Free The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines

anytime and rain from now on. Bad weather you’ll cover only half the distance. That means two and a half miles instead of five. But weather ain’t all you go’n have to worry about. You got rattlesnakes, copperheads, water moggasins—they got to be reckoned with, too. That means you got to by-pass all bayous and all weedy places, and in order to do that you go’n have to buck back South or go West, because if you go East you go’n be headed straight for Mi’sippi. So that’ll knock that other half mile off, leaving you with just two per day. All right, that take care snakes and bad weather. But we have to consider at least one bad dog every other day. Now, since you and that boy’ll have to climb a tree and stay up there till somebody pull that dog away or till he just give up and wander off, that’ll rob you of another half a mile. All right, that take care bad dog. Next come old Vet’rans from the Secesh Army still hating niggers for what happened, and since they can’t take it out on the Yankees, wanting nothing better than to get two little niggers and tie them on a log full of red ants. So you duck round them and you lose another half amile, leaving you with just one mile per day. That boy over there sooner or later will eat some green berries or some green ’simmons, and what they go’n do to his bowels will cause you to lose another half a mile, leaving you with just a half. Well, you done made it to Arkansas. But the people in Arkansas ain’t heard the war is over, and soon as you and that boy land there they capture y’all and sell y’all to somebody in the hills. So, now, we forget traveling a few years—say, five, six—before they fully convinced Lee done surrendered and back at West Point teaching more gorilla tragedy. But let’s get back to you and the boy—y’all free again. You bigger and stronger and you can go ten miles a day now instead of five. But you got another worry now—men; black and white. The white one to treat you like he done treated you and your race ever since he brought you here in chains, the black one to treat you not too much better. So you settle down with a black one. No, not to protect you from the white man; if the white man wanted you he’ll take you from the black man even if he had to kill him to do so; you settle with one black man to protect you from another black man who might treat you even worse. But this one ain’t no bargain either; he beats you from sunup to sundown. Not because he wants to, mind you; he has to. Because, you see, he’s been so brutalized himself he don’t know better. But one day the boy there can’t take your suffering no more, and while the man is sleeping, the boy sneaks in and bust him in the head with a stick. Y’all start out again—now, y’all running. Y’all find your way into Tennessee where y’all captured again. No, not by the law you been running from—you captured by the good citizens of Tennessee. These here good people of Tennessee even more backward than them good people you left in Arkansas—these still speaking Gaelic. Since you ain’t got no Gaelic papers in this country, it’s go’n take them ten more years to learn Lee done quit and probably even dead now. Some kind of way you and the boy get away and start asking about Ohio. But since bothof y’all speaking Gaelic now the people don’t know what the world y’all talking about, so they point toward Memphis just to get rid of you. In Memphis you meet another nigger you ask the way. He don’t understand Gaelic either, but he’s one of them slick niggers who feels that any nigger speaking Gaelic ought to be took for all he’s worth, so he tells you and the boy to wait a minute and he’ll take you where you want to go. Y’all wait a minute, then y’all wait an hour, then a day, a year, five years—till that boy there got to bust this one in the head like he did the other one. Now, you and the boy steal horse and buggy and head out for