work?”
“Sherry butt me!--E broke my skull!--I got a bad headache!”
“Do shut you’ mouth, an’ git up off de ground! Unhitch you’ mule an’ go
on home to Leah. Baby!”
Brudge got up slowly, and moaning low but steadily did what he was
told. With April, he was very humble. His trembling fingers fumbled at
the lines and trace-chains, but he kept up a furious sobbing all the
time he worked at knots and links.
“Help him, Breeze!” April’s order cracked out like the snap of a whip.
Breeze hurried forward obediently, not that April had ever mistreated
him, or even scolded him, but because he knew that April ruled
everybody and everything on the plantation with a heavy hand. People,
beasts, even plants and insects, had to bend to his stubborn will, or
suffer.
“Hey, Sherry!” April called. “Come dis way! Left Clara whe’ e is! Git a
move on you, too!”
April was rarely unjust, and sometimes he was almost gentle, but now
his voice stung the air. Sherry had better not vex him further, or
there’d be trouble.
Although Sherry walked without hurry, he was out of breath when he
reached April. His hands shook a little as men do when a chill is about
to seize them.
“How come you butt Brudge?” April asked him coldly.
“You ought to be glad I butt em. Brudge is a no-manners scoundrel.”
“If he done wrong, whyn’ you tell me?”
“I ain’ no news carrier.”
April’s eyes glittered as he shifted his hickory stick from one hand to
the other.
“You ain’ Brudge’s daddy, you know?”
“No.” And Sherry smiled. “I ain’ nobody’s daddy, not yet.”
“Wha’ you mean by dat?” April’s voice rose, and in a sudden burst of
anger he seized Sherry by the shoulder. “You can’ sass me, Sherry!
You know it too! If you wanted to butt somebody, whyn’ you come try
my head, instead o’ mashin’ up a li’l’ half-grown boy like Brudge? I
got a mind to make mush out o’ you’ brains right now. You ever was a’
impudent black devil!”
Sherry’s eyes gleamed, his fists clenched, and he drew closer to April.
“I didn’ had no cause to butt you, dat’s why! But I just as soon butt
you as anybody else.”
April smiled. “I hate to kill you, Sherry. You’s a good plow-hand, an’
I need you.”
Sherry’s answer didn’t lag one iota, and he met April’s eyes with a
steadfast look. “Come try me! Just stick you’ neck out! One time! Just
one time! You t’ink you’s de onliest man got a skull on dis whole
plantation. I got a bone in my head, too. Come try em! I’ll butt you’
brains out same as if you wasn’ my daddy!” Sherry’s eyes glared, his
head crouched between his shoulders, he came forward with a rush. But
April jerked him clear up off his feet, and his big head came down on
Sherry’s forehead with a butt that brought the blood streaming from
both men’s nostrils.
Sherry staggered back a step, then leaped forward, but April’s powerful
outstretched arms hurled him toward the plow-hands, who caught him and
held him fast, for April warned them.
“Yunnuh hold dat boy. If e comes back at me I’ll kill em. An’ we ain’
got time to be diggin’ a grave, not till de cotton’s all plowed under.”
“You mens lemme go, I tell you! I ain’ scared o’ April. Lemme go!”
“Yunnuh ain’ to fight! Great Gawd! Yunnuh’d kill one anudder. You can’
git loose, Sherry. No, suh!”
Sherry struggled fruitlessly. Then he stood still. April wiped his nose
on his shirt-sleeve, picked his ragged hat up off the ground, set it
straight on his head, then quietly buttoned up the neck of his shirt,
for a sudden gust of wind came up cool from the rice-fields.
Casting his eyes up at the sky where a flock of small ragged clouds
hung high and white, he said calmly, “Yunnuh better git back to
plowin’. It’s gwine rain in a few days an’ we must git dis big field
finished befo’ den.”
He tried to speak coolly. Quietly. To hold up his head triumphantly.
But his shoulders had a dejected droop, as he turned his back and went
toward the woods.
After a few steps, he turned around, “Sherry, you an’ me can’ live
on de same place. Not no mo’. I’ll kill you sho’ as we try it. For a
little I’d kill you now. You git on off. I don’ care whe’ you go, just
so I don’ see you, not no mo’! Git outen de field! Right now, too.”
Breeze felt hot, then cold. The blood rose in his throat and choked
him. If he could only help Sherry kill April! But he stood shaking,
shivering, with lips twitching, until April asked, “What is you cryin’
about?” And Breeze stammered weakly, in a thin reedy voice, “I ain’
cryin’, suh.” The glare April gave him made him dizzy like a blow
between his eyes.
“Den git at you’ work! Don’ be wastin’ good time on a mawnin’ like dis!”
Sherry held up his head and fastened his look on April, but the tears
that ran down his cheeks belied his hard reckless smile. In a voice
broken by hate and fury he cried out:
“You stinkin’ ugly devil---- Quit scarin’ dat li’l’ boy! You’s got a
coward-heart even if you’ head is too tough fo’ Hell! I hope Gawd’ll
rot all two o’ you feets off! I hope E will----” Sherry stretched out a
fist and shook it helplessly, then broke into sobs.
“Hush, Sherry! You better left April alone now. You done said enough,”
warned one of the men, but April strode away. If he heard Sherry’s
cursing he made no sign of it. And Sherry walked across the field to
Clara, who stood, still hitched to the plow, waiting for him to come
back. He patted her nose. “Good ol’ Clara. I’m gwine. Breeze’ll take
you to de barnyard, won’t you, Breeze?”
Breeze tried to answer a loud “Yes, Sherry!” but a dumb sob shook his
words.
“Good-by, mens!”
“Good-by, Sherry!”
That was all. Sherry walked away toward the Quarters. As Breeze watched
him go the sunshiny noon grew dim. The plows went on cutting down
stalks, burying them, but the men were silent as death. Birds kept
singing in the forest trees, but their notes had a doleful sorrowful
sound. The day had paled. The rice-fields meeting the sky yonder, so
far away, were hazy and sad. The wind itself wept through the trees.
A flock of crows passed overhead, croaking out lonesome words to one
another.
The field lay dark. Dismal. Its rich earth changed to dry barren land.
The men who plowed it walked in a distressful silence.
Sherry was gone. Zeda’s Sherry. The most promising young man on the
whole plantation. April’s big-doings bullying had run him off. April
would pay for it. He’d poison cotton by himself next summer. He could
make the men do almost anything else, but he’d never get them to poison
boll-weevils. They knew better than to fight Providence. April wasn’t
God. No.
From the Quarters a scream rose and swelled until its long, weird,
melancholy note went into a death-cry! Zeda’s grieving! Breeze had to
clench his teeth to keep from bursting out crying himself. Suppose
April got mad with him some time, and butted him? What would he do? He
couldn’t do anything but stand still and take it and die.
He went on plowing, side by side with the rest in the painful silence
that hung on stubbornly. The soft flat-footed pattering of the men’s
bare feet, the dead flat thudding of mule steps, the sullen waving of
the branches in the wind, the low murmuring of the water, all fell
together into a dull batch of doleful sound.
Flocks of field larks rose up and cried out plaintively as their
feeding-ground was turned under. Old Louder chased them in a slow trot,
sniffed at them, then at some smell in the earth. Coming up to Breeze,
he rubbed against his legs and whined. Breeze gave him nothing in
return, only a low word or two, and a furtive pat on the head, so he
trotted off to one side, and sat on his haunches, watching the plowmen
with sorrowful eyes. He missed Sherry too.
When the bell rang for noon, Breeze was near the rice-fields side.
His mule stopped short and seized a mouthful of grass, as he gazed
toward Sandy Island. It was far away to-day. The haze had every sign
of it hidden. A broad sheet of water sparkled and glittered, as bright
reflections of white clouds floated softly, silently on its shining
surface. All the channels were buried. What was his mother doing now?
And Sis? He swallowed a sob and turned the mule’s head toward home, and
saw Big Sue waddling across the field. She didn’t follow any path, but
came on straight toward him, over the soft plowed earth. Why was she
coming to the field at noon? He had his breakfast long ago, and he
always went home for dinner. Maybe she wanted to talk about Sherry. She
stopped and said a few words to April but she came on to Breeze.
She gave Breeze a hand-wave as she got nearer, but her face was solemn,
without any show of a smile. “April says you kin come straight on home,
Breeze. Somebody else’ll take de mules to de lot.”
Giving his shoulder a gentle pat, she drew Breeze up to her with a
little hug. She didn’t say a word, and her eyes looked wet.
April was waiting at the path, and he walked on home beside them. Tall,
solid as a tree, rugged, tough-sinewed, double-jointed, yet the cruel
look in his deep-sunk eyes that blazed out when they looked at Sherry,
had given way to something else. They glowed bright as he turned back
and looked across the rice-fields toward Sandy Island, and said gently:
“Sandy Island is way back behind de clouds to-day.” His anger with
Sherry had passed.
His voice sounded unsteady, his features were haggard and ashy.
Big Sue looked at him, then at Breeze. “You break de news to Breeze,
April. I ain’ got de heart.”
April shook his head. “Me neither.”
Big Sue’s small eyes blinked. “Son,” she hesitated strangely, and laid
a hot fat hand gently on his shoulder, “you t’ink you got a mammy,
enty?”
Of course Breeze thought so. He was so sure of it. What on earth was
Big Sue aiming at?
“No, son.” She shook her head slowly. “You ain’ got none. You’ mammy
went out on de tide befo’ day dis mawnin’.”
What did Big Sue mean? Breeze felt confused. Where had his mother gone
on that before-day-tide? He didn’t understand what Big Sue was talking
about.
Marsh-hens cackled gaily out in the rice-fields. A crane croaked. A
fish-hawk circled high, then halted to poise himself for a swoop.
Taking Breeze by the hand Big Sue led him on through the greenish shade
cast by the live-oaks over the road and the cabin’s yard. Her bright
cold eyes peeped out sidewise at him now and then. She was trying to be
kind. Once she said, “I’se gwine to be you’ mammy now, since you’ own
mammy’s dead and gone.”
Breeze felt as if he was in a dream, walking in his sleep. His legs
were numb and heavy.
“Hurry up, son! You must walk faster. We got to dress an’ go to de
buryin’, cross de river in a boat. April’ll let Sherry take we across
de river in de boat, enty, April?”
“No, not Sherry. Somebody else’ll take you. Sherry’s done gone off. To
stay.”
“Wha’ dat you say, April? Sherry’s gone?”
“I run em off de place a while ago.”
“Great Gawd! What is dis! April, don’t you know Zeda’s gwine kill you?
Man! I’m glad I ain’t you. You might be strong, but you ain’ strong as
dat conjure Zeda’s gwine put on you.”
Louder had followed them from the field, and now sat on his hind
quarters, listening, watching, snapping at a fly now and then. As a
squirrel ran down the trunk of a tree and across the yard, he jumped up
and ran a few paces, then came back and sat down again, as though he
had done his duty.
“Come on in de house an’ dress, Breeze. I don’ believe you got it
straight in you’ head yet. You’ ma is dead, son! Dead! De people is
gwine put em in a grave soon as dis same sun goes down.”
Breeze looked up at each of the grown people. He felt hurt, as if his
mother had abandoned him just when he wanted to see her most, to go
back home to her. Sherry was gone away. She was dead. Nobody was left,
but Uncle Bill. Leaning toward Big Sue he hid his face in the folds of
her skirt and wept.
“Don’ cry, son,” she soothed him. “Come on an’ eat some dinner. You got
to go wid me to de buryin’. Enty, April?”
She led him inside and made him sit in a chair beside April, while she
fried links of sausage to eat with the bread and cups full of sweetened
water. The sausage had a savory smell, and Breeze bit into it and
chewed it a long time, but he could scarcely swallow it for the choking
lump in his throat. His mother was dead. She was no longer yonder at
Sandy Island with Sis and the other children. She had flown up into the
sky, where Heaven was, and Jesus and all the angels. April washed his
food down with great swallows of water. How dumb he was.
“Lawd!” Big Sue grunted as she came out of the shed-room with her
Sunday dress on her arm. “Ain’ it awful to die in sin? It pure scares
me half to death when I think on Breeze’s mammy a hoppin’ in Hell right
now! Great Gawd! Wid fire a scorchin’ em!”
“How you know?” April thundered out.
“How I know? I know e was a’ awful sinner. You know so too. E got dis
same Breeze right here at Blue Brook whilst a revival meetin’ was gwine
on. You don’ call dat sin?”
April didn’t so much as crack his teeth, and she looked at him with
narrowed eyes.
“You an’ her all two better had got religion dat summer.”
“You better keep you’ mouth shut, now, Big Sue. You’s a-talkin’ out o’
turn. Better help Breeze dress. E’s a settin’ yonder on de floor wid
jaws hangin’ open! Boy, you’s gwine swallow a fly if you don’ mind.”
Breeze was trying to think. His mother, his dear, kind, good mother,
was hopping in Hell. Burning in a fire nine times hotter than the fire
on earth!
“April!” Big Sue called out, “you ought to buy Breeze a nice pair o’
shoes an’ stockin’s to wear to de buryin’.”
“Brudge is got a pair Breeze kin borrow an’ wear. I ain’ got time to go
to de sto’ now.”
“Please go git ’em fo’ me.”
April got up stiffly and walked away. In a little while Brudge came
bringing a pair of Leah’s shoes. He had lost one of his own, but Leah
sent her slippers instead. April said they would do. They were low-cut
and shiny, with high heels and a strap across the instep. Breeze made
such a poor out at walking in them, Big Sue couldn’t help laughing,
although she declared she was not making sport of him.
“Take ’em off, son. Tote ’em in you’ hand till we git to Sandy Island,”
she suggested, and Breeze did.
Uncle Bill rowed the boat that took them to Sandy Island, and although
he pulled hard with his oars, the sun was almost down when they reached
the cabin up on the hill above the river.
Mules and oxen hitched to carts filled the yard, and the house was
crowded with people.
Big Sue made Breeze sit down on the ground and put on Brudge’s
stockings and Leah’s shoes. They made his feet stumble about miserably,
but Big Sue said that made no difference, since they looked nice.
He was terribly excited, but as he walked hand in hand with Big Sue up
the steep path into the yard he could hear people say:
“Lawd, Breeze is grow fo’ true. Looka e fine clothes!”
Seeing his old home made him forget to be polite.
Big Sue whispered, “When de ladies an’ gentlemens speaks to you, bow
an’ pull you’ foot an’ say, ‘Good evening.’ Don’ grin at ’em like a
chessy-cat! Be mannersable!”
When Sis came to the door Breeze broke away from Big Sue’s hand and
ran, half falling up the steps. Sis grabbed him and held him tight. He
put his arms around her and squeezed her, and they laughed and cried
together. Poor Sis! Her body felt like a pack of bones! Where was the
baby? Where were all the other children? Sis whispered they’d been sent
off to a neighbor’s house until after the burying was over. She didn’t
have time to feed them and look after everything else.
Big Sue interrupted the tight hug Breeze was giving Sis: “Come on in,
boy, an’ look at you’ ma. Dey’s ready to put em in de box.”
The cabin was full of a queer smell. Breeze hated to go inside, but Big
Sue held him fast by the arm and drew him toward the shed-room door.
The room was dim, for the one wooden shutter was closed so that very
little light could filter through. Breeze saw only a few solemn-looking
black women standing around the bed. He couldn’t bear to go any
farther. But Big Sue’s firm hand urged him on, its strong jerks making
it useless to draw back.
“Don’t you cut no crazy capers wid me, Breeze. You got to come look at
you’ ma. I want de people to see I raised you to have respect fo’ you’
parents. Open de window, Sis!”
The small room looked even smaller on account of the low ceiling, and
the bed, the only piece of furniture, was pushed out from the wall
leaving a narrow way all around it.
Sis undid the window latch and flung the shutter back. The sun flooded
the white bed with blood-red light, and marked a long slim thing under
a sheet. One of the black women turned the sheet slowly down and
exposed a pinched face. A chin bound with a white cloth. Two bony black
hands crossed on a sunken breast. Two feet whose black skin showed
through thin white stockings. The feet were still, not hopping.
That strange stiffness could not be his mother! Breeze shut his eyes
tight to keep from seeing it.
“Open you’ eyes, Breeze. Stand ’side you’ ma an’ look at em good fo’ de
last time. You ain’ never gwine see em no mo’.”
“No! No! Cun Big Sue! Don’ make me look at em! Please, Cun Big Sue!”
Breeze began screaming in spite of himself. He wanted to be good. To
please Big Sue. To have manners. But that thing on the bed was too
fearful.
He felt himself lifted in Big Sue’s strong arms. Her hot breath puffed
on him as she bore him close to the bed. The terrible scent filling the
house rose in his nostrils. Screams split his throat. He couldn’t hold
them in to save his life. Although his eyelids squeezed tighter shut,
tears poured through them.
Big Sue’s determined fingers tugged at them, pulling them apart, until
his eyes, naked, except for tears, were held over his mother’s face.
Her two dead eyes peeped out from half-closed lids, her black lips
cracked open over a grin of cold white teeth. He strove wildly to get
away, but Big Sue held him until a soft darkness swallowed everything.
When Breeze came to himself he was flat on the ground, so near the cape
jessamine bush that a cool clean blossom touched his cheek.
Where were Big Sue and Sis?
He raised up, and saw men with white gloves on their hands bringing a
long new pine box through the door. They came down the steps and went
toward a wagon. As they passed an old mule, the beast tried to break
his tether and run. A man yelled at him, another jerked him by the bit,
a third got a stick and frailed him, but Uncle Bill called out, “Don’
lick em, son. Dat mule smell death and it fret em. Pat em. Talk easy to
em. Death kin scare people, much less a mule.”
Everybody was leaving the house. They had forgotten Breeze. He couldn’t
stay here by himself, with nothing to keep him company but that strange
smell that followed the box out of the shed-room and settled right in
the cape jessamine bush. It drowned the scent of the blossoms.
Hopping to his feet he ran humbly to Big Sue, and slipped a hand in
hers, “Lemme go wid you, Cun Big Sue. I ain’ gwine holler no mo’.”
Big Sue gave his hand a painful squeeze, “I’m dat provoke’ wid you,
Breeze, I can’ talk. But you wait till I git you home. You’s de
kickin’est nigger I ever did see. But you wait till I git you home. I
bu’sted one sleeve clean out o’ my new dress a-tryin’ to hold you.”
With his heart tingling Breeze tottered on. His eyes blurred. His legs
scarcely could carry him down the sandy road toward the graveyard under
the tall trees.
The afterglow fell clear from the sky on an open grave with dark earth
piled high on each side of it. It was outlined by flaming smoking
torches held in the hands of the mourners, who marched slowly around
it, singing a funeral dirge. One man, dressed in a long white robe,
stood at the head of the grave, his deep voice chanting the solemn
burial service. Breeze’s mother belonged to the Bury League, and all
the members carried a white lily. When the leader gave the sign they
held the flowers, arm high, and yelled, “Christ is Risen!” but the
leader was a strange man, not his stepfather.
A hymn, or spiritual, was raised, and the whole crowd joined in
with great questioning waves of sound, sometimes harmony, sometimes
dissonance. Breeze’s heart ached. He wanted to cry out too, to the
great Creator of Life. He felt bewildered when Sis gave a piercing
shrill wail, that rose high and sharp above the somber death chant.
Her cry had scarcely died away before an answer came echoing from
the opposite side of the grave. Big Sue looked at Uncle Bill with a
mischievous grin that shocked Breeze. How could anybody laugh here? The
very woods reechoed the unearthly death-cries!
The mournful singing gradually changed into a confused din, a whirlwind
of grief. Men and women shrieked and shouted. They shook and shimmied
their shoulders, and jerked their arms and gyrated about in a frenzy
of grief and excitement. Some of the women went wild. They beat their
breasts and cried above the roaring hubbub. But all the time Sis’
shrill, piercing, falsetto wailing kept steadily calling across the
grave. Her screams rose high and then melted into the life of the air.
The tall brown trunks of pine trees around them loomed up until their
plumy tops touched the sky. They waved gently, mysteriously, above the
confused group of people. Red sweaters and blue overalls, green and
purple and yellow dresses, wide white aprons and turban-bound heads,
black hands and faces, were all tinged with a rosy glow dropped over
them by the sky as night began creeping out of the forest.
The strong damp odor of the woods freshened, and mosquitoes stung
Breeze’s face and hands and ankles. He was unhappy. Wretched. When Big
Sue said, “De mosquitoes is too bad. Dey got me in a fever! Le’s go,”
he felt a relief to get away from it all.
Not even Sis paid them any attention as they turned around, facing
homeward. She was too absorbed in grief, in the terrible thought of
Death, that strange mystery which had just stricken Breeze’s mother.
Breeze hurried along the road, fearing snakes less than the sound of
that inferno of mourning which followed behind him.
Sandy Island was quiet; the cabin on the hill empty; the dusk on the
river so deep that the boat was scarcely outlined against the water;
but Breeze could see the old dead pine down on the white sand. It’s
head had fallen. Its whole length rested on the ground.
His brain whirled in his skull. Cold tremors ran through his body. His
mother had buried all her money at the foot of that tree. So had old
man Breeze. But nothing less than strong iron chains could have dragged
the boy one step nearer it.
Uncle Bill helped Big Sue to her seat in the boat’s stern, where she
sat solemn and stiff and ruffled like a sitting hen.
They went in silence. The water whispered in bubbles, but the wind had
died out of the trees.
* * * * *
In the cabin, a big fire blazed up the chimney, and a delicious scent
of food came to meet them.
“Who dat in my house?” Big Sue cried out, when April came to the door.
“You got company.”
“Who? You?”
“No. You guess again.”
“I dunno, an’ I’m too weak to walk, much less talk.”
“It’s Joy. E come on de boat dis evenin’.”
Big Sue stopped short in her tracks, dumb-struck. “Great Gawd! You don’
mean it! Whe’ is Joy?”
Instead of hurrying forward she gazed at the cabin with black dismay as
if she turned some terrible thought over and over in her mind, but a
warm laugh gurgled out, and a low voice called:
“What did you tell Ma for, Cun April? I been want to fool em!”
A girl in a bright red dress and with red-stockinged legs came bounding
across the yard to meet them.
“How you do, Ma? I bet you is surprised to see me!” She held her mouth
up to meet Big Sue’s, their kiss made a loud smack, then Uncle Bill
hurried to shake her hand.
“Lawd, Joy! Just de sight o’ you would cure de sore eyes! Honey, you
looks sweet enough to eat!” Breeze stared at her. Deep down in his
heart he felt Uncle Bill spoke the truth. He had never seen any one
like Joy before.
She leaned to pull up one red stocking tighter over a knee, but
she grinned up into Uncle Bill’s face. “Do listen at Uncle Bill!
A-sweet-talkin’ me right here befo’ ev’ybody!” Her eyes beamed, her low
soft drawl was full of friendliness, and she turned to Breeze with a
blithe greeting:
“How you do, son? I’m sho’ glad to see you here wid Ma!” A small bold
hand shot out to meet his, but Breeze cast his eyes down, bashful and
afraid. The hand gave his shoulder a light pat, took one of his and led
him toward the house.
“You ain’ scared o’ me, is you, son? Come on in by de fire. I want to
see you good.”