Light in August: Chapter 10 Summary & Analysis

In a blur, Joe hears the voices of everyone leaving the house: Bobbie, Max, Mame, and the stranger. Before they go, they argue about whether they should take the money Joe brought for Bobbie, which is lying on the floor. Before Mame leaves, she takes a bank note from her stocking and tucks it into Joe’s trousers. After they are gone, Joe cannot yet stand up and thus continues to lie there rather “peacefully.” Eventually he stands up and looks at his severely bruised face in the mirror, but somehow doesn’t feel any pain.

Christmas finds an almost full bottle of whisky on a bureau, and drinks it all. Feeling “courageous” from the whisky, he then staggers out of the house and into the street, which will go on for “fifteen years.” It will take him to Oklahoma, Missouri, Mexico, Chicago, Detroit, and only then back south to Mississippi. During this time, he works in oil towns, in wheat fields, and in the army, although he deserts after only four months and manages never to be caught. During this time, Christmas sleeps with women and pays them if he has money. Otherwise he tells them he’s black, which usually freaks them out enough for them to immediately disappear. On only a few occasions does he end up “beaten unconscious.”

Eventually Christmas learned that there were actually some white women who would willingly have sex with a black man. Where he used to fight white men who called him black (even though he himself often goaded them into doing so), he now began fighting black men who called him white. During his time in Chicago and Detroit he lived in black communities, “shunning white people.” He lived “as man and wife” with a dark-skinned black woman. He tried to expel the whiteness from himself, even as his body physically recoiled from this effort. Throughout this period, Christmas was trying to escape himself, which made the journey he was on “empty” and endless.

Christmas is 33 by the time he arrives in Mississippi, to a town whose name he doesn’t care to know. He sees a big house, old and rather dilapidated, and decides to go there to ask for some food. Before approaching, he asks a young black boy about who lives there. The boy replies that it is Miss Burden, adding that there “aint no Mr. Burden.” The boy explains that Miss Burden is neither old nor young and lives alone; when Christmas asks if she is afraid, the boy replies that “colored folks around here looks after her.” The boy also informs Christmas that the next town is 30 miles away.

Christmas takes a nap in some shrubbery 100 yards away from the house, and at 10 pm he finally approaches it. He is surprised to find that the kitchen window is propped open with a stick, and climbs through it. He is moving not by his own volition, but as if he is being guided by another force. He eats something from a dish he cannot see in the darkness, not caring what it is. He is suddenly caught by a memory of waiting on the corner for Bobbie, whose name he has now forgotten.

Christmas now sees that the dish is fieldpeas cooked in molasses. He hears feet approaching, but does not move—he does not even stop eating. Joanna enters, wearing an old dressing gown and carrying a candle. She does not look scared, and Christmas thinks that she is probably not older than 30. She says: “If it is just food you want, you will find that.”