Part 13

“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.