IXSATURDAY AFTERNOON
Soonafter the noon bell rang on Saturday, Big Sue gave Breeze a panful of dinner, cooked on the hearth where a sleepy fire nodded and dozed over a few chunks of hard oak wood.
“Hurry an’ eat, son, I want you to go wid me to de sto’. I got a lot to buy, an’ I’m scared to come home by myself after dark. To-morrow’s Sunday. I got to buy a kerosene an’ some rations. I’m gwine to git you some clothes, too.”
As he followed Big Sue down the long avenue Breeze was careful not to step in her tracks. Outside the gate, the road ran through a gloomy forest, where tall pines and live-oaks stood among magnolias and cedars and fragrant myrtle thickets. Big Sue talked about the country as they walked on.
The old road, now dwindled to this narrow dim way, was once a fine highway. Important gentlemen and lovely ladies used to drive over it in fine carriages drawn by fiery horses. The gold and silver on the harness used to blind people’s eyes the same as summer lightning. Men who had run the whole country had gone along here many a time, right where the trees sprung tall in the old dead ruts. Thorny yupon branches reached out and scratched Breeze on the arm, trying to tear the holes in his shirt bigger than they were. Big Sue called out greetings, for numbers of black people were walking the same way. Some in groups. Some walking by twos andthrees. All dressed in their Sunday best, going to the Landing.
The boat stopped on its way up and down the river twice a week, bringing supplies and mail from the town in the river’s mouth to the shabby little stores that squatted along the water’s edge. This row of dilapidated houses was strung close together, and scrawny, mule-bitten hackberry trees, some with hollows clear through their bodies, stood in front of the wide-open doors, making hitching-posts for the restless beasts that had to be tethered. Many of the mules and oxen stood free to go if they liked, but they waited, dozing, switching flies, the oxen chewing cuds.
Flashy colors of hats and ribbons, gay headkerchiefs and curiously fashioned dresses wove in and out as crowds of black girls and women tramped up and down the path that ran from one shop to another. Sunday shoes, dulled with gray dust, made a cheerful squeaking as they blotted out tracks made in the soft dirt by bare feet.
Some of the men were tall, with bold strong faces. Brawny muscles of powerful arms and legs could be seen bulging under faded patched shirts and overalls.
Droll shapes of merry laughter mixed with greeting voices. There were graceful bows and handshakes and kindly inquiries. Old men, who might have had great-grandchildren, tottered about importantly on uncertain legs, bantering the girls with words that belied the white hairs bristling from their withered ears. White wool peeped through their tattered wool hats. Rheumatism spitefully twinged their joints and put a hitch in every gay step. But lively spirits cheered their shriveled flesh and lightened clouded eyes. Laughter deepened the creases in old wrinkled faces, and swelled the tendons in ropy wilted throats.
Uncle Isaac and Uncle Bill sat, side by side, on a box outside the post-office, chewing tobacco and spitting with calm delight. After each bit of close talk, Uncle Isaac broke into sudden fits of high cracked laughter, and pounded Uncle Bill gleefully on the back. He was old and deaf, yet he took a full part in the pattern of Saturday’s joy. Breeze wished he could hear one of the stories that made him laugh so, but he knew by Uncle Bill’s bashful look that those stories should never have been told at all.
“How’s you’ rheumatism?” Uncle Bill shouted, to change the subject.
“E’s better. A lot better dan e been. I been totin’ a’ oak-gall in my pocket ’stead o’ dem buckeyes. I b’lieve de oak-gall is stronger. Seems to me like I kin git ’roun’ more better since I made de change.”
Uncle Bill looked doubtful and his head shook a little, but he spat thoughtfully, then yelled, “I made me a li’l’ pokeberry wine, an’ I tell you, suh, it’s a fine t’ing! A fine t’ing! I ain’ hardly been bothered wid any kind o’ misery since I been drinkin’ em.”
Uncle Isaac’s mild old eyes watched every word, for they had to help his deaf ears understand. “You say elderberry wine?” he queried.
“No! Pokeberry! You know pokeberry, enty? Elderberry wine wouldn’ do rheumatism no good. My Gawd, no,” Uncle Bill answered, laughing at such a mistake. “You ain’ turned to no lady, is yuh?”
“No, t’ank Gawd!” Uncle Isaac screeched. “If it wan’t fo’ my crippled knee, I wouldn’ feel no more’n forty years old. No, suh. Not a bit more’n forty. April’s gwine git a rattlesnake to make me some snake tea. Dat’s a good medicine.”
“E might be fo’ true,” Uncle Bill agreed. “I ever did hear say so. But my stomach is too weak to standsich a strongness. Rattlesnake tea be de same as con’trated lye! Better mind how you projec’ wid em, Uncle!”
“Sho’! Sho’! I’m old enough to know medicine ain’ somet’ing fo’ play wid. I ain’ no chillen, son. I been in dis world a good while.”
The mail was not open yet, and Big Sue waited for it all to be given out so the storekeeper, who was postmaster too, could let her have what she wanted. Breeze stood close beside her, watching the black people who loitered and laughed and talked, as they crowded into the dirty crank-sided store. Each man invariably paid her a compliment, such as, “I declare to Gawd, Miss Big Sue, you look sweet,” or, “It do my eyes good to see you.” Uncle Bill said, “I’m gwine buy you a treat soon as de mail is finished.”
The men took off their hats and pulled a forelock and drew one foot back to make their bows. The women made easy graceful curtsies. Big Sue whispered to Breeze that he must pull his foot and bow too. Look at Uncle Bill and Uncle Isaac. He must learn manners. But Breeze hadn’t the heart to try here where so many would see him.
Outside, near the road, Brudge, a black boy as ragged as Breeze, but apparently happy, parched peanuts in a round, black, fire-heated oven. Over and over he patiently turned the sooty cylinder with a black iron handle, all the time chattering and grinning, as from time to time he dished out paper sacks-full, not only for the children, but for grown men and women who bought them to eat right then. The smell of the peanuts was delicious, but it was almost smothered by the scent of fried fish, which came from a shack near by.
Big Sue said it was a restaurant, and Breeze was craning his neck to see inside when April took him by thehand and led him in, while Big Sue, laughing as she came, walked behind them. The afternoon light, aided by a large kerosene lamp, whose glass shade was dim with smoke, shone on the white oil-cloth that covered several small tables. Big Sue said, “Set down, Breeze,” and he dropped into a chair by a table. He ate big thick slices of store-bought baker’s bread that the boat had brought from town and squares of fried fish that Big Sue said were caught in the sea by regular fishermen.
April had a powerful look. He was very tall, his forehead high, his mouth straight and wide, his bony chin and cheek-bones set forward. He left most of his good bread broken all up but uneaten on the greasy tin plate.
“Whyn’t you eat you’ victuals, April?” Big Sue asked him.
“I ain’ so hongry, not dis evenin’,” he answered, smiling and with his glowing eyes on Breeze.
Reaching a long hand down in his pants pocket, he took out a piece of paper money and gave it to her. “Buy de boy some clothes, Big Sue. Feed em good, too. I want em to grow.”
Big Sue took it and told Breeze to go outside and watch the people until she came.
Some of the women and girls were fat and funny-looking, but others were slender, with well-formed bodies. All of them looked at Breeze searchingly, some slyly, but most of them with brazen eyes. Many of the older women were smoking small clay pipes, and when they laughed their teeth showed brown, stained with tobacco.
Young men strutted past them, with hats cocked on one side of their heads. Some caught the girls’ hands and held them and offered to treat them. Bottles of coca-cola and bags of candy rivaled peanuts and thesmall sweet-cakes, just come on the boat from town in a big wooden box that opened like a trunk. As Breeze gazed, his mouth watered at the sight of so many good things to eat.
Big Sue kept talking to April, who stood strong as an oak, his eyes riveted on her face. She looked uneasily at the door when he took her hand. As she drew it away he laughed, then spat far outside and left her.
Pulling up her skirt, Big Sue got a handkerchief out of her underneath pocket, and untying the knot in its corner, added the piece of paper money to what it already held. She gave Breeze two pennies. “Go buy you a cake, son,” she bade him. Then she halted him with, “Wait, gi’ me back dem pennies. Here’s a nickel. Git t’ree. I want one o’ dem cakes myself.”
Forgetting his fear in his eagerness for the sweet-cake, Breeze ran into the store next door. Every man and woman who had come to do serious purchasing carried a crocus sack into which the things were crammed: groceries, cloth, shoes, were all crowded in on one another. Those who bought kerosene had it in quart glass bottles tied with strings around the necks.
Breeze had never seen so many red sweaters in his life. They were in all shapes and sizes and conditions. Some quite new. Some patched and faded. Some with rolled collars. Some with frayed elbows. They were worn with blue overalls and khaki breeches, white aprons and full skirts and short skimpy dresses. Old and young wore them jauntily, as a sort of badge of Saturday’s joy.
The doorway was hidden as the happy people pressed in and out of the store. The sidewalk, thick flaked with bits of white oyster shell, became trashy with empty peanut hulls, and scraps of tissue-paper torn from candy kisses.
Everybody looked happy and light-hearted. Breeze envied them their easy friendly ways, their gaiety. As he stood apart, looking on, listening to them, he felt more homesick than ever. Even the sweet-cake, that dropped rich crumbs on the floor with every bite he took, couldn’t make him forget that he was a stranger here.
The postmaster called out Big Sue’s name, and there was a dead silence, then much laughter. “Who? Big Sue Goodwine? My Gawd! Who dat wrote she a letter?” Breeze was sent in a hurry to call her to come get it. There was much chaffing. “It’s de sheriff, Big Sue. Dat’s who.” And, “You got so much beaux you can’ member who is home an’ who’s gone off.”
When Big Sue stumbled in half out of breath, they called out to her, “Hurry up an’ read em. Le’ we hear de news!”
But Big Sue sucked her teeth and said, “I don’ tell ev’ybody my business. Not me!” She took the letter and put it deep down in her apron pocket where not a soul could even see it.
The mail was all given out at last, and the buying was done. The threads of color unraveled as the negroes left the stores and walked away down the road, some young couples hand in hand. Big Sue was among the last to start buying, for she had spent the time talking with her friends. She waited until the store was almost empty, then she chose a pair of pants and two shirts for Breeze, holding the garments up to his body to get the right size. She gave him the package to hold, saying, “Walk roun’ an’ look at de store. I want to git my letter read.”
The store was almost clear of people, but its air was still thick with the acrid smell of hot sweaty bodies. Breeze knew few of the things offered for sale, for therickety shelves were crammed with much besides cloth and shoes. He recognized the gay paper-covered tin cans of salmon, but the little bottles of cologne labeled “Hoyt’s German” were strangers to him. He couldn’t read, so he couldn’t tell that paper covers on a big batch of china jars claimed in emphatic black words that they held a cure for the darkness of dusky skins, or that the few bottles left on a shelf that was lately full would straighten the kinks out of crinkly hair.
Heavy sacks of green coffee berries were piled high between paunchy barrels of moist brown sugar, and smaller, neater barrels of pure white flour. Bolts of scarlet flannel waited to make garments that would keep the cold from old painful knees and shoulders. Rolls of gay outing and checked homespun for dresses were out on the counter. Piles of strong brogans were only a few steps away from boxes of Sunday shoes. Kits of chewing tobacco stood near a lot of little cloth bags full of Bull Durham. Cakes with pink and white icing, and red-striped sticks of candy were under a glass case along with black and white ball thread and needles and fish-hooks.
The big kerosene lamp, tied with a wire to a rafter overhead, filled the room with a pale yellow flare of light that showed the floor, whitened with cornmeal, and spattered with stains of greasy salt that fell on it whenever fat chunks of cured hog-meat were taken out of the barrels and passed over the counter to the customers.
When at last nobody else was in the store, Big Sue reached down in her pocket and got out her letter. “Please, suh, read em fo’ me. I’m ravin’ to know who’s wrote me a letter,” she asked. The storekeeper was a kind-looking white man with blue eyes and red skin, and a mouth stained at both corners withtobacco. He wiped his hand on his trousers, then took the letter and tore it open and took out a single sheet covered with pencil writing.
“It’s from Silas Locust. He’s your own husband, isn’t he?”
“Great Gawd!” Big Sue fairly panted. She put the fat hand up to her breast and held it there for a minute before she could get breath enough to say, “Do hurry, suh. Tell me wha’ dat nigger is writin’ to me ’bout.”
The letter said Silas was in Wilmington, North Carolina. He was a preacher now, and married to a big fine-looking yellow woman, who had three nice children for him. But lately his mind kept turning back to Big Sue and Blue Brook Plantation. He wanted to see them. He was coming home, in short. Big Sue repeated the words “in short” two or three times. She seemed to have no feeling against Silas at all, or against the fine-looking yellow woman he had married.
When the storekeeper handed the letter back to her, saying, “You may as well get married, too, now that Silas has a wife,” she gave a shamefaced giggle at the idea and said she couldn’t marry, not with a living husband. The storekeeper said she needn’t laugh, she’d do it yet, and she owned that she had thought about it a little.
The last time she went on an excursion to town, a man who had a nice restaurant took her to ride in a painted hack, and said he’d buy her an organ if she’d marry him. They could run the restaurant together. (She giggled again.) But now she was glad she hadn’t done it, since Silas was a preacher, and he’d be a-coming to see her, in short. Her sides shook, and her round eyes rolled, until a serious thought came to her mind, and she inquired, soberly, “Did Silas say if he’s Runnin’Water Baptist, or a Stale Water?” The storekeeper said Silas hadn’t mentioned either one, and Big Sue pondered over it until the white man asked her if Silas came back what she’d do with all her other beaux. Jake and Uncle Bill and Uncle Isaac, too, and what about the foreman, April?
“Great Gawd! Do hush!” Big Sue shouted with clamorous laughter, as each name was mentioned. “You make me too shame. I don’ care nothin’ ’bout none o’ dem old mens! Not me! An’ April just got me to fetch dis li’l’ boy here to Blue Brook. E’s April’s own, by a ’oman on Sandy Island.”
But the storekeeper was in earnest, and he said, “If I were you, whether Silas ever comes home or not, I’d leave April alone. Leah will get you if you don’t. You’ve forgotten her gums are blue, haven’t you? She’ll bite you some day, and what will happen then? You’ll die, and those white folks will have to hunt another cook when they come to Blue Brook to shoot ducks. Better be careful. Blue gums are worse than a rattlesnake bite. Leah’s not going to stand outside that restaurant and see you eating bread and fish with her husband inside, without doing something about it. I heard her say so a while ago.”
Big Sue tossed her head. “Humph! I ain’ scared o’ Leah. Fat as e is, I could squeeze em to deat’ in one hand.” She opened and clenched her powerful fists. Years of kneading dough had given strength to her thick wrists and round fingers, for all the soft cushion of flesh that covered them.
It was late and Big Sue and Breeze took a short-cut by a path that ran through the woods, then by a smooth planted field where new oats sprouted green tips and covered the earth. They looked tender against the dark even green of the trees. The evening light was thin andmisty. Shadows and colors and forms all melted into a cool pale dusk.
Big Sue warned, “Watch out for snakes, son. I can’ smell good. A fresh cold is got my nose kinder stop up. A cold ever did hinder my smellin’. I must go stand round de stables a while to-morrow. Dat’ll broke up a cold quicker’n anyt’ing else.”