Mountain Part 30

"Ah ain't got no time to waste on no funerals, Miss' Mary, 'less dey's closer'n Coalstock."

Jim, the second boy, joined Ed in work upon the mountain; Will and Babe continued at school, although Stella grumbled about a sixteen-year-old negro bothering with books, when a job was handy.

Diana arrived home the last of May. The whole family surrounded her admiringly, as she hung the framed diploma on the sitting-room wall.

"Hit's beautiful," Stella said simply, as the daughter pointed out the school buildings in the half-tone oval in the center.

There was no opening, however, for a negro milliner in Adamsville. Tired with the futile search for work prepared for by her education, she replaced Stella in the Judson kitchen, to allow the elder woman the greater freedom which "was.h.i.+n'" permitted. With the coming of the clearing gangs, Will joined his two brothers at the work, leaving only fourteen-year-old Babe at school. Even he longed for the jingle of pay-day wealth in his overalls. One day he announced at home that Mr.

Hewin had taken him on as a helper. "Three dollars a week, maw. What good is school, anyway?"

Then began a new period in the life of the Cole boys. The mountain had taken them to its red bosom; the lesson of isolated self-reliance which it had taught to Pelham Judson came in parallel form to them. They were a gang, four strong, which could cope with any equal number of Lilydale negroes, or Scratch Ankle or Buzzard Roost rock-throwers. If a larger number got after them, there was the mountain they could retreat to; its rocky reinforcement and refuge furnished safety.

Stella scolded them sharply on the night when they had fought the Harlan Avenue white boys. "Let them Lilydale n.i.g.g.e.rs fool wid white trash, ef dey wants to. De Judsons is quality, don't you fergit; you let dat white trash be. Fight wid you' own kind. Ef a white man gin you any trouble, you let Marster Judson fix 'im."

The lesson sank in. They were quality negroes, lords of the mountain domain. Stocky Jim was the champion rough-and-tumble fighter of the Zion Church. "Ah kin lick any three Neboes wid mah toes an' teeth," he would boast in religious sn.o.bbery. Tom had had one of Mr. Judson's shotguns, to warn off marauders; the care of this descended to Ed, as the oldest, and the boys took turns in potting rabbits, flickers, and an occasional partridge, with sh.e.l.ls borrowed from the big house. First choice of the game went to the Judson table; but there was enough left to fill out the scanty Cole menu of corn-pone, sow-belly, mola.s.ses, and a seasonal mess of greens.

The boys practiced hurling outcrop boulders at the big-trunked oaks until they could skin the bark four times out of five at fifty feet. The outdoor life, the clearing work, the continual "toting" of water from the icy spring in balanced buckets, toughened them into exuberant manhood. They did not marry, although Stella constantly scolded the older pair for "hangin' 'roun' dem Avenoo C skirts"; and their wider rambles added gra.s.s-ripened watermelons and plump chickens to the fare.

Diana, alone of the family, found life on the mountain bleakly unhappy.

She possessed a frightened, dusky beauty. Adolescence had changed her from a gawky immaturity to a lush roundness, large-lipped and full-figured, and yet with the well moulded face and the soft brown texture of skin that are occasionally found in a mixture of blood. From some Aryan ancestor she had inherited features the reverse of negroid; and she revealed nothing of the unpleasant pertness often developed in the twilight realm where black and white intermingle.

The liberating touch of education had been just potent enough to dissatisfy her with the old, and too weak to furnish a self-sufficient subst.i.tute. The world of books she had begun to explore at Tuskegee; there was no one in the family group who could go with her in the talk or the dreamings that this led to. The haphazard home life, the thick enunciation, worse at meal times, these were the things she had begun to get away from; she could not reconcile herself to the old slough of "n.i.g.g.e.r" life.

The church gave her some outlet. She joined the various Ladies' Aids, took over an advanced Sunday School cla.s.s, wheedled different ones of her night-restless brothers to escort her to the Zion sociables, the chitterling suppers, the frequent revivals. But here an obstacle lay in the women of the congregation. No newfangled notions for them, thank you. They considered her careful accent, her ideas borrowed from more progressive members of her race, an affront to Lilydale's time-hallowed way of doing things; she was shouldered into the background. The few educated negro men, Wyatt the druggist, Tom Strickland, who owned the five-story building in the city, the young lawyer who lived in Lilydale, were married, or were disagreeable. They found in her only a desire for expanding culture, not its achievement; they did not seek her out.

The isolation frequently overcame her. Nauseated by the glut of the slipshod home living, she would pull open one of her text books ...

often to sit and cry, unable to read a line.

"You're gettin' peaked, Diany," Stella worried. "Huc-come you ain't so pert as when you come back?... You got a good job."

"I'm all right, mother."

One night she overheard the older boys fussing at Babe. "You too little, kid. Ef a cop started chasin' you, yo' short legs wouldn't do no good."

"Ah kin run faster 'n you, Ed. An' 'Banjo' said Ah could come along," he whined. "Maw, tell Ed 'n' Will 'n' Jim not to leave me behin'."

"Where are you boys going?" asked Diana.

Ed fidgeted sourly. "Aw, nowhar."

"Ah'll tell you," said Will boastingly. "Goin' to de Union Depot, to see what we kin pick up."

"Mother, will you let yo' boys rob cars?"

"Shut up, won't you?" Ed injected savagely.

Stella looked helpless. "You boys'll be careful, won't you? Yo' pappy got caught.... Babe's too little."

"You know that that 'Banjo' Strickland is a regular criminal, ma--even his brother Tom says so."

Stella closed her mouth. "Dey kin look after dey-selves, Ah reckon.

Dey's growed up."

To belong to a family of day-laborers and common thieves! In pa.s.sionate rebellion she told herself that it was more than she could bear.

For several days she studied the poison labels in the Judson medicine chest. If she only knew which would be painless....

She picked her dark way, a few nights later, over the rough planking across the nearest ramp--the excavating had begun, which meant better pay for the boys, and a mountain full of white and negro workers. The chill breathing of the Autumn wind drove her limp calico skirts swirling around her body. As she entered the darker tree-shadows beyond, she stopped suddenly, a chiller fear shaking her. A dark figure stood squarely in front, a figure that made no motion of stepping out of her way.

"Where you goin', n.i.g.g.e.r?"

He was one of the men she had seen working, a slouching young fellow--a white man.

"Home," she said, in a roughened voice.

She endeavored to brush past on the lower side of the pathway; the sheer cut of the hill obstructed the upper.

He put out a friendly hand, catching her arm in rude a.s.sertiveness. "Not so fast. You're the Cole gal, ain't you?"

"I'm Diana Cole. I'm going home."

Her tone trailed off weakly, as he stepped closer. She could see his face now, uncertain eyes squinting directly at her.

"Hey, good-looker," he dropped to an ingratiating whisper, with a leer to increase the effectiveness of his words. "What you say--wanter show me a bit of good time? What you say?"

She tried to shake herself free. "Let me go! Don't dare touch me----"

"Don't say dare," Jim Hewin said warmly, his left hand sliding appraisingly up the bared softness of her right arm. "Plump, eh? Nice piece of dark meat. I like you; I'll treat you right."

A gust of sudden fright, the blind fright of the female when her well-ordered maiden state is first threatened, shook over her; her arm lashed out impotently.

He stepped aside to avoid the blow.

"If you touch me ... I'll kill you...." Her words were gasps.

He held her arms again, pus.h.i.+ng them behind her until her face was close before his. "You black devil! I've a mind to----"

Then he pulled her closer, fastening his dry lips against her protesting mouth. For a hushed second she took the unexpected caress quiescently; then fought, kicked, scratched, to get away. He held her firmly, shaking her until she ceased. Then he let her go.

She ran a few frightened steps, then turned in the dusky safety, facing him. Her mind held only an outraged hate; her feelings quivered and rioted in disquieting turmoil.

He smacked his lips broadly.

"You--you white trash----"

He faced her coldly. "When I want you,"--whistling, as though calling a dog, he turned up toward the crest--"you'll come...."

Her heart panting in wrenching excitement, she listened to his retreating steps. She stared, helplessly rooted in the accusing silence.