I walked outside and over to the big fire, where the men were sitting. I was greeted and then I sat. We talked some about what happened to a runaway over at another farm. “Yeah, they beat him real good,” Doris said. Doris was a man, but that didn’t seem to matter to the slavers when they named him.
“All of them are going to hell,” Old Luke said.
“What happened to you today?” Doris asked me.
“Nothing.”
“Something must have happened,” Albert said.
They were waiting for me to tell them a story. I was apparently good at that, telling stories. “Nothing, except I got carried off to New Orleans today. Aside from that, nothing happened.”
“You what?” Albert said.
“Yes. You see, I thought I was drifting off into a nice nap about noon and the next thing I knew I was standing on a bustling street with mule-drawn carriages and whatnot all around me.”
“You’re crazy,” someone said.
I caught sight of Albert giving me the warning sign that white folks were close. Then I heard the clumsy action in the bushes and I knew it was those boys.
“Lak I say, I furst found my hat up on a nail. ‘I ain’t put dat dere,’ I say to mysef. ‘How dat hat git dere?’ And I knew ’twas witches what done it. I ain’t seen ’em, but it was dem. And one dem witches, the one what took my hat, she sent me all da way down to N’Orlins. Can you believe dat?” My change in diction alerted the rest to the white boys’ presence. So, my performance for the boys became a frame for my story. My story became less of a tale as the real game became the display for the boys.
“You don’t says,” Doris said. “Dem witches ain’t to be messed wif.”
“You got dat right,” another man said.
We could hear the boys giggling. “So, dere I was in N’Orlins and guess what?” I said. “All of a sudden dis root doctor come up behind me. He say, ‘Whatchu doin’ in dis here town.’ I tells him I ain’t got no idea how I git dere. And you know what he say ta me? You know what he say?”
“What he say, Jim?” Albert asked.
“He say I, Jim, be a free man. He say dat ain’t nobody gone call me no nigga eber ’gin.”
“Lawd, hab mercy,” Skinny, the farrier, shouted out.
“Demon say I could buy me what I want up da street. He say I could have me some whisky, if’n I wanted. Whatchu think ’bout that?”
“Whisky is the devil’s drink,” Doris said.
“Din’t matter,” I said. “Din’t matter a bit. He say I could hab it if’n I wanted it. Anything else, too. Din’t matter, though.”
“Why was dat?” a man asked.
“Furst, ’cause I was in dat place to whar dat demon sent me. Weren’t real, jest a dream. And ’cause I ain’t had me no money. It be dat simple. So dat demon snapped his old dirty fingas and sent me home.”
“Why fo he do dat?” Albert asked.
“Hell, man, you cain’t get in no trouble in N’Orlins lessen you gots some money, dream or no dream,” I said.
The men laughed. “Dat sho is what I heared,” a man said.
“Wait,” I said. “I thinks I hears one dem demons in the bushes right naw. Somebody gives me a torch so I kin set dis brush alight. Witches and demons don’t lak no fires burnin’ all round ’em. Dey start to melt lak butta on a griddle.”
We all laughed as we heard the white boys hightail it out of there.
