Free A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines

nightclub in Port Allen; Claudee, killed by a woman in New Orleans; Smitty, sent to the state penitentiary at Angola for manslaughter. And there were others who did not go anywhere but simply died slower.
    The big mulatto from Poulaya had predicted it, hadn’t he? It was he, Matthew Antoine, as teacher then, who stood by the fence while we chopped the wood. He had told us then that most of us would die violently, and those who did not would be brought down to the level of beasts. Told us that there was no other choice but to run and run. That he was living testimony of someone who should have run. That in him—he did not say all this, but we felt it—there was nothing but hatred for himself as well as contempt for us. He hated himself for the mixture of his blood and the cowardice of his being, and he hated us for daily reminding him of it. No, he did not tell us this, but daily he showed us this. As clearly as anything, he showed his hatred for himself, and for us. He could teach any of us only one thing, and that one thing was flight. Because there was no freedom here. He said it, and he didn’t say it. But we felt it. When we told our people how we felt, they told us to go back and learn all we could. There were those who did go back to learn. Others who only went back. And having no place to run, they went into the fields; others went into the small towns and cities, seeking work, and did even worse.
    But she told me that I would not be one of the others, that I would learn as much as he could teach me, then I would go away to learn from someone else. But that I would learn as much as he could teach me. And when he saw that I wanted to learn, he hated me even more than he did the others, because I challenged him when the others did not. The others believed what he said. They went out into the fields, went into the small towns and into the cities and died. So you think you can? he said. So you think you can? No, he did not say it with words, only with his eyes. You will be the loser, my friend. Maybe he did not say “friend”; he probably didn’t say “friend”; “fool,” more likely. Anyway, you will be the loser, he said. Yes, I will teach you. You want to learn, I will help you learn. Maybe in that way I will be free, knowing that someone else has taken the burden. Good, good, you want to learn? Good, good, here is the burden.
    Even after I had gone away for further education, on returning to the plantation to visit my aunt I could still see the hatred in him. And after he had retired from teaching because of ill health and I would visit him at his home in Poulaya, I would still feel his hatred for himself, for me, for the world. Once, as I sat at the fireplace with him, he said to me, “Nothing pleases me more than when I hear of something wrong. Hitler had his reasons, and even the Ku Klux Klans of the South for what they do. You don’t believe me, do you?” he asked me. “No, sir, I don’t,” I said. “You will one day,” he said. “I told you what you should have done, but no, you want to stay. Well, you will believe me one day. When you see that those five and a half months you spend in that church each year are just a waste of your time, you will. You will. You’ll see that it’ll take more than five and a half months to wipe away—peel—scrape away the blanket of ignorance that has been plastered and replastered over those brains in the past three hundred years. You’ll see.” Then he would be quiet for a long time, while we both stared into the fire.
    â€œI’m cold,” he said one day while we sat there looking into the fire. I got up to put on another piece of wood. “That’s no good,” he said. “I’ll still be cold. I’ll always be cold.” He looked at me. “You’ll see, you’ll see.” “I must,” I said. “No, you don’t must,” he