“Ever who favors bestowin’ de Revun Vinegar Atts wid one D say aye!” Hitch Diamond howled.
“Aye!” the crowd bellowed.
“I thanks you-all fer yo’ int’rust,” Green Trapps announced quietly. “We will bestow de Revun Vinegar Atts wid one D at de Shoofly chu’ch tomorrer night.”
All day long Vinegar Atts occupied himself by decorating the Shoofly church. He had festooned the building with arm-loads of long Spanish moss taken from the trees in the swamp. He had brought a wagon-load of ferns and palms and wild flowers from the fields and woods, and now as the shadows of the evening lengthened in the large, barnlike structure, he viewed the result with dissatisfaction.
“I needs dat settee an’ readin’ lamp to sot off dese here decorooshuns,” he sighed, scratching his head in perplexity. “Atter I git my D, I got to go an’ set down in a ole chair wid de bottom busted out, an’ dat ain’t doin’ it up in de right sort of style.”
He walked up and surveyed the offending chair, turned it over and looked underneath and uttered a disgusted grunt. He could make nothing out of it except what it was, a broken, dilapidated chair. Then a great idea entered his head.
“I bet de white folks is got plenty pulpit chairs an’ readin’ lamps dat dey don’t need. I’ll go out an’ beg a few.”
Ten minutes later Vinegar paused at the gate before the home of the Rev. Dr. Sentelle.
There were only two churches in Tickfall, one for the whites and one for the blacks. For nearly thirty years neither church had had a change of preachers, so that Dr. Sentelle and Vinegar Atts were old friends and workers in the Tickfall vineyard.