The committee moved on, visiting from house to house, admonishing each occupant who had not observed all the rules of reform, just as the white men had done years before during the fever epidemic.
Then a totally unexpected thing happened.
The next day being Christmas Eve, every negro in Tickfall lost his job at noon. All business places were closed, and every man went home to get a good start for the Christmas celebration. Several hundred negroes found themselves with a half-day of idleness confronting them. They cut all the weeds on the streets in all the negro settlements, burned all the trash, put four coats of whitewash on the Shoofly church, mended all the fences, tore down several unsightly shacks which had been decaying in the sun for half a century, dug ditches to drain their communities, and ceased their work at dark to get supper and assemble in their church, where Vinegar Atts later confronted more work-weary parishioners then he had ever seen before.
In the midst of their evening service Skeeter Butts arrived, carrying a bundle of papers almost as large as himself, which he placed upon a table in front of the pulpit desk.
This incident was sensational in itself, promising all sorts of fearful possibilities; but the congregation received its greatest jolt when it beheld the Rev. Dr. Sentelle crippling slowly up the aisle behind Skeeter, leaning heavily upon his eleven-pound walking stick.
Dr. Sentelle was the lion of Tickfall, beloved and magnified by whites and blacks. He was a man of influence and power for miles around. Intense courage glowed in his eyes, which held smoldering flames like the eyes of a jungle beast; tenderness, gentleness, sweetness, and love, love, love were etched in the map of his pain-wrinkled face like an illuminated missal by Bellini; and his beautiful voice was as sweet as music, every spoken word caressing like a woman’s hand.
“Bless Gawd!” Vinegar Atts bellowed at sight of the white clergyman. “I capsizes right now in favor of de Revun Dr. Sentelle. He’s gwine fotch us a Chris’mus message!”
The entire congregation rose to their feet. Vinegar Atts trotted half-way down the aisle and met the cripple. With a murmur of thanks, the white man placed his delicate, blue-veined hand in the crotch of Vinegar’s powerful arm and stumbled slowly, feebly forward to the pulpit platform. When he had seated himself the negroes sank quietly back upon the benches.
In the meantime all the business men in Tickfall were holding a meeting in the rear of the Tickfall bank.