Part 1



_Green Thursday_

[Illustration:

THE BORZOI POCKET BOOKS

A POPULAR EDITION OF SOME OF THE BEST BOOKS OF OUR OWN AND OTHER AGES. THE END PAPERS AND BINDING HAVE BEEN DESIGNED BY W. A. DWIGGINS, THE TITLE PAGE BY ELMER ADLER.

NEW YORK · ALFRED · A · KNOPF ]

[Illustration:

GREEN THURSDAY

_Stories by_

JULIA PETERKIN

[Illustration]

_NEW YORK_

ALFRED · A · KNOPF

1929 ]

COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.

PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER, 1924 REPRINTED ONCE NEW POCKET BOOK EDITION, MAY, 1929

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

_To the memory of Maum Lavinia Berry_

_Contents_

ASHES 9

GREEN THURSDAY 26

MISSIE 50

MEETING 62

MOUNT PLEASANT 79

FINDING PEACE 94

THE RED ROOSTER 103

TEACHING JIM 115

CAT FISH 123

SON 132

A SUNDAY 143

PLUM-BLOSSOMS 170

_Ashes_

An old plantation with smooth-planted fields and rich woodlands and pastures, where little shaded streams run, lies right at the edge of a low wide swamp.

Steep red hills, rising sheer above the slimy mud, lift it out of the reach of two yellow-brown rivers that sprawl drowsily along before they come together to form one stream.

The rivers are hidden by huge trees garlanded with tangled vines, and the swamp seems a soft, undulating, colourful surface that fades into a low line of faint blue hills far away on the other side.

Those hills are the outside world, but the swamp is wide and pathless.

The two rivers commonly lie complacent, but on occasion they rouse and flood low places with furious, yellow water. They lunge and tear at the hillsides that hold the plantation above them until their violence is spent; then they creep back into their rightful channels, leaving other sodden acres desolate and covered with bent, ruined stalks that show where fields of cotton and corn were ripe and ready for harvest.

The old plantation sits always calm. Undisturbed. The rivers can never reach it. And the outside world may wamble and change, but it cannot come any nearer.

Years pass by and leave things unaltered. The same narrow, red roads run through cotton-and cornfields. The same time-grayed cabins send up threads of smoke from their red-clay chimneys. Summer brings the same flowers to bloom around doorways, and china-berry and crape-myrtle blossoms to drop gay petals on little half-clothed black children.

Fields lush with cotton and corn are enlivened by bright-turbaned black women. Sinewy men with soft-stepping bare feet laugh and sing as they guide patient mules up and down the long rows.

When winter browns the fields and brings cold winds up from the swamp, women and children huddle over uncertain fires or gather on sunshiny doorsteps while the men creep down to the swamp in search of food and adventure.

There is nothing to hint that life here could be sweet or that its current runs free and strong. Winter, summer, birth, death, these seem to be all.

The main road on the plantation divides. One straggling, rain-rutted fork runs along the edge of a field to a cluster of low, weather-beaten houses grouped under giant red-oak trees. The Quarters, where most of the black people live.

The other fork bends with a swift, smooth curve and glides into a grove of cedars and live-oaks and magnolias, whose dense evergreen branches hide all beyond them but slight glimpses of white columns and red brick chimneys.

Right where the two roads meet is a sycamore tree. Its milk-white branches reach up to the sky. Its pale, silken leaves glisten and whisper incomplete cadences in the hot summer sunshine.

When frost crisps the leaves and stains them and cuts them away, they flutter down, leaving golden balls to adorn every bough.

There is hardly a sign of the black, twisted roots. There is not a trace to be seen of their silent, tense struggle as they grope deep down in the earth. There is nothing to show how they reach and grapple and hold, or how in the darkness down among the worms they work out mysterious chemistries that change damp clay into beauty.

* * * * *

A little one-roomed log cabin sitting back from the crooked plantation road was gray and weather-stained and its shingled roof was green with moss, but its front was strangely like a cheerful face.

Its narrow open front door made a nose, at each side a small square window with a half-open wooden blind made an eye, and the three rickety steps that led from the door into the front yard made a very good mouth.

The face was warped and cracked with age, but it looked pleasant in the bright morning sun. The gnarled crape-myrtle tree that hugged one corner and almost hid the cabin’s red clay chimney was gay with pink blossoms. The front yard, divided in the middle by a clean-swept sandy path, was filled with rich-scented red roses and glossy-leaved gardenia bushes, whose white, waxen blooms perfumed the air.

This was old Maum Hannah’s home. Most of the land around her had been sold. But the space she occupied was very small, she was no trouble to anybody, and there was really no reason to disturb her. A few hens, a cow, a patch of peanuts, and a vegetable garden fenced around with hand-split clap-boards made her independent. The cross-roads store was not far away, “des a dog’s pant” she called it, and there she exchanged well-filled peanuts, new-laid eggs, and frying-size chickens for meal and coffee and plug-cut tobacco. And she was always ready to divide whatever she had with her friends, or with anybody in need.

To a stranger her old arms might look weak and withered, but they were strong enough to wield an ax on the fallen limbs of the trees in the woods back of the house, and the fire in her open fireplace was never allowed to go out, summer or winter.

On this spring morning she sat in a low chair by the fireplace and warmed her crusty bare feet by the charred sticks that burned smokily there among the ashes. She held her breakfast in a pan in her lap and ate slowly while she talked to herself and to the gray cat that lay on the clay hearth by her feet. The cat opened its eyes and purred lazily when she spoke, then drowsed again.

At a sudden rumbling sound outside, the cat jumped up and stretched and walked slowly to the door to look out.

“Who dat?” Maum Hannah asked, and she turned to look out too.

Two strange white men were driving up to the house in a buggy. When they got out, they hitched the horse to the clap-board garden fence.

“A nice house spot,” one of them said, looking around him.

“Yes,” the other agreed, “and the darkies say there’s a fine spring coming out of the hill right behind the house there.”

Maum Hannah was a little hard of hearing, but her eyes were keen. She put down her pan of breakfast and stood in the door. Her astonishment made her forget her manners, until one of the men called out sociably:

“Good morning, Auntie.” Then she dropped a low curtsey and answered:

“Good mawnin’, suh.”

“We’re just a-lookin’ around a little,” the man continued in an apologetic tone, for her old eyes, puzzled and alarmed, were fixed on him.

“Yes, suh,” she said politely, but she leaned against the door-facing for support.

“It must be a healthy place. That old woman looks like she might be a hundred years old,” one said facetiously, and they both chuckled as they walked back into the woods behind the house toward the spring.

Presently Maum Hannah saw them coming back into the front yard. She watched them step off distances. They drove down a few stakes. When they had finished, one of them came to the doorstep and held out a silver coin to her. She bowed gravely as she took it.

“Buy you some tobacco with this, Auntie,” he drawled, and he turned away awkwardly. Then he faced her again, and cleared his throat as if embarrassed.

“Auntie,” he hesitated, “I hate to tell you this--but you’ll have to make arrangements to go somewhere else, I reckon.” He did not meet her eyes.

“You see,” he continued, “I’ve done bought this place, and I’m goin’ to build my house right here.”

Maum Hannah stared at him, but did not reply.

“Well, good-by,” he added, and the two men got into the buggy and drove away.

Maum Hannah watched them until they were out of sight, then she held the coin out in her wrinkled hand and looked at it. It shone bright against the dark-lined palm.

Tears welled up under her shriveled eyelids and hesitated, as if uncertain which path to take through the maze of wrinkles on her cheeks. One shining drop fell with a splash on the silver in her hand. With a sigh she dropped the money into her apron pocket, wiped her eyes with the corner of her apron and turned inside. Taking a handful of meal from a large gourd on the shelf by the door, she scattered it on the ground near the doorstep where a hen with tiny, fluffy chickens around her clucked and scratched.

* * * * *

The very next day, white men with wagonloads of lumber drove into the yard. They had red, sunburned faces, and their shoes and blue overalls were worn and dusty. Maum Hannah looked at them.

“Po-buckra,” she said to the cat.

The men sawed and hammered and mixed mortar and smoothed it between red bricks with clinking trowels. Day after day they came. Yellow pine boards made the air fragrant and soon the frame of a new house cast its shadow over Maum Hannah’s gardenias and red rose-bushes.

“I ’f’aid dey gwine stop bloomin’ now,” she said sadly to the cat.

At last the house was finished. One of the men who first came walked up the narrow, clean-swept, sandy path and tapped on the side of Maum Hannah’s house with a stick. She came to the door and listened as he drawled nasally:

“Auntie, my house is done now. My folks want to move in next week. You’ll have to be movin’. You know I told you that at first. We can’t have you a-livin’ here in our back yard. Of course, if you was young enough to work, it ’ud be different, but you ain’t able to do nothing. I’ll need your house anyway to put a cook in. I thought you’d ’a’ done been gone before now. I told you in time, you know.”

Maum Hannah listened attentively. She heard only part of what he said, but she understood. She must go. She must leave home. It was no longer her home, but _his_.

Her loose old lips trembled as she bowed in answer to him.

She did not go to bed that night. She sat in the low chair by the clay hearth where a pine knot fire wavered and flickered. She filled her cob pipe and puffed at it briskly until it burned red, then she mumbled to herself until it died out and grew cold in her fingers. Rousing up, she’d light it with a fresh coal, smoke for a few puffs, then, absorbed in her trouble, she’d forget it and let it go out.

The cat on the hearth looked up and blinked sleepily whenever Maum Hannah repeated:

“He say dis _he_ place an’ I haffer go f’om heah. Whe’ I duh gwine? Who kin tell me dat? Whe’ I duh gwine?”

There was Killdee. “My niece,” she called him. He was her sister’s son and her neighbor. Killdee might come and take her to live with him. But his cabin was very small. Rose’s voice was sharp sometimes. No, she could not go there. If Margaret were living--or if she knew where any of her boys were--she might go to them.

She thought of the peaceful graveyard and lifted her old, wrinkled hands above her head in prayer.

“Oh, do, Massa Jedus, he’p me fo’ know wha’ fo’ do. I ain’ got no place fo’ go. I ain’ got nobody fo’ tell me. I don’ haffer tell You de trouble I got. You know, I ain’ got nobody fo’ he’p me but You. I know You mus’ be gwine he’p me. I eber did been do de bes’ I kin. Mebbe sometime I fail.--But, Jedus! Gawd! I know You couldn’t hab de hea’t to see me suffer! Widout a place to lay my haid.” She intoned her prayer and rocked from side to side as she plead for help.

Then she stood up. Tears ran down her cheeks.

“Do gi’ me a sign fo’ know wha’ fo’ do. Please, Suh! Do, Massa Jedus! Gi’ me a sign! All my chillen’s gone an’ lef me heah----”

Her bony arms were raised high and her knotted fingers held the cold pipe. Her supplications were emphasized with tense jerks of her arms. With a start she became conscious that ashes from her pipe were trickling down through her fingers and falling on the floor. She stopped and looked at them.

_Ashes! Cold ashes!_ She had asked for a sign and the sign had come! It was _ashes_! Plain as the dawn that streaked the East! There was no doubt of it!

The thought stimulated her like a drug. She went to the door and looked out. A young day reddened the East. The sky was red like fire! “Another sign,” she thought. A sign from Heaven.

She lifted her arms and, with tears streaming, said softly:

“Yessuh, Massa Jedus, I understan’ You, Suh. You say it mus’ be _ashes_! Ashes an’ de fiery cloud! Yessuh, I know wha’ You tell me fo’ do.”

Without hesitating, she went to the hearth and took up a smoldering brand of fire. Walking quickly to the front of the new dwelling and stumbling up the steps, she laid it with trembling hands near the front door. Then she went back into the yard and gathered up an apronful of shavings. She sprinkled these carefully on the smoking pine, and knelt and blew until her breath fanned it into flame. Then she went for more shavings and blocks of wood. When the fire grew strong, she left it and went to her own cabin.

She did not sit down but unlocked a trunk in the corner.

Selecting a clean white apron from the clothing there, she put it on, put a stiff-starched white sun-bonnet on her head, and tied the strings carefully under her chin. Then she locked the trunk again and put the key in her apron pocket.

The crackle and the roar of the fire outside was startling, but she made herself take time. She closed the wooden blinds of the cabin and latched them on the inside. She pulled the chair away from the hearth, then went out of the door and closed it and locked it behind her. She stepped carefully down the steps, walked past the flaming house, and then on, and on, down the narrow road.

Once she stopped to look back at the flames that already rose high in the sky, but she did not change her steady gait.

* * * * *

“Jedus! It’s a long way!” she complained when the road got sandy and her breath became short, but she kept up her pace.

At last the village came in sight. The open spaces became smaller. Low, white-painted cottages huddled close together. She walked slower. Then she stopped and gazed ahead of her, uncertain where to go.

A man driving a team of mules to a wagon was coming. She waited until he reached her, then inquired calmly:

“Son, kin you tell me which-a-away de sheriff lib?”

“Yes’m,” the man answered. He stood up in the wagon and looked toward the houses in the little town.

“You see da’ kinder high-lookin’ house up yonder on da’ hill? De one wid de big white pillar in f’ont ob’em? Da’s de place. De sheriff lib right dere.”

Her eyes followed where he pointed.

“T’ank you, son,” she said; “Gawd bless you,” and started on toward the house he indicated.

The man watched her a minute, then he clucked to his mules to move on. She was a stranger to him. What did she want with the sheriff? Such an old woman. He couldn’t imagine.

The sheriff had just finished breakfast when she reached the back door and asked to see him.

“Who is she?” he asked the servant who told him.

“I dunno, suh,” was the answer. “A old ’oman. Look lak ’e come a long way. E seem out o’ breat’.”

The sheriff lit a cigar and went to see for himself.

“Good morning, Auntie,” he said pleasantly in response to her profound curtsey. “What can I do for you this morning?”

The old woman looked at his kind face, and tears came to her eyes.

“Cap’n sheriff,” she began brokenly, “I too troub-led, suh.”

Her dry old hands held to each other nervously.

“I dunno wha’ you gwine do wid me, suh----” She swallowed a sob. “I reckon you haffer put me on de chain-gang---- I done so ol’, too---- I wouldn’t be much ’count at you put me on----”

The sheriff smiled behind his hand.

“Why, Auntie, what have you been doing?”

“A po-buckra man de one done it, suh. He de one. I lib all dis time. I ain’ nebber do nobody a hahm t’ing een my life, not tell dis mawnin’. No, suh. You kin ax anybody ’bout me, suh, an’ dey’ll tell you de same t’ing.”

“Well, what have you done now?” the sheriff insisted.

She came nearer to him, encouraged by his gentleness. She spoke in a low tone.

“Dis is how it been, suh.” She looked around to see that nobody heard, then began to tell.

“A po-buckra man come an’ buil’ ’e house right een my front ya’d. ’E say it _he_ place, now. ’E say I got to go way. I been lib een my house eber sence I kin ’member. Ol’ Cap’n sell de plantation, but ’e tell me fo’ stay whe’ I is. I stay. Dis po-buckra man come an’ tell me I mus’ go. Whe’ I gwine? My peoples is all gone. Mos’ o’ dem a-layin’ een de grabeya’d. I dunno why Jedus see fitten to leab me heah all dis long time----” She lifted her apron to wipe her eyes.

“Las’ night I call on Him, up yonder. I beg ’em fo’ he’p me. Fo’ tell me wha’ fo’ do. I rassle wid ’em tell ’E gi’ me a sign. Yessuh! ’E answer me! ’E gi’ me one!”

Her puckered old face lighted up with emotion. Her voice quivered.

“’E gi’ me a sign f’on heaben, yessuh. _Ashes! Ashes an’ fire!_ Him up yonder tell me so!”

Then she leaned forward and whispered: “I put fire to de man house. I bu’n ’em down same lak Jedus tell me fo’ do. Yessuh! Den I come right on heah fo’ tell you I done ’em.”

“Did your house burn too?”

“Oh, no, suh. Jedus sen’ a win’ fo’ blow de spark de udder way.”

“Who are you, Auntie?” The sheriff’s voice was pitying. Gentle.

“Dis duh me, Hannah Jeems, suh. I one o’ ol’ Mass Richard Jeems’ niggers, suh. My white folks is all gone. Gone an’ lef’ me. Times was tight. Dey had to sell de plantation an’ go.”

She stood before him awaiting sentence with her eyes cast down.

“You walked all the way here from the James plantation this morning?”

“Yessuh. Quick ez I set de house on fire, I come heah fo’ tell you, suh.”

“Why did you come to tell me?” he asked.

“Well, suh,” she hesitated and a far-away look filled her eyes, “when I was a chillen I heah ol’ Mas’s Richard say, de niggers ain’ know, but _he_ know. De sheriff is de bes’ frien’ de niggers is got een dis worl’, next to Him and Jedus. Mas’s Richard been a mighty wise man.”

The sheriff looked at the pathetic figure before him. At the mesh of fine wrinkles on her face. At the small, black, frightened hands, clasping and unclasping. At the bare, old, dusty feet. They had walked many a weary mile since life for them first began. His own clear eyes became moist.

“Come on into the kitchen, Auntie. The cook will give you a cup of coffee and some breakfast. Then, we’ll talk things over.”

“T’ank you, suh,” she said gravely as she followed him.

When he reached the door, he faced her again and held up a finger.

“It’s best not to talk much, Auntie,” he warned her.

She smiled at him brightly.

“Ef da man didn’ been a po-buckra ’e wouldn’ do me so,” she said wistfully.

His brow was knit as if he were uncertain what to say.

“Auntie,” he spoke slowly, distinctly, “you believe in the Bible, don’t you?”

“Oh, yessuh,” she affirmed solemnly, “I can’ read ’em, but I b’lieb ’em.”

“Did you ever hear how the Bible says you must not let your right hand know what your left hand does?”

“Oh, yessuh,” she said reverently.

“Can you remember that passage of Scripture? I think you can.”

She looked at him shrewdly, then she smiled and bowed very low.

“T’ank you, suh. T’ank you! An’ may Gawd bless you, suh!”

The sheriff was embarrassed. He cleared his throat and awkwardly flicked the ashes off his cigar.

“Auntie,” he hesitated, “I’m thinking about riding up that way this morning. I might take you back home.” Maum Hannah bowed again.

* * * * *

The distance to the cross-roads store was soon covered by the sheriff’s high-powered car. He stopped.

“Jim,” he called out to the proprietor, “I hear one of your neighbors lost his new house by fire last night. Did he have any insurance on it?”

“Yes, sir,” Jim answered. “Wasn’t he lucky to have it?”

“How does he think the house caught?” asked the sheriff.

“He doesn’t know, sir, unless it caught from a spark out of Maum Hannah’s chimney. It seems she was gone off for the night.”

“Yes,” said the sheriff, “she came all the way to me hunting for a place to stay. I’m taking her back home now. She may as well stay on there for the present, don’t you think so?”

Jim nodded his head confidently.

“I tell you, sheriff, I don’t believe anybody’d build a house there again. It’s a bad-luck place. It always was.”

* * * * *

When Maum Hannah got out of the car in front of her home, a great pile of ashes still smoldered there. She held to the sheriff’s hand with both of her quivering ones when she told him good-by.

“Gawd bless you, son! Gawd bless you,” she sobbed gratefully, and bright tears followed each other down her old cheeks.

“Come back to me if you ever get in trouble again,” the sheriff told her.

“T’ank you kindly, suh,” she answered, “but I ain’ gwine nebber risk gittin’ in trouble no mo’. Not me.”

She unlocked her door and fed the cat, and added a few pieces of wood to the fire; then she scattered meal for the frightened hen and little chickens.

When the fire blazed bright, she drew up the little chair before it and sat down. She was tired. She sat still and smoked and nodded. As she dozed, she said softly to the cat:

“Ashes is de bes’ t’ing eber was fo’ roses.”

_Green Thursday_

The day was bright and hot. Cotton-and cornfields glittered green. Dancing, quivering heat waves blurred the distant woods and cabins.