Free The Lucky Stone by Lucille Clifton

ONE

    On a hot June morning, Tee and her Great-grandmother were sitting on the porch in the sun. Tee had plumped the cushions in the rocker and helped her Great-grandmother get comfortable and park her stick. Then she sat on the first step right by the rocker and smiled.
    “Tell me a story, Grandma.”
    And that smile was all Mrs. Pickens needed.
    “That smile you got remind me of a lady,” her Great-grandmother began, “remind me of a lady long long long time ago.
    “This lady was named Vashti, and she lived with her Mama right down the road from me and mine. Her and her Mama used to sit out in the summertime on they front porch just rockin like this and smilin just like you, so pretty and polite.
    “But we was all scared of them because they had real long fingernails on they fingers and long toenails on they toes. They never did say nothin to us or one another till one day me and my friends was passin by them soft-like.
    “They was smilin and rockin on they porch, and the one Vashti leaned across the railin and whispered right to me, ’Girl, bring me glass a cool water I give you a lucky stone.’

    “Now you know that scared me half to death but it wondered me too. And dog if I didn’t light out and run back home and fetch back to that porch a long drink of cool water.

    “Yes, and I can still hear them long fingernails slickin on the glass while she drank it all down her long throat.
    “Then she made me come close to her and she reached in her bosom and handed me a warm stone, shiny black as nighttime ’cept for a scratch looked just like a letter A. And she said the stone was mine. I tell you, Sweet Tee, I was sayin my prayers I was so scared, but I didn’t let on.
    “‘Thank you, ma’am, but that’s all right,’ I said to her. But she come right close with her face to the porch rail. ‘Take it. I got no other chick nor chile. It’s a lucky stone,’ she said. So I took it and kept it and got it still and one fine day I’m gonna give it to you, Sweet Tee.
    “And the story of that stone is this.

    “When Vashti’s Mama, Miss Mandy, was a little girl it was slavery time. One day when she was workin in the hot sun pickin cotton, a mean old snake come creepin up on her by her foot and she gave a holler and fell down and dumped the sack she was carryin. It split wide open and all the cotton was ruined, don’t you know, a whole load of cotton!
    “Now she was just a girl but she was scared ’cause she was due for a beatin indeed, and she didn’t want to be whipped by that mean old bossman. She hadn’t never been whipped before, and she had promised herself she never would be. So she just started creepin easy and fast and low down in the field so nobody could see her.
    “But the bossman saw her anyhow and started toward her on his horse with the whip in his hand. And she lit out so scared and ran off from the field and hid in a cave.

    “Come dark she was too scared to go back and come day again she was too scared ’cause she had been gone all night. One day become two and two days become three and on the third day she heard dogs far off and knew she couldn’t go back or move from where she was. That little girl.
    “Well, didn’t nobody know where she was, slave nor free, when one evening after near a week had gone by, an old driver from the plantation was ridin by that cave bringin the carriage when a stone shot out and spooked his horse. That horse reared up but the driver held him and got him stopped and steady and then he got down to see what it was had hit his horse. And he found on the ground a stone black as night.
    “Well, that old man was disgusted that one little stone was makin him lose time like that. So he picked it up and threw it back into the cave.

    “And Tee, do you know that while he was walkin back to the carriage that stone come sailin out of the cave again and hit him on the neck! That old driver grabbed it up where it fell and looked at it and knew it for the same