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“HE has been at that for thirteen years.”
And the speaker laughed as he watched an old man gathering up a bucket
of stones and broken bricks. The old man continued his work until his
bucket was filled, and then started back toward Spring Street, stopping
on the way to resurrect a rusted old hoop that was nearly buried in the
gutter.
After walking about three blocks he stopped at the corner of Spring and
James streets, and laying the rusty hoop carefully upon a great heap of
hoops of all kinds and sizes, he carried the bucket to the back of his
lot, a part of which was considerably lower than the front, and emptied
the bucketful of bricks and stones.
He was a very old man—about seventy years old, apparently—in his
shirt-sleeves, and wearing a dingy straw hat. He was feeble, too, and
his steps were slow, but he stopped only to get a drink of water at the
back door, and then ambled off with the empty bucket.
The little frame structure is half store and half residence. Just inside
the door to the store sat a portly old lady of sixty or thereabouts.
“Who is that old man yonder with that empty bucket?”
“Him! Why that’s old man Lewis Powell, and he’s my husband. I thought
everybody knowed him.”
“Is that all he does?”
“Fill up the lot, you mean? No, no, he puts hoops on barrels and kegs,
and raises calves and such like, but that’s his main business. He’s been
at it now for nigh on to fourteen years.”
“And how much has he filled in?”
“Oh, from the sidewalk on back. The lot is fifty by eighty, and it used
to be just one big hole. Now here on Spring Street where the front is,
the bank went nearly straight down ’cause the eye of the sewer was right
there. Then the sewer was open and run in a gully the whole length of
the lot, and just about in the middle of the lot. Here on James Street,
at the side there, it wasn’t so steep. The front of the old house was
about half-way down the bank, and the pillars at the back was over ten
feet high. The house wasn’t more’n twelve feet that way, either, so you
can tell how steep it was. And right at the back door the sewer passed.”
“How deep was it?”
“Well, right here at the front the city men measured to the sewer once,
and it was a little over twenty feet below the sidewalk. The back of the
lot was a little lower. It was one big hole fifty by eighty, and almost
in the bottom of it was the old house.”
“Fourteen years ago.”
“Fourteen years ago we bought it from Jack Smith on time. It wasn’t
much, but me and Jenny and Joe and Stella just buckled down and worked
like tigers. The neighbors made fun of us at first, and even the niggers
thought it was funny. Now, I aint telling you this because I’m stuck up
about it, but it just shows what the Powell family has done, and it
shows what any poor folks can do if they just stick at it.”
“Didn’t the old man help?”
“Yes, a little. But we had to live, and then he spent lots of his time
a-fillin’ up, so the brunt of the money part fell on me and the
children. We bought the mudhole, and he made the mudhole what it is now.
Right here where the mudhole was there is a corner lot, and them what
used to laugh at us would like mighty well to own it now.”
And the old lady smiled as though the thought was a very pleasant one.
“Yes, sir,” she continued, “it’s worth a good deal now, and the first
thing you know, when the streets get paved along here, it will be worth
a lot more than it is now.”
“And the old man?”
“The old man has worked mighty faithful. Little at a time he has fetched
dirt, and rocks, and bricks, and trash. Then the city put a pipe there
for the sewer, and he begun at the sidewalk on Spring Street and filled
back. The bank kept getting further and further, and after, I don’t know
how long, we built this little house on the filled-in part. The old man
kept fillin’ back till we’ve got a pretty big back yard; and there’s
only a little part left to fill back there. You see, he never tore up
the old house—the patchwork palace of ’77—just throwed in around it and
in it till he has almost buried it.”
“Why?”
“Oh, it’s just a notion of his. He didn’t want to see the old house tore
up, and there it is now, with just the roof stickin’ out. In a little
while it will be one level yard, fifty by eighty, and a corner lot, too.
And by the time it all gets filled up—well, me and the old man is
gettin’ feeble now, and we won’t last much longer. But, now that we are
all out of debt, and just enough left to do to keep the old man’s hand
in, it does me good to think of that old mudhole, and how we had to save
and slave and pinch to pay for it. And I think the old man likes to
stand there at the corner and look back how level and smooth it is, and
think how it was done, a handful at a time, through the rain and the
snow and the sunshine. Fourteen years! It was a big job, but we stuck to
it, and I’m restin’ now, for my work is done. The old man don’t work
like he used to, but he says his job aint finished yet, and he keeps
fillin’ up.”
“And when his work is done—”
“Then he’ll rest, too.”
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