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Venus, Florida Mrs. Senie Williams Bartara Berry Darsey, writer Veronica E. Huss, reviser
MARY WINDSOR
To reach the house I had to leave the trail and pick my way through pines and thick grasses and around large clumps of palmettos where thoughts of lurking rattlesnakes sent me hurrying toward my destination. There was no other dwelling within miles, and a peculiar stillness brooded over the place, broken only by the soughing of the wind in the pines.
A weak feminine voice called from the house as I approached. "Come right in, mam. There aint no gate but you kin raise up the wire and get through the fence thataway. Willie has been a-fixin to make us a gate ever since we come here but he don't seem to find no time fer it." Sure enough there was no gate in the rusty two-strand barbed wire fence which zigzagged around the house but the strands were hung loosely upon the crooked posts, and it was an easy matter to crawl under the lowest strand.
"Please mam, jest chase them little biddies outen the room, fer that old hen, she won't be quiet till she gets them all out with her. They will come in thisaway when I'm sick in bed and can't chase them out. They's always a-lookin fer scraps and crumbs. I declare, I believe one or two is in the kitchen yet, they shore do pester me thisaway. Would you mind a-shooin them out please. I feels sorry to pester you like this, mam, but there ain't nobody else to call."
The tiny chicks were urged out the front door to be taken under the protecting wing of the irate hen. The other chickens were then chased from the kitchen table. They made their protesting way into the back yard where they
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lingered about the steps.
With order restored for the time being, the comely young woman with dark curly red hair, spoke again. She lay in the soiled bed covered with several dingy blankets and a ragged quilt: "This here house don't look very clean mam. But I been sick now with chills and fever for most a week, and I aint been able to clean and scrub and wash like I belong to. Teeny, there, she don't feel so good neither, she's had the fever, too, and Willie, he went to town this momin' to git us some fever medicine; he aint got back yet."
Teeny, proved to be a tiny tow-headed girl of two or three years of age. She was cuddled down in the blankets next to her mother.
"No mam, we don't never have a doctor, livin so far out thisaway and without no money much neither. I feel better soon as I take a few doses of thet fever medicine. I try to always keep it in the house fer there aint no tellin' just when them chills will strike me like. But the medicine, it give out the last time I was so sick and I kept a waitin' thinkin' maybe I wouldn't have no more chills. Soon's Willie gits back and I start the medicine agin, I'll feel better. No mam, I don't know jest what kind he'll git this time. He says it's better to change the medicine a lot and he sure knows too, fer Willie, he knows a heap about most everything like."
She looked dreamily out across the clearing as if the wish for Willie's return would make him materialize at once. "When Willie is home and these chills starts, he always wraps me up warm and puts a stove lid to my feet. Then he fixes the medicine fer me, too. He always knowed jest what to do bout everthing like, he's got such a fine education. Teeny here, she has the chills too and she takes the medicine, but sometimes it makes her sick to her stummick. Some times I wish we could have a doctor but I expect Willie knows bout as much.
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"Teeny is most four years old now. Willie and me has been married bout five year, I think it is. But I don't pay no mind to dates like, and time do pass so quick. I been havin' these here chills and fever off and on all the time like. I spect I mighta had other babies by now if I hadn't been so puny. I heerd that sometimes it keeps more babies from a-comin. I wouldn't mind two or three more if they didn't come along too quick. Seems like it would be real nice fer Teeny to have a little brother to play with. Willie don't never say much but he likes babies, too. I guess he would be glad, specially if it was a boy. He says it's always better to have boys; they is easier to raise and can help better with the farmin'.
"I sure do wish we had a big farm. Willie, he's always a plannin' to buy one like. Willie, he were raised on a farm too and he sure knows a lot bout farmin. He worked on a lot of places, too, croppin fer other folk. And if them folks had-a all just done like he told them to, they woulda made better crops," she said sincerely.
"Yes mam, we was both borned in Florida. We lived here all the time; we aint never been away out the State. I am most 23 years old now and Willie, I reckon he's about 35. I won't rightly know where he was borned, but it were in Florida. I was borned over in Hardee County, away out in the country almost like this here. My daddy, he were a farmer, but he never had no very big farm. I don't know where my family come from to start with, I never thought of nothin but just a-livin here like.
After drinking a glass of water which I secured for her from a bucket on a bench outside the kitchen door, she continued:
"After we was married Willie, he worked on farms and in the strawberries in Hardee County, a lot. He lost a fortune in them strawberry fields and through no fault of his'n. You see he had most a hundred dollars he made at a
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sawmill just fore we got married, so he went in with another man to raise berries. But the man, he wouldn't do like Willie said and they both lost all their money. It shore made us feel awful bad and we aint never had that much money any more like."
In reply to a question about the mill work, Mary stated with pride: "Willie, he is a sawyer, and he kin run one of them circle saws better'n most anybody else. I guess there just aint much that he can't do, he got so much schoolin and knows so much.
"I reckon Willie could get lota work most anywhere, but he can't do much in the mill or at farmin fer it hurts his back like. Sometimes though he works in the mill and then we have more money, but it aint ever enough and it don't last long fer things is so high. Willie, he has worked round on lotsa farms, but seems like he knows so much better how to do the work and it most always makes the folks mad at him. I guess they's jest jealous. Seems like Willie, he just don't hold no job fer long, even when it don't hurt his back. He always knows a better way to do most any kind of work, and sometimes he gets mad and says the work just ain't worth afoolin with.
"I'll be mighty glad when we can buy us a great big farm, mam, like Willie is a plannin to do. I want a big car, too, and a fine big house, but I don't see no chance of it now. I hope we won't be a livin' so far out in the woods then. Willie likes it out here and I do, too, only I get real lonesome-like sometimes. And it's worser when I'm so sick, cause then I wish I had some neighbors to come in. I sure am glad you come today, so you could talk to me awhile.
"This here place is all right fer us now cause we don't pay no rent. And we aint pestered by nobody. But I'd like to be near a town and see folks and
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things, and go to picture shows. We might get there sometimes if we lived in town. I useter like to go dancin fore Willie and me was married. I aint been to a dance fer so long now I spect I forgot how. We don't have no way to get no place livin way out here, it's a mighty long walk to town. It aint often there is anybody comes along the grade with a car either, and it's a long walk to the grade from here.
"Now I wouldn't want folks always a-runnin in and tellin me how to do things and manage like, hut I would like to visit some. It's so fer to walk any place the way it is now, by the time I gets where I'm a-goin I'm too tired to visit. Sometimes somebody comes along with a car and carries us where we want to go, but that aint often.
"Sometimes I think I would like to try livin in a city, but I spect I would get mighty tired of the dust, and noise, and smoke. And all them pesterin things I hear about. Out here it is quiet and the air is pure and sweet, and don't them pines look pritty a wavin in the sunshine? I been to some of the big towns around here, and they look mighty nice at night with all them lights. But I don't see how people sleep, and when they is sick it must be just awful. But people what lives there gets to see a heap of things we don't never git the chance to and there is lots of places to go to. If we lived in town we might be able to go to the movin pictures sometimes and there is a lot of free things to go to, like band playin and parades.
"It might be better fer Teeny, if she was to be raised in town, but I don't know. Some folks say city childrens is smarter than others, but there is Willie, he was raised in the country and there just aint nobody no smarter than what he is. When Teeny gets ready to go to school I spect we'll have to move if we is still a livin out here, fer she never could walk to the grade and to the school bus through all these here woods all by herself."
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