The Piano Lesson

Three days have passed, and Wining Boy, Doaker’s older brother, is visiting. A half-empty whiskey bottle is on the table. Doaker is cleaning up, and they discuss Boy Willie and Lymon, who have been unsuccessful in selling their watermelons. They’ve been trying to take them to the white part of town, but the truck keeps breaking down. Wining Boy agrees that the Ghosts of the Yellow Dog killed Sutter, promising to run away if he sees his ghost. He also agrees that Berniece will never sell the piano. Doaker thinks that Berniece has spent enough time mourning Crawley and needs to get married again, mentioning that she has some kind of relationship with Avery. Wining Boy tells Doaker about a man who was telling everyone that he was Jesus and was going to follow in the footsteps of Jesus’s life. But when he got to the crucifixion, he backed out and told everyone to go to church.

Wining Boy tells Doaker about Cleotha, his now deceased wife. Wining Boy received a letter with the news. He loved her, but he couldn’t stay in one place, and after they married, they fought about his need to wander. She told him to leave but said that she loved him and promised that he always had a home with her. Wining Boy says, “I believe in my heart I always felt that and that kept me safe” (35). Wining Boy asks for more whiskey, and Doaker gripes but goes to his room and fills his glass. Wining Boy asks Doaker about Coreen, his wife who left him, and Doaker says that she’s in New York and he tries not to think about her. Boy Willie enters with Lymon, joking when he sees Wining Boy that he knew he’d come around when he was out of cash. Wining Boy insists, “I got a whole pocketful of money” (36). The truck has broken down again, and Boy Willie and Lymon argue about which one of them should sleep in the truck to keep an eye on the watermelons. Boy Willie asks Wining Boy about the bag of money he had last time he was there, and Wining Boy asks him for five dollars.

They talk about the Ghosts of the Yellow Dog, who have supposedly killed around 10 or 11 men. Boy Willie comments that Berniece doesn’t believe in them, but Wining Boy asserts that he went down to the Yellow Dog rail and “called out their names. They talk back to you too” (37). He claims that they responded by making him feel like a king, and afterward, he had good luck for three years. Boy Willie tells Doaker that he has the name of the man who buys musical instruments, explaining to Wining Boy his plan to buy Sutter’s land. Wining Boy doubts that Sutter’s brother is really waiting for Boy Willie to come back with the money, but Boy Willie insists that he could have sold it to Stovall already.

Wining Boy asks about Lymon and Boy Willie’s incarceration in the Mississippi penitentiary. They tell him that they were working for a white man hauling wood, and they kept some of the wood to sell themselves. They were caught and ambushed, accused of stealing wood. Crawley fought back and was killed. Lymon and Boy Willie ran away, but the sheriff caught up with them, and Lymon was shot in the stomach. They were both put in prison. Now, the sheriff down in Mississippi is looking for Lymon because he was arrested for not working. Jim Stovall paid the $500 fine, and Lymon was ordered to work for Stovall to pay him back. Lymon asked to be put in jail instead of being forced to work for free, but he wasn’t given a choice. Wining Boy offers to go back with Boy Willie since Lymon won’t. Lymon plans to stay up north where he believes Black men are treated better, and Boy Willie insists that he sees himself as equal to white men. Wining Boy explains how the law favors white men, and how white man can adapt the law to benefit themselves. Boy Willie asserts, “I don’t go by what the law says. […] I go by if it’s right or not” (41). Lymon replies that his attitude will land him back in the penitentiary.

At Parchman Farm, they were forced to work hard. Boy Willie starts singing “Berta, Berta,” a prison work song. Soon they are all singing, stomping, and clapping to the rhythm and breaking into harmony. Boy Willie tries to coax Wining Boy into playing the piano, but Wining Boy says that he doesn’t play anymore. Everywhere he went, when people found out that he could play, they would expect him to play, refusing to let him do or be anything else. He felt like he was carrying the piano on his back. People would give him drinks and women would fall all over him, but Wining Boy started to hate the drinks and the women. Boy Willie comments that if anyone plans to play the piano, they’d better hurry before it’s sold. Wining Boy reiterates that Berniece will never agree to sell it. Boy Willie argues, but Doaker explains for Lymon, who doesn’t know, the story of the piano and why Berniece won’t sell it.

Before slavery ended, their family was owned by Robert Sutter, the grandfather of the Sutter who died in his well. For his wedding anniversary, Sutter wanted to buy a piano for his wife, Ophelia, from a man named Joel Nolander. Sutter didn’t have the money, but he could use his enslaved people as bargaining chips. Sutter offered to trade “one-and-a-half n*****s,” or one adult and one child, for the piano (45). Nolander agreed, choosing Doaker’s grandmother, also named Berniece, and Doaker’s father, who was nine years old. For a while, Ophelia loved the piano, but she started missing Berniece and her son and the work they did for her around the house. Ophelia and Sutter tried to trade the piano to get them back, but Nolander refused. Ophelia was so upset that she became ill and took to her bed, starting to waste away. Then Sutter brought in Doaker’s grandfather, also named Boy Willie (they called him Willie Boy), who was extremely talented at woodworking. Nolander had wanted to buy him to keep the family together, but Willie Boy brought Sutter too much money with his craftsmanship, and Sutter wouldn’t let him go.

Sutter told Willie Boy to carve his wife’s and son’s faces into the piano. Once he’d carved Berniece and his son, he kept going, etching the faces of the rest of his family. Then he moved on to important scenes from his family history: his wedding, his mother’s funeral, Sutter’s selling Berniece and his son to Nolander. Sutter was angry about all the extra carvings, but Ophelia loved the work, as “now she had her piano and her n*****s too” (46). She played the piano happily until she died. But Doaker’s older brother, Boy Charles, who was Boy Willie and Berniece’s father, was obsessed with the piano. Boy Charles talked about it all the time, wanting to steal the piano, because the Sutters’ owning those carvings was almost like the family was still in slavery. Finally, in 1911, when they knew Sutter was out, Doaker, Wining Boy, and Boy Charles broke into Sutter’s house and took the piano. Doaker can only guess at Sutter’s reaction to finding the piano gone, but someone burned down Boy Charles’s house.

However, Boy Charles wasn’t home, having left town by hopping the Yellow Dog train. They don’t know for sure who stopped the train—possibly Sutter or the sheriff, and there were whispers of other suspects. But they found the boxcar where Boy Charles was riding with four transients and set it on fire, killing everyone inside. A couple of months afterward, one of the suspects fell into his well and died. That was the start of the rumors and stories about the Ghosts of the Yellow Dog exacting revenge. Doaker concludes that Berniece will never sell the piano that her father died over. Boy Willie argues that their father would have traded the piano himself if he’d had the chance to own some land. Doaker claims that he’s neutral on the issue and was just enlightening Lymon as to why Berniece would be so stubborn about selling. Wining Boy goes over to the piano and starts to play, singing a song about rambling and wandering. He doesn’t play or sing well.

After the song, Berniece enters followed by Maretha, greeting Wining Boy with surprise. Berniece exits with Maretha, promising to cook dinner for Wining Boy after she changes. Wining Boy comments on how big Maretha has gotten, and how pretty she has grown. Abruptly, Boy Willie goes to the piano and tells Lymon to come and help him determine how heavy it is and whether they can carry it. Wining Boy tells him to stop, but Boy Willie swears that he’s taking it as soon as he has sold enough watermelons to make room in the truck. Boy Willie asserts that the piano belonged to his father, and Wining Boy points out that he and Doaker helped him to steal it. Boy Willie reminds them that only Boy Charles died for it, which makes the piano his and Berniece’s. Doaker agrees. They manage to move it a little. At the same time, there is the sound of Sutter’s ghost, which only Doaker can hear. As they put the piano back, they all hear Sutter’s ghost. Boy Willie and Berniece argue about the piano. Boy Willie contends that they should be building on the inheritance of the piano. If Berniece were playing it and teaching students, Boy Willie would leave it alone.

Boy Willie believes that their father would be on his side. Berniece describes how their mother “polished this piano with her tears for seventeen years,” rubbing until her hands started to bleed and then rubbing her blood into the wood (53). Then, every day, she would tell Berniece to play. Berniece declares, “You always talking about your daddy but you ain’t never stopped to look at what his foolishness cost your mama” (54). She asks whether 17 years of loneliness was worth this “piece of wood” and revenge. Berniece exclaims that the men are all the same, perpetuating a cycle of stealing and killing. Nothing ever comes of it but more violence and theft. She accuses Boy Willie of killing Crawley, “just as sure as if [he] pulled the trigger” (54). Boy Willie and Lymon asked Crawley to help them load wood into their truck, and Berniece says that Crawley didn’t know the wood was stolen.

Boy Willie claims that they didn’t steal the wood. They were just “keeping […] a little bit on the side” of what they were hauling, and Crawley knew the circumstances (55). Some men saw where they were keeping it, and when Crawley heard that they might try to take the wood first, he got his gun. Boy Willie argues that Crawley was killed because he started shooting and the other men shot back. Berniece cries that they’re here and Crawley isn’t. She starts to hit Boy Willie, repeating, “He ain’t here, is he?” (55). Boy Willie reiterates that it wasn’t his fault until Doaker pulls her away from him. Suddenly, Maretha screams in terror upstairs.