Don’t Miss This One

A Gathering of Old Men a novel by Ernest J. Gaines.  From Gaines: Four Novels.  Library of America.  pp. 405-583.  *****

Though I almost didn’t read it—I’d been disappointed by In My Father’s House, which I found oddly inert—A Gathering Of Old Men might be Ernest J. Gaines’ best novel.  It is certainly the most suspenseful; I was on the edge of my seat the whole time, concerned about what would happen but also blazing with rage at the blatant racism on page after page.  It was in this book that I fully understood the section of Louisiana that Gaines hailed from, and how complicated the situation is.

It’s a land of sugarcane fields, which stretch around for miles.  At one time they were plantations, but now they have been divided into farms, sharecropped by various people and owned by a few wealthy families.  Supervising the blacks who do the work are a clan of Cajun men, and while the whole system is blatantly racist, they are most obviously so.  They also have a chip on their collective shoulder because they believe that the wealthy families look down on them, which they do.  It’s that familiar mix of landed families, poor whites, and blacks, with the poor whites particularly clannish.

As the novel opens, a Cajun sharecropper named Beau Boutan has been shot, apparently by an older black man named Mathu.  There was bad blood between the two men, who had staged a legendary fist fight some years before, observed by many.  The daughter of one of the landed families, Candy Marshall, concocts a plan to round up a passel of older black men and have them all sit in the front yard with twelve-gauge shotguns and one spent number five shell, as if it has just been fired.  They, along with Candy, will all swear they committed the murder, and for the same reason: Boutan was beating a black man named Charlie who worked for him.  When Charlie retreated to Mathu’s shack and Boutan came after him with a shotgun, Mathu shot him, or so it seems.  But all these people will insist that they committed the crime, and that will leave the local sheriff, a man named Mapes, in a fix.

The real danger in this situation, which we don’t understand at first, is Cajun vigilantes, whose ringleader, a man named Fix, is Boutan’s father.  He has been the unofficial lawmaker in the area, judge, jury, and executioner, and the situation is a set-up for him to ride again.  So another reason for all these men to be sitting there with rifles is to confront him, and whoever he brings with him.  Candy was thinking fast when she concocted this strategy.

As a vehicle for telling a story, it’s brilliant.  The fact of the matter is that everyone in this group had a reason for killing Boutan, even Candy.  If it wasn’t for something he personally did, it was for something his people did, some act of violent racism from years ago.  Everyone has not one reason, but a whole list.  And when the Sheriff finally arrives, though he’s highly skeptical and believes he knows who committed the crime, he lets these men—finally—tell their stories.  They form a massive saga of racism and injustice, men swallowing their pride and stifling their rage.  Suddenly they’re not doing that anymore.

A complicating factor is that Beau Boutan’s brother Gil is a fullback for LSU, who is playing Ole Miss the next day in the most important game of the season.[1]  He’s Cajun, but he’s moved into a larger world where he understands that vigilantes—like his own father—are a thing of the past, and where his sidekick in the backfield is a black man (the fans call them Salt and Pepper.  Racism hasn’t quite been eradicated in this larger world).  He comes back to see his family in their grief and anger, and the tension in that scene, the deep feeling, is palpable.  We don’t believe the Cajuns should take the law into their own hands.  But we understand why they feel beleaguered and misunderstood.

The real loose cannons in that scene are a collection of men led by a guy named Luke Will, who are not part of the family but who would be part of whatever posse the group forms, and who are really just looking for trouble.  They don’t want to wait and decide.  They want to do something now.  There’s a scene in a small local bar where these men go for a drink, in the same place as Candy’s Uncle, Jack Marshall, and an unnamed college professor who seems to be drinking too much but who does believe in the rule of law (and who undoubtedly thinks the Cajuns are ignorant vermin).  It was in that scene that I really saw the drama playing out.  And the black men weren’t even there.

I won’t say any more except that there is a surprise ending—it was certainly a surprise to me—and that Gaines doesn’t in any way skirt the conflict.  He lets it play out, shotguns and all.  I’ve read three of his other books, but it was with this one that I finally understood his little corner of Louisiana, and the way this age-old story played out there (as it is playing out in this country right now).  Gaines has a large cast of characters, but he manages them well.  Every person is an individual, and we see a wide range of viewpoints.  It’s not a pretty sight.

[1] As I post this, weirdly enough, LSU is scheduled to play Ole Miss tomorrow.