A Gathering of Old Men by Ernest J. Gaines Page B

But you wouldn’t never catch it opening. It opened while you was sitting there, but you never saw it. Like trying to watch a hour hand move on a clock. You never see it move, but it was moving all the time.
    “That’s why I kilt him, that’s why,” Johnny Paul said. “To protect them little flowers. But they ain’t here no more. And how come? ’Cause Jack ain’t here no more. He’s back thereunder them trees with all the rest. With Mama and Papa, Aunt Thread, Aunt Spoodle, Aunt Clara, Unc Moon, Unc Jerry—all the rest of them. But y’all do remember, don’t y’all?” He turned to Glo. Glo sat there on the steps, still wearing her apron, her little grandchildren at her side. She was looking down at the ground, remembering. She nodded. “Remember the palm-of-Christians in Thread’s yard, Glo? Other people had them, but they didn’t grow nowhere thick and dark like they did in her yard. Remember, Glo?” Glo nodded again, not looking at him. She was seeing the palm-of-Christians. I was seeing the palm-of-Christians. That’s when you was a little boy, you used to drag a little girl under them leaves. It was the coolest place in summer. If it was raining, storming, the leaves was so big, they kept the water off you. “Remember Jack and Red Rider hitting that field every morning with them two mules, Diamond and Job?” Johnny Paul asked us. He wasn’t looking at Glo now; he was looking way off again. “Lord, Lord, Lord. Don’t tell me you can’t remember them early mornings when that sun was just coming up over there behind them trees? Y’all can’t tell me y’all can’t remember how Jack and Red Rider used to race out into that field on them old single slides? Jack with Diamond, Red Rider with Job—touching the ground, just touching the ground to keep them slides steady. Hah. Tell me who could beat them two men plowing a row, hanh? Who? I’m asking y’all who?”
    “Nobody,” Beulah said. “That’s for sure. Not them two men. Them was men—them.”
    Johnny Paul nodded his head. Not to Beulah. He wasn’t looking at her. He was looking way off again, down the quarters toward the field.
    “Thirty, forty of us going out in the field with cane knives, hoes, plows—name it. Sunup to sundown, hard, miserable work, but we managed to get it done. We stuck together,shared what little we had, and loved and respected each other.
    “But just look at things today. Where the people? Where the roses? Where the four-o’clocks? The palm-of-Christians? Where the people used to sing and pray in the church? I’ll tell you. Under them trees back there, that’s where. And where they used to stay, the weeds got it now, just waiting for the tractor to come plow it up.”
    Johnny Paul had been looking down the quarters. He looked at Mapes again. The people had been nodding their heads, going along with him all the time.
    “That’s something you can’t see, Sheriff, ’cause you never could see it,” he said. “You can’t see Red Rider with Job, Jack with Diamond. You can’t see the church with the people, and you can’t hear the singing and the praying. You had to be here then to be able to don’t see it and don’t hear it now. But I was here then, and I don’t see it now, and that’s why I did it. I did it for them back there under them trees. I did it ’cause that tractor is getting closer and closer to that graveyard, and I was scared if I didn’t do it, one day that tractor was go’n come in there and plow up them graves, getting rid of all proof that we ever was. Like now they trying to get rid of all proof that black people ever farmed this land with plows and mules—like if they had nothing from the starten but motor machines. Sure, one day they will get rid of the proof that we ever was, but they ain’t go’n do it while I’m still here. Mama and Papa worked too hard in these fields. They mama and they papa worked too hard in these same fields. They mama and they papa people worked too