Войти в систему
Войти с помощью соц. сетей:
One day Brer Wolf was going home after fishing all day. What’s that you say? You say I told you that Brer Rabbit killed Brer Wolf by pouring hot water on him? Well, now, that’s true, ain’t it? But you got to understand: Back before “Once upon a time,” dying was different. Just because you died in one story didn’t mean you stayed dead for the rest of the stories. That wouldn’t be no fun, would it? Of course not.
Now, like I was saying, Brer Wolf was sauntering home with his string of fish when all of a sudden, Miz Partridge came flying out of the bushes at him. He ducked and dodged, wondering what in the dickens was going on.
It finally occurred to him that Miz Partridge must have her nest nearby. Well, Brer Wolf had a lot of fish, but the thought of some nice young partridge was more than he could resist. He dropped his string of fish right there in the road and went to hunt for the nest.
A few minutes passed and along come Brer Rabbit. He stopped when he saw the string of fish lying in the road. He looked at them. The fish looked at him, and that settled that.
When Brer Wolf came back empty-handed, he didn’t see nothing in the road but a big wet spot. He looked up the road. No fish. He looked down the road. No fish nowhere.
He sat down and thought the situation over. There was only one explanation, of course: Brer Rabbit!
He went straight there. Brer Rabbit was sitting on the porch.
“You stole my fish,” Brer Wolf said without so much as a howdy-do.
“What fish?”
“You know what fish!”
Brer Rabbit said Brer Wolf shouldn’t be going around accusing people of crimes they hadn’t committed, and Brer Wolf said other folks shouldn’t be taking what wasn’t theirs, and they went back and forth and forth and back like that until Brer Rabbit said, “If you believe I got your fish, then you can go out back and kill the best cow I got.”
Brer Rabbit thought that would put an end to the matter. Nobody would offer his best cow if he was lying. But Brer Wolf knew Brer Rabbit pretty well.
He marched right on back to the pasture, took a close look at all the cows, and being a gentleman of good judgment and discriminating taste, killed the best cow of the lot.
Brer Rabbit couldn’t believe his eyes. What was the world coming to when somebody wouldn’t believe one of his lies? But that didn’t mean Brer Rabbit was whupped.
“Brer Wolf! Brer Wolf! The police is coming! The police is coming! You better run and hide.”
Brer Wolf dropped the cow and took off through the underbrush. He was always up to so much no good that it didn’t surprise him that the police might be after him.
Brer Wolf wasn’t hid good before Brer Rabbit was skinning the cow, cutting it up into pieces and salting it. He called his children and they ran and hid the meat in the smokehouse. When he was finished, Brer Rabbit took the cow’s tail and stuck it in the ground.
“Brer Wolf! Hey, Brer Wolf! Come quick! Your cow is going into the ground!”
Brer Wolf came cautiously out of the underbrush and saw Brer Rabbit holding onto the cow’s tail like he was trying to keep it from going into the ground. Brer Wolf grabbed hold. They pulled and – POP! – the tail came out of the ground!
Brer Rabbit shook his head sadly. “We pulled the tail out of the cow and the cow done gone now.”
Brer Wolf didn’t want to hear nothing like that.
He got him a shovel and started digging. Brer Rabbit chuckled and went and sat on his porch.
Brer Wolf was shoveling the dirt out so fast you’d a thought he’d turned into a steam shovel. Brer Rabbit just chuckled, and every now and then he sang under his breath:
“He diggy, diggy, diggy, but no meat there. He diggy, diggy, diggy, but no meat there.”
Even if Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox had become friends, it didn’t mean that Brer Fox had stopped being a fox. When he dropped by to see Brer Rabbit one afternoon and saw the little rabbits all by themselves, well, he couldn’t help it that he was a fox. They looked so fat and tender and juicy, he wanted to gobble ’em up right then and there, but didn’t know how he could without having a good excuse. He still remembered how Brer Rabbit had poured scalding water over his cousin, Brer Wolf.
The little rabbits were huddled in a corner as scared as they could be. Brer Fox sat down in a rocking chair and started rocking back and forth. He saw a stalk of sugarcane standing by the door. “Break me off a piece of that cane!”
Ain’t too many things in this world tougher than sugarcane. Brer Fox knew they couldn’t break it, and when they failed, he’d have an excuse to eat ’em.
The little rabbits sweated and they wrestled and they strained and they puffed, but nothing doing.
“You rabbits hurry up! If you don’t break me off some of that cane, I’ll eat you!”
The little rabbits tried even harder, but they couldn’t break it. Then they heard a little bird singing on top of the house:
Take your teeth and gnaw it.
Take your teeth and gnaw it,
Saw it and yoke it,
And then you can break it.
The little rabbits started into gnawing and biting, and quicker than butter can melt on a hot stove, they had a piece of cane broken off.
Brer Fox wasn’t too happy about that. He got up and commenced pacing the floor. He saw a sifter hanging from the wall. “Here! Take this sifter and run down to the creek and get me some fresh water.”
The little rabbits ran down there and tried to dip water with the sifter. Naturally the water just kept running out. They didn’t know what to do and sat down and cried.
Then, from up in a tree, the little bird started singing:
Sifter holds water same as a tray,
If you fill it with moss and daub it with clay;
The Fox gets madder the longer you stay —
Fill it with moss and daub it with clay.
The little rabbits put moss and clay in the sifter, filled it with water and carried the water to Brer Fox. He was fighting mad now. He pointed to a big log that was setting beside the fireplace. “Put that log on the fire!” he ordered.
The little rabbits tried to lift it. It wouldn’t budge. They tried to turn it on end. It wouldn’t budge. They tried to roll it. It wouldn’t budge. Then they heard the little bird sing:
Spit in your hands and tug it and toll it,
Get behind it and push it and pole it;
Spit in your hands and rare back and roll it.
They set to work and just about time they got the log on the fire, Brer Rabbit and his wife came walking in. Brer Fox grinned real sheepish-like. “Well, Brer Rabbit. Thought you wasn’t going to get back before I left.”
Brer Rabbit only needed to glance at his children to see that something was wrong, but he pretended like he didn’t notice a thing. “Why don’t you stay and have supper, Brer Fox? Since Brer Wolf stopped coming to see me, I ain’t had much company. Gets mighty lonesome sometime.”
Brer Fox allowed as to how Miz Fox was expecting him home for supper, and he tipped on away.
One winter the weather got so cold the animals started wondering if the Lord had forgot to send spring. Most of them were all right, since they’d worked hard during the summer, made a good crop, and got all their wood chopped and stacked. All of them, that is, except Brer Rabbit. He hadn’t made a crop that year, since he’d been eating out of everybody else’s garden, and he hadn’t chopped firewood either, figuring that the winter wouldn’t be cold.
Brer Rabbit went over to Brer Fox’s house one day and he was troubled in his mind. His wife was sick, his children were cold and hungry, and what little fire there was in the fireplace had gone out in the night.
Brer Fox felt bad, and gave him some fire. Brer Rabbit smelled beef cooking and his stomach almost popped out of his belly, it wanted some of that beef so bad. But Brer Rabbit didn’t like to beg, so he took the fire and left. He didn’t get far before the fire went out. He went back to Brer Fox’s house to get some more.
This time the beef smelled even better. “Brer Fox, where you get so much nice beef?”
Brer Fox answered, “Why don’t you come over tomorrow? I’ll show you where you can get all the beef you want.”
Brer Rabbit showed up bright and early the next day.
“There’s a man live near Miz Meadows who’s got a lot of cattle. He’s got one named Bookay. You just go up to her and say Bookay, and she’ll open her mouth. You jump in and get as much meat as you can carry away.”
Brer Rabbit had never heard of such a thing. “Tell you what. Go with me this time and show me how it’s done.”
They went down to the man’s pasture. Brer Fox walked around among the cattle until he found the one he was looking for. He walked up to her, hollered Bookay, and sho’ nuf, the cow’s mouth swung open like a door. Brer Fox jumped in and Brer Rabbit jumped in after him.
“Now, you can cut almost anything you want, but don’t cut near the haslett [heart and liver].”
“I want me a roast,” Brer Rabbit hollered back.
“Fine. Just don’t cut near the haslett.”
“And after I get a roast, going after some London broil and filet mignon and Chateaubriand.”
Brer Rabbit was hacking and cutting and sawing and thinking about the hollandaise sauce he was going to make instead of looking where he was cutting and he cut right through the haslett. The cow fell over dead.
Brer Fox said, “Oh, oh. What we gon’ do now? When the man come down this evening to look at his cows, we gon’ be in a world of trouble.”
“You get in the rear of the cow and I’ll get in the head,” said Brer Rabbit.
That evening the man came and saw his cow was dead. He cut her open to see if he could figure out what killed her. Brer Rabbit crawled out through the cow’s mouth and ran up to the man.
“If you want to know who killed your cow, just look in the hind parts and there he is.”
The man didn’t take time to look. He got a club, beat on the hind part so hard that he killed Brer Fox dead. Brer Rabbit asked the man if he could have Brer Fox’s head. The man cut it off and gave it to him.
Brer Rabbit wrapped the head up in old newspaper and took it over to Brer Fox’s house. “Miz Fox; I got some nice beef here that your old man sent for supper. But he said not to look at it until you was ready to eat.”
Miz Fox took what Brer Rabbit gave her, put it in the pot and set it cooking for supper. Tobe, Brer Fox’s oldest boy, was hungry and got tired of waiting to see what was for supper. He looked in the pot. When he saw what it was, he started screaming and yelling. His momma came running in. When she saw that she was cooking her old man’s head, she started screaming.
She called the dogs on Brer Rabbit and he took off running like he’d just heard slavery was coming back. The dogs were so close their tongues were lapping his cottontail. He saw a hollow tree and ducked into it just as the dogs was getting ready to jump him.
Miz Fox and Tobe came along a minute later. She told Tobe to guard the tree while she got the shotgun. After she left, Brer Rabbit asked Tobe if he’d be so kind as to go down to the creek and fetch him some cool water. Tobe, being young and not knowing no better, went to get the water, and quite naturally, Brer Rabbit got out.
When Miz Fox come back and found that Brer Rabbit had gotten away, she was fit to be tied. She told Tobe he wasn’t going to live to be no grown fox ’cause she was going to kill him right then and there. Tobe was afraid she meant it, so he went through the woods hunting for Brer Rabbit. Since a fox can outrun a rabbit, it wasn’t long before he caught him. He brought Brer Rabbit back to his momma. She took Brer Rabbit by the neck and carried him back to the house.
Brer Rabbit said, “Miz Fox, I know my time is up. I just ask one thing of you. Lay me on the grindstone and grind my nose off so I can’t smell when I’m dead.”
Miz Fox liked that idea, so she carried him out back to the grindstone. She looked around and realized she needed some water for the grindstone.
“Tobe can turn the handle,” said Brer Rabbit, “while you go and get the water.”
Well, soon as Miz Fox left to get the water, Brer Rabbit ran off, and this time Tobe didn’t catch him.
Войти с помощью соц. сетей: