Part 15

The men on the lemonade committee were arguing about what to do, when the Reverend, who had been walking around through the crowd shaking hands with the people and patting the children’s heads, came up with Leah, who was smiling and talking and putting on many fine airs. The preacher said he was sure, Leah, Mrs. Locust, knew all about lemonade. She could tell exactly if they’d have to send for more sugar or not. Just give her a taste. She’d decide for them.

Zeda laughed out. Big Sue muttered something, but both stood aside to make room for Leah, who giggled happily, and stepped up to the barrel.

The Reverend took up the long clean hickory paddle Uncle Bill had used to mix it, and leaning over, gave it a vigorous stirring. He must have stirred too hard, for the cold air rose up out of the barrel into Leah’s nose, and before she had time even to turn her head, she gave one loud sneeze and all her white teeth flew out of her mouth right into the barrel of lemonade.

It was a bad time. Leah said she’d have to have her teeth back right now. But they were mixed up with all those hundreds of lemon skins and that big block of ice. Every man on the committee took a hand at stirring for them, but the teeth rose up and grinned, then hid deep in the bottom of the lemonade before anybody could snatch them out. The preacher said pour the whole hogshead of lemonade out on the ground! The idea! Breeze felt relieved when the committee was firm. Leah would have to wait. The lemonade would soon be low in the barrel. The people were thirsty. They’d drink it up in a hurry. Leah didn’t argue but went off one side and began sniffling and crying with her mouth hidden behind her pocket handkerchief. Big Sue chuckled out loud. Uncle Bill stepped forward with a long-handled dipper and filling it brimming full handed it to the Reverend, with a low bow, “Have de first drink, Reverend. I know you’ throat’s dry after all de preachin’ an’ prayin’ you done to-day! Gawd bless you, suh!”

The Reverend fell back a step, and shook his head and coughed behind his hand.

“If you’ll excuse me----” He stammered it, then coughed again, and walked over to where Big Sue stood with a broad smile on her face.

But April suddenly appeared.

“What’s all dis?” he asked, looking straight at the Reverend, with a glitter in his eyes.

“Your wife--ah--Mistress Locust--has--ah--met with a little accident----”

“Didn’ Uncle Bill hand you a dipper o’ lemonade?”

“Why, yes, Brother Locust.”

“How come you didn’ drink em? Don’ you be brotherin’ me, either.”

“Why--ah, I’m really not thirsty, Mr. Locust.”

“You ain’ thirsty, eh?”

“Why, ah, no.”

April’s Sunday clothes made him look even taller than usual. His hair was newly cut, and his face shaved clean, except for a small mustache. He made a fine-looking, powerful figure to Breeze’s wide-stretched eyes.

His mouth smiled as he spoke to the preacher, but his words snarled. It was plain that he was furiously angry. Breeze felt as if he’d choke with excitement. The breath was squeezed out of his body as the crowd pushed closer, and his bare feet were trod on until he felt his toes were mashed too flat ever to walk again.

The stillness was broken only by Leah’s sniveling, and April’s hurried breathing.

Uncle Bill put up a warning hand when April slowly took off his hat. “Keep you’ hat on, April. Don’t you dare to butt dis servant of Gawd! You’ll git struck dead, sho’ as you do!”

April smiled knowingly, then pulled his hat down tight on his head.

“I doubt if Gawd would knock me ’bout dat, but I don’ b’lieve I want to dirty my skull on such a jackass, not no mo’. I butt him good de last time we met. E ain’ fo’got.”

“Great Gawd! April, shut you’ mouth!”

“Did you cuss me for a jackass?” the preacher shrieked and darted furiously at April.

Women screamed out. Children wailed. Men mumbled protests. But before anybody suspected his intention April leaped forward and seized the preacher’s head with two powerful hands, held it like a vise, and bit a neat round mouthful out of the cheek next to him.

Making a horribly ugly face he spat out the morsel of flesh. Old Louder, Uncle Bill’s faithful hound, caught it and swallowed it down.

A fearful outcry arose. Men groaned. Women shrieked and yelled. Some went off into trances. The wounded preacher toppled, fell over, limp as a rag, his high white collar reddening as it swallowed the blood that streamed out of the hole in his face. Poor man. His face would rot off now. Poison would swell it up, bloat it, then peel it off.

Uncle Bill scolded Louder terribly and frailed him with a stick until the poor dog cried out pitifully. Breeze felt sick and faint enough to die. His hair stood on end. His flesh shook cold on his bones. God would strike April sure as the world.

The people rushed forward, some calling for water, some threatening April. Everybody shouted until the noise and confusion waxed loud and frightful.

Leah and Big Sue vied with each other in stormy torrents of words and weeping.

April’s fury spent itself with the bite. His strained muscles unbraced, unbuckled, he cleared his throat and spat. “Dat meat taste too sickenin’,” he grumbled. Then squaring his shoulders he walked away. Cool. Master of himself. Alone.

XV

FIELD WORK

All the cotton had been picked except scraps in the tip-top of the stalks. When these were gathered, the last chance for the women to make a little money would be over until early next spring when the stables were cleaned out and the black manure put in piles for them to scatter over the fields.

The sultry day was saturated with heat. The swollen sun shone white through a fog that brought the sky low over the cotton field. The cotton pickers swarmed thick, sweat poured off faces and hands and feet. Slowly, steadily they moved, up and down the long rows of tall rank stalks, carefully picking every wisp of staple out of the wide-open brown burrs.

Everybody was barefooted, most of the boys and men wearing only shirts and overalls, and the women had their skirts tied up almost to their knees.

Not the smallest gust of wind stirred the steamy air. Sweat blackened sleeves and shirts and dresses, yet the talk stayed bright and chatty.

Breeze had picked all morning except for one little while when he stopped to eat a piece of cold corn-pone and drink a few swallows out of his bottle of sweetened water. He wanted to pick a good weight, but the cotton was light and sparse. April was paying a whole cent a pound instead of the half a cent he paid when the cotton was green and heavy.

If Big Sue would pick faster instead of talking so much, together they ought to get a hundred pounds. Maybe even a hundred and twenty-five.

Side by side they trudged along, but too often Big Sue stopped and straightened up her bent shoulders and stretched her arms for a rest. Leaning over so long had her all but in a cramp. Yet when Breeze stopped to eat she scolded him. This was no time for lingering. Every pound picked meant a cent.

“Wha’ de news f’om Joy?” Leah called across the rows.

“Joy wa’n’t so well when I heared last.”

“Wa’n’t Joy kinder sickly all last summer?”

Big Sue admitted it grumly.

“I hear-say Joy have changed e boardin’ place since e went back to school.”

Big Sue took her time to answer. After picking several stalks clean she said Joy had changed, fo’ true. She was staying right on the campus now. Right with the teachers and the professors and all the high-up people.

Leah spat on the ground. “Lawd, Joy must be know ev’yt’ing by now, long as e’s been off at school. How much years? Five or six?”

“Joy do know a lot, but ’e ain’ been off but four years. You know it too, Leah.”

“Joy’s a stylish gal, Big Sue. Even if e is puny.” Zeda was plainly siding against Leah.

“Joy ought to look stylish, much money as I spent on em. When e went back to school dis fall, Joy’s trunk looked fine as a white lady’s trunk. Not a outin’ gown in em! Not a outin’ petticoat! Even to de shimmys, Joy had ev’yt’ing made out o’ pink and blue and yellow crêpe. Joy is a fine seamster, if I do say it myse’f. Joy’s clothes is fine as any store-bought clothes.”

“Wha’s Joy gwine do when e finish college?” Leah asked presently.

Big Sue was uncertain. Joy was working to get a depluma. When she got that she could be anything she liked. Joy was sickly last summer because she had so much learning stirring around in her head. Leah laughed--innocently. There was no need to worry, as long as a girl was sickly from things stirring in her head.

“Wha you mean by dat, Leah?” Big Sue stopped short and her narrowed eyes gazed fixedly at Leah who went on picking.

“I ain’ say nothin’ to vex you, Big Sue! You’s too touchous! Joy ain’ gold neither silver.”

“You keep Joy’s name out you’ mouth, Leah!” Big Sue snapped the words out in a stinging tone that cut through the heat.

Zeda stood still and gave a wide-mouthed yawn and a lazy laugh. “Do hush you’ wranglin’. When it’s hot like dis, I can’ stan’ to hear nobody tryin’ to start a brawl. You womens ain’ chillen! Joy’s a nice gal. Fo’ Gawd’s sake, le’ em ’lone!”

She looked up at the sun hanging low in a whitish glow, then down at the short shadows and the heat wilted leaves. Not a bird chirped. Not a locust or grasshopper spoke.

“I bet Joy’ll marry some o’ dem fine professors or either preachers,” Bina drawled.

“Joy might, fo’ true,” Big Sue bragged.

Zeda said nothing, but her eyes darted a sharp look at Big Sue, then turned toward the rice-fields where the river crept up without a murmur or a shimmer of light on its surface.

Breeze picked on and on long after his back was tired and his fingers sore from the sharp points of the stiff burrs. The crocus sheets spread out along the road at the side of the field were piled higher and higher with cotton which was heaped up, packed down, running over. The last picking yielded more than anybody expected.

Thank God, the sun was setting at last. Wagons were rattling in the distance, coming to haul the cotton to the big gin-house! This year’s crop was done.

XVI

PLOWING

Breeze was to do his first plowing, but instead of being up and dressed and ready to go to the fields when dawn first streaked the sky he lay sobbing underneath the clean bright quilts, which were all rumpled up over his bed, the big, high, soft feather-bed in the shed-room where Big Sue’s Lijah used to sleep.

He was wretched and lonely and sore from head to heels. The feather-bed hurt wherever it pressed its fat cushiony sides against his naked body, although that feather-bed was made out of the finest down of wild ducks and geese. Big Sue liked to tell how she took years to save so many, for she wanted her Lijah to have the finest feather-bed on the whole plantation. Whenever the hunters brought wild fowls to the kitchen for her to roast in the big oven there, she carefully picked the softest pinless feathers off the breasts, and put them in a bag and kept them until she finally had enough for Lijah’s bed. Lijah liked a soft bed. He was like her.

Joy was different. A feather-bed made Joy hot and unrestful, and she liked to sleep on a mattress filled with cotton tacked tight to keep it firm and hard and in place. Joy and Lijah were different altogether. But Lijah left his feather-bed soon after it was made, and went away to a far country. Big Sue was not sure whether the country was named “Fluridy” or “Kintucky.” Sometimes she called it “Kintucky-Fluridy.”

The fine softness of Lijah’s bed meant little to Breeze, for he was homesick and unhappy. He’d a lot rather go back to his mother’s cabin, on Sandy Island, and sleep on a pallet made out of a ragged quilt spread on the splintery hard floor, than to stay here with Big Sue and sleep in this nest of down feathers that had once warmed and comforted other children with bill and wings and webbed feet.

He turned and twisted and heaved with mute sobs. He felt all alone in the world. He had learned not to cry out loud. Big Sue had taught him that people with manners cry low and easy. Manly boys never cry at all. If Big Sue would only take time to beat him right away when he did wrong, he could somehow bear the pain better, but to be waked up before daylight, and stripped naked, and made to stand still under the cuts of a strap, or a switch, that’s hard.

When she waddled home at night, after the day’s work and pleasure were done, she was too weary to do anything but drop down in a chair and rest. Breeze had to undo the wide-strung-up shoes and take them off her fat feet, and fill up her pipe and light it. She’d smoke a little while and go to bed, worn-out, too tired to whip Breeze, no matter how much he needed a licking. She always waited until next morning, when she woke up fresh and strong, ready to raise Breeze and teach him manners. Her usual morning greeting was, “Git up, Breeze. Git up and strip. I want to git down to you’ rind,” his rind meaning his naked skin.

She declared that licking Breeze hurt her as much as it hurt him. She hated to have to do it, but Breeze was a poor, ignorant, no-manners boy. She had to beat him to do her duty by him.

A long, thin, black leather strap stayed up on the mantel-shelf, ready to give lickings. It had a black-snake’s hiss, and a crack as sharp as a pistol-shot. But this morning Big Sue couldn’t lay her hands on it, so she broke a switch off the plum tree growing beside the cabin’s front door. There were all kinds of switches outside. Big Sue could easily have got a smoother, better one, but she was in a hurry and the plum switch was in easy reach of her hand.

In the weak morning light she didn’t see that thorns stayed on it when she pulled off its limbs. Those thorns had sharp teeth, and Big Sue drove them deep into Breeze’s back and thighs. Now as he stroked his hurts with both hands he felt blood warm and wet on them.

Breeze’s mother had never talked to him about manners. Big Sue said she didn’t know them. At Blue Brook plantation, manners are the most important things in the world, but they stand between you and everything you want to do. Nobody ever eats the first sweet black walnuts that fall on the ground, for eating green walnuts makes lice in your head, and it is bad-mannered to be lousy.

To play with the funny hop-toadies, whose little black hands look just like a tiny baby’s thumbs and all, makes warts come on your hands, and it’s bad-mannered to have warts.

If you drink goat’s milk, although it is sweeter than cow’s milk, you’ll hate water, just like goats hate it. You won’t want to wash. And it’s bad-mannered not to like soap and water.

If your feet get cold as ice and you can’t get them warm any other way, you must not put them on the warm black pots on the hearth, because the soot on the pots will stick to your feet, and it’s bad-mannered to have sooty feet.

To put a finger in your mouth is bad-mannered. Everything is bad-mannered!

Breeze’s reflections and sobs were checked by a call from Big Sue to get up! To make haste too! He hopped up and pulled on his clothes, and taking a piece of cold bread in his hand, hurried to the barnyard. Daylight had already spread through the sky, and was creeping over the earth. The fall day smelled like spring. One old apple tree in the orchard had been fooled into blooming by the drowsy warmth. Poor silly thing!

The creek babbled low as the tide swelled it high up near the bank, and a cow, followed by her new-born calf, ventured in knee-deep, and sucked up the water noisily. As she lifted her head to look at Breeze, drops falling from her mouth were suddenly shot through with a streak of light. The sun was up! He was late! Lord, he must run! Every flower had its face turned eastward to meet the day. They knew it had come.

Cocks began a fresh crowing. Jay-birds chahn-chahned. Partridges whistled. A mocking-bird trilled. Tiny brown birds fluttered through the thickets like dead leaves come back to life. Wagon wheels rumbled on a road out of sight, the pop of a whip cracked out. Everything was astir, ready for the day’s work.

In the barnyard a lively confusion of men and beasts made a thick din that filled Breeze’s heart with excitement. To-day he would begin doing a man’s work. On Saturday he’d get his pay, like Sherry and all the other farm-hands.

He could hear the men hailing one another. The mules neighed. Trace-chains tinkled between shouts of “Whoa” and “Gee” and “Haw” and “Git up.” On the near side of the barnyard fence a long-legged funny mule colt went staggering behind old Sally, Uncle Bill’s old bay mare. When he lagged she whinnied to him to come on.

A litter of pigs huddled around a lean black sow wallowing comfortably in a filthy mud-hole. They squealed to her to lie still and let them feed, but she grunted lazily, and rolled still deeper in the mire. Near by an old dominecker hen clucked sharply to her biddies and scratched eagerly for worms in the rich black earth. She’d better mind. That old sow would eat her up, feathers and all, and swallow the biddies down like raw oysters.

The fine fall day felt like spring. Men and mules stepped briskly, glad to go to work.

For the first time since the boll-weevils came and pestered the cotton, the crop had been abundant, and now the field must be cleared of old stalks for the winter.

The summer’s dry weather had been a big help. No rain came to wash the poison off. Sherry ran the poison machine over the fields at night when the cotton was wet with dew and the thirsty weevils drank poisoned dew and died. It was a scary thing to see these great white clouds of poison dust rising and settling to kill. The people scarcely dared to look.

Now, every lock of cotton was picked, and the plows were to turn the stalks under so deep in the earth the boll-weevils would not have as much as one lone cotton leaf to eat during the winter. April was planning already to make such a big crop next year, the gins would have to run day and night when fall came, to get the cotton packed into bales by Christmas! Money would be plentiful one more time!

A score of men were plowing, most of them tall strong fellows, straight and slender as tree-trunks. Their ease and skill made Breeze almost despair, for plowing was a hard job to him. But Sherry was chaffing them, calling them scary ladies who stayed at home and slept with the women and children while he and April fought boll-weevils all night long.

He wouldn’t hold it against them if they’d work well in the daytime and plow the crop fast and keep the ground-crust broken and the grass killed. He and April could attend to the weevils next summer, all by themselves. With that big poison machine and three mules, he could poison forty acres a night. Instead of resenting what Sherry said, the men laughed good-naturedly and declared they were satisfied to leave the boll-weevils to Sherry and April. Let the devils fight the devils.

Leah’s Brudge was there, right in among the men. He plowed last year and showed he felt important. At first he scarcely noticed Breeze who struggled and strove to hold his unruly plow steady and straight like Sherry’s.

Each man had his own mule, taught to his ways. Sherry’s mule, Clara, was a beauty. Sleek and trim and spry, she understood every word Sherry spoke. Brudge had Cleveland, an old brown mule with sprung fore-knees, but with a steady gait and a nice coat of hair. Breeze had old Cæsar, a shaggy, logy beast, mouse-colored, except where bald spots marked his hide black. One blind eye was like a hard-boiled egg and the other had an uncertain peep, but Sherry said Cæsar had sense like a man. All Breeze needed to do was hold the lines and the plow handles together and walk straight behind. Cæsar would do the rest. Breeze wished he might have had a handsomer beast, but even old Cæsar made his heart thrill.

The earth had been dried out by the warm autumn sunshine and it sent up clouds of dust as the sharp steel of the plows cut it deep, and long rows of rank stalks were uprooted and turned under and carefully covered with dark smooth soil.

April stood alone, watching the men and mules walking sturdily across the field, then back. When they neared him, their talking hushed except for words spoken to the mules.

Overhead a blue sky looked down; the breath of the stirred earth, scented strong with life, rose and brimmed up, filling the air.

When the plowmen reached the far side of the field again, turning slowly they moved along, side by side, talking and laughing. Their gay racket hushed in a hurry when April’s voice floated to them from where he stood, a tall speck by the trees in the distance. Clear and sharp his words fell through the sunshine.

“Hey dere! Yunnuh quit so much talkin’ and laughin’. I want all dem cotton stalks covered up deep!”

Every man of them stepped a little slower, every plowstock was gripped with a tighter hold after the correction. Merry chatter changed to stern shouts that chided the patient mules. “Hey, mule!”, “Watch you doin’s!”, “Gee!”, “Haw!”, “Come up!” The mules pulled harder and the crunching of the earth as the plows cut deeper took the place of laughter and gay bantering words.

The day moved on, warm and drowsy, with yellow sunshine still hot enough to cast black shadows, and draw sweat out of both men and beasts. April stood watching, hour after hour, while the swarm of mules and men trudged back and forth from the water’s edge to the woods and then back again, never stopping for even a breathing spell. The sun rode high in the sky. Shadows shortened. Breeze longed for the noon hour, time to stop and eat and drink and rest.