During a period following his mother's death Peter Siner's life drifted
emptily and without purpose. He had the feeling of one convalescing in a
hospital. His days passed unconnected by any thread of purpose; they
were like cards scattered on a table, meaning nothing.
At times he struggled against his lethargy. When he awoke in the morning
and found the sun shining on his dusty primers and examination papers,
he would think that he ought to go back to his old task; but he never
did. In his heart grew a conviction that he would never teach school at
Hooker's Bend.
He would rise and dress slowly in the still cabin, thinking he must soon
make new plans and take up some work. He never decided precisely what
work; his thoughts trailed on in vague, idle designs.
In fact, during Peter's reaction to his shock there began to assert
itself in him that capacity for profound indolence inherent in his negro
blood. To a white man time is a cumulative excitant. Continuous and
absolute idleness is impossible; he must work, hunt, fish, play, gamble,
or dissipate,--do something to burn up the accumulating sugar in his
muscles. But to a negro idleness is an increasing balm; it is a
stretching of his legs in the sunshine, a cat-like purring of his
nerves; while his thoughts spread here and there in inconsequences, like
water without a channel, making little humorous eddies, winding this way
and that into oddities and fantasies without ever feeling that
constraint of sequence which continually operates in a white brain. And
it is this quality that makes negroes the entertainers of children
_par excellence_.
Peter Siner's mental slackening made him understandable, and gave him a
certain popularity in Nigger-town. Black men fell into the habit of
dropping in at the Siner cabin, where they would sit outdoors, with
chairs propped against the wall, and philosophize on the desultory life
of the crescent. Sometimes they would relate their adventures on the
river packets and around the docks at Paducah, Cairo, St. Joe, and St.
Louis; usually a recountal of drunkenness, gaming, fighting, venery,
arrests, jail sentences, petty peculations, and escapes. Through these
Iliads of vagabondage ran an irresponsible gaiety, a non-morality, and a
kind of unbrave zest for adventure. They told of their defeats and
flights with as much relish and humor as of their charges and victories.
And while the spirit was thoroughly pagan, these accounts were full of
the clichés of religion. A roustabout whom every one called the
Persimmon confided to Peter that he meant to cut loose some logs in a
raft up the river, float them down a little way, tie them up again, and
claim the prize-money for salvaging them, God willing.
The Persimmon was so called from a scar on his long slanting head. A
steamboat mate had once found him asleep in the passageway of a lumber
pile which the boat was lading, and he waked the negro by hitting him in
the head with a persimmon bolt. In this there was nothing unusual or
worthy of a nickname. The point was, the mate had been mistaken: the
Persimmon was not working on his boat at all. In time this became one of
the stock anecdotes which pilots and captains told to passengers
traveling up and down the river.
The Persimmon was a queer-looking negro; his head was a long diagonal
from its peak down to his pendent lower lip, for he had no chin. The
salient points on this black slope were the Persimmon's sad, protruding
yellow eyeballs, over which the lids always drooped about half closed.
An habitual tipping of this melancholy head to one side gave the
Persimmon the look of one pondering and deploring the amount of sin
there was in the world. This saintly impression the Persimmon's conduct
and language never bore out.
At the time of the Persimmon's remarks about the raft two of Peter's
callers, Jim Pink Staggs and Parson Ranson, took the roustabout to task.
Jim Pink based his objection on the grounds of glutting the labor
market.
"Ef us niggers keeps turnin' too many raf's loose fuh de prize-money,"
he warned, "somebody's goin' to git 'spicious, an' you'll ruin a good
thing."
The Persimmon absorbed this with a far-away look in his half-closed
eyes.
"It's a ticklish job," argued Parson Ranson, "an' I wouldn't want to
wuck at de debbil's task aroun' de ribber, ca'se you mout fall in,
Persimmon, an' git drownded."
"I wouldn't do sich a thing a-tall," admitted the Persimmon, "but I jes'
natchelly got to git ten dollars to he'p pay on my divo'ce."
"I kain't see whut you want wid a divo'ce," said Jim Pink, yawning,
"when you been ma'ied three times widout any."
"It's fuh a Christmas present," explained the Persimmon, carelessly,
"fuh th' woman I'm libin' wid now. Mahaly's a great woman fuh style. I'm
goin' to divo'ce my other wives, one at a time lak my lawyer say."
"On what grounds?" asked Peter, curiously.
"Desuhtion."
"Desertion?"
"Uh huh; I desuhted 'em."
Jim Pink shook his head, picked up a pebble, and began idly juggling it,
making it appear double, single, treble, then single again.
"Too many divo'ces in dis country now, Persimmon," he moralized.
"Well, whut's de cause uv 'em?" asked the Persimmon, suddenly bringing
his protruding yellow eyes around on the sleight-of-hand performer.
Jim Pink was slightly taken aback; then he said:
"'Spicion; nothin' but 'spicion."
"Yeah, 'spicion," growled the Persimmon; "'spicion an' de husban'
leadin' a irreg'lar life."
Jim Pink looked at his companion, curiously.
"The husban'--leadin' a irreg'lar life?"
"Yeah,"--the Persimmon nodded grimly,--"the husban' comin' home at
onexpected hours. You know whut I means, Jim Pink."
Jim Pink let his pebble fall and lowered the fore legs of his chair
softly to the ground.
"Now, look heah, Persimmon, you don' want to be draggin' no foreign
disco'se into yo' talk heah befo' Mr. Siner an' Parson Ranson."
The Persimmon rose deliberately.
"All I want to say is, I drapped off'n de matrimonial tree three times
a'ready, Jim Pink, an' I think I feels somebody shakin' de limb ag'in."
The old negro preacher rose, too, a little behind Jim Pink.
"Now, boys! boys!" he placated. "You jes think dat, Persimmon."
"Yeah," admitted Persimmon, "I jes think it; but ef I b'lieve ever'thing
is so whut I think is so, I'd part Jim Pink's wool wid a brickbat."
Parson Ranson tried to make peace, but the Persimmon spread his hands in
a gesture that included the three men. "Now, I ain't sayin' nothin'," he
stated solemnly, "an' I ain't makin' no threats; but ef anything
happens, you-all kain't say that nobody didn' tell nobody about
nothin'."
With this the Persimmon walked to the gate, let himself out, still
looking back at Jim Pink, and then started down the dusty street.
Mr. Staggs seemed uncomfortable under the Persimmon's protruding yellow
stare, but finally, when the roustabout was gone, he shrugged, regained
his aplomb, and remarked that some niggers spent their time in studyin'
'bout things they hadn't no info'mation on whatever. Then he strolled
off up the crescent in the other direction.
All this would have made fair minstrel patter if Peter Siner had shared
the white conviction that every emotion expressed in a negro's patois is
humorous. Unfortunately, Peter was too close to the negroes to hold such
a tenet. He knew this quarrel was none the less rancorous for having
been couched in the queer circumlocution of black folk. And behind it
all shone the background of racial promiscuity out of which it sprang.
It was like looking at an open sore that touched all of Niggertown, men
and boys, young girls and women. It caused tragedies, murders, fights,
and desertions in the black village as regularly as the rotation of the
calendar; yet there was no public sentiment against it. Peter wondered
how this attitude of his whole people could possibly be.
With the query the memory of Ida May came back to him, with its sense of
dim pathos. It seemed to Peter now as if their young and uninstructed
hands had destroyed a safety-vault to filch a penny.
The reflex of a thought of Ida May always brought Peter to Cissie; it
always stirred up in him a desire to make this young girl's path gentle
and smooth. There was a fineness, a delicacy about Cissie, that, it
seemed to Peter, Ida May had never possessed. Then, too, Cissie was
moved by a passion for self-betterment. She deserved a cleaner field
than the Niggertown of Hooker's Bend.
Peter took Parson Ranson's arm, and the two moved to the gate by common
consent. It was no longer pleasant to sit here. The quarrel they had
heard somehow had flavored their surroundings.
Peter turned his steps mechanically northward up the crescent toward the
Dildine cabin. Nothing now restrained him from calling on Cissie; he
would keep no dinner waiting; he would not be warned and berated on his
return home. The nagging, jealous love of his mother had ended.
As the two men walked along, it was borne in upon Peter that his
mother's death definitely ended one period of his life. There was no
reason why he should continue his present unsettled existence. It seemed
best to marry Cissie at once and go North. Further time in this place
would not be good for the girl. Even if he could not lift all
Niggertown, he could at least help Cissie. He had had no idea, when he
first planned his work, what a tremendous task he was essaying. The
white village had looked upon the negroes so long as non-moral and non-
human that the negroes, with the flexibility of their race, had
assimilated that point of view. The whites tried to regulate the negroes
by endless laws. The negroes had come to accept this, and it seemed that
they verily believed that anything not discovered by the constable was
permissible. Mr. Dawson Bobbs was Niggertown's conscience. It was best
for Peter to take from this atmosphere what was dearest to him, and go
at once.
The brown man's thoughts came trailing back to the old negro parson
hobbling at his side. He looked at the old man, hesitated a moment, then
told him what was in his mind.
Parson Ranson's face wrinkled into a grin.
"You's gwine to git ma'ied?"
"And I thought I'd have you perform the ceremony."
This suggestion threw the old negro into excitement.
"Me, Mr. Peter?"
"Yes. Why not?"
"Why, Mr. Peter, I kain't jine you an' Miss Cissie Dildine."
Peter looked at him, astonished.
"Why can't you?"
"Whyn't you git a white preacher?"
"Well," deliberated Peter, gravely, "it's a matter of principle with me,
Parson Ranson. I think we colored people ought to be more self-reliant,
more self-serving. We ought to lead our own lives instead of being mere
echoes of white thought." He made a swift gesture, moved by this passion
of his life. "I don't mean racial equality. To my mind racial equality
is an empty term. One might as well ask whether pink and violet are
equal. But what I do insist on is autonomous development."
The old preacher nodded, staring into the dust. "Sho! 'tonomous
'velopment."
Peter saw that his language, if not his thought, was far beyond his old
companion's grasp, and he lacked the patience to simplify himself.
"Why don't you want to marry us, Parson?"
Parson Ranson lifted his brows and filled his forehead with wrinkles.
"Well, I dunno. You an' Miss Cissie acts too much lak white folks fuh a
nigger lak me to jine you, Mr. Peter."
Peter made a sincere effort to be irritated, but he was not.
"That's no way to feel. It's exactly what I was talking about,--racial
self-reliance. You've married hundreds of colored couples."
"Ya-as, suh,"--the old fellow scratched his black jaw.--"I kin yoke up a
pair uv ordina'y niggers all right. Sometimes dey sticks, sometimes dey
don't." The old man shook his white, kinky head. "I'll bust in an' try
to hitch up you-all. I--I dunno whedder de cer'mony will hol' away up
North or not."
"It'll be all right anywhere, Parson," said Peter, seriously. "Your name
on the marriage-certificate will--can you write?"
"N-no, suh."
After a brief hesitation Peter repeated determinedly:
"It'll be all right. And, by the way, of course, this will be a very
quiet wedding."
"Yas-suh." The old man bobbed importantly.
"I wouldn't mention it to any one."
"No, suh; no, suh. I don' blame you a-tall, Mr. Peter, wid dat Tump Pack
gallivantin' roun' wid a forty-fo'. Hit would keep 'mos' anybody's
weddin' ve'y quiet onless he wuz lookin' fuh a short cut to heab'n."
As the two negroes passed the Berry cabin, Nan Berry thrust out her
spiked head and called to Peter Captain Renfrew wanted to see him.
Peter paused, with quickened interest in this strange old man who had
come to his mother's death-bed with a doctor. Peter asked Nan what the
Captain wanted.
Nan did not know. Wince Washington had told Nan that the Captain wanted
to see Peter. Bluegum Frakes had told Wince; Jerry Dillihay had told
Bluegum; but any further meanderings of the message, when it started, or
what its details might be, Nan could not state.
It was a typical message from a resident of the white town to a denizen
of Niggertown. Such messages are delivered to any black man for any
other black man, not only in the village, but anywhere in the outlying
country. It may be passed on by a dozen or a score of mouths before it
reaches its objective. It may be a day or a week in transit, but
eventually it will be delivered verbatim. This queer system of
communication is a relic of slavery, when the master would send out word
for some special negro out of two or three hundred slaves to report at
the big house.
However, as Peter approached the Dildine cabin, thoughts of his
approaching marriage drove from his mind even old Captain Renfrew's
message. His heart beat fast from having made his first formal step
toward wedlock. The thought of having Cissie all to himself, swept his
nerves in a gust.
He opened the gate, and ran up between the dusty lines of dwarf box,
eager to tell her what he had done. He thumped on the cracked, unpainted
door, and impatiently waited the skirmish of observation along the edge
of the window-blinds. This was unduly drawn out. Presently he heard
women's voices whispering to each other inside. They seemed urgent,
almost angry voices. Now and then he caught a sentence:
"What difference will it make?" "I couldn't." "Why couldn't you?"
"Because--" "That's because you've been to Nashville." "Oh, well--" A
chair was moved over a bare floor. A little later footsteps came to the
entrance, the door opened, and Cissie's withered yellow mother stood
before him.
Vannie offered her hand and inquired after Peter's health with a stopped
voice that instantly recalled his mother's death. After the necessary
moment of talk, the mulatto inquired for Cissie.
The yellow woman seemed slightly ill at ease.
"Cissie ain't so well, Peter."
"She's not ill?"
"N-no; but the excitement an' ever'thing--" answered Vannie, vaguely.
In the flush of his plans, Peter was keenly disappointed.
"It's very important, Mrs. Dildine."
Vannie's dried yellow face framed the ghost of a smile.
"Ever'thing a young man's got to say to a gal is ve'y important, Peter."
It seemed to Peter a poor time for a jest; his face warmed faintly.
"It--it's about some of the details of our--our wedding."
"If you'll excuse her to-day, Peter, an' come after supper--"
Peter hesitated, and was about to go away when Cissie's voice came from
an inner room, telling her mother to admit him.
The yellow woman glanced at the door on the left side of the hall,
crossed over and opened it, stood to one side while Peter entered, and
closed it after him, leaving the two alone.
The room into which Peter stepped was dark, after the fashion of negro
houses. Only after a moment's survey did he see Cissie sitting near a
big fireplace made of rough stone. The girl started to rise as Peter
advanced toward her, but he solicitously forbade it and hurried over to
her. When he leaned over her and put his arms about her, his ardor was
slightly dampened when she gave him her cheek instead of her lips to
kiss.
"Surely, you're not too ill to be kissed?" he rallied faintly.
"You kissed me. I thought we had agreed, Peter, you were not to come in
the daytime any more."
"Oh, is that it?" Peter patted her shoulder, cheerfully. "Don't worry; I
have just removed any reason why I shouldn't come any time I want to."
Cissie looked at him, her dark eyes large in the gloom.
"What have you done?"
"Got a preacher to marry us; on my way now for a license. Dropped in to
ask if you 'll be ready by tomorrow or next day."
The girl gasped.
"But, Peter--"
Peter drew a chair beside her in a serious argumentative mood.
"Yes I think we ought to get married at once. No reason why we shouldn't
get it over with--Why, what's the matter?"
"So soon after your mother's death, Peter?"
"It's to get away from Hooker's Bend, Cissie--to get you away. I don't
like for you to stay here. It's all so--" he broke off, not caring to
open the disagreeable subject.
The girl sat staring down at some fagots smoldering on the hearth. At
that moment they broke into flame and illuminated her sad face.
"You'll go, won't you?" asked Peter at last, with a faint uncertainty.
The girl looked up.
"Oh--I--I'd be glad to, Peter,"--she gave a little shiver. "Ugh! this
Niggertown is a--a terrible place!"
Peter leaned over, took one of her hands, and patted it.
"Then we'll go," he said soothingly. "It's decided--tomorrow. And we'll
have a perfectly lovely wedding trip," he planned cheerfully, to draw
her mind from her mood. "On the car going North I'll get a whole
drawing-room. I've always wanted a drawing-room, and you'll be my
excuse. We'll sit and watch the fields and woods and cities slip past
us, and know, when we get off, we can walk on the streets as freely as
anybody. We'll be a genuine man and wife."
His recital somehow stirred him. He took her in his arms, pressed her
cheek to his, and after a moment kissed her lips with the trembling
ardor of a bridegroom.
Cissie remained passive a moment, then put up he hands, turned his face
away, and slowly released herself.
Peter was taken aback.
"What _is_ the matter, Cissie?"
"I can't go, Peter."
Peter looked at her with a feeling of strangeness.
"Can't go?"
The girl shook her head.
"You mean--you want us to live here?"
Cissie sat exceedingly still and barely shook her head.
The mulatto had a sensation as if the portals which disclosed a new and
delicious life were slowly closing against him. He stared into her oval
face.
"You don't mean, Cissie--you don't mean you don't want to marry me?"
The fagots on the hearth burned now with a cheerful flame. Cissie stared
at it, breathing rapidly from the top of her lungs. She seemed about to
faint. As Peter watched her the jealousy of the male crept over him.
"Look here, Cissie," he said in a queer voice, "you--you don't mean,
after all, that Tump Pack is--"
"Oh no! No!" Her face showed her repulsion. Then she drew a long breath
and apparently made up her mind to some sort of ordeal.
"Peter," she asked in a low tone, "did you ever think what we colored
people are trying to reach?" She stared into his uncomprehending eyes.
"I mean what is our aim, our goal, whom are we trying to be like?"
"We aren't trying to be like any one." Peter was entirely at a loss.
"Oh, yes, we are," Cissie hurried on. "Why do colored girls straighten
their hair, bleach their skins, pinch their feet? Aren't they trying to
look like white girls?"
Peter agreed, wondering at her excitement.
"And you went North to college, Peter, so you could think and act like a
white man--"
Peter resisted this at once; he was copying nobody. The whole object of
college was to develop one's personality, to bring out--
The girl stopped his objections almost piteously.
"Oh, don't argue! You know arguing throws me off. I--now I've forgotten
how I meant to say it!" Tears of frustration welled up in her eyes.
Her mood was alarming, almost hysterical. Peter began comforting her.
"There, there, dear, dear Cissie, what is the matter? Don't say it at
all." Then, inconsistently, he added: "You said I copied white men.
Well, what of it?"
Cissie breathed her relief at having been given the thread of her
discourse. She sat silent for a moment with the air of one screwing up
her courage.
"It's this," she said in an uncertain voice: "sometimes we--we--girls--
here in Niggertown copy the wrong thing first."
Peter looked blankly at her.
"The wrong thing first, Cissie?"
"Oh, yes; we--we begin on clothes and--and hair and--and that isn't the
real matter."
"Why, no-o-o, that isn't the real matter," said Peter puzzled.
Cissie looked at his face and became hopeless.
"Oh, _don't_ you understand! Lots of us--lots of us make that
mistake! I--I did; so--so, Peter, I can't go with you!" She flung out
the last phrase, and suddenly collapsed on the arm of her chair,
sobbing.
Peter was amazed. He got up, sat on the arm of his own chair next to
hers and put his arms about her, bending over her, mothering her. Her
distress was so great that he said as earnestly as his ignorance
permitted:
"Yes, Cissie, I understand now." But his tone belied his words, and the
girl shook her head. "Yes, I do, Cissie," he repeated emptily. But she
only shook her head as she leaned over him, and her tears slowly formed
and trickled down on his hand. Then all at once old Caroline's
accusation against Cissie flashed on Peter's mind. She had stolen that
dinner in the turkey roaster, after all. It so startled him that he sat
up straight. Cissie also sat up. She stopped crying, and sat looking
into the fire.
"You mean--morals?" said Peter in a low tone.
Cissie barely nodded, her wet eyes fixed on the fire.
"I see. I was stupid."
The girl sat a moment, drawing deep breaths. At last she rose slowly.
"Well--I'm glad it's over. I'm glad you know." She stood looking at him
almost composedly except for her breathing and her tear-stained face.
"You see, Peter, if you had been like Tump Pack or Wince or any of the
boys around here, it--it wouldn't have made much difference; but--but
you went off and--and learned to think and feel like a white man. You--
you changed your code, Peter." She gave a little shaken sound, something
between a sob and a laugh. "I--I don't think th-that's very fair, Peter,
to--to go away an'--an' change an' come back an' judge us with yo' n-new
code." Cissie's precise English broke down.
Just then Peter's logic caught at a point.
"If you didn't know anything about my code, how do you know what I feel
now?" he asked.
She looked at him with a queer expression.
"I found out when you kissed me under the arbor. It was too late then."
She stood erect, with dismissal very clearly written in her attitude.
Peter walked out of the room.