E. K. Means

“ Inside the low railing which divided the room, and nearest to the chairs which the jurors were to occupy, Hitch Diamond sat at a long table with Goldie Curtain by his side. In that crowd of people, either white or black, Goldie was the one splotch of vivid coloring—her face and hands and neck a beautiful orange in color, and her half-caste beauty most striking and attractive. Hitch sat beside the table as stolid and indifferent as a wooden man, but Goldie trembled, her nervous fingers plaited in and out of each other like squirming snakes ”

“ Thus the negroes walked from house to house telling their appalling stories to little groups of pop-eyed listeners, adding something more blood-curdling to the tales with each repetition, until the terrified inhabitants of Shiny, Shoofly, Hell’s Half-Acre, and Dirty Six were as uneasy and fearful as if they were standing in the crumbling crater of a rumbling volcano.
Then the grapevine telephone was put into operation.
There is nothing as mysterious to the white man as the negro’s method of communicating information for long distances and to the remotest cabins of his race. ”

“ But there is one thing every negro can do. His fright is like kerosene poured on hot coals: it goes up in vapor and goes off with a bang. When those explosive sounds began to prod the negroes like hat-pins running into their ears, they began to howl and pray, and from five or six hundred throats there arose an assorted series of yells—they sang a long scale of variegated vociferations of fright—and they uttered implorations and prayers, and made promises to the God of heaven in return for his protection, promises which they could not have remembered in sober moments, much less performed. ”

“ Just at that moment Tucky Sugg fought his way through the tangle of human arms and legs and sprang into the open window. Then he went screaming downward to his death as a bullet from the sheriff’s pistol went with him, pocketed in the murderer’s heart!
Then, as if the crack of the sheriff’s pistol was her cue to enter, another woman came up-stage and stood in the blazing light of battle. She weighed four hundred and ten pounds, and resembled a balloon divided in the middle by an apron string. She was conducted by Dainty Blackum and a strange young negro man, and her name was Ginny Babe Chew. ”

“ As the six negroes walked down the silent road, the darkness in the woods, increased by the interlocked branches of the trees, was intense and overwhelming. The green fringe of the swamp weeds took on fantastic shapes, and the negroes, through their disordered imaginations, beheld claws and wings, and leering eyes, and sneering mouths, and snarling teeth, and painted upon the black canvas of the dark were all the slimy, horrid forms which fear could conceive. ”

“ He’s got the legs on him and he’s got the bones on him, and he’s got a good, sound mind in a good, sound body, both ripened by long years of toil and experience. Some of you remember when Jinx first came to Tickfall Parish, but none of you can remember how old Jinx is now and how old he was when you first saw him. You can estimate the age of a cow by the rings on her horns and the age of a tree by the concentric rings on its trunk, and the age of a horse or mule by the teeth. ”

“ Skeeter Butts, the little, yellow barkeeper at the Hen-Scratch saloon, had the back of his chair propped against the trunk of the tree, his heels hung in the rungs of the chair in front, and looked like a jockey mounted upon a bony, sway-backed horse. Vinegar Atts, the fat, bald-headed, moon-faced pastor of the Shoofly church, sat on one chair, rested his feet on another, and had his massive arms outspread upon the backs of yet two other chairs. He looked like a pot-bellied buzzard trying to fly upside down and backward. ”

“ Nearly every lawn in Tickfall held a boy busy with tools, cutting the grass, raking the dead leaves, hoeing out the flower-beds, and mending the fences. White people accustomed to seeing a workman take ten minutes to chop down one weed, and half an hour to light his corn-cob pipe, now observed that all were working with feverish haste, and at the same time with the most minute care and exactness as if it were a religious observance of some sort.
“What ails all these coons in town?” Gaitskill laughed as he looked down the street and saw not a single dusky loafer. ”

“ And the scenery would set an artist wild: a sky like a soap-bubble, and high in the dome a buzzard sailing like a speck of dust, a river like a broad, flowing ribbon of old gold, and close to the levees on each side the woods, dense, black, moss-hung and funereal, absorbing so little of the sun’s light that the negroes could hear the call of the night-owls and the voice of the whip-poor-will. ”

“ The negro is like a cat, sleepy and dull during the day; but he wakes up at night, and is a prowler in the streets and woods and fields. It was four miles to the Little Moccasin prairie, but that tramping crowd of men thought nothing of that, and as they marched they sang, keeping step to music that carried echoes of the African jungle, and those minor tones which are characteristic of all people who have been enslaved since the ancient days when subjugated Israel in the land of Egypt “hung their harps on the willows.” ”

“ Bill stood like a rag doll, or anything else you can think of which is spineless and helpless and non-resistant.
Conko walked up and glared into Bill’s listless, humid eyes like a monstrous, bloodthirsty gorilla eying a wax dummy. Bill did not see the negro, for unknown to Conko, the tall form of Zodono stood just behind him, and the professor’s eyes held the hypnotic as a snake charms a bird.
“Now,” Zodono commanded in sharp tones to the darky, “make a stroking motion before his face—slow—slow—slow. Now bring your will to bear upon his subconscious mind—that’s it. Sleep—sleep—sleep—ah!” ”

“ After a while they seated Skeeter Butts and Vinegar Atts in the machine, and every man that had paid his dollar and wore his feather in his cap took his turn at helping to push the airplane over the ground. It was followed by all the other negroes who shouted and whooped as it bumped along over the prairie like some awkward, stiff-legged, ridiculous bird which spurned the earth and felt like it was a disgrace to be upon the ground. ”

“ From the moment they entered the swamp the shouts and laughter of the negroes ceased.
They had all spent their lives within sight of that jungle and knew well its fearful menace and entertained toward it a most wholesome fear. They knew that three deep, broad bayous flowed into it, widened into an enormous mud-puddle and disappeared, swallowed up by rank, encroaching vegetation. ”

“ When Hitch Diamond emerged from the plum-thicket 56 which had served for a dressing-room, his seconds behind him, and stalked through the crowd to the ring, a wild burst of greeting and applause went up from his waiting fellow townsmen, all of whom, except Skeeter Butts and Figger Bush, had backed him to the limit at any odds.
Hitch bowed right and left, waved his giant arms at the people on the edge of the crowd, and listened with hungry ears to their pleas:
“We’re bettin’ on you, Hitch; don’t make us lose our money!”
“Knock him out, Hitchey! Den us’ll all be rich!” ”

“ Pap was practicing the political trick of looking like he belonged to the great common people, and had come up from the commonest of them all. He was a grave-digger and well-digger by profession, and he looked to-night like he had just finished the job of digging all the graves and wells that would be needed in Tickfall Parish for many years to come. There was fresh clay on his clothes and hat and shoes; clay streaked his yellow baboon face, and was plastered thick upon his horny hands. ”