When she waddled home at night, after the day’s work and pleasure were done, she was too weary to do anything but drop down in a chair and rest. Breeze had to undo the wide-strung-up shoes and take them off her fat feet, and fill up her pipe and light it. She’d smoke a little while and go to bed, worn-out, too tired to whip Breeze, no matter how much he needed a licking. She always waited until next morning, when she woke up fresh and strong, ready to raise Breeze and teach him manners. Her usual morning greeting was, “Git up, Breeze. Git up and strip. I want to git down to you’ rind,” his rind meaning his naked skin.
She declared that licking Breeze hurt her as much as it hurt him. She hated to have to do it, but Breeze was a poor, ignorant, no-manners boy. She had to beat him to do her duty by him.
A long, thin, black leather strap stayed up on the mantel-shelf, ready to give lickings. It had a black-snake’s hiss, and a crack as sharp as a pistol-shot. But this morning Big Sue couldn’t lay her hands on it, so she broke a switch off the plum tree growing beside the cabin’s front door. There were all kinds of switches outside. Big Sue could easily have got a smoother, better one, but she was in a hurry and the plum switch was in easy reach of her hand.
In the weak morning light she didn’t see that thorns stayed on it when she pulled off its limbs. Those thorns had sharp teeth, and Big Sue drove them deep into Breeze’s back and thighs. Now as he stroked his hurts with both hands he felt blood warm and wet on them.
Breeze’s mother had never talked to him about manners. Big Sue said she didn’t know them. At Blue Brook plantation, manners are the most important things in the world, but they stand between you and everything you want to do. Nobody ever eats the first sweet black walnuts that fall on the ground, for eating green walnuts makes lice in your head, and it is bad-mannered to be lousy.
To play with the funny hop-toadies, whose little black hands look just like a tiny baby’s thumbs and all, makes warts come on your hands, and it’s bad-mannered to have warts.
If you drink goat’s milk, although it is sweeter than cow’s milk, you’ll hate water, just like goats hate it. You won’t want to wash. And it’s bad-mannered not to like soap and water.
If your feet get cold as ice and you can’t get them warm any other way, you must not put them on the warm black pots on the hearth, because the soot on the pots will stick to your feet, and it’s bad-mannered to have sooty feet.
To put a finger in your mouth is bad-mannered. Everything is bad-mannered!
Breeze’s reflections and sobs were checked by a call from Big Sue to get up! To make haste too! He hopped up and pulled on his clothes, and taking a piece of cold bread in his hand, hurried to the barnyard. Daylight had already spread through the sky, and was creeping over the earth. The fall day smelled like spring. One old apple tree in the orchard had been fooled into blooming by the drowsy warmth. Poor silly thing!