Mozart and Leadbelly Read online

  “What for?” I said. “I wish I had my slingshot. I’ll keep my eyes on him. I’ll—”

  “Boy?” Mom said. She looked at me in that mean way she got of looking when she wants me to pay attention. She glanced at the woodpecker and looked at me again. “When he fly away, you count to thirty and let me know.”

  “Suppose he don’t fly? I want to go shoot marbles.”

  “If he peck there all day, you stay there.”

  “Suppose he stay there all night?”

  Mom looked at me again in that mean way.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  “I hate what I’m doing,” she said. “But I can’t help it. Letting that yellow woman make a fool of him like that.”

  She went inside, and I sat on the steps watching that woodpecker. Then when I got tired sitting, I lay back and looked at him. Then when I got tired lying there, I sat up again. When Lucius came by and asked me to shoot marbles with him, I told him I had to watch that woodpecker. Lucius asked me what I had to watch a woodpecker for. I told him for Mom. Lucius didn’t know what I was talking about, but he sat there and watched him with me. Then after a while, he got tired and left. That doggone woodpecker was still up there, pecking and pecking away. Once he stopped for about a second, then he started all over again.

  Then ’round five-thirty he gave it up and flew over the house. I counted to thirty right fast and ran inside to tell Mom.

  “Get your hat,” she said. “Let’s go down to Mr. Étienne.”

  We went down there, and Mr. Étienne was in the back just getting ready to unhitch his mules. Mom asked him could she borrow his wagon for a while, and Mr. Étienne looked at her kind of funny-like. But when Mom promised to take good care of the mules, he said all right.

  She told me to get in the wagon and take the lines, and she went and opened the gate. When I drove out in the road, she made me turn right. She locked the gate and climbed in, and we headed into the field.

  Mom didn’t say another word to me. Every time I asked her which way, she pointed her finger. I’d pull the lines, and the mules would go in that direction. The mules were tired and didn’t want to go at all, so every now and then I had to give ’em a little pop. Mom didn’t say anything to me, but I could feel she wanted to.

  We went on and on, and then I seen we was headed toward Miss Molly Bee’s house. I looked at Mom ’cause I still didn’t know what was going on. But she just sat there quietly and looked straight ahead.

  When we came up to the gate that took you in the pasture, Mom stood up in the wagon and started looking ’round. She looked right, she looked left. Then as she was getting ready to look right again, she jerked her head back the other way.

  “There he is over there,” she said.

  I stood up to look, and, sure enough, there was Pap lying over there all tangled up in the wire fence. Mom opened the gate, and I drove over where Pap was. Pap was mumbling something to himself, but he wasn’t moving. Mom told me to get down and help her get him in the wagon. We had a hard time untangling Pap out of that barbwire, but we managed to get him free. Then we got him in, and I gathered up the line and the string of fishes and laid them beside him. Pap was mumbling so much, Mom had to sit in the bed of the wagon and hold him in her arms.

  “It’s all right,” she kept whispering to Pap. “It’s all right.”

  When we got home, the sun had gone down. I helped Mom get Pap inside, then I took the mules back to Mr. Étienne. When I got back home, Pap was really mumbling. Over and over—“Get him away from me. Get him away from me.” Pap mumbled like that all night. “Get him away from me. Get him away from me.”

  When Pap was able to talk, about a week later, he told us what had happened. He really got excited when he told us about it. I had never seen Pap get so excited before.

  “My way home from fishing—” he said.

  “From where?” Mom cut him off.

  “Fishing. My way home from fishing—”

  “From where?” Mom said.

  Pap started to say he was on his way home from fishing again, but he stopped and looked at Mom.

  “You know?” he said.

  “I know,” Mom said.

  Pap looked at her a good while, then he nodded his head.

  “You right. I was on my way from her house. I was walking slowly, walking slowly. Then all a sudden I heard this cissing. Didn’t know what it was at first. Never heard nothing like it before—hope to never hear nothing like it again. Looked over my shoulder, couldn’t see a thing. Soon as I start walking, could hear it. Cissing, cissing. Coming from back in the woods. Look back; nothing. Go little farther, then it get closer, and I hear it plainer. Look back. They got a snake there ten foot long. Never seen one like that before. Crawling on just half his belly. Head part straight up in the air. Looking straight at me—just cissing. I start running. Thing cissing—coming after me. I stop. He stop. I start walking. He come little bit, too. I stop. Thing stop. I break at him. Thing break back. I stop. He stop. I look at him. He look at me. I move my head one way. He move his head. ‘Lord have mercy,’ I say. ‘This the devil? This the devil?’

  Thing just look at me, going ‘Ciss-ciss.’ I start walking. Here he come. I stop. He stop. I break at him and swing my pole at his head. Thing duck. I swing the other way. Thing duck again. Must hit fifty times at him, ain’t hit him yet. ‘This ain’t no real snake,’ I say. ‘This ain’t no real snake. This must be a haint.’ And when I said that, I headed for home. Me, that haint, and that road. Faster I run, faster that haint run. Haint right behind me, going ‘Ciss-ciss.’ Getting close to the gate, haint get right side me, going ‘Ciss-ciss.’ Then I see that haint making me run ’cross the pasture—toward the fence. Come to the fence, didn’t even think, just went in. Haint knowed what he was doing. Got me all tangled up and tried to beat me to death. Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy. You ain’t been beaten by a haint, you ain’t been beaten. When I woke up, I was home. Don’t know nothing. Don’t know nothing. Nothing but that haint.”

  Pap must have told that story about fifty times, and every time he told it he told it the same way, so it had to be the truth.

  But that was a week later. The night we brought Pap home, Pap twisted and turned and mumbled all night. Mom sat up with him, bathing the cuts on his back and feeding him soup. I wanted to stay up with her, but she made me go to bed. When I woke up the next morning, there was Pap again—mumbling and groaning. People heard Pap was sick and they came by to see him. But Pap didn’t recognize a soul, just sweating and mumbling. People told Mom she ought to get him a doctor, but Mom said Pap was her man, not theirs, and she knowed how to look after him. People wouldn’t argue with Mom; nobody ever argued with Mom. But they kept on dropping by to look at Pap. Everybody dropped by. That is, everybody but Miss Molly Bee. She passed by the house couple times and peeped in, but that was all. One time I met her in the road and she asked me how was Pap feeling. I said he was doing pretty good. She smiled and told me to tell Pap she said hello. I told Pap. Pap didn’t say a word. He just gazed at the ceiling. Then he started talking about the haint again. That haint just stayed in Pap’s mind. Nothing else. Just the haint. And everything led up to the haint. If you said berry, Pap would put berry with bush, bush with pasture, and pasture with haint. If you said post, Pap would put post with fence, fence with pasture, and pasture with haint. If you said dirt, water, sky—anything; it all added up to haint.

  But after about a week or so, Pap was able to get up. His legs were still wobbly, and he couldn’t do much, but he could at least go out on the gallery and sit in the sun. And the first day Pap went out there, Pap surprised me. Because that was the first time I’d ever seen Pap sit in a chair on the gallery. He set right by the door across from Mom. And Mom was some proud of it. You could see it and you could feel it.

  Not too long after we had been sitting out there, Lucius came by. Me and Lucius played marbles a few minutes, then we sat on the steps. I waited till Mom and Pap were quiet, the
n I looked at Lucius. Lucius said, “Passed by Miss Molly Bee’s house yesterday, and Miss Molly Bee was laughing to kill Caesar.”

  I could tell Mom and Pap was looking at Lucius, and I said, “What was she laughing about?”

  Lucius said, “Don’t know. But she sure was laughing. Back there in her kitchen, laughing to beat the band.”

  A week after Pap was up, he was able to go fishing again. I dug a big cup of worms, and we left the house. Just as I was turning down the quarters, Pap stopped me.

  “Where you going?” he said.

  “Ain’t we going fishing?”

  “We going,” he said.

  “Well, ain’t —?”

  “That’s the only fishing hole you know?” he said.

  “You mean we going to the river?”

  Pap didn’t say anything, and started walking. I ran and caught up with him.

  “Ehh, y’all sure think you smart, huh?” he said.

  “Who, Pap?” I said.

  “Madame Toussaint. Who else?” he said.

  I didn’t say anything. I liked old Pap. I liked Mom, too.

  “What a haint,” Pap said. “What a haint.”

  In His Own Words:

  Ernest J. Gaines in Conversation

  A LITERARY SALON: OYSTER/SHRIMP PO’BOYS, CHARDONNAY, AND CONVERSATION WITH ERNEST J. GAINES

  Ernest J. Gaines, Marcia Gaudet, and Darrell Bourque

  December 17, 2002

  DB: That whole idea of influence or use or whatever you want to call it is really broad. I mean to a large extent any of us who are writers or musicians or visual artists are all influenced by the larger culture that we encounter. But what we could do in this particular set of interviews is to ask some more specific questions about how artistic expression impacts a particular imagination. As we’ve talked to you over the years informally and in other essays or interviews that you’ve given, you know, there are instances where you talk about the way in which you listened to Joyce, read Joyce, read Turgenev, loved the work of Vincent van Gogh, and so forth. And so in a lot of ways, I think that one of the reasons why your name immediately came up for me is because I know that as you’ve talked through the years, you’ve touched on some of those ideas. But I was wondering, Ernie, who would you say is a nonliterary artist who has maybe had an impact on you as a writer or as an artist yourself? Are there any people who come to mind?

  GAINES: A nonliterary artist?

  DB: Right, either a musician or—

  GAINES: Well, I’ve listened to music all my life, all my adult life I should say, and especially the classical music, symphonies as well as chamber music. I like to listen to jazz music, a lot of jazz music, of course. And a lot of blues, a lot of spirituals. Pop music. And I think without knowing how directly it’s influenced me, I think it has influenced me. I think I’ve taken from so many different artists that it’s hard for me to pinpoint it to one particular musician. Although I’ve listened to pieces of music, like the New World Symphony of Dvořák. And because of the motifs or themes of spirituals and themes in the symphony, it’s awakened something in me when I’ve listened to it.

  MG: I want to go back to what you said sixteen years ago. You said at that time that music helped you develop as a writer, and while writing Miss Jane Pittman, you played Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. You also said that some of the best descriptions of things, especially dealing with blacks, have been described better in music, especially the great blues singers like Bessie Smith, Josh White, and Leadbelly. And also in jazz music—a repetition of things, understatement, playing around the note.

  GAINES: Right, right. Yes, I agree. Bessie Smith’s “Backwater Blues,” and I feel that I get the sensation, the description, and the feeling of it—of the Flood of ’27, as I get when I read Faulkner’s “Old Man.” That sharp picture that she gives in two and a half lines of singing, I get a picture of what it must have been like—for the people—the water, and life at that particular time. Leadbelly singing about the prisons—at Angola or the prisons in Texas. I get a good feeling of what prison life was like. Regarding that influence in some of my work—Lightnin’ Hopkins singing “Mr. Tim Moore’s Farm”—I think that influenced me in writing some of the books. When I wrote Of Love and Dust, a man was put on the farm to work his time out. That had an influence on me. And I listened to the spirituals, and I used that kind of, those kinds of emotions when writing scenes of older women—for example, in A Gathering of Old Men or in A Lesson Before Dying—how they talked to God, and the associations about God. I think that’s from listening to that.

  MG: Do you think the contemporary singers—and I have in mind especially B. B. King, because I think you said you liked B. B. King. I’m not talking about rap music—

  GAINES: I don’t know a thing about rap—

  MG: Artists like B. B. King—do you get that same kind of feeling or influence?

  GAINES: I do. I think I do. I think the early B. B. King. The B. B. King of the fifties. You see, I’ve been listening to B. B. King since the fifties. Definitely. I have those records. And it’s not as sophisticated as it is today. There’s a young musician—who’s compared to B. B. King—called Robert Cray. And he’s just a fantastic blues singer. And he sings contemporary things. The way he sings about these contemporary problems—I went through those problems as a young man in the forties. And he’s young. I guess in his forties—young compared to B. B. King. So I’m still very much influenced by the blues singers. Especially the rural singers, much more than the urban blues singers.

  MG: I wonder about the influence of rap. The rap singers are so much a part of the mainstream culture right now—and not only an influence on young African-American culture. But it seems like an urban thing, and so removed from the experiences of the older generations.

  GAINES: Right. I don’t understand a thing about it. I don’t understand it at all. I can’t even talk about it.

  DB: I think one of the interesting things about rap music is the way in which it cuts across a racial divide, so that young white kids are as interested in black rap music as young black kids. And it goes both ways. Some of Eminem’s strongest and most fervent fans are young black kids. And it’s just a phenomenon to me that I don’t understand, either, but there’s a kind of ability to communicate and something going on there that I think is not for our generation.

  MG: But in a way the blues and jazz singers did the same thing.

  DB: Yeah. That’s interesting. I hadn’t thought about that.

  MG: It just may be the form that generation needed. And that was my other question, do you think that the great blues and jazz singers did serve that purpose—of sort of appealing very widely? They were singing often about specific black experiences, but they reached a larger audience.

  GAINES: Yes, I think that definitely happened. And I don’t know where Elvis Presley would be today if it were not for black musicians. And the group that really made white America aware of the influence of blues—especially rural blues—was the Rolling Stones from England. They were the first white group to really come out and say, “Yes, definitely, we’ve been influenced by these people.” By Muddy Waters, and Chuck Berry, and all of these black singers. These blues singers definitely influenced many of the white singers. This young man who died in a plane crash several years ago—from Texas—Stevie Ray Vaughan—a tremendous blues musician, and you can see the influence of black music on him. So it’s definitely there. Go back to jazz, as you said, Benny Goodman with the Count Basie Band, how they integrated, how they worked together and made good music. Benny Goodman had people like Charlie Christian on guitar, and Lionel Hampton on the xylophone. Teddy Wilson on the piano. So it’s always been out there. I can understand that. That stuff that’s called “hip-hop”—I can’t understand. I don’t know what they’re doing. I was at a place recently, at one of these readings, and one guy got up and asked me, “Mr. Gaines, what do you think of hip-hop music, as a writer?” What’s hip-hop? I had no idea what th
ey were talking about.

  MG: And what’s almost frightening to me is that I can remember— not so much with my dad because he was a musician, and he loved blues and jazz—but with Chuck Berry and others and when rock and roll became mainstream—and now my generation is questioning whether rap, or hip-hop, really is an art form.

  GAINES: I think of contemporary jazz—and when they came out with bebop—you know, nobody wanted to accept it. You know, the old traditionalists didn’t want to accept bebop. But then the artists and industry and all those guys stuck to it—

  DB: And now we can hear it. You couldn’t even hear it early on. Your ears wouldn’t accept it—

  GAINES: Right—but it’s out there. John Coltrane, when he changed music around, people didn’t understand what he was doing. But John Coltrane was a genius. That was another influence on my work—listening to it—because it’s really rooted in the blues. If you really listen to John Coltrane, it’s really blues all the time—blues and spirituals all the time.

  DB: You were mentioning Elvis Presley a while ago, and a little fact about Elvis Presley is his love of gospel music. He would come off the stage after a performance at midnight, and at five or six in the morning, his singers, his backup singers were still backstage. He would make them sing gospel music, and he would just go on until daybreak. And it wasn’t something that happened at a stage in his career. It was all the way through. And I think that he drew to a large extent from the same thing—from the blues and the spirituals.

  GAINES: Yes, sure.

  MG: And he didn’t see that as a sort of a divide. And I wonder about that—the idea that there is sort of a break between the spirituals and blues or jazz—and even that expression, that one is much more “God’s music” and the other is sort of like “the Devil’s music.”

  GAINES: I think the artist must deal with both God and the Devil. I think you can’t put one aside or the other. You know, like if you’re going to write for certain groups, and I don’t believe in writing for any specific group. So let others call blues the “sin music” and gospel is God’s music, just as the minister does in A Lesson Before Dying. You know, when they visit Jefferson in jail, and he’s playing that radio and he’s listening to blues, the old man—the minister—says “that sin box.” Well, sometimes that sin box can help you get to heaven as well as anything else. That’s what I was trying to show. But the artist himself cannot separate the religious or the blues or the spiritual. The artist cannot.