THE TURKEY HUNTER
Sabey, a queer, misshapen mulatto, almost an albino, with green eyes and yellow wool lighting and thatching a shrewd and twisted, though good-natured, monkey face, lived, a few years after the war, on Pon Pon. His wife, Bess, a good-looking black girl, was devoted to him as a good husband and a first-rate provider. When twitted by the other negro women with her husband’s lack of personal pulchritude, she was always ready with a retort.
“Mekso you marri’d monkey fuh man, Bess?”
“Sabey oagly en’ him look lukkuh monkey fuh true, but him iz uh good puhwiduh en’ no odduh man haffuh come een him house fuh feed him wife, en’Stepneynebbuh come een needuh.”
Sabey lived in a cabin at the edge of the woods, far away from the other plantation settlements, seldom mixing with the other negroes, who rather feared him, having a vague sort of belief in his ability to throw spells. When not hunting, he worked, but he was usually hunting in winter, and hunting successfully, for although his piece was one of the condemned army muskets carried by so many low-country negroes after Freedom, he was a good shot and possessed infinite patience and considerable woodcraft. Energetic, too, his twisted legs carried him for miles through the forests and along the backwaters and abandoned ricefields where, creeping on all-fours and worming his way through cane-brakes and briars, he frequently surprised summer ducks, and occasionally mallard and teal, feeding on the grass seeds along the margins, orthe rich acorns from the live-oaks whose far-flung boughs stretched over the canals, and Sabey was an economist and seldom wasted shot on a single bird. On frosty mornings when he peeped over the embankments and saw green-wing teal strung upon a floating log basking in the first rays of the wintry sun, he would maneuver and crawl around, regardless of bogs or briars, until he got into a position where he could line them up, when, after his old “muskick” had spoken, he would sometimes gather up a dozen or more, which he sold to “de buckruh” on the plantations, or at the railway station; but it was as a turkey hunter that Sabey achieved distinction in the community.
Wild turkeys were very plentiful in the low-country soon after the war, and in the winter season flocks sometimes came up in the live-oak avenues and tangled gardens of the war-ruined plantations, making a boy’s heart thump against his ribs as he watched them picking up the acorns just out of gunshot of his little single-barrel. In roaming the woods, Sabey knew every dogwood knoll between the Stackyard and Beaver Dam, and when, in midwinter or later, he saw where the turkeys had “scratched” among the leaf mould for the glossy red berries that form their favorite wild food, he scattered handfuls of peas or rough rice about and returned a day or two later to see if the turkeys had taken the bait. If the scattered grain was untouched, he would offer temptation elsewhere until the wary birds had overcome suspicion and established relations with the rich man-grown food placed before them. The bait once taken, Sabey returned at two or three-day intervals and spread the feast anew, which after a while came to be to the turkeys as their dailybread. Then, behind some hurricane tree or old log nearby, the hunter prepared the “blind”—usually a pit three or four feet deep, camouflaged with boughs or great pieces of pine bark, with a gun opening toward an open space where, in a shallow trench, grain was scattered. From the scratching ground under the dogwoods, a trail would be laid to the trench, which was visited and replenished day after day until the greedy birds had become fearless and came regularly to their breakfast table. Then “one fine day,” just at dawn, Sabey would shamble off to the forest and creep within his blind, where he almost held his breath in “watchful waiting” for the coming of his quarry.
Nothing save Sir Walter’s conception of the mutability of the feminine mind, is quite so uncertain as the hour of the coming of wild turkeys to a blind. Sometimes at daylight, as they fly from their roosts on the topmost limbs of the great pines, they go at once to the bait. The next day, perhaps, they may roam the woods for hours and not reach the blind until noon, and on yet other days the fickle creatures resist temptation altogether, so “it is well understood” that whoso would shoot turkeys at a blind must have abundant patience and a certain complacent attitude toward his own society.
Who can tell what thoughts moved through Sabey’s brain cells as he sat “steadfast, ummovable” through the waiting hours. Did the tips of Aurora’s rosy fingers mean anything to him as she lifted the somber curtains of the night and ushered in the radiant God of day? Did the harsh yet homey “chauw, chauw” of the brown thrasher—the first winter bird to awaken in copse or forest—take his thoughts to the lonely cabinwhere Bess dreamed of the Sunday calico or the new shoes that would follow Sabey’s successful shot? Did the last hoot of the barred owl as, his night hunting over, he slipped away on muffled wing to the thick woods to drowse his days away, tell him anything of the human prototypes of all birds of prey? They, too, the selfish and the predatory, clutter up the by-ways of the world, closing their eyes to the light of service and the pulsing of humanity about them till, with the falling shadows, their eyes open and they prowl in quest of the unwary!
But whatever Sabey’s musings, he crept morning after morning into his blind and waited patiently as the hours slipped by, for the game that never came. Perhaps the wary birds had sensed danger at the blind—perhaps they had found a more convenient food supply elsewhere—but late every morning for a week Sabey had returned home weary and empty-handed, but, with a true sportsman’s spirit, determined to try again. Sunday intervened. A strong superstition in the negro’s mind, that to fire a gun on Sunday is to “hab sin,” kept him out of the woods, and he shambled off to church, but four o’clock the next morning, an hour before dawn, found him at the tryst which, through thought-waves, he believed he had made with the flock of turkeys.
They kept the tryst. The dawn came up slowly and silently, bringing in one of those rare windless, low-country winter days, when all the air is pale blue and gold and the forests are green and purple and brown. The first rays of the sun touched with pallid flame the topmost boughs of the tall pines and glanced from the myriad glistening needles that hung motionless in thechilly air. As the sun climbed yet higher, its sensuous warmth drank up the white frost that lay like a crystal blanket upon the open spaces and the light vapors that hung over the dark places in the forest, and, as the warmer and softer air fell about Sabey, he drowsed at his post.
The outdoor negroes of the coast need neither watch nor clock to tell the time of day. From “middlenight” or “fus’ fowl crow,” on through the procession of the hours to “dayclean,” “sun’up,” “one,” “two,” “t’ree hour attuh sun’up,” to “middleday,” and then on, as the sun slants downward, through “t’ree hour,” “two hour,” “one hour to sundown,” and “fus’ daa’k,” he makes a close approximation. So, as Phœbus shot with flat trajectory across the Southern sky, Sabey, snuggled down among the dry pine needles with which he had nearly filled his trench, dozed and listened and dozed, and waking, muttered “middleday,” and dozed again.
A slight rustling of dead leaves like the whisper of gently falling rain, and ten beautiful gobblers entered the little glade and going straight to the trench, began picking up the grain greedily. The sunlight flashed from their gleaming breasts as from planished bronze. Their iridescent plumage showed all the tints of glorified autumn leaves, and, as they stooped to feed, their long beards touched the ground. A braver sight to a hunter’s eye than bear or buck or any other game that roams the Southern forests!
Sabey slowly opened his eyes and stiffened like a setter at the point. His long musket, already aligned to rake the trench, rested securely in a forked stick driven into the ground. As a sibilant whistle camefrom his twisted lips, ten heads uprose like the armed men from the mythical dragon’s teeth, and came in line with the leveled gun. At a warning “putt” from their suspicious leader, they stood on tiptoe for a breakaway, but Sabey pulled his clumsy trigger, and following the heavy roar, he clambered out of the blind and ran forward to find seven great birds fluttering on the ground, while the others ran at race-horse speed for thirty or forty feet (your turkey, like your condor and your aeroplane, must take wing from a running start) and, rising on a long slant with a great beating of the air, topped the pines a quarter of a mile away and sailed off beyond “the Cypress.” The big birds, shot in the head, soon lay still and Sabey’s simian face wrinkled with satisfaction. “Tengk Gawd, uh git oonuh at las’,” he chuckled. “One, two, t’ree, fo’, fibe, six, seb’n,” he slowly counted—“t’ree git’way.” And then he scratched his head. Sabey was undersized, “him leetle but ’e ole,” the negroes observed, and could he pack far more than his weight in turkeys to the “big house” a mile away? It seemed a task too great for his strength, but his spirit was high, and, as he thought of the wildcats and gray foxes that abounded in these forests so seldom entered by hunter or woodman, he shook his head, pulled out a formidable-looking clasp knife and began to peel the bark from a young hickory. “No,” he said to himself, “uh yent fuh lef’ none. Uh tote’um all ef ’e tek me ’tell sundown fuh git Pon Pon. All wuh Mas’ Rafe ent buy, uh gwine tek deepo. No fox, needuhso wil’cat, nebbuh git ’e teet’ een dem tuckrey!” and he quickly removed the outer bark from the long strips he had skinned from the sapling and scraped and twisted the tough inner fibre into serviceablethongs. This strong hickory bark is the common cordage of the plantation negroes and serves for girths, bridles and harness for horse and ox, and is also plaited into the long whips used by herdsmen and bird-minders, the “pop” of whose lash or “cracker” is as far-sounding as the report of a rifle. Sabey tied six of the birds in pairs by their long necks, distributing them as comfortably as he could about his ungainly person—one pair over each shoulder, while the other, hanging forward, supported by the back of his neck, was balanced by the seventh bird hung at his back, suspended from the barrel of his musket. Thus laden like a pack donkey, he threaded the thick woods, avoiding as best he could the tangled vines and dangerous stump holes, and came at last to the open clearing of “Cotton Hill.” Here he laid down his burden and rested, “fuh ketch me secun’ win’.” Half an hour later he took up his load and, mindful of the fact that he had been poaching, avoided the direct way through the fields to the settlement and, skirting the old ricefield, traversed with furtive eye the negro burying ground where, shaded by giant live-oaks, seven generations of slaves and freedmen slept under the thick mould. For many of the far-scattered family negroes still bring their dead to rest in these hallowed places on the old plantations. Apart from the sentiment, it gives them standing among the low-caste darkeys who had belonged to “po’ buckruh” and whose forbears slept in no ancestral graveyards. Passing behind the “Echo Oak,” Sabey reached the big road and, a quarter of a mile beyond, tramped boldly up the great avenue to sell “Mas’ Rafe” his own game. He made a dramatic entrance into the yard, his deformed body completely covered by thesplendid birds, their black beards hanging from their burnished breasts and their feet nearly touching the ground. The hounds, which had run out with bristling backs and open mouths at the unwonted sight, wagged their tails and whimpered as they caught the familiar scent of the game.
“Well, you copper-colored imp of Satan! Where did you shoot those turkeys?”
“Uh shoot’um Beabuh Dam.”
“No, Sabey. Beaver Dam is more than two miles off, and I heard a gun in the Stackyard.”
“Yaas, suh, but duh Beabuh Dam uh shoot’um. Uh mek uh bline’ on da’ po’ buckruh’ groun’, ’cause him all-time duh mek bline’ ’puntop’uh yo’ groun’, en’ uh shoot him tuckrey fuh pay’um back, en’ uh ’spec’ da’ gun you yeddy shoot duh da’ po’ buckruh wuh bin attuh da’ gang uh tuckrey wuh use een dem dogwood t’icket. Meself been yeddy uh gun shoot Stackyaa’d w’en uh bin Beabuh Dam.” “Mas’ Rafe” passed his hand admiringly over the glossy breast of the largest bird while deftly feeling his crop. “What did you bait these turkeys with?”
“Uh bait’um wid cawn, ’cause uh nebbuh mek no peas las’yeah, needuhso no rice.”
“Did you work here last week?”
“Yaas, suh, uh wu’k Chuesday and T’ursday ebenin’.”
“What did you do?”
“Uh beat rice, suh.”
“How much rice did you take home in that bag you carried?”
“Eh, eh, Mas’ Rafe! You see me wid bag? You t’ink suh me t’ief yo’ rice? Wuh nyuse me hab fuhrice? Me en’ Bess alltwo lub fuh eat cawn hom’ny tummuch.”
“You didn’t bait these turkeys with rice, did you?”
“Who? Me! Mas’ Rafe, you hu’t me feelin’s fuh talk ’bout bait dese tuckrey wid rice! Weh me fuh git rice? Dese tuckrey nebbuh see uh rice sence dem bawn!”
“How did the rice get in their crops?”
“Dem got rice een dem craw? Mas’ Rafe, dem tuckrey mus’be bin spang Willtown dis mawnin’ fuh use een Baa’nwell’ ricefiel’, en’ full dem craw, en’ attuh dat dem come six mile to de bline’ weh uh kill’um.”
“But it is only five miles from Willtown to Beaver Dam, Sabey, and six miles to the Stackyard, where youdidn’tkill the turkeys!”
Completely cornered, Sabey grinned. “Mas’ Rafe, you sho’ hab uh good onduhstan’ fuh know nigguh! Nigguh ent fuh fool you! No, suh!”
And then the former slaveholder bought the game shot on his own land and baited with his own grain, from the freedman who had stolen both, which is not infrequently the way of former slave-holders in dealing with former slaves.