Free A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines Page A

said. “You want to. But you don’t must.” “You did,” I said. “Yes, I did,” he said. “But I told you not to. I told you to go. God has looked after them these past three hundred years without your help. He won’t—” “God?” I said. Because I had never heard him say God before. Because when we had said our Bible verses for him, he seemed to have hated the very words we spoke. “Sir, did I hear you say—?” “I’m cold”—he cut me off. “I stay cold. You better go. Come back some other time if you like. I made a mistake.” I came back a month later. I remember that it was cold that day too.
    Now, about that mulatto teacher and me. There was no love there for each other. There was not even respect. We were enemies if anything at all. He hated me, and I knew it, and he knew I knew it. I didn’t like him, but I needed him, needed him to tell me something that none of the others could or would.
    I brought some wine that day. He sent me into the kitchen to get two glasses. “This will warm you up,” I said. “Nothing can warm me up,” he said. He sat in the rocker, gazing down at the fire, with the blanket tight around him. He was a big-boned man, but very skinny now. “To flight,” he said, raising his glass. “But you didn’t go,” I said. “I’m Creole,” he said. “Can’t you tell?” “Was that it?” I asked him. “That was it,” he said. “I’m Creole. Do you know what a Creole is? A lying cowardly bastard. Did you know that?” “No, I didn’t know that,” I said. “I was afraid,” he said, looking into the fire. “I was afraid to run away. What am I? Look at me. Where else could I have felt superior to so many but here?” “Is that important?” I asked him. “It is,” he said. “For everyone. Especially for the whites and the near whites. It is important.” “Do you feel superior to me?” I asked him. “Of course,” he said. “Don’t be a damned fool. I
am
superior to you. I am superior to any man blacker than me.” “Is that why you hate me?” I asked him. “Exactly,” he said. “Because that superior sonofabitch out there said I am you.” “Do you think he is superior to you?” I asked him. “Of course,” he said. “Don’t you?” “No,” I said. “Just stay here long enough,” he said. “He’ll make you the nigger you were born to be.” “My only choice is to run, then?” I asked him. “That was your choice. But you won’t. You want to prove I’m wrong. Well, you’ll visit my grave one day and tell me how right I was.” “Tell me more,” I said. “What’s wrong with that university?” he asked. “Don’t they tell you?” “They tell me how to succeed in the South as a colored man. They tell me about reading, writing, and arithmetic. I need to know about life.” “I can’t tell you anything about life,” he said. “What do I know about life? I stayed here. You have to go away to know about life. There’s no life here. There’s nothing but ignorance here. You want to know about life? Well, it’s too late. Forget it. Just go on and be the nigger you were born to be, but forget about life. You make me tired, and I’m cold. The wine doesn’t help.”
    I visited him again only a month or two before he died, in the winter of ’42. He was forty-three years old. That was my first year as a teacher. I had been teaching two or three weeks when I visited him. We had just gotten our first load of wood for winter. Maybe that’s why I had gone to see him. I could always remember that first load of wood for winter, how we older boys had chopped the wood into smaller pieces while he stood