The Mask and Procter Lewis

Earlier, I wrote about the role that Grant Wiggins plays in relation to the whites that he interacts with. Grant consciously decides whether or not he will conform to the role of the subservient African American that whites such as Henri Pichot and Sheriff Guidry expect him to be. Today, I want to explore this same interaction; however, this time I want to look at how Procter in "Three Men" decides to put on the mask in order to possibly get a more lenient sentence or perhaps bonded out of jail for killing Bayou during a fight over a woman named Clara. Like A Lesson before Dying, "Three Men" deploys the first person point of view, in this case, Procter's.

At the beginning of the story, Procter enters the jail to turn himself in. Upon entering, Procter sees two policemen sitting at a desk and talking. Initially, the officers look at Procter, "but," he says, "when they saw I was just a nigger they went back to talking like I wasn't even there" (121). Just as Henri Pichot makes Grant wait to see him, the two men, even though they notice Procter, make him stand there waiting before they even acknowledge him in any way. Trudier Harris points out that Procter's initial referencing of himself as a "nigger" is important. Essentially, through this reference, Procter "labels himself through the eyes of the whites," letting  them determine his identity (43). While Grant has a more fleshed out identity, he acts the same way as Procter does in order to gain a chance to see Jefferson.

Like Grant, Procter knows when to add words like "sir" and "mister" to his speech. However, just as Grant thinks about whether or not he will add these formalities, Procter toys with the notion as well, explicitly leaving "sir" off of statements.  When asked about whether or not Paul, the other officer, had ever brought Procter into jail, he simply responds with, "Yes sir, once I think" (123). Here, Procter uses "sir" as a sign of "respect," but behind his outward comment on going to jail once, he thinks to himself, "I had been there two or three times, but I wasn't go'n say it if he didn't. I had been in a couple of other jails two or three times, too, but I wasn't go'n say anything about them either" (123).

Immediately following this thought, Paul asks Procter if he is good with his fist. Procter replies, "I protect myself" (123). This response causes T.J. to perk up, prodding Procter with, "You protect yourself, what?" (123). This causes Procter to repeat the statement, adding "sir" to the end. After another question, Procter does the same thing by leaving off "sir," and T.J. prods him again. Harris notes that this exchange shows Procter as trickster because "[h]e is mask and wearer, the Uncle Tom and the self-aware trickster, for the trickster registers his true responses to the situation as well as his resistance to the very role he has elected to play out with the white men" (44). Procter maintains his mask, making sure the two officers see him as subservient and falling in line. However, as his previous thoughts show, Procter "registers his true responses." At one point, when T.J. tells Procter that the he would "run every damned one of you off in that river out there," Procter just stands there quietly and thinks to himself, "I was quiet, looking at him. But i made sure I didn't show in my face what I was thinking. I could've been killed for what I was thinking then" (125). We don't know what Procter was thinking, but we do know, through his comments, that it was a thought of resistance. Even with this thought, Procter's face remains the same, showing no evidence of the thoughts that lurk behind his expression.

Procter, like Grant and Booker Wright who I wrote about before, wears the mask. He knows how to respond, and how to resist, albeit in minor ways. What are some other examples, either in Gaines' works, where these interactions appear? Place them in the comments below so we can discuss them.

Gaines, Ernest J. "Three Men." Bloodline. New York: W.W. and Norton, 1976. 121-155. Print.
Harris, Trudier. The Scary Mason-Dixon Line: African American Writers and the South. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2009. Print. 

The White Eagle

When Gaines started coming back to Louisiana and Baton Rouge to write and research, he would frequent the White Eagle (pictured above) in Port Allen. Seeing that Baton Rouge was a dry town on Sundays, Gaines and his friends would cross the Mississippi River to Port Allen and frequent the rough and tumble White Eagle. In "Mozart and Leadbelly," Gaines writes, "The White Eagle was a rough place, and there were always fights, but I wanted to experience it all. One novel, Of Love and Dust, and a short story, 'Three Men,' came out of my experience at the White Eagle bar" (26-27). 

Of Love and Dust and "Three Men" both focus on an African American character who kills another African American in a barroom fight. The only difference is that Marcus gets bonded out of jail and Procter Lewis doesn't. Gaines talks about the White Eagle in regards to the inspiration for Of Love and Dust by saying: 

I was in a nightclub once where I saw a knife fight between two boys, two blacks, young men, and the fight was stopped before either of them got really hurt. Now, I also know of an incident where a friend of mine got in a fight like that, and he killed a guy. Three guys jumped on him, and he killed one of them. He was sent to prison. He had been working for the white man, and this man could have gotten him out if he wanted to come out, but he said, "I'd rather spend my time because I killed this guy." So, he went to jail; he went to Angola, the state prison in Louisiana, and he spent five years. (Tooker and Hofheins 100)

The friend Gaines mentions, in a way, resembles Procter because he decided to stay in jail and accept his punishment instead of allowing the white man to bond him out. Munford continually tells Procter in "Three Men" to stay in jail because if he allows Roger Medlow to bail him out he'll be right back in the same situation soon. Talking to Procter, Munford tells him that Medlow could bail him out because white men don't care if he killed another African American. So, Munford implores Procter to go to Angola "saying, 'Go fuck yourself, Roger Medlow, I want to be a man, and by God I will be a man. For once in my life I will be a man" (141).

The institution of African Americans being "bonded" out of jail to work on farms and elsewhere occurred throughout the South during the twentieth century. Writing about Of Love and Dust and the institution of "bonding" people out of jail to work, John A Williams says, "One hears stories from time to time of plantations like this, cut off from the rest of the world where slavery--what else can you call it?--still exists." Essentially, that's what the practice was, a new form of slavery. For more information on the practice, see Douglas a. Blackman's Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II.

Gaines, Ernest J. "Mozart and Leadbelly." Mozart and Leadbelly. Eds. Marcia Gaudet and Reggie Young. New York: Vintage Books, 2005. 24-32. Print. 

Gaines, Ernest J. "Three Men." Bloodline. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1976. 119-155. Print. 

Tooker, Dan and Roger Hofheins. "Ernest J. Gaines." Conversations with Ernest Gaines. Ed. John Lowe. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1995. 99-111. Print.