A sudden gust of wind lifted the foam cap from a breaking wave, blew it in their faces and whistled eerily through the wild-oats. A ghost crab sprang up at their very feet and scurried away, affrighted. Jane clutched Esau’s arm. “Great Gawd!” she groaned, “duh plat-eye! Uh shum! uh shum!”
“Weh-weh ’e dey?” stammered her frightened but less imaginative escort.
Before she could point to the flying crab, another pallid, spider-like creature drifted across her path and followed the first. Jane was poised for flight, but Esau stood firm and steadied her nerves, and in a few moments they moved on again, but with wide eyes and hesitant steps. At last they had covered half the distance, and a mile away, beyond the dark, a spot of yellow light marked their goal, which they might have reached but for the raccoons’ love for shell fish. At a low spot in the broad beach the tide had eaten out a narrow channel through which the waters rushed almost up to the sand-hills, bringing small fish and shrimp and clams far beyond the break of the rollers, and, at the entrance to this cut, facing the ocean, a big raccoon was fishing at the moment the negroes reached the tidal rivulet and paused to look for a crossing. Esau, with trousers rolled up to his knees, adventured first, and as Jane, “standing with reluctant feet,” on the marge, called to him to ask the depth, she unhappily cast her eyes seaward just as the four-footed fisherman, startled by the voices behind him, wheeled, and turned his round, green eyes full upon them. As their sinister light shone fearsomely against the dark background of the waves, Jane shrieked in agony. “Oh Jedus! de plat-eye! de plat-eye!” And, turning tail, she fled along the back track, screaming at every jump. Esau’s gallantry, and one look at the shining eyes, prompted him to follow Jane, which he did at top speed, while the wretched raccoon, frightened out of his supper by the havoc he had unwittingly wrought, lost no time in attaining sanctuary among the scrub beyond the sand-hills.
On sped Jane. Her screaming-wind gave out after the first hundred yards, and, save for her labored breathing, she ran silently, Esau, a black shadow, close behind. In an incredibly short time, Jane and her runner-up reached the hotel, speechless with exhaustion and fright. When she had recovered her breath, Jane hurried to her mistress. “Missis, ma’am, uh nebbuh tek de ansuh wuh you sen’ to da’ juntlemun todduh side de Ilun’, ’cause uh nebbuh git dey, Missis; en’, ef Jedus yeddy me, uh nebbuh fuh gone to da’ place no mo’ duh night-time! Missis, dem plat-eye t’ick ’puntop da’ beach sukkuh fiddluh crab’ t’ick een de maa’sh w’en tide low! Uh binnuh walk ’long Esau, en’ one sumpn’nurruh come off de wabe’ top, en’ ’e float by me sukkuh cloud wuh hab uh sperrit een’um. Uh shet me yeye, en’ ’e gone. Den de win’ mek uh jump, en’ ’e biggin fuh shake dem grass en’ t’ing ’puntop de san’hill ’tell ’e mek me hair fuh rise! Same time uh see two w’ite sperrit run ’cross de paat’. Esau binnuh trimble ’tell uh graff’um by ’e sleebe fuh keep’um f’um run’way, but none de t’ing nebbuh hab uh chance fuh t’row dem eye ’puntop me ’tell uh git to de place weh de tide bruk t’ru de beach. W’en uh git dey, Missis, Esau roll up ’e britchiz fuh cross. Me duh wait ’tell him git ’cross befo’ uh staa’t’ fuh hice me ’coat fuh walk t’ru’um, en’, ef me Jedus didn’ tell me fuh t’row me yeye fuh look roun’, uh nebbuh would’uh bin yuh, but w’en uh look, uh see da’ t’ing’ two eye’ duh shine sukkuh lightship’ eye’ shine ’puntop’uh Rattlesnake shoal’! Missis, w’en uh fus’ look ’puntop’um uh t’ink ’e duh lightship fuh true, but bumbye ’e shake ’e head en’ uh know suh ’e duh plat-eye, en’ ’e duh try fuh t’row uh spell ’puntop me fuh mek me fuh dead! Uh yent hab time fuh kneel down, but uh staa’t fuh pray een me h’aa’t, en’ uh baig Gawd, ef da’ plat-eye haffuh ketch nigguh, fuh mek’um fuh ketch Esau en’ lef me, ’cause, Missis, eb’rybody know’ suh Esau ent wut! But seem lukkuh Gawd nebbuh yeddy de pray’, ’cause me mout’ bin shet w’en uh mek’um, ’cause uh yent wan’ Esau fuh yeddy wuh uh say, en’ de plat-eye nebbuh tek ’e yeye off’uh my’own. ’E look en’ ’e look, en’ ’e yeye git mo’ bigguh en’ mo’ shiny, en’ w’en uh see suh him duh look ’puntop’uh me en’ ent duh study ’bout Esau, Missis, uh comin’ fuh home! Missis, you see dog run, you see hawss run, you see bu’d fly, en’ you see pawpus jump een de ribbuh, but you nebbuh see none dem t’ing trabble lukkuh me trabble w’en uh staa’t fuh run! W’en me ten toe’ dig een de du’t, ’e t’row de san’ mo’nuh half uh acre behin’ me! De win’ wuh uh mek t’row dem wil’oats en’ grass en’ t’ing flat ’pun de groun’, en’ all de time uh duh run uh yeddy Esau’ foot duh beat drum behin’ me, en’ w’en uh yeddy’um, uh tengkful, ’cause uh know da’ t’ing fuh ketch him fus’ ’fo’ ’e kin git me; en’, Missis, ef you ain’ hab no ’jeckshun, ma’am, uh gwine tek Esau fuh husbun’ ’gen, ’cause, attuh tenight, uh know suh me kin run fas’ mo’nuh him, en’ him will be uh nyuseful t’ing fuh tek ’long w’en uh duh walk duh paa’t duh night-time, ’cause, ef plat-eye mek alltwo uh we fuh run, him ’bleege fuh ketch Esau fus’, en’, alldo’ da’ nigguh ent wut, ’e hab shishuh slow foot, Missis, uh kin mek’um fuh sabe me life!”
“OLD PICKETT”
Before the war, the low-country planters, migrating each summer to their mountain homes at Flat Rock, N. C., frequently bought horses and mules from the drovers as they passed along the Buncombe Road on their way South from the stock ranges of Kentucky and Tennessee. Sometimes beautiful ponies were brought from the Pink Beds, away back in the North Carolina mountains, others came from the nearer valleys of the French Broad, but most of the Seacoast planters supplied their needs from the Tennessee drovers as they moved down the main-traveled road.
From an old drover named Pickett, a mule was acquired to which the negroes gave the drover’s name. Although a young mule, and of the opposite sex, she was christened “Old Pickett,” and bore the name with distinction for nearly a quarter of a century. Long and low, and powerfully built, Old Pickett was a light bay in color, with the brown stripe down the back and the zebra legs which mule wranglers regard as evidence of toughness—and Old Pickett was tough.
Old Pickett came into the hands of the family late in October. A thin skin of ice had formed along the shores of the lakes. Flocks of blue-winged teal whistled through the air and splashed as they alighted on the clear waters. Chestnuts had fallen, and their green and brown burrs covered the ground under the far-spreading limbs of the big trees. Their little cousins, the chinquapins, had long been gathered and strung in necklaces, or roasted at the hearths of the glowing wood fires. The pheasant-shooting was nearly over, and Westly-Richards and Greener were cleaned and oiled and slipped into their buckskin covers, in readiness for the campaign against deer and duck and turkey in the low-country. With the first days of November, as the branches of the great oaks cracked under the weight of the roosting wild pigeons, and the sloping sides of old Pinnacle and all the lesser peaks burned with the flame-like foliage of the hickory and the ruby fires of the oaks, the family started down the mountain for Greenville, the first stop in the ten-day journey to the sea. Carriages for the ladies and the elders, saddle horses for the younger men, and comfortable covered wagons for the house servants, the cavalcade moved out, Old Pickett and her companions tethered behind the wagons to take their turn at the pole later on.
Arrived at the big plantation, Old Pickett became familiar with the plow, the cart and the Gullah negro, and for twelve years led an uneventful life, buckling to the tough “joint grass” of the uplands in summer, and bogging pastern deep in winter as the slim plowshare slid through the sticky soil of the ricefields and turned the stubble into long greasy-looking furrows. While a willing worker, Old Pickett took her time and always “gang’d her ain gait.” She was nimble, too, with her heels, and the stable boys about the mule lot could always amuse themselves by throwing sticks or light clods of earth on Old Pickett’s hindquarters to make her “kick up,” when she came in to be unharnessed after her day’s work, and she was always ready to oblige. Wearing a blind bridle, she could not see behind her, but she was strong for the uplift, and whatever touched her in the rear had to go up, whether stick, or clod or stable boy!
Then the war! In the dawn of an April morning, came the sound of the big guns in Charleston harbor thirty miles away, and, a few months later, from another direction, rolled the thunder of yet heavier and more distant guns, bombarding Port Royal, and still Old Pickett plowed and carted, and otherwise plodded in the ways of peace, but not for long. The questing eye of the Confederate Government looked approvingly on Old Pickett’s short legs, arched loins and well-sprung ribs, and, discerning an artillery mule, intimated a desire for ownership, but Old Pickett, compelling as she did the little negroes who walked behind and around her to become alert and watchful, was a plantation institution and could not be parted with permanently, but she was loaned to the Confederacy, and for a year or two hauled caissons and cannon and army wagons about the coast section wherever an attack was threatened by the invaders.