The Conjure Woman, Charles W. Chesnutt [reading women txt] 📗

of the colic. I replaced him with a mule, and Julius henceforth had to take his chances of driving some metamorphosed unfortunate.

Circumstances that afterwards came to my knowledge created in my mind a strong suspicion that Julius may have played a more than unconscious part in this transaction. Among other significant facts was his appearance, the Sunday following the purchase of the horse, in a new suit of store clothes, which I had seen displayed in the window of Mr. Solomon Cohen’s store on my last visit to town, and had remarked on account of their striking originality of cut and pattern. As I had not recently paid Julius any money, and as he had no property to mortgage, I was driven to conjecture to account for his possession of the means to buy the clothes. Of course I would not charge him with duplicity unless I could prove it, at least to a moral certainty, but for a long time afterwards I took his advice only in small doses and with great discrimination.

Sis’ Becky’s Pickaninny

We had not lived in North Carolina very long before I was able to note a marked improvement in my wife’s health. The ozone-laden air of the surrounding piney woods, the mild and equable climate, the peaceful leisure of country life, had brought about in hopeful measure the cure we had anticipated. Toward the end of our second year, however, her ailment took an unexpected turn for the worse. She became the victim of a settled melancholy, attended with vague forebodings of impending misfortune.

“You must keep up her spirits,” said our physician, the best in the neighboring town. “This melancholy lowers her tone too much, tends to lessen her strength, and, if it continue too long, may be fraught with grave consequences.”

I tried various expedients to cheer her up. I read novels to her. I had the hands on the place come up in the evening and serenade her with plantation songs. Friends came in sometimes and talked, and frequent letters from the North kept her in touch with her former home. But nothing seemed to rouse her from the depression into which she had fallen.

One pleasant afternoon in spring, I placed an armchair in a shaded portion of the front piazza, and filling it with pillows led my wife out of the house and seated her where she would have the pleasantest view of a somewhat monotonous scenery. She was scarcely placed when old Julius came through the yard, and, taking off his tattered straw hat, inquired, somewhat anxiously:⁠—

“How is you feelin’ dis atternoon, ma’m?”

“She is not very cheerful, Julius,” I said. My wife was apparently without energy enough to speak for herself.

The old man did not seem inclined to go away, so I asked him to sit down. I had noticed, as he came up, that he held some small object in his hand. When he had taken his seat on the top step, he kept fingering this object⁠—what it was I could not quite make out.

“What is that you have there, Julius?” I asked, with mild curiosity.

“Dis is my rabbit foot, suh.”

This was at a time before this curious superstition had attained its present jocular popularity among white people, and while I had heard of it before, it had not yet outgrown the charm of novelty.

“What do you do with it?”

“I kyars it wid me fer luck, suh.”

“Julius,” I observed, half to him and half to my wife, “your people will never rise in the world until they throw off these childish superstitions and learn to live by the light of reason and common sense. How absurd to imagine that the forefoot of a poor dead rabbit, with which he timorously felt his way along through a life surrounded by snares and pitfalls, beset by enemies on every hand, can promote happiness or success, or ward off failure or misfortune!”

“It is ridiculous,” assented my wife, with faint interest.

“Dat’s w’at I tells dese niggers roun’ heah,” said Julius. “De fo’-foot ain’ got no power. It has ter be de hin’-foot, suh⁠—de lef’ hin’-foot er a grabe-ya’d rabbit, killt by a cross-eyed nigger on a da’k night in de full er de moon.”

“They must be very rare and valuable,” I said.

“Dey is kinder ska’ce, suh, en dey ain’ no ’mount er money could buy mine, suh. I mought len’ it ter anybody I sot sto’ by, but I wouldn’ sell it, no indeed, suh, I wouldn’.”

“How do you know it brings good luck?” I asked.

“ ’Ca’se I ain’ had no bad luck sence I had it, suh, en I’s had dis rabbit foot fer fo’ty yeahs. I had a good marster befo’ de wah, en I wa’n’t sol’ erway, en I wuz sot free; en dat ’uz all good luck.”

“But that doesn’t prove anything,” I rejoined. “Many other people have gone through a similar experience, and probably more than one of them had no rabbit’s foot.”

“Law, suh! you doan hafter prove ’bout de rabbit foot! Eve’ybody knows dat; leas’ways eve’ybody roun’ heah knows it. But ef it has ter be prove’ ter folks w’at wa’n’t bawn en raise’ in dis naberhood, dey is a’ easy way ter prove it. Is I eber tol’ you de tale er Sis’ Becky en her pickaninny?”

“No,” I said, “let us hear it.” I thought perhaps the story might interest my wife as much or more than the novel I had meant to read from.

“Dis yer Becky,” Julius began, “useter b’long ter ole Kunnel Pen’leton, who owned a plantation down on de Wim’l’ton Road, ’bout ten miles fum heah, des befo’ you gits ter Black Swamp. Dis yer Becky wuz a fiel’-han’, en a monst’us good ’un. She had a husban’ oncet, a nigger w’at b’longed on de nex’ plantation, but de man w’at owned her husban’ died, en his lan’ en his niggers had ter be sol’ fer ter pay his debts. Kunnel Pen’leton ’lowed he’d ’a’ bought dis nigger, but he had be’n bettin’