"That Evening Sun(g)": Blues Inscribing Black Space in White Stories

Southern Quarterly, Spring 2004 by Peek, Charles A

Jesus, alone among the Negro men Quentin knows, will not help Nancy "fetch and deliver the clothes," has "a razor scar down his face," carries a "razor on that string down his back," may or may not be "kin to" Aunt Rachel, has been ordered to "stay off our place" by "Father," and is "gone to Memphis. . . . Dodging them city po-lice" (according to Nancy) or is "probably in St. Louis [with] another wife by now" (according to Mr. Compson) (290, 295, 294, 292, 293, 295). These details identify Jesus with a character type on which the blues both drew and helped propagate. This type is embedded in

Tales of "court, arrests, idleness, crime, and bravado" featuring the rounder, the eastman, the creeper, the baclman, and other generic characters in the form of Stackolee, Casey Jones, John Henry, Railroad Bill, and other legendary heroes. (Floyd 49)14

Among this character type's traits Floyd lists "deception, narrow escapes, revenge, much vitality . . . and dramatic oppositions and resolutions" (24). Whatever the guise, the origin of this character was the figure of the Trickster who, often in animal guise,

enters a situation in order to upset its normal harmony and create dramatic contrast; his subsequent antics inevitably lead to a rather chaotic situation that is eventually resolved through some form of accommodation. (Floyd 24)

These form the significance of the name "Jesus" for the trickster's name is Esu. Of Esu's other manifestations and his location, Floyd notes:

The transplanted Africans also brought with them the trickster god, Esu [or] Legba, guardian of the crossroads, or as the Devil, who frequented crossroads in search of souls for which to trade. (48)

Esu's more malevolent traits-that is, as Legba, the Devil . . . took hold as he emerged at the crossroads sometime in the late nineteenth century to deliver superior creative skills to black songsters, and exerted a powerful influence on the development of the blues, which would become ascendant following Emancipation. (73)15

The location of the Trickster at the crossroads, then, is worth some emphasis; it accounts for the way Faulkner constructs the setting for "That Evening Sun." Floyd locates all sorts of African American expression as taking place "early on . . . at the verges and crossroads" (267-68). Faulkner's story takes place at and between two locations connected by a lane crossed by a ditch by which the two races cross into each other's communities. Jesus stands outside the Compson house (from which he has been banished) and outside his own (either lurking or clear to St. Louis) from which he has been driven by circumstances. From there, although it is an unlikely position from which to inflict much real damage, he can instill fear and otherwise upset routines. Floyd cites these as instances of a "sneak attack on the values of the dominant white culture," undermining its power and control to a degree that made life more tolerable, amusing, and optimistic for African Americans (48). Esu/Jesus's function in the story not only upsets the Compson household routine; more importantly it upsets the Compson version of reality and the reader's confidence in Mr. Compson's judgment. Unlike Mr. Compson, Nancy asserts, "Jesus always been good to me" (294). Here, it is not "the other Jesus she means" (297)!