XXSEEKING
Itwas early dawn when Joy woke him. He must get up and fetch plenty of water, and cut some wood. By that time Uncle Bill would be here to stay with April and he could go to the woods and seek.
Breeze sat up and rubbed his eyes and tried to listen, but it was all he could do to keep from sinking back deep under the covers and pulling them over his head. He didn’t want to seek, he’d a thousand times rather sleep. But April spoke:
“Git up, Breeze! You don’ hear Joy talkin’ to you!” And Breeze opened his heavy eyes and sprang to his feet. He dressed, then put his bed in order, and went at his work. By the time it was done, Uncle Bill had come, and he was set free to pray.
Cocks were crowing, birds chirping, crows cawing. Uncle Bill said they were saying their morning prayers. Breeze must listen how earnestly they did it, and learn how to pray just as hard.
Everything out-of-doors was silvery with dew, and the early sun gave the earth a mysterious radiance that dazzled Breeze’s drowsy eyes as he dragged himself slowly along. The woods looked far away. In the distance their hazy darkness blent into the sky. The path to the corn-field was shorter, and it led toward the sunshine, whose warm yellow light drew every flower face toward it.
He reached the corn-field before the morning dewwas dry. The black furrows between the tall green rippling blades felt cool and damp. As a light breeze blew, the corn rustled and waved and the silks added their perfume to the fruity blossomy fragrance in the air.
Breeze sat down on the ground and looked up at the sky overhead, pondering. He couldn’t remember his sins. He hated Brudge, but that couldn’t be sinful, mean as Brudge was. Anybody who knew Brudge would hate him.
“Oh, Lawd,” he began, then halted. If he knew how to pray it would be easier. Where was Jesus? How could he make Jesus hear him? The blue sky where Heaven was looked high and far and empty.
Getting on his knees Breeze closed his eyes and repeated the words of Uncle Bill’s prayer as nearly as he could remember. Over and over he said them, until in spite of all his striving to keep awake, the stillness overcame him and he fell into a gentle doze. Something tickled his nose, then crawled across his lips. He jumped, hit at the pest, a straw. The sun’s midday light was a hard hot glare; the black shadows short. Emma stood over him, her white teeth shining in a broad grin that vexed him bitterly, a wisp of dry grass in her fingers.
“How you duh sleep! You ain’ gwine pray?” Emma giggled as she asked it.
Breeze rubbed his eyes and looked all around. He hated being caught, and Emma had no business tickling his face while he slept. Stung to the quick with shame and vexation, he snapped out angrily:
“How come you duh grin like a chessy-cat? Who you duh laugh at so frightenin’?”
His ill humor sobered her and she made haste to explain, “I ain’ laughin’ at you. I’m a-laughin’ atBrudge. Brudge is done found peace in dem woods back o’ we house. Lawd, e hollered so loud, I thought sho’ e had got in a yellow-jacket’s nest! Jedus, you ought to heared em!” Emma’s laugh rippled out and shook her slim shoulders so that the beads Joy had given her chinked merrily against the hot black skin of her little black neck. Her three-cornered face glowed with fun, her slanting eyes sparkled as they met Breeze’s, but he shrugged disdainfully. “I know dat ain’ so. Brudge didn’ start seekin’, not till dis mawnin’. E couldn’ find peace, not dat quick. You can’ fool me. Shucks!”
“I ain’ tryin’ to fool you. Gramma made me go see wha dat was ail Brudge, made em squall an’ holler so loud.” Emma’s face had got serious, her teasing eyes grave.
In spite of the too-big, ugly dress she wore and the long awkward sleeves that hung over her small hands, the child had a half-wild grace and lightness, and as she knelt down in the soft dusty furrow and one hand crept out from the folds of her dress toward Breeze, he grabbed it and held it before it could draw back.
“Breeze——” her husky little voice made his name a new thing. He could feel a smile twitch at his mouth. “Breeze—if you’d find peace, you wouldn’ be scared to git baptized?”
Breeze knelt beside her and he glowed, all on fire with courage now. “Who? Me? Lawd, I ain’ scared o’ nothin’. Not nothin’!”
Emma’s eyes widened with wonder and respect for his boasting. “You ain’ scared o’ nothin’ in de world?”
Breeze turned his head and spat far away like a grown-up man. “Not nothin’ in de world.”
Breaths of hot air drove the clouds along over their heads. A grasshopper played shrill faint music, a dove mourned softly, the corn blades rustled gently.
Breeze dropped her hand and grasped her thin shoulders, but she tore herself from his hold with a breathless laugh. Then he caught her arm, but she was stronger than he thought. The muscles in her small arm tightened under his fingers and, wriggling herself loose, Emma went flying down the corn row, calling back mockingly, daringly:
“Better go on an’ pray. A witch might git you!”
And Breeze answered boldly, his fear of God and the Devil all forgotten,
“I ain’ gwine pray. No! Wait on me, Emma! Don’ run so fast! You t’ink you kin outrun me! Good Lawd, you can’ do dat! I’ll show you so right now!”
At the cabin a crowd of people gathered. Breeze could hear them babbling together, then keeping silent while one voice rose high. There was no making out what it said, and Breeze went as fast as he could, eager to know what was the matter. He found Brudge telling his experience. The boy had told it over and over until his voice was hoarse and trembly, yet he kept on, excitedly, as the people, mostly women, urged him to tell them again what God had done for him. Brudge said he was away off in the woods praying. Down on his knees with his eyes wide open, looking up through the trees at the heavens, begging God to hear him, to give him some sign, to let him know his sins were forgiven, just as Uncle Bill said he must do. He had been there for an hour or two, calling on Jesus with every breath, when all of a sudden the light cut off, just like the lights in the Big House at night when the white folks go to bed. Everything was pitch black dark. There was not one sound anywhere. He thought he had died and it scared him so he raised up and hollered loud as he could; the light came back quick as a flash, with such a brightnesshe was mighty nigh blinded. All the trees over his head began waving their arms and shouting. All the clouds up the elements broke in half, and in the middle of them he could see people, crowds of people waving their arms and shouting. He jumped up and shouted with them! He felt light as any feather! The wind fair blew him along as he ran home to tell the people what he had seen this morning!
“Great Gawd, what a vision dat boy did have!”
“Dat’s de first time anybody on dis place ever did see right spang into Heaven!”
“Son, Gawd is sho’ blessed you to-day!”
“It makes me pure scared to hear de boy talk!”
“It sounds to me like Brudge is called to preach!”
“De Holy Sperit sho’ did knock em on de head. Listen how de boy talks!”
“Now ain’ it so? Brudge must l’arn how to read an’ write.”
“Sho’! A preacher has to read readin’ an’ writin’ too.”
“Don’ you know Leah is happy in Glory to-day!”
The mention of Leah’s name brought pitying groans.
“Po’ Leah. Gawd took em home too soon. Leah ought to be here to-day.”
Brudge’s ranting became louder, more breathless, as he declared God had made him so strong he could lift up a mule by himself. He would pray for April’s legs to grow back. God would answer his prayer. The people would soon see. April would be well.
April lay on the bed by the window, his short body covered over with a quilt. When Breeze peeped in at him, he threw out his long arms with an impatient gesture that made the flies rise with a buzz.
“Tell Uncle Bill I say come here!” he ordered, then he groaned and put his clasped hands under his head.Breeze felt vaguely uneasy. He whispered to Uncle Bill to hurry, and the old man’s feet stumbled up the steps, for Brudge’s unexpected conversion had him shaken and bewildered. But he steadied when April burst out furiously, “Whyn’ you make Brudge hush dat fool talk? Brudge’s mind ain’ never been solid, an’ now yunnuh’s gwine run em clean crazy! Tell dem people to go on home! Brudge went to sleep in dem woods. E ain’ seen nothin’ but a dream! No!”
Uncle Bill patted his shoulder and tried to cool his heat. “Brudge is just happy, son. Dat’s all. I know ezactly how de boy feels. I felt de same way when I found peace. You ain’ never been saved. Dat’s how come you don’ un’erstand. Brudge is called to preach, April. Sho’ as you’ born. You ought to be so t’ankful!”
“Great Gawd!” April fairly bellowed. “You is fool as Brudge! Whe’s Joy? Tell Joy to make Brudge hush dat fuss! I can’ stand so much racket! No!”
April’s eyes glowed fever bright and his forehead held drops of sweat. Nobody but Uncle Bill would have dared to cross him, and even Uncle Bill was upset.
“You mustn’ fret dis way, April. You’ll git you’ liver all hottened up. I’ll make Brudge stop talkin’, but you mustn’ holler like a baby. People’ll t’ink you’ mind ain’ solid. Anybody else but you would be rejoicin’!”
The yard was soon empty, the cabin still. Only Joy and Uncle Bill sat outside on the steps, talking in whispers.
That night Joy went out in a blustery wind and rain, and did not come home until late. The heavy steps that always left stealthily came inside along with hers. Doors creaked sharply. There were little hissing sounds like whispers. Maybe it was the wind.
April raised up on an elbow. Listened. Leaned toward Joy’s room and listened. Crawling out of bed on his long thin arms, he crept across the floor and strained his ear against the wall between his room and the room where Joy slept.
He crouched and listened but he made no sound. It was not the wind that he heard.
Suddenly, something inside him seemed to break. Something in his head or his breast. With a yell he beat on the door, and tried to break it down. Then he lost his balance and fell back on the floor where he lay and raved and cursed himself and Joy and God.
During the days that followed, April’s darkened room was filled with his wild delirium. Joy sat by him for hours at a time, brushing the flies away, wiping off his face with a cool wet cloth, trying to hush him, to lower his fever with the root teas Uncle Isaac brewed for him. Outside in the heat, the trees slept, the moss on them hung limp, the tree ferns were brown and lifeless.
Whenever Joy flung herself down on Breeze’s straw mattress in the corner to rest, Uncle Bill took her place, watching, waiting for some change to come. His big rough hands, blue at the nails and knuckles, squeezed each other distressfully, or stroked April’s restless fingers trying to stop their plucking, plucking, at the cover. Coaxing them to stand still. His old ears constantly listened at the window for the marsh birds to tell him if the tide came in or went out and his eyes were dim with pity and sorrow and love for April, who tossed on the bed, mumbling, raving.
Sometimes April thought the mules were loose in the fields and trampling the cotton, and cried out to stop them! Once he thought he had swallowed Joy’sfine diamond ring and it was cutting his chest to pieces. He babbled of boll-weevils and poison and ginning the cotton.
Uncle Bill tried to hold the weak nerveless hands, to steady them and keep them quiet. Over and over he prayed to God to have mercy on April, to give him back his right senses, not to let him die out of his mind, and at last his prayer was heard.
The night was sultry, the cabin parching hot. Joy had broken down, panic-stricken, and she knelt on the floor with her head on Uncle Bill’s knee. She burst into a storm of weeping that drowned out April’s raving, but Uncle Bill put his arms around her and took her into another room and made her go to bed. She must sleep. He’d wake her if he needed anything. Breeze would sleep with one eye open and jump up the minute Uncle Bill called him. Zeda and Jake were both coming at the first turn of the night after midnight. Joy must not fret and wear herself out. She’d poison her breast-milk and make her baby sick.
Midnight must have passed but dawn had not come when April called Uncle Bill so distinctly Breeze woke up, leaped to his feet, but Uncle Bill was at April’s bed.
“Uncle,” April called again weakly, “you’s wake, enty?”
“Yes, son, I’m right ’side you.” Uncle Bill took both April’s hands and held them close, while he leaned low to hear every word the sick man spoke.
“My time’s come, Uncle. I ain’ got much longer——” April’s voice climbed up, then dropped.
Uncle Bill looked up at the rafters. “Do, Jedus, look down. Do have mercy!”
“Don’ stop to pray! De time’s too short now!” April’s short patience had come back, but his shortened breath held it in sudden check.
“Uncle—my feets is cold—I feels death up to my knees——”
“Son, you ain’ got no feets; neither knees! Is you forgot?”
“No, I ain’ forgot. But I feels ’em—dey’s cold—— Listen, Uncle——”
April’s sense had come back. He was in his right mind, even if he did feel the feet and legs that had been gone for months. His low husky words were earnest.
“I ain’ scared to go. I’d sooner go dan stay. My time’s out. I’m done for. I know it. I got one t’ing to ask you. Not but one. You’ll do it, enty? I couldn’ rest in my grave—if you fail me——”
His breath cut off his words and he closed his eyes as it came with a rattle through his teeth. Uncle Bill called Breeze to open the window.
“Open em easy, son. Don’ wake up Joy, not yet,” he cautioned.
“Not yet,” April’s whisper echoed.
Outside, the black trees sounded restless. An uneasy pattering and rustling ran through the dry lips of the leaves. Flying insects buzzed into the room and beat against the walls with noisy humming wings. Moths flew wildly about the glass lamp on the floor at the foot of the bed. They were crazed by its smoky yellow bitter-smelling light.
“Uncle——” April’s breath stifled, his eyes widened with the strain, but he forced his lips to twist out the words he wanted to say.
“Bury me in a man-size box—— You un’erstan’?— A man—size—box—— I—been—six—feet—fo’—Uncle—— Six feet—fo’!”
The blaze in his eyes fell back, cold, dim. A long shudder swept over him. The tide had turned.
THE END