The day after Christmas Happy was still laughing, but all the other women looked deeply tired.
Willa Retha and Mabel left in a huff with their families at sunrise, despite Sarah urging them to wait until later in the day. Beauty shook her head at Sylvester and Gertrude when they entered the kitchen and asked them, “How could you?” clucking her tongue.
Sarah lit in to Sylvester again, almost as mad as she had been the night before.
“I swear you’re not too old for me to take a whipping stick against!” she threatened.
“Aw, Mama, how was I to know they’d all hear?” he pleaded, but he burst out laughing when Happy caught his eye.
Rose and Queen shot hot looks at him, and Rose ignored him when he asked for his coffee. He finally had to get up and get his own breakfast.
The little children came downstairs quite late, shadow-eyed and silent, yawning as they stumbled into their chairs. They all stared at Sylvester and Gertrude, eyes wide and mouth gaping.
Little Baby, wild eyed, started to cry, calling “Mama, Mama,” until Sarah picked her up.
“Once I get this child settled down, I’m coming after you with a fry pan,” she threatened Sylvester. “I told you these babies wouldn’t sleep a wink.”
“Come on Gert, we’re in the doghouse today,” he told his wife as he pulled her up from her chair, both of them laughing. “Let’s go see if Emma will take pity and let us hide out there.” They fled the kitchen and in a little while could be heard clattering down the stairs and out the front door.
“We’ll be back later, you all rest up. Get your sense of humor back,” Sylvester called as they rushed from the house, laughing.
“It sure was one Christmas to remember,” Happy cheerfully pointed out.
Even before dawn on Christmas Day Rose had smelled barbecue cooking. Sylvester and the boys had dug a pit on Saturday and filled it with kindling and charcoal and logs in complex layers.
“This has to burn for two days, need to do it right,” Sylvester explained to Rose and Queen, watching.
The pig was slaughtered that afternoon. Daniel and Roy assisted Sylvester with the messy tough job and both looked a little sick when they came in to warm up.
“Big job,” Daniel told Rose when she handed him a coffee mug. “That one didn’t go easy. We had to drag it down with a rope.”
Happy had covered her ears during the killing, muttering “I hate that sound, poor thing, fed up and treated good all year just to have it’s throat cut.”
“That pig’s done its job,” Sarah told her. “That’s the sound of a feast, if you ask me. Tells me my family’s going to eat, and eat well.”
Rose had felt a little queasy during the slaughter as she and Queen watched out the window, but Christmas morning she couldn’t wait to taste the barbecued pork. It smelled so good it was hard to stay in the house and help; all she wanted to do was to go out to the pit with a knife and slice off some of that meat.
“Smells good, smells good, um mm! Smell that good food! Good morning, Rose, and Merry Christmas to you!” Sarah greeted her and gave her a hug. “A happy Christmas this year.”
The worktables were all covered in pies and rolls and other baked goods the women had prepared over the previous week. Even the table where the family ate was half covered with plates of cookies and pans of gingerbread.
Gertrude was already down helping Sarah.
“It’s our Rose, good morning and Happy Christmas,” she greeted Rose. “It looks like the best barbecue ever, if you look at that pig out there,” she said as she returned to the stove to pour Rose some coffee.
Gertrude had a way of heating up milk and mixing it half and half with coffee that Rose loved; she was happy to see that Gertrude was mixing her a “cafe”, as she called it, adding two teaspoons of sugar for her before bringing it to the table.
Rose could see the glowing pit from the back window and the outline of two people standing in front of the roasting pig.
“Here, you slip on your coat and take these out to Daniel and Sylvester, they’ve been out there off and on all night,” Gertrude said as she gave Rose a tray with coffee mugs and slices of nut bread.
Rose added her own cup to the tray, put on her coat and walked out to the pit. After they all had their cafe and had eaten some of the fresh baked bread, the three of them stood and stared at the fiery pit and the carcass dripping and smoking over the coals.
“You think that’s enough meat, Syl?” Daniel asked.
“We’ll cook some chickens too, later on when the pork comes off,” his uncle told him. “Have some chickens, plenty of pork, that’s two hundred fifty pounds of pig on the hoof. Even if we have a hundred people here, we’ll feed them all.”
“We can always send A.T. out for rabbits,” Daniel joked, and they all laughed.
Rose was glad that Daniel stood close to her, happy when he leaned close enough for their shoulders to touch. She soon slipped off back to the house, knowing that there was more work than usual today and wanting to be a help to her aunt Sarah. But she gave Daniel a big smile as she left.
Sylvester smiled at her and winked as she returned to the house.
“You’re a vision, girl, thank you for the coffee,” he told her.
By eight in the morning people had started to arrive. Emma and James were the first to arrive, with lots of food and all their children, grandchildren, cousins and other relations. Just their branch of the family filled the downstairs. The little ones came right down when they heard their cousins arrive and the house was suddenly loud and shaking with all the yelling and running around. It took all five of the young women of the house and cousin Scrappy to corral the smaller children, get them dressed and fed and outside out of the way. Marlene and Mary, Scrappy and Beauty took them off to walk down to the Hall’s house, where Daddy Hall was making ice cream for the party.
The rest of the women continued with the cooking and preparations as more family members and friends arrived. Sarah’s daughters Mabel, the mother of Charlene and Baby, and Willa Retha, A.T. Marlene and Mary’s mother, arrived with their husbands and each with a new baby, tired after the long wagon ride from the turpentine camp where they worked as cooks down in Gulf Hammock. Both daughters were relieved to pass the fussy babies to their other children and head upstairs for a quick rest.
“Minnie Lee, we have us a baby,” A.T. called as he headed outside with the small bundle.
There were so many people in the house by noon that it was hard to cross the kitchen. The parlor was full, the dining room was full, children could be heard upstairs running back and forth, the porch was full of people. The yard was full of people and wagons, and one Hall family cousin from Gainesville had brought an automobile. All day long it was full of small children with wistful dreaming faces.
Plates of food were everywhere, in the kitchen and outside on long plank tables the men had set up between the house and the barbecue pit. There was every kind of good thing to eat, and everyone was eating, all day long.
There was pork and barbecued chickens. There were beefsteaks and smoked turkeys. Every kind of vegetable was present, baked in casserole or boiled or roasted or fried. Rose, Queen and Marlene peeled fifty pounds of potatoes that morning, which were quickly turned into mashed potatoes, roasted potatoes and potato salad by Beauty and Happy.
Dozens of desserts were on another long table all by themselves and it seemed as if every type of pie that had ever been invented had a representative present. Rose tried a piece of sour orange pie, which she had never tasted before, and was plotting how to hide the rest of that delicious dessert for later when she realized that all the rest of both of the sour orange pies Emma had brought were already eaten. Of course there was also fruitcake from Emma, sliced thin and eaten plain or with a little sweet butter spread across. There was a strange green chiffon pie made by an elderly maiden auntie, which everyone warned Rose not to eat.
There was so much food it was hard to imagine anyone ever being hungry ever again, but Rose herself found that after an hour or so of chasing the children around in the crisp winter air, or after another turn in the kitchen washing up the endless stacks of dishes, she was ready for another plate of food.
Men with guitars and fiddles and harmonicas sat on the front porch and started playing music in the afternoon. Christmas carols and popular tunes were sung, a few church hymns were played but then the new music called jazz began to be tinkered out bit by bit, and a shifting dancing crowd formed and swayed in the sunlight as the music drifted out over the front yard. Groups of singers formed and reformed as tune after tune was played, Marlene and Queen singing, Roy joining in, Sylvester and his cousin Aaron providing much of the music on the family piano, wheeled out to the porch despite Sarah’s nervous protests.
By sundown most of the family and friends had moved on, off to their homes or on to another visit. A large group was moving off to the Hall’s house for more celebration. The Goins were off to Goins' Corners, a group of family houses down in the west corner of Rosewood. Emma and James were the last to leave, but they finally made it out the door with even Minnie Lee following, despite her begging to sleep over.
It took another hour to clean up the final dishes, put leftovers away and straighten the house, but then in the quiet evening the family assembled in the parlor and dining room, sliding the doors open between, and had their own little Christmas together.
Everyone had gifts to open. There were oranges and candies for everyone and a sack of corn ears for popping. There were jacks and balls for the little girls and new baseballs for the boys. Everyone received a pair of new shoes and something warm, gloves or socks or hats. A.T. received his first suit with long pants, amidst much teasing from his older male cousins.
Rose went upstairs to retrieve the small package she had put at the back of her drawer, way back on her first day in her new home.
“Now, you save this for Christmas,” her mother had told her, “So we’ll be together for at least a little bit that day.” Those last moments at the train station in Chicago, they seemed so long ago and so far away from this place, this new, good place.
Rose carefully unwrapped the paper and curled up the ribbon to save for later. Inside the box was another box, a jeweler’s box covered in soft gray velvet. Rose lifted the lid and inside found a gold chain with a single pearl pendant.
“Ohhh,” was all she could say as she lifted the necklace and placed it around her neck. “Oh Mama.”
Sarah noticed the new necklace right away when Rose returned to the parlor.
“Is that from your mama?” she asked softly as she admired the soft glow of the pearl’s luster. Rose nodded.
“A pearl for a pearl of a girl,” Sylvester told her, and Rose felt able to smile again, the sadness in her heart lifted by his silliness.
Queen was sitting on the sofa, wrapped in her new quilt, and she scooted over to make room for Rose, wrapping them both in the quilt when she was settled. Daniel sat down next to Rose, making Rose happy despite A.T. giving her an indignant look. Queen snuggled closer, smiled at Rose and at Daniel. Leaning close, she whispered, “It’s time for stories.”
Sarah went first, telling an old story that everyone but Rose had heard before, about two sisters sent by their mother through the woods on an errand. One sister is greedy and selfish so she has bad luck and never completes her errand. The other sister is helpful and trustworthy so she receives help on her errand and finds treasures as she travels through the woods.
Both Happy and Beauty groaned as Sarah told her moral tale.
“Oh, Mama, you going to tell that same old story?” they complained. Through the whole story they told each other “You’re the bad one,” “No, you’re the one who’s selfish, serves you right the crows picked your eyes out like that.” Everyone was laughing at their bickering by the time Sarah was finished.
Happy went next, with a tale about the pirate Jean Lafitte, reputed to have buried treasure all along the Gulf coast in various spots. These spots were supposed to be haunted by the ghosts of his unlucky shipmates, killed by Lafitte after helping him to hide his chests of treasure, so they could never tell where it was buried. The ghostly revenge they laid on Lafitte was that once he returned to dig up his chests, he was so frightened by the haunting of his spectral mates that he could no longer remember the locations of his hidden booty. And so Lafitte died a poor man, wandering the swamps of Florida, looking for his treasure.
Beauty told a tale of a pair of lovers taken from life by the yellow fever more than a hundred years before in colonial times, but united in eternity in the graveyard where they both lay. She described how spectral music plays in this graveyard on the anniversary of their deaths and the two wraiths can be seen, dancing in the moonlight every year on that same night.
Queen and Rose thought it quite a romantic tale.
Sylvester snickered and told the girls, “It’s probably some young people, trying to get some privacy. Nothing too scary about that.”
Gertrude slapped his arm.
"You’d be one to know,” she told him.
“I only know what you tell me I know,” he told her with a smile, and she swatted him arm again but gave him a smile back.
Sylvester popped corn for everyone, and a bowl of pecans was passed around. Hot cocoa was sipped and nuts were cracked. Once everyone had finished their snacks and snuggled back in by the fire, Gertrude told a story about Old Possum and how he tricked Old Bear into giving him his honeycomb. Gertrude, imitating Old Possum’s cry of “Sure do like that honey, Old Bear,” in a high squeaky voice, made all the smaller children laugh.
After Gertrude’s story Sarah and Beauty led the children upstairs to bed, all protesting despite the fact they were all yawning. Willa Retha and Mabel followed with their babies. After they were all in bed Beauty returned for more stories but Sarah told everyone goodnight and went to her room.
“Don’t stay up all night, and don’t you wake up those babies!” she warned.
After Sarah departed for bed Queen told a story about a famous Gainesville ghost, a doctor who died in a carriage accident on a stormy night as he hurried off to a patient delivering a baby. People reported seeing his carriage rushing by on many dark rainy nights; a few had been stopped on moonless evenings by a man in a black carriage, asking could they tell him how to get back to Gainesville? Before they could answer he would whip up his horse and tear down the road, the carriage rocking and swaying behind the screaming fleeing nag. Later they would find out that they had indeed met the spectral physician, still hurrying to try and save his long dead patient.
Rose told a story none of them had heard before, although everyone she knew back home had heard the story of the man with one hook hand. Young lovers, looking for a private spot, would walk down by the waterfront and sit on park benches to talk and maybe kiss a little. A crazed sailor, the lone survivor of a terrible shipping accident on the river, would spy on couples and sneak up on the unwary lovers, absorbed in each other. Waiting until the young man would perhaps step away or turn away for one moment, the maniac would grab the young woman, smothering her cries with his one good hand. The crazed sailor, the hand he lost in the accident replaced with a sharp gleaming hook, would use it to cut her throat. He would arrange her on the ground to appear as if asleep and flee, never to be caught but always leaving the same cryptic message scratched by his hook hand into the ground by her dead body.
“Leave her not, never leave her unattended!” Rose cried at the end of her tale. “That’s what he always writes.”
“That’s a good one,” Happy applauded as everyone agreed.
Queen shivered. “I’d never hang around outside in the dark,” she said, “Someplace where there’s some old hook hand man wandering around.”
“Love makes you foolish sometimes,” Sylvester commented, looking in to Gertrude’s dark eyes as she laughed and took his hand.
“I’m going up to bed, goodnight all,” Gertrude told the group and went out of the parlor.
“Time for my tale,” Sylvester began. “This story took place right here, nearby us in the swamps of Gulf Hammock, down by where Willa Retha and Lucius are working the turpentine. About ten miles away, Rose,” he explained.
“There was an old man who built a house way out in the middle of the swamp. Right in the middle of the swamp he lived, him and his wife. You had to walk a long ways in to find them, over little hummocks of dry grass and across fallen cypress trees until you’d see way back in a clearing, right on a slow dark stream, you’d see a low roof and an awning made out of palm fronds so it blended right in to the trees around it. You’d have to look real close, the house was all covered in vines and had moss hanging down all around it so it blended right into the hammock.
“Once you got close enough you’d see her, crouched down next to a big old cauldron black as night, big enough to scald a pig in. She’d be stirring a big old stick around in that big old pot, stirring and stirring as it cooked over a smokeless fire. How she made a fire with no smoke in the middle of a swamp I don’t know, not a dry stick of wood for miles around.
“That old man’s wife, that’s who she was, crouched down next to that old cauldron. Long scraggly hair all in her face, you could never see clear what she looked like, all that hair snarled around her head. Looked like it hadn’t been combed or cleaned in years. She was all skinny, long skinny arms, long skinny legs, looked like a spider crouched down there by that fire pit, stirring that cauldron. Set back under that overhang in the shadows, you couldn’t ever see her too clear, and as soon as she saw you she’d scurry in the house.
“The old man’s out back!” she’d cry out, and she’d flee inside like you were the Devil after her. You’d not see more of her than that, she’d not come out again no matter how long you were there.
“We’d walk around back, Uncle James and Daddy and I, and there’d be the old man. It wouldn’t seem possible but he was even skinnier than his woman, looked like a skeleton wrapped in old leather, he was so old and so black and so wrinkled. Wild thick white hair and a long white beard all tangled up. Pale blue eyes, yellow around the edges like real old folks get but bright, bright blue in that dark skin, always wide open and staring.
“I never saw a man so afraid of people in my life. Some folks said he was cursed by a voodoo witch woman down in New Orleans, she magicked him into a zombie man so he was never right after. He sure acted strange, like he’d been cursed.
“What you want,” he’d cry, clutching his gun or his ax close, like he was afraid you’d hurt him. “I got nothing, what you want?” he’d cry, even though he knew Daddy and James for close to forty years by then and ought to have known not to fear them. He’d run off half the time, not speak more or let them speak to him, just run off or try to run us off, wave his ax at us.
"Daddy would try to talk to the man, but most times he’s just have to give up and would tell us, “Come on, we’re leaving,” and we’d go, the old man still yelling “What you want? What you want?”
“When the old man’s woman died, he was about done in by the loss. She slipped on the muddy banks of the river, fell and broke her neck. The sheriff, after not hearing from them for a while, rode out to the old man’s place and found him laying on the ground, clutching his dead wife, screaming over and over ‘What you want? What you want?’
“Sheriff had to come get James and Daddy to help him get that old man off the ground and loose of her corpse. He wouldn’t let them bury her up here in the cemetery. He put her inside an old ‘gator nest nearby their house, and you know, that ‘gator just swam off and let him do it. After, the old man just stood there moaning, crying ‘What you want?’ over and over. Daddy and Uncle James tried to help him, get him to clean up, get him to eat something, but he just run off, sobbing and screaming. They never went out to his place after that, and after that nobody hardly ever saw that old man.
“Crazy old man, he took to wearing his wife’s old dress, I don’t know why. Maybe he missed her. Maybe his clothes were all worn out after a while and he didn’t have anything else, but if you did catch a glimpse of him he’d be in a tattered old black dress, all strings and rags from him dragging around through the swamp all that time. Looked like some kind of ghost out there in the swamp, wandering around crying and screaming. Got so people started going out of their way to avoid his part of the swamp, it was so unnerving to stumble upon him and hear him screaming as he scurried away, ‘What you want? What you want?’
“Full moon nights people started to see his old woman’s ghost, wandering around. After she died her spirit rose up, couldn’t get any rest buried in that old gator hole. Her spirit wandered all around here, she’d come up to Goins' Corners, head hanging all funny off to one side, her ghost screaming ‘Look out! Look out!’, just like she did that day she fell and had her neck broke. You’d see that old zombie man following her ghost around, she’d scream and he’d cry out ‘What you want? What you want?’ Uncle James saw them right out in the orange grove once, screaming and crying and carrying on out there all night.”
Sylvester paused in his tale, crossed the room to the table where the kerosene lamp was burning. He turned the wick up, causing the flame to leap higher and the room brightened; then he turned the wick back down. “This lamp is smoking sister, it needs its wick trimmed,” he complained as he returned to his seat.
“People have seen the two of them down at the railroad depot,” he continued, “Her floating by, screaming, him scurrying along behind her, crying out, wearing that old black tattered dress, trying to catch her ghost. They still come by every so often, her ghost floating by, screaming, him a zombie or maybe a ghost now too, who knows? He’s still crying out though, still asking her, ‘What you want? What you want?’”
A long, loud, piercing scream ripped through the night. Marlene, Rose, Queen and Happy all screamed, creating a nice harmony. Beauty leapt up, crying out “Lord, have mercy, what was that?”
“What you want, what you want?” Sylvester yelled, making everyone scream again, and a loud pounding commenced on the front door. The thundering steps of a crowd in a hurry was heard as the littler children, led by Mary and followed up by A.T., came flying down the stairs and into the parlor. “What is it, what is it?” they screamed.
“What is going on out here?” Sarah cried as she came hurrying up the hallway, shotgun in hand. Willa Retha and Mabel, hair tied up in rags, flew down the stairs, followed by their husbands.
“It’s a zombie ghost, Mama, Uncle Syl said, we were sitting on the stairs listening and we heard him tell, we heard it screaming,” the little ones sobbed, clinging to Sarah.
The pounding recommenced, and the screaming, and everyone tumbled out into the hall and turned towards the front door. A shadow against the glass could be seen, a shadow with long wild hair and its head hung at a strange angle. Queen and Rose screamed again at whatever apparition was haunting outside the door, rattling the brass doorknob and moaning.
“What? What you want? What you want?” Sylvester cried, bringing on another round of shrieks.
“Oh, lord, are you telling them that old story?” Sarah asked, disgusted.
The screaming and crying stopped abruptly as everyone turned to look at Sarah.
“I’ve been saving that story for fifteen years,” Sylvester started to laugh, “Ever since Uncle James and Daddy scared a bunch of us boys with it on a hunting trip out to the old fish camp,” he cackled.
“Oh you are low, you are so low!” Happy howled. “So I guess that old ghost out there must be somebody by the name of Gertrude, isn’t it?” she cried as she crossed the hall and flung open the front door.
There stood a haunted figure, with long wild hair and a dark ragged dress, laughing and slapping her leg as she came in to the hall and embraced Sylvester.
“Our signal worked just right,” he told his wife, “You screamed and they all went crazy."
“I know, I heard them,” she told him, and the two of them laughed even harder, leaning against the doorjamb so they wouldn’t fall over.
The little children were still sniffling, as were Marlene and Mary. Rose and Queen shot angry looks at Sylvester and Gertrude, then turned and stormed upstairs without another word.
Beauty, carrying a sobbing Baby and leading a teary eyed Charlene, herded the two smaller boys and A.T. upstairs, glancing back at Gertrude and Sylvester long enough to frown at them and shake her head. Willa Retha and Mabel, complaining to their poor tired husbands, condemned their brother, sister-in-law, the Christmas tradition of telling ghost stories, and everything else they could think of as they went back to bed.
Happy was still chuckling. “That’s the best one ever, I wish you could have seen your all’s faces, I will never forget that!” she told Daniel and Roy. “Did you hear those girls scream?” she asked as the three of them headed upstairs. “That was the best story ever.”
“You all are a mess,” Sarah scolded the two pranksters. “Those babies will be up all night, trying to sleep, thinking about some old dead woman and her old zombie husband outside their window. If they start screaming and crying you two better get up and go in to them. No, no you don’t! Don’t you dare go in their room, you all just make them worse. They’ll think you’re the zombie ghosts. I swear, you all a mess,” she scolded as she returned to bed.
Sylvester and Gertrude laughed and laughed, although they tried not to as Sarah scolded them. Once she went back to bed they just let loose until they were gasping and snickering, hardly able to breathe but starting to laugh again whenever they looked in each other’s eyes.
“What you want? What you want?” Sylvester cried out one more time, and the two of them busted out laughing all over as voices from the upstairs bedrooms cried out “Shut up!"
“Nobody will ever forget this Christmas," Sylvester sighed happily. “Not ever."