Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories

								

through the door watched the performance with growing eagerness.
"Git yerself propped up," Amanda called when the cakes were encircled
with crisp, brown edges. "I'll git the bread-board to put acrost yer
knees. You be eatin' this soup while I dishes up the bacon an' onions.
How'd you like to have a little jam along with yer apple-dumplin'?"
Gordon Lee, sitting up in bed with this liberal repast spread on the
bread-board across his knees, and his large, bare feet, with their pink
adornments, rising like ebony tombstones at the foot of the bed, forgot
his grievance.
"Jam!" he repeated. "Well, dat dere Sally Ann Slocum's dumplin's may
need jam, er Maria Johnsing's, but dis heah dumplin' is complete in
hitself. Ef dey ever was a pusson dat could assemble a' apple-dumplin'
so's you swoller hit 'most afore hit gits to yer mouf, dat pusson is
you."
Harmony being thus restored, and the patient having emptied all the
dishes before him, Amanda proceeded to clear up. Her small, energetic
figure moved briskly from one room to the other, and as she worked she
sang in a low, chanting tone:



              "You got a shoe,

              I got a shoe,
All God's children got shoes.
When I git to heaben, gwine try on my shoes,
Gwine walk all over God's heaben, heaben, heaben.
Ever'body's talkin' 'bout heaben ain't gwine to heaben--
Heaben, heaben, gwine walk all over God's heaben."
But the truce, thus declared, was only temporary. During the long days
that Amanda was away at her work, Gordon Lee had nothing to do but lie
on his back and think of his ailments. For twenty years he had worked in
an iron foundry, where his muscles were as active as his brain was
passive. Now that the case was reversed, the result was disastrous.
From an attack of rheumatism a year ago he had developed an amazing
number of complaints, all of which finally fell under the head of the
dread hoodoo.
Aunt Kizzy, the object of Amanda's special scorn, he held in great
reverence. She had been a familiar figure in his mother's chimney-corner
when he was a boy, and to doubt her knowledge of charms and conjuring
was to him nothing short of heresy. She knew the value of every herb and
simple that grew in Hurricane Hollow. She was an adept in getting people
into the world and getting them out of it. She was constantly consulted
about weaning calves, and planting crops according to the stage of the
moon. And for everything in the heavens above and the earth beneath and
the waters under the earth she "had a sign."
Since Gordon Lee's illness, she had fallen into the habit of dropping in
to sit with him at such hours as Amanda would not be there. She would
crouch over the fire, elbows on knees and pipe in mouth, and regale him
with hair-raising tales of "hants" and "sperrits" and the part she had
played in exorcising them.
"Dis heah case ob yourn," she said one day, "ain't no ordinary case. I