Free Mozart and Leadbelly by Ernest J. Gaines Page B

said. “Remain ignorant.” One day when I came to her apartment with one of my little carvings, I heard on the radio what I thought was a great piece of music. I asked her what it was, and she told me it was Modest Mussorgsky’s
Pictures at an Exhibition.
She told me that if I listened closely enough, I would hear that the music was constantly changing, which meant that the viewer had moved from one picture to another. And she told me that if I listened closely enough, I could hear that each change was definitely different. “Just as characters should be different in a book,” she said. “lf you like the record, I will get it for you.”
    “I like it,” I said. “I like it very much.” And since then, music has always been one of the tools.
    One day the woman said, “The work is getting better. We’ll send it to the people in the big city and see what they think of it.” So we did. And we got a message with the little figure saying, “Yes, but . . .” And I told the woman I was very tired and I doubted that I could go on. She pushed: “Yes, you can go on; I’ll be there to help you go on. You’re blessed.”
    “I’m cursed, not blessed; I’m damned,” I said.
    “You should be honored that they chose you,” she countered. “One day you’ll be thankful that you went on.” (At that time, I thought the woman was crazy, and I thought myself crazier, but still I went back.)
    Some nights, I would go for long walks in the wind and fog, and I would say out loud, “Please relieve this load from my shoulder. I don’t need the honors. Pass it on to someone else who deserves it more.” And when it was not taken away, I thought more than once about Ambrose Bierce. Why not walk away, as he had done, and never be heard of again? Some of my friends were going to Africa, Mexico, Europe. But on their return, they seemed worse off than before they left. I began to wonder if I had the nerve for the big drop from our famous Golden Gate Bridge. My aunt, whom I loved more than anyone else in the world, was dead now, so what did I owe this world? I owed this world nothing.
    But back in that room, I would see those faces again, on the porch and by the fire. And I would see my aunt crawling over the floor, and cooking the food and washing the clothes, and never ever complaining. And I would see the faces of many of my friends who never had my chance. And I would pick up the hammer and the chisel or one of the knives and go back to work.
    Twenty-five years later, it is I who have begun to search faces for that one to whom I can pass the tools. I’m not through with the block yet, but at the same time, I’m looking. And if you as teachers should find him or her before I do, then
you
pass on the tools. In the long run, he or she will not regret the favor.

AUNTY AND THE BLACK EXPERIENCE IN LOUISIANA
    When people ask me who has been the greatest influence in my writing, I suppose they expect me to say another writer or a teacher. And I have learned much from teachers and writers and books. But the greatest influence on me as a writer and a man has been my aunt, Miss Augusteen Jefferson. Not for what she taught me with words— she did not give me advice (on leaving her), as Polonius gave Laertes; but she showed me, without the use of her legs, that I could do almost anything with those twenty-six letters if I would only work hard enough at it.
    Of course, I have not. I have not read half as much as I should have. And surely I don’t spend nearly as much time at the desk as I should. Five days a week, five hours a day are too much for me. With her it was seven days a week, all day—and as far as I know she never had one day’s vacation in her life.
    You know, there’s never a lack of others telling you what to do with your life. My young friends did not want me to write about the rural South, but about New Orleans—which I knew absolutely nothing at all about. Years later, when I was about to be discharged from the army,