Eldred Kurtz Means
Is This a Title? It Is Not. It Is the Name of a Writer of Negro Stories, Who Has Made Himself So Completely the Writer of Negro Stories
9781465627339
311 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Figger Bush did not look like a man who was about to die; if anything, he looked like one who ought to be killed. He was a scarecrow sort of a negro, with ragged, flapping clothes. His coal-black face formed a background for a little, stubby, shoe-brush mustache, and Figger thought that mustache justified his existence in the world. He had not much use for his coconut head except to support a battered wool hat and grow a luxuriant crop of kinky hair. He had an insuperable aversion to all sorts of work. None of these things indicated that Figger was about to die; in fact, they showed that he was enjoying life. The only thing that indicated an unusual condition in Figger was the fact that he was now walking down the middle of the road with rapid and ever-lengthening steps, glancing from side to side, and grumbling aloud to himself. “I gotta find dat Skeeter Butts an’ find him quick,” he muttered. “Nothin’ like dis ain’t never happen to me befo’, an’ nobody cain’t ’lucidate on my troubles like Skeeter kin.” A high, cackling laugh, accompanied by a hoarse bellow of laughter, floated to him upon the hot August breeze, and Figger ceased his grumbling and began to chuckle. “I gits exputt advices now,” he mumbled. “Skeeter am talkin’ sociable wid de Revun Vinegar Atts.” On top of the hill in front of the Shoofly church, Figger found his two friends resting under the shade of a chinaberry tree. Skeeter Butts, the little, yellow barkeeper at the Hen-Scratch saloon, had the back of his chair propped against the trunk of the tree, his heels hung in the rungs of the chair in front, and looked like a jockey mounted upon a bony, sway-backed horse. Vinegar Atts, the fat, bald-headed, moon-faced pastor of the Shoofly church, sat on one chair, rested his feet on another, and had his massive arms outspread upon the backs of yet two other chairs. He looked like a pot-bellied buzzard trying to fly upside down and backward. “Come up, Figger!” Vinegar howled, as he kicked the chair, on which his feet rested, toward him. “Take a seat, take a set-down, rest yo’ hat, spit on de flo’—make yo’se’f at home!” Figger picked up the chair, placed it back where Atts could rest his feet upon it again, and sat down upon the ground, interlocking the fingers of both hands and nursing his bent knees.
