“Dey’s fine pigs, dough. Dey’s out-growin’ all de rest. Melia’s a case. A heavy case.” His proud chuckle ended with a sigh. “I reckon I’m too easy on Melia. She played a bad trick on me. I know I ought not to let em do so. But I’m gittin’ old an’ soft-hearted, an’ Melia knows it. Melia’s got too much sense. God ought not to ’a’ made Melia a hog. No. Dat was a mistake. Ought I to ’a’ killed Melia, Uncle!”
“No. No,” Uncle Isaac said gently. “You couldn’ be hard, not on Melia. Melia had a right to choose her man. Ev’y ’oman ought to could do dat, enty?”
Big Sue laughed and curtsied good-by, after thanking Uncle Bill for showing Breeze the barnyard creatures, and Uncle Bill and Uncle Isaac both pulled back a foot and bowed and touched their bald foreheads, where forelocks should have been.
With a happy heart Breeze followed Big Sue on the path that swung along the edge of an open field, close to tall pines whose dark plumy tops lifted high above the red ripened leaves fluttering on bushes at their feet. The dogwood was crimson; haws and wild plum thickets gay scarlet. Partridges whistled. Across a reaped field larks rose and called out plaintively to one another from the stubble. High vines of black muskadines perfumed the air. Persimmon trees bent with fruit waiting for frost to make it mellow and sweet. The sun beat down hot, but summer had given way to fall.
The road to the Quarters, strewn with fallen leaves that almost hid its ruts and holes, ran past sugar-cane patches where green blades rustled noisily over purple stalks. Sweet potatoes cracked the earth under vines shading the long rows. Pindars were blooming. Okra bushes were full of creamy red-hearted blossoms and pointed green pods. Butter-bean vines clambered over the hand-split clapboard garden fences that kept pigs and chickens out of small enclosures, where wide-leaved collards waited for frost to make them crisp, and scarlet tomatoes spotted straggly broken-down bushes.
Birds chirruped everywhere. The fields murmured in the soft wind. The Quarters, although made up of houses that tottered and leaned crank-sided, seethed with noise and life.
A large wagon, drawn by two mules, and with new planks laid across its high body for seats, rolled by, filled with church-goers. A flutter of hand-waves and a chorus of “good mawnin’s” greeted Big Sue as she stopped to let it pass.
“How come you ain’ gwine to church to-day, Big Sue?” somebody called out.
“I ain’ no Still-water Baptist, gal! I wouldn’ go to hear no Still-water preacher. No, ma’am!” she answered. “Jedus was baptized in de River Jurdan, an’ dat’s runnin’ water. Still water gits stale an’ scummy too quick. It can’ wash away sin! No! Sin needs runnin’ water.”
The Quarters’ houses, long, low, shabby buildings, had two front doors apiece. Each house sheltered two families, a huge chimney in the middle marking the division. Moss adorned the gray shingles of the sagging roofs. Steps were worn thin. Rust reddened the old hand-wrought hinges of the leaning doors and gave a creak to wry window shutters.