A Lesson Before Dying: Chapters 1–5

When he told them he didn’t have a solitary dime, it was then that Brother and Bear started talking credit, saying that old Gropé should not mind crediting them a pint since he knew them well, and he knew that the grinding season was coming soon, and they would be able to pay him back then.

He stood there gaping at the old man slumped against the bottom shelf of gallons and half gallons of wine.

The defense argued that Jefferson was innocent of all charges except being at the wrong place at the wrong time. There was absolutely no proof that there had been a conspiracy between himself and the other two.

A man with a modicum of intelligence would have seen that those racketeers meant no good.

A man with a modicum of intelligence would have seen that those racketeers meant no good.

Do you see a man sitting here? I ask you, I implore, look carefully—do you see a man sitting here?

“I thank you, gentlemen, from the bottom of my heart, for your kind patience. I have no more to say, except this: We must live with our own conscience. Each and every one of us must live with his own conscience.”

The judge commended the twelve white men for reaching a quick and just verdict.

I hurried to my room with the satchel of papers that I had brought from school to work on that night.

I tried to think of a way to make a quick appearance in the kitchen for courtesy’s sake and then leave.

The fourth-grade writing was nearly illegible, but even if it had been typed I would not have been able to concentrate long enough to read it.

Her husband, who was dead now, had called her Miss Emma, and she had called him Mr. Oscar, and that is how we on that plantation had grown up addressing them.

She wore a white dress, white shoes, a blue gingham apron, and a kerchief on her head.

So Henri Pichot, who cared nothing in the world for me, tolerated me because of my aunt.

There, instead of houses and trees, there were fishing wharves, boat docks, nightclubs, and restaurants for whites.

Bayonne was a small town of about six thousand. Approximately three thousand five hundred whites; approximately two thousand five hundred colored. It was the parish seat for St. Raphael.

Thelma ran the café, and her husband, Joe, ran the bar. I asked her what she had for supper.
“Smothered chicken, smothered beefsteaks, shrimp stew,” she said.

Vivian Baptiste was a beautiful woman, and she knew it; but she didn’t flaunt it, it was just there.

We had friends in Baton Rouge who knew about her pending divorce and knew about my aunt, and they let us stay awhile at their place while they went out to a bar.

We pledged allegiance to the flag. The flag hung limp from a ten-foot bamboo pole in the corner of the white picket fence that surrounded the church.

Behind my desk was the pulpit and the altar.

Breakfast was two fried eggs, grits, a piece of salt pork, and a biscuit.

I reached for the piece of chalk, but in her fear of me she continued to hold on to it, and I had to pry it out of her hand.

Other than that, all there was to see were old gray weather-beaten houses, with smoke rising out of the chimneys and drifting across the corrugated tin roofs.

I could see the smoke rising from the kitchen chimney of the girl who stuttered, and I knew that she came from a family of twelve, and that she had a pregnant older sister, who was not allowed to come back to school but had to work in the field with all the others, and that she had an idiot brother and a tyrant father...

One or two of the students near him giggled nervously, but most remembered the mood I was in and seemed petrified. The boy, with his hand cupped over the welt, was crying now.

One or two of the students near him giggled nervously, but most remembered the mood I was in and seemed petrified. The boy, with his hand cupped over the welt, was crying now.

No one answered. Most averted their eyes.

At his age, he was still only a messenger to run errands. To learn anything, he had to attain it by stealth or through an innate sense of things around him.

At his age, he was still only a messenger to run errands. To learn anything, he had to attain it by stealth or through an innate sense of things around him.