Whatever he believed, he believed. It didn’t matter to him whether it was really true or not. He just changed the truth till it fit him. He was a real white man.

He awoke in good time sure enough, sat up, and barked out, “Stop near that cabin in clearing yonder. Our work is here.” Now he was as lost as the rest of us, and didn’t know his way out of the particular patch of woods and that homestead any more than a bird knows his way out of a privy with the door closed, but he was the leader, and he had found

Some things in this world just ain’t meant to be, not in the times we want ’em to, and the heart has to hold it in this world as a remembrance, a promise for the world that’s to come. There’s a prize at the end of all of it, but still, that’s a heavy load to bear.

It seemed to me the whole business of the Negro’s life out there weren’t no different than it was out west, to my mind. It was like a big, long lynching. Everybody got to make a speech about the Negro but the Negro.

Truth is, lying come natural to all Negroes during slave time, for no man or woman in bondage ever prospered stating their true thoughts to the boss. Much of colored life was an act, and the Negroes that sawed wood and said nothing lived the longest.

It was all, “Fetch me some water, Onion,” and “Grab that gunnysack and bring it yonder,” and “Wash this shirt in the creek for me, Onion,” and “Heat me some water, dearie.” Being free weren’t worth shit.

Now, I was just a young boy dressed like a girl and foolish as a dimwit and not able to hold anybody in their wrong, stupid as I was, but still, I was a young man coming into myself, and even I weren’t that dim. It occurred to me that it didn’t take but one of them colored angling for a can of peaches or a nice fresh watermelon from their master to

for he didn’t have no taste for anything cooked, but my own tastes growed to pumpkin bread, fresh blackberries, turkey, venison, boiled pigeon, lamb, dainty fish, pumpkin bread, and butchered ham with real German sauerkraut like I had up in Boston every time I dropped word on being a slave.

“They call that a Good Lord Bird,” he said. “It’s so pretty that when man sees it, he says, ‘Good Lord.’”