Preacher’s Legend, Truman Capote
Preacher’s Legend
A south-moving cloud slipped over the sun and a patch of dark, an island of shadow, crept down the field, drifted over the ridge. Presently it began to rain: summer rain with sun in it, lasting only a short time; long enough for settling dust, polishing leaves. When the rain ended, an old colored man—his name was Preacher—opened his cabin door and gazed at the field where weeds grew profusely in the rich earth; at a rocky yard shaded by peach trees and dogwood and chinaberry; at a gutted red-clay road that seldom saw car, wagon, or human; and at a ring of green hills that spread, perhaps, to the edge of the world.
Preacher was a small man, a mite, and his face was a million wrinkles. Tufts of gray wool sprouted from his bluish skull and his eyes were sorrowful. He was so bent that he resembled a rusty sickle and his skin was the yellow of superior leather. As he studied what remained of his farm, his hand pestered his chin wisely but, to tell the truth, he was thinking nothing.
It was quiet, of course, and the coolness made him shiver so that he went inside and sat in a rocker and wrapped his legs in a beautiful scrap quilt of green-rose and red-leaf design and fell asleep in the still house with all the windows wide while the wind stirred bright calendars and comic strips he had plastered over the walls.
In a quarter of an hour he was awake, for he never slept long and the days passed in a series of naps and wakings, sleep and light, one hardly different from the other. Although it was not cold he lit the fire, filled his pipe and began to rock, his glance wandering over the room. The double iron bed was a hopeless confusion of quilts and pillows and scaly with flecks of pink paint; an arm flapped desolately from the very chair in which he sat; a wonderful poster-picture of a golden-haired girl holding a bottle of NE-HI was torn at the mouth so that her smile was wicked and leering. His eyes paused on a sooty, charred stove, squatting in the corner.
He was hungry, but the stove, piled high with dirty pans, made Preacher tired even to consider it. “Can’t do nothin’ ’bout it,” he said, the way certain old people quarrel with themselves; “sick to death of collards an’ whatevahelse. Just sit here an’ stahve, that be my fate.… Bet yo’ bottom dollah ain’t nobody gonna grieve on dat account, nawsuh.” Evelina had always been so clean and neat and good, but she was dead and buried two springs ago. And of their children there was left only Anna-Jo, who had a job in Cypress City where she lived-in and went cavorting every night. Or, at least, Preacher believed this to be the case.
He was very religious and as the afternoon wore on he took his Bible from the mantel and traced the print with a palsied finger. He enjoyed pretending he could read and continued for some time: plotting his own tales and poring over the illustrations. This habit had always been of great concern to Evelina. “Why you all de time studyin’ ovah de Good Book, Preacher? I declare you ain’t got no sense.… Can’t no mo’ read than I kin.”
“Why, honey,” he explained, “ever’body kin read de Good Book. He fixed it so’se dey could.” It was a claim he had heard made by the Pastor in Cypress City and it satisfied him completely.
When the sunlight made an exact impression from window to door he closed the Bible over his finger and hobbled onto the porch. Blue and white pots of fern swung from the ceiling on wire cords and flowered to the floor, trailing like peacock tails. Slowly, and with great care, he limped down the steps, fashioned from tree trunks, and stood, frail and humped in his overalls and khaki shirt, in the middle of the yard. “Here I is. Didn’t spec I’d do it.… Didn’t spec I had de stren’th in me today.”
A smell of damp earth hung on the air and the wind turned the chinaberry leaves. A rooster crowed, and its scarlet comb went darting through the high weeds and disappeared under the house. “You best run, ol’ crow, else I git me a hatchet and den you bettah watch out. Bet you taste mighty fine!” The weeds swept up at his bare feet and he stopped and tugged at a handful. “Ain’t no use. You just grow right smack back agin, nasty mess.”
Near the road the dogwood was in bloom and the rain had scattered petals that were soft under his feet and stuck between his toes. He walked with the aid of a sycamore cane. After crossing the road and passing through a wild pecan grove, he chose the path, as was his custom, that led through the forest down to the creek and The Place.
The same journey, the same way, and at the same time: late afternoon because, that way, it gave him something to look forward to. The walks had begun one November day when he had reached his Decision and continued all winter when the earth frosted and pine needles clung frozen to his feet.
Now it was May. Six months were gone, and Preacher, born in May and married in May, thought surely here was the month that would see the end of his mission. It was his superstition that a sign marked this day in particular; so he followed the path more rapidly than usual.
Sun pooled in shafts, caught in his hair, changed the color of the Spanish moss, flung limp and long like whiskers across the waterbay branches, from gray to pearl to blue to gray. A cicada called. Another answered. “Shut up, bettle-bugs! Whut you wanna be makin’ so much racket fer? You lonesome?”
The path was tricky, and sometimes, because it was really no more than a thread of trampled ground, difficult to maintain. At one point it sloped downward into a hollow that smelled of sweet gum and here began a thickly-vined stretch where it was night black and the brush trembled with who-knows-what. “Git out o’ there, all you devils! Ain’t nary a one of you kin scare Preacher. Ol’ buzzards and ghosts, bettah watch out! Preacher … he’ll bust you side de haid an’ skin off yo’ hide an’ gouge out yo’ eyes an’ stomp de whole caboodle down to de pit of fire!” But all the same his heart beat faster, his cane rapped searchingly before him; the beast lurked behind; terrible eyes, shining in hell, watched from their lair!
Evelina, he recalled, had never believed in the Spirits and this made him angry. “Hush now, Preacher,” she would say, “I ain’t gonna listen to no mo’ of dat spook talk. Why, man, dey ain’t no spooks ’cept in yo’ haid.” Oh, she had been unwise, for now, sure as there was a God in heaven, she belonged among the hunters and the hungry-eyed waiting there in the dark. He paused, called, “Evelina? Evelina … answuh me, honey.” And he hurried on, suddenly fearful that someday she would hear and, not recognizing, devour him whole.
Soon the sound of the creek; from there The Place was only a few steps. He pushed aside a thorny nettle and, with anguished grunts, lowered himself down the bank and crossed the stream, stone by stone, with studied precision. Nervous minnow schools made finicky forays along the clear and shallow edge and emerald-winged dragons plucked at the surface. On the opposite bank, a humming bird, whirring its invisible wings, ate the heart of a giant tiger lily.
So the trees thinned and the path broadened into a small, cubic clearing. Preacher’s place. Once, before the lumber mill closed, it had been a washing center for the women, but that was long ago. A flow of swallows swept overhead and from somewhere nearby an unfamiliar bird sang a strange, persistent song.
He was tired and out of breath, and he dropped to his knees, leaning his cane against a rotted oak stump on which clusters of devil’s snuff grew. Then, unfolding his Bible to where a silver ribbon lay pressed between the pages, he clasped his hands and lifted his head.
Several moments of silence, his eyes pinched narrow, intent upon the ring of sky, the smoky strands of cloud, like stray loops of tow hair, that seemed scarcely to move over the blue screen, paler than milk glass.
Then, in just a whisper:
“Mistuh Jesus? Mistuh Jesus?”
The wind whispered back, uprooting winter-buried leaves that turned furtive cart wheels across the moss-green floor.
“I’se back agin, Mistuh Jesus, faithful to de minute. Please, suh, pay ’tention to ol’ Preacher.”
Certain of his audience, he smiled sadly and waved. It was time to speak his piece. He said he was old; he didn’t know how old, ninety or a hundred, maybe. And his business finished and all his people gone. If there was still the family, then things might be different. Hosanna! But Evelina had passed away and what had become of the children? Billy Boy and Jasmine and Landis and Le Roy and Anna-Jo and Beautiful Love?
Some to Memphis and Mobile and Birmingham, some to their graves. Anyway they weren’t with him; they had left the land he had worked so hard, and the fields were ruined and he was frightened in the old house at night with nothing for company but the whippoorwill. And so it
