The little girl leaned on the counter, slowly unrolled an old bandanna handkerchief, and spread the six eggs before her, carefully keeping the unhappy chickens concealed in her apron.
“Ebenin’, suh. Ma tell me fuh git uh plug’uh tubackuh wid dese aig’.”
“You can get only half a plug for half a dozen eggs. Eggs are ten cents a dozen!”
“Yaas’suh, but Ma tell me fuh git’uh whole plug,” said the shrewd little trader. “Ma tell me fuh ax you ef you ent g’em uh whole plug uh tubackuh fuh de six aig’, please, suh, fuh gimme uh gunjuh—tengky, suh,” as the obliging clerk handed her a big scalloped molasses cake and short-cut the plug of tobacco enough to pay for it.
The tobacco trade consummated, the girl fumbled furtively in her apron, and, feeling about deftly, located and drew forth the “seb’npunce” chicken. That adolescent fowl, a rooster whose voice was changing, alternately peeped and squawked, as the seller with outstretched arm dangled him by the legs high over the counter, his outspread wings making him look a full size larger, but the shopkeeper was country-bred, and felt the rooster’s breastbone. “Fifteen cents,” he said.
“Ma tell me fuh git twenty-fibe cent’ wut uh flour ’long dish’yuh one,” she fibbed.
“I’ll give you twenty cents’ worth,” he countered, and, as she nodded in acquiescence, jubilant at the thought of having outwitted him, he plunged his scoop into a barrel and weighed out twelve cents’ worth of flour. When this had been wrapped and delivered, the clerk, knowing by her expectant look that further commercial transactions were imminent, stood at attention, while the girl abstracted the first of the three “fo’punce” chickens from her apron and held the noisy fledgling, naked and unashamed, at arm’s length above the counter. “Ma tell me fuh git dis seb’npunce chickin wut uh side meat,” she ventured, craftily watching the face of the Caucasian whom she sought to overreach.
“Why, that’s a fo’punce chicken. He ain’t half the size of the other one.”
“Yaas’suh, alltwo come out de same nes’ en’ alltwo hatch out de same time. Da’ todduh one duh dish’yuh one bubbuh, en’ dish’yuh one duh da’ todduh one tittie. Him look big mo’nuh dish’yuh one ’cause him duh roostuh en’ him hab comb, en’ dish’yuh one duh pullet en’ him ent hab no comb, en’ de roostuh greedy mo’nuh de pullet, en’ him nyam de mor’is’ bittle, en’ dat mek ’e stan’ so,” she prevaricated unblushingly. These earnest asseverations had no effect on the purchaser, however, and, appraising the gallinaceous juveniles at ten cents each, he stood pat, and one by one they were withdrawn from the apron and exchanged for bacon, sugar and molasses. Upon the pouring of the latter commodity, however, Aryan and African again locked horns. The weather was warm, and as even the thick “blackstrap” molasses flowed freely, the careless shopman very nearly gave his customer the full quart for which she had paid—an inadvertence which, it should be said in justice to his commercial acumen, he very seldom committed. Realizing too late that nearly all the molasses had run into the tin bucket out of the quart measure (false-bottomed as it was) he gave it a quick upward flirt to save what he could, and started back to the barrel, but was checked by the girl’s scream of protest. “Ma tell’ me fuh tell you ’sponsubble fuh mek you fuh po’rum out ’tell eb’ry drop done dreen een de bucket,” she cried excitedly, and, in shame-faced compliance, he let her hold the measure till the uttermost drop had been “dreened” out. With a sideswipe of a very questionable finger, she garnered the dulcet drops that clung to the curved lip of the cup and, sucking the sweetened digit greedily, she grinned with satisfaction. And now, with the packages carefully tied up in the bandanna in one hand, and the covered tin bucket in the other, she dropped a curtsy, for she was a polite little darkey, and went her ways homeward, sweetened in soul and saliva.
The night was dark, and the path traversed a small bay, where the sweetgums spread their limbs above the track, and their heavy foliage hid the stars and deepened the shadows along the way. Along the edge of the bay, in the sodden soil, grew lush water-grasses, and they were very sweet to a vagabond ox, as he cropped them, undisturbed by flies, in the cool night air. But the peaceful ox, playing truant, poor wretch, from his negro master, was full of tragedy, for the ox was white, and no solitary negro in the low-country, where the forests are full of little negro graveyards, can bear the sight of anything white in the woods at night. The fear of ghosts is always with them, and a white cow, grazing in or near a graveyard, will often stampede a road full of worshipers returning from a prayer-meeting.