Strawberry Girl Read online

  Dan and Buzz helped the boys pass out the Old Sacred Harp hymn books. First the people sang the notes, then words from the book. A pretty young woman with curly hair played the organ. As Birdie watched her fingers move over the keys, she forgot all about the hog chase of the night before. The organ music was rich and melodious. It was the nicest music she had ever heard.

  Birdie saw Olema Dorsey and asked her who the organist was. Olema told her that her name was Miss Annie Laurie Dunnaway. She repeated the name to herself. It was almost as pretty as the organ music.

  The congregation kept singing all day long. Nobody had to sit through it all. People kept going in and coming out. They sat or stood and talked in the yard, then came in and sang till they were tired and went out again. They all did just as they pleased. It was a good time to visit friends and to make new ones. And the best thing about it was the organ music and the singing which kept on and on. Birdie talked to some of the girls she had met at school, and felt as if she had always known them.

  At noonday, the preacher announced in a loud voice: “Dinner on the grounds!” and everybody was dismissed. In the piney woods behind the church were rough board tables, covered with table cloths. The women opened their baskets and spread out their rations, all the delicious dishes of the Florida backwoods. There was food for everybody—fried chicken, rabbit, squirrel, ham, sweet potatoes, cowpeas, grits and gravy, cakes and pies, corn bread and biscuit and plenty of cane syrup. Everybody ate heartily, laughed and joked, and talked in loud voices.

  After dinner, the people strolled back into the church and sat down again. They waited for the organist to come and start the music. Birdie came to the door just as Miss Dunnaway appeared.

  “Hit was mighty purty, ma’am … the music,” she said.

  “You like it?” asked the organist. “You play the organ too?”

  “No ma’am,” gulped Birdie. “Only … I’d like to.”

  “Maybe you will some day,” said Miss Dunnaway.

  “I …” Birdie could not speak.

  “You are one of the Boyer girls? The new family in the old Roddenberry house?”

  Birdie nodded. She wanted to say more, but the people were waiting. Miss Dunnaway hurried in. The music and singing began.

  Birdie, left standing at the door, saw her father crossing the yard. Then she saw Gus and Joe Slater, and a man with them who must be their father. All thoughts of the organ music faded from her mind as she remembered the hogs. The man left Gus and Joe and came over to join Mr. Boyer.

  Birdie slipped out around the corner of the church, where she could hear the men without being seen. She was trembling. She wished Pa had not chased Slater’s hogs. Likely he was a good fighter like his sons.

  It was the first time the two men had met, but they talked as if they knew each other. They sounded polite, not angry at all.

  “I chased some hogs outen my strawberry field last night,” said Boyer. “Might a been your’n.”

  “That so?” Slater looked up at him.

  “Got a good fence, but it’s mighty hard to make it hog-tight,” Boyer went on.

  “That so?” asked Slater.

  “You know well as I do, them piney woods rooters can go under a gate and raise it off the hinges! They can turn a house over almost! Fence don’t seem to do no good, keeping them out.”

  “That so?” repeated Slater.

  “Of course you understand I don’t want trouble with my neighbors,” said Boyer.

  “No?” said Slater.

  “I’m a peaceable man,” said Boyer, “but sometimes I lose my temper.”

  “Mighty glad to hear it!” said Slater, slapping him on the back. “I’m peaceable myself. Course we all know there’s some matters that can only be settled with a shotgun!”

  “There’s the law,” suggested Boyer.

  “Wal—round here, a shotgun’s more useful than the law, and handier, too!” Slater laughed.

  “Speakin’ of hogs,” Boyer continued, “iffen you’d feed your’n, they’d stay at home and not bother other folks.”

  “Feed ’em!” cried Slater. “Why, man, they can find plenty to eat in the flatwoods—that’s what them long noses is for. They eat snakes of all kinds, mice, rabbits, skunks and young foxes; acorns, palmetto buds and roots, and pine mast. And when they can’t find none of them things, they can eat pine knots!” He laughed at his joke.

  “And the neighbor’s corn and strawberries!” added Boyer.

  Slater laughed. “I tell you what, Boyer, if ary hog of mine gets on your place, don’t you hurt him, just take a switch and switch him. Switch him good.”

  Boyer frowned, then he spoke slowly: “I never kill other folkses’ hogs or cows, unless I catch ’em on my place!”

  “You’ll never catch ’em! My razorbacks can run like a streak o’ lightning!” retorted Slater. “They’re regular wind-splitters. They can split the wind in two, they run so fast!”

  Both men laughed heartily. They walked side by side and went into the church. They sat down on the men’s side together and began to sing out of the same hymnbook.

  Birdie had listened carefully and her fears were considerably relieved. Pa hadn’t hurt Slater’s hog after all. Pa knew how to handle Mr. Slater and keep him peaceable. Everything was all right again.

  Birdie went in and began singing too.

  During the afternoon, she strolled outdoors and joined a group of children gathered under the trees. Someone had seen a snake and the boys were trying to catch it. It slithered off under the palmetto bushes and they kept poking among the bristling, crackling leaves with sticks.

  Essie and Zephy Slater were there, and several other children.

  Shoestring boasted loudly that he would catch the snake alive.

  “O-o-o-h, don’t!” cried the girls, shuddering. “It might could be a rattler!”

  “I’ll catch it and whirl it by the tail till its head drops off!”

  Birdie laughed. Still bragging, that boy!

  Then she saw that he had caught the snake and was doing what he said. She watched the live snake go whirling through the air around his upraised arm. Horrified, she saw it slip from his grasp and come flying toward her.

  “Shoestring! Don’t you dare!” she gasped.

  Then a blow struck her head which nearly knocked her hat off. She stood still, stunned. The other girls ran from her in fright. She wondered why they were running so fast.

  At first she did not realize what had happened. Then she saw Shoestring staring at her hat and she felt the unusual weight on it.

  The snake was on her hat! On her Sunday hat!

  She ducked her head with a sudden, violent motion. The snake fell to the ground and slipped off into the bushes. She saw that it was a young harmless blacksnake, but that did not change her feelings.

  “You! You!” she yelled, shaking her fist at the boy.

  She was so angry she wanted to kill him. She hated him with a cold hard hate. She hated his overalls and his black felt hat. She hated his thin face, tight mouth and half-shut eyes. She hated every bone in his skinny body. Her anger was black enough to kill him, but he ran so fast she could not catch him.

  She came back to the church, went in and sat down beside her mother. She took her hat off and dropped it on the floor. She never wanted to see it or wear it again. She was trembling all over. She could not sing any more.

  That night the hogs got into the strawberry field again. Birdie was awakened by the commotion, but she did not get up.

  At breakfast, Pa said: “Reckon Slater will keep his hogs home from now on.”

  “Now, Bihu,” said her mother, “we want to live peaceable, no matter how many strawberry plants they ruin.”

  “There’s only one language some folks can understand,” said Boyer, frowning.

  Birdie looked from her father to her mother and wondered what they meant. Her brothers and sisters ran outdoors and paid no attention. All her fears returned. Were the Slaters going to spoil everythi
ng?

  The second morning after the All-Day Sing she was sweeping the front porch when she noticed a piece of white tablet paper tacked up on the wall.

  She saw there was pencil writing on it. With some difficulty she made out the words: will git you yet jest you wate. She read the words over several times.

  Then she heard some one passing and saw it was Shoestring.

  She remembered the snake and she was still mad enough to kill the boy. Or, if she could not kill him, she would fight him. She clenched her fists behind her back. She resolved she would never speak to him again. Then she saw that he was dragging something along by a chain, something small and dark and furry.

  “Nice little bitty puppy you got!” The words came out in spite of herself.

  “Ha, ha! Hain’t no dog! That’s where you got fooled,” laughed Shoestring. “Hit’s a coon.”

  “Where’d you git it?”

  “Out on the limb of a tree last night. My hound dog treed him,” said the boy. “I can git me one ary time I want one.”

  “What you fixin’ to do with it?”

  “Gentle it. Keep it under the house to kill mice and rats,” said Shoestring. “Make me a pen to keep it in. Learn it tricks. You want I should git you one?”

  “No,” said Birdie. She remembered how she hated him.

  “Here, take this one,” said the boy. “I kin git me another.”

  “Don’t want no coon,” said Birdie.

  The boy hesitated, then pointed. Evidently he had brought the coon along for an excuse to cover his real purpose. He pointed to the paper tacked on the wall. “What’s that ’ere paper stuck up there?” he inquired.

  “Look and see for yourself,” said Birdie.

  “Can’t read,” said Shoestring.

  “Good reason,” said Birdie. “’Cause you don’t go to school, that’s why. Why don’t you go to school, I want to know?”

  The boy shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t aim to mess up with no little ole school iffen I kin help it. What do the paper say?”

  Birdie read it aloud: “‘will git you yet jest you wate.’ Who put it here?” she demanded.

  “Haw! Don’t you know?”

  “Wouldn’t ask iffen I did,” said Birdie.

  “You don’t even know who put it there?”

  “Your Pa, I reckon,” said Birdie. “But why?”

  “You don’t know what your Pa done to my Pa’s hog?”

  Birdie’s heart sank. He must have killed the hog, and it would only make further trouble. “Chased it outen the strawberry field is all,” she said.

  “Now don’t you act so innocent!” said Shoestring. “You know well as I do he chopped the tips of our hog’s ears off!”

  “Huh!” said Birdie, with relief. The hog was not dead then. “Your Pa did it hisself. That’s the way he marks ’em.”

  “No, it ain’t!” said Shoestring. “Pa’s hog mark is a round hole in the ear;”

  “Well, if my Pa done it, he meant it for a warning,” said Birdie angrily. “He wants to let your Pa know that hog came on our place and did a heap of damage, and it better not come again!”

  Shoestring pointed to the piece of paper. “There’s my Pa’s warning! Iffen your Pa don’t leave our hogs alone, Pa means what he says: he’ll git him yet! I jest come over to tell you.”

  Birdie looked the boy up and down.

  “So your Pa wrote this note and sneaked over here in the night and put it up, to say he’ll get even!” Her voice was bitter with scorn.

  “No, Gus done it,” said the boy. “Gus learned to write at school.”

  Birdie looked at the note. “Iffen he’d stayed in school, he might a learned to write, you mean. But he whopped the teacher and broke up school. I was there, I know all about it.”

  “You do?” said Shoestring. “Well—he’s too old to go now, he’s sixteen.”

  “Iffen you went to school, you might could learn to write your Pa’s notes for him, and sign your name to ’em. Whoever wrote this un didn’t sign his name.”

  Birdie reached up for the paper and pulled it down. She folded it and tore it to bits. She threw the pieces on the porch and swept them angrily off onto the ground.

  “Ain’t your Pa seen it?” asked Shoestring.

  “No,” said Birdie, “and he ain’t goin’ to, ’cause it’s tore up.” She faced the boy boldly. “Hit’s cowardly to write notes. Your Pa’s scared to come and say what he’s got to say to my Pa’s face. Your Pa’s a coward. Only cowards write notes and don’t sign their names.”

  She expected Shoestring to get madder than ever when she called his Pa names, but he didn’t. All he said was, “What we gonna do, so they don’t git to shootin’?”

  Birdie thought for a while. This was a surprise. It looked as if Shoestring didn’t want trouble any more than she did.

  He was trying to fix things up. All at once her black hate melted away and she liked him again. She was able to forgive him for the snake on her hat. She decided not to fight him for the snake. He only did it in fun anyhow. He had not meant to hurt or frighten her. Then she thought about the hogs again.

  “You’ll have to feed your hogs every night to keep ’em home,” she suggested. “That’s the onliest thing to do.”

  “But they’re wild!” protested Shoestring. “They run wild and never come nigh the house, and that old boar, he’s mean! Great-Grandpa was an old Indian fighter, and the boar cut him all to pieces last year, so he died.”

  Birdie had no time to think about Great-Grandpa Slater.

  “Corn and peanuts and boiled sweet potatoes are good for feeding hogs,” she said. “Hogs get tame soon enough if you feed ’em every night; Ours was perfectly wild once too. Now they’re plumb gentle and come when I call. You jest try it.”

  “I got a better idea,” said Shoestring. “I’ll get my cowhorse and keep ridin’ your fences every day, and whenever I see ary of our hogs come nigh it, I’ll lasso him and take him home.”

  “That won’t do. They come at night when you’re in bed,” said Birdie. “You got to throw ’em a mess of peanuts or chufers each evenin’ to keep ’em comin’ home. Hear?”

  “I mean!” said Shoestring.

  CHAPTER V

  Overalls

  BIRDIE WAS GLAD WHEN it was her turn to go to town on Saturday. Dixie had to stay home to take care of Bunny and Dovey. Buzz and Dan had to get in wood. There had to be room in the wagon for the new cooking stove and the barbed wire, so only Birdie could go, besides Ma and Pa.

  Like Ma, she was to have a new summer hat. She had never worn her old one after it had the snake on it. She put on her best dress and her long black stockings and high shoes. She knew she had to keep them on, no matter how hot it got. She fanned her hot face with her sunbonnet as they rode along. Pa said it was the hottest day they had had all summer.

  Town seemed very far away because the road was new to her. It followed an endless sand-rut through miles of palmettos in the scrub. Then it was a mere wagon-track winding this way and that through the piney woods, and still farther along, it became a corduroy road through a cypress swamp. When at last they came to houses and began to pass people walking on foot in the same direction, Birdie knew they would soon be there.

  They came to town, and it was filled with people because it was Saturday. There was an open square in the middle, with hitching posts under the trees. The depot, where the trains came in, was on one side, and stores and houses on the other three sides. The stores were mostly one-story buildings, with wooden awnings jutting out over the sidewalks.

  It was fine to be in town, to walk on board sidewalks instead of loose sand, and to go straight into the millinery store.

  “Howdy, Mis’ Boyer! Howdy, Miss Birdie!”

  Miss Liddy Evans stepped up to greet them. “Come right in,” she said. Although they were newcomers in the neighborhood, she knew them by sight and called them by name.

  Miss Liddy was everybody’s friend and no wonder. She always had a smil
e or a joke or a laugh ready. She knew that every woman, no matter how poor or plain, had a yearning for pretty things, and she liked to please them. And she was never too busy trimming hats or making dresses to help her customers when they needed help.

  Miss Liddy turned to a woman in the back of the store.

  “Why, yes, ma’am, I shore will accommodate you,” she said, handing her some money. “You go right out and buy what you need. And when your husband gets paid this evenin’, you come pay me back. Now don’t you worry a mite. Yes ma’am! Jest leave your baby right there on the couch in the back room. That’s what it’s for. There’ll be plenty more there before the evenin’s over, or I miss my guess.”

  The woman had a forlorn look, with her long, bedraggled skirts and stringy hair protruding from under her dark sunbonnet. She slipped silently out the side door, clutching the borrowed money in her hand.

  “Warn’t that Mis’ Slater, Ma?” whispered Birdie.

  When Mrs. Boyer began to look at the hats on the stands, Miss Liddy came forward.

  “A pretty straw for the little girl?” she suggested.

  Soon Birdie was seated in front of a tilted mirror, trying on hats—hats with high crowns and low, wide brims and narrow, and with all kinds of fancy trimmings. Birdie thought they were all beautiful.

  The sound of a baby’s crying rang out.

  “That’s the Slater young un,” said Miss Liddy. “Birdie, while I show your mother some hats, could you …”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  Birdie found the baby lying on a pile of quilts on a couch in the corner. Boxes, shelves, tables and chairs, a dressmaker’s form and a sewing machine filled the back room. The floor was littered with snips and scraps of ribbons, laces, silks, cottons and fancy trimmings.

  Birdie picked up the Slater baby and joggled it on her shoulder. She watched Miss Liddy’s assistant trim a hat, lay it aside and take up another. It must be fun to trim hats.