VIIITHE PREMISES
Breezeslept late next morning. When he woke Big Sue stood by his bed, looking straight into his eyes. A bar of sunlight fallen through a crack in the wooden window blind laid a dazzling band on her face.
“Looka de sun shinin’ on you, son. You is gwine be lucky. Git up now, I’m got to off a piece. But you’ breakfast is settin’ on de hearth. I bet you had a bad dream last night. Don’t tell it befo’ breakfast. Dat’ll make it come true.”
But Breeze couldn’t remember any dream at all, and, slipping out of Big Sue’s night-gown and into his own clothes, he took his pan of breakfast and went to sit on the front step in the sunshine while he ate. He swallowed down the grits and bacon grease in a hurry, keeping the sweet potato for the last. A lean spotted hound trotted up and sniffed at his feet and legs, then turned to the empty pan on the step and licked it clean. When he looked beseechingly at the potato, Breeze gave him a taste and patted his head and stroked his long silky ears and together they went to look around the premises.
Big Sue had told Breeze that Blue Brook was the finest plantation on the whole Neck, and the Big House the largest dwelling, but those chimneys, towering high as the tree-tops, and the tall closed windows and doors had a cold unfriendly look. The yard was empty exceptfor a few chickens and a flock of geese. The old gander looked at Breeze and flapped his wings and screamed out, and Breeze turned back, frightened by his threats.
Behind Big Sue’s cabin were a tiny fowl-house and a pig-pen with a big hog lying down inside. When Breeze looked over the fence the creature grunted and struggled to get to his feet. Fat had it weighted down, yet its snout made hungry snuffles at the empty trough, and the small bright eyes watched through the cracks to see if Breeze had brought any food. The hound stopped to smell a fresh mole-hill, then walked leisurely on, and Breeze left the hog to follow him and see what the premises held.
Weeds narrowed the path. Once a lizard barely got out of his way. He must watch out for snakes. The morning was sunlit, sweet with fragrance that the sun, already high up in the glittering sky, wrung out of the shrubbery; but everything was so silent.
As Breeze went toward the still shadowy garden, with its boxwood borders and bird pool and old gray sun-dial, Big Sue, unexpectedly, came out of the side door in the Big House and behind her came April, who had held him last night. Without a word April strode off in a different direction, but Big Sue called to Breeze that she’d walk with him. Going in front she led him past flowers of every color, bushes of all leaves, telling him about them as she went. Years ago the garden had been stiff and trimmed, and the shrubbery had grown in close-cut bushes between straight box hedges. But time had changed everything. Uncle Isaac was old and deaf, and instead of staying home at night and resting so he could work at the roses and keep them from running wild and getting all tangled up with vines, he ran around to birth-night suppers and cut up like a boy. She pointed out boughs that reached across the path.Clumps of paper-white narcissus, not waiting for spring, bloomed in the wrong places. White patches of sweet alyssum crept right up to the edge of the boxwood borders, the delicate perfume making the air honey-sweet. But it was out of place, and ought to be cut away. Uncle Isaac was too trifling to be the gardener now.
Tall tangled heads of grass were in some of the beds, and a bold vine whose topmost branch was gay with orange-scarlet bells swayed from the tip of a magnolia tree. The bright bunch of blossoms nodded at Breeze with a slow persistence, sunlight filled each flower cup, and its hot scent streamed out in the soft wind. There was something queer in its steady silent bowing. A light sound hissed through the stiff magnolia leaves whenever the mild wind freshened, but the magnolia tree held every crisp, brown-lined leaf still. Unmoved. The light stir of the morning’s breeze could not move that tall dark tree, which was splashed here and there with over-ripe blossoms.
“Son, is you see de way dat trumpet vine is a-wavin’ at you? Better bow back at em!”
Breeze did bow the best he knew how, but Big Sue laughed.
“When you bow, you must pull you’ foot.” She showed him how to do it.
She reached up and broke off a half-open bud, and tearing its creamy petals apart showed Breeze how they closed over a core of gold. She showed him the sun-dial marking the time of day. A spattering of water called them to see the birds enjoying a bird bath; a flock of pigeons dropped with a slanting flight, then hurried off. A tinkling of sheep bells told that a flock browsed peacefully not far away. When a blue-jay perched overhead with a screech, Big Sue shook a fatfist at him. “Git off,” she scolded. “You don’t know to-day’s Friday. Is you forgot you is due to tote a stick o’ wood to Satan? Git on to torment, lessen you done been dere a’ready dis mornin’!” A streak of scarlet flashed where a cardinal darted across a bright path of sunlight as a hammer banged down on a nail. Old deaf Uncle Isaac was mending a broken place in the fence, and talking to himself. His deaf ears had not heard Big Sue and Breeze, and his murmured talk droned on out of his stammering lips.
“Po’ old Uncle Isaac!” Big Sue sighed. “When e can’ talk to de livin’ e talks to de dead. His eyes is so full up wid speerits right now, he don’ see we. You kin see speerits, too, son, enty? You’ ma said so.”
Before Breeze had time to deny it, all of a sudden she turned on him and gave a sharp cry. “Looka here, boy! You been a-steppin’ in my tracks! I know it! A’ awful pain is come right on de top o’ my head! You done it! You needn’ shake you’ head. I was feelin’ good when I come in dis flowers yard. Git a stick! Now broke em in two an’ cross ’em! Put em in one o’ you’ tracks! Git me shet o’ dis pain! I declare to Gawd, dat’s a provokin’ t’ing you done! I was feelin’ so good too. If you try to conjure me, I’ll kill you!”
Breeze denied it humbly. He had not meant to step in her tracks. He didn’t even know it would work her harm. When he had placed the broken sticks as she bade him, she spoke more kindly, and warned him to be careful never to step in anybody’s tracks.
Once she missed and stepped in Uncle Isaac’s tracks and it gave him a terrible tooth-ache. She had to cross twenty sticks before she got him rid of it. Poor Uncle! They’d better not go near him. He was on the side of the garden where spirits stayed. Let him talk to them.
“My head is done better now, t’ank Gawd,” she sighed, adding that she’d ask Uncle Isaac to supper to-night. He could tell so many funny stories. He could explain, exactly, why the grass is green and the sky is blue. Why the sun shines in the daytime and the moon and stars shine at night. He knew what the thunder said when it spoke. He could whistle the first tune the wind ever whistled. One time, the night was a great big black giant that ran round the sun, trying and trying to catch the day. Uncle Isaac said so and he knew more about the first men and women who ever lived than Adam and Eve ever dreamed of. He got it all at first-hand, by word of mouth, from Africa, where the world itself was born and a terrible black God made all men black. Big Sue’s narrow black eyes softened, her voice grew mild, her fat fingers toyed with a rose. She said Uncle Isaac knew a strange tale about the high-tide and the evening star, and another about why the morning clouds eclipse the moon. They were pretty tales, all about love, but Breeze was too small to hear them.