Success with Small Fruits Part 10

"I should think you and your husband would work together," I ventured.

"We doesn't. He goes about his business and I goes about mine," she remarked, with languid complacency.

Here is a character, I thought, as we pa.s.sed on--the very embodiment of a certain kind of wilfulness. She would not resist or chafe at authority, but, with an easy, good-natured, don't-care expression, would do as she pleased, "though the heavens fell." A little later there was a heavy rumble of thunder in the west, and we met again the young woman whose marital relations resembled those of many of her fas.h.i.+onable sisters at the North. She was leading her small band from the field. The prospective shower was her excuse for going, but laziness the undoubted cause. Harrison, like a vigilant watch-dog, spied them and bl.u.s.tered up, never for a moment doubting that she would yield to his authority.

But he had met his match. She merely looked at him with her slow, quiet, indolent smile, in which there was not the faintest trace of irresolution or fear, and he knew that the moment he stepped out of the way, she would pa.s.s on. His loud expostulations and threats soon ceased. What could he do with that laughing woman, who no doubt had been a slave, but was now emanc.i.p.ated a trifle too completely? He might as well try to stop a sluggish tide with his hands. It would ooze away from him inevitably. The instincts of this people are quick. Harrison knew he was defeated, and his only anxiety now was to retreat in a way that would save appearances.

"I'se a-gwine home, M's'r Harrison," she said quietly. "You don't catch us gittin' wet ag'in."

"Oh, well, if you is 'fraid ob gittin' wet, s'pose I'll habe to let you off jus' dis once," he began, pompously; and here, fortunately, he saw a man leaving the field in the distance. There was a subject with which he could deal, and a line of retreat open at the same time; and away he went, therefore, vociferating all the more loudly that he might cover his discomfiture. The woman smiled a little more complacently and went on, with her old easy, don't-care swing, as she undoubtedly will, whithersoever her inclinations lead, to the end of her life. To crystallize such wayward, human atoms into proper forms, and make them useful, is a problem that would puzzle wiser heads than that of the overseer.

I think, however, that not only Harrison and Peters, but all who have charge of working people, rely too much on driving, and too little on encouraging and coaxing. An incident which occurred may ill.u.s.trate this truth. My companion, Mr. Drake, soon mastered one of the labors of a strawberry farm--the gathering of the fruit--and out of the plenitude of his benevolence essayed to teach a little sable how he could pick to better advantage.

"Put your basket down, sonny," he said. "Now you have two hands to work with instead of one--so, don't you see?"

"Dat's mighty good in you, Mas'r," said a woman near. "Lor bress you!

de people 'ud jess jump over derselves tryin' to do the work if dey got sich good words, but de oberseer's so cross dat we gits 'umptuous and don't keer."

Still, to the majority, the strawberry season brings the halcyon days of the year. They look forward to it and enjoy it as a prolonged picnic, in which business and pleasure are equally combined. They are essentially gregarious, and this industry brings many together during the long bright days. The light work leaves their tongues free, and families and neighbors pick together with a ceaseless chatter, a running fire of rude, broad pleasantry, intermingled occasionally with a windy war of words in a jargon that becomes all the more uncouth from anger, but which rarely ends in blows.

We were continually impressed by their courage, buoyancy, animal spirits, or whatever it is that enables them to face their uncertain future so unconcernedly. Mult.i.tudes live like the birds, not knowing where their next year's nest will be, or how to-morrow's food will come. It _has_ come, thus far, and this fact seems enough. In many instances, however, their humble fortunes are built on the very best foundations.

"What can you do after the berry season is over?" we asked a woman who had but one arm.

"I kin do what any other woman kin do," she said, straightening herself up. "I kin bake, cook, wash, iron, scrub--"

"That will do," I cried. "You are better off than most of us, for the world will always need and pay for your accomplishments."

The story of her life was a simple one. She did not remember when she lost her arm, but only knew that it had been burned off. When scarcely more than an infant, she had been left alone in the little cabin by the slave mother, who probably was toiling in the tobacco field. There was a fire on the hearth--the rest can be imagined only too vividly. She is fighting out the battle of life, however, more successfully with her one hand than are mult.i.tudes of men with two. She is stout and cheery, and can "take keer of herself and children," she said.

Scattered here and there over the fields might be seen two heads that would keep in rather close juxtaposition up and down the long rows.

"Dey's pairin' off," was the explanation.

"You keep de tickets," said a buxom young woman to her mate, as he was about to take her tray, as well as his own, to the buyers.

"You are in partners.h.i.+p," I remarked.

"Yes, we is," she replied, with a conscious laugh.

"You are related, I suppose?"

"Well, not 'zackly--dat is--we's partners."

"How about this partners.h.i.+p business--does it not last sometimes after the strawberry season is over?"

"Oh, Lor' yes! Heaps on 'em gits fallen in love; den dey gits a-marryin' arter de pickin' time is done gone by."

"Now I see what your partners.h.i.+p means."

"Yah, yah, yah! You sees a heap more dan I's told you!" But her partner grinned most approvingly. We were afterward informed that there was no end to the love-making among the strawberry rows.

There are from fifty to one hundred and fifty pickers in a squad, and these are in charge of subordinate overseers, who are continually moving around among them, on the watch for delinquencies of all kinds.

Some of these minor potentates are white and some black. As a rule, Mr.

Young gives the blacks the preference and on strictly business principles, too. "The colored men have more snap, and can get more work out of their own people," he says. By means of these sub-overseers, large numbers can be transferred from one part of the farm to another without confusion.

Fortunes are never made in gathering strawberries, and yet there seems no dearth of pickers. The mult.i.tude of men, women, and children that streams out into the country every morning is surprisingly large. Five or six thousand bushels a day are often gathered in the vicinity of Norfolk, and the pickers rarely average over a bushel each. "Right smart hands," who have the good hap to be given full rows, will occasionally pick two bushels; but about thirty quarts per day is the usual amount, while not a few of the lazy and feeble bring in only eight or ten.

As has been already suggested, the pickers are followed by the buyers and packers, and to these men, at central points in the fields, the mule-carts bring empty crates. The pickers carry little trays containing six baskets, each holding a quart. As fast as they fill these, they flock in to the buyers. If a trayful, or six good quarts, are offered, the buyer gives the picker a yellow ticket, worth twelve cents. When less than six baskets are brought, each basket is paid for with a green ticket, worth two cents. These two tickets are eventually exchanged for a white fifty-cent ticket, which is cashed at the paying-booth after the day's work is over. The pickers, therefore, receive two cents for every quart of good, salable berries. If green, muddy, or decayed berries are brought in, they are thrown away or confiscated, and incorrigibly careless pickers are driven off the place. Every morning the buyers take out as many tickets of these three values as they think they can use, and are charged with the same by the book-keeper. Their voucher for all they pay out is another ticket, on which is printed "forty-five quarts," or just a crateful. Only Mr.

Young and one other person have a right to give out the last-named tickets, and by night each buyer must have enough of them to balance the other tickets with which he was charged in the morning. Thus thousands of dollars change hands through the medium of four kinds of tickets not over an inch, square, and by means of them the financial part of gathering the crop is managed.

In previous years these tickets were received the same as money by any of the shops in the city, and on one occasion were counterfeited. Mr.

Young now has his own printing-office, and gets them up in a way not easily imitated, nor does he issue them until just as the fruit begins to ripen. He has, moreover, given authority to one man only to cash these tickets. Thus there is little chance for rascality.

He also requires that no ticket shall be cashed until the fields have all been picked over. Were it not for this regulation, the lazy and the "b.u.mmers" would earn enough merely to buy a few drinks, then slink off.

Now they must remain until all are through before they can get a cent.

Peters and Harrison see to it that none are lying around in the shade, and thus, through the compulsion of system, many, no doubt, are surprised to find themselves at work for the greater part of the day.

And yet neither system nor Peters, with even his sanguinary reputation, is able alone to control the hordes employed. Of course the very dregs of the population are largely represented. Many go out on a "lark," not a few to steal, and some with the basest purposes. Walking continually back and forth through the fields, therefore, are two duly authorized constables and their presence only prevents a great deal of crime.

Moreover, according to Virginian law, every landholder has the right to arrest thieves and trespa.s.sers. Up to the time of our visit, five persons had been arrested, and the fact that they were all white does not speak very well for our color. The law of the state requires that they shall be punished by so many lashes, according to the gravity of the offence, and by imprisonment. The whipping-post is one of the inst.i.tutions, and man or woman, white or black, against whom the crime of stealing is proved, is stripped to the waist and lashed upon the bare back. Such ignominious punishment may prevent theft, but it must tend to destroy every vestige of self-respect and pride in criminals, and render them hopelessly reckless. Therefore, it should cease at once.

It must be admitted, however, that very little lawlessness was apparent. In no instance have I received a rude word while travelling in the South, while, on the other hand, the courtesy and kindness were almost unstinted.

The negroes about Norfolk certainly do not wear an intimidated or "bull-dozed" air.

"Git off my row, dar, or I'll bust yo' head open," shouted a tall, strapping colored girl to a white man, and he got off her row with alacrity.

Mr. Young says that the negro laborers are easily managed, and will endure a great deal of severity if you deal "squarely" with them; but if you wrong them out of even five cents, they will never forget it.

What's more, every citizen of "Blackville" will be informed of the fact, for what one knows they all seem to know very soon.

We were not long in learning to regard the strawberry farm as a little world within itself. It would be difficult to make the reader understand its life and "go" at certain hours of the day. Scores are coming and going; hundreds dot the fields; carts piled up with crates are moving hither and thither. At the same time the regular toil of cultivation is maintained. Back and forth between the young plants mules are drawing cultivators, and following these come a score or two women with light, sharp hoes. From the great crate manufactory is heard the whir of machinery and the click of hammers; at intervals the smithy sends forth its metallic voice, while from one centre of toil and interest to another the proprietor whisks in his open buggy at a speed that often seems perilous.

After all, Mr. Young's most efficient aid in his business was his father (recently deceased). It gave me pleasure to note the frequency and deference with which the senior's judgment wa& consulted, and I also observed that wherever the old gentleman's umbrella was seen in the field, all went well.

At four or five in the afternoon, the whole area would be picked over.

The fields would be left to meadow-larks and quails, whose liquid notes well replaced the songs and cries of the pickers. Here and there a mule-cart would come straggling in. By night, all signs of life were concentrated around the barns and paying booth; but even from these one after another would drift away to the city, till at last scarcely a vestige of the hurry and business of the day would be left. The deep hush and quiet that settled down on the scene was all the more delightful from contrast. To listen to the evening wind among the pines, to watch the sun drop below the spires of Norfolk, and see the long shadows creep toward us; to let our thoughts flit whither they would, like the birds about us, was all the occupation we craved at this hour. Were we younger and more romantic, we might select this witching time for a visit to an ancient grave in one of the strawberry fields.

A mossy, horizontal slab marks the spot, and beneath it reposes the dust of a young English officer. One bright June day--so the legend is told--one hundred and sixteen years ago, this man, in the early summer of his life, was killed in a duel.

Lingering here, through the twilight, until the landscape grows as obscure as this rash youth's history, what fancies some might weave. As the cause of the tragedy, one would scarcely fail to see among the shadows the dim form and features of some old-time belle, whose smiles had kindled the fierce pa.s.sion that was here quenched, more than a century since. Did she marry the rival, of surer aim and cooler head and heart, or did she haunt this place with regretful tears? Did she become a stout, prosaic woman, and end her days in whist and all the ancient proprieties, or fade into a remorseful wraith that still haunts her unfortunate lover's grave? One s.h.i.+vers, and grows superst.i.tious.

The light twinkling from the windows of the cottage under the pines becomes very attractive. As we fall asleep after such a visit, we like to think of the meadow-larks singing on the mossy tombstone in the morning.

Daring a rainy day, when driven from the field, we found plenty to interest us in the printing-office, smithy, and especially in the huge crate manufactory. Here were piled up coils of baskets that suggested strawberries for a million supper-tables. Hour after hour the mule-power engine drove saws, with teeth sharper than those of time, through the pine boards that soon became crates for the round quart baskets. These crates were painted green, marked with Mr. Young's name, and piled to the lofty, cobwebbed ceiling.

But Sat.u.r.day is the culminating period of the week. The huge plantation has been gone over closely and carefully, for the morrow is Sunday, on which day the birds are the only pickers. Around the office, crate manufactory, and paying booth were gathered over a thousand people--a motley and variegated crowd, that the South only can produce. The odd and often coa.r.s.e jargon, the infinite variety in appearance and character, suggested again that humanity is a very tangled problem. The shrewdness and accuracy, however, with which the most ignorant count their tickets and reckon their dues on their fingers, is a trait characteristic of all, and, having received the few s.h.i.+llings, which mean a luxurious Sunday, they trudge off to town, chattering volubly, whether any one listens or not.

But many can not resist the rollicking music back of the paying booth.

Three sable musicians form the orchestra, and from a ba.s.s viol, fiddle and fife they extract melody that, with all its short-coming, would make a deacon wish to dance. Any one, white or black, can purchase the privilege of keeping step to the music for two cents, or one strawberry ticket. Business was superb, and every shade of color and character was represented. In the vernacular of the farm, the mulatto girls are called "strawberry blondes," and one that would have attracted attention anywhere was led out by a droll, full-blooded negro, who would have made the fortune of a minstrel troupe. She was tall and willowy. A profusion of dark hair curled about an oval face, not too dark to prevent a faint color of the strawberry from glowing in her cheeks. She wore neither hat nor shoes, but was as unembarra.s.sed, apparently, in her one close-fitting garment, as could be any ballroom belle dressed in the latest mode. Another blonde, who sported torn slippers and white stockings, was in danger of being spoiled by much attention. As a rule, however, bare feet were nothing against a "lady"

in the estimation of the young men. At any rate, all who could spare a berry ticket speedily found a partner, and, as we rode away from the farm, the last sounds were those of music and merriment, and our last glimpse was of the throng of dancers on the green.