Part 11

Uncle Bill hailed him, “Good mawnin’, son! How come you so dressed up? I don’ like dem boots. You’s a good swimmer fo’ true, but boots kin drown a fish. A watch kin fool you too. I wouldn’t trust to no watch. Not me!”

“I rather drown dan let oyster shells cut my feets all up. Plain shoes don’ hinder ’em. But how you like dese fish?” He held up a string of long, smooth, snaky-looking creatures. They could have passed for short fat snakes.

“Great Gawd, de eels! You sho’ had luck wid you dis mawnin’.”

“Luck stay wid me!” April bragged, but Sherry laughed.

“You must be mean Bad Luck, enty? If I’d catch a’ eel, I’d call it Bad Luck!”

“How come so?”

“I can’ stand to look at a’ eel, much less eat one. Not me!”

“When did you git so pa’ticular, Sherry? You must be kissed you’ elbow an’ turned to a lady, enty?” April sneered coolly.

“No matter how long you cook a’ eel, it’ll turn raw soon’s it gits cold.”

“Who’d let a eel git cold? Not me, I know,” April returned hotly. “Eels ain’ nothin’ but he catfish. How come you love catfish so good an’ scorns eels?”

“Sho’ dey is!” Uncle Bill affirmed promptly. “Dey’s de men catfish. Sho’! Anybody’ll tell you dat.” April shoved his boat forward.

“Well, I’m glad you don’ want ’em, Sherry! It would be too bad if you did. But I tell you, when Big Sue gits dem seasoned up right in a pot dey would make you pure bite you’ fingers just to smell ’em.”

Sherry said no more, and April’s boat glided on. A bend in the stream closed its gate behind it, shutting him and his boatload of food out of sight.

Uncle Bill took a chew of tobacco. “April’s de luckiest man I ever seen,” he ventured, but Sherry said nothing at all.

Through breaks in the trees Breeze caught glimpses of drab, level, water-covered spaces. Old rice-fields. Deserted. Marsh-grown. They lacked the color and the look of life that filled the thick-tangled growth of trees and thorny-looking vines and bushes encircling them.

“Sherry,” Uncle Bill rested his paddle, “you don’ hold nothin’ against April, does you?”

Sherry’s answer was slow coming, “Not nothin’ much, suh.”

Uncle Bill began paddling again, and Sherry put down his gun and stretched, then said that since April and his boat had scared all the ducks out of this creek, they’d better go across the river into some of the creeks around Silver Island where lots of ducks raise and there’d be a chance to get some good shooting.

Sherry’s good humor was gone. He sat dumb, his forehead all knotted up in a frown. The eels or April or something had crossed him. Breeze was glad to hear him ask, “Who named Silver Island, Uncle? You reckon any money’s buried on it?”

Uncle Bill didn’t know. It was named long ago, when each bit of land here was given a name. These marshes were all fields in the old days. Rice was planted everywhere then. He pointed to old rotting pieces of wood that held the tide back until it gurgled as it strained to get over them.

“See de old flood-gates? De old trunks? Dey used to let de water in and out. Dey used to know dere business to!” He sighed. “But dey time is out. De old days is gone. De tide does like it pleases now.”

On an old piece of wood, brown with rot and soaked by the flood-tide, yet standing guard beside an opening on the bank, several small black tortoises sprawled out flat, sunning themselves. As the boat got nearer they all slid into the water for safety.

It amused Uncle Bill mightily. He chuckled and called out that they needn’t hide from him.

“You like cooters, Uncle?” Sherry asked him with a laugh.

“No, suh!” the old man said shortly, “Not to-day, anyhow. De sky’s too clear.” He cast his black beady eyes up and scanned the blue overhead. “I don’ see no sign of thunder nowhere, an’ if a cooter bites you e won’t never let go till it thunders.”

Sherry laughed. “You know, don’t you, Uncle?” Then he told how once when Uncle Bill was a boy a cooter caught his toe and held on to it for a whole day and night.

“Fo’ days, son!” Uncle Bill corrected.

“Was it four, fo’ true, Uncle?” Sherry asked doubtfully.

“Yes, suh! An e’d ’a’ been holdin’ on till now if it didn’t thunder,” Uncle Bill spoke solemnly.

“What did you do all dem four days, Uncle?” Sherry asked.

“I watched de clouds an’ prayed for de thunder to roll, son.”

When Breeze hoped one would never bite him, Uncle Bill grunted. “You right to hope so, son. I hope so too. A cooter is a contrary creeter.”

“De people used to say Uncle Isaac was crippled by a cooter. E makes like e’s plagued wid rheumatism, but I have hear tell e ain’ got no big toe on one foot. Did you know dat, Sherry?”

“How come so?” Breeze inquired.

“Well, now, I tell you, dis might not be so. But I used to hear de people say it was. Old man Isaac is a heap older’n me an’ all dis happened before I was born. But my mammy used to laugh ’bout em. Plenty o’ times when e’d come hoppin’ up to de house a-talkin’ ’bout how it must be gwine rain soon by de misery in his knee was so bad, my mammy use to say his big toe wasn’t buried straight an’ dat was what hurt Uncle Isaac. T’ings have to be buried right or dey can’ rest at all.”

“Whe’ was de cooter?” Breeze asked.

“De cooter was in de corn-field, son.”

“An’ whe’ was Uncle Isaac?”

“E was in de corn-field too, choppin’ grass.”

“Did de cooter bite his toe off?”

“No, you wait now an’ le’ me tell em my way.”

“When Uncle Isaac was young e used to run round a lot at night instead o’ being’ home ’sleep, like he had business to be. E used to catch a nap in de daytime whilst he was hoein’. Plenty o’ people can stand straight up in de field an’ lean on dey hoe an’ sleep good. I never could, but a lot o’ people can. Well, Uncle Isaac was gwine long hoein’ a spell, den dozin’ a spell. One time when e opened his eyes to look e thought e seen a cooter’s head right side his foot. E chopped down hard to cut em off. But it wasn’t no cooter head dat time. It been his own big toe! Dat’s how come e’s hoppin’ to dis day. An’ a-lyin’ ’bout em too.”

“Po’ ol’ man!” Sherry laughed along with his pitying. “I don’ blame em fo’ lyin’ ’bout dat. I’d be shame’ to tell de truth. Dey say if you tell a lie an’ stick to it, dat’s good as de truth anyhow.”

“I dunno,” Uncle Bill answered doubtfully, “I reckon sin is easier to stand dan shame.”

A blue dragon-fly flitted along close to the water.

“Does you know his business?” Sherry asked Breeze. But the fly was catching gnats and mosquitoes right then and anybody could see what its business was. Breeze laughed at Sherry’s question.

“You’s wrong,” Sherry laughed back. “You’s talkin’ ’bout his victuals, not his business. Dat’s a snake doctor. A sick snake is around here somewhere now. You watch out. We’ll see him. Den we’ll kill him and hang him up on a limb to make it rain. It’s powerful dry dis fall.”

“If you hang a dead snake on a limb, dat couldn’ make it rain?”

Sherry’s laugh was so merry that Breeze grinned at his own ignorance.

“Great Gawd, boy! You didn’t know dat! Sho’, it will! In less’n three days too. Won’t it, Uncle?”

“Sho’!” Uncle Bill answered stoutly, but he added there was no use to bother with the snake, for it was going to rain in less than three days, anyhow. “The new moon hung in a ring last night and only one star was inside it. That means it will rain after one day. If they’d find the snake and kill him he couldn’t die until the sun went down. Neither can a frog nor a cooter, nor a wasp. Lots of things can’t die if the sun shines.”

Breeze felt he was learning a lot, and he listened so attentively that Uncle Bill went on talking.

“Most people have to wait until night to die, and even when night comes, dey can’t die until de tide turns.”

“How can dey tell if dey’s sick in the bed?” Breeze asked, and Uncle Bill explained that the people themselves didn’t know. The life that stays inside them, that knows.

“It knows mighty nigh everything,” the old man declared, “and when de time comes for it to go, it goes, an’ leaves a man dead as a wedge.” This statement left Breeze wondering, but Uncle Bill went on telling how the rice-fields were full of all kinds of snakes, some of them poisonous, and some not. But the snake he feared most, more than even a rattlesnake or a moccasin, was a coach-whip.

“If a coach-whip catches you, he will wrap his body round you an’ tie you to a tree an’ whip you to death wid his tail. Lawd, boy, when a coach-whip blows dat whistle in de end of his tail, put you’ foot in you’ hand an’ run!”

“Yes, suh!” Sherry agreed, “I too ’fraid of coach-whips myself. I never did see one do it, but a coach-whip can outrun a man any day. If you get to outrunnin’ him, e will grab his tail in his mouth and roll after you like a hoop to catch you. An’ tie you to a tree an’ whip you. Enty, Uncle?”

“Sho’?” Uncle Bill was astonished at his asking. “Sho it’s so! I’ve seen a coach-whip do it plenty o’ times.”

He spat far out into the stream when he had said it, then held one oar still in the water to wheel the boat to one side, as he asked:

“Did you ever catch one of dose pretty little garter snakes an’ see him break hisself all up into little joints? Dey go back all togedder again when dey gits ready.”

Sherry never had.

“Well did you ever burn a blacksnake an’ make him show you his feet. You must be have done dat, Sherry?”

“No, suh,” Sherry answered solemnly. “I ain’ done em not yet, but I’ve seen plenty o’ people what has done em.” And after a thoughtful silence he added:

“Deys one t’ing I do know, Uncle. If a snake bites you and you don’t die, all you’ hair will drop out every time dat snake sheds its skin. Dat’s so, ’cause my own done it about ten years until Uncle Isaac told me to put a boxwood poultice on my hand ebery night las’ spring. An’ dat cured me.”

“Sho’!” Uncle Bill agreed. “Boxwood’s good for most eberyt’ing what ails you.”

“Poultices made out of boxwood will make you’ hair grow and cure tooth-ache or either rheumatism. Boxwood tea’ll cure de itch or de spring fever, too.”

“I heard so,” Sherry approved. “Boxwood roots is good for foot troubles too.”

“Yes, suh. It’s a good medicine. Sho’! De white people knowed it and dats how come dey fetched it across de water wid em. All de flowers gardens on dis whole Neck is full o’ boxwood. Some’s grows high an’ some low. Some ain’ no taller dan my finger, an’ it’s old as de Big House, too.”

“Lawd, how times is changed! Changed before yunnuh was born. Looks like all de good old days is done gone.”

“We done well enough till de boll-evils come, enty, Uncle?”

“But de boll-evils is come. Dey ruint de whole crop year befo’ last.”

“De crop was good last year after we pizened ’em.”

“But I tell you, I sho’ don’ believe in pizenin’ ’em. No, suh! Gawd sent dem here an’ we better leave dem lone. If I was you, I wouldn’t run no pizen machine. At night too, when de cotton is wet wid dew, a pizen dust’ll stick to you’ feets. When I look out o’ my door at night and see dat pizen dust a-floatin’ over de cotton-fields in dem big white cluds, an’ dat machine a-singin’ like a locust, a-creepin’ up and down de rows, th’owin’ out pizen I git too scared to look. No wonder de mens hates to take part in it. Dem pizened blossoms is done killed all de bees on de place, an’ a lot o’ de turkeys and de guineas died from eatin’ de pizened evils. Better let weeds grow in de fields, I say. We kin do widout money till we git some crop to take de place o’ cotton. Cotton’s time is out. I ’member when dey had to give up plantin’ indigo, and people said we was ruined. But cotton done just as good. Now cotton is failed, and we ought to wait till we git some kind o’ crop to take its place.” Uncle Bill heaved a mighty sigh as he said it. “April is too brazen. E would buck Gawd A’mighty. Don’t you try to be like em, Sherry. No. If April keeps on, e will land in Hell, sho’ as e was born.”

“You t’ink de place’ll ever be sold, Uncle?” Sherry asked him presently.

“No, son. Not long as de li’l’ young Cap’n is livin’! E was born wid two li’l’ teeth, and when dem two li’l’ teeth got ripe an’ fell out, my Katy took ’em an’ went to de graveyard an’ buried ’em in a clear place right longside his gran’pa.

“No matter whe’ da li’l’ boy goes or how long e stays gone from here, dis place’ll hold to him. Dem li’l’ two teeth’ll make him come back to die an’ be buried right here. You’ll see. It’s so. Just like I’m tellin’ you. It’ll be dat way. Katy was a wise-minded ’oman.”

The boat moved steadily forward all the time, for Uncle Bill’s arms didn’t slacken the oar’s paddling once.

As Breeze listened thoughtfully to all that was said, his eyes wandered unseeing over the beauty that lay thick around him, for he was trying to understand some of the things he had heard.

The rice-fields blurred by yellow sunshine were tinged with ripeness and flecked with brilliant color. Purple shadows were cast by crimson branches, scarlet berries sparkled on slender vines and adorning gray thorny branches. The bright water, gay with reflections, ran sober edges under blue cypress.

The tide of the year, more deliberate but as constant as the tide from the sea, was almost full, almost at its height. It would soon pause, mature and complete, its striving over, for a little rest; and start ebbing.

A great owl, roused by the boat’s passing, spread out wide wings and flew from the shadowy darkness of a dense moss-hung tree. Marsh-hens, that couldn’t be seen, cackled out shrill strident notes from the marsh-grown, water-covered mud flats. Solemn blue-and-white herons stood motionless at the water’s edge, gravely watching the boat. High overhead, thin lines of ducks sliced across the sky with swift slashing wings. When the boat rounded a bend where the creek met the river, Uncle Bill began a careful, precise paddling with his one long oar, and with settled, even strokes thrust the boat forward into the wide dark stream.

“For Gawd’s sake, be careful, Uncle! Don’ go too fast against dis current. I’d sho’ hate to be turned over dis morning. Dat water looks mighty cold.”

Sherry gave a shiver and laugh as he said it, but Uncle Bill’s reply was full of reproach. Why would Sherry think of such a thing as turning over? He was inviting trouble.

The boat had run silently for some little time, close to the river’s bank, when Uncle Bill broke into a sputter of words. Breeze turned to look at him. His eyes, two bright black berries in the dull black surface of his skin, were fixed on something away ahead. Breeze tried to see it too. He searched the distance ahead. But nothing showed except miles of wide river swelled out beyond its banks into the flat old rice-fields. Palmetto trees showed now and then among the willows and cypresses. Low-lying marshy islands, fringed with vine-covered scrubby bushes, were cut into patterns by narrow creeks.

Sherry was watching the distance too. “Wha’ kind is dey, Uncle?” he murmured.

“Bull-neck, son,” Uncle Bill answered promptly.

“I wish my eyes was trained to see good like your’n. I wonder why dey ain’!”

“I dunno, son. I dunno. I reckon dey ain’ had to look hard as mine,” and he chuckled with pleasure at the compliment Sherry paid him.

Uncle’s calm black face filled with a warm friendly smile. Uncle’s bright eyes, keen and cold, flitted swiftly from Sherry’s face to Breeze’s, then beyond them to the ducks he saw in the distance. Breeze began to see more in Uncle Bill’s black features than he did at first. They were more than wrinkled flesh that time had creased and withered, for not only shrewdness, but wisdom and pity shone in the clear-seeing eyes; and the old mouth, where so many teeth were missing, tightened its lips in a way that meant more than caution and prudence.

Breeze gazed at every bit of the surface ahead, starting with the water where sunshine dazzled close beside the boat and ending where the hazy sky dropped down to join the earth, but he couldn’t see any ducks.

“Looka right yonder!” Uncle Bill pointed to direct his eyes and he made out two tiny black specks side by side on the water.

“You must shoot dose two,” Sherry said. “It ain’t against de law to kill bull-necks, and maybe dey’ll stay on de water until we get in gunshot.”

“You better shoot ’em, Cun Sherry. I can’t hit ’em.” Breeze hesitated although his heart was beating fit to burst with excitement at the thought of shooting a gun.

“No, dem’s you’ ducks. You must kill ’em,” Sherry insisted. “If you do like I tell you, you can’ miss em. I don’ mind breakin’ de law, so I’ll hit de summer ducks and you kill de lawful ones.”

“I’m scared I’ll miss ’em.” Breeze’s voice quivered so shakily Sherry laughed.

“No you won’t. I’ll tell you how to do,” he said gently.

Uncle Bill headed the boat straight for the two small dots which were swimming toward it, and soon Breeze could see the gray of their feathers and the bright orange color of their bills. They seemed not to know their danger even when Uncle Bill stopped paddling and Sherry whispered to Breeze.

“Cock your gun now and hold em close up to you’ shoulder. Look straight at de duck you want to kill and pull de front trigger.”

Breeze did just as Sherry told him, but the drake he aimed at sat quite motionless on the water, as if he had not even heard the gun’s explosion.

“Fine, son!” Sherry exclaimed. “He didn’ know wha’ hit him. Now, shoot de hen duck. Hold you’ gun up close to you’ shoulder, den look straight at em an’ pull de back trigger.”

Breeze’s fingers were trembling but he shot again, and the hen duck made wild splutterings on the water.

“Po’ creeter! You hit em, but you got to shoot em again. Put us up a li’l’ closer, Uncle. Load you’ gun, Breeze.”

Breeze’s tense fingers shook as he unbreached his gun and replaced the two empty, smoking shells with heavy new ones. As the boat swung near to the wounded duck that swam round and round its dead mate, Sherry spoke to him sharply.

“Hurry up! Shoot em again!”

How could he do it? The poor wounded fowl was fluttering in agony now.

“Quit you’ triflin’, boy!” Sherry ordered sternly. “Put em out o’ dat misery.”

Breeze’s fingers tightened on the trigger and the gray-feathered body quivered into bloody shreds as the swift lead from his gun tore through it. Breeze felt wretched. Killing that duck gave him no pleasure.

Uncle Bill paddled up close to the two dead bodies and Sherry picked them up out of the water.

“Dey’s plump!” he commented as his fingers examined the breasts to see.

“We has all de ducks we can eat now, but dis boy ought to shoot one flyin’ befo’ we go home.”

“Den we’ll go on,” Uncle agreed.

They crossed the river and entered a creek much like the first one. It branched right and left, becoming narrower all the time. Uncle Bill began a stealthy creeping around the wooded bends. Sometimes ducks were there, sometimes not. Breeze shot wildly each time one rose. Sherry declared he killed two of those that fell. He may have, he didn’t know. Sherry may have just said so to encourage him.

This was a strange world to Breeze. Gray water, unfamiliar trees, long stretches of ripening marsh grass where odd-looking birds made outlandish cries as they passed.

Uncle Bill paddled steadily on with a measured stroke. Past islands lined with ranges of sand-hills where tall pines above the willows stood against the sky. Through channels choked with weeds where white cranes fed. Long streets of water, curving, dustless, houseless, settled only by light and shade and the images of trees and clouds and sun they faithfully reflected.

At a sudden “S-st” from Uncle Bill, Breeze looked at the low wooded hillside and glimpsed a doe, followed by her fawn. They had come down to the water’s edge to drink. Sheer terror held them rigid for a brief instant and then both were gone.

“Jedus, Sherry,” Uncle Bill chided. “You could ’a’ got all two if you had ’a’ tried!”

“I didn’ want dem,” Sherry answered. “We’s done killed enough for one day. My mammy says if you kill too much o’ t’ings at a time you’ll git so you smell like death. I don’ want to. I kills a while and den I stops.”

Uncle Bill laughed, and the silence was so deep that his voice echoed and reechoed.

Breeze was glad the killing was over, for he’d rather hear the two men talk than to see Sherry kill.

The boat flowed evenly, almost silently, over the water’s smooth surface. Uncle Bill kept it close to the bank to avoid the full sweep of the current in the middle of the stream.

Great dark birds, startled by its passing so close to their homes, flew up out of the water with a loud flopping of wings, but there was little talk for the rest of the way.

The water slipped swiftly past them. The small whirling circles made by Uncle Bill’s paddle widened until they reached the bank’s willowy edges where vines and bushes wound tight together, choking and strangling one another as they wrestled for a narrow foothold.

When Uncle Bill paused and cleared his throat Breeze knew he was going to ask Sherry a question.

“How come you don’ like April, here lately?”

“Who say I don’ like em?” Sherry answered.

“I say so.”

Sherry’s white grin was cold. Hard. His answer slow in coming.

“April’s legs is most too long fo’ de foreman of a big plantation like Blue Brook.”

“Wha’ you mean, son?”

“Dey kin tote him too far f’om home sometimes.”

“You mean April kin walk too far atter dark?”

“Yes, suh,” Uncle Bill sighed.