“I gotta find dat Skeeter Butts an’ find him quick,” he muttered. “Nothin’ like dis ain’t never happen to me befo’, an’ nobody cain’t ’lucidate on my troubles like Skeeter kin.”
A high, cackling laugh, accompanied by a hoarse bellow of laughter, floated to him upon the hot August breeze, and Figger ceased his grumbling and began to chuckle.
“I gits exputt advices now,” he mumbled. “Skeeter am talkin’ sociable wid de Revun Vinegar Atts.”
On top of the hill in front of the Shoofly church, Figger found his two friends resting under the shade of a chinaberry tree.
Skeeter Butts, the little, yellow barkeeper at the Hen-Scratch saloon, had the back of his chair propped against the trunk of the tree, his heels hung in the rungs of the chair in front, and looked like a jockey mounted upon a bony, sway-backed horse. Vinegar Atts, the fat, bald-headed, moon-faced pastor of the Shoofly church, sat on one chair, rested his feet on another, and had his massive arms outspread upon the backs of yet two other chairs. He looked like a pot-bellied buzzard trying to fly upside down and backward.
“Come up, Figger!” Vinegar howled, as he kicked the chair, on which his feet rested, toward him. “Take a seat, take a set-down, rest yo’ hat, spit on de flo’—make yo’se’f at home!”
Figger picked up the chair, placed it back where Atts could rest his feet upon it again, and sat down upon the ground, interlocking the fingers of both hands and nursing his bent knees.
“You been cuttin’ out chu’ch recent. How come?” Vinegar bellowed.
“Religium don’t he’p a po’ nigger like me,” Figger responded gloomily.
“Dat’s a fack,” Atts agreed promptly. “Religium is got to hab somepin to ketch holt on an’ you ain’t nothin’.”