“If you hang a dead snake on a limb, dat couldn’ make it rain?”
Sherry’s laugh was so merry that Breeze grinned at his own ignorance.
“Great Gawd, boy! You didn’t know dat! Sho’, it will! In less’n three days too. Won’t it, Uncle?”
“Sho’!” Uncle Bill answered stoutly, but he added there was no use to bother with the snake, for it was going to rain in less than three days, anyhow. “The new moon hung in a ring last night and only one star was inside it. That means it will rain after one day. If they’d find the snake and kill him he couldn’t die until the sun went down. Neither can a frog nor a cooter, nor a wasp. Lots of things can’t die if the sun shines.”
Breeze felt he was learning a lot, and he listened so attentively that Uncle Bill went on talking.
“Most people have to wait until night to die, and even when night comes, dey can’t die until de tide turns.”
“How can dey tell if dey’s sick in the bed?” Breeze asked, and Uncle Bill explained that the people themselves didn’t know. The life that stays inside them, that knows.
“It knows mighty nigh everything,” the old man declared, “and when de time comes for it to go, it goes, an’ leaves a man dead as a wedge.” This statement left Breeze wondering, but Uncle Bill went on telling how the rice-fields were full of all kinds of snakes, some of them poisonous, and some not. But the snake he feared most, more than even a rattlesnake or a moccasin, was a coach-whip.
“If a coach-whip catches you, he will wrap his body round you an’ tie you to a tree an’ whip you to death wid his tail. Lawd, boy, when a coach-whip blows dat whistle in de end of his tail, put you’ foot in you’ hand an’ run!”
“Yes, suh!” Sherry agreed, “I too ’fraid of coach-whips myself. I never did see one do it, but a coach-whip can outrun a man any day. If you get to outrunnin’ him, e will grab his tail in his mouth and roll after you like a hoop to catch you. An’ tie you to a tree an’ whip you. Enty, Uncle?”