Document Information

• Section & Chapter: Part Two, Chapter 33
• Scene: Returning from Baton Rouge, Jim recalls a conversation with the bar owner while waiting on Bonbon and Pauline.
• Draft: Mid-to-Late Typescript
• File location: Box 3, folder 29

Discussion Questions

1. The opening paragraph of chapter 33 in this typescript became the first paragraph of chapter 34 in published version of the novel. However, the rest of the typescript becomes part of chapter 30 and spreads out in various areas of the surrounding chapters. Gaines revised the opening paragraph(s) of this chapter to adjust the way he set the scene. What differences do you notice between this draft and the published version? How do those differences change your sense of the scene and their order? In what way would this chapter remaining chapter 33, instead of chapter 34 in the published novel, change the story itself as a whole? Would it make sense or flow?
2. In the published novel, Gaines made some minor edits to the dialogue in this section and placed it within chapter 30. Identify a couple of those changes and describe how they alter the characters’ dialect and conversation. Why might Gaines have made those edits? Why did Gaines separate this scene and place different parts into other chapters of the published version?

Chapter Thirty-Three

We got back to the quarters just after dark. Bonbon’s yard was red. I didn’t know what it was at first; then I remembered he had to burn the leaves after he raked them. When we went by the house I saw him standing against the fire. The whole yard and the front part of the house was lit up. Behind the house was dark as the rest of the quarters.

Bonbon went down the quarters, driving just as fast as he ever did. He had drove all the way from Baton Rouge like that. But while him and Pauline was in Baton Rouge, they acted like they never wanted to leave. They musta stayed in that room five or six hours. I went back to the place three times and they was still in the room. The last time I went back I sat at the bar and waited for them. The big man who owned the bar and rented rooms was sitting next to me. He was a mulatto with curly brown hair and he had a big mole on his right jaw. He had freckles in his face too.

“Ain’t that a white man you came here with?” he said, after we had been talking a while.

“Yeah.”

“I thought so.”

“Gave you any trouble?”

“No, I saw the gun,” the fat man said. “They have to come with black women, but they have to bring a gun, too. Where y’all from?”

“St. Michael River.”

“Plantation up there?”

“Yeah. Hebert.”

“I know the place,” the fat man said. “Think I seen him before, too. Ain’t he the overseer there?”

“Yeah.”

“And her?”

“She works in the big house.”

“Nice looking women.”

“Yeah, she’s okay.”

“Want another beer?”

“Sure,” I said, “I’ll take another one.”

“Gladys,” the fat man said to the girl behind the bar.

She was the same waitress who had served us earlier. She She looked even prettier under those color lights behind the bar. I liked expecially that long black wavey hair. It was so glossy and it looked so light you just felt like reaching out and touching it. But from the way she ignored me when she served me the beer, I could tell I’d better keep my hand to myself.