“Brudders, I introduces Pap Curtain,” Skeeter announced. “He’s runnin’ fer presidunt of de Uplift. We axes him to say de fust words.”
“I ain’t used to speakin’ ’thout I kin cuss,” Pap Curtain began, in his snarly voice, gazing at the Prophet aggregation with contemptuous eyes and sneering lips. “When I sees a lot of dude niggers tryin’ to ack like Gawd made a mistake when He didn’t make ’em white, I don’t cuss, because I ain’t able to do the subjeck jestice. I thanks de good Lawd dat I ain’t nothin’ but a corn-fiel’ nigger, brudder of de cotton-fiel’ mule, an’ I makes my livin’ diggin’ wells, ditches, an’ graves. I done dug de graves of all de dead, an’ now I’s gittin’ ready to dig de graves of some dat’s livin’. We corn-fiel’ niggers will bury Mustard Prophet an’ his Tickfall dudes when de day of votin’ comes!”
A sullen note of applause came from Pap’s ugly-looking crowd, but there was no enthusiasm, no good-will. In a word, Pap’s crowd were not good sportsmen. One man took a big red apple out of his pocket, wiped it off on the leg of his trousers and began to eat it.
“I now introduces Mustard Prophet,” Skeeter announced uneasily.
There was handclapping, several shouts of applause. Mustard’s crowd had been trained in the lodges and the various clubs and knew a little better how to act under the circumstances.
“I don’t see no reason fer gittin’ sour an’ ugly, brudders,” Mustard began. “Nobody ain’t gwine lose much ef he don’t git elected presidunt of de league. In de last year I ain’t got nothin’ fer my presidunt job but a cuss-word eve’y time I do somepin dat don’t please nobody. Of co’se I wants to keep on wid dis job an’ hopes you won’t fergit to vote fer me. Pap Curtain says he’s a corn-fiel’, cotton-fiel’ nigger, but dar ain’t no man, white ner black, dat ever seed him wuckin’ in no kind of fiel’ as a country nigger oughter do. He lives in dis town, an’ he owns his house in dis town. As you-all knows, I’s a real country nigger, never did live in town, an’ I been de overseer of Marse Tom’s plantation fer twenty year. I tries to stand by de high notions of de Uplift. I preaches dat a feller ought to dress up in work clothes when he wucks, an’ put on his compan’y clothes when he goes out in sawciety, an’ wear his Sunday clothes at de lodge an’ de fun’ral an’ de meetin’-house——”
At this point the apple-eating adherent of Pap Curtain had consumed his apple to the core. He balanced it on his thumb as a child prepares to shoot a marble, and flicked it across the room, where it landed on the top of Mustard Prophet’s bald head.
Mustard Prophet stepped down from the chair on which he was standing, walked quietly across the room, laid hold of the collar of the offender, kicked his shins, punched his jaw, then turned him around and booted him across the room.
It was no more than the offender deserved, but he offered all the resistance and counter-offensive in his power, and while this was going on someone slipped behind Mustard and administered a lusty and soul-satisfying kick to him.
The notion became contagious. The two forces joined in combat, but, strange to say, they did not fight with fists, but with feet.