In My Father's House Read online

  Praise for

  ERNEST J. GAINES’S

  In My Father’s House

  “He writes eloquently of the frustrated love between fathers and sons.… His best writing is marked by what Ralph Ellison, describing the blues, called ‘near-tragic, near-comic lyricism.’ ”

  —Margo Jefferson, Newsweek

  “The dialogue is mesmerizing.… The characterizations come right off the page.… No one writes about mainstream, ordinary black life as well as he does.”

  —Ishmael Reed

  “It would make a gripping play with its tight plot and strong scenes of confrontation, its Ibsenite central character.”

  —Julian Moynahan, Washington Post

  “Gaines’s people talk real talk and walk real streets.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  ERNEST J. GAINES

  In My Father’s House

  Ernest J. 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 at the University of Southwestern Louisiana in Lafayette. His books include A Lesson Before Dying, A Gathering of Old Men, In My Father’s House, A Long Day in November, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Bloodline, Of Love and Dust, and Catherine Carmier. In 1993 A Lesson Before Dying won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, and the same year 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. His new book, Mozart and Leadbelly, will be published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2005.

  ALSO BY ERNEST J. GAINES

  Catherine Carmier

  Of Love and Dust

  Bloodline

  The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

  A Long Day in November (for children)

  A Gathering of Old Men

  A Lesson Before Dying

  FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, JULY 1992

  Copyright © 1978 by Ernest J. Gaines

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, in 1978.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Gaines, Ernest J., 1933–

  In my father’s house / Ernest J. Gaines. — 1st Vintage international ed.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-83037-1

  I. Title.

  [PS3557.A35515 1992]

  813′.54—dc20 91-50733

  v3.1

  To the memory of George and Mamie Williams and Octavia McVay—

  They gave you whatever they had; they asked you for nothing in return

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  1

  Virginia Colar was standing in the kitchen looking out of the window at the rain when she heard the knocking at the front door. She could see how the wind was blowing the limbs in the pecan tree, and she thought the knocking was no more than a limb brushing against the sides of the house. She turned from the window to check the pot of soup that she had cooking on the stove. After tasting it to see if it was seasoned well enough, she nodded her head with satisfaction and lowered the flame.

  She heard the knocking again, this time louder than before. She was sure now that somebody was out there, and she went to the front to see who it was. When she opened the door she saw a thin, brown-skinned young man standing before her in a wet overcoat. Water dripped from his knitted Army field cap down his face, leaving crystal drops hanging from the scraggly beard on his chin.

  “You got rooms?” he asked her.

  “I got—” But she cut it off.

  She didn’t like his looks. He was too thin, too hungry-looking. She didn’t like the little twisted knots of hair on his face that passed for a beard. He looked sick. His jaws were too sunken-in for someone his age. His deep-set bloodshot eyes wandered too much. He could have just been released from the state pen. He definitely looked like somebody who had been shut in. They probably had let him go because they figured they had punished him enough already and knew he would die soon.

  Something in the back of her mind told her to tell him that she had made a mistake about having rooms. She had just rented the last one to a— an insurance man that very morning. But she asked herself where else would he go? Uptown to one of those back rooms of that white motel? Would they let him in there? By law they were supposed to, but couldn’t they say they didn’t have any vacancy either?

  After looking him over again, still telling herself that she would be doing the wrong thing, she moved to the side to let him come in. His only luggage was a half-full laundry bag slung over his right shoulder. After he had passed her she looked outside again. She was looking for Fletcher Zeno’s cab. Fletcher was the only black cab driver in St. Adrienne, and he met every bus that came into the station. But Virginia knew before looking outside that the cab would not be there. The young man’s clothes and the laundry bag would not have been so wet if Fletcher had brought him to the house.

  “That’s a dollar a day,” she said, still holding the door open. She wished he would say a dollar was too much for a room, then she would have had a good excuse to send him back out there.

  “I like it for a week,” he said.

  “Seven dollars,” she said. “And I ’preciates my money in advance.”

  She waited until he had reached toward his pocket before she closed the door and told him to follow her to her office. Her office was a small desk and a chair that she had sitting in one corner of her living room. At the door she told him to stay out in the hall, while she went into the room to get his key and the receipt book.

  “Where you from?” she called from inside.

  He didn’t answer her.

  She came back out.

  “I asked where you was from?” she demanded this time.

  Virginia was short, stocky, and very black. Her hair, which had only recently been straightened, was no more than a couple of inches long. Her face was round and oilish. Because she was so much shorter than the young man she was talking to, she had to throw her head back to look him in the face. She looked at him as fiercely as she could. She wanted him to know she expected an answer when she spoke, and she wanted him to know that she was doing him a favor by taking him in on a day like this.

  “Chicago,” he told her.

  She looked at him a moment longer, then she looked at the blue laundry bag that he still had slung over his shoulder. She didn’t believe he was from Chicago.

  “Money,” she said, reaching out her hand.

  He gave her a wrinkled five-dollar bill and some change. The change money was black with age, as though it had not been used in a long time.

  “Your name?” she asked him.

  “Robert,” he said.

  “Last name?”

  “X.”

  Virginia was holding the receipt book against the wall while she wrote down the information. When she heard him say “X” she drew down one line and stopped. She wasn’t looking at him yet; she was still looking at the receipt book, trying to recall what
group of people called themselves “X.” She couldn’t remember now whether it was the Black Panthers or the Black Muslims.

  Something in the back of her mind told her to give him back his money. But something else said, Where else would he go? Uptown? The whites wouldn’t let him in there either. They had turned down fatter ones and drier ones than he. And she was sure no “X” had ever slept in any one of those beds.

  She turned to him. “I don’t want no trouble in here,” she said. “I run a nice orderly place here. I don’t bother the law, the law doesn’t bother me. You hear me, don’t you?”

  He didn’t answer her, he wasn’t even looking at her, he was looking at the receipt book that she held against the wall. She had drawn half of his last name, and he might have been looking at that. But Virginia couldn’t tell from his gaze where his mind was. She slashed the other line across the first and told him to follow her upstairs.

  “You musta walked from the station?” she said.

  When he didn’t answer her, she waited until she had climbed another step before she stopped and looked back at him. He was standing two steps below her. Beads of water still clung to his beard, and that blue laundry bag was slung over his shoulders as if he was leaving instead of coming in.

  “I’m ’customed to people answering me,” she said.

  “I walked,” he said.

  “Wasn’t Fletcher there?” she asked. “A little ugly black man with red, beady—”

  “He was.”

  “Was?” she said. She wanted to say: “And he didn’t stick a gun in your back?” or “And he didn’t drag you to his cab?” But she didn’t say either, because he wouldn’t even have heard her. Something in the back of her mind told her again to give him back his seven dollars. But something else asked her, Where else would he go?

  She led him up to his room and lit the little gas heater, then she went to the bathroom down the hall to get a bucket of water to set on top of the heater. The water would keep moisture in the room. All the time that she was in the room with him, he stood by the window looking out at the rain. He hadn’t taken the laundry bag from his shoulder or taken off the cap or unbuttoned the coat.

  “The toilet and the shower down the hall there,” she said, to his back. “I change sheets and pillow cases once a week—Saturday. These already clean, so I won’t be changing them tomorrow. When you get hungry, the best place round here is Thelma’s café—about three blocks farther back of town. Her husband, Wrigley, runs that nightclub next to it—place called the Congo Room—you can’t miss it.”

  She could see he wasn’t interested in what she was saying, and she went back downstairs to the kitchen. She dished up a bowl of soup and sat down at the table to eat. But she had eaten no more than a couple of spoonfuls when she thought about Fletcher, and she went up the hall to her office to telephone him. Fletcher’s cab stand was at Thelma’s café, and Fletcher must have been sitting at the counter or standing nearby, because as soon as Thelma answered the telephone, Virginia heard her say: “For you, Fletcher.”

  “Fletcher,” he said.

  “You rich, hanh?” Virginia asked him.

  “I see,” Fletcher said. “He found his way.”

  “So y’all did talk?” Virginia said. “And you didn’t stick a gun in his back to make him get in that cab?”

  “No, I didn’t pull my gun this time,” Fletcher said. “I just begged him. But begging don’t work.”

  Virginia heard him drink something quickly. It could have been a cocktail he had gotten from the bar side, or a cup of hot coffee that he was drinking at the counter.

  “You got your money?” he asked her. “He wasn’t exactly tipping everybody at that bus station.”

  “I got a week in advance,” Virgina said.

  “That cold rain can do that,” Fletcher said. “Can make you change your view on life right away.” Then he laughed, quick and short. “He say where he’s coming from?” he asked Virginia.

  “Chicago,” she said.

  “Where?” Fletcher asked her.

  “That’s what he told me.”

  “With nothing but that blue laundry bag?” Fletcher asked.

  “He calls himself Robert X,” Virginia said.

  “One of them, hanh?” Fletcher said. “Well, you got something on your hands now, sister.”

  “What you mean?”

  “You’ll find out,” Fletcher said, and laughed again.

  Virginia hung up the telephone and went back into the kitchen. From the table she could see the rain touching lightly against the windowpanes. She could see the soft swaying of limbs in the pecan tree beside the house. There was not a pecan on the tree, not even a single leaf; not one bird sat on any of the limbs. The tree, bare, gray, was the same color as the low-hanging sky above it.

  I don’t like the look of this weather, I don’t like the feel of it, Virginia thought to herself. Trouble always ’company weather like this.

  She thought about her tenant upstairs in number four, and she wondered if he was hungry. She didn’t serve food at the house, but she had cooked much more than she would ever eat. If she ate soup every day for a week, there would still be some left over.

  It was her conscience bothering her again, she told herself. It wasn’t satisfied that it had made her let him into the house, but now it was trying to make her feed him too.

  After she had finished eating, she dished up another bowl of soup, and with some crackers on a plate, she took the food up to his room. She knocked twice, and when he didn’t answer her, she opened the door and went in. She would set the plate on the bucket of water, and the food would still be warm when he woke up. She was halfway across the room when she suddenly felt as though she was being watched, and she jerked her head round to face the bed. He was not watching her, but he was lying there wide awake. The wet overcoat and the knitted Army cap hung on a nail against the wall, both smoking from the heat in the room. For a moment Virginia was too angry to do anything but stare down at him. She couldn’t make up her mind whether to curse him and leave the food or curse him and take it back to the kitchen.

  “You bastard,” she said. “You bastard.”

  Without answering her, he pushed himself up on the bed and reached into his pocket to get her some money.

  “It’s free,” she said. “I don’t serve no food here. And I don’t take too much nonsense either. I hope you remember that.”

  She set the plate on the small lamp table at the head of the bed and backed away from him. She had reached the door when she heard him asking: “Any churches back here?”

  Virginia considered herself a Christian above anything else. A moment ago she cursed her tenant, but hearing him ask about church, she was ready to forgive him.

  “Churches?” she said. “We got three—if you said churches?”

  He picked up his plate and started eating. He nodded his head without looking round at her.

  “You need to go to church?” she asked, hoping that he would say yes.

  “No,” he said.

  “You just want to know where they at?”

  He didn’t even nod his head this time.

  “We have two Baptist and a Catholic,” she said. “But we don’t have none for the Mus—” She cut it off.

  “Baptist,” she heard him say.

  “We got a Baptist church just up the street there,” she told him. “Solid Rock Baptist Church. My church. Reverend Phillip J. Martin, pastor. Maybe you done heard of Reverend Martin up there in Chicago?”

  He went on eating, without answering her. She figured he didn’t know about the minister.

  “He’s our civil rights leader round here,” she said. “Everybody round here proud of him. Done such a good job here, people thinking ’bout sending him on to Washington. Would be the first one from round here, you know.”

  “Must be a good man,” Virginia heard him say.

  “The people here think so,” she told him. “ ’Course you have some ’gainst him—white
and black. You go’n find that no matter where you go. But most of the people all for him. He’ll be a good man in Washington. Sure done some wonderful things here for us.”

  “What’s he done?” the tenant asked without looking round.

  “What’s he done?” Virginia said. “What’s he done?” She didn’t mind his being ignorant of her pastor’s work, but it sounded from the tone of his voice that he didn’t believe what she was saying. “He’s done everything,” she said. “Everything. That’s what he’s done—everything. Changed just about everything round here, ’cept for old Chenal up there. But it won’t be long ’fore Chenal fall too. He’ll fall just like all the rest. Old white man we got uptown don’t want pay the colored nothing for working. Own the biggest store up there, everybody go in his store, still don’t want pay nobody nothing for working. He’ll change his tune when Phillip get through with him—you mark my word.”

  The tenant went on eating his food as if he were in the room alone. Virginia felt that she would have been talking only to the walls if she had stood there any longer.

  That evening, just after dark, he came downstairs and left the house. Virginia stayed up watching television late, but never heard him come back in. The next morning around six o’clock, even before she had gotten out of bed, the cab driver, Fletcher Zeno, called her on the telephone.

  “Want hear something good?” he asked her.

  “No,” she said, and hung up.

  The telephone rang again.

  “What you want, Fletcher?” she said. “You know what time it is?”

  “Five minutes to six, ’cording to my old Waterbury,” Fletcher said. Virginia heard him drink something quickly. She figured he was at home and was drinking hot coffee. “Seen your boy sitting behind Reverend Martin’s church door last night,” he said. “Round midnight, on my way home. First, I took him for a ghost. Then I thought it might be a dog. I went up to Brick O’Linde’s and turned round and came on back. I still couldn’t make out what it was, all slumped down like that, so I got out the car. Maybe it was Unc Matty or Dago Jack sick there and couldn’t make it home. But halfway up the walk I seen who it was—your boy there. Slumped back ’gainst that door with his hands jabbed down in his pockets. Coulda been ’sleep for all I know. I turned around and went on home. Well?” Another sip from his hot coffee. “What you think? Think he’s crazy—or just like cold rain?”