As she went along husking them, shelling the peas, she was soon aware
of some one burrowing in the nearby hedge, and whistling
Donkey wahn wahtah, hole 'im Joe
Donkey wahn wahtah, hole 'im Joe
Hole 'im Joe, hole 'im Joe,
Hole 'im Joe, don't let 'im go--
Donkey wahn de wahtah, hole 'im Joe.
She readily recognized Zink Diggs, but hardly, the words that followed.
"Good mawnin', Miss Emptage."
Being a child of the Lord, April answered, "Good mawnin'." She
continued singing a Sankey hymn, and shelling the peas.
"You're not a quarrelsome uman," she heard Zink Diggs say, "but you're
dam side mo' determined than I am!"
But she went on, not turning her head, singing the Sankey hymn.
V
It was spring; spring in Barbadoes. For the dogs--evil omen. Grippe.
Sickness. Across the flowing acreage the brindle pup took a post near
the goat. Nearby Alfie, Mirrie, Ona and Din were twittering, "Come,
doggie; come, doggie--" and giving the poor wretch parsley.
"Go back an' put de pot on de fiah," April shouted to Mirrie as she
strode through the cornpatch. "Go back an' boil de pigeon peas."
"Oi wan' fi' come, too."
"Go down de stan' pipe an' get a bucket o' water an' mek yo' oven,
den."
They left her, and she went madly down to the end of her ground. On the
rim of her land she met Zink Diggs. "Wha' yo' doin' 'pon my groun'?"
she said. "Yo' muss be mek a mistake, uman, yo' ent survey yo' ground
right."
"Yo' t'ink so?" the other cried, "Now look yah, Miss Emptage, yo' bin'
lookin' fo' trouble evah sence yo' move in dis gap, yo'--yes, yo'--an'
yo' dam well know dat when yo' wuz plantin' dem peas an' corn yo' wuz
trespassin' 'pon my groun'. Uman, yo' mus' be outa yo' senses."
With a rope of banana trash to tie up her skirt--up so high that her
naked legs gleamed above the tops of her English patent leather boots
which the Doctor had ordered her to wear as a cure for "big foot"--Zink
strode swiftly through the patch, dragging up by their roots, cane,
corn, peas, okra--April's plantings.
"Move outa my way, uman, befo' Oi tek his gravallah an' ram it down yo'
belly! Don' mek me lose me head dis mawnin' yeh, Oi don' wan' fo' spend
de res' o' my days in de lock-up fo' killing nobody."
No rock engine, smoothing a mountain road, no scythe, let loose on
a field of ripened wheat, no herd of black cane cutters exposed to
a crop, no saw, buzzing and zimming, could have out-done Zink Diggs
slaying and thrashing and beheading every bit of growing green. Flat,
bare, she left it. April was afraid to open her mouth. She stood by,
dumbfounded, one hand at her throat.
Gleaming in triumph, Zink gathered her bill and graveller and paused
before she went. "Look at she dough," she said, "she look like Jonah
when de whale puke he up!" And she flounced through the orchard,
singing _Hole 'Im Joe_.
* * * * *
"Ona, come yah, quick!"
"Yo' always boddering me, why yo' don't--"
"Come, yah, gal--gal, Oi call yo'!"
"Wha' do yo', ni?"
"Me wan' fi' show yo' somet'ing, gal."
"Wah'm is, ni?"
"De black pin is ketchin' de house afiah."
"Gahd! Go tell mahmie--"
"Wha' she is?"
"Roun' by de shed-roof."
"Mirrie, come yah, an' see wha' Din do! Ketch de house afiah!"
"It ent me! It is de black pin burnin'--"
Down by the back of the breadfruit tree Alfie and Mirrie were sitting
close to each other--very close. They hated to be diverted by such
silly inquisitiveness. Calm, unexcited, Mirrie was prodding the boy
to do something to her. She had put it down on a matchbox, in edgy,
scrawly letters--one word--but it refused to stir Alfie's sluggish
desire. The scent of something ripe and rich and edible--something to
be tasted with the lore of the tropics deep in one's blood--something
bare and big and immortal as the moon--compelling something--began
to fill the air about the little boy. He secretly felt it surging in
Mirrie, and something beat a tattoo in his temples. Upon him a certain
mirage fell--sure, unerring.
"Wha' yo' two doin' heah?" shouted Din, coming up. "Hey, Oi gwine tell
mah mahmie 'pon yo' two."
"Wha' yo' gwine tell she? Yo' mouthah!"
"Dat--"
"Mout' run jess lik' sick neygah behine."
"Dat what? Wha' yo' ketch me doin', yo' liad t'ing yo'? I ent doin'
nutton. I was just showin' Alfie--"
"Mirrie!"
"Comin', mum!"
His tongue thick, heavy, Alfie rose. "Yo' girl chirrun, if unna don't
behave unna self, Oi gwine tell unna mahmie 'pon unna, too. Wha' all
yo' makin' all dis noise fo'?"
"De pin ketch de house afiah."
"Wha' pin?"
"Fomembah de black pin Zink Diggs giv' Alfie fo' he mahmie?"
"Hey, yes."
"Gal, shut up yo' mout', yo' too stupid, how kin a pin ketch de house
afiah?"
"Wha' is dah smoke, den?"
"Run an' tell mahmie, quick."
Ona, Din, Alfie, Mirrie--the last one, dusting, aggrieved,
thwarted--galloped past the shed roof round to the kitchen.
"Mahmie."
"Quick, de black pin is ketchin' de house afiah."
"Gyrl, yo're crazy."
Swiftly drying her hands, she sped around to the shed roof. A gust of
smoke darted, on the crest of a wind, from the place where the deadly
missile had been imprisoned.
Surely, it was burning--the black pin had fired the shed roof! Out
April tugged it. Once more she held it trembling in the sun. A smoking
black pin. Some demon chemical, some liquid, some fire-juice, had been
soaked into it originally. _Obeah_ juice. "But Oi gwine sick de Lord
'pon yo'," vowed April, tossing it upon a mound of fowl dung and wormy
provisions scraped together in the yard, and set a bonfire to it all.
The fire swallowed it up and the wind sent a balloon of gray-white
smoke-puffs streaming over Zink Diggs' hedge.
* * * * *
It had speed, and energy, and a holy vitality--the smoke; for it kept
on till it got to Zink Diggs' house and then it burst puffing into
it. It had hot, red, bitter chemicals, the smoke of the pin, and Zink
Diggs' reaction to them was instantaneous. The smoke blew by, taking
life--animal, plant. The dog dropped, the leaves of tea bush she had
picked and had on the kitchen table, withered suddenly. It left her
petrified by the stove, the white clay pipe ghastly in her mouth. Even
her eyes were left sprawling open, staring at the cat, likewise dead,
by the smoking coal pot.
_THE WHITE SNAKE_
8
_THE WHITE SNAKE_
I
On the banks of a bilgy lamahau, the eeliest street-stream in Bordeaux,
a row of Negro peasant lodgings warmly slept. It was a vile, backward
crescent reeking in brats and fiendish lusts. _Cocabe_ among its
inkish rice-growers extended to gorillas sentenced to the dungeons of
Surinam, Portuguese settlers who'd gone black, Chinks pauperized in the
Georgetown fire of '05, and Calcutta coolies mixing _rotie_ at dusk to
the chorus of crickets and _crapeaux_ moaning in the black watery gut.
The dawn rose a dewy crimson, and a blood-curdling sound polluted the
vapory silences of a Negro lodging.
"Murdah! Police! Warlah! Hole 'im! Miss Ewin', tek 'e arf me."
Fetid black snorers rolled restively, clawed, dug at bugs or itching
veins rising bluely on bare languid bodies, as if to say: _don't worry.
It's nothing. Nothing but some Hindu coolie, after the evening's rotie
debauch, to the roll of goat drums, outside, on the low lamahau earth,
severing the head of some jewel-laden, thirteen-year-old mate, the
third on a string of murdered conquests_.
But die the scream would not.
"Lahd--"
"Wha' de mattah wit' yo', gal? Why yo' don' let a po' body res'?"
"Tek it arf me, no--?"
"Tek wha' arf yo', gyrl, yo' mus' be crazy. Foolish t'ing! Tek arf yo'
top lip!"
"Wahy--look he crawlin' up me legs! Quick, tek 'e arf me!"
"Sahv yo' right. Tell yo' yo' eat too much hole pea soup 'n cawn meal
dumplin'! Go 'long an' le' de mule ride up 'n down yo' belly."
"See 'im, dey! Dey he is! A white one--see 'im, Miss Ewin'? A white
snake crawlin' up me foots--tek 'e 'way. Quick--o! Miss Ewin', Ah beg
yo'! Help mah!"
"Gyrl, get up! Yo' only dreamin'! It ent no snake fo' true--get up.
It's mawnin'. An' go down to de stan' pipe 'n bring up de bucket o'
hossah yo' lef' out dey las' night--"
"O! Lahd, Oi wuz frighten so--"
"Yo' heah ne, ni, Seenie? An' don' fuhget to blow de kerosene lamp out
befo' yo' go."
The whole thing seemed to follow as a natural sequence. For Jack
Captain, a Berbice mulatto, was an energetic wooer.
And then one rosy dawn, a dozen Hindu fires kindling the lamahau, the
gold-digging _macaume_ lured from Seenie the seed of her all.