Uncle Isaac jumped out of the wagon, and putting the rope lines in Big Sue’s hands, began poking and feeling with his stick in the still black water that covered the two ruts in the driveway. Julia must keep to the right of the road. The middle looked safe, but it was tricky. It didn’t show how deep and miry the mud in it was. It couldn’t fool Lula, but Julia was strange to it. With his stick and queer words he told Julia exactly where to walk until the bad boggy place that Big Sue feared was behind them. He’d walk the rest of the way. Julia would move faster if he went ahead.
The long avenue was bordered with enormous live-oak trees, whose great low branches, almost hidden by drooping gray moss, completely shut the road in, making it a long damp dimly-lighted shadow. Uncle pegged along steadily in front, his stick stepping as importantly as either crooked leg. Once in a while he turned around and spilled out broken stammering words, his cheerful grins showing his empty gums.
The avenue of those gloomy moss-hung oaks began to seem endless, for the road was soft and wet and the mule would not hurry, but at last a white fence made of slender pickets stood in front. Julia stopped short and Uncle Isaac sighed. “You an’ de li’l’ boy may as well git out now. You kin go de rest o’ de way by you’se’f.”
He suggested that they’d better go through the front yard. Nobody was at home so it wouldn’t matter. The path around the side was weedy. Snakes were walking fast now and he’d hate for Breeze to be bitten as soon as he set foot on Blue Brook.
Taking off his ragged cap, he bowed a low good night. He was glad a boy blessed with second-sight had come to live on the plantation. April was wise to get him here.
Big Sue thanked him, and, taking Breeze by the hand, led him through the gate and along the driveway that curved between box-borders around a large bed of shrubbery that Big Sue said was shaped like a heart.
If the white folks were home they couldn’t come this way, but since they weren’t she was glad for Breeze to see the Big House. It was the finest and largest one ever built on the Neck, and that was saying a lot, for in the old days, before most of the houses were burned or left to rot down, the Neck was a vast rich country.
In the fading light the great white house had an old gray look like everything else here, from Julia and the wool on Uncle Isaac’s head, to the moss swinging down from the huge age-twisted limbs of the giant oaks. Breeze counted the six white columns rising from the brick-paved porch, a step above the ground, to the corniced roof. Every door, every green window shutter was closed. No sign of smoke rose from the tall red brick chimneys. The background of shrubs and flowers was deadly still and so full of deep darkness, Breeze held his breath.
Big Sue sniffed. “Lawd, ain’t de flowers sweet? Jedus, have mercy! Dey pure cuts at my heart-strings! Watch whe’ you step, son. Seems to me like I smell a snake too.”
“No’m, dat’s a watermelon.”