X

Mrs. McDuffy goes to Church every Sunday and always shouts and tells her “determination.” Her husband always sits in the back row and beats her as soon as they get home. He says there’s no sense in her shouting, as big a devil as she is. She just does it to slur him. Elijah Moseley asked her why she didn’t stop shouting, seeing she always got a beating about it. She says she can’t “squinch the sperrit.” Then Elijah asked Mr. McDuffy to stop beating her, seeing that she was going to shout anyway. He answered that she just did it for spite and that his fist was just as hard as her head. He could last just as long as she. So the village let the matter rest.

XI
Double-Shuffle

Back in the good old days before the World War, things were very simple in Eatonville. People didn’t fox-trot. When the town wanted to put on its Sunday clothes and wash behind the ears, it put on a “breakdown.” The daring younger set would two-step and waltz, but the good church members and the elders stuck to the grand march. By rural canons dancing is wicked, but one is not held to have danced until the feet have been crossed. Feet don’t get crossed when one grand marches.

At elaborate affairs the organ from the Methodist church was moved up to the hall and Lizzimore, the blind man presided. When informal gatherings were held, he merely played his guitar assisted by any volunteer with mouth organs or accordions.

Among white people the march is as mild as if it had been passed on by Volstead. But it still has a kick in Eatonville. Everybody happy, shining eyes, gleaming teeth. Feet dragged ’shhlap, shhlap! to beat out the time. No orchestra needed. Round and round! Back again, parse-me-la! shlap! shlap! Strut! Strut! Seaboard! Shlap! Shlap! Tiddy bumm! Mr. Clarke in the lead with Mrs. Mosely.

It’s too much for some of the young folks. Double shuffling commences. Buck and wing. Lizzimore about to break his guitar. Accordion doing contortions. People fall back against the walls, and let the soloist have it, shouting as they clap the old, old double shuffle songs.

’Me an’ mah honey got two mo’ days
Two mo’ days tuh do de buck’

Sweating bodies, laughing mouths, grotesque faces, feet drumming fiercely. Deacons clapping as hard as the rest.

“Great big nigger, black as tar
Trying tuh git tuh hebben on uh ’lectric car.”
“Some love cabbage, some love kale
But I love a gal wid a short skirt tail.”
Long tall angel—steppin’ down,
Long white robe an’ starry crown.
’Ah would not marry uh black gal (bumm bumm!)
Tell yuh de reason why
Every time she comb her hair
She make de goo-goo eye.
Would not marry a yaller gal (bumm bumm!)
Tell yuh de reason why
Her neck so long an’ stringy
Ahm ’fraid she’d never die.
Would not marry uh preacher
Tell yuh de reason why
Every time he comes tuh town
He makes de chicken fly.

When the buck dance was over, the boys would give the floor to the girls and they would parse-me-la with a slye eye out of the corner to see if anybody was looking who might “have them up in church” on conference night. Then there would be more dancing. Then Mr. Clarke would call for everybody’s best attention and announce that ’freshments was served! Every gent’man would please take his lady by the arm and scorch her right up to de table fur a treat!

Then the men would stick their arms out with a flourish and ask their ladies: “You lak chicken? Well, then, take a wing.” And the ladies would take the proffered “wings” and parade up to the long table and be served. Of course most of them had brought baskets in which were heaps of jointed and fried chicken, two or three kinds of pies, cakes, potato pone and chicken purlo. The hall would separate into happy groups about the baskets until time for more dancing.

But the boys and girls got scattered about during the war, and now they dance the fox-trot by a brand new piano. They do waltz and two-step still, but no one now considers it good form to lock his chin over his partner’s shoulder and stick out behind. One night just for fun and to humor the old folks, they danced, that is, they grand marched, but everyone picked up their feet. Bah!!

XII
The Head of the Nail

Daisy Taylor was the town vamp. Not that she was pretty. But sirens were all but non-existent in the town. Perhaps she was forced to it by circumstances. She was quite dark, with little brushy patches of hair squatting over her head. These were held down by shingle-nails often. No one knows whether she did this for artistic effect or for lack of hair-pins, but there they were shining in the little patches of hair when she got all dressed for the afternoon and came up to Clarke’s store to see if there was any mail for her.

It was seldom that anyone wrote to Daisy, but she knew that the men of the town would be assembled there by five o’clock, and some one could usually be induced to buy her some soda water or peanuts.

Daisy flirted with married men. There were only two single men in town. Lum Boger, who was engaged to the assistant school-teacher, and Hiram Lester, who had been off to school at Tuskegee and wouldn’t look at a person like Daisy. In addition to other drawbacks, she was pigeon-toed and her petticoat was always showing so perhaps he was justified. There was nothing else to do except flirt with married men.

This went on for a long time. First one wife then another complained of her, or drove her from the preserves by threat.

But the affair with Crooms was the most prolonged and serious. He was even known to have bought her a pair of shoes.

Mrs. Laura Crooms was a meek little woman who took all of her troubles crying, and talked a great deal of leaving things in the hands of God.

The affair came to a head one night in orange picking time. Crooms was over at Oneido picking oranges. Many fruit pickers move from one town to the other during the season.

The town was collected at the store-postoffice as is customary on Saturday nights. The town has had its bath and with its week’s pay in pocket fares forth to be merry. The men tell stories and treat the ladies to soda-water, peanuts and peppermint candy.

Daisy was trying to get treats, but the porch was cold to her that night.

“Ah don’t keer if you don’t treat me. What’s a dirty lil nickel?” She flung this at Walter Thomas. “The everloving Mister Crooms will gimme anything atall Ah wants.”

“You better shet up yo’ mouf talking ’bout Albert Crooms. Heah his wife comes right now.”

Daisy went akimbo. “Who? Me! Ah don’t keer whut Laura Crooms think. If she ain’t a heavy hip-ted Mama enough to keep him, she don’t need to come crying to me.”

She stood making goo-goo eyes as Mrs. Crooms walked upon the porch. Daisy laughed loud, made several references to Albert Crooms, and when she saw the mail-bag come in from Maitland she said, “Ah better go in an’ see if Ah ain’t got a letter from Oneido.”

The more Daisy played the game of getting Mrs. Crooms’ goat, the better she liked it. She ran in and out of the store laughing until she could scarcely stand. Some of the people present began to talk to Mrs. Crooms—to egg her on to halt Daisy’s boasting, but she was for leaving it all in the hands of God. Walter Thomas kept on after Mrs. Crooms until she stiffened and resolved to fight. Daisy was inside when she came to this resolve and never dreamed anything of the kind could happen. She had gotten hold of an envelope and came laughing and shouting, “Oh, Ah can’t stand to see Oneido lose!”

There was a box of ax-handles on display on the porch, propped up against the door jamb. As Daisy stepped upon the porch, Mrs. Crooms leaned the heavy end of one of those handles heavily upon her head. She staggered from the porch to the ground and the timid Laura, fearful of a counter-attack, struck again and Daisy toppled into the town ditch. There was not enough water in there to do more than muss her up. Every time she tried to rise, down would come that ax-handle again. Laura was fighting a scared fight. With Daisy thoroughly licked, she retired to the store porch and left her fallen enemy in the ditch. None of the men helped Daisy—even to get out of the ditch. But Elijah Moseley, who was some distance down the street when the trouble began arrived as the victor was withdrawing. He rushed up and picked Daisy out of the mud and began feeling her head.

“Is she hurt much?” Joe Clarke asked from the doorway.

“I don’t know,” Elijah answered, “I was just looking to see if Laura had been lucky enough to hit one of those nails on the head and drive it in.”

Before a week was up, Daisy moved to Orlando. There in a wider sphere, perhaps, her talents as a vamp were appreciated.

XIII
Pants and Cal’line

Sister Cal’line Potts was a silent woman. Did all of her laughing down inside, but did the thing that kept the town in an uproar of laughter. It was the general opinion of the village that Cal’line would do anything she had a mind to. And she had a mind to do several things.

Mitchell Potts, her husband, had a weakness for women. No one ever believed that she was jealous. She did things to the women, surely. But most any townsman would have said that she did them because she liked the novel situation and the queer things she could bring out of it.

Once he took up with Delphine—called Mis’ Pheeny by the town. She lived on the outskirts on the edge of the piney woods. The town winked and talked. People don’t make secrets of such things in villages. Cal’line went about her business with her thin black lips pursed tight as ever, and her shiny black eyes unchanged.

“Dat devil of a Cal’line’s got somethin’ up her sleeve!” The town smiled in anticipation.

“Delphine is too big a cigar for her to smoke. She ain’t crazy,” said some as the weeks went on and nothing happened. Even Pheeny herself would give an extra flirt to her over-starched petticoats as she rustled into church past her of Sundays.

Mitch Potts said furthermore, that he was tired of Cal’line’s foolishness. She had to stay where he put her. His African soup-bone (arm) was too strong to let a woman run over him. ’Nough was ’nough. And he did some fancy cussing, and he was the fanciest cusser in the county.

So the town waited and the longer it waited, the odds changed slowly from the wife to the husband.

One Saturday, Mitch knocked off work at two o’clock and went over to Maitland. He came back with a rectangular box under his arm and kept straight on out to the barn and put it away. He ducked around the corner of the house quickly, but even so, his wife glimpsed the package. Very much like a shoe-box. So!

He put on the kettle and took a bath. She stood in her bare feet at the ironing board and kept on ironing. He dressed. It was about five o’clock but still very light. He fiddled around outside. She kept on with her ironing. As soon as the sun got red, he sauntered out to the barn, got the parcel and walked away down the road, past the store and out into the piney woods. As soon as he left the house. Cal’line slipped on her shoes without taking time to don stockings, put on one of her husband’s old Stetsons, worn and floppy, slung the axe over her shoulder and followed in his wake. He was hailed cheerily as he passed the sitters on the store porch and answered smiling sheepishly and passed on. Two minutes later passed his wife, silently, unsmilingly, and set the porch to giggling and betting.

An hour passed perhaps. It was dark. Clarke had long ago lighted the swinging kerosene lamp inside.