J.,” he said, “it’s something all black wearing an old long cape and it’s got white on its head and it’s pointing its hand up at the sky.
“At the sky?” said B. J. and began to fumble around in the darkness of the tent floor with both hands for his Bible. “You say it’s wearing a long cape?”
“That’s right, that’s right,” said Barney Lee in a high whine and began to cry. He heaved himself forward onto his hands and knees and lurched into a rapid crawl as if he were planning to tear out the back of the mountaineer’s tent, colliding with B. J. and causing him to lose his grip on the Bible he had just found next to a paper sack full of bananas.
“Hold still, Barney Lee,” B. J. said. “Stop it now. I’m trying to get hold of something to help us if you’ll just set still and let me.”
To Sully on the outside, standing breathless and stunned next to the clothesline pole, the commotion in the two-man tent made it look as though the shelter was full of a small pack of hounds fighting over a possum. First one wall, then the other bulged and stretched, and the ropes fastened to the tent stakes groaned and popped under the pressure. The stakes themselves seemed to shift and glow in the dark as he watched.
“White folks,” Sully said in a weak voice and then, getting a good breath, “white folks. I gots to talk to you.”
The canvas of the tent suddenly stopped surging, and everything became quiet. Sully stood tilted to one side and braced against the pull of the earth, his mouth half open to listen, but all he could hear for fully a minute was the sound of the yellow shine seeping and sliding through his head and from far off somewhere in the woods the call of a roosting bird that had waked up in the night.
Finally the front flap of the tent opened up a few inches and the bulk of a man’s head appeared in the crack.
“Who’s that out there?” the head asked.
“Hidy, white folks,” said Sully. “It’s only just me. Old Sully. Just only an ordinary old field nigger. Done retire.”
The flap moved all the way open, and B. J. crawled halfway out the tent, straining to get a better look.
“It’s just an old colored gentleman, Brother B. Lee,” he said over his shoulder. “Like I told you, it ain’t nothing to worry about.”
“Well,” said Barney Lee from the darkness behind him, “I was afraid it was something spiritual. Why was it standing that way with its hand pointing up, if it was a colored man?”
“Hello, old man,” said B. J., all the way out of the tent now and standing up to brush the dirt off his pants. “Kinda late at night to be calling, idn’t it?”
“Yessir,” said Sully. “It do be late, but a old man he don’t sleep much. He don’t need what he use to.”
“Uh-huh,” B. J. said and turned back to help Barney Lee who had climbed halfway up but had gotten stuck with one knee bent and the other leg fully extended.
“Why,” Barney Lee addressed the man in the long coat, “Why you standing that way with your arm sticking way up like that?”
“Well sir,” said Sully and turned his head to look up along his sleeve. “It seem like it help me to stand like this.” The shine made a ripple in a new little path in his head, and he had to lift his hand higher to keep things whole and steady.
“I just wish you’d listen to that, Barney Lee,” B. J. said in a tight voice.
“What? I don’t hear nothing.”
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about. Here’s this old nig—colored gentleman—come walking up in the dead of night, and what do you hear from them dogs? Not a thing.”
Everybody stopped to listen and had to agree that the dog pen was showing no sign of alert.
“And I thought the training was going along so good the last few days. I’m getting real discouraged about Christian Guard Dogs.” B. J. sighed deeply, kicked at the ground, and coughed at the dust hanging in the air. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
“However,” said Sully, “what it is I come up here and bother you white folks about it be up yonder in the pasture.” He swung a hand back in the direction he had come, almost lost the hold he was maintaining against the steady pull of the earth, and staggered a step or two before he found it again.
“Say it helps you to stand like that?” asked Barney Lee and shyly stuck one arm above his head until it pointed in the direction of the Little Dipper. “Reckon it helps circulation or something?”
“Didn’t make one peep,” said B. J. “I didn’t hear bark one, much less a growl.”
“Yessir, white folks, it up yonder in the pasture. What I come here to your pulp tent for.” Sully’s arm was getting heavy so he ventured to lean against the pole supporting the clothesline and found that helped him some. Things were tilted, but not moving.
“A few minute ago, I was outside my house walking to that patch of cane. You know, tending to my business and that’s when I heard her yonder.”
“Who?” said B. J., making conversation as he looked over at the dark outline of the Christian Guard Dog pen as though he could see each individual Doberman and shepherd.
“Miz MayBelle.”
“MayBelle? Aunt MayBelle Holt?” B. J. turned back to look at the little black man leaned up against the pole. “You say you heard her up in the nigger quarters?”
“Naw sir, white folks, not rightly in the quarters. She in that back pasture lying down in that fire ant bed.”
“The fire ant bed?”
“Yessir, old Sully was in the quarters and she in the bed of fire ants.”
“What’s Aunt MayBelle doing in the fire ant bed? Did she fall into there?”
“I don’t know about that,” said Sully and adjusted his pointing arm more precisely with relation to the night sky. “I only just seed her in there a talking to them boosters.”
“Come on, Brother B. Lee,” B. J. said and broke into a trot toward the back fence. “We got to see what’s going on. Them things will eat her up.”
“Thata’s just the very thing I thought,” said Sully, lurching away from the clothesline pole, and stumbling into a run after B. J., his gesturing right arm the only thing keeping him away from another solid lick from the ground. “I thought it sure wasn’t no good idea for a white lady to lie down in amongst all them biting things.”
“I’m coming, B. J.,” called Barney Lee, a few steps behind Sully but close enough that the old man’s flapping coat-tail sent puffs of dust up into his face. As he ran through the fence at the bottom of the hill, he raised an arm above his head and immediately felt his wind get better and his speed increase a step or two.
“I believe,” Barney Lee said between breaths to the tilted sidling figure moving ahead of him, “that it’s doing me good, too. Pointing my arm up at the sky like this.”
“Yessir,
