A Plantation Boyhood
I
AT Hampton, the old family estate near Charleston where I grew up, late summer was a season of extraordinary activity. The time of the great rice harvest was approaching, and all hands had to turn out to ‘mind birds’ — that is, to prevent the migrating bobolinks from eating up our entire crop. For years I was on the regular staff of minders, but I always remained an amateur. It took a Negro like Scipio to develop the finished skill of a professional; and since I was for so long his admiring disciple I cannot do better than to describe his methods.
The bobolink, ortolan, ricebird, or reedbird is, by no matter what name he is called, a sad glutton. When his breeding season is past, he leaves the river meadows and the warm marshes along the coast of the Middle Atlantic States and, about the middle of August, comes south. The rice is then ‘in the milk’ — which means that it has headed out and begun to turn down, but the grain is still soft. The birds flock to the fields by the millions, and at twilight, when they are settling for the night, the whole sky becomes darkly alive with them. At this season an unguarded field would be a total loss. It is fortunate, therefore, that the pests are regarded by epicures as a rare delicacy. Every year countless thousands of the birds are captured or killed by the Negroes, and sold in the local markets or shipped north.
When the migration begins, every plantation commissary must have on hand many kegs of black powder and bags of No. 10 shot, to be portioned out to the Negro bird minders. Sometimes the minders are stationed on platforms set up in the middle of a field, sometimes at the intersection of check banks, where the corners of four fields can be watched. There are many ways of dealing with the birds; perhaps the most effective, after that of killing as many as possible, is to frighten them off by firing a flattened buckshot , which whirs over them making a noise like the wings of a hawk. All day long a small army of Negroes are kept employed patrolling the banks of the rice fields and rending the air with the incessant firing of their huge muskets.
When the birds first arrive after their long flight, they are very thin and ravenously hungry, and quite wary and shy. Their note is then a lively ‘pink-pank,’ with an occasional trill of exquisite song. But as their visit lengthens, and as, with every long summer’s day, they gorge themselves upon the succulent, nourishing rice, both their appearance and their voices undergo a change. Each slim, bright-eyed bird, about the size of a field sparrow, is transformed into what Poe would have called ‘an ungainly fowl’ — dull, corpulent, incautious. From his cheery ‘pink-pank’ tenor, he descends to a phlegmatic ‘ponk-ponk’ bass. All his charm and spirituality are gone. He becomes too lazy to fly without great provocation. He does not even fear the approach of a man like Scipio. Therefore he is lost.
II
Scipio was, and always had been, a poacher. All winter long he would set mink traps and shoot wild ducks and turkeys on posted land. When occasion demanded, he was also, like one of Sir Roger de Coverley’s hounds, a noted liar. But what did these things matter? He was famed far and wide as a bird hunter, and when the migrating season arrived he was indispensable. Six feet tall, he had a remarkably fine figure, and his dark, muscular body glistened through the tatters of his loose-hanging clothes.
Early in the morning he would put in his appearance. Already the great Carolina rice fields lay steaming under the August sun. In every direction stretched the golden grain, which in a few weeks would be ready for the sickle. The fields were flooded from the sluggish river that flowed past to form the eastern boundary, the water coming within a span of the rich drooping heads of the rice. Scipio surveyed the scene and took his stand in the shade of a cypress tree upon the bank. Here he deposited in the tall grass the little tin bucket containing his lunch, and gave his cur dog the command to ‘mind’ it.
Then he began to load his musket — an elaborate ritual. Into the long rusty barrel he poured four drams of coarse black powder, which he took from a dirty tobacco bag. This he wadded down with any superfluous part of his clothing that came handy, tearing it off in a wholly unconcerned manner. He topped the load with about two ounces of mustard-seed shot, which he again wadded firmly with a tatter from his clothes. Finally, from some obscure pocket in his undershirt, he took out the precious metal box of percussion caps. Selecting one, he settled it on the nipple and let the hammer down with great care. Everything was now in readiness.
Half of the day might go by before Scipio came into action. He was no fool. Those other Negroes might waste their powder bang-banging at the sky, but he was a hunter. He was waiting for a shot. The Negro nearest him on the bank, who gloried in the name of George Washington Alexander Burnsides Green, had been shooting at frequent intervals all day, but he hardly had birds enough for supper. Scipio was scornful of such inefficiency. Waiting in the shade of the cypress, he was biding his time until the birds should begin to alight near him. At last came one, from a bush on the bank; then perhaps twenty or thirty others; and finally they poured in from every direction — one hundred, two hundred, a thousand, five thousand birds, all flocking to join the first adventurers.
‘If Cousin Scipio ever git in dat crowd,’ muttered Wash Green excitedly, ‘I sho’ feel sorry for dem bud!'
Marking the gathering with an eye that had made him the hero of all the little pickaninnies on seven plantations, Scipio grinned, and, slouching his old greasy cap over his eyes, he bent under the cypress limbs and stepped down into the hot, evil-smelling water of the rice field. He sank in over his knees. He had to keep himself in a crouching position, with his head below the level of the rice, as, parting the grain before him with his musket and his left hand, he stalked the birds two hundred yards away. Once he stumbled into a drain, just catching himself in time to keep his powder dry; and again he suddenly jerked his hand from within a few inches of a blunt-tailed, deadly cottonmouth moccasin.
As he approached the spot where the hosts were congregated, he came upon several stragglers that he might have caught in his hand; but he ignored them and moved cautiously forward. He inched along until he could hear them feeding — the chattering of their bills against the rough rice grains; the occasional little song; the soft, contented, full-fed note. Then, slowly, the long black barrel of the musket rose out of the field of grain, to be followed by the Negro’s head. The gun was leveled steadily.
‘Who-o-o-o-o-e-e!’ bellowed Scipio’s voice.
There was a rush of wings, and the roar of the musket, whose detonation reverberated up and down the river. As the smoke lifted from the field, the hunter found the ‘trail’ — the line of his shot. He caught and dispatched the wounded birds and gathered in the killed, stuffing them in the canvas sack that hung at his side.
These operations took so much time that Wash, whose curiosity had drawn him to the nearest point on the bank, called out, ‘Hey, Cousin Scipio! How you mek out?’
Scipio stopped and looked up, shading his eyes with his hand. ’Bro’ Wash,’ he answered, ‘I donno w’at is de matter wid de bud. I sho’ do po’ly — po’ly.’
When he finally emerged from the water, he was grinning with the delight of a cheerful liar. He pulled three birds out of his sack and threw them to his dog. Then he sat down under the cypress tree, stretched out his legs into a patch of sunshine to dry, and began counting his kill. Twelve dozen and five birds came out of the sack. Scipio had made a shot.
III
Throughout my plantation boyhood I took a deep and solicitous interest in observing the wild life of our countryside. The disastrous forest fires that sometimes swept through the pinelands of the neighborhood afforded me unusual opportunities to study the behavior of wild creatures under dramatic circumstances. On more than one occasion I managed to keep about a hundred yards ahead of the advancing flames in order to watch the effect. It surprised me to see that many of the wild things that came out of the smoke, and almost, it appeared, out of the flames, gave evidence of feeling discomfort and boredom rather than downright terror. As they fled along, they would often pause to look and listen, seeming to be as wary of the danger that might lurk ahead as of the certain peril behind.
I saw many gray squirrels, running on the ground or along logs. Some of them managed to escape, but many of them perished. For squirrels, like raccoons and other tree dwellers, are the worst sufferers in forest fires. At the first alarm, they make for home — a hollow in some favorite tree — and if that tree goes they are lost. Often, however, the favorite tree is among the largest in the woods, and for that very reason may survive a fire that mows dow n scores of smaller trees.
Once I saw a gray fox stealing along in artful fashion on the very edge of a rim of flame. Seemingly unalarmed by his danger, he caught a wood rat close to the fire — a fugitive ghoulishly taking advantage of a fellow fugitive.
One afternoon while I was in a section of the homeland woods that was then almost surrounded by a forest fire, I was attracted to a dense thicket of bays, about ten yards square, which occupied the centre of the unburned area. It occurred to me that it was a place where wild life might be taking temporary but insecure refuge, so I approached it cautiously, from the leeward side. Hearing the snapping of twigs within the clump, I threw a stone to arouse whatever might be within, and waited to see what would happen. Out of the foliage appeared the graceful head of a buck, his ears set forward in alert intelligence as he faced the fire that gleamed and crackled in the broom sedge. It took him only a moment to decide upon his course. To the west was a wide tract through which the fire had already passed, rimmed vividly on the near side by the oncoming flames. Not the least disconcerted, the buck approached the fire, and, with one great bound and a show of his white regimental flag, was lost to sight in the smoky woodland. I doubt if he had ever before seen a forest fire, but he handled himself as if it were nothing out of the ordinary.
In the swampy pine barrens there were many quail, which, if unmolested, remained year after year on a remarkably limited range. When fires swept their damp coverts and their sunny feeding grounds in the broom sedge, they were left in sore straits; for, although the quail can make good use of his wings, as every sportsman knows, he is essentially a ground bird, and rarely takes to the air except when disturbed. Fond of frequenting one small locality, he suffers acutely when his home is destroyed.
As I walked through the burned country, I could hear the calling of quail every few hundred yards. Once or twice a whole covey, strung out in line, with all the members of the family in plain view, set up the penetrating, sweet gathering call of the old mother. They gave every sign of being spiritually distracted. But they were exceedingly wild, and were well able to take care of themselves. As my approach was noisy and obvious, they would flush before I could get very close to them, and their flight sometimes carried them beyond my range of vision. Two or three days after the fire, all these birds had moved into a narrow strip of woodland that had been saved from the flames. IV
As a boy I was always impressed by the dexterous ease with which Negroes handled animals. With comparatively little effort, one of our men, Aaron Alston, broke a malicious bull to the plough. Prince, the little black boy who was my constant shadow throughout childhood, was able to manage a team of particularly obstinate mules with which I could do nothing at all. The fact is that a plantation Negro often has the power to insinuate himself into the very spirit of an animal, and to cajole that spirit into obedience. I saw evidence of this strange phenomenon countless times. Consequently, whenever a horse or an ox was pronounced unmanageable, it was promptly turned over to the occult ministrations of one of the darkies. The plan, however, was only partially successful; for, although the creature would always be quickly broken of his vicious antics, it often happened that he was gentled only for the man who had exorcised his devils.
I was never able to learn the secret of the Negroes’ power over animals, but there came times when I had to try to manage difficult situations with beasts of the field all by myself, without the help of the black man’s magic. Several instances of this kind stand out vividly in my memory.
In addition to the forest fires of which I have spoken, we were also subject to perpetual danger from freshets. Torrential rains in the upcountry would swell the tides of the Wateree and the Congaree rivers, which, flowing together to form the Santee, would come rushing down upon us near the coast, inundating the delta, submerging the swamps, topping our banks, and, if the crops were then growing, utterly destroying them. On such occasions an incredible flotsam of wild life would take refuge upon our plantation shores. Deer, turkeys, wild hogs, swamp rabbits, great flocks of Wilson’s snipe, hundreds of stately king rails — all these would be driven to our higher fields in their efforts to escape the rampaging river. The fugitives, being crowded together in strange country, were more or less helpless, and we made it a practice never to hunt in a freshet. I am glad to say that there is now a law against such barbarism.
It was not always easy, however, to maintain a benevolent neutrality toward the creatures from the wilds, particularly when they began to commit depredations upon our fields and flocks. Once a vicious wild boar, which had been routed by flood from his haunts in the great Santee swamp, made himself such a nuisance upon our land that we had to take measures against him. After an exciting chase, in which every dog and human being on the plantation had participated, he was finally caught and lodged for safekeeping in a pen in the stable yard. Grizzled, tall, and menacing, he was curiously high in the shoulders, like a hyena. Even after he was penned up, every creature on the place felt a healthy fear of him, and, like the horses, walked wide of his enclosure. No one, I think, had any very clear idea as to what we should do with him, but for the moment he seemed to be safely out. of the way.
Late one afternoon, when all the Negroes had gone home, I stopped near the pen to take a look at the foul old captive. We had noticed that every evening, as dusk approached, he would become restless and active. Now he was thrashing about, tearing up the earth with his tusks, and grunting savagely. I had been shooting crows, and had with me an old Winchester rifle. After looking at the boar, I sauntered toward the gate of the stable yard.
Suddenly, behind me, I heard a terrific crash. As I whirled about, the boar had broken out of the pen and was making straight toward me. Instinctively I put up my rifle and blazed away — not a moment too soon. The bullet sped true, but not before the marauder, in the full momentum of his rush, had struck me and knocked me down. Fortunately I was unhurt, and the boar lay dead beside me as I scrambled to my feet.
Not long after this incident a razorback sow began to kill our lambs. We were at dinner one day when all the sheep in the pasture set up a pathetic and insistent bleating. Then one of the Negroes shouted an alarm. I ran out of the house, and as I climbed the fence of the pasture I saw the whole flock of sheep clustered under an oak in frightened helplessness. Near by was a monstrous old sow, half-wild and ownerless, the mother, I knew, of eleven little pigs. Now she was famished, and had turned killer. Detached somewhat from the flock of sheep, and between them and the marauder, stood an old ewe. Before her eyes her lamb was being devoured by the sow.
I snatched up a heavy live-oak club and advanced to the attack. Seeing me coming, the wily old sow abandoned the remains of the lamb and dashed straight through the flock of sheep. In passing, she seized another lamb in her jaws, and, with her victim held high in the air, started for the woods, jumping over the low bushes with the agility of a deer. I managed to run ahead of her and cut off her escape, and as I dashed up I so belabored her across the snout with the heavy club that she dropped the lamb. Turning, she fled in the opposite direction, and after a fruitless pursuit I had to give up the chase.
The injured lamb eventually recovered, but the old sow, having tasted blood, came back within a few hours. To protect our flock, we had to keep all the sheep in the stable yard for the next three weeks.
These semi-wild razorback hogs were a constant source of trouble to us on the plantation. They were remarkable for their sullen independence, for their daring, and for a kind of brutal savoir faire in their savage mode of life. Few dogs had courage enough to close upon one of them. They ate rattlesnakes with almost comical nonchalance. They could run like antelopes, swim like the otter, and stand their ground against all enemies except man, and the old black bears that shared with them the ancient freehold tenure of the wilderness.
V
We had many hogs roaming all over the plantation — creatures both wild and tame. At that time there was no stock law. One of my duties as a boy was to keep track of the indiscriminate herds. I was especially commissioned to look after the mothers and their young. It was a task to which I devoted myself with great zeal, and my attempts at its performance led me into many an adventure. One such was the first aid that I was able to render to the beleaguered Sallie — a huge domesticated sow’ of splendid motherly qualities.
When the day of her delivery was almost at hand, she sought out a suitable place as a bed for her little ones. At such times, animals develop an elaborate secretiveness, so that it is no easy matter to discover where they have taken refuge. When Sallie withdrew herself from general circulation, I searched for hours before I found her. By mere good chance I stumbled upon her hiding place on Sam Hill — a wild, blossomy thicket jutting out into one of the rice fields. It was a solitary spot. Not wanting to disturb her, for I could hear her setting her house in order, I peered through the dense underbrush. There was something very touching in the attitude and behavior of this primitive thing as she went about her preparations. She was wary, solicitous, almost fastidious, as, in a tiny area flanked by thick myrtles, she pushed together a perfect bed of dry pine straw and leaves. I noticed that she arranged the bedding so that it was heaviest toward the north and west. Without disturbing her I stole away, knowing that on my return next day I should probably find the new family in possession.
The next morning, just after breakfast, I started off for Sam Hill, taking with me a gun to shoot the crows that were pulling up the young corn. While still a long way off, I was startled to see a score of turkey vultures circling low over the pines above the very spot where Sallie had made her bed. I quickened my pace, and, as I drew near, the vultures were settling down into the woods. Some had taken their perch on low trees surrounding the thicket. It was evident that trouble of some kind was afoot within. I was afraid that the gallant old mother was dead, or that some mishap had befallen her brood.
As I drew abreast of the sheltered arena I heard faint squeals; then angry grunts from Sallie. I saw the buzzards wheeling and swooping down. One look through the bushes showed me what was taking place. The noisome black robbers were trying to steal from Sallie her newborn babies.
The splendid old creature stood with her back to the densest part of the thicket. Her eyes gleamed with rage. Her head was high and defiant. Her great jaws champed vengefully. Under her heaving flanks, hardly able to stand, nestled her brood, squealing and panting with fright. I could see that some of the little pigs were bleeding, from cuts that looked as if they had been stabbed with a sharp knife. On the ground about them a dozen of the vultures stood gawkily in a rough semicircle. Every now and then one of the birds would rise on its wings to swoop swiftly down and make a vicious thrust at the pigs. But Sallie had given a good account of herself. Immediately before her, three of the dusky brigands lay dead.
Since the vultures were gathering in increasing numbers from every quarter of the heavens, I have no doubt that if I had not arrived so opportunely this woodland drama would have had a tragic ending. I fired at the group on the ground, and saluted them again as they rose. As I stepped into the arena, Sallie came over to me, grunting a friendly welcome. She seemed immensely relieved. And who knows but that her brute heart was grateful?
That day I moved her and her babies into a safe corner of the stable yard.
Because of such experiences as this, there early came to me a vivid awareness of that mysterious thing which we call life. Before I was ten years old I had taken care of many mothers among our stock, and their young; and with them I had fought off death — only to realize how puny is any mortal strength against the might of Azrael. So it often is with children bred in the country. Though they lack many of the graceful advantages of urban environment, they are likely to have developed within them a deeper and more just appreciation of the stark elementals of existence. City children usually hear of birth and death as rumors, as facts far removed from their own experience. But to me, and to many others like me, these things were daily realities. Such experiences served to steady me. While still a child, there came to me, though I comprehended it only dimly, a sense of the poignant pathos of existence.