Black people ruled sickness with magic, but white people got sick and died. White people leave money to their children, but black people leave signs. Give her signs every time! Uncle Isaac was getting old. He might die soon. Breeze had better start learning all he could right now, before Uncle Isaac’s mind failed. She’d see Uncle Isaac and tell him.
As she spoke a faint rustle of wind went through the trees and a lizard, carefully colored to match the soil, scurried across the path, rattling dead leaves as it slid under the solid gravestone. Big Sue leaned over the grave and stirred the earth, selecting bits of the coarser sand.
“I want seven li’l’ rocks now. One fo’ ev’y night in de week. I gwine keep ’em tie up in my pocket-hankcher, so I would stop havin’ so much bad dreams all de time.”
Breeze shivered. If spirits of the dead ever haunt the paths of the living, they lurked in the deep gloom of the shade made by the overgrown shrubbery, by those coiling, writhing twisted vines. The swift wings of a cardinal spun a scarlet thread before them. Clear notes were flung in a spray of song from the top of the tallest tree. Big Sue called up at him: “It’s twelve o’clock, enty? I hear you sayin’ dis is de brightest time o’ de day!” She tried to make her lips smile bright enough to fit her words, but Breeze could see that the graveyard had made her afraid too. “Le’s go, son. Le’s git out o’ here,” she said.
She trampled on a wild rose, full of frail blossoms. As Breeze stepped aside to keep from crushing another, a soft wind seized the delicate petals and scattered them over leaves that were already dead.
The road went through the woods past a cleared place, then brought them to the negro graveyard. Every grave held something valued by the dead. A white china pitcher and basin. Old bottles, still holding medicine. Small colored glass vases. Cups and saucers. A few plates. Some of the graves were decorated with clusters of wooden sticks, skilfully carved to make heads of wheat. Breeze wanted to take one, but Big Sue objected. To take one off a grave would be bad luck. Uncle Isaac would be glad to make him one if he’d ask him.
Bright and early Monday morning, Big Sue began fitting together small, carefully cut scraps of cloth, sewing them into squares with strong ball thread. Breeze sat on the step in the pleasant sunshine threading her big-eyed needle as fast as it worked up arm-lengths of thread into firm-holding stitches, while she sat in a low chair on the porch.
Squirrels chased one another across the yard, and up into the live-oak trees. Showers of ripe acorns jarred down by their playing spattered over the ground. Those acorns were sweet as chinquapins, and the squirrels were fat with eating so many. But Big Sue would not let Breeze kill even one for dinner. His fine new sling-shot, made out of a dogwood prong, could hit almost as hard as a gun, but Big Sue said the white folks who lived in the Big House wanted the squirrels left. Even if they ate up all the pecans in the fall, and all the peaches in the summer, not one was to be killed. White people have foolish notions, but it is better not to cross them if you can help it.
She was working hard to get her quilts quilted before the white folks came down for the duck shooting this winter. They didn’t stay long these last years. They had another home up-North, so li’l’ “Young Cap’n” could go to a fine school there. Poor little boy! He liked this home a lot better, but his Yankee stepma ruled him and his pa too.