The Tragedy of Brady Sims Read online

  Ernest J. Gaines

  THE TRAGEDY OF BRADY SIMS

  Ernest Gaines was born on a plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish near New Roads, Louisiana, which is the Bayonne of all his fictional works. He is writer-in-residence emeritus at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. In 1993 Gaines received the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship for his lifetime achievements. In 1996 he was named a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, one of France’s highest decorations. He and his wife, Dianne, live in Oscar, Louisiana.

  ALSO BY ERNEST J. GAINES

  A Lesson Before Dying

  A Gathering of Old Men

  The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

  In My Father’s House

  Bloodline

  Of Love and Dust

  Catherine Carmier

  Mozart and Leadbelly

  FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, AUGUST 2017

  Copyright © 2017 by Ernest J. Gaines

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Contemporaries and colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  The Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data

  Names: Gaines, Ernest J., author.

  Title: The tragedy of Brady Sims / Ernest J. Gaines.

  Description: First Vintage Contemporaries edition. | New York : Vintage, 2017. | Series: Vintage contemporaries.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017005574 (print) | LCCN 2017012542 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: African American men—Fiction. | City and town life—Fiction. | Race relations—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / African American / General. | FICTION / Literary. | FICTION / Crime.

  Classification: LCC PS3557.A355 (ebook) | LCC PS3557.A355 T73 2017 (print) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2017005574

  Vintage Contemporaries Trade Paperback ISBN 9780525434467

  Ebook ISBN 9780525434474

  Cover design by Stephanie Ross

  Cover photograph © Walker Evans/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

  www.vintagebooks.com

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  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Also by Ernest J. Gaines

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part One: Louis Guerin

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Part Two: Mapes

  Chapter Nine

  Part Three: Louis Guerin

  Chapter Ten

  To Wilfred Hebert

  He helps others in so many different ways

  and to

  Irwin Mayfield for his “Angola”

  Part One

  LOUIS GUERIN

  Chapter One

  It was over. We all got up to leave. Two deputies had the prisoner by the arms. I was sitting in back of the courtroom because I had been on another assignment and I had gotten there late. I was near the aisle when I heard someone called out loud and clear: “BOY.” I looked back over my shoulder and saw that the two deputies had stopped with their prisoner and were facing old Brady Sims. Next came the loudest sound that I had ever heard. I saw the prisoner fall back with blood splashing from his body, and both deputies let go of his arms at the same time. Brady Sims stood there in that old faded blue jumper, with the smoke still rising from the gun in his hand.

  Then came the screaming and scrambling to get out of the place or get down on the floor. The members of the jury who didn’t run out of the room got down behind their chairs. The judge went under his desk. The two deputies stood frozen, with their hands near their guns, but not on the guns. Brady, facing them—his head as white as cotton is in September—stood as straight and tall as a picket in a fence. I watched him, I watched them all, afraid to run, afraid to get down on the floor.

  “Tell Mapes give me two hours,” Brady said.

  “You don’t think you walking out of here, do you?” Claude said. He was the younger of the two deputies.

  Brady got his hat off the chair next to the one where he had been sitting. He adjusted it well on that pile of cotton.

  “I didn’t come here for no foolishness, boy,” he said to Claude. “Tell Mapes what I said,” he said to Russell, the older deputy.

  “Go on,” Russell said.

  “Go on, like hell go on,” Claude said.

  Then I heard that deafening sound again—and the smoke rising up between the old man and the two deputies.

  “You old bastard, you,” Claude screamed. “You tried to kill me, you old bastard, you.”

  “I shot down in the floor that time,” Brady told him. “Don’t try it no more.”

  “Go on,” Russell said again.

  “You crazy?” Claude asked Russell.

  “Mapes’ll bring him in.”

  “Mapes put us in charge.”

  “Go on,” Russell told Brady.

  “You go’n take the blame for this,” Claude told Russell. “By God, you go’n take all the blame for this.”

  Keeping his eyes on the deputies, old Brady backed his way down the aisle. The two deputies watched him, but did not move. The rest of the people lay quietly on the floor. I watched the old man back closer and closer to where I stood. Then we were facing each other, three or four feet apart. I had known him all my life, but this was as close as I had ever been to him. His face was the color of dark worn leather, and looked just as tough. His mustache and beard were the same color as the hair on his head—snow-white. He had a large hawkish nose, thin lips, and the whites of his eyes were yellow. But those same eyes looked tired and weak.

  He continued to stare at me, as if he wanted me to understand what he had done, or why he had done it. But at that moment I couldn’t even think, I was barely able to breathe. Still, I couldn’t look away.

  When he saw no answers in my face, he looked again at the deputies and slowly backed out of the courtroom, with the big gun still in his hand, pointing at nothing.

  I took in a deep breath and tapped my chest a couple times to make sure that I was all right, then I went outside.

  I saw some of the people who had been inside the courtroom were now standing out on the lawn. Others from nearby stores and shops had joined them. Now, we all watched Brady go to his truck—the big pistol still hanging from his hand. He had to jerk twice on the truck door to get it open. Then he had to back up and go forward twice before he had the old blue pickup straightened out. He drove slowly out of town.

  The nearest public telephone was in the drugstore across the street. I ran over there and called the paper. Velma, the secretary, answered. I told her I wanted to speak to Cunningham. Quick. I told him what had happened. He told me to stay there until he got there, and to get everything down that I could. I ran back to the courtroom. The people had gotten up off the floor. The jury members who were left sat in their respective chairs. The judge was sitting at his desk, his hands clasped together as he looked back over the courtroom where a few of the spectators were sitting. The two deputies were standing over the body of the prisoner. Someone had spread a raincoat over the body. Blood flowed from under the raincoat toward the jury box.

  Then we heard Mapes. No, we heard the car coming in fast, then screeching to a dead stop in Mapes’s parking space. We heard the car door slam an
d some loud cussing, then he was inside, pushing those two hundred and sixty-nine and a half pounds of fury (he had weighed three hundred pounds a year ago, but his doctor had put him on a strict diet, and he had lost thirty and a half pounds, and he was proud of it, and wanted you to know it). Now he was huffing and puffing and pushing all that weight up the aisle toward us. He looked at his two deputies like he wanted to strangle both of them, then he leaned over and pulled back the raincoat for a second, and flung it back with the same fury. Now he was looking at Russell.

  “Out of nowhere—BOOM,” Russell said.

  Mapes stared at him with those steel-gray eyes.

  “Out of nowhere—boom? I’m supposed to tell Victor Jarreau—out of nowhere—boom?”

  “Nobody saw it coming,” Russell said. “Nobody expected anything like that. He was sitting over there like he’s been doing the last two days. Stood up, hollered at the boy, and shot him. What else can I say?”

  “You can say you tried to stop him.”

  “Stop him? Stop him how? Nobody knew what happened ’til it was over.”

  “He’s right,” Judge Reynolds said. “I’ve observed him in that same chair for the last two days. I saw no warning that—”

  “You’re not paid to see men carrying guns, he is,” Mapes said. “Well?”

  “What more can I say, Mapes?”

  “What more can you say; what more can you say? You can tell Victor Jarreau how this arthritic old man had time to pull out a gun from—I don’t know where—time to holler to the boy, time to shoot—while you and this, this thing over here, had your minds somewhere else. Tell him that.”

  “Mapes,” Judge Reynolds said. “I’ve been sitting here waiting to talk to you, because I thought you could be sensible. But I see it was just a waste of my time. He could do no more to stop Brady from killing that boy than you could have stopped him from wherever you were. Ladies and gentlemen, excuse me, I’ll be in my chambers.”

  The judge left. Mapes was looking at Russell.

  “He wants two hours,” Russell said.

  Mapes was still looking at him.

  “Then come and get him,” Russell said.

  Mapes didn’t say anything, but it seemed like those two hundred and sixty-nine and a half pounds of fury wanted to explode.

  “Old bastard shot at me,” Claude said, out of the quietness.

  Mapes heard him, but he went on looking at Russell. Russell had been around long enough to handle situations like these.

  “Luckily, the old bastard missed,” Claude said, speaking again.

  Mapes looked at him this time. He looked at him up and down. He looked at him well.

  “He didn’t miss,” Mapes said. “He don’t miss what he shoots at. I’ve hunted with him enough times to know that he never misses what he shoots at.” He turned back to Russell. “Call Herman. Tell him come pick this up. Think you can remember that much?”

  Russell didn’t answer. Mapes looked down at the raincoat.

  “He can have his two hours, then I’ll get him.”

  “Want me to go with you?” Claude asked.

  “No,” Mapes said. “You’ve already worked too hard for one day.”

  “I’d like to be the one to put the cuffs on him, myself,” Claude said.

  “You can go and arrest him.”

  “No. Old bastard liable to shoot at me again, and I don’t want to have to kill him.”

  Mapes grunted to himself, then he turned to the jury box where the people sat waiting.

  Mr. A. Paul sat in jury chair number eleven. He was the only black member of the jury, a little baldhead man who was a deacon in his church and lived on the same street as I did in Bayonne. He wiped his head with a pocket-handkerchief and stared down at the floor. The white jury members were all looking at Mapes.

  “Every last one of you, come to my office,” Mapes told them.

  “Half of them have already gone,” Russell said.

  “Find them, round them up, and bring them to my office,” Mapes said. He turned to me. “Were you there?”

  “Yes, sir, but I didn’t see anything, Sheriff.”

  “Come to my office.”

  “I swear I didn’t see anything, Sheriff.”

  He didn’t say any more.

  Just about then Ambrose Cunningham came into the courtroom. All the white people call him Abe or Cunningham. I call him Mr. Abe. He always looks skeptically at me whenever I call him Mr. Abe. He knows I’m laughing inside. He much prefer I call him Mr. Cunningham. But this is the South, and we always address you by your first name. Abe Cunningham is editor of our little weekly, the Journal. He is six three or six four, weighs a hundred and seventy pounds at most. He likes his gabardine in winter, his seersucker in summer. He wears a little polka-dotted bow tie all the time. He integrated our little paper about five years ago. A black woman, Velma, is in the office, and I’m a reporter. Jack Richard, a white guy, is the other reporter.

  “Mapes,” Cunningham spoke, and smiled—something he likes to do whenever he wants information. “Heard you had a little trouble?”

  Mapes grunted but didn’t say anything.

  “May I?” Cunningham asked.

  “Suit yourself,” Mapes said.

  Cunningham pulled the raincoat back and looked at the body, and covered it again.

  “Heard he asked for two hours,” Cunningham said. “Any comments?”

  Mapes noticed that Cunningham had brought out a little tape recorder from inside his coat pocket.

  “Talk to your boy over there,” Mapes said. He turned to the jury box. “Rest of y’all follow me.”

  Mapes pushed those two hundred and sixty-nine and a half pounds back down the aisle with the jury members at his heel. There were six or seven of them left; the others ran out of the courtroom when the shooting began. Those left were on Mapes’s heel all the way, as though they were afraid Brady might still be around.

  “He actually gave him two hours?” Cunningham asked me.

  “That’s what he said.”

  “Why?” Cunningham asked.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know.”

  Cunningham is about three inches taller than I am. He is farsighted and wears thick-lens glasses. His blue eyes behind those glasses looked like bird eggs. I could see in his eyes he was thinking.

  “Seems strange to me,” he said. “Shoots his son down in a courtroom full of people. Deputies let him go. Sheriff gives him two hours to get his business straight before arresting him—don’t that seem strange to you?”

  “Like I said, I don’t know.”

  Those two blue eyes looked down on me.

  “Go find out.”

  “Find out what?” I asked.

  “You’re a reporter, aren’t you?”

  “I try to be.”

  “A human interest story on my desk by midnight.” He turned from me to the deputies. “Mind if I ask you boys couple questions?”

  “What is it?” Russell asked.

  “How did he get in here with that gun?”

  “Had it under that old jumper.”

  “How did he get by security?”

  “We don’t always check old people, especially the ones we know. How could we know he had a gun with him today?”

  “How do you know he didn’t have it with him yesterday?”

  “You’re perfect,” Claude said. “I can tell by that rag you publish, you’re perfect.”

  I was standing behind Cunningham, and I could tell by the slight movement of his shoulders that he was laughing at Claude.

  “Tell me,” Cunningham said. He was speaking to Russell. “From the moment he called to the boy, from the moment the boy fell from your hands, what happened?”

  “I better not talk anymore,” Russell said.

  “Anything to add?” Cunningham asked Claude.

  “Go to hell,” Claude said.

  I could tell by the slight movements of his shoulders that he was laughing at Claude again.
r />   “You boys might need a friend before this is over,” he said. He looked back at me. “You’re still here?”

  Chapter Two

  I left the courtroom and went to the sheriff’s office. His office was on the same floor, but nearer the entrance to the building. Only two people were still waiting there to see Mapes—juror number ten, a little white lady, wearing a black-and-white checkered suit; and number eleven, Mr. A. Paul Williams. Everyone else had already seen Mapes or had sneaked out while Mapes was in his office. I sat down beside Mr. A. Paul. He had just wiped his face and head with the pocket-handkerchief. He kept it in his hand as though he knew he would need it again. He introduced me to the little white lady. Her legs were so short that her feet barely touched the floor.

  “Miss Greta,” Mr. A. Paul said.

  “Miss Greta.”

  “Please to meet you,” she said. She had rosy cheeks, green eyes, and little red lips.

  Juror number six or seven, I forget which, came out of Mapes’s office. He was a tall white man with a long neck and orange-color hair. He told Miss Greta that she could go in now. Miss Greta patted Mr. A. Paul twice on the knee just before she stood up. Mr. A. Paul nodded his head and said, “Thank you, ma’am,” in response. After Miss Greta had gone into Mapes’s office, Mr. A. Paul wiped his face and head again with the wet pocket-handkerchief. He didn’t put it in his pocket.

  “Nobody never told me jury was go’n cover all of this,” he said. “I went through enough of this just to vote. ‘How many beans in a jar; how many grains of corn on a cob’—wasn’t that enough to make me a citizen? Now this. ’Round here shooting up the place like he’s some kind of Jesse James. ’Nough to make you sick.”

  “Jury duty is not always like this,” I told him.

  “Ain’t it?” Mr. A. Paul challenged me.

  “After all, you did sentence his son to death.”

  “It wasn’t just me,” Mr. A. Paul said. “It wasn’t just me. I went ’long with the rest. So don’t go ’round here putting it all on me.”