slowly, stealthily, in the direction of the smell. Breeze thought his
heart would stop beating altogether, so great was his terror. If that
snake struck April and killed him, how’d he ever get home himself? He
didn’t know the way. His hands thrust deeper into his pockets and one
felt his knife. Uncle’s directions for helping a snake-bitten person
came to him. Cut the wound wide open and suck out the poison. Could he
do it? Could he cut April’s flesh and suck his blood? He’d have to, if
it came to the worst.
April thrashed about in the undergrowth with his long forked stick,
calling out as he did so, “Whe’ is you, snake? Hurry up an’ rattle! I
wan’ git you!”
When a clear dry rattle sang out, he laughed. “Now we’ll see who’s de
best man, me or you! Breeze, git you’ pocket knife! Cut a shell open!
Have it ready so if I miss an’ git bit you kin pour de powder in de
bite an’ set em afire. I got a box o’ matches here in my pocket. You
better take ’em. You understand, enty? Burnin’ de pizen out is better’n
suckin’ it out. Fire kin fight em stronger’n you’ mouth.”
The thick-bodied, large-headed snake was coiled, ready to strike. The
rattles on the end of its tail raised and shook angrily. But instead of
dread, April showed a fierce pleasure in the dry ear-splitting whir.
Breeze’s throat went dry, but April laughed.
“You’s too slow, you pided devil! Summer’s gone! I kin kill you easy
as Breeze kills a chicken! Lawd! you is old! You’ rattles looks like a
cow’s horn. Come on!”
He batted the snake’s head to one side with a deft blow, and, putting
the stick’s fork over its neck, held it fast to the ground, until he
could seize it below the throat in a steady powerful grip. As he lifted
it up off the ground, the thick body wound wildly around his arm in a
terrible struggle to wrench loose, the flat eyes glared, the wide mouth
yawned. April stood firm as a tree.
“Fight, boy, fight! Stretch you’ mouth wide as you kin! Dat ain’ wide
enough yet! I want to spit clean down in your belly! Show you’ fangs!
Dey ain’ nuttin! I got blue gums too! You may as well stand still and
pray! You’ time is out! You gwine meet you’ Gawd to-day!”
With a whoop April threw his head back, then he spat straight into the
yawning mouth.
“Dat shot got you!” he cried, and spat again. “You can’ harm me, son!
You is a-weakenin’! I see it! My spit is pizen as you’ own!”
“Come, Breeze! Looka dis scoundrel! Lawd, e sho’ is a whopper!”
The snake’s muzzle was covered with plates, its scaly brown body marked
with yellowish square shapes; its eyes, full of hate, stared out from
the front of its heart-shaped head. Breeze’s own blood had frozen in
his veins, and his legs were almost too numb to carry him.
“You got blue gums, Breeze. Come spit in dis mouth so you’ll know how
to do it next time!”
“Don’ make me do dat, Cun April.”
“You ain’ no gal-baby, is you?”
“No, suh.”
“Den come on. Git you’ mouth full. Now, aim straight fo’ de fork in his
tongue.”
Breeze’s lips twitched so that he missed the snake completely the
first time, but the next effort was a success.
“Dat’s good. You got mo’ grit dan Sherry. Sherry never would try dis.
But den, Sherry ain’ got blue gums like me an’ you.”
The snake’s plunging and twisting grew less violent. The huge body
writhed sluggishly. Had April really poisoned the creature by spitting
into its tongue? Or had he choked it to death? Its life was going out,
that was certain.
Suppose April’s fingers took cramp. What would happen then? April
turned his face toward home.
“Le’s go, Breeze. It’s too late to git a turkey. I’ll take dis snake
to Uncle Isaac. He axed me to git him one to make some tea for his
rheumatism. Po’ ol’ man. Rheumatism’ll make a Christian out o’ em yet!”
Full daybreak shed its light everywhere. Night and stars were gone out
of the sky. The sun would soon be up. But at Uncle Isaac’s cabin, the
doors and windows were shut tight.
The snake couldn’t die altogether until sun-down, but April dropped it
on the ground and used his forked stick to beat hard on the sides of
the house.
“Hey, Uncle! Hey! Wake up!” He shouted until the old man opened the
door. “I got a present fo’ you! A rattlesnake! Me an’ him had a tight
time dis mawnin’! Lawd! Yes! I sho’ love to fight wid a snake!”
Uncle Isaac hopped around, exclaiming over the snake’s size. He was
glad to get him. He’d fix some snake tea to-day.
As they walked home down the avenue, April talked cheerfully. He said
Uncle Isaac had taken so much snake cut that snakes got weak if they
crossed his path. If one came near him it got stiff as a stick, and
helpless. Next time Breeze saw the old man he must look at his ankles
where they’d been cut and cut for snake poison to be rubbed into them.
His feet were full of scars too, but Uncle Isaac had worn shoes ever
since he chopped off a big toe.
April had walked up on snakes that were stricken by getting too close
to Uncle Isaac. They’d be blind and numb, unable to move a step. God
gave Uncle Isaac a strong sweat too. If he had never taken snake cut,
he could send any snake into a trance by wetting his hands at his
armpits and waving them in the snake’s face. They’d faint right off,
and stay dead a long time.
Breeze ought to learn Uncle Isaac’s magic. He’d been born with a
second-sight. Learning magic would be better for him than learning
books. Black magic, as well as white magic; Uncle Isaac knew both.
Uncle Bill too. But Uncle Bill gave magic up for religion. A poor swap.
A deacon or a preacher is not much more than a woman. Not much more!
April’s down-heartedness had completely passed. Loitering along, he
chatted pleasantly. Although the sun had risen he was in no hurry.
XII
DUCK-HUNTING
Sherry promised Big Sue plenty of wild ducks for her quilting dinner if
she’d persuade Uncle Bill to row him.
“Lemme go, too, Sherry. Please, Sherry,” Breeze begged.
“If you’ll kill some ducks, you could go.”
“I ain’ got no gun.”
“Plenty o’ guns is yonder in de Big House. Cun April is got de key.”
“I’ll git you a gun, Breeze,” Big Sue offered, and before the day was
out Breeze went into the Big House with April, through the same side
door out of which April and Big Sue came that first morning.
The side passage led into a wide front hall and a queer feeling of
intrusion seized Breeze as he went past rooms where pictures of white
people looked at him from the walls. Brass andirons and fenders gleamed
out from big fireplaces. Unlit candles left the high ceilinged rooms
in a dim uncertain light. Dark shadows hid under the heavy furniture,
until April pressed a button and a chandelier hung from the ceiling
became hundreds of dazzling icicles, dripping with light.
April took Breeze to a room where a rack held guns of all sizes and
shapes, each one polished, well oiled, ready for work. April handed
Breeze one after the other to try, making him put them up to his
shoulder as if he aimed at something. When one was found to fit, April
cautioned him, “When you shoot, fo’git you’ gun. Fasten you’ eyes on
de t’ing you want to hit, den pull de trigger. Try em now, son! Don’
squint up you’ eyes! Keep all two wide open. Shootin’ ain’ hard work!
It’s for pleasure! You can’ hit nothin’ if you frown.”
Breeze was glad to get out of the silent house with its book-lined
walls and rug hidden floors. He took the gun home, but he could
scarcely go to sleep for happy excitement over the prospect of going
hunting.
* * * * *
Uncle Bill sat waiting in the stern of a small narrow boat, but he got
to his feet when he saw Big Sue. While he held the boat steady for
Breeze and Sherry to get in, he kept an eye on Big Sue as he warned her
please not to touch Breeze, and he kept saying to Breeze:
“Mind, son. Don’ put you’ hand on Miss Big Sue. When a man is gwine
a-huntin’, it’ll ruin his luck to let a lady touch him. Be careful!”
He wanted Breeze to sit alone in the bow of the boat, but Sherry
considered and then said, no, Breeze must sit beside him on the narrow
board seat in the boat’s middle. Uncle Bill shook his head and muttered
in disapproval, but Sherry wouldn’t give in.
“No, Uncle Bill, Breeze wouldn’t be safe settin’ in front o’ me dis
morning. My gun feels too ready to shoot. I can’ trust em. It’s so
quick on de trigger it might miss and aim at his head or his back
instead o’ at a duck.”
“Wha’ dat is got you so nervish, Sherry?”
“When my mind runs on some people, I wants to shoot right den!”
“Dat is sinful, son. Awful sinful! I hates to hear you talk so!”
To Breeze, the boat seemed very narrow and the seat scarcely able to
hold two. He knew he couldn’t swim if he fell out, but he said nothing,
and soon Uncle Bill swung them out into the middle of the deep clear
stream.
Instead of being brown-black like the river, this arm of that stream
was filled with the blue of the sky. But its dark depths looked
bottomless and dangerous, and Breeze sat mute, with his eyes staring
down in it until Sherry nudged him and made him look up. “You got to
learn how to swim, son, den you won’ be scared o’ water! You get dis
straight in you’ head now too; when a man starts out huntin’, e mustn’t
never let no ’oman put her hand on him. If e do, his luck is gone.
Uncle Bill is even scared for my right hand to touch you, for you ain’
no more’n a li’l’ gal. But I’ll risk it. My luck kin stand a lot. It
don’ fail me.”
Breeze listened and answered, “Yes suh,” but he did not altogether
understand, and Sherry’s eyes glanced over the water’s surface.
“Lawd! Looka de creek, how blue e is dis mornin’! Winter or summer, e
stays blue. Dat is what gives de plantation de name, Blue Brook. Cun
Big Sue ain’ told you dat yet?”
Behind them Uncle Bill hissed, “Sh-sh,” and Sherry leaned to whisper,
“We mustn’ talk. De ducks’ll hear an’ we won’t git a shot. Is you know
how to load you’ gun?”
In his excitement Breeze had forgotten, but Sherry took it and showed
him again how to slip two neat yellow, brass-trimmed shells into place
in the clean steel barrels, how to make the gun “safe” and “ready.”
Then he took up his own gun and with quick slidings and clickings
slipped half a dozen shells into its snug chamber. Breeze noticed that
Sherry had purple shells and wondered what the different colors meant,
but before he could ask, a sharp “sh-sh” from Uncle Bill hissed behind
them again.
“Go easy,” Sherry’s big mouth buzzed back in a whisper. To Breeze he
mumbled, “Git you’ gun ready, son.”
The tide must have been going with them for they flowed along without a
sound. Breeze saw no ducks until suddenly dark wings flashed everywhere
in front of them. The gun in Sherry’s hands fired, again and again. It
was all quickly over. Echoes banged back and forth at one another, then
died, and everything was still. On the water in front of them three
limp bundles of feathers were floating, not caring at all where they
went.
Uncle Bill’s laughter cackled out. “Sherry, you can’ be beated! Son,
you’s a shot-man, fo’ true! Yes, Jedus! You don’ never miss!”
He shot the boat forward and Sherry leaned far out to pick up the
lifeless bodies of the ducks he had killed. How strong he was! And as
much at home in this cramped-up boat as on the ground.
“Poor creeters!” he pitied, holding the gay-colored bill of one of them
between his fingers. “Ain’ e a beauty!”
“I hope you ain’ gettin’ chicken-hearted,” Uncle Bill twitted, and
Sherry grinned back.
“Maybe I is, Uncle.” Sherry’s big fingers gently ruffled the feathers
on the duck’s breast to show them to Breeze. They were beautiful,
indeed. The trim head had a high crest of purple and green and black
feathers. White lines were above and below the poor death-dulled eyes.
The throat and warm breast, colored soft tan like a chinquapin, and
spotted with white, were bloodstained across the fine black markings.
The bill was bright pink; the feet and legs, bright orange. Sherry said
they were safe to be loud-colored, for they were hidden under water
most of the time.
The drake’s mates were less gay. The brown and gray and white feathers
on their trim bodies were quiet as shadows on the water.
All three of them were quite dead, and Sherry tossed them back to Uncle
Bill who put them far back under the seat, saying as he did so:
“We better hide ’em fo’ true. Dey’s all summer ducks. It’s five hundred
dollars to kill one! Five hundred!”
“Shucks!” Sherry answered, reloading his gun. “Dem white folks way off
yonder to Columbia sho’ do make some fool laws!”
“If de game warden was to slip up on you right now you’d wish you had
kept ’em, dough. Where’d you git de money to pay?”
“Oh, I know I’d go straight to de gang as a martin to his gourd,”
Sherry answered cheerfully. “But I trust to my luck to don’ git caught.”
All three of them laughed, and Uncle Bill thrust the boat silently
on. Once Sherry pointed to a hollow high up on the body of a leaning
cypress. The tree’s feathery top rose far above the mesh of interlaced
vines and branches on the bank of the stream. As likely as not a summer
duck made her nest in that hollow. They choose knot-holes or hollows,
sometimes forty feet high, sometimes near the water. Queer fowls. Hard
to fool.
As they rounded a bend on the stream a faint splash sounded in front.
Sherry listened with pent breath. “Ducks, enty, Uncle?” he whispered.
“Great Gawd, Sherry! Wha’ dat ail you’ years?”
Almost at once they swung into sight of April in a boat much like their
own. He had a load of sacks and packages and its back was piled high
with oysters in the shell. His trousers were inside his laced-up boots
and a silver watch-chain dangled from a side pocket.
Uncle Bill hailed him, “Good mawnin’, son! How come you so dressed up?
I don’ like dem boots. You’s a good swimmer fo’ true, but boots kin
drown a fish. A watch kin fool you too. I wouldn’t trust to no watch.
Not me!”
“I rather drown dan let oyster shells cut my feets all up. Plain shoes
don’ hinder ’em. But how you like dese fish?” He held up a string of
long, smooth, snaky-looking creatures. They could have passed for short
fat snakes.
“Great Gawd, de eels! You sho’ had luck wid you dis mawnin’.”
“Luck stay wid me!” April bragged, but Sherry laughed.
“You must be mean Bad Luck, enty? If I’d catch a’ eel, I’d call it Bad
Luck!”
“How come so?”
“I can’ stand to look at a’ eel, much less eat one. Not me!”
“When did you git so pa’ticular, Sherry? You must be kissed you’ elbow
an’ turned to a lady, enty?” April sneered coolly.
“No matter how long you cook a’ eel, it’ll turn raw soon’s it gits
cold.”
“Who’d let a eel git cold? Not me, I know,” April returned hotly. “Eels
ain’ nothin’ but he catfish. How come you love catfish so good an’
scorns eels?”
“Sho’ dey is!” Uncle Bill affirmed promptly. “Dey’s de men catfish.
Sho’! Anybody’ll tell you dat.” April shoved his boat forward.
“Well, I’m glad you don’ want ’em, Sherry! It would be too bad if you
did. But I tell you, when Big Sue gits dem seasoned up right in a pot
dey would make you pure bite you’ fingers just to smell ’em.”
Sherry said no more, and April’s boat glided on. A bend in the stream
closed its gate behind it, shutting him and his boatload of food out of
sight.
Uncle Bill took a chew of tobacco. “April’s de luckiest man I ever
seen,” he ventured, but Sherry said nothing at all.
Through breaks in the trees Breeze caught glimpses of drab, level,
water-covered spaces. Old rice-fields. Deserted. Marsh-grown. They
lacked the color and the look of life that filled the thick-tangled
growth of trees and thorny-looking vines and bushes encircling them.
“Sherry,” Uncle Bill rested his paddle, “you don’ hold nothin’ against
April, does you?”
Sherry’s answer was slow coming, “Not nothin’ much, suh.”
Uncle Bill began paddling again, and Sherry put down his gun and
stretched, then said that since April and his boat had scared all the
ducks out of this creek, they’d better go across the river into some of
the creeks around Silver Island where lots of ducks raise and there’d
be a chance to get some good shooting.
Sherry’s good humor was gone. He sat dumb, his forehead all knotted up
in a frown. The eels or April or something had crossed him. Breeze was
glad to hear him ask, “Who named Silver Island, Uncle? You reckon any
money’s buried on it?”
Uncle Bill didn’t know. It was named long ago, when each bit of land
here was given a name. These marshes were all fields in the old days.
Rice was planted everywhere then. He pointed to old rotting pieces of
wood that held the tide back until it gurgled as it strained to get
over them.
“See de old flood-gates? De old trunks? Dey used to let de water in and
out. Dey used to know dere business to!” He sighed. “But dey time is
out. De old days is gone. De tide does like it pleases now.”
On an old piece of wood, brown with rot and soaked by the flood-tide,
yet standing guard beside an opening on the bank, several small black
tortoises sprawled out flat, sunning themselves. As the boat got nearer
they all slid into the water for safety.
It amused Uncle Bill mightily. He chuckled and called out that they
needn’t hide from him.
“You like cooters, Uncle?” Sherry asked him with a laugh.
“No, suh!” the old man said shortly, “Not to-day, anyhow. De sky’s too
clear.” He cast his black beady eyes up and scanned the blue overhead.
“I don’ see no sign of thunder nowhere, an’ if a cooter bites you e
won’t never let go till it thunders.”
Sherry laughed. “You know, don’t you, Uncle?” Then he told how once
when Uncle Bill was a boy a cooter caught his toe and held on to it for
a whole day and night.
“Fo’ days, son!” Uncle Bill corrected.
“Was it four, fo’ true, Uncle?” Sherry asked doubtfully.
“Yes, suh! An e’d ’a’ been holdin’ on till now if it didn’t thunder,”
Uncle Bill spoke solemnly.
“What did you do all dem four days, Uncle?” Sherry asked.
“I watched de clouds an’ prayed for de thunder to roll, son.”
When Breeze hoped one would never bite him, Uncle Bill grunted. “You
right to hope so, son. I hope so too. A cooter is a contrary creeter.”
“De people used to say Uncle Isaac was crippled by a cooter. E makes
like e’s plagued wid rheumatism, but I have hear tell e ain’ got no big
toe on one foot. Did you know dat, Sherry?”
“How come so?” Breeze inquired.
“Well, now, I tell you, dis might not be so. But I used to hear de
people say it was. Old man Isaac is a heap older’n me an’ all dis
happened before I was born. But my mammy used to laugh ’bout em. Plenty
o’ times when e’d come hoppin’ up to de house a-talkin’ ’bout how it
must be gwine rain soon by de misery in his knee was so bad, my mammy
use to say his big toe wasn’t buried straight an’ dat was what hurt
Uncle Isaac. T’ings have to be buried right or dey can’ rest at all.”
“Whe’ was de cooter?” Breeze asked.
“De cooter was in de corn-field, son.”
“An’ whe’ was Uncle Isaac?”
“E was in de corn-field too, choppin’ grass.”
“Did de cooter bite his toe off?”
“No, you wait now an’ le’ me tell em my way.”
“When Uncle Isaac was young e used to run round a lot at night instead
o’ being’ home ’sleep, like he had business to be. E used to catch a
nap in de daytime whilst he was hoein’. Plenty o’ people can stand
straight up in de field an’ lean on dey hoe an’ sleep good. I never
could, but a lot o’ people can. Well, Uncle Isaac was gwine long hoein’
a spell, den dozin’ a spell. One time when e opened his eyes to look e
thought e seen a cooter’s head right side his foot. E chopped down hard
to cut em off. But it wasn’t no cooter head dat time. It been his own
big toe! Dat’s how come e’s hoppin’ to dis day. An’ a-lyin’ ’bout em
too.”
“Po’ ol’ man!” Sherry laughed along with his pitying. “I don’ blame em
fo’ lyin’ ’bout dat. I’d be shame’ to tell de truth. Dey say if you
tell a lie an’ stick to it, dat’s good as de truth anyhow.”
“I dunno,” Uncle Bill answered doubtfully, “I reckon sin is easier to
stand dan shame.”
A blue dragon-fly flitted along close to the water.
“Does you know his business?” Sherry asked Breeze. But the fly was
catching gnats and mosquitoes right then and anybody could see what its
business was. Breeze laughed at Sherry’s question.
“You’s wrong,” Sherry laughed back. “You’s talkin’ ’bout his victuals,
not his business. Dat’s a snake doctor. A sick snake is around here
somewhere now. You watch out. We’ll see him. Den we’ll kill him and
hang him up on a limb to make it rain. It’s powerful dry dis fall.”
“If you hang a dead snake on a limb, dat couldn’ make it rain?”
Sherry’s laugh was so merry that Breeze grinned at his own ignorance.
“Great Gawd, boy! You didn’t know dat! Sho’, it will! In less’n three
days too. Won’t it, Uncle?”
“Sho’!” Uncle Bill answered stoutly, but he added there was no use to
bother with the snake, for it was going to rain in less than three
days, anyhow. “The new moon hung in a ring last night and only one star
was inside it. That means it will rain after one day. If they’d find
the snake and kill him he couldn’t die until the sun went down. Neither
can a frog nor a cooter, nor a wasp. Lots of things can’t die if the
sun shines.”
Breeze felt he was learning a lot, and he listened so attentively that
Uncle Bill went on talking.
“Most people have to wait until night to die, and even when night
comes, dey can’t die until de tide turns.”
“How can dey tell if dey’s sick in the bed?” Breeze asked, and Uncle
Bill explained that the people themselves didn’t know. The life that
stays inside them, that knows.
“It knows mighty nigh everything,” the old man declared, “and when de
time comes for it to go, it goes, an’ leaves a man dead as a wedge.”
This statement left Breeze wondering, but Uncle Bill went on telling
how the rice-fields were full of all kinds of snakes, some of them
poisonous, and some not. But the snake he feared most, more than even a
rattlesnake or a moccasin, was a coach-whip.
“If a coach-whip catches you, he will wrap his body round you an’ tie
you to a tree an’ whip you to death wid his tail. Lawd, boy, when a
coach-whip blows dat whistle in de end of his tail, put you’ foot in
you’ hand an’ run!”
“Yes, suh!” Sherry agreed, “I too ’fraid of coach-whips myself. I never
did see one do it, but a coach-whip can outrun a man any day. If you
get to outrunnin’ him, e will grab his tail in his mouth and roll after
you like a hoop to catch you. An’ tie you to a tree an’ whip you. Enty,
Uncle?”
“Sho’?” Uncle Bill was astonished at his asking. “Sho it’s so! I’ve
seen a coach-whip do it plenty o’ times.”
He spat far out into the stream when he had said it, then held one oar
still in the water to wheel the boat to one side, as he asked:
“Did you ever catch one of dose pretty little garter snakes an’ see him
break hisself all up into little joints? Dey go back all togedder again
when dey gits ready.”
Sherry never had.
“Well did you ever burn a blacksnake an’ make him show you his feet.
You must be have done dat, Sherry?”
“No, suh,” Sherry answered solemnly. “I ain’ done em not yet, but I’ve
seen plenty o’ people what has done em.” And after a thoughtful silence
he added:
“Deys one t’ing I do know, Uncle. If a snake bites you and you don’t
die, all you’ hair will drop out every time dat snake sheds its skin.
Dat’s so, ’cause my own done it about ten years until Uncle Isaac told
me to put a boxwood poultice on my hand ebery night las’ spring. An’
dat cured me.”
“Sho’!” Uncle Bill agreed. “Boxwood’s good for most eberyt’ing what
ails you.”
“Poultices made out of boxwood will make you’ hair grow and cure
tooth-ache or either rheumatism. Boxwood tea’ll cure de itch or de
spring fever, too.”
“I heard so,” Sherry approved. “Boxwood roots is good for foot troubles
too.”
“Yes, suh. It’s a good medicine. Sho’! De white people knowed it and
dats how come dey fetched it across de water wid em. All de flowers
gardens on dis whole Neck is full o’ boxwood. Some’s grows high an’
some low. Some ain’ no taller dan my finger, an’ it’s old as de Big
House, too.”
“Lawd, how times is changed! Changed before yunnuh was born. Looks like
all de good old days is done gone.”
“We done well enough till de boll-evils come, enty, Uncle?”
“But de boll-evils is come. Dey ruint de whole crop year befo’ last.”
“De crop was good last year after we pizened ’em.”