Free Mozart and Leadbelly by Ernest J. Gaines

Chekhov, I must include this block of wood somewhere in my story. Which reminds me of something else. One should never title a speech. Speeches should be either untitled as paintings are untitled or numbered as symphonies are numbered, but they should never be titled. Titles are so hard to stick by. (Many years ago I saw a French movie, one of those New Wave French movies of the fifties and sixties. It might have been
Rififi
—I’m not sure. But, anyway, the people inside the theater were advised not to reveal the ending to the people who were waiting in line to come inside. One fellow came out of the theater and told everybody in line to look out for the little white dog. Some people cursed him, some challenged to fight him, but he got away. We went into the theater and waited for the little white dog to show up on the screen. It never did.)
    Anyway, earlier I mentioned a block of oak wood, and according to Mr. Chekhov, I must do something with that block of wood before closing.
    But first, since the block of wood in the sack was only a symbol, what was its meaning? And again, as you may recall, I said that I didn’t know its meaning. Only that it was there, and that it was heavy, a burden to carry.
    Now let’s go back to that one-room apartment with that block of oak wood in mind. In that room, I began to wonder what I should write about. At San Francisco State, at Stanford, on Guam, and in my home in Vallejo before going into the army, I had tried to write about the South, the old place, the old people, my brothers and sister, my friends, my church, and my little school. I remembered the letters I had written for the old people, the letters I had read for them. I thought about how I had gone to the store for them, how I had gone to the post office for them, how I had run from one house to another, borrowing a little sugar, salt, flour, or lard for them. I remembered how I had listened to them when they visited my aunt. I remembered how I had traveled with another aunt all over Pointe Coupee and West Baton Rouge Parishes, selling cosmetics. This aunt who sold cosmetics was Catholic and Creole, and I remembered how she and some of the other old Creoles talked about “them crazy ’mericans there on them plantation.” The other aunt, the one who had raised me, was dead now (she died in ’53, the same year I went into the army), but I could still remember her crawling over the floor, and cooking the food, and washing the clothes, and crawling across the porch to work in the vegetable garden beside the house after the sun had slipped behind our pecan tree. I could still see the rows of string beans and sweet peas and the rows of tomatoes and cucumbers where she worked.
    In that small apartment sitting at that small wooden table, I could still remember the day I left Louisiana. And I could see those faces who didn’t wish to look back at me, the same ones for whom I had written and read the letters. And when they did look at me, no more than a glance. I saw in their faces their lives, the lives of their people, my people, the past. I saw in those faces at that moment what they would never be able to put into words. Now it began to dawn on me: the meaning of those letters that I had written for them. How I had had to create the letters. They would say, “Dear Sarah, I’m well.” Then they expected me to carry on from there. I had to tell Sarah all that they
wanted
to tell her but couldn’t. (“That’s why you go to school, ain’t it?” they asked. “Now say something to fill in both sides of that paper.”) And afterward, they would give me pralines, tea cakes, or a nickel.
    In that room, I realized the meaning of that block of wood. These people had let me go to California, but I still had to write their letters. They made sure of that. Together, they cut a heavy block from one of our oldest live oaks, put it inside a strong croker sack, and said, “Here, and don’t you dare turn loose of that sack. You do,