ENPages
Two other versions of "Hester Fry," entitled "No Laud, I Ain't Ready," can be found on pages 657-669.
825A
AL-89 Alabama
HESTER FRYE
The old house was set back from the dirt road. Where the lawn had been only dog fennel was growing. The picket fence was almost down, a back chimney had fallen, and part of the roof was open to the sky. There were no steps at the front. A tangle of wistaria gripped the rotting gallery.
No one answered my "hello." I pulled myself up by one of the rickety pillars and picked my way over sagging planks to the door. I knocked, but no one answered. Wandering around the gallery toward the back, I met an old Negro man who invited me to walk in and "res' " my hat.
Through a side door, I entered a room with drawn and torn shades. As my eyes became used to the dimness they picked out an old piano stool covered with worn red plush and moth-eaten ball fringe. Scattered on top of a once lovely but now outmoded square piano, were several daguerreotypes, a family album, and mildewed copies of old songs.
On the wall above were two charming hollow-cut silhouettes, one an aristocratically high-nosed gentleman, the other a young and engagingly pretty woman. On the mantel was a small figure which may have been Derby Bisque, and whose mate no doubt had shared the fate of other treasures, the spoils of many generations. The needle-point of the cushion of an old wing chair was soiled and frayed, though the chair was deep and hospitable. There was an old blue perfume bottle holding a bunch of faded artificial flowers, and on a small 825B
- 2 - marble-topped table was a lovely etched hurricane glass of rare pattern. A queer, heterageneous collection it was, and I turned to leave, for I still had not found the woman whom I had come to see. As I moved, a tall bookcase partly hidden now by the open door came into view. I stood still, torn between desire to investigate what appeared to be a rare literary find, and to forget the mustiness of the past that surrounded me when the titles of several books challenged my attention. These were Darwin's Origin of the Species, the Descent of Man, and several books of philosophy. Hardly a second passed, before the sound of shuffling feet through what sounded like an empty room, was followed by a voice which can only be described as flat and utterly lifeless saying, "You better git out er here 'cause Mr. Charlie ain't gonna lack nobody rummagin' 'roun' 'mongst his things." This was so totally unexpected that for a moment I was frightened, and turning quickly I saw across the room her bare arms hanging limp at her sides a barefoot Negro woman, was clad in loose, soiled, blue homespun, and wore a faded spotted handherchief around her head. Her face was curiously gray, and her eyes so dull that she appeared encased in a fog. Silence followed, broken only by a tree-branch which scraped the window to and fro.
The amazing thing was/that, though my imaginary fears had so completely upset me, the sight of a soul so withered and desolate should somehow restore my confidence.
I tried as best I could to explain why I was there. "I came here looking for Hester Frye, I said. "This here is Hessie," she replied. "I was told," I continued, "that you lived on the old Johnson place 826
- 3 - and somehow I imagined this was the house, that is, until I saw the books: then I became so interested I hoped I might buy some from whoever might own them."
"Hit too late now," she said, "but I wish to de Lawd you had er got 'em er long time ago, fer they ain't enver done Mr. Charlie no good, nor nobody else, ef you ax me." She walked slowly into the room and through the door where I had entered, and out the back. "De front door done been boa'ded up," she added, "caze don't nobody never come here no mo'," putting into the cryptic sentence all that I had somehow felt. For here was a once proud place now tuned in a minor key to a jumble of shattering discords.
I followed her down the back steps and across a narrow plank walk to a small cabin which I had somehow not seen on the far side of the house. "If this is your house," I said, "won't you let me come in and talk with you while, and tell me something of yourself, and your family, and what you do and where you come from?" (Her dialect I had noticed, was different from that of the Alabama Black Belt, Negro's).
With an apparent distrust, not only of me, but of life in general, she sat down on the steps, and in her haunting voice said, "T'ain't no use to come in caze I ain't got nothin' ter tell, 'cause I don't know nothin'. My name is Hester; jes' lack I said, Hessie Frye is what I goes by. I ain't never been married ter nobody, _ that is, I ain't had what you might call no reg'lar husban'. En all I does is jes' stay here and look after Mr. Charlie. I ain't never been no fiel' hand. Jes' stays in de house. I ain't got no folks, deys all gone too long ago. 827
- 4 - My mammy's name was Lucy Frye. She came out here in slav'y time, wid Marse Bob, frum Char'ston, South Ca'lina, in er wagin. Didn't none of her folks come wid her, jes' her by herself, en she say she didn't never see non of em no mo'. Den I was born here, right here in dis here yard, and didn't never know no pappy, but I was her fore Marse Bob died, en 'fore his two boys Mr. Joe and Mr. Johnny died too, en once dey's gone ain't no comin' back. I can't recollec' Miss Ca'line much, caze my 'membrance is shaller, but she was us old Mistress. I knows she had a heap er trouble; I hear mammy say dat. I used to wash en iron de shirts en look atter de house in dem days, en jes' lack Marse Bob lef' hit, dats jes' lack he found hit. But ain't nothin' lef' now to look atter. Ev'ything done drunk up an' in ruination. Mr. Charlie mos' done come to de end of de row, en my tiredness done come down on me too. I don't 'zactly know how old I is, but I knows I is gettin' on, but you better go 'long now, Miss," she said, "caze I'se got plenty ter do 'fore dark en hits mighty nigh fust dust now."
I apologized for having taken up so much of her time, and then remembered to say that I had been invited into the "gre't house," as she called it, by on old Negro man. "Must er been 'Bokay'," she said, "but he don't b'long here no more en you does, he jes roams about caze he ain't got no place ter stay at, en he's sorter franzy-minded too. He can't do nothin' much 'cept chop her little wood now en den."
I understood now something of her dialect. She was a Gullah Negro, at least her mother was, and it was the influence of Scotch 828