Jane had in her time looked upon husbands in yellow and brown and black, and had almost run the chromatic scale in temperament as in pigmentation. The sharps had irritated, the flats had wearied her—the “naturals,” being neither too sharp nor too flat, were, like the small wee bear’s belongings, “just right,” and Jane, like Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, thanked the Lord for them while they lasted. “But pleasures are like poppies spread,” and, as in Georgetown colored circles husbands don’t always “stay put,” one by one Jane’s poppies—perhaps she thought them snap-dragons—folded their petals and their tents, and, forsaking the dusky companionship of the old love, flitted away to present freedom and prospective enslavement to the new—for there’s always a new—“ef rokkoon only hab one tree fuh climb, dog ketch’um,” being an axiom among them. As Jane couldn’t trot in double harness, she single-footed successfully for several years—so successfully, indeed, that she developed a fine scorn for the opposite sex. “Dem ent wut,” she thought, and “dem ent wut,” she said, whenever men were mentioned. In her solitude she found solace in industry, and, working at odd jobs during the winter, supplemented her summer earnings at the hotel and soon acquired enough to buy “uh piece uh groun’” (the coast negroes never speak of land) and built thereon a comfortable cabin, near which, within a wattled clapboard fence, she enclosed a plot where she grew the easy-going squashes and beans in summer, and Georgia collards—the holly-hocks of the vegetable garden—in winter.
Jane’s domain was on the mainland in the flat pine woods thick sown with clumps of the dark green tropical-looking saw-palmettoes, and bordered the marsh-fringed inlet or tidal lagoon, beyond which, half a mile distant, lay the broad ocean beach, the rolling sand dunes and the dwarf live-oak and cedar scrub of “the Island.” Here, nestling among the thickets, and sheltered under the protecting shoulders of the hills, were the summer cottages of the Islanders, and here, too, just opposite Jane’s cottage, stood the hotel, where all through the summer days she fried whiting, boiled sheepshead, deviled crabs, and did sundry other things to the sea-food that the fishermen constantly brought to her kitchen. Jane’s riparian rights permitted her a landing where, moored to a primitive little pier, she kept the flat-bottomed skiff in which morning and evening she crossed the unvexed waters that lay between her home and her work.
Esau, a trifling, ramshackle, youngish negro, made an easy living by fishing, crabbing and doing odd jobs about the Island community. He was venturesome, as most saltwater negroes are, and often in the early mornings ran his leaky skiff through the breakers at the mouth of the inlet, and rowing—or wafted, when the wind favored, by a rag of a sail—adventured out to sea five miles from the beach, dropped an anchor made of two condemned iron pots tied together, and fished upon the blackfish rocks in the broiling sun till noon, returning to shore to sell the good fish to the Islanders and, later, eat the culls and odds and ends himself. On other days, when the East wind warned him that the fish wouldn’t bite, he bogged about the little creeks and runs of the marsh, or along the edge of the lagoon, and caught crabs by the basketful, which usually found a ready market.
Bringing his fish often to the hotel, Esau was on pleasant conversational terms with old Jane, and she often handed him out toothsome bits of “buckruh bittle” that fell from the overflowing table. In return for these gastronomic courtesies, Esau would chop wood, split kindling, or do other manly things that chivalrous colored bucks not infrequently perform for the females outside of their own family circles.
One hot August morning, Esau gathered lines and bait as soon as it was broad daylight, and, slipping over the shallow bar at the mouth of the lagoon, sculled lazily out to the “drop” on the rocks. It was a windless dawn, the sea was without a ripple, and the slow, heaving swells reflected the opalescent tints of the eastern sky. The tide was still on the ebb, and its impulse, augmenting his speed, soon brought him to the drop where he cast anchor, and the boat swung round, bow to land, while Esau, in the stern, sat with his back to the rising sun and threw out his lines. The fish bit well, and at the end of two or three hours the bottom of Esau’s boat was well covered with the shining catch, chiefly speckled sea trout, whiting and blackfish. The sun increased in warmth, and Esau nodded and dozed and then slept, although, with the turn of the tide, the prow of his boat now pointed seaward and the sunshine burned in his face. At last, at noon, when its beams fell vertically upon his kinky head, he awoke with a start as a big horse-mackerel leaped from the water so near him that he was drenched with its spray. He looked out upon a sea of molten silver. A great shark, as long as his boat, rose slowly from the depths to within a foot of the surface, and, lying motionless, regarded him with cold, expressionless eyes. Esau shuddered. “Great Gawd,” he muttered, “time fuh gone home!” and, as the sinister creature sank out of sight, he quickly hauled up anchor, shipped oars, and pulled lustily to shore. It was high tide when he reached the inlet, and he rode the long rollers over the bar, and soon ran the nose of his skiff ashore on the oyster shells of the landing. He strung his fish and set out to find a market, but the time lost while he slept had made him too late to supply the dinners of his usual customers, and, as his fish were now stale, he had no recourse but to eat them himself, so he set about cleaning them, and an hour later, when Jane, having served the hotel dinner, was dining alone in the kitchen, Esau appeared and ingratiatingly asked the loan of a frying pan, “please, ma’am, en’ some greese fuh greese’um.” As neither fat nor fuel cost Jane anything, she graciously complied, in the handsome spirit that prompts so many of us to be generous at the expense of others. Esau rubbed the greasy bacon-rind over the broad, generous bottom of the hotel frying pan and, having lubricated it sufficiently, cast in his fish, and the horrible sound and the horrible smell of frying soon filled the ears and the nostrils of every one about the establishment. Esau fried and he fried until, having filled a large tray with fish, he hung up the frying pan, took down his appetite, and began to eat. Esau was an eater, and had no half-dealings with his art. Seizing a fish by the head and tail, he moved it laterally across his mouth as some traveling men maneuver green corn on the cob, or as the village darkey plays the mouth-organ, until, in the twinkling of an eye, only the bones remained in his greasy fingers; then he played another mouth-organ, until in a few minutes he was filled to the neck, and only ten or twelve fried trout remained, and these he cached with old Jane for future attention, and betook himself to the shade of a scrubby live-oak nearby to rest. He threw himself on the sand and slept for several hours like a gorged Anaconda. At last, toward sundown, the land breeze brought the mosquitoes from the mainland across the lagoon, and they swarmed over him. Thrashing about in his troubled sleep, some of the cockspurs that grow everywhere in the Island sands worked their way through his thin homespun trousers and stung him into wakefulness. He arose grouchy and grumbling, and returned to the kitchen where Jane was already preparing supper. “Eh, eh, weh you bin, Esau?” she greeted him.
“Uh binnuh sleep, ma’am, en’ muskittuh’ en’ cockspuhr’ en’ t’ing wake me en’ mek me fuh git up.”
“Wuh you gwine do wid dese fish wuh you lef’, Esau? De buckruh sen’ wu’d suh dem fish duh bodduhr’um, en’ ’e tell me fuh t’row’um een de ribbuh.”
“Uh had bidness fuh eat all dem fish one time, den uh wouldn’ haffuh t’row’um ’way.” And Esau sidled over to the tray of fish, and, looking at them regretfully, pinched off nibbling bits with his fingers and carried them to his mouth.
“You bettuh t’row’way da’ t’ing, Esau,” admonished Jane as she bustled about her work.
“Yaas, ma’am, uh gwine t’row’um ’way bumbye. Uh yent duh eat’um, uh jis’ duh pinch’um.” And he went slowly out toward the lagoon with the tray under his arm, but, as he walked, he pinched the fish so assiduously that, by the time he came to the water, little save the bones remained.