BLACK APRIL
[Illustration]
BLACK APRIL
_by_ Julia Peterkin
[Illustration]
GROSSET & DUNLAP, _Publishers
by arrangement with_
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1927
BY THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
_Printed in the United States of America_
_To_
JULIUS MOOD
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I APRIL’S FATHER 11
II APRIL’S SON 21
III COUSIN BIG SUE 40
IV JULIA 52
V BLUE BROOK 57
VI UNCLE BILL 66
VII A BIRTH-NIGHT SUPPER 73
VIII THE PREMISES 84
IX SATURDAY AFTERNOON 89
X THE BARNYARD 100
XI HUNTING ’POSSUMS AND TURKEYS 129
XII DUCK-HUNTING 138
XIII THE QUILTING 159
XIV CHURCH 180
XV FIELD WORK 199
XVI PLOWING 203
XVII HOG-KILLING 231
XVIII JOY AND APRIL 268
XIX AT APRIL’S HOUSE 287
XX SEEKING 308
BLACK APRIL
BLACK APRIL
I
APRIL’S FATHER
The cool spring dusk fell drowsy and soft over Sandy Island, all but
blotting out a log cabin that nestled under great moss-hung oaks
close to the river’s edge. The small drab weather-stained house would
scarcely have shown except for the fire that burned inside, sending a
bright glow through its wide-open door and showers of sparks up its
short stick-and-clay chimney.
A gaunt, elderly black man strode hastily toward it along the path
leading up from the river and went inside, but in a few minutes he came
to stand in the doorway, his bulk well-nigh filling it as one broad
shoulder leaned dejectedly against the lintel. When a moan came from
inside, his brawny hands clenched and buckled in a foolish helpless
way, and a frown knitted his forehead as he cast a glance at the old
black woman who pattered back and forth from the hearth to the bed in
the corner with a cupful of root-tea or a bit of hot grease in a spoon
or a pinch of salt in the palm of her hand.
Once in a while she called to him that everything was going well.
To-morrow this same girl would laugh at all these groans and tears.
Birthing a child is tough work. He must have patience. Long patience.
Nobody can hurry a slow-coming child.
The fire crackled and leaped higher, lighting the dirt-daubed cracks
of the walls, shining under the bed where it played over the freshly
sharpened point of a plow-share. A share ground and filed and put under
a bed is the best thing in the world to cut birth-pains, but this one
lagged with its work. Its clean edge glittered bright enough, yet as
time dragged on the pains lingered and the expected child tarried with
its coming.
The moon must be to blame. This new moon was right for planting seed
but wrong for birthing. Swift labor comes with a waning moon, not a
growing one.
The man heaved a deep sigh and looked out into the gathering twilight.
The slender young moon was dropping fast. This birthing ought to get
over. When the river’s tide turned, life could go out mighty quickly.
Ebb tide is a dangerous time for sick people.
Old Granny was too slow. Too easy-going. When this same girl was born
sixteen years ago, or was it seventeen, Granny had a long race with
Death and lost, yet here she was poking around with her roots and teas,
trifling away the time.
“Granny,” he stopped to clear the huskiness out of his throat, “better
make haste. De tide’ll soon turn. Ebb tide ain’ to be trusted, you
know.”
A wry smile shriveled Granny’s face. “You’s too short-patienced,
Breeze. Dis is a long-patienced task. It takes time. You better go cut
one more turn o’ fat lightwood an’ fetch em in. De fire is got to keep
up shine to-night.”
A pitiful moan from the corner stopped her talk, and, with an echoing
grunt, the man stepped down into the yard.
Granny’s shaking head bobbed faster as she watched him hurry to the
wood-pile and pick up the ax. Her trembling hands drew her shawl closer
around her bent shoulders. Lord, how time does change people, she
muttered to herself. Breeze was no mild fellow in his youth. No. He was
a wild scamp. But when his own girl got in trouble, he r’ared around
and wanted to kill the man that fooled her. As if she wasn’t to blame
too. A good thing the girl had sense enough to keep her mouth shut.
Nobody could make her say who the father of her child was. She was a
shut-mouthed creature. But spoiled to death. Rotten spoiled. No wonder.
Here she was, disgracing her father’s house, after he had raised her
nice as could be, but he hadn’t a hard word for her. Not one. If he
hadn’t humored her all her life to everything heart could wish, she’d
get to work and finish this birthing before dark, instead of keeping
people fretted with worry-ation all day and now, more than likely, half
the night. But as long as her soft-hearted old father took her part,
Granny was helpless, and her scolding did no good.
The sturdy ax-cuts that rang out gave Granny an idea. That ax was sharp
and clean. The plow-share was hampered with rust. Why wouldn’t the ax
cut the birth-pains far better? Hurrying back to the door she quavered
out shrilly, “Bring me dat ax, Breeze! Hurry wid em.”
He came with it, but halted at the door. He had ground that ax only
this morning. Its edge was awful keen. This was no time to be risking
anything. Granny had better be careful.
Granny stretched her old neck forward and her forehead furrowed with a
frown as she said sharply that as long as she’d been catching children,
if she couldn’t rule an ax, she’d better quit right now and go home!
She couldn’t stand for people to meddle with her when she was doing
her best. What did a man know about birthing? Put the ax beside the
share. Together they’d fetch the child like a lamb a-jumping!
When steel jangled against steel under the bed, Granny ordered sharply,
“Now you git out de door till I call you. You ought to be glad for de
pain to suffer dis gal. I’m so shame of how e done, I can’ hold my head
up. I hope to Gawd you’ll lick em till e can’ stand up, soon as e gits
out dis bed. I never did hear no ’oman make sich a racket! E ought not
to much as crack e teeth! I wish e was my gal. I’d show em how to be
runnin’ round a-gittin’ chillen, stead o’ gittin’ a nice settled man
fo’ a husband.” Granny eyed the girl, then her unhappy old father,
severely, but her talk was to no purpose, for old Breeze’s eyes were
bloodshot with pity, his very soul distressed.
“You’s wrong, Granny. I used to t’ink like you, but I know better now.
If de gal’ll git thu dis safe, I wouldn’ hold no hard feelin’s ’gainst
em. Never in dis world.” He leaned over the bed and gave the girl’s
shoulder a gentle pat, but Granny hurried him away. This was no time
for petting and being soft. Some hard work waited to be done. The
sooner the girl got at it, the sooner it would be finished.
“Quit you’ crazy talk an’ go on out de door! Don’ come back in dis
room, not less I call you.”
Granny spoke so sharply, he obeyed humbly, without another word.
The breath of the earth was thick in the air, a good clean smell that
went clear to the marrow of the man’s bones. God made the first man
out of dust, and all men go back to it in the end. The earth had been
sleeping, resting through the winter, but now, with the turn of the
year, it had roused, and it offered life to all that were fit and
strong. The corn crop, planted on the last young moon when the dogwood
blooms were the size of squirrel ears, was up to a stand wherever the
crows let it alone. Pesky devils! They watched every blade that peeped
through the ground and plucked it out with the mother grain, cawing
right in the face of the scare-crow that stood up in the field to scare
them, although its head, made out of a pot, and its stuffed crocus sack
body were ugly enough to scare a man. To-morrow he’d hide and call
them. He could fool them close enough to shoot them. It was a pity to
waste shells on birds unfit for man or beast to eat and with too little
grease on their bones to add a drop to the soap pot, but there’d soon
be another mouth to feed here.
To-morrow, he must plant the cotton while the young moon waxed strong.
There was much to do. He needed help. Maybe this child being born would
be a boy-child, a help for his old age. A sorrowful woman will bear a
boy-child, nine times out of ten, and God knows, that girl had been
sorrowful. When she helped him plant the corn, she had dropped a tear
in mighty nigh every hill along with the seed. No wonder it grew fast.
Soon as the moon waned, the root crops, potatoes, pindars, chufas,
turnips, must be planted. Field plants have no sense. If you plant
crops that fruit above the ground on a waning moon, they get all mixed
up and bear nothing but heavy roots, and root crops planted on a waxing
moon will go all to rank tops no matter how you try to stop them.
Plants have to be helped along or they waste time and labor, just the
same as children you undertake to raise. That poor little girl was
started off wrong.
She was born on a moon so wrong that her mammy died in her birthing. He
had done his best to raise the little motherless creature right, but he
made a bad mistake when he let her go to Blue Brook without him last
summer. She went to meet his kin and to attend the revival meeting.
She was full of life and raven for pleasure. He couldn’t refuse her
when she asked to go. But he hadn’t made her understand that those
Blue Brook men were wicked devils. He knew it. He had been one of them
himself. Poor little girl, she knew it now! Now when it was too late
for anybody to help her out of her trouble.
Years ago, over thirty of them, he had left Blue Brook and come to
Sandy Island on account of a girl. She had named her child April
because it was born this very month. Afterward, she had married and
forgotten him. Now she was dead, but her child, April, was the finest
man on Blue Brook. Barely middle-aged, April was already the plantation
foreman, ruling the other farm-hands, telling them what to do, what not
to do, and raising the best crops in years. April had made a name for
himself. Everybody who came from Blue Brook had something to say about
him, either of his kindness or of his meanness, his long patience or
his quick temper, his open-handedness or his close-fistedness. On Blue
Brook, April was a man among men.
He had seen him, a tall, lean, black, broad-shouldered fellow, so
much like himself that it was a wonder everybody didn’t know that he
was April’s daddy. But they didn’t. For April’s mother had been as
close-mouthed as the girl lying yonder on the bed. She never did tell
who fooled her and made her have sin. She died without telling.
Some day he’d like to tell April himself. But after all, what was the
use? April had taken the name of his mother’s lawful husband and he
loved the man who had raised him as well as an own father could have
done. Why upset them?
Granny’s shambling steps inside the cabin took his thoughts back to
the girl there. If the child was born on this rising tide, it would
more than likely be a boy-child. April would be a good name for him
too. April was a lucky month to be born in; it was a lucky name too.
If the child came a girl, Katy, the name of April’s mother, would be a
good name for it.
The spring air wafted clouds of fragrance from the underwoods bordering
the forest. Crab-apple thickets and white haw trees were in full bloom.
Yellow jasmine smothered whole tree-tops. Cherokee roses starry with
blossoms sprawled over rail fences and rotting stumps, piercing through
all other scents with their delicate perfume.
Sandy Island looked just so, smelled just so, on that April night when
he came here so many years ago. He thought then that he’d go back some
day and fetch Katy here to stay with him. But the years had tricked
him, fooled him. They had rolled by so fast he’d lost track of them,
and of Katy and her boy, April. Now, he was almost an old man, and Katy
was up yonder in Heaven. His own lawful wife and his other boy, his
yard son, were up there too. Had Katy told them about April? Or would
she stay shut-mouthed for ever and ever?
As he wondered and pondered about the ways of people in Heaven, the
river, gorged by a high spring tide, slowly flooded the rice-fields
encircling the island. The black water lapped softly as it rippled over
the broken dikes and passed through the rotted flood-gates, hiding
the new green shoots of the marsh grass and uprooting the tall faded
blades, that had stood through the winter on the boggy mud flats.
Frogs chanted. Marsh-hens chattered. Wood ducks piped and splashed.
Ganits flew in long lines toward the sunset, squawking hoarsely and
flapping the air with blue and white wings. Partridges whistled. Doves
mourned. Where were the groans from the bed in the corner? Maybe all
was over at last.
Granny stood in the door beckoning him to come. Her harshness was all
gone. She hobbled down the steps and came tottering to meet him, then
laying a bony hand on his shoulder she whispered that the ax was too
sharp. It had cut the pains off altogether. They had ceased too soon
and she couldn’t get them started again. She had tried every tea she
knew. Every root. Every ointment. Every charm. She was at her row’s
end. This moon was all wrong for birthing. A young moon makes things
go contrarywise. The child should have waited a week longer to start
coming. And two weeks would have been still better.
The girl had dozed off in spite of everything. He must come and try to
rouse her up. Girls behave so crazy these days. They do like nobody
ever had birthed a child before them. She was fretted half to death the
way this girl carried on. He must come and make her behave. If she had
been a nice decent girl, all this would never have been.
The girl’s eyes opened and looked up at him, and he leaned low over the
bed to hear her whispered words. She spoke with worn-out tired breath,
begging him to go and get help from somewhere. She hated to die in sin,
and leave him, but she couldn’t hold out much longer. Death already had
her feet cold as ice, it was creeping up to her knees. Couldn’t he take
the boat and go across the river to Blue Brook? Wasn’t somebody there
who could come to help her?
He studied. Certainly there was. Maum Hannah, his own first cousin, had
a string of charm beads their old grandmother had brought all the way
from Africa when she came on a slave ship. They and the charm words
that ruled them were left in Maum Hannah’s hands. Ever since he was
a boy, living on Blue Brook, he had heard people say that those beads
had never failed to help a woman birth a child safely. No matter how it
came, head foremost, foot foremost, or hand foremost, it was all the
same when those charm beads got to working.
He’d go fetch Maum Hannah. She’d come. Old as she was, she’d risk the
booming river if her beads were needed to help a child come into the
world.
His boat was a dug-out and narrow for two people in a river running
backward in a flood-tide, but she’d come. He felt sure of it.
Barefooted, bareheaded, without a coat, he ran down the steep slope to
the black water’s edge, and soon the sharp bow of his boat, driven by
one short paddle, sliced through the current. Swift wheeling circles
of water marked every steady dip it made. Hugging the willow banks,
the boat hurried on, then cut straight across the river. Thank God,
the high-running tide made the rice-fields a clear sheet of water. The
boat could take a bee line to Blue Brook without bothering about how
the channel ran beyond the river. The landing aimed for was on a deep,
clear blue creek, which gave the plantation its name, Blue Brook. The
man’s knees were shaking as he stepped out of the boat and dragged it
higher up on the bank to wait until he came back with Maum Hannah and
the beads. Up the path he trotted, to the Quarters where the long low
houses made blurs of darkness under tall black trees. The thick-leaved
branches rose against the sky, where the fires of sunset had lately
died and the moon had gone to its bed.
Rattly wagons hurried over the roads. Cattle bellowed. Children
shouted. Dogs barked. An ax rang sharply and a clear voice sent up a
song. “Bye an’ bye, when de mawnin’ comes!” How trustful it sounded.
He tried to hum the tune, but fear gnawed at his heart and beat drums
in his ears and throat and breast.
He was born and reared on Blue Brook. He knew every path and road on
it. Every field and ditch and thicket. Every moss-hung oak. He had
lived right yonder in the foreman’s house with his grandfather, the
plantation foreman. The foreman _now_ was his son! His blood kin. A
proud fellow, that April! Lord, how April strutted and gave himself
airs!
The darkness melted everything into one. The whiteness of the Big House
was dim.
Fences, cabins, trees, earth were being swallowed up by the night.
Maum Hannah’s cabin was the last in those two long rows of houses, and
firelight shining out from her wide-open door sent a glow clear across
her yard. She was at home. It wouldn’t take long to get her and the
charm beads into the boat, then back across the river.
Black people were gathered in the doorways, most of them his kin with
whom he’d like to stop and talk, but there was no time for one extra
word, even with April, the foreman. Dogs ran up to him, sniffed,
recognized that he was of the same blood as their masters, and went
back to lie down.
II
APRIL’S SON
Taking Maum Hannah’s three steps as one, he called out a breathless
greeting:
“How you do, Cun [Cousin] Hannah?”
She was stirring a pot on the hearth and the long spoon clattered
against the iron sides she dropped it. “Who dat call me?” She limped
backward a few halting paces and gazed at him with questioning eyes.
“Dis is me, old man Breeze! Git you birthin’ beads quick an’ come go
home wid me!”
She stared at him vacantly. “Fo’ Gawd’s sake, who is you?” She
whispered sharply.
“You don’ know me? Is you gone blind, Hannah?”
Her arms dropped weakly as she peered at him, taking in his bare feet,
his patched clothes, his shirt, open at the neck, showing the swell of
his throat, the panting of his breast. With a sudden burst of laughter
she reached out and took his hand. “Lawd, Breeze, I thought sho’ you
was Grampa’s sperit come fo’ me! You scared me well-nigh to death, son!
Come on een an’ set down! Jedus, I’m glad to see you! But you is de
very spit o’ Grampa!”
“I can’ set, Hannah. I ain’ Grampa’s sperit, but I sho’ did come to git
you! My li’l’ gal is ’bout to die, Hannah. E can’ birth e chile to save
life, no matter how hard e try. Git Gramma’s birthin’ beads. You got to
go wid me. I couldn’ stan’ to le’ dat li’l’ gal die, an’ don’ do all I
can to save em. E’s so pitiful in e pain.”
Maum Hannah grunted. “Pain don’ kill a ’oman, son. It takes pain to
make em work steady till de task is done. I can’ stop no pain! No,
Jedus! De gal might be well by now anyhow.”
But he was firm. “Listen to me, Hannah! You got to go home wid me
to-night! Now! In a hurry! Make haste, too!”
“It’s a mighty black night since de moon is gone down.”
“Bein’ black don’ matter. I know de way. You come on, Hannah.”
“I declare to Gawd, my cripple knee is so painful I don’ know ef I
could git in a boat.”
“Den I’ll tote you, but you sho’ got to come.”
“I’m mighty ’f’aid o’ boats an’ water in de daytime much less at
night.” She leaned down to fix the sticks on the fire, but he caught
her roughly by the arm.
“Don’ you tarry, Hannah. You come on right now!”
“What kind o’ boat you got?”
“De boat’s narrow an’ de river’s high, but you got strong heart, enty?
You’ll be as safe wid me in dat boat as ef you was settin’ right here
by de fire in your rockin’ chair. I promised my li’l’ gal to fetch you
an’ you’ birthin’ beads ef e would hold out till I git back. You better
come on! Gramma’ll hant you sho’ as you fail me to-night!”
Maum Hannah sighed deep. “I know I got to go, scared as I is. A boat
on a floodin’ river is a turrible t’ing, but I sho’ don’ want Gramma’s
sperit to git no grudge against me. Catchin’ chillen is Jedus’ business
anyhow, an’ de river belongs to Jedus, same as me an’ you, I reckon.
You wait till I git de beads out de trunk. Sometimes I wish Gramma
didn’ leave me dem beads. It’s de truth!”
She groped her way to the shed-room and fumbled in a trunk, then called
out that she needed a light. He broke a splinter off from a stick of
fat lightwood on the hearth and, lighting it, took it to her. The small
flame blazed up, sputtering and hissing, and spat black drops of tar on
the clean floor, on the quilt covered bed, on the wide white apron she
was tying around her waist. The shaking hand that held it was to blame.
“How come you’ hand is a-tremblin’ so, Breeze?” she asked gently. “You
is pure shakin’ like a leaf. Trust in Gawd, son. You’ gal b’longs to
Him, not to you. Jedus ain’ gwine fail em now when e have need.”
The light wavered wildly as he raised an arm to draw his shirt-sleeve
across his eyes. Big teardrops rolled down his cheeks, and his face
twitched dumbly.
“You mus’ scuse me, Hannah. I’m so weakened down wid frettin’ until de
water dreans out my eyes. My mind keeps a runnin’ back to de time dis
same li’l’ gal’s own mammy was taken dis same way. When de tide turned,
e went out wid em. Dat’s how come I’m hurryin’ you so fas’. We mus’ git
back whilst de tide is risin’.”
He stood, straight and tall, and strong for his years, but the troubled
look in his eyes made the old midwife wonder.
Her weight tilted the narrow boat so far to one side that some of the
black river water slid over its edge and ran down cold on her feet.
“Jedus hab mussy!” she groaned. “If dis boat do go down, I’ll sho’ git
drowned to-night! I can’ swim, not a lick.”
“You set still, Hannah. Dis boat knows better’n to turn over to-night.
I got em trained. E’s got sense like people. E knows e’s got to take me
an’ you safe.”
“I’m mighty glad to hear dat, son, mighty glad.”
The boat was already gliding swiftly past the black willows on the Blue
Brook’s bank and around the bend where the thick trees made shadows
and long tresses of gray moss waved overhead. Soon they’d reach the
river. When a dark bird flew across the stream Maum Hannah shivered
and whispered, “Do, Jedus, hab mussy,” but Breeze muttered, “Dat ain’
nuttin’ but a summer duck.”
The whole world lay still, wrapped by the night, quiet, save for the
swish of the water against the sides of the boat as the noiseless dips
of the steady-plying paddle thrust it on.
As they neared Sandy Island the shrill cry of an owl in the distance
caused the boat to falter in its forward going.
“Wha’ dat, Breeze?”
“Dat’s one o’ dem blue-dartin’ owls. Dat ain’ no sign o’ death.”
Ripples from the boat broke into glittering sparkles of light laid by
the stars on the water. The river murmured. Trees along the bank were
full of strange shadowy shapes. Whenever the lightest rustle of wind
drifted through the black branches, low smothered sobs fell from them.
A tall sycamore with its white outstretched arms high up toward heaven,
reached toward the river waving, beckoning.
The night air was cool, but Maum Hannah took up the edge of her apron
and wiped off big drops of sweat that broke out cold as ice on her
forehead. “Do, Jedus, hab mussy!” she prayed.
The new moon had gone to bed. Now was the time evil spirits walk and
take people’s souls out of their bodies. Pines on the island made soft
moans. The darkness quivered with whispers. Only the firelight shining
out from the cabin on the hill made a clear red star to guide them.
The narrow boat swerved and turned in-shore. A cypress knee, hidden by
the water, bumped hard against it, but didn’t stop its leap toward the
bank. Old Breeze eased himself past Maum Hannah, and hopping out on the
wet sand drew the boat up a little higher on the hill.
“Git up, Hannah. Le’ me hold all two o’ you’ hands. Step slow. Hist
you’ foot. Don’ miss an’ trip. Now you’s on dry land.”
“T’ank Gawd! Praise Jedus’ name!”
“You got de beads, enty?”
“Sho’ I got ’em. Dem beads is all de luck I got in dis world. If dey
was to git lost, I’d be ruint fo’ true. Pure ruint!”
The steep climb cut her breath and stopped her flow of talk, but Granny
who had heard them coming, croaked out:
“Yunnuh better make haste. De chile is done come, but de gal won’ wake
up an’ finish de job. Yunnuh come on.”
Maum Hannah lifted the long dark string of beads from around her neck
and handed them to old Breeze. “Run wid ’em, son. Put ’em round de
gal’s neck. Right on e naked skin. If I try to walk fast I might fall
down an’ broke my leg.”
Breath scarcely came and went through the girl’s parted lips, and her
teeth showed white. Were they clenched? Old Breeze pressed on the round
chin to see. Thank God the mouth could open!
Maum Hannah got inside the room at last. The charm words that went with
the beads would set things right. Death might as well go on home! Let
the girl rest. She was tired. Things could wait while she had her nap
out.
The big hickory armchair, drawn close to the fire, held a feather
pillow on its cowhide seat, and lying in the nest it made was a small
black human being. Granny laughed as she picked it up and put it into
Maum Hannah’s hands, saying:
“A boy-chile! An’ born wid a caul on e face!”
“Great Gawd, what is dis! You hear dis news, Breeze? Dis chile was born
wid a caul on e face!”
The man turned his troubled eyes away from the bed. “Wha’ you say,
Hannah?”
Laughing with pleasure Maum Hannah and Granny both told him again. His
grandson had been blessed with second-sight. He had been born on the
small of the moon and with a caul over his face. He would have second
sight. He’d always be able to see things that stay hidden from other
people. Hants and spirits and plat-eyes and ghosts. Things to come and
things long gone would all walk clear before him. They couldn’t hide
from this child’s eyes.
“Hotten another pot o’ water, Granny. Lemme warm em good, an’ make em
cry.” Maum Hannah cradled the child tenderly in her hands, then held
him low so the firelight could shine in his face. With a quick laugh
she caught him by one foot and holding him upside down smacked him
sharply with three brisk slaps.
“Cry, suh!” she scolded. “Ketch air an’ holler! I hate to lick you so
hard soon as you git here, but I got to make you fret out loud.” A poor
weak bleating sounded and she handed the child to Granny.
“You fix em, whilst I finish up wid de mammy.”
* * * * *
“Wake up, gal!” she plead, shaking the girl’s limp arm. “Wake up!”
The rigid eyelids fluttered open and a faint smile played over the
girl’s face. She was too weary to draw her breath. The pain had sapped
all her strength, every bit.
Maum Hannah stooped and looked under the bed.
“Great Gawd,” she grunted. “Who dat put a’ ax under dis bed? No wonder
de pains quit altogedder. You ought to had chunked dese irons out de
door!” She did it forthwith herself.
“Now! All two is gone! Open you’ eyes, gal! Ketch a long breat. Dat’s
de way. Hol’ you’ two hands togedder. So. Blow in ’em! Hard. Hard as
you kin! Make a stiff win’ wid you’ mouth! Blow you’ fingers off. Dat’s
de way!”
Then something else went wrong. Where was a spider’s web? Granny ought
to have had one ready. Every good midwife should find one as soon as
she takes a case. Maum Hannah’s eyes were too dim to see a web on the
dark rafters overhead. Somebody must find one and fetch it quickly.
Life can leak out fast. Spider webs can dam it up better than anything
else. But, lord, they are hard to find at night! Where was Breeze?
One was found at last. Then it took careful handling to get it well
covered with clean soot from the back of the chimney. Thank God for
those beads. The girl would have lost heart and given up except for
them and the charm words which Maum Hannah kept saying over and over.
With those beads working, things had to come right. Had to. And they
could not help working. Couldn’t, thank God.
* * * * *
The next morning’s sunshine showed plenty of gossamer webs spun with
shining wheels. Long threads of frail silk were strung across the yard
from bush to bush, traps set by the spiders for gnats and mosquitoes,
strong enough to hold a fly once in a while. But it takes a house
spider’s stout close-woven web to hold soot and do good. For a house
spider to make its home under your roof is good luck, for sooner or
later the cloth it weaves and spins will save somebody’s life.
Old Breeze got up early and cooked the breakfast, fixed himself a bit
to eat and a swallow or two of sweetened water to drink and went to the
field to work, but the two old women sat by the fire and nodded until
the sun waxed warm and its yellow light glowed into the room through
the wide-open door. Then their tired old bodies livened and their heads
raised up and leaned together while whispered talk crept back and forth
between them. Granny held that Breeze was a good kind man to take the
girl’s trouble as he did. Many a man would have put her out-of-doors.
Girls are mighty wild and careless these days. But their parents are
to blame for it too. Half the children born on Sandy Island were
unfathered. It wasn’t right. Yet how can you stop them? Maum Hannah
sighed and shook her head. It was a pity. And yet, after all, every
child comes into the world by the same old road.
A thousand husbands couldn’t make that journey one whit easier. The
preachers say God made the birthing pain tough when He got vexed with
Eve in the Garden of Eden. He wanted all women to know how heavy His
hand can be. Yet Eve had a lawful husband, and did that help her any?
Granny blinked at the fire and studied a while, then with a sly look
at the bed she whispered that this same little boy-child was got right
yonder at Blue Brook during the protracted meeting last summer. Her
wizened face showed she knew more than she cared to tell. Not that it
was anything to her whose child it was.
She fidgeted with her tin cup and spoon and peeped at Maum Hannah out
of the corner of her eye, then asked with pretended indifference:
“What’s de name o’ de gentleman what’s de foreman at Blue Brook now?”
“E’s name April.”
“Enty?” Granny affected surprise. “Is e got a fambly?” she presently
ventured in spite of Maum Hannah’s shut-mouthed manner.
“Sho’, e’s got a fambly. E’s got a fine wife an’ a house full o’
chillen too.”
“Well, I declare!” Granny mirated pleasantly. “Was any o’ dem born wid
a caul?”
“No, dey wasn’t. I never did hear o’ but one or two people bein’ born
wid a caul. Ol’ Uncle Isaac, yonder to Blue Brook is one, and e’s de
best conjure doctor I ever seen.”
“Who was de other one?” Granny inquired so mildly that Maum Hannah
stole a look at her hard, dried furrowed face. There was no use to beat
about the bush with Granny, so she answered:
“April, de foreman at Blue Brook, was de other one. Dese same ol’ hands
o’ mine caught April when e come into dis world, just like deys caught
all o’ April’s chillen.”
“You mean, April’s yard chillen, enty?” Granny looked her straight in
the eyes like a hawk, but Maum Hannah met the look calmly, without any
sign of annoyance.
“I dunno what you’s aimin’ at, Granny. April’s a fine man. Blue Brook
never did have no better foreman. An’ his mammy, Katy, was one o’ de
best women ever lived. April was she onliest child. April was born
dis same month. Dat’s how come Katy named him April. April’s a lucky
month an’ a lucky name, too. Wha’ you gwine name you li’l’ boy-chile,
daughter?”
Granny looked toward the bed and listened for the answer.
“I dunno, ma’am,” the girl answered weakly, and Granny sweetened her
coffee with a few drops more of molasses. She stirred and stirred until
Maum Hannah suggested:
“April’s a fine name. Whyn’t you name em dat? When I git back to Blue
Brook, I’ll tell de foreman I named a li’l’ boy-chile at him. Dat
would please em too. E might would send em a present. April’s a mighty
free-handed man, an’ e sho’ thinks de world o’ me too.”
Granny waited to taste the sweetened coffee until she heard what the
girl said. The girl didn’t make any answer at first, but presently she
said with a sorrowful sigh, she’d have to think about the baby’s name.
She couldn’t decide in a hurry. Sometimes a wrong name will even kill a
baby. She must go slow and choose a name that was certain to bring her
baby health and luck.
She talked it over with her father and named the baby Breeze, for him.
No foreman in the world was a finer man, or a kinder, stronger, wiser
one. The breeze for which he was named could have been no pleasanter,
no sweeter, than the breeze that blew in from the river that very
morning.
The old man beamed with pleasure. He was glad to have the child named
for him. But since the month was April, why not name him April Breeze?
Then he’d have two good-luck names, and two would be better than one.
“We could call em li’l’ Breeze, enty?” she asked with a catch in her
voice.
“Sho’, honey! Sho’! If dat’s de name you choose to call dis chile, den
e’s li’l’ Breeze f’om now on. But April is a mighty nice name for a
boy-chile.”
“It’s de Gawd’s truth,” Maum Hannah declared, and Granny grunted and
reached for a coal to light her pipe.
Li’l’ Breeze grew and throve and his grandfather prized him above
everything, everybody else. He was a boy-child, and, besides, he was
born with a caul on his face. Men born so make their mark in this
world. Rule their fellows. Plenty of people have no fathers, and many
of them are better off. A child that has never looked on his daddy’s
face can cure sickness better than any medicine. Just with a touch of
the hand, too. It was a good thing for Sandy Island to have such a
child.
Before Breeze was weaned people began coming to have him stroke the
pain out of their knees and backs and shoulders. He could cure thrash
in babies’ mouths, and even cool fevers.
His mother’s disgrace was completely forgotten, when she married a
fine-looking, stylish young town man who came to Sandy Island to preach
and form a Bury League. He could read both reading and writing and talk
as well as the preacher who read over them out of a book.
Breeze stayed on with his grandfather, helping him farm in the summer
and set nets for shad in the spring. When the white people who owned
Sandy Island came from somewhere up-North in the winter and crossed
over the river on a ferry-flat from Blue Brook with their dogs and
horses to hunt the deer that swarm so thick on the island that they
have beaten paths the same as pigs and rabbits, Breeze went along
to help hold the horses and watch the dogs. People said he was Old
Breeze’s heart-string, and Old Breeze’s eyeball. He was, although the
mother had other boy-children now, fine ones too.
And instead of the grandfather’s getting feeble and tottering with age,
he grew younger, and worked harder, so that he and Breeze might have
plenty. Every extra cent saved was buried at the foot of a tall pine
tree growing on the bank of the river not far from the cabin’s front
door. When hard times came, they’d have no lack. The money would be
there, secretly waiting to be spent.
One spring when the shad fishing was done, Old Breeze got leave from
the white folks to cut down some dead pines the beetles had killed.
He dragged these to the river with his two old oxen, and made them
into a raft which he floated down to the town in the river’s mouth,
and sold to a big saw-mill there. Breeze stayed with his mother until
his grandfather came back home, pleased as could be, with presents for
everybody, and a pocket full of money besides. But although he brought
the mother a Bible besides many other fine things that made her smile,
she shook her head and said, “Dead trees are best left alone. Trees
have spirits the same as men. God made them to stand up after they die.
Better let them be.”
But the grandfather was not afraid of tree spirits, and he cut and cut
until no dead tree was left standing and the ground all around the big
pine tree was full of hidden money. Then there was nothing to do but
fish and hunt, and to hunt in the spring is against the white men’s
laws. Old Breeze got restless. He gazed in the fire night after night,
thinking and thinking.
One morning he got up early and skimmed all the cream and put the
clabber in a jug, then he took the brace-and-bit down off the joist
where it stayed and walked off to the woods alone. Every morning he did
it. There was no more clabber for the pigs or the chickens, but the
pine trees began dying so fast that before long enough were ready to
cut for a raft to be floated down the river.
The tall pine close to the bank was the biggest tree on Sandy Island.
It stretched far above the oaks before it put on even one limb. If that
tree ever died, it would make a good part of a raft by itself.
One cold dark dawn, Breeze was roused by the cabin’s door creaking on
its hinges as it closed behind somebody’s muffled steps. Where was Old
Breeze going? Easing a window open, he peered out and saw the old man
going toward the big pine with the jug and the brace-and-bit.
“Wait on me! I’m a-gwine wid you!” he called.
Old Breeze stopped and stood stiffly erect.
“Who dat call me?”
“Dis me! Breeze!”
The old man broke into a laugh. “Lawd, son, I thought sho’ a sperit was
a-talkin’ to me. How come you’s ’wake so soon? Git back in de bed an’
sleep!”
But Breeze dressed in a hurry. He wanted to see what would be done with
clabber and the brace-and-bit.
Outside in the half-light it was silent except for the rustle of the
big tree’s needles in the wind. Breeze watched while holes were bored
deep in the solid roots and the clabber all poured down them. He
promised never to tell a soul. Not a soul. That was a stubborn tree.
It swallowed down many a jug of buttermilk and clabber without getting
sick at all, but at last the tips of its needles looked pale. The green
of them faded into yellow, then brown, and its whole top withered. The
old tree gave up. Poor thing.
Its heaviest limbs faced the south, away from the water. That was good.
When it fell, the big butt cut, the heaviest one, would be easy to roll
into the river, and the next two cuts would not have to be pushed very
far. That tree would bring money with its stout, fat heart. A pocket
full of money.
Sunday night came, and Old Breeze wouldn’t go to meeting, but went to
bed for a long night’s sleep. He must get up a high head of strength
before sunrise to cut the big tree down.
Day was just breaking through the cracks of the cabin’s log sides
when Breeze heard it fall. It gave a great cry, and its crash jarred
the cabin. The weight of a big tree’s falling always leaves a deep
stillness behind it, but after the big pine fell the stillness stayed
on. Breeze lay quiet and listened. The tree must have dropped wrong,
and gone across a clump of bamboo vines. Old Breeze would have to clear
them away before his ax could begin to talk.
He’d hear it soon. Lord! Nobody could make an ax speak faster or louder
or truer. Nobody. This was Monday morning and he must get the clothes
up for the mother to wash. Every Monday he carried them to her and
helped her do the washing.
Kingfishers splashed into the river. Once an eagle cried. The day moved
on, smooth and bright and yellow, as the sun walked up the sky past
the tree-tops, higher and higher until noon stood overhead. But the
grandfather’s ax had said nothing yet. Not yet. But wait! It would make
up for lost time when it started to ring!
Sis, the stepfather’s young sister, lived with Breeze’s mother and
helped her mind the children. Every Monday morning they washed the
clothes out in the yard, where the washtubs always sat on a bench in a
sunshiny place. The other children, Breeze’s half brothers and sisters,
roasted sweet potatoes in the ashes under the big black washpot, and
kept the fire going.
On that Monday morning, the fire burned blue and kept popping, and
every now and then the mother cast her eyes, full of dark thoughts,
at the sun. Old Breeze always came for dinner with her on Monday.
Something must have happened. The big tree must have fallen wrong to
keep him so long. But Sis could talk of nothing but the new dress and
the ribbon he had promised to buy her with some of the money the big
pine brought.
The mother lifted the lids of the little pots that sat all around the
big washpot cooking the family’s dinner. With a big iron spoon she
stirred and tasted, added salt and a pod of red pepper. Pepper is good
to help men be strong and warm-hearted. It makes hens lay, too. She
filled the bucket with victuals and told Breeze to run, fast as he
could, to the big tree, so the dinner would be hot when he got there.
Hopping John, peas and rice cooked together, is so much better fresh
out of the pot and breathing out steam. When rice cools it gets gummy.
The fish stew was made out of eels, and they get raw again as soon as
the fire’s heat leaves them. Breeze must take his foot in his hand and
fly.
Breeze did run, but he soon came running back, for Old Breeze wasn’t
there. His ax lay almost in the water, with its handle wet, and his
throwing-wedge beside it.
The two old oxen were chewing their cuds, but the ground around the
tree was all dug up and broken, as if hogs had rooted it up to find
worms.
Breeze had called, and called, but nobody answered! When the mother
heard that, a shiver went clear through her body. Her hands shook so
when she lifted them out of the washtub that all the soap-suds on them
trembled.
She said she’d go and call. She knew how to send her voice far away.
She could make him hear and answer. Maybe a deer or a fox or a wildcat
had come and tricked him away from his work, but her words quivered in
her mouth as she said them.
All the children went trailing after her; Sis went hurrying with
baby Sonny in her arms; and they all stood still and listened while
the mother’s throat sent long thin whoopees away up into the sky.
Her breast heaved with hoisting them so far above the trees into the
far-away distance. She’d wait for an answer until all the echoes had
whooped back, then she’d take a deep breath and cry out again.
An old crow laughed as he passed overhead, an owl who-whooed far in
the distance. The wind began moaning and crying in the tops of all the
other trees around the fallen pine.
The mother dropped on her knees and laid her forehead down on the
earth. Her thin body shook, and her fingers twisted in and out as her
hands wrung each other almost to breaking. She prayed and moaned and
begged Jesus to call Granddad to come back. To come on in a hurry. She
couldn’t stand for him not to answer when she called so hard and so
long.
All the children began crying with her. Even Sis, who never cried no
matter what happened, put Sonny down on the naked ground and with tears
running out of her eyes all over her face, reached out and took the
mother’s shoulders in both arms. She tried to keep them from shaking,
but she soon shook with them, for the mother said over and over she had
known all the time that something bad was going to happen. She knew it
last night when she came home from meeting. Her fine glass lamp-shade,
the one Granddad brought her from town, with flowers on it, broke
right in two in her hand. She hadn’t dropped it, or knocked it against
anything, but it broke in two in her hand. Her moaning talk changed to
a kind of singing as her body rocked from side to side. Her face turned
up to the sky, her eyes gazed straight at the sun, and over and over
she wailed the same words until the littlest children all cried out
and screamed them too:
“Las night I been know
Somebody gwine dead!
Yes, Lawd! Somebody gwine dead!
A sign sesso!
Yes, Lawd, a sign sesso!
De hoot-owl ain’ talk!
De wind ain’ whine!
I ain’ see a ground-crack needer!
But I had a sign,
Jedus gi’ me a sign!
Da lamp-shade!
F’om de town-sto!
E come een two
Een my hand!
Yes, Lawd!
E come een two een my hand!
I ain’ drap em. No!
I ain’ knock em against nuttin,
But e come een two
Een my hand!
De lamp-shade know,
E try fo’ talk,
E broke fo’ gi’ me a sign.
My Pa is dead!
I know, fo’ sho’!
Da lamp-shade broke
Een my hand!”
Her breath caught in her throat with gasps and her grieving got hoarse
and husky, the steady sing-song braced by the children’s shrill
mourning reached the neighbors who came hurrying to see what was wrong.
At first they tried to cheer up the mother’s heart with big-sounding,
bantering talk. Granddad could outswim an otter. The river could
drown him no more than a duck. He had followed a wild turkey, or a
hog going to make her bed. It was wrong to trouble trouble before
trouble troubles you. Hogs had rooted up the earth around the pine.
Nobody had done that. Granny hobbled up, muttering to herself between
her toothless jaws. The sun shone right into her eyes and marked how
they shifted sly looks from the fallen tree to the earth. Her withered
fingers plucked at the dirty greasy charm thread around her wrist. One
bony finger pointed at the broken ground.
“Whe’ is e, Granny?” the mother asked, and the silence was that of a
grave. Granny’s palsied head shook harder than ever, and the mother
rent the air with her cries. Sis and the children joined in with wails,
and the dogs all howled and barked. Granny said Old Breeze was done
for! The same as the felled tree. Who was to blame? How could she tell?
Had he eaten any strange victuals lately? Had he drunk water out of any
strange well? No? Then he must have been tricked by somebody under his
roof. Somebody who wished him ill had put an evil eye on him. No strong
well man would melt away unless he had been bewitched. Granny peeped
sidewise at Breeze. Where was his stepfather? Where? Nobody answered
the old woman, but feet shuffled uneasily as she said that the whole
of Sandy Island showed signs of bewitchment. When had it rained? The
fowls’ eggs hatched poorly. The cows lost their cuds. The fish didn’t
bite. Shooting stars kept the sky bright every night. Black works were
the cause! Then everybody chimed in; it must be as Granny said. And the
old woman looked straight at Breeze. He was born with second-sight. The
young moon was here. This was the time when all those who are cheated
out of life come back and walk on this earth whenever a young moon
shines. If Old Breeze had met with foul death, he’d come back that
night and walk around that very pine as soon as the first dark came.
Young Breeze must watch for him and talk with him and find out what had
happened to him. Nobody else on Sandy Island could talk to spirits like
that boy. He had been born with a caul over his face, and that strange
thing that had veiled his eyes when he came into the world gave them
the power to see things other people could never witness. Spirits and
hants and ghosts and plat-eyes.
Granny’s talk made Breeze’s flesh creep cold on his bones. His blood
stopped running. Fear tried to put wings on his feet, but he clung to
his mother’s skirt and wept, for even the shadows began an uncertain
flickering and wavering as if they’d reach out and grab him.
“Hogs ain’ rooted up de ground. Not no hogs what walks on fo’ legs. No.
Sperits might ’a’ done it--but whe’s you’ husban’, gal? Whe’ e is?”
Nobody knew. Nobody ever knew. And Breeze was too coward-hearted to
watch for his grandfather’s spirit. No matter how Granny scolded him,
he couldn’t do it.
Days afterward, April, the foreman on Blue Brook Plantation, came to
Sandy Island, bringing a pair of blue overalls holding pieces of a
man. He had fished them up out of the Blue Brook itself where they had
drifted instead of going on down to the river’s mouth.
Old Breeze had worn blue overalls that Monday morning. Maybe it was he.
More than likely it was he. Granny was certain of it.
The stepfather had disappeared with the money buried at the foot of the
old dead pine, but April stayed to help dig a grave and bury the poor
thing he had found. The mother shrieked and wailed, but Granny grunted
and shook her head. She said Old Breeze’s body floated to Blue Brook on
purpose so April could find it, for April was Old Breeze’s son, and,
more than that, April was li’l’ Breeze’s daddy!
III
COUSIN BIG SUE
Breeze had heard about Blue Brook Plantation all his life, but he had
never heard about his mother’s Cousin Big Sue until one hot October
afternoon when he was minding the cow by the spring branch and helping
his mother break in the precious nubbins of corn and put them in the
log barn. Sis called them to come on home in a hurry! The stepfather
had gone to town hunting work. Maybe he had come home. Sis’s voice was
high and shrill and scared, and Breeze knew something had happened.
These hot days the mother always worked in the field until first dark
because that was the coolest part of the day, and Sis, who stayed at
home and sewed and patched and cooked, never called anybody until after
the sun went down.
Breeze forgot that the cow was in reach of the low-ground corn and
hurried across the stubby furrows as fast as his skinny legs could
carry him, but he stopped short when he saw a big fat black woman with
a good-natured smile on her face, standing beside Sis in the cabin’s
back door. Who was she? Why had she come? Why did Sis look so grieved?
The other children were in the yard, giggling, trying to hide behind
one another, but the woman’s eyes stayed on Breeze.
“I kin see de likeness!” she laughed. “Lawd, yes! Dat boy is de pure
spit o’ April! De same tar-black skin. De same owl eyes. A mouth blue
as blackberry stain.”
Breeze had run so fast he was out of breath and his heart beat against
his ribs as he watched his mother kiss the stranger and go inside the
cabin with her. Presently Sis called him to come in too.