“Jedus, hab mussy! I ain’ never hear such a cough. You’ palate must be fell down. Git on back in de bed. If you keep coughin’ I’ll gi’ you a spoonful o’ kerosene. If you’ palate is down Maum Hannah must tie up you’ palate lock. Go on back to bed. I sho’ am sorry you’ palate is fell, but don’ you ever walk in on me a-sleepin’, not no mo’!”
The threat of the kerosene made Breeze struggle to hold in his coughs, and whenever one tried to burst out he covered up his head, although it seemed to him somebody was laughing in the shed-room with Big Sue.
VIII
THE PREMISES
Breeze slept late next morning. When he woke Big Sue stood by his bed, looking straight into his eyes. A bar of sunlight fallen through a crack in the wooden window blind laid a dazzling band on her face.
“Looka de sun shinin’ on you, son. You is gwine be lucky. Git up now, I’m got to off a piece. But you’ breakfast is settin’ on de hearth. I bet you had a bad dream last night. Don’t tell it befo’ breakfast. Dat’ll make it come true.”
But Breeze couldn’t remember any dream at all, and, slipping out of Big Sue’s night-gown and into his own clothes, he took his pan of breakfast and went to sit on the front step in the sunshine while he ate. He swallowed down the grits and bacon grease in a hurry, keeping the sweet potato for the last. A lean spotted hound trotted up and sniffed at his feet and legs, then turned to the empty pan on the step and licked it clean. When he looked beseechingly at the potato, Breeze gave him a taste and patted his head and stroked his long silky ears and together they went to look around the premises.
Big Sue had told Breeze that Blue Brook was the finest plantation on the whole Neck, and the Big House the largest dwelling, but those chimneys, towering high as the tree-tops, and the tall closed windows and doors had a cold unfriendly look. The yard was empty except for a few chickens and a flock of geese. The old gander looked at Breeze and flapped his wings and screamed out, and Breeze turned back, frightened by his threats.
Behind Big Sue’s cabin were a tiny fowl-house and a pig-pen with a big hog lying down inside. When Breeze looked over the fence the creature grunted and struggled to get to his feet. Fat had it weighted down, yet its snout made hungry snuffles at the empty trough, and the small bright eyes watched through the cracks to see if Breeze had brought any food. The hound stopped to smell a fresh mole-hill, then walked leisurely on, and Breeze left the hog to follow him and see what the premises held.
Weeds narrowed the path. Once a lizard barely got out of his way. He must watch out for snakes. The morning was sunlit, sweet with fragrance that the sun, already high up in the glittering sky, wrung out of the shrubbery; but everything was so silent.
As Breeze went toward the still shadowy garden, with its boxwood borders and bird pool and old gray sun-dial, Big Sue, unexpectedly, came out of the side door in the Big House and behind her came April, who had held him last night. Without a word April strode off in a different direction, but Big Sue called to Breeze that she’d walk with him. Going in front she led him past flowers of every color, bushes of all leaves, telling him about them as she went. Years ago the garden had been stiff and trimmed, and the shrubbery had grown in close-cut bushes between straight box hedges. But time had changed everything. Uncle Isaac was old and deaf, and instead of staying home at night and resting so he could work at the roses and keep them from running wild and getting all tangled up with vines, he ran around to birth-night suppers and cut up like a boy. She pointed out boughs that reached across the path. Clumps of paper-white narcissus, not waiting for spring, bloomed in the wrong places. White patches of sweet alyssum crept right up to the edge of the boxwood borders, the delicate perfume making the air honey-sweet. But it was out of place, and ought to be cut away. Uncle Isaac was too trifling to be the gardener now.