his mother sang to him too. her voice was soft and shining gray like her dear gray eyes. she sang, “sleep baby sleep, thy father watches the sheep,” and he could see his father sitting on a hillside looking at a lot of white sheep in the darkness but why; “thy mother shakes the dreamland tree and down fall little dreams on thee,” and he could see the little dreams floating down easily like huge flakes of snow at night and covering him in the darkness like babes in the wood with wide quiet leaves of softly shining light. she sang, “go tell aunt rhoda,” three times over, and then, “the old gray goose is dead,” and then “she’s worth the saving,” three times over, and then “to make a featherbed,” and then again. three times over. go tell aunt rhoda; and then again the old gray goose is dead. he did not know what “she’s worth the saving” meant, and it was one of the things he always took care not to ask, because although it sounded so gentle he was also sure that somewhere inside it there was something terrible to be afraid of exactly because it sounded so gently, and he would become very much afraid instead of only a little afraid if he asked and learned what it meant. all the more, because when his mother sang this song he could always see aunt rhoda, and she wasn’t at all like anybody else, she was like her name, mysterious and gray. she was very tall, as tall even as his father. she stood near a well on a big flat open place of hard bare ground, quite a way from where he saw her from, and even so he could see how very tall she was. far back behind her there were dark trees without any leaves. she just stood there very quiet and straight as if she were waiting to be gone and told that the old gray goose is dead. she wore a long gray dress with a skirt that touched the ground and her hands were hidden in the great falling folds of the skirt. he could never see her face because it was too darkly within the shadow of the sunbonnet she wore, but from within that shadow he could always just discern the shining of her eyes, and they were looking straight at him, not angrily, and not kindly either, just looking and waiting. she is worth the saving.
she sang, “swing low, sweet cherryut,” and that was the best song of all. “comin for to care me home.” so glad and willing and peaceful. a cherryut was a sort of a beautiful wagon because home was too far to walk, a long, long way, but of course it was like a cherry, too, only he could not understand how a beautiful wagon and a cherry could be like each other, but they were. home was a long, long way. much too far to walk and you can only come home when god sends the cherryut for you. and it would care him home. he did not even try to imagine what home was like except of course it was even nicer than home where he lived, but he always knew it was home. he always especially knew how happy he was in his own home when he heard about the other home because then he always felt he knew exactly where he was and that made it good to be exactly there. his father loved to sing this song too and sometimes in the dark, on the porch, or lying out all together on a quilt in the back yard, they would sing it together. they would not be talking, just listening to the little sounds, and looking up at the stars, and feeling ever so quiet and happy and sad at the same time, and all of a sudden in a very quiet voice his father sang out, almost as if he were singing to himself, “swing low,” and by the time he got to “cherryut” his mother was singing too, just as softly, and then their voices went up higher, singing “comin for to carry me home,” and looking up between their heads from where he lay he looked right into the stars, so near and friendly, with a great drift of dust like flour across the tip of the sky. his father sang it differently from his mother. when she sang the second “swing” she just sang “swing low,” on two notes, in a simple, clear voice, but he sang “swing” on two notes, sliding from the note above to the one she sang, and blurring his voice and making it more forceful on the first note, and springing it, dark and blurry, off the “l” in “low,” with a rhythm that made his son’s body stir. and when he came to “tell all my friends i’m comin too,” he started four full notes above her, and slowed up a little, and sort of dreamed his way down among several extra notes she didn’t sing, and some of these notes were a kind of blur, like hitting a black note and the next white one at the same time on grandma’s piano, and he didn’t sing “i’m comin’ ” but “i’m uh-comin,” and there too, and all through his singing, there was that excitement of rhythm that often made him close his eyes and move his head in contentment. but his mother sang the same thing clear and true in a sweet, calm voice, fewer and simpler notes. sometimes she would try to sing it his way and he would try to sing it hers, but they always went back pretty soon to their own way, though he always felt they each liked the other’s way very much. he liked both ways very much and best of all when they sang together and he was there with them, touching them on both sides, and even better, from when they sang “i look over jordan what do i see,” for then it was so good to look up into the stars, and then they sang “a band of angels comin after me” and it seemed as if all the stars came at him like a great shining brass band so far away you weren’t quite sure you could even hear the music but so near he could almost see their faces and they all but leaned down deep enough to pick him up in their arms. come for to care me home.
they sang it a little slower towards the end as if they hated to come to the finish of it and then they didn’t talk at all, and after a minute their hands took each other across their child, and things were even quieter, so that all the little noises of the city night raised up again in the quietness, locusts, crickets, footsteps, hoofs, faint voices, the shufflings of a switch engine, and after awhile, while they all looked into the sky, his father, in a strange and distant, sighing voice, said “well ...” and after a little his mother answered, with a quiet and strange happy sadness, “yes ...” and they waited a good little bit longer, not saying anything, and then his father took him up into his arms and his mother rolled up the quilt and they went in and he was put to bed.
he came right up to her hip bone, not so high on his father.
she wore dresses, his father wore pants. pants were what he wore too, but they were short and soft. his father’s were hard and rough and went right down to his shoes. the cloths of his mother’s clothes were soft like his.
his father wore hard coats too and a hard celluloid collar and sometimes a vest with hard buttons. mostly his clothes were scratchy except the striped shirts and the shirts with little dots or diamonds on them. but not as scratchy as his cheeks.
his cheeks were warm and cool at the same time and they scratched a little even when he had just shaved. it always tickled, on his cheek or still more on his neck, and sometimes hurt a little, too, but it was always fun because he was so strong.
he smelled like dry grass, leather and tobacco, and sometimes a different smell, full of great energy and a fierce kind of fun, but also a feeling that things might go wrong. he knew what that was because he overheard them arguing. whiskey.
for awhile he had a big mustache and then he took it off and his mother said, “oh lay, you look just worlds nicer, you have such a nice mouth, it’s a shame to hide it.” after awhile he grew the mustache again. it made him look much older, taller and stronger, and when he frowned the mustache frowned too and it was very frightening. then he took it off again and she was pleased all over again and after that he kept it off.
she called it mustásh. he called it must’ash and sometimes mush’tash but then he was joking, talkin like a darky. he liked to talk darky talk and the way he sang was like a darky too, only when he sang he wasn’t joking.
his neck was dark tan and there were deep crisscross cracks all over the back of it.
his hands were so big he could cover him from the chin to his bath-thing. there were big blue strings under the skin on the backs of them. veins, those were. black hair even on the backs of the fingers and ever so much hair on the wrists, big veins in his arms, like ropes.
