Chapter V: Hitch Enlists the Parson’s Aid

On the following morning, Mrs. Tom Gaitskill had a real cause for worry: Diada could not be found and was last seen going toward the Little Moccasin Swamp.

This swamp was twelve miles long and eight wide, traversed by winding streams of slow-moving, oily, yellow water, abounding with quagmires, full of poisonous vines and deadly serpents, the feeding range of wild hogs as vicious as wolves. It was a man-trap, a dreadful place to all except the most experienced woodsmen. Many a hunter had led his squirrel-dog into that swamp, and only the dog found his way back home. The man’s friends found him a few days later by watching the spiral flight of the buzzards concentrating at one spot in the jungle.

“Tom,” Mrs. Gaitskill exclaimed in anxious tones, “you must send Hitch Diamond after Diada at once!”

“Let her go!” Gaitskill replied indifferently. “I’m surfeited with her society. Maybe she’ll come back after a while.”

“You know she will not, Tom,” Mrs. Gaitskill protested with glistening eyes. “If she is not captured before she gets too deep in that swamp, she is gone forever.”

“If she took my pajamas with her, I’m fully resigned to the will of the Lord,” Gaitskill grinned. “They’re gone forever, too.”

“Oh, hush!” Mrs. Gaitskill begged, her fine face flushed with mortification. “Oh, those garments in my reception-room--I can’t bear to think of them! But we can’t let her wander off in that swamp and die.”

“I’ll send Hitch after her--if he’ll go,” Gaitskill said, and walked back toward the rear of the house, where he located Hitch, not by sight, but by sound:

“My wife’s strong-minded,
She’s double-j’inded,
She ain’t tame,
Scan’lize my name----”

The negro ceased singing, jerked off his big hat, and sprang to his feet.

“Hitch,” Gaitskill began, “Diada ran away last night. I want you to find her.”

“Yes, suh; Hopey narrate me about dat.”

“Go out into the swamp and find her!” Gaitskill commanded.

Hitch sat down and scratched his head; he plowed up the dirt with the toe of his ponderous boot; he slapped at the flies with his hat. He was trying to think up a plausible lie as an excuse for declining the proffered job.

“Naw, suh, Marse Tom,” he said slowly. “I’s powerful sorry, but I jes’ nachelly, can’t go--er--de lodge meets to-night----”

“You’ll be back before night,” Gaitskill assured him.

“Yes, suh, but I gotter hustle aroun’ an’ git some money to pay my dues----”

“I’ll pay your dues.”

“Yes, suh, but--er--I gotter had my lodge clothes cleaned an’ pressed, an’----”

“Get some nigger to do that for you. I’ll pay him.”

“Yes, suh----”

Hitch stopped. His resources were exhausted. He looked at Gaitskill with a face as expressionless as a glass-eyed doll. “Marse Tom is sho’ a quick ketcher,” he thought. Then he spoke aloud:

“Marse Tom, I jes’ nachelly don’t wanter go atter dat coon! Why don’t you an’ me jes’ let her ramble? Us kind of folks hadn’t oughter pay dat nigger no pertick’ler mind--she ain’t----”

Gaitskill turned and walked away.

He was too much in sympathy with Hitch’s argument to discuss the matter. He salved his conscience with the reflection that he had told Hitch to go, although he was pretty sure that Hitch would slip off down-town, stay hid all day, and return at night to report that he had failed to find Diada.

But contrary to Gaitskill’s expectations, Hitch did some heavy thinking, then sought out the Rev. Vinegar Atts, pastor of the Shoofly church.

“Elder,” he began, “does you b’lieve in cornvertin’ de heathen?”

“Suttinly,” Atts replied, scenting a contribution for foreign missions.

“Well, suh,” Hitch declared, “now is de choosen time to get right nex’ to a shore-’nuff she-heathen. Marse Tom is got her out to his house on a little visit, an’ las’ night de Revun Sentelle an’ all de miss’nary ladies of Marse Tom’s chu’ch was makin’ ’miration over dat coon, an’ I figgers dat us Mef’dis niggers oughter jub’late too.”

“Shorely, shorely!” Vinegar Atts boomed. “Whar is dis here she-heathen at?”

“Her’s gone out fer a walk in de Little Moccasin Swamp,” Hitch informed him. “Ef us walks out to’des de swamp, ’pears to me we mought meet up wid her an’ git real good acquainted.”

“Dat’s good argufyin’,” Vinegar responded, reaching for his hat. “Whut do she look like?”

“Her looks like us niggers--only ’bout fawty’leben times more!” Hitch told him.

“Kin she talk?”

“Yes, suh, but a feller cain’t ketch on to nothin’ she specifies. It’s a kind of jibber-jabber monkeytalk dat lubricates a whole lot, but it don’t show whar at!” Hitch informed him, wondering at the same time how she really did talk--for Hitch had never heard a sound from her throat.

“Ef she cain’t talk to us, an’ we cain’t talk to her, we shore ain’t gwine fuss an’ fall out!” Vinegar declared.

The big, fat, squat-legged preacher trotted along beside the giant prize-fighter toward the swamp, and by the time they turned off the main road on to the bridle-path which led to the Gaitskill hog-camp, Hitch had told the preacher as much about Diada as he thought Vinegar ought to know. Needless to say, he did not mention her ugliness, her size, her love for raw meat, nor his own overwhelming fear of her.

“Whut’s de matter wid dis swamp, Hitch?” Vinegar demanded, gazing at the trees and wiping the copious sweat from his face.

The swamp had suddenly become as hot as an anteroom to hell. The trees had lost their green sparkle, assuming the colors of decay--corpseyellow and livid green, shining with an oily, sickening glitter.

Hitch shuddered. It was easy for him to believe that Diada had conjured the swamp and had caused it to assume this aspect of menace.

“Less hump along to’des de hog-camp, Revun!” he exclaimed. “I’s skeart of dis place. I been talkin’ to hear my tongue rattle, but now I kin shet my mouf an’ hear my jaws rattle.”

Something scared the birds in the jungle and they flew shriekingly from tree to tree, all going in the same direction.

Submerged among the immense trees of the jungle the negroes could not tell what was happening in the heavens, but they noticed that the sun had changed, no longer spraying off of the tops of the trees like falling water, and the path at their feet had become almost invisible in the darkness.

A wind suddenly swept through the forest, cold as a breeze from the arctic icebergs. Every tree and shrub leaned away from that icy blast, and vines which trailed the ground for hundreds of feet slowly rose up and whirled and writhed in the air like long, slim snakes. In twenty seconds that one puff of wind had passed and there was no more, and the scalding heat rose from the ground like steam from the boiling caldrons of Tophet.

At any other time, Hitch Diamond would have known that a Southern rain-storm was coming and would have paid no attention to it except to seek a cleared spot in the forest, where the dead limbs falling from the trees could not impale him to the ground.

But now his fear was superstitious, and it became infectious to Vinegar Atts and the two raced before the storm like catboats on a wind-swept lake.

Then the rain fell--fell exactly as if some great Titan’s hands had lifted up the silver bowl of the Gulf of Mexico and emptied its contents on their heads. The first big drop felt like a bucketful and seemed to wet them all over.

From that moment they stumbled rather than ran, simply fell forward, caught themselves, and fell forward again--who could run under Niagara’s tumbling flood?

And thus they ran blindly into the august presence of Diada!

Just as another icy blast swept through the jungle, lasting for twenty seconds and stopping the rain, the two men looked up and beheld Diada, facing the breeze, standing in their path like a rooted tree. She still wore Mrs. Gaitskill’s light-blue, pink-flowered kimono, and that gaudy garment trailed out behind her and snapped in the breeze, resembling the variegated tail of some enormous tropic bird.

To the astounded men Diada looked as big as a skinned mule.

With a shriek Hitch Diamond dodged around her, leading Vinegar Atts in the flight by a nose, and the two men ran on toward the hog-camp--the falling rain thundering around them like the sound of a troop of cavalry crossing a wooden bridge.

As they plunged across the open clearing in front of the cabin Hitch looked back.

Diada was forty steps behind him, trotting easily, covering incredible space with each step, her horrible mouth twisted into a cannibal grin. But it did not look like a grin to Hitch--those immense, protruding teeth and the repulsively thick lips curled back above and beneath them reminded him of nothing so much as the mouth of an angry, biting jackass.

“Here she comes, Vinegar!” Hitch bawled. “Come in an’ shet de do’!”

But they were too late. Diada’s foot struck the bottom step of the little porch just as Hitch reached the top step. Diada grasped Hitch by the coattail and was towed into the house by that frightened giant who promptly shucked off his coat as he passed through the door and let Diada have it.

Vinegar Atts turned around and took a long look at Diada. He reeled back against the wall, covered his eyes with his hands, and in horror-stricken tones he bellowed:

“Come here, Hitch, an’ he’p me! Somepin’ is done happened to my eyesight--I ain’t seein’ right!”