Watermelon time is in full blast in Tennessee now. Ordinarily, the
whites in the South cease to eat watermelons after the fifteenth of
September, because they know that as soon as the cool nights begin
every melon contains a thousand chills. But not so with the darkey.
A chill rattles as harmlessly off the armour of his constitution as
buckshot from the back of the Olympia. He can absorb miasma like a
sponge, and, like it, grow fat as he absorbs. The negro, then, eats his
melon until the November frosts kill the vines. Even then he carries
the half-ripe melon into his cabin and often, on Christmas morning, an
ice-cold watermelon is his first diet.
And a great treat it is. Did you never wander over the fields, way
down South, after the cotton was all picked, and the November breezes
came cool and ladened with that delicate, indescribably rare flavor
the frost gives when it first nips the mellow-ripe muscadine? You
have shouldered your gun and gone out after old Mollie Cotton Tail.
It was cool and crisp when you went out, but toward noon it has grown
hot again. Flushed and tired, you stop to rest by the big spring that
flows from under the roots of the big oak near the cotton field. In
the shadow of that oak, half hid in the frost-bitten weeds, you find a
little striped watermelon--a guinea melon, as the darkies call it--a
kind of a volunteer melon that grows in the cotton every year, the
first seeds of which were brought by some Guinea negro, from the coast
of Africa, when he first came over to servitude, with silver rings in
his nose and ears. And though he failed to bring his idols and his
household gods along with him, yet did he not forget the melon of his
naked ancestors. Planting it as he hoed his first crop of cotton for a
new master, it has never deserted him since, and so, year after year,
it comes up amid the cotton, to remind him of the days it grew wild in
a sunnier clime.
And there you find it this November morning. Boy like, you pounce on
it with a shout and soon it is laid open, as red as your first love’s
lips and as sweet; and so cold it seems to have been raised in the
deep-delved cellars of all the centuries. I am sorry for the boy who
has grown to be a man and never, in a November morning’s hunt after Old
Mollie, had the exquisite sweetness of this satisfying surprise--the
like of which is not equalled by the sweetness of any other surprise on
earth. No--not even should he grow to be a man, and awake some morning
to find himself famous and the father of twins!
Every darkey of any standing in Tennessee “gives a treat” at least
once in his life. He will stint and economize for months to save money
enough to invest in watermelons and tartaric acid (the acid makes
the lemonade). Then, when the glorious day arrives, Nero, giving free
entertainment to the citizens of Eternal Rome, is not in it with that
darkey. Henceforth he can get anything in that community he wishes,
from constable to presiding elder, while the widows of the church are
his’n by a large majority!
I had heard that old Wash was going to run again for justice of the
peace and the “deaconship of Zion” over in the coon district of Big
Sandy, and that he was going to give his annual treat.
These had always passed off beautifully and ended in the unanimous
election of the old man to both offices and anything else he wanted. I
thought it was all over and entirely harmonious until he came in the
other night, looking like Montejo’s flag-ship after Dewey’s ten-inch
shell went through her, “a-rippin’ out her very innards”--as Old Wash
himself described it--“from eend to eend.”
But when I saw the old man, creeping into my library, I was certain he
was in the last stages of Asiatic cholera, and I rang the telephone
hastily to get my family physician. But he feebly raised his hand, and
beckoned me to desist.
“No, no, boss; he can’t do me no good--no good,” as he feebly sank into
a chair. Then he whispered:
“Jes a drap, a leetle drap, on my tongue, boss--jes’ to let the old man
shuffle off dis mortal coil wid a good taste in his mouth. It’s all I
wants.”
Under the stimulant of that eternal beverage of moonlight and melody,
he revived a little.
“What’s the matter with you? Anybody been giving you a hoodoo,” I asked.
“No, no, boss”--feebly--“I--I--I gin a treat at Big Sandy.”
“Well, you have given many a treat at Big Sandy. Why should this one
make you look like a piney-wood coal-kiln after a cyclone had struck
it?”
It took another dose from my side-board bottle to put enough life into
the old man to make him take any interest in things. Then he brightened
up and said:
“Dat’s jes’ hit--a man may go on doin’ de same trick year arter year,
ontwel it looks lak he cud do it wid his eyes shet, an’ den at last, if
he ain’t mighty keerful, hit’ll buck and fling ’im! De hardes’ luck,
I take it, in dis wurl’, am when a man dun shuck de dice ob success
ontwell dey seem to bob up at his word, only to play off on him an’
bust ’im es his palsied han’ shakes ’em fur de las’ time.”
His tears were flowing so freely and his remarks seemed so true and
heartfelt, I did not have it in me to fail to brace him up with
another pull from the side-board bottle. Then I saw he was ripe and
reminiscent, and I lit my cigar, struck an easy attitude, and let him
do the rest:
“On de Sundy befo’ de fust Mundy ob de full moon in September,” he went
on, “cum off de ’lection fur ’ziden elder of Zion, an’ de next day
am de day sot by law fur de ’lection of jestus ob de peace. So las’
Sat’d’y I gin a treat. I axed ebry nigger in de deestrict dar, an’ all
de members of Zion, an’ Br’er Johnsing wus to preach de watermilion
sermon.
“Ain’t nurver heurd ob de watermilion sermon? Hit’s de sermon preached
at de feast ob de watermilion jes’ befo’ de new moon in September,
an’ it am one ob de doctrines ob Zion to kinder take de place ob de
feast ob de Passober ’mong de Jews--only in dis case we don’t pass
ober nuffin’, ’specially de watermilions. Now, hit tain’t eb’ry nigger
kin preach de watermilion sermon. Hit takes a mighty juicy nigger to
do hit, yallar with dark stripes, juicy at de core, full of tears an’
sweet penitence an’ easily laid open by the blade of grace, an’ brudder
Johnsing am de slickest one I eber seed at it.
“Now, dat wus my time to git in my fine Italyun han’, an’ so I gin
it out that hit wus to be my treat, an’ I axed all de voters ob de
deestrick an’ all de members ob Zion ter be on han’ fur de revival ob
de speerit an’ de refreshment ob de flesh.
“’Cordin’ to my custom, jes’ befo’ de time fur de sermon I had all
de watermilions laid out on de grass, one hundred ob de bigges’ an’
fattes’ ones you eber seed. You see, boss, I am constertushunally
upposed to long sermons,” he winked, “an’ I knowed dey wa’n’t a
nigger libin’ c’uld preach ober ten minnits wid all dem watermilions
a-layin’ dar a-winkin’ at ’im an’ waiting to be led, lak’ lambs, to de
sacrifice. Does you see de p’int?”