Ambrose Elliott Gonzalez

“ At times the verbal tide flows on unchecked from a full ball of yarn; again, the ravelings are pulled angrily, jerkily, from the warp of a threadbare subject. “Onrabble ’e mout’!”
“Lef’”—left—is given not only its own proper meaning, but serves for leave, leaving, as “loss” does extra duty for lose, losing, lost.
“She-she talk”—a contemptuous characterization by Gullah bucks of feminine gossip—is suggestive of the whispering frou-frou of silken petticoats.
“En’ t’ing’”—and things—is a verbal grab-bag comprehensive enough to hold every etcetera, animate or inanimate, that one may lay tongue to. ”

“ As the sun climbed yet higher, its sensuous warmth drank up the white frost that lay like a crystal blanket upon the open spaces and the light vapors that hung over the dark places in the forest, and, as the warmer and softer air fell about Sabey, he drowsed at his post.
The outdoor negroes of the coast need neither watch nor clock to tell the time of day. ”

“ How beneficent must have been the institution of slavery under kindly masters which could cause Joe Fields, black, yellow-eyed, knock-kneed, slew-footed, longtime husband of Philippa, sometime father of twins, to boast, 53 years after the war, of the prowess and attainments of his former master, Duncan Clinch Heyward, sometime governor of South Carolina, now collector of internal revenue and sitting at the receipt of customs in the tall Palmetto building at Columbia, with dominion over war tax, surtax and every other impost internally levied by a benevolent government upon its loyal people. ”

“ THE LOST BUCK
An hour after sunrise, hunters and pack assembled at the appointed rendezvous, a centrally situated plantation. There was the usual exchange of pleasant badinage as to the relative speed, stamina and other qualities of the different hounds, who, now united in an imposing pack of twenty, combined almost every type known to the deer hunter, and each had its admirers. The older men preferred the native low-country stock, a blend, perhaps, of the blood of fox hound and beagle, bred for a hundred years or more from dogs brought from England long, long ago. ”

“ Just as he pulled himself over it and got to his feet, there was a great rattling of claws on the bark of a long outstretching limb a few feet over his head, and, silhouetted against the patches of starlight that broke the leafage above him, he could make out the cunning ’coon running along the limb to its very end where it touched a far-reaching bough from the second tree of the group. Tom yelled, with the hope that he might frighten the animal into missing its step and falling, but the sure-footed creature passed safely and disappeared among the dark needles that veiled his sanctuary. ”

“ Monday knew that the superstitious negroes feared most the unknown. The negro who would have taken a chance with alligator or bull, or the even more dangerous hind legs of a mule, could be scared stiff by a weird, unfamiliar sound in the woods at night. So Monday decided that the ear-jarring sound emitted by his double-bass “Devil’s Fiddle” should do service for the roar of a lion, as these creatures were unknown on Combahee, and the few negroes who had once seen lions when the circus visited Walterboro, brought back marvelous tales of their ferocity and their terrible voices. ”

“ Thus for years has Billy Smith trod—or rather joggled along—the path of duty between Walhalla and Belton. In the spring-time, when rill and river are swollen by heavy rains, and the tawny waters rush down the hillsides, gullying the plowed lands and scattering the rich soil “out among the neighbors,” when the pale blue wild violet and the waxen Easter lily peep from dell and dingle, and the peach and plum trees, clustering around the farmsteads, open their pink and white petals to the sunshine and the dew ”

“ In these deep underground holes, the ugly creatures hibernated from autumn to spring, until, with the earliest warm sunshine, first the nose and eyes would appear cautiously above the water which covered the entrance to the hole, and, growing bolder day by day, as the weather became warmer, next the head, and, at last the entire body would be exposed, lying on the muddy bank, or on a tussock among the rushes. ”

“ For many of the far-scattered family negroes still bring their dead to rest in these hallowed places on the old plantations. Apart from the sentiment, it gives them standing among the low-caste darkeys who had belonged to “po’ buckruh” and whose forbears slept in no ancestral graveyards. Passing behind the “Echo Oak,” Sabey reached the big road and, a quarter of a mile beyond, tramped boldly up the great avenue to sell “Mas’ Rafe” his own game. ”

“ Jane was delighted. “Missis, me en’ you done sabe Esau’ life. Da’ nigguh blonx to me en’ you, Missis, en’ uh gwine mek’um wu’k.”
Summer passed into early autumn. The days shortened. September suns burned fiercely upon the ripening corn, and through the lengthening nights heavy dews fell on the purple petticoat-grass and the golden-rod. Between sunset and dusk, summer ducks flew over from their feeding grounds to their roosts in the pineland ponds, and all through the night sounded the faint “tweet, tweet” of the ricebirds passing on to their winter quarters. ”

“ Just at the end of the “dog watch” of the mariners, just before the “day clean” of the negroes—the hour known to all night workers, when, with the imminence of the dawn, somewhat of the weight of the world seems lifted from their shoulders—Middleton rose from his cornshuck couch and opening his cabin door looked forth, as is the custom of the early-rising negroes, to scan the sky and appraise the promise of the coming day. ”

“ Most frequently, however, the plat-eye appears in the form of some familiar animal which, glaring at the beholder with eyes of fire, springs upon him, frightening him into rigidity, and, just as he expects his vitals to be torn out, the apparition vanishes, and the trembling negro hurries on his way. The belief has been expressed that, in some instances, the negroes to whom plat-eyes appear have fallen asleep as they walked, and, dreaming of these terrors, awakened to find them gone. ”

“ Besides his single-barreled muzzle-loader, the boy “packed” a knapsack filled with smoked herrings and hardtack from the plantation commissary. Abram had his musket, and Tom Ford and Joe Smashum, two young negroes, their axes. All three carried bundles of “fat” lightwood for torches strapped to their backs. Sike, a half-grown black boy, carried himself. All the negroes were bare-footed, the horny soles of their feet having become so toughened as to make them indifferent to briars and snags. ”

“ Why so few words should have survived is a mystery, for, even after freedom, a few native Africans of the later importations [Pg 18] were still living on the Carolina Coast, and the old family servants often spoke, during and after the war, of native Africans they had known; but, while they repeated many tales that came by word of mouth from the Dark Continent—the story-tellers were almost invariably of royal blood, and did not hesitate to own it—they seem to have picked from the mouths of their African brothers not a single jungle-word for the enrichment of their own speech. ”

“ Passengers going in the direction of Columbia will have to git off now, you’ll have to git off, as this train leaves in about ten minutes, ten minutes, for Greenville, for Greenville—which is in the opposite direction from Columbia!”
There are moments in every life when flowers are no longer sweet, and women no longer fair; when there is no music in the song of birds, no merriment in the laughter of children, and all the world seems dark. ”

“ Although always suspected, old Okra was never caught. When he killed a cow or other large game, the hide, and the head with its telltale ear-marks, were carefully buried in the woods, and part of the meat distributed among his cronies, insuring not only their protective silence, but a full crop of elaborate alibis for Simon, should suspicion ripen into accusation. “Nigguh haffuh stan’ by we colluh,” being the motto on all the plantations round about.
The squirrel hunter was as lean and hungry-looking as Cassius, with a shifty eye and a face deeply pock-marked. ”

“ And one who holds a warning as of small account, will often say in response to an admonitory “haa’kee!” “Yaas, bubbuh, uh haa’kee, but uh yent yeddy”—literally, I hearken but I don’t hear, while actually meaning I hear but I don’t heed, going in one ear and coming out of the other.
“’Nuf” means not only enough, sufficiency, but more often abundance. Thus “you hab enny mint?” “Yaas, suh, we hab ’nuf,” carries assurance of not merely enough for a few juleps, but a patch of fragrant greenery that could cover the graves of a score of old-school Virginians! ”

“ Although old Bo’sun Smashum, the herdsman, who had raised Barney from a calf, would twist his tail in the barnyard and chevy him about with impunity, the bull was truculent toward outsiders and on more than one occasion disputed the highway with planters of the neighborhood, who were forced to turn back and drive a mile or so out of the way in the interest of safety; while negroes riding or driving oxen, on sighting Barney in the road half a mile away, would take to the woods or the fields and make a wide and respectful detour. ”

“ The cry skirted the swamp and in a few minutes their barking indicated that they had treed a quarter of a mile away. The ’coon had taken refuge in a big rosemary, whose smooth bark and thick trunk presented difficulties to a climber, and Abram decided to cut it down. Tom and Joe on opposite sides plied their axes vigorously. How many magnificent forest trees have been sacrificed since the war by the wasteful negro hunters who have no compunction about cutting down a ten dollar tree, belonging to some one else, to capture a “two-bit” raccoon! ”

“ How few of us realize that there is more exhilaration in a five-mile spin than in a quart of champagne, that ’tis more blessed to swish the briefest cotton skirt in Arcadie—if in Arcadie we belong—than to drag a satin train in a Paris salon! ”

“ During the sturgeon run, when, too, mulberries and blackberries were plentiful, the negroes grew fat and “swonguh” and became more than usually irresponsible.
The heavy, sensuous Southern spring was in the air. The bayous or “backwaters,” which irrigated the inland swamp ricefields, were dotted with the sweet white pond lilies, or aflame with the yellow lotus, while over the broad leaves of lily and lotus, purple gallinules tripped daintily. ”

“ Philippa worked out among the white people, cooking and washing and scrubbing, while Joe rode about on a mortgaged horse or ox and boasted as a Sir Oracle at the Cross Roads or the station. Philippa was always willing to feed Joe, but she was none the less ready to season his food with the sauce of her tongue, and whenever she came home, her sense of duty urged her to remind Joe of his shortcomings. ”

“ Lucy Jones, of Pon Pon, square and stout and widowed, had in her youth been as frequently husbanded as the Wife of Bath. One by one, however, through death, incompatibility of temperament, or indifference, she had lost these affiliations, and now, a “settled woman,” Lucy lacked the masterful ways and the loving club of a man about the house, for it is axiomatic among the Gullah ladies of the Carolina coast that love and physical chastisement are inseparable. ”

“ The veteran ’coon dog will rarely follow any other animal than raccoon or ’possum—the lawful prey of his negro master—ignoring the frequently crossed trails of deer or fox. Puppies and undisciplined dogs often break away and run rabbits, of course, but they are always caught and thrashed and the occasional lapse is held derogatory to the dog’s master. ”

“ Wild turkeys were very plentiful in the low-country soon after the war, and in the winter season flocks sometimes came up in the live-oak avenues and tangled gardens of the war-ruined plantations, making a boy’s heart thump against his ribs as he watched them picking up the acorns just out of gunshot of his little single-barrel. ”

“ Sabey lived in a cabin at the edge of the woods, far away from the other plantation settlements, seldom mixing with the other negroes, who rather feared him, having a vague sort of belief in his ability to throw spells. When not hunting, he worked, but he was usually hunting in winter, and hunting successfully, for although his piece was one of the condemned army muskets carried by so many low-country negroes after Freedom, he was a good shot and possessed infinite patience and considerable woodcraft. ”

“ The low-country negroes whom it overtook in Abbeville, went their ways. The wagons and mules, all save old Pickett, were sold for the pitiful greenbacks that the profiteering few who had them, were willing to pay, and old Pickett came home. A low-country freedman, wishing to return to his habitat, kindly consented to ride her the two hundred miles, cannily exchanging his fore-knowledge of the road for the use of her four legs. ”

“ Unhappily, those who have been blessed with so rich an experience as to have suffered both fools and knaves, seldom learn to read the buoys with which nature has wisely marked the dangerous reefs in her physiognomonic charts, until the keels of their craft grind upon the rocks! ”

“ Occasionally, a kingfisher would leave his station on a dead limb and, zig-zagging in his flight, would swoop down on some small fish that showed on the surface, and, having swallowed his prey, would leisurely return to his perch with a harsh note of triumph. ”

“ Forced to oust the householder, in order to get at his unbidden guests, the terrapin hunter was now turned ’gator hunter. Although almost invariably hunting alone, pulling the smaller ’gators out of their holes with an iron hook and killing them with his axe, the master of the Half Moon pool was too ugly a customer to be so easily disposed of, and, after pondering long, Sabey determined to organize a ’gator hunt for the following day and call to his aid some of the plantation negroes. ”

“ Theoretically, a member of the gentler sex has only to wish herself upon a man and the man is as good as wived, and the dogma that “a woman has only to make up her mind to marry a man and she gets him,” is probably as old as the Creation, for Adam, like the gentleman he was, accepted philosophically and uncomplainingly—even gallantly—the spouse which kind Heaven had [Pg 91] wished upon him. ”

“ But the peaceful ox, playing truant, poor wretch, from his negro master, was full of tragedy, for the ox was white, and no solitary negro in the low-country, [Pg 157] where the forests are full of little negro graveyards, can bear the sight of anything white in the woods at night. The fear of ghosts is always with them, and a white cow, grazing in or near a graveyard, will often stampede a road full of worshipers returning from a prayer-meeting. ”