Louisiana Justice : A LESSON BEFORE DYING, <i> By Ernest J. Gaines (Alfred A. Knopf: $21; 256 pp.)</i>

One fall afternoon in rural south Louisiana in the late 1940s, a slow-witted young black man called Jefferson accepts a ride from two ne’er-do-wells, Brother and Bear. In the scene that serves as catalyst for Ernest Gaines’ eighth novel, “A Lesson Before Dying,” Brother and Bear decide to detour by Alcee Grope’s store to try to obtain a pint of wine on credit. When they are refused their request, guns are produced; two black men and the white grocer are left dead on the floor.

In a state of panic, Jefferson swills a half bottle of whiskey and pockets the money from the open cash drawer. Before he can flee, two white men enter the store. Jefferson is arrested, branded a co-conspirator in the robbery and put on trial for murder.

In his summation to the jury, Jefferson’s defense attorney tells them that “this skull here holds no plans. What you see here is a thing that acts on command. A thing to hold the handle of a plow, a thing to load your bales of cotton, a thing to dig your ditches, to chop your wood, to pull your corn. That is what you see here, but you do not see anything capable of planning a robbery or a murder. He does not even know the size of his clothes or his shoes. . . . What justice would there be to take this life? Justice, gentlemen? Why, I would just as soon put a hog in the electric chair as this.”

His words, demeaning as they are to poor Jefferson, fall on deaf ears. Given the time and place, the jury is comprised of 12 white men. With a black man standing accused of killing a white man, their verdict is a foregone conclusion: death by electrocution.

This verdict, and the reference to Jefferson being nothing more than a dumb animal, spurs the action of the novel, affecting the entire community, black and white, around the fictional town of Bayonne, the setting of all Gaines’ works.

Most touched by the tragedy is Grant Wiggins, the book’s narrator, who was raised by his aunt, Tante Lou, in “the quarter” adjacent to Henry Pichot’s plantation, upon which all the residents are dependent for their livelihood. Educated at an out-of-state university, he has returned to the plantation to teach in the elementary school.

Because of his role in the black community, Grant is summoned by Miss Emma Glenn, Jefferson’s “nannan” (godmother). She is grieved by the fate of the man-child she raised, but also deeply offended by the public defender’s remarks. She wants Grant to visit Jefferson in jail and make him know, to prove to the white people, that he is a man and not an animal.

“I don’t want them to kill no hog,” she tells him. “I want a man to go to that chair, on his own two feet.”

Grant’s problem is that since returning to the quarter he has become tired of being committed. He hates teaching, feels he is running in place and needs “to go someplace where I can feel like I’m living.”

He makes no effort to disguise his reluctance to take on this mission, telling Miss Emma that Jefferson is already dead. “The past 21 years,” he says, “we’ve done all we could for Jefferson. He’s dead now. And I can’t raise the dead. All I can do is try to keep the others from ending up like this--but he’s gone from us. There’s nothing I can do anymore, nothing any of us can do anymore.”

A strong position, but not strong enough to enable Grant to stand up under the moral pressure of his indomitable aunt and the immovable Miss Emma. They prevail and he endures--suffering humiliation from the white power structure that no longer has any use for him because he is “too educated,” agonizing self-doubt and philosophical introspection over his religious belief, and stubborn resistance from his most important pupil. He is rewarded in the end with a success of sorts in the form of a semi-literate, but haunting, diary written by Jefferson during his last days.

The story Gaines tells in “A Lesson Before Dying” is enormously moving. The author, a native of south Louisiana, unerringly evokes the place and time about which he writes. Some passages are redolent with the aura of a memoir.

The pacing of the novel, however, is a bit too languorous, even for a Southern writer writing about Southern characters. Gaines’ use of repetition wears thin over the course of the book. The reiterations accumulate without building on themselves to further the narrative. We are apprised of Jefferson’s big brown eyes, with the whites too reddish, three times in less than half a page. On that same subject, the three white characters whose eyes are mentioned all have gray-blue eyes--though this may be a feature of white south Louisianians that I am unfamiliar with.

In a sub-plot involving Grant Wiggins and his love-interest, a fellow teacher, their exchanges are particularly stilted and clumsy, as evidenced by the following:

“ ‘You want me here?’ Vivian asked.

“I was not looking at her when she said it, and I could tell by her voice that she was not looking directly at me.

“ ‘Yes,’ I said.

“She had been gazing down at the ground. Now she raised her eyes to me.

“ ‘I love you Vivian,’ I said. ‘I want you to know that. I love you very much.’

“ ‘I hope you love me half as much as I love you.’ ”

Call this quibbling, if you will, but these flaws inflate a narrative that needs no such favor, hint that a writer did not get the editing he deserves, and tug the whole endeavor perilously close to the border of melodrama.