’em grow. Now, Emma’s small, but e hab sense. Since de nights is cool
e sets by de fire an’ warms e feet on de pots. Dem same smutty pots I
cooks de victuals in. I tell em to don’ do so! But Emma keeps right on.
Dat smut leaves de pots to stick on Emma’s feets, den when Emma goes to
bed de smut leaves e feets to stick on my clean sheets an’ quilts. It
takes tight scrubbin’ to make ’em git off. Smut too loves cloth! Dat’s
how come I lick Emma so much. I try fo’ make em hate smut same ez I
hate sin. But Emma’s feets is so black e can’ see de smut on ’em.”
“Why you don’ git Emma some shoes, Mauma? Dey’ll keep her feets warm,
better dan de pots.”
“No, honey. I ain’ got de heart to make po’ li’l’ Emma wear shoes. E
too love to jump round an’ dance an’ shout. Shoes would hinder em. I’ll
dis keep on lickin’ em till e knows better. I’ll break em f’om de pots
soon ez I git time. I been too busy lately. All de chillen needs so
much doctorin’. De womens run round too much, a-pleasurin’ deyselves,
to hab good chillen dese days. Times is changed, honey. Womens ain’
quiet an’ steady like dey used to be. No.”
She sighed and pointed to the head of a little girl where a bit of wool
was tied so tight right over the middle of her forehead that the poor
child could hardly blink her eyes.
“I had to tie up Tingie’s palate lock dis mawnin’.” Tingie’s big eyes
looked up solemnly, and Tingie’s sore throat gulped with a great effort
to swallow. “Tingie hab de so’ t’roat, bad.”
“I’s feelin’ better now,” Tingie declared huskily.
“You’ll soon be well, honey,” Maum Hannah told her with a kind smile,
and the child smiled back, sure that Maum Hannah knew.
“I needs some buzzard-claw mighty bad, Big Sue. I wish you’d tell Uncle
Bill so. De babies is teethin’ so bad dis fall. I tried puttin’ a
hog-teeth on a string roun’ dey neck, but hog-teeth is too weak to do
any good. Do tell Uncle Bill to shoot me a few buzzards. De gal-chillen
is teethin’ ’most hard as boy-chillen dis year. But boy-chillen is
mighty scarce. De womens pleasure deyself too much to hab boy-chillen.
Boy-chillen picks sober womens fo’ dey mammy. Dese gals buy so much
trash out de sto’ to eat, dey breast-milk is weak as water. I tell ’em
so, but dey don’ listen at me. No.”
“My Lijah was plagued wid de grow-fast. You ’member, Mauma?”
Maum Hannah nodded. “I ’member, but grow-fast is a easy complaint to
cure. I had to work on one yeste’day.” She told how she and the mother
had taken the child into the room where it was born, and stood in
opposite corners to throw it back and forth to each other, singing the
grow-fast song as they did. A sure cure for grow-fast. “When de room is
big, it’s stiff treatment. My arms mighty near broke yeste’day.”
* * * * *
Instead of going home the way they came, Big Sue followed a path
through the woods, and crossed a clear brown stream that flowed without
a single ripple to break its smooth dark surface, or coat it with foam.
The water’s breath smelt warm as it rose into the cooler shadows.
In a small hollow, near its banks, washtubs were turned upside down on
wooden benches, and a big black washpot sat over dead embers. Waiting
for Friday, the plantation wash-day. All the first days of the week
are field-days. On Friday the women gather and wash their clothes and
gossip. It is a great day for them. A sort of holiday. Full of things
to talk about. Every bit of the sunshine between the trees is strung
with clothes-lines, heavy weighted with clothes, the old trees stand
around silent and dolesome, with black shadows cooling their feet.
By Saturday noon the ironing is done, the week’s work over, then
the fun begins. Crap games and parties and dances for the sinners;
prayer-meetings and church for the Christians. Something goes on all
the time until Monday morning. Everything that matters happens between
Saturday night and Monday morning. A week’s earnings can be lost, or a
wife, or a sweetheart.
Even one’s soul!
When they passed a smooth clean piece of ground with a pile of charred
blackened sticks on it, Big Sue laughed and said, “Do look! De
crap-shooters been here last night. See where dey had a fire? Firelight
makes de bones rattle better, so dey say. An’ naked ground brings luck
to de players.”
“Is you a sinner or a Christian, Cun Big Sue?” Breeze blurted out
before he knew it.
“Who? Me? Great Gawd! I been a Christian ever since I was twelve years
old.” After a minute she added, “I did got turned out o’ de church one
time. I stayed out mighty nigh a year. Silas was de cause of my havin’
sin. E deviled me too bad befo’ e left me. But de earthquake come dat
summer, an’ I got so scared it didn’ take me long to seek and find
peace. I joined de church an’ I been in it ever since. You’s mighty
nigh twelve, enty? When you’s twelve Gawd’ll hold you responsible fo’
you’ sins.”
Near the creek stood the schoolhouse for the black children on the
plantation. A log house with a doorway cut in one end, and fitted with
a rude door made of clapboards swung on iron hinges. The big chimney
at the other end was overspread with clay mortar. This cabin occupied
a lovely spot, overshadowed with a great oak tree from whose roots a
small spring trickled and ran to join the larger stream behind it.
Big Sue said there were too many children to get inside the schoolhouse
at one time. Half of them had recess while the other half recited
lessons. The teacher taught with a long keen whip in her hand, and she
made every child learn the lessons. One word missed brought a sharp cut
across the palm of the offender’s hand. Two words brought four cuts
that would not soon be forgotten. Big Sue said she had never bothered
to learn to read and write. She didn’t have any use for either.
Sometimes she’d like to read a new receipt. Still, she could cook
better out of her head than most people could cook out of a book.
The old people didn’t believe in book learning. They thought learning
signs and charms more important, and they discouraged having a school.
But Zeda’s girl, raised right on the plantation, was the teacher, and
she worked wonders with the children. Lijah had never liked books.
Playing and riding and shooting and swimming interested him more. He’d
have made a good conjure doctor. Once he put some of his own hair in a
hole in a tree, and it cured his sprained ankle. He cut an elder stick
for Maum Hannah’s asthma, and tied it by the neck and hung it up in the
loft, and it cured her, too. For a while, before he ran away, he saved
all his toe-nails and finger-nails to put in his coffin, but that was
so much trouble he quit after he got one little bottle full. It takes a
lot of learning to be a good conjure doctor, for there’s black magic as
well as white. Magic can save as well as kill. Breeze ought either to
pray now or start learning magic. He was almost twelve.
The path ran close to a group of trees surrounded by an old rusty iron
fence, where tombstones gleamed white. Deep shadows rippled whenever
a breeze made its way through the thick, moss-hung woods. Enormous
live-oaks stood at regular intervals, all of them festooned with
trailing moss that made a weird roof overhead.
Cicadas chanted shrilly in a tangle of rose vines and honeysuckles.
White oleanders and japonicas crowded one another, the fragrance of the
blossoms mingling with the stench of decaying leaves and wood. Raising
the rusted creaking latch of the iron gate, Big Sue tipped inside the
enclosure where gnarled roots of the old trees crawled across the paths
and slipped under pink-plumed tamarisk bushes. They disappeared, but
they tilted the heavy tombstones, and crumbled the brick foundations
from under marble slabs thick with words.
Some of the graves were smooth and clean, others were smothered
with vines stretched across sunken hollows. Plantation masters and
mistresses had been crumbled, melted, to feed blind groping roots.
Big Sue went toward a corner where a massive gray stone marked a grave.
“Old Cap’n lays here. Gawd! Dat was a man! Not scared o’ anyt’ing or
anybody! Mean! Jedus, he was mean!”
Big Sue sighed. How times change! That same man lying in his grave had
lorded it over this whole Neck, once. Not only over the black people
who worked his fields after freedom the same as in slavery days, but
over the white people too. Most white people hereabout now were trash.
Poor buckra. Gray-necks. Children and grandchildren of overseers. When
the war to free the slaves was going on they stayed home and sold
whisky. They ran under the bed and hid if anybody started a racket.
They made money and saved their skins. Some of them owned plantations
now, and lived in houses whose front doors had been shut to their
grandfathers!
Times had changed. The man who had ridden over this country with the
loosest rein and the sharpest spur, was down under the ground feeding
tree roots and worms to-day. One little boy, one lone grandson, was
all that was left of his seed, and he was being raised up-North, among
Yankees. The child’s own ma was dead and his stepma had taught him the
strange ugly speech of the Yankees. Enough to make his grandpa turn
over in his grave! Wouldn’t the old man curse!
This land must be too rich, too rank for white people to thrive on it.
Their skins were too thin, their blood too weak to bear the summer
heat, and the fevers and sickness that hid in the marsh in the daytime,
then came out to do their devilment after dark.
Black people ruled sickness with magic, but white people got sick and
died. White people leave money to their children, but black people
leave signs. Give her signs every time! Uncle Isaac was getting old.
He might die soon. Breeze had better start learning all he could right
now, before Uncle Isaac’s mind failed. She’d see Uncle Isaac and tell
him.
As she spoke a faint rustle of wind went through the trees and a
lizard, carefully colored to match the soil, scurried across the path,
rattling dead leaves as it slid under the solid gravestone. Big Sue
leaned over the grave and stirred the earth, selecting bits of the
coarser sand.
“I want seven li’l’ rocks now. One fo’ ev’y night in de week. I gwine
keep ’em tie up in my pocket-hankcher, so I would stop havin’ so much
bad dreams all de time.”
Breeze shivered. If spirits of the dead ever haunt the paths of
the living, they lurked in the deep gloom of the shade made by the
overgrown shrubbery, by those coiling, writhing twisted vines. The
swift wings of a cardinal spun a scarlet thread before them. Clear
notes were flung in a spray of song from the top of the tallest tree.
Big Sue called up at him: “It’s twelve o’clock, enty? I hear you sayin’
dis is de brightest time o’ de day!” She tried to make her lips smile
bright enough to fit her words, but Breeze could see that the graveyard
had made her afraid too. “Le’s go, son. Le’s git out o’ here,” she said.
She trampled on a wild rose, full of frail blossoms. As Breeze stepped
aside to keep from crushing another, a soft wind seized the delicate
petals and scattered them over leaves that were already dead.
The road went through the woods past a cleared place, then brought them
to the negro graveyard. Every grave held something valued by the dead.
A white china pitcher and basin. Old bottles, still holding medicine.
Small colored glass vases. Cups and saucers. A few plates. Some of
the graves were decorated with clusters of wooden sticks, skilfully
carved to make heads of wheat. Breeze wanted to take one, but Big Sue
objected. To take one off a grave would be bad luck. Uncle Isaac would
be glad to make him one if he’d ask him.
* * * * *
Bright and early Monday morning, Big Sue began fitting together small,
carefully cut scraps of cloth, sewing them into squares with strong
ball thread. Breeze sat on the step in the pleasant sunshine threading
her big-eyed needle as fast as it worked up arm-lengths of thread into
firm-holding stitches, while she sat in a low chair on the porch.
Squirrels chased one another across the yard, and up into the live-oak
trees. Showers of ripe acorns jarred down by their playing spattered
over the ground. Those acorns were sweet as chinquapins, and the
squirrels were fat with eating so many. But Big Sue would not let
Breeze kill even one for dinner. His fine new sling-shot, made out of a
dogwood prong, could hit almost as hard as a gun, but Big Sue said the
white folks who lived in the Big House wanted the squirrels left. Even
if they ate up all the pecans in the fall, and all the peaches in the
summer, not one was to be killed. White people have foolish notions,
but it is better not to cross them if you can help it.
She was working hard to get her quilts quilted before the white folks
came down for the duck shooting this winter. They didn’t stay long
these last years. They had another home up-North, so li’l’ “Young
Cap’n” could go to a fine school there. Poor little boy! He liked this
home a lot better, but his Yankee stepma ruled him and his pa too.
Each day got shorter now. She must sew fast. Get all her squares
patched and ready. She’d scarcely have time to draw a long breath for
the turn of cooking to be done after they came. Nobody else on the
plantation could season victuals to suit them. Zeda helped sometimes,
but Zeda didn’t know when ducks were done to a turn and not too done.
Zeda was apt to get venison as dry as a chip, and if she as much as
looked at a waffle it fell flat.
Uncle Isaac’s wife was the cook before Big Sue. She used to be the
finest cook on the whole Neck. Nobody knew how she made things taste
so good. She wouldn’t tell. One day she dropped dead. Right in the
kitchen. Some people thought she was conjured, but too much rich eating
may have done it. After that Uncle Isaac tried to train two or three
people to fix the food, for he knew a lot of his wife’s secrets from
watching her. Big Sue was a girl then, but she was a natural-born cook.
When Uncle Isaac found that out, he let her have her own way. She could
beat everybody now. Lord! When she had the right kind of victuals,
people gnawed their fingers and bit their tongues just to smell the
steam when she lifted the pot lids.
The next moon might bring cold weather. She must hurry and get these
quilts pieced and have a quilting. She had quilts enough for herself.
These were for Joy. She’d ask all the plantation women to Maum Hannah’s
house, where the big room stayed ready for meeting on Wednesday nights,
and for quiltings any day in the week. If it turned cold, Sherry
would kill enough wild ducks for her to cook for the women to eat with
the rice. Wild ducks and rice are fine. If it stayed warm, she’d cook
chickens and rice, instead. Make a pilau, with plenty of hard-boiled
eggs. Uncle Bill would give her the chickens.
Sherry loved Joy so much he’d get anything she wanted for this
quilting! The women could easily quilt ten quilts a day. If they came
early and worked fast they could do fifteen, but she’d be satisfied
with six, for she wanted hers quilted right. With fine stitches, run
in rows close together. Then the cotton batting could never slip, no
matter how many times the quilts were washed.
She was piecing a “Monkey wrench” quilt now. She had a “Log-cabin”
finished, and a “Primrose” and a “Star of Bethlehem” and a “Wild-goose
Chase” and a “Pine-burr.” She had begun a “State-house Steps,” but that
was a hard one to do. It couldn’t be worked out in a hurry and look
right. She’d wait and finish it next year. Joy could wait for that one.
Some women don’t care how their quilts look. They piece the squares
together any sort of way, but she couldn’t stand careless sewing. She
wanted her quilts, and Joy’s, made right. Quilts stay a long time after
people are gone from this world, and witness about them for good or
bad. She wanted people to see, when she was gone, that she’d never been
a shiftless or don’t-care woman.
XI
HUNTING ’POSSUMS AND TURKEYS
Breeze learned something new almost every day. He grew taller each
week. His skinny muscles were filling out, his arms and legs growing
longer and tougher. Big Sue said he’d be useful if he kept on. He
fetched all the water they used from the spring, three full buckets at
a time, one bucket on his head, one in each hand. He cut all the wood
they burned, without fatigue, since Sherry had taught him the trick of
swaying his body forward from the hips as he brought the ax down on the
wood. Sherry made a game of wood-cutting, and could cut a thick oak log
in two with nineteen whacks. Breeze took two or three times as many,
but he did it with one or two less each day.
He made up both beds every morning and swept the floor so clean that
Big Sue couldn’t find a speck of dust anywhere. He knew how to crack
hickory nuts and walnuts so the goodies came out whole for Big Sue to
put in sweetened bread. He had helped make soap with ashes, pot-grease
and the fat of a lot of spoiled hog-meat April gave Big Sue. He took
a sack of corn on his shoulder to mill every Saturday morning, and
brought it back, ground fine, and hot from the grinding rocks. He
milked the cow, churned the cream, fed the chickens, and the hog in the
pen. He could even patch his own clothes.
The regular field-hands drew rations on Saturday, one peck of corn,
three pounds of cured hog-meat. The women who had no man living with
them, paid rent for their cabins with one day’s work a week. April saw
to it that every one paid. He was close and careful. Everybody had to
come right up to the notch since he was foreman, but the house of Big
Sue was rent free, since she was the cook. Breeze drew rations like a
regular field-hand, and by hunting and fishing with Sherry and Uncle
Bill he provided many a good potful of meat. With a line tied to the
end of a long swamp cane, and a slick wriggly earthworm for bait,
he caught strings of perches that made rich morsels when dipped in
cornmeal and fried.
Sherry’s coon dog, Zip, had a faithful nose, and when Sherry and Breeze
took him out at night they seldom came home without coons, or ’possums,
enough to satisfy both Big Sue and Zeda.
They came in earlier than usual one night with nine ’possums and found
April sitting by the fire with Big Sue. Breeze saw Sherry’s frown and
the two men hardly spoke to each other, until April eyed the ’possums
with a sneering smile and said:
“Yunnuh’s got a lot o’ ’possums to-night. I heared Jake’s calf got in a
bog. E must ’a’ died.”
April poked the fire until sparks flew into the room.
“Wha’ you doin’, April? Is you crazy?” Big Sue cried sharply.
April spat contemptuously far back into the live embers. “I’d as soon
eat a buzzard as one o’ dem ’possums!”
“How come?” Breeze, Big Sue, Sherry, all darted astonished looks at him.
“Dey’s full up wid carrion. A ’possum ain’ decent as a buzzard. Dey’s
so coward-hearted, dey durstn’ come out in de daytime to eat. No. Dem
sleek-tailed devils wait till night, den goes creepin’ to carcasses
and stuffs on all what de buzzards scorns.”
“Shut you’ dirty mout’, April! I declare to Gawd, you’s a-turning my
stomach! Torectly, I couldn’ eenjoy eatin’ dese possums at all!” Big
Sue laid stress on every word.
“When did you git so awful delicate, Big Sue?” April asked with a grin.
“I ever did have a delicate stomach. I don’ hardly have no appetite at
all lately.”
Sherry gave a loud guffaw and April frowned in sudden ill-temper. “Wha’
dat tickle you so turrible, now, Sherry?”
April’s irritation showed in the jerky shifting of his hands and
feet, and Big Sue’s eyes stretched open and rolled toward Sherry, who
answered sourly:
“Oh, I ain’ so awful tickled. No. I just had to laugh when I thought
on how it takes a thief to catch a thief. Night-walkers meets
night-walkers, enty?”
“I do’in’ un’erstan’ wha’ dat you’s a-drivin’ at.” April stroked his
mustache and eyed Sherry coldly.
“Me neither,” Big Sue chimed. “Whyn’ you talk plain talk, Sherry? It’s
mighty no-manners to stand up an’ laugh a horse laugh in somebody’s
face.”
“Do ex-cuse me, Cun Big Sue. Ev’y now an’ den, I forget an’ speak out
o’ turn. I was just talkin’ fool talk. I ain’ laughin’ at nobody. Come
on, Breeze. Le’s divide de ’possums. You take four, I take five. We
sho’ had good luck to-night. Good night, ev’ybody!”
Sherry flung himself out of the door and April sat silent, vexed,
upset; but his anger lasted only a short time. When he spoke, his tone
was pleasant enough. He ought not to have joked with Sherry. The boy
was too easy to get plagued. Zeda had spoiled him all his life, instead
of breaking him of his sassy ways. Such a pity to ruin a nice boy.
April got to his feet and stood stiffly erect.
Big Sue’s gimlet eyes watched his face, then leaning to knock her pipe
on the hearth she said sadly: “Lawd, I wish dem ’possums was somet’ing
fit to eat. A wild turkey or somet’ing. If dey was a wild turkey, I
could stuff dem wid oysters an’ roast dem. Jedus, wouldn’ dey taste
good! Whyn’ you kill a turkey, April? Looks like nobody else can shoot
one but you? Ain’ you got a blind baited?”
She smiled up at him so sweetly, April smiled back.
“Whyn’ you take Breeze an’ go in de mawin’?” she pressed. “We could eat
turkey to-morrow night.” She smacked her lips.
April turned her words over in his mind, thinking, calculating.
Presently he asked, “How ’bout gwine turkey huntin’ wid me in de
mawnin’, boy?”
Breeze was rapt with pure joy. April’s smile made him tingle all over.
Instead of being bashful and afraid, he looked straight into April’s
eyes and nodded.
“Lawdy! Lawdy!” He murmured low, and his heart went pit-a-pat. He was
going turkey-hunting with April, the foreman, who had scarcely ever
noticed him before!
“Git on to bed, son!” Big Sue said so gently, so kindly, Breeze was at
a loss to know why. He walked slowly back to the shed-room, the blood
beating clear up in his cheeks, but Big Sue sat down in her chair by
the fire to smoke another pipeful. “Set down, April,” she said. “De
night is young, yet.”
She woke Breeze before daylight when the black sky held only a narrow
moon, without any sign of sunrise. A thin gray mist hung over the earth
and all was quiet except a few crickets and the occasional bark of a
dog. Breeze had slept little, but he felt wide awake, breathless, as
he followed April’s slow ponderous steps. April spoke seldom. He seemed
to be brooding over something. Breeze pitied him. A foreman has so much
to think about, so many people to rule, so much land to manage. Sherry
was wrong to be impudent last night.
They turned off from the road into a path which Breeze could barely
see although his eyes worked well in the dark. April led the way, and
Breeze hung close at his heels for the silence in the forest was full
of strange sounds and shapes.
The turkey blind was a great bush heap, with one small opening in its
side, looking straight out on a narrow trench. The bottom of the trench
was strewn with white shelled corn, so when April called the turkeys,
and they got to eating, their heads would be down in a bee line. One
shot might blow two or three heads off. Wild turkeys fly too fast for
any gun to have a good second chance at them.
Breeze sat perfectly still inside the blind, while April yelped and
yelped. Once a hen yelped back, but she came no nearer. Breeze’s feet
went to sleep. Both his legs got cramp. His back ached. The cold
morning air chilled his very bones, but he dared not move so much as
one muscle. April had warned him not even to whisper. The silence made
him drowsy, but when April sniffed and Breeze drew in a long breath of
air, then his body’s discomfort fled! Cold fear took its place, for a
rattlesnake was near.
“Le’s go, Cun April!”
“I’m gwine git dat snake first, son. You set still till I call you.”
Day was coming. Tree branches overhead talked softly to one another.
Leaves brought down by the wind fell rustling. Birds chirped and
twittered. Squirrels barked. Breeze’s blood drummed in his temples.
The forest around them was old and great, most of the trees gums or
poplars, with an occasional pine appearing. The undergrowth crowded
close together, twining and tangling with limbs and branches so dense
the light could scarcely reach the ground.