*Interview with Lucindia Washington*
--_Alice S. Barton_
Little black Cindy skipped along the narrow path that led to the Spring
House. In her hand she swung an empty cedar pail that she was soon to
fill with cool, fresh milk. She entered the small glade overhung with
willow trees and spread with soft grass, and gazed at the sparkling
water of the spring as it caught the beams of sunlight coming through
the trees and reflected them in myriads of little points. Shadows of the
waving leaves danced over the ground and up the side of the stone Spring
House. How cool and nice it was here, she thought. Gentle breezes
rustled the limbs of small saplings and quietly stirred the long grass
along the upper part of the branch.
A young rabbit hopped from a little clump of bushes and Cindy watched
him as the small creature drank thirstily from the crystal water.
Occasionally, the bunny would lift his head as if warned by a slight
sound, but in a moment she saw him fold back his delicate ears and once
more dip his small mouth into the babbling water.
After quenching his thirst, the rabbit hopped a few feet away and
nibbled on a wisp of tender grass. Cindy was as still as a statue as she
watched the procedure. "Dat's de cutest little bunny I ever seed," she
said to herself. "I wish I could ketch him." But Cindy knew that she
could not catch a rabbit, so she was content to stand in the shadow of a
sycamore and gaze eagerly at the animal, nibbling the grass.
Suddenly, without warning, Cindy's eyes protruded from their sockets
with an expression of fear. Slipping noiselessly through the green
undergrowth she saw a giant rattler gliding slowly toward the young
rabbit. She wanted to cry out, but she was afraid; afraid of attracting
the rattler's attention toward her. She was deathly afraid of snakes.
Since babyhood, she had harbored a growing fear of them. If Cindy had
been still before this time, she now became a frozen image. It would not
have been apparent that she was even breathing. So frightened was she of
the snake that her whole body broke out in a profuse perspiration. Her
eyes were glued to the tremendous brown monster which, without the
slightest sound, oozed deftly toward its victim. Cindy was hypnotized!
The snake seemed to hold her in a strange spell. Slowly, inexorably he
moved entirely out of the undergrowth and was now weaving on the clear
ground. He approached the rabbit within a distance of three feet and
began to carefully form himself in a deadly coil. Cindy saw every
movement. She saw each diamond on its brown back; each scale of its
crawling skin; each lash and point of its tongue; the whiteness of its
breast, the large track that it had made in the sand. She watched its
eyes gleam, expressionless and ominous. She gazed at the deadly mouth as
it slowly began to open. She was aware of the first appearance of the
two death-like fangs pointing downward. She saw the ten-buttoned rattle
stand erect. She saw it quiver; shake; sound. She saw the rabbit turn
with fear. She saw the strike; the sinking of the fangs into the soft,
brown fur. She watched the rabbit give an ephemeral struggle; witnessed
the brief pitiful look in the bunny's eyes and at last saw the mouth
sink into the small belly and draw the last breath of life away.
The experience was more than the little girl could stand. Cindy was now
in a state of frenzy. She could not move, nor speak, nor turn her eyes.
She could only stare! At what?
The monstrous snake then girded himself for further onslaught. After
being sure his victim was dead, he loosed his grip and stretched at full
length upon the ground; drew the rabbit out until it too was stretched
carefully out with its hind feet together and its head pointing in the
opposite direction. Then followed an experience that to Cindy seemed
entirely impossible. The snake took the hind feet of the rabbit in his
mouth, until gradually they had disappeared. Then came what seemed to
'Cindy an agonized struggle. The snake's mouth stretched almost to the
breaking point as it began slowly to close over the rest of the rabbit's
rear quarter. With fits and starts and jerks and stretches, the rattler
reeled and squirmed; contorted and wreathed and sucked until the rabbit
had half gone. With the last great effort the serpent threw himself into
another series of bodily contortions that seemed to 'Cindy positively
agonizing to him, until at last the rabbit had entirely disappeared from
the earth. For several minutes 'Cindy apparently watched the tremendous
hump in the snake move slowly backward. With gradually diminishing
intermittent jerks, the snake finally got the small animal to his
digestive tract. The monster then crawled to a hot sandy section and
went to sleep.
----
Two hours later it was twilight. An overseer was walking along the path
to the Spring House. He paused for a moment beneath a sycamore tree to
rest and cool himself. As his eyes roamed the shadowy little glade they
came to rest on the body of a little Negro girl, lying inert upon the
soft grass with the handle of a cedar bucket clutched in a death grip.
He lifted the small black form into his arms and carried her to the
house. He saw in her face an expression of mingled agony and fear.
----
"Yassuh, white folks, dat was me," Aunt 'Cindy smiled as she told me of
the experience, 80 years later. "Dat was de biggest snake I ever seed.
He musta been seven feet long.
[Illustration: _Cindy Washington, [TR: Eutaw], Alabama_]
"All dis happen in Sumter County whar I was bawn. Us had a pretty place
dere. I'll never forgits how de niggers worked dere gardens in de
moonlight. Dere warn't no time in de day. De white folks work tuk dat
time. De oberseer rung a big bell for us to git up by in de mawnin' at
fo' o'clock, an' de fus' thing we done was to feed de stock."
"You axe was we punished?" Yassuh, we was punished for something: most
of all for stealin'.
"Yassuh, we was taught to read an' write, but mos' of de slaves didn't
want to learn. Us little niggers would hide our books under de steps to
keep f'um havin' to study. Us'd go to church wid de white folks on
Sunday and sit in de back, an' den we go home an' eat a big Sunday meal.
When we got sick f'um eatin' too much or somp'n, Massa Jim Godfrey was a
doctor an' he'd ten' to us. Den when new nigger babies came, nine little
black bugs was tied up in rags 'roun' dere necks for to make de babies
teethe easy. When I was ma'ied, white folks, at de age of thirteen, Alex
Washington, my husband an me had a forty-dollar weddin'. My mistis baked
me a cake, an' a white schoolmaster named Henry Hindron spoke de
ceremony. Me an' dat ole husband had twenty-two chilluns.
"Yas ma'm. I sho does believe in ghosties. We's got one good spirit an'
one bad un. One goes to heaben an' de udder stays on earth. Ghosties sho
does lak whiskey, caze dey'll follow you iffen you got any. Iffen you
po' it on de groun' beside you, dough, dey'll lose track of you. Always
give a gos' de raght han' side of de road, white folks, an' he won't
bother you.
"Yes my chile, I is got religion. I seed Jesus a hanging f'um de cross.
He give his blood so dat us could live. I knows I is goin' to heaben."