They went to the steamboat. But Herman Basket said that Doom did not notice the ten black people until it was time to return to the Plantation. Herman Basket told how Doom looked at the black people, then looked at pappy. “It seems that the white men did not want these black people,” Doom said.
“So it seems,” pappy said.
“The white men went away, did they?” Doom said.
“So it seems,” pappy said.
Herman Basket told how every night Doom would make all the men sleep in the House, with the dogs in the House too, and how each morning they would return to the steamboat in the wagons. The wagons would not hold everybody, so after the second day the women stayed at home. But it was three days before Doom noticed that pappy was staying at home too. Herman Basket said that the woman’s husband may have told Doom. “Craw-ford hurt his back lifting the steamboat,” Herman Basket said he told Doom. “He said he would stay at the Plantation and sit with his feet in the Hot Spring so that the sickness in his back could return to the earth.”
“That is a good idea,” Doom said. “He has been doing this for three days, has he? Then the sickness should be down in his legs by now.”
When they returned to the Plantation that night, Doom sent for pappy. He asked pappy if the sickness had moved. Pappy said how the sickness moved very slow. “You must sit in the Spring more,” Doom said.
“That is what I think,” pappy said.
“Suppose you sit in the Spring at night too,” Doom said.
“The night air will make it worse,” pappy said.
“Not with a fire there,” Doom said. “I will send one of the black people with you to keep the fire burning.”
“Which one of the black people?” pappy said.
“The husband of the woman which I won on the steamboat,” Doom said.
“I think my back is better,” pappy said.
“Let us try it,” Doom said.
“I know my back is better,” pappy said.
“Let us try it, anyway,” Doom said. Just before dark Doom sent four of the People to fix pappy and the black man at the Spring. Herman Basket said the People returned quickly. He said that as they entered the House, pappy entered also.
“The sickness began to move suddenly,” pappy said. “It has reached my feet since noon today.”
“Do you think it will be gone by morning?” Doom said.
“I think so,” pappy said.
“Perhaps you had better sit in the Spring tonight and make sure,” Doom said.
“I know it will be gone by morning,” pappy said.
IV
When it got to be summer, Herman Basket said that the steamboat was out of the river bottom. It had taken them five months to get it out of the bottom, because they had to cut down the trees to make a path for it. But now he said the steamboat could walk faster on the logs. He told how pappy helped. Pappy had a certain place on one of the ropes near the steamboat that nobody was allowed to take, Herman Basket said. It was just under the front porch of the steamboat where Doom sat in his chair, with a boy with a branch to shade him and another boy with a branch to drive away the flying beasts. The dogs rode on the boat too.
In the summer, while the steamboat was still walking, Herman Basket told how the husband of the woman came to Doom again. “I have done what I could for you,” Doom said. “Why dont you go to Craw-ford and adjust this matter yourself?”
The black man said that he had done that. He said that pappy said to adjust it by a cock-fight, pappy’s cock against the black man’s, the winner to have the woman, the one who refused to fight to lose by default. The black man said he told pappy he did not have a cock, and that pappy said that in that case the black man lost by default and that the woman belonged to pappy. “And what am I to do?” the black man said.
Doom thought. Then Herman Basket said that Doom called to him and asked him which was pappy’s best cock and Herman Basket told Doom that pappy had only one. “That black one?” Doom said. Herman Basket said he told Doom that was the one. “Ah,” Doom said. Herman Basket told how Doom sat in his chair on the porch of the steamboat while it walked, looking down and the People and the black men pulling the ropes, making the steamboat walk. “Go and tell Craw-ford you have a cock,” Doom said to the black man. “Just tell him you will have a cock in the pit. Let it be tomorrow morning. We will let the steamboat sit down and rest.” The black man went away. Then Herman Basket said that Doom was looking at him, and that he did not look at Doom. Because he said there was but one better cock in the Plantation than pappy’s, and that one belonged to Doom. “I think that that puppy was not sick,” Doom said. “What do you think?”
Herman Basket said that he did not look at Doom. “That is what I think,” he said.
“That is what I would advise,” Doom said.
Herman Basket told how the next day the steamboat sat and rested. The pit was in the stable. The People and the black people were there. Pappy had his cock in the pit. Then the black man put his cock into the pit. Herman Basket said that pappy looked at the black man’s cock.
“This cock belongs to Ikkemotubbe,” pappy said.
“It is his,” the People told pappy. “Ikkemotubbe gave it to him with all to witness.”
Herman Basket said that pappy had already picked up his cock. “This is not right,” pappy said. “We ought not to let him risk his wife on a cock-fight.”
“Then you withdraw?” the black man said.
“Let me think,” pappy said. He thought. The People watched. The black man reminded pappy of what he had said about defaulting. Pappy said he did not mean to say that and that he withdrew it. The People told him that he could only withdraw by forfeiting the match. Herman Basket said that pappy thought again. The People watched. “All right,” pappy said. “But I am being taken advantage of.”
The cocks fought. Pappy’s cock fell. Pappy took it up quickly. Herman Basket said it was like pappy had been waiting for his cock to fall so he could pick it quickly up. “Wait,” he said. He looked at the People. “Now they have fought. Isn’t that true?” The People said that it was true. “So that settles what I said about forfeiting.”
Herman Basket said that pappy began to get out of the pit.
“Aren’t you going to fight?” the black man said.
“I dont think this will settle anything,” pappy said. “Do you?”
Herman Basket told how the black man looked at pappy. Then he quit looking at pappy. He was squatting. Herman Basket said the People looked at the black man looking at the earth between his feet. They watched him take up a clod of dirt, and then they watched the dust come out between the black man’s fingers. “Do you think that this will settle anything?” pappy said.
“No,” the black man said. Herman Basket said that the People could not hear him very good. But he said that pappy could hear him.
“Neither do I,” pappy said. “It would not be right to risk your wife on a cock-fight.”
Herman Basket told how the black man looked up, with the dry dust about the fingers of his hand. He said the black man’s eyes looked red in the dark pit, like the eyes of a fox. “Will you let the cocks fight again?” the black man said.
“Do you agree that it doesn’t settle anything?” pappy said.
“Yes,” the black man said.
Pappy put his cock back into the ring. Herman Basket said that pappy’s cock was dead before it had time to act strange, even. The black man’s cock stood upon it and started to crow, but the black man struck the live cock away and he jumped up and down on the dead cock until it did not look like a cock at all, Herman Basket said.
Then it was fall, and Herman Basket told how the steamboat came to the Plantation and stopped beside the House and died again. He said that for two months they had been in sight of the Plantation, making the steamboat walk on the logs, but now the steamboat was beside the House and the House was big enough to please Doom. He gave an eating. It lasted a week. When it was over, Herman
Basket told how the black man came to Doom a third time. Herman Basket said that the black man’s eyes were red again, like those of a fox, and that they could hear his breathing in the room. “Come to my cabin,” he said to Doom. “I have something to show you.”
“I thought it was about that time,” Doom said. He looked about the room, but Herman Basket told Doom that pappy had just stepped out. “Tell him to come also,” Doom said. When they came to the black man’s cabin, Doom sent two of the People to fetch pappy. Then they entered the cabin. What the black man wanted to show Doom was a new man.
“Look,” the black man said. “You are the Man. You are to see justice done.”
“What is wrong with this man?” Doom said.
“Look at the color of him,” the black man said. He began to look around the cabin. Herman Basket said that his eyes went red and then brown and then red, like those of a fox. He said they could hear the black man’s breathing. “Do I get justice?” the black man said. “You are the Man.”
“You should be proud of a fine yellow man like this,” Doom said. He looked at the new man. “I dont see that justice can darken him any,” Doom said. He looked about the cabin also. “Come forward, Craw-ford,” he said. “This is a man, not a copper snake; he will not harm you.” But Herman Basket said that pappy would not come forward. He said the black man’s eyes went red and then brown and then red when he breathed. “Yao,” Doom said, “this is not right. Any man is entitled to have his melon patch protected from these wild bucks of the woods. But first let us name this man.” Doom thought. Herman Basket said the black man’s eyes went quieter now, and his breath went quieter too. “We will call him Had-Two-Fathers,” Doom said.
V
Sam Fathers lit his pipe again. He did it deliberately, rising and lifting between thumb and forefinger from his forge a coal of fire. Then he came back and sat down. It was getting late. Caddy and Jason had come back from the creek, and I could see Grandfather and Mr Stokes talking beside the carriage, and at that moment, as though he had felt my gaze, Grandfather turned and called my name.
“What did your pappy do then?” I said.
“He and Herman Basket built the fence,” Sam Fathers said. “Herman Basket told how Doom made them set two posts into the ground, with a sapling across the top of them. The nigger and pappy were there. Doom had not told them about the fence then. Herman Basket said it was just like when he and pappy and Doom were boys, sleeping on the same pallet, and Doom would wake them at night and make them get up and go hunting with him, or when he would make them stand up with him and fight with their fists, just for fun, until Herman Basket and pappy would hide from Doom.
“They fixed the sapling across the two posts and Doom said to the nigger: ‘This is a fence. Can you climb it?’
“Herman Basket said the nigger put his hand on the sapling and sailed over it like a bird.
“Then Doom said to pappy: ‘Climb this fence.’
“ ‘This fence is too high to climb,’ pappy said.
“ ‘Climb this fence, and I will give you the woman,’ Doom said.
“Herman Basket said pappy looked at the fence a while. ‘Let me go under this fence,’ he said.
“ ‘No,’ Doom said.
“Herman Basket told me how pappy began to sit down on the ground. ‘It’s not that I dont trust you,’ pappy said.
“ ‘We will build the fence this high,’ Doom said.
“ ‘What fence?’ Herman Basket said.
“ ‘The fence around the cabin of this black man,’ Doom said.
“ ‘I cant build a fence I couldn’t climb,’ pappy said.
“ ‘Herman will help you,’ Doom said.
“Herman Basket said it was just like when Doom used to wake them and make them go hunting. He said the dogs found him and pappy about noon the next day, and that they began the fence that afternoon. He told me how they had to cut the saplings in the creek bottom and drag them in by hand, because Doom would not let them use the wagon. So sometimes one post would take them three or four days. ‘Never mind,’ Doom said. ‘You have plenty of time. And the exercise will make Craw-ford sleep at night.’
“He told me how they worked on the fence all that winter and all the next summer, until after the whisky trader had come and gone. Then it was finished. He said that on the day they set the last post, the nigger came out of the cabin and put his hand on the top of a post (it was a palisade fence, the posts set upright in the ground) and flew out like a bird. ‘This is a good fence,’ the nigger said. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘I have something to show you.’ Herman Basket said he flew back over the fence again and went into the cabin and came back. Herman Basket said that he was carrying a new man and that he held the new man up so they could see it above the fence. ‘What do you think about this for color?’ he said.”
Grandfather called me again. This time I got up. The sun was already down beyond the peach orchard. I was just twelve then, and to me the story did not seem to have got anywhere, to have had point or end. Yet I obeyed Grandfather’s voice, not that I was tired of Sam Fathers’ talking, but with that immediacy of children with which they flee temporarily something which they do not quite understand; that, and the instinctive promptness with which we all obeyed Grandfather, not from concern of impatience or reprimand, but because we all believed that he did fine things, that his waking life passed from one fine (if faintly grandiose) picture to another.
They were in the surrey, waiting for me. I got in; the horses moved at once, impatient too for the stable. Caddy had one fish, about the size of a chip, and she was wet to the waist. We drove on, the team already trotting. When we passed Mr Stokes’ kitchen we could smell ham cooking. The smell followed us on to the gate. When we turned onto the road home it was almost sundown. Then we couldn’t smell the cooking ham any more. “What were you and Sam talking about?” Grandfather said.
We went on, in that strange, faintly sinister suspension of twilight in which I believed that I could still see Sam Fathers back there, sitting on his wooden block, definite, immobile, and complete, like something looked upon after a long time in a preservative bath in a museum. That was it. I was just twelve then, and I would have to wait until I had passed on and through and beyond the suspension of twilight. Then I knew that I would know. But then Sam Fathers would be dead.
“Nothing, sir,” I said. “We were just talking.”
HAIR
I
This girl, this Susan Reed, was an orphan. She lived with a family named Burchett, that had some more children, two or three more. Some said that Susan was a niece or a cousin or something; others cast the usual aspersions on the character of Burchett and even of Mrs Burchett: you know. Women mostly, these were.
She was about five when Hawkshaw first came to town. It was his first summer behind that chair in Maxey’s barber shop that Mrs Burchett brought Susan in for the first time. Maxey told me about how him and the other barbers watched Mrs Burchett trying for three days to get Susan (she was a thin little girl then, with big scared eyes and this straight, soft hair not blonde and not brunette) into the shop. And Maxey told how at last it was Hawkshaw that went out into the street and worked with the girl for about fifteen minutes until he got her into the shop and into his chair—him that hadn’t never said more than Yes or No to any man or woman in the town that anybody ever saw. “Be durn if it didn’t look like Hawkshaw had been waiting for her to come along,” Maxey told me.
That was her first haircut. Hawkshaw gave it to her, and her sitting there under the cloth like a little scared rabbit. But six months after that she was coming to the shop by herself and letting Hawkshaw cut her hair, still looking like a little old rabbit, with her scared face and those big eyes and that hair without any special name showing above the cloth. If Hawkshaw was busy, Maxey said she would come in and sit on the waiting bench close to his chair with her legs sticking straight out in front of her until Hawkshaw got done. Maxey says they considered her Hawkshaw’s client the sa
me as if she had been a Saturday night shaving customer. He says that one time the other barber, Matt Fox, offered to wait on her, Hawkshaw being busy, and that Hawkshaw looked up like a flash. “I’ll be done in a minute,” he says. “I’ll tend to her.” Maxey told me that Hawkshaw had been working for him for almost a year then, but that was the first time he ever heard him speak positive about anything.
That fall the girl started to school. She would pass the barber shop each morning and afternoon. She was still shy, walking fast like little girls do, with that yellow-brown head of hers passing the window level and fast like she was on skates. She was always by herself at first, but pretty soon her head would be one of a clump of other heads, all talking, not looking toward the window at all, and Hawkshaw standing there in the window, looking out. Maxey said him and Matt would not have to look at the clock at all to tell when five minutes to eight and to three oclock came, because they could tell by Hawkshaw. It was like he would kind of drift up to the window without watching himself do it, and be looking out about the time for the school children to begin to pass. When she would come to the shop for a haircut, Hawkshaw would give her two or three of those peppermints where he would give the other children just one, Maxey told me.
No; it was Matt Fox, the other barber, told me that. He was the one who told me about the doll Hawkshaw gave her on Christmas. I dont know how he found it out. Hawkshaw never told him. But he knew some way; he knew more about Hawkshaw than Maxey did. He was a married man himself, Matt was. A kind of fat, flabby fellow, with a pasty face and eyes that looked tired or sad—something. A funny fellow, and almost as good a barber as Hawkshaw. He never talked much either, and I dont know how he could have known so much about Hawkshaw when a talking man couldn’t get much out of him. I guess maybe a talking man hasn’t got the time to ever learn much about anything except words.
Anyway, Matt told me about how Hawkshaw gave her a present every Christmas, even after she got to be a big girl. She still came to him, to his chair, and him watching her every morning and afternoon when she passed to and from school. A big girl, and she wasn’t shy any more.
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