One spring when the shad fishing was done, Old Breeze got leave from the white folks to cut down some dead pines the beetles had killed. He dragged these to the river with his two old oxen, and made them into a raft which he floated down to the town in the river’s mouth, and sold to a big saw-mill there. Breeze stayed with his mother until his grandfather came back home, pleased as could be, with presents for everybody, and a pocket full of money besides. But although he brought the mother a Bible besides many other fine things that made her smile, she shook her head and said, “Dead trees are best left alone. Trees have spirits the same as men. God made them to stand up after they die. Better let them be.”
But the grandfather was not afraid of tree spirits, and he cut and cut until no dead tree was left standing and the ground all around the big pine tree was full of hidden money. Then there was nothing to do but fish and hunt, and to hunt in the spring is against the white men’s laws. Old Breeze got restless. He gazed in the fire night after night, thinking and thinking.
One morning he got up early and skimmed all the cream and put the clabber in a jug, then he took the brace-and-bit down off the joist where it stayed and walked off to the woods alone. Every morning he did it. There was no more clabber for the pigs or the chickens, but the pine trees began dying so fast that before long enough were ready to cut for a raft to be floated down the river.
The tall pine close to the bank was the biggest tree on Sandy Island. It stretched far above the oaks before it put on even one limb. If that tree ever died, it would make a good part of a raft by itself.
One cold dark dawn, Breeze was roused by the cabin’s door creaking on its hinges as it closed behind somebody’s muffled steps. Where was Old Breeze going? Easing a window open, he peered out and saw the old man going toward the big pine with the jug and the brace-and-bit.
“Wait on me! I’m a-gwine wid you!” he called.
Old Breeze stopped and stood stiffly erect.
“Who dat call me?”
“Dis me! Breeze!”
The old man broke into a laugh. “Lawd, son, I thought sho’ a sperit was a-talkin’ to me. How come you’s ’wake so soon? Git back in de bed an’ sleep!”