Scarlet Sister Mary (1928, Bobbs-Merrill Company)/Chapter 12
The road leaving the Quarters ran straight to the river which was the plantation's main highway out into the world, the faithful carrier which took away its bales of cotton and brought back all its luxuries. The road's deep ruts cut by slow-moving wagon-wheels ran side by side past cotton-fields, through woods where last year's fallen leaves and brown pine-needles made them dim and where every grass-blade or leaf budding up above the ground was crushed back into the earth by the cloven feet of patient oxen or small, round, quicker-stepping mule hoofs.
As the road reached the brow of the hill, it slackened its gait and sent a small fork off to one side. Mary followed this as it crept cautiously and with painstaking curves through thickets, under low-hanging trees whose roots clutched the earth, until the cabin where Old Daddy Cudjoe lived came in sight. Small, dilapidated, paintless, lonely, it squatted low on the ground in the midst of a confusion of little rickety outbuildings. A crape-myrtle tree beside it was gorgeous with leaves that the heat had dyed in every shade of crimson and yellow. Frosty blueberries filled the tall cedar that rose behind it and a giant hickory scattered golden leaves over the cabin's sagging roof every time a breeze came up from the river and stirred the air.
Daddy Cudjoe's cabin sat on a hill just above the river bank, its weathered roof green with moss, its old cracked sides the color of the deep shadows cast around it by the twisted live-oak trees. Chickens scratched around the door. A mother hog lying under a tree fed her babies and, when Mary passed, she blinked and grunted but did not move. An old horse munched eagerly at a dry grass patch, and one of his eyes was white with blindness.
Daddy Cudjoe, shriveled, old, crooked-legged, white-bearded man, came hobbling up from the spring with a bucket of water, and his face beamed as he spied Mary. His stumbling old feet hurried faster until he reached her, then putting his bucket on the ground, he took off his tattered old hat, and plucking at a white forelock with his crumpled fingers, he pulled a foot back and made a fine bow.
His words were broken into bits by stammering, but Mary understood them; he was glad to see her; she looked as sweet and pretty as a flower garden in the springtime; she must come in and sit down and have a cup of newly steeped life-elastic tea that he had just finished brewing; it would do her good. Nothing is better in the fall than life-elastic tea.
Daddy Cudjoe was used to having people come to him for advice, and he knew how to make them feel at home. Mary had never been here before, but when she was a child, whenever she saw the old, white-haired, bent man passing the house, or in the woods digging roots, she always ran from him, and he would stop and laugh and shake his fist and cackle out, "You better run! If I catch you, I'll conjure you!" and he looked so strange, with his black eyes shining under thick, white, bushy brows, she believed he would.
His cabin's two rooms ran the length of the house with a low board wall between them, one for Daddy Cudjoe to sleep in and the other for him to work in. Mary sat down by the fireplace, whose hearth was filled with steaming pots. Strange smells rose. Medicine, charms, love- and hate-potions all mixed their breaths together as they brewed side by side on the red coals.
"De sight o you face makes my eyeballs feel pure rich," Daddy Cudjoe greeted Mary.
He poured her the drink, then he rubbed his knotted hands together, and with a kind smile asked, "What you want, daughter?"
There was no use to hesitate, she might as well talk right out.
"I want a charm for July, Daddy Cudjoe. July's got a side-gal."
Daddy looked grave.
"How long you been married, honey?"
"Me an' him ain' been married a year yet."
"Who is de side-gal, daughter?"
"Cinder."
At this answer he puckered up his lips and puffed out his cheeks. "Cinder? Why, Cinder's de very one what come here last month and got a love-charm to catch em a beau. You don' mean dat gal is used em on you husband? Jedus have mercy. You womens is someting else." He threw back his head and cackled long and loud.
"Now, de beau's lawful lady is come for someting to get e husband back. Well, I declare. I got to make a charm to fight a charm. Black hand is got to squeeze black hand. Dat ain' no easy ting, gal. I got to study a minute."
Then Mary told him July was not the only thing giving her trouble. Cinder had put a hand on everything in her house. The fire was conjured so it muttered and popped red coals out on the bare floor scorching black spots in the clean boards around the hearth. Food stuck to the pots. Water would hardly boil in the kettle. Wind flew down the chimney in hard gusts driving smoke into the room and fanning up the ashes, scattering them in the victuals. Her baby was in mortal danger too, for he cried out in his sleep, frightened by evil things he saw in his dreams.
"I'd like to kill Cinder, Daddy—kill em dead. If you'll gi me a pizen I'll feed it to em till e is stone dead."
Daddy shook his head kindly. "No, honey, you wrong. Pizen ain' to be trusted. Sometimes, it works backwards as well as forwards, you might be de one to dead. Hatin ain' good for you, neither. It'll pizen you breast milk an' make you baby sick. It's better to go easy wid conjure. You must stop frettin an' bein scared. Keep you belly full o victuals, make you mouth smile, laugh an' be merry if you can. Don' never let people see you down-hearted, or a-hangin you head, an' lookin sorrowful. Dat ain' de way. No. Mens don' crave a sorrowful, sad-lookin 'oman. Don' never let a man feel sorry for you if you want em to stick to you."
He got up and went out of the door into the yard and Mary could hear him puttering around, scratching in the earth as if he were digging up something. Presently he came back smiling and poured her out a cup of tea from another one of the several pots boiling on the hearth.
"Drink dis, honey. It'll do you all de good whilst I fix you someting to try. If July ain' conjured too bad already e won' never get shet o' de spell we'll work on em. I ain' never seen no man get loose from a 'oman what wears dis mixtry. It's de powerful-est one I knows."
Daddy took a needle and stuck the little finger on her right hand and took a drop of her blood on a wisp of cotton. "You right hand is de strong hand, honey," he said. "It's de hand what catches an' holds."
Then he took a bit of skin from her left heel. "Dis is de foot what walks fastest, honey."
A bit of toe-nail from a toe on her left fool, was added to one hair plucked from her left armpit as near to her heart as she could get it. These were all mixed with some sort of conjure root and tied into a tiny scrap of white cloth with a string long enough to go around her neck. Daddy Cudjoe was excited. His eyes shone and sweat ran down off his forehead as he handed the bag to her with a high crackling laugh.
"Put em on, gal. Wear em day an' night. If e don' work, den I'll quit makin' love-charms for de rest o' my life. Dat charm is a man. Great Gawd, yes. E's a mans o monkeys, honey."
As Mary took it her heart began beating violently. Lord, yes, she could feel it was strong! Now she'd hurry home with it for July might by some chance come back on the regular boat this afternoon instead of waiting for the excursion boat to-night.
"How much I owe you, Daddy?"
"Honey, you don' owe me a Gawd's ting but a sweet smile. An' I wish you all de luck in dis world. I hope you will get you husband back an' keep em de rest o you life."
The old man really seemed grateful to her for coming to him. Perhaps he was lonely, living so far off by himself.
"Come see me sometimes, Daddy."
"Gawd bless you, chile, I'll do it. But befo you go let me get you some fresh eggs to take home. When you eat em, hang de shells side de mantelpiece so de fire'll keep em warm. Dey'll make you hens lay good. Come look at some fine new layin stock shut up in a pen."
He hobbled ahead of her toward the back of the cabin where a rickety hand-split clapboard fence enclosed a small yard. Taking down the props of the hingeless gate, he showed Mary six straw-necked pullets and a young cockerel.
"Dey's fine, Daddy," Mary praised.
"Is you like em?" he asked with pride. "I sent all de way 'cross de river an' got em. Le me know when you got a hen settin an' I'll gi you a clutch o eggs for seed."
A tall black rooster on the outside walked up close to the open gate, and stretching up his neck gave a long shrill crow. The smile left Daddy Cudjoe's face.
He picked out a stick and threw it violently, stammering and spluttering and shaking his fist threateningly at the offending fowl, declaring that any rooster old as that ought to know how to settle down and behave himself. He had ten grown hens running loose outside with him in the open yard; all he could say grace over, to save his life; yet, instead of attending to his own business and helping those hens scratch and find worms for themselves and for the children they had for him, there he was, running up and down by that fence, peeping through the cracks at those pullets, calling them and making a big to-do, telling them to come see what a fine thing he had found for them to eat, talking all kinds of sweet-mouthed talk to them, until the fools had their combs all bloody from reaching their heads through the fence. They believed every word the scoundrel said. They had no sense at all.
The rooster stood eying Daddy Cudjoe from a safe distance. When he flopped his wings and stretched his neck and gave a bold crow, Daddy laughed, "I hear you, son. I hear how you sass me. But you better mind, or you'll be a-stewin in a pot befo you know it." His words were threatening but his eyes were twinkling; he said people and fowls were much alike. That same rooster was just like a man.
A man may have the finest wife in the world, but just let a strange woman come around and smile at him a little, and he turns to a fool right away. He will start lying and doing everything he can to fool the strange woman into loving him, but as soon as she does he will leave her and go trying to find some other new woman to fool. It is a hard thing to keep a man satisfied. A hard thing. If it wasn't for love-charms and conjures to help women keep their lawful husbands at home and out of devilment, only God knows what would become of the world.
"Whe is you husband, to-day, daughter?"
Mary shook her head. July was gone on the excursion and Cinder was with him.
Daddy Cudjoe turned away and gazed at the rice-fields that lay sunlit and still under a circle of soft blue sky. "Po lil gal," he pitied. "I'm too sorry to see you a-frettin. But remember dis: as much good fish is in de river as ever was caught out. July ain' de onliest man in de world. No. Gawd made plenty just as good as him. Just as good. Don' forget dat."
A wild plum thicket full of reddening leaves stood close at the old man's elbow, and when he put out a hand to pat Mary's shoulder and emphasize what he was telling her, one of the slim thorny switches reached out and caught his sleeve. He jerked quickly away from it. "What you mean by pickin at me?" he asked it gruffly. "I know what I'm a-tellin dis gal." Then he snapped the branch off with his short knotted fingers and twisted it between them until all its red leaves were gone, and its sharp thorns were left stark naked.
"I'm a-tellin you what Gawd loves, daughter; de truth, de pure truth. Gawd made plenty o' men besides July. If dat charm don' fetch you husband back to you, you use it on somebody else."
"But I don' want nobody else, Daddy. Not nobody but July."
Then Daddy cackled out merrily again, "You's young, honey. You ain' got much sense, but you'll learn better. Sho. I got good hopes o you. Good hopes. Some o dese days you'll learn better." Daddy Cudjoe laughed, then wiped the tears out of his eyes. "You can' nebber blongst to nobody, honey, an' nobody can' blongst to you. But Ki! Dat ain' reason fo cry! You breath come an' go mighty sweet when e free, but you strive fo hold em. Den e bitter!"