“Pa, is you pit any powduh een dat gun?”
“Who? Me? Wuh gun? Betsey? C’ose I pit powduh een ’um.”
“Bettuh try’um,” said doubting youth, and he did. When the shot was drawn and the screw of the long iron ramrod clicked against the breech of the musket, old Okra’s face was a study. “Yaas, ef I did’n’ bin haffuh watch Boyzie duh watch de squerril, I wouldn’t bin fuhgit fuh load’um.” Consoling himself with this shifting of responsibility, he loaded deliberately and fired, bringing down, with a lot of pine needles, half the squirrel’s tail, which he stuck in the cord which bound his old hat with the remark, “Well, ennyhow I git all wuh I shoot at. Ef man kin git all wuh ’e try fuh git, him oughtuh tengkful!”
THE “CUNJUH” THAT CAME BACK
Lucy Jones, of Pon Pon, square and stout and widowed, had in her youth been as frequently husbanded as the Wife of Bath. One by one, however, through death, incompatibility of temperament, or indifference, she had lost these affiliations, and now, a “settled woman,” Lucy lacked the masterful ways and the loving club of a man about the house, for it is axiomatic among the Gullah ladies of the Carolina coast that love and physical chastisement are inseparable. “Ef man ent lick you, ’e yent lub you.” So, yearning for the touch of a vanished hoe handle or axe helve, Lucy languished. There was no longer satisfaction in “cawnhom’ny” or “tu’n flour.” There was no savor in “poke” greens or lamb’s-quarter. Fat bacon, while greasing her mouth, no longer anointed her soul. Her cabin was snug and comfortable, her bed was wide, and covered with a patchwork quilt that would have made Joseph’s coat look like a drab jacket of butternut jeans. This quilt, slowly fabricated of all the bits of bright cloth—silk, cotton and wool—that she had begged from “de buckruh” during a period of several years, she had stitched together with painstaking fingers and exalted soul, absolutely confident that with its completion would come a husband to share its chromatic glories. “All de time uh binnuh mek dat quilt uh bin agguhnize een me min’ duh study ’pun wuh kinduh husbun’ uh gwine git w’en ’e done finish. Sometime’ uh t’ink uh gwine git uh nyung nigguh, en’ den uh ’membuh suh dese’yuh nyung nigguh ent wut. Dem too lub fuh t’row bone. En’ den, ’nodduh time uh study en’ uh t’ink uh’ll git uh settle’ man, but uh know berry well uh haffuh git some kind’uh man ’cause uh lonesome tummuch, en’ uh keep on sew de quilt ’tell ’e done, en’ uh pit’um on de bed, en’ dat night w’en uh gone’sleep onduhneet’ de quilt, uh hab one dream, en’ one sperrit come to me een de dream en’ tell me suh me fuh marry Isaac Middletun.”
So the notion got into her head. Isaac was tall, as Lucy was short; Isaac was thin, as Lucy was stout, and Isaac was wary, as Lucy was predaceous. Himself an elderly widower, he was living alone when Lucy delicately intimated to him her desire to change the Welsh name of Jones for the aristocratic English patronymic of Middleton. Middleton, acknowledging the compliment, politely declined the offer, preferring to keep his lonely cabin to himself. “Uh tell’um wuh de sperrit say,” she said, “en’ uh tell’um de sperrit say him fuh come fuh marry me dat same night. Uh hab fait’ een de sperrit’ wu’d, en’ uh scour’ out de house en’ uh mek de bed, en’ uh pit de tea by de fiah, en’ still yet Middletun ent come. Uh nebbuh know shishuh eegnunt nigguh. W’en uh fin’ suh ’e yent come, uh gone deepo fuh fin’um, en’ uh tell’um ’gen wuh de sperrit say. Uh tell’um ’bout de quilt en’ de tea en’ t’ing’, en’ uh tell’um nemmine’ ’bout him house, cause myself hab house fuh alltwo uh we fuh lib een, but Middletun ent haa’kee to wuh uh tell’um ’bout de sperrit. ’E say suh de sperrit hab bidness fuh talk ’long nyung ’ooman ef de sperrit fuh send wife fuh him. Uh tell’um uh nyung ’ooman cyan’ specify fuh wife fuh settle’ man lukkuh Middletun, ’cause dem lub fuh dress tummuch, but seem lukkuh uh cyan’ git Middletun’ min’ straight.” So she “took her foot in her hand” and went home, dejected but not hopeless, for she determined to stick to the trail, as the hound to the slot, until she ran the wily quarry to earth, to wit, cabin, for she hankered after him with an intense hankering.
“Lucy Middletun,” “Mis’ Middletun,” how it filled the mouth and the ear, and exalted the spirit with satisfaction! Ever since emancipation the negroes have laid great store by their “titles,” prefaced by “Mistuh” or “Mis’.” Very dear to their hearts was the evolution of “Cuffee,” “Cudjo” and “Sancho” of slavery, into “Mistuh Scott,” “Mistuh Hawlback” and “Mistuh Middletun,” of freedom, and, in the twinkling of an eye, “Dinah” and “Bina” and “Bella,” the grubs, were transformed into “Mis’ Wineglass,” “Mis’ Chizzum” and “Mis’ Manigo,” the butterflies. So, as Lucy mused and spun the spider web of fancy in which she hoped to entrap the wary and unappreciative Isaac, her mind crossed the stormy seas of Endeavor, and, resting in the snug harbor of Achievement, she thought of the deed as done, and imagined herself as going to work on week days, to church on Sundays, and to class meetings in the evenings, carrying, as appurtenant to her person, the longed-for “title” of Isaac, and as she thought upon the occasions when on public road or by-path she should “pass the time of day” in the ceremonial salutations so dear to her kind, she was filled to the jowls with ecstasy and her eardrums vibrated with the melody of “Middleton.”
“Mawnin’, Mis’ Jones, how you do, ma’am?”
“Mawnin’, Mis’ Wineglass, uh tengk Gawd fuh life, but you know uh yent name Mis’ Jones now. Me duh Mis’ Middletun.”
“Dat so? I nebbuh yeddy ’bout Bredduh Jones dead.”