r








R I* V E R GEORGE


BOOKS BY GEORGE W. LEE
BEALE STREET: Where the Blues
RIVER GEORGE


RIVER
GEORGE
by y"
GEORGE wf LEE
THE MACAULAY COMPANY
NEW YORK


Copyright, 1937,
By The Macaulay Company
Printed in the United States of America





RIVER GEORGE





CHAPTER I
THE train came slowly to a stop at the little wooden
station of Holly Rock, and puffed restlessly as
though it were really only hesitating here out of neces-
sity and was bent on expressing the engineer's impa-
tience to be on his way. The platform was deserted save
for an old colored man who stood looking anxiously
down the line of coaches to the car "for colored only."
He was a squat figured man, yet this was less because
he was actually short than that his breadth seemed to
reduce his height, making him seem shorter than he
really was. About his chin and upper lip a fringe of
graying beard and mustache framed the fullness of his
mouth which drooped a little at the corners as though
it had become used to expressing sorrow. He wore no
coat and the coarse blue shirt was patched and faded.
Over it was tightly stretched the one remaining mem-
ber of a pair of suspenders supporting the coarse work-
ing pants, patched in the knees and the seat. Surmount-
ing his head was an old felt hat, the brim long twisted
out of shape, and the peak, formed by the end of the
crease in front, worn through in a ragged hole.
The station agent, seemingly as surprised at the train
stopping here as the engine seemed restless to be on its
way, came out of the waiting room and looked ques-
tioningly at the colored man.


IO
RIVER GEORGE
"Howdy, Uncle. You expecting somebody?" he
asked in a friendly voice.
"Aaron comin' in on this train," the other replied
quietly.
"All filled up with college talk, I suppose?" the sta-
tion agent said, but the colored man made no reply.
The white man was feeling really friendly and, with
no desire to offend the other, thrust one more remark
across the gap which separated them, changing the
subject lest it be left on an unpleasant note.
"How's old Henry this morning?" he asked.
"Po'ly," the colored man said quietly. "He cain't las'."
"Sorry to hear it," the white man answered but his
concern was less than his curiosity.
He, too, watched closely as a tall, strong Negro boy,
with great, clumping feet, and long, ape-like arms,
hurried down the steps of the Jim Crow car holding a
worn canvas-covered carry-all of the type known in the
early years of this century as a telescope, and walked
quickly to meet the older Negro.
Deep anxiety was written on the face of the younger
man, a face that was as black as had been that of his
great-grandfather brought to America as a slave from
Africa. Although he was actually in his twenty-fifth
year, an intelligent white person looking at him for the
first time might have guessed that he was seven-
teen or thirty-five, for the ageless lineaments of the
Negro race were upon him, the lost searching bright
look of his eyes; the fullness of his lips; the depth of
seriousness in his mouth, which was yet loose as if from
laughter; the gangling length of his arms; the looseness


RIVER GEORGE
11
of his hurried gait; the complete and unmarred rhythm
of every movement which his body made as it crossed
the platform.
His full six feet of height still further dwarfed the
figure of the man beside him. For Aaron George, the
boy, was as broad and as heavily boned and muscled as
the other, yet had this increasing height to combine in
making of him the figure of a large and powerful man.
The two men did not shake hands but, almost before
either had spoken, started, as if by common consent,
toward the street where a mule stood waiting hitched to
an ordinary spring farm wagon. The younger man
looked searchingly into the face of the older and asked
the question which had been torturing him all the way
along the hot dusty ride.
"How's Pa, Uncle Am?"
Amity George looked pityingly at his nephew.
"It don't 'peah that we know much about it, Aaron,"
he said softly.
Restraint gone for the moment, the younger man
grasped his arm.
"You telling me true, Uncle Am?" he asked. "He
ain't dead is he?"
"No boy," the other answered sorrowfully shaking
his head. "I'm tellin' yo' only what God loves, the naked
truth. We don' know how bad off he is. The doctor
don' like his looks but he ain't daid yet."
Silently they climbed over the wheel to the hard seat
of the spring wagon but when Amity George took up
the two ends of rope, which served as reins, Aaron
reached for them.


12
RIVER GEORGE
"Let me drive ol' Sal, Uncle Am," he said. "Seems
like I haven't had anything in my hands for a long time
felt so good as these pieces of rope."
The older man's lips parted in a brief smile.
"Mus' be yo' don' like the feel of pencils and books
in dose hands, Aaron?" he asked.
"It isn't that—"
The boy paused and looked ahead down the road over
the bouncing back of the jogging mule.
"College is fine. I suppose it's the best thing that ever
happened to me. Ain't ever a day there I don' stop and
think how grateful I am to Pa an' Ma."
He paused again. It was strange how there beside his
Uncle Amity, sitting up in the high seat behind old
Sally, his speech wanted to drop back into the musical
irregularities of his childhood. Three years of college
had changed it markedly, just as they had changed his
clothing from an outfit very similar to that which his
uncle wore to this brown store, suit, in need of pressing
now, which hung on his huge frame awkwardly as if ill
at ease, and this white shirt, soiled now by his trip,
and the too large but uncomfortable collar and the
somewhat gaudy tie at his throat. He looked slowly
down at the palm of one hand and moved his fingers
stiffly, tensing and flexing them.
"I got big hands, Uncle Am," he said slowly. "They
always were used to doing hard work when I was a
boy. Sometimes they seem a little lost when all they can
get hold of is a book, and then it's good to get hold of
these pieces of rope back of old Sally. But there's some-
thing else, too."


RIVER GEORGE
He was thinking how good it was, even with the
terror in his heart at the thought that his father might
be dying, to be back here with his people, thinking how
much more at ease he felt here than in the halls and
classrooms of the college from which he had hurried to
his father's bedside, thinking, that if needs must be, he
could stay here with them happily, yet feeling in his
heart too a great surge of that hope which every intelli-
gent, sensitive, Negro knows at some time in his life—
the hope that through education, through meeting and
grasping truth, his race could be set free from a bitter
bondage which did not end with the signing of the
Emancipation Proclamation.
Old Sally, never slackening her slow jogging trot, was
turning off the road now of her own accord, going
surely without wavering, along the path her feet had
trod for many years up to the door of a little ram-
shackle barn which stood 30 feet away from a house
that was no larger nor less shabby. Dropping the reins
and leaving his telescope behind him in his eagerness,
Aaron jumped from the spring seat over the wheel and
ran to the door of the house from which his mother
was coming with an eagerness equal to his own.
She was a large woman, whose age would have been
even more difficult to guess than Aaron's and in her fine
round face struggled the conflict of her joy at the sight
of her son and her grief at the fore-knowledge of her
husband's death. With a little cry of happiness, he put
his arms around her and, stooping his powerful body in
a grotesque curve, he laid his head for a moment upon
her large breast.


RIVER GEORGE
"Ma!" he cried.
For a moment she held him thus, then taking his
shoulders in her two powerful hands, hands which
knew well the feel of a hoe and plow-handle, she raised
his head gently and held him from her at arms' length,
her eyes filled with tender gladness too great to be
dimmed by her sorrow.
"Yo' make my eyes rich, son," she said.
For a moment, the boy rested his hand hard against
one of the work roughened hands on his shoulder with-
out speaking, his own eyes bright with unshed tears.
"How's pa?" he asked briefly, his voice none too
steady.
Her eyes filled with pain at his words but neither
they nor her answer evaded the question or the fact
which she had already faced and accepted in the depths
of her heart and mind, which had suffered too long
from reality to attempt now to make any substitute
for it.
"He's about to cross ovah, son," she said.
Her voice was scarcely above a whisper and filled
with sorrow but there was no horror in it, no fear, only
the calm acceptance of the fact that death, as well as
life, is the common lot of man. Together they went into
the house.
There were only two rooms here, the kitchen with
its worn old stove, the top of which sagged a little
above the fire-box, and the bedroom beyond it. Over
the stove in the kitchen hung a great skillet, flanked by
half a dozen pans shining from their many scourings
with wood-ashes. Across the room from the stove stood


RIVER GEORGE
IS
a home-made pine table. There was no cloth on it, but
like the pans, the top was clean and bright from fre-
quent, repeated scrubbings. Three kitchen chairs, two
of them without backs, stood near the table on a floor
as spotless as the rest of the room, and in a corner was
a little stand. On it stood a pail of cold spring water.
Above the stand on the wall were three home made
shelves, which held the little stock of store dishes that
were the pride of Hannah George's heart.
As Aaron entered the door, this room which he knew
so well seemed to embrace him and bring him peace.
But he didn't pause here. Without a word, he hurried
through the low door into the bedroom beyond, where
his father lay dying. For a moment, unable to speak,
the boy towered over the silent man lying there and the
other, in that state of dim consciousness which, for the
desperately ill, is a softening of the way through the
gate of death, did not sense his presence. Then with a
little moan of sorrow which he couldn't restrain, Aaron
dropped on his knees by the bedside and took in his
own the knotted hand which lay on the covers.
"Pa!" he cried.
Slowly the older man's eyes opened as if with a weari-
ness too great for even the effort of lifting the lids,
and the lines in his lips softened in welcome.
"Yo' here, Aaron?" he asked weakly. "I tol ' yo' Ma
not to bothuh to sen' fo' yo'."
"She didn't send, Pa," Aaron defended her. "Uncle
Am wrote and told me. I wouldn't want to be any-
where else with you sick, Pa. I'm going to help Ma


RIVER GEORGE
17
Yo' might sing something now while I can still heah
yo'.»
"What shall I sing, Pa?"
"Might sing 'Fare Thee Well,' Aaron, I alius did like
it. My mammy used to sing dat song."
Aaron's eyes closed against the insistent tears which
forced themselves under his lids, and for a moment he
knelt there silently fighting to regain control of his
voice. Then he began to sing softly in a rich baritone
voice. His mother, coming noiselessly through the door,
stood beside him and then kneeling, waited quietly, her
head on the bed close to the hand of her husband, as
their son's rich, deep voice laid a blanket of comforting
sound over them.
Oh, fare thee well, my brother,
Fare thee well, by the grace of God
For Vse gwinen home.
Vse gwinen home, my Lord,
Vse gwinen home;
Marse Jesus give me a little broom,
For to sweep my heart clean;
Sweep 'em clean by the grace of God
And the glory in my soul!
When he had finished, the older man was breathing
quietly as though asleep. For a moment Aaron watched,
then leaning closer to his mother he put his arm about
her shoulders and kissed lightly the back of her bowed
head before he rose and tip-toed from the room leaving
them alone with each other for this unfathomable
parting.


CHAPTER II
ARON GEORGE stood on a little hill looking over
ii the wide fields of Beaver Dam Plantation, the home
of his childhood, the place in which he had learned
those first slow truths about life in a world in which
his black skin had made him different from his white
masters. Gray dusk was settling over the fields and the
little patch of timber to the east. Above him the first
stars were glimmering and there was a cool sweet per-
fume in the air as if the earth itself, parched from the
long sunburned day, had breathed a fragrant sigh as the
sun descended. Below him, in the cottage where his
father lay dead, the voices of his friends were raised in
song. Aaron knew, for he had just left them, that the
little bedroom was crowded with the sorrowing neigh-
bors, that the kitchen was likewise filled, and from
where he stood he could see a little group outside the
opened door, leaning against the door casing, their
heads bowed, their voices chanting with the rest. His
own lips moved slightly as he listened, but no sound
came to join the monotonous rhythm of the song that
was floating up from the house.

Death ain' yo' got no shame,
Shame,
Death ain' yo' got no shame,
Shame.


RIVER GEORGE
Over and over the same words in the same melody,
the same monotonous wailing rhythm. At the focal
point of sound in the heart of that sorrowing group,
he knew that his mother knelt at the bedside of the man
whose life she had shared shoulder to shoulder with
perfect loyalty and devotion for 30 years. But he knew,
too, that she was not weeping now. Her tears had been
shed in that moment when she had felt the cold hand of
death brushing her own face as it rushed by her to
touch her husband. She would not weep again, but her
voice, as strong as the rest, would continue all night
long to join the others in song. Now the song, dropped
first by one voice and then another, gradually tapered
off into silence and there was no sound anywhere in the
world for the moment save the barking of a dog down
the road at another cottage similar to that below him
which housed death. Then a single voice from the group
below was lifted in the first line of another song, a
song full of power and triumph, a song before whose
magnificence terror fled, leaving only awe and a sense of
the greatness of this messenger who had visited them.
0 the sperit said I want yo' for to
Go down Death,
Easy!
1 want you go down Death,
Easy!
I want yo' go down Death,
Easy!
And bring my servant home.
Go down Death!
Go down!
Preach my glory and my mighty name;


20
RIVER GEORGE
/ want yo' go down!
I want yo' go down!
And bring my servant home!
Many times as a child Aaron had listened to these
meetings held beside the cold, still form of one whose
spirit had fled and then they had only stimulated a
sense of wonder and mystery in him for he had not
known the deep meaning of grief. Now, with sorrow
lying like a heavy hand on his heart, he saw the true
meaning of these songs which were less expression of
pain than of welcome, less a complaint against the
bitterness of loss than a formal greeting to do proper
honor to a distinguished and mighty guest. Loving life
more fully and vibrantly than the less vital race of
white men who were their masters, his people had
learned as none other to look forward with certainty
to the eventual coming of one more powerful than they,
more powerful even than their white overlords, more
powerful than life itself. And they knew that he de-
served honor and were prepared to give it. Death to
them was more than a fact, it was a personality, one
whose might stimulated worship even more than his
weaker brother life. And they knew too, that although
he brought pain for those whom he ignored, to the
one for whom he had come he brought release from
pain and a final peace.
His father more than any one he had ever known,
unless it was his mother, deserved that peace. Aaron
could not mourn for him now. He could only, with the
rest, bow his head in honor to the one who had brought
release to this good man and hope that his own strength


22
RIVER GEORGE
little recourse against wrong to the negroes was, never-
theless, administered with kindliness and an underlying
sense of justice. But since King had sold the plantation,
the negroes had been in as sorry a state as their ancestors
had been under slavery. For a long time it had troubled
Aaron, while he had felt happy and secure himself in
the friendly confines of college walls, to think of his
father and mother and friends at home suffering under
the yoke imposed by the new owner.
In college he learned a great many things besides
dates in history and reactions in test-tubes of the
chemical laboratory, and one of them, the thing which
had impressed him more deeply than anything else, was
that in the breasts of good men whether white or
colored there burned a passionate love for democracy
and justice. He had learned that among his own people
and among members of the white race which had en-
slaved his people there were individuals who believed
in the possibilities that the Negro race would eventually
stand shoulder to shoulder with the white, each con-
tributing of his ability to a common struggle for the
freedom of the entire suffering human race. And he
learned too that the constitution of the great land of
which he was a citizen formulated, in no uncertain
terms, the principle of free and equal status for every
person in that land and set up a machinery of law to
protect that freedom.
Aaron stood looking over the fields, his back turned
to the house from which there came to him the con-
tinuous throbbing melodies of the songs which were


RIVER GEORGE
greeting death. Now they were singing the Danville
Chariot.
Swing low sweet chariot
Pray let me enter in.
I don' want to
Stay heah no longah.
He walked slowly away down the road, leaving the
sounds which went with death behind him. Tomorrow
he would help carry on his shoulder the rough pine box
which enclosed his father's body, leading the slow wail-
ing march to the group of willows where, with his own
hands that day, Aaron had dug the grave in the spot
where his father had asked him to. He walked more
rapidly now, with each step leaving the singing farther
behind until only the strongest notes reached him. But
so strongly had it entered his heart and mind during
the long hours through which it had gone on that he
found his lips moving in keeping with the songs al-
though no sound came from them and in his mind the
words and music furnished an obbligato to his troubled
thoughts.
Oh graveyard
Oh graveyard
I'm walkin' thru' de graveyard
Lay dis body down!
Through the haunting minor melody of the song
surged a deep note of triumph, almost of joy, and he
remembered another less known graveyard song, in
which at the very moment of its most poignant expres-
sion of the realization of death surged a frank note of
praise.


RIVER GEORGE
Oh we take this po' body and we carry it to the graveyard
And we lay it in de grave.
Hallelujah!
He thought tenderly that there was cause for all who
had loved his father to give praise for the release which
had come to him. He had been a good man, a strong
man, a wise man. He had taken life as it had come,
without complaint and without making too great de-
mands of anyone or of anything. He had been loyal to
his friends and to all who had treated him fairly. He
had cherished, for all his life, a great hope for the
triumph of goodness and right, had lived cheerfully in
squalor and looked forward to the day when his son
Aaron, or Aaron's son, or that great host of on-coming
young Afro-Americans would lead his people to a
better day.
Aaron remembered how the last time he had been
home he had talked with his father about the deplorable
state of the share-cropper and, with the enthusiasm of
youth, had proposed that he go and make serious com-
plaints to the new white owner. But his father had
only sighed and said:
"Aint no use complainin' boy. Might as well talk
to a old rattle snake as talk to dat Mistuh Tyler. Caint
do anythin' with a man like dat. Things was bettah
when we had Mr. King an' dey'll be bettah again some-
time."
"But there are laws," Aaron had said angrily. "You're
being cheated."
His father had shook his head sadly. When he spoke
there was a deep note of old wisdom in his voice.


RIVER GEORGE
"Laws aint for colored," he said slowly. "Far as I
can see aint much good for white men either. We used
to get along all right without thinkin' bout law."
"But that was because Mr. Klingman obeyed the
law," Aaron protested. "If the new owner won't the
court will make him."
His father shook his head again slowly.
"Mistuh King was jes a good man," he went on,
"an' dat settles hit. All de nigguhs liked him a heap
too. Dere nevuh was a time on dis place when dey
didn't hab all de hands dey wanted."
"Mebbe dat was because he made you de straw-boss,"
Hannah said, jestingly. "Since Mistuh King give up his
place de nigguhs can't do lak dey ustah, 'cause dis
Mistah Tyler dat took hit ovah ain't nuthin' but po'
white trash, and Mistuh Tuhnuh done got as bad as
he is."
Sam Turner had been the agent for the owners of
Beaver Dam Plantation for many years. He was a thick-
set, red-faced man, with a sardonic scowl playing about
the corners of his mouth. He wore a six-shooter buckled
around his waist, a habit he had acquired when he was
a convict driver on the Parchman prison farm. The old
negroes used to say: "He's hell-a-mile ef y'uh don'
keep up wid yo' wuk, but he don' pay no tenshun tuh
yuh and he don't try to drive yuh ef yuh make him
a good crop."
For many years Sam Turner had lived alone in a
white-painted house on the banks of the Beaver Dam.
No white woman was ever known to enter the door
of his strange living quarters. "Wanta be in the center


26 RIVER GEORGE
of things" was the reason he gave for not living up
at the plantation headquarters, where the farm manager
and the bookkeepers and their families lived, but the
old Negroes said he wanted to live where he could get
drunk every night and sleep with a Negro gal. But
neither whiskey nor women kept Sam Turner from
rising early and riding the turn-rows.
During the cotton-picking season, he would ride up
and down the field crying to the slow tenant farmers:
"Hurry with that cotton, you Nigguhs; Winter's just
over the hill. Them thar boles are busting open three
times faster than you kin pick 'em. After while they'll
be rolling on the ground. Get the wimmen folks and
the chillun out heah, we need everybody to pull these
cotton boles in the field."
The field hands would listen to his storming and
work faster. None ever got up courage enough to talk
back to him when he was in such an ugly mood. So
long as he was round storming and cursing, the tenants
bent forward and snatched at the cotton boles until
their fingers bled, but as soon as he rode away and
vanished over the hill, the tall cotton stalks no longer
trembled from the touch of busy hands. Some of the
tenants found the nearest tree and stretched out on
the ground, their bronze legs and arms gleaming in the
sun, while those that remained moved lazily through
the field, bending their backs, snatching at the boles
here and there and then straightening up to join in a
song.
Aaron shook his head sadly as he walked along. What
could he do for these people against the combination of


RIVER GEORGE
a man like Turner, a man like Crawford and the whole
tradition of black subjugation which had ruled the
agricultural south since the day when the first slave-ship
had landed on its shore to pour a host of strong muscled
cringing black men and women from its stinking hold.
He paused sharply as his feet encountered fresh dug
earth. Without intent, without taking any conscious
direction, he had walked to his father's newly made
grave. With a sudden cry of anguish, he flung himself
onto the ground burying his hands in the warm, loose
earth, letting his forehead touch it, sobbing with deep
wrenching sobs, releasing some of the emotion which
his restraint since coming home had bottled up within
him, facing bitterly the task which he knew in his heart
he must undertake and which he knew equally well
would be futile.
From far off came the moving sound of song.
I know moonlight
I know starlight
I'm walking through de starlight
Lay this body down!


RIVER GEORGE
"What you want, boy?" he asked.
"I wants ter get a paih of licenses. I'se gwiner get
married."
The clerk pulled out an application and started to
write.
"What's her name?" the Clerk questioned.
"Her name is er— ah, er "and Do Pop scratched
his head in profound meditation, but the name of his
promised bride just would not come forth.
"Don't you know the name of the girl you gonna
marry?" the clerk looked up, puzzled.
"Nawsuh, I sho' done cleah fo'got huh name," he
scratched his head again. "Cain't Ah git de license
widout her name?"
"Nope, you got to give her name," the clerk smiled.
Do Pop had to ride all the way back home to get his
bride's name and the wedding was postponed for two
days.
So, when he came through on the Lord's side, he
found very little encouragement at home. Lucy just
eyed him suspiciously and had nothing to say. He
shuffled off down the road from the praying ground,
wringing his hands and pausing in front of the roadside
cabins long enough to cry out his convictions, his voice
booming through the night:
"I'se so glad I'se been saved. I got Jesus! I got Jesus!
I feel de spirit movin' in me! Jesus done whispuhed
strange things tuh me! I feel it way down deep!"
Aunt Lizzie, one of the mothers of the Mt. Zion
Church, was sitting on her steps, pulling away at her
pipe, when Do Pop came down the big road.


3o RIVER GEORGE
"Come heah, son," she called, "an' tell yo' Aun'
Lizzie all 'bout hit."
"Wal," began Do Pop, "I wuz prayin' las' night ovuh
dar in de woods, w'en I heahs a voice whispuhing
through de trees, sayin': 'Seek an' ye shall fin'; knock
an' de do' shall be opened; ask and hit shall be given—'
and den I looks up at de skies and I seed a vision. I seed
uh man in a cha'iot, wid clouds wrapped all roun' hit.
Hit wuz pulled by two milk-white hosses, dat jes'
pranced tru de skies. De man in de cha'iot had uh
crown on his head, wid stahs shinin' in hit. Wen he
look down and p'inted his finguh at me, the lightnin'
shot frum his finguh tips and I jes' fell faintin' on de
ground! Wen I wakes up I heah de same voice, whislin'
through de trees, sayin'; 'Git up, Do Pop, go fo'th and
tell de good news!'"
"Son, y' sho' got de right kin' o' 'ligion," murmured
Aunt Lizzie, as she mopped her eyes with an end of her
faded cotton skirt.
Early the next Sunday morning a train of fifty
wagons carried Do Pop and the rest of the converts
and church members to the Sunflower River. It had
rained the night before and the swollen stream offered
great danger for a baptizing, so all the other candidates
agreed to wait until the water abated before being bap-
tized. But Do Pop refused to put it off any longer
and, after a lengthy argument, the services began, with
the Rev. John Smith and Deacon Andrews officiating.
Then the crowd shuddered and drew in their breath—
for Do Pop had slipped from the hands of the Reverend
and the Deacon. The swift current caught him up and


RIVER GEORGE
31
carried him far down stream before he was able to swim
ashore.
When Do Pop came back, crying in a shrill voice:
"De debil tried to take me away from God, but I'se
done conquered him," the crowd received this with
something akin to worship and Do Pop became the hero
of Mount Zion.
But in the midst of their shouting, on the shore of
the river, a sudden silence fell on the outskirts of the
group as Aaron George entered it. He had been taking
a Sunday morning walk and his desire for companion-
ship and his interest in the people of whom he was a
part had led him to Do Pop's baptizing. He had origin-
ally intended to stay away because he had found, to his
surprise and pain, that he was not accepted now with
the same free spirit of comradeship which had marked
his relations with his friends before he went to college.
The eyes of the plantation were upon him. The whites
were curious and resentful, as they always were of a
Negro who tried to become educated, and the Negroes,
shy before his new speech and store clothes, were re-
serving judgment.
Aaron pushed his way through the crowd until he
stood beside Do Pop. He laid an arm across the other's
shoulder and smiled at him in friendship, while the
others looked on, wondering how this boy, who had
grown up among them, living their life and following
their customs, only to go away from them and be
changed by education, would now fit into a baptisin'.
"Ol' Devil sure couldn't ever keep you down, could
he Do Pop?" Aaron asked.
*


3*
RIVER GEORGE
Do Pop looked at him with shining, hysterical eyes.
"I tuk urn by de throat an' push um under!" he
cried. "Hallelujah! I been into de sea!"
The rest of the crowd, less abashed now, since Aaron
had broken the spell of restraint his presence had
brought upon them, were moaning their praises, and the
boy, eager to be a part of them and make them feel his
friendliness, took up the line from Do Pop's cry.
Throwing back his head he lifted his fine voice and
began to sing.
Halle-e-lu-jah,
And a halle-e-lujah!
A woman beside him cried, "Praise Jesus!" and the
whole crowd joined the song.
Halle-e-lujah, Lord,
I've been down into de seal
Yes I've been to de sea
An' I've done been tried,
Been down into de sea!
Yes I've done been tried
In Jesus' name,
Been down into de sea!
Halle-e-lujah!
And a halle-e-lujah!
Halle-e-lujah, Lord,
I've been down
Into de sea!
Aaron watched their faces as they sang, his strong
voice still leading them, and a great wave of affection
and pity swept over him. Here they were happy. Here
they could come, down by the river side, down into the


RIVER GEORGE
33
valley of their souls, and, lifting their voices to their
gentle God forget the fact that they were cheated,
year after year, of the fruit of their toil. To be sure
the worship of other gods stirred deeply in the souls
of many of them, gods which were older than the God
of the New Testament, gods which had been born in
the depths of Africa, fierce and unruly spirits who were
still placated in secret voodoo meetings. But here, by
the side of the flood-swollen river, they besought gentle
Jesus, and were like lovely children, their faces lifted
skyward in hope and praise. The song swelled on to
greater and more joyous heights.
Why don' yo' mourners
Rise an' tell—
Been down into de sea!
De glories of Emmanuel?
Been down into de sea!
Halle-e-lujah!
An' a halle-e-lujah!
Halle-e-lujah, Lord!
I been down into de sea!
The song was coming to a close now and here and
there the members of the group were talking to each
other. George knew that they were talking about him
and wondered what they were saying. But when he
heard one old woman saying in a low voice, "Dere's
one boy dat learnin' ain' spoilt," he smiled with pleasure.
He looked about at the friendly faces there and his
heart was light with happiness.
He knew that he had changed. He knew that, never
again so long as he lived, would he be the care-free


34
RIVER GEORGE
unthinking boy who had left these people three years
before to go to college, knew that he could not accept
their trials, the unfair treatment of the white owners
of the plantation, their pennilessness, the spiritual abuse
which was accorded them by the whites, with the calm
and silent resignation which they showed. But if they
would take him back as one of them, let him be a part
of their life, perhaps there would be a way in which
he could use whatever college had given him for them
as well as for himself.
He remembered poignantly the charge his father had
given from his death-bed. "You've got learning now,
the same as a white man. Take care yo' use it right!"
Could there be any better way for him to use it than
here, among his people, helping them?
The Reverend John Smith, eager to be home and dry
his wet feet and legs, pushed through the crowd and
extended his large wet hand to George.
"Glad tu see yuh heah, Boy," he beamed. "Yuh done
growed up a heap since yuh been off yonder tuh dat
big school. I hopes yuh git along all right' roun' heah."
"I hope so too," Aaron said. "Don't see any reason
why I shouldn't, do you?"
"I ain' sayin' dat yuh wont, but yuh gottuh be sho
tuh turn de lef cheek when dey hits yuh on de right
one, 'cause de white folks done changed 'roun' heah.
Dey done got purty bad since Mr. King done give up
dis place. So I reckkon yuh—" The minister paused
for a moment and then his deep religious zeal swayed
him . . . "Well yuh ain' got tuh pay no 'tention to dare
meanness. Bes' tuh love 'em dat's all. Jes' love 'em dats


RIVER GEORGE
35
hatin' yuh. Got tuh love 'em so much dat dey'll stop
hatin' yuh an' start tuh lovin' yuh."
Aaron watched the minister amble off down the road
and then, leaving the now thinning crowd, he turned
and followed a trail through the fields. Spring lay like
a great calm sea over the land, and, moved by the
beauty of the song he had just joined in singing, he felt
the benediction of its baptism. In the woods, heavily
laden vines of white roses filled the air with sweetness.
He climbed a little hill and paused to look at the
broad acres which stretched away before him, the land
which had nurtured his infancy and childhood, the land
to which he had come back, now, of necessity, but with
a calm feeling of belonging to it.
Farther than the eye could reach the green fields of
young cotton and corn stretched to beyond the horizon
—five thousand acres of greenness, dotted with the
little cabins of the Negroes who toiled and sweat that
these green plants bear shining white bolls of cotton and
gleaming yellow ears of corn. Corn and cotton, cotton
and corn, to go through the gin and the meal mill and
turn a bright yellow stream of gold into the purses of
the owners while the men and women of whose labor
the gold was fruit must content themselves with a bit
of meal for bread, a bit of sowbelly, and a little molasses
to sweeten their mouths. Share and share alike was the
spoken rule, half to the workers, and half to the owners
of the land, but not one in a hundred of the Negroes
could read or write, to say nothing of figuring, and
George knew (as they all did in their hearts) that they
were habitually cheated in their settlements.


RIVER GEORGE
He knew for instance that the old mule, Sally, whom
his father had cherished for years, had, for all these
years, figured in the accounts of the owner with Old
Henry George. Every year, when the settlement was
made there had been little or nothing coming to Henry,
and every year the bookkeeper had made the aging
man a small advance against the mule, so that Henry
had never really known whether the animal belonged
rightfully to himself or to the plantation.
He looked away across the sunshine flooded fields and
tried to put unpleasant speculation out of his mind but
the words of the minister hung heavily in his ears. He
was afraid that if the Reverend Smith and his like kept
waiting for love to sway the white owners to decency,
his people would all rot in their graves with waiting.


CHAPTER IV
THE next morning he left the house early to go to
the plantation store. He walked thoughtfully
down the path from the door, looking at the young
cotton plants which thrust their heads through the
ground up to the very door of the cottage. In the old
days of Mr. King's reign, there had been a little lawn
here, and just over there a little kitchen garden which
had been tended by his mother's loving and capable
hands, and had furnished enough fresh vegetables to
keep them well supplied. But since Mr. Tyler had taken
over the plantation he had forced all the Negroes to do
away with their gardens, planting every available foot
of soil to cotton or corn, and forcing them to buy all
of their food stuff at the plantation store, at prices
which included exhorbitant profits.
Approaching the store he saw Frank Harding, son
of one of the white overseers, lolling in the shade. At
his feet a hound dog lifted himself, grunted a friendly
greeting, and thumped his tail against the ground. Be-
hind them the Negro porter sat supported by an oak
tree, his head thrown back against the broad trunk,
sleeping peacefully.
It was the first time Aaron had happened to en-
counter the white boy since returning from college and
he was genuinely glad to see him. Although Frank
37


38 RIVER GEORGE
was several years younger than he, they had been play-
mates and close friends as children. Aaron went forward
eagerly, his hand extended.
"Hello, Frank," he grinned.
The other looked insolently at the extended hand
and made no move to take it.
"What kind o' damned way is this y'got of speaking
to a white man?" he asked. "I'm Mister Harding to you,
and don't you forget it!" Rising, he deliberately turned
his back to George and walked away, followed by the
dejected form of the hound. But the latter, more
friendly than his master, paused a moment to push an
inviting nose under Aaron's hand, asking for an affec-
tionate pat.
Aaron stood silently for a moment, looking down
at the hand which the white boy had refused and the
hound accepted. Then, as he had done in the wagon
beside his uncle Amity, he tensed and flexed the fingers,
but there was a spasmodic movement in them now.
These powerful hands, instinctively extended in friend-
liness to all the world—what if the whole world refused
them? Perhaps there was something other than friend-
liness in them
He turned and went silently into the store where
he bought a pair of overalls and a pair of work shoes,
to be charged against his account and deducted from
the value of his cotton crop when it was ginned. He
noticed the coldness and unfriendliness of the white
clerks, who showed clearly their resentment of a Negro
who had the temerity to appear among them with an
education.


4°
RIVER GEORGE
Here was his place. He would at least find out what
could be done, what could be expected. He would have
a talk with the agent. He turned to his work. There
were some holes to be repaired in the floor of the cotton
house.
He climbed into the building with a bundle of
shingles and boards on his back. He squeezed into the
door with his load and dropped it on the floor. Great
beads of sweat rolled down his face. He began to repair
the broken places, finally threw the hammer in a corner,
moved over to the door and stood there for a moment
mopping his face with a red bandanna, when suddenly
he spied the plantation agent riding toward him. This
was the chance, he thought, to talk. White folks talked
more freely when others were not around.
"Howdy, boy?" The agent's voice was full of con-
descension.
"How are you, Mr. Turner?" replied George. He
spoke courteously though inwardly he felt the quick
thrust of irritation and annoyance he always felt when
white men addressed him this way.
"If this weather keeps up we gonna have a good crop
this year, if the dam' bollweevil don't eat it up."
The agent pulled out a cob pipe and dipped its bowl
into a package of cut plug tobacco, lighted it and
puffed lazily.
George gazed at him thoughtfully and began to toy
with a button on his shirt, pushing it in and out the
buttonhole, and when he did speak, it was very gravely.
"Mr. Turner, I was just thinking about you. Just
thinking about talking to you about the way things are


RIVER GEORGE 41
around here now. Everything's so changed, and—
and"
"What about it then?" Turner eyed him suspiciously.
"It's kinda hard to tell you. Wouldn't like to be mis-
understood." He paused.
"Misunderstood about what?" The agent was growing
impatient now.
"Just this. The croppers never seem able to get any-
where. No matter how hard they work or how good
a crop they make, they never seem to have anything
coming to them in the Fall. And now they can't even
have their gardens. Couldn't you say something to Mr.
Tyler to make things a bit easier for us?"
For a long moment the agent looked at George in
surprised and angry silence. Then he answered.
"You talk pretty damn smart to be a nigger. What
the hell are you driving at anyway?"
George suffered for a moment under the agent's cold
stare. Then he went on, stammering a little as he spoke,
"Well, I—I mean just this, Mr. Turner. Each family on
the place raises from one to twenty-five bales of cotton
every year, but when settlement time rolls around, even
though they have purchased only a little side-meat and
corn meal with an occasional sack of flour at the plan-
tation store, the book-keeper has just about the same
reply for every one, 'You get nothing this year'—or
'in the hole fifty or a hundred dollars.' I was just won-
dering if something couldn't be done about it."
"I figured from the first day you came back you ain't
got no business around here." Turner's voice was that
of an accusing enemy. "You talk too much about things


RIVER GEORGE
43
the world but give me Jesus.' They have the right to
their lodges so long as they say nothing in them but a
lot of mystic nonsense. They have the right to their
homes, but the white man can invade them and get
away with it. Why won't you admit it's the way it is?
You were the agent of Mr. King before he sold the
place and moved to Indian Mound. He saw it then. It's
true that he kept the prices of food stuffs high and
charged thirty per cent interest, but there was always
something coming to those who made enough cotton
to more than settle their accounts."
For a moment the agent stared at him without
speaking. Never had this white man heard a Negro talk
so fearlessly, or say so frankly what was in his mind.
Had Aaron been one of the typical field Negroes, trying
to express those same thoughts in the halting, ungram-
matical speech of the illiterate, Turner would have
known what to do. He would have knocked him down
and gone away, knowing that the matter would end
there. But he was confused by Aaron's clear, direct
statement. His instinctive reactions were thwarted by
this speech which came from a coal black face yet
sounded like the talk of a white man. When he spoke it
was in the disgruntled tone of a man who is losing an
argument yet has might on his side.
"Well, it's different now," he said. "The man who
bets five hundred dollars on two mules that might die
and a nigger who might loaf on the job, against the
bollweevil and drought, got a slim chance of making
much money."
For a long time the farm boss sat on his horse, puffing


44
RIVER GEORGE
his pipe, and was silent. Aaron could see that some con-
flict was seething in his mind, and a spot of fear settled
down over his own. Had he talked too much? Suppose
the rider were to spread a report among other white
people of the community that Aaron was trying to
organize the Negroes against them? If they felt it
strongly enough, Aaron knew what would happen.
There would be a hundred men with rifles around his
cabin before midnight. There was some chance to make
an individual listen to reason, but there was no weapon
against a mob, filled with rage and hatred. At last the
agent spoke as if he had made a decision. He removed
his pipe from his mouth and gazed sternly down at
Aaron, a deep, red flush covering his face.
"See here," he ejaculated, and this time his tone was
kindlier, though still gruff, "Your education has just
about made a fool of you and your fool notions are
apt to get you into more trouble than you'll ever get
out of. You need horse whipping right now. But your
old dad, Uncle Henry was my friend. He lived here
on this place most of his life. He was a good nigger
and tended to his own business, and you better thank
God that you're his boy, because that's the only reason
I'm letting you off. I'm not going to make any trouble
for you this time. I don't give a damn about you;
it's your old dad I'm thinking about. But if you plan
to live here you'd better keep your mouth shut." He
paused, and then added, "The banks and landowners
done put too much money out on these crops to stand
for you running around here shooting off your mouth
and trying to ruin it for them. If they find out you


RIVER GEORGE 45
got such damn notions in your head they'll smash you
in no time."
He wheeled his horse and, without looking back,
galloped off down the turn row. Aaron watched him
ride away, a strange hot fear playing up and down his
spine, and a bitter sense of failure clouding his mind.
He heard a step at the corner of the cotton house and,
turning, saw Do Pop coming toward him, shaking his
head sadly, his hands trembling slightly.
"Hello, Do Pop," Aaron said, but his voice was
dispirited. "Where'd you come from?"
"Yuh gwine fool 'roun' heah an' git yuhself kilt,
talkin' to white folks like dat," Do Pop whined. "I
heah'd whut yuh said. Yuh goin' fin' yuhself a heap o'
trouble, Boy."
"Where were you?" Aaron said.
"Down in de ol' fiel' pullin' corn. I was jus' comin'
up when I heahed yuh talkin' trouble. I didn' want no
part o' dat, so I staid back of de cotton house and
listened. Yuh gotta be careful, Boy."
"Well, something's got to be done," Aaron answered.
"We can't go on like this."
"Whut kin you do, when you is wukin' fuh de white
folks? You gotta do whut dey say do."
"But, Do Pop," Aaron protested, "Are you satisfied
when you get nothing for what you do and pay double
for what you get? Look at Uncle Am. He made twelve
bales of cotton last year. All he bought from the plan-
tation store was about sixty dollars worth. He had an
additional cash allowance of sixty dollars, yet his twelve
bales of cotton were taken away from him, together


46
RIVER GEORGE
with two hundred and fifty bushels of corn and when
he went up for settlement, he was told that he came out
fifty dollars in the hole."
"Well," said Do Pop, shaking his head, "I ain' made
nuthin' an' I don' speck nuthin' tell I dies. I jes' wu'k
and pray. De preachah say we gwine get ouah's up
yonduh, where dere ain' no wu'k, wheah de streets is
all gold an' dey feeds you wid milk an' honey."
"You satisfied to wait till you die for everything?"
Aaron asked angrily.
"Yeh, but de white folks always take care ob de
niggers," Do Pop said. "Dem yeahs when de flood waters
come down de river yonder and cover dis heah delta,
and de white folks is losin' all dey money, de niggers is
still eatin' an' sleepin'."
"Yes, but eating and sleeping isn't enough," Aaron
said slowly.
"All de nigger gwine git dis side o' ressurection, an'
ain' no use makin' trouble tryin' to git more."
Do Pop spat and shuffled off while Aaron watched
him. So even Do Pop, the rollicking, chicken-stealing,
carefree, comfort-loving one, would be against him!


RIVER GEORGE
49
Lightning always had plenty of whiskey on hand at
these Saturday night breakdowns. He ordered it from a
shipping house across the River. There was moonshine,
too. It came from Lightning's still, which no revenue
man had ever been able to find in its nest deep down
in the swamp. The still smoke curled up above the
tree tops, but the revenue men passing along the big
road couldn't see it. The faint hissing sound of water
boiling in the big vat was like the whisper of the pines;
and the stuff that Lightning carried in big cans to his
cabin on Saturday night had the power of a mule's
hind leg.
Aaron rose slowly to his feet and looked through the
door where his mother was giving the kitchen a final
"reddin' up" for the night.
"Think I'll go down to Lightnin's, Ma," he called.
"Mind yuh don't get in no trouble," she called back
to him. Plainly, she too had worried about him, since
he had returned from college with a new speech and
new ideas.
He walked slowly down the road and turned in
toward the squat double shanty and past it to the barn
where lanterns hung from the wall and half a dozen
Negroes were shooting craps on a plain pine table. An
authoritative voice cut through the bantering talk of
the players as they crooned to their dice.
"Quit chokin' dem dice, nigger! Let 'em roll!"
A tall, black, man with a bullet shaped head and
dancing eyes, was Lightning, with a voice which spoke
authoritatively.
Aaron turned from the barn and surveyed the


5O
RIVER GEORGE
boisterous crowd in the yard. They stood in ever-shift-
ing groups, shouting back and forth at each other, the
moonlight falling fitfully on their faces through the
trees. Their voices already showed the effects of Light-
ning's raw liquor.
Most of them had lived for generations on Beaver
Dam. They knew but little of the customs and habits
of the outside world. During the six week-days they
rose at dawn and made their way to the fields. They
hitched their mules to the plows and moved slowly up
and down, row after row, pushing their plow-shares
deep and turning up the fresh, brown earth, or laboring
with the hoe, chopping up the rank weeds that grew
much faster than the cotton. Sometimes they sang.
Often they would lift their faces, dripping with sweat
and look up at the sun, as if pleading with it to have
mercy on them, but at all times their movements were
in perfect rhythm because when the songs died on their
lips, they echoed in their hearts. It was their way of
taking the pain from their labors.
When the big bell at the plantation store clanged
for the noon hour, those whose fields were not far
away returned to their cabins for lunch, but those who
worked in distant fields carried their lunches with them
and spent the noon hour lunching and dozing under
the nearest tree, until the measured beats of the plan-
tation bell called them back to their labors.
When the sun went down and twilight crept over
the silent fields, they trudged wearily down the road
to their cabins, where man and beast found relief from
toil and heat, but not from the swarms of mosquitoes


RIVER GEORGE 51
that infested the night. Even the smoke from rags
which they burned in old tin pans, never drove the
insects completely away, but the Negroes had more
persistence than the mosquitoes. They would sit out
in the yard in the black night grateful for the pleasant
breeze which swept across them from over Beaver Dam.
In July the crops were laid by. In September, the
cotton picking began. During the short winter months
they sat around their fires, roasted potatoes or gathered
at one of the many cabins, buried deep in the cotton
fields, to laugh and talk.
On Saturday night they just had to play; whiskey
was cheap at the breakdowns. The music was smoking,
red-hot. Dancing couples pressed their throbbing bodies
close together and it was easy to find someone to join
one in light-hearted sin. But those who lived in the fear
of God waited for their happiness until Sunday when
they went to Church and prayed to their God to wash
them "whiter than snow." And some managed to
squeeze a double portion of joy from every weekend
by sinning at the breakdowns on Saturday night, and
praying for forgiveness at Church on Sunday morning.
A sudden shout interrupted Aaron's revery.
"Who gwine call de fighuhs?"
"Taint nobody kin call em lack Vince. "When dat
nigger cries, 'han's up, circle lef, yuh kin heah him a
mile away."
"Well I'se gwine dance on de head," Dave Johnson
was none too pleased with Vince's popularity.
"Damn ef dats so," another shouted. "Fse gwine


5*
RIVER GEORGE
dance on de head, an' Dave Johnson gwine dance on
de foot."
"I be damned ef yuh do."
"I be damned ef I don't."
There was a moment's silence in which Aaron edged
closer to the dispute. Dave Johnson was not accepting
defeat graciously.
"Look er heah, Vince, whar all dese putty gals com'
fum dats round heah tuhnight?" Dave's eyes followed
two girls who passed close by.
"Some uv dem come fum yonder at Los' Lake, an'
some uv dem is town gals out tuh catch suckers fum de
section gang an' de levy camp. But de puttiest ones
com' fum round heah. I knows all dem—" he chuckled
softly—"cause I done kept com'any wid more uv dem
den anybody on de Beaver Dam."
"Look out dar, som'body gwiner heah yuh tuhreckly.
You don't think yuh don' kept com'any wid more
den I is, do yuh, Vince?"
"Sho, I is. I don' tol' yuh."
"Well, I'se gwiner show yuh. Yuh jest stan' rat whar
yuh is an' eveyone dat pass dat yuh done kep' com'any
wid, yuh jest clear up youh throat, an' I'se gwiner do
de same."
There was a moment of waiting and then three girls
came by giggling.
Vince shot a swift glance in their direction, then
cleared his throat three times.
"Which one?" Dave asked glaring at him.
"All three uv dem," a broad grin spread over Dave's
face.


RIVER GEORGE 53
"But de one in de middle is my steady."
"Caint help dat."
Dave lifted his arm. A razor flashed in the moon-
light. The crowd began to scatter. Aaron pressed for-
ward; his fingers grasped at the uplifted arm, gripping
it about the wrist. The razor fell to the ground.
"Why be so quick with your razor?" asked Aaron.
"Vince has done nothing to you. I heard the argument.
You know he didn't mean what he said about your
girl. He was smiling all the time."
The two men glared at each other across Aaron's
separating arm, saying nothing. Aaron smiled imperson-
ally at both of them.
"Fooling, weren't you, Vince?"
For a moment Vince's eyes shot fire, then they
dropped and he looked at the toe of his right foot as
it dug restlessly into the ground.
"Sure," he said, "I was jes' foolin'."
Aaron dropped Johnson's arm and they all turned to
the house from which the music of a banjo, guitar, and
mouth organ issued, punctuated by the beating of a
drum. The band had struck up the first dance. As if
one body the crowd surged to the door and Aaron went
with them, carried along as much by the great shout
which had arisen from them as by their physical move-
ment.
A little man with a shining black face was singing.
'Sense me, people, I don' mean no harm,
I jes' dropped by to sing yuh a song.
Tell my Ma,
Tell my Pa,


54
RIVER GEORGE
/ got good potatoes an' I raise dem all mahself;
Tell everybody in the neighborhood,
1 got good potatoes, and not green tomatoes,
An' I raise dem all myself!
As his song ended the music of the band reached a
stronger tempo. A dozen girls, dressed in cotton skirts
that clung closely to their supple bodies, sashayed out
on the floor, followed closely by their male companions.
They reached the center of the room and then the
men slow-dragged away, while the girls danced in
place, their arms thrown wide apart; they stomped their
feet and moved their undulating hips, augur-like in
rhythm with the music.
One of the girls, whose graceful, seductive move-
ments had caught Aaron's eye at once, suddenly saw
him watching her and, with a sudden fling of her body
she threw herself more furiously than ever into the
dance, her eyes flashing at him. She was tree-top tall.
Her long legs made Aaron think of the beauty of a
race horse. Her hair curled darkly about the deep ivory
of her face. Her lips were soft; her eyes wide; her
forehead high.
"Who is she?" Aaron asked Lightning, who had left
the crap game in the barn now that the dancing had
begun.
"Who yuh mean? Dat long tall yallah gal shakin'
it like a cannon ball over dar?"
"Yeah," Aaron said. "The swell looking one."
Lightning looked at him closely.
"Name's Ada Green," he said slowly. "Lives down
de road not far from heah. Aint nevah seen her at


RIVER GEORGE
55
one of dese breakdowns befoah. She jes' stay to herself
all de time. Folks say she too yallah to be niggah 'oman
an' she got too much niggah in huh to be white folks,
so she aint got no race 'tall, 'peah lak to me. The
women folks is whisperin' mighty bad things 'bout
huh."
Aaron was gazing so intently at the girl when she
danced close by again, that he paid no attention to
Lightning's innuendo. He watched her and felt the
insistent call of her deep, soft eyes and voluptuous body.
She had apparently come alone. He meant to see that
she did not go home alone.
The little bald man was singing again.
Come along, little chillun, come along,
While de moon am shinin' bright,
Get on bo'd down de riveh flow,
Gonna raise a ruckus tonight.
Some folks say dat a preacher won't steal,
But I caught three in mah co'n fed'.
One had a bushel, one had a peck,
One had a co'n fiel' 'roun' his neck.
If you want to git to heaven, Ah tell you what to do,
Jes' grease yuh foot in mutton stew,
If de debbil get at yuh, wid a slippery han'
Jes' ooze right ovah in de Promised Lan'.
The song stopped and there was a momentary lull in
the dancing. Aaron, trying to appear nonchalant and
not too much in a hurry, worked his way through the
crowd toward the spot where he had last seen Ada, but,
once on the other side of the room, he found that she
was nowhere to be seen. It was strange, he thought, that
it should suddenly matter. He had never seen the girl
I


RIVER GEORGE
before, and, up to the moment when he had seen her,
girls had been the last thing on his mind. He had been
thinking too much of his own problems and the ques-
tions which his argument with the riding boss had
created to be worrying about the fact that there was
no woman in his life. Now though, as he looked about
him and saw no sign of her, he felt a quick sense of
loss, a feeling of depression, as if something precious
which he had found, something on which he had
counted, had been taken from him.
He quickly pushed through the crowd again toward
the door of the shanty and hurried out. For a moment
his eyes, accustomed to the light on the dance floor,
could distinguish nothing, then he saw her, winding
her way in the bright moonlight past the wagons and
buggies which stood in the yard. As he watched she
sat in the grass and took off her shoes and stockings.
Quickly he left the door and hurried toward her, reach-
ing her just as she stood up and set her bare feet into
the dust of the road.
"You aren't going home so early are you?" he asked.
She looked up at him in surprise, and then looked
back toward the house as if afraid of watching eyes.
Without speaking, she hurried her pace, but this only
further increased Aaron's feeling that he must be with
her, must know her, must penetrate the deep warmth
that lay behind those eyes.
"Mind if I walk with you?" he asked.
"I only live fo' houses down," she said non-commit-
ally.
Her voice was rich and deep and filled his ears with


RIVER GEORGE
57
music. Without asking further for consent, he fell into
step beside her.
"I could carry your shoes," he said, and, taking them
from her, put them under his arm.
She did not answer him at once, but again looked at
him with that slow half fearful surprise he had seen in
her face when he had first come up to her.
"I guess dat's de fust time in my life anybody
wanted tuh carry sumpin fo' me," she said at last slowly.
For a long way they walked in silence. As much as
he had wanted to see her and become acquainted with
her, Aaron found himself made suddenly shy by her
direct simplicity. Her cabin was close upon them when
he spoke again.
"My name's Aaron George," he said.
"Mine's Ada Green," she said. "Ain' seen you before."
"I haven't seen you either," Aaron answered. "I
thought I knew everyone around here. You been here
long?"
"'Bout three years," Ada answered. There was sadness
in her voice as if the memory of those years hurt her.
"But I don't go 'roun' much." Her words ended
abruptly, harshly, as though she didn't want to talk
about it.
They had reached the yard of her cottage now and
he handed her the shoes and stockings.
"I t'anks yuh for comin' home wid me," she said
shyly, and before he could answer, she ran into the
house.
For a moment Aaron watched the door behind which
she had disappeared. Then he turned slowly and started


58 RIVER GEORGE
the walk back down the road, all sense of weariness
and discouragement gone. His step was light and his
lips parted in a happy grin. From the breakdown he
could hear the little bald-headed man singing another
song.
Take yo' fingahs off her,
Don' yuh dare tub touch her,
Yuh know dat she belongs to me.
Way down youndab in de Delta land,
I got a gal dat's sweet as she kin be.
Take yo' fingahs off it,
Don' yuh dare to touch it,
Yuh know dat it belongs tub me—
I said
Yuh know dat it belongs tub me!


CHAPTER VI
AARON woke the next morning with an unex-
- plained feeling of well-being and eagerness. Al-
though it was Sunday and he would do no work that
day, the habit of early rising which he had formed
during his month on the Beaver Dam plantation, was
too strong to be evaded. He rose, stretched himself and
started to the kitchen, vaguely thinking that something
fine was about to happen, something which would make
him happy, but he couldn't remember what it was.
Then he thought of Ada and smiled with pleasure while
a strange little tremor ran through his body.
He went to the door and looked across the fields to
the east, where the upper rim of the sun shone red above
the cottonwood trees. He drew a deep breath, holding it
for a moment as if to preserve the perfume of jasmine
blossoms which came to him through the dew-sweet
morning air. His eyes seemed to be looking through
the cottonwoods, focussing on a point beyond them
where Ada's cabin stood, securely hidden from the eyes
of his body, but vivid to his eager mind. Was she up
yet, he wondered? Was she bending over the stove in
her little kitchen, as his mother was behind him? Was
she walking from stove to table now maybe, on her
pretty little bare feet, saving her shoes for the Saturday
night breakdowns?
59


60 RIVER GEORGE
He laughed, a low musical note in his throat. His
mother turned in surprise from the stove.
"What yoll laughing 'bout so early dis mornin'?" she
asked pleasantly.
"Don' know, Ma. Because I'm happy I guess." He
spoke in the easy, slurred accents of his childhood, as
though nothing had come between that and this day
to put newly used, unaccustomed consonants into his
words. "I was thinkin' how nice the poplars look and
how sweet the jasmine smells."
His mother looked at him closely, her keen eyes and
understanding heart sensing that a change had come
over him since the day before.
"Yo hab a good time at de breakdown las' night?"
she asked.
"Sure I did!" he laughed easily. "People there from
all 'round. Mus' been most a hundred, I guess."
"Yo' ain' been drink dat Lightnin's likker, is yo?"
Her voice was worried.
George laughed.
"No Ma. Didn' tech a drap. Yo got no cause to
worry."
"Lots a 'omans dere?" Hannah pursued the matter
relentlessly and Aaron, suddenly on his guard found
himself speaking as he had done at college.
"Oh sure, Ma, quite a few. Why do you ask?"
"Jes' wonderin', dat's all. Who was dey?"
"Oh you know. The regular crowd, I suppose. The
Brittain girls were there and that Sue who used to work
in Mr. King's house when she was a little girl. Remem-
ber her? She's grown up now. And there were some


RIVER GEORGE
61
girls from Lost Lake and some from Holly Rock. And
there was a girl named Ada Green. You know her?"
He looked down and stopped, embarrassed at the
enthusiasm in his own voice. But he had said enough
for the sharp ears of Hannah. So that was it! She
trudged heavily back to the stove to take up the smok-
ing piece of sow-belly, while deep in her throat rose a
wordless rumbling of discontent and annoyance. It was
like far distant thunder, rising, threatening, but it did
not form itself into words until Aaron had spoken.
"What's the matter, Ma? What you making such
noises for? Have I said anything wrong?"
"Yo bes' stay away fum dat Ada," she growled, and
clamped her mouth tight shut again, while she poured
a cup of coffee for him, the vehemence in her mind
reflecting itself in a lurch of the tin coffee pot which
spilled a steaming blob of liquid onto the table.
"Why, Ma? She was awfully nice. I couldn't see
anything wrong with her."
"Yo heahed me!" She slashed savagely into a pan of
corn bread, digging out huge chunks to set beside his
coffee and sow-belly. "I ain' scandalizin' no 'oman's
name, not even ef it's befoah my own son. But yo bes'
stay 'way fum dat Ada. Dat's all dey is to dat, Son."
Try as he would he could get no more out of her. All
day he wondered about it, as he walked about the sixty
acres which had been allotted to his father to farm,
planning his next week's work. He had taken a course
in soil chemistry in college and now he was applying
what he had learned. Even the short month in which
he had worked showed the results of the fertilization


RIVER GEORGE
he had given the land. And the swampy ten acres, which
had never grown anything but weeds before, blossomed
now as a result of his ditching and draining. It had
always been regarded as waste land before, fit only for
rabbit hunting during the short winter, but Aaron had
learned that swamp bottoms were the richest land in
the world. Once you controlled the water, and limed
the land to neutralize its acids, you could draw on the
rich plant food which countless years of rotting vegeta-
tion had left behind and grow finer crops than any-
where on the uplands.
That evening, as he sat at the table with his mother
over their supper he was quiet and thoughtful.
"Somethin' troublin' yo Aaron?" his mother asked.
"No Ma," he said. "That is, it aint trouble yet. I was
thinking that we'd probably have a fine crop this year."
"Spec' we will, son," she said warmly. "Sho ought to
de way yo is workin'. Sometimes it peahs to me like yo
tryin' work yo'self into de grave."
"I've been thinking," he said slowly. "It doesn't seem
to matter how much or how little work you do here, if
all I hear is so. You come out about the same at the
end of the year. But I was thinking that maybe if we
got a specially good crop—surely we'd get a little
money on it. And if we saved, maybe in a year or so we
could get a little farm of our own across the dam where
we wouldn't have to give everything we make to the
white men at the store."
His mother looked up, startled by the intensity in
his voice as he spoke of the owners.


RIVER GEORGE
"Don' yo go raisin' ruckus wid dem white folks,
boy," she said. "Won't get nobody nuthin' but trouble."
"Don't worry, Ma," he said smiling, and rose from
his chair.
To the east the poplar trees were straight, finely
etched lines against the grey of evening, the faintest
tinge of red at their tops showing that the sky in the
west still glowed with the fire of the sun, which had
already set. Aaron looked at them for a moment, gazing
through and beyond them, as he had done when first
he had set his foot in this doorway that morning.
"Think I'll walk a bit, Ma," he said quietly.
"Wha yo goin' Aaron?"
"Just walk down the road a piece. I might pull up
at Lightnin's a minute."
His mother sighed. She knew full well that Light-
ning's would not be his ultimate destination, but he
was a man now, and the head of this house, and it
would not be seemly for her to tell him where he might
and might not go.
"Min' you fin' no trouble," she called after him
sharply.
He walked slowly along the road to the east until
the poplar trees were between him and the house, and
then, almost without any consciousness of it, he quick-
ened his pace.
As he came abreast of Lightning's shanty, he saw the
older man sitting on the porch smoking. As Aaron
came nearer the other's head raised in friendly greeting.
"Evenin' Boy," he called.
"Evenin' Nigger!" It was strange how these two


64 RIVER GEORGE
forms of address, so irritating in the mouths of white
folks should express simple friendliness when two
Negroes used them to pass the time of day.
"Whut yoll set yo' foot in de road fo' dis time o'
night?" Lightning asked.
"Just going down the road a piece," Aaron answered.
"Ain' goin' down along dat Ada Green, is yuh?"
Lightning lowered his voice slightly. "'Cause if yo' is
yoll'd be bettah smokin' heah on my porch."
It was the sort of thing that might be spoken in jest,
but there was no humor in Lightning's voice. Aaron
wondered about it, but dismissed it with a friendly
laugh and went on. What did they mean? There was
something Lightning had said the night before, and
the things his mother had said this morning. But he was
too eager now to spend any energy on wondering long
about innuendoes.
As he came within sight of Ada's cottage, he saw her
sitting in front of her door, gazing off into the distance.
But before he had reached her she had risen and, with-
out a backward look, walked hurriedly down the road
away from him. He followed eagerly, wondering
whether she had seen him, but she walked so fast that
he could not catch up with her until after they had
turned a bend in the road, and Ada, leaving the road
itself, had found her way along the side of a little creek
and well into a grove of trees which grew on both sides
it. Here her pace slowed and Aaron, breathing heavily
from the last hundred yards which he had covered in
a run, overtook her.


66
RIVER GEORGE
thrown back against her hands, her breasts high and
close against the light fabric of her dress, her head
back, her lips parted.
Aaron looked and was lost in the surge of blind desire
which swept over him. To touch her! To let the palms
of his hands rest on the smooth flesh of her legs, the
rounded softness of her breasts! She felt his desire in the
tenseness of his body beside her, heard it in the labored
breath which struggled through his lips, and looked
at him with direct, challenging eyes.
"Whut foh yuh look like dat?" she asked. "Whut
yuh wan' say?"
For answer he caught her into his arms, wordlessly,
and so fiercely that she was swept from the slight
support her hands gave her. Together they fell full
length to the ground, his arms tight about her, his
chest crushed against her firm breasts. Slowly, pressing
closely against his body, her arms encircled him and,
when his mouth sought hers, her hot, savage, kiss was
ready for him, her teeth stabbing hard against his lips.


CHAPTER VII
HANNAH GEORGE wrung the last sock out with
powerful wrists and flung it into the market
basket which stood beside her, mumbling incoherent
sounds. A soft-voiced inquisitive hen, who know from
life-long observation that she would get only gentleness
from this animate mountain of black flesh, slowly
walked to the basket, clucking softly to the half-grown
brood of chicks which followed her. Craning her neck
over the edge of the basket she pecked tentatively at
the wet clothes, and looked questioningly up at Hannah,
who turned, with waving, outspread hands.
"Git 'long, fool," the woman cried. "Cain' eat ole'
cloe's. Yuh'll be peckin' holes in dem turreckly!"
Surprised at the suddenness of the admonition, the
hen fluttered away and then, regaining her dignity,
clucked briskly to her family in a tone of haughty in-
jury, and stalked off.
Hannah lifted her apron absently and dried her
hands on it, looking out over the sun-drenched fields
to where Aaron was hoeing corn, hoeing like mad,
yet with a song on his lips.
"Lawd hab mussy," she said and, groaning, stooped
to lift her basket and carry it to the clothes line.
A month before, when she did her washing, her
voice was raised as happily in song as Aaron's own was
67


68 RIVER GEORGE
now and as hers had always been on every bright
Monday when she stood under the burning southern sun
and felt the joyous stimulation of hot soapsuds and
wet clothes on her hands. But for the past three weeks
doom had seemed to her to be settling over all of them.
It had been three weeks since Aaron had gone to
the Saturday night breakdown at Lightning's, three
weeks since he had lost that thoughtful, detached air
which he had brought back from college with him, and
had gone about with a smile for everybody and an
almost constant song issuing from his throat, three
weeks since his habit of evening walks had settled
suddenly upon him, since he had begun saying, directly
after he had finished his supper, "Think I'll walk a
piece, Ma," and had left the house to come in at mid-
night or later.
"Reckon I'll hab tuh tell um," she sighed. "Ain'
nevah so long's I live scandalize no 'oman's name befo',
nieder interfered wid no man's business, but dis trouble
too heavy foh to carry wid my mout' shet. Ef I seed a
rattle snake comin' up behin' um I'd tell um. I got tuh
tell um dis."
She hung the clothes over the line and went on into
the house, stepping carefully to avoid the little chickens
whose mother she had so recently driven from the
clothes basket. The old hen was now peacefully strut-
ting about the kitchen floor, clucking to her family and
pecking here and there at any small object which looked
interesting.
"Git 'long out a heah, fool," Hannah shouted. "Yuh


RIVER GEORGE
69
oughta know bettah dan come in my kitchen when
I'se studyin' about somethin'."
But the old hen, wise in the ways of her mistress,
only shied a little to one side and took up her futile
search again, this time behind the stove.
When supper time came she thought she was ready
for him. But he came in so eagerly, seeming so fresh
even after the hard day's work he had done, that she
had not the heart to spoil his happiness just yet. She
would let him have one more evening in his suddenly
found paradise before she would shatter it with her
words and, she hoped, save him. At any rate he would
be in no danger tonight.
He finished his supper quickly, eagerly, and rose.
"Guess I'll walk up the road a piece, Ma," he said.
"Min' yo fin' no trouble, son," she said.
He swung up the road with long easy steps, the
eager happiness in his heart finding voice in a low
humming melody. It was early yet. It would be an hour
before dark, an hour before the time when he was to
meet Ada at the spot of green grass in the woods beside
the creek. She had never asked him to come to her
cabin, and once when he had done so without asking,
she had hurriedly led him away and told him not to
come there again.
He had wondered about that, but stilled the insistent
questioning in his mind by remembering her explana-
tion—that the cabin was shabby and she did not want
him to see it until she was able to pretty it for him.
Later, some time, he was to come. He thought of this
now and wondered whether, if he were to go there early


70
RIVER GEORGE
like this, maybe just before she was ready to go to meet
him in the woods, she would be angry. But the doubt
in his mind withheld him. Perhaps there was some other
reason—some better reason than that—some worse rea-
son. He would stop and talk with Lightning awhile,
waiting for the interminable minutes to pass until he
could meet her in the woods. He had taken a liking to
this wild-hearted man with the dramatic reputation.
There was something dauntless and steadfast about him,
something which made Aaron feel as though he were
a man to be depended upon.
He found him, as usual, smoking a cob pipe before
his door, and sat beside him. They talked of the crops,
of the weather, of the fight which had well-nigh dis-
rupted the last Saturday night breakdown when Vince
and Dave Johnson had come together in earnest at last.
Though their razors had been taken away from them,
Johnson was still nursing a jaw which was badly swollen
at the point where Vince's fist had hit it. Then a
moment of silence fell between them, broken at last
by Lightning whose remark seemed irrelevant.
"Heah Fred Smith comin' back tomorrow," he said
slowly.
"Didn' know he'd been away," Aaron answered with-
out interest. Smith was the postmaster at Heathman, a
mean-faced, mean souled white man who was avoided as
much as possible by all the Negroes.
"Been ovah at Sugah Creek 'bout a mont'," Light-
ning said slowly. "Ef he nevah come back it'd be too
soon."
Aaron was silent. With the rest of the Negroes he


RIVER GEORGE
7*
shared dislike for Smith but, following the philosophy
of his race he could see nothing to worry about so long
as he stayed away from the white man.
Lightning looked at him narrowly.
"Mought be yuh won' be goin' to see Ada so much
after tomorrow?" he asked slowly.
"Why not?" Aaron asked quickly. He had never said
that he was going to see Ada, but it was obvious that
Lightning would know.
"Mought be healthieh ef yuh stayed 'way fum dare
aftah Fred Smith come back, dat's all."
Aaron looked up quickly, pain, surprise, and anger
struggling in his face. Within him a cold leaden weight
seemed to fill his chest and choke him. He could not
mistake Lightning's friendly intent, could not possibly
misunderstand that Lightning was trying to help him,
not wanting to hurt him, and, regardless of the repu-
tation the other had for violence, Aaron had found him
kindly at heart, never eager to pick a quarrel. For a
moment he sat there in silence then, rising without a
word, he walked rapidly away toward the creek and
the place of his rendezvous with Ada.
She was waiting there when he came, stretched out
on the grass, her head pillowed in her back-flung hands,
staring silently up into the branches of the trees, etched
like lace against the star-lit sky. So quietly did he come
that she did not hear him and, for a moment he paused,
not a dozen feet away from her and gazed with tortured
desire at the slim graceful lines of her body against the
grass, and the dark cloud of her hair.
Her body was without motion, quiet with the com-


72 RIVER GEORGE
plctely abandoned relaxation of a wild thing, all anima-
tion gone for the moment. Yet in its perfect repose lay
the implications of swiftness. Even at this distance from
her he could feel, as though it were an actual, touchable
aura which surrounded her, the vitality which his hands
and lips could stimulate, the swift surging of life within
her which leaped to meet his love and desire for her. He
felt the tug of her being at his vitals. His hands burned
with their need to touch her, his arms were heavy with
their desire to embrace her. But through his heart
rushed the swift blade of Lightning's words. Could it
be that she had been giving this loveliness, this surging
vitality which belonged to him, to a white man, to one
whose return made her totally lost to him? One of his
own kind he could fight, but if she belonged to a
white man, he knew that their love was madness.
With a tortured cry he stumbled over the little
stretch of grass between them and sank weakly to the
ground beside her, burying his face in the fragrant
warmth of her breast, and gained a momentary peace
as he felt the strong immediate response of her arms,
holding him savagely close to her as though against a
force which was trying to pull him away.
She spoke no word for a moment, but shifted her
position slightly so that, without letting his head leave
her she could hold her own above it, kissing the back
of his neck in a gesture which was all gentleness and
all passion. When she spoke it was in a low throaty
murmur which caressed and comforted him.
"Yuh lak tuh sca' me comin' up sudden lak dat,"
she said. "Whut de mattah, Aaron? Yuh grievin' 'bout


RIVER GEORGE
73
sumpin." It was not a question, but a statement. His
tortured heart, beating against her body, was as volu-
ble as though he had cried his pain in words. Aaron sat
up slowly, but he did not kiss her.
"It aint nothin'." he said. "I've just been too hungry
for you, I guess."
But he made no move toward her and through her
own heart swept bitter terror. Then he had heard!
For a long time they sat in silence, staring at the night-
blanketed ground before them, unconscious of the
musical sounds of the creek which ran at their feet. It
was Aaron who broke the silence at last, and when
he did it was in the stiff speech of the white man which
he had brought back with him from college, the speech
which he had never used with Ada since they had
become lovers.
"I want to ask you something, Ada," he said slowly.
"Do you belong to anybody else?"
Now it was out, and she could not stay at this dis-
tance from him, could not bear the cold wide barrier
which his words had suddenly thrown up between them.
She would die, here, now, lying at his feet, if his
thoughts and cold college words banished her utterly
like this. There was no life for her in the world without
his love, no spot which held any warmth for her body
or food for her spirit, unless he were there loving her,
touching her with his body, giving her life with his
devotion to her. With an anguished cry she threw her-
self toward him, her head resting heavily against his
thighs, her hands clinging desperately to his waist, and
Aaron, moved beyond all possibility of words, yet find-


RIVER GEORGE
75
for the threat which hung over them both with terrify-
ing insistence.
It was after midnight when he walked the dark road
to his home, his heart heavy. After that first discussion
he and Ada had said no more about it, but had lain
there in the dark, clinging desperately to each other,
saying little. Still Aaron would not admit the literal
truth. After all no one had said anything definite.
Perhaps it was all in the past. Perhaps Lightning and
his mother thought of Ada simply as soiled baggage
unfit for him. If she actually belonged to a white man
now His eyes stared into the dark with horror
as he thought of it!
He was surprised to see a light still burning in the
kitchen and walking in, found his mother sitting in a
rocker, sucking on the reed of her cob pipe.
"You still up, Ma?" he asked in surprise. His voice
was heavy and tired.
She looked up and saw the lean hardness of his face
in the lamp-light, the face of a man, and her heart
swelled with her pride of him.
"Jes' waitin' fer yuh to come in," she said. "Sump'n
I got tuh say to yuh, son."
He sank heavily into a chair sighing.
"Guess I know whut it is, Ma," he said sadly.
"Yuh been keepin' comp'ny wid Ada," she said. It
was a statement of fact which did not ask for confir-
mation or denial and Aaron waited in silence through
the pause which followed it.
"Does yuh love her, boy?"
He looked at her, his eyes warm and eager and full


76 RIVER GEORGE
of pain in the lamplight, his lips half opened to speak.
But no sound came from them. Nor was any necessary.
He had answered more plainly than any words could
have done.
"Lord hab mussy!" his mother moaned and her body
swayed slowly, mournfully, back and forth, the rockers
of the chair following, making a creaking accompani-
ment to her grief.
"What do you mean, Ma?" he evaded. "Is it so ter-
rible for a man to love a woman?"
She could not look at him at once, hearing the pain
in his voice, but neither could she turn away from her
duty, nor carry it out with averted eyes. Her face full
of pity she looked up again, directly at him, as she
delivered the words which doomed his happiness.
"I simply means dat she's a white man's 'oman," his
mother said. "She belong tuh Mister Fred Smith, de
Postmaster yonder at Holley Rock—an' you is got to
let her 'lone, dat's all."
"But Ma"
"Hit ain' no but to dat, son," his mother said. "You
kin let her alone or you kin look for trouble. An' she
ain't wort' de trouble!"
She rose, picked up the lamp and went across the
narrow hall into her room. And Aaron sat there,
slumped down in his chair, gazing into the darkness
of the room about him.


CHAPTER VIII
AARON swung his plow out of the ground as old
- Sally, the mule, turned the end of the row, stopped
and looked back at him speculatively. It was an unvary-
ing principle with Sally to stop at the end of a row. In
the old days, when Henry or Hannah alone had driven
her at the plow, they had seemed glad to have her, and
had always joined her in a brief rest before starting the
new row. But Aaron was different. Like as not he would
only urge her on again before she had even a chance
to relax that left front ankle which had bothered her
ever since she had slipped and wrenched it years before.
Still it was always worth a try. Sometimes even Aaron
forgot. She looked narrowly at him over her shoulder,
her long pointed ears straight back, and when she saw
him lean on the plow handle, looking away into space,
she sighed heavily with relief, swung her eyes front
again, letting her head drop down between her knees,
and shifted her weight happily to her right foot, letting
her left front ankle flex deliciously, the hoof loose
against the ground, with no weight on it.
Aaron gazed moodily to the east, beyond the poplar
trees, his thoughts carrying him far beyond Ada's cabin,
even, to the other side of the river where, in his hopes
and plans, he had picked a little farm to which he and
his mother might go, and to which he could bring Ada
77


7«
RIVER GEORGE
later. It was the only solution that he could see to the
thing which was hanging over all of them with its
terrorizing threat.
For he had not given up Ada as his mother had told
him he must do. He had studied it all out, sitting there
that night a month before, sitting in the dark after
his mother had confirmed his worst fears. He knew
that, if Ada was still Fred Smith's woman, he was
courting disaster to see her, yet he felt powerless. He
loved her so much that he did not question the circum-
stances which had thrown her into Smith's power. He
knew that she did not love the white man, knew that
there could be no love for any other man but himself
in that passionate body and soul which gave themselves
so utterly to him. Whatever the outward aspects, what-
ever Fred Smith and the world thought, Ada was the
woman of Aaron George and nothing could change
that.
They had never talked about it again, but their
nightly meetings had become desperate greedy inter-
ludes for both of them, as though, each time they met,
they were meeting for the last time on earth, seizing,
in their joint panic, a little more life from the very
jaws of death. And their accustomed point of meeting,
the grassy slope by the side of the creek, which had at
first seemed a bower created for the privacy of lovers,
now became a hiding place, to which they crept by
different routes, with hunted looks in their eyes and
fear in their hearts. Sometimes she came to him very
late—long after their appointed hour, and on these
nights Aaron would hold her miserably and tenderly


RIVER GEORGE
79
in his arms, while she wept with her head on his breast.
He never made love to her on nights like this. One
night she had not come at all and he had passed her
darkened cabin long after midnight with the hot desire
for the throat of Fred Smith stinging his great hands.
Yet they never spoke of it.
Nor had his mother mentioned it directly again.
But it was in her constant worried glances at him, in
the silence which oppressed them both when they were
together, in the slow, monotonous creak of the rocking
chair in which she swayed mournfully back and forth
when her day's work was over. And once she had
mentioned it indirectly when Aaron was leaving the
house one evening.
"Min' yuh tak care prowlin' aroun' de woods at
night," she said. "Yuh cain' tell who gwine see yuh."
"I'll be careful, Ma," Aaron answered gravely, and
the look which passed between them was full of pain
and love. .
He stirred impatiently behind his plow, straightening
suddenly, and urged Sally forward. At the end of the
row he found the white riding boss, Turner, waiting
on his horse surveying the crop approvingly.
"Howdy, boy," the white man called. "You've got
a fine lookin' crop heah. Old Henry never raised a crop
like this."
"Yes Sir, it'd better be," George answered grimly.
"Aim tuh make some real money this year." He was
thinking of the little farm across the river, the promised
land which would set him and his mother and Ada free.
The white man looked at him speculatively. There


80' RIVER GEORGE
was nothing wrong in what the boy had said, yet
Turner never could be quite sure what was going on
in the mind behind Aaron's words. It sounded omi-
nously as though he were already thinking of the Fall
settlement, already girding himself for an argument.
Wheeling his horse, the agent galloped off down the
row without a word.
Aaron looked wearily to the west. The sun still
showed its rim above the western ridge, but he was
unaccountably tired. He had been feeling that way
for weeks now. He sighed, and turned the mule out
of the row. She looked around at him, not sure that
he had meant to turn her head toward the barn and
then, when she felt no restraining pull at the line, her
ears went up and her stride lengthened, as she started
off, plow and all, so that Aaron had to call to her to
stop while he unhitched her. Then, springing to her
back, he let her carry him from the field.
Rounding a little grove of trees he was surprised to
see his mother, trudging toward him, apparently on
her way to the fields which he had just left. She stopped
when she saw him and waited for Sally to bring him
alongside her.
"Jes' comin' down tuh tell yuh dat I lef yo' suppah
on de table. Ise gwine set my feets in de road." She
looked away from him as she spoke, unwilling to meet
his eyes.
"Where you going, Ma?" he asked anxiously. He
knew his mother well enough to know that she did not
take a walk without a definite errand, and that unless


RIVER GEORGE
81
the errand were something she had rather not talk
about she would say directly what it was.
"Jes' gwine a little piece down de road." She looked
evasively across the swaying fields of cotton. "Mought
pull up at Ada's house. Ain' zactly know whuh I is
gwine yet."
She turned, without waiting for his comment, and
trudged across the field toward the big road which led
past Lightning's house and up to Ada's muttering to
herself, those queer little thundering noises which
seldom became words. As her feet stirred the dust of
the road, she became briefly articulate.
"Hit's sumpin us is got tuh face 'oman to 'oman,"
she said aloud, "an' hit don' mattah who is right an'
who is wrong. We is got to face it now, befo' us run
up agin sumpin dat nieder one of us will be able to
face an' live down."
She found Ada bending over the stove, preparing her
supper. The girl looked up in surprise, and a cloud of
fear swept across her face, but she greeted the older
woman with friendliness and Hannah entered the
kitchen and sat down.
"I'se glad to see yuh, ma'm," Ada said, but her face
showed no evidence of happiness. Her eyes were bright
with her fright, like those of an animal wearied of
pursuit.
Hannah looked about the room critically. She had
not expected to see the house so neat and clean, nor
the girl herself so quiet or so appealing. In her heart she
had resisted hate for this girl and had pictured her as
a brazen, hard-souled woman of sin. What she saw was


82
RIVER GEORGE
a lovely, lonely, frightened child, and her compassion
went out to her. But she set herself against the instinct
to take Ada in her arms, and her voice was stern when
she spoke.
"Ada, I come to talk to yuh 'bout Aaron," she said
gravely. "I jes' got tuh talk wid yuh."
"Yes'm Mrs. George," the girl said in a low voice,
and her eyes grew wider with the fear in them, but she
did not evade the other.
"He's in trouble, Ada," Hannah went on, "an' I
come tuh yuh fer yo' help, cause yuh's de on'y one kin
help. So dat's de reason I come 'long heah. I figgered
yuh an' me could hab a li'l understandin' like, 'oman
to 'oman."
"I guess I knows what yuh want," Ada said, her
voice scarcely above a whisper. Her hands dropped
helplessly to her sides and she faced the older woman.
"Yuh wants us to stop keepin' compa'ny don' yuh?"
Her voice rose in a hysterical hopeless cry. "Yuh mean
we cain' go on lovin' each other. Yuh mean we got tuh
stop, we got tuh give each other up. Yuh mean you
know 'bout Fred Smith an' we got tuh stop lessen he
fin' out."
For a moment Hannah was silent, twisting her hands
together, her eyes down, her heart torn with pity for
Ada. When she spoke it was very quietly and there was
infinite sadness in her voice.
"Yeh, dat's whut yoll will hab tuh do."
For an instant, Ada didn't move. A wild fierce light
burned in her eyes and ran, in a streak of sudden scarlet
along her cheek bones. Her gaze left the room and wan-


RIVER GEORGE
83
dered through the door and out across the dusk-dark
fields, as a caged bird might look toward a forest, while
her body twitched spasmodically.
"No!" she cried suddenly, with a vehemence which
startled Hannah. "I won't give him up! I love him an'
he loves me. I want him and he wants me—No! I
won't"
The old woman glanced up at the younger woman's
face. Then she rose quietly.
"Den hit means death fer Aaron," she said, without
altering her tone. "'Cause Fred Smith ain' de kind to
share his women wid a nigger ef he know 'bout hit."
"Wait a minute, Mrs. George," Ada cried. "Sit down
—don't go! Yuh know I don' wan' him in trouble.
I didn't mean I'd do anythin' to hurt him. I just meant
I couldn' bear to lose him. I cain' give him up! He's
in my blood lak fiah an' in my heart lak a song. We
loves one another an' we wants to go on lovin' one
another. We wants to go on and on an' on, an' on! We
just wants to be left alone so we can be happy."
"Dat mought be so, but de way yuh is doin' is jes'
gittin' him in er deat' trap, an' you knows dat jes' as
well as I does. I seen too much of what comes uv dis
kind uv trouble," she continued, "an' Aaron's all I'se
got in de world! I jes' cain' stan' it ef he gits kilt, so
I'se come heah to beg you on mah knees to let him be,
and tell me dat you ain't gwine see him no mo!"
She looked at Ada closely, resentment flooding her
eyes.
"Hit ain' so much I'm askin' of yuh Ada. Yo've had
yo' fill o' men. It ain' as though Aaron was de fust


84
RIVER GEORGE
or las'. Yuh got a white man now. Ef yuh have tuh
run back to cullud whyn' yuh pick somebody mo'
worthies, lak dat Dave Johnson. Don' much mattah
den. But Aaron's good. Yuh ain' got no call takin' him
down. Ef things was differen'"
She was interrupted by a moaning cry from the girl
who had flung herself on her knees and buried her face
in Hannah's lap.
"Have mercy, please ma'm, Mrs. George," she
pleaded. "I ain' been dis way 'cause I wanted to be.
I didn' hab much tuh eat when Fred Smith wanted me
an' he tuk care o' me. Den when Aaron came along,
I was sorry for everything I done. I wished I'd starved
rudder den tak off Fred, 'cause I love Aaron an' ef I
lose him I'll jes' die. I kinda thought we could go 'way
fum heah where nobody wouldn' know us. Won' you
please jes' give us a chance?"
Hannah's arms were soothing her gently now, her
hands stroking her hair and patting her back tenderly.
"I don't lak to cause you no misery, Ada, but you
knows as well as I does dat yuh cain't git loose from
dat postmaster so easy as dat. When yuh gits in a t'ing
lak dat, yuh jest cain't git out ob it lak talkin' about
it. Why don't yuh git out ob dis mess yuh is in, den
dar will be time for yuh tuh keep company wid
Aaron."
For a long time the girl lay with her head in
Hannah's lap, sobbing fitfully. Finally her weeping
stopped and she lay there quietly for a bit, as though
reluctant to relinquish the maternal tenderness which
she felt in spite of the harsh edict of the other. Finally
Hannah spoke again.


RIVER GEORGE
8$
"I ain' objectin' to yuh, Ada. When yuh gits rid o'
dat Fred Smith an' yuh an' Aaron still loves each othah,
I be proud to tak yuh lak a daughter den, an' fo'git all
dat come befo'."
The girl raised her head and her eyes were clear and
steady as she looked up into the face of the older
woman.
"I t'anks yuh fer dat, Mrs. George," she said quietly.
"I'll tell him tonight."
Hannah rose with a sigh and turned her face to the
door.
"Den I'll be goin', Ada."
She went out the door and started off slowly down
the road, her heart easier. Ada looked like a girl who
would keep her word. Turning to look back, she saw
the girl standing motionless in the door against the
light of the kitchen lamp. Seeing the older woman turn,
and interpreting it as a further gesture of friendliness,
Ada sprang from the doorway and ran quickly down
the path after her, her bare feet pattering pleasantly on
the ground. Reaching Hannah, she put her two young
arms about her and swiftly kissed the withered cheek
of the older woman. Then, without a word, she turned
and sped back to the house and into the kitchen without
looking back.
"I declar!" Hannah muttered. "She ain' no bad 'oman
'tall. She ain' nuthin' but jes' a sweet chile!"
She shook her head slowly, and a low rumbling sound
rose in her throat, an imprecation without words,
directed against Mr. Fred Smith, against the white race
as a whole, and the universe in general, as she shuffled
on through the night.


CHAPTER IX
BY August Aaron's fields were white with cotton
which gleamed in the sunshine like fields of snow.
He knew that it was a better crop than any his father
had ever raised there, better than any for miles around,
and a grim look of satisfaction filled his eyes whenever
he looked at it. You could not beat the white man with
your fists or with words, but perhaps this was a way.
He thought bitterly of the long weeks which had
been barren of all but work. Work, and eat, and sleep,
sleep and eat and work, day followed day broken only
by his hope for the future.
Since the night when his mother had talked with
Ada, Aaron had not taken his evening walk down the
dusty road to the creek, and into the woods to the
grassy trysting place. Ada had told him that night,
with dignity and firmness that she would not see him
again until she had settled once and for all with Fred
Smith and all danger of interference from him was past.
"Yo' mudder is right, Aaron," she had said sadly.
"We all t'ree knows it. Ain't nuttin to be done 'bout it
'til we knows we ain' got him to wory about. I curse
de day I met him an' hate myself for evah takin' up wid
him, but I didn' know den dare was anybody in de
worl' lak you. Now hits done an' I got tuh undo as
86


Si
RIVER GEORGE
was ready for him. At noon the bookkeeper left the
store to go to his lunch and Aaron watched him with
growing resentment as he walked by with complete
unconcern. He was away for three hours and when he
came back one of his friends was waiting for him so
that Aaron had to sit again and watch while the book-
keeper and his white friend spent an hour in gossip,
paying no attention to the waiting black man who had
come on business.
It was after 4:30 before the bookkeeper finally called
Aaron in. By this time the latter's resentment had
resolved itself into a deep bitter silence. He was furi-
ously angry and passionately determined to restrain
himself from any violent word or act. He stood silently
before the other's desk, still waiting while the book-
keeper slowly glanced over a page of figures before him.
Finally, the white man looked up with a leer on his
face that was intended to be a smile.
"Well, boy," he said, "you're in fine shape to make
some money next year. That crop of yours pays up
all of your father's debts and pays for the mule."
Aaron started involuntarily. He knew that actually,
Henry had paid for the mule five or six times over in
settlements like this.
"You mean to say that Pa still owed something on
old Sally?" he asked. His voice was low and restrained
but there was a deep note of anger in it which made
the other avert his eyes.
"Sure he did," the bookkeeper said. "Didn't he tell
you about it? He made a poor crop last year and we


9o RIVER GEORGE \
erect and motionless, the muscles of his mighty arms
as tense as coiled springs. When he spoke his voice had
sunk lower and each syllable was clipped short through
his labored breath.
"I ain't intimating anything, Mr. Martin," he said,
slowly. "Only if your figures are fair, there's no reason
why you should mind my seeing them. Any man has a
right to an accounting for his work." For a moment the
two men glared at each other, eye against eye, and then
the white man, unable to face the angry, accusing stare
of the other, let his eyes drop to Aaron's throat where
his pulse was visibly beating.
"Who the hell are you to tell me what your rights
are? Get out of here and if you want that $75.00 ad-
vance come back tomorrow when you can talk more
civil."
George turned and stared sullenly out the window
for a moment, fighting hard to control the resentment
that flamed through him. He had expected from the
beginning that he would be cheated out of a part of
his due, but that his entire crop would be taken away
from him this way, in payment for debts, the existence
of which he greatly doubted, was almost more than he
could bear calmly. In the dark recesses of his mind a
beautiful vision and a hope suddenly crumbled. Unless
he did something, unless he found some way to change
the circumstances, which had enslaved his father all of
his life, he would have no more freedom than the older
man had had. His education would count for nothing
and even the little farm, which he had envisioned as a
home for his mother, himself, and Ada, would be simply


9*
RIVER GEORGE
forget it so long as he lived. Wearily he rose to his feet
and without another word went to bed.
The next morning he was astride Sally again and on
his way, but this time not to Holly Rock. His mother
had said that it was no use for a colored man to fight
white men unless he had other white men fighting for
him. Aaron knew that he would never ask a white
man to fight for him but he could ask one to help him.
So he was on his way to Indian Mound to see Mr. King,
an idea surging through his tired mind, a plan which
might still save his cherished dream. He found the old
master of Beaver Dam plantation sitting on the broad
veranda of his house, as erect and fine as one of the
beautiful white columns which supported the veranda
roof. He was not surprised to see Aaron George riding
up on his mule. In the twenty-five years during which
he had owned the plantation the Negroes had come to
love him and trust him. Although he had accepted the
paternalistic traditions of the south toward his Negroes
as incontrovertibly as the truths of the Old Testament,
within the frame of those traditions he had treated
them with kindliness and fairness. He had never driven
them but on days when he felt like going to the fields
he would just ride down the turn-rows, basking in their
smiling greetings and often say aloud so they could hear
him, "I've got the best niggers and the best crop in
the Delta bottoms."
When he had sold the plantation and moved to
Indian Mound he had not forgotten his Negroes, and
it was a common occurrence for one of them, perplexed
by a question too difficult for him to decide, or in


RIVER GEORGE
93
trouble with the white folks, or needing something he
could not get for himself, to come to him for help. As
Aaron dismounted and walked up to the porch, the
elderly white man smiled a friendly greeting to him.
"Good morning, Aaron," he said. "I'm glad to see
you, my boy."
It was strange how his tone and the simple addition
of the possessive pronoun took the sting out of that
hated word "boy."
"Thank you, sir," Aaron said, standing before him
with his hat in his hand. "I thought perhaps I might
come and ask you for help."
"Glad to have you," King said. "Sit down."
Aaron looked at him with gratitude in his eyes. To
be sure, it was a simple unostentatious courtesy for one
man to ask another to be seated, but to have a white
man in the south ask a Negro to sit down was so rare
an occurrence that Aaron felt a sudden burst of affec-
tion for this man who, for twenty-five years, had been
his father's master.
"Thank you, sir," he said again, and seated himself
on the top step.
"Did you have a good crop, Aaron?" the white man
asked.
"Ginned ten bales, Mr. King," the boy answered
proudly.
"You don't say," the other cried. "That's more than
Henry ever made on that piece."
"Yes, sir," Aaron answered, "but"
The unspoken words hung between them in the
silence that followed. Aaron had decided, before he


94
RIVER GEORGE
came, that he would not mention to Mr. King what had
happened at the settlement the day before. A matter of
pride was involved. If there was any fighting to do he
would do it for himself. He was determined to keep his
conversation with the white man to its primary purpose,
and John King, sensing what was going on in the boy's
mind, did not ask for elaboration. He knew too well
what went on at the yearly settlements and, although
he had a great deal of sympathy for the Negroes and
felt that Tyler had carried things a bit too far, he was
not eager to seem to set himself against his own race for
the sake of a Negro in a land where all tradition was
violently against such a course.
"I was thinking, Mr. King," Aaron went on, "that
now the farm work is over for a spell, I'd like to get
a job in town. I'm strong and can work hard and I
could do the work that has to be done on the plantation
at night when I get home. I thought maybe you could
help me find a job."
The white man looked at him with admiration. It
was seldom that any Negro wanted to do more than
he had to, he thought.
"Why I reckon I can, Aaron," he said with easy good
nature. "Your father, Henry, was one of the best
workers I ever saw and you look to me like you was
following right in his foot-steps. You wait here while
I go in and make a telephone call and I'll see if I can't
fix that up for you right now." He rose and went into
the house.
In a few minutes he was back, a broad smile on his
face.


9«
RIVER GEORGE
in disgust. "He ain' doin' nobody any good. Shall I
get him throwed out?"
Aaron smiled at his friend's seriousness.
"Oh he's harmless, Lightning. Why worry about
him?"
"I don' noways trust him," Lightning said slowly,
looking across the group to where Do Pop was nerv-
ously arguing with Vince Sims. "He got too much psalm
singin' for de mean look dat's in his eyes."
"Oh forget it, Lightning," Aaron said, "the more we
have the better."
Lightning shrugged his shoulders briefly.
"Whatever yo' say, Aaron, yo' is de brains of dis
outfit." He turned and led the way into the hall and
the group followed him. When they were all assembled,
Lightning held up his hand for silence.
"Yuh knows what we's heah fo'," he said solemnly
and Aaron felt a sudden thrill of pride as he saw the
dignified seriousness of the group. "I ain't much on dis
'splainin' bizness, so, I'se gwine tuhn dis meetin' ovah
tuh Bruddah George."
"Yuh ain't gwine open dis meetin' widout a prayah,
is yuh?" Do Pop asked of Lightning. "Ef yuh is, yuh
gwine be a failure at de start. Dis is de Lawd's bizness,
an' yuh got tuh talk tuh de Lawd an' git him heah
'fo' yuh staht."
Lightning suppressed an instinctive snort of disgust
and turned questioningly to Aaron. Aaron shrugged
his shoulders briefly and signified consent, whereupon
Lightning faced Do Pop.
"Well I guess yo' knows more abou' dat bizness dan


RIVER GEORGE
99
I do, Bruddah Do Pop," he said. "I bin too busy
thinkin' 'bout men's bizness to be much concerned wid
de Lord's. Fiah away ef yo' wants to."
Clearing his throat, Do Pop took off his hat and
glared at the other men until they too removed theirs.
Then he bowed his head solemnly and clasping his hands
together, held them rigidly under his chin, while his
voice rose in a loud chant.
"Oh Lord we come befoah thee in sin an' humility.
Weep my bruddahs and sistahs, weep. Let de watah
flow and wash de sin out of our souls. We know we
cain' hide ouah sin from yo', oh God. No doah is t'ick
enough. No crack in de eart' is large enough. No
shadow in de night is dark enough to keep yo' all
seein' eye from penetratin'. We jes' got to come out
in de open and confess it and trus' in yo'. De sinner
kin stray away to de ends of de eart' but de debbil
will follow em. Blessed are de ones dat come back an'
confess dey sins dey ownselves 'cause ef de debbil brings
dem back dey gonna be damned. Some day when time
is no moh, some day when de stars begin to fall, some
day when de moon turns to blood, some day when de
light goes out ob de stars an' all de worl' is in darkness,
Gabriel gonna step out of de clouds wid de trumpet
of doom. He gonna blow it so loud dat he'll wake up
de dead and all de sinners, and all de hypocrites, an'
all de back-biters an' all dose as is too lazy to wuk hard
in de fiel's, dey all gonna have to come back to wheah
dey sinned and in der distress dey gonna cry to de
mountains to fall on dem. Oh God we know we cain'
dodge yo'. Yo' so tall we cain' go ovah yo', so large we


IOO
RIVER GEORGE
cain' go 'roun' yo' . Yo' hold de seas in yo' hand. Yo'
speak peace to de storm. You point yo' fingahs at de
troubled watahs and dey stan' still. We ask yo' to bless
dis meetin' and bring us de light to see de error of
our ways. Amen."
The Negroes shuffled restlessly and, sighing with re-
lief that the ordeal was over, put on their hats and
looked expectantly at Lightning. Without any further
preliminaries he beckoned Aaron to his place before
them.
"I now gonna turn dis meetin' ovah to Aaron
George," Lightning said slowly and backed away to
join the rest of the group.
Aaron stood for a moment looking at them, longing
passionately for wisdom and eloquence with which to
speak wisely. The faint glow from an oil-lamp fell on
their faces accentuating with dark shadows their gaunt,
sharp features grooved with wrinkles. Finally he spoke
in a low dignified voice which was full of gravity and
concern.
"What I say to you here tonight may cause me to
be ordered off this plantation and you to be thrown
out of your houses; but you asked me to come here,
and I'm gonna talk to you from the bottom of my
heart.
"When my father died, I came back here determined
to earn enough money to buy a little farm where my
old mother could live in comfort the rest of her life.
I wanted to help you also when I discovered the plight
you were in. My father left nothing when he died, so
I've had to work the land on shares just as he did and


RIVER GEORGE
IOI
just as you are doing now. I'm suffering just as you are
from the system of these new owners. Their plan of
dealing with us means nothing less than starvation and
death. They furnish the house, the land, the mules and
the plows, while we put the cotton in the ground, culti-
vate it and pick it. We are supposed to receive half of
the returns on our crop, and the owners are supposed
to furnish us with food and supplies until settlement
time at the end of the season. But the settlement brings
us nothing. We are fortunate if we get out of our work
enough to pay for the corn-meal, side-meat and molasses
we eat during the year. Now, when you get the oppor-
tunity to do a little work in town, you find out at last
that you are capable of earning a decent living.
"I'm glad that something has opened your eyes. This
however is no solution of our problem. If we could get
the right kind of settlement and long time contracts, we
would be encouraged to look after these farms as if they
were our own." He paused, wiped the perspiration from
his face and then continued.
"I would like to have expressions from some of you
brethren on this question."
There was a long silence. Aaron sat down to wait.
Finally, Do Pop rose and began speaking slowly:
"Dis am a pretty tickless question dat yuh is talkin'
'bout now. It's liable tuh make a heap uv troubl'. Dare
ain't much good dat kin com' out uv a sit'ation whar
de niggers dun got too lazy tuh say 'git-up' to de
mules dat dey is plowin', an' de white folks dun got
too mean tuh go tuh de debil. De niggers is jes got
tuh men' dare ways an' wuk lak dey wuked when


102
RIVER GEORGE
Mr. King had dis place. An' dese white folks got tuh
drop all dese slavery notions 'fore de Lawd gwine put
his han's on dis place. De Lawd ain't please' wid de
niggers, nurther is he pleas' wid de white folks. Dat's
how com' he sen's all dese floods to dis Delta lan'; an'
ef dis t'ing keeps up, he's gwine sen' a flood one uv dese
days lack he sunt in Noah's time; an' dare ain't gwine
be nobody lef but de right'ous. What we needs tuh
do is tuh pray fur de Lawd tuh bring dese white folks
bak tuh de rock o' salvation an' den pray to de Lawd
agin tuh put som' 'lectwicity in de lazy bones uv dese
niggers so dey kin take holt uv de blessings when dey
comes. Dis ani' no time fur niggers tuh be talkin' 'bout
zisting de white folks. It's jes gwine git a lot uv dem
lynched.
"When God gits ready, he's gwine give dem a sign,
jes lack he give it tuh Moses in de burning bush."
The crowd stirred uneasily at Do Pop's words. Light-
ning rose quickly to his feet. He looked at Aaron and
then around at Do Pop.
"Some niggers is too scared an' too lazy fuh any use,"
he said. "Dey don' want no change a'tall. We got a
right tuh know what we gittin' fuh our cotton when
we carry it up dar to de gin. An' we ain't doin' nuthin'
'ginst de Lawd nurther de white folks cause we try tuh
git our half uv what de crop brings. I been on dis place
might nigh thurty years, an' I ain' made nuthin' since
Mr. King sold it. I jes gits deeper in debt eve'y yeah.
Now, I'se tiad uv dem cheating me out uv my money,"
he shouted. "I ain't no hog dat dey kin feed an' make
me satisfied while dey take all de money fuh de crop.


RIVER GEORGE 103
Now ef dis heah cheatin' ever gwiner be stopped, who's
gwiner stop hit ef we don' complain? Hit's alrigh' tuh
'pend on de Lawd, but de Lawd want yuh tuh do
somethin' fuh yuhself."
Lightning sat down. The crowd nodded their heads
in approval of his speech. But it was growing late and
they were becoming restless. Unless something was done
quickly, all would be lost, Aaron thought. He rose and
lifted his hands for silence.
"I have worked out a partial plan," he said. "First,
I suggest that you appoint a committee composed of
three of the oldest tenants on the place to go up to
Heathman and take up with the landowners the whole
question of settlement. If the owners are willing to give
us consideration, we will then name one of our group
to keep the accounts of those who are unable to read
and write, so they will know what's coming to them
before they go up for settlement at the end of the
season."
The group, ready by now to follow any lead which
Lightning and Aaron took, quickly agreed. And
although Aaron had suggested appointing three of the
oldest tenants on the plantation, his name was the first
to be called for the committee and against his protest
he was unanimously elected as chairman and asked to
select his other two members. Without hesitation he
asked Lightning and Vince Sims to work with him and
the meeting was dismissed. As Lightning and Aaron left
the hall, Do Pop was still haranguing some of the others,
waving his hands and expostulating.


io4 RIVER GEORGE
"Dat nigger ain't nevah gonna do nobody any good,"
Lightning said, and spat disgustedly into the road. "I
looks at him an' I wondah why dey bothahed tuh fight
de Civil War."


CHAPTER XI
THROUGHOUT the cabins on the Beaver Dam
plantation, uneasiness was spreading. It showed
itself in the silence which oppressed the evening air that
was wont to be filled with song and laughter; in the
little groups which clustered here and there in the door-
yards, inevitably divided into two camps relentlessly
opposing each other, arguing about something which
worried them all; in the down-cast eyes and worried
faces of the Negroes when they met white folks on the
road. The population of Beaver Dam, which had gone
along for generations as one body of hard-working,
poverty-stricken Negroes, was now obviously split into
factions, one consisting of those who applauded all that
had been said and planned at the meeting at the hall of
the Sons and Daughters of the Rising Sun and were
willing to lend moral support at least to the accom-
plishment of those plans, the other group made up of
the reactionaries who shook their heads, sadly declaring
that no good could ever come of it and counselling
silence and caution.
How the news had got around, no one seemed to
know. Those who had attended the meeting had agreed
steadfastly that all which had been said there would
be kept within the knowledge of the original group
until after the committee had had its interview with
105


RIVER GEORGE 107
As a matter of fact, his meeting with Aaron had
come about as a result of a daily attempt to bring it
about for three days. For weeks the white group who
ran the plantation had viewed with annoyance the exo-
dus of the Negroes from the plantation to jobs in town,
knowing well that knowledge of the wages they could
earn in town would soon open the eyes of many of
them to the futility of work on the plantation. When
news of the meeting had reached the white ears, dismay
had turned to fury and they decided to move swiftly
against the man whom they knew instinctively to be the
ring-leader.
As Aaron's mule approached, the agent turned his
horse into the road blocking the way.
"Where you been?" he asked gruffly.
Aaron looked at him a moment without replying.
He must be careful now. He must watch closely what
he said.
"Been up to town," he said quietly.
The agent glared at him with accusing eyes as though
he might have confessed that he had just been out com-
mitting a murder.
"They tell me that you got a job in town and that
you're using our mule to ride to work every day. What
about it?"
Aaron smiled with a difficult simulation of friendli-
ness.
"Why, yes sir, Mr. Turner, I got a job alright.
Thought I'd do something to help out a little till the
planting season. I manage to get my work around home
done alright in the evening. But I ain't been riding any


io8
RIVER GEORGE
of your mules. This here is old Sally that my father had
ten years before he died. She's been bought and paid
for a dozen times, I reckon."
Immediately he wished he could recall the last sen-
tence. While he was sure that what he had said was true,
he had been so determined to say nothing, and do noth-
ing which would arouse the anger of any of the white
folks, and here, in his first encounter, he was encourag-
ing unpleasantness. The agent glared at him with rising
anger.
"You're just crazy as hell," he said. "The mule be-
longs to the plantation and I'm going to take her along
with me right now. If you go to town again, you'll
hoof it."
Aaron felt his body growing tense with fury and it
was with difficulty that he restrained himself and spoke
calmly.
"That mule is paid for, Mr. Turner," he said. "What-
ever the situation was before Pa died, the bookkeeper
told me, when we settled this fall, that all the debts
were paid and the mule paid for."
"Well you'll give him up, by God," Turner's voice
was rising with an angry threat in it. "You think you're
a damn smart nigger, but you haven't learned yet to
keep your nose out of trouble. The $75.00 advance you
got involved the mule and she's our mule until you pay
the money back."
Aaron was silent for a moment, fighting hard to
control himself. Now, more than ever before, he must
be careful. He must not speak the impulsive words of
wrath which clamored in his throat for utterance, must


RIVER GEORGE
not let his great hands double into murderous fists as
they were trying to do, must not let his body leave its
firm seat on the back of old Sally to fly like a raging
fury at the form of the man before him. His eyes
wandered off over the fields for a moment to shut out
of sight the cause of his wrath. When he spoke again,
it was calmly, quietly, but in a low voice.
"The bookkeeper told me," he said slowly, "that the
advance of $75.00 was on next year's crop, otherwise
I wouldn't have signed the contract to work the land
for another year. I have a committee going to see
Mr. Tyler and if he says that I should give the mule
up, I'll leave it at Holly Rock. Otherwise I won't."
His eyes met the agents' unflinchingly, but the other's
turned away in evasion, a slow flush of anger running
from his neck to his temples. He looked back again, his
eyes flaming hate.
"You're telling me what you'll do!" he shouted.
"Well I'm in the habit of telling niggers what they're
going to do, and if they don't do it I beat the hell out
of them. Get down off that mule before I drag you
down."
For answer, Aaron's eyes glowered in silent defiance
as he sat immobile astride his mule. With a curse,
Turner reached behind him and seized a heavy leather
strap which hung from his saddle. His arm flashed
upward in an ascending arc but the strap never reached
Aaron. With the quickness of a cat's paw, his own left
hand shot upward and grasped the agent's right wrist,
tightening on it with the strength of a steel vise until
the white man's face contracted with pain and the strap


no
RIVER GEORGE
fell limply to the road, while the eyes of the men fought
for supremacy, Aaron's blazing with fury, Turner's
smoldering with hate, into which were injected little
flashes of fear.
"You ain't gonna whip nobody right now, Mr.
Turner," Aaron said tensely and flung the white man's
arm from him while his own right hand trembled with
its leashed desire to strike. Fearing that he would not
be able to control himself, feeling instinctively the need
to confine that powerful right arm, Aaron thrust his
hand stiffly into his coat pocket pushing hard against
the bottom of it in the need to give it some action
which would keep it from the deed it must somehow be
restrained from doing.
The agent looked with horror and it was with diffi-
culty that he spoke without letting his voice tremble.
"By God, you dare threaten me with a gun!" he
cried. "You dare threaten a white man!"
"No, Mr. Turner, it was you who did the threaten-
ing," said Aaron. Taking his hand from his pocket, he
let it fall limply to his side, feeling a sudden helpless
sense of defeat. He knew that he could crush this white
man's body with his bare hands, knew that the white
man knew it too and knew equally well that just as
such a physical victory that this might be would bring
nothing but trouble and further suffering, so the moral
victory he had won in this moment had been utterly
futile.
"I know better ways to handle a damn nigger like
you," the agent snarled, and without further words
whirled his horse around and galloped off down the


RIVER GEORGE
in
road, leaving the strap he had been unable to use lying
where it had fallen.
Late that evening six men gathered in the rear of
the plantation store in response to Sam Turner's sum-
mons. In addition to Sam Turner, Fred Smith the post-
master, and the clerk, the overseer, the book-keeper,
there was Bud Scott, tall and raw-boned, the leader of
the paddy-rollers, that group of ruthless night riders
who had put terror into many a cowering Negro's heart,
and brought death to not a few, a man who had served
a term as Deputy Sheriff, and for twelve years had led
every posse that sallied forth in search of desperate
characters. His gun had proved more deadly than the
gallows on the second floor of the little brown, brick
jail up at Indian Mound. There also was Watt Matthews,
former boss of a construction gang on the Yellow Dog
fifteen years before when Colonel Billie Bob built the
road. But Colonel Billie Bob had fired him long before
the Yellow Dog was completed. The Colonel had said
that he was too hard on his niggers.
The eyes of all the men were turned on Sam Turner.
"Something's got to be done to get rid of Aaron
George," he snapped briefly, "and it's got to be done
right away. Why this nigger aint done nothing for
months but stir up other niggers, and if he gits away
with this every damned nigger on the plantation will
be shipping to town to work; and when they find they
can make more money than they git here, they'll be
going to other towns and who the hell will work for
the farm? An' where'U our jobs be? He's using our


112
RIVER GEORGE
mules to ride to town to work and is urging other nig-
gers to do the same. When I tried to stop him this
evening and take the mule, he threatened my life."
"I don't know that I've ever liked the looks of this
nigger," the bookkeeper, in perfect harmony with the
agent, chimed in. "He don't look down at the groun'
like the rest of the niggers when a white man is talkin'
to him. Kind of thought he'd git smart when I settled
with him last year, but I guess the big forty-five layin'
in the open drawer kinda cooled him off."
"Why don't you get a warrant out for him?" the
overseer asked, ignoring the bookkeeper and speaking
directly to the agent.
"What for?" asked the agent.
"Didn't you say he threatened you? With gun play?
Didn't you catch him comin' from town on one of the
mules?"
"Yes," the Agent replied.
"Well," said the bookkeeper, "he can be indicted.
He can be sent to Parchman Farm. No court gwine to
decide in no nigger's favor when he threatens a white
man."
"That wouldn't work," said the overseer. "That
damn' King would step in and spoil everything."
"I guess that's right," the leader of the paddy-rollers
said thoughtfully. "It's a damn good thing he ain't got
this place no more. I never could understand him. He
let the niggers make too much money. That's what's the
matter with them now."
Watt Matthews lifted his head and glared at those
around the table. There was a look of cold disdain in


RIVER GEORGE
"3
his eyes. Slowly he drew back his lips revealing a row
of teeth stained with tobacco juice.
"You'd think this nigger was somebody the way you
all are carrying on," he said in disgust. "Since when
did a nigger git so important that you had to stay up
all night trying to find a way to deal with him? Why
can't you just string him up and then explain after-
wards? There ain't gonna be much explaining to do
nohow."
"Yes, but he ain't done enough to call for a lynch-
ing," said the overseer. "Course he done a lot of talking
back to Sam, and I ain't in for letting him get away
with that at all, but I—I"
"But I what? When did you turn into a nigger
lover?" the agent cut in coldly. "This nigger ain't no
good at all. It ain't gonna be long before he does some-
thing sho nuf. If you don't git him now, you gonna
have to git him sooner or later. He'll give you plenty
reason all right to git him good."
"Well what do you want us to do?" Sam, the leader
of the paddy-rollers asked. The agent was silent for a
moment.
"I just wanted to find out and make sure all you
boys would be with me if I got something started.
Suppose, for instance, this nigger happened to do some-
thing that really called for a neck-tie party, would
you boys be in on it?"
"Sure, sure!" they chorused, the only dissenting note
coming from the overseer who modified, "If it was
serious enough."
"Alright," Turner said, apparently satisfied. "I guess


RIVER GEORGE
"J
The agent thought rapidly for a moment, formulat-
ing a plan which the postmaster's quick reaction to his
news had given birth in his mind.
"Well if I got the right dope," he said at last, look-
ing narrowly at the postmaster, "all you got to do is
get up to Ada's house about 8:00 o'clock tomorrow
evening and you'll get an eye-full of proof."
"I'll be there," Smith answered grimly and the two
men rose, shook hands and left.
Once on the street, Sam Turner hurriedly hunted up
Watt Matthews.
"Tell the boys, Watt," he said with a significant look,
"to be ready for a neck-tie party tomorrow night.
Fred Smith's gonna catch that nigger up at Ada's house
and I figure that if Fred doesn't kill him himself, it will
be only because the nigger beats hell out of Fred and
that's all we need."
Watt looked at him in amazement.
"But they tell me he hasn't been seeing the gal for
a couple of months," he said doubtfully.
Turner laughed unpleasantly.
"Don't worry," he said, "I'll see that he's there al-
right. I've got a nigger out there who'll damn well
get him there. That black psalm-singing bastard would
do anything for four-bits."
Watt shrugged his shoulders and turned away. And
Sam Turner, his face set, mounted his horse and gal-
loped rapidly away in the direction of the shanties on
the Beaver Dam plantation.


RIVER GEORGE
"7
He stirred uneasily on old Sally's back, and passed a
nervous hand across his throat, then bent low above
her neck, and clung for a moment to her bristly mane,
steadying himself against the dizziness which threatened
to overwhelm him.
All day he worked silently, speculating darkly on
what the next few days might bring him. A premoni-
tion of disaster followed him, oppressed his heart, clung
to the movements of his hands, slowing them. Would
the first words he had spoken at the meeting a few
nights before prove so soon to be prophetic? He had
said, "Perhaps what I am about to say will cause me
to be driven from this plantation." Was that about to
happen? He had little doubt that his encounter with
Sam Turner the night before had been no chance meet-
ing, nor that his use of the mule, and his job in town
had been the only things at stake. Undoubtedly the
white owners had learned of the meeting and had set
out at once to hamper the effectiveness of anything
which Aaron and his group might do.
He thought again of his mother's admonition, "Ain'
no use fightin' 'gainst white folks." Would it always
be true? Would he and his race carry oppression for
the rest of life, as they carried their black skins? Was
there no release for them?
He rode Sally home slowly that night, scarcely
bothering, in the weariness which assailed his body and
soul, to look for Sam Turner or any other white man
who might be waiting along the road to intercept him
and his mule. To right and left the fields and trees
which had surrounded his carefree childhood stretched


n8 RIVER GEORGE
away. They had seemed so lovely to him when he had
come back here from college, ready to center his life
among them. Now he scarcely looked at them as he
rode along, his head bowed, his eyes scarcely seeing
anything at all. Every tree that he passed seemed brood-
ing, inimical; every field seemed barren and hostile, as
though denying him a hiding place against his possible
need. But it seemed suddenly to matter so little. What-
ever he did, whatever he thought, whatever he intended,
whatever he hoped, amounted to nothing, for he was a
Negro in a world made and ruled by white men.
He shook his head slowly, trying to rid his mind of
his thoughts. Nothing could be gained by figuring
things that way. After all, nothing had happened. He
had done nothing—save talk of fairness and intelligence
to his friends—and raise his hand against that of a
white man about to strike him. He shuddered as he
thought of this. That was the great crime.
He stabled Sally and went slowly to the house where
his mother waited, his supper on the table. She looked
at him with keen troubled eyes as he entered silently
and sat down without even greeting her.
"What yuh grievin' 'bout, son," she asked with gentle
concern. "Yuh in trouble?"
He looked at her anxious, wrinkled face, and his
heart softened with affection and pity. He was trying
to forget the gloomy thoughts which had pursued him
all day, but as he looked at Hannah they descended
upon him again in a cloud. Had he, by his desire to be
something, for himself, and for her, and for Ada and


120
RIVER GEORGE
upon the compassion of the Almighty to make the suf-
ferings of her race easier to bear. Here was a new faith,
a vision which could see in the future a glory coming
to his people through the very force of their being,
something which she believed must inevitably come
about, without help or hindrance from such puny
efforts as those which his committee might make.
He studied her face slowly, a new respect entering his
eyes, a new glimmering of understanding tugging at his
mind. If he could grasp it, if it could be quite plain to
him, perhaps he could find a way to make life bearable
here, now, working with seemingly everything against
him. Perhaps if he had listened to her more before,
things would be different now. She had always seemed
to him, for all her staunchness, unwilling to admit that
there could be anything for the Negro but toil and
trouble, always unwilling to run the risk of antagoniz-
ing the white rulers of this land through any attempt
at progress, always had seemed to him to be utterly
resigned. And resignation and inactivity had seemed so
futile to him.
Yet, as he felt now, he had been equally futile. Was
her way best after all?
"Ma," he said slowly, "I wonder if I've been wrong.
I got fire in my blood and my hands are itching to do
something besides waitin'. Your way just takes whut
comes an' I cain' wait easy."
A hurried step before the door made them both
start. Then they settled back with a sigh of relief when
they saw that it was only Do Pop. He was trembling,


RIVER GEORGE
121
and his eyes were jumping forward and rolling. He
would not look directly at either of them.
"I wanna talk wid yuh a minute Aaron," he said.
"Mought yuh could cum outside."
Aaron rose and followed him. Out of earshot of the
open door they stopped.
"What's wrong, Do Pop?" Aaron asked anxiously.
"I dunno ef anything's wrong or not wrong," the
other whined. "I ain' said anything wrong."
"Then what are you so excited about?" Aaron's voice
was a little impatient. "You act as though there was
about to be a lynching or something."
"Hush yuh mout'," Do Pop's whine rose almost to
a scream. "Don' yuh talk 'bout t'ings lak dat."
Aaron sighed. He was beginning to share Lightning's
dislike and mistrust of this man. There was no getting
to the bottom of him.
"Well, what's on your mind?" he asked impatiently.
"Ain' nutting fo' yuh to git sore about. It's jes' dat
I cum by Ada's house an' she ask me would I tell yuh
dat she got tuh see yuh right away 'bout sumpin."
His voice trailed off into a whisper as he spoke, and
he looked away, evading Aaron's eyes in the rapidly
gathering dusk, and he shook as if with a chill.
Aaron looked at him narrowly.
"What does she want to see me about, Do Pop?" he
asked slowly.
"Fo' God I do' know nuttin' 'bout hit, Aaron. She
jes' tol' me she want tuh see yuh right away."
"Then what are you shaking so for?" Aaron's voice
was accusing. He knew that he must watch every move


122
RIVER GEORGE
he made now, and there was something about this which
made him cautious. He had not seen Ada for many
weeks. She had said that she would let him know when
she had settled finally and for good with Fred Smith,
but it did not seem likely that she would send word
to him this way, by an excited Do Pop. And why
should Do Pop be so upset over a simple message like
that?
"Peah's lak I got a misery in me," the little man
whined. "Peahs lak I cain' keep still. I'se feelin' lak I
felt when I got dat vision on de road fum town.
Mought be I'm goin' see dat chai'ot again an' dem
angels—"
Aaron scarcely heard him. He knew that he would
learn no more from the trembling man before him.
His heart beat wildly with a strange conflict, his sudden
surge of desire to see Ada again, to feel the strong
warmth of her arms about him, to find again the com-
fort which his head would know on her breast, and
the unexplained premonition of evil which Do Pop's
message and hysterical excitement had brought to him.
Then, suddenly a new thought assailed him. Perhaps
Ada was in trouble. Perhaps she needed him. Perhaps
Do Pop had heard more than he had told, seen some-
thing he had not mentioned for fear of involving him-
self. Perhaps this was why he was so agitated. Turning,
he called to his mother, keeping his voice as calm as he
could.
"I'm goin' up the road a piece ma," he said.
She came to the door quickly.


RIVER GEORGE
"3
"Whut's wrong, Aaron," she asked sharply. "Whah
yuh goin'?"
"Nothing's wrong. I'm just going up to see Lightning
and the boys a minute," he lied, and turning, headed
for the road, breaking into a run as soon as he was well
out of sight of the kitchen door.
For a moment Hannah stared after him into the
young night. Her accustomed admonition that he "fin'
no trouble" hung unspoken on her lips. When he was
out of sight she walked slowly back into the room and
settled heavily into her rocker.
"Lawd hab mussy," she moaned, "an' bring um back
tuh me dis night."


CHAPTER XIII
ARON leaned against the door-casing of Ada's
xA.house breathing heavily, for he had run most of
the way. He had called to her softly as he had come
up the path, his heart beating hard, as much with fear
of what he might find, as from his exertion, but he
had had no response. Now he hesitated a moment as he
gazed through the open door of the house to which he
had been forbidden entrance. Quickly his eyes took in
every detail of the neat clean kitchen, the room which
long ago Ada had told him she did not want him to see
until she had had a chance to pretty it for him. As
scantily furnished as it was, as bare of all adornment,
as volubly as it spoke of poverty, he would have been
proud as a guest in that room. He sighed heavily and
feeling, since the prohibition of Ada's word, that he
could not enter unbidden, he raised his hand, rapped
gently on the door-post and waited.
She came from the inner room bare-footed and
scantily clad in the cotton dress she had worn that first
night they had met in the woods. Her eyes were full
of sleep. She had evidently been resting. Plainly there
was nothing wrong with her. Apparently she had not
been expecting him. Nonplussed Aaron stood there
silently, torn by his desire for her and his astonishment
at her evident lack of expectation.


RIVER GEORGE 125
When she saw who he was, she came forward quickly,
her face flushed with surprise, her voice eager and a
little frightened.
"Aaron," she cried, "whut yuh doin' heah? Cum in
off dat stoop quick before anybody mought see yuh."
Taking him by the hand, she led him hurriedly
through the door and across the kitchen floor into the
bedroom. And Aaron forgot his fear for a moment,
forgot to question why he was here, in the sudden surge
of warmth which her presence and the love which he
found in her eyes gave him.
"Ada," he cried, "I've been so hungry for you." His
arms went around her and she clung to him while he
pressed her head close against his shoulder kissing her
ears, the back of her neck, holding her tightly to him
as though he would never let her go. For a moment
she rested thus, then looked up, fear in her eyes.
"Why yuh cum heah, Aaron?" she asked anxiously.
"Because yuh sent fo' me, honey," Aaron said, his
voice full of the astonishment which he felt.
Her eyes wide, Ada's lips parted as if to answer him,
but her words remained unspoken, for a heavy step on
the kitchen floor made them spring apart to face Fred
Smith, the postmaster, who strode toward them, his
face white with rage. He was a large man, heavy with
fat through the hips and shoulders and he moved cus-
tomarily with a slow ponderous gait which was quick-
ened slightly now by his rage. His eyes, as he approached
them, glazed hotly. For a moment, he looked from one
to the other, then he roughly pushed Ada aside and
faced Aaron.


126
RIVER GEORGE
"Get the hell out of this house, nigger," he cried and
advanced toward Aaron.
Slowly, walking backward step by step, his eyes never
leaving those of the white man, Aaron retreated
through the kitchen and out the door. His lips were a
thin line, his face immobile, his muscles tense. He won-
dered dully why he was not afraid, why he felt nothing
save this rigid hate for the distorted, angry face of the
man before him. Feeling the grass of the yard under his
feet, he stopped. Then Smith turned to Ada who had
followed them closely, trembling and looking from one
to the other in an agony of fear.
"What's this nigger doing here?" he asked roughly.
The girl flinched and her teeth dug against her lower
lip.
"Oh he jes' a friend of mine. He just cum ovah to
say good-bye."
She threw an appealing look at Aaron, her agonized
glance pleading with him.
"He wanted to say good-bye 'cause he's leavin' to-
morrow morning," she added.
She paused, her eyes flashing white at the rim of her
lids, her breath catching. The white man looked at her
closely, angrily, and seized her arm in one hand, grasp-
ing it tightly until she winced with pain. Great beads
of sweat stood out on his forehead and a little spot of
red in each cheek turned to purple. Aaron watched
them in silence, restraining himself with all of his
power, standing immobile where he had stopped. Be-
fore the eyes and ears of his memory, a stark drama
was being replayed. It was a night fifteen years before


RIVER GEORGE
"7
when Aaron had been going down the road past the
cabin of a girl he had known as a child. Her name was
Sue Brown and all the world had known that she was
the mistress of a white man. As he went down the road
he had seen Bud Moore, a colored boy who loved her,
duck through the gate and run toward the house. Near
by a white horse was hitched with the stirrups over the
saddle, a horse Aaron had known, a horse which be-
longed to the white man. He had heard the sound of
Bud's knuckles rapping against the door, a sound he
would never forget, for a moment later he saw the
door open and heard a volley of pistol shots ringing
through the stillness of the night. And the sound of the
shots was like the rap of the knuckles on the door. He
straightened up and his teeth ground against each other
and the muscles in his face worked tensely as he looked
at Fred Smith glaring now at Ada, suspicion and anger
in his face.
"By God, I think you're lying," the white man
snarled. "I'll not share you with any nigger."
Automatically, as though he had no control over
them, Aaron's feet moved forward two steps bringing
him close to the white man, so that his body half
interposed itself between Smith and the girl. And when
he spoke, his face was not a foot away from that of
Fred Smith and his voice was low in his throat as though
it were unused to words.
"It ain't a matter of sharing her with a nigger, Mr.
Smith. You ain't speakin' truth."
The white man started as though he had been slapped,
the color draining out of his face and receding into his


130 RIVER GEORGE
head pressing against him, but he seemed strangely cold
and inanimate, unable to speak or move, gazing at her
trembling body and the lifeless form of the white post-
master impersonally as though they and all else which
existed were of a world from which he was now com-
pletely cut off, standing away in space which was far
distant from everything he had ever encountered before.
He could not bring his mind to any clear thought, to
any memory or logical arrangement of the events which
had preceded this moment. Why had he come here?
Who was this woman whom he had come to see? Why
had he wanted to see her? Suddenly his tortured mind
clutched at a thread of memory. She had sent for him,
that was it. She had called him here to this horrible
thing. When he spoke, his voice was hard, cold, and
without life.
"I got to go now," he said. For a moment she clung
to him more desperately, then her hands dropped limply
to her side.
"Yeah, you got to go now," she said, her own voice
lifeless, and her body sank lower until her bent back
and her head resting against the knees which touched
the ground made a line against the grass which spoke
infinite desolation. Against her ear-drums beat the re-
morseless pounding of Aaron's foot-steps across the
grass as he walked away, but she did not look up again.


CHAPTER XIV
FIELDS which he had seen grow and bloom in the
sunlight, trees which had shown him their green
glory in the spring and pleasant brown peace in the
autumn, slid by him unseen, a deadly and inimical
monotone in the dark as he ran down the road, his
breath coming in choking gasps, his heart a pounding
terror in his chest. Instinctively he was glad that there
was no moon, that no light save that of the stars shone
on him, for he wanted only to be hidden, only to find a
place where no prying, baleful eyes set in white faces
could find him out. And even in these first few terror-
stricken moments which followed that cataclysmic in-
stant in which the world had dissolved in sound and
flame and he had seen Fred Smith lying motionless be-
fore him, he suspected that he would find no adequate
hiding place until that day when he received ultimate
sanctuary in earth.
Ahead a dim light shone through the kitchen window
of his mother's house. With a sob, he quickened his
pace and ran toward it, stumbling through the door at
last wordlessly. How many times this room had re-
ceived him quietly, peacefully, when his body and soul
were weary, and given him the surcease he needed.
Now it would be less than a resting place, only a point
at which he could touch in anguish on his flight.
131


13* RIVER GEORGE
He found Hannah sitting in her chair, her pipe in
her mouth, as he entered. But as she saw him she rose,
her pipe clattering to the floor. No words were needed
to tell her that the peace of her world had been shat-
tered. Aaron's face and labored breath were more volu-
ble than any speech. She stood immobile for a moment,
her mind seeking frantically for an assumption on
which she might pin a little hope, but when Aaron,
with a wordless cry, flung himself into the chair she had
just vacated, his head sinking hopelessly into his hands,
she knew that whatever he was about to say would only
increase her fear.
"Lawd hab mussy!" she moaned.
Without raising his head he spoke.
"I've got to go, Ma," he said. His voice was low, his
words spoken in choked syllables.
Still she was immobile.
"Whut yuh do, Aaron?" she whispered.
His head sank lower, resting on his arms flung across
his knees. A low, tortured sob was her only answer.
Quickly she came to him and knelt beside his chair,
taking his head in her arms and lifting it to her breast.
"Whut yuh do, Aaron?" she asked again. Her voice,
still low, was strong and insistent, demanding, refusing
any evasion.
"I done kill a white man!" he sobbed. "I done kill
Fred Smith!"
For a moment her body was rigid with terror. Here
was trouble which no words or acts would assuage.
Only flight—endless, perpetual flight—could possibly
save him. Ahead she saw the years which she would face


RIVER GEORGE
in loneliness, when she would not know where he was,
or whether he was living even. For a moment her mind
dwelt bitterly on Ada Green, whose existence had
brought this about, but she pulled her thought away
to listen to what he was saying.
"He pulled a gun on me an' I grabbed fer it. It
went off an' killed him. I don' know whether he did it
or I did it but he's dead and it'll be all the same to me
when they find him."
He sprang to his feet as he thought he heard a noise
in the darkness which surrounded the cabin.
"I gotta go quick, Ma," he cried.
Still she could find no words which could bear upon
their trouble. There was nothing she could say. In hope-
less defense against its agony, her mind sought practical
expedients.
"I fix some t'ings fer yuh," she said heavily, and
moved toward the cupboard. But her hand, raised to the
latch, was transfixed in mid-air as she heard the un-
mistakable sound of hoofs pounding along the road.
"Dey comin', Ma!" he cried, and sprang to the lamp,
blowing out the light before he leaped through the
door and into the night.
Through the yard he ran, his feet sinking into the
soft earth of Hannah's kitchen garden. Suddenly realiz-
ing that he was leaving a clear track behind him, he
turned and doubled, repassing the house at the back
just as the pounding hoof beats, the sound of which had
driven him forth, drew up at the front. Fearful lest
the sound of his flight would betray him, he threw
himself into the shelter of the darkness, lying flat and


RIVER GEORGE
135
A quarter of a mile away was the edge of the woodland
through which ran the creek. Instinctively they sought
the shelter of the trees.
"Wheah yuh t'ink of heading?" Lightning asked, his
words punctuated with his heavy breathing, as they
ran.
"What difference does it make?" Aaron asked. "We
better git to the railroad track and try to hop the first
freight. It don't much matter which way it goes."
They were in the forest now where the darkness was
intensified to an impenetrable blackness by a heavy
growth of pines. Under their feet the pine needles
made a soft murmuring sound. It was so dark that they
had to feel their way along to keep from running head
on into the trees.
Suddenly both stopped short and listened. Across the
fields and woods which separated them from Ada's
house came the unmistakable baying of a hound. The
chase had started. For a moment they stood motionless,
then George put his hand briefly on Lightning's arm.
"The creek!" he whispered, and together they felt
their way cautiously toward the distant sound of trick-
ling water. It was only a little stream, scarcely ankle-
deep, but in Aaron's terror it seemed a haven of safety.
So long as he could walk with both feet in the water, no
dog could follow his trail.
When they reached it Aaron took the lead and ran
along the bank upstream a little way, then he stepped
in, with Lightning following him and together they
continued upstream a hundred yards, then stepped to
the bank for a few yards. Re-entering the stream, they


RIVER GEORGE
went on in the same direction, then again ran along the
bank for a little way, hoping that they could make the
dogs pick up the scent and follow the stream in this
direction. But the terrifying sound of the baying was
coming nearer. Plunging into the water, they turned
around and hurried downstream as fast as the slippery
rocks on the creek-bed would allow them.
When they had gone half a mile they heard the sound
of the dogs directly behind them, baying confusedly,
obviously running in circles. They had reached the
creek now, and had lost the scent at the point at which
Aaron and Lightning had first entered the water.
For a moment the two stood and listened, then
sighed with relief as they heard the joyous yelp of the
dogs. They had picked up the scent again—but up-
stream, and were headed away from them.
"Let's make for the railroad," Aaron said, and leav-
ing the water they started north, in a few moments
reaching a road down which they ran with all the
strength left in their weary bodies.
But they had not gone far when they were stopped
again, this time by the sound of the hounds coming
down the creek. They had evidently abandoned their
upstream search, after having lost the scent in that
direction, and were working their way downstream,
trying to pick it up there. Their simple ruse had been
used too many times in the south by Negroes escaping
slavery in the old days or the vengeance of whites in
the new days of freedom, to be effective for long.
"Dem damn paddy-rollers hard to shake off," Light-


138
RIVER GEORGE
confused voice behind him. No question that they
would soon be on him.
Thinking quickly, he suddenly stepped out of the
water again. By now Aaron would be close to the rail-
road track. He knew there was a freight train headed
for Memphis due at almost any minute. If Aaron was
lucky he might be able to catch it. At any rate the dogs
had been thrown completely off his trail. Following the
scent of his shoes there was little possibility that they
could pick up the actual trail of George now, even if
the paddy-rollers back-tracked and tried again.
Stooping over, without leaving the water, Lightning
swiftly removed the shoes and threw them onto the
bank. Then, barefooted, he stepped into the water again
and hurried on. As he left the stream and set his bare
feet in the road less than a quarter of a mile from his
cottage, he heard the excited yelping of the dogs,
gathered in a clutter of sound. They had found the
shoes. He turned for a moment, looking in the direction
from which the sound came, and listening.
"Yoll welcome to dem," he said bitterly, and walked
on, breathing more easily now, knowing that he would
not be followed farther this night.
Lying close in the grass by the side of the track
Aaron waited as the sound of the rumbling freight
train came nearer. It seemed an eternity of slowness, yet
he was glad that it was not traveling more rapidly. It
would be difficult enough for him to swing aboard as it
was.
As the locomotive passed him, he stood up and began


RIVER GEORGE 139
running along the side of the train, watching for his
chance and, seeing a box-car which seemed empty, he
made a flying leap, seized one of the bars on the side,
and, for a terrifying instant, swung in air. Tightening
his hold, he pulled himself up and flung his body over
the side, dropping to the floor of the car.
As he crept over to one corner to a pile of hay, he
heard a faint sound like someone yawning. He struck a
match and held it up, his hand trembling. He saw
curled up in one corner of the car, a black man in blue
denin overalls.
"Put dat light out!" the other commanded crossly.
"What's de mattah wid yuh, losin' yo' min'? De white
folks jest got through peepin' in heah. Dey thought Ah
was a big lump o' coal."
"I'm sorry," George mumbled. "I didn't expect com-
pany, and wanted to see who it was."
"Well, you gwine have company fo' a long time, ef
you'se gwine whar I'se gwine."
"Where you going?" Aaron asked. He was glad the
stranger wanted to talk about himself. It might keep
him from asking questions.
"I'se gwine to 'Blues Heben' jest as sho' as de sun
sets in de West, bruddah. I'se Blues Heben-bound!" he
fairly wailed.
"Where is Blues Heaven?" asked George. He forced
himself to the question. If he could keep the other talk-
ing perhaps he could even keep his own mind away
from the terror that was gripping it.
"Man, don' yuh know whar 'Blues Heben' is?"


RIVER GEORGE
"I never heard of it before. You're not thinking of
dying, are you?"
"Whar's yuh been all yuh life, dat you ain't heer'd
'bout 'Blues Heben'? Dey calls Beale Street in Memphis
'Blues Heben'. Dar's whar de good time are—dey barrel
house and sing de blues all night wid a lot er putty
gals."
"It sounds good to me," Aaron said. "Guess I'll string
along with you, if you don't mind."
"Say, man, if yuh git to Beale Street once, they ain'
gwine never be able tuh git yuh back on the farm."


CHAPTER XV
BEALE STREET lingers in the American mind like
a strumming banjo. Half forgotten by the rest of
the world, it lies substantial in Memphis, a packed and
jangling thoroughfare, an avenue of vice and commer-
cial ambition, of sweet melody and low comedy. It ram-
bles for about a mile through the heart of Memphis,
and then loses itself in the muddy bottoms of East
Street. All through the years it has remained an out-
post of age-old Africa, in the midst of a bustling city.
Civilization crashes sullenly against it and Main Street
crosses it, but it refuses, somehow, to become assimilated.
On Beale Street live and work such men as Robert
R. Church, the political boss of the Republican Party
in West Tennessee, the roving dictator of the Lincoln
Belt, and down Beale Street once walked W. C. Handy,
following a Negro that was humming a tune that had
been heard for many years in the cornfields, on the
railroads and in the sweltering river bottoms. When
Handy heard it he took it to his heart, elaborated and
harmonized it, and out from "Blues Heaven" floated the
"Beale Street Blues." Around the world, to Broadway,
to Paris, to Singapore, to Capetown, it went, to be fol-
lowed by another melody to fit "My Man's got a Heart
like a Rock Cast in the Sea."
On Beale Street, the pulse of dark America beats
141


142
RIVER GEORGE
highest. River rats, roustabouts, richly red-brown lovely
women, hang-jawed country rubes from the cornfields,
mingle with spruce urban Negroes in an atmosphere
pungent with barbecued pig, white mule and synthetic
gin, alive with loud and plaintive music of those who
sit around in the cafes, trying to ease their souls with
ready-made song.
Crowds gather at Jim Mulcahy's place at Fourth and
Beale, and dance to the tune of a loud jazz band. Yel-
low girls, tired from plying their trade, drift in and
droop over the piano, where the nimble fingers of a
lean black man execute every trick of syncopation.
The music seems to have a very singular effect upon
those pale, wasted women, who gather there. First, they
weep, as the song tells of sorrow and of suffering, and
of other days, but as it grows faster and louder, they
dash away their tears, throw their heads back and, with
reckless laughter on their lips, move to the center of the
floor and execute the "pasamala", and other torrid di-
versions of the "honky-tonk" dancers. Then Beale
Street is "Blues Heaven" to those women, who have
strayed away from their Delta homes to have a fling
at life where the blues began.
The night echoes with the cries of a gay, carefree
people, who pass along the streets in a never ending
parade. The strumming of guitar players strolling down
the street, with their girls singing to the accompani-
ment, blend with the traffic noises, to create short
snatches of gaiety, such as Handy had heard flowing
from the throbbing bosom of "Blues Heaven."
So this was Beale Street, the "Blues Heaven" that


RIVER GEORGE
143
Aaron's companion had told him about, when they were
riding along in the box car towards Memphis! He
walked slowly down Beale to Wellington where he
stopped to watch a procession that was passing by,
headed by a tall, pompous black man, dressed in a
frock coat and a stovepipe hat set on one side of his
head at a rakish angle. More than fifty Negroes followed
behind him in a column of twos, yelling and singing
to the accompaniment of two guitar players, who fol-
lowed close on the heels of the leader.
"What's all this about?" Aaron asked a bystander.
"Man, dat's de gravy train. Dat tall nigguh you see
in de lead is Casino Henry. He's de bes' gambler in
town. He's just about done broke up somebody's crap
game, now he's gwine tuh make de rounds of all de
places in town and the crowds gwine follow him until
he spends all his winnin's. Come on, les' hitch onto
dis line and go wid 'em."
Aaron followed. He had no destination. He did not
want to think. So he joined the gravy train. The first
stop was at Hammett's Place.
Cateye, the master of ceremonies, stood in the door-
way, waiting to receive Henry and his train.
His face was well barbered and his tailor-made,
basket-weave, blue suit thoroughly fitted him. Cateye
gave way to Henry who paused for a moment in the
doorway with his back bowed in and his head thrown
back, like a sway-back horse.
"How do you do, Mr. Henry?" Cateye grinned,
bowing low.
"Hello, Cateye, how you been?"


144
RIVER GEORGE
"Fine, sir, is you enjoying de stroll, Mr. Henry?"
"It ain't so bad, after bustin' de bank." As Henry
spoke he lifted himself to his full height, expanded his
chest and puffed a fat cigar.
"What did yuh git dem for dis time, Mr. Henry?"
"Oh, bout five hundred simoleums."
"Whew! What a man! I sho' is glad to hear dat, de
gravy train don' look right less you leadin' it."
"Well, I guess I do know my stuff at dat. I'se busted
mo' banks and led mo' o' dese gravy trains dan all dese
smart gamblahs put together."
"I say you have—and it ain't cause you lucky. You
jest nachally is a born gambler and a dead game sport."
"Well, de onliest thing I want dese dive keepahs t'
do is tuh set up wid me and I'se gwine tuh live high
and easy de rest o' my life."
Aaron had never heard this sort of boasting before.
Although he had been to college, it seemed to him that
these city folks knew much more than he did and he
was beginning to feel himself as raw and untutored as a
country rube could be.
"Come on, everybody, the drinks're on me," Henry
continued, as he affected a lofty carriage and strode to
the bar. Soon glasses clinked, wise-cracks and laughter
floated in the air, while the crowd drank to the health
of Casino Henry, who had broken up the game and
won all the money at Beale Street's most notorious
gambling hell, the Hole in the Wall.
"What's the matter, young feller, yuh ain't drinking.
Want a bottle of milk?" Henry glared at Aaron, who , -
stood against the wall just looking on.


146
RIVER GEORGE
My gal was settin' on another man's knee,
She cooks good biscuits, and she cooks 'em brown,
But she think I'se de one dat brought de punkin to town,
Ef I catch another mule kicking in mah stall,
Honey, I'se goin' tub tear it down!
The Panama was the most colorful night spot on
Beale Street. Bill Bailey, the bartender, was always per-
fectly attired and always on his dignity, but this hap-
pened to be one of the nights that business was slow.
So Henry and his crowd went across the street to the
Monarch, known to the underworld as the "Castle of
Missing Men."
Cousin Hog and Bad Sam had killed so many men in
the Monarch while they were the bouncers there, that
a fenced lane had been built in the rear of the club,
extending from the Monarch to the very door of an
undertaker's establishment. "When a gambler was killed,
his body was dragged to the rear, dumped in the yard,
where the undertaker later gathered it up in a basket
and carried it into the morgue.
Henry was thinking about some of those bloody
dramas when he led his crowd through the door. He
cast a quick glance in the direction of the gambling
den, nodded to the barkeeper and climbed the stairs to
the dance hall. Black Carrie spied him as he entered.
"What's all dis, comin' in heah!" she cried. "Done
broke up another bank?"
"Now whadda yoll think?" grinned Henry.
"Yuh sho' is wukkin' yuh rabbit foot on dese joints.
Sho' glad to see yuh. How dey treatin' yuh? Watcha
gwine have, big boy?"


RIVER GEORGE 147
"If dey treated me any bettah, I'd think it was a
frame-up. Whiskey straight fo' everybody in de house."
Henry leaned against the bar and looked into the big
mirror, eyeing himself.
"Ah wants a gal fo' evy man in de party wid me.
Cause we gwine walk de dog 'til de flo' caves in."
The girls were quickly supplied and Henry led off
with Carrie on his arm. They all chanted, as they
danced:
Grab yo' gal and dontcha linger,
Do dat two-step cross de hall.
Do dat dance dey call de Texas Tommy,
Drop jes' lak yuh set tin' on a log,
Rise slow—dat'll show
Dat's de dance dey calls walkin' de dog.
Finally, the couples moved back against the wall,
joined hands and formed a circle, while some moved to
the center of the ring to execute steps all the way from
the pigeon-wing to balling the jack.
This kind of dancing was more to Aaron's liking and
when it came his turn to show his skill, he bounded
into the center of the ring, executed a buck-and-wing,
turned and leaped in front of one of the girls in line
and paused; then began shuffling his feet and twisting
his body in unnatural postures.
The crowd gave a loud yell of approval.
"Say, Honey," came a voice from the crowd, "I'se got
money, marbles and chalk dat's all for you, if you jes be
mah easy rider."
The dance went its course and the crowd left the
floor and moved over to the tables strung along the
wall.


148
RIVER GEORGE
"Who is dat tall, brown pappy dat you got wid
you?" Carrie asked Henry when they had recovered
from the exertion of the dance.
Henry looked up at Carrie and grinned.
"Whatsamattah, Carrie, you ain't fell fo' dat kid,
is yuh?"
"Naw," Carrie shook her head, "sure I ain't; he just
don't look like de guys 'round heah all de time."
"Well, he ain't been heah befo'," said Henry. "He
ain't nothin' but a country boy dat's come to town to
see de sights. I picks him up down dah at Hammett's
place. Thought he'd been drunk and dropped out by dis
time, but he carry his likker pretty well to be from de
sticks."
Carrie signalled the piano player to play the blues and
she moved out on the floor with considerable grace, her
straight lithe figure showed to great advantage; her blue
black skin gleamed resplendant under the lights. Ex-
pressions of admiration went up from those gathered
around the tables. She snapped her fingers and kept her
body in ceaseless motion.
Aaron felt Carrie's stare upon him as she danced by
his table. He looked at her; a faint smile formed on her
lips as their eyes met. She paused and then she was gone.
He followed her with his eyes around the room, but
now he scarcely saw her. . . . Carrie with the blue-
black skin. He was thinking about another woman who
danced one Saturday night at a plantation break-down,
on the banks of the Beaver Dam.
The music ceased and Henry rose, put a yellow bill
in Carrie's outstretched palm and left.


RIVER GEORGE 149
The crowd that filed out behind him had grown
larger, for new passengers had boarded the train at
every stop.
When they were out in the street, Henry called
George aside.
"Kid, I kinda like havin' yuh along, but I speck you
bettah hang around de Monarch a while; you mought
do yo'se'f some good, cause dat gal Carrie 'peahs to be
kinda sweet on you, and if yuh treat huh nice yuh can
live on Easy Street, and yuh don' have tuh do no wuk
atall. Cause she's got bucks and a plenty of 'em."
George shook his head.
"Thanks," he said, "But I'll keep stringin' along, if
you don't mind."
"Suit yerse'f!"
Henry led his procession into Peewee's place, named
by the underworld Negroes "Beale Street's Garden of
Eden," because it was there where the blues were born.
Bad characters of every quarter of the globe gathered
there; hoboes drifting South to New Orleans in the
Fall, and North in the Spring, they always made it
their business to stop over for a night at Peewee's. They
would sit of nights around the red hot stove and ease
their souls with ready-made song.
When Henry entered at the head of his gravy train,
the hoboes were having a rough house. They were be-
ginning to feel their drinks. They would drink awhile,
holler awhile and sing awhile. There was a jug-band,
in which one Negro dragged a black cat bone across
a washboard that had a cow bell nailed on the top left
corner and a cymbal on the right corner. Another


RIVER GEORGE
Negro blew in a jug and still another played a guitar,
while a quartet of hoboes crowded around the stove
and harmonized:
Down in Memphis, Tennessee,
1 got a gal jes' as sweet as she kin be,
Everybody's talking 'bout Sadie Green,
She uses powder and she uses paint,
Make her look jes' lak what she ain't.
Everybody's talking about Sadie Green,
She weahs sho't dresses and she weahs a tarn,
Make her legs look lak a Georgia Ham.
Everybody's talkin' 'bout Sadie Green.
Henry and his crowd lingered, but for a short while
among these rowdies. At the head of his gravy train,
he set out for the Blue Goose, down on the River front,
but Aaron was unable to follow them further. The ride
in the box car had left him exhausted, and the liquor,
to which he was unaccustomed, finally had its effect on
him. He dropped into a chair and soon fell into a deep
sleep.
He was wakened by a prod in the ribs and a harsh
voice. "Hey, wake up, black boy!" growled a police-
man. "This ain't no place for sleepy heads. If you ain't
got a bed to go to, I've got a nice one for you in a
fine three-story mansion and you'll have a lot of nice
company."
George sprang to his feet, trying to keep terror from
showing in his eyes. Although he was sure that the
policeman thought of him only as a vagrant, the very
thought of being in the hands of the law filled him
with terror.


RIVER GEORGE 151
"I'm sorry," he mumbled. "I just was tired and
dropped off to sleep."
"Well, you'd better come along with me. Nobody
will disturb you in the cooler."
Wildly Aaron looked for an exit. Perhaps he could
make a dash for it. But the policeman was between him
and the door. As he looked the other way, he saw a tall
black woman, dressed with some distinction and pos-
sessed of considerable charm, coming toward them. She
smiled pleasantly at the officer.
"Mr. Johnnie, he's my man," she said. "Ah'll take
care of him and get him straightened out."
"O.K., Annie. He looks like he's all in to me. Better
get him away from here," the policeman answered, and
satisfied, left.
Annie turned to Aaron.
"What's the trouble, big boy?" she asked.
"Oh, just dead tired, I guess. Thanks for helping
me."
"Come on and sit down," she moved over to the
table and sat down. Aaron stood there for a moment
staring at her.
"Why did you tell that lie for me?" he asked, slip-
ping into a seat across from her.
"Oh, I jest hated to see a poor fish sealed up in the
jug," she said casually. "You got a place to sleep
tonight?"
Aaron shook his head and looked down at the table.
"You got any money?"
"Not a nickel." Still he could not meet her eyes.


RIVER GEORGE
"O.K. Kid. I ain't askin' any questions. You come
along an' spend the night at my house."
She pulled from her purse a puff and dabbed her
face with powder, smeared her lips with rouge, looking
all the while in her pocketbook mirror. Replacing the
lipstick and powder puff, she snapped it shut and rose
to go.
Aaron followed mechanically. Where they were go-
ing he did not know, but she had proved a friend in
need in a dangerous situation and now she offered him
sanctuary. Together they walked down Beale Street
through the gray dawn.


CHAPTER XVI
NNIE BELL was a creamy chocolate color. Her eyes
J. A. were brown and strange and compelling. Her body
was as sinuous as a snake's. When she was a young girl
down in the Delta bottoms, the white plantation agent
desired her and, when she was fifteen, he took her to his
white-painted house on the banks of the Beaver Dam
to sleep with him. And, when he grew tired of her, he
gave her money so that she could go to Indian Mound.'
But, on the way she met a Negro with a guitar, who
took her to Memphis. That was fifteen years before she
met Aaron.
Now, Annie was the mistress of a gaudy palace of
pleasure on Fourth Street, a two-story, brown brick
house, with a piano in the parlor, where black men and
white came and spent their wages on liquor and brown
women.
Annie had little education, but she was far beyond
the common women of the underworld in her knowl-
edge of men and their ways. She loved the kind of
adventure that lurked on the very borderline of danger.
Her spirit was as wild as a sapling pine on some craggy
mountain top.
Men from many walks of life had at one time or
another been in her power, but when she had taken
what she wanted from them, she pushed them aside and


RIVER GEORGE
small bits of nonsense nor light-hearted, primitively
vulgar gestures of invitation such as those which had
marked all the lovemaking she had ever known. He
simply stayed, accepting her bed and food, and letting
her give him a little money for clothes, thanking her
simply every time she did so.
For Aaron it was an impossible situation, one into
which he had drifted through fatigue and helplessness
on the night when, half drunk for the first time in his
life, a fugitive from the terrible vengeance of white
men, he had accepted her help as the only sanctuary
which offered itself. And, having accepted her help, he
did what was expected of him in return—or as much as
he was capable of doing. But day by day his heart grew
heavier.
Until his arrival at Memphis and his acquaintance
with Annie and her friends, he had never heard of "easy
riders," or "ease-men," those colorless creations of the
Negro quarters in large southern cities, brown-skinned
gigolos supported by the earnings (more often than not,
illicit) of their women. And spiritually he was as far
removed from them as north from south. He had no
particular moral point of view toward the situation in
which he found himself. He had needed help and Annie
had given it to him. He was grateful and tried to show
her his gratitude. Nor did his love for Ada and his con-
tinued desire for her make him feel that he was wrong-
ing her through his relationship with Annie. Above all,
the Negro is a realist in matters of sex.
But the whole thing was distasteful to him and ob-
structive to everything which he wanted in life.


i56
RIVER GEORGE
Day after day he would spend the daylight hours in
sleeping, fearing to show himself on the street lest he
might have another encounter with an officer, an en-
counter which would lead him back to the Beaver Dam
Plantation, and to a rope with a noose in the end of it.
At night he and Annie would often go out together,
to Peewee's Place, to the Monarch, to all of the gay
hurried life of Beale Street. But Aaron found himself
detached, unable to take part in the gayety. And Annie,
seeing him thus, knew that she held him by a slender
thread.
A month went by and Aaron became more and more
silent. Often, waking while Annie still slept, he would
leave his bed quietly so as not to rouse her, and sit
staring through the window, his thoughts far away
from the room in which he sat, and from Memphis,
trying to find a way in his own mind through the maze
of circumstance which held him.
He was without money save that which Annie gave
him and he dared not even write home for fear that the
unusual event of a letter addressed to his mother or to
Ada or Lightning would cause the letter to be opened
and his whereabouts discovered. And what would a
letter home accomplish anyway, save that the writing
of it would ease his spirit somewhat?
As to Annie—it was pelasant in many ways to be
with her. He found his debt to her not too difficult to
pay. Yet between them stood constantly his unappeased,
unspoken love and desire for Ada. He had spent hours
in conflict between his instinctive faith in her and his


RIVER GEORGE
attempt to try to piece together in his mind the last
few hours he had spent on the Beaver Dam Plantation.
He could not, in his heart, believe that she had been a
party to his betrayal, yet Do Pop, that night when he
had come excitedly to Hannah's house and called him
out on what had developed into a fatal mission, had
said that Ada had sent for him. Had she really, and if
so, had she known that Fred Smith would be there that
night? Aaron could swear that she had exhibited only
honest surprise when he had appeared at the door yet
the devilish ghost of suspicion kept whispering to him,
wasn't that exactly the way she would have acted if she
had actually been guilty of bringing him there?
Sitting in Annie's bedroom one morning, his mind
full of his problem, he was unaware that Annie had
wakened and was watching him closely. For a long time
she lay silently gazing at him, while he sighed and
shifted his weight slightly, only to continue staring out
the window. Finally she broke into his revery.
"What's her name, big boy?" she asked softly.
Surprised, Aaron's thoughts became articulate before
he had time to consider the virtues of silence.
"Ada," he answered mechanically, then starting, he
jumped from his chair and faced the woman on the bed.
"What do you mean?" he asked. "I don't know what I
was saying."
Annie smiled wryly.
"I've always wondered," she said. "Whenever I see
you studying like that, I've always wondered what her
name was. What's the matter? She throw you out?"
■


i58
RIVER GEORGE
"No," Aaron said, drawing the syllable out slowly.
For a long moment he looked questioningly at the
woman's face as it lay on the pillow, but he found
neither censure nor evasion there, only a lightly amused
air of tolerance. He walked over and sat on the edge of
the bed looking down at her.
"Look here, Annie Bell," he said. "You've been aw-
fully swell to me. It makes me feel like a cheat and a
deadbeat unless I tell you about it."
"You don't have to tell me nothing you don't want
to tell," she said, but she didn't look at him.
He reached over and stroked her hair gently with his
hand and both were silent for a moment. Then he spoke.
"I guess the truth is that I want to tell you," he said.
"O. K., big boy, shoot the works if you want to."
Bit by bit, slowly at first, but gaining ease and speed
as he went along, he told the whole tragic story, of his
father's death, of his return to the land, of his desire to
help his people get what was coming to them, of his
meeting with Ada, the woman of a white man, and of
those last terrible hours on the Beaver Dam and his
terror-stricken flight.
"It isn't just that I'm afraid of the white folks," he
said. "That's bad enough. I don't know whether I killed
Fred Smith or not, and if it was my finger on the
trigger instead of his, it was an accident that happened
while I was defending myself from being killed by him.
But there ain't a jury in the South that wouldn't hang
me if they got me, whether I was right or wrong. And
it would be partly because I laid hands on a white man
and partly because I fought for the rights of Negroes


RIVER GEORGE
159
that haven't got any rights." He paused for a moment
with a short, bitter laugh.
"My father said to me," he went on, "'You got
learning now, just like white folks. See that you use it
right.' Well, the only chance I'll ever have to use it
again, I guess, will be in solitary contemplation, because
the first time I pop my head out in the open someone's
going to want to take it off!"
His body drooped and he buried his face in his hands.
Annie reached over and awkwardly tried to draw his
head down to her. More accustomed to gestures of
passion than to those of tenderness, she yet felt instinc-
tively the need to comfort her man. For a long time
they were silent. Whatever may have surged through
Annie's breast as she listened to Aaron's story of Ada,
never became articulate.
"What you need, honey," she said at last, "is help
from Mary the Wonder."
Aaron raised his head hopelessly and, standing up,
walked to the window.
"This is something voodoo won't clear up, Annie,"
he said.
Without replying she rose and dressed. Then she put
on her hat.
"Come on, big boy," she said. "We're going to take
a walk."
He raised his eyebrows questioningly.
"Where to?" he asked.
"We're going to see Mary the Wonder," she answered
firmly. "You can usually find her on the street this time
of the day selling some of her stuff."


RIVER GEORGE
Without bothering to argue with her Aaron got his
hat. The fresh air would feel good, and if it gave Annie
any comfort to see Mary the Wonder, it would do him
no harm.
There was a crowd gathered at the corner of Her-
nando and Beale, listening to a tall, brown woman who
was speaking with passionate fervor, her arm lifted high
above her head. There was something in her hand.
"Any time de valves of de veins is stopped up," she
was saying, "twenty drops of dis 'sho-shot' blows de
valves open and de blood jumps through de veins an' de
nerves am built up again. Dere is too many men losing
dere wives, 'cause dey got bad nuhves. Dis 'sho-shot'
will sho' make peace in de home. Wonderful, useful,
magnifikant, article composition dis is! It's nevuh been
discovered in no other paht of de country. Nevuh been
on publication befo'! Used in de office by no one else's
prescription thereof. It's gotta wondhuhful reco'd in
Washington!"
She paused and lifted from a table a strange looking
root and began to exhibit it to the crowd.
"Dis is a swamp root," she continued. "Tain't no
good less you dig it by de light of de new moon. Dis
one," she said, pointing to another root, "got to be
dug when dere is no moon up in de skies atall. When
dey is put together dey will blow de colds out of yo'
haid and if you fix dem up an' weah dem lak Ah tells
you, dey ain't nothin' atall dat can happen to you.
Dey done invented machinery to do quick work and I
done invented medicine to make quick cures. I kin
thaw de joints out in de ol' men, dat's what yuh call


RIVER GEORGE 161
machine-work medicine. An' what de medicine don't
do Ah can call up de spirits an' make dem do. Dey gotta
put akahall in dese automobiles in de wintuh time to
keep dem hot. Ah kin put somepin in a man or woman
dat dey can go out in de snow widout dere clothes on
an' nevuh as much as ketch a col'. Mary de Wonder is
a mystery! Dat's what Washington says about me."
She paused, lifted her head proudly and then con-
tinued:
"I ain't so much fo' myse'f, but I is fo' de public of
de people. I is put sight back into de eyes of de blin';
I snatch folks 'way f'om trouble; Ise given de women
folks back dere sweethearts and husbands. I is Mary
de Wonder!"
Annie left Aaron as Mary stopped speaking and go-
ing up to the voodoo woman spoke to her briefly. Then
she came back to him, her eyes shining and her face
serious.
"I got an appointment with her in half an hour at
her house," she said. "You get yourself some breakfast
and then go back to the house and I'll see you later."
She thrust a bill into his hand and left.
An hour later she was back, every movement ex-
hibiting restrained excitement. She took off her hat with
quick, nervous movements, then sat down, facing him.
"You're going to get help, big boy," she said. "I don'
know why I do it when it means you'll probably leave
me in the end for that woman on the plantation, but
there's something about you that means I gotta help
you. I guess I ain't never in my life tried to help a man
before—'cept once."


x6i
RIVER GEORGE
She paused, and for a moment a gray mist covered
the brightness of her eyes, while Aaron looked on
silently, moved deeply by the woman's desire to place
the powers of Mary the Wonder, in which she had
such direct and simple faith, at his disposal. To refuse
her proffered help by saying again that voodooism
would not help him, would be graceless ingratitude
indeed.
"You're swell, Annie," he said. "What am I to do?"
"You gotta go see her," Annie answered. "I told
her about you, but she gotta talk to you yourself."
Aaron looked up quickly, gravely.
"I hope you didn't tell her too much," he said.
Annie looked away, evading his eyes.
"I didn't tell her nothing," she said, but there was a
carefully stolid quality in her voice which indicated
that she was not completely easy in her mind. "And
besides," she added, "when you talks to Mary, it's just
like as if you was talkin' to God."
An hour later Aaron rang the door bell of Mary's
apartment up over the Panama on Beale Street at
Fourth. A maid, who wore a white uniform, opened the
door and he was shown into the parlor. There were
others waiting to see Mary. Finally his turn came and
he was shown into a dimly lighted room. Suddenly, the
room went dark. In spite of himself, Aaron shivered
a little with the dramatic intensity of the entire scene.
For a moment—he could not know whether it was a
minute or five—he waited in silence and darkness. Then
a flame leaped suddenly from a large bowl on the table


RIVER GEORGE
near the door, flooding the room with light, and he saw
a woman, in a white robe, standing there in the center
of the room. Her features were golden brown, her eyes
dark and mysterious, like hidden pools of light. She
stood there regarding him in silence for a moment. It
was Mary the Wonder.
Her hands went up, palms out, as though she were
warding off something unwelcome, as she spoke.
"Dere is er lot uv worry on yo' min'," she said slowly,
"an' yuh don' know whut tuh do 'bout it."
"You're marvelous," Aaron said, smiling a little, but
she paid no attention to him. Closing her eyes, she lifted
her hands to her face.
"Dar's er gal dat's worryin' yo' min'," she went on.
"She got hair dat's long en straight, en her coloh is lak
de snow on de mountin when de sun shines on it. Yuh
big en strong alright, en yuh got er strong min', too,
but she kin ben' yuh back lak de win' bend's de blades
uv grass in de meadow. She done got intuh yuh en
yuh ain' nevah gwine git huh out uv yuh, 'less yuh go
tuh de big cottonwood tree not fah from huh house on
de Beavah Dam en dig up er hat uv yore's dat she done
buried at de foot uv dat cotton wood tree; en den clim'
up dat tree en drive a nail rat thu de centuh uv de hat
to the highest limb en den when yuh comes down yuh
got tuh walk 'round de tree seven times. Dere's no
odder way yuh kin break dat spell she done had put
on yuh."
Her hands dropped from her face. Gradually she
opened her eyes and looked at Aaron. He scowled in
annoyance. Apparently, Annie Bell had told Mary the
Wonder a great deal.


166
RIVER GEORGE
farm and went to the river, under the guidance of a
Captain C. B. Church, a white man, how he rose from
cabin boy to steward and sailed to Memphis in the same
year the town was occupied by Federal troops, how the
crew fell into the hands of the Federal Army and
Church fell into the lap of freedom, how he was freed,
but without resources, in a strange town, and of how
he used his experience as a trader, while employed on
the river as a steward, together with a loan of a thou-
sand dollars, made to him by a white man named John
Overton, and how he invested his accumulations wisely,
bought property everywhere, until the value of his
estate reached a million dollars.
George was unwilling to admit that Church, or
Booker T. Washington, or Frederick Douglas, or any of
the other few outstanding men in colored American his-
tory represented sporadic outbreaks of the ability of
supermen. Rather, these leaders simply epitomized the
exceptionally endowed Negro. There were many young
Negroes in the South, who might be just as successful
if they had the chance, he reflected. Negroes were so
slow in helping their own, so indifferent to their strug-
gling young manhood, so jealous of the budding genius
of their own household. Those of their talented, who
had actually succeeded, were supported by a few pub-
lic spirited white men. How narrowly did Paul Law-
rence Dunbar escape life as an elevator boy? Had not
Robert G. Ingersoll, riding on his elevator one day,
looked over his shoulder and read lines of his poetry?
Otherwise the poet might have lived without recogni-
tion. How narrowly did Booker Washington escape the


RIVER GEORGE 169
She came to him and laid the palm of her hand caress-
ingly on his face.
"You got me, Sugar," she said. "Ain't I taking care
of you good enough?"
He took her hand in one of his and patted it gently.
"You've been marvelous to me, Annie," he said. "But
I've got a couple of things to do. My mother is all alone
on the Beaver Dam plantation. I thought I could take
care of her by staying there and working the land, but
now I can't go near it and I'm afraid to write her even
for fear they'd trace me by the letter. God knows what
will become of her if I don't find a way to send her
some money. I've got to—"
Annie leaned against him quickly, affectionately, and
interrupted him.
"I'll send her money today," she said gently. "I got
plenty."
He smiled gratefully.
"Don't you see, Annie, I can't keep taking money
from you for myself and my folks and have any re-
spect for myself?"
She patted his arm.
"Don't you worry about that. There's plenty men
in this town ain't worth helping a minute that womens
are supporting. You're something special, big boy. I'm
proud to do it."
"But Annie, I just can't let you keep on doing it.
I'll always be grateful for what you've done already.
But I've got to get on my own feet again somehow.
I've got to find a job."


i7o
RIVER GEORGE
She sighed, and walked to the other side of the room,
her shoulders drooping in dejection.
"I guess it's no use arguing with you," she said. "If
you've got to, you've got to. But meanwhile, let's send
your mother a little dough. How'll I address it?"
Gratefully he went to her and put his arm about her
shoulders.
"Thank you, Annie," he said. "Ten dollars would be
a fortune to her, you know. And I'll pay you back some
time. Don't send it direct to her, though. The post-
office might get suspicious." He thought a moment.
"You'd better send it to Lightning," he went on. "Don't
get a money order or anything. Just send him a bill
and put a note in saying it's for Hannah George from a
friend. Don't say anything about me. Lightning'll un-
derstand. You'd better not give this address, either. Just
send the money."
She looked up at him from beneath speculative eye-
brows.
"Lightning your friend?" she asked.
"The best I have there, next to my mother."
"Then he might want to get in touch with you."
Aaron hesitated a moment. It would be good to have
news from home, to have his mind set at rest about his
mother and Ada, to know whether the whites had in
any way visited their wrath on them. But he shook his
head.
"No," he said. "It'd be too risky. I don't think they
suspect Lightning of anything. But he doesn't get many
letters. Someone might open the letter."
"I tell you what I'll do," Annie said. "I've got a


RIVER GEORGE
friend lives down on Gayoso Street. She's got a place
like mine here. When one of us gets crowded on big
nights, we send people to the other. I'll use her address,
and tell her I may get a letter there. I'll use another
name—I'll sign the letter 'Helen Thomas' and use that
address. Then if your friend is smart enough and wants
to send word to you, he can do it that way."
Aaron's eyes lit up with gratitude and admiration for
the staunchness of Annie Bell's friendship.
"Gee, Annie," he said, "you've got more brains than
any six college girls I ever saw."
It was dark before they had written and sealed the
letter to Lightning, and Aaron went out to mail it, his
heart lighter than it had been at any time since that
terrifying moment when he had seen Fred Smith's still
body lying at his feet. He knew that, although Light-
ning's schooling had never gone beyond the elementary
routine which made up education on the Beaver Dam,
he could write a simple letter and read. And he knew
that his native intelligence went far beyond that of
many well-educated persons. He was sure Lightning
would get the news which was between the lines. And
then perhaps he could learn what was happening to Ada
and his mother, and start out on whatever path he could
find, with greater assurance.
He walked back to Annie's house, his heart filled with
longing for Ada and peace. Yet, surging through his
love for her was a deep feeling of gratitude to Annie
who, with more than womanly understanding, had been
eager to help him even when her help made it more
likely that he would leave her for the woman he loved.


CHAPTER XVIII
LIGHTNING spat speculatively in the dust before his
J cabin, and looked westward to where the setting
sun flushed the sky with red and gold and purple. It
had been just three weeks ago, on this night, when he
had come quietly up that road in his bare feet, his pants
dripping with water from the creek, his mind weighing
the chances of Aaron's safe getaway. Apparently the
escape had succeeded, for although the Beaver Dam had
buzzed the next day with talk of the postmaster and
Aaron, no one seemed to know anything definite.
Indeed the known facts about that night of horror
made a story which had often caused Lightning's fore-
head to wrinkle and his nose to twitch like a rabbit's
as he had thought about them and tried to fit them
together into an understandable whole.
He had been sitting on his porch when he had heard
the shot down the road. Instinctively he had connected
it with the fact that a few minutes earlier he had seen
Aaron George hurrying along in the direction of Ada's
cottage. With the disturbing sound ringing in his ears
he had darted behind his own house and, skirting the
garden, had run through the woods to a point where
behind the trees he had seen Ada's terrified form
crouching on the grass beside the lifeless body of Fred
Smith. Looking about him quickly to see that there
173


174
RIVER GEORGE
were no other white men in sight, he had hurried over
and lifted her to her feet while she, trembling and sob-
bing, had told him in a few disconnected phrases what
had happened. He couldn't get the whole story, for Ada
was in no condition to tell any story just then, but the
words which had rung in his consciousness, the words
which had told him that Aaron had killed Fred Smith,
made him stiffen with apprehension. Quickly he had
told Ada to go over to the cottage of Sally Miller and
keep quiet, letting someone else find Fred Smith's body.
Then he had run back to his own house, jumped on his
mule and hurried to find Aaron.
Later, when, having eluded the paddy-rollers, he had
sought Ada again, he heard her story—how George had
come to her saying someone had told him that she had
sent for him; how Smith had found them together,
and how, as George had struggled with the white post-
master to avoid being shot himself, the gun had been
discharged, apparently killing Smith. He looked at Ada
as she told this and then asked her one question.
"Yo' sen' fo' Aaron?"
She looked at him with wide, startled eyes.
"Fo' Gawd, Lightnin', Ah ain' seen Aaron, neider
sen' fo' him fo' months—not sence his maw and Ah
had a talk. Ah tole him den dat Ah wouldn' see him
'til aftuh Ah git rid o' dat Fred Smith. Ah wuz gettin'
rid o' him, too, an' evahting would uv been all right
in 'bout a mont' if dis hadn' happen'. Ah don' know
what git into Aaron's min' comin' ovah dat night."
Then Lightning had taken her home to find the place
completely deserted. In the yard was a little spot where


RIVER GEORGE
the grass had been beaten down by the struggle between
Aaron and Fred Smith, and later evidently by the
tramping of many feet. But the body was gone! In the
cabin they had found Ada's orderliness completely de-
stroyed. Even the meagre kitchen utensils which had
been kept in her small pantry had been thrown out as
though the searchers had thought someone might have
been hiding behind a kettle. Her bed had been torn to
pieces and everywhere were signs that a feverish search
had been made.
Later, he had gone down the road and found Hannah
George, her cottage dark, sitting silently in her rocker
smoking her pipe, while her mind brooded darkly on
the events of the evening and the future which faced
her son. She had told him that Aaron had left in answer
to a message brought by Do Pop, and at the mention
of the little psalm-singing Negro's name Lightning's
face had clouded with an insistent, bitter suspicion.
But the crowning bewilderment of all came the next
day and on the days that followed. No one seemed to
know anything about where Fred Smith's body had
been takert. It was said that he was to be buried at
his home down somewhere near Nashville. But Willie
Blaire, the porter down at the station, had told Light-
ning that no coffin had gone out on any train. Pickle
Bledsoe, who worked for the only trucking concern at
Holly Rock, had likewise reported that no coffin had
left town by truck. After that brief cataclysmic en-
counter with Aaron in front of Ada's house, Fred Smith
had suddenly disappeared from the face of the earth.
Now Lightning sighed and shifted his weight, leaning


i76
RIVER GEORGE
back with one elbow on the floor of the porch. He
wondered how far George had gone; he wondered who
had told Do Pop that George was wanted in Ada's
house; he wondered consistently, and with no release
from his own questioning, whether Fred Smith was
really dead. Too often in his forty years of life he had
seen plots of one kind and another patched up to
enrage a brutally white populace against troublesome
Negroes, and more than once he had burned with a
holy bitterness when one of his race had been taken
to a tree or a railroad trestle where his life slowly and
horribly ebbed away at the end of a taut rope. More
than once there had been murder in his heart for all
who had taken the smallest part in such affairs as these.
He knew, beyond the shadow of any doubt, that
Aaron's quick flight that night and the aid which he
had lent him had been the only things which had pre-
vented the Beaver Dam plantation from another lynch-
ing. Fired anew with the hope which the organization
formed by Aaron and himself had created, he brooded
darkly now on what had been lost.
From a nearby cabin came the sound of a guitar and
the voice of a singer:
Ain't it hahd to be a Nigguh?
Ain't it hahd to be a Nigguh?
Ain't it hahd to be a Nigguh?
Po' Nigguh ain't got no show.
Again Lightning spat in the dust.
"Fools," he grunted disgustedly. "All dey can do is
sing songs. Dey don' do nothin'."


RIVER GEORGE
177
He looked up quickly as he saw a figure shuffling
along the dusty road before him. There was an unmis-
takable stoop to the body and an ineradicable sense of
evasion, as if the whole body were cringing from an
unoffered blow. It was Do Pop. As he came abreast of
the cottage Lightning looked innocently in the other
direction without speaking, hoping that the other would
pass on. He had no desire to waste breath just now
talking to one who, to Lightning's way of thinking,
knew better how to sing hymns and intone pompous
prayers than he did to speak the truth. But there was no
escape. Do Pop turned in at the path and came shuffling
up to the porch. Something white gleamed in his hand
in the deepening shadows of early evening. He held it
out for Lightning.
"New pos'master gi' me dis lettuh en said would
Ah gi' it tuh yuh, Lightnin'," he said querulously.
Concealing his surprise, Lightning reached for the
envelope. It was seldom that anyone wrote him a letter.
Yet some instinct made him want, if possible, to let
Do Pop think it was the most natural thing in the
world. Fortunately he could read a little. Slowly he
put his big finger under the flap to tear it open, and as
he did so, the flap came free of the envelope, as though
it had scarcely been stuck at all. For a moment he
hesitated before extracting the envelope's contents.
Although he had little formal schooling, his naturally
agile mind had spent so much time brooding on the
treachery of mankind that it was quick to observe signs
of such treachery, and now, surprised at the ease with
which the envelope had come open, he noticed that


RIVER GEORGE 179
"Gal Ah knows down in de city," he said modestly.
"Guess she gittin' lonesome fo' to see me."
"Nevah di' have no use fo' dem city 'omans," Do Pop
said. "Dey is tools of de debble en dey lips is de gateway
to hell."
Turning, he shuffled down the path without a good
night and started along the road in the direction from
which he had come. Lightning watched him out of
sight and then, as if in quick decision, turned suddenly
and ran back of his cabin, past the garden and into the
woods. Keeping near the edge of the trees he ran parallel
with the road along which Do Pop had gone until he
again caught sight of the shuffling little figure, hurry-
ing now, and walking as though he had an objective.
Without losing sight of him, yet without revealing him-
self, he followed Do Pop, shifted his direction when
the latter turned into a private road which led up to
Sam Turner's cabin. Lightning went more carefully
now for Do Pop was going more slowly, looking from
side to side as though he expected someone. Half-way
up the road he stopped as a white man stepped from
behind a tree and hailed him. Lightning dropped to his
hands and knees now, and inch by inch crawled closer
until he could see the white man's face and hear the
low voiced words they spoke to each other. It was Sam
Turner.
"Well, did you give it to him?" Turner asked
impatiently.
"Ah sho did, Mistuh Turner," Do Pop whined. "Ah
gi' it right into his own han'."


i8o
RIVER GEORGE
"How did he look? What did he say?" the other
asked impatiently.
Do Pop looked from side to side, unable to meet the
gaze of the white man even in the gathering dusk
which now almost obscured their faces.
"Din' look no way special, Mistuh Turner," he
whined. "Din' say nothin' atall. Jes' put dat ol ' ten
dollah bill in his pocke', tryin' tuh keep me fum seein'
it, en den whin Ah ast him, say it cum fum a frien'
o' his in de city."
"Didn't he look surprised?" Turner asked.
"Couldn' see him lookin' any ways," Do Pop said.
"Jes' din' look anytin' atall. Yo' gonna gimme mah
money now, Mistuh Turner? Yo' nevah di' pay me
eider fo' dat oder night whin Ah wen' tuh Aaron's
house."
Silently the white man's hand went into his pocket
and withdrew a bill which he gave to Do Pop.
"Now, beat it," he said harshly, "and keep your
damn mouth shut or the same thing will happen to
you that's going to happen to George when we catch
him."
Turning, the white man hurried back along the road
toward his house, while Do Pop shuffled away, his body
seeming to cringe more than ever, his gait a silent con-
fession of degradation.
In the woods, skirting the road, Lightning followed.
When they had gone far enough so that they were out
of earshot from Turner, he ran ahead a little and came
suddenly on to the road before the now trembling
Do Pop. Unlike the latter's cringing body, Lightning's


RIVER GEORGE 181
was erect and hard and in his face was the steady set
look of one bent on cold, calculated retribution. His
left hand shot forward seizing Do Pop by the shoulder,
while his right doubled into a hard, knotty fist. When
he spoke his voice came between lips which opened only
wide enough to let out the bullet-like words, while his
face remained immobile.
"Yo' yell, Do Pop," he said slowly, "an' fo' Gawd
Ah beat yo' tuh deat' wid dis fis'."
But Do Pop was beyond all yelling. His body, which
had begun trembling when he had first seen Lightning
emerge from the trees, now shook as if with ague. What
strength he had ebbed in a fast receding flood, and had
it not been for Lightning's supporting hand, he would
have fallen to the ground. Half leading, half dragging
the trembling creature, Lightning went into the woods
again, going farther away from the road, following a
little creek until they came to an open spot where the
grass grew down to the water's edge. Here, with a
gesture of scorn and hate, he threw the other from him
and Do Pop, stumbling, fell at full length on the
ground. With a terrified cry he scrambled to his feet
and, with head down, started to bolt. But with one leap
Lightning was upon him, his left hand clamped again
on the trembling man's shoulder. This time he accented
his hate with a stinging blow from the palm of his
right hand which sent Do Pop reeling until he came
up finally with his back against a tree and then slid
slowly and weakly to the ground. He made no effort
to rise this time but crouched there moaning.


182
RIVER GEORGE
"Don' yuh go hittin' me, Lightnin'," he whined.
"Ah ain' done nuthin' tuh yuh."
Lightning spat with deadly aim, but Do Pop was too
frightened now even to raise his sleeve to wipe the
trickling saliva from his check. Then Lightning spoke.
"Ah seen snakes," he said slowly, "an' Ah seen rats,
an' Ah seen lice, but fo' Gawd, 'less Ah'm crazy, Ah
ain' nevah in mah life befo' seen nothin' dat's so low-
down as yuh is." He paused a moment seeking for
words. "An' Ah' done smell rotten eggs an' manure
heaps an' daid pigs dat de buzzards is aftuh, but Ah
ain' nevah in mah life knowed anytin' dat stink de
way yuh does. Niggahs like you is wussen any white
man evah was! Now yuh talk an' say wha' yuh know,
or fo' Gawd Ah gonna kill yuh wid dese two hands."
He towered over the cringing Do Pop, and the other,
looking up, lifted one arm as though to ward off a blow.
"Ah don' know nuthin', Lightnin'," he whined. "Ah
jes' wen' up de road tuh git a little money dat Mistuh
Turner done owe me fer fixin' his chicken coop."
For answer, Lightning's hand shot down and seized
the other by the shoulder again, raising him to his feet.
Again the open palm of his right hand struck Do Pop's
left cheek, stinging like fire, and as the latter reeled,
Lightning lifted his left hand and struck him once
more, catching him before he fell, and pushing him
hard against the tree under which they stood.
"Yuh lie like hell, Do Pop," he growled. "Turner
pay yuh tuh-night fo' bringin' me dat lettuh. He pay
yuh, too, fo' goin' to Aaron's house. What night wuz
dat yuh go tuh Aaron's house?"


RIVER GEORGE
183
The other was almost inarticulate now, but finally
words came from between his shaking teeth.
"Ah don' know nuthin', Lightnin'. Yuh lemme go."
This time Lightning used his fists. First his right and
then his left smashed into the other's face until a bright
stream of blood sprang from Do Pop's nose, and cours-
ing down over his mouth and chin, began to drop on
his shirt. He flung up his arms against the destroying
blows and backed away as well as he could.
"Yuh stop dat, Lightnin'," he screamed. "Ah tell
yuh."
Lightning stopped, and as Do Pop began to sink to
the ground again, reached down and held him up.
"Yuh stan' up an' tell me," he said shortly.
Do Pop was sobbing now in little tortured moans.
"Dey kill me tuhmorrow if Ah tell yuh," he sobbed.
"An' Ah kill yuh tuh-night if yuh don'," Lightning
shouted. "Fo' Gawd, yuh nevah leave dis spot alive 'less
yuh tell me."
"Yuh keep dem fum hurtin' me if Ah tell yuh?"
Do Pop asked Lightning. "Yuh take care o' me?"
"Ah take care uv yuh good," Lightning said grimly.
"Mistuh Turner make me do it," Do Pop whined.
"He kep' at me en kep' at me all de time Aaron wuz
seein' Ada tuh watch dem. He say he kill me if Ah
don' do it. He make me follow Aaron en Ah cum
right heah where we standin' now en see him an' Ada
together. Den he make me go dat night and tell Aaron
dat Ada want tuh see him. Den aftuh Aaron go, Mistuh
Turner tol ' de new postmaster to watch fer any lettuhs
dat cum tuh George's mudder or tuh yuh. He tink


CHAPTER XIX
A ARON hurried along the street, his heart lighter
il than it had been for months. For a week he had
been working, earning enough money so that, as soon
as he got his first pay, he would be able to be on
his own, leaving his unwelcome position as an "ease-
man" and living, again, like a man. Then, whatever
there might be between him and Annie, it would be an
honest relationship, a thing which came out of their
liking for each other with no suspicion of necessity.
He knew that he was taking a chance in appearing
openly on the streets of Memphis, but he saw no escape
from that circumstance. Annie probably would give
him money to go to St. Louis, or Chicago, or New
York, but, since he knew that she wanted him to stay
with her, he felt a certain delicacy about asking her
to finance his departure. And the job which he had
taken furnished him with at least a partial disguise, in
the way of a uniform, which was a comfort.
During his college days Aaron had learned to play a
violin—not too well, to be sure, but well enough to
take part in any one of a hundred colored pickup bands
which furnished many a party and many a dance with
music in the south. Even so it is doubtful whether he
would have been able to find a job if it had not been
for Annie's help. Though she had opposed from the
185


186 RIVER GEORGE
start his desire to go to work, when she had found
that he was determined to do so she had seen Charlie
Robinson, a friend of hers and the leader of "Robinson's
Syncopaters," and had got Aaron his job. In effect she,
the almost illiterate madam of a Memphis house of
prostitution, paraphrased Voltaire, of whom she had
never even heard, by saying, "I wholly disapprove of
what you do and will defend to the death your right
to do it." There was an element of greatness in Annie
Bell.
"Robinson's Syncopaters" formed one of the old units
in Memphis. They played for many of the popular
affairs which drew large crowds from distant points
along the Mississippi. The dances were for whites only
and the pay was good. Members of the band wore uni-
forms which would have looked more at home on
trained monkeys than on men, with little colored hats
set on the sides of their heads and held there by rubber
bands, brightly colored and ridiculously patterned vests
and jackets, white shoes with high French heels that
made every man there at least a half inch taller than
he was normally, and grey spats. Most of the men kept
their uniforms at Robinson's office, from which they
left in a body every night for their job, wherever it
might be, but Aaron always wore his home with him,
and dressed at Annie Bell's before leaving in the eve-
ning. He was glad of the extra height the shoes gave
him and of the bizarre appearance of his clothing,
which would almost certainly distract attention from
his face.
He looked down now, at his ridiculous shoes and at


RIVER GEORGE
his trousers with their long white stripes down each leg,
and smiled with satisfaction. He was passing a low
frame house in the Negro section of Memphis. Through
an open window drifted a song being sung by one of
its occupants. Aaron stopped to listen.
O, Adam, he was fust built man,
Hat's jest what de Good Book say;
An Eve come next! Den Sin began.
Dat's jest what de Good Book say;
Eve bit de apple right in two,
Dat's jest what de Good Book say;
A wicket thing fo' Eve to do;
Yes, dat's what de Good Book say.
Dat's just what de Good Book say, it am
Yes, dat's what de Good Book say.
I'se read it through, yo'll find it true,
Fo' dat's what de Good Book say.
Dere was a man, his name was Lot,
Dat's just what de Good Book say,
And he hab a wife an' daughter got,
Dat's just what de Good Book say.
His wife she balk an' make a halt,
Yes, dat's what de Good Book say;
An' de Lo'd he tu'n huh into Salt,
O, Dat's what de Good Book say!
He smiled and turned to go on his way, almost
bumping into another man who had apparently also
stopped to listen. The stranger was a little blue-black
Negro with steely eyes and cold, expressionless face.
Aaron begged his pardon and hurried on, but the glance
of the other followed closely, seeming to take in every
line of Aaron's ridiculously clad figure, just as it had


i88
RIVER GEORGE
seemed to inventory every characteristic of his features.
As Aaron turned the corner he looked back quickly and
saw the other following. Quickening his pace he reached
Robinson's office as quickly as he could. But when, later,
he came out with the rest of the band to get into the
truck which was to take them to the inn where they
were going to play that night, he looked from side to
side apprehensively and felt a marked relief when he
found that the stranger was nowhere to be seen.
All through,the evening, as Aaron played with the
band, he felt a dim sense of apprehension. He chided
himself for what seemed silly to him—after all there
was nothing unusual about a stranger who happened
to be going in the same direction as he was. He tried
to shake worry from his mind in watching the crowd
on the dance floor.
White bodies moved to black rhythm, tired white
bodies made young again through the music of age-old
Africa. Jazz touched white limbs and the grace which
those limbs knew on the Peabody Roof or in the parlor
of the Plantation Big House now gave way to the
honky-tonk postures of the black-bottom and the
bombershay.
It was during an intermission, when the orchestra
paused for a rest, that Aaron noticed two red-faced
white men lingering about the bandstand. Their appear-
ance was that of river men from the lower reaches of
the Delta. Their eyes were deeply set, their cheeks hol-
low, and stains of tobacco juice showed at the corners
of their mouths.
He watched them for a moment, and a tremor shot


RIVER GEORGE
through his body. These were men he had seen on the
streets of Holly Rock. Who they were he did not know,
but he knew that he had seen them before. There was
an ominous silence about them, a secretiveness about
their movements and the steely glare of their eyes
which looked out from beneath mops of stringy yellow
hair that dropped low, like a horse's mane, over their
faces. And staring at their faces, Aaron remembered
another face he had seen years before, and how his
mother had told him that that man had led a mob.
He felt suddenly sick in the pit of his stomach and
glanced away. His palms felt sticky and hot. His eyes
began to see things—faces and trees and a rope. The
rope had a loop in the end of it, and it swung down
from a limb, where a sea of tightly drawn faces—white
faces—glared up through the flickering flames of the
torch lights.
"Listen, Charlie," he said. "Play something, will you?
Strike up something!"
"What's the matter?" Charlie said. "It's the inter-
mission! What's the hurry?"
"There's no hurry," Aaron answered. "I just can't
stand this damned silence."
He stood up then and went out through a door that
led to the side of the house. He needed air. He had been
afraid for a moment that he was going to faint. He
walked toward the front, but quickly stepped aside into
the shadow of a tree as he saw a figure pacing slowly up
and down in front of the house. It was the little black
man who had followed him in town!
For a moment Aaron considered bolting as he was.


RIVER GEORGE
boys climbed over the side of the truck now. Some had
leaped to the ground and started to run; but the voice
of one of the white men stopped them.
"I don't aim fer a nigger to move," a voice said
slowly. "I jest want every Goddam one of you to line
up tell we git a good look at you."
The voice had a loose, lapping sound, like a dog dip-
ping its tongue in and out of a pail of water. It fell
silent and a flashlight suddenly shown on Charlie's face,
blinding him, as he stood in the body of the truck, not
moving.
"Climb down, nigger, and don't take so long," the
voice said. It sounded flat now, flat and hard. The light
kept swinging around Charley's face and shirt front.
And when he climbed over the side and dropped to the
ground, the man with the flashlight came forward and
stared into his eyeballs.
"You look like the very nigger we's lookin' fer," the
man said. "Ain't yuh th' black bastard what kilt a
white man down to Holly Rock?"
"No suh!" Charlie said, his voice quivering with fear,
"I ain't nevah done nothin' that was wrong to a white
man in my life! An' I ain't nevah been to Holly Rock
in mah life."
"Don't you tell me no Goddam lie, nigger," the man
with the flashlight said.
"But I never done it," Charlie said. "I—I ain't never
been to Mississippi in my whole life. My Pa and Ma
both live in Georgia and that's where I come from.
I—I—ben"
"Shut up!"


CHAPTER XX
THE East was red with the rising sun when Aaron,
still dressed in his band uniform, crept silently
to Annie's house. But before he had put his hand to
the door-knob, it opened and Annie stood before him.
Drawing him inside quickly she closed the door, and
without a word led him to her room. Only when that
door, too, was safely closed behind them, did either of
them speak.
"Tell me," she said quickly, "did anything happen?
I've been worried sick all evening, and when you didn't
get here on time I thought I'd go crazy until I knew."
He sank wearily into a chair and lighted a cigarette.
"Plenty happened," he said. He told her the whole
story while her eyes popped wide open with terror.
"God!" she moaned, when he had finished, her head
sinking, "and it was my crazy idea that did it!"
George looked at her quickly.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"It was that letter I wrote," she said. "Mabel came
over tonight half an hour after you'd gone and told me
that two white men and a mean looking little nigger
had come to her place on Gayoso Street and asked for
Helen Thomas. She didn't like their looks and told them
there was nobody there by that name an' that she'd
194


RIVER GEORGE 195
never heard of anybody by that name. They must have
read the letter I wrote Lightning and got the name and
address out of that and decided it was from you."
Aaron looked at her through eyes which were
dimmed with weariness.
"Listen, honey," he said slowly, "in the first place it
wasn't any of it your fault. What you did was swell.
And in the second place it doesn't matter. I got away
from them and that's that. It was only a matter of time
before I'd have to go anyway. Well, I've got to go a
little sooner than I planned to, that's all."
"Where'll you go?" /
He sighed wearily.
"Suppose I figure that out after I've had a few hours
sleep."
He paused and his face clouded with apprehension
as a new worry entered his tired mind.
"How well do you know Charlie Robinson?" he
asked.
"Better'n I know you," she answered, then she looked
up from under arched eyebrows and her eyes glowed
with sadness and affection. "But I don't like him so
well," she added.
"Can you trust him?" Aaron asked.
"Sure. Charlie's on the level."
"And how about Mabel?"
"What do you think she kept her mouth shut this
afternoon for?" Annie flashed. "She ain't double-cross-
ing anybody!"
"Okay," he sighed. "Then I guess I can go to sleep."


198
RIVER GEORGE
his face alight with something she had never seen in it
before.
"Look here, Annie," he said, "you remember what
my father told me, 'You've got learning now just like
white folks. See that you use it right.' Even before he
told me that, while I was still at college, I found out
that the only thing in the world I really wanted to do
was—"
He stopped again and shrugged his shoulders, smiling
enigmatically. When he went on his voice was full of
diffidence.
"I don't know how to say it, Annie," he said, "but
don't you see? Every colored man who has any kind of
a chance at all, who has any of the kind of training
my mother and father gave me, or the kind of educa-
tion I got, has only one job. He's got to spend his life
trying to do something for his people, trying to lift
them out of their suffering and darkness, trying to
get a decent chance for them."
Her face was tender as she heard his impassioned
words. But suddenly it grew dark and hard as she flung
her answer at him.
"That's almost poetry, big boy," she said. "And it
would be swell if it worked. You think the whole white
race is against all of us. You think they're the only
enemy we've got. You think that just because your skin
is black and mine is black and there are millions of
other black skins in America, and white people treat
us different than they do each other, that you'd only
have to make the white people treat us right to have
everything rosy. Well, it won't work that way. I tell


RIVER GEORGE 199
you there are as many rats with black skins as with
white and they got just as sharp teeth. Try to help the
Negroes and, as often as not, it's a nigger that will stick
you in the back. Anyway, what good will it do you to
join the army?"
He looked up at her helplessly, spreading his hands
in a gesture of impotence.
"What can I do here where I'm wanted for murder,"
he said. "Listen, Annie, this man's army is going to
be full of colored men. They're going to be part of the
gang that fights for the things America stands for.
When they come back the country will have to treat
them like men. I want to be part of that."
She snorted with disgust.
"Yeah!" she said. "There'll be plenty of colored boys
all right to get killed over there along with the white
boys. Don't fool yourself. If you go over there and
fight and get back here, so far as this man's country
goes, you'll still be a nigger and you'll still be treated
like a nigger."
He rose and walked silently across the room away
from her, made inarticulate by the scorn in her voice.
But she hurried after him, putting her arms about him,
and when he looked into her face he found it soft and
full of tenderness.
"Oh, honey," she said, "don't look like that. I'm not
talking against you. I'm for you all the way. Whatever
you want to do is right as far as I'm concerned. If
you've got to go, you got to go, and all I want to do is
help you. But you can't enlist here. What are you going


202
RIVER GEORGE
took that girl and put her in a trance and made her
howl like a dog and butt her head against the wall like
a goat. When she came out of the trance, she got on
her knees in front of Mary and kissed her dress. Then
Mary gave her a charm and later, when the man pulled
a gun on her and tried to shoot her, the bullets just
wouldn't go off."
George carefully fastened the charm around his neck
and kissed Annie again.
"Thank you, honey," he said.
That night, as the Chicago train pulled out of Mem-
phis, Annie stood quietly on the platform watching
until its tail lights were out of sight. Then she waved
her hand gently in farewell down the track and turned
to go back to her house which would seem empty and
desolate to her now that Aaron was on his way to enlist
for active service in France.


CHAPTER XXI
IT was August, 1919. The war which was to have
made the world safe for democracy had been fought
and representatives of the powers which had sent mil-
lions of men to slaughter each other were gathered in
a formal gesture of peace, a gesture in which manceu-
vering for individual advantage, hate, and the desire
for revenge played a more important part than wisdom,
good will, and the solemn intention that the world
would never again be dismembered by war.
The troop ship, loaded with colored soldiers taken
from many regiments—pitiful remnants, many of
them, of the outfits which had left America over a year
before, warped slowly into the New York harbor on
its way to Hoboken to discharge its jubilant cargo. To
right and left several freight and passenger ships of
allied European nations rode at anchor, wearing their
fantastic harlequin suits of camouflage, made of futur-
istic designs in purples and greys and browns, donned
in the hope of eluding the dreaded German U-boats and
their campaign of terror and ruthless destruction. To
starboard a United States destroyer was proceeding to
the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Steaming down the harbor
on its way to sea came the Rotterdam, prize passenger
boat of the Holland-America line, the smoke pouring
203


204
RIVER GEORGE
lazily from her funnels, her crew gay in the knowledge
that no torpedoes would cross her path on this trip.
And from every vessel which had steam up, from the
lowliest tugboat to the majestic Rotterdam, came a roar
of welcome to the boys who were coming home at last,
the war over, the war won, as the world thought, and
peace, bought dearly with the blood of white and black
brothers alike, settling its benediction upon the earth.
At the rail of the troop ship, looking hungrily at the
New York sky-line, stood Aaron George in the uniform
of a second lieutenant of infantry. His body was erect
and hard, but there were lines in his face, a new, firm
set to his mouth, and a deep solemnity in his eyes which
showed that he had aged during his service to his
country. Whatever there had been of a boy about him
as he had told Annie good-bye in the Memphis station
that night which seemed so long ago, it was gone now,
and his face and bearing were those of a man who had
seen too much suffering ever to be quite gay and care-
free and youthful again.
Yet in his serious, too sad eyes, there shone a new
hope, too. For he had witnessed, and shared in, a great
triumph for his race. He had seen Negroes fight shoul-
der to shoulder with white men for a common aim,
had been present when General Pershing himself had
decorated a Negro soldier for conspicuous gallantry in
action, had seen the respect in the great general's eyes
as he had saluted the colored man. He had watched
members of his race suffer and die with songs on their
lips, had seen as he had never seen before the strength
which was the heritage of the black man.


RIVER GEORGE
205
Behind him Popeye, his orderly, was playing his
guitar softly and singing. Popeye was an original, one
who suggested no precedents. Feeling none of the typical
Negro's need for society, Popeye stayed by himself more
often than with any human companion. But wherever
you found Popeye you almost surely found his guitar.
It mattered little what was going on around him. If it
were a parade and Popeye had to go, he would go,
escaping the groups who talked about it later, to find
his guitar and lose himself from the world in song.
Now, while the rest of the boys crowded to the rail,
waving at the crews of ships and tugs they passed, and
shouting their joy, he stayed aloof, strumming his
guitar softly, and singing to himself.
Aaron moved more closely to listen and a sense of
nostalgia filled his heart. On many a night these low-
voiced songs had cheered him in the terrible loneliness
of a dugout while shells whined overhead and Death
seemed to wait hungrily for him just outside that fragile
shelter. He would miss these songs and the silent
friendly personality of the singer.
"Good boy, Popeye," he said gently.
The orderly looked up at him from dreaming eyes
and, sweeping his fingers through a few transitional
bars of music, began another song.
I don' know why we went to war,
Tell me, oh, tell me, now!
I don' know why we went to war,
Or what these folks is fightin' for,
Tell me, oh, tell me now!


RIVER GEORGE
207
she had made for him and wondered. But he had no
answer.
Popeye was singing the last verse of his song.
/ surely hopes dere is a God,
Tell me, oh, tell me now!
I surely hopes dere is a God,
When de grave-digger slaps me in de face wid a sod,
Tell me, oh, tell me now!
Aaron looked into Popeye's brooding face. It seemed
to him to typify one side of the Negro race. Almost all
of the songs which the colored boys had sung in the
trenches were like this one. While their white comrades
were singing gaily of Mademoiselle from Armentiers
and "K-k-k-katy," the Negroes, closer to fundamental
things than the white race, more intimately in touch
with universal reality, were singing minor melodies of
love and death, death and love, the two forces which
hovered over the world with equal insistence.
Aaron smiled at the singer.
"Sing that other one I always liked, Popeye," he
asked. "I'd like to hear it again before we land—that
one that goes like this—" he hummed a tune and
Popeye answered him with an instant accompaniment
on the instrument before taking up the words. The first
bar of the melody was an exact repetition of that of
the "St. Louis Blues," but then it changed into one of
complete originality—product of some black singer, or
more likely a group of black singers, bulwarking them-
selves with song against the insistent threat of death.
When I lays down an' dies
On my oV tired hunkers,


RIVER GEORGE
De fam'ly back home'll get
Ten thousand plunkers,
Oh, dis man's war is a mean man's war, fob sure!
All dose black mamas back home
Is a-pinin'
Fer a papa like me, when
De moon is a-shinin'
Oh, dis man's war is a mean man's war fob sure!
Nearby a gaunt, bright eyed Negro who had been a
preacher in a country church in Alabama was trying
to get the attention of a group of men who were lean-
ing against the rail making raucous, and often bawdy
comments about what they expected to do as soon as
they got leave to go into New York City.
"Befoh dis ship lands," he was shouting, "yoll bettah
make up yo min's whedder yuh is goin' de right way or
de wrong way. Yo is goin' into a city whose streets is
like de streets ob hell, lessen yo min' whe yo step. Yo
has been snatch fum de jaws ob deat' by de hand ob
God, de same God who delivered Jonah fum de belly
ob de whale an' de Hebrew chillen fum de fiery fur-
nace, de same God dat walked on de water an' made
de Red Sea part. He has watched ovah yo and kep yo
safe. You hab come safe t'ru deat' to de body but yo'
can march straight into det' to de soul lessen yo mind
whe' yo step. Remembah!" His voice soared with the
pleasant quality of the word, and he paused, one finger
upraised. "Remembah!" he repeated, in still shriller tone.
"Remembah dat de road to hell is lined wid de scarlet
lips ob women!"
"I mean, papa!" a jubilant voice cut in, but the


RIVER GEORGE 209
preacher seemed not to hear him. His eyes glowing with
holy zeal, he finished his brief sermon.
"My God is a rock in a weary lan' an' a shelter in
de storm," he cried. "Let us pray."
Most of the men turned their backs to continue
gazing excitedly at the New York shore which slowly
slipped past them as they pushed their way up the
North River, or to shuffle off to reform in new groups,
but the minister, undaunted, bowed his head.
"O Lord," he cried, "when I was thirsty you gave
me drink. "When I was hongry, yo' gave me meat. Now
I ask dat you look down on dese here sinnahs who are
rushin' headlong to de pat' of temptation. Keep dem
from de scarlet lips ob women an' de jaws ob deat'.
Make dem repent, O Lord. Send yo angels in front ob
dem to sweep temptation fum dey way. Amen."
Something about his fulsome tone of voice reminded
Aaron of Do Pop. What had happened to him, he won-
dered. And what of Vince Sims and the others? He
knew that his mother had been taken care of. Annie,
who had written him at intervals all of the time he
had been away, had assured him of that. It was she
who had seen to it that the aging woman was supplied
with a little money now and then and she had told him
that Lightning had helped Hannah work her land so
that the white owners did not evict her.
He turned to Popeye.
"I guess that praying fellow is worried about
Harlem," he said. "Ever been there?"
Slowly, sadly, Popeye shook his head and went on
sweeping his fingers across the strings of his guitar.


2IO
RIVER GEORGE
"Well, now's your chance," Aaron said.
Again the other shook his head.
"When Ah gits off dis boat," he said sadly, "Ah'm
gonna bury mahse'f so deep in Gawgia dat dey is gonna
hafta put bakin' powdah in mah coffin so's Ah kin rise
when Gabriel blows his trumpet! An' Ah ain' stoppin'
in Harlem befoh Ah heads Sout'."
"But don't you want to see how Negroes live in the
North?" Aaron asked. "Wouldn't you like to see what
it's like to be able to live the way white folks do, and to
know Negroes who are writing and doing things which
change the white people's attitude toward all of us so
that some day the poor damned share croppers and
other Negroes who never get a chance can have the
same chance the whites have?"
Popeye looked away, a slight expression of boredom
on his face.
"De damned and de po'," he said, "we always gonna
have. Ain' no use tryin' to worry 'bout dat. Ef de Lawd
jes' lets me git back to Gawgia, Ah'm gonna let him
change de white folks hisse'f."
A tug was pushing its nose against the bow of the
troop ship, like a calf nuzzling its mother, getting ready
to shove the great boat around and into its slip, but
Popeye, unconcernedly, went on plucking the strings
of his guitar.


CHAPTER XXII
IIEUTENANT AARON GEORGE stood at the cor-
U ner of Seventh Avenue and 135th Street, an hon-
orable discharge from the United States Army in his
pocket. Here he was in the center of American Negro
culture, in the neighborhood of James Weldon Johnson
and his brother, Rosamond, and all of those other con-
temporary black artists who were blazing the way in
art and letters for the rest of the race. Perhaps here,
among them, he could find expression for his own de-
sire. Perhaps he could settle down here, far from the
spectre of Fred Smith, which had pursued him for two
years, and find peace.
He looked up and down Lenox Avenue, wondering
which way to go, and gazing curiously at the face of
the people who stood in groups on the sidewalk, or
walked along slowly, talking and laughing with each
other, less as though they were going some place than
as if they were simply out for a good time.
Suddenly he was aware that someone was standing
close to him. There was a strange exotic perfume in
his nostrils and that subtle awareness of a woman's
presence which men feel without being able to analyze
it. He turned his head and found an olive-skinned
Negro girl looking at him and smiling. She was smartly
dressed in a blue tailored suit. Her jet black hair showed


RIVER GEORGE
213
"I'm a musician," he answered. "I play the violin."
"Lots of orchestras in Harlem," she said. "Lots of
boys wanting to play in 'em, too."
"You have lots of famous people living here, don't
you?" he asked. His voice was almost shy, as though
he hesitated to talk of the things which really interested
him.
"Sure," she laughed. "Bill Robinson lives up here.
And is that boy a comer! And Kenneth Bright."
Aaron looked down at his plate.
"I don't mean people like that," he said slowly.
"James Weldon Johnson, and Rosamond Johnson, and
Countee Cullen, George Schuyler and Walter White and
DuBois—do they live up here?"
Her face was blank.
"Who are they?" she asked. "Are they dancers or
prize-fighters or what? I never heard of them."
He looked up at her and found her face frank and
ingenuous. Then he looked away.
"No, they're writers," he said. "Men who have tried
to do something for the Negro race."
"Oh," she laughed, "goofy intellectuals. Listen, big
boy, we aren't much interested in Harlem in doing any-
thing for the race. The fellows who worry about that
usually push their faces into trouble. And who cares?
Harlem has a good time. Come on, let's dance."
Silently Aaron rose and, taking her arm, went to the
dance floor. Fanny was a good dancer, and for awhile
he forgot his disappointment in her answer.
At midnight they went to one of Harlem's most
famous night clubs. It was Fanny's idea, but Aaron fell


RIVER GEORGE
in readily enough. How would it compare with Pewee's
place, in Memphis, he wondered. He remembered the
gravy train which had carried him to his first sight of
Memphis night life—in fact to his first sight of any
Negro night life in the city. Would it be so different
in Harlem? he wondered.
They went up a flight of deeply carpeted stairs and
into a large dimly lit room where Aaron found himself
in a world so strange and different from anything he
had ever seen anywhere that he was speechless. It was
crowded with tables where both white and Negro
couples sat eating, drinking liquor poured from pocket
flasks, and watching the elaborate entertainment being
given on the low stage at one end of the room. It was
amazing enough to see whites and colored people in the
same room eating together and watching the same en-
tertainment together, but the spectacular thing was the
obviously high social standing of many of the white
people, and the equally obvious prosperity of the blacks.
Expensive furs were thrown back from the shoulders
of many of the women and jewels shone on both brown
and white fingers.
The show was made up entirely of colored girls and
men, but most of them were so light that they could
have passed easily for Spaniards. The costumes of the
girls were elaborate, though abbreviated, and their songs
and dances were always just on the edge of inadmissible
obscenity.
"There's a swell chorus here," Fanny was saying.
"Some of those girls will be on Broadway by winter."
"Yes, I suppose so," Aaron said. He was thinking


RIVER GEORGE 215
about the slave grandparents of some of these chorus
girls, those simple people who had given birth to such
songs as "Steal Away to Jesus," and "Deep River." He
was wondering how they would have felt to see their
grandchildren, those who had broken away from the
limiting South and found their way into the greater
freedom of the North, where Negroes had opportunities
for education and culture and general advancement,
almost equal to those of the whites, using their new
freedom to parade their bodies before white men and
pander to their desire for vulgarity.
He looked from the stage to the audience, his eyes
seeking out its brown-skinned members. They were few
in proportion to the whites, and those who were, there
were obviously of the upper crust—at least financially.
For the men were immaculately dressed and the women,
if less expensively, more extravagantly than the white
women. He looked back to Fanny.
"Are these the best of Harlem?" he asked.
She looked at him and laughed.
"You have a funny way of talking, Soldier," she said.
"And what are you being so serious about?" She leaned
over and poked a playful finger at his chest. "I brought
you up here to have a good time. This isn't Harlem at
all—this is Broadway moved uptown. A white man
owns this place. He runs it for white people. They let a
few jigs in just to show that they're democratic. We
ain't started to see Harlem yet."
It was eight o'clock in the morning when Aaron
finally found his way back to the dirty Harlem hotel


RIVER GEORGE
1 wondah what mah brown's a-doin'
Wid all dose boys 'bout a-wooin'
Tell me, oh, tell me now!
and
All dose black mamas at home's a-pinin'
Fer a papa like me when de moon's a-shinin'
Oh dis man's war is a mean man's war foh sho.
He remarked again the number of these songs born
spontaneously in the trenches occupied by colored sol-
diers, which included at least one verse about love and
at least one about death. In the trenches where Death
screamed over their heads, lay in wait for them out in
a tangle of barbed wire and often touched them indif-
ferently and impersonally while they slept, they were
constantly aware of his presence and, directly articulate
as they were, sang of him. It had been so in the days
of slavery, when life itself for the Negro had often
been only an animated death and when sickness and
physical misuse had often made actual death seem a
release from imprisonment and pain. Then the singers
of his race had voiced their mixture of love and fear of
the Reaper with such songs as this:
There's a man goin' 'round takin' names,
There's a man goin' 'round takin' names,
Oh, he took mah mothah's name an' he left mah heart in pain,
There's a man goin' 'round takin' names.
and
Oh, we take dis poor body and we carry it to de graveyard,
And we lay it in de grave,
Hallelujah!


RIVER GEORGE
219
America to which he had come? Was it from this group
of people that the spiritual emancipation of his race
would arise? Suddenly with the pain of longing, he
thought of the staunch integrity of Lightning, the un-
educated share cropper; the simple, direct and powerful
emotional quality of Ada; and the outspoken, unpre-
tentiousness of Annie. A warm wave of nostalgia seized
him and, pillowed on its breast, he slept.


222
RIVER GEORGE
de cryin' towel. Let de man tell us sumpin 'bout de
wah."
Stepping over to the group Aaron offered them ciga-
rettes and for an hour answered their questions. Their
attention and interest pleased him. Here he felt that he
was at home with people whom he understood. Bit by
bit the group was augmented by others who had entered
the store. Negroes crowded close in and listened in-
tently, but on the edges of the group there were a few
white men standing aloof and watching Aaron with
cold, unfriendly eyes. As the crowd increased the elderly
Negro who had first warned Aaron took his arm and
in a low voice cautioned him again.
"Ah wouldn' talk no more, son," he said. "Too many
people listenin' here."
But again the younger man who had first encouraged
Aaron to talk interposed.
"Shet yo' crazy ol' mouth, Jim," he said, "an' let de
boy tell us what he knows." He turned to Aaron again.
"Guess dose white folks sit up an' take notice when our
boys went over de top, didn' dey, Lieutenant?"
Aaron smiled, but there was a wistful look in his face.
"I wish they had taken more notice," he said slowly.
"I thought when the war started that the colored regi-
ments would be a powerful evidence to show what
Negroes are really like. I thought perhaps the colored
soldiers would show the Negroes themselves, too, what
they were capable of—but now that I'm back I wonder
a little whether there's going to be any real difference.
There was a fellow on the train telling me that the Klan
is getting pretty active down here again."


RIVER GEORGE
223
As he said this the group stared restlessly, and their
eyes looked apprehensively around the store and there
was fear in them as they searched the white faces there.
"Dat so, boy," old Jim said in a low voice. "But Ah
wouldn' speak so loud if I was yuh."
A young white man hurriedly left the store looking
back over his shoulder at Aaron. As he left, old Jim's
eyes followed him nervously, and again he turned to
Aaron.
"Yuh bettah get along outa here, Lieutenant," he
whispered. "Ah don' think dose white people like de
looks of what yuh is an' Ah don' think dey like de
sound of what yuh said."
Aaron looked around at the faces in the store. Near
the door a little group of white men were talking to-
gether in low tones and out on the sidewalk the faces
of another small group peered at him inquisitively. As
he watched two other white men drifted out and stood
before the door questioning the others there. His atten-
tion was called away by the voice of a well-dressed
Negro standing near him whom he had heard called
"Dr. Simons" by another in the group.
"Well, I'm glad it's over, now," Dr. Simons said,
"and I don't see that anybody gained much by it. I'm
afraid you're right about the Negroes not getting much,
and," he lowered his voice, "I'm afraid Jim here is
right, too, Lieutenant. If I were you, I wouldn't wear
that officer's uniform in Vicksburg very long."
A slow look of bewilderment spread over Aaron's
face.
"But why?" he cried. "I earned this uniform and


224
RIVER GEORGE
these bars on my shoulder fighting with the white men,
fighting for the same things they were fighting for.
God knows what they were now! But why should any
white man resent me? The white officers are still wear-
ing their uniforms, aren't they? Were they any better
officers than I was? Did they do any more than I did?"
His voice had risen in bitterness and passion. He had
not heard the angry muttering in another part of the
store, nor seen that small group outside the door had
grown to a crowd. His first consciousness that some-
thing had changed came when he was aware that he
was being pushed from behind. Looking back quickly
he saw that the store was now filled with white men
and that outside more were still pushing to get through
the door. Quickly he noticed several olive drab uni-
forms of white soldiers in the crowd and in his bewil-
dered ears was rising the unmistakable horrible sound
of a mob growling.
He looked back to where the group of Negroes sur-
rounding him had stood, but in the short space of his
glance at the gathering crowd they had vanished, all
but old Jim and Dr. Simons. Then he was aware that
old Jim had taken hold of his arm and was urging him
with all his strength toward the back of the store and
Aaron, scarcely able to comprehend what was happen-
ing, went where the old man pushed him. He noticed
that Dr. Simons had quickly stepped between him and
the crowd in a little space between a counter and the
narrow door which led into the prescription department.
As Aaron was hurried through the door by old Jim he


RIVER GEORGE
225
heard Dr. Simons' voice, trembling a little but raised
courageously, talking to the crowd.
"That man is an officer in the United States Army,"
the doctor was shouting. "You have no right—"
But now he felt the outside air on his face and found
himself in an alley running beside the wheezing figure
of old Jim.
"Dis way, Boy," the old man gasped. "Turn down
heah."
Blindly Aaron followed him. After a little their pace
slowed.
"Yuh bes' cum down in mah part ob town," Jim
said. "Frien' o' mine dere drive yuh outa town in his
cah an take yuh tuh a train. Dey won' wan' tuh start
doin' nothin' 'til tuh-night."
"But why should I leave town?" Aaron cried. "I
came here to see a friend. I want to stay a few days."
"Yuh bes' let seein' yo' frien' wait a little while,"
Jim told him. "Yuh cum back heah some oder time in,
diff'ent clothes, but Boy, Ah wouldn' try tuh fin' dat
frien' tuh-day. It ain' goin' be healthy now dat crowd
started. An' Ah'd be mighty quiet if Ah wuz yuh,
once Ah got on dat train. Mighty quiet."


CHAPTER XXIV
THE next day Aaron stepped off the train at
Memphis. His hurried flight from Vicksburg had
left him feeling crushed and beaten. Having had no
definite plan when he had gone to Vicksburg, he now
found himself seemingly incapable of formulating one.
Before he had been threatened by the mob there, his
fear of returning to the Beaver Dam plantation or to
Memphis had been an intellectual one. Now, with the
angry growl of the mob still ringing in his ears, a blind
terror gnawed at his heart. For two years the conscious-
ness of his flight from Fred Smith's death had haunted
him. But now he had heard the sound of a mob's voice
directed against himself; had seen the dark, unreasoned
threats in their faces; and even though that mob had
known nothing of his connection with the death of a
white man, symbolically it had been his accuser.
But as he had sat hunched in a corner of the Jim
Crow Car to which old Jim's friend had taken him,
trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, there had
suddenly come back to him the words Annie had spoken
on the last night they had been together in Memphis.
"So long as I got a roof over my head, you can come
here."
It was the one place in the world where he knew he
would find friendly shelter, and even though he was
226


228
RIVER GEORGE
increased his deep dejection. He walked on to Annie's
house and rang the doorbell. A maid he had never seen
before let him in. But when he told her his name her
face showed no recognition.
"I'll tell the madame," she said quietly and left him
standing in the hall while she went upstairs. A moment
later she was back, grinning. "You're to go right up,"
she said.
The door to Annie's room was ajar and Aaron pushed
it open and walked in to find her hastily putting on a
negligee and trying futilely to straighten her hair out.
But when she saw him she hurried over to him, her face
beaming, her arms outstretched.
"Honey boy," she cried, "You've got back at last."
For a moment the warm comfort of her arms soothed
him and gave him a sense of peace. But he was called
back to his tumult and confusion and fear by her voice.
"You going to stay here now?" she asked.
"God knows what I'm going to do, Annie," he re-
plied. "Just now I feel as though I were licked."
She stood away from him and looked proudly at his
uniform.
"What nonsense is that?" she said. "Aren't you one of
the boys that just licked the Germans?"
"It doesn't mean anything, Annie," he said shortly.
"I was just run out of Vicksburg because I had the bad
sense to appear on the streets there in a uniform. It
looks like the South hasn't got any use for colored
soldiers except to let them get shot in the trenches."
A gentle smile played at Annie's lips.
"Why do you worry so, Aaron?" she asked softly.


RIVER GEORGE
"Why do you trouble your mind all the time with what
the white folks think about us? You're just the same
as you were when you went away, aren't you? Always
worrying about something. Nothing could stop you
from going to war, but you're back safe now, thank
God. Why don't you just settle down here?"
He shook his head.
"You know I can't do that, Annie. If I stay in
Memphis I've got to find a job. I thought I'd be safer
in New York and I thought maybe I could find some
people there that would—" He paused, seeking for
words and when he went on there was a confused and
helpless look in his eyes— "that would help me think
things out. But one night was enough in Harlem. I
don't think I could stand living there. Then I got scared
in Vicksburg, and this was the one place I could think
of where I could come. But I just can't live the way
you want me to."
For a moment Annie was silent and sat looking at the
floor without seeming to see anything there. Then she
looked directly at Aaron and in her eyes was a frankness
which called for equal honesty from him.
"You still in love with Ada?" she asked softly.
A quick surge of longing swept through Aaron as he
heard the name. He had never asked himself this ques-
tion—had avoided asking—had let his mind run away
from the thought of Ada and from all of the questions
that thought had brought him. Now he reached over
and took Annie's hands in his before he answered.
"I've never tried to think whether I was or not," he
said. "But when you said that it seemed to me as though


*34
RIVER GEORGE
he saw a look of tenderness on her face which was not
directed towards him.
"I kind of wish you hadn't told Lightning I was
here," he said thoughtfully. "I don't suppose it matters,
but I guess I'll always be scared for fear they'll catch
up with me."
She came over and patted his cheek gently.
"Don't you worry, Big Boy. We'll find you a job
here and you'll be safe as you would be anywhere in the
world. I talked to Mary the Wonder yesterday and she
says you got to stay in Memphis. She says George
Thomas is a good luck name for you. So when you get
a job you got to go by that name."
For a moment Aaron's annoyance almost overcame
his feeling of gratitude and affection for Annie.
"Why did you have to tell Mary the Wonder about
it?" he asked crossly. "The more people know I'm here,
the worse my chances are. What good can Mary the
Wonder do anybody?"
Annie's eyes opened wide in pained surprise.
"Mary the Wonder's like God," she said. "She don't
tell nobody nothing that people tell her. And didn't
her charm keep you safe in them trenches?"
Aaron's fingers fumbled under his shirt and felt the
little red heart-shaped bag which had hung there ever
since Annie had given it to him over two years before,
and his mind went back to dark, lonely, heartsick nights
in France when the little token had brought him com-
fort, not because of any belief that he had in the
potency of Mary the Wonder's mixture, but because it
had been a constant reminder to him of Annie's devo-


RIVER GEORGE 235
tion and friendly kindness. He had worn it for Annie,
not for any belief in its saving quality, and it had be-
come so a habit with him that it seemed to merge with
his body—to be a part of him—and he would have felt
as though something were lacking if he had left it off.
He smiled gently and pulled it out where Annie could
see it.
"Well, here it is," he said. "I've always worn it and I
did get back all right." She came over and looked at it
and began to scold him.
"You've let it get all dirty," she said. "You ought to
be ashamed of yourself. There's so much dirt on it
you can hardly see that white cross she embroidered
on it. You give it to me and I'll clean it up. You don't
need it anyway while you're staying here in the house."
Two days later Annie came in jubilant. She had
arranged for a job for Aaron.
"It ain't much of a job," she said, "but you're so
hellbent to go to work, and you said you'd do any-
thing—and you ought to be able to make fairly good
money on this job—what with the tips. Anyway, it's a
good place to hide out. You can go to work tomorrow
morning as a bellhop at the Gayoso Hotel. I talked to
Mary the Wonder about it and she said it's the right
place for you. I told them your name was George
Thomas."
Through Aaron's mind swept memories of his college
days, of his hopes to become a great lawyer who would
use his ability to free his people. Now he saw himself
in the uniform of a bellhop carrying out the petty


RIVER GEORGE
going to happen to him he would have to meet it some
time. He turned to the bell captain.
"Is it all right if I'm away for an hour or so?" he
asked.
The other grinned. "Sure," he said. "So long as you
haven't actually started answering calls anyway, take
your time and we'll fix you up when you get back."
He found the house, a small frame dwelling with
little to distinguish it from the other houses on the
block. The curtains at the front were down and there
was no sign of life anywhere about. With his heart
beating wildly, half in hope and half in fear, he pushed
the bell. There was no response, and he found himself
looking suddenly over his shoulder and down the street
as if afraid that he was being watched. For a moment
he had an impulse to run, and then cursing himself for
his trepidation, he pushed the bell again. After a mo-
ment he heard a muffled movement within and the door
opened just wide enough to show the face of a colored
woman glaring coldly and challengingly at him. Her
eyes were narrow, venomous slits and her lips a tight
thin line in her wrinkled face.
"Well?" she asked curtly.
Aaron hesitated and when he spoke he found his voice
trembling.
"Did someone call me from here?" he asked.
The door opened wider.
"Who are you?" the woman asked.
Again Aaron hesitated. There was something in her
face, some indication of evil intent, some brooding dark-


RIVER.GEORGE
243
yet let a man get away from him." He lifted his face
proudly and his mouth opened in a wide grin.
For a moment Aaron stared dejectedly out of the
window. Then he turned back to the other.
"How did you ever find me?" he asked quietly.
Blue Steel laughed.
"Yuh talk too much, son," he said. "I ain' sayin'
jus' how I did find yuh. But yuh bettah remembah
aftuh dis dat conjure women are no bettah than any-
body else. Yuh are jus' as apt tuh buy information from
dem as yuh are from anybody."
Aaron looked out the window again patting the
pocket of his coat in which Mary the Wonder's charm
rested, and a scornful smile played about his lips. So it
was Mary the Wonder who had given him away—Mary
the Wonder in whom Annie had had such simple faith.
For a long time he stared out across the fields without
seeing them. Perhaps Blue Steel was right. Perhaps it
would be better for him to have the thing over with.
Then he thought of the frailty of the jail at Indian
Mound, of the colorless lack of character of its keeper,
and of other jails whose barred doors and windows had
offered but momentary barriers to the anger of white
mobs intent on vengeance, and the fear which had first
assailed him when he had felt the hand-cuffs snap about
his wrists, flooded him in a great blinding torrent. His
eyes misted with fear, his throat was gorged with it, and
his hands trembled so that he pressed them hard against
his knee to keep the chain which bound the hand-cuffs
together from rattling.
Once again he glanced at the little detective sitting


CHAPTER XXV
AARON climbed slowly to the bank, his clothing
-dripping river water. He was exhausted by the
long pull against the current which had tried to carry
him downstream. Disadvantaged by his manacled
hands, he had turned on his back and fought his battle
with his legs alone. Now he lay on the ground, breath-
ing heavily. But he knew that he could not lie there
long. At the next station, or before, Blue Steel would
leave the train and come back to the bridge from which
a man-hunt would start.
Rousing himself he hurried up the bank and pushed
his way into the forest. Where he was going he did not
know, but he knew that he must get as far away from
there as possible. In a few minutes he came to a little
clearing in which he saw an elderly colored woman
washing clothes. For a long time he stood behind a tree
and watched her, trying to make up his mind about
her, and looking closely at the cabin door and the two
shabby out-buildings. Finally, satisfied that no one else
was around, and that he must take his chances on her
friendliness, he left his shelter and approached her,
making no attempt to conceal his manacled hands.
She looked up from her washboard and her mouth
dropped open with surprise, but she remained silent.
245


RIVER GEORGE
He looked at her mutely for a moment, holding out
his manacled hands. Then he spoke quietly.
"I'm in bad trouble with the white folks, ma'm," he
said. "I've done nothing wrong but they're fixing to
murder me. Will you help me?"
For a moment she studied his face closely and
earnestly. Then her eyes dropped to his hands.
"Yuh looks lak a good boy," she said. "I knock dose
off yuh lak dey was fedders."
Turning, she led the way to a shed in which a few
gardening tools, , old, and many of them broken, were
stacked. For a moment she fumbled about in a box of
miscellaneous nails and bits of iron, then laid out an
old iron horse weight. In her hands she held a huge
spike and a hammer with a broken handle.
"Put yo' han's down dere, boy,—so," she said, laying
her own hands across the heavy piece of iron to show
him.
Docilely, gratefully, Aaron obeyed, and her deft
fingers quickly fitted the point of the spike to the key-
hole of the lock on one of the hand-cuffs. Holding it
steady with her left hand, she delt the head of the spike
a terrific blow with the hammer, and Aaron groaned
involuntarily as the handcuffs, slipping off the iron,
bruised his wrist. Paying no attention to his pain, she
lifted it back into place, fitted the spike, and delivered
another blow which would have done credit to a black-
smith. Again Aaron felt the impact of the twisting
handcuff on his bruised wrist, but still the lock held.
The woman picked up his hands then, and examined her
work closely.


RIVER GEORGE
"One moh shot bust um open," she said, and laid the
steel on the iron weight again, with Aaron's wrists
dangling painfully over the edge.
True to her prophecy the lock fell open at the next
try, and Aaron stretched his hand with grateful relief,
and threw his arms out wide, relaxing the shoulder
muscles and biceps, which had been strained and tense
since Blue Steel had snapped the handcuffs on him,
binding his hands close together.
The other one went more easily, and in a moment
he stood up, his wrists aching, and one of them bleed-
ing from the pummelling they had just received, but
free! He picked up the now useless handcuffs and
looked at them.
"A colored man put those on me," he said quietly.
"You'd think colored folks could stick together better
than that, wouldn't you?"
She looked up at him and her face was lined with the
sadness and wisdom of her race.
"Yuh ain' got no call tuh remembah dat, son," she
said, "widout yuh remembah along wid it dat a colahed
'oman tuk em off yuh."
For a moment one of his newly freed hands rested
gratefully on her arm. Then it went to his pocket, and
withdrew a five dollar bill—all the money he had left
from the pay he had brought out of the army with
him.
"I'll never forget it, ma'm," he said. "Take this and
buy yourself something."
Her eyes looked hungrily at the money—an amount


250
RIVER GEORGE
drain out of him and he felt that he could go no farther.
His head throbbed with the sudden, insistent pain again.
His eyes clouded. He stopped, leaning against a tree,
and listened. He couldn't remember anything! He
couldn't remember even what it was he feared! Only
the rustling of the leaves broke the deep silence. Ap-
parently he had left the posse behind. Having no defi-
nite starting point, since they could not have known
where he had left the river, and nothing of his from
which the dogs could get the scent, they must have
been working at loose ends.
Sighing with relief, he lay down and stared up into
the dark shadows of the tree tops. Somewhere in the
forest an owl called, and Aaron started, and found him-
self trembling as he tried to relax again. Wearily he sat
up, and tried to lean his weight on one of his hands.
But the pain in his wrist was too great. Groaning he
stood up, turning his head from side to side as though
thus he might see into the concealing darkness.
Suddenly he became rigid again, listening, straining
every nerve as a high-pitched, mournful sound came to
him through the trees. But it was not the voice of the
owl this time. Quavering through the dark with an
accusing insistence, it fell on his ears, damning him,
shattering the little shred of peace which had come to
his soul in that momentary rest. He listened tensely,
and it came again—clearly, unmistakably,—the baying
of a hound following a trail.
With a moan he sprang forward, his arms flailing
ahead of him at the bushes which reached out like
clutching hands to bar his way, pushing them aside


RIVER GEORGE
253
Aaron smiled and moved up closer. The mate cursed
and cracked his whip but the toiling roustabouts paid
little attention. Then he turned and looked at Aaron.
"Lookin' for a job, boy?" he asked.
"Yassah," replied Aaron. He had decided, before even
the mate spoke to him, that he would try to hide his
personality behind dialectic speech—that he would talk,
act, and be, like a roustabout.
"You look big enough and tough enough to roust on
the Stacker Lee." The mate eyed him closely.
"Mistah, the Stackah Lee ain' got no rouster dat's big
and strong as I is." (He must be careful. He must
guard his speech closely, lest that pain in his head return,
and that mist before his eyes.)
"Ever roust before?"
"Yassah, used to roust 'round N'Awleans."
"What's your name?"
Aaron hesitated. He dared not say either Aaron
George or George Thomas. The thought of the river
and what it had meant to him in his escape from Blue
Steel, and later from the posse, came to him.
"They call me River George," he said, forgetting, in
his confusion over hiding his real name to speak like a
rouster.
"All right, you're hired; here's your ticket. If you're
as big and strong as you talk, you ought to be able to
stand on a foot of ground and shake a levee. Let me
see you grab that sack of meat and strike out across the
gang-plank."
He watched Aaron kneel down, straighten up with a


RIVER GEORGE
sack of meat on his back and stagger down the slippery
plank onto the boat.
"He ain't no rouster, but he's sure got the makings,"
the mate said, and turned to his cursing.
By three o'clock that evening the Stacker Lee was
loaded with bales of cotton ten tiers high. The bell rang
and the whistle blew two long blasts, followed by three
short blasts.
"Know what dat whistle say?" a rouster asked Aaron
as they moved up the gang-plank.
Slowly, carefully, scarcely having heard what the
other said, Aaron shook his head in negation.
"Well, it say: 'Lee Line, Lee Line, Bob, Reese, Pete.'
Dem am de bruddahs dat owns all dese boats."
The speaker was interrupted by a song that floated
back from the fo'castle. A group of roustabouts were
crooning as the boat slipped away from its moorings:
The money man will come aroun',
Ab'll get mah pay an' den Ah am ready tub see
De sweetes' gal in town.
Ah'm wu'kin' hahd along de levee, so I kin say to Lindy Lee,
Do, honey, tell me if yuh want me,
'Cause I'se jes' wu'kin', gal, fob yuh.
Dere's dat whistle once agin, boo-oo, woo, boo, woo.
Steamboat comin' 'roun' de ben', boo, woo, boo, woo.
Sounds tub me lak de Robe't E. Lee, boo, woo, boo, woo.
Dat means a dollah a day fuh me, Lindy Lee.
It's all fob yuh dat Ah rolls dem cotton bales.
The high, brown bluffs of Memphis, the tall gray
buildings in the background, the river packets clustered
about the waterfront, receded. The Stacker Lee was
under way.


RIVER GEORGE 255
Aaron stood watching the city retreating from him
with a vague sense that it, and Annie, were passing out
of his life forever. Somewhere in the city she was won-
dering where he was, wondering what was happening
to him. For he had not let her know. He had been
afraid to go near her house, afraid to show his face
in any of his old haunts.
He looked down at the water slipping smoothly along
the flanks of the boat, and again he felt the dizziness
which had assailed him in the forest. He turned and
hurried to the forecastle.
The stench that rose from the rousters gathered there
sickened him. The air was heavy, the day was hot. But
he stretched out on a bale of cotton and gratefully
relaxed his aching muscles. For the moment he was safe.
For the monent he need not think of Blue Steel, or
posses, or the terrifying sound of baying dogs.
Near him the rousters had formed a circle and were
clapping their hands and yelling their approval of one
of their members named Sammy Brown, who was doing
a buck-and-wing, but as the boat drifted down the lazy
river, the noise of the rousters seemed to Aaron to be-
come fainter and fainter, and he slept.
He was wakened by something prodding his ribs and
jumped up quickly, terror in his eyes. But he turned to
face only a grinning rouster.
"What's the trouble?" Aaron asked.
"Man, yuh bettuh git up f'um deah an' grab dat
headline. Dis is de landin'."
He struggled to his feet and took the line, but as he
jumped for the shore, he tripped and fell into the yellow


RIVER GEORGE
257
heart for so long would find relief in violent action and
even in the physical pain which he might get from the
hands of his opponent. But he wanted no fighting.
He could feel no animus against Bill, nothing which
would make him want to strike the other. He did not
want to fight.
Then he saw the expectant, waiting faces of the
rousters standing about, and saw that others were drift-
ing toward him. Plainly they expected a fight. Plainly
they looked to him to furnish it. He had come on this
boat as a rouster. Would not this fight be as much a
part of his disguise as the rough speech he had tried to
assume?
Turning his head back to face Bill he spoke slowly
and purposefully, choosing his words carefully, speak-
ing in the swaggering, slurred accents which he had
been hearing all about him, but he spoke automatically,
with but little consciousness of what he said, the pain in
his head throbbing insistently, dulling his sensibility of
all around him.
"Ah kin take care ob mahself anywhar, any time, big
boy," he said.
"De meat might tremble on yo' bones an' yo' bones
might crack lak er eggshell de fus time a good man jes'
tetched you," Bill taunted.
For answer Aaron grinned sardonically and spat con-
temptuously on the deck close to Black Bill's feet. The
other glowered.
"Suppose yuh put yuh fist wheah yo' mouf is an' ef
yuh is a good man gi' me mo' light an' less noise," he
challenged.


RIVER GEORGE
259
"Gathah 'roun' me, all you rousters!" Bill cried.
"Ah'm gwiner lead a song to River George, de new
rouster of the Stacker Lee, de only rouster on de rivah
dat evah flo'd Black Bill." As the others came closer,
Black Bill began to sing.
All through de merry month of June,
Dat when de cotton am agrowin',
Beneath de silvery Southern Moon,
Dares whar de darkies am asleepin',
An' all a-lyin' in a row,
But evah one is up and bustlin',
Soon he heah's de whistle blow.
What's dat noise, so loud and cleah?
Boo, woo, boo, woo.
Sounds tuh me a-drawin' neah,
Boo, woo, boo, woo.
Sounds tuh me lak de Robert E. Lee,
Chuck full of cotton from Tennessee.
Grab yo' truck an' take yuh stan',
Fo' tuh roll dent cotton bales.
There was a pause in the song. Someone handed Bill
a guitar and he began plucking the strings absently.
"Heah de paht dat I done thunk up on Rivah
George," he announced. He bent low over his guitar
and it twanged louder, while he sang.
River George, Lord, River George,
River George is a natchal man of all de rousters on de Stacker
Lee,
River George is de one to be, 'cause he knocked Black Bill
down.
Three times on de deck, Lord, Lord, he beat Black Bill into a
natchal wreck.
There was a pause and the rousters crowded closer
to the singer. One of them started a new song and the


z6o RIVER GEORGE
rest joined him. Under cover of their interest in the
song, Aaron edged his way out of the crowd to a spot
on the deck where he could stretch himself out and
think.
Again, as during that moment in the woods, his sense
of time and place seemed to desert him. He did not
understand what had happened; his dull mind could not
fathom the words the rousters were singing and saying.
Then suddenly the implications of their words came to
him. They were proclaiming him a leader—why, he
could not tell—saying that he was the greatest man
who had ever rousted on the Stacker Lee, for he had
beat Black Bill.
He wanted none of the adulation of the rousters,
none of the story telling about him which had made
Black Bill a well known figure along the river. Once
this were to happen to him, once the name of River
George was commonly heard wherever stories were told,
it would be only a question of time before Blue Steel
would catch up with him again and he would be de-
livered to the uncertain justice of the white man. It
would be better if he were to leave the boat, work his
way to some distant point—perhaps even Chicago or
New York again, leave no trace behind him, and lose
his identity as far from the South as possible.
He closed his eyes and tried to sleep. And thus he did
not notice a white passenger who, detaching himself
from the group of white passengers who had come to
witness the excitement, suddenly paused before him and
studied his sleeping face carefully, then started back, his
face suffused with excitement, and hurried away. In a


RIVER GEORGE
261
moment he returned followed by two other white men
who gazed cautiously at the recumbent form from a
little distance where a pile of freight partially hid them.
"Sure as hell that's the nigger," one of them
whispered.
"Shall we grab him now?" another asked.
"Not a chance," the first replied. "The captain would
never stand for it. We'll wire ahead to Holly Rock and
have Sam Turner and the other boys come down to the
river and meet the boat."
But Aaron was half asleep and didn't hear them. He
was thinking dreamily that he would leave the boat that
night, that he would take one more chance before he
left the South forever. Under cover of the night he
would find his way home, would see his mother and
Ada, and then, before morning, he would be off, hoping
that somewhere, some way, he could find peace and earn
enough money so that eventually he could send for
Ada and his mother to come and join him.
On the deck the rousters were singing, and their
song brought a sense of peace to Aaron, as he drifted
into sleep.


RIVER GEORGE
263
jog-trot which was little more than a walk, trying to
forget the cold weariness which seemed now to be
settling into his bones, trying to forget all of the past
except the staunch goodness of his mother and the
warm loveliness of Ada, to which he was hurrying—
hurrying as though there were not a minute to lose, as
though he were being driven by^ an insistent need to
get there while there was still time.
His wrists still ached with the bruises they had re-
ceived when the kindly old woman in the woods had
beaten his handcuffs off his hands—handcuffs which
had been put on him by a member of his own race.
This was one of his bitterest thoughts, one which was
hardest for him to lose—that a black man, one of the
race to which he, himself, belonged, a race living with
blindness and misery which he had hoped to help,
should have shackled him, who had done no wrong—
and that a black woman, who sold her crazy formulas
to those with simple faith, should also have been a party
to his betrayal.
Yet, even though his weary mind was assailed with
these bitter thoughts, he heard again the words which
the old woman in the woods had spoken to him.
"Yuh ain' got no call tuh remembah dat, son," she
had said, "widout yuh remembah along wid it dat a
colahed 'oman tuk em off yuh."
There had been a familiar quality in her voice as she
said it, a familiar look of old wisdom in her eyes—
something which he had heard and seen before, long
ago somewhere in another day and another life—some-
thing which had lived with him for years and had


264 RIVER GEORGE
troubled him in those black hours of self-doubt when
all the world had seemed wrong and himself the
wrongest thing of all in it. But there seemed to be a
curtain of mist drawn over that other life through
which he could not see, as though it were another
person back there who had looked forward to some-
thing fine and upbuilding—another person whom he
did not know at all now.
He shook his head slowly from side to side, his
breath coming quickly in gasps, as his feet thudded
rhythmically on the road that was leading him home,
back to that bare clean little kitchen, back to Hannah
—and to something else that he wanted terribly—to
someone else—
And then suddenly the mist cleared and he seemed to
see his mother, her great, quiet bulk moving easily from
stove to table, dishing up his supper. It was as though
he were living again in that other evening, long ago,
when he had come to her with his heart seething in
rebellion after his encounter with Sam Turner, and for
the first time had heard his mother's expression of faith
in her own race. Ada was forgotten now in his great
need for Hannah, in his need again to hear her calm
words of wisdom, in his desperate necessity to turn the
clock of time back to that night which still had lying
before it a future. A low, tortured sob rose in his aching
throat as he seemed to hear her words again.
"Black skin all right," she had said gruffly, "so long's
it don' try to be white skin. White folks allays fightin'
an' grabbin' fer sumpin in a hurry. 'Peahs to me it don'
git 'em much. Niggers got sumpin white folks ain' got.


166 RIVER GEORGE
quarrel with Sam Turner; felt again the knobby hard-
ness of the white man's wrist as he wrested the threaten-
ing strap away from him; heard again Do Pop's whin-
ing voice urging to caution the members of the little
group Aaron and Lightning had brought together; felt
against his knee the pressure of Fred Smith's chest as
he knelt above him; felt his face contract and grow
rigid with terror as his eyes closed automatically against
the blinding flash of the gun in Fred Smith's hand—
With a hoarse cry, he stumbled, and trying to re-
cover himself, found that he was off the road. For a
moment he paused, leaning against a tree, breathing
heavily. Now the mist was descending before him again
and he brushed his hand tentatively across his eyes,
trying to clear his sight and his mind, and he looked
about him wonderingly, blankly, in an attempt to orient
himself in time and space. Just ahead he heard the
musical sound of running water and, taking a few
steps, found himself at the edge of a little creek whose
laughing voice tugged cruelly at his pain. Dimly in his
heart there grew something more painful than anything
which had preceded it—something which he recognized
as a thing which had been there before—new and throb-
bing with fresh beauty—surging with a tremendous life
he had never kfaown was in him. But now it had in it
the pain of old age and death—the bitter, helpless
throbbing of life which has no peace.
Quietly walking on tip-toe as though he were afraid
of waking someone, he turned up the creek and entered
the woods. He raised one arm and stretched the hand
out before him as if he were groping for something.


RIVER GEORGE
Then he came to it—a little open space in the woods
where the grass grew down to the water's edge—where
the brook murmured musically over rocks.
And suddenly, with a groan which shook his whole
body, he flung himself on the grass there, his hands
reaching out desperately, clutching at the side, trying
to hold close to him the spot where he had lain with
Ada. He was weeping now in long, piteous sobs, the
tears flowing unchecked from his eyes, his body writh-
ing in its knowledge of ultimate and complete denial.
When he stood again he was calm and his face was
rigid, not in the lines of peace, but rather in those of
one to whom release from too great pain has been
brought by unconsciousness. He turned back toward
the road but he did not walk on tip-toe now, nor did
he run. His tread was heavy and regular, like that of an
automaton, as he set his face toward his mother's house
and went on.
A quarter of a mile ahead of him and coming to-
wards him was a dim light swinging a little, as a
lantern might in the hand of a man, but Aaron did
not see it. The silence of the night was broken by the
slowly rising sound of angry, questioning voices, but
Aaron did not hear them. Steadily he went forward—
one foot following ahead of the other—unseeing, un-
hearing, until he stopped short, the way ahead of him
blocked by a dark mass, its darkness and depth accen-
tuated by the little light of one small lantern. He stood
still then and gazed as from a great distance until
gradually his sight cleared and he saw that the mass was
made up of the bodies of men and that at the top of


268
RIVER GEORGE
each body there was a white face. Dimly, as though
from a great distance, he heard words, but they were
meaningless to him—they had nothing to do with him
—they were nothing that he could understand.
"By God, that's the damn nigger now."
What were they talking about? What were they say-
ing? Why were these people standing in the middle of
the road staring at him? He put his hands forward to
brush them away, as he had brushed away the briars in
the woods, and took another step.
Out of the blackness of the night, out of the dimness
of the days and weeks and months and years which
pressed into him, out of the bitter venom in the heart
of man, backed by a million years of hate and greed
and lust and terror, a white fist shot and Aaron
crumpled and lay in the dust of the road.


27o RIVER GEORGE
ning, and Ada had grinned back at him delightedly, for
it was no secret to Ada and Hannah that more than
friendship between Lightning and Annie had grown
out of the sudden interest she had displayed in the
affairs of the Beaver Dam plantation. But how would
they manage it? She knew that Aaron could never come
back here; knew that the bitterness which the whites
had felt for him before he had left was increased ten-
fold now, for week after week and month after month,
the ranks of the share croppers had been growing thin-
ner. The war had taken its toll for the draft, but a far
greater cause of the exodus had been the unrest of the
Negroes themselves, who, one by one, had been leaving
the bitter struggle for existence which the share cropper
knows for more remunerative work in the cities.
Throughout the Delta plantations, up and down the
river, the movement had spread until hundreds of
cabins were empty and thousands of acres of land were
untitled. Some of the little towns which had been pros-
perous before the war were deserted now. Stores were
closed and grass grew in the streets before them, untrod
by the feet of Negro share croppers who had been
attracted to the northern industrial centers by the
promise of higher wages, better living conditions and
better school facilities for their children.
The farm owners had tried with every means at their
command to stem the retreating tide. Ticket agents had
been warned about selling tickets to Negroes. Stations
had been picketed to keep Negroes off the trains, but
the movement swept on and with its onward sweep
there rose in the hearts of the white owners greater and


*74
RIVER GEORGE
"Bettah yuh let it be da'k 'till we get dere."
Silently he obeyed and they went on. As they neared
the cabin Lightning's steps became slower and he lis-
tened and peered into the dark apprehensively. But
there was no sound, no light, to break the peace of the
night.
They turned up the path that led to the kitchen door,
grown high with grass and weeds now, for no one had
lived in the cabin for over a year. But the grass and
weeds were trampled low by many feet, which had
come, and trod, and gone. The clearing was deserted.
Then they saw it. Dark in the meager light of the
stars it hung from a tree near the cabin door, tre-
mendous, and heavy, and quiet, save that it swayed
gently, and turned a little on the rope which held it.
The legs hung straight, the great feet with toes pointed
to earth, the long, ape-like arms, and huge hands, hung
limp. The head was fallen forward on its chest.
With trembling hands Lightning raised the lantern
chimney and lit the wick, then held the light high while
they both looked searchingly at the bowed head. But
the face was so battered and bleeding that it would have
been impossible to say even whether it was the face of
a man or a beast.
Raising his arm slowly, fearfully, Lightning took the
blood-dripping chin in his hand and pushed it a little
higher. But still he could find no semblance of any
human face in the broken mass of pulp before him.
As he lowered his hand it touched something hanging
against the bared breast of the dead man. He pulled,
and it came away, trailing the broken string which had