As his nimble fingers quickly undid the hard knots and the wide flat shoes were slipped off her fat feet, the firelight flamed past him and lit up the room. The walls were covered with newspapers, the floor was scoured almost white, and the wooden bed in the corner puffed up high with its feather mattress and many-colored quilt.
Taking her shoes off made Big Sue a different person. From being heavy and slow she became light on her feet and quick. She took a black iron spider off the hearth and put it over the clear hot blaze, then dropped slices of white bacon on it to cook. While the bacon hissed and curled up with frying, Big Sue pulled sweet potatoes out from under the pile of hot ashes in one corner. Those that a squeeze from her fingers showed soft and well done she put in a pan to be eaten, the others were put back in the ashes to cook longer. She stirred a pot full of white cornmeal mush; collard greens, cooked with chunks of bacon, half filled another. The smell of food went all through the cabin every time a pot-lid was lifted.
Big Sue gave Breeze a tin pan and a spoon, while she took another; but just as she leaned down to dip up the food she glanced toward the bed. Breeze had put his hat on it. She stopped still and glared at him.
“Great Gawd, boy! You put bad luck on my Joy’s bed. I got a good mind to lick you. Take dis pin. Go stick em in da hat. Don’ never put a hat on no bed. You ain’ had much raisin’, or you’d know better.”
Breeze took the pin and stuck it, as she said, in the hat’s crown. It must stay there until morning, then he must hang the hat on a nail in the newspapered wall.
“Lawd,” she sighed as she leaned over the pot again, “dat hat sho’ scared me. S’pose I didn’ had a pin! Come fill you’ pan now. Eat a-plenty. I want you to grow fast so you’ll git big enough to help me work. Put some pot liquor off de greens on you’ mush. Mush an’ pot liquor is good fo’ you. It’ll stick to you’ ribs. Sweet potatoes an’ fat meat’ll fatten you too. You’s too small. You’ ma says you’s gwine on twelve, but you can’ be dat old! I hope to Gawd you ain’ a runt!”
Breeze was ready to cry, and she changed her tone and told him that April had a goat for him to break and ride and drive, if he’d be a good boy and mind all she said. April would get a goat harness and a goat wagon, too. Breeze must get the goat tame before the little white boy who lived in the Big House came home. White people are so subject to fever, they can’t risk even one night on the river before killing frost. When the nights get warm, in the spring, they have to go away. White people have some mighty weak sickly ways.
Breeze had eaten too much. He was packed so full he felt tight and uneasy. He wanted to go home to his mother, but Big Sue kept talking fast to keep his mind from dwelling on his troubles. Over and over she said he was a lucky boy to be here with her at Blue Brook. While he washed his pan and spoon, she got a tin basin off the water-shelf by the door and poured it half full of hot water out of the big black kettle simmering on the hearth. She gave it to Breeze with a big new bar of turpentine soap. “Wash you’ feet good and get ready for bed, son.”
But he had no night-clothes, no day clothes either, except the few he brought tied up in a white cloth. He couldn’t sleep between her clean white sheets in those dirty breeches and that filthy shirt! No! His tears poured out when she got a great big garment out of the trunk in the corner, and putting it over his head drew the great sleeves up over his arms. As she buttoned it up at the neck, her laughing broke into such funny snorts Breeze had to stop crying to look at her. Her wind must be broken fo’ true!
He had to sleep in the big bed in the corner, Joy’s bed, to-night, to take off the bad luck his hat had put on it. To-morrow night he’d take the bed she fixed for him in the shed-room where Lijah used to sleep when he was a little boy.