IIICOUSIN BIG SUE
Breezehad 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-blackskin. 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 helived. 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 oldsow 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 hiddenfrom 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.
“Gi’ me de black all de time. White t’ings is too weakly!” she shouted gaily, as Uncle led the way towardthe flat. Big Sue followed, holding Breeze’s hand tight. She picked her way down the short sandy hill with slow uncertain steps.
“I ain’ use to shoes an’ dey hinders my feet in dis sand,” she explained loudly, but Uncle was busy starting the flat across the river. Grunting, straining until veins showed in his forehead, he finally got the waterlogged hulk to moving by means of a rusty cable and a curious narrow board with notches cut in one side so it could clutch the cable tight.
The sun fell lower as they slowly crossed. Colors of the sky on the still water made a band of flame, of scarlet and purple down the middle of the dark stream, that spread out into the marshy forest.
The old ferryman paused in his pulling and muttered, as he gazed at the sunset; then with a bright look at Breeze, and a chuckle, he began pulling hard again. A flock of crows streaked the sky, going home; a lone fish-hawk sailed not far behind them; tiny swamp sparrows twittered and chattered.
Night was coming and the whole world knew it. The wind dropped into a quiet whispering, waiting for the tide to turn. Every tree and leaf and bough, even the water itself, was darkening. Squirrels chittered softly in their nests, a wildcat yeowled gently. Breeze’s heart, that had been thumping miserably in his breast, now beat up in his throat and the lump that had risen when he told his mother good-by swelled bigger and harder than ever. Tears that had been stinging his eyes all the way began rolling down his cheeks.
He turned his back, and easing a hand stealthily up to his face, tried to brush them away. Cousin Big Sue mustn’t see him cry. Sis said he must be a man and try to be good.
He suddenly forgot his sorrow when swarms of tiny,almost invisible insects rose from nowhere, and settled in his eyes and ears and nostrils and teeth, with a fierce singing and stinging that was maddening. He took off his ragged hat and tried to fight them away, but they ignored its waving. As fast as he killed what seemed to be handfuls, by crushing them on his face and neck and bare legs, others took their places. Sand-flies and mosquitoes were eating him up. Cousin Big Sue had to fight them too, but Uncle was not troubled at all.
“Is de sand-flies pesterin’ yunnuh?” he asked mildly.
“Great Gawd, dey sho’ is!”
“Git some sweat out you’ armpits an’ rub on you’ face. Dat’ll run ’em!”
“Do, Uncle! Fo’ Gawd’s sake! I ain’ no filthy ol’ man like you! I washes myself!”
“Wha’ dat you say, daughter?”
Big Sue broke into a laugh. “I ain’ say nuttin! Not nuttin!”
Uncle calmly worked on, unconscious of what she said. Sweat trickled over his wrinkled face, but it kept its pleasant smile. More than once Big Sue opened her mouth to speak, but closed it without a word, and her face was as doleful as if, like Breeze, she was lonely and homesick.
Breeze wondered bitterly why he hadn’t run away and hidden down in the branch where nobody would ever find him? Baby partridges, or new hatched guineas, will sneak under a leaf and stay there until they die before they’ll let a stranger find them. Why didn’t he do it? He would rather die by himself in the woods than be here on his way to live with this strange woman whose wind was broken.
The sticky mud on the bank had shown no respect for Big Sue’s wide-laced shoes. It clung to their solesand stained their shiny tops. The hem of her stiff starched white apron was streaked with dirt. Everything here was strange and unfriendly. The water and trees, the tangled vines and rank undergrowth were all dark and scary. Snakes and alligators and hog-bears and jack-o’-lanterns lived in such places. More than likely hants and plat-eyes and fever and spirits were thick all around. Suppose he’d see them now, with his second-sight! He didn’t want to see anything but his home yonder behind him, and it was too far to see even the smoke rising out of its low clay chimney. A thick green dusk had risen up from the earth, cutting off the shore on the other side of the river.
The cable slapped the water as it drew the flat across. The old man kept up his grunting and straining. He was not afraid, although he was so old that the years had dried up the flesh on his crooked bones. Breeze jumped sharply, startled and bewildered, when, without any warning, the old man’s laughter cackled out. Looking down where the old bent forefinger pointed, he caught sight of an alligator which settled slowly, noiselessly, under the water until two eyes and a nose tip made three small dark bumps above the smooth surface.
“De alligator see you, son!” the old man squeaked out gleefully, and Big Sue broke into shouts of laughter.
“Great Gawd,” she cried. “Do look how e gaze at you, Breeze. E mus’ be hongry! E don’ see how you’s po’ as a snake! You’ li’l’ bones would pure rattle inside dat big creeter’s belly.”
Stinging homesickness filled Breeze’s heart. Why had he come? Truly, this was out of his world. But there was no way to turn back. None. Shrill piercing bird-cries that rose and fell out of the sky answered something that ached in his heart.