Scarlet Sister Mary (1928, Bobbs-Merrill Company)/Chapter 18
Fifteen years passed and although everything on the plantation looked much the same, many changes had crept in. The pots on Mary's hearth were always full, the pig-pen always kept a shoat fattening on the scraps of food that were left; a flock of hens with red ripe combs clucked and cackled around her door and greens kept her vegetable garden lively; food was plentiful and everybody in her house had plenty to eat. But the old house itself needed help, and June was not there to fix it. The old rock pillars were crumbling and they let the solid weight of the building's square body lean to one side. The front door sagged and scraped on the floor; the board window-blinds drooped on their hinges, one-sided and out of shape. Thank God, the old clay chimney was still firm on its foundations, able to breathe out smoke day after day; and the green moss on the roof held the frayed—shingles together from the warped ridge-pole to the edge of the rotting eaves.
Food was plentfiul but money was scarce, for the cotton-fields which had always provided enough for outside needs were cursed with the most terrible pest the plantation had ever known. The cotton stalks grew taller than they ever had done, their leaves stayed green through the worst droughts, but they made no fruit for they fed multitudes of boll-weevils from the first warm days of the spring until a killing frost came. Then the moss on the old oak trees made warm pleasant beds to keep the pests safe through the winter.
Some people called the creatures boll-weevils, others called them boll-evils, some people thought God made them to turn the thought of people to Him, others thought Satan had sent them; but no matter who was right, the wicked things destroyed every lock of cotton year after year and no man or charm or conjure could rule them.
The white landowners sent poison machines to scatter poison dust over the fields. Night after night the strange things droned and whined spreading their poison clouds, but the rain always came and washed the fields clean and fresh again. It must have been that the weevils could eat poison and thrive. The stuff that was meant to kill them seemed to make them grow fatter and stronger than ever. Cotton's time was out. In the fall, competition had always been keen and people had asked each other, "How many bales did you make this year?" They now sighed and asked, "Where will we get seed enough to plant a crop next year?"
In the spring they no longer asked, "Is your cotton up to a stand yet?" but, "Is your field as thick with boll-wevils as mine?"
For a few years June struggled on trying to fight weevils and make a crop but fall after fall came and found him with nothing to show for his whole year's work. He got discouraged and gave up and went away to find something else to do. He could not write so no ietter ever came to tell Mary where he went or what he was doing.
Unex had grown up tall like July. His eyes glittered with the same boldness and his white teeth pierced the blackness of his face when he boasted that he knew how to work, that his back would never bend under a load. But at last he gave up too and left to find better work and easier money somewhere out in the world. He went with a laugh in his mouth, he took nothing but a little bundle of clothes and his father's old battered guitar (they were all he wanted in the world); but he had never learned to write and no word ever came from him. Only God knew if he was alive or not. Mary had reared every child she had brought into the world, for she knew how to start them off right. Her house was full of them, little and big, but Unex was her only lawful child. Now he had gone away and forgotten her the same as his father had done, although she loyed him with every hair of her head, every drop of her blood, every beat of her heart, not because he was lawful or because he was her first-born, but because he was the child of her heart-love, while all the others were the children of the flesh.
Seraphine was almost a woman in spite of her smallness and childishness, and Budda Ben had worshiped her ever since that Christmas Day when Mary left her on the wood-pile alone with him. Budda never saw anything wrong with her for she never laughed at his infirmities and queer ways, but took his part whether he was right or wrong. When she wanted things Mary refused to let her have, Budda gave them to her. Last year when she craved to go off to town to school Budda sent her, although he had to dig up every cent he had saved and buried to keep, just as he had when Mary wanted a wedding-dress. But Mary had children enough left to look after her and take care of her when old age came to make her weak and helpless. Without them, she might fare poorly, for she had no husband or father or brother to depend on.
She was able to laugh and dance and sing again, her flesh had got back its old smoothness, her old sadness and weariness and bitterness were left behind. Thank God, she knew men at last, and she knew that not one of them is worth a drop of water that drains out of a woman's eye. Once, long ago, she used to think that Cinder was a mean, low-down hussy, but now she knew Cinder was not to blame for July's sins. Cinder's heart got broken too, for July left her to run off with another woman. As likely as not he had been taking women and leaving them all through the years since he went away. God made July a devil. Cinder was not to blame for that.
Last summer Mary went to town on an excursion to see Cinder, a poor pitiful soul, living in a broken-down shack filled with wharf-rats and water bugs. Her black skin was ashy and dried up on her bones, not a decent tooth was in her head, yet she still grieved for July. Deep down in Mary's heart she thanked God for all the other strong men that were in the world. July was not the only one. And June was not either.
The first real spring morning of the year had come and the sun blossomed in the east as bright and yellow as the jonquils and daffodils and butter-and-eggs around Mary's door, dropping floods of warm light over the Quarters. Opening the creaky, dragging door of her cabin as soon as she woke, Mary peered outside to see what was going on.
She had overslept, but so had everybody else, that was plain enough. She looked up at the sky, which promised a fair day, although a slight chilliness, brought by the night, lingered in shady places. Winter was loath to go. But spring had come, with its round of work. Quilts must be washed and sunned and put away, summer things hunted up and mended.
Then she and the children could go fishing for the trout and bream were biting fast. She cared no more about the water-snakes coiled up on the tree limbs along the river-bank and the alligator eyes peeping slyly up out of the water at her children than she did for the yellow-bellied terrapins that sunned themselves on every log. She had learned not to meddle with such creatures and not to fear them.
Thank God, winter had not lasted long, and the few sharp spells of bitter cold which made everybody hug the big smoke-blackened fireplaces, were short and soon forgotten. Summer would soon be here with blazing hot days and still hot nights. Field work would soon keep the clear salty sweat dripping off her hot face, and every thread of her clothing drenched from the skin out, for times had changed. Boll-weevils had come and would eat up the cotton unless it was worked fast. But sweating is good. Out-of-doors is good.
The old moss-hung oaks, towering and spreading with full-bodied strength, were so full of new life that drops of sap were falling like rain from their tasseled, new-leaved branches, and wasting on the ground. Life runs so thick inside them they become wasteful and careless and extravagant. The moss on them sheltered the boll-weevils all winter, giving warmth to the plantation's worst enemy.
The wide-spread fields waiting to be plowed and planted held grass and weed seeds that would sprout and grow among the planted crops. Plows and hoes would have to work from dawn until dusk to keep them from binding their strong roots around the cotton and corn and choking the life out of the crops. Plants have sap, boll-weevils and people have blood. Summer makes both run hot and free. Winter makes them run slow and cold, but, thank God, winter's time was out.
A free school opened a week ago. Another new thing. It began at nine, and if Keepsie wanted to go, she must hurry up breakfast and let him start, for the walk was long now that he had only one leg to go on.
A great fire soon leaped joyously up the chimney. The ashes roasted the potatoes, the skillet fryed the breakfast meat, the three-legged spider baked the bread, then Mary woke up the children and put them to work, from Keepsie, the oldest one at home, to the yearling baby who strove to put on his one lone garment without help.
Two of them ran to the spring for water, two went to the wood-pile for wood, one went with Mary to the cow pen to mind the calf and hold the cow's tail while she milked and keep it from switching her face when it strove to brush the stinging flies away.
Her sinewy hands squeezed two swift streams of milk into her pail and the foam rose high. Inside the cabin, pots and pans and dishes clattered, water splashed, children laughed. Thank God, they were able to help themselves. She had trained Unex and Seraphine, her two oldest, and they had trained the others. Even the baby could dress himself.
She missed Unex and Seraphine more than ever now that Keepsie had only one leg. But Keepsie faced his trouble without complaining although he was only a shoulder-high boy.
People were trying to change the world, letting new ways creep in every day. Except for that newfangled hay-press, Keepsie would have his two good legs to-day. But the poor little fellow had so much curiosity about everything, instead of keeping his distance while the old mule pulled the long pole round and round, packing the hay into tight little bales, he went close to the machine to see how it tightened down on the wire bands before it clipped them off. Somehow, only God knows how, before Keepsie could get out of the way, it caught his leg and held it fast, and clipped it off the same as a wire around a hay bale. The people screamed and cried, but Keepsie made no sound. He knew he had done wrong. He knew Big Boy had warned him about going close to that hay-press. Big Boy told him it was a blind contraption made by white men and it would cut off a boy's arm or leg as quickly as wire.
God must have sent that white doctor from town to go deer hunting. Maum Hannah said so.
Big Boy got him to come and fix Keepsie's leg. Keepsie's eyes got big and shiny, but he held himself still and did not flinch when the white doctor took scissors and trimmed his ragged meat and sewed his skin with a needle and thread the same as cloth.
Keepsie was a brave-hearted boy. He could have died, but he strove to live and now he was as well as ever. He could play around as spry as any of the other children, hopping like a sparrow, doing almost anything the others could do until he decided to go to that free school.
Mary didn't want him to go. She had never learned to read. There were no printed words in the Quarters except in Brer Dee's Bible and on the newspapers pasted on the house walls to hinder the wind from gushing too fast through the cracks. The same white people who made that hay-press made newspapers and books. Such things were dangerous. Keepsie ought not to tamper with them. Who could tell what book-reading might do to him.
Spoken words are safer. If Keepsie would keep his ears open he could hear plenty of good wise talk. Spoken words can cut and sting and beat down almost any enemy. They can bring tears or make people split their sides with laughter. Instead of reading all the time out of books and papers covered with printed words, he would do better to learn how to read other things: sunrises, moons, sunsets, clouds and stars, faces and eyes. Everything has its way of speaking and telling things worth knowing. Even the little grass-blades have their way of saying things as plain as words when human lips let them fall. Book-learning takes people's minds off more important things. The faithful old superstitions, the choice bits of wisdom passed down by word of mouth ever since the first slaves were brought here to live were never written down in any books.
Big Boy and Budda Ben sided with Keepsie. They told Mary to let him learn to read and write too, for Keepsie could never farm. A one-legged boy can not hop along and hold a plow straight to the row in soft ground. Keepsie would have to follow some other kind of business to make himself a living.
Last Monday morning Keepsie got up before day was clean and did all his tasks before breakfast, then he washed and dressed and hopped off to the schoolhouse. Mary hardly thought he could get so far, but she was mistaken. The next morning he started out just as brave as ever, hopping off gaily and laughing with happiness to be going. The children could not leave him then. He hopped too high and too fast. But he came home in the evening hopping slowly, wearily. Hopping up two long hills was a hard task for his one little leg. The hills fagged him out on the way home. He couldn't hop high enough to make any progress up them. Poor little faithful Keepsie. Money was scarce and crutches would cost cold hard dollars, but Keepsie must have a pair. Brer Dee could make heavy crutches for grown men or for old slow-moving people, but Keepsie needed a light pair that would help push him up the hill and not weight him down, or hold him back and hamper him. Big Boy's father. Andrew, had sharp tools and a good head. He might make Keepsie crutches that would fetch him home as joyful in the evening as he was when he started off in the morning. But she hated to ask any favor of Andrew, for he was the deacon who was hardest on her, always the main one to say she was pure scarlet and not fit ever to have been a member of the church.