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Published by Yearling, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books
a division of Random House, Inc., New York
Text copyright © 1992 by Patricia C. McKissack
Illustrations copyright © 1992 by Brian Pinkney
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eISBN: 978-0-307-77023-3
Reprinted by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers
v3.1
AUTHOR’S NOTE
When I was growing up in the South, we kids called the half hour just before nightfall the dark-thirty. We had exactly half an hour to get home before the monsters came out.
During the hot, muggy summer, when days last longer, we gathered on the front porch to pass away the evening hours. Grandmama’s hands were always busy, but while shelling peas or picking greens, she told a spine-chilling ghost tale about Laughing Lizzy, a specter who’d gone mad after losing her entire family in a fire. Her hysterical laughter was said to drive listeners insane.
Then on cold winter nights, when the dark-thirty came early, our family sat in the living room and talked. The talk generally led to one of Grandmama’s hair-raising tales. As the last glimmers of light faded from the window overlooking the woods, she told about Gray Jim, the runaway slave who’d been killed while trying to escape. Gray Jim’s ghost haunted the woods on moonless nights. “Sorry for those who hear Gray Jim’s dying screams,” she whispered, “’cause they’re not long for this world.” At this point my grandmother would pause and say, “Pat, go in the kitchen and get me a glass of water.”
Many years later I learned that Laughing Lizzy and Gray Jim had been real people in our small African American community. The strange—and often sad—circumstances of their deaths had inspired the ghost stories that lived after them. They inspired me, too.
The Dark-Thirty: Southern Tales of the Supernatural is a collection of original stories rooted in African American history and the oral storytelling tradition. They should be shared at that special time when it is neither day nor night and when shapes and shadows play tricks on the mind. When you feel fear tingling in your toes and zinging up your spine like a closing zipper, you have experienced the delicious horror of a tale of the dark-thirty.
Patricia C. McKissack
1992
CONTENTS
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Author’s Note
The Legend of Pin Oak
We Organized
Justice
The 11:59
The Sight
The Woman in the Snow
The Conjure Brother
Boo Mama
The Gingi
The Chicken-Coop Monster
About the Author
The Legend of Pin Oak
In 1868 a Kentucky artist, Thomas Satterwhite Noble, painted The Price of Blood, which shows the sale of a mulatto slave by his father-master, to illustrate the cruelty of slavery. There is no greater horror than a system that allows parents to sell their children—or, as in this story, brother to sell brother.
The plantation bell summoned everybody to the big house. About fifty slaves, including the inside help, gathered in front of the white mansion. Among them were Henri and his wife Charlemae.
Harper McAvoy, looking pale and weak, stood beside one of the big Doric columns that supported the second-story porch. After nervously clearing his throat, he announced in a not-so-steady voice, “I’ve sold Henri.”
One of the slaves screamed, Charlemae perhaps, Harper didn’t know for sure. As he hurried back inside the house voices called after him:
“No, not Henri.”
“Massa! What about Charlemae and the baby?”
“Who will see after things round here?”
“What will become of us all …?”
Harper raced to his study, where he barricaded himself against the onslaught of questions. “I sold Henri!” he said, giggling foolishly. “I did it! Now I’ll be rid of him.”
Suddenly the door to his study burst open. “Do you hate me that much?” Henri asked without hesitation. “Enough to destroy Pin Oak?”
Harper scurried behind his desk to put a barrier between them. “I owe you no explanation. You’re my slave!”
Harper’s resentment of Henri began in childhood. Actually their story started with Amos McAvoy, the former master of Pin Oak. Amos had inherited the estate from his father, Thomas McAvoy, who had built it the same year Thomas Jefferson was elected President of the United States. Only Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage equaled Pin Oak’s graceful architectural styling and elegant setting.
Amos McAvoy had been a tall, red-headed man with a square-cut chin and deep-set green eyes. He’d courted the lovely Alva Dean from Spring Manor and won her over with his dashing style and devil-may-care charm. Their spring wedding united two old Tennessee families—the Deans and the McAvoys—two fortunes and two hearts. But the marriage lasted only a year.
The night they told Amos that Alva had died in childbirth, he locked himself in her room and wept bitterly. When Amos finally emerged the next morning, he named his son Harper, then abandoned Pin Oak, leaving it to be run by overseers.
For ten years Harper saw Amos only a few weeks during harvest season. The rest of the time his father stayed in New Orleans. The boy was left in the charge of his grandmother Dean, who showered him with everything her money could buy. But material possessions and her love were no substitute for the thing he most desired—his father’s acceptance.
“He would rather I had died,” Harper told his grandmother. And no matter how much Amanda Dean tried to deny it, they both knew it was true. To ease his pain, Harper taught himself not to care.
Then one day Amos unexpectedly arrived at the Deans’ Spring Manor. Harper slipped down the steps and stood outside the parlor, where he listened to the conversation.
“I’m returning to Pin Oak,’ Amos said. “And I want my son to come live with me.”
“There’s nothing I can do to stop you,” Amanda answered coldly. “But why
now after all these years? You’ve never taken the slightest interest in the boy before.”
“I know. And it was wrong,” he admitted, “but I plan to make it up. I’ve left my affairs in the care of others far too long.”
Amanda sighed deeply. “Harper is a complicated child—I don’t think he knows how to be happy. I’ve spoiled him, I know. Perhaps it will be good for him to be with you.”
“Yes, from now on things will be better.”
Harper had lived at Pin Oak for about a month when his father announced that he was going to New Orleans. He returned several weeks later with Henri, a mulatto child about two years younger than Harper.
The boy had a mop of dark red hair, a square chin, and unusual pale green eyes. Gossip spread quickly from the big house to the quarters.
“Say the boy’s mama was one of them free blacks down in New Orleans,” Harper overheard the cook tell the driver.
“Got his mama’s skin and his daddy’s green eyes—an odd combination.”
“That’s for sure. Anybody with eyes can clearly see that Henri is Massa Amos’s own flesh and blood.”
Harper saw what everybody else saw. The McAvoys were big, strong, athletic men with ruddy complexions. Henri, though younger, was taller and more solidly built than Harper. A frail child with the same pastel features as his mother, Harper hated the way he looked and despised Henri for looking so much like their father.
What was worse, Amos never denied a word of the gossip. Even if he had, it wouldn’t have stopped the tongues from wagging.
“So it’s all true,” Amanda Dean gasped when she came to Pin Oak, admittedly to see Henri. She fell into a chair and fanned herself, then turned to Amos. “You and that boy are the talk of two counties. Now I see why!”
Amos sent Henri on an errand so that he could speak freely to Amanda. “The child’s mother is dead, and I didn’t want him with somebody who might mistreat him.”
“How dare you shame my grandson with this … this abomination? I’ve come to take Harper back to Spring Manor.”
“No, the boy stays here,” he answered. “Henri will be a good companion for Harper. I brought him home for that purpose.”
“Are you so blind?” Amanda said, pointing an accusing finger. “This can only lead to disaster.”
Amos ignored his mother-in-law’s counsel and installed Henri as a house servant.
In time, however, Henri was put in charge of Amos’s stables. Pin Oak’s horses were some of the finest in the state, and Amos was a gifted horseman. Henri enjoyed taking care of Hercules, Amos’s prize stallion. Harper, on the other hand, stayed as far from the stables as possible—horses made him sneeze, and riding them made him sore.
“I’m hot,” Harper complained when Amos took both boys out to view the fields. “And besides, I’m not interested in how cotton grows.”
“Stop whining, Harper,” Amos scolded. “You’ll be master of Pin Oak one day. And Henri, you’ll run the place. That’s the way I want it.”
The seasons passed swiftly, until at last Henri reached manhood, tall, confident, and strong. Harper’s jealousy of Henri grew each year until it dominated his life, and he was immersed in an ever-widening pool of anger and hatred.
Just as Amos planned it, Henri was put in charge of Pin Oak operations. Soon after, Amos approved his marriage to Charlemae, a beautiful African woman. Together they built a cabin with a stone fireplace, wood floors, and shuttered windows. It wasn’t until then that Amos told Henri he was free.
“Your mama was freed by her master when she was born. I never told you before now, because I didn’t want you running off when you were too young to take care of yourself. You’re twenty-five and the law says I have to let you go.”
“I’ve always known I was free,” Henri said. “My mama told me many times before she died.”
“Will you be leaving Pin Oak?” Amos asked.
Henri sighed. “No, because Charlemae belongs to you, and she couldn’t come with me. I’ll stay and keep running Pin Oak—but for a salary. And I want to use that salary to buy Charlemae’s freedom.”
“A wise decision,” Amos said, smiling.
As long as Amos lived, Henri was safe. Then one Christmas, Amos took sick at the dinner table. Believing it to be indigestion brought on by too much eggnog, Henri helped Amos to his bedroom. By the time they realized it was something far worse, it was too late.
“He’s asking for his son,” Dr. Shipp said, turning first to Henri, then to Harper. After an embarrassing moment, the doctor said to Harper, “He’s asking for you. Do hurry. He’s near death.”
Brushing past Henri, Harper went into his father’s bedroom. “I’m here.”
Amos held out his trembling hand, and for a split second Harper wanted to embrace his dying father and forget everything that had gone wrong between them. Instead he stood in stony silence. “Henri …” Amos struggled to say “Tell him …” But Amos McAvoy died before he could finish.
“Henri to the last,” Harper hissed. “Not even a parting word for me.” He sat in the darkened room for a while. Then he started laughing, a chuckle that turned into a shrill giggle. When the doctor and Henri rushed in to see what was happening, Harper looked at them with wild eyes. “I am the master of Pin Oak.”
“Did he say anything about freeing Charlemae and my son?” Henri asked some weeks after the funeral. “He promised Charlemae and me—”
“No. In fact, my father suggested I sell you,” Harper lied. “But of course I’d keep Charlemae … and your baby. Does that bother you, Henri? Knowing you’re just a slave after all?”
Harper looked for signs of hurt in Henri’s face. He saw only his father’s contemptuous green eyes staring defiantly back at him.
“Go, get out.” Harper waved Henri away.
But his brother didn’t leave. Though Henri saw no point in telling Harper he was a free man, there was another matter he needed to discuss. “There’s something you should know,” he said with urgency in his voice. “Pin Oak is in trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?” Harper asked, growing nervous.
“For the past two years the crops haven’t come in healthy—too much rain one year, not enough the next. Still, Master Amos said if we toed the line, cut a few corners, and brought in a good crop this year, we could get through these hard times.”
Harper turned his back on Henri. “How dreary. Do what you must to keep the place going.”
But meanwhile Harper continued to spend Pin Oak’s money, on good whiskey and bad deals. It wasn’t long before the bank threatened foreclosure.
Driven by years of anger and resentment, Harper met the bank’s demand payment by selling the most valuable asset he had—Henri.
“You fool!” Mr. Kelsey, a longtime family friend at the bank, shouted when Harper told him. “Why didn’t you sell the silver? Sell all the furniture? Not Henri. Would a carpenter sell his saw?”
But the deed had been done. Harper sat in his office listening to a slave sing a mournful tune.
Steal away … steal away … steal away home.
I ain’t got time to stay here…
He, too, longed to steal away to a peaceful place, if only for a moment. He drifted off to sleep.
“Harper.”
Opening his eyes, Harper saw his father—no, it was only Henri. “Do you think you might try saying ‘sir’ or ‘Massa Harper,’ ” he said sarcastically.
“I’ve come once more to plead with you to reconsider.”
“Sorry, but there’s nothing I can do. I sold you.”
“But that’s just it. You can’t sell me,” Henri said carefully. “I’m free, because my mother was free. You know the law. When my mother died, your father came to New Orleans to get me, but he knew the condition of my birth. That’s why he couldn’t sell me. Neither can you.”
Harper’s eyes stretched wide with anger and frustration. “Wh-where are your papers?” he asked incredulously. “Can you show me some papers?”
> “Here.”
Harper read the document and swore. “He never told me. You mean you were always free to go? Why didn’t you just leave?”
“I couldn’t abandon Charlemae and our baby. Besides, Master Amos was letting me build cash credits to buy my family’s freedom. I should be close to my goal.”
“I can’t imagine my father making such a deal.”
“Master Amos must have kept records. Won’t you at least have a look?”
Harper ignored the question. He rubbed his temples. “The dealers are coming tomorrow,” he whined. “Oh, they do terrible things to people who renege on sales. What must I do?”
“Give them their money back.”
“I’ve spent it.”
But slowly an idea formed in Harper’s head. As it grew and took shape, he smiled. “Since you’re free, I’ll give them Charlemae in your place. If you want, you can follow her and offer your services to her new master. I’ll keep your son, of course. That seems a fair deal, don’t you think?”
“What? Why?”
“Why not? You always got everything you wanted. But now I’m in charge.”
Henri started to walk away but turned back. “You always envied me, but there was no cause,” he said. “How do you think I felt having to call my own father Massa Amos? I used to watch you whine and fret, and he’d remind you that one day you’d be master of Pin Oak. I ran Pin Oak for him, kept it afloat, but in the end he called you to his bedside.” Henri shook his head. “You never understood.” Then he left.
Dawn brought the slave dealers, as promised.
“Beautiful morning, don’t you think?”
“We’ve come for the buck,” one man said gruffly.
The other one took an ankle cuff and chain from his pack. “Fetch him.”
“There’s a slight problem …”
“We’re listening.”
“Unfortunately, Henri is a free man,” Harper said apologetically. “Seems he was born free. The sale I made was illegal.”
One of the men spat tobacco juice. “Whoever heard of a free nigger in Tennessee? We’re taking him, papers or no. Go fetch him.”
The Dark-Thirty Page 1