town for the family with which he boarded at the time. She had washed
and ironed for him, atrociously, it is true, but her intentions were
beyond reproach if her washing was not. She had also been clumsily
attentive to him during a spell of illness. He had paid her with an
occasional bandana, a calico dress, or a checked apron, and they had
always considered the account between themselves square, with no
sentimental feeling of gratitude remaining on either side.
“I like to know,” remarked Ozème, as he took the gray mare from the
shafts, and led her up to the trough where the mule was—“I like to know
w’at you mean by makin’ a crop like that an’ then lettin’ it go to
was’e? Who you reckon’s goin’ to pick that cotton? You think maybe the
angels goin’ to come down an’ pick it fo’ you, an’ gin it an’ press it,
an’ then give you ten cents a poun’ fo’ it, hein?”
“Ef de Lord don’ pick it, I don’ know who gwine pick it, Mista Ozème. I
tell you, me an’ Sandy we wuk dat crap day in an’ day out; it’s him done
de mos’ of it.”
“Sandy? That little—”
“He ain’ dat li’le Sandy no mo’ w’at you rec’lec’s; he ’mos’ a man, an’
he wuk like a man now. He wuk mo’ ’an fittin’ fo’ his strenk, an’ now he
layin’ in dah sick—God A’mighty knows how sick. An’ me wid a risin’
twell I bleeged to walk de flo’ o’ nights, an’ don’ know ef I ain’ gwine
to lose de han’ atter all.”
“W’y, in the name o’ conscience, you don’ hire somebody to pick?”
“Whar I got money to hire? An’ you knows well as me ev’y chick an’ chile
is pickin’ roun’ on de plantations an’ gittin’ good pay.”
The whole outlook appeared to Ozème very depressing, and even menacing,
to his personal comfort and peace of mind. He foresaw no prospect of
dinner unless he should cook it himself. And there was that Sandy—he
remembered well the little scamp of eight, always at his grandmother’s
heels when she was cooking or washing. Of course he would have to go in
and look at the boy, and no doubt dive into his traveling-bag for
quinine, without which he never traveled.
Sandy was indeed very ill, consumed with fever. He lay on a cot covered
up with a faded patchwork quilt. His eyes were half closed, and he was
muttering and rambling on about hoeing and bedding and cleaning and
thinning out the cotton; he was hauling it to the gin, wrangling about
weight and bagging and ties and the price offered per pound. That bale
or two of cotton had not only sent Sandy to bed, but had pursued him
there, holding him through his fevered dreams, and threatening to end
him. Ozème would never have known the black boy, he was so tall, so
thin, and seemingly so wasted, lying there in bed.
“See yere, Aunt Tildy,” said Ozème, after he had, as was usual with him
when in doubt, abandoned himself to a little reflection; “between us—you
an’ me—we got to manage to kill an’ cook one o’ those chickens I see
scratchin’ out yonda, fo’ I’m jus’ about starved. I reckon you ain’t got
any quinine in the house? No; I didn’t suppose an instant you had. Well,
I’m goin’ to give Sandy a good dose o’ quinine to-night, an’ I’m goin’
stay an’ see how that’ll work on ’im. But sun-up, min’ you, I mus’ get
out o’ yere.”
Ozème had spent more comfortable nights than the one passed in Aunt
Tildy’s bed, which she considerately abandoned to him.
In the morning Sandy’s fever was somewhat abated, but had not taken a
decided enough turn to justify Ozème in quitting him before noon, unless
he was willing “to feel like a dog,” as he told himself. He appeared
before Aunt Tildy stripped to the undershirt, and wearing his
second-best pair of trousers.
“That’s a nice pickle o’ fish you got me in, ol’ woman. I guarantee,
nex’ time I go abroad, ’tain’t me that’ll take any cut-off. W’ere’s that
cotton-basket an’ cotton-sack o’ yo’s?”
“I knowed it!” chanted Aunt Tildy—“I knowed de Lord war gwine sen’
somebody to holp me out. He war n’ gwine let de crap was’e atter he give
Sandy an’ me de strenk to make hit. De Lord gwine shove you ’long de
row, Mista Ozème. De Lord gwine give you plenty mo’ fingers an’ han’s to
pick dat cotton nimble an’ clean.”
“Neva you min’ w’at the Lord’s goin’ to do; go get me that cotton-sack.
An’ you put that poultice like I tol’ you on yo’ han’, an’ set down
there an’ watch Sandy. It looks like you are ’bout as helpless as a’ ol’
cow tangled up in a potato-vine.”
Ozème had not picked cotton for many years, and he took to it a little
awkwardly at first; but by the time he had reached the end of the first
row the old dexterity of youth had come back to his hands, which flew
rapidly back and forth with the motion of a weaver’s shuttle; and his
ten fingers became really nimble in clutching the cotton from its dry
shell. By noon he had gathered about fifty pounds. Sandy was not then
quite so well as he had promised to be, and Ozème concluded to stay that
day and one more night. If the boy were no better in the morning, he
would go off in search of a doctor for him, and he himself would
continue on down to Tante Sophie’s; the Beltrans’ was out of the
question now.
Sandy hardly needed a doctor in the morning. Ozème’s doctoring was
beginning to tell favorably; but he would have considered it criminal
indifference and negligence to go away and leave the boy to Aunt Tildy’s
awkward ministrations just at the critical moment when there was a turn
for the better; so he stayed that day out, and picked his hundred and
fifty pounds.
On the third day it looked like rain, and a heavy rain just then would
mean a heavy loss to Aunt Tildy and Sandy, and Ozème again went to the
field, this time urging Aunt Tildy with him to do what she might with
her one good hand.
“Aunt Tildy,” called out Ozème to the bent old woman moving ahead of him
between the white rows of cotton, “if the Lord gets me safe out o’ this
ditch, ’t ain’t to-morro’ I’ll fall in anotha with my eyes open, I bet
you.”
“Keep along, Mista Ozème; don’ grumble, don’ stumble; de Lord’s
a-watchin’ you. Look at yo’ Aunt Tildy; she doin’ mo’ wid her one han’
’an you doin’ wid yo’ two, man. Keep right along, honey. Watch dat
cotton how it fallin’ in yo’ Aunt Tildy’s bag.”
“I am watchin’ you, ol’ woman; you don’ fool me. You got to work that
han’ o’ yo’s spryer than you doin’, or I’ll take the rawhide. You done
fo’got w’at the rawhide tas’e like, I reckon”—a reminder which amused
Aunt Tildy so powerfully that her big negro-laugh resounded over the
whole cotton-patch, and even caused Sandy, who heard it, to turn in his
bed.
The weather was still threatening on the succeeding day, and a sort of
dogged determination or characteristic desire to see his undertakings
carried to a satisfactory completion urged Ozème to continue his efforts
to drag Aunt Tildy out of the mire into which circumstances seemed to
have thrust her.
One night the rain did come, and began to beat softly on the roof of the
old cabin. Sandy opened his eyes, which were no longer brilliant with
the fever flame. “Granny,” he whispered, “de rain! Des listen, granny;
de rain a-comin’, an’ I ain’ pick dat cotton yit. W’at time it is? Gi’
me my pants—I got to go—”
“You lay whar you is, chile alive. Dat cotton put aside clean and dry.
Me an’ de Lord an’ Mista Ozème done pick dat cotton.”
Ozème drove away in the morning looking quite as spick and span as the
day he left home in his blue suit and his light felt drawn a little over
his eyes.
“You want to take care o’ that boy,” he instructed Aunt Tildy at
parting, “an’ get ’im on his feet. An’, let me tell you, the nex’ time I
start out to broad, if you see me passin’ in this yere cut-off, put on
yo’ specs an’ look at me good, because it won’t be me; it’ll be my
ghos’, ol’ woman.”
Indeed, Ozème, for some reason or other, felt quite shamefaced as he
drove back to the plantation. When he emerged from the lane which he had
entered the week before, and turned into the river road, Lamérie,
standing in the store door, shouted out:
“Hé, Ozème! you had good times yonda? I bet you danced holes in the sole
of them new boots.”
“Don’t talk, Lamérie!” was Ozème’s rather ambiguous reply, as he
flourished the remainder of a whip over the old gray mare’s sway-back,
urging her to a gentle trot.
When he reached home, Bodé, one of Padue’s boys, who was assisting him
to unhitch, remarked:
“How come you didn’ go yonda down de coas’ like you said, Mista Ozème?
Nobody didn’ see you in Cloutierville, an’ Mailitte say you neva cross’
de twenty-fo’-mile ferry, an’ nobody didn’ see you no place.”
Ozème returned, after his customary moment of reflection:
“You see, it’s ’mos’ always the same thing on Cane riva, my boy; a man
gets tired o’ that à la fin. This time I went back in the woods, ’way
yonda in the Fédeau cut-off kin’ o’ campin’ an’ roughin’ like, you might
say. I tell you, it was sport, Bodé.”
PRESS OF
STROMBERG, ALLEN & CO.
CHICAGO
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcriber’s Note
Errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected, and
are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the original.
The following issues should be noted, along with the resolutions.
17.24 they considered in[s]trusive Removed.
24.3 a sudden knife thrust[.] Added.
220.14 and only on[c]e glancing aside Inserted.
234.3 with what he flat[t]ered himself was humor Inserted.
257.15 I’ll take another nap[,]” Inserted.
289.15 begged the bell[ ]hanger Removed.
382.15 be[g]inning to reveal itself Inserted.
399.14 Maman-Nai[n]aine was as patient Inserted.
408.5 with which he boarded at the time[.] Added.