Further E. K. Means: Is This a Title? It Is Not. It Is the Name of a Writer of Negro Stories, Who Has Made Himself So Completely the Writer of Negro Stories That This Third Book, Like the First and Second, Needs No TitleMeans, E. K. (Eldred Kurtz)
General
Further E. K. Means: Is This a Title? It Is Not. It Is the Name of a Writer of Negro Stories, Who Has Made Himself So Completely the Writer of Negro Stories That This Third Book, Like the First and Second, Needs No Title
Means, E. K. (Eldred Kurtz)
African Americans -- Fiction; Short stories, American
Org had no particular love for religious instruction. All the time that
he was trying to learn a sufficient portion of that day’s lesson to
satisfy his teacher, he was thinking of a buzzard’s nest which Little
Bit had told him about, a buzzard’s nest which contained two baby
buzzards, both of them white as snow. If that buzzard’s nest had been
concealed in some Sunday-school book—but Org never found anything
interesting in a Sunday-school book. What little he knew of that day’s
portion of the Scripture had been imparted to him by the laborious
efforts of his sister, and he was now walking down the hill toward the
church, mumbling his newly acquired information to himself.
“Whar you gwine, Marse Org?”
“Sunday-school. Come and go with me.”
“Ain’t fitten,” Little Bit giggled. “A little black coon like me ain’t
got no place in a white chu’ch. Excusin’ dat, I janitors in a saloon,
an’ Sunday-schools ain’t made fer such.”
“I’ll tell you all I know about the lesson,” Org urged. “Listen:
Methusalem—oldest man ever was: nine hundred and sixty-nine years
old—was not, for God took him—gathered to his fathers——”
“How ole you say he wus gwine on when he died?” Little Bit asked.
“Nine hundred and sixty-nine years.”
“Whoop-ee! Whut did de ole gizzard die of when he died?”
“I dunno,” Org replied. “He died of smoking cigarettes, I reckon. If you
go with me, we’ll ask the teacher.”
“I mought stan’ outside behime de chu’ch while you axed,” Little Bit
said doubtfully. “Who am dis here teacher?”
“Captain Kerley Kerlerac.”
“I ain’t gwine to no Sonday-school to ax my boss nothin’,” Little Bit
said positively. “Dat white man don’t ’low no niggers to pesticate him
wid ’terrogations. I knows!”
Org was not willing to part with his companion. He could have a great
deal more fun with Little Bit than he could contemplating the career of
a man who had lived nearly a thousand years and had been dead for
several thousand more. Besides, he was a little skeptical of the alleged
age of that old party. So when Org came to a corner where he should have
turned to the right, he turned to the left, and from that time on there
was a vacant chair in the Sunday-school.
The old cotton-shed on the edge of the Gaitskill sand pit was the first
thing to attract the attention of the pair. In that storehouse, they
found an old cotton-truck, and a door which had been torn off the hinges
and was lying on the floor near the office.
They found amusement for a while by pulling each other around on the
truck. Then they sat down in the door to cool off and gazed out over an
expanse of water which formed a shallow pond in the sand pit.
“If we could get this old broken-down door over to that pond, we could
have a raft to ride on,” Org remarked.
“’Tain’t no trouble,” Little Bit replied. “Jes’ load de door onto de
cotton-truck an’ push de truck down to de pond.”
“You are certainly intell’gent, Little Bit,” Org exclaimed admiringly as
he sprang to his feet.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account