CANE
Jean Toomer
_With a Foreword
by_
Waldo Frank
_Oracular.
Redolent of fermenting syrup,
Purple of the dusk,
Deep-rooted cane._
[Illustration] LIVERIGHT
NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT © 1923 BY BONI & LIVERIGHT
® 1951 BY JEAN TOOMER
1.987654
STANDARD BOOK NUMBER: 87140-535-0
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 23-12749
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
To my grandmother...
FOREWORD
Reading this book, I had the vision of a land, heretofore sunk in
the mists of muteness, suddenly rising up into the eminence of song.
Innumerable books have been written about the South; some good books
have been written in the South. This book _is_ the South. I do not
mean that _Cane_ covers the South or is the South’s full voice. Merely
this: a poet has arisen among our American youth who has known how to
turn the essences and materials of his Southland into the essences and
materials of literature. A poet has arisen in that land who writes, not
as a Southerner, not as a rebel against Southerners, not as a Negro,
not as apologist or priest or critic: who writes as a _poet_. The
fashioning of beauty is ever foremost in his inspiration: not forcedly
but simply, and because these ultimate aspects of his world are to him
more real than all its specific problems. He has made songs and lovely
stories of his land ... not of its yesterday, but of its immediate
life. And that has been enough.
How rare this is will be clear to those who have followed with
concern the struggle of the South toward literary expression, and the
particular trial of that portion of its folk whose skin is dark. The
gifted Negro has been too often thwarted from becoming a poet because
his world was forever forcing him to recollect that he was a Negro.
The artist must lose such lesser identities in the great well of life.
The English poet is not forever protesting and recalling that he is
English. It is so natural and easy for him to be English that he can
sing as a man. The French novelist is not forever noting: “This is
French.” It is so atmospheric for him to be French, that he can devote
himself to saying: “This is human.” This is an imperative condition for
the creating of deep art. The whole will and mind of the creator must
go below the surfaces of race. And this has been an almost impossible
condition for the American Negro to achieve, forced every moment of his
life into a specific and superficial plane of consciousness.
The first negative significance of _Cane_ is that this so natural
and restrictive state of mind is completely lacking. For Toomer,
the Southland is not a problem to be solved; it is a field of
loveliness to be sung: the Georgia Negro is not a downtrodden soul
to be uplifted; he is material for gorgeous painting: the segregated
self-conscious brown belt of Washington is not a topic to be discussed
and exposed; it is a subject of beauty and of drama, worthy of creation
in literary form.
It seems to me, therefore, that this is a first book in more ways
than one. It is a harbinger of the South’s literary maturity: of its
emergence from the obsession put upon its minds by the unending racial
crisis—an obsession from which writers have made their indirect escape
through sentimentalism, exoticism, polemic, “problem” fiction, and
moral melodrama. It marks the dawn of direct and unafraid creation.
And, as the initial work of a man of twenty-seven, it is the harbinger
of a literary force of whose incalculable future I believe no reader of
this book will be in doubt.
How typical is _Cane_ of the South’s still virgin soil and of its
pressing seeds! and the book’s chaos of verse, tale, drama, its
rhythmic rolling shift from lyrism to narrative, from mystery to
intimate pathos! But read the book through and you will see a
complex and significant form take substance from its chaos. Part One
is the primitive and evanescent black world of Georgia. Part Two is
the threshing and suffering brown world of Washington, lifted by
opportunity and contact into the anguish of self-conscious struggle.
Part Three is Georgia again ... the invasion into this black womb of
the ferment seed: the neurotic, educated, spiritually stirring Negro.
As a broad form this is superb, and the very looseness and unexpected
waves of the book’s parts make _Cane_ still more _South_, still more of
an æsthetic equivalent of the land.
What a land it is! What an Æschylean beauty to its fateful problem!
Those of you who love our South will find here some of your love. Those
of you who know it not will perhaps begin to understand what a warm
splendor is at last at dawn.
A feast of moon and men and barking hounds,
An orgy for some genius of the South
With bloodshot eyes and cane-lipped scented mouth
Surprised in making folk-songs....
So, in his still sometimes clumsy stride (for Toomer is finally a
poet in prose) the author gives you an inkling of his revelation. An
individual force, wise enough to drink humbly at this great spring of
his land ... such is the first impression of Jean Toomer. But beyond
this wisdom and this power (which shows itself perhaps most splendidly
in his complete freedom from the sense of persecution), there rises
a figure more significant: the artist, hard, self-immolating, the
artist who is not interested in races, whose domain is Life. The book’s
final Part is no longer “promise”; it is achievement. It is no mere
dawn: it is a bit of the full morning. These materials ... the ancient
black man, mute, inaccessible, and yet so mystically close to the new
tumultuous members of his race, the simple slave Past, the shredding
Negro Present, the iridescent passionate dream of the To-morrow ...
are made and measured by a craftsman into an unforgettable music. The
notes of his counterpoint are particular, the themes are of intimate
connection with us Americans. But the result is that abstract and
absolute thing called Art.
WALDO FRANK.
Certain of these pieces have appeared in _Broom_, _Crisis_,
_Double Dealer_, _Liberator_, _Little Review_, _Modern Review_,
_Nomad_, _Prairie_, and _S 4 N_.
To these magazines: thanks.
CONTENTS
PAGE
FOREWORD, by _Waldo Frank_ vii
KARINTHA 1
REAPERS 6
NOVEMBER COTTON FLOWER 7
BECKY 8
FACE 14
COTTON SONG 15
CARMA 16
SONG OF THE SON 21
GEORGIA DUSK 22
FERN 24
NULLO 34
EVENING SONG 35
ESTHER 36
CONVERSION 49
PORTRAIT IN GEORGIA 50
BLOOD-BURNING MOON 51
SEVENTH STREET 71
RHOBERT 73
AVEY 76
BEEHIVE 89
STORM ENDING 90
THEATER 91
HER LIPS ARE COPPER WIRE 101
CALLING JESUS 102
BOX SEAT 104
PRAYER 131
HARVEST SONG 132
BONA AND PAUL 134
KABNIS 157
KARINTHA
Her skin is like dusk on the eastern horizon,
O cant you see it, O cant you see it,
Her skin is like dusk on the eastern horizon
... When the sun goes down.
Men had always wanted her, this Karintha, even as a child, Karintha
carrying beauty, perfect as dusk when the sun goes down. Old men rode
her hobby-horse upon their knees. Young men danced with her at frolics
when they should have been dancing with their grown-up girls. God grant
us youth, secretly prayed the old men. The young fellows counted the
time to pass before she would be old enough to mate with them. This
interest of the male, who wishes to ripen a growing thing too soon,
could mean no good to her.
Karintha, at twelve, was a wild flash that told the other folks just
what it was to live. At sunset, when there was no wind, and the
pine-smoke from over by the sawmill hugged the earth, and you couldnt
see more than a few feet in front, her sudden darting past you was a
bit of vivid color, like a black bird that flashes in light. With the
other children one could hear, some distance off, their feet flopping
in the two-inch dust. Karintha’s running was a whir. It had the sound
of the red dust that sometimes makes a spiral in the road. At dusk,
during the hush just after the sawmill had closed down, and before
any of the women had started their supper-getting-ready songs, her
voice, high-pitched, shrill, would put one’s ears to itching. But no
one ever thought to make her stop because of it. She stoned the cows,
and beat her dog, and fought the other children... Even the preacher,
who caught her at mischief, told himself that she was as innocently
lovely as a November cotton flower. Already, rumors were out about
her. Homes in Georgia are most often built on the two-room plan. In
one, you cook and eat, in the other you sleep, and there love goes on.
Karintha had seen or heard, perhaps she had felt her parents loving.
One could but imitate one’s parents, for to follow them was the way of
God. She played “home” with a small boy who was not afraid to do her
bidding. That started the whole thing. Old men could no longer ride her
hobby-horse upon their knees. But young men counted faster.
Her skin is like dusk,
O cant you see it,
Her skin is like dusk,
When the sun goes down.
Karintha is a woman. She who carries beauty, perfect as dusk when the
sun goes down. She has been married many times. Old men remind her that
a few years back they rode her hobby-horse upon their knees. Karintha
smiles, and indulges them when she is in the mood for it. She has
contempt for them. Karintha is a woman. Young men run stills to make
her money. Young men go to the big cities and run on the road. Young
men go away to college. They all want to bring her money. These are
the young men who thought that all they had to do was to count time.
But Karintha is a woman, and she has had a child. A child fell out of
her womb onto a bed of pine-needles in the forest. Pine-needles are
smooth and sweet. They are elastic to the feet of rabbits... A sawmill
was nearby. Its pyramidal sawdust pile smouldered. It is a year before
one completely burns. Meanwhile, the smoke curls up and hangs in odd
wraiths about the trees, curls up, and spreads itself out over the
valley... Weeks after Karintha returned home the smoke was so heavy
you tasted it in water. Some one made a song:
Smoke is on the hills. Rise up.
Smoke is on the hills, O rise
And take my soul to Jesus.
Karintha is a woman. Men do not know that the soul of her was a growing
thing ripened too soon. They will bring their money; they will die not
having found it out... Karintha at twenty, carrying beauty, perfect
as dusk when the sun goes down. Karintha...
Her skin is like dusk on the eastern horizon,
O cant you see it, O cant you see it,
Her skin is like dusk on the eastern horizon
... When the sun goes down.
Goes down...
REAPERS
Black reapers with the sound of steel on stones
Are sharpening scythes. I see them place the hones
In their hip-pockets as a thing that’s done,
And start their silent swinging, one by one.
Black horses drive a mower through the weeds,
And there, a field rat, startled, squealing bleeds,
His belly close to ground. I see the blade,
Blood-stained, continue cutting weeds and shade.
NOVEMBER COTTON FLOWER
Boll-weevil’s coming, and the winter’s cold,
Made cotton-stalks look rusty, seasons old,
And cotton, scarce as any southern snow,
Was vanishing; the branch, so pinched and slow,
Failed in its function as the autumn rake;
Drouth fighting soil had caused the soil to take
All water from the streams; dead birds were found
In wells a hundred feet below the ground—
Such was the season when the flower bloomed.
Old folks were startled, and it soon assumed
Significance. Superstition saw
Something it had never seen before:
Brown eyes that loved without a trace of fear,
Beauty so sudden for that time of year.
BECKY
Becky was the white woman who had two Negro sons. She’s dead;
they’ve gone away. The pines whisper to Jesus. The Bible flaps
its leaves with an aimless rustle on her mound.
Becky had one Negro son. Who gave it to her? Damn buck nigger, said the
white folks’ mouths. She wouldnt tell. Common, God-forsaken, insane
white shameless wench, said the white folks’ mouths. Her eyes were
sunken, her neck stringy, her breasts fallen, till then. Taking their
words, they filled her, like a bubble rising—then she broke. Mouth
setting in a twist that held her eyes, harsh, vacant, staring... Who
gave it to her? Low-down nigger with no self-respect, said the black
folks’ mouths. She wouldnt tell. Poor Catholic poor-white crazy woman,
said the black folks’ mouths. White folks and black folks built her
cabin, fed her and her growing baby, prayed secretly to God who’d put
His cross upon her and cast her out.
When the first was born, the white folks said they’d have no more to do
with her. And black folks, they too joined hands to cast her out...
The pines whispered to Jesus.. The railroad boss said not to say he
said it, but she could live, if she wanted to, on the narrow strip
of land between the railroad and the road. John Stone, who owned the
lumber and the bricks, would have shot the man who told he gave the
stuff to Lonnie Deacon, who stole out there at night and built the
cabin. A single room held down to earth... O fly away to Jesus ... by
a leaning chimney...
Six trains each day rumbled past and shook the ground under her cabin.
Fords, and horse- and mule-drawn buggies went back and forth along the
road. No one ever saw her. Trainmen, and passengers who’d heard about
her, threw out papers and food. Threw out little crumpled slips of
paper scribbled with prayers, as they passed her eye-shaped piece of
sandy ground. Ground islandized between the road and railroad track.
Pushed up where a blue-sheen God with listless eyes could look at it.
Folks from the town took turns, unknown, of course, to each other, in
bringing corn and meat and sweet potatoes. Even sometimes snuff... O
thank y Jesus... Old David Georgia, grinding cane and boiling syrup,
never went her way without some sugar sap. No one ever saw her. The boy
grew up and ran around. When he was five years old as folks reckoned
it, Hugh Jourdon saw him carrying a baby. “Becky has another son,” was
what the whole town knew. But nothing was said, for the part of man
that says things to the likes of that had told itself that if there was
a Becky, that Becky now was dead.
The two boys grew. Sullen and cunning... O pines, whisper to Jesus;
tell Him to come and press sweet Jesus-lips against their lips and
eyes... It seemed as though with those two big fellows there, there
could be no room for Becky. The part that prayed wondered if perhaps
she’d really died, and they had buried her. No one dared ask. They’d
beat and cut a man who meant nothing at all in mentioning that they
lived along the road. White or colored? No one knew, and least of all
themselves. They drifted around from job to job. We, who had cast out
their mother because of them, could we take them in? They answered
black and white folks by shooting up two men and leaving town. “Godam
the white folks; godam the niggers,” they shouted as they left town.
Becky? Smoke curled up from her chimney; she must be there. Trains
passing shook the ground. The ground shook the leaning chimney. Nobody
noticed it. A creepy feeling came over all who saw that thin wraith
of smoke and felt the trembling of the ground. Folks began to take
her food again. They quit it soon because they had a fear. Becky if
dead might be a hant, and if alive—it took some nerve even to mention
it... O pines, whisper to Jesus...
It was Sunday. Our congregation had been visiting at Pulverton, and
were coming home. There was no wind. The autumn sun, the bell from
Ebenezer Church, listless and heavy. Even the pines were stale, sticky,
like the smell of food that makes you sick. Before we turned the bend
of the road that would show us the Becky cabin, the horses stopped
stock-still, pushed back their ears, and nervously whinnied. We urged,
then whipped them on. Quarter of a mile away thin smoke curled up from
the leaning chimney... O pines, whisper to Jesus... Goose-flesh came
on my skin though there still was neither chill nor wind. Eyes left
their sockets for the cabin. Ears burned and throbbed. Uncanny eclipse!
fear closed my mind. We were just about to pass... Pines shout to
Jesus!.. the ground trembled as a ghost train rumbled by. The chimney
fell into the cabin. Its thud was like a hollow report, ages having
passed since it went off. Barlo and I were pulled out of our seats.
Dragged to the door that had swung open. Through the dust we saw the
bricks in a mound upon the floor. Becky, if she was there, lay under
them. I thought I heard a groan. Barlo, mumbling something, threw his
Bible on the pile. (No one has ever touched it.) Somehow we got away.
My buggy was still on the road. The last thing that I remember was
whipping old Dan like fury; I remember nothing after that—that is,
until I reached town and folks crowded round to get the true word of
it.
Becky was the white woman who had two Negro sons. She’s dead;
they’ve gone away. The pines whisper to Jesus. The Bible flaps
its leaves with an aimless rustle on her mound.
FACE
Hair—
silver-gray,
like streams of stars,
Brows—
recurved canoes
quivered by the ripples blown by pain,
Her eyes—
mist of tears
condensing on the flesh below
And her channeled muscles
are cluster grapes of sorrow
purple in the evening sun
nearly ripe for worms.
COTTON SONG
Come, brother, come. Lets lift it;
Come now, hewit! roll away!
Shackles fall upon the Judgment Day
But lets not wait for it.
God’s body’s got a soul,
Bodies like to roll the soul,
Cant blame God if we dont roll,
Come, brother, roll, roll!
Cotton bales are the fleecy way
Weary sinner’s bare feet trod,
Softly, softly to the throne of God,
“We aint agwine t wait until th Judgment Day!
Nassur; nassur,
Hump.
Eoho, eoho, roll away!
We aint agwine t wait until th Judgment Day!”
God’s body’s got a soul,
Bodies like to roll the soul,
Cant blame God if we dont roll,
Come, brother, roll, roll!
CARMA
Wind is in the cane. Come along.
Cane leaves swaying, rusty with talk,
Scratching choruses above the guinea’s squawk,
Wind is in the cane. Come along.
Carma, in overalls, and strong as any man, stands behind the old brown
mule, driving the wagon home. It bumps, and groans, and shakes as it
crosses the railroad track. She, riding it easy. I leave the men around
the stove to follow her with my eyes down the red dust road. Nigger
woman driving a Georgia chariot down an old dust road. Dixie Pike is
what they call it. Maybe she feels my gaze, perhaps she expects it.
Anyway, she turns. The sun, which has been slanting over her shoulder,
shoots primitive rockets into her mangrove-gloomed, yellow flower face.
Hi! Yip! God has left the Moses-people for the nigger. “Gedap.” Using
reins to slap the mule, she disappears in a cloudy rumble at some
indefinite point along the road.
(The sun is hammered to a band of gold. Pine-needles, like mazda, are
brilliantly aglow. No rain has come to take the rustle from the falling
sweet-gum leaves. Over in the forest, across the swamp, a sawmill
blows its closing whistle. Smoke curls up. Marvelous web spun by the
spider sawdust pile. Curls up and spreads itself pine-high above the
branch, a single silver band along the eastern valley. A black boy
... you are the most sleepiest man I ever seed, Sleeping Beauty ...
cradled on a gray mule, guided by the hollow sound of cow-bells, heads
for them through a rusty cotton field. From down the railroad track,
the chug-chug of a gas engine announces that the repair gang is coming
home. A girl in the yard of a whitewashed shack not much larger than
the stack of worn ties piled before it, sings. Her voice is loud.
Echoes, like rain, sweep the valley. Dusk takes the polish from the
rails. Lights twinkle in scattered houses. From far away, a sad strong
song. Pungent and composite, the smell of farmyards is the fragrance of
the woman. She does not sing; her body is a song. She is in the forest,
dancing. Torches flare .. juju men, greegree, witch-doctors ..
torches go out... The Dixie Pike has grown from a goat path in Africa.
_Night._
Foxie, the bitch, slicks back her ears and barks at the rising moon.)
Wind is in the corn. Come along.
Corn leaves swaying, rusty with talk,
Scratching choruses above the guinea’s squawk,
Wind is in the corn. Come along.
Carma’s tale is the crudest melodrama. Her husband’s in the gang. And
its her fault he got there. Working with a contractor, he was away most
of the time. She had others. No one blames her for that. He returned
one day and hung around the town where he picked up week-old boasts and
rumors... Bane accused her. She denied. He couldnt see that she was
becoming hysterical. He would have liked to take his fists and beat
her. Who was strong as a man. Stronger. Words, like corkscrews, wormed
to her strength. It fizzled out. Grabbing a gun, she rushed from the
house and plunged across the road into a cane-brake.. There, in
quarter heaven shone the crescent moon... Bane was afraid to follow
till he heard the gun go off. Then he wasted half an hour gathering
the neighbor men. They met in the road where lamp-light showed tracks
dissolving in the loose earth about the cane. The search began. Moths
flickered the lamps. They put them out. Really, because she still
might be live enough to shoot. Time and space have no meaning in a
canefield. No more than the interminable stalks... Some one stumbled
over her. A cry went up. From the road, one would have thought that
they were cornering a rabbit or a skunk... It is difficult carrying
dead weight through cane. They placed her on the sofa. A curious, nosey
somebody looked for the wound. This fussing with her clothes aroused
her. Her eyes were weak and pitiable for so strong a woman. Slowly,
then like a flash, Bane came to know that the shot she fired, with
averted head, was aimed to whistle like a dying hornet through the
cane. Twice deceived, and one deception proved the other. His head went
off. Slashed one of the men who’d helped, the man who’d stumbled over
her. Now he’s in the gang. Who was her husband. Should she not take
others, this Carma, strong as a man, whose tale as I have told it is
the crudest melodrama?
Wind is in the cane. Come along.
Cane leaves swaying, rusty with talk,
Scratching choruses above the guinea’s squawk,
Wind is in the cane. Come along.
SONG OF THE SON
Pour O pour that parting soul in song,
O pour it in the sawdust glow of night,
Into the velvet pine-smoke air to-night,
And let the valley carry it along.
And let the valley carry it along.
O land and soil, red soil and sweet-gum tree,
So scant of grass, so profligate of pines,
Now just before an epoch’s sun declines
Thy son, in time, I have returned to thee,
Thy son, I have in time returned to thee.
In time, for though the sun is setting on
A song-lit race of slaves, it has not set;
Though late, O soil, it is not too late yet
To catch thy plaintive soul, leaving, soon gone,
Leaving, to catch thy plaintive soul soon gone.
O Negro slaves, dark purple ripened plums,
Squeezed, and bursting in the pine-wood air,
Passing, before they stripped the old tree bare
One plum was saved for me, one seed becomes
An everlasting song, a singing tree,
Caroling softly souls of slavery,
What they were, and what they are to me,
Caroling softly souls of slavery.
GEORGIA DUSK
The sky, lazily disdaining to pursue
The setting sun, too indolent to hold
A lengthened tournament for flashing gold,
Passively darkens for night’s barbecue,
A feast of moon and men and barking hounds,
An orgy for some genius of the South
With blood-hot eyes and cane-lipped scented mouth,
Surprised in making folk-songs from soul sounds.
The sawmill blows its whistle, buzz-saws stop,
And silence breaks the bud of knoll and hill,
Soft settling pollen where plowed lands fulfill
Their early promise of a bumper crop.
Smoke from the pyramidal sawdust pile
Curls up, blue ghosts of trees, tarrying low
Where only chips and stumps are left to show
The solid proof of former domicile.
Meanwhile, the men, with vestiges of pomp,
Race memories of king and caravan,
High-priests, an ostrich, and a juju-man,
Go singing through the footpaths of the swamp.
Their voices rise .. the pine trees are guitars,
Strumming, pine-needles fall like sheets of rain ..
Their voices rise .. the chorus of the cane
Is caroling a vesper to the stars..
O singers, resinous and soft your songs
Above the sacred whisper of the pines,
Give virgin lips to cornfield concubines,
Bring dreams of Christ to dusky cane-lipped throngs.
FERN
Face flowed into her eyes. Flowed in soft cream foam and plaintive
ripples, in such a way that wherever your glance may momentarily have
rested, it immediately thereafter wavered in the direction of her
eyes. The soft suggestion of down slightly darkened, like the shadow
of a bird’s wing might, the creamy brown color of her upper lip. Why,
after noticing it, you sought her eyes, I cannot tell you. Her nose was
aquiline, Semitic. If you have heard a Jewish cantor sing, if he has
touched you and made your own sorrow seem trivial when compared with
his, you will know my feeling when I follow the curves of her profile,
like mobile rivers, to their common delta. They were strange eyes. In
this, that they sought nothing—that is, nothing that was obvious and
tangible and that one could see, and they gave the impression that
nothing was to be denied. When a woman seeks, you will have observed,
her eyes deny. Fern’s eyes desired nothing that you could give her;
there was no reason why they should withhold. Men saw her eyes and
fooled themselves. Fern’s eyes said to them that she was easy. When
she was young, a few men took her, but got no joy from it. And then,
once done, they felt bound to her (quite unlike their hit and run with
other girls), felt as though it would take them a lifetime to fulfill
an obligation which they could find no name for. They became attached
to her, and hungered after finding the barest trace of what she might
desire. As she grew up, new men who came to town felt as almost
everyone did who ever saw her: that they would not be denied. Men were
everlastingly bringing her their bodies. Something inside of her got
tired of them, I guess, for I am certain that for the life of her she
could not tell why or how she began to turn them off. A man in fever
is no trifling thing to send away. They began to leave her, baffled
and ashamed, yet vowing to themselves that some day they would do some
fine thing for her: send her candy every week and not let her know whom
it came from, watch out for her wedding-day and give her a magnificent
something with no name on it, buy a house and deed it to her, rescue
her from some unworthy fellow who had tricked her into marrying him.
As you know, men are apt to idolize or fear that which they cannot
understand, especially if it be a woman. She did not deny them, yet the
fact was that they were denied. A sort of superstition crept into their
consciousness of her being somehow above them. Being above them meant
that she was not to be approached by anyone. She became a virgin. Now a
virgin in a small southern town is by no means the usual thing, if you
will believe me. That the sexes were made to mate is the practice of
the South. Particularly, black folks were made to mate. And it is black
folks whom I have been talking about thus far. What white men thought
of Fern I can arrive at only by analogy. They let her alone.
• • • • •
Anyone, of course, could see her, could see her eyes. If you walked
up the Dixie Pike most any time of day, you’d be most like to see her
resting listless-like on the railing of her porch, back propped against
a post, head tilted a little forward because there was a nail in the
porch post just where her head came which for some reason or other she
never took the trouble to pull out. Her eyes, if it were sunset, rested
idly where the sun, molten and glorious, was pouring down between the
fringe of pines. Or maybe they gazed at the gray cabin on the knoll
from which an evening folk-song was coming. Perhaps they followed a
cow that had been turned loose to roam and feed on cotton-stalks and
corn leaves. Like as not they’d settle on some vague spot above the
horizon, though hardly a trace of wistfulness would come to them. If it
were dusk, then they’d wait for the search-light of the evening train
which you could see miles up the track before it flared across the
Dixie Pike, close to her home. Wherever they looked, you’d follow them
and then waver back. Like her face, the whole countryside seemed to
flow into her eyes. Flowed into them with the soft listless cadence of
Georgia’s South. A young Negro, once, was looking at her, spellbound,
from the road. A white man passing in a buggy had to flick him with
his whip if he was to get by without running him over. I first saw her
on her porch. I was passing with a fellow whose crusty numbness (I
was from the North and suspected of being prejudiced and stuck-up) was
melting as he found me warm. I asked him who she was. “That’s Fern,”
was all that I could get from him. Some folks already thought that I
was given to nosing around; I let it go at that, so far as questions
were concerned. But at first sight of her I felt as if I heard a Jewish
cantor sing. As if his singing rose above the unheard chorus of a
folk-song. And I felt bound to her. I too had my dreams: something I
would do for her. I have knocked about from town to town too much not
to know the futility of mere change of place. Besides, picture if you
can, this cream-colored solitary girl sitting at a tenement window
looking down on the indifferent throngs of Harlem. Better that she
listen to folk-songs at dusk in Georgia, you would say, and so would I.
Or, suppose she came up North and married. Even a doctor or a lawyer,
say, one who would be sure to get along—that is, make money. You and
I know, who have had experience in such things, that love is not a
thing like prejudice which can be bettered by changes of town. Could
men in Washington, Chicago, or New York, more than the men of Georgia,
bring her something left vacant by the bestowal of their bodies? You
and I who know men in these cities will have to say, they could not.
See her out and out a prostitute along State Street in Chicago. See
her move into a southern town where white men are more aggressive. See
her become a white man’s concubine... Something I must do for her.
There was myself. What could I do for her? Talk, of course. Push back
the fringe of pines upon new horizons. To what purpose? and what for?
Her? Myself? Men in her case seem to lose their selfishness. I lost
mine before I touched her. I ask you, friend (it makes no difference
if you sit in the Pullman or the Jim Crow as the train crosses her
road), what thoughts would come to you—that is, after you’d finished
with the thoughts that leap into men’s minds at the sight of a pretty
woman who will not deny them; what thoughts would come to you, had
you seen her in a quick flash, keen and intuitively, as she sat there
on her porch when your train thundered by? Would you have got off at
the next station and come back for her to take her where? Would you
have completely forgotten her as soon as you reached Macon, Atlanta,
Augusta, Pasadena, Madison, Chicago, Boston, or New Orleans? Would you
tell your wife or sweetheart about a girl you saw? Your thoughts can
help me, and I would like to know. Something I would do for her...
• • • • •
One evening I walked up the Pike on purpose, and stopped to say hello.
Some of her family were about, but they moved away to make room for me.
Damn if I knew how to begin. Would you? Mr. and Miss So-and-So, people,
the weather, the crops, the new preacher, the frolic, the church
benefit, rabbit and possum hunting, the new soft drink they had at old
Pap’s store, the schedule of the trains, what kind of town Macon was,
Negro’s migration north, boll-weevils, syrup, the Bible—to all these
things she gave a yassur or nassur, without further comment. I began to
wonder if perhaps my own emotional sensibility had played one of its
tricks on me. “Lets take a walk,” I at last ventured. The suggestion,
coming after so long an isolation, was novel enough, I guess, to
surprise. But it wasnt that. Something told me that men before me had
said just that as a prelude to the offering of their bodies. I tried
to tell her with my eyes. I think she understood. The thing from her
that made my throat catch, vanished. Its passing left her visible in a
way I’d thought, but never seen. We walked down the Pike with people on
all the porches gaping at us. “Doesnt it make you mad?” She meant the
row of petty gossiping people. She meant the world. Through a canebrake
that was ripe for cutting, the branch was reached. Under a sweet-gum
tree, and where reddish leaves had dammed the creek a little, we sat
down. Dusk, suggesting the almost imperceptible procession of giant
trees, settled with a purple haze about the cane. I felt strange, as I
always do in Georgia, particularly at dusk. I felt that things unseen
to men were tangibly immediate. It would not have surprised me had
I had vision. People have them in Georgia more often than you would
suppose. A black woman once saw the mother of Christ and drew her in
charcoal on the courthouse wall... When one is on the soil of one’s
ancestors, most anything can come to one... From force of habit, I
suppose, I held Fern in my arms—that is, without at first noticing
it. Then my mind came back to her. Her eyes, unusually weird and open,
held me. Held God. He flowed in as I’ve seen the countryside flow
in. Seen men. I must have done something—what, I dont know, in the
confusion of my emotion. She sprang up. Rushed some distance from me.
Fell to her knees, and began swaying, swaying. Her body was tortured
with something it could not let out. Like boiling sap it flooded arms
and fingers till she shook them as if they burned her. It found her
throat, and spattered inarticulately in plaintive, convulsive sounds,
mingled with calls to Christ Jesus. And then she sang, brokenly. A
Jewish cantor singing with a broken voice. A child’s voice, uncertain,
or an old man’s. Dusk hid her; I could hear only her song. It seemed to
me as though she were pounding her head in anguish upon the ground. I
rushed to her. She fainted in my arms.
• • • • •
There was talk about her fainting with me in the canefield. And I
got one or two ugly looks from town men who’d set themselves up to
protect her. In fact, there was talk of making me leave town. But
they never did. They kept a watch-out for me, though. Shortly after,
I came back North. From the train window I saw her as I crossed her
road. Saw her on her porch, head tilted a little forward where the nail
was, eyes vaguely focused on the sunset. Saw her face flow into them,
the countryside and something that I call God, flowing into them...
Nothing ever really happened. Nothing ever came to Fern, not even I.
Something I would do for her. Some fine unnamed thing... And, friend,
you? She is still living, I have reason to know. Her name, against the
chance that you might happen down that way, is Fernie May Rosen.
NULLO
A spray of pine-needles,
Dipped in western horizon gold,
Fell onto a path.
Dry moulds of cow-hoofs.
In the forest.
Rabbits knew not of their falling,
Nor did the forest catch aflame.
EVENING SONG
Full moon rising on the waters of my heart,
Lakes and moon and fires,
Cloine tires,
Holding her lips apart.
Promises of slumber leaving shore to charm the moon,
Miracle made vesper-keeps,
Cloine sleeps,
And I’ll be sleeping soon.
Cloine, curled like the sleepy waters where the moon-waves start,
Radiant, resplendently she gleams,
Cloine dreams,
Lips pressed against my heart.
ESTHER
1
_Nine._
Esther’s hair falls in soft curls about her high-cheek-boned
chalk-white face. Esther’s hair would be beautiful if there were
more gloss to it. And if her face were not prematurely serious, one
would call it pretty. Her cheeks are too flat and dead for a girl of
nine. Esther looks like a little white child, starched, frilled, as
she walks slowly from her home towards her father’s grocery store.
She is about to turn in Broad from Maple Street. White and black men
loafing on the corner hold no interest for her. Then a strange thing
happens. A clean-muscled, magnificent, black-skinned Negro, whom she
had heard her father mention as King Barlo, suddenly drops to his knees
on a spot called the Spittoon. White men, unaware of him, continue
squirting tobacco juice in his direction. The saffron fluid splashes
on his face. His smooth black face begins to glisten and to shine.
Soon, people notice him, and gather round. His eyes are rapturous
upon the heavens. Lips and nostrils quiver. Barlo is in a religious
trance. Town folks know it. They are not startled. They are not afraid.
They gather round. Some beg boxes from the grocery stores. From old
McGregor’s notion shop. A coffin-case is pressed into use. Folks line
the curb-stones. Business men close shop. And Banker Warply parks his
car close by. Silently, all await the prophet’s voice. The sheriff,
a great florid fellow whose leggings never meet around his bulging
calves, swears in three deputies. “Wall, y cant never tell what a
nigger like King Barlo might be up t.” Soda bottles, five fingers full
of shine, are passed to those who want them. A couple of stray dogs
start a fight. Old Goodlow’s cow comes flopping up the street. Barlo,
still as an Indian fakir, has not moved. The town bell strikes six. The
sun slips in behind a heavy mass of horizon cloud. The crowd is hushed
and expectant. Barlo’s under jaw relaxes, and his lips begin to move.
“Jesus has been awhisperin strange words deep down, O way down deep,
deep in my ears.”
Hums of awe and of excitement.
“He called me to His side an said, ‘Git down on your knees beside me,
son, Ise gwine t whisper in your ears.’”
An old sister cries, “Ah, Lord.”
“‘Ise agwine t whisper in your ears,’ he said, an I replied, ‘Thy will
be done on earth as it is in heaven.’”
“Ah, Lord. Amen. Amen.”
“An Lord Jesus whispered strange good words deep down, O way down deep,
deep in my ears. An He said, ‘Tell em till you feel your throat on
fire.’ I saw a vision. I saw a man arise, an he was big an black an
powerful—”
Some one yells, “Preach it, preacher, preach it!”
“—but his head was caught up in th clouds. An while he was agazin at
th heavens, heart filled up with th Lord, some little white-ant biddies
came an tied his feet to chains. They led him t th coast, they led him
t th sea, they led him across th ocean an they didnt set him free.
The old coast didnt miss him, an th new coast wasnt free, he left
the old-coast brothers, t give birth t you an me. O Lord, great God
Almighty, t give birth t you an me.”
Barlo pauses. Old gray mothers are in tears. Fragments of melodies
are being hummed. White folks are touched and curiously awed. Off to
themselves, white and black preachers confer as to how best to rid
themselves of the vagrant, usurping fellow. Barlo looks as though he is
struggling to continue. People are hushed. One can hear weevils work.
Dusk is falling rapidly, and the customary store lights fail to throw
their feeble glow across the gray dust and flagging of the Georgia
town. Barlo rises to his full height. He is immense. To the people he
assumes the outlines of his visioned African. In a mighty voice he
bellows:
“Brothers an sisters, turn your faces t th sweet face of the Lord, an
fill your hearts with glory. Open your eyes an see th dawnin of th
mornin light. Open your ears—”
Years afterwards Esther was told that at that very moment a great,
heavy, rumbling voice actually was heard. That hosts of angels and of
demons paraded up and down the streets all night. That King Barlo rode
out of town astride a pitch-black bull that had a glowing gold ring
in its nose. And that old Limp Underwood, who hated niggers, woke up
next morning to find that he held a black man in his arms. This much is
certain: an inspired Negress, of wide reputation for being sanctified,
drew a portrait of a black madonna on the court-house wall. And King
Barlo left town. He left his image indelibly upon the mind of Esther.
He became the starting point of the only living patterns that her mind
was to know.
2
_Sixteen._
Esther begins to dream. The low evening sun sets the windows of
McGregor’s notion shop aflame. Esther makes believe that they really
are aflame. The town fire department rushes madly down the road. It
ruthlessly shoves black and white idlers to one side. It whoops. It
clangs. It rescues from the second-story window a dimpled infant
which she claims for her own. How had she come by it? She thinks of
it immaculately. It is a sin to think of it immaculately. She must
dream no more. She must repent her sin. Another dream comes. There
is no fire department. There are no heroic men. The fire starts. The
loafers on the corner form a circle, chew their tobacco faster, and
squirt juice just as fast as they can chew. Gallons on top of gallons
they squirt upon the flames. The air reeks with the stench of scorched
tobacco juice. Women, fat chunky Negro women, lean scrawny white women,
pull their skirts up above their heads and display the most ludicrous
underclothes. The women scoot in all directions from the danger zone.
She alone is left to take the baby in her arms. But what a baby! Black,
singed, woolly, tobacco-juice baby—ugly as sin. Once held to her
breast, miraculous thing: its breath is sweet and its lips can nibble.
She loves it frantically. Her joy in it changes the town folks’ jeers
to harmless jealousy, and she is left alone.
_Twenty-two._
Esther’s schooling is over. She works behind the counter of her
father’s grocery store. “To keep the money in the family,” so he said.
She is learning to make distinctions between the business and the
social worlds. “Good business comes from remembering that the white
folks dont divide the niggers, Esther. Be just as black as any man
who has a silver dollar.” Esther listlessly forgets that she is near
white, and that her father is the richest colored man in town. Black
folk who drift in to buy lard and snuff and flour of her, call her a
sweet-natured, accommodating girl. She learns their names. She forgets
them. She thinks about men. “I dont appeal to them. I wonder why.”
She recalls an affair she had with a little fair boy while still in
school. It had ended in her shame when he as much as told her that for
sweetness he preferred a lollipop. She remembers the salesman from the
North who wanted to take her to the movies that first night he was in
town. She refused, of course. And he never came back, having found out
who she was. She thinks of Barlo. Barlo’s image gives her a slightly
stale thrill. She spices it by telling herself his glories. Black.
Magnetically so. Best cotton picker in the county, in the state,
in the whole world for that matter. Best man with his fists, best
man with dice, with a razor. Promoter of church benefits. Of colored
fairs. Vagrant preacher. Lover of all the women for miles and miles
around. Esther decides that she loves him. And with a vague sense of
life slipping by, she resolves that she will tell him so, whatever
people say, the next time he comes to town. After the making of this
resolution which becomes a sort of wedding cake for her to tuck beneath
her pillow and go to sleep upon, she sees nothing of Barlo for five
years. Her hair thins. It looks like the dull silk on puny corn ears.
Her face pales until it is the color of the gray dust that dances with
dead cotton leaves..
3
_Esther is twenty-seven._
Esther sells lard and snuff and flour to vague black faces that drift
in her store to ask for them. Her eyes hardly see the people to whom
she gives change. Her body is lean and beaten. She rests listlessly
against the counter, too weary to sit down. From the street some one
shouts, “King Barlo has come back to town.” He passes her window,
driving a large new car. Cut-out open. He veers to the curb, and steps
out. Barlo has made money on cotton during the war. He is as rich as
anyone. Esther suddenly is animate. She goes to her door. She sees him
at a distance, the center of a group of credulous men. She hears the
deep-bass rumble of his talk. The sun swings low. McGregor’s windows
are aflame again. Pale flame. A sharply dressed white girl passes by.
For a moment Esther wishes that she might be like her. Not white; she
has no need for being that. But sharp, sporty, with get-up about her.
Barlo is connected with that wish. She mustnt wish. Wishes only make
you restless. Emptiness is a thing that grows by being moved. “I’ll
not think. Not wish. Just set my mind against it.” Then the thought
comes to her that those purposeless, easy-going men will possess him,
if she doesnt. Purpose is not dead in her, now that she comes to think
of it. That loose women will have their arms around him at Nat Bowle’s
place to-night. As if her veins are full of fired sun-bleached southern
shanties, a swift heat sweeps them. Dead dreams, and a forgotten
resolution are carried upward by the flames. Pale flames. “They shant
have him. Oh, they shall not. Not if it kills me they shant have him.”
Jerky, aflutter, she closes the store and starts home. Folks lazing
on store window-sills wonder what on earth can be the matter with Jim
Crane’s gal, as she passes them. “Come to remember, she always was a
little off, a little crazy, I reckon.” Esther seeks her own room, and
locks the door. Her mind is a pink mesh-bag filled with baby toes.
• • • • •
Using the noise of the town clock striking twelve to cover the creaks
of her departure, Esther slips into the quiet road. The town, her
parents, most everyone is sound asleep. This fact is a stable thing
that comforts her. After sundown a chill wind came up from the west.
It is still blowing, but to her it is a steady, settled thing like the
cold. She wants her mind to be like that. Solid, contained, and blank
as a sheet of darkened ice. She will not permit herself to notice the
peculiar phosphorescent glitter of the sweet-gum leaves. Their movement
would excite her. Exciting too, the recession of the dull familiar
homes she knows so well. She doesnt know them at all. She closes her
eyes, and holds them tightly. Wont do. Her being aware that they are
closed recalls her purpose. She does not want to think of it. She opens
them. She turns now into the deserted business street. The corrugated
iron canopies and mule- and horse-gnawed hitching posts bring her a
strange composure. Ghosts of the commonplaces of her daily life take
stride with her and become her companions. And the echoes of her heels
upon the flagging are rhythmically monotonous and soothing. Crossing
the street at the corner of McGregor’s notion shop, she thinks that the
windows are a dull flame. Only a fancy. She walks faster. Then runs. A
turn into a side street brings her abruptly to Nat Bowle’s place. The
house is squat and dark. It is always dark. Barlo is within. Quietly
she opens the outside door and steps in. She passes through a small
room. Pauses before a flight of stairs down which people’s voices,
muffled, come. The air is heavy with fresh tobacco smoke. It makes her
sick. She wants to turn back. She goes up the steps. As if she were
mounting to some great height, her head spins. She is violently dizzy.
Blackness rushes to her eyes. And then she finds that she is in a large
room. Barlo is before her.
“Well, I’m sholy damned—skuse me, but what, what brought you here, lil
milk-white gal?”
“You.” Her voice sounds like a frightened child’s that calls homeward
from some point miles away.
“Me?”
“Yes, you Barlo.”
“This aint th place fer y. This aint th place fer y.”
“I know. I know. But I’ve come for you.”
“For me for what?”
She manages to look deep and straight into his eyes. He is slow at
understanding. Guffaws and giggles break out from all around the room.
A coarse woman’s voice remarks, “So thats how th dictie niggers does
it.” Laughs. “Mus give em credit fo their gall.”
Esther doesnt hear. Barlo does. His faculties are jogged. She sees a
smile, ugly and repulsive to her, working upward through thick licker
fumes. Barlo seems hideous. The thought comes suddenly, that conception
with a drunken man must be a mighty sin. She draws away, frozen. Like
a somnambulist she wheels around and walks stiffly to the stairs. Down
them. Jeers and hoots pelter bluntly upon her back. She steps out.
There is no air, no street, and the town has completely disappeared.
CONVERSION
African Guardian of Souls,
Drunk with rum,
Feasting on a strange cassava,
Yielding to new words and a weak palabra
Of a white-faced sardonic god—
Grins, cries
Amen,
Shouts hosanna.
PORTRAIT IN GEORGIA
Hair—braided chestnut, coiled like a lyncher’s rope,
Eyes—fagots,
Lips—old scars, or the first red blisters,
Breath—the last sweet scent of cane,
And her slim body, white as the ash of black flesh after flame.
BLOOD-BURNING MOON
1