"Ah got hell, Stella. Ah gotter clear out er Adamsville; dem Ellis boys
done said so."
"Whar you gwine?" Her marital suspicion strengthened his resolve; a
holiday from home had its advantages.
"Ah 'lowed Ah'd walk down ter Hazelton 'r Coalstock. Ah could get
somethin' to do 'roun' de rollin' mill."
"What de chu'ch gonter do?"
"Brudder Adams he kin preachify tell Ah comes back."
"Why 'n' cher stay here?"
"An' git shot?"
She dismissed him, in the limp dawn, with wifely solicitude. "Don' cher
be up to no tricks, Tom, or Ah 'low Ah'll pull all yer wool out when Ah
git hol' of you."
"You'll see me when you see me, ole' 'ooman." And he was gone.
One warm morning in the April following, the Judsons' watchman and
man-of-all-work, Peter, hesitated before his mistress, a barrow of
uprooted poison-ivy poised in the grip of sturdy old hands, which were
immune from the noxious irritation. "Ah done got a letter f'um Tom Cole,
Miss' Mary."
"Where is he?"
"He's dead."
"You got a letter from him?"
"No'm; it was f'um de man he wu'ked for, in Coalstock. Died Chuesday
las' week, de letter said. Dey buried him. Ah done tol' Stella."
"That's too bad, Peter. I'll have to speak to Stella." Her heart went
out to the black woman, who had lost her husband; what if it had been
Paul! She determined to turn over to the widow an old black silk that
she had noticed the wrinkled eyes coveting.
The gift was lavishly appreciated.
"Thank 'ee, thank 'ee, Miss' Mary. Ah'm gwineter fix it up wid
puhple--it'll make a gran' mo'nin' dress!"
"You didn't go to the funeral?"
"Ah ain't got no time to waste on no funerals, Miss' Mary, 'less dey's
closer'n Coalstock."
Jim, the second boy, joined Ed in work upon the mountain; Will and Babe
continued at school, although Stella grumbled about a sixteen-year-old
negro bothering with books, when a job was handy.
Diana arrived home the last of May. The whole family surrounded her
admiringly, as she hung the framed diploma on the sitting-room wall.
"Hit's beautiful," Stella said simply, as the daughter pointed out the
school buildings in the half-tone oval in the center.
There was no opening, however, for a negro milliner in Adamsville. Tired
with the futile search for work prepared for by her education, she
replaced Stella in the Judson kitchen, to allow the elder woman the
greater freedom which "washin'" permitted. With the coming of the
clearing gangs, Will joined his two brothers at the work, leaving only
fourteen-year-old Babe at school. Even he longed for the jingle of
pay-day wealth in his overalls. One day he announced at home that Mr.
Hewin had taken him on as a helper. "Three dollars a week, maw. What
good is school, anyway?"
Then began a new period in the life of the Cole boys. The mountain had
taken them to its red bosom; the lesson of isolated self-reliance which
it had taught to Pelham Judson came in parallel form to them. They were
a gang, four strong, which could cope with any equal number of Lilydale
negroes, or Scratch Ankle or Buzzard Roost rock-throwers. If a larger
number got after them, there was the mountain they could retreat to;
its rocky reinforcement and refuge furnished safety.
Stella scolded them sharply on the night when they had fought the Harlan
Avenue white boys. "Let them Lilydale niggers fool wid white trash, ef
dey wants to. De Judsons is quality, don't you fergit; you let dat white
trash be. Fight wid you' own kind. Ef a white man gin you any trouble,
you let Marster Judson fix 'im."
The lesson sank in. They were quality negroes, lords of the mountain
domain. Stocky Jim was the champion rough-and-tumble fighter of the Zion
Church. "Ah kin lick any three Neboes wid mah toes an' teeth," he would
boast in religious snobbery. Tom had had one of Mr. Judson's shotguns,
to warn off marauders; the care of this descended to Ed, as the oldest,
and the boys took turns in potting rabbits, flickers, and an occasional
partridge, with shells borrowed from the big house. First choice of the
game went to the Judson table; but there was enough left to fill out the
scanty Cole menu of corn-pone, sow-belly, molasses, and a seasonal mess
of greens.
The boys practiced hurling outcrop boulders at the big-trunked oaks
until they could skin the bark four times out of five at fifty feet. The
outdoor life, the clearing work, the continual "toting" of water from
the icy spring in balanced buckets, toughened them into exuberant
manhood. They did not marry, although Stella constantly scolded the
older pair for "hangin' 'roun' dem Avenoo C skirts"; and their wider
rambles added grass-ripened watermelons and plump chickens to the fare.
Diana, alone of the family, found life on the mountain bleakly unhappy.
She possessed a frightened, dusky beauty. Adolescence had changed her
from a gawky immaturity to a lush roundness, large-lipped and
full-figured, and yet with the well moulded face and the soft brown
texture of skin that are occasionally found in a mixture of blood. From
some Aryan ancestor she had inherited features the reverse of negroid;
and she revealed nothing of the unpleasant pertness often developed in
the twilight realm where black and white intermingle.
The liberating touch of education had been just potent enough to
dissatisfy her with the old, and too weak to furnish a self-sufficient
substitute. The world of books she had begun to explore at Tuskegee;
there was no one in the family group who could go with her in the talk
or the dreamings that this led to. The haphazard home life, the thick
enunciation, worse at meal times, these were the things she had begun to
get away from; she could not reconcile herself to the old slough of
"nigger" life.
The church gave her some outlet. She joined the various Ladies' Aids,
took over an advanced Sunday School class, wheedled different ones of
her night-restless brothers to escort her to the Zion sociables, the
chitterling suppers, the frequent revivals. But here an obstacle lay in
the women of the congregation. No newfangled notions for them, thank
you. They considered her careful accent, her ideas borrowed from more
progressive members of her race, an affront to Lilydale's time-hallowed
way of doing things; she was shouldered into the background. The few
educated negro men, Wyatt the druggist, Tom Strickland, who owned the
five-story building in the city, the young lawyer who lived in Lilydale,
were married, or were disagreeable. They found in her only a desire for
expanding culture, not its achievement; they did not seek her out.
The isolation frequently overcame her. Nauseated by the glut of the
slipshod home living, she would pull open one of her text books ...
often to sit and cry, unable to read a line.
"You're gettin' peaked, Diany," Stella worried. "Huc-come you ain't so
pert as when you come back?... You got a good job."
"I'm all right, mother."
One night she overheard the older boys fussing at Babe. "You too little,
kid. Ef a cop started chasin' you, yo' short legs wouldn't do no good."
"Ah kin run faster 'n you, Ed. An' 'Banjo' said Ah could come along," he
whined. "Maw, tell Ed 'n' Will 'n' Jim not to leave me behin'."
"Where are you boys going?" asked Diana.