James

by Percival Everett

“Folks be funny lak dat. Dey takes the lies dey want and throws away the truths dat scares ’em.”

“I kin see how much you miss yer family and yet I don’t think about it. I forget that you feel things jest like I feel. I know you love them.” “Thank you, Huck.”

“River ain’t a white woman.” “What about Sadie, yer wife? She’s pretty. You think she’s pretty.” “I do, but, Huck, I’m a slave. You don’t neber forget dat. I ain’t no nigger, but I is a slave.” After some quiet: “Was she nice? You kin say whether she was nice.” “She was nice, Huck. We was young ’uns.” “Was you friends?” “Looky dere,” I said. “Lawdy.” Across the river, a steamboat was on fire. Flames leaped high into the sky. People jumped off the decks into the river. Small boats circled, pulling people in. If there was screaming, the wind carried it away onto the far shore and we heard none of it, so it played out like a sort of weird dream. A man on fire hurled himself from the upper deck and fell like a firework into the water.

We concealed ourselves and slept under the sun and we came out of our daytime hide to find the Duke and the King sitting on our raft, waiting for us. “If it ain’t Hucklelarry and his nigger,” the Duke said. “That’s Huckleberry. How did you get here?” Huck asked. “We’re thieves,” the King said. “We stole a boat.” He pointed to a skiff tied up to some willows down the bank. Seeing them there was like a bad dream. It was as if they had appeared out of thin air. They were so assured and pleased with themselves.

The Duke looked at me. “Anyway, the King and I have come up with a new business.” “What’s that?” Huck asked. “We goin’ into the slave-sellin’ business,” the Duke said. They smiled. “It’s beautiful. See, we sell ol’ Caesar here. He escapes and we sells him again. He’s already a runaway, so it should make no never mind to ya’ll. He ain’t worth much dead. They cain’t lynch you but once, but we kin sell you a bunch of times.”

WE DIDN’T TRAVEL that day, as the river was choppy and wild. The King claimed he was bound to be sick on such a rough sea. The Duke and the King sprawled out in comfort while Huck and I caught a mess of fish. The two men sat out in the open, unafraid of being seen. That was new to me and Huck. A boy and a Negro attracted suspicion, but grown white men and a Negro, that was normal. Huck and I were hauling in catfish while those two yakked. “I ain’t never seen two fellas talk so much and say so little,” Huck said.

“I’m putting the lantern out now,” the old man said. “Okay, Easter.” He put out the light and walked away into the back of the livery. Huck stirred beside me. “Is Easter gone?” he asked. “Yeah, he be gone.” Huck sat up. “You don’t trust me, do you, Jim?” “ ’Course I trusts ya, Huck. Why you say dat?” “I was listening to you and Easter talkin’. You weren’t talkin’ like you talk to me.” I said nothing. “Why is that, Jim? I thought we was friends. I thought you trusted me.” “I does trust you, Huck. Cain’t you see dat? I trusts you wif my life.” “I’m going back to sleep,” the boy said. “Just one thing?” “Yeah, Huck?” “I understand why you talk the way you do.” “What do you mean?” I asked. “I mean it makes sense.” I studied his face. He was talking with his eyes closed, as much fighting sleep as losing to it. There was a lot of this in that face. “You be a smart boy, Huck.” “Goodnight, Jim.” “Goodnight, Huck.”

“Okay, Jim, are you ready to learn a few songs?” I didn’t say anything, but stared at him. He stared back at me and just started singing, a big, crazy grin on his face: Ole Dan Tucker was a fine old man, Washed his face with a fryin’ pan, Combed his hair with a wagon wheel, Died with a toothache in his heel. Git outen de way, Ole Dan Tucker, You’s too late to come yo supper. Git outen de way, Ole Dan Tucker, You’re too late to git yo supper.

“What is this whole thing?” I asked. “Singing?” He looked around. “The new thing is white folks painting themselves and making fun of us to entertain each other.” “They sing our songs?” I asked. “Some. They also write songs that they think we might want to sing. That’s strange, but not the worst.” “What, then, is the worst?” “I’d better start putting this on you,” he said, showing me the tin of polish. I sat still and looked straight ahead. “Ready?”

“They even do the cakewalk.” “But that’s how we make fun of them,” I said. “Yes, but they don’t get that—it’s lost on them. It’s never occurred to them that we might find them mockable.”

“Everyone, get blackened up. It’s almost time to head into town.” Emmett marched on through the camp like a commander. “Help me understand,” I said to Norman. “I’m to look authentically black, but I need the makeup.” “Not exactly. You’re black, but they won’t let you into the auditorium if they know that, so you have to be white under the makeup so that you can look black to the audience.”

My mind was racing. The business about the performance was surreal and foreign, of course, but I couldn’t leave alone the thought that Daniel Emmett might be paying me for my singing. I might be able to have the money to buy my wife and daughter. “Jim, are you ready?” Emmett called to me. I paused, unsure of my diction, whether to speak as myself or as a slave. I made the safe choice. “I is, suh.”

We marched in step, then fell into a cakewalk stagger. Emmett belted out a song line and the rest of us repeated it. Lawdy, Lawdy, slap dat mule, slap dat mule. Lawdy, Lawdy, slap dat mule. Massa keep his corn in a old brown keg. Massa keep dat corn in a old brown keg. Massa’s chilluns run to school, act the fool. Massa’s chilluns run to school. Ole Miss chase ’em with her wood’n leg. Ole Miss chase ’em with her wood’n leg.

They sought to share this moment of mocking me, mocking darkies, laughing at the poor slaves, with joyful, spirited clapping and stomping. I looked at one woman who might have been intrigued by me or taken with me, the entertainer. I saw the surface of her, merely the outer shell, and realized that she was mere surface all the way to her core.

Come listen, all you gals and boys, Ise from Tuckahoe, Ima gone sing you a little song. My name is Jim Crow. Wheel ’bout and toin ’bout and do jis so, Ev’ry time I toin ’bout, jump Jim Crow! I went down to da riber ’n’ I dint mean ta stay, But dere I seen so many gals I couldn’t run away. Wheel ’bout and toin ’bout and do jis so, Ev’ry time I toin ’bout, jump Jim Crow!

By the time we reached the end of that tune, the whole place was jumping, just like the song instructed. And then the show was over. All the white people were happy.

“It was just marvelous. A few times I could have sworn you was all darkies fer true.” Her father laughed. “Nice show, son. But none of ya’ll had me goin’. You kin black up all you like, but you cain’t fool me. I kin smell me a darkie from fifty country yards away. Cain’t fool me.”

It wasn’t too long until the rest of the troupe came outside, led by Emmett. He put his hand on my shoulder. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “I thought you were a goner.” He laughed and slapped his leg. “What would they have done to you if they had figured out that you were exactly what you were pretending to be?”

I wish I was in da land o’ cotton, Old times dere are not forgotten, Look away, look away, look away Dixie Land. In Dixie Land whar I was born Early on one frosty morn, Look away, look away, look away Dixie Land. Oh, I wish I was in Dixie. Hooray! Hooray! In Dixie Land I makes my stand, To live and die in Dixie. Away, away, away down south in Dixie Away, away, away down south in Dixie.

“A dollar a day,” I said. “So, dat be two hunnert days.” “Two hundred performances,” he corrected me. “One hunnert ninedy-nine,” I said. Emmett’s silence was palpable. “Suh, I’s tryin’ to unnerstan’. You sayin’ you is makin’ a ’stinction ’tween chattel slavery ’n’ bonded slavery?” I didn’t think I’d meant to actually ask that question out loud, but I must have, because I said it in proper and appropriate slave diction. Emmett looked at me askance. “Would you mind repeating that?” “I reckon I would,” I said.

“Why did you take that?” he asked. He began to dress. “I wanted the paper.” “He was crazed when he couldn’t find it.” “Listen to this: Nigger love a watermelon, ha! ha! ha! Nigger love a watermelon, ha! ha! ha! Dey comes round for it all too soon, Ain’t nuttin’ like a watermelon to a hungry coon.” “Damn,” Norman said. “He wrote that?” “I imagine he did. What does that even mean?”

“Let’s go, Massa Brown, suh.” The town looked like it might be called Bluebird. It was well populated with complacent-looking, nicely dressed white people, the scariest kind.

“Ma’am?” Norman said. “Did your nigger say somethin’?” Norman was a struck deer. “Did he say somethin’ about me?” “Tell her I just make sounds,” I mumble-whispered to him. “He just said somethin’ else,” she said. “Oh, sorry, ma’am, but my slave here that I own, he just makes noises. He likes to pretend he can talk just like us white folks. All he can do, though, is grunt and whine like a fawn. You ever hear a fawn cry out?” “Bless his heart,” she said, though it was clear she hardly wanted me blessed by God or man. She cut me a hard look. “They’s like lil’ monkeys, ain’t they.” “Just like monkeys,” Norman said. “Did he jest look at me,” she asked. “I’m certain he didn’t.” “He better not—that’s all I have to say.”

“And he’s a good worker, if he is a little stupid, even for a nigger. He slows me down on the road. Do you know of anyone who might want to buy him? He’s strong as a Missouri mule.” The old woman shook her head, turned and walked on.

Norman Brown might sell me once and take off for the hills, never to be seen again. But he might just as well have done that if he were a black man. Bad as whites were, they had no monopoly on duplicity, dishonesty or perfidy.

“We’ll have to make a raft. There’s plenty of timber, but we’ll need rope or something to tie it all together.” “I’ll go find some,” Norman said. “I’ll even buy it if I have to.” Sammy and I watched Norman disappear into the brush. “He’s really a slave?” Sammy said. “So he says. I reckon I believe him.”

“Look at me.” Even in the dim light I could see how disheveled he was. Aside from being soaked, his clothes were filthy from the hull’s tar. Looking at him like that gave me a renewed appreciation of the power of his skin color. That alone had been enough to faze and control the slave in the engine room. Even though Norman looked like the poorest and worst-off white man, he still commanded fear and respect. But he would not be able to pass through the throng of white people on the decks above us—though they could never identify him as black, they would see him as something worse, a very poor white person.

I washed the slime off my arm with the Mississippi’s muddy water. Huck was correct—the fish might have weighed fifty or more pounds—and I had fought it out of its cave and onto land, but I felt no sense of accomplishment, no joy, no relief. Huck struck the fish’s head with a big stick until it struggled no more. “Dinner,” Huck said, standing straight.

TO SAY THAT the following four days crawled by would be a gross understatement. Days of forced labor always seemed to last weeks. Twenty-minute floggings took months. The waiting for some tear in the invisible curtain that bound us felt like centuries. In fact, was centuries.

Norman. I read the first pages of the narrative, and it might as well have been my story. It was, in fact, my story. I read even though I wanted to sleep. I read of how he had boarded a boat headed toward free states, toward cities he had imagined as real, toward Canada.

I WALKED THROUGH THE DARKNESS, across a wide valley, muddy in its trough. I saw fires dotting the far side and imagined, hoped, that it was Edina. I could hear more human sounds. There was nothing scarier than human sounds. Voices, laughter, whimpering. I saw a ring of shacks that I guessed were slave quarters. I smelled the waste from an open latrine and moved away from it. There was a group of four slave men shackled to a common post, a bowl of mush in the center of them.

AS HAPPENS with the frightened and unprepared, we scattered. Some of us would be caught. Some of us would be killed. Probably some of us would go crawling back. Sadie, Lizzie and I made it north to a town we were told was in Iowa. Morris and Buck remained with us. The white people didn’t seem happy to see us, but there was a war on. It had something to do with us. The local sheriff met us in the street and regarded us suspiciously. “Runaways?” he asked. “We are,” I said. “Any of you named Nigger Jim?” I pointed to each of us. “Sadie, Lizzie, Morris, Buck.” “And who are you?” “I am James.” “James what?” “Just James.”

None of this work would exist without my best friend and wife, Danzy Senna. She and my sons, Henry and Miles, remind me that I am part of the world. Finally, a nod to Mark Twain. His humor and humanity affected me long before I became a writer. Heaven for the climate; hell for my long-awaited lunch with Mark Twain.