A Lesson Before Dying: Chapters 6–11

She raised the lids on two other pots, but still the odor of the onions, pepper, and garlic pervaded the room.

Each time she returned from the library, Inez seemed more agitated. I knew she was feeling sorry for me.

I had come through that back door against my will, and it seemed that he and the sheriff were doing everything they could to humiliate me even more by making me wait on them.

“To die with some dignity, I suppose. I suppose that’s what she wants.”

“You and I are in accord there,” he said. “But my wife thinks different. Now, which one you think is right, me or her?”

“I make it a habit never to get into family business, Mr. Guidry.”
The fat man didn’t like that quick maneuver. I could see it in his face.

“And I want you to know I don’t like it. Because I think the only thing you can do is just aggravate him, trying to put something in his head against his will. And I’d rather see a contented hog go to that chair than an aggravated hog. It would be better for everybody concerned. There ain’t a thing you can put in that skull that ain’t there already.”

A doctor had come once, a midwife had visited a young woman twice, an insurance man had shown up, a bill collector from a furniture store had appeared, Henri Pichot had driven through the quarter at least once each day, and family and friends of people in the quarter had also visited.

“Hummmm. Stifling,” he said.
I thought it was a little cool myself, but I figured that anyone as heavy as he was must have felt stifled all the time.

There was a good breeze coming in from the direction of the cane fields, and it wavered the flag on the pole in the yard.

I motioned for him to precede me into the church.

My classroom was the church. My classes ranged from primer to sixth grade, my pupils from six years old to thirteen and fourteen.

“I can’t hear you if you keep your head down,” Dr. Joseph told her.
She looked up, timidly. “Gloria Hebert.”

In the upper grades—fourth, fifth, and sixth—he asked grammatical, mathematical, and geographical questions.

At least Dr. Joseph had graduated to the level where he let the children spread out their own lips, rather than using some kind of crude metal instrument.

They did not see this as quite the same, but when I didn’t give them any other choice, they grudgingly relented.

They did not see this as quite the same, but when I didn’t give them any other choice, they grudgingly relented.

Standing by the fence, I watched the five older boys saw and chop the wood. Two would saw while another would straddle the wood pole to keep it steady.

There was always news coming back to the quarter about someone who had been killed or sent to prison for killing someone else: Snowball, stabbed to death at a nightclub in Port Allen; Claudee, killed by a woman in New Orleans; Smitty, sent to the state penitentiary at Angola for manslaughter.

There was always news coming back to the quarter about someone who had been killed or sent to prison for killing someone else: Snowball, stabbed to death at a nightclub in Port Allen; Claudee, killed by a woman in New Orleans; Smitty, sent to the state penitentiary at Angola for manslaughter.

That in him—he did not say all this, but we felt it—there was nothing but hatred for himself as well as contempt for us.

He had told us then that most of us would die violently, and those who did not would be brought down to the level of beasts. Told us that there was no other choice but to run and run. That he was living testimony of someone who should have run.

He looked terribly frail that day. I hadn’t seen him in several months.

The cell was roughly six by ten, with a metal bunk covered by a thin mattress and a woolen army blanket; a toilet without seat or toilet paper; a washbowl, brownish from residue and grime; a small metal shelf upon which was a pan, a tin cup, and a tablespoon.

“You want a tea cake? You don’t have to eat no chicken if you don’t want. You don’t have to eat no old yam neither. But I know how much you like my tea cakes. I didn’t bring no clabber, but—Jefferson?”

“You’re saying I’m supposed to visit him alone? He’s no kin—”

Sparks of fire shot across the hearth into the room, and smoke and ashes shot up the chimney.

“I didn’t bring any corn,” I said. “And you’re not a hog.”
He looked at me as if I was patronizing him.

His expression didn’t change—as though someone had chiseled that painful, cynical grin on his face.

His expression remained the same—cynical, defiant, painful.