Scarlet Sister Mary (1928, Bobbs-Merrill Company)/Chapter 21

by Julia Mood Peterkin

Chapter XXI

As the years passed life seemed to divide most of the people Mary knew into two groups: men and women; and the women were all her rivals and competitors, except Maum Hannah. Even her oldest girl child, Seraphine, was pitted against her for the first place in the heart of Budda Ben, although maybe Budda Ben could hardly be counted a man. Certainly Maum Hannah was so old she could hardly be counted a woman. For she lived in another world, seeking only the love of God and Jesus, craving only to do what was pleasing in. Their sight. To her, human men were no more than children who needed to be fed and encouraged and warned and pitied.

She had been like a mother to Mary all through the years and the love between them was natural, but what bound Mary to Budda Ben was not so much his kindness to her nor her pity and affection for him, but another thing altogether.

The rest of the Quarter people lived and moved and thought in droves and flocks like chickens or sheep. They could not be happy or help themselves except in crowds or groups. They had societies, bury-leagues, sick benefit circles, lodges.

They all belonged to Heaven's Gate Church, whose strict rules tried to curb their conduct. They allowed no ground between sinners and Christians. Church-members were all Christians, saved from sin. They, only, were the children of God and brothers and sisters of little kind Jesus. Everybody else would be damned in Hell.

Budda argued that the Christians often turned right into wrong, justice into injustice. They denied some of the plainest, simplest facts of life, and thought they could run God's business; they laid strict rules for each other because they were too timid, too coward-hearted to come out in the open and live as they wanted to live.

He lashed out against their pretenses. Sometimes they were right, but not always. Nobody is always right. Nobody always knows what right is. The wisest people in the world are ignorant about many things. The most free-handed have to be stingy sometimes and the kindest, mean. If he could only hold out to live his own life without flinching, that would be enough to ask of himself.

With all Budda Ben's bitterness and sadness he was never humble. He said whatever came into his head without caring what anybody thought. He was an unforgiving enemy and a faithful friend. When he loved or hated, he let the world know it.

He was wretched over being out of the church now, not because it cut him off from his neighbors, but because he had respect for God and Satan. Every man with sense must fear his Maker, no matter how bold he may be. He had joined the church over and over, but he could not stay a member. Every time he joined he got turned out again. His short patience and hot words would more than likely send him to Hell along with Mary. For to save Mary's life she could not keep her mind fixed on the joys of Heaven, but sought her pleasure right here in this world, where pleasures are in such easy reach. She believed in God and Satan and Heaven and Hell too, and she had no doubt that sinners fed Hell's fires, but the rules of Heaven's Gate Church made the Christian life very difficult for a young, strong, healthy woman. She and Budda Ben would probably spend eternity in torment together and that bound them to each other here on earth.

She was straight and strong and able, and he was weighed down by powerless sinews and a painful misery that clogged his joints. She was supple and lithe, and her body seldom knew weariness, while Ben stayed weary all the time. Her feet stepped lightly through the years and Budda's legs had to walk, half-squatting, slowly, following the long stout stick his hands used to guide them. But both of them resented many of the ways and customs of the plantation people who never stopped to think about things, and accepted ideas and beliefs which were handed down to them, the same as they accepted the old houses where they were born and worked in the, same old fields which their parents and grandparents had salted with sweat.

When Mary first began sinning openly, Budda Ben tried his best to stop her, then when he found that nothing he said made her change her ways, he began defending her and holding that whatever people crave to do is good for them to do. If Mary fed her children and clothed them and trained them to be brave-hearted, to work, and to have manners, that was enough to expect of her. She was not a member of any lodge or society or church, and she had a right to live her own life as she liked. He defended everything she did. He declared that except for his own mother, Mary was the best woman on the plantation. She understood folks. She had sympathy for them. She knew their needs and sufferings and forgave their mistakes because she knew that blunders are easy to make. Budda said she was like a garden where flowers blossom the whole year through, and, although she had little money now, one so rich in kindness could never be poor. Her children were not full kin, but they grew up together in peace as brothers and sisters of one family, working, pleasuring, growing up strong and more able than any lawful children in the Quarters.

Mary was different from the other women. She had been so all her life. In her childhood among her playmates, or working in the field with her blood-kin thick around her, she always seemed different. She had married July and he left her to fend for herself, but if she wanted a house full of children that was nobody's business but her own.

The Quarter women muttered dark things about Mary and prophesied dark things for her. They feared the power she had over their men, so they had no faith in her kindness.

The passing years made no difference to the spirit of her youth. The Quarter women could dream their bad dreams and talk of good and evil as much as they liked; they made no difference to Mary. Hard work had kept her lean and hard-muscled. She was still keen-eyed and erect while they were paunchy in the middle and saggy in the cheeks. Their faces were lined and their hair streaked with white, and fear of Mary's charm made their tongues bitter. They had more pleasure in her misery than in her happiness. Her sorrow pleased them more than her joy.

So Mary valued Budda Ben's smiles and dreaded his frown. Nobody could say before her that he was only a cripple who walked half squatting with a stick; nobody could hint at his debasement. She loved him and she was as kind to him as if he stood tall and perfect in grace and bearing. Perhaps she clung closer to him because he was not whole. Maybe if he had been a strong man, she would have treated him as she did the others, whom she lured boldly and without shame, using the love-charm Daddy Cudjoe gave her to get July back.

That charm, old and worn as it was now, still stood by her faithfully. It had never failed her. She prized it and cherished it as if it were God's best gift instead of something that would send her to the bottomless pits of perdition.

When she first tried it, she was stunned to see how it worked on June. She was ugly then with her blood turned to water, and her flesh all withered and shriveled. For months her eyes had poured tears, sometimes down her cheeks, sometimes through her heart. Her breast was sunken with misery, and her arms were weak and bony.

She was very cautious with it at first, afraid of it, uncertain of what it might do, but wicked as the charm undoubtedly was it had given back her lost youth, and brought her a strange satisfaction and happiness. Her flesh got back all its old smoothness, her body its old supple grace. She could laugh and sing while she worked. All her weariness left her, all her sadness and bitterness were gone, sorrow was far behind her.

Men are all alike when spring comes and the sunshine works its charm on them, whether they are people or beasts or bugs or fowls. The men grasshoppers fight to the death for a green six-legged lady, the men fish kill each other for the sake of a cold-blooded scaly length of meat, the cocks use spurs and beaks and claws to possess hens that are nothing but a bundle of warm cackling feathers. Human men are worse; they will risk Hell itself for a woman, not only in the spring when all things mate, but all through the year. They risk death to drink without being thirsty, and deal death to eat when they are not driven by real hunger.

Her charm did nothing but draw the men she liked to her, and hold them as long as she wanted them, no more than that.

Her mind was full of two things, and both of them were important: she wanted Andrew to make the crutches for Keepsie and she wanted to know the new way to birth children. The morning was long. She would finish her work, go to see Andrew, then come home by Heaven's Gate Church where the midwife school was held.

Instead of going straight down the road, she took a path through the woods. Everything seemed silent and still, but little by little many sounds fell on her ears. Water trickled, leaves rustled, birds chirruped over their nest-building. A lizard slipped under a root to hide, a snake writhed swiftly across her path then out of sight.

The forest was the oldest thing on the plantation except the earth itself. The trees were mighty and tall, and the long gray moss almost hid the new leaf buds which pushed the old leaves off. Poplars flamed with new yellow leaves and green flower petals. Scarlet bells were falling off the supple Jack vines which had climbed high to get clear of the dark damp shade. Jessamine vines covered naked bushes and treetops under masses of yellow mist and the shadowy undergrowth was splotched with red-bud and dogwood and crimson buckeye blooms. Nothing changed here. The same old banks of shiny-leaved laurel sloped down to patches of blue and white violets and beds of white lilies. Birds sang everywhere, and the tall pines sighed as they dropped brown needles over their feet.

When a flock of mosquitoes hummed in front of Mary's eyes, she brushed them away with a smile and told them to go suck some juice out of the tender leaves and let her blood alone. In the distance a wild turkey hen was yelping, boldly calling for a mate. All the gobblers went off by themselves in the winter, leaving their women alone, but the first spring yelp sent them flying to begin their courting in earnest. Gobblers that had been good friends all winter would fall out and fight, the strongest ones taking the hens from the others. That same hen's calling would start trouble.

Turkeys have strange ways, but perhaps no stranger than people. Men are the queerest of all God's creatures. Poor fools, not one of them worth a headache, or a tear-drop, and yet, worthless as they are, by means of them her own life had become full and her heart had grown warm and glad again.

She was even with July at last, no matter where he was, or what he was doing. Her heart clutched a little when she thought of him, but a woman's heart is a foolish thing.

She stepped carefully across a narrow log that bridged the sluice between the road and the blacksmith shop, a small, black, dilapidated house whose sloping, broken roof let the evil-smelling smoke inside trickle through. A wild plum thicket that straggled up close to one corner made a bold white splash of fragrant blooms right in the face of the smoky shop-door. A crape-myrtle's new leaves were scarlet and tender. Squirrels played in a tall hickory whose bright yellow tassels made a thin screen above the old shop's ugliness, and whenever a sudden light stir of wind freed some of the pretty bits they flitted airily down. Poor things. Their time was out.

Andrew, the blacksmith, was smoking, and his pipe smelled pleasant beside the stench of the coal which floated out through the door.

Mary tapped on the outside and called timidly, "Good mawnin, Cun: [Cousin] Andrew."

"Who dat?" came a quick answer, followed by a surprised and polite, "Why, how you do, Si May-e?"

Mary saw how his black eyes deepened as they fell on her with a hard fixed gaze trying to make out why she had come.

His grimy woolen shirt was open across his broad breast, and his sleeves were rolled up high, showing his powerful, brawny arms. But he looked weary. His face was lined, his lips droopy, and the hand that held his pipe was a bit unsteady. He looked different from himself, somehow.

"How you do to-day?" he asked her coldly, his eyes still taking account of her.

She met his question boldly and with a smile.

"Fine, Cun Andrew, fine. Same like a lamb a-jumpin."

More than once those same keen searching eyes had embarrassed her miserably and shamed her until she could not hold up her head, for Andrew was the deacon next in power to Brer Dee, and when they turned her out of the church, he scolded her before all the people at meeting. His reproof had cut her deeply and ever since then she had kept out of his way.

But she was older now and more experienced. She could face him easily without batting an eyelash, and she smiled pleasantly as she inquired, "How do you do yousef, Cousin? You ain' lookin so spry to-day. How-come so?"

Almost unconsciously her fingers began toying with the tiny soiled rag tied on a string around her neck, for such polite indifference as Andrew's was something she seldom met. He was not exactly young in years, but he still stood tall and lean and straight, his muscles were hard, his teeth strong and his eyes keen.

In many ways he looked better now than he had ever looked in his whole life. The years had added flesh to his long, lanky frame, his great strong double joints were less gaunt and with worry-ation softening his bright eyes, they became almost gentle. Trouble does most people good. If they are too weak to bear it, they get crushed but if they can stand up against it, it makes them better, in the end. Strange how Andrew stuck to that stupid fat Doll when there were so many better-looking, willing women in the world. Of course, he was a deacon, and he had always been so severe with sinners that he had to walk straight himself. But a little crooked walking might do him good.

"What de matter all you, Cousin?" she asked him pleasantly. "You don' have to depend on cotton for a livin and I hear-say you's got more money dan you know what to do wid. You ought to be happy and smilin, enty?" She said it as softly, as gently as she could, smiling as woman smiles when she knows her power.

He shook his head gloomily. "I has a lot o trouble, Si May-e."

Mary laughed out, "Trouble? You has trouble? Gawd have mussy on you, Cousin. If I didn' have no more trouble'n you, I'd jump up an' crack my heels togedder wid joy. Yes, Jedus. What kinder trouble is gnawin on you to-day?"

As Andrew took up his heavy hammer and fingered it, the brawny muscles slid back and forth under the smooth black skin of his powerful arms. It was strange to see this big, strapping fellow down-hearted, for as a rule he strutted around vain as a turkey cock. Nobody was ever more sure of himself or more certain that all he did was right, nobody else had such sharp tools or such skilful, well-trained hands; but he seemed not to know just how to start telling her what his trouble was. "I declare to Gawd, Si May-e, when I think on Doll and de foolish way e done me, I git pure povoked. I ain' never had a long patience, no-how."

"Doll? Fo Gawd's sake, Cousin. You make me surprise. You an' Doll ain' lovin as two turtle doves? I didn' thought butter would much as melt in Doll's mouth, e talks so mild an' pleasant all de time."

"E didn' talk mild an' pleasant, not dis mawnin. Great Gawd, no. E like to a choked esef a-workin e tongue. All 'bout nothin, too."

Mary sighed and murmured that it was a pity for a nice useful man like himself to be worried and fretted. But some women are silly like children, and get spoiled to death if you pet them or treat them anyways soft and easy.

"You got sense, Si May-e, sense like a man." Andrew looked at her with brightening eyes, and his hands tightened their grip on the hammer's handle.

Andrew was a good housekeeper. The shop was crammed with wagon wheels in need of spokes or rims, but they stood in neat rows, one against the other.

The solid block which held the anvil had a band around its middle where punches and cold chisels and other tools stood in the pockets, where his hands could reach them without trouble or waste of time. The oak shavings were free of smut. But, Lord, the shop had an evil smell—the breath of that smoky black coal constantly. To stand near the forge was a terrible thing when Andrew turned the handle of the bellows and fanned the black coals red. If cedar smoke could cause miscarriage, what would this coal smoke do?

"Great Gawd, Cun Andrew, how-come you don' burn hickory or ash or some kind o sweet-smellin wood like you used to? How can you stand a coal fire? It stinks worse'n a blunt tail moccasin to me."

Andrew's eyes twinkled but his voice was grave. "You better smoke you pipe whilst you's here, Si May-e. Le me fill em fo you." And she handed him her pipe, making a wry face.

"I ruther smell a pole-cat, Cun Andrew."

"Me too, but don' blame me, gal. Big Boy is de one fetched coal to de shop. E will try new tings and newfangled ways. Big Boy knows more'n me or anybody to hear him talk."

"Shucks," Mary answered, as she took a tiny ember off the forge and lighted her pipe. "Big Boy'll find out some o dese days dat all de sense his skull ever will hold ain' much as you got in one lil toe-nail."

The iron in the forge slowly turned red, then white with heat as Andrew blew the bellows.

"I dunno. Big Boy is gwine to be a fine man too, Si May-e. I see plenty o signs o dat, but e's been mighty down-hearted lately. E's so raven about Seraphine, e can' rest. I keep tellin' em to wait an' see what kind o 'oman Seraphine'll be. A contrary 'oman is a hard thing to stand."

"Dat's de Gawd's truth, Cousin, but what you know 'bout a contrary 'oman?"

"When Doll gets e head set e gits mighty contrary," Andrew complained.

Mary puffed her pipe in silence. Her eyes were fixed on the red-hot coals, and Andrew, now fairly started, talked on and on in a vexed, aggrieved tone. He had never mistreated Doll in his life. Every year God sent when all the crops were gathered he sent her to town on the boat and let her get herself and all the children, his and hers, some clothes. She always had shoes to wear on Sundays. She always had a nice hat. He never had stinted her. He made money, but she spent it as freely as water. He had never been hard on her in any way. He provided well for her and encouraged her to pleasure herself as much as any Christian woman ought to do. He never said a word when she stayed all day at a quilting or when she marched around the fire half the night at birth-night suppers.

Andrew paused for breath and Mary put in, "You sho has been a good husband, Cousin. Everybody on de whole plantation knows dat. I ever did say Doll is de luckiest 'oman I ever seen. E got de finest man ever was for a husband, a lot o nice chillen, a good home, an' clothes, an' plenty to eat. What more could heart wish? Doll must be gone out e head if e ain' satisfy wid all dat."

Andrew's eyes narrowed at the last words and he shook his head. Doll was not satisfied. That was the whole trouble. Nobody could please her. The angel Gabriel could not please her. Instead of being satisfied with being a high-up church-member and a deacon's wife, Doll was raven to join the Bury-league. She talked about it day and night.

"Doll is spoiled. You done too much for em, Cousin. Too much. It don' pay to let a woman run over you. If you do, before long Doll will stop an' wipe e feet on you."

Andrew nodded slowly. Mary wasright. She knew Doll, but he was going to teach Doll a lesson. She'd find out he was no feeble fool to run after her and be a slave for her. She could stay right where she was the rest of her days before he'd ever go one step to fetch her home.

"Whe e is, Cousin? Whe Doll dey? Fo Gawd's sake, you don' mean dat fool 'oman is gone an' left you! How-come so?"

Andrew tilted his hat a bit farther back and squared himself with his feet farther apart to tell Mary about the whole thing. Doll never could understand that men and women are different creatures. God made them different at the very start. He did not make men to sit down at home and patch and sew and quilt. Mary smiled. Of course, God didn't make men so, and she for one was glad of it. She never could stand to have a man hanging around the house. Men had business to be out working and doing what men were meant to do.

Andrew said Doll couldn't see it that way, not that he ever craved running around day or night. When the crops were growing and the grass growing with them, he stayed right in the field behind his plow keeping them clean. But when his potatoes were all dug and banked, his peas picked, his corn gathered and put in the barn, his cane ground and made into molasses, he got tired sitting at home every night from first dark until time to go to bed with nobody to talk to but Doll and the children. The nights were too long. One winter night was as long as three June nights.

Doll could sleep from first dark until sunrise, but if he went to bed early he couldn't sleep until daybreak to save his life. He twisted and turned like a worm in hot ashes and his bones pure hurt from lying in bed so long. Sometimes he walked out at night and visited the neighbors, but here lately Doll began sticking out her mouth and complaining of being lonesome. Last night she got so vexed she wouldn't talk to him at all. She just swelled up like a toad-fish and sat and looked at the fire without cracking her teeth.

This morning she looked so mean and cross he asked her what ailed her. At first she would not answer him, but after a while she said she was tired of the way he ran around at night. What she said was not so bad as the way she said it. Doll knew he did not run around at night. She was vexed because he would not go buy her an auto-mobile. She rode in one last summer when she went to town on the excursion and she had not given him any peace since then. The ugly, old, worn-out, second-hand thing would cost as much as his whole share-crop of cotton would make in five years. It was fit for nothing but to run into the first ditch it saw and break her neck or her insides.

Money burned Doll. With her, it was easy come, easy go, as if his field still made a bale of cotton to the acre. Doll wanted to spend every cent instead of burying some in the ground to keep for hard times.

Mary listened thoughtfully. Doll was wrong. God did not intend for people to act so. He gave them feet and the ground to walk on. If they get in a hurry or have a long distance to go. He has provided mules and oxen to hitch to wagons and buggies. People ought to stand still and think.

"And pray, too," Andrew added solemnly. "Fo times is changed, an' de change ain' fo de better. Looka de Bury-league. De plantation ain' de same since it come here."

"You right, Cousin?"

Andrew drew a deep sigh. Friends used to look after one another on the plantation. If you got sick your friends came and sat up with you and rubbed you; Daddy Cudjoe made root tea and dosed you and got you well. If you died they closed your eyes and shrouded you and nailed clean new boards into a box to hold you. When they dug your grave they let the sun set in it before they laid you away in the earth.

If sickness seizes a person now, unless he belongs to a Bury-league society, he is not counted for a thing. He can die and get buried the best way hecan. He may be a member of the church, in good standing, or even a deacon or a deacon's wife, but unless he joins the Bury-league and keeps his dues all paid up, he gets no attention. The Bury-league sisters and brothers sit up with the worst sinners now and pray over them and listen to all their last words, the same as if they were Christian people. When sinners drop off into their last sleep, they have a store-bought shroud and lie in a fine store-bought box varnished up and painted like a bureau with a glass window in it to show their wicked faces. The Bury-league members don't care how much the preacher preaches sinners to Hell. They are too brazen to care.

They think about nothing but marching and speaking and singing, and wearing white gloves. Women who are hardly decent put on white waists and black skirts and black sailor hats, and journey round and round people's graves, saying words that are written in a book. Strange words instead of the words Jesus told people to say. Before the dust settles they put up a fifteen-dollar tombstone with your name on it. And the dues are high. Every time somebody dies you pay an extra tax of fifty cents. People die fast these days too. They don't wait for plain sickness to cut them down. They run around and find ways to meet sudden death.

He had told Doll all these things as plain as he could. He told her again this morning but instead of listening to him she stuck out her mouth. The way she did made him hot all over and he all but slapped her then, but he didn't. He just told her to pull in her lip and keep it pulled in. Then, Doll jumped up and said he had better pull in his own. He. Andrew, her lawful husband, and a deacon in the church, too, had to take such slack talk as that from Doll.

Mary turned aside to smile, but she made her voice sound as kind as she could. "It must a been hard for you to take it, Cousin. Mighty hard. All dis you tell me sho makes me surprise. Doll ain' got de sense I thought e had. Not by a long shot."

But wait; he hadn't told her all yet. Doll got so vexed with him she bawled out loud enough for everybody a mile off to hear, and she the wife of a deacon in Heaven's Gate Church. Then, and he hated to tell this—but Doll cursed him for a stingy old fool.

The words didn't have a chance to get cold off her tongue before he hauled off and slapped her dumb. No woman has a right to call a man such a thing, even if she is married to him. No woman could call him so and not get her face slapped good and hard, free-handed as he was.

But, Lord, the devil was turned loose then. Words ran out of Doll's mouth faster than water runs down the gully after rain. She screamed and hollered and carried on until she was too hoarse to whisper. Nobody could stop her or do a thing with her. The more she talked, the more she said.

When she ran into the shed room he paid no heed to her until he heard a strange fuss. He got there just in time to see Doll grab up every bit of the rations and throw them out of the window into the yard. All the grits and meal and bacon, all the rice and sugar and coffee. Every God's thing he had bought to feed her and the children and himself for a whole week. He had taken some corn all the way down to the end of the Neck to get it ground on a water mill because Doll liked water-ground meal more than meal ground by a steam-engine. God knew he ever had tried to please the woman.

When she finished throwing away all the rations, he thought she would cool down some, but she wasn't satisfied yet. She ran out in the yard and before he could hinder her, she chopped down all the potato banks with a hoe. Chopped every single bank right in the top where the cornstalks stuck out to let the air in. Then she flew to the wood-pile and got the ax and gave the big iron wash-pot one awful lick. The poor thing pure bellowed when the ax hit it, for a great hole broke in its side.

Mary was shocked sure enough now. "De best wash-pot on dis whole place, Cousin. I declare to Gawd I too hate it myself. I was aimin to borrow dat pot de next time I kill ahog. How's Doll gwine to boil clothes now? How's e gwine to try out lard?"

Andrew grunted. Doll would never wash any more clothes for him in this world or kill another hog out of his pen, for when she kad done all that devilment she left and only God knew where she went. But she could stay right there until Gabriel blew his trumpet for all he cared. He'd never ask her to come back. Never as long as he was in his right mind.

Mary listened, puffing at her pipe now and then, thinking the matter over. Andrew was wrong.

"Mens is different from womens, Cousin, but all o we has two minds, enty?"

Andrew agreed it was so.

"I got two, you got two, an' Doll's got two, enty?" Andrew started to speak but she stopped him, "Wait a minute, Cousin; you's willin to own Doll's got two minds de same as you, enty?"

He was.

"One o Doll's minds is good an' sensible, de other is mischeevous, enty?"

Perhaps so.

"All whilst you was talkin to me, a-tellin me 'bout Doll, all two o my minds was speakin. One mind say, 'Doll is a mean 'oman;' de other mind say, 'Doll is a po pitiful creeter. E can' stand for Andrew to go off to see anybody else after dark.' My first mind say, 'Tell Andrew to don' never fool wid Doll, not no more,' but my second mind say, 'Tell Andrew fo Gawd's sake go hitch up a mule an' wagon an' fetch Doll back home.' Doll's a-lookin down the road fo you right dis minute, Cousin. Evy time Doll sees a dust a-risin e heart jumps inside e breast a-hopin dat dust is you."

Andrew's eyes widened and he stopped quite still to think it over. "Si May-e, you's a good 'oman. You got a good heart, even if you is de wickedest sinner Gawd ever made."

Mary grinned. "I ain' so wicked, Cousin, neither so good. You's a man an' I's a 'oman. You want to have all de pleasure, an' don' leave me an' Doll none. Dat ain' right, church or no church. Gawd ain' gwine be too hard on people what misses an' makes mistakes sometimes. You'll see. But you better go fetch Doll home. An', Cousin,"—Mary laughed, smiled right up into Andrew's eyes,—"if I was you, you know what I'd do?"

"What, gal?"

"I'd go beg Doll's pardon."

"Beg em pardon?"

"Dat is what I say."

"But I ain' done Doll no wrong."

"It don' matter who done right or wrong. If you would go humble like to Doll an' beg em pardon, it would do em an' you all-two good."

Andrew wasn't convinced, but Mary persisted.

"What's done is done. You can' change em. You may as well make de best o em."

Andrew stayed dumb as a clam.

"You must be forgot how you licked Doll on you weddin-night, enty, Cousin?"

"I didn't lick em so much. I was just lettin em know I was gwine to rule em. Dat was all."

"Den why don' you rule em, if you know how?"

"Times is changed, Si May-e. Womens is changed too. Nobody can' rule a 'oman by switchin em dese days. Dey hides is pure tough. A leather strap can' sweeten em now."

Andrew did not see that Mary covered up a smile under her hand, for he was making her a comfortable seat by turning upside down a broken wash-tub which was waiting to have a new band put around it.

He began bending a steel rod into a smooth strong link and Mary drew her skirts to one side for the sparks flew wildly about under the beating of the heavy hammer.

She liked to watch Andrew's big hands ruling the hot metal and molding it into a pattern. The rumbling boom of his deep voice was pleasant. His skin was as smooth and black as her own and in spite of his height and bulk he moved as easily as a cat. Suddenly his eyes lifted and looked straight at her.

"How-come you named you cripple boy Keepsie, Si May-e? Dat's a new name to me."

The smoke from Mary's pipe curled into a curious shape which broke and faded as she drew in a sudden breath. She hated to answer the question truthfully, yet if she lied, Andrew would know it.

"You ever did hear of a town named Pough-keepsie?"

Andrew had not.

"Well, it's a town up-north."

Andrew nodded, then waited for her to go on.

"Keepsie's daddy come from Pough-keepsie."

"Who e is?"

"When I went to town on de excursion long time ago, I met em."

"You ain' seen em since?"

"Not since."

Andrew reflected and nodded his head. Since Keepsie had no daddy to provide crutches for him, he would be glad to make them. He would put all his other work aside and start them as soon as he got Keepsie's measure. Big Boy would go to the swamp and get the right kind of ash wood, so the crutches would be both stout and light. Together, they would soon get them made. And maybe after this Seraphine would treat Big Boy with more manners.

"When did Seraphine ever mistreat Big Boy?"

"Last Sat'day when e went all de way to town to see em."

"What Seraphine done, Cousin?"

"Seraphine wouldn' much as come out an' speak to em."

The morning was warm and the air in the shop was hot from the fire in the forge, but cold sweat broke out on Mary and chilled her the same as if Andrew poured a bucket of spring water over her. Fear stabbed her to the heart. Seraphine was always so glad to see anybody from home, why would she not come out and speak to Big Boy?

"How-come Big Boy ain' told me how Seraphine done?"

"Big Boy ain' had de heart to tell you." Andrew's eyes shot a swift look at Mary's face then went back to the hot white rod which shed scales of red-hot skin every time that it was given a twist.

"Big Boy is wrong, somehow, Cousin. Seraphine wouldn' miss seein em, not fo gold. Seraphine is a good manners-able gal, an' e ever was raven over Big Boy."

"So much book readin might be changed Seraphine from how e was, Si May-e."

Mary could not answer that. Book reading is an unnatural thing, and it might have gone to Seraphine's head fo-true.

Andrew plunged the piece of steel into a tub of water and the sigh he made was almost as deep as its hissing. Women have got to be strange things these days. They don't need book reading to make them act crazy. All they want is enough money to buy themselves cake and candy and bottle-drinks and stuff to sweeten their mouths and rot out their teeth. They were not satisfied to ruin their feet wearing shoes every day, but they wanted irons to straighten their hair and grease to lighten their skins.

"Seraphine ain' like dat, Cousin. Seraphine is a sensible gal. E do wear shoes lately fo-true, by e got such a awful splinter in e heel de last time e danced barefeeted. But e skin is black an' e teeth is solid as my own. Soon as e gits a depluma e's comin straight home to stay."

"Wha dat you call a depluma, Si May-e?"

"Gawd knows what e is, Cousin. I ain' never see one in my life, but Seraphine craves to get one, I know dat."

"If dat is what Seraphine craves, I hope e won' be disappoint."

The big boat was coming up the river, bellowing and splashing water like a great vexed alligator. The day was passing. Mary must go. And yet the news about Seraphine had rooted her feet to the ground so she could hardly pull them up and move them.

"De day is young, Si May-e. It ain' middle-day, not yet. What's you hurry?"

"I'm gwine by Heaven's Gate road, Cousin. Dat's a long ways home."

"Is you comin to Heaven's Gate Friday night?"

"I might. I ain' certain."

"You better come see de place whe you is gwine some o dese days."

"Who? Me?" Mary laughed. "Lawd, Cousin, when you gets to Heaven I'm gwine to be waitin for you, ready to set right by you side."

"I hope so. I hope you will, gal."

The cool air outside was full of delicious scents which were all the more pleasant after the horrid smell of Andrew's shop with its black coal smoke. Mary sniffed it, then breathed it in deep before she started walking swiftly on the road leading toward Heaven's Gate Church.

New leaves, fragrant weeds and grasses were reaching up to catch all they could of the day's yellow sunshine. A light breeze full of summer softness floated in from the rice-fields and, snatching at the strong sweet smoke Mary pulled out of her pipe, swept it away, then climbed up and whirled some of the yellow tassels down from the trees.

Mary was worried. What in God's world ailed Seraphine? Big Boy was a fine-looking fellow. When he got on his Sunday clothes and tiltedhis hat over on one side, any girl would be glad to get him for a husband. She must try to straighten Seraphine out somehow. She would go to Daddy Cudjoe and get a love-charm for Big Boy to use on Seraphine and cure her of any foolish notions book reading had put into ber head.

Meantime, she might try her own hand at working a spell on Big Boy's daddy. Andrew was a fine-looking fellow. Such a proudful fellow too. She would like to see him humble just once. One time would not do him any harm.

She would have to be careful, for he was fiery-tempered and headstrong, and if she displeased him he would make her rue the day she ever crossed his path. He had the name of being a good friend but a mean and heartless enemy. He liked to think he set an example which ought to be followed by every other man on the plantation, but the strongest men were weak before her little cloth conjure rag. If it failed to put a hand on Andrew it would be because he was such a faithful Christian man, always praying and singing holy hymns and abusing sinners and sin. If she did fail to get a spell laid on him, it made no difference. Plenty of other men were in the world, and the difference between one man and another does not amount to a very great deal. There had been a few men she preferred to all the rest for a day or a week; some as long as a year, because they were kinder or stronger or maybe weaker and more in need of what she had to give, but not one of them had ever satisfied her long at a time. Not one, although she had always picked the best.

Men are too much alike, with ways too much the same. None is worth keeping, none worth a tear; and still each one is a little different from the rest; just different enough to make him worth finding out. Everybody has a selfness that makes the root of his life and being.

If getting men, taking them from their rightful owners, had been hard work, she would never have bothered about it; but it was such an easy thing. All she had to do was call them with a look, or a smile, or the wave of a hand. Sometimes with no more than a glance. Whichever man she wanted came running, whether he was old or young, sinner or church-member. All she had to do was to wear that little charm on a string around her neck as it was to-day.

Most of the women who had grown up in the Quarters with her were fat and logy or skinny and sharp. Thank God, she had kept supple and young. The years had been easy on the others and hard on her, but toil and carrying heavy loads had hardened her sinews and lengthened her wind and kept her body lean and slim. She could swing an ax and cut the toughest wood for hours at a time without a taint of weariness. She could jerk a hoe day after day through the hottest sunshine. She could pick cotton with the best and come home at night as cheerful and fresh as when she waked at dawn. Thank God!

Instead of going straight into the Big Road, she chose to leave that at one side for a narrow path which made a short-cut through the neighboring woods, where everything was silent and still. Hardly a leaf or blade of grass trembled as they reached up to catch the light, and forest shadows made a dark veil across the damp earth.

Mary walked on, fast at first, then more slowly, for she had two heavy loads to carry this morning, her unborn child, and her heart full of fear that something had gone wrong with Seraphine. Poor little girl, How little she knew now of life, of people, of her own self for that matter. The tall old trees let no sunshine fall on the path, and only a narrow strip of sky showed overhead. The earth smelled moldy under the trees.

The road gave a narrow white glimpse of the Big House at the end of the long avenue. Whenever she wanted to be by herself a while, in some quiet place so she could think, she went and sat on one of the old stone benches in the weed-grown flower garden; nobody would disturb her.

The great silent house looked grand and solemn, with its high gray roof and tall red chimneys. She had a timid feeling when she walked near it or sat alone in the garden, lest a ghost of somebody who once lived there, a servant or one of the fine white ladies, should call out to her and ask her what she wanted.

The plantation owners, had lived there many a year, ruling the land and the tides in the rice-fields as firmly as they ruled the black people whom they bought and sold as freely as they did the mules which slept in the great open stables and ate out of long wooden troughs. Black people used to make up a part of the plantation's wealth the same as the carriage and saddle horses with their well-rubbed, shining hides.

They were valued according to their strength and sense. The weak and stupid were sold. Only the best were kept. A good thing. Mary could see it now. The white people were gone. The forest had taken back many of their fields, the river had swallowed their rice-fields, but the black people were used to hardship and they lived on here and throve. Her mother had been born here and her grandmother and all the other women before them right on back to the first ones who were brought long ago up the river from the town where a slave market gave them and other black people to the rice- and cotton-fields. She had got her health and strength and vigor from them.

The same old cabins housed them. The same old fields had taken their days. Sunshine and work, darkness and rest, that was all they had, and there would be nothing else in the world to-day if a body did not stop to pleasure a little now and then. Yet, work is good, and sunshine is good, even when its scorching heat burns backs and the soles of bare feet. It freshens weakness and brings back strength, and the field which takes time and labor gives back pay enough te make life pleasant.

A crooked old rose-tree had covered its knotted black limbs with red blossoms which were sweet with honey. Bees hummed eagerly over them, then settled on them, searching them, walking through them with bold brown legs, shattering them and scattering them on the ground. Bees don't mind if they hurt rose-blossoms, for when those blossoms fell they'd go somewhere else to find honey.

Mary sighed. She loved the sunshine. Its warmth and brightness lulled her, soothed her, but the bees—they buzzed so. They might sting her. She'd go.