(A scuffle.)
MERIDIAN
: All right. All right! Come on, now. Come on.
(Ken steps forward and spits in Arthurs face.)
ARTHUR
: You black s.o.b., what the hell do you think you’re doing? You mother—!
MERIDIAN
: Hey, hold it! Hold it! Hold it!
(Meridian wipes the boy’s face. They are all trembling.)
(Mother Henry enters.)
MOTHER HENRY
: Here they come. And it looks like they had a time.
(Juanita, Lorenzo, Pete, Jimmy, all Negro, carry placards, enter, exhausted and dishevelled, wounded; Pete is weeping. The placards bear such legends as
Freedom Now, We Want The Murderer, One Man, One Vote,
etc.)
JUANITA
: We shall overcome!
LORENZO
: We shall not be moved!
(Laughs)
We were moved tonight, though. Some of us has been moved to
tears.
MERIDIAN
: Juanita, what happened?
JUANITA
: Oh, just another hometown Saturday night.
MERIDIAN
: Come on, Pete, come on, old buddy. Stop it. Stop it.
LORENZO
: I don’t blame him. I do not blame the cat. You feel like a damn fool standing up there, letting them white mothers beat on your ass—shoot, if I had my way, just once—stop crying, Pete, goddammit!
JUANITA
: Lorenzo, you’re in church.
LORENZO
: Yeah. Well, I wish to God I was in an arsenal. I’m sorry, Meridian, Mother Henry—I don’t mean that for you. I don’t understand you. I don’t understand Meridian here. It was his son, it was your grandson, Mother Henry, that got killed, butchered! Just last week, and yet, here you sit—in this—this—the house of this damn almighty God who don’t care what happens to nobody, unless, of course, they’re white. Mother Henry, I got a lot of respect for you and all that, and for Meridian, too, but that white man’s God is
white.
It’s that damn white God that’s been lynching us and burning us and castrating us and raping our women and robbing us of everything that makes a man a man for all these hundreds of years. Now, why we sitting around here, in
His
house? If I could get my hands on Him, I’d pull Him out of heaven and drag Him through this town at the end of a rope.
MERIDIAN
: No, you wouldn’t.
LORENZO
: I wouldn’t? Yes, I would. Oh, yes, I would.
JUANITA
: And then you wouldn’t be any better than they are.
LORENZO
: I don’t want to be better than they are, why should I be better than they are? And better at what? Better at being a doormat, better at being a corpse? Sometimes I just don’t know. We’ve been demonstrating—
non-violently
—for more than a year now and all that’s happened is that now they’ll let us into that crummy library downtown which was obsolete in 1897 and where nobody goes anyway; who in this town reads books? For that we paid I don’t know how many thousands of dollars in fines, Jerome is still in the hospital, and we all know that Ruthie is never again going to be the swinging little chick she used to be. Big deal. Now we’re picketing that great movie palace downtown where I wouldn’t go on a bet; I can live without Yul Brynner and Doris Day,
thank you very much. And we
still
can’t get licensed to be electricians or plumbers, we still can’t walk through the park, our kids still can’t use the swimming pool in town. We still can’t vote, we can’t even get registered. Is it worth it? And these people trying to kill us, too? And we ain’t even got no guns. The cops ain’t going to protect us. They call up the people and tell them where we are and say, “Go get them! They ain’t going to do nothing to you—they just dumb niggers!”
MERIDIAN
: Did they arrest anybody tonight?
PETE
: No, they got their hands full now, trying to explain what Richard’s body was doing in them weeds.
LORENZO
: It was wild. You know, all the time we was ducking them bricks and praying to
God
we’d get home before somebody got killed—
(Laughs)
I had a jingle going through my mind, like if I was a white man, dig? and I had to wake up every morning singing to myself, “Look at the happy nigger, he doesn’t give a damn, thank God I’m not a nigger—”
TOGETHER
:
“—Good Lord, perhaps I am!”
JUANITA
: You’ve gone crazy, Lorenzo. They’ve done it. You have been unfitted for the struggle.
MERIDIAN
: I cannot rest until they bring my son’s murderer to trial. That man who killed my son.
LORENZO
: But he killed a nigger before, as I know all of you know. Nothing never happened. Sheriff just shovelled the body into the ground and forgot about it.
MERIDIAN
: Parnell will help me.
PETE
: Meridian, you know that
Mister
Parnell ain’t going to let them arrest his ass-hole buddy. I’m sorry, Mother Henry!
MOTHER HENRY
: That’s all right, son.
MERIDIAN
: But I think that Parnell has proven to be a pretty good friend to all of us. He’s the only white man in this town
who’s ever
really
stuck his neck out in order to do—to do right. He’s
fought
to bring about this trial—I can’t tell you how hard he’s fought. If it weren’t for him, there’d be much less hope.
LORENZO
: I guess I’m just not as nice as you are. I don’t trust as many people as you trust.
MERIDIAN
: We can’t afford to become too distrustful, Lorenzo.
LORENZO
: We can’t afford to be too trusting, either. See, when a white man’s a
good
white man, he’s good because he wants
you
to be good. Well, sometimes I just might want to be
bad.
I got as much right to be bad as anybody else.
MERIDIAN
: No, you don’t.
LORENZO
: Why not?
MERIDIAN
: Because you know better.
(Parnell enters.)
PARNELL
: Hello, my friends. I bring glad tidings of great joy. Is that the way the phrase goes, Meridian?
JUANITA
: Parnell!
PARNELL
: I can’t stay. I just came to tell you that a warrant’s being issued for Lyle’s arrest.
JUANITA
: They’re going to arrest him? Big Lyle Britten? I’d love to know how you managed
that.
PARNELL
: Well, Juanita, I am not a
good
man, but I have my little ways.
JUANITA
: And a whole lot of folks in this town, baby, are not going to be talking to you no more, for days and days and
days.
PARNELL
: I hope that you all will. I may have no other company. I think I should go to Lyle’s house to warn him. After all, I brought it about and he
is
a friend of mine—and then I have to get the announcement into my paper.
JUANITA
: So it
is
true.
PARNELL
: Oh, yes. It’s true.
MERIDIAN
: When is he being arrested?
PARNELL
: Monday morning. Will you be up later, Meridian? I’ll drop by if you are—if I may.
MERIDIAN
: Yes. I’ll be up.
PARNELL
: All right, then. I’ll trundle by. Good night all. I’m sorry I’ve got to run.
MERIDIAN
: Good night.
JUANITA
: Thank you, Parnell.
PARNELL
: Don’t thank me, dear Juanita. I only acted—as I believed I had to act. See you later, Meridian.
(
Parnell exits.
)
MERIDIAN
: I wonder if they’ll convict him.
JUANITA
: Convict him. Convict him. You’re asking for heaven on earth. After all, they haven’t even
arrested
him yet. And, anyway—why
should
they convict him? Why him? He’s no worse than all the others. He’s an honorable tribesman and he’s defended, with blood, the honor and purity of his tribe!
(
WHITETOWN
:
Lyle holds his infant son up above his head.)
LYLE
: Hey old pisser. You hear me, sir? I expect you to control your bladder like a
gentleman
whenever your Papa’s got you on his knee.
(Jo enters.)
He got a mighty big bladder, too, for such a little fellow.
JO
: I’ll tell the world he didn’t steal it.
LYLE
: You mighty sassy tonight.
(Hands her the child.)
Ain’t that right, old pisser? Don’t you reckon your Mama’s getting kind of sassy? And what do you reckon I should do about it?
(Jo is changing the child’s diapers.)
JO
: You tell your Daddy he can start sleeping in his own bed nights instead of coming grunting in here in the wee small hours of the morning.
LYLE
: And you tell your Mama if she was getting her sleep like she should be, so she can be alert every instant to your needs, little fellow, she wouldn’t
know
what time I come—
grunting
in.
JO
: I got to be alert to
your
needs, too. I think.
LYLE
: Don’t you go starting to imagine things. I just been over to the store. That’s all.
JO
: Till three and four o’clock in the morning?
LYLE
: Well, I got plans for the store, I think I’m going to try to start branching out, you know, and I been—making plans.
JO
: You thinking of branching out
now
? Why, Lyle, you know we ain’t
hardly
doing no business
now.
Weren’t for the country folks come to town every Saturday, I don’t know
where
we’d be. This ain’t no time to be branching
out.
We barely holding
on.
LYLE
: Shoot, the niggers’ll be coming back, don’t you worry. They’ll get over this foolishness presently. They already weary of having to drive forty-fifty miles across the state line to get their groceries—a lot of them ain’t even got cars.
JO
: Those that don’t have cars have
friends
with cars.
LYLE
: Well, friends get weary, too. Joel come in the store a couple of days ago—
JO
: Papa D.? He don’t count. You can always wrap him around your little finger.
LYLE
: Listen, will you? He come in the store a couple of days ago to buy a sack of flour and he
told
me, he say, The niggers is
tired
running all over creation to put some food on the table. Ain’t nobody going to keep on driving no forty-fifty miles
to buy no sack of flour—what you mean when you say Joel don’t count?
JO
: I don’t mean nothing. But there’s something wrong with anybody when his own people don’t think much of him.
LYLE
: Joel’s got good sense, is all. I think more of him than I think of a lot of white men, that’s a fact. And he knows what’s right for his people, too.
JO
(Puts son in crib)
: Well. Selling a sack of flour once a week ain’t going to send this little one through college, neither.
(A pause)
In what direction were you planning to branch out?
LYLE
: I was thinking of trying to make the store more—well, more colorful. Folks like color—
JO
: You mean, niggers like color.
LYLE
: Dammit, Jo, I ain’t in business just to sell to niggers! Listen to me, can’t you? I thought I’d dress it up, get a new front, put some neon signs in—and, you know, we got more space in there than we use. Well, why don’t we open up a line of ladies’ clothes? Nothing too fancy, but I bet you it would bring in a lot more business.
JO
: I don’t know. Most of the ladies I know buy their clothes at Benton’s, on Decatur Street.
LYLE
: The niggers don’t—anyway, we could sell them the same thing. The white ladies, I mean—
JO
: No. It wouldn’t be the same.
LYLE
: Why not? A dress is a dress.
JO
: But it sounds better if you say you got it on Decatur Street! At Benton’s. Anyway—where would you get the money for this branching out?
LYLE
: I can get a loan from the bank. I’ll get old Parnell to co-sign with me, or have him get one of his rich friends to co-sign with me.
JO
: Parnell called earlier—you weren’t at the store today.
LYLE
: What do you mean, I wasn’t at the store?
JO
: Because Parnell called earlier and said he tried to get you at the store and that there wasn’t any answer.
LYLE
: There wasn’t any business. I took a walk.
JO
: He said he’s got bad news for you.
LYLE
: What kind of bad news?
JO
: He didn’t say. He’s coming by here this evening to give it to you himself.
LYLE
: What do you think it is?
JO
: I guess they’re going to arrest you?
LYLE
: No, they ain’t. They ain’t gone crazy.
JO
: I think they might. We had so much trouble in this town lately and it’s been in all the northern newspapers—and now, this—this dead boy—
LYLE
: They ain’t got no case.
JO
: No. But you was the last person to see that crazy boy—alive. And now everybody’s got to thinking again—about that other time.
LYLE
: That was self defense. The Sheriff said so himself. Hell, I ain’t no murderer. They’re just some things I don’t believe is right.
JO
: Nobody never heard no more about the poor little girl—his wife.
LYLE
: No. She just disappeared.
JO
: You never heard no more about her at all?
LYLE
: How would I hear about her more than anybody else? No, she just took off—I believe she had people in Detroit somewhere. I reckon that’s where she went.
JO
: I felt sorry for her. She looked so lost those last few times I saw her, wandering around town—and she was so young. She was a pretty little thing.
LYLE
: She looked like a pickaninny to me. Like she was too young to be married. I reckon she
was
too young for him.
JO
: It happened in the store.
LYLE
: Yes.
JO
: How people talked! That’s what scares me now.
LYLE
: Talk don’t matter. I hope you didn’t believe what you heard.
JO
: A lot of people did. I reckon a lot of people still do.
LYLE
:
You
don’t believe it?
JO
: No.
(A pause)
You know—Monday morning—we’ll be married one whole year!
LYLE
: Well, can’t nobody talk about
us.
That little one there ain’t but two months old.