Jupiter

I

WHEN ‘Uncle Bob,’ who for many years had served my brother and me as gardener, stable-man, hewer of wood, and drawer of water, quietly died of old age, Jupiter came to take his place. His former employer, Mrs. Crenshawe, gave him this amazing ‘ character ’: —

‘Jupiter certainly is the most trying darkey in Tippah, and he’s bound to do everything in his own way and at his own time, if it kills him. He’s lazy and shiftless and untidy, but if you let him alone he gets things done. Anyhow, I don’t know how on earth I’ll ever do without him, and I’d be perfectly happy if only I could keep him as long as I live.’

When I asked why she let him go, she said she had n’t discharged him; Jupiter was leaving of his own accord because Mr. Crenshawe had given him a ‘ cussin’-out’ for taking so long to go to the post-office and back.

‘You know it’s only a mile to the post-office,’ she pleaded, ‘and Jupiter always rode, unless he was too lazy to saddle Dame,’ — Dame was Mr. Crenshawe’s white mare, — ‘and he hardly ever had any errands to do, unless it was to go to the bank and have a check cashed, or to carry round the notices of a meeting of the Woman’s Auxiliary, — you know I’m secretary, and it saves stamps to send the notices by Jupiter, — or to fetch out some groceries, or to match some embroidery silk for me; but although he had next to nothing to do, he would be gone three or four hours every day. However,’ she sighed, ‘the Lord knows I’m going to miss him.’

‘Maybe he won’t stay with me, either,’ I suggested, cheerfully, for I felt a little guilty, as though I were robbing gentle Mrs. Crenshawe of her chief treasure.

But I made up my mind to keep him if he were as useful as she claimed; and I knew my brother, Judge Roberts, whose house I have kept ever since his wife died of ‘the Fever,’ in ’78, would never give Jupiter a ‘cussin’-out.’ He leaves to me the management of the servants, who, he declares, treat him as a distinguished visitor; and he says he prefers the privileges of a guest to the responsibilities of a master.

The morning after my little talk with Mrs. Crenshawe, Jupiter, a stalwart figure, more like Hercules than the Father of Olympus, with a carriage whose dignity I have never seen equaled by any white man, sauntered up the lane lined with young walnut trees, which led to our back yard. I was sitting on the steps of the back porch, and I called him to me.

‘Where do you live, Jupiter?’

He told me, and when I found that his house was two miles off I had some doubt about his getting to his work in good season every morning.

‘What time you want me ter come, Miss Molly?’ he asked. ‘I kin come whenever you say: five o’clock, fo’ o’clock, half-pas’ three. Ole folks like me don’ require much sleep.’

He looked about forty, but when I asked his age he said he was ‘nigh on to a hund’ed,’ and added that he had been married twice and had ‘a dozen head o’ chillen, not countin’ them what wuz dead.’

‘All my chillen wuz bawn wid twelve fingers an’ twelve toes,’ he boasted, ‘same as I wuz. The doctor gin’rally cuts ’em off — the little extrys, I mean. Some folks says hit’s like the monkeys. Is you ever seed a monkey, Miss Molly?’

Discouraging his curiosity about natural history, I proceeded to set forth his duties. He was to chop wood for the fireplaces and for the kitchen stove, to make the garden and gather the vegetables, to feed the chickens, and to draw water from the well and carry it to the house and to the kitchen.

‘Is that all? Don’ I have ter go ter the post-office? An’ don’ you want me to holp in the kitchen? Aunt Malviny’ — the cook — ‘is powerful fat, an’ I reckin she’d be proud ter have me beat her biscuits every mawnin’. An’ I sho’ kin cook. I kin make all kinds er cake — Charlotte Polonaise, Blue Grass, Lady Baltimore, tipsy cake, fruit cake, angel cake, marble cake, Jew cakes —’

I cut short Jupiter’s eloquence and directed him to the wood-pile. But his culinary accomplishments were soon put to the test. A week after his introduction into our household poor fat Aunt Malviny succumbed to apoplexy and followed her husband, Uncle Bob, to the grave. Jupiter succeeded her, as my brother said, automatically, and great was his indignation when I spoke of looking for another cook.

‘Ef you’ll lemme bring my gal, Chasty, here to holp me, Miss Molly,’ he proposed, ‘you won’t need to hire ary other nigger. Chasty’s twelve years old, but she looks fo’teen. I can’t make her go ter school, ’cause she’s done tuk the notion that every nigger what learns ter read an’ write will die in the penitentiary. You won’t have ter pay her no wages, Miss Molly; jus’ feed her an’ give her some o’ yo’ ole close. Ef she thought she wuz wuth wages she’d git so uppety that her maw would have to lick her oncet a week, same as she does the boys. Yes, ’m, Sue licks the boys reg’lar; she sho’ does her bes’ ter raise my chillen right. Some folks thinks she is lazy, ’cause she don’t hire out, or take in washin’; but I says she has got her hands full with all that passel o’ chillen. When they’s little she greases ’em an’ she iles ’em an’ she cleans out their cisterns, an’ when they gits big she licks ’em good an’ proper. She’s had fifteen chillen an’ buried six, an’ the younges’ wuz bawn las’ night an’ as it’s a gal she wants ter name it Molly, for you, ma’am.’

I made the proper acknowledgment of this compliment, and asked Jupiter if he had any grandchildren. I wanted to know if they had twelve toes.

‘Well, Miss Molly, not exackly. I got a piece o’ one.’

‘ Mercy, Jupiter, what do you mean ? ’

‘Well, you see, Miss Molly, Little Jupiter, that’s my oldes’ son, he ain’t never married his gal yit, an’ that ’s why I say their baby ain’t no more ’n a piece of a gran’chile. An’ he did n’t have no twelve fingers an’ toes, neither. She ain’t much, that gal ain’t. Puts powder on her face an’ spends Little Jupiter’s good money, what he made shootin’ craps, buyin’ some pizen stuff ter take the kinks outen her hair.’

II

When Jupiter was not talking he was cooking. The garden and the chickens were neglected, and Jupiter’s maddening habit of never doing anything at the right time would have been the despair of any but the most easy-going of housekeepers. So long as I let him go his own way, and shut my eyes to the fact that the dishes were washed only once a day and that the interior of the kitchen, though clean, looked like a junk shop, all went well; but whenever I rashly stood out for more order and system, Jupiter always hinted that his talents were wasted in Tippah, and that there was ‘ big money’ to be made in a rest-er-ant in a neighboring city, where his ‘Eyetalyan cooking’ would be appreciated. Once I remonstrated when he spoke in this tone; it was too much like a threat, and smacked of impertinence.

‘Miss Molly, I did n’t sass you; I ain’t never sassed you,’ he protested, so humbly that I had to forgive him, and let him go on in his happy-golucky way. Left to himself, he regaled us with the best food we ever had, a joy to the eye as well as to the palate, for Jupiter touched nothing that he did not adorn. Like Imogen, he ‘cut our roots in characters.’

To do what he was told to do was gall and wormwood to his proud spirit. If by any makeshift or subterfuge he could evade obedience to orders he was happy. He wanted to take the initiative, to assume responsibility, to spring a surprise on us. If I specified a dessert, there was generally some good reason why that particular dessert could not be prepared that day; but if I weakly let him alone, or said carelessly, ‘Fix us up something good, Jupiter,’ I was never disappointed. ‘The trivial round, the common task’ bored him sadly; works of supererogation were his keenest delight. He boasted that he could do everything, ‘’cep’n’ wash an’ iron, which is women’s work.’ He left me no peace until I bought a cow, saying that he loved to milk, and that the butter would pay for the cow’s food. His wonderful cakes called for more butter than I could afford to buy in those days, for times were hard, with cotton only five cents a pound.

One day I was sitting on the back porch, churning and wondering how long I could hold out against Jupiter’s entreaties that I buy a little pig, which he would fatten on buttermilk and finally convert into sausage, side-meat, and chitterlings, when to my dismay my valuable servant came up to the steps and said he was mighty sorry, but he was afeard he ’d have ter quit.

I nearly upset the churn.

‘Leave us, Jupiter? But why?’

‘Well, Miss Molly, a man like me needs ter make a whole lot o’ money. I got thirteen head o’ chillen, an’ while the gals is right smart, the boys ain’t wuth the powder an’ shot it would take ter kill ’em. You pays me eight dollars a month, an’ that would n’t be enough for me ter take care o’ my family on, an’ pay my Lodge dues — you know I is a Knight an’ Lady of Honor, Miss Molly — withouten I made some more. Now I’s been makin’ four dollars a month as sexton of St. Faith’s, only they don’t pay me reg’lar. Howsomever, I kin git erlong on twelve dollars a month. But now I done lost my job as sexton, so I better go to Memphis, an’ work in a resterant.’

‘But, Jupiter, what happened? Were you discharged?’

‘No, ma’am. I done discharged myself. Mr. Simpson, he say I stole. I ain’t never stole nothin’ in my life, an’ Mr. Simpson ain’t got no call ter make a fuss over a little bit o’ coal. You know I has ter make the fire in the furnace at St. Faith’s every Sunday, good an’ early, so the church’ll be warm for seven o’clock service. Well, they bought some coal las’ fall, an’ soon after Christmas when it wuz nearly all gone, I went to Mr. Simpson, the senior warden, they calls him, an’ tole him he better buy some more, an’ he says he thinks there’s plenty for another Sunday or two. Then I goes to him agin, an’ he says I mus’ speak ter Mr. Yates, the treasurer. An’ Mr. Yates he says he’s a treasurer withouten any treasure, an’ I better see the rector, ’cause he had n’t no money to buy no coal. An’ the rector, he say he had n’t nothin’ to do with business matters, but he would see that the subjick wuz laid before the vestry. An’, bless my life, the vestry did n’t meet for two months, an’ by that time the weather wuz warm an’ they did n’t need no coal nohow. An’ then las’ Sunday after church I wuz onhitchin’ Mr. Simpson’s hoss an’ he wuz a-gittin’ in his buggy ter drive home when he says, “ Well, Jupiter, you pestered us all mightily about coal, but we did n’t have to buy any more, after all. I thought the supply we laid in in the fall would last until spring, and it did. It’s just a question of knowing how to run a furnace economically.”

‘ “ Yessir,” I says. “But it sho’ wuz hard work wheelin’ coal in er wheelbarrer all the way from the freight yards, the other side of the deepo, every Sunday for six weeks.”—Yes, Miss Molly,’—in answer to my exclamation of horror, — ‘ that’s what I had ter do. I axed fur coal, an’ I axed fur coal, an’ the gemmen jus’ kep’ on payin’ no ’tention ter me, an’ what else could I do? It wuz my business ter keep that church hot. Think I’d let everybody freeze to death with carloads o’ coal settin’ thar doin’ nothin’ on the railroad tracks? I uster git up at three o’clock of a dark winter mawnin,’ an’ take your wheelbarrer, Miss Molly,’ — this with a confiding smile, as though he were glad to let me have a humble share in this creditable performance, — ‘an’ go an’ help myself ter enough coal ter make the House of the Lord comfortable for his worshipers. Sometimes I had ter make as many as six trips, on a extry col’ day. An’ Mr. Simpson calls that stealin’! Stealin’ is takin’ sompen fur yo’ own self, an’ I took this here coal fur the Church. I ain’t never tooken even one teeny lump fur myself, ’cause I don’ burn nothin’ but wood, nohow.’

I was not concerned with Jupiter’s private interpretation of the Eighth Commandment, but I asked if he would give up the idea of going to Memphis if I could get his job at St. Faith’s back for him. His statement that he had ‘resigned’ I did not credit; Mr. Simpson had doubtless discharged him when he heard of his larceny. For once, I decided to call my brother to my aid. He is a member of the vestry of St. Faith’s, and through his influence Jupiter was not only reinstated, but from that time he was paid his four dollars promptly on the first of the month.

III

For a while everything went smoothly. I promised to get a pig the following year if Jupiter would stop teasing me. My idea was to dangle the pig over his head, as a promise of distant reward, hoping in this way to bind him to my service. Absolutely devoted as he was to my interests, he never ceased to pine for Memphis, and the ‘big money’ he could make there.

Jupiter’s daughter — the illiterate Chasty — was soon taught by her father to do everything he was unwilling to do himself. She picked chickens, crawled under the cabins to look for eggs, pulled up weeds, made beds, waited on the table, and, on occasion, as when Jupiter was at church, on a Sunday morning, she could cook a dinner. She was a bright-eyed little thing, always dressed in red calico, with her legs bare, except in winter. At breakfast and supper she scudded back and forth between the house and the kitchen, carrying relays of waffles, biscuits, and batter-cakes; but at dinner, which we ate at one o’clock, we were served by Jupiter himself, whose kinky black head rose above his white jacket and apron ‘like a fly in a pan o’ milk,’ as he pleasantly suggested. Talkative elsewhere, in the dining-room he was all that was correct. My brother or I might unbend, and compliment some gorgeous dish he served, but Jupiter never lost his dignity, or said an unnecessary word. He prided himself on having always lived with ‘the quality,’ and he did not belie his training.

The first time the Bishop visited St. Faith’s after Jupiter’s occupation of my kitchen, I arranged to have him dine with us, after the morning service. The Bishop was fastidious, but if Jupiter’s cooking did not satisfy him, he deserved to go hungry. Jupiter of course had to be at church all morning, to ring the bell and to blow the organ, but he planned his dinner carefully, and Chasty was left to carry out her father’s instructions. We all came home about half-past twelve. I left my brother to entertain the Bishop on the porch, peeped into the dining-room, saw that it was dark and cool, and that my peacock-feather fly-brush was in readiness, then made my way to the kitchen.

Chasty had disappeared.

The fire was out, the vegetables had not been prepared; the chickens, killed and picked the night before, still hung in the well; the ice-cream had not been frozen, and the ice destined for the freezer had melted in its old blanket. There was no clue to Chasty’s whereabouts. Jupiter, after saying he would break every bone in her body, wasted no time in conjecture, but went to work. I did what little I could to help, and my brother plied the Bishop with cigars and mint-juleps. In less than two hours, Jupiter stood majestically waving the fly-brush over as good a dinner as the Bishop ever ate; of that I am sure. Later, while the gentlemen were smoking, I slipped out on the backporch, where I found Chasty in tears, and Jupiter hurling his thunderbolts.

‘I ain’t er-gwine ter leave it ter yer maw ter lick yer,’ he stormed. ‘I’s gwine ter lick the stuffin’ outen yer myself. Miss Molly, she done spent the whole blessed mawnin’ settin’ on Mrs. Simpson’s kitchen steps whilst that nocount Pury, what cooks fer Mrs. Simpson, wropped her ha’r. Mrs. Simpson wuz dinin’ out, an’ Pury did n’t have nothin’ ter do. Chasty wanted to be primped up ter go ter the pertracted meetin’ to-night. I ain’t er-gwine ter let her go, an’ I’s gwine ter wear her out jes’ as soon as I gits home from evenin’ service. I’s gwine ter beat her till she’s so sore she can’t lay nor set.’

It seemed my duty to interfere. I ordered Jupiter not to whip the child, and promised to punish her thoroughly myself. He went off to church, leaving me to deal with the little sinner. Her tears did not move me, but I was fascinated by her hair. Accustomed as I was to seeing hair ‘wropped,’ I had never seen such a coiffure as Chasty’s. There must have been fifty little short tails sticking out at right angles to her head, each wrapped around with particolored rags. No wonder it took Pury two hours to do it. I gazed, and I had an inspiration.

‘Chasty,’ I commanded, ‘sit down on the lowest step.’

She obeyed, sobbing, and I sat on the top step, above her. Spreading a towel on my lap, I proceeded in silence to un-wrop her hair. The operation lasted an hour. Chasty wailed that she had had her hair wropped because she wanted to go to the pertracted meetin’ that night, and that she might er got erligion, and now maybe she never would git erligion, and it would be my fault if she went to the Bad Place when she died. But I was obdurate.

Looking back, I regard this as the most cruel act of my life. Far better if I had let Jupiter ‘lick the stuffin’ outen her.’

Apart from protracted meetings and barbecues, Jupiter’s chief dissipation was ‘ the Lodge.’ He was an enthusiastic Mason, and when the time approached for a visit from the Grand Master of the Templars, for the purpose of initiating new members, he assumed an air of mystery and importance, sometimes tinged with anxiety. Once he came to me with a troubled look on his pleasant black face.

‘ Miss Molly, would you please, ma’am, tell me what is a peblet?’

‘A what? How do you spell it?’

The dictionary threw no light on the problem, and Jupiter explained that the Grand Master had written that when the procession was formed to meet him at the station every Knight must bear in his hand a ‘peblet.’ Jupiter would have died rather than confess ignorance. For days he looked gloomy and puzzled, and at last he appealed to me again.

‘Don’t yer think, Miss Molly, that a nice long stick with a ball on the end would make er good peblet?’

‘Jupiter,’ I answered earnestly, ‘it would make a fine peblet. Nothing could be more edifying, impressive, and appropriate.’

His face cleared.

‘Yes, ’m; yes, ma’am. An’ now I comes ter think erbout it, I ’members that’s jes’ what a peblet is. Dunno huccome I ain’t thought of it sooner.’

He went about his work with his old debonair gayety, and that night we had angel food for supper. Days passed happily. Discretion forbade any questions about the mystic rites of the Templars; but a week later, when I heard the neighbors’ children lamenting the disappearance of many croquet balls I drew my own conclusions. In justice to the Knights and Ladies of Honor I must add that the balls were afterwards found lying about in the different yards, none the worse except for a few holes where nails had been driven and extracted.

IV

When Jupiter had been with us about two years, and had assumed full charge of me and my brother, the cow and the pig, — for of course I had bought a pig, — the chickens and the garden, a new and important member was added to our family. I am a spinster, and had had no experience with children when the tragic death of my brother’s daughter and her husband, in a fire in a theatre, left a little orphan girl of two years to my care. At first I was a little nervous over my new responsibility, and I was not above finding comfort in Jupiter’s reassuring words.

‘Chillen ain’t half the trouble that other animiles is, fer the reason that they got sense, an’ the beasties ain’t. I ought ter know all erbout chillen; I’s had seventeen. Jes’ you turn little Missy loose in the back yard, an’ ole Jupiter’ll see nothin’ don’t hurt her.’

Missy was backward about talking, and it was after she came to us that she began to put words together. It is of record that her first attempt at a sentence was, ‘Missy bonny kitchy Jupy,’ which meant that she wanted to put on her sunbonnet and go to the kitchen to see Jupiter; and a pretty picture she made, sitting in her high-chair at the kitchen table, with a piece of dough and a little stick, her sweet dimpled arm copying Jupiter’s every motion as he beat the biscuits on a block he had made from a tree-stump and a piece of granite he had coaxed the tombstone maker to give him.

Fed on corn-bread and pot-liquor, ‘jes’ the same as a setter pup,’ Missy grew round and rosy. Chasty was her devoted handmaiden, Jupiter her humble worshiper and faithful protector. My hold on him now seemed secure; Missy was a greater success than the pig in making him forget Memphis and ‘big money.’

Years passed. I began to regard with patronizing pity my friends whose chief topic of conversation was trouble with servants. I never had any trouble. In 1893, when everybody was going to the World’s Fair, I decided to leave Jupiter in charge and take a long holiday, spending a week in Chicago and the rest of the summer at a resort on Lake Michigan. My brother had already gone to Buffalo Lithia for his gout, and Missy, no longer fat and freckled, but slim and sweet and shy, had been taken to Europe in the spring by her northern aunt. Jupiter had been restless and discontented ever since her departure, and I thought perhaps my absence would give him a change of occupation and manner of life, and enable him to see more of his family, so that when I came back I should find the Jupiter of former days.

My return home was hastened by this letter: —

TIPPAH, MISS.
sep nineth 1893.
MISS MOLLY, —
We are all well. I hop you ar well. The cat had kittins but I drownd em. The cow will kum in in erbout a month. All yore frens axes me when is you kumin home an has the Jedge got rid of his gout an if Missy has been presented at Cote. I says Missy aint got no call to go to Cote Houses nor yit jails. Please Miss Molly is you heerd from Missy. I xpecks she done forgot ole Jupiter. My boy Cube wuz run over an kilt by the I. C. railrode las weak. A white gemman whut says he wuz the clame agent fur the rode gimme 2 hunded dolars ter sine my name ter a paper sayin I did n’t blame the rode fur killin him. He wuz berried in gran style fur I had had him inshured, an I cut all yore full-blone roses fur ter put on the coffin, but I never teched nary buds. Youll have ter git another cook cause Im er goin ter take the 2 hunded an go to Memphis an start a calf A fur toney cullud folks. Hit sho is lonesome with you an Missy an the Jedge gone. Chasty got married las month but she never tole me till today. She will stay on till you kum back. I made 7 duz kwats of pikkles an presarves an jelly an I put up okra in cans. I am well an hopin you are enjoyin the same Gods blessin.
Yore sarvent
JUPITER.

I took the next train and found everything in good order, but Chasty was impatient to go to Texas, with her husband, and the loss of Jupiter was a calamity. My brother was in New York to meet Missy, and they reached home a week after I did, Missy with fine presents for Jupiter and Chasty, who were not there to receive them.

Over the discomforts and inconveniences and vexations of the following three months I draw a veil. One thing I gained: I revised my uncharitable opinion of women who could talk of nothing but the servant problem.

One morning, not long before Christmas, I was wakened by the familiar sound of the beating of biscuits, — a sound which in happier days had been the equivalent of a rising bell in our household. The cook I had then — the eleventh since Jupiter left me — made only soda biscuits, saying that her doctor had warned her against exercise that might ‘ injure her organ.’ I dressed as quickly as possible, and when I went downstairs there stood Jupiter, his beaming smile a reflection of my own look of pleasure and surprise.

‘Howdy, Miss Molly! You sho’ is lookin’ well. I done sont off that goodfer-nothin’ yaller gal I found in my kitchen. I tole her you would not require her sarvices now that I wuz home agin. Lawdy! lawdy! I sho’ is glad ter git back ter Tippah. How’s Missy, an’ the Jedge?’

At this moment they came down, to speak for themselves, and we all wanted to know the fate of the Calf A.

‘Hit’s done busted up,’ said Jupiter, cheerfully, ‘an’ ter tell the trufe I is glad uv it. I allus has lived wid white folks, an’ wid quality, at that, an’ I ain’t er-gwine ter spen’ my declinin’ years waitin’ on niggers, what eats with their knife jes’ the same as I do, an’ what ain’t no better’n me, nohow — if they’s as good. Yistiddy the white man what I rented my dinin’-hall an’ kitchen from say if I don’ pay the rent to-day he ’d tu’n me out, so I jes’ lit out myself, an’ beat my way home on a freight car, an’ heah I is. An Miss Molly, if you’ll please, ma’am, excuse me fer runnin’ off, I’ll stay right on now, an’ when Missy gits jined togedder at the altar I’ll blow the organ fer the weddin’ march, an’ I’ll bake the fines’ weddin’ cake that ever wuz baked in the State of Mississippi.’