To git some milk fo’ de baby.
Go to sleep.”
Breeze lay open-eyed. Restless. The cabin was stifling hot. Fear had him sweating.
When the long night, baked with heat, passed into a warm, dewy morning, the baby woke and Breeze took him to see the men pass with the mules and plows on their way to the corn-field, then to watch Leah’s children and Joy stick sweet-potato cuttings into the ground. Time went slowly. If one morning could be long as this, when would those cuttings ever make a crop? The baby’s weight burdened his arms. His shoulders ached. He’d go sit on the step and sing it to sleep, then he’d rest. “Bye an’ bye, when de mawnin’ comes!” Breeze sang, and the baby’s eyelids drooped. “Bye an’ bye, when we’s gathered home!” The eyelids closed down tight. “We’ll t-e-l-l de story! H-o-w we over-come,” Breeze sang it softly, the baby was ready to ease down on the bed. His tired arms could rest a while. He might take a nap himself.
The day was so quiet when he sat on the step again and leaned his head back against the door-facing that the old tree, bending its head across the yard toward the cabin, whispered every time a breath of air stirred it. A wood-pecker’s tapping made a tumult of sound. The twitterings of a pair of wrens with a nest in a knot hole under the eaves made a distinct clamor. Drowsiness glazed Breeze’s eyes, stopped up his ears. The morning flowed on by.
When the noon bell rang he jumped, awake, with the bare shadow of a gasp. Then he remembered he was living with Joy, not Big Sue, and he stretched his mouth in a lazy yawn.
The Quarters soon bustled with people coming in from the fields. The women, first, with hoes on their shoulders, then the men. Hens cackled, telling of eggs they’d just laid. Ducks quacked. Pigeons wheeled in low circles.
Joy arrived ahead of the children, her arms drooping, her steps lax and careless, her eyes noting naught around her, not even Breeze, who got up to let her pass. Then something on his head made her heed. “Wha’ dat on you’ head, Breeze! Who put em dere! Great Gawd, Breeze whe’ you been?”
Breeze put up a scared hand and felt all over his head. There was nothing so far as he could tell. “Wha’ e is, Joy? I ain’ feel nothin’.”