audacity?” He met the singularly bright gaze that was bent upon him. In
some uncanny way it seemed to evoke Mamba herself. It gave him the same
melting twist in the pit of his stomach that he had felt when she had
cozened those spurious letters of recommendation out of him three years
before. “But I tell you we only employ men,” he repeated in a voice
that was weakly argumentative.
She unbuttoned her sleeve and jerked it back to the shoulder, then held
out her arm, turning it slowly. Under the dark skin the muscle of the
forearm rippled. She bent the arm upward at the elbow, and the biceps
bunched. She gave a low, confident laugh. “Ain’t dat all right?” she
asked.
The negroes began to laugh and whisper. A woman in the pits--who ever
heard of such a thing!
Saint regarded the demonstration of muscle and laughed. “It certainly
is,” he answered her. Then, quite to his own surprise he found himself
adding: “If you want to try it, I don’t see why you shouldn’t.” He took
down an account book. “And while you’re here you might as well give me
your name.”
The woman hesitated, biting her full lower lip with strong white teeth.
Finally she asked: “Ain’t yo’ gots one in dere dat Ah can use?”
Saint wondered if she hadn’t one of her own.
“Ah did hab one what Ma gib me, but it’s done wore out.”
He spun the pages of his book and stopped at one that showed an open
account. There had been the usual purchases--rice, grits, molasses,
candy, cheroots, amounting to perhaps a dollar, pleading mutely
from the page for settlement. He read the name at the top of the
sheet--“Baxter--how’ll that do?” he inquired.
The woman repeated the word slowly as though to accustom her tongue to
its use.
The negroes were regarding the performance with undisguised interest.
Now Maum Vina spoke impulsively: “Do, Mr. Saint, don’t gib she dat
bad-luck name. Don’t yo’ ’member Baxter done got drownded loadin’ a
schooner?”
There was a moment of superstitious silence, while the negroes’ eyes
seemed to grow as they watched her, placing an absurd importance on
the simple matter. The woman’s voice broke the silence: “Ah guess
Ah’ll take it, anyhow. It gots a good sound to it, an’, aftuh all, Ah
ain’t so lucky mahse’f.” Then she seemed arrested by the drama of her
predecessor. She reached across the counter and dropped a long index
finger on the writing.
“When he buy dat bittle he been well an’ hongry, an’ he nebber lib long
’nough to pay for um. Ain’t dat so?”
Saint nodded assent.
“Po’ Baxter,” she apostrophised. “Yo’ ain’t mean to cheat nobody. If Ah
lib long ’nough Ah’s goin’ settle dat bill fuh yo’.”
Saint had to leave her then to serve his customers. It was an
interminable business--two cents’ worth of grits, three cents for
molasses, a penny invested in a herring, salt pork, kerosene--and so
it went with each shopper. When he had time to notice Baxter again she
had joined the group in the doorway and seemed already to have made her
place among them.
Near closing time Gilly Bluton came in. They heard his buggy drive up
and stop outside. Then he entered, elbowing his way through the crowd
around the door, with a young woman clinging to his arm. “What make yo’
don’t stand back an’ gib de lady room!” he demanded irritably.
They crowded back then, not breaking up and scattering, but opening for
him in two closely standing divisions. There was a hostile significance
in the way they massed, leaving the man and his partner more room
than they needed, as though their touch were evil. But Bluton chose to
ignore them and swaggered over to the show case where luxuries were
exhibited. The man was a mulatto with negro predominating, but among
the negroes of the camp, most of whom retained the sooty blackness
indicative of undiluted Gullah blood, he seemed of a different race.
The contrast was accentuated by the fact that he could read and write,
and figure with great rapidity. Talents which, applied with energy
and cunning and without conscience, resulted in his acquisition of
most of the wages of the labourers that were not previously retained
by the commissary or appropriated by the magistrate. He always wore
store clothes of extreme cut, and never spent money unless he had an
audience. The woman who accompanied him was not a resident of the camp,
but lived at Red Top, a neighbouring hamlet. She glared her defiance
and flaunted her triumph before the local belles.
With white people Bluton had an ingratiatingly confidential manner,
and he now made the purchase of a highly coloured box of candy for the
young woman appear as an especially intimate transaction between Saint
and himself. Not that he presumed an equality, he was much too astute
for that. But he always managed to give an impression to watching
negroes that his basis of contact with the whites differed from theirs.
Finally he purchased a real cigar from the solitary box which was
housed under the cash till, lighted it, and turned leisurely to survey
the group at the door.
Saint despised the man, and the necessity of serving him was the one
real humiliation of his humble vocation. But Bluton was a person of
importance and the one negro who had it in his power seriously to
inconvenience the company if he were given a grievance. This had been
intimated to Saint when he came to work at the mines. It had been
pointed out that the negro’s position as the confidential employé of
Proc Baggart, the magistrate, would enable him so to demoralise the
labour that the operation of the camp would be thrown decidedly out of
gear. They would like to have sent him packing, but he was too deeply
entrenched, and he knew it, and the power that it gave him.
He stood for a moment lolling against the counter and looking
disinterestedly at the group around the door that was now breaking
up into pairs and individuals and straggling away toward the cabins.
The older ones left in silence. The younger women and men told Bluton
good-night, some boldly calling him Gilly, and the timid ones Mr.
Bluton. Some regarded him with fawning wonder in their stupid eyes. The
man nodded absently in response, then he shot after them: “What’s the
use yo’ boys sayin’ good-night? I ’spec’ I’ll be seein’ yo’ all at de
game ’bout nine o’clock. Dis Saturday night, ain’t it?”
Baxter had been sitting on a box beside Maum Vina, who had promised to
put her up for the night. Now she and the old woman rose and called a
good-night to Wentworth.
Bluton turned slowly and met her gaze. Without shifting his eyes he
removed the cigar from his mouth and crossed slowly until he stood
before her; then he looked her up and down.
“Whar did yo’ come from, Big Gal?” he asked at length, his large,
facile mouth mocking her with its smile.
The woman was standing in the doorway, with the night behind her, and
the flickering lamps pointing up high lights in her boldly modelled
face, bringing out glints of dark amber in her wide eyes. As the man
approached, her body tensed defensively, and lifted itself to its
full height. There was nothing humorous about the wrapped wool of her
head--the shabby clothes. She was invested in a sudden natural dignity.
“Ah come from Sabannah,” she told him. “Ah come ’cause Ah wants to.
An’ my name ain’t Big Gal. It’s Baxter.” Her gaze never wavered, the
glints of amber giving it a strange lucence as it held Bluton’s eyes.
For a moment they stood without movement. A sense of impending drama
drew wire-tight through the room--twanged the nerves of susceptible
onlookers.
Maum Vina’s cackle, timid but urgent, jangled across it. “Come on,
daughter. Time to go home,” she said gently. She took Baxter’s hand and
drew it toward the door.
Bluton laughed shortly, uncomfortably, lowered his eyes, and folded his
loose lips tightly over the cigar. The girl by the show case, who had
been standing with a chocolate in her fingers, ran over and caught her
man by the arm, glaring defiance at Baxter. The big woman regarded her
with a look of supreme contempt, then turned without a word and went
with Maum Vina. Behind her the tense atmosphere went suddenly slack.
Bluton collected his faculties and, stressing each word exaggeratedly,
called after the disappearing figure: “All right, Sistuh, jus’ as _you_
say, ob course.”
* * * * *
Saint experienced some difficulty in getting Baxter on the pay roll.
No one could look at her and doubt her ability to perform even that
gruelling labour. But this was the fatal objection: there was no
precedent for it. Women worked in the fields, the home, bore children.
But the mines were for the men. Then, too, the mining was done by
gangs composed of two negroes each, and no man was willing to risk the
ridicule of having a female partner. The prospect was becoming dark
indeed when Saint discovered that an aged negro called Drayton was
going to be laid off because he was becoming feeble and none of the
younger negroes would take him on as pit partner. He arranged that
Baxter should have a try-out with the old man. The woman had no idea
what the work would be like, but she had superlative confidence in her
muscle. And, too, the open country, the sense of space, and the cool
yielding sand beneath her feet gave her a sense of harmony with her
surroundings.
At the field’s edge on that first morning she was joined by Drayton, a
grizzled little man with a wisp of a moustache and old, stubborn eyes.
There was a story that when he was in his prime and a schooner was
being loaded with rock against time, he had wheeled and dumped five
hundred barrow loads of four hundred pounds each without pausing even
for food and had earned the record wage of seven dollars in a single
day by his feat. Ever since this achievement he had strutted like a
little cockerel, and the story was always on his lips. He would say to
the big lazy bucks: “How much barrow can yo’ load in a day?” When he
got the answer he would always cluck his tongue in scorn and tell of
his own record. He knew well that they would be glad to turn upon him
when his hand grew feeble and his ultimate hour of humiliation arrived.
But his worst fear had never conjured up the idea of having to work
with a woman. To-day the sweet winter air was as wormwood on his tongue.
They stood in the open looking each other up and down, these strangely
mated partners. Then, in a deep, bullying voice that no one had ever
heard him use before, the old labourer took the offensive. “Spec’
me tuh make mine han’ out ob yo’, enty! Well, Ah ain’t gots no time
fuh foolin’. Ah spec’ yo’ done heah ’bout dat time Ah done roll fibe
hundred barrow in a day, enty? Well, dat de kin’ ob a man yo’ gots fuh
partner. Ef yo’ can’t keep up wid me, Ah goin’ quit, yo’ onnerstan’!”
Baxter looked at the agitated little figure and saw the surrender
masquerading behind bluster and noise, and her heart went out to him,
but before she could reply the other negroes caught sight of them, and
whoops of derision rent the air.
“Do look, Daddy Drayton gots he nurse wid um.” “Whar dem fibe hundred
barrows now, Daddy?” Hats were hurled into the air, and bodies bent
double in spasms of laughter.
Baxter had been missing Lissa terribly, and now a flood of maternal
yearning rose and overwhelmed her. She saw the old man turn on his
tormentors and grimace fiercely at them, like an old and toothless
dog who must seem so much fiercer than a young one because he is so
uncertain of himself. She was full of tenderness for him. She would
have debased herself if she could have propped up his toppling dignity
thereby. She was sorry that her huge body made him seem all the smaller
by comparison. She wished that she could shield him, help him over his
bitter hour.
“Ah t’ank yo’ fuh take me on,” she said humbly. “Ah heah how yo’ is de
bes’ man on de field. Ah ain’t nuttin’ but a ’oman, but Ah is goin’ do
de bes’ Ah can.” And so they turned their backs on the jeering crowd,
and entered upon their strange partnership.
The field to be mined was a large one. The axe men had gone before
them and cleared it of forest, and it waited, clean and bare, for the
diggers. Presently the foreman came around and assigned a “task” to
each pair of workers, or, if they were industrious, two together, while
he was about it. A “task” was a rectangle four by six feet in size.
The labour consisted in digging one’s way slowly downward, throwing
out the earth, which was called the overburden, and uncovering, at a
depth of about six feet, the layer of phosphate rock deposit. Then the
real labour commenced, for the rock, which lay in a stratum of about a
foot in thickness, had to be broken into small pieces with a pick and
thrown up out of the pit with a shovel by hand. This work was usually
done by one of the partners, while the other had the far easier task of
wheeling the rock in a barrow to the little railroad and dumping it in
a pile for the cars.
Baxter spat upon her hands and closed them about the pick handle.
The first stroke drove the implement into the soil up to the handle
socket. Drayton’s eyes widened, and he could not restrain a grunt
of admiration. The woman dug most of the day, and when they got to
the rock, she elected to pick it out while he rolled it to the cars,
telling him that she wanted to keep away from the men who were gathered
at the tracks.
Once the foreman came up and looked into the pit. He was a gentleman,
and his people had for generations been used to appraising negro
labour. The hole had reached its depth of six feet, and the woman was
standing on the bare floor of rock into which she was driving her pick.
She paused and looked up. The pit had been full of sun all day, and the
work terribly heavy. Baxter had thrown off her outer waist, and through
her undershirt the man could see the swell of powerful shoulder and
back muscles, the high lift of her chest as it rose and fell on long,
unhurried breaths. He turned to Drayton with a wink. “You’re not such a
damned bad picker, after all,” he observed.
The old man smiled; then, in the new, deep voice of authority, he
ripped out some unnecessary instructions to the woman. She answered
submissively: “Yas, suh. T’ank yo’, suh.” And he wheeled his barrow off
toward the tracks.
She glanced up out of the pit full into the amused eyes of the white
man, and a look of absolute comprehension passed between them. “You
know men, Baxter, you’ll do,” he said with a grin as he turned away.
By the time that Saturday night came the jibes at Drayton’s expense had
ceased and he was the secret envy of most of the lazy young pit men in
the field.
Baxter for her part had earned eight dollars for the week’s labour.
She had settled in old Maum Vina’s cabin, and she owed half of her
income to the commissary for supplies which she had contributed to
their living. That first Saturday night she turned her back on the
allurement of gossip and laughter at the store, took her four dollars,
tied it up in a corner of her handkerchief, dropped it in her bosom,
and went home to bed. There would be a long journey to-morrow, and she
must be up and on her way in the early morning.
* * * * *
The next morning Baxter found that Maum Vina was going to spend the
day at Red Top, and, as their way would be the same for several miles,
they started off together. The day was flawless, and the early sun
sent its level radiance over the broad marshes, flooding the barren
winter wastes with gold until they looked like fields of ripened grain.
Down the tunnelled road under the live oaks the light shot, edging
the stalactites of Spanish moss with filaments of fire. A red bird
fell like a live coal out of the sky into a roadside casena bush and
whistled three confident notes up into the face of the new day. The
air had a tang to it and lifted the travellers into a good stride.
As Baxter strode along life throbbed upward through the soles of her
Sunday shoes and filled her with a sense of well-being. This was
reinforced when she lifted her hand to her breast, where she could feel
her four big silver dollars tied in the corner of her bandana.
As the pair stepped briskly along Baxter stole a sidelong glance at
her companion, studying her in this first moment of leisure that they
had enjoyed together. The old woman had a strange habit. In the house
she was just like every one else, but as soon as they were out upon
the open road she walked with bent head. Her large clay pipe clenched
between her jaws wreathed her face in rank tobacco smoke, and through
it her eyes could be seen, bright and eager, sliding from side to side
of the road, missing no crevice or rut in their scrutiny. Presently she
referred to this unusual behaviour, and told her companion the cause.
Twenty years before, when her old man had died and left her penniless,
a conjure woman had told her not to worry, that she would find money
in the road before she was too old to look after herself, and that she
would die in affluence. Since then the years had been cruel. She had
seen her two children go into the little graveyard with the father. Age
had stripped her down to that last pitiful hope. But there was not a
shadow of a doubt in her mind that some day she would find her fortune
lying at her foot. But already her sight was failing a little, the keen
eyes missing things that they would have seen easily enough even a year
ago. So she must hurry and cover many miles of road while she could,
and she must be careful, too. Who knew but what the money would be
there in the road right around the next corner? Once, in the excitement
of the recital, she raised her eyes while she talked to Baxter, then,
in a panic, she made her wait for her while she trotted back and
returned, searching the ground.
The younger woman was impressed. “Ah wish tuh Gawd Ah had somet’ing
like dat tuh look forward tuh,” she said enviously. “Ah ain’t gots
nuttin’ but bad luck gib tuh me when Ah talks tuh one ob dem cunjers.”
Presently they approached a bend in the road and heard the rattle of a
rapidly driven vehicle. Then a light buggy swung the curve into full
view and raced toward them behind the finest span of trotters that
Baxter had ever seen. Before her the fore legs flashed up and down
with the precision of pistons, and she got a fleeting impression of
broad muscular chests under glistening chestnut coats, eyes showing
glints of white, and mouths quivering open to the relentless pull on
the bits. The driver was pushing them hard, using the whip against
tight lines, and they were upon the two pedestrians in a flash. As
Maum Vina snatched Baxter’s big, slow-moving body to the side of the
road, the woman looked up in sudden anger at the man. Not personal
resentment so much as a militant pity for the horses which were being
so hardly used. The appraising of strangers was not a calculated
business with her. She had always had instinctive first impressions,
and experience had taught her that they were far more accurate than
subsequent pondered judgments. Now, for the first time in her life, she
was actually frightened at what she saw in a human face. The head was
held straight on the rather spare shoulders, and a broad-brimmed felt
hat shaded a long face that was shaped like a coffin--broadest at the
high cheek bones, and tapering only slightly to an extravagantly long,
square chin. The eyes were narrowed against the wind, and a broad, thin
gash of a mouth was drawn in a tight, fixed smile. Under the shading
hat brim the skin showed with a fungous-like pallor, most unusual
in a country where the white men were used to working out under a
subtropical summer sun. A shower of sand from the spurning hoofs stung
the women’s faces. They stood watching the vehicle diminish down the
perspective of the avenue, take a far curve, disappear.
“Sweet Jedus!” ejaculated Baxter in a hushed voice. “Who dat
rattlesnake, Mauma?”
Then, while they pursued their way, the old negress told her about
Proc Baggart and the part that he played in the lives of the negroes
of his section. She was an amazingly astute old creature. In the
moments when her eyes were not employed upon their eternal quest they
had looked into people’s souls and minds and told her what they saw
there. She knew much more about the operation of Baggart’s magisterial
office than a negro was supposed to know. She also knew enough to feign
ignorance, which for one of her race is the ultimate in human wisdom.
Baggart was the law for the mining district. First as constable, then
as magistrate, he had killed six negroes. The last killing had been
rather spectacular and had served well to put the fear of God into the
onlookers. The victim had been drinking, and instead of scurrying to
the roadside at the approach of the buggy had remained in the middle of
the road. He shouted something unintelligible at the magistrate, who
replied by shooting him dead from the buggy seat with a shotgun; then,
with a Saturday night gang of fifty negroes about him, driving the
vehicle over the body and proceeding deliberately upon his way to give
himself up and go through the form of a trial.
The magistrate, it seemed, made more money than any man in the county.
There were things called taxes that the negroes were supposed to pay,
but they were afraid to go to the house in town to find out about
them, because it looked like a jail. So the magistrate waited awhile
until the taxes got penalties--a process which to Maum Vina’s mind
was similar to that by which an evil she-dog will eventually come
home with a litter of still more evil puppies--then he sent for the
negroes to come and pay him what he claimed. Sometimes he would send
official-looking little blue papers by the constable. At other times
he would just send word that such a negro was wanted. Once a new negro
in the camp had asked for a receipt for his tax money, but after that
he was hounded so that he had to go away. Then there were the dogs.
That was where Gilly made most of his money, it was said. He would come
slipping around when no one was looking, and if he saw a dog in a yard
he’d report it to the magistrate. If the negro didn’t have a license,
and of course no one ever did, he’d have to raise ten dollars for
Baggart, or sometimes twenty, if he wasn’t civil. Gilly would get half
of that as informer. That gave him mighty keen eyes. And Gilly also ran
the big crap game just outside of the Company’s land. Everybody knew
that the building belonged to Baggart and that he must be in on the
game, because it was never raided. They all knew that the dice were
crooked, but it was the only safe place to play. An independent game
out in the bushes always managed to leak out, and the offenders were
given stiff fines or jail sentences. When the old woman finished her
recital she was at her turn-off, and without lifting her glance from
the white sand of the road she said good-bye and left Baxter to her
meditations.
For the greater part of an hour the big woman’s road led between woods,
and she strode along with bowed head. Her thoughts were now upon her
errand, and her darkly brooding expression gave place to a smile of
happy anticipation. Abruptly the road left the woods, and her glance
leaped free over the broad marshes and the silver ribbon of the Ashley
to the city lying low along the horizon with the glamour of the morning
sunlight upon it. Up the river, faint but very clear, came the familiar
music of St. Michael’s bells calling the white folks to service. An
exquisite pang of nostalgia twisted the listener’s heart. Now, in the
crowded court on East Bay, in the long Sunday leisure, she would have
been combing Lissa’s hair out for her, trying to straighten it so that
she could be in the new style and not have to wear it wrapped like the
older negroes. And while she worked she would have been listening to
the talk, and sharing the laughter. Then to-night there would have been
church, and singing with her friends.
She came in sight of the bridge--a taut thread of white stretched
between the city and her destination at the end of the road. Fear
assailed her. Perhaps she was late. She quickened her pace to a
lumbering trot.
When she reached the bridge two figures were waiting: Mamba in her
Sunday black, and Lissa in a new cloth coat, a recent gift of her
grandmother, and of which not even one of the Battery white folks need
have felt ashamed.
Baxter panted up, huge, hot, and dusty. She greeted Mamba hastily,
“Hello, Ma! How yo’ been?” then fell on her knees in the dirt of the
road and strained the child to her breast, drawing her finger tips
along the soft cheek with her characteristic gesture. As always she
was awed by the miracle that this fragile thing could be the fruit of
her great crude body. After a moment, with gentle pushing movements,
the child released herself from the enfolding arms and stood looking at
her mother. Then, with the frank callousness of youth, she sidled over
and leaned against Mamba’s clean, stiff Sunday black. A little dashed
in spirit, Baxter got to her feet and fumbled in her bosom for her
handkerchief. Then she untied the knot, biting it free with her strong
white teeth, and handed Mamba four silver dollars.
“If Ah is careful, Ma,” she said, “Ah can count on dat each week, an’
when Ah git hardened some more, maybe Ah can do better.”
The old woman took the money and put it in a handbag that she carried.
She was preoccupied with her calculations for the child, half
forgetting the mother, who stood there waiting for a word of approval.
But after a moment Mamba smiled her new smile, grim and rather
terrifying with its big masculine teeth, and admitted: “Dat ain’t so
bad.”
She stood pondering a moment longer, her lips moving silently to some
thought, then she went on more brightly: “Now, if yo’ can keep dat up
steady, we can start dem music lessons for Lissa. Ah got her in the
infant choir las’ Sunday ebenin’, an’ de leader say she gots de bes’
voice in de Sunday school. She say dat fuh three dolluh a week she can
tek she right on up so she can earn a libbin’ singin’ out ob books an’
teachin’.”
They stayed for a while longer, sitting beside the road and saying
the inconsequential things that always crowd up in the moments before
a parting, while the real words that should be carried away to be
remembered afterward elude the mind. For Baxter the glory had somehow
gone out of the sunlight. The sight of Lissa leaning against her
grandmother filled her with a new sort of loneliness that hurt her more
than the past days of separation. Finally she rose to go. This time she
did not take the child in her arms and kiss her, but patted the little
head gently with her big hand. “Well, so long,” she said, and turned
abruptly away.
* * * * *
The winter passed slowly for Baxter that first year at the mines, for
it was not merely a succession of days and weeks, but one of those
periods in a human life when a new agony yields slowly to custom, and
custom becomes a commonplace with which one can go on living without
flinching.
Every Sunday brought Mamba to the bridge head, but Lissa was in the
regular Sunday school now and did not want to miss the singing and
companionship of the other children. So she came only occasionally to
see her mother. When she did she was strange and diffident, preferring
to sit by Mamba on the roadside embankment as they talked. The child’s
music teacher had got her into the Sunday school of the stylish mulatto
church which was attended by only the most prosperous of the coloured
citizens. Rumour in the negro quarter had it that there was a door at
the entrance of the church painted tan and that, when an applicant for
a pew passed through it, his complexion was observed by the vestry. If
it showed darker than the door there were no pews for rent. Whether or
not this was malicious humour on the part of the full-blooded negroes,
there is no way of knowing, but the fact remained that, while they
might scoff, it could not be denied that membership in the Reformed
Church meant entrée to the coloured _haut société_. And so Mamba had
gladly let Lissa go with her friend while she continued to attend her
humble place of worship near the old East Bay tenement.
No better method could possibly have been devised in the old city,
where the caste system among negroes went to exaggerated extremes, of
making a colour snob of Lissa. The mother felt this instinctively,
but her first definite impulse to try to prevent it was immediately
suppressed by Mamba’s inflexible determination to give the girl
her chance to the new negro life that she felt to be so full of
possibilities.
“Yo’ an’ me, Hagar--what de hell is we?--Nuttin’! But Ah ain’t no fool
at schemin’, an’ yo’ gots de strength. Look like we ought fuh gib dat
gal a chance ’tween us.”
And so the spring wore away. The green and brown of the winter woods
gave place to the spilled gold of jessamine, and the wood lilies
marched in white battalions through the swamp proclaiming the Easter
season. In the open, deciduous trees hung like puffs of yellow smoke
against soft horizons, and in the swamps pollen spread a glaze coloured
like verdigris over the pools.
Then came the hot days, with the sunlight trembling in waves over the
denuded mining fields, and impounding its heat in the pits where Baxter
laboured with her great body for her child and learned to spend her
thwarted maternity on Maum Vina and old Drayton, who had to be humoured
like a child while he was kept happy by her apparent submission to his
authority. But the physical labours, at any rate, had not been without
compensation. Her muscles were like iron and were no longer a vast
half-directed force but a perfectly disciplined machine.
* * * * *
July came, and in its second week a spell of record-breaking heat.
Baxter’s pit was out in the centre of the field and would get no shade
all day. Wednesday--and to-night there would be a church service, and
after that a “love feast” under the auspices of the lodge. All over
the fields the men were taking it at half speed. As they were paid by
the output they were not pushed by the foremen, and when they carried
a barrow to the cars they would sprawl for a few moments in the strip
of shade. But Baxter could not afford to lag. The sun had come up in
a smother of red haze; later it had climbed above it, but the moisture
had flowed sluggishly along the earth and settled in the pits. Out of
an intolerable grey-blue dome the sun struck directly down into the
humid excavations, making of each a veritable Turkish bath. Baxter had
stripped to the limit that her self-respect would allow and swung along
steadily, lifting ten pounds of rock with every hoist of the shovel and
hurling it out for old Drayton to barrow to the cars.
When knocking-off time came she was conscious of physical exhaustion
for the first time since she had got her muscles hardened to the work.
Church night, lodge meeting, and “love feast” all rolled into one! What
a night it was going to be! Everywhere the negroes were beginning to
show excitement, cutting pigeon wings and shuffling. Mouth organs were
coming from pockets and overwhelming the evening birds in the casenas
and scrub oaks.
For two months the white men who worked at the plant had been spending
the nights on the high sandy ridge three miles away where there was no
fever in hot weather. They would scurry off at sundown as though the
devil were after them, and would not dare to return until after sunup.
But the negroes were immune to malaria. They could stay. Unnumbered
generations behind them along the swarming Congo--in the swamps of
Angola--had tolerated the breed to the poison, had given them this
heritage of safety and these months of freedom from the surveillance of
the white man. What a God-given dispensation of nature! From moonrise
until to-morrow’s sun--a negro country. Even Proc Baggart, who feared
neither god nor devil, wouldn’t dare to prowl in the malarial lowlands.
When the white men were there no liquor was sold on the mining
company’s property, and there was comparatively little drinking among
the negroes. But now! Negro country! Who cared for rules with no one to
enforce them!
Bluton appeared with a buggy load of half-pint dispensary flasks which
he had brought from town and which he resold at double price, until
every cent left of last week’s wages in the camp went into his pockets.
The negroes hated to patronise him--the yellow hound, the rattlesnake!
Why hadn’t one of them thought of going for it?--but they never
did--and Bluton always remembered and had the jump on them every time.
Now he got in his empty buggy and drove off with the money, telling
them frankly that, if he came back later, he wasn’t going to risk a
pocketful of change in that gang.
In the air of celebration, with the spirits of every one about her
vaulting, Baxter felt by contrast tired and depressed. She dawdled over
to Bluton’s rig. What a scramble there was for the flasks! She hadn’t
touched a drop since she came to the camp. Perhaps just a half pint
might pick her up. She pulled the bandana out of her bosom and handed
the mulatto fifty cents. The hot liquor was strong in her throat. It
did not take long to saturate the system, like beer or wine. There was
a great scramble for the last few bottles. Suddenly, as though animated
by some overpowering force outside of herself, Baxter brushed the
squabbling men aside, seized the last flask, and, flinging her bandana
out, emptied it on the floor of the vehicle. Then everybody laughed as
she shied the first flask, now empty, at a distant yellow pine. Near by
half a dozen young bucks were skylarking, tussling with each other. A
splendidly proportioned young black threw a larger one for a solid fall
and turned to the onlookers with a shout of boastful laughter. Baxter
sauntered amiably toward him, took him by the collar, snatched him
suddenly across her knee and administered a resounding spank where his
pants were stretched the tightest. She probably owed her easy success
in some degree to the surprise of her attack, but it delighted the
onlookers, who held their sides for laughter.
She felt her spirits soar. Life was glowing and singing for her again.
What use were the lonesome blues, anyhow!
Time for meeting. The lodge members all wore their regalia--broad,
flat blue sashes edged with silver fringe, crossing their breasts from
shoulder to hip. The keeper of the great key arrived and elbowed her
way through the crowd to the door of the building that served as both
church and lodge room. Suspended about her neck on a silken rope was
a silver key a foot in length. It was tremendously impressive. She
fumbled beneath it in her bosom and finally brought out a small, rusty
key with a dirty red string tied through its ring. Then with this she
opened the ten-cent padlock that held the two panels of the sagging
portal together. Ready hands opened the doors wide and placed props
against them, and the crowd surged into the steaming room and seated
themselves noisily on the unstable backless benches to await the coming
of the preacher.
* * * * *
The Reverend Quintus Whaley let his large and cherished body through
the door of his well-kept cabin and turned his steps toward the church.
He had a broad sensual mouth and a pair of small cunning eyes that
gleamed avidly under heavy eyelids. As he walked ponderously through
the twilight the alternate advance of right and left thighs kept his
pendulous belly swinging, not without a certain massive dignity,
from side to side. He wore a new black tail-coat, a recent gift from
the mining company, and the watch, which he presently hauled from a
pocket in his alpaca vest, had come as a Christmas reminder of the
fact that the white folks not only gave him his bread but buttered
it as well. Astute as he was, he little realised the fact that,
for the investment that he represented, he was the most valuable,
though unproclaimed retainer of the corporation. The allowance at the
commissary for supplies, the best cabin in the village--these were
good, but the coat and watch that invested him with all the dignity
of a city preacher--well, they made it very easy for him to see the
hand of God behind all of the labour policies of the Company. He
smiled now to himself as he remembered the threatened exodus of labour
during the past autumn. One of the more intelligent and daring men
had gone North to work and had sent home such good reports that much
unrest resulted. A land with big wages--and no Proc Baggart. Then,
fortunately for the Company, the man had died of pneumonia. Acting upon
a brilliant inspiration, they had telegraphed instructions to have the
body cremated before shipping. But it was the Reverend Quintus whose
magnificent rolling rhythms had pointed to the hand of God in the fate
that had befallen their brother. And it was he who had exhibited to the
awed negroes the ashes that alone remained of the daring adventurer.
He entered the church, smiling and bowing from right to left. The
sisters greeted him effusively, craning forward to warm themselves
in the light of his smiles. But the men sat unmoved and, for the
most part, silent. The reading desk was quite high, reaching to the
preacher’s shoulders, and there was a shelf beneath the open Bible to
which the Reverend, with remarkable dexterity for so heavy a man, now
transferred a pint flask from beneath his coat.
A shrill leading soprano flung the first clear notes of a spiritual
into the close silence. A tenor rang in and chimed with it from the
last bench, then the full chorus lifted and beat against the thin
clapboarded walls in recurrent waves of melancholy beauty.
The Reverend Quintus dropped to his knees behind the high reading desk
and, safe from view, drew the cork from his bottle and took a long
preliminary pull. He was not always so lucky. To-night he would speak
with the tongue, not of men, but of angels.
* * * * *
Baxter had not entered the building with the crowd. Her high spirits
had not endured, and now she wanted to be alone. Maum Vina had
lingered, watching her a little anxiously, but she sent the old woman
in and promised to follow soon. The cool of evening was creeping up out
of the swamp, sending low, flat layers of mist over the parched and
tortured mining fields, banking up in the avenues under the live oaks,
swimming out over the marsh to blur the horizon. As night grew heavy in
the East, a gleam like phosphorus under dark water commenced to fringe
the skyline, and the watcher knew that the lights were going on in the
city. Mamba would be putting Lissa to bed.
Of late the pain of missing had become almost more than the mother
could bear. She almost never saw the girl now. Mamba could only leave
the Atkinsons on Sunday morning while the children were at Sunday
school and church; and that was Lissa’s opportunity to sing in the
choir and meet the well-to-do members of her race. Mamba had pointed
this out, and it had been accepted with that blind obedience that made
Baxter still seem so much of a child. But the mother’s spirit was the
prisoner of a past from which it would not free itself because the
present offered it no harbourage. And she could no longer visualise
Lissa clearly--the child of even a few months ago was becoming confused
with an imagined portrait of the young girl into which she was growing.
She dashed a hand across her eyes; she looked at the moisture streaked
along the dark skin that she was holding before her face in the gloom.
She forced a laugh, short and bitter, there by herself in the night.
Deliberately she lifted her second flask, half emptied it, then set it
mechanically beside her. Now the bitterness and the pain were ebbing.
She let her memory go back into the old days, and, instead of the ache
of longing, she experienced a warm sense of immediacy--an illusion of
reality so intense that she almost felt the touch of soft skin against
her hands. The image was quite clear now--no longer confused with
physical change--the child that had been hers was hers to keep now,
always, like this, near her.
She was happy now with her head bowed upon her lifted knees. Over the
eastern marshes the moon pushed its flattened disk of copper, pulled
free of the horizon, rounded out to a perfect sphere and brightened to
polished brass. Then it sailed confidently up toward the zenith.
Maum Vina left the church building and came to hunt for Baxter. She was
relieved to see her sitting so still. Touching her on the shoulder,
she dispelled the reverie. There was a new peace in the big face with
its features of a child that Baxter raised. The moon was well up now,
pouring its light down on the cabins and church, arranging the little
settlement rigidly in a cubist pattern of sharp blacks and whites,
planes and angles. The church windows were three yellow slabs on a
black rectangle. Baxter sighed heavily and got to her feet. Then she
remembered the flask, picked it up with an odd detachment of manner,
drained it, and threw it in a clump of bushes.
Maum Vina led her by the hand toward the church, and she went
submissively, moving hugely behind the wiry little figure.
* * * * *
They entered the building at a dramatic moment. The Reverend Quintus
was sending his mellifluous syllables against the walls in a call for
confession and repentance, when a violent and misdirected gesture
dislodged his nearly emptied flask from its snug retreat and sent it
clattering, naked and blatant, down on the floor beneath fifty pairs of
astonished eyes.
There was a moment of silence; then a crashing roar of laughter from
the congregation. That was dangerous. The cloth could endure anything
but ridicule. He leaned forward over the desk, and his tremendous
voice rose over the babblement among the benches. In his extremity he
relapsed into the thick Gullah dialect that he seldom employed in the
pulpit.
“Onnah heah me condemn de hypocrite--enty? Onnah heah me say
confess--enty? If onnah confess and repent when onnah ain’t gots no
sin, den onnah is hypocrite. An’ God despise hypocrite worse dan
rattlesnake. So now, in de presence ob dis congregation, I done t’row
my licker down an’ confess my sin. An’ I calls on ebery nigger in deese
walls fuh t’row he licker down! Yeah, verily, if dere be one among
yo’ what is widout de sin ob hypocracy, let him be de fus’ to cas’ he
licker down!”
He paused for breath, and there was an uneasy fidgeting on the benches.
He was quick to follow up his advantage.
“Remembuh what de hymn say: ‘Hypocrite, hypocrite, God despise. He
tongue so nimble an’ he will tell lies.’”
He was glaring down at them now, and there was none to meet the
condemnation in his eyes. He allowed the silence to grow for a full
minute, then snapped the tension with a thundering blow on the desk
and, without preface, flung his great, resonant voice into the opening
line of a spiritual. Old tactics! But they could always be counted
on in an emergency. Sitting protectively over their own flasks, his
brethren were well content to let bygones be bygones and to hurry the
present into the past with song.
* * * * *
It was time for the love feast. The committee had the refreshments
ready--gaudy little factory-made cakes from the commissary, cherry
bounce, thinned economically with lemonade. But the spirit of song
had seized the bodies of the congregation, and the gross appetites of
the stomach were forgotten. They passed the plates to a few, but the
singers would have none of them. Benches were being thrown back and the
floor cleared for a shout. Already splay feet were slapping the loose
boards of the floor. The spiritual rang out:
“Oh, mornin’ star is in de West--
Honour de Lamb, honour de Lamb!
An’ I wish dat star was in my breast.
Honour de Lamb, honour de Lamb....”
Now the shouters were in full swing, bodies that could give themselves
utterly to a rhythm swayed and bent; here two facing each other, the
rest forgotten; there several together with a more concerted interplay.
But always the feet hit the same time, swaying and rattling the whole
building.
“Oh, way down yonder in de Harbes’ Fiel’--
Honour de Lamb, honour de Lamb!
Angel workin’ on de cha’iot wheel.
Honour de Lamb, honour de Lamb!”
One of the larger groups started to circle, and a ring shout was under
way. The refreshment committee knew that this could last until morning.
They put their plates aside to be eaten by those who would drop out
later from exhaustion.
Shrill and piercing above the more measured rhythm of the spiritual,
with its worship of the new Christ, cut the voice of a soprano in the
Gullah shouting rhythm:
“Simmi yubba leaba, simmi uyh,
Ronda bohda simmi yuh....”
Only the two lines, but repeated interminably in a heavily syncopated
measure, with the concerted stamping of the feet crashing through it
like the thunder of a tribal tom-tom.
Some of the older people began to drop out and reach gratefully for
the cooling drink. But, with the younger, the excitement mounted. Women
screamed. Men emptied their flasks openly, their feet holding the
rhythm the while.
Ned was there. He had tried to persuade Dolly to come, but she never
went out with him now, and had said she was ill and would go to
bed. They had a sort of understanding now. He did not ask much of
her--except not to go around openly with Bluton. She was not to shame
him before everybody. Now he looked up from his shouting and saw
them in the door. Dolly was good-looking, the best-looking woman in
the room. Her full figure was pressed close to the man to whose arm
she clung. Gilly had been drinking, and the beast that he was looked
unguarded out from his face. The cunning, bestiality, hypocrisy--there
they were. His eyes were fixed on Ned, gloating with insolent
amusement. The man and woman left the doorway and sauntered into the
room. Then, with the rhythm of the shouters, who were so rapt that they
were dazed, rushing it up to a swift dramatic climax, tragedy was upon
them.
Ned had his razor out, holding it as the old razor fighters used to,
the handle clenched lightly in his hand, and the blade with back
resting against the closed fingers of his fist. Held so, it could not
close on its owner and could be hurled downward with the full weight of
the fist behind it. Some one snatched up one lamp and hurled it from a
window, but one remained hanging from a beam and could not be reached.
There was a rush for doors and windows. When the crowd gained the open
and looked back, it was over. Ned had vanished as if by magic. Dolly
was gone. Of the three principals in the drama Bluton alone remained.
He lay under the lamp that was swinging slightly, casting his shadow
eerily from side to side, creating a terrifying illusion of movement.
He was not alone. Baxter loomed above him. She stood as though
hypnotised, looking down at the dark venous blood that flowed out of
the slashed clothing and sent the arc of its sinister circle rapidly
toward her. Now it was under one of her great bare feet. She moved. A
foot slid sickeningly and waked her suddenly from her trance.
“Sweet Jedus!” she ejaculated and dropped to her knees.
Knife wounds were nothing new to her. She opened a slashed sleeve and
examined the cut. It was as clean and incisive as surgery--but, God!
she didn’t know a man had so much blood to spill. She hoisted her
skirt, snatched off her petticoat and tore it into strips. She saw the
windows and doors, then, filled with wide eyes and sullen faces.
“Gimme a han’, somebody,” she called. “Can’t be yo’ goin’ stan’ dere
an’ let a man dead!”
No one moved. Their hatred of Bluton seemed to make the air dark and
thick about the kneeling woman. Ned had done it for them. They had
only to go away and leave him. But no one could muster the courage to
call her off. They could only watch and see which way the dice would
fall--“Good Luck Gilly”--or the rest of them. He lay with his face
toward her. There was a slash across the forehead close to the hair
and, below it, the yellow skin had gone a ghastly grey. Alone--he was
worse off than she, for all his money and his dubious good luck. His
hand lay flung open beside her. It was long-fingered, sensual, soft,
with that beauty of modelling so often found in the hand of a negro.
The palm was scarcely lighter than the outer skin. She took it in both
of hers, his plight forgotten for the moment. Her brain had been cloudy
with liquor, but the excitement had charged across it like an electric
storm and left it clear and ringing, but it was a thing separate from
herself, working irresistibly from premises of its own choosing. The
slender hand lying between her strong, dark ones held her fascinated
gaze. It dissociated itself from the personality of Bluton. The touch
of it made her flinch, but she could not release it. Then she knew
why: it was an enlarged replica of Lissa’s, shaped and coloured the
same. A warm smothering sensation took her suddenly, making her senses
lurch and waver. Then her starved maternity took Bluton in. It was
instinctive but it was utter. For that night, while he lay alone and
near to death, she gave him all that she could have given to her own
flesh and blood.
She worked with frantic haste. A band tied above a wound and drawn
tight with her bare hands was as effectual as a tourniquet. He was
deeply slashed in both arms as he had shielded his face with them,
and there was that gash across the forehead. After the uproar in the
room its poisoned atmosphere now hung in a dead and ominous quiet. The
silent watchers at the window waited, their eyes following Baxter’s
every movement. No arteries had been cut, but the veins had poured
out the man’s life until he was in desperate straits. The ghastly
visage thrown up toward the light showed that something must be done
immediately. Baxter bound the wounds, staunching the bleeding. Then she
stood up and met the eyes that were fixed on her.
“We gots to get um to town quick,” she said. “If we can get um in de
hospital, maybe dey can pull um t’rough.”
Not a body moved. They kept on standing there staring at her
inimically. She faced them desperately. Oh, if she only had Mamba now!
Mamba who always made plans, pushed things through. She turned back on
her own resources, and a plan began to form. She met old Drayton’s eyes
peering in a window, and in a second she had him by the arm.
“Listen!” she shot into his face. “Yo’ go an’ break in de commissary
stable an’ get de wagon here soon as yo’ can. Ah’ll fix it wid Mr.
Saint.” The old man hesitated. “If dat wagon ain’t here in fibe minute
I ain’t nebber goin’ dig anoder pit wid yo’. Onnerstan’!”
She loosed him and he started for the stable at an unsteady run.
A voice that was unable to conceal its satisfaction called out, “Dat
ain’t no use. Dey ain’t le’s nuthin’ but city niggers free to de
hospital. Country nigger gots to pay in exvance.”
“Dat all right,” Baxter answered. “Gilly always gots money.”
She dropped on her knees and went through Bluton’s pockets. Not a
penny. Then they all remembered at once. The man had stripped the
settlement of every cent on the whisky sale and had carried the money
away to hide. The irony of the situation struck the negro humour and
they began to laugh.
“Sarve um right,” some one called. “Can’t trus’ we--now he can dead.
Ain’t nuttin’ but a low white-folks nigger nohow.”
The big woman glared at them.
“He ain’t goin’ dead. Yo’ hear dat, yo’ dirty passel ob yellow-liver
nigger?--He ain’t goin’ dead. ’Cause Ah’s goin’ see um t’rough.”
The wagon rattled up. Baxter heard it, stooped, lifted her charge in
her arms, and, taking him from the building, lay him on the floor of
the vehicle. There was an old tarpaulin on the seat. She spread it
carefully over him and climbed in. Then she looked down at the sullen
crowd about the wagon and lashed them with her parting words.
“Yo’ gawd-damned low-livered niggers. Yo’ fair mak’ me ’shamed tuh be
black.”
No one answered, and the vehicle started off under the live oaks with
the horse moving soundlessly between the deep sandy ruts and the
passenger lying, awful in his immobility, under the tarpaulin.
* * * * *
Baxter brought all of her faculties to bear on the problem of getting
him into the hospital. If she could only have Mamba here now--she
would know what to do. Then, slowly, under the urge of necessity,
her brain began to evolve a scheme. What if he were found near the
hospital--lying unconscious in the street--who would know that he was
not a town nigger? She had had friends who had been found so by the
police and carried to the hospital, where they were cared for. She
knew the city well. The police were few in the quiet part of the town.
Perhaps she could slip through the darkened streets and leave Bluton on
one of the beats.
They had covered several miles before she finally decided to risk the
plan. She had been so intent upon it that no other consideration had
entered her mind. Now she was aware of a menacing shadow--a prescience
that all was not right. Then it came down upon her like a physical
blow--what if she were caught? Two years in jail. Immediately the
horror elaborated itself in her quickened imagination. What would Mamba
say? Lissa!--All the young girl’s toney friends--her music--and her
ma in the jail! They would throw Lissa out--she knew it. Instantly it
loomed insurmountable before her. But here was Bluton--she could not
let him die now. Sweat burst out on her face, cold and clammy in the
night air.
With the odd instinct of dumb animals, the horse had sensed her
hesitation and stopped in the middle of the road. She mopped her
streaming face. Then, with a decisive gesture, she slapped the animal’s
back with the slack lines. She’d have to gamble on her luck. Maybe it
had changed. Anyway, she’d have to see it through.
She was on the main road now, and the going was good. In the distance
she could see the taut thread of the bridge, white under the moonlight,
and the red light at the draw glowing like a single ruby at its centre.
Then came a short drive over the flats, with the marsh talking to her
in its soft plopping monosyllables.
On the planking now, the loose timbers making a thunder of sound in her
apprehensive ears as the shod hoofs fell rhythmically against them.
The draw was closed. That made it final. She must go ahead now. Had it
been left open to-night, as was sometimes done, fate would have turned
her back. A high tide ran under the bridge, sweeping the moon’s silver
under it in a shining flood. Overhead the luminous disk--no longer
brass, but a cold platinum--was so brilliant that its light had drowned
out all of the lesser stars. The vehicle, with its silent passenger and
the great hunched figure of its driver, moved toward the dark clustered
buildings of the city as though it advanced beneath a vast flood light
upon a gargantuan stage.
The toll office was closed for the night, but Baxter’s approach had
been heralded by the noise of the vehicle, and as she left the bridge
she saw the night watchman waiting. He was a very old, bent man, and he
stood swinging his stick and peering up in surprise.
“Where you goin’ this hour of the night?” he called querulously,
with the pettishness of one who has just been awakened. Then Baxter
remembered that she had no money to pay toll.
“Jus’ takin’ some truck to town,” she said lamely. “I’ll pay comin’
back when de office open.”
But the persistent old creature would not let it go at that. She had
stopped the wagon, and he now came up and peered over the side. He
was standing there, undecided what to do. Baxter’s mind was in panic.
Should she risk bolting for it with the old horse and heavy wagon?
They were both silent, trying to make up their minds. Bluton became
the deciding factor. There was movement beneath the canvas and a low,
agonized groan. With an instinctive reflex action, Baxter’s foot shot
out and caught the horse full on the rump. An astonished spring jerked
the vehicle clear of the watchman. Then the animal gathered himself
together and set off with the vehicle clattering and jouncing over the
cobbles. The din would bring the whole town down about her ears if it
continued, and so, as soon as the driver collected her wits, she threw
her weight on the right line with the result that they were plunged
into the immediate peace of an unpaved side street. She pulled the
animal down to a walk and listened with her heart thumping heavily in
her throat. There was no sound of pursuit. Evidently the watchman had
gone back to his nap and the policeman had been at the remote end of
his beat.
She waited a moment under a shade tree to quiet the trembling animal
and to gather courage for the plunge from the pool of shadow into the
relentless moonlight. Confidence that her luck had changed began to
come. She had won the first break. The horse was quiet now. She must
get on with it.
She moved out of the shadow, driving slowly and soundlessly in the soft
deeply rutted earth. Now her whole being seemed concentrated in her
sense of hearing. In the remote residential section through which she
was passing the stillness was so absolute that she even heard faint
snoring in one of the houses. Then, with a sudden intrusion of humour
into tragedy, came a fretful female voice waking the offender and
telling him to lie on his side. Then came footsteps on the pavement of
a side street, indolent, heavy, maddening in their deliberation. Baxter
pulled the wagon under the wide-flung branches of a tree and waited.
Around the corner a half block away came a policeman. He was swinging
his club by its thong, and his head was thrown back while he gazed up
into the wonder of the night. Without looking down, he pursued his
leisurely way down the street past where Baxter was waiting.
She saw his broad back receding ahead of her and knew that for the
second time luck had been with her. Now she had only to wait until
he was out of earshot, then follow, discharge her passenger near the
hospital, and the officer would find him on his next round. Presently
she was under way again and covered the three blocks to her destination
without adventure.
She pulled the wagon into the shadow of a palmetto. A faint air was
talking to the tree, and it was answering in its harsh gutturals, so
different from the voices of other trees. The sound frightened Baxter,
but she conquered her qualms. She climbed down and removed the canvas
from Bluton’s form. Then she saw that his eyes were open and fixed upon
her.
“Oh, dat yo’, Baxter?” he said in a weak voice. “What de hell is all
dis about, anyhow?” Then he moved, became aware of his wounds, and
groaned loudly.
“Shut yo’ damn’ mout’,” she answered fiercely; then gathered him up,
carried him into the light, and placed him on the pavement. Bending
down, she spoke almost savagely into his face.
“Yo’ want fuh dead?”
“Fuh Gawd’s sake, no! You wouldn’t----”
She cut him off. “Berry well, den. Listen! Keep yo’ eye an’ yo’ mout’
shet. Don’t tell nobody who yo’ is or whar yo’ come from. Got dat
straight?”
He nodded. Then she saw that the exertion had caused him to faint again.
She drove the rig down a side street, tied the horse beneath a tree,
and crept back to watch. She had not long to wait. The deliberate steps
were coming back. She saw the figure now, a black, solid bulk in the
white light.
Now he was fairly on the supine form of Bluton. Had he gone blind?
Then, “Well, I’ll be god damned!”
He stooped, made a swift examination, then rose quickly, trotted to a
box on the corner, and put in a call. Scarcely had he got back to the
inert form before the wagon came. Two alert figures sprang out and
lifted the wounded man in. Then, with a single clang of the bell, the
vehicle lunged away toward the hospital.
* * * * *
Baxter slipped back around the corner of the fence that had been
shielding her and returned to the wagon. There, suddenly, in her
moment of triumph, she knew that she had lost. The bridge was the only
way back, and the irate watchman would be waiting for her there. There
would be no disguising her great body that always got her into trouble.
She was caught in a trap. The realisation came with a numbing shock
and paralysed her initiative. Mamba! She must get to her and ask her
what to do. The recklessness generated by the whisky had gone from her
blood; the maternal impulse that had driven her blindly into her danger
was passing. She was suddenly terribly afraid; a little whimpering
sound escaped her.
Then she heard a human voice, casually conversational, expressing
amused surprise. “Well, if here ain’t the big un back in town!”
She looked down and knew the man instantly. He had called for her more
than once in the room on East Bay, and he had been the officer who had
carried her off that last fateful night.
She was speechless, sitting massively above him, sobbing freely now
into the crook of her arm. Down on the pavement the Celtic intuition in
the big square body was beginning to put two and two together.
“So, it’s you that just dumped the high yaller on Calhoun Street? Well,
I got to hand it to you; you ain’t fergot how to take ’em to pieces!
Reckon you better drive back there to the box while I call a special to
take you in.”
“I swear to Gawd, chief, I ain’t cut dat nigger up. Listen ’fore yo’
call, fuh Gawd’ sake! an’ lemme tell yo’ how ’tis!”
He led the horse out into the light where he could see the woman
plainly and told her to go ahead. When she had finished her story he
stood silent a moment. Then he said, “You know, Big Un, it’s funny, but
I don’t believe you’re lying. I think you’re just about that damned a
fool.” Then he asked, “This the first time you been in town?”
“Yes, Boss. I swear tuh Gawd.”
He fairly snapped his answer at her: “Well, git out o’ it damn quick!
An’ I ain’t seen no woman nor wagon since suppertime, I don’t care what
the hell anybody says.”
He turned and walked briskly away. In a moment he had rounded the
nearest corner, and his footfalls were fading into silence.
Hagar must get to Mamba now. That was the only thing to do. Her own
mind had stopped working. She had to cross the city in a diagonal
direction, and it was more instinct than conscious judgment that
selected the deserted byways and alleys for her passage. But luck was
with her--luck and a sharp retrenchment in the police department with
a resultant cut in personnel--and she traversed the distance without
being again in jeopardy. Finally, just before day, she drove the wagon
into the court in East Bay Street.
She routed out a startled friend and sent her to wake and fetch Mamba;
then sat waiting like a child who knows that she has done wrong and
will be punished.
An hour after the old woman came cursing into the court arrangements
were complete. The wagon had been washed down until it was scarcely
recognisable as the mud-covered country vehicle; a half-grown boy had
been engaged at an honorarium of two dollars to drive it over and
deliver it to the commissary, and a fisherman had contracted, for the
sum of three dollars, to row Baxter around the city and across the
river where she would be within safe walking distance of the mines.
Mamba peered from the gateway and scanned the street. It was absolutely
empty, its air astir with that indefinable thrill of expectancy which
is the precursor of dawn. There was silence save for the far panting
of a freight engine. Growling bitterly over the injustice of a fate
that had imposed such a daughter upon her, the old woman conducted the
culprit across the street and to the pier head. At the foot of a ladder
a boat could be discerned, its rower waiting with oars ready.
Silently Baxter descended and took her seat. In the moment of
departure, the old face, hanging above her against the thinning night,
softened, and the deep-timbred voice said gently, “Good-bye, Daughter.
Fuh Gawd’ sake take care ob yo’self an’ keep out ob trouble.”
The oars dipped, and Baxter was once again out of the city. Behind her
the night seemed to cower suddenly down into the narrow streets and
beneath the dock. Far out beyond Fort Sumter a new day lifted, washed
and shining, from the Atlantic. The oarsman pulled steadily ahead.
Above the crouching woman, and looming fabulously into the morning
skies, hung the great Battery mansions, their high-flung columns and
façades showing rose and saffron in the young day. To her left the
“mosquito fleet” was putting to sea for its day at the fishing banks,
sailing straight into the eye of the rising sun, and, under Baxter’s
dazzled gaze, seeming to founder and vanish eastward in a flood of
intolerable glory. Close by her now, where she could touch them with
her hand, small, plangent waves sprang up and caught the light. She
looked for a long moment, lifted out of herself by the splendour; then
her large bullet head fell forward on her crossed arms.
“Sweet Jedus,” she muttered, “in a worl’ like dis, why Yo’ gots to make
me such a damn’ fool!”
The oarsman pulled doggedly ahead toward the distant line of trees.