African Americans -- Fiction; Short stories, American
Joe Lindsay is said by Lum Boger to be the largest manufacturer of
prevarications in Eatonville; Brazzle (late owner of the world’s
leanest and meanest mule) contends that his business is the largest in
the state and his wife holds that he is the biggest liar in the world.
_Exhibit A_--He claims that while he was in Orlando one day he saw
a doctor cut open a woman, remove everything--liver, lights and heart
included--clean each of them separately; the doctor then washed out the
empty woman, dried her out neatly with a towel and replaced the organs
so expertly that she was up and about her work in a couple of weeks.
VIII
Sewell is a man who lives all to himself. He moves a great deal. So
often, that ’Lige Moseley says his chickens are so used to moving that
every time he comes out into his backyard the chickens lie down and
cross their legs, ready to be tied up again.
He is baldheaded; but he says he doesn’t mind that, because he wants as
little as possible between him and God.
IX
Mrs. Clarke is Joe Clarke’s wife. She is a soft-looking, middle-aged
woman, whose bust and stomach are always holding a get-together.
She waits on the store sometimes and cries every time he yells at her
which he does every time she makes a mistake, which is quite often. She
calls her husband “Jody.” They say he used to beat her in the store
when he was a young man, but he is not so impatient now. He can wait
until he goes home.
She shouts in Church every Sunday and shakes the hand of fellowship
with everybody in the Church with her eyes closed, but somehow always
misses her husband.
X
Mrs. McDuffy goes to Church every Sunday and always shouts and tells
her “determination.” Her husband always sits in the back row and beats
her as soon as they get home. He says there’s no sense in her shouting,
as big a devil as she is. She just does it to slur him. Elijah Moseley
asked her why she didn’t stop shouting, seeing she always got a beating
about it. She says she can’t “squinch the sperrit.” Then Elijah asked
Mr. McDuffy to stop beating her, seeing that she was going to shout
anyway. He answered that she just did it for spite and that his fist
was just as hard as her head. He could last just as long as she. So the
village let the matter rest.
XI
+Double-Shuffle+
Back in the good old days before the World War, things were very simple
in Eatonville. People didn’t fox-trot. When the town wanted to put on
its Sunday clothes and wash behind the ears, it put on a “breakdown.”
The daring younger set would two-step and waltz, but the good church
members and the elders stuck to the grand march. By rural canons
dancing is wicked, but one is not held to have danced until the feet
have been crossed. Feet don’t get crossed when one grand marches.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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