Ghost torment

Uncle Billy rested his axe on the log he was chopping, and turned his grizzly old head to one side, listening intently. A confusion of sounds came from the little cabin across the road. It was a dilapidated negro cabin, with its roof awry and the weather-boarding off in great patches; still, it was a place of interest to Uncle Billy. His sister lived there with three orphan grandchildren.

Leaning heavily on his axe-handle, he thrust out his under lip, and rolled his eyes in the direction of the uproar. A broad grin spread over his wrinkled black face as he heard the rapid spank of a shingle, the scolding tones of an angry voice, and a prolonged howl.

"John Jay an' he gran'mammy 'peah to be havin' a right sma't difference of opinion togethah this mawnin'," he chuckled.

John Jay

He shaded his eyes with his stiff, crooked fingers for a better view. A pair of nimble black legs skipped back and forth across the open doorway, in a vain attempt to dodge the descending shingle, while a clatter of falling tinware followed old Mammy's portly figure, as she made awkward but surprising turns in her wrathful circuit of the crowded room.

"Ow! I'll be good! I'll be good! Oh, Mammy, don't! You'se a-killin' me!" came in a high shriek.

Then there was a sudden dash for the cabin door, and an eight-year-old colored boy scurried down the path like a little wild rabbit, as fast as his bare feet could carry him. The noise ended as suddenly as it had begun; so suddenly, indeed, that the silence seemed intense, although the air was full of all the low twitterings and soft spring sounds that come with the early days of April.

Uncle Billy stood chuckling over the boy's escape. The situation had been made clear to him by the angry exclamations he had just overheard. John Jay, left in charge of the weekly washing, flapping on the line, had been unfaithful to his trust. A neighbor's goat had taken advantage of his absence to chew up a pillowcase and two aprons.

Really, the child was not so much to blame. It was the fault of the fish-pond, sparkling below the hill. But old Mammy couldn't understand that. She had never been a boy, with the water tempting her to come and angle for its shining minnows; with the budding willows beckoning her, and the warm winds luring her on. But Uncle Billy understood, and felt with a sympathetic tingle in every rheumatic old joint, that it was a temptation beyond the strength of any boy living to resist.

His chuckling suddenly stopped as the old woman appeared in the doorway. He fell to chopping again with such vigor that the chips flew wildly in all directions. He knew from the way that her broad feet slapped along the beaten path that she was still angry, and he thought it safest to take no notice of her, beyond a cheery "Good mawnin', sis' Sheba."

"Huh! Not much good about it that I can see!" was her gloomy reply. Lowering the basket she carried from her head to a fence-post, she began the story of her grievances. It was an old story to Uncle Billy, somewhat on the order of "The house that Jack built;" for, after telling John Jay's latest pranks, she always repeated the long line of misdeeds of which he had been guilty since the first day he had found a home under her sagging rooftree.

Usually she found a sympathetic listener in Uncle Billy, but this morning the only comfort he offered was an old plantation proverb, spoken with brotherly frankness.

"Well, sis' Sheba, I 'low it'll be good for you in the long run. 'Troubles is seasonin'. 'Simmons ain't good twel dey er fros'bit,' you know."

He stole a sidelong glance at her from under his bushy eyebrows, to see the effect of his remark. She tossed her head defiantly. "I 'low if the choice was left to the 'simmon or you eithah, brer Billy, you'd both take the greenness an' the puckah befo' the fros'bite every time." Then a tone of complaint trembled in her voice.

"I might a needed chastenin' in my youth, I don't 'spute that; but why should I now, a trim'lin' on the aidge of the tomb, almos', have to put up with that limb of a John Jay? If my poah Ellen knew what a tawment her boy is to her ole mammy, I know she couldn't rest easy in her grave."

"John Jay, he don't mean to be bad," remarked Uncle Billy soothingly. "It's jus' 'cause he's so young an' onthinkin'. An' aftah all, it ain't what he does. It's mo' like what the white folks say in they church up on the hill. 'I have lef' undone the things what I ought to 'uv done.'"

Doubled up out of sight, behind the bushes that lined the roadside ditch, John Jay held his breath and listened. When the ringing strokes of the axe began again, he ventured to poke out his woolly head until the whites of his eyes were visible. Sheba was trudging down the road with her basket on her head, to the place where she always washed on Tuesdays, she was far enough on her way now to make it safe for him to come out of hiding.

The tears had dried on the boy's long curling lashes, but his bare legs still smarted from the blows of the shingle, as he climbed slowly out of the bushes and started back to the cabin.

"Hey, Bud! Come on, Ivy!" he called cheerfully. Nobody answered. It was a part of the programme, whenever John Jay was punished, for the little brother and sister to run and hide under the back-door step. There they cowered, with covered heads, until the danger was over. Old Sheba had never frowned on the four-year-old Bud, or baby Ivy, but they scuttled out of sight like frightened mice at the first signal of her gathering wrath.

Ivy lay still with her thumb in her mouth, but Bud began solemnly crawling out from between the steps. Everything that Bud did seemed solemn. Even his smiles were slow-spreading and dignified. Some people called him Judge; but John Jay, wise in the negro lore of their neighborhood Uncle Remus, called him "Brer Tarrypin" for good reasons of his own.

"Wot we all gwine do now?" drawled Bud, with a turtle-like stretch of his little round head as he peered through the steps.

'Wot we all gwine do now?'

John Jay scanned the horizon on all sides, and thoughtfully rubbed his ear. His quick eyes saw unlimited possibilities for enjoyment, where older sight would have found but a dreary outlook; but older sight is always on a strain for the birds in the bush. It is never satisfied with the one in the hand. Older sight would have seen only a poor shanty set in a patch of weeds and briers, and a narrow path straggling down to the dust of the public road. But the outlook was satisfactory to John Jay. So was it to the neighbor's goat, standing motionless in the warm sunshine, with its eyes cast in the direction of a newly-made garden. So was it to the brood of little yellow goslings, waddling after their mother. They were out of their shells, and the world was wide.

Added to this same feeling of general contentment with his lot, John Jay had the peace that came from the certainty that, no matter what he might do, punishment could not possibly overtake him before nightfall. His grandmother was always late coming home on Tuesday.

"Wot we all gwine do now?" repeated Bud.

John Jay caught at the low branch of the apple-tree to which the clothes-line was tied, and drew himself slowly up. He did not reply until he had turned himself over the limb several times, and hung head downward by the knees.

"Go snake huntin', I reckon."