Sitting Up With the Dead: A Storied Journey Through the American South. Pamela Petro
know what, bear? That rabbit, he always was a little bit too sassy for me. You hear me?’
Bear said, ‘Yay-yuh, I hears you Brer Fox. What we gonna do about it, huh?’
Fox says, ‘Bear, I don’t know about you, but if I ever get my hands on that cotton-pickin’ rabbit, I’m gonna take his little whiskers, and nick ’em out one by one.’
The bear says, ‘When you get through with that, hee, hee, hee, you give him to me, so I can just nookie him – Bam! Boom! – clean out cold. Let’s go get him now.’
‘No. You wait here till I get back. I gots myself an idea.’
As Akbar spoke my knees ached to stretch out, but I was penned in by cookie-scented children on all sides, effectively stuck in a kind of perceptual briar patch of my own making: a white man’s house built with money wrung from the stories of slaves, now administered by a black foundation – which, word had it, faced an uphill financial battle because of the see-sawing of Harris’ reputation – principally visited by white tourists who made their way to an off-the-beaten-track black neighborhood, where, if they were lucky, they could hear a black storyteller spin ancestral tales preserved by the intercession of a white man.
Well, old Fox, he left Bear sittin’ there. He went down the road to his house, and he got him a bucket. He got that old bucket and he went on down in the woods and he filled it up with some of that old sticky, yucky, mucky, ooey, gooey tar. And he come back out there to where the bear was waitin’ on him. When he got back he showed it to old Bear. Then he went and got some turpentine and he poured that over it, kind of softened it up a little bit. Then he went ahead and stirred it. And when he got it good and stirred up, he started scoopin’ it up and shapin’ it up, and after a while he shaped up a little old head. He worked up some shoulders, and chest, some arms and some legs, and when he got through with it, it looked just like a little bitty person. Some folks say, a little bitty baby. Y’all got any idea what he might a called it?
Kids: ‘TAR BABY.’
Well, after he got this tar baby thing all shaped up, he knew that he had to catch that old smart rabbit. And he didn’t know if this old tar-shaped thing was gonna do it. See, one thing that fox knows about, he knew that little rabbit ain’t nobody’s fool. So he figured, he gotta dress this thing up to get that old rabbit to stop and be friendly with it.
So he looked around to see what in the world he could dress it up with, and he noticed the buttons on old Bear’s jacket. He called old Bear a little closer. The old Bear got close to him and he just, Pluck! Pluck! He snatched off a couple of buttons and he stuck them on the tar baby for eyes. He got him a piece a coal and he stuck that on for a nose. Hee, hee, hee, hee! He went on and shaped up a little old mouth. And, aaah, he squeezed some ears on the side of the head. Hee hee, hee, hee, hee! Hooo-EY! He looked at all the hair on Brer Bear’s neck, and he just … aaaah!!! … stuck that on top of the tar baby’s head. Then he took his jacket off and he wrapped that around it. And to top it off, he got old bear’s straw hat, and he stuck it – eek! – right on top of the head.
Now. He knew that if that Rabbit saw this little dressed-up tar baby thing, he was gonna stop and try to be friendly. Then he and old Bear would see what would happen when the tar baby didn’t say nothin’. Now, to set the trap, they got that old dressed-up tar baby thing, and they took him out to the big road. And when they got out there, they set it up right by the side of the road, then they went out into the bushes to hide. Now, what I want y’all to know, is that right over there (Akbar points; children all look) on the left corner of the imagination, was a thing called a briar patch …
Now, that tar baby thing was just sittin’ up there just as quiet as could be. Old Fox and Bear, they out in the bushes tryin’ to hide.
Harris’ shyness prevented him from reading from his own collections in public (the public, in 1900, meant the middle-class, white public). The curious thing is that he lost his inhibitions in front of black people. There is a story about him hiding from crowds behind a railroad station while he waited for a train. There he met a group of black railway workers on their break, with whom he immediately fell into an easy-going, storytelling swap until his train came. Caution tells me this is a psychological quagmire I should leave well alone. But the fact is that Harris exclusively communicated with white audiences in print, as Uncle Remus, and with black audiences in his own voice, as himself. Did he simply take the Remus character to heart, and only feel comfortable with ‘kin,’ or did Harris have an inkling that Brer Rabbit – ‘Brer,’ by the way, means ‘Brother’ – was really a guerilla?
‘Brer Rabbit,’ wrote Robert Hemenway introducing a recent Uncle Remus collection, ‘is black from the tip of his ears to the fuzz of his tail, and he defeats his enemies with a superior intelligence growing from a total understanding of his hostile environment.’ Brer Rabbit – the incorrigible trickster – was born prey rather than predator, yet he triumphs through his wits again and again. Passed on within the confines of slavery from one African-American to another, these stories held a kernel of revolution: they conveyed strategies, allowed for vicarious victories, and promised that organized systems could be overcome by cunning. Brer Rabbit doesn’t always win – or when he does, it is often at great cost, through the sacrifice of allies or the unnecessarily cruel torture of enemies. Intelligence allows him to choose freedom by whatever means available, if he wants it badly enough: a message of hope, heartbreaking in its moral ambiguity.
Now look! Who’s comin’ down the road just as happy and sassy as can be? Was our friend Brer Rabbit. Old Rabbit, he skipped along there, and when he saw that tar baby thing he stopped. Screech! And he tried to be friendly. First thing old Rabbit said was, ‘HEY THERE!’ But what did that tar baby say? Children: ‘Nothing.’ Old Brer Fox and Brer Bear, they just laaaay loooow.
Now, Rabbit say, ‘I see you!’ What’d that old tar baby say that time? Children: ‘Nothing.’ Old Brer Fox and Brer Bear, they just laaay loooow.
Rabbit say, ‘Can you hear me? No, looks like you cain’t!’ Did he say anything then? No, didn’t say nothin’. Old Brer Fox and Brer Bear, they just laaaay looow.
Rabbit say, ‘Wait. Now don’t you know how to SPEAK? Round here we all speaks to one another.’ Did the tar baby say anythin’? No, didn’t say NOTHIN! Old Brer Fox and Brer Bear, they just laaaaay loooow.
Rabbit says, ‘Wait. Now, if you don’t take that hat off and tell me ‘Hi!’ by the time I count THREE, I’m gonna blip you on the nose!’ Was the tar baby scared? Children: ‘Noooo.’ Did he say anything? No, he didn’t say nothin’. Old Brer Fox and Brer Bear, they just laaaay loooow.
Brer Rabbit was serious. Rabbit say, ‘One. Two. Two and a half. Three! Eeeeeeh … Blip!’ (Rabbit tries to free himself) ‘Unh! Unh! Unh!’ Right there’s where things got sticky, didn’t it? Cause his fist stuck. He says, ‘Hey! Let go! Let go! Let go right now, before I hit you with this one, and … Blip! Unh! Unh! Unh!.’ That one stuck. He says, ‘Hey! Let go! Let go! Let go before I kick the natural stuffin’ outta you! And, Unh! Unh! Unh!’ Did any stuffin’ come outta that tar baby? Children (sounding superior): ‘Nooo.’ ‘Let go! Let go! Let go! Let go right now, before I butt you with my head. And … Blip! Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah!’ I think we know what happened to the head, now don’t we?
Well, old Rabbit looked up and he was stuck completely to the tar baby. Old Fox and Bear, they peek out of the bushes and see that old Rabbit was stuck. They eased up behind him and old Brer Fox, he say, Mornin’, Brer Rabbit, don’t you look kinda stuck up this mornin’? Ha, ha, ha! We’ve been lyin’ here for a mighty long time, but we got ya now. This is gonna be the last day that you see!
Bear looked at him and said, Huh, huh, huh, huh, huh, I’m gonna nuggie yo’ head clean off.
Fox say, Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. Quick! We gotta make him suffer. Let’s start us up a FIRE. Let it get good and hot, drop old Rabbit in it and let him BAR-BEEE-CUE for a while.
Well now, Brer Rabbit, you know he was stuck. But two things about this Brer Rabbit I want us to never forget. Number one, even though he was stuck, he didn’t