Blues for Mister Charlie Read online

PAPA D.: That’s right, Mister Lyle.

  JUANITA: That’s Lyle Britten. The one we were talking about before.

  RICHARD: I wonder what he’d do if I walked into a white place.

  JUANITA: Don’t worry about it. Just stay out of white places—believe me!

  RICHARD (Laughs): Let’s TCB—that means taking care of business. Let’s see if I can dance.

  (They rise, dance. Perhaps she is teaching him the “Fight,” or he is teaching her the “Pony”; they are enjoying each other. Lyle gets his change, gets cigarettes out of the machine, crosses to the counter, pauses there to watch the dancers.)

  LYLE: Joel, you know I ain’t never going to be able to dance like that.

  PAPA D.: Ain’t nothing to it. You just got to be supple, that’s all. I can yet do it.

  (Does a grotesque sketch of the “Twist.”)

  LYLE: Okay, Joel, you got it. Be seeing you now.

  PAPA D.: Good night, Mister Lyle.

  (On Lyle’s way out, he jostles Juanita. Richard stops, holding Juanita at the waist. Richard and Lyle stare at each other.)

  LYLE: Pardon me.

  RICHARD: Consider yourself pardoned.

  LYLE: You new around here?

  PAPA D.: He just come to town a couple of days ago, Mister Lyle.

  RICHARD: Yeah. I just come to town a couple of days ago, Mister Lyle.

  LYLE: Well. I sure hope your stay’ll be a pleasant one.

  (Exits.)

  PETE: Man, are you anxious to leave this world? Because he wouldn’t think nothing of helping you out of it.

  RICHARD: Yeah. Well, I wouldn’t think nothing of helping him out of it, neither. Come on, baby, record’s going to waste—let’s TCB.

  (They dance.)

  So you care about me, do you? Ain’t that a bitch?

  (THE CHURCH: Pete and Juanita, a little apart from the others.)

  PETE: Why have you been avoiding me? Don’t answer that. You started going away from me as soon as Richard came to this town. Now listen, Richard’s dead but you still won’t turn to me. I don’t want to ask you for more than you can give, but why have you locked me out? I know—you liked me. We had nice times together.

  JUANITA: We did. I do like you. Pete, I don’t know. I wish you wouldn’t ask me now. I wish nobody would ask me for anything now!

  PETE: Is it because of Richard? Because if that’s what it is, I’ll wait—I’ll wait until you know inside you that Richard’s dead, but you’re alive, and you’re supposed to live, and I love you.

  JUANITA: When Richard came, he—hit—me in someplace where I’d never been touched before. I don’t mean—just physically. He took all my attention—the deepest attention, maybe, that one person can give another. He needed me and he made a difference for me in this terrible world—do you see what I mean? And—it’s funny—when I was with him, I didn’t think of the future, I didn’t dare. I didn’t know if I could be strong enough to give him what he needed for as long as he would need it. It only lasted four or five days, Pete—four or five days, like a storm, like lightning! And what I saw during that storm I’ll always see. Before that—I thought I knew who I was. But now I know that there are more things in me than I’ll ever understand—and if I can’t be faithful to myself, I’m afraid to promise I’ll be faithful to one man!

  PETE: I need you. I’ll be faithful. That helps. You’ll see.

  JUANITA: So many people need so much!

  PETE: So do you. So do I, Juanita. You take all my attention. My deepest attention.

  JUANITA: You probably see things that I think are hidden. You probably think I’m a fool—or worse.

  PETE: No. I think there’s a lot of love in you, Juanita. If you’ll let me help you, we can give it to the world. You can’t give it to the world until you find a person who can help you—love the world.

  JUANITA: I’ve discovered that. The world is a loveless place.

  PETE: Not yet—

  (The lights of a car flash in their faces. Silence. They all listen tensely as the lights of another car approach, then pass; they watch the lights disappear. The telephone rings in the office. Mother Henry goes off to answer it. They listen to the murmur of Mother Henry’s voice. Mother Henry enters.)

  MOTHER HENRY: That was Freddy Roberts. He say about two-thirty his dog started to barking and woke him up and he let the dog out on the porch and the dog run under the porch and there was two white men under Freddy’s porch, fooling around with his gas pipes. Freddy thinks the dog bit one of them. He ran inside to get him his rifle but the rifle jammed and the men got away. He wanted to warn us, maybe they might come prowling around here.

  LORENZO: Only we ain’t got no rifles.

  JUANITA: It was the dog that woke him up? I’ll bet they come back and kill that dog!

  JIMMY: What was they doing under the man’s house, messing around with his gas pipes, at that hour of the morning?

  PETE: They was fixing to blow up his house. They might be under your house, or this house, right now.

  LORENZO: The real question is why two white men feel safe enough to come to a black neighborhood after dark in the first place. If a couple of them get their heads blown off, they won’t feel so goddamn courageous!

  JUANITA: I better call home.

  (Exits into office.)

  PETE: Will you have your mother call my house?

  LORENZO: And have his mother call my house?

  JIMMY: And tell all the people that don’t have rifles or dogs to stay off their porches!

  LORENZO: Tell them to fall on their knees and use their Bibles as breast-plates! Because I know that each and every one of them got Bibles! (Meridian has walked to the church door, stands looking off)

  LORENZO: Don’t they, Meridian?

  MOTHER HENRY: Hush.

  (We hear Juanita’s voice, off. Then silence falls. Lights dim on the students until they are in silhouette. Lights up on Meridian. We hear Richard’s guitar, very lonely, far away.)

  (A car door slams. The voices of young people saying good night. Richard appears, dressed as we last saw him.)

  RICHARD: Hello, Daddy. You still up?

  MERIDIAN: Yeah. Couldn’t sleep. How was your day?

  RICHARD: It was all right. I’d forgotten what nights down here were like. You never see the stars in the city—and all these funny country sounds—

  MERIDIAN: Crickets. And all kinds of bugs and worms, running around, busy, shaking all the bushes.

  RICHARD: Lord, if I’d stayed here, I guess I might have married old Juanita by now, and we’d have a couple of kids and I’d be sitting around like this every night. What a wild thought.

  MERIDIAN: You can still marry Juanita. Maybe she’s been waiting for you.

  RICHARD: Have you ever thought of marrying again?

  MERIDIAN: I’ve thought of it.

  RICHARD: Did you ever think of marrying Juanita?

  MERIDIAN: Why do you ask me that?

  RICHARD: Because I’d like to know.

  MERIDIAN: Why would you like to know?

  RICHARD: Why would you like to hide it? I’d like to know because I’m a man now, Daddy, and I can ask you to tell me the truth. I’m making up for lost time. Maybe you should try to make up for lost time too.

  MERIDIAN: Yes. I’ve thought of marrying Juanita. But I’ve never spoken of it to her.

  RICHARD: That’s the truth?

  MERIDIAN: Yes.

  RICHARD: Why didn’t you tell me the truth way back there? Why didn’t you tell me my mother was murdered? She was pushed down them steps.

  MERIDIAN: Richard, your mother’s dead. People die in all kinds of ways. They die when their times comes to die. Your mother loved you and she was gone—there was nothing more I could do for her. I had to think of you. I didn’t want you to be—poisoned—by useless and terrible suspicions. I didn’t want to wreck your life. I knew your life was going to be hard enough. So, I let you go. I thought it might be easier for you—if I let you go. I didn’t want you to gro
w up in this town.

  RICHARD: But there was something else in it, too, Daddy. You didn’t want me to look at you and be ashamed of you. And you didn’t know what was in my eyes, you couldn’t stand it, I could tell from the way you looked at me sometimes. That was it, wasn’t it?

  MERIDIAN: I thought it was better. I suppose I thought it was all over for me, anyway. And I thought I owed it to your mother and to girls like your mother, to try—try to change, to purify this town, where she was born, and where we’d been so happy, and which she loved so much. I was wrong, I guess. I was wrong.

  RICHARD: You’ve just been a public man, Daddy, haven’t you? Since that day? You haven’t been a private man at all.

  MERIDIAN: No. I haven’t. Try to forgive me.

  RICHARD: There’s nothing to forgive. I’ve been down the road a little bit. I know what happened. I’m going to try again, Daddy.

  (A pause. Richard take out the gun.)

  Here. Grandmama saw this this morning and she got all upset. So I’ll let you hold it for me. You keep it till I ask you for it, okay? But when I ask you for it, you got to give it to me. Okay?

  MERIDIAN (Takes the gun): Okay. I’m proud of how you’ve come through—all you’ve had to bear.

  RICHARD: I’m going to get some sleep. You coming over to the house now?

  MERIDIAN: Not yet.

  RICHARD: Good night. Say, Daddy?

  MERIDIAN: Yeah?

  RICHARD: You kind of like the idea of me and Juanita getting together?

  MERIDIAN: Yeah. I think it’s a fine idea.

  RICHARD: Well, I’m going to sleep on it, then. Good night.

  MERIDIAN: Good night.

  (Richard exits.)

  (After Richard’s exit, the lights come up on the students.)

  JUANITA: Lord it’s gone and started raining.

  PETE: And you worried about your hair.

  JUANITA: I am not worried about my hair. I’m thinking of wearing it the way God arranged it in the first place.

  LORENZO: Now, now, Mau-Mau.

  PETE: This chick is going through some weird changes.

  MERIDIAN: That’s understandable. We all are.

  JIMMY: Well, we’ll see you sometime tomorrow. It promises to be a kind of active day.

  MERIDIAN: Yes, we’ve got some active days ahead of us. You all better get some sleep.

  JUANITA: How’re you getting home, Jimmy?

  JIMMY: Pete’s driving us all home.

  JUANITA: And then—are you going to drive all the way to your house alone, Pete?

  PETE: You’re jumpy tonight. I’ll stay at Lorenzo’s house.

  LORENZO: You can call your house from there.

  MOTHER HENRY: You get some sleep, too, Meridian, it’s past three o’clock in the morning. Don’t you stay over here much longer.

  MERIDIAN: No, I won’t. Good night, all.

  MOTHER HENRY: Good night, children. See you in the morning, God willing.

  (They exit. Meridian walks to the pulpit, puts his hand on the Bible. Parnell enters.)

  PARNELL: I hear it was real bad tonight.

  MERIDIAN: Not as bad as it’s going to get. Maybe I was wrong not to let the people arm.

  PARNELL: If the Negroes were armed, it’s the Negroes who’d be slaughtered. You know that.

  MERIDIAN: They’re slaughtered anyway. And I don’t know that. I thought I knew it—but now I’m not so sure.

  PARNELL: What’s come over you? What’s going to happen to the people in this town, this church—if you go to pieces?

  MERIDIAN: Maybe they’ll find a leader who can lead them someplace.

  PARNELL: Somebody with a gun?

  (Meridian is silent.)

  Is that what you mean?

  MERIDIAN: I’m a Christian. I’ve been a Christian all my life, like my Mama and Daddy before me and like their Mama and Daddy before them. Of course, if you go back far enough, you get to a point before Christ, if you see what I mean, B.C.—and at that point, I’ve been thinking, black people weren’t raised to turn the other cheek, and in the hope of heaven. No, then they didn’t have to take low. Before Christ. They walked around just as good as anybody else, and when they died, they didn’t go to heaven, they went to join their ancestors. My son’s dead, but he’s not gone to join his ancestors. He was a sinner, so he must have gone to hell—if we’re going to believe what the Bible says. Is that such an improvement, such a mighty advance over B.C.? I’ve been thinking, I’ve had to think—would I have been such a Christian if I hadn’t been born black? Maybe I had to become a Christian in order to have any dignity at all. Since I wasn’t a man in men’s eyes, then I could be a man in the eyes of God. But that didn’t protect my wife. She’s dead, too soon, we don’t really know how. That didn’t protect my son—he’s dead, we know how too well. That hasn’t changed this town—this town, where you couldn’t find a white Christian at high noon on Sunday! The eyes of God—maybe those eyes are blind—I never let myself think of that before.

  PARNELL: Meridian, you can’t be the man who gives the signal for the holocaust.

  MERIDIAN: Must I be the man who watches while his people are beaten, chained, starved, clubbed, butchered?

  PARNELL: You used to say that your people were all the people in the world—all the people God ever made, or would make. You said your race was the human race.

  MERIDIAN: The human race!

  PARNELL: I’ve never seen you like this before. There’s something in your tone I’ve never heard before—rage—maybe hatred—

  MERIDIAN: You’ve heard it before. You just never recognized it before. You’ve heard it in all those blues and spirituals and gospel songs you claim to love so much.

  PARNELL: I was talking about you—not your history. I have a history, too. And don’t be so sure I’ve never heard that sound. Maybe I’ve never heard anything else. Perhaps my life is also hard to bear.

  MERIDIAN: I watched you all this week up at the Police Chiefs office with me. And you know how to handle him because you’re sure you’re better than he is. But you both have more in common with each other than either of you have with me. And, for both of you—I watched this, I never watched it before—it was just a black boy that was dead, and that was a problem. He saw the problem one way, you saw it another way. But it wasn’t a man that was dead, not my son—you held yourselves away from that!

  PARNELL: I may have sounded—cold. It was not because I felt cold. There was no other way to sound, Meridian. I took the only tone which—it seemed to me—could accomplish what we wanted. And I do know the Chief of Police better than you—because I’m white. And I can make him listen to me—because I’m white. I don’t know if I think I’m so much better than he is. I know what we have done—and do. But you must have mercy on us. We have no other hope.

  MERIDIAN: You have never shown us any mercy at all.

  PARNELL: Meridian, give me credit for knowing you’re in pain. We are two men, two friends—in spite of all that could divide us. We have come too far together, there is too much at stake, for you to become black now, for me to become white. Don’t accuse me. Don’t accuse me. I didn’t do it.

  MERIDIAN: So was my son—innocent.

  PARNELL: Meridian—when I asked for mercy a moment ago—I meant—please—please try to understand that it is not so easy to leap over fences, to give things up—all right, to surrender privilege! But if you were among the privileged you would know what I mean. It’s not a matter of trying to hold on; the things, the privilege—are part of you, are who you are. It’s in the gut.

  MERIDIAN: Then where’s the point of this struggle, where’s the hope? If Mister Charlie can’t change—

  PARNELL: Who’s Mister Charlie?

  MERIDIAN: You’re Mister Charlie. All white men are Mister Charlie!

  PARNELL: You sound more and more like your son, do you know that? A lot of the colored people here didn’t approve of him, but he said things they longed to say—said right out loud, for all the world to hear,
how much he despised white people!

  MERIDIAN: He didn’t say things I longed to say. Maybe it was because he was my son. I didn’t care what he felt about white people. I just wanted him to live, to have his own life. There’s something you don’t understand about being black, Parnell. If you’re a black man, with a black son, you have to forget all about white people and concentrate on trying to save your child. That’s why I let him stay up North. I was wrong, I failed, I failed. Lyle walked him up the road and killed him.

  PARNELL: We don’t know Lyle killed him. And Lyle denies it.

  MERIDIAN: Of course, he denies it—what do you mean, we don’t know Lyle killed him?

  PARNELL: We don’t know—all we can say is that it looks that way. And circumstantial evidence is a tricky thing.

  MERIDIAN: When it involves a white man killing a black man—if Lyle didn’t kill him, Parnell, who did?

  PARNELL: I don’t know. But we don’t know that Lyle did it.

  MERIDIAN: Lyle doesn’t deny that he killed Old Bill.

  PARNELL: No.

  MERIDIAN: And we know how Lyle feels about colored people.

  PARNELL: Well, yes. From your point of view. But—from another point of view—Lyle hasn’t got anything against colored people. He just—

  MERIDIAN: He just doesn’t think they’re human.

  PARNELL: Well, even that’s not true. He doesn’t think they’re not human—after all, I know him, he’s hot-tempered and he’s far from being the brightest man in the world—but he’s not mean, he’s not cruel. He’s a poor white man. The poor whites have been just as victimized in this part of the world as the blacks have ever been!

  MERIDIAN: For God’s sake spare me the historical view! Lyle’s responsible for Richard’s death.

  PARNELL: But, Meridian, we can’t, even in our own minds, decide that he’s guilty. We have to operate the way justice always has to operate and give him the benefit of the doubt.

  MERIDIAN: What doubt?

  PARNELL: Don’t you see, Meridian, that now you’re operating the way white people in this town operate whenever a colored man’s on trial?

  MERIDIAN: When was the last time one of us was on trial here, Parnell?