[Footnote 1: I wish to thank the editor of _The New Age_ for permission
to reprint _Drought_.]
_PANAMA GOLD_
2
_PANAMA GOLD_
I
The sun was slowly dying. Ella, a switch in her hand, rounded up
her chicks. Cocks came proudly in, puffed by poise and conquest;
hens, agitated, jealous of their young, clucked in--furious at the
disappearance of a one-eyed one caught by the leg and dragged down the
hole of a mongoose.
"Yo' go up dere, an' behave yo'self."
Swish, swish, swish.... "Ah know you had to be last, yo' rascal yo'
... jump inside!" Guinea fowl, swifter than a hare, wild as any of the
gap's tabbies.
The wind subsided. Butter fish clung to the sky ... fish in the
sky ... mullets, gar fish, butter fish. Fish--blue, gold, black,
orange--tossing on a sea, floundering around in God's sky. Fishermen at
Low'rd set their nets by the twilight visions, mirrored in the sky,
of the lore rolling drunk on the sea's bottom. They were dark sea rats
streaming out at twilight to embark on some intrepid quest.
She would be alone at dusk, cooking, mixing flour, or tasting broth....
"Why taste it, why? It no fo' me alone?" Yampies, eddoes, plantains....
"De Bajan man him say," Ella smiled, "'plantain an' salt fish me don't
want 'um, an' de Mud-head man him say, me wish me had 'um, me wish me
had 'um....'" And moisture came to Ella's laughing eyes.
From the plantains to the corn and the flour dumplings.... "One o' dem
would knock a man in a cock hat," she observed ... a man ... a man....
All of a sudden a problem arose, "Gahd, I ain't got a bit o' salt in
de house. No, sah," she cried frantically, "me can't stand no fresh
food--me muss get a pinch o' salt."