Becky Moore has eleven children of assorted colors and sizes. She has
never been married, but that is not her fault. She has never stopped
any of the fathers of her children from proposing, so if she has no
father for her children it’s not her fault. The men round about are
entirely to blame.
The other mothers of the town are afraid that it is catching. They
won’t let their children play with hers.
IV
+Tippy+
Sykes Jones’ family all shoot craps. The most interesting member of the
family--also fond of bones, but of another kind--is Tippy, the Jones’
dog.
He is so thin, that it amazes one that he lives at all. He sneaks into
village kitchens if the housewives are careless about the doors and
steals meats, even off the stoves. He also sucks eggs.
For these offenses he has been sentenced to death dozens of times, and
the sentences executed upon him, only they didn’t work. He has been fed
bluestone, strychnine, nux vomica, even an entire Peruna bottle beaten
up. It didn’t fatten him, but it didn’t kill him. So Eatonville has
resigned itself to the plague of Tippy, reflecting that it has erred in
certain matters and is being chastened.
In spite of all the attempts upon his life, Tippy is still willing to
be friendly with anyone who will let him.
V
+The Way of a Man with a Train+
Old Man Anderson lived seven or eight miles out in the country from
Eatonville. Over by Lake Apopka. He raised feed-corn and cassava and
went to market with it two or three times a year. He bought all of his
victuals wholesale so he wouldn’t have to come to town for several
months more.
He was different from us citybred folks. He had never seen a train.
Everybody laughed at him for even the smallest child in Eatonville had
either been to Maitland or Orlando and watched a train go by. On Sunday
afternoons all of the young people of the village would go over to
Maitland, a mile away, to see Number 35 whizz southward on its way to
Tampa and wave at the passengers. So we looked down on him a little.
Even we children felt superior in the presence of a person so lacking
in worldly knowledge.
The grown-ups kept telling him he ought to go see a train. He always
said he didn’t have time to wait so long. Only two trains a day passed
through Maitland. But patronage and ridicule finally had its effect
and Old Man Anderson drove in one morning early. Number 78 went north
to Jacksonville at 10:20. He drove his light wagon over in the woods
beside the railroad below Maitland, and sat down to wait. He began to
fear that his horse would get frightened and run away with the wagon.
So he took him out and led him deeper into the grove and tied him
securely. Then he returned to his wagon and waited some more. Then he
remembered that some of the train-wise villagers had said the engine
belched fire and smoke. He had better move his wagon out of danger. It
might catch afire. He climbed down from the seat and placed himself
between the shafts to draw it away. Just then 78 came thundering over
the trestle spouting smoke, and suddenly began blowing for Maitland.
Old Man Anderson became so frightened he ran away with the wagon
through the woods and tore it up worse than the horse ever could have
done. He doesn’t know yet what a train looks like, and says he doesn’t
care.
VI
+Coon Taylor+
Coon Taylor never did any real stealing. Of course, if he saw a chicken
or a watermelon or muskmelon or anything like that that he wanted he’d
take it. The people used to get mad but they never could catch him. He
took so many melons from Joe Clarke that he set up in the melon patch
one night with his shotgun loaded with rock salt. He was going to fix
Coon. But he was tired. It is hard work being a mayor, postmaster,
storekeeper and everything. He dropped asleep sitting on a stump in
the middle of the patch. So he didn’t see Coon when he came. Coon
didn’t see him either, that is, not at first. He knew the stump was
there, however. He had opened many of Clarke’s juicy Florida Favorite
on it. He selected his fruit, walked over to the stump and burst the
melon on it. That is, he thought it was the stump until it fell over
with a yell. Then he knew it was no stump and departed hastily from
those parts. He had cleared the fence when Clarke came to, as it were.
So the charge of rock-salt was wasted on the desert air.
During the sugar-cane season, he found he couldn’t resist Clarke’s soft
green cane, but Clarke did not go to sleep this time. So after he had
cut six or eight stalks by the moonlight, Clarke rose up out of the
cane strippings with his shotgun and made Coon sit right down and chew
up the last one of them on the spot. And the next day he made Coon
leave his town for three months.
VII
+Village Fiction+
Joe Lindsay is said by Lum Boger to be the largest manufacturer of
prevarications in Eatonville; Brazzle (late owner of the world’s
leanest and meanest mule) contends that his business is the largest in
the state and his wife holds that he is the biggest liar in the world.
_Exhibit A_--He claims that while he was in Orlando one day he saw
a doctor cut open a woman, remove everything--liver, lights and heart
included--clean each of them separately; the doctor then washed out the
empty woman, dried her out neatly with a towel and replaced the organs
so expertly that she was up and about her work in a couple of weeks.