"She cooks for us," explained young Arkwright, "and Mammy wants her to
come and git supper, too."
The phrase "get supper, too," referred to the custom in the white homes
of Hooker's Bend of having only two meals cooked a day, breakfast and
the twelve-o'clock dinner, with a hot supper optional with the mistress.
Peter nodded, and passed on up the path, leaving young Arkwright seated
on the ledge of rock, a prey to all the boiling, erratic impulses of
adolescence. The negro sensed some of the innumerable difficulties of
this white boy's life, and once, as he walked on over the silent
needles, he felt an impulse to turn back and talk to young Sam
Arkwright, to sit down and try to explain to the youth what he could of
this hazardous adventure called Life. But then, he reflected, very
likely the boy would be offended at a serious talk from a negro. Also,
he thought that young Arkwright, being white, was really not within the
sphere of his ministry. He, Peter Siner, was a worker in the black world
of the South. He was part of the black world which the white South was
so meticulous to hide away, to keep out of sight and out of thought.
A certain vague sense of triumph trickled through some obscure corner of
Peter's mind. It was so subtle that Peter himself would have been the
first, in all good faith, to deny it and to affirm that all his motives
were altruistic. Once he looked back through the cedars. He could still
see the boy hunched over, chin in fist, staring at the mat of needles.
As Peter turned the brow of the Big Hill, he saw at its eastern foot the
village church, a plain brick building with a decaying spire. Its side
was perforated by four tall arched windows. Each was a memorial window
of stained glass, which gave the building a black look from the outside.
As Peter walked down the hill toward the church he heard the and
somewhat nasal singing of uncultivated voices mingled with the snoring
of a reed organ.
When he reached Main Street, Peter found the whole business portion
virtually deserted. All the stores were closed, and in every show-window
stood a printed notice that no business would be transacted between the
hours of two and three o'clock in the afternoon during the two weeks of
revival then in progress. Beside this notice stood another card, giving
the minister's text for the current day. On this particular day it read:
GO YE INTO ALL THE WORLD
Come hear Rev. E.B. Blackwater's great
Missionary Address on
CHRISTIANIZING AFRICA
ELOQUENT, PROFOUND, HEART-SEARCHING.
ILLUSTRATED WITH SLIDES.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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