More E. K. Means / Is This a Title? It Is Not. It Is the Name of a Writer of Negro Stories, Who Has Made Himself So Completely the Writer of Negro Stories That This Second Book, Like the First, Needs No Title

by E. K. Means

Tick Hush looked like a negro who would work like a horse, and who would do as he was told.

Colonel Tom Gaitskill leaned back in his swivel chair for a comprehensive survey of this new applicant for a job.

He saw a brown-skinned man, with a big round head, a flat nose, heavy lips that were easy-smiling, and eyes which were as wide-open, as simple and innocent as the black, glass eyes of a china doll. He noticed that the man stood perfectly straight, without nervousness, and that his big hands were hard and square—the hands of a willing worker.

“I don’t know nothin’ but how to wuck de lan’, Marse Tom,” Tick told him. “Farmin’ is my trade. So when I heerd tell dat you done bought dat farm whar de ole pest-house was located at, I figgered dat dis wus a chance to git me a good job wid a good boss.”

The speech won Gaitskill’s favor. Negroes are afraid of hospitals, quarantine stations, and graveyards. He had had difficulty in securing a negro tenant for this newly acquired farm because the pest-house occupied a portion of the plantation.

“Aren’t you afraid of that farm, Tick?” Gaitskill smiled.

“Naw, suh,” Tick chuckled. “De cullud folks orate ’bout all dem bad ketchin’ diseases in de pest-house, but I ain’t gwine pester aroun’ in dat neighborhood none.”

Gaitskill determined to test the negro’s sincerity once for all.

“Think of the people who have died out there, Tick,” he said. “When I was a boy there was an epidemic of cholera, and the people died in that old stone house like flies. After that there was yellow fever, and nobody who was taken into that house for quarantine ever came out alive. There have been epidemics of diphtheria, scarlet fever, and smallpox. People are buried all around that quarantine station—you mean to tell me that you are not afraid?”

“Naw, suh, I ain’t skeart,” Tick grinned. “Dem folks is all been dead so long dey done fergot whut dey died of. Dem bad ketchin’ diseases is done kotch on to somebody else by dis time an’ been toted away. Of co’se, I ain’t gwine dig fer no buried money aroun’ dat spot.”