"What"s the matter?" he asked tenderly.
"Nothing, Boy, I"m just dreaming of you!"
The first day of the fall in his sixth year he asked his mother to let him go to the next corn-shucking.
"You"re too little a boy."
"I can shuck corn," he stoutly argued.
"You"ll be good, if I let you go?" she asked.
"What"s to hurt me there?"
"Nothing, unless you let it. The men drink whiskey, the girls dance.
Sometimes there"s a quarrel or fight."
"It won"t hurt me ef I "tend to my own business, will it?"
"Nothing will ever hurt you, if you"ll just do that, Boy," the father broke in.
"May I go?"
"Yes, we"re invited next week to a quilting and corn-shucking. I"ll go with you."
The Boy shouted for joy and counted the days until the wonderful event.
They left home at two o"clock in the wagon. The quilting began at three, the corn-shucking at sundown.
The house was a marvellous structure to the Boy"s excited imagination.
It was the first home he had ever seen not built of logs.
"Why, Ma," he cried in open-eyed wonder, "there ain"t no logs in the house! How did they ever put it together?"
"With bricks and mortar."
The Boy couldn"t keep his eyes off this building. It was a simple, one-story square structure of four rooms and an attic, with little dormer windows peeping from the four sides of the pointed roof.
McDonald, the thrifty Scotch-Irishman, from the old world, had built it of bricks he had ground and burnt on his own place.
The dormer windows peeping from the roof caught the Boy"s fancy.
"Do you reckon his boys sleep up there and peep out of them holes?"
The mother smiled.
"Maybe so."
"Why don"t we build a house like that?" he asked at last. "Don"t you want it?"
The mother squeezed his little hand:
"When you"re a man will you build your mother one?"
He looked into her eyes a moment, caught the pensive longing and answered:
"Yes. I will."
She stooped and kissed the firm mouth and was about to lead him into the large work-room where the women were gathering around the quilts stretched on their frames, when a negro slave suddenly appeared to take her horse to the stable. He was fat, jolly and coal black. His yellow teeth gleamed in their blue gums with a jovial welcome.
The Boy stood rooted to the spot and watched until the negro disappeared. It was the first black man he had ever seen. He had heard of negroes and that they were slaves. But he had no idea that one human being could be so different from another.
In breathless awe he asked:
"Is he folks?"
"Of course, Boy," his mother answered, smiling.
"What made him so black?"
"The sun in Africa."
"What made his nose so flat and his lips so thick?"
"He was born that way."
"What made him come here?"
"He didn"t. The slave traders put him in chains and brought him across the sea and sold him into slavery."
The little body suddenly stiffened:
"Why didn"t he kill "em?"
"He didn"t know how to defend himself."
"Why don"t he run away?"
"He hasn"t sense enough, I reckon. He"s got a home, plenty to eat and plenty to wear, and he"s afraid he"ll be caught and whipped."
The mother had to pull the Boy with her into the quilting room. His eyes followed the negro to the stable with a strange fascination. The thing that puzzled him beyond all comprehension was why a big strong man like that, if he were a man, would submit. Why didn"t he fight and die? A curious feeling of contempt filled his mind. This black thing that looked like a man, walked like a man and talked like a man couldn"t be one! No real man would grin and laugh and be a slave. The black fool seemed to be happy. He had not only grinned and laughed, but he went away whistling and singing.
In three hours the quilts were finished and the men had gathered for the corn-shucking.
Before eight o"clock the last ear was shucked, and a long white pile of clean husked corn lay glistening in the moonlight where the dark pyramid had stood at sunset.
With a shout the men rose, stretched their legs and washed their hands in the troughs filled with water, provided for the occasion. They sat down to supper at four long tables placed in the kitchen and work room, where the quilts had been stretched.
Never had the Boy seen such a feast--barbecued shoat, turkeys, ducks, chickens, venison, bear meat, sweet potatoes, wild honey, corn dodgers, wheat biscuit, stickies and pound cake--pound cake until you couldn"t eat another mouthful and still they brought more!