“How’s your mother?” he finally asked. “Is she all right?”
“She’s not all right,” the boy answered quietly, without looking round.
“What’s the matter?” Phillip asked.
“Grieving herself to death.”
“Grieving?” Phillip asked. “Grieving over what?”
“Her two children.”
“Something happened to the children?”
The boy nodded his head, as he stared out at the tree in front of the car. “Something happened to the children,” he said quietly, thoughtfully.
Phillip waited for him to go on, but he didn’t.
“What happened?” Phillip asked.
Instead of answering, the boy turned to look at him. His face didn’t show hatred, at least the eyes didn’t show it, they showed pain. But Phillip could feel the hatred there. He felt it strongly and quickly as he would have felt a blow with a club, or a cut with a knife. They stared at each other a moment, then he saw the boy’s eyes shifting to his clothes—hat, coat, trousers—as if he might be comparing them to his own. When the boy looked back at him again, the eyes showed no more hatred than before, but Phillip knew it was there.
“You interested?” he asked.
Phillip had forgotten what he had asked him, but he nodded his head anyway.
“They both dead,” the boy said calmly.
“Dead?” he asked, and bit into his bottom lip.
“ ’Leven years,” the boy said. His face calm as his voice. Still, Phillip could feel the hatred there.
“Why I’m just hearing ’bout it?” he asked.
“We didn’t know you was interested.”
“Not interested in my own flesh and blood?”
“You never showed no interest in your own flesh and blood before. We didn’t know if you be interested in your own flesh and blood then.”
Phillip bit into his bottom lip as he studied the thin, bearded face. He knew the boy hated him, and he wasn’t sure he could believe what he was telling him now.
“If this happened that long back, what bringing you here now?”
“Revenge,” the boy said directly, yet calmly, his face showing no more emotion than it would have shown if he had looked out at the fields. “Revenge,” he repeated.
“Revenge?” Phillip asked him. “Revenge for what?”
“For destroying me. For making me the eunuch I am. For destroying my family: my mama, my brother, my sister.”
“How did I destroy you, destroy the family?” Phillip asked him. “I ain’t seen one of y’all in twenty years—over twenty years. How did I destroy you?”
The boy grunted and started to turn away, but Phillip grabbed his arm. The boy looked down at the hand a moment, then pried it loose and slammed it back.
“You my son,” Phillip said. “I have my rights. I can touch you if I want.”
“I’m a moment of your lust,” the boy said.
“You my son, no matter what,” Phillip said. “No matter what happened, you still my son.”
“I’m a moment of your lust,” the boy repeated.
“Johanna know you here?”
“She gived me the money.”
“You lying,” Phillip said. “You lying.”
The boy turned away. He was quiet a moment as he stared out at the tree in front of the car.
“Yes, she gived me the money,” he said. “When I heard where you was, I told her I wanted to come here and kill you for destroying the family. And she slapped me. She slapped me so hard I went blind. She went and got the jar of money and slammed it down on the floor in front of me. She made me get down there and pick up every penny. I cut my hands, I cut my knees, picking up pennies and wrinkled old dollar bills.” He turned back to Phillip again, his eyes showing more pain than hatred. “ ‘Get yourself a ticket and go kill him,’ she told me. ‘Sew back your nuts by killing your father.’ But I can’t sew them back by killing you, can I? Can I, Father?”
Phillip looked horrified. He didn’t know what was going on. He looked around as if he were looking for someone to help him. But no one else was there, and he turned back to his son.
“Boy, what are you talking about? What are you saying?”
“It’s not boy, Father. It’s Robert X.”
“It’s not Robert X,” Phillip said. “It’s not even Robert.”
“Then what is it, Father?”
“I don’t know,” Phillip said. “I don’t know yours, I don’t know your brother’s, I don’t know your sister’s. But you mine, and I love you. I love you now, and I loved you then. I was too weak then to do anything. Today I have strength. ’Cause today I have God.”
The boy looked at him and grinned. Then he laughed. He looked at Phillip’s expensive clothes, laughing. He looked at the jewelry on his hands, laughing. He looked back in his face, he just couldn’t stop laughing.
“That’s what the man told Mama,” he said. “Told Mama you had found God, and you was down here saving souls. Mama thought it was the funniest thing she’d ever heard. You down here saving souls. After you had destroyed us, you down here saving souls. Don’t you think that’s funny? I think it’s funny. Mama thought it was funny.”
Phillip shook his head. His eyes had suddenly filled with tears. “I didn’t destroy you, boy.”
“Robert X, Father,” he said. He wasn’t laughing any more. And he wasn’t suppressing his hatred any more either. His face quivered, his nostrils expanded, the hatred in his eyes went deep into Phillip’s heart. “If you didn’t destroy me, who did?”
“That world out there.”
“The world?”
“The world.”
“The world laid with her in the field?” the boy asked him. “Where did you take her? In the ditch? Between the cane rows? In the weeds near the swamps? Where at, Father?”
Phillip bit into his lips, the tears running down his face.
“Now you put it on the world,” the boy said, taunting him more now that he was crying. “Did the world push them three dollars in my hand that day? That was twenty-one years ago, but I can still see them, feel them, smell them. Even after she made me bring them back to you I could still smell the stink in my hand. Three dollars. A dollar for each one of us. That’s what you paid. A dollar for each one of us.”
Phillip was still crying. But he clenched his fist. “I won’t allow that,” he said. “I won’t allow you to talk about her like that. I won’t allow it.”
“I’m not talking about her, I’m talking about you. You treated her like a common whore. I held the three dollars in my hand. I, I, I held them. I had to carry the money to the wagon, and take it back. I had to do it.”
“That’s all I had in the world,” Phillip said. “I didn’t even own myself then. Nothing. Nothing else but the rags on my back. But you wrong when you say I treated her like a whore. I loved your mother, your mother loved me. Yes, we loved in the fields. But the fields was not dirty. The fields was clean. Clean as any bed.”
“You mean your lust couldn’t wait till you got to bed.”
Phillip trembled with anger. It was hard to control his voice as well as his urge to hit him. “I loved her,” he said. “I loved her, and she loved me. That’s why she slapped you, boy. That’s why she slapped you.”
“She slapped me because she loved you, and she still love you. But you never loved her, or us. You raped her. You tried to pay off with three dollars.”
“I never raped nobody,” Phillip said. “Surely not her. I gived you three dollars ’cause that’s all I had.”
“You had more,” the boy said. “You had a mouth, a voice. You had arms, you had legs. You coulda walked out that door. That’s all she wanted. You to walk out that door and call her back. That’s all she wanted.”
“You just don’t understand,” Phillip said. He was not trying to control the tears that rolled down his face. Neither was he trying to control his voice now, it was choked with emotion. “I couldn’t bit more leave that room, t
hat woman I didn’t care nothing in the world for, than I can right now carry this car here on my back. I was paralyzed. Paralyzed. Yes, I had a mouth, but I didn’t have a voice. I had legs, but I couldn’t move. I had arms, but I couldn’t lift them up to you. It took a man to do these things, and I wasn’t a man. I was just some other brutish animal who could cheat, steal, rob, kill—but not stand. Not be responsible. Not protect you or your mother. They had branded that in us from the time of slavery. That’s what kept me on that bed. Not ’cause I didn’t want to get up. I wanted to get up more than anything in the world. But I had to break the rules, rules we had lived by for so long, and I wasn’t strong enough to break them then.”
He stopped and looked at his son. The boy’s face was turned from him. Phillip’s hand went out to touch him but stopped inches away from the sleeve of the coat.
“I’m a man today. I prayed for Him to make me a man, and He made me a man. I can stand today. I have a voice today.” He stopped again. “You listening to anything I’m saying to you?” he asked.
“He answers fathers’ prayers,” the boy said without looking around. “Not sons’.”
“All men’s prayers.”
“Not all men’s,” he said, turning to look at Phillip, his eyes painfully sad. “Not all men’s. I prayed, and prayed, and prayed. He never answered mine. I know He never answered mine.”
“What happened back there?” Phillip asked him.
The boy raised his hand up to his temple as if he was in pain, and Phillip could see by his eyes that his mind was wandering.
“What happened?” Phillip asked again.
“My sister viciously raped,” he said. “Viciously raped. Instead of me taking the gun like I shoulda done, I took her in my arms and called on God. Viciously raped, her young body torn and bloody—and I sat there rocking her in my arms, crying, and calling on God.”
Phillip’s chest suddenly seemed very full, and he raised his hand and rubbed it hard. Twice he tried to speak, but neither time could he make a sound.
“My brother brought the gun to me,” the boy went on. “Pushed it on me three times. ‘Go kill that dog. Go kill that dog.’ But all I did was sit there holding my sister and crying. So he did it for me. He found the man, shooting pool; and blew out his brains.”
Phillip covered his mouth with his hand to keep from crying.
“Every day of my life I regret I didn’t kill him myself. Every day of my life since that day. Every day.”
“No,” Phillip said. “No. That’s what the law is for. That’s what the law’s there for.”
“Law?” the boy asked, as if the word was foreign to him. “There ain’t no law. Why should the law protect us when the father won’t? You think the law should care more for the family than the father? By law she wasn’t even raped. Black girls don’t get raped, black girls entice their rapist. Like Mama musta enticed you.”
“What happened to your brother?” Phillip asked.
“What you think happens to a black boy when he kills? The law takes charge.”
“They killed him?”
“For all we’re concerned, they killed him. He didn’t want nothing to do with me or Mama when he came out of that prison.”
“Why your mother?”
“ ’Cause it was her man who raped my sister.”
“How can I get in touch with Johanna, with my other two children?” Phillip asked.
“I don’t know how to get in touch with my brother and sister myself,” the boy said. “And even if I did and told you it wouldn’t do any good. They don’t know you exist. They don’t know you ever did.”
“I don’t believe this,” Phillip said, shaking his head and biting into his lip.
“Why not?”
“I am their father,” he said. “No matter what.”
“Not to them,” the boy said. “They wiped you out of their minds the day they left that plantation. The way you wipe all the letters and numbers off a blackboard. No father, no more than there’s God or law.”
“There’s father,” Phillip said. “There’s God and law. Always was. Always will be.”
“Not to them. Not to me no more either.”
“I’m father,” Phillip said. “No matter what. I’m father. To you and to them.”
The boy looked at him a long time. The face showed more pain, more hurt, than hatred.
“Say my name,” he said. “Don’t call me boy no more, Father. Say my name.”
Phillip could not. The boy grunted to himself and turned to get out of the car. Phillip grabbed his coat sleeve.
“Where you going?” he asked.
“For a walk. For a good long walk.”
“It’s ten miles back to St. Adrienne. And it’s cold out there.”
“I been cold before.”
He pulled himself free and got out of the car. Phillip got out on his side and came round the front of the car to meet him.
“You in my charge still,” he said. “And I want you at my house.”
“I’m not going to your house,” the boy told him.
“You rather be in that jail?”
“I’m not going back there either,” he said. “I’m going for a walk.”
He looked across the fields toward the swamps. The trees looked like an impenetrable black wall from this distance.
“You need money?” Phillip asked.
“No.”
“You got any?”
“I don’t have none, and I don’t need none,” the boy said. “I don’t need nothing from you any more.”
He started to walk away.
“Wait,” Phillip said. “Wait. You didn’t live too far from here. Let’s go over to the old place. Visit your nanane. She christened both of us—me and you. She’ll be glad to see you, I’m sure.”
The boy walked off again.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Phillip said. This time he got in front of him. But he didn’t ask it. He couldn’t bring himself to ask it. Still he knew the boy knew what he wanted. “You wouldn’t deny me that?” he said.
The boy looked at him and walked away. Phillip watched him go farther and farther across the fields. When his coat became the same color as the trees, Phillip turned, his head down, and went back to the car.
After sitting there quietly a moment, he started out for Reno Plantation. He would travel the blacktop road a short distance, then a graveled road would take him the last seven or eight miles. He knew this road as he knew his hand, but when he reached Reno Plantation he couldn’t recall having seen a thing. He knew he had passed the store and post office at McCabe. He knew he had crossed the wooden bridge at the Two Indians Bayou near Hobson, and that the road had made a sharp V-like turn to the left. He had passed the old church at Silas Woods where he had gone to grammar school. He had passed many, many houses, and he had probably passed a lot of people who waved at him. He had crossed the railroad tracks at Shottsville, and he had driven past the old weighing scale and the old wooden derrick. He had to have passed all these things to get here, but he couldn’t recall any of it. He was not aware of place or time until he reached the quarters of Reno Plantation. Driving down the thinly graveled muddy road, he looked out at the few old unpainted houses still there. The house where he had lived was torn down, and the one where Johanna and the children had lived was also gone. Now weeds and shrubbery had taken over where houses, yards, and vegetable gardens had been.
Phillip stopped the car in front of his godmother’s house, but now he was ashamed to go inside. How could he go in there and tell her how he felt? What would she think of him if he went in there and told her what had happened only a few miles away from here? But if he couldn’t go to her, where else could he go? Back to St. Adrienne and stand at the window again?
He sat in the car looking into the yard at the house. The yard was clean and bare, except for a mulberry tree on the left side of the walk and a rose bush on either side of the steps. The house itself was exactly like every other one in the quarters. The
y all had the same rusted corrugated tin roofs with a brick chimney sitting in the center. They all had the same long, warped porches, with three or four steps leading up to the porch. Every house had two doors facing the road. All had been whitewashed at the same time, twenty-five or thirty years ago—none had been painted since—and the weather had turned all of them the same ashy gray color.
Phillip thought about driving away before anyone saw him, but he was sure somebody had looked out of a door and seen him already. Maybe even his nanane knew he was sitting out there watching the house.
He thought he heard someone chopping wood in the back yard, and he rolled down the glass to listen better. He could hear the axe louder now, and he could hear men talking and laughing. He looked up at the chimney, and he could see a trickle of blue smoke rising above the roof and drifting down the quarters. Why hadn’t she gotten a gas heater like most of the other people were doing? He had begged her to get one. He had even tried to buy her one. But she told him if he brought it there she wouldn’t even let it inside the house.
“What I want a heater for?” she asked. “Wood made to burn, ain’t it? What you go’n do with wood if you don’t burn it, hanh? Eat it?”
He got out of the car and went up to the house and knocked.
“Come in,” his godmother called from inside.
He pushed the door open and went into a dark room that smelled of salt pork and cabbage. There was a fire in the fireplace but no other light, and it took him a while to get accustomed to the darkness. He saw his godmother, Angelina Bouie, sitting in a rocking chair at one end of the fireplace. She wore a headrag, she had on a sweater over her dress, and she had a small blanket over her legs to keep the fire from scorching them. Loretta Williams, a much larger woman and a few years younger than Angelina, sat at the other end of the fireplace. A heavy topcoat and a man’s felt hat hung on the back of her chair. Both Loretta and Angelina were eating peanuts and throwing the shells into the fire.
“I do declare,” Loretta said.