Part 3

The mother dropped on her knees and laid her forehead down on the earth. Her thin body shook, and her fingers twisted in and out as her hands wrung each other almost to breaking. She prayed and moaned and begged Jesus to call Granddad to come back. To come on in a hurry. She couldn’t stand for him not to answer when she called so hard and so long.

All the children began crying with her. Even Sis, who never cried no matter what happened, put Sonny down on the naked ground and with tears running out of her eyes all over her face, reached out and took the mother’s shoulders in both arms. She tried to keep them from shaking, but she soon shook with them, for the mother said over and over she had known all the time that something bad was going to happen. She knew it last night when she came home from meeting. Her fine glass lamp-shade, the one Granddad brought her from town, with flowers on it, broke right in two in her hand. She hadn’t dropped it, or knocked it against anything, but it broke in two in her hand. Her moaning talk changed to a kind of singing as her body rocked from side to side. Her face turned up to the sky, her eyes gazed straight at the sun, and over and over she wailed the same words until the littlest children all cried out and screamed them too:

“Las night I been know Somebody gwine dead! Yes, Lawd! Somebody gwine dead! A sign sesso! Yes, Lawd, a sign sesso! De hoot-owl ain’ talk! De wind ain’ whine! I ain’ see a ground-crack needer! But I had a sign, Jedus gi’ me a sign! Da lamp-shade! F’om de town-sto! E come een two Een my hand! Yes, Lawd! E come een two een my hand! I ain’ drap em. No! I ain’ knock em against nuttin, But e come een two Een my hand! De lamp-shade know, E try fo’ talk, E broke fo’ gi’ me a sign. My Pa is dead! I know, fo’ sho’! Da lamp-shade broke Een my hand!”

Her breath caught in her throat with gasps and her grieving got hoarse and husky, the steady sing-song braced by the children’s shrill mourning reached the neighbors who came hurrying to see what was wrong.

At first they tried to cheer up the mother’s heart with big-sounding, bantering talk. Granddad could outswim an otter. The river could drown him no more than a duck. He had followed a wild turkey, or a hog going to make her bed. It was wrong to trouble trouble before trouble troubles you. Hogs had rooted up the earth around the pine. Nobody had done that. Granny hobbled up, muttering to herself between her toothless jaws. The sun shone right into her eyes and marked how they shifted sly looks from the fallen tree to the earth. Her withered fingers plucked at the dirty greasy charm thread around her wrist. One bony finger pointed at the broken ground.

“Whe’ is e, Granny?” the mother asked, and the silence was that of a grave. Granny’s palsied head shook harder than ever, and the mother rent the air with her cries. Sis and the children joined in with wails, and the dogs all howled and barked. Granny said Old Breeze was done for! The same as the felled tree. Who was to blame? How could she tell? Had he eaten any strange victuals lately? Had he drunk water out of any strange well? No? Then he must have been tricked by somebody under his roof. Somebody who wished him ill had put an evil eye on him. No strong well man would melt away unless he had been bewitched. Granny peeped sidewise at Breeze. Where was his stepfather? Where? Nobody answered the old woman, but feet shuffled uneasily as she said that the whole of Sandy Island showed signs of bewitchment. When had it rained? The fowls’ eggs hatched poorly. The cows lost their cuds. The fish didn’t bite. Shooting stars kept the sky bright every night. Black works were the cause! Then everybody chimed in; it must be as Granny said. And the old woman looked straight at Breeze. He was born with second-sight. The young moon was here. This was the time when all those who are cheated out of life come back and walk on this earth whenever a young moon shines. If Old Breeze had met with foul death, he’d come back that night and walk around that very pine as soon as the first dark came. Young Breeze must watch for him and talk with him and find out what had happened to him. Nobody else on Sandy Island could talk to spirits like that boy. He had been born with a caul over his face, and that strange thing that had veiled his eyes when he came into the world gave them the power to see things other people could never witness. Spirits and hants and ghosts and plat-eyes.

Granny’s talk made Breeze’s flesh creep cold on his bones. His blood stopped running. Fear tried to put wings on his feet, but he clung to his mother’s skirt and wept, for even the shadows began an uncertain flickering and wavering as if they’d reach out and grab him.

“Hogs ain’ rooted up de ground. Not no hogs what walks on fo’ legs. No. Sperits might ’a’ done it--but whe’s you’ husban’, gal? Whe’ e is?”

Nobody knew. Nobody ever knew. And Breeze was too coward-hearted to watch for his grandfather’s spirit. No matter how Granny scolded him, he couldn’t do it.

Days afterward, April, the foreman on Blue Brook Plantation, came to Sandy Island, bringing a pair of blue overalls holding pieces of a man. He had fished them up out of the Blue Brook itself where they had drifted instead of going on down to the river’s mouth.

Old Breeze had worn blue overalls that Monday morning. Maybe it was he. More than likely it was he. Granny was certain of it.

The stepfather had disappeared with the money buried at the foot of the old dead pine, but April stayed to help dig a grave and bury the poor thing he had found. The mother shrieked and wailed, but Granny grunted and shook her head. She said Old Breeze’s body floated to Blue Brook on purpose so April could find it, for April was Old Breeze’s son, and, more than that, April was li’l’ Breeze’s daddy!

III

COUSIN BIG SUE

Breeze had heard about Blue Brook Plantation all his life, but he had never heard about his mother’s Cousin Big Sue until one hot October afternoon when he was minding the cow by the spring branch and helping his mother break in the precious nubbins of corn and put them in the log barn. Sis called them to come on home in a hurry! The stepfather had gone to town hunting work. Maybe he had come home. Sis’s voice was high and shrill and scared, and Breeze knew something had happened. These hot days the mother always worked in the field until first dark because that was the coolest part of the day, and Sis, who stayed at home and sewed and patched and cooked, never called anybody until after the sun went down.

Breeze forgot that the cow was in reach of the low-ground corn and hurried across the stubby furrows as fast as his skinny legs could carry him, but he stopped short when he saw a big fat black woman with a good-natured smile on her face, standing beside Sis in the cabin’s back door. Who was she? Why had she come? Why did Sis look so grieved?

The other children were in the yard, giggling, trying to hide behind one another, but the woman’s eyes stayed on Breeze.

“I kin see de likeness!” she laughed. “Lawd, yes! Dat boy is de pure spit o’ April! De same tar-black skin. De same owl eyes. A mouth blue as blackberry stain.”

Breeze had run so fast he was out of breath and his heart beat against his ribs as he watched his mother kiss the stranger and go inside the cabin with her. Presently Sis called him to come in too.

The mother put an arm around him and drew him up close to her side. Her sleeve was wet with sweat, her body hot and steamy, but her hand was cold and shaking like a leaf. How weak and frail she looked beside the fat outsider, who held out a thick hot hand to shake Breeze’s. The gold rings on it matched the gold hoop earrings glittering in her small ears, and they felt hard as they pressed against his fingers.

In the silence that followed Breeze looked at the big woman’s sleek smooth face. It was round and tight like her fleshy body but with dimples in its cheeks like baby Sonny’s. She took a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles out of her pocket and put them on, then leaned back in her chair and laughed a queer gurgling laugh that widened her flat nostrils and stretched her full lips.

“Lawd, ain’t it funny how dat boy favors his pa! Dat’s a pity too. A boy-chile ought to favor his ma to be lucky. I hope e ain’ gwine be de devil April ever was. April was born wid a caul de same way. Lawd, e’s a case too!”

Without giving his mother time to answer she talked on; her son Lijah was like her and her girl, Joy, the image of Silas, her husband. Thank God, Joy didn’t have ways like Silas. He was good-looking enough, but God never made a more trifling creature than Silas. He ran off and left her seven years ago and she had raised those two children all by herself. Lijah was in Fluridy now. Or maybe it was Kintucky, she wasn’t certain which; but he was the worst man in the town where he lived. Everybody was scared to meddle with Lijah. She laughed and rubbed her fat hands together. Nobody would ever run over her Lijah. He took after her that way. Now Joy was different. Joy was weak and easy. But she was a nice girl. She was in town, going to college, getting educated. Joy wouldn’t rest until she got a depluma. When she got it, she’d teach school or marry some fine stylish town man. Joy was a stylish girl herself. Maybe too slim, now, but she’d thicken out. When she was Joy’s age, Silas could span her waist with his two hands. Joy would fatten up too when she reached a settled age.

Cousin Big Sue rolled out her talk without stopping to catch one breath, and all the time her small sparkleberry eyes roved from Breeze’s face to his mother’s, then back to Breeze again.

The mother sat huddled low in her chair, her forehead wrinkled, her shoulders drooped. She reached out and took baby Sonny from Sis, and with fingers that shook she unbuttoned her dirty sweaty dress to feed him. For the first time in his life Breeze noticed her poor ragged underclothes and her bony feet and legs. They looked so lean and skinny beside Cousin Big Sue’s tight-filled stockings and wide laced-up shoes.

Two bright tears fell swiftly in baby Sonny’s fuzzy wool and shone there, two clear drops. Breeze was about to cry himself for his mother’s stooped body looked so pitiful. The corners of her mouth were pinched in and the back of her dress, all darkened with sweat from the hard work she had been doing, was humped out in two places by the bones of her thin shoulder-blades. But baby Sonny bobbed his head in such a funny way as he seized the long thin breast that came flopping out. He crowed and kicked his little feet with joy just as if that ugly flesh was the finest thing in the world. Breeze forgot himself and laughed out loud.

Cousin Big Sue’s fat hands stroked each other gently, and the laugh that oozed out of her mouth squeezed her eyes almost shut.

“Dat boy Breeze is got nice teeth, enty? But Lawd, his gums sho’ is blue! April’s got ’em too. An’ April’s wife, Leah, is got ’em. Dat’s dog eat dog, enty? I wish dis boy didn’ had ’em, but I know e won’t never bite me. Will you, son?”

Breeze felt so shamefaced he shut his mouth tight and hung his head, and his mother began telling Big Sue about the terrible dry-drought. How it had worked a lot of deviltry since June. The crops had promised to make a fair yield, and she kept stirring the earth to encourage them to hold on to their leaves and blossoms, even if they couldn’t grow. But the hot sun wouldn’t let a drop of rain fall, no matter how the clouds sailed overhead full of thunder and lightning. The leaves all got limp and dry. Sis said they were hanging their heads to pray, but they stayed limp, then they parched brown and dried up and fell off. The peas-patch didn’t make enough hay to stuff a mattress. The corn planted on the hill looked like dried onions. The patch of corn in the rich low-ground, close by the spring branch, had done little better. Mid-summer found every blade with its hands shut up tight, trying to hold on to what little sap the sun left. The grass quit trying to be green and the cow had nothing to eat but the coarse bitter weeds growing alongside the spring branch. She was nearly gone dry. What little milk she gave was skimpy and rank, and turned to clabber soon as it cooled. The cream was ropy, and the curds tough. When the butter was churned it wouldn’t gather, but laid down flat like melted lard.

The hens had quit laying and spent the summer panting air in and out of wide-open mouths, with their wings away off from their bodies, trying to get cool. The old sow had quit rooting and stayed in the mud-hole wallowing, until the mud baked into squares like an alligator’s hide. She had no milk for her pigs, and those that didn’t starve turned into runts.

Winter was coming. Not a leaf of collards was growing, the few nubbins of corn left wouldn’t make bread to last until Christmas. God only knew how she’d feed the children.

When she leaned down to wipe her eyes on her skirt, baby Sonny raised up his hard little head and jerked it down on her breast with a hungry butt, and Breeze forgot again and snickered out. Not that he would ever make sport of Sonny. Never in the world. He loved every crinkly tuft of wool on the baby’s head, every tiny finger and toe. Even if he didn’t grow a bit, his lightness made him easy to hold. Breeze loved him better than all the other children put together because he was small and weak.

Big Sue broke into a bright smile. “Son, I’m sho’ glad you love to laugh. I love to laugh my own self.” Her narrow eyes sparkled through her gold-rimmed spectacles, and her wide loose lips spread across her face. “De people on Blue Brook is almost quit laughin’ since de boll-evils come. But boll-evils don’ fret me. I cooks at de Big House. An’ no matter if de buckra is at Blue Brook or up-North whe’ dey stays most o’ de time, I has all de victuals an’ money I wants. I has more’n I kin use. It’s de Gawd’s truth. You’ll sho’ have sin, if you don’ give me dat boy to raise. Po’ as you is, much mouths as you got to fill, you ought to be glad to git shet o’ one. You better listen good at all I say. I’ll train em good. I’ll fatten em up. I’ll learn em to have manners. Dis same boy might git to be foreman at Blue Brook yet. E comes from dat foreman breed. You sho’ ought not to stand in his way. No, ma’am.”

If she wanted a boy-child to raise why didn’t Cousin Big Sue choose one of the others? Maybe she didn’t like the way their shirts were unbuttoned, with their naked bodies showing down to their waists. Their ragged breeches were not only dirty but ripped open.

Breeze’s heart fluttered like a trapped bird’s. Fright had him paralyzed so he couldn’t run off and hide. His mother looked shrunken, withered. A few tears fell from her eyes as they stared out of the door.

“I bet you ain’t got decent victuals for supper right now. I got plenty, yonder home.”

Cousin Big Sue’s eyes were riveted on Breeze, as she declared he’d be far better off with her than here with his mother, and a house full of starved-out children, growing up in ignorance and rags. She’d teach him and train him and raise him to be a fine man, to know how to do all kinds of work, to make money and wear shoes and fine clothes like her Lijah.

“April”--she peeped sidewise at the mother when she spoke the name--“April’s de foreman at Blue Brook, an’ e’ll help me raise Breeze. E tol’ me so las’ night.”

The mother listened and looked at Sis. Sis slowly nodded back, yes. Breeze burst out crying. He begged them not to give him away. He didn’t want to leave home. He wanted to stay right there and be hungry and ragged. He liked to grow up in ignorance and sin.

The shed-room was open so that Big Sue saw the beds covered with old quilts worn into holes. She said Breeze would have good quilts and a feather-bed at her house. The softest lightest feather-bed in the world. It was stuffed with breast feathers plucked off the wild ducks she’d picked and cooked for the white folks at the Big House. Breeze would think he was sleeping on air. She had dry-picked the ducks so the feathers would be puffy, though scalding would have made picking easier.

She’d buy him a pair of ready-made pants from the store, and two or three shirts. She’d get shirts with tails on them like a grown man’s shirt.

After that first outcry Breeze couldn’t make a sound with his voice, for a lump rose in his throat and choked him. He’d rather stay at home and do without bread, or bed.

“Please, please----” he wailed. But his words were dumb and his crying did no good.

The day was moving. The shadow cast by the china-berry tree had stretched from the front steps to the four-o’clocks over on the other side. Big Sue said she must go. A long walk was ahead, and her feet were not frisky these days.

Breeze could scarcely take in what had happened. He was given away. When Big Sue closed her warm, wet-feeling hand over his and led him away down the path that followed the deep, wide black river, he wanted to scream out, to yell that he didn’t want to go. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t even stop his feet from stepping side by side with hers, one step after another.

Something about this big fat woman kept his mouth shut. Even when the long sandy path was behind, and he could see the ferry-flat, that would take him across the river, he couldn’t speak, and the throat lump had swelled to a great big ache in his breast.

When a sudden patter of feet sounded behind him Breeze looked around expecting to see a fawn go across the road, but instead, there was Sis, with her arms outspread. She ran straight to him, fast as she could, and with a sharp little cry hugged him tight. She pressed her soft cheek, wet with tears, on his and whispered in his ear that he must go like a man, and try to be a good boy. She held him close for a minute, then without another word let him go, and ran. She was soon hidden from his eyes by the bend in the road. He strove for one more glimpse of her, but he could see nothing but trees and shadows.

They had reached the far end of the island and the dim road turned to drop down to the river where the flat waited, floating with one end tied up close to a cypress knee. Nobody was in sight. Big Sue stopped. “Whe’ is you, Uncle?” She shouted. Echoes answered and reechoed. “Come on, Uncle! Le’s go!” She waited, then grumbled. “Lawd! Uncle’s too deef.”

A few steps nearer the river showed a little old man, sitting crumpled up with his back against a tree. His head was dropped forward, his old cap awry, showing the milk-white wool on his head. Big Sue broke out laughing and went close enough to him to yell in his ear. At once he jumped awake, jerked his chin up off his breast, sat up straight. His eyes, dazed with sleep, gazed around, groping for the sound. When they found Big Sue hiding, he joined her laughter with a hearty cackle that bared his pink toothless gums set in the midst of the bristling white whiskers that stood out around his jaws and chin, fiercely denying the bright twinkle in his eyes.

“Takin’ a li’l’ nap, Uncle? I couldn’t sleep on Sandy Island, not to save life.”

Yes, he admitted, he had dropped off. No use to lie, for he’d been caught. Sleep was a tricky thing. A sly-moving thief. Always stealing time from somebody. He gave a wide-mouthed yawn, stretched his arms to try the sleeves of his long-tailed faded black coat, then strove to get his crooked legs straightened, to unbend his knock-knees, and get his stumbling feet clear of the rough footing made by the great puckered roots around the tree. When he finally reached the clear ground he appeared to see Breeze for the first time.

“Lawd, Big Sue, you had luck fo’ true! I too glad! Wha’ you’ name, son? Come shake hands wid Uncle.”

He made a polite bow when he took Breeze’s hand, his dry old face shone with a kindly smile, his frock coat opened, showing a flowered waistcoat underneath.

“A good-size boy too. E ought to could plow by next spring. Sho’! How old you is, son?” Uncle stood back on his heels, straight as a ram-rod, his eyes sparkling as he praised Breeze’s looks.

“I gwine on twelve, suh,” Breeze answered. But Big Sue put her mouth up close to the old man’s ear and bawled:

“His mammy say e’s gwine on twelve, but e looks mighty small to me. You t’ink e’s a runt?”

Uncle’s eyes watched her lips.

“No, no, Sue, dis boy ain’ no runt. You feed em up. E’ll fill out an’ grow. Bread an’ meat all two is been sca’ce on Sandy Island since de dry-drought hit em las’ summer. You keep de boy’s belly full, an’ dis time nex’ year you wouldn’ know em.”

“I wouldn’ live on such po’ land!” Big Sue bawled again. “Not me! Dis sand looks white as sugar. T’ank Gawd, us home yonder is on black land what kin hold water!”

“You like de black land, enty? No wonder, black as you is, gal!” Uncle chuckled at his joke.

“Sho’! Gi’ me black land eve’y time! You ain’t so white you’self, Uncle.”

Uncle missed her last words. He was too busy laughing and talking.

“You like you own color, enty, gal?”

Big Sue nodded and joined in heartily with his hollow clattering guffaws.