“’Bout a mile away,” the storekeeper replied to my question, “but Ah
reckon you’ll find that close enough.”
“These Huggins boys don’t seem to be very popular,” I said, hoping to
lead him on.
“They ain’t,” he answered shortly, adding confidentially, “Doan you
lend ’em nawthin’ you set no value on.”
Another customer interrupted us. I thanked him for his advice, and he
supplemented it with the information. “We-all doan give ’em no credit
here.”
That evening my next door neighbor, who lived half a mile away, dropped
in to extend his welcome. He too, warned me about these boys. Later
I questioned his overseer, who had ordered them off the plantation,
and he characterized them shortly as “the damnedest nuisances in the
country”. Uncle Willis, after a deal of questioning, confessed, “Well,
Massa Billie, hit’s disaway, dey is jest natcherly meaner dan a mad
mule”.
Bits like this, a little here and a little there, I gathered up
everywhere. In little scraps too, I collected their history. Their
father before them had been a notorious character, famous as a fighter
and a leader of moonshiners. All his life he had been a hard-drinking,
work-hating good-for-nothing, and his sons, according to common report,
were following right in his unsteady footsteps. There was not enough
energy among the four of them to cultivate their little farm properly.
They raised a little cotton and harbored a scrubby cow and half a dozen
gaunt, half-wild hogs, but land and stock, little cabin and dilapidated
barn were all going to rack and ruin as fast as abuse and neglect
could drive them. Failing to make a living out of what might have been
a good little plantation, they hired out for odd jobs and in the winter
burned tar. But their services were never greatly in demand, and just
how they managed to live, and their old mother and sister too, was a
mystery. Some people, with a great show of pretended knowledge, hinted
at a blockade still and raw corn liquor sold to the darkies for two
bits a quart. Others pointed out that whatever ready money they scraped
together was invested in the cheapest and most virulent whisky, which
argued against any home-made intoxicants. All this I learned before I
made their acquaintance, and our first meeting did not tend to improve
the opinion I had formed of them.
One Sunday morning, as I was sitting on the verandah pretending to
read, but really luxuriating in the January sun, the Sabbath peace was
rudely broken by a quavering falsetto voice whining out a darky song:
“De Lord he thought he’d mak’ a man.
Dese bones gwine t’ rise again!
Lil’ bit o’ earth an’ lil’ bit o’ sand.
Dese bones gwine t’ rise again!
Ah knows it: de-ed Ah do know: Ah knows it,
Dese bones gwine t’ rise again!
Thought He’d mak’ a ’ooman too.
Dese bones gwine t’ rise again!
Cast about see what He’d do.
Dese bones gwine rise again!
Ah knows it: de-ed Ah do know: Ah knows it,
Dese bones gwine t’ rise again!”
The mournful sound was getting louder and louder. Evidently the singer
was coming up the driveway. I laid aside my book and walked around the
house to see who it was.
“Took a rib from Adam’s side.
Dese bones gwine t’ rise again!
Made Miss Eve t’ be his bride.
Dese bones gwine rise again!
Ah knows it: de-ed Ah----”
I stepped around the corner and the song stopped abruptly. A most
remarkable vehicle, an ancient phaeton, all besplattered with red clay
mud and held together with odd bits of rope, twine, and wire, was
approaching at a slow and dignified pace. It was drawn by a little
moth-eaten mule who dragged his hoofs through the sand and flopped his
big ears in a distressingly spiritless manner. In violent contrast
to their melancholy equipage two cheerful figures sprawled in the
carriage. The driver, his great feet thrust over the wobbly dashboard
his head resting on the back of the seat, was paying much more
attention to the wisps of white clouds overhead than to his steed. His
companion, the singer, sat sideways, swinging his legs over the side
in time with his song. He broke off in the middle of a word when he
caught sight of me, and giving the driver a violent nudge, switched
himself around into the carriage. The driver slipped his feet off the
dashboard and hunched up into an almost sitting position. The mule just
stopped and, for all the world with the Dormouse at the mad tea-party,
immediately went to sleep. The singer, too, might have posed for the
drawings of the Mad Hatter himself. He had the same lean face with
high cheek bones; the same bulging eyes and prominent nose; the same
protruding teeth and receding chin. Nor was the driver unlike the March
Hare. There was a strange mixture of brazen effrontery and extreme
timidity in his manner. His shifting eyes and shuffling feet belied his
bold speech.
“Good morning,” I said.
The singer nodded embarrassedly, and the driver, his eyes scanning the
landscape, grunted, “Mawnin’”.
“What can I do for you?” I asked.
“Is you the gemmen’s rented dis place?” asked the driver bluntly.