Free Blues for Mister Charlie by James Baldwin Page B

about the trial?
    LYLE : No, I ain’t worried about the trial. I ain’t even mad at you, Parnell. Some folks think I should be, but I ain’t mad at you. They don’t know you like I know you. I ain’t fooled by all your wild ideas. We both white and we both from around here, and we been buddies all our lives. That’s all that counts. I know you ain’t going to let nothing happen to me.
    PARNELL : That’s good to hear.
    LYLE : After all the trouble started in this town—but before that crazy boy got himself killed, soon after he got here and started raising all that hell—I started thinking about her, about Willa Mae, more and more and more. She was too young for him. Old Bill, he was sixty if he was a day, he wasn’t doing her no good. Yet and still, the first time I took Willa Mae, I had to fight her. I swear I did. Maybe she wasfrightened. But I never had to fight her again. No. It was good, boy, let me tell you, and she liked it as much as me. Hey! You still with me?
    PARNELL : I’m still with you. Go on.
    LYLE : What’s the last thing I said?
    PARNELL : That she liked it as much as you—which I find hard to believe.
    LYLE : Ha-ha! I’m telling you. I never had it for nobody bad as I had it for her.
    PARNELL : When did Old Bill find out?
    LYLE : Old Bill? He wouldn’t never have thought nothing if people hadn’t started poisoning his mind. People started talking just because my Daddy wasn’t well and she was up at the house so much because somebody had to look after him. First they said she was carrying on with
him.
Hell, my Daddy would sure have been willing, but he was far from able. He was really wore out by that time and he just wanted rest. Then people started to saying that it was me.
    PARNELL : Old Bill ever talk to you about it?
    LYLE : How was he going to talk to me about it? Hell, we was right good friends. Many’s the time I helped Old Bill out when his cash was low. I used to load Willa Mae up with things from the kitchen just to make sure they didn’t go hungry.
    PARNELL : Old Bill never mentioned it to you? Never? He never gave you any reason to think he knew about it?
    LYLE : Well, I don’t know what was going on in his
mind
, Parnell. You can’t never see what’s in anybody else’s
mind
—you know that. He didn’t
act
no different. Hell, like I say, she was young enough to be his granddaughter damn near, so I figured he thought it might be a pretty good arrangement—me doing
his
work, ha-ha! because
he
damn sure couldn’t do it no more, and helping him to stay alive.
    PARNELL : Then why was he so mad at you the last time you saw him?
    LYLE : Like I said, he accused me of cheating him. And I ain’t never cheated a black man in my life. I hate to say it, because we’ve always been good friends, but sometimes I think it might have been Joel—Papa D.—who told him that. Old Bill wasn’t too good at figuring.
    PARNELL : Why would Papa D. tell him a thing like that?
    LYLE : I think he might have been a little jealous.
    PARNELL : Jealous? You mean, of you and Willa Mae?
    LYLE : Yeah. He ain’t really an old man, you know. But I’m sure he didn’t mean—for things to turn out like they did.
(A pause)
I can still see him—the way he looked when he come into this store.
    PARNELL : The way
who
looked when he came into this store?
    LYLE : Why—Old Bill. He looked crazy. Like he wanted to kill me. He
did
want to kill me. Crazy nigger.
    PARNELL : I thought you meant the other one. But the other one didn’t die in the store.
    LYLE : Old Bill didn’t die in the store. He died over yonder, in the road.
    PARNELL : I thought you were talking about Richard Henry.
    LYLE : That crazy boy. Yeah, he come in here. I don’t know what was the matter with him, he hadn’t seen me but one time in his life before. And I treated him like—like I would have treated
any
man.
    PARNELL : I heard about it. It was in Papa D.’s joint. He was surrounded by niggers—or
you
were—
    LYLE : He was dancing