Ole Mammy's Torment

Chapter 6

Although John Jay bore many a deep scar, both in mind and body, very little of his life had been given to sackcloth and ashes.

"Wish I could take trouble as easy as that boy," sighed Mammy. "It slides right off'n him like watah off a duck's back."

"He's like the rollin' stone that gethah's no moss," remarked Uncle Billy. "He goes rollickin' through the days, from sunup 'twel sundown, so fast that disappointment and sorrow get rubbed off befo' they kin strike root."

Despite all his troubles, if John Jay had been marking his good times with white stones, there would have been enough to build a wall all around the little cabin by the end of the summer. There were two days especially that he remembered with deepest satisfaction: one was the Saturday when Mars' Nat took him to the circus, and the other was the Fourth of July, when all the family went to the Oak Grove barbecue.

But now blackberry season had begun,--a season that he hated, because Mammy expected him to help her early and late in the patch. So many of the shining berries slipped down his throat, so many things called his attention away from the brambly bushes, that sometimes it took hours for him to fill his battered quart cup.

Usually his reward was a juicy pie, but this year Mammy changed her plan. Berries were in demand at Rosehaven, and she had very little time to spend in going after them.

"I'll give you five cents a gallon for all you'll pick," she said to John Jay. He looked at her in amazement. As he had never had any money in his life, this seemed a princely offer. He was standing outside by the stick chimney when she made the promise. After one sidelong glance, to see if she were in earnest, he threw his feet wildly into the air and walked off on his hands; then, after two or three somersaults backward, he stood up, panting.

"Where's the buckets at?" he demanded, "I'm goin' to pick every bush in this neck o' woods as clean as you'd pick a chicken."

Now it was Mammy's turn to be surprised. She had expected that her offer would lure him on for an hour or two, maybe for a whole day. She had not supposed that it would keep him faithfully at work for a week, but it did. His nimble fingers stripped every roadside vine within a mile of the cabin. His hands and legs, and even his face, were criss-crossed with many brier scratches. The sun beat down on him unmercifully, but he stuck to his task so closely that he seemed to see berries even when his eyes were shut. Every day great pailfuls of the shining black beads were sent over to Rosehaven, and every night he dropped a few more nickels into the stocking foot hidden under his pillow.

"Berries is all mighty nigh cleaned out," he said one noon, when he was about to start out again after dinner. "Uncle Billy says there's lots of 'em down in the gandah thicket, but I'se mos' afeered to go there."

"Nothin' won't tech you in daylight, honey," answered Mammy, encouragingly, "but I would n't go through there at night for love or money I'd as lief go into a lion's cage."

"Did you ever see any ghos'es down there Mammy?" asked John Jay with eager interest, yet cautiously lowering his voice and taking a step nearer.

"No," admitted Mammy, "but oldah people than I have seen 'em. All night long there's great white gandahs flappin' round through that thicket 'thout any heads on. You know they's an awful wicked man buried down there in the woods, an' the sperrits of them he's inju'ed ha'nts the thicket every night. There isn't anybody, that I know of, that 'ud go down there aftah dark for anything on this livin' yearth."

"Then who sees 'em?" asked John Jay, with a skeptical grin.

"Who sees 'em?" repeated Mammy wrathfully, angry because of the doubt implied by his question and his face. "Who sees 'em? They've been seen by generations of them as is dead and gone. Who is you, I'd like to know, standin' up there a-mockin' at me so impident and a-askin' 'Who sees 'em?'"

She turned to begin her dish washing, with a scornful air that seemed to say that he was beneath any further notice. Still, no sooner had she piled the dishes up in the pan than she turned to him again, with her hands on her hips.

"Go down and ask Uncle Mose," she said, still indignant. "He can tell you tales that'll send cole chills up an' down yo' spine. He saw an awful thing in there once with his own eyes. 'Twan't a gandah, but somethin' long an slim flyin' low in the bushes--he reckoned it was twenty feet long. It had a little thin head like a snake, an' yeahs that stuck up like rabbit's. It was all white, an' had fo' little short legs an' two little short wings, an' it was moah'n flesh an' blood could stand, he say, to see that long, slim, white thing runnin' an' a-flyin' at the same time through the bushes, low down neah the groun'. You jus' go ask him."

John Jay swung his buckets irresolutely. "I don't believe I'll go down there aftah berries," he said. "I don't know what to do. They isn't any moah anywhere else."

Mammy wished that she had not gone to such pains to convince him. "Nothin' evah comes around in the daytime," she insisted, "an' I reckon berries is mighty plentiful, too," she added, persuasively. "Nobody evah saw anything down there in the daylight, honey. I'd go if I was you."

John Jay stood on one foot. He was afraid of the headless ganders, but he did want those berries. He walked out through the door, hesitated, and stood on one foot again. Then he went slowly down the hill. Mammy, standing in the door with her apron flung over her head, watched him climb up on the fence and sit there to consider. Finally, he dropped down to the other side, and started in the direction of the gander thicket.

It was a place that the n*****s had been afraid of since her earliest recollection. It was only a little stretch of woodland, where the neglected underbrush had grown into a tangled thicket. No one remembered now what had given rise to the name, and no one living had ever seen the ghostly white ganders that were said to haunt the place at night. Still, the story was handed down from one to another, and the place was shunned as much as possible.

Brier Crook church stood at one end, with its desolate little graveyard, where the colored people buried their dead under its weeping willows and gloomy cedars.

John Jay avoided the lonely road that led in that direction, and took the one that wound around the other end of the thicket, past a deserted mill. Yet, when he reached the ruined old building, with its staring windows and sunken roof, he was half sorry that he had not gone the other way.

The berries were on the far side of the thicket, and he was obliged to pass either the graveyard or the old mill to reach them. The possibility of plunging boldly into the thicket and pushing his way through to the other side had never occurred to him, although it is doubtful if he would have dared to do so even had he thought of it. He ran down the dry bed of the stream, and past the silent moss-grown wheel, breathing a sigh of relief when he came out into an open field beyond.

Balancing himself on the top rail of the fence, he looked cautiously along the edge of the thicket. It did not look so dismal in there, after all. A woodpecker's cheerful tapping sounded somewhere within. Butterflies flitted fearlessly down into its shady ravines. A squirrel ran out on a limb, and sat chattering at him saucily. Then a big gray rabbit rustled through the leaves, and went loping away into the depths of the thicket.

"I don't believe there's anything skeery in there at all!" exclaimed John Jay aloud. After starting several times, and stopping to look all around and listen, he followed the rabbit into the bushes. Plunging down a narrow cow-path which wound in and out, he came to an open space where a few trees had fallen. Here, with an exclamation of delight, he pounced upon the finest, largest berries he had ever seen. They dropped into the tin pail with a noisy thud at first, and then with scarcely a sound, as they rapidly piled higher and higher.

Both pails were filled in a much shorter time than usual, and then he sat down on a wide log to enjoy the lunch he had brought with him. There were two big slices of bread and jam in one pocket, and a big apple in the other. As he sat there, slowly munching, he began to feel drowsy. He had awakened early that morning, and had worked hard in the hot sun. He stretched himself out full length on the log, to rest his back while he finished eating his apple.

The branches overhead swayed gently back and forth. His eyes followed them as they kept up that slow, monotonous motion against the bright sky. He had no intention of closing them; in fact, he did not know they were closed, for in that same moment he was sound asleep.

The woodpecker went on tapping; the squirrel whisked back and forth along the limb; the same gray rabbit came out and hopped along beside the log where he lay. Suddenly, it raised itself up to look at the strange sight, and then bounded away again. The sun dropped lower and lower. In the open fields there was still light, but the thicket was gray with the subdued shadows of the gloaming.

John Jay might have slept on all night had not a leaf fluttered slowly down from the tree above, and brushed across his face. He opened his eyes, looking all around him in a bewildered way. Then he sat up, and peered through the bushes. A cold perspiration covered him when he realized that it was dusk and that he was in the middle of the gander thicket. He snatched up the blackberries, a pail in each hand, and stood looking helplessly around him, for he could not decide which way to go. In front of him stretched half a mile of the haunted thicket. It was either to push his way through that as quickly as possible, or to go back by the long, lonesome road over which he had come.

Just then a harmless flock of geese belonging to an old market-gardener who lived near came waddling up from the creek, on the way home to their barn-yard. They moved along in a silent procession, pushing their long, thin necks through the underbrush. John Jay was too terrified to see that their heads were properly in place, and that they were as harmless as the flock that fed in Aunt Susan's dooryard.

"They'll get me! They'll get me!" he whimpered, as they came nearer and nearer, for his feet seemed so heavy that he could not lift them when he tried to run. Made desperate by his fear, he raised first one pail of berries and then the other, hurling them at the startled geese with all the force his wiry little arms could muster.

Instantly their long white wings shot up through the bushes. There was an angry fluttering and hissing, as half running, half flying, they waddled faster towards home. John Jay did not look to see what direction they were taking. He was sure they were after him. He could hear their long wings flapping just behind him; at least, he thought he could, but the noise he heard was the snapping of the twigs he trampled in his headlong flight. No greyhound ever bounded through a wood with lighter feet than those which carried him. His eyes were wide with fright. His heart beat so hard in his throat he thought he would surely die before he could reach the cabin. At every step the light seemed to be growing dimmer and the thicket denser, although he thought he certainly must have been running long enough to have reached the clearing. Still he ran on, and on, and on. The recollection of one of Mammy's stories flashed across his mind.

Once a man had lost his way in this wood, and the ganders had chased him around and around until daylight. The thought made him so weak in the knees that he was ready to drop from fright and exhaustion. Then he recalled a superstition that he had often heard, that anyone who has lost his way may find it again by turning his pocket wrong side out. He was twitching at his with trembling hands, looking with eyes too frightened to see, and fumbling with fingers too stiff with fear to feel, but the pocket seemed to have disappeared. "It's conju'ed too," he wailed, as he ran heedlessly on.

Something long and white slapped across his face. An unearthly, wavering voice sounded a hoarse, long-drawn "Moo-oo-oo!" just in front of him. He sank down in a helpless little heap, blubbering and groaning aloud, with his teeth chattering, and the tears running down his clammy face. There was a louder crackling, and out of the bushes walked an old spotted cow, calmly switching her white tail and looking at John Jay in gentle-eyed wonder.

Strength came back to the boy with that familiar sight, but not being sure that the cow was not as ghostly as the ganders, he scrambled to his feet and started to run again. To avoid passing the cow, he turned in another direction. This time, it happened to be the right one, and in a few moments more he had dashed into the open. Then he saw that it was not yet dark in the fields.

Mammy heard the sound of rapid running up the path, and came to the door. John Jay dropped at her feet, trembling and cold, and so frightened that he could only cling to her skirts, sobbing piteously. When, at last, he found his breath, all he could gasp was, "Oh, Mammy! the gandahs are aftah me! the gandahs are aftah me!"

Big boy as he was, Mammy stooped and lifted him in her arms, and holding him close, with his head on her shoulder, rocked back and forth in the big wooden chair until he grew calmer. Not until he had sobbed out the whole story, and wiped his eyes several times on her apron, did he see that there was company in the room.

George Chadwick was sitting by the door. It was the first time he had been in the cabin since his return from college. He had ridden up from the toll-gate on a passing wagon to see his old friend, Sheba, and had been there the greater part of the afternoon, listening to her tales of his mother in the old slavery days. He had not intended to accept her urgent invitation to stay to supper, but when he saw that she shared John Jay's fright, he decided to remain. Had it not been for his protecting presence in the house, Mammy was so affected by the boy's story that she would have barred every opening. Then, cowering around one little flickering candle, they would have fed each other's superstitious fears until bedtime. George knew this, and so he stayed to reassure them by his matter-of-fact explanations, and his cheerful common sense. While he could not convince them that they had been needlessly alarmed, he drew their attention to other things, by stories of college life and experiences at the North, while Sheba bustled about, bringing out the best of her meagre store to do him honor.

Ivy, scrubbed until she shone, and in a stiffly starched apron, sat on his knee and sucked her thumb. Bud squatted at his feet in silence, sticking his little red tongue in and out of the hole where the lost tooth had been. As for John Jay, his hero-worship passed that night into warmest love. From that time on, he would have gone through fire and water to serve his "Rev'und Gawge,"--anywhere in fact, save one place. Never any more was there motive deep enough or power strong enough to drag him within calling distance of the gander thicket.