Elijah of Buxton

  If you buy land here in the Settlement, there’s some rules you gotta go ’long with no matter how much gold you have, and one of ’em is that it ain’t no one’s job but your own to make sure you clear your whole fifty acres and dig a drainage ditch all ’long your property and the road.

  Mrs. Holton’s girls were way too young to do serious woodcutting, and it was the time of year that folks were so busy working from sunup to sundown that no one had the time nor the fight left in ’em to get a chopping bee going, so she paid Mr. Leroy to clear her land and dig her drainage ditch. He was always looking to do extra work ’cause he was saving up enough money to buy his wife and daughter and son out of America. That made him and Mrs. Holton a first-prize team.

  Mr. Leroy was happy ’cause since Mrs. Holton and her children came to Buxton he didn’t have to hire hisself out to none of the white farmers up ’round Chatham, and she was happy ’cause till her husband could escape again, she needed someone to do the heavy work ’round her home.

  Mr. Leroy near ’bout built her house all by hisself, and since he was the best carpenter in the Settlement, she’d paid him to put all kinds of fancy pillars and posts and gewgaws and curlycues everywhere on the outside of her house. She’d draw him up a picture of something she remembered or thought up, and he’d make it outta wood in no time atall.

  All Mr. Leroy’s work had folks saying that Mrs. Holton was gonna win the Most Beautiful Home in Buxton Contest this year. That was something that didn’t sit too good with our next-door neighbor, Mrs. Highgate, ’cause she’d won it for the pass five years one after the ’nother and waren’t particular pleased ’bout someone else aiming at her prize.

  I got to Mrs. Holton’s house and knocked on the door to pay my respects.

  “Evening, Eli.”

  “Evening, Mrs. Holton.”

  “Follow your ears. He way out back.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Holton. Ma said to tell you she asked ’bout you.”

  “Tell your ma and pa I axed ’bout ’em too.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  There was a kind of music to him when Mr. Leroy was felling trees. From ’bout a mile off it sounded like one person playing and all you could hear was a steady, regular crack! sound that rolled toward you like it was being carried on the wind. That was the axe biting into the tree.

  Once you got a bit closer, it started sounding like there were two folks playing music and you could hear something that sounded like CHUH! coming from Mr. Leroy. That was his breath getting squozed outta him once he hit the tree.

  If you got close enough that you could see the sweat flying off of him, it sounded like someone else was joining in and you could hear a sound like hoong! That waren’t nothing but him sucking air back in till he got set to swing again.

  If you finally got close enough that you started getting nervous that the axe or them wood chips he sent flying were gonna hit you, you’d hear a sound that went ka! which was the sound of the axe getting pulled back out of the tree.

  The harder and longer Mr. Leroy worked the more regular and music-ish the sound he made got. So when he first started, it would sound like crack! CHUH, hoong, ka, crack! CHUH, hoong, ka, crack! CHUH, hoong, ka.

  But once he’d been going at it for a while, he got swinging faster and faster till he sounded like crack!CHUHhoongkacrack! CHUHhoongkacrack!CHUHhoongka … so’s he went from being music-ish to being machine-ish, which is what the Preacher said Mr. Leroy was. He said he’d heard Mr. Leroy’s heart beating in his chest and that ’stead of sounding like it was made out of flesh and blood, it banged and pounded like it was made out of pure iron!

  Mr. Leroy saw me and took one more crack!CHUHhoong and left the axe stuck in the tree where it last bit.

  He took a second to let his breathing catch up to him and said, “Evening, Elijah.”

  “Evening, sir.”

  “That time already, is it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Hadn’t even noticed the sun was setting.”

  Mr. Leroy took a rag out of one of his overall pockets and wiped the sweat off his head. This waren’t nothing but a waste of time, though, ’cause soon’s the rag left his face, sweat rolled right back all over it. He rubbed his left elbow and arm and said, “You had you some luck fishing?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Thank you kindly for remembering me, son.”

  Mr. Leroy sat on a stump and I sat on one next to him. He took a drink outta the jug of water he always keeps in the field and pulled the rag off the plate of fish Ma had fried for him. Ma had put some okree and potatoes and dandelion greens and a big piece of Mrs. Brown’s cherry pie on the plate.

  Mr. Leroy said, “You make sure you thanks your ma, Elijah. This is mighty kind of both of y’all.”

  Walking all this way to give Mr. Leroy a plate of food was worth it ’cause waren’t nothing scarier nor funner than watching him eat fish. He didn’t believe in wasting nothing, so he chawed every single piece! Fins and bones waren’t nothing to him. Why, I bet if I’d left the scales and the guts on those fish he’d’ve chawed clean through those too.

  The fish bones crackled and snapped in his mouth like dry corn in a mill.

  I asked him, “Mr. Leroy, sir, ain’t you never choked on one n’em fish bones?”

  He said, “How you gunn choke if you’s mashed ’em up good?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I try real hard to pick all the bones out of my fish, and when one of ’em does get through, it seems like it don’t want to do nothing but stick in my throat sideways. It’s enough to make you want to quit eating fish.”

  Mr. Leroy kept chomping and said, “Fish eating’s like anything else in life, Elijah. If you go at it ’specting something bad to happen, all you gunn do is draw that bad thing to you. You caint be timid ’bout nothing you do, you got to go at it like you ’specting good things to come out of it. If I’s to worry ’bout bones choking me, it’d happen every time I et fish. Ain’t nothing further from my mind.”

  Fish bones snapped in his mouth like dry twigs.

  Mr. Leroy finished off the vegetables and pie Ma’d gave him and handed me back the plate.

  “Be sure you thank your ma and pa, Elijah. Tell your ma I ’preciate her thinking ’bout me.

  “Now come on, we got us a lot of work to do.”

  It don’t seem fair, but since the start of this year Mr. Travis has been teaching us both our everyday school and our Sabbath school classes. And that means the man is on you like a tick, you caint get away from him no matter where you go. The biggest problem is if he pegs you as being not particular bright in everyday school, you ain’t got prayer the first of having a clean slate when Sunday comes ’round and you got to go to Sabbath school.

  When Mrs. Guest was our schoolteacher and Mrs. Needham taught us Sabbath school, you had a better chance of fooling at least one of ’em into thinking you were sensical, but with Mr. Travis running both schools, you ain’t nothing but a dead duck.

  What’s even unfairer is that he mixes regular lessons up with Sabbath lessons, so they run one into the ’nother and you caint tell which one is which one. I know that ain’t the way it’s supposed to be ’cause if it was, they wouldn’t have regular classes at the schoolhouse and Sabbath classes at the church.

  I ain’t trying to be disrespectful of teaching or teachers, but I’ve had enough classes with Mr. Travis to know that getting taught in a classroom just don’t work. That ain’t to say that he caint force you to study something till it sticks in your mind for a while, ’cause he can. But I don’t care if you study on something all your life, it ain’t gonna stick like if it happen to you personal.

  Ain’t nothing made this point better than the lesson Mr. Travis has been pounding on us lately, both in regular classes and Sabbath school. It started out ’cause Cooter Bixby went and sassed Mr. Travis when he didn’t know he’d done it and when he didn’t mean to do it.

  I came to school on Monday and Cooter’s waiting on me af
ore the bell runged. He’s sitting on the front steps of the school so antsy and twitch-ity that he looked like he’s sitting on a hot stove. Something had him awful riled up and happy.

  I said, “Morning, Cooter.”

  “Morning, Eli!”

  He jumped off the steps and pulled me over to the side of the schoolhouse so’s no one else could hear us.

  Cooter said, “Guess what! I seen Mr. Travis at the sawmill on Saturday!”

  “So?”

  “And he was acting more peculiar than he normal do!”

  “So?”

  “And we gets to talking and I seen he’s mighty upset ’bout something.”

  “So?”

  “So the more he talk to me, the more and more upsetter he’s getting for no cause atall. So when he finally leave, I’m standing there scratching my head wondering what’s plaguing him.”

  “What you figure it was?”

  “I couldn’t make heads nor tails of it till a minute ago when I seen him going at the blackboard like a demon had ahold of him! Then I finally knowed what it was!”

  “Cooter, quit playing. What was it?”

  “He was acting so peculiar ’cause of what he was planning on doing here at school today!”

  “What’s that?”

  “Elijah, you ain’t gonna believe what Mr. Travis is fixing to teach us ’bout this morning!”

  I waren’t gonna get myself worked up ’bout none of Mr. Travis’s lessons. I ain’t trying to say I’m smarter than Cooter, but I notice things a little better and carefuller than him, and Mr. Travis ain’t showed no signs atall that he could come up with any lesson that was worth getting this excited over.

  But if there was someone who waren’t enthusiastic ’bout his studies more than me it was Cooter Bixby, so for him to be this riled up maybe it was gonna be something after all!

  I said, “What’s he gonna teach us?”

  Cooter looked over both our shoulders then whispered, “Take a peek in that window and look what he’s writ on the blackboard. You ain’t gonna believe it!”

  I stood on my tiptoes and looked into our classroom. Mr. Travis didn’t usually write nothing on the board till we’d been studying for a while and children had started getting drowsy and droopy, but today he’d writ ’cross the blackboard in letters big enough that you could’ve read ’em from Lake Erie in the fog: FAMILIARITY BREEDS CONTEMPT!

  You could tell Mr. Travis was feeling real strong ’bout this lesson, the words were underlined three times and you could even see that he’d been mashing on the chalk so hard that it had busted clean in two in a couple of places and he had to commence his underlining all over again! It waren’t nothing to imagine Mr. Travis standing at the blackboard after he’d finished doing this writing, huffing and puffing with his eyes spitting fire!

  Doggone-it-all, maybe Cooter was right!

  I waren’t too confident that he was gonna know but I asked him anyway, “So what do those words mean?”

  Cooter said, “You don’t know? I was kind of hoping you could tell me. But I done some thinking the way Mr. Travis’s been telling us to. I matched up the two of them words I don’t know with two words that I do know.”

  “What you come up with?”

  “Like I said, I ain’t got too much a notion what the first word and last word mean, I figure they ain’t nothing but some fancy mumbo jumbo. But we both know what that word in the middle means, right?”

  I must’ve been looking puzzled.

  Cooter said, “Eli! You work in the stable, you gotta know what …” He checked over our shoulders again, leaned in real close, and whispered in my ear, “You just gotta know what BREEDING is, right?”

  You didn’t need to work in no stable to know what breeding is!

  I said, “Yeah!”

  Cooter said, “And look at that first word, famili-arity. That look a powerful lot like it got something to do with family, don’t it?”

  “It does.”

  Cooter said, “And the last word, con-tempt, it looks just ’bout the same as contest, right?

  “I guess so.”

  “So what’s that all sum up to?”

  I shooked my head.

  Cooter whispered, “Come on, Eli, put it all together and it come up to family breeding contest! He’s gonna learn us ’bout having a blanged family breeding contest!”

  “No!”

  “What else could it mean?”

  Cooter saw I waren’t real convinced, he said, “My pa said that Mr. Travis is from New York City and growned up free. And that’s two reasons what folks should be suspicious ’bout him for. Pa says him and n’em other growned folks was gonna have to keep a sharp eye on what Mr. Travis tried to learn us.”

  I said, “So?”

  “Don’t you see, Eli? Ain’t no growned folks been checking up on Mr. Travis lately so he thinks the coast is clear and it’s safe for him to give us some of that stuff what Pa calls ‘up-north, big-city learning mess’!”

  It sounded peculiar at first, but if you started thinking like you didn’t have no common sense atall it seemed like Cooter’d put it all together real good!

  Cooter saw I was starting to believe and said, “And if family breeding contests don’t count as some up-north, big-city learning mess, I don’t know what do.”

  I couldn’t help myself from saying, “I’ll be blanged!”

  I know that’s swearing, but compared to what our lesson was gonna be ’bout, swearing didn’t seem like much of a sin no more.

  Cooter said, “I just wish he hadn’t gone and writ the lesson out on the board like that. What if that doggone Emma Collins or one n’em other persnickety girls run off and tell someone what we’re ’bout to study? What if they stops this afore he gets to the real interesting, real nasty parts?”

  By the time the school bell runged, Cooter had me so worked up that I was looking like I was sitting on a hot stove too!

  We both knowed something big was ’bout to happen ’cause ’stead of saying his regular “Good morning, scholars, strivers, and questers for a better future! Are you ready to learn, are you ready to grow?” the way he does every other morning, Mr. Travis was sitting at his desk holding on to his pointing stick. His eyes were closed and he was so hopping mad that it was a miracle that smoke waren’t pouring from his ears!

  I knowed why too! He must’ve figured out that once he taught us ’bout family breeding contests, the growned folks were gonna hunt him down and give him a good tar-and-feathering!

  I’d heard lots of talk ’bout such things, but hadn’t never witnessed it myself. But I knowed if I ever ran into Mr. Travis again after this I was gonna have to apologize for spreading talk that he was a boring teacher. I was gonna have to eat my blanged words ’cause couldn’t nothing in the world make you want to come to school more than learning ’bout a family breeding contest then watching the teacher that taught it to you get covered in hot tar and run out of the Settlement on a rail!

  We all settled down at our desks and waited. Even the children who didn’t know what today’s lesson was ’bout sensed something waren’t right and started looking at one the ’nother all nervous and worrisome.

  Mr. Travis stood up and me and Cooter were ’bout to bust with excitedness!

  Mr. Travis brung that pointing stick down on top of his desk so hard it was a miracle the desk didn’t split clean in two!

  All the other children were taking this in a very terrorific way. They were clenching on to the sides of their desks and looking as afeared as a horse that’s seen a three-head snake. ’Cepting for Mr. Travis’s heavy breathing, and the pointer sound echoing off the walls, the classroom was quiet as a dead squirrel!

  Only me and Cooter were smiling ’cause we both knowed this was just the start of the best day of schooling we were ever gonna have!

  I looked over at Cooter and he was looking just as happy as me.

  Mr. Travis opened his eyes and saw Cooter smiling away, and if I live to be fifty years old, I h
ope I don’t never witness another growned man go berserk like Mr. Travis did! It was a sight and a scar that’ll be with me the rest of my life, right ’long with that trouble twixt me and Mr. Frederick Douglass.

  The adventure got going so quick-like that I ain’t sure of everything that happened, but all the sudden Mr. Travis was howling like a wolf and jumping clean ’cross the classroom and pouncing on Cooter Bixby like a owl on a rat! He moved so fast that Cooter didn’t even have a chance to get the smile off his face afore Mr. Travis jerked him out of his chair by the ear and marched him to the front of the room!

  I was shocked and couldn’t’ve moved if I wanted to. Some of the other children waren’t in as much shock as me and soon’s Mr. Travis clamped down on Cooter’s ear, they made a dash toward the doors. You caint blame ’em neither, ain’t nothing in the world that can get you more frighted up than watching your Sabbath school teacher get took over by Satan and commence twisting the juices outta children’s ears. Which is probably the first step the Devil takes when he’s ’bout to wrestle your soul away from you!

  Afore anyone could reach a door, Mr. Travis called out, “Return to your seats this instant!”

  Everyone stopped where they were at and commenced heading back to their desks, all ’cept for Johnny Wells, who screamed like a haint had got ahold of him and jumped right out the window! The last I saw him, Johnny was tearing down the road toward the square, raising up little clouds of dust as he ripped along.

  Once everyone got sitting again Mr. Travis kept ahold of Cooter’s ear and shouted louder than you’d’ve figured a proper man like him should, “Our people are still enslaved and treated like animals!”

  Cooter couldn’t tell that Mr. Travis had lost his mind! He was still smiling and nodding. And I knowed why too. Cooter ain’t the sharpest tooth on the saw and he must’ve figured that if we were gonna get a family breeding contest lesson, then getting your ear pulled on a little bit waren’t too much a price to pay!

  Like I said, I ain’t trying to say I’m smarter than Cooter, but I do study on things a little better and carefuller than he does, and I could see there waren’t gonna be no kind of lessons on nothing till Mr. Travis was done dusting off Cooter Bixby and dusting him off good!