“What place?”
“’E cut me on me pussun, suh, en’, Jedge, de t’ing sweet’n’ me so bad, ef uh could’uh ketch da’ ’ooman ’fo’ uh ketch me foot en’ fall obuhr’um, da’ ’ooman would uh dead!”
As there was murderous intent in the sudden heat and passion of both Venus and Diana, the court imposed upon the defendant a fine only sufficient to rehabilitate the wardrobe of the prosecuting witness, who sailed out of court thoroughly satisfied with the new frock in prospect and the present enrichment of her vocabulary by the buckra word “pussun.”
THE DOWER HOUSE
The “Dower House,” which Abram Drayton had inherited from his father, old John, now resting under the great live-oaks of the plantation burying ground, was quite a pretentious affair, two stories high, with two chimneys and a leak. The stories were not very high, only six or seven feet in the clear, but it was sometimes convenient to be able to reach up and touch the ceiling, and, after all, it was a two-story house and, like all two-story houses among the negroes, added greatly to the prestige of the owner’s family. In the usual one-story negro cabin, the boarded-over “loft,” reached by ladder, is at once the sleeping room for the children, the granary for corn and peas, and the hay mow for whatever straw or fodder the householder possesses, but the Dower House had a real second story, attained by steps, narrow and teetering ’tis true, which the ascending biped usually “cooned” on all-fours, but they were steps, not rungs, and, however vigorously the negro expresses in hymns and spirituals his willingness, indeed anxiety, to “climb up Jacob’s ladder,” in the present life he prefers the creak of a board under his foot.
Under the law of primogeniture, arbitrarily established by old John for the disposition and control of his landed property, the “Two-Chimbly House” was bequeathed by word of mouth to his eldest son, and similarly settled upon his eldest grandson, and so on, as long as the line lasted, or until the shingles fell off, when dynastic difficulties would inevitably intervene. Perhaps he had heard of primogeniture and dower houses while waiting at the table of his English-bred master in the old times, but however the idea came into his kinky head, once in, it stuck, and he determined that a Dower House he would leave, and a Dower House entailed. “Uh gwine tie de ’tail ’puntop da’ house fuh hol’um fas’! Uh tie’um fus’ ’puntop my boy, Ebbrum, en’ den ’e fuh tie ’puntop him boy, my gran’, en’ de ’tail ent fuh tek’off! De ’tail ent fuh tie ’puntop no ’ooman. ’Ooman ent fuh hab no house. Man fuh hab’um en’ him fuh hol’um, so him kin fetch de ’ooman to ’e han’!”
So, the “’tail” still tied to Abram, in due time he came into the Dower House, and here, in the woods on the road from Adams Run Station to Caw Caw Swamp, he lived and reared a family.
At the tail of the summer his wife partook “not wisely but too well” of watermelon and buttermilk, and through the unfortunate combination was forthwith translated from the bosom of Abram to that of Abraham. The widowed man resigned himself to the will of the Lord, and accepted his bereavement not the less philosophically that his crop was already made and partly gathered. “Ef de Lawd haffuh tek’um, uh glad ’E yent tek’um ’tell de crap done mek,” he reflected gratefully and reverently. In a week he had picked and sold the last of his cotton, and out of the proceeds outfitted his old mare with a new saddle, bridle and cloth, notwithstanding which, the ungrateful creature, with true feminine perversity, “gone en’ leddown en’ dead, jis’ ’cause uh yent feed’um fuh two’t’ree day. Uh nebbuh know da’ mare gwine hongry to dat! ’E hongry ’tell ’e dead, en’ now uh haffuh tek me two foot en’ walk!”
Abram, being now more than a “settled” man, jogged along in single harness uneventfully for several months. “Not so young, sir, to love a woman for singing, nor so old as to dote on her for anything,” he now, in the autumn of his days, became somewhat critical in the matter of feminine needlework. His grown daughter esteemed herself a competent, almost a skilful, patcher of broken, frayed or frazzled raiment. She knew very well how to put crocus or burlap patches on the knees of the jeans or blue denim trousers affected by her sire, but though she could attach them in such fashion that they would hold, the edges always overlapped like the strakes of a clinker-built whale boat. But whatever these patches lacked in symmetrical attachment, they served well enough, for, as Abram advanced in years, he did not kneel so often as he sat. The seats of his trousers, however, yawned in pathetic neglect for, however acceptably his daughter repaired his broken knees, the half-soling of the seats was a much more serious matter, which she lacked the high spirit to undertake, and he carried about with him, whithersoever he went, gaping wounds in his sartorial equipment where, according to Hudibras, “a kick in that part more hurts honor than deep wounds before.” Not that anyone would ever have kicked him, for he was of a quiet and inoffensive disposition.
Most observers of humanity have noted with interest the close resemblance of certain types of the “wild (and tame) animals one has known.” The horse, the ass, the bulldog, the pug, sheep and goat, fox, raccoon and rat, the ’possum, grinning with pious hypocrisy, and the Berkshire pig with slanting eyes and champing jowls, are all marked likenesses frequently reproduced in human faces, representing the stupid, the sly, the selfish, the grasping, the predaceous, the stubborn, the sensual, the combative, the treacherous—all of them to be avoided, or warily appraised, for the good of one’s soul—and of one’s pocket. Unhappily, those who have been blessed with so rich an experience as to have suffered both fools and knaves, seldom learn to read the buoys with which nature has wisely marked the dangerous reefs in her physiognomonic charts, until the keels of their craft grind upon the rocks! But Abram’s face was that of the mild-eyed, introspective ox. There was no militant personality in the neighborhood to “walk a mile out of his way to kick a sheep,” and, even had there been, to have kicked Abram would have been anatomically impossible, for the unsportsmanlike may shoot a sitting bird, but he cannot kick (offensively) a sitting man, and Abram was usually sitting! So, having held inviolate against the insulting toe the seats of his trousers, which he had lost only through the slow attrition of honest sloth, he retained his self-respect, though he was a peripatetic scandal whenever he went abroad upon his “peaceful occasions.” With praiseworthy propriety, he now came in late to church or prayer-meeting, and, a vigorous and devout “class leader,” coached his class from the bench, dreading the publicity of the sidelines. Then he sat discreetly at the close of the services until “de ’ooman en’ t’ing” had gained an offing and sailed away, when, as he showed a fairly presentable front, he would follow after them and engage in long distance conversation.