Central High School - Mirror Yearbook (Birmingham, AL)

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IN OLD PLANTATION DAYS The soft breath of a marsh in midsummer fanned our cheeks, as we, Bavard and I, sat out under the immense old umbrella tree down in the lawn. It was moist, warm, heavy breath; and it lulled us and quieted us until we sunk under its spell and dreamed—each in our fanbacked wicker. At length the silence seemed to bear Bavard down; he sank deeper and deeper, his head lower. He slept. Almost at the call of the locusts on the cypress trees down the swamp, the mellowest of harvest moons swung up. Its laving warmth, sifting down through the broad leaves of the oaks, bathed us in a glorious silvery flood. The sere old head in the chair across from me glowed under the touch of the rays, but it did not move. I looked about me on the glade, letting my eyes rest here and there; on the little copse of scrub-oaks where in the winter we shot the patridges. further on down the slove to the level where Elsie and her chums from college played croquet, and farther still to the glistening stream of the river, whose shadowy bluffs told many a story of steamer landings. Further away on the left I heard a slave singing, and still another picking the bass string of a banjo. I listened to the lone voice, a wavering falsetto wafted by that lnd;an summer breath which had so strangely soothed us. Its wailing notes— Massa's in de Cold. Cold Ground''—lulled me to sleep. Bavard must have been awake some time before I woke, for he had mixed a new julep. Its crisp, sparkling taste brightened him and he seemed in the mood to talk. Xerxes, my boy. I have just dreamed an old tale 1 have wanted you to set down in your book, oh! so long. It is a pitiful tale, Xerxes; short—but true. I leaned forward. He spoke in a low voice: On your father’s plantation I have raised nearly everything. I once boasted of this to a trader from the ’Elizabeth Anne.’ but he swore that there was one thing I could never raise—Carolina rice. Well, sir. 1 swore I could. And I have tried ever since, in a small patch of twenty acres right on the river. I’ve had a special lot of slaves to tend it. have given it the best of watching, but. sir. to this day none of us on this plantation have ever eaten any home-grown rice. The spring rains came too soon, and the winter rains too late. When the stalks were about to bear, the drought came and burned them to sedge. Still I tried. I had special quarters for the slaves tending the crop, down at the lower end of the field. They were mostly 'Creole Niggers' who had seen Carolina rice grown, so I gave them special privileges. They had their own little church and I sent my smartest houseboy down to teach their pickanninies to write. They were a bit apart from the rest of us but they got the best of attention. Vatjc Sixteen

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THE PIERIAN LITERARY SOCIETY

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 In those quarters a tiny mulatoo was born to a wench we took from the last boat. You could scarcely have called her a woman. Strange creature that she was. she spoke the purest French. She brought the boy up. and some of the negroes heard her label him 'si gentil' and he has been called Jonntee ever since. It was that Jonntee who died last spring? I asked. Yes. that same yellow Jonntee. Xerxes, who had the withered legs. They were not withered at birth, but later. That is my story. ‘ I he sins of the father,' however, were visited upon him—paralysis. He would sometmes fall helpless in the nvdst of a sermon; and because of that he lived alone in a shack at the opposite end of the field from all the other darkies. When the boy I sent to teach the children in the little settlement reported to me that Jonntee was the brightest mulatto he had ever seen. I told him not to let the boy work in the field, but to teach him to preach. I’ve always believed it was the little negro’s white blood that made h'm smart. So little Jonntee lived on in his solitary shack, preaching and singing 'of nights and Sundays. He was soon Aunt Zenda's righthand man with little Hannibal; and all the darkies would come to see him, hoping to see him throw one of his 'conniption fits’—as they called them. They thought he was a witch (not a wizard), and for that reason the slaves shunned him. On just this kind of night, with the marsh-breath whispering tales about the witchery of the new moon filtering through the trees. Jonntee would sit in his little hut, alone. His fondness for reading kept his weird eyes constantly peering between book covers. He had devoured all of mine, and I must confess, Xerxes, that some of them I hadn’t had patience to wade through myself. He had even translated some of my English works into French: polite French which his mother had taught him. Yes. said I. as he digressed, but you talked a moment ago as if something were about to happen. Something did happen. Xerxes, something terrible happened. A tiny blaze, starting down that field of Carolina rice stalks kindled to an angry roar; and the parched stalks fed the raging flames until the lives of the slaves sleeping at the other end were endangered. But Jonntee heard it coming. Jumping up from his lamp he saw the lurid glare, saw the sparks leap high. He heard naught but the growl and snapping that he knew would soon be upon him. He started to run. stumbling, falling, crying out. Over the hard baked rice trenches he fairly flew, screaming a warning shrilly—now in French, now in English. The dry. sere lances of the stalks cut his bare chest; and worse than that the stubble slashed his feet. Still, with the spirit that brands men heroes, he ran on. with the fiery breath of the dragon on his back. There were no lights, for it was late, and had it not been full moon he should have run squarely into the first outpost of the quarters. Almost out of breath he awakened the dogs, and with them at his heels, he ran from cabin to cabin, crying to the sleeping slaves to save themselves. The negroes needed no second invitation. Seeing the ruddy light ' £ • Seventeen