The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines Page A

standing there the woman was fussing at us.
    “Don’t think I love niggers just because I’m giving y’all water,” she was saying. “I hate y’all. Hate y’all with all my heart. Doing it because I’m a God-fearing Christian. I hate niggers with all my heart. Y’all cause of all this trouble, all this ravishing. Yankee and nigger soldiers all over the place stealing my hogs and chickens. Y’all cause of it all. I hope the good white people round here kill all y’all off. Hope they kill y’all before the night over. I’m go’n tell them which way y’all went, and I’m go’n tell them go kill y’all. Now, get away from here. Get away from here before I kill y’all myself. If I wasn’t a God-fearing Christian I’d kill y’all myself.”
    I thanked her for the water and told Ned come on. We went East till sundown, then we swung back North.

The Hunter
    Night caught us but we kept going, traveling by the North Star all the time. I reckoned it had been dark about three hours when we came in a thicket of pine trees, and I smelled food cooking. I stopped quickly and held out my arms so Ned would be quiet. I turned my head and turned my head, but I couldn’t see the fire or the smoke. Now, I didn’t know what to do—go back, go forward, or move to one side.
    Then somebody spoke: “Now, don’t this just beat everything.”
    I turned around so fast I dropped the bundle on the ground. But I felt much better when I saw another black face standing there looking down on us. He had a green stick about the size and link of a bean pole. He had come on us so quietly he could have killed both of us with that stick before we even saw him.
    “What the world y’all doing way out here?” he said. “Y’all by y’all self?”
    “Just me and this little boy,” I said.
    “Lord, have mercy,” he said. He was one of the fussin’est people I had ever seen. “Y’all come on over here,” he said.
    I picked up my bundle and me and Ned followed him back to his camp. He had a rabbit cooking on the fire. He nodded for me and Ned to sit down. I saw a bow and arrows leaning against one of the trees. The man squatted by the fire and looked at us.
    “Now, where the world y’all think y’all going?” he said.
    “Ohio,” I said.
    “My Lord, my Lord,” he said. “I done seen things these last few weeks, but if this don’t beat everything, I don’t know. Coming and going, coming and going, and they don’t bit more know what they doing than that rabbit I got cooking on that fire there. I bet y’all hungry.”
    “We got something to eat,” I said.
    “What, potatoes and corn y’all done stole?” he said. “Don’t have to tell me, I already know. I done met others just like y’all.”
    He took the rabbit off the fire and laid it on the leaves he had spread out on the ground. Then he took a knife from his belt and cut the rabbit up in three pieces. When it had cooled off good he handed me and Ned a piece. He had seasoned it down good with wild onions that he had found out there in the swamps.
    “You going North?” I asked him.
    “No, I’m where I’m going right now,” he said. “South.”
    I quit eating. “You got to be crazy,” I said.
    “I reckoned you got all the sense, dragging that child through the swamps all time of night,” he said. “Good thing I’m a friend, not an enemy. I heard y’all long time before you stopped back there listening. I had been leaning on that pole so long I was fixing to fall asleep.”
    “We was quiet,” I said.
    “Quiet for you, not for me,” he said. “A dog ain’t got nothing on these yers. What you think keeping me going, potatoes and corn?”
    I didn’t answer him. The rabbit was good, but I didn’t want show him how much I liked it. Just nibbling here and there like I was particular.
    “Who you know in Ohio?” he asked me.
    “Just Mr. Brown,” I said.
    “Mr. Brown who?”
    “Mr. Brown, a Yankee soldier,” I said.
    “Lord, have mercy,” the