His boat was a dug-out and narrow for two people in a river running backward in a flood-tide, but she’d come. He felt sure of it. Barefooted, bareheaded, without a coat, he ran down the steep slope to the black water’s edge, and soon the sharp bow of his boat, driven by one short paddle, sliced through the current. Swift wheeling circles of water marked every steady dip it made. Hugging the willow banks, the boat hurried on, then cut straight across the river. Thank God, the high-running tide made the rice-fields a clear sheet of water. The boat could take a bee line to Blue Brook without bothering about how the channel ran beyond the river. The landing aimed for was on a deep, clear blue creek, which gave the plantation its name, Blue Brook. The man’s knees were shaking as he stepped out of the boat and dragged it higher up on the bank to wait until he came back with Maum Hannah and the beads. Up the path he trotted, to the Quarters where the long low houses made blurs of darkness under tall black trees. The thick-leaved branches rose against the sky, where the fires of sunset had lately died and the moon had gone to its bed.
Rattly wagons hurried over the roads. Cattle bellowed. Children shouted. Dogs barked. An ax rang sharply and a clear voice sent up a song. “Bye an’ bye, when de mawnin’ comes!” How trustful it sounded. He tried to hum the tune, but fear gnawed at his heart and beat drums in his ears and throat and breast.
He was born and reared on Blue Brook. He knew every path and road on it. Every field and ditch and thicket. Every moss-hung oak. He had lived right yonder in the foreman’s house with his grandfather, the plantation foreman. The foreman now was his son! His blood kin. A proud fellow, that April! Lord, how April strutted and gave himself airs!
The darkness melted everything into one. The whiteness of the Big House was dim.
Fences, cabins, trees, earth were being swallowed up by the night.
Maum Hannah’s cabin was the last in those two long rows of houses, and firelight shining out from her wide-open door sent a glow clear across her yard. She was at home. It wouldn’t take long to get her and the charm beads into the boat, then back across the river.
Black people were gathered in the doorways, most of them his kin with whom he’d like to stop and talk, but there was no time for one extra word, even with April, the foreman. Dogs ran up to him, sniffed, recognized that he was of the same blood as their masters, and went back to lie down.
II
APRIL’S SON
Taking Maum Hannah’s three steps as one, he called out a breathless greeting:
“How you do, Cun [Cousin] Hannah?”