Merely a Matter of Grammar

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB

THERE were about thirty Negro convicts working on the road along Moccasin Bayou when I rode by that morning on my way to hunt squirrels in the woods behind Weeping Willow slough. They were short-termers sent up for little things like slapping a woman in the face with a lighted coal-oil lamp or running off with money that belonged to the lodge. Times were hard out in the free world, but here in the road camp a nigger was sure of three meals a day, the work was easy because there was more labor than you could shake a stick at, and the white folks did n’t bear down too hard as long as a man knew his place.

For that matter, even if a nigger had wanted to run away the guards would n’t have bothered to kill him. Jodie Eubanks and Son Boggs stood there with .30—30 rifles, and both of them could knock the ears off a rabbit at fifty yards as he hopped down a turnrow. Jodie and Son were hill boys from counties where they would n’t even let a nigger chauffeur driving a white man’s car pass through, but, although they were now down in the Delta where niggers were thicker ’n flies, they did n’t have shooting on their minds. There was n’t any sense in it. Suppose you did kill a convict? Well, the county would have to bury him at its own expense, the Board of Supervisors would call you up on the carpet and give you hell, and more than likely you ’d lose your job.

And the funny part of it is that prisoners in Dromgoole County did n’t try to run off. Why should they? If they were first-termers they had a good time meeting new people and having no worries on their minds. If they were old-timers, all they had to do was to pick up their shovels and start up where they had knocked off. Then, a lot of the convicts got on friendly terms with the women of near-by plantations, and on the Sunday visiting days the guards made out like they did n’t know what was going on in camp and everybody had a heap of fun. The whole neighborhood around the camp, as far south as Rolling Fork, twenty miles away, is chockablock with what the niggers call ‘yard chillun.’

So, all in all, the convicts have a pretty good time and I have to laugh whenever I think of the government man from Washington City who came to my house last summer to ask my advice about establishing what he called ‘recreation projects’ for niggers in the Delta.

Well, while I was sitting there on my horse watching the work, along came a highbrown girl. ‘Boys, watch me strike her ’tention,’ said Willie Washington. He was in for thirty days for throwing bricks at a woman at a church social because she would n’t do ugly for forty cents. When the girl got near him Willie started singing.

When Willie had finished singing he whispered something in the girl’s ear and she went on down the road laughing.

‘That nigger, Willie Washington, reminds me of some nigger I seen before,’ said Jodie Eubanks. ‘Now who could it a been?’

‘I’ll tell you,’ said Son Boggs. ‘You ain’t got the memory of a bedbug. You remember when we was guarding up in Bailer County for Old Man Skinner? They had a kinder slow-footed chicken thief in camp up there. Everybody said he was crazy. Well, don’t you recollect the time just after breakfast when we was fixing a bridge over Buzzard Bend creek and that crazy nigger lit out through the cornfields like he had firecrackers in his pants and we drilled him full of holes before you could say Jack Roberson? That’s who Willie reminds me of.’

Jodie looked at Son and laughed. ‘What you mean we drilled him full of holes? Boy, ain’t you had no schooling? Don’t you know no grammar? You mean you drilled him. You ain’t never been known to give nobody else a chance when it come to shooting, whether it was rabbits or niggers. That nigger was well ventilated before I could even get my gun up to my shoulder. You better go on back to school and get you some learning.’

Jodie and Son laughed fit to kill, and it was pretty funny the way they told it, though it may not look that way to you. But the sun was getting pretty hot, so I rode on off to Weeping Willow, where you can get the best squirrel shooting in the State of Mississippi if the mosquitoes don’t drive you crazy.