Short Fiction, Kate Chopin [sci fi books to read txt] 📗

In the morning Sandy’s fever was somewhat abated, but had not taken a decided enough turn to justify Ozème in quitting him before noon, unless he was willing “to feel like a dog,” as he told himself. He appeared before Aunt Tildy stripped to the undershirt, and wearing his second-best pair of trousers.

“That’s a nice pickle o’ fish you got me in, ol’ woman. I guarantee, nex’ time I go abroad, ’tain’t me that’ll take any cutoff. W’ere’s that cotton-basket an’ cotton-sack o’ yo’s?”

“I knowed it!” chanted Aunt Tildy⁠—“I knowed de Lord war gwine sen’ somebody to holp me out. He war n’ gwine let de crap was’e atter he give Sandy an’ me de strenk to make hit. De Lord gwine shove you ’long de row, Mista Ozème. De Lord gwine give you plenty mo’ fingers an’ han’s to pick dat cotton nimble an’ clean.”

“Neva you min’ w’at the Lord’s goin’ to do; go get me that cotton-sack. An’ you put that poultice like I tol’ you on yo’ han’, an’ set down there an’ watch Sandy. It looks like you are ’bout as helpless as a’ ol’ cow tangled up in a potato-vine.”

Ozème had not picked cotton for many years, and he took to it a little awkwardly at first; but by the time he had reached the end of the first row the old dexterity of youth had come back to his hands, which flew rapidly back and forth with the motion of a weaver’s shuttle; and his ten fingers became really nimble in clutching the cotton from its dry shell. By noon he had gathered about fifty pounds. Sandy was not then quite so well as he had promised to be, and Ozème concluded to stay that day and one more night. If the boy were no better in the morning, he would go off in search of a doctor for him, and he himself would continue on down to Tante Sophie’s; the Beltrans’ was out of the question now.

Sandy hardly needed a doctor in the morning. Ozème’s doctoring was beginning to tell favorably; but he would have considered it criminal indifference and negligence to go away and leave the boy to Aunt Tildy’s awkward ministrations just at the critical moment when there was a turn for the better; so he stayed that day out, and picked his hundred and fifty pounds.

On the third day it looked like rain, and a heavy rain just then would mean a heavy loss to Aunt Tildy and Sandy, and Ozème again went to the field, this time urging Aunt Tildy with him to do what she might with her one good hand.

“Aunt Tildy,” called out Ozème to the bent old woman moving ahead of him between the white rows of cotton, “if the Lord gets me safe out o’ this ditch, ’t ain’t tomorro’ I’ll fall in anotha with my eyes open, I bet you.”

“Keep along, Mista Ozème; don’ grumble, don’ stumble; de Lord’s a-watchin’ you. Look at yo’ Aunt Tildy; she doin’ mo’ wid her one han’ ’an you doin’ wid yo’ two, man. Keep right along, honey. Watch dat cotton how it fallin’ in yo’ Aunt Tildy’s bag.”

“I am watchin’ you, ol’ woman; you don’ fool me. You got to work that han’ o’ yo’s spryer than you doin’, or I’ll take the rawhide. You done fo’got w’at the rawhide tas’e like, I reckon”⁠—a reminder which amused Aunt Tildy so powerfully that her big negro-laugh resounded over the whole cotton-patch, and even caused Sandy, who heard it, to turn in his bed.

The weather was still threatening on the succeeding day, and a sort of dogged determination or characteristic desire to see his undertakings carried to a satisfactory completion urged Ozème to continue his efforts to drag Aunt Tildy out of the mire into which circumstances seemed to have thrust her.

One night the rain did come, and began to beat softly on the roof of the old cabin. Sandy opened his eyes, which were no longer brilliant with the fever flame. “Granny,” he whispered, “de rain! Des listen, granny; de rain a-comin’, an’ I ain’ pick dat cotton yit. W’at time is it? Gi’ me my pants⁠—I got to go⁠—”

“You lay whar you is, chile alive. Dat cotton put aside clean and dry. Me an’ de Lord an’ Mista Ozème done pick dat cotton.”

Ozème drove away in the morning looking quite as spick and span as the day he left home in his blue suit and his light felt drawn a little over his eyes.

“You want to take care o’ that boy,” he instructed Aunt Tildy at parting, “an’ get ’im on his feet. An’, let me tell you, the nex’ time I start out to broad, if you see me passin’ in this yere cutoff, put on yo’ specs an’ look at me good, because it won’t be me; it’ll be my ghos’, ol’ woman.”

Indeed, Ozème, for some reason or other, felt quite shamefaced as he drove back to the plantation. When he emerged from the lane which he had entered the week before, and turned into the river road, Lamerie, standing in the store door, shouted out:

“Hé, Ozème! you had good times yonda? I bet you danced holes in the sole of them new boots.”

“Don’t talk, Lamérie!” was Ozème’s rather ambiguous reply, as he flourished the remainder of a whip over the old gray mare’s swayback, urging her to a gentle trot.

When he reached home, Bodé, one of Padue’s boys, who was assisting him to unhitch, remarked:

“How come you didn’ go yonda down de coas’ like you said, Mista Ozème? Nobody didn’ see you in Cloutierville, an’ Mailitte say you neva cross’ de twenty-fo’-mile ferry, an’ nobody didn’ see you no place.”

Ozème returned, after his customary moment of reflection:

“You see, it’s ’mos’ always the same thing on Cane riva, my boy; a man gets tired o’ that à la fin. This time I went back in the woods, ’way yonda in the Fédeau