Chapter VII: Foreword (6)

Once a fine shoat strayed too near to Ben’s little field and soon found its way into the old man’s larder, where it was found by a search party in charge of old Harrison. An examination showed that the animal had been shot with duck shot, and shot of the same size having been found in the undischarged barrel of the negro’s double-barrel, Ben was arrested and sent to Walterboro jail and Harrison was summoned as a witness. Harrison was fond of a dram and looked forward to the approach of court week which would bring him a visit to the county seat with witness fees of 50 cents a day and mileage. Walterboro was 35 miles away, and five cents a mile both ways meant $3.50, which loomed large in the mind of the old hunter. On the Saturday night before the convening of court, he prepared a week’s rations of cornbread, bacon and baked sweet potatoes, and early Sunday morning filled a great knapsack, and, with his long gun on his shoulder, walked all the way to the county seat. On the following day the pig thief was duly arraigned, the jury organized, and old Harrison, loaded to the muzzle with Walterboro whiskey, to which he had been treated by the youngsters who liked to hear him talk, came to the witness stand, a 20-pound knapsack of provisions around his shoulders and his long gun in his hand. His direct testimony was:

“Sunday mornin’ bin over t’ Cap’n Elliott’s, coz mostly Sunday mornin’ ef uh goes by th’ house Cap’n gennully gives me uh pow’ful drink, en’ uh allus likes me dram. W’en uh got through me dram, uh was walkin’ ’long by ol’ Ben’s house, en’ uh heerd uh gun shoot. Uh meet some boys and went to th’ house en’ fin’ th’ shoat en’ fin’ number two duck shot een ’im. Uh fin’ ol’ Ben’s gun in the corner, one barrel been fired, en’ uh drawed th’ load of t’other barrel en’ fin’ number two duck shot, same size ez een th’ shoat. Then uh told Cap’n, he give me ’nother dram, we ’rested ol’ Ben in th’ pulpit where he was preachin’ to a raft uh niggers, en’ we send him to Walterboro.”

Then came the cross-examination. The young lawyer for the defense baited old Harrison to the great amusement of the court room.

“What do you know about duck shot?” he was asked. “I don’t believe you know the size of a duck shot.”

“Uh don’t know de size uv uh duck shot! _Course_ uh knows de size uv uh duck shot. Bin hunt’n’ all me life, bin shoot’n’ _duck shot_ all me life.”

“If you know the size of a duck shot, take this pencil and let the jury see you draw one on the court house wall.”

Harrison rose with bleary eyes and a fatuous smile on his bronzed face. Unable to read or write, he held the pencil as a small boy holds a sizzling firecracker, but he was game and stepped up to the wall primed with the confidence born of ignorance. Judge, jury and spectators craned their necks to see the performance. The draftsman stuck close to the wall and moved the pencil slowly and laboriously over the whitewashed surface. When at last he stepped back and turned around proudly to reveal his work, the court house exploded with laughter, from Judge Wallace on the bench, to the tipstaff at the door, for the tipsy old hunter’s outline of a duck shot was about eight inches long and five inches wide and bore a striking resemblance to the continent of Africa. He returned to the witness chair. Taking the shouts of merriment as tributes to the accuracy of his sketch, he looked scornfully at the young lawyer.

“Ain’t I tell ye uh know’d d’size uv uh duck shot? Bin shoot’n’ duck shot all me life. _Course_ uh knows d’size uv uh duck shot!” And there was more laughter.

The negro was convicted, and sent to the penitentiary for two years, but was soon leased to a railroad contractor, and, becoming a “trusty” and a cook, had an easy time. When he returned to Pon Pon he resumed his place in the pulpit without the slightest loss of caste, and often referred to his sojourn in the Capital City, telling many stories to the members of his flock about “de time w’en uh bin penitenshus,” or “w’en uh bin Cuhlumbia.”

One Christmas morning old Harrison came to the house with the portentous information that he intended to marry the widow Pendarvis, was then on his way to her habitation seven or eight miles away, and would bring back his bride the same evening.

“Dat whut uh yaim t’do Cap’n. Uh knows hits pow’ful resky t’marry uh widder, coz dey allus knows toomuch, but uh needs uh ’ooman to clean up en’ do about d’house, en’ look after d’children, en’ de widder Pendarvis is uh right peart creeter, en’ she ain’t got uh lazy bone een her, so uh reck’n uh’ll resk it. Den, she’s got a son, John Henry, ’bout d’age uh my William. John Henry he ain’t much account, but uh needs anuther han’ en’ uh reck’n uh kin make out wid John Henry, so uh yaims to tek d’widder.”

The old adventurer was fitted out with a white shirt and a handkerchief, a pocketful of Christmas candies and a couple of stiff snifters, and so, fortified, he started toward the widow, stepping high, gun on shoulder. “Uh allus totes m’gun. Y’never knows whut y’gwine t’see.”

So the widow Pendarvis was duly acquired and proved a faithful and useful spouse, but old Harrison soon reached the conclusion that he had been gold-bricked in John Henry. “He ain’t no manner uv account. Ain’t wuth d’powder’n shot it ud’take t’kill’im! W’en uh married d’widder, uh didn’ aim t’git much uv uh bargin in John Henry, he was jus’ kinder throw’d een fuh good measure like, but now uh wisht he mout uh bin throw’d out.”

A year or two later William Harrison was walking the woods one day, and from a shallow grave at the edge of a negro’s field, his dogs dug up the hide and head of a stolen cow which the thief had buried to hide the ear-marks and the brand. The negro was sent to jail to await trial and William was subpœnæd as the chief witness. Old Harrison protested. “’Taint uh bit uh use t’sen’ William t’Walterboro fuh fifty cents uh day, w’en ’e’s makin’ seventy-five cents uh day now. W’y don’t yuh take my stepson John Henry Pendarvis fer uh witness? He ain’t a workin’ en’ he’ll be glad t’git d’fifty cents uh day.” It was explained to the old hunter that as John Henry had not found the telltale hide and head, and knew nothing about the case, he could not be accepted as proxy. “Don’t make uh bit uh diff’unce. William kin tell John Henry whut he found en’ John Henry kin go t’Walterboro en’ swear to it. John Henry he’s a noble liar, en’ he kin lie en’ stick to’t. Them Walterboro lawyers can’t shake him.”

After awhile, bad health came upon the former widow, and in taking palliatives to relieve her pain, she became addicted to opium and spent all she could scrape for the drug at the village store. At last the neighborhood doctor warned her husband, “Harrison, if you don’t look out, some day your wife will take an overdose of laudanum and go up the spout.”

“Well, Doctor, ’tain’t fuh me to go ag’in her! She’s bin’uh noble ’ooman in ’er time. She’s never had uh lazy bone een ’er body. She’s bin uh pow’ful hand to do about, en’ she’s bin as peart uh ’ooman as ever was wropped up in that much hide, but she’s gitt’n kinder poorly now, she ain’t whut she used to be, she ain’t much account now, she can’t scrub no mo’, she’s got de rheumatism in de jints, so, Doctor, if she aims to go, uh reck’n d’best thing to do is to let her take a pow’ful dost en’ _let ’er go_!” So--poor, tired soul--she went.

A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE

Twenty-five years ago, old Jane was the very efficient cook at the Pawley’s Island hotel. A widow woman of fifty-odd, her black countenance, with its aquiline nose and sharp chin, was shrewd and witchlike.

“Old maids” are seldom met with among the low-country negroes, most of the women achieving matrimony, or having matrimony thrust upon them, at an early age in communities where marrying and unmarrying are but the merest incidents in their social and economic lives--and they are largely socio-economic relations,--“Uh haffuh hab wife fuh cook fuh me en’ wash me clo’es, enty?” “Uh haffuh hab man fuh wu’k fuh me en’ min’ me, enty?”--“and so they were married.”

Often, however, in early life, less frequently in middle age, women are, for the moment, unmarried, or, as one might more correctly say, unaffiliated, and if one of these “unaffiliations” should last long enough to constitute more than a very brief intermission in the matrimonial program, one, if of the fiercer sex, incurs the odium supposedly attaching to “oldmaidenhood.”

Jane had in her time looked upon husbands in yellow and brown and black, and had almost run the chromatic scale in temperament as in pigmentation. The sharps had irritated, the flats had wearied her--the “naturals,” being neither too sharp nor too flat, were, like the small wee bear’s belongings, “just right,” and Jane, like Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, thanked the Lord for them while they lasted. “But pleasures are like poppies spread,” and, as in Georgetown colored circles husbands don’t always “stay put,” one by one Jane’s poppies--perhaps she thought them snap-dragons--folded their petals and their tents, and, forsaking the dusky companionship of the old love, flitted away to present freedom and prospective enslavement to the new--for there’s always a new--“ef rokkoon only hab one tree fuh climb, dog ketch’um,” being an axiom among them. As Jane couldn’t trot in double harness, she single-footed successfully for several years--so successfully, indeed, that she developed a fine scorn for the opposite sex. “Dem ent wut,” she thought, and “_dem ent wut_,” she said, whenever men were mentioned. In her solitude she found solace in industry, and, working at odd jobs during the winter, supplemented her summer earnings at the hotel and soon acquired enough to buy “uh piece uh groun’” (the coast negroes never speak of land) and built thereon a comfortable cabin, near which, within a wattled clapboard fence, she enclosed a plot where she grew the easy-going squashes and beans in summer, and Georgia collards--the holly-hocks of the vegetable garden--in winter.

Jane’s domain was on the mainland in the flat pine woods thick sown with clumps of the dark green tropical-looking saw-palmettoes, and bordered the marsh-fringed inlet or tidal lagoon, beyond which, half a mile distant, lay the broad ocean beach, the rolling sand dunes and the dwarf live-oak and cedar scrub of “the Island.” Here, nestling among the thickets, and sheltered under the protecting shoulders of the hills, were the summer cottages of the Islanders, and here, too, just opposite Jane’s cottage, stood the hotel, where all through the summer days she fried whiting, boiled sheepshead, deviled crabs, and did sundry other things to the sea-food that the fishermen constantly brought to her kitchen. Jane’s riparian rights permitted her a landing where, moored to a primitive little pier, she kept the flat-bottomed skiff in which morning and evening she crossed the unvexed waters that lay between her home and her work.

Esau, a trifling, ramshackle, youngish negro, made an easy living by fishing, crabbing and doing odd jobs about the Island community. He was venturesome, as most saltwater negroes are, and often in the early mornings ran his leaky skiff through the breakers at the mouth of the inlet, and rowing--or wafted, when the wind favored, by a rag of a sail--adventured out to sea five miles from the beach, dropped an anchor made of two condemned iron pots tied together, and fished upon the blackfish rocks in the broiling sun till noon, returning to shore to sell the good fish to the Islanders and, later, eat the culls and odds and ends himself. On other days, when the East wind warned him that the fish wouldn’t bite, he bogged about the little creeks and runs of the marsh, or along the edge of the lagoon, and caught crabs by the basketful, which usually found a ready market.

Bringing his fish often to the hotel, Esau was on pleasant conversational terms with old Jane, and she often handed him out toothsome bits of “buckruh bittle” that fell from the overflowing table. In return for these gastronomic courtesies, Esau would chop wood, split kindling, or do other manly things that chivalrous colored bucks not infrequently perform for the females outside of their own family circles.

One hot August morning, Esau gathered lines and bait as soon as it was broad daylight, and, slipping over the shallow bar at the mouth of the lagoon, sculled lazily out to the “drop” on the rocks. It was a windless dawn, the sea was without a ripple, and the slow, heaving swells reflected the opalescent tints of the eastern sky. The tide was still on the ebb, and its impulse, augmenting his speed, soon brought him to the drop where he cast anchor, and the boat swung round, bow to land, while Esau, in the stern, sat with his back to the rising sun and threw out his lines. The fish bit well, and at the end of two or three hours the bottom of Esau’s boat was well covered with the shining catch, chiefly speckled sea trout, whiting and blackfish. The sun increased in warmth, and Esau nodded and dozed and then slept, although, with the turn of the tide, the prow of his boat now pointed seaward and the sunshine burned in his face. At last, at noon, when its beams fell vertically upon his kinky head, he awoke with a start as a big horse-mackerel leaped from the water so near him that he was drenched with its spray. He looked out upon a sea of molten silver. A great shark, as long as his boat, rose slowly from the depths to within a foot of the surface, and, lying motionless, regarded him with cold, expressionless eyes. Esau shuddered. “_Great Gawd_,” he muttered, “_time fuh gone home_!” and, as the sinister creature sank out of sight, he quickly hauled up anchor, shipped oars, and pulled lustily to shore. It was high tide when he reached the inlet, and he rode the long rollers over the bar, and soon ran the nose of his skiff ashore on the oyster shells of the landing. He strung his fish and set out to find a market, but the time lost while he slept had made him too late to supply the dinners of his usual customers, and, as his fish were now stale, he had no recourse but to eat them himself, so he set about cleaning them, and an hour later, when Jane, having served the hotel dinner, was dining alone in the kitchen, Esau appeared and ingratiatingly asked the loan of a frying pan, “please, ma’am, en’ some greese fuh greese’um.” As neither fat nor fuel cost Jane anything, she graciously complied, in the handsome spirit that prompts so many of us to be generous at the expense of others. Esau rubbed the greasy bacon-rind over the broad, generous bottom of the hotel frying pan and, having lubricated it sufficiently, cast in his fish, and the horrible sound and the horrible smell of frying soon filled the ears and the nostrils of every one about the establishment. Esau fried and he fried until, having filled a large tray with fish, he hung up the frying pan, took down his appetite, and began to eat. Esau was an eater, and had no half-dealings with his art. Seizing a fish by the head and tail, he moved it laterally across his mouth as some traveling men maneuver green corn on the cob, or as the village darkey plays the mouth-organ, until, in the twinkling of an eye, only the bones remained in his greasy fingers; then he played another mouth-organ, until in a few minutes he was filled to the neck, and only ten or twelve fried trout remained, and these he _cached_ with old Jane for future attention, and betook himself to the shade of a scrubby live-oak nearby to rest. He threw himself on the sand and slept for several hours like a gorged Anaconda. At last, toward sundown, the land breeze brought the mosquitoes from the mainland across the lagoon, and they swarmed over him. Thrashing about in his troubled sleep, some of the cockspurs that grow everywhere in the Island sands worked their way through his thin homespun trousers and stung him into wakefulness. He arose grouchy and grumbling, and returned to the kitchen where Jane was already preparing supper. “Eh, eh, weh you bin, Esau?” she greeted him.

“Uh binnuh sleep, ma’am, en’ muskittuh’ en’ cockspuhr’ en’ t’ing wake me en’ mek me fuh git up.”

“Wuh you gwine do wid dese fish wuh you lef’, Esau? De buckruh sen’ wu’d suh dem fish duh bodduhr’um, en’ ’e tell me fuh t’row’um een de ribbuh.”

“Uh had bidness fuh eat all dem fish one time, den uh wouldn’ haffuh t’row’um ’way.” And Esau sidled over to the tray of fish, and, looking at them regretfully, pinched off nibbling bits with his fingers and carried them to his mouth.

“You bettuh t’row’way da’ t’ing, Esau,” admonished Jane as she bustled about her work.

“Yaas, ma’am, uh gwine t’row’um ’way bumbye. Uh yent duh eat’um, uh jis’ duh pinch’um.” And he went slowly out toward the lagoon with the tray under his arm, but, as he walked, he pinched the fish so assiduously that, by the time he came to the water, little save the bones remained.

Two hours later, Jane approached the mistress of the house with an anxious face. “Please, ma’am, fuh gimme some ginjuh en’ t’ing fuh gi’ Esau ’fo’ ’e dead. Da’ nigguh sho’ hab uh hebby appetite fuh eat bittle. ’E ketch all dem fish, en’ ’e couldn’ sell’um to de buckruh ’cause dem binnuh leddown all day een de sunhot, en’ him fry’um en’ nyam t’ree string by ’eself, en’ ’e lef’ one string ’tell aw’ile ago, en’ uh tell’um fuh t’row’way dat one, en’ ’e staa’t’ fuh t’row’um ’way, but de fish cry out fuh Esau en’ Esau yeddy de cry, en’ ’e pinch de fish, en’ ’e keep on pinch’um, pinch ’um, ’tell ’e done nyam mos’ all de fish, en’ now de fish pinch _him_! Uh bin hab uh bottle uh hawss linniment fuh rub hawss, en’ uh t’row dat een’um, but de bottle didn’ bin mo’nuh half full, en’ uh ’f’aid de linniment ent ’nuf fuh do’um good, alldo’ ’e strangle Esau w’en him swalluhr’um, en’ mek’um fuh spit sukkuh crab spit. Now, ’e duh roll obuh en’ obuh ’pun de groun’ same lukkuh mule roll w’en ’e tu’n out duh Sunday, en’ oonuh kin yeddy’um groan sukkuh dem ’ooman groan to the sett’n’up, w’en dem husbun’ en’ t’ing dead. Ef you please, ma’am, kin gimme some linniment, uh sump’n’nurruh fuh g’em, uh dunkyuh ef ’tis kyarrysene, ’cause da’ nigguh gwine dead!”

“What do you want, Jane--ginger, peppermint or whiskey?”

“Wuh da’ las’ one you call ’e name, Missis?”

“Whiskey.”

“Missis, da’ t’ing too sca’ceful fuh t’row’um ’way ef da’ nigguh gwine dead. Ef you ent got de linniment, please, ma’am, gimme de ginjuh en’ de peppuhmint alltwo, so uh kin t’row’um een Esau.”

“Don’t give him too many things, Jane, one is enough.”

“Missis, enty da’ nigguh eat _fo’ kinduh fish_? Uh wan’ g’em meddisin fuh reach all de kinduh fish wuh ’e done eat. Uh yent want’um fuh dead on my han’, ’cause him ent hab no fambly, en’ ’e yent blonx to no suhciety fuh bury’um, en’ uh know berry well me yent fuh t’row’way money fuh buy shroud en’ cawpse en’ t’ing fuh no Esau, so please, ma’am, mek’ace en’ gimme de t’ing fuh t’row een’um en’ see ef uh kin sabe ’e life!”

A liberal dose of mixed ginger and peppermint was poured into a tin cup, the rim of which Jane forced between Esau’s teeth, and drenched him so successfully that in a few minutes he was flopping over the ground like a fish just pulled out of the water. His spasms were soon over, however, and he lay in a state of semi-coma. Jane was delighted. “Missis, me en’ you done sabe Esau’ life. Da’ nigguh blonx to me en’ you, Missis, en’ uh gwine mek’um wu’k.”

Summer passed into early autumn. The days shortened. September suns burned fiercely upon the ripening corn, and through the lengthening nights heavy dews fell on the purple petticoat-grass and the golden-rod. Between sunset and dusk, summer ducks flew over from their feeding grounds to their roosts in the pineland ponds, and all through the night sounded the faint “tweet, tweet” of the ricebirds passing on to their winter quarters.

So Jane, in the late summer of her days, looked kindly upon the man she had saved, even though she did not value the salvage very highly, and Esau gradually got in the habit of hanging about her kitchen and submitting to the air of proprietorship which she assumed toward him, chopping wood and doing other little chores for her, as a matter of course.

At last, one Thursday evening toward the end of the month, Jane bashfully appeared before her mistress, holding a corner of her apron against a corner of her mouth, which widened almost from ear to ear.

“Missis, uh come fuh tell you, ma’am, uh gwine marri’d Esau. Da’ nigguh duh heng roun’ de kitchen ’tell ’e git een me way. Uh cyan’ tu’n roun’ bidout step ’puntop’um, so uh gwine tek’um fuh husbun’.”

The announcement caused quite a flutter among the ladies at the hotel, and, as Jane had fixed the following Saturday evening for the wedding, they hastened to overhaul their wardrobes for suitable material with which to deck out the bride. An old dotted-swiss muslin, found hidden away, was contributed by its owner as something sweet and virginal with which to rig out the craft that had sailed the seven seas of matrimony. Another guest of the hotel contributed a pair of white stockings, and, as Jane desired a veil, a breadth of old mosquito-netting, stiffly starched and skilfully laundered, was added to the outfit. On Saturday night, an hour after supper time, Jane, under the convoy of Esau and accompanied by the “locus pastuh” (the local preacher of her church) appeared before the hotel company assembled on the piazza, and announced her readiness to wed. The mosquito-net veil had been artistically looped about her by some of the ladies, and the dotted-swiss enveloped her with its starched stiffness. The knot was soon tied, and Jane, carrying the bride cake in her arms and followed by her new husband, floated away like a smutty coal-carrying brig, under a new suit of sails.

On the following morning, Jane appeared in the kitchen earlier than usual. The lady of the house asked what she had done with her new husband. “Uh run’um off, missis. Uh yent want’um. Wuh me fuh do wid man! Enty uh hab proputty! Uh marri’d Esau fuh git husbun’, uh yent marry’um fuh git man! Nigguh’ wuh grow up sence freedum, dem ent wut! Uh marry’um, den uh t’row’um ’way!”

“Why did you marry him, then, if you didn’t want him?”

“Ki! Missis! _Uh marry’um fuh shet dem todduh ’ooman’ mout’! You t’ink me wan’ dem gal’ fuh call me ole maid?_”

THE PLAT-EYE

All low-country negroes believe more or less in “sperrits,” “haants” and other mysterious appearances, but the “plat-eye,” peculiar to the Georgetown coast, is the weirdest and most fearsome that vexes the roaming negroes at night. Plat-eyes appear to old and young of both sexes, sometimes in the form of a small dog or other animal, while at other times they may float like wraiths along the marshes or unfrequented paths, or stoop like low-hung clouds and envelop the victim. Most frequently, however, the plat-eye appears in the form of some familiar animal which, glaring at the beholder with eyes of fire, springs upon him, frightening him into rigidity, and, just as he expects his vitals to be torn out, the apparition vanishes, and the trembling negro hurries on his way. The belief has been expressed that, in some instances, the negroes to whom plat-eyes appear have fallen asleep as they walked, and, dreaming of these terrors, awakened to find them gone. In whatsoever form they come, however, the negroes dread the visitations as Werewolves were feared in Europe not so long ago.

Now, old Jane, the cook at the Pawley’s Island summer hotel, the many-times widowed woman who, having saved the life of Esau, the fisherman, by drenching him with horse liniment after he had partaken too freely of the spoils of his lines, had wedded that same Esau to save herself the reproach of oldmaidenhood, and had chased him away the morning after her _Marriage de Convenance_, was a fervent and fearful believer in plat-eyes. Whenever and wherever she went her ways at night, she was on the lookout for them, and the expectation of their momentary appearance kept her nerves in a pleasant state of jumpiness. A stray calf at the edge of the clearing, a raccoon ambling along a woodland path, a sudden rabbit bouncing up before her, the horned owl that lifted her wayward fowls from their runaway roost on the ridgepole of her cabin, even the ghostly sandcrabs that drifted along the beaches at night as lightly as wind-blown foam, were all potential plat-eyes!

Two weeks had passed since Jane, the self-made celibate, had ejected the transitory husband of her bosom from the “bed and board” to which, under colored custom, if not under State law, he was supposed to be entitled. Esau wandered about, following his usual vagrant occupations, but vaguely conscious of his rather indefinite status as a husband--responsibilities there were none. Jane, to whom the marriage had brought wifehood--in the abstract, and very real things in the dotted-swiss and the white stockings of her bridal outfit--being withal as free and untrammeled in her property and her person as she had been before the episode, felt herself the gainer, and, to do her justice, regarded Esau rather as a slaughtered innocent. In respect of one small matter, however, Esau, too, had gained something. During his tentative courtship, or rather while, without his knowledge, Jane had had him under consideration, he chopped wood and did other chores for her without specific contract for compensation, for Jane was then an unrelated and unconnected female of the species, and he willingly performed these gallantries for her; but once married, even though she had so speedily and unceremoniously divorced, or put him away, she was yet his woman--in thought at least, his chattel--and, harking back to his African ancestry, he bethought him that women were but hewers of wood and drawers of water, the domestic slaves of the lordly males, and, before laying hand to axe or stooping to pick up chips or driftwood, he never failed to bargain and chaffer with the cook for what she should pay him--at the expense of the lady of the house.

“Esau, uh wish you please kin pick up some chip’ fuh me fuh staa’t me fiah.”

“Wuh you gwi’ gimme?”

“Wuffuh me haffuh pay you fuh chop wood, Esau?”

“Enty uh done marri’d you fuh wife? Wuffuh man haffuh chop wood fuh ’e own wife?”

“Uh marri’d you, fuh true, Esau, but enty uh done run you off, en’ now you stan’ same lukkuh all dem todduh man wuh uh nebbuh bin hab fuh husbun’?”

Esau scratched his head, the point being rather fine for his comprehension, but he grunted stubbornly, nevertheless.

“Man hab wife fuh cook ’e bittle fuhr’um, enty? Hukkuh ooman kin cook bittle bidout ’e chop wood, eeduhso pick up chip’ fuh mek fiah? No, ma’am! Wuh you gwine gimme fuh eat ef uh chop wood fuh you?” Therefore, whenever Esau chopped wood, the hotel kitchen paid the fee.

September burned and passed away. October came. Among the brown and purple trunks of the pines, the red-bronze foliage of blackgum and sourwood glowed like dull fires. Tripods rose above the breakers, and, from the vantage of their elevated tops, the Islanders fished with rod and reel for the beautiful channel bass which came up with the rising tide. The long rollers crashed upon the strand and broke into lace-like spray that the sea-wind tossed into a thousand miniature rainbows. The plaintive cry of the sea-birds, the whisper of the wild-oats as their ripening seed panicles rustled in the wind, and the sharp tang in the air, brought to the spirit the poignant sadness of autumn--“Falling Leaf and Fading Tree,” and Tosti’s haunting melody.

On a certain night, Jane permitted Esau’s escort to a cottage two miles up the beach, whither she had undertaken an errand for her employer. The night was dark and overcast, and the air was heavy with a promise of coming rain. A fitful breeze picked up the loose sand above highwater mark into little whorls, sent them dancing about the upper beach, and set the clumps of wild-oats on the dunes above to shivering weirdly. The tide was at the flood, and the long dun rollers boomed sullenly on the beach and sucked at the sands as though loath to leave them.

As she got farther away from the comforting lights of the hotel and adventured into the creepy darkness that lay before her, Jane shuddered, and lifted the shawl from her shoulders over her bandanna-topped head as though to shut out from her apprehensive ears all fearsome sounds. Esau shuffled along beside her, but he, too, was uncomfortable, for he was a timid negro, and even the boldest are none too brave at night.

A sudden gust of wind lifted the foam cap from a breaking wave, blew it in their faces and whistled eerily through the wild-oats. A ghost crab sprang up at their very feet and scurried away, affrighted. Jane clutched Esau’s arm. “_Great Gawd!_” she groaned, “_duh plat-eye!_ Uh shum! uh shum!”

“Weh-weh ’e dey?” stammered her frightened but less imaginative escort.

Before she could point to the flying crab, another pallid, spider-like creature drifted across her path and followed the first. Jane was poised for flight, but Esau stood firm and steadied her nerves, and in a few moments they moved on again, but with wide eyes and hesitant steps. At last they had covered half the distance, and a mile away, beyond the dark, a spot of yellow light marked their goal, which they might have reached but for the raccoons’ love for shell fish. At a low spot in the broad beach the tide had eaten out a narrow channel through which the waters rushed almost up to the sand-hills, bringing small fish and shrimp and clams far beyond the break of the rollers, and, at the entrance to this cut, facing the ocean, a big raccoon was fishing at the moment the negroes reached the tidal rivulet and paused to look for a crossing. Esau, with trousers rolled up to his knees, adventured first, and as Jane, “standing with reluctant feet,” on the marge, called to him to ask the depth, she unhappily cast her eyes seaward just as the four-footed fisherman, startled by the voices behind him, wheeled, and turned his round, green eyes full upon them. As their sinister light shone fearsomely against the dark background of the waves, Jane shrieked in agony. “_Oh Jedus! de plat-eye! de plat-eye!_” And, turning tail, she fled along the back track, screaming at every jump. Esau’s gallantry, and one look at the shining eyes, prompted him to follow Jane, which he did at top speed, while the wretched raccoon, frightened out of his supper by the havoc he had unwittingly wrought, lost no time in attaining sanctuary among the scrub beyond the sand-hills.

On sped Jane. Her screaming-wind gave out after the first hundred yards, and, save for her labored breathing, she ran silently, Esau, a black shadow, close behind. In an incredibly short time, Jane and her runner-up reached the hotel, speechless with exhaustion and fright. When she had recovered her breath, Jane hurried to her mistress. “Missis, ma’am, uh nebbuh tek de ansuh wuh you sen’ to da’ juntlemun todduh side de Ilun’, ’cause uh nebbuh git dey, Missis; en’, ef Jedus yeddy me, uh nebbuh fuh gone to da’ place no mo’ duh night-time! Missis, dem plat-eye t’ick ’puntop da’ beach sukkuh fiddluh crab’ t’ick een de maa’sh w’en tide low! Uh binnuh walk ’long Esau, en’ one sumpn’nurruh come off de wabe’ top, en’ ’e float by me sukkuh cloud wuh hab uh sperrit een’um. Uh shet me yeye, en’ ’e gone. Den de win’ mek uh jump, en’ ’e biggin fuh shake dem grass en’ t’ing ’puntop de san’hill ’tell ’e mek me hair fuh rise! Same time uh see two w’ite sperrit run ’cross de paat’. Esau binnuh trimble ’tell uh graff’um by ’e sleebe fuh keep’um f’um run’way, but none de t’ing nebbuh hab uh chance fuh t’row dem eye ’puntop me ’tell uh git to de place weh de tide bruk t’ru de beach. W’en uh git dey, Missis, Esau roll up ’e britchiz fuh cross. Me duh wait ’tell him git ’cross befo’ uh staa’t’ fuh hice me ’coat fuh walk t’ru’um, en’, ef me Jedus didn’ tell me fuh t’row me yeye fuh look roun’, uh nebbuh would’uh bin yuh, but w’en uh look, uh see da’ t’ing’ two eye’ duh shine sukkuh lightship’ eye’ shine ’puntop’uh Rattlesnake shoal’! Missis, w’en uh fus’ look ’puntop’um uh t’ink ’e duh lightship fuh true, but bumbye ’e shake ’e head en’ uh know suh ’e duh plat-eye, en’ ’e duh try fuh t’row uh spell ’puntop me fuh mek me fuh dead! Uh yent hab time fuh kneel down, but uh staa’t fuh pray een me h’aa’t, en’ uh baig Gawd, ef da’ plat-eye haffuh ketch nigguh, fuh mek’um fuh ketch Esau en’ lef me, ’cause, Missis, eb’rybody know’ suh Esau ent wut! But seem lukkuh Gawd nebbuh yeddy de pray’, ’cause me mout’ bin shet w’en uh mek’um, ’cause uh yent wan’ Esau fuh yeddy wuh uh say, en’ de plat-eye nebbuh tek ’e yeye off’uh my’own. ’E look en’ ’e look, en’ ’e yeye git mo’ bigguh en’ mo’ shiny, en’ w’en uh see suh him duh look ’puntop’uh me en’ ent duh study ’bout Esau, Missis, _uh comin’ fuh home_! Missis, you see dog run, you see hawss run, you see bu’d fly, en’ you see pawpus jump een de ribbuh, but you nebbuh see none dem t’ing trabble lukkuh me trabble w’en uh staa’t fuh run! W’en me ten toe’ dig een de du’t, ’e t’row de san’ mo’nuh half uh acre behin’ me! De win’ wuh uh mek t’row dem wil’oats en’ grass en’ t’ing flat ’pun de groun’, en’ all de time uh duh run uh yeddy Esau’ foot duh beat drum behin’ me, en’ w’en uh yeddy’um, uh tengkful, ’cause uh know da’ t’ing fuh ketch him fus’ ’fo’ ’e kin git me; en’, Missis, ef you ain’ hab no ’jeckshun, ma’am, uh gwine tek Esau fuh husbun’ ’gen, ’cause, attuh tenight, uh know suh me kin run fas’ mo’nuh him, en’ him will be uh nyuseful t’ing fuh tek ’long w’en uh duh walk duh paa’t duh night-time, ’cause, ef plat-eye mek alltwo uh we fuh run, him _’bleege_ fuh ketch Esau _fus’_, en’, alldo’ da’ nigguh ent wut, ’e hab shishuh slow foot, Missis, uh kin mek’um fuh sabe me life!”

“OLD PICKETT”

Before the war, the low-country planters, migrating each summer to their mountain homes at Flat Rock, N. C., frequently bought horses and mules from the drovers as they passed along the Buncombe Road on their way South from the stock ranges of Kentucky and Tennessee. Sometimes beautiful ponies were brought from the Pink Beds, away back in the North Carolina mountains, others came from the nearer valleys of the French Broad, but most of the Seacoast planters supplied their needs from the Tennessee drovers as they moved down the main-traveled road.

From an old drover named Pickett, a mule was acquired to which the negroes gave the drover’s name. Although a young mule, and of the opposite sex, she was christened “Old Pickett,” and bore the name with distinction for nearly a quarter of a century. Long and low, and powerfully built, Old Pickett was a light bay in color, with the brown stripe down the back and the zebra legs which mule wranglers regard as evidence of toughness--and Old Pickett was tough.

Old Pickett came into the hands of the family late in October. A thin skin of ice had formed along the shores of the lakes. Flocks of blue-winged teal whistled through the air and splashed as they alighted on the clear waters. Chestnuts had fallen, and their green and brown burrs covered the ground under the far-spreading limbs of the big trees. Their little cousins, the chinquapins, had long been gathered and strung in necklaces, or roasted at the hearths of the glowing wood fires. The pheasant-shooting was nearly over, and Westly-Richards and Greener were cleaned and oiled and slipped into their buckskin covers, in readiness for the campaign against deer and duck and turkey in the low-country. With the first days of November, as the branches of the great oaks cracked under the weight of the roosting wild pigeons, and the sloping sides of old Pinnacle and all the lesser peaks burned with the flame-like foliage of the hickory and the ruby fires of the oaks, the family started down the mountain for Greenville, the first stop in the ten-day journey to the sea. Carriages for the ladies and the elders, saddle horses for the younger men, and comfortable covered wagons for the house servants, the cavalcade moved out, Old Pickett and her companions tethered behind the wagons to take their turn at the pole later on.

Arrived at the big plantation, Old Pickett became familiar with the plow, the cart and the Gullah negro, and for twelve years led an uneventful life, buckling to the tough “joint grass” of the uplands in summer, and bogging pastern deep in winter as the slim plowshare slid through the sticky soil of the ricefields and turned the stubble into long greasy-looking furrows. While a willing worker, Old Pickett took her time and always “gang’d her ain gait.” She was nimble, too, with her heels, and the stable boys about the mule lot could always amuse themselves by throwing sticks or light clods of earth on Old Pickett’s hindquarters to make her “kick up,” when she came in to be unharnessed after her day’s work, and she was always ready to oblige. Wearing a blind bridle, she could not see behind her, but she was strong for the uplift, and whatever touched her in the rear had to go up, whether stick, or clod or stable boy!

Then the war! In the dawn of an April morning, came the sound of the big guns in Charleston harbor thirty miles away, and, a few months later, from another direction, rolled the thunder of yet heavier and more distant guns, bombarding Port Royal, and still Old Pickett plowed and carted, and otherwise plodded in the ways of peace, but not for long. The questing eye of the Confederate Government looked approvingly on Old Pickett’s short legs, arched loins and well-sprung ribs, and, discerning an artillery mule, intimated a desire for ownership, but Old Pickett, compelling as she did the little negroes who walked behind and around her to become alert and watchful, was a plantation institution and could not be parted with permanently, but she was loaned to the Confederacy, and for a year or two hauled caissons and cannon and army wagons about the coast section wherever an attack was threatened by the invaders.

At last, the booming of cannon came nearer, an expedition having reached Willtown only seven miles away, and, as negroes from nearby plantations were “running away to the Yankees,” a farm was leased in the far away land of Abbeville, and thither, for safekeeping, went a number of slaves under Zedekiah Johnson, a kindly and reliable overseer. With this venture went Old Pickett, and here, until the end of the war, she faithfully followed the curved and crooked furrows that ran around the terraced hills, and stubbed her unshod hoofs against the flinty stones thick sown about the ruddy soil. In the up-country, women sometimes plowed, and Old Pickett, blinkered and forward-looking as she was forced to be, submitted to the indignity of being “gee’d” and “haw’d” and chevied along by a bare-footed, sun-bonneted female of the species.

Freedom came. The low-country negroes whom it overtook in Abbeville, went their ways. The wagons and mules, all save old Pickett, were sold for the pitiful greenbacks that the profiteering few who had them, were willing to pay, and old Pickett came home. A low-country freedman, wishing to return to his habitat, kindly consented to ride her the two hundred miles, cannily exchanging his fore-knowledge of the road for the use of her four legs. And what a home-coming! The “big house” at the head of the wide live-oak avenue lay in ruins, sentineled by the tall, charred trunks of “Sherman’s laurels,” the two great magnolias that sometime stood in their glossy green liveries overhanging the hospitable hearths that once glowed within. Wildcats lurked in the briar thickets now upsprung from the fertile soil where once stood the great stables. The plantation quarters, whose streets formerly resounded with jest and laughter, at the touch of the vandal’s torch had flared into flame and vanished, and among their ashes Jimpson weed and other rank growths struggled.

In a rough stable, hastily improvised of blackgum logs, Old Pickett was introduced to strange, young Western mules, new to negro ways, but, from the time of her home-coming, she seemed to grow resentful toward all the world. While still performing her tasks faithfully, she would not be hurried, and no freedman was ever able to urge her into a trot, so, by example, if not by precept, the younger mules associated with her gradually acquired somewhat of trickiness and of truculence. Old Pickett still respected the former slave-holding planters, and under one of these (she was a good saddle animal) she would still condescend to canter, but the small white boy of ten or eleven years, and the negroes of all ages, she held in utter contempt. Saddles and bridles were scarce after the war, and spurs were rare. “The Captain” had a single ante-bellum spur with which he urged recalcitrant horse or mule to such bursts of speed as a grass diet would warrant. When rallied by his hunting companions on his lack of the twin spur, he shrewdly observed that if he could make one side of his steed travel fast enough to suit him, the other could always be induced to go along, too. As this precious tool was never loaned, the small boy who aspired to equestrian exercise was forced to kick his steed in the ribs with his bare heel, to which was sometimes tied, with a piece of hickory bark, a forked stick shaped like a wishbone, usually an effective goad with which to tickle the equine flank, but Old Pickett was unresponsive. She was, in a manner of speaking, on all-fours with St. Paul. “None of these things move me,” she thought--and they didn’t. The ambitious boy who expressed a willingness to adventure a trip to the railway station, two miles away, for the mail, only for the chance to ride, was sometimes offered Old Pickett, just to chill his ardor. If he accepted the mount, he was given a plow bridle, a folded crocus bag upon which to sit, and was allotted a few hours in which to make the trip. A stout switch was permitted him, which he carried in his right-hand for style, rather than for any impression he hoped to make on Old Pickett’s tough hide. Fortunately, the kindly amenities of war had left the great avenue without a gate, or he could not have passed, as no amount of urging could have brought Old Pickett within arm’s length of the latch, so the way was clear to the old King’s Highway. The boy had plenty of time to admire the scenery as Old Pickett walked sedately along between the willow-fringed canals that flanked the approach to the “Two Bridges.” In the summer, water snakes dropped quietly into their element from the overhanging branches upon which they had been sunning themselves, terrapins slid from their floating logs, and now and then a small alligator sank slowly downward, leaving only his eyes above the water. Just beyond, where the boughs of a grove of Spanish oaks stretched above the road, squirrels sometimes played, alighting among the smaller branches with a soft “swish” as they sprang from tree to tree. Then, on to Jupiter Hill, or “Town Hill,” as the negroes called it, because it lay in the direction of Charleston. Here, with a clay hole on one side and a Colonial milestone on the other--“31 M. to C Town” cut in its brown sandstone face--the roads forked, the right-hand leading to the Village, the left to the station. Although Old Pickett’s way always led to the station, she never failed to submit the selection of the road to argument, and invariably leaned to the right. Whether the memory of the brave, hopeful, early days of the Confederacy, when she had drawn artillery or army wagons along this road, urged her to tread again the once familiar paths, or whether she sought only to match her will and her wits against the boy’s, one may not know, but, as far as the boy was concerned, the discipline was wholesome, for loss of temper availed nothing against Old Pickett. Her response to an application of the switch was to sidle up to the nearest tree or sapling, against which she would rub her rider’s bare legs, so she was seldom switched. Sometimes the boy would sit on her back ten or fifteen minutes without moving, while she drowsed and dreamed of the past, and then, when, perhaps, she had forgotten the dispute between them, he would get her started in the way she should go. At other times, however, when she could not be wheedled out of the Village road, her rider let her have her way, and, after going two or three hundred yards, would slowly turn her head into the pineland and, gradually sweeping around in a wide semi-circle to the left, would reenter the road to the station a quarter of a mile beyond. Arrived at his destination, the boy would be fortunate to find some idle negro around who would bring out the mail to him, for, once dismounted, he could not remount without assistance, Old Pickett invariably backing her ears, baring her teeth, and altogether turning toward him “an unforgiving eye and a damned disinheriting countenance.” To grown-ups Old Pickett was dangerous only at the rear, but to a dismounted boy she was loaded at both ends and--a revolver at that--she was so pivoted that head and tail could swap places with surprising facility. Old Pickett’s tracks on her way home, however, were the prints of peace. Like so many of the human race, she knew the way to the trough, and thither she was willing to be guided.

On Sundays, Old Pickett was turned into the big pasture with the other mules, for rest and recreation, but, while her companions galloped or trotted and played, she kept away from them, grazing alone until satisfied, when, withdrawing to a far corner of the field, and resting her head upon the rider of the rail fence, she would gaze into space with retrospective eyes. Sometimes the Sunday outings would be in cornfields after harvest, where the slovenly freedmen usually left bunches of rank-growing sheep burrs, having a strong affinity for the manes and tails of horses and mules. Of these, Old Pickett acquired her share. The negro who plowed her extracted without difficulty those which lodged in her mane, but the taking of them out of her tail was an event in stableyard circles. Strongly tethered in her stall with a short halter, a stout bar was run into grooves behind her, so hampering her hindquarters that she could not extend herself. Thus helpless, she was ignominiously despoiled of the burrs that clung to her tail, even the small black boys participating in the spoliation, of which they did not fail to brag later to their companions at the quarters.

“You see dis sheep buhr, enty? Uh tek’um out’uh Ole Pickett’ tail,” said one, proudly pulling a burr out of the wool about his ears.

“No, you nebbuh! You duh Gawd fuh projick ’long Old Pickett’ tail? ’E yent come out’um!”

“’E yiz, now!”

“’E yent!”

“’E yiz!”

“’E yent!” and then they fought.

Besides the burrs acquired by her mane and tail, Old Pickett sometimes got them in her ears, and then a circus act was necessary to get the bridle over her head in the morning.

One summer afternoon, crook-legged, yellow Sabey came up to the house to borrow a mule with which to drag from a distant backwater a large alligator he had just killed, offering to recompense the favor by bringing a portion of the creature’s oily flesh to be cooked for the always hungry hounds. As all the other farm animals were busy, Sabey was told that he might have Old Pickett, who grazed alone in a distant pasture. Not knowing Old Pickett intimately, the poor darkey scraped his foot gratefully, and taking a bridle from the rack, an ear of corn from the crib and a bundle of fodder from the stack, he set out as gaily and as full of faith as the small boy who, receiving from an elder his first handful of “fresh salt,” goes forth in quest of the elusive robin’s tail. Arrived at the pasture, Sabey shambled toward Old Pickett, holding the ear of corn and the blades coaxingly before him. The bridle was hidden from sight at his back, tied to a hickory bark suspender. As Sabey approached, though he looked like no Greek that ever walked, or fought, or ran, Old Pickett, appraising the provender as camouflage and fearing even the Gullah bearing gifts, raised her head and looked at him suspiciously, but, as Sabey slowed down his pace and called “coab, coab, coab” softly and appealingly, she let him come up to her and condescended to nibble at the outstretched handful of blades. The negro’s favorite method of catching a loose mule is to seize her firmly by the ear, and to this Old Pickett, without an earful of sheep burrs, might have submitted, but, as Sabey grabbed, the sharp burrs were pressed so painfully into the inner lining of her ear, that she wheeled as quick as a flash and, lashing out with heels that had lost none of their youthful vigor, would have lifted Sabey into the air had he not with quick presence of mind thrown himself flat on the ground, so that she kicked over him. When the immediate danger had passed, Sabey rose to his feet and followed her about the pasture for two hours, in the vain effort to coax her again within reach, or to drive her into a fence corner, where he might, by getting a rail behind her, so pen her up that the bridle could be slipped over her head without danger. But Old Pickett could neither be led nor driven, and, just as the sun was setting, Sabey returned alone to the house.