OSCAR,
Louisiana – His ancestors were slaves. They worked this flat plantation land
just west of the snaking Mississippi, chopping sugar cane with their machetes.
They and some of their descendants lived in the plantation’s “quarters.” And
when they died, most were buried here in a small patch of earth, for blacks
only.
Ernest J.
Gaines, 77, the acclaimed author of “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman”
and “A Lesson Before Dying,” is part of the fifth generation of this family to
be born on the River Lake plantation. But unlike his ancestors, many of whom
had nothing during their lives and were buried in unmarked wooden boxes that
have since decayed, Gaines has built and owns his own house on the old
plantation. He and his wife, Dianne Saulney Gaines, 70, a retired lawyer, have
rescued the cemetery from near oblivion and they intend to be buried here
themselves.
Gaines has
put down his pen – he wrote the first draft of all his novels in longhand – in
the belief that he has “nothing original left to say.” He chronicled life in
rural southern Louisiana, in a fictional version of this plantation, and his
people, he said, showed him the meaning of dignity. As his friend Wendell
Berry, the writer, once observed, he and Gaines “knew the talk of old people,
old country people, in summer evenings.” Gaines’ goal now is to honour them by
keeping up the cemetery.
From their
house, the Gaineses can see the old church and the massive pecan trees that
border the cemetery, about one kilometre away. Years before buying the land,
before they knew they would one day live so close, they began tending the
cemetery. They also established the Mount Zion River Lake Cemetery Association,
a nonprofit corporation, and in 1996, the owners of the cemetery, who were
heirs of the plantation, deeded their interests to it.
“He had an
obsession that the sugar cane fields, which were coming closer and closer,
would eventually plough it under and every remnant or memory of his people
would be erased,” Dianne Gaines said.
This
concern is evident in Ernest Gaines’ fiction. In “A Gathering of Old Men,” a
character worries that the cane-cutting machines are “trying to get rid of all
proof that black people ever farmed this land with ploughs and mules.” The
character laments that his people “worked too hard, too hard to have that
tractor just come in that graveyard and destroy all proof that they ever was.”
It is not
entirely fiction. Today, the cemetery sits as a .40-hectare oasis in the midst
of towers of green sugar cane. In this, the “grinding season,” tractors are
whacking down rows of stalks and loading them into haulers that crisscross the
sugar fields on their way to a local mill. The other day, the trucks churned up
blinding clouds of dust that coated the Gaineses’ car in a fine, gold film as
they drove slowly to the burial ground.
As part of
their commitment to the cemetery, the Gaineses host a beautification day every
year at the end of October, on the Saturday before All Saints’ Day. About 40
people, including family, friends and local residents, come and help clear
fallen branches, rake leaves and pressure-wash the cement vaults.
Then they
feast on red beans and rice, gumbo and baked ham for two or three hours back at
the house.
“There’s
always a feeling of euphoria,” Dianne Gaines said, “of enjoying the moment.”
This year,
the University of Louisiana at Lafayette is taking advantage of the timing of
the cemetery cleanup, when friends and family will be visiting, to honour
Ernest Gaines the next day. They will be dedicating a centre in his name to
house his papers and promote research. He was a writer in residence and taught
there for more than two decades.
Marcia
Gaudet, director of the centre and a professor of English, said that Gaines’
early work was sometimes criticized by other black writers “for not being
militant enough.” But she said he believed he could be more effective by
writing about what he knew, which was life in the rural South.
“His
literature is based on memory of the past, and it’s somewhat different from
that of many African-American writers of the mid-20th century, who based their
work on erasure of that past and moving their characters to Northern urban
settings,” Gaudet said. “Gaines was one of the first to go back and look at
what the hardships were.”
The stories
of hardship lie in the graveyard. Gaines’ aunt, Augusteen Jefferson, who raised
him, is buried here, although he is not sure where. She was disabled (“She had
to crawl all over the floor her whole life”), but Gaines said she taught him
“the importance of standing,” as he wrote in the dedication of “Miss Jane
Pittman.”
“They had
nothing,” he said, looking at the vaults. “At least here they each have [2
metres] of ground.”
He added:
“I’m going to do everything to keep up for them, in memory. That is my duty
from now until I die.”
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