by Dave Mckay
I said, “Don’t do nothing of the kind; it’s one of the most donkeyest plans I ever heard.” But he never paid no listen to me; went right on. It was his way when he’d got his plans set.
So he told Jim how we’d have to get in the rope-ladder pie and other big things by Nat, the black man that brought the food in, and he must be on the watch, and not be surprised, and not let Nat see him open them; and we would put small things in uncle’s coat pockets and he must rob them out; and we would tie things to aunt’s apron strings or put them in her apron pocket, if we could; and told him what they would be and what they was for. And told him how to keep a diary on the shirt with his blood, and all that. He told him everything. Jim he couldn’t see no good in the most of it, but he said we was white people and knowed better than him; so he was happy, and said he would do it all just as Tom said.
Jim had a lot of tobacco; so we had a right down good friendly time smoking it; then we climbed out through the hole, and so home to bed, with hands that looked like they’d been chewed. Tom was in high spirits. He said it was the best fun he had ever had in his life, and the most smartest; and said if he only could see his way to it we would keep it up all of our lives and leave Jim for our children to get out; for he believed Jim would come to like it better and better the more he got used to it. He said that in that way it could be pulled out to as much as eighty years, and would be the longest time ever. And he said it would make us -- all that had a hand in it -- known around the world.
In the morning we went out to where the firewood was and cut up the candlestick into the right size pieces, and Tom put them and the spoon in his pocket. Then we went to the slave cabins, and while I got Nat looking off, Tom pushed a piece of candlestick into the middle of corn-bread that was in Jim’s pan, and we went along with Nat to see how it would work, and it just worked perfectly; when Jim took a bite of that bread it almost broke all his teeth out; and there weren’t ever anything could a worked better. Tom said so himself. Jim he never let on but what it was only just a piece of rock or something like that that’s always getting into bread, you know; but after that he never would take a bite of nothing but what he pushed his fork into it in three or four places first.
And while we was a-standing there in the poor light, here comes two dogs pushing in from under Jim’s bed; and more kept on coming in until there was eleven of them, and there weren’t hardly room in there to breathe. Good lord, we didn’t lock that lean-to door!
The black man -- Nat -- he only just shouted “Witches” once, and fell over onto the floor down with the dogs, and started to groan like he was dying. Tom pushed the door open and threw out a big piece of Jim’s meat, and the dogs went for it, and in two seconds he was out himself and back again and shut the door, and I knowed he’d fixed the other door too. Then he went to work on the servant, talking nice to him, and asking him if he’d been thinking he saw something again. He lifted himself up, and opened and closed his eyes around, and says: “Master Sid, you’ll say I’s crazy, but if I didn’t believe I seen almost a million dogs, or devils, or someone, I wish I would die right here where I stand. I did, most surely. Master Sid, I felt ‘em -- I felt ‘em, sir; dey was all over me. Dad blame it! I just wish I could get my hands on one of dem witches just once -- only just once -- it’s all I’d ask. But mostly I wish dey’d let me alone, I does.”
Tom says: “Well, I tell you what I think. What makes them come here just at this runaway slave’s breakfast time? Isn't it because they’re hungry; that’s the reason. You make them a witch pie; that’s the thing for you to do.”
“But my land, Master Sid, how’s I gwyne to make ‘em a witch pie? I don’t know how to make it. I ain’t ever heard of such a thing before.”
“Well, then, I’ll have to make it myself.”
“Will you do it, honey? -- Will you? I’ll worship de ground under your foot, I will!”
“All right, I’ll do it, seeing it’s you, and you’ve been good to us and showed us the runaway slave. But you got to be mighty careful. When we come around, you turn your back; and then whatever we’ve put in the pan, don’t you let on you seen it at all. And don’t you look when Jim takes out of the pan -- some- thing might happen, I don’t know what. And above all, don’t you handle the witch-things.”
Handle ‘em, Master Sid? What is you a-talking about? I wouldn’t lay de weight of my finger on ‘em, not for ten hundred thousand billion dollars, I wouldn’t.”
Chapter 37
So then we went to the backyard, where they throw old shoes, and cloth, and pieces of bottles, and broken tin things, and we scratched around and found an old tin wash-pan, and stopped up the holes as well as we could, to cook the pie in it, and took it down to the basement and robbed enough flour to fill it and started for breakfast.
We had found a few nails that Tom said would be good for a prisoner to scratch his name and sadness on the prison walls with, and dropped one of them in the pocket of Aunt Sally’s apron which was hanging on a chair, and t’other we put in Uncle Silas’s hat, which was on a cabinet, because we heard the children say their parents was going to the runaway slave’s house this morning. Then we went to breakfast, and Tom dropped the spoon in Uncle Silas’s coat pocket. Aunt Sally hadn’t come yet, so we had to wait a while.
When she come she was hot and red and angry, and couldn’t hardly wait for the blessing; and then she went to pouring out coffee with one hand and hitting the closest child’s head with a thimble on the other, and says: “I’ve hunted high and low, and I just don’t know what has become of your other shirt.”
My heart fell down with my lungs and intestines and things, and a hard piece of corn-bread started down my throat after it and met with a cough on the way, and flew across the table, and took one of the children in the eye and coiled him up like a fishing-worm. He let out a cry the size of an Indian war shout, and Tom he turned kind of blue. It all added up to a serious problem for about fifteen seconds. I would a sold out for half price if there was anyone wanting to buy. But after that we was all right again -- it was the surprise of it that knocked us so cold.
Uncle Silas he says: “It’s most strange, I can’t understand it. I know perfectly well I took it off, because -- “
“Because you ain’t got but one on. Just listen at the man! I know you took it off, and I know it by a better way than your foggy remembering, too, because it was on the clothes-line yesterday -- I seen it there myself. But it’s gone, that’s the long and the short of it, and you’ll just have to change to a red one until I can get time to make a new one. And it’ll be the third I’ve made in two years. It just keeps a body on the jump to keep you in shirts; and whatever you do with ‘em all is more than I can make out. A body’d think you would learn to take care of ‘em at your time of life.”
“I know it, Sally, and I do try all I can. But I shouldn’t have to take all the blame, because, you know, I don’t see them or have nothing to do with them apart from when they’re on me; and I don’t believe I’ve ever lost one of them off of me.”
“Well, you ain’t to blame for not losing one off of you, Silas; because I think you’d a done it if you could. And the shirt ain’t all that’s gone, either. There’s a spoon gone; there was ten, and now there’s only nine. The goat got the shirt, I think, but the goat never took the spoon, that’s for sure.”
“Why, what else is gone, Sally?”
“There’s six candles gone -- that’s what. The rats could a got the candles, and I think they did; I’m surprised they don’t walk off with the whole place, the way you’re always going to stop their holes and don’t do it. If they was smart they’d sleep in your hair, Silas -- you’d never find it out. But you can’t blame the spoon on the rats, and that I know.”
“Well, Sally, I’m in the wrong, and you have my confession; but I won’t let tomorrow go by without stopping up them holes.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t hurry; next year’ll do.
"Matilda Angelina Araminta Phelps!”
>
Bang! Down comes the thimble, and the child pulls her fingers out of the sugar-bowl without wasting any time doing it.
Just then the black woman steps inside, and says: “Mrs, dey’s a sheet gone.”
“A sheet gone? Well, for the good of the land!”
“I’ll stop up them holes today,” says Uncle Silas, lookng guilty.
“Oh, do shut up! -- Do you think the rats took the sheet? Where’s it gone, Lize?”
“Honest to God I don’t know at all, Miss Sally. She was on de clothes-line yesterday, but she done gone: she ain’t dere no more now.”
“I think the world is coming to an end. I never seen anything so crazy in all my born days. A shirt, and a sheet, and a spoon, and six can -- “
“Mrs,” says a young girl, “dey’s a candle-stick missing.”
“Clear out from here, you bad girl, or I’ll take a pan to you!” Well, she was just running over with anger. I started to look for an opening; my plan was to hide in the trees until the weather cleared. She kept a-shouting right along, running her war against everyone all by herself, with everyone else all shy and quiet; and at last Uncle Silas, looking kind of foolish, fishes up that spoon out of his pocket. She stopped, with her mouth open and her hands up; and as for me, I wished I was in Jerusalem or somewhere. But not long, because she says: “It’s just as I thought. So you had it in your pocket all the time; and like as not you’ve got the other things there, too. How’d it get there?”
“I really don’t know, Sally,” he says, kind of sorry like, “I was a-studying over the reading for Sunday in Acts Seventeen before breakfast, and I think I must a put it in there, not thinking, meaning to put my Bible in, and it must be so, because my Bible ain’t in there; but I’ll go and see; and if the Bible is where I had it, I’ll know I didn’t put it in, and that will show that I put the Bible down and took up the spoon, and -- “
“Oh, for the good of the land! Give a body a rest! Go along now, the whole lot of you; and don’t come near me again until I’ve got back my peace of mind.”
I’d a heard her if she’d a said it to herself, let alone saying it out loud; and I’d a got up and obeyed her if I’d a been dead. As we was passing through the sitting-room the old man he took up his hat, and the nail fell out on the floor, and he just took it up and put it on the shelf, and never said nothing, and went out.
Tom seen him do it, and remembered about the spoon, and says: “It ain’t no good to send things by him no more, he can’t be trusted.” Then he says: “But he done us a good turn with the spoon, anyway, without knowing it, and so we’ll go and do him one without him knowing it -- we’ll stop up his rat-holes.”
There was a good lot of them down in the basement, and it took us a whole hour, but we done the job tight and good. Then we heard someone on the steps, and blowed out our light; and here comes the old man, with a candle in one hand and a lot of things in t’other, looking as lost as year before last. He went a looking around, first to one rat-hole and then another, until he’d been to them all. Then he stood about five minutes, pulling little pieces of wet wax off his candle and thinking. Then he turns off slow and sleepily toward the steps, saying: “Well, for the life of me I can’t remember when I done it. I could show her now that I weren’t to blame for the rats. But never mind -- let it go. I don’t believe it would do any good anyway.”
And so he went on a-talking to himself up the steps, and then we left. He was a mighty nice old man. And always is.
Tom was pretty worried about what to do for a spoon. He said we had to have it; so he took a think. When he had something worked out he told me how we was to do it; then we went and waited around the spoon-basket until we see Aunt Sally coming, and then Tom went to counting the spoons and laying them out to one side, and I put one of them up my sleeve, and Tom says: “Why, Aunt Sally, there ain’t but nine spoons yet.”
She says: “Go along to your play, and don’t worry me. I know better, I counted ‘em myself.”
“Well, I’ve counted them two times now, Aunty, and I can’t make but nine.”
She looked anything but patient, but still she come to count -- anyone would.
“I can’t believe it; there ain’t but nine!” she says. “Why, what in the world -- devil take the things, I’ll count ‘em again.”
So I secretly put back the one I had, and when she got done counting, she says: “Hang the trouble, there’s ten now!” and she looked angry and worried both.
But Tom says: “Why, Aunty, I don’t think there’s ten.”
“You foolish boy, didn’t you see me count ‘em?”
“I know, but -- “
“Well, I’ll count ‘em again.”
So I secretly took one, and they come out nine, same as the other time. Well, she was in a crying way -- just a-shaking all over, she was so angry. But she counted and counted until she got that confused she’d start to count the basket for a spoon at times; and so, three times they come out right, and three times they come out wrong. Then she picked up the basket and threw it across the room and knocked the cat on its head; and she said to clear out and let her have some peace, and if we come around worrying her again between that and dinner she’d skin us. So we had the extra spoon, and dropped it in her apron pocket while she was a-giving us our talking to, and Jim got it okay, along with her nail, before noon. We was very happy with this business, and Tom said it was worth two times the trouble it took, because he said now she couldn’t ever count them spoons two times the same again to save her life; and she wouldn’t believe she’d counted them right if she did. He said that after she’d about counted her head off, for the next three days he judged she’d give it up and promise to kill anyone that wanted her to ever count them any more.
So we put the sheet back on the line that night, and robbed one out of the cabinet; and kept on putting it back and robbing it again for two days until she didn’t know how many sheets she had any more, and she didn’t care, and weren’t a-going to waste her life worrying about it, and wouldn’t count them again not to save her life; she would be happier to die first.
So we was all right now, as to the shirt and the sheet and the spoon and the candles, by the help of the goat and the rats and the mixed-up counting; and as to the candle-stick, it weren’t important; it would blow over by and by.
But that pie was a job; we had no end of trouble with it. We fixed it up away down in the trees, and cooked it there; and we got it done at last, and very well, too; but not all in one day; and we had to use up three wash-pans full of flour before we got through, and we got burned pretty much all over, in places, and eyes put out with the smoke. We didn’t want nothing but a pie covering for the rope ladder, and we couldn’t hold it up right, and it would always collapse in. But we thought of the right way at last -- which was to cook the ladder, too, in the pie. So then we stayed with Jim the second night, tearing up the sheet all in little strings and knitting them together, until, long before the sun come up, we had a very nice rope that you could a hanged a person with. We let on it took nine months to make.
And in the morning we took it down to the trees, but it wouldn’t go into the pie. Being made of a whole sheet, that way, there was rope enough for forty pies if we’d a wanted them, and enough left over for soup, or anything you choose. We could a had a whole dinner.
But we didn’t need it. All we needed was just enough for the pie, and so we throwed most of it away. We didn’t cook none of the pies in the wash-pan -- afraid the soft metal we used to stop the holes would melt; but Uncle Silas he had a beautiful warming-pan which he thought a lot of, because it belonged to one of his family a long time in the past. It had a long timber handle that come over from England in one of them early ships and was hiding away up in the roof with a lot of other old pans and things that was worth a lot, not because you could do anything with them, but just because they were so old. We snaked her out, secretly, and took her down there to the trees.
It didn’t work on the first
pies, because we didn’t know how, but she come up smiling on the last one. We took and covered her with pie mix, and set her in the coals, and then filled her up with sheet rope, and put on a roof of pie mix, and shut down the cover, and put hot coals on top, and stood off five foot, with the long handle, cool and comfortable, and in fifteen minutes she turned out a pie that was a good feeling just to look at. But the person that eat it -- if that rope ladder wouldn’t make him sick I don’t know nothing what I’m talking about; and give him enough stomach pains to last him until next time, too.
