But we didn’t catch on then, because I was driving now, sho enough, because Pap was laying flat in the wagon bed with the rain popping him in the face and him not even knowing it, and me setting on the seat and watching our new horse change from a black horse into a bay.
Because I was jest twelve and me and Pap had always done our horse trading along that country road that run past our lot. So I jest druv into the first shelter I come to and shaken Pap awake. The rain had cooled him off some, but even without that he would have sobered quick. “What?” he says. “What is it?”
“The horse, Pap!” I hollered. “It’s done changed color!”
Yes, sir. It sobered him quick. We was both outen the wagon then and Pap’s eyes popping sho enough now and a bay horse standing there where he had went to sleep looking at a black one.
Because I was jest twelve; it happened too fast for me; I jest mind seeing Pap tech the horse’s back at a spot where ever now and then the backband must have teched it (I tell you, that nigger was a artist) and then the next I knowed that horse was plunging and swurging; I remember dodging jest as it slammed into the wall and then me and Pap heard a sound like when a automobile tire picks up a nail: a sound like Whoosh! and then the rest of that shiny fat black horse we had got from Pat Stamper vanished.
I don’t mean that me and Pap was standing there with jest our mule left. We had a horse too. Only it was the same one we had left home with that morning and that we had swapped Beasley Kemp the sorghum mill and the bob-wire and the straight stock for two weeks ago.
We even got our fish hook back, with the barb still bent where Pap had bent it and the nigger had jest moved it a little. But it wasn’t until we was home the next day at daylight that we found the hand pump valve behind its off fore leg.
And that’s about all. Because Mammy was up and seen us pass, and so after a while we had to go to the house, because me and Pap hadn’t et since twenty-four hours ago. So we went to the house, with Mammy standing in the door saying, “Where’s my separator?” and Pap saying how he always had been a fool about a horse and he couldn’t help it and Mammy couldn’t neither and that to jest give him time, and Mammy standing there looking at him and then she begun to cry and it was the first time I ever seen her cry.
She cried hard, standing there in her old wrapper, not even hiding her face, saying, “Fool about a horse! Yes, but why the horse? why the horse?”
“Now, Vynie; now, Vynie,” Pap said. Then she turned and went back into the house. We didn’t go in. We could hear her, but she wasn’t in the kitchen, and Pap told me to go around to the kitchen and see if she was fixing breakfast and then come down to the lot and tell him, and I did but she wasn’t in the kitchen.
So we set on the lot fence, and then we seen her coming down the hill from the house; she was dressed and had on her shawl and sunbonnet and her gloves, and she went into the stable without looking at us and we could hear her saddling the mule and Pap told me to go and ask her if she wanted him to help her and I did and she didn’t answer and I saw her face that time and so I come back and set on the fence with Pap and we saw her ride out of the barn on the mule.
She was leading Beasley Kemp’s horse. It was still black in places where the rain had streaked it. “If it hadn’t been for that durn rain, we might could have got shet of it,” Pap said.
So we went to the house then, and I cooked breakfast and me and Pap et and then Pap taken a nap. He told me to watch for her from the gallery, but me and him neither never much thought to see her soon. We never seen her until next morning. We was cooking breakfast when we heard the wagon and I looked out and it was Odum Tull’s wagon and Mammy was getting outen it and I come back to the kitchen jest before Pap left for the stable. “She’s got the separator,” I told Pap.
“I reckon it didn’t happen to be our team in Odum’s wagon,” Pap said.
“No, sir,” I says. So we saw her go into the house with the separator.
“I reckon likely she will wait to put on her old wrapper first,” Pap said. “We ought to started breakfast sooner.” It did take about that long. And then we could hear it. It made a good strong sound, like it would separate milk good and fast. Then it stopped. “It’s too bad she ain’t got but the one gallon,” Pap said. “You go and look in the kitchen.” So I went, and sho enough, she was cooking breakfast. But she wouldn’t let us eat it in the kitchen. She handed it out the door to us.
“I am going to be busy in here and I don’t aim to have you all in the way,” she said. It was all right now. Her face was quiet now; it was jest busy. So me and Pap went out to the well and et, and then we heard the separator again.
“I didn’t know it would go through but one time,” Pap said.
“Maybe Uncle Ike showed her how to do it,” I said.
“I reckon she is capable of running it right,” Pap said. “Like she wants it to run, anyhow.” Then it stopped, and me and Pap started down to the barn but she called us and made us bring the dishes to the kitchen door. Then we went down to the lot and set on the fence, only, like Pap said, without no stock to look at, it wasn’t no comfort in it. “I reckon she jest rode up to that durn feller’s tent and said, ‘Here’s your team.
Now you git me my separator and git it quick; I got to ketch a ride back home,’ “ Pap said. And then after a while we heard it again, and that afternoon we walked up to Old Man Anse’s to borrow a mule to finish the lower piece with, but he never had none to spare now. So he jest cussed around a while and then we come on back and set on the fence. And sure enough, pretty soon we could hear Mammy starting it up and it running strong and steady, like it would make the milk fly. “She is separating it again,” Pap said. “It looks like she is fixing to get a heap of pleasure and comfort outen it.”
The End
