls, dragged bare feet after him as he ambled to the
public road from the Big House lane. Jimmy jammed the book
into his knapsack and called out, “Hey, fellow!"
"Hi, and whar yuh gwine?"
"Right here. Looking for work."
"Got plenty here. Facts is, they's too much work fuh me even.”
“My name's Jimmy."
"Ah’m Sammy. Ah's the yahd man here. Ah ain't no fiel' nigger.”
"Huhn,” Jimmy grunted and descended the levee. He crossed
the road and entered a large wooden gate that stood open. Just
inside the entrance, to the right of the cart lane, was a castor bean
tree and a clump of weeds. North of this section a vegetable garden
flourished.


As he approached the living quarters of the plantation hands,
colored children of school age were darting in and out of the cabins.
These houses of two, three and four rooms presented an assortment
of rotting galleries, broken banisters and lime-scaled walls.
On the front steps of a cabin, two old brown-skinned women
were sitting quietly.
“Good evening,” said Jimmy.
“Tol'ble, son, jis tol’ble," said one of the women.
"My name's Jimmy.”
"Mah name's Lucy. And this here's mah sister Jenny. Ah got
the rheumatiz bad, son.”
“Well, it's good you can take things easy."
“Can't do nothin' else,” said Jenny.
“We's done spen'us days,” said Lucy. "Now us is jis waitin'."
"You get a pension?”
"Pension? Us jis pen's on us chilluns and gran'chilluns."
They laughed and Jimmy laughed with them. “I'll be back some-
time,” he said.
He reached the fence that separated the living quarters from
the pasture. He turned here and walked south toward the shops,
where men were moving about from one task to another. In the
far west corner of the pasture stood the whitewashed mule stable.
Under a tree in the center of the yard sat the watering tubs. A mule
was drinking, her head submerged to the eyes in the freshly pumped
river water.
Jimmy entered the blacksmith shop where colored men were
hammering plowshares, colters, traces, doubletrees and singletrees.
The biceps of the men bulged as they lifted their arms, hammered
three times on the red-hot iron, then bounced their hammers several
times on the anvils and back to the hot metal.
In the harness room repairmen were sewing mule collars, rivet-
ing saddles, attaching bits to bridles and splicing ropes.
“Lookin' fuh work, boy?” asked a harness tailor.
“Yep, any chances ?”
“Lots o'chances. Yuh from the city, eh?”
"Nope, River Bend."
“Yuh talks proper, lak them city boys.”
13


At the railroad siding men were unloading carloads of mer-
chandise—boxes of brogans, sacks of cornmeal, barrels of salt pork
and sacks of oats.
“You're sure getting in lots of stuff,” said Jimmy.
"All fuh the commissary,” said a stalwart brown man, throwing
down a sack of sugar on the floor of a waiting cart. " 'Ceptin' the
eats. They's fuh the mules.”
Teamsters were backing up their cartloads of corn in the shuck
into a large barn. In an open section of the field, workers were
pitching hay onto carts, others were filling wheel ruts in the head-
land. A man approached on muleback. It was Sammy.
"Where's the boss?” asked Jimmy. "I want to hire in."
“Go down yonder to the li'l back gate, then turn to yoh right
at that li'l buildin'. Tha's the buggyhouse. When yoh gits there
turn to yoh lef' and go straight till yoh gits to them commissary
steps. Yoh'l fin' Mist' Joe Tillman there."
At the end of the trail Jimmy saw a white man with a rugged
face, long, graying eyebrows and a heavy head of slightly gray
hair sitting under a chinaberry tree and writing in a ledger as he
talked to a black man.
“Where'd you work last, boy?” he asked, not lifting his head.
"Governor Warmoth's place, suh. Tha's whar ah work las',"
said the applicant, fidgeting with his hat.
Jimmy fell in line behind three other applicants.
“Did you say your name was Finnigan?” asked the white man
of the applicant just ahead of Jimmy.
“Yas, suh, tha's right, suh.”
"Never heard of a black Irishman before. How 'n hell did you
get such a name?”
“Mah pappy he done got it from his pappy, an' his pappy done
got it from—”
"All right, all right-you're hired.”
Jimmy moved close to the table, knapsack securely on his shoul-
der and both hands at his sides.
The overseer raised his furrowed brow. "Nigger," he snapped,
"take off that hat! Don't you know better than to stand before a
white man with your hat on?"
of the applin tha's right,
Irishman
14


Jimmy was slow to take off the hat. The overseer jumped to his
feet. “You want to get knocked down?" he shouted.
“No, sir, I don't.”
"Say that again, and say it like a nigger!"
"No, suh, I don't, suh."
The overseer sat back down, eyeing Jimmy suspiciously. He
swung his pencil up and down on the ledger as if trying to figure
out whether Jimmy had been trying to be sarcastic. Abruptly, he
snapped, “What's your name?"
“Jimmy Dixon, sir."
"Huhn!" The overseer held his head back, staring at Jimmy
down his nose. "You look like a nigger but you don't talk like one.
Where you from?”.
"River Bend, sir.”
Tillman leaned back in his chair, clasping his hands behind his
head. “How old are you?”
"Twenty-two."
The plantation boss looked curiously at Jimmy's knapsack. After
a moment he leaned forward to pass his hand over its bulky sur-
face. “What you got there, boy?”
“Working clothes and such, sir."
“What else? What's this here thing here?”
“Oh, that, sir? It's a book."
The overseer turned the book over and read aloud, "Frederick
Douglass, by Booker T. Washington.” He looked up. “You can
read this book?"
“Yes, sir."
Jimmy stood uneasily in the long silence that followed. He had
to have that hundred! Finally, he said, “Won't you give me a
chance, sir? I'm a good worker."
“Hell,” said the overseer loudly, "a nigger with book-learning
ain't no good! He just gets more trifling."
"You're wrong, sir. I—".
Tillman jumped to his feet. "Shut up! Get a li'l book-learning
and right off a nigger wants to sass a white man.” He flopped down
in his chair.
“I'm sorry, sir."
15


"Sorry, eh?” Tillman folded his arms, resting his elbows on
the arms of the chair. He eyed Jimmy coldly for fully a minute,
then said, “Maybe I will give you a chance-maybe I will." He
smiled craftily. “Maybe you don't know you're a nigger yet. Or
do you?"
"Yes, sir."
“Hmm. Take number fifty cabin and report to the teamshed
before sunrise in the morning. Henry'll have something special
for you."
“Thank you, sir.” Jimmy reached for his book.
The overseer slapped a hand on it. “I'll keep this here. Get
going!"
“But, sir—"
“I said, get going!”
Jimmy, hat still in his hand, started away.
“Just a minute, you!"
Jimmy stopped and looked back.
"Wipe that damned look off your face, or I'll fire you before
you start.”
Jimmy did the best he could.
“Okay, get going—and don't let me see that look on your
ugly black puss again.”
Jimmy went on, gripping the hat tightly.


On the street facing his cabin, Jimmy gazed at the scaly white-
washed planks that formed the outside walls. Walking to the gallery,
he kicked at the rotting joist on the ground. He opened the front
door and stood staring at the dirty floor. A bunk, nailed to the
wall under the window, was the only furniture in the house. A
stiff, dust-covered mattress lay upon wooden slats. .
Jimmy hung his knapsack on a hook jutting from the grimy
wall, then stared at a ragged garment hanging from a nail. He
spread it on the floor, forming a V with its short legs. A slit in
the back ran up to the waistline. Governor splits! He threw the
female underwear in the fireplace and went outside. On each side
of the doorway sat an open barrel on cypress blocks three feet high.
A wooden trough from the roof brought rainwater from the eaves
into the barrels. Wiggletails were racing around in the shallow
water. Jimmy turned and stared at the rear of Big House. A cistern
on tall brick pillars was screened against insects.
On his way to the commissary to get a broom and a couple
of boxes, he fell to the ground to avoid being swarmed by low-
Aying bees. “Why the hell don't you guys gang up on the over-
seer?” he said through set teeth. “Why me?”
At the commissary he found a middle-aged clerk opening up
crates. The man glanced up, but continued to draw nails. The store
was a hodgepodge of crates, bulging sacks and barrels. Open con-
tainers of grits and other coarse staples stood exposed everywhere.
The clerk finally put down the nail puller. "What you want, boy?”
"A broom, sir."
The clerk hesitated. “Stranger in these parts, ain't you?”
"Sort of.”
The clerk handed Jimmy two brooms which he'd pulled down
from the ceiling rack. “Take your choice.”
Jimmy picked one. "How much?”
The clerk passed a hand over his graying moustache. "What
17


difference it makes how much?” He reached for the account book.
"I want to pay for it now.”
The clerk turned over the book's pages. “What's your name?"
he asked.
"Jimmy Dixon, but you won't find it there."
"It ought to be here."
“How could it be? I haven't bought anything here yet.”
“You working here, ain't you?"
"Just hired in."
“Then your name's here. And here it is— Jimmy Dixon." He
started to write.
"I said I'm paying cash.” Jimmy took a silver dollar from his
pocket. “How much?”
“Four bits.”
Jimmy took the change and went his way. The clerk smiled
and completed the entry.
At the rear of the store Jimmy picked up two boxes from a
stockpile and went to his cabin. He started sweeping and the dust
rose in clouds. Stepping outside, he picked up a tin can, dipped it
in the amber-colored water in the barrel and sprinkled it on the
floor. He swept the walls, raking down cobwebs and lime scales.
He then turned the broom around and jabbed at the sealed mud-
daubers' nests against the ceiling. They fell, exposing newly born
insects. He finally swept the floor clean, dusted the bunk and spread
a sheet over the mattress.
At sundown, when he crossed the yard, field hands were rushing
home from many sections of the plantation. Some carried scythes,
others shovels and pitchforks. Plowmen rode on their one-planked
slides, their plows resting securely under angle irons forged to fit
the shares and bolted down to the front end of the plank. Team
after team passed him, the artful plowmen bobbing up and down
on one foot behind fast-trotting mules to steady their conveyances
when riding over rough spots.
The sweaty mules, relieved of harness, rolled in the dust. Many
got as far as their backs, with their legs kicking in the air. A few
turned from side to side. Jimmy watched the mules bury their
faces in the drinking tubs, swallowing water through their nostrils
18


and mouths. Their thirsts quenched, the mules trotted off to the
stable and waited impatiently for the stableman. They stood alert,
cars pointing forward, tails switching with anxiety for their oats,
corn, hay and blackstrap molasses.
A mule came forward to meet the stableman. She got into step
behind him, nuzzling his shoulders. He broke into a run.
The bars were let down and all the mules tried to squeeze in
at once. One of them, forced to back out, bent her ears sharply
and kicked her way into the stable. Jimmy laughed and went on
to the commissary.
At the store field hands were passing in and out through the
doorway. A man asked for four bits worth of saltmeat. The clerk
cut off a hunk from a shoulder and handed it to him. The man
walked out of the store and the clerk made an entry in the account
book. Another wanted six bits worth of cornmeal. The clerk scooped
up two large bags of the meal from a barrel and handed them to
the worker, who went his way. Another entry was made in the
account book.
A tall blond man came from an anteroom and began waiting
on customers. Jimmy fell in line. That other clerk meant trouble
for him.
"Next!" the new clerk called out.
“How much is your saltmeat?” asked Jimmy.
The clerk stared at him. “Listen, boy, I'm here to dish stuff out
to you. How much meat you want-two bits, four bits or what?”
“That depends on the amount I get.”
"What you worryin' 'bout? Get the amount you want-this
store'll carry you."
“I'm sure it would.”
“All right, what you want?" He spat.
"Two pounds, please.”
The clerk threw the meat on the scale. "Two and a quarter
pounds. What else?”
Jimmy bought a lot of other food items, pricing each one as
he went along. "That's all, sir. How much?” he asked.
The clerk, ignoring Jimmy's question, reached for the account
he Jimmy bought lot of other food items pricing, cach one as
19


book. Picking up the pencil, he looked at the quiet field hands,
who were watching.
He turned back to Jimmy. “What's your name?”
"My name? I'm paying cash."
The clerk looked stern. “Come on, nigger, I got to charge this
stuff!"
"I've told you I'm paying for it.”
“Hell and be damned!" the clerk shouted. He went to the senior
clerk. “Bill, got a smart nigger here that wants to pay cash. What'll
I do?"
Bill turned to look at Jimmy. “Take it. And complete the trans-
action, too."
The young clerk faced Jimmy. “Four-fifty,” he said, a wry smile
on his face.
Jimmy paid and went on his way.
Jimmy was at the teamshed before sunrise. Field hands were
pouring out of their cabins, those with scythes and shovels going
directly to the field. Others stood at the shed waiting for team carts
to take them to work.
Jimmy looked around. He knew Henry would not be a white
man, because Joe Tillman had not told him to see Mr. Henry. A
heavy-set dark-brown man came up to him and said, “My name's
Bigman."
"Mine's Jimmy. I'm looking for Henry.”
"Henry? That's the li'l nigger over yonder with spurs on his
brogans.”
Jimmy thanked Bigman and went up to Henry. "I'm Jimmy,"
he said.
"Good. Wait here fuh me. Them teamsters don't look like
they's awake.”
Upon Henry's approach, the teamsters bestirred themselves
with their hitching—some to carts, some to mowing machines, some
to plows. Others mounted the bare backs of their collared mules
and rode off to their plows in the field.
Henry headed for a team cart that was ready. “Git aboard!” he
ordered. “The sun's risin'!".
20


The teamster cracked his whip and the rumbling cartload of
workers was off to the field.
Henry returned to Jimmy. “Follow that cartload of hay over
yonder,” he said, and smiled thinly.
At the hay barn the driver climbed on the load of hay and
plunged his fork into the fodder. He leaned on the handle as Jimmy
approached. “Yuh gwine work here, podner?”
"Guess so, why?"
"Nothin'. Ah's jis wonderin'” Henry got off his mule. "Git in
the loft, Jimmy, an' pack hay tight g’inst the rafters.”
Jimmy stumbled over ears of corn in the barn and climbed a
stepladder to the loft. At the window he picked up a pitchfork.
So this was the special job Joe Tillman had planned for him!
The teamster pitched hay through the window, the only opening
in the loft. Jimmy dragged it and packed it away. The more he
tugged at the dry fodder, the more the teamster pitched it at
him. He scratched his back to ease the sticking of sharp particles.
Wiping his moist face, he listened to the teamster sing:
You
Ah done sont fuh yoh pa an' yuh done come.
Boy, this a man's job! Make no mistake!
Bossman 'spects yuh make hay hum,
But ah jis knows yuh won't las', by Jake.
106!
cts
The teamster drove off. Jimmy, pulling at the hay, cleared his
throat and spat out the gray accumulation. The bright outside
gleamed through an aperture. “Damned stuff!” said Jimmy aloud,
and threw himself on the floor. He put his head out the window
and inhaled deeply.
His breathing spell was short-lived. In rolled another cart,
stacked high. "How yuh doin', pod?”
“All right.” Jimmy squirmed to minimize the hay pricks. His
blue denim shirt stuck sweatily to his skin. On the third load
sat another worker. Jimmy perked up. He could use some help.
Henry rode up. “Joe,” he said, “help Ben chunk it in, an' when
Jimmy give up, take his place. If he still hol' out, come back to
the fiel'."


The two men jammed the window.
Puffing, Jimmy tugged and packed. His wet denims hugged his
legs. Water, dripping down his thighs into his brogans, made a
slushing noise when he walked. He cleared the window and saw
the cart roll off. Tillman wasn't the only one after him. Field
hands were getting a kick out of his misery.
The whistle blew for breakfast. Jimmy descended the ladder
and Alopped down on a pile of corn. He ate greedily from a tin
bucket.
At twelve he went to his cabin and changed into dry clothes,
and, after eating, he lay across the bunk, rolling from side to side
to relieve the dull ache in his back and hips. He was thinking of
Antonia and her soft lips pressed tightly against his when finally
he fell asleep.
Three sharp blasts from the drain-machine whistle woke him
with a start. Doggone! He stretched and yawned. Sliding to the
door, he slipped on his shoes and dragged himself out of the shack.
He stuck with the hayloft until the end of the week, which
finished up the hay harvest.


Teboy elbowed his way out of the group. “Ah ain't talkin' 'bout
yoh winnin's," he said. “It's yoh 'vestment.”
“Jimmy here kin write,” said Clark. “Let him write down us
names an' the amount each say he got comin'."
Teboy faced Jimmy. “Good idea. Write down the names o' these
niggers, Jimmy.”
Jimmy produced a pencil, but didn't have any paper. Clark
picked up a piece of paper bag from the willows and handed it to
Jimmy. Jimmy hesitated before touching the bag. “Is it clean?”.
As the men sang out their names and the amount each said
he'd invested, Jimmy wrote it down. Adding the figures, he found
the sum to be three times greater than the cash Teboy was holding.
Teboy looked around at the expectant faces. “Would yuh peanut
gamblers be satisfied with what me an' Jimmy say do?”
The men agreed. Teboy and Jimmy stepped to one side. In a
few minutes they returned to the group.
Teboy spoke up. “Us knows Bigman had one dollar comin'
to him, 'cause he done shot foh bits twice and lost. The rest gits a
even divide with what's lef’.”
“Hell,” grumbled Clark, "some o' them niggers didn't even
play no dice. Yuh givin' them money too?”.
“Yuh done said already yuh'd leave things to me an' Jimmy.
Now, shet yoh Goddamned mouf an' take what yuh gits!
“Here, take yoh buck,” he said to Bigman. “Ah's got three dol-
lars lef'. Tha's thirty cents for each o'yuh squawkers. Come and
git it an' no bellyachin'.”
The men left the batture joking about who got bunged up the
worst. Jimmy followed to the levee. These guys seemed to fight
just for the hell of it.


The last Saturday in the month, Jimmy left for the field in high
spirits. It was pay day. All of his thoughts were about how much
he would save out of the seventeen-fifty he'd earned for the month.
In the field, he took a stone from his pocket and whetted his
scythe. As he mowed down the cocklebur bushes, he wondered
why Buddy Bones and Charley Patterson had expressed a dislike
for pay day.
At eight o'clock, he picked up his breakfast bucket and sauntered
over to where Buddy and Charley were plowing. He stood on the
freshly plowed earth watching the team approach the headland.
Buddy was sitting lady-fashion on a rawhide saddle that was girded
to the left hind mule. His fork rein was fastened to the hame
of the saddled mule. He sat idly while the six mules crept along,
cropping whatever green growth they could reach. Charley, walking
behind the plow, barely lifted one foot before the other.
“Gee way!” yelled Buddy, finally reaching the headland.
The two lead mules moved to the right, their traces slackened.
The two center mules followed. The driver guided the two hind
mules to keep them from swinging around while the plow was
still turning over the earth. On the headland the plow dragged on
its moldboard to the next furrow. Charley pulled the wiregrass
from the colter and cleared the dirt from beneath the plowshare
with a wooden paddle.
Jimmy joined the two men as they sat on the plow beam to eat
their breakfast. “I heard what you fellows said yesterday about
pay day. Why don't you like it?”
Charley chewed thoughtfully. Buddy said, “Us don't git no
money on pay day. How come us ought to like it?”
“Yeah, how come?” asked Charley. “Commissary gits all us
makes. All us gits is a settlement!"
"An' it ain't never in us favor," piped Buddy. "All ah gits is,
.
27


'Buddy, yuh owes the commissary only foh dollars an' six bits
this mont'.' Hell, ah don't care if pay day never come!”
"Don't you guys know if you bought more at the commissary
than you make during the month?” asked Jimmy.
"Us don't know nothin'!” said Charley. “Us buys and them
clerks writes. Us don't know what they's done writ.”
Jimmy stood up to go. "Hell, I don't think I could keep on
working that way.”
As he slow-dragged behind the plow, Charley yelled to Jimmy,
“Yuh'll see this evenin' at the pay counter!”
After dinner, Charley and Buddy went to Jimmy to settle an
argument.
"Jimmy," said Charley, “this here crazy nigger's been tryin' to
tell me that down in River Bend white folks an' niggers play
poker together. Ah tell Buddy white folks in the souf don't do
that.”
“Sure,” said Jimmy, “they play poker together. They eat together
too. Some of 'em even sleep together.”
“Shucks,” said Charley, “white mens sleeps with black 'omans
here, too-in the loft, 'gainst haystacks, an' in the cane."
Jimmy didn't mean that way. He meant living together as hus-
band and wife like his maternal grandmother and grandfather,
who had lived together for sixty-one years without benefit of
marriage; and like his Aunt Sarah, who was living with a white
man for whom she had borne three children.
"Yoh aunt done tuck up with that white man jis like some
niggers does here,” said Buddy.
"Well, not exactly. Black folks who take up can still marry if
they want to, but white and colored can't by law.”
"They ought to go norf and git married,” said Charley. “They
tells me they ain't no law 'gainst it up there."
"They'd have to stay there if they did.”
“They's living together now an' the white folks ain't doin 'em
nothin',” said Buddy.
“That's true,” said Jimmy, “but you know how white folks are."
“What yuh mean?"


“Just this. If a white man and a colored woman take up, the
white folks say that's the white man's privilege. But if they marry,
white people say that's social equality. So the laws forbid it.”
That afternoon, the hands were knocked off early and at four
o'clock Jimmy was standing in the crowd before the plantation
store.
One by one, stragglers joined the crowd, and shortly Jerry
Gordon, the boss, was taking his place behind the counter. Standing
near him were the sugar-mill engineer and the senior store clerk.
Joe Tillman stood in the doorway.
Gordon turned to the right and spoke to the flaxen-haired book-
keeper, who called out, “John Bailey!”.
“Yas, suh, ah's a-comin'."
“Three dollars for you, John," said Gordon, handing the worker
the money in silver.
"Buddy Bones!"
Buddy, a frown on his face, stepped slowly to the counter.
“One dollar and ninety cents for you, Buddy."
Quickly, Buddy took the money. It had been several months
since he'd drawn that much.
“Bill Cunningham!”
Bill was told that he'd broken even but could get anything he
wanted from the plantation store. Dejectedly, he went to his quar-
ters. His sick child needed medical attention.
“Max Danmark!"
Jimmy moved in closer.
"Max, here's two dollars. You drew the same last month. Must
be budgeting yourself.”
"Yah, suh. Ah means, no, suh, boss. Ah ain't humbuggin mahse'f.
Ah jis buys what ah needs, tha's all."
Gordon smiled. “Teboy Dowden!"
Teboy pushed his way through the crowd and walked briskly
to the counter.
"Two-fifty for you,” said Gordon.
Teboy stood motionless.
“Here, don't you want this money?"
29


Teboy scratched his head. He didn't know exactly how much
he had coming to him, but he knew he hadn't eaten fifteen dollars
worth.
Gordon slammed the silver pieces on the counter. “Take it and
go!” he snapped.
"Yah, suh, but it seem like—"
“Beat it!”
Teboy picked up the money and left.
"Jimmy Dixon!"
While Jimmy was hurrying up the steps, Jerry and his book-
keeper went into hushed consultation.
“Get your daybook, Jim," said Gordon.
The senior clerk gave Jerry the book opened up to Jimmy's
name.
"Six dollars,” Gordon grumbled. He pushed the book aside
and scowled at Jimmy. “Don't you eat, boy? Don't you wear
clothes? How do you live?”
Jimmy stepped closer. “What do you mean, sir?"
"You bought only six dollars worth of provisions this month.
You can't live on that.”
"I bought more than that, but not here.”
"This commissary carries everything you need. You work here,
you buy here. Why run credit elsewhere?"
"Credit?” said Jimmy, frowning. “I paid cash for what I bought
elsewhere, just as I did for the stuff I bought here."
“Cash, you say? What do you mean you paid cash at this
store? This book shows you owe six dollars.”
"I paid that man and that one." Jimmy pointed to the store
clerks.
Jerry rose. “Shut up, nigger! You don't know what you're
saying!”
"Oh, yes, I do!”
Joe Tillman rushed toward Jimmy. "These white men wrote
what you bought in that book. Are you callin' them liars? Answer
me!”
Gordon glanced at the quiet field hands standing about. “Cut
it, Joe,” he said with a movement of his head.
30


Gordon was silent for a moment, then said, “Step aside, boy,
I'll see you later."
Jimmy followed Gordon through a gate in the counter. In an
anteroom Jerry sat down behind a desk and began to fondle a lead
pencil. Jimmy, standing in front of the desk, eyed a chair in the
corner. He'd better stand, he knew.
"Where'd you learn to read and write?” Jerry began.
"In school, sir.”
“I didn't know this parish had schools for your folks."
"It hasn't. We pay taxes, too, but only whites get the schools.
So I went to New Orleans to school.”
Jerry spat on the floor. “Here, take this money.”
“Would you please count it, sir.”
Gordon spread the money on the desk—two fives, a one, and a
fifty-cent piece.
Jimmy's frown deepened. “I earned seventeen-fifty, sir, and
I want it.”
Gordon's bluish-gray eyes scrutinized Jimmy sharply. “Don't
forget, boy, you're talking to a white man!"
“How could I forget?”
Gordon bit his lips. “Up the river where I came from, you
wouldn't dare talk to a white man like that.”
“I have read about the lynchings there, sir."
Gordon pulled six dollars from his pocket and slammed them
on the desk. “Take it, God damn you, and get out!"
Jimmy shoved the money in his pocket and walked through the
store. At the door, the older clerk asked him, “Did you get your
money, boy?"
“Why don't you ask the boss?” he retorted.
At home, Jimmy stretched out on his bunk and yawned. He
looked at his seventeen-fifty. It was tough to earn and tougher to
collect. He rolled over on his side and fell asleep. . . .
Jimmy was awakened by loud knocking on his door. He sat on
the edge of the bed and listened. The knocking was repeated more
sharply. He stood up. "Who is it?”
“Teboy."


“All right,” he called out sleepily, "wait a minute.” He stooped
and fumbled around for a match, lit the kerosene lamp and pulled
open the door.
Teboy stepped in.
“What's wrong?”
"Ain't nothin' wrong. Ah comes to git yuh fuh the boys at
the hangout.”
“What's up?"
"Nothin', 'ceptin' us done see yuh talkin' to the white folks like
yuh was mad. Us done 'spicion 'twas 'bout yoh pay. The boys
wants yuh to tell 'em 'bout it."
"Can't make it,” said Jimmy drowsily. “Tired, gotta get some
sleep."
Gently, he pushed Teboy out, closed the door and stumbled back
into his bunk.
Teboy put out the lantern and shook Jimmy by the shoulder.
Jimmy, waking with a start, saw eyes peering at him in the night
dark. He sprang to his feet and ran into the willows.
The boys laughed, Teboy lit the lantern and called out, “Whar
yuh gwine, Jimmy?”
Jimmy turned back. “All right, you guys!"
"Boy, kin yuh sleep!” said Teboy. “Six o' us done fetch yuh
here on the mattress an' yuh ain't never turned over. Yuh jis
snored louder.”
Jimmy slipped on the trousers Teboy handed him, then sat
down on the mattress. "What's the big idea?” he demanded.
"Jimmy, tell us how yuh's able to argue with the white folks,
an' us can't,” spoke up Bigman.
Isaac Butler, Jr., came out of the dark and sat beside Jimmy.
"We ain't never hear no nigger talk back to the white folks like
yuh done done today.”
"Us knows it was 'bout yoh pay," said Teboy, " 'cause us seen
Mist Jerry a-lookin' at them books an'a-talkin' to Mist' Joe an'
them.”
Jimmy studied the crowd that encircled him, then he carefully
explained that, if the workers knew how much time they'd put in
32


during the month and their daily rate of pay, it should be easy for
them to figure out how much they had coming at the end of the
month.
Said Butler, “We all knows somethin' 'bout the time us puts
in an' how much we gits a day, but how 'bout them deducts?"
"Yes, them Goddamned deducts!” yelled Bigman. “Tha's whar
us gits all messed up."
"When you buy on credit, you should write it down, including
what you paid for it. Then, on pay day, you deduct your purchases
from your earnings. The balance is what you should receive in cash.”
“That sounds all right,” said a man from the rear, “but how'n
the hell kin us keep them 'counts when us don't know figgers from
frog piss?”
"Tha's it to a pee!” said another.
“Talkin' 'bout pee,” said Buddy Bones, “one o' them bullfrogs
done peed on mah hands oncet, an' yuh oughta seen the knots it
done raise!"
"Is yuh sho it wasn't yo 'oman what done piss on yuh?" asked
Butler.
"Shet up, yuh sons o' bastards!” yelled Teboy. “Can't yuh
niggers be serious sometimes?".
“Keep my ol' woman outa this!" shouted Buddy Bones. “When
she puts knots on me, it ain't with what she pisses with!”
“Yuh sho o' that?” called out Butler.
“Sho o' what?”
“Damn it to hell, you bastards,” Teboy yelled, “I'm tellin' yuh
to git ser’ous! An' no more talkin' 'bout what pisses with what,
where or who!"
“Yuh know somethin'?” said Butler.
Teboy barked at him, “Shet yo’ damned mouf, ah done tell
yuh!”
“But this time ah's ser’ous. I means it."
“Go 'head then, but it better be serious.”
“If us chilluns went to school like the white chilluns, then us
could git them to do us figgerin'!".
Clark rose. “Nigger, us thought yuh was gwine say somethin',”
he said to Butler. "In the fust place, yuh knows they ain't no schools
33


fuh nigger chilluns, an' in the secon' place, how'n hell we's gwine
buy 'nough outa that commissary if us chilluns don't work in the
fiel' to help us feed 'em?”
"Hell!” said Charley. “What difference is it if us kids work
or not? The white mens keep all the money, anyway.”
Bigman scratched his head, then got up. “Yuh niggers kin talk
'bout yoh chilluns gotta work in the fiel' to he'p they pappy an'
mammy, but daggummit, they ain't no use us tryin' to argue with
the white man 'til us git some ejication!"
"We ain't gwine never start argufyin' then," said Ted, walking
slowly through the crowd, " 'cause yuh sho can't git no ejication
widdout no schools.”
Jake Thompson stood on a log, waving his arms. “Hol' ev’ything!
Hol' ev’ything! Ah's got it-mens, ah's got it!"
Teboy was curious. “What yuh got, Jake?”
He pointed at Jimmy. "He kin learn us!"
Sammy Jones, who had not shown a spark of interest until
this moment, stepped to the front. This was something he had to
get straight. He stood there listening to the exclamations.
“That sho is it, mens!"
"Tha's the answer!”
“Jake's got it right!"
“And it ain't no frog piss, neither!"
Bigman had his doubts. “Jake got the answer all right, but
would it work? Would Mist' Jerry an' them stan' fuh it?"
Clark Morgan stepped forward. "If Mist' Jerry knowed his
han's was learnin' somethin' he'd raise hell an' break it up, but
what fool nigger here gwine tell the bossman if Jimmy learns us?”
"It done been did b'foh,” said Charley, “an' all the damned
Judases ain't done died yit!”
“If any black bastard here tell the white folkses,” cried Teboy,
"us'll yank out his tongue!”
Sammy hastily stepped out of the limelight and sat down at
the far rear of the crowd.
"Yankin' his tongue out is all right by me,” said Bigman. He
turned to Jimmy. "How 'bout it, Perfessor? Yuh kin learn us right
here on the batture, can't yuh?"
the far rear, his tonguw 'bout it,"
34


Jimmy sat in troubled silence, listening to the remarks that
followed Bigman's question.
“What yuh done done today give us hope, Jimmy.”
"Yuh jis can't let us down now."
“They jis ain't no chance fuh us niggers widdout a ejication."
Jimmy got up. "Listen, boys,” he said slowly, "I came here to
work and make a few dollars. I'm getting married in the spring,
so I need the dough. If I taught you guys, I'd lose my job. Then
where'd I be? My girl's getting her things together. I can't let her
down.”
Zed, who'd been silent, got up. "Ah don't want no paht o' this
here ejication stuff! All mah life ah's been eatin' outta the com-
missary an' livin' in the quarters. Tha's all right with me. Yuh
niggers is lookin' fuh trouble. Ah's gwine home to Liza."
“Don't pay no 'tention to Zed,” said Jake. “He's always sca'ed
an' gwine home to Liza."
“Yeah,” said Bigman, “they's a nigger like him in every pile.
Every plantation got one."
Jimmy looked around at the faces. "In effect, that is exactly
what I said to you fellows a moment ago—that I couldn't be involved
because of the girl I loved. Besides, I'm not going to be here long-
about forty more days. What could I do in that time, especially
with the boss already against me?"
Ted passed in front of the light, shaking his head. “He done
turn us down, boys,” he said dejectedly.
“Hell,” said Jimmy, “you guys ought to know I wouldn't just
turn you down. You know I'm for you all the way. But 1 ..."
The men whooped and whistled, slapped one another on the
back, skylarked. Jimmy wasn't given a chance to go on. He'd said
all they wanted to hear.
After a moment, he turned away. “Help me take my mattress
back, boys. I got to get some sleep."


Jerry turned around. “Sammy! Now where did that damned
nigger—"
“There he is, going around the buggyhouse."
"Sammy, come back here!"
Sammy crept back.
Jerry collared him again. “What else did this Jimmy say to you
boys?”
Sammy twisted his neck, gulping.
"You're choking the nigger, Jerry,” said Daniel. “He can't talk.”
Jerry loosened his grip. “Talk before I slap hell out of you!"
“The boys done ax Jimmy to learn 'em figgers an' words.”
"Did Jimmy say he would?”
Sammy nodded.
“Jail ain't no place for a nigger like that,” said Daniel, looking
upset. “The swamps would be better."
Sammy sneaked off again. He was crawling under the fence
when Jerry called to him. “Sammy, damn you, come back here!”
Sammy dragged himself back.
"Get in the buggy and go for Mister Joe. Bring him back with
you!”
Sammy crawled in, and as he passed the boys in the lane he
didn't turn to speak. He knew they would think he was acting up,
but he just couldn't look one of them in the eye.


It was nearly noon, and Jimmy was still talking to the group that
surrounded him in the lane. "Okay, boys,” he said finally, “just one
more story, then I gotta go."
Most of the men had been either too young or too old for the
draft. The war had rolled through its bloody climaxes far off-
a million miles or so—and some of its implications were difficult
and obscure. And yet members of their own race had been there;
they could not hear enough of such men as Needham Roberts and
Henry Johnson, who had captured a score or more of Germans
by their expert use of bolo knives.
"You means to tell me that Needham an' Henry was nigger
soldiers an' them Germanses was white folkses?” asked Booker.
“They were black American soldiers,” said Jimmy.
“An' the 'Merican white mens done let them nigger soldiers
hunt down white folkses in France like white mens hunts down
niggers in this here state?" Booker shook his head. “Ah jis can't
git that th’ough mah thick skull!”.
"Huhn,” Jimmy grunted. “In war, when white folks fight white
folks, they use not only black soldiers but even bugs and jackasses!”
Holding a package under his arm, Bigman stood on the levee
gazing at the group in the lane, hoping they might see him. He
slipped the package behind his back when he saw Jerry gesticulating
as he talked to Daniel.
Finally, Charley looked up. "Boys, he done got back. Le's go!"
They ran toward the levee, beaming with enthusiasm.
Teboy waited for Jimmy. Zed, too, had remained behind. “Ain't
yuh comin', Zed?” asked Teboy.
“No, ah's—”
“Ah knows—yuh's gwine home to Liza. Go, but keep yoh damn
trap shet!”
Jimmy walked along in silence, Teboy beside him. “It sho's
40


gwine do mah soul good when ah compares mah count with that
commissary book jis foh pay day!”
Jimmy grunted. On the batture Bigman handed Jimmy the
package. “I done buy all the store had,” he said.
Jimmy unwrapped the package as forty-eight men sat on logs
in a semicircle. He laid the slates and pencils down. "Listen, fel-
lows," he said, looking at the men intently, “I hope you understand
this is serious business and that I'm sticking my neck out.”
Running a careful glance over the men, he picked out the
smallest one and stationed him on the levee. Another he placed
on the batture south of the group, and another to the north. Baptiste,
the levee lookout, walked slowly up and down, looking in all direc-
tions. The two placements on the batture stood on logs that enabled
them to see clearly from the levee base to the water's edge. Because
of the heavy growth of willows, they could see only a short distance
to the north and south.
In the group optimism ran high. Using the palm of his hand
and the index finger to simulate a book and pencil, Buddy said,
“Man, nex' pay day ah's gwine tell Mist Jerry when he done tell
me how much ah owes the commissary that he's wrong, 'cause mah
count here what ah done kep' says different.”
Charley produced a memorandum book. “Ah's gwine start nex'
week writin' down what ah buys from the store.”
Jimmy called the class to order. “Now, all you men who already
know your alphabet raise your right hand and step to one side.”
Not a hand went up.
Jimmy changed the wording. "How many of you guys know
your A B C's?”
Faces brightened, but nobody answered.
Jimmy wrote on the twelve slates the first three letters of the
alphabet and gave one slate to each fourth man.
"You men who have slates copy these three letters, A, B and C.
They're the first three of the alphabet."
Awkwardly, their plow-stiff fingers grasped the slate pencils.
"Booker, that's a pencil you're holding, not a hoe handle. Hold
it between your thumb and forefinger like this.”
41


They held their pencils to the slates, but not one of them dared
to make a scratch.
Booker held up his hand. “Perfessor, how'n hell yuh start this
here thing, from the point at the top, the sides, er this here li'l
ladder in between?”
Jimmy showed him, then stepped aside to the next one.
Booker started at the extreme left of the slate and drew a line
an inch across. He turned the slate around and drew a slightly
diagonal line across the horizontal one. Then he drew another line
on the right end a little longer than the first. He looked at the
character. It resembled the figure he'd seen on the locomotive of
the train called the Four Spot. He shook his head, then got up.
“Perfessor, us wants to learn how to figger an' write words, not
this here chil' stuff!”
“Tha's right,” said Charley, "how kin us figger with these
things?”
“There's no other way to begin,” said Jimmy, smiling.
They began to pore over the letters in earnest. Slates began to
screech under the dull pressure of pencils.
Jimmy went from one to the other. “Booker, you're doing all
right, but your letters don't have to be so big. ... Dick, that's
perfect. ..."
A quarter of a mile south, Sammy sped west on a lane that
led to a house of poplar siding and cypress stave roof. Tillman lived
there with his wife and two daughters.
Hitching his horse to the back picket fence, he ran up the
steps into the kitchen without knocking. Sally, cooking the Sunday
dinner, struck at him with a large stirring spoon. “Yuh ol' good-
fuh-nothin' nigger, don't yuh come in here a-scarin' me like dat!
Git out! Ah ain't got nothin' here to gi'e yuh!"
Sammy threw up his hands to ward off the blows, then took
the spoon away from Sally. “Ah don't want none o' yo'l grub!
Ah eats white folkses food at Mist Jerry's, ah'll have yuh to know
that.”
"Git out!” she yelled, and kicked at his shin. “They ain't no
good in yuh!”
42


Sammy slipped under the kitchen table. “Ah done come to fetch
Mist' Joe. Mist' Jerry done sent me.”
Sally spat at him. “Yuh wait here, ah'll go call Mist' Joe—an'
don't go dippin' y'ol dirty han's in nothin', needer!"
Tillman entered the kitchen. “Did Mister Jerry say what he
wanted with me?"
"Naw, suh. He jis say go git Mist' Joe quick."
Tillman started for Big House, but paused when he heard
Jerry talking excitedly behind the buggyhouse.
"All I want is to jail the nigger, get him out of circulation,”
Jerry was saying.
"I agree with you," said Daniel, “but I still say the swamp is
a better place than the jail.”
Jerry introduced his friend to Tillman. The two men shook
hands.
“What's wrong?" asked Tillman.
“That nigger, Jimmy, stirring our niggers to revolt! He's at
it now in the lane. Look at him! We'll have him locked up!"
"What lane, Jerry?”
Jerry stepped into the open. “They were there only a few minutes
ago!" He grabbed Sammy's shirt. “Where'd the boys go?-and
none o' your Goddamned evasive answers either!"
Sammy twisted against Jerry's hold. “Talk!” shouted Jerry, and
slapped him.
“Ah done seen 'em go no place,” Sammy managed to get out,
"but ah 'spects they's down on the batture shootin' craps."
Thrusting Sammy to one side, Jerry turned to Tillman. “Better
investigate, Joe.”
“I'll go with you," said Daniel.
They got into the buggy and drove through the field on a head-
land to another lane so as not to approach the men on the batture
directly. Reaching the public road, they climbed the levee in a
curve. On the batture they crept stealthily northward through the
thick willows.
Suddenly, Daniel stopped. “Look at that nigger!” He pointed
to a man standing on a log.
“Yeah," said Tillman, "something's up. Follow me.”
43


Slowly they moved toward the base of the levee, walking in a
stooped position along the revetment. The sentry stared intently
toward the levee. Watching him closely, Tillman and Daniel
crouched low. The sentry gasped, then backstepped.
“Stop where you are!" commanded Daniel, digging into his
back pocket.
Shaking all over, the sentry watched them in a state of mind
bordering on panic as they walked toward him.
“What you niggers doing here?” asked Tillman harshly.
"Nothin', nothin', Mist' Joe, 'ceptin' maybe a li'l game."
"You're a black liar! The law don't bother niggers for shooting
craps. What you on the lookout for?”
The sentry drooped his head, stalling. “It's like this, Mist Joe,
ah,”
“Shut up, Ben-you've lied enough! Get going, I'll find out
for myself.”
Shoving Ben ahead of him, Tillman pressed forward through
the willows, now crossing logs, now meandering around them,
Daniel following closely behind. The willow trees thinned and
Tillman jerked Ben around, pointing. "A li'l game, eh? You god
damned liar, you!"
The white men watched Jimmy, their expressions grim.
"Jimmy's urging those niggers to revolt,” said Tillman. “Keep
Ben here while I creep closer."
He went forward quietly, placing his feet carefully to avoid
breaking driftwood with a popping bang. Finally, he was able to
make out words. He stopped and listened.
He heard: "Jack, you're doing fine. In a few years you'll be able
to keep your commissary account. . . . Bigman, you had your
doubts yesterday that you were being paid correctly. If you keep
up the good work the boss'll be paying you all he owes you. ...
Now, Pete, let me hear you repeat the alphabet down to L.”
Pete cleared his throat. “A, B, C, C, C—"
“Go on,” urged Jimmy. “What follows C?”
Pete stood uneasily, eyes focused on the willows around him.
“Come on, Pete, what follows C?” Jimmy saw that Pete had
i 44


stiffened. “Pete, you're gray in the face. What's wrong-are you
sick?”
The pencil fell from Pete's hand. “Mist' Joe!” he yelled. “Come
on!"
The men scrambled frantically to their feet and darted into
the willows.
Tillman rushed into the open. “What's going on here?” he
demanded.
Jimmy made no reply. Teboy and Bigman, who had kept their
seats, bowed their heads.
Tillman stepped close to Jimmy. “I said what's going on here?”
Jimmy stepped back a little.
“Stand still, nigger, a white man is talking to you! You're
organizing these niggers to think they're as good as white men.
I heard the stuff you're drilling into their heads."
"In a way, what you're saying is true,” said Jimmy quietly.
"Why, you Goddamned son of a black bitch!" Tillman yelled,
almost frothing at the mouth. “You'll be driving these niggers
crazy!”
Teboy faced the overseer. “Mist' Joe, Jimmy ain't drivin' nobody
crazy. Us is jis learnin' A, B to C's—tha's all.”
Tillman felt the blood rushing to his head. If these niggers
could stand up to him now and they couldn't even recite the
alphabet, he shuddered to think what would happen after they
had learned to read and write.
He grabbed Jimmy by the arm. “I never should have hired you,
you black bastard!” he yelled. “I should have known you wouldn't
work.”
"Who packed your hay in the loft?" asked Jimmy calmly.
“Why, you—"Tillman made a pass at Jimmy with his free hand.
Jimmy ducked.
"Mist' Joe,” said Bigman, stepping close, “don't hit Jimmy,
please. Us done stand fuh a lot on this here plantation. Us done see
all us labor grabbed up by that commissary year in an' year out,
an' us done tuck it. But don't hit Jimmy, Mist' Joe."
Tillman gazed at Bigman as if in shock. “Now it's you, eh?”
he ground out. “Now it's you, and then another, and then an-
45


other—" Uncontrollable fury took hold of him and he let go of
Jimmy's arm and lunged at his throat.
"Not that, Joe!” yelled Daniel, pointing into the open. “And
not now! Come on, let him alone. Maybe Jerry'll listen to reason
now!”


Sammy, shivering in sudden misery, walked away. Jimmy
wouldn't have a chance!
Gordon appeared at the edge of the side gallery. “Sammy, hey,
Sammy!” he called.
“Yas, suh, Mist' Jerry, ah's comin'."
“Drive the buggy around to the front gate, then come in and
get Mrs. Jerry's suitcase. Hurry up!"
Mrs. Gordon and her little girl were taking the northbound
train to New Orleans. The train came rumbling around a curve
at the little flag stop. Sammy, on Gordon's command, rushed into
the center of the tracks and flagged the engineer with a bandana.
Before getting on, Mrs. Gordon called out, “Save me some venison,
Jerry."
"Yes, dear,” said Jerry, "if we bag any."
Sammy blinked. So the boss was sending his family away be-
cause he was going “deer” hunting! He began to feel sick to his
stomach.
It was five o'clock when he hitched the horse of the last comer
to the post. He didn't know when he'd seen so many horses hitched
to the front picket fence. He looked toward the kitchen. His mother
was standing in the doorway. She waved to him and he ran through
the gate into the inner yard. Nothing was worrying him now, his
stomach felt good again. Chicken and rice and the trimmings!
Thinking about Jimmy could be postponed a bit.
After dinner he sat on the commissary steps, his head drooped
between his knees. What could he do now to save Jimmy? What
could he undo? Nothing, he knew, not a thing. Damn it, he was
going to his woman's house. He'd done enough thinking. He'd
go to Rachael and get some loving.
He ran down the steps and was halfway to the quarters when
he saw Teboy coming. Oh, oh! He whirled around and headed
back to the commissary.
“Yuh ugly bastard!” called Teboy after him. Sammy stopped.
Teboy came up to him. “Look up here!” he said. Sammy dug his
chin in his chest, trying to hide his face more. “Now I knows
yuh guilty, yuh black ape,” hissed Teboy. “Yuh ain't done tell the
white folks nothin', is yuh?"
cy, the comming. Oh, oh, was halfwo,
48


“Ah knows ah done wrong, but don't tell the white folkses,
Teboy. Don't tell 'em. Yuh knows ah gits mah grub from Mist'
Jerry's kitchen. Please don't tell the white folkses!"
“Ah ain't gwine tell no white folkses nothin'. But why'n hell
yuh's always tellin' 'em somethin'? 'Stead o' yankin' out yoh tongue,
ah oughta ram it down yoh th’oat an' sink it in yoh greedy belly!"
He let go of Sammy's collar and Sammy fell back against the
wall, bumping his head. He wrung his hands and begged, “Jis
don't tell the white folkses, Teboy-please!"
Teboy was walking the floor again. “Shet up!” he snapped. He
kept walking in deep thought. Abruptly, he said, “What time is
them mens gwine to git Jimmy tonight?”
"Ah hears them say at nine o'clock."
The sun was falling fast behind the trees. Teboy snapped his
fingers. “Pull off them rags o' your'n an' han' 'em over," he
demanded.
Sammy trembled. “What yuh gwine to do to me, Teboy?”
"Nothin'. But hurry! Ah ain't got no time to lose.”
“If yuh gwine beat me up, don't do it on mah nekked ass.”
"Ah ain't gwine ť tech yuh now, but hurry, ah tells yuh!"
Teboy picked up Sammy's clothes. “Now git in that bunk. I
reckon you'll stay there now till ah gits back.” He rushed out the
back door.


With Sammy's clothes securely under his arm, Teboy hurried
across the back yards of several cabins before crossing the street
to Jimmy's. He glanced over at Big House and saw white men
pacing back and forth on the front gallery. Others were sitting
at tables, talking with much hand waving. Teboy walked along
casually so as not to arouse suspicion.
As he passed Zed Grannison's cabin, Zed poked his head out
the door. “Whar's yuh gwine?” he asked.
Teboy stopped. Of all people, that guy had to see him! “Gwine
to Lucy to see if she kin wash them here dirty duds.” With Zed
watching him all the way, he cut diagonally across the quarters,
skirted Lucy's house to the front and doubled back along the
street. Four cabins east, he started toward the back yard again. He
glanced toward Zed's. The door was closed. The next house was
Jimmy's. He tapped lightly on the door.
"Jimmy,” he called softly. “Jimmy, lemme in.”
A click of the bolt and Teboy slipped into the cabin and sat
down on the bunk.
“What's wrong?" asked Jimmy. “You look like you've been
told you are going to die!"
"Not me—you is, if yuh keep talkin' so loud. Ah done snuck
here. Nobody must know."
"What are you talking about?”
“Jimmy, yuh gotta git-tonight! 'Foh nine o'clock. White folks
gwine take yuh to the swamp.”
Jimmy grabbed Teboy's shoulders. “Why?”
“That bastard Sammy! He done tol' them about the edjicating!"
Jimmy reached for his knapsack. He threw in his Sunday clothes
and shoes, then reached into his food box and took out a hunk of
bread, two hard-boiled eggs and a slice of saltmeat. Wrapping the
food in a piece of brown paper, he thrust the package in the bag.
He picked up the cane knife Henry had given him to cut cane
51


with on Monday morning. That gadget had been to help him earn
the hundred he'd come to Saint Agnes to get. He'd better take
it along too.
Teboy went to the door, opening it a little. “Better wait,” he
said. “Ain't quite dark 'nough yet, Jimmy. Us'ns better not make
no slip ups.”
They sat down on the bunk to wait, and Teboy said, “Yuh
done open us eyes to a lot o’things, Jimmy. We likes yuh foh that.”
"Don't praise me too much, Teboy. What I did was against
my will and better judgment. All I wanted was to do my work
and take home a hundred dollars. Now I may not even take myself
home.”
Teboy went again to the back door. Night had fallen and the
darkness had been quickened by a low-hanging black cloud. He
turned and extended his hand to Jimmy. “It's dark ’nough now.
Ah'm gwine. Watch yoh step, Jimmy. Us'll meet ag'in, don' worry.”
They gripped hands. “We might and we might not,” said Jimmy.
Teboy went out and was soon lost to sight.
Leaving the kerosene lamp burning, Jimmy walked cautiously
to the cart lane. There he stood for a minute looking and listening,
then went on.
At Big House, light flooded the gallery. He turned off the cart
lane near the gate and had taken only four steps when he heard
a quick move a few feet to his left. He froze in his tracks, but
whoever it was had already detected him. A shadowy figure rose
out of the weeds and a voice shouted, “Make a move and I'll
plug you!"
Jimmy started to say something.
"Shut up and throw up your hands!"
Jimmy obeyed.
"Higher!”
He'd heard that voice before, and suddenly remembered. It
belonged to the man who had been with Tillman on the batture
that morning.
Resting the cold muzzle of a revolver on Jimmy's neck, Daniel
frisked him. He jerked the cane knife from the knapsack and
dashed it to the ground.
52


“George! Daniel George!” He moved his fingers over the man's
chest, searching for his heart. It was thumping slightly. "George!"
he shouted close to Daniel's ear. Daniel did not budge.
Tillman mounted his horse and galloped to Big House. He ran
up the front steps. “Jerry, come quick! Call a doctor—it's Daniell"
"Where?"
"In the lane, stretched out!” Tillman ran down the steps.
“Follow me!”
Dragging chairs screeched under the weight of rising men as
they threw their cards on the tables. An overseer ran to the tele-
phone, then back to the gallery. “Burt, get the vet!” he yelled.
"Doctor can't come!"
Puffing hard, Gordon bent over Daniel. He shook him and
called his name. “Completely out,” he said. He loosened Daniel's
collar. "Take him to the well. We've got to revive him!"
Six overseers took hold of the injured man and hurried down
the lane past the quarters, then across the stable yard to the well.
Tillman lowered the bucket and drew it full of water. He poured
it on the man's head in a steady stream.
Daniel stirred a little.
"More water, Joe.” Gordon's fat body was shaking like a soft
pudding. "More water, quick-we've got to find out who attacked
him!”
Down went the bucket. Frantically, Tillman pulled at the rope.
He poured water on Daniel's head and dashed the rest in his face.
Daniel began moving his head from side to side.
Jerry rubbed his friend's hands. “Daniel, Daniel, who hit you?”
The Georgian mumbled through his teeth. Tillman drew an-
other bucket of water. He threw it hard into Daniel's face. Daniel
sat up, gasping. He rubbed his chin and said weakly, “I'm all wet.”
“Who struck you, Daniel?”
"Struck me?” The Klansman gazed at Gordon through glassy
eyes.
"How many niggers ganged you?".
“Niggers? Ganged me?” Daniel frowned.
The plantation manager placed a hand on his friend's shoulder
and shook him. “How many of my niggers jumped you?"
55


10
It was nine o'clock and River Bend was asleep. Among the few
residents stirring about was Aunt Hannah, who was in the kitchen
preparing her next day's meal. Now a field worker, Aunt Hannah
was a former slave who had never known her father. Her mother,
whom she remembered only faintly, had been sold down the river
when Hannah was a small girl. As a house slave, Hannah had
developed a hankering for book learning. One day she astounded
her mistress by asking her to teach her to read and write. Very
soon she was secreting her mistress' books in her room at night,
where she would read by candlelight behind a bolted door. She
was the only black woman her age in River Bend now capable
of reading and writing. Many sought her advice on personal prob-
lems. The young folks loved her, too.
She was walking out of the door to cross the gallery that sep-
arated the house from the kitchen when she heard the rapid hoof-
beats of a horse coming up the road. Hurriedly, she dipped a bucket
of rainwater from a barrel under the eaves of the house and ran
inside.
She closed the door and opened the south window, listening
hard. She knew the animal was not galloping, but racking. It
could be no one else but Pierre Crozat, since his horse was the only
animal in the Bend with that peculiar gait, and Pierre was the
only one who ever rode him. Where was Pierre going in such haste?
As he passed the house, she heard him clearing his throat. It
was Pierre, all right. He always hawked as if he were tearing off
the roof of his mouth. She closed the window and moved to the
center of the floor, standing in deep thought. Whenever Pierre
rode hastily into the night there was trouble ahead!
Footsteps on the gallery startled her. “Aunt Hannah,” she heard.
It was Tony. She opened the door.
"What you doing out this late at night?" she asked.
“Looking for Sport. He hasn't been home in two days. I knew
58


he came here at night sometimes, so I thought I would look in.”
"Haven't seen that dog in several days. Won't you come in?”
The Cajun truck farmer stepped inside.
"You hear Pierre go by?" asked Aunt Hannah, lifting the cloth
from her rising rolls.
“Who could miss that racking horse?”
"That horse on the road at night reminds me of my girlhood
days, when galloping horses up and down meant trouble for some
poor slave.”
"In that respect things haven't changed much.”
"Some people have changed, though." Aunt Hannah sat down.
“Pierre, for instance."
"Pierre's been a changed man since they made him a police
juror and appointed him to the LaFourche Levee Board." Tony
rubbed his stubby beard. "He used to be one of us, but now he
hobnobs around with plantation managers, snubs his friends and
spends the public dough for his private profit." Tony opened the door
to go. “If there was any justice, someone should be chasing Pierre.”
As she made herself ready for bed, Aunt Hannah kept wonder-
ing what Pierre was up to. Was he out after a colored man? She
knelt down to say her prayers, and prayed that he wasn't. Then
she blew out the lamp.
Riding hard, Pierre turned into a lane that led to a farmhouse
not far from the public road. At the house he dismounted and tied
his horse to a gallery post. He ran up the steps, his potbelly shaking,
and pounded on the door.
“Who is it?"
“Me, Pierre. A nigger attacked a white man. Rush over to the
oak. We're forming a posse!”
Pierre hit the road again, going north until he came to a double
farmhouse. One side was occupied by the white owner and the
other side by his colored foreman. On the gallery Pierre lifted his
fist to knock on the door but hesitated. He wasn't sure on which
side Marcus lived. Finally, he knocked
“Who that?” the foreman called out. "What you want?”
“Hell . . . nothing!” He switched to the other door. Living


next to a nigger—and Marcus was supposed to be a white man!
Marcus threw open the door. “What's up, Pierre?”
“To the oak, Marcus! Nigger hit a white man. He's in the cane!"
From house to house the same message, and by ten o'clock
Pierre was making his last contact in the area. Riding up to Mike's
house, he called his name loudly. There was no reply and Pierre
called again, then banged on the door. Finally, he jumped off the
gallery and went around to the bedroom window. He rammed the
side of the house with his heel, yelling to Mike to wake up. “Damn
a man who sleeps that sound!” he fumed. He fired his revolver
twice, and was about to fire again when the window shot up and
Mike poked his head out.
“Why don't you wake up like a white man?” Pierre shouted.
Mike rubbed his eyes. “What's wrong?”
"A nigger—he split open a white man's skull! Get to the oak!
There's a man in the cane!"
Jimmy had four miles more to go before he would get to Aunt
Hannah's. He knew he was in serious trouble, but as yet there was
no special feeling about it that he could call fear. He was feeling
a lot more disgusted with himself than frightened. How in hell had
he gotten into this mess? If they caught him, he'd die ... that
he knew. But he was not thinking about that. As he crept along,
alert to all sounds about him, he kept thinking that, in some way
or other, he had failed his girl. If he died, how would Antonia
ever understand?
A half hour later he reached the lower line of Louise Plantation.
At that point, the old and the new levee met. The old levee ran
abreast of the public road, while the new ran along the water's
edge. Should he continue by the old levee? Should he switch to
the new? Except at the north and the south junction, the distance
between the two levees was a quarter of a mile. Here the heavy
growth of willows and the drift logs scattered among them pre-
sented a veritable no-man's-land. He'd better stick to the old route.
A short distance from the upper junction, he came to a spot
where the weeds had been mowed. He climbed the levee. At the top
he saw a light about a half mile south. It was on land! He turned


to look again a half minute later. This time there were six lights
and they were moving toward him.
He broke into a run and kept running until he had reached
the north junction of the two levees. Breathing hard, he cast a quick
glance behind him. Now there were two groups of light. One was
on the old levee, the other on the new. They were following both
levees to be sure they would not miss him!
Fear gripped him now with a suddenness that made him sick
to the stomach. He dug his fists into the pit of it and bent over,
spewing onto the ground the eggs and the hunk of bread he'd
eaten a good distance back. Then, reeling, he turned toward the
cane field. It was too matted at this point to hide in; besides, it
was strange to him. He ran down the levee to the batture and
dropped behind a drift log among the willows.
Their lights beamed on the batture, the posse came to a stop
opposite his hiding place. Tillman climbed the levee. “The nigger
shouldn't be far from here," he called back. He spurred his horse.
The posse streamed after him.
For a long while Jimmy lay there without moving. Without
sound, his lips kept forming the words, “Thank God.” As yet they
hadn't spread out, but were keeping together and were on the move.
Thank God for that, too! Finally, he crept across the batture to
the levee and, with utmost caution, began making his way north.
In River Bend, Pierre had organized his deputies and assigned
them in pairs. While riding from one of these pairs to another,
he ran into Tillman and his posse.
"Halt!” yelled Tillman.
"Save your breath,” Pierre called out, recognizing the voice.
“Everything here is under control—the levee, road, batture, rail-
road tracks and the headlands. But what you bums doing with them
lanterns lit? Want to be good targets ?”
"Hell,” said Tillman, “I never thought of that. Put them lights
out, you guys!”
“Who's the nigger we're after?” asked Pierre, bringing his
horse closer.
"Calls himself Jimmy Dixon.”


"Tall nigger? Can he read and write?”
“That's him! Why?”.
“You want that nigger, you'd better keep his name out of it
around here. You just say a tall nigger on the loose, armed with
a gun. No other nigger will be out tonight except this one-not with
word around we're out to string one up."
“Damn, he's just another nigger, ain't he? What's his name got
to do with it?”
"Lots. River Bend ain't your plantation.”
Tillman slapped his horse and turned to go. “Damn a place
that'll protect a nigger against white people! Such white bastards
ought to be strung up too!”
The posse galloped down the coast.
Pierre rode on leisurely. Of all niggers, it had to be Jimmy
Dixon! Even his own son Lester had talked of Jimmy Dixon as
if the nigger had been a white man, telling Pierre about Dixon's
fighting in the war side by side with white soldiers and eating when
they ate, all of them sitting in a circle on the ground and talking.
Lester hadn't fought with Dixon, but he'd heard of Dixon's bravery;
and Lester himself had sat and ate with niggers on the battlefront.
Pierre's fat belly jounced up and down as his racking horse headed
for one of his pairs of deputies.
"I'll tell them all a nigger with a gun. Just a nigger with a
gun—and he's in the cane."
But Jimmy was not in the cane. Passing the row of giant pecan
trees that adorned the front yard of old man Charley's place for
three hundred feet along the roadside, he knew he had but a few
miles to go. Aunt Hannah would help him—she'd know what to do.
A little farther on, he heard a horse stumble on top of the levee.
He fell to the ground and held his breath. The animal was trotting.
Jimmy crawled to a clump of weeds near the base of the levee,
scaring out a cottontail that lit out with scurrying feet. The rider
turned on a flashlight and beamed it on all sides of him. From
where he lay, Jimmy could see the glint of a rifle lying across the
rider's saddle.
The rider went on and Jimmy waited a minute, then got to
62


left and go on a half hundred feet, then to the right just as far,
then forward again. He kept up this twisting about, not caring
how lost he got for the time being. The north star would help him,
he knew, if only he could see it. Suddenly, he felt weak and dizzy.
His legs shook and he sat down with a plop and just sat there,
feeling foolish and about to faint. Far behind, he could hear men
shouting, but their voices were not coming closer. Presently, he
could not hear them and suddenly he wanted to burst out laughing.
For the moment, he had outwitted them, all of them but the
impulse to laugh was short lived. Now they knew for sure where
he was. He was in the cane. He was right where they wanted him.
The dizzy weakness came back and he took out what little food
he had left in the knapsack and wolfed it down, ravenously hungry.
And no wonder, he said to himself. He had thrown up, hadn't he?
He'd been running on an empty stomach. No wonder he was dizzy
and weak! He thought of this and he felt like laughing again.
“I should have brought more food,” he said aloud. “But wait'll
I get to Aunt Hannah's!”
He got up, feeling refreshed, and began pushing on. Only a short
distance away, Antonia was sleeping. But he had to get to Aunt
Hannah's first.
His hunger was still with him, though. The gnawing began
after he'd taken less than a few dozen steps. And with the gnawing,
the weakness came back, also the dizziness. He began stumbling
and falling, and, finally, he lay there on his stomach, too exhausted
to go on. “Damn it to hell,” he said aloud, and shook his head.
A drowsiness he could not shake off was enveloping him. It felt
wonderful. He closed his eyes, put an arm up under his head and
gave in to it.
“Just a minute,” he muttered. “I'll just sleep a minute. ..."


11
Rustling leaves scattered as Jimmy leaped to his feet in the early
morning, aiming his gun. The cold noses of two bloodhounds
sniffing eagerly against his face had awakened him with a start.
He shot the dogs, both of whom fell over without a whimper and
jerked dead.
"That'll do it,” he muttered. “They won't have much trouble
finding me now.”
A creaky noise in back of him made him spin around. Another
dog! Jimmy backed up alongside the next row of cane. The dog
advanced, growling, watching him with hostile eyes.
"I hate to kill you,” said Jimmy and pulled the trigger. The
plunger struck a low-hanging pea vine and the gun failed to
discharge.
Jimmy jerked the hammer loose and again took aim, but a
hissing sound close by scared him so badly he couldn't pull the
trigger. Congo snake! Jimmy plunged into the gully and back-
stepped. At that instant, the dog sprang at him. Simultaneously,
the coiled reptile struck out with its full three-foot length. Jimmy
fell back on a growth of cane, breaking it with a crackling sound.
The snake missed his hand, caught the dog under the throat and
dropped to the ground.
Jimmy, staring, staggered to his feet, picked up his cane knife
and hacked the grayish-black snake in two. The center of the
writhing body was as thick as his own biceps. Gripping the cane
knife tighter, he moved toward the jerking, agonized mongrel.
The sheriff, Tillman and Pierre tramped back and forth on the
east headland, trying to decide what next to do to drive Jimmy
from the cane.
"We know the nigger's in there," said the sheriff, “because two
shots from the field stopped our dogs.”
Pierre held his potbelly with both hands and spat out tobacco
65


juice. “There ain't no doubt about that. But what's got me is what
stopped the third dog?”
Tillman lit his pipe. “That's it! Since there wasn't no more pistol
shots, the question is—who's dead, the dog or the nigger?”
“I think it's the nigger," said Pierre confidently.
The sheriff walked away. “I'm not so sure about that.”
The bloodhounds had been good hunters. They'd tracked down
many a nigger for him. Big Pete, the mongrel, was a good hunter
too. He had been raised from a pup with the bloodhounds and
had received substantially the same training. Given half a chance,
Pete could tear a man to pieces.
The sheriff stood and gazed at the matted cane. It had been
risky to send those dogs in there alone. But what else could he
have done? A deputy pushing through the tangled field would have
made a good target for Jimmy.
The sheriff came back, passed a hand over his unshaven face
and said, “We haven't decided what to do to get hold of that
nigger. We cant't burn him out-the field's too damned green!”
Pierre emptied his mouth of the lifeless tobacco wad and took
another bite of cut plug. “By God, we can't burn him out, but we
sure'n hell can cut him out!"
“Sure!” agreed Tillman. “Why didn't we think of that in the
first place?"
Pierre looked at his watch. “We'll start cutting after dinner!”
At one o'clock, four cane carts bearing one hundred cutters
came to a stop on the headland opposite the square of cane in
which Jimmy was hiding. Jumping to the ground, the workers
hung their empty dinner pails on the barbed-wire fence alongside
the road ditch, then slowly walked toward their respective rows and
waited their turn to fall in.
While standing around, some of the men whetted their knives.
Others lit pipes or rolled cigarettes. Still others took bites of cut
plug, chewed and spat brown juice in every direction. A few of the
old women raised gunny-sack aprons and took out corncob pipes
from the pockets of their gingham dresses.
The cutters represented a cross section of the working people of
66


River Bend, ranging in years from fourteen to seventy-five, and in
color from black through brown to yellow and white. A few of the
men were white. The males wore the typical field clothing of the
parish-blue denim pants and shirts, red handkerchiefs around their
necks, heavy cotton socks, brogans, and old felt hats or corduroy
caps. The women's cotton dresses were rolled at the waist and tied
with a string, which raised the long skirts slightly below the knee.
Their heavy cotton stockings were either blue, tan or gray, and
their shoes were light-weight brogans. Some wore old hats, others
tignons.
The overseer, of Cajun-Irish descent, short in stature, small
bodied and wearing a long, thick mustache, rode about the headland
on his shaggy-maned mare, talking and joking with the cutters.
The leading cutter, a brown-skinned man of sixty-nine, started cut-
ting on the second row from the ditch bank. His partner, a white
man and son of the leader's ex-master, took the third. A black boy
of eighteen worked next to the leader and a young mulatto woman
next to the white cutter. These four constituted the leading crew.
The leader and his partner carried the “heap rows,” where all
cane harvested from the set was thrown into heaps. The boy and
girl carried the “fy rows,” which received all cane tops and other
debris from the set. They began by drawing the cane toward them
with the hooks on the backs of their knives, shucking the stalks
and chopping off the tops at the last usable joint. Then the two
heap-row partners cleared a section between their rows, and the
denuded cane stalks were cut at the base and thrown into a pile.
Set by set, the other crews began to cut. The piles grew rapidly
as the field flattened out behind the cutters. By the time the last
group had fallen in, the first had penetrated so deeply into the field
that the line resembled the hypotenuse of a great triangle. Cane
knives now rang like so many dinner bells, while green tops and
dry leaves rustled like a brigade of stiff petticoats on the march.
On the ditch banks the sentries moved along with the cutters,
keeping a sharp lookout for the inevitable break of Jimmy from the
cane. The overseer rode from ditch bank to ditch bank behind the
cutters, stopping here and there to engage them in conversation or
to tell a joke.


On the headland Pierre and the sheriff sat in their saddles, their
faces cheerful and confident. There was no way possible for the man
in the cane to escape.
On the other side of the field Tillman rode beside Monty, the
Cajun overseer. Commenting on the luxurious growth of the ribbon
cane, they turned toward the north ditch bank.
"Gimme a chaw, Monty,” said a mulatto boy on whose row the
overseers had stopped.
Bill LaBat, the octoroon partner of the boy, stopped cutting and
spat a mouthful of brown juice on a cane heap. “How old is you,
boy?”
“Nineteen, Unc' Bill.”
LaBat resumed his cutting. “You ought to be home suckin' yoh
mammy's tiddies 'stead o' axin' for a chaw o' tobacco.”
The boys in hearing snickered. The girls grinned.
"Hush yoh mouf, Bill,” said Sarah, Bill's wife and fly-row partner,
“ 'foh you make that boy say somethin' he ain't got no business.”
The boy insisted, “Come on, Monty."
Tillman gazed at the boy, then at Monty. Wasn't Monty going
to tell that nigger where to get off? No nigger would call him Joe
and get away with his teeth.
Monty smiled at the boy, then pulled out a hunk of cut plug and
handed it to him. Tillman stared in amazement as the boy bit off a
piece of the hard tobacco and handed it back.
Talking to another cutter, Monty held the cut plug in his hand.
Tillman was sure Monty would throw the hunk away. But Monty
bit off a chunk right where the boy had bitten, then put the balance
in his pocket.
Tillman threw up his hands. “God damn!” he said, and rode off
to the headland.
It was now midafternoon. The cutters were cutting faster. All
along the line cane knives rang out with sharper sounds. The con-
tinuous swishing noise of cane tops was louder, and stalks thudded
on heaps with increasing frequency. It was getting late, and the
workers had to cut down the stretch before knocking off.
Meanwhile, from the center of the field, Jimmy pushed his way
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through the cane, trying to determine what the noise was he'd heard.
The nearer he got to the cutters, the more puzzled he became. Were
the overseers coming after him?
He stopped. What was that ringing sound? He thrust his head
forward. Cane knives! He began to shudder, his knees gave way
and he sank to the ground, his head in his hands. If only he could
think! Antonia! Antonia! Great sobs tore at his throat.
The cane knives rang on, still far away but relentlessly coming
nearer. Those workers were his friends. Did they know it was Jimmy
they were trying to cut out?
Softly, hardly drawing his breath, he pushed his way toward the
cutters, then paused and looked down a matted row of cane. He
could see all the way to the end, could see white men riding around
in the field, rifles across their saddles. He was trapped! He crossed
to another row and again pressed forward, moving to the south.
Now he could hear voices. He kept going, creeping with the utmost
care. Someone was cutting ahead. He listened. Just one cane knife,
a solitary worker. Quickly he hid behind a cluster.
Aunt Hannah stopped shucking and topping. What was that
noise? A jack rabbit? She could eat a leg of rabbit for supper.
Keeping her cane knife in striking position, she sneaked ahead,
glad that she was alone. Abruptly, she stopped. Head on one side,
she stared into the cane.
“Jimmy!” she gasped. She rushed into the cane and threw her
arms about him. “My boy, my boy!"
Jimmy rested limply in her arms. “It's me they're after," he
said, his eyes filling with tears.
She released him almost roughly. "We can't be sitting here then-
we have to do something! And quick!”
"Talk to the River Bend folks," begged Jimmy. “Tell 'em it's
me, Aunt Hannah."
Aunt Hannah's wrinkled face twisted. “No, Jimmy, they'll start
fighting with Pierre. The overseers will come, and before you know
it there'll be killings.” She could see the mangled dead, the weeping
women, the burials. “No, they've first got to organize, get a leader."
"But what can we do now?"
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She stared all around her, her eyes flashing. “We start digging
a hole-right here!"
They fell to their knives, digging into the soft earth with their
cane knives. Finally, a shallow grave had been dug. They lined it
hurriedly with dry cane leaves.
"Now lie down, Jimmy-be quick!"
Jimmy stretched out on the dry leaves while Aunt Hannah
gathered more. She spread them over him, allowing for air passage
over his nose. Cutting off some green tops, she spread them over
the leaves. Then, as she gazed at the “grave,” tears started running
down her cheeks.
"Son, be patient, please,” she said, and turned away, moving with
fearful erectness.
Working again, she crept ahead of the group. After disposing of
her denuded stalks, she kept topping off until she reached Jimmy
again. She piled more tops on him. “It's me, mon cher,” she whis-
pered.
Looking around, she could see sentries moving about on the field.
Overseers were riding around on horseback, and the waterboy was
trudging back and forth. She called for water and the boy tramped
toward her with two full buckets.
"Why don't you put one o' them heavy buckets down, son?" she
said. “Here, put it on my row.” She indicated a spot near Jimmy's
head. “Then I won't have to call you when I want a drink, and I'm
awful thirsty."
Now Jimmy's head would be safe. No one would ride over that
bucket.
She resumed her cutting, glancing back repeatedly. Pierre rode
up, stopping his horse just short of where Jimmy lay hidden. Aunt
Hannah threw down her cane knife and went to the bucket. Stand-
ing in front of the horse, she dipped some water out and sipped on
it slowly. After exchanging a few words with her, Pierre moved on.
She heaved a sigh of relief and settled down to work again.
Two cutters plodded toward the water bucket. Aunt Hannah
glared at them. After drinking, one of the men sat down to tie his
shoelaces. Aunt Hannah's mouth quivered open, her eyes blazing.
She trembled for Jimmy.
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“That's just the point!"
Presently Pierre's yardman rode alongside the police juror and
handed him a note. Pierre read: “White man murdered in Saint
Ann swamps. Investigate.”
The note was to the sheriff and was signed by the district attor-
ney. He gave the message to the sheriff. After reading it, the sheriff
told Pierre to continue patrolling the section until tomorrow.
"I'll borrow a set of hounds from Saint Bernard and track the
nigger to hell if we have to!" He gathered his men and galloped
up the coast.
Having learned of the sheriff's plans, Aunt Hannah picked up
her dinner bucket and hurried away, mumbling, “Dogs! Dogs!
Bring on your ol bloodhounds!"


In the room, Aunt Hannah held the girl in her arms. "Listen,
honey, I came to tell you—"
"Tell me what, Tante Hannah?”
“I came to tell you, the man in the cane"
“Yes?"
"He's Jimmy."
Bewildered, Antonia stared at the old woman. “Tante Hannah-
you must be joking!”
“I ain't joking. It's the truth.”
Still staring, Antonia's eyes filled with terror. “Hélas! Bon Dieu,
quelle surprise!"
Aunt Hannah caught her as she started to fall. “Honey, get hold
of yourself. You've got to!”
The brown eyes flashed with fire. “They'll kill him!” she
screamed. “Where is he? I must find him!” She broke loose from
Aunt Hannah's grasp and ran out the door.
"Come back here!" cried the old woman. “Antonia, come back
here!"
Dugas sprang from his chair and rushed down the gallery.
Antonia threw herself into his arms.
“What's going on here!” Dugas led his weeping daughter back
into the bedroom. “Tante Hannah, what you said to this gal?"
"Mon cher, mon pauvre Jacques!” moaned Antonia. “Quel dom-
mage! He's the man in the cane!”
“What you sayin', gal? You know Jimmy's on Saint Agnes!"
"No, François, he's in the cane," said Aunt Hannah. “He's the
man they're after."
Dugas leaned against the wall. He stared into the darkness.
Aged phantoms moved before him. He could hear the agonized
screams of black death in the swamps, in the lonely woods.
“But the cane's cut,” he said at last. “Where is he? Where is
Jimmy?"
"He's safe. But we gotta go after him. First, I want you to go
for Albert, George and Joe.” She walked over to him and placed
a hand on his arm. "Trust me, François. Tell the men to hurry.
Don't tell them why."
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door of her room. Aunt Hannah cast a quick glance at her, then
hurried over and patted her on the shoulder.
“Trust your Tante Hannah, honey.” She turned and followed
the recruits down the lane to the gate. Her stride was long, her
back as straight as a soldier's.
“You men take the levee,” she ordered. “I'll stay in the road."


13
Jimmy lay uneasily under the cane tops. There was no more swish-
ing of cane leaves, no more banging of cane knives. Cautiously, he
moved his right shoulder. The cane tops rustled. But his position
was unbearable. If only he could get up and stretch! Gradually, he
moved his arm from beneath the creaking leaves. He cleared a space
over his eyes. The black mask of night greeted him.
Field mice, lizards and small scorpions moved about the cane
leaves. They had come out for their night's foraging. A mouse
crawled over his face. He blew on it and it ran away. He shud-
dered. That could've been a muskrat out of the ditch.
He heard the shuffling noises of footsteps of a sudden, then his
name being called. It was Aunt Hannah! Her voice was low,
guarded. “Get up, Jimmy,” she whispered. “We've come to get you.”
Jimmy happily extricated himself and followed her mutely to
the east headland. The four accomplices greeted him in whispers.
“Lie down on this homemade stretcher," Aunt Hannah com-
manded. He obeyed without question. “Now, my boy, don't let any
part of your body or clothing touch the ground.” She turned to the
men. "Go on now, and be careful.”
Picking up the stretcher, the men walked across the headland
and slid it through the barbed-wire fence that ran along the road
ditch. Aunt Hannah followed through the fence with Jimmy's cane
knife and knapsack, then preceded the stretcher bearers up the
levee and headed south.
The stretcher-bearers descended the levee to the batture. Ambling
along, they became alarmed at the cracking of driftwood under their
feet. They changed their course to the willows. Here, they had to
change again. Tilting the stretcher to negotiate the willows might
throw Jimmy off, they knew. They took to the water's edge, walk-
ing in and out of gorges. This bobbing up and down was harder,
but a lot safer.
They heard a sudden "Who!" Jimmy jumped. The carriers
78


stopped at the door and listened before going out on the gallery.
Returning, she could hear Pierre's racking horse on the road. She
walked to the edge of the gallery to see in what direction he was
going. Somehow, she had a feeling that Pierre was just a little sus-
picious about her log. And, too, he had given her an inquiring look
in the field.
Riding south in haste and flashing his light, Pierre passed the
house. Aunt Hannah took a deep breath, then went inside with
Jimmy's plate, bolting the door behind her.
Jimmy ate as heartily of the second plate as he had of the first.
"I knew I'd get into trouble if I taught those boys to read and write.
But here were guys who worked year in and out and were too
ignorant to know what they had coming to them on pay day.”
Aunt Hannah took a sip of coffee. “You did the right thing,
son.”
“Maybe so, but I didn't get the hundred I went after."
There were footsteps on the gallery. The dish of sagamite fell
from Jimmy's hand. He kicked off his slippers and jerked on his
shoes. “My pants, Aunt Hannah, my pants!"
The old lady hurried to her feet and threw his trousers at him.
A light tap came on the door. Aunt Hannah stood close to it
while Jimmy quickly put on his pants and shirt over his pajamas.
He shoved his pistol into his pocket and hid in a corner behind the
four-posted bed, cane knife in hand.
The knock came again, louder. “Tante Hannah!” called a sweet
voice.
Aunt Hannah quickly opened the door, but only wide enough
to admit Antonia. Promptly, she bolted it again.
“Where is he, Tante Hannah? Where's Jimmy?”
Jimmy came out fast from his hiding place behind the bed. He
caught the girl in his arms. “Antonia! Antonia!” He buried his face
in her soft hair.
She clung to him, choking with wild sobs. “Jimmy, oh, Jimmy-I
am so afraid!” Jimmy hugged her closer. “Why are they after you,
Jimmy? Why do they want to kill you?”
"Shh, honey,” he whispered. “I'll be all right now."
“Please hold me forever, Jimmy!"
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faces when Aunt Hannah's tap came on the door. "It's me, Tante
Hannah.”
Antonia opened the door. With her was Tony. The door bolted,
the four sat down and Aunt Hannah eyed Jimmy and Antonia
closely. “Did she behave while I was gone, Jimmy?” she asked,
smiling.
Antonia hid her face. "Tante Hannah, sometimes you say the
funniest things!"
"Hmm,” said Aunt Hannah and looked at Jimmy.
Tony looked at Jimmy's discolored eyes and bruised face. “They
really meant to get you, boy!”.
“They still do,” said Jimmy.
“Aunt Hannah told me your story. The first thing is to get some
men together. We'll show these damned overseers!” Tony got up.
“With Plascide we'll complete our plans in the morning."
Aunt Hannah turned to Antonia. “I think you'd better go with
Tony, sugar ... or the man in the cane might get you!”
Antonia hid her face again. “I don't care if he would!” she whis-
pered.
"Antonia!” gasped Aunt Hannah.
Jimmy smiled and embraced Antonia, kissing her eyes and lips.
"Come early tomorrow," he said in her ear. “I love you, angel.”
After the door had closed behind Tony and Antonia, Aunt
Hannah took Jimmy's hands in hers. “I hope to God you come out
of this safely, Jimmy--for her sake, too. If anything happened to
you, she'd be lost-she'd never look at another man, Jimmy.”


14
At ten o'clock the next morning, two bloodhounds were led upon
the field by their trainer. The sheriff and his deputies had returned
from the murder investigation and were standing on the headland
where the cane had been cut. Tillman was there with Daniel George,
who was now well enough to join the man hunt. Presently, Pierre
rode up with five more overseers from near-by plantations east and
west of the river.
The sheriff strode across the headland to face Tillman. “If them
dogs follow the trail to another stretch of cane, we'll have to follow
'em this time.”
“Yes," said Tillman, “that nigger mustn't get away this time."
"When we get him," said Pierre, “we'll have to rush him out o'
here the back way."
“Why the back way?"
“People here might give trouble.”
“Hell, we'll shoot the bastards down. Them Bend niggers need
to be taken down a peg, anyhow.”
"It wouldn't be just niggers we'd have to shoot."
Daniel joined the conversation. “You mean white men here
would try to stop the sheriff from hauling a nigger they thought
had tried to kill a white man?”
"At least they would if we caught the nigger we're after," said
Pierre.
As the warm sun crept higher overhead, a crowd of eager spec-
tators was forming at the scene to see the dogs take up the scent
of the man in the cane. The dog trainer patted the hounds on the
head. One of the dogs extended his tongue, whipped it around both
sides of his mouth and swallowed.
"I'm ready," said the trainer. "Got anything for these pups to
smell?”
The trainer held a handkerchief to the dogs' noses. They'd picked
it up in Jimmy's cabin. After getting the scent, they lowered their
83


heads to the ground and sniffed across the headland until they came
to a row near the center of the square. The trainer, holding the
leashes, followed the dogs in a half-running gait down the field. A
few yards from the headland, the dogs cut across several rows to
the south, smelled their way back to the row on which they had
entered the field and went west.
They kept zigzagging until they had reached a spot about half-
way to the square, then whirled south and raced across the field,
stopping within a row of the ditch bank. They pranced about, their
noses dragging on the ground.
Retracing their steps, the dogs went to the north ditch bank,
where they stopped and whined, then slowly came back over the
same trail, carefully smelling at every step until they reached Jimmy's
hiding place. They pawed at the leaves and barked furiously.
Coaxed by their trainer to move on, the hounds turned eastward
on the same row, barking harder and faster as they sped along. The
trainer's face brightened.
The man-hunters gathered at the fifty-ninth row to watch the
dogs as they bore toward the east headland. The sheriff shouted,
"They've got the trail now, boys! Just look at them dogs hunt!”
Within six feet of the headland, the bloodhounds stopped,
puzzled. Their trainer followed. Pierre said, “By God, what's wrong
with 'em?”
“Maybe they need to open their noses with Vick's salve," offered
a spectator.
The trainer jerked his head proudly. “Nothin's the matter with
them dogs. The nigger you're lookin' for didn't leave this field on
foot."
"He didn't ride out on horseback," said Tillman, "and he sure'n
hell didn't fly out.”
"Trainer, you ain't trying to tell us you think the nigger's still
in this patch, are you?” asked the sheriff.
"Your guess is as good as mine, Ben. Them dogs 'll follow a
nigger to hell if his scent's on the ground, but if it ain't there they
just can't take it up.”
“This ain't no guessing game,” said Pierre, “and I know what
I'm beginning to think about them dogs."
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"Hell, mister! You seen what them dogs done on the field. You
seen 'em zigzagging here and there. If that nigger went out o’here
on foot, hands or knees, them dogs would o' followed the trail.
What's more, I'll pit them dogs against bloodhounds from any
place.”
"We ain't interested in canine comparisons,” said Daniel. “Up
in Georgia where I come from, we don't fool around with niggers
like this."
“I can believe that, mister."
The sheriff knitted his brows and squinted his eyes. If Jimmy
got away, Jerry wouldn't like it. He was up for election next year,
too.
“Just a minute, men,” he said. “This arguing ain't gettin' us no
place. Let's come down to earth. Now, we know the nigger was in
this cane before we cut it down. We know he was in there when
it was only half cut-the barking of the dogs, the two shots, the
dogs' silence. Then three dead dogs—two shot, a third hacked-are
proof of the nigger's presence. Yet we came to the end of the rows
without seeing neither hair nor hide of him. He slipped through
the tightest cordon I've ever drawn around a nigger.”
"You're right, Ben,” said Pierre, “but, by God, the nigger didn't
just vanish. Either he walked out or ran out. And if them hounds
was any good, they'd keep up the trail!”
The trainer patted the dogs. “All right, you smart guys, since
you know the nigger was in this square of cane, why didn't a
hundred cutters and a couple dozen men with guns see him come
out?"
Daniel stepped close to a cane heap. He was tired of this bicker-
ing. That nigger had to be found. He'd struck a white man.
"At what end of the field did the cutting start?” he asked.
"On this here end,” said Pierre.
“Then the nigger must've left the field on the other end."
“Maybe so, Mister Georgia-Man," said the trainer, “but you
seen them dogs go down about halfway of the field. You seen 'em
cross and recross, turn and return, tracing and retracing their steps
until they stopped here. Also, you seen them dogs smell their way
85


“I tell you, Mandy, that gorilla was a strange one—white like
a sheep! Then a black ghost, he come an' help fight the gorilla.”
Bob Jefferson stood hands akimbo, his cane knife pointing
backwards. “Stella,” he said in his soprano voice, “you can dream
moh in one minute standin' on yoh feet than a dozen people snorin'
all night!”
Gene Norbert, a short, decrepit old man with white hair, was
sitting at home arguing with himself as was his habit, when the
herald stopped at his house.
“You say the man in the cane ees Jeemmee?” he asked.
“That's right, Unc' Norbert.”
"Chiens! Cochons! Ah weel feex 'em.” Rising with difficulty, he
reached for his cane. “Ah weel feex 'em!” He hobbled off in the
direction of the man hunt.
The herald paused at the man-hunt scene. “It's Jimmy they're
after, folks. Jimmy Dixon!”
Tongues stopped wagging. The crowd was shocked into silence.
Finally, a young Cajun surged through the crowd. He stood facing
the man-hunters. “Did you hear what he said, Pierre? Is it true the
man in the cane is Jimmy Dixon?"
Pierre didn't answer. He sat on his horse looking off into space.
The young man persisted. “Is it true, Pierre?”
Still ignoring the white man, Pierre rode alongside the sheriff.
“Wonder how'n hell that name leaked out!"
"I wonder,” said the sheriff, frowning.
Tillman and Daniel rode up.
"I guess you know what that means, Ben," said Pierre.
"What does it mean?” asked Daniel.
"Trouble!” said Pierre with emphasis.
"We lock up people who disturb the peace where I come from,"
said Daniel.
One by one, men and women joined the group, swelling the
assemblage to nearly a hundred.
Pierre's own field workers were there. “Why ain't you folks
cuttin' cane?” he asked, meeting them.
“Right now, Pierre, we'd rather raise cane!” snapped a mulatto
woman.
88


"You knew who the man in the cane was. Why didn't you tell
us?” cried another woman.
"Go back to your work!” yelled Pierre.
"Like hell we will!” said a cutter.
They surged past Pierre. He followed, looking worried.
The crowd had swollen to nearly two hundred people of mixed
emotions—some angry, some curious, some thrilled.
“What you got against Jimmy, Pierre?” asked a Cajun.
"Nothin'," replied Pierre dryly.
“You been knowin' that boy since the day he was born,” said
a middle-aged white woman. “His folks and you was children
together. But you huntin' 'im down like the leader of a Georgia
mob! How come, Pierre?”
"An' look, Miss Emma, Pierre got a Georgia man out there!”
said a colored woman.
"Boo-ooh!” yelled the crowd.
A huge, muscular black man stood before his colleagues. “Folks,
I'm a peaceful man, but I just can't stand here an' let them overseers
take Jimmy. Let's chase 'em!"
The crowd remained silent.
"Don't try to buck the law!" cautioned the sheriff.
“Them planters with guns!" retorted a Cajun. "They the law,
too?”
The crowd shuffled closer.
The sheriff shifted his position to the right. “Better see what you
can do with 'em, Pierre. I hate to shoot them Cajunized niggers
and niggerized Cajuns!”
"In the name of the law, friends!” said Pierre. "Why—"
“Yeah, folks," one of the crowd taunted, “let's put Jimmy in
jail! Let him rot there! But do it in the name of the law!”.
"That boy busted a white man's head!” blurted the sheriff.
"The white man must've had it comin' to 'im!"
Tillman placed his hand on Daniel's shoulder. "Here's the white
man the nigger cracked over the head! Show them, Daniel.”
Daniel took off his hat. “Look at the gash! The nigger beaned
me with a piece of iron!”
89


"Ah, put on your hat, mister,” said a mulatto woman. “We ain't
bothered about you. It's Jimmy we's worried about!"
“What you doin' here, anyway?" asked a tall brown man.
A black sawmill worker stepped before the crowd, signaling for
silence. “Folks,” he said, "the sheriff here done make a heap to do
'bout the law. But I done seen the law in action round Bogalousa
when them black sawmill hands was askin' foh moh pay! The first
thing the law done was put the handcuffs on the leaders and haul
'em away to the Washington Parish jail. But them mens ain't never
got to that jail! On the way, some other law tuck charge, an' in a
li'l while them leaders was no moh. Now, ah ain't tellin' you what
to do, but don't let Jimmy Dixon get lynched too!”
The crowd surged forward again.
"Ain't you people got no sense?” whined Pierre. “Ain't you got
no respect for the law?”.
Twelve men, white and colored, rode up on horseback.
"Shoulder arms!" barked Pierre to his deputies. “We'll show
them fools!”
Andrew quickly lifted his rifle. A deputy next to him knocked it
down and stood on it. The other deputies didn't move.
“By God, I said shoulder arms!"
Mike stepped forward. “Pierre, we got relatives out there."
“Them folks are our friends," said another deputy. “We ain't
gonna shoot 'em!”
Daniel spurred his horse and rode around in a circle. “In all my
life," he yelled in disgust, “I've never seen white men and women
make over a nigger so much!” He turned his horse to face Pierre's
deputies. “Ain't you guys white men?"
There was no answer.
Daniel pulled on the reins and rode up the coast in a fast gallop.
He'd show that bunch of niggers and nigger-lovers they couldn't
fool with a real white man! He counted the armed men that would
be on his side-Pierre, Tillman, the sheriff and his three deputies,
six overseers and the five he was going after. Eighteen of them!
Damn it, he'd show that crowd!
Around a curve a couple of hundred yards away where the cane
field ended and truck farming began, Daniel stopped his horse
90


abruptly. He called the overseers, who were strung along the edge
of the cane with rifles lying across their saddles.
They trotted to the public road. “What's wrong?" asked one.
“We need you boys. Niggers gettin' out of line!” He turned his
horse. "Come on, follow me!".
The overseers galloped behind Daniel. Thundering around a
curve, the posse was now in full view of the crowd. They came to
a halt at the feet of the spectators.
"Scatter!” Daniel roared.
Those in the path of Daniel's horse fell to one side.
“Disarm them men, Sheriff!” demanded LeBlanc, the mulatto
leader of the twelve men. “There's gonna be bloodshed!”
"I don't take orders from niggers," said the sheriff.
"Better do as Henry said, Ben," warned Paltron, a Cajun
colleague of Henry's.
“How many times do I have to repeat that I'm the law here?”
“That's why we're asking you to do something you're the
law!"
Eleven of Pierre's deputies went into a huddle. Mike emerged.
"Ben,” he said, "if you don't disarm them men, we'll have to
do it for you!"
He turned to Daniel. “We'll give you fellows just one minute
to drop them guns!"
The other ten deputies took up positions at vantage points.
Slowly, Mike approached Daniel. The Georgian gazed at him
contemptuously. “You must be mad!” he yelled.
“Do as Mike said,” roared LeBlanc.
Daniel bristled, but only for a short time. He was now sur-
rounded by twenty men with leveled guns.
“Cajuns! Niggers!” he exclaimed, and dropped his gun. The
weapons of five overseers dropped to the ground.
The crowd gazed in amazement. Pierre puffed his fat jaws. The
sheriff looked on helplessly as Mike gathered the arms and tossed
them to his colleagues.
“Now, you overseers and this Georgia man, get down off them
horses!” ordered LeBlanc.
91


Tony rode up hurriedly. "Folks, I've something to say to the
sheriff.”
“What is it, Tony?” The sheriff lifted a miserable face.
“Ben, Jimmy Dixon is ready to surrender, but you got to give
him protection."
“Where's the nigger ?” asked Ben angrily.
Tony looked at the overseers. “I can't tell you with this mob
around.”
"Mob!” the sheriff Alared. “Be careful how you speak, Tony.
These men are here to help enforce the law!"
“Ben, these men are here for revenge and you know it!”
“The sheriff gets who he damned pleases to help him round up
criminals.”
Pierre spat a mouthful of tobacco juice to the ground. “It might
pay you to keep your nose out of this, Tony."
“Your nose is in it, Pierre-right up to your neck! And it
shouldn't be. Do you remember how our ancestry was kicked out
of Acadia a hundred and fifty years ago? Well, you've joined the
same kind of mob!"
"Bravo!” yelled the crowd.
"Ben, you're hunting an innocent man,” said Tony.
"Innocent! But he struck a white man!"
“The white man started it. Jimmy struck back in self-defense."
"I'm neither judge nor jury, only a cop. The nigger tried to kill
a white man. He attacked a white man. That's enough for me!”
Daniel placed himself between the sheriff and Tony. "No nigger
should put his dirty hands on a white man!" With a dramatic
gesture he snatched off his hat. “The nigger struck me right here.
See the mark?"
"I know all about it,” snapped Tony.
"As a white man, you should tell the sheriff where the nigger
is.”
"My first duty is to keep an innocent man from being mobbed.”
He turned to the sheriff. “What about it, Ben? What about
Jimmy's protection?"
“It's your duty as a citizen to—".
“Duty!" broke in Tony. "Sheriff, you've got a bunch of men
92


They started toward the railroad tracks. The leading guards
spurred their horses to a gallop. The sheriff and Jimmy followed
close behind, with the sheriff's deputies in the rear.
Tillman and the overseers rushed toward their horses.
"Wait!" yelled Tony. “You fellows can't leave here until six-
thirty. You too, Pierre. We're taking no chances!"
Andrew started to sneak off.
“You're in that bunch too, Andrew," snapped Tony.
"I'm going and nobody's going to stop me!" blurted an overseer
Pierre's ex-deputies, armed with their own revolvers, surrounded
Pierre and his colleagues. Tony regarded his unwilling guests
intently. A mob was as close to Jimmy as a telephone was to any
one of this group.
Daniel lit a cigar. “This is unconstitutional,” he said, trying to
appear contemptuously at ease.
Mike laughed. “Look who's tryin' to lean on the Constitution!"
Pierre rubbed his potbelly. "I'm still the police juror here.”
"And you're still with the overseers!” snapped Tony.
one of the lit a cigarily at ease
“The Five Spot,” as the evening southbound New Orleans, Fort
Jackson & Grand Isle train was commonly called, came to a stop
at the railroad crossing that served as one of the stations from River
Bend. The sheriff, his retinue of officers and the prisoner got
aboard. They stepped into the combination baggage car and Jim
Crow coach and occupied the wooden seats.
While the train was rumbling on to the next station a half mile
away, the conductor came into the Jim Crow coach, yelling, “Fare!"
He lumbered toward the sheriff, punch in hand. The sheriff handed
him a twenty-dollar bill.
“How many, Sheriff?”
"Seventeen."
"Seventeen? Them nig-them too?”
“They're my deputies.”
The baffled conductor shook his head, punched the receipts and
ambled back to the other coach, muttering, “Nigger deputies!"
The train rolled and rocked on its uneven tracks, stopping to
discharge or take on passengers with the frequency of a streetcar
96


The jailer stared. “Lock who up? I don't see nobody with
handcuffs.”
The sheriff pointed to Jimmy. “That one.”
“Who them other fellows?"
“Guards for the prisoner.”
“I mean them niggers.”
“Them, too."
The jailer grunted. He unlocked the jailhouse door and flung
it wide open.
A few of the guards slipped in ahead of the prisoner. The jailer
bristled. “Hey, you guys, I ain't lockin' y'all up. Stay outside with
them guns!”
Henry smiled. “Some'll be inside and some'll be outside."
The jailer locked the door and rushed ahead of the guards
down the corridor to a vacant cell. He pushed Jimmy in and
slammed the door.
"Pushing him wasn't necessary," said Mike, and his eyes
narrowed.
The jailer stood gazing at Mike while dangling his bunch of
keys. Then he turned and walked up the corridor and sat down
just inside the front door.
“That guy's so used to pushin' black boys 'round that he do it
without thought,” muttered Henry. He and three other guards went
to the jailer. “We all would like to see over the jail on both
floors."
The jailer stared at Henry, passed his hand over his forehead, got
up and said, “Follow me.”
Like the first floor, the second was filled with black and brown
prisoners. They met a trusty carrying two buckets. "What the hell
is stinkin' so?" asked Fouche.
“Nigger dung,” replied the jailer.
“You mean the prisoners have to squat over them buckets?"
“That or shit on the floor."
Henry and Fouche sat opposite Jimmy's cell. The other four
deputies selected for duty for the first half took up positions outside.
After an interval, Fouche, a Cajun, strolled over to where the
jailer was sitting. “How many birds this cage holds?” he asked.


“Seventy-five. Right now we have sixty-nine, with the nigger
you're guardin'."
“I don't see any whites."
“Why should you? Jail's here for niggers."
“Why 're most of the guys in here?”
“Jumpin' commissary bills, vagrancy and cuttin' other niggers.”
“Jumpin' commissary bills ? I thought it was against the law to
jail a man for debt!"
“That's the law all right, but them niggers is charge with
stealin'."
“Most of the prisoners here are serving time, I suppose."
The jailer let go a volley of brown spit. “I'd say only about half
of 'em. The rest is waitin' trial.”
“How long they got to wait?".
“That depends. Some of them niggers have to wait for six
months if they get in here just after the court term ends.”
“You mean six months in jail without a hearing?”
"Sure. When the judge is in another parish holdin' court, there
ain't nothin' else to do."
"If convicted, a prisoner gets time off, I suppose."
“Hell, no!"
Back in River Bend after Tony had dismissed his unwilling
guests, Joe Tillman and Daniel George rode slowly down the road.
A carriage passed them driven by a stringy-haired youth. In it sat a
matronly woman and four young women. The most beautiful was
dark-complexioned. Daniel gazed at her. “Well, I'll be damned!”
he said. “Look at that mulatto wench riding with those white
folks!”
"Shh," said Tillman. “Them's Pierre's folks.”
"The mulatto gal, too?”
"She ain't no mulatto. She's Pierre's daughter. So are the other
three girls. The older woman's his wife and the mother of them
girls. The boy is their son.”
“Pierre's daughter? Hell, she's lots darker than lots of mulattoes
I've seen.”
The two men galloped on.


17
Armidé Touchard passed through a side door to the jailer's office.
He was a tall man with hollow cheeks and shoulders, the latter
giving him a perpetual bent-over appearance, not one of senility but
of aggressiveness, as if he were constantly about to wrap his long
arms about any person he was talking to directly. His forehead was
unusually high, and not because of any loss of hair. A great amount
of bushy iron-gray hair jutted upward in all directions from his
head, an unruly mass that had embarrassed him since childhood
but which, actually, gave him a look of extraordinary distinction.
His tallness was accentuated by his skinniness, but he did not in the
slightest appear frail. A face almost Lincoln-like above his long
neck had in it such strength of character and dignity that one
scarcely noticed the sparseness of his frame-especially after he
started talking. His voice was both mellow and direct and gripping,
no matter what he might at the moment be talking about. When
he smiled, the hollowness in his cheeks vanished, being replaced
by immense wrinkles that quivered out of an inner motivation
impossible to fathom, for he was known to smile just as often in
anger as he did in mirth.
"I'm Touchard, Attorney Touchard,” he said, “I want to see
my client, Jimmy Dixon.”
The jailer, remembering that he had seen the attorney five years
before in the famous Crozat-Guichard case, said, “Yes, Mr.
Touchard.”
Jimmy's guards recognized him as he came in.
As the cell door slammed behind him, Touchard asked, "Are
you Jimmy Dixon?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I'm Armidé Touchard, your attorney."
“Tony Eskind told me to expect you, sir.”
"Have you had any visitors?”
"The district attorney and Joe Tillman just left my cell.”
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"I hope you were brief with them.”
“I was, sir." Jimmy then related his experiences on Saint Agnes
Plantation.
Touchard rubbed his chin. “What witnesses can we get from
Saint Agnes?"
"Witnesses!” Jimmy exclaimed. “Everybody there knows what
happened, but would anybody tell the truth?” He thought for a
moment. “Yes, we might be able to get one to talk. His name is
Teboy Dowden.”
"How would I go about getting him ?”
“Tony will arrange.”
Touchard got up off the bunk and his head almost reached to
the ceiling. “Stand on your constitutional rights. Refer all ques-
tioners to me.”
The cell door opened and Tony stepped in. “The train was late,"
he said.
"Tony,” said Jimmy, “there's a man on Saint Agnes named
Teboy. We need him as a witness. Would you try to get him?”.
“Contact me when you do," said Touchard. “I want to question
him.”
“Hunh,” said Tony, “that's going to be a tough one!"
“We must have him.”
“I'll do my best.”
Tony turned to Jimmy. “You're on pins and needles to ask me
about Antonia. I can see it in your face, Jimmy. But I got to tell
you she's sick in bed. Got hysterical after you left. We had to call
in the doctor."
Jimmy jumped up. He looked up imploringly into his attorney's
face and said, “Mr. Touchard, I've got to get out of here on bond.
I know Judge Rochon has never let a colored man out on bond,
but my girl's health is in danger. I love her and she loves me-
we're engaged to get married.”
“Yes, Jimmy," said Touchard. “Yes, I know. I understand—but
court does not open until Monday after next. Meanwhile, your girl
is out of her mind. She's scared. A week to her now is like a year.”
He patted Jimmy's arm. “Jimmy, I'll go see her myself. I'll talk to
her. I'll tell her you are in no danger now. That you're not being
102


mistreated. That you'll be out on bond after court opens. She doesn't
need medicine from a doctor. She needs spiritual medicine. I'll give
her a good big dose of it, and when court opens I guarantee you
she'll walk in smiling, dignified and proud.”
"Thank you, sir,” said Jimmy, tears in his eyes.
The jailer clanged open the door. Tony and Touchard stepped
into the corridor and followed the jailer out.
A few days later Attorney Touchard stepped briskly into Tony
Eskind's parlor and sat down.
“This is your Saint Agnes witness," said Tony, pointing to
Teboy. “His name's Teboy Dowden.”
"Good,” said Touchard. “Had any trouble getting him?"
"Well, it wasn't too easy. We got a guy from a colored settle-
ment across the river to hire in on Saint Agnes. His name's Jake
Smith. On account of the State law making it a felony to entice
field hands to leave the plantations, Jake had to be very careful
how he went about it. Then after he contacted Teboy he had a hard
time convincing him that he should leave.”
Touchard looked at Teboy. “What's the matter, don't you want
to get Jimmy out of jail?”
“Yes, suh, but ah jis don't like gettin' all mixed up in white
folks' bidness," said Teboy.
"Somebody's got to get mixed up in white folks' business if a
guy like Jimmy is to get justice.”
“That's what Jake done tell me, but you see, mister, ah jis got
one neck!”
"Hunh!” grunted Touchard. “Draw up a chair and sit here
beside me.”
Teboy sat down and Touchard went on: "On the witness stand
I'll question you. Then you will be cross-questioned by the district
attorney. And all the time the jurymen will be looking at you, and
so will the judge. But there'll be nothing for you to be afraid of.
All you got to do is answer the questions truthfully, to the best
of your knowledge.”
Teboy listened to the attorney attentively, watching Touchard's
gestures, his wrinkled grimaces, his aggressive directness. Touchard
103


18
On the second Monday after Jimmy's arrest, Aunt Hannah sat in
the parish courtroom in deep thought. She contemplated the pro-
found silence of her white and colored friends and ventured the
thought that their solemnity, like her own, could be attributed
to the fact that they were sitting in a room that symbolized justice.
Sitting in a courtroom to her was like sitting in church. In both
houses serious business was transacted. However, she went to church
only on special occasions-baptisms, christenings, weddings, wakes
and funerals. She never attended regular services because she
couldn't stomach hearing the minister preach fatherhood while being
a party to the denial of brotherhood. The Jim Crow practice of the
church was anything to her but brotherhood. What's more, the
church had helped to keep her a slave, and white preachers hadn't
even yet stopped twisting the meaning of the Scriptures to justify
a slave class based on color. What was worse, she believed, black
preachers were in tacit agreement in order to make a soft living.
She glanced across the room. Her mind had been so absorbed
in the lawlessness of the law—the divine as well as the secular-
that she'd almost forgotten that another interested group was sitting
in the courtroom.
With the overseers were Pierre and Andrew Ogden. Since Pierre
knew everyone connected with the defense, some of them being
his employees, she wondered if he felt strange at his connection
with the forces arrayed against them. Chewing tobacco in silence,
Pierre didn't appear happy. She thought Andrew looked compla-
cent. His beady eyes showed him capable of anything loathsome.
She thought she saw on the faces of Jerry Gordon and Daniel
George not only amused contempt, but a slight fear that justice
might appear on the scene. As for the others, their behavior indi-
cated light hearts. Some wore an air of merriment, others non-
chalance. To the latter group everything was in the bag.
i
105


died down to whispers, the judge said, “Mr. Touchard, you have
gone out of your way to make bold and slanderous remarks about
the good white people of this parish!”
"Your Honor," said Touchard, lowering both arms to his sides
and standing up as erect as he could, “I am prepared to prove my
statement!"
The spectators waxed into silence as he faced them. His eyes
roved over them until they met Pierre's. He smiled and turned
to the judge. “I shall not, your Honor, disturb a portion of my
audience with the same answer as I gave then. However, I object
most strongly to the district attorney's request that my client plead
guilty to crimes to which he is innocent. Mr. Adams' advice is raw
and defenseless!"
The smile on Touchard's face slowly uncreased. His eyes nar-
rowed and his lip corners went down. He was in a fighting mood.
"Would the district attorney have made the same suggestion
to a white defendant?” He spoke sharply now. "Would he have
advised a white defendant to plead guilty because his word had no
standing in court against that of a black man? Does the word of
an American citizen carry less weight in court when his face is
black? Does it carry more weight when the citizen's face is white?
Since when, in law, has white become a virtue and black its
antithesis?”
The spectators gazed at Touchard, spellbound, while the judge
sat with hands folded. Jimmy drew his feet back against the rung
of the chair and leaned forward to absorb carefully every word
his attorney said.
"Mr. Adams is presumptuous," continued Touchard. “His state-
ment is sheathed in the tradition that all black men are unequal to
all white men. His advice to my client is a psychological stab at
justice. It is legal mockery and is reprehensible to every decent,
fair and just instinct. In the first place, my client, Mr. Dixon—"
The judge rapped for order. The planters and overseers were
protesting Touchard's calling Jimmy “mister." The judge continued
tapping his mallet. “Please, gentlemen, come to order!”
Finally, the talking and protesting ceased.
109


man has said nothing that would indicate in the least that he
wouldn't vote in an unbiased manner if sworn in to judge this case.
I object to his disqualification!”
The two attorneys wrangled over the prospective juryman for
some time. Finally, the judge grew weary and dismissed the
venireman.
Adams and Touchard continued to object to the intended jury-
men, the prosecutor on grounds of residence, the defense on active
plantation connections or sympathy for the views of the planters.
At noon the judge recessed court for dinner without a single
juryman having been chosen, a record for the court in which the
defendant hadn't been white.
When court convened after dinner, the district attorney and
the defense attorney continued to clash over those called for jury
service. Now a planter or overseer was called, objected to, fought
for and dismissed. Now a resident of River Bend went through the
same procedure.
Judge Rochon gave a sigh. He looked at his watch. “Do you
attorneys realize that time's Aying and we don't even have one
juryman as yet? I would appreciate you gentlemen meeting me
in my chambers."
In his chambers, the judge tore into the attorneys. “You guys
got to stop this nonsense! We've got to draw a panel-no? Or yes ?
Adams, you can't pack a jury box with all overseers; and you,
Touchard, you are not going to have a panel chock-full with River
Bend Cajuns.”
"Listen, Rochon, with me it's either overseers or nigger lovers,
and it won't be nigger lovers!”
Touchard's face began to crease in a smile of restrained fury.
He said, “Be reasonable, Rochon. I'm only trying to give a colored
man his freedom, but Adams has got to look after his boss's
interests.”
"I don't like your humor, Touchard!” snapped Adams.
"Really, don't you?” Touchard's smile became a mask of sar-
casm. “I'll take my chances with Rochon's suggestion."
Back in the courtroom, the judge rapped for order. He called
the sheriff and spoke to him in low tones. The sheriff gave the
115


20
Jimmy entered the courtroom under guard and sat down. He winked
at Antonia, then gazed at her new dress with the slightly V-shaped
neck draped over her firm, round breasts. She cupped her chin
and smiled.
Judge Rochon breezed in.
"Hear ye, hear ye ..." droned the clerk, and court was in
session for the second day.
“Gentlemen of the jury,” began Adams, “you have been sworn
in to hear the case of the People versus Jimmy Dixon and to pass
judgment. This court has never had a more important case before
it, never a more dangerous defendant!"
He stared at the accused. “Jimmy Dixon is not an ordinary
nigger criminal. He's vicious! Look what the charges are: One, try-
ing to kill a white man! Two, organizing plantation hands to
destroy their boss and benefactor, Jerry Gordon. Three, willfully
killing two bloodhounds belonging to this parish!”.
He walked past Jimmy and stood close to the jury box.
“The first charge alone is sufficient for you to hang the
defendant!"
Planters and overseers nodded.
“As an honorable body of white men devoid of all sentiment,
but desiring to do justice, you will vote to convict Jimmy Dixon!”
Adams turned to face the audience, then sat down.
The sheriff, called to take the stand, identified Jimmy Dixon as
the “boy” he'd arrested in River Bend against "great opposition and
under unusual circumstances.”
“What were those unusual circumstances, sheriff?” asked Adams.
“The manner in which the defendant slipped through our cordon
without being seen or heard."
“Did the defendant resist arrest?”
"He did.”
“Your witness, Mr. Touchard."
“No questions," replied Touchard.
117


all.
Pierre was called to take the stand. The district attorney ques-
tioned him.
“Mr. Crozat, is the defendant, Jimmy Dixon, the person you
were asked by the sheriff to arrest the last Sunday night in
September?”
Pierre cleared his throat. “Yes, sir.”
“That is all.”
Again Touchard declined to cross-examine the witness.
“Mr. Joe Tillman,” called the clerk.
Smiling, Adams asked, “Mr. Tillman, is the defendant, Jimmy
Dixon, the boy whom you hired on Saint Agnes the last day in
August, nineteen hundred and nineteen?”
“Yes, sir."
"Did you hire other niggers that day?"
“I did.”
“Did you hire Jimmy Dixon as readily as you did the others?"
“No, only after some thought."
"Why did you hesitate? Wasn't he a strong-enough-looking buck
for your plantation?”.
Touchard sprang to his feet. “I object, your Honor, to the term
'buck'!"
“The district attorney will please rephrase his question,” said
the judge.
Adams again asked the question, leaving out the word “buck.”
Tillman said his hesitation to hire Jimmy was due to "his suspicious
looks."
“While in your employ did the defendant say anything or do
anything to justify your suspicions of him?"
“Yes.” Adams then went into details about the charges against
Jimmy.
“Mr. Tillman, it was you who found Daniel George in the
cart lane that Sunday night after he had been struck down by the
defendant. Tell the court about it in your own words.”
"When I entered the cart lane I saw something lying across
the path resembling a log. I rode closer. My hair rose on my head,
standing straight up! It was a white man! I rushed to his side. Mr.
George was out cold and bleeding like a stuck sow!"
118


“What did Mr. George tell you when he was revived?”
“'The nigger hit me with a piece of iron!' he said.”
“What nigger was Mr. George talking about?"
"This one, Jimmy Dixon.”
"Your witness."
“Mr. Tillman,” began Touchard, “just what are your require-
ments for a field worker?”.
"He must be a good nigger and a good worker.”
“You hired other hands when you hired the defendant. Were
you suspicious of them, too?”.
"No."
“Why were you suspicious of Jimmy Dixon?"
"Well,” Tillman hesitated, “the nigger just didn't talk right."
"You're in court, Mr. Tillman, and offensive terms are out of
place here., in court, Mr. Tillmahe nigger just didn
There was a buzzing in the planter section.
"What did you mean when you said Jimmy Dixon didn't talk
right?"
"Well, he was insulting!"
"Come, come, Mr. Tillman. Plantation bosses don't take insults
from black men. Didn't you object to Jimmy Dixon because his
diction denoted a degree of intelligence not found in ordinary field
hands?"
"No, no!"
“I can hear you better if you don't scream. Now, when you found
Daniel George in the cart lane did he have a revolver on him?"
"I didn't search him."
“Didn't you know he toted a pistol?”
"No!"
“That's all.”
Adams called the plantation veterinary to the stand.
“Did you dress the wound of Daniel George the last Sunday
night in September?” asked Adams.
"Yes, sir.”
"How wide and deep was Mr. George's wound?”
"About a half inch wide and skin-deep."
"Your witness."
119


"Doctor Mark," began Touchard, "you said the wound of
Daniel George was skin-deep. Did it seem to have been made by the
trigger of a pistol?”
"I couldn't say. You see, it was my first time dressing the
wound of a man. Up to that time I had dressed only galled mules
and razor-slashed niggers.”
"That is all, Doctor Mark.”
Jerry was called.
"Mr. Gordon," began Adams, “when did you discover that
Jimmy Dixon had organized your hands to kill all the white people
on Saint Agnes?”
“The same day he tried to kill Mr. George.”
"What was the defendant's conduct while in your employ?”.
“At the pay counter he demanded money he wasn't entitled to
and sassed me out because I didn't give it to him.”
“That is all, Mr. Gordon."
Touchard rose slowly. He stepped in close to the witness and
folded his long arms, a smile creasing his cheeks in deep furrows,
a smile that was neither friendly nor forbidding. "Mr. Gordon, who
were the visitors at your home the Sunday night you found Daniel
George unconscious in the cart lane?”
"Since when can't a white man have visitors without being
questioned about it?”.
"Who were they?”
“I don't remember."
Touchard moved closer and the smile began curving into a
sarcastic grin. “Why did Daniel George leave your house and
company to walk alone in the dark that night?”
“He went for a stroll.”
"Was he armed?”
“Don't answer that question, Mr. Gordon," snapped Adams.
"Judge, your Honor," said Touchard, not moving his eyes from
Gordon's, "the question's in order. I demand an answer!”
“Answer the question, Mr. Gordon.”
“I don't know if he was armed.”
"Why were your other guests armed with revolvers and equipped
with bunches of hemp rope?”
120


“I hadn't noticed it if they were."
Touchard turned and walked to the table. He picked up a
package and slowly unwrapped it. “Where have you seen this
pistol before, Mr. Gordon?”
"I've never seen it before."
The spectators could see that the grin on Touchard's face was
beginning to make Gordon nervous. Even while unwrapping the
gun, he'd kept his eyes on Gordon's ruddy face. Now he laid the
pistol on the table, then walked slowly back to the witness, as close
as before.
“Mr. Gordon, do you know the defendant?”
“Casually."
"Didn't he work on your plantation?”
“Yes.”
“Jimmy worked on Saint Agnes for a full month. Why did you
refuse to pay him his full wages?”.
"Don't answer that question!” shouted Adams.
"Your Honor—" began Touchard.
“Answer the question, Mr. Gordon,” broke in the judge.
"I paid him his full wages.”
“Yes, Mr. Gordon, you did, but only after Jimmy Dixon fought
for it. Isn't that so?”
"I paid him, I told you."
"When you found out that you couldn't hold out on Jimmy
Dixon as you did your other field hands, why didn't you fire him
instead of bringing in others to help you hang him?"
Gordon's face flashed with anger. Jumping up, he slapped his
chest. “Who do you think I am? Do you think you're talking to a
nigger ?"
Touchard pursed his lips and just stood there, staring at Gordon.
“Your Honor,” Adams shouted, "the defense attorney is delib-
erately insulting the witness! Furthermore, I object to the question!”
Rochon smiled. “Sustained!” His voice was resonant.
Touchard backstepped to the table. He picked up another pack-
age and unwrapped it slowly, tantalizingly.
Judge Rochon leaned forward, staring at what Touchard had
unwrapped. It was a book. Touchard held it up, then opened it and
121


turned the pages until he came to a page headed: “September, 1919,
Payroll Account.” He began reading aloud: "Ben Jones, one
dollar; Sarah Hapgood, one dollar and fifty cents."
Jerry Gordon, his face flushed, stared at the ceiling.
“Do you recognize those names, Mr. Gordon?” asked Touchard.
"I do not!"
Touchard resumed his reading, picking names and figures at
random. Gordon denied knowing any of the names, or anything
about the figures.
“Do you recognize this book, Mr. Gordon?”
“Never saw it before."
“That's possible. After all, a man who manages a half-dozen
plantations can't see everything he controls.” Touchard faced the
bench. “Your Honor, may it please the court, I request that the clerk
read the title of this book to the jury.”
The jurymen waited in silence.
Tillman shuffled his feet and whispered to Pierre, but Jerry
Gordon betrayed no interest.
The judge hesitated. Then, finally, in a low voice scarcely
audible to the spectators, he said, “Read it."
“Payroll Account, Saint Agnes Plantation, Jerry Gordon, Man-
ager,” read the clerk.
After much fidgeting Gordon shouted, “How did you get hold
of that book?"
Again Touchard pursed his lips. “I am the questioner, Mr.
Gordon.”
Daniel brewed in anger. He got up and began loudly, “Judge,
your Honor—"
Touchard's voice came in louder to cut him off. “Your Honor,
this man is an attorney. He knows better than to yell at the bench
from the floor. He should be led from this room!”
"Order!” said the judge.
Reluctantly, Daniel sat down.
“Your Honor," said Touchard, “I offer this payroll account as
Exhibit Number One.”
Adams leaped up, shouting, "That book represents stolen prop-
erty! In justice to the witness, it cannot be entered as evidence!”
122


The judge regarded both Touchard and Adams in silence.
"To permit this exhibit to stand,” continued Adams, “would
obstruct, yea, defeat the wheels of justice! It is immaterial and must
be rejected!”
Anxiety shrouding his face, Judge Rochon leaned forward. “The
exhibit stands," he said quietly.
For a moment Jerry Gordon stared ahead, writhing in mental
anguish and rage, then, abruptly, with fists on his hips, he sprang
up. “Don't you planters out there see what's happening here? Don't
you see you're being drubbed along with me?".
“We see! We see!” cried a dozen voices. They got up and rushed
to the aisles, but were encountered there by the River Bend guards
and pushed back into their seats.
Agitated, the judge sounded his gavel. “One more such demon-
stration and I'll have the room cleared! Please, Mr. Gordon, control
yourself.”
"I'm sorry," said Gordon.
"Proceed, Mr. Touchard,” said Rochon.
Touchard was smiling. “That's all, Mr. Gordon," he said and
sat down.
The judge ordered court to adjourn until two in the afternoon.
Under a tree on the batture, Aunt Hannah spread an oilcloth.
She uncovered a basket and took out a dish of fried chicken, home-
made bread and a jar of peach preserves. “Fall into this stuff," she
said to Antonia and Tony. After they'd started to eat, she asked,
"Well, Tony, what do you think of the case so far?”.
"Touchard's doing all right,” said Tony. "Still I wouldn't say
it's in the bag."
“Suppose the jury isn't listening to Mr. Touchard?” worried
Antonia. “Suppose they convict Jimmy?” She stopped eating. “I
wonder what they're feeding him in that awful jail now."
After eating, Aunt Hannah strolled alone through the grounds
of the courthouse. She was walking leisurely among the vehicles
in the hitching station when she noticed a team of mules hitched to
a cane cart standing some distance away. She wondered at once why
it wasn't hitched to a post like the other teams. She noticed also
123


21
Daniel George sat in the witness chair with hands crossed and
elbows resting on the arms. He was the first witness called after
the judge had reconvened his court.
“Mr. George,” began Adams, "the last Sunday night in Septem-
ber, you were attacked by a nigger. Is he in this courtroom?"
"Your Honor,” cried Touchard, coming to his feet like a jack-
knife springing open, “I demand a retraction from the district at-
torney! Either he call my client by name or use the word defendant!"
"All right, all right," said Adams. “I'll put the question this way:
Is the African boy who attacked you on Saint Agnes that Sunday
night in this room?"
Again Touchard was on his feet. “Your Honor, my client is
American. Not African. I object to the term!"
"But your Honor," asked Adams, “what's wrong with the word
‘African'?”
"Nothing's wrong with the word 'African,' your Honor," said
Touchard. “But the district attorney is using it contemptuously!”
Adams bit on his lower lip. “The one who knocked you speech-
less, Mr. George, is he in this room?"
Daniel pointed to Jimmy. “There he sits, sir."
“Tell the court how Jimmy picked a fight with you before he
clubbed you with a piece of iron.”
“I had been taking a walk down the road and, immediately after
entering the gate on my way back, I could hear someone approach-
ing. I slowed up, and a few feet from me I could see a big nigger
with a knapsack on his shoulder and a piece of pipe in his hand. He
brushed my shoulder with his dirty bag. 'Be careful what you're
doing,' I said. Without a word he hit me over the head with the
pipe. From then on I didn't know anything."
"Show the jury the scar on your scalp where Jimmy Dixon
clubbed you."
125


“Quiet, you!" snapped the judge.
Touchard yawned and Gordon, puffed to the breaking point,
yelled out, “It was stolen at the same time my payroll record was!”
“Order!” said the judge in a courteous tone. “Proceed.”
Touchard yawned again, patting his mouth, then said, “Judge,
your Honor, I offer this revolver which bears the name of the owner,
Daniel George, as Exhibit Number Two."
Smiling, he sat down.
Already Adams was on his feet. "Your Honor, it has not been
proven that Mr. George was struck over the head with that pistol,
or with any gun at all, for that matter!”
The faces of the planters brightened.
“This pistol,” Adams went on, “is stolen property and I object to
its being placed here as an exhibit!”
Touchard stood up and said calmly, “My client had never seen
Daniel George alone before the said party attacked him. What's
more, my client has been in jail since arrested. How else could he
have obtained the revolver if he did not do so when Daniel George
attacked him? Your Honor, this exhibit must stand!”
“Judge, your Honor," said Adams excitedly, "Mr. Touchard has
strayed a long way from the path of truth to impress this jury that
his client is innocent. Now he asks the question, 'How else could he
have obtained the revolver?' Frankly, your Honor, he can't answer
that question. The court cannot supply it, neither can the witness.
There is but one answer—the defense stole it! Stole it to bolster up
his case. The exhibit cannot stand!”
Touchard rose slowly. “Your Honor, this revolver that lies on the
table, bearing the name of the klansman, Daniel George, was the
same weapon Dixon used to club the witness. It was the same gun
used to slay the sheriff's bloodhounds. It must stand!”
"Your Honor,” said Adams, trying hard to smile calmly as
Touchard was, “we're simply delaying the completion of this case.
I refer to this bickering over an article that cannot be entered as an
exhibit. The defense has not proven and cannot prove that this
instrument was used to club Mr. George or to shoot the sheriff's
dogs in the cane. Can the defense produce the bullets from the car-
128


casses of those dogs? Can it do that? It cannot! I demand, therefore,
that the court reject the pistol as an exhibit!”
Touchard whispered to Jimmy, “Aunt Hannah should have
extracted those bullets when she went for you that night.”
Gordon and his colleagues were beaming. The district attorney
had cornered Touchard!
The judge smiled at Gordon. “Objection sustained!” he said.
His lip corners down in disgust, Touchard said, “That's all,
Mr. George.”
The tenseness that had prevailed among the planters and over-
seers relaxed. They kept looking around at each other, exchanging
smiles. Things would go their way now.
“Next witness," said the judge.
“Sammy Jones!" called the clerk.
Sitting up stiffly, Sammy pretended he had not heard his name
called. Zed nudged him in the ribs. "Man, dat mean yuh!”
Sammy paid him no mind.
"Sammy Jones!" the clerk yelled.
Sammy swallowed hard and looked up. “Ya-aas, ah's here,” he
drawled out and kept sitting.
The judge smiled. The audience tittered. Gordon shook his head.
The district attorney didn't find it funny.
"Don't you know your name?" asked the clerk.
"Yas, suh, mister, ah knows it.”
"Well, come on up here!"
"Up there, suh?”
“Yes, up here!"
"You mean now, suh?”
The clerk began looking purple. “Yes, now!” he yelled.
"Yah, suh, ah's comin'.” Sammy finally got up.
Daniel whispered to Gordon, “I still say your Sammy is the
sorriest nigger I ever saw."
"Look at the smirk on Jerry's face,” Aunt Hannah said to An-
tonia. “He can laugh, but Sammy is as much his product as the
sugar cane he grows."
Antonia scarcely heard her. The trial seemed to be going all
wrong to her, and when the gun had been denied entry as an ex-
129


“I did not say with the help of God,” cut in Rochon sharply. “I
said, so help you God!” He had to stop, for the courtroom again
was rocking with laughter. He did not rap with his gavel, but per-
mitted the laughter to subside. Then he said, “So help you God
means that God will not have mercy on you when your day comes
to stand up before Him if your record shows you have told a lie in
court under oath.”
“Jedge, ah sees what yo' mean," said Sammy and looked upward,
a frightened look on his face.
“Now," said the clerk again, "do you solemnly swear to tell the
truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”
Sammy placed his hand on the Bible. "Yas, suh, yas, suh, ah
does."
Answering the district attorney's questions, Sammy said that he
knew Jimmy Dixon, and that he was sitting at the table “next to that
ge’man tha's 'fendin' 'im.”
“Now, Sammy,” said Adams, “tell the court what you heard
Jimmy Dixon tell the hands on the batture that Saturday night he
called them together-how they should beat up Mister Joe and
Mister Jerry."
Sammy gazed at Adams expectantly, as if hoping he would go
on to say that Sammy would not have to answer this particular
question. When Adams just stared back at him, he said, “Ah ain't
done hear Jimmy say nothin' 'bout how he done want the boys
to beat up Mist' Joe and them.”
“Come on, Sammy, you're under oath." Adams' expression had
gone from a smiling one to impatient sternness.
“Tha's what ah knows. Ah knows ah's on the oats, suh. Tha's
why ah's already done tell yuh the trufe. Fuddermore, Jimmy ain't
done call nobody together. The boys done fotch him from his bed
theyse'f while he was sleepin'."
The crease in Adams' brow deepened. “What did Jimmy say to
the boys on the batture that night?"
“Jimmy done tell the boys that night he don't want to learn 'em
from no books, 'cause he knowed the white folks don't want they
niggers to know nothin'. 'Sides, he say he would lose his job. An' he
131


say he love a girl and don't want nothin' to happen what might
make him in trouble.”
Adams gritted his teeth. "Shut up, nigger, you're lying!" He
turned to Touchard. “Your witness," he said in disgust and flopped
into his chair.
Smiling gently, Touchard rose. “What did Mr. Gordon say to
you when you reported to him that Jimmy had promised to teach
the workers on Saint Agnes to read and write?"
"You mean, Mist' Jerry?”
“Mister Jerry.”
"Well, ah guess ah's gotta keep on tellin' the trufe.”
“The whole truth."
“Well, Mist' Jerry, he done got madder'n hell!”
“What did Mister Jerry say he would do to Jimmy Dixon?”
“Mist' Jerry sont me fuh Mist' Joe.”
“What did Mister Jerry say to Mister Joe?"
"Mist' Jerry done say, 'Joe, yoh nigger's actin' up ag'in. Yuh
better call the boys.””
"Judge, your Honor,” shouted Adams, “the defense is taking
advantage of this nigger's ignorance to pry lying answers out of
him. I object to his line!"
“Your Honor, the witness is answering my questions freely."
"Continue.”
“What boys did Mister Jerry want Mister Joe to call?”
"Don't answer that question!” cried Adams.
"But ah knows the answer, mister!"
"Give the court the answer," prodded Touchard.
“Them overseers an' them other mens what come to Mist' Jerry
house, come to take Jimmy away to the swamps."
“Thank you, Sammy, that's all.”
Adams looked worried. He got up. “Your Honor," he said, “I
object to the testimony of Sammy Jones on the grounds of incom-
petency and irresponsibility. I demand that his whole story be ex-
punged from the record and that the jury be instructed to disregard
what he said.”
“Your Honor," said Touchard, rising and looking bored, “Sammy
132


“Well, Mister White Man, yuh knows ah's been on Saint Agnes
fuh a helluva long time. An' all the time ah gits mah place to stay
an' mah grub from the commissary. Tha's all ah can git, so tha's all
ah wants. Yuh see, us niggers jes' can't git around that. Now, this
ejication stuff, ah knowed it wouldn't work with the white mens.
So me, ah figgers they ain't no use in no nigger makin' trouble foh
hissel with the white folks.”
Touchard smiled. “Very true, Zed. That's all."
“Court's adjourned until ten tomorrow," announced the judge.
At five-thirty that afternoon, the southbound train stopped at
West Point-à-la-hache. Four Cajuns and three men of color got off
and walked toward the river. Dressed in hunting clothes, their rifles
and shotguns swung from their shoulders in drab-colored cases. Rifle
bullets and shotgun shells hung from belts around their waists. They
boarded the ferry and steamed across the river along with other
passengers.
On the east bank they were met by Tony. “Good work, Joe,” he
said.
Tony guided the men down the batture, where Jake Smith and
the six men he had brought from Saint Sophie in a cane cart were
waiting
After darkness fell, they built a fire; and with guns hidden in the
willows, the fifteen men settled down for the night.
134


22
It was Friday and the third day of the trial of the People vs Jimmy
Dixon. News of the court proceedings of the first two days had
reached the ends of the parish, mostly by word of mouth. Two
schools of thought were particularly interested—the group that de-
plored the fact that the arrest of a colored man was tantamount to
conviction, and the group that saw in the trial a threat to things as
they were. The latter group, representing the plantation interests,
lamented the fact that it had taken more than two hours to arraign,
try and convict the defendant.
The judge entered and talking ceased. The clerk sang the usual
“Hear ye,” and court was in session.
Adams rose. “Judge, your Honor, the state rests its case tem-
dalll.
porarily.
d was on his bod in Jimmy's. 1 witness called couchard.
Touchard was on his feet. He called and questioned a few char-
acter witnesses who testified in Jimmy's behalf.
Teboy Dowden was the first material witness called.
“How long have you lived on Saint Agnes?” asked Touchard.
"Ten years, suh.”
“Do you know the defendant, Jimmy Dixon?”
“Yas, suh."
Teboy said he had seen nine white men with coils of rope
suspended from saddles ride up to the Big House the same Sunday
that Jimmy left the plantation. Further questions developed that he
had gone to Jimmy's cabin to warn him “that the white folks would
take him to the swamps that night.”
“On that night did you see a pistol or any other firearms in
Jimmy's cabin or on his person?”.
“Naw, suh.”
"You saw Jimmy packing his knapsack. What did he put in
it?”
"He put in a sammich, some clothes an' a cane knife.”
"Your witness, Mr. Adams."
135


tan't call the distiway. Didn't yoidn't steal no
Adams strutted toward the witness stand and stared at Teboy.
"Why did you run away from Saint Agnes?"
“Ah didn't run away, suh, ah jes' lef?."
"Nigger, don't call the district attorney a liar. You stole Mister
Jerry's account book and ran away. Didn't you?”
“No, mister, ah didn't run away an'ah didn't steal no book an'
no nothin'."
"When you went to Jimmy's cabin that Sunday night, you did
so to make plans against the white people on Saint Agnes, didn't
you?"
“No, suh, to warn him—"
“Stop lying!"
“Ah ain't lying, mister."
“What? Oh, what's the use of questioning a lying nigger!”
Adams, wiping his face, flopped into his chair again.
Teboy left the stand and went to his seat.
“Call Jimmy Dixon,” said Touchard.
Jimmy sat down in the witness chair and stillness quickly fell
over the courtroom. The judge stared at him and Adams snorted.
Jimmy looked down to where Antonia was sitting, and they
stared into each other's eyes. He could tell by her weak smile that
she was deeply worried. His mom, her eyes glassy with tears, looked
the other way. Aunt Hannah sat stoically. Jimmy looked back into
Antonia's eyes and smiled. It was barely a smile, but in it was a
message to her to sit up a little straighter, to hold her chin up,
to be more dignified. She stared back a moment, and abruptly gave
him back the same kind of smile, sitting up erectly and looking
proud. Jimmy nodded, then directed his attention to Mr. Touchard.
"Mr. Dixon, how long did you work on Saint Agnes Plantation?”
“The whole month of September, nineteen hundred and nine-
teen.”
"Was there any complaint about your work during that time?"
"Not that I know of.”
"Why did you have difficulty collecting your month's earnings
on Saint Agnes?”
"The commissary had charged against me six dollars worth of
merchandise that I had paid cash for already."
136


Touchard walked up close to the witness chair, the gentle smile
wreathing his entire face in soft, amiable wrinkles.
"Miss Dugas—”
A concerted snort came from the planters' and overseers' section.
Touchard turned slowly to glance their way, his expression un-
changed. He turned back to Antonia.
“They object to my calling you Miss Dugas,” he said softly.
“However ...” he said, and paused; “however, Miss Dugas, do you
know the defendant, Jimmy Dixon?”
"I do,” said Antonia, her voice clear and strong, "and I shall
always want to know him!”
Plascide couldn't help it-he chuckled aloud. At once there were
catcalls from the overseers' section. Judge Rochon pounded with
his gavel. “Order!” he said loudly.
A hush settled again over the courtroom. Even the planters and
overseers sat forward slightly, curious to know why Touchard had
called Antonia to the stand.
“Miss Dugas,” said Touchard, "would you please tell the court
why Jimmy Dixon went to Saint Agnes in the first place?"
"To earn one hundred dollars, so that he could come home and
marry me. He said he needed one hundred dollars to put in with
what he already had. He was going to buy me a bed—”
“When does a nigger need a bed?” somebody yelled from the
overseers' section.
"Order!” rapped Judge Rochon. He looked down kindly at
Antonia and said, “Go on, please.”
“A bed for our home. And other things. And things for his
mother. That's why he went to a plantation to work. It was not just
to Saint Agnes he went. It was to any plantation. It just happened
he got his job at Saint Agnes. And that's when the trouble started.”
"What trouble, Miss Dugas?”
"Well, Jimmy, he hates trouble, but when those men there asked
him to help them, to teach them to read and write, he just couldn't
refuse. He knew it would mean trouble if he were caught, but
Jimmy just can't refuse to help anyone who needs help. That's why
he's in this awful mess.”
"Why do you love Jimmy Dixon, Miss Dugas?"
140


Antonia looked down at her hands, embarrassed. She clasped her
fingers tightly and said, “He's so good and so clean, Mr. Touchard!
So wonderfully clean and decent. Jimmy is a gentle person, too. And
all he wanted to do when he set out to earn his one hundred dollars
was just to do that and nothing else. He is not interested in making
trouble. He hates trouble. But when a man is—”.
Adams was on his feet. “I object, your Honor, to this farcical con-
clusion to an already incredibly ridiculous trial. The witness is en-
deavoring to convey to the jury the illusion that the defendant is a
white man-calling him clean and decent and gentle and not inter-
ested in making trouble. It is obvious that the defense attorney has
coached her at length. She keeps calling Jimmy Dixon a man. A
man! Jimmy Dixon is a nigger, and there is no way around it-no
matter how much the defense attorney tries working on the heart
strings of the jury, bringing into this case the incidental matter of a
love affair!”
Touchard's smile broadened. “We don't then have a man on
trial ?"
Adams glared. “I told you what we have on trial.”
"Not a man?"
"Your Honor, I object to the defense attorney's arrogance and his
insinuations that Jimmy Dixon—"
Judge Rochon held up his hand. “Please be seated, Mr. Adams,”
he said, not unkindly. “Proceed, Mr. Touchard.”
Adams turned to look at the spectators, a stunned look on his
face. Then he sat down, folded his arms and stared at the floor, his
forehead creased in a rageful frown.
"Miss Dugas," said Touchard, "if Jimmy Dixon is freed of the
charges upon which he stands trial, where are you going to live?”
"Right where we've always lived, sir, in River Bend. Jimmy never
made trouble in River Bend. If he were one to make trouble, he
would have made it long ago—but in River Bend he is respected
by both white and colored. Jimmy is a peaceful man, Mr. Touchard.
Except when he is forced to defend himself against someone who is
trying to take his life. And when our babies—"
Adams leaped up. “Your honor, I object to this witness remain-
ing on the stand! She was brought up here only to wring the hearts
141


of the jurors! Love affairs! Marriage! Do those terms apply to
niggers? They meet a girl today, sleep with her a week, or a month,
or a year, and the next year they're sleeping with somebody else. Or
the next day! Marriage! How many niggers are there who actually
get married? They've no more respect for marriage than they have
for their jobs, the way things are getting to be. Wanting to learn
how to read and write—for what? To cut cane? To get into bed
with another nigger the minute they're through with the last one?
Clean and decent! Show me a single nigger who knows the meaning
of such words and I'll—”.
“They don't have to know the meaning of such words,” cut in
Touchard quietly. “They don't have to have a dictionary to define
their rights to being human beings. All they need be is human beings,
and they're just as much human as you are or I. But you need object
no longer. The defense rests its case temporarily.”
Adams, taken aback, whispered to the clerk, who sang out,
“Daniel George will please take the stand.”
"Mr. George, before you were struck over the head by Jimmy
Dixon that Sunday night, did he act in a suspicious manner? If so,
tell the jury about it.”
"It was dark but I could see the nigger as I was nearing the gate.
The nigger stopped and looked around. Then he walked a few feet
more, stopped and looked around a second time. Then he got
moving to a trot, turning his head from side to side.”
“Where were you when Jimmy struck you on the head?”
“Just inside the gate.”
“What did he say before he struck you?”
“Nothing."
“Then the defendant tried to kill you without provocation?"
“Yes.”
“What did Jimmy strike you with?”
“The piece of pipe he held in his hand.”
“Thank you. That is all.”
“Mr. George," said Touchard, “that Sunday night in question
passed into history as one of the darkest ever seen in these parts.
Many couldn't see more than five feet ahead. Now, how could you
i 142


have seen the defendant walking and stopping so many times, even
trotting, in such a short distance ?"
“I saw the nigger."
“Offensive names are objectionable to people of good breeding.
While I am questioning you, I demand respect for my client.”
Daniel stared contemptuously.
"Could you have been hiding somewhere waiting for the de-
fendant to pass-in a clump of weeds, for instance?'
"I was facing him.”
“Were you not hiding in a clump of weeds near the gate when
you ordered the defendant to stop?”
“No!”
"Mr. George, are you a Christian?”
"Do I look like a Jew?"
“Are you a member of the Ku Klux Klan?"
“Yes."
“What office do you hold in that mob—I mean organization?"
Daniel braced himself. “In the unconquerable fraternity of the
Ku Klux Klan, I am a Kleagle.”
Touchard picked up the revolver. “For once your answer is
truthful. The inscription here says you are a Kleagle.”
Adams bounced up. “Your Honor, the court has already ruled
that gun out!”
"You just testified that you were struck by Jimmy Dixon just
inside the gate. Yet you were found cold about fifty feet from the
entrance gate. Hunh!" Tapping a pencil against his cheek, Touchard
surveyed first the jury and then the spectators. “So the witness on
the darkest night in twenty years, when a man couldn't even see
his own hand when stretched before him, saw the defendant walk,
stop, run in a dogtrot, stop, and finally come to where he was stand-
ing! So, this witness, clubbed senseless and motionless, fell fifty
feet away! I ask you, gentlemen ..."
An outburst of laughter exploded among the River Bend group
and the judge rapped for order.
Touchard faced the judge. “Your Honor, I move a dismissal. The
state has not proved its case. It has proved only a conspiracy on the
143


part of the arresting authorities and the plantation owners to brow-
beat and rob the defendant!"
Adams rose. “I object to a dismissal, your Honor. The jury is
here to decide.”
"Objection sustained. Court's adjourned until one o'clock."
Aunt Hannah nosed around the courtyard. She watched with
interest a conversation between the white driver of the cane cart
and a white man she had seen sitting in the courtroom.
She strolled leisurely down the levee where the Saint Sophie and
River Bend group was sitting about on logs.
When she got back to the courthouse grounds she was surprised
to see that a tarpaulin had been thrown over the body stakes of
the waiting cane cart.
In the courtroom she saw Daniel George staring scornfully at
Jimmy. “Touchard didn't tell him enough about the Klan," she
said to Antonia. “In the seventies and eighties the Klan and its
cousins, the Knights of the White Camelia, spread terror over
this parish by yanking black men from their homes at night, tarring
and feathering them, even whipping and killing some, because they
dared to vote or tried to."
She glanced at the clock on the wall. The session for the after-
noon would soon begin. She surveyed the planters and the over-
seers. “I don't see Andrew Ogden,” she said to Antonia. “I don't
see the bums that sat with him, either.”
Judge Rochon took his seat. “Are you lawyers ready for argu-
ment?”
"Not yet,” said Touchard. “Tony Eskind, please take the stand.”
Tony came forward.
"Mr. Eskind, take this pistol. Where have you seen it before?”
“Jimmy Dixon handed it to me before his arrest.”
“Tell the court how Jimmy Dixon told you he came in pos-
session of this revolver.”
"Jimmy told me he knocked it from the hand of Daniel George
with his knapsack when Mister George was marching him back to
the quarters the last Sunday night in September.”
144


"That is all."
Adams rose quickly. "Where and when did you see the defendant
the night he slipped from the cane?”
“Don't answer that question," said Touchard.
"Your Honor, my question is simple. I demand an answer!"
“The witness will answer the question,” said the judge.
Tony looked at Aunt Hannah. "It was somewhere between the
cane in which he had been hiding and my house."
“What particular spot?”.
"I don't remember."
Adams squinted his eyes. “You don't remember! Why don't you
remember?”
“Because I cannot recall the spot in which he was standing when
I saw him."
“Your honor, this witness is perjuring himself!"
“Prove it, Mr. Adams, and the court will take proper action.”
A frustrated look on his face, Adams said, “That's all.”
“Go on with your argument, Mr. Adams, if you're ready.”
Adams faced the jury. “Gentlemen of the jury, evidence has
been produced by the white witnesses for the state to convince you
that Jimmy Dixon is guilty. He is guilty of attacking a white man
with intent to murder, guilty of fomenting an uprising against the
white people on Saint Agnes Plantation, guilty of slaying three
dogs belonging to the people of this parish.”
A door slammed by a sudden gush of the Gulf wind. The
audience stirred uneasily.
Adams continued, “He must be found guilty. Not because he's
a nigger—but being a nigger, he struck a white man! This in itself
should draw the death penalty! The white man's superiority must
be preserved at all costs. You can maintain it!"
Daniel cleared his throat, while Jerry listened in silence.
"My opponent has tried to discredit that humble band of Chris-
tian patriots that saved the white man's government in the seventies
and eighties. He calls them by uncomplimentary names, but this
jury must realize how the klansmen prevented the best blood on
earth from being trampled under the shiny heels of vicious niggers!”
145


Adams walked away from the box. Suddenly he turned and
strutted back.
"Look at that boy there!" He pointed to Jimmy. “Look, and
you'll see a threat to white civilization! You must remove that
threat. You must do so because this nigger's color is not accidental
but designed by an all-wise, all-seeing, all-knowing, all-just Al-
mighty as an eternal mark of inferiority, which cannot be improved
by education–because it is a divine mark that is as abiding as the
ages!”
Aunt Hannah moved irritably.
“Thank God, we've done away with nigger-voting forever. Yes,
niggers have got rights, too—rights to live and work-but that does
not license them to trample upon the rights of white people!"
Adams paused. His friends' bright faces pleased him. He took
a long breath, then moved closer to the jury box. “Jimmy Dixon
wasn't satisfied with trampling on the rights of his white employer,
he had to lay his dirty black hands on a white man! Men of the
jury, that sort of thing could destroy our God-given heritage! For
that alone you must find him guilty!"
He placed both hands on the rail of the jury box and said in
a low voice that was almost confidential, “If you free Jimmy Dixon
you will precipitate the doom of civilization.” He straightened up
and burst forth. “This case is only a spark of nigger violence!
Stamp it out before a flame of nigger atrocities breaks forth. Vote
guilty!"
He flashed a look toward the audience, breathing hard. The
planters were grinning and looking cheerful. Again he faced the
jury. “Gentlemen, when you retire to your room don't forget white
womanhood-your wives, your mothers, your daughters, your sis-
ters, your sweethearts! Then return to this room with the decision:
'We, the jury, find Jimmy Dixon guilty!'”
Clearing his throat repeatedly, the district attorney sat down.
Touchard rose slowly, taking a full minute to unfold his long
limbs and torso. Then he cracked the joints in his fingers and
walked leisurely toward the jury box. On the way there he paused
to sniff at the air around his head. “What's that smell?” he mumbled
146


and went on to the jury box, saying, “Must be the district attorney's
argument."
Adams glared, while a titter arose from the River Bend section
which was quickly quieted by a few taps of the judge's gavel. Several
of the jurymen had started to smile, but all quickly realized their
position and put their faces back straight again.
"Gentlemen of the jury," Touchard began, “you are here con-
fronted with a situation the like of which has never existed in
this courtroom before. It is not a question of the People versus
Jimmy Dixon, but it is a question of an intelligent black man
versus the plantation interests! It is a question of a worker refusing
to permit his wages to be swallowed up by the commissary system.
“The district attorney would have you believe that civilization is
at stake if you do justice in this case—that is, if you vote to clear
Jimmy Dixon. But let me tell you, civilization would be at stake
if you don't! For if the freedom of one man is denied unjustly, the
freedom of all of us is in jeopardy, notwithstanding the race and
complexion of the defendant! Make no mistake about that!
“Now, neither white civilization nor white supremacy is the
issue here, although civilization itself has taken a terrible walloping
in this trial!”
He turned to Adams. "Purity of the white race!” Again he
faced the jury. “It's a myth! The district attorney has used it as a
shibboleth and it should carry no weight with this jury.
"It is plain that the district attorney is in collusion with the
planters to persecute my client. Only two of the prosecuting wit-
nesses have told the truth, Sammy Jones and Zed Grannison. You
cannot convict the defendant on perjured testimony."
He turned to face Pierre. "White blood!”
Again he faced the jury box. “Don't let mob phrases influence
your verdict. If you do, you will be helping the swindling plantation
system make an example of Jimmy Dixon!".
A tall juryman hooked his shoe around the spittoon and dragged
it closer. He spat a mouthful of brown juice into it, sat back again
to listen.
“Yes, Jimmy Dixon killed the sheriff's dogs. He had a right
to protect his life. Yes, he clubbed Daniel George on the head.
147


"Order! Order!” shouted the judge.
The disturbers crammed the aisles, while the River Bend guards
rushed toward Jimmy.
“Throw those men out!” commanded the judge. “And don't let
them in again!”
The overseers stampeded toward the door.
Aunt Hannah leaped to her feet. “Henry! Henry! Keep that
door bolted! Don't let a single man out! Look at the grins on their
faces!”
Henry raised his rifle. The other guards rushed forward and
pushed the men back into seats. Still on her feet, Aunt Hannah was
watching. When the aisles were cleared, she gave a long sigh and
sank into her seat.
Judge Rochon rose, a queer, baffled expression on his face. “Old
woman, I'm giving the orders here! If you were not such an old
nigger, I'd hold you in contempt of court. Now, you get out!”
She got up slowly, a secret smile touching her lips. With great
dignity she walked to the door, unbolted it and went outside. Tony
and Plascide followed her.
The judge sat in deep thought. Finally, he sent an appealing
glance at the sheriff. “To avoid any more disturbance, Sheriff, get
those overseers out of here!"
Quickly, the men started toward the aisles, but the guards pushed
them back into their seats. The sheriff sent the judge a look, shrug-
ging his shoulders.
The frustrated judge turned a sickly yellow. He sat for a time
in silence. Finally, he nodded to Adams.
Adams made the most of what had happened. Here was a perfect
example of nigger rule! Nigger guards shoving white men around
like they were niggers too! “Men of this honorable jury, retire to
your room and bring back a verdict of guilty!”
The judge cleared his throat. “Jurymen, attention! The evidence
in this case is quite clear to me and should be to you. You must
ignore the outbursts in this courtroom, especially that of the old
woman. And—and this is important—where white men rule, peace
is assured. Retire to your room.”
As the jurymen filed upstairs to their room, the judge instructed:
150


the white driver turned toward the courthouse with the steady,
cold fixity of an old marble statue in the park.
As Henry kicked the door, Aunt Hannah gave an uncontrollable
start. Then, yawning, as if half asleep, she sauntered slowly to the
south end of the stone porch, took off her colored bandana and put
on a white one.
Teboy, waiting on the levee, caught the signal. He rushed down
the batture.
Aunt Hannah leaned against the pillar of the porch. In a few
minutes, a cartload of driftwood came rolling over a ramp south
of the courthouse. Over the levee and down the other side of the
ramp, the cart rumbled to the public road, then turned sharply
into the lane.
"We, the jury,” began the scrawny, sharp-faced foreman, "find—”
He came to a full stop when feet began to scuffle in the planter
section. He turned to the judge. Rochon, assuming a mask of
sternness, glared over the heads below. All was still now. All eyes
were bolted fast to this spare, black-suited figure.
“We, the jury, find Jimmy Dixon”-he paused—“not guilty!"
In the hush after the sigh that followed these words, a shot
suddenly was fired in the planter section. At once, elbowing men
and screaming women stampeded toward the exit, but were stopped
by Henry and four other guards who were at his side.
“Get back! Get back!” yelled Henry. “Nobody ain't gonna leave
this room!”
Guards moved up and down the aisles, searching for the pistol.
“Take your nigger-loving hands off of me!” snarled an overseer.
“Which shall it be, search you or club you?” asked the Cajun.
A guard came up with a pistol. He examined it. “It's a toy blank
pistol!” he cried out. “It was a signal! A prearranged signal!”
The district attorney made a furtive retreat to his office. Rochon,
with a harried look, sneaked off to his chambers. The sheriff
followed.
Touchard, calmly, a broad smile creasing his hollow face, moved
slowly along the jury box, shaking the hand of each man in turn.
"I thank you,” he said simply.
152


“You too, Andrew!"
“Nigger, if this was only Caddo Parish!”
Jake's fist triggered forward. Andrew fell to the ground and
came up with both hands in the air.
Aunt Hannah moved along with Tony, watching the slightest
movement of every captive. A smile came to her lips and flickered
away.
"Tie 'em up!” ordered Tony.
“Get back ’g’inst the wall!” commanded Jake.
Hastily, the defiant men shuffled back to the courthouse wall.
Jake's cohorts surrounded them. Two men moved toward the white
cart driver with plowlines. Tying him, they threw him into the
cart.
Two others faced Andrew. “Don't touch me!” snarled the mob
leader.
Jake tapped him lightly on the head. Andrew slumped to the
ground.
"Gather up their arms and throw 'em in our cart," said Tony
after all twelve of the mob had been tied and thrown into the cart.
The Saint Sophie driver dumped his false load of wood to the
ground, then mounted the saddle.
Teboy sat in the saddle of the white driver, while Jake Smith
and six others climbed in beside the twelve bound prisoners.
“Drive to Davant!" ordered Tony after the rest of the men had
climbed into the other cart. “Then take the main cart lane and
head for the swamps!"
The drivers popped their whips. The two teams stretched their
traces and the tranquil air was filled with the curses of wailing,
frustrated men.
154


"Mount your horses!" commanded Jerry.
Planters and overseers sped to the hitching posts. Led by Tillman,
they galloped across the area toward the lane.
“Stop!” screamed Daniel, waving his hands. “Come back! Your
guns!”
Tillman whirled around, staring in blank dismay. Suddenly,
he said, “Follow me!” He led them to the sheriff's arsenal. They
dismounted and made for the back room, but were startled by
the muzzles of ten resolute guards.
"Niggers again!" yelled Tillman.
“Cajuns, too,” said Daniel.
“Ah, they're all niggers,” said Tillman in disgust.
The teeth of the River Bend guards gleamed in a delighted
smile. The bluish gun barrels did not waver. A wind drifted up
from the gulf and whispered hotly in the trees. Somewhere a horse
whinnied and a mockingbird broke into song.
“Niggers agan coid Daniel.. tillman in disgust...
delighted
Aunt Hannah elbowed her way through the crowd and into the
courtroom. The interior was almost deserted. Where were they?
Catching her breath in a surge of suspicion and fear, she ran
toward the judge's chambers. Touchard emerged through a door.
“Where are they?" she cried.
The lawyer's eyes lighted. “Stop worrying, they're all right. Go
see for yourself.” He pointed to a stairway in a corner of the room.
As Aunt Hannah approached she could hear Antonia's soft voice:
"J'en suis si heureuse, mon cher. Oh! Comme je t'adore!"
Aunt Hannah paused. Leave them alone? An immense smile
came into her face. She saw Antonia in a corner of the stairway
nestled in the curve of Jimmy's arm, his cheeks resting against her
rich brown hair.
"Mon brave”
"Oooh! Hein! C'est comme je pensais," broke in Aunt Hannah
like a rooster crowing. “Look here, you two, it's time you got
married. Et bientôt.”
Jimmy jerked away from Antonia, a smile on his face as big as
Aunt Hannah's. He hurried to Aunt Hannah and hugged her to
him. "You sweet—" he began, and couldn't go on. A tear rolled
157


down his cheek and he hugged her tighter. “Oh, you are wonder-
ful!” he whispered. “How can we thank you for all you have done
for us?”
"Pooh, pooh,” said Aunt Hannah, beaming.
“There's no other like you, Tante Hannah!” cried Antonia.
She crowded in, hugging Aunt Hannah as best she could with
Jimmy ahead of her.
Aunt Hannah pulled away from both of them. She slipped a
hand into her dress pocket and withdrew a small pocketbook. She
took from it five twenty-dollar bills. “Here," she said, trying
to look severe, “is the hundred dollars you wanted so badly, Jimmy.”
Jimmy's arms fell limply to his sides. “Aunt Hannah, I can't
take your money. Please—".
“Don't be silly—it ain't mine! All my life I haven't been able to
save that much. Here, take it, and stop looking like a lamb lost in
the woods. It's from your friends in the Bend extending you and
Antonia their best wishes. You wouldn't want to hurt their feelings,
would you?”
Jimmy gazed at Antonia, then back at Aunt Hannah. He took
the money from her hand. “One hundred dollars," he said softly.
“One hundred dollars! All this trouble over one hundred dollars.”
He looked at Antonia and began laughing as softly as he'd spoken.
“One hundred dollars, sweetheart. How wonderful!"
Antonia was crying and couldn't answer.
“Will you two please stop being so childish?” exclaimed Aunt
Hannah, looking exasperated. “Father Jones is outside—and the
parish clerk is in his office.”
“Father Jones?” said Jimmy, turning to stare at Antonia. "The
parish clerk?”
"That's what I said, Jimmy!” Aunt Hannah got between Jimmy
and Antonia and took their arms. She walked out of the courtroom
with them, her chin up and her eyes wide open, as if daring anyone
to stop her, as if saying, "Make way, everybody-for love!”
The River Bend guards were still alerted. They stood in groups,
their guns at rest, but their hands shifted uneasily along the polished
barrels. When Jimmy and the two women emerged from the court-
158


How often, toward the fall of twilight, had he watched ducks flying
over in just that way!
Memories were crowding inside him-of childhood, of eager
youth, of war, of all that had happened since the day he'd demanded
a fair accounting of his wages—days that were like years, days in
which he had learned the real meaning of brotherhood and the
full meaning of love. ...
He awoke with a start, turned slowly and looked at the sleeping
girl beside him. Why hadn't he told her? He stared at her and began
getting impatient. He hadn't told her because—well, what does a
man do on his wedding night? Talk about the future?
"Antonia, Antonia,” he said, and began shaking her.
“Huh?” She woke up beautifully, her eyes wide and young, her
lips open a little, beckoning.
He kissed her passionately.
“Antonia, I must tell you—" he began.
“Shh,” she whispered. “Just let me look, Jimmy."
“Shh, yourself, Mrs. Dixon. I've got news for you, and don't
smile. Your man, your big strong man is—” He paused and kissed
her again, gently. Then he sat up and looked down at her, sternly.
“Pierre approved of it at once, little wife. I've got a job.”
“A job?"
“Teaching."
“Teaching?"
“A school-for grownups. Not kids, honey. For grownups.”
Antonia closed her eyes and at once they were wet with tears.
“Thank God," she whispered. “A school, finally, in River Bend-
for people, too."
“Colored people, angel—from six to sixty, or more, if they wish
to learn how to read.”
"Pierre really approved of it?”
“And a lot of others here."
Antonia opened her eyes. She looked up at Jimmy, and her
lips curved outward. “Jimmy,” she cried out abruptly, "love me
love me, Jimmy!”
Jimmy, smiling, sighed happily.
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UC-SANTA CRUZ
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