A Gathering of Old Men (1987) - full transcript
A regular day in a Louisiana sugarcane plantation changes course when a local white farmer is shot in self defense. A group of old, black men takes a courageous step by coming forward en masse to take responsibility for the killing of a white racist, whom one of their members has shot. As the sheriff confronts the suspects, the young plantation owner stands alone in her daring defense of this group of men, provoking racial tension that makes a compelling drama.
*
- No!
No, stop, no!
No!
No!
No, no!
- I'm gonna get you,
Charlie.
I'm gonna get you, boy!
It didn't start
this morning.
It started about 30,
40 years ago.
That wasn't the first time
I run from somebody.
All my life that's all
I ever done
is run from people.
Made me do
what they wanted me.
"Nigger this, nigger that."
And as long as I was
big Charlie nigger boy,
I took it.
But there comes a day.
There comes a day.
Go inside!
Beau boutan trying to kill me!
- Oh, boy!
I know you're in there.
I've come to get you,
Charlie!
I've come to get you!
Come on out here, Charlie.
Come to kill you, boy.
- Janey,
did you hear that shot?
- Sure did.
- I ain't gonna
stay here, mathu.
You know what
fix boutan gonna do
when he find out
his son is dead,
killed by somebody black.
I just can't stay with you.
- Go on, then.
Get!
- I can't stay, mathu.
They'll hang me.
I just can't stay.
- Go on.
- They're coming now.
- Mathu, what did you do?
That's fix's son Beau.
What happened?
Mathu, you answer me!
I'm afraid for you, mathu.
Mathu, you know what fix
is gonna do when he finds out?
That's not just any white man
lying out there, mathu.
Mathu, please.
I can't let them kill you.
Not you, mathu.
Aunt glo!
Aunt glo.
- Is your name aunt
or glo?
Well, then
sit and eat your turnips.
- Aunt glo!
- How come we don't eat nothing
but turnips all the time?
- 'Cause I say.
- I ain't no turnip
eating machine!
- Aunt glo!
- What's the matter, candy?
- Get snookum out here.
- Snookum?
- Good-bye, turnips.
- What's snookum done now?
- Hurry, aunt glo.
I can't talk now.
Snookum, get over here.
Come on!
Snookum, listen to me.
I want you to run
and tell yank and Jameson
and corrine
and the rest of them
to gather at mathu's house
right away.
Now, listen to me good now.
Now,
you go up to the front,
and you tell miss merle
I say come down here quick.
No--tell her to call Lou
and tell Lou to get here quick.
No talking on that phone,
just get here.
Now, you heard what I said,
snookum?
- Mm-hmm.
- Okay.
- Why I'm telling all them
people to get here quick for?
- That's none of your business,
snookum.
You're a child.
Now do like I said.
Get moving.
Y'all coming to mathu's house
right now.
Come right now.
Bring your shotguns,
all of you.
- Y'all come to mathu's.
Candy said come to mathu's.
- Mathu's?
What do they want us there for?
- Hey, James,
come on to mathu's house.
Bring a 12-Gauge shotgun,
number five shells.
Edward,
come to mathu's house now!
- Janey!
Janey!
- What's the matter
with you, boy?
- Candy sent me.
Is miss merle in there?
- No, she ain't.
- Call Lou and tell him
candy wants him at mathu's.
- At mathu's?
- It has something to do
with Beau.
Something about Beau lying dead
in mathu's yard.
- Lord have mercy.
Lord have mercy!
- You gonna give me
some tea cakes?
Candy didn't pay me.
- You better get on, boy.
Go home where
you're supposed to be going.
Hello, Mr. Dimes.
Lou dimes?
Yes, this is janey
over at Marshall's.
Well, now, miss candy told me
to call you.
She says she needs you
right now.
- Me?
Well, now, that's strange.
I've known her
for three years.
She never needed
anybody before.
- It's got something to do
with Beau boutan being dead
over there in mathu's yard.
She says she needs you.
- I'm on my way.
- Okay.
- I killed Beau, miss merle.
I shot Beau.
- Candy, what's going on
down here?
And what is mathu doing
with that gun?
- I don't know, miss merle.
I shot him.
But all of a sudden,
mathu says he shot Beau.
And then when Ruth came,
he said he had as much reason
to shoot Beau as anybody.
So he ran home and got his gun.
He says he shot Beau.
But I'm still the one
that shot him.
- No.
Here in mathu's yard?
- Well, I said I did it.
But I need you to help me,
miss merle.
I need more guns.
- Candy Marshall,
I will do no such thing.
- No, no
now, more 12-Gauge shotguns
and people.
I need more people.
- Who?
- Janey knows them.
She can call them.
Get any of them, all of them.
- So they can be killed?
- Is that what you want,
blood all over this place?
- We don't have much time,
miss merle,
and I want an hour's jump
on mapes.
- And what about fix, candy?
What can you do about fix?
- I won't let him
touch my people.
I said I did it.
Now, you tell janey to tell
all the men to come here
with 12-Gauge shotguns
and number five shells,
empty shells.
You tell them to fire the guns.
Now, you don't have much time.
- Candy,
nobody in this parish
will ever believe
you killed Beau.
- Shh.
- You can't protect mathu.
- Tell janey to wait until
Lou dimes passes the house
before she calls mapes.
Well, it's done, mathu.
Can't nothing stop it now.
- Booker!
Booker, chimley!
Janey said miss merle said
candy wants y'all at mathu's.
She wants y'all
to bring 12-gauges
and number five shells.
- All that for what?
- Got something to do
with a white man dead
in mathu's yard.
Charlie's all scared.
He run down
my quarter screaming.
- He better run out
of Louisiana.
- I'd done my part.
She said y'all can do
like she said
or go home and crawl under
your bed like you always do.
Me, I'm leaving.
- These white folks
sure know how to mess up
the river, don't they?
- Yeah, fish used to come up
and asked to be caught.
Come up and tug at your line
like a woman
at a bedroom door.
- He works in mysterious ways,
don't he?
- That's what they say.
You think mathu did it?
- He could have.
See, I remember the fight
mathu and fix had.
It started over a coke bottle.
Now, when fix
had drunk his coke,
he told mathu to take the empty
bottle back in the store.
Mathu said, "hmm!"
He was nobody's servant.
Now, when fix told mathu
to take the empty bottle
back in the store again
and mathu didn't,
fix hit him.
And the fight was on.
Mm, man, for an hour,
it was toe-to-toe.
But when it was all over,
mathu was up.
Fix was down.
Now, them white people
tried to lynch mathu.
But sheriff wouldn't let them.
- I ain't never knowed
in my time
when a black man
kills a white one
and got away with it.
Not in this parish.
- Well, uh, if he did,
you know,
we ought to be there, chimley.
- You got any
number five shells?
- You sure now, chimley?
- How many times
he stand up for us?
- Scared?
- Yeah.
About that bed, chimley:
I'm too old
to go crawling under that bed.
Besides, it's too low.
- Yeah, mine ain't no higher.
- Janey!
Jack.
Jack.
Janey, who you know
don't like fix?
- Ma'am?
- Don't answer me
with a question, janey.
Who?
- Well, I don't know nobody
do like fix.
- You got their phone numbers?
Okay, I want you to go inside,
call them,
get them over to mathu's.
Hurry.
- Clatoo is somebody
you can call.
Was fix set that fire put his
junky store out of business.
Now I can have my peapicker.
- Oh, janey, don't you move.
We don't have time
for peapickers, bea.
Beau boutan is dead
in the quarter,
and candy is claiming
she did it.
- Well,
what can I do about it?
People die all the time.
She sure got spunk,
don't she?
That's my niece.
Probably why
nobody wants to marry her.
Janey, you know what time it is.
- Don't move, janey.
- Whoa.
Here on Marshall miss,
I say "don't."
And I say, "do."
Okay, janey,
what are you waiting for?
About time she shot
one of them boutans,
messing up the land
with those tractors.
Never should have leased
the land to fix
in the first place.
- We don't have time
for that, bea.
- His kind never loved
the land,
not like our neighbors.
- Now let's go, janey.
- Don't make me do nothing
like that, please, miss merle.
- Don't you tell me
don't make you do
nothing like that.
Now there is a crazy white girl
down in the quarter
claiming she killed
a white man.
I know mathu did it,
but she's gonna protect him.
And you and I
are going inside, janey,
and are gonna call up
everybody:
Uncle Billy and clatoo
and yank and coot, everybody.
- She got spunk.
- Well, you see,
I never wanted none of this,
protect your name and land.
Let my niece have it.
Let her run it.
I don't care
if it goes to hell.
- Booker, you gonna
tell me something
before you leave here
with a shotgun.
- Go somewhere and sit down,
beulah.
This is men's business.
- I'm making it my business.
- Catch him laying dead out
there in mathu's yard.
Charlie a fool and the others
is running.
But for once in my life,
I'm gonna be there when they
come to lynch somebody.
Now you know.
- That's got nothing to do
with you, booker, you old fool.
Have you gone crazy?
You think I'm gonna let you
go to mathu
and get yourself killed?
I bet you your brother
will stop you.
Just wait.
- Oh, no, beulah.
Now talk on that.
- What's the matter with you,
you old fool?
- What's the matter with me?
All these years we've been
living together, woman,
and you still don't know
what's the matter with me?
All these years
we done struggle
in George medlow's field,
making him richer
and richer
and us getting poorer
and poorer,
and you still don't know
what's the matter with me?
The years I done come home drunk
and beat you
for no reason at all.
All of them, woman.
All of them,
how he let him die
in that hospital
just 'cause he was black?
How'd he let him bleed to death
with no doctor to serve him
just 'cause he was black?
He works in mysterious ways.
Give old nigger like me
one more chance to do
something with his life.
I'm going to Marshall,
even if I have to die.
I know I'm old,
maybe even crazy.
But there's nothing
you can do about it.
- Lord have mercy.
- Pray if you want to.
Pray for all us old fools.
But woman,
don't try to stop me.
Jacob.
Go get your gun.
We're going over
to mathu's place.
Now hurry.
- Uh-huh.
- Old man,
what's the matter with you,
you shootin'
out that window like that?
- I don't know myself...
Why I'm doing things like that.
- Mm, mm, mm.
- But if them fish
ain't ready for me to eat
when I get back,
I'm gonna do myself
some shootin' right here.
- How you doing?
- You all shot?
- I'll save mine for the fields.
I might see me a rabbit.
Clatoo gonna be letting us off
before we get to Marshall's.
- What's with
all these shotguns?
- We're going hunting.
- What, this time of day?
Hunting where?
- We'll let you know
when we get back.
- Y'all come to mathu's.
- What for?
- Folks say to come.
Y'all come to mathu's.
- Yank and Jacob was waiting
for us by the road.
Yank was in his early 70s,
but he still thought
he was a cowboy.
We all felt kind of good,
'cause we was doing something
different for the first time.
We didn't do much talking.
It was just feeling proud,
proud as we could be.
- Wait for you
at the graveyard, clatoo.
- Hey, you ride back
with the rest of them.
- All right.
- You missed him, huh, Billy?
- He was moving.
- I hope you don't miss
fix like that.
- He was moving.
- After you stumbled over him,
he moved.
- Blind as a bat.
- Yeah, but now you're just
laughing at me
'cause I shot that rabbit,
man.
I know what that rabbit did.
Y'all laughing.
I shot the best I could.
It ain't every day you can
hit a rabbit.
- I heard that before.
- I mean...
Old man gonna shoot a rabbit.
- You too?
- Hey, my man.
- How you doing?
- All right.
- Good to see you.
- Yeah.
- Been expecting you.
- Everything gonna be
all right now.
- Remember Jessie?
- She hadn't ought to have got
mixed up with no white men.
- My brother Gabe is there.
Uncle ned's in here somewhere.
- We got a whole
lot of us in here.
You know, they seem to be
getting rid
of more and more
of these old graveyards.
Yeah.
I was the only man
from this parish
that fought with
the 369th infantry regiment.
That's when I went north.
369th was
an all colored outfit.
We didn't fight
'sides white folks then.
Oh, we were in France
and got decorated,
kissed on the jaw and all.
And I was proud.
Ooh, yes, I was proud
till I came home.
And the first white man I met,
very first one,
told me I'm home now
and they didn't cotton
to niggers
wearing medals
for killing white folks.
That was back in world war I,
and things ain't changed
one bit.
Huh, look what happened
to my boy Walter
after he come home
from the second world war
and they saw him with that
picture of that German girl.
I mean, you all know what they
did to him with them knives.
Well, this day
was a long time coming.
But I reckon a lot
of folks in here
will be proud of us
before this day is over with.
Of course, maybe some of us
might be even joining them.
- You all shot?
- Billy shot a rabbit
on his foot and missed.
- Well, now everybody
who ain't shot, shoot.
She told us to bring
empty shells.
Now, who ain't shot yet?
- I haven't.
- I haven't.
- Okay, go ahead, shoot.
Go ahead, shoot.
All right.
Now, them that want
to turn back--
anybody want to turn back,
you can.
There won't be nothing said.
- I tell you--
- ain't nobody--
- I'm not gonna.
- You know it could get pretty
hot around there today.
- Keeping all the way.
- Everybody ready?
Okay.
Heads up, back straight.
We're going in like soldiers,
not like tramps.
We're gonna let old mathu
see something today.
- That's right.
- Let's go.
- All right, gentlemen,
in a straight line.
On your shoulders.
Forward march.
Single file now.
One behind one another.
Put your gun by your shoulders.
- We had cane,
tall and blue-green cane
on both sides of the road.
This was the very land
we had worked,
our families and our people
had worked
since the time of slavery.
- How you doing, clatoo?
- Hi, candy.
- Hi, uncle Billy.
Thank y'all for coming.
- Yeah, how you doing?
- Put this away.
Well...
- She called for y'all.
I didn't.
The law'll come.
I'll turn myself in.
- I'm gonna turn myself in.
- You're gonna have to come
after me, Jacob aguilar.
- Now, look,
it was me who done it.
- I shot him.
- I did it for my brother.
- I shot him.
Chicken hawk came in my yard--
- I did it!
- No, I did it.
- I did it.
Now, if some of y'all don't
get out of the way,
gonna have to do
some more shooting.
- No, no, no.
If anybody did it,
it was me.
- Well, you've got to follow
behind me!
- I shot him!
- Y'all be singing
a different tune
before this is over.
Singing a different tune!
Mathu, put an end
to this nonsense.
Please, mathu.
- Go home, Jameson.
- I live here too, candy.
I ain't got no home
if they burn the quarter down.
Do you all understand what
I'm talking to you about, huh?
Clatoo, you got sense.
Now, you talk to him.
Tell him what can happen.
- I come here to stand.
Not to talk.
- That's right.
- You all came here to die.
- Go home, Jameson.
I don't want to have
to tell you anymore.
- Are you satisfied?
Are you satisfied?
And this here is supposed
to make up for all your hurts.
White man laying flat
on his back--
- did everyone shoot?
All number fives?
- Yeah.
- And them shooting them
number five shells, huh?
That's supposed to fool mapes?
You think mapes is crazy?
- Reverend Jameson,
nobody listening to you today.
Just go back home
like candy said.
- You old bootlicker.
Shut up.
- What did you say?
- Come on, come on.
Come on, you bootlicker.
- You want your men
to get killed?
- No, no, I'll whip you crazier
than you already is,
you old possum-looking fool.
- You'll just have to suffer
the consequences,
all of you.
- Go on, get.
- I guess we showed him.
- You know why,
don't you, clatoo?
- Yeah, I know, candy.
I know he looked out for you
all your life.
I know that.
And I know it ain't nothing you
wouldn't do for him.
I understand, candy.
- Yeah, you old fools!
Is that all, huh?
- Candy.
Candy, candy.
- Let go of me.
- Come on, candy.
What's going on?
What's gonna happen?
- You go back up there
with mathu.
I'm glad you got here.
I killed Beau.
- Oh.
And I killed Martin Luther King
and Kennedy.
What the hell is going on?
- I'm the one.
- I did it.
- I know you're lying.
If this is a game,
it's damn stupid.
Can't somebody cover him up,
for god's sake?
- Corrine, go get me a sheet
or something.
- Did you call mapes?
- I told them to call mapes
after you passed by.
- Did mathu do this?
Huh?
Candy, just tell me
the truth now.
Fix is going to demand--
- I did it, and that's what
I'm telling mapes,
what I'm gonna tell radio,
what I'm gonna give TV.
Go!
- Well, well.
Hello.
How do, folks?
- Hey, sheriff.
- Sheriff.
- Mm-mm.
Turn that thing off.
- Sir?
- The tractor!
- Yes, sir.
- Oh, and Griffin,
get on that radio.
Tell Russ--
nobody else--
tell Russ to go back
on that bayou
and keep fix and his crowd
back there
till he hears from me.
You understand that?
- Yeah, sheriff.
- Thank you.
Mathu.
- Yeah.
- 12, 13...17, 18.
I count 18 of them.
Is that all
you could round up?
- I killed him.
- What for?
- Beau was living in the past.
You just don't beat people
with a stalk of cane
and hunt them like animals.
You just don't do that nowadays.
I'll swear to it in court.
And that's my story
to the press.
- Is that so?
Griffin, bring me one of them.
- Which one?
- Any one of them who can talk.
- I said I did it.
Now, why are you
questioning them?
- Candy, please--
- no.
Because they're black
and helpless.
Is that why you're
picking on them?
- You.
- What you doing from behind
those trees, Jacob?
- I killed him.
- How'd she get you
from behind those trees?
- I said I killed him.
- Ahh!
- Why don't you use a stick
or a hosepipe?
- I said, "one who can talk,"
Griffin.
Ah, uncle Billy.
Come on down here.
Hurry along now.
How come you're so far
from home, uncle Billy?
- I killed him.
You ever see anybody die in
the electric chair, uncle Billy?
- No, sir.
- Well, that ain't
a pretty sight.
When that juice hits you,
I've seen that chair dance.
Is that how you want to go?
- No, sir.
- Well, I ain't got all day,
uncle Billy.
Today is my fishing day.
And I expect to see you
and old booker
down on the Charles fishing.
So I'm gonna ask you once again.
How come you so far from home?
- I killed him.
Smack!
- Hey, man!
- Mapes, I'm gonna
remember that.
- Now let's try it again,
uncle Billy.
How come you so far from home?
- 'Cause I killed him.
Ahh!
- He's an old man now, mapes.
- Is that all you're gonna do?
- What exactly is it
that you want me to do?
You want me to go
to jail with him?
I don't particularly want to go
to jail with him, okay?
- You still go to church,
uncle Billy?
- Deacon
in the Shiloh baptist church.
- Well, don't your Bible tell
you to always tell the truth?
- It do.
- Then why did you kill Beau?
- Beau beat my son crazy,
beat him so crazy
I had to send him to Jackson,
beat him so bad the boy
don't know me no more.
- Well, don't your Bible say,
"thou shalt not kill"?
- Sometimes you have to stray
away from that Bible, sheriff.
- Is that a fact?
Griffin, stand uncle Billy
over there by the fence
and get me another one.
- You gonna beat them all,
mapes?
- Get her out of here.
- This is my land,
in case you forget,
sheriff mapes.
- Stay out of my way.
- Like hell.
- Like hell you won't.
Yank.
Come on down here.
- Can you tell me a little
something about this man
he just called down here?
- Oh, that there's old yank.
Used to break all the horses
and mules hereabouts
till them tractors of fix's
took the only work he had away.
- What you doing
on mathu's porch, yank?
- I killed him.
You can do that all day long.
- I'm next, mapes.
- Then me.
- We'll all go.
- Lou.
- Sheriff,
you want me to call state
in Baton Rouge down?
Let's get some ambulances
down here.
- You know mathu did it,
didn't you?
He's the only one
with guts enough.
- Why don't you just arrest him?
- On what charges?
Just 'cause Beau was killed
in his yard?
That's no proof.
Every one of em's got 12s
and number 5 shells.
He ain't gonna get out
of this one.
He killed a man.
She ain't gonna get him
out of that.
Maybe Beau was living
in the past, I don't know.
But she sure is.
She's trying to do
what her grandaddy did
50 years ago.
Well, she can't.
Can't you talk to her?
I-I don't want anything
to happen on this land, Lou.
There's a crowd in Baton Rouge
gettin' drunk
for tomorrow's game.
They'd just look forward
to a little necktie party.
- Yeah, she won't listen.
That's right.
- You tried throwing her butt
in the back of your car?
- You seen my car?
You two are gonna make
one hell of a marriage.
- Oh, don't get personal, mapes.
- If she had any sense,
she'd have
brought him in herself.
- You seem like maybe you got
something particular
against him.
- That's where you're wrong.
I admire that negro.
He's one of the best men
I've met,
white or black.
But he killed a man.
And fix ain't gonna take that
lyin' down.
I know fix.
- What mapes is trying to do
out here ain't working.
You never seen them like this.
They're fanatic.
You just be ready with some
backup when I call you.
And check
on a helicopter too.
- Beau is dead.
- Who killed Beau?
- Mapes didn't give me
the details, Mr. Boutan.
I'm sorry I'm the one
that has to--
- auguste!
Auguste!
Call the family together.
Some nigger killed my son.
- How do, Herman?
Well, ain't you gonna
get started?
- Sure, mapes.
Bring a stretcher
and a blanket.
- How long you reckon
he's been dead?
- Oh, two, maybe three hours.
What the hell
is going on around here, mapes?
You're sitting there
scratching your head.
Bunch of niggers
standing around with shotguns.
White man laying dead
in the grass.
What the hell is going on?
- I don't know any more
than you do, Herman.
You take care of your business.
I'll take care of mine.
And when you go back,
don't spread this around.
And don't say who the body is.
- I won't tell a soul.
If they ask about Beau,
I'll say he caught a chill
in this heat.
- I'm talking about
the shotguns.
And don't get cute with me.
I ain't in a mood for it today.
- Don't worry about the guns.
Nobody around here'd
believe it anyway.
Would you?
Crash!
- Mathu, come on over here.
- Stay where you're at.
- I'll come to the man.
- Hey, mapes.
Mind your hands now.
He's not chimley or yank.
Mind your hands.
- How you feeling, mathu?
- Fine, sheriff.
You?
- Tired, kind of tired.
Thought I'd get
a little fishing in.
Tell them to go home, mathu.
They'll do it
if you tell them to.
If they don't,
there's gonna be trouble.
- It's up to them.
- You don't have
to answer him.
- I don't mind talking, baby.
- Tell them to go home.
I've always been fair with you.
You know that.
Remember that alligator
we caught in '53
down on the atchafalaya?
Tell them to tell who did it,
mathu.
- I did it, sheriff.
- I know you did it.
But I have to hear it
from one of them.
Somebody has to say they came
here after it happened.
You don't want to see them hurt,
do you?
- Sheriff...
A man got to do
what he got to do.
What make him different
from a boy.
- I'm asking you man to man,
mathu.
Tell them to go home.
- It ain't going to work
this time, sheriff.
- Who said that?
- I did.
- Clatoo?
You're the last man I thought
would be looking for trouble
with the law.
- That's been my trouble.
- What's that mean?
- I'm old.
- So?
- About time I had trouble
with the law.
- You're going to jail.
- I figured I was on my way
when I shot him.
- Amen.
- Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
Now, ain't it a little bit late
to be getting militant
around here?
- I always been militant.
My intrance gone sour
keeping my militance down.
- I see.
I see.
- No.
You don't see, sheriff.
You don't see the flowers
we used to see
when there was no weeds.
Uncle moon,
auntie spoodle,
ma and pa.
They all used to sit out there
on the porches.
They all had flowers.
Nobody had four o'clocks
like Jack toussaint.
4:00 every afternoon,
they'd open up just as pretty.
Remember?
- Remember Jack and red rider
hitting the fields every morning
with them two mules,
diamond and Joe?
- Tell me, who could beat those
two men plowing a row?
- Nobody.
Them was men then.
- Lord, lord, lord.
- Tell me y'all can't remember
them early mornings?
Son, you used to come up
over them trees.
- Remember Harry,
that old mule red rider?
How they used to hit the fields?
Any y'all remember anybody
that could outwork Harry
and the red rider?
- 30 or 40 of 'em just to hit
the cane field.
Sunup till sundown,
we all stuck together.
Where's all the folks that used
to pray or sing at church?
Dead.
Gone.
- And that's something
you can't see, sheriff.
That's why I did it.
Fix and that tractor was getting
closer and closer
to the graveyard,
and I got scared
that that tractor
would plow up them graves
and get rid of all the proof
that we ever was.
- You know my brother Silas?
You can't see him.
Last black man
around here to sharecrop,
and we told him to stop.
The marshalls dosed out
all the best land to the cajuns
anyway.
"Get off the land," we told him.
Raced that mule
against a tractor and won.
There ain't no black man
supposed to win 'round here.
They beat my brother down
into the ground.
And I didn't move,
didn't do nothing.
And I was there.
Y'all don't know
'cause y'all wasn't there.
I ain't been able to talk
about it before.
Been in here all these years
boiling in me.
Fear done spoiled my intrance.
Fear.
I don't know how come
I'm still alive.
Silas, forgive me.
Can you hear me?
Forgive me, Silas.
Where was the law?
Where was the law then?
- If I was the sheriff
around here,
they wouldn't be talking to me
that way.
- Just stick around long enough.
- Griffin, shut up.
- We ain't run out of stories
yet.
- I don't want to hear anymore.
Far as I'm concerned,
you've all run out of stories.
So it's all on fix, huh?
Whether he did anything or not.
Fix is going to pay
for everything
that ever happened to you?
Is that it?
Fix didn't change things
around here.
Progress did.
And fix wasn't even there
the night Oliver died
in the hospital, booker.
You're blaming the wrong man.
And you're talking
30, 40 years ago,
with no proof fix was in
any of it.
- We get killed,
lynched, shot,
guts all hanging out,
and here he come up with
"ain't no proof who did this."
Ain't that just like
white folks?
- Sure is.
- And it ain't been no 40, 50
years ago.
Right here in them
demonstrations,
somebody was always
turning up missing.
Things ain't that nicety-nice
around here now.
- I could take you to jail,
beulah.
- I'm ready to go.
- Me too.
*
- all or none, huh?
Is that how you organized it?
- Why don't we just throw that
old coon in the back of the car
and get out of here?
- Sure got a big mouth for
somebody with hardly any butt.
- Well, we're all one big
happy family, ain't we?
- Do you need to lie down?
He hasn't been feeling well
lately,
suffering from dizzy spells.
- I get dizzy spells too.
Every time I shoot somebody.
- You know, there's 25 of them
there now,
not counting fix's crowd,
and more coming.
- The quiet before
the hurricane.
Fix will be here when he gets
them all together.
Y'all know that, don't you?
- We'll be here too, sheriff.
We'll be here too.
- Lsu's salt and pepper,
that's some combination.
Ooh, did you see that?
It was the block thrown by lsu's
Gilbert "salt" boutan,
John bridey of central state,
that led lsu to a 41-10 victory.
And the crowd goes wild.
And there's Sully waving
from the bench.
- Yeah, coach, he sure is.
Gil, coach wants to see you
in his office.
Ooh.
- I thought we'd gone over
tomorrow's game plan.
- I don't think it's about
football this time.
- Hey, what's up?
- Gil, what's the matter?
- My brother was killed.
Why today?
- Hey, Gil.
That's Cal.
Damn it, Gil.
That's pepper.
Gil.
- Why today, Sully, huh?
Give me your keys.
The black people at Marshall,
I just hope to god
none of them did it.
Thanks.
- Take care, man.
- I didn't want to head home
right away.
I wanted to go to
Marshall quarters first.
This was cajun country.
You had a few other whites,
a few blacks,
but mostly cajuns,
with names like
jireaux, monteux,
rautmare, broussard, lambreux.
- Are you Gil?
All right, go on.
- Our family doesn't own
any land.
My father was the first one
to lease this land from
the marshalls,
and my brother Beau
was working it.
- Hello, Gil.
- Where's my brother, mapes?
- Took him to the morgue.
I got Russell back on the bayou.
Told him to keep your daddy
back there.
Don't want him here at Marshall.
I'll have this over by sundown.
He'll be in jail.
- You know who did it?
- Yep.
I know.
- Why don't you arrest him,
mapes?
- You'll let me take care
of that.
- Mapes.
My brother been dead how long,
huh?
Four hours and...
You mathu?
- Yep.
I did it.
- What's going on here, mapes?
What the hell is going on here?
- Beau come in here stalking
Charlie with a shotgun.
- You're lying.
Beau would never come after
Charlie with a gun.
A stalk of cane, yeah,
but never a gun.
- Whoa, Gil.
Whoa.
- You never did like us, candy.
Looking at us like we were
some breed below marshalls,
but we're not.
We're not.
Your folks had a break,
not mine.
My god.
You're pathetic.
You know that?
Pathetic.
When's it going to stop, huh?
Won't it ever stop?
*
I do all I can to stop it.
- Don't you think you'd be
better off up at a house?
I can keep you posted on things
down here.
- I'm not leaving.
- Yeah, well, Gil just got here.
Gil?
They're waiting for you inside.
Go ahead.
- Uh, I'd like you to come in
if you don't mind.
- Sure, Gil.
Anything.
Look at that and that.
How could I stop it?
Man, it's up to you now, Gil.
Talk some sense into them.
Calm 'em down.
- Yes.
Oh, hold just a minute.
Gilbert's just come in here now.
- Really good man.
We gotta get the one
that did it to him.
- Sorry, Gil.
- We're so sorry.
- This is terrible, Gil.
- Sorry, Gil.
- Sorry, Gil.
Be strong, Gil.
- How're you so late
getting here, Gilbert?
- I went by Marshall, papa.
They'd already
taken Beau to the morgue.
- What was mape doing?
Do we know who did it?
- He don't want you down there,
papa,
until he sends for you.
- My boy dead,
shot dead like a dog,
and mapes don't want me
in the quarter?
Tell me, does he know the one
who did it?
- He thinks mathu did it.
Claimed Beau chased Charlie
into his yard with a shotgun.
- Why would mathu kill my boy?
- He'd been too big for his
pants since I known him, fix.
I think we're wasting time,
and what difference does it make
why?
He shot Beau.
That's all we need to know.
- You're not a member of this
family and you don't speak.
Get out if you can't hold
your tongue.
Right?
- At Marshall, there's a bunch
of old black men with shotguns.
- Let's go get 'em.
- Old men, papa.
Your age.
Auguste's age.
And they're waiting for you.
- What are you trying to say?
Get to the point, Gilbert.
- Papa, I want to be
an all-American, see,
and we have a really good
chance, Cal and me.
It'd be the first time ever,
black and white together.
And I depend on him, papa,
every moment I'm on that field.
- Your brother was killed today,
Gilbert.
I don't care if the one
who did it was black or white.
Your brother was killed today!
- Your brother
you're talking about.
- Papa, look.
If we're involved in anything
that's against the law,
even if our name was involved,
do you understand?
- But your brother.
- I love Beau,
but we can't bring him back.
And I won't go, papa.
You can beat me, but I won't go.
- What you think of this great
all-American here?
Alfonze?
- Auguste?
- Hmm.
- Jean, Mr. Hog butcher.
- Pop.
What will we do when we go
to the quarter, huh?
And who else will go,
and for what reason?
- You forget your brother
was murdered today!
- Papa, me, I won't ever
forget today.
But if they are friends,
show respect, huh?
Stay out of their quarter until
mapes has all this cleared up.
- Beau's been dead for hours and
mapes ain't done nothing yet.
- Mapes will take care of it.
- Don't listen to Luke, fix.
He's no friend of your family.
- He is a friend.
- Then we go to the quarter.
- No!
- Don't try it!
- I won't have none of that
in my house!
No!
- Luke wants trouble, fix.
- Fix?
Mr. Boutan.
In my house, I decide what's
right and what's wrong.
Me!
William fix boutan.
What should I do, auguste?
- I'm an old man.
I don't know if what they say
is right or wrong anymore.
Je connais pas.
- Well, auguste don't have all
his senses,
and all Gilbert wants to do is
play football with niggers.
I say we go.
- Luke's days are over, papa.
The day where you take the law
in your own hands,
those days are gone forever!
- The day when family
responsibility is put aside--
- the day of the vigilantes,
they want us to go there, papa!
I want people to know that we're
not what they think we are.
- And the rest of you.
- Are we going to let them
niggers stand there
with shotguns
and not accommodate them?
- I'm not interested in you,
Luke.
Only in my family.
And if the majority feel
that Beau was not worth it,
then the family has spoke.
- Papa.
- Leave, Gilbert.
Go.
Run the football.
Let that take the place
of family.
Change your name,
Mr. All-American.
Get out of my house!
- Papa, don't send me away.
*
- You want my opinion?
Go on back to lsu.
Get some rest, and tomorrow play
the best game
you ever played in your life.
- What about them, Russ?
- You want to do something
for them?
Play in that game tomorrow
with pepper.
Gil, sometimes you have to plow
under one thing in order--
- just leave me alone, Russ.
- If you think this is over,
you're crazy.
- Stay away from Marshall.
- Sure, Russell.
We're just going to tee-Jack's
for a few drinks.
Why don't you just go
kill him off, Gil?
He's already half-dead anyway.
- Luke will was always
hanging around my family,
but he wasn't from around here.
He worked with the oil drilling.
On the side, he did other
little jobs,
like turn over school buses
or throwing a few snakes
into churches.
*
- How you doing tonight?
Are there any spiders
in there?
- Yeah, there's some cobwebs
in there.
Listen.
Why don't you do something?
Go home, take a bath.
Come back in a little while.
You're not going to miss
anything, and I'll be here.
- Oh, come on, Lou.
You know what mathu means
to me.
This is my land.
They're my people.
I know.
I got to help.
- I don't know what you're
talking about.
Your land, your people.
That sounds like something
from a hundred years ago.
Let me tell you something,
you can't do any good here.
These old men, they don't need
any help from you.
- Oh, yes, they do.
And I need you back up
to the front there,
so mapes doesn't do
anything stupid.
Don't--don't stand around here
waiting on me.
Go on.
- Mapes?
Mapes?
- Oh.
How are you?
- I brung you some sandwiches.
- Oh, good.
- But it's all I brought.
- That's fine.
- There ain't no beer.
- Water will do.
- Snookum.
Now I want you to go
and get that jug of ice water
out of the icebox.
Get me them jelly glasses
out of the safe
and bring it to the sheriff
right away now.
- Too late to go fishing now
anyhow.
- Yep.
- Griffin, hurry up.
Get the rest of it
out of the car.
You see the sun?
It's getting late,
candy Marshall.
And don't come up to the house
bleeding,
because I'm not patching up
anybody.
*
look at these guns.
Never saw anything like this
in my life.
Have a sandwich.
- Thank you, deputy.
- Thank you, deputy.
- Thank you, sir.
- Thank you, deputy.
- Just look at that.
- Thank you, deputy.
- Guns all over.
Have one and pass it right on
up there.
- Hello, Mrs. Merle.
- Oh, Lou.
You know, I've known candy
for over 20 years.
She was no more than 5 or 6
when her father and mother
were killed in a car wreck.
Mathu here in the quarter and I
at the main house
done as much to raise her
as her uncle and aunt,
maybe even more than they.
Yes, we done more than they.
*
- That river where the people
went all their lives,
where they fishing,
wash their clothes,
where they got baptized--
St. Charles river.
No more.
Can't go there no more.
*
- Got you.
- All right,
got some news for you.
Fix ain't showing up.
- That's a lie.
- Y'all might as well go home.
- He's got to show up.
Look at the blood on that grass.
That fix's boy's blood.
- Fix ain't the fix
of 30, 40 years ago.
Fix ain't coming.
- That just don't sound
like fix.
- I say it's a lie.
- Just trying to throw us off.
- Mathu?
You ready, old friend?
- Hey, sheriff.
I just called you a liar
in front of a bunch of niggers.
Ain't you going to take me in?
- Come on along, mathu.
- I'm ready, sheriff.
- Now, hold it.
Hold it.
The show is over with.
What you think you're going
to do with them empty guns?
- Hold it.
Sheriff, can we talk with mathu
inside?
Give us a few minutes?
- Well, make it quick.
I'm real tired now.
- All right.
Y'all come on inside.
All of you.
- Griffin, back door.
- Not you, candy.
We don't want you there
this time.
- Nobody's talking without me.
- This time we have to.
- What did you say?
You know who you talking to,
clatoo?
Get the hell off of my place.
- I'm not going anywhere, candy.
- Y'all can go on and listen
to clatoo if y'all want.
But clatoo got his own land,
and y'all don't have nothing
but this.
You leave here now,
and you won't even have this.
- It sound familiar.
- You want to keep them slaves
all their lives, is that it?
- I'm protecting them.
My family has always
protected them.
Mathu.
Is that what you want?
- I want you to go home.
That is what I want.
I got to pay.
No.
- Candy, now you go on home.
- No.
No, you have paid enough
already.
My granddaddy told me
that you've paid enough.
Let go of me, Lou dimes.
Get off of me.
Mathu!
Mathu!
This place is gonna die
without you!
This is nothing without you!
- Well, the man going to take
mathu in.
- Then we go too.
- And do what when we get there?
- Same thing we was going to do
before.
- I already said it.
If they take mathu to jail,
they take me to jail.
- You think I'm stupid,
don't you?
- No.
Maybe you don't know it,
but after tonight there's going
to be a big change in your life.
That old man's free of you now.
He set both of you free.
You know what I'm saying?
He doesn't need you to protect
him anymore.
What little time he's got left,
he wants to live it his own way.
- What about me?
- What about you?
You know what, candy?
Before I leave here tonight,
I want a yes or a no
as to where our relationship
is going.
And if I don't get any answer,
I won't be coming back here
anymore.
- You bastard.
- That's highly possible.
I wasn't there when it happened.
Well, if that's how you feel
about it,
thank you, ma'am.
I'll just stick around till
mapes takes him to bayonne.
That's all I'll need
for a story.
- Now, y'all can see the man's
Patience done run out.
To fight 'sides him.
That's why we all came here.
Now to fight who?
Ain't nobody to fight.
- I ain't come all this way
for nothing.
I don't care what clatoo say.
- No.
No, no.
Clatoo is right.
There ain't nothing more
to prove.
Ain't nothing more.
Look.
Look at here.
Chimley with a gun.
Bill and yank.
Gentlemen.
I must thank y'all for
the proudest day
of my life.
Thank y'all, gentlemen.
My lord, I never thought
I'd live to see this day.
Ain't nothing but a mean,
bitter old man.
Hating them white folks
out there by the river,
hating y'all in the quarter.
Hating them because they never
let me be a citizen.
Hating y'all 'cause you
never tried.
Put myself above all of y'all.
I'm proud to be an African.
I ain't nothing but
a mean, bitter old man
till this hour.
Thank you, gentlemen.
Thank you.
- We'll never gather like this
again.
- Now wait a minute.
Clatoo, you can have anything
in here you want.
The rest of it,
just throw it all away.
- Hey, where you going?
Y'all just stay where you at.
Mathu ain't going to no jail.
One of y'all that ain't doing
nothing,
call a lawyer in here.
Man up, all right.
Man.
- It ain't fix.
You heard him yourself.
He wanted to come but wouldn't
come without his sons.
The way I see it,
he left it to us.
- Fix ain't coming?
- Man, what's this world
coming to?
- The end.
Plus, we the only ones left.
If it wasn't for us,
the nigger might get away.
What do you say, sharp?
- I say we go see those niggers
and kick some Booty.
- I hear that.
- Maybe fix is right, Luke.
- You telling me you agree
with Gil boutan?
- No, but mapes is out there.
I say let the law
take its own course.
I mean, that's what we pay him
for, ain't it?
- What you mean?
You scared of some old niggers
with shotguns, sharp?
- I ain't scared of nothing,
Luke.
Boutans are not like they used
to be.
I got a wife and kids.
If I go to jail, who's going to
take care of them?
You?
- A nigger killed Beau.
Now are we going to let
that slide?
What are we going to let slide
next?
When one of them rapes
your wife?
- I'm with you, Luke.
- Shut up.
I ain't drinking with you
no more, sharp.
Go on.
Go home to Lois.
We'll do it without you.
- Yeah, go on home, sharp.
We don't need you.
- I ain't seeing you this
afternoon, Luke will.
- Tee-Jack.
- Good evening, Mr. Marshall.
- Heard about Beau,
Mr. Marshall?
Got killed by a nigger
on your property.
Fix don't like it too much.
Your niece is out there
playing games.
Can you hear me, Mr. Marshall?
- I have no niggers.
Never had any niggers,
never wanted any niggers,
never will have any niggers.
They belong to my niece,
miss candy semly Marshall.
Now if you don't mind, I'd like
to finish my drink, Luke will.
- This is Griffin calling.
Can anybody hear me?
- Yeah, we can.
- This is Griffin, over.
I think we got something
going on down here.
I tried to tell mapes
from the beginning.
Now he's gone in the house.
18 men with shotguns,
and he's been in there
15 minutes.
We're going to need a code three
down here right away.
And call state too.
- Come on, radio.
Come on.
- They cut him off, Luke.
- Let's go.
- Yeah, let's roll.
- Go easy on that liquor, Leroy.
- You got your own, Luke.
Can't get none of mine.
- I said let go of it.
- Hey, hey.
Quit it.
Not in here.
Get out!
Get out of my place.
- Shut up.
Alcee!
Leroy!
Don't let me down, Leroy.
Not you.
Don't let me down.
- I won't let you down, Luke.
- Move over.
- Started in the field, sheriff.
Beau cussed me.
Said he was going to beat me.
I told him I wasn't going to lie
no more
when I turned 40.
He didn't think I'd hit him,
but there comes a day.
He chased me in here.
And mathu say he'd rather see me
dead than run from another man.
He give me his gun.
When Beau wouldn't stop,
he raised his gun
and I pulled the trigger,
and I told mathu to say
he did it.
- Charlie, I don't believe you.
- Yes, I did!
Then I ran.
I ran. I ran.
And everywhere I turned, I was
still on the Marshall place.
Like a wall everywhere.
I fell down and screamed.
Ate dirt.
Then I heard a voice
coming across the swamp,
coming from the graveyard.
I thought it was
the dead ones awake
when you fired them shots
over the graves.
I listened, and I listened.
And I heard their voice say,
"come back."
A man come back to pay up,
sheriff.
Stops running.
- All right, Charlie.
Let's go.
*
- I'm all right.
- Good Charlie.
- Thank you.
- Charlie, what in the devil
possessed you?
- There just comes a day,
sheriff.
Just comes a day.
- Griffin, cover him!
- I ain't in this.
I ain't fighting no white men
over no niggers.
- You jughead.
- Hold it!
Where you going with Charlie?
- You got business around here,
Luke?
- You know why I'm here!
I want the nigger killed Beau!
- I got him.
He's going to jail.
- Don't you foolin' us, mapes!
There ain't nobody but Charlie.
Now, we come for mathu.
You know that.
- There he is.
You want him,
you take him.
Now I'm taking my prisoner
into town.
You can stay or you can leave.
It makes no matter to me.
Charlie, go ahead.
*
- Whose sheriff are you, mapes?
- Hey!
Hey!
- Get on out of here.
The sheriff got Charlie!
- Get out!
Get out!
- What are you doing this for,
Luke?
- Get out!
What the hell's wrong with you?
They're a bunch of old men,
for god's sake.
- I thought you said it was
mathu.
*
- Back up, Luke.
They're going to shoot you,
Luke.
Get in here.
- Ain't going to be no lynching,
tonight,
Mr. Luke will.
- Come on!
- I'll be coming back!
Do you hear that, candy?
Goddamn it!
Wait for me.
- Lord, have mercy.
We done did it!
- And we didn't back down.
*
Corrine?
*
- yeah!
- No!
No, stop, no!
No!
No!
No, no!
- I'm gonna get you,
Charlie.
I'm gonna get you, boy!
It didn't start
this morning.
It started about 30,
40 years ago.
That wasn't the first time
I run from somebody.
All my life that's all
I ever done
is run from people.
Made me do
what they wanted me.
"Nigger this, nigger that."
And as long as I was
big Charlie nigger boy,
I took it.
But there comes a day.
There comes a day.
Go inside!
Beau boutan trying to kill me!
- Oh, boy!
I know you're in there.
I've come to get you,
Charlie!
I've come to get you!
Come on out here, Charlie.
Come to kill you, boy.
- Janey,
did you hear that shot?
- Sure did.
- I ain't gonna
stay here, mathu.
You know what
fix boutan gonna do
when he find out
his son is dead,
killed by somebody black.
I just can't stay with you.
- Go on, then.
Get!
- I can't stay, mathu.
They'll hang me.
I just can't stay.
- Go on.
- They're coming now.
- Mathu, what did you do?
That's fix's son Beau.
What happened?
Mathu, you answer me!
I'm afraid for you, mathu.
Mathu, you know what fix
is gonna do when he finds out?
That's not just any white man
lying out there, mathu.
Mathu, please.
I can't let them kill you.
Not you, mathu.
Aunt glo!
Aunt glo.
- Is your name aunt
or glo?
Well, then
sit and eat your turnips.
- Aunt glo!
- How come we don't eat nothing
but turnips all the time?
- 'Cause I say.
- I ain't no turnip
eating machine!
- Aunt glo!
- What's the matter, candy?
- Get snookum out here.
- Snookum?
- Good-bye, turnips.
- What's snookum done now?
- Hurry, aunt glo.
I can't talk now.
Snookum, get over here.
Come on!
Snookum, listen to me.
I want you to run
and tell yank and Jameson
and corrine
and the rest of them
to gather at mathu's house
right away.
Now, listen to me good now.
Now,
you go up to the front,
and you tell miss merle
I say come down here quick.
No--tell her to call Lou
and tell Lou to get here quick.
No talking on that phone,
just get here.
Now, you heard what I said,
snookum?
- Mm-hmm.
- Okay.
- Why I'm telling all them
people to get here quick for?
- That's none of your business,
snookum.
You're a child.
Now do like I said.
Get moving.
Y'all coming to mathu's house
right now.
Come right now.
Bring your shotguns,
all of you.
- Y'all come to mathu's.
Candy said come to mathu's.
- Mathu's?
What do they want us there for?
- Hey, James,
come on to mathu's house.
Bring a 12-Gauge shotgun,
number five shells.
Edward,
come to mathu's house now!
- Janey!
Janey!
- What's the matter
with you, boy?
- Candy sent me.
Is miss merle in there?
- No, she ain't.
- Call Lou and tell him
candy wants him at mathu's.
- At mathu's?
- It has something to do
with Beau.
Something about Beau lying dead
in mathu's yard.
- Lord have mercy.
Lord have mercy!
- You gonna give me
some tea cakes?
Candy didn't pay me.
- You better get on, boy.
Go home where
you're supposed to be going.
Hello, Mr. Dimes.
Lou dimes?
Yes, this is janey
over at Marshall's.
Well, now, miss candy told me
to call you.
She says she needs you
right now.
- Me?
Well, now, that's strange.
I've known her
for three years.
She never needed
anybody before.
- It's got something to do
with Beau boutan being dead
over there in mathu's yard.
She says she needs you.
- I'm on my way.
- Okay.
- I killed Beau, miss merle.
I shot Beau.
- Candy, what's going on
down here?
And what is mathu doing
with that gun?
- I don't know, miss merle.
I shot him.
But all of a sudden,
mathu says he shot Beau.
And then when Ruth came,
he said he had as much reason
to shoot Beau as anybody.
So he ran home and got his gun.
He says he shot Beau.
But I'm still the one
that shot him.
- No.
Here in mathu's yard?
- Well, I said I did it.
But I need you to help me,
miss merle.
I need more guns.
- Candy Marshall,
I will do no such thing.
- No, no
now, more 12-Gauge shotguns
and people.
I need more people.
- Who?
- Janey knows them.
She can call them.
Get any of them, all of them.
- So they can be killed?
- Is that what you want,
blood all over this place?
- We don't have much time,
miss merle,
and I want an hour's jump
on mapes.
- And what about fix, candy?
What can you do about fix?
- I won't let him
touch my people.
I said I did it.
Now, you tell janey to tell
all the men to come here
with 12-Gauge shotguns
and number five shells,
empty shells.
You tell them to fire the guns.
Now, you don't have much time.
- Candy,
nobody in this parish
will ever believe
you killed Beau.
- Shh.
- You can't protect mathu.
- Tell janey to wait until
Lou dimes passes the house
before she calls mapes.
Well, it's done, mathu.
Can't nothing stop it now.
- Booker!
Booker, chimley!
Janey said miss merle said
candy wants y'all at mathu's.
She wants y'all
to bring 12-gauges
and number five shells.
- All that for what?
- Got something to do
with a white man dead
in mathu's yard.
Charlie's all scared.
He run down
my quarter screaming.
- He better run out
of Louisiana.
- I'd done my part.
She said y'all can do
like she said
or go home and crawl under
your bed like you always do.
Me, I'm leaving.
- These white folks
sure know how to mess up
the river, don't they?
- Yeah, fish used to come up
and asked to be caught.
Come up and tug at your line
like a woman
at a bedroom door.
- He works in mysterious ways,
don't he?
- That's what they say.
You think mathu did it?
- He could have.
See, I remember the fight
mathu and fix had.
It started over a coke bottle.
Now, when fix
had drunk his coke,
he told mathu to take the empty
bottle back in the store.
Mathu said, "hmm!"
He was nobody's servant.
Now, when fix told mathu
to take the empty bottle
back in the store again
and mathu didn't,
fix hit him.
And the fight was on.
Mm, man, for an hour,
it was toe-to-toe.
But when it was all over,
mathu was up.
Fix was down.
Now, them white people
tried to lynch mathu.
But sheriff wouldn't let them.
- I ain't never knowed
in my time
when a black man
kills a white one
and got away with it.
Not in this parish.
- Well, uh, if he did,
you know,
we ought to be there, chimley.
- You got any
number five shells?
- You sure now, chimley?
- How many times
he stand up for us?
- Scared?
- Yeah.
About that bed, chimley:
I'm too old
to go crawling under that bed.
Besides, it's too low.
- Yeah, mine ain't no higher.
- Janey!
Jack.
Jack.
Janey, who you know
don't like fix?
- Ma'am?
- Don't answer me
with a question, janey.
Who?
- Well, I don't know nobody
do like fix.
- You got their phone numbers?
Okay, I want you to go inside,
call them,
get them over to mathu's.
Hurry.
- Clatoo is somebody
you can call.
Was fix set that fire put his
junky store out of business.
Now I can have my peapicker.
- Oh, janey, don't you move.
We don't have time
for peapickers, bea.
Beau boutan is dead
in the quarter,
and candy is claiming
she did it.
- Well,
what can I do about it?
People die all the time.
She sure got spunk,
don't she?
That's my niece.
Probably why
nobody wants to marry her.
Janey, you know what time it is.
- Don't move, janey.
- Whoa.
Here on Marshall miss,
I say "don't."
And I say, "do."
Okay, janey,
what are you waiting for?
About time she shot
one of them boutans,
messing up the land
with those tractors.
Never should have leased
the land to fix
in the first place.
- We don't have time
for that, bea.
- His kind never loved
the land,
not like our neighbors.
- Now let's go, janey.
- Don't make me do nothing
like that, please, miss merle.
- Don't you tell me
don't make you do
nothing like that.
Now there is a crazy white girl
down in the quarter
claiming she killed
a white man.
I know mathu did it,
but she's gonna protect him.
And you and I
are going inside, janey,
and are gonna call up
everybody:
Uncle Billy and clatoo
and yank and coot, everybody.
- She got spunk.
- Well, you see,
I never wanted none of this,
protect your name and land.
Let my niece have it.
Let her run it.
I don't care
if it goes to hell.
- Booker, you gonna
tell me something
before you leave here
with a shotgun.
- Go somewhere and sit down,
beulah.
This is men's business.
- I'm making it my business.
- Catch him laying dead out
there in mathu's yard.
Charlie a fool and the others
is running.
But for once in my life,
I'm gonna be there when they
come to lynch somebody.
Now you know.
- That's got nothing to do
with you, booker, you old fool.
Have you gone crazy?
You think I'm gonna let you
go to mathu
and get yourself killed?
I bet you your brother
will stop you.
Just wait.
- Oh, no, beulah.
Now talk on that.
- What's the matter with you,
you old fool?
- What's the matter with me?
All these years we've been
living together, woman,
and you still don't know
what's the matter with me?
All these years
we done struggle
in George medlow's field,
making him richer
and richer
and us getting poorer
and poorer,
and you still don't know
what's the matter with me?
The years I done come home drunk
and beat you
for no reason at all.
All of them, woman.
All of them,
how he let him die
in that hospital
just 'cause he was black?
How'd he let him bleed to death
with no doctor to serve him
just 'cause he was black?
He works in mysterious ways.
Give old nigger like me
one more chance to do
something with his life.
I'm going to Marshall,
even if I have to die.
I know I'm old,
maybe even crazy.
But there's nothing
you can do about it.
- Lord have mercy.
- Pray if you want to.
Pray for all us old fools.
But woman,
don't try to stop me.
Jacob.
Go get your gun.
We're going over
to mathu's place.
Now hurry.
- Uh-huh.
- Old man,
what's the matter with you,
you shootin'
out that window like that?
- I don't know myself...
Why I'm doing things like that.
- Mm, mm, mm.
- But if them fish
ain't ready for me to eat
when I get back,
I'm gonna do myself
some shootin' right here.
- How you doing?
- You all shot?
- I'll save mine for the fields.
I might see me a rabbit.
Clatoo gonna be letting us off
before we get to Marshall's.
- What's with
all these shotguns?
- We're going hunting.
- What, this time of day?
Hunting where?
- We'll let you know
when we get back.
- Y'all come to mathu's.
- What for?
- Folks say to come.
Y'all come to mathu's.
- Yank and Jacob was waiting
for us by the road.
Yank was in his early 70s,
but he still thought
he was a cowboy.
We all felt kind of good,
'cause we was doing something
different for the first time.
We didn't do much talking.
It was just feeling proud,
proud as we could be.
- Wait for you
at the graveyard, clatoo.
- Hey, you ride back
with the rest of them.
- All right.
- You missed him, huh, Billy?
- He was moving.
- I hope you don't miss
fix like that.
- He was moving.
- After you stumbled over him,
he moved.
- Blind as a bat.
- Yeah, but now you're just
laughing at me
'cause I shot that rabbit,
man.
I know what that rabbit did.
Y'all laughing.
I shot the best I could.
It ain't every day you can
hit a rabbit.
- I heard that before.
- I mean...
Old man gonna shoot a rabbit.
- You too?
- Hey, my man.
- How you doing?
- All right.
- Good to see you.
- Yeah.
- Been expecting you.
- Everything gonna be
all right now.
- Remember Jessie?
- She hadn't ought to have got
mixed up with no white men.
- My brother Gabe is there.
Uncle ned's in here somewhere.
- We got a whole
lot of us in here.
You know, they seem to be
getting rid
of more and more
of these old graveyards.
Yeah.
I was the only man
from this parish
that fought with
the 369th infantry regiment.
That's when I went north.
369th was
an all colored outfit.
We didn't fight
'sides white folks then.
Oh, we were in France
and got decorated,
kissed on the jaw and all.
And I was proud.
Ooh, yes, I was proud
till I came home.
And the first white man I met,
very first one,
told me I'm home now
and they didn't cotton
to niggers
wearing medals
for killing white folks.
That was back in world war I,
and things ain't changed
one bit.
Huh, look what happened
to my boy Walter
after he come home
from the second world war
and they saw him with that
picture of that German girl.
I mean, you all know what they
did to him with them knives.
Well, this day
was a long time coming.
But I reckon a lot
of folks in here
will be proud of us
before this day is over with.
Of course, maybe some of us
might be even joining them.
- You all shot?
- Billy shot a rabbit
on his foot and missed.
- Well, now everybody
who ain't shot, shoot.
She told us to bring
empty shells.
Now, who ain't shot yet?
- I haven't.
- I haven't.
- Okay, go ahead, shoot.
Go ahead, shoot.
All right.
Now, them that want
to turn back--
anybody want to turn back,
you can.
There won't be nothing said.
- I tell you--
- ain't nobody--
- I'm not gonna.
- You know it could get pretty
hot around there today.
- Keeping all the way.
- Everybody ready?
Okay.
Heads up, back straight.
We're going in like soldiers,
not like tramps.
We're gonna let old mathu
see something today.
- That's right.
- Let's go.
- All right, gentlemen,
in a straight line.
On your shoulders.
Forward march.
Single file now.
One behind one another.
Put your gun by your shoulders.
- We had cane,
tall and blue-green cane
on both sides of the road.
This was the very land
we had worked,
our families and our people
had worked
since the time of slavery.
- How you doing, clatoo?
- Hi, candy.
- Hi, uncle Billy.
Thank y'all for coming.
- Yeah, how you doing?
- Put this away.
Well...
- She called for y'all.
I didn't.
The law'll come.
I'll turn myself in.
- I'm gonna turn myself in.
- You're gonna have to come
after me, Jacob aguilar.
- Now, look,
it was me who done it.
- I shot him.
- I did it for my brother.
- I shot him.
Chicken hawk came in my yard--
- I did it!
- No, I did it.
- I did it.
Now, if some of y'all don't
get out of the way,
gonna have to do
some more shooting.
- No, no, no.
If anybody did it,
it was me.
- Well, you've got to follow
behind me!
- I shot him!
- Y'all be singing
a different tune
before this is over.
Singing a different tune!
Mathu, put an end
to this nonsense.
Please, mathu.
- Go home, Jameson.
- I live here too, candy.
I ain't got no home
if they burn the quarter down.
Do you all understand what
I'm talking to you about, huh?
Clatoo, you got sense.
Now, you talk to him.
Tell him what can happen.
- I come here to stand.
Not to talk.
- That's right.
- You all came here to die.
- Go home, Jameson.
I don't want to have
to tell you anymore.
- Are you satisfied?
Are you satisfied?
And this here is supposed
to make up for all your hurts.
White man laying flat
on his back--
- did everyone shoot?
All number fives?
- Yeah.
- And them shooting them
number five shells, huh?
That's supposed to fool mapes?
You think mapes is crazy?
- Reverend Jameson,
nobody listening to you today.
Just go back home
like candy said.
- You old bootlicker.
Shut up.
- What did you say?
- Come on, come on.
Come on, you bootlicker.
- You want your men
to get killed?
- No, no, I'll whip you crazier
than you already is,
you old possum-looking fool.
- You'll just have to suffer
the consequences,
all of you.
- Go on, get.
- I guess we showed him.
- You know why,
don't you, clatoo?
- Yeah, I know, candy.
I know he looked out for you
all your life.
I know that.
And I know it ain't nothing you
wouldn't do for him.
I understand, candy.
- Yeah, you old fools!
Is that all, huh?
- Candy.
Candy, candy.
- Let go of me.
- Come on, candy.
What's going on?
What's gonna happen?
- You go back up there
with mathu.
I'm glad you got here.
I killed Beau.
- Oh.
And I killed Martin Luther King
and Kennedy.
What the hell is going on?
- I'm the one.
- I did it.
- I know you're lying.
If this is a game,
it's damn stupid.
Can't somebody cover him up,
for god's sake?
- Corrine, go get me a sheet
or something.
- Did you call mapes?
- I told them to call mapes
after you passed by.
- Did mathu do this?
Huh?
Candy, just tell me
the truth now.
Fix is going to demand--
- I did it, and that's what
I'm telling mapes,
what I'm gonna tell radio,
what I'm gonna give TV.
Go!
- Well, well.
Hello.
How do, folks?
- Hey, sheriff.
- Sheriff.
- Mm-mm.
Turn that thing off.
- Sir?
- The tractor!
- Yes, sir.
- Oh, and Griffin,
get on that radio.
Tell Russ--
nobody else--
tell Russ to go back
on that bayou
and keep fix and his crowd
back there
till he hears from me.
You understand that?
- Yeah, sheriff.
- Thank you.
Mathu.
- Yeah.
- 12, 13...17, 18.
I count 18 of them.
Is that all
you could round up?
- I killed him.
- What for?
- Beau was living in the past.
You just don't beat people
with a stalk of cane
and hunt them like animals.
You just don't do that nowadays.
I'll swear to it in court.
And that's my story
to the press.
- Is that so?
Griffin, bring me one of them.
- Which one?
- Any one of them who can talk.
- I said I did it.
Now, why are you
questioning them?
- Candy, please--
- no.
Because they're black
and helpless.
Is that why you're
picking on them?
- You.
- What you doing from behind
those trees, Jacob?
- I killed him.
- How'd she get you
from behind those trees?
- I said I killed him.
- Ahh!
- Why don't you use a stick
or a hosepipe?
- I said, "one who can talk,"
Griffin.
Ah, uncle Billy.
Come on down here.
Hurry along now.
How come you're so far
from home, uncle Billy?
- I killed him.
You ever see anybody die in
the electric chair, uncle Billy?
- No, sir.
- Well, that ain't
a pretty sight.
When that juice hits you,
I've seen that chair dance.
Is that how you want to go?
- No, sir.
- Well, I ain't got all day,
uncle Billy.
Today is my fishing day.
And I expect to see you
and old booker
down on the Charles fishing.
So I'm gonna ask you once again.
How come you so far from home?
- I killed him.
Smack!
- Hey, man!
- Mapes, I'm gonna
remember that.
- Now let's try it again,
uncle Billy.
How come you so far from home?
- 'Cause I killed him.
Ahh!
- He's an old man now, mapes.
- Is that all you're gonna do?
- What exactly is it
that you want me to do?
You want me to go
to jail with him?
I don't particularly want to go
to jail with him, okay?
- You still go to church,
uncle Billy?
- Deacon
in the Shiloh baptist church.
- Well, don't your Bible tell
you to always tell the truth?
- It do.
- Then why did you kill Beau?
- Beau beat my son crazy,
beat him so crazy
I had to send him to Jackson,
beat him so bad the boy
don't know me no more.
- Well, don't your Bible say,
"thou shalt not kill"?
- Sometimes you have to stray
away from that Bible, sheriff.
- Is that a fact?
Griffin, stand uncle Billy
over there by the fence
and get me another one.
- You gonna beat them all,
mapes?
- Get her out of here.
- This is my land,
in case you forget,
sheriff mapes.
- Stay out of my way.
- Like hell.
- Like hell you won't.
Yank.
Come on down here.
- Can you tell me a little
something about this man
he just called down here?
- Oh, that there's old yank.
Used to break all the horses
and mules hereabouts
till them tractors of fix's
took the only work he had away.
- What you doing
on mathu's porch, yank?
- I killed him.
You can do that all day long.
- I'm next, mapes.
- Then me.
- We'll all go.
- Lou.
- Sheriff,
you want me to call state
in Baton Rouge down?
Let's get some ambulances
down here.
- You know mathu did it,
didn't you?
He's the only one
with guts enough.
- Why don't you just arrest him?
- On what charges?
Just 'cause Beau was killed
in his yard?
That's no proof.
Every one of em's got 12s
and number 5 shells.
He ain't gonna get out
of this one.
He killed a man.
She ain't gonna get him
out of that.
Maybe Beau was living
in the past, I don't know.
But she sure is.
She's trying to do
what her grandaddy did
50 years ago.
Well, she can't.
Can't you talk to her?
I-I don't want anything
to happen on this land, Lou.
There's a crowd in Baton Rouge
gettin' drunk
for tomorrow's game.
They'd just look forward
to a little necktie party.
- Yeah, she won't listen.
That's right.
- You tried throwing her butt
in the back of your car?
- You seen my car?
You two are gonna make
one hell of a marriage.
- Oh, don't get personal, mapes.
- If she had any sense,
she'd have
brought him in herself.
- You seem like maybe you got
something particular
against him.
- That's where you're wrong.
I admire that negro.
He's one of the best men
I've met,
white or black.
But he killed a man.
And fix ain't gonna take that
lyin' down.
I know fix.
- What mapes is trying to do
out here ain't working.
You never seen them like this.
They're fanatic.
You just be ready with some
backup when I call you.
And check
on a helicopter too.
- Beau is dead.
- Who killed Beau?
- Mapes didn't give me
the details, Mr. Boutan.
I'm sorry I'm the one
that has to--
- auguste!
Auguste!
Call the family together.
Some nigger killed my son.
- How do, Herman?
Well, ain't you gonna
get started?
- Sure, mapes.
Bring a stretcher
and a blanket.
- How long you reckon
he's been dead?
- Oh, two, maybe three hours.
What the hell
is going on around here, mapes?
You're sitting there
scratching your head.
Bunch of niggers
standing around with shotguns.
White man laying dead
in the grass.
What the hell is going on?
- I don't know any more
than you do, Herman.
You take care of your business.
I'll take care of mine.
And when you go back,
don't spread this around.
And don't say who the body is.
- I won't tell a soul.
If they ask about Beau,
I'll say he caught a chill
in this heat.
- I'm talking about
the shotguns.
And don't get cute with me.
I ain't in a mood for it today.
- Don't worry about the guns.
Nobody around here'd
believe it anyway.
Would you?
Crash!
- Mathu, come on over here.
- Stay where you're at.
- I'll come to the man.
- Hey, mapes.
Mind your hands now.
He's not chimley or yank.
Mind your hands.
- How you feeling, mathu?
- Fine, sheriff.
You?
- Tired, kind of tired.
Thought I'd get
a little fishing in.
Tell them to go home, mathu.
They'll do it
if you tell them to.
If they don't,
there's gonna be trouble.
- It's up to them.
- You don't have
to answer him.
- I don't mind talking, baby.
- Tell them to go home.
I've always been fair with you.
You know that.
Remember that alligator
we caught in '53
down on the atchafalaya?
Tell them to tell who did it,
mathu.
- I did it, sheriff.
- I know you did it.
But I have to hear it
from one of them.
Somebody has to say they came
here after it happened.
You don't want to see them hurt,
do you?
- Sheriff...
A man got to do
what he got to do.
What make him different
from a boy.
- I'm asking you man to man,
mathu.
Tell them to go home.
- It ain't going to work
this time, sheriff.
- Who said that?
- I did.
- Clatoo?
You're the last man I thought
would be looking for trouble
with the law.
- That's been my trouble.
- What's that mean?
- I'm old.
- So?
- About time I had trouble
with the law.
- You're going to jail.
- I figured I was on my way
when I shot him.
- Amen.
- Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
Now, ain't it a little bit late
to be getting militant
around here?
- I always been militant.
My intrance gone sour
keeping my militance down.
- I see.
I see.
- No.
You don't see, sheriff.
You don't see the flowers
we used to see
when there was no weeds.
Uncle moon,
auntie spoodle,
ma and pa.
They all used to sit out there
on the porches.
They all had flowers.
Nobody had four o'clocks
like Jack toussaint.
4:00 every afternoon,
they'd open up just as pretty.
Remember?
- Remember Jack and red rider
hitting the fields every morning
with them two mules,
diamond and Joe?
- Tell me, who could beat those
two men plowing a row?
- Nobody.
Them was men then.
- Lord, lord, lord.
- Tell me y'all can't remember
them early mornings?
Son, you used to come up
over them trees.
- Remember Harry,
that old mule red rider?
How they used to hit the fields?
Any y'all remember anybody
that could outwork Harry
and the red rider?
- 30 or 40 of 'em just to hit
the cane field.
Sunup till sundown,
we all stuck together.
Where's all the folks that used
to pray or sing at church?
Dead.
Gone.
- And that's something
you can't see, sheriff.
That's why I did it.
Fix and that tractor was getting
closer and closer
to the graveyard,
and I got scared
that that tractor
would plow up them graves
and get rid of all the proof
that we ever was.
- You know my brother Silas?
You can't see him.
Last black man
around here to sharecrop,
and we told him to stop.
The marshalls dosed out
all the best land to the cajuns
anyway.
"Get off the land," we told him.
Raced that mule
against a tractor and won.
There ain't no black man
supposed to win 'round here.
They beat my brother down
into the ground.
And I didn't move,
didn't do nothing.
And I was there.
Y'all don't know
'cause y'all wasn't there.
I ain't been able to talk
about it before.
Been in here all these years
boiling in me.
Fear done spoiled my intrance.
Fear.
I don't know how come
I'm still alive.
Silas, forgive me.
Can you hear me?
Forgive me, Silas.
Where was the law?
Where was the law then?
- If I was the sheriff
around here,
they wouldn't be talking to me
that way.
- Just stick around long enough.
- Griffin, shut up.
- We ain't run out of stories
yet.
- I don't want to hear anymore.
Far as I'm concerned,
you've all run out of stories.
So it's all on fix, huh?
Whether he did anything or not.
Fix is going to pay
for everything
that ever happened to you?
Is that it?
Fix didn't change things
around here.
Progress did.
And fix wasn't even there
the night Oliver died
in the hospital, booker.
You're blaming the wrong man.
And you're talking
30, 40 years ago,
with no proof fix was in
any of it.
- We get killed,
lynched, shot,
guts all hanging out,
and here he come up with
"ain't no proof who did this."
Ain't that just like
white folks?
- Sure is.
- And it ain't been no 40, 50
years ago.
Right here in them
demonstrations,
somebody was always
turning up missing.
Things ain't that nicety-nice
around here now.
- I could take you to jail,
beulah.
- I'm ready to go.
- Me too.
*
- all or none, huh?
Is that how you organized it?
- Why don't we just throw that
old coon in the back of the car
and get out of here?
- Sure got a big mouth for
somebody with hardly any butt.
- Well, we're all one big
happy family, ain't we?
- Do you need to lie down?
He hasn't been feeling well
lately,
suffering from dizzy spells.
- I get dizzy spells too.
Every time I shoot somebody.
- You know, there's 25 of them
there now,
not counting fix's crowd,
and more coming.
- The quiet before
the hurricane.
Fix will be here when he gets
them all together.
Y'all know that, don't you?
- We'll be here too, sheriff.
We'll be here too.
- Lsu's salt and pepper,
that's some combination.
Ooh, did you see that?
It was the block thrown by lsu's
Gilbert "salt" boutan,
John bridey of central state,
that led lsu to a 41-10 victory.
And the crowd goes wild.
And there's Sully waving
from the bench.
- Yeah, coach, he sure is.
Gil, coach wants to see you
in his office.
Ooh.
- I thought we'd gone over
tomorrow's game plan.
- I don't think it's about
football this time.
- Hey, what's up?
- Gil, what's the matter?
- My brother was killed.
Why today?
- Hey, Gil.
That's Cal.
Damn it, Gil.
That's pepper.
Gil.
- Why today, Sully, huh?
Give me your keys.
The black people at Marshall,
I just hope to god
none of them did it.
Thanks.
- Take care, man.
- I didn't want to head home
right away.
I wanted to go to
Marshall quarters first.
This was cajun country.
You had a few other whites,
a few blacks,
but mostly cajuns,
with names like
jireaux, monteux,
rautmare, broussard, lambreux.
- Are you Gil?
All right, go on.
- Our family doesn't own
any land.
My father was the first one
to lease this land from
the marshalls,
and my brother Beau
was working it.
- Hello, Gil.
- Where's my brother, mapes?
- Took him to the morgue.
I got Russell back on the bayou.
Told him to keep your daddy
back there.
Don't want him here at Marshall.
I'll have this over by sundown.
He'll be in jail.
- You know who did it?
- Yep.
I know.
- Why don't you arrest him,
mapes?
- You'll let me take care
of that.
- Mapes.
My brother been dead how long,
huh?
Four hours and...
You mathu?
- Yep.
I did it.
- What's going on here, mapes?
What the hell is going on here?
- Beau come in here stalking
Charlie with a shotgun.
- You're lying.
Beau would never come after
Charlie with a gun.
A stalk of cane, yeah,
but never a gun.
- Whoa, Gil.
Whoa.
- You never did like us, candy.
Looking at us like we were
some breed below marshalls,
but we're not.
We're not.
Your folks had a break,
not mine.
My god.
You're pathetic.
You know that?
Pathetic.
When's it going to stop, huh?
Won't it ever stop?
*
I do all I can to stop it.
- Don't you think you'd be
better off up at a house?
I can keep you posted on things
down here.
- I'm not leaving.
- Yeah, well, Gil just got here.
Gil?
They're waiting for you inside.
Go ahead.
- Uh, I'd like you to come in
if you don't mind.
- Sure, Gil.
Anything.
Look at that and that.
How could I stop it?
Man, it's up to you now, Gil.
Talk some sense into them.
Calm 'em down.
- Yes.
Oh, hold just a minute.
Gilbert's just come in here now.
- Really good man.
We gotta get the one
that did it to him.
- Sorry, Gil.
- We're so sorry.
- This is terrible, Gil.
- Sorry, Gil.
- Sorry, Gil.
Be strong, Gil.
- How're you so late
getting here, Gilbert?
- I went by Marshall, papa.
They'd already
taken Beau to the morgue.
- What was mape doing?
Do we know who did it?
- He don't want you down there,
papa,
until he sends for you.
- My boy dead,
shot dead like a dog,
and mapes don't want me
in the quarter?
Tell me, does he know the one
who did it?
- He thinks mathu did it.
Claimed Beau chased Charlie
into his yard with a shotgun.
- Why would mathu kill my boy?
- He'd been too big for his
pants since I known him, fix.
I think we're wasting time,
and what difference does it make
why?
He shot Beau.
That's all we need to know.
- You're not a member of this
family and you don't speak.
Get out if you can't hold
your tongue.
Right?
- At Marshall, there's a bunch
of old black men with shotguns.
- Let's go get 'em.
- Old men, papa.
Your age.
Auguste's age.
And they're waiting for you.
- What are you trying to say?
Get to the point, Gilbert.
- Papa, I want to be
an all-American, see,
and we have a really good
chance, Cal and me.
It'd be the first time ever,
black and white together.
And I depend on him, papa,
every moment I'm on that field.
- Your brother was killed today,
Gilbert.
I don't care if the one
who did it was black or white.
Your brother was killed today!
- Your brother
you're talking about.
- Papa, look.
If we're involved in anything
that's against the law,
even if our name was involved,
do you understand?
- But your brother.
- I love Beau,
but we can't bring him back.
And I won't go, papa.
You can beat me, but I won't go.
- What you think of this great
all-American here?
Alfonze?
- Auguste?
- Hmm.
- Jean, Mr. Hog butcher.
- Pop.
What will we do when we go
to the quarter, huh?
And who else will go,
and for what reason?
- You forget your brother
was murdered today!
- Papa, me, I won't ever
forget today.
But if they are friends,
show respect, huh?
Stay out of their quarter until
mapes has all this cleared up.
- Beau's been dead for hours and
mapes ain't done nothing yet.
- Mapes will take care of it.
- Don't listen to Luke, fix.
He's no friend of your family.
- He is a friend.
- Then we go to the quarter.
- No!
- Don't try it!
- I won't have none of that
in my house!
No!
- Luke wants trouble, fix.
- Fix?
Mr. Boutan.
In my house, I decide what's
right and what's wrong.
Me!
William fix boutan.
What should I do, auguste?
- I'm an old man.
I don't know if what they say
is right or wrong anymore.
Je connais pas.
- Well, auguste don't have all
his senses,
and all Gilbert wants to do is
play football with niggers.
I say we go.
- Luke's days are over, papa.
The day where you take the law
in your own hands,
those days are gone forever!
- The day when family
responsibility is put aside--
- the day of the vigilantes,
they want us to go there, papa!
I want people to know that we're
not what they think we are.
- And the rest of you.
- Are we going to let them
niggers stand there
with shotguns
and not accommodate them?
- I'm not interested in you,
Luke.
Only in my family.
And if the majority feel
that Beau was not worth it,
then the family has spoke.
- Papa.
- Leave, Gilbert.
Go.
Run the football.
Let that take the place
of family.
Change your name,
Mr. All-American.
Get out of my house!
- Papa, don't send me away.
*
- You want my opinion?
Go on back to lsu.
Get some rest, and tomorrow play
the best game
you ever played in your life.
- What about them, Russ?
- You want to do something
for them?
Play in that game tomorrow
with pepper.
Gil, sometimes you have to plow
under one thing in order--
- just leave me alone, Russ.
- If you think this is over,
you're crazy.
- Stay away from Marshall.
- Sure, Russell.
We're just going to tee-Jack's
for a few drinks.
Why don't you just go
kill him off, Gil?
He's already half-dead anyway.
- Luke will was always
hanging around my family,
but he wasn't from around here.
He worked with the oil drilling.
On the side, he did other
little jobs,
like turn over school buses
or throwing a few snakes
into churches.
*
- How you doing tonight?
Are there any spiders
in there?
- Yeah, there's some cobwebs
in there.
Listen.
Why don't you do something?
Go home, take a bath.
Come back in a little while.
You're not going to miss
anything, and I'll be here.
- Oh, come on, Lou.
You know what mathu means
to me.
This is my land.
They're my people.
I know.
I got to help.
- I don't know what you're
talking about.
Your land, your people.
That sounds like something
from a hundred years ago.
Let me tell you something,
you can't do any good here.
These old men, they don't need
any help from you.
- Oh, yes, they do.
And I need you back up
to the front there,
so mapes doesn't do
anything stupid.
Don't--don't stand around here
waiting on me.
Go on.
- Mapes?
Mapes?
- Oh.
How are you?
- I brung you some sandwiches.
- Oh, good.
- But it's all I brought.
- That's fine.
- There ain't no beer.
- Water will do.
- Snookum.
Now I want you to go
and get that jug of ice water
out of the icebox.
Get me them jelly glasses
out of the safe
and bring it to the sheriff
right away now.
- Too late to go fishing now
anyhow.
- Yep.
- Griffin, hurry up.
Get the rest of it
out of the car.
You see the sun?
It's getting late,
candy Marshall.
And don't come up to the house
bleeding,
because I'm not patching up
anybody.
*
look at these guns.
Never saw anything like this
in my life.
Have a sandwich.
- Thank you, deputy.
- Thank you, deputy.
- Thank you, sir.
- Thank you, deputy.
- Just look at that.
- Thank you, deputy.
- Guns all over.
Have one and pass it right on
up there.
- Hello, Mrs. Merle.
- Oh, Lou.
You know, I've known candy
for over 20 years.
She was no more than 5 or 6
when her father and mother
were killed in a car wreck.
Mathu here in the quarter and I
at the main house
done as much to raise her
as her uncle and aunt,
maybe even more than they.
Yes, we done more than they.
*
- That river where the people
went all their lives,
where they fishing,
wash their clothes,
where they got baptized--
St. Charles river.
No more.
Can't go there no more.
*
- Got you.
- All right,
got some news for you.
Fix ain't showing up.
- That's a lie.
- Y'all might as well go home.
- He's got to show up.
Look at the blood on that grass.
That fix's boy's blood.
- Fix ain't the fix
of 30, 40 years ago.
Fix ain't coming.
- That just don't sound
like fix.
- I say it's a lie.
- Just trying to throw us off.
- Mathu?
You ready, old friend?
- Hey, sheriff.
I just called you a liar
in front of a bunch of niggers.
Ain't you going to take me in?
- Come on along, mathu.
- I'm ready, sheriff.
- Now, hold it.
Hold it.
The show is over with.
What you think you're going
to do with them empty guns?
- Hold it.
Sheriff, can we talk with mathu
inside?
Give us a few minutes?
- Well, make it quick.
I'm real tired now.
- All right.
Y'all come on inside.
All of you.
- Griffin, back door.
- Not you, candy.
We don't want you there
this time.
- Nobody's talking without me.
- This time we have to.
- What did you say?
You know who you talking to,
clatoo?
Get the hell off of my place.
- I'm not going anywhere, candy.
- Y'all can go on and listen
to clatoo if y'all want.
But clatoo got his own land,
and y'all don't have nothing
but this.
You leave here now,
and you won't even have this.
- It sound familiar.
- You want to keep them slaves
all their lives, is that it?
- I'm protecting them.
My family has always
protected them.
Mathu.
Is that what you want?
- I want you to go home.
That is what I want.
I got to pay.
No.
- Candy, now you go on home.
- No.
No, you have paid enough
already.
My granddaddy told me
that you've paid enough.
Let go of me, Lou dimes.
Get off of me.
Mathu!
Mathu!
This place is gonna die
without you!
This is nothing without you!
- Well, the man going to take
mathu in.
- Then we go too.
- And do what when we get there?
- Same thing we was going to do
before.
- I already said it.
If they take mathu to jail,
they take me to jail.
- You think I'm stupid,
don't you?
- No.
Maybe you don't know it,
but after tonight there's going
to be a big change in your life.
That old man's free of you now.
He set both of you free.
You know what I'm saying?
He doesn't need you to protect
him anymore.
What little time he's got left,
he wants to live it his own way.
- What about me?
- What about you?
You know what, candy?
Before I leave here tonight,
I want a yes or a no
as to where our relationship
is going.
And if I don't get any answer,
I won't be coming back here
anymore.
- You bastard.
- That's highly possible.
I wasn't there when it happened.
Well, if that's how you feel
about it,
thank you, ma'am.
I'll just stick around till
mapes takes him to bayonne.
That's all I'll need
for a story.
- Now, y'all can see the man's
Patience done run out.
To fight 'sides him.
That's why we all came here.
Now to fight who?
Ain't nobody to fight.
- I ain't come all this way
for nothing.
I don't care what clatoo say.
- No.
No, no.
Clatoo is right.
There ain't nothing more
to prove.
Ain't nothing more.
Look.
Look at here.
Chimley with a gun.
Bill and yank.
Gentlemen.
I must thank y'all for
the proudest day
of my life.
Thank y'all, gentlemen.
My lord, I never thought
I'd live to see this day.
Ain't nothing but a mean,
bitter old man.
Hating them white folks
out there by the river,
hating y'all in the quarter.
Hating them because they never
let me be a citizen.
Hating y'all 'cause you
never tried.
Put myself above all of y'all.
I'm proud to be an African.
I ain't nothing but
a mean, bitter old man
till this hour.
Thank you, gentlemen.
Thank you.
- We'll never gather like this
again.
- Now wait a minute.
Clatoo, you can have anything
in here you want.
The rest of it,
just throw it all away.
- Hey, where you going?
Y'all just stay where you at.
Mathu ain't going to no jail.
One of y'all that ain't doing
nothing,
call a lawyer in here.
Man up, all right.
Man.
- It ain't fix.
You heard him yourself.
He wanted to come but wouldn't
come without his sons.
The way I see it,
he left it to us.
- Fix ain't coming?
- Man, what's this world
coming to?
- The end.
Plus, we the only ones left.
If it wasn't for us,
the nigger might get away.
What do you say, sharp?
- I say we go see those niggers
and kick some Booty.
- I hear that.
- Maybe fix is right, Luke.
- You telling me you agree
with Gil boutan?
- No, but mapes is out there.
I say let the law
take its own course.
I mean, that's what we pay him
for, ain't it?
- What you mean?
You scared of some old niggers
with shotguns, sharp?
- I ain't scared of nothing,
Luke.
Boutans are not like they used
to be.
I got a wife and kids.
If I go to jail, who's going to
take care of them?
You?
- A nigger killed Beau.
Now are we going to let
that slide?
What are we going to let slide
next?
When one of them rapes
your wife?
- I'm with you, Luke.
- Shut up.
I ain't drinking with you
no more, sharp.
Go on.
Go home to Lois.
We'll do it without you.
- Yeah, go on home, sharp.
We don't need you.
- I ain't seeing you this
afternoon, Luke will.
- Tee-Jack.
- Good evening, Mr. Marshall.
- Heard about Beau,
Mr. Marshall?
Got killed by a nigger
on your property.
Fix don't like it too much.
Your niece is out there
playing games.
Can you hear me, Mr. Marshall?
- I have no niggers.
Never had any niggers,
never wanted any niggers,
never will have any niggers.
They belong to my niece,
miss candy semly Marshall.
Now if you don't mind, I'd like
to finish my drink, Luke will.
- This is Griffin calling.
Can anybody hear me?
- Yeah, we can.
- This is Griffin, over.
I think we got something
going on down here.
I tried to tell mapes
from the beginning.
Now he's gone in the house.
18 men with shotguns,
and he's been in there
15 minutes.
We're going to need a code three
down here right away.
And call state too.
- Come on, radio.
Come on.
- They cut him off, Luke.
- Let's go.
- Yeah, let's roll.
- Go easy on that liquor, Leroy.
- You got your own, Luke.
Can't get none of mine.
- I said let go of it.
- Hey, hey.
Quit it.
Not in here.
Get out!
Get out of my place.
- Shut up.
Alcee!
Leroy!
Don't let me down, Leroy.
Not you.
Don't let me down.
- I won't let you down, Luke.
- Move over.
- Started in the field, sheriff.
Beau cussed me.
Said he was going to beat me.
I told him I wasn't going to lie
no more
when I turned 40.
He didn't think I'd hit him,
but there comes a day.
He chased me in here.
And mathu say he'd rather see me
dead than run from another man.
He give me his gun.
When Beau wouldn't stop,
he raised his gun
and I pulled the trigger,
and I told mathu to say
he did it.
- Charlie, I don't believe you.
- Yes, I did!
Then I ran.
I ran. I ran.
And everywhere I turned, I was
still on the Marshall place.
Like a wall everywhere.
I fell down and screamed.
Ate dirt.
Then I heard a voice
coming across the swamp,
coming from the graveyard.
I thought it was
the dead ones awake
when you fired them shots
over the graves.
I listened, and I listened.
And I heard their voice say,
"come back."
A man come back to pay up,
sheriff.
Stops running.
- All right, Charlie.
Let's go.
*
- I'm all right.
- Good Charlie.
- Thank you.
- Charlie, what in the devil
possessed you?
- There just comes a day,
sheriff.
Just comes a day.
- Griffin, cover him!
- I ain't in this.
I ain't fighting no white men
over no niggers.
- You jughead.
- Hold it!
Where you going with Charlie?
- You got business around here,
Luke?
- You know why I'm here!
I want the nigger killed Beau!
- I got him.
He's going to jail.
- Don't you foolin' us, mapes!
There ain't nobody but Charlie.
Now, we come for mathu.
You know that.
- There he is.
You want him,
you take him.
Now I'm taking my prisoner
into town.
You can stay or you can leave.
It makes no matter to me.
Charlie, go ahead.
*
- Whose sheriff are you, mapes?
- Hey!
Hey!
- Get on out of here.
The sheriff got Charlie!
- Get out!
Get out!
- What are you doing this for,
Luke?
- Get out!
What the hell's wrong with you?
They're a bunch of old men,
for god's sake.
- I thought you said it was
mathu.
*
- Back up, Luke.
They're going to shoot you,
Luke.
Get in here.
- Ain't going to be no lynching,
tonight,
Mr. Luke will.
- Come on!
- I'll be coming back!
Do you hear that, candy?
Goddamn it!
Wait for me.
- Lord, have mercy.
We done did it!
- And we didn't back down.
*
Corrine?
*
- yeah!