VBLUE BROOK
Littleby little the cart creaked along, leaving the grove of live-oaks at the landing behind, then crossing the pasture where the rich land lay unplowed, unsown, but covered with lush grass and sprinkled with flowers. Some of them bloomed so close to the ruts that their heads were caught in the cart wheels and shattered.
The fields came next, ripe corn-fields, hay-fields ready to be harvested, brown cotton-fields, dripping with white locks of cotton. Whirls of yellow butterflies played along the road. Flocks of bull-bats darted about overhead in the sky, twittering joyfully as they caught gnats and mosquitoes for their supper. White cranes flew toward sunset, field larks sang out, killdees rose and sailed off crying. The whole earth was full of sound.
Beyond the field near the river a group of low houses, “the Quarters,” crouched in a grove of tall trees. Smoke from the chimneys settled in long bands of still blue haze. Breeze could smell its oak flavor. Human voices called out to one another, children shouting, laughing, playing, all of them strangers to him. It set his limbs to quivering, his heart to fluttering. He had nobody here. Nobody!
On a path that skirted the cotton field a skinny little black girl swinging on the end of a rope was being jerked along by a large red cow that stubbornly refused to follow the narrow path threading across the field.The beast had run out between the rows of cotton stalks, and with a deft tongue was licking, right and left, swallowing lock after lock of white staple. Uncle got to his feet.
“Git a stick, Emma! Lick em! April’ll kill you, an’ de cow too, if you knock out da cotton! Lawd, de field’s white! We sho’ made a crop dis year!”
The girl’s quick eyes glanced back, her small mouth gave a grin. Taking one end of the rope for a whip she fell to beating on the sides and back of the cow with such zeal that it left off its eating, and with a long mournful low, turned into the path that crossed the field and led toward the Quarters. The child tugged at the rope and strove to master the beast, whose dragging steps raised a cloud of dust that shone as it floated low through the evening’s bright afterglow.
The dusk crept out across the fields wiping out the day’s light. Fires in the cabins made every doorway shine. Long blue streams of smoke rose up from the chimneys and trailed in the sky. Tiny birds flitted and cheeped in the thickets. Sheep bleated. Shouts and snatches of song mingled with wagons rattling.
“Emma’s a funny li’l’ creeter!” Big Sue remarked. “E look like a witch to me.”
But Uncle hadn’t heard her, for he was busy jerking the rope lines, trying to hurry Julia’s slow steps. When a closed iron gate finally embarred them, Julia stopped short and Uncle gave a sigh. “T’ank Gawd, we’s home at last.”
At each side of the gate was a house: one a small church, with a steep roof and pointed windows; the other a cabin with a fire blazing high in its wide chimney.
Big Sue yelled out at the top of her voice, “Do, Uncle! Please, suh! Go all de way wid us.”
But the old man pretended not to hear her, and said to Breeze, “Son, I knowed you’ grampa good, when e wa’n’t as high as you. You’ grampa was my own sister’s chillen.”
Then he got out of the cart, went into the cabin and came out bringing a big iron key. He unlocked the gate and opened it wide enough for them to pass through.
Big Sue shouted in a coaxing tone, “Do, Uncle, let Julia take us all de way. I so scared o’ de boggy place yonder in de middle o’ de avenue. If I was to git in em Gawd knows how deep I’d sink down.”
At the thought of such a dreadful thing Uncle joined in Big Sue’s gales of laughter, chattering in between his cackles. “Great Gawd, daughter! Sho! You right! I better go long wid you! Da bog can’ fool me. I know em too good. I’ll go long an’ show you de way.”
“You ought to try an’ git em drained befo’ de buckra comes home dis winter. Dat bog likened to swallowed up a big awtymobile las’ year.”
Breeze was sure Uncle Isaac heard her, but instead of answering, the old man gave a powerful grunt and said the weather would be casting up for rain soon. The misery in his crippled knee had been jumping up and down all day long.
Big Sue told Breeze “de buckra” were white people who owned the plantation. They didn’t stay here much, but they would come from up-North as soon as frost killed out the fever here and wild ducks got thick in the rice-fields.
The wabbly cart creaked slowly on. The weird loneliness and strangeness of the twilit avenue made Breeze feel very lonely and sorrowful. The mule’s feet were heavy and made unwilling logy steps as they slowly carried Breeze farther and farther from all the paths and places he’d ever known.
Uncle Isaac jumped out of the wagon, and putting the rope lines in Big Sue’s hands, began poking and feeling with his stick in the still black water that covered the two ruts in the driveway. Julia must keep to the right of the road. The middle looked safe, but it was tricky. It didn’t show how deep and miry the mud in it was. It couldn’t fool Lula, but Julia was strange to it. With his stick and queer words he told Julia exactly where to walk until the bad boggy place that Big Sue feared was behind them. He’d walk the rest of the way. Julia would move faster if he went ahead.
The long avenue was bordered with enormous live-oak trees, whose great low branches, almost hidden by drooping gray moss, completely shut the road in, making it a long damp dimly-lighted shadow. Uncle pegged along steadily in front, his stick stepping as importantly as either crooked leg. Once in a while he turned around and spilled out broken stammering words, his cheerful grins showing his empty gums.
The avenue of those gloomy moss-hung oaks began to seem endless, for the road was soft and wet and the mule would not hurry, but at last a white fence made of slender pickets stood in front. Julia stopped short and Uncle Isaac sighed. “You an’ de li’l’ boy may as well git out now. You kin go de rest o’ de way by you’se’f.”
He suggested that they’d better go through the front yard. Nobody was at home so it wouldn’t matter. The path around the side was weedy. Snakes were walking fast now and he’d hate for Breeze to be bitten as soon as he set foot on Blue Brook.
Taking off his ragged cap, he bowed a low good night. He was glad a boy blessed with second-sight had come to live on the plantation. April was wise to get him here.
Big Sue thanked him, and, taking Breeze by thehand, led him through the gate and along the driveway that curved between box-borders around a large bed of shrubbery that Big Sue said was shaped like a heart.
If the white folks were home they couldn’t come this way, but since they weren’t she was glad for Breeze to see the Big House. It was the finest and largest one ever built on the Neck, and that was saying a lot, for in the old days, before most of the houses were burned or left to rot down, the Neck was a vast rich country.
In the fading light the great white house had an old gray look like everything else here, from Julia and the wool on Uncle Isaac’s head, to the moss swinging down from the huge age-twisted limbs of the giant oaks. Breeze counted the six white columns rising from the brick-paved porch, a step above the ground, to the corniced roof. Every door, every green window shutter was closed. No sign of smoke rose from the tall red brick chimneys. The background of shrubs and flowers was deadly still and so full of deep darkness, Breeze held his breath.
Big Sue sniffed. “Lawd, ain’t de flowers sweet? Jedus, have mercy! Dey pure cuts at my heart-strings! Watch whe’ you step, son. Seems to me like I smell a snake too.”
“No’m, dat’s a watermelon.”
“Enty? Dey smell a good deal alike, rattlesnakes an’ watermelons. It’s easy to take one fo’ de other, specially when de watermelons is kind o’ green.”
They crossed the back yard, which was clean-swept and white with sand, then passed by the kitchen where Big Sue cooked the white folks’ victuals. It was a long low whitewashed building with plenty of room inside, but Big Sue said when the duck shooting and deer hunting started that kitchen could hardly hold all the game. Not only ducks and deer, but partridges and wildturkeys and squirrels and oysters and turtles. As soon as a killing frost made the place safe from fever they’d be coming. Lots of ducks were already here. Lord, how she had to turn! Those white folks were heavy eaters.
Breeze could make himself mighty useful helping her, bringing in stove wood, running fast with the hot waffles, so they’d get to the dining-room before they got cold. Cold waffles are not fit to eat, and the kitchen was so far off it took quick moving feet to get anything into the house crisp and hot. But it’s dangerous to have a kitchen on to a house. Some of the best houses on the Neck caught fire and burned down as soon as kitchens were built up close to them.
A short straight clear path ran from the kitchen to the door of Big Sue’s home, a squatty cabin of whitewashed boards with the floor of its tiny front porch only one step up.
Big Sue pulled up her top skirt and her fat hand fumbled for the pocket of her petticoat, her hussy, she called it, where she carried her house key tied to a small flat piece of wood. She unlocked the padlock fastening the rusty chain that held the door tight shut, and went into the dark front room.
A few coals blinked with red eyes from out of a mound of ashes in the big fireplace. Big Sue well-nigh jarred them out when she threw a heavy knot of fat lightwood on them.
“Git down on de hearth an’ blow up de fire, Breeze. I got to git off dese shoes. My toes is pure got de cramp wid dem.”
While Breeze placed the fat knot carefully on the live coals, and blew on them with well-aimed puffs of his breath until a bright yellow flame sent smoke and sparks flying up the chimney, Big Sue groaned withtrying to bend low enough to reach the strings in her shoes. She gave it up saying:
“Do unlace dese strings, son. My wind is too short fo’ me to strain a-tryin’ to bend down low.”
As his nimble fingers quickly undid the hard knots and the wide flat shoes were slipped off her fat feet, the firelight flamed past him and lit up the room. The walls were covered with newspapers, the floor was scoured almost white, and the wooden bed in the corner puffed up high with its feather mattress and many-colored quilt.
Taking her shoes off made Big Sue a different person. From being heavy and slow she became light on her feet and quick. She took a black iron spider off the hearth and put it over the clear hot blaze, then dropped slices of white bacon on it to cook. While the bacon hissed and curled up with frying, Big Sue pulled sweet potatoes out from under the pile of hot ashes in one corner. Those that a squeeze from her fingers showed soft and well done she put in a pan to be eaten, the others were put back in the ashes to cook longer. She stirred a pot full of white cornmeal mush; collard greens, cooked with chunks of bacon, half filled another. The smell of food went all through the cabin every time a pot-lid was lifted.
Big Sue gave Breeze a tin pan and a spoon, while she took another; but just as she leaned down to dip up the food she glanced toward the bed. Breeze had put his hat on it. She stopped still and glared at him.
“Great Gawd, boy! You put bad luck on my Joy’s bed. I got a good mind to lick you. Take dis pin. Go stick em in da hat. Don’ never put a hat on no bed. You ain’ had much raisin’, or you’d know better.”
Breeze took the pin and stuck it, as she said, in the hat’s crown. It must stay there until morning,then he must hang the hat on a nail in the newspapered wall.
“Lawd,” she sighed as she leaned over the pot again, “dat hat sho’ scared me. S’pose I didn’ had a pin! Come fill you’ pan now. Eat a-plenty. I want you to grow fast so you’ll git big enough to help me work. Put some pot liquor off de greens on you’ mush. Mush an’ pot liquor is good fo’ you. It’ll stick to you’ ribs. Sweet potatoes an’ fat meat’ll fatten you too. You’s too small. You’ ma says you’s gwine on twelve, but you can’ be dat old! I hope to Gawd you ain’ a runt!”
Breeze was ready to cry, and she changed her tone and told him that April had a goat for him to break and ride and drive, if he’d be a good boy and mind all she said. April would get a goat harness and a goat wagon, too. Breeze must get the goat tame before the little white boy who lived in the Big House came home. White people are so subject to fever, they can’t risk even one night on the river before killing frost. When the nights get warm, in the spring, they have to go away. White people have some mighty weak sickly ways.
Breeze had eaten too much. He was packed so full he felt tight and uneasy. He wanted to go home to his mother, but Big Sue kept talking fast to keep his mind from dwelling on his troubles. Over and over she said he was a lucky boy to be here with her at Blue Brook. While he washed his pan and spoon, she got a tin basin off the water-shelf by the door and poured it half full of hot water out of the big black kettle simmering on the hearth. She gave it to Breeze with a big new bar of turpentine soap. “Wash you’ feet good and get ready for bed, son.”
But he had no night-clothes, no day clothes either, except the few he brought tied up in a white cloth. He couldn’t sleep between her clean white sheetsin those dirty breeches and that filthy shirt! No! His tears poured out when she got a great big garment out of the trunk in the corner, and putting it over his head drew the great sleeves up over his arms. As she buttoned it up at the neck, her laughing broke into such funny snorts Breeze had to stop crying to look at her. Her wind must be broken fo’ true!
He had to sleep in the big bed in the corner, Joy’s bed, to-night, to take off the bad luck his hat had put on it. To-morrow night he’d take the bed she fixed for him in the shed-room where Lijah used to sleep when he was a little boy.
When Breeze crawled into Joy’s fine bed, the soft feathers rose up gently, kindly, around his tired body, and Big Sue leaned over and gave him several light pats.
“Sleep good, son. Dream a nice dream.” She fixed the big pillow under his head, and drew up the quilts close over his shoulders. “All you dream to-night’ll come true, so don’t git on you’ back an’ dream a bad dream. Sleep on you’ side. So.”