Blues for Mister Charlie by James Baldwin Page B

race! You let me in that tired white chick’s drawers, she’ll know who’s the master! Ha-ha-ha!
    (Exits. Richard’s laughter continues in the dark. Lyle and Parnell as before.)
    LYLE : Niggers was laughing at me for days. Everywhere I went.
    PARNELL : You never did call the Sheriff.
    LYLE : No.
    (Parnell fills their glasses. We hear singing.)
    PARNELL : It’s almost time for his funeral.
    LYLE : And may every nigger like that nigger end like that nigger—face down in the weeds!
    (A pause.)
    PARNELL : Was he lying face down?
    LYLE : Hell, yeah, he was face down. Said so in the papers.
    PARNELL : Is that what the papers said? I don’t remember.
    LYLE : Yeah, that’s what the papers said.
    PARNELL : I guess they had to turn him over—to make sure it was him.
    LYLE : I reckon.
(Laughs)
Yeah. I reckon.
    PARNELL : You and me are buddies, huh?
    LYLE :
Yeah
, we’re buddies—to the end!
    PARNELL : I always wondered why you wanted to be my buddy. A lot of poor guys hate rich guys. I always wondered why you weren’t like that.
    LYLE : I ain’t like that. Hell, Parnell, you’re smarter than me. I know it. I used to wonder what made you smarter than me. I got to be your buddy so I could find out. Because, hell, you didn’t seem so different in
other
ways—in spite of all your
ideas.
Two things we always had in common—liquor and poon-tang. We couldn’t get enough of neither one. Of course, your liquor might have been a little better. But I doubt if the other could have been any better!
    PARNELL : Did you find out what made me smarter?
    LYLE : Yeah. You richer!
    PARNELL : I’m richer! That’s all you got to tell me—about Richard Henry?
    LYLE : Ain’t nothing more to tell. Wait till after the trial. You won’t have to ask me no more questions then!
    PARNELL : I’ve got to get to the funeral.
    LYLE : Don’t run off. Don’t leave me here alone.
    PARNELL : You’re supposed to be home for supper.
    LYLE : Supper can wait. Have another drink with me—be my buddy. Don’t leave me here alone. Listen to them! Singing and praying! Singing and praying and laughing behind a man’s back!
    (The singing continues in the dark
, BLACKTOWN :
The church, packed. Meridian in the pulpit, the bier just below him.)
    MERIDIAN : My heart is heavier tonight than it has ever been before. I raise my voice to you tonight out of a sorrow and a wonder I have never felt before. Not only I, my Lord, am in this case. Everyone under the sound of my voice, and many more souls than that, feel as I feel, and tremble as I tremble, and bleed as I bleed. It is not that the days are dark—we have known dark days. It is not only that the blood runs downand no man helps us; it is not only that our children are destroyed before our eyes. It is not only that our lives, from day to day and every hour of each day, are menaced by the people among whom you have set us down. We have borne all these things, my Lord, and we have done what the prophets of old could not do, we have sung the Lord’s song in a strange land. In a strange land! What was the sin committed by our forefathers in the time that has vanished on the other side of the flood, which has had to be expiated by chains, by the lash, by hunger and thirst, by slaughter, by fire, by the rope, by the knife, and for so many generations, on these wild shores, in this strange land? Our offense must have been mighty, our crime immeasurable. But it is not the past which makes our hearts so heavy. It is the present. Lord, where is our hope? Who, or what, shall touch the hearts of this headlong and unthinking people and turn them back from destruction? When will they hear the words of John?
I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would that thou wert cold or hot. So, then because thou art lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched and miserable