Thank you.
This is a very nasty thing to do,
I realize, but could I ask you to move down
a little closer to the front?
There's something frightening about voids,
and there are lots of those.
That way that way we can not have to shout at one another.
What I thought I would do tonight,
is read a little bit from my first novel,
and then read some poems, and then read from the novel
that I'm doing now, that I've finished actually,
but I'm revising.
It will be a first for me, because I haven't
shown this second novel to anyone,
or I haven't read from it, so far.
So any reaction that you have, I would be very grateful for.
I'm reading the poems, one or two of my own,
but also of other peoples, because it seems to me that you
get awfully tired of listening to one voice, one
fictional voice for a whole reading.
So we'll try to break it up with that.
This first novel is written as an attempt
to write an oral novel in Southern dialect,
as a matter of fact, the hill dialect, more or less,
that you find in Tennessee, North Alabama, West
Virginia, these areas.
And it has no objective narrator.
It's a story that's being told by a man named Mr. Fred,
sitting around a campfire, sitting around a fishing camp,
as a matter of fact, telling the story.
And listening to it, is a Black man
named Gus, who was present during the events of the story.
Now he's thinking as Mr. Fred is talking.
And he's remembering the events of the story
from a different point of view.
I'm going to read just a little bit of it
to get something of the flavor of it.
It will be Mr. Fred telling part of the story and Gus thinking.
The story concerns, basically, one Sunday
on which Mr. Fred Ossie, who was the hero
of the story and a hillbilly musician,
and Carl, who is something of a preacher.
He gave up knifing people and went to preaching.
He preaches mainly to stumps and beer cans and trees
because no one else will listen to him.
And the villain of the story, J.D., who is mean.
Period.
There's no way to explain some kinds of meanness.
So, they're telling about what happened when they tricked
Ossie into the cage they had built for the hog
that they were going to haul across the county,
and Ossie's in his tuxedo, and he's
stuck in the cage, which is on the back of the truck,
and they're on their way to Ossie's house.
I'm going read just a little bit of it.
Mr Fred's talking to begin with.
Ossie is in the back in the cage, and, with him,
is Gus, who is the Black guy.
"Little old sand dirt road with pine straw all over it,
was all there was up to the camp, and we're taking it slow.
Woods was steaming all around us,
and seemed like the gnats was outrunning us, getting
stuck in the sweat on our eyebrows
when they come into the truck.
Birds carrying on like a bunch of dagos everywhere.
Truck rattling.
Winding up that old mountain, us swaying up against one another
with the ruts in the road, and Ossie there in the back singing
beat hell, 'Mammy, Mammy, tell me.
Mammy, Mammy, mine.
Why do the white folks childrens call me snowball all the time?'
And trying to get Gus to join in with him,
and Gus declaring he just didn't feel like no singing right
then."
Gus is the Black guy.
"Doggedest way to spend a Sunday I ever seen.
That old Carl had got all fired up by J.D.
Asking him if it wasn't a Christian thing to do to get
some more whiskey, and I had to listen to him going on, too ,
saying something like--"
Talking to J.D., of course.
" 'You know, J.D., Miss Tidwell seen Jesus in her washing
machine last week.'
And J.D. who wasn't half listening answered, 'that so?'
Carl keeping on, 'Yep.
Witnessed about it in church last Sunday, mama said.
Bent down to take her husband's overalls out,
and there was Jesus looking up at her.'
'Don't say?'
'Yeah.
Mama says it must be a sign about what she's heard about
niggers stealing washing machines, or something,
niggers or communists or something like that.'
'Uh huh.'
'Of course Miss Tidwell ain't seen Jesus in no automobile
yet, but I have.'
'Mm hmm.'
'Yeah, I think I have.
A long time ago must have been.
Yeah, I think so, a Chevrolet it was.
1937 four door, I think.' "
Now Gus is thinking.
" 'Oh, there's lots of things you think, crazy old man,
but not much you know, is there?
See Jesus in a whiskey bottle if there was a chance,
wouldn't you?
But what he's seen and what you've seen be something else.
My mom and daddy talking, I recollect,
after supper in the evening before the lamps was lighted.
Daddy rocking on the porch.
Me sitting with them, being the most oldest.
Daddy seen it, he said, working by the mules.
He'd be right near and seen it all.
Great, great big old wench thing, there was.
Mules hooked up to it go round and round and round,
all day long.
Go round and round and round and winching them cars up
the slopes.' "
Talking about a mine, of course.
This is in mining country, and the mules
would winch the cars up.
" 'Stop and start.
Stop and start.
Stinking mules black with old coal dust.
Best they figured, daddy say.
Little Schmidt boy--' "
This is Ossie when he was a child.
" 'Come-a following shack rousters that morning,
watching him bring in his daddy.' "
The shack rousters, by the way, were interesting.
It was an interesting occupation.
You see, when you lived in a coal mining camp,
you lived in a company house.
And when you didn't go to work, the company
would send men around to drag you out of bed
and drive you to work.
They'd put you between two mules and drive you up to the mines.
It was the theory being that as long
as you were living in a company house,
you had to go to work to pay for it.
"Old man Tittle bringing him in saying he no he
ain't that sick, and little Schmidt
is slipping along behind.
Don't take long, I reckon, he see old man Tittle be right,
his daddy ain't all that sick.
So we slip over by where the tracks would come up
out the slope.
Go and find him a spike, he'd say, after it all over with.
Great, big spike what they need for some kind of old spinning
Jenny thing he making.
Well, he look over one side of the tracks
and don't find none, less than it drove in too good
to take out.
A little old thing he'd be, and everybody
know him don't pay him no never mind,
so I reckon he decided to look on the other side of the tracks
where he can't see on account of the cars
lined up waiting to be weighed.
Make sure ain't nobody looking mussed up,
and hop he'd go betwixt the cars, step on the coupling,
and clank.
Old mule step, winch turn, cars jerking, down he'd go.
Screamed like a caught bobcat.
Whomp, come the wheel right halfway across his belly,
and stop.
Old mules blink and push harder.
Whomp, come the wheel down, and up come the next,
and somebody stopped the mules.
Well, he don't pass out then, so he can't feel nothing at all,
even explained why he were there while they was a calling
his daddy and the doctor.
Everybody is scared to move anything.
Scared to move anything just unhitched the mules
and lock the winch till the doctor come,
and him still scrunched half up under that car which,
praised the Lord, was empty.
Somebody take off in a wagon after his mama,
and wait, wait, wait, nobody move.
Doctor don't come.
Straw boss don't know what to do.
His daddy come up the slope, carbide still a hissing,
and sit with him.
He don't know nothing to do except sit.
Talking to him real low and when the wagon with Miss Schmidt
come up, boy still don't move, and they all
sit together trying to talk something or another
to the little old boy, and him not half knowing
what they said.
Doctors still don't come.
Sun getting higher, getting hotter and hotter.
Everybody clustering around the car and not making a sound.
Finally straw boss, talking through his nose like he always
do, say, 'Gonna die when they move that car, ain't he?'
And boy hear it.
Nobody say a word.
The little boy, he lay awhile, seem to study on it.
'Momma,' he said after a spell, 'I'm going to Heaven if I die,
ain't I, Momma?'
'Yes,' she tell him.
'Will you go with me, Momma?'
he asks.
Little nigger, who shovel up the mule shit,
giggle, and straw boss come back hand him across the mouth.
'No,' she said. 'No, I say, I can't go yet.'
'Daddy,' he said, 'would you go with me?'
Little nigger giggle again and run off
amongst the mules so straw boss can't find him.
'No, son,' Mr. Schmidt said, kind of choked up.
'It ain't my time yet.
You got to go by yourself, I reckon.'
Little Schmidt boy lay and study a mite more.
'Will you meet me there then?' he say,
brightening up and grinning like everything going to be all
right.
His momma cried a little bit and say they would.
And he shut his eyes, still a-smiling.
Then directly he opened them up again,
and his mouth kind of hang open.
'Looky, he says, staring straight up at the sun.
'Looky yonder Momma.
Ain't that the prettiest man you ever seen?
It's, it's Jesus, Momma.
It's Jesus.
He's coming for me.
Can you see, Momma?
Can you see?'
Everybody kind of step back and look up.
Mrs. Schmidt bust out a-crying again.
Fall down on the stomach of hugging the boy, yelling,
'Don't do it!
Don't do it!' right in his ear.
But he keeps staring up at the sun
and smiling all glassy-eyed, and not pay no attention to nobody.
Then Lord God Almighty, they come a whoop
from out behind the mules would have shook the walls of Jericho
down without their trumpet.
Mules and folks all give a jump about half
a foot off the ground, and out come the little nigger,
what been hiding, and tearing out like 400 hell
in amongst the folks, riding on the back of the meanest looking
mule I ever seen in my life.
A-whooping like judgment day, the mule scat and a holler
and bust a gut, and when folks see
what it be and get a hold of themselves,
they all commence to cussing and chasing
the mule all around the yard, and by the mule pens
and down by the cars again.
Til finally, little nigger fall off by the dynamite shack
and they pounces on him.
Shack rouster, Mr. Tittle, he the maddest, I reckon,
because he go to kicking the boy, and the rest of us
cool it, kind of back off.
Well, Mr. Tittle got some boots, so he do a pretty good job,
and when he threw, straw boss come out and drag the boy off
under a tree.
Everybody come back and see about little Schmidt boy,
but what they don't know, doctor done
come while they be a-chasing the little nigger, and done
got the boy in the wagon and going home.
He ain't died after all, and Jesus done gone away without
him.'
'Yes sir, Mr. Carl, you got a long way to go.' "
It's painful, sometimes, to write a book like that
because it uses and explores a great number of attitudes
that may be repulsive to one.
But yet, it was that way, and it does no good to hide it
and to pretend it wasn't that way
as a good many of our motion pictures seem to do, nowadays.