Free Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor

tears to fill the largest bucket in the kitchen. But now Sukey was an accomplished fact, and the child grinned all day long, and crawled everywhere; she pulled herself up beside chairs, and grinned at the old master and snatched at the finger which he presented with its gold Masonic ring. Soon she would be walking.
    How that child, you Coffee?
    She all wet. He giggled sleepily. She wet but she sleeping. She got me wet too.
    Time, old man.
    He yawned enormously. Still got time, and his big strong hand came hunting amusement. He began to struggle around to face her.
    No, no, no! You be decent, man.
    Still got time!
    No, old man. No time now. Them chickens started in.
    I don’t hear them.
    You listen, you hear them. Don’t you come funning with me now. You come home tonight, I let you make fun then.
    Oh, yes, old woman. I come home all tuckered out.
    Sukey awakened and began to yell. Give her to me, you Coffee. Coffee gathered up the dripping child and helped her to crawl across his strong body until she whimpered happily at her mother’s fat breast. Pet was built like a bean-pole, but she carried plenty of milk. The milk was rich, and Naomi said, Hi, just see that fat in it. Once Sukey was born she had never been sick a day in her little life.
    Get out of there. You hear me?
    The chickens were increasingly vocal; Coffee dared not ignore their summons any longer. He could hear the roosters in their high wailing whooping, all the way across the world. He guessed he could hear them away over at the Tebbs place, and in the scrawny village of Anderson itself.
Urr-a-urr-a-oo.
    Bell ain’t spoke yet.
    It’ll speak, but don’t you wait. You fly round, get your clothes, put on one more log, make yourself some count.
    The bell spoke: pound, pound, pound. It hung in its gallows on the corner of Old Leander’s cabin two cabins away from the home of Pet and Coffee, and it was one of Old Leander’s proud tasks to ring the bell according to direction. He would beat it ferociously, then go hobbling back to bed. He had worked for a lifetime, he had toiled well and hard, he could sleep as late as he pleased. Nowadays however he spoke of Heaven with increasing frequency; he prayed hourly. He said that he had seen the three young masters in a dream, and they were dressed in raiment. The rest of the hands were impressed. They cried a little whenever Leander spoke of the young masters, and they too talked about raiment.
    Alternately groaning and snorting, Coffee emerged from bed and put on the loose shirt and jeans which he had wadded under the foot of the bed. Wind cut through the few cabin-cracks and made even his strong frame shiver.
    Where our shawl, woman?
    On that peg with my frocksies.
    He found the shawl, tied it around his shoulders, and padded away toward the door.
    Don’t you go making dirt by the door, you hear me? Old Mastah say everybody go down to the privy, else we get a plague.
    Coffee mumbled that he had no intention of making dirt. However, the privy was a long way down the hind path, and cold made him squirm. It was dark, no one could see; all he wanted to make was water, and he went between the two small Walker’s Yellow apple trees and made it. Around him rose the sounds of earliest morning, though still the night clung black; you could make out the blot of horizon in the east, you could separate the lighter darkness of sky from the darker darkness of earth, that was all. Jonas and Buncombe, his eldest child, were busy at the stables; Coffee could hear them talking to the horse and the mules. That little Buncombe was stepping around smartly these days; before long he would graduate on the rolls and be listed as half a hand. . . . Coffee put his fingers into both of the buckets on a split bench before the cabin door. Empty or practically so. He carried the pails to the nearest well, beyond the line of cabins on a rounding small hill above stockpens and stables. He put down the sweep, brought up water, filled the