The Death of Joe Christmas and the Power of Words

Abstract

Chapter 19 of Light in August ends in Gail Hightower's kitchen, where the fugitive Joe Christmas barricades himself behind an overturned table. Percy Grimm, just steps ahead of his men, rushes into the doorway and opens fire with his automatic pistol, shooting Joe five times. But more is yet to come: When the others reached the kitchen they saw the table flung aside now and Grimm stooping over the body. When they approached to see what he was about, they saw that the man was not dead yet, and when they saw what Grimm was doing one of the men gave a choked cry and stumbled back into the wall and began to vomit. Then Grimm too sprang back, flinging behind him the bloody butcher knife. Now you'll let white women alone, even in hell, he said. But the man on the floor had not moved. He just lay there, with his eyes open and empty of everything save consciousness, and with something, a shadow, about his mouth. For a long moment he looked up at them with peaceful and unfathomable and unbearable eyes. Then his face, body, all, seemed to collapse, to fall in upon itself, and from out the slashed garments about his hips and loins the pent black blood seemed to rush like a released breath. It seemed to rush