ZEEK’S FAMILY.
“Alight!” said Zeek, dismounting at the gate.
I remonstrated against leaving the animals uncovered in the cold, but he
said it was the way people did in that country; and it was not until an
hour later that he found it convenient to give them shelter and food.
We were met inside the gate by a sister of the young man’s, a girl of
fifteen, in a native Bloomer dress that fell just below the knees. As I
entered the space between the two divisions of the house, I noticed that
doors on both sides were open, one leading to the kitchen, where there
was a great fire, and the other to the sitting-room, where there was
another great fire, in large old-fashioned fireplaces.
Zeek took me into the sitting-room, and introduced me to his mother.
There were two beds in the back corners of the room. The uncovered floor
was of oak; the naked walls were of plain hewn logs; the sleepers and
rough boards of the chamber floor constituted the ceiling. There were
clothes drying on a pole stretched across the room, and hanks of dyed
cotton thread on a bayonet thrust into a chink of the chimney. Cold as
the day was, the door by which we entered was never shut, and sometimes
another door was open, letting the wintry wind sweep through the house.
Zeek’s mother went to see about getting us some dinner; and his father
came in from the woods, where he had been chopping, and sat in the
chimney-corner and talked with me: a lean, bent, good-humored,
hard-working, sensible sort of man. He told me he had five hundred acres
of land, but only thirty-six under cultivation. He and Zeek did the
work; they had never owned negroes.
“Three or four niggers is too much money for a pore man to invest in
that way: they may lie down and die, and then whur’s yer money? Thar was
five niggers owned in Middle Tennessy,” he added, “to one in this part
of the State.”
Speaking of his farm, he said it was mighty good land till it wore out.
He had raised two bales of cotton on three and a half acres, the past
season. It was equally good for other crops. “I make some corn, some
pork, some cotton, and a mule or two, every year: I never resk all on
one thing.”
Looking at the open outside doors and the great roaring fires, I said I
should think wood must be a very important item with Tennessee farmers.
“Yes, I reckon we burn two cords a week, such weather as this, just for
fire, and as much more in the kitchen. We’ve wood enough. As we turn out
old land, we must cle’r new; then we have the advantage of the ashes for
ley and soap.”
“But the labor of chopping so much wood must be considerable.”
“Oh, I can chop enough in a day, or a day and a half, to last a week.
Winters, farmers don’t do much else but feed and get wood.”
I said I thought they would some day regret not having kept up their
cleared fields by proper cultivation, and preserved their forests.
“I allow we shall. I’ve just returned from a trip up into Middle
Tennessy” (accented on the first syllable), “whur I used to live; they
burnt up their timber thar, just as we’re doing hyere, and now they’re
setting down and grieving because they’ve no wood. They save everything
thar, to the trunks and crotches. We just leave them to rot, or log ’em
up in heaps and burn ’em, whur the land’s to be cle’red; and use only
the clean limbs, that chop easy and don’t require much splitting.” He
broke forth in praise of a good warm fire. “Put on a big green back-log
and build agin it,—that’s our fashion.”
Zeek’s mother came to announce our dinner. I crossed the open space,
pausing only to wash my hands and face in a tin basin half filled with
water and pieces of ice, and entered the kitchen. It was a less
pretentious apartment than the sitting-room. There was no window in it;
but wide chinks between the logs, and two open doors, let in a
sufficiency of daylight, and more than a sufficiency of cold wind. There
was a bed in one corner, and a little square pine table set in the
centre of the room. A gourd of salt hung by the chimney, and a homemade
broom leaned beside it. I noticed a scanty supply of crockery and
kitchen utensils on pegs and shelves.
The table was neatly set, with a goodly variety of dishes for a late
dinner in a back-country farm-house. I remember a plate of fried pork;
fricasseed gray squirrel (cold); boiled “back of hog” (warmed up); a
pitcher of milk; cold biscuit, cold corn bread, and “sweet bread” (a
name given to a plain sort of cake).
We could have dined very comfortably but for the open doors. Blowing in
at one and out at the other, and circulating through numberless cracks
between the logs, the gale frisked at will about our legs, and made our
very hands numb and noses cold while we ate. The fire was of no more use
to us than one built out-of-doors. The victuals that had come upon the
table warm were cold before they reached our mouths. The river of
pork-fat which the kind lady poured over my plate, congealed at once
into a brownish-gray deposit, like a spreading sand-bar. I enjoyed an
advantage over Zeek, for I had taken the precaution to put on my
overcoat and to secure a back seat. He sat opposite me, with his back
towards the windward door, where the blast, pouncing in upon him,
pierced and pinched him without mercy. He had not yet recovered from the
chill of his long winter-day’s ride; and his lank, shivering frame, and
blue, narrow, puckered face under its thin thatch of tow (combed
straight down, and cut square and short across his forehead from ear to
ear), presented a picture at once astonishing and ludicrous.
“Have you got warm yet, Zeek?” I cheerfully inquired.
“No!”—shuddering. “I’m plumb chilly! I’m so kule I kain’t eat.”
“I should think you would be more comfortable with that door closed,” I
mildly suggested.
He slowly turned his head half round, and as slowly turned it back
again, with another shiver. The possibility of actually shutting the
door seemed scarcely to penetrate the tow-thatch. I suppose such an act
would have been unprecedented in that country,—one which all
conservative persons would have shaken their heads at as a dangerous
innovation.
Zeek begged to be excused, he was so kule; and taking a piece of
squirrel in one hand, and a biscuit in the other, went and stood by the
fire. I found that he was averse to going out again that day: it was now
late in the afternoon, and our poor animals had not yet been fed, or
even taken in from where they stood curled up with the cold by the gate:
I accordingly proposed to the old folks to spend the night with them,
and to take Zeek with me over the battle-field in the morning. This
being agreed upon, the father invited me to go out and see his stock,
and his two bags of cotton.
In the yard near the house was the smoke-house, or meat-house, a blind
hut built of small logs, answering the purpose of a cellar,—for in that
country cellars are unknown. In it the family provisions were stored.
Under an improvised shelter at one corner was the cotton, neatly packed
in two bales of five hundred pounds each, and looking handsome as a lady
in its brown sacking and new hoops. The hoops were a sort of experiment,
which it was thought would prove successful. Usually the sacking and
ropes about a bale of cotton cost as much by the pound as the cotton
itself; and, to economize that expense, planters were beginning to
substitute hickory hoops for ropes. The owner was very proud of those
two bales, picked by his own hands and his children’s, and prepared for
market at a gin and press in the neighborhood; and he hoped to realize
five hundred dollars for them when thrown upon the market. A planter of
a thousand bales, made by the hands of slaves he was supposed to own,
and ginned and pressed on his own plantation, could not have
contemplated his crop with greater satisfaction, in King Cotton’s
haughtiest days.
Near the meat-house was a huge ash-leach. Then there was a simple
horse-mill for crushing sorghum,—for Mr. ——, like most Southern farmers,
made sufficient syrup for home consumption, besides a little for market.
Under a beech-tree was a beautiful spring of water. A rail-fence
separated the door-yard from the cattle-yard, where were flocks of hens,
geese, ducks, and turkeys, cackling, quacking, and gobbling in such old
familiar fashion that I was made to feel strangely at home in their
company. There were bleating, hungry calves, and good-natured surly
bulls, and patient cows waiting to be milked and fed, and a family of
uncurried colts and young mules, and beautiful spotted goats, with their
kids, and near by a hog-lot frill of lean and squealing swine. Speaking
of the goats, Mr. —— said there was no money in them, but that he kept
them for the curiosity of the thing.
There was no barn on the place. The nearest approach to it was the
stable, or “mule-pen,” constructed of logs with liberal openings between
them, through one of which my lonesome iron-gray put his nose as I came
near, and whinnied his humble petition for fodder. There he was, stabled
with mules, unblanketed, and scarcely better off than when tied to the
gate-post,—for the wind circulated almost as freely through the rude
enclosure as it did in Mrs. ——’s kitchen. Such hospitalities were
scarcely calculated to soothe the feelings of a proud and well-bred
horse; but the iron-gray accepted them philosophically.
“Where is your hay?” I inquired.
“We make no hay in this country. Our stock feeds out on the hills, or
browses in the woods or cane-brakes, all winter. When we have to feed
’em, we throw out a little corn, fodder, and shucks.”
A loft over the mule-pen was filled with stalks and unhusked corn. Zeek
went up into it, and threw down bundles of the former, and filled
baskets of the latter, for his father to feed out to the multitude of
waiting mouths.
I inquired particularly regarding the large quantities of natural
manures which ought to accumulate in such a farm-yard.
“We just throw them out, and let them get trampled and washed away. We
can’t haul out and spread. It’s the hardest work we ever did, and
Tennesseans can’t get used to it.”
The yard was on a side hill, where every rain must wash it, and the
mule-pen was conveniently situated near the brink of a gully, from which
every freshet would sweep what was thrown into it. In vain I
remonstrated against this system of farming: Mr. —— replied that he was
brought up to it, and could not learn another.