But Harriett did not care to quarrel now when there would be no time to finish it properly. She was out of breath from hurrying and almost in tears. She was afraid to go home.
“Mingo, I’m scared.”
“Well, you know what you can do if your ma puts you out,” her escort said quickly, forgetting his anger. “I can take care of you. We could get married.”
“Could we, Mingo?”
“Sure!”
She slipped her hand in his. “Aw, daddy!” and the pace became much less hurried.
When they reached the corner near which Harriett lived, she lifted her dark little purple-powdered face for a not very lingering kiss and sent Mingo on his way. Then she frowned anxiously and ran on. The sky was a pale pearly color, waiting for the warm gold of the rising sun.
“I’m scared to death!” said Harriett. “Lord, Sandy, I hope ma ain’t up! I hope she didn’t come home last night from Mis’ Lane’s. We shouldn’t’ve gone, Sandy … I guess we shouldn’t’ve gone.” She was breathing hard and Sandy had to run fast to keep up with her. “Gee, I’m scared!”
The grass was diamond-like with dew, and the red bricks of the sidewalk were damp, as the small boy and his young aunt hurried under the leafy elms along the walk. They passed Madam de Carter’s house and cut through the wet grass into their own yard as the first rays of the morning sun sifted through the trees. Quietly they tiptoed towards the porch; quickly and quietly they crossed it; and softly, ever so softly, they opened the parlor door.
In the early dusk the oil-lamp still burned on the front-room table, and in an old armchair, with the open Bible on her lap, sat Aunt Hager Williams, a bundle of switches on the floor at her feet.
IX
Carnival
Between the tent of Christ and the tents of sin there stretched scarcely a half-mile. Rivalry reigned: the revival and the carnival held sway in Stanton at the same time. Both were at the south edge of town, and both were loud and musical in their activities. In a dirty-white tent in the Hickory Woods the Reverend Duke Braswell conducted the services of the Lord for the annual summer tent-meeting of the First Ethiopian Baptist Church. And in Jed Gateway’s meadow lots Swank’s Combined Shows, the World’s Greatest Midway Carnival, had spread canvas for seven days of bunko games and cheap attractions. The old Negroes went to the revival, and the young Negroes went to the carnival, and after sundown these August evenings the mourning songs of the Christians could be heard rising from the Hickory Woods while the profound syncopation of the minstrel band blared from Gateway’s Lots, strangely intermingling their notes of praise and joy.
Aunt Hager with Annjee and Sandy went to the revival every night (Sandy unwillingly), while Jimboy, Harriett, and Maudel went to the carnival. Aunt Hager prayed for her youngest daughter at the meetings, but Harriett had not spoken to her mother, if she could avoid it, since the morning after the dance, when she had been whipped. Since their return from the country Annjee and Jimboy were not so loving towards each other, either, as they had been before. Jimboy tired of Jessie’s farm, so he came back to town three days before his wife returned. And now the revival and the carnival widened the breach between the Christians and the sinners in Aunt Hager’s little household. And Sandy would rather have been with the sinners—Jimboy and Harriett—but he wasn’t old enough; so he had to go to meetings until, on Thursday morning, when he and Buster were climbing over the coal-shed in the backyard, Sandy accidentally jumped down on a rusty nail, which penetrated the heel of his bare foot. He set up a wail, cried until noon over the pain, and refused to eat any dinner; so finally Jimboy said that if he would only hush hollering he’d take him to the carnival that evening.
“Yes, take de rascal,” said Aunt Hager. “He ain’t doin’ no good at de services, wiggling and squirming so’s we can’t hardly hear de sermon. He ain’t got religion in his heart, that chile!”
“I hope he ain’t,” said his father, yawning.
“All you wants him to be is a good-fo’-nothin’ rounder like you is,” retorted Hager. And she and Jimboy began their daily quarrel, which lasted for hours, each of them enjoying it immensely. But Sandy kept pulling at his father and saying: “Hurry up and let’s go,” although he knew well that nothing really started at the carnival until sundown. Nevertheless, about four o’clock, Jimboy said: “All right, come on,” and they started out in the hot sun towards Galoway’s Lots, the man walking tall and easy while the boy hobbled along on his sore foot, a rag tied about his heel.
At the old crossbar gate on the edge of town, through which Jed Galoway drove his cows to pasture, there had been erected a portable arch strung with electric lights spelling out “Swank’s Shows” in red and yellow letters, but it was not very impressive in the daytime, with the sun blazing on it, and no people about. And from this gate, extending the whole length of the meadow on either side, like a roadway, were the tents and booths of the carnival: the Galatea illusion, the seal and sea-lion circus, the Broadway musical-comedy show, the freaks, the games of chance, the popcorn- and lemonade-stands, the colored minstrels, the merry-go-round, the fun house, the hoochie-coochie, the Ferris wheel, and, at the far end, a canvas tank under a tiny platform high in the air from which the World’s Most Dangerous and Spectacular High Dive took place nightly at
