Hazel

“Do you know, Scip,” Hazel confided, “I’m dreadfully afraid of pigs.”

“They won’t hurt you,” Scip replied.

The two children were sitting among the pines on the hill that overlooked their homes. A few hogs grunted near them among the cones.

“Of course, I’m not afraid when you’re here,” Hazel explained, “but when I come up alone sometimes they try to get around me and it makes me fidgety.”

“They might give you fleas,” said Scip.

He found a stick for her. “Hit ’em with that,” he said. “That’ll fix ’em.”

“Would it do for cows, too, Scip?”

“Yes’m.”

“I’m afraid of cows and pigs and I’m terribly afraid of bulls. I expect you think I’m a coward.”

“No, I don’t,” Scip said, looking squarely at her. “You wasn’t afraid of my father, Sunday night.”

Hazel changed the subject. “What do you want to do when you grow up?” she asked.

“Go to school.”

The girl laughed. “Why now’s the time to go to school, before you grow up. You can’t go afterwards.”

“Can’t I?” the boy asked anxiously, “I ain’t got time now.”

“Haven’t you been to school at all?”

“Six weeks when I were ten, and four weeks when I were eight.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Then you can’t read?”

“I’s feared I’s forgot. I can print some.”

Hazel thought a moment, and then said, “Would you like me to teach you, Scip? I’m not busy. I don’t have anything that I have to do except make my bed, and of course I help Granny with the dishes and ironing. I can iron nicely now, and I can spin, too. But I could teach you any time you would come. I have books.”

Scipio dug a stick in the ground and scattered the pine-cones. “I ain’t smart,” he muttered. “I’s feared you couldn’t learn me.”

“I’ll try,” Hazel answered. “I’m a young teacher, don’t you think, Scip?” She jumped up and laughed. “You must do everything I say. Let’s begin now. I’ll go and get my books.”

She ran down the hill, her blue dress blowing in the wind, her small head gaily erect.

“Like a blue-bird,” Scipio thought.

She came back in a few minutes, her hands full.

“I’ve pencil and paper,” she called. “Scip, can’t we find a nice place to keep school in?”

“There’s a green spot a way up,” the boy replied. “You might like it.”

He led her among the trees to a little enclosure. Small pines, not more than six feet high, made a natural hedge, and shut them out from the road below.

“How pretty,” cried Hazel. “It’s like a little house. Here, take the books, Scip, and I’ll decide what to do.”

He obediently held the books for her.

As she looked about among the pines a new idea came to her.

“We won’t call it school,” she declared. “We’ll play house. You and I will be brother and sister. We’ll play that I’ve had advantages, I’ve been North to school, and now I’ve come home. This will be our house and this,” tapping with her foot, “will be the parlor. We’ll sit down here and I’ll teach you.”

She took the books and papers from his hands and placed them on the ground. “I can sit down and lean against this tree and pretend I’m in a chair. Here is the paper and pencil. I haven’t a primer so I’ll start and print the letters. Sit down, Scip.”

He seated himself beside her.

“Do you know your alphabet?” she asked.

“I don’t rightly know whether I remember it all, ma’am.”

“You mustn’t say ma’am to me, I’m your sister.”

“No, ma’am.”

Hazel laughed. “You’re so funny, Scip. Now do you know what that letter is?” pointing to the first on his paper.

“Yes, Sister. That’s A.”

The little girl almost jumped at her new name. She did not know how common the appellation was in the South.

“And the next one, Scip?”

“B.”

And so on. I and J proved stumbling blocks, but once passed the end was reached without further mistake.

“Now words,” said Hazel, turning from the alphabet, “are letters put together. Can you spell any words?”

“I can print my name.”

“Please do, then.”

Scipio took the pencil and laboriously printed SCIPIO LEE.

“The C isn’t pronounced,” Hazel said thoughtfully. “I guessed it was spelt SIPIO. You can never guess at spelling, though, it’s so queer.”

Scipio Lee

“It’s a fool name,” said Scip, moodily. “My pa and ma done give us all fool names but Tom.”

“I think Scipio was a Roman, and the Romans were very brave. You aren’t afraid of anything are you?”

“I’s afraid of my father.”

Hazel was silent. She felt very sorry for her new playmate.

“Shall we go on?” she said at length.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She let the “ma’am” pass, and began to teach again.

“We’ll spell the things about us. There are the pigs. See, pig is spelt PIG.” And she printed it for him.

He slowly repeated the letters.

“Say it phonetically,” she commanded. “P—ig.”

He tried unsuccessfully to imitate her.

“Oh, Scip, you’re so funny. This is the sound of P, Pe̤, Pe̤.” She blew the P out from between her lips. “P—ig P—en, P—encil, P, P, P, say them, Scip.”

He did better this time.

“Now, can’t you think of something that begins with P yourself?”

“P, P, P, Peep,” Scip said, stumbling on the word by chance.

“Yes, that’s right. That’s what the chickens say, isn’t it? Have you chickens at your house?”

“Yes, Sister. We tries to raise ’em; but they ain’t pert like Aunt Ellen’s chickens.”

“There’s another P. P—ert. Don’t you hear it, Scip?”

He repeated it after her.

“Good! Now I’ll write these words for your lesson to-morrow. Can you come here to-morrow, do you think?”

“I try to,” he answered, looking at her gravely. “We ain’t over busy now. Ma, she’d be glad to have me come. She’d kep’ me in school if she’d been ’lowed. I come if I can, but I can’t never be sure.”

“What is the best time for you to get away?”

“I reckon when dinner’s done. Pa goes to sleep then sometimes.”

“We’ll play like this, Scip. I’ll always be here after dinner, if it is pleasant. Granny doesn’t need me then, so I’ll come to my house up here. And I’ll brush up, and get things tidy; and if my brother comes I’ll teach him his lessons. If he doesn’t, I’ll play by myself. Now I’ll write out your words.” And she made a fair copy and handed it to him.

He held it by the corner carefully, afraid of soiling the page.

Hazel gathered up her belongings and together they moved from the little enclosure.

“This is our house, isn’t it, Scip? And we won’t tell anyone about it. We might go to it a roundabout way. Oh, where is my stick to scare the pigs with?”

Scipio brought it to her.

“This ain’t much account,” he said. “I done bring you a better one to-morrow.”

“Will you? Thank you. Good-bye, Scip.”

“Good-bye, Sister.”

He watched her run down the road and into her grandmother’s open door. Then he trudged home.

Hazel told Granny that evening of what she had undertaken.

“I’s right glad, sugar,” Granny said heartily. “That boy’s been put upon. The old man works him like he was a mule, and then drinks up all he makes. They is Ward’s tenants, he that keeps the store down the tracks, and Ward always gives his tenants whiskey. I pity that poor woman. Every year it’s just the same. Slave, slave and not a thing to show for it.”

“Scip says they had a good crop of cotton last year.”

“He’s right, they done did. And what good come to them? Ward, he weighed the cotton and ’lowed old man Lee owed it on his books. He see to it his men always owes the half of the cotton and the half of the corn as is theirs by rights.”

Hazel looked puzzled.

“You don’t understand, child, and it ain’t no wonder. But I’s been through it. I’s owned my land many years now, though, thanks to my sons. You see, Ward, the master here, he owns the land and the store and the seed and the mules and the cows and the calves. Along come a colored family, like the Lees, and the master say to them: ‘You-all wants work. I done give you-all a house and mule for half the crop you done raise.’ Understand?”

“Yes, I understand,” said Hazel.

“Then the family move in; but they’s got to plant and make the crops afore anything comes to them. Then Master Ward he tell them to trade at his store and there ain’t no hurry to pay. So he run up a bill against them, charging what he feel like, and he sell the old man whiskey, ’stead of shoes for the children, ’cause there’s more money made in whiskey than in shoes and when fall come the crop is all drunk up, all traded off.”

“But, Granny, my mother keeps such careful accounts, every penny. Don’t they know how much money they spend?”

“Of course they don’t. They don’t have pennies to spend, honey. And the store won’t give them no account.”

“Then no matter how hard Scip works he won’t get any money?”

“Not a cent, sugar.”

“Then if I were he I wouldn’t work at all!”

“Reckon you’d be turned out then pretty quick without a roof over your head. That happened once before Scip were big. The others they ain’t much account for work. They was born tired. But Scip he’s strong and steady-like.”

“Perhaps he’ll run away and get rich.”

“Perhaps he will,” said Granny, “and perhaps he’ll stay by his mother.”

The teaching progressed, for Hazel was unusually apt for a child at her profession; and if Scip failed at times as a pupil it was not for lack of application on his part. At least four afternoons in the week he found it possible to slip away from the fields or the dirty cabin to the house, as Hazel liked to call it, among the pines. She had made it look like a dwelling-place, bringing two boxes for seats and a third for a table. One day Scipio brought her some early violets and she flew down to Granny’s for a tin can which she filled with water. In this she placed the flowers, setting the can in a corner against the pines. After that the tin vase was often filled. When her pupil could not come she tidied her pine-needle carpet, or, armed with the two-pronged stick Scip had given her, walked bravely among the cows and the grunting pigs. Some days teacher and scholar found it too cold to sit still long and raced one another through the trees, or teased the turkeys whose “gobble, gobble” always amused Hazel. But usually they worked hard at the task of learning to read. Hazel wisely gave up for the present the effort to teach the boy’s clumsy fingers to guide the pencil to write.

One afternoon he was late and seemed unusually slow in responding to his teacher’s questionings.

“Oh, Scip, you must remember that word,” Hazel said impatiently. “Look down and study the letters again,” and she pointed to the HORSE plainly printed on the copy in her lap.

As the boy bent over she saw that his hair was matted with blood, and that blood was oozing from a gash in his forehead.

“Scip,” she cried, “what has happened?”

“Don’t you mind Sister,” he answered. “I can read the letters,” he went on—“HORSE”—studying it, “but I can’t rightly remember what they done spell.”

“Scip, how did your head get that way?”

“It ain’t nothing.”

“I’m going right to the house to get some water to wash the blood off for you.”

“Don’t you do that, Hazel,” he said earnestly. “It ain’t much, and you’d mind the blood. My father’s been drunk again,” he added sullenly.

“Oh, Scip, dear, I’m so sorry,” Hazel cried, “I’m so sorry,” and longing to give such comfort as she could she put her arms about his neck and kissed him.

The tears came to the boy’s eyes. His child’s face, grown dull and expressionless from neglect and cruelty, quivered in every muscle. Hazel moved back shyly, startled at her own impulsiveness. He looked down at the copy in her lap, at her slender brown hands, and said gently, “Don’t you mind, Hazel. I don’t mind no more.”

Then placing his black finger on the word over which he had been puzzling, “It’s ‘Horse,’ ain’t it? Horse, Horse. Reckon you thought I was a mule!”