Part 9

“You know how come good as me. Better’n me, too. But dat’s you’ business. Not my own. My business is workin’ for Him up yonder.” Maum Hannah held up her arms to the sky and lifted her face as if she were praying, but her gaze became so fixed that they all looked up. There, away above them in the sky like a tiny bird, sailed something so high that its buzz was hardly more than the hum of the wind.

Maum Hannah got to her feet, and quickly untying her white apron, held it up and waved it overhead as she called out loud as she could:

“Pray, chillen, pray! Talk wid Jedus! I too sorry to see you dis mawnin’!” She shook her old head, and shouted again. “Gawd don’ like mens to go up in de elements! Dis is His day, too! Pray, chillen, pray! Do, Jedus, hab mussy on dem. I hope dey ain’ none o’ we white folks.”

“I hope not,” Big Sue joined in. “But most white folks is sinners, Maum Hannah.”

“I dunno, gal. I can’ see inside nobody’s heart, an’ I tries to love de sinners same as de rest.”

“You love sinners, Maum Hannah?” Big Sue was amazed.

“Sho’, honey, I loves de sinners, an’ hates de sin.”

“Dat’s right, Mauma. Right.” She gave the old shoulder an affectionate pat. “Dat’s how come you has such good luck catchin’ chillen. Gawd blesses you. How much did you catch last night?”

Both old hands went up with a gesture of importance. Two!

She’d caught two children last night. Two angels since first dark. The spring love-making was bearing fruit early this fall.

“When’s de white folks comin’ home?” she asked with a sudden change of expression.

Big Sue didn’t know for certain, but she thought soon as white frost came to kill the fever.

“How come you want to know?” Big Sue was curious.

Maum Hannah hoped they would hurry and come while she was well and able to talk with them. Something was on her mind, worrying her, and she wanted to get it settled. She was fretted about the graveyard. It was too full. Every grave dug lately uncovered old bones. There was no more room, and a new graveyard ought to be started.

“Do, Jedus!” Big Sue exclaimed. “I sho’ would hate to be de first one buried in a new graveyard. Dey say you wouldn’ never rest, not till Judgment Day, if you gits buried first, off by you’ lonesome self.”

“Not if you trust Gawd, honey.”

“I trust Gawd, Maum Hannah, but I ever did hear dat de first one to be bury in a new graveyard is bound to be unrestless.”

A gentle smile shone on Maum Hannah’s face. “I know, honey. I ever did hear so too. Gawd knows if it’s so or not. But I done made up my mind to dis: I’m willin’ to be de first one. I’m gwine ask de white folks to set off a piece o’ new ground an’ when my time is come to let me be de first one to be buried in em.”

“Great Gawd!” Big Sue panted. “You’s got a strong heart, fo’ true, Mauma. I couldn’t do dat to save life.”

“I know, chile. My heart gits weak as branch water too when I t’ink on death. But I’m done old. I got to go soon. I may’s well put my trust in Jedus. E knows I done de best I could. I talk wid Him every night. I talk wid em ’bout de graveyard in de new ground. I’m gwine to hab faith dat E’ll help me to rise up on Judgment Day an’ fly straight to glory, same as if I was a-layin’ yonder longside my mammy an’ all dem what’s gone befo’ me.”

Big Sue pondered and shook her head. She couldn’t stand to let her mind run on death. She couldn’t sleep at night if she did.

“Dat’s ’cause you’s healthy. If you was weakened down wid a sickness you’d as soon go as stay.”

“Not me! No, Jedus! I hope I kin stay till I’m old and dry as Aun’ Trecia!”

“I hope you kin if you craves dat. But I know my time is most out. I’m willin’ to sleep in new ground when my work is done.”

“Nobody else’ll mind a new graveyard if you sleeps dere ahead of dem, Mauma.”

“I can’ do nobody no good if dey dies in sin. You must git right befo’ you’ time comes. Do, honey, git right. Right wid Jedus!”

Big Sue answered she _was_ right. And she wanted to stay right. But she was worried half to death now, because she had broken a looking-glass.

“Now, dat is a pity! I too sorry you broke a lookin’-glass. But you go see Emma. Emma kin help you git shet o’ dat back luck. Po’ chile, e had ear-ache e’se’f las’ night. Dat cow make em run an’ fret e’se’f so bad. Emma pure cuss de cow!” Maum Hannah burst into a laugh. “Emma’s bad! Bad! I haffa all de time lick em! Po’ li’l’ creeter! Emma will cuss dat cow!”

“Emma is too small to lick fast, enty, Mauma? Looks like lickin’ would stunt em worser.”

Maum Hannah laughed again, and all the children laughed too.

“Lickin’ don’ stunt chillen! No. Lickin’ loosens up dey hide, an’ makes ’em grow. Now, Emma’s small, but e hab sense. Since de nights is cool e sets by de fire an’ warms e feet on de pots. Dem same smutty pots I cooks de victuals in. I tell em to don’ do so! But Emma keeps right on. Dat smut leaves de pots to stick on Emma’s feets, den when Emma goes to bed de smut leaves e feets to stick on my clean sheets an’ quilts. It takes tight scrubbin’ to make ’em git off. Smut too loves cloth! Dat’s how come I lick Emma so much. I try fo’ make em hate smut same ez I hate sin. But Emma’s feets is so black e can’ see de smut on ’em.”

“Why you don’ git Emma some shoes, Mauma? Dey’ll keep her feets warm, better dan de pots.”

“No, honey. I ain’ got de heart to make po’ li’l’ Emma wear shoes. E too love to jump round an’ dance an’ shout. Shoes would hinder em. I’ll dis keep on lickin’ em till e knows better. I’ll break em f’om de pots soon ez I git time. I been too busy lately. All de chillen needs so much doctorin’. De womens run round too much, a-pleasurin’ deyselves, to hab good chillen dese days. Times is changed, honey. Womens ain’ quiet an’ steady like dey used to be. No.”

She sighed and pointed to the head of a little girl where a bit of wool was tied so tight right over the middle of her forehead that the poor child could hardly blink her eyes.

“I had to tie up Tingie’s palate lock dis mawnin’.” Tingie’s big eyes looked up solemnly, and Tingie’s sore throat gulped with a great effort to swallow. “Tingie hab de so’ t’roat, bad.”

“I’s feelin’ better now,” Tingie declared huskily.

“You’ll soon be well, honey,” Maum Hannah told her with a kind smile, and the child smiled back, sure that Maum Hannah knew.

“I needs some buzzard-claw mighty bad, Big Sue. I wish you’d tell Uncle Bill so. De babies is teethin’ so bad dis fall. I tried puttin’ a hog-teeth on a string roun’ dey neck, but hog-teeth is too weak to do any good. Do tell Uncle Bill to shoot me a few buzzards. De gal-chillen is teethin’ ’most hard as boy-chillen dis year. But boy-chillen is mighty scarce. De womens pleasure deyself too much to hab boy-chillen. Boy-chillen picks sober womens fo’ dey mammy. Dese gals buy so much trash out de sto’ to eat, dey breast-milk is weak as water. I tell ’em so, but dey don’ listen at me. No.”

“My Lijah was plagued wid de grow-fast. You ’member, Mauma?”

Maum Hannah nodded. “I ’member, but grow-fast is a easy complaint to cure. I had to work on one yeste’day.” She told how she and the mother had taken the child into the room where it was born, and stood in opposite corners to throw it back and forth to each other, singing the grow-fast song as they did. A sure cure for grow-fast. “When de room is big, it’s stiff treatment. My arms mighty near broke yeste’day.”

* * * * *

Instead of going home the way they came, Big Sue followed a path through the woods, and crossed a clear brown stream that flowed without a single ripple to break its smooth dark surface, or coat it with foam. The water’s breath smelt warm as it rose into the cooler shadows.

In a small hollow, near its banks, washtubs were turned upside down on wooden benches, and a big black washpot sat over dead embers. Waiting for Friday, the plantation wash-day. All the first days of the week are field-days. On Friday the women gather and wash their clothes and gossip. It is a great day for them. A sort of holiday. Full of things to talk about. Every bit of the sunshine between the trees is strung with clothes-lines, heavy weighted with clothes, the old trees stand around silent and dolesome, with black shadows cooling their feet.

By Saturday noon the ironing is done, the week’s work over, then the fun begins. Crap games and parties and dances for the sinners; prayer-meetings and church for the Christians. Something goes on all the time until Monday morning. Everything that matters happens between Saturday night and Monday morning. A week’s earnings can be lost, or a wife, or a sweetheart.

Even one’s soul!

When they passed a smooth clean piece of ground with a pile of charred blackened sticks on it, Big Sue laughed and said, “Do look! De crap-shooters been here last night. See where dey had a fire? Firelight makes de bones rattle better, so dey say. An’ naked ground brings luck to de players.”

“Is you a sinner or a Christian, Cun Big Sue?” Breeze blurted out before he knew it.

“Who? Me? Great Gawd! I been a Christian ever since I was twelve years old.” After a minute she added, “I did got turned out o’ de church one time. I stayed out mighty nigh a year. Silas was de cause of my havin’ sin. E deviled me too bad befo’ e left me. But de earthquake come dat summer, an’ I got so scared it didn’ take me long to seek and find peace. I joined de church an’ I been in it ever since. You’s mighty nigh twelve, enty? When you’s twelve Gawd’ll hold you responsible fo’ you’ sins.”

Near the creek stood the schoolhouse for the black children on the plantation. A log house with a doorway cut in one end, and fitted with a rude door made of clapboards swung on iron hinges. The big chimney at the other end was overspread with clay mortar. This cabin occupied a lovely spot, overshadowed with a great oak tree from whose roots a small spring trickled and ran to join the larger stream behind it.

Big Sue said there were too many children to get inside the schoolhouse at one time. Half of them had recess while the other half recited lessons. The teacher taught with a long keen whip in her hand, and she made every child learn the lessons. One word missed brought a sharp cut across the palm of the offender’s hand. Two words brought four cuts that would not soon be forgotten. Big Sue said she had never bothered to learn to read and write. She didn’t have any use for either. Sometimes she’d like to read a new receipt. Still, she could cook better out of her head than most people could cook out of a book.

The old people didn’t believe in book learning. They thought learning signs and charms more important, and they discouraged having a school. But Zeda’s girl, raised right on the plantation, was the teacher, and she worked wonders with the children. Lijah had never liked books. Playing and riding and shooting and swimming interested him more. He’d have made a good conjure doctor. Once he put some of his own hair in a hole in a tree, and it cured his sprained ankle. He cut an elder stick for Maum Hannah’s asthma, and tied it by the neck and hung it up in the loft, and it cured her, too. For a while, before he ran away, he saved all his toe-nails and finger-nails to put in his coffin, but that was so much trouble he quit after he got one little bottle full. It takes a lot of learning to be a good conjure doctor, for there’s black magic as well as white. Magic can save as well as kill. Breeze ought either to pray now or start learning magic. He was almost twelve.

The path ran close to a group of trees surrounded by an old rusty iron fence, where tombstones gleamed white. Deep shadows rippled whenever a breeze made its way through the thick, moss-hung woods. Enormous live-oaks stood at regular intervals, all of them festooned with trailing moss that made a weird roof overhead.

Cicadas chanted shrilly in a tangle of rose vines and honeysuckles. White oleanders and japonicas crowded one another, the fragrance of the blossoms mingling with the stench of decaying leaves and wood. Raising the rusted creaking latch of the iron gate, Big Sue tipped inside the enclosure where gnarled roots of the old trees crawled across the paths and slipped under pink-plumed tamarisk bushes. They disappeared, but they tilted the heavy tombstones, and crumbled the brick foundations from under marble slabs thick with words.

Some of the graves were smooth and clean, others were smothered with vines stretched across sunken hollows. Plantation masters and mistresses had been crumbled, melted, to feed blind groping roots.

Big Sue went toward a corner where a massive gray stone marked a grave. “Old Cap’n lays here. Gawd! Dat was a man! Not scared o’ anyt’ing or anybody! Mean! Jedus, he was mean!”

Big Sue sighed. How times change! That same man lying in his grave had lorded it over this whole Neck, once. Not only over the black people who worked his fields after freedom the same as in slavery days, but over the white people too. Most white people hereabout now were trash. Poor buckra. Gray-necks. Children and grandchildren of overseers. When the war to free the slaves was going on they stayed home and sold whisky. They ran under the bed and hid if anybody started a racket. They made money and saved their skins. Some of them owned plantations now, and lived in houses whose front doors had been shut to their grandfathers!

Times had changed. The man who had ridden over this country with the loosest rein and the sharpest spur, was down under the ground feeding tree roots and worms to-day. One little boy, one lone grandson, was all that was left of his seed, and he was being raised up-North, among Yankees. The child’s own ma was dead and his stepma had taught him the strange ugly speech of the Yankees. Enough to make his grandpa turn over in his grave! Wouldn’t the old man curse!

This land must be too rich, too rank for white people to thrive on it. Their skins were too thin, their blood too weak to bear the summer heat, and the fevers and sickness that hid in the marsh in the daytime, then came out to do their devilment after dark.

Black people ruled sickness with magic, but white people got sick and died. White people leave money to their children, but black people leave signs. Give her signs every time! Uncle Isaac was getting old. He might die soon. Breeze had better start learning all he could right now, before Uncle Isaac’s mind failed. She’d see Uncle Isaac and tell him.

As she spoke a faint rustle of wind went through the trees and a lizard, carefully colored to match the soil, scurried across the path, rattling dead leaves as it slid under the solid gravestone. Big Sue leaned over the grave and stirred the earth, selecting bits of the coarser sand.

“I want seven li’l’ rocks now. One fo’ ev’y night in de week. I gwine keep ’em tie up in my pocket-hankcher, so I would stop havin’ so much bad dreams all de time.”

Breeze shivered. If spirits of the dead ever haunt the paths of the living, they lurked in the deep gloom of the shade made by the overgrown shrubbery, by those coiling, writhing twisted vines. The swift wings of a cardinal spun a scarlet thread before them. Clear notes were flung in a spray of song from the top of the tallest tree. Big Sue called up at him: “It’s twelve o’clock, enty? I hear you sayin’ dis is de brightest time o’ de day!” She tried to make her lips smile bright enough to fit her words, but Breeze could see that the graveyard had made her afraid too. “Le’s go, son. Le’s git out o’ here,” she said.

She trampled on a wild rose, full of frail blossoms. As Breeze stepped aside to keep from crushing another, a soft wind seized the delicate petals and scattered them over leaves that were already dead.

The road went through the woods past a cleared place, then brought them to the negro graveyard. Every grave held something valued by the dead. A white china pitcher and basin. Old bottles, still holding medicine. Small colored glass vases. Cups and saucers. A few plates. Some of the graves were decorated with clusters of wooden sticks, skilfully carved to make heads of wheat. Breeze wanted to take one, but Big Sue objected. To take one off a grave would be bad luck. Uncle Isaac would be glad to make him one if he’d ask him.

* * * * *

Bright and early Monday morning, Big Sue began fitting together small, carefully cut scraps of cloth, sewing them into squares with strong ball thread. Breeze sat on the step in the pleasant sunshine threading her big-eyed needle as fast as it worked up arm-lengths of thread into firm-holding stitches, while she sat in a low chair on the porch.

Squirrels chased one another across the yard, and up into the live-oak trees. Showers of ripe acorns jarred down by their playing spattered over the ground. Those acorns were sweet as chinquapins, and the squirrels were fat with eating so many. But Big Sue would not let Breeze kill even one for dinner. His fine new sling-shot, made out of a dogwood prong, could hit almost as hard as a gun, but Big Sue said the white folks who lived in the Big House wanted the squirrels left. Even if they ate up all the pecans in the fall, and all the peaches in the summer, not one was to be killed. White people have foolish notions, but it is better not to cross them if you can help it.

She was working hard to get her quilts quilted before the white folks came down for the duck shooting this winter. They didn’t stay long these last years. They had another home up-North, so li’l’ “Young Cap’n” could go to a fine school there. Poor little boy! He liked this home a lot better, but his Yankee stepma ruled him and his pa too.

Each day got shorter now. She must sew fast. Get all her squares patched and ready. She’d scarcely have time to draw a long breath for the turn of cooking to be done after they came. Nobody else on the plantation could season victuals to suit them. Zeda helped sometimes, but Zeda didn’t know when ducks were done to a turn and not too done. Zeda was apt to get venison as dry as a chip, and if she as much as looked at a waffle it fell flat.

Uncle Isaac’s wife was the cook before Big Sue. She used to be the finest cook on the whole Neck. Nobody knew how she made things taste so good. She wouldn’t tell. One day she dropped dead. Right in the kitchen. Some people thought she was conjured, but too much rich eating may have done it. After that Uncle Isaac tried to train two or three people to fix the food, for he knew a lot of his wife’s secrets from watching her. Big Sue was a girl then, but she was a natural-born cook. When Uncle Isaac found that out, he let her have her own way. She could beat everybody now. Lord! When she had the right kind of victuals, people gnawed their fingers and bit their tongues just to smell the steam when she lifted the pot lids.

The next moon might bring cold weather. She must hurry and get these quilts pieced and have a quilting. She had quilts enough for herself. These were for Joy. She’d ask all the plantation women to Maum Hannah’s house, where the big room stayed ready for meeting on Wednesday nights, and for quiltings any day in the week. If it turned cold, Sherry would kill enough wild ducks for her to cook for the women to eat with the rice. Wild ducks and rice are fine. If it stayed warm, she’d cook chickens and rice, instead. Make a pilau, with plenty of hard-boiled eggs. Uncle Bill would give her the chickens.

Sherry loved Joy so much he’d get anything she wanted for this quilting! The women could easily quilt ten quilts a day. If they came early and worked fast they could do fifteen, but she’d be satisfied with six, for she wanted hers quilted right. With fine stitches, run in rows close together. Then the cotton batting could never slip, no matter how many times the quilts were washed.

She was piecing a “Monkey wrench” quilt now. She had a “Log-cabin” finished, and a “Primrose” and a “Star of Bethlehem” and a “Wild-goose Chase” and a “Pine-burr.” She had begun a “State-house Steps,” but that was a hard one to do. It couldn’t be worked out in a hurry and look right. She’d wait and finish it next year. Joy could wait for that one.

Some women don’t care how their quilts look. They piece the squares together any sort of way, but she couldn’t stand careless sewing. She wanted her quilts, and Joy’s, made right. Quilts stay a long time after people are gone from this world, and witness about them for good or bad. She wanted people to see, when she was gone, that she’d never been a shiftless or don’t-care woman.

XI

HUNTING ’POSSUMS AND TURKEYS

Breeze learned something new almost every day. He grew taller each week. His skinny muscles were filling out, his arms and legs growing longer and tougher. Big Sue said he’d be useful if he kept on. He fetched all the water they used from the spring, three full buckets at a time, one bucket on his head, one in each hand. He cut all the wood they burned, without fatigue, since Sherry had taught him the trick of swaying his body forward from the hips as he brought the ax down on the wood. Sherry made a game of wood-cutting, and could cut a thick oak log in two with nineteen whacks. Breeze took two or three times as many, but he did it with one or two less each day.