THE GILDED SIX-BITS
Joe treats his wife Missie May with utter contempt even as they are portrayed as being happily married. When Joe returns home from work on Saturdays, he tosses silver dollars for Missie May to pick up and pile next to her plate at dinner. In front of Otis, a man of means from Chicago, Joe insists that Missie May parade around like a trophy to be admired and desired while parading the wealth of Otis in front of her like a tempting bait on a hook. Sure enough, Missie May sleeps with Otis in exchange for gold. Rather than toss her out for his infidelity, Joe benevolently keeps on so she can cook and clean and massage his sore feet. He also hands over to her a gold piece that came loose from Otis’ vest when Joe struck him. She hands the gold back since it makes her feel like a prostitute. Later, Missie May gives birth to a boy who—fortunately—looks like Joe rather than Otis. Turns out that Otis’ coin was merely gilded rather than the real thing, but having been redeemed, Missie May finds it adequate enough to buy candy for the baby boy.
SWEAT
Delia is pious and a hard worker. Sykes is her shiftless, abusive spouse. The hard work she does well enough to gain a measure of respect is washing clothes for white families and she has been at it for 15 years, supporting both herself and her husband. Sykes, on the other hand, has been eaten away from the inside by the bitterness of enjoying no respect and not getting ahead and feeling shame for the work his wife does. Sykes threatens to leave Delia for his girlfriend, Bertha, and give Bertha the house for good measure. Exploiting his wife’s fear of snakes, he one day tries to frighten her with a trapped rattlesnake and then concocts a murder plot involving leaving the snake in a laundry basket. Figuring out his sinister motive, she manages to escape the wrath of the rattler, but leaves it behind for Sykes to find. He does and she watches with cold lack of concern as he slowly and painfully dies from the snake’s bite.
THE EATONVILLE ANTHOLOGY
This experimental bit of short fiction may remind some viewers of Edward Arlington Robinson’s “Spoon River Anthology.” Rather that describing the inhabitants of a town through verse, however, the residents of Eatonville are revealed through fourteen individual entries that really qualify more as sketches than genuine stories in and of themselves.
SPUNK
Spunk Banks is big, brave and confident. Joe Kanty is small and nervous. Spunk appears to have stolen Joe’s beautiful wife Lena right out from under him, making Joe the object of derision. Fed up, Joe announces his intent to get even with Spunk at the end of a razor blade. Nobody thinks Joe has the stones to go through with it, but it turns out they’re wrong. Only things go bad for Joe and Spunk shoots him then openly brags about it by transforming the razor into a giant axe and Joe’s stealthy creep from behind into an act of wild madness. At any rate, Joe attacked him from behind like a coward and deserved what he got, according to Spunk. A trial clears him of guilt and clears the way for marriage to Lena. One night a bobcat shows up and Spunk proudly grabs the gun he used to kill Joe with every intention of killing the cat. He gets caught up short by the weird spectacle of the bobcat staring straight into his eyes and finds he can’t pull the trigger because he’s convinced the cat is a demonic resurrection of Joe. Overcome by fear after the encounter, eventually Spunk’s anxiety costs him his life while working at the sawmill. Just before he dies, he accuses Joe of having pushed into the mill blade from behind…like a coward. Meanwhile, the rest of the town wonders who will replace Spunk in Lena’s bed.
CONSCIENCE OF THE COURT
Black Laura Lee Kimble is maid to white Mrs. Celestine Beaufort Clairborne, but she’s got much bigger problems. She is facing charges for an alleged assault of Clement Beasley, a white man. According to Beasley, he arrived at the Clairborne house to collect on a debt that Celestine owed, only to find Laura Lee packing up the silver. Concerned that he is watching his chances of collecting the debt slip away, he impulsively decides to take the furniture from the house even though it would fail to cover the cost of the loan. At that point, the maid brutally beat him. Laura Lee is especially upset with Beasley’s story, suggesting as it does that her employer would weasel out of paying a debt and that the furniture would not bring enough to cover the loan. Even more upsetting is that Mrs. Clairborne has yet to respond to her plea for help. Laura Lee’s account differs slightly: she told Beasley where to find her employer, but he arrived the next day with a truck to take away the furniture. Her efforts to block his entry did result in his beating, but when he couldn’t stand up by himself, she carried him to the gate and kicked him off the property. Eventually, she learns that the Mrs. Clairborne borrowed the money from Beasley to pay for Laura Lee’s husband to be buried back in their hometown since the two had followed her employer to Florida following Mr. Clairborne’s death. The due date on the promissory note was not for three months and so the judge clears Laura Lee of charges because she essentially was stopping Beasley from committing grand theft. Laura Lee also learns that the reason Mrs. Clairborne never responded to her plea for help was because she never received it.
DRENCHED IN LIGHT
Isis is a young girl who does young girl things: sitting on a fence and watching people pass by, riding horses with the Robinson brothers and dancing. The one thing she doesn’t like too much is minding her grandmother. One day she takes it upon herself to shave off her grandmother’s “whiskers” and another time she dances at a cabaret wrapped in her grandmother’s red tablecloth. She decides to run away from what she knows will be a whipping and to teach her grandmother a lesson by drowning herself. Before she can do that, some white people stop and ask her for directions to a hotel. She takes them up on the offer to ride along and when they drop her off at home, the grandmother is definitely boiling. The nice white ladies repay Isis for her kindness by paying the grandmother to cover the cost of the ruined tablecloth. They then whisk Isis with them to the hotel so she can put on a dance show just them for them.
