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Aunt Tildy dwelt in the not unusual log cabin, of one room, with its chimney of mud and stone, and its shallow gallery formed by the jutting of the roof. In close proximity to the cabin was a small cotton-field, which from a long distance looked like a field of snow. The cotton was bursting and overflowing foam-like from bolls on the drying stalk. On the lower branches it was hanging ragged and tattered, and much of it had already fallen to the ground. There were a few chinaberry-trees in the yard before the hut, and under one of them an ancient and rusty-looking mule was eating corn from a wood trough. Some common little Creole chickens were scratching about the mule’s feet and snatching at the grains of corn that occasionally fell from the trough.

Aunt Tildy was hobbling across the yard when Ozème drew up before the gate. One hand was confined in a sling; in the other she carried a tin pan, which she let fall noisily to the ground when she recognized him. She was broad, black, and misshapen, with her body lent forward almost at an acute angle. She wore a blue cottonade of large plaids, and a bandana awkwardly twisted around her head.

"Good God A’mighty, man!Whar you come from?" was her startled exclamation at beholding him.

"F’om home, Aunt Tildy; w’ere else do you expec’?" replied Ozème, dismounting composedly.

He had not seen the old woman for several years—since she was cooking in town for the family with which he boarded at the time. She had washed and ironed for him, atrociously, it is true, but her intentions were beyond reproach if her washing was not. She had also been clumsily attentive to him during a spell of illness. He had paid her with an occasional bandana, a calico dress, or a checked apron, and they had always considered the account between themselves square, with no sentimental feeling of gratitude remaining on either side.

"I like to know," remarked Ozème, as he took the gray mare from the shafts, and led her up to the trough where the mule was—"I like to know w’at you mean by makin’ a crop like that an’ then lettin’ it go to was’e? Who you reckon’s goin’ to pick that cotton? You think maybe the angels goin’ to come down an’ pick it to’ you, an’ gin it an’ press it, an’ then give you ten cents a poun’ fo’ it, hein?"

"Ef de Lord don’ pick it, I don’ know who gwine pick it, Mista Ozème. I tell you, me an’ Sandy we wuk dat crap day in an’ day out; it’s him done de mos’ of it. "

"Sandy?That little—"

"He ain’ dat li’le Sandy no ma’ w’at you rec’lec’s; he ‘mos’ a man, an’ he wuk like a man now. He wuk mo’ ‘an fittin’ to’ his strenk, an’ now he layin’ in dab sick—God A’mighty knows how sick. An’ me wid a risin’ twell I bleeged to walk de flo’ o’ nights. an’ don’ know ef I ain’ gwine to lose de han’ after all. "

"W’y, in the name o’ conscience, you don’ hire somebody to pick?"

"Whar I got money to hire?An’ you knows well as me ev’y chick an’ chile is pickin’ roun’ on de plantations an’ gittin’ good pay. "

The whole outlook appeared to Ozème very depressing, and even menacing, to his personal comfort and peace of mind. He foresaw no prospect of dinner unless he should cook it himself. And there was that Sandy—he remembered well the little scamp of eight, always at his grandmother’s heels when she was cooking or washing. Of course he would have to go in and look at the boy, and no doubt dive into his traveling-bag for quinine, without which he never traveled.

Sandy was indeed very ill, consumed with fever. He lay on a cot covered up with a faded patchwork quilt. His eyes were half closed, and he was muttering and rambling on about hoeing and bedding and cleaning and thinning out the cotton; he was hauling it to the gin, wrangling about weight and bagging and ties and the price offered per pound. That bale or two of cotton had not only sen
t Sandy to bed, but had pursued him there, holding him through his fevered dreams, and threatening to end him. Ozème would never have known the black boy, he was so tall, so thin, and seemingly so wasted, lying there in bed.