Captain Sam (And the Stern-wheel Tale)

Captain Sam
((And the Stern-wheel boat) (a tale by Josh Jefferson))


“Toby, you aint know’ bout de time I tooken that trip on da stern wheel-boat down da Mississippi, with Mr. Hightower and Captain Sam B?” (Likened to a house boot, perhaps 35-foot long hull, 12-feet wife deck)
“No, I aint never heard you tell me that one?”
“Well, we’s goin’ to St. Louis from New Orleans, and Captain Sam had this here boat, I reckon he done had it for a longtime. He took his wife along this one night, and the boat struck a barrier of some kind, going around a crook in da river, and it started to skink, it run down in de water and tore the side apart, and Mrs. Sam she a-sleeping, and da water now was higher than the cabin floor, and Captain Sam he sho’ is raise a ruckus ‘bout it, and at the back, where his wife sleep he with an axe, cut into his wife’s sleeping quarters, da roof wuz rotten, pert near you could see-through it, when he done took that first heavy he-ho blow, it done crashed down through those moldy plank-floorboards, that it cracked her skull wide open.”
“It look like Sam got poorly judgment” said Toby.
“It ain’t so poorly all de time, jes’ that time,” said Josh, “Hightower, he used to get the ideas ‘bout movin’ sometimes, and finding him a Missy, when he away from da plantation, and he had his missy. Let me tell you de end of it,” said Josh.
“Well, go-on and tell me de tale!” said Toby
“He reckons he done loss her—and I suppose he did cuz he never did go and check on her after he heard that crack and saw what he saw, an’ he axe de ooman at de wheel—too!”
“Why he do that?” asked Toby.
“The oonigger, tell he boss he wife was mighty nice woman, and he like Sam fret he loosen her, and I reckon he didn’t need de ooman anymore, to take care of his poor little rotting stern-boat.”
“So,” remarked Toby, “now he boat-less and wifeless, what he say now?”
“He look at me and say, ‘you coon,’ to me and run off de boat, like ole cat scared out of his wits.”


No: 605 (2-19-2010)
Written for the book “The Cotton Belt”