Coon Taylor never did any real stealing. Of course, if he saw a chicken or a watermelon or muskmelon or anything like that that he wanted he’d take it. The people used to get mad but they never could catch him. He took so many melons from Joe Clarke that he set up in the melon patch one night with his shotgun loaded with rock salt. He was going to fix Coon. But he was tired. It is hard work being a mayor, postmaster, storekeeper and everything. He dropped asleep sitting on a stump in the middle of the patch. So he didn’t see Coon when he came. Coon didn’t see him either, that is, not at first. He knew the stump was there, however. He had opened many of Clarke’s juicy Florida Favorite on it. He selected his fruit, walked over to the stump and burst the melon on it. That is, he thought it was the stump until it fell over with a yell. Then he knew it was no stump and departed hastily from those parts. He had cleared the fence when Clarke came to, as it were. So the charge of rock-salt was wasted on the desert air.
During the sugar-cane season, he found he couldn’t resist Clarke’s soft green cane, but Clarke did not go to sleep this time. So after he had cut six or eight stalks by the moonlight, Clarke rose up out of the cane strippings with his shotgun and made Coon sit right down and chew up the last one of them on the spot. And the next day he made Coon leave his town for three months.
VII
Village Fiction
Joe Lindsay is said by Lum Boger to be the largest manufacturer of prevarications in Eatonville; Brazzle (late owner of the world’s leanest and meanest mule) contends that his business is the largest in the state and his wife holds that he is the biggest liar in the world.
Exhibit A—He claims that while he was in Orlando one day he saw a doctor cut open a woman, remove everything—liver, lights and heart included—clean each of them separately; the doctor then washed out the empty woman, dried her out neatly with a towel and replaced the organs so expertly that she was up and about her work in a couple of weeks.
VIII
Sewell is a man who lives all to himself. He moves a great deal. So often, that ’Lige Moseley says his chickens are so used to moving that every time he comes out into his backyard the chickens lie down and cross their legs, ready to be tied up again.
He is baldheaded; but he says he doesn’t mind that, because he wants as little as possible between him and God.
IX
Mrs. Clarke is Joe Clarke’s wife. She is a soft-looking, middle-aged woman, whose bust and stomach are always holding a get-together.